It’s not making headlines yet, but I’m getting a mighty uneasy feeling about the global earthquake situation. Part of the reason is that I was expecting a peak in quake activity around April 19th. Another is that there have been so damn many of them – the USGS site reported 64 yesterday alone.
And the problem with me is that I’m a spreadsheet junkie at heart. Why give me any data set with more than a dozen points in it and I’ll be slicing and dicing to hell’s not a foot away. It’s just who I am I suppose. Back in the day, I didn’t even wait for Excel’s early shortcomings to be worked out. It was VisiCalc on a Commodore Pet and then Lotus 1-2-3 on a Compaq and later, the first half-screen sized HP portable. I love data because it is so much fun “model businesses” because it can give you tremendous insights that many people otherwise overlook.
Take the earthquake data from yesterday. A person could look at it and say “Hmmm…lots of data there…probably just a global swarm or clustering….now where’s my remote…”
Wrong answer. My “spidey-sense” is that the data is telling us something IF we listen. Let’s do a little slicing and dicing, eh wot?
I begin by assigning to one group all quakes which occurred yesterday running along the general east side of the Pacific plate, but in an area which would likely experience seismicity if things like the Joe Brandt dream, and multiple others of “California slides into the ocean” were to take place. In my doodles, I call this “set a” with 25-members.
In the next set (“b” but you might have guessed that being you’re more awaken than me, more’n likely) we would put in everything in the general vicinity of the Sumatra mega quakes…and there were 21 of those.
“Set c” is our more of less continual shaking that’s been going on in the Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Mona Pass region. Six of them.
What’s “left over” is the usual worldwide spread including four near Japan, the Tajikistan quake, and one up in
n = 64
West Coast events
25
39.06%
Sumatra events
21
32.81%
Puerto Rico events
6
9.38%
Other
12
18.75%
And pictorially:
The question banging away in the back of my head, wanting to get out, is whether by simply assigning sets to general regions like this is a valid way to consider this data set. Intuitively it shows something that’s been gnawing down in the guts: What does it mean when there are more events on the eastern side of the ring of fire?
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Readers have been generously contributing with information, too. This email was particularly worthwhile, since it circles back to that “El Centro underwater someday?” question:
“George:
For your I-Ching Inbox pile….
My Fambly-Tree Roots date back to circa 1900 living in the Yuma, AZ area. My “people” helped build the Imperial Dam on the Colorado River and the All-American Canal on the California-side through the Imperial Sand Dunes back in The Days of the Old Plank Road over the dunes. They “homesteaded” in the Welton Area … blah, blah, blah….
The so-called known Anglo “history” of California actually only dates back to circa 1850 with the Gold Rush of ’49. The Spanish have some pretty good information from the previous time period due to the “missionary” development. Here is the point: Father Kino was in the area on the East side of today’s Baja Peninsula during the early 1700s … and travelled as far East as the Tucson area working with the indigenous Indians of the Era. He also travelled into the Yuma Area. The local Indians of that time told Kino that “California” was an “Island”….
The pre-1700s maps of early Pacific sea-explorers also show that California was perceived to be an Island from approximately the Los Angelenos area to current day La Paz located on the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula….
My family had “folklore” stories about the “early” homesteaders/farmers who were involved with the first settlement of the Imperial Valley area from Calexico north toward El Centro / Brawley “finding” entire ships buried in the sand — including “Viking” designs. Hmmmm….
Keep in mind that the current Salton Sea “did not exist” prior to the creation of the New River due to flooding of the Colorado River circa early 1900s.
Thanks to you and Zeus The Cat for your excellent website. I read it daily while:
Watchin’ & Waiting….”
As are we, lol. And, just to keep the PC crowd happy, don’t be letting on about “Viking” ships being found out there as I’m sure the La Raza/Reconquista folks would be highly offended. Such global wanderings of old distant ancestors has been pretty well peer-reviewed out of journals.
And speaking of the PC police, one of the reasons Gavin Menzies book “1421: The Year China Discovered America (P.S.)“
Another reader opines thusly:
“A clearly free-thinking reader asks: “What if the Pacific ring of fire is really a caldera?” We won’t go there. “
Doh!…ShiT!…
But let’s say it’s dormant, but a settling as in a collapse occurs? That would really present a problem with Oceanographic Survey Boys! New Charts for everyone…just give us fifty years or so…can’t rush into these things.
It would really piss off those worried about rising sea levels…Huh?”
The rest of his email went into how a lah-dee-dah high-roller ex-girlfriend would soon be getting her comeuppance should California slide and how he’d had a near brush with marriage only to be saved by a last-minute attack of nose-ring allergy when it got the “real picture” of what she was like dialed in. In the interest of not being sued, I’ve skipped mentioning anything personally identifiable about her except that her name is…….Yeeooouch!
What’s this? Editor Zeus the Cat just clawed at me and meowed something that sounds like lawyer?
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One last reader snippet on this quakey-shaky festival that seems to be going on:
“George,
It was intriguing that you brought up ayahuasca in today’s discussion. As a graduate student, I was twice initiated into the vision world of the fruits of the vine. For a dirt poor, Appalachian Mountain, kid who grew up on a tobacco farm, my closest brushes with hallucinogens (and I use that term loosely) was the occasional trip on LSD, shrooms, and peyote. While each had their own “spiritual” insights; none prepared me for the self-revelations that I would receive from ayahuasca. On those vision quests, I saw my future (so much for free will), the choices I would make, the ecstasy and agony each choice would reveal…I also saw a version of my “mission” here. Unfortunately, I was shown that, after a certain amount to suffering, I would be “released” in the summer of 2012 to a greater mission.
Now as I near that date, I suffer from Multiple Sclerosis, intractable chronic pain, and yet I serve as the Dean of the largest academic college of one of the state’s largest Historically Black Universities. I continue to publish my research with regularity and, despite such personal tragedies as the recent death of my father and my wife of nearly 20 years abandoning me, I carry on, attempting to fulfill my mission.
Oddly enough, one of the many pharmaceuticals (experimental) being used to keep me working is Ketamine, another spirit molecule. The older I get, the more I come to believe what I was shown under the influence. .
If you use this, just sign me as: Dr. Strange.”
“10-4, Doc.” Which, just writing it, strums the rhyme with Back to the Future which is where we all end up going, and as people seem to be experiencing at a broad level presently, sometimes it gets a little shaky along the path.
And another 5.7 off Oaxaca Mexico this morning doesn’t make me any more comfortable.
And at least the seismology people have started to man-up (or girl-up, depending) on fracking: It’s now being tied to unusual quakes.…just what we’ve been talking about here for what three or four years? Sometimes being unfettered with peer process is a good thing. Lets people just see data and apply common sense and logic… Bet Oilman2′s next hint – about the massive ground water issues to follow will come along in, oh, at the speed of choke collar academics let’s say five more years. FMTT.
Rush to Judgment
One of the highlights of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists convention that Elaine and I will be attending in a few weeks over in Macon, Georgia, will be remarks by Nancy Grace who’s scheduled to be there. I’m packing a tube of SuperGlue with with to restrain my tongue for much of the event. I’ve already chewed off about two inches of my tongue but there’s enough of a stub it oughta be glued down.
As reader piped up:
“Hi George
Your saying that “like baseball, it’s the final score that matters” is true, but the fun is in the details. Assuming, of course, that baseball and trials are fun.”
Well, not so fast, buckaroo. The fun is in the details ONLY if you’re sitting out in the sunshine on a spring afternoon, a bunch of jovial people chit-chatting, having a few hotdogs and nipping at a beer.
Courts lack this air of conviviality because they persist, despite my lobbying, to hold session indoors, with no food allowed in the courtroom, and worst of all no peanuts of beer.
But lookie here: Even unruly flash mobs have the marketing-sense include outdoor or at least large public gathering places, and often with participants doing a bit of self-medicating. Try that in court! Which is why young people find flash mobs more interesting than courts….you getting this? We don’t have so much a generation gap as a nested series of institutional marketing problems.
This also why more people watch baseball than Congress, by the by. By making their hearings unbelievably boring, thoughtful people usually watch a few minutes of C-Span at bedtime because it’s cheaper than a prescription for Lunesta and comes with event basic cable or fiber in most markets.
“Tell me it ain’t so!“ Well it is, and like Obama Term 2, and institutional boredom, you might as well get used to it and learn to swim in the sea that it is, which in case you’re completely delusional, does have a bit of a septic tank bouquet at times.
Adventures in Non-Flying
There we were, Thursday morning…Elaine had gotten up with daylight and was set to roll out the door when the morning column was done, but Universe had other plans.
Mark the Mechanic called at the last possible second to announce that The Mouse failed the morning run-up after annual. “Your tach has gone bad…showed only 1,100 RPM when it should be running up static to 2,300 or so with the new prop on it. Ever notice that before?”
Gulp…there was one time on our adventures last year, climbing out of Palm Springs when the tach was reading about 200 RPM low for the first hour, but the climb speed was right on the money, so I chalked it up to the cold weather out there and not having been flown for a week…
“Well, I’ll get a new tach on the way and the right mount for the new (vertical card) compass should be in at the same time…”
What followed was a peach-perfect example of how “Going with flow of Universe pays off.”
I didn’t get off-put by the turn of events…and just told Elaine “Remember when I said this was National $400 George to Death Week? It just struck again...” Kids needing help with rent, lawnmower issues, the septic tank a couple of weeks back…it’s been fun.
Then Universe started to reveal how is was playing with me. Phone range 15-minutes later (we would have been gone, you see) and it was The Big Client and we’re ready for launch next week. Yeehaw! I’ll tell you more about that when we get there because it’s really gong to be fun….and yes, should create (nationally) about 500- year good independent contractor jobs which are likely to pay between $50,000 and $100,000 per year….which is really a grand thing.
After the phone call I got to wondering…are we really gong to make it to Macon, Georgia on May 3rd through that Sunday as planned?
As if to answer, the I-Ching Inbox announced this:
OMG! Aircraft Spruce is to Airplanes what West Marine is to boaters, Cheaper Than Dirt is to hunters, and Camping World is to the RV crowd. Hand me that sectional chart? See! That’s only 45-minutes of flying time from the convention! I could get up at the crack of dawn…fly over, power shop the sale, fly back and not miss too much of the program. What’s the phrase? Oh yeah “…and lead us not into temptation….”
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So goes my Dance Lessons from Universe where, near as I’ve been able to divine, my most important role is to provide toes to be stepped on while Universe laughs hysterically at the dim-witted slowness of its dance partners.
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So now our “dream tour” of the East Coast is suddenly in doubt: Do we run home and make a quick million bucks after the convention gavel falls, or persist in the plans to fly up to the NYC area and from there up to Viagra Falls and a mosey around the the country on the way back? I’ll be watching my dance partner closely for clues….which ought to be along, any old time….
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And so another week comes to an end. If you’re not back here Monday, same time, same wonk, I’ll be getting after you with my Wouff-Hong and the Rettysnitch. And if that doesn’t put the fear of God in you, then the Ugerumf will.
Write when you break even: george@ure.net
Of Interest to Readers:
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Double Trouble Wednesday
Markets at the brink and two major quakes… Enjoy this morning’s rally while you can when US markets open. The Global Depression may be game on and if it it, it should become evident in the US/West in coming weeks. This morning we assess what some of our indicators are telling us, and if this may be a good time to get really defensive in order to minimize your family’s upset quotient. We also roll out a new tool for timing such trade. Then, after sizing up those two massive earthquakes in the South Pacific, well consider the question of whether the web bot March danger window was merely a month early in its timing….
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(Also) The “Flip-Side” of Virtual
In Wednesday’s report on the future of virtual reality glasses, a new technology which I think had pretty good potential to “pop” (standing 10-feet from a virtual 102″ screen is pretty snazzy stuff) which qualifies it as one of our serial get-rich-slowly paths, which usually seems to take years instead of days, but that’s another matter. What matters this morning is that as a friend (Oilman2) told me this week, there’s a really horrible side of virtual and he’s been kind enough to share details of how virtual is getting ready to start whacking jobs down in the oil patch. As usual, before we wade into the grim, we can recap the market and some of the major week ending headlines to see where that points…
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Safer Computing: Swearing Off Cookies
It has been a while since I roared the praises of the Maxa Cookie Manager which you can download and install for a free test drive by clicking here.
To upgrade from the demo to full working is still less than $30 (During their Spring Sale) and one heck of a bargain at that, if I do say so.
I am a high-reliability computing kind of guy – and near as I have it figured, the road to a hassle-free computing experience is (like flying an airplane) a matter of going through a proper checklist before popping onto the web:
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You need an active cookie manager – because sites you visit can put small bits of code on your computer and some of these are designed for Flash, have no expiration, and can really bugger-up the computing experience. This part gets handled by Maxa Labs’ product which on my system says 184,380 cookies have been removed, 73,881 “web bugs” which can track movement from site to site and such, and I have only 10-active cookies.
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Second thing you need is a good antivirus program – and I happen to really like Avira’s Antivir pro.
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Then you need to deal with Malware so for this Malware bytes is updated and run daily.
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And last, though certainly not least is the firewall and the one in Win 7 works fine.
Like anything in computers, updates are critical so before work every morning, the computer does its update ritual – Check of Maxa (5.3.02 is current) Avira, and Malware bytes.
Toss in a good bit of common sense (example: Don’t open email purporting to be from UPS, IRS, the US Post Office, or anything else that even has a hint of fishy odor to it) and first thing you know, the internet’s actually a useful tool.
“Live on $10,000″ A Year
Having a hard time making ends meet? (Like who isn’t, right?) A good starting point to better match up income with outgo is our $10 e-book “How to Live on $10,000 a Year…or less!”
It’s an automatic download. It’s written in an information dense style: The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the cheap, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you have a little hustle left. A bonus section called “How to Build Anything” should instill confidence if you’ve
