Daily Archives: December 27, 2004

Lynda, Sharon, Matt, Evie and I went to Chez Gerard tonight for post-Christmas nosh. Others were invited but were otherwise engaged, or still tied to relatives, or something.

We got the broody waitress, so service was good: Sharon could just wave Evie in her general direction and we’d get some attention.

My meal was pretty good: French onion soup (heavy on the onion and the bread; marshland rather than garden pond) and a puy lentil casserole with a nice bite to it, looking like a huge chilli seen from across the room. Good anti-Christmas (but nicely warming) food. I feel like going back again soon and eating exactly the same thing.

Avaragado’s rating: 9 on the Schmichter scale

I emailed The Guardian and the BBC today. I’ve been irrationally aggrieved by their continued use of “9.0 on the Richter scale” for the recent earthquake.

It’s not the Richter scale: that scale goes bonkers above about magnitude 7. The 9.0 that’s being quoted is actually the moment magnitude (which, by design, corresponds pretty closely to the Richter scale until about magnitude 7, but diverges above).

Saying “Richter scale” is just journalistic sloppiness: assumption rather than investigation. Yes, this is common; but that doesn’t mean I have to let them get away with it. I’m not expecting anything to change as a result, of course.

I decided not to moan about the redundant use of “tsunami waves”:

tsunami: n., pl. tsunamis. A very large ocean wave caused by an underwater earthquake or volcanic eruption.

In other natural disaster news: 1-in-37 chance of asteroid impact on Friday April 13, 2029 that would devastate thousands of square kilometres (based on observations at time of writing).