The site you linked to looks to be the best authority for data on the quake. They don't mention anywhere which scale they use. I doubt they would still be using the Richter scale, but it is a possibility. The quake very well could be 7.5Mw and the USGS is using less accurate data/modals to arrive at 7.8Mw.

...

After further investigating I don't think GeoNet has a clue which scale they use. On their history page they alternate using Mw,Ml,Ms.

using Ms value as M
http://info.geonet.org.nz/display/quake/M+7.1%2C+Arthur%27s+Pass%2C+9+March+1929

using Mw value as M
http://info.geonet.org.nz/display/quake/M+7.1%2C+Inangahua%2C+24+May+1968

using Ml value as M
http://info.geonet.org.nz/display/quake/M+6.3%2C+Christchurch%2C+22+February+2011

Would be nice if they would state and be consistent on which scale they use for magnitude. The Eiffel tower is both 276 and 302 tall.

Solution, no. Semi-mitigation....possibly if it could be done, but there would be tradeoffs, it wouldn't be a simple 'now it's only CO2' solution....as if that was a solution, there's still too much CO2 too.

I'm intrigued by the engineered bacteria idea...at this point it couldn't be much worse than just releasing all the methane (OK, it could), but it's like that one time I went to the lake to bone my girlfriend, but the mosquitos were going crazy and she said there is no way. By the time people decided it was worth the risk and started developing them, it would be too late anyway, but we might mitigate the extinction event for the insects....who knows?

Um....uninhabitable for 100 years? How do you figure? It's likely that when the ocean temps rise enough, and are acidic enough, most sea life dies, sinks, rots, and releases massive amounts of hydrogen sulfide killing anything that's left.
(WIKI-Kump, Pavlov and Arthur (2005) have proposed that during the Permian–Triassic extinction event the warming also upset the oceanic balance between photosynthesising plankton and deep-water sulfate-reducing bacteria, causing massive emissions of hydrogen sulfide which poisoned life on both land and sea and severely weakened the ozone layer, exposing much of the life that still remained to fatal levels of UV radiation.)
Along with all the other damages of climate change, and the apocalypse that >7 billion people will cause on the way out, it's going to be way longer than 100 years before humans can live off nature if ever....way way longer.

We are hard to kill, but we aren't extremophiles. We'll die, or become mole people, but some other life will continue.

When I was young I visited Port Arthur in Tasmania, which ran an experiment along these lines starting in 1848 - http://portarthur.org.au/activities/separate-prison/

What they found was that solitary confinement sent many of their prisoners mad, or at least caused neuroses (or PTSD) and it was described as a failed experiment.

(see Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain,p. 11.)

yes, a sense of humor about extreme violence, cruelty, torture, dismemberment and murder. it is certain that the victims have a much different perspective on things.

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

veganism is about social justice and non-violence. the only difference between the dogs you love and the cows, chickens and pigs you eat is your perception. vegans get ridiculed due to people's lack of awareness and false perceptions- just as anti-slavery activists were ridiculed in the antebellum south for suggesting the moral equivalence between white people and black people. i believe Arthur Schopenhauer said it best:
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

America's problem is not guns, it's the awful social situation that rampant capitalism and consumerism has landed it in. Same as drugs aren't the reason why large communities of black people are stuck in the same cycle of drugs/gangs/violence/death. It's not because of the drugs, or the people themselves, it is because they are pretty much abandoned by society.

Guns are just a means to an end, and an easy one at that. They are an easy answer when you want to cause violence to someone else, or yourself.

The fact that so many people want to cause violence to others or themselves is what needs to be looked at.

I've visited many parts of the US and the people have generally struck me as friendly and polite to a fault. People will just strike up a conversation with you as if you were a long lost relative. I've had people sit with me on a public bus well past their stop just to make sure I got off at the right place. At it's heart, it's a great country. But the flip side is that currently, it's built on basic inequity and inequality. I was in LA when Katrina hit, and watching what happened was freaking unreal for me as a person who lives in an area prone to cyclones. When we get hit, the entire community bands together and takes care of each other. When New Orleans got hit, it was post apocalypse dog eat dog.

Getting rid of guns in the US won't stop inequality, it won't stop senseless accidents and it won't stop violence. The UK has had strict regulations on guns for years and *surprise* has a very high rate of knife crime. Australia introduced tough gun legislation after the massacre at Port Arthur massacre, but we didn't really have serious violence problems before that so while people claim that bans on semi-autos etc "worked", it's very hard to quantify going from "very little gun violence" to "very little gun violence" as much of a shift... It's a core difference in the social fabric of countries.

People who completely focus on banning the gun are neglecting to look at the bigger picture, and are often doing so deliberately because the bigger picture is far harder to solve. Same as the war on drugs. Regulate guns, sure, enforce safety and bring in high penalties for misuse or allowing your weapon to be misused. But banning them won't fix anything.

I don't really mind the video, thinking twice before owning a firearm is a good thing. But I think it misses the point.

Childhood's End is the first, and - I loathe to admit - at this point the sole, Arthur C. Clarke book I have read.
It struck a chord in me so deep I hesitate to pick up another of his works for fear of no longer being able to function in modern society.

Ah , The Crazy world of Arthur Brown - Fire! is one of my favourite tracks, now its even better!

As does The Crazy World of Arthur Brown

Definitely worth my last point to *promote this!
I'm so glad they managed to take him home. Good job Arthur!

Tags for this video have been changed from 'stanley kubric, 2001, space odyssey, trailer, recut, 2014' to 'stanley kubric, 2001, space odyssey, trailer, recut, 2014, arthur c clarke' - edited by brycewi19

Who could name it "Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel".

That would at least be easier to remember than "Malcolm Peter Brian Telescope Adrian Umbrella Stand Jasper Wednesday (pops mouth twice) Stoatgobbler John Raw Vegetable (whinnying) Arthur Norman Michael (blows squeaker) Featherstone Smith (whistle) Northcott Edwards Harris (fires pistol, then 'whoop') Mason (chuff-chuff-chuff-chuff) Frampton Jones Fruitbat Gilbert (sings) 'We'll keep a welcome in the' (three shots) Williams If I Could Walk That Way Jenkin (squeaker) Tiger-drawers Pratt Thompson (sings) 'Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head' Darcy Carter (horn) Pussycat (sings) 'Don't Sleep In The Subway' Barton Mainwaring (hoot, 'whoop') Smith"

Yes, you're ignored, and I read your comment anyway.

No, in saying "use drugs," I was not "implying cannabis." I said "use drugs" because I meant "use drugs." Rather than trying to interpret or 'read into' what I'm saying, it might help if you responded to my post, and not what you post in your mind on my behalf.

And I will take you up on your 'challenge:' below is a list of ten "highly intelligent" people who have used cocaine (note: at no point did I say "encourages the use of cocaine." I said "use drugs" without becoming addicted, and being able to function), so that you can provide me with 10,000 more** whose lives and families have been destroyed by it. (**And note here, we're talking about individuals whose lives were destroyed by the use of cocaine itself, and not by the pointless drug laws that imprison people for having a mental or emotional condition that provokes "self-medication" as a form of treatment. Nor are we talking about the illegal status of cocaine which, itself, gives rise to violent cartels that function in the shadow of its legal status.)

So, while certainly many of the following list of "highly intelligent" (non-cognitively deficient) and successful "celebrities" may no longer be using cocaine, all of the following have used cocaine and are/were not addicted and function(ed) just fine:

Sigmund Freud
Thomas Edison
Oprah Winfrey
Stephen King
Tim Allen
Hunter S. Thompson
Angelina Jolie
Robert Louis Stevenson
Steven Tyler
Robert Downey, Jr.

There are others (like William Burroughs, Eric Clapton, Grover Cleveland, David Crosby, Arthur Conan Doyle, Isadora Duncan, Ulysses S Grant, Abbie Hoffman, Elton John, King George V, Larry Kudlow, Sir Paul McCartney, & Barack Obama), but I thought I'd stop at 10.

And if you post the 10,000 names of those whose lives and families were destroyed by cocaine (and not by the pointless drug laws or its illegal status) by the end of the week, I'll take your point.

Pretty tenuous links there.

So Wallace, Vincent and Mia are Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere ....

OR....

pretty much any love triangle in the history of fiction?

Briefcase=holy grail is probably the best bit, but Butch as Mordred doesn't work at all and neither does Jules as Galahad. Butch is not Wallaces son (where's Morgana?) and Jules is actually older than Vincent. Also, Morderd didn't kill Lancelot, and Mordred killed Arthur, he didn't save him from rape.

It reminds me of the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, in the first book where Arthur and Ford get picked up by the ship with infinite improbability drive, clip linked here - http://bardfilm.blogspot.com.au/2011/09/shakespeares-infinite-monkeys-in-adams.html

And particularly this quote:

"there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out."