A blog about societal, cultural, and civilizational collapse, and how to stave it off or survive it. Named after the legendary character "Crazy Eddie" in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's "The Mote in God's Eye." Expect news and views about culture, politics, economics, technology, and science fiction.
Something unexpected and potentially irreversible is changing Antarctica and scientists finally know why.
Over the past few decades, researchers have tracked the mysterious growth and sharp decline in sea ice in Antarctica. But a few years ago a troubling discovery was made that could upend global ocean circulation, push one species of penguin to extinction, and change our planet’s climate forever.
In this episode of Weathered, Maiya May looks into the role sea ice plays in our global climate, and the threat that its disappearance poses to our natural world.
From emperor penguins, to sea level rise, to the slowing of the AMOC, these seemingly inconsequential chunks of floating ice could hold the key to our survival. And their loss could be a sign that we’ve crossed a tipping point in an already delicate region of our planet.
Climate scientists and oceanographers have been so concerned about the AMOCweakening and collapsing because of the Greenland ice sheet melting that we've ignored the threat to the Global Conveyor Belt current from melting in Antarctica. We can't do that anymore, not once the Antarctic sea ice began to shrink the same way that Arctic sea ice had been for decades. At least Antarctic sea ice growing will no longer be a viable climate change denial talking point. Small favors.
Follow over the jump for the most read and active posts about climate change and extreme weather during the 15th year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News.
Fossilized poop might seem gross, but coprolites give us critical information about how animals lived millions of years ago.
Hosted by: Reid Reimers (he/him)
That was a fascinating survey of the information derived from coprolites, once I can recommend to my students, although I'm not going to show it to them. Just the same, welcome to blogging as professional development.
Since the SciShow video overlaps with a Howtown video I featured, follow over the jump for the most read entries containing content from Howtown last year.
I've only celebrated Passover once before on this blog, Shortest lunar eclipse in a century on Passover eleven years ago, so I decided to observe it again by turning it into one of my drum corps holidays by featuring one of the most famous renditions of the theme to The Ten Commandments on a football field.
Follow over the jump for the rest of the most read holiday entries posted during the 15th year of this blog in lieu of my usual drink recipe.
You've heard of fake purses, and fake food, and fake concert tickets. But fake fossils? Turns out forging evidence of life in the ancient past isn't as uncommon as you might think. From another work by the infamous forger of the Piltdown Man to the carved footprints that fueled a conspiracy theory, here are seven of the weirdest fossil forgeries of all time.
Hosted by: Savannah Geary (they/them)
I knew about Piltdown Man, which is why I blogged about it twice, now a third time, but I had forgotten about Charles Dawson's other fossil forgery, the toad in the hole, which seems lazy in comparison. I hadn't heard about some of the others, particularly the augmented cheetah. Too bad — Acinonyx kurteni was a good name that is now invalid.
That completes the celebration of today's holiday. Follow over the jump for some of the most read holiday posts during the 15th year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News.
As of 11:59 PM EDT March 20, 2026, this blog had a lifetime total of 10,896,134 page views, 6,536 posts, and 4,274 comments. Minus the 5,222,122 page views, 6,168 total posts, and 4,180 comments as of just before March 21, 2025, that means this blog earned 5,674,012 page views and 94 published comments on 368 posts during the 365 days of the 15th year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News. My calculated page views round to the ~5,670,000 page views Blogger's counter showed during the past twelve months. I can't ask for any better given the level of precision available, so not only closer than last year, but as exact as I could measure. On the other hand, the 94 published comments are not at all close to the 125 comments Blogger showed on my dashboard. On the other hand, I can account for the 31 comment difference; all of them are spam that was never published or retroactively unpublished. The stats worked out this year!
Last year's trend of increasing page views continued. Not only did this past year's 5,674,012 page views on 368 posts during 365 days beat the year before's 758,914 page views on 370 posts during 365 days, it beat the year before that's 419,300 page views on 641,234 page views on 380 posts during 366 days. It also exceeded the page views during the entire preceding 14 years. Wow! I had written "May the trend" of "working less hard for more page views" continue, but this was beyond any of my expectations. The blog averaged 15,418.51 page views per post and 15,545.24 page views per day. That's nearly eight times as much as the 2,051.12 page views per post and 2,079.22 page views per day during the 14th year of the blog, the 1,687.46 page views per post and 1,752.01 page views per day the blog earned between March 21, 2023 and March 20, 2024 and the 1,106.33 page views per post and 1,148.77 page views per day between March 21, 2022 and March 20, 2023. I'm not expecting the trend of increasing page views per post and day to continue. I'd just be happy if the 16th year exceeds the 14th.
Both the published and total comments decreased from 123 to 94 and either 154 or 133 to 125, respectively. The published number is still above the 78 of two years ago, but the raw number has decreased from 199 through either 154 or 133 to 125. Since I don't have comment goals, I'm not concerned.
As for my commenters who aren't spammers, I'd like to thank them, beginning with continuing commenters Infidel753, Paul W., and Steve in Manhattan. I also want to welcome back K-dog and Degringolade, who didn't comment last year. Keep up the good work! I also want to thank Richard, Glen Tomkins, and fry1laurie for making their first posts here. Stick around! The exception is Riverboat Grambler, who pissed me off. Don't come back, Grumbler! Unfortunately, I seem to have lost longtime commenters Nebris, the first commenter on my blog, and Friend of the Court. In addition, last year's first-time commenters John R. Christiansen, E.A. Blair, and Steven C. Di Pietro didn't return. Come back, I miss you!
Follow over the jump for the rest of the analysis.
The Big One is coming and it could be far worse than anyone imagined.
The Cascadia Subduction Zone, just off the Pacific Northwest coast, is building toward a massive earthquake and tsunami. But new research reveals an even more terrifying possibility: widespread toxic spills, infrastructure collapse, wildfires, and deadly gas plumes. All triggered by a single seismic event.
In this episode of Weathered, we dig into the science behind the Cascadia Megaquake, why the Pacific Northwest is especially vulnerable, and how climate change could make it worse. We explore what you can do to stay safe and why your community might be your best line of defense.
Infidel753: The Portland metro area has two million people and Seattle is even bigger. Even if 125,000 people were killed on the Oregon coast and a similar number on the Washington coast, I would still expect the death toll from structural collapses and fire in Portland and Seattle to be much larger.
Coastal fatalities (Oregon): 4,800 (4,500 from tsumami, 300 from the earthquake itself)
I-5 corridor fatalities (Oregon): 400 (all from earthquake)
Coastal injuries (Oregon): 6,500 (5,000 from earthquake, 1,500 from tsunami)
I-5 corridor injuries (Oregon): 9,000 (all from earthquake)
Homelessness/needing shelter (Oregon): 520,000 (500,000 earthquake, 20,000 tsunami)
Coastal fatalities (Washington): 9,100 (9,000 from tsunami, 100 from earthquake)
I-5 corridor fatalities (Washington): 300-1,600 (300 earthquake, 0-1,300 tsunami)
Coastal injuries (Washington): 5,000 (2,000 earthquake, 3,000 tsunami)
I-5 corridor injuries (Washington): 7,400 (7,000 earthquake, 400 tsunami)
Homelessness/needing shelter (Washington): 415,000 (370,000 earthquake, 45,000 tsunami)
According to these estimates, more people will die from the earthquake along the I-5 corridor than along the coasts in both Oregon and Washington, but far more will die from the tsunami along the coasts alone (13,500) than the total that will die from the shaking throughout both states (1,100). So, no, the official estimates do not support your expectation that "the death toll from structural collapses and fire in Portland and Seattle to be much larger" than tsunami deaths on the Oregon and Washington coasts.
Infidel753: Very interesting links, thank you. I need to think further about this.
Me: Thanks for linking to the sources of these statistics and the blog as a whole in Link round-up for 18 January 2025. I'm glad to have informed you and your readers.
The statistics quoted are from a 2016 document, but the casualty numbers are higher than in the video, 43,800 total deaths and injuries in the document compared to "over 30,000 casualties" (total deaths and injuries) cited by Tina Dura of Virginia Tech. Surviving Cascadia also cites a 2022 study by Patrick Massey for FEMA that projects 1,100 earthquake-related fatalities, 13,000 tsunami-related fatalities, and 24,000 injured. The death count is substantially the same, but the number of injuries is less than the 27,900 predicted in the 2016 estimate, altough the 2022 report was for a February earthquake and tsunami. Casualties could be higher during the peak of tourist season. Cascadia Rising didn't list a dollar amount, but I can believe the video's estimate of $81 billion dollars of damage.
On the other hand, Luke Hanst of Portland State University added up to 2,500 deaths from toxic gas exposure resulting from burning fuel and chemical storage tanks and hundreds of thousands of people affected, adding tens of thousands of injuries. Even adding the 2,500 deaths to the 400 from the earthquake listed above for Oregon's I-5 corridor would not push it above the 4,800 deaths expected along Oregon's coast, but it does make the risk more even as well as much higher along the interior.
The video added two items of scientific interest, the effects of liquefaction and climatechange. I make a big deal of the former when I lecture about earthquakes, especially the 1964 Alaska Good Friday earthquake. I might show this video to my geology students just to reinforce the point. Climate change will make the subsidence along the coast, which the video in January's post showed happening in 1700, even worse.
For what it's worth, I've seen similar, if not the same, findings about lower crime rates and increased cooperation after natural disasters and wrote about them five years ago in Seeker/DNews is optimistic about how people would behave during the apocalypse. As I wrote then, "that's good news, even if it might not be good entertainment."
Still good news.
That concludes the latest installment in this series. Stay tuned for the first Sunday entertainment feature of July. Awardsshows!
NBC News National Political Correspondent Steve Kornacki joins Meet the Press NOW to discuss the early state of play in California's gubernatorial race as former Vice President Kamala Harris weighs a run for governor.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris would have a wide lead over the rest of the field if she were to enter the 2026 race for California governor, according to an Inside California Politics/Emerson College poll released Thursday. April 17, 2025.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris is the runaway front-runner in the California governor’s race – but voters are split on whether the failed 2024 Democratic presidential candidate should even enter the fray.
Harris has the support of 31% of Californians who plan to vote in the Golden State’s June 2026 gubernatorial primary election, according to an Emerson College Polling/Inside California Politics/The Hill survey released Thursday,
But half of likely voters, 50%, believe that the former vice president, California senator and state attorney general should not run for the governorship.
Harris’s closest competitors are former Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), who only mustered 8% support, and Republican Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco, who garnered a 4% backing.
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, a recent entrant into the race, received 2% support.
That's a really good preview image, but I'm suspicious of the channel itself. I wonder who's behind it.
Follow over the jump for a retrospective of the relevant top post plus the most commented posts between March 21, 2024 and March 20, 2025 for today.
We often hear industry and political leaders talk about how we need to balance the economy with the environment. The thinking goes something like this: environmental destruction is necessary to earn a living and make the things we need. But is this really true? Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant explores how we can approach the economy and the environment differently.
This video reinforces a point I've been making since the first year of the blog and even before that in my environmental science classes: "economy is dependent on society, which is in turn dependent on the environment. Without an environment, there is no society. Without a society, there is no economy."
...
I think the system needs to be reformed; the status quo is unsustainable, while scrapping our food, energy, and economic systems and starting over would be too disruptive.
This video provides an idea of how those reforms could work. It's also one I could show my students. Welcome to blogging as professional development.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant also pointed out the inequitable distribution of both harms and benefits from economic activity using the example of the port district of Wilmington in Los Angeles, which I can add as an example of environmentalracism. What struck me as hard as the life expectancy of residents of the port neighborhoods of San Pedro, Wilmington, and West Long Beach being eight years lower than Los Angeles County as a whole is that more people died from air pollution in L.A. County than from traffic accidents and crime combined. Yikes! Am I glad I moved out of there!
Follow over the jump for how today's top post earned its page views.
[Paramount+] released the teaser trailer for the upcoming third season of its hit original series STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS, coming this summer to the platform. Paramount+ previously announced the series has also been renewed for a fourth season, which is currently in production in Toronto.
In season three, when we reconnect with the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise, still under the command of Captain Pike, they face the conclusion of season two’s harrowing encounter with the Gorn. But new life and civilizations await, including a villain that will test our characters’ grit and resolve. An exciting twist on classic Star Trek, season three takes characters both new and beloved to new heights, and dives into thrilling adventures of faith, duty, romance, comedy, and mystery, with varying genres never before seen on any other Star Trek.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is based on the years Captain Christopher Pike manned the helm of the U.S.S. Enterprise. The series follows Captain Pike, Science Officer Spock, Number One and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise, in the years before Captain Kirk boarded the starship, as they explore new worlds around the galaxy. The new season is set to debut in 2025.
That's an interesting premise entertainingly executed. I'm looking forward to seeing how the crew gets out of this situation, as well as the rest of the ten episodes that will stream this summer.
Let's look at every holiday from Star Trek that we can celebrate in 2025.
Hearing that Frontier Day is April 13th reminds me that I already celebrate a space day that I declared in 2012, Apophis Day. Now I have two holidays to celebrate in eight days!
Hello and welcome! My name is Anton and in this video, we will talk about 10 exciting studies that won the Ig Nobel prize in 2024[.]
I agree with Anton; many of these are important studies, some of which may become stories I tell my students, at least for the next year or so I plan on teaching. The plant that mimics other plants, including plastic ones (Radiohead's Fake Plastic Trees, anyone?), dead trout and salmon swimming, and butt-breathing mammals are facts I can share with my Organismal Biology students. I can even use the last today, as I'm lecturing on the respiratory system in Human Structure and Function after lecturing on the digestive system last week — a transition! My geology students flip coins for an extra credit exercise simulating radioactive decay, so the fair coin finding will be a good story to share with them. Finally, I show age structures comparing Bihar and Kerala, the states with the lowest and highest literacy in India, and point out how illiteracy affects Bihar's reported age structure. The demographic research casting doubt on extreme age might enhance that story.
I hope my readers enjoyed today's excursion into "achievements that first make people LAUGH, then make them THINK." All of them are real research. No hoaxes today!
Follow over the jump for a retrospective of the five most read posts about holidays during the 14th year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News.
As of 11:59 PM EDT March 20, 2025, this blog had a lifetime total of 5,222,122 page views, 6,168 total posts, and 4180 comments. Minus the 4,463,208 page views, 5,798 total posts, and 4,057 comments as of just before March 21, 2024, that means this blog earned 758,914 page views and 123 published comments on 370 posts during the 365 days of the 14th year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News. My calculated page views are close to the ~757,000 page views and 133 comments Blogger's counter showed during the past twelve months. That was closer than last year, but not exact. I think that's because Blogger counts whole days, which started at 8:00 P.M. March 21, 2024, but my count starts 20 hours earlier. Blogger lost all of those ~1,900 page views from those 20 hours. I tested this hypothesis by multiplying the next day's 2,290 page views by 0.833 (20/24) and got 1,908. Close enough. I can't completely account for the ten extra comments. I deleted six and there were eight comments during the first three weeks of March 2024 that Blogger might have counted, but neither add up, literally. Maybe I'll figure it out next year.
Last year's trend of increasing page views continued. Not only did this past year's 758,914 page views on 370 posts during 365 days beat the year before's 641,234 page views on 380 posts during 366 days, it beat the year before that's 419,300 page views on 379 posts during 365 days. That means I'm working less hard for more page views, as the blog earned 2,051.12 page views per post and 2,079.22 page views per day during the blog year just ended. Both are more than the 1,687.46 page views per post and 1,752.01 page views per day the blog earned between March 21, 2023 and March 20, 2024 and a lot more than the 1,106.33 page views per post and 1,148.77 page views per day between March 21, 2022 and March 20, 2023. May the trend continue during this year just started.
While the published comments increased from 78 to 123, the raw number, including never released spam decreased from 199 to either 154 or 133. Still, the number of published comments increased to 123, just edging out the 122 of two years ago. Just the same, I'm getting less spam and more published comments. Since I don't have comment goals, I'm not concerned. I'd prefer fewer quality comments than a lot of spam.
As for my commenters who aren't spammers, I'd like to thank them, beginning with continuing commenters Infidel753, Nebris, the first commenter on my blog, Friend of the Court, and Steve in Manhattan. I also want to welcome back Paul W., who didn't comment last year. Keep up the good work! I also want to thank John R. Christiansen, E.A. Blair, and Steven C. Di Pietro for making their first posts here. Stick around! Unfortunately, I seem to have lost longtime commenter Narb Xorbian, the best man at my first wedding. In addition, last year's first-time commenters H-bob, tronvillain, August Johnson, Noah, Marc McKenzie, Realityhold, and my student Ecogranite didn't return. Come back, I miss you!
Follow over the jump for the rest of the analysis.
The 1700 Cascadia earthquake and tsunami was a massive natural disaster that reshaped the Pacific Northwest. Through tree rings, soil layers, and international collaboration, scientists have pieced together the exact timing of the event. As the region braces for another quake, can we prepare in time? Find out how new models and tsunami evacuation towers are helping coastal communities face the threat.
This video shows that it took the efforts of people in multiple disciplines, geology, biology, and history, to decipher the evidence and connect it all together into a coherent reconstruction of the event in 1700. It also shows, like the previous episodes, how people are preparing for the next event. One of those preparations are escape towers. As I wrote last year, "my first instinct if I can't get away from the shore would be to climb up, so I'm relieved to see people building vertical escape structures. Now to build more than three in the U.S." If they're all as well-stocked as the Shoalwater Tribe's, then the people should be in good shape to survive the tsunami.
Follow over the jump for the comments from last year's post.
The AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation) plays a crucial role in regulating global climate by transferring heat from the warm tropics to the North Atlantic, helping to stabilize temperatures worldwide. However, scientists have raised concerns that it may be slowing down—or even on the verge of shutting down—which could lead to severe consequences, such as more extreme weather patterns and rising sea levels.
This is not a new concern, as Al Gore described it in "An Inconvenient Truth." I asked about it specifically in the worksheet I used in one of my classes, which I reproduced in Hot (not): a cold blast from the past along with an answer.
What is the likely effect of the melting of the Greenland ice cap on ocean circulation and global climate?
In the movie, the idea is that the release of meltwater from a large glacial lake diluted the Gulf Stream, causing the water to become less dense and unable to sink to the bottom of the ocean off Greenland, jamming up the global thermohaline circulation and sending the planet back into an ice age for another thousand years. An analogous melt of water from the Greenland icecap, which is beginning to happen, would do much the same thing, slowing ocean circulation and cooling Europe. Both of those are indeed taking place.
The movie came out seventeen years ago and I wrote the above more than ten years ago. It's not as if we weren't warned.
Happy Throwback Thursday! Today's retrospective covers the most commented on entries during the blog's 13th year. The post with the most responses last year talked about technology. Hmm, communication using technology — I just watched a video about that, Be Smart asking Can AI Help Us Talk to Whales?
New technology is revolutionizing how we study and protect nature. In this video, we’ll learn how artificial intelligence is being used to decode the sonic landscapes of the ocean - specifically, whale song. That’s right, there may come a day soon where AI allows us to understand and talk to whales. But some scientists are saying: the question may not be CAN we talk to whales, but SHOULD we talk to whales?
Roger Payne and National Geographic's release of "Songs of the Humpback Whale" shows the power of music to not only make people aware of issues, but to change how they think and feel about them. That demonstrates why I write about entertainment as much as I do. Not only is it fun, it's important, too.
Blue whales are on the brink of extinction. Despite being the biggest animals to ever exist on Earth, they remain a mystery. To protect them, we first need to understand them better.
In our 14th Planet Wild mission, we’re using drones to drop camera robots on whales. Our goal is to find out what a day in the life of a blue whale looks like.
Special thanks to Cascadia Research for providing us with additional footage, taken under NOAA permit to John Calambokidis.
Additional footage by "World of Survival: Humpbacks–the Gentle Giants”, The world of survival show/ TV channel Anglia
First, A.I., now drones. Both show the importance of technology in advancing science.
Follow over the jump for the most commented on entries during the 13th year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News.
2024 was the warmest winter on record, so big winter storms are a thing of the past, right? Not quite…a new study reveals that there is a winter-weather trend that OVERPOWERS CLIMATE CHANGE. To better understand this, we are taking it back to March of 1993 to look at The Storm of the Century, which brought record breaking cold temperatures and 20 INCHES OF SNOW to ALABAMA! By going back, we can better answer questions like: What causes this set up to occur in our atmosphere? And why are we still seeing extreme cold and SNOW IN THE SOUTH? Buckle up as our experts talk the jet stream, polar vortex, and this stubborn cold exception so we can answer the ultimate question: Are these winter storms here to stay? Watch this episode to find out.
Long Beach, California. Home of one of the busiest container ports in the world, expensive housing, a very long beach, and...over 2500 active oil wells. Yes, you heard that right.
I worked on the constructionof L.A.'s subway, which intersected with the Long Beach light rail on the south side of downtown. At that time, the line's northern terminus was at that intersection. I'm glad to read that it was extended into the San Gabriel Valley to become the longest light rail line in the world.
As for all the oil wells, I'm not surprised. I grew up in Los Angeles and just accepted the pump jacks, which my family called grasshoppers, as part of the landscape. I expect a lot of them will be pumping oil for decades to come, regardless of how bad fossil fuels are for the environment in general and climatechange in particular.
That's it for the current post. Follow over the jump for a retrospective of the top post featuring CityNerd from the 13th year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News.
Normally, I'd tell my readers to stay tuned for highlights of tonight's Saturday Night Live except that I reached my page view goals for the month already, so I'm going to post something else for the Sunday entertainment feature. An retrospective of the top entertainment posts of the 13th year of this blog? That's certainly a possibility!
The only question is what new material I would use to lead into the look back. Since all the posts I'm featuring below the jump are about awards shows, I'm revisiting the most recent awards show I covered the Critics ChoiceSuper Awards. I already expressed my annoyance at no Star Trek show winning an award in 'Star Trek: Discovery' trailers for First Contact Day, so I want to use today's post to brag, sort of. Fortunately, I found an opportunity to do so that connects to a current movie.
I wrote "I'd get a kick out of MEGAN or Godzilla winning this award. Oh, no, there goes Tokyo. Go, go, Godzilla!" As the graphic above shows, I got my wish. On the other hand, I completely blew my pick for Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie, as I thought "it's between The Boy and the Heron and Poor Things with the latter favored." Nope, the third Oscar winner Godzilla Minus One won. Here are the paragraph announcing the movie winners from the press release.
Garnering two wins each, “Godzilla Minus One,” “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning,” “Poor Things,” and “Talk to Me” lead the film winners. “Godzilla Minus One” triumphed as the Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie and Godzilla was named the overall Best Villain in a Movie. Tom Cruise received Best Actor in an Action Movie for “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning,” while Rebecca Ferguson took home Best Actress in an Action Movie. For their roles in “Poor Things,” Mark Ruffalo was awarded Best Actor in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie and Emma Stone won Best Actress in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie. “Talk to Me” won Best Horror Movie and Sophie Wilde earned the award for Best Actress in a Horror Movie.
While I whiffed on Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Movie, I did call Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, and Talk To Me to win their awards. My wife and I finally watched Talk To Me last night and we saw why it won Best Horror Movie/Film here and at the Saturn Awards. It was smart and scary!
As for Godzilla Minus One, I'm looking forward to seeing it on my Saturn Awards ballot later this year, where I have it penciled in as my vote for Best International Film, along with Poor Things and The Boy and the Heron, which are my current choices for Best Fantasy Film and Best Animated Film, respectively. That written, I already think Poor Things will lose to the kaiju movie currently in theaters, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire for Best Fantasy Film. In addition Godzilla will face friendly fire, as I would not be surprised if both Godzilla Minus One and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire both earn nominations for Best Fantasy Film. Only if the kaiju fans split their votes in this category does Poor Things stand a chance of winning at the Saturn Awards, given that "the Saturn Awards are about entertainment not art, they don't care for subtle, and they love to stick it to the experts."
Godzilla is one of the most recognizable monsters in film, and he should be. After all, he is part of the longest running film franchise in the world, but you might be surprised to learn that his history in literature is just as prolific. Without his giant footsteps paving the way, we wouldn’t have the female kaiju Mothra, who is perhaps even more beloved.
In this episode, Dr. Zarka shows how kaiju are deeply rooted in past events in Japan including the deployment of nuclear weapons there during World War II. She explains how both Godzilla and Mothra serve as metaphors and looks at how these monsters continue to shed light on social history.
Dr. Z is in the middle of a series about Kong and has a review of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire up, which I'm saving until she finishes her series. I'm an environmentalist. I don't just recycle, I conserve my resources! Until then, I'm ending this section the way I opened it, with a quote from Blue Öyster Cult's "Godzilla."
History shows again and again
How nature points up the folly of man
Godzilla!
Follow over the jump for last year's top posts about entertainment in general and awards shows other than the Saturn Awards in particular.
With over 43 million Americans paying off student loans, John Oliver discusses how so many people have come to take on student loan debt, why it’s so hard to pay off, and what we can do about it, mama.
I'm lucky to have been able to get my education without borrowing, so I escaped student loan debt. My wife and daughter were not so fortunate, and my daughter is still paying hers off. Sigh.
I'm looking forward to Last Week Tonight's future examinations of the cost of college. Until then, follow over the jump for a retrospective of the most read entries featuring John Oliver during the 13th year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News.
As of 11:59 PM EDT March 20, 2024, this blog had a lifetime total of 4,463,208 page views, 5,798 total posts, and 4,057 comments. Minus the 3,821,974 page views, 5,418 total posts, and 3,979 comments as of just before March 20, 2023, that means this blog earned 641,234 page views and 78 published comments on 380 posts during the 366 days of the 13th year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News. My calculated page views are close to the ~640,000 page views Blogger's counter showed during the past twelve months, which I think covered April 1, 2023 to March 20, 2024, but wildly off from the 199 comments it counted during the same period. Blogger aggressively threw a lot of comments into the spam filter beginning about February 2023, including some that were not spam and which I had to approve to display again, which would explain the more than 100 comment difference. Blogger also aggressively held a lot of comments in the spam filter and never published them. That's O.K. I don't miss the spam.
I also don't miss the anxiety I was feeling when I wrote last year's post. This past year's 641,234 page views beats the year before's 419,300 page views on 379 posts between March 21, 2022 and March 20, 2023. It's also more than the 532,981 page views the blog earned between March 21, 2021 and March 20, 2022. Had I actually followed through on raising my page view goal to 25,000 per 29 days, which translates to 862 page views per day, I would have easily exceeded the 315,517 page view goal for the 366 days of the blogging year. Yay!
I'm also no longer working harder for fewer page views, as the blog earned 1,687.46 page views per post and 1,752.01 page views per day. That's much better than the 1,106.33 page views per post and 1,148.77 page views per day last year and the 1,452.26 page views per post and 1,460.22 page views per day the year before that. Whew. Still, I'm not tempted to increase my page view goals this coming year.
While the raw number of comments, including spam never released from the spam filter, increased from 168 to 199, the published comments remaining at the end of the blogging year decreased from 122 to 78. Since I don't have comment goals, I'm not concerned. I'd prefer fewer quality comments than a lot of spam.
As for my commenters who aren't spammers, I'd like to thank them, beginning with continuing commenters Infidel753, Nebris, the first commenter on my blog, Friend of the Court, and best man at my first wedding Narb Xorbian. Keep up the good work! I also want to thank H-bob, tronvillain, August Johnson, Noah, Marc McKenzie, Realityhold, Steve in Manhattan, and my student Ecogranite for making their first posts here. Unfortunately, I seem to have lost longtime commenters Paul W. and Sarnia Sam, while last year's first-time commenters Powers, Sicko Ricko, Expat, verbum, Buzzcook, Bruce.desertrat, and emjayjay didn't return. Come back, I miss you!
Follow over the jump for the rest of the analysis.
While tsunamis happen all over the world, really big ones are rare. But, they can be truly devastating. And what’s more, the West Coast of North America is overdue for a subduction zone earthquake and tsunami that has the potential to be the biggest disaster the U.S. has ever seen. So, what is the single most important factor determining whether or not YOU survive a tsunami? Watch this episode to find out.
Infidel753: Living in Portland, I worry about this a lot. I may actually move, if I can ever afford to. At least the apartment complex I live in is one of those "stick buildings", so it probably wouldn't collapse, but the disruption to water, sewage, transport, and everything else is likely to be horrific, and not quickly fixed.
Me: I can relate. Although they're down the list, earthquakes are one of the things I don't miss about California now that I live in Michigan. As I wrote last year: "the prospect of this quake has dissuaded my wife and me from moving to the Pacific Northwest when I retire." It might make you move out when you retire.
My wife and I just talked about this last week and it reinforced our decision not to move to Seattle or Portland, as lovely as those cities seem in Grey's Anatomy or Grimm — and that's even with the fairy tale monsters in the latter!
As for the answer to the question in the title, it's reaction time and my first instinct if I can't get away from the shore would be to climb up, so I'm relieved to see people building vertical escape structures. Now to build more than three in the U.S.
This concludes January's blogging. Stay tuned for February. Leap year month!
