“A new study cites 75 instances since 2003 where portable electronic devices may have interfered with airplane communication, navigation or surveillance systems.
“‘If that interference happens at the wrong time then it can be a threat to the aircraft and safe operations,’ says Dave Carson, Co-chair of the Special Committee On Portable Electronic Devices.”
“Glenn Beck thinks earthquake might be a message from God. Glenn, ‘everything’ is a message from God, or it isn’t. Make up your mind.”
“Watching the videos of towns in Japan filling with water, it is impossible to believe in Atlantis any more, in the sense of a lost metropolis underwater, with fish swimming through the columns of temples. The ocean doesn’t sink cities; it shreds them.”
“Although [Japanese officials] seem to be trying to downplay the risks from the damaged plants, their actions suggest that they believe the risks of (further) catastrophe to be significant.”
Here’s Your Lineup For Worst Company In America 2011! – The Consumerist
32 companies in the brackets.
“In Europe today is 14/3, which is the sum of 3 consecutive primes (43+47+53), and also of 5 consecutive primes (11+13+17+19+23+29+31).”
3.14
Our printable PDF brackets don’t include extraneous information like team names and seedings. Instead, we provide you with the bare minimum of information you need to make hasty, uninformed predictions: images of 68 mascots and 68 sets of school colors. Do you think the hornet has what it takes to win it all, or do you side with one of the many wildcats? Is blue and orange or green and gold the most fearsome color combination?
Printable NCAA bracket 2011: Alternative March Madness brackets with mascots and team colors
The average time between magnitude 8 and larger Cascadia earthquakes is about 240 years … . The last megaquake, estimated as a magnitude 9, occurred in 1700 — that’s 311 years ago. In geologic terms, Cascadia is “9 months pregnant” and overdue.
Earthquake expert Yumei Wang quoted at Dot Earth, The New York Times.
The Cascadia Subduction Zone is off the northern California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia coasts. One of the reasons we know of the great quake in 1700 is because they recorded the tsunami from it in the very parts of Japan hardest hit Friday.
There are a lot of variables, but a magnitude 9 earthquake is roughly half again as powerful as Friday’s 8.9.
Great Chinese State Circus
Watch it all.
That is what I said aloud when I viewed this incredible graphic.
Move the slider in the middle left and right.
I recommend glowingly the documentary Waiting for Superman, a film released this past October.
Directed by Davis Guggenheim, who also directed the Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth, Waiting for Superman describes the larger failure of American education through the stories of five young students — Anthony, Bianca, Daisy, Emily and Francisco. The children are each promising; the likelihood of their getting a good education not so promising. While much is simplified to make a complex subject digestible, the movie will still leave you angry, frustrated, saddened and charmed.
Waiting for Superman won the Audience award at the Sundance Film Festival. We watched on Netflix Blu-Ray.
Japan raced to avert a nuclear meltdown today by flooding a nuclear reactor with seawater after Friday’s massive earthquake left more than 600 people dead and thousands more missing. Towns in the country’s northeast coast were literally wiped away by an ensuing tsunami, leaving countless people seeking shelter in the aftermath of the quake, which measured 8.9 on the Richter scale and was the country’s strongest recorded quake. — Lloyd Young 44 photos total)
This is Japan we’re looking at, not some backward country like the U.S.
“Gimme my fucking hour back.”
If you were in Japan on Friday chances are you would have seen this.
It’s Japan earthquake warning system that the government spent $1billion to build and includes a network of 1,000 GPS-based sensors spread out over the country.
Considering the devastation that followed it doesn’t sound actually sound all that alarming, but according to Alan Boyle at MSNBC it provided “enough time for people to switch off their gas lines and get beneath a table or a door frame.”
And was especially helpful to those in Tokyo who were 230 miles from the epicenter and therefore may have had an additional 80 seconds to prepare.Boyle says it is considered a model for the rest of the world and the basis for a system the U.S. is trying to develop for California.
Trying to develop in California. Trying!?! WTF?!?
Photos and video at the link.
Go watch the video at least through the end of the quake. It’s fascinating.
“God forgives you at any age, but voters should only reward reformations that occur before the miscreant receives his first copy of the AARP bulletin.”
Gail Collins in a column highlighting Newt Gingrich as the fool he is.
“NFL Fans: If you want to watch highly staged aggression designed to enrich players and their owners, consider politics.”
The tsunami in San Francisco Bay.
The earthquake today sped up the Earth’s rotation by 1.6 microseconds.
Which would mean, I believe, that gravity increased.
And that makes us all a tiny bit heavier. (Also the day a tiny bit shorter.)
Update: An 8.9 earthquake is equal in force to 22 billion metric tons of TNT.
I see on Twitter that #prayforJapan is trending.
They should have prayed for Japan yesterday.
An 8.9-magnitude earthquake hit off the east coast of Japan early today. The quake — one of the largest in recorded history — triggered a 23-foot tsunami that battered Japan’s coast, killing hundreds and sweeping away cars, homes, buildings, and boats. Editors note: we’ll post more as the story develops — Lloyd Young (43 photos total)
“Today’s the day to change your life! Seize the moment! Be amazing! Actually, probably best to wait till Monday as it’s nearly the weekend.”
Twitter / @Gwyn Grey via SinPantalones
On MSNBC they have live tsunami coverage from Hawai’i.
But on Fox the tsunami coverage is from Kenya.