Friday, October 12, 2007

Microsoft ready to get wiped out!

Not financially, since they have a monopoly, but in terms of earthquake hazard. Seems that the 'powers' have re-evaluated Seattle, and bumped up the seismic hazard values. Lots of Seattle is on swamp, so it will have a great ride in an earthquake. My whole career, I've been saying that they have underestimated the hazard of being on soft gucky soil. You can expect amplifications of 10 to 100 times, but the old estimates were only a factor of 2.

However, I can't expect them to make more expensive bridges, or to beef up the infrastructure. For that, you would have to raise gas taxes, which is an impossibility. So the game plan is to wait for the disaster, and have the federal government bail them out with deficit spending. :)

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