"Tim J." wrote in message
...

"rw" wrote...
Tim J. wrote:

Having an earthquake in the Midwest puts an entirely different
perspective
on
things. Will everything west of Milwaukee slide into the
Pacific, or will
Milwaukee have beach front property on the Atlantic? Hmmm. . .

"Most people think that destructive earthquakes only occur in the
western United States. To the contrary,
snip

Yeah, I know. However, they don't talk about the "doom" factor like
they do when
quakes hit the west coast. Having grown up in Calif., it became a
bit of a joke
when the quakes would hit and the soothsayers would predict us
sliding out to
sea.

If you're from Southern California and haven't seen the Steve Martin
movie "L.A.
Story", which satirizes the SoCal lifestyle, there is a
thirty-second scene
worth watching where Martin and friends are dining at a fancy coffee
shop when a
quake starts shaking. The group acts as if nothing is happening - a
fairly
genuine reaction to anything under about a 5.5 in CA.

As is so often the case, there seems to be a systematic error in the
media coverage of last night's event. It has been widely reported as
a magnitude 4.5 quake. In fact, it was a 45.

Wolfgang
who will now probably spend the rest of his life waiting for "the big
one".