Blowing your money on a sailing trip

For 6 of us, it cost half a new roof.  We wanted to get all the kids together for a possibly last time.  Any farther down the road, and there will a lot more to go, since the younger two are still single.

It was a great trip.  We chartered a 55 foot catamaran with a married couple as crew.  They did everything for us, food and drinks were all-inclusive, and it included several scuba dives for the certified ones.  She was a master chef and he was winning bar and dive-master.

I'm still recovering.  :)  It took 2 days to get your sea legs on very calm water, and another two days when you came back, to stop the floor from swaying.  I snorkelled on a lot of reefs and saw many pretty fish.

We'd love to do it again, but we have to build up the war-chest.  :)

The Annual Oklahoma Earthquake Predictions

These are not really predictions, in the sense that they have to be useful.  This is just an extrapolation based on the main hypothesis, and incorporating all known physics.  The hypothesis can be invalidated by a variation of the prediction, keeping in mind the uncertainties are huge.

Hypothesis:  OK earthquakes are caused by the injection of freshwater frack waste into the highly stressed Precambrian basement, which is riddled by major megathrust structures which can be mapped in Canada.

Extrapolation:  This is the big trumpy year.  We expect a huge increase in demand for frack waste disposal.  On the other side, the supply (available injection) is being restricted due to an assumption that mere pressure is causing earthquakes.  As with the 'war on drugs', the price of injection will go up.  We estimate that we can expect a doubling or tripling, from 30 cents a barrel to over $1.  As such, the lower grade 'produced water' will be priced out of the market, and they will shooting pure freshwater frack waste.

 We are noticing now that the seismic rate is going up to one m4 per week.  A rough idea of the total seismic energy rate is to just keep track of the larger earthquakes.  Forget about the m3's.  The 'powers' like to plot 3's as 'proof' the number of earthquakes are going down.  Every year, the seismic rate has been very low during the winter because they can't deal with fresh water when it freezes.  Last year, things didn't start moving until May, because of the very cold April.

We now expect March-April to have a rate of a 4 every other day, giving a rate of one 5 per month.  Please note that we do not use the busgus magnitudes because of severe directivity.  We generally go with the largest rating by seismometers around the world.

The summer will see one 5 a week.  This should give us a few 6's over the season.  We maintain good odds of a 7 this year with 8's next year.  We are very uncertain about the 'multiple' factor for these larger earthquakes.  Right now we seem to have a factor of 5, that is 5 m4's for an m5, etc.  Who knows about the m6's?

All in all, an exciting earthquake season.  Politically, we expect no voice from the busgus (defunded), or the EPA (purged).

A new continent - Zealandia

Reference

I always follow good stuff in plate tectonics, and this is the best.  Of course, you've always could have seen it since the beginning of Time, in Google Earth.  :)

But this is all semantics.  The paper now says it should be a continent rather than pieces of rock.  And that's big news!  Like planet being demoted to planetoid and back again, and back again.

But trumpies can't build a hotel on it with Russian money.  It needs to dry out a bit.  Perhaps a new Ice Age might exposed prime property.  But it is interesting to note that this is what happens to any continent who loses its heat engine.