The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
Hey, What Ya Reading??? A book???
delalluvia:
Just finished reading No Apparent Danger, the story of two volcanic disasters in Colombia in 1985 and 1993.
The book details two stories.
1) the near hopelessness poor countries have in saving their people from volcanic disasters. In 1985, Colombia had no vulcanologists, but they had volcanoes and they had no money in which to fund a properly run agency to study them.
The book details the Colombian scientists' difficulty of getting equipment that actually worked to monitor the mountains, the harder difficulty of getting people who knew how to read and interpret what their equipment was telling them and trying to stop the local poor people from trooping up the mountainside to steal the equipment to sell for scrap.
I was shocked at how long it takes one government to ask another government for help when there isn't any current danger or disaster - it takes months. The Colombians had requested technical advice and visits from the USGS (world renown for their expertise).
Once, one of the head USGS scientists came and gave recommendations to the Colombians on one of their active volcanoes. He advised
a) restricting tourism
b) adding security to protect the monitoring equipment
c) moving the radio towers off the mountain
d) lighting the local airport in case a disaster did come so that support from the air could land
Needless to say, the Colombians didn't act on his advice. The Colombian scientists were aghast that Americans would make recommendations that cost money!
So when the disaster did come, needless to say, tourists were killed, half the radio towers were destroyed, etc. and the local people blamed the scientists because the mountain had been "fine" up until they started moving equipment on it. This obviously made the mountain "mad". So the blame went to the scientists.
It makes me sad how such poor countries basically don't have the money to save their own people. Despite scientists' advice on relocating populaces or making evacuation plans, their advice will go unheeded because the governments don't have the money to spend on them and the populace has nowhere to go. Their lives and means of a living are tied to the land and so many can't leave.
So the solution is that the volcano will eventually wipe out the lands and the people on them, solving both problems. :(
The book also
2) tells the story of the hijacking of the last disaster, in which an unbalanced, arrogant scientist, unable to abandon his pet theory which did not work, scoffing at safety gear, ignoring proven warning signs, led 14 fellow scientists - into the active volcano. Nine were killed when the volcano blew.
Surviving the blast, this scientist reached the U.S. first and held press conferences and interviews, describing himself as the lone survivor and taking credit for having warned his fellow scientists about the danger. He urged one of his graduate students to copy another man's work (I guess it isn't plagiarizing if the other work isn't published) describing the warning signs and got him to publish first, leaving the man whose worked they based their paper on and had actually predicted two volcanic eruptions, out in the cold, his work unpublishable due to this academic theft.
The book was also an attempt to get out the knowledge of this man's misdeeds.
Sad, all the way around.
retropian:
--- Quote from: Kerry on August 24, 2009, 02:32:12 am ---
I have just finished re-reading an old favourite of mine – The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault. It was first published in 1956 and is the first of her historical novels set in Ancient Greece. Many believe it to be her greatest novel. Because I have such an emotional connection to this book, it is difficult for me to describe it in a detached, clinical manner. Suffice to say that Ms Renault’s descriptive evocation of Ancient Greece is breathtaking beautiful in the extreme. It is a book to be savoured slowly and re-read regularly. The twist at the end always brings me undone and I’m sure it always will, no matter how many times I read it.
Here is an abridged version of what Wikipedia has to say about The Last of the Wine:
The first person narrator is Alexias, a noble Athenian youth, who becomes a noted beauty in the city and a champion runner. The teenager Alexias falls in love with Lysis, a young man in his 20's, who is a champion athlete and a student of Socrates. The core of the novel is the relationship between the two, following their life together in sport, love, peace and war.
Socrates also figures prominently, as both men become his students and his philosophy is much discussed. Also characterized in the novel are Plato and several figures from his Dialogues, who were Socrates' students. Another historical figure who figures in the story, albeit mostly off-stage, is Alcibiades, the Athenian general who flees Athens on a charge of sacrilege and sells his services to other city-states, finally becoming a general serving Sparta and thus becoming partly responsible for Athens' destruction.
In time, Lysis marries. His wife views Alexias favorably and encourages the continuation of her husband's relationship with him. By then Athens has been defeated by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War and Alexias and Lysis take part in the democratic rebellion of Thrasybulus against the Spartan-imposed tyrannical regime of Athens.
The Last of the Wine discusses the mores and culture of Ancient Greece, including symposia (drinking parties), the treatment of women, the importance of athletic, military and philosophical training among young men, marriage customs and daily life in war and peace.
--- End quote ---
You inspired me to read it once again. Perhaps it's a function of my getting older, but I find new wisdom here with every reading. I first read it perhaps twenty years ago or more, and in retrospect I don't think I understood very much, I just liked the story. Now, it seems much more; how to be.
delalluvia:
Reading Misquoting Jesus again.
It just boggles the mind how anyone can possibly imagine that the books of the bible are the true word of god or they are what was originally written in any way, shape or form.
Jeff Wrangler:
Hey, Jane Austen fans! I read in this morning's newspaper that last spring's publishing hit, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, is now being followed up with the somewhat more alliterative Sense and Sensibility and Seamonsters. ;D
retropian:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on September 22, 2009, 08:39:52 am ---Hey, Jane Austen fans! I read in this morning's newspaper that last spring's publishing hit, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, is now being followed up with the somewhat more alliterative Sense and Sensibility and Seamonsters. ;D
--- End quote ---
I am about 2/3rd the way through "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies". It's friggin brilliant! I hope it gets the "Masterpiece Theater" treatment. Maybe Colin Firth can reprise his role as Darcy, or if he's to old, maybe he can be Mr. Bennet. I'm looking forward to reading "Sense and Sensibility and Seamonsters". What's next "The Wolfman of Mansfield Park"?
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