Cool stuff! Go check it out.
That's about as articulate as I can manage today.
Showing posts with label geology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label geology. Show all posts
01 February 2010
02 November 2009
Ig/Met Pet question.
Callan's post on his new "granite" counter top reminded me of a post I meant to do while in Portland. I didn't have my camera so I had to wait until I got home, and I just drew a quick sketch of the gorgeous "granite" that adorned my bathroom at the Paramount. My petrology class was a while ago and I spend most of my time looking at the electrical properties of sedimentary rocks, so other than metamorphic I didn't get any further with this:
The biotite books in the groundmass (for lack of a better term) weren't that aligned (i.e. no preferred orientation), I was just lazy in Illustrator. The white space in the groundmass was mostly quartz with plag. The ground mass was medium to dark grey overall. The large feldspar clasts were between approximately .5"-1.25" (1 - 3cm, or nickel to Kennedy half-dollar); some had rings of biotite in them and/or inclusions of biotite, quartz, and rarely plag. A couple had rings of quartz inclusions - like an overgrowth of quartz followed by regrowth of feldspar; a few were almost complete overgrown by quartz.
So anyone know what it was?
* Speaking of puns, check out Callan's Halloween costume
The biotite books in the groundmass (for lack of a better term) weren't that aligned (i.e. no preferred orientation), I was just lazy in Illustrator. The white space in the groundmass was mostly quartz with plag. The ground mass was medium to dark grey overall. The large feldspar clasts were between approximately .5"-1.25" (1 - 3cm, or nickel to Kennedy half-dollar); some had rings of biotite in them and/or inclusions of biotite, quartz, and rarely plag. A couple had rings of quartz inclusions - like an overgrowth of quartz followed by regrowth of feldspar; a few were almost complete overgrown by quartz.
So anyone know what it was?
"It's a terrible thing when gneiss is taken for granite"
-J.C. Pashin (and probably others)*
* Speaking of puns, check out Callan's Halloween costume
30 October 2009
50/50?
Short Geologist asked about male/female ratios where we work. My answer was going to be a bit long, so I'm making a whole post.
At the engineering consulting firm (where I did UST and SWPA work) I was one of 4 women "professionals" (a geologist, an engineer, a chemist, and an environmental scientist), so total for "professionals" was about 4:12; there were far more women then men in the office but the rest were drafters, secretaries, personnel manager, office manager, book keeper... As far as I know there were no women on the survey crews (those crews probably brought the total male/female back up to 50/50).
Back in grad school the ratio was close to 40:60ish, a few more males than females (students only).
Where I am now there are 9 female geologist and chemists (iirc, she actually does programming for us) and 50 male geologists, biologists, and engineers. My division is 3:4 and our building (next door to most of the Survey) is 4:9, plus one volunteer lady geologist*. When I counted up my co-workers from the phone list I was kind of surprised there were actually that few women scientists. It always seems like there are more women here but in my mind I'm probably including all the support staff (accounting, personnel,...), which is mostly female. Lots of the men work either for the OGB or on the 3rd floor where I rarely go and so usually only see all those folks at holiday luncheons.
I've noticed a difference in conference attendance. When I went to the American Association of Petroleum Geologist's meeting there were definitely more men than women but at the Geological Society of America meetings I've been to (all 2 of them) it was more even. There's a small (200 people?) symposium here every spring on coalbed methane and shale gas. When I was a student my (now) boss' wife and I would be among the very few women there. (No line at the bathrooms!) now the numbers of women are creeping up. That meeting is probably still in the 25:75 range. The field trip my boss runs for that meeting is the only time I've seen men crash the ladies bathroom (1-holers at a gas station). Not uncommon for the van drivers and I to be the only women.
At the consulting job I spent most of my time in the office writing up other's reports because the guy (an engineer, who once described a sand as "well sorted, fine to coarse grained") could help our drill crew lift augers, 70lb bags of sack-crete, etc. and all I 'could' do was describe the soil. The only time I really was uncomfortable about being a lady geologist was the job with the driller who hit on me, obnoxiously, for 3 days straight. My (then) boss and his mostly thought it was funny and were laying bets as to when I'd slug the jerk. (It's surprising he managed to get the hole straight because he spent almost all of his time looking at me - and I'm not terribly attractive in field clothes and a hardhat.)
Male/female ratios aren't something I've ever worried a whole lot about. That is partly due to the fact that I've had good role models, also, with 5 brothers it doesn't bother me to be "one of the guys". Besides, I have it so much easier than it used to be. My boss' wife (a geologist) was once denied a job because they didn't have a ladies room in the building. At that time, she had a job where she had a 10 minute walk to the closest ladies room.
*with only 2 one-holers, one non-climate controlled, for us ladies!
At the engineering consulting firm (where I did UST and SWPA work) I was one of 4 women "professionals" (a geologist, an engineer, a chemist, and an environmental scientist), so total for "professionals" was about 4:12; there were far more women then men in the office but the rest were drafters, secretaries, personnel manager, office manager, book keeper... As far as I know there were no women on the survey crews (those crews probably brought the total male/female back up to 50/50).
Back in grad school the ratio was close to 40:60ish, a few more males than females (students only).
Where I am now there are 9 female geologist and chemists (iirc, she actually does programming for us) and 50 male geologists, biologists, and engineers. My division is 3:4 and our building (next door to most of the Survey) is 4:9, plus one volunteer lady geologist*. When I counted up my co-workers from the phone list I was kind of surprised there were actually that few women scientists. It always seems like there are more women here but in my mind I'm probably including all the support staff (accounting, personnel,...), which is mostly female. Lots of the men work either for the OGB or on the 3rd floor where I rarely go and so usually only see all those folks at holiday luncheons.
I've noticed a difference in conference attendance. When I went to the American Association of Petroleum Geologist's meeting there were definitely more men than women but at the Geological Society of America meetings I've been to (all 2 of them) it was more even. There's a small (200 people?) symposium here every spring on coalbed methane and shale gas. When I was a student my (now) boss' wife and I would be among the very few women there. (No line at the bathrooms!) now the numbers of women are creeping up. That meeting is probably still in the 25:75 range. The field trip my boss runs for that meeting is the only time I've seen men crash the ladies bathroom (1-holers at a gas station). Not uncommon for the van drivers and I to be the only women.
At the consulting job I spent most of my time in the office writing up other's reports because the guy (an engineer, who once described a sand as "well sorted, fine to coarse grained") could help our drill crew lift augers, 70lb bags of sack-crete, etc. and all I 'could' do was describe the soil. The only time I really was uncomfortable about being a lady geologist was the job with the driller who hit on me, obnoxiously, for 3 days straight. My (then) boss and his mostly thought it was funny and were laying bets as to when I'd slug the jerk. (It's surprising he managed to get the hole straight because he spent almost all of his time looking at me - and I'm not terribly attractive in field clothes and a hardhat.)
Male/female ratios aren't something I've ever worried a whole lot about. That is partly due to the fact that I've had good role models, also, with 5 brothers it doesn't bother me to be "one of the guys". Besides, I have it so much easier than it used to be. My boss' wife (a geologist) was once denied a job because they didn't have a ladies room in the building. At that time, she had a job where she had a 10 minute walk to the closest ladies room.
*with only 2 one-holers, one non-climate controlled, for us ladies!
08 September 2009
Great song but you got a bit wrong.
I just watched the videos for "Science is Real", "I'm a Palentologist", and "The Elements" (on YouTube and BoingBoing via i09).* Loved 'em, and I would buy this album if I was spending money on music just now, except TMBG got one little bit wrong:
I know everyone likes the idea of compressing coal to make an diamond - it's a great image but it's wrong. Pure carbon at surface temperatures and pressures is graphite (main ingredient in pencil leads).** Coal is the remains of ancient plants (and algae); it is mostly carbon but it isn't anywhere near pure.
Thank you. Go and sin no more.
And yes, I can be a prick about science.
*Yes, I know, I'm a bit late to the party.
**In fact, diamonds are less stable at surface pressures and temperatures than graphite and would turn into graphite over time if it weren't for the huge energy needed to break the C-C bonds. (At least that's what I remember.) Imagine a bowl on a counter top and a bowl on the floor with a tube in the water of the upper bowl going up to the ceiling and then down to the bowl on the floor - the lower bowl is at a lower potential energy and the water would "want" to get there, but it's gonna take a hell of a lot of energy to get the water up to the ceiling first.
I know everyone likes the idea of compressing coal to make an diamond - it's a great image but it's wrong. Pure carbon at surface temperatures and pressures is graphite (main ingredient in pencil leads).** Coal is the remains of ancient plants (and algae); it is mostly carbon but it isn't anywhere near pure.
Thank you. Go and sin no more.
And yes, I can be a prick about science.
*Yes, I know, I'm a bit late to the party.
**In fact, diamonds are less stable at surface pressures and temperatures than graphite and would turn into graphite over time if it weren't for the huge energy needed to break the C-C bonds. (At least that's what I remember.) Imagine a bowl on a counter top and a bowl on the floor with a tube in the water of the upper bowl going up to the ceiling and then down to the bowl on the floor - the lower bowl is at a lower potential energy and the water would "want" to get there, but it's gonna take a hell of a lot of energy to get the water up to the ceiling first.
30 July 2009
Reflection on the Field
No field work this week, the LiCor has been sent back to get fixed and recalibrated, but I had a couple of thoughts and one question on working in the field and with RA.
Question first. If it hurts RA's manly pride for me to carry heavy things or swing the machete then I'm not going to argue with him. I'll offer to do it but I'm not going to insist, it seems silly to make more work for myself and fight for it. Should I be more insistent? Am I not being feminist enough?
Most of my thoughts center on RA's apparent lousy sense of direction. When I said we needed to go a little further west for on collar and he said "I'm so turned around I have no idea where that is" I was a bit flabbergasted; west was heading towards the highway, which you could hear, also not up or down hill and we hadn't even been winding around much. He was pretty tired by then, so that was part of the problem. I'm sure he can get around with a compass; I've been with him when he was using one and I fairly sure orienteering is taught in [home country]'s army (otherwise navigating in areas without roads is much more difficult). I'm not sure if normally his sense of direction is as bad as it was out at the site or if it was a related to exhaustion, terrain, and/or not pay attention because that's what I was doing.
One of the few things I'm really good at* is visualizing in 3D. This is helpful for my job and some puzzles and I think it's why I my sense of direction isn't too bad. Drive me around for a while, stick me in the woods and I might guess north right 30% of the time (it'd be 25% of the time except when the sun is low(ish) in the sky I can get E or W, then turn 90°) but if I have a starting point, like I know the road runs generally N/S and I need to move due E to find a point (like what I was doing while placing collars) I can do it, or if I need a get back to a starting point I don't have retrace all my steps. It's like I map the route (detours around trees, thickets,... and/or from point to point) in my head, along with the lay of the land.
I used to be able to figure out what direction north (E, W, or S) most places around where I lived because most of the roads were fairly straight, for that matter I probably still can. They weren't in a grid pattern (except in DC, which was way outside my mental map anyway) but they were mostly straight. I knew which way, generally, my house faced (east) and could back track from where I was to home and figure out the cardinals. Things outside this map were connected by a much looser, cardinal-direction wise, road "network" of how you got places (like, route 7 runs through here, route 50 will take you to x and y) which could connect two destinations but not necessarily given you an idea of the distances (but possibly travel time) or which way you were going. (It never helped that sometimes to go physically south you went "north" on 495. And I only drove there for a year.)
I mostly have T-town "mapped" as a route network. Near downtown and campus the roads are regular enough that I could actually draw a map and I could include some of the more out lying roads. But when you get out of town a little ways the roads wind around so much that really keeping a clear picture of it in my head is hard, it becomes more of a general this road takes you to these roads or that place. Also there are a lot of parts of town I never drive through, no reason except I've just never needed, so those areas are completely blank in my mental map. I do have a better mental map of where different communities/places are within the county here than I did in Virginia; I think because I deal with maps of the county a lot and because of tornado warnings - I had to learn if a storm moving east near Samantha was going to threaten my house.
Do you guys have mental maps or road networks of where you drive (walk, bike,...) a lot?
*the other two primary ones being sleeping and counting to 4 (3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 12) in rhythm
Question first. If it hurts RA's manly pride for me to carry heavy things or swing the machete then I'm not going to argue with him. I'll offer to do it but I'm not going to insist, it seems silly to make more work for myself and fight for it. Should I be more insistent? Am I not being feminist enough?
Most of my thoughts center on RA's apparent lousy sense of direction. When I said we needed to go a little further west for on collar and he said "I'm so turned around I have no idea where that is" I was a bit flabbergasted; west was heading towards the highway, which you could hear, also not up or down hill and we hadn't even been winding around much. He was pretty tired by then, so that was part of the problem. I'm sure he can get around with a compass; I've been with him when he was using one and I fairly sure orienteering is taught in [home country]'s army (otherwise navigating in areas without roads is much more difficult). I'm not sure if normally his sense of direction is as bad as it was out at the site or if it was a related to exhaustion, terrain, and/or not pay attention because that's what I was doing.
One of the few things I'm really good at* is visualizing in 3D. This is helpful for my job and some puzzles and I think it's why I my sense of direction isn't too bad. Drive me around for a while, stick me in the woods and I might guess north right 30% of the time (it'd be 25% of the time except when the sun is low(ish) in the sky I can get E or W, then turn 90°) but if I have a starting point, like I know the road runs generally N/S and I need to move due E to find a point (like what I was doing while placing collars) I can do it, or if I need a get back to a starting point I don't have retrace all my steps. It's like I map the route (detours around trees, thickets,... and/or from point to point) in my head, along with the lay of the land.
I used to be able to figure out what direction north (E, W, or S) most places around where I lived because most of the roads were fairly straight, for that matter I probably still can. They weren't in a grid pattern (except in DC, which was way outside my mental map anyway) but they were mostly straight. I knew which way, generally, my house faced (east) and could back track from where I was to home and figure out the cardinals. Things outside this map were connected by a much looser, cardinal-direction wise, road "network" of how you got places (like, route 7 runs through here, route 50 will take you to x and y) which could connect two destinations but not necessarily given you an idea of the distances (but possibly travel time) or which way you were going. (It never helped that sometimes to go physically south you went "north" on 495. And I only drove there for a year.)
I mostly have T-town "mapped" as a route network. Near downtown and campus the roads are regular enough that I could actually draw a map and I could include some of the more out lying roads. But when you get out of town a little ways the roads wind around so much that really keeping a clear picture of it in my head is hard, it becomes more of a general this road takes you to these roads or that place. Also there are a lot of parts of town I never drive through, no reason except I've just never needed, so those areas are completely blank in my mental map. I do have a better mental map of where different communities/places are within the county here than I did in Virginia; I think because I deal with maps of the county a lot and because of tornado warnings - I had to learn if a storm moving east near Samantha was going to threaten my house.
Do you guys have mental maps or road networks of where you drive (walk, bike,...) a lot?
*the other two primary ones being sleeping and counting to 4 (3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 12) in rhythm
24 July 2009
Tales from the Field
The graduate research assistant (let's just call him RA) and I have been back out in the field (new test site, almost completely official!). Of course this time instead of starting the soil monitoring in mild, late spring like at the old site, we're starting in mid-Hell, (the months between early summer and early fall). We've gotten 3.5 days in and not a single reading thanks to equipment problems. (A people will crank their AC down pretty far, but even in Eureka they can't get below absolute zero.) So far our time in the field has consisted of installing the monitoring collars (pieces of 12 PVC pipe hammered into the ground at particular points in a semicircular pattern) and machete-ing paths for ourselves through the low branches and blackberry brambles. (love blackberries, hate blackberry canes).
So first off I'm using this older model GPS which has like a 10m accuracy which is about 3/10 of a sec of longitude or latitude around here. One collar is, according to the GPS location I got 9 meters north of the well (and some 40 or so west) when I can stand at the collar, look due east, and stare directly at the pump jack. I've decided if the location I end up at is within about 10 meters (according to GPS) then it's good even if my map ends up looking all squiggly.
That first day was shit hot and the RA wouldn't let me do much hammering when we were placing the collars. The worst part was when we went to lunch (BTW, did I mention Windham Springs is in MoBFN?) I must have sat outside the gas station (first 'civilization' we passed, 15 miles from the site) for 20 minutes waiting for RA to get done in the bathroom (not as bad as the prune juice day, did I tell y'all about that?). And RA was wearing short sleeves so he sweated off his bug spray and the little biting flys were having a feast off him that afternoon. I hadn't figured out how far a second of lat and long was before we went out so several locations were a little off, also two had typos and were WAY off. They had to be moved.
So the second day we went out with machetes and the 5-lb sledge. I was slightly better equipped - I'd brought work gloves and my tool belt. I could, kind of, carry the hammer in my rock hammer holster. We got the first path cut, and a collar moved without to much trouble. Except the RA was flagging fast. We start on cutting the 2nd path and moving that collar a good ways in. About 50 yards in RA rest his hand on a bank for a second and puts his hand in an ant bed. So I trade with him to do some cutting while he takes a break for a minute or two (and knocks ants off his arm). I decide to go to the right, around a small tree, rather than to the left to avoid the ant bed all together and find a wasps nest. I actual never saw it but when the buzzing started I walked as fast as I could (without tripping) back down the path saying as I passed RA "wasps, move, wasps, move NOW" About half way out he says "wait, I think they've stopped following." They hadn't, I got stung again. I only got 3 stings - one in each and and one in the arm - does bug spray repel wasps and bees? They didn't follow us all the way back to the road, thank goodness.
We get back to the truck, my partner is exhausted and wondering if we could have some AC. I reach in my pocket and the keys aren't there. I was wearing jeans (as usual for the field) so I figure I must not have actually gotten the keys in my pocket so they would have fallen out near the truck. No luck. As I remember it we cut N150, stopped at the truck for water (requiring unlocking and locking), then I put the keys in my pocket, stood in the minuscule patch of shade for a minute, walked down the road to where we started the N100 path and went into the woods. Luckily I was wrong about the re-locking the truck because then we wouldn't of had access to my phone or water. I searched around the truck, where I stood, and finally went back down the path to as close to the wasps as I dared. Then I went back to the truck, got my phone and walk to the well (around the bend and up a hill) to get signal. While I was calling my boss to have him come rescue us RA thought to check the other path. I was wrong about having hte keys when we came back to the truck because apparently they'd fallen out near it and he, luckily, saw them. No mean feat in grass over a foot high. We got several minutes of AC and I bought him lunch the next time as a thank you. The rest of the day went much better, except it was shit ass hot, RA was not up to the heat, and neither of us had much of a second wind after lunch (found a place closer than town, yay).
On the third day we just hacked our way through the brush and moved one collar. We had started on the path to S100 the trip before so there's already a good deal of work done on the first ~10 yard. I mean serious clearing 2 inch saplings, removing limbs up to 6-7 feet off the ground kind of work. Then I start directing RA where to cut the path. North, direction we needed to go, is pretty much directly uphill of where we were but the path has to wind a bit to go through the easier bits. RA has a tendency to drift left when I told him cut directly in front of him; when I told him to head towards his one or two o'clock he went straight ahead. Oh, and he has no sense of direction.* So I keep correcting us back to the east and we finally wind our way to the spot. The path definitely winds but it's not lots longer than a straighter path and it has easy access from the road. Further around, and more directly south of the collar, the hill was cut into to make the lease road so there's a 3-4 foot bank. I'm hammering the collar in the ground and RA who has been clearing the path as I go decides that it's shorter to go straight down the hill (true) and, hey, the woods are "more open" (also true, to a point) that way. My problem is three fold. For one he's already spent a fair amount of energy cutting a path, which he now wants to abandon but it's his arm (since he won't let me do much machete work). Secondly, the woods are more "open" because the trees are widely spaced where RA's heading, that means there's a lot more undergrowth that needs cutting and not necessarily the easiest way to go. But it's his arm and he's determined. Third and more theoretically, I want to minimize our impact; while we aren't actually taking out trees that would ever be sold (we're only taking out little, late starters, that'll probably get shaded out before they get very big) I don't want the land owner, if he ever sees it, to be pissed, but at this point RA has a big sharp knife and is swinging it around, so I follow at a safe distance shaking my head. I really don't understand making more work for yourself. Really, really don't understand it.
The last path we cut that day was really short, maybe 20 yards, into fairly open (at ground level) woods. These pines are taller creating deep shade, so other than some poison ivy not much undergrowth. We want paths were we don't have to stoop at any point, it's not much fun to not bend over with a heavy backpack. I had a little more energy than RA did at this point and the batteries were mostly dead so I went ahead to the collar, checked the location, and then started clearing my way back out. He was working on the one spot where it was tight, I was mostly cutting off small dead limbs. There was one point where I decided he needed to take out the bush because I just didn't have the upper body strength (or maybe my machete was getting dull) to get it. So I look at the path, I think it's clear, I can walk up-right the whole way, only one 'stump' in the way. I'll walk out, get a drink, and RA will be out a minute or two later. Five minutes later he's still hacking away at something - I don't know what it was. He finally staggers out exhausted and we leave. Again, I think he was making work for himself.
Yesterday we went back one more time for the last two paths. They both went fast and were fairly easy. The only real hiccup was I happened to park next to a collar that is on the side of the lease road. RA starts cutting down grass and weeds. At first I thought he was just clearing the area right around the collar, then he's moving towards the bank, then he's working on the bank. I asked where he was going. He hadn't noticed that he'd practically tripped over the collar to get where he was standing. Sometimes I worry about him.
Speaking of RA, I haven't heard back about the thermocouple. I guess I'll get keys and hope we go Monday morning. So if you see me at Jalapeños Monday with my pants tucked into my socks, you'll know why.
So first off I'm using this older model GPS which has like a 10m accuracy which is about 3/10 of a sec of longitude or latitude around here. One collar is, according to the GPS location I got 9 meters north of the well (and some 40 or so west) when I can stand at the collar, look due east, and stare directly at the pump jack. I've decided if the location I end up at is within about 10 meters (according to GPS) then it's good even if my map ends up looking all squiggly.
That first day was shit hot and the RA wouldn't let me do much hammering when we were placing the collars. The worst part was when we went to lunch (BTW, did I mention Windham Springs is in MoBFN?) I must have sat outside the gas station (first 'civilization' we passed, 15 miles from the site) for 20 minutes waiting for RA to get done in the bathroom (not as bad as the prune juice day, did I tell y'all about that?). And RA was wearing short sleeves so he sweated off his bug spray and the little biting flys were having a feast off him that afternoon. I hadn't figured out how far a second of lat and long was before we went out so several locations were a little off, also two had typos and were WAY off. They had to be moved.
So the second day we went out with machetes and the 5-lb sledge. I was slightly better equipped - I'd brought work gloves and my tool belt. I could, kind of, carry the hammer in my rock hammer holster. We got the first path cut, and a collar moved without to much trouble. Except the RA was flagging fast. We start on cutting the 2nd path and moving that collar a good ways in. About 50 yards in RA rest his hand on a bank for a second and puts his hand in an ant bed. So I trade with him to do some cutting while he takes a break for a minute or two (and knocks ants off his arm). I decide to go to the right, around a small tree, rather than to the left to avoid the ant bed all together and find a wasps nest. I actual never saw it but when the buzzing started I walked as fast as I could (without tripping) back down the path saying as I passed RA "wasps, move, wasps, move NOW" About half way out he says "wait, I think they've stopped following." They hadn't, I got stung again. I only got 3 stings - one in each and and one in the arm - does bug spray repel wasps and bees? They didn't follow us all the way back to the road, thank goodness.
We get back to the truck, my partner is exhausted and wondering if we could have some AC. I reach in my pocket and the keys aren't there. I was wearing jeans (as usual for the field) so I figure I must not have actually gotten the keys in my pocket so they would have fallen out near the truck. No luck. As I remember it we cut N150, stopped at the truck for water (requiring unlocking and locking), then I put the keys in my pocket, stood in the minuscule patch of shade for a minute, walked down the road to where we started the N100 path and went into the woods. Luckily I was wrong about the re-locking the truck because then we wouldn't of had access to my phone or water. I searched around the truck, where I stood, and finally went back down the path to as close to the wasps as I dared. Then I went back to the truck, got my phone and walk to the well (around the bend and up a hill) to get signal. While I was calling my boss to have him come rescue us RA thought to check the other path. I was wrong about having hte keys when we came back to the truck because apparently they'd fallen out near it and he, luckily, saw them. No mean feat in grass over a foot high. We got several minutes of AC and I bought him lunch the next time as a thank you. The rest of the day went much better, except it was shit ass hot, RA was not up to the heat, and neither of us had much of a second wind after lunch (found a place closer than town, yay).
On the third day we just hacked our way through the brush and moved one collar. We had started on the path to S100 the trip before so there's already a good deal of work done on the first ~10 yard. I mean serious clearing 2 inch saplings, removing limbs up to 6-7 feet off the ground kind of work. Then I start directing RA where to cut the path. North, direction we needed to go, is pretty much directly uphill of where we were but the path has to wind a bit to go through the easier bits. RA has a tendency to drift left when I told him cut directly in front of him; when I told him to head towards his one or two o'clock he went straight ahead. Oh, and he has no sense of direction.* So I keep correcting us back to the east and we finally wind our way to the spot. The path definitely winds but it's not lots longer than a straighter path and it has easy access from the road. Further around, and more directly south of the collar, the hill was cut into to make the lease road so there's a 3-4 foot bank. I'm hammering the collar in the ground and RA who has been clearing the path as I go decides that it's shorter to go straight down the hill (true) and, hey, the woods are "more open" (also true, to a point) that way. My problem is three fold. For one he's already spent a fair amount of energy cutting a path, which he now wants to abandon but it's his arm (since he won't let me do much machete work). Secondly, the woods are more "open" because the trees are widely spaced where RA's heading, that means there's a lot more undergrowth that needs cutting and not necessarily the easiest way to go. But it's his arm and he's determined. Third and more theoretically, I want to minimize our impact; while we aren't actually taking out trees that would ever be sold (we're only taking out little, late starters, that'll probably get shaded out before they get very big) I don't want the land owner, if he ever sees it, to be pissed, but at this point RA has a big sharp knife and is swinging it around, so I follow at a safe distance shaking my head. I really don't understand making more work for yourself. Really, really don't understand it.
The last path we cut that day was really short, maybe 20 yards, into fairly open (at ground level) woods. These pines are taller creating deep shade, so other than some poison ivy not much undergrowth. We want paths were we don't have to stoop at any point, it's not much fun to not bend over with a heavy backpack. I had a little more energy than RA did at this point and the batteries were mostly dead so I went ahead to the collar, checked the location, and then started clearing my way back out. He was working on the one spot where it was tight, I was mostly cutting off small dead limbs. There was one point where I decided he needed to take out the bush because I just didn't have the upper body strength (or maybe my machete was getting dull) to get it. So I look at the path, I think it's clear, I can walk up-right the whole way, only one 'stump' in the way. I'll walk out, get a drink, and RA will be out a minute or two later. Five minutes later he's still hacking away at something - I don't know what it was. He finally staggers out exhausted and we leave. Again, I think he was making work for himself.
Yesterday we went back one more time for the last two paths. They both went fast and were fairly easy. The only real hiccup was I happened to park next to a collar that is on the side of the lease road. RA starts cutting down grass and weeds. At first I thought he was just clearing the area right around the collar, then he's moving towards the bank, then he's working on the bank. I asked where he was going. He hadn't noticed that he'd practically tripped over the collar to get where he was standing. Sometimes I worry about him.
Speaking of RA, I haven't heard back about the thermocouple. I guess I'll get keys and hope we go Monday morning. So if you see me at Jalapeños Monday with my pants tucked into my socks, you'll know why.
07 July 2009
Can We Change the Station?
Silver Fox just put up a post about road songs. This reminded me of field camp. For some reason only one person had brought a Walkman and she only had a couple tapes of local underground bands (at least in the van I was in). Things were OK the first day of driving. From Tuscaloosa to OK City is mostly civilized. From OK to Taos is, as I recall more sparsely populated but radio stations were available. In the wilds of New Mexico radio stations were not so easily found. Unless you want to listen to stock auctions.
Our TA was driving "my" van and our first trip to a Walmart he bought 2 tapes - Best of the Doors and Songs You Know By Heart. These two tapes were on pretty much continuous play for the remaining 4 weeks. I know all those songs, well, by heart.
These wouldn't necessarily count as road songs by SF's rules but those two albums certainly were our road music. I like something singable for the road and/or danceable. I'm a great seat dancer. =)
What do you think of as "road songs"? What are some of your favorites?
Our TA was driving "my" van and our first trip to a Walmart he bought 2 tapes - Best of the Doors and Songs You Know By Heart. These two tapes were on pretty much continuous play for the remaining 4 weeks. I know all those songs, well, by heart.
These wouldn't necessarily count as road songs by SF's rules but those two albums certainly were our road music. I like something singable for the road and/or danceable. I'm a great seat dancer. =)
What do you think of as "road songs"? What are some of your favorites?
04 June 2009
Field Vehicles
Several people are talking about field vehicles and I guess I'm lucky but I've never had to rent a field vehicle. (I do have a story about that for later.) I work for the State and we have our own vehicles, mostly trucks and SUVs, which while low mpg, they do meet all the general field vehicle requirements. (Can I get a pencil/map/GPS/field book holder, too?)
Picking up core requires (sometimes extensive) driving on bad lease roads and carrying several hundred feet of boxed, 2-inch core in the bed - this limits our choices to 4WD full-sized trucks; even then some of the hills were iffy, also you don't jack-rabbit off from a stop. Luckily the truck that could haul the most also had an extended cab because all three of us rode to lunch in one truck. (We're State employees, we're taking our lunch break!) For looking at actual outcrops, we use one of the SUVs - space for people in relative comfort, room for samples, good clearance so we don't have to worry about what's on the shoulder, etc. The mappers tend to be pickier and a little possessive about the trucks. (Big Blue is Ed's truck, the red one with the ugly camper shell was Dorothy's...)
Most of the field work I've done since working here was at our "old test site", a short way down a decent lease road, where anything except the mini-van or Crown Vic would do. (Actually, no one really wants to drive the Crown Vic or mini-van on the highway either. We also have the "mail van" that's rather scary but it still makes to the PO.) Our new test site (where we might actually get to put some CO2 in the ground!) is really close to the highway and on a great lease road - I could drive my brother's Mustang up there, but we haven't brought in drilling and work-over rigs yet. The agency's vehicles get well used, a lot. High mileage is the rule, but for the most part they are well cared for but where I worked right after college we had a couple of real doozies.
The worst vehicle I think I have ever driven was a Dogde dually with possessed alignment. This truck would pull to one side long enough for you to start to get used to it and then it would switch, suddenly, to pulling to the other side. Or the amount/strength of the pull would change. It was exhausting to drive. One time couple of the guys were driving back to the hotel after doing a tank tightness test (well after midnight) and were pulled over for weaving. They hadn't had a drop of alcohol, they were just to tired to fight the steering wheel. There was also an old Explorer that'd shake your fillings out above 50 miles/hour; that one was loads of fun to ride in to Montgomery. At that job there was a definite hierarchy of vehicle allocation: owners - new(every few years) SUV (for work and personal use); engineers going to meeting - newish SUV/truck; survey crews - slightly older SUV/newish trucks; environmental division - a couple of trucks that wouldn't be replaced until they wouldn't tow the grout machine; geologic division (both of us) - whatever was left or POV. A couple times I was very thankful for my station wagon had front-wheel drive.
The University's vans were another set interesting field vehicles. Apparently years ago my Alma mater rented the vans in New Mexico and everybody just met in Albuquerque for field camp. Then the rental companies figured out what they were doing with the vans and stopped giving them the corporate rate. After that they started using the university's vans but the motor-pool people had already figured out not to give the Geology department nice vans because we'd get them all muddy. When I was at field camp both vans had a crack in the windshield, top to bottom. The whole set of vans purchased one year had the windshields badly seated and they all had cracks. I can assure you there was no way you could rev the engine up enough to warp the frame (like in drag racing); seriously, a semi passed us one day, going up hill - can you say under-powered? (Still better than under-braked.) On a southern Appalachian field trip we had a pair of under braked vans - wouldn't erring on the side of over-powered brakes be preferable to possibly under-braked? - We only had to take one brake-cooling break, thanks good route planning and 1st gear.
The only rental car/ field experience I had was near Denver. My advisor and I were there for a class and had a free day, so we went out driving. "Unimproved road" means something different in Colorado than it means in Alabama. In AL it, generally, means county maintained dirt; I think in CO means any track one could conceivably drive some sort of land vehicle over. We started on a paved road which became dirt which became a jeep track which started to look a lot like the photos Silver Fox posted. We decided after a short distance that perhaps we didn't want to have to walk back to civilization and turned around. My advisor told me a story about a field trip where they'd reserved high-clearance 4-wheel drive vehicles and were given sedans. IIRC, he told me they returned 3 and drew a map to the 4th.
Picking up core requires (sometimes extensive) driving on bad lease roads and carrying several hundred feet of boxed, 2-inch core in the bed - this limits our choices to 4WD full-sized trucks; even then some of the hills were iffy, also you don't jack-rabbit off from a stop. Luckily the truck that could haul the most also had an extended cab because all three of us rode to lunch in one truck. (We're State employees, we're taking our lunch break!) For looking at actual outcrops, we use one of the SUVs - space for people in relative comfort, room for samples, good clearance so we don't have to worry about what's on the shoulder, etc. The mappers tend to be pickier and a little possessive about the trucks. (Big Blue is Ed's truck, the red one with the ugly camper shell was Dorothy's...)
Most of the field work I've done since working here was at our "old test site", a short way down a decent lease road, where anything except the mini-van or Crown Vic would do. (Actually, no one really wants to drive the Crown Vic or mini-van on the highway either. We also have the "mail van" that's rather scary but it still makes to the PO.) Our new test site (where we might actually get to put some CO2 in the ground!) is really close to the highway and on a great lease road - I could drive my brother's Mustang up there, but we haven't brought in drilling and work-over rigs yet. The agency's vehicles get well used, a lot. High mileage is the rule, but for the most part they are well cared for but where I worked right after college we had a couple of real doozies.
The worst vehicle I think I have ever driven was a Dogde dually with possessed alignment. This truck would pull to one side long enough for you to start to get used to it and then it would switch, suddenly, to pulling to the other side. Or the amount/strength of the pull would change. It was exhausting to drive. One time couple of the guys were driving back to the hotel after doing a tank tightness test (well after midnight) and were pulled over for weaving. They hadn't had a drop of alcohol, they were just to tired to fight the steering wheel. There was also an old Explorer that'd shake your fillings out above 50 miles/hour; that one was loads of fun to ride in to Montgomery. At that job there was a definite hierarchy of vehicle allocation: owners - new(every few years) SUV (for work and personal use); engineers going to meeting - newish SUV/truck; survey crews - slightly older SUV/newish trucks; environmental division - a couple of trucks that wouldn't be replaced until they wouldn't tow the grout machine; geologic division (both of us) - whatever was left or POV. A couple times I was very thankful for my station wagon had front-wheel drive.
The University's vans were another set interesting field vehicles. Apparently years ago my Alma mater rented the vans in New Mexico and everybody just met in Albuquerque for field camp. Then the rental companies figured out what they were doing with the vans and stopped giving them the corporate rate. After that they started using the university's vans but the motor-pool people had already figured out not to give the Geology department nice vans because we'd get them all muddy. When I was at field camp both vans had a crack in the windshield, top to bottom. The whole set of vans purchased one year had the windshields badly seated and they all had cracks. I can assure you there was no way you could rev the engine up enough to warp the frame (like in drag racing); seriously, a semi passed us one day, going up hill - can you say under-powered? (Still better than under-braked.) On a southern Appalachian field trip we had a pair of under braked vans - wouldn't erring on the side of over-powered brakes be preferable to possibly under-braked? - We only had to take one brake-cooling break, thanks good route planning and 1st gear.
The only rental car/ field experience I had was near Denver. My advisor and I were there for a class and had a free day, so we went out driving. "Unimproved road" means something different in Colorado than it means in Alabama. In AL it, generally, means county maintained dirt; I think in CO means any track one could conceivably drive some sort of land vehicle over. We started on a paved road which became dirt which became a jeep track which started to look a lot like the photos Silver Fox posted. We decided after a short distance that perhaps we didn't want to have to walk back to civilization and turned around. My advisor told me a story about a field trip where they'd reserved high-clearance 4-wheel drive vehicles and were given sedans. IIRC, he told me they returned 3 and drew a map to the 4th.
26 March 2009
Field Gear
I don't have a picture handy of what I look like in my field gear so I'll follow Geotripper's (et al.) lead and just describe it. What I wear/carry in the field varies a lot, depending on what I'm doing but somethings remain the same.
Hair: Somewhat unkempt. Now that it is short, it's just under a hat (baseball or straw) or tied back with a kerchief. When it was longer it was pulled back one way or another and under a hat. At field camp it would start out a down in back, then in a pony tail, then braided by the 3rd day without washing.
Sunburned Peeling Nose: Sure hope not. That's what the hat and sunscreen are for.
Beard: Can't seem to grow one, which is just as well because waxing ain't cheap.
The Ever-Present T-shirt and Logo: Depending on the weather and location the T-shirt would be sleeveless and covered with a long-sleeved light weight shirt (the better to keep off bugs, sun, and prickers) or long-sleeved and under a sweater or, rarely, a flannel shirt. Every once in a while I do wear just a t-shirt by itself. Most of my long- and short- sleeved tees have logos/slogans on them the tank tops don't. Favorites LS tees are the volunteer fire department and crab trap clean up (OK they are about the only LS tees I have); I don't have favorite SS tees too many choices. The GSA one is OK. The big seal on the back and dark green color make it a bit warm in the summer, besides it disappeared after the second time I wore it.
Belt and Buckle: Pants fit o.k. but I need something to hang my Brunton on. I have a big tool belt that I wore over my pants at field camp with a hammer holster and field pack; I don't usually wear that anymore because I'm never that far from the car.
Deep Pockets: (not in the legal sense; geologists are often poor) Keys (if I'm driving), inhaler (if I remember to get it out of my purse), cell phone (if I remember...), and occasional small sample may be in my pockets. Other stuff (water bottle, camera, Brunton, purse, tape, extra padlock, colored pencils,...) are in my backpack and/or camera bag. I usually carry my field book and a pen in my hand or shove it in the back of my pants when I need both hands. This habit has lead to my field book almost disappearing completely in one day when I wore slightly loose pants.
Assorted Scars and Bandages: Actually I can't think of a scar that is geology related.
Rock Hammer: for specimen collecting, fighting off deer flies, self-defense, installing Li-Cor collars, beating stupid computers senseless, etc.
Muscular, tanned legs: Tanned? My legs are always covered with pants. I don't like bites, sunburns, thorn pricks, or random scrapes when they are easily avoided. Therefore they are about as far from 'tanned' as possible. (And I come from northern European stock, too.) Muscular? I don't know about that.
Shoelaces:I still have the original laces that came with the boots. Guess I'm lucky or sit in my office too much.
Cool Socks! And not just for field work.
Boots: for traction on rocks, mud, and snow (hah! like anyone in Alabama would go out in the field in snow). I have two pair. My favorite are a pair I got from LL Bean 11 years ago (obviously I sit in my office too much). I also have a pair of Timberlands I bought a few years ago in an emergency (packed for a society field trip the night before, taught the next day, and ten halfway to the hotel I realized the only shoes I had were the flats I was wearing.). I need to get some steel toed boots but keep putting it off because I can think of other things to spend my money on.
Ironclad Bladders: (not pictured) I usually don't have to go far to the field but bathroom are not terribly close to the research site so this is useful. (Go before leaving the office, at lunch, and upon return). I knew all those long car trips would come in handy one day.
Brunton Compass: to determine strike and dip, fault orientations, and locating next collar location (if we ever get the access agreements signed). We also use GPS receivers to get exact locations.
Eyes: Full of wisdom...yeah that's it. And behind glasses. I love my Transitions.
Brain: (not pictured) Dehydrated, half-baked, freeze-dried, but enjoying every minute.
Other stuffs: There's a lot of things that are task specific, but some common things not covered above are: safety vest during hunting season, bags (sample, grocery, Ziploc), extra sharpies, work gloves, rain-gear (when the weatherman says maybe), survey tape, bug spray, sunscreen, measuring tape, hand lens (around the neck), WD-40, large pocket knife.
I'm either lucky or unlucky in that I spend most of my time in an office. (And most of the "rocks" I look at in a well log.) When I do go in the field it's usually only for a day or two at a time and come home every night. I can usually find decent food nearby (especially if I'm out with my boss for whom this is a necessity). Since I've been at the Survey most of my field time has been spent of two particular projects. For one I and two co-workers were out collecting cores which had been drilled by a local mining company. For the other, I and a grad student were, and will be again soon, going out every week and getting soil CO2 flux measurements (this is why I have a spare padlock and WD-40 in my bag). For those days in the field, gear was fairly light. I get to do some 'regular' fieldwork, like last Friday (when I didn't take my camera, damn it.) when more of stuff is needed.
Hair: Somewhat unkempt. Now that it is short, it's just under a hat (baseball or straw) or tied back with a kerchief. When it was longer it was pulled back one way or another and under a hat. At field camp it would start out a down in back, then in a pony tail, then braided by the 3rd day without washing.
Sunburned Peeling Nose: Sure hope not. That's what the hat and sunscreen are for.
Beard: Can't seem to grow one, which is just as well because waxing ain't cheap.
The Ever-Present T-shirt and Logo: Depending on the weather and location the T-shirt would be sleeveless and covered with a long-sleeved light weight shirt (the better to keep off bugs, sun, and prickers) or long-sleeved and under a sweater or, rarely, a flannel shirt. Every once in a while I do wear just a t-shirt by itself. Most of my long- and short- sleeved tees have logos/slogans on them the tank tops don't. Favorites LS tees are the volunteer fire department and crab trap clean up (OK they are about the only LS tees I have); I don't have favorite SS tees too many choices. The GSA one is OK. The big seal on the back and dark green color make it a bit warm in the summer, besides it disappeared after the second time I wore it.
Belt and Buckle: Pants fit o.k. but I need something to hang my Brunton on. I have a big tool belt that I wore over my pants at field camp with a hammer holster and field pack; I don't usually wear that anymore because I'm never that far from the car.
Deep Pockets: (not in the legal sense; geologists are often poor) Keys (if I'm driving), inhaler (if I remember to get it out of my purse), cell phone (if I remember...), and occasional small sample may be in my pockets. Other stuff (water bottle, camera, Brunton, purse, tape, extra padlock, colored pencils,...) are in my backpack and/or camera bag. I usually carry my field book and a pen in my hand or shove it in the back of my pants when I need both hands. This habit has lead to my field book almost disappearing completely in one day when I wore slightly loose pants.
Assorted Scars and Bandages: Actually I can't think of a scar that is geology related.
Rock Hammer: for specimen collecting, fighting off deer flies, self-defense, installing Li-Cor collars, beating stupid computers senseless, etc.
Muscular, tanned legs: Tanned? My legs are always covered with pants. I don't like bites, sunburns, thorn pricks, or random scrapes when they are easily avoided. Therefore they are about as far from 'tanned' as possible. (And I come from northern European stock, too.) Muscular? I don't know about that.
Shoelaces:I still have the original laces that came with the boots. Guess I'm lucky or sit in my office too much.
Cool Socks! And not just for field work.
Boots: for traction on rocks, mud, and snow (hah! like anyone in Alabama would go out in the field in snow). I have two pair. My favorite are a pair I got from LL Bean 11 years ago (obviously I sit in my office too much). I also have a pair of Timberlands I bought a few years ago in an emergency (packed for a society field trip the night before, taught the next day, and ten halfway to the hotel I realized the only shoes I had were the flats I was wearing.). I need to get some steel toed boots but keep putting it off because I can think of other things to spend my money on.
Ironclad Bladders: (not pictured) I usually don't have to go far to the field but bathroom are not terribly close to the research site so this is useful. (Go before leaving the office, at lunch, and upon return). I knew all those long car trips would come in handy one day.
Brunton Compass: to determine strike and dip, fault orientations, and locating next collar location (if we ever get the access agreements signed). We also use GPS receivers to get exact locations.
Eyes: Full of wisdom...yeah that's it. And behind glasses. I love my Transitions.
Brain: (not pictured) Dehydrated, half-baked, freeze-dried, but enjoying every minute.
Other stuffs: There's a lot of things that are task specific, but some common things not covered above are: safety vest during hunting season, bags (sample, grocery, Ziploc), extra sharpies, work gloves, rain-gear (when the weatherman says maybe), survey tape, bug spray, sunscreen, measuring tape, hand lens (around the neck), WD-40, large pocket knife.
I'm either lucky or unlucky in that I spend most of my time in an office. (And most of the "rocks" I look at in a well log.) When I do go in the field it's usually only for a day or two at a time and come home every night. I can usually find decent food nearby (especially if I'm out with my boss for whom this is a necessity). Since I've been at the Survey most of my field time has been spent of two particular projects. For one I and two co-workers were out collecting cores which had been drilled by a local mining company. For the other, I and a grad student were, and will be again soon, going out every week and getting soil CO2 flux measurements (this is why I have a spare padlock and WD-40 in my bag). For those days in the field, gear was fairly light. I get to do some 'regular' fieldwork, like last Friday (when I didn't take my camera, damn it.) when more of stuff is needed.
13 March 2009
Never Win.
FSP and Chad are talking about cheating. I left an amusing anecdote about my 8th graders on FSP, I thought I'd tell a less amusing story about a fellow Geo. major of mine from back in the day*.
I had at least 5 upper level classes with Obnoxious Guy (not his real name) over 3 semesters. During the first semester he seemed to get sick the day of a test a lot. He'd then call someone to find out what was had been on the test. One day KK came into class seriously pissed off because she hadn't gotten to bed until the wee hours (due to aqueous solutions needing to be run and the computer not cooperating much) and OG had called her at like 7 to find out about the test he'd missed because he'd been "sick"*. I think KK was contemplating changing her number after that. After some other test he'd had a "migraine"* for, he stopped me on the sidewalk to ask me what had been on the test; I just couldn't remember any specifics - funny that, huh?
More than halfway through the semester he told our optical mineralogy TA that he was color blind. He was hoping he'd get some help (/benefit of the doubt/get off easy) because he would have difficulty with mineral id with birefringence. Unfortunately for OG, one of the other grad students actually was red/green color blind (in geology this kind of thing comes up) and he could tell what order and high/low. Beside by this point in the semester I'm pretty sure our TA was onto him.
OG had non-subtle wandering eyes. For example: In Op Min, as I recall, there'd be 2-4 slides of a given rock type, and one weeks lab might cover several rock types. Everyone has their own microscope and often people sitting next to one another will trade off slides. OG rarely traded slides with the person behind him, he had a definite preference for trading slides with a person whose lab sheet he could see. What's sad is we were allowed to ask one another questions and for help, even when we weren't working in groups, in most labs.
In sed/strat and ig pet we'd almost always work in groups because there weren't enough samples to go around and discussing why a rock is x or y helps you learn how to identify. OG would sit there and not say a word. KK and I were to polite to tell him to fuck off so he often worked "with" us. One day she and I were going back and forth on the percentages of quartz, feldspar, and lithic fragments. The sample was close to the line between three potential classifications, and our different estimates made a difference. We had gone back and forth for maybe 5 minutes, and OG says "so what is it?". KK plops the sample in front of him, and says "I don't know, what do you think it is?" He stumbles through some words like quartz, k-spar, 50%, etc. and finishes with "I don't know, what do you think?" KK and I rolled our eyes and finished deciding what the classification was, he copied down what we wrote and we all moved on.
One day he told us he didn't like rocks, he wanted to do geologic engineering. Scuttlebutt was that he'd been in the College of Engineering but they kicked him out. Another rumor was that one geo prof caught him cheating and told him to "withdraw failing"^ or he'd be reported. Obviously I don't know if any of that is true but it wouldn't have surprised me. I don't have anyway of knowing if he was ever reported to the appropriate authorities or not (or, for that matter, if he actually did anything reportable) but God, did I wish he had been. Still, I never could figure out how he stayed in school; he took many of the courses twice. His GPA had to have been in the toilet.
I spent much of the first semester mentally making excuses for OG, his personality not the cheating. He wasn't from the US (home was in sub-Saharan Africa) and the first thing that I didn't like about him was the way he spoke, not accent but mannerisms and volume; volume was actually the first thing that annoyed me. I told myself that maybe that's normal in his home country. Then when he kept being "sick" for tests, I thought maybe he's gotten away with that his whole life and so doesn't understand how much the rest of us resent it; maybe his family was important/rich enough at home he could get away with shit like that growing up.** Obviously when he refused to help cook or clean up dinner on a camping trip, it was because in the culture he grew up in, it was "women's work". So on and so forth. One day, as I was mentally excusing some behavior I'd find annoying in anyone else, I realized that all of his countryman couldn't possibly be that obnoxious, I was being extremely unfair to them, and he was a jerk no matter where he grew up.
*Migraines can be horrible and debilitating, I know. He may have even suffered from such migraines but since he was sick with something for every test I was highly suspicious.
^After a certain point in the semester you can't withdraw for a course without grade determination (W), it's either 'WP' or 'WF'; even later in the semester it has to be a 'WF'. A 'WF' and counts against your GPA, 'W' and 'WP' has no impact on it.
**I guessed his family had money or connections because he was going to school in the US and had no obvious means of support here. He certainly didn't seem to be the kind of student who would catch the eye of some scholarship granting group.
I had at least 5 upper level classes with Obnoxious Guy (not his real name) over 3 semesters. During the first semester he seemed to get sick the day of a test a lot. He'd then call someone to find out what was had been on the test. One day KK came into class seriously pissed off because she hadn't gotten to bed until the wee hours (due to aqueous solutions needing to be run and the computer not cooperating much) and OG had called her at like 7 to find out about the test he'd missed because he'd been "sick"*. I think KK was contemplating changing her number after that. After some other test he'd had a "migraine"* for, he stopped me on the sidewalk to ask me what had been on the test; I just couldn't remember any specifics - funny that, huh?
More than halfway through the semester he told our optical mineralogy TA that he was color blind. He was hoping he'd get some help (/benefit of the doubt/get off easy) because he would have difficulty with mineral id with birefringence. Unfortunately for OG, one of the other grad students actually was red/green color blind (in geology this kind of thing comes up) and he could tell what order and high/low. Beside by this point in the semester I'm pretty sure our TA was onto him.
OG had non-subtle wandering eyes. For example: In Op Min, as I recall, there'd be 2-4 slides of a given rock type, and one weeks lab might cover several rock types. Everyone has their own microscope and often people sitting next to one another will trade off slides. OG rarely traded slides with the person behind him, he had a definite preference for trading slides with a person whose lab sheet he could see. What's sad is we were allowed to ask one another questions and for help, even when we weren't working in groups, in most labs.
In sed/strat and ig pet we'd almost always work in groups because there weren't enough samples to go around and discussing why a rock is x or y helps you learn how to identify. OG would sit there and not say a word. KK and I were to polite to tell him to fuck off so he often worked "with" us. One day she and I were going back and forth on the percentages of quartz, feldspar, and lithic fragments. The sample was close to the line between three potential classifications, and our different estimates made a difference. We had gone back and forth for maybe 5 minutes, and OG says "so what is it?". KK plops the sample in front of him, and says "I don't know, what do you think it is?" He stumbles through some words like quartz, k-spar, 50%, etc. and finishes with "I don't know, what do you think?" KK and I rolled our eyes and finished deciding what the classification was, he copied down what we wrote and we all moved on.
One day he told us he didn't like rocks, he wanted to do geologic engineering. Scuttlebutt was that he'd been in the College of Engineering but they kicked him out. Another rumor was that one geo prof caught him cheating and told him to "withdraw failing"^ or he'd be reported. Obviously I don't know if any of that is true but it wouldn't have surprised me. I don't have anyway of knowing if he was ever reported to the appropriate authorities or not (or, for that matter, if he actually did anything reportable) but God, did I wish he had been. Still, I never could figure out how he stayed in school; he took many of the courses twice. His GPA had to have been in the toilet.
I spent much of the first semester mentally making excuses for OG, his personality not the cheating. He wasn't from the US (home was in sub-Saharan Africa) and the first thing that I didn't like about him was the way he spoke, not accent but mannerisms and volume; volume was actually the first thing that annoyed me. I told myself that maybe that's normal in his home country. Then when he kept being "sick" for tests, I thought maybe he's gotten away with that his whole life and so doesn't understand how much the rest of us resent it; maybe his family was important/rich enough at home he could get away with shit like that growing up.** Obviously when he refused to help cook or clean up dinner on a camping trip, it was because in the culture he grew up in, it was "women's work". So on and so forth. One day, as I was mentally excusing some behavior I'd find annoying in anyone else, I realized that all of his countryman couldn't possibly be that obnoxious, I was being extremely unfair to them, and he was a jerk no matter where he grew up.
*Migraines can be horrible and debilitating, I know. He may have even suffered from such migraines but since he was sick with something for every test I was highly suspicious.
^After a certain point in the semester you can't withdraw for a course without grade determination (W), it's either 'WP' or 'WF'; even later in the semester it has to be a 'WF'. A 'WF' and counts against your GPA, 'W' and 'WP' has no impact on it.
**I guessed his family had money or connections because he was going to school in the US and had no obvious means of support here. He certainly didn't seem to be the kind of student who would catch the eye of some scholarship granting group.
11 March 2009
Random bits, part 3.1?
This is awesome, I wish I thought local students would be so creative and motivated to tell the hate mongers off. (via Scalzi)
To accent my nerdiness, I'm trying to figure out the best way to knit circles in both circular and flat knitting with the aid of math and spreadsheets (because the maths get tedious the 20th time through). Because, really an octagon is not "close enough" to a circle. I will let you know when I get it right, the chord length calculations are tricky (and my DPNs are busy right now). In other knitting news, Mom's shawl is coming along nicely and the rows are getting to be noticeably long. It took me 30 minutes yesterday to do 2 rows (lace pattern then knit back across).
Two Sunday's ago=snow. Last Sunday= short sleeves and Irises and Bluets.
In case you were wondering, one of the things Honu-Girl is doing in St. Pete is talking about layer cake geology. Here she's creating some classic alpine thrusts.
Triple-time Swing went much better for me last night than last time I took this class. For some reason this time around the dancing in 6 to music in 4 (or 8) didn't bother me. (I had the same difficulty with the Fox Trot to start with but that one was a little easier to get over.) Although I wanted to point out to the instructor that we weren't "dancing in 8", there are 8 steps in 6 beats (For the musicians out there: 1-a-2-3-a-4-5-6 or 1-2-3-a-4-5-a-6, depending on if you start on the triple step or the rock step; the 8th notes should be slightly delayed, like "swing 8th notes" in jazz, (almost a dotted 8th-8th triplet) but can be counted as straight 8ths).
The instructor (Can not think of his name!) made a slip of the tongue last night. In Fox Trot and Waltz the man's right hand is behind the lady's left shoulder or slightly lower, in swing it is on the lady's waist. He was showing the correct position but said "your hand is on her hip". (You kind of had to be there but) Emma's (his wife, who helps him teach) quick and forceful correction and his subsequent demonstration of what was NOT her waist was funny. I think, if you grab your partner's hip, gentleman, you may very well get slapped or worse. Remember you're in close quarters.
To accent my nerdiness, I'm trying to figure out the best way to knit circles in both circular and flat knitting with the aid of math and spreadsheets (because the maths get tedious the 20th time through). Because, really an octagon is not "close enough" to a circle. I will let you know when I get it right, the chord length calculations are tricky (and my DPNs are busy right now). In other knitting news, Mom's shawl is coming along nicely and the rows are getting to be noticeably long. It took me 30 minutes yesterday to do 2 rows (lace pattern then knit back across).
Two Sunday's ago=snow. Last Sunday= short sleeves and Irises and Bluets.
In case you were wondering, one of the things Honu-Girl is doing in St. Pete is talking about layer cake geology. Here she's creating some classic alpine thrusts.
Triple-time Swing went much better for me last night than last time I took this class. For some reason this time around the dancing in 6 to music in 4 (or 8) didn't bother me. (I had the same difficulty with the Fox Trot to start with but that one was a little easier to get over.) Although I wanted to point out to the instructor that we weren't "dancing in 8", there are 8 steps in 6 beats (For the musicians out there: 1-a-2-3-a-4-5-6 or 1-2-3-a-4-5-a-6, depending on if you start on the triple step or the rock step; the 8th notes should be slightly delayed, like "swing 8th notes" in jazz, (almost a dotted 8th-8th triplet) but can be counted as straight 8ths).
The instructor (Can not think of his name!) made a slip of the tongue last night. In Fox Trot and Waltz the man's right hand is behind the lady's left shoulder or slightly lower, in swing it is on the lady's waist. He was showing the correct position but said "your hand is on her hip". (You kind of had to be there but) Emma's (his wife, who helps him teach) quick and forceful correction and his subsequent demonstration of what was NOT her waist was funny. I think, if you grab your partner's hip, gentleman, you may very well get slapped or worse. Remember you're in close quarters.
18 February 2009
CGI geology
I suspect Silver Fox is happy to see sketching because it means actual rocks were observed not just data derived from rocks. It is very important that rocks are actually used in the study of geology. (You laugh, but my thesis area was mostly 500+ feet under ground. I started to miss actual rocks and get really sick of well logs.) But I still want discuss the computer stuff. Computer-generated illustrations fall into two categories in my mind - model/reconstruction "photos" and drawings. The sketches I draw would never be published, I'm not that good. But I can, if required, produces drawings in Canvas (or Illustrator or whatever) that are of publication quality. I like Canvas for cross-sections because I can scale them and keep track of line lengths and areas but for general drawing I guess Illustrator is better (partly because Adobe is taking over the world). "Pictures" of computer models can't be substituted for.
Screen shot from a reconstruction of the top Pratt cycle based on well logs in 3DMove (from my thesis work). Surface is colored by elevation (blue is deeper) CI=200 feet IIRC; points are colored by peak gas production (red higher/blue lower); approximately 5x VE, wells average 1/4 mile spacing (400m).
There is no better way to show structure and it's relationship to gas production (or water production, thickness, porosity, mineralogy...) than with pictures like this, IMHO. Structure contour maps, et al. are great. I've done them, lots of them. I've done some by hand. I've had to correct ones done by computers. But for those who don't visualize in 3D well, being able to "see" the rocks 1000feet below their feet is priceless. And the computer models allow for even those of us who can see the structure in our heads to drape other attributes over the structure and see the relationships better. Besides it makes for some really sexy figures.
Screen shot from a reconstruction of the top Pratt cycle based on well logs in 3DMove (from my thesis work). Surface is colored by elevation (blue is deeper) CI=200 feet IIRC; points are colored by peak gas production (red higher/blue lower); approximately 5x VE, wells average 1/4 mile spacing (400m).
There is no better way to show structure and it's relationship to gas production (or water production, thickness, porosity, mineralogy...) than with pictures like this, IMHO. Structure contour maps, et al. are great. I've done them, lots of them. I've done some by hand. I've had to correct ones done by computers. But for those who don't visualize in 3D well, being able to "see" the rocks 1000feet below their feet is priceless. And the computer models allow for even those of us who can see the structure in our heads to drape other attributes over the structure and see the relationships better. Besides it makes for some really sexy figures.
Draw a photo
The reason is that photography can't always pick up what's important. Sometimes the light is just not right in the field. You can take a photo from all different angles, use the flash to fill-in a shadow, not use the flash to prevent washing out, cast your shadow over a bit... and nothing will get the lighting right. Beautiful days in the field can be too pretty - bright light and hard shadows often make for terrible outcrop photos. There are places where I have three photos for one spot and none of them really show what's important - sometimes the picture is too busy and the interesting bit gets lost in the details. With a sketch you can suggest all those unimportant details and focus on the important ones. Sometimes the feature of interest just isn't very photogenic due to coloring or contrast. Let me show you some examples.
In this example the photo does a pretty good job of capturing the crack fill texture and type of cement. My sketches are ok at it.
In this case I'd say the sketch does a better job of showing the fractures than the photo. (The sketches are not of exactly what's in the picture but similar piece of core.)
This is an outcrop with both standing Calamites fossils and stigmaria (take that young Earth geologists!). The photos don't do it justice, fossils are very faint (although the Calamites do stand out fairly well and look good in close-ups). I have some better examples of problems at the outcrop scale but I didn't sketch them because we're going back to do a detailed description another day.
Obviously when one needs high quality photos or a core or outcrop one can take the time and effort to make sure the photos are good (take core outside, use umbrella to shade, go back to a field site on a cloudy day...) and really show what one wants but for everyday, quick work often a sketch is better. Even with really good photos lines, circles, arrow, and the like are often added to draw the readers eye to the important bits.
In this example the photo does a pretty good job of capturing the crack fill texture and type of cement. My sketches are ok at it.
In this case I'd say the sketch does a better job of showing the fractures than the photo. (The sketches are not of exactly what's in the picture but similar piece of core.)
This is an outcrop with both standing Calamites fossils and stigmaria (take that young Earth geologists!). The photos don't do it justice, fossils are very faint (although the Calamites do stand out fairly well and look good in close-ups). I have some better examples of problems at the outcrop scale but I didn't sketch them because we're going back to do a detailed description another day.
Obviously when one needs high quality photos or a core or outcrop one can take the time and effort to make sure the photos are good (take core outside, use umbrella to shade, go back to a field site on a cloudy day...) and really show what one wants but for everyday, quick work often a sketch is better. Even with really good photos lines, circles, arrow, and the like are often added to draw the readers eye to the important bits.
17 February 2009
To shoot or not to shoot.
I kind of want to gush about Buffy growing up and telling the Watcher's Council off and all but that might lead to more ramblings about season 5 and lots of spoilers for Honu-Girl.* So instead I'll ramble on about photos, sketching, and computer-generated illustrations and their respective uses in geology, as I see it.
The Lost Geologist (who's temporarily lost his motivation, I'm sure it'll come back soon) posted an abstract and a fold sketch the other day. Based on the scale my guess is the fold is a detail of an outcrop. Silver Fox commented that she's (?) glad that some people still draw and not just use computers; TLG replied that they draw a lot in his program. I'm impressed by the quality of his sketch, my own tend towards the sloppy, but the art of sketching outcrops, hand samples, structures, sedimentary fabrics, etc. is alive and well. If not necessarily alive well in my hand:).
*Honu-Girl doesn't have nearly as much time as I do to sit around and watch TV. She has 2-legged children that demand attention, playing with, taking to soccer practice, real dinners, and tucking in. My children are 4-legged and the big one demands a scoop of food followed by tv watching w/wo snuggling every evening and the front door opened on occasion. The more couch time the better.
Bonus: I turned one ramble into three posts simply by being overly verbose!
The Lost Geologist (who's temporarily lost his motivation, I'm sure it'll come back soon) posted an abstract and a fold sketch the other day. Based on the scale my guess is the fold is a detail of an outcrop. Silver Fox commented that she's (?) glad that some people still draw and not just use computers; TLG replied that they draw a lot in his program. I'm impressed by the quality of his sketch, my own tend towards the sloppy, but the art of sketching outcrops, hand samples, structures, sedimentary fabrics, etc. is alive and well. If not necessarily alive well in my hand:).
*Honu-Girl doesn't have nearly as much time as I do to sit around and watch TV. She has 2-legged children that demand attention, playing with, taking to soccer practice, real dinners, and tucking in. My children are 4-legged and the big one demands a scoop of food followed by tv watching w/wo snuggling every evening and the front door opened on occasion. The more couch time the better.
Bonus: I turned one ramble into three posts simply by being overly verbose!
18 December 2008
America-centric?
Let's put some numbers to this America-centric charge of the 100 things list in my last post.
First List:Items 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, and 17 give examples of geological feature (10/10) in the NA which can, most likely, also be found elsewhere in the world. Twenty-seven of the items on the first list are North America specific locations (total of 34 specific places); 14 of them are for geological features that may be seen on another continent (IDK if they are); for an additional 8 I'm not sure why we are 'suppose' to visit the locations so I don't know if they are truly unique geologically or just happen to be good examples of something that could be found somewhere else.
Bently List: Of the 45 specific places listed, 13 are in North America (3 in Alaska alone!). Off the top of my head that seems like a reasonable share considering the amount of land we're covering. For the geological features and activities he list examples in North America for ten of them (55 total, 11 with example locations) and most have non-American examples as well.
So both lists offer examples of geologic features in North America with or without non-NA examples. Bently clearly lists many more non-US places a geologist should visit. I think the America-centrism critic of the original meme may stem from many of the specific locations are in the US even though the geologic feature may be found elsewhere. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I'm willing to believe the original author simply gave examples he was most familiar with.
That said I think I like the Bently list better. It lists specific places of geological importance and then geological features. By separating them he avoids the danger of an over abundance of American locations making the list and stress that while a geological feature may be well repreesented in a given place it almost certainly exists in locations around the world. It also means that those of us who haven't traveled much (at least not yet) don't feel completely left out.
In the end, it's just a way to fill a post. (I've managed to make two posts out of it. :P) To find a true geologist life time 100 list we'd have to get geologists all over the world to submit suggestions of both locations and features and then figure out which were the most common and even then there would be arguements. Because everyone will have a different opinion of what one MUST do/see.
First List:Items 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, and 17 give examples of geological feature (10/10) in the NA which can, most likely, also be found elsewhere in the world. Twenty-seven of the items on the first list are North America specific locations (total of 34 specific places); 14 of them are for geological features that may be seen on another continent (IDK if they are); for an additional 8 I'm not sure why we are 'suppose' to visit the locations so I don't know if they are truly unique geologically or just happen to be good examples of something that could be found somewhere else.
Bently List: Of the 45 specific places listed, 13 are in North America (3 in Alaska alone!). Off the top of my head that seems like a reasonable share considering the amount of land we're covering. For the geological features and activities he list examples in North America for ten of them (55 total, 11 with example locations) and most have non-American examples as well.
So both lists offer examples of geologic features in North America with or without non-NA examples. Bently clearly lists many more non-US places a geologist should visit. I think the America-centrism critic of the original meme may stem from many of the specific locations are in the US even though the geologic feature may be found elsewhere. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I'm willing to believe the original author simply gave examples he was most familiar with.
That said I think I like the Bently list better. It lists specific places of geological importance and then geological features. By separating them he avoids the danger of an over abundance of American locations making the list and stress that while a geological feature may be well repreesented in a given place it almost certainly exists in locations around the world. It also means that those of us who haven't traveled much (at least not yet) don't feel completely left out.
In the end, it's just a way to fill a post. (I've managed to make two posts out of it. :P) To find a true geologist life time 100 list we'd have to get geologists all over the world to submit suggestions of both locations and features and then figure out which were the most common and even then there would be arguements. Because everyone will have a different opinion of what one MUST do/see.
What haven't I done?
Lots.
A meme zinging around the geoblogosphere asks "what have you seen?" (I've bolded all the I've done/seen.)
1. See an erupting volcano
2. See a glacier
3. See an active geyser such as those in Yellowstone, New Zealand or the type locality of Iceland
4. Visit the Cretaceous/Tertiary (KT) Boundary. Possible locations include Gubbio, Italy, Stevns Klint, Denmark, the Red Deer River Valley near Drumheller, Alberta.
5. Observe (from a safe distance) a river whose discharge is above bankful stage
6. Explore a limestone cave. Try Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, Lehman Caves in Great Basin National Park, or the caves of Kentucky or TAG (Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia)
7. Tour an open pit mine, such as those in Butte, Montana, Bingham Canyon, Utah, Summitville, Colorado, Globe or Morenci, Arizona, or Chuquicamata, Chile.
8. Explore a subsurface mine.
9. See an ophiolite, such as the ophiolite complex in Oman or the Troodos complex on the Island Cyprus (if on a budget, try the Coast Ranges or Klamath Mountains of California).
10. An anorthosite complex, such as those in Labrador, the Adirondacks, and Niger (there's some anorthosite in southern California too).
11. A slot canyon. Many of these amazing canyons are less than 3 feet wide and over 100 feet deep. They reside on the Colorado Plateau. Among the best are Antelope Canyon, Brimstone Canyon, Spooky Gulch and the Round Valley Draw.
12. Varves, whether you see the type section in Sweden or examples elsewhere. [hand sample only]
13. An exfoliation dome, such as those in the Sierra Nevada.
14. A layered igneous intrusion, such as the Stillwater complex in Montana or the Skaergaard Complex in Eastern Greenland.
15. Coastlines along the leading and trailing edge of a tectonic plate.
16. A gingko tree, which is the lone survivor of an ancient group of softwoods that covered much of the Northern Hemisphere in the Mesozoic. [near my office, god the fruit stinks]
17. Living and fossilized stromatolites (Glacier National Park is a great place to see fossil stromatolites, while Shark Bay in Australia is the place to see living ones)
18. A field of glacial erratics
19. A caldera
20. A sand dune more than 200 feet high [Great Sand Dune National Park]
21. A fjord
22. A recently formed fault scarp
23. A megabreccia
24. An actively accreting river delta
25. A natural bridge
26. A large sinkhole [Lake Jackson, Florala, Alabama - largest sinkhole in the state]
27. A glacial outwash plain
28. A sea stack
29. A house-sized glacial erratic
30. An underground lake or river
31. The continental divide
32. Fluorescent and phosphorescent minerals [got a set one time as a present]
33. Petrified trees
34. Lava tubes
35. The Grand Canyon. All the way down. And back. [haven't been to the bottom]
36. Meteor Crater, Arizona, also known as the Barringer Crater, to see an impact crater on a scale that is comprehensible
37. The Great Barrier Reef, northeastern Australia, to see the largest coral reef in the world.
38. The Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Canada, to see the highest tides in the world (up to 16m)
39. The Waterpocket Fold, Utah, to see well exposed folds on a massive scale.
40. The Banded Iron Formation, Michigan, to better appreciate the air you breathe. [samples only]
41. The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Tanzania,
42. Lake Baikal, Siberia, to see the deepest lake in the world (1,620 m) with 20 percent of the Earth's fresh water.
43. Ayers Rock (known now by the Aboriginal name of Uluru), Australia. This inselberg of nearly vertical Precambrian strata is about 2.5 kilometers long and more than 350 meters high
44. Devil's Tower, northeastern Wyoming, to see a classic example of columnar jointing.
45. The Alps.
46. Telescope Peak, in Death Valley National Park. From this spectacular summit you can look down onto the floor of Death Valley - 11,330 feet below.
47. The Li River, China, to see the fantastic tower karst that appears in much Chinese art
48. The Dalmation Coast of Croatia, to see the original Karst.
49. The Gorge of Bhagirathi, one of the sacred headwaters of the Ganges, in the Indian Himalayas, where the river flows from an ice tunnel beneath the Gangatori Glacier into a deep gorge.
50. The Goosenecks of the San Juan River, Utah, an impressive series of entrenched meanders.
51. Shiprock, New Mexico, to see a large volcanic neck
52. Land's End, Cornwall, Great Britain, for fractured granites that have feldspar crystals bigger than your fist.
53. Tierra del Fuego, Chile and Argentina, to see the Straights of Magellan and the southernmost tip of South America.
54. Mount St. Helens, Washington, to see the results of recent explosive volcanism.
55. The Giant's Causeway and the Antrim Plateau, Northern Ireland, to see polygonally fractured basaltic flows.
56. The Great Rift Valley in Africa.
57. The Matterhorn, along the Swiss/Italian border, to see the classic "horn".
58. The Carolina Bays, along the Carolinian and Georgian coastal plain
59. The Mima Mounds near Olympia, Washington
60. Siccar Point, Berwickshire, Scotland, where James Hutton (the "father" of modern geology) observed the classic unconformity
61. The moving rocks of Racetrack Playa in Death Valley
62. Yosemite Valley
63. Landscape Arch (or Delicate Arch) in Utah [maybe, but I'm not sure]
64. The Burgess Shale in British Columbia [samples only]
65. The Channeled Scablands of central Washington
66. Bryce Canyon
67. Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone
68. Monument Valley [again, I don't remember everywhere we went that summer]
69. The San Andreas fault
70. The dinosaur footprints in La Rioja, Spain
71. The volcanic landscapes of the Canary Islands
72. The Pyrennees Mountains
73. The Lime Caves at Karamea on the West Coast of New Zealand
74. Denali (an orogeny in progress)
75. A catastrophic mass wasting event
76. The giant crossbeds visible at Zion National Park
77. The black sand beaches in Hawaii (or the green sand-olivine beaches)
78. Barton Springs in Texas
79. Hells Canyon in Idaho
80. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado
81. The Tunguska Impact site in Siberia
82. Feel an earthquake with a magnitude greater than 5.0.[only a 3.5]
83. Find dinosaur footprints in situ
84. Find a trilobite (or a dinosaur bone or any other fossil)
85. Find gold, however small the flake
86. Find a meteorite fragment
87. Experience a volcanic ashfall
88. Experience a sandstorm
89. See a tsunami
90. Witness a total solar eclipse
91. Witness a tornado firsthand. [thank God, no]
92. Witness a meteor storm, a term used to describe a particularly intense (1000+ per minute) meteor shower
93. View Saturn and its moons through a respectable telescope.
94. See the Aurora borealis, otherwise known as the northern lights.
95. View a great naked-eye comet, an opportunity which occurs only a few times per century
96. See a lunar eclipse
97. View a distant galaxy through a large telescope
98. Experience a hurricane
99. See noctilucent clouds
100. See the green flash
Apparently there were some complaints that it is US-centric so Callan Bently wrote up a slightly different one:
Specific places
A meme zinging around the geoblogosphere asks "what have you seen?" (I've bolded all the I've done/seen.)
1. See an erupting volcano
2. See a glacier
3. See an active geyser such as those in Yellowstone, New Zealand or the type locality of Iceland
4. Visit the Cretaceous/Tertiary (KT) Boundary. Possible locations include Gubbio, Italy, Stevns Klint, Denmark, the Red Deer River Valley near Drumheller, Alberta.
5. Observe (from a safe distance) a river whose discharge is above bankful stage
6. Explore a limestone cave. Try Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, Lehman Caves in Great Basin National Park, or the caves of Kentucky or TAG (Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia)
7. Tour an open pit mine, such as those in Butte, Montana, Bingham Canyon, Utah, Summitville, Colorado, Globe or Morenci, Arizona, or Chuquicamata, Chile.
8. Explore a subsurface mine.
9. See an ophiolite, such as the ophiolite complex in Oman or the Troodos complex on the Island Cyprus (if on a budget, try the Coast Ranges or Klamath Mountains of California).
10. An anorthosite complex, such as those in Labrador, the Adirondacks, and Niger (there's some anorthosite in southern California too).
11. A slot canyon. Many of these amazing canyons are less than 3 feet wide and over 100 feet deep. They reside on the Colorado Plateau. Among the best are Antelope Canyon, Brimstone Canyon, Spooky Gulch and the Round Valley Draw.
12. Varves, whether you see the type section in Sweden or examples elsewhere. [hand sample only]
13. An exfoliation dome, such as those in the Sierra Nevada.
14. A layered igneous intrusion, such as the Stillwater complex in Montana or the Skaergaard Complex in Eastern Greenland.
15. Coastlines along the leading and trailing edge of a tectonic plate.
16. A gingko tree, which is the lone survivor of an ancient group of softwoods that covered much of the Northern Hemisphere in the Mesozoic. [near my office, god the fruit stinks]
17. Living and fossilized stromatolites (Glacier National Park is a great place to see fossil stromatolites, while Shark Bay in Australia is the place to see living ones)
18. A field of glacial erratics
19. A caldera
20. A sand dune more than 200 feet high [Great Sand Dune National Park]
21. A fjord
22. A recently formed fault scarp
23. A megabreccia
24. An actively accreting river delta
25. A natural bridge
26. A large sinkhole [Lake Jackson, Florala, Alabama - largest sinkhole in the state]
27. A glacial outwash plain
28. A sea stack
29. A house-sized glacial erratic
30. An underground lake or river
31. The continental divide
32. Fluorescent and phosphorescent minerals [got a set one time as a present]
33. Petrified trees
34. Lava tubes
35. The Grand Canyon. All the way down. And back. [haven't been to the bottom]
36. Meteor Crater, Arizona, also known as the Barringer Crater, to see an impact crater on a scale that is comprehensible
37. The Great Barrier Reef, northeastern Australia, to see the largest coral reef in the world.
38. The Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Canada, to see the highest tides in the world (up to 16m)
39. The Waterpocket Fold, Utah, to see well exposed folds on a massive scale.
40. The Banded Iron Formation, Michigan, to better appreciate the air you breathe. [samples only]
41. The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Tanzania,
42. Lake Baikal, Siberia, to see the deepest lake in the world (1,620 m) with 20 percent of the Earth's fresh water.
43. Ayers Rock (known now by the Aboriginal name of Uluru), Australia. This inselberg of nearly vertical Precambrian strata is about 2.5 kilometers long and more than 350 meters high
44. Devil's Tower, northeastern Wyoming, to see a classic example of columnar jointing.
45. The Alps.
46. Telescope Peak, in Death Valley National Park. From this spectacular summit you can look down onto the floor of Death Valley - 11,330 feet below.
47. The Li River, China, to see the fantastic tower karst that appears in much Chinese art
48. The Dalmation Coast of Croatia, to see the original Karst.
49. The Gorge of Bhagirathi, one of the sacred headwaters of the Ganges, in the Indian Himalayas, where the river flows from an ice tunnel beneath the Gangatori Glacier into a deep gorge.
50. The Goosenecks of the San Juan River, Utah, an impressive series of entrenched meanders.
51. Shiprock, New Mexico, to see a large volcanic neck
52. Land's End, Cornwall, Great Britain, for fractured granites that have feldspar crystals bigger than your fist.
53. Tierra del Fuego, Chile and Argentina, to see the Straights of Magellan and the southernmost tip of South America.
54. Mount St. Helens, Washington, to see the results of recent explosive volcanism.
55. The Giant's Causeway and the Antrim Plateau, Northern Ireland, to see polygonally fractured basaltic flows.
56. The Great Rift Valley in Africa.
57. The Matterhorn, along the Swiss/Italian border, to see the classic "horn".
58. The Carolina Bays, along the Carolinian and Georgian coastal plain
59. The Mima Mounds near Olympia, Washington
60. Siccar Point, Berwickshire, Scotland, where James Hutton (the "father" of modern geology) observed the classic unconformity
61. The moving rocks of Racetrack Playa in Death Valley
62. Yosemite Valley
63. Landscape Arch (or Delicate Arch) in Utah [maybe, but I'm not sure]
64. The Burgess Shale in British Columbia [samples only]
65. The Channeled Scablands of central Washington
66. Bryce Canyon
67. Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone
68. Monument Valley [again, I don't remember everywhere we went that summer]
69. The San Andreas fault
70. The dinosaur footprints in La Rioja, Spain
71. The volcanic landscapes of the Canary Islands
72. The Pyrennees Mountains
73. The Lime Caves at Karamea on the West Coast of New Zealand
74. Denali (an orogeny in progress)
75. A catastrophic mass wasting event
76. The giant crossbeds visible at Zion National Park
77. The black sand beaches in Hawaii (or the green sand-olivine beaches)
78. Barton Springs in Texas
79. Hells Canyon in Idaho
80. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado
81. The Tunguska Impact site in Siberia
82. Feel an earthquake with a magnitude greater than 5.0.[only a 3.5]
83. Find dinosaur footprints in situ
84. Find a trilobite (or a dinosaur bone or any other fossil)
85. Find gold, however small the flake
86. Find a meteorite fragment
87. Experience a volcanic ashfall
88. Experience a sandstorm
89. See a tsunami
90. Witness a total solar eclipse
91. Witness a tornado firsthand. [thank God, no]
92. Witness a meteor storm, a term used to describe a particularly intense (1000+ per minute) meteor shower
93. View Saturn and its moons through a respectable telescope.
94. See the Aurora borealis, otherwise known as the northern lights.
95. View a great naked-eye comet, an opportunity which occurs only a few times per century
96. See a lunar eclipse
97. View a distant galaxy through a large telescope
98. Experience a hurricane
99. See noctilucent clouds
100. See the green flash
Apparently there were some complaints that it is US-centric so Callan Bently wrote up a slightly different one:
Specific places
- Visit the Chalk (England, France, Ireland...) [I've seen the Selma chalk]
- Visit Iceland
- Visit Mt. Fuji, Japan
- Visit Great Barrier Reef, Australia
- Visit the Himalayas (Kashmir?)
- the Tibetan Plateau
- Visit the Gobi Desert
- Visit the Sahara Desert
- Visit the Sonoran Desert (for the saguaros)
- Visit the Atacama Desert
- Visit the Rub' al Khali (Empty Quarter)
- Visit Beijing or Shanghai (for the perspective on what really dirty air looks like)
- Visit the big island of Hawai'i
- Visit Yellowstone
- Visit the Galapagos Islands
- Visit Madagascar (for the lemurs)
- Visit Patagonia
- Visit the Andes
- Visit the Alps
- Visit the Canadian Rockies
- Visit Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska (and/or neighboring Kluane National Park in the Yukon Territory)
- Visit Denali, Alaska
- Visit the Aleutian Islands
- Visit Chimborazo, Ecuador (furthest point from the center of the Earth, due to the equatorial bulge)
- Visit Antarctica
- Visit the Siberian Traps
- Visit the Deccan Traps
- Visit the Columbia River flood basalt province
- Visit Sumatra/Krakatau/Java, Indonesia
- Visit the South Island of New Zealand
- Visit the Appalachians
- Visit the Dead Sea
- Visit the Giant's Causeway, County Antrim, Northern Ireland.
- Visit the Great Rift Valley of East Africa
- Visit the Nile River
- Visit the Mississippi River
- Visit the Amazon River
- Visit the Grand Canyon
- Visit the Owens Valley, California (or anywhere in the Basin & Range, but the Owens Valley is pretty darned special, and geologically diverse)
- Visit Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland, Canada (walk on the "Moho")
- Visit Siccar Point, Scotland (for the unconformity)
- Visit Gibraltar, "UK"
- Visit Vesuvius, Pompei, and the Pompei-to-be, Naples
- Visit Uluru (Ayers Rock), Australia
- Visit the Moon
- A tectonic triple junction (Mendocino, CA is an example, or northern Burma, or Panama)
- Tower karst (Guilin, China, or southwestern Thailand are examples)
- A regional flood
- A flash flood
- Ediacaran fauna fossils in situ (possibilities include the type locality of the Ediacaran Hills in Australia, or Charnwood Forest in England, the White Sea region in Russia, or maybe the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland)
- Vertebrate fossils in situ
- Visiting a laggerstatten site (Burgess Shale, Chenjiang, Sirius Passet, Solnhofen?)
- An alpine glacier
- A continental glacier (ice cap or ice sheet)
- A kimberlite pipe (preferably with diamonds, and good luck with that) [in Arkansas]
- A coral atoll (take your pick)
- A meteor impact crater (not a buried one, either)
- A big river delta (Mississippi, Ganges, Nile, or any of the dozens of others)
- Barrier islands (Padre Island, Texas, and the Outer Banks of North Carolina come to mind, but I'm sure there are others on other continents)
- A craton (Canadian shield, Kaapvaal, North China, etc. etc. etc.)
- A big estuary (Cook Inlet, Chesapeake Bay, Bay of Fundy: all North American examples. Give me some others)
- See some karst.
- Kayak (or other boat) through a fjord.
- See a dropstone.
- See an ophiolite.
- Visit a major stike-slip fault (San Andreas in USA/Mexico, or North Anatolian in Turkey, or Tan Lo (sp?) in China)
- Visit a nappe or thrust sheet (Glarus Thrust in the Alps, Chief Mountain/Glacier NP in Montana, Blue Ridge in Virginia/North Carolina)
- Visit a really big cave (Mammoth, Lechugilla, or some other that I don't know about on another continent)
- A world-class natural history museum (London Museum of Natural History, American Museum of Natural History, and the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History all come to mind.)
- Meeting of a classic scientific society (Royal Society, Explorers Club, Cosmos Club...)
- Do some original research.
- Present your research at a meeting of other scientists.
- Publish your research in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
- Visit an original copy of "map that changed the world" (William Smith's geologic map of England, Wales, and part of Scotland)
- Experience a big earthquake (greater than 5.0 sounds like as good a cut-off as any)
- Experience a volcano erupting something other than gases (lava, pyroclastics)
- Go ice fishing (or just out onto a frozen lake/pond/sea/ocean and ponder the improbable nature of ice and how it freezes from the top down, preserving the living things underneath, like fish. Without this odd property, it would be tough to maintain life in our high-latitude/elevation lakes/etc. through the winter months.)
- Compare and contrast El Nino and La Nina.
- Go on an oceanographic research cruise for more than two weeks at sea.
- Experience a hurricane/typhoon/cyclone (preferably with surviving it as a caveat)
03 December 2008
Turning Off Inner-Geologist - Fail
Many of the pictures I took at the beach were geology related. Here are the best:
The nearly pure quartz sands of the Alabama coast. It's squeaky clean!
Funny true story: One summer my folks rented a place at Virginia Beach for a few days and my older siblings came, too. One of my then sister-in-laws actually tip-toed across the sand because it was "dirty". She'd only been to the sugar sand beaches of Alabama and Florida before, she apparently thought all those feldspars and heavy minerals were dirt.
Ripples
Future trace fossils? Bird tracks Crab borrow
rain drop impressions with human tracks
Future fossils? Shell hash at the high tide line.
The nearly pure quartz sands of the Alabama coast. It's squeaky clean!
Funny true story: One summer my folks rented a place at Virginia Beach for a few days and my older siblings came, too. One of my then sister-in-laws actually tip-toed across the sand because it was "dirty". She'd only been to the sugar sand beaches of Alabama and Florida before, she apparently thought all those feldspars and heavy minerals were dirt.
Ripples
Future trace fossils? Bird tracks Crab borrow
rain drop impressions with human tracks
Future fossils? Shell hash at the high tide line.
19 November 2008
Alabama Geology 101
Yesterday I actually got to go out and look at some real rocks. (Wo0t!1!) I took a bunch of pictures so of which were actually geological in nature. I thought I'd share a few to give my far-flung readers an idea of what it is like doing field work in Alabama.
First off, it was chilly (around 40°F/4.5C); although it wasn't so bad since I could do my work wearing real gloves and a hat didn't seem weird, as opposed to being in the office where I can only wear half-finger gloves to type and wearing my hat seems a bit of overkill.* It was almost nice in the sun for a little while. And it isn't nearly as bad as it can be (it is Alabama after all). Heck it was WAY nicer than field work in August and there's less foliage to deal with. Procuring lunch can be difficult is some areas. Ashville has a relatively new Mexican restaurant (in the shopping center with Ashville Drug, towards the interstate) that was pretty good. It is definitely a positive addition to the area. And to be fair, we were looking for shale outcrops in the 'mushwad'^, so large fresh exposures don't exist.
First stop was the longest and highest (3-5 feet tall by 160-180 feet long or 1-1.65 m by 56-60m), here's a representative picture:
It was a little too sunny for good pictures. There's a mylonitic zone right where my boss is looking about where the shadow starts. The contrast between sun and shade is almost too much to make zone visible in pictures.
Second stop was in the ditch on the side of a road:
This outcrop is about 1 foot high and 2.5 feet long (.3m high and .75m long).
Here are my co-workers take a strike and dip. The book is to even out and extend the tiny bit of rock sticking out of the weathered material. It doesn't give you much room to work with though. This outcrop does have the advantage that every few years the county will come and scrap it out potentially and temporarily creating better exposure.
Third stop by the railroad, very interesting, very complex:
We could spend days just getting data from this stop but it might give some clues to the internal structures of the mushwad.
Fourth stop by the railroad tracks further down, yay for resistant beds:
We tried to get a strike while the train went by but that amount of steel completely screwed up the compass. So all we could do was count cars until it passed.
The fifth outcrop we went looking for has been sodded over by the highway department. DOT is one out the best outcrop makers in Alabama (probably throughout the SE) and in Alabama we can stop and look at the rocks (in VA that's not allowed). Unfortunately the DOT doesn't appreciate the need to keep outcrops free of trees and bushes and likes to (at least try) to grass over rocks. They also have a tendency to shotcrete less competent strata - gunite running parallel to bedded - likely shale, gunite at high angle to bedding - likely fault, gunite over the entire outcrop - g@ddamn engineers, the secrets of the Birmingham anticlinorium could be hidden behind that.
*Actually, right now the system seems to working and it's comfortable. This may or may not last.
^area of thick structurally complex Conasuaga
First off, it was chilly (around 40°F/4.5C); although it wasn't so bad since I could do my work wearing real gloves and a hat didn't seem weird, as opposed to being in the office where I can only wear half-finger gloves to type and wearing my hat seems a bit of overkill.* It was almost nice in the sun for a little while. And it isn't nearly as bad as it can be (it is Alabama after all). Heck it was WAY nicer than field work in August and there's less foliage to deal with. Procuring lunch can be difficult is some areas. Ashville has a relatively new Mexican restaurant (in the shopping center with Ashville Drug, towards the interstate) that was pretty good. It is definitely a positive addition to the area. And to be fair, we were looking for shale outcrops in the 'mushwad'^, so large fresh exposures don't exist.
First stop was the longest and highest (3-5 feet tall by 160-180 feet long or 1-1.65 m by 56-60m), here's a representative picture:
It was a little too sunny for good pictures. There's a mylonitic zone right where my boss is looking about where the shadow starts. The contrast between sun and shade is almost too much to make zone visible in pictures.
Second stop was in the ditch on the side of a road:
This outcrop is about 1 foot high and 2.5 feet long (.3m high and .75m long).
Here are my co-workers take a strike and dip. The book is to even out and extend the tiny bit of rock sticking out of the weathered material. It doesn't give you much room to work with though. This outcrop does have the advantage that every few years the county will come and scrap it out potentially and temporarily creating better exposure.
Third stop by the railroad, very interesting, very complex:
We could spend days just getting data from this stop but it might give some clues to the internal structures of the mushwad.
Fourth stop by the railroad tracks further down, yay for resistant beds:
We tried to get a strike while the train went by but that amount of steel completely screwed up the compass. So all we could do was count cars until it passed.
The fifth outcrop we went looking for has been sodded over by the highway department. DOT is one out the best outcrop makers in Alabama (probably throughout the SE) and in Alabama we can stop and look at the rocks (in VA that's not allowed). Unfortunately the DOT doesn't appreciate the need to keep outcrops free of trees and bushes and likes to (at least try) to grass over rocks. They also have a tendency to shotcrete less competent strata - gunite running parallel to bedded - likely shale, gunite at high angle to bedding - likely fault, gunite over the entire outcrop - g@ddamn engineers, the secrets of the Birmingham anticlinorium could be hidden behind that.
*Actually, right now the system seems to working and it's comfortable. This may or may not last.
^area of thick structurally complex Conasuaga
23 August 2007
Weekeend Assignment #180
Weekend Assignment #180: Build a Bumper Sticker
Hadn't done one of these in a while. I got a little carried away with making bumper stickers (I'm at work what else am I going to do?). Here are a few of them.While your at it - guess my profession.
I sure that one strikes fear in the heart of a reader or two.
Actual quote from my boss.
This one could be interpreted several ways.
My old car had a bunch of bumper stickers. I decided that if my niece could get arrested for protesting the death penalty, I could slap a few of my beliefs on my car. Good thing my mother has similar socio-political views as I do because it's her car now. My new car only has three right now (a Brite Blue Dot, 01-20-09, and Stop Continental Drift). I have a few more to put on there but they have ended up at the bottom a stack somewhere. When I find them again, on they will go.
For this Weekend Assignment I thought we'd do something easy. Because it's August, and that's just the wrong month to think:
Weekend Assignment #180: Go to this bumper sticker generator, and create a bumper sticker. Then post it in your journal. The generator page gives you a number of options to play with, so you should be able to have fun with it. Naturally, keep it reasonably clean; I have to link to it, after all.
Extra Credit: How many bumper stickers does your car have in real life?
Hadn't done one of these in a while. I got a little carried away with making bumper stickers (I'm at work what else am I going to do?). Here are a few of them.While your at it - guess my profession.
I sure that one strikes fear in the heart of a reader or two.
Actual quote from my boss.
This one could be interpreted several ways.
My old car had a bunch of bumper stickers. I decided that if my niece could get arrested for protesting the death penalty, I could slap a few of my beliefs on my car. Good thing my mother has similar socio-political views as I do because it's her car now. My new car only has three right now (a Brite Blue Dot, 01-20-09, and Stop Continental Drift). I have a few more to put on there but they have ended up at the bottom a stack somewhere. When I find them again, on they will go.
26 July 2007
Carbon Sequestration, WTF is that?
It is what I do. Or at least the research I am currently working on.
'Carbon sequestration' is the term used by the U.S. Dept of Energy to refer to projects designed to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it for the long term. Why DOE choose sequestration instead of storage, like the rest of the English speaking world, no one out side the agency knows but we are stuck with a word that has most of the public going "huh???" but no one asked me.
Twice recently when asked what it is I do, I've had people assume that because I work in fossil fuel research I am not in an environmentally friendly field. Both times I was quick to point to the CO2 sequestration project, which I spend most of my work week on (unless of course I am slacking off). I am sorry I didn't challenge the individual's perception that fossil fuels are inherently bad. (as this cartoon illustrates)
The division of the state agency I work for is called the Energy Investigation Program. There are several projects going at the moment. A couple of them have to do with estimating reserves and potential for conventional oil and gas development, coal bed methane development, and coal reserves; two of them are about CO2 sequestration; one is tangentially related to CO2 sequestration. Not one employee in the EIP (or the whole agency for that matter) wants to see our planet raped and pillaged or rapid global climate change (a.k.a. global warming), nor (I am fairly certain) do any of us hold any other anti-environment views. We do however understand the necessity of the use of fossil fuels in the short and long terms to maintain the standard of living the developed and developing worlds have come to know and love.
Are big energy companies environmentally friendly? Not out of the goodness of their hearts. They are businesses and they exist to make money not be nice. If being "greener" will make their profits go up, then they will be "greener".
Are Americans prepared to stop driving their cars, stop using electricity, stop buying plastic shit,...? NO.
Most of the electricity you use (at least if you are living in America) is from coal fired power plants. If we stop mining coal you will not be able to set your thermostat at 70° and keep your beer cold in the fridge.
The gas used to heat millions of homes across America (and the world) comes from the burning of natural gas and propane. It has to come out of the ground. I like to not get frostbite. How about you?
Almost every single drop of the fuel used to power cars, trains, buses, boats, and planes comes from crude oil. (A very few of you use biodiesel and good for you. There is ethanol being used. There isn't enough used cooking oil for all of us. Not enough corn to feed the world and run our cars. You are still shooting CO2 out your tailpipe.) Without oil rigs the world over, I would not have gotten to work this morning and neither would have you. Are you prepared to ride a bike, keep horses, and not travel very far ever? I didn't think so.
Are there things we can do to lessen our impact on the Earth? OF COURSE! There are many things we can all do everyday to lessen the amount of fossil fuel used to support our way of life and lessen our environmental footprint (carbon and otherwise). Public transit, car pooling, planning errands to avoid extra driving, recycling, shorter showers, public transit, washing the clothes in warm rather than hot water, turning the thermostat up in the summer and down in the winter, programmable thermostats, recycling,...I could go on and on.
Do we need to look into alternatives for fossil fuels? YES. It will one day be economically and environmentally unavoidable. Right now there are no commercially viable alternatives to the gasoline and diesel, universally available. Alternatives for electricity production help but all have environmental costs that have to be weighed. (Where you going to put that nuclear waste? What river are you going to dam?)
These are complex problems that we created over the last 100 years. There is no simple solution. Please don't assume that my job is about stripping the world's natural resources, future be damned. I hope to one day have grandchildren, too. I am, however, a realist, geologist, and environmentalist.
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