Geo 1095: April 22, Day 842: Full-On Koosah

I think this is the best view I've seen of Koosah Falls. There's a direct trail from the parking area to the eastern lip of the falls, and there's a longer trail that heads downstream a bit before heading back up and rejoining the shorter bit, making a brief loop. I'm pretty sure this spot was just below where the longer trail rejoins the shorter segment.  A spur off the longer path provides a more distant, but less obscured, view.

It appears, from this post by Walter Sullivan (If Oregon had a Hiker Laureate, he would be it.), that there is a loop trail between Koosah and Sahalie, with the other portion on the far side of the river. The views would certainly be different, and possibly better, from the other side. However, the hike that I've have gotten myself all hyped-up about, in the course of doing this McKenzie segment, can be seen on the map on page 3 of this PDF: a 7.5 mile downhill hike from Clear Lake to Trail Bridge Reservoir, which would include as a highlight Tamolitch Falls and Blue Pool. From Carmen Reservoir to Tamolitch, the McKenzie goes underground again, to re-emerge full blown at Blue Pool, except during heaviest flow periods. So for several miles below Carmen, the river is present only as a dry bed, and Tamolitch isn't so much a "falls" as a precipice. Logistically, this would require two or more cars, but I've got a lot of Interzone People excited about it, several of whom have vehicles. So I'm just waiting for Dana to start thinking about geogalavanting for the season.

Photo unmodified. July 7, 2013. FlashEarth Location.

Geo 730: July 19, Day 565: Lavender Garnished with River Gravel and a Bonus Butterfly

Prior to chalking in the sundial in yesterday's photo, Tim and his son removed the cheatgrass that normally dominates the base of the pole, brought in some good soil, and planted a number of lavender starts. Then they tiled the bare areas with some river gravel. It's a refreshing change from the nasty invasive. A passing butterfly appears to agree.

While the angle of the shadow with respect to 16th and Monroe is not evident in this photo, I'll first admit, I threw out a bit of a deceptive comment yesterday when I described 16th as running "roughly north-south." The original street grid in Corvallis was laid out parallel to the riverfront, and runs about 20 degrees east of north. At Kings Avenue, a block west of my current location, the street grid snaps to N/S-E/W, or truly compass oriented (See the FlashEarth location). Second, due to modern horological conventions, we're currently on daylight savings time, which means the clock gets to noon about an hour earlier than the sun reaches "true noon," at its greatest height in the sky and directly to the south. Put those two factors together, and you can see why the two o'clock mark is the one that's almost parallel to 16th street, not the 12 o'clock mark.

Understanding these sorts of seemingly unrelated tidbits to make sense of the world around us is all part and parcel of "thinking like a geologist." I commented, "we're looking at an intersection of geology, geography, horology, and human history." When solving geological puzzles, one needs to be able to draw from a great many disciplines, even if the puzzle is as trivial as, "Why isn't the shadow falling where we'd expect it to?"

Photo unmodified. July 18, 2014. FlashEarth location.

Geo 730: July 18, Day 564: High Noon at Interzone

I'll be taking a few days' break from Quartzville to enjoy a spontaneous bit of art that happened at Interzone starting on Tuesday. Every hour, on the hour, IZ denizen Tim snapped a chalk line on the left edge of the shadow cast by the street lamp/telephone/power pole on the northeast corner of 16th and Monroe. Then the lines were bolded and times colored in with sidewalk chalk by Heidi and Erin. Shea drew a silhouette on the two o'clock line, which is the one most parallel to the street. This was shot within a minute of noon; for the time being, it's surprisingly accurate.

Where's the geology in this? If you've followed this blog at all, you know my attitude is that it's all geology, and this is no exception. Under the "12" is asphalt, a mixture of petroleum products, sand and gravel. Under my shadow and in the upper right is concrete, made of lime (CaO) (which in turn is limestone (CaCO3) heated to drive off the CO2) mixed with clay, to which water, sand and gravel are added and allowed to set. The chalk itself is either the same composition as limestone (true chalk) or gypsum (which is softer and easier to work with). These materials are normally powdered, some clay added for a higher degree of consistency and hardness, then pigment and binder added. The result is then molded into the cylindrical form in which we are accustomed to using it.

At a more esoteric level, we're looking at an intersection of geology, geography, horology, and human history. I'll get back to this tomorrow, but I'll leave with a comment and a couple questions: the streets in this area run roughly north-south. Why is the sun at noon casting a shadow so far to the west? Wouldn't you expect the shadow to be falling northwards, roughly parallel to the street, rather than across it?

Photo unmodified. July 18, 2014. FlashEarth location.

Know What I Did Last October? (Or "Halloween: The Ambushing.")

Interzone Nickelle sewed me up a pretty floral bonnet for Halloween, and I went around all day swearing by it. The shirt was a little tight, but it's the most cowboyish thing I own.

Interzone Bill took some photos with my camera, but I only today figured out how to get them onto this computer with out a whole lot of fuss. Take the memory card out and stick it into the appropriate slot. I don't like handling the memory card, but apparently, it's not that big a deal.

This Should be Fun...

I'm not much of one for holidays... nothing agin' 'em, just passively ignore 'em. The last time I dressed up for Halloween, I was still working at Vet Med in Clinical Pathology, so that would've been 82 or 83. I enjoy seeing other people have fun with it, but I'm not particularly inclined to make any effort of my own.

However...

At some point in the past year or so, I watched Firefly. (All 14 episodes. Sheesh, FOX!) And loved it. Then this past summer, I watched it again, and loved it even more. I commented on Twitter a few days ago that I don't generally do anything for Halloween, but I really wished I had (or could find) a pretty floral bonnet to dress up as Captain Mal Reynolds. So a few minutes ago, I was outside for a smoke, and mentioned this to an IZ friend. She was delighted, and is now planning on sewing me a pretty floral bonnet for Wednesday.

I'm already practicing my line: "Now think real hard. You been bird-doggin' this township awhile now. They wouldn't mind a corpse of you. Now, you can luxuriate in a nice jail cell, but if your hand touches metal, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet, I will end you."

This should be fun.

And oh, yes, there WILL be photos!

Autumn

For reasons not entirely clear to me, Interzone got a piano yesterday. My (vague) understanding is that someone is simply storing it here for a few months, and someone else is kinda maybe thinking about using it for a performance series this fall. Whatever, we'll see. But a young woman just came in, sat down, and played some very nice bits of music. When she finished up, I asked her what it was, as it had sounded a little familiar. She replied she'd just been making it up as she went along... a fact I find very impressive. She sounded like she'd played it before, needed a bit more practice, but was playing a well-known piece. The idea of composing it as she went along is difficult for me to grasp.

At any rate, in one of those recollective belches that happen to me frequently, I was able to come up with the album of which her music reminded me. I commented to her that while much of the "New Age Music" of the 80's-90's could get very trite and cliche, some of it (especially, in my experience and opinion, from Windham Hill) was really quite lovely. Here are a couple selections from George Winston's album "Autumn."
Colors/Dance

(Not sure which pieces are included in this; it's at least three tracks from "Autumn." That minor sound is what reminded me of the young woman's ad-libbing, but the original post is in Japanese.)

This morning was the first this fall cool enough to prompt me to wear a jacket. The foliage is only just beginning to change, and it won't really feel like autumn until we get some real rain (still none in predictions), but these piano solos feel right for today... cool and crisp.

Followup: Yes, it looks like there is a music series planned for this fall and winter.

 The hard surfaces in this space make it painful for me to listen to music- especially amplified music- for any length of time, so expect no reviews here.

Twice in a Lifetime

...And as best as I can recall, I missed the first opportunity because it was too early in the morning and the weather was expected to be cloudy. But on Tuesday, we had decent weather- mostly clear skies, with some broken clouds- and a great chance to watch the last transit of Venus for 105 years. And thanks to discussions by other bloggers following the annular eclipse (partial, here) two weeks ago, I learned how to project an image with one side of my binoculars. And the quality of the projection far exceeded my wildest expectations.

Interzone people gathered around the projected image, and below, what we saw:

Our high-tech equipment...

The paper is 8 1/2 by 11 inches, so not only was the image sharp and bright, it was a good size, too.

 Below, a crop from the above photo, with labels.

And another view of folks gathered around enjoying the show:

The best part? I've since had three people come up and tell me they went home, got out their own binoculars, and gathered little crowds of their own. In the words of Douglas Adams, "Last chance to see!" There will be a transit of Mercury on May 9, 2016, and with that planet both smaller and more distant from us, it will be more challenging to view. But I'm very impressed with this projection technique- it's far superior to a pinhole viewer- and I'm guardedly optimistic we can pull it off.

Addendum: Today's APOD shows the image quality you can get with good equipment. In this case the Hinode satellite.

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

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...

Geo-Mystery

Interzone friend Katie, who will soon be off to Connecticut for her PhD in psychology, sent me an interesting link yesterday to the Wikipedia article on The Devil's Kettle at Judge C. R. Magney State Park, Minnesota. Take a look at the picture and spot the problem:
The Brule River splits in two just above a waterfall and falls in two cascades. That's not all that unusual; in fact it's pretty common. What's odd here is that one of the streams falls into a pothole. But wait! Even though that made me do a double-take, reading the text really blew my socks off. See, no one knows where the water goes, and a number of obvious tests have been done to solve the problem without useful results:

One [theory] is that, after dropping down the pothole, the river runs along a fault underground, or as a variant, that it enters an underground channel and comes out somewhere under Lake Superior. Both of these ideas have one valid aspect in common: they recognize that water must move downhill! But the main problem is creating a channel or conduit large enough to conduct the impressive flow of half the Brule River! Faulting commonly has the effect of crushing and fracturing the rock along the fault plane. This could certainly increase the permeability of the rock - its capacity to transmit water - but the connected open spaces needed to drain half the river would be essentially impossible, especially for such a distance. Furthermore, there is no geologic evidence for such a fault at the Devil's Kettle. Large, continuous openings generally do not occur in rocks, except for caves in limestone terranes. The nearest limestone is probably in southeastern Minnesota, so that doesn't help... Maybe the Devil's Kettle bottoms out fortuitously in a great lava tube that conducts the water to the Lake... Unfortunately for this idea, they are not the right kind of volcanic rocks! Rhyolites, such as the great flow at this locality, never form lava tubes, which only develop in fluid basaltic lava. Even the basalts in this area may not be the "right kind", being flood basalts that spread laterally as a sheet from fissures, not down the slopes of a volcano. No lava tubes have been found in the hundreds of basalt flows exposed along the North Shore. Furthermore, the nearest basalt is so far below the river bed, and even if it did contain an empty lava tube (very unlikely after its long history of deep burial) the tube would have to be both oriented in the right direction (south) and blocked above this site so that it isn't already full of debris. And there are no reports of trees or other floating debris suddenly appearing at one spot offshore in Lake Superior. The mystery persists.

Wow. This is a delightfully puzzling planet.

Coffee Kitteh

I'm impressed. As a rule, I drink straight coffee, and only rarely get the fancy drinks, so I don't get the artwork that often accompanies the latter. There are some baristas here who can pull off some some really pretty drinks, but I suspect the kitty above would be more than they'd try for. (EpicPonyz)

It's Full of Stars!

I tend to assume that many of the silly things that fly at me out of the innertubz are faked or photoshopped. Yesterday I posted an image of a "monolith action figure" about which I made that assumption... mistakenly. It's a real thing that's really for sale at ThinkGeek and Amazon.

• Properly proportioned to those in the movies 2001 and 2010 (1:4:9 - the squares of the first 3 integers)
• Made of semisynthetic, organic, amorphous, solid materials (AKA plastic)
• Zero (0) points of articulation
• May cause strange magnetic fields, action figure evolution, seeing things filled with stars, and/or more (or it might just sit on your desk doing nothing)

It's going for $12.99, which seems kind of spendy for what it is, but face it: it comes with that packaging, which is sort of priceless. (Hat tip to Rawley for letting me know this is an actual thing and where to find it.)

Lockwood, Bitches!

My friend Aria was playing with her new i-Touch last night, and took this photo in very poor light; I was surprised it came out as well as it did. Kind of weird how I've somehow turned into a status symbol for the young adults that hang out at my favorite coffee shop.

Deer Cookies

Identifying information wiped, except for the guilty party.

No More Time For "Studying"

Even though we Oregonians can generally cast our ballots any time during the two weeks prior to and including election day, I generally put it off until the end. Most years, I actually do spend a fair amount of time reading up on issues and candidates, and it's not all that uncommon for me to vote- at least during the last century- for non-democratic candidates, or against the party line on contentious issues. This year, it's purely been procrastination. I know of three races that I feel strongly about- Governor, US Senator, and US Representative. I'll be voting Kitzhaber, Wyden, and Schrader, respectively. I'm less than proud to say I am really not familiar with other candidates, or what measures are up. Nevertheless, I'm going to drop out of sight for a little while here and do a whirlwind run through the voter's guide and my ballot, and get this beast out of the way, as a fellow coffee drinker is doing above. Since I took the photo, she has dragged out her laptop, and is doing some follow-up research.

I have had homework assignments I've been excited about- that doesn't mean they're easy, or without frustration, but it does mean that when I'm done I feel as if I've accomplished something of value. I've had others that feel like pure drudge work. This year's voting, for the most part, feels like the latter.

Interzone People in the News

One of my Interzone friends was interviewed by KVAL for a story on National Coming Out Day.  Way to go, Kevin!  Here's the summary:

Oregon State and the University of Oregon were both recently named gay-friendly campuses by a national advocacy group, and a new program at OSU helps recruit queer students to study engineering and science.

And the closing sentence- a very powerful position in text journalism- is given to Kevin, as well: "This day is here to symbolize that people will accept themselves," he said, "and the rest of the world, whether they accept it or not - we will be gay."

So homophobes, grow up and get over it.  As I mentioned earlier elsewhere, "I promise not to worry about your sexuality if you don't worry about mine. Today is National Coming Out Day. I'm sorry we need one."

Followup: here's the video.

If Simon and Garfunkel Had Been Skeptics

The Sound of Science:

Just had a very pleasant conversation with Iris. She pointed out this video to me, which I thought was clever. Our conversation concluded with a discussion of the sludge ponds associated with minerals processing and coal burning, which wasn't so pleasant, in light of this week's disaster in Hungary.  The sludge ponds are much more common than I think people realize... topic for another time, I suppose.

Speaking of which, I have a post started about the fact that a rescue shaft has reached the trapped Chilean miners- though their actual removal will not start immediately, they and their families must be overjoyed at this news.  But I have a little catching up to do, and have decided to back-burner this post for the time being.

Sometimes, One NEEDS To Be A Grammar Nazi

A certain female Facebook friend was rooting for OSU's unfortunately named team.

Local Water Blogs

A week or so ago, a young woman came up and introduced herself as Abby, and asked if I wasn't the person who did this blog... which, of course, I am. She then proceeded to flatter me mercilessly. I always feel a little awkward getting complimented, but you know, I can deal. So I asked her what she did, and she's a student in international water issues.

Now water isn't really my "thing," by which I mean it's interesting, but I've spent very little time actually learning about water issues. I had a single class in hydrogeology as an undergrad, which I found painfully tedious; I don't remember whether I dropped or flunked it. I know when I graduated I saw groundwater as one possible application of my geology degree that I could live with ethically; as much as I'm fascinated with ore minerals and their genesis and concentration, I don't want to be the person to walk into unspoiled land and say, "This looks like a mighty fine place to dig a city-sized hole." I'm glad there are people who can, and I envy them. But I'm afraid I'd feel awful doing that for a living. The point is, groundwater and remediation as a career choice just looked awful to me at the time.

On the other hand, I'm painfully aware of the importance of water issues in the arid west. Even here in "rainy" western Oregon, I'm afraid we take abundant water for granted. We haven't had any rain- to my knowledge- since mid-June. We had a near miss yesterday, and it did rain and thunder to the south of Corvallis. I like rain, and was pretty excited, then disappointed when it didn't make it here.

I have been following Todd Jarvis' Rainbow Water Coalition since early May, but Abby pointed me at a couple of other local water blogs: her own is Water for the Ages. She's in the midst of graduate student crunch right now, though, so posting is light. The other is Michael Campana's Water Wired, and the impetus for this post.

Today's piece is "So You Think You Know Western Water Law? Read 'Ten Water Laws of the West,'" and it's a hoot. I'll just excerpt the conclusion, and Campana ends each of his posts with a quote; I like this one, so it's included too. Click over and read the whole thing; if you're at all familiar with western US water issues, "you'll laugh until you cry."

Conclusion: The principles that govern Western water law and policy have a long and somewhat distinguished history. It should also be noted that similar arid environment ditch-dependent civilizations ultimately collapsed under extreme environmental stresses, internal political conflict, and invasion by barbarian hordes. This is worth contemplating during a drought with various water interests fighting over who will get water in times of future shortages while the streets of Santa Monica or Scottsdale or Tucson are filled with RVs with New Jersey license plates.

"Human beings were invented by water to transport it uphill." -- Unknown

And I'd be remiss not to mention Anne Jefferson, who in addition to broader geoblogging at Highly Allochthonous, also blogs on watery topics at Watershed Hydrogeology Blog. Anne is currently at UNC Charlotte, but did her PhD here at Oregon State on Cascades hydrogeology. As a result, I think of her as a "local" blogger.

Happy 12th, Interzone!

Interzone will be "closing" at 4 pm today for a quick clean up and prep for their 12th anniversary party. Believe it or not, our local rag printed a story that wasn't from AP or McClatchy. (Also too, a little background on the bands, which should probably be taken with a grain of salt.) I'm going to try to stick around for a while, but I tend not to do well with crowds and noise. We'll see how much I can take.Thanks, Bill and Iris, for creating this space, my home away from home.

How Not To Be Seen

I ws just telling a friend about this clip. It's not exactly as I remember it, but it's a classic nevertheless. Of course, I think that's true of almost all of the Monty Python stuff. Enjoy, Chris!