The little tsunami that wasn't

In 1960, Hilo caught some damage from a tsunami caused by an earthquake in... well... Chile, but fifty years later, the water just sloshed around in Hilo Bay like tipping an old tin bath tub back and forth a couple times.

Na'atheless, our tubes were clogged all morning with breathless halipocalypsis from Fox Snooze, CNN, MSNBC, etc., with cameras urgently scanning the horizon for the Big One. Naturally, the media, who'd just got caught dropping non-existent dead donkeys every fifteen minutes, were not happy with those scientists who (rather responsibly, I thought) issued a tsunami alert. But from the tone and tenor of the dancing urgency of the gotta-go-now TV coverage, nothing less than The Wrath of Neptune would have satisfied our periwhites anyway.

Greatest non-event since Dan Rather called the 2000 election for Al Gore.

In similar news, there's evidently a new iceberg the size of Luxembourg calved off Mertz Glacier on the coast of Antarctica, part of a vast pinball game called (you guessed it) global warming. The new one got clocked by B9B, another speed demon big boy berg. Look out Patagonia, it's headed your way!!!