Ben Chinnchilla

rd67: Hawaiian Volcano Landscape post by jchip8

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:10:53 -0800

rd67:

Hawaiian Volcano Landscape
post by jchip8

NYC in a 8-bit Zelda map.

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:40:00 -0800

NYC in a 8-bit Zelda map.

Hilary Duff's natural progression of getting engaged

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:49:00 -0800

Oh Lizzie McGuire, when will you learn?

Gorillaz - On Melancholy Hill It’s about time this album...

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 03:26:04 -0800

Gorillaz - On Melancholy Hill

It’s about time this album leaked. After the first listen this is my favorite song. Damon says this is the most poppy album he’s ever made. I don’t really agree with that.

magdalina: Geoff Manaugh at BLDGBLOG on what might have been...

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:23:41 -0800

magdalina:

Geoff Manaugh at BLDGBLOG on what might have been The Road’s world-ending disaster:

The only glimpse we’re given of what violently ends the known order of things is this brief scene; I have left McCarthy’s original spelling and punctuation and intact:

The clocks stopped at 1:17. A long shear of light and then a series of low concussions. He got up and went to the window. What is it? she said. He didnt answer. He went into the bathroom and threw the lightswitch but the power was already gone. A dull rose glow in the windowglass. He dropped to one knee and raised the lever to stop the tub and the turned on both taps as far as they would go. She was standing in the doorway in her nightwear, clutching the jamb, cradling her belly in one hand. What is it? she said. What is happening?

I dont know.
Why are you taking a bath?
I’m not.

After this, the landscape outside—everywhere—is described as “scabbed” and “cauterized,” heavily covered in ash. McCarthy memorably writes: “They sat at the window and ate in their robes by candlelight a midnight supper and watched distant cities burn.”

… McCarthy’s end-times scenario sounds, to me, remarkably like nuclear war, but in his Wall Street Journal interview McCarthy entertains, even if only casually, that it could also have been the caldera beneath Yellowstone National Park finally exploding. McCarthy:

A lot of people ask me [what caused The Road’s apocalypse]. I don’t have an opinion. At the Santa Fe Institute I’m with scientists of all disciplines, and some of them in geology said it looked like a meteor to them. But it could be anything—volcanic activity or it could be nuclear war. It is not really important. The whole thing now is, what do you do? The last time the caldera in Yellowstone blew, the entire North American continent was under about a foot of ash. People who’ve gone diving in Yellowstone Lake say that there is a bulge in the floor that is now about 100 feet high and the whole thing is just sort of pulsing. From different people you get different answers, but it could go in another three to four thousand years or it could go on Thursday. No one knows.

It was thus amazingly interesting to read that no less than 1,799 earthquakes have occurred beneath Yellowstone since January 17, 2010—a so-called earthquake swarm.