Chris Rowan is a geologist specialising in the dark arts of paleomagnetism, and getting people to pay him to travel to exotic destinations for fieldwork. Having drilled up New Zealand during his PhD, and South Africa in his first post-doc, he now works at the University of Edinburgh.
Anne Jefferson has a love of all things water-related and blends hydrology, geomorphology, geology, and climate change in her work. She has a Ph.D. from Oregon State University and is now an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.One of the main things I do on Twitter is link-sharing: that is, note stories and web resources that I find interesting, but that I don't have the time or inclination to blog about (my own idiosyncratic approach to blogging has always generally boiled down to, "some thought/input from Chris required"). It works well for me, but I know that not everyone who reads the blog is into Twitter; that, and the desire to keep a more permanent record of stuff I've encountered on the interwebs, has led me to wondering if it would be worth posting a weekly summary. Which is what you see below: all of my tweets last week where I linked to something I found interesting, shorn of all the @s and RTs.
Sediments can be as pretty as minerals sometimes: see Clastic Detritus' Friday Field Foto from Tierra del Fuego http://bit.ly/g2hfa
Wonder what hoaxers thiink? Apollo 12 landing site (+ visible astronaut footprint tracks!) imaged by LRO: http://is.gd/2RiYv
WANT. Like beer? Like the Burgess Shale? Combine them! http://bit.ly/Mzzqg
Rock and Roll Building Will Survive Earthquakes http://bit.ly/n8WKL
Mentioning geoengineering could spur people to reduce their carbon footprint. http://bit.ly/yE8WE
A glass act: sculptures of deadly viruses http://bit.ly/drAsD
Did Life Arise 3.5 Billion Years Ago? http://tinyurl.com/kv9axl
24 hr global animation of scheduled flights. Fascinating! http://bit.ly/WBDY
How depressing. Exclusive: Chances of getting a (UK) research grant plummet to all-time low. http://bit.ly/1OSfQr
Oooh: anectodal report that Iphone can accurately measure diips and strikes http://bit.ly/10oiAr Structural mapping app, anyone?
A great discussion about different types of basin http://bit.ly/1aYces
Discussion on mainstreaming geo-terminology at All of My Faults are Sress Related gets ever better. Fave so far: Franciscan=disorganised. http://bit.ly/DbOFs
Geobloggers riffing off the LA fires: http://bit.ly/1Yzv1J and http://bit.ly/t8h3c
Completely addicted to StormPulse hurricane monitoring tool. Here's Jimena: http://bit.ly/2JNlXu
What would you give to geologise on Mars? Should the first manned mission to Mars be a one-way trip? http://bit.ly/PuyQY
Royal Society weighs in on Geoengineering http://bit.ly/2KoDK Seem to think it may be a necessary semi-evil.
Dear science journalists, please stop saying "scientists believe..." http://bit.ly/JHg0k
PG&E wants to store wind, solar energy http://bit.ly/VUqDl As compressed air pumped into porous reservoir rock. Clever.
Let me know whether you think this is useful or interesting; if enough people like, I'll make it a regular weekend thing. Please don't be afraid to tell me you find it annoying; I'll just keep a personal record and leave it at that.
While you're possibly feeling opinionated, please also take a second to go and tell the Overlords what you'd like from their proposed user registration programme.
Comments
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Posted by: Lab Lemming | September 5, 2009 8:49 AM
I like this very much, except for one thing. I do a regular "blogospheric" thing (not periodic, just frequent) and I've gotten some feedback and have looked at the numbers. Here's a few observations
1) Relatively few readers actually care or look at these but those who do appreciate it a lot and like to see it.
2) It is important to make sure that the title of this kind of post makes clear that it is a list of links. I use the term "blogospherics" so my regular readers who don't care about this can give it a pass easily
3) Cross linking (link love) is a great community building exercise and and in my view is not done enough here on scienceblogs. I find it interesting that there was a big move to have more link love in and around science blogs several months ago and that resulted in about two bloggers realizing that you could do this and who now regularly do. What's with these people?
4) Regardless of any one person's opinion about link love, many people like it and want it. I am not sure, but I think using tinyURL eliminates the link love. It is the link equivilant of condoms. I'm not sure if the other person could ever see, on google search or something like technorati or any other such tool, that they've been linked to. I know that Twitter makes the tinyurls even if you don't, but it is a lost opportunity.
Posted by: Greg Laden | September 5, 2009 10:13 AM
I think this is a great way to combine Twitter and blogging! I do think ferreting out the non-shortened urls when posting to the blog would ultimately better, though it will take more time to go back and find the originals. For one thing, I'd like to "mouse-hover" over each link to see if I've already read it before clicking through (although I often can tell by your text).
Posted by: Silver Fox | September 5, 2009 11:10 AM
And I like the title just fine!
Posted by: Silver Fox | September 5, 2009 11:12 AM
That's a good point on expanding the URLs; there might be a way to do that automagically...
Posted by: Chris Rowan | September 5, 2009 11:18 AM
Yeah, full URLs would be good. I like this because I don't often get the chance to follow the twitter links when you tweet them, and then they are lost in the great tweet graveyard in the sky! I'm always looking for some good weekend reading.
I agree with Greg on the title of the post thing (also think your title is great though - perhaps just reuse it?). If this kind of post annoys some readers, an identifiable title is a great way for them to screen it out. I look forward to his blogospheric posts, and like that I can easily identify them because of the title. Now I'll look forward to yours as well :)
Posted by: kjhaxton | September 5, 2009 11:34 AM
I think it's great. The only thing I'd maybe add is a little link love to anyone who tweeted it to you in the first place.
Posted by: Anne | September 5, 2009 1:32 PM
Great idea, packaging these up like that. But a suggestion (if it wouldn't entail too much effort), if you are doing some processing, it would be nice if you could cite the source.
Example, I had to click on the "Did Life arise ..." link to confirm my suspicion that it was Larry Moran's post on his blog (already read it), rather than yet another view on the subject (which would have been more interesting). Adding a "over at Sandwalk" or "Larry Moran discusses ..." would have done it.
Posted by: Divalent | September 5, 2009 1:38 PM
Great idea!
Posted by: Susannah | September 5, 2009 4:52 PM
Me likey long time. I am now a stormpulse addict, boring my wife (whose name is linda...) about the havoc she is not causing in the pacific. I also want shale ale. Dear FSM, is brilliant.
To extract shortened hyperlinks, I just google searched and tested out Longurl.org and found it performed well, even for Friend Feed links! http://longurl.org/
Posted by: Kevin Z | September 7, 2009 10:31 PM