California's seasons: Flood, Fire, Earthquakes, and Summer.

Southern California is flammable. Please extinguish all matches, lighters, candles, bbqs, fireplaces, campfires,and flamethrowers. Bring water.

From turbines to sniper rifles... what's not to love?

Wind turbine trees.

The 9 teachers who just received awards from the White House were all in the U.S. illegally.

Earthquake preparedness.

Earth from space.

That useless liberal arts degree is needed in the tech business.

Jimmy Carter says we're not a democracy anymore.  We're an oligarchy. (h/t to Steve Bates.)

Hacking a self-aiming sniper rifle.

Early computers, polar vortexes and Emma Watson

Antikythera mechanism expedition begins search for missing fragments of world’s oldest known computer and more.

My Year As an Abortion Doula

My Year in the NRA

More megaquakes can happen.

An excellent male contraceptive.

Sign of the times.

Polar vortex a sign of global warming.

Internet trolls.

Emma Watson, UN's Goodwill ambassador

To the moon, Alice!

Humans can cause earthquakes?  Does it count when the entire country eats that second helping of pie after a Thanksgiving dinner?

Beautiful timed photos of a trip in the western US.

The coldest place on earth.

The ultimate Legoland:  Rivendell.

Facts about book lovers.

China's on the Moon and there's damp spots on Mars.

Rock and Roll..

Earthquake Record Shakes Up Pacific Northwest Predictions

The study delves into the past of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a tectonic boundary that stretches more than 700 miles (1,100 kilometers) from Northern California to Vancouver Island. The exhaustive, 170-page report from a team at Oregon State University (OSU) offers ample evidence that 19 or 20 magnitude-9.0 earthquakes have ripped along the fault over the last 10,000 years. 

"That is a remarkable record that goes back a long time," said geophysicist Craig Weaver, the Pacific Northwest coordinator for the U.S. Geological Survey's Earthquake Hazards Program, who was not associated with the research.  

Weaver said that it's been known since the late 1980s that the Cascadia Subduction Zone can rupture its entire length all at once, producing magnitude-9.0 quakes — the same magnitude as Japan's devastating March 2011 earthquake — along a fault that is even closer to shore. Yet the new report shows it has done so repeatedly, about every 500 years. 

The last magnitude-9.0 earthquake hit in January 1700, and sent a deadly tsunami across the Pacific Ocean to Japan. That event has been well-documented both historically and geologically.

What the frack?

Fracking leads to earthquakes.  I check the USGS earthquake map every day and yes, Oklahoma and other central US states are getting unusual earthquakes now.  Will Big Oil stop fracking?  Ha.

Suddenly Sunday...

Finding cave paintings in Mexico

About the earthquake swarm near the Lassen Volcanic Center.... nothing to do with volcanoes.  (Rats.)

What the soldiers in the Vietnam War really thought.

Colony Collapse Disorder.

Marching against Monsanto.  Because of things like this.  And who actually owns organic products.

And because I haven't posted for a while... kittens and cats

US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits, spyware, ransomware and trojans to attack pirates!

Unexpected Health Insurance Rate Shock-California Obamacare Insurance Exchange Announces Premium Rates

Radiation? What radiation?

The government wouldn't lie to their own people in such a dangerous situation, would they? ... Apparently they would, they did, and they will. Fukushima No. 2 Reactor Has '10 Times The Fatal Dose' of Radiation. Meanwhile, Original Contamination Data Was Deleted The whole world was watching, taking aerial samples, checking the seawater, and we knew that it was horribly horribly bad. It's still horribly horribly bad and will remain so forever. Japan just lost a massive chunk of their island because of their nuclear program. How many accidents and disasters do we have to go through before we realize we can't handle nuclear power plant mistakes? How much more of the earth do we have to make uninhabitable?

Is it my imagination....

Or is the world becoming more and more crazy by the minute?

 

Musical architecture

One year anniversary of the Japanese quake.

Island nation of Kiribati plans mass relocation due to climate change

Top Rabbi believes Catholic Church is imposing Sharia Law on Americans over contraception

How to read gang tags and disses on LA streets

via Bryan, Iran will have the bomb... yesterday, today, any minute now....

Five hundred new fairytales discovered in Germany

I think I have found the way to stop wars.  Flood the area with kittens.

Study: Hate of Obama fuels 755% growth in extremist groups

Unlike traditional hate groups, “Patriot” groups subscribe to a set of conspiracy theories and see the government as their primary enemy. 

“Basically what ‘Patriot’ groups think is that the federal government is an evil cabal in the hands of bad people,” Potok explained. “The government is about to impose martial law on the country, very probably with the help of foreign troops, perhaps U.N. troops. They intend to confiscate all guns from Americans. Those liberty-loving Americans who resisted will be thrown into concentration camps that have secretly constructed by FEMA. And ultimately the government will force us all into a socialistic kind of one-world government, the so-called New World Order.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same.... Kansas Republicans look to profit off abortion taxes

Gee... I wonder why? Aren't Republicans the party of family values? No love for the GOP among America's women...  Could it be because people feel free to call this 16 year old a slut?

The Big Bang?

Hundreds of metres under one of Iceland's largest glaciers there are signs of a looming volcanic eruption that could be one of the most powerful the country has seen in almost a century. Mighty Katla, with its 10km (6.2 mile) crater, has the potential to cause catastrophic flooding as it melts the frozen surface of its caldera and sends billions of gallons of water surging through Iceland's east coast and into the Atlantic Ocean. "There has been a great deal of seismic activity," says Ford Cochran, the National Geographic's expert on Iceland. There were more than 500 tremors in and around the caldera of Katla just in October, which suggests the motion of magma. "And that certainly suggests an eruption may be imminent."

What we don't know

Will most certainly kill us. The 'non'-reporting about the total meltdown at Fukishima:

Gundersen points out that far more radiation has been released than has been reported.

"They recalculated the amount of radiation released, but the news is really not talking about this," he said. "The new calculations show that within the first week of the accident, they released 2.3 times as much radiation as they thought they released in the first 80 days."

According to Gundersen, the exposed reactors and fuel cores are continuing to release microns of caesium, strontium, and plutonium isotopes. These are referred to as "hot particles".

"We are discovering hot particles everywhere in Japan, even in Tokyo," he said. "Scientists are finding these everywhere. Over the last 90 days these hot particles have continued to fall and are being deposited in high concentrations. A lot of people are picking these up in car engine air filters."

Radioactive air filters from cars in Fukushima prefecture and Tokyo are now common, and Gundersen says his sources are finding radioactive air filters in the greater Seattle area of the US as well.

The hot particles on them can eventually lead to cancer.

"These get stuck in your lungs or GI tract, and they are a constant irritant," he explained, "One cigarette doesn't get you, but over time they do. These [hot particles] can cause cancer, but you can't measure them with a Geiger counter. Clearly people in Fukushima prefecture have breathed in a large amount of these particles. Clearly the upper West Coast of the US has people being affected. That area got hit pretty heavy in April."

Update: Now they tell us! Chemicals Newly Disclosed As Risky Are In What We Eat...But What?

And the oceans are dying: Ocean life on the brink of mass extinctions

How fast can you run?

The video was removed by the author. Just showed the tsunami rushing in between the houses as the person filming the water ran up the hill. The speed of the water is amazing, even though it looks like the town was not as inundated as the others. Perhaps the town was far enough away to just get the final wash before the ocean retreated.

*edited for really bad grammar...

This should take care of any geology majors in Italy...

Seismologists Tried for Manslaughter for Not Predicting Earthquake

Earthquake prediction can be a grave, and faulty science, and in the case of Italian seismologists who are being tried for the manslaughter of the people who died in the 2009 L'Aquila quake, it can have legal consequences.

The group of seven, including six seismologists and a government official, reportedly didn't alert the public ahead of time of the risk of the L'Aquila earthquake, which occurred on April 6 of that year, killing around 300 people, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

But most scientists would agree it's not their fault they couldn't predict the wrath of Mother Nature.

"We're not able to predict earthquakes very well at all," John Vidale, a Washington State seismologist and professor at the University of Washington, told LiveScience.

Even though advances have been made, the day scientists are able to forecast earthquakes is still "far away," Dimitar Ouzounov, a professor of earth sciences at Chapman University in California, said this month regarding the prediction of the March 11 earthquake in Japan.

Science that leaves you aglow

MESSENGER delivers its first image from Mercury

Bug Highway:

How much fresh water is left on earth?

Another video of the Japanese quake.

And all things radioactive: Caesium fallout from Fukushima rivals Chernobyl.

Why are there so many different ways of measuring radiation?

Workers at Japan's quake-hit nuclear plant are trying to prevent radioactive water from seeping into the sea.

Tom Tomorrow helps explain it all.

The radioactive ocean that we've been using as a bomb site and dumping ground:

Radioactive pollution in the ocean is nothing new. We've been loosing the stuff offshore since 1944.

News worth pulling your hair out over...

DEAR GOD. WTF?! Top Bush-era GITMO and Abu Ghraib psychologist is WH's newest appointment.

What's inside a Japanese quake grab bag?

American workers got what they deserved

A quote from Bob Herbert's last column for the New York Times:

Arthur Miller, echoing the poet Archibald MacLeish, liked to say that the essence of America was its promises. That was a long time ago. Limitless greed, unrestrained corporate power and a ferocious addiction to foreign oil have led us to an era of perpetual war and economic decline. Young people today are staring at a future in which they will be less well off than their elders, a reversal of fortune that should send a shudder through everyone.

The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely.

Why we need to watch the Japanese radiation leak patterns carefully.

Five myths about the UN.

Farmers Sue USDA Over Monsanto Alfalfa - Again

Often in tragedy

Animals help us express our deep emotions.

(and yes, they were saved.)

Relentless

6 intense minutes of the tsunami in Japan. (via facebook)

And the earthquakes continue.

Volcanoes erupt in connection with the earthquake.

And the meltdowns threaten, ground radiation is a reality.

Liquefacation

Monster storms

Here and there and everywhere...

Australia



US

Update: a much more impressive photo:





Don't even THINK about coming to Southern California! We ...uh... have earthquakes!

Update: More at Bryan's excellent blog.

Blog sprinkles

Keep Sarah Palin off of Discovery Channel:

"I am appalled that Discovery Communications -- home of numerous eco-conscious offerings -- has picked up "Sarah Palin's Alaska." Sarah Palin's anti-nature crusade as governor makes her extremely unsuitable to host a show in your lineup. I urge you to cancel the show before it airs."

Plan B has more options: Understanding Ella, the Latest Controversy in 'Morning After Pills' And a clever response to an anti-abortion ad.

One more reason we really don't want Chinese food products....

According to a 2008 State Oceanic Administration report, raw sewage and pollution from agricultural run-off has polluted 83 percent of China's coastal waters, leading to algae and other problems.

The Council of Dads has advice.

Seventh graders prove science isn't dead.

It's dangerous to ask for help in a forum.

The 7.2 Mexicali, Mexico, earthquake was so powerful that it shifted the Earth's crust 31 inches near Calexico, Calif., according to radar images and data released by NASA on Wednesday.

Irony. And more BP jokes.

We're number one!1! ... uh... We're number seven!!

Despite having the most costly health system in the world, the United States consistently underperforms on most dimensions of performance, relative to other countries. This report—an update to three earlier editions—includes data from seven countries and incorporates patients' and physicians' survey results on care experiences and ratings on dimensions of care. Compared with six other nations—Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom—the U.S. health care system ranks last or next-to-last on five dimensions of a high performance health system: quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives.

Strange what happens when you run out of money, isn't it?

A growing number of centrist Democrats say they’re open to trimming Pentagon spending in the face of record budget deficits and mounting public debt.

Liberal Democrats for years have called for cuts to the massive defense budget to no avail. Even after Democrats regained control of Congress in 2007, their few attempts at reining in defense spending have proven futile, partly because of opposition from centrist Democrats hawkish on defense issues.

Obama and McChrystal.