Offtopic (earthquakes, not taxonomy)

[chapterandverse]

If one reads Alfred Russell Wallace's accounts of his travels in the Malay
Archipelago in the 1860s, it is all too apparent that he was continually
affected by earthquakes, as well as repeated bouts of malaria and other
hardships.

If such men had decided to steer clear of places like Indonesia, there would
have been significantly fewer advances in scientific knowledge, plus the
fact there would have probably never been a theory of evolution by natural
selection!

Regards to all for the new year.

Ashley H. Kirk-Spriggs
Namibia

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Grehan" <jgrehan at SCIENCEBUFF.ORG>
To: <TAXACOM at LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 5:31 AM
Subject: Re: [TAXACOM] Offtopic (earthquakes, not taxonomy)


I think I much prefer living in Tornado Alley to being near the Ring of
Fire.  I'd move to Yellowstone before I would to California, and I have no
desire to even visit places like Indonesia, Japan, or Alaska.
    ---Ken

As one who has also lived in or near both its all relative. Tornadoes are a
yearly and unpredictable concern while earthquakes may occur intermittently
without anything much happening in a life time. I lived much of my life
right on top of the same fault system that runs through California. Each
day's travel would be along a major fault escarpment that provided a daily
reminder of the last major quake in 1855 that lifted the area up several
feet. Everyone kept saying that we were overdue for another big one (and we
are still overdue). On the other hand the quakes were a reminder of how the
region (New Zealand) came to evolve the way it did with all its interesting
biogeographic connections. Broken eggs and all that.

John Grehan