MetaChat is an informal place for MeFites to touch base and post, discuss and
chatter about topics that may not belong on MetaFilter. Questions? Check the FAQ. Please note: This is important.
The USGS site is definitely for real. Here's the page that monitors US earthquakes, plus larger earthquakes in the rest of the world.
I live in quite a little earthquake zone (see the nice cluster of activity in the middle? Yeah - that's around where I am. Evidently, I rock your world), so I kind of keep my eye on this stuff.
And killdevil, don't be too surprised that you didn't feel it. People right on top of the quake likely slept through it. What was it, 2.5? Hell, your average bulldog farts harder than that.
Sheesh, lightweights. Come out to California. It's pretty much non-stop earthquakes. People adopt them as pets. This incredibly huge one followed me home from school one day and it was totally cute but I wasn't allowed to keep it - feeding them hot magma and b-list celebrities gets expensive, I guess.
I used to surf the constantly rippling sidewalks to and from school. We make our roads out of rubber so they just go with the flow. What do you think happened to Lombard Street in San Francisco?
Little known fact: 99% of the movies made in Hollywood are merely the results of these non-stop earthquakes shaking up a box of random crap, which is then filmed and edited into what we ship out to the world. That's why those backlot studio sound stages are so frickin' huge. It also explains why Hollywood has been sucking so terribly for many years now. There hasn't been a good earthquake in LA since the Northridge quake.
An even less known fact: Cars in Los Angeles don't actually have engines. The service stations actually only pump sugar water and/or coffee. People get around by getting in their cars and just waiting for the earthquakes to vibrate them there, not unlike those vibrating electric football tables.
This is also why there's so many goddamned people there, why the traffic is such a catastrophe and why you should always rent a car in LA rather than driving your own in from the outside. Visitors who drive into LA are fine until they first try to fill up their tank, and then find themselves stuck there with a suddenly and completely broken car - a broken car that is only capable of randomly vibrating around the LA area.
I once saw an earthquake help an old lady across the street, only to turn around and mug her for her heart pills and to pee on her shoes and start taunting her in Old Norse. Yeah, earthquakes are random like that.
Sometimes you find earthquakes in your shoes. It's best to shake your shoes out before putting them on in the morning.
Earthquakes taste like lemon curd. No one knows why, but it's incredibly delicious.
NASA uses earthquakes at their JPL facility to "shake down" satellites and test rocket engines - it's a scientific fact that the frequency of vibration of any earthquake is identical in texture to a rocket launch, but much, much stronger. Therefore, if it can survive the earthquake shakedown, it can survive a launch.
I once saw an earthquake shamble by with a whole bunch of little baby earthquakes on it's back. It was really cute.
And finally, least known fact of all about earthquakes: Mr. T was actually born from one. The famous 1971 Sylmar Quake spat Mr. T right out of the La Brea Tarpits on to Wilshire Blvd. This is why property there is so expensive, it's because Mr. T kicks so much ass.
I didn't feel it here in Boston, but maybe that's cuz I was creating a little bit of an earthquake of my own, nudge nudge. Boy is my epicenter sore this morning.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
