mailto: blog -at- heyrick -dot- eu

Libya

It has been rather amusing following the news coverage of events in Libya, where shouty (over the gunfire) reporters sound half-awestruck and half mid-orgasm over the events unfolding. The villify Gadaffi and sex up the activities of "The Rebels", all of which must surely be called Ché Guevara by now.

I'm not going to comment on whether or not Qadafi should be ousted. To my mind he seems like another in a long line of megalomanical nutcase Arab dictators - but this might be heavily influenced by Western media coverage. Either way, I hope after this, things improve for Libyan people, otherwise what was the point? And by "improve", I mean better than Iraq.

But it has all come to a screeching halt as an abandoned hospital has been found with bodies upon bodies, not to mention people who show signs of torture before having been murdered. And this is all a little icky and doubly so given we can't point the finger at Gadhaffi. This might have been the doing of "the good guys".

Either way, I can't help but feel that if a faction of American residents started an uprising against the "Bush Regime" (can't pick Obama, he's too damn inoffensive!) and their actions were aided by air strikes on Washington, DC from a foreign power... well, my God, wouldn't the news sound different.
I don't want to hear how awesome The Rebels are. Just report what is going on and leave emotions at the door. The wall-to-wall coverage is, actually, starting to get tedious.

 

Earthquake!?

Well, I did predict America would have an earthquake... but... hello? The East Coast?

The Chesapeake Bay area is the result of a large meteor strike some 35 million years ago. The deep crater zone is about 40km (25 miles) across and just over a kilometre (just under a mile) deep - almost as deep as The Grand Canyon. This is the deep crater. The actual crater itself is nearly 85km (53 miles) in diameter, and the basement rock was fractured to a depth of 8km (5 miles). There is no trace of the meteor, it was vaporised upon impact.
This crater, only recently discovered, is the largest impact crater in the United States. By comparison, Barringer Crater (Arizona) - where the end of the film Starman is set, which is one of the most beautiful craters that looks like it belongs on the moon, is only a kilometre across (less than a mile).

Having said that, disturbance aside, this is an intraplate earthquake as while there are mountains (Blue Ridge, VA), it is in the middle of a tectonic plate. Earthquakes are possible anywhere, but a 5.8 is not usual, even for a mildly seismic zone as this part of Virginia is.

Of course, if there was a "megaquake" taking out the east coast, I suspect large parts of Europe would suffer heavily. The low-lying Charente area of France would look like a replay of the Tōhoku tsunami, though I'd hope there would be enough advance warning to get everybody out. The Japanese, sadly, were not offered that possibility. Still, damage would be considerate.

 

Hello Irene

Can somebody explain what is wrong with America that governors need to declare a "state of emergency" before anything has happened in order to release FEMA and federal funding for shelters? Isn't there a clue in the word "shelter"?

Thankfully the thing seems to have been overhyped and wasn't as bad as predicted - but nobody should be smug about it. I'd rather act upon end-of-the-earth predictions that never transpire, than think "meh!" and sit looking at a scene from "The Day After Tomorrow" bearing down upon me.

Mom asked me if I'd stay in the house or go to an evac centre. I said neither. Truth be told, some of those evac centres look flimsy. And I don't get the one where a beachfront hotel was setting up a shelter in its basement - am I the only person to think "huh?"?.
I'd put some petrol cannisters in the front of the car. Essentials in the boot. Cats and budgies in cages/boxes on the back seat. A pack of rootbeer and a stack of donuts on my lap, I'd fire up my vehicle (probably some sort of small Toyota 4WD thing) and get the hell out. I mean, like to Wisconsin. Somewhere way out of the predicted track of the hurricane.
This is, of course, in an alternate reality where I live in America and own a car and a driving licence. Point still stands... I would consider the evacuation order as an opportunity to go see some place I've not been to before.

 

Donations

I've been asked about the possibility of donations. Well, I don't make a big thing of it, but it does take lots of tea and cookies to get this stuff written. Thus any donations received (once I've figured out how to extract money from PayPal) will go to the cookie fund [*]. ☺

If you're feeling suitably generous/crazy, here's a link:

For some reason, it seems to list my spam-drop email address (heyrickmail-ebay -at- yahoo.co.uk) instead of my name or anything.

* - I reserve the right to supplement or replace cookies with donuts, rootbeer, or coffee-in-a-can; or to buy ingredients to bake cookies. Recipe suggestions welcome. Rest assured that no donations will be spent on "healthy" food. It's sugar-high all the way, baby!

That said, if you think throwing some money my way is a bit crass, then please could you instead show your appreciation by making a donation to the Japanese Red Cross? Link in the right panel...

 

Here is a photo of the brave website administrator at work. You can see what I've been up to in the background. It's a long slog, but I'm getting there little by little...

Website administrator

Don't ask for the URL for that, as it isn't ready for the primetime yet. You ought to be able to guess the URL. If not, you'll just have to wait until it goes "live" (replaces my current assembler stuff). I envisage this to be Christmas Day (erm, this year...), but that is a fairly arbitrary date.

 

Your comments:

Please note that while I check this page every so often, I am not able to control what users write; therefore I disclaim all liability for unpleasant and/or infringing and/or defamatory material. Undesired content will be removed as soon as it is noticed. By leaving a comment, you agree not to post material that is illegal or in bad taste, and you should be aware that the time and your IP address are both recorded, should it be necessary to find out who you are. Oh, and don't bother trying to inline HTML. I'm not that stupid! ☺ ADDING COMMENTS DOES NOT WORK IF READING TRANSLATED VERSIONS.
 
You can now follow comment additions with the comment RSS feed. This is distinct from the b.log RSS feed, so you can subscribe to one or both as you wish.

joe, 29th August 2011, 17:23
Libya 
Time magazine put "Sex" and "Kill" on Gaddafis face long 
time ago and he was part of this "Axis of Evil" plan by smartest presidents of all times. 
North Korea, Cuba and Syria are on the list too. 
 
It looks like brave administrator is running windows XP on some strange machine with English and Japanese keys on the keyboard. 
I was wondering if it would be possible to run RISC OS on today's touch screen PNAs and PDAs, which usually run Android or windows CE?

Add a comment (v0.11) [help?] . . . try the comment feed!
Your name
Your email (optional)
Validation Are you real? Please type 95089 backwards.
Your comment
French flagSpanish flagJapanese flag
Calendar
«   August 2011   »
MonTueWedThuFriSatSun
1245
810111214
15161718192021
222425262728
3031    

(Felicity? Marte? Find out!)

Last 5 entries

List all b.log entries

Return to the site index

Geekery
 
Alphabetical:

Search

Search Rick's b.log!

PS: Don't try to be clever.
It's a simple substring match.

Etc...

Last read at 23:43 on 2024/12/12.

QR code


Valid HTML 4.01 Transitional
Valid CSS
Valid RSS 2.0

 

© 2011 Rick Murray
This web page is licenced for your personal, private, non-commercial use only. No automated processing by advertising systems is permitted.
RIPA notice: No consent is given for interception of page transmission.

 

Have you noticed the watermarks on pictures?
Next entry - 2011/09/04
Return to top of page