Boobquake 2010 Rocks Indiana

If you've been living under a rock for the past 24 hours, let me enlighten you with a little story about a Hoosier girl doing right in the world.

A week ago, you may recall seeing this quote in the news: "Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes." This was quoted from Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, a prayer leader from Iran on Friday, April 16th.

So what does any normal science geek do to respond to the horrifically sexist comment? Create BOOBQUAKE, of course!

Jen McCreight, a self-described liberal, geeky, nerdy, scientific, perverted atheist feminist trapped in Indiana (who also happens to be a Purdue student), decided to create this event, calling for all women to wear their lowest cut shirts on April 26th to gather scientific evidence on whether or not dressing slutty had a direct effect on the frequency of earthquakes.

What were the results, you ask? There was a 6.5 magnitude earthquake in Taiwan! Oh, the horror! Must be a direct result from the all the jugs being shaken from coast to coast in protest.

But not so fast...

Turns out that in comparison to the average number of earthquakes in the world each day, yesterday was a pretty quiet day. In the chart below (borrowed from Ms. McCreight's blog), you can see that the red square represents the number of earthquakes occurring on Boobquake 2010, which is relatively average in the scheme of things.

Thanks to Boobquake, we not only stood up for women's rights by baring our cleavage, but also learned a bit about plate tectonics, too. Thanks, Jen! Oh - and don't forget to buy your t-shirt!