Okay. Now I'm paranoid.
I spent a Sunday taking care of little odds and ends, preparing for the Holidays. Nothing spectacular, really, but enough to make a relaxing day out of it. Except for an afternoon of dreadful television.
No, I wasn't watching the Seattle Seahawks muck up another football game. Other than checking to see who Washington State will play in the Rose Bowl, this wasn't a Sunday for sports viewing.
Nope, I decided that, since I wasn't in the mood for the Holiday food extravaganza on the Food Network, I'd watch the Discovery Channel. Bad idea.
If you want to be scared shitless without watching a lot of blood and gore, watch the Discovery Channel. And I'm not referring to Crocodile Hunter.
After first visiting Hawaii, and then living on Maui, I've become interested in volcanoes, and the Discovery Channel had an interesting show called Supervolcanoes. I figured the term had something to do with something like Monster Trucks – you know, bigger versions of the same thing.
In this case, super-sized doesn't begin to cover it. Nor does colossal.
Here's an example to show what I mean. This geologist went hiking through Yellowstone Park, looking for evidence of its volcanic history. After checking through the different geological strata, he went searching for evidence of the volcano – the caldera. The caldera is the geological remains of the volcano – think of it as the crater left behind after the eruption. The problem was, he couldn't find it. There was no caldera to find.
It wasn't until NASA did an aerial survey that they spotted the caldera. The couldn't find a caldera IN Yellowstone Park because Yellowstone Park WAS the caldera. An 80-mile wide crater.
Then they did the math, which showed that this volcano went off about every 600,000 years, and mentioned that the last eruption was, you guessed it, 600,000 years ago.
Of course, then they went to a program about tsunamis – tidal waves, and pointed out that there was a fault line on the Big Island of Hawaii, where part of the Island would eventually fall into the ocean, creating a tidal wave 1,000 feet high that would wipe out Japan and Australia, as well as the West Coast.
I gave up after that. The idea of a natural disaster of cataclysmic proportions really puts you in the Christmas Spirit.
Finally, something to make me believe there ARE bigger disasters waiting out there worse than Dubya.
More soon.
I spent a Sunday taking care of little odds and ends, preparing for the Holidays. Nothing spectacular, really, but enough to make a relaxing day out of it. Except for an afternoon of dreadful television.
No, I wasn't watching the Seattle Seahawks muck up another football game. Other than checking to see who Washington State will play in the Rose Bowl, this wasn't a Sunday for sports viewing.
Nope, I decided that, since I wasn't in the mood for the Holiday food extravaganza on the Food Network, I'd watch the Discovery Channel. Bad idea.
If you want to be scared shitless without watching a lot of blood and gore, watch the Discovery Channel. And I'm not referring to Crocodile Hunter.
After first visiting Hawaii, and then living on Maui, I've become interested in volcanoes, and the Discovery Channel had an interesting show called Supervolcanoes. I figured the term had something to do with something like Monster Trucks – you know, bigger versions of the same thing.
In this case, super-sized doesn't begin to cover it. Nor does colossal.
Here's an example to show what I mean. This geologist went hiking through Yellowstone Park, looking for evidence of its volcanic history. After checking through the different geological strata, he went searching for evidence of the volcano – the caldera. The caldera is the geological remains of the volcano – think of it as the crater left behind after the eruption. The problem was, he couldn't find it. There was no caldera to find.
It wasn't until NASA did an aerial survey that they spotted the caldera. The couldn't find a caldera IN Yellowstone Park because Yellowstone Park WAS the caldera. An 80-mile wide crater.
Then they did the math, which showed that this volcano went off about every 600,000 years, and mentioned that the last eruption was, you guessed it, 600,000 years ago.
Of course, then they went to a program about tsunamis – tidal waves, and pointed out that there was a fault line on the Big Island of Hawaii, where part of the Island would eventually fall into the ocean, creating a tidal wave 1,000 feet high that would wipe out Japan and Australia, as well as the West Coast.
I gave up after that. The idea of a natural disaster of cataclysmic proportions really puts you in the Christmas Spirit.
Finally, something to make me believe there ARE bigger disasters waiting out there worse than Dubya.
More soon.
posted by wurdsmith at
9:17 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home