Human Earthquakes
This is the scene aboard American Airlines Flight 1561 from Chicago, just ten minutes before arrival at San Francisco's airport, when a Yemeni man attempted to storm the flight's cockpit. During the last few days, you may have noticed that people are beginning to share questions like, "Is there something in the air?" or "What's in the water?" Comments such as those usually alert us to the fact there seems to be a strange trend in the news reflecting outbursts of human behavior or what I like to call, "human earthquakes." There definitely are periods when humans appear to repeat patterns so similar that the copycat effect, behavior contagion, or some mysterious seismic forces seem to be at play. Are we in such a period? First, let us mention the prediction for a massive earthquake occurring today, May 11, 2011. Raffaele Bendani, an Italian seismologist, forecast in 1915 that a large earthquake would hit Rome on May 11, 2011. (Or will it hap...