Video: New Yorkers Knew Of Earthquake Via Twitter Before Ground Shook

For a seismic wave to travel the 230 miles from Washington D.C. to New York City, it takes approximately 30 seconds.  That's roughly 27,600 miles per hour.

It only takes 25 seconds for someone to feel the ground shake, and post a tweet that says "I think we just had an earthquake", that can be read by someone in New York.

That is exactly what happened last Tuesday when a 5.9 earthquake struck near Richmond, Virginia.  When buildings shook near Washington Tuesday afternoon, the internet exploded, primarily on Twitter and Facebook. Twitter claims that readers in other areas were aware of the coming quake via their site before local seismographs registered any readings.  They're so proud of it, in fact, check out their new promotional video:



Twitter announced Wednesday that the D.C. earthquake created more site traffic for them than the death of Osama Bin Laden, and tied the level of traffic that they saw at the time of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in March.  This tells me one of two things.  Either Twitter has quickly gained a large number of users, or Americans seriously have their priorities fucked up.

As an interesting side note, Eric Fischer created an animated map of the earthquake related tweets that afternoon.  The green dots represent earthquake related tweets.  Gray dots are tweets about other topics.  During the 28 second piece, each frame is one second.  The entire piece represents 12 minutes of elapsed time.

Happy Birthday, Lady Gaga

How could I not let the day go by without wishing Gaga a Happy 25th?  Having such a prolific career in such a short amount of time, she'll be remembered as one of the most poignant and controversial artists of all time.  In just three years, Gaga has not only become an identity, but a brand.

Having accomplished much more by the age of 25 than Madonna could have ever imagined, (Madonna had only released her first album a month before her 25th birthday) Lady Gaga has already gone on to win 5 Grammys, 18 MTV Awards, and countless Billboard awards.  Not to mention, as of August 2010, selling 51 million singles, and over 15 million albums.

She is also one of the most unselfish people in the music industry, becoming one very creative philanthropist.  Just within the last 18 months, she has had a hand in raising over $160 million for AIDS research, raising money for PETA, and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for the earthquakes in Haiti and Japan.  She's a vocal, very vocal, advocate for LGBT rights, and, some may say, has done more for the cause than many politicians in Washington.

'Born This Way' has really grown on me over the last couple of weeks, but the video has this 3 minute intro that is just to strange, even for my tastes.  Instead, I'm going to play my favorite Gaga video to date, 'Bad Romance'.  In my opinion, it's the perfect dance song.  You can't get any better.  Enjoy, and Happy Birthday, Gaga.

What To Expect Over The Next Week Or Two

Other than an update from my hospital room, I didn't have a single post on this blog in 16 days.  It's amazing how much can happen in 16 days.

I watched tens of thousands get washed out to sea from my bed.  I nervously  flipped back and forth between MSNBC and CNN in my hospital room as temperatures rose in reactor after reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.  It was frustrating enough that I felt helpless laying in a bed 10,000 miles away.  It was even worse that I couldn't write about the situation.

I have some catching up to do.  Over the last two weeks, I have accumulated a number of rare and exclusive videos on the earthquake and tsunami that I feel that I have to share.  You cannot understand the magnitude of what happened there until you see some of this video.

There are also some other news stories that have occurred in the last couple of weeks that I want to put my two cents in on.  You may care.  You may not.

In the last week, I have also seen a number of things regarding some recent Watchtower articles that I cannot stay silent on.  Expect a slew of ex-JW posts all of a sudden.  Maybe it's all of those blood transfusions I had in the hospital.  LOL.  Kidding.

So, over the next few days, some of this stuff may be old news to some of you.  Some of it may be eye opening.  Hopefully, regardless if you've heard the subject matter before, you'll see it from a new perspective. That's my goal at least.