The judiciary in Italy stuffed its’ head so far up its’ ass that it cannot even see it’s decision much less smell the flowers! All that is left is a foul odor wafting from up from four distended rear ends of the judges who did the deed!
- Today, in an act that has as much intelligence attached to it as Honey boo boo’s latest episode the Italian court convicted 7 scientists to as much as six years in prison for not predicting an earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy that killed 300 or so Italians.
While I am in full sympathy for the unfortunate fate of 300 Italians, I am incensed by the totally idiotic non-logic and action of the Italian Courts.
Total insanity. Right up there with a green cheese moon, a flat Earth, the end of the Mayan calendar and the conclusion that last nights’ debate between so-called-Presidential candidates was informative. None of these is true or even laughably true or even believable except by the masses who will believe anything if they are presented with appropriate propaganda to convince them.
Earthquake prediction is not an established science! It is an on going scientific study which will continue for years, to see what the data collected on dozens of seismically active areas along continental fault zones or “hot spots” on continental plates such as the New Madrid fault in Missouri, to see if we can somehow identify data that will, eventually, allow us the predictive ability to provide a percentage possibility of an earthquake in a general (perhaps a thousand miles a long) location.
“Duh! Hang quei figli puttana per non raccontare la mia prozia che la sua costruzione è stata di andare a cadere in un giorno terremoto dopo domani alle 02:00!” or words to that effect.
(Jeebus, I love Google!)
Since when is not doing something a crime?
In Italy perhaps not pooping in the middle of the plaza where the statue of David is located or not throwing alms into the fountain close by could be pronounced a crime and hundreds of tourists (me included) could be rounded up for not appreciating art or not dropping my excreta in a public street, under David’s statue. Negative action convictions can target anyone for anything they didn’t do! I can see spending a year or so in an Italian lock-up for not resisting arrest or now owing any taxes or for not grabbing the arm of a pickpocket on the Rome subway that is stripping the purse from a companion traveler. I broke the arm of a pickpocket on the Roma subway once – an eight year old delinquent that was all of 80 pounds. You would have thought I was murdering the little bastard.. Luckily witnesses were able to tell the true story and the lady who had the purse snatched was very supportive – during and after the incident. I never reached my destination on that subway as she wanted to express her gratitude for the “save”. Some subway trips in underground Roma are better than others!
Were I an Italian scientist, doing research in any area of human endeavor, or an American scientist working closely with an Italian colleague, I would immediately do a “John Gault” and withdraw my services from whatever Italian University or Government Agency I worked for or with. Today. Now. Right now and were I them, I would not turn a lick until all seven scientists, convicted of not doing something, are cleared of any wrongdoing, set free with apologies and suitable compensation and no record of their trial. As if it hadn’t happened. Period.
This opens the door for prosecution of scientists who have not found a cure of HIV (throw the bounders in jail – that’ll encourage them to try harder!).
A slack effort of scientists to totally define the coming the shift in Earth’s magnetic field which holds the possibility of killing everything on Earth’s surface in a mere 500 years would probably earn them a life sentence making little rocks out of big ones. I mean we’re talking a big time problem here. If you think this example of earthquake non-prediction is extreme, you better do some research on the current 10% loss of Earth’s magnetic field and predictions of how long it will take to likely weaken and reverse the magnetic field. This has happened many times in Earth’s past – killing everything on the surface of our planet by radiation and solar wind that is no longer deflected from earth’s surface by it’s very strong magnetic field. That shrinking magnetic field now shields Earths’ surface from big trouble. In only 500 years it may be gone and before that, weakened sufficiently to play havoc with everything! And I am very, very serious!
Hells Bells, if an Italian scientist didn’t predict the exact moment the earth’s magnetic field would fade sufficiently to allow unlimited mutation of the genomes of every animal and plant on earth (including us), that would be grounds for drawing and quartering. And if you don’t know what kind of punishment that is, picture yourself spread-eagle on the ground with ropes tied to each wrist and each ankle. Hook these ropes to the harness of four horses and shout ”Whooooo! AHHHH!” . Then you watch while you can as they all run in different directions essentially disconnecting you into five pieces, the fifth piece just dropping to the ground while the other four vanish into the distance.
This action of the Italian judiciary (small print) is just another indication of the total stupidity of the EU to do anything right. Shoot the messenger when he fails to deliver a message than no one can possibly of compose. I repeat in emphasized mode: All scientists in Italy need to pull a John Gault. Now. Tomorrow.
As far as I’m concerned, since we seem to be following Europe and Japan into a dystopian future of epic failure of all current systems including the John Roberts’ Supreme Fantasy Court, we are totally done. No reprieve short of collapse and reset here, in Europe and Japan and start over from a much lower level of wealth with a large die off and a retreat to perhaps Kunstler’s “World Made by Hand” is the only and least damaging possibility. As much as I hate to say it, it is the only path out, now or tomorrow depending on how fast the collapse runs away with our lives.
Italy certainly leads the way as far as courts are concerned.
Collapse nymph says:
I am fucking begging for collapse. I don’t even care if I die during it, I just want this shit hole to go. The noise, the chemicals, the stupidity, the worthless bullshit. Even if I only live for a day in a post collapse world, I will live it with a big fucking smile on my face.
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23rd October 2012 at 8:55 am
OF says:
I don´t know, whether this makes things better (six years!), but as I understood the matter, it was not about not predicting the earthquake, but that they had ample warnings coming from their equipment plus people already being worried from small quakes and had started to move when these scientists expressly told everyone not to worry and they should stay home. That´s how I read it.
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23rd October 2012 at 9:10 am
flash says:
Science , the unaccountable God!
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2012/10/let-science-be-silent.html
Let Science be silent
There is an wise old saying that I very much attempt to apply to life, the universe, and everything. “Let Reason be silent when Experience gainsays it.” In this postmodern scientific age, we very much require a new aphorism.
Let Science be silent when it cannot predict future events.
The fear and outrage being expressed in light of the conviction of the Italian geologists who are guilty of manslaughter at L’Aquila are entirely misplaced, as it is not science that is being found guilty, but rather, the abuse of the common man’s faith in science by scientists. Consider the facts of the case, as described by Nature, a publication that can hardly be considered hostile to science:
The article and the account it provides of the fate of the Vittorini family is damning to guilty geologists. It is clear that the Italian families resident there no longer abided by their traditional custom of clearing out of their houses when there were tremors, primarily due to the assurances they received from the National Commission, which is why the death toll was larger than it would have been if it hadn’t been for those assurances. The defenders of the scientists around the world are observably bending the truth, even lying, for claiming that science is on trial or that the basis of the charges are that they failed to do the impossible by not “pinpointing the time, location and strength of a future earthquake in the short term”, as Nature puts it.
As the prosecutor points out, the basis of the charges is not that the scientists didn’t predict the earthquake, but rather that they did not fulfill their legal duties to perform a proper risk assessment. Moreover, if it is impossible to predict an earthquake, then how could any honest geologist accept a paid position on a government body called the National Commission for Forecasting and Predicting Great Risks? If you know you can’t do the job required, then you had better not accept it in the first place.
I have to disagree with Instapundit’s take on the matter. He sees this Italian attempt to hold scientists accountable for engaging in unscientific activity that led directly to great loss of life as creating “incentives for scientists to leave Italy and to avoid giving any sort of earthquake advice to the Italian government. I predict a run of bad luck.”
First, I note the inapplicability of the quote to the situation. Heinlein was talking about entrepreneurs and technological and conceptual innovators when he described his “extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people”. He most certainly wasn’t describing publicly acclaimed, government-funded individuals hailed as the nation’s “most respected geophysicists”.
Second, I very much doubt Italy will have any trouble at all finding top-credentialed scientists to continue accepting government funding. And to the extent that those scientists learn to keep their mouths shut about things they can neither predict with any reasonable accuracy nor support with credible scientific evidence, that would be an entirely desirable advancement from the current state of scientistry, which so often attempts to confuse credentialed democracy and amateur editing for genuine scientody.
Labels: law, science
posted by Vox @ 10/23/2012 06:09:00 AM 11 comments links to this post
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23rd October 2012 at 9:20 am
flash says:
People can survive without science, but can scientodies survive without people i.e taxmoney?
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23rd October 2012 at 9:23 am
Eddie says:
This has lots legal precedent in Italy. Look what they did to Galileo.
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23rd October 2012 at 9:39 am
flash says:
The story of Galileo being persecuted by the Catholic church is mostly myth.
WAS GALILEO REALLY PERSECUTED BY THE CHURCH?
The Truth Will Shock You: It Was NOT the Church Which Persecuted Galileo But His Fellow Scientists!
Demolishing a Modern Myth…
http://www.ukapologetics.net/galileo.htm
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2010/03/mailvox-in-which-we-hear-from-densa.html
. As for Galileo, he was not prosecuted for writing in support of the Catholic ecclesiastic’s model of heliocentrism, whose book had been in the possession of every major mathematician and astronomer for the 90 years prior to Galileo’s trial. Even Wikipedia is clear on the reason Galileo found himself in hot water.
The book, “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems”, was published in 1632, with formal authorization from the Inquisition and papal permission…. Pope Urban VIII had personally asked Galileo to give arguments for and against heliocentrism in the book, and to be careful not to advocate heliocentrism. He made another request, that his own views on the matter be included in Galileo’s book. Only the latter of those requests was fulfilled by Galileo. Whether unknowingly or deliberately, Simplicio, the defender of the Aristotelian Geocentric view in “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems”, was often caught in his own errors and sometimes came across as a fool. Indeed, although Galileo states in the preface of his book that the character is named after a famous Aristotelian philosopher (Simplicius in Latin, Simplicio in Italian), the name “Simplicio” in Italian also has the connotation of “simpleton.”[99] This portrayal of Simplicio made “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems” appear as an advocacy book: an attack on Aristotelian geocentrism and defence of the Copernican theory. Unfortunately for his relationship with the Pope, Galileo put the words of Urban VIII into the mouth of Simplicio.
So Galileo disobeyed and betrayed the Pope, then publicly attacked him and made him look like a fool. The fact that Galileo wasn’t simply beheaded on the spot, as would have likely been the case if he had treated any other medieval ruler this way, is testimony to how reasonable the Roman Inquisition was. The most ridiculous thing about the attempt to cite the Galileo incident as proof that the Christianity is anti-science is that geocentrism was a pagan concept while heliocentrism was developed by a Christian canon who took Church orders and may have been a full priest.
Labels: history, religion
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23rd October 2012 at 10:43 am
Ron says:
Its so stupid its hard to comment on.
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23rd October 2012 at 10:49 am
Eddie says:
Flash
Your truths always shock me. Interesting link.
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23rd October 2012 at 10:50 am
flash says:
Eddie, truth is those who question the purported infallibility of science as the answer to all questions of creation ,existence and function are more often than not the victim of abuse.
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23rd October 2012 at 10:56 am
DaveL says:
Wait until they start indicting and convicting people in this country for denying climate change. Sentencing will be very harsh. 15-20 minutes without exhaling CO2.
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23rd October 2012 at 6:10 pm
IndenturedServant says:
Are there only seven seismologists in all of Italy? Presumably most, if not all of their kind missed the mark. Who will they blame when there are no more seismologists? If I were an Italian scientist living in Italy, I’d be seeking political asylum elsewhere right about now.
Does anyone even care that two members of Pussy Riot are now serving hard time in two different Siberian prison camps right now?
)
Can we PLEASE just put the deer crossings some place safer?!!!
)
The whole fucking planet has gone bat-shit crazy!
I_S
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23rd October 2012 at 6:34 pm
crzyb0b says:
“flash says:
People can survive without science, but can scientodies survive without people i.e taxmoney?”
Dysentery, smallpox, cholera, polio, malaria, yellow fever, TB, cancer, starvation… Mass killers of humanity that are at an end because of science. People CAN’T survive without science (more accurately people’s odds of survival are greatly diminished without science).
Without modern science the average lifespan was 35 years (and that was only counted AFTER you survived infancy). Science has, in all likelihood, saved your life already flash.
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23rd October 2012 at 9:56 pm
crzyb0b says:
Not to mention that science has given you the internet on which to complain about science.
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23rd October 2012 at 9:59 pm
ThePessimisticChemist says:
flash likes to rant against science, but the proof is in the pudding. Every facet of his life is heavily influenced by scientific accomplishment.
You can hate us, but you wouldn’t in a million years give up what science has given the world. If you really believed your rhetoric you’d climb down some hole and become a hunter-gatherer.
On topic:
The next logical step for this persecution is to attack meteorologists. Those guys are the worst!
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23rd October 2012 at 12:35 pm
flash says:
LOL…Scientody alert.!
Science has given us genocide , weakened DNA i.e. the human race, and generated a nation of obese morons who spend all day pecking away at keyboards , mostly saying nothing.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
The forked tongue of the fetishist
I thought this exchange on Slashdot between an engineer and a science champion concerning the recent Italian court verdicts was as illuminating as it was entertaining:
E1: As a professional engineer, accountability starts the moment you have a license number in your state. Any opinion you give on any project makes you liable. The problem is that too many people are giving opinions on subjects that affect other people’s lives and have zero accountability. this trial is a precursor to what may eventually become the norm. Picture these so-called experts on TV talking about this and that and if they are found wrong and someone was affected by it, then they can be held accountable. The same will be applied to lawyers and politicians and before you know it, people will be better off if we hold people with some sort of power (over other people) accountable.
S1: You seem to be conflating science with engineering. Now I have news for you: there’s a reason why we have two different words for these things (and no, it’s not so that poets can have a richer vocabulary for writing odes).
S2: The difference is obvious. An engineered system is just that — a system that is fully understood and can have predictable outcomes from known initial conditions. So…it is reasonable to expect engineers to be liable for their work. Predicting earthquakes is not anywhere near as simple. To find criminal accountability from such failures is preposterous.
As a pro-scientody critic of scientistry, I am very much enjoying the flailing about of the professional scientific community and its cheerleaders in response to the L’Aquila verdicts. Notice how these attempts to argue that scientists cannot be held liable for their false predictions completely flies in the face of the absurd, but common claim that science is the only possible means of genuinely knowing anything. What we’re witnessing here in real time is the logical unraveling of the rational materialist’s science fetish; the next time you encounter an appeal to science, you now possess a powerful rhetorical weapon that will be much more effective than the logical arguments which the science fetishists ignore so readily.
If science is so obviously unreliable that scientists cannot reasonably be held responsible for the accuracy of their science-based predictions, then how can one rationally assert that it is always more reliable than documentary evidence, eyewitness testimony, or even haruspicy? If evolution and global warming are scientific facts, then why can’t they be used predict any future events with a degree of accuracy that comes anywhere close to that of a street bookie? Is there a single biologist on the planet who is willing to risk his job on the basis of a scientific prediction, the way that so many non-scientists do every single day?
The observable and provable fact is that most science that has not already been confirmed by its transformation into engineering is absolutely and utterly unreliable and most factual assertions by scientists are guaranteed to be false. One need not know anything about science to correctly conclude this, one need only understand basic human behavior and witness the way in which scientists are highly accountability-avoidant. Moreover, it is worth noting that the position taken by the science champions is a point I have previously articulated, which is that science can only be considered reliable to the extent that it has evolved into engineering.
Labels: science
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23rd October 2012 at 4:42 am
flash says:
BTW…link.
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-forked-tongue-of-fetishist.html#comment-form
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23rd October 2012 at 4:42 am
An Answer to the L'Aquila Earthquake Sentence | sandrostudio says:
[...] Italian Judges Have Their Lost Their Minds! Read more on the topic, altri siti e articoli sul temaEarthquakesUSA Groundwater AssociationUSGS superficial and groundwater [...]
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23rd October 2012 at 6:44 pm