greengabbro

Feedburner tells me that there are still more than 50 people waiting patiently for my next post here. Um. Hi? When I shifted from personal/political blogging to science blogging, and particularly when I started writing here at ScienceBlogs, I wanted to be a reliable source. Turns out that it's…

This morning, the California Supreme Court will announce its decision on whether or not a slim 50% majority can amend the state constitution in order to specifically deny a previously-recognized constitutional right. It will also determine the fate of the 18,000 same-sex marriages performed last…

Following on Short Geologist's list of things you do and don't need at a field hotel, and fresh from the field (where by "field" I mean "three days of driving around the mountains looking for stuff", and by "fresh" I mean I'm still at the airport), I thought I'd do a list of amenities that I want…

Huh, I suppose it's been a while, hasn't it? 1: I was really surprised by how many of you fell for my April Fools joke. 2: I do have a real job now. I'm an environmental consultant, and I can't be much more specific than that - not because I am trying to keep the details a secret, but because I…

Update, April 2: I hope you all had a wonderful April Fools Day, unmarred by water shortages, supervolcanoes, and threats to your world view. This was a fake, but I should have a real job announcement to make soon - and it won't involve any quack apologetics. After months of searching in a…

The question of whether or not I am a geologist is not just an amusing exercise in academic politics. In Washington, as in most U.S. states, geology is a regulated profession; guidelines for who can and cannot call themselves a geologist in a professional context are laid out in the administrative…

Or, less generally, am I a geologist? I have a B.S. in geophysics and an M.S. in earth and planetary science with a funky geophysics/geohydrology emphasis. I took some intro physical geology and earth history as a sophomore, but I have never taken formal courses in mineralogy, petrology, structural…

On Monday, airline passengers were the first to observe the eruption of the just-barely-above-the-water volcano that forms the islands of Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha'apai, in Tonga. Three days later, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake occurred on the Tonga trench. Was the timing of these two events just…

My job, for most of the past six weeks, has been to align cryptic old maps with existing digital data, so that points labeled in small, blurry fonts can be entered into a database. I am not going to show actual screenshots of my work - even if I gave away no useful information to the opposing legal…

A friend of mine IMed me this weekend, very excited about a minor earthquake. She used the word "temblor" and was very excited about that, too - how often do you get a chance to say "temblor"? She felt impressive and sciencey. I have been hanging around with seismologists for some time now, and I…

I don't have a lemon tree in the backyard, and springtime has only just reached the frigid northlands, but I do have a bit of Seattle summer tucked away in the back of my freezer. Pick some slightly underripe blackberries for this one, so it's as tart as a good lemon meringue. Ingredients For the…

I have had many terrible ideas for pie in my life - durian pie, anyone? And I expected this to be one of the worst. Then again, I've also had some Guinness ice cream that was absolutely fantastic; it should be possible to replicate that experience in a pie. American food shies away from bitterness…

This one's for Wilkins; it's a Pi Day / St. Patrick's Day twofer. Ingredients 1 lb. stew lamb 1 onion A few tbsp diced tomatoes (whatever was left in the can you used for pasta the other night) 1 clove garlic 6-8 ice cubes of broth - I make broth from whatever bones and scraps I have left over…

As Lab Lemming pointed out, the graham cracker crust I made for my pie last weekend cannot be represented on the ternary phase diagram for traditional pie crust. But that doesn't mean it is somehow illegitimate or unsciencey! See, look at all this science: In addition to being simpler to prepare,…

Flavor factor analyses of nutmeg distributions show systematic deviations from Poisson behavior despite homogeneous squash. We recorded spice-triggered covariance profiles from the filling layer at sites along inferior lateral and medial custard horizons (Rombauer areas 14 and 25). Each covariance…

Thoughts on Tuli v. Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Inc., et al. « Feminist Law Professors -- On the rewards of a sexual harassment lawsuit: "So, the bonus payoff here is, she gets to work in an environment where she is ostracized, despised, feared, and hated - barred from any leadership position…

The mojito is quite possibly a perfect cocktail. Fussing with it never seems to generate significant improvements, but driven by the need to seem unique and creative, bars keep offering variations with pomegranate, green tea, lychee, or whatever else the flavor of the month happens to be. After…

Once again it is time to acknowledge that I will never read all of the papers I've flagged in my RSS reader... but I can at least go through the abstracts. While my summaries here may be slightly in error due to the fact that I haven't actually read the papers in question, here is what I'm skimming…

The consensus piece of apologetics for Jindal's anti-USGS remarks appears to be to claim that even though volcano monitoring is, of course, a worthwhile investment, it is not economically stimulating, and therefore does not belong in the stimulus bill. To claim that this is what Jindal was actually…

I turned on Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal's campaign speech pre-campaign campaign insinuation pre-campaign dogwhistle fundraiser rebuttal to Obama's speech while cooking my pancakes this evening. I have two questions. Do Republicans (or moderates who don't have a kneejerk anti-Republican reflex…

The Bacon Story -- How science can make even bacon disgusting. Building a Google Earth Geology Layer -- Lots of great resources accumulating in the comments here. Magma Cum Laude: Using Google Earth to visualize volcanic and seismic activity -- A discussion of the different data layers available…

Following the Royal Mail's release of some lovely new Darwin stamps, a few of us got to Twittering over lunch yesterday about the lack of geologists on this year's release of American scientist stamps. (What's that? You have no idea what Twittering is? It's a stupid Web Eleventy-Point-Oh jibber-…

I got a request for advice from Maryam, an old undergrad committee-comrade-in-arms, which I have mangled for clarity: To make a long story short, I'm co-teaching a communication class to engineers and I want to introduce them to science blogging. I'm planning to have them write brief essays about…

Dear Environmental Geologists, Engineers, and Technical Illustrators of 20 Years Ago: Please remember that the real audience for your work - the mind-numbingly detailed technical reports over which you have slaved many hours - is not the board of petty bureaucrats who commissioned your…

I finally have a day job! For a few weeks, anyway - I'm temping as a GIS monkey. While this is not functionally much different from generic office temp jobs, data entry using ArcGIS pays much better than data entry with Excel. Historically, day-jobbing has not had much effect on my blog output,…

One of my New Year's blogolutions was to clear out my to-blog folder, and bring closure to my unfinished drafts by simply posting them as-is. This is one of those drafts. Disorganized paragraphs, unfinished sentences, and general incoherence enhance the natural character and beauty of a half-…

One of my New Year's blogolutions was to clear out my to-blog folder, and bring closure to my unfinished drafts by simply posting them as-is. This is one of those drafts. Disorganized paragraphs, unfinished sentences, and general incoherence enhance the natural character and beauty of a half-…

REMINDER: Accretionary Wedge posts due this Friday -- The theme is unhinged speculation about the future Earth. Calculus: The Musical! -- The concept may or may not be more charming than the execution. Sand Won't Save You This Time -- Mmm, ClF3. Plausibly Impossible: Hirotoshi Itoh's Grinning…

One of my New Year's blogolutions was to clear out my to-blog folder, and bring closure to my unfinished drafts by simply posting them as-is. This is one of those drafts. Disorganized paragraphs, unfinished sentences, and general incoherence enhance the natural character and beauty of a half-…

In addition to helping judge this year's Open Laboratory science blogging anthology, I'm also the production editor (i.e., typesetting jockey). So as I go through, reading the entries in much greater detail than I ever would otherwise, I'm noticing a couple of things: All of the pieces are either…