Maria Brumm has a Master's degree... in Earth Science! She lives in Seattle, WA, where she works in environmental consulting.
Opinions expressed on Green Gabbro are well-reasoned and insightful. Needless to say, they are not those of my employers, Seed Media Group, or anyone on my thesis committee. Disclaimers expressed on this blog may be those of the Whad'Ya Know? quiz show.
Feedburner tells me that there are still more than 50 people waiting patiently for my next post here. Um. Hi?
When I shifted from personal/political blogging to science blogging, and particularly when I started writing here at ScienceBlogs, I wanted to be a reliable source. Turns out that it's difficult for me to care about being reliable without dredging up a whole bunch of other issues about wanting to be seen as an AUTHORITAH! - Cartman voice and and all. So, that slowly got to be less fun.
Turns out, I miss having a blog that was less about explaining things, and more about discussing them.
I'm not making any promises - it's been almost 10 years since I started doing this and I have never made promises - but I've written a couple of posts about foraging and bicycles, which are things I've been doing lately that I don't feel so much like an authoritah! about. They're on my old domain. That's where more posts will appear, too, if I write them.
This morning, the California Supreme Court will announce its decision on whether or not a slim 50% majority can amend the state constitution in order to specifically deny a previously-recognized constitutional right. It will also determine the fate of the 18,000 same-sex marriages performed last year, between the state Supreme Court's decision that same-sex marriage was a constitutional right in California, and the passage of Proposition 8. The New York Times quotes one man whose marriage is currently in legal limbo:
“The 18,000 marriages will be evidence that California is not going to fall apart if gay people get married,” Mr. Lok said. “It’s not like there’s not going to be an earthquake.”
Oh ho ho, won't Mr. Lok and his husband be chuckling at that one when San Francisco falls into the ocean! In fact, the potential link between same-sex marriage and earthquakes is one of the strongest arguments I've ever seen in favor of preserving the traditional-except-for-all-the-ways-we've-changed-it-in-the-past institution of opposite-sex-only marriage.
While the observation that same-sex marriage might be followed by earthquakes has been made before - notably by Israeli parliamentarian Shlomo Benizri and American preacher Pat Robertson - science has advanced beyond the simple "God does it" explanations most commonly proposed by nutcase conservative public figures. Below the fold, I will tell you how we actually think this process works.
Following on Short Geologist's list of things you do and don't need at a field hotel, and fresh from the field (where by "field" I mean "three days of driving around the mountains looking for stuff", and by "fresh" I mean I'm still at the airport), I thought I'd do a list of amenities that I want in a field vehicle.
1: I was really surprised by how many of you fell for my April Fools joke.
2: I do have a real job now. I'm an environmental consultant, and I can't be much more specific than that - not because I am trying to keep the details a secret, but because I work for a tiny, multidisciplinary company, which is rapidly expanding my collection of professional hats. Last week I was primarily a technical writer, this week I'll be out in the field doing preliminary ground work for a survey of natural resource use, and in the near future they've promised me hydrodynamic modeling, ecological risk assessments, GIS work, and some other stuff that depends on the outcome of the several proposals we've all been working on. I've been enjoying it so far.
This is not a promise to get back to a regular blogging schedule. It's not the job that's the problem, though - it's the cat I finally felt responsible enough to adopt. Apparently the time and brainspace I had previously devoted to blogging is the exact same time and brainspace required to dangle a string from the end of a stick. Who knew?
This is also not a shut-down notice. Blogging has been a rewarding hobby for the past 8 years and I am not going to quit entirely, though I'm thinking about if/how I want to scale back and/or change venues.
What this is, is a reminder that if you are interested in following my sporadic updates - including any announcements about a new URL - you can set up an email subscription to alert you of new entries. The sign-up is at the bottom of the left-hand sidebar.
Update, April 2: I hope you all had a wonderful April Fools Day, unmarred by water shortages, supervolcanoes, and threats to your world view. This was a fake, but I should have a real job announcement to make soon - and it won't involve any quack apologetics.
After months of searching in a desperate economy, I am incredibly relieved to have been offered a permanent position. Not just relieved, but tremendously excited - I've managed to find an incredibly exciting, challenging, and meaningful job. As of today, I am the newest adjunct fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture!
My role will be to expand the Institute's existing "Teach the Controversy" campaign to include other scientific debates. Eventually this will encompass everything from protecting linguistics professors who discuss the number of words that Eskimos have for snow, to advocating for free market policy solutions in the design of the next big particle accelerator (to ensure that any wormholes created only lead to awesome alternate universes), to making sure that the broab is included as part of an alternate functional diagram in neuroanatomy textbooks. For now, though, I'll be getting my feet wet sticking close to my field of expertise: the Expanding Earth hypothesis.
The question of whether or not I am a geologist is not just an amusing exercise in academic politics. In Washington, as in most U.S. states, geology is a regulated profession; guidelines for who can and cannot call themselves a geologist in a professional context are laid out in the administrative code and enforced by the Geologist Licensing Board.
I am not a geologist, nor will I become one any time soon. To comply with Washington law, I would need to complete coursework in the core subjects of geology (as specified in WAC 308-15-040: structural geology, mineralogy, petrology and sedimentary geology/stratigraphy) and then my professional clock would start ticking - experience gained prior to completing these educational requirements doesn't count towards the necessary 5 years. So, assuming I have understood the requirements correctly (always a gamble!), it would take a minimum of 6 years to become a Washington professional geologist. Even if there is a way to appeal for a shortcut, man, what an annoying hurdle.
On the other hand, if I got a job in California I could be a geologist in a few months. In fact, as far as I can tell, Washington is almost uniquely strict about this - only Nebraska has an equivalently rigid licensing requirement.
I have a B.S. in geophysics and an M.S. in earth and planetary science with a funky geophysics/geohydrology emphasis. I took some intro physical geology and earth history as a sophomore, but I have never taken formal courses in mineralogy, petrology, structural geology, sedimentology, or stratigraphy. However, I've picked up the basics of these fields from older kids on the street corner and make use of them in my work.
Please assume while you are answering the poll that my work involves using my knowledge of the Earth's history, processes, and constituent materials for the benefit of humanity, and not just creating ugly abstract art. My work does not, however, require that I identify any minerals trickier than feldspar, or touch a Brunton with a ten-foot pole - to which I say phew, because I'm not very good at either of those things.
On Monday, airline passengers were the first to observe the eruption of the just-barely-above-the-water volcano that forms the islands of Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha'apai, in Tonga. Three days later, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake occurred on the Tonga trench.
Was the timing of these two events just coincidence?
My job, for most of the past six weeks, has been to align cryptic old maps with existing digital data, so that points labeled in small, blurry fonts can be entered into a database. I am not going to show actual screenshots of my work - even if I gave away no useful information to the opposing legal team, it would be bad luck - but here is an artist's impression:
Extracting information from this pathetic excuse for a usable map is, in fact, a learned skill. I only realized this a couple of weeks ago, when I sat down with the company's graphic designer to show her how to do what I was doing. She was impressed at my ability to rapidly find relevant landmarks in the Pollockian heap of worms and pink spaghetti on my screen.
Maria Brumm has a Master's degree... in Earth Science! She lives in Seattle, WA, where she works in environmental consulting.
