Posted on 03/02/2010 2:45:52 PM PST by Reaganesque
In his days on the staid old London Times of the 1930s, Claud Cockburn won an in-house competition for the most boring headline by coming up with "Small Earthquake in Chile: Not Many Dead." ...snip...
Seismology in this decade is already emerging as the most important new department of socioeconomics and politics. The simple recognition that nature is master and that the crust of our planet is highly volatile has been thrown into some relief by the staggering 250,000 butcher's bill exacted from the people of Haiti by a single terrestrial spasm, and by the relative survival capacity of Chileans even when hit by a quake of superior magnitude. Gone are the boring-headlined stories about the magnitude of the quake and the likely epicenter. The effects of upheavals of the earth can now be quite expertly studied, and even predicted, along a series of intersecting graphs that measure them against demography, income level, and—this is a prediction on my part—the vitality of democratic institutions.
Professor Amartya Sen made a reputation some decades ago for pointing out that in the 20th century no serious famine had occurred in an open or democratic society, however poor....snip...
...Down with the earthquake deniers! Long live democratic seismology!
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Ignoring the substance of the article for a moment, don't you just love dry British humor...
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