Still Peckish

Hat Tip to Balloon Juice for image and idea. About Biafra.

Obama Opposes Biodiversity!

Can't quit. I can't believe the stuff that becomes "news." This one occured to me because I just murdered a fly that wouldn't stop pestering. Don't tell PETA. (Vidclip here)

Followup, June 20: Very funny response to PETA's nonsense at My Corner to Vent. (front page): "The fly kept landing on his hand. With the way that Obama talks with his hands..." You'll have to click over to read the punchline.

Glenn Beck Cries For an Hour

Pop Quiz over at MPS.

What I Think

Context here and here.

You Don't Say?

So are we done yet? No, we are not. Though we probably should move on to other things for a while.

Hoekstra Gets a Label!

Though as I've noted before, this absurdly grandiose blathering is so epidemic in the unhinged party as to be almost unnoticed, Hoekstra is now this blog's official poster boy of the phenomenon. As such, he has earned his own tag.

And don't forget to visit the orignator of this meme at http://hoekstraisameme.com/ for many more. They've just put up several more.

Hoekstra Meme Revisited

Context here and, and many more here.

My Robotic Avatar

Get Your Cyborg Name

I don't like the "Ceaseless Killing" part. I'll have to fix that...
Via Silver Fox.

Followup: Much better! (Font is 13 point "impact")

Late-Week Geo-Meme: Show Me Your Sidewalk!

(Click for full size... which I just realized is quite close to its actual size!)

So what do sidewalks have to do with geology? Well, to begin with, they're made in large part of rocks; the other major component, cement, is man-made, and is therefore not technically rock. But perhaps more interestingly and importantly, gravel is used in very large quantities and is very massive, and thus is prohibitively expensive to transport very far. In consequence, nearly every community of more than a few people has its own source of gravel. That gravel in turn represents at least a few aspects of the local or regional geology.

In the case above, you can tell from the well-rounded pebbles that the gravel has undergone stream water transport. (Wave or current transport would result in the same rounding.) I have no doubt that this is from Willamette River fluvial sediments. Most of the Willamette gravels are derived from the west flank of the Cascade Range. There is some contribution from the Coast Range, but most of the Coast Range is underlain by grungy sedimentary rock that does not survive transport very far. If you look at the gravel in the Mary's river, which drains a substantial chunk of the Coast Range west of here, and has its confluence with the Willamette in the southern part of Corvallis, it is made up of almost entirely basalt. Additionally, the Coast Range component of the Willamette drainage is smaller and gets much less total precipitation than the Cascade component. So the above "random sample" of the rocks in my local drainage are not really random at all. It's dominated by Cascade volcanic rocks, and is further segregated in that rocks less resistant to weathering and erosion, those that don't survive transport, are either un- or under-represented.

Ranking from most abundant to least abundant we have

1. Basalt- can be difficult to tell if it has been altered in this context. I look for a lack of polish.
2. Altered volcanics- a broad and not entirely useful category, these are most often infused with some sort of microcrystalline quartz, such as chalcedony, or its non-fibrous analogues. The parent material is still the dominant component, but they have been hardened by the addtion of silica.
3. Intermediate and Felsic volcanics- don't seem to survive transport too well unless they have been "altered," as above. Additionally, the Cascades are quite dominated by basalt; intermediate and felsic volcanics are simply not as abundant to start with.
4. Jasper, agate and various other micro- and cryptocrystalline varities of quartz. These are fragments that crystallized in void spaces, so there is no "parent rock." Frequently in vivid colors, and take a nice polish from countless soles grinding on them.
5. Petrified wood (technically for most fossil wood in the western Cascades, "permineralized wood," i.e. original woody material is still present, but has been completely infused and entombed in microcrystalline quartz)- probably belongs grouped with #2 or #4, but it's cool enough to warrent it's own bullet, IMHO.

So there you have it: a geo-literate person could walk a half dozen paces from the door of my favorite coffee shop and quickly infer quite a lot about his or her geological setting by looking at their feet (and btw, that's the toe of my boot for scale)... despite the fact that the closest "outcrop" is nearly a mile away.

So where do you live, geologically? Show me your sidewalk! I'm not going to tag anyone, unless no one plays...

Awesome!

(Full size here) This is certainly among the most amazing and stunning volcanic eruption images I have ever seen. According to the description of the image, "A fortuitous orbit of the International Space Station allowed the astronauts this striking view of Sarychev Volcano (Kuril Islands, northeast of Japan) in an early stage of eruption on June 12, 2009."

The plume of ash from this eruption has diverted numerous flights in the north Pacific region, and has forced quite a number to simply return to their point of origin; they didn't have enough fuel to safely divert around the plume. The blogger who brought this picture to my attention, Eric Klemmeti, has been following the eruption regularly under the category "Sarychev" on his blog, Eruptions. (Home page; the previous link will take you to all the posts of this volcano and its convulsions.)

Hoekstra Meme

"To Hoekstra is to whine using grandiose exaggerations and comparisons," according to the home site. This is a funny, funny meme that should not be (and in my mind isn't) limited to Pete Hoekstra; it's epidemic among the republicans. Hat tip to EB Misfit for pointing this out. (Followup: if you're not familiar with "napalm girl," here's the (in)famous photo. Warning: graphic and nauseating, though such an iconic image, might be considered safe for work. Or Not)

What I Think

Context here and here.

Hey!

A kinder, gentler Jurassic Park, and a thousand points of "Hey!"

Catching up on my funny stuff..

Mount Doom

I frequently grab a picture from Cakewrecks for my Sunday Funnies. If you like to laugh, and you don't visit that site (sight) at least occasionally, you are missing out! This is the quintessence of cake wreckness, and much too entertaining to make it wait another four days...

Yes, they really did build that sweet disaster. Then, yes, they really did set it on fire. Visit the post for the full story...

What I Think

Context here and here.

No, I haven't abandoned this series, just busy and not particularly inspired by the recent "American Voices" posts... they haven't been bad, but my funny generator hasn't responded with anything postworthy.

And in a related note, I found this cool page hosted by the US Census bureau, which shows the real-time estimate for just how many of us there are in the US and the world...

U.S. 306,693,977
World 6,787,216,899
21:02 GMT (EST+5) Jun 17, 2009

Wednesday Words

Annnnd... it's Wednesday again! Thanks to last week's participants, who came up with some fun suggestions for additions to this crazy language we call English. I do have a few questions for you all... would this be more fun if I actually listed all the entries that came in for the previous post, or is the link back to the short post and comments enough? Would it be more fun if I withheld the comments until the next post, then put them all up at once? I know that sometimes I just feel, "Wow, there's no way I'm going to top that one!" then don't even try. How about voting on the suggestions? Just tossing out some ideas here... I'd like to get a few more folks playing. The two or three players we get each week come up with such great definitions, it seems there must be even more.

And with that quick quiz, here are this week's five would-be words:

Moral Obligation? US? Nah!

Suvrat Kher, over at Reporting on a Revolution, pointed out this NYT blogpost, and this Lancet article. The gut clenchers were these two cartograms. The first was large enough for me to make out, but I couldn't read the second, so I went to the Lancet article, skimmed over it, and captured the full-size images. I'm more than a little scared to read the full article, but I've downloaded it so I can, later, even if I don't have a wi-fi connection. (Click the pics for full size)
The top panel of the above image shows a cartogram in which the size of the country is a function of how much CO2 it has emitted; the bottom shows the estimated increase in mortality due to four climate-sensitive health factors: malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea, and inland flooding. (Follow-up: I suspect if you factored in some other climate-sensitive phenomena, such as coastal flooding associated with tropical storms, tornadoes and so on- and certainly if you factor in economic costs- the disparity would not be as extreme. Still, that's a stunning image)
This one shows "tipping points," where minor environmental changes could lead to positive feedbacks and runaway conditions with dire consequences. So, for example, the blob to the NE (~left) of Australia and SW of (~up from) North America is labeled "ENSO Triggering." ENSO stands for "El Nino- Southern Oscillation." El Nino an La Nina conditions have profound, and largely negative, consequences throughout the Americas. That little blob implies that these conditions would be more frequent and more severe. And it's just one of numerous blobs on the map.

Of course, what is the health and safety of a few hundred million people, when the profits of the megacorps might suffer? Burn, Baby, Burn!

Two of My Favorite Shows in 99 Seconds

Oh. My. God.

If this YouTube stuff had been around when I was a teen, I would have never discovered rocks. Good thing it wasn't around, but I feel bad for today's teens. (Hat tip to Swans on Tea)

Sunday Funnies: Monday Edition!

So some of my young friends have moved on for the summer, and some have graduated, and have moved on pretty much forever. It's a bittersweet time of year for me; I may see them briefly when they pass through town again, but we'll slowly loose touch with each other. On the other hand, they're so pleased to be done, and, rightfully, so proud of their accomplishments, and so eager to move on to the "real world" or graduate school, that it's impossible for me to be "sad" about it. (If only they knew the reality of either the real world or grad school... I enjoy saying, only a little facetiously, that the worst mistake I ever made in my life was applying for graduation.) But at any rate, to those newly minted graduates, and to those who've successfully defended recently (Yay, Amy! Yay, Ben!), I offer my hearty contragulations...
Sorry, Ian; I don't think we met, but I'm seriously hoping your life turns out better than that cake. Jen over at cakewrecks has been running disasterous gradcakes all week. This is one of my favorites. And what goes better with cake than a nice cup of freshly brewed coffee? What? Alright, who left the pot empty?


From here, via Buzzfeed. It's getting hot enough now that some nice cold water is a good alternative, though. Unless there's a hippopotamus in it. Or a dog pretending to be a hippopotamus; then it would be much too dangerous...

see more dog and puppy pictures. And after all that food and drink, this week's emergent theme appears to be body functions. All you middle schoolers are going to love this weeks funnies.
From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Criggo is one of my favorite humor sites, where the tagline is "Newspapers are going away. That's too bad." So when I realized I didn't have anything from there in my lineup, I just had to go find something that fit the theme... this one does so admirably.
So this doggie would like you to desist from using gelatin desserts to ease the irritation:
(The title of this post was "I'm getting really sick of this nickname.") From Pets Who Want to Kill Themselves. And speaking of poop, I think I can say with a high degree of confidence that the last thing the world needs is a toilet that decorates...

(see more Engrish) ...and if I was to come across that sign, I would definitely take the advice of the following plan:

(see more Fail Blog)

There are other body funtions, of course. For example, boogers...
(From Saturday Bulletin) ...and menstrual cycles, which have recently been shown to be susceptable to mathematical analysis: (XKCD)Then there are the bodies that function just fine, but underwent some quirky development. This young woman (I assume it's a young woman) seems to have taken it all in stride, with a cheeky sense of humor.
(From bmezine, this post. Front page here, but many posts NSFW; I think the name stands for Body Modification e-zine)

Rather than humor, this kitteh has reacted with rage at being implanted with a terminator eye.
see more Lolcats and funny pictures

And this kitteh is shaken by what it has witnessed in today's "funnies" so far.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

This little kitteh invented an entirely unique language...

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

...while this ketteh has merely expanded the definition of "black hole." Nothing that enters the box has a chance of escape.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Speaking of black holes, Pictures For Sad Children suggests they may be just wild and crazy parties at an atomic level:
What with budget cuts and all, I imagine many of you are being forced to economize. I hope you are not the one being economized! Have a good week at work, and try to keep in mind that however bad things may get, there's always a high probability they're going to could get much, much worse.

see more Political Pictures

And make sure you keep up to date on all the relevant paperwork!

(see more Lol Celebs)

See you in the funnies!

What's Going On?

I've read hardly any news since Thursday; as you might have noticed, I just completed three substantial geology posts. I hear the Iranian election is thought by many to have been a farce, and there's some pretty serious unrest and response. Frank Rich has a typically terrific Op-Ed in yesterday's NYT regarding the silence of the "moderate" right in the face of the unhinged right's words and actions. Many of us liberals have been saying much the same thing for a while now, but as always, Rich's piece is better written and documented than most of us could ever hope to accomplish. Anything else I should know about?

There are probably a number of regulars here at my favorite coffee shop wondering where the Sunday Funnies are. I'm probably not going to get a whole lot of news read today either... I'd like to get up a Monday edition of the funnies.

In the meantime, drop me a comment or e-mail if they announce the world is coming to an end... I'd like to have time to kiss my ass goodbye.