The WELL: inkwell.vue.406: Andrew Alden on Earthquakes

#126: Mark McDonough (mcdee) Wed 11 May 11 14:10

Wed, 11 May 2011 14:10:00 PDT

I am glad I am not the only Winchester-hater. I thought that book was awful. I just totally do not get his appeal - guy could write about the Second Coming and make it sound boring. [Read entire topic]

#125: Gail Williams (gail) Wed 11 May 11 12:30

Wed, 11 May 2011 12:30:00 PDT

Thanks, Andrew and all.

For WELL-members who enjoyed this, you might add the <quake.> conf to your list. (It's quiet for a while, then all of a sudden it's active and fascinating again. No wonder.) [Read entire topic]

#124: Andrew Alden (alden) Wed 11 May 11 12:02

Wed, 11 May 2011 12:02:00 PDT

Any connections between great events and later ones that they may trigger are obscure and limited at best. Winchester is not a theorist, does not have a good grasp of his subject, and doesn't express himself well except as a barstool yarn-spinner. He really deserves the same share of attention as the predicters, which is to say none. [Read entire topic]

#123: Alan Fletcher (af) Wed 11 May 11 11:54

Wed, 11 May 2011 11:54:00 PDT

[ slip -- for non-well people, that means <alden> posted <122> while I was composing this one. ]

1 dead after earthquake hits Spain <http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/05/11/spain.earthquake.death/index.html?hpt=T2>

[ Thanks for the discussion --- maybe you can come back to it when there's a new event! ]

< A magnitude 9 event is particularly good at exciting the extremely slow oscillations that affect the entire planet.

Wouldn't this lend some credence to the triggering of related earthquakes, for example Simon Winchester's theories (and reports of a sequence of major quakes before the SF 1906 event). [Read entire topic]

#122: Andrew Alden (alden) Wed 11 May 11 11:50

Wed, 11 May 2011 11:50:00 PDT

No book, but my long-standing website at About.com <http://geology.about.com/> amounts to one. I do my best to cover earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, rocks, minerals and the more advanced topics in geology at a layperson-friendly level. And of course I'm around the Well along with other folks with plenty of their own expertise, ready to comment whenever something comes up.

If I have any advice today, it is to resolutely ignore and counterargue stories like the supposed quake prediction for Rome. Earthquakes, and the prospect of earthquakes, bring out the worst in people because they cannot be controlled and cannot be predicted yet. We give them the same responses we give to the prospect of death, taxes and other inevitabilities. [Read entire topic]

#121: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Wed 11 May 11 06:17

Wed, 11 May 2011 06:17:00 PDT

As Andrew noted Monday, we're at the end of the "official" two week run for this conversation. The next Inkwell conversation begins today, but this conversation doesn't have to end as long as Andrew and other are interested in continuing. In fact, I just ran across a couple of news stories referring to a prediction that Rome will have a significant earthquake today - many people are leaving Rome, per http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13357963. That might be worth discussing, especially if there really is a severe earthquake in the region today (as predicted by the late Raffaele Bendandi, who didn't really pinpoint Rome).

Many thanks to Andrew and Mark for this informative, in-depth discussion of earthquake and geology. This was an unusual discussion in that we didn't have a book to focus on, but maybe one will emerge in the wake of these discussions... [Read entire topic]

#120: Andrew Alden (alden) Tue 10 May 11 22:17

Tue, 10 May 2011 22:17:00 PDT

ShakeMap is now considered as robust as traditional methods for making intensity maps, Gail. And of course every person who fills in the form in reporting their quake experience is aware of earthquakes in a way they weren't before. It's like the people who light their flames at rock concerts: a little thing for each person, but we create an impresive communal event.

The other day I was thinking about the stadium experience called "the wave," where the people in one section of seats lift their arms simultaneously, then "send" the signal to the next section over, launching a phenomenon that can persist for quite a long time, circling the stadium many times. There ought to be a version that a stadium full of seismologists could do, simulating the several types of seismic waves in a visceral way. (No doubt there's a blog post somewhere already.) [Read entire topic]

#119: Gail Williams (gail) Tue 10 May 11 21:52

Tue, 10 May 2011 21:52:00 PDT

Great stuff.

I have a question, Alden. One of the things I loved from geology text books was the that there was an older scale that is used to compare surface intensity, the thing we actually perceive on the ground. I know that a quake has one Magnitude and perhaps many local intensities, but it is a wonderful way to describe what happens on the surface.

I love the use of "Did You Feel It?" questionaires in making crowd-sourced shake maps. With GPS-enabled devices it could become even more precise in time, though now it is by zipcode.

Here's one sample of what I'm looking at: < http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/dyfi/events/ci/14978652/us/index.html>

What do you think of shake mapping for participatory quake reporting and awareness? Is it of any use for science, too? [Read entire topic]

#118: Teleological dyslexic (ceder) Tue 10 May 11 20:43

Tue, 10 May 2011 20:43:00 PDT

Thanks for being here! [Read entire topic]

#117: Teleological dyslexic (ceder) Tue 10 May 11 20:42

Tue, 10 May 2011 20:42:00 PDT

Sorry to come in so late, I do not know what year it was but I got awakened in Manhattan city like a giant was shaking my bed, the building etc. The radio was out for half an hour... pets were upset as were pictures on the walls. Hard-rock shaker! ;-}

T [Read entire topic]