99% of the world tacitly agrees with Italian "earthquake" court : no such thing as a natural disaster, only human negligence...

MODERNITY sentences scientists

It should be, by far, the biggest news story this year - in fact, one I feel sure historians will be referencing two centuries from now, when they try to assist citizens of the future to understand the 'spirit of the age' of this still very modernist early 21st century.

But in fact, almost unnoticed by most of the world's largest media, an Italian court has sent a half dozen scientists to jail for 6 years, for failing to warn citizens that an earthquake was going to happen.

Actually they had  publicly warned that a major earthquake might or might not happen fairly soon in this earthquake-prone part of the world : which is as vague or as precise as scientists can ever get about earthquakes' timing, severity and location.

The judge found them guilty and tacitly, so did the rest of the world by their approving silence.

In 99% of the educated world's eyes, unpredictable random natural disasters (Acts of God) do not and can not exist in a "just world" : only preventable human irrationality.

The ballot question on modernity versus post modernity (cum global commensality)

In a nutshell, as concise a statement of what it means to be Modernist as one can ever hope to find.

By contrast, I am a post-modernist and I believe that much of Nature and Reality will always be veiled from human understanding, controlling and predicting : natural disasters can and do happen and they are not the fault of an conspiracy of willfully negligent humans.

It is truly a ballot question as we Canadian political scientists are wont to say: the crux of every election that turns complicated voting decisions into a simple plebiscite choice.

November 6th 2012 : *FEMA : kill it (Romney) or keep it (Obama) ?

Anytime : NATURAL DISASTERS : real or result of human failure ?

Pick one or the other and then pull the lever......

*Romney promises to kill FEMA and hand its job over to for-profit corporations, if he was prez when another SANDY hits....