we took a day off yesterday (well, i did, ben worked from home at least the same amount of time that he would have had we gone to work).
the occasion -- we had tickets to the Goodman Theatre production, "A Christmas Carol".
it was fabulous!
Scrooge was just the right amount of "humbug" turning into giddy, and the other actors, to the last of them, were also excellent.
there certainly is something special about the theater, we should definitely do it more!
it's cold, and there's snow all over. i don't mind it when i'm at home, or somewhere having fun. but i really hate it when i have to deal with it on the way to work.
snow turns into slush at the side of the road, a muddy puddle you need to somehow avoid when crossing the street. an icy layer under the snow that you need to be careful not to slip on. urgh. 
i started working on a poncho:
the colors in this image aren't exactly right. they are more similar to the colors of this hat .
i hope to finish it soon, so i can wear it at the office and keep warm! it's gonna get real cold in chicago soon. right now i'm happy if the temperature outside is freezing and not below :S
other plans for the weekend, is to make a pot of chicken soup for us to take to work next week. it's perfect soup weather, and the choice of soups at the cafeterias isn't that great (their chicken noodle soup is actually good, but they don't usually have it).
another experiment is going to be cinnamon rolls. ever since i made that chala for dinner in canada, i'm not as afraid of yeast as i used to be.
oh, and ben got a starwars game for the wii. i think he likes it.
every time i come back from Israel, safta (my grandma) sends with me a batch of frozen Kreplach. they mostly make it all the way, depends on the weather. we go through it faster than me going back to Israel... so it's about time i learned how to make them myself.
last june, for safta's 80th birthday, my mom (with the help of the family) produced a documentary film of safta's life. safta was the lead star of course, as she was followed around with the camera, doing her stuff.
a part of the movie, as she called it -- for the next generations, was a cooking lesson in how to make her Kreplach. it was very informative, going through the process step by step, but as to the tradition of jewish (or maybe polish?) mommas when handing out recipes, somethng was missing: the quantities!
it starts with "i use this full of flour (holding up a container) , and this cup full of eggs..."
so i called her on Friday night to ask for more specific recipe, but she claimed that she doesn't remember (no way, the woman is as sharp as my best $100 knife!). after a little bit of pressure she admitted to just having finished two and a half glasses of red wine. i got her to promise me to send the quantities by email :)
so today, armed with her email with the correct measures, i got down to business.
mmmmmm! success!
ingredients:
------------
500 ml whipping cream
1+1/3 cups milk
1/3 cup sugar
7gr gelatin powder + 3 table spoons boiling water
1+1/2 tbs vanilla extract (or 2-3 tbs imitation vanilla extract)
6-10 oven safe cups (see * for what to do if you don't have them!)
5-6 tbs sugar (can mix 1/2 brown or sugar on the raw) for caramel
instructions:
-------------
boil cream+milk+sugar.
add vanilla extract, cook for 3 minutes while stirring (otherwise there will be crust)
in a small bowl, dissolve the gelatin in boiling water. mix well until there are no lumps. add to the cream while stirring. stir well. let cool for about 30 mins.
make caramel:
put 5-6 tbs sugar in a non-stick pan, on high heat, and let melt. stir all the time until it completely melts and gets a nice caramel color. be careful not to overcook! you don't want it to burn.
pour 1 tsp of caramel in each cup and let cool.
[* if you don't have heat-safe cups, here's what to do: place a sheet of aluminum foil on a cutting board. pour a tsp of caramel on the foil, to create a caramel "coin" about the size of the bottom of your cups. repeat with the rest of the caramel (make 6-10 "coins") let cool completely, peel off the foil, and place one at the bottom of each cup. ]
after the cream cooled, strain with a fine strainer - to make sure there are no lumps.
pour about 1/3 cups of the cream in each cup, over the caramel. cover cups with foil or serene wrap, and refrigerate for 12-24 hours before serving. the caramel will liquify and become syrup.
to serve, turn over on a plate. yumm!!!
some extra caramel syrup: if you're like me, and like some more syrup, here are instructions!
p.s. - it's OK to lick the plate :)
and i don't mean REAL football, which people here call "soccer". i mean American football.
(did you know, that the word "soccer" is an alteration of assoc., abbreviation of "association football" ?!?!? i bet you didn't!!)
anyway, it's a big american pass-time activity. not playing, no, just any form of activity that involves being in some interaction of a football game. it can be sitting at home drinking beer and watching it on tv; or meeting your friends at a sports bar, to watch THE game; or just owning a jersey with the number of your favorite player (or just some random number that was used by a guy that nobody remembers and was cheap); and at the top, there's the tailgating.
"Tailgating is the practice of driving on a road too closely behind another vehicle"
"Tailgating is a social event held on and around the open tailgate of a vehicle. Tailgating often involves alcoholic beverages and barbecuing. Tailgate parties usually occur in the parking lots at stadiums and arenas before, and occasionally after or during, sporting events & rock concerts. People attending such a party are said to be tailgating. Many people participate even if their vehicles do not have tailgates."
Ben and i had to go to a collaboration meeting in Colorado. It wasn't at all what i expected. well, the meeting part was just what i expected, but the accommodations were, umm, rustic.
the entire group was staying at the YMCA of the Rockies, in two large lodges. Ben and I were lucky to get a double bedroom, but many people (pretty much everybody except for the organizers!) had to share a room with bunk beds, and EVERYBODY shared the showers. it's one thing to do something like that with your friends or family, but when it's people you work with, it's one step too far from just getting drunk together in the sake of bonding.
Anyhow, besides having to be with all those people 24h/day, the surrounding area was pretty nice. the place is just on the outside of the Rocky Mountains National Park, and this time of year there's a lot of wildlife around. mainly elk and deer. they just hang out around town, by the roads, posing for amazed tourists.
Since Ron was still in the US, we arranged for him to come with us (he stayed in the bunk-bedroom), and i drove him into the park every morning. i'm happy at least he had fun!
here are some pictures from the afternoon we spent driving through the park. it was a very nice drive and a very little hike to a peak, which was admittedly hard due to the high altitude.
as you can imagine, i took lots of pictures of elk. i included the less blurry ones. they like to be out there after sunset, and move a lot, so it's hard to take a sharp image without a tripod.
...and here's a link to Ron's pictures.
i probably didn't post a picture of my new office yet. actually, i didn't say much the lat few months.. i think i might have burnt out a little. the official excuse is, however, that my computer is not a lot of fun to turn on when i go home at night. this is about to change though, since i've ordered a fancy new one, and it's supposed to arrive in a week or so (fingers crossed!)
anyway,
this is my new office:
i moved to it a few weeks ago. i like it a lot -- as you can see, there's a biiiiiig window, and lots of light, which i didn't have in my old office. at the desk at the left of the image sits my new office mate, a nice astronomer from the Czech Republic.
the only disadvantage is that now i'm not across the hall from ben.
this picture was taken a couple of weeks ago, now there are additional items: 1 - i have a HUGE monitor on my desk, that will be hooked up to my new laptop. 2 - i brought in a couple of plants: Phil JR, a descendant of Phil the Philodendron (i took a few cuttings from it, and trying to grow them) and a lemongrass (that was saved from Gray Scrooge, that for some unknown reason likes munching on lemongrass)
a few weeks ago we came back from Cadillac with Jimmy, a young red maple that tried to make it in the forest in ben's parents' back yard. We had low expectations, we've never heard of anyone growing a maple tree in an apartment, but thought it could be a nice project. Some day, we'll have a house of our own, and when Jimmy grows out of his pot (and possibly hit the ceiling... :S) we can plant him in our back yard and enjoy its changing leaves in the fall, and its bloom in the spring.
Jimmy didn't do much for a long time. Most of his leaves were damaged because it was hammered by hail (like this?) at some point this winter (in his old home), and were ripped and had holes in them. we kept waiting for new leaves to grow at the end of the existing branches, but it didn't seem like he wanted to do that.
One day, about two weeks ago, we noticed that it's sprouting two new branches!
We follow him closely, and notice how much his new branches grow each day.
The following images show how well he's grown. the ones on the left are from Sep. 19th, and the ones on the right are from today -- less than 10 days later! i'm sorry the images are not from the same angle, the branches have grown so much that they can't fit in the image if i take it from the same angle.
it may be hard for you guys to spot the new branches 'cause they grew so much... the new leaves look a little pink (they slowly turn green though), that will give you a hint to where to look.
seems like ben has become a true Sharon member. his latest midnight snack: slice of bread with... Hummus and marmite. top that.
a few weekends ago we went out of our way to get to the "Redbull Flugtag" event. in short, it's a wacky contest in which people come with their home-made flying machines, and try to make them fly. The only rule is that the 'machines' should only use human energy for fuel (with or without redbul).
I had very high expectations, since i've been to one of these events a few years ago, in Park Hayarkon in Tel Aviv. (here are some examples from the TA event.)
we were deeply disappointed.
First, let me say that Chicago has A LOT to learn from Tel Aviv, when it comes to crowd control, and the overall planning of a multi-participant event.
There were lots of people, as could be expected -- the weather was nice, and Chicagoans are just looking for things like that to do towards the end of summer, when cold-stay-at-home winter is around the corner. However, whoever designed this event set the stage so that only a couple hundred people can see it well. the other thousands had to figure it out somehow. the entire site was fenced with barricades, forcing you to enter and leave through 'gates'. you can imagine the stream of people trying to squeeze in and out, and the bottlenecks it caused. when we got there they were so packed, that they closed one gate to entry (people were flowing out of it, trying to escape the mess and disorder inside), so we had to walk all the way around till we found a way in.
the people trying to escape should have been a sign for us to stay away, but we came all the way by train -- so we didn't want to give up so soon.
we found a way in (between the toilets and the ambulance parking) and tried to squeeze in between the people and find a point from which we can see something. anything.
now would be a good time to explain the area:
this is a satellite image of the part of the beach.
this is the organizer's map (to which i added some stuff):
the 'L' shaped black thing is the 'stage' on which the flying machine were pushed and from the end of which they jumped into the water.only people standing in the red-marked area could really see anything. the rest had to satisfy their curiosity with looking at the screen, which was pretty good quality, but only faced north.
anyone standing to the south of the stage could not see ANYTHING, because the large screen, that was facing away from them, obscured the entire show. 
so, in order to actually see any of what's going on, you HAD to be in the compound. you can easily see from the air picture above that there's lots of room for people just to the south, and it would have been great, if the design of the site had allowed them to see anything.
the stage is plenty visible even from far away down the beach:
The TA comparison, the stage was visible from almost anywhere in the park. crowd was easily managed regardless of the number of bikes, rollerblades, strollers and what not that people came with. there were huge screens and sound system that allowed you to lay down on the grass and enjoy the show, even if you decide to find yourself a more secluded corner far from dense areas.
back to Chicago, the view is obstructed for 75% of the beach. Our guess is that this layout was partially engineered by the city, who wanted to minimize traffic and onlookers between Oak Street Beach and North Beach. or, maybe Red Bull wanted to trap people in a confined area where they can hammer them with advertisements and make them buy their (overpriced) products.
Regardless of who made the event suck, don't waste your time going to the Chicago Flugtag next year!
(on a brighter note, we did enjoy the walk down the beach and the burrito we got on the way :))
A couple of nights ago, we came home and found police buzzing up and down Bryn Mawr. The normal entrance to our parking lot was blocked off by police, so we went around the block to the back entrance. On the way, we were cut off and almost splattered by carloads of undercover cops. The way they were driving, I was sure Osama Bin Laden had been spotted at the Red Line stop.
We parked and walked down the alley. There was a black Chevy Malibu, and a single bicycle cop standing guard over it. We asked him what was up.
"The car is hot [as in stolen], and the occupant took off running when they pulled him over," he said.
"Wow. Welp. Good luck!"
We rode the lone working elevator upstairs, and looked down in the alley again from our apartment:
Several police cars (not shown) and cops were tearing the car apart. The ATV cops from the park later showed up too. If you look closely, you can see the childrens' red wagon that was in the trunk. They later pulled out a golf bag, and whole bunch of other crap. There were no less than 20 cops on the scene.
Now comes the part I want to get to the bottom of. I check in the paper the next day, and found this story.
They shot the guy! It happened about 3 miles due west of here -- the 12th police-related fatality this year. Apparently, a weapon was found in the car, but as with many of these police-related stories, I have a hard time learning about the details on the internet.
My usual standby is Chicago Crime. They usually run about a week behind, so there's no info on this shooting yet. But while I wait for this to be updated, I usually waste time looking at all kinds of other crimes in the city. For instance, dice games in parks can be found primarily in 3 regions of the city,and homicides cluster on the South and West sides. There's also still a market for crack in Chicago.
More to come...
Megan and Kevin are here for the weekend, and after debating for a while last night (over a forty of black kobra for the boys and classy baylies for the girls) we decided to go down to north beach and watch the Chicago's 50th Air and Water Show.
The beach was full of people, but we found a nice spot by the water, where we met our friend Sarah, and leaned back to watch the show.
It started with some small planes doing acrobatic maneuvers, flips and twists (these must have some professional names which the commentator said but i don't remember), buzzing really low above the water.
Soon after came fighter jets (of the type you see in top gun) - and i was speechless. they fly fast, they fly slow, they fly straight up - turn around and fall down, crazy stuff. i kept thinking how Assaf should have been there. i'll do my best to make him come next year!
here are a couple of pictures i took with my phone camera... should have brought cami. on the other hand, it's kinda hard to grasp the effect with a still camera. the sound doesn't come out just right ;)
Stealth Bomber
Super Hornet
later on, we moved to the beach across the street from us, and, for the first time here, did what everybody else seem to do there: grill!
we got a tiny little Weber grill the other day (it looks like a baby Weber), and Ben grilled some burgers, potatoes, onions and sweet corn that we imported from Michigan.
all in all, an awesome day, even without counting the late night margaritas and flan at the little mexican cafe :)
i processed my entire thesis through wordle, a cool website that does things like that. although the first attempt was sort of cool, the largest words ended up being 'et' and 'al'. but after removing all those, i got this:
i think it's awesome, you can really tell what my thesis is about just by word statistics. www.wordle.net
I spent a couple of days in Rome, but it's all a big blurr right now. just leaving a space saver here, and i'll post some pictures and stories later. i know i still owe a gallery post, that's on the to-do list!
(this is a very incomplete list, and is based on a very small sample. to check for completeness, i would need to experiment with randomly selected establishments and this is beyond the prospect of this research)
we had some bad luck with restaurants the first two days, seems like finding a good and reasonably priced restaurant in florence is just as hard as finding one in Kikar Atarim. we therefore decided to ask for recommendations from people we sort of trust (like my advisor...). since this knowledge is probably more priceless than my thesis, i will document it here for future reference and future generations.
starting with 'Trattoria', which is the general name for a restaurant-like establishment. a fact that i completely ignored, when we arrived at the conference dinner meeting point and i argued that this can't be the place we're supposed to go to - we are supposed to meet at a restaurant named 'Il Cambi' and this place is 'Trattoria'! how embarrassing.
The place, however, was fabulous. i mean, the food was. well, it was the conference dinner, so it was free, and possibly expensive. but free. so who cares?!?
we were served the traditional florentine/tuscan cuisine, which included some broschettas with chicken liver, Ribollita (Tuscan Vegetable and Bread Soup), pasta (a 'first course' in Italy); then came the main course - meat, meat, meat! red meat!
mmmmmmmmmmm
i should add some pictures here. definitely.
the one thing i could not understand was those people who ate the side of white beans.
anyway, it's RISTORO DI CAMBI - VIA S. ONOFRIO 1R ZONA PORTA SAN FREDIANO, and they have a website too.
ROSSOPOMODORO
this one was actually recommended by the girl who sits at the front desk at our tiny hotel. this one seems to have had the best pizza of them all, but we didn't sample pizza everywhere. as i said, i'm incomplete.
Piazza del Mercato Centrale, 22/r Firenze
Trattoria "Le Mossacce"
Dani marked that one on the map, he didn't know the name of the place, but noted that they have a large green sign saying 'Trattoria' by it, not too far from another place with yellow lamps.
It's a tiny place, looks like a workers restaurant, and luckily we could find a table right away although we were like 10 people. we got some of the traditional tuskan bloody steak and salad. Via del Proconsolo 55R. www
[getting tired and being eaten alive by mosquitoes. so i'll stop here for now, and add some more stuff later on! to come: Yellow, Osteria Dell Agnolo, Noir, Michael Collins Pub]
Yellow:
That's the restaurant with the yellow ball-shaped lights. We got pizza - and it was good! the prices were reasonable. i think the thing to mention about this place is the service - the waitress was actually nice!
i guess i'm used to the waiters in america, where they come to your table with a fake smile and ask you how you're doing and help you with the menu. (as you all know, i do have complaints about american service as well, but that's not for now). here, in florence, waiters usually barked at us, were not nice or polite or anything. a normal situation is when a waiter approaches the table with a notepad and says YES or nothing at all, and just waits for you to say what you'd like to eat. and if you as a question (e.g., "how big is the lasagna?") they interrupt it as a request ("ok, one lasagna"...)
anyway, the service was good and the pizza too, so thumbs up.
Osteria Dell Agnolo
we saw this place a bunch of times on our way to and from the hotel. the first night it was full of people, so we didn't go in, and eventually we went there on the last night. assaf was very happy with the gnocci (tomato sauce) and i was happy with whatever i had. they have a big chunk of parmaisan cheese that you can just graba piece of on your way in/out. mmmm!!
Noir
a bar on the Arno river, one bridge down from the ponte vecchio. I suppose they have decent drinks, but the taquila in the picture was terrible. nice view of the river though, and you can walk with your drink accross the street and just stand by the wall overlooking the water.
Michael Collins Pub
in Piazza della Signoria, by the statue of the horse. it's just a bar, no food to speak of, but during happy hour you can pay with your us$ and 1$=1euro!!! best deal in town, really.
Leonardo's signature detail is a knotted thread that he includes in his paintings. "vinci" means "knot".
In our gallery tour, the guide (which was very good, btw) asked us to try and find it in each of his paintings.
one of the Italian astronomers had a very hard time finding it, as he kept looking for a signature signature, and was very frustrated when he couldn't find the name 'leonardo' scribbled anywhere, and everybody else could detect the 'signature' right away... when i explained to him what the guide meant by signature, and pointed out all those knots that we saw (one in the hair, one in the sleeve, one in the garment...) he explained that now he understand why I find all those supernovae.
Astronomers usually know where to have their conferences. it's a well known thing, that they like the nice exotic places, and the organizers strive to lure more and more people to their meetings just by locating them at attractive locations. some very common examples are Aspen (possibly the fanciest ski resort in the US) and Hawaii. Unfortunately, although all those nice places i've been to make me seem like a well traveled individual, i always feel like all i ever see is the inside of a lecture hall.
since i was never rich, and those conferences can be expensive and time consuming, i usually scheduled my flights to exactly bracket the days of the conference.
at some point i decided to leave a couple of days to exploring the places i go to, and this is sort of the first time it happened.
I arrived Florence (Firenze) on saturday, met with Assaf, and we spent the day walking all around town and the hills above it. The city of Firenze is dotted with sculptures, fountains, extravagant buildings and churches, all created by the most famous artists and architects of the 13-15th centuries. The streets are very narrow, and the sidewalks don't leave room for more than one person, but still there's quite a lot of traffic - tourists and cars seem to crowd the streets with very little order.
After going through some Piazzas, we decided to cross the river, and climbed up on the hill overlooking town on a whim. 
The river you see in the picture is the Arno, and the closest bridge is (the famous) Ponte Vecchio. The top part of the bridge is actually a long corridor, that starts from the palace to the left of the picture, goes over the bridge, bends 90 degrees and goes along the river, then bends again and goes into town, all the way to Palazzo Vecchio - the palace in which the governors of the city sat. This allowed the important people to go frome home to work without stepping in the streets. It is (if i remember correctly) about 1km long.
The next day, we stood in line in the rain for about an hour, and entered the Academy Gallery (to which i think i will dedicate a post), so totally worth the wait!!!! i enjoyed it very much. Later that day, we checked in to the hotel in which we stay for the duration of the conference - Villa Agape. It's actually a convent, and a few tiny old nuns run a guest house in it. It's pretty nice, except for everything being very small (the beds, the shower...) and the curfew that we have to obey by getting back no later than 11PM. This curfew thing is very weird, especially at a conference with social activities (probably the most important thing in conferences is to meet people and make connection, usually by spending the nights getting drunk together). I sort of liked that curfew idea for the first three nights, since i still had to prepare my lecture (i didn't have anything prepared until i got to florence!).
The afternoon of the third day of the conference was dedicated to a guided tour in the Uffizi Gallery, an amazing art gallery displaying works of art fromt he glorious days of Florence. The main attraction there is Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus". I have a lot to say about my experience there, so will keep it for a coming post :)
in short, i was very moved.
today is the last day of the conference, and tomorrow we will have some more time to explore and then off to Rome!
Keren is gone until the end of June. I'll be joining her in Israel in a couple of weeks. Before we hand Keren's plants off to our friends, I've been charged with caring for them. One plant (I think they're zinnias -- they should flower someday) really likes the water...EVERYDAY!. Over about 12 mins this morning it went from sleepy to wide awake:
[Well, I guess the background light kind of killed the pictures this time. But you'll never hear me brag about what a good photographer I am.]
I'll be keeping an eye on these guys, watering, petting, and encouraging them to grow, as I was instructed. I don't have to change their litter, brush them, clean their hair balls, or be awoken by them at 4:30am to be petted, so they're pretty low maintenance.
OK, gray scrooge wants to play fetch. So going to try and wear him out so he'll sleep tonight.
A couple of sharp knocks on the door woke me up at 4AM, and even before getting the door I realized what it was about: there was water everywhere.
The problem was with our toilet -- the water tank in the back never shuts off so water just continuously flows into the tank. This isn't too much of a problem...unless the toilet becomes plugged. We had spoken with the management and with Miguel (the building's handy-man) several times about fixing this over the last two months, mostly because of the total waste of water, but also because of the potential overflow if the toilet ever became backed up. For reasons we don't understand, they never fully fixed the problem, and so sometime last night the toilet was plugged, and the tank just kept pumping water and overflowing into our apartment.
maybe it was the early hour, or just plain confusion, but the first thing Miguel did (rookie mistake!! i wouldn't expect that from him!) was to flush the toilet. which of course made everything even worse.
So at 4 in the morning (or should i say, before-morning) ben and i and a few towels tried to minimize the damage, while Miguel unplugged the toilet.
what a wonderful way to start the day.
i went to Lincoln park with two of my friends, to enjoy the spring and take some pictures (and get me out of the house so i don't feel too lonely without ben)
i think Tulips are my favorite flower. they are all over town. i think people put the bulbs in the ground in the fall, and then after the ground thaws the tulips come out. i get distracted by pretty flowers no matter where i go or how hurried i am or if it rains.
... a couple of flamingos at the zoo were totally into each other, playing some sore of courtship game.
... a part of a gmail chat with ben a few seconds ago (regarding some guy who i'm collaborating with)
me: yes
thats good
i just hope i can trust this clown
Ben: mi ze ha leitzan ha ze?
when your husband starts quoting Givat Halfon, that's when you know he successfully assimilated into Israeli society.
ben had to fly to chile for a work-related meeting.
a little chime wakes me up this morning, and i read this text message on my phone:
"Im back in atlanta. We turned around halfway over columbia and flew back. We're leaving atl again. Will call later tonight if we get to chile"...
apparently there was some instrumental malfunction, and the pilot decided to turn the plane back and land where it started... i'm sure ben will have more to say about that.
It would be a crime not to write something about this. In southern Illinois, some 250 miles south of Chicago, an earthquake of magnitude 5.2 on the Richter scale struck West Salem, Illinois at about 4:30 AM on Friday, April 18th . Reports were that skyscrapers swayed downtown in the loop, Indianapolis, and St. Louis and that the earthquake was felt hundreds of miles away, as far as Detroit and Cincinatti. After shocks were reported as strong as 4.6 later that morning.
There was moderate damage to some buildings near the quake, but nothing much happened in Chicago. A chunk of re-rod in the Edens Expressway in northwest Chicago was said to have been broken and exposed by the earthquake, causing damage to passing cars.
We felt nothing in our building. Keren and I slept soundly. In the U.S., the U.S.Geological Survey usually compiles information on these earthquakes. In fact, we're encouraged to report our experiences here.
I don't know how they weed spam out of this, but there you have it.
Earthquakes are not completely unknown to this part of the country (see picture at right); we sit near the New Madrid Seismic Zone. It's not a normal seismic zone like those found near the intersection of plates (e.g. San Andreas in California, Dead Sea Fault in Israel -- see next map of earthquakes since 1963, where most fall along major fault lines). Rather, it's part of a Midcontinent Rift System, specifically the so-called "Reelfoot Rift".
The strongest recorded earthquake in Illinois was in 1968, at magnitude 5.4. However, a legendary earthquake in neighboring Missouri, the New Madrid earthquake, is said to have
actually diverted the flow of the Mississippi River on Feb 7, 1812 (Chicago didn't exist yet). Geologists estimate the earthquake to have reached 8.0 on the Richter scale (recall that a one unit increase on the Richter scale is a factor of 10 higher in intensity). If true, this is 100's of times stronger than what we experienced yesterday. For reference, the devastating Great Sumatra-Andaman Earthquake, which killed hundreds (due to tsunami) on Dec 26, 2004, measured a 9.1.
I don't want to say in this high rise we live in long enough to find out if an earthquake will ever damage Chicago. The city hasn't even been here 200 years, short on geological time scales, so it doesn't seem impossible that we might get a real scare someday. If another 8.0 quake should strike within a few hundred miles of here, the last place I want to be is on the 9th floor of any building.
