As goofy as these guys can sometimes be, this one makes a lot of sense to me. 

http://tbwsdailyshow.com/2011/05/04/department-of-justice-sues-major-bank-for...

Where to Go During an Earthquake

Remember that stuff about hiding under a table or standing in a doorway? Well, forget it! This is a real eye opener. It could save your life someday.

EXTRACT FROM DOUG COPP'S ARTICLE ON 'THE TRIANGLE OF LIFE'

My name is Doug Copp I am the Rescue Chief and Disaster Manager of the American Rescue Team International (ARTI ), the world's most experienced rescue team. The information in this article will save lives in an earthquake.

I have crawled inside 875 collapsed buildings, worked with rescue teams from 60 countries, founded rescue teams in several countries, and I am a member of many rescue teams from many countries. I was the United Nations expert in Disaster Mitigation for two years, and have worked at every major disaster in the world since 1985, except for simultaneous disasters.

The first building I ever crawled inside of was a school in Mexico City during the 1985 earthquake. Every child was under its desk. Every child was crushed to the thickness of their bones. They could have survived by lying down next to their desks in the aisles. It was obscene -- unnecessary.

Simply stated, when buildings collapse, the weight of the ceilings falling upon the objects or furniture inside crushes these objects, leaving a space or void next to them - NOT under them. This space is what I call the 'triangle of life'. The larger the object, the stronger, the less it will compact. The less the object compacts, the larger the void, the greater the probability that the person who is using this void for safety will not be injured. The next time you watch collapsed buildings, on television, count the 'triangles' you see formed. They are everywhere. It is the most common shape, you will see, in a collapsed building.

TIPS FOR EARTHQUAKE SAFETY

1) Most everyone who simply 'ducks and covers' when building collapse are crushed to death. People who get under objects, like desks or cars, are crushed.

2) Cats, dogs and babies often naturally curl up in the fetal position. You should too in an earthquake. It is a natural safety/survival instinct. You can survive in a smaller void. Get next to an object, next to a sofa, next to a bed, next to a large bulky object that will compress slightly but leave a void next to it.

3) Wooden buildings are the safest type of construction to be in during an earthquake. Wood is flexible and moves with the force of the earthquake. If the wooden building does collapse, large survival voids are created. Also, the wooden building has less concentrated, crushing weight. Brick buildings will break into individual bricks. Bricks will cause many injuries but less squashed bodies than concrete slabs.

4) If you are in bed during the night and an earthquake occurs, simply roll off the bed. A safe void will exist around the bed. Hotels can achieve a much greater survival rate in earthquakes, simply by posting a sign on the back of the door of every room telling occupants to lie down on the floor, next to the bottom of the bed during an earthquake.

5) If an earthquake happens and you cannot easily escape by getting out the door or window, then lie down and curl up in the fetal position next to a sofa, or large chair.

6) Most everyone who gets under a doorway when buildings collapse is killed. How? If you stand under a doorway and the doorjamb falls forward or backward you will be crushed by the ceiling above. If the door jam falls sideways you will be cut in half by the doorway. In either case, you will be killed!

7) Never go to the stairs. The stairs have a different 'moment of frequency' (they swing separately from the main part of the building). The stairs and remainder of the building continuously bump into each other until structural failure of the stairs takes place. The people who get on stairs before they fail are chopped up by the stair treads - horribly mutilated. Even if the building doesn't collapse, stay away from the stairs. The stairs are a likely part of the building to be damaged. Even if the stairs are not collapsed by the earthquake, they may collapse later when overloaded by fleeing people. They should always be checked for safety, even when the rest of the building is not damaged.

8) Get near the outer walls of buildings or outside of them if possible - it is much better to be near the outside of the building rather than the interior. The farther inside you are from the outside perimeter of the building the greater the probability that your escape route will be blocked.

9) People inside of their vehicles are crushed when the road above falls in an earthquake and crushes their vehicles; which is exactly what happened with the slabs between the decks of the Nimitz Freeway. The victims of the San Francisco earthquake all stayed inside of their vehicles. They were all killed. They could have easily survived by getting out and sitting or lying next to their vehicles. Everyone killed would have survived if they had been able to get out of their cars and sit or lie next to them. All the crushed cars had voids 3 feet high next to them, except for the cars that had columns fall directly across them.

10) I discovered, while crawling inside of collapsed newspaper offices and other offices with a lot of paper, that paper does not compact. Large voids are found surrounding stacks of paper.

Spread the word and save someone's life...

Nooshin Khosh

By Liz F. Kay

RISMEDIA, January 21, 2011—(MCT)—The local java joint or airport terminal might seem like the perfect location to log onto Facebook or troll Amazon for a deal. But for anyone who has accepted the convenience of unsecured Internet access, here’s another reminder to be cautious about what information you share online.

When you use a wireless network—or even many wired ones—your communications are sent to every other computer on the network, said Seth Schoen, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group that defends civil rights in the digital world.

For years, there have been readily available programs known as “packet sniffers” that intercept those communications. Schoen said he’s given demonstrations where he’s shown intercepted e-mail and instant messages as well as Google search terms. Until recently, it required a little bit of Internet know-how.

But now a programmer has released a browser modification called Firesheep that makes spying on certain information much, much easier—causing quite a stir in the computer world.

Some sites such as Facebook encrypt your information when you’re entering your password to log on—denoted by the padlock at the bottom of the browser. But afterward, it saves a credential on your computer that indicates you’re currently logged on and reverts to its unencrypted version.

A nefarious user could then intercept and copy that credential into another browser to impersonate you on that site, Schoen said.

Some sites, such as Amazon, encrypt payment and shipping steps, but not clicks through pages of books or other products. Financial sites usually encrypt your entire session, he said.

Schoen said he believes many popular sites such as Twitter should also be encrypted. “Other things that people do online are also very sensitive and private, and can and ought to be protected in the same way,” Schoen said.

Encrypted sites are denoted by the “https” in the URL line of your Web browser. To protect yourself, you could bookmark https links to your favorite websites on your computer and smart phone.

If you use the Firefox browser, you could also install the “HTTPS Everywhere” extension developed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Tor Project, dedicated to improving Web privacy. That automatically directs you to the encrypted version of every site that offers one.

But there are limitations. It doesn’t block sites that don’t support encryption, but it does disable functions such as Facebook Chat and Google Instant search findings.

Even some areas of sites that support encryption may be vulnerable, he said, but he believes the situation will improve in the long term. “Some of these sites have more engineering work that they have to do in order to protect users,” Schoen said.

Mike O’Leary, director of the Center for Applied Information Technology at Towson University, also said consumers should be wary of free Wi-Fi hotspots they don’t have a reason to trust.

Those who use Wi-Fi may have noticed at times a network called “Free Public Wi-Fi.” This isn’t actually a network at all, O’Leary warned. When a computer running Windows XP that hasn’t had certain upgrades can’t find a Wi-Fi network, it offers itself up. It wouldn’t give you Internet access, but it could give another user access to your computer.

“If an evildoer wanted to get access to your credentials, an incredibly easy way is for them to put an access point somewhere,” O’Leary said.

As this operating system is phased out, consumers will likely see this glitch less and less frequently, he said. But criminals may try to set up rogue access points.

“Regardless of how you’re connecting to the Internet, you have to trust all of the intermediary nodes along that path,” O’Leary said. “You’re placing trust in these organizations.”

(c) 2010, The Baltimore Sun.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

Original Article URL: http://rismedia.com/lowes/8355/12270