Earthquake News

Earthquake News, Federal officials issued a tsunami advisory for the California coast after a 7.9 temblor struck American Samoa earlier .

Officials said that they don’t believe coastal regions are likely to suffer much damage but that some beaches could see higher-than-usual tides about 9 p.m. Pacific time. Curt Kaplan of the National Weather Service in Oxnard said the seismic activity could bring waves a foot higher than normal.

“This is an advisory, not a warning,” he said. “But if I were on the [immediate] coast, I would move inland.”

He said “light fluctuation in tides and currents” are expected and could last for several hours.

The weather service issued a statement that said in part: “A Tsunami Advisory means that a tsunami capable of producing strong currents or waves dangerous to persons in or very near the water is imminent or expected.

Significant, widespread inundation is not expected for areas under an advisory. Currents may be hazardous to swimmers, boats, and coastal structures and may continue for several hours after the initial wave arrival.”

The quake struck about 10:45 a.m. about 4,000 miles from Los Angeles, and officials in American Samoa have reported some fatalities.

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Earthquake News was first posted on September 30, 2009 at 6:17 pm.

Google Wave update

Google Wave, Google Wave Will Invite Volunteers To Begin Preview, Starting Wednesday, September 30 Google’ll be sending out more than 100,000 invitations to preview Google Wave to:
* Developers
* The first users who signed up and offered to give feedback on wave.google.com
* Select customers of Google Apps

Google Wave update Source

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Google Wave update was first posted on September 30, 2009 at 7:26 pm.

Pink Toed Tarantula

Pink Toed Tarantula, There’s a lot of searching going on for information about the pink toed tarantula.

Simply put it’s a species of tarantula which, when adult, has pink feet: there, bet you couldn’t guess that from the name!

Actually, if looks very cute (if you’re into spiders that is) and the babies are even more so: the colouration reverses as they mature. So the baby ones are pink all over but with dark little toes.

The reason they’re so popular as pets is that they’re very calm and rarely attack. They cannot, unlike many other species of tarantula, shoot their hairs into things, although  the hairs on their abdomen can cause irritation and an allergic reaction if you happen to be allergic to them.

Much of the searching going on is for “pink toed tarantula bite” and one would assume that someone’s woried about having been bitten. In humans this isn’t a problem: about equivalent to a wasp sting.

Although do note, there are humans who are sufficiently allergic to wasp stings (so called anaphylactic shock) that one can kill them. So while the pink toed tarantula is not dangerous, just irritating, to most of us, this isn’t true for everyone.

If you’d like to see why people keep pink toed tarantulas as pets, watch this video of one dining.

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Pink Toed Tarantula was first posted on September 30, 2009 at 8:09 pm.