Showing posts with label maps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label maps. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Google My Life

I guess that I am totally dependent on Google to run my life. I use igoogle for my home page, gmail for my e-mail, Google Reader for my favorite blogs, website articles and my blog comments. Google is my only search engine. Google maps and driving directions help us find our way, Blogger and Blogspot for my blog. I use Google bookmarks. I did use the Google desktop search for finding things on my computer before my hard drive got so bloated that I needed to get rid of some of the excess fat, I also use Picasa2.

I get a little frustrated when I lose something around the house. I sometimes want to sit down and type in the item in a Google search to find out where it is. Then I sadly remember that Google doesn't have my house categorized and indexed, or at least I don't think that they do. Google does know too much about me, it serves me ads about horses, chickens, goats, children, vet supplies, farming, pets, internet technology and electronic gadgets.

It is really pretty scary, they will probably come up with a chip to install in our brains soon to help our memories and give us access to a huge knowledge database. They will have us in a category and index us along with all of our thoughts. We will no longer be human but walking, talking googlebots.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Wabash Fault Zone

Many friends that I asked didn't feel the second earthquake that we experienced yesterday because they were either walking or riding in a car at that time.

My young Grandson and his classmates felt it because they were sitting at their desk but their teacher was standing and moving around and didn't feel it. They alerted him and he told them that they could lie down on the floor if they wanted to, so they could feel the vibrations.

I heard on the radio that this was indeed a second earthquake and not an aftershock. This second shaking started as soft vibrations that built up to a 4.5 magnitude quake for only a couple of seconds and then returned to just soft vibrations that lasted quite a while. It hit at 11:14 a.m. according to the United States Geological Service.

The article below gives information about the area that we live in. We are a part of the Wabash Fault Zone, they don't know if this is related to the New Madrid Fault or not. The Wabash Fault runs almost parallel to the Wabash River in Southern Illinois and Indiana and could be a northern extension of the New Madrid Zone but that seems up for debate.

The article says that the reason the quakes in this area are so far reaching is because of our old bedrock that they compare to a bell that carries the seismic waves like sound for a longer distance than the California quakes reach.

California's bedrock is young and fractured, the waves do not carry as far, like a cracked bell wouldn't carry the sound waves as far. So California Earthquakes are more localized. Our bedrock carries these waves well over a thousand miles because of its age and rigidness.

The strongest quake produced by the Wabash Fault was a magnitude 5.3 in southern Illinois in 1968. The New Madrid fault zone produced quakes in 1811 and 1812 that reached an estimated magnitude of 7.0. The Wabash faults have the potential to do the same. Some experts say that the Wabash could produce a quake that could devastate the region.

Scientists say Midwest quakes poorly understood - Yahoo! News

A map of the area where yesterday's quakes were felt:
Yahoo Map Image

Lots of maps of the New Madrid and Wabash Valley seismic zones:
New Madrid and Wabash Valley seismic zones

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