[Foss-cafe] a little piece i wrote on the end of the world

[dep]

quoth Daniel Cassidy:
| Pupeno wrote:
| >>so a president gets word a big space rock is headed for us: what
| >> does he do? what *can* he do?
| >
| >Answering your question... from any leader (any president of the
| > country where i happen to be living now or any other country) I
| > would expect him to deploy all the means of evacuation and expose
| > all the facts to the population.
|
| Agreed. Bearing in mind that people are going to evacuate whether you
| organise it or not, it is clear that economic disruption is
| unavoidable. The best choice, therefore, is to organise an evacuation
| but not to make it mandatory.

i agree all around; some of the subtler issues involve not just that we 
are told but *how* we are told. unhappily, the "oh my god, we're all 
gonna die" mentality permeates the media, as does a nasty little strain 
of cynicism. these would figure into the extent to which there might be 
panic and the extent to which an announcement would be believed.

i've also watched evacuations due to hurricanes, and they always go 
poorly (and they are typically nonmandatory, save for, for instance, 
hotels). last week, i saw the main road between boston and new york 
closed -- and southbound, it remains closed and only opened northbound 
today -- due to a single motor vehicle accident. half the population 
lives along the coasts.

to me, the critical thing would be to impart the knowledge of a pending 
threat without it being taken as -- or capable of being interpreted as 
-- a justification for behaving irrationally. or, to be perfectly 
accurate, more irrationally.<g>

btw -- what does everyone think of novell's decision to have its desktop 
be qt-based? the possibilities are all interesting, some more than 
others, but there is the potential for much good here, methinks.
-- 
dep

the mind earns by doing. the heart earns by trying.