Peeking into the rock

By way of Abi at Making Light -- it's an addictive game. You can be a painting tagger!

The Public Catalogue Foundation has a vast online treasury of publicly-owed art in the UK (It's called Your Paintings, but it's not all paintings).. They're asking for people to come in and help tag the work. It's really fun. I spent more time than I should trying to track down a term I couldn't remember (I failed: it's that board piece that Elizabethans put into their pairs-of-bodies to make the front of the dress be stiff and flat),

In the interest of economy, I'm tagging this citizen science. What? History is a science. Or ought to be.

So we're all sitting around the house, doing what we do (after a delicious meal of sauteed mixed forest mushrooms -- grisette, chanterelle, and calyptrata -- and brown rice pilaf with dried craterellus. It rained yesterday!). The house begins to shake. Earthquake. Nobody moves. The house keeps shaking, harder and harder. And it goes on. So we all simultaneously, swiftly but without rushing, go to the nearest doorways and stand in them for what seems like a very very long time till the house stops shaking. As soon as we're sure it's over Emma and I both dive back to our computers to report it to the USGS recent earthquake site. Our earthquake isn't even on the map when we start filling out the forms!

The USGS computer automagically produces an earthquake report from the reports us citizens file and I think a few sensors here and there. Refreshing it a few minutes later gets an updated report which has been reviewed by a seismologist.

What we got: a moderate (5.6) quake centered 15 km northeast of San Jose City Hall, at 9 km deep, occuring at 8:04:59 pm PDT. Probability of strong aftershock in the next week: 30%. Of a quake stronger than the first one: 5-10%. Expecting 15 or so weak aftershocks. If you click around the site, you'll find shake maps, topo maps of the region, etc. The shake map is not up for this one yet, alas.

I love this stuff. I do have to admit I got kind of concerned when the earthquake kept going on and on.