Just got an interesting e-mail from a friend – complete with a map of the location of earthquakes around the world. The map refreshed itself every five minutes.
While it’s encouraging to see no earthquakes showing around our Northwest region, it’s less encouraging to recognize the map shows there have been more than 90 earthquakes in the world since midnight, our time, on this day, March 29.
The closest one was a 1.6 magnitude quake in southern Alaska 75 minutes ago. And there was another, again 1.2 magnitude, in central Alaska 43 minutes ago.
Three hours ago, there was a 5.5 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Honshu, Japan. And there was a 2.5 magnitude quake today in the Mount St. Helen’s region of Washington State.
I’m just talking about today (Tuesday of last week). Check this one out yourself at www.quakes.globalincidentsmap.com – fascinating...and really calming for your blood pressure.
Actually the map is one of a series – highlighting the locations of amber alerts, hazardous-materials incidents, forest fires, gang activities, disease outbreaks, border incidents, drug interdictions, non terrorist aviation incidents, terrorism event predictions - and, new to what I’m now calling the Happy Days network, human trafficking incidents!
It is election time, again – and that often brings out some grandiose ideas. At time of writing, it has only been three or four days so the more startling “policy” ideas have been few and far between.
NDP leader Jack Layton’s promise to curb credit card interest rates at five per cent (plus prime) is probably the only eye-catcher for me so far. I believe I can feel the bank CEOs trembling in their shoes at the thought of Prime minister Layton.
I didn’t get the same feel from Stephen Harper’s narrow, but targeted offer of a “lower income” family tax sharing scheme for families with children under 18 (capped at a joint income of $50,000) to come along some time, maybe five years down the road, when the deficit is paid off. This of course was not in the budget of five days earlier.
Mr. Ignatieff feels Canadians can be attracted by his announcement of his new “education passport” - a $1-billion program that will offer various levels of support for diverse young high school grads who are seeking a university education.
He promises it will be in the first Liberal budget - “on top of everything we are doing in post secondary education now.”
I like this, with the exception of the fact that the “we” he is talking about is the actual taxpayer ... i.e. you and me.
I’m sure this will be solved before the appearance of this article – but TV-media people again don’t want Green Party leader, Elizabeth May to be part of televised election debates because she doesn’t hold a seat.
Doesn’t seem to be a problem for B.C. Premier Christy Clark!
Ah, much more to come before May 2!
I was reading some comments on the announcement that (surprise!) the NHL Philadelphia Flyers plan to increase seat ticket prices for next season.
Season ticket-holders will apparently see the average single game ticket increase from $78 a game to $95 and, like fans everywhere, they just don’t like it.
To keep this in perspective, box office tickets for Montreal v Chicago, last night, started at $110. I am, like hockey fans paying arm-and-leg prices for tickets at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Bell Centre in Montreal, and at Whatever-it-is-this-year, oh yes, Rogers Place in Vancouver, still wondering how teams like L.A. Kings and Phoenix Coyotes can sell four tickets and a free pizza for $100.