Whoa Trippy.

Exactly 20 minutes after I started writing my 20:03 post last night (18/1) the US Geological Survey announced that a 7.4 magnitude struck the Baluchistan province in Pakistan. Observers in the region later confirmed that significant, earthquake-like, geological event took place in that region at that time. Although a 7.4 magnitude earthquake is quite large it's epicentre occurred in a vast area of unpopulated desert meaning that no-one was even knocked off their feet let alone killed in the incident.

Even so with the Chinese President meeting the American President in Washington this was possibly the worst place on earth for an earthquake to strike. Back in the 1970's when Pakistan was developing it's nuclear weapons program it actually used the Baluchistan desert area to test it's nuclear bombs. So any discussion about shock waves in the area automatically touches on issues of nuclear security, India/Pakistan relations and Iran. Also while the historical credibility is open to some debate there are those who claim that like Kurdistan Baluchistan is actually an independent nation made up of bits of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. Over the years literally everybody from Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Britain, India, the USA, Russia, the Taliban and Israel have all provided support to the Baluchistan independence movement in order to help destabilise Iran, Pakistan or Afghanistan. So any discussion about the region automatically opens up a million and one unsightly arguments about espionage, deception and secret military operations.

So I apologise for sounding like a hippy but excluding a convoluted conspiracy theory involving secret, underground nuclear tests it seems to me that this earthquake was the environment's way of announcing that it's held a meeting about this global warming thing and decided that it's true. Therefore it would prefer it if the USA and China, as the only two nations with the ability to accurately measure global temperature, could possibly find a way of jointly releasing their climate data for public scrutiny as part of the United Nations process on climate change. Obviously not by the end of this current round of talks but ideally before the start of this years COP17 Summit.

Also I'm trying to work out if I'm getting more or less healthy. You see I feel much more tired then I did at this point last year but I also feel as though I've done much more work then I'd done by this point last year. Speaking of which are these US/China talks really going on until January 22nd? It's just I really should start a discussion about the situation in Tunisia and that is going to have to touch on Iraqi reconstruction post-invasion so I really can't think of a way not to make it controversial.