7.8 Earthquake Rocks Nepal, Hundreds Dead 114
An anonymous reader writes: Nepal was struck by an earthquake of magnitude 7.8 today, with an epicenter 80 km east of the country's second biggest city, Pokhara. Its effects were also strongly felt in the capital, Kathmandu. Casualty reports conflict, but authorities have indicated at least 500 are dead and many more are feared to be trapped. Nepal has declared a state of emergency for the affected areas, and asked for international humanitarian assistance. India and Pakistan have both offered help. Some Indian cities were affected by the earthquake as well, and there are reports of avalanches on Mt. Everest, which has many climbers at any given time.
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Is "fracking" to blame? (Re: News for nerds) (Score:1)
Depends even on more on whether "fracking" could be blamed for the disaster...
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It will be blamed on both Obama and the Republicans, the frackers, the socialists, the global warming deniers, the ecoterrorists, and the NIMBY crowd. And of course, they're all at fault as part of the One World Conspiracy.
Just don't blame for me, I voted for Kodos.
Re:News for nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
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s it linked to the Sun activity
Eh? This is seismology, not climatology.
linked to the human oil/gas digging
Damn!
I was just about to (sarcastically) blame fracking and Sarah Palin...
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I, for one, am waiting for the inevitable discussion that links the Nepal quake to global warming.
At any time now, someone is going to suggest that the quake may have been triggered by tectonic changes as the bedrock under Antarctica and Greenland begins to rebound as the weight of those ice caps is reduced.
Oh. I guess that suggestion was just made. Silly me.
Cue the responses saying why the massive phase change of H2O from solid to liquid could not possibly have any effect on the tectonics underneath. I
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If the earthquake were in... Antarctica or Greenland, you might have a good case.
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But then, you knew that and were just poking fun at the "everything is because of climate change" folks, right?
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The location of an ice sheet is a constant downward pressure on the bedrock that supports it.
As it melts, that mass goes out to sea. If it is a large ice sheet, the underlying tectonic plate rebounds as the pressure is relieved. Stresses at the boundaries of all plates change.
However, you are right, I was just poking fun at the "everything is because of climate change" mentality. Heck, it will be at least another 30 months before enough of Greenland's and Antarctica's ice has melted away to trigger anythi
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Missed a few:
1) This is the US's fault! Even left-wing politicians would be right-wingers in Western Europe.
2) This is the US's fault! Broadband adoption areas in rural areas are not nearly as good as those in Western Europe.
3) This is the US's fault! Copyrights go on for WAY too long.
4) This is the US's fault! Yada Yada Yada
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You forgot the attempt to tie this into global warming, Chinese use of fossil fuels and the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.(TM)
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Re: News for nerds (Score:2)
Or Cthulhu is angry at Christians.
japan quake 40x larger than Nepal quake (Score:2)
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obviously he hates pagans
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There have always been those things throughout history, what a load of bullshit
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Why would God do such a thing to such innocent people?
Santa Claus also allowed this to happen. What does this say about Santa Claus?
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. What does this say about Santa Claus?
It makes me suspect that Santa Claus is neither omnipotent nor omniscient. And only seasonally omnipresent.
Re:Why would God do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Stop learning so much about the world around you. Knowing why complex natural events happen makes it harder to control people through fear of our magic invisible sky ruler."
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Like most people, they simply received a Christian "education" because their parents considered themselves as Christian, and they didn't know better, and didn't want to oppose their parents (plus seven-year-old kids generally don't want to go to Hell, and they want to do their "Communion" with their friends instead of risking being ostracized...).
Then, as adults, most of them used a Christian "cover", to limit the risk of being censored and attacked by the Church for their researches and discoveries.
Many of
Re:Why would God do this? (Score:5, Funny)
look, how many times do we have to go over this?
the 'sky ruler' is a false god.
this really pisses off the real god, the sky protractor. if you piss him off, he'll send all kinds of scary angles you way.
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"Stop learning so much about the world around you. Knowing why complex natural events happen makes it harder to control people through fear of our magic invisible sky ruler."
“He who thinks half-heartedly will not believe in God; but he who really thinks has to believe in God.”
Isaac Newton
Re:Why would God do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
"He who thinks half-heartedly will not believe in God; but he who really thinks has to believe in God."
Isaac Newton
Also, alchemy. Don't forget alchemy.
Re:Why would God do this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just accept that there is a reason for everything, and He has a plan.
His reasoning sucks and he is a horrible planner. I wonder if he has an MBA.
Change in earth rotation/altitude (Score:1)
In a few weeks, we'll typically have a new measurement of earth rotation speed. Large earthquakes that cause landslides under water triggering tsunamis often change the moment of inertia of the earth. This is probably in the same category. Since the mass moves from higher to lower, decreasing the mean radius of the earth, we typically speed up a little bit, from conservation of momentum. Maybe a few microseconds/day (1 part in 1E11 sort of magnitude)
Then, some later time, there will probably be some radar
Pohkara is beautiful (Score:5, Interesting)
Pohkara is beautiful with about 400K people living in the area. My thoughts go out to all the people impacted.
Only spent a few weeks in Nepal around Holi time and found the people there to be wonderful, generous, and fun!
I was there upgrading the wifi network infrastructure at a Buddhist Monastery. The monks need their youtube. ;) Worked on my karma at the same time.
Getting help to that part of the country will be difficult.
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Pohkara is beautiful with about 400K people living in the area. My thoughts go out to all the people impacted.
Only spent a few weeks in Nepal around Holi time and found the people there to be wonderful, generous, and fun!
I was there upgrading the wifi network infrastructure at a Buddhist Monastery. The monks need their youtube. ;) Worked on my karma at the same time.
Getting help to that part of the country will be difficult.
Wow, now that's an interesting experience to share! Going to an actual Buddhist Monastery... they let you partake and everything?
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Totally agree. Spent six weeks hiking there a few years ago. One of the most wonderful countries. I checked and Red Cross International does not have a specific fund for this catastrophe set up yet, but I am hoping they will soon. They do already have people up there. Red Cross will only spend money donated for a specific event or area on and in that area, so that's my method of choice for sending support. Ever since finding out that Locks of Love is a total scam, I am cynical about donating.
Re: Pohkara is beautiful (Score:4, Insightful)
If you get yourself stomped in an earthquake, maybe we will send you a package of Doritos and a new keyboard. But that's only if your karma improves. Right now, you're looking to get a couple of Slashdot dupes.
And we're being generous.
Re:Pohkara is beautiful (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of us visit other places and try to learn something from the peoples and cultures we encounter there. Some of us spend their days in their mothers' basements cursing those who aren't afraid to emerge.
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I am pretty sure that I do not match any of the stereotypes which any of you wish to ascribe to me.
Re:Pohkara is beautiful (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm hardly a hipster, but whatever.
Balding, middle aged, father, former athlete (Olympic trial level in '84) with an interest in travel, helping others, and Linux. For years, I was a low-paid government contractor at NASA working on incredible stuff. You've seen my work if you've seen anything related to manned space flight in the last 30 yrs. I'm positive.
Nothing apple here - btw. Isn't that a requirement to be a hipster? Me?
Went to Nepal because a friend of a friend asked - and it was once-in-a-lifetime. While there, I met with the local KTM Google/OWASP group.
To get to Pohkara, we took a 12 hr bus from Kathmandu (about US$9). Normally it was 6 hrs, but due to unrest in a city between, the 1.5 lane mountain road was blocked and we sat for 6 hrs with 2000+ other vehicles (probably 20K people where stuck). There aren't any alternative routes. Having long talks with locals on the bus brings a new understanding. Someone pulled out a frisbee and we threw it around with locals for a few hrs before dark. There was a Deep Purple concert billboard on the road just outside KTM - none of the locals on the bus had heard of Deep Purple before - didn't know they they'd rent a venue. I couldn't have paid to have this experience. Most tourist take the plane between Pohkara and KTM. We had stocked up on snacks and shared what we had with others on the bus. They shared what they had too. Nobody expected to be stuck in a huge lineup on the side of a mountain rd for 6 hrs in the middle of Nepal.
Life is about experiences. At least it is for me.
I could have stayed home and skipped over the Tokyo and Seoul parts of the trip where I was just a tourist. That's what many people would do - like you, I suspect. I have the time, enough money and the desire for travel to different parts of the world, meet different peoples and try to be nice so our overbearing US government isn't the only reference point for these people. In the 1990s, I worked in Tokyo 2 weeks at a time for a few years. Hipster? Me?
Oh - and I've never lived on the west coast of the USA. Sorry.
Hipster? Me? Nope. Now get off my lawn.
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Sounds like a fantastic trip! You need to blog about this!
Ignore that other Arrogant Cunt that has no respect for seeing or learning about other people's culture. He's a twat probably still living in mommy's basement. Some people are so myopic and insecure that they feel the need to shit on other people's experiences.
> Life is about experiences. At least it is for me.
Absolutely!
Charles R. Swindoll wrote:
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We care about effective use of our tax dollars.
Where effective is enriching those who you support. Or who support you.
We care about curbing rampant illegal immigration.
You care about making it an issue to beat the drum and rally the base, but aren't interested in addressing it beyond clamoring for an ineffective and expensive border fence. That's REALLY popular.
We care about allowing free enterprise to flourish.
Which is why you do nothing when that enterprise exploits and abuses people, in particular, the above illegal immigrants, but also citizens in general, because we can't get in the way of business.
We care about freedom of speech.
Which is why so many Repubicans fell in love wi
Everest climbers (Score:2)
Looks like at least 8 climbers dead from the avalanches at Everest.
Damn...
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meanwhile 2500+ poor people died, but who cares they're just peasants eh?
Re:earthquakes in Nepal? (Score:5, Informative)
It's the Indian-Asian boundary. India is a subcontinent on its own tectonic plate which has been crushing into Asia for a long time. The place where the plates collide is in the Himalayas. Those mountains are still increasing in altitude because of that.
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Where did you get the silly idea that massive earthquakes couldn't happen in the middle of a plate? They do.
Re:earthquakes in Nepal? (Score:4, Informative)
The Himalayas are there because they are on a plate boundary where one plate is colliding with another. At this one, instead of subduction, we have collision and uplift. And this uplift we happen to call the Himalayas.
I'm surprised that there aren't *more* earthquakes of high intensity there.
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You should read the comments from the people who have been there.
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See how annoying that was?
These anticipatory posts about expected reactions are just as annoying as the supposed real reactions they are predicting.
The Himalayas are rising (Score:1)
Fascinating [usgs.gov]
Google Executive Dan Fredinburg killed on Everest (Score:2)
http://uk.businessinsider.com/... [businessinsider.com]
Google executive Dan Fredinburg was among 18 people killed on Mount Everest after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake ravaged Nepal on Saturday.
A woman who identified herself as Fredinburg's younger sister, Megan, said on his Instagram page that he had a major head injury after the avalanche triggered by the quake. He didn't survive.
The catastrophic earthquake Saturday killed more than 1,300 people and leveled ancient buildings in the Nepali capital of Kathmandu. The quake was so str
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What fucked up ethical system do you have that doesn't start by saying human life is inherently valuable?
It is we who choose to make human life valuable or not. And there are easy to conceive global collapse scenarios such as a global famine where human life has negative value - each additional mouth to feed takes food from everyone else and causes more suffering.
My view on this is that the economic mechanisms of trade and private ownership of capital have done far more to make human life valuable than any system of ethics. One can say the same of technology progress, particularly in agriculture, transporta
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If an individual life has negative value, then the total number of lives worth saving is 0, and there's no reason to care whether a particular act causes an increase in suffering or not.
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If an individual life has negative value, then the total number of lives worth saving is 0, and there's no reason to care whether a particular act causes an increase in suffering or not.
It's a marginal cost. Reducing the number of people can reach a regime where there is a positive value to people once again.
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While I (vaguely) understand the notion that you are asserting, if the value of people can fluctuate (that is, human life has no intrinsic value), then what is the value standard in such a marketplace? Gold? dollars?
This also leads to a rather dismal world in which some murders are ok, and some are slightly more ok than others. Of the choices of available dystopias, this one sounds less appealing than average.
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While I (vaguely) understand the notion that you are asserting, if the value of people can fluctuate (that is, human life has no intrinsic value), then what is the value standard in such a marketplace? Gold? dollars?
Whatever is traded in the market. I've found that even when there isn't a formal currency of trade (or the currency of trade is woefully inadequate for some reason such as a high rate of inflation or inability to use it for most trade in the market), markets tend to gravitate to a informal standard of trade.
And since human life is rarely traded directly, it is a tenuous connection in the marketplace, say to jobs that risk life and limb or in trade offs (such as where to live or what quality of tool to bu
Re:News? (Score:5, Insightful)
Poor undeveloped country has insufficient building standards for regular predictable natural disaster. People die.
Its not going to affect me, there is nothing I can do to help, and its hardly surprising, so why care? Not news for anyone, let alone nerds.
Empathy is a basic human emotion that refers to the capability to feel for other people. If you don't ever give a crap about anyone else, why should anyone else ever give a crap about you?
And by the way, I'd consider a earthquake capable of unleashing 7.8 Megatons [wikipedia.org] of energy and leveling entire cities to be worthy of my morning news.
Donations - Do your bit! (Score:1)
https://life.indiegogo.com/fun... [indiegogo.com]
http://www.globalgiving.org/pr... [globalgiving.org]
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Empathy? That is a reason _not_ to read about it and watch the news. The pointless loss and suffering is sickening.
So why is it "news"? To answer my own above rhetorical question - it is disaster porn.
The same reason people gawk at traffic accidents, stopping even after the ambulance is there. The same reason CNN still makes money showing 9/11 or any other disaster over and over.
Of course some disasters are more newsworthy than others. Fresh pictures are vital - if it takes a week for photos
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Empathy is a basic human emotion that refers to the capability to feel for other people. If you don't ever give a crap about anyone else, why should anyone else ever give a crap about you?
It's never been a problem before that most of the world doesn't care about me.
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From what I read, their new high rise buildings were fine and the areas that were destroyed were the historic districts.