[extropy-chat] re: news in perspective

[Amara Graps]

Me:
>  And so is the ~1000 people in Baghdad who died on a pilgrimage
>  during the time of New Orleans' terrible misfortune. (was that
>  reported?)
>
>  And so is 200,000 people who died in the tsunami.
>

Spike:
>They did mention it, but didn't really get to the point.

OK

>The important point of this tragedy is that now the terrorists have
>figured out a way to slay huge numbers of the other guys without a
>bomb and without a conspiracy: one guy could do it

Yes. That is what is so sad now. The 'amplification of fear' factor
is practically self-sustaining, and it doesn't take much to bring
about a tragedy of this scale.

BTW, despite my comment earlier about wishing that the America media
put this in perspective, it seems from what I've read today that the
economic consequences could be huge. And I don't like seeing people
in other governments (e.g. Schroeder) exploiting the New Orleans
tragedy in political ways. Nevertheless, I think that that the US
government will have a hard time with receiving aid. The view of the
US from countries outside has changed alot in the last 4 years. It's
hard to help a government that one despises, even though it is the
American people themselves, not the government, who will suffer.

Here's a bit of 'trivia' that someone pointed me to today,
a video, from January, from the PBS program "Nova":

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204/02.html

The video fairly accurately predicted what was going to happen.
I wonder why the New Orleans area wasn't better prepared, given
that these dangers were so well-known.

Amara
-- 

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Amara Graps, PhD          email: amara at amara.com
Computational Physics     vita:  ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt
Multiplex Answers         URL:   http://www.amara.com/
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