The Banality of Corporate Evil: Bill Gates & Monsanto

[First posted 29 January 2012

WHEN BIGGER ISN'T BETTER... (reprise)

Earthquakes and megacities: a recipe for catastrophe

Courtesy of National Geographic

WASHINGTON, Feb 28, 2010 – Megacities are something new on the planet. Earthquakes are something very old. The two are a lethal combination, as seen in the recent tragedy in Port-au-Prince, where more than 200,000 people perished — a catastrophe that scientists say is certain to be repeated somewhere, and probably soon, with death tolls that once again stagger the mind. In 1800, there was just one city with more than a million people — Beijing. Now there are 381 urban areas with at least a million inhabitants. Urbanisation crossed a threshold last year when, for the first time, more people lived in city settings than rural ones. About 403 million people live in cities that face significant seismic hazard, according to a recent study by seismologist Roger Bilham of the University of Colorado.

 

The next Big One could strike Tokyo, Istanbul, Tehran, Mexico City, New Delhi, Kathmandu or the two metropolises near California’s San Andreas Fault, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Or it could devastate Dhaka, Jakarta, Karachi, Manila, Cairo, Osaka, Lima or Bogota. The list goes on and on. “You can name about 25 cities that are like Port-au-Prince. They’re not going to shake much but every 250 years (on average they will). So if you can name 25 of them, you’re going to have an event like this every 10 years,” said David Wald, a seismologist with the US Geological Survey. In many vulnerable cities, people are effectively stacked on top of one another in buildings designed as if earthquakes don’t happen.

   

It is not the tremor that kills people in an earthquake but the buildings, routinely constructed on the cheap, using faulty designs and, in some cities, overseen by corrupt inspectors. 

The difference between life and death is often a matter of how much sand went into the cement or how much steel into a supporting column. Earthquakes might be viewed as acts of God, but their lethality is often a function of masonry. “In recent earthquakes, buildings have acted as weapons of mass destruction,” Bilham wrote in the journal Nature. For years, earthquake scientists have shouted their warnings about the strong likelihood that a major quake would level an impoverished city and kill hundreds of thousands of people. They have said, for example, that Nepal’s Kathmandu, where masonry structures expanded so haphazardly that some eventually cantilever over narrow city streets, was every bit as vulnerable as the surrounding Himalayas are majestic. They have said that a million people could die in a major quake in Tehran, Iran.

What’s impossible, however, is knowing precisely which of these cities will be the next to crumble. Or when. For all practical purposes, scientists can’t predict earthquakes. The theory of plate tectonics, largely developed since the 1960s, explains why earthquakes happen in general. 

The major plates of the earth’s crust move constantly, creeping along at about the speed of fingernail growth. They rarely move smoothly past one another but are usually locked in place. On a strike-slip fault of the type that ruptured in Haiti, strain builds on the fault line for decades or centuries. The fault in Haiti had not ruptured in 240 years. An earthquake is a sudden, stress-relieving event. The fault is said to “break.” Scientists can map faults and estimate how much strain has accumulated since the last quake. What they can’t do is say that a given fault will break tomorrow or next year or 10 years from now. Any calculation of earthquake probabilities has a lot of slop in the numbers. “The problem is, the slop is huge on a human time scale,” said Susan Hough, a seismologist with the US Geological Survey. “We’re wired to deal with the immediate. We’re not geared to plan and stress about things likely to happen in 30 years.”

Some large earthquakes have small precursors, called foreshocks, but others happen without warning. There is one famous case of earthquake prediction, in Haicheng, China, in 1975. A local official sounded the alarm after many foreshocks and reports of snakes emerging from hibernation. But that prediction was more akin to a hunch than a scientific argument. There have been countless, less publicized instances when predicted earthquakes did not materialize. As Hough notes in her book “Predicting the Unpredictable,” the successful prediction of earthquakes was an official government mandate in Mao Zedong’s China, but no one foresaw the killer quake that took at least 240,000 lives in Tangshan in 1976.

 

Port-au-Prince had not been hit with a major quake since the days of French rule in the 18th century. Only in recent years have scientists mapped the fault that runs near the city. “Just the beginning of work had been done. But enough was known that it could produce a big earthquake,” said Carol Prentice, a geologist with the US Geological Survey. “We knew it would be bad, but I didn’t imagine that it would be this bad.” 

[Source: The Washington Post. First posted 28 February 2010]

WHAT da fuck gives YOU da right?

I've been smoking since I was 15. Women, they come and go. Tobacco stays. I'm not into beer or whisky, not even the occasional Shandy. Alcohol I can live quite happily without. But I'd fight to the death for my right to light up and enjoy a quiet, untroubled smoke. Without being forced to look at gruesome, ugly images conjured by the world's greatest hypocrites - the World Health Organization.

That's right. The same scam that brought us Herpes, AIDS, SARS, cock & bull flu. They have the power to quarantine you if you so much as sneeze as you go through the airport scanners. They can order schools closed, borders sealed, entire cities evacuated. WHO says it cares about World Health. Yup. Health is BIG business. One of the biggest. After warfare.

I can't remember exactly when these so-called Government Health Warnings first began to appear on cigarette packs. Perhaps in the early 1990s (when George Herbert Walker Bush announced the New World Order). But I sure miss the good old days when all you saw on a pack of cigarettes were cheerful, positive statements like: "Where Particular People Congregate" or "Finest Virginia Blend" or "By Special Appointment to Buckingham Palace, Purveyors of Fine Tobacco Since 1828" or simply "London. New York. Paris. Vladivostok."

Don't these pompous idiots in white smocks realize the great evil they are helping to perpetrate by bombarding us with such negative thoughts and images? If they genuinely desire to promote human health, wealth and welfare, shouldn't they use their collective clout as medical professionals to campaign against patently lethal things like nuclear weapons, depleted uranium, industrial pollution and warfare?

Assuming the Health Authorities are truly sincere about discouraging people from smoking, don't you think they would achieve far better results if they went with upbeat, positive advice on every pack of cigarettes instead of manipulating and reinforcing people's fear of disease and death? A far more acceptable Government Health Warning might read:

SMOKE LESS, ENJOY IT MORE!

Now if they could persuade the tobacco companies to quit putting toxic additives into their commercial blends just to make their cigarettes burn faster - and forbid tobacco farmers from spraying their crops with pesticides - that would be a laudable effort I'd happily support.

Indigenous peoples have enjoyed tobacco for thousands of years. They regard smoking as a sacred ritual. Tobacco represents the plant kingdom, growing from the fertile soil of Mother Earth. When tobacco smoke passes into the lungs it is charged with love from the heart chakra. As the smoke is exhaled, it is blessed with a sense of gratitude for life's pleasures, small and great, and offered as a fragrant incense to Father Sky. This is the sacred meaning of smoking when performed as a conscious ritual. Done this way smoking cannot harm you. Indeed, it can be viewed as a universal form of prayer, honoring the mystical connection between Heaven, Earth and Humanity.

When governments take on the role of nannies, their insincerity and hypocrisy invariably shows. If your government genuinely cares for you, it will channel every effort towards eliminating war from this planet. War not only kills millions of innocents, civilians as well as soldiers - it also contaminates the environment and causes massive damage to ecosystems (think about Agent Orange, radioactive fallout, unexploded bombs and landmines!) The number of war casualties since the beginning of recorded history exceeds by far the number of people who have succumbed to diseases related to smoking. So how come there are no Government Health Warnings printed on every military uniform and painted on every tank, jetfighter and aircraft carrier?

How many people have been killed every day on the roads since the invention of the automobile? Why doesn't the government introduce a law requiring car manufacturers to emblazon every new vehicle with grisly images prominently displayed on the bonnet?

Would you pay RM3.5 million to charge around in one of these?

[Vomit-inducing images supplied by Delan Goh]

NOTE TO MILITANT NON-SMOKERS 

I'm aware that smoking and non-smoking are emotional issues, not too different from respect or disrespect for organized religions. The views I offer are entirely subjective. Militant non-smokers are bound to get uptight when they read this post. Just as hardcore Umno members get all rigid whenever they see the phrase Ketuanan Rakyat.

My own honest opinion about smokers and non-smokers is that I've always felt a lot more comfortable and relaxed around people who smoke - whether cigarettes, pipes, cigars, bongs or reefers. My non-smoking friends, as a broad category, tend to be more disciplined, ascetic, fastidious, judgmental and strong-willed (read "somewhat anal" :-). They're the ones who get up with the sun and go jogging and enjoy munching on raw celery. Not that they're actually healthier than my smoking, non-jogging friends... just more uptight and self-righteous about maintaining their precious daily routines.

I used to really enjoy travel, in happier days when you'd be asked at check-in counters, "Smoking or non-smoking? Window or aisle?" Aircraft seemed to have more legroom those days (nope, I haven't grown taller; but as planes get bigger, legroom appears to shrink, mainly because profit-greedy accountants and marketing slicks now run the show). After being served a meal, the smokers at the back of the plane would unfasten their seat belts and light up. Often, conversations with strangers sitting across the aisle would begin at that point. True, non-smokers often complained that their clothes reeked of stale cigarette smoke after the flight - but at least the atmosphere in the planes was a great deal more cheerful and pleasant, especially before the word "terrorism" was invented by the CIA's spindoctors. And your clothes will reek of stale smoke coming out of a pub anyway... unless smoking is banned throughout the world... and drinking too (or else a couple billion nerve-wracked tobacco addicts suffering cold turkey will be tearing up the pavements on berserk drunken binges).

Next will be oral, anal and non-procreative sex. Mark my words, all ye would-be-banners of simple pleasures. One of these days you'll find yourself accosted and detained for grinning too broadly whilst some eager young stud is sucking you off under the table... and you'll end up having to service a prison blockful of hardcore criminals (mostly from Umno/BN, be warned!) for the next 20 years with no weekends off.

You call that PROGRESS? 

Smoking can cause your dick to get big and hard - that's what I call a warning!

(First posted as a comment on Malaysia Today)