Category: Life

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According to the USGS, the frequency of large earthquakes has remained constant over the last century. In a typical year, the planet has roughly 17 “major” earthquakes (measuring 7.0 to 7.9 on the Richter scale) and one “great” earthquake (measuring 8.0 or higher).

So, no, earthquakes are not increasing as a sign/symptom of the impending end of the world.

(via @2012hoax)

Update March 1: 2012hoax has a nice page showing how recent quakes fit into these statistics, including Haiti, Chile, and the one in Illinois a few weeks ago (which was really quite small — there are 130,000 quakes that size in any given year!).

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It turns out that in the digital age, the average American reads three times as many words today as thirty years ago.

Medal of Honor recipient Ed Freeman has been co-opted by a political disinformation campaign. Remember: any time you receive a political email that asks you to forward it to everyone you know, check the facts first!

(Both via This Is True)

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I put the Pushing Daisies soundtrack CD in my computer and it rebooted. Fortunately it took less than a minute….

Of course I tried it again to see if it was a fluke. Same thing. Then I decided to try with another CD. Apparently any audio CD crashes it. Shows how often I use CDs these days.

At least the DVD-RW drive works. IIRC it doesn’t have CD-audio hooked up, but the player seems perfectly happy to just read it digitally.

I guess I’ll have to set aside some time on Sunday to figure out what’s causing the problem. It’s a bit late tonight, and tomorrow’s going to be busy!

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  • 10 years ago I had just started working at an Internet provider and was very glad they didn’t want me in the server room at midnight for Y2K.
  • I just ordered tickets to Avatar in IMAX 3D. It actually *was* cheaper to see Xanadu on stage, even including parking!
  • Made it into Avatar. Got surprisingly decent seats considering how long the line was. We’ll miss midnight, so Happy New Year!
  • Overheard waiting for the movie: “If you lost an eye, would you get a glass eye or an eye patch?” “I’d get an eye patch and grow a beard!”

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