Rick's b.log - entry 2011/08/29

Libya

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!?

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

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

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

* - 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...

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:

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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?

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