I was a bit dismayed the other day, when the big Japan earthquake hit.... First I had the feeling that the number of casualties was going to be very high... May the dead have found their peace.
Second my website where I get usually very accurate readings of earthquakes had this one marked at 7.9 not at 8.9 contrary to the news stations' claims...
Knowing what is happening is important to me. After half-a-day I was going to write a piece about the piece of string being measured by different people in different ways but as I was about to post the piece, I checked again and the site had updated to 8.9... Another site had 8.8. The difference between 7.9 and 8.9 is basically 10 times more damage. So how come this earthquake site got it wrong in the first place and took half a day to reset the value. Well I don't know. I suspect from looking at some of the plotted graphs that the plots at some recording stations went way outside the graph paper and got registered only to the edge of the paper — not beyond. The results are then computed automatically, thus the error, I suspect.... Lucky I checked again and also got information from another official earthquake site.

For me happiness is... knowing the length of a piece of string... For other people it may not be not so much about caring about the length of the same piece of string... The buddhists, for example, happiness is reaching the enlightenment of the self while being somewhat generous to others. Unlike the catholics whose dogma is very iffy about evolution, the Buddhists embrace science as part of their teachings...  To me, this appears as a form of appropriation to save the furniture, so to speak... Some the Buddhist ramblings about science are quite poor and nonsensical. Buddhist also claim that their religion is not a religion.... Nonsense. Belief in reincarnation — be it as a cockroach should we behave badly in this temporal place — IS as much a religious belief as praying to someone the romans nailed to a cross because the jews thought it would make good entertainment... Will elaborate on "buddhism and science", next...

Tokyo's outspoken conservative governor Shintaro Ishihara has apologised for describing Japan's deadly earthquake and tsunami as "divine punishment".

"[The remarks] hurt victims, Tokyo residents and victims," he told a news conference. "I deeply apologise."

Mr Ishihara, 78, said yesterday that Japanese people were becoming "greedy" and highlighted the case of people who continue to pocket their parents' pensions by delaying death notifications.

"It is necessary to wash away the greedy mind... by using the tsunami," he told reporters.

"I think that it is divine punishment."

Mr Ishihara has retracted the remarks as the nation works frantically to avert a nuclear meltdown and fights to rescue survivors from Friday's twin disasters.

The governor, who has also served in the national parliament, announced his candidacy for a fourth four-year term on Friday.

Mr Ishihara is known for his nationalistic views and has denied Japanese atrocities before and during World War II such as the Rape of Nanking.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/15/3164805.htm?section=justin

Gus: remember when earthquake in Italie were deemed to be punishment from god?... Remember the tsunami in Aceh being described as punishment from allah?  Idiotic thoughts...

'A bugger of a day at the office,'' sighed Cardinal Pazzo, sinking heavily into a chair. His mistress, the principessa, fussed around him, proffering a peck on the cheek and plumping a cushion.

''It's the fools I have to suffer,'' said the cardinal. ''This Galileo Galilei idiot, for example. Claims the Earth is a globe that orbits around the sun. A wicked heresy. But I'm having the devil of a job getting him to recant.''

The principessa splashed some wine into a goblet, a rare old Tuscan Brunello bottled especially for the Holy Office, the Roman Inquisition, where her lover held sway as chief enforcer. ''Is it not possible that Signor Galileo might have a point?'' she cooed. ''It would explain the sunrise and sunset, for example.''

Moments like this irritated Pazzo beyond measure. A woman's opinions in such matters were worthless. He had thought often of replacing the principessa with a younger paramour, but then she was still deliciously good in bed. So he banged a bejewelled hand on the arm of his chair.

''Basta!'' he cried. ''I spend a lot of time studying this stuff. The Earth is flat. If it were a sphere revolving around the sun, obviously we would all fall off it and into the jaws of Hell. God will not be mocked.''

''And so what do you propose to do with this Galileo?''

''Oh, the usual ... Pull out a few fingernails, stretch him on the rack, a bit of how's-yer-father with a red hot poker. Never fails to bring 'em to their senses. This the 17th century, Cara Mia. Mother Church knows all there is to know.''

Cardinal George Pell's latest rant against the science of climate change suggests that four more centuries have not shone much new light in the intellectual backwaters of the church. His attack this week on the head of the Bureau of Meteorology, Dr Greg Ayers, was extraordinary in its dogmatic ignorance. In case you missed it, and to cut a long story short, Ayers - an internationally recognised atmospheric scientist - had explained to a Senate estimates committee that human-induced climate change is real and growing.

Pell, on the other hand, clings to the fashionable right-wing credo that global warming is a fraud. He believes climate change is a pagan superstition and that global temperatures were, in fact, higher in Roman times and the Middle Ages. ''Ayers, when he spoke to the House, was obviously a hot-air specialist. I've rarely heard such an unscientific contribution,'' he told the Herald. ''I regret when a discussion of these things is not based on scientific fact ... I spend a lot of time studying this stuff.''

Such folly is unsurprising in a man who believes that prayers to a dead nun can cure cancer. Not that His Eminence is likely to resort to the thumbscrew and the rack, though. They probably no longer have these instruments at St Mary's.

Mike Carlton