journal features

earthquake

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Tokyo, 2009.08.10

We had a strong earthquake last night at around 20:30. It went on for quite some time, and really shook things. When we realized that it wasn't another little one (we haven't even had little ones of late) Mari scooped up Kenny and headed for the shelter of the dining table (a big solid wooden thing) while I ran for a flashlight and asked Joon, who was visiting, if he could ensure that the front door was open.

The quake was a 6.9 magnitude affair, some 340km underground. Quite impressive, actually.

Then overnight it began to rain.

This morning I headed down the hill to take Kenny to daycare and saw that between the earthquake and the rain, quite a lot of mud has been pushed up from the storm drains. A gentle reminder that the works of man are fragile, I suppose.

rand()m quote

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (1995)