Sunday, March 13, 2011

Tsunami: Just awful

Remarkable, terrible pictures. Cleverly set up, so you can mouse over and see before/ after. (Thanks to the Blonde for the link).

Given how little warning they had, the government likely did the best that could have been done. That was a huge earthquake.

Amazingly, we now have "Tsunami warnings" here in NC, on the coast. Not really very helpful. "If you see a wall of water moving extremely fast, please try to run, even the land here is perfectly flat for about 15 miles." I guess there is the water receding, and the roar. But still, 5 minutes? There's one bridge off the island.

A bonus: you can buy a plagiarized paper, if you want.

Not a real warning. Just a sign that says that if there IS a tsunami, you need to run away. As this page notes there has been...only one tsunami in the Atlantic. Okay, there have been at least ten, but only one that caused actual damage. And that one was the 1755 Lisbon earthquake tsunami, which was admittedly a real son of a b***h: Voltaire thought of it as a metaphysical event, raising questions about God himself. An excerpt from Voltaire's poem responding to the Lisbon earthquake (and anticipating Pat Robertson being an idiot), straight out of Pangloss's playbook.

What crime, what sin, had those young hearts conceived
That lie, bleeding and torn, on mother’s breast?
Did fallen Lisbon deeper drink of vice
Than London, Paris, or sunlit Madrid?
In these men dance; at Lisbon yawns the abyss.
Tranquil spectators of your brothers’ wreck,
Unmoved by this repellent dance of death,
Who calmly seek the reason of such storms,
Let them but lash your own security;
Your tears will mingle freely with the flood.

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