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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (404602)	1/16/2011 12:01:11 PM
From: Maurice Winn	2 Recommendations Respond to of 794268

Boundary conditions are good for testing what happens when things are extreme. Things can look hunky dory when it's a nice sunny day and the daisies are cheerful on the lawn. But as Haiti and Christchurch showed in the outcome of their respective earthquakes of the same size [near enough for government work], having well built buildings and a robust civilisation really really matters. When the going gets tough, that's when the men are sorted from the boys. It's January in Queensland. That's pretty hot normally, but it's chilly there now in the low 20s, which is presumably why the water is dropping out of saturated air as it reaches its dew point. It's worth comparing New Orleans and Brisbane to see what happens when things happen. I would rather be in Australia from what I saw. A storm is currently brewing in the US$ and other state run fiat currencies. The situation has been hunky dory for decades while they "quantitatively eased" themselves more and more and more $billions to spend, diluting the holders of the currencies. Iceland, Ireland and Greece are already in some trouble but they each have an externality to lean on by being "bailed out". When there is no externality such as when the Euro goes belly up, things could be dire. There have been various countries go broke from time to time. It's not a pretty sight. Some fare better than others. Pakistan, New Orleans and Australia experienced Biblical flooding. Haiti and Christchurch experienced earthquakes. Tsunamis to come. Taupo and Yellowstone to come. If an earthquake hit much of southern European towns, it would be a catastrophe because they are multistorey stacked rocks with streets 4 metres wide. After the quake there would be a 2 metre pile of rock with people squashed under it. For example, we stayed here: asso30.com in Saint Quentin la Poterie. Taupo city looks nice on a beautiful sunny winter's day but one day will be buried under megatons of hot pumice when the Lake Taupo caldera erupts again [1 in 10 odds in any lifetime over the next few hundred years. The large urban areas built on sand-spits around New Zealand will be washed away by Pacific Ocean tsunami and people will once again learn about building on rock, in an elevated location as a safer spot. It's best to prepare for disaster before it happens and be somewhere else at the time. Our house is well up, at 93 metres elevation and away from any potential disasters though social carnage would surround us. Taupo erupting would leave us without electricity until we could buy a generator and another power station could be built but that would be a tolerable inconvenience - going to live in the South of France during winter and Australia during summer would be fine. We don't need electricity really so it wouldn't be all that tough. We have natural gas for hot water, heating and cooking so no biggie. Mqurice