I feel the earth...move...under my feet

Man, this is already going to be known as the Year of the Quake (I can see Time's end of year special). Another month, another quake, this one even more powerful than the one in Haiti on Jan. 12th, but striking just off the coast of central Chile. The big difference here is that Chile is one of the richest countries in Latin America and has stricter building codes due to it's more recent history of quakes...ones the population can actually remember (1960) vs. 250 years for Haiti. They also had the resources to respond faster and so far the death toll is numbering in hundreds, not hundreds of thousands! I just watched the 1974 classic 'Earthquake' the other day which is weird too. I'm still wondering when a quake that strong strikes an area with now 14 million people in it because it's entirely possible. In the movie they talk about where to evacuate 4 million so 10 million people moved there in the past 30 years! Of course they may have been just talking about LA the city and not the metro, but you would think they'd be worried about the entire LA basin. Mother Nature will definitely be the hot topic in all end of year lists what with the earthquakes and unbelievable snow accumulations and storms that have covered the northern two thirds of the country especially the Midwest over to the Northeast. Even Dallas got a foot of snow, tying overall records, earlier this month. Here in Austin we finally got a good snow show last Tuesday but it was gone by the next day. El Nino is having a lot to do with the colder wetter winter season we've been having. All these morons are saying stuff like 'Where's Global Warming?' and 'Al Gore's an idiot' but no matter what we keep doing to the planet, El Nino and La Nina will continue to happen AND they may even be more enhanced BECAUSE of the warming of the earth. I love it when a bunch of couch meteorologists and climatologists suddenly spring out of the woodwork not to mention all the Republican senators who suddenly seem to be experts in these fields. Man has got to face that no matter how much we think we are in control of the earth, we are reminded daily that we are not. Nature is in control and we're just along for the ride.