Sharknado vs. Meth-Quake

The tornado vs. earthquake debate has always been a source of conversation between Okies and Californians —

I just don’t see how you can live where:

A)  giant vacuum cleaner storms can scoop you and your homes up into the sky, or
B)  the ground can just start shaking and collapse your whole town

Thankfully, the oil and gas fracking boom has given Oklahoma just a little taste of the California experience by increasing the size and frequency of earthquakes in the Sooner State.

When the Seismological Society of America says that fracking earthquakes are a real thing, then it’s a good bet that they are. The annual SSA meeting last Thursday featured a daylong session on “Induced Seismicity” that featured new research indicating that oil and gas fracking, and the practice of disposing wastewater underground, can alter the character of an existing fault. 

As of last month, in Oklahoma alone more than 100 3.0-and-up earthquakes have been recorded. The total between 1967 and 2000 was only 21. This recent increase jumps out from any statistical noise like a group of Westboro Baptist protesters at a military funeral.

A study by Canada’s Western University in Ontario noted that “the hazard from induced seismicity can overwhelm the hazard from pre-existing natural seismicity, increasing the risk to structures that were originally designed for regions of low to moderate seismic activity”, the term infrastructure including dams, nuclear power plants, underground pipelines and other sorts of high-impact damage multipliers.

I’m not sure if we could match “Sharknado” for it’s California charm, but I could see “Meth-Quake”  giving it a run for it’s money.

Yeah, the Feds  take down a major clandestine lab in central Oklahoma and decide to dispose of all the toxic chemical slurry in an injection well. This triggers the Big One and it spews mutant-inducing methamphetamine residue out of every crack in the ground! Try to imagine the trailer below with Charlton Heston in meth-mouth dentures, the actors with Oklahoma regional dialects and all the extras gibbering and running really fast!

Assad, Azathoth and what have you

A gargoyle on a historic 13th Century abbey has caused a social media sensation with its resemblance to the monster from the Alien films. The prosaic explanation is quite prosaic.

The police, an open door, and probable cause: Seven things Maggie Koerth-Baker and Her Husband Learned at 4 am on a Tuesday.

Earth life ‘may have come from Mars’, New research supports an idea that the Red Planet was a better place to kick-start biology billions of years ago than the early Earth was.

Meet Lisa/S, the world’s smallest UAV autopilot! At $230 each, there’s no excuse to not build your own flying kill-bots!

Here’s some good Oklahoma weirdness! Strange monument mysteriously shows up in front of Paseo area restaurant: “In the year of our lord 2012 Creer Pipi claimed this land for Azathoth“!

True to form, the Texas State Board of Education has nominated several well-known creationists to review high school biology textbooks. The battle against Reality continues.

Poverty and the all-consuming fretting that comes with it require so much mental energy that the Poors have little ‘mental bandwidth’ left to devote to other areas of life, according to the findings of an international study published on Thursday.

Dr. Jesse Marcel Jr., who said he handled debris from the 1947 crash of an unidentified flying object near Roswell, N.M., has died at the age of 76.

Beach’s short list of Totalitarian Bizzarreness. I was let down that he didn’t mention Josef Stalin’s round-up of those decadent saxophones.

All that Syria Jazz-

Reporters for Le Monde spent two months clandestinely in the Damascus area alongside Syrian rebels. On the scene during chemical weapons attacks, they bear witness to the use of toxic arms by the government of Bashar al-Assad.

5 Possible Repercussions of a U.S. military Strike on Syria – ABC News

Analysis: Strike on Syria could trigger retaliatory attacks, cyberwar – Reuters

Alleged CW munitions in Syria fired from Iranian Falaq-2 type launchers, from The Rogue Adventurer, and stills of the launch process from Brown Moses Blog.

Loaded:

Firing:

All Hail Scooby-Doo!

I can hardly wait to see “Dear Mr. Watterson”!

Talk about a self-defeating argument: On Tuesday, Deseret News flagged a post on Utah’s Republican State Sen. Aaron Osmond’s blog Friday where he says that Utah “should take a close look at repealing compulsory education.” Just what Utah needs: more idiots! I’m sure it would be beneficial for the GOP, though.

Hours after Rick Perry signed sweeping new restrictions into law, Texas state republicans filed an even more draconian bill to ban abortions after six weeks. What, you didn’t see that coming? Texas, for the last time, please secede yourselves back to Mexico already!

Here’s a very loving retrospective on the “Phantasm” movies. Didja know that Angus Scrimm, who played the Tall Man, once won a Grammy for writing great liner notes or that he also speaks Flemish?

The Vatican is offering time off from purgatory to followers of Pope Francis’ tweets. No, this isn’t something from The Onion.

Honore de Balzac once said: “A man cannot marry before he has studied anatomy and has dissected at the least one woman.” I maintain that you should do this only after marriage.

Call them the ‘Impuritans’: Miscellaneous Sexual Offences – 1653-1683 in the Plymouth Colony Court Records.

Once again the U.S. falls behind: China is ranked world’s fourth ‘horniest country’. “In the past eight years, 5,000 sex shops have opened in Beijing alone. Plus, China even has a Sexpo, where Chinese residents come to check out sex paraphernalia”.

Tour the Museum of Bad Art, for “art too bad to be ignored”.

The only thing worse than arguing on the internet is losing an argument with a cat on the internet.

Call me “Side-Strokes With Pigs”. Yes, you can swim with the pigs at Pig Beach in the Bahamas. Talk about a dream vacation!

Send Prozac! No, not for me… for THEM!

I live in the very sweaty area just under the buckle of the Bible Belt. Having been an atheist from an early age, I frequently have had to deal with some very hostile religious people, particularly protestant christians. Perhaps because more cosmopolitan people from outside Indian Territory (you know, them fancy-pants folks that kin read and write and cypher and even critically analyze new ideas) make it a habit to AVOID THIS AREA LIKE THE PLAGUE, these hostile christians are a rather insular lot, unused to the norms of civilized life and are frequently deluded  into thinking that they’re granted the divine right to accost, condemn and denigrate others over the same matters of conscience they are free to exercise in this country.

It’s very quaint in a “Children of the Corn” manner!

Just last night a lovely woman, a stranger to me, launched into a vitriolic diatribe over my identification as an atheist (may have been on pof.com). Seriously, if we’d been face to face, the depth of her ignorance and hostility were strong enough that I’d have had to consider the use of lethal force, because she was acting THAT scary-crazy. I can still smell burning heretics in the air.

Is there a “Stand Your Philosophical Ground” law in Oklahoma?  -<Heavy sigh>-

Thank you Christwire.org for “Scooby Doo, The First Atheist Brainwashing Cartoon Reviewed“. I hated this cartoon (mostly due to a friend who insisted on imitating the title character’s speech impediment all the time), but in retrospect…

TGIF linkstew: the Best and the Not-So-Brightest

It could be that Issa’s investigators have some surprise witness who’s sitting on emails between Barack Obama and Lois Lerner plotting to destroy the tea party movement. But anything like this seems a pretty remote possibility at this point—and showing once again how conservatives refuse to sort fact from fiction.

Isn’t it funny the way Libertarians try to sound like anarchists but end up acting like Republicans? It almost looks like a some kind of a sham that’s used to split the vote or something.

This Darth Vader TIE-fighter wheelchair is totally bitchin’!

Only in England: Pot farm busted because of cop’s farts. That’s why we can’t have nice things.

There’s a reason I cringe when I see “Oklahoma” in a headline: Appeals court says Christian can sue Oklahoma over Native American license plate (instead of the more sensible “Go away and quit whining!” response), and Mysterious monster-like creature spotted in Oklahoma. Yeah, it could be a monster… if you are a pecan, maybe.

Some interesting musings on  the Man of Steel, Myostatin, and Super Strength.

An instrument aboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) found that plastics and other lightweight materials are pound-for-pound more effective for shielding against cosmic radiation than aluminum.

Researchers have sequenced the surprisingly well-preserved genome of the leprosy bacterium from medieval graves and found the modern strain has changed very little over the years.

In other old news, Gene Wilder turned 80 the other day, and he really hates Tim Burton’s recycling of Willie Wonka.

What’s the first thing you do when you find an unexploded bomb in your garden? A quick wash-up in the kitchen sink, right? The lemony scent will protect you.

When a thought experiment just isn’t enough. Engineers in the Czech Republic have successfully tested their flying bicycle project, F-bike.

Scientists say they have solved the mystery of how marine mammals can hold their breath for up to an hour.

“I think that he’s a moron and he proves that stupid has no specific political affiliation”…“I have no idea what goes into the mind of a moron like that” – Gabriel Gomez, Republican candidate for the open Massachusetts Senate seat, on GOP Rep. Trent Franks, who channeled Todd Akin when he said that the rate of pregnancies resulting from rape is “very low.”

Six months after: From Santa Monica to Philadelphia, thousands have been killed since the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre. Those opposed to the on-going death toll aren’t convinced that we’ve done all we can to keep guns out of the hands of murderers.

It has already been more than 24 hours since Beck promised to “take down pretty much the whole power structure”. It could be the agents of Agenda 21, or the Common Core conspirators, or the UN’s gun confiscation squad, or even the {gasp} IRS, we just don’t know, but someone has obviously gotten to him. Maybe his paralyzed vocal cords were a warning. What other explanation could there be for his not making even a single reference to his shocking announcement yesterday? Besides his obvious mental and ethical problems, I mean?