august: cleveland county

Angela Merkel deserved to be Person of the Year. Her influence over world politics was unparalleled this year and has not met its equal on the European level for quite some time. However, previous Person of the Year essays have not always been so positive. Although the choice was sound, it could also have been tempered with a slightly larger dose of reality.

After a seemingly unending period of construction, part of the new InterCity Express train line that will eventually connect Berlin to Munich via Erfurt is finally finished! Now you can travel from Erfurt to Leipzig in less than an hour, and by the end of 2017, the travel time from Berlin to Munich is only going to be four hours, which is two hours less than it was when I first visited Germany in 2012.

You can watch a German news video about the event here.
This project is part of German Unity Transport Project 8, whose website is in both German and English. In addition, the new train line is part of a wider European Union effort to increase ease of transit within Europe.

When I was living in Erfurt, the train station had to be closed on holidays several times in order to get the part of the tracks immediately surrounding the train station put in place. This led to an interesting experience - Deutsche Bahn (the train company) had to bus people from Erfurt to Weimar or Erfurt East in order to catch trains from these smaller stations. The buses were quite crowded, which made for a memorable trip.

It's an exciting time for Erfurt. Once finished, the city will finally be on the line between Munich and Berlin. Up until now, that route passed through the smaller university town of Jena instead. This makes it a much more enticing spot for businesses since it will finally have great train connections to match its regional airport, which offers flights to London and Majorca, and the large amount of industrial space that is available on the city's outskirts.

Erfurt's train station, September 2013

Here's Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson to tell you what to do in the event of an earthquake. Instead of stop, drop and roll, the catchphrase is drop, cover, and hold on. You should drop to the floor, cover your head and neck, and then hold on to a sturdy object. It really isn't that different from a tornado drill, except you can be upstairs for this. I'm not entirely sure what I would hold onto in my apartment filled with lightweight objects (my desk?), but it's still nice to know.

Ready.gov also says that if you are in bed, you should stay there during the earthquake.

If you're outside, stay away from possible sources of debris. If you're in your car, pull over when it's safe to do so.

In addition to this, the Red Cross says that standing in doorways does not make you safer than anywhere else in the house.

Also, if you're in a trailer or a building "unattached to its foundation," the Red Cross says you're at additional risk. (FEMA has some resources for people that own their dwelling who wish to make it more earthquake safe.)

Why is this happening to us now?

Some studies show a link between increased fracking (a method of natural gas extraction) and increased earthquakes. A report in MIT Technology Review found that "nearly all earthquakes were within two miles of high-volume injection wells." Some wells, however, have never triggered a seismic event.

Bloomberg published an article in October 2015 saying that these earthquakes are a threat to national security since much of the nation's oil runs through Oklahoma. If important oil centers such as Cushing were to be harmed, it could affect the entire country's oil supply.

RT, the always questionable Russian news organization, had a field day with Oklahoma's earthquakes and fracking.

The Oklahoma Corporation Commission did call for disposal wells near the epicenter of strong earthquakes to be shut down and others to decrease their volume follow this week's earthquakes.

I'm not a geologist by any means, so if you have more information on this subject, let me know!
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Links:
Red Cross
Ready.gov
FEMA
If you feel an earthquake, help the USGS out and report it!
Image source: Flickr user Andy Maguire, used under CC 2.0.

The German television station Das Erste's news program, tagesschau, has started a version of their 100 second news broadcast online with subtitles in Arabic and English for migrant and refugee viewers. Both are silent with subtitles, but it is a welcome gesture nonetheless. The broadcast will be updated twice a day on weekdays and once a day on weekends and holidays. The original German broadcast is one of my favorite news sources, so I'm glad that English and Arabic speakers can access it now!

Here's a link to the article (in German).

tagesschau in Arabic here.
tagesschau in English here.

Today, many leading officials from many states have come to the conclusion that it is too difficult to sort Syrians seeking asylum from terrorists in disguise. These people think that the United States is putting itself at risk by accepting refugees from Syria. Perhaps they are right; you can never say never about these sort of things.

However, these people, who include my governor and several of my facebook friends, seem to be overlooking three major points:

It is extremely difficult to enter the United States as an asylum-seeking refugee. The US State Department lists the average processing time for an asylum seeker as 18-24 months. The backlog is enormous. The U.S. Code specifically prohibits individuals with a history of persecuting other individuals from applying for asylum. (This probably wouldn't discourage a terrorist, but it is still important to note.) These individuals must also be interviewed by a busy case worker who may only have four hours to review the entire case, including the interview, which means that any inconsistencies often result in rejection.

In September, President Obama only promised to take in 10,000 Syrian refugees next year. That is not a significant population when one considers the population of the United States (322 million). This is also not very significant when one considers the number of American citizens who engage in activities such as school shootings that incite terror each year.

Finally, if you look at Germany, these worries begin to seem a bit silly. Only one terrorist attack has taken place this year in Germany, and this was carried out by a German who injured only one other person (a policewoman). This man claimed to be an Islamist although this was disputed. Before the massive influx of refugees began in Germany in 2015, there were already over 226,000 people seeking asylum and over 216,000 additional refugees in that country.* If the amount of terrorists hiding among the Syrian refugees is as high as some seem to believe, wouldn't there have been an attack in Germany by now?

If you look at all the research and come to the conclusion that refugees should not be allowed in the United States, that is your right, but please do your research before coming to a conclusion.
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*Note: this source was last updated December 2014
Image source: Wikimedia, uploaded by Haeferl on February 16, 2013, used under creative commons.