2005.01.14
"Life is so short, it's like a vapor. Here today, gone tomorrow. And there's nothing you can do about it. Nothing at all. So I don't have any advice for anybody except appreciate your loved ones around you--your family, friends, or whatever, because death is quicker than you think."This quote is the last bit from the last interview in the wonderful book Gig, which I finally finished...I must've started it in 2000 or 2001 and set it aside until relatively recently.
News of the Moment
CNN had some coverage of cracks in the alliance among different groups of Jihadists. That's kind of heartening, but on the other hand, historically it has only taken a relatively small bunch of people hating us to do serious damage.
Physics of the Moment
So I heard about that girl who had just done a project on tsunamis, so she was able to warn her vacationing family when she saw that all the water had been sucked away from the shore. (I guess she saw the boats bobbing as well.) And I've read about the physics of tsuanamis...but nothing that mentions or explains why the water gets sucked away before hand. Can anyone offer a layman explanation of what's going on with that?
In finding that first link I found Luke Simmonds' first hand account of the Tsunami and its immediate aftermath.