Two different tsunami stories of huge magnitude

Something about the Japan tsunami and quake that blew me away: as reported by CNN, the quake moved the main island of Japan 8 feet and moved the Earth's axis 4 inches. This was caused by the 18-meter (~59 foot) movement of two tectonic plates off of Japan. Unbelievable, as is this picture:

(My guess is that the airbase didn't have enough pilots on duty to move the plane in advance of the tsunami.)

and.....

Apparently, researchers believe that Atlantis has been found (in Spain), and that Atlantis was the victim of.....you guessed it, a tsunami

A couple off interesting things.....

First, check out this chart of true government debt levels ad consider its' implications. It's become accepted based on the work of Reinhart and Rogoff that real problems occur once government debt exceeds 90% of GDP, based on a measure of government debt outstanding.

However, the US government has made a variety of long-term promises (mostly mortgage guarantees (Fannie & Freddie) and health care for retirees and federal employees) that dwarf the amount of outstanding debt. As you can see in the chart, the US is basically "next in line" after Greece, prompting one of my favorite authors, Niall Ferguson to predict a Greece-type crisis for America, while another writer that I admire, Martin Wolf, argues otherwise. The Ferguson-Wolf debate is summarized here.

(I think Wolf is more in the right, meaning that government will just print whatever money is necessary to cover the debt. Unfortunately, this means certain inflation.)


Other interesting things that I've read recently:

The earthquake in Chile moved the city of Concepcion 10 feet! I find this absolutely incredible. Imagine the force required to an entire city 10 feet to the west!

The phenomenon was observed all across the continent. Even Buenos Aires - 800 miles from the Quake's epicenter - moved an inch.


Last interesting fact of the day (I can't find the story online): Google (and it's businesses, like YouTube) currently accounts for 10% of all internet traffic. I'm both stunned and gratified by this number. Stunned that any companyhas so much market share in such a large space, and gratified, because this figure proves the distributed nature of the internet and that even at 10%, Google is not in any position to dominate.

Interesting experiment....

The Washington Post recently recruited a world-class violinist to play at an entrance to a Metro (subway) station in order to see what would happen.

The end result from 45 minutes of playing: $32 in donations, and a handful of sporadic listeners, for a guy who normally gets $1,000 per minute to play his Stradivarias violin.

The lesson here is that we're far too locked into our daily routines, and should spend more time with our eyes (and ears) open.