But Berlusconi is pushing to build five nuclear power plants (older, less safe models) around Italy, which is a country known for:

a) having over 80% of earthquake-prone land;

b) having such corruption among the building industries that it is considered normal for buildings to be built with “fake concrete” – a cheaper mix that will simply crumble down at the lightest shake

Earthquakes can’t be stopped. Berlusconi can.
And if nobody intervenes (from abroad, because Italians have their hands well tied by Berlusconi himself), someday you will all be breathing the radioactive consequences of your inaction.

Seems like something i’d have to actually compile / deduce myself.

This earthquake happened just in the days in which the government was about to vote on a new law to encourage building and renovations of houses (to help the economy), which was seen by some as just a license to kill (not only architecturally speaking) handed out to greedy builders, probably the same that made the new L’Aquila hospital (supposedly anti-seismic and all) so weak that it collapsed entirely. The government was quick enough to tie this new law with the rebuilding of the earthquake zones, not before scrapping a small little comma in the law called ‘simplifications in anti-seismic matters’.
I suppose earthquakes are somewhat random in their effects, but a small builder in one of the most violently stricken zones had his own house made with all the anti seismic procedures applied to the letter and guess what: the house is still up, without a crack.

So now everybody is hoping that the rebuilding will be quick and honest, but this really goes down to the people: at every level from the prime minister to the small builder there is the chance to loot and make profits and the only thing that can keep things on the right track is really each one’s ethics.
The trend of the last years gives us not entirely good vibrations about this, but we’ll see.

A minor correction on the city name: it’s L’Aquila, with the article, which means The Eagle.

If it weren’t horrible enough going through this disaster, you have to endure him wailing on about it. Zippy @4 beat me to it.

Another thought: is there an increase in seismic activity worldwide, or am I just happening on more reports? Is it just happening in places where there are more white people to report on, not those horrid poor, dark-skinned places we don’t need to hear about?

I’ve tried finding sites that have worldwide seismic / volcanic activity broken down into simpler stats, or on a map with frequency and severity, but haven’t had much luck.

Can anyone point me to such a resource?

Google Earth has real time earthquake information

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/011157.html