A 5.2-magnitude earthquake centered near the southern Illinois-Indiana border rattled several states this morning, including Tennessee. Becky and I didn’t feel anything; the quake happened at 5:37 AM EST, when we were still asleep, and it didn’t rouse us. But some East Tennesseeans were awakened by the distant tremor.

Here’s a map showing the epicenter, and another map showing where people have reported feeling the quake, and how strongly (close-up here):

If you’re a Californian wondering how on earth something a puny as a 5.2 quake (or "temblor," as you guys say out there) could be felt so strongly, and in places as far afield as Chicago and Knoxville, it’s because, as explained here, "seismic waves in the East travel farther and pack more destructive
punches." The exact reason for this phenomenon is a topic of much debate among scientists, but "one explanation is that eastern geology is older and simpler,
with fewer faults in the ground to slow the travel of quake waves." See also here:

Earthquakes in the central and eastern U.S., although less frequent than in the western
U.S., are typically felt over a much broader region. East of the Rockies, an earthquake
can be felt over an area as much as ten times larger than a similar magnitude earthquake
on the west coast.

That point is graphically illustrated here.

Of course, this morning’s mini-quake is nothing compared to the Big One that will someday destroy Memphis and cause massive devastation all across the region.

P.S. Brian Neudorff has more, and some history.

P.P.S. Ann Althouse felt it. (Hat tip: InstaPundit, who didn’t.)

Hey, I thought of something non-political that I can blog about: pretty pictures! Those always work. :)

As a follow-up, sort of, to my shiny old cars post, here is my promised photo gallery of "Springtime in Knoxville." A few highlights:

That’s Neyland Stadium in the distance in that bottom picture, and the Tennessee River on the left… in case you were wondering. The middle picture is of Knoxville’s Krutch Park. And the top one was taken from a downtown parking garage. Those white trees are gorgeous (though they aren’t white anymore; they turned green a couple of weeks ago).

Anyway, again, the full album is here. It starts on March 6 and continues through April 9 (and I’ll add to it if I take more pictures that belong in it). Nothing photographically spectacular, IMHO, but some nice pictures anyway. It’s truly a beautiful time of year here.

Last weekend, Becky, Loyette and I went to "Harriman’ Cruisin 2008," a street festival in the kinda sorta nearby town of Harriman. Basically, Harriman Cruisin’ involves a bunch of car buffs parking their classic cars all up and down Main Street and letting people ooh and aah at them. Here’s my photo gallery.

As the title and the above photo suggest, it’s mostly pictures of shiny old cars, but there are a few miscellaneous shots of what is otherwise, frankly, kind of a depressed, Rust Belt-ish looking downtown area. (See, e.g., here and here.) In fact, if you look closely, you might see some small-town folk who look a little bitter and might well be clinging to religion and, er, antipathy to people who aren’t like them. ;)

Anyway, we had fun. Old cars are neat. We even saw a Ford Model A! Here, again, is the link to the gallery.

UPDATE: As noted in comments, the above-pictured car is (I think!) a 1959 Chevy Impala. Here’s an old "subliminal" TV ad for it, featuring Pat Boone and Dinah Shore:

Ain’t YouTube great?

John McCain did “Hardball” at Villanova today, and a student — in reference to the recent photos of Hillary Clinton doing (or possibly sipping) a whiskey shot at Bronko’s restaurant in Crown Point, Indiana — asked him, “I was wondering if you think that she’s finally resorted to hitting the sauce just because of some unfavorable polling. And I was also wondering if you would care to join me for a shot after this?”

Heh.

That reminds me: I have a proposal for Hillary Clinton. As you all know, I’ve soured on her rather severely in recent months, and at this point, I’d be pretty hard-pressed to vote for her under any circumstances. However, there is one thing that might make me change my tune. Hilldog, if you’ll go to The Backer, order one of their terrible yet potent Long Islands, and get yourself photographed and videotaped singing the “God Bless the USA” followed by the Notre Dame Victory March (yes, this would mean staying until — ahem — 3:00 AM), I might consider switching my allegiance. :)

P.S. Possible campaign ad: “It’s 3:00 AM, and your children are safe and asleep. But Hillary Clinton is wide awake, if slightly tipsy, singing patriotic music while swaying back and forth in a circle of townies* in South Bend, Indiana. Suddenly, a cell phone rings — the cab is here. Who do you want answering that phone? The elitist snob Barack Obama, who will jump in the cab at the earliest opportunity to get away from the ‘bitter’ townsfolk, and miss the Victory March? Or Hillary Clinton, the woman who respects your traditions, who’ll tell the cabbie to wait ten minutes so she can stay right through to the end of ‘Oh What A Night’? Make the right choice: Vote for Hillary Clinton on May 6. [slurred Hillary voiceover: ‘I’m Hilllary Clinton and I (hiccup) approve this message.’]”

*Why townies, you ask? Because the Domers are too “elitist,” of course! ;)

Joe Lunardi has published his initial, ridiculously early, meaningless yet fun, pre-pre-season 2009 Bracketology projections. (Hat tip: BK.) His #1 seeds are North Carolina, Duke, Texas and Pittsburgh. 2007 finalists Kansas and Memphis drop to #2 and #3, respectively, and UCLA plummets to a #7. w00t! :)

More importantly, Notre Dame is a #2 seed (without Gene Cross? Hmm…), Gonzaga is a #5, and USC is a #9. Frankly, those all seem high to me, but maybe I’m just a pessimist about my own teams. (Although, if so, it didn’t prevent my irrational Zag-xuberance last year.)

Tennessee falls all the way to #9… where they’re matched up in a brutal first-round game against #8 Davidson. (Stephen Curry FTW!) This year’s mid-major superpower that almost beat UT, Butler, is on the bubble but out, as are the Washington Huskies. The UConn Huskies, though, are sitting pretty as a #2 seed. Oh, and the University of Hartford Hawks, after falling one game short in 2008, make their NCAA Tournament debut in 2009 as a #16 seed. Hurrah!

Yeah, so, we have a college football season to start — and finish — before I’ll get really excited about any of this, but it’s fun to look ahead. :)

Notre Dame’s magical, unexpected run through ice hockey’s NCAA Tournament ended one step short of a national title, as Boston College beat the Irish 4-1 last night.

I neglected to post about this last night (sorry!), but on a different post, several commenters complained that the Irish got screwed by a wrongly disallowed goal that totally changed the momentum of the game. *sigh*

Regardless, and despite the loss, an amazing run for the Irish.

In the last half hour, a spooky sort of here-come-the-storms feeling has definitely settled over Knoxville. Tornado warnings off to the west. I'm heading home, and should beat the storms.

UPDATE: I’m home, in case anyone was worried. :) No major storms yet here, though I think Jay’s hometown of Loudon got pounded. [UPDATE: Apparently not.]

Looks like we may get some action in 30-45 minutes, but overall, the line of storms appears to be weakening. Indeed, thankfully, there are no more tornado warnings at the moment.

LATER UPDATE: The line of storms kind of fell apart as it neared Knoxville proper, so we were largely spared. But one isolated storm cell did move over a while later, bringing some heavy rain for a few minutes and briefly turning the sky a weird shade of yellow — I’m not sure what that was all about. Here are the “before & after” shots, at 8:02 PM and 8:07 PM:

Hmm… upon further review, sunset was at 8:07, so maybe the sunlight at 8:02 was somehow shining through the clouds and rain at some weird angle, producing the yellowness.

It was a bit spooky, though, regardless.

The field is set for the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella in New York City next Saturday! The event will be held at the Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, the 2,738-seat venue where the New York Philharmonic plays.

As I mentioned previously, the USC SoCal VoCals advanced to the finals for the first time ever by earning the West Region championship on March 15. At the time I wrote that, however, the identities of most of their competitors were still to be determined.

Well, the last semifinal was held six days ago, so now the full field is known. The VoCals will compete against Oxford University Out of the Blue (Western Europe champion), Northwestern University Purple Haze (Midwest champion), Florida State University All-Night Yahtzee (South champion), New York University N’Harmonics (Northeast champion) and Ithaca College Ithacappella (Mid-Atlantic champion).

You hear that, Kristy? USC vs. Ithaca! Oh, it’s ON!!

Fight on, Trojans! Beat the Seminoles, Wildcats, Violets, Bombers and… um… Oxons?

P.S. Here’s the official ICCA website, including a link to buy tickets. I wish I could go! Alas, I don’t think a random trip to New York City is in the cards. But if any of y’all are in the area, I’d recommend it. I’m sure it’ll be an amazing show.

P.P.S. Newly discovered site: The A Cappella Blog. Cool.

Notre Dame’s men’s basketball assistant coach Gene Cross, credited by some with turning Mike Brey’s team around over the last two years, has been hired by Toledo as their new head coach. (Hat tip: Chris A.)

Whenever I’ve eaten crow and praised Brey — whose first name, for blog purposes, used to be "Fire" — over the last two years, Becky has countered that "he has an awesome assistant coach," choosing to credit Cross rather than Brey for the Irish’s improvement. I guess now we’ll find out who’s right.

(Well, maybe. There is, of course, a third person whose arrival between the 2004-05 and 2005-06 seasons was also rather a big deal: Luke Harangody.)

Becky e-mails that The Weather Channel "is telling people in western Nashville suburbs to take cover." That would be because of the tornado warning for central Cheatham County. And that line of storms is headed our way. "Methinks it’ll be one helluva night," Becky writes. Indeed.

UPDATE: The big Dogwood Arts Parade in downtown Knoxville, scheduled for 7pm tonight, has been postponed to next Friday April 25 due to the approaching line of storms.

It's a beautiful spring day here in Knoxville, with forecast highs in the upper 70s. But, better enjoy it while it lasts; a wintry blast is coming, and by Monday the high will be around 40. Yikes!

The Frozen Four is underway, and Notre Dame leads Michigan 3-2 with 10:44 left in the second period. It was 3-0, but Michigan just scored two rapid-fire goals to get back in it.

Liveblogs here and here. The game is being televised live on ESPN2. Winner gets Boston College in the national championship game Saturday. GO IRISH!!! BEAT SKUNKBEARS!!!

UPDATE: Michigan tied it at 3-3… then Notre Dame just took a 4-3 lead with less than 9 minutes left.

UPDATE 2: Tie game 4-4, with 5:21 left. Ugh.

UPDATE 3: Overtime. And, alas, I have to go to bed. Go Irish.

UPDATE 4: IRISH WIN!!!! (Okay, so I didn’t actually go to bed…) WOOOHOOO!!!

UPDATE 5: The Associated Press is mean. Check out their lede:

Michigan has Notre Dame’s number on the football field. Not so the ice.

Jeez! Is that really necessary? The Irish hockey team makes it to the national championship game for the first time ever — upsetting the #1-ranked team in the country, and becoming the first #4 seed ever to advance this far — and the first sentence of the AP article takes an irrelevant shot at the football team? WTF?! Is Brian Cook working ghost-writing for the AP or something?

Moreover, it’s inaccurate. Yes, Michigan beat Notre Dame — badly — in 2007 and 2006, but the Irish won easily in 2005 (when Michigan was ranked #3 in the country, the Irish just #20) and in 2004 (when ND was unranked and Michigan was #7). Michigan won in ‘03; Notre Dame won in ‘02. That makes them 3-3 in their most recent series. (They didn’t play from 1998 to 2001.)

If you want to go back further, the Irish are 12-11-1 against the Skunkbears since the series was renewed in 1978 after a 35-year hiatus. Michigan leads the overall series 20-14-1, but somehow I don’t think the Wolverines’ 9-2 record between 1884 and 1943 was what the AP reporter had in mind.

In any event, 20-14 is hardly a massive advantage, and 11-12 isn’t an advantage at all, nor is 3-3. However you look at it, you simply cannot construct an accurate historical reality in which "Michigan has Notre Dame’s number on the football field," unless you’re looking only at the last two years, which is rather myopic and hardly a sufficiently representative sample to make such a sweeping statement. Neither team has the other’s number; they’ve been very even in recent years.

Maybe the AP’s hockey writers should stick to talking about hockey. How about that.

Anyway, here’s a better ESPN article about Notre Dame’s amazing run to the national championship game. In hockey.

P.S. Now, if you want to say that USC currently has Notre Dame’s number in football, thanks to six straight wins — five of them blowouts — that
would be accurate. :) Likewise, it would have been accurate to say that
the Irish had the Trojans’ number back during their 13-year undefeated
streak in the ’80s and ’90s. But no way does either ND or UM have the
other’s number right now.

The bad news: O.J. Mayo is going pro. (I’m shocked, SHOCKED.)

The good news: LSU has hired Stanford’s Trent Johnson, which obviously means they won’t be hiring USC’s Tim Floyd.

And here's the UT student paper. It notes that Pat Summitt is two championships away from tying John Wooden's record. Hey, this could be my opening to root for the Lady Vols without being disloyal. :)

The News-Sentinel front page.