fluff

Hey! Who are you calling unfashionable?

khannula — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:50:18 +0000

Hey! Who are you calling unfashionable?

My climatological Scibling Stoat used "geologist" as an insult, I think:

hard rock geologists have done rather poorly in science, because they have become unfashionable

Hey! I resemble that remark!

(Point taken, at least career-wise. In the past 20 years, many departments have replaced retiring rock geeks with climate geeks. But some of us aren't bitter, and most of us accept that climate science has made huge advances in the past 20 years. In fact, I said something like that in a recent survey from... maybe AAAS?)

I blog because I think rocks are interesting. But perhaps blogging about the inherent coolness of rocks isn't enough to save the field. Maybe we need a fashion makeover.

Maybe we need a goddess. Isis has advice about stylish clothes for the air-conditioned office. Maybe she could save us from our fleece and Carhartts... and get us into Science and Nature, too.

On the other hand, geologists aren't universally seen as unfashionable. Why, geologists have even been described as the "coolest and sexiest men alive"...

*looks down*

Maybe we do need help from Dr. Isis. But for other kinds of advice.

khannula Thu, 05/28/2009 - 10:50

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fluff

"hard rock geologists have done rather poorly in science"

I've heard this before, and it infuriates me every time. Some people just seem determined to disrespect geology and what we do. It's strange that I never hear similar comments about other fields:

"Oh, those invertebrate zoologists... what a bunch of hacks." "Organic chemists... like, put the L on your forehead."

Hell, Carhartt is an improvement. Back when I was getting my degree we used to buy all our clothes from the army surplus store because it was cheap and held up great for field trips.

"Temblor"

greengabbro — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 07:13:07 +0000

"Temblor"

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 don't think I have ever heard anyone use the word "temblor" in either ordinary or technical speech. I have only ever seen it in news reports, where it seems to fulfill a need to (a) limit the number of times a single word is repeated in a short space, and/or (b) use short words in headlines to satisfy layout constraints.

Am I alone here?

greengabbro Tue, 03/17/2009 - 03:13

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earthquakes

fluff

Okay, I'm showing my geek here, but one of the very few places I've ever heard that word is on the name of a multiplayer map for Total Annihilation (it's more sophisticated than it sounds)called "Temblorian Mist", the area in question is misty and prone to small earthquakes.

Temblor is one of two Spanish words that mean "earthquake" (the other is terremoto). I'm not a native Spanish speaker, so I don't know what the distinction is between those two words.

That said, I don't see a good reason for using "temblor" in English. "Earthquake" does the job just as effectively, and in the same number of syllables.

Oh good, I thought it was just me who had missed the memo on this one.

I wonder how it got started? Just a reflection of the changing demographics in the US perhaps?

I answered "Yes - other reason" because I've occasionally described a photo's location as "from the Temblor Range." But other than in the place name, nope.

"Yes - other"

When I was in Chile, people said temblor to mean small earthquakes (terremotos) or tremors. It means tremor in Spanish.

Other: The Calaveras Dam replacement is founded on the Temblor Sandstone so the word gets used quite a bit there.

You see it a lot in older engineering/seismology reports also.

Interesting. I've seen it mostly in news reports. Don't know how or when it got started.

Yes, other; too much time spent perusing the dictionary as a child.

The first few times I saw this, some years ago, I thought there was an R missing.

Well, in spanish we use 3 different words, all 3 meaning almost the same:

Sismo: I think the most appropriate "earthquake" word and most used by seismological agencies.

Temblor: Most used by people, and referring to a not-so-strong earthquake.

Terremoto: Most used by people again, referring to a strong to pretty strong earthquake.

I've also heard the very rare "tremor" in spanish, and the favorite of tv reports "movimiento telÃºrico".

Boy, are those a lot of words to describe one single thing, heh.

Thanks for the rundown, Miguel!

In English, a "telluric movement" sounds like something unpleasant better discussed by SB's medical bloggers...

Anonymous: I'd say it sounds like something Orac would target on his Friday Dose of Woo.

This is like people in the media and movies using "twister" for tornado. I grew up in Tornado Alley, watched tornadoes on the ground, picked up pieces of a friend's house after a tornado, etc., and I never once heard anyone who lives in the midwest use the term "twister". I think that some people must think it sounds folksy and down-home, but reality is opposite of perception here. People who live around tornadoes are tornado junkies. When the F5 plowed through Oklahoma City in 1999, I was 20 miles away watching the mesocyclone from a lawn chair in the front yard.

You'll know this has hit the baroque phase when there is a major Hollywood movie called, "Temblor!"

I hate the word. It always sounds like someone mispronouncing "trembler." It's not euphonious. Earthquake, quake, and tremor are perfectly sufficient.

The overuse of the word in the media irks me as much as the consistent misuse of epicenter (as a synonym of focus or center).

Mistaking epicenter/hypocenter doesn't actually bug me. Yeah, it's a technical mistake, but I think it's far more important for people to realize that a magnitude 8 earthquake is not a point source than to waste time/memory learning which point source is which.

It's not so much the use of epicenter as a synonym for hypocenter, but when epicenter is used outside of a geological context. Like, say, "Colombia is the epicenter of the cocaine trade." Really? It's on the surface, and not the center of the action?

I call it a sismo (in proper Castellano: Seismo) - "terremoto" is IFAIK only used by people who don't experience them more than a couple of hundred times.

Say "sismo" 50-60 times (each month).

Then try "terremoto" for the same number of times, and you'll understand.

March 2009: http://ssn.dgf.uchile.cl/mapas/mensuales/guc\_eve04\_200903\_map.jpeg - updated each time you reload the page.

Insiting in what Miguel said above, I would like to comment also that "temblor" is just a "shake". It can be a seismic event, it can be what the body makes when it's cold :-).

Cheers

I searched my site just now, and in the past 11 years I have used the word "temblor" just once, with a smirk: "EERI, the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, has been out there stalking the wild temblor since 1949." I am so proud.

Taking it way back: the T-bomb (T for Temblor). A weapon that destroys the Kilrathi home planet, ending the threat to the Terran species. Bonus points for figuring out which game.

I fall under the "news report" category. I use it, but only because it's a convention. As a former geologist, I never understood where it came from or why reporters used it. Now I use it to keep from having the word "earthquake" or just "quake" repeated a million times in every article I write. I also use "tremor," "shudder," and "shimmy" with some regularity.

If I thought I could get away with "sismo," I'd use it. Any other suggested synonyms would be gratefully received!

Weird so further to the above is the word "Temblor" used outside the US? I live in New Zealand and we have Earthquakes regularly - especially of note recently and I'd never heard the word in our media and only saw it for the first time in a US report on our quake here yesterday. I had to look it up! LOL

#22 - But the usage of "temblor" in news stories just makes the news sound ridiculous. It's the only place that word is used in English, and it's always used in place of what should be the second instance of the word "earthquake". It's a cliche now, and I wish the news would just drop it. If we're talking about earthquakes (in English), just use the word earthquake. Using "temblor", which is just the Spanish word for earthquake, makes just as much sense as picking some other Spanish word at random (say, baÃ±o) and throwing it into English conversations. I mean, how does this sound to you: "A bear destroyed a local family's bathroom this morning. The bear snuck in the back door, dragged a turkey off the kitchen table and holed up in the baÃ±o. It then shredded all of the family's toilet paper and went to sleep in the bathtub." And people never pronounce it right in English. It's temBLORE, not TEMblor or TEMbler. Like #15 said, it doesn't sound right.

http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/2952/
http://www.arrantpedantry.com/2011/06/28/temblor-trouble/

Blackberry Meringue Pie with Orange Bitters and Almond Crust

greengabbro — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 16:34:53 +0000

Blackberry Meringue Pie with Orange Bitters and Almond Crust

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

4 egg whites
1/2 c. sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
1 Tbsp corn starch

1 c. blackberry juice from about 1/2 quart of frozen berries
6 egg yolks
1/4 c. lemon juice
1 Tbsp Regan's orange bitters
1/4 c. corn starch
1 c. sugar
generous pinch of salt
2 Tbsp butter

8-9 graham crackers
handful of almonds
5 Tbsp butter

Directions

Cook down the blackberries over low heat, then blend 'em up. Strain out the seeds. Save the leftover pulp for baking - it makes tasty muffins.

Preheat the oven to 325 ºF.

Crust: Whirl the graham crackers and almonds in a food processor until they are wee crumbs, then add the melted butter. Process until it looks like wet sand, then mush into the bottom of a pie pan. Bake for 15 minutes or so.

Filling: Mix the corn starch, sugar, salt, bitters, 3/4 c. blackberry juice, and 1 c. water over medium heat. When it begins to thicken, whisk in the egg yolks two at a time, then the lemon juice and remaining blackberry juice, then the butter. Bring it to a simmer while whisking constantly, and cover with plastic wrap while you work on the meringue.

Meringue: Mix the corn starch and water over medium heat; cook, whisking vigilantly, until it turns translucent. Remove from the heat and have it ready next to you while you beat the eggs. Mix the sugar and cream of tartar together.

Beat the eggs until they are foamy, then add the sugar and cream of tartar a little bit at a time. When those have been incorporated and the mixture forms soft peaks, add the corn starch. Beat until you get stiff peaks.

Assembly: Make sure that the filling is hot when you assemble the pie. Pour in the filling, then spread the meringue on top, working from the outside in and being sure to connect the meringue to the outer edge of the pie, so that it doesn't shrink.

Bake at 325 ºF for 20 minutes or so, until the meringue is golden brown.

greengabbro Sat, 03/14/2009 - 12:34

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I love blackberry. I have to try to cook it :)

Beer Meringue Pie

greengabbro — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 15:23:56 +0000

Beer Meringue Pie

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 in any form, and especially in dessert form. Dark chocolate is starting to weaken that taboo, though. Once you have decided that nibbling on eleventypercent cacao is an acceptable after-dinner activity, there is really no reason not to open the floodgates to all manner of bittersweet delights.

Turns out that the bitterness of hops and the complexity of a finished stout can anchor a cloud of sweet meringue. This pie sounds strange, but is actually fantastic.

Ingredients

a small handful of hops
1 Tbps corn starch
1/2 c. sugar
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
4 egg whites

1 bottle Guinness
6 egg yolks
1/4 c. corn starch
1 c. sugar
pinch of salt
dash cloves
2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp dark malt extract

8-9 graham crackers
5 Tbsp. butter
2 Tbsp. dark malt extract

Boil the hops in 1/2-3/4 c. of water for 20 minutes. Line a colander with cheesecloth and pour the boiled hops through to strain; leave the left over mixture in the colander until it cools, then gather the cheesecloth and squeeze the remaining water out. Reserve the water and discard the solid hops.

For the crust: Zip the crackers and malt extract around in a food processor, then add the melted butter. Pulse until it has the texture of wet sand, and then pat it into the bottom of a pie pan. Cook it for 15 min. or so in a 325 ºF oven, then let it cool while you make the rest of the pie.

For the filling: Mix the sugar, corn starch, salt, cloves, malt, and 1 1/2 c. Guinness in a sauce pan. Cook over low heat, whisking intermittently, until it begins to thicken. Then whisk in the egg yolks, two at a time, another 1/2 c. Guinness (mixed with a bit of the hop tea if you want), and finally the butter. Bring to a simmer, then cover with plastic (to prevent a skin from forming) and remove from the heat.

For the meringue: Mix the sugar and cream of tartar together. Whisk together the corn starch and 1/3 c. of hop tea. Cook over medium heat, whisking, until the mixture simmers and turns translucent. Set it aside. Then, start whisking the eggs. When they are foamy, add the sugar and cream of tartar, a little bit at a time. When the mixture forms soft peaks, start adding the corn starch mixture, also a little bit at a time. Beat the meringue until it forms stiff peaks.

My meringue-making life became much simpler when I realized that the whisk attachment to our wimpy mixer will also fit in the electric drill.

Make sure that the filling is still hot when you are ready to add the meringue; you might want to put it over low heat while you finish beating. Pour the filling into the crust, and top it with the meringue, spreading from the outside of the crust in so that it does not shrink and leave gaps when it cooks.

Cook in a 325 ºF oven for 20-30 min, until the meringue is golden brown.

greengabbro Sat, 03/14/2009 - 11:23

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fluff

It *looks* good in the format pictured above!

Hmmm. I like the idea of more savory pies. I'll be watching to see what you do with this.

You might be interested in trying Pissaladiere ProvenÃ§al (In our house we omit the anchovies and add more ripe olives and shredded Swiss cheese on top.).
http://www.sallybernstein.com/food/columns/braker/pissaladiere.htm

Sorry, Jake, this is really not what you'd call "savory".

We've been making lots of pizza lately, though, and getting into salty canned fish toppings (mostly sardines). That pissaladiere sounds amazing! And good incentive to buy a new thyme plant...

Real beer floats are kind of tasty too.

Small handful! :-D

Graham cracker crust, definitely.

I'm so sorry I couldn't make it. Graw.

Guinness is an ingredient in the best chocolate cake I've ever made. It isn't bitter, just gives the chocolate an amazing complexity. Also excellent liquid in which to cook corned beef and cabbage.

Guinness Lamb Pie

greengabbro — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 02:50:59 +0000

Guinness Lamb Pie

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 after other cooking, and freeze it in ice cube trays for easy use later. Fortuitously, my most recent batch was mostly lamb ribs and onion butts.
~1/2 pint Guinness
Salt, pepper, and MSG to taste

1 cup white flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
8 tbps (1 stick) butter
2 1/2 tbsp vegetable shortening, and when I realized that we were out of shortening, I added some lard, too.
Small amount of ice water

Heat a skillet with a small amount of oil over medium-high heat. Brown the lamb meat for a few minutes - not to cook it through, just to get those delicious Maillard reactions happening on the surface. Put it in a crock pot with the rest of the stew ingredients on low overnight.

Cut the fat into the flour. Add the ice water a little bit at a time, mixing it in with a folding motion, until the fatty flour turns into dough. Form it into a couple of patties and chill overnight. Or, just use a premade savory pie crust, or some canned biscuit dough or something.

When you get up in the morning to make your other pies, stir in 1/3 to 1/2 cup flour as a thickening agent and turn the crock pot to high.

Roll out the crust and assemble the pie.

Bake in a 425 ºF oven for 20-30 minutes, until the crust is poofy golden brown.

greengabbro Fri, 03/13/2009 - 22:50

Tags

I already told you: meat pies are bought, not made.

Hurry the fuck up, Gabbs!!!!!!

Mmmm. Looking good. I'll have to share this with my friends at Shepherds Hey Farm in Clifton Park, NY. They raise all natural lamb that is fattened on the spent mash from a local brew pub -- the tastiest, sweetest lamb I've ever eaten.

I'll be happy to sell you the pie once it's finished...

Gimme that motherfcuking pie, NOW, and no one gets hurt!

That looks amazing!!!

Ternary Phase Diagram for Cracker-Crumb Crusts

greengabbro — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 23:24:25 +0000

Ternary Phase Diagram for Cracker-Crumb Crusts

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, the graham cracker crust is delicious over a much larger range of compositions than a traditional pie crust.

I will have another pie posted later this week, but the rate-limiting ingredient is still equilibrating with ethelyene gas in a bag on my kitchen table.

greengabbro Tue, 03/10/2009 - 19:24

Tags

fluff

"gratuitous ingredient for jaded hipsters"

Wait! Wut!? You put weed in your fucking pie!?!?

ftw!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think the Pile of crumbs area is too large. If you can get the pie onto a plate without completely losing the crust it's a OM NOM NOM. The WTF area could be smaller but then the amount of "gratuitous ingredient" is less important than what it is, IMHO. Maybe that dimension should be amount*WTF-iness?
(nuts - low WTFiness; Yak's spleen - high WTF-iness)

(in the interest of full discloser: my last cheesecake, mocha with chocolate crumb crust, was a little closer to pile of crumbs than I'd like but I was almost out of butter; birthday girl and our coworkers couldn't have cared less)

AAHHAHAAH I love this. And I would like to om nom nom on your kiwi lime pie.

Hee, hee! Love it! "So for compositions falling in the Om Nom Nom field, we see... mmmmmm.... pie...

Hee, hee!

"but the rate-limiting ingredient is still equilibrating with ethelyene gas in a bag on my kitchen table."

A ha! A meat pie!

Fruitilinear Perturbation Methods for Layered Meringue Spaces

greengabbro — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 07:51:35 +0000

Fruitilinear Perturbation Methods for Layered Meringue Spaces

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 matrix showed 6 to 8 significant eigenslices. To investigate this behavior, we solved the Child equations for flavor propagation in homogeneous layered meringue-custard spaces. By introducing slight fruitilinear perturbations to the model, we show that there exists a critical value of the dimensionless Lemon number that determines the onset of flavor convection. We synthesize piesmograms for several important endmember systems. The synthetic piesmograms display soft peaks that stiffen when perturbed past the critical Lemon number, and significant waveform piefurcation at mid-custard reflectors.

CR Categories: 1.4.2 [Piesmology]: Statistical Piesmology
Keywords: egg media; citrus covariance; flavor factor analysis

greengabbro Tue, 03/10/2009 - 03:51

Tags

fluff

piesmology

*smirk*

mmm...Piesmology.

Careful, or you'll actually end up a technical writer!

*giggle* *snort* *chortle* *bellow* HAHAHAAAHAA

*wipe eyes*

*repeat*

I think I read that abstract in the rss feed for the Journal of Geophysical Research.

I love it.

I think that in homogeneous layered meringue-custard space flavour increases as nutmeg tends to infinity. I would test this hypothesis but apparently death can be fatal.

I lol'ed. :-)

Kiwi Lime Pie (with Bonus Cocktail)

greengabbro — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 16:37:13 +0000

Kiwi Lime Pie (with Bonus Cocktail)

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 impulse-purchasing some kiwis and throwing them into a mojito pie for the ScienceBlogs Pi Day contest, I can't say I'm any better than a bartender shilling $12 cocktails to jaded foodies. But the kiwi and lime blend seamlessly together in a refreshingly tart custard, and hey, they were on sale.

You'll need to bake this pie at least 3 hours before you plan to eat it, so that it has time to set.

This recipe is based on the key lime pie from The New Best Recipe, my staple cookbook. (I reviewed it, along with some other helpful pie-baking books, in my National Pie Day cookbook-reviewing extravaganza.)

Ingredients

For the crust:

~8 or so graham crackers
5 Tbsp butter
6-12 1 oz. candy canes

For the filling:

4 egg yolks
1 14-oz can of sweetened condensed milk
1/2 c. lime juice - the New Best Recipe people did some experiments using both true key limes and the Persian limes you normally find in grocery stores, and found that the variety of lime makes absolutely no difference to the final pie. Do not waste time or money on exotic limes when you are just going to smother their subtleties with sweetened condensed milk.
lime zest - I used the zest from 7 little round limes. It is theoretically possible to use too much zest, but this is not as great a risk as using insufficient zest and having a pie with no zing.
1-3 tsp rum extract, or 1-3 tbsp dark rum
3-5 kiwi fruit

For the topping, if you're into that sort of thing:

Whipped cream; or,
Use the egg whites to make meringue

Directions

Preheat oven to 325ºF (160ºC)

Crust: Run the graham crackers in a food processor, or put them in a plastic zipper-lock bag and smash them with a bottle, until they have an even crumb. Mix them in a bowl with the melted butter; add more butter, if needed, so that the mixture has the consistency of wet sand.

Mush the buttered crumbs into a pie dish. Place in the oven for 15 minutes, until the crust just begins to brown.

Run the candy canes in a food processor, or smash them into a coarse powder. When the crust is out of the oven, spread the candy cane powder evenly in it.

Filling: Whisk together the egg yolks and lime zest until the mixture turns a pale green or you are sick of whisking, whichever comes first. Add the sweetened condensed milk, lime juice, and 1 tsp of rum extract (or 1 Tbsp rum). Taste - add more rum if necessary. When you think you have enough rum, add another teaspoon, or maybe two; the lime zest will release more flavor as you cook it, and the rum will not. The amount of rum necessary to balance out the lime is what makes me think it's a good idea to use rum extract - the alcohol won't stop your filling from setting, I don't think, but if you add too much liquid overall, it will be runny. Also, rum extract is much cheaper than real rum.

You might also add a bit of mint flavor to the filling - muddle some fresh leaves in the lime juice, or use an extract. I think the candy canes were too weak in the final pie.

Let the filling congeal for a bit while you fuss with the kiwis and the crust.

Slice 3-4 kiwis and lay them out on the bottom of the crust.

After the filling has congealed, pour it over the kiwis. Stick it in the oven for 15-18 minutes, until the center is firm yet wibbly when you poke it. Garnish with mint sprigs or thinly-sliced kiwi; chill for 3 hours (or more) before serving.

I did not make a sweet topping for this pie - I like 'em tart. I also feel less guilty about having pie for breakfast when it's not smothered in whipped cream. However, if you do whip up some cream or make a meringue topping for your pie, I recommend adding a bit of rum and/or mint flavor to that as well.

Bonus Cocktail: Kiwi-Lime Sponde

Creme de violette is an old-fashioned cocktail ingredient that is beginning to come back into style - or at least U.S. availability. The Mr. and I impulse-purchased a bottle of Rothman & Winter's on close-out, and have been scouring the Internet for Prohibition-era cocktail recipes for the past several weeks. This is how we know that we are, indeed, jaded foodie hipsters; with a little more disposable income we would be just as unbearable as some of our friends.

The Jupiter cocktail is more or less a martini with creme de violette or parfait amour and orange juice added.

A Sponde cocktail (we decided last night, after paging through lists of Jovian satellites) is any one-off variation on a Jupiter. Sponde is a tiny, tiny moon of Jupiter - a 2 km fragment of a captured asteroid, most of which survived as the larger moon Pasiphaë. Sponde is also one of the Horae, who presides over the seventh hour of the day, "libations poured after lunch".

Here's the one we made:

1 1/2 oz gin
1/2 oz dry vermouth
1/2 oz creme de violette
1/4-1/2 oz kiwi/lime juice (Procedure: Attempt to juice a kiwi on your citrus juicer. Realize that this is a dumb idea, because kiwis do not juice the same way citrus do, and you are getting mostly pulp. Juice a small lime on top of that, and then push some of the kiwi pulp through the strainer.)
1/4 tsp or so sugar

Shake with ice and strain into a martini glass.

It's good but not great; there was more lime than kiwi, and together they overpowered the violet. I thought about naming it Ganymede or Europa, in honor of its mottled grayish appearance, but it seems like a waste to name something I am unlikely to make again after one of the Galilean satellites. I'll wait until I have a more stable recipe.

greengabbro Sun, 03/08/2009 - 12:37

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That pie looks motherfucking DELISH!!!!!!!!!

mmmmmmmm.....yummmmmmmm.....

The pie sounds very good if you leave out the candy canes and sprinkle the crust with brown sugar instead.

I'm assuming that "wibbly" is one of those techie geologist terms having something to do with the stability of igneous intrusions.

Yes, "wibbly" is highly technical jargon. It's halfway between Jello, and the seismic response of a sedimentary basin.

This looks and sounds soo good, and with matching cocktail, you will surely win!

I don't like limes, but as a grad student I blended plenty of kiwis into my lemon meringues. Kiwi fruit, too.

Your crust is sadly unthermodynamic.

OMG. That looks amazing. Candy canes in the crust is inspired. Do you think spearmint candy would have been good, too?

I think spearmint candy would have been *way better*, especially something strong - maybe a mix of spearmint and peppermint Altoids. I only used candy canes because I had a bunch of them left over from impulse purchases at the post-Christmas clearance sales.

When you declared you were gonna pwn your Sciblings' asses, I had no idea how much you were NOT kidding. This pie definitely takes the cake (heh heh)

For a change, I think Physioprof's swearing is woefully inadequate for the occasion.

Coming from the land of kiwifruit and kiwis, I would point out that kiwis are either birds or humans :-)

Yes, I know that for some bizarre reason the rest of the world insists on calling kiwifruit, kiwis. But it has the effect that your recipes (which look good by the way) have unintentional humour over here...

e.g.

After the filling has congealed, pour it over the kiwis. Erm, no thanks, we'd rather not have congealed goo all over us :-)

Heraclides, your New Zealand authenticity is no match for my USian cultural imperialism. Kiwi birds are less common up here than kiwi fruit, therefore they should get the suffix.

Also, [insert name of your favorite NZ celebrity here for generic innudendo] would be quite delicious covered in congealed goo.

Obviously you're not into cultural sensitivity :-)

Humour aside, my own hunch where people in have gone wrong with thisâaside from ignorance of what 'kiwi' properly refers toâis missing that it's kiwifruit, one word trademarked product name, not kiwi fruit, a two word general name for a fruit. I can imagine this being the result of a sloppy journalist and their mistake catching on, you know the way it goes... Once it's made (erroneously) into two words, people getting the idea of dropping the "fruit" bit, would make sort-of sense, wrong as it might be.

In any event, the "proper" name of the fruit is (apparently) yÃ¡ng tÃ¡o. I haven't a clue how to pronounce that :-)

Well, in all seriousness, I'm not aware of any reason that the kiwi/kiwifruit thing should be treated any differently than the fact that I say "pants" instead of "trousers" and write without extraneous u's - differences which are also good for some cheap lulz and banter, but aren't really wrong. If I am treading on deeper cultural issues, I would very much appreciate an education.

Earth Scientists on Stamps

greengabbro — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 07:33:32 +0000

Earth Scientists on Stamps

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-jabber service, pay no attention. If you are an Eleventy-Point-Oh sort of person, though, perhaps you should be following me.)

Googling around a bit for existing stamps that feature earth scientists, I found the pickings to be surprisingly slim. Alfred Wegener has been on stamps issued by both East Germany and Greenland, but not in recognition of his ill-fated early support of continental drift. The stamps honored his work in polar meteorology (Wegener died on an ill-fated scientific expedition to collect the first full year of weather data in interior Greenland).

Other earth scientists with stamps:

Milankovitch.
Zhang Heng, creator of the world's first seismometer.

The question we were having fun with at lunch, though, is this: Which earth scientists would you pick to put on stamps?

To avoid making this too simple an exercise in listing off a bunch of awesome dead earth scientists, I'm going to stick to a themed (at least by nationality) set of four. My suggestions for the USPS:

Yes, I booted Harry Hess in favor of Marie Tharp in order to fill a diversity box. It's a set of stamps, yo; it is not just a straightforward list of the people whose names are already in the history books, it is a sneaky kind of aspirational statement. I'm disappointed that I failed on the racial/ethnic diversity box; if anyone has suggestions I would love to hear them. Remember, though, stamps are always posthumous honors.

greengabbro Thu, 02/19/2009 - 02:33

Tags

fluff

Geoscientists

Science Culture

I nominate Charles Schuchert (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Schuchert) mostly because it'd be cool to have a relative on a stamp. Other than that your list is pretty good.

Motherfucking geologists! On the motherfucking USPS stamps!!

John Wesley Powell seems like a trite, obvious choice, but you just know if the USPS does decide to honor geotypes, he'll be at the top of the list. For the diversity, I would nominate Florence Bascom.

I am out in the field, and cannot remember if he made it to a stamp, but Sir Douglas Mawson is on the $100 Australian banknote.

Norman L. Bowen would be a candidate for a US stamp.

Louis Agassiz, Charles Lyell, Wallace Broecker, Nicholas Shackleton, Lonnie Thompson, Sue Hendrickson, and Roger Revelle.
I suppose one could argue some of those do not qualify as 'earth scientists'.

GKG is a good choice, but some llewelly's nominations fail the posthumous test.

Agassiz's legacy is tarnished by his creepy racism. He really shouldn't get a stamp until after all the scientists who make better role models have been appropriately honored.

Isn't Broecker still alive?

Also, I think Inge Lehmann deserves a stamp simply because her big discovery is attributed to Mohorovicic in the stamp pictured above.

If the discovery has already made the cut, it might as well be properly attributed.

Maria Brumm | February 19, 2009 9:34 PM

Agassiz's legacy is tarnished by his creepy racism. He really shouldn't get a stamp until after all the scientists who make better role models have been appropriately honored.

I hadn't known Agassiz's creepy racism was any worse than typical for his time period. Since seeing your comment, I've done some more reading on Agassiz, and I now agree with you. Thank you for the correction.

Science Woman, Lab Lemming, Broecker and Thompson are both still alive. I didn't realize that was a disqualifying criteria, but if it is they're both out. (My list was too long anyway.)

I'd put Helen Tappan Loeblich on a stamp; any microfossil stratigrapher would know why.

Why not Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Marsh? And Dana and Clarence King and of course Harry Hess too.

Sir Douglas Mawson has featured on several Australian stamps.

I'd add William Smith to the list.

Douglas Mawson has left the Australian $100 note in favour of others - Monash and Nicholls. A shame - the $100 image was the frontespiece of my M. Sc. thesis on rocks Mawson studied in the Northern Flinders Ranges, and the note design included one of his cross sections that showed my sequence.

Wegener is honoured by an ?80s vintage ?DDR stamp I have somewhere - not to hand as I write this note - that lacks his image, but shows his continental drift reconstruction. I suspect it is the first continental drift stamp ever issued.

And yes - a big shout for Bill Smith.

Okay, I know very little geology, but the Mohorovicic Discontinuity Layer rocks my world, but then again, I'm a huge moho.

How to Fight Global Warming at Night with your Fists

greengabbro — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 07:36:55 +0000

How to Fight Global Warming at Night with your Fists

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-written blog post and should not be considered flaws or defects.

Draft date: October 22, 2008

I don't know what it is about Dinosaur Comics that inspires me to be a contrarian, but when I saw this, I immediately wanted to prove T-rex wrong.

Wear Gloves - Last night we gave in and ran the heater for the first time this season, because my hands were too cold to type. Tonight I've got fingerless gloves on; they're sort of helping.
DON'T punch down bread dough - Commercially-made bread is actually one of the most energy-efficient processed foodstuffs there is. According to this study, unless you have a super-efficient gas oven that you load with several loaves at once, baking your own bread will consume as much as 8 times as much energy as a similar commercial loaf. One exception: If your bread travels more than ___ miles between the bakery and the grocery store, the climate will be better off if you bake your own.
DO try punching the following: "Off" switches, broken items that you would otherwise throw out that might be restored to usable condition with a quick jab to the dented or sticky part,

greengabbro Thu, 01/08/2009 - 02:36

Tags

environment

fluff

But... but...
Homemade bread is so goooood.
Isn't that worth screwing the environment just a little bit for?

Yes, keep em coming! I'm getting out my gloves now. I *want* to use my fists so I don't end up like T-rex: without any.

Just bake your home made bread in the winter, when you were going to heat your house anyway. I know, an electric oven isn't as efficient a heater as your gas furnace, but I live in an apartment which is heated electrically, so there isn't an efficiency issue. Definitely DO NOT bake anything in the summer when your AC is on. If you absolutely have to, take your oven outside and do it there.

There is sort of an efficiency issue, depending on the layout of your kitchen - my oven is right next to my refrigerator, the baseboard heaters are not. But yeah, there have definitely been nights where it's cold, but not quite cold enough to turn the heat on, and I decide what I want for dinner based on how much time it will spend in the oven...

Summer baking is when it's time to start playing with solar cookers!

There's a lot more to making your own bread than energy efficiency. For example, trying to reduce your dependency on the global food monopoly or eating organic and/or local. The cheapest way to eat local/organic is to buy organic/local flour and bake your own. It's tasty too. I would be interested in estimates for how much running your oven to bake bread costs. I don't bake when it's hot outside and unfortunately my apartment has that crazy electric heat in the ceiling.

But I live in Pork Smith, where the bread SUX and we have no bagels except Wal-Mart bagels! I HAVE to bake at home.