CFI Forums

EaRtHqUakes!

2012-02-08T12:57:06-05:00

Hi all!

Most of you will probably be aware of the earthquakes that have been going on here in Christchurch, New Zealand since September 2010.

I thought I’d start a thread about it since we’ve just passed the 10,000 aftershocks mark!

I’ve been fortunate enough to still have a house but many people I know do not.

In the small hours of September 4th, 2010, I woke up to a rumbling sound, followed by shaking. At first I thought it was just one of our smaller shakes - not that we were “known” for our rumbles but we might get the occasional 3.something that gets people talking. But this one just grew and grew. I leapt out of bed and headed for the doorway and actually had to hold on to it to prevent myself from falling over. When I heard stuff smashing downstairs I knew it was a biggie.

Fortunately we didn’t lose power, phone or internet, so I was able to communicate with people fairly easily. I soon found that we’d had a mag 7.1 slightly out of town.
Also fortunately, there was NO loss of life. Sadly, many homes and businesses were lost.

Christchurch is built on old wetlands. In fact, I suspect that if they knew what was down there, nobody would have settled here.
In some areas liquefaction was really, really bad. In short, liquefaction silt & water spewing out of the ground and it looks like this.
Areas that are close to rivers got hit quite bad, and areas built on the more swampy ground were totally inundated with it.
And of course, the displacement of that silt means the ground actually sinking quite a bit. We have almost entire suburbs written off and there’s places that we will NEVER be able to build on again. A few in particular should never have been built on in the first place as the risks were known.

Over the following months the aftershocks subsided slowly, but we still had some pretty scary ones.
Boxing day was ruined by a large-ish aftershock that closed down businesses on their busiest day of the year.

All seemed to be getting better until February 22nd, 2011… 12:51pm to be precise.
A 6.3mag quake, located this time in Lyttelton harbour, an extinct volcano that we are built next to/on.

While 6.3 might sound a lot less than 7.1, it’s force was unprecedented. As Wikipedia says…

The quake was a “strike-slip event with oblique motion”—mostly horizontal movement with some vertical movement —with reverse thrust (i.e. vertical movement upwards). The vertical acceleration was far greater than the horizontal acceleration. The intensity felt in Christchurch was MM VIII. The peak ground acceleration (PGA) in central Christchurch exceeded 1.8g (i.e. 1.8 times the acceleration of gravity), with the highest recording 2.2g, at Heathcote Valley Primary School a shaking intensity equivalent to MM X+. This is the highest PGA ever recorded in New Zealand; the highest reading during the September 2010 event was 1.26g, recorded near Darfield. The PGA is also one of the greatest ever ground accelerations recorded in the world, and was unusually high for a 6.3 quake and the highest in a vertical direction. The central business district (CBD) experienced PGAs in the range of 0.574 and 0.802 g. In contrast, the 7.0 Mw 2010 Haiti earthquake had an estimated PGA of 0.5g. The acceleration occurred mainly in a vertical direction, with eyewitness accounts of people being tossed into the air. The upwards (positive acceleration) was greater than the downwards, which had a maximum recording of 0.9g; the maximum recorded horizontal acceleration was 1.7g

I’ve never felt anything like it and hope I never do again.

I was at work at the time. One sales rep who was on the road at the time said he saw cars actually leave the ground!
I don’t drive, I cycle everywhere, and I’m glad I do - it was the best way to get anywhere! The streets weren’t only clogged with people trying to get home and to loved ones (most phones were out) but the roads were rough at parts too.
The second aftershock came as I was on my bike… not nice! Picture someone pulling a sheet around underneath a cat and you’ll get the general idea of what the sensation might be like.

Here is some CCTV footage of the quake as it happened. I was nine minutes away from walking into town on my lunch break and this is the route I planned to take!! Sure glad I’d been held up by a sales rep.

This time we weren’t so fortunate. 184 people died. Three of them I knew. One of them, Matty Beaumont, was in the Canterbury Television building where half of the deaths occurred. There was no “body” to speak of and it took weeks for him to be formally identified. The building was weakened by the September quake and concerns were raised about the safety of the building.

Thankfully we have very strict building codes so we still have a city! While the news footage overseas probably died off pretty quickly, we’re still in recovery mode and I don’t think we’ll know “normal” for years to come. The central business district is still fenced off as they take the larger buildings down that are in bad shape.

It doesn’t end there though. We got hammered again in June 2011 by a 6.0, and again in December by a 6.0. I was again on my bike for the December 6.0 and that was pretty scary. Thankfully, while there was still damage, there was no loss of life.

Naturally, these disasters haven’t been without conspiracy theories and such silliness. I’ve seen people posting all sorts of piffle on the net. HAARP, chemtrails, and we have our resident “moon man” who thinks he can predict quakes as well as weather by the moon. Despite his spectacular failures, people still get scared around the full moon. An co-worker of mine sometimes left town during full moons… and of course nothing happened. I understand people’s anxieties though.

Here’s my pics of quake damage:
February 2011 quakes: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150104940587226.286585.589507225&type=3&l=0c98991c8e
June/December 2011 aftershocks: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150215195852226.331163.589507225&type=3&l=010d4317a4 (some pics of my mother’s house that was written off in there.)
September 2010 quake: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.431187992225.229801.589507225&type=3&l=799019d5bf

What are you reading?

2009-04-24T10:19:12-05:00

Interested in the books people are reading, if any.

I’m currently reading “Losing my Faith” by William Lobdell

Superbowl Sunday. Any preferences on who you want to win?

2012-02-05T00:38:07-05:00

I honestly haven’t put any stock into either team, so I’ll flip a coin…....ok Giants….

Volunteering with religious charities?

2012-02-06T10:13:36-05:00

Here in NYC, I used to volunteer at a soup kitchen called Christian Help in Park Slope (CHIPS). I liked it. I’m a good cook, I work well in a team, and I always left feeling fulfilled. CHIPS is run by Franciscan nuns but they aren’t back in the kitchen, where I and my fellow volunteers were. Every time I worked there, my fellow volunteers were also outwardly secular people, and we weren’t expected to mingle/dine with the people we fed, most of whom were either religious or whom I at least overheard often praising their lord. In the kitchen, I don’t remember any god talk at all.

But I’m moving to a different neighborhood, and since I haven’t found a secular soup kitchen/food pantry yet, I’m looking at religious ones again. The closest ones are run by Catholic Worker, two LGBT-friendly Episcopal churches (one of them called “Holy Apostles”), a Presbyterian church, and a Jewish student-life center. The nonprofits organizing the two best-known citywide ones are either Catholic (God’s Love We Deliver, the most famous but with high overhead costs) or Jewish (Meals on Wheels) nonprofits.

I’d much rather volunteer with a secular charitable nonprofit, but the pickings in even this big city are thin unless I find another form of work that can help my community or city without promoting religion. I’m happy to help religious people in need. I just don’t want a deity taking credit for it.

Do you volunteer with religious groups? And if you do, as you do it, are you open about your secularity?

god hates figs

2012-02-06T08:34:28-05:00

Don’t know if you’ve seen this one but those fundies are at it again and this time they’re using candy!!

http://theperilsofpalins.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/god-hates-figs/

Cap’t Jack

Seeking lawyer willing to challenge unjust laws (Canada)

2011-05-31T00:11:55-05:00

The following is a copy paste from where I posted this question on yahoo answers. Between the less than helpful response I got there, and every lawyer I have spoken to telling me that while they are certain they could get the charges dropped they will only do so for $1500-2500, and would not be willing to challenge the validity of the law itself. I thought to explore alternative means of seeking such a lawyer; so I am trying here as well. I am not satisfied simply have my charges taken care of, I wish to solve the fundamental problem.

‘I was recently arrested for ‘public intoxication’ while completely sober, and spent the entire evening in the drunk tank denied a lawyer, phone call, any means to defend myself or even any way of demonstrating I was not intoxicated. I requested multiple sobriety tests, or breathalyzer tests and even flat out asked if there was any way whatsoever I could demonstrate I was not drunk and one officer said, very clearly, “Nope.” There were people at my home that were concerned about me enough they actually searched for me, as I was being denied any means of letting them to know I was unhurt.

Anyway; the wrongful arrest and lack of civil rights I have already filed a complaint about and will pursue that as far as is reasonable. Half an hour after the wrongful arrest I was subjected to a search, and they then found my marijuana. It never even occurred to me to ‘ditch the evidence’ while I sat unsupervised in the squad car, as due to the simple fact that I do not think like a criminal. I was charged with possession, and ‘obstructing an officer,’ which means nothing to me. Sounds like a bonus charge… although perhaps the thirty seconds I interacted with the officers before I was handcuffed was long enough to ‘obstruct’ his predetermined intention to arrest me.

I have decided that I will not compromise my position, I have done nothing wrong and will not allow someone to tell me that I have. Human freedoms should only be sacrificed in exchange for a right of greater value. Giving up the freedom to kill a human grants the right to not be killed by a human. Giving up the freedom to steal grants the right to not have your belongings stolen. I never gave up my freedom to smoke marijuana, and I was certainly not granted an equal right in exchange. I find this morally reprehensible. Laws exist to protect human rights, one that simply denies freedom is not valid.

My moral philosophy is this; Anything that violates a human right, or denies a human freedom, is immoral. Valid laws do not deny freedom, they protect rights. The one thing that takes priority over freedom is rights. So any law that denies freedom, and does not protect rights, is immoral. And this immorality is compounded when citizens who are not criminal (read - immoral) are treated, and classified, as though they are.

It is very simple. If it is immoral, it needs to be illegal. If it is not, then it does not. Smoking marijuana is not immoral; in smoking marijuana I am violating no one else’s rights nor denying any one else’s freedom. Therefore, the action is not immoral.

While I realize in my own position there is a real possibility I could find a lawyer that will get it thrown out because of the initial invalid arrest, I want to take this fight now that I have been given thopportunityty. I am not a criminal, and I will not allow someone to label me such when I have done nothing immoral.

The law is not valid, and I am going to challenge this to the extent of my capabilities. If I had a lawyer on hand, even just for occasional consultations, it would greatly extend those capabilities. So, anyone know someone, or is someone, who might be interested in joining a fight for human freedom, and our right to it?’

From the Economist -Fleecing the Flock

2012-02-01T16:36:30-05:00

Notice how many of the examples are from religous contacts.

WITH a nudge from their pastor, the 25,000 members of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church near Atlanta opened their hearts, and their wallets, to Ephren Taylor. And why not, given his glittering credentials? Mr Taylor billed himself as the youngest black chief executive of a publicly traded company in American history. He had appeared on NPR and CNN. He had given a talk on socially conscious investing at the Democratic National Convention. Snoop Dogg, a rapper, had tapped him to manage a charitable endowment.

So when Mr Taylor’s “Wealth Tour Live” seminars came to town, faithful ears opened wide. Eddie Long, the mega-church’s leader, introduced Mr Taylor at one event with the words: “[God] wants you to be a mover and shaker…to finance you well to do His will.” Mr Taylor offered “low-risk investment with high performances”, chosen with guidance from God.

Divine inspiration, alas, has given way to legal tribulation. For many investors, the 20% guaranteed returns proved illusory. Mr Taylor (whereabouts unknown) stands accused of fraud in a number of lawsuits. Bishop Long, a co-defendant, has urged Mr Taylor to “do the right thing” and cover any losses. The charges are not the first blot on the minister’s reputation: last year he settled for an estimated $15m-25m claims that he had coerced young men into oral sex.
An essential element of Mr Taylor’s approach was to make those he targeted want to invest in him personally, says Cathy Lerman, a lawyer representing some of the victims. “He was a master of creating a marketing presence. He would say: ‘If you want to check me out, just Google me.’” He had no problem convincing them that he was an ordained minister, even though he had no formal seminary training, according to court documents.
It will take time to gauge the full extent of the losses, not least because it will require untangling a web of companies, some of them shells. Victims, many of whom entrusted their life savings to Mr Taylor, are still coming forward. Some call him “the black Bernie Madoff”.
Let us prey
Mr Madoff, whose victims lost perhaps $20 billion, perpetrated the largest “affinity fraud” ever. The term refers to scams in which the perpetrator uses personal contacts to swindle a specific group, such as a church congregation, a rotary club, a professional circle or an ethnic community. Once the scammer gains their trust, his scam spreads like smallpox. Most affinity frauds are Ponzi schemes, in which money from new investors is used to repay old ones, or is siphoned off by the promoters.
The Madoff fraud fed on multiple affinity circles: wealthy Jews in Florida and Israel, country-club types and European old money, lured with help from marketers running “feeder” funds. The next-largest alleged investment fraud of recent years, the $7 billion collapse of Allen Stanford’s empire, also concerned specific groups, including the Latin American and Libyan diasporas and Southern Baptists. Mr Stanford’s trial began on January 23rd. He denies wrongdoing.
Beneath the mega-scams swirls a mass of smaller cons, spanning the world. Any close-knit community can be a target. Last August a South Korean pastor was indicted for misappropriating 2.4 billion Korean won ($2.3m) that the faithful had handed over to set up a Christian bank. In Britain, Kevin Foster’s KF Concept targeted the former coal-mining towns of South Wales, bilking more than 8,000 victims with the help of glitzy roadshows.
The problem is a global one but best-documented in America. Besides the Madoff saga, Marquet International, a consultancy, has identified more than 300 sizeable Ponzi schemes from the past ten years, with combined losses for investors of $23 billion. It estimates that up to half of those were affinity-based. No one has a reliable number for smaller frauds over the same period, but guesses range from $5 billion to $20 billion. In all, affinity-fraud losses in America could be as much as $50 billion.
The FBI is probing some 1,000 cases of investment fraud, more than double the number outstanding in 2008. Six state securities commissioners contacted by The Economist all say the problem is growing.

The increase is partly a result of better detection, post-Madoff. The SEC filed more than twice as many Ponzi cases in 2010 as in 2008. The number of Ponzis exposed each month began to climb just as the financial crisis struck in 2007 (see chart). Frauds are more prone to collapse in a weak economy as investors try to pull money out to cover shortfalls elsewhere.
Bad times also make get-rich-quick schemes more tempting. Desperation breeds gullibility. The median annual return offered by scammers in the Marquet study was 38%. In a case in Montana, victims were promised 800% back in a week.
Mistrust of mainstream finance helps the scammers. The big guys on Wall Street have shown they can’t be trusted, they say; better to go with someone you know. This was part of Mr Taylor’s pitch in Georgia.
Brent Baker, a former SEC lawyer who now works on affinity-fraud cases, has seen ones involving “just about every type of community you can think of”, including one where loyal listeners of a Persian-language radio show were bilked by its presenter. But religious fraud is particularly common, because people find it hard to imagine that the pastor is a perp. Joseph Borg, Alabama’s securities commissioner, reckons half of all affinity frauds in the American South are faith-based.
The problem stretches across all types of belief, and ranges far beyond the Bible Belt. In September, a 77-year-old man from Ohio was indicted for allegedly defrauding 2,700 fellow Amish of $17m (though he had somehow resisted the temptation to trade his horse and cart for a Ferrari).
The hook of Mormon
The state thought to have the most affinity fraud per head is Utah, where 60% of the population are Mormons. In 2010, regulators and the FBI were investigating cases there with 4,400 victims and perhaps $1.4 billion (or $500 for every Utahn) in losses. The numbers have surely climbed since, with the three largest cases alone involving combined losses of up to $700m, says one investigator.
Mormons tend to be both trusting and welcoming of newcomers, says Keith Woodwell, head of Utah’s Division of Securities. As soon as you pull up to your new house, neighbours appear to help you unpack. A scammer who gets his foot in the door can exploit this closeness.
LuElla Day, for example, lost $1.2m in a deal hatched by Daniel Merriman, a fellow Mormon she had known for four years. “He’d spoken at our meetings. When I sold my farm, he came and said the bishop had asked him to help me invest the proceeds,” says the 81-year-old. He told her the money would go into government debt. The transaction was done on a handshake. Ms Day never got a penny back.
Credulousness is not confined to sweet old ladies. One of Ephren Taylor’s victims was an electrical engineer with an MBA. A man in Utah was taken for $50,000 by his next-door neighbour, who offered a chance to invest in a new type of ice machine. Nothing remarkable there, except that the victim was a retired federal agent who had worked on white-collar fraud cases.
Why do such people let their guard down? “Everyone is looking for a shorthand way to judge character, and affinity settings offer that, at least in theory,” says Jeff Robinson, head of the Utah County Attorney’s investigations bureau. Tribal ties foster trust, which is usually a good thing (see article). But it can be abused.
Another factor is the rise of “prosperity theology”, or the belief that God wants Christians to be rich as well as good. This idea has taken root fastest in black and Hispanic churches. The problem is that it puts pressure on congregations to invest successfully, which makes them more vulnerable, says Ole Anthony of the Trinity Foundation, which investigates church fraud.
Social media make affinity fraud quicker. Bonds that used to take years to establish can be forged in days on Facebook or Twitter. Fraudsters read potential victims’ online profiles, and use the information they glean to refine their pitches. In a recent case, the SEC won a restraining order against a scam targeting users of chat sites popular with the deaf.
At a federal level, the American government’s response has been inadequate. The SEC has launched some high-profile cases, but done little to educate investors. The agency “has chosen to stick some ambulances at the bottom of the cliff rather than build fences at the top,” as one former employee puts it.
American states have tried harder. Pennsylvania, for example, holds hundreds of meetings a year to teach investors how to be more careful. Utah ran a billboard campaign showing a series of respectable-looking types saying: “I’m your friend. I’m your neighbour. I’m a con man.” People should “be trusting but verify”, says Gary Herbert, Utah’s governor.

A new law in Utah increased penalties for fraudsters who abuse a relationship of trust. Another pays whistle-blowers up to 30% of recoveries. (The SEC operates a similar scheme, but only for cases larger than $1m.) Both bills were sponsored by Ben McAdams, a state senator who returned to his native Utah from New York to help ensure that “as much energy went into shrinking the fraud economy as growing the ski economy.” In Utah, suspected fraudsters’ property can be seized before charges are brought, if there is “probable cause” that a crime was committed.
Other ideas are percolating. Sean Reyes, a lawyer who is running for state attorney-general, supports the creation of a “fraudsters registry”, similar to the one for sex offenders. “It’s amazing how many are repeat offenders,” he says. He also wants to explore the idea of reducing sentences for scammers who lead investigators to assets they have salted away. Most victims see a few pennies on the dollar returned, if that.
Investigators face strong headwinds. One is that victims are often reluctant to come forward. Some cannot admit to themselves what they have lost. Others don’t want their families to know: older victims often fear being deemed unable to manage their lives and shoved in a home. In religious cases, there is often an unwritten rule that what happens in church stays there, with disputes handled by the church elders or the minister. Many frauds are dauntingly complex. One Ponzi, at the Baptist Foundation of Arizona, used 120 shell firms to extract $590m from members.
There is only so much governments can do to protect people from their own credulity. Mr Baker thinks that private groups are better-placed to build those fences on the cliff top. He has set up a “Fraud College” in Utah (and on the web) with help from Mr Reyes. This self-styled “neighbourhood watch” for fraud offers online advice and holds events to raise awareness. The next conference, on February 15th, will hear from state and federal fraudbusters, victims and, in a first, a senior figure from the Mormon church. Amen to that.

A short video inspired by Reason, Tolerance and Enlightenment values

2012-02-02T09:01:19-05:00

Hi Everyone,

I would like to introduce you to a charitable project that is designed to spread a positive philosophy of non-theism whilst supporting a rational world view based on reason, tolerance and individual freedom.

Words Engraved is a short video series created to educate and support critical thinking.

The first video is in English and uses the rare craft of freehand stonemasonry to express the sentiment behind the words: http://youtu.be/gIA346XA_tQ

The second video is in Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles and employs the ancient art of calligraphy: http://youtu.be/pNNUdek56DU

Words Engraved is in the process of creating additional interesting videos in different languages which can be found at http://www.wordsengraved.org

If you think they have merit, please share the videos with others.

Rose Lancaster
@WordsEngraved (a project not affiliated with any religious, political or governmental organisation)

Foxification of the WSJ

2012-02-02T05:53:49-05:00

Junk science is alive and well on the WSJ editorial page. HERE is a good rundown of the latest garbage.

The Wall Street Journal has published one of the most offensive, untruthful, twisted reviews of what scientists think of climate change; the WSJ Lies about the facts and twists the story to accommodate the needs of head-in-the-sand industrialists and 1%ers; The most compelling part of their argument, according to them, is that the editorial has been signed by 16 scientists. ...

Extraterrestrials

2012-02-01T10:44:24-05:00

OMG—and I never say “OMG.” Did anyone else (besides the mod who deleted the post) see the spam by the guy who wrote a book called Extraterrestrials? Just for kicks I read the description on Amazon. Check it out:

The universe is vast. The existence of extraterrestrial life is nearly certain when one considers the size of the cosmos. But what would these alien life forms really be like from a scientific perspective?

Dookdook is a member of the Dooda species, a Type 2 extraterrestrial civilization based entirely on the pursuit of scientific advancement. Like other members of his race, he cannot understand the concepts of war, honor and bravery. However, when his star system is attacked by a predatory alien species known as the Grubboxes, he realizes the importance of combat and fighting for what he believes in. But can he convince his species to do the same? Can theoretical physics really dominate experimental physics?

Delve into a place where none of the aliens look or act like humans. Discover what it truly means to be an extraterrestrial.

What a brilliant plot. And the names he chooses… Dookdook? Dooda species? Grubboxes? Are you freakin’ kidding me?