That’s what I really want the headline to say. There was just a 5.9 near Mineral, VA that shook NYC a little and generated constellations of headlines and twitter feeds and cell phone cluster bombs. The earthquake: shocked, jolted, rattled, shook, the east coast according to the news. Still, I prefer surprised. Because that’s what it was. A surprise.

I have no idea who these nice people are but I think the degree of surspise must be related to the depth of the gulf between the surprisee and the crowd, which doesn;t apply to earthquakes. Typically.

New England/NYC book tour… 1) Tornado in the Berkshires 2) NYC earthquake 3) Hurricane, penciled in for Saturday. SURPRISE! Ah, weather.

Back to geology.

Half of my obsession probably stems from maps like these…

see? nothing to worry about.

As a general rule, the less your state geological map resembles this…

… the better. Maybe. I guess it depends what the age the colors represent. In this case, the 80s, which was a very bad decade for earthquakes and gated snares…

this map will not feed back (because it isn't a hollow body and / or the amp has too much headroom) but it's still a fine state.