Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Sorry I haven't written

Been waist-deep in the Census work that we trained for last week, and it leaves me a little stupid. I wonder how we manage to get up and go to work every blessed day for decades. This little old patch of work leaves me too pressed for time and too tired to enjoy much of anything.
So, to clear off a little backlog, first this video, shot for a commercial, of slo-mo dogs catching a treat from the air. It's cool; you'll like it.
Then, the terremoto in Chile. It is a marker of my profound humanity that the first thing I thought wasn't, 'Oh, no … what'll this do to my supply of Carmenere?' (Carmenere is the lovely Chilean red that we favor, and the quake hit near the wine country.) However, the second thing I thought was just that. And now it appears that there will be an interruption in the Concha y Toro supply lines.
And from from True/Slant blog, a hope that the religious right in the U.S. not find a moral lesson in the quake: 'I’m sure Robertson can find some holy poop to throw against the wall and make stick in this case. Heck, if the tsunami that’s branching out kills anyone in Hawaii, I’m sure Pat will argue that it’s because they sent us President Obama.' You can read all that here. I haven't yet heard any of the bloody-minded holy imply that the quake was punishment for transgressions rather than unlucky geography.
And then for comparison to a historic American quake, the 1906 San Francisco quake, from a history site:
Scientists are still trying to accurately calculate the magnitude of the quake. Since the scientific instruments used to measure the earthquake weren't as reliable as more modern ones, scientists have yet to agree on the size of the magnitude, but most place it between 7.7 and 7.9 on the Richter scale (a few have said as high as 8.3).

Read all that here. So, at an est. 8.8, the Chilean quake was likely ten times worse than the San Fran quake. I read a lot on Chile a few years ago. I was gonna move to Chile after the time I was gonna move to Yucatán and before the time that San Rafael, Argentina, was my chosen destination. These day I'm moving to Uruguay. Next week, who knows? I never made to to Chile, but a friend who did says it's fine country.

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