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Mudslide

Watch out, mysophobes! History’s worst mudslides, the world’s largest mud volcano, and man-made lakes that failed epically, All this plus how to survive a mudslide plus “Lesser of Two Evils”: would you rather be caught in a mudslide or have to eat a head made of frozen blood?

Music: “Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall” by The Ink Spots with Ella Fitzgerald

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Romancing the Stone
Toren: 4/10
Joe: 6/10
Kevin: 7/10

16 Responses

  1. Mudslides?!? Let the poo jokes begin!

    You mentioned the possibility of a mudslide on the North Shore. Well it already has happened. A pretty serious one too. I was living in England when it happened. I got to work and my coworkers were asking me if anyone I knew was hit. Here’s the story…

    Canadian mudslide leaves one dead
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4191387.stm

  2. Mudslides?!? Let the poo jokes begin!

    You mentioned the possibility of a mudslide on the North Shore. Well it already has happened. A pretty serious one too. I was living in England when it happened. I got to work and my coworkers were asking me if anyone I knew was hit. Here’s the story…

    Canadian mudslide leaves one dead
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4191387.stm

  3. Oh wow the lesser of two evils got me.
    All of that headcicle talk made me gag.

    Incidentally I have swallowed enough blood to make me throw up.
    FYI: Semi digested blood comes out in a mixture of black and red chunks.
    Kinda like the way sulfuric acid will cook egg protein, your stomach acid make tiny wee scabs out of the blood one may ingest.

    You might get lucky enough to have it come through your nasal passage on the way up too, that’s something real special!

    1. +1 for the Lesser of Two Evils – that’s got to be the best of the decade, let alone the best of the season!

  6. Hey, thanks for including the Ciudad Vieja story! One note on that, given the comments in the show.

    Ciudad Vieja is the name the town got after the capital was re-established elsewhere. It means old city. They moved to the town now called Antigua Guatemala, which of course is also a nickname turned real name, because it was abandoned after a massive earthquake in the 1770s. Today it is a charming tourist town with lots of colonial architecture, precisely because it was abandoned and then revitalized, rather than turning into a huge modern city. You can see the Volcanes de Agua y Fuego from the city. The classic tourist shot of the city is through the arch of a nunnery towards Agua, while you will typically see smoke from Fuego during your stay. Here’s my take on it

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/33306215@N06/3939667603/in/photostream

    I love Antigua, and recommend it if you ever get down that way.

    Ciudad Vieja in Guatemala (there is one in El Salvador, where I did archaeological work) used to be Santiago de los Caballeros. While the Spanish seat of government went to the new city, now called Antigua, Ciudad Vieja became to some degree the home of the native allies of the Spaniards, the conquistadores mejicanos that were the bulk of the invasion force in Central America (having come from Mexico).

  7. And yeah, I was no fan of Romancing the Stone. It seemed a bit witless, and as noted cheap, and my intense dislike for Danny Devito in most of his roles does not help. The one great part is running into the drug lord “The Joan Wilder?!”

  8. And yeah, I was no fan of Romancing the Stone. It seemed a bit witless, and as noted cheap, and my intense dislike for Danny Devito in most of his roles does not help. The one great part is running into the drug lord “The Joan Wilder?!”

  9. It was nice to hear Kevin pull that episode. Are mudslides a self-interest, or was it your turn in the Big-Chair?

    1. It was my turn in the big boy chair. That, and I saw the opportunity for pop quizzes, and I love conducting pop quizzes. (who doesn’t?)

  10. A few years back there was a house here in Portland, Oregon that slid off the side of the hill and fell into some other houses below it in the wee morning hours. I was living about a half mile away at the time, and a few days after the event I snuck over there to see the landscape carnage: it was pretty awesome!! The story that went around was that the people living there left the hose running for an extended period of time (like, days!); then it rained (as it is apt to do here in Portland) and it softened the earth to the point that it just gave way. The house’s owners had a legal battle with the insurance company over whether the damages were covered, and whether the cause was officially a “landslide” or a “flood”.

    Not sure how accurate that is, but here’s a few articles on the event that I found:
    http://www.komonews.com/news/local/30621959.html
    http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/10/southwest_portland_home_swept.html
    http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2010/04/southwest_portland_couple_whos.html

  11. A few years back there was a house here in Portland, Oregon that slid off the side of the hill and fell into some other houses below it in the wee morning hours. I was living about a half mile away at the time, and a few days after the event I snuck over there to see the landscape carnage: it was pretty awesome!! The story that went around was that the people living there left the hose running for an extended period of time (like, days!); then it rained (as it is apt to do here in Portland) and it softened the earth to the point that it just gave way. The house’s owners had a legal battle with the insurance company over whether the damages were covered, and whether the cause was officially a “landslide” or a “flood”.

    Not sure how accurate that is, but here’s a few articles on the event that I found:
    http://www.komonews.com/news/local/30621959.html
    http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/10/southwest_portland_home_swept.html
    http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2010/04/southwest_portland_couple_whos.html