Wow Wordwind, I just read link #1 and now I know more about the tsunami than 99.999% of the people who live on Earth.
I am glad that I couldn't pull up link #2,
because then I wouldn't have anyone to talk to.
Thanks for the link.
Thank you, WW, for posting these. Holy cow:
A fundamental tenet of plate tectonics theory is that the Earth's surface is divided into rigid plates that move together and apart like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Scientists have long recognized 12 major plates. Now there are 13. ...
There are 12 plates in the world and earthquakes occur when these collide. A 13th plate was created by the breakup of the Indo-Australian plate was documented in 1995. ...
Scientists have known that for some 50 million years, the Indian subcontinent has been pushing northward into Eurasia, forcefully raising the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayan Mountains. The new research suggests that starting about 8 million years ago, the accumulated mass became so great that the Indo-Australian Plate buckled and broke under the stress. ...
"In the Central Indian Ocean, Nature is conducting a large-scale laboratory experiment for us, showing us what happens to the oceanic lithosphere (Earth's outer layer) when force is applied," Dr. Weissel said in an interview. Essentially pushed into an immovable object, "it can buckle like a piece of tin," he said.
These quotes are from the first link. I was amazed when I saw the maps of the plate boundaries: no wonder New Zealand has so many earthquakes--they're right on top of one of the boundaries. [shiver] Oh, and it gave yet another def. of tsunami: The word "Tsunami" is Japanese for "Harbour Wave". They are often wrongly called "Tidal Waves" and have nothing to do with tides.
The second link opened okay for me, though the images were a bit slow to come up. Ack: until last night, I hadn't seen any pictures that gave me, a person unfamiliar with any of the areas that were hit, sufficient perspective of the size of the wave(s). But one of the news channels showed a video of an incoming one, and only when the camera zoomed in on what I had thought was a small piece of...something, maybe a child's shirt or a hamburger wrapper--did I realize I was seeing a man.
rigid plates that move together and apart like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
And what kind of acid is *your jigsaw puzzle on?
that might have worked okay as a metaphor with the simple addition of the word "bad" ahead of jigsaw puzzle.
>Oh, and it gave yet another def. of tsunami: The word "Tsunami" is Japanese for "Harbour Wave"
Sounds familiar:
http://tinyurl.com/44w27
Hey Wordwind, how's your well?
And where's Christiansburg, Virginia ?
http://va.water.usgs.gov/NEWS_RELEASE/quake_dec26_2004.html
Christiansburg is about 120 miles NE of where I live, on I-81 in the mountains of SW Virginia. I've been through it many a time while jaunting to DC and back. It's near Radford, where there's a university, and I'd guess that fact has some tie-in to the monitoring of the well.
Almost as interesting as the fluctuations caused by the quake are the daily fluctuations which seem to me to be related to tides. But C'burg is 350 plus miles from the coast and a lot higher in altitude.
I've written to one of the contacts on that press release to ask him for an explanation for the daily fluctuations.
TEd
Great TEd, please post his answer here if you will.
A local effect from a such a long way off is unnerving.
No matter, in today's world of pretend, these photos will serve quite nicely, thank you.
___________________________________________________
These photographs are yet another examples of any images depicting large waves being grabbed and passed around as "real photographs" of the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
These pictures were purportedly taken in Thailand in December 2004, but they actually date from 2002 and depict not a tsunami, but a tidal bore (unusually high tides resulting in waters flowing upstream at high speeds) on the Qian Tang Jiang River, in Hangzhou, China.
Tidal bores occur at predictable times, and watching these events is a four-day-long government-sponsored tourist festival in China, hence there were plenty of people and photographers on hand to observe the one captured in the pictures above. Several news outlets in a variety of countries have been taken in by these photos and have run them as genuine pictures of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
http://www.snopes.com/photos/tsunami/tsunami1.asp!!!!!!Edit: I see where this snopes listing was posted on another tsunami topic. Sorry for the duplicate.
Now my only problem is whether or not to tell my children at school that the pictures that I showed them of the tsunami were false.
my only problem is whether or not to tell my children at school that the pictures that I showed them of the tsunami were false.
Shouldn't be a problem if you're trying to teach them critical reasoning. Just point out how embarrassed you were to find out you'd been taken in, too.
Sorry for the duplicate. Don't worry about it; we do that all the time.
Definitely tell your kids about the error. It's a great lesson in checking sources and falling prey, especially to the power of the internet pit viper.
As opposed to the snake that slithers across the front of your car: the vindshield viper.
It was a windy and stormy day, a day not fit for man or beast. The house was old and weather worn and in sore need of painting. The windows were dirty and streaked by the weather. The old woman who lived there was in poor health, and she could no longer go up or down stairs. Consequently, neither the upper or lower floors were in use. She lived (or rather existed) on the first floor. She had an elder lady who helped her to cook and clean, but she was in rather poor help herself.
But on the day in question, her help was away on some errand when the telephone, and on the line, a gravelly voice with a strange accent said: "I am de Viper. I am coming." The old lady was terrified! She fell back into her chair, but just then, the light all went out, plunging the house into darkness. There were flashes of lightning and claps of thunder all around. She found some candles to light up the house a little but then the phone rang again.
"I am de Viper. I be der soon." The connection terminated. The old lady was scared out of her wits! She tried to call 911 but the phone remained silent . She fearfully retreated to a back corner of the house, fearing the worst.
Much too soon, there was a banging on the door. The old lady cowered in her corner, too frightened to even move. Then the banging stopped, but only for a short time. Then it started up again, and then nothing. The old lady was too frightened to even scream. Then, just as suddenly, the door burst open and a tiny old man with a familiar gravelly voice entered the house saying: "I am de Viper und I come to vash and vipe de vindows."
And while you're teaching them critical reasoning, show them this picture from snopes:
http://70.85.14.98/photos/tsunami/graphics/satellite_small.jpgAsk them if anyone thinks it's a satellite photo of the tsunami.
that looks more like Mr. Yuk to me.
-ron obvious
Father Steve,
I heard your story once told by a children's entertainer--and I cannot remember his name. He told the story as though it was one of his. Do you by any chance remember your source? The little kids at the elementary school loved his stories, but I don't know for sure whether this was his or someone else's material. Thanks!
MELT, just for the record here, I wanted to make sure any readers didn't confuse the links I posted in the thread starter with the ones in Snopes. The ones I posted above are to my knolwedge authentic reports and the ones to which you refer are the ones mentioned on the other tsunami thread on this forum. However, if Snopes has included the links I provided, too, then please do set me straight. Thanks.
There is no source of which I am aware.
I first encountered this story when I was a small boy attending a Lutheran summer camp. We did it as a skit. The members of the cabin group would line up by height. The tallest would run "on stage" (e.g. at a campfire) and shout "The Viper is coming in ten minutes." This would continue, in descending order of height and with progressively shorter periods within which the Viper was expected to appear. Finally, at the end, the shortest kid in the cabin would come "on stage" carrying a bucket and a squeegie and announce, in his best mock Dutch accent, "I am der viper; Aye come to vipe der vinders." It was then obligatory to laugh, as if one hadn't seen the skit the year before (and the year before that). Come to think of it, it may have been written by Martin Luther.
...in his best mock Dutch accent...Do the Dutch really *do that, or was it more like this guy?
http://www.almac.co.uk/chef/chef/swedish.html
Now you've gone and done it!
I LOVE the Muppets and I LOVE the Swedish Chef. I very much enjoyed the website to which we were just referred. And I MISS the little furry creatures on televison.
No, I'm sure that real live Dutch people don't speak English in a stereotypic accent any more than any real live human from Sweden speaks English in an accent like that made famous by the Swedish Chef.
From time to time, I actually don a white chef's jacket and toque* and, on those occasion, persons who do not hold me in sufficient reverence have been heard to suggest that I LOOK a bit like the Swedish chef. Given my magiric aspirations, I take that as a compliment.
-------------------------------
*The toque was earned, not honorary, as I was named a Chef of the West by Sunset Magazine in 1987.
Although my usual *tone would lead one to believe that I was mostly having a tug at someone's leg, this time I was just adjusting the pants because of a wedgie...
... as a 5 timer to the Scandanavian peninsula, the Norske's (and even more so the Swede's) who speak English, do, indeed, have the stereotypical "singsong" inflections (of course not as pronounced), and the letter "w" is called a "double-v" for the not so not obvious reason.
I've truly have never heard Dutch spoken... (I can feel the hotlinks arriving as I'm saying that...
Although I haven't been around a lot, Fr Steve, it seems to me that you've done darned near EVERYTHING! ...like most of us occasionally only think about doing!
you've done darned near EVERYTHING!
Life, thus far, has been very full and very satisfying. It makes one wonder what wonderful thing is going to happen next.
I finally got a response to my query about the tidal movements of water in wells, which I post below it its entirety. I've not had a chance to look at the links, but it appears there are two kinds of tides, earth-tide and ocean-tide. I was almost fit to be tide!
Instead I'm TEd
Sorry for the delay in my response, I was in a meeting down in Florida last week. The diurnal fluctuations are related to earth tides and are not related to ocean tides. Below is some additional information that may interest you:
Merritt, Michael, L., 2004, Estimating Hydraulic Properties of the Floridan Aquifer System by Analysis of Earth-Tide, Ocean-Tide, and Barometric Effects, Collier and Hendry Counties, Florida: U.S. Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations Report 03-4267, 70 p.
http://water.usgs.gov/pubs/wri/wri034267/ Earthquake and Wells
http://water.usgs.gov/pubs/fs/fs-096-03/ Pennsylvania Earthquake
http://pa.water.usgs.gov/reports/wri99-4170/index.html Hope this helps
Dave
David L. Nelms
District Ground-Water Specialist
U.S. Geological Survey
1730 East Parham Road
Richmond, VA 23228
(804) 261-2630
(804) 261-2659 (Fax)
dlnelms@usgs.gov
http://va.water.usgs.gov/
I've naught thought very much on earth tides. Woods Hole apparently has :
http://www.whoi.edu/info/tides.html
Thank you Ted, the information David Nelms sent you was good reading and informative and the conclusion was refreshingly straightforward...
Conclusions
Hydrogeologic responses to large distant earthquakes have important scientific implications with regard to our earth’s intricate plumbing system. The exact mechanism linking hydrogeologic changes and earthquakes is not fully understood, but monitoring these changes improves our insights into the responsible mechanisms, and may improve our frustratingly imprecise ability to forecast the timing, magnitude, and impact of earthquakes.
Now I know more about well changes from earthquakes than I did know but I still don't know a lot.
Strange World indeed.