AW #56: Photos From a Geologist's Perspective

This is a tough one, but important.

What makes a landscape beautiful, or a rock beautiful or a fossil beautiful, is more than just its superficial attractiveness. These things also have geological information. In documenting them, the geologist's task is like that of the portrait photographer: to show the beauty in the true.

Why tough? I got my first SLR camera in the early 1980's, after I'd already started on my geology degree. So, basically, I've been taking photos from a geological perspective from the outset of really trying to do serious photography (as opposed to random snapshots of friends). Thus it's difficult to contrast what's different in my perspective; it's the only one I know.

What I can say is this: I definitely think about the esthetic aspect when I'm framing a shot. I'm not really sure exactly what it is I think about, but I often try several different frames and zooms to get a shot that I like. The advent of DSLR's has made that much easier: with film, each shot was a bit less than a dollar taking into account film and developing costs, so a roll of 36 slides was not a cheap proposition. These days, I can fire merrily away, then pick the one or few shots I like. But I definitely want the photos to look appealing.

I tend to focus mostly on outdoor photos, at the scale of a cobble or boulder, to outcrop, to landscape scale. My photos of hand samples tend to be uninteresting, to me, at least.

But it's the comment "These things also have geological information," that resonates with me. There are two broad "topics" that I tend to focus on: things I know and understand, and want to share, and things I don't know or understand, and want to look at more carefully, or perhaps ask others what they think. Time is a huge limit on field trips, but not such a limit in looking carefully at photographs. As an example of the former, here's a recent one from "Islands of Seals:"

Now the fun thing about that one was that it was in that post I came up with a plausible explanation for a photo I'd taken moments earlier of a feature I thought, at the time, I understood, Elephant Rock:

I, like Silver Fox, am definitely thinking about what features are visible in the viewfinder before I press the shutter button. And one nice thing about digital photo technology is that it's easy to mark up and highlight the features I was looking at when I shot the image, as In the Neighborhood of the Splort:

And of course "The Splort" itself is likely my favorite photo I've taken on my new camera. I certainly did not understand WTF I was looking at with this one at the time, mostly because I was focused mainly on what had gone where, rather than looking at and thinking carefully about the faults that accommodated those motions. What I "saw" was a plug intruding down into the surrounding rock, and that just didn't make sense. So, get a picture of it.

A couple of other nice options with digital photography are the options to easily create panoramas, such the not-quite normal normal faults...

(this version has also been annotated) ...and animated gifs: Heeere's Water!

My feeling about gifs is that they offer an ability to photographically illustrate another dimension beyond the two of traditional photography. Rotating the view can offer a visceral sense of the depth in a view, or as here, the third dimension illustrated is change through time.

So in the end, I think what influences my perspective as a photographer of geology is an imperative to communicate the nature of the planet we live on. The esthetic, emotional aspects are important to me, too, but I guess even if a shot is gorgeous, if it's not telling a story, or part of a story, it's not one I'll be likely to take.

Geo 365: Feb. 6, Day 37: Oregon Dunes Viewpoint and Clay

Looking approximately NW from one viewing platform to another viewing platform in the Oregon Dunes. I don't want to try to guesstimate the elevation here, but from the ocean in the distance, you can see we're up at least a few hundred feet. The Wikipedia article says these dunes can get up to 150 meters (~500) feet in height.

What with the heavy coastal rain (The coast gets substantially more than we do here in the valley; we get about 40-45 inches/year, the coast gets 60-80) and temperate climate- rarely below freezing- plants desperately want to colonize these surfaces. However, summers are dry, and there are only a few species that can get roots down deep enough into open sand in a few wet months to tap sufficient moisture during the dry season. A second, more complicated, barrier to colonization is that the sand is dominated by quartz. Typical soils have lots of clay, and clay is the result of weathering of (in particular) feldspar.

Clays are complicated, but very important. In geology, the term has two very distinct meanings: a particle size and a mineral group. In the first sense, it means a particle size of less than 1/256th mm- way tiny. In the mineralogical sense... well, it's complicated. Clays are platy minerals, phyllosilicates, like micas. So they split easily into very thin sheets. Here's the important part with respect to this discussion: first, their inclination to split into sheets means they have stupendous surface area. Second, their composition gives them areas of weak positive and negative ionic charges distributed across those surfaces. This means they bind weakly to all sorts of anions and cations, and can capture them as they're transported by water moving through the soil. That may not seem like a big deal, but here's a partial list of things that clays will glom onto: ammonium, nitrate, potassium, phosphorus salts, and magnesium, among others. That list should ring a bell: it's the major set of soil nutrients needed by plants.

In short, clays allow soils to hold onto nutrients that plants need to grow and thrive, rather than just being carried away by seeping groundwater. Quartz and feldspar don't do that.

Incidentally, the term "clay" is often used loosely, because the things we call by that name tend to be both at the same time: clay minerals are most often clay-sized particles.

Now there is some feldspar in the sand, which is undoubtedly weathering to clays. The problem, in this eolian environment, is that when the wind is strong enough to blow the sand around, it's strong enough to remove clay from the area entirely. While sand bounces and rolls, "saltates," in the jargon, clay just goes airborne, and is probably deposited inland somewhere, or is washed out by rain.

What we're seeing, in the picture above, is an area that has been stabilized long enough that the clays have had a chance to develop without being removed, vegetation of one form and another has grown there long enough that the clays have captured a rich store of plant nutrients. This, in turn, has allowed a mature Douglas fir forest to be established and thrive. If we were to turn and look south from here (see this photo, from this post), we'd be looking over an area of open sand, moving and migrating through the years, and other swaths of forest in the distance.

This patch of forest is almost certainly doomed over a period of decades to centuries, but that's not really a bad or sad thing. Other areas will stabilize, and the process will repeat. While on one hand, geologists cherish life just as much as anyone else, on the other, I think we're more accepting of the idea that, in the long term, we're all dead. Oregon Dunes is simply an environment where "the long term" is shorter than many other places.

And one of the smallest and least obvious components of that environment, clay, is the thing that allows it to happen.

Photo unmodified.  March 8, 2012. FlashEarth Location, cross hairs on the viewing platform on which I was standing when I shot this photo, if you care to zoom in a bit.

Followup- meant to add that clays also cling to water, which means plants that can't colonize open sand, because they desiccate during the dry season, have at least some, if meager, water available year-round.

When Am I Thinking of the Thing, Itself?

The above just came through my Twitter feed. It's a retweet by someone I do follow, from someone I don't, so I've anonymized it.

When I was working in science ed, one of the things I think was valued about my input to discussions was my persistent need to tease out meanings of words, concepts, things. There are often meanings that are presumed by groups that go beyond formal definitions, and formal definitions often do not evolve to keep up with shifting nuances of meaning. I can't help but poke and prod at things like that.

One extended conversation, over several days, seemed to have most people either stumped, or bemused about why I thought it was important- and have no doubt, I did think it was important. It was my comment and question, "When I reflect on my own thinking, I find that when I think about a thing, I think in terms of images, metaphors, and similes. In other words, I think about the thing in terms of other things, not the thing itself. When am I actually thinking about the thing itself?"

Now that was a puzzler. Some suggested it might be that we do in fact think of all things in terms that are simply relational- that is, nothing has meaning except in terms of other things. I wasn't really satisfied with that; to me, it seems tautological. As I mentioned, some shrugged the question off as not very important, but it seemed to me that questions of individuality and uniqueness required a thinker to know what was distinct about "the thing itself." And that was what led me to a satisfying answer.

My solution? "I'm thinking about the thing itself when I'm thinking about how the thing is different from the images, metaphors, and similes I use to think about it."

#WebRockIDTips

A little while ago, I was recommended as a person who might be helpful in identifying unknown rock or mineral samples from photographs via Twitter. I'm flattered, to be sure. However, my response was measured: "Thanks for consideration, I'll certainly do what I can. However, ID'ing rocks with photo only is *very* tentative."

This is a topic that comes up often- probably daily, at least- in the online geology community: identifying rocks from a photo only is very tricky, and to describe the final consensus as "tentative" may even be an overstatement. It's perhaps best described as a hypothesis: an educated guess. As I've said before, after handling tens of thousands of samples, known and unknown, and hundreds of different kinds of rocks with hundreds of different kinds of textures and other features, the process of identification becomes internalized to the point that it's almost unconscious.  Most important, it is by no means only visual. We use all of our senses in identifying a sample. As an analogy, imagine we saw the entire visual spectrum in a gray-scale, and someone sent you a photograph of a rainbow, asking for an ID. You might very well guess it's a rainbow, but there are quite a number of other phenomena that create a semi-circle of brighter light in the sky- all sorts of arcs and halos from ice crystal diffraction, for example. So a practiced cloud observer might well guess "rainbow" is the most likely identification, but without more information (position of sun relative to unknown, sky/weather conditions, for example), you're just guessing which is most likely, with no real way to be confident.

So I started a hashtag, #WebRockIDTips, which will be quite short-lived, I'm sure, to post some comments on features and characteristics that I and others would find helpful in pinning down a somewhat more confident identification of a geological photograph- whether it's a single rock or a whole outcrop. This post is to archive those comments for future reference. Tweets with no identifier are mine; others' tweets will include an identifier. Here's what we have so far, and I'll add others as they come in.

• Just got recommended as a geotweep to help ID rocks over twitter. What, along with photo, also helpful? Scale (ruler great!)
• Different photos with different angles, perspectives.
• Location, Location, Location- the closer to original source, the better- this can seriously narrow possibilities.
• Oddities- what is unusual about this rock? What brought it to your attention? Density? Luster? Grains? Why interesting?
• What do other geotweeps wish folks requesting rock photo ID's would include as helpful info?
• ‏@maitri Pantone/web color and texture.
• ‏@meaganhogg Hardness. Anyone can grab a knife and scratch. Have you asked http://www.reddit.com/r/geology  ? Lots of Rock ID Qs there.
• Water-rounded surfaces almost useless by themselves, but in conjunction with freshly-broken surface, can add info.
• What, if any, minerals or features can you identify with some degree of confidence?
• @rschott My foremost recommendation is a plea for photos that are in focus (admittedly not always easy at the macro scale).
• ‏@rschott Beyond that I'd largely echo what you've suggested. Also advise the submittor to be prepared for non-definitive answers.
• @rschott Probably my best advice is to post the mystery rock photos to a blog that allows comments, and point to it from Twitter.
• ‏@rschott Best to get a conversation going around the sample on a space the poster can call their own.
• @aboutgeology I point people to my article "How to Look at a Rock" and invite them to my http://About.com  forum: http://bit.ly/Tn90Mt

As a final comment, I'll say that as a general rule, if I'm online, I'll respond within a few minutes to a tweet mention (@lockwood dewitt) that needs a response. I don't have a connection (of my own, or dependable) at home though. So if I'm offline, I can't respond. Who else among geotweeps has been active in rock photo ID's?

• @hypocentre 
• @rschott
• @aboutgeology 
• @callanbentley 
• @clasticdetritus
•  others?

If you can think of (an)other geotweep(s) who have/has been involved in rock photo identification- or if you have, or would be willing- please add suggestion(s) in comments below, or send via Twitter to me with a mention. If the latter, please include the hashtag  #WebRockIDTips

AW #46: Geology, Life and Civilization- Chaotic Feedback

Cat at Knowledge Flocs is hosting this month's Accretionary Wedge with a topic that looks relatively simple and straightforward, unless it's a topic you've spent some serious time contemplating, as I have. To wit: "How has life or civilisation been affected by geology or how has geology been affected by life?" With the provision that I'm going to change the last "or" to "and," here are some conclusions I've come to over the years, with a prefatory tangent.

The concept of "chaos," as it was developed during the late 70's and early 80's, and coming to public attention particularly in the late 80's, is at once fairly simple and straight-forward, but at the same time, I think, widely misunderstood. The important idea is that arbitrarily small differences in starting conditions of a particular system can lead to arbitrarily large differences in outcomes given enough time or iterations of the equations that describe said system. The iconic images illustrative of the concept, those of the Mandelbrot set, are the result of iterating a single simple equation (albeit one using complex numbers) to determine which starting conditions do not result in tending toward infinity after approaching infinite reiterations. Even very simple systems can exhibit chaotic behaviors, such as one of the ones first recognized as such, the Lorenz attractor. Note that while this is described as "a system of three ordinary differential equations," it isn't necessary to think of them as differential equations; one could consider them as a set of iterated steps:

• Using current x, y, z positions, calculate new velocities (dx/dt, dy/dt, dz/dt).
• Add new velocities to current positions to get new positions, and go back to beginning to reiterate.

Simple, huh?

The point is, the earth's components/systems, which because of my background, I tend to compartmentalize as geosphere [solid], hydrosphere [liquid], atmosphere [gaseous], and biosphere [living], with additional influences from the environment in which it rests ["space"], are each, in and of themselves extremely complex chaotic systems, involving huge numbers of variables. The above two examples are chosen to illustrate the simplicity of systems in which chaos can arise. Any one of earth's component systems is many magnitudes more complex than these... and when one tries to integrate all five into a unitary "Earth System..." well, speaking for myself, my mind just boggles. It's not a "complete fail;" I can dimly perceive patterns, trends, I can sensibly speculate, but I feel I'm relying more on constrained imagination than data, logic, and reason. My confidence in the "conclusions" I reach is best described as "minimal."

The focus of much popular science in the public mind is on things that are simply not understood by the vast majority of us (and yes, I intentionally include myself). Ask a group of random (or selected- I doubt it makes much difference) people, "Based on what you know and read, what are the most important questions science is trying to address?" I would be willing to wager responses that come up most frequently would include:

• What is the nature of the Higgs Boson? Does it exist?
• What is Dark Matter?
• What is Dark Energy? Does it exist?
• What sources of non-fossil energy are practical, and how can we transition to them with minimum effort?
• Does life exist elsewhere in the cosmos? Where might it?
• What is the cure for cancer/HIV/the common cold (Yes, I understand that the first and last are nonsensical, the second might too, and that's kind of the point.)

And while you might occasionally get something along the lines of "What are the consequences of global warming?," or "Is global warming real?," I'd also be willing to wager that an answer you would almost never get is along the lines of, "How can we better understand the dynamics of the total earth system, and make better predictions of the consequences of our interactions with it, in order to maintain our civilization without putting ourselves and important aspects of the earth at risk?"

And I ask, in all sobriety, "Can there be a more important question than that?"

The focus here is intended to be geology, but if you've read this blog for any length of time, you know I tend to flog the point that the solid earth is, directly or indirectly, the source of almost every single resource we use. I was going to say, "excluding air," but realized even that is in part a result of solid earth interactions with the biosphere. (Plants require phosphorus, potassium and magnesium, as well as a variety of micro-nutrients, that are available over the long term only from the solid earth.) I see no real point in beating on that theme again.

However, for those a little newer to OTI, here are a couple of older pieces that address this month's theme. The first, "Geo-Biz," focuses on some geology/economics news over a period of just a few days- and those few days were by no means atypical. Keep in mind "money" is at best a symbol of value, at worst an illusion. The real issue is the central consequence of being a living organism: the necessity to acquire resources. Economics is the study of how we as a species and a culture exchange resources we have in excess for those of which we are experiencing a deficit, with some other entity for which/whom the opposite is the case. Money is merely a consensual illusion that facilitates such exchanges.

The second, "Unanswered Questions," considers one aspect of a question that fascinates me deeply, and has for many years: "How has the presence and ongoing evolution of life influenced the overall evolution of the planet?" Specifically, the question I address is "how would the earth be different if life had never existed on it?" Spoiler: my conclusion is that for all practical purposes, it would be completely unrecognizable.

To end on an optimistic note, there are uncountable numbers of people working to make sure that we as a civilization continue to acquire the resources we need, and similarly uncountable numbers trying to assess, predict and avoid chances of environmental problems, disasters, and catastrophes. In other words, the scientific question I regard as most important is being addressed. I'll grant we're a long way from definitive answers on many important aspects of that question, and further still from integrating component answers into a broad understanding of "the Earth System," but the lack of discussion in most sources does not mean no one is working on it. Millions are. Many of these are scientists, many are not. Of the scientists, many are geologists. Many are computer scientists, chemists, atmospheric scientists, climatologists, astronomers or physicists in other sub-disciplines, biologists, and so on. But it bothers me, as a matter of pride, as a matter of pragmatism, and as a concern for the future, that the media, and as a result, the general public, is essentially blind to the fact of how fundamentally civilization is grounded (pun intended) in understanding, and understanding how to responsibly use, the solid earth.

Heh

Earlier this week, I glanced quickly at the forecast, and moved on in exasperation: every day was predicted to top out in the low to mid-fifties, with overcast skies and showers. This has been a cold, wet "spring" to the extent that it feels more like typical winter weather.

So yesterday's weather took me by very pleasant surprise: it was almost completely clear all day, with a few gorgeous, cottony cumulus clouds to highlight the bright blue sky, temperatures forged into the lower 60's, and sunshine... lovely, warm, bright, toasty sunshine!

It was glorious.

Of course it was too good to last, with overcast (though still fairly warm over the weekend) today and rain forecast for tomorrow, then cooler and wet through next week. I'm not complaining; it was nice while it lasted, and I'm sure in a few months I'll be sniveling about the heat.

The Oregonian's weather staff is not one to miss an opportunity for a nice bit of acerbic wit, though, and I for one feel quite appreciative of their efforts.Followup: Check out the chart under the above headline and photo- it shows quite well how dreary it has been for the last month and a half.

A Day of Infamy

69 years ago today, Japan's forces attacked Americans at Pearl Harbor. The Big Picture has a collection of 34 photos from that day and its aftermath; some of them, like the above, seem very familiar to me, so I'm giving it the "Iconic Photos" label.

It seems downright impossible that this event was closer to my birth- by over 33 years- than my current age is.

Accretionary Wedge #27: Important Geological Experiences

NOTE: If you submitted a post for this AW, and don't see it here (or know of one that I didn't include) please leave a comment and a link.  I'm almost certain I lost at least one in writing this up, maybe more, and it's quite possible I simply missed others.  Thanks for your help. I'll leave this note up for a while, then clip it off when I cross post to the AW blog in a few weeks.

A few weeks back I suggested a topic for the next AW, important geological experiences:

It may (or may not) be something that led you to the discipline , or a class, or a work experience, or a field experience. It might have been a puzzle or problem solved, or job landed, a degree completed. Perhaps it was something else entirely. It could have been an awful, disastrous experience from which you learned an important lesson. Maybe it's still in your future- something you're looking forward to. Additionally, explain why it was important.

The response has been nothing short of overwhelming.

It has left me with something of a problem- how to organize it?  After reading the posts, I went back though and loosely organized them into somewhat arbitrary themes that stuck out in my mind: "New faces, New places," "Thinking it through, Working it out," "The Real World," "Limitations," and "Field Camp." Many people's experiences included aspects of two or more of these themes, so I have pigeon-holed mercilessly. Without further ado, here are the submissions.

 New faces, New places

This theme developed around the pattern of people engaging with landscapes, people and cultures that were formerly new or even alien to them, and finding wonder.

(From here- link #1 under "Photographs-" inspired by Coconino's post)

The first submission was from a high school friend, Steve, who is not a blogger or a geologist, but whose geological future looks somewhat ominous:

I have a candidate, a twofer: a young French friend of ours was in Chile with her boyfriend (now husband) when the recent big earthquake struck, staying in the same beach resort where some of the most dramatic photos were taken, and then, a couple weeks later, she was in Paris when the volcano in Iceland blew its top,and as a result she was one of many left stranded, unable to return home, because of the volcanic ash. Personally, it makes me a little nervous that she's now living in Albuquerque, close to me and mine, and close to the Valles Caldera...

Michael Welland at Through the Sandglass had the experience of getting gnashed between the grinding plates of geology's great paradigm shift in Innocent Abroad.

For my presentation I brought out several plate reconstruction graphics that I had hauled across the Atlantic; I put these up on the wall of the seminar room, and launched into the story – the Cambridge (UK) edition, that is. And then it happened. The imposing voice of Bernie Kummel interrupted my narration – and he was coming down on me like a proverbial ton of bricks. A sense of shock and horror came over me: Bernie Kummel, the Bernie Kummel, didn’t believe a word I was saying.

Ian Stimpson of Hypo-theses fame relates a (mostly) solitary adventure in a foreign land, and brings to our attention another emergent theme among geologists: the stress of feeling alone, but in some way obligated to find "the answer."

Prior to this our mapping training was done as buddy pairs but here I was on my own. We wouldn’t be allowed by health and safety regulations to do this today, which is a real shame because it was a wonderful experience. It was just me against the rock. I had to sort things out for myself. It took me about four weeks to work out why in one part of the area the bedding/cleavage relationship was telling me that the beds were upside-down where as I knew from the stratigraphy that they were the right-way up. It was a struggle, but I cracked it – myself.

The next couple of entries highlight the disproportional influence just one or two mentors who care can have on a young geologist's life path. History of Geology's Dave Bressan discusses how getting away from the dry structure of a discipline, and focusing on enthusiasm can make a world of difference.

This changed suddenly; the next lecture was hold by a new visiting lecturer - with a complete different approach. Even if the step by step procedure of plant determination was inevitable, the mood was noticeably better, there was an introduction at the beginning of the lessons about the characteristics of the plants we should observe, and inevitable errors perpetuated by us beginners were not ridiculed, but explained and resolved.

And in what I nominate as one of the most deeply moving geologic experiences of all time (of all time!) Matri describes her transition into geology under the guidance of a professor who truly understands what it means to be a mentor, in "Of Honest Teachers and Precious Rock Hammers." My sniffles and watery eyes are just allergies.  Seriously.

...through the course of the semester, Professor Chen noticed this curiosity and indecision on my part, and went out of his way to convince me to enroll in UIUC’s geoscience program of study. During office hours, he would honestly and tirelessly list all of the degree’s challenges and, like every good Asian parent, none of its rewards. That mineralogy required chemistry and optics, being able to identify thousands of minerals and late hours in the lab. That the geology curriculum required geophysics which in turn needed linear algebra and differential equations and three physics classes including electricity & magnetism. That structural geology was difficult for many but I should take it the following semester when it was offered. That much field and lab work was required on weekends. That distinction and honors in the program (and he expected no less) came only with undergraduate research and a thesis. That beyond here were graduate school, more graduate school and, maybe some day, a postdoctoral position and then the tenure track. Was this man insane?

Coconino of Ordinary High Water Mark discusses a youthful memory from another land and a shocking realization that "impossible" landscapes do exist- an experience I know I've had, and which I suspect most of us share.

It blew my mind that day, that mountains did "grow" that way, that the art I had seen was not all wrong. I looked at those slides with wonder and awe. And they inspired a love of landforms and earth processes I've never lost.

Kyle House and I share this much: we moved to the Pacific Northwest, and if not overwhelmed by what we found, we were certainly whelmed, fair and square.

...when you are a typical kid growing up in Texas and Oklahoma, you think the only mountains in the country are in Colorado. Then, if you take a trip to Seattle on a clear day and see the unthinkably huge, ice-laden edifice of Mt. Ranier looming over the city like no mountain you have ever seen in your short life, all bets are off. Everything changes. The Cascades blew my mind. Surprisingly (or not), I was such a slacker in 1980 that Mt. St. Helens never registered for me (even though I was 15 at the time). But once I got to western Washington only three years later, my life changed forever. I was completely enthralled by the scenery and the juxtaposition of ice-clad volcanoes and the ocean.

Anne of Highly Allochthonous describes a flood in the middle of the Australian desert.  Desert downpours and flooding have fascinated me since my first visit to the Grand Canyon, and I'm a little jealous: I still haven't witnessed a good rainstorm in the desert.  On the other hand, I have to admit some of her description gives me a case of the willies.

But while the floodwaters had passed in Alice, there was still LOTS of water in the desert. As desert roads aren’t always equipped with bridges, there were several places where the vehicles had to ford slow-moving or ponded water. Even in college, I was enough of a river rat to know that driving across a flooded roadway is a great way to get yourself killed and I remember lots of consternation at the prospect of the water crossing pictured below. But we were literally in the middle of nowhere so my options for abandoning the trip were limited and after watching at least a dozen other vehicles ford the water, my friends and I got back on our bus and safely made it across the remnants of Rosita’s rain.

Thinking it through, Working it out

 A central theme of geology- one I sometimes wonder if we spend enough time discussing explicitly- is developing stories, narratives and explanations for how something came to be.  It can be stressful when facing this imperative the first few times, though as we'll see in a later section, geologists learn to cope.

(The Far Side, by Gary Larson; picture from here, inspired by the coincidences and others that can lead us to the conclusions we claim as our own)

Geology Happens reminded me of a post from early summer of 2009, when he realized that landscaping gravel was full of familiar rocks, leading him to recall how

...with some simple tools I could interpret a rock, a outcrop, a road cut and even a mountain range. This idea shook me up. Here is something that happened a long time ago and with a few rules of physics I could construct a story about the origins of a landform...I was hooked.

...or a truckload of river gravel, for that matter!

The experience I chose also involved the stress of feeling under pressure to come up with a plausible, hopefully convincing, story for how some rocks that seemed out of place came to be where they were.

In our soil pits, from which we collected samples and water that had leached through the top meter of the soil, we kept finding these clusters of basalt cobbles, about fist-sized. They too were deeply weathered, but under a centimeter or two of clay, quite fresh.  Judging by the weathered surface, they were pretty angular; if they had been transported, it wasn't far.  Without thinking much about it, I simply assumed they had moved in by soil creep. It turned out later that creep wasn't a tenable mechanism, because there wasn't enough uphill uphill from our site, and no basalt outcrop either.

At Mountain Beltway, Callan presents a reminder of something those of us with years doing geology sometimes forget: what seems simple to the experienced can be troublesome and/or profound to those just getting started. Even something as straight-forward as a first anticline.

Bam! It hit me: I got the idea of an anticline at that point — the idea that a structure like an anticline could be so large that I couldn’t actually see it from my earthbound human-sized perspective, and I could only infer it from detailed measurements of the rock structures. It was a revelation to me: this valley and its surrounding ridges were part of a massive fold. The anticline must have breached in the middle, with the shale eroding away faster than the sandstone, producing a valley flanked by two ridges.

Matt Kuchta, who blogs at Research at a Snail's Pace, not only contributes to this month's wedge, but also foreshadows the next, in a post I summarized in my organizational notes as "slickensided lightbulb."

One of the instructors put me on the spot, asking me to speculate on how one might get Ordovician rock sitting next to Precambrian basement rock (skipping all those Cambrian rocks in-between). The outcrop was nothing special - in fact, much of it was covered by talus and vegetation. But, being a minting geologist, I thought for a moment, then looked at the rocks by my feet. There was a chunk of beautifully polished dolomite. "A fault" I said, holding up the sample. I managed to earn "field-trip-brownie-points" not only by providing a reasonable answer, but also a piece of material evidence for my idea.

The Real World

In the academic study  of science education, there is a substantial body of literature on the phenomenon of "classroom science," the perception in students' minds that what they're being asked to learn is how the classroom world works... which may have little or no bearing on how the rest of the world works.  Though field experiences have already made a number of appearances thus far, some of the cases seemed to warrant an independent category, of simply witnessing and confronting "the real world" as an experience in and of itself, with the pressure to learn and/or perform fading to inconsequential.

Above, the youngest geoblogger, Sam, who writes with her dad at Geology Blues, posts a delightful photo of herself at Devil's Tower, Wyoming. From one geoblogger to another, a high compliment: you rock, Sam!

My Dad asked me to write what my most interesting experience in geology was. It was when we still lived in Montana, we went to Devils Tower. I thought of it as a big rock that was not a mountain. I liked camping there and waking up to see the sunrise. We took a walk around the base and we saw a huge Pine Snake!

Ron Schott at his Geology Home Companion takes an interesting slant on the theme: What is his most important experience, not from a personal perspective, but from the perspective of the earth and its processes?  I like his choice.

So many geological processes that we witness at Earth’s surface are destructive (e.g., weathering, erosion, mass wasting, etc.) but how often do we experience Mother Earth renewing herself? I submit that it is not often, yet when considered in the context of the rock cycle, it is of fundamental importance. How much less exciting would geology be on a planet that had long since ceased to be active? Thus I choose for my most “important” geological experience being present at the birth of a rock.

I can relate to Planelight's choice of important experience, at Life in Plane Light, since far and away the bulk of the time I've spent in the field has been with learners, not for research or formal purposes, but to try to develop excitement and appreciation (which can only very rarely be assessed afterwards) in students who have chosen to be there.

I enjoy teaching in the classroom and lab, but my favorite part of my job is taking students into the field. Whether it's just down the road or halfway across the country, watching students learn how to look at the ground beneath their feet and the landscape around them to backtrack the geological history of an area is worth the headaches of renting vehicles, planning food that can be cooked over a campstove, and wondering if its going to downpour or snow. To me, going into the field is the reason why I love being a geologist.

Why am I not surprised that the choice by Dana, at En Tequila Es Verdad, lyrically captures the sheer awe and wonder that geologists feel in the field?  Yes, learning to figure out the story is important, but it's the amazement we experience as we do so that drives us to do it again and again. (Dang, Dana, it's tough to pick just one passage!)

That, my darlings, was the day my young world ended forever, and my old one began.  Continental drift went out the window: no more vague images in my mind of stately continents floating slowly about to fetch up gently against one another before drifting apart again like guests at a soiree.  The rolling hills around Dewey ceased to be the least-interesting part of the drive between old home and new: I never could pass that way again without thinking of continents going bang up against each other, crushing and transforming rock as they collided.  Rocks meant something: they weren't just pretty baubles, but storytellers with a rich store of history to draw on.  The world changed fundamentally from era to era, and the past dictated the present.  Landscapes weren't just scenery anymore.  They were portals to other worlds. 

Limitations

I really doubt that geology is unique in the way that its students confront "fail" on such a regular basis, but there does seem to be an unusual acceptance among its practitioners that we are, at the very least, occasionally not going to find an answer that stands up to testing, or even that satisfies us in the short term.  If this category seems derogatory, you probably haven't spent much time doing geology.

(Found here, with the comment "Truer words were never spoken..." Except in geology, a better caption might be "It's better to know and accept your limitations than to be eulogized.")

CB Dawson of Point Source gets at a perennial problem in many disciplines: techniques and technologies have been developed to simplify doing whatever it is you want to do, but the devil is in the details.  If you don't know what's happening in the process of simplification, can you say you know what's happening at all?

After the initial glow of “wow, that was easy!” I realized I was far from done. I had so many questions:

• How did the model correspond with other geophysical data and local stratigraphy?
• Was the model meaningful?
• Was the model equally valid and reliable in all areas?
• How does the software get from the initial data I provide to the inverse model?

I had so many questions, but not enough answers! I dug into the software. I learned more about the modeling algorithm. I learned about the variety of settings you could use when running the model. I learned about sensitivity analyses and maximum/minimum versions of the model values.

Jessica (AKA Tuff Cookie) at Magma Cum Laude offers a personal, poignant, and very wise bit of insight for anyone practicing a complex technical skill... especially for the first time:

As a freshman, I may have been bright enough that my advisor invited me to come on a trip that was normally restricted to upperclassmen, but I should also have been bright enough to realize my own limitations. That was one of the best things I learned on that trip, and one that's helped me immensely since. If I can take a step back from whatever frustrating problem I'm dealing with at the moment, I can figure out what I tools and knowledge I need to acquire to solve it. That process may be slow and frustrating itself, but it's much better than thinking I know everything (and then finding out, usually in embarrassing ways, that I'm wrong). Come to think of it, this is a great way to look at life in general, not just geology.

Julia at Stages of Succession reminds me of a very similar experience I had- though for better or for worse (the outcome was fine in both cases), no one would have had any idea how far afield I was. I'll recount my own story another time, but for now, here's Julia's "Great Cock-up on Great Cockup."

About an hour before our rendezvous point, I was on the saddle between Knott and Great Calva, with Hause Gill and Wiley Gill either side of me. I had intended to go down Wiley Gill, meet up with the track along the Caldew, and stroll back to the car. To this day, I have no idea why I did this, as I was perfectly capable of reading a compass.

I went the wrong way.

BTW, I suspect anyone who doesn't have a story similar to Julia's simply hasn't been at it long enough.  Yet.

Field Camp

The final category for this month's wedge is "Field Camp." As I said at the outset, there is a lot of overlap in the themes I picked out to organize these posts, and a number of others already written up might fit here as well.  These are ones that struck me as really getting at the essence of the field camp experience.

John Wesley Powell's first camp at Green River, Wyoming, from the US National Archives (entry #11, here).

Silver Fox of Looking For Detachment describes the events that fortuitously allowed her to return to her beloved west, instead of "a sentence term in an overgrown, kudzu-infested, hot and humid field camp."

Yes! Bright, brilliant geology everywhere, just the way I had always — after growing up near the Sierra Nevada — thought it should be. And rocks besides limestones! And volcanic rocks that weren't old and decrepit greenstones of nearly unimaginable age!

In addition to being a classic field camp story, Brian Romans at Clastic Detritus again captures that deer-in-the-headlights, dichotomous feeling of "is that really all there is to it?" combined with "I have no clue what I'm doing; do you really expect me to believe I got this right?"

Using my mechanical pencil to point on the topographic map, I said: “We think the contact runs right through here”.

He looked at me with a grin, saying “Well, you should go ahead and draw the contact there”. I remember looking at the map, looking out at the landscape again, looking back down at the map with my head cocked to the side. I simply wasn’t sure if what I was seeing was correct. My professor must have seen the lack of confidence in my body language. He took my hand with the pencil in it and, with his hand over mine, drew a small line on the map where I said the contact was. I looked up at him saying “That’s it?” and he smiled saying “Yep … now keep going”.

Last, but most certainly not least, Geotripper Garry Hayes' story isn't of the typical undergrad field camp, which generally comes near the end of a four-year degree, but an intensive and grueling field experience nonetheless: hiking to the bottom, and back out, of the Grand Canyon.

We were going in, spending 4 or 5 days below the rim, checking out each and every one of the layers from top to bottom (and back to the top again).

The trip involved a hike along some of the semi-maintained trails that are not usually a part of the tourist experience. The route down was along the New Hance Trail to the Colorado River, then along the Tonto Platform to Horseshoe Mesa, and then up the steep trail to Grandview Point. The entire journey was a revelation, as we saw the Paleozoic and Proterozoic sedimentary formations up close and personal (miles are meaningless in the canyon; when climbing out, you note what layer you've reached, not a mileage post), explored a copper mine, climbed through two limestone caverns (with ropes and helmets, no less), and even of all things, saw the aurora borealis from our camp on Horseshoe Mesa. I walked out of the canyon a geology major.

So that winds up this edition of the Accretionary Wedge.  It's been both more work and more rewarding than I expected. More work in the sense that I hadn't really thought about how difficult it would be to both organize and give fair play to the tremendously wide set of experiences- a great many shared by most of us, and some almost unique- and the overlapping nature of those experiences.  More rewarding than I expected in the sense that working through these recollections has triggered memories of a large number of other geological stories I should tell at some point, picking up on the themes so wonderfully expressed in these entries: sometimes a little self-deprecatingly humorous, sometimes reeking of frustration- or spitting in the face of frustration- but always, always, always anticipating that next moment of awe and wonder, the feelings that drew us to this sublime discipline in the first place.

I just realized a bit ago that I haven't actually put up a notification of the next Accretionary Wedge at the AW Blog (Now remedied), though I have here at OTI and on Twitter.  But just as a reminder, Matt has kindly offered to host October's AW, with the theme of "Deskcrops."  See the link for full details, and leave comments and links to your submissions at Matt's call for posts.

Moly Be Damned

There's an interesting article regarding exploration on a potential molybdenum deposit near Boise, Idaho at The NYT. I feel it does a pretty good job of discussing the pros and cons, economic vs. environmental concerns.

While I'm pro-environment and pro-conservation compared to most, I have this pragmatic streak that comes from a strong background in the sciences- geology and biology particularly. I don't think most people in the US really comprehend that the mere fact they're alive means they are going to consume resources. There seems to be a mindset that if environmentalists can block all resource extraction, people will just quit demanding those resources. I wish it worked that way, but it doesn't.

I can understand and empathize with some of the environmental concerns here: "conservation groups and public health advocates are already lining up to oppose the project, arguing it threatens a watershed that provides one-fifth of Boise's municipal water supply." That is certainly not a threat to take lightly. But I get frustrated with what often appears to me to be a knee-jerk reflex to try to block any new resource project that comes along, rather than getting a sense of the company's reputation and plans, and attempting to improve those as needed. My interpretation of this piece is that there are no clear-cut threats of environmental degradation and contamination beyond those involved in mining generally. In other words, I see nothing described that suggests sediment and heavy metal contamination wouldn't be avoidable with appropriate planning, oversight and enforcement. Obviously, as we saw in the Gulf over the last few months, "planning, oversight and enforcement" can be iffy, but a point that wasn't made clearly enough in the MSM is that the Macondo blowout had minimal, if any, effect on people's consumption of petroleum resources. If that well hadn't been drilled, another one would have.

The situation is the same with this mine. It irritates me that the enviro's big complaint at this point is that there is no way for The NFS to "just say no," even though the article makes clear that they do have the option to regulate it to commercial infeasibility, if they feel its environmental effects will be too severe. "In theory, Baird said, the Forest Service could make such a project too expensive to pursue."

So the point really is, I don't have the background or detailed information I would need to support or oppose this operation, but I don't think that opposition to extracting natural resources as a matter of principle is a very worthwhile attitude. And that attitude is on full display in this article.

Perspective

Via Newsweek, a graphic to illustrate the size of the portal to the rest of the world, from the perspective of the trapped Chilean miners. (reduced 30% to fit; click to see full-size) The question I still haven't seen addressed- though I haven't looked that hard- is how they're meeting their sanitary needs. Is there a corner that simply drains off to deeper levels? Still, from everything I've heard, they're doing very well indeed, in terms of both physical and psychological health. I anticipate that they'll actually have more difficulty dealing with celebrity and loss of privacy after the ordeal than they're having with the current situation.

They're in my thoughts.

Up and Down, Here and There

I have always loved astrophotos. I'm just old enough to have watched the original airings of Star Trek TOS, and I remember being fascinated with the photos of galaxies especially. It wasn't until I started my geology degree that I started to really think about what separated geology from astronomy. My conclusion is that it's only a matter of perspective. If we were Mercurians (?), looking outward from the sun, with earth in the night sky, this is what we would see:Earth and Luna, from the MESSENGER robotic probe, yesterday's APOD. If we were a life form evolved to live on the surface of Mercury, to what degree would we be able to make sense of the processes on Earth's surface? Would we eventually comprehend volcanism on a planet that has been volcanically inert for eons?

We face the same conundrum from our perspective on this planet. It has been a long, involved process simply to make sense of the environment in our immediate nieghborhood- and there are plenty of unanswered questions still. Yet we are capable of extrapolating from both natural and experimental/laboratory conditions and making provisional statements about the nature and history of other objects in the universe... some only light minutes away, some millions or even billions of light years away. (below from Hawaiian Lava Daily)
I think that's part of what nearly paralyzes me when I see images that combine beautiful geology and astronomy: the realization that I make a distinction between them only because I happen to be here rather than there. And the feeling that there may very well be- maybe likely to be- some unimaginable creature there looking back and contemplating exactly the same thing.

K+5

Five years ago today, Katrina plowed ashore in New Orleans, killing thousands, and proving for once and for all Reagan's sweet little homily that a government with no interest in governing is the enemy. If there's a phrase more terrifying than "We're from the government, and we're here to help," it's "Fuck you. You're on your own. This is your fault." Which latter statement is, of course, what stranded residents of New Orleans heard from the Bush administration.

"Heh heh! Sucks to be you!"

This was a period leading up to my complete abandonment of TeeVee, and I had given up on news from that medium... as a result, it was Wednesday before I really realized just how bad the situation had become. Looking primarily for text, I saw few images in the aftermath. In many ways, I was better informed regarding the details than most, but I missed and was unaware of the viscerally gripping pictures that were circulating. It wasn't until much later- weeks to months- that I started filling in the gaps there.

Friday, The Big Picture ran a series of 49 photos commemorating this anniversary, many new to me. The one below is one that gave me pause and made me feel a little teary.

Leonard Thomas, 23, cries after a SWAT police team burst into the flooded home where he and his family were living in New Orleans on Sept. 5, 2005. Neighbors had reported that the family was squatting in the house in the wake of Hurricane Katrina but the authorities left after the family proved they were the owners. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

I find it more than a little ironic that this happens a day after Beck, Palin and Teabaggers United marched on the Lincoln Memorial, screaming and crying about how if everyone were as religiously committed as they are, as blindly jingoistic as they are, and above all, as white and affluent as they are, well everything would be just peachy.

Hate to disillusion you folks, but that ain't happenin'. And even if it was, I don't believe that was the message your Jayzus was trying to convey.

Miscellaneous Amusements

Some stuff that has amused me and entertained me in recent days has been piling up, and I finally have time to throw it together into some sort of online slumgullion.What Would Jack Do?
Sofa Pizza, and from the same post:

WASHINGTON – In what might be the most serious challenge to Barack Obama’s legitimacy as President, a new poll shows that one out of five Americans are not convinced that Mr. Obama exists.

(The Borowitz Report)
I love optical illusions. This is another where if you can hold your eye fixed on a particular point, nothing seems to be wrong. But if you allow your gaze to wander naturally, the apparent motion is downright freaky. FuckYeahAlbuquerque
Darius Whiteplume's Tumblr. Now look, we don't want kids to realize this. The fact that they don't is the only reason the human race still exists.
Darius Whiteplume's Tumblr, posted with the note, "Michael Ian Black Goes After a Racist Obama-Hater During his Set." I have mixed feelings; speaking truth to power is dangerous, but worthwhile. Speaking truth to "fucking idiots" may not be as consistently dangerous, but I'm afraid it's pretty pointless most of the time. Idiots, by their nature, cannot comprehend that they're idiots.
Pop culture ore deposits and where to find them. Blackadder
I may or may not have anything more to say about this travesty later. I've been waiting to see how it unfolds. So far, pretty much what I expected. (Clay Bennett, from The Chattanooga Times Free Press)
The Daily What... I find it seriously troubling that I can find young women slightly older than a third of my age so appealing.
EpicPonyz... will this become a regular Thursday post? I have regular posts for Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. There's no particular reason to have one for the other three days, but no reason not to. And I've loved Norse mythology since about second grade. We'll see.

USGS, Ugh

The title is a bit of an overstatement I guess. I generally don't pay very close attention to USGS's Frequently Asked Questions; most I already know, and most of the remaining are questions I don't really care about. But the Q's and A's come through Ron Schott's Shared Items, so they get skimmed over, and from time to time... well, clunk. Here's the most recent example:

What are some examples of supervolcanoes?

Volcanoes that produced exceedingly voluminous pyroclastic eruptions and formed large calderas in the past 2 million years would include Yellowstone, Long Valley in eastern California, Toba in Indonesia, and Taupo in New Zealand. Other 'supervolcanoes' would likely include the large caldera volcanoes of Japan, Indonesia, Alaska (e.g. Aniakchak, Emmons, Fisher), and other areas.

That answer should also include a statement that "Supervolcano" doesn't really have a defined meaning, and isn't used by volcanologists or geologists generally. It was created as an attention-getter by the BBC. From Wikipedia,

The term "supervolcano" was originally used in the BBC popular science television program Horizon in 2000 to refer to these types of eruptions. That program introduced the subject of large-scale volcanic eruptions to the general public.

Volcanologists and geologists do not refer to "supervolcanoes" in their scientific work, since this is a blanket terms that can be applied to number of different geothermal conditions.

Here's another:

Why are there no faults in the Great Valley of central California?

The Great Valley is a basin, initially forming some ~100 million years ago as a low area between the subducting ocean plate on the west (diving down under the North American plate) and the volcanoes to the east (now the Sierra Nevada mountains). Since its formation, the Great Valley has continued to be low in elevation. Starting about 15 million years ago the tectonics changed in California and instead of the ocean plate diving down under the North American plate, it began to slide along it, with the ocean plate moving northward. This movement occurs along the San Andreas fault and the many other faults that are roughly parallel to it.

The faults on the east side of the Great Valley, mostly in Nevada, are the result of the North American plate pulling apart there, in a different tectonic setting that results in the linear mountain ranges and long valleys you can see there. The faults just to the east of the Great Valley are mostly old faults and may or may not still be active today. So there is movement of faults in two separate regimes: sideways motion along the San Andreas system to the west-southwest, and pull apart motion along the faults mostly in Nevada to the east-northeast of Sacramento.

Now that is actually a pretty nice answer, with lots of clear and succinct information. My quibble? There are almost certainly lots of faults in the Great Valley, but most if not all are not currently active. I'm not a big fan of the phrase "earthquake fault," but I do think it serves something of a purpose in helping people understand that some faults present a seismic risk of greater or smaller magnitude, but others do not. The fact that a particular fault isn't believed to be a potential earthquake risk doesn't make it "not-a-fault" though. And as I said, there are probably plenty of faults in the valley. They may not be mapped, though, because most of the bedrock is buried under a deep blanket of alluvial fill. So the above answer, while I like it generally, simply needs to clarify the distinction between active and inactive exposed faults and inactive obscured faults.

The third one, which really got under my skin, and was the reason I started setting these aside to see if there was a pattern, was this one:

What is a coral reef?

Coral reefs can be damaged by natural processes, such as storms, but they are increasingly at risk from human activities. Oil spills and pollutants can threaten entire reefs. Excessive nutrients from land sources, such as sewage and agricultural fertilizers, promote the growth of algae that can smother corals. Other organisms harmful to corals, such as crown-of-thorns starfish, multiply when the species that prey on them are removed.

Coral productivity is also decreased when land developments for agriculture, industry, and housing increase sediment transported from land into coastal waters as runoff. This clouds the waters and blocks light necessary for photosynthesis by algae living in corals. Corals face serious risks from various diseases. When corals are stressed, they often expel the algal symbionts that are critical to their health in a process commonly known as coral bleaching. One known cause of coral bleaching is increases in ocean temperatures, possibly due to global warming.

So, what's being done to protect coral reefs? Scientists worldwide are working to understand the impacts of natural processes and human activities on the health and sustainability of coral reefs. In the United States, this effort is being coordinated by the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force. As part of the task force, the USGS is contributing to the effort to understand the biological and geological controls that affect our Nation's coral reefs. USGS coral reef research focuses on detailed mapping of reefs, the development of monitoring techniques, studying reefs' geologic growth and development, and how they are affected by water quality, fishing, and sedimentary and hydrologic processes. These efforts will help provide information that is essential if coral reefs are to be saved.

Do you see anything in there that answers the question? It's not that risks to coral and reefs are unimportant, but the question posed is ignored, and in fact, the "answer" presumes that the reader already knows what a coral reef is. Here are the first two paragraphs from the Wikipedia page:

Coral reefs are underwater structures made from calcium carbonate secreted by corals. Corals are colonies of tiny living animals found in marine waters containing few nutrients. Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, and are formed by polyps that live together in groups. The polyps secrete a hard carbonate exoskeleton which provides support and protection for the body of each polyp. Reefs grow best in warm, shallow, clear, sunny and agitated waters.

Often called “rainforests of the sea”, coral reefs form some of the most diverse ecosystems on earth. They occupy less than 1% of the world ocean surface, about half the area of France, yet they provide a home for 25% of all marine species, including fish, molluscs, echinoderms and sponges.

Look, the USGS has, in any one of its employees, more geological expertise than I have or ever will have. I'm not sure what's going on here, and these are three chosen bits that stood out to me as being sub par, incomplete, or off the mark. I'm not by any means suggesting these are representative. But when I see better answers to geological questions at Wikipedia than from our National Geological Survey, it bugs me.

GUTOP

Not a surgical procedure for weight loss, but "Grand Unified Theory of Palinisms." Jacob Weisberg, who you may remember as the archivist who collected eight-plus years of Bushisms, is still at it, but with a new collection. Following is an excerpt from his book Palinisms: The Accidental Wit and Wisdom of Sarah Palin, due out in a couple of days, and previewed at Slate:

But the best Palinisms of all result when the huntress encounters something she wasn't hunting for—that is, when Sarah Palin comes into contact with most anything to do with domestic, foreign, or economic policy. It is this situation that generates those priceless let me tap-dance and, also, sing for you a little song while you think of a different question moments. One such was the juncture in her mind-boggling 2008 interview when Katie Couric asked Palin to name a Supreme Court decision she disagreed with, other than Roe v. Wade. Surrounded by hostile forces, out of cartridges for her Remington, she bravely held her ground and kept pulling the trigger, to no effect:

Palin: Well, let's see. There's—of course in the great history of America there have been rulings that there's never going to be absolute consensus by every American, and there are those issues, again, like Roe v. Wade, where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So, you know, going through the history of America, there would be others. But, um.

Couric: Can you think of any?

Palin: Well, I would think of any again that could best be dealt with on a more local level maybe I would take issue with. But, um, you know as a mayor and then as a governor and even as a vice president, if I am so privileged to serve, I would be in a position of changing those things, but in supporting the law of the land as it reads today.

Weisberg's Bushisms were (and are-Shrub's limited public appearances mean fewer misunderstatementisms, but Weisberg has kept the site up to date) often side-splitting, and I much appreciate his work in putting together the definitive collection. Likewise, while the Palinisms project seems a little limited at this point, I expect it will be expanded after the book makes its initial run.

However, I think that simply listing all these strange quotes (and they are strange) for the LOLs misses the point. First, it gets old pretty quick. Second, it overlooks, even obscures, the strange phenomenon of Palin: here is a person who apparently cannot tack together an intelligible sentence in the English language without a prompt, and even then it's iffy. Yet people are paying her hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions, for her writing and speeches. What does that say about the media, and what does it say about us? That is the book I'd like to read.

For me, the definitive compilation of Bushisms, and what it says about our culture, is Mark Crispin Miller's The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on A National Disorder. Oh sure, there's lots of yucks in the book, some tear-inducing. But it's placing them in context, and showing how and why Bush was a perfect match for modern TV, while Gore was a poor fit indeed, that makes it such a compelling read. For people who weren't paying attention pre-9/11, I still highly recommend it (here's a good review, and here's the Amazon Page), and though I haven't read any reviews of Weisberg's book yet, I hope he has tried to do a little of this needed contextualization of Palin's malapropisms. Yeah, such stuff is funny to a point, but it won't be if Caribou Barbie decides to run for POTUS and we let the media play us for suckers yet again.

Eurypterid?

They had at least one fossil of one of these critters at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History when I was growing up... it mesmerized me.(image from the old standby online reference) When I saw the following photo from Picture is Unrelated a moment ago, my first reaction was "That has got to be shopped." Then "waitaminit... that looks familiar. Was it um... eurypterid?" I don't know if it's a mock-up for a museum or something, but it looks right to me.Whether it is or isn't, my memory freaks me out sometimes; occasionally I get to the end of the day and can't remember whether I've eaten or not. Yet somehow "eurypterid," correct spelling and all, bubbles up with barely a pause, 35 or 40 years later.

What Is the Opposite of Irony?

Predictable? Expected?

One man dies when California-based death metal bands' van rolls on I-5 near Medford

The man who died was identified as Makh Daniels, lead singer for the San Francisco death metal band, Early Graves. Daniels, 28, from Pacifica, California, was one of five members of the band; the other four-member band traveling in the van was identified as The Funeral Pyre from La Habra, Calif.

Now this isn't really funny; a person died, and though the article doesn't say, I'd be surprised if others weren't injured. Somewhere family and friends are mourning. Still, this is stunning in how opposite it is to irony.

Hyperbole and a Half

I first read Hyperbole and a Half a couple of weeks ago when the post Dog ("A lingering fear of mine was confirmed last night: My dog might be slightly retarded.") was making the rounds on the pop aggregator sites. There is a ring of truth to the posts there that makes me wonder about how much real hyperbole is involved. Whether it's a little or a lot, it makes for wonderfully entertaining reading. The most recent episode involves a long-lived phobia of bicycles and the reasons behind it. Enjoy.