Author: Dana Hunter

I Can't Show You This Picture, But You Must See It

Dana Hunter5 Comments

I have this weird respect for copyright, so I didn’t want to embed this, but you really have to see it. Then come back and we’ll talk about it.

Yeah, that’s some kind of delicious, isn’t it just? More where that came from, at David Rankin’s website. So many sights there that reminded me of the not-so-halcyon days when I lived in Page. The only thing good about Page was the scenery. No complaints there, my friends – it’s truly dramatic. And David managed to capture an extra dollop of drama there. Fantastic.

I thought I recognized that old local icon, the Navajo Generating Station, but I wrote to him about it just to be sure. He advised, “The photo was taken with a telephoto lens from southern Utah just across the UT/AZ border looking at the Navajo Generating Station and LeChee Rock.” Four years I lived there, and I never knew that was LeChee Rock. We callow kids didn’t know the names of most of the mesas. We just kind of pointed at them and said “That one” when discussing them. I think the only reason we knew Page is built on Manson Mesa is because, hey, it’s Manson.

I used to go out at night up to the place on the edge of the mesa where it was rumored a whole settlement had blown sky-high one Halloween night back in the ’50s, and I’d stand there looking beyond the barely-lit airstrip out to the Navajo Generating Station. You wouldn’t normally think of a coal-fired plant as beautiful, but it was. Standing out there alone in the bare desert, the only light beyond Page for miles aside from the moon and stars, it looked like a ship in a sandy sea, sailing serenely among rocky icebergs. I mean, seriously. Go look at it again. Take your eyes off the lightning and really look at the plant. Doesn’t that look just like a grand old steamship, floating out there against the mesas? David captured it just as I remember it. Only he managed to capture so much more: the stark, dark cliffs standing against storm-torn skies.

This is what I was talking about when I told you about slickrock. Those mesas rose up from the desert floor, stark and still. The storms rolling in over them are bloody amazing to watch. Only you’ll want to do it from high ground. David’s shot what I’m talking about. It may not even be raining within a hundred miles of where you are, but suddenly, a sound, a roar, and water, swift and deep and treacherous. You can’t outrun it, and if you’re in a slot canyon, you can’t out-climb it, either. People have died because they didn’t understand this about the desert: even here, you can drown.

But to stand in a high place, to watch the lightning strike and the rain arrow down, to hear the wind roar through the barren rock – that you won’t trade for anything. To see the storm-light on the red rock, watch colors and hues change, dappled over ten or fifty or a hundred miles around you, painting an already painted desert – that’s a vision that will imprint itself indelibly. It stays.

I want to go back. I want to sit in the high places, and watch the sun explore ancient rocks. I want to hear a silence so profound it’s like a physical force. I want to lie back against that smooth, bare slickrock and stare into an endless sky. And I want to see the storms again, smell a petrichor so intense it tangles up and overwhelms the more prosaic scent of sand, feel that shock of chill air from a thunderstorm that washes over the skin like a mist and leaves you with goosebumps in a hundred degrees. I love and miss those things.

I’m glad I have such images to remind me.

I Can't Show You This Picture, But You Must See It
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Caturday Geocat: Hand Sample Analysis

Dana Hunter2 Comments

My poor beautiful hand samples from our Oregon trip are just sitting forlorn on the porch, waiting for me to come up with a permanent home for them. I’m afraid I may never get to properly house them, however. My cat has taken a definite interest.



We have this little ritual when I come home for lunch. She usually spends the time outside on the porch, hanging out on her carpet square whilst I scarf some food and catch up on Twitter. Then she greets me at the door as I head outside for a smoke. She follows me over to the lounge chair, where I sit and enjoy the last moments of freedom before heading back for another four hours of soul-sucking drudgery agonizing boredom work. She consents to a scratch behind the ears, and then ambles over and starts inspecting the rocks.



Here she’s analyzing one of the platy volcanic bits (which may or may not be basalt or basaltic andesite, but that’s a story for another day). It’s one of the ones with dendrites on it. Once she gets done with those, she’ll establish ownership over the rhyolite by rubbing her cheeks all over every piece she can reach. I have to watch her on that – they’ve got some glassy textures and sharp edges.

She’ll look up occasionally, stare off into the distance like she’s considering what she’s just learned from her latest inspection.



Then she’ll go back to her favorite sample, a frothy bit of basalt or basaltic andesite with quartz in.



She loves that rock the best. She curls up with it every time we’re out there together. I’m surprised it’s not coated in cat hair, considering how much she snuggles with it.



It’ll be winter soon, and both rocks and kitteh will have to come in from the cold and rain. But for now, I think I’ll leave her hand samples just as they are. This time we have together, me and her and the rocks, is precious.

I’m lucky to live with a cat who shares my love of geology and Doctor Who. I can forgive the occasional homicidal rages. We all have our little quirks, after all.

You’ve had your Caturday dose of cute. Time for something of substance. Both Lockwood and Cujo have written up bits of our recent trip. Cujo explains why geology is important, and Lockwood’s done a more in-depth look at his teaser tweeting, a sexy take on the Pinnacles, and a dedication to the teacher who introduced him to many of the wonders we saw. Enjoy!

Caturday Geocat: Hand Sample Analysis

Interlude With Dragonfly

Dana Hunter4 Comments

I wish I could promise you drama. However, aside from some very nice scenery, Highway 58’s about the least-dramatic road through the Cascades. When you reach Willamette Pass and stop by Odell Lake, you don’t really feel as though you’ve just reached the mid-point through some of the most dramatic mountains in the United States. Sure, they explode occasionally, but they haven’t exploded round here just lately. You haven’t even climbed very much – you’re at a mere 5,000 feet. There’s some nice pointy peaks surrounding you, but it’s not like you’ve been on a steep climb with hairpin turns through them. You don’t feel like you’ve really worked for it.

Which is fine, because that’s left you nice and relaxed and in a mood to amble round photographing pretty things. There’s even a helpful sign that tells you what you’re photographing:
Hard to be sure, but that could be Diamond Peak there in the distance

Rather not what one expects in a shield volcano, is it? But that’s what it is – a great big shield volcano composed of fifteen cubic kilometers worth of basaltic andesite. That’s lots. And it’s thought to be fairly young – around 100,000 years or so, which in geologic terms means it’s barely out of diapers.

I know, I know. You’re looking at its jaggedy profile and saying, “Dana, my dear, that looks more like a stratovolcano.” Well, yes, of course it does. It stopped erupting before the last ice age ended, and the ice did a number on it. Ice is quite the artist (not Vanilla Ice, but actual ice, mind). It sculpted and carved and removed bits until this nice, sharp diamond shape was left.

And it left a rather nice lake, as well.
A bit of Odell Lake

The glacier that covered this area carved out a nice basin, then closed it off with a terminal moraine, and left the lake behind. The Cascades are riddled with these high mountain lakes, and they’re all quite lovely. Not warm. But pretty.

I’d have quite a few more pictures of mountains and so forth, only I came across this wonderful wee beastie as I was pottering about:
An unexpected dragonfly

Well, you know I’m mad for these things. And this poor bloke was dying. When I saw him, he was a bit pathetically crumpled up, on his back, and just looking miserable lying there on the bare shoulder pavement. I didn’t want him to finish the last moments of his life by being squished under a tire, so I scooped him up. He spent a comfortable few moments on my knee:
A fine fellow

And he didn’t seem much fussed by the whole thing. He just rested there calmly, and I thought, I’ll never have a better opportunity to photograph a dragonfly’s eyes. Only I’m a softhearted silly person who won’t reposition a dying dragonfly for her own gain, so I bunged the camera in front of him and hoped for the best, although I couldn’t see where we were aiming:
Dragonfly eyes

Looks a bit insouciant, doesn’t he just? Rather like he’s bellying up with an elbow on a bar, about to order a cold one. I liked him very much, and wished there was some reasonable way to prevent nature taking its course, but of course there’s not. You can’t rush an elderly dragonfly to the hospital and demand emergency resuscitation. So after a bit, I just eased him off into the weeds, where nature could finish taking its course without intervention from half a ton of passenger vehicle. I took one last photo, with my hand for scale, so you can have an idea of how very large he was:
Goodbye, dragonfly

My index finger is about 3 1/2 inches from knuckle to tip, for those who like precision. That translates into a seriously large dragonfly. I’m very nearly sure he’s one of the darners, but they all look so similar I’m not sure exactly which he might be.

Strangely, these skinny creatures with their transparent wings don’t feel delicate. Their little legs are sturdy, and their bodies hard and smooth. Even though this one had one pair of feet over the Styx, he seemed quite tough. They’re even quite tough after hitting the hood of a Honda Civic at 60 miles per hour – we ended up with one plastered to the front during the trip, and while everything else had spattered, it was still a whole, recognizable dragonfly, although a bit crispy and very, very deceased. I have even more respect for these guys after seeing that. They’re certainly not as dainty as they look.

After savoring my closest encounter with a dragonfly yet, we drove on. Hang on, my darlings, because it’s about to get a wee bit explosive.

Interlude With Dragonfly

Is There a Word for a First World Nation Becoming a Third World Country?

Dana Hunter2 Comments

Even when I was a kid, I knew I was lucky. I had a middle-class family in a prosperous country. Sally Fields used to come on the teevee soliciting funds for all those poor, starving kids in other countries where families were lucky if they had a bit of cloth to throw over a stick for a house, and I’d be quite grateful my country wasn’t like that. Poorest kids I knew still had roofs over their heads and got a few good meals a week. And we knew America was the greatest country on earth. Almost everybody wanted to be like us.

I used to feel sorry for those folks who lived in countries that weren’t number one in everything.

Rome used to be great, too, the greatest on earth, and it fell. When I learned about it, I couldn’t imagine it. What would it have been like, to live in a nation that was sliding down to oblivion? Weren’t the people sad, maybe even despairing? Did they know? Did they realize what was happening to them? I didn’t think it would happen to America, not very soon anyway, but I knew it could happen, and I just hoped it wouldn’t happen in my lifetime. I loved my country. I wanted the best for it. Selfish reasons, too: I’d never wanted to live in a decayed civilization, amongst the ruins of greatness, without a chance to become anything amazing. It’s really hard to write works of enduring literature when you haven’t got any paper and everybody in your country’s so poor they couldn’t afford to buy your book even if you managed to write it.

Those were my silly childish thoughts. Then I grew up, and for a little while, in the heyday of the ’90s, it looked like America, despite some occasional stumbles, didn’t really have to worry about falling from its perch. We were great, and we’d continue being great. We could certainly be greater. I’d learned about homelessness and grinding poverty, and some of our cities were falling apart, and the Republicans were getting awfully weird, and we spent a fuck of a lot of money on the military while screwing the poor and the public schools, but still. We weren’t doing all that badly.

Then it got worse. And worse. We voted a jackass into office (never mind Florida, it never should’ve been so close anyway). Terrorists slipped through our defenses, and the jackass and his merry band of fuckwits used that as carte blanche to invade the wrong damned country and basically bomb all the brown people they could. They turned this from a nation of laws that didn’t always live up to its rhetoric but at least acted ashamed when it didn’t into a nation that proudly tortured people. And the middle class melted away, and the infrastructure crumbled, and even crazier fuckwits started getting bold enough to dazzle a bunch of flaming morons into voting for them, and here we are today, rubbing shoulders with third-world nationhood.

Seriously. We are.

Take air travel: The United States, the report notes, now has the worst air-traffic congestion on the planet, with one-quarter of flights arriving more than 15 minutes late. One reason is that U.S. air-traffic control still relies on 1950s-era ground radar technology, even as the rest of the world has been shifting to satellite tracking (the FAA has begun the transition to a satellite-based system, though it’s moving slowly and future funding is a big question). According to recent World Economic Forum rankings, even Malaysia and Panama now boast better air infrastructure.

For fuck’s sake.

And check out what came across my Twitter feed only yesterday: we are the only industrialized nation to have a World Heritage Site we can’t be bothered to preserve. Every other country on the list has probably got a plausible excuse: tiny and poor, tiny and war-torn, tiny and trying too hard to deal with extreme natural disasters and religious fuckery and trying to build themselves up to a reasonable standard of living to be much fussed with things like World Heritage Sites. What’s our excuse? We have Republicans who think preserving things like the Everglades takes too much money out of super-rich pockets. We still have gobs and oodles of money, more than enough to pay for things like preserving priceless treasures and repairing that aged infrastructure and ensuring people get an education and health care and have decent jobs, but we’ve elected absolute idiots and let them give all the money to a disgustingly bloated military and greedy asshats who sit on millions and billions of dollars and scream like two year-olds denied a toy when someone tries to extract so much as a penny from their tight fists for the common good.

We’re 37th in the world in health care, or at least we were in 2000 – I shudder to think where we are now, after eight years of Bush and before our inadequate but good-as-we’re-gonna-get-at-this-point new health care law fully kicks in. Square between Costa Rica and Slovenia, we are. Best in the world? Which world? Certainly not the second world – maybe best in the third world, I think we can comfortably claim that, but we’d best not get too comfortable with that idea, because Cuba’s only two rungs below us on that particular ladder.

Oh, and here’s a nifty little fact: the United States of America gets its ass kicked in income equality by the likes of Iran and Nigeria. Oh, yes, we are so great and glorious, we are kicking Haiti’s ass! Eat it, the exactly two developed nations who do worse than we do! USA! USA!

And while we slide down into the scrap-heap of has-been empires, we’ve got Republicans running around beating their chests and screaming we’re the absolute best at everything there ever was. Best at what, exactly? Burning ignorance? Failed leadership? Shitting on science after sending men to the moon? Yeah. Sure. I’ll grant you that. We’re certainly top contenders in those categories.

What pisses me off is that I know we’re better than this. Yes, this country is full of willfully ignorant fucktards intent on launching us back into the dark ages, but we used to keep them on the hopeless fringes of our political system. We didn’t give them the power and authority they needed to run this country into the ground. We made a mistake. And we’re going to have to rectify that, remove the dangerous halfwits from office and never ever let them have power again, if we don’t want to end up on the bottom of the heap.

I don’t want to live in a former first world country, people. Neither do you. And neither does that greedy little shithead on Wall Street, but he could give a rat’s ass considering he’s got the money to move. So it’s up to us.

America deserves better. We’re gonna have to vote smarter and work harder to ensure she climbs back towards the top. And then, once we’ve stopped falling down, we’ve got to help the rest of the world up.

We were a beacon once. We can be that again.

Is There a Word for a First World Nation Becoming a Third World Country?

Crazy Columns and Ice-Polished Rocks: Salt Creek Falls

Dana Hunter4 Comments

I’m not going to say a damned word about lineaments. Let’s just say that traveling down Route 58 is something of an intrigue: you’re crossing the Cascades, but it doesn’t feel that way. You’re on a long, nearly straight road that doesn’t seem to go up much. Mountains rear all round you, and yet here you are, merrily zipping through them. There are some extraordinary things about the Pacific Northwest: these long, straight, bizarre structural features, some of which are barely accepted as real and others as yet only suspected, are among the most perplexing. But they’re very nice to take a road trip on.

So there you are, zipping along, unfussed by steep grades or switchbacks, and then, just before you get to Willamette Pass, you’ve got this little attraction. Well, I say little. It’s only the second-highest waterfall in all of Oregon.
Salt Creek Falls

Salt Creek Falls is a marvel of falling water, but it’s not quite as interesting as the geology that surrounds it. I mean, yes, tall as Niagara, “most powerful waterfall in southern Oregon,” yeah, fine. Whatevs. You know what I was looking at after having gawked at the pretty falling water for two minutes? That’s right, the rocks.

There’s a story here, and it begins on a tall, bald outcrop that’ll draw a geologist’s eye faster than any amount of falling water.

Outcrop, Salt Creek Falls

Okay. So here we have a bit of bare rock in the Pacific Northwest – intriguing enough. It’s surrounded by forest (with rhododendrons – don’t ask me why wild rhododendrons fascinate me, they just do). The trees and plants seem determined to colonize everything up to and including near-vertical cliffs, so why have they avoided this?
Other side of Ye Balde Outcrop, hooman for scale

So, if you’re crazy for rocks like Lockwood and I, you get up there to nose around a bit. You’re obviously standing on columns of something volcanic. That much isn’t hard to figure out. And it looks like it’s been polished by millions of exploratory feet. Could it be bald because everybody, their siblings and their friends climb up? Possibly. Though it’s hard to imagine they’d have knocked the trees down. Then there’s the idea that it got scraped clean whilst folks were building the nice paved overlook, but why would they do that? No reason.

Bend down. Get your nose to the stone.
Striations. Camera battery (1 1/2″ by 1 1/4″) for scale

All right. Striations. That got Lockwood all excited, but me, not so much. I can think of many reasons for a rock in a public place to get scratched. But there’s one more clue. Have a look at the valley we’re in:
U-shaped valley with a V-shaped valley bunged in

Oh, it’s hard to see. Lockwood had to point it out, and then it was clear as day. That, my friends, is your classic U-shaped valley, only the creek’s carved a deep ravine into the bottom of it. But now we start to get a sense of this place. This has got the Pleistocene’s clammy fingermarks all over it. Your beautiful bald outcrop was scraped clean and bare, then polished up a bit by the glacier that carved that valley. This was a cold land, once.

These were exciting times. The Cascades we know today were coming into existence. And they were doing it through an ice cap that stretched all the way from Mount Hood to Mount McLoughlin, nearly two hundred miles of cold, hard ice that may have reached almost half a mile thick, busily grinding away at the volcanics. Glaciers spilled down stream valleys, plowing them from V’s to U’s. Cascades volcanoes that stopped erupting during these icy times didn’t fare well – we’ll see what happens to a volcano that goes dormant or extinct while glaciers are busy. It leaves them jagged shadows of themselves.

So look at that valley again, and notice the rounded shoulders of the surrounding highlands, and how only the tallest bits are jagged, and you’ll get a sense of the power of an ice cap. Then look at the V-shaped notch there now, and you’ll begin to appreciate the power of tens of thousands of gallons per minute of water roaring through after the ice went away. This is the fate of mountains: to be ground, sliced, diced, and worn away to something more acceptable to gravity.
Salt Creek, below the falls, busily buzzsawing away

All right. Let’s head on down the trail and have a closer look at these columns, shall we?
Salt Creek Falls, with view of columns

You know, I know what you’re gonna say. “Oh, boy. Basalt.” And yes, it’s Oregon, and yes, there’s a billion trillion tons of basalt, but in this case, it’s actually andesite. Yay, andesite! Okay, it’s andesite that kinda looks like basalt, but still. It’s more exciting! Because andesite is rather like Two-Face: it can flow very politely and quietly like basalt, sweet as Harvey Dent, or it can explode all over the place with extraordinary violence, like Harvey Dent’s worse half. 600,000 years ago, this flow added its bit to the Cascades, and cooled into the happy little columns we see today.
Happy Little Columns topped by Happy Little Trees

They create some wonderful patterns in falling water: happy water bouncing over happy little columns:
Bouncing Water

Some of the happy little columns become crazy little columns, though.
Columns o’ chaos

If I had a time machine and surviving-fresh-lava gear, I’d head back to see what this bugger was up to. Why did some of its columns form ramrod-straight whilst others are practically horizontal, or curved? I’d imagine it was contending with some ice round the edges, maybe some water, that caused it to cool all funny. But I could be utterly wrong. The more I study how columns form, the more confused I seem to get.

But that’s all right. We’ve got a lovely valley filled with mist from the waterfall to contemplate when crazy columns make our noggins hurt.
Mist drifting down-valley

Walking that part of the trail is an exercise in caution: it’s covered with hunks and chunks of rock that have parted company with their surroundings and decided to go wading. Only they didn’t make it all the way to the creek, because they landed on the path. One caught my eye.
Could it be… striations?

Looks a bit striated. And what have we here, gleaming in the sunlight filtering through the trees?
Glacially-polished rock

Why, that’s a fine example of glacial polish! Superfine. Smooth and slick to the touch, shiny as anything. Glaciers sometimes do an amazing job buffing up the rocks to a nice gleam. It’s probably a good thing this baby wasn’t sitting in direct sunlight, because the glare would’ve been like the reflection off a brass mirror.
Glacial polish closeup

How nice is that? Too bad about the lichens.

So there you have it, my darlings. One small half-hour to forty-five minute jaunt, and you’ve got a nice waterfall, some volcanics, and a passel of outstanding glacial features to enrapture you. Not a bad place, that. Nice opening act to the later geo-dramas.
Lockwood with Salt Creek Falls

Lockwood will be doing up his own bit on this lovely little location soon. Don’t miss it!

Ye olde indispensable tomes which, combined with Lockwood’s instruction, allowed the author to sound semi-knowledgeable:

In Search of Ancient Oregon – simply the most beautiful book written about Oregon’s natural history.
Crazy Columns and Ice-Polished Rocks: Salt Creek Falls

Dojo Summer Sessions: The Writer's Rituals

Dana Hunter1 Comment

I think most of us who write, no matter how skeptical or non-superstitious we are, have our little rituals to summon the Muse (not that the wretched entity comes when called). Consider this an invitation to regale us with yours.

I’m not picky when it comes to blogging. I’ve done it in my PJs, but usually sans Cheetos, thus not fully confirming stereotypes. Something arises I wish to pontificate upon, and so pontification occurs. I can blog any time of day or night, in a variety of settings, in various stages of dress or un, with or without prior preparation depending on the subject.

But fiction, that’s a different beast. I’ve successfully written a few times in places outside my home, but that’s a rare thing. Generally speaking, in order to summon the storytelling, I have to be ensconced in my comfy chair in my living room, within sight of my Yoshitaka Amano prints of Morpheus. I must be fully dressed. I’ve never felt comfortable writing fiction in my jammies, although I’ve managed it a few times when the Muse has rousted me out of bed. I must have music playing, and the music must be agreeable to the characters I’m writing. I’ve gotten involved with quite a lot of musical genres I had no use for simply because a particular character required them. Strange, perhaps, but there it is.

Some stories require a clean house. Some require sobriety, some a nice mixed drink. It’s nice to know these things in advance so that writing can commence.

There must be darkness. I have a terrible time writing in daylight, which is why Seattle winters are such a compliment to my writing and its summers make it nearly impossible. That’s fine. A writer needs to get out occasionally, experience life in order to create lifelike worlds, so I just use the summer to accomplish that feat.

I have a special hand soap I use, a very deep floral scent that washes away all traces of the day. I plug in a nice jasmine scented oil. Scent is an important component of emotional states, as science has proved, and those particular scents signal my brain that it’s time to shake off the remains of the day and get on with the real work.

Some stories are helped along by particular shows or movies, even if they aren’t the same genre or atmosphere as what I’m writing. So I might spend an hour or two watching one, before the real work starts. Then, shot full of adrenaline, I have one final preparatory smoke out on the porch, look at the stars (if the Seattle skies have obliged), and sit me down in the chair to invite further forays into the realm of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

It may sound a bit complicated and unnecessary. To non-writers, it probably smacks of madness. But there you are: without at least a handful of those rituals, I sit staring at a blank screen, and words too often refuse to come. I’m sure neuroscience will one day be able to calmly and dispassionately explain all in great detail. It might even come up with ways to persuade the Muse to work even on nights when the rituals have failed, and the brain remains as stubbornly blank as the screen. Until that day, I just stick with what’s worked so far, like a pigeon performing a crazy little dance in the belief that this is what makes the food appear.

Creativity is a weird and wonderful thing, innit it?

Dojo Summer Sessions: The Writer's Rituals

Los Links 8/23

Dana Hunter3 Comments

Whelp, I managed to catch up on all the blog reading I’d missed whilst adventuring. It wasn’t easy, as it was interrupted by long periods of unconsciousness. Exercise makes you energetic my arse.

It’s been quite the week, what with an earthquake on the East Coast and a hurricane ditto and Nymwars heating up and all. I’ve added an extra-special Nymwars section, since it’s beginning to seem ‘nyms are second only to atheists in the hated-by-society department. I think it’s because companies think people with pseudonyms don’t spend money and some very unobservant people think that folks never do or say anything nasty under their real names. I hope these delusions are only temporary, but in the interests of not killing brain matter by oxygen starvation, I’m not holding my breath.

I’ve not had time (as per usual) for snappy little descriptions, but I’ve bolded a few pieces of especial interest for those without time to read everything. Some beautiful, evocative, and thought-stimulating posts came across my stream last week. I hope you all enjoy!

Virginia Earthquake

Paleoseismicity.org: The Wednesday Centerfault (8) – Virginia M5.8 Earthquake.

Washington Post: For central Virginia’s seismic zone, quake is an event of rare magnitude.

Slate: Is Washington as Earthquake-Proof as Los Angeles?

ABC13: Seismologists From Virginia Tech Talk Earthquake.

Buzz Feed: 20 Stunning Photos Of The Damage Caused By The East Coast Earthquake.

Mountain Beltway: The Mineral, VA earthquake of August 23, 2011, Cracking up and Aftershocks.

Bad Astronomy: What’s with all these earthquakes?

Scientific American: A “sixth sense” for earthquake prediction? Give me a break!

Clastic Detritus: Snapshot of Seismic Waves Traveling Across Virginia.

CNN: Why quake rang like a bell.

Eruptions: NYC Earthquakicane Armageddon: Random distibutions and the folly of correlation.

Science

Glacial Till: How a small Oregon town continues to teach me about geology and Meteorite Monday: Sikhote-Alin Meteorite.

Neatoshop: Poorly-Punctuated Equilibrium.

Georneys: Geology Word of the Week: L is for Lepidolite.

The Loom: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Death threats for scientists?

White Coat Underground: Dr. Pal, why do you love Big Pharma so? and When a “scientific study” is neither.

Superbug: Cost of Compassion: Drug Resistance in Military Hospitals.

Speakeasy Science: At the Door of the Loony Gas Building and Of Dead Bodies and Dirty Streets.

The Scientist: An Unlichenly Pair.

Lounge of the Lab Lemming: Mass–independent isotopic fractionation.

Scientific American: Don’t Just See, Observe: What Sherlock Holmes Can Teach Us About Mindful Decisions.

Laelaps: Chain, Chain, Chain… Chain of Food.

Scientific American: Eyewitness Testimony Loses Legal Ground in State Supreme Court.

Culture Lab: When all you can smell is your brain.

Neuron Culture: Reef Madness 10: Darwin’s Earthquake.

History of Geology: Earthquakey Times.

Scientific American: Modern Rivers Shaped By Trees.

Wired Science: Clever Dolphins Use Shells to Catch Fish.

The Last Word on Nothing: Science Metaphors (cont): Resonance.

History of Geology: Cities and Geological Risk.

The Chronicle of Higher Education: Nanotechnologists Are Targets of Unabomber Copycat, Alarming Universities.

ScienceNews: Asteroid sample nails meteorite source.

Reuters: America is losing another generation to science illiteracy.

The Dynamic Earth: Sole-Saving Sed Structure Sunday!

Life, Unbounded: Pitch Black: The (almost) dark truth about hot Jupiters.

Writing

The Coffee-Stained Writer: The Land of Misfit Words.

Tobias Buckell: Writers and pellets.

Indie Author: Ebook Madness: Don’t Confuse Ebook Conversion With Ebook Formatting!

The Coffee-Stained Writer: The world is your classroom.

Patricia C. Wrede: Deeper still.

A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing: What’s Wrong With Sex?

Anne R. Allen’s Blog: RIP the Author Book Tour—and why you shouldn’t be sad to see it go.

A Brain Scientist’s Take on Writing: How to Make Your Reader Cry: Anatomy of a Death Scene.

The Scicurious Brain: High Fructose Corn Syrup: Much Maligned? Or the Devil’s Food Cake?

Women’s Issues

The Poke: Best Twitter apology this week.

On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess: Your Home Birth is Not a Feminist Statement and In Reply to Kate Clancy…

Context and Variation: Why do those who advocate home birth feel the way they do?

DrugMonkey: Home Birther Logic. or “Logic” actually.

Thus Spake Zuska: What Function Does Denial Serve?

The Spandrel Shop: Is there a dark side to the breast feeding movement?

Whizbang: Better Late Than Never.

JAYFK: FFS: Ladies, your vagina is just fine.

Adam Serwer: The Nice Guy And The Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

Religion and Atheism

Butterflies and Wheels: Can you call your husband ‘Lord’?

Utne Reader: Look God, No Hands.

Paula Kirby: Evolution threatens Christianity.

Politics

Anil Dash: What they’re “protecting” us from.

Culture of Science: When Facts Don’t Agree With Your Political Bias, Fire The Scientists.

Mike the Mad Biologist: The Left Does “Give a Fig About Science”–For Its Own Sake.

Guardian: The Tea Party moves to ban books.

Almost Diamonds: We Can Have Better.

The Weekly Sift: One Word Turns the Tea Party Around.

The Nation: Michele Bachmann, Wife in Chief?

Grist: Why Michele Bachmann thinks she can get gas under $2 a gallon.

Nymwars

I Speak of Dreams: A Public Servant, Blogging and Tweeting Under His Own Name, Has Been Silenced By His Employers.

The Skeptical Lawyer: Lessons from EpiRen: do public employees have free speech rights?

Respectful Insolence: The consequences of blogging under one’s own name.

PulpTech: Google Plus: Too Much Unnecessary Drama.

Gizmodo: Google’s Real Names Policy Is Evil.

On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess: What’s In A Name?

White Coat Underground: The death of pseudonyms? Not so fast…

The Atlantic: All Hail Anonymity.

Society and Culture

Food Safety News: Asian Honey, Banned in Europe, Is Flooding U.S. Grocery Shelves.

Crooks and Liars: It’s Time for a Pro-Quality-of-Life Movement.

Guardian: Vietnam’s rice bowl threatened by rising seas.

Not Exactly Rocket Science: Eco-labelled fish may be unsustainably fished, or the wrong species.

Superbug: Food Safety in China, and the Risk to the U.S.

AlterNet: Schools Nationwide Cutting Down to 4 Days a Week, Because Wealthy Refuse to Pay Fair Share.

The Portland Mercury: The $1 Million Twitter Fight.

Almost Diamonds: Why Should I Pay for Your Health Insurance.

Naked Capitalism: How Chase Ruined Lives of People Who Paid Off Their Mortgages.

Los Angeles Times: Take back the liberal arts.

The Express Tribune: Obituary of liberal-secularism — I

Los Links 8/23

Dear Famous Scientists: Please STFU About Areas Outside Your Expertise

Dana Hunter7 Comments

Erik Klemetti, on Twitter, had steam coming from his ears on Wednesday:

WHY, OH WHY did Bloomsberg talk to instead of a geologist about the VA earthquake? Come on, people!

That’s probably because some journalists seem to find it impossible to distinguish between various types of scientist. They also want a big, recognizable name in their headline. So when an event happens and a scientist needs to be consulted, they call the first big name scientist who comes to mind, no matter their discipline. To quote Rocko’s Modern Life: “Those guys are idiots.”

And perhaps, just perhaps, if we smack them for stupidity often enough, they’ll develop an ability to distinguish between different types of scientists, and figure out whom to call for a quote when various events occur.

But I have a beef with the big-name scientists *coughKakucough* who blabber about subjects they have little or no relevant expertise in rather than calmly saying, “Damn it, Jimmy, I’m a physicist, not a geologist. Go phone a geologist. Quote me as saying, ‘I have no idea, as I did not study geology.'”

It’s that simple. And someone who does science for a living should know enough to know when they don’t know, and be intelligent enough and tough enough to be comfortable saying, “I don’t know.” Observe Professor Rowena Lohman, who teaches geophysics at Cornell. After delivering kick-ass accurate answers to a variety of questions within her area of expertise, is perfectly comfortable telling a CNN reporter that she is not omniscient:

CNN: Is the East Coast ready for an earthquake?
Lohman: That’s a question for a different kind of scientist or engineer.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is how it’s done. Alas, that does not seem to be how Kaku does it.

I’d love to try an experiment. Next time there’s big physics news, I’d love to interview a microbiologist, say, or a seismologist, and write up a big newspaper article using only them as experts, and then stuff it under the nose of Michio Kaku. “See what happens? See how infuriating it is when experts pop off on subjects they know nothing about?” Perhaps that would help him overcome the compulsion to spout on subjects far outside his realm. Perhaps that would convince him that he doesn’t need to babble any old response to clueless journalists, but hand out the phone numbers of relevant scientists instead. And perhaps after several instances of that, the clueless journalists will become clued.

Alas, I don’t work for a major paper. Anyone who does willing to try said experiment? It would be a kindness to several geologists whose heads are currently feeling a little prone to explosion.

(Shot glass raised to the poor nameless writer at CNN’s opinion section who was smart enough to head for an expert in geophysics and tectonics rather than a string theorist when the earth went wobbly. Kudos to you, unknown wise journalist!) 

Dear Famous Scientists: Please STFU About Areas Outside Your Expertise

First Rule of Great GeoTrips: Start at OMSI and Build II – Fossil Madness!

Dana Hunter5 Comments

One of the beautiful things about OMSI is the Paleontology Lab. This is a place where a mere rope stands between you and delights like this:
Triceratops in jacket – snazzy!

I believe they’re freeing a triceratops from its matrix of rock. Again, the distractions of friends kept me from paying as much attention to the details as I might have done (no complaints about that!), but one can absorb quite a bit snapping a few photos and drooling over a few touchable displays.

Here’s something I adored:
Spike!

Okay, so it’s not real. It’s a resin cast. But it was taken from an actual stegosaurus, and stegosaurus is cool. The fact the tail spikes are called thagomizers because of a Far Side cartoon is fucking awesome. I got to touch a cast of a thagomizer, people. That tickles me right down to me toes.

I’ve always liked the Steg. Other kids in my grade-school class went in for T-Rex, but I figured a dinosaur with armor plates and freaking tail spikes that could potentially beat a T-Rex to death was way cooler. Besides, we have a special relationship, Steg and I. When I was out sick in kindergarten on the day when we were making clay dinos with cookie cutters, my teacher saved me a stegosaurus. I hung it on my wall and petted it and loved it, although I didn’t name it George. You can keep your silly T-Rex, y’all. I have a bloody awesome stegosaurus. My Steg can kick your Rex’s arse.

I’m more convinced of that than ever, because that tail spike was at least two feet long, and damned thick. You would not want to be walloped with one. Allosaurus certainly did not want, but got anyway. Yeow.

Here’s another bit of yum:
Mesosaurus brasiliensis

Mesosaurus brasiliensis should gladden the hearts of all geologists. This is a Permian freshwater critter, a marine reptile that nommed on fish and swam around in lakes and rivers in what became South America and South Africa. It couldn’t cross oceans, and there were no such things as bilges back in the Permian in which stowaways might travel. Turns out this aquatic reptile is excellent evidence that South America and South Africa were once joined – score one for plate tectonics!

There are leaves, too, though I didn’t photograph the sign for them, so I haven’t the foggiest what they are:
Fossil leaves

The preserved veins are incredible. The leaf margins don’t seem to have been preserved well, which is unfortunate, because having preserved leaf margins would tell me whether these are from a temperate or tropical forest. Experts probably don’t need no stinkin’ leaf margins to figure it out.

Ooo. More triceratops!
This is what fossil preparers deal with. Respect them.

Hard to believe something coherent will emerge from that mess, but the folks who take the tiny little tools and scrape the rocky matrix away a fragment at a time make it happen.

Sometimes, though, all you have to do is split open a slab, and a thing of beauty emerges:
Archaeopteryx replica

How gorgeous is that? Archaeopteryx is a fascinating creature, which I should know much more about. Alas, all I know is that it’s a creature with features of both bird and dinosaur, the first feathered dinosaur found, and there’s been a recent dust-up over its place in the avian family tree, which Brian Switek dispatched nicely in an ode Archaeopteryx richly deserved. For myself, simply admiring.

Another Triceratops Interlude

You’ve gotta respect people who can wrap a huge, heavy rock full of delicate bones in plaster and haul the bastard back to the lab. After having hoofed a great many pounds of hand samples back to the car and then up the stairs, my hat, as it were, is off.
Brachiopods?

I believe, though I do not know, foolishly not having photographed the accompanying informative sign, that these are fossil brachiopods. They look quite a lot like clams and so forth, but there are differences between bivalves and brachiopods which explain why bivalves are now common as muck and living brachiopods are much rarer, although brachiopods were far more common in the past. Those wanting more information are encouraged to consult this handy .pdf.

Coquina!

I love this stuff. I love a rock that is, basically, all shells and can make cannonballs bounce. So when I had a chance to get my hands on some coquina for the first time ever, you can bet I fondled it. It’s harder than you’d expect for something famously soft enough to absorb enormous balls of metal hurtling toward them at speeds meant to destroy. It feels quite solid. And very, very shelly.
Baleen whale fossils

Here we have vertebrae and ribs from a 20 million year old baleen whale, found in the Astoria Formation. Yes, some cool shit can be found in the Astoria Formation. Makes me want to go and play in it. I mean, bloody hell, this was found by a beach comber. Somebody bring me an extra-large comb, and let’s go comb some beaches!

After all that fossil madness, it was time to rejoin the others down in the non-earth science area, and enjoy a photo op with Glacial Till, one of the best geotweeps I’ve ever had.



When we met up with Michael Klaas of Uncovered Earth later that evening, we got so busy chatting we forgot the photo op. We won’t be so remiss again! Meeting the two of them was high on the list of highlights of this trip, and I can’t wait to drag them out into the field.

Then it was off to Park Lane Suites, which has some very nice gneiss in its lobby, and together with the fact it’s convenient and comfy, is among the reasons I recommend it for your Portland lodging needs.


First Rule of Great GeoTrips: Start at OMSI and Build II – Fossil Madness!