Three Generations in Antarctica

From Bill Gates' blog. Yeah, he's one of us although I doubt he's the one slaving over the fucking keyboard.

On a recent family trip, Bill witnessed great natural beauty and further evidence of global warming – even in one of the coldest places on Earth.

When I gave my ten-year-old son a chance to pick anywhere in the world to go with me and two of his grandparents, he chose Antarctica. I was thrilled. It’s the only continent I’d never visited, a continent with no indigenous people, where the largest land animal is a tiny, wingless fly.

We flew down to Chile (before the earthquake) and then took a special plane to the Antarctic Peninsula. It’s incredibly beautiful. Icebergs and icy mountains make up most of the landscape. The penguins are amazing. But winter temperatures there have risen by five degrees centigrade [41° Fahrenheit], which is changing the icepack and the penguin habitat quite dramatically. The warming being seen worldwide is magnified in the Antarctic Peninsula.

That's a damn interesting son he has there. Mine would have chosen Disneyland®.



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Chilean Quake Likely Shifted Earth’s Axis, NASA Scientist Says

Just remember it has happened, but you'll never know it.

The earthquake that killed more than 700 people in Chile on Feb. 27 probably shifted the Earth’s axis and shortened the day, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist said.

[snip]

The length of the day should have gotten shorter by 1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second),” Gross, said today in an e-mailed reply to questions. “The axis about which the Earth’s mass is balanced should have moved by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters or 3 inches).”

I can't imagine spending my days coming up with such data. Maybe that's just me, though.



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Chile calls for aid, looters break quake curfew

Please stop calling Haitians and Chileans looters if they're fucking taking food or bathroom tissue and shit. If there are no functioning grocery stores and people are hungry, what options do they have? They take what food they can find. And why they would take the tissue is obvious.

Breaking curfew is another matter. So is helping oneself to a nice new TeeVee. Arrest their asses.

CONCEPCION: Chile called for international aid on Monday as the anguished calls of trapped quake survivors pierced the rubble and police had to arrest 160 looters for defying overnight curfews.

Another serious problem is insurance. When any remaining food stocks disappear and the owners aren't insured, many of those grocery stores may not return because of the cost of restocking. As if these poor people don't already have enough shit to contend with.


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CHILE EARTHQUAKE: 8.8 Magnitude Quake Hits Chile

This earthquake is the largest I've ever heard of. The TV news is saying it is one of the 10 largest. If Haiti's had been this large the deaths would have been in the millions. Chile gets many earthquakes and has better construction standards, but even those didn't prevent massive damage.

An 8.8-magnitude earthquake, one of the largest ever recorded, tore apart houses, bridges and highways in central Chile on Saturday and sent a tsunami racing halfway around the world.

Chileans near the epicentre were tossed about as if shaken by a giant, and authorities said at least 214 people were dead.

The quake was felt as far away as Sao Paulo in Brazil — 900 kilometres to the east. The full extent of damage remained unclear as scores of aftershocks — one nearly as powerful as Haiti's devastating Jan. 12 earthquake — shuddered across the disaster-prone Andean nation.

President Michele Bachelet declared a "state of catastrophe" in central Chile and said the death toll was rising.

"We've learned that it was a shallow thrust earthquake, which means it had the potential to cause a tsunami, which it did in this case," said Jessica Sigala of the U.S. Geological Survey.

"The earthquake in Chile released about 500 times the amount of energy that the earthquake in Haiti did," she told CBC News.

[snip]

Did you catch that? Five hundred fucking times the magnitude of the Haitian quake. Now this teacher puts the magnitude at 35 times that of the Haiti quake. No link, but I've seen some stories that rate it at 1,000 times. You can decide which number is correct, but they're all pretty damn bad.

The quake struck at 3:34 a.m. local time (1:34 a.m. ET) and was centred 325 kilometres southwest of the capital, Santiago, at a depth of 35 kilometres, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

In the hours after the 90-second tremor, the U.S. Geological Survey reported 11 aftershocks. The strongest was a magnitude 6.9.

The President of Chile by some accounts had declared a state of catastrophe within 3 hours. Three God damn hours!!1!!! Can we elect her here and set her loose in NOLO?

It appears the earthquake has trumped the killer whale story on CNN.

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Gotta love the internets tubes

I just got a hit from Chile which is 10,164 miles (16.357 km) away.

No one so far away has ever considered my opinions before. Ya gotta love it.

Hey, the picture is a joke. K?