greengabbro

As you may or may not be aware, Green Gabbro is one of the smallest blogs on the ScienceBlogs network. But on the challenge leaderboard tonight, I'm just two donors behind a first place tie between Drug Monkey, Science Women, and Uncertain Principles. These blogs all get at least triple my traffic…

A week ago, the USGS updated its official estimates of U.S. geothermal energy resources for the first time in over 30 years. During the past three decades, we've made significant progress on technology to exploit geothermal energy in areas where there's plenty of heat in the ground, but no natural…

I've seen the geoblogosphere periodically erupt in harrumphing about the way geology is treated (and by "treated" we usually mean "ignored") in K-12 education. Well, now's our chance to fix that. Budget cuts and the No Child Left Behind Act mean that science is getting squeezed out of elementary…

This month's geoblog carnival is on Geologeeeee.... innnn... SPAAAAAAACE!!1! - you simply must click through to see the cover. If you need more geoblog goodness, Lutz at geoberg.de is working on a complete list of the entire geoblogosphere! See it in English or German. There are currently 101…

TODAY! TODAY TODAY! Come party with me, Sandra, Dave, and GrrlScientist in the upper mezzanine at Ozzie's, 105 W. Mercer St. just behind the Space Needle*. Some of the Seattle Skeptics are showing up, and later on, a few folks from the Pacific Science Center. Meet lots of people who care about…

Like so many moments of culinary inspiration, this plum clafoutis is nothing like what I was thinking of prior to actually wandering into the kitchen to make dinner. I was going to make pancake dome pancakes. Pancake domes are features on Venus. They are so named because they look like pancakes:…

Welcome to the 65th biweekly showcase of the feminist blogosphere! Here's just a taste of what's inside: Owning privilege is not about feeling ashamed, it is about acknowledging the benefits that one receives without having to work for them. And now today an excited colleague announced that he had…

Shiver me timbers, I almost forgot! What five minerals would a pirate want to know? pyrite arrrsenopyrite arrragonite cinnabarrrr feldsparrrr

While I was away, the rest of the geoblogosphere spent some time creating a list of 50 minerals to see before you die, and then ticking off which ones they've done; Dave Schumaker put together a neat tag cloud to display the results. Intimidated by the length of this list, Callan, Kim, EffJot,…

Sometimes Google Books throws up some interesting results: The knowledge of Geology seems to be requisite in all states and pursuits of life. The artisan and the mechanic, are benefited by the mineral products of the earth; without Iron alone, (the rusty king of all metals,) man could not exist in…

A few more announcements while I'm catching up with the blogonets: I will be hosting the next edition of the Carnival of Feminists on September 24. Please send me your best recent women-in-science posts (or non-sciencey feminist-oriented posts, if you must) by the 22nd, using the carnival…

For those of you who don't actually read any other ScienceBlogs (hi, Mom): We're approaching the one meeeellionth comment here at the ScienceBorg! This means there's a contest! If you submit a comment with a valid email address between... um, whenever the contest started, and whenever it is that…

You scour eBay looking for zircon engagement rings. Zircons are forever. During the wedding portraits, you keep hearing the words "for scale" Who knew REI had a bridal section? Altar? I thought you said meet me at the outcrop! She asks the musicians to slow down at any interesting unconformities…

It might be Labor Day, but summer isn't really over until the blackberries are gone. Since it's harvest season and I'm still on leave from the workforce, I've been spending my time figuring out clever things to do with the bountiful produce of my neighborhood's back alleys. (Tonight: lemon verbena…

I had to finish off the series. Happy Friday, everyone.

I was struck by the similarity of these two images. Which one does your dentist want you to eat? I won't speculate about anyone's dentist's motivations, but the top image comes from The Science of Ice Cream, and the bottom from the USGS. I'm not sure what conditions the ice cream was stored…

It was hot out last weekend. Some of you might scoff at what I consider "hot", but the glorious thing about Seattle is that the entire city seems willing to join me in whining and wilting whenever the temperature breaks 80 (that's 25 of your Earth units). Naturally, I spent a lot of time thinking…

The Scibling meetup weekend included free passes to see the ponies at the American Museum of Natural History. OMG PONIES... but I found the exhibit depressing, for the following reason: I don't understand why more organizations don't give out press kits to bloggers. We make such good use of the…

Final details ahoy! Not only will this be a fun time hanging out with your favorite Internet friends you've never met, Seed will buy the first round of booze (or not-booze, if you're into that sort of thing in the middle of the afternoon). 2-4 pm, Saturday, August 9 Social 795 8th Ave (close to…

Gentle Reader, how long do I have to go without blogging before you start sending me solicitous letters of concern for my health, my Internet connection, and the distribution of my assets after death, huh??? I've got a backlog of stuff to write about, which summer lassitude will mostly doom to…

Craig McClain over at Deep Sea News has been spewing some vile libel about our magmatic companions: Two spectacularly awful events occurred in the ocean. Ocean anoxic event 1 (120mya) and 2 (93 mya). Rather unshockingly, the complete lack of oxygen in the oceans led to major extinctions. But what…

The chip in my head (the nice doctors at Seed installed one when I signed up for this blog) is all a-twitter. That means it's almost time to make my way, slack-jawed and drooling with my arms groping vaguely about the space in front of me, all the way across the continent to Seed's aboveground…

Gentle Reader, help me out here: Did I accidentally write Tuesday's post in crazy moon-language? The response to that coordinated swarm of movie reviews - from people who are affiliated with Sizzle, as well as people like Chris Mooney, who just plain liked it - appears to be that those of us who…

Eye candy of the week: Zoltan Sylvester (of Hindered Settling fame) has some fantastic photos from the Geopalooza! exhibit at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Mike Brown on coming up with a name for Make-make (the plutoid formerly known as 2005 FY9 aka Easterbunny): Its orbit is not…

Before I give you my review of Randy Olson's new mockumentary about the global warming debate, I'd like to apologize for being such a terrible liberal documentary-goer. I haven't seen An Inconvenient Truth, or Olson's previous movie, Flock of Dodos, or any of Michael Moore's work since "TV Nation…

There's an article in last Friday's issue of Nature describing some changes in the rocks near the San Andreas Fault that occurred in the hours before two small earthquakes. Here's the BBC's writeup; for those of you who can sneak behind the Nature paywall, the original article is here. A similar…

Well, technically this is Friday tsunami blogging, but sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the 1958 Southeast Alaska earthquake and ensuing Lituya Bay megatsunami, a half-kilometer high wave which killed only a handful of people. The earthquake…

This month's Scientiae is out! Hear women's voices... in science! A conversation with Mr. Mister: Should I blog about this? It's got some gender in it. Yeah, it's got a lot of gender. It's kind of awful. Attention, Southern California! On November 13 you will have the exciting honor of hosting…

One hundred years ago today, a meteor exploded above Siberia, flattening trees over an area of a couple thousand square kilometers (one-tenth of Wales). This video shows the mostly recovered forest, and a view of the lake that might or might not be an impact crater: The narration overstates the "…

Okay, I'm still trying to figure out why my del.icio.us link-posting script is broken, but it's time to get back to quasi-regular link-posting anyway. Christie at the Cape has a great post on archetypal female geologists - a counterpart to those irritating jokes about geology stereotypes that…