No…your Eyewitness ain’t talking about pizza crust – as to whether you like it thick or thin – on which his favourite toppings are to be spread!! Incidentally, have you noticed that even though pizza’s supposed to be Italian, every country plops on toppings that tickles THEIR local tastebuds?? Yes, dear reader, Koreans serve pizza with kimchi on top and Indians with curry!! But the crust stays the same – thick or thin!!
Now you may be wondering how pizza – pronounced “peet-za” thank you!! – got into your Eyewitness this morning!! Well, it’s as good a place to start as we try to digest the news that southern Trinidad was raised TWENTY FEET higher in the wake (wave?) of the earthquakes that brought down all those buildings across the waters in Venezuela. As he tried to make sense, it’s a good thing he liked Geography back during his High School days – as opposed to Algebra and its quadratic equations, thank you!! – and that it included a bit of geology involving earthquakes!!
It seems that while we talk about walking on “solid earth”, the latter is actually made up of a crust – yes, that’s the name – that’s floating on an interior core of molten lava after it cooled eons and eons ago!! Which is about how long his pizza crusts takes to cool before he can plunge his slice into his (watering) mouth!! Anyhow in the beginning, the crust was one huge supercontinent called Pangea – surrounded by water. But it then broke up and started to float apart assisted by the spinning of the earth. Africa floated westward away from South America and India floated westward away from Africa and crashed into Asia!! Right now the entire East Africa is splitting apart along the aptly named, “Rift Valley”!!
And the parts of the crust that move – dubbed tectonic plates – have continued to do so!! So the Venezuelan earthquakes are due to a South American plate moving northwards- which then bumped into the Caribbean plate on which T&T rises!! And which was then bumped up TWENTY FEET!! Over time, it’s gonna continue rising and who knows, might become mountains!! After all after India collided into Asia, the section that hit rose to form the HIMALAYAS!! With Mt Everest 29,031feet eight inches – and growing one-eight of an inch annually!!
Lucky for us in Guyana, we’re on a section of the crust – Amazonia – that’s pretty stable and at worse we might get some slight tremors from nearby earthquakes – like the latest Venezuelan’s. We’re thus doubly lucky in that by also not being in the hurricane belt, we’re spared both disasters. The Caribbean snickers at our squalls!!
But then, unlike them, we suffered through twenty-eight years under Burnham and the PNC!!

…to protect
Your Eyewitness notes some voices raising concerns over that Canadian company – having taking over ownership from a Singaporean one that had done the same with the original (different!) Canadian one- starting production. Now there’s nothing we can do about the mining now – since they have a valid license – unless we ban all uranium mining in toto!! Which mightn’t send the right signal to investors who we’re wooing right now!!
What we CAN do, however, is insist the company complies with all the rules and regulations that were built into the contract to protect the workers from the well-known unique dangers of uranium mining – due to the radioactive nature of the element!! When the ore is in proximity to workers at any stages of extraction they must wear proper protective clothing. There’s also the radioactive radon gas that’s emitted from uranium breaking down.
The bigest challenge will be to sequester the area mined and tailings dropped in perpetuity – since even trace amounts of uranium are carcinogenic!!

…from runnings
The AG’s warning that traffic cops must not haul errant – but ticketed – drivers to the police station removes the biggest weapon that is brandished from the latter’s arsenal to extract booty for fried rice and other top-ups!!

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