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The Triumph of Hope over Experience

Archive for category Current Events

The Multiverse Just Got Real

May 12

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments

I used to scoff at the idea of the multiverse – there are an infinite number of universes out there where anything is possible – but after hearing that James Cromwell superglued his hand to the counter at a Starbucks as part of PETA protesting the up charge for fake creamer at a company that is built on the up charge because apparently vegan creamer is a basic human right or something, I now subscribe to the leaky multiverse hypothesis: not only do we live in a multiverse but people can leak through between them. Because clearly no one from this universe, what with all the war, famine, disease, inflation, crime, etc would think that most pressing issue facing us is that vegan creamer costs more at Starbucks. We should be running tests on these people to see if they interact with neutrinos or emit zeta radiation or whatever to discover what alternate universe they are from and how to “leak” there so we can find out how they solved all the problems we have such difficulty with.

Sorry about ending not just the sentence but the whole paragraph with a preposition but that’s just the kind of rebel I am.

Snowpocolypse II

Feb 3

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments

We have survived Day 2 of the snowpocolypse of 2022.

Last night MBH and I huddled together under a blanket and rode out the storm. Since we live in a climate controlled house it was basically just like every other winter night, only with snow falling outside. I bet the wind was blowing too, but what did we care, we were inside a house.

The milk is holding out so no trudging through the snow uphill. My back, however, isn’t holding out after shoveling the driveway yesterday and today.

This morning running was out of the question, so I headed to the basement for my weight workout. After the first set, 25 push-ups, my back was killing me, so I came back upstairs where MBH observed “that seemed fast”. Fortunately after a rest and a variety of painkillers I was able to clear the driveway this afternoon. Tomorrow I will clear the driveway one last time – I’m hoping to use the push broom and salt. I’m confident that Manchester will plow one last time and block the end of my driveway again so I foresee a contest of wills over which one of us will be able to outlast the other, a contest I’m not willing to lose.

I realize many of you are celebrating and enjoying these “snow days” but this is interfering with my regularly scheduled “retirement days” which is just like a snow day except without all the cold, snow, and most importantly immobility and therefore much more enjoyable. For those of you who continue to suffer “workdays”, I can only offer my deepest sympathy and gratitude that you continue to produce all the goods and services I consume.

Tomorrow I hope that I don’t just leave the house, I leave my property. It’s good to have something to look forward to.

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Snowpocolypse I

Feb 2

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments

We have survived Day 1 of the snowpocalypse of 2022.

We have an eighteen day supply of eggs, an indefinite supply of bread since we only eat it on as needed basis, but the milk could run out in a matter of days. MBH is the only one who drinks milk, well technically eats it on cereal for breakfast, so if we run out I’ll be trudging uphill through the snow to buy more.

Tonight we feasted on quinoa, black beans and chicken. It was our last can of black beans, but we can survive. We will survive. Even when forced to eat low sodium beans.

I have enough Kale and Tuna to last weeks if I ration carefully. MBH doesn’t eat much, she will survive if I can just keep her in milk. Milk is the key, and I’m intolerant. I can only hope she will drink my almond milk. It’s our last, best hope.

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A Little Philosophy

Mar 29

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Culture, Current Events | No Comments

How and when did we go from “you need to get out of your comfort zone” turn into you are evil and violent because you made somebody uncomfortable? I’ve never made any personal improvement – physical, mental, moral – without discomfort. You really want to screw someone up? Teach them to avoid discomfort at all costs.

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When they came for the Statues, …

Jun 25

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments

George Floyd is killed by a police officer in Minneapolis, and protests erupt over his death in particular and police brutality in general.  In conjunction with those protests, riots and looting break out.  When people complain about the riots and looting, they are told that they need to keep the focus on George Floyd’s death and police brutality, and the rioters and looters are not part of the protests anyway.  So while we are still discussing improvements to policing from defunding the police to voting for more Democrats in cities that have had nothing but Democratic office holders for like 50 years, the protests pivot to pulling down statues of confederate generals (Democrats to a man BTW).  When people complain about the lack of process and the destruction of property involved, they are told that if Christian churches had statues of Satan people would wonder.  I’m still wondering at that analogy.  But before the paint was dry on the first confederate statue, pretty much any old statue was fair game to be vandalized, from the alarming like abolitionist Union generals including US Grant to the simply absurd like Miguel Cervantes and Stevie Ray Vaughan.  And there are threats to the Emancipation Memorial with Abraham Lincoln which was paid for by freed slaves and dedicated by Fredrick Douglass.  So tell me again how vandalizing and pulling over statues of Abraham Lincoln isn’t taking the focus off George Floyd and police brutality?  I know I’m slow and all because when people say defund the police I somehow leap to the conclusion that means taking money from police departments but I’m assured that it means something completely different, defang perhaps.  And don’t get me started on all the white protesters calling black cops racist and that word ordinarily no white person is allowed to use. 

Another puzzling thing is how when black communities hold vigils and protests when blacks are killed by other blacks (and they do with distressing regularity) none of this nonsense happens.  It gets local media attention, no looting occurs, no rioting, no vandalizing, no violence, just peaceful protest.

I’m thinking that there are a bunch of people who really don’t care about George Floyd, his death, other people’s deaths, police brutality, racism, logic, discussion, reason, they just want to steal and break things.  An orgy of destruction is their aim.  And not only they shouldn’t be encouraged, they should be condemned.

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A Better Way to Act on COVID19

May 14

Posted by Kevin Murphy in COVID19, Current Events | No Comments


We are all in this together, but we are all not the same. The risk of death or serious illness varies quite widely from one person to the next by a factor of like a thousand based on age and certain conditions like diabetes, and our life situations also vary quite widely. For example, my wife and I no longer have parents to take care of (or worry about), while many other married couple our age do have elderly parents. So basing all our actions and policies on some perceived worst case just doesn’t make sense.

I really think we are continuing to make certain mistakes because we are not adjusting to data as it becomes available, and because of the emphasis on statewide common actions. We are citizens, not subjects; we are adults, not children. So the “because I say so” from governors and other politicians, or the “we are all going to die” from my fellow citizens is wearing thin. Why are we not following the American way? By all means, make recommendations, but don’t just issue edicts and claim they are data driven. Provide the data, provide the rationale and inferences, take into account important differences, and let us make informed decisions on the risk we are willing, or unwilling as the case may be, to assume.

Phone data shows people began social distancing and staying at home before any politician issued an edict. We don’t need nannies or nags, we need information and reasoned discussion. Treat us like a adults, and we’ll act like the adults we are. Don’t treat us like children and then be surprised when some act petulantly.

This is a very serious and deadly disease, which means we should tackle it with our best practices which are open and honest communication, frank discussion of options, data, and uncertainty, and the appreciation that while we are all equal we are not all the same and so not only can reasonable people disagree, the correct course of action will be different for people in different situations. The best way to find our way through this challenging and uncertain time is through people doing what they think best and constantly reassessing as data rolls in. And that includes people trying different things and seeing what happens. COVID 19 did not change everything, and we need to stop thinking and acting like it did.

Testing, Testing, Testing

May 9

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments

Let’s talk numbers. I know what you’re thinking, I was promised no math. So no equations, just a couple of pretty pictures and a lot of words. I trust we’ve all seen the first chart – we know it, we love, we live it. 

Let’s be honest, it isn’t accurate, it’s idealized. 

The first thing I’ll note, is if the only thing that changes is that as time goes on more people become immune, the right side is not symmetrical with the left side, in fact the drop off is faster than the rise and that is because during the rise the rate of change in available infectees is less than during the descent because there are fewer available infectees. And yes, I created an Excel model and discovered this. 

The second thing, is that for this epidemic at least, you don’t start with protective measures (you know, the guidelines) in place, so the reality is there is this transition period as people react, and in the case of COVID in advance of any orders to, so there would be this period of lowering the transmission as behavior changed that would put you on a different slope.

The third thing is, people are people. And that means we have this tendency to adjust to risks so as we see the curve flattening (and thus the risk lowering), we would engage in riskier behavior, and as we see the curve steepening, we would engage in less risky behavior. Don’t believe me? Look at the history of automobile safety, where every safety advance is met with an increase in risky behavior such that deaths per mile decline less than what the safety feature should cause. 

So put that all together, and you have the actual reality of new cases just won’t ever look like those nice curves (oops, did I forget to mention random noise, so unsmooth the curves!) It will start steep, then flatten, but won’t ever go all the way down like you think it ought to. And there may well be multiple upticks depending on how long until either a vaccine or herd immunity kicks in.

I will just note at this point the area under the curves are not the same – the one that has lower transmission rates will have less area, i.e. fewer people will get infected. (Thanks again, Excel model). But since these are idealized, and the reality is messy and complicated, yeah, all bets are off on which one infects fewer people.

And that’s the real curve of actual new infections. Now let’s talk about the measured version. It isn’t the actual number, it’s a sample of the actual number.

So it’s going to have more noise (go to Worldometer, look at the new daily death histogram for the USA and explain to me why it varies 100% over a six day period – don’t worry, I’ll wait). 

And it’s going to depend on how many tests we run a day. More tests mean more new cases measured. If the actual number were flat, if you ran more tests you would see an increase in the number of cases. As I always said about software bugs, the sooner we stop testing the sooner we’ll stop finding problems. Normally we take care of that by normalizing, i.e. dividing the number that allows you to make meaningful comparisons like total number of people in a state to compare states or total number of tests (which is why I think Dr. Birx, whom I admire and respect, was always quoting the percent positive rates on tests as well as the totals). 

Now normalizing works well if you are consistent in your test criteria, e.g. people who have symptoms bad enough they are willing to have a swab shoved far, far up their noses (in the old days, till it came out the back). And test type. What happens when you starting with one test done by hand in state labs, and then keep adding different tests run on different equipment and you switch from shoving the swab 4 inches up someone’s nose to 2 inches? Do they all have the same sensitivity and error rates? But wait, that not the only changes you make, what happens when you keep increasing your testing to the point where you test everybody in a meat packing plant even though no one asked to have a swab shoved up their nose? IOW, you test both asymptomatic as well as symptomatic? You see another round of big jumps, like where Missouri found 373 workers were infected but asymptomatic. And at the same time you’re looking at new cases chart like the one I included, the State of Missouri is moving the date of the case from the test to when the person reports the first symptoms occurred.

So look at that chart and tell me are cases increasing, declining, or treading water. And while you’re at it, try to come up with a way to normalize across all those changes in testing. I don’t know about you, but when I try to look at that real chart and compare it to the idealized chart, I wonder how one can possibly relate to the other, and I’m vary comfortable with data, noise, uncertainty, and models vs. reality.

So I will say that Missouri, and I think every state at the request of the Federal government, provides a deeper dive into the data: 

https://health.mo.gov/…/novel-coro…/pdf/analytics-update.pdf

where they do cover many things, including COVID hospitalizations and percent positive test results (smoothed to a seven day average, which given that’s a work week seems right to me at the risk of loosing sight of short term trends) which shows a peak back on 3/21 at over 20% with a decline, a long plateau, and another decline to ~4% on May 2. I don’t know about you, but that makes me feel better, like the rate of infections really are declining.

So what does it all mean? I think we are getting better, but don’t expect the simple one wave if you do it right, two waves if you do it wrong concept, and don’t even get me started on why the second wave will by necessity be worse than the first. 

Now here’s another quick, back of the envelope calculation – chart shows about 200 new cases a day, say that represents worst case 10% of real infection rate so 2000 new cases a day, and given a population of 6,138,000 (I rounded up from wikipedia 2019 figure), it will take another 3,069 days before we all catch it here in Missouri, wait, subtract 30 days for what we’ve already gone through, so over eight years. I think we’ll have a vaccine by then. If you don’t like my calculations, get your own envelope.

And I think we should start calming down.

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A Better Way to Think About COVID19

Apr 17

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments


I’ve come to the conclusion we are not thinking rationally about the COVID 19 pandemic. The problems are in large part driven by its novelty which leaves us vulnerable to our cognitive biases. First we have tunnel vision (AKA Cognitive Tunneling combined with Zero Risk Bias) and basically have focused on COVID 19 to the exclusion of all other considerations. This means we are looking at the results of the virus to consider every death from COVID 19 as a loss but ignore every other death, and infection from COVID 19 as a loss but ignore all other health and non-health problems. And loss aversion means we can’t take our focus off COVID, we only see the risks associated with COVID 19 infections and fatalities and are blind to all other risks. Essentially the enormous uncertainty and newness so terrified us that we pulled the covers over our head and refused to get out of bed. That’s OK for a day or two, but if we all do that how long can we keep it up?

So my suggestion is to lose the exclusive focus on COVID since it leads to a terrible local optimization problem where we are only optimizing for COVID and nothing else. Clearly COVID is a serious disease, but it isn’t the only serious disease we face. Instead, we should recognize the loss from COVID without action and count every decrement from that as gain – because we can think much more rationally about gains and in large part that’s how we think about all other disease and causes of death. 

So what does that mean? Let’s take that initial estimate of 2 million deaths in the US over the next two years (approximately) and use as our benchmark the 2.8 million non-COVID deaths (just to put an anchor out there, the case fatality rate for a year of life in the US is 0.86%) plus the 1 million COVID deaths per year and then strive to drive the number down from 3.8 million per year. And this is realistically the situation we confront. Since COVID would be the leading cause of death in this framing, clearly efforts should be significantly but not exclusively focused there as it would be only somewhat ahead of heart disease at over 647,000 and cancer at 599,000 deaths per year. This framing allows us to take a holistic system approach to the problem and we need our metrics to reflect that. The constant drumbeat from the media showing the daily death count from COVID alone doesn’t help us, it hurts us.

You may ask how is our current framing is hurting us. Keep in mind that the general rule of thumb (Pareto Principle) is that the first 80 percent of a solution is cheap and easy and the remaining 20 percent is increasingly expensive and difficult. In our zeal to drive one risk to 0, we are paying the full expense of getting to a complete solution for one problem (COVID) while starving all others of resources and attention – and in terms of fatalities those problems cause more deaths. If we don’t look at the full picture, we will be worse off and won’t make the right trade offs. Adult life is tradeoffs. We need to pull the covers down and get back to living.

Death statistics can be found at: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

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Saving Lives With Ocean Models

May 14

Posted by Carl Drews in Carl, Current Events, Economics, Faith, Science, Technology | No Comments

The orphans were tied together for their safety. Their teacher had attached all the children with lengths of rope, tied securely around their waists, as the storm approached Galveston and the waters began to rise. And that is how the rescuers uncovered their lifeless bodies, by following the rope from one drowned child to another.

Erik Larson relates the tragedy of the Galveston orphans in his 2000 book Isaac’s Storm. A total of ~9,000 souls perished in that 1900 disaster. In 2005 a similar tragedy befell New Orleans, as Hurricane Katrina swept into the Louisiana delta and drove Lake Pontchartrain over the levees into downtown New Orleans. 1,833 people lost their lives, and at $108 billion Hurricane Katrina represented the largest monetary loss in U.S. history due to natural causes.

These human tragedies don’t have to be repeated.

I’m an ocean modeler at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. This is my personal blog at funmurphys.com with my own views. I use computer simulation to study hurricane-driven storm surge. I can send a Category 5 hurricane into New York, or Miami, or even Buffalo, New York. I can watch an advancing wall of water obliterate downtown Tokyo from the comfort of my office, all without anyone else getting wet. To do this, I construct a digital model of the coast and I blast it with 150-km/hr winds. A supercomputer calculates the hourly rise in sea level as the storm waters inundate populated areas. I can verify my calculations with past events, and evaluate the risk posed by future hurricanes.

Figure 11. Directional analysis at New York Harbor (experiment NY7).

Figure 11 of Drews C, Galarneau TJ Jr (2015) Directional Analysis of the Storm Surge from Hurricane Sandy 2012, with Applications to Charleston, New Orleans, and the Philippines. PLoS ONE 10(3): e0122113. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0122113

Grid cells in the ocean model are wet or dry. Grid cells containing water are colored blue for the sea; grid cells on land are colored green for vegetation. When the ocean rises and floods formerly dry cells (storm surge), I color them red. I use yellow when a normally wet cell becomes dry (wind setdown).

Just four colors: blue, green, red, and yellow. The ocean model runs and the grid cells change color. That’s all. It’s just a numerical model. But I also realize: People live in those grid cells. Every cell is home to businesswomen, teenagers, hourly laborers, little babies, and retired couples. The grids on my computer screen are filled with living, breathing, working, laughing people. Every grid cell matters. When I see a set of green cells along the coast turn red, I know the human cost. I have joined flood cleanup efforts and seen the destruction. I think about how to prevent the next disaster, how to warn these communities, and how to get them out of harm’s way.

If you live in a coastal area, you should know that supercomputers are even now running and calculating to protect your life and property. Researchers are developing coastal models to evaluate your risk and your evacuation plans. At NCAR, NOAA, and the National Hurricane Center, projects are underway to forecast hurricane-driven storm surge. Today you can view your city’s risk at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/experimental/inundation/. Hopefully someday you will be able to click on a Google Earth plot of your own house and show the hourly surge forecast as the storm approaches.

Other hurricanes will surely come. Typhoons will pound the coasts of the Philippines, Taiwan, and Japan. We are determined that there will never be another Galveston 1900, that the human tragedy of New Orleans 2005 will never happen again. With accurate and timely forecasts, we are working to ensure that next time people won’t be in the way when the big waves come ashore.

Carl Drews, author of Between Migdol and the Sea: Crossing the Red Sea with Faith and Science.

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Movie Review: Exodus Gods and Kings

Dec 14

Posted by Carl Drews in Books, Carl, Current Events, Faith, History, Media Criticism, Movies, Science | 1 Comment

Yesterday morning I caught the early bird showing of the new movie “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” directed by Ridley Scott. Regular readers of Funmurphys: the Blog already know that I have written and published a new book about the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt, focusing specifically on crossing the Red Sea. The book is titled: Between Migdol and the Sea: Crossing the Red Sea with Faith and Science (2014), by Carl Drews. This review is written from a book author’s perspective.

Spectacle and Grandeur

A good biblical epic should provide jaw-dropping spectacle and majestic grandeur. Exodus: Gods and Kings provides these in abundance! Some of the earlier scenes show the great sweep of the Nile delta, with pyramids rising along the banks of the great river, while Bronze Age citizens bustle about under the stern watch of the Pharaoh’s foremen. Ancient Egypt was a marvelous place! This movie really brings out the grandeur of the New Kingdom in all its glory.

Ten Plagues

The Ten Plagues are depicted graphically in the film, and the result is disturbing. A week ago I would have not imagined an infestation of frogs to be all that bad, but I just about jumped out of my theater seat to see all those slimy amphibians crawling over everything! Yuck! Then there came all manner of flies, more flies than I have ever seen even in Alaska. We saw the movie in 3-D, and we were recoiling and trying to get out of the swarm. The plagues are very well done by the cinematographer.

Exodus: Gods and Kings brings out a theological point: During the Ten Plagues, a lot of people suffered greatly. According to the narrative in Exodus, Pharaoh suffered because he refused to let the Israelites go. Ridley Scott makes the point that many common Egyptians suffered as well, through no fault of their own. What kind of god would strike dead all the first-born sons? Modern Christians continue to feel uncomfortable about these episodes, and we debate various resolutions. Generally we conclude that Jesus doesn’t do things that way any more, and we follow Jesus.

God as a Petulant British Boy

God Almighty is portrayed in Exodus: Gods and Kings as a boy about 8 years old with a British accent. I can accept God speaking to Elijah as a “still, small voice” in 1 Kings 19. I believe that God became incarnate in the baby Jesus Christ, born in Bethlehem. But the surly attitude of the God-boy in this movie was jarring, and I was left wondering why Moses would accept the commands from such a manifestation of the Almighty. At least the boy should have had more gravitas, and should have spoken to Moses with graceful majesty. Was Morgan Freeman not available?

Goblins and Chariots

There is a scene in The Hobbitt: An Unexpected Journey where Gandalf and the dwarves kill the Great Goblin and escape from the underground goblin kingdom. When my family watches this sequence at home, we usually keep a body count of goblins, yelling out the numbers as they fall. Our total usually comes out to about 140.

During the pursuit of Moses by the Egyptian army, Rameses II charges with all his chariots down a narrow mountain road after the fleeing Israelites. Naturally some careless chariot driver careens off the edge and tumbles down the mountain. Then another chariot hits a rock, and within a few moments there is a huge landslide about 30 chariots behind Pharaoh, and all the remaining vehicles in the column either tumble to their tragic and untimely deaths, or are blocked by the now-impassable road. So – Rameses is left with about 30 chariots out of the 1,000 that departed the Egyptian capital. 400,000 Israelites ought to be able to make quick work of them.

But when Pharaoh reaches the beach somehow all his 1,000 chariots have miraculously re-appeared. Someone was not counting properly! Yeah, I know it’s just a movie. But I was chuckling over the movie’s continuity error while still enjoying the action. And the action in Exodus: Gods and Kings is superb!

Crossing the Red Sea at Nuweiba, not the Straits of Tiran

At one point Moses brings out a hand-written map showing his planned route from Egypt back to his wife Zipporah in Midian. Maybe nobody else in the audience cared, but I instantly recognized the route after studying that geography for five years. Moses, generations of biblical scholars would gladly trade several chapters of Leviticus for just one glance at your map! The traditional route of the Exodus is generally agreed, but there are other proposals.

Between Migdol and the Sea (Drews 2014) Figure 11-1 with lines added in cyan showing routes from the movie Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014). Copyright 2014 by Carl Drews.

My book Between Migdol and the Sea (Drews, 2014) provides a map of the Sinai peninsula in Chapter 11 (right). The traditional route is marked here in red and green. In Ridley Scott’s Exodus, Moses plans to take the cyan (light blue) route down the west coast of Sinai and cross the Straits of Tiran (dotted cyan). But he takes a detour through the Sinai mountains and gets stuck at Nuweiba instead (solid cyan). In the movie the Israelites cross the Red Sea from Nuweiba over to modern Saudi Arabia.

There are a couple of problems with this scenario. An earlier scene shows Moses splashing across the “Straits of Tiran” on his way to meet Zipporah. But this strait in real life is not like Adam’s Bridge across the Palk Strait from India to Sri Lanka, oh no! The Enterprise Passage in the Straits of Tiran today is 250 meters (820 feet) deep.[Between Migdol and the Sea, page 179] Nobody will be splashing across there.

The underwater ridge at Nuweiba is 765 meters (2,510 feet) deep.[Migdol, page 179] That would be quite a hike.

How Not to Communicate Science

This little vignette was actually pretty funny, especially for me. Rameses is getting understandably tired of the Plagues, and he calls in various advisors to learn how to stop the plagues, or at least to predict when they will end. Bad advice results in immediate execution. One of these advisors is a Scientist who has not taken the seminar on How to Communicate Science. He gleefully launches into a technical discussion of how the crocodiles churned up the water and made it turn red, how all that extra sediment caused the fish to die and the frogs to multiply. Rameses knows this already and scowls at Scientist, wondering when he’s going to come to the point. “And what comes next?” asks the Scientist happily. “Flies!” retorts Rameses in disgust, swatting at the hundreds of flies swarming around him. “Yes!” answers the Scientist, obviously pleased that his students are following the lecture.

The next shot shows the Scientist on the scaffold about to be executed.

In science communication we talk about Framing the Message. Framing means to go beyond the facts; your audience wants to know why these facts matter and how they are relevant to their own concerns. In climate science, a government audience wants to know how society will be affected, not just how many degrees the temperature will increase.

Meteorite and Tsunami

In Exodus: Gods and Kings, the parting of the Red Sea is accomplished by a flaming meteorite that falls into the sea beyond the horizon. This impact causes a tsunami in which the sea draws back for the Israelites to cross, then returns in a giant wave while the Egyptian chariots pursue. In the movie God sends the meteorite at the right place and time for Moses to lead his people across, so of course this is full-on theistic astronomy. Ridley Scott does not fall into the “God of the Gaps” fallacy that seems to plague certain atheist bloggers! Good for him.

The Bible says the east wind drove back the water all night long (Exodus 14:20-21). But would a meteorite impact also work? The answer is: not likely. For the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that struck Indonesia, there were three huge waves over 1.5 hours. The wave period from drawback through the return surge was about 30 minutes. There have been some tsunamis with a longer wave period, but the basic wave cycle is measured in tens of minutes, not hours. At the Nuweiba crossing Moses and the Israelites would have to descend 2,500 vertical feet and then crank up the other side back to sea level, all in 30 minutes. The Colorado Mountain Club uses 1,000 feet per hour as a rule of thumb when climbing fourteeners (Between Migdol and the Sea, page 166). A tsunami simply does not provide enough time to make the crossing.

But the wave action is spectacular! Exodus: Gods and Kings does action very well.

Go see it!

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