Dylan Thomas

“When one burns one’s bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.” (Dylan Thomas, NY Times)

Getting ready for The Big One

How to prepare for an earthquake.

On the other hand, some experts think the Big One in California will be a flood, not an earthquake. From today's Chronicle:

...During the height of the drought, California went as long as a year without seeing a single atmospheric river. But the state was hit by more than 30 of the systems last winter, according to Scripps researchers. That explains why the season was one of the wettest on record.

Because of the prospect of significant damage, the U.S. Geological Survey conducted a disaster preparedness exercise in 2011, loosely based on a series of atmospheric rivers that struck during the winter of 1861-62. The string of storms a century and a half ago left much of California covered in water and thousands dead.

Dale Cox, who led the simulation, said it was designed around conditions the state could realistically experience in the near future.

“This wasn’t a way-out-there kind of storm,” he said. “As far as disasters go, earthquakes are the charismatic species. They’re the ones that people tend to fear the most. Floods don’t get the attention, yet that’s what’s going to be California’s big one.”

From the Friendly Atheist:

We’ve posted before about the problem of Orthodox Jewish men on planes refusing to sit next to women because they see even accidental contact as sexual in nature...It’s not because it was an adult film or something. That movie was Music and Lyrics, a 2007 PG-13 film starring Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore. If the reason for covering up that screen was so no one would have to watch a Hugh Grant film, I would understand, but the fear of something scandalous happening was hardly an issue.

Yeshiva World News, the publication that obtained the footage, says they don’t know the details of this flight — when it happened or where they were heading — but “the video speaks for itself.”

Rob's comment:

Religious crackpots will be the death of us. Here it's fanatical Jews, but Republicans in Alabama just voted for a Christian crackpot. Even Buddhists are getting into the act, and of course fanatical Muslims are active every day. :