Just for fun, here’s an absolutely hilarious reaction from a local resident of Washington, D.C. to the modest earthquake that rocked the city and parts of the eastern seaboard this afternoon.
But hey… who knows? This hysterical woman may be onto something. After all, the National Cathedral did suffer quite exceptional damage to its pinnacles (or as witless NBC correspondent Luke Russert ineptly described them, “pentacles”).
Update: More amusement about the earthquake panic courtesy of Countdown…
No chance of Tsunamis!
Red Tory v.3.0.3 
No matter if she is on the right track or not, there is something kinda likeable about the woman.
Damn, calling them “pentacles” does make them sound downright devilish. Maybe Damian Thorne (of Omen fame 😉 entered the city today.
No matter if she is on the right track or not, there is something kinda likeable about the woman.
Sorry, all I could see there was a failure of the US public education system. No inkling that the supposed solid earth we live on is in fact only a thin veneer of solid rock with thousands of miles of molten magma beneath it. No knowledge of plate tectonics or earthquakes.
“We’ve never had earthquakes in Virginia. It’s a sign, God’s a coming'”
And obviously no idea about how those Appalachian mountains in Virginia came about.
John: The truly funny thing was that Martin Bashir gave him every opportunity to correct himself, but Luke insisted that, no, “pentacles” is what he’d been told by his “sources”… When pressed for an explanation (you know, for the viewers) of what that word actually meant, Russert went into a meandering explanation of how the cathedral took over a 100 years to complete and had been hand carved by masons, etc.
Oh well, the reporter on Fox wasn’t much better. He described them as “those spiky things”…
tofkw: Ah, you read my mind on that one. In fact (not that it would matter to this poor lady), Virginia has had more than 200 earthquakes in the past 30 years or so… about six a year. Usually however they’re of much lower intensity than this one.
It WAS a bomb. And now they are trying to cover it up! Everyone knows we don’t get earthquakes!
(Conspiracy-theorists, you’re on deck.)
No knowledge of plate tectonics or earthquakes.
Indeed, tofkw. This women and her community would be enriched immeasurably if they got rid of this kind of crap and attended lectures on plate tectonics instead.
Having experienced the 8.8 in Chile in 2010, I recognized the tremor when it rolled through Toronto yesterday. My 6 yr old, who was also in the Chile quake, “laughed his head off” along with all of southern California at the panic generated from this.
Peter, I am by no means an expert on these matters. However by my comment re: “No knowledge of plate tectonics or earthquakes”, I hope I didn’t come across as someone insisting that everyone should attend university and receive degrees in earth sciences. I hope that’s how you took my comments.
My own personal knowledge comes from grade-school geography (I repeat, grade-school …high-school geography is not required) and what I’ve learned watching TV sciency stuff on PBS, or even on the nightly news whenever a significant earthquake occurs (and they inevitably explain why these things happen).
I would hope that the world’s population which at least possesses a grade-school education understands why earthquakes occur, or for that matter basic weather phenomena too. I’d like to think we as a civilization have advanced somewhat from where we were 2000+ years ago; when every trembling of the ground beneath us, or electrical storm rolling in, automatically generated the idea that the gods, or God, were angry with us.
Evidently in Virginia, that isn’t the case. Hence I conclude that woman represents a failure in the US public education system.
Jeff: Having grown up on the West Coast, earthquakes are really no big deal. Most often, you sleep through them and read the next day in the paper or hear on the radio that there was a notable seismic event of some kind (that you completely missed) in the region. That said, the actual experience of having the ground shift beneath you (and whatever structure you may happen to be in at the time) is pretty awesome.
Peter: I don’t know if I can forgive you for posting a link to that horrific video.
btw, Never mind lectures, I recall learning about plate tectonics in elementary school Geology. It’s pretty basic stuff.
tofkw
Why are so so anxious to make plate tectonics a subject of universal knowledge, any more than phloem and xylem? Isn’t it enough that people who need to know about earthquakes do actually know? Anyway, I very much doubt the public education system taught her that earthquakes mean God’s a-comin’.
I just find it disturbing that a poor, simple black woman from Virginia, whose life may well have been spent trying to meet challenges you and I can’t imagine, is held up publically by the beautiful people as a figure of fun because of the naive and simplistic faith that sustains her.
Peter, plant anatomy is a high-school biology topic. So I expect very few people to remember the difference between xylem and phloem, probably only those would continued on in science or agriculture, or maybe lumberjacks?
As Martin and I just pointed out, earthquakes and what causes them is taught at the grade school level, at least in Canada that is the case. It’s taught alongside such other mind-bending concepts as being able to tell a tree’s age by counting rings (oh there’s that xylem and phloem stuff again), or that the uneven heating of the earth’s surface by the sun is what causes winds (and by extension, weather).
And your comments about me supposedly making fun of that poor woman is purely disingenuous bullshit. I am clearly criticizing the USA’s public education system. Or do you think such ignorance is acceptable for what is supposedly the richest, most advanced nation on the planet? If so, you won’t believe where China will be in relation to the States by 2050.
OK, let’s agree that the woman was genuinely rattled by the earthquake and maybe, just maybe she wasn’t in her best form at that moment. Maybe the reporter could have talked to someone else. She has her faith, yes, but maybe in that moment she was taken advantage of.
What is this, the middle ages?