Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Disaster expert?

This morning's NPR program aired the first of three part interview with Stephen Flynn, a former Coast Guard commander, who wrote The Edge of Disaster. Quote that made me cringe:


...this is the place that if it were disrupted whether it's an act of god which would be potentially an earthquake or whether it's a terrorist attack....


Why did he feel compelled to declare an earthquake an act of god?!? This piece also reminded me that I should really go back and finish reading the book I started few years ago, but for some reason never finished: The Culture of Fear , especially since I find myself wrapped up in a blanket of it more often than I care to.

3 comments:

Pinar said...

Hey,
This is Pi :)I set up a blog about a week ago but haven't been able to post anything yet. Thanks for your comments on the other site, and again, I am so glad I did not offend you.

Hope to correspond with you in the future.
Cheers!
-Pinar

e said...

Pi,

Glad to meet you. So beside both being female and Saggitarius and agnostic, do we have other things in common? Are you a math teacher as well?

Pinar said...

No I'm not a math teacher. :) But I do teach a freshman class at a univ. here and am getting my PhD in environmental engineering.

I hope to post some blogs soon, some on subjects similar to what we've talked about before, and some more "light-hearted" stuff...LOL...We need the light-hearted stuff I guess...
*sigh*

I replied once again to Eric's newest blog...I just can't seem to stop...hehe...It's just that Sam Harris has some good points, but he comes out as "preaching" and I don't like that. Also, he is getting his PhD in neuroscience...Not that that is not a good thing, but most of the ppl who preach spirituality and are interested in neuroscience start putting different spins on things to make them look more credible/scientific. Granted, I don't know him, he might strictly be interested in the "science" part of it, so I should probably not get so suspicious, but makes me raise an eyebrow. Next thing we know, he could be scientifically "proving" spiritual things using quantum physics...LOL...Also, he doesn't deny he's interested in ESP, paranormal phenomena, etc., so he is open to "supernatural" things. Sounds interesting to me...

Anyways, what the heck do I know, I am still trying to figure things out for myself, but at least I do not preach about science and reason over the "sky-god" or supernatural, then tell ppl to abandon religion and practice spirituality...

Talk to you later!
-Pi