WELLLLLL...THAT WAS INTERESTING!

The Bay Area just had a 5.2 on the Richter scale earthquake.

For my wife and I, it felt like a short, slight rolling feeling, followed quickly by a longer rolling motion. The whole thing was over in about 30 seconds, with no obvious damage to our, or our neighbor’s houses. The local news of course, is probably still covering it. As my wife said to me, they treat an earthquake that causes little or no damage, and no deaths with about the same coverage a snow storm back east would get that cripples traffic, kills people, and closes schools.

The last earthquake I felt here was about two years ago, on a Sunday while my wife, “Group Captain Lionel Mandrake” (on his first “tour of duty” in the Bay Area) and I were at a local theater watching “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”. I always refer to that as “the movie that had everything”: screaming toddlers, loud adult patrons, cell phones ringing, and in the middle of it all, a 3.0 earthquake–which was more of a quick THUMP than this rolling quake.

Speaking of snowstorms and earthquakes, here’s Virginia Postrel’s take on them–and interestingly enough, how they influence how California and Boston do business.