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L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists found guilty of manslaughter

bbc.co.uk

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Re: L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists found guilty of manslaughter

#101

Post by klez »

tomelders wrote: post #34
jivatmanx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all of Italy, only the South. That's why the biggest party in the north is a secessionist party. A lot of cool stuff comes out of the North, like Arduino.

I lived in the Veneto for 4 years, and I would say the north is definitely corrupt. I've seen business people turning up at the commune to hand over bags full of cash without uttering a single word. Places of business burnt down because they the owners didn't have "approval" from the right people. Council officials just blatantly asking for money to make something happen. Try buying a house in the Veneto, you have to…

Unfortunately you are right.

I was born and still live in Veneto and the amount of racism against immigrants (lately it's common to blame the Chinese, North Africans and Romanian for everything wrong in society or economics) is depressing.

Re: L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists found guilty of manslaughter

#102

Post by klez »

kitsune_ wrote: post #4

I can wholeheartedly recommend a documentary called Draquila – L'Italia che trema [1] about the L'Aquila earthquake. As many of my Italian friends tell me, Italy is an absolutely corrupt shit hole. I remember a scene where they showed recordings of civil protection officials gloating about the disaster on the phone, right after it happened. They talked about the opportunity to make money [2]. The head of the national…

> I remember a scene where they showed recordings of civil protection officials gloating about the disaster on the phone, right after it happened. They talked about the opportunity to make money

Actually they where enterpreneurs

Re: L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists found guilty of manslaughter

#103

Post by hannes0x21 »

Well, sure thing, noone can predict earthquakes. But the same is true for claiming that there won't be one.

Prior to the earthquake on April 6th, 2009, there have been several smaller ones. On March 30th, there was a quake with a magnitude of 4.1. People were really concerned that something was about to happen shortly. So the day after these scientists claimed, that there won't be an earthquake in the near future. This was surely to calm the public. However, they were wrong. And according to the court, they didn't make their point clear enough, that they are basically unable to make such predictions.

Although I don't follow the sentence, I somehow get the judge's point.

More info here [german]: http://podcast-mp3.dradio.de/podcast/2012/10/22/dlf_20121022...

Re: L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists found guilty of manslaughter

#105

Post by 89a »

cpeterso wrote: post #85
andrewcooke wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

chile should be so fucking proud of that map.

Why is Chile such an outlier among South American countries on the Corruption Perceptions Index?

They corrupted the Corruption Perceptions Index

Re: L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists found guilty of manslaughter

#106

Post by riffraff »

trhtrsh wrote: post #88
riffraff wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for the record: the last major of milan was, for lack of better word, "impeached" after it was found out her son had built an abusive "batcave". The current governor of lombardia and the whole council is in a corruption and vote marketing scandal. The head of the secessionist party for the last twenty years left his role after it was found out he and his son had been using the party as a revolver bank account. And, n…

Holy cow, the plot of Sin City (Politician's son builds a rape/torture chamber, and the son is protected from punishment because the politician wants him to produce an heir) ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401792/ ) actually really happened in Milan?

ah I'm very sorry for the misunderstanding, no.

I meant abusive as in "abusive financial practices", a synonim for illegal (per merriam webster), not abusive as in "physical abuse".

Please excuse this non native speaker for making something look worse than it was :)

Re: L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists found guilty of manslaughter

#107

Post by Anon84 »

ninguem2 wrote: post #76
Anon84 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The italians on HN might find this interesting: http://evasori.info/ it aims to crowd source tax evasion in Italy. Their mobile app has recently won an award: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=... (Disclaimer: I've worked directly with several of the people involved.)

I gather from the website that this app is trying to discourage tax evasion by exposing evaders. Your sentence "it aims to crowd source tax evasion in Italy" gives the wrong impression.

Sorry that's what I meant. It should be "crowd source tax evasion detection" :-)

Re: L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists found guilty of manslaughter

#108

Post by godDLL »

Stakes are raised?

> If the scientific community is to be penalised for making predictions that turn out to be incorrect, or for not accurately predicting an event that subsequently occurs, then scientific endeavour will be restricted to certainties only and the benefits that are associated with findings from medicine to physics will be stalled."

May work as a fraud deterrent too. May.

Re: L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists found guilty of manslaughter

#109

Post by andrewcooke »

cpeterso wrote: post #85
andrewcooke wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

chile should be so fucking proud of that map.

Why is Chile such an outlier among South American countries on the Corruption Perceptions Index?

i don't know. i do believe it is true (chileans i know that have lived in argentina are mortified by the corruption there), and the country is very isolated culturally (by the andes in the east and desert - and poor relations politically - to the north). so it's reasonable for it to be different, but i don't have a good explanation for why it is.

whatever the reason, it seems to be quite deep, culturally. anecdotally, i was shocked just a couple of weeks ago when i went to get a picture framed and the people doing the work lied to my face (they said between themselves that they didn't have the material i wanted; when i questioned that they promised they did; the results were not what they promised). that was very odd for chile (sorry, i didn't make it clear above - i live there), but the shop owners were argentinian immigrants... it is normal, culturally, here (speaking in broad terms) to speak "optimistically" of the future (so if you ask whether a shop will have something in stock next month, they will - usually, in my experience - say yes), but not to directly contradict what was said a moment earlier without batting an eyelid (i should perhaps add that i suspect i missed something myself in the exchange in the picture shop - perhaps the expected way i should have behaved was to offer an acceptable compromise instead of directly questioning what was happening - i am aware that cultural distinctions are not absolute judgements).

Re: L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists found guilty of manslaughter

#110

Post by rmc »

trhtrsh wrote: post #86
mechanical_fish wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tragic fact about scapegoating is that once a community has chosen a scapegoat it is very hard for it to "regain its composure." Who will be the first to defend the scapegoat? There are big disincentives. You risk being grouped with the scapegoat and suffering the same fate. You risk becoming the new scapegoat. You risk reprisals from the folks who are hiding in shadows while the spotlight follows the scapegoat.…

Everything you say is politically true, but the reason we have judges and juries (in the US anyway, I don't know how Italy works) is that they are in a position to stop the BS.

the reason we have judges and juries (in the US anyway, I don't know how Italy works)

I assure you that Italy has judges and juries and a modern judicial system. This isn't some teeny tribe of Amazonian warriers here, this is a large country.

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