How did it feel for you? Was it scary?

Why did a relatively minor earthquake just hit the US east coast? Tracy Grant attempted to explain this rare event to small children in the Washington Post:

How did it feel for you? Was it scary? Cool? A little bit of both?

...The U.S. Geological Survey, an agency that keeps track of earthquakes, offers a good way of thinking about earthquakes. Put your fingers together as if you’re going to snap them. When your fingers are together, they don’t move up and down or side to side, but when you snap, your fingers move and slide apart. The same thing happens with pieces of the Earth’s crust. Most of the time, the Earth’s rocks are together, just like your fingers, but in an earthquake, the rocks slide apart. 

Joseph Farah of World Net Daily had a stab at explaining the event to the sort of grown-ups likely to vote for a Tea Party candidate:

Occasionally God really does shake things up as a sign to us of the consequences of disobedience and indifference to our Creator.

Yes, I really believe that.

I welcome the ridicule that will inevitably come from a statement like that. 

It would rude to ignore the impressively-mustachioed Mr Farah's kind invitation to mock, so here's my take on the whole divine displeasure hypothesis. I haven't yet come across a convincing reason to supposed that the universe is under the control of a sentient being who takes a special interest in the human race, but let's imagine, for the sake of argument, that such an omnipotent higher intelligence is looking down at our world through a celestial microscope.

If He/She/It was looking down at the USA recently, it wouldn't be too fanciful to attribute the recent earthquake to the Creator's head being repeatedly banged against His/Her/Its desk in sheer frustration after seeing the list of Republican Presidential nominees. Having endowed the human race with the faculty of reason, it would test any deity's patience to see the inhabitants of the most powerful nation on earth reduced to choosing their future leaders from a rag-bag of gibbering loons who'd disgrace a contest to elect the Village Idiot of the Year.

Seriously though, Joe, that's one epic 'tash. If you ever quit the day job, there's always a place for you in a Village People tribute band. All together, now:

Young man, there's no need to feel down. ..
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Hat tip.