Pharyngula

Posted by: Zeno | December 31, 2009 10:47 AM

Boy, most of those rocks sure are burning up far away from the earth. The atmosphere must extend a lot farther out than we thought.

Or the rocks are trying to trick us! (Sneaky rocks!)

Posted by: Dania | December 31, 2009 10:48 AM

Hey, I was submitting a comment on the other thread when you closed it! I got this:

Your comment submission failed for the following reasons:

Comments are not allowed on this entry.

And my comment did have the word "limestone" in it...

no one will talk geology at all in this open thread.

*pouts*

Posted by: Josh | December 31, 2009 10:51 AM

Ahh, that reminds me. I do still need to finish my reply to that douchebag in that other thread.

Posted by: Nakarti | December 31, 2009 10:52 AM

Geology! Are you nuts? The Moai are coming for us dum-dums!!
Everybody PANIC!

Posted by: Glen Davidson | December 31, 2009 10:54 AM

Also, I've always wanted the IDiots to explain a bunch of fast and hard objects coming in and killing most life periodically, and whatever the whole Permian extinction was.

They're silent about "design" through the bit of intelligence they actually have, though. What? We're not here to explain anything except for complexity, which is easy to do through an omniscient God if you're open-minded enough to grant its existence sans evidence.

They should be pressed on the huge numbers of "gaps" (there'd have to be connections for there to be real gaps, however) when they can be, no matter how much they try to avoid any honest discussion of ID.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p

Posted by: blf | December 31, 2009 10:59 AM

GOATS ON FIRE! The above comment by me (blf) was supposed to have been an “anonymous” comment by Rock:

Look, squishy organic semi-evolved proto-slime, without me and my friends, the best you could have been was a sub-intelligent shade of the colour yellow. So go back into your rock-walled cave and close your calcium-filled gob.

Not sure why/how the SciBorg's goofyware figured out it was me?

Posted by: Steve | December 31, 2009 11:01 AM

I keep waiting for the 'bots to come in!

Posted by: daveau | December 31, 2009 11:10 AM

I always confuse geography with geometry. What? Oh...

Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawlLc8Gfo6oZ8uAX3dYeOBxChVtMasvnHck | December 31, 2009 11:13 AM

Up until the last few seconds that
could have been a promo for the 2001
film "Evolution".

"Coming to wipe that silly smile off
your planet."

Posted by: PaleGreenPants | December 31, 2009 11:15 AM

"Sneaky rocks"

*snicker.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | December 31, 2009 11:17 AM

Must. Not. Post. Too. YouTube. Videos.

Posted by: Knockgoats | December 31, 2009 11:20 AM

OK, here's a non-geological, but topical topic: what is next year (or this year for those in and around the western Pacific) called. I know it's 2010, but is that going to be "two thousand [and] ten", or "twenty-ten"? Throughout the noughties, the Two-thousand-ites have prevailed, but I predict a strong comeback for the Twenty-ists. Their victory will surely be complete by 2020 - how can this be anything other than "twenty-twenty"?

Posted by: Lynna, OM | December 31, 2009 11:29 AM

Dania @3: To salve your frustrated desire for a post with the word "limestone", here's some W.H. Auden:

If it form the one landscape that we, the inconstant ones,
     Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly
Because it dissolves in water. Mark these rounded slopes
     With their surface fragrance of thyme and, beneath,
A secret system of caves and conduits; ... Dear, I know nothing of
Either, but when I try to imagine a faultless love
     Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur
Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.

Posted by: Sean McCorkle | December 31, 2009 11:31 AM

Yay! "Monolith Monsters" is one of my favorite old B films. It was pretty original I think. The images of gigantic crystal obelisks smashing a farm was pretty cool. And there's actually a bit of the scientific method present in the plot - towards then end the characters try to isolate the component in a compound which attacks the substance.

And if Im not mistaken, that is Paul Frees narrating! the voice of Sci Fi!
Who could forget his parts in "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers" and "Colosus: The Forbin Project"!

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | December 31, 2009 11:36 AM

Double jacking at the breast is when two miners are working at the end of a tunnel or trench, extending the mine where the vein is exposed but not yet accessible for removing ore.

Was this intended to titillate?

Posted by: Lynna, OM | December 31, 2009 11:52 AM

Josh @690 on the previous thread (and Alan B before that):

tufa: ambient temperature freshwater carbonate rock, usually from carbonate precipitation in springs or streams (to be distinguished from lacustrine limestones and from hot water travertines)
tuff: a suite of deposits composed of fine-grained volcanic detritus. Tuffs are complex and it would take a while to get really into them here, but for the purposes of this comment, they are volcaniclastic* sediments, as opposed to tufas, which are water-derived carbonate sediments.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | December 31, 2009 11:57 AM

@29

"Double jacking at the breast is when two miners are working at the end of a tunnel or trench, extending the mine where the vein is exposed but not yet accessible for removing ore."
Was this intended to titillate?

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | December 31, 2009 12:04 PM

There should have been a "Many." in #21. How can a person keep dropping words like this? Is my brain made of swiss cheese. Did I consume some prions a few years back?

moans...

Posted by: Dania | December 31, 2009 12:04 PM

@Lynna, thanks. That was beautiful. I grew up surrounded by limestone landscapes. :)

My post (*shakes fist at PZ*) was about a failed attempt by me and my cousin to "climb" a slightly rounded slope of highly weathered limestone when we were young. It wasn't very high and it wasn't steep, but we soon realized that there was no way in hell we could make it to the top without having small blocks of limestone slipping down underneath our feet at every step we took. We were young, and we really wanted to reach the top that way, but thankfully we both ended up agreeing that it would be better to give up and go back to the foot-path.

Posted by: badgersdaughter | December 31, 2009 12:17 PM

Was this intended to titillate?

Mining and petroleum geologists and engineers have some of the most unintentionally (or not) hilarious jargon ever. I work in a large firm specializing in oilfield equipment. Another female coworker and I were laughing ourselves breathless last week. We were bored because support calls were few, and we were playing around with the engineering database.

We found whips, chains, straps, belts, cages, restraints, lubricants, bottom subs, bottom plugs, nipple clamps, vibrators, male extension equipment, a "power coupler," something called a "rubber finger," something called a "female banana plug" (further identified as a "johnson component"), and much more.

Posted by: badgersdaughter | December 31, 2009 12:21 PM

Or, as I said to her at the end of the day, anytime you work in a field where the whole business is devoted to ramming long, hard, tools designed for penetration into deep, dark, hot, wet holes, you're going to get that sort of thing.

Posted by: Nemo | December 31, 2009 12:26 PM

Sorry, a software DVD player. And to think, I even previewed.

Posted by: NewEnglandBob | December 31, 2009 12:32 PM

Kryptonite is the only worthwhile rock.

Posted by: Romeo Vitelli | December 31, 2009 12:39 PM

Hey, I don't see geologist bloggers writing about evil cephalopods. Be fair.

Posted by: Dania | December 31, 2009 12:56 PM

And probably even further complicated by the fact that tufa is a fairly obscure type of sedimentary material.

And isn't turf a type of sedimentary material too?

Posted by: David L | December 31, 2009 1:04 PM

One of the craters shown in this clip is not from a meteor strike. It's Ubehebe Crater in northern Death Valley, and is the result of upward migrating magma contacting groundwater, causing a great steam explosion.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | December 31, 2009 1:10 PM

When in doubt, blame Rev BDC -- it gives him a sense of purpose.

Lynna, I have informed Chimpy that I love him for his typos. It just struck me that I am about the only person who gets away with calling him Chimpy.

Posted by: windy | December 31, 2009 1:20 PM

OK, they want to reproduce, but they're all interested in making everything vapor and dead first.

It's a rock monster, it doesn't HAVE motivation!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPND-I2_1dk

Posted by: eddie | December 31, 2009 1:22 PM

Re 36 and others;

Not to be confused with tofu.

Posted by: Jeff Martin | December 31, 2009 1:25 PM

Here is some geo and some evo.

When meteor crash into Earth, they create amino acids. Likely meteor strikes on the early Earth created the building blocks for life.

citation

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | December 31, 2009 1:30 PM

Welcome back, my Queen.

Posted by: reyfox | December 31, 2009 1:36 PM

Up until the last few seconds that could have been a promo for the 2001 film "Evolution".

"Coming to wipe that silly smile off
your planet."

Sadly, that tagline is more clever and funny than the entire movie.

Posted by: Alan B | December 31, 2009 1:50 PM

#47 Romeo Vitelli

Hey, I don't see geologist bloggers writing about evil cephalopods. Be fair.

That's because once they are fossilised they become GOOD. Anything that's rock is GOOD.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/03/images/090319-octopus-fossil-picture_big.jpg

VERY GOOD!

www.baystatereplicas.com/images/amm_octopus_phil.jpg

(OK. So it's a photo of a replica. No one's perfect.)

www.heathermccurdy.com/archives/robyn%20octopus.JPG

Er. No!

http://www.chinookcyclingclub.com/images/octopusGarden.gif

Question:

Would PZ rather have this or his mount at the Creation Museum?

Posted by: Josh | December 31, 2009 1:59 PM

Anything that's rock is GOOD.

fossil =/= rock.

*ducks*

Posted by: Dania | December 31, 2009 2:08 PM

You had to go and complicate things... :P

*smiles*

Actually, I think I've always had that doubt. I couldn't miss the opportunity to ask you, could I? :)

Thank you.

Posted by: eddie | December 31, 2009 2:14 PM

Are! You! Ready!... To RAWK?!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmYY6D_h84g

Posted by: Josh | December 31, 2009 2:17 PM

I couldn't miss the opportunity to ask you, could I? :)

HUMPF.

I think you do it because it amuses you when I get all geeked out.

I don't believe I wrote several paragraphs on turf.

*shakes head*

Posted by: Alan B | December 31, 2009 2:22 PM

#72

Ignorance is no excuse!

Posted by: Dania | December 31, 2009 2:27 PM

it amuses you when I get all geeked out.

Now, that I cannot deny...

I don't believe I wrote several paragraphs on turf.

But I enjoyed it. It could have had some more asterisks, though...

*ducks*

Posted by: Paul | December 31, 2009 2:33 PM

It's IMHO more likely for a stupid person to use their mobile while driving on an open road than in heavy traffic. But why am I thinking stupid people will be rational?

You say IMHO, but I really think any assertion of this manner requires some sort of evidence. Granted, living in California may skew my perception, but I've noted many more people text messaging or calling in traffic than on open roads. If you're focusing on driving fast, that occupies your attention. If you're bored or going slower than expected in traffic, you're more likely to fiddle with your phone or feel the need to otherwise occupy your time productively utilizing your phone.

Of course, I don't even own a cell phone, so I'm not personally biased either way.

Posted by: Josh | December 31, 2009 2:35 PM

It could have had some more asterisks, though...

Oh you are so gonna get it...

Posted by: Josh | December 31, 2009 2:40 PM

Ignorance is no excuse!

Now you're talking.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Eomaia_scansoria.JPG

That thing is fucking awesome. Nice preservation.

Posted by: mythusmage | December 31, 2009 2:48 PM

Now here I go getting some people upset again...

For I went and looked up the topic of hot springs, finding this list of them. Select the state by dropdown menu and hit 'select'. You'll find that places such as California and Nevada have a shit load of hot springs. New York State? One. That's it, one.

Overall the eastern United States is just not all that geologically active. Nowhere near as active as the western U.S. Certainly not active enough to be a reliable indicator of such tectonic business as subduction, unless it's at a real low level. More likely is that there is minor upper mantle upwelling providing a small amount of heat for powering hot springs. Once again you see how demonstration trumps assertion.

I'm still not persuaded that the west North Atlantic floor merges seamlessly into the North American Continent. I admit it is possible, but evidence it is would appear to be buried deep beneath the talus slope we call the continental shelf.

Where continental crust is concerned, my apologies for taking the major constituent for granite. That was rude, and showed no consideration for the subject in question. I just didn't treat it gneiss.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | December 31, 2009 2:56 PM

They'll stone you at the breakfast table.

Posted by: Alan B | December 31, 2009 3:14 PM

#85 mythusmage

I'm still not persuaded that the west North Atlantic floor merges seamlessly into the North American Continent. I admit it is possible, but evidence it is would appear to be buried deep beneath the talus slope we call the continental shelf.

Where is your evidence that it does not or even that it might not? Do you have anything other than speculation and your inability to conceive of it being so?

The status quo of science is the product of a huge amount of work although it is always a work in progress. Progress comes from producing evidence. "Thought experiments" (or speculation with inadequate understanding) just don't cut it.

wrt evidence of subduction of the Atlantic Ocean floor under the East coast of America. That would be some discovery! Especially as oil companies have done a lot of speculative seismic work in the coastal area of the US. It is not my speciality but seismic imaging would show up your "talus slope" and what lies beneath it.

Have you thought of doing any searching for yourself to see if there is any seismic imaging available along the E coast of the USA?

P.S. Pity you didn't respond to my message on the last thread about your "Leanon Spring" link. Do you have a link you want us to follow up?

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | December 31, 2009 3:20 PM

Now I am styling.

Posted by: Patricia Queen of Sluts, OM | December 31, 2009 3:42 PM

Is it stoning time yet?

Posted by: Sean McCorkle | December 31, 2009 4:04 PM

Cheryl@32:
It would be really fun to compile or even see a list of old B films where the women characters were at least strong if not the heros. One favorite of mine, "Them", comes to mind -if I recall correctly, the daughter of the senior entomologist is herself an entomologist and is the first one into the dangerous situation. Not bad for 1954.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | December 31, 2009 4:11 PM

With your majestic and superior cackling hen.

Posted by: Alan B | December 31, 2009 4:25 PM

#92 Janine, She Wolf Of Pharyngula, OM
Hi Janine:

This video contains content from Vevo, who has decided to block it in your country.

Pity. What have I missed?

Posted by: mythusmage | December 31, 2009 4:30 PM

Alan B, #89; re Lebanon Springs

An example of an eastern American hot springs, that and nothing more. Serving primarily as an example of how lacking in tectonic activity the eastern U.S. is. It's the sort of thing that persuades me where assertion will not.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | December 31, 2009 4:34 PM

There's a riot going on!

Posted by: mythusmage | December 31, 2009 4:36 PM

Janine, #102

A bit?

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | December 31, 2009 4:41 PM

Can you surry?

Posted by: Lynna, OM | December 31, 2009 4:46 PM

Here's a poll that's currently too close to call. It's the Ass Clown of the Year Award, and it is a race between Glenn Beck and Joe Lieberman. Personally, I feel that Glenn Beck should get the award because he's always an Ass Clown, while Lieberman is occasionally an Ass Clown. Consistency, people, consistency.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | December 31, 2009 4:50 PM

You should have let me known.

Posted by: SC OM | December 31, 2009 4:56 PM

Observation

It is when reason sleeps when monsters are born.

Observation

Eres megatwit.

Goya told me to tell you that.

***

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qHAZ25HYqU

Posted by: Patricia Queen of Sluts, OM | December 31, 2009 4:58 PM

ahhh...there's always room for Dylan.

Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula | December 31, 2009 5:06 PM

Janine wrote:

Alan B, that would be I Want You Back by The Hoodoo Gurus off of their Stone Age Romeos album. (I still use the word album.)

Janine, my estimation of your music-foo is now in the stratosphere. I didn't realise anyone outside of Australia had heard of the Hoodoo Gurus - one of my favourite 80s/90s Australian acts and the first band I ever saw live.

Incidentally, that gig was also the first - and, at this point in time at least, last - 'date' I ever went on; that I totally bombed out may be why it was the last.

Posted by: SC OM | December 31, 2009 5:12 PM

So sorry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4hHqC-Grhk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS_tQOF7YKc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RmKBFND9SY

Posted by: Katrina, radicales féministes athées | December 31, 2009 5:18 PM

Josh, the only reason I was familiar with tuff is because that was one of the main ingredients in Roman construction. And no wonder; we saw it everywhere in the Naples area. If I can dig up some of my photos, I'll link them.

I don't even pretend to be a geologist, but I have a few friends who are and have always found it fascinating.

Posted by: Alan B | December 31, 2009 5:32 PM

#120 eddie

No, I think I first mentioned Status Quo (#80) and the status quo (#90). The second use was intended to be in part humorous. Obviously not too subtle for you to catch ...

Posted by: mythusmage | December 31, 2009 5:34 PM

SC, #113

There is a treatment for that rash.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | December 31, 2009 5:36 PM

Uh huh her.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | December 31, 2009 5:49 PM

I am cheating here.

Guess what this is?

If you cannot guess what this is...

Posted by: SC OM | December 31, 2009 5:55 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_mrMV4FWRY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCtTDYhUvSk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT9U5ChjGWo

Posted by: blf | December 31, 2009 6:00 PM

It's just turned into 2010CE here.
Yawn!
Only two-ish years to go before the End of Life, The Universe, and Everything…  ;-)

Cheers!

Posted by: SC OM | December 31, 2009 6:10 PM

Probably a sledgehammer, yes?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1tTN-b5KHg

Yes, I'm antisocial. I'll go join the party soon...

Posted by: llewelly | December 31, 2009 6:20 PM

Er, wait, that's old news, he was fired in 2008. My apologies.

Posted by: Alan B | December 31, 2009 6:28 PM

#137 llewelly

The trial / inquiry / panel (whatever) still goes on ... and on ... and on. Have a look at The Pandas Thumb. This is the latest:

http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2009/12/freshwater-dec-1.html#more

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | December 31, 2009 6:33 PM

And it rolls on.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | December 31, 2009 7:05 PM

Did you count your fingers after shaking my hand?

Posted by: Patricia Queen of Sluts, OM | December 31, 2009 8:28 PM

Lynna - On one of my trips through SLC we stopped for refreshments at the Dead Goat Saloon. Do you know if it is still there? They had great T-shirts.

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | December 31, 2009 9:09 PM

Lynna: The trick to getting obliterated in Utah is to drink at high altitudes, which are pretty easy to get to*. They have CRAZY baroque liquor laws, but a little 3.2 beer at 3,000m goes a long way.

*OK...the best way is to bring your own stuff in and camp in the mountains. I like Logan Canyon, and west of Salt Lake, but I here S. Utah is rad too.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | December 31, 2009 9:22 PM

Something appropriate for the night.

Posted by: Patricia Queen of Sluts, OM | December 31, 2009 9:27 PM

Thank you boygenius. Aww, dang, the Dead Goat was a place I looked forward to going to again if I ever got to Utah again.

Posted by: Beth | December 31, 2009 10:00 PM

I remember this movie from when I was a kid, watching the Creature Feature on the weekend! Thanks for a fun memory...this was one of the cheesiest of all the cheesy movies, and I remember it fondly.

Posted by: eddie | December 31, 2009 10:28 PM

Aah! Apologies to Anne McCaffrey, and to Ursula K leGuin. I confess I have only read short stories by either of them and not been convinced to buy any of their novels.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | December 31, 2009 10:46 PM

OT I'm back on the non-snowing side of Lake Michigan. Later the Redhead and I will have some cake my mother sent home with us with some peach spumante. All finished off with a good nights sleep in our own bed. Looking forward to that the most. Happy New Year everybody.

Posted by: Rorschach | December 31, 2009 11:20 PM

*drags poisoned body into thread and counts remaining braincells*

Well, a happy new year to everyone out there, mine was spent at home quietly..

For the new year, I'm reminded of the great german philosopher Dragoslav Stepanovic's words :

"Lebbe ged weida" !

Posted by: Aratina Cage | January 1, 2010 12:00 AM

Happy New Year!

Posted by: John Morales | January 1, 2010 12:32 AM

Works like a charm, O prized pullet!

Posted by: Cake or Death? | January 1, 2010 12:36 AM

(This is not actually Patricia -- I wanted to try creating a Moveable Type account that I could hand off to her)

Posted by: Lynna, OM | January 1, 2010 1:07 AM

Happy Twenty-Ten my friends! Here's some good news to start the year out right: Gay Marriage in Argentina!

After their first attempt to wed earlier this month in Buenos Aires was thwarted, gay rights activists Jose Maria Di Bello and Alex Freyre took their civil ceremony to the capital of Argentina's Tierra del Fuego province, where a sympathetic governor backed their bid to make Latin American history.
     The couple exchanged rings Monday in Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, closer to Antarctica than Buenos Aires. The informal ceremony was witnessed by state and federal officials.
"My knees didn't stop shaking," said Di Bello. "We are the first gay couple in Latin America to marry.

P.S. Thanks, boygenius, for keeping Patricia up to date on the Utah dens of iniquity.

Posted by: boygenius | January 1, 2010 1:16 AM

Den of Iniquity? Never heard of it. Did you mean this:

http://www.thedenofiniquity.net/dun.html

?

Posted by: eddie | January 1, 2010 1:46 AM

AAARRRGGGHHH!!! My eyes. Lynna, you can be cruel sometimes in ways that would make boygenius's mistress of bdsm blush.

Posted by: mythusmage | January 1, 2010 1:58 AM

On matters geological, here's a link to an article (pay) from the January 2010 Scientific American. The premise is that asteroids in the early days provided the nucleus of the continents.

I'm inclined to say that asteroids weren't necessary, but I don't know enough to say they weren't involved.

BTW, check out the thread with it. Woo addiction can be found in a lot of places.

Posted by: boygenius | January 1, 2010 2:25 AM

eddie:

My mistress does not blush.

I do.

Posted by: Ralph Dosser | January 1, 2010 3:14 AM

I remember this movie from when I was a kid. The only way to stop the mineral menace was with .... salt water. We all know how much rocks hate salt. Fortunately the monoliths had all bunched up at the bottom of the old salt quarry, which happened to be below the big, poorly constructed dam.

Boy was that a stupid movie.

Posted by: boygenius | January 1, 2010 4:44 AM

The full story behind my BDSM sweetie and myself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COdabvBaiug

Posted by: boygenius | January 1, 2010 4:58 AM

I will donate 2 internets to anyone (other than Sven) who can tell me what song the band teased before they started playing Steep Grade, Sharp Curve in my link @179

Posted by: SC OM | January 1, 2010 9:48 AM

I'll go join the party soon...

Yeah, I'm really

really

really wishing I hadn't done that so early.

Or at least had eaten something first.

Ouch.

boygenius,

Lost Sailor? Terrapin Station?

Posted by: cnocspeireag | January 1, 2010 10:36 AM

Thanks a bunch, Pharyngulytes. You could have warned me before I eventually got to play my DVD of Watchmen.
I'll never again be able to listen to Leonard Cohen singing 'Hallelujah' without the remembered image of a naked Malin Akerman.
How could you do this to me?

Posted by: JeffreyD | January 1, 2010 11:24 AM

Sven? SC OM? You both appear a tad fragile this morning. Hope you feel better - going to go have some runny eggs on toast, smoked kippers, haggis and blood pudding, and some smoked oysters. Hope I have some of the chili cheese topping left for the oysters. (evil grin)

Ciao folks

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | January 1, 2010 12:30 PM

Josh's Ruck 'n' Brunch^TM

Franchises now available!

Posted by: Josh | January 1, 2010 12:38 PM

Josh's Ruck 'n' Brunch^TM

Ha!
I love it, but who the hell would our clientele be? Most people aren't going to be thrilled about six-twelve miles of punishment before they get their bacon...

We would serve a bad ass Bloody Mary, though.

Posted by: David Marjanović | January 1, 2010 12:51 PM

Eating pork medallions wrapped in bacon right now.

The alt-text at the "quick link to the latest endless thread" has changed to "Rock it." :-)

Nothing happens at random

Wrong.

It's hard to overemphasize how important it is that this is wrong.

It's also hard to overemphasize how... peculiar it is that this discovery, made in 1927, still hasn't become common knowledge!

Drew left mormonism only to fall in with a knitting cult

:-) :-) :-)

aiyiyi

¡¡¡Ay, ay, ay!!!

Posted by: boygenius | January 1, 2010 1:03 PM

SC OM wins 2 internets. Technically it's Lady With a Fan but Terrapin Station is close enough.

Lynna, the strippers at Miss Sally's needed more than dim lighting and alcohol to look great. There is a bar directly across the street, and most people probably tie one on prior to going to the dance. *Or so I've heard*

Posted by: boygenius | January 1, 2010 1:32 PM

Lynna@186:

What has gone wrong in Nyssa, OR? Did the mormons invade?

Plenty of Mormons in the area, of course. There is also a fairly large Mennonite population and they are far more conservative than the Mormons, believe it or not.

http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/I32.html

Posted by: Lynna, OM | January 1, 2010 1:56 PM

boygenius, Thanks for the link to the Mennonite colonies in Idaho. Odd that most of them are clustered around heavily mormon areas. I wonder if they siphon off discontented mormons. People who think mormons are not conservative enough ... whoa, nelly!

A school in Nampa, Idaho has been in the news lately for its plans to use the Bible as a textbook. But I don't remember what flavor of crazy they are.

I don't have any bloody mary ingredients in my house, and it's snowing like crazy here. I wish Josh's Ruck 'n Brunch was next door. I already shoveled snow for about an hour and a half, and I'll have to do it again this afternoon. I think this should qualify as a substitute for a ruck.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | January 1, 2010 2:53 PM

The girls at the Nampa Classical Academy are required to wear bike shorts under their skirts? That will be nice in the hotter months. It's also not a medically sound requirement.
Nobody's tax dollars should fund schools like this. I notice that they also list "patriotism" as one of the main subjects they teach. Wonderful.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 1, 2010 3:24 PM

I already shoveled snow for about an hour and a half, and I'll have to do it again this afternoon. I think this should qualify as a substitute for a ruck.

Posted by: SC OM | January 1, 2010 3:26 PM

You're a mean one, JeffreyD! Fortunately, I had returned to sleep and was feeling somewhat better by the time I read that.

I think we should officially propose that all work weeks close with brunch.

Seconded. Brunch is the best meal. Eggs Florentine. Yum.

SC, a quick reminder that my comment is still waiting for you over on this thread.

Yes, Walton, I haven't forgotten. I'll get back to you later today or tomorrow. Unless you remind me again - then I won't.

:)

SC OM wins 2 internets.

Yay! Only hours into the new decade and I've already won two internets!

Technically it's Lady With a Fan but Terrapin Station is close enough.

Yes. Blame the hangover.

Anybody else in need of some hair o' the dog this morning?

I've never been a hair-o'-the dog person. Can't conceive of wanting a drink when I'm feeling like that (other than the occasional brunch mimosa). More of an I'm-never-drinking-again kind of girl. I may be up for a walk along the water, though, if I can get out in the next few minutes...

Speaking of Mennonites and the like, the Doukhobors

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doukhobor

are an interesting community that I heard of because Peter Kropotkin helped arrange with the Canadian government for them to migrate from Russia to Canada. I was just checking out the Wikipedia entry, and parts of it sound ridiculously biased and lacking documentation, e.g.:

Peter V. Verigin's son, Peter P. Verigin who arrived from the Soviet Union in 1928, succeeded his father as leader of the Community Doukhobors. He became known as Peter the Purger, and worked to smooth the relations between the Community Doukhobors and the larger Canadian society. His policies, seen by the radical Sons of Freedom as ungodly and assimilationist, were answered by increasing protests on the part of the latter. The Sons of Freedom would burn the Community Doukhobors' property, and organize more nude parades. The Canadian Parliament responded in 1932 by criminalizing public nudity. Over the years, over 300 radical Doukhobor men and women were arrested for this offense, which typically carried a three-year prison sentence.[16]

In 1947-48, Sullivan's Royal Commission investigated arsons and bombing attacks in British Columbia, and recommended a number of measures intended to integrate the Doukhobors into the Canadian society, notably through the participation of their children in public education. Around that time, the provincial government entered into direct negotiations with the Freedomite leadership.

But W. A. C. Bennett's Social Credit government, which came to power in 1952, took a harder stance against the "Doukhobor problem". In 1953, 150 children of the Sons of Freedom were forcible interned by the government agents in a residential school in New Denver, British Columbia.

Abuse of the interned children was later alleged although there was no evidence to this claim albeit fit well with the Doukhobors' senseless mantra of government persecution. The real abuse was on the part of the Doukhobor community that failed to educate their children other than to drill into them government conspiracy theories and train them to commit acts of violence towards their own families and community members (through well documented bombings and acts of arson). In less than a half a century Sons of Freedom acts of violence and arson rose to 1112 separate events and over $20 million in damages (bill to taxpayers) that included public school bombings and burnings, bombings of Canadian railroad bridges and tracks, the bombing of the Nelson, B.C. courthouse, and a huge power transmission tower servicing the East Kootenay district resulting in the loss of 1200 jobs.

Posted by: boygenius | January 1, 2010 3:34 PM

Nerd, what is the origin of the term Yooper?

Is it some mangling of Upper in the regional dialect?

Posted by: Alan B | January 1, 2010 3:38 PM

What is the importance of the tufa?

First of all its the largest block of tufa anywhere in England and possibly in Europe. Roderick Impey Murchison (of Silurian and Permian fame) comments on it in his exploring of the Welsh Marches. It should be noted that the method of formation (i.e. in cold water and encouraged by mosses) is quite different from the travertine formed in "volcanic" hot springs in Italy and elsewhere. There the calcium carbonate is laid down in a more dense form.

Secondly, it is likely that the tiny spring that formed this great mass of rock was sacred in pre-Christian times. The rock was at one stage "home" to a hermit and later to a small number of monks. They may have been involved in helping travellers and visitors to this holy site.

Thirdly, the tufa makes a remarkably light-weight building material. For a rock so open in structure it is surprising how much load it can take and how resistant it is to weathering. The initial construction of some of the local churches was entirely of tufa and other churches further afield have incorporated tufa into the building. In some places this might be because of the lightness combined with strength (e.g. in the roof vaulting of Worcester Cathedral). There are so many churches in Herefordshire in particular that contain small amounts of tufa that it is believed that it was incorporated deliberately. The theory is that the spring was sacred and hence the rock produced by the spring carried some of the same holiness with it into the new church building.

Fourthly, the rock, unexpectedly emerging from the woods, has a beauty and a stature that demands attention. The lack of visitors is primarily that it is "off the beaten track". Unlike when the monks were there you have to take your own picnic lunch and find suitable places in the woods for other requirements.

Or, perhaps, not enough people enjoy looking at REALLY GOOD rock!

Footnotes

For a geology trail guide and more information unload a pdf at:

http://www.geopark.org.uk/documents/publications/SouthstoneRockTrailGuide.pdf

(Photograph 8 shows tufa used in a local church to frame a medieval window. At 150% or 200% zoom the open structure is easily seen)
For a local church built entirely of tufa (St Andrew's, Shelsley Walsh) see:

www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1172257

(Shelsley Walsh is the site of a world famous (car) hill climb where the enthusiasts are allowed (encouraged) to mix with the competitors in the pit area. But that is another story!)

Posted by: boygenius | January 1, 2010 4:11 PM

Nerd,

I should have guessed, being 1/2 Finnish myself. I have fond memories of my maternal grandmother speaking Finglish to me when I was a lad.

SC OM,

Thanks for the link to the Doukhobors. Very interesting. I had never heard of them before, although I have walked past the Nelson, BC courthouse that was bombed. Nelson is an awesome little town with phenomenal back-country skiing/boarding in the Kootenays. Anyone who is up for the experience of a lifetime should check out Baldface Lodge:

http://www.baldface.net/

Posted by: Josh | January 1, 2010 4:19 PM

Seconded. Brunch is the best meal. Eggs Florentine. Yum.

Yum.

I had turkey Benedict (same as traditional, but the Canadian bacon has been replaced), a pile* of really good home fries, toast, and a side of bacon, chased with coffee and...a Bloody Mary.

*And I mean a pile.

Posted by: Sphere Coupler | January 1, 2010 4:30 PM

David, Get a grip.

Leucippus was alive at a time long ago, our knowledge today is built upon the succeses and failures of those before us, just as those who come after us will build upon our knowledge base.

Really...try to understand the inflection within the context of the whole.

You act as if Heisenberg uncertainty principle is a secret known only to you, thatsa mighty high horse your riding.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | January 1, 2010 4:59 PM

Hooray! Alan B is giving geology lessons again.

Thank you, Alan.

Posted by: boygenius | January 1, 2010 5:20 PM

I've never understood the I'm-never-drinking-again mentality.

Like cures like, doesn't it? At least that's what my homeopathist tells me.

Posted by: SEF | January 1, 2010 5:30 PM

@ Sven DiMilo #160:

happy newt year

If only. It has been nearly 3 years since my last newt. :-(

I do have the promise of getting some newt-spawn this year if possible though (from a friend of a child of a friend!). At the moment I'm just hoping most of my frogs survive the ice and snow.

Posted by: Katrina, radicales féministes athées | January 1, 2010 6:16 PM

boygenius re: Yooper

It's a contraction of U.P.'er, or someone from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

~~~~~~~~~~

Home made eggs Benedict and mimosas at our house this morning. No rucking, though I am dismantling Christmas decorations.

Posted by: Knockgoats | January 1, 2010 6:29 PM

What did Mahatma Gandhi and Genghis Khan have in common? - eddie@218

One possible answer does concern the "names" they are commonly known by: neither is actually a name, both are titles. Gandhi was Mohandas Gandhi - "Mahatma" means "great soul". Genghis Khan was called Temujin: "Genghis Khan" means "lord of the Earth".

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 1, 2010 6:42 PM

Hooray! Alan B is giving geology lessons again.

Thank you, Alan.

It's a contraction of U.P.'er, or someone from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Posted by: Josh | January 1, 2010 6:45 PM

Okay, I think I easily win today's dumb ass award. I just stubbed by toe and it hit the wall just right so that I actually tore off a toenail (little toe). There is blood all over my goddamn sock.

I hereby propose that weeks do not end with brunch + toe stubbing.

Fuck.

Posted by: boygenius | January 1, 2010 6:57 PM

Josh:

I feel you, brother. Nothing can bring a grown man to tears more easily than a stubbed toe. If we actually had an Intelligent Designer (TM), you would think he would have placed fewer nerve endings in a portion of our anatomy that is prone to kicking things.

Posted by: Alan B | January 1, 2010 7:01 PM

#229 Josh

I hereby propose that weeks do not end with brunch + toe stubbing.

I second that emotion!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tAUDiS4rak

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 1, 2010 7:05 PM

Josh, you sound like my sister. She was practicing a cheer (back in Jr. High) and kicked the wall in her bedroom, breaking her little toe. I keep stubbing that toe on a number of things, but it remains intact.

Posted by: Josh | January 1, 2010 7:09 PM

Your sister's experience sounds pretty dreadful.

My little toe is strange. It's a tiny bit smaller than you might expect and it articulates slightly more proximal to the ankle than the rest. As such, I'm rather prone to stubbing the little bugger. But, of the stuff I've actually broken, my toes aren't to my knowledge yet on the list.

Posted by: Josh | January 1, 2010 7:15 PM

Hope it's not hurting too much. :/

*shrug*

It hurts pretty damn good, but now that I've gotten it bandaged it's much better than it was.

Posted by: Dania | January 1, 2010 7:49 PM

I can cure my hangover by drinking myself to death?

Er... Look, whatever you try to do, I have nothing to do with it I have not given you any ideas. 'Kay?

Posted by: Dania | January 1, 2010 8:06 PM

Indeed, it is. And you've confused me even more! :)

Well, I'm off to bed... I really need a good night* of sleep.

G'night everyone.

*Several, actually. I've successfully fucked up my sleeping patterns in the last two weeks or so... and I WANT THEM BACK!

Posted by: boygenius | January 1, 2010 8:17 PM

Ahh,

Checklist:
1. Confuse Dania
2. Confound Sven re: Jerry phrasings.
3. Learn something about Mormons that Lynna doesn't already know.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | January 1, 2010 8:24 PM

They have the same middle name, the.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | January 1, 2010 9:15 PM

Janine has shown that she is a 4th Grade graduate by knowing the correct answer to my silly question.

Posted by: John Morales | January 1, 2010 9:25 PM

Antiochus inspires me.

I'm a pretty slack cook, but if I say so myself I make a damn good pseudo-Coq au vin which is quite cheap too:

* a couple of tablespoons of olive oil
* an onion or two, sliced roughly
* some slices of short bacon, chopped-up fine
* a couple of garlic cloves, chopped quite small
* a couple of cups of stock
* a couple of pounds of chicken thigh¹ fillets, chopped-up
* a decent glass of red wine

- brown chicken pieces, set aside
- fry up the onion on medium heat, until nearly caramelised
- then add bacon bits, fry some more
- add garlic, fry for a little bit (burns easily)
- add wine and use it to thoroughly deglaze
- add browned-up chicken pieces
- add enough stock to cover chicken
- simmer uncovered, stirring ocassionally, until liquid is well-reduced.

PS Like a curry, I think it better when reheated on the second day.

--

¹ Breast meat is too dry and not robust enough for this, IMO.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | January 1, 2010 10:00 PM

As already pointed out
*shrug*
+1

Posted by: cicely | January 1, 2010 10:48 PM

I can has sign in?

Posted by: John Morales | January 1, 2010 11:14 PM

Um, I see no evidence that you're signed in, cicely.

Posted by: mythusmage | January 2, 2010 1:59 AM

Returning now to a conversation from the last thread, here's a link to a skeptic's look at skeptic's fail. Or how skeptics can blow their chance to convince others by being rude, snide, sarcastic, and irrational. My personal favorite is #10...

Thinking that disrespect and mockery are ever effective outreach. At best, superiority entertains the base.

Posted by: Alan B | January 2, 2010 5:44 AM

#222 Tigana

Thanks for the information! I was unaware of the mapping project and of them finding tufa is substantial amounts (by UK tufa standards).

Are you studying with the OU or tagged onto the OUGS field trip? (Don't answer if you don't want to - I know personal information is rarely asked for or given on the internet).

I shall have to have a read of the report. I'm interested in the environment in which it might have formed and whether there is evidence of moss - ancient or modern. Hopefully, I shall find it there otherwise I will probably contact the survey team.

Thanks again.

Posted by: David Marjanović | January 2, 2010 6:08 AM

What about Plitvice? Is that tufa?

Nerd, what is the origin of the term Yooper?

Is it some mangling of Upper in the regional dialect?

That's what Wiki says.

Erm, no, the article you cite says comments 223 and 252 are right.

You act as if Heisenberg uncertainty principle is a secret known only to you, thatsa mighty high horse your riding.

What, if anything, was the point of citing Leucippus when you know full well the quote has been falsified?

WTF?

Genghis Khan was called Tem[ü]jin: "Genghis Khan" means "lord of the Earth".

Does it? What about the "ruler who is as the ocean" idea, with chinggiz from the word for "sea" in Turkic languages (tingiz/tengiz/dengiz... Turkish deniz, because Turkish has turned every ng into n... Mongolian always turns ti into chi)?

Posted by: Josh | January 2, 2010 6:18 AM

What about Plitvice? Is that tufa?

Yes. And it's one of the best examples of this sort of precipitation/deposition. Waterfall turbulence and resultant precipitation, formation of tufa dams in active fluvial channels, vegetation getting actively interred. Classic. Happening right now.

Posted by: Josh | January 2, 2010 6:34 AM

So tufa is something that grows on you.

Yes.

http://books.google.com/books?id=9XMPAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA633

Posted by: Rorschach | January 2, 2010 6:50 AM

Ok this thread needs music !!! Dont think we've had Queen for a while...

Play the game !

Bohemian Rhapsody

Show must go on

Posted by: Tigana | January 2, 2010 8:10 AM

Alan B #261

They interpreted the Witherslack tufa as forming in an ice tunnel, we looked at a couple of easily accessible large blocks of tufa in a field but there were many more in the woodland following the line of the tube, so they may be no moss to identify. Try Michael Dewey at Cumbria RIGS / WGS for more details.

I have just finished the Geology S260 course & am starting "Understanding the Continents" in Feb, plus go on fieldtrips with number of groups inc OUGS. I tend to lurk on this thread for the geology links. Hopfully, the more I study, the better I will be able to contribute to the conversation.

Posted by: Josh | January 2, 2010 8:46 AM

Now, if you look at this figure from that last comment I wrote,

http://3dparks.wr.usgs.gov/nyc/images/fig112.jpg

the abrupt contact between the oceanic crust and the continental crust is probably going to piss you off. But you really need to remember that any of these margin cross-sections(1) are going to be schematic. Far more important than that, however, is the fact that the contact between the oceanic crust and the continental crust in this case(2) is pretty abrupt. Remember, you're discussing an ocean basin that was initiated and continues to open because of processes that are broadly explained by the hypothesis of sea-floor spreading.

References and Notes
1. www.lisrc.uconn.edu/images/geology/images/225-145mya.jpg
2. The eastern coast of North America.

Posted by: Josh | January 2, 2010 8:49 AM

FUCKING SB!

Please ignore #273. I'm working on something.

Josh, sorry about your toe man.

Thanks, man. Yeah, no trade--I can live with this... :)

Posted by: SC OM | January 2, 2010 9:18 AM

Apropos of nothing, I think this is cool:

http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/project-pages/coastal_mass/

But then, I just like maps. :)

***

On the other hand, I do like to snuggle in the morning so none of them ever actually tried to kill me for being the way I am.

I'd want to kill you more. :)

***

The nails on my pinky toes are so small as to be very difficult to find (mm or two). I'm sure I'd notice if I lost one, but it wouldn't take long to heal, that's for sure.

And because this is my life, the timing is poor. I've got a PT test coming up in a couple of weeks where my running speed is going to matter, so this is not when I need to be skipping run (or ruck) days. Fuck.

Aren't you able to report any injuries that might interfere with your training/performance?

Posted by: Josh | January 2, 2010 9:47 AM

I'm sure I'd notice if I lost one, but it wouldn't take long to heal, that's for sure.

Yeah, they don't take long to regrow, but they do hurt like hell when they come off.

Aren't you able to report any injuries that might interfere with your training/performance?

Of course, but it has to be something that's perceived as a "real" injury. Something that really would prevent you from getting the job done if it happened in the suck. Otherwise, injuries are an unfortunate part of being down range. In the case of something as trivial as a toenail getting ripped off, my teammates are gonna be like "WTF? It's a toenail...get on the fucking chopper. We've got shit to do."

Did you hit submit instead of preview or are you sure you hit preview but it somehow got submitted instead?

No, I absolutely hit submit instead of preview.
Fuck. But the latter has happened to me in the past.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | January 2, 2010 10:06 AM

Thanks, Alan B, for the posts on the tufa. I especially liked the details regarding the placement in the dingle, and the relationship of tufa formation to water flow(s).

A "dingle" quote from Dylan Thomas's "Fern Hill"

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,...

Here's a good example of tuff (not tufa): Photos and geological info on Crystal Peak

Posted by: JeffreyD | January 2, 2010 10:14 AM

Cool map SC OM. Also a map freak.

Re snuggling, always been lucky that my partners are snugglers - wonderful on a chilly morning when you don't have to be anywhere in particular.

Well, coffee and food time - Ciao y'all

Posted by: Kristjan Wager | January 2, 2010 10:24 AM

Completely unrelated to anything going on before in the comment section (I presume, I scrolled past).

I'm leaving for a vacation in Perth, Australia tomorrow - most of the time is going to be spent visiting family, but can anyone tell me if there is anything I should make sure to see while in town?

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | January 2, 2010 10:36 AM

Warning: Should the discussion here continue to concern toenails, I WILL post graphic descriptions of mine, one by one, and, should it become necessary, photos. There may be fungus involved, but I am neither confirming nor denying that possibility at this time. This is your only warning.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | January 2, 2010 10:40 AM

It's obscenely warm and rained a bit today. :-(

aah, home, sweet home :-p

Posted by: Lynna, OM | January 2, 2010 10:51 AM

Witherslack

Posted by: Lynna, OM | January 2, 2010 11:01 AM

Well, Sven, I say, "Bring on the fungus, if you must." However, I hope you'll note that I did try to change the subject to slack withers.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | January 2, 2010 11:16 AM

Looks like a classic nor'easter.

Posted by: Walton, Marquis of Carabas | January 2, 2010 1:05 PM

Jadehawk,

Sorry for derailing the thread (since there seems to be an unwritten rule that all open threads have to be devoted to snow, interesting rocks, bad music, bacon and inventive uses for the word "sniny"), but I wanted to continue a discussion about consumerism we were having a few weeks ago on this thread before it got derailed by insanity seasonal high spirits. :-)

Having given some thought to it, I still have to disagree with your perspective on consumerism. Consumer capitalism gives us so many things which it would be difficult to live without. I'm not talking about wall-mounted singing fish; rather, I'm talking about refrigerators, computers, central heating, mobile phones, digital watches, and all the other technology we use on a daily basis without even noticing. And the idea of living on "local food" is great if you happen to live in an agricultural region, but not so great if you live in, say, Iceland or the Falkland Islands and are allergic to fish.

In the end, a person who has, for instance, a refrigerator has a better quality of life than a person who does not have a refrigerator. This is not a culturally contingent truth; the need for refrigerators is not artificially created by "consumerist culture". Ditto for computers, and heating, and air conditioning. And thanks to consumer capitalism, more people in the world than ever before have access to these things - a situation which, sadly, is probably unsustainable because of limited environmental resources.

The point I'm trying to make is that while I recognise the necessity for environmental action to be taken, I don't think we can kid ourselves and claim that we'll all be happier without a "consumerist lifestyle".

Posted by: Kristjan Wager | January 2, 2010 1:57 PM

'Tis Himself, yes South America is a bit out of the way when I'm in Perth, Australia. Iguazu Falls looks breathtaking though

Posted by: mythusmage | January 2, 2010 6:33 PM

Josh, #273

Actually, that's what I was talking about; a abrupt transition from oceanic to continental crust, no blending of the two.

Posted by: Josh | January 2, 2010 6:44 PM

Actually, that's what I was talking about; a abrupt transition from oceanic to continental crust, no blending of the two.

Yeah, as you can see from my accidental posting, I'm working on a reply to that issue. I was working on it pretty well, but then got distracted by some other stuff. I doubt I'll finish it tonight. Sorry about that.

Posted by: mythusmage | January 2, 2010 6:52 PM

Josh, #303

Better late and correct than early and wrong. BTW, I don't know if I'll be able to check out all your links, but I do appreciate you providing them. I expect others will be able to take advantage of the leads you provided.

Posted by: SC OM | January 2, 2010 8:11 PM

I just struck me, over at American Scientist there are people working there who visit this blog on regular occasion (it's in their list of links on their front page) who read these comments. I have to wonder how often they wonder if maybe their fellow scientists are a few light bulbs short of a chandelier.

On what do you base this, specifically? Can you point to some comments in particular? I can't find that, by the way. Could you provide a link?

And I think you mean chanderlier:

http://www.yousuckatcraigslist.com/?p=3746

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | January 2, 2010 10:29 PM

Walton,

1)Before I even get into this conversation, let me make something very clear: if you ever again dismiss data simply because you don't like the uses/conclusions of the source without providing evidence that the data is faulty, I will permanently killfile you. This is a strategy used by creotards and AGW denialists as an excuse to never read anything on TalkOrigins or RealClimate, and I do not have the time or the patience for that crap.


2)You seem to either conflate capitalism and consumerism, or you think consumerism is the only form of capitalism that has ever existed/can ever exist. This isn't a conversation about capitalism; it's a conversation about the consumerist version of it, which is a very modern phenomenon, a deliberate consequence of the fact that everything a person actually needs can be made relatively cheaply and quickly and little human labor, thus resulting in need saturation and labor glut. A good article about the birth of consumerism is here.


3)Consumerism is a flavor of capitalism that requires people not to buy, own, and use things, but to consume them. Things aren't used, they're used up. There are two ways of achieving this: one is by making people feel like they need more than they actually do, and by planned obsolescence.
I'm not even going to bother with the former, because if you don't think desires (i.e. "needs") can be artificially created, you clearly don't live on the same planet as me, where advertising is ubiquitous and highly profitable.
The latter is what happens when things that are actually useful and even needful are made in such a way that you will have to buy them over and over again even when theoretically buying it once would be quite enough. American cars are the best known example of this: they were specifically designed to fall apart almost instantly so that people would have to repair them all the time and replace them often. This is true for a lot of other things too: most regular clothing, tools, appliances etc. are of such low quality that they need to be replaced every couple of years. Especially since fixing/"upgrading" broken things has become severely sidelined (by stigmatizing it, or by making it impossible via design of the object in question, or simply via the fact that buying a new item can be cheaper than fixing the old, due to various price distortions).
This is all done on purpose, but is often not visible to the public at large. For example, bra companies such as Victoria's Secret are pushing hard to make every woman out there believe the myth that she needs to replace all her bra's every 6 months, and that a woman can't just wear the same bra-size for decades. Those are both absurd statements: firstly, many women do wear the same size for many many years, so of course they can; secondly, 6 months is ridiculous*, even in times of severe change such as puberty and childbearing. And yet, that's precisely what they're telling their customers, and their products are also not designed to last longer than 6 months (usually they do, but wear and tear is visible very quickly, and as I just mentioned, most people don't fix clothing, they replace it). Add to this the fact that "old" is being pushed as a sufficient reason to replace something (even something that still works just fine), and you have the wasteful, neurotic consumerist culture in which we currently live. This isn't necessary or even particularly conductive to actual happiness (because no addiction ever is, and consumerism is addiction to buying stuff): my mom has had the same furniture and appliances since she moved to Germany 20 years ago; my boyfriend's family has appliances that are almost 30 years old, and cars from the 50's and 60's; my car is 20 years old, my furniture is older than I am, and several of my clothes have been worn by my mother and my aunt when they were in college. And this despite the fact that none of these things were ever meant to last that long, because we weren't supposed to FIX them, only replace them**. How much better still would it be if things were designed in such a way as to make them durable, fixable, and modular (i.e. upgradable in parts***)? Stuff made, sold, and bought that way would still be part of a capitalist system, but one that doesn't sacrifice resources and quality of life at the altar of the consumerist economy.****


4)No amount of "environmental protection" is going to be even remotely effective as long as the world continues to function according to the rules of consumerist growth economics. We've touched on this in the discussion about population growth (these economies need constantly increasing customer basespopulations, which is obviously counterproductive to trying to stop and reverse overpopulation), but exactly the same thing applies to resource management; it even applies to energy efficiency: where electricity is handled by a business rather than a non-profit or government itself, efficiency will be actively hindered by the fact that an increase in efficiency is likely to hit the provider hard or even drive them out of business, because suddenly they can't sell enough electricity to make a profit. Thus, they will actively resist any such developments, or alternatively find loopholes that promote efficiency at one end, but increased energy use at another.


5)Ecosystems that are completely incapable of supporting large populations shouldn't have large populations. The environmental cost of shipping food halfway across the globe aside, such ill-placed population centers do immesurably more damage to the environment than population-centers in more sturdy, suitable environments. Las Vegas is an example I've used of a city where none should be... but pretty much all of the American Southwest is overpopulated for its carrying capacity, especially in terms of water. Aquifers underneath Nevada, Southern California, Arizona and New Mexico are being sucked dry at alarming levels; the same goes for the Colorado and the Rio Grande. The population-centers in this area (Las Vegas, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Santa Fe and LA)are responsible for the rapid , total, and irreparable destruction of ecosystems which stretch for many thousands of miles, and which could have otherwise supported the populations residing there. Just think about this: the settlement of these entirely unsuitable places has dried up one of the largest rivers in North America, and is on its way to do the same with another!
Anyway, the point here being that areas like that will have to be severely depopulated if we're to prevent the environmental death of these areas. And if that sounds draconic, please keep in mind that they'll end up depopulated eventually anyway, because of the destruction going on (you can transport water only so far before it becomes too expensive or before you run out of places willing to sell you their water); the issue is merely to do it before the damage is done, not wait until afterwards


6)As far as agriculture is concerned, there are only two directions this whole thing can go: we can continue with the current system which is more or less feeding the current world population, but is destroying arable land at a ridiculous pace and is therefore unsustainable and will eventually collapse and result in mass starvation; or we can make the (admittedly painful) switch to sustainable agriculture, which we would be able to continue indefinitely. Now, the main "argument" against sustainable and local agriculture is that it can't feed all of the world's population. Which is true only in a very shallow sort of way, i.e. when you think of sustainable agriculture solely in terms of quaint, "organic" family farms that produce much less food than industrial agriculture. If that's all there were to it, then switching to sustainable agriculture would result in starvation. This isn't the case luckily. Part of developing a sustainable agriculture is solving sustainability and productivity problems with the help of technology. And for places that have sufficient water but insufficient arable land (either because of poor or non-existent soil, or because of urban sprawl), the vertical farm is probably the best solution i've seen so far. Which would solve the "fish allergy in Iceland" problem just fine :-p

eh... yeah, that's enough for now I think.

-------

*they even unknowingly admit that this is crap, because they will also tell you that a woman needs to gain/lose 25lbs before she needs a different bra size; what woman constantly gains and/or loses 25lbs every 6 months?!

**incidentally, at this point I'd commit murder for a sieve that doesn't break every 8 months, ffs. My mom's strainer is also fucking ancient, why can't they make them like that anymore?!

***think of this as a desktop vs. laptop issue. When you buy a laptop, you're stuck with whatever specs you started out with, so when one part becomes obsolete, you have to replace the whole thing. OTOH, desktops are more modular: you can add and replace individual parts, so that overall you waste less resources and money on it. The same concept can and should be applied to other things; part of this being the compatibility of newer parts with older machines, which is one of the main reason a lot of old things cannot be fixed: the parts just aren't made anymore.

****two things I remembered in regard to this: the first was an article at the beginning of the current economic crisis giving people advice on how to weather the recession. It actually told people that while they should limit their spending somewhat, under no circumstances should they completely stop spending money, because then they'd make the economy even worse. This was advice to people who were losing their houses, jobs, etc, and yet they were told to sacrifice their shrinking, insufficient incomes for the betterment of the economy! The second one was an article about china, in which it was mentioned that the chinese (I don't remember if they were talking specifically about the chinese middle class, but I suspect so) save 20% of their incomes and how they must be coaxed and tricked into spending much more money, for the good of the economy. Both of those were pretty damn good examples of how consumerist economies are bad: for one, what's good for the consumerist economy is bad for actual people; two, once you are stuck in a consumerist economy, you're in a lose-lose situation where both spending and not spending money will bite you in the ass

Posted by: negentropyeater | January 3, 2010 7:25 AM

Walton,

in fact, our economy is built almost entirely on this process of producing too much and creating demand for stuff. Get rid of that, and you put millions out of work, as well as destroying the tax revenue base which sustains the public sector.

But that's precisely the problem, that our economic system requires rapid growth to provide full employement. In qunatifiable terms, we know that our system demands an average yearly growth rate of ca. 3.5% per annum of its output in order to provide full employement (at NAIRU). But you can easily see that this is doomed to collapse one day, and that day will be some time in this century : if the output needs to double roughly every twenty years (and the consumption of resources with it), this means that before the end of this century, the world population will need to consume more than 16 times what it is consuming today.
This is of course not sustainable, and we will need to transition towards a much more resilient system most probably within our lifetime...

Which one ? Thats is the question, and I don't think there exists a complete answer yet, but I hope that when a growing population will recognize the need to move away from the current system of finance-led capitalism and consumerism, we will find a new satisfactory way forward.

Oh and about fish allergic people in Iceland, read this:

At end of 1998, there were around half a million sheep in Iceland but with the addition of lambs in summer, a total sheep stock of 1.1-1.2 million may be assumed. ... There are about 30,500 milch cows, producing a total of around 100 million litres of milk per year. ... Other crops include potatoes (the harvest of which meets about 80% of domestic consumption), turnips and carrots. Cultivation of vegetables and flowers in geothermally heated greenhouses is extensive. In total, greenhouses produced about 800 tonnes of tomatoes in 1998, which was two-thirds of annual consumption. By area under cultivation, cucumbers come second in importance after tomatoes, and the output of 700 tonnes supplies over 70% of domestic demand.

Posted by: negentropyeater | January 3, 2010 8:24 AM

Walton,

we haven't tried anarchism yet. Abolishing property and money-as-debt would be a good start.

But, sadly, I tend to agree with your prediction : we will probably have to wait first until the current system collapses, with the unavoidable resulting misery and wars, before we find a new way forward...

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | January 3, 2010 8:43 AM

The simple truth is that there is no alternative to capitalism that provides equally high material living standards to the average person. Every other socio-economic system ever attempted has produced poverty and misery.

SC would strongly disagree with this statement.

One of my concerns for the future is that a system of commercial feudalism will replace the present capitalist-democratic system we have now in the Western World.

Posted by: Sphere Coupler | January 3, 2010 9:10 AM

These Black Swans ?

Posted by: David Marjanović | January 3, 2010 10:31 AM

several of my clothes have been worn by my mother and my aunt when they were in college.

Same with me, brother, and uncles. And there are two 40-year-old pieces my dad wore in communist Yugoslavia that I still wear often...

Even his Soviet-made wind-up watch, about 50 years old, still works, though it's only used in emergencies (which may be why it's still not broken, who knows).

Posted by: mythusmage | January 3, 2010 11:24 AM

SC, #307

Why link to Pharyngula if you didn't think it worth your time?

Posted by: mythusmage | January 3, 2010 11:37 AM

On the subject of tufa (you do remember tufa), the January 2010 issue of Scientific American has an article on The Truth About Nanobacteria

Basically, animals such as molluscs and vertebrates take advantage of the tendency of certain minerals --- calcium carbonates and calcium phosphates for example --- to self assemble and have evolved mechanisms for guiding that self-assembly in certain locations; leading to the formation of such things as bone and shells. So you could think of your bones as a sort of tufa variant.

The article also reminded me of an essay I read years ago on how sea urchins regrow spines once they've been damaged. In a sense we use tufa all unknowingly all the time, and even manufacture the stuff --- depending on how you define tufa.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | January 3, 2010 11:53 AM

Geology: still boring.
Economics: not even boring. Beyond boring.
PZ: still a poopyhead.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | January 3, 2010 12:11 PM

Why link to Pharyngula if you didn't think it worth your time?

WTF are you talking about?
You asserted that "people working at American Scientist" who read comment threads at Pharyngula might "wonder if maybe their fellow scientists are a few light bulbs short of a chandelier."

SC asked what you were talking about--care to mention specific comments or scientists that might evoke such wonder?

You also claimed that Pharyngula is "in their [=American Scientist] list of links on their front page"
SC said she couldn't find this. Me neither. Can you clarify?

Posted by: Dania | January 3, 2010 12:21 PM

SC said she couldn't find this. Me neither.

It's not exactly on the front page, but it is there (under "Science Blogs"):

http://www.americanscientist.org/science/

Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives | January 3, 2010 12:37 PM

I just struck me, over at American Scientist there are people working there who visit this blog on regular occasion (it's in their list of links on their front page) who read these comments. I have to wonder how often they wonder if maybe their fellow scientists are a few light bulbs short of a chandelier.

I also wonder what the point was supposed to be re:American Scientist employees. It's a fun magazine that explains things in easy to understand form and has some good comics and some really thorough book reviews. Why exactly do you think that they regard Pharyngula commenters as stupid?

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | January 3, 2010 12:40 PM

Ah, OK, there it is. Thanks Dania. That's a click past the front page.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | January 3, 2010 12:45 PM

I've been ignoring my work e-mail account for the last week or two. I'm sure it's full of students with queries about their grades that I can't answer by e-mail anyway. And probably a series of increasingly alarming notices from the registrar that my final grades are not reported yet.

New Year's Resolution: Deal once and for all with the chronic procrastination problem.

yeah, it's exactly the same as the last 30 years of resolutions, but hey [whine] it's haaaaaaard! [/whine]

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | January 3, 2010 12:53 PM

Good list, rids (@#334), but you forgot that one of the most daunting barriers to long-term space exploration or colonization is not our technology, but our physiology. Disuse atrophy of skeletal muscles and (especially) bone tissue under conditions of microgravity are big, big problems without easy solutions.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | January 3, 2010 1:24 PM

Sven @337. I am assuming that any scheme to exploit the rest of the Solar System will be robotic. A manned program would be ludicrous! Every day spent in space would require several kg of expendable cargo, plus other support equipment. And if you think it's hard to get resources back down to Earth, humans are so fragile they require re-entry in a frigging egg carton.

Robotics is definitely the way to go. We lose nothing and save a whole helluva lot of problems.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | January 3, 2010 2:08 PM

so alton, your response to the looming resource cliff is: "there's no easy fix, so I'd rather just drag it all out long enough so the collapse comes after I'm not around anymore"?

how incredibly cowardly and selfish.

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | January 3, 2010 2:12 PM

We lose nothing and save a whole helluva lot of problems.

Except that the robots get to make first contact. You don't think they'll steal the credit and turn on their former masters, allying with the aliens in an invasion of the earth? Goddamned robots of the future!

Posted by: WhatIsOptimalTemperatureOfThePlanet | January 3, 2010 2:26 PM

Wht s th ptml tmprtr f th plnt?

Posted by: Dania | January 3, 2010 2:30 PM

Fuck off, troll.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 3, 2010 2:42 PM

Ah, our loser idjit troll thinks he has something cogent to say. Never mind that while he could post, he never said anything scientific or cogent. Total abject loser, with no redeeming features. Pure unadulterated attitude without cogency. Bye-bye fuckwit.

Posted by: WhatIsOptimalTemperatureOfThePlanet | January 3, 2010 2:50 PM

Nrdy Rdhd = Qn f Prjctn

Posted by: WhatIsOptTemp | January 3, 2010 3:02 PM

How do you explain the Medieval Warming Period?

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | January 3, 2010 3:44 PM

No, iamjadehawk!

Sorry, I could not resist. I can resist everything except temptation.

Posted by: Alan B | January 3, 2010 4:44 PM

WhatIsOptimalTemperatureOfThePlanet

I will say this once:

If you write without vowels I will never read it!

No matter what you think you stand for or how clever you think you are, you loose all credibility in my eyes with your stupid messages.

Posted by: Josh | January 3, 2010 4:50 PM

I'm going to preface this comment with the following disclaimer: I'm not a goddamn structural geologist. This continental transition bullshit isn't in my comfort zone.

Okay. Now, if you look at this figure from that last comment I wrote,

http://3dparks.wr.usgs.gov/nyc/images/fig112.jpg

the abrupt contact between the oceanic crust and the continental crust is probably going to piss you off. But you need to remember that any of these margin cross-sections(e.g., 1) are going to be schematic. But far more important than that is the fact that the contact between the oceanic crust and the continental crust in this case(2) really is fairly abrupt when you consider the scales at which they are drawn.

Okay, so why is the transition abrupt? Well, recall that we're discussing an ocean basin that was initiated and continues to open via processes that are broadly addressed by the hypothesis of sea-floor spreading(3, 4). The Atlantic dates to the Late Triassic(5) and opened in a sequence schematically along the lines of this(6), which won't be news to anyone likely to actually wade through this comment. What is pertinent for us here are the beginnings of that opening. That's where the key(7), such as it is, to this abrupt transition between oceanic and continental crust lies.

Right. So you'll variously see the initiation of the Atlantic depicted like this(8), and it will seem ridiculously oversimplified and cartoonish. And yes, like so many illustrations in science, it is ridiculously oversimplified. However, despite everything that it doesn't show, this cartoon actually does basically address the point of contention here, which is the continent-seafloor transition (at the scale at which the diagram is depicting the process).

Recall that we started out in the early Late Triassic with Pangea all welded together into one big happy fucking continent(9), to which we of course have to append the label "super," because we're people and we like to do that kind of shit. So how did a big beast of an ocean like the Atlantic come out of situation like we see in (9)? Well, it began with rifting, like we see near the Red Sea today. Indeed, as I'm sure everyone still reading this knows, the East African Rift(10) is usually offered up as perhaps the best modern analog to what happened during the initial opening of the Atlantic. The process is very similar to what we infer from the rock record with the Atlantic.

So pretty much as soon, geologically speaking, as Pangea got assembled, it began to think about fragmenting(11). The detailed story of this is way beyond a foolish blog comment, but in essence, massive regional extensional stresses led to crustal thinning and stretching(12). The stretched crust fractured and split (because a parcel of crust can stretch by a factor of 2 for 4 times during this process), so we ended up with lots of normal faulting and subsidence along the faults(13, 14). The result of this was the formation of a bunch of fault-bounded basins(15, 16), the remains of which are preserved all up and down the eastern seaboard of North America(17) and in various places in Europe and Africa.

Now, note the volcanics shown in (13). Because of the crustal thinning and stretching that causes rift-basins to form, the faults that bound the basins and the blocks end up having not too far to travel before they intersect mantle material. Some of them thus provide easy conduits for that mantle material to travel (refer to that schematic in (15) again). This is why rift-basin sediments are so commonly associated(18, 19) with volcanic rocks (and, incidentally, why rift-basins are such great places to search for fossils(20): lots of accommodation space for rapid sediment accumulation and intercalated datable igneous rocks).

This is a complex system of extension. There are rips and tears occurring in numerous places, sometimes geologically at the same time(21-23 these are key to the whole point of this comment; go look at them). Over time, as the crustal thinning continues, the sediment accumulation in the basins becomes increasingly subordinate to the magmatism in the basins until finally you start forming really shallow basins that are dominated by volcanism (see Figure 8B and C in (22)). You are also, at this point, starting to large scale subsidence, partial melting of continental material, intrusive activity, etc. You're at the boundary between the continental crust and the incipient ocean basin (see Figure 8C and D in (22); see also (24)). There are some great figures in this paper:

http://geology.rutgers.edu/~schlisch/aapg_inversion_98.pdf

which is a really nice overview of passive margin tectonics in the Atlantic. I'd spend some time with it. You also might start at slide 31 of this:

http://geology.rutgers.edu/nbhydro/abs/Roy-Schlische-I.pdf

The transition zone isn't completely worked out nor totally understood. But it isn't some huge mystery, either, and it's certainly nothing that requires a subduction zone (that we can't see) to explain. And the problems that I raised before with the Subduction-on-the-now-Atlantic model remain. Look at Figure 1 in (21). Look at the cross-sections in the other papers. The sections in most of these papers are balanced cross-sections based on outcrop data, well data, and seismic data, to name a few sources. There is a lot of depth that is accounted for, and we know where the oceanic crust isn't. If you're gonna try and stuff a pile more oceanic crust under the eastern seaboard, then where is it? And how does it fit?

References and Notes
1. www.lisrc.uconn.edu/images/geology/images/225-145mya.jpg
2. "This case" being the eastern coast of North America.
3. I don’t think we need to get into the specific mechanisms operating here in much more detail than the level of the image in (1). In this comment, I’m really only concerned about the issues that were raised (in the previous installment of The Thread^TM) regarding the abruptness of the transition between the continental and the oceanic crust on the North American edge of the Atlantic Ocean. I think that the level of resolution/precision/understanding/whatever suggested by (1) should be sufficient for my purposes (and should help prevent this comment from becoming book-length...).
4. For those who want it, the basics of SFS are addressed fairly well here: www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/10i.html.
5. See the Introduction on page 11 of this .pdf: www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~polsen/nbcp/olsen_et_al_89_all_sm.pdf
6. museum.gov.ns.ca/fossils/geol/images/globe2.gif
7. And in writing key, I of course mean "currently accepted understanding of..."
8. faculty.mccfl.edu/rizkf/oce1001/Images/seafloorspread1.gif
9. geology.rutgers.edu/103web/Newarkbasin/Pangea_NB.html
10. astro.wsu.edu/worthey/earth/html/im-geology/east-african-rift.gif
11. geology.rutgers.edu/103web/Newarkbasin/ENAtectonics.html
12. geology.rutgers.edu/103web/Newarkbasin/extension_origin.html
13. www.searchanddiscovery.com/documents/2007/07024ianev/images/4s_4.jpg
The sub-vertical black lines are normal faults. The little arrows beside them indicate direction of fault block motion. To envision the stress directions, imagine another red arrow opposite and opposed to the one that is shown.
14. Here too: geology.rutgers.edu/103web/Newarkbasin/halfgraben.html
15. maps.unomaha.edu/maher/GEOL3300/week14/TrRiftUSGS.jpg
16. As shown here too. This is kind of a crappy figure, for which I apologize. The intertubes really are lacking: www.amnh.org/learn/courses/images/W2E2_3.jpg
17. See Figure 1 (page 7 of the .pdf); the black and brown represent basins that we know are there: www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~polsen/nbcp/olsen_et-touhami_08.pdf
18. www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~polsen/nbcp/dosecc_fieldtrip2.pdf
19. See Figure 6 on page 21 of this .pdf. This is a map of Jurassic basalt dikes associated with the rifting: geology.rutgers.edu/~schlisch/CAMP_schlische.pdf
20. www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~polsen/nbcp/GAC-MAC_field_whole_sm2.pdf
21 this is important. See Figure 7A, here (page 7 of the .pdf): geology.rutgers.edu/~schlisch/SEPMrifts.pdf
22 this is important. See Figure 8A here (page 31 of the .pdf): geology.rutgers.edu/~schlisch/A42_2005_GCSSEPM.pdf
23. That this system of extension is so complex is reflected in the number of basins which are preserved (refer to (17, 19) again).
24. See Figure 15 on page 19 of the .pdf (note the caption of that figure...): faculty.gg.uwyo.edu/holbrook/papers/Holbrook_1994_JGR_Mid-Atl.pdf

Posted by: SC OM | January 3, 2010 5:05 PM

mythusmage,

Show some character - examples or a retraction.

Posted by: Alan B | January 3, 2010 5:38 PM

#258 mythusmage said:

So tufa is something that grows on you.

Only if you lie down in a freezing cold stream and allow moss to grow on you first.

Posted by: Alan B | January 3, 2010 5:46 PM

#272 Josh

One of your urls may be curtailed:

www.colorado.edu/geography/class_homepages/geog_3251_sum08/05_talus_slopea

If this is the full url then it is no longer available.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | January 3, 2010 5:50 PM

just so I'm clear is mythusmage = Alan Kellog?

Posted by: Owlmirror | January 3, 2010 5:57 PM

It occurs to me to ask: Is it correct to refer to all carbonate deposits as "tufa", as implicitly done @#323?

I mean, if it's defined as freshwater-fluvial-deposit carbonate, then all other examples of carbonate deposits should not be confused with it.

The talus slope URL is just missing a ".jpg" extension, hence:

http://www.colorado.edu/geography/class_homepages/geog_3251_sum08/05_talus_slopea.jpg

Posted by: windy | January 3, 2010 6:23 PM

No, iamjadehawk!

that reminds me:

Off all the horrible Kubrick endings the worst one is Spartacus.

We spend almost 3 hours thinking Kirk Douglas is Spartacus and at the END of the movie it turns out it could have been ANY one of those guys?!?

Gimme a break.

Hey Kubrick, desperate for a twist ending much?

Posted by: Alan B | January 3, 2010 6:36 PM

#305 mythusmage said:

I don't know if I'll be able to check out all your links

Do you realise how discourteous this sounds? You come to a site. Shoot your mouth off saying a mixture of nonsense with some good stuff. You are directed to sites which help you understand the basic science and a highly competent geologist takes time to help you understand and you casually dismiss it.

I expect others will be able to take advantage of the leads you provided.

You bet! But why not you? Or don't you want to learn more? I do and I am in my 60s. Never too young to learn.

Posted by: Alan B | January 3, 2010 7:01 PM

#316 Rorschach

Thanks for the info on pinnacles and Wave rock - looked them up and how they formed. Fascinating - especially the calcrete rout for formation of the pinnacles.

#321 mythusmage

Wow! Just, WOW (see #305/#373) I would remind you that SC did not launch into a dynamite-into-a-garden-pond post on geology but you did!

Slowly catching up and I see I still have a huge post by Josh to come ...

Posted by: Alan B | January 3, 2010 7:10 PM

#363/#364 Josh

Did we just gain some insight into what Alan does in his spare time...?

The locals don't call me "The Hard Man" for nothing!

[Ed. They wouldn't call him "The Hard Man" even if he paid them ...]

Posted by: Josh | January 3, 2010 7:23 PM

Alan B, you are begging to have dick jokes told at your expense.

Damn! You got to it before I could.

Posted by: Alan B | January 3, 2010 7:55 PM

#360 Dania

Oh, the troll doesn't write without vowels. It's just that this troll is banned here and gets disemvoweled at sight.

Ah! You learn something every day! So he's not being clever/stupid. Just a run-of-the-mill-lurking-under-bridges-type troll.

I tried to find the old song: "I am a troll ... follderoll"

But ended up with something rather more nasty:

Make sure young children aren't watching:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMc-zCGYMhs&feature=related

Posted by: Rorschach | January 3, 2010 8:11 PM

just so I'm clear is mythusmage = Alan Kellog?

Yup.

Alan B,

I posted those links to Wave Rock and the Pinnacles for K Wager as travel tips, but could have guessed it would interest the geologists...:-)

In other news, Pakistan is making Australia look silly by being 0/73 in reply to our measly 127 all out yesterday !

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | January 3, 2010 8:57 PM

Economics: not even boring. Beyond boring.
PZ Sven DiMilo: still a poopyhead.

Fixed it for you, Sven. That'll be $29.95, cash only please. Have to keep that currency circulating.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | January 3, 2010 9:54 PM

I prefer the term "professional poopyhead."

The rest of us are just amateur poopyheads.

Posted by: Aratina Cage | January 3, 2010 10:04 PM

Darned atheists and their poopyheadedness!

Posted by: Owlmirror | January 3, 2010 10:41 PM

Monolith Monster Poopyhead => Coprolithhead

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | January 3, 2010 11:44 PM

That image reminds me of WARNING NOT FOR THRE SQUEAMISH this one, posted by somebody nymed Quidam on another thread.

Posted by: John Morales | January 4, 2010 3:17 AM

Owlmirror,

Monolith Monster Poopyhead => Coprolithhead

Might as well go the whole hog: Copropetrocephalos.

Posted by: negentropyeater | January 4, 2010 4:10 AM

a-ray,

So, are you sure that this isn't a case of the Dilbert principle: "Anything you don't understand must be easy?"

I didn't write anything that implied that I thought it would be easy.

Clearly, colonizing and exploiting resources from other planets is going to be orders of magnitude more difficult (and costly) than landing a man on the moon. And it's certainly not a solution to our problems for this century.

Posted by: SEF | January 4, 2010 7:37 AM

Not as a corny flake then?

Posted by: Walton, Marquis of Carabas | January 4, 2010 8:09 AM

Jadehawk,

so alton, your response to the looming resource cliff is: "there's no easy fix, so I'd rather just drag it all out long enough so the collapse comes after I'm not around anymore"?

how incredibly cowardly and selfish.

No, that's not at all what I said. Rather, I'm arguing that we should keep the current consumer-capitalist economy going for as long as possible because, at the moment, the only alternative is poverty and deprivation for billions more people; and, since I care about other human beings, I would like to stave off that poverty and deprivation for as long as possible. The only hope, longer-term, is to find technological solutions which will allow us to access and exploit more resources.

On a personal level, I'm doing my part: I've pledged never to have children. I think others should do the same. This helps on two levels: first, it reduces population growth and therefore lessens the impact of overpopulation on scarce resources; and secondly, it ensures that if there is a total collapse of civilisation and a new dark age of poverty and misery, there will be fewer people there to experience the consequent suffering.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | January 4, 2010 8:25 AM

Is the fabled G-spot more or less real than the god-shaped hole many people claim (others) to have? Are both merely convenient fictions (for some), like gods. Or do some people genuinely have a random physical advantage or psychological defect respectively.

Not to intentionally offend the more squeemish (cover your eyes walton) my wife definitely has what would be considered a G-Spot. Now what that means I don't have a clue.

I believe the "myth"...

Posted by: Rorschach | January 4, 2010 8:43 AM

Is the fabled G-spot more or less real than the god-shaped hole many people claim (others) to have?

Goodness.
I come home from work and have to give anatomy lessons !

*NSFW*( but not pornographic)

G-Spot anatomy

Posted by: Rorschach | January 4, 2010 8:52 AM

You failed to read the linked article

I read it.

The women in the study, who were all pairs of identical and non-identical twins, were asked whether they had a G-spot.

Asking women whether they think they have one does not equal them having one.
Men suck at finding it and playing with it, so women mightn't know about it, I sure have found it in some women who didn't know they had one !

Posted by: Rorschach | January 4, 2010 9:15 AM

I appreciate the stimulating topic after a hard day's work LOL.

If it's men which "suck" rather than women, then an alternative and less controversial version might be to collect only reports of G-spot presence or absence from women who have masturbated (ie ditch the need for an adequate sexual partner altogether)

My experience is, a lot of women are not very familiar with their bodies and its sexual functions, be it through lack of experience, or religious/social inhibitions, that's one, the other thing is women fiddling themselves is not the same as being fiddled, if you know what I mean, not in the head, and not in the field....:-) A lot of women's masturbation is via clitoral stim, or vibrators, not aware of any woman that fingers her g-spot routinely....

And of course, everyone is different, while I'm pretty sure every woman has an urethral sponge, women are stimulated by different things, nipples, bottom, cuddling, biting, whatever, and for some the g-spot might just not be the main area of stim.

Need more female commenters on this...:-)

Posted by: Rorschach | January 4, 2010 9:21 AM

Also, don't forget, about 10% of women (in the US, probably similar elsewhere) are anorgasmic and have never climaxed, so they wouldn't have a clue about whether they have a g-spot.

Source

Posted by: Rorschach | January 4, 2010 9:51 AM

Oh noz, not the foreskin discussion again !!

Which by the way is not an organ, but a piece of skin with nerve fibres, of course it's sensitive.
Had a guy with a little technical accident to his today which led to a torn foreskin and frenulum, he was not a happy camper !!

why is the G-Spot in that video not touched on by this new G-Spot research?

How would I know, ask them ! Wasn't so much research then an opinion poll though, this "do you think you have" business.
If they had gone and specced the ladies and gone looking for it, that would have been different.

Well, as far as anecdotal evidence goes, I have yet to find a woman who doesnt have one. Go me, I guess...:-)

Posted by: SC OM | January 4, 2010 10:44 AM

Just in case you haven't seen it yet:

I hadn't! Added to my feeds, thanks.

Possibly of interest here:

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/421-faith-science-and-the-flood/

SC, have you seen this? (Honduras, Iran, what's the difference?)

I had read something brief about it the other day, but not the longer piece in Rebelión. Thanks! The amazing thing is the fact that they gave the same images the opposite spin in the real vs. the fake contexts: in Honduras (real)*, legitimate police actions against violent anti-democracy miscreants; in Iran (fake), outrageous human rights violations against peaceful pro-democracy forces. So clear.

BTW, I was going to post this recent talk by Chomsky about Honduras on my blog, but I'll do it here first:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKwJI9axblQ

The US as mafia don.

*(when they were shown at all, which was rare)

Posted by: Rorschach | January 4, 2010 11:00 AM

They are just not functionally equivalent tissue....
So what's happening in Honduras ?

Posted by: Rorschach | January 4, 2010 11:11 AM

Given the problem of pain in phantom limbs, are there any reports of phantom foreskins still giving pleasure to their former owners?

Good nite....:-)

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | January 4, 2010 11:24 AM

Phantom Foreskins: Excellent band name.

Posted by: Aratina Cage | January 4, 2010 11:31 AM

The claim is that the G-Spot is not tissue at all according to the referenced twin study. That's why it is interesting to me: one erogenous zone (which is debatable) clearly is sensitive tissue, the other is not doubted as being erogenous but it is debatable as to its corporeal existence (your reference to real tissue notwithstanding but in this case it is said to be all in the head). Put in tabular form:

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | January 4, 2010 11:43 AM

the only alternative is poverty and deprivation for billions more people

----

*and incidentally, happy and healthy people are more important than merely wealthy people. wealth itself doesn't make anyone's lives better, especially when there's wars being fought over diminishing resources, and western levels of wealth can create stupidly high levels of mental disease and life dissatisfaction.

Posted by: David Marjanović | January 4, 2010 1:21 PM

…and would finally give Thomas Lee Elifritz his runaway greenhouse effect, unless it's such a weak greenhouse gas that there isn't actually enough stupid in the world for…

…

I'll just stop here.

Posted by: Alan B | January 4, 2010 2:48 PM

#359 Josh

Working through your magnum opus. Problems with figure in 6. I tried copying and pasting several times but something was making it go astray (perhaps it did not like bypassing the set-up for the moving plates?). It worked for me only by getting into the museum site:

http://museum.gov.ns.ca/en/home/default.aspx

Choosing "Online resources"

Then learn about fossils of Nova Scotia - the 5th bullet. This took me to:

http://museum.gov.ns.ca/fossils/

and then manually typed in the rest. It then worked fine.

(Carrying on reading ...)

Posted by: blf | January 4, 2010 3:54 PM

I prefer the term "professional poopyhead."

But Little Professional Poopyhead Ped Zed doesn't scan quite as well as (and is harder to type than) Little Poopyhead Ped Zed. I suppose Professional Poopyhead Little Pee Zed is a possibility…

Posted by: David Marjanović | January 4, 2010 6:27 PM

...More alarming still is a book called Under Orders: A Spiritual Handbook for Military Personnel, by an air-force lieutenant colonel named William McCoy, publicity for which describes the separation of church and state as a “twisted idea.” Nor is this the book’s only publicity: it comes—with its direct call for a religion-based military—with an endorsement from General David Petraeus....

Oh, so that's why I've seen him called Betrayus.

The Truth About Nanobacteria

...would interest me a lot. Unfortunately the link doesn't work.

Pangea all welded together into one big happy fucking continent

:-) :-) :-)

I have already mentioned my SUPPORT A UNITED PANGEA T-shirt by the Pangean Unification Foundation (One continent. One world.™), haven't I? Buy your own at the next SVP meeting or... wherever in teh intarwebz!!1!!eleventyone!!

(Alas, the map on the REUNITE GONDWANALAND T-shirts is all wrong. :.-( )

References and Notes

Today I have to go to bed. Will I find time to work tomorrow?

Oh, the troll doesn't write without vowels. It's just that this troll is banned here and gets disemvoweled at sight.

And the sight of poopyheads isn't perfect, as comment 353 shows !!

My experience is, a lot of women are not very familiar with their bodies and its sexual functions, be it through lack of experience

Not just such people and not just such functions. I had long read that some people have that, but I was over 10 years old when I found out I have functional, innervated ear retractor muscles. In fact, I can't (or would have to train to) smile without using them! It took me perhaps another 10 years to figure out that I have separate ear retractors and lifters that I can all operate independently.

(I do seem to lack ear protractors and have to wait for elastic recoil. Takes only maybe half a second, though.)

Well, as far as anecdotal evidence goes, I have yet to find a woman who doesnt have one. Go me, I guess...:-)

May I ask about the order of magnitude of the sample size...? Because... I, too, "I have yet to find a woman who doesnt have one", but I also have yet to find one who has one... :o)

<duck & cover>

Going to read up on the urethral sponge tomorrow. <vehement nodding>

Nerve endings transduce a variety of stimuli, even in the penis skin.

Temperature, most conspicuosly.

Posted by: Rorschach | January 4, 2010 7:52 PM

Oh noz !! More headache for creationists....

Single atom controls motility required for bacterial infection

Posted by: Patricia, OM | January 4, 2010 8:38 PM

Sven - If he ever mentions over population I'll join you.

Posted by: mythusmage | January 4, 2010 11:28 PM

David Marjanovic, #437

On Nanobacteria

Dang. I can only advise going to the SciAm site itself and clicking on the "current contents" link on the right. Or picking up a copy of the issue itself.

I also liked the article on life in alternate realities using variant physical constants, even though it was metaphysically conservative. :)

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | January 5, 2010 12:36 AM

Wow, windy...did somebody dose Will's Earl Grey?

Patricia: excellent point

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | January 5, 2010 3:34 AM

*clears throat*

Thank you for coming.

*clears throat again, spits*

I have been authorized by the Central Committee of Commenters on Pharyngula to make the following announcement:

Not only am I truth machine, I am also SC. As you might imagine, this keeps me rather busy. So if I'm not answering my messages, go on and forward them to Nerd of Redhead, whom I aspire to be next.

(Yes I realize this is an extraordinary claim, and no I can't cite the peer-reviewed literature. Use your other ways of knowing, people.)

Posted by: SC OM | January 5, 2010 4:03 AM

He's lying. I'm Knockgoats and occasionally truth machine

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/fyi.php#comment-981664

Who is Jadehawk?, is the question...

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | January 5, 2010 4:16 AM

I have slept! I swear! At least I'm pretty sure I remember waking up. It'll be another four hours before I can again though.

Posted by: SC OM | January 5, 2010 4:21 AM

"sinister, Leninesque demagogue" was a classic.

must

sleep

Posted by: SEF | January 5, 2010 4:52 AM

But are you on fire? Or are you one of those splitter goats?

Posted by: Alan B | January 5, 2010 12:31 PM

#359 & #433

I have found 2 issues with the websites Josh has put up.

1) I have problems getting into about 1 in 3 sites. I have now worked out that several problems are caused by my own ham-fistedness and lack of knowing quite what I am doing! Occam's Razor suggests it is likely that any remaining problems also result from the same cause.

2) However, by having to chase round some of these University sites I am finding a lot more interesting stuff! Especially when you can get back into the list of files that are accessible by going to the Directory. I'm not explaining myself very clearly but I know what I mean!!

[Ed. Pity nobody else does!]

Thanks Josh. Not got to the end of #359 (yet) but I will do ...

Posted by: Josh | January 5, 2010 12:50 PM

I have now worked out that several problems are caused by my own ham-fistedness and lack of knowing quite what I am doing!

Alan, please clarify--is there something I'm doing with the reference citations that is making things difficult? Aside from typos, of course. I'll change the format if that one doesn't work.

Posted by: David Marjanović | January 5, 2010 1:33 PM

I think I already mentioned that

I now clearly remember I did, because the hygiene argument was getting trotted out. I gave details on my hygiene habits, so don't try to search for it :-þ

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | January 5, 2010 2:17 PM

Strange Gods, I missed the sinister, Leninesque demagogue the first time around. Damn, I love it. No surprise that it was Hyperion. I give you greetings from one of the organizers of The Beer Hall Putsch.

Posted by: Alan B | January 5, 2010 2:29 PM

#459

No. I was self-correcting #433 which implied there was something wrong. Having looked further I found I was making mistakes on at least some of the references and without going back on all of them, I suspect I was making mistakes on all the "problem" references. I won't say what the nature of the mistakes was. Just to say they were idiosyncratic (read "stupid") mistakes made by somebody who is not aware of the finer points of what he is doing (but learning).

Needless to say, I am interested enough to find a way through ...

The second comment is still true. Because of the mistakes I made I got to look further into some of the sites and found lots of interesting Figures and papers.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | January 5, 2010 2:31 PM

A Thread-appropriate image.

= 16376

Posted by: eddie | January 5, 2010 2:57 PM

"You're my friend. I poopyhead you for nothing."

On foreskins: I once had one that wouldn't retract (my early teens and before). Then one time it did, suddenly and with some pain. Now it it, as far as I can tell, normal.
I figured it's a male analog of the hymen but I'm not an anatomist.

On g-spots: I'm not an expert :-(((

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | January 5, 2010 3:52 PM

One of my favorite singers covers Nilsson.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | January 5, 2010 4:01 PM

The Walrus was Paul.

Posted by: Silič O'Nopolitanopoulos, Färschdbischuf Beesknees aus Ulm und Klein Elguth, Elector Pharynguline. | January 5, 2010 4:08 PM

Just dropping in to say "phimosis".

As you were.

Posted by: Owlmirror | January 5, 2010 4:39 PM

Over on Highly Allochthonous, Chris posted about processes that cause isotopes to be differentiated, or occur in different ratios.

Apparently the enzymatic processes used by life use ¹²C over ¹³C, so finding 3.85 billion-year-old residues with a high ¹²C/¹³C ratio suggests that life may have evolved that far back.

  http://home.earthlink.net/~douglaspage/id87.html

Alan B: He's also discussing the terranes that make up the British Isles, which you also might find of interest.

Posted by: John Morales | January 5, 2010 5:58 PM

So, while catching up on the news, I noticed this:
Six arrested in Indonesia for 'sexy dancing'.
Pullquote:

Indonesian police arrested six people for the alleged performance of a "sexy dance" at a cafe in the early hours of New Year's Day, a police official said Tuesday.

Police arrested six people - four female dancers, the dance group's leader and the cafe owner, local police chief detective Arman Achdiat said.

"We're charging them for preparing the dance and performing it in public, which is against morality," he added.

Achdiat did not give any details about the dance but said the dancers, who had performed at a live music cafe in Bandung, south of Jakarta, were in skimpy clothing.

"It could be described as sexy dancing. But more importantly, they were wearing minimal clothing and performing in public, which can stir desires," he said.

Posted by: SC OM | January 5, 2010 6:09 PM

Meanwhile, in Malaysia:

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/malaysian.government.and.catholic.church.in.high.court.over.allah/24887.htm

Posted by: Owlmirror | January 5, 2010 6:15 PM

Apparently the enzymatic processes used by life use ¹²C over ¹³C

You didn't know that? Photosynthesis is especially famous for it. Methane generation and methane eating have much stronger effects, though.

If I ever knew it, I forgot it.

Is there any reason known for why the chemistry of isotope differences exists?

Posted by: eddie | January 5, 2010 7:19 PM

The jstor page only gives abstract and first page of the article unless you pay. Wiki here;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopic_signature

Posted by: Rorschach | January 5, 2010 7:42 PM

Owlmirror,

this might help explain it.

Posted by: mythusmage | January 5, 2010 7:48 PM

Owlmirror, #486

The science article on isotopes in the March 2010 Analog mentions this. The most extreme example being the chemical differences between hydrogen and deuterium. Why this occurs I do not know, but it would appear that mass does have an impact.

Posted by: mythusmage | January 5, 2010 7:58 PM

(This link may not work, if it doesn't look for local Savannah GA media sites and have a look at their weather news).

Observation: San Diego CA is north of Savannah GA (when you adjust for longitude). San Diego is found next to a cold water current coming down from the north, while Savannah is found next to a warm water current coming up from the south. Yet San Diego (at 70°) is supposed to have a warmer day than Savannah (at 47°). Could it be there is something more to the story of local weather than told in popular accounts? :)

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | January 5, 2010 8:11 PM

Yet San Diego (at 70°) is supposed to have a warmer day than Savannah (at 47°). Could it be there is something more to the story of local weather than told in popular accounts? :)

There is a massive high pressure system covering eastern North America. Miami has a current temperature of 37°F (or pretty damn cold for Florida in °C). It's actually warmer in southeastern Connecticut than it is in Atlanta.

Posted by: SC OM | January 5, 2010 8:19 PM

'Tis: This is on PBS right now:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/killersubs/

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | January 5, 2010 8:33 PM

Owlmirror, keep in mind that chemical reactions are mediated by atomic FORCES, and F=Ma. A lighter isotope will simply react more quickly, leaving the heavier isotope as a wallflower.

This is one of the ways we know that the carbon that is increasing atmospheric CO2 content is from a fossil source--and hence anthropogenic.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | January 5, 2010 8:47 PM

A Bob Seger classic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOYppTlU42U&feature=related

Posted by: SC OM | January 5, 2010 9:09 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7Zs2vXxSUE

Posted by: mythusmage | January 5, 2010 10:38 PM

Katrina, #496

It also helps that you get cold air masses off of the Russian Far East via the Gulf of Alaska. On great occasion you pass such an air mass on to us, and so local temperatures can drop as much as 40 degrees in an hour's time. (I remember a day when people were in shirt sleeves in the morning, and piling on sweaters and jackets in the afternoon.)

On a really unrelated note, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) once observed that the coldest winter he'd ever experienced was a summer in San Francisco.

Posted by: Owlmirror | January 5, 2010 10:55 PM

Oh, and the section of the Wiki article on heavy water/dideuterium monoxide about metabolism was fascinating -- toxic at 50% of body water, but also a potential longevity treatment at 25% of body water (in fruit flies).

Not that I'm volunteering for human trials or anything.

Yet prokaryotes don't seem to have any problem with it at all. Hmm.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 5, 2010 11:28 PM

Louis, wherefore are you????? Here's your chance...

Posted by: Patricia, OM | January 5, 2010 11:41 PM

OK that's it. Nerd & Rorschach off to the spanking couch the both of you.

Posted by: Alan B | January 6, 2010 3:54 AM

#477 Owlmirror

Alan B: He's also discussing the terranes that make up the British Isles, which you also might find of interest.

Thanks for the heads up. I'll take a look. Where I live is close to where 3 microterranes meet with (minor) earthquakes on one of the fault systems.

Posted by: John Morales | January 6, 2010 5:45 AM

Windy, perhaps Himself was pointing out dancing can be um, "sexy", even with voluminous amounts of clothing?

Posted by: Louis | January 6, 2010 7:42 AM

Being a UKian, I had to sleep, sorry for my lateness!

Nerd, your generosity shall not go unnoticed....just unrewarded. ;-) Should I start singing "This is my Moment"? I'm going with "no".

Owlmirror #504/505/506:

Yes, that's what it means. However, the 13C substituted molecule vs the identical 12C substituted molecule reaction rate differences are (typically) much smaller than D vs H. This is, rather obviously, largely due to the fact that a difference of ~ 1 mass unit in 13 is less significant than a difference of ~ 1 mass unit in 2. This is without considering the effect of orbital overlap and bonding modes btw (this becomes more significant for heavier nuclei with very different isotopes).

As for the biological effects, I can't really add much to the Wiki article without getting technical! Simply put those biological reactions/processes which rely particualrly heavily on hydrogen bonding (like mitosis), or where D has substituted for a crucial H, will feel the pinch of the stronger D-X bond the most. (BTW I'm using X here for any atom D is bound to, C, O, N, S, etc)

Reading around a little, something that struck me was that it seems like relatively "fast" biochemical reactions were significantly effected (various reactions with cytochrome P450 for example) by heavy water/D-labeled molecules. That impression makes sense to me at least, especially if we're condiering primary kinetic isotope effects. Hmmmmm...

I'm off to the library!

Louis

Posted by: Katrina, radicales féministes athées | January 6, 2010 1:54 PM

Had an interesting conversation with my 7-y-o skepchick over dinner last night.

She informed me that one of her classmates has been going around saying, "God made us. God made us. God made us." She said she finally got tired of it and said to him, "No he didn't. Charles Darwin proved more than a hundred years ago that we evolved from non-human ancestors."

Her second-favorite book (her favorite is whatever she happens to be reading) is Voyage of the Beetle, by Anne Weaver and George Lawrence.

Posted by: Katrina, radicales féministes athées | January 6, 2010 3:51 PM

This child of mine begs me to play NOVA specials for her on my computer.

Of course, I comply. ;-)

Posted by: Alan B | January 6, 2010 5:44 PM

Cornell reference:

http://www.geo.cornell.edu/geology/classes/Geo656/656home.html

and click on Lectures on the LHS to give you a full set of lecture notes delivered 2009.

You will want Part IV Stable Isotope Geochemistry.

Posted by: Alan B | January 6, 2010 5:51 PM

#477 & #451

Looked further at the site. Interesting.

The concept of multiple "slices" making up Great Britain is well known. In addition, the Midlands platform as shown in his figure is believed to be made up of 3 pieces. I have found 1 or 2 reliable references that assume this to be so. There is a paper that presents the evidence but I can't put my hands on it (yet).

Posted by: Alan B | January 6, 2010 6:13 PM

#515 Louis

Remember, the effect of the 2 carbon isotopes is likely to be not 1 part in 12 / 13 but 1 part in the molecular weight (whatever the molecule). Likewise for H-1 and H-2.

For carbon dioxide 44 vs 45.
For deuterium it would probably be 16 vs 17 (for water).

Posted by: eddie | January 6, 2010 6:23 PM

It's OK guys. The race is over. These guys won.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkVzmWPUayM

Posted by: mythusmage | January 6, 2010 6:29 PM

Through his comment series Alan B shows another reason why I like this blog and its commentors, the generosity.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | January 6, 2010 7:31 PM

Well, Alan B, I should know something about geochemistry, but really I know fuck all. I truly enjoyed your comment 520.

I won't remember the math, but I will remember that the formula exists ... so I can look it up if needed. Mostly, I'll remember the concept behind the diffusion rates (especially liked the explanation of carbon in plants), and the relationship to porous mediums, hole sizes, etc.

Do you feel like tackling the chemistry behind irradiated topaz (changing common brownish shades to blue)? 'Tis Himself gave us an overview some time back, and I either need to be told again, or I need a more detailed explanation. Throwing the stuff into a nuclear reactor, and the dangers that result (hot gemstones!) made for an interesting discussion.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 6, 2010 7:47 PM

Hey Nerd, I've very recently (and am sitting here on a second bottle of Best Brown Ale) discovered Bell's Brewery, which hails from Comstock, MI. Are you familiar with the brand? It's not UP, but...was curious. The "Best Brown Ale" is tasty.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | January 6, 2010 9:22 PM

I'll chime in to the Isotopic Effect discussion, though I must admit at the outset that I am about a half-dozen pints into the evening already.

OK. Metabolic rates of organisms are of interest for any number of reasons. By "metabolic rate" I mean "rate of energy expenditure," which ought to be measured in units like moles of ATP per day, but are approximated instead by measurements of oxygen consumption and/or carbon dioxide production. Gas-exchange rates are measurable directly in the laboratory (not easily, believe me, but measurable). But sometimes what we want to know is "Field Metabolic Rate," the rate of energy expenditure by animals behaving naturally in their natural habitats.
Long story short, the best (most accurate) way to measure/estimate FMR is called the "doubly labelled water" (DLW) technique. Here's the idea. You enrich the body water of a bunch of individuals with isotopes of both oxygen (O¹⁸) and hydrogen (H² or H³). Wait for the injected water to equilibrate with the body water, take a blood sample, and let em go to behave naturally etc. Now the (usually) hard part: recapture the labelled individuals after an appropriate interval (24h for a small bird or mouse up to 30d for a tortoise). Nother blood sample.

Now you distill out the water from the blood samples and analyze it for the H and O isotopes (via various radio- spectro- photo- alchemicalo- techniques). Proportions of both enriched isotopes will have decreased over time. Hydrogen isotopes are lost almost entirely as H₂O, so the deuterium or tritium concentration decreases (and is interpretable as water flux rate). Now oxygen is also lost as water, BUT is lost in CO₂ too. Paying attention? Subtract the rate of H isotope decrease (water) from the rate of O isotope decrease (water + CO₂) and whaddaya get?

A: Carbon dioxide production rate, a stoichiometric correlate of ATP production and (therefore!!!) chemical-energy-use rate; i.e. metabolic rate (=, btw, and via the FLoT, heat production rate). In the field. FMR.

The technique has been applied to dozens of species of terrestrial animals. Pretty cool stuff. OK.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | January 6, 2010 9:30 PM

Shit, I forgot the whole point: One of the things one has to take into account when interpreting rates of decrease in isotope levels is fractionation. For example, simple evaporative water loss favors lighter isotopes...

Posted by: John Morales | January 6, 2010 10:08 PM

Sven, interesting. I'm familiar with energy expenditure being expressed in terms of power (i.e. units of energy per units of time), but I can see the point of expressing it in terms of units of (chemical energy source processed) per unit time¹ as a basis for determination.

Clever biochemists!

--

¹ However, I thought the processing efficiency dependent on a number of factors, not least temperature. I guess homeostasis in organisms is taken as a given?

Posted by: Miki Z | January 7, 2010 1:49 AM

As a teenager working a drive-thru window, I got really good at grabbing money stuff into the pages of a chick tract and letting the tract drop to the ground without coming through the window. I see they aren't any less despicable than they were back then.

Posted by: John Morales | January 7, 2010 4:37 AM

negentropyeater, interesting link, but it's weird.

In contrast to Spain, where the lead-up to the legalisation of gay marriage in 2005 brought hundreds of thousands of demonstrators onto the streets, the bill in Portugal has provoked only muted opposition even from the right.

Though Portugal is contiguous with Spain (where I spent my childhood) and their borders are porous, in some ways they might as well be on opposite sides of Europe.

Anyway. I might be straight as an arrow, but I'm also firmly egalitarian, and I think this is good news.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 7, 2010 7:44 AM

Ugh, it's going to be a long day here too. We are getting our first significant snowfall of the season, and the Redhead is going into Chicago (by train) to see a matinee dress rehearsal of an opera. It should be interesting when she returns (about 4-7 inches expected by then). Nothing like people unused to driving on snow, and suddenly having to cope with doing so. Scary.

Posted by: Josh | January 7, 2010 7:54 AM

I hate trying to drive here when it snows. Everyone seems to collectively lose their mind.

Posted by: Miki Z | January 7, 2010 7:59 AM

So, Josh, is there a story behind the dead body, or is this a typical 'long day' indicator?

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 7, 2010 8:13 AM

You're right Josh, not a great way to start the day.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | January 7, 2010 8:20 AM

Actually, damn come to think of it I found another dead person when I was climbing in the Tetons. Shit I had kind of forgotten about that one. ugh. That wasn't pretty at all.

Posted by: Josh | January 7, 2010 11:08 AM

And yet another misleading headline:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100106/sc_livescience/fourleggedcreaturesfootprintsforceevolutionrethink

Posted by: Dania | January 7, 2010 1:44 PM

John Morales,

negentropyeater, interesting link, but it's weird.

In contrast to Spain, where the lead-up to the legalisation of gay marriage in 2005 brought hundreds of thousands of demonstrators onto the streets, the bill in Portugal has provoked only muted opposition even from the right.

Yeah, it's weird. I was expecting a lot more opposition to the bill from the right, but the opposition is mainly coming from the left*!

All I've heard from the right is the usual "oh, sure, just don't call it marriage, 'kay?" and the very persuasive "but...but... *pulls out random red herring* What about this More Important Issue^TM!? We can't waste time with minor issues!!" I guess they're doing their best not to sound like homophobic bigots.

*That's because while this bill legalizes same sex marriage it also makes it explicit in the law that married gay couples cannot adopt. The only thing keeping gay couples from adopting children** at the moment is the fact that they can't marry, otherwise they would fit all the legal requirements to adopt. This bill removes the requirement that two people need to be of different sex in order to marry BUT it adds that requirement to adoption by couples. Needless to say, not everyone in the left is happy with this (I'm not, but it's better than nothing).

**As a couple. As far as I know, there's nothing preventing non-heterosexuals from becoming single parents by adoption.

Posted by: Bastion Of Sass | January 7, 2010 3:11 PM

Am posting this here, as well as in the I WANT A UNITY CONVENTION! thread in the hopes that more people will see it, since the Unity thread has kinda wound down.

ATTN: Baltimore Blasphemous Bastards

We will attempt to get together for the first time on Friday, Jan. 29, between 5:30 and 8:30 PM at Brewers Art which is in the upper Mt. Vernon area of downtown Baltimore. Feel free to bring one or more companions.

Because of the reluctance of some Pharyngulates to join Facebook, and my reluctance to pay meetup.com's group organizer's fees, I have set up a yahoo group for us, Baltimore Pharyngula Fans. Not as catchy as Baltimore Blaspheming Bastards, admittedly, but not as scary for the less militant who might potentially join us.

Please join the yahoo group and let me know if you'll be coming to this meetup or just to keep in touch with other Pharyngula fans in the Baltimore area.

Because of the (surely) spam and (potential) troll issues, I have set moderator (that's me, so far) approval of members and messages from new members, so there may be some delay in seeing your first message appear.

Posted by: mythusmage | January 7, 2010 3:52 PM

BDC, #552

I recall a time when a fellow died in public, on a major street downtown, and the authorities didn't figure out he was dead for about three days.

Posted by: Paul | January 7, 2010 4:49 PM

Jadehawk,

I reply with the the previous chick tract.

The message I took away from it is "believe in Jesus, and he'll kill your enemies for you".

Posted by: Josh | January 7, 2010 5:21 PM

*headdesk*

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 7, 2010 5:47 PM

And I've lost count of how many times the theory of evolution has undergone a "revolution" lately...

Posted by: Lynna, OM | January 7, 2010 5:58 PM

The LDS Church just bought 13 more acres of downtown Salt Lake City. They already own Temple Square, part of Main Street, and several acres on which they are building a new mall, and some condos. Sounds to me like they are creating their own version of Vatican City.

The Sinclair Companies, controlled by oil magnate Earl Holding, said Thursday it has sold about 13 acres of prime real estate in downtown Salt Lake City to the LDS Church.
     The LDS Church, which is active in real estate development, purchased a 10-acre block between 400 South and 500 South and West Temple and Main streets....
     LDS Church spokesman Scott Trotter confirmed the purchase by the church's Property Reserve Inc. "The land was purchased as a long-term investment with no immediate plans for development," he said in a statement....

...Dick Cheney records the video tribute when Earl wins an award.
Earl Holding is a recluse and an eccentric—and a forceful member of the inner circle of power in Mormon Country. He owns the Little America hotel chain, Sinclair Oil, Sun Valley and Snowbasin ski resorts, and 500,000 acres of land in the West. He is now worth nearly $5 billion, which makes him the 77th richest American on the 2008 Forbes 400 list.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | January 7, 2010 6:12 PM

At first the mormons were proud of the fact that poor church members in Brazil gave the gold out of their dental work as contributions to help build a new temple (1998-2000). Then, belatedly, the mormons realized that it was pretty bizarre to everyone but them, and that the photo of Apostle Faust holding a handful of gold fillings was not as glorifying to God as they thought.

STORY ONE Excerpt:

He emphasized the need to sacrifice for temple building and shared how members in Argentina found ways to donate during the construction of the São Paulo Brazil Temple. They gave the gold from their dental work to help pay for the temple. He said that he had purchased some of the gold fillings for more than the market price to share with congregations the nature of the sacrifice made by these members (Church News, 9 May 1998).

One memorable donation was a gold dental bridge presented by an Argentine man to a pair of missionaries. They declined the gift at first, saying they couldn't take the man's teeth, but he responded, "You can't deny me the blessings I will receive by giving this to the Lord for his temple." Elder James E. Faust, who was serving as the South America area supervisor for the Church, heard the story and paid a generous sum of money for the gold. From that day on, he kept the dental bridge as a reminder of the Saints' countless sacrifices."

Posted by: Alan B | January 7, 2010 6:27 PM

#531 Lynn asked me:

Do you feel like tackling the chemistry behind irradiated topaz (changing common brownish shades to blue)?

Here goes, the second KemistryKorner (I blame Josh #528)

(The first, not IDed as KK, was #520 on isotope fractionation by diffusion.)

I am taking most of my information from an excellent website initially developed by Jill Banfield while she was a Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The internet materials were developed in summer 1995, and distance education students began to take in Fall 1995. The course was first offered as an internet option to UW students in 1997. The course (Gems and Gem Materials) was then offered at UC Berkeley (Ref 1). The student material is freely available and well worth a look if you want a simple introduction to "Gemology". I read through much of it some 8 or so years ago.

"This unique internet-based course is designed for students without a strong background in basic science. The primary goal of the course is to present some introductory earth science and to provide students with a solid understanding of gemology."

The course covers a range of Gems and Gem Materials. To keep this post a sensible length, I will cover ONLY topaz and ONLY the conversion of naturally-occurring pale topaz to sky blue topaz by radiation and the implications of the process. (See Ref. 2 for the study notes on topaz.)

Wiki gives some helpful information about topaz (Ref. 3). Topaz is a silicate of aluminium (note the correct IUPAC spelling!) with fluorine and hydroxide ions in varying ratios. Pure topaz is colourless and transparent but is usually tinted by impurities; typical topaz is wine, yellow, pale grey or reddish-orange, blue brown. It can also be made white, pale green, blue, gold, pink (rare), reddish-yellow or opaque to transparent/translucent.
Orange topaz, also known as precious topaz, is the traditional November birthstone, the symbol of friendship, and the state gemstone for the US State of Utah.
Blue topaz is the Texas state gemstone. Naturally occurring Blue Topaz is quite rare. Typically colourless, grey or pale yellow and blue material is heat treated and irradiated to produce a more desired darker blue.

I will leave an explanation about the way radiation affects the colour and deal with the other issue:

Is residual radioactivity a problem?

The answer is: it depends! It depends on how the radiation treatment is done. Consider 2 different methods:

Neutron irradiation. Firing neutrons at a topaz target risks the formation of long lived radionuclides of Scandium and Tantalum (Ref. 4). Sc-46 has a half life of 84 days and is a beta emitter (Ref. 5). No one is going to chew up and eat a topaz. For a start, it has a Mho's hardness of 8 compared with the highest value of 10 for diamond! Some beta particles may well go through the skin but not from a mounted gemstone.

Ta-182 is a greater concern. Thus, according to Wiki (Ref. 6):

Tantalum has been proposed as a "salting" material for nuclear weapons (cobalt is another, better-known salting material). A jacket of Ta-181, irradiated by the intense high-energy neutron flux from an exploding thermonuclear weapon, would transmute into the radioactive isotope Ta-182 with a half-life of 114.43 days and produce approximately 1.12 MeV of gamma radiation, significantly increasing the radioactivity of the weapon's fallout for several months. Such a weapon is not known to have ever been built, tested, or used.

Thus, if irradiation was carried out by neutrons there is a risk of trace impurities being activated to produce small amounts of unpleasant radionuclides with long half lives.

Electron Irradiation
According to the Gems and Gem Materials site (Ref. 7), the most common tool for irradiation is Linac (linear accelerators) using electron beams:

In the creation of "Sky blue" topaz, irradiation involves an electron beam with an energy below the activation threshold for all impurities except sodium (half life is about 15 hours). Thus, the small quantities of radioactive isotopes that form during electron irradiation decay away before the stones are released from the accelerator.

Ten days (240 hours) is 16 half lives. In 10 half lives the radioactivity will have decayed to one thousandth of the initial value. A further 6 half lives will reduce it by another factor of 60. (Both figures approximate - actual value 1/65,536. A further ten days will reduce it to vanishingly low values. (The gamma rays emitted by Na-24 are easily detected).

So the answer is if the irradiation process is by an electron beam linear accelerator there is no residual problem with radioactivity from the process. (There could, of course, be trace amounts of naturally-occurring radionuclides, as there could be with many gemstones).

Part 2 on the effect of radiation on the physics/chemistry of the effect of radiation on colour tomorrow (if it weren't this site, I might put "DV").

References

Ref. 1 nature.berkeley.edu/classes/eps2//wisc/intro2.html

Ref. 2 http://nature.berkeley.edu/classes/eps2//wisc/Lect10.html

Ref. 3 Wiki article "Topaz".

Ref. 4 nature.berkeley.edu/classes/eps2//wisc/radio.html

Ref. 5 Wiki article "Isotopes of Scandium"

Ref. 6 Wiki article "Isotopes of Tantalum"

Ref. 7 nature.berkeley.edu/classes/eps2//wisc/L10c1.html

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | January 7, 2010 6:51 PM

oh, the gaps

how they gape

Posted by: Aratina Cage | January 7, 2010 6:58 PM

/sarc Do I have to ...?

Naah. :)

Posted by: Alan B | January 7, 2010 7:56 PM

#578 'Tis Himself, OM

Pretty good rule of thumb for alpha and beta although I'm trying to think of occasions when you would have pure alpha, beta or gamma other than manufactured sources.

Not so sure about the gamma radiation. Inverse square law comes in so putting it in your pocket doesn't seem an awefully good idea. Depending how quickly the radionuclide passes through the body, I'm not sure if I would want to eat it and have it lodge in some particular organ. Some gamma emitters also emit beta particles, of course (e.g. I-131).

No. All told, I will keep away from the gamma and rely on the inverse square law to help me.

Posted by: Josh | January 7, 2010 8:26 PM

Though I don't know why Josh gets all the credit.

No, no. I only get credit for goading him into making the post...

Posted by: Josh | January 7, 2010 8:31 PM

Hydrocarbons are a pretty good radiation shield, particularly for gamma radiation.

Huh...I didn't know that. That's pretty interesting.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | January 7, 2010 8:46 PM

He, together with Harvard PhD anthropologist Alice Kehoe, reveals the racist and religiously bigoted perspectives that developed within the early 1800's scientific community.

Sure there were some really bigoted scientists in the 19th Century. Louis Agassiz was the most famous (although he wasn't early 1800s) but there were others. So what? That doesn't say anything about there being no real evidence that two bunches of middle-easterners came to the Americas as the Book of Mormon claims.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | January 7, 2010 9:03 PM

'Tis Himself, the trailer for "The Lost Civilization of North America" shows the expert bemoaning the racism, which, as you say, is only too evident in historical records. But the trailer also reveals the unethical editing that creates an unwarranted leap from that racism to "proof" of a conspiracy to hide the "truth" of all those tribes mentioned in the Book of Mormon. It's a fucking crime.

And that's just the trailer.

Posted by: SEF | January 7, 2010 9:07 PM

@ Lynna #584:

One wonders how many of them knew what they were being roped into.

If they're contactable you could ask them. Some may even already have blogged/tweeted or whatever about it.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | January 7, 2010 9:44 PM

I sent an email to Roger G. Kennedy, Director Emeritus
Smithsonian National Museum of American History. If someone wants to tweet Alice Beck Kehoe, she's on twitter, but I didn't find an email contact for her.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | January 7, 2010 10:14 PM

Note on my link @592: Unfortunately, they pixelated the kilt-wearing dude's treasure when he did his high kick at the end.

Posted by: Owlmirror | January 7, 2010 11:42 PM

If someone wants to tweet Alice Beck Kehoe, she's on twitter, but I didn't find an email contact for her.

Actually, I found the following article about her on SciAm, which ends with: "In her retirement Kehoe enjoys writing and traveling: She's off to Angkor Wat in Cambodia in January to see the pyramids there that bear a similarity to the ones in Mexico. "

Granted, that was Dec. 08, but she still might be traveling around somewhere.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | January 8, 2010 12:11 AM

Rex Rammell, uncut, unedited, and unhinged.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | January 8, 2010 12:30 AM

Jadehawk, yeah, the "exist anciently" was not their only sin against the English language. I particularly liked " Where are the physical manafestations..." with "manafestations" instead of "manifestations."

The trailer for the movie contains dog whistle moments for mormons, like the comparison of Native American rock art to Egyptian hieroglyphics. Remember Joe Smith and his "reformed Egyptian" translations? The "Lost Civilization of North America" is really just salivation movie for mormons.

What I'd really like to know is how much the LDS Church paid him to make that travesty.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | January 8, 2010 1:02 AM

I'll have to look again at the list of scientists, both real and faux, involved in Meldrum's movie to see if they have a real DNA expert instead of just those "experts" blinded by mormon confirmation bias. The movie description includes this gem:

This film may open many tens of thousands of doors for missionary work as people around the world learn of the amazing DNA connections between this ancient civilization in North America and the ancient Semitic peoples of the Mediterranean, just as would be expected from the Book of Mormon account.

I keep calling it a "movie" because I can't bear to put it in the category of "documentary".

Posted by: Lynna, OM | January 8, 2010 1:28 AM

boygenius, All we have to do is stand back and watch Rex Rammell shoot himself in the foot over and over again. It's like he issued a hunting license for his foot rather than that hunting tag he wanted to issue for Obama.

I noticed that he backed off from his earlier offer that non-mormons could come to his "Elders of Israel" meetings if they just emailed him first. Now he backtracks and says that the room will be filled with Elders, so there's no room for the gentiles ... and no room for mormon women either.

Unfortunately, I'm sure Rammell is correct about attendance. He'll have wall-to-wall elders nodding in agreement. We'd like to think that Rammell is the only one that unhinged, but he has plenty of company.

Only the guy with the exploding underpants on the flight to Detroit is crazier.

Posted by: boygenius | January 8, 2010 2:04 AM

Rex Rammell's Ten Principles to Govern America:

http://rexrammell.com/tenprinciples.aspx

"Principle" #4 kind of stands out, in light of their involvement in Prop. 8.

Lynna:

Only the guy with the exploding underpants on the flight to Detroit is crazier.

Angrier? Yes, absolutely. Crazier? That's a toss up.

Posted by: boygenius | January 8, 2010 2:37 AM

386sx...,

Perhaps you have been living under a rock since 1938? :-) You may be interested to learn that he also had a son that achieved some level of success:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4s0nzsU1Wg