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Timothy Noah and Marjorie Williams

the breakfast table
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from: Timothy Noah

The Tremors of Sierra Madre

Posted Friday, July 17, 1998, at 5:55 PM ET

Dear Marjorie,

I'd missed Marc Fisher's very funny story in the Post Style section (skipped ahead to the review of The Mask of Zorro, which I think we should go see some afternoon next week). It's quite engaging. I had never heard of quipu before--had you? Quipu were "a series of knotted cords somehow used as mnemonic devices" by the Incans. Spanish conquistadors ordered them burned, and the only quipu that survived were ones buried with their owners. Apparently quipu could be used to "count objects, record poetry and transmit messages." Today, nobody knows how they worked. Fisher points out that quipu are an exception to the general rule that communications media rarely die outright. For example, there are apparently still people who like to watch Victorian pornography on 19th century magic lanterns. (Fisher doesn't say so, but I bet they have their own web site.) I'm remembering, too, that one character in Armageddon tells NASA that he will fly into outer space and blow up an asteroid that threatens to destroy planet earth only if they promise to bring back eight-track tapes. Whoops, now I've told all these nice people that we actually used up a Babysitter Date to go see an extremely stupid disaster movie! Do you suppose anyone will take us seriously now?

Speaking of disasters, the Los Angeles Times has a big earthquake story today. It seems we have to familiarize ourselves with yet another fault: the Sierra Madre, which runs along the southern flank of the San Gabriel Mountains.

The bad news: Somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago, the Sierra Madre fault was the site of two earthquakes that were 15 times more powerful than the big Southern California earthquakes of 1994 and 1971. Earthquake experts at UCLA, Caltech and USC all say it's time for Angelenos to reassess their building codes.

The good news: Nobody knows when an earthquake will occur on this fault again. (Some would say that's the bad news.) Thomas Heaton of Caltech says the Sierra Madre fault appears to cause "infrequent but very violent earthquakes." He says that's good news, too. But an earthquake 10,000 years ago, followed by an earthquake the day after tomorrow, would not in my book qualify as a "frequent" occurrence. (Hey, do you remember what you were doing 10,000 years ago?)

This story amply demonstrates why I'm glad I no longer live in Southern California.

On terra firma,

Tim

the breakfast table
entries
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from: Timothy Noah

The Tremors of Sierra Madre

Posted Friday, July 17, 1998, at 5:55 PM ET
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Timothy Noah writes Slate's "Chatterbox" column. Marjorie Williams is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair.
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