Did the earth move for you, too?

Okay, it seems to me that at least some of these folks ought to know better. For the record, the area of tectonic movement off the western coast of the US and Canada is called the Cascadia SUBduction Zone. SUBDUCTION. If you don't believe me, check the Wiki. Which, by the way, has no mention of "seduction" in the article - yet it still comes up near the top on a search for "seduction zones" in Google. That speaks of serious tampering with the keywords or the search algorithms or both in an attempt to keep people from making boobs of themselves while talking science. [Heh, heh - she said "boobs."] That tells me there are an awful lot of people out there that apparently can't tell the difference between the two terms.

So, I couldn't help myself - I had a look. Hey, what's Google for if not to help mankind more efficiently waste online time? Here are some of the offenders I found. Enjoy!

On the list of people who probably should know better is "Quizlet.com." This is from the page touted as a "third nine weeks science study guide." If you look towards the bottom of the terms list, there it is! "seduction zone: forms when two oceanic plates collide." Whoa, that one must make a lot of noise.

Next on the "probably should know better" list is Mason County, Washington, Planning and Advisory Committee where in their minutes you find this quote: "The basic scenario where we get earthquakes is we have a seduction zone". Page 6, paragraph three, if you don't believe me. I have to ask on this one - shouldn't these folks be expected to know a bit more about what they are preparing for? Or, maybe they do. Maybe it's the rest of us that are confused and think they are supposed to be preparing for natural disasters.

In the hilarious but unintended double entendre category, we have this gem:

"Because Cascadia is a “seduction zone”, small earthquakes are not witnessed in the numbers that are reflected on the San Andreas Fault, or other active fault-zones, so the strain builds-up, and when it does “move”, which is usually in intervals of 300 to 400 years (although it has on seven (7) occasions caused tsunamis every 150 years.) the results are catastrophic. An event of this type is referred to as a “Megathrust earthquake,” " [web link]

He said "megathrust." Heh, heh.

Found on a comment on this page: "SoCal will get spanked again and the Cascadia seduction zone will go postal, its just a question of when." Oooh, more double entendre. And kinky, too.

Did you know there was a massive seduction zone not far from Tonga? I didn't. The Tongans must be thrilled.

Sri Lanka apparently has one, too. At least, that's what their newspaper says. But I think since it's not likely that English is their primary language, we should probably cut them some slack on vocabulary.

And on "Peer Papers" - a term paper boosting site, we find that Wizard Island, "on the North American continent, it is located relatively on top of the seduction zone between the North American plate and the..." Looks to me like another really good reason to write your own term papers, kiddies. Don't say you weren't warned.

I leave you with this quote from an instructional teaching paper: "First, the teacher will draw a seduction zone on the board..." Which class was that, now?

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Oh yes it can!

"The importance of achieving that goal can't be understated."

You don't say?

From an article on the new "Isaiah Processor" on Yahoo Tech.

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Corn grows on "bushes" - you heard it here!

Apparently, corn grows on "bushes." If you don't believe me, take a look at this:

"Mr. Coxe said crop yields around the world need to increase to something close to what is achieved in the state of Illinois, which produces over 200 corn bushes an acre compared with an average 30 bushes an acre in the rest of the world."

Once, I can pass off as a simple typo. But twice in the same sentence? I think that's a bit more like some kind of cluelessness at work.

Addendum: Four days later, and still not corrected.

Addendum to the Addendum: nearly TWO MONTHS later, and STILL not corrected.

Addendum to the Addendum to the Addendum: TWO YEARS and two months later, and STILL not corrected...

Addendum to the Addendum to the Addendum: FOUR YEARS and two months later, and ... Yup, still just as wrong...

So, some people are rock-heads. Who knew?

"The real problem today is people taking other people for granite..." (over-read on an online forum somewhere recently)

My guess is the author of this post meant to say that the problem was people "taking other people for GRANTED" but, hey - maybe people mistaking other people for inanimate igneous rockage is a bigger problem in our country than I thought it was.

I personally think the real tragedy is people who do not read mindlessly reusing phrases they've overheard but obviously do not understand. Perhaps the poster quoted above was kin to the Miss Teen USA contestant who made a fool of herself recently by using nothing but parroted sound bites to answer a simple question about the lack of basic geographic literacy in the USA.

The moral of the story is, unless you actually know what you are saying it's probably better to leave those catchy phrases out of your speech. That is, unless you want other people to take you for granite.

Democrats "never met a bill they couldn't solve..."

This week President Bush said of the Democratic-led congress that they "haven't seen a bill they could not solve without shoving a tax hike into it. In other words, they believe in raising taxes, and we don't."

Um, okay. I didn't know that we "solved Congressional bills" like we solved violent crimes (although, now that I look at it, that's really not a bad metaphor!)

Anyway, back to the point - for the sake of argument, shouldn't that sound bite have gone something more like, "Democrats never met a problem they couldn't solve by shoving a tax hike into an upcoming bill?"

Or, perhaps given the President's history on this sort of thing what he really should have said was "I never met a metaphor I couldn't mangle and oh, yeah - about those Democrats..."

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The FED is doing what???

From the front page of Reuter's online. On the 1/2% rate cut a while back, ALAN SKRAINKA, CHIEF MARKET STRATEGIST, EDWARD JONES, ST. LOUIS sez:

"This is very good news. The Fed is taking out a little insurance policy. Maybe they were a bit behind but now they're catching up. They're on the ball, they're mining the store, and will take aggressive action to prevent the economy from slipping into recession."

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Wow. Any way you define "mining" it appears we have honesty in Economics at last.

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