From Life.com, who seem to be sharing services with Time and some others on this story.

The most powerful earthquake in 300 years according to this guy at The Plumber's Forum ..... seriously.

You are small, and the Earth is strong.

We've been all over the place looking for serious analysis that we could understand (the catch) concerning the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

The best thing out there at the moment is a letter from Dr, Josef Oehmen who is billed as a research scientist at MIT, to the family of a blogger who has emigrated to Japan.

That letter can be found here at Morgsatlarge-blogeriffic and again at Bravenewclimate.com with some additional diagrams which are nice to look at.

There is some more reasonably easy analysis to be found at World Nuclear News  back there.

News Daily provides some "for Dummies" analysis and comparisons between Fukushima, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

The photo will link you up.

 With regards to the Three Mile Island core meltdown.

Click on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's logo below for their "Backgrounder" on the event and it's outcomes.

Not very long.

Pretty easy to skim for gist.

 The only funny thing here is that sooner or later everyone takes a shot at the Russians.

Since we updated our Housing over Gold post yesterday, might as well update the Dow Jones Industrial Average over Gold today.

Both charts are from Fred's Intelligent Bear, click either chart to access Fred's excellent if slow moving site.

Then just because we watch this thing without fail, every single time we cruise through Fred's site, here's the legendary John West Red Salmon commercial.

We've posted this chart two or three times over the past couple of years.

It's getting no better unless you're invested in Gold rather or in addition to a house.

Click on the chart to go to Chart of the Day's page.

They're going to tell you that it presently takes 120oz of gold to buy the median single family house, in 2001 in took 600oz.

We think we're going to get the double bottom ..... or top, depending on your point of view, and are invested that way. 

Ken Ring at PredictWeather.com who claims over 5000 subscribers including farmers, corporations and government agencies, uses in his own words, "trends and cycles of Moon orbits to predict the weather", scored some notoriety lately for having tweeted a Valentine's Day prediction for a Christchurch, New Zealand earthquake between February 15 and 25.

Damn that was a convoluted sentence.

Be reminded here of the devastating magnitude 6.3 earthquake the hit Christchurch February 21, 2011.

In an article at his site titled The Ethics of Warning, in which Mr. Ring defends himself and his predictions from charges of fear mongering and pseudo science, he writes the following:

Earthquakes correlate with kingtides - they are a function of the kingtide in the land deep under the ground.

The whole 2/3 of the planet that is beneath the Earth's surface has a moving egg-shaped bulge that, as the earth daily rotates, is always pointing to the moon, just as when a magnet is moved above a plate of iron filings and the area under the magnet is always more responsive.

The perigee (day that the moon is closest to earth each month) is in control of the timing of the kingtide. Sometimes new moon accompanies perigee (as on 4 Sept 2010), sometmes full moon (22 Feb 2011), so kingtide occurs around these dates as well. 

Before new year kingtide days were new moon-related. From February onwards full moon has accompanied perigee, so kingtides were full moon-related.

It does not mean all full moons (or new moons) bring the biggest earthquakes.

Perigee (closest approach to the Earth) is also a factor.

I can find no other use of the phrase kingtide anywhere (I know you believe me when I say that I looked) that correlates in any way to Mr. Rings.

He predicts an second earthquake March 20, 2011 in Christchurch based on the astronomy of that day, namely the "Supermoon" on March 19, and the Jupiter, Saturn opposition which is exact on March 28, 2011, but is within a few degrees from mid March until mid April 2011.

Click on the below sketch of the Jupiter, Saturn opposition for a radically different way to look at both the world and the universe around you.

Remembering as always ..... head ..... swivel.

Business Insider is all over the Raj Rajaratnam "Insider Trading" trial in New York.

They've run 12-15 short but fascinating stories around and about the trial, the likes of which I haven't seen anywhere else.

The photo links to today's story, the gears above take you to the series.

Recommended.

Rajaratnam To Anil Kumar: "I Have One Million In Soft Dollars That I Can Use To Pay You"

Katya Wachtel and Courtney Comstock

 

 

Anil Kumar, one of the government's star witnesses in the Raj Rajaratnam insider trading trial, is currently testifying inside the U.S District Courthouse.

Yesterday, the government told us about payments that Raj allegedly made to his friend and former McKinsey high-flier, for inside information on clients he worked with at McKinsey.

Today in the witness stand, Kumar described those payments and their agreement to share information.

Kumar describes an email he sent to Raj, proposing Mckinsey work with his hedge fund, Galleon back in the early 2000s. Raj rejected the offer twice. In those offers, no confidential, material information was exchanged, Kumar said.

The prosecution then asked Kumar if he gave confidential documents to Raj after 2004? "Yes," Kumar responded.

Our friend Richard Nolle at Astropro is picking up some press from the mainstream lately

The following is from an article at Accuweather.com.

As always, click the photo to link up the entire piece.  

Extreme Super (Full) Moon to Cause Chaos?

Mar 1, 2011; 7:54 AM ET

Coming up later this month (March 19 to be exact) the moon will make its closest approach to Earth (called lunar perigee) in 18 years. A new or full moon at 90% or greater of its closest perigee to Earth has been named a "SuperMoon" by astrologer Richard Nolle. This term has been recently picked up by astronomers. An extreme "SuperMoon" is when the moon is full or new as well as at its 100% greater mean perigee (closest) distance to earth. By this definition, last month's full moon, this month's and next month's will all be extreme "SuperMoons".

Please visit Richard's website by clicking here.

I have read several "new age" forecasts that go something like this: "Extreme SuperMoon this month (March 2011) will bring strong earthquakes and storms and/or unusual climate patterns." Google the term 'extreme SuperMoon March 2011' and see for yourself what comes up. The validity of these types of forecasts can be debated ad nauseum.

There were SuperMoons in 1955, 1974, 1992 and 2005. These years had their share of extreme weather and other natural events. Is the Super Moon and these natural occurences a coincidence? Some would say yes; some would say no. I'm not here to pick sides and say I'm a believer or non-believer in subjects like this, but as a scientist I know enough to ask questions and try to find answers.

We obviously know that there are scientific laws that say the moon affects the Earth (i.e. tides). There are also less proven theories that propose that the moon affects the Earth in other ways (i.e. abnormal behavior during a full moon). Can the Super (full) Moon contribute to extreme weather and other natural phenomenon?

Here are Richard's thoughts on March's "SuperMoon" activity from his February 28, 2011 post.

Click on the map for the entire post.

Markets, geopolitics and history aside, you can’t get there from here if you don’t get out of Mother Nature’s way.

First and foremost, that means being mindful of the March 19 full moon 28° 48' Virgo.

It’s arguably the year’s most extreme SuperMoon, for a couple of reasons: it’s the closest SuperMoon of the year, occurring within an hour of lunar perigee (the Moon’s closest approach to Earth): the Moon will look huge when it rises at sunset.

And being so close to the vernal equinox, this SuperMoon occurs within hours of the moment the full moon crosses the celestial equator from north to south, just as the Sun crosses in the opposite direction. That makes this a major geophysical stress window, centered on the actual alignment date but in effect from the 16th through the 22nd.

Of course you can expect the usual: a surge in extreme tides along the coasts, a rash of moderate-to-severe seismic activity (including magnitude 5+ earthquakes, tsunami and volcanic eruptions), and most especially in this case a dramatic spike in powerful storms with heavy precipitation, damaging winds and extreme electrical activity.

Floods are a big part of the picture in this case, although some of these will be dry electrical storms that spark fast-spreading wildfires.

As always, keep your head on a swivel.

Making change you can believe in a third thing?

Ok, so here's my question.

Before you even get to issues having to do with training.

They're sitting around the table one night.

I'm guessing opium almost has to have been involved.

When one guy turns to his buddy and says, "I know ..... a tight rope walking goat."

And the other guys says, "Maybe ... but we'll need to find a monkey to ride it."