After I posted I realized my comment on Californians sounded a bit harsh.

I've lived in California a few years, the last time within 200 yards of the coast at Port Hueneme. In many ways it's a great place. Super. I loved the winter storms. You could put on a wet suit, head out into the ocean, and play in the surf. The waves would toss you, roll you around, it was like a crazy elevator. The slope was gentle and sandy, and if you got out far enough there didn't seem to be any problem with getting bashed up.

The inability to ever get away from people finally got to me. I mean, there was nowhere to go where there weren't people. Nice people, decent people, kind people. But people. I think that's a quirk of mine, wanting to be able to do that. Not necessarily do it, but be able to. And the weather. Either completely sunny, or a dull, gray, cloudy overcast which never quit.

I don't think we went 10 minutes without hearing a siren of some sort. Drive by shootings were a sport, much like throwing rocks at mailboxes had been when I was a kid. I saw more bars over windows (especially in the poorer areas, which I thought was odd) than they have at Pelican Bay.

The building in flood plains and the building of cabins on Forest Service property where in the normal course of events the rivers ARE going to flood and the forests ARE going to burn is criminal. Far more of a conscious decision to lose everything than living in an earthquake zone. Putting people to the task of making extraordinary efforts to save those houses are ridiculous. If a public agency tries to limit building, the developers sue. And win.

And following a predictable, understandable, foreseeable fire or flood the folks get on TV crying that they lost everything, the memories of a lifetime, the pictures of their kids, all I've worked for, moaning for 5 minutes followed by 10 seconds of a brave "but we'll go on".

Hell, if I had a problem here, and the dog, cat and I got out, they can have the rest. What isn't junk will be sooner or later anyway.

Oh, yeah. What I started out to say, besides apologizing for my unnecessary harshness re California. I wonder how many of the people who are seriously concerned with asteroids slamming into Earth (a real concern, I know) live along fault lines?

Arf