More Madonna, Less Jesus

A tribute to Mardi Wormhout

John Laird wrote an insightful reflection on Mardi Wormhout’s leadership during the year after the quake in today’s Sentinel.

Predicting Quakes

This list appears in Sandy Lydon‘s lecture handouts this week:

Most Notable Santa Cruz County Earthquakes Since 1950
1865 (October) : estimated 7.0 on San Andreas fault, damage in Santa Cruz
1868 (October): estimated 7.0 on Hayward fault, damage throughout county
1890 (April): strongest in Pajaro Valley, chimney and brick walls
1906 (April): damage throughout county, 7 deaths in Hinckley Canyon
1926 (October): damage in Pajaro Valley
1983 (May): Coalinga, some damage in county
1984 (April): Morgan Hill, some damage in county
1989 (October): Loma Prieta, extensive damage in county, 7 confirmed deaths.

What’s with April and October?

Last night I went to an event at Cabrillo and saw a presentation by Tom Bleier who owns a company that is researching if it is possible to predict earthquakes from the very low-frequency energies produced by rock under stress.

The website of the company is http://www.quakefinder.com/ but it seem to be broken. Blieir didn’t seem like a crank, but he’s privately funded and the UCGS doesn’t have anything to do with him. He’s training students from high schools all along the San Andreas to build instruments and deploy them, thus building a network of earthquake detectors. They aren’t predicting quakes yet, they are simply gathering data to test the hypothesis.

Here’s a news story:

http://www.youtube.com/user/quakefinder#p/a

He seemed to be claiming that his research shows that someday we could know that an earthquake was to occur 14 to 15 days ahead of time. How would that change things? It would change everything. We could all lay in water and soup, and prepare to camp out for a week or so. We could prepare businesses, we would keep our families together instead of leaving the kids off at day care. We could make sure that our pets had food and water and weren’t left alone. We could take care of ourselves, and not need public “shelters.” There was a time when hurricanes weren’t predictable too.

Signs Prostitution is on the Rise in my Neighborhood

1. A woman standing on a corner with a cell phone saying “But I’m ON Broadway!” She asks me “Is this Broadway?” I point to the sign above her head. “No, it’s Barson.”
2. Men alone in their cars slow down and nearly stop, trying to catch my eye. I’m standing in my front yard in my robe letting my dog pee. No, I’m not who you think I am.
3. Lots of men alone in their cars, slowing down, slowing down, talking on their their phones, speeding up.
4. A woman gets out of a car that stops in the middle of the street, walks down half a block to get into another car that has stopped in the middle of the street.
5. The Sentinel reports prostitution stings in the neighborhood.
6. It’s not raining yet.

The Five Elements of A Good Story

For about a year now I’ve been trying to remember what Garrison Keillor said were the five elements of a good story. I should have just googled it, because of course, there they were, on snopes:

During is November 8, 1997 broadcast, Garrison Keillor was heard to expound on the five required elements of humor (religion, money, family relationships, sex, and mystery) saying there was one twelve-word joke that contained all these elements: “God,” said the Banker’s daughter, “I’m pregnant. I wonder who it was?”

Apollo and Dionysus in Pacific Avenue

The last remaining writer at the Sentinel, Wallace Baine, has written a brilliant article about the significance of the Pacific Garden Mall; its birth, death, and legacy.