Outside The Interzone

Test Post

2011-10-28T13:04:00.000-07:00

I haven't been able to get any Blogger pages to load for at least the last two days- not even my own blog. Twitter inquiries lead me to believe this is just me, not an issue with Blogger. I'm still seeing posts in RSS, but for those who clip their posts, sending just an intro snippet to their feed, I can't click through to read the rest... or rather, it won't load. I can get to the "create post" page, though, so I'm testing whether I can still post, and if doing so will allow me to get to OTI.

Volcanic Ramblings Part 6: Cascades Slop Over Into Basin and Range

2011-10-18T15:54:00.000-07:00

We managed to consistently get started at a decent time each day of the trip, aiming to gather for breakfast at 8:00. Since we had driven about an hour south from the turn-off to Crater Lake, that meant we had to drive an hour north- though I recently realized there IS a more direct, probably significantly shorter route that would have taken us to the SW entrance. But wait'll you see the juicy outcrops we would have missed in that case!

Descending into the Klamath Basin, numerous ~N/S normal faults have opened up some terrific exposures I had never bothered to look at carefully- though the next one (after this) in particular is one I've wistfully watched as I sailed past it more times than I care to count over the decades. But here's the thing: the rock is steep, not particularly competent, so mass wasting into the road is commonly a problem, route 97 is sort of shoehorned in there where it fits, often with little space for pull-outs or break-down lanes... and it's a fast, busy and dangerous road. So opportunities to geologize need to be chosen carefully, with an eye toward safety.

All that said, we did find a few pre-park stops which, though they chewed up and spat out enormous amounts of precious time (the commodity which was in shortest supply for the whole trip), were definitely worth it. For most of the stops on the trip, I tried to remember to take a shot or two of helpful landmarks for anyone else who would like to check the spots out for themselves someday, and so I could more confidently and precisely find them in Flash Earth. The lead photo above is the intersection of Algoma Road with Route 97. We were able to get off the road, park in a pull-out on the south side, get behind the Jersey Barrier (which was very nice to have between ourselves and traffic), and walk a hundred yards or so south to an interesting-looking face we had noticed only moments before.

Here's the first shot of the day ( Note that all the photos in this series will get much larger with a click.):So what are we looking at? Well, that there is an itty-bitty normal fault in poorly sorted, extremely immature volcaniclastic sand (mostly) and silt. The grains looked to be mostly lithic, which is why I describe it as "extremely immature." The offset looks to be about an inch. Here's a view from a different angle:Isn't that purty? I'm quite fond of sed structures, both original and soft deformation, so I keep an eye out for them at stops like this. Not much of note at this one, but enough to convince me this stuff was reworked by water, not just air fall ash. (Obligatory admission: I'm no expert, and I'm always open to correction and/or questioning.)
Backing off from the same spot, with the lovely Dana Hunter for scale, you can get a better sense of the over-all look of the outcrop, and see that the fault is roughly parallel to the cliff face, suggesting this is a subsidiary fault to the much larger one that created this escarpment.Looking a bit farther along, there's a lens of very dark sediment that I took to be a small cut-and-fill structure at the time, but it occurs to me it might be a small channel from near the start of this sedimentation cycle. The next unit down is a brick red layer that looked as if it might be a thick ash-fall unit. Looking south along the face, below, it's quite striking. But at the far end, you can see the same kind of stratification as above the brick red stuff.
Walking south, down-section, more of the same under the bricky stuff...
Turning to look north, yep, it's pretty clear that structurally, we're in basin and range. I would guess (and later 65 mph reconnaissance geology seemed to confirm) that the sorts of rocks and sequences we're seeing here would be up there, too.Below, a block of stretched-vesicle mafic rock that fell from a lava flow above the sediments first shown with the fault...
...and a coarse cobbly layer in the lower section of sediment.
So what can we say about this environment (dons semi-irresponsible speculation helmet)? Well, it's very clearly dominated by a nearby source of volcanic rocks... oh, I didn't show you the view across the highway yet, did I?That'd be Mt. McLoughlin, the southernmost major Cascade peak in Oregon. (I doubt that particular volcano contributed much to this outcrop, though.) But I have to admit, I'm not very confident describing the depositional environment. I'm guessing that we're looking at a braided stream drainage, mostly choked with ash, but with larger channels carrying flows competent enough to move larger boulders. The material is too coarse and poorly sorted to be lacustrine (as the modern-day lake across the road) but I'm not seeing enough in the way of cross bedding and channel features to feel comfortable with what I'd consider a more typical meandering fluvial environment. There are quite a few flows in between thick piles of sediments, so we're not so far from the vents that sufficiently fluid lavas couldn't reach this spot, but they're a fairly small proportion of the pile... less than a quarter for sure, maybe closer to 10-15%.

In terms of age, I really don't know, but I'd bet pre-Pleistocene, because the magnitude of the fault offsets (which post-date the sedimentation) would require at least one or two million years.

One last shot, taken as we crossed the causeway in the lead photo, with a question for Callan Bentley... what was the term for a ramp between two vertically offset blocks? You mentioned it in your posts on structure in the Bishop Tuff. Followup: Callan responds swiftly with the response "relay ramp." That there below is one.

Volcanic Ramblings Part 5: Lotsa Lakes

2011-10-16T15:15:00.000-07:00

Looking across Odell Lake to Diamond Peak

I have read several times, in sources that look to be reputable, that the rate of ecological change from the Cascade Crest down into central Oregon is one of the most rapid in the terrestrial (as opposed to marine) world. I'm always suspicious of any claim of unique extremity- who says it's the biggest/tallest/deepest/smallest? But if you watch the change in trees and underbrush from Salt Creek Falls to route 97- the N/S backbone of central Oregon- it really is quite amazing how rapidly and thoroughly the forest changes, not just once, but multiple times. Just west of the crest, I would guesstimate annual precipitation is around 150 inches per year; by the time you get out onto the east side apron, it's closer to 25. The dominant trees grade from enormous DouglasFir, with lush and abundant undergrowth, to Ponderosa Pine, Lodgepole Pine, then sagebrush and juniper scrub.

Geology? Oh, my, yes! The presence of the Cascades creates a barrier to moisture coming in off the Pacific; not only do the mountains catch a large proportion of that moisture, but air descending the eastern slope is, well, descending. It warms adiabatically, with the result that air masses moving into central Oregon are most often capable of holding more moisture than when they went over the pass. Which means they don't drop any more moisture. In this case, the mere presence of all that geology has a profound effect on the types of vegetation that can grow, compete, and reproduce in different parts of the east side.

As an aside, much of central and eastern Oregon is referred to as "High Desert," both colloquially and technically; it bears pointing out that strictly speaking, "deserts" receive 10 inches or less of precipitation per year. My understanding is that the Alvord Desert, on the east side of Steens Mountain, does meet this criterion, but little if any of the rest of Oregon does. More accurately, most of the High Desert is semi-arid grassland, but that just doesn't have the same ring, does it? So High Desert it is.

Not to rain on the parade, though, I think one of central Oregon's best-kept secrets is that there's much more water than I think most people realize... which means, in turn, more vegetation and wildlife than they might guess, as well. Yes, there are stretches that can seem barren (to the unaccustomed eye), and there are lots of glorious "dear gawd, look at all those nekkid rocks" vistas, but there's water, too, and lots of birds.

I had planned to spend the first night in the Chemult area, and had used the old Google machine to check that were indeed hotels in the little town. Oops. Without paying very close attention to where, exactly, said lodgings were, you know, located. There were a couple of ramshackle sorts of huts, members of the Bates Chain of Fine Accommodations, if you catch my drift.

So we put in an extra hour of driving to get to Klamath Falls.

As we rounded Modoc Point, we had a grand view of Upper Klamath Lake... ...and a short distance later, took advantage of a pull-out for a more lingering view.
Don't let all that sparse eastern Oregon water distract you from the fact that it's beginning to look a lot like basin and range. If I were asked to stick a tack onto a US map at the northwestern-most corner of that physiographic province, it's fun to imagine an enormous steel pillar suddenly splashing into existence somewhere out in that puddle.
Our diversion to K-Falls had some downsides and caused some later logistical problems, but also led to some fortuitous stops which we otherwise wouldn't have made. (Dana has already posted on one of those from the next day.) All in all, things worked out well; it was a good first day.

Volcanic Ramblings Part 4: The East Side Apron

2011-10-15T15:20:00.000-07:00

The Oregon Cascades are conventionally divided into two N-S sections: the western Cascades, which start as low foothills on the eastern margin of the Willamette Valley, then rise to quite respectable heights before sloping down to the High Cascades. I know that sounds oxymoronic, but it's an accurate description. On route 20 in particular, one crosses two very well-defined passes. You may recall this diagram from my post on Salt Creek Falls:
The Western Cascades is older, ranging from roughly 35 Ma to 5 Ma. The combination of our wet PNW climate, the fragmentary nature of much of the rock, recent glaciation, with the lack of ongoing volcanism means that the Western Cascades have been deeply incised. Indeed, some of the canyons through the area are awesome, and the Western Cascades overall are far more precipitously rugged than the High Cascades- with the exception of some of the big stratovolcanic peaks.

The High Cascades, as implied above, are younger, from about 5 Ma to present. In a few areas, recent glaciation has cut deep canyons well into the High Cascades platform, but overall, the province is a surprisingly gentle swell, punctuated with a relative few peaks that rise another 5000 feet or so above the ~5000-foot pass levels.

The moniker I applied in the title, "the East Side Apron," is entirely my invention, and is not used in broader literature, as far as I know. However it does a good job of expressing my perception of descending eastward out of the mountains toward Central Oregon: a very smooth and steady decline. There are exceptions, of course, but by and large, the east flank is exceptionally gentle. It gets comparatively little precipitation, so erosion is subdued, glaciation was much more moderate than on the west side, and the prevailing winds are from the west, so tephra-rich eruptions regularly cover the landscape with inches to feet of ash and debris, smoothing it out.

One of the more recent large eruptions in Oregon, that of Mount Mazama, is easily recognized in many road cuts in the central part of the state; when coming down from Willamette Pass on route 58, I always point it out to my traveling companions, and if interest warrants, make a stop. The general area where it becomes too obvious to miss is near where the Crescent cut-off takes off to the east near Odell Butte.
Mazama ash and tephra has a distinct creamy-yellow color; its coarseness varies, becoming finer with distance from Crater Lake. Where roads have been cut into and through it, you can see that it has a consistent thickness in a given location, but that unlike a bed of sedimentary rock, it is not horizontal. It follows the shape of the landscape.
In fact, after bringing this odd layer to Dana's attention, it only took a couple of prompts, "Look at the way it's following the landscape," before she let fly with a squee and wildly started scanning for the first safe pull-out she could find.
(lens cap is ~52 mm) As she notes in her description of this stop, the dark cinders are from winter time road gravel, but there's no problem finding as many pieces of pumice as you want to carry away.
I ended up with maybe 7 or 8 of the little buggers; I wanted to stop later to get a couple of head-sized chunks off the roadside near Chemult, but that ended up not happening. Another time.
The best part of this stop? Dana's non-stop squeeing and exclamations.

Misquotes

2011-10-12T15:59:00.000-07:00

Many years ago, Omni Magazine ran a reader contest for best (i.e. funniest) misquote. I split my sides reading the resulting entries, but lost my copy of that issue, and have not been able to find it online anywhere. Today in honor of that long-lost genius, I started posting some of them on Twitter then just kept going. For archival purposes, here is the list thus far. Items I know I first saw in Omni are marked (O), and some have been around for years. Most were freshly half-baked this afternoon.

Asking Peter to pay Paul
A waist is a terrible thing to mind.
Every cloud has a soggy liner.
Don't look a gift horse in the ear.
87 years ago, our four fathers bought a fourth country...
When in the curse of human events...
Beggars can't be boozers
Smart as a peacock (O)
Angry as a hatter (O?)
A man who lives in a glass house should not throw orgies.
An apple a day will get you kicked out of Eden right quick.
A penny saved is still just a penny.
One if by lan, two if by C
She's the cantaloupe of my eye
Romeo! Romeo! Why fartest thou, Romeo?
A bird in the pan is worth two in the fridge
Time and tide will turn eventually
An object in motion will remain in motion in an equal and opposite direction.
Wife-eye hot zone
'Scuse me while I kiss this guy
The road to hell was paved with the best inventions
RT @eruptionsblog @lockwooddewitt Man, you really need to get all your horses in a row.
Eyeplastics (O)
Toothglue (O)
A rolling stone gathers no wool.
Half of one, six dozen of the other. (O)
To be or not to be, those are the parameters. (O, grand prize winner)

Language is so much fun!

It's the Only Way to Be Sure

2011-10-08T16:10:00.000-07:00

No, I haven't forgotten or given up on OTI, nor (fsm knows) is there any shortage of material I'd like to be writing about. Between frustrations with freaked-out browsers, "unresponsive" plug-ins (yes, flash, I'm looking at you), intermittent wifi, Blogger's new improved, marginally usable compose interface, and the electronic equivalent of Alzheimer's, all combined with an obsessive need to read (or at least skim over) hundreds of news articles, geology and other science bits, glorious photos, humor, political commentaries and miscellaneous other stuff on a daily basis, I just don't have the gumption or patience to get any blogging done.

Put it this way: last spring, I could spent 6-8 hours reading my RSS, keeping up with Twitter, write a post or two for OTI, and pretty easily clean out out 1200 news articles and blog posts. This week I have spent 11-12 hours a day here. I have managed to keep up with Twitter, but only on a couple of days have I managed to finish my RSS items- and I'm not going through any more than in the past.

Like I say, frustrating.

At any rate, the above LOL occurred to me, and I thought it an opportune moment to explain my absence. I don't promise anything, but I do promise I'll try to start posting more. I really want to get back to some geology...

Followup: I fully understand that the above individuals have a substantial dollar value attached to them. They can bill me.

Sunday Funnies

2011-09-18T14:49:00.000-07:00

Clay Bennett

Sober in a Nightclub

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Bizarro Blog

Wil Wheaton's Tumblr

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I can't exactly swipe this whole post, but I definitely recommend Princess Sparkle Pony's "Republicans React to things."

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see more WIN - Epic Win Photos and Videos

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Married to the Sea

The High Definite

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Medium Large

Bizarro Blog

Animals Being Dicks

Criggo. OSU doesn't start until Monday the 26th, but they were definitely trying out their school supplies last night.

God Hates Protestors

Channelate

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Bachmann Vs Ripley

2011-09-14T16:58:00.000-07:00

This was always my favorite part of the movie. I love how it ends, but I won't spoil it for you.

A Modest Proposal

2011-09-13T16:21:00.000-07:00

Several of us have been discussing this at IZ this afternoon. Just thought I'd toss it out there... any GOP nomination candidate who wants to run with this, I won't even ask for credit. But given your target audience, on second thought, you might want to go pay-per-view.

Sunday Funnies: Not Going to Let Tragedy Get in My Way Edition

2011-09-11T16:08:00.000-07:00

What Would Jack Do?

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Sober in a Nightclub: Scariest fortune ever.

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Badtux the Snarky Penguin

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Skull Swap

Criggo

Sofa Pizza. Follow the link for additional fun facts on Romney, Bachmann and Gingrich.

Sofa Pizza

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Sofa Pizza

Skull Swap

epic4chan

Wil Wheaton's Tumblr, available for sale at Nowhere Bad

Dr Boli

Clay Bennett

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Buttersafe... Disaster!

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Meanwhile, in Australia... epic4chan

Wil Wheaton's Tumblr

Dr. Boli

Some Guy With a Website

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Criggo

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see more The Daily What... Hmm. Goggisaurus?

SMBC

Tree Lobsters, "Dr. Hugh"

Bizarro Blog

Sober in a Nightclub

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Sober in a Nightclub

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Volcanic Ramblings Part 3: Salt Creek Falls

2011-09-10T16:43:00.000-07:00

In Memoriam: Harold "Sharkey" Enlows

There's not too much of note to see on the drive down I-5 from the Corvallis exit to Route 58 just south of Eugene... at least little I'm not jaded to. So with an exception I'll tack on at the end, our first stop was at Salt Creek Falls. As the second tallest waterfall in Oregon, it's an enjoyable, lovely stop for anyone, even non-geotypes. I must say, Dana and Cujo359 got an earful of my griping about the $5 day-use fee for what used to be a nice, free roadside rest.

Dana has focused mostly on the glacial aspect of this spot in her post- and that is indeed an important part of the story- so I'll look more carefully at the bedrock geology. The Cascade Volcanic arc has an interesting evolutionary history. I have no idea if the pattern is unusual, but it youngs and narrows toward its eastern margin. In other words, when volcanism initiated about 35 mybp, following the docking of Siletzia (the Coast Range block), and subduction started outboard of that newly accreted terrane, it spread from the eastern side of the Willamette Valley to central Oregon. As time passed, though, the axis of active volcanism narrowed to what is now a fairly confined band along the eastern margin of what was originally a wide swath of activity. So the arc- at least in Oregon- can be divided into two portions: the Western (older) Cascades, and the High (younger) Cascades. The Western Cascades were more explosive overall, and produced a huge pile of pyroclastic rocks, volcanoclastic sediments and debris flows/lahars. They were also the ash source for the John Day formation in central to northeastern Oregon, famous for its preservation of Cenozoic mammals and other organisms.

According to a conceptual model developed by Ed Taylor, and apparently largely accepted on the basis of subsequent work by him, his students, and others, the origin of the modern Cascades began with the foundering of the ancestral "Plio-Cascades" 4-5 mybp into what is referred to as the "High Cascade Graben," as shown schematically above. The image that understandably comes to mind when one pictures these mountains are the big stratovolcanoes, but they are the exceptions, not the rule. Most of the High Cascade arc actually consists of a low ridge of basalt, andestic basalt, and basaltic andesite.

So what does all this have to do with Salt Creek Falls? When we stopped here with Sharkey, it was not for the pretty water feature, but because it was the boundary between the Western and High Cascades. The lower layer of rock, of Western Cascade affinity, is one I have not had an opportunity to look at closely, but judging from its fragmentary nature at a distance, I feel safe saying it's probably either lahar deposits or pyroclastic rocks of some kind- dark in color, so probably fairly mafic in composition. Overlying the fragmented rock is a thick intracanyon High Cascade mafic flow- Dana has found a source saying it's andesite, and I have no reason to say differently. I never could distinguish the mafic lavas without a petrological scope. So in a nutshell, we have a thick, competent, vertically-jointed rock overlying a soft, easily weathered and eroded rock.

This is a classic set-up for a waterfall.

Water erodes the softer rock and undercuts the overlying hard rock, which, because of its vertical jointing, slabs off to form a vertical face. While in most cases, erosion would incise and smooth the streambed, in this case, the physical arrangement of components acts to maintain a shear face. There are certainly other ways waterfalls can form, but I think of the "hard-over-soft" scenario as being the most common.

Well, isn't that sweet. Blooger has decided it controls the vertical and horizontal again. Sorry, I'm tired of fighting with this for now... maybe I can figure out how to fix it later.

Looking downstream, ~west, from the top of the falls.

This is perhaps not the best possible view to show it, but the landscape is pretty clearly the product of two distinct phases of erosion: a broad, glacially carved valley, followed by Holocene incision by Salt Creek.

The falls from the north rim...

...and from halfway down the trail.

Lovely columns.

Sunday Funnies: Missing "A" Edition

2011-09-04T12:53:00.000-07:00

The death of a computer is a horrible thing to watch. Two keys on my dementia-afflicted electronical difference engine no longer work: the "a" and the scroll down arrow. So how is it I have all the "a's" in these sentences? I copy one into the buffer, then paste it with the "Ctrl-V" command. It's convoluted, but it works, and one actually does get used to typing it that way. But god help me if another letter goes belly-up. Now, I find blooger has gone and "upgraded" its composition format- that is, taken a simple function that worked perfectly well and fixed it so that using it requires an advanced degree, and even then won't do what you want it to. Sigh. If my life didn't revolve around this fucking machine, I would take great joy in devising a fitting demise for it.

Sober in a Nightclub

Savage Chickens

Sober in a Nightclub... "Why we have eyebrows."

Sober in a Nightclub

SMBC

Cyanide and Happiness

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Abstruse Goose

Bizarro Blog

Sober in a Nightclub

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see more WTF Pictures and WTF videos by Picture Is Unrelated

What Would Jack Do?

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What Would Jack Do?

Sofa Pizza

Fake Science

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Darius Whiteplume's Tumblr... two other ~~hysterical~~ historical markers at the link.

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Criggo

Slowpoke

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Sober in a Nightclub

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Woot! Photo Shout-Out From NASA!

2011-08-30T15:36:00.000-07:00

A photo I took on our recent Volcanic Ramble has received a complimentary treatment from Robert Simmon, along with a structural interpretation by Callan Bentley (@callanbentley ) And to make sure all involved parties get appropriate credit, that's Dana Hunter's hammer (currently on sabbatical with Bif and me), held by none other than the lovely @Dhunterauthor herself. Boo-Yah! Teamwork!

BTW, I've been repeatedly distracted from my efforts on Salt Creek Falls this afternoon, but I'm hoping to have that up before I go home.

Volcanic Ramblings Part 2: A Dedication

2011-08-29T15:23:00.000-07:00

I'd like to start off the more methodical portion of this "Volcanic Ramblings" series with a heart-felt dedication to Harold "Sharkey" Enlows, who first showed me many of the stops we made on this trip on the 1984 Petrology series spring excursion. Enlows could be curt and abrasive, but in his way, he was a very caring Teacher. He wasn't affectionate, but he simply wouldn't accept less than what he believed a student was capable of. His nickname arose not from fear, but from the respect and fondness his students felt toward him.

One example: I was not the most responsible student in the history of studenting (I've always said, "I'm an excellent learner, but I'm a terrible student."), and frequently missed early morning classes. The petrology/petrography series lectures fell into that category. So when the test for metapet rolled around, and I was confronted, on the first page, with the question, "Describe the mono-mineralogical problem with respect to metamorphic rocks," I mentally shrugged and skipped it. Sharkey typically sat in his office and did other paperwork while classes took tests, and when we finished, we took our tests to him and dropped them off. He glanced up when I dropped mine off. I turned to go, but he brought me to a sharp stop with "Hold it, DeWitt!" I knew that tone. I turned, and he had his finger on the hole where an answer should have been. I muttered, "I think I must have missed that day," to which he responded, "You did. But you can figure this out. Take this (he shoved the paper back at me) and go sit down until you do."

I had it sussed even before I got back to my seat. If you have only one mineral phase in a nice clean metamorphic rock- like a quartzite or marble- it's nearly impossible to say anything quantitative about the T & P history it's been through. Metapet depends on finding how differing elemental components have been partitioned into differing mineral phases; only one phase, no partitioning. So within a couple minutes I was back in his office, waiting, embarrassed, while he made a great show of reading my answer, then flipping through the rest of the pages to make sure there were no other blanks. He rolled his eyes at me and said, "Good. You're sharp. Don't let lazy get in the way."

Word.

When I graduated, some years later, I made a point to visit most of my profs to explicitly thank them for the effort they'd put into my education. I do believe most of them were close to teary-eyed (I know I was); too few students make that small effort of their own. But I didn't make that happy trip to Sharkey's office. Why? Because unbeknownst to us undergrads, he had been diagnosed with and in treatment for cancer for the entire year we'd had him as a teacher. In summer of 1984, just a month or so after we finished his class, and less than two after he took us on what remains to this day one of the best field trips of my life, the disease took him. One of my biggest regrets is that I never had a chance to express my respect, thanks, and admiration to his face. He wasn't my "favorite" prof, but he's the one who made me work the hardest, and from whom I learned the most.

And that's no small compliment.

So for each of the stops we made on our Volcanic Ramblings that I saw first under Sharkey's tutelage, I'll just skip over the long-winded intro, but preface the post with a dignified "In Memoriam: Harold "Sharkey" Enlows." It feels like the least I owe him.

I was going to write up our first official stop, Salt Creek Falls, but it occurs to me I've forgotten to eat today, and I need to blow my nose and dry my eyes. Dana will have Salt Creek Falls covered for you in the near future. Here's a spur-of-the-moment photo I took when we stopped for gas out near I-5, on our way out of town, looking back over Corvallis to the iconic profile of Marys Peak.

Marys Peak, Oregon: a fore-arc uplift of seafloor basalt overprinted with oceanic plateau basalt, topped with a frosting of deep-water turbidites, then intruded and capped with a gabbroic sill.

Accretionary Wedge #37: Sexy Geology

2011-08-28T19:44:00.000-07:00

Accretionary Wedge #37: Sexy Geology

This month's topic engaged the geoblogosphere's lascivious side, and boy, oh boy did you folks turn out for this late-summer shindig and swinger's party! As always when I host, it's a real pleasure to read through the posts when I first see them, then frustrating as I try to decide how to organize and present them in a way readers will enjoy as much as I did. Of course, when I asked myself what aspects of the earth geologists found sexy, the answer was obvious. What geologists think is sexy is exactly the same sorts of things everyone does: Lines and Forms, Bones and Structures, Tones and Colors, Vivaciousness, and Chemistry.

Lines and Forms

The first thing that often catches our attention when recognizing a natural beauty is a certain perfection of line and form.

Tannis, who likes rocks, finds herself particularly flustered in the face of ripples. "There's just something about being up on a ridge, far away from any water and even farther away from a beach, and seeing ripples."

Silver Fox swoons over the luscious curves of cross bedding in the Navajo Sandstone. She's not the only one: I've seen quite a few posts on this sexy sand over the last few weeks.

Fellow traveler Dana Hunter's post wasn't easy to pigeon-hole: she ran the gamut in Earth Erotica. "My non-geo friends don't get dry mouths and pounding hearts when passing road cuts. Sometimes, I think they're blind to beauty. Unclothed rocks are some of the most beautiful sights on earth."

Dave Bressan breaks into a sweat thinking about beaches past and present, and reminds us of the great truth that geologists are the coolest and sexiest men (and women) alive.

And for our final entrant in this category, Anne Jefferson at Highly Allochthonous shows off some seductive pahoehoe curves during a visit to the Galapagos Island earlier this summer. She also shares some sexy sand, and ends with a provocative shot of an utterly nude sunbather.

Bones and Structures

Underlying line and form, though, is structural perfection. Largely hidden from the untrained eye, practice allows us to see clues and hints to understanding the underlying bones.

Matt at Research at a Snail's Pace first shows us the beauty of Glacier National Park, then uses a pair of sketches to get a sense of the subsurface structures responsible for it.

Ian Stimpson of Hypo-theses was the first to respond to the call for posts, but apparently misunderstood the topic. He thought I was demanding, like a drunken reveler, "Show us your cleavage!"

Count on Jessica Ball of Magma Cum Laude to get us all hot and bothered with shots of a recent fissure eruption in Hawaii. No comment on what resemblance I first saw in the picture below.

Anne of Anne's Musings on Geology and Other Things gets bent out of shape by Big Bend National Park: "To me this place seems to have it all, and that is why I muse upon Big Bend being such a geologically sexy place to visit" .

And our concluding post in this category, from first-time AW participant Un Geologo En Apuros, reminds me I need to carry a spatula with me sometimes, to scrape my eyeballs off the inside of my glasses. I'm not going to copy either photo here; you really need to go see them yourselves, and you most definitely want to click them for glorious full-size. To the author: don't worry about your poor English; my Spanish is much worse, and this is sexy geology that transcends any language barriers.

Tones and Colors

For many, including myself, line, form and structure are all very nice, but what really rivets our attention is the perfect tone, a lovely exotic glow, and a mesmerizing play of color.

Darius Whiteplume is a friendly innertubz denizen I've been following for a while on various blogs and tumblrs, and more recently on Twitter. He sent this to me via the latter yesterday, and I thought it appropriate to "mistake" it for an AW submission.

Selim sends word of the lovely White Desert in his home country of Egypt. It has to be tough in that country right now, but knowing there are sites (and sights) like this gives me hope they can work through their troubles.

Ron Schott posts a magnificent mineralogical mystery: it ain't lithium, it's manganese! (Oh yes, and a groaner of a pun, which, as he says, works better if you read it aloud. Just not too loud.)

My own entry is the beautiful warm glow of the Pinnacles at Crater Lake National Park. As an aside, I had intended as I started that post to get at some of the science of that spot. However, as I surveyed the debris from the landslide of innuendo and double-entendre in that post, I decided to let the science stand at a dignified distance. I'll get back to it later.

Vivaciousness

When humans convey a sense of brimming with life, we call them vivacious. When rocks convey a sense of being full of life, we call them fossiliferous. In either case, though, it's very, very sexy.

Jazinator's excitement is palpable as he recounts his first field rendezvous with Paleodictyon.

Geosciblog focuses on Echinodermata erotica, and fossil fetishists (one of which he claims he isn't) around the world are paralyzed.

Matt at Geosphere gets needled by Cnidaria... the corals, in particular.
And Callan at Mountain Beltway suggested I just link the post I used as an outstanding exemplar of Sexy Geology in the original call for posts: fossils and structures in the vicinity of Swift Dam.

Chemistry

In the end though, each person's answer to the question "What is Sexy?" is going to involve countless imponderables, a lot of je ne c'est pas, and shoulder-shrugging responses, "I dunno. I just do." In other words, the stuff we call chemistry.

Geotripper has some seriously weird rocks that likely are not unique, but I've never heard of or seen their like before.Another first-time participant, Narnian Rockhound at Earth-Like Planet, posts on a world-class mineral area, the Bancroft district in Ontario, Canada. Having visited a number of sites in the area myself, I whole-heartedly concur with this sexy nomination.

Finally, Metageologist weighs in with a dark and sultry mafic mystery: a "syntectonic gabbro."

So there you have it: The geoblogosphere's nominations for sexy geology. It occurs to me that this should have been Wedge number 34. If you're not familiar with the pop-culture rule 34, it is this: "If it exists, there is porn of it." While none of the above constitutes "porn," really, there's no doubt plenty of fodder for some very sweet dreams. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, and thanks to all who particpated. If I've somehow managed to miss your submission, leave a comment and link. I'm also happy to add in late submissions, so if you've been meaning to get to this but haven't, you still have a little time.

Next month's AW will be hosted by Anne Jefferson, on the theme "Back to School." See you then!

Know The Difference

2011-08-26T16:14:00.000-07:00

Bif Naked

Bif, furry. Yes it's subtle, but I'm fond of both of them, so I'm obligated to know the differences. Don't know Bif Naked? Your loss.

What is Sexy? Geology.

2011-08-25T15:58:00.000-07:00

This month's Accretionary Wedge topic is Sexy Geology; the deadline is tomorrow, Friday August 26, but as usual I'll add in anything I get before I post this edition, and tack on late entries for a week or two afterward. Also, Twitter has been giving me its "Sorry! We did something wrong. Try sending your Tweet again in a minute." BS since yesterday morning, which line I've now seen probably 40 or 50 times. I'd really appreciate it if a geotweep or two would tweet a link to this post.

In February of 1981, I started a student job at OSU's college of veterinary medicine, as a "glassware technician." That is, I washed the horrifically dirty dishes that are part and parcel of any medical work. Only a few months later, I was approached by the head technician in Clinical Pathology, Suzy, and was asked if I would like to work in her lab. Absidefinitely, I didn't say, but absidefinitely thought. Enough with the stinky stuff, already.

I quite liked my job upgrade, and was very fond of Suzy and her husband Gene. So I was disappointed when, in the summer of 1983, they were offered jobs at the trauma center in Lone Pine, California. I traveled with them to watch their two boys, John and Brian, while they interviewed, went house-hunting, and did the various sundry tasks associated with moving to a new town in a new state. It was my first visit to that area, and though I didn't have a lot of time for sight-seeing, what with one youngster in hand and in tow, and another mostly conked out and drooling on my shoulder, one thing you should know about Lone Pine is that pretty much any random glance that isn't directly groundward rewards with scenery that is completely bind-moggling.

So shortly afterward, Suzy and Gene moved away; I was less than happy with my new boss, who was a conservative (expletive deleted), a male chauvinist pig (to put it mildly), and while he may have been medically competent to do his job, struck me as mentally inferior to most fenceposts I've met. It was nearly a year before I found another job, but when I did, it was more appropriate to my interests, and most importantly, came with a boss and crew I could respect.

But I digress.

For spring break of 1984, Suzy and Gene invited me down to Lone Pine, sort of as a reward for helping with the munchkins the previous summer. I readily accepted, and hopped a Greyhound south. All sorts of great adventures on that trip, but the pertinent one was the day we went over to Death Valley.

A young geologist never forgets his first time.

Coming down off the Panamints, one can see the rugged geology of those mountains, but the wider view of the valley floor is mostly obscured until rounding a corner a little ways above Stovepipe Wells. Suzy was sitting in the front seat looking back at me the moment we went around that corner. As she recounted later, between gales of laughter, I leaned forward, my eyes went wide, and my jaw slowly dropped. I gasped, "Oh. My God. Look at all the naked rocks."

So all that is just lead-in to make this point: I've been a sucker for sexy geology for a long, long time, and age has done nothing to blunt that lust. On the contrary, I find THOSE urges stronger and more difficult to control than ever. I'm more practiced, less frantic, now, and more inclined toward gently and slowly working my way through a site instead of feeling like I have to bang on everything RIGHT NOW. But there is still nothing like figuring out what an outcrop wants from me, and wants to give me, to make my heart go pitter-pat, and to make me sigh blissfully in the afterglow.

So picking one example of sexy geology is something of a conundrum. Do I go for scantily-clad rocks, or the complex, deep ones? Shall I pick based on the perfection of color and complexion, or the vividness of the the story she wants to tell me? Do I want the vixen of volcanic heat or the chilly snows of deep, dark sedimentation? The tortured tales of difficult childhood and dignified recovery from a metamorphic mistress?

So hard. To choose just one, that is.

With last week's adventuring still fresh in mind, it should be no surprise I'm going to select a location from that trip. Given the ground we covered and numerous stops made, though, it's still a difficult choice. In the end though, the Pinnacles at Crater Lake National Park wins this pageant. I feel like it combines some likenesses to all three rock types, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic, it presented us with beautiful tones even sans make-up, a gorgeous early evening lighting choice, and (at the risk of sounding like a serious perv) is barely legal from a geological perspective, at a nubile 6800 years old.
Look at that glow!
Perky!
For the evening gown segment, she arrayed herself in a stunning forest green fashion of her own design... the symmetry and self-similarity are breath-taking.
Zooming in to savor the details...
Skin tone is only skin deep, but oh what skin tone it is!
Study in contrasts.
For rocks, this complexion is perfect.
Secrets for those patient and willing to search them out.
Soft, sensuous curves flirtatiously revealed to a wooer willing to get a bit edgy...
...followed by a J.J. Abrams glamour shot.

Early evening glow.
Seductively teasing

@Dhunterauthor

Coyly sharing secrets...
...and a fond farewell after an early evening rendezvous.

Whew! Excuse me; I need to go wash up!

As a postlude, another story of Suzy and Gene: they met as students at U of O in Eugene. Gene had a summer job as a firewatcher, and was posted on Mount Scott for a while. That peak is the tallest in this park, and located not far from Kerr Notch, which is where Sand Creek, the stream that carved this gorge, originates. It's lower eastern flank is visible in the uppermost left of the photo captioned "Secrets for those patient and willing to search them out." Though thunderstorms are painfully rare here in the Willamette Valley, they are fairly frequent and brutally violent in the Cascades. The iron-framed bed in the watch tower rested on thick glass casters, and Gene had been advised that in the event of an electrical storm, the bed was the safest place around. Suzy, upon visiting him one weekend, and happening to be there during a serious storm, was, shall we say, less than convinced that Gene's intentions were honorable. And of course, the louder and more forcefully he insisted, the less convinced she became...

Face it: sexy geology is more straight-forward than human relations. With rocks, you can be sure they're not playing mind games, at least not on purpose.

Post Script: Almost forgot, I wanted to mention that one year our Geology Club tee-shirt was a line drawing of the Grand Canyon, showing both the layers of the horizontal Paleozoic section, and the tilted layers of the Precambrian Grand Canyon Series. Drawn by classmate and friend Michelle D., with whom I recently reconnected on Twitter, the caption was "So many beds, so little time."

Volcanic Ramblings Part I: Teaser Tweeting

2011-08-22T14:28:00.000-07:00

I'm now back in my sleepy little home town of Corvallis, blissfully sipping coffee at my favorite coffee shop. Bif the kitteh was clearly traumatized by his 5-day abandonment; the person who was to feed and water him and give him a little attention and company didn't, and the back-up apparently didn't really do back up. His water was low and filthy, and it looked, from the amount of food spilled around, that the bowl was filled to the brim once, then forgotten. I don't know what the whole story is yet, so I'm keeping my temper on simmer. The good news is, as frantic and scared as he was when I got in last night, he calmed and quieted down as the evening went on, and seemed pretty relaxed this morning.

While I did have wifi most nights, what I didn't have was energy and time to say anything of substance regarding the day's sights and events. So starting day 2, I made my priority to get my photos downloaded to ye old electronical difference engine, and get a few "teasers-" photos I was pleased with- uploaded to Twitter, with a minimum of commentary and concern with geological utility. I figured those things were better addressed with blog posts, which simply were not going to happen. Between the difficulty of sleeping in unfamiliar beds in unfamiliar settings, and days that invariably ran longer than anticipated, I think it's fair to say all three of us spent the trip in a state of semi-exhaustion, and complete exhaustion by the time we retired to our respective rooms.

So herewith are the photos I posted from the road, more or less in the order we visited the sites, along with the associated Twitter comments I made when posting them. I'm not going to try to resize these to larger, but they should all get much bigger if you click on them or open links in new tabs with a right-click.

Booyah geotweeps! Tired, but great geo! Few pics: 1, Salt Creek Falls, yday
Volcanclastic seds, diatomite, coal, on Rt. 97 N of Klamath Falls, ~30 mi.
Pinnacles, Crater Lake NP
@Dhunterauthor in front of lahar deposit filling cut into volcaniclastic sed layers
Platy jointing 1; hammer middle bottom for scale.
Platy jointing 2, partway up Doherty grade. #1 in left middle of #2
Pisolitic texture in devitrified rhyolite (I was reminded later by @CGKings317 that the correct name for these structures is "spherulites," however, I'm not sure "pisolitic texture" would be incorrect in this context. Any geo-terminology nerds care to clarify?)
Filling in the happy little alluvial fans- Doherty Rim
One more pic before bed: Hart Mountain (on right) from near Adel, OR.
Summer Lake: a geologist was here (before us, I mean)
Ball & pillow structure in Table Rock tuff cone deposits.
Yaaaaaay! Correlation is fun! (Table Rock tuff cone deposits)
@callanbentley The rarely observed "splort structure." (Table Rock tuff cone)
Palagonite tuff at Fort Rock, OR
3 episodes of palagonite tuff accumulation, 2 of sloughing into blast crater, & 1 major episode of wave erosion.
Mahogany obsidian (looks like Glass Butte) in facade of hotel where staying tonight (Budget Inn, Bus. Rt. 97, Bend OR)
Parasitic cinder cones on NW flank of Newberry Volcano, from top of Lava Butte
A few final teaser photos from last day of volcanic rambling: 3 Sisters, Paulina Peak Pinnacles & Paulina Lake
Paulina Lake, Central Cinder Cone, East Lake and obsidian flow, ringed by Newberry Caldera
Contorted flow banding in Newberry Obsidian Flow (need to measure lens cap, but recollection is 52 mm)
Flow banded block broken off and re-entrained in more flow banded obsidian, Newberry Caldera, OR.
One more: Dee Wright Observtory, McKenzie Pass, OR: a most propitious place to observe volcanoes

Keep in mind, these are intended just to be quick and dirty updates, and to tantalize various geobloggers with hints of things to come. I will post the majority of these photos again with more detailed discussion and many additional shots from the same stops and areas. I shot 625 pictures on this trip, so the above, while including some of my favorites, are truly only a drop in the bucket. Also be sure to follow @Dhunterauthor (En Tequila Es Verdad), who was my impossibly generous sponsor, delightfully enthusiastic traveling companion, and increasingly, dear friend on this grueling but wondrous excursion. She probably took twice as many photos as I did. The third member of our company, Cujo359, blogs at Slobber and Spittle, and while not as enamored with things geological as Dana and I are, also helped underwrite my participation in this adventure, and showed enduring patience in the face of our lithic fixation. He has already posted a lovely picture of a rail trestle west of Oakridge OR, and will undoubtedly post further documentation of this trip in the days and weeks to come. Followup: Thanks to a commenter on that post, information on a large landslide has come to light, which Cujo359 has gone through and discussed in detail at the link. For example, mud/debris lines 50 feet up the tree trunks...

I make no promises regarding the regularity or frequency of posts in this series, but I'm looking forward to working through some first-hand experiences at long last. Stay tuned!

Taters and Tofu: It's What's for Breakfast!

2011-08-13T13:50:00.000-07:00

In honor of a past employee who's visiting this weekend, Interzone is running as a special the breakfast he liked to prepare for himself when he worked here. They haven't run a special in quite a while, and as much as I love the weekend Super Burrito, I gotta give this a try. I'm substituting an everything bagel for the toast. Should be showing up any minute now...

The Imperative of Questions

2011-08-12T15:28:00.000-07:00

This post is dedicated to Dana Hunter, who seemed particularly unsettled by my endless questions when we went to Marys Peak and the coast last fall. I'm going to spend five long days with her very soon, and thought she at least deserved to know that my questions are not intended to be "tests." They are, in fact, much more subversive and manipulative than that. Fair warning though: knowing what I'm doing and why will not free you from the effect I describe. ;)

There are two main reasons teachers ask questions: assessment and motivation. Assessment can either be formative (trying to figure out where students are in terms of knowledge and understanding, so one can more effectively and efficiently guide them to your goals and objectives) or summative (trying to determine if they have indeed arrived at the set objectives). Motivation in this case means that students are more likely to mentally engage with a topic at hand if they are frequently and regularly asked questions... and particularly if they expect to be asked questions, and expect to be obligated to answer them.

One of the reasons I left teaching was the disgust I feel with our society's obsession with grades. Is that the only reason we have to learn any more? Well, for some, yes: "You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test." -Townsend, Tenn., Feb. 21, 2001. BRAAAPP! Sorry, Dubya, you get to start over with grade one. So the idea of questions as "tests," while necessary, an unavoidable component of traditional teaching, important, justified, what have you, is just distasteful and offensive to me. I rarely ask those sorts of questions.

I sometimes ask questions to figure out what I need to clarify. I was going to tell my hipster geology gag about thalwegs to a student in environmental science, but asked first if he knew that term. (he did, and loved the joke). So formative questions can be quite useful to figure out what background you need to cover before getting to the meat of the subject at hand, and I ask these sorts of questions fairly often.

But it's the "motivational" questions I really love. Educational research has consistently shown that it's more about the frequency and expectations students have for questioning than the cognitive level, difficulty or complexity of the questions. Obviously, for advanced learners (i.e. upper level undergraduates and up) some of the questions need to be demanding. But the expectation that there will be questions, and that the learner will be expected to give some kind of response, do the most to keep the mental faculties engaged.

There's also a side issue which I think is best claimed as a matter of personal opinion and educational philosophy- I don't know that I've read the perspective I'm about to present elsewhere.

I view questions as a sneaky, subversive and somewhat unfair- though completely ethical- opportunity to issue imperatives. If I say "Describe that outcrop," and do it often enough, I will come to be seen as abrasive and even dictatorial. On the other hand, if I wave and point at an outcrop, and with a smile, ask "What do you see?" then wait... The student has been given almost no guidance, and is generally not sure what specifics I'm after (because more often than not, I'm not after any particular thing[s], specifically), and may not even be sure where to start, yet there I stand, bemused grin smeared across my mug, waiting... This is a powerfully motivating situation for students. Why? Perhaps it's fear of failure, or the fear of looking diminished in the eyes of an instructor. I'm honestly not sure, but it's a very real feeling that I have experienced myself many, many times. In my own case, I think it's mostly a matter of living up to my own expectations for myself ("C'mon, dude, you oughtta know this one..."). But I recognize that widened-eye flicking of students' minds racing when I see it. I feel a slight pang of guilt sometimes, because I don't like that feeling of cognitive near-panic either. Still, I know that working through it can lead to some powerful learning experiences, so in my estimation, it's worth it.

So when I hand you a rock or point out an outcrop, and ask an innocuous question like "What do you see," or "How do you suppose that might have happened," or "Why is that growing there," or any of hundreds of other open-ended questions for which there is not and cannot be a single "right" answer, I'm not testing you. I'm telling you to look and think. Because questions are an imperative way to do that in a much more effective and much less irritating manner than pointing at an outcrop and saying "Look! Think!"

Or if you'd like the blunt version, I'm messing with your head.

I'm a teacher at heart. That's what I do.

Volcanic Ramblings

2011-08-10T18:17:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned, I'll be doing some geotripping next week, and the schedule looks as if it's been bumped up a day. Which means it's a day closer than it was when I woke up this morning, and in turn, that I'm even more excited than I expected to be. I have had the itinerary basically worked out for the last two months. By "basically" I mean that in the many, many trips I've done with high schoolers and middle school students, I've found that it's important to plan a certain amount of flexibility into one's expectations. Spur-of-the moment decisions can lead to unexpected and terrific discoveries. So I think of a trip itinerary as a framework to be built onto as needed. On the other hand, for safety (and sometimes communication) reasons, it's nice to have something that someone could point to and say "this is where they're supposed to be right now." A policeman might have some chance of finding a group that's in the neighborhood, but that's unlikely if they are two counties away.

I've also found that it's good to have a conceptual framework that you can tie things to. On Central and Southeast Oregon trips with high school-age students that framework was either how various differences in magma composition and environmental factors interacted to create different styles of volcanism, or how geologic factors (including- but not limited to- the landscape) interacted with the rest of the non-living world to effect the local biota. The conceptual framework I've been pondering for this trip more or less combines those two, and unites them in thinking about the large scale tectonic structure of Oregon: subduction, forearc ridge, forearc basin, arc, back arc rifting, and influences from the Yellowstone Hotspot, which made its presence impossible to ignore in Miocene Oregon. Basin and Range is still a little enigmatic to me, and I haven't seen anything that convinces me that the questions surrounding what drives that rifting have been satisfactorily settled. Nevertheless, it is certainly best explained in terms of tectonics; it's just that there are at least two approaches to doing that, and probably more, in addition to sliding scales of importance of this factor versus that factor.

All that said, here's the outline I just sent to the person sponsoring this volcanic ramble:

Day 1: (hoping we can set off from CVO mid-day/early aft.)

Rt. I-5-> Eugene; Willamette seds, W. Casc. foothills
Rt. 58 Eugene-> Crescent area http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=43.656335&lon=-122.225997&z=11.5&r=0&src=msl W. Casc, Salt Creek Falls, High Casc, E Casc. flank, Mazama ash

Day 2:

Rt. 97-> N entrance Crater Lake, drive rim w/numerous stops, side trip to Pinnacles (inverted Mazama magma chamber)
http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=43.146907&lon=-121.697854&z=10.1&r=0&src=msl
Couple hour drive over to Lakeview & geyser http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=42.219802&lon=-120.369028&z=14.4&r=0&src=msl

Day 3:

Rt. 140 E into N Nevada, Basin and Range volcanics. This grade will knock your socks off: drive up the side of a 1500 foot cliff! http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=42.037287&lon=-119.485068&z=13.1&r=0&src=msl Virgin Valley opals, opalized wood, badlands, Canyon hike, NICE hotspring if you feel like a leisurely soak http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=41.860943&lon=-119.006195&z=14.4&r=0&src=msl then back to Lakeview

Day 4:

Rt. 395 N to Valley Falls, Abert Rim & Lake http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=42.530515&lon=-120.278008&z=10.7&r=0&src=msl
Double back to Rt. 31, N to Summer Lake, Picture Rock Pass, Table Rock http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=43.165818&lon=-120.880866&z=12.3&r=0&src=msl Fort Rock http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=43.373231&lon=-121.068561&z=13.2&r=0&src=msl Hole-in-the-Ground http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=43.407399&lon=-121.194715&z=13.1&r=0&src=msl If time, a lava tube and associated spatter cone http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=43.526128&lon=-120.865433&z=15.9&r=0&src=msl Another possibility is Crack-in-the-Ground. http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=43.334696&lon=-120.673823&z=16.4&r=0&src=msl

Day 5:

Newberry Volcano area- there are just too many possibilities here to list, figured we'd discuss and choose in preceding days or on the fly. http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=43.713128&lon=-121.233225&z=13.2&r=0&src=msl
Head back to the Valley via McKenzie Pass: http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=44.243084&lon=-121.793236&z=12.3&r=0&src=msl and McKenzie River Highway http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=44.343641&lon=-121.99535&z=12.3&r=0&src=msl to Rt. 20, then into CVO

So skimming over this list, things to bring that you might not think of would include swimsuit/water wear if you're into hot springs, and flashlight/lamp. Bring a large container of water to keep in car (I generally carry 2 liters with me, try to keep at least 4 in the car), and smaller to carry with you. High elevation desert (Lakeview is over a mile in elevation, and it's on the valley floor), sunshine will be intense; hat and sunscreen. (Something I forgot to mention in this note is that the area is REMOTE, and very sparsely populated. Two hours or more between gas stations/stores of any kind is not uncommon, and that's assuming you're staying on main roads. In this area problems that might be minor elsewhere can quickly become life-threatening if you don't have basic supplies. Water is at the top of that list, and knowing places you can top off your supply is important.)

Okay I've spent too much time on this, but I think this is a good overview. Tectonically, we'll see a forearc basin (forearc ridge last fall), the evolution of a volcanic arc (W. Cascades are older, to ~30 Ma; High Cascades younger, <5Ma), and overlapping, complex magmatism related to the arc itself, back-arc rifting (possible early stage continental rift system) and hot-spot influenced magmas. I keep telling people that Oregon is overwhelmingly volcanic; we will see a few other rocks, but those are mostly sediments derived from erosion of volcanics.

I'm planning on taking the ol' electronical difference engine with me, in case we make meal or night stops that have wi-fi, but I make no promises that I'll actually post anything for a while. And even after I get back home, I will likely spend at least a day or few trying to high-grade my way through the better part of a week's intertubal accumulations.

Sunday Funnies

2011-08-07T17:21:00.000-07:00

Clay Bennett "This won't hurt (me) a bit."
Sofa Pizza
Savage Chickens
"Every. Damn. Morning." Sober in a Nightclub
epic4chan
epic4chan
Too big to embed the comic, so I'll just post the teaser above and recommend you click this link.

see more Memebase After Dark
Blackadder

see more Celeb Look-A-Likes
Dork Tower

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see more Lol Celebs
Wondermark The tragic plight of inbred cats... Skull Swap
SMBC
epic4chan
The High Definite
Darius Whiteplume's Tumblr

see more Very Demotivational
The fact may seem mundane, but the most profound ones often seem that way. Bits and Pieces
Calamities of Nature
Sofa Pizza... isn't there something about milk being evil in the Bible?
epic4chan
Criggo
Skull Swap
Above and below: The Daily What

see more The Daily What

see more Lolcats and funny pictures.

see more Celeb Look-A-Likes. The big difference, of course, is that Lohan only fucked up her own life and the lives of those close to her.
Sofa Pizza
Sofa Pizza

see more Funny Graphs
This is either dogs in slo-mo or the current House Republican Caucus. Not sure which. EpicPonyz
What Would Jack Do?

see more That Will Buff Out
SMBC
Skullswap; one in a series of a kitteh trying to get in the box. Endearing & side-splitting.
Blackadder
Welcome to Oregon... Things Look Different Here. (Bits and Pieces) Winery is in Hood River.

see more Gifs. I'm REALLY curious how he pulled this off... I suspect in reverse.
Criggo

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Sunday Funnies

2011-07-31T16:56:00.000-07:00

epic4chan

see more Gifs
Clay Bennett

see more Political Pictures
The Far Left Side

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Sober in a Nightclub
Skull Swap

see more Gifs. Friendly reminder: sometime in the next month and a half or so, OSU will have its first home game of the season. I can hardly wait.

see more Very Demotivational. Maybe it's just me, but the skies seem increasingly fabulous as we approach the official repeal of DADT.
Sofa Pizza
Above and below, What Would Jack Do?Bits and Pieces. As I said elsewhere, Amy Winehouse's death saddened me more than I would have expected; I was rooting for her to make it despite the tabloid vultures. However, I have to admit this made me chuckle.
Bits and Pieces
Bits and Pieces. I don't spend much time on Facebook anymore.

see more Comixed. "NOW CUT THAT OUT!"
Sober in a Nightclub
Sober in a Nightclub
Skull Swap
EpicPonyz

see more Gifs. "What memes my come..."

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epic4chan
God Hates Protestors
Married to the Sea

see more Lolcats and funny pictures
Now that you mention it, yes. Yes, I do. Sober in Nightclub

see more Lol Celebs. "He who must not Bean named."

see more Political Pictures. No surprise. Does she strike you as the kind of person who has ever cracked a book on her own?

see more Political Pictures
I didn't come for the former, nor did I stay for the latter. But I'm into rocks, so what do I know? All the women in this state are lumberjacks anyways; watching them disrobe is not high on my "to do" list. Darius Whiteplume's Tumblr
Darius Whiteplume's Tumblr

see more So Much Pun

see more Very Demotivational

see more Funny Graphs... Actually, what I always ask is "When do you get your first locomotive?"
Wil Wheaton's Tumblr
What Would Jack Do?

Call For Posts, Accretionary Wedge #37: Sexy Geology

2011-07-27T16:38:00.000-07:00

This topic came up as a result of Dana Hunter's (En Tequila Es Verdad) recent post called The Seduction of Subduction, which used sexual metaphor and puns to describe the excitement of certain geological contexts and certain kinds of rocks. After reading the post, I commented that "Sexy Geology" would make a good AW topic. Since traditionally the host suggests the topic, and conversely, the person who suggests the topic hosts the wedge, I decided to go ahead and host this one myself.

I still think "Sexy Geology" is a good topic, but I think it behooves me to describe explicitly (heh) what I do and do not mean with that description. I mean geology that makes your heart race, your pupils dilate. Rocks and exposures that make you feel woozy and warm. Structures and concepts that make your skin alternately sweaty and covered with goosebumps. Places you've visited, read about, or seen photos of that make you feel weak-kneed, and induce a pit in your stomach.

In other words, it's about sexy geology, not geologically-themed sex. Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition photos that happen to have rocks in the background do not qualify unless you have something substantive to say about the rocks, and that substance is your primary focus. Scantily clad individuals of either sex will not necessarily disqualify a post, but remember that AW tries to be inclusive, and some people's threshold of offense is lower than that of others. I will use my own discretion in moderating this topic, and my decisions almost certainly will be more conservative than my own personal inclinations would dictate. If your post is in ahead of time, and I find it questionable, I will comment or e-mail with my concerns, to give you a chance to edit or defend. Does that sound fair?

I'm going to be out of town from roughly the middle of August until the early 20's, exploring sexy volcanoes and volcanic rocks in central and southeastern Oregon and perhaps a day in northernmost Nevada. I may or may not end up using material from that trip for my own post. So let's set a deadline of Friday, August 26 for this wedge, and I'll put it together over the weekend and post it Sunday or Monday. (As I usually try to do, late entries will be added as convenient for a week or two after the wedge is posted.) In the meantime, here's a post of my own from two and a half years ago to help illustrate the kind of discussion I'm aiming at: Rocks that make me feel all funny inside.

So as we sweat through the dog days of summer (at least in the northern hemisphere- participants in the south can use this opportunity to imagine unbridled heat!), This wedge gives you the opportunity to think about what might conceivably be hotter still: give us all a flash of what you think constitutes Sexy Geology!

Also, we're looking for hosts and topics for the Accretionary Wedge for October and beyond. If you have a blog- and your focus doesn't need to be primarily geology- and you think you have a good idea for a topic, leave a comment at "Who's Hosting the Next Accretionary Wedge."

Note: If and when you have a post ready to submit, please leave a comment and link either here or at the AW home page, so I can find your post when I go to put it all together.

Followup 5:09PM: Almost forgot, this post from a few days ago, at Callan's Mountain Beltway, was a third example of sexy geology I wanted to point to. Paleontology tends to get short shrift at OTI; my undergrad experience with paleo was NOT positive, and I have limited experience with the subject in real life. But if geo-types don't make a strong claim for it, the bio-types are going to try to snatch it from us. It needs to be shared, and I think this post has some particularly sexy fossils. And of course, Callan being Callan, sexy structures are almost always on his mind. I saw a press release once saying there's research claiming Callan is thinking about sexy structures on average every 7 to 8 seconds. As with most press releases, I suspect this one is total BS. I happen to know he thinks about the topic much more frequently than that.

Sunday Funnies: Limping Return Edition

2011-07-24T15:40:00.000-07:00

I have been having a god-awful slew of difficulties with my computing device, and have been spending much of the past month with my chin on my right hand glaring at yet another lock-up. Games work fine, movies work fine, everything seems to be fine... except for browsing. Friday an IZ friend changed something called "page size," and while browsing is still a little sticky and jumpy, at least Chrome isn't spending 40 of every 60 minutes frozen. Firefox remains problematic, but I've been switching back and forth between the two, and it's nice to finally be able to count on at least one of them. So with out further ado, here's my first compilation of funnies in nearly a month.
Sofa Pizza. Captioning LolCats... you're doing it wrong
Sofa Pizza, titled "Derp."
Skull Swap
epic4chan
Sofa Pizza
Sofa Pizza
English Fail Blog
Night Deposits

see more Lol Celebs
L'il Johnny Connor and Uncle Bob. The High Definite

see more Historic LOL

see more So Much Pun

see more Engrish (*Citation needed.)
epic4chan

see more Lol Celebs
Skull Swap
EpicPonyz

see more Very Demotivational

see more So Much Pun
Sofa Pizza

see more Historic LOL
Surviving the World
xkcd
Sofa Pizza
Sofa Pizza

see more Gifs
Sober in a Nightclub
Bits and Pieces
Savage Chickens
Dork Tower

see more Gifs
Calamities of Nature
I Hate My Parents
LolReligion

see more Hacked IRL - Truth in Sarcasm
Sober in a Nightclub

see more Historic LOL

see more Gifs
Married to the Sea
A Moment to Think
Skull Swap

see more Celeb Look-A-Likes
Sober in a Nightclub
Sober in a Nightclub

Moonday: Amalthea

2011-06-27T18:43:00.000-07:00

(Image from Wikipedia; full article here) At 83 km in diameter (~50 mi), Amalthea was the fifth discovered moon of Jupiter (the first four were the large Galilean satellites), and the last planetary satellite to be discovered by direct visual observation, as opposed to photographically. Given that the above Galileo images are among the highest quality available, it should be unsurprising not too much is known about this object. A couple of seemingly unrelated facts do constrain its history, though. First, Jupiter would loom in the sky, covering more than 45 degrees of arc; in other words, if you drew a horizon-to-horizon line, Jupiter would cover more than quarter of that. Second, recent observations strongly indicate that Amalthea is icy. Since the young planet was very hot, we can conclude Amalthea did not form where it is today. It either migrated from a more distant orbit, or was captured by Jupiter later in its history.

Rain Today

2011-06-27T15:27:00.000-07:00

The weather service has been predicting showers from this evening through Thursday, and here they come, right on schedule. It's nearly 80, with dewpoints (variable by station) in the mid 50's. To me, this feels slightly muggy, but not unpleasantly so. We've had so little warm weather in the first half of 2011 that this is quite appreciated. On the other hand, I adore warm weather rain, so I'm looking forward to the change, too. And, as there is a good chance this will be the last substantive precipitation we have until fall, I feel duty-bound to savor it. I'll get tired of unending clear skies, blistering sunshine and heat soon enough, just as I'm tired of clammy dampness right now.

As general rule of thumb, I tell people that the PNW has the best weather in the world. We just have too damned much of it at stretch. This week may well end up being my favorite-weather-wise- of the year: plenty of variety.

Science by Press Release

2011-06-21T18:32:00.000-07:00

I've been spending more and more time on Twitter, with a result of less time here. Partly that's because I've been having a slew of aging computer, connectivity and software problems (Seriously Adobe, your plug-ins couldn't cause more issues?), and partly it's because sharing a quick comment and link on Twitter is just so much faster and easier... especially when aforementioned problems are causing my computer to go into lockdown every 3 to 5 minutes.

The downside is that Twitter, like Facebook, is very much ephemeral. It is next to impossible to find a particular tweet unless it's pretty recent.

I got onto another Twitter rip today, with the theme of "If Science by press release existed in [...]'s day," satirizing the kind of sensationalistic, overly dramatic, factually challenged, and premature types of reports that pass for science journalism these days. So for the sake of a permanent record- for my own satisfaction, at least- here are my tweets (and one from another) on that topic:
If Science by Press Release existed in...

Newton's Day: "New Discovery May Lead to Space Flight: Report."
Stone Age: "Control of Fire May Resolve Transportation Problems Says Eminent Witch Doctor."
Pasteur's Day: "Animicule Theory Could Lead to New treatments for Bad Air."
Archimedes' Day: "Application of Density to Astronomy Suggests New Class of Exotic Space Objects."
Becher's day: "Phlogiston Theory Supports Existence of Human Soul, Angels, Demons, Study Says."
Eratosthenes' day: "Shape, Size of the world: Controversy and Conflict Among the Experts"
Agricola's day: "New Study to Examine differences between Dwarf and Kobold Mining Techniques."
Socrates' day: "Announcement: New Element Discovered, Named 'Aether.'"
Pliny's day: "The Next Supervolcano Eruption and You: Is YOUR Family Safe?"
Mendel's day: "Peagate 'Proves Inheritance is Hoax:' Scientific Report" (with followup comment from @canislatrans, "Gene Skeptics Scoff at New Wrinkle in Mendelist Theory")
Hutton's day: "Claim: Earth May Be One Million Years Old. Theologists Express Skepticism, Outrage."
Mendelev's day: "New Periodic Organization Dismissed: Chemists Prefer Traditional, Alphabetic Order.

Also, from @aboutgeology, If science by press release existed in Darwin's day: "It All Comes Down to Sex: New Study by Fossil Sleuth"

I'll add any others that I come up with, and, with appropriate credit, other folks post. How would your favorite scientist(s) have been misquoted, misrepresented or misinterpreted by today's so-called "journalism?"

Tuesday Tits

2011-06-21T17:50:00.000-07:00

see more So Much Pun. I wasn't even expecting to open my blog today, but I came across this a moment ago and couldn't pass it up.

Moonday: Helene (Again)

2011-06-20T10:01:00.000-07:00

I won't make a habit of using the same moon twice in a row, but this is too cool to pass up. NASA's image of the day is a high-resolution shot of Helene, captured by Cassini just two days ago. I'm struck by the evident streamers on the surface... I have some ideas what they might be, but I'll keep them to myself. Poorly informed guesses can cause more problems than they're worth. (Full size image here; definitely worthwhile)

Sunday Funnies: Game of Thrones of Muppets Edition

2011-06-19T14:35:00.000-07:00

I'm looking forward to watching the season finale, but not to waiting for the next season to start airing. Of course, that's nothing compared to the- what, 5 years? 6 years?- wait we've had to endure for book 5, A Dance with Dragons. Does anyone know when season 2 starts?

see more Lol Celebs

Darius Witeplume's Tumblr

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!
LOLReligion

see more Very Demotivational

see more Gifs

see more There I Fixed It. A quick guide to fixing anything.
Bits and Pieces. Humor is a dish best served without taste.
Bits and Pieces
Married to the Sea
E.B. Misfit- "All We Are Saying Is Give Peace a Chan----
Ah, Fuck It, Let's Go Shoot Something."

Phil, this wasn’t fucking amateur hour. PEOPLE DIED BECAUSE OF YOUR LACK OF SUPERVISION. THERE WERE RAPTORS ALL UP IN THE KITCHEN PHIL. IN THE GOD DAMN KITCHEN.

YOU HAD ONE JOB PHIL. ONE JOB.

Stupid Gifs OregonLive Toles via Balloon Juice
Some Guy With a Website
...which then give rise to copious amounts of bacteria. And so the circle of life continues. Fake Science
Sofa Pizza... there's nothing quite like a well-choreographed museum!
Dr. Boli
Surviving the World
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal- love the baby's expression at the end.
Calamities of Nature
epic4chan- “I got two fortunes in my fortune cookie. Should I be worried?”
epic4chan
Slowpoke
The Far Left Side

see more Lol Celebs
Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Dr. Boli

see more Gifs
The High Definite
Please give; it's for a good cause. The High Definite
What Would Jack Do? "Finger-licking good!"
Skull Swap- if it doesn't look quite right, that's because it's made entirely of balloons.
Monkey Muck
Peanutweeter has apparently been cease-and-desisted to death, so this is likely the last from them. :(

see more Lol Celebs

see more Political Pictures

see more Celeb Look-A-Likes
Bits and Pieces
Medium Large
The High Definite
xkcd... if you're a geotype, this is only the 30th or 40th time you've seen this.

see more Hacked IRL - Truth in Sarcasm

see more So Much Pun... anyone remember Ironmandrill and Spiderspidercrab?

see more Gifs. Not so much funny as awesome. I'm assuming those lights swooping across the sky are airplanes... it looks like they're leaving contrails behind.
Natalie Dee
The High Definite

see more The Daily What

see more Political Pictures
Comixed
Blame Canada... Sofa Pizza
The Joy of Tech

Preventing A Cave Calamity

2011-06-14T14:18:00.000-07:00

The Deschutes National Forest says it's taking safeguards to prevent the spread of a deadly bat disease at Lava River Cave south of Bend.
KTVZ reports that when the cave opens July 1, visitors will be asked not to wear clothing or use gear that has been used in caves or mines outside Oregon and Washington.

(From KGW) I've seen a couple of articles on preventative measures being taken here in the PNW to protect cave-dwelling bats. I mentioned it to an IZ friend earlier today; she is planning to visit Oregon Caves (in the Klamath Mountains of SW Oregon), and said they had warnings on their website asking visitors to not bring clothing, shoes or other gear that had been in eastern caves.

Lava River Cave is a heavily used, semi-developed lava tube, and the longest of its type known in the state. It's quite fun and not too demanding or hazardous. There are others I like better, but I haven't visited any of them in years. Given the environmental services bats provide- especially insect control- please take time to consider and exclude any items that may have been in eastern caves from visits you make to any PNW caves, not just the heavily used ones that are mentioned in articles like the one above. Once this disease (a fungal infection referred to as white nose syndrome) gets established, it appears to spread rapidly with or without human vectors or intervention. But the only way it is likely to be able to spread (at least quickly) from the eastern US to the west coast is through ignorance, thoughtlessness, and indifference.

Twitter Assistance for Bachmann

2011-06-14T12:51:00.000-07:00

Today's big Twitter meme is #BachmannCampaignSlogans, and it happens to fall at a time when it seems the snark is strong with this one. Here are my suggestions to help Michelle get her minty cylon frying circuits up and running:

We've never had a tax attorney for president. Isn't it about time we did?
I'm on a boat! I'm president of the world!
Ohhhh, I'm an idiot and I'm okay, I sleep all night and I talk all day
Insert vapid slogan here
Please disregard previous slogan. Through miscommunication, it was thought to be finished, and released prematurely
Rabies: It's what's for president!
She may be a raving crazy IDiot, but she's YOUR raving crazy IDiot!
Because we all know 8 years of disinterested, impulsive, ignorant, arrogant and inhumane leadership wasn't enough.
All four Wizard of Oz folks in one: A lost little girl with no heart, no brains, and no courage.
In your heart you know "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" can come true. (reference to a too poorly known Poe short story)
She knows what Real America looks like. She saw it out the window when she flew to Washington. And she will again.
Because she recognized the word "constitution" once.
We hate brown and poor people way more than any of those other guys.
Colder than a Minnesota winter, buggier than a Minnesota Summer
Our campaign bus is the short one.
Nature may abhor a vacuum, but the GOP abhors nature.
Because "Lune" is French, but "Loon" is Minnesotan.
Because the voices in your head said "Vote Bachmann in 2012"

And a great one from @drskyskull: "All four horsemen in one folksy package."

Also, I forgot to note who tweeted this, so I can't give credit (anyone want to fess up?), but for the GOP debate last night, someone said "How about this for a GOP debate drinking game: if any of these fuckers win next fall, spend the next four years drinking."

Yup.

Sunday Funnies

2011-06-12T15:54:00.000-07:00

Darius Whiteplume's Tumblr

see more Very Demotivational

see more Gifs

see more Historic LOL
Skull Swap

see more Historic LOL

see more Very Demotivational
Skull Swap

see more Lol Celebs
Bits and Pieces

see more Celeb Look-A-Likes
Bizarro

see more Gifs

see more Historic LOL

see more Gifs
epic4chan

see more Lol Celebs

see more Political Pictures

see more Political Pictures
Dark Roasted Blend

see more Hacked IRL - Truth in Sarcasm

see more Gifs
God Hates Protesters
Stupid Gifs

see more Political Pictures. Wait... Seattle? What?
Darius Whiteplume's Tumblr
Darius Whiteplume's Tumblr
Regret the Error- this has been popping up all over, but this was the first screen capture I've seen where I can clearly tell that the inset picture really is Tina Fey.
Sofa Pizza
Sofa Pizza "Oh no, I’ve said too much..."
Sofa Pizza
Questionable Content
The New York Times
Cyanide and Happiness
Medium Large
Sober in a Nightclub
One of a series of "propaganda posters for WWIII" from Historic LOLs.
Hark, a Vagrant
Pundit Kitchen

see more Lol Celebs
Sofa Pizza
Sofa Pizza... This is your cat on caffeine.
Surviving the World

see more Political Pictures. See also The Borowitz Report: Supercomputer Fails to Translate Palin Emails into English.
epic4chan
Clay Bennett

Moonday: Helene

2011-06-06T13:38:00.000-07:00

From The Planetary Society comes this image of Saturn and its moon, Helene. (Several other magnificent color pictures of Saturnian moons at the link.) You can tell at glance it's a fairly small moon; it's irregularly shaped and has enormous relief compared to its size. Larger bodies with more mass are more strongly effected by gravity and pull themselves into more spherical shapes. A quick check of Wikipedia gives its mean diameter as 17.6 km (11 miles). Though this moon was only discovered in 1980, it was not from a Voyager flyby, but from ground-based observations.

Sunday Funnies: Exasperation Edition

2011-06-05T12:51:00.000-07:00

Between Firefox's "upgrade," a plugin called plugin container, which normally lasts all of 10 minutes before it locks up, and Interzone's sinusoidal wi-fi (up again, down again), this has been an extraordinarily irritating week for the web. For the record, I'm glad it's over.Skull Swap
Savage Chickens: "The Dangers of Altruism."

see more Lol Celebs
The Far Left Side
Sober in a Nightclub
Skull Swap
EpicPonyz
Peanutweeter
Bizarro Comics- also, a nice little piece on religion: "The only difference between mythology and religion is whether or not you happen to believe in it."
Darius Whiteplume's Tumblr
Bits and Pieces
Bits and Pieces
epic4chan
Wil Wheaton's Tumblr (For you youngsters, that's Tom Lehrer poisoning pigeons)
Skull Swap

see more Political Pictures
Sober in a Nightclub

see more Gifs
Skull Swap
God Hates Protesters

see more Very Demotivational

see more Historic LOL

see more WTF Pictures and WTF videos by Picture Is Unrelated
God Hates Protesters (The tiny text on his shirt reads "For extremely large values of 2")
Sober in a Nightclub
MthruF
Darius Whiteplume's Tumblr
xkcd
God Hates Protesters
Medium Large

see more Tots and Giggles
Darius Whiteplume's Tumblr
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
epic4chan
Sober in a Nightclub
Darius Whiteplume's Tumblr

We Had Been Told This Mighty Ocean-Liner Even God Himself Could Not Sink

2011-05-31T16:40:00.000-07:00

According to The Christian Science Monitor, Titanic was launched 100 years ago today. It was built in and launched from a shipyard in Belfast, Ireland, at the time the largest in the world. In the photo above, the first in the linked gallery, Titanic sails out of Southampton, England, on her first and last voyage.

The word "hubris" is of Greek origin, and the concept (though I suspect it long predates that culture) plays a major role in much of Greek and Roman mythology. In that tradition hubris refers to overweening pride to the extent a character's self-satisfaction and confidence offends one or more Gods, who then decide to punish the mortal who thinks so highly of him/her self. Clearly, the concept exists in Christian mythology as well, though as far as I know, it's merely referred to as "pride," and not as hubris, at least in the King James version of the Bible.

The tale of Titanic, in all its versions, is perhaps the best-known parable of hubris in modern times. I have mentioned the line I chose as the title of this post in discussions I've had with students on the nature of science quite a few times. I've been under the impression it was excerpted from a contemporary editorial, but I don't know that for sure. (Followup: a little poking around, and I found this Snopes post; the quote is probably apocryphal.) You couldn't beg more effectively for a god's wrath and punishment than to challenge said god with "even YOU couldn't sink this ship."

If you're not a believer, though, as I am not, how do you explain this "punishment?" First, you have to give up the idea of "punishment" and "reward." The universe is not conscious, does not have purpose, does not care what you do or don't do, does not care whether you live or die. There are consequences of actions, but these are not "intentional." If you throw a ball into the air, it will fall to the ground. That is a natural consequence of gravity, not a sign that god or the universe finds airborne balls anathema. In philosophical terms, I do not consider the universe to be a teleological construct.

So why do human displays of hubris so often result in catastrophe? Because we are so damned good at constructing our own perceptions, which we then project upon reality. If you are in charge of the largest ship in history, why should you worry about a few piddling little icebergs? If we speed up, we may be able to break the mail record. If you're drilling in thousands of feet of water with the best new technology, why should you be concerned with a potential blowout? Why should you even think about what options you might bring to bear in that event? It can't, and therefore won't, happen. Perhaps you're in charge of managing the most complex machine ever built... why should a frosty night be of concern? A wondrous spaceship like the shuttle is certainly immune to a mere chill, whatever those dweeb engineers might say. If you're convinced that the US is the greatest nation ever, and undefeatable in any way, you might be inclined to ignore warnings of a known terrorist trying to find a way past our security, and declare an unjustifiable war on an uninvolved country when he does. Or, you might put a bureaucrat-lawyer, whose expertise is horse racing, in charge of the nation's emergency response agency, and declare he's doing a "heckuva job" as thousands perish after a major city is inundated. And the list goes on and on, and on. You may allow urbanization and development on coastal plains far outboard of obelisks from centuries ago which warn of tsunami dangers. You may develop residential neighborhoods on the slopes of historically active volcanoes, or in the path of enormous mapped debris flows or lahars. You may build great metropolises in the middle of arid lands prone to decades-long droughts. You may look at housing as a bubble that can't pop, and encourage banks, recently freed to do so, to invest in your bundled loan packages.

And on, and on. And on.

My point is, one needn't fear God or Gods to recognize and fear hubris. As far as I'm concerned, it's one of the most important and most ignored concepts controlling humanity's future that I can think of.

I wish I could find a clip of this song to embed; it's hauntingly beautiful and sad. But a YouTube and Google search return mostly, in yet another case of hubris, hundreds of clips of Celine Dion's banshee howling.

Hans Theessink: Titanic (lyrics from here)
That night it all started when the ship began to shake
We were filled with amazement a little shocked but not afraid
We didn't really understand what caused the water to come in
We had been told this mighty ocean-liner "even god himself couldn't sink"
You took a picture of our child your hat and your jewelry
And we put on some warm clothes because we thought it might be cold at sea
When we left our cabin we noticed how the water started pouring in
Was it a tear or maybe just a drop of water on your chin
Titanic Titanic so proud and so free
Will your grandeur protect us from the cold icy sea
We followed some white arrows with a lifeboat-sign
We had to go onto the first-class deck but no one seemed to mind
Despite the strange situation we all took it quite with ease
Only one of the third-class passengers was behaving foolishly
We talked to a gentleman that we'd met earlier on
He introduced us to his wife he introduced us to his son
Then the captain said that the lifeboats could not be lowered down
I believe it was because some chains of the hoist could not be found
Titanic Titanic so proud and so free
Will your grandeur protect us from the cold icy sea
We were all invited for a free drink at the bar
We drank to the empire and to good health for us all
The ship was leaning to one side we felt it sinking quietly
We decided to stay together on board though many people jumped into the sea
Then the rats left the ship to try and find dry land
But we stayed close together and held each others hand
It was midnight on the water we could hear the ocean roar
In the lifeboats that were lowered down there was no room for us anymore
Not a helping hand around in this cold cold night
An iceberg disappearing into the distant morning light
We're watching the last lifeboat as it slowly lowers down
There's many men women and children left behind not a helping hand around
Not a helping hand around not a helping hand around
There's many men women and children left behind not a helping hand around
Now the members of the band struck up with "nearer my god to thee"
Somehow banal but in the vain of our time and century
By now we have lost our last tiny bit of hope
We're all going down while the flag is going up

Sunday Funnies: Breaking News Edition

2011-05-29T15:18:00.000-07:00

see more Very Demotivational
What Would Jack Do?
Blackadder
The High Definite

see more Gifs

see more Historic LOL
epic4chan

see more Gifs
epic4chan

see more Gifs

see more Funny Graphs
The lack of rapture may very well be the reason for our endless winter here in western Oregon. Bits and Pieces

see more Very Demotivational
"A Mormon Science Fair," from LOLreligion. "I reeeeally wonder what that data says..."
Sober in a Nightclub
Seriously, I wonder if a tongue-in-cheek campaign like this might have a positive effect in a campus environment like, say, OSU... Sober in a Nightclub.
Comic JK

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

see more Lol Celebs... Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin' alive, stayin' alive...
Balloon Juice
Cheeseburgers in the Sky

see more The Daily What: “Barack Obama’s signature is totally a cartoon baby Tyrannosaurus playing with a ball of yarn.”

see more That Will Buff Out... The George W. Bush Memorial Pilot Car.

see more So Much Pun

see more Historic LOL

Skull Swap

Sober in a Nightclub
Savage Chickens
Sober in a Nightclub

see more Comixed

see more So Much Pun (Stop Sine)

see more Monday Through Friday
TYWKIWDBI
epic4chan
Clay Bennett
Darius Whiteplume's Tumblr

see more Lolcats and funny pictures
Jesus: now available in vending machines. Bits and Pieces

see more Gifs

see more Memebase After Dark

see more So Much Pun
Wondermark
The Far Left Side
Bug. If it was me, I'd be in exactly one episode for two or three minutes, wearing a red shirt.
Sofa Pizza. No, of course it's not shopped.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
The High Definite
Peanutweeter
Some of us don't need to go all the way to the moon to have that perspective. TYWKIWDBI

see more The Daily What

see more Gifs
What Would Jack Do?
Skull Swap
epic4chan
Sofa Pizza
Sofa Pizza
Sober in a Nightclub... T. rex: the king of pranksters.

Weird Geology: Name That Rock Type!

2011-05-28T18:24:00.000-07:00

Note: AW #34, Weird Geology, has now been accreted at En Tequila Es Verdad.

This month's Accretionary Wedge topic, hosted by Dana at En Tequila es Verdad, is one near and dear to my heart: weird geology. To step back a bit, one might define weird as something decidedly outside or beyond typical human experience. Taking that as a working definition, nearly all geology is weird: the environmental conditions, rates of change, chemical reactions, as well as starting materials and end products are too hot, too high pressure, too slow, too extreme, too unusual, or too obscure to make sense without quite a bit of background. Conversely and paradoxically, the materials and processes are often so mundane that we simply don't notice them or pay attention to them. Just as the structures and behaviors of a spider or flowering plant are so day-to-day that few really look hard and try to understand these odd (from a human perspective) organisms, so too the never-ending passage of sand, silt, mud and dissolved material through a neighborhood stream goes unnoticed and unremarked. Yet millennia and eons of such mundane activity will result in breath-taking changes in the nearby landscape. From this perspective, I think it's fair to say that nearly all geology would be considered weird to most, and certainly to those with no training or background in the subject.

I think of myself impossibly lucky in that even with a considerable background, I can still look upon geologic processes and materials with such fresh eyes, and see the wondrous weirdness of such things with one part of my mind, even as I observe, analyze and hypothesize with another. Perhaps it's schizophrenic, but it pleases me to be amazed by things that generally make pretty good sense to me.

All that said, there is a matter of degree... there are definitely some rocks and processes that are more difficult to come to grips with. For example, I'm fascinated by komatiitite, a type of volcanic rock characterized by its extremely high magnesium content. It can be considered the volcanic equivalent of peridotite, just as basalt is the volcanic equivalent of gabbro. It was quite abundant in the earth's early history, but as the planet has aged and cooled, as its original dole of radioactive nuclides has decayed and decreased, the geothermal gradient has become too gentle to allow melts of this composition to reach the earth's surface. One can think of komatiite as an "extinct" rock type. It is preserved as lithic "fossils" in various places (I have had the opportunity to see some first hand in the Hill Lake quad between Temagami and Cobalt, in central Ontario), but not only is it no longer created, it no longer can be created.

But the weirdness I really want to address gets at the way we name things. Often, the way we do science can get in the way of better understanding- a characteristic shared with language generally. Words allow us to symbolize ideas we can share with others, and allow us to perform abstract operations on the symbols that we could not perform with the actual thing. But the utility and availability of those symbols also confines us. We tend not to think too much or too hard about things for which we do not have words.

Anyone who has had even a grade school lesson or few on geology knows the three rock types: igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary. A little more background, and one begins to grasp just how arbitrary the boundaries between those rocks types are, and how difficult it is to simply draw lines between them. Exactly how hot, and under how much pressure, must sedimentary rocks be, before miniscule changes in textures and mineralogy force us to conclude that the rocks must be considered metamorphic? In fact there isn't, nor can there be, any such precise definition. We learn to hedge; we create a new facies ("zeolite grade metamorphism") to delineate this intermediate stage. Never mind that the vast majority of zeolites and zeolite-cemented rocks I have dealt with are clearly the result of diagenesis, not metamorphism.

But at least we can assign all known rocks to those three classes, or their intermediaries, right? Well... maybe not so much. The term "metasomatic rocks" came up in only one of my classes, and only in passing. The term was not used at all in my economic geology class, where most of the rocks we discussed could be considered to be members of that group. The roots (meta=change, soma=body) imply a change in mass composition, differing from a common assumption in metamorphism, that the bulk composition of the rock is mostly fixed, but mineral phases and textures change in response to changing T & P. With metasomatic rocks (AKA hydrothermal rocks), certain elements/ions may be preferentially removed or deposited as their solubilities change due to changing temperature of transporting water/water vapor/hydrothermal fluid. Even the concept of liquid and gas become fuzzy at high enough temperatures and pressures. For example, above a temperature of about 375 C, water behaves as a gas; at or slightly below that so-called critical temperature, it requires a pressure of 218 atmospheres to maintain a liquid state. So what happens if both T and P exceed those values? You have what is called a supercritical fluid, one which has a density nearly that of liquid water, but a behavior more like that of a gas. And one that is very, very reactive with many minerals. A graph of SiO2 solubility (both quartz and amorphous silica) can be seen here (~500 kB PDF). Note that under the conditions we are accustomed to, SiO2's solubility is essentially zero; somewhere around 325-350 C, it hits a maximum of about 600 PPM for quartz to 1600 PPM for amorphous silica.

I do not currently have any photos of vein quartz, so I snagged this one from Callan's class notes for Geol 135; follow the link for a full description, about halfway down the post.
So should this quartz vein be considered igneous, metamorphic or sedimentary? It crystallized from a hot, silica saturated fluid, like an igneous rock, and the textures are most similar to igneous textures. But that fluid was water, so perhaps it should be considered a chemical sedimentary rock. On the other hand, the conditions of high T & P are suggestive of metamorphism, and the mineralogy is more like metamorphic rocks than most we would consider igneous or chemical sedimentary. How do we resolve this conundrum?

This is not a trivial question. While metasomatic/hydrothermal rocks are fairly uncommon, I would not really consider them rare. And while (taking an educated guesstimate) I suppose they probably make up a fairly small fraction of a percent of rocks exposed on the planet's surface, they are extremely important economically. The same processes that dissolved quartz from one region and redeposited it in concentrated form in the vein above can do exactly the same thing with a variety of other materials and elements. Think gold, copper, silver, zinc, lead, barium, and many, many others- our sources of these materials are largely places where moving hot water has concentrated them to a degree and in a location where they can be extracted profitably.

I don't have a sense that there is widespread acceptance of "metasomatic rocks" as a valid class at the same level as the big three, but at least one person (I think it was @stressrelated, but I'm not positive) has said the text they use considers that class as a fourth rock type.

So that gets all the unrecognized rock types, right? Well, maybe not so much. Again, as always, I cannot speak for the geologic community; I can only say I've spent some time thinking about this and toss my ideas out there. If anyone finds them useful, super! If they need to be criticized or shot down outright, I'm open to hear/read the reasons. But I would suggest there are at least two more rock types that we may need to consider. The first is vanishingly rare, the second fairly common but short-lived, in the earth environment. And since there are not widely accepted words for these rock types, I have to give them my own names: let's call them sublimate and cryologic rocks.

Sublimate rocks would be those that crystallize directly from a gas to a solid. On earth, sulfur is probably the most important sublimate rock (though most of it is mined from and resides in other rock types). The Big Picture had a striking gallery a couple of years ago of sulfur mining in Indonesia; I'm pretty confident that most of the sulfur condenses from fumerolic gases- though some may have remelted, and would thus be considered igneous. But thinking about the still bigger picture, if my understanding is correct, nearly all the solid matter in our solar system was originally gaseous effusions from an earlier generation of stars. Those gases crystallized to form dust and chondrules, the primordial building blocks of the terrestrial planets. So while sublimate rocks and minerals may be of miniscule importance on earth today, understanding them may be of fundmental importance in comprehending the history of our solar system and our home.

Cryologic rocks would be those that are made of frozen material that would be gas or liquid under the conditions with which we're most familiar. The biggest deposits of these on our modern world are in Greenland and Antartica: ice. But again, many moons from Jupiter outward have a large component of frozen water, ammonia, and hydrocarbons. Recognizing and understanding this rock type and the kinds of processes, chemical reactions and depositional patterns that can occur in it will be of critical importance to understanding what has happened and is happening today in the cooler parts of our solar system.

I'd like to develop this more, but it's already late: it was due yesterday. I'm tired and exasperated with Firefox, my computer and the Interzone Wifi. I'm going home, where I haven't had a wifi connection for a few weeks. But I hope this tweaked your imagination a little, and made you think about the idea that I mentioned near the beginning: that naming things is very useful and very powerful, but it can become limiting when you feel as if you've named everything important. You probably haven't, and if you don't have a word for it, you will tend to be blind to it.

How many rock types have yet to be named?

Saturd80's

2011-05-28T16:07:00.000-07:00

The Vapors, Turning Japanese:

B-52's, Rock Lobster:

XTC, Senses Working Overtime:

Ohio: A Great Place to be FROM

2011-05-26T12:34:00.001-07:00

As in "not there anymore." H/T @rockbandit.

RIP Spirit

2011-05-25T17:07:00.000-07:00

There have been numerous reports over the last couple of days on the fact that after many attempts, NASA is giving up on re-establishing contact with the Spirit Rover. Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy provides what strikes me as a very fitting eulogy. Followup: Another concise but satisfying summary of the life and times of Spirit by Ryan Anderson at The Martian Chronicles.

I got quite a bit of flack, early in Spirit's rovings, for pointing out that it was very slow, primitive, and limited. I stick by those comments, though. With a six-hour source of breathable air, a hammer, hand lens and camera, I could accomplish in that time much of what Spirit took six years to do. What my critics failed to grasp was that this was intended as a slam on neither the rover, its engineers, nor the mission scientists who managed the day-to-day logistics, data acquisition and analysis. The fact is, we do not have the means to put me (or others more competent) onto Mars alive. Spirit was state-of-the-art... ten years ago. My point was simply that compared to technologies of the near future, or (drool) human explorers, it's important to understand just how limited Spirit really was. That should take nothing away from the accomplishments of the plucky little rover that could, but rather provide motivation and inspiration for the next steps in our exploration of Mars and other solid-surfaced planets and moons.

To Paraphrase the X-Files, the truth is out there, and I want to believe we have the determination to find it. I know we have the resources. I know if we choose to, we can figure out how to make it happen. The only thing I'm uncertain about is whether we have the will.

Certainly, taking the next step will help make up for the undignified manner of Spirit's demise:

Wednesday Wednesday

2011-05-25T16:17:00.000-07:00

From Forbidden Planet, accompanying an article claiming that Tim Burton is going to do a stop-motion Adams Family film. The post is more than a year old, and I haven't heard anything else about it, so I'm dubious.

Don't Panic, It's Towel Day

2011-05-25T15:43:00.000-07:00

Shoot, almost missed this. I looked it up earlier in the month, and somehow got it into my head it was on May 28th. Thankfully, someone else mentioned it was Towel Day, I double checked, and so it is! For better or for worse, I had been seriously considering draping a towel around my neck for the occasion, and I haven't. Maybe next year. For this year, though, no sheepish explanations that I am indeed a serious nerd.

Tuesday Tits

2011-05-24T17:46:00.000-07:00

Marsh tit, Poecile palustris, from Wikipedia.

Introducing Bif

2011-05-23T18:57:00.000-07:00

Three months ago, I got a new kitteh, Bif, and I wanted to post some pictures of him for the GeoLOLCat meme that's going around.
This first one was taken his first night in my apartment; a beanie baby toy that had been given to me at Christmas of '09 is still one of his favorite toys. As you can see from the rest of the photos, he's filled out quite a bit since February.
Posing with a rock hammer...
Suspiciously watching me watch Jurassic Park...
Trying to figure what the heck I'm up to with that danged string...
And sleeping by the porch door. Why Bif? Well, it's a nice, trite male name, and when he arrived, I was struck by his fine stripes, which reminded me of laminated sediments. Shift the color balance to extreme red, and...The LOL's I've done of Bif can be seen at the GeoLOLCats post.

Moonday: Io

2011-05-23T17:19:00.000-07:00

It has been my intention to draw attention primarily to moons that aren't as well known or "popular" in this series, but this image from yesterday's APOD takes the cake:(follow the link to the site and click the pic there for full-size awesomeness and detailed insets) Quoth APOD:

What's happening on Jupiter's moon Io? Two sulfurous eruptions are visible on Jupiter's volcanic moon Io in this color composite image from the robotic Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003. At the image top, over Io's limb, a bluish plume rises about 140 kilometers above the surface of a volcanic caldera known as Pillan Patera. In the image middle, near the night/day shadow line, the ring shaped Prometheus plume is seen rising about 75 kilometers above Io while casting a shadow below the volcanic vent. Named for the Greek god who gave mortals fire, the Prometheus plume is visible in every image ever made of the region dating back to the Voyager flybys of 1979 - presenting the possibility that this plume has been continuously active for at least 18 years. The above digitally sharpened image of Io was originally recorded in 1997 from a distance of about 600,000 kilometers. Recent analyses of Galileo data has uncovered evidence of a magma ocean beneath Io's surface.

Regarding that magma ocean, which I also mentioned last Moonday, Erik Klemetti had a good clarification last Wednesday on why "ocean" is probably not the best word to use to clearly communicate the nature of magma in Io's subsurface.

A couple of other loony images have come across the innertubz recently: the first is another APOD from May 12 of Enceladus and its cryovolcanism, which I had actually been intending to use for last week, until I got distracted by the Callisto/Callista differentiation. The second came from The Cassini Solstice Mission webpage this morning, and captures five of Saturn's moons in one frame!

Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across) is largest here and is closest to Cassini. Dione (1,123 kilometers, or 698 miles across) can be seen just above the rings near the center of the image. Tiny Prometheus (86 kilometers, or 53 miles across) is just barely visible in the rings to the right of Dione. Epimetheus (113 kilometers, or 70 miles across) is to the right of the rings, and Tethys (1,062 kilometers, or 660 miles across) is on the extreme right of the image.

I've linked the full-size image here; the only one that might be difficult to spot is Prometheus, which looks more like a tiny bump on the ring plane, rather that a moon, just to the right of Dione.