As my housemates and I sat around the dinner table tonight, we heard a loud bang and then felt some quick shaking. It was an earthquake, though in the seconds after the rumbling, I fought hard not to go into a state of surreal denial. What did we have to do next? Should we stand in the doorway? What's the chance of an aftershock? When a minute or so had passed without any tangible shakes, I pulled out my Treo 300 and surfed around to find some info on the earthquake. It wasn't easy to find any information immediately after a quake, at least from a little cellphone/web browser; I did finally land on the "Most Recent Event" ShakeMap page. Yes, indeed, there had been a quake 6 km SE of Berkeley.

Another wakeup call, no doubt. The power outages out east already made me wonder how prepared we are for natural disaster. It's time to double check our preparations.

This evening, my housemate Ildi asked me whether I had read Jon Carroll's column from yesterday. "He mentions weblogs." Of course, I had to look up the piece, which starts:

I suppose blogs have had their day as a populist phenomenon. Democratic candidates for president have blogs now, and that's pretty much the death knell for cutting-edge status. If John Kerry has one, it's not a trend, it's an appliance.

But I think that's true only of blogs produced in the United States. In other countries, the Internet is still a revolutionary tool, a place for information censored in every other medium in the nation. Vox populi, and no pop-up ads. It's 1991 all over again.

Carroll goes on to commend Baghadad Burning, a blog that comes ostensibly from Iraq. "Oh, isn't that the blog that Lloyd mentioned on his blog recently?" -- yes, indeed.

Now that both Ildi and Lloyd have referred me to the same Carroll column, I am paying attention....

So often these days, having something mentioned by one friend is not enough for it to register. Once two friends independently mention a website or new item, then my attention becomes engaged. I'm a bit sad about this reality; shouldn't the recommendation of one friend enough for me to do something? Well, maybe -- but I'm just in dire need of my filters.