Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes :Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo

Earthquake at 00:56 a.m. Did the Earth Move for You?

Breaking news....
Here I am at the forefront of a news story...
My house just shook... Wobbled, Rattled.. Hummed...
Low frequency sound, vibration, and a very strange feeling...
Unease, foreboding, maybe this is what spooks animals in these circumstances.

Timed at about 00:56 a.m. Duration about twenty seconds.

It took a while of searching seismographs online... yes, there are some.. The British Geological Survey's site was too busy.
But
It seems there was a quake measuring approx 5.2 on the Richter scale, about 40 miles west-south-west of here.
Much of England had a brief wobble along with it.
Ho hum. Nothing seems to have fallen down.
Move along, nothing to see here folks...................

Oh. And Reuters are reporting no major injuries or damage reported- at half an hour after the event.
They're probably right, but. I suspect they're a bit quick in publishing, because if there were major chaos going on, I think it might take longer than that to check and say everything is fine.
Back to bed then.
Good Night All.

Data from USGS http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/

Magnitude	4.7
Date-Time	Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 00:56:45 UTC Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 12:56:45 AM at epicenter Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location	53.321°N, 0.314°W
Depth	10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program
Region	ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
Distances	50 km (30 miles) S of Kingston upon Hull, England, UK 70 km (45 miles) NE of Nottingham, England, UK 80 km (50 miles) E of Sheffield, England, UK 205 km (125 miles) N of LONDON, United Kingdom
Location Uncertainty	horizontal +/- 6.8 km (4.2 miles); depth fixed by location program
Parameters	NST= 50, Nph= 50, Dmin=291.4 km, Rmss=1.02 sec, Gp= 54°, M-type=body magnitude (Mb), Version=7
Source	USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)
Event ID	us20

British Geological Survey Seismology Report later in the day gives magnitude as 5.2 richter.
PRESS RELEASE
27 February 2008
England hit by Earthquake
The British Geological Survey (BGS) recorded an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.2 (ML) on the Richter scale near Market Rasen, Lincolnshire at 00:56 GMT. The BGS has been inundated with calls from the public, media and emergency services throughout England.
Summary:
DATE : 27 February 2008
ORIGIN TIME : 00:56 GMT
LAT/LONG : 53.39° North / 0.35° West
GRID REF : 509.9 kmE / 389.0 kmN
DEPTH : 10 km
MAGNITUDE : 5.2 Richter Scale (ML)
LOCALITY : Market Rasen, Lincolnshire

Like Trains of Cars on Tracks of Plush -Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Like trains of cars on tracks of plush
I hear the level bee:
A jar across the flowers goes,
Their velvet masonry

Withstands until the sweet assault
Their chivalry consumes,
While he, victorious, tilts away
To vanquish other blooms.

His feet are shod with gauze,
His helmet is of gold;
His breast, a single onyx
With chrysoprase, inlaid.

His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for a bee’s experience
Of clovers and of noon!

A Few Pictures From Yesterday.

Top Gear Again.

You may recall I earlier posted the guys from BBC's 'Top Gear' programme, risking their lives poking fun at rednecks?
Well, last night I was watching an episode of their show where the three presenters had a challenge, to buy a 1970s british 'classic' car...
(for classic, merely read 'one that has not quite finished falling apart yet') and submit it to a series of increasingly silly endurance tests. Here is the final one.


I think my old landrover would beat even Jeremy's rover, in the rate at which water fell out of the bottom. Maybe I should put the floor screws back in.

"No Mule's Fool" Family, 1970

"No Mule's Fool"
A dusty day in this old town
A hazy yellow eye looks down
A buzzing bee's the only lazy sound

I take grass, he hits the hay
The two of us drift through the day
A butterfly, a sigh, and it's flick away

Know we're lazy, lots of people say so
But one day they're gonna see
We're only doing whatever makes us happy
We're sitting here, me and mule
We make our own rules, and it's cool

I know I'm lazy, lots of people say so
But one day they're gonna see
We're only doing whatever makes us happy
We're sitting here, me and mule
We're nobody's fool, and it's cool

Close my eyes, yeah I feel alright
Yeah, must be close to 95
Got my shade from a good old hat made of hide

One more day in God's good sun
And we won't move for anyone
Spend your lazy days and ways just turning on

I'm looking down, there's my old mule
A stubborn nag, but no, no one's fool
He's my only friend and he's cool

My old mule, nobody's fool

Curved Air- Vivaldi

Curved Air
Named after a piece of music by composer Terry Riley, "A Rainbow in Curved Air."
Einstein, and the concept of curved space, were probably involved too. This piece of music was on the first album, Air Conditioning.
It was also the second album ever to be released as a picture disc. I bought one in 1970......... still have it, somewhere, I think.
HA! damn thing won't fit into the slot in my CD-DVD drive........
Just think, to today's student youth, these things are as baffling and archaic as Edison's phonograph's wax rolls were to me.
Yet, come the collapse of our electric world, I could still, with a pointy bristle, and a cone of leaves, get music out of the old vinyl. Try that with your ipods, kids, when there's no electricity, and no more lithium batteries..........

The video on this is really crummy. I'd recommend closing your eyes.
I'm willing to bet my regular visitors will be underwhelmed.

But I like it.

The Poems I Have Not Written -John Brehm

I’m so wildly unprolific, the poems
I have not written would reach
from here to the California coast
if you laid them end to end.

And if you stacked them up,
the poems I have not written
would sway like a silent
Tower of Babel, saying nothing

and everything in a thousand
different tongues. So moving, so
filled with and emptied of suffering,
so steeped in the music of a voice

speechless before the truth,
the poems I have not written
would break the hearts of every
woman who’s ever left me,

make them eye their husbands
with a sharp contempt and hate
themselves for turning their backs
on the very source of beauty.

The poems I have not written
would compel all other poets
to ask of God: "Why do you
let me live? I am worthless.

please strike me dead at once,
destroy my works and cleanse
the earth of all my ghastly
imperfections." Trees would

bow their heads before the poems
I have not written. "Take me,"
they would say, "and turn me
into your pages so that I

might live forever as the ground
from which your words arise."
The wind itself, about which
I might have written so eloquently,

praising its slick and intersecting
rivers of air, its stately calms
and furious interrogations,
its flutelike lingerings and passionate

reproofs, would divert its course
to sweep down and then pass over
the poems I have not written,
and the life I have not lived, the life

I’ve failed even to imagine,
which they so perfectly describe.