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Strange behavior and earthquakes
The following from All Shook Up: Mapping Earthquake News on Twitter from Virginia to Maine | SocialFlow Blog.
"The proper response to an earthquake? Run, scream, take cover?… no wait, Tweet!
"On Tuesday, the denizens of the East Coast had exactly this choice, and they responded by flooding the interwebz with messages: startled, mundane, humorous, informational. And it happened fast. Seismic waves travel at 3-5 km/s, communication signals in fiber optic cables move at a speed of 200,000 km/s [as this XKCD cartoon brilliantly notes]. Tweets do take time to compose, but significantly less when you’re tweeting “EARTHQUAKE”!
"We thought you’d like to see some of the data behind it. The visualization below replays the spread of earthquake related Tweets across North America, from the moment the epicenter hit Mineral Virginia (1:51PM) on August 23rd through its spread across the East coast and the South."
Preparing for the worst? Try making your world more resilient.
In the Washington Post online's opinion pages, dated Friday Feb 25, Mike Tidwell, Executive Director of Chesapeake Climate Action Network, describes the measures that he is taking to prepare for an increasingly likely scenario of system disruption resulting from climate change.
I know several people who have concluded that things are likely to get much worst and are preparing with similar measures. Some have bolt holes in the mountains and a few are stockpiling weapons. Many are edging towards food self sufficiency by ramping up gardening or working out energy self-sufficiency options. Measures to prepare for the worst may be prudent, but they aren't sufficient. There's probably some correlation between personal security measures and a sense of the absence of resilience in a community. The only meaningful way to prepare for the worst when it becomes a chronic problem is to work with your neighbors to improve the resilience of your community. What can you do? Well in the first instance, it would be useful to assess your vulnerabilities - where your community is not likely to spring back easily after a shock. And although I have not yet developed such an analytical tool, I think that it is safe to say that many of us live within a system of systems that is very precise, and finely balanced - think "just in time" delivery of necessities. Last winter the Manchester Guardian, reporting on the difficulty of stocking shelves after heavy snows, warned that the region was "nine meals from anarchy". Our system is so finely tuned that a failure in one component easily leads to cascading failures, culminating in a complete breakdown in social order such as was seen in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit. Brothers and sisters, better locks on your doors, hidey holes in the mountains, and a generator may make you feel secure. But in the long term, will you be more secure? Will your community close ranks and help one another? Or is it every man for himself where you live? Women, do you agree? How then do we respond? That's the challenge.Amplify’d from www.washingtonpost.com
As a longtime environmental activist, I was deeply alarmed by new studies on global warming, so I went all out. I did my part.
Now I'm changing my life again. Today, underneath the solar panels, there's a new set of deadbolt locks on all my doors. There's a new Honda GX390 portable power generator in my garage, ready to provide backup electricity. And last week I bought a starter kit to raise tomatoes and lettuce behind barred basement windows.
