Before my blog on earthquakes, two newsworthy items: The lull in the Iran War is over.  Iran lobbed missiles at American bases in the Middle East. Here is the backdrop: Way back in February, Netanyahu and Trump felt that, if they could surprise Iran with a serious series of bombardments, they could assassinate the Supreme Leader, plus many dozens of top government leaders, stimulating the people to rebel and overcome.  Israel and the USA could then swoop in, establish a new government, and totally demolish any nuclear ambitions. The USA/Israel did succeed in killing Ali Khamenei and 53 leaders.   Here is the complete list . However, Iran knew someday this would happen, and they organized a plan to take control of the Strait of Hormuz, and if necessary, also the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Here is the current situation. The people did not rebel, a new government formed and Iran has been able to maintain control over the two oil flow choke points. They also are not idiots....

Wednesday is my sci-tech day.  With the recent passage of   Richard Garwin,   I'll assess where we are today on the Hydrogen Bomb, for he was the individual who was in charge of building the first one in 1951, at the age of 23.  Yes, he lived to be 97. My only link to nuclear energy is that I twice worked under Edward Teller at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  But this was in the 1970's, and for half a century I haven't done much in this field.  In any case, at LLNL I was with the laser fusion program.  Teller was not only the father of the Hydrogen Bomb, he also was director of this lab, where  John Nuckols  had developed a process to use a laser to produce fusion for power. Teller came to Hawaii in the 70's, proposing a bank of wind turbines at the top of the Koolaus.  This was so long ago that Google can't find that photo, which was on the front page of one of the local newspapers.  While there, I joined him and Momok...

So where are we on  China tariffs ? Trump has enacted new blanket tariffs of around 20% on top of existing 10% duties that went into place during Trump's first term. China has responded with up to 15% duties on US farm goods such as chicken and pork, which went into effect Monday, March 10. Said Trump yesterday:   Xi "and top people underneath him" will come to the U.S. in the "not too  distant future," Trump said. He did not provide more details about the potential meeting, including when it may be held and his hopes for a meeting with Xi.  He  last visited the U.S. in 2023, when the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) held a summit in San Francisco. What about TikTok?  Here is  what I said about TikTok in 2021 : TikTok is a video-sharing social networking service started in 2017 by Chinese company ByteDance.  The video performance tends to be short, from 15 seconds to three minutes.  After you watch this supposedly   top ten ...