It could be an unusually active seismic year, but that really does not mean anything. These things run in cycles and while truly full of sound and fury, signify nothing.

I have no new age prophecies although I am sure some will.
But the USGS says this is not an unusual year – on average we get 16 earthquakes of 7 magnitude a year – so we are on track thus far to have a normal year. The Icelandic explosion is also normal – at least 1 such explosion per year.
What is a bit unnerving about the Icelandic explosion is that it seems that when this volcano blows – the larger and potentially more dangerous volcano Kata usually blows a few months later. So this may not be a good year to plan a flight to northern Europe. Amazing how nature will remind us who really is in charge!
Read in today’s paper that the Prime Minister of Norway is sitting in a NYC airport – running the country by using his iPad.

The gigantic hell-spawned space alien would really like out of the planet’s core now, near as I can tell from that picture.
The fact that the Prime Minister of Norway is running his country from an iPad in a New York City airport is awesome. Probably not for him, but just the principle of the thing…

Luke 21:10-11 “Then he went on to say to them: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; 11 and there will be great earthquakes, and in one place after another pestilences and food shortages; and there will be fearful sights and from heaven great signs.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-TYo1LgHr4

So I’m trying to remember back to my undergrad geo minor, and as I recall there isn’t much that we know about why seismic activity increases. The relationship of seismic activity to volcanoes is a bit easier, though. In essence, the earthquakes plus pent up pressure can loosen material blocking the usual path of the magma. Once loosened, away it goes.

It hasn’t been an unusually ative seismic year. But by chance more of the activity (whose volume is quite average) has happened in areas inhabited by people, with nasty consequences that make the evening news. Volcanoes that erupt under the ocean and faults that cause major earthquakes in the deeps do not get much notice outsided the seismology community.

Well, there’s this:
http://www.volcano.si.edu/faq/index.cfm?faq=06
…and this:
http://www.volcanolive.com/world.html
…and from the Geology News blog:
“Simply put, there is absolutely nothing strange happening.”
Check out the data here:
http://geology.rockbandit.net/2010/03/01/has-there-been-an-increase-in-earthquake-activity/

This is what it signals:
http://www.businessinsider.com/1821-eyjafjallajokull-erupted-2010-4?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+clusterstock+%28ClusterStock%29

Read the prophecies of Edgar Cayce, he said that we would know the major part of the planetary pole shift is starting when the Iceland Volcano Blows…
He predicted many historical events…

I gotta admit that all of this geological activity tickles and old itch. I grew up in evangelical churches where the books of Hal Lindsey — The Late Great Planet Earth and others — were considered near sacred. There were girls in our youth group who were so convinced of the imminent return of Christ they went out and got married at 18 because they wanted to have that experience before the Rapture. I’ve always been a bit contrary and though at age 13 I also thought the Rapture might occur, I had no doubt that I would be left behind. Just in case I came home and found all my family gone, I always kept my backpack ready to go in my closet. Before the nukes started flying, I was going to high tail it for the Rockies, and hunker down and survive just like the kid in “My Side of the Mountain.” Thinking back on it now, I wonder why my mom never asked about my backpack. Maybe she figured I wouldn’t be Raptured. . .

Here’s my profound New Age and scientific take on it: some days you’re the pigeon and some days you’re the statue. When you’re born into a race of primates which lives on floating islands of rock on a sea of molten rock and iron, you takes your chances….

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!

Rod, I gotta say… it’s times like this when I miss your old blog. There would have been at least a FEW juicy religious prophecies on Crunchy Con… Thanks to John T. for the lone biblical reference… Tonight I’m feeling nostalgic for the poetic, visionary thinkers who used to haunt this spot. (Maybe it’s just the wine talking…)

I’m just scared of another one of these:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/states/events/1811-1812.php#december_16
That will be Katrina times 10.

Each volcano has an irregular cycle of its own, and a really big rumble sometimes triggers other volcanos or quakes that are “almost ready”.
It’s a good example of phase-locked astable multivibrators,
or in less technical terms, it’s like PMS in a sorority.

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!
——————
Droll. Very droll.

Ophu wrote, “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!”
Like the old Beagle Books ads for their Lovecraft reprints used to say, Not much is known of the Old Tongue except that it was heavily coated.

“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!”
That’s givin’ them that old-time religion!
Some months ago my son showed me a spot-on parody of a Jack Chick salvation booklet that featured a Cthulu evangelist.
Boy, just wait until Antarctica thaws. If that happens, slather yourself with A-1 and hope you get eaten first.

Volcanic-ash sunsets in the British Isles, from The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2010/apr/16/natural-disasters-iceland
Note especially the Star-Trekky view of Edinburgh.

While Jack Chick salvation booklets need no parody, the Cthulu evangelist was a riot.
All this sesimic activity indicates the core of our planet is molten likely due to breakdown of radioactive elements. The heat slowly convects to the surface causing these events. Due to a statistical phenomena known as clumping such events can occur together and appear to be correlated. Humans evolved to extract agency from correlated events due to the survival value, but this instinct misfires and we infer agency where none exists.
The God or Gods are not displeased with us, indeed it’s not all about us in the first place.

Who Will Be Eaten First?
http://www.piratejesus.com/nerdcore/data/cthulhu/

My fervent belief is that anyone who says they “know why” all the seismic activity is happening is making it up as they go along. Stuff happens – the earth is constantly evolving, changing, adapting. So rather than ask why, or pretending to know why, try to sort out what to do next.

Ask not what your planet can do to you, ask what you can do to your planet.
– Gaia, as channelled by me. Stay tuned for my next book “The Gaia Chronicles”, which will show that the planet has been speaking to us all along, and that all we need to do is listen if we want to know when the next rainstorm will happen, let alone a hurricane or earthquake.
Jaybird: Gesundheit!

I am envying the Irish and Brits those sunsets – the Edinburgh pic is a dream scape

I must say, I’m disturbed by the number of anti-Seismic commenters on this story: to the best of my knowledge, though money does indeed make the social world go around, its effect as an open-seisme upon geologic substrata is negligible…

http://www.raptureready.com‘s Rapture Index only went up by one point this week as a result of this volcano. Quite disappointing really. Note to Iceland: must try harder. The second coming of Jesus at least partially depends on your volcanic activity, apparently.

See this post by Israeli rabbi Lazer Brody. He argues that the ash over the UK may have been in reaction to the UK’s governments’ anti-Israel stance, in particular its view that the Western Wall is not properly part of Israel — they won’t even allow them to put the wall on tourist advertising in Britain. It may sound far-fetched, but I think it may be true. The Bible says, those who curse the people Israel will be cursed, and those who bless them will be blessed.
http://lazerbrody.typepad.com/lazer_beams/2010/04/the-long-arm-of-hashems-justice.html

Luke 21:10-11 “Then he went on to say to them: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; 11 and there will be great earthquakes, and in one place after another pestilences and food shortages; and there will be fearful sights and from heaven great signs.”
Which has only happened every year since the day Jesus was crucified.

There is an advanced species underneath us, they settled here over a hundred thousand years ago, they came to find shelter away from another advanced nomadic species who has been trying to wipe out them out. The species underneath us is preparing for an attack by creating military equipment from various materials and elements in the lithosphere. The species underneath us is using up so much of the lithosphere that it is offsetting the earth’s crust causing an abnormal amount of seismic activity…
Several thousand years ago, while our ancestors were just emerging among the nile and among mexico, the nomadic aliens came among earth, teaching our ancestors how to organize and conceptualize ideas into actions, helping us create huge structures such as pyramids, which are identical in egypt and mexico. They gave us communication and literacy from hieroglyphs, and if you look at these hieroglyphs you can see the teachings of the nomadic species. In the Mayan calender the date that is set for the nomadic species to return is 12-21-2012. They will discover the species underneath us and cataclysmic events will follow…

I think we all have a front row seat to “The in of the World”

There shall in that time be rumors of things going astray, and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things with the sort of raffia-work base, that has an attachment. At that time, a friend shall lose his friend’s hammer, and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before, about eight o’clock.

Not that you were looking for a “real” answer, but there does seem to be some correlation between seismic activity and the 11-year sunspot cycle.

I like the theory of the Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi, as reported by spongebobcrackwhore over at Ornery Bastard:
Apparently Sluts Cause Earthquakes.
As Benny Hill used to say whenever someone would correctly answer a question from him with a noun that sounded to him like “malarkey”, “balderdash”, &c., “It’s true I tell you!”