2002-09-21 11:13 p.m.
What's Shiny Today
- The same day we had that creepy earthquake weather, SFGate ran
this story about how the Parkfield theory has been seriously undermined.
Parkfield had had at least 5 sizable (magnitude 6+) earthquakes in a row at
roughly 22-year intervals, so geologists set up all kinds of instruments to
record what happens in the area before a quake, keep track of fault creep
and so forth... and waited... and waited. The next quake was due to happen
in 1988 or thereabouts, and 14 years later the instruments are still out
there waiting for something to happen. This may mean the theory was wrong,
or that there's a whopper of a quake due to happen later on. In any case,
this shows how poorly we still understand how earthquakes happen.
- Rune's Barf Bag Collection includes
photos of air sickness bags from around the world. This would be just a
little odd, were it not for the seriousness and comprehensiveness of
the site. He has a Yahoo!
Group for barf bag collectors,
links to other members of the frighteningly large community of like-minded
individuals (including designforchunks
.com), and a Hall of Shame,
encouraging collectors to boycott airlines who use plain white bags.
I have to admit that my life is just a little bit richer for having learned that "barf bag" in German is Spucktute, though. - SFWeekly's 10 most overdone "alternative press" stories include Mumia,
Project Censored and "Why [insert name of local citizen] thinks [insert name of
obscure bureaucratic agency] is up to no good. And why [same local citizen] isn't going to take it anymore."
- Finally, someone on the East Coast notices we have some damn fine baseball
here in the Golden State. ESPN's running a California Baseball Diary:
"Two teams [the A's and Angels] who know they are good are learning more every night about how good they can be. They're playing tense, tight games and trading blows, and in the midst of it, they're making baseball -- which, only about a month ago, looked like it was on the brink of extinction -- seem robust and worth falling in love with." - PETA members and people who don't want potential 24 Hour Party People
spoilers, skip on to the next item.
Did you see 24 Hour Party People? This story reminded me of that scene. Y'know, the one that's so sick and yet so funny, and you can't quite believe someone would do that? And, according to Rowetta of the Happy Mondays, they actually did? - The first MRI on an otter was performed on
Friday. Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital, a medical facility for humans,
performed the scan. The patient, who is believed to have been munching
on too many mussels during the red tide, needed to be iced periodically to maintain body
temperature.
Not-so-weird Google search: rally monkey. Hope this convinced the searcher not to come up from Anaheim for the ALCS.