Since every one of these undying threads turns into something about geology, including the last one, it is only fitting that we reveal the truth here: rocks are evil. They want to turn everything into stone.
Now watch: no one will talk geology at all in this open thread.
Boy, most of those rocks sure are burning up far away from the earth. The atmosphere must extend a lot farther out than we thought.
Or the rocks are trying to trick us! (Sneaky rocks!)
OK, they want to reproduce, but they’re all interested in making everything vapor and dead first.
They do make some nice rocks when they’re small, though. Pallasites, for one.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Hey, I was submitting a comment on the other thread when you closed it! I got this:
And my comment did have the word “limestone” in it…
*pouts*
Really, I always thought rocks gave you Teh Ghey (TM). Well there goes my logical reasoning.
Ahh, that reminds me. I do still need to finish my reply to that douchebag in that other thread.
Look, squishy organic semi-evolved proto-slime, without me and my friends, the best you could have been was a sub-intelligent shade of the colour yellow. So go back into your rock-walled cave and close your calcium-filled gob.
Geology! Are you nuts? The Moai are coming for us dum-dums!!
Everybody PANIC!
That had about as much to do with Geology as Creation Science has to do with Science. No, on reflection, it did have significantly more.
Also, I’ve always wanted the IDiots to explain a bunch of fast and hard objects coming in and killing most life periodically, and whatever the whole Permian extinction was.
They’re silent about “design” through the bit of intelligence they actually have, though. What? We’re not here to explain anything except for complexity, which is easy to do through an omniscient God if you’re open-minded enough to grant its existence sans evidence.
They should be pressed on the huge numbers of “gaps” (there’d have to be connections for there to be real gaps, however) when they can be, no matter how much they try to avoid any honest discussion of ID.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
That sure sounds like Bill Conrad. You sure this isn’t another chance to bring up Rocky and Bullwinkle?
JC
GOATS ON FIRE! The above comment by me (blf) was supposed to have been an “anonymous” comment by Rock:
Not sure why/how the SciBorg’s goofyware figured out it was me?
Oops!! I meant Paul Frees – and it is!! Wow. Old ears still work.
JC
I keep waiting for the ‘bots to come in!
Geology is a scam created by miners so they can continue to be paid way above board for the supposed “danger” of being under the so called “ground”
Of course no one here will believe me because you don’t have open minds!
need more proof check out these poorly maintained geocities websites from 1996!
http://www.rocks-not-all-theyre-cracked-up-to-be.com
http://www.geology.doesnt.rock.com
on a side note I hope those sites are real… XP
I always confuse geography with geometry. What? Oh…
I’ve only done geology at foundation level, but am fascinated by it. The stuff here from Josh and others is most welcome.
If you guys do requests, could you talk more about the distinction between continental and oceanic crust. I know there.s a progression in continent building from small island chains to larger chains with more continental crust being made through subduction and volcanos, to larger continents.
My basic question is: is the amount of continental crust always increasing? I know that subduction can take continental rocks with it, but one they have once went through a process of change, can this be reversed to make the ricks oceanic type again?
Up until the last few seconds that
could have been a promo for the 2001
film “Evolution”.
“Coming to wipe that silly smile off
your planet.”
It reminds of one of my favorite MST3K quips; It’s the monsters of rock tour.
I am sorry, it had me rolling on the floor.
“Sneaky rocks”
*snicker.
Dude, there is one and only one “undying Thread.” All the little pieces that you slap goofy titles on are but subThreads of the glorious Whole.
Must. Not. Post. Too. YouTube. Videos.
Owlmirror @663 on the previous thread:
My thoughts exactly, Owlmirror. In fact the idea of swinging a jackhammer through a wide arc had me laughing. A jackhammer big enough to make headway in difficult rock is truly heavy, so the dude that was swinging it must have been a helluva man.
I have been inclined to swing a jackhammer when/if the damned thing wouldn’t start, or wouldn’t engage the chisel tool, but so far, no jackhammers have been swung by the Reflector of God’s Light™. (Nickname given to both me and my brother by an admiring fan, and now used by me with a large dose of irony.)
Usually, one swings various sizes of sledge hammers at chisels. You manage to work a chisel into a crack, and then you strike it until the rock loosens. Or, you may strike it to no apparent effect, take a break to let the rock rest and relax, then when you come back, you may be blessed by the miracle of loosened rock. Sometimes you have to let it rest overnight.
Single jacking is when you both hold the chisel in place and use your other hand to swing a sledge to strike the chisel. Double jacking is when someone else holds the chisel while you use both hands to swing a bigger sledge. I’ll hold a chisel while my brother swings a sledge, but my brother will never hold a chisel while I swing a sledge hammer … I wonder why that is? Double jacking at the breast is when two miners are working at the end of a tunnel or trench, extending the mine where the vein is exposed but not yet accessible for removing ore.
OK, here’s a non-geological, but topical topic: what is next year (or this year for those in and around the western Pacific) called. I know it’s 2010, but is that going to be “two thousand [and] ten”, or “twenty-ten”? Throughout the noughties, the Two-thousand-ites have prevailed, but I predict a strong comeback for the Twenty-ists. Their victory will surely be complete by 2020 – how can this be anything other than “twenty-twenty”?
#4 Andyman:
They do! They do!!!
Isn’t it about how you get your rocks off??!!??
Dania @3: To salve your frustrated desire for a post with the word “limestone”, here’s some W.H. Auden:
A friend of mine asked in an email earlier tonight if the new decade was to be call the Tens or the Teens. I hope it’s the tens. I mean, who wants a rebellious, angsty decade that never cleans its room and wants to borrow the car keys.
Yay! “Monolith Monsters” is one of my favorite old B films. It was pretty original I think. The images of gigantic crystal obelisks smashing a farm was pretty cool. And there’s actually a bit of the scientific method present in the plot – towards then end the characters try to isolate the component in a compound which attacks the substance.
And if Im not mistaken, that is Paul Frees narrating! the voice of Sci Fi!
Who could forget his parts in “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers” and “Colosus: The Forbin Project”!
Canada has rocks.
Was this intended to titillate?
Was that the voice on the old Hinterland Who’s Who films in Canada?
Josh @690 on the previous thread (and Alan B before that):
Thank you! I knew that, but suffered from brain-offline-from-hunger syndrome … that temporarily obscured the difference between tufa and tuff. Cascade Springs in Utah (not far from Mt. Timpanogos) is a good place to view freshwater carbonate rock.
Crystal Peak in the Wah Wah Range of Utah is a great place to view volcanic tuff.
@#27 – That was one of my favorites, too. Every Saturday afternoon there was a local TV station that showed all the scifi B-movies. I miss those where the scientist girl, who was a lot of times also a scientist.
@29
“Double jacking at the breast” is an eye-opener. Be sure to wear your protective goggles and hardhat.
hee hee
(When will I grow up?)
There should have been a “Many.” in #21. How can a person keep dropping words like this? Is my brain made of swiss cheese. Did I consume some prions a few years back?
moans…
RE: Tufa and Tuff.
I first learned the difference while living in southern Italy. Most everything you see there is Tuff, but to make things more confusing, the Italian for tuff is “tufo.” So everyone who wouldn’t ordinarily know the difference hears “tufa.”
@Lynna, thanks. That was beautiful. I grew up surrounded by limestone landscapes. :)
My post (*shakes fist at PZ*) was about a failed attempt by me and my cousin to “climb” a slightly rounded slope of highly weathered limestone when we were young. It wasn’t very high and it wasn’t steep, but we soon realized that there was no way in hell we could make it to the top without having small blocks of limestone slipping down underneath our feet at every step we took. We were young, and we really wanted to reach the top that way, but thankfully we both ended up agreeing that it would be better to give up and go back to the foot-path.
Nobody else is going to mention meteors being from “stars whose dying light is too far away to be seen” as opposed to our own solar system?
Mining and petroleum geologists and engineers have some of the most unintentionally (or not) hilarious jargon ever. I work in a large firm specializing in oilfield equipment. Another female coworker and I were laughing ourselves breathless last week. We were bored because support calls were few, and we were playing around with the engineering database.
We found whips, chains, straps, belts, cages, restraints, lubricants, bottom subs, bottom plugs, nipple clamps, vibrators, male extension equipment, a “power coupler,” something called a “rubber finger,” something called a “female banana plug” (further identified as a “johnson component”), and much more.
YouTube poster fails at DVD ripping. It looks like it was played on a software DVD ripper, and fed back through a capture card.
Nice meteor though.
Or, as I said to her at the end of the day, anytime you work in a field where the whole business is devoted to ramming long, hard, tools designed for penetration into deep, dark, hot, wet holes, you’re going to get that sort of thing.
Hey! I want to see the movie! (Just kidding) It does bring to light the fact that same old “50’s mentality” is alive an well in 2009-10.
Sorry, a software DVD player. And to think, I even previewed.
I haven’t seen this movie in forever! I think the last time I saw it I had nightmares….
Kryptonite is the only worthwhile rock.
*giggle*
And probably even further complicated by the fact that tufa is a fairly obscure type of sedimentary material.
Hey, I don’t see geologist bloggers writing about evil cephalopods. Be fair.
Janine:
I don’t know about you, but when I am attempting to proofread my own work, I see what should be there, instead of what is there. The brain fills in the missing pieces, and auto-corrects the wrong pieces. It’s a nuisance. The only way around it is to proofread the text in a different form, like copy-pasted into a text document displaying a larger font. That’s too much trouble to go through for online chatting. When in doubt, blame Rev BDC — it gives him a sense of purpose.
And isn’t turf a type of sedimentary material too?
Now watch: no one will talk geology at all in this open thread.
Ok, since you requested a new topic, I’ll talk about the new airline regulations.
According to the NHSTA, about 16,600 people died in MVAs in the first half of 2009. If the second half is about the same, then about 32,000 people died (or will die tonight) from MVAs in 2009. If the new “unpredictable” airline screening and in flight rules make it such a pain to fly that traffic increases by 10% without any compensating changes (better cars, fewer people talking on cell phones, etc) then an additional 3200 or so people will die in car crashes in 2010. In short, TSA’s body count should equal al Qaeda’s 911 body count within a year. Two at most.
One of the craters shown in this clip is not from a meteor strike. It’s Ubehebe Crater in northern Death Valley, and is the result of upward migrating magma contacting groundwater, causing a great steam explosion.
Carlie at #712 on the just closed thread. Glad you liked it. Theft is the sincerest form of appreciation. Kidding, of course. (grin) Happy New Year.
Ciao
When in doubt, blame Rev BDC — it gives him a sense of purpose.
Lynna, I have informed Chimpy that I love him for his typos. It just struck me that I am about the only person who gets away with calling him Chimpy.
That’s true love.
It’s a rock monster, it doesn’t HAVE motivation!
… geologist bukakke?
Does anyone have any idea about the number of meteors (or related objects) that actually might have come from other star system? You’d think that in 4+ gigayears it might have happened at least once. Whether we’d be able to tell, I have no idea.
Re 36 and others;
Not to be confused with tofu.
*smirk* I calls him Chimpy too.
Here is some geo and some evo.
When meteor crash into Earth, they create amino acids. Likely meteor strikes on the early Earth created the building blocks for life.
citation
Holy shite! My comment got through! Thanks for doing your magic PZ.
Welcome back, my Queen.
You had to go and complicate things… :P
It depends–well actually, no…I don’t think so. I don’t think that you can divorce “turf” from the vegetation which is growing on the soil*. And even if you can, soil isn’t sediment; it is, at best (i.e., in those cases where the soil in question has developed on sedimentary parent materials (as opposed to developing on, say, a basalt flow**)), modified sediment. Soils geology is a different field from sedimentology; usually, soils scientists aren’t sedimentologists, and vice versa. The classes I took in sedimentology didn’t really address soil (except for some discussion of paleosols***), and the classes I took in soils geology weren’t really sed. classes. The subjects are kept separate, and there is a good reason for doing so. There are issues of biology and geochemistry that need to be included in any discussion of soil; issues that don’t come into play when considering many of the sedimentary processes that are out there (and much of the geochemistry that does come into play when dealing with sedimentary processes is distinct from that which occurs during pedogenesis****). Soil and sediment simply aren’t the same animal.
So no, having never actually considered that exact question before, I guess I don’t think I would refer to turf as a sedimentary material.
*Wikiblabbia doesn’t seem to think so, but of course the Wikiblabbia entry on turf also wants to include peat under the umbrella of soil, which doesn’t make sense to me at all.
**Where most of the weathering product (i.e., in this case broken down bits of basalt) doesn’t really get transported and redeposited–so a smaller proportion of the parent material would be technically sediment (an unimportant distinction).
***$100 word for “ancient soil” or (yuck) “fossil soil” (as opposed to “active soil”)
****$100 word for “soil formation processes”
Sadly, that tagline is more clever and funny than the entire movie.
@DavidL–exactly! Ubehebe Crater is a phreatic crater rather an impact crater, but it is also is short drive from LA to film the shot.
When I think of the significant fraction of my adult life spent looking through a petrographic microscope, trying to distinguish trondhjemite from monzosyenite from anorthosite, I heartily agree with PZ: Rocks Are Evil. :)
#47 Romeo Vitelli
That’s because once they are fossilised they become GOOD. Anything that’s rock is GOOD.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/03/images/090319-octopus-fossil-picture_big.jpg
VERY GOOD!
http://www.baystatereplicas.com/images/amm_octopus_phil.jpg
(OK. So it’s a photo of a replica. No one’s perfect.)
http://www.heathermccurdy.com/archives/robyn%20octopus.JPG
Er. No!
http://www.chinookcyclingclub.com/images/octopusGarden.gif
Question:
Would PZ rather have this or his mount at the Creation Museum?
That rocks are evil has been obvious since about when EAC agents started to find fossils in them.
fossil =/= rock.
*ducks*
Re Diane @50 {a lady doesn’t disclose her age ;-)}
Good shout, although some would argue with the estimates. F’rinstance; more congestion should mean both slower moving cars, with the lower collision speeds leading to less fatalities, while the cars being closer together should lead to drivers working harder at paying attention to the road. It’s IMHO more likely for a stupid person to use their mobile while driving on an open road than in heavy traffic. But why am I thinking stupid people will be rational?
Re geologist bukakke: Depends how the meteors (oro) originate. Are they formed like proto-planets, from accumulated dust, or are they fragments form earlier collisions? I’d guess that only individual dust grains may have extra-solar origin, on the basis of the energy needed for a collision fragment making it out of the solar system entirely is so much higher than for it just leaving the gravity well of it’s origin planet or asteroid.
How do you spell bukkake anyway?
*smiles*
Actually, I think I’ve always had that doubt. I couldn’t miss the opportunity to ask you, could I? :)
Thank you.
#46
I know you are bigger than I am, Josh, but you’re talking about a rock I love! And I haven’t finished with Southstone Rock.
It has a claim to fame: it’s the youngest hard* rock used for buildings in the UK!
* hard rock. I’m talking about a man’s rock – hard, strong, capable of taking a load
and carrying an 80lb pack of equipment(sorry, got carried away). Not floppy sands and gravels.Southstone Rock tufa was used in building at least one major cathedral (OK, I realise that may not be a winning move – forget that.) It’s still GOOD stuff.
Are! You! Ready!… To RAWK?!!!
Alan, my friend, I never said I didn’t like tufa. It’s sediment–how could I not? It’s a perfectly cromulent rock. But you have to agree that if you were to poll 1000 undergraduates who were standing in line to receive degrees in geology, the number of them who knew what the hell tufa was wouldn’t be that large.
Who’s floppy?
HUMPF.
I think you do it because it amuses you when I get all geeked out.
I don’t believe I wrote several paragraphs on turf.
*shakes head*
#67 Josh
You had better duck when I throw a piece of GOOD ROCK at you! OK so it isn’t a fossil duck. I couldn’t pick this up
http://www.flickr.com/photos/65397115@N00/62411819
so I had to make do with a duck-billed platypus:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Eomaia_scansoria.JPG
Now, tell me that isn’t a GOOD rock …
#72
Ignorance is no excuse!
Its new year in India !! Happy new yr my godless friends :) .. If I could , Id jump into my monitor and live in Pharyngula.. Pardon the beer
:*
Gow
Now, that I cannot deny…
But I enjoyed it. It could have had some more asterisks, though…
*ducks*
I was raised on the good book Jesus ’til I learned to read between the lines.
I have not heard this song in a couple of decades until the other day. Now I cannot stop listening.
You say IMHO, but I really think any assertion of this manner requires some sort of evidence. Granted, living in California may skew my perception, but I’ve noted many more people text messaging or calling in traffic than on open roads. If you’re focusing on driving fast, that occupies your attention. If you’re bored or going slower than expected in traffic, you’re more likely to fiddle with your phone or feel the need to otherwise occupy your time productively utilizing your phone.
Of course, I don’t even own a cell phone, so I’m not personally biased either way.
eddie round-up
#71 eddie
Call that rock music? This is rock music (just in case anyone missed it at the end of the last thread):
#57 eddie
It seems like only a handful per 1000 US geology students can tell the difference.
I looked up tofu just to make sure whether it was igneous or sedimentary. Turns out to be bean curd with the comment:
I guess what they mean was it was a mistake.
/removes tongue from cheek
Oh you are so gonna get it…
*wishes everyone a Happy New Year and leaves thread whistling innocently*
Now you’re talking.
That thing is fucking awesome. Nice preservation.
Stone joke that is as old as rocks:
One night some neighborhood kids were peeking through the window as a neighbor lady undressed. One of them abruptly ran off.
“Where are you going, Joey?”
“Home! My mama said if I ever saw a lady naked I’d turn to stone — and part of me is getting hard already!”
Now here I go getting some people upset again…
For I went and looked up the topic of hot springs, finding this list of them. Select the state by dropdown menu and hit ‘select’. You’ll find that places such as California and Nevada have a shit load of hot springs. New York State? One. That’s it, one.
Overall the eastern United States is just not all that geologically active. Nowhere near as active as the western U.S. Certainly not active enough to be a reliable indicator of such tectonic business as subduction, unless it’s at a real low level. More likely is that there is minor upper mantle upwelling providing a small amount of heat for powering hot springs. Once again you see how demonstration trumps assertion.
I’m still not persuaded that the west North Atlantic floor merges seamlessly into the North American Continent. I admit it is possible, but evidence it is would appear to be buried deep beneath the talus slope we call the continental shelf.
Where continental crust is concerned, my apologies for taking the major constituent for granite. That was rude, and showed no consideration for the subject in question. I just didn’t treat it gneiss.
How is biology like geology?
Research can be rocky.
They’ll stone you at the breakfast table.
ALAN! Now you’ve got him doing it, too!
#85 mythusmage
Where is your evidence that it does not or even that it might not? Do you have anything other than speculation and your inability to conceive of it being so?
The status quo of science is the product of a huge amount of work although it is always a work in progress. Progress comes from producing evidence. “Thought experiments” (or speculation with inadequate understanding) just don’t cut it.
wrt evidence of subduction of the Atlantic Ocean floor under the East coast of America. That would be some discovery! Especially as oil companies have done a lot of speculative seismic work in the coastal area of the US. It is not my speciality but seismic imaging would show up your “talus slope” and what lies beneath it.
Have you thought of doing any searching for yourself to see if there is any seismic imaging available along the E coast of the USA?
P.S. Pity you didn’t respond to my message on the last thread about your “Leanon Spring” link. Do you have a link you want us to follow up?
I may be wrong.
Now I am styling.
I am still on the theme. Look up the name of the album.
Is it stoning time yet?
Nicotine. Valium. Vicodin. Marijuana. Ecstasy. And alcohol.
Cheryl@32:
It would be really fun to compile or even see a list of old B films where the women characters were at least strong if not the heros. One favorite of mine, “Them“, comes to mind -if I recall correctly, the daughter of the senior entomologist is herself an entomologist and is the first one into the dangerous situation. Not bad for 1954.
Who threw that?
With your majestic and superior cackling hen.
I’ve the same problem. Whilst I do use the different format trick at times (usually just printing it out is sufficient), what works best for me is to take a break, drink a
coffeebeer and do something else for awhile, and then come back to the proofreading. I still miss things, but it’s not quite as bad as proofreading more-or-less immediately after the writing/editing session. (Reading aloud to yourself is another good trick, albeit one with practical difficulties.)Biggest self-auto-correction problem I have is adding the “not” that I meant but didn’t write. For instance, I’ll write “Cretinism is science” when what I meant to write (and what I silently read to myself) is “Cretinism is not science”. Needless to say, this can cause rather annoying problems later…
But as you say, these tricks seem like overkill for most netversations.
#92 Janine, She Wolf Of Pharyngula, OM
Hi Janine:
Pity. What have I missed?
Alan B, #89
Where is your evidence that it does?
Alan B, #89; re Lebanon Springs
An example of an eastern American hot springs, that and nothing more. Serving primarily as an example of how lacking in tectonic activity the eastern U.S. is. It’s the sort of thing that persuades me where assertion will not.
Alan B, that would be I Want You Back by The Hoodoo Gurus off of their Stone Age Romeos album. (I still use the word album.)
As you can guess, I am feeling just a bit silly today. And I have nothing to say about geology. Nothing against the subject but I am surrounded know a lot more about it than I do.
There’s a riot going on!
Observation
It is when reason sleeps when monsters are born.
Janine, #102
A bit?
Check out Comment 911 on the Mormon Prophecy thread. I’m reposting the first couple of sentences here because the comment is too good to be missed just because it appears on a thread that is off the radar.
Can you surry?
I’m going to riot if someone doesn’t turn off the damned snow machine. It’s deep enough out there to go up the pullets skirts, and they are not amused.
Here’s a poll that’s currently too close to call. It’s the Ass Clown of the Year Award, and it is a race between Glenn Beck and Joe Lieberman. Personally, I feel that Glenn Beck should get the award because he’s always an Ass Clown, while Lieberman is occasionally an Ass Clown. Consistency, people, consistency.
Joan Jett loves rocks and roll
You should have let me known.
You used to laugh about everybody that was hanging out.
‘Tis, that is one of my most favorite things ever!
Observation
Eres megatwit.
Goya told me to tell you that.
***
I loved that film! A true gem for MST3K fans. Best of all, despite the horribleness of the plot, they did a wonderful job with their model work at the end when they flooded the rocks. Water is hard to scale down for film, and they must have had a huge set for those scenes. It’s better f/x than a lot of other films created.
ahhh…there’s always room for Dylan.
SC, great song. But I am working a theme here.
Janine wrote:
Janine, my estimation of your music-foo is now in the stratosphere. I didn’t realise anyone outside of Australia had heard of the Hoodoo Gurus – one of my favourite 80s/90s Australian acts and the first band I ever saw live.
Incidentally, that gig was also the first – and, at this point in time at least, last – ‘date’ I ever went on; that I totally bombed out may be why it was the last.
Wowbagger, when I was a college radio DJ in the late eighties, Electra was trying to break them in the US. For Blow Your Cool they had The Bangles singing backup vocal. At that time, The Bangle were big. (Though never as good as their first album, All Over The Place.)
So sorry.
Re Janine SWOP, OM @103;
Our Family Stone is more like a Pet Rock.
Also, Alan B, mythusmage said something about you supporting the status quo. Nice one. That’s the first record I remember rocking out to as a kid.
Josh, the only reason I was familiar with tuff is because that was one of the main ingredients in Roman construction. And no wonder; we saw it everywhere in the Naples area. If I can dig up some of my photos, I’ll link them.
I don’t even pretend to be a geologist, but I have a few friends who are and have always found it fascinating.
#107Janine, She Wolf Of Pharyngula, OM
Only if its got a fringe on top:
#120 eddie
No, I think I first mentioned Status Quo (#80) and the status quo (#90). The second use was intended to be in part humorous. Obviously not too subtle for you to catch …
Alan B, I was going to break form and link to Oklahoma USA by Ray Davies but I was not happy with the sound quality. And the video ends in the middle of the song.
SC, #113
There is a treatment for that rash.
Here are some of the cliffsides I found rummaging through my Italy photos. I can tell you where each was taken, but only know (with certainty) the story for one of the photos.
http://picasaweb.google.com/patnkatng/RocksAroundNaples#
Uh huh her.
Hey all. Have a great time celebratin’ if you’re celebratin’. SC, thanks for the email. Reply to come tomorrow or thereabouts.
Okay, I’m out. I’ll talk to you all next year (local time).
*pops smoke*
I am cheating here.
Guess what this is?
If you cannot guess what this is…
#104 mythusmage (also #113 SC OM)
mythusmage: Why are you misquoting Goya?
Wiki gives an interpretation:
What are you trying to say by deliberately misquoting the great Spanish painter? I am not even sure whether your version makes any sense.
It’s obscenely warm and rained a bit today. :-(
Oh, the jackhammer is the pneumatic one? Then it’s a sledgehammer.
Half a minute. Didn’t it use to be mentioned in the error message?
Because you’re logged in!
He is, he is…
Provided they only speak English and/or Danish and therefore pronounce all unstressed vowels the same… :-)
He simply switched registration off. Temporarily.
I don’t get the joke. Eomaia is our dawn mother, not that of the monotremes and not even that of the marsupials. It’s a eutherian (though not a placental, rather far from it).
It’s not at all seamless – there’s just no present or past subduction, as shown by oil exploration drills and seismic imaging (see comment 89). The latter reaches all the way down to the mantle at the very least.
It’s just turned into 2010CE here.
Yawn!
Only two-ish years to go before the End of Life, The Universe, and Everything… ;-)
Cheers!
Temporarily.
Aww Jehovah!
Yes, I’m antisocial. I’ll go join the party soon…
More cheer with which to ring in the New Year:
Science Teacher John Freshwater Fired.
Er, wait, that’s old news, he was fired in 2008. My apologies.
Hi Josh
You have e:mail on the address I have used before.
#137 llewelly
The trial / inquiry / panel (whatever) still goes on … and on … and on. Have a look at The Pandas Thumb. This is the latest:
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2009/12/freshwater-dec-1.html#more
I’m out of here, guys and gals. See you in the New Year (23:30 GMT)
I need my beauty sleep although many would say it is far too late …[Ed. Indeed they would!]
And it rolls on.
Not a fan of the band but it is a cover of a Victoria Williams song. I am sure most get how this fits into my theme.
Did you count your fingers after shaking my hand?
It’s harder to celebrate New Years Eve in Utah. The number of liquor licenses was cut, and now runs dry
A lot of people celebrated when Utah lawmakers trashed the private-club law that used to require club membership before anyone could buy a drink at a bar. Too soon, my friends. You should have known that the Utah lawmakers (about 90% of whom are mormons) would have a sneaky plan up their sleeve.
Lynna – On one of my trips through SLC we stopped for refreshments at the Dead Goat Saloon. Do you know if it is still there? They had great T-shirts.
Lynna,
You probably know this but others here might not. One of the quaint Utah liquor laws (before the change you referenced) allowed a non-member to drink if they were “sponsored” by someone who is already a member. So, you could walk into a bar and say “I need a sponsor”. Custom dictates that you buy your “sponsor” a beer/drink. A lot of locals would stake out a seat near the entrance so they could get free drinks by sponsoring random people.
On a snowboarding trip to Park City years ago, I attended a concert at Harry O’s (a rather largish night club). There were four separate gates to enter the club, each with a person taking tickets. As they tore your ticket, they would tell you “If anybody asks, Dave is your sponsor”. My other friends went through different gates and were told that Matt was their sponsor, or James, or whoever.
Point being, the old system was to easy to subvert. Much easier to limit the number of available licenses to keep people away from the demon likker.
Lynna: The trick to getting obliterated in Utah is to drink at high altitudes, which are pretty easy to get to*. They have CRAZY baroque liquor laws, but a little 3.2 beer at 3,000m goes a long way.
*OK…the best way is to bring your own stuff in and camp in the mountains. I like Logan Canyon, and west of Salt Lake, but I here S. Utah is rad too.
Patricia, my Queen:
The Dead Goat had to shut down as a music venue in ’03-’04. (Due to changes in the liquor laws; go figure.) They reopened as a strip club (with no liquor) under the name Crazy Goat shortly thereafter. I don’t know if they are still open or not. I haven’t been down to SLC in 4-5 years.
Something appropriate for the night.
‘Tis:
Thanks for that. I’m taking a cup of kindness as we speak. ;-)
Thank you boygenius. Aww, dang, the Dead Goat was a place I looked forward to going to again if I ever got to Utah again.
The Leaving of Liverpool Just because I like the song.
I remember this movie from when I was a kid, watching the Creature Feature on the weekend! Thanks for a fun memory…this was one of the cheesiest of all the cheesy movies, and I remember it fondly.
To usher in the new year and to admire a glimpse into the dawning of light…I’ll quote Leucippus,
Have a happy.
Aah! Apologies to Anne McCaffrey, and to Ursula K leGuin. I confess I have only read short stories by either of them and not been convinced to buy any of their novels.
Patricia, don’t you dare use lack of registration as an excuse to stop posting when rego is on!
I have no doubt at all that what others have managed to do, you can too.
(If you really can’t get an account, I’m sure someone here can provide you with one.)
OT I’m back on the non-snowing side of Lake Michigan. Later the Redhead and I will have some cake my mother sent home with us with some peach spumante. All finished off with a good nights sleep in our own bed. Looking forward to that the most. Happy New Year everybody.
The Leaving of Liverpool brought this to mind. I loves me some seafaring ballads.
*drags poisoned body into thread and counts remaining braincells*
Well, a happy new year to everyone out there, mine was spent at home quietly..
For the new year, I’m reminded of the great german philosopher Dragoslav Stepanovic’s words :
“Lebbe ged weida” !
happy newt year
16071
Happy New Year!
Hm. Does this work?
Works like a charm, O prized pullet!
… Though I note name changes are retroactive…
And by “like a charm”, I mean unreliably! ;)
But it works.
(This is not actually Patricia — I wanted to try creating a Moveable Type account that I could hand off to her)
happy newt year to you too, Sven.
http://www.naturephoto-cz.com/photos/others/smooth-newt-25731.jpg
Happy Twenty-Ten my friends! Here’s some good news to start the year out right: Gay Marriage in Argentina!
Touch My Balls, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcmtMIR0LQQ
Astronomy Picture of the Day for January 1, 2010: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100101.html
P.S. Thanks, boygenius, for keeping Patricia up to date on the Utah dens of iniquity.
Drew left mormonism only to fall in with a knitting cult
Den of Iniquity? Never heard of it. Did you mean this:
http://www.thedenofiniquity.net/dun.html
?
Well now, that is a nice fetish playground of the future, but I was thinking of the Dead Goat, the only strip club in the USA without a liquor license — a Utah specialty.
AAARRRGGGHHH!!! My eyes. Lynna, you can be cruel sometimes in ways that would make boygenius’s mistress of bdsm blush.
Alan B, #130
Because it is when reason sleeps — when reason slumbers, is off duty, taking a break, on sabbatical, asleep at the wheel, lost in the ozone — that monsters, the monsters of irrationality and elder night, arise. It is only when reason is alert, aware that monsters are banished. But never to be utterly dispelled, for they always wait in the dark for reason to sleep again. Those who employ reason must always be alert, always vigilant, for monsters are ever ready to come creeping out of their holes whenever they hear the soft snoring of slumbering reason.
On matters geological, here’s a link to an article (pay) from the January 2010 Scientific American. The premise is that asteroids in the early days provided the nucleus of the continents.
I’m inclined to say that asteroids weren’t necessary, but I don’t know enough to say they weren’t involved.
BTW, check out the thread with it. Woo addiction can be found in a lot of places.
Lynna:
Miss Sally’s in Nyssa, OR was a totally-nude strip club that did not have a liquor license. Lots of places will let you look at naked people as long as you’re not drinking. Other clubs will allow you to look at scantily clad lasses while drinking an $8 cocktail. It depends on where you live, I think.
*Or so I’ve heard.*
eddie:
My mistress does not blush.
I do.
And what exactly is the fucking point with that ?
:-)
A discussion I clearly missed ! Which I somewhat regret since it sounds like it was fun..:-)
What part of the polulation is into BDSM I wonder ? 8% of australians go to church, I can’t imagine the number of bdsm folks would be much less !
I remember this movie from when I was a kid. The only way to stop the mineral menace was with …. salt water. We all know how much rocks hate salt. Fortunately the monoliths had all bunched up at the bottom of the old salt quarry, which happened to be below the big, poorly constructed dam.
Boy was that a stupid movie.
Rocks from space – full of refined petrochemicals!
The full story behind my BDSM sweetie and myself:
Someone mentioned, “Get your rocks off”.
As expected, somebody else mentioned Dylan.
Therefore:
I will donate 2 internets to anyone (other than Sven) who can tell me what song the band teased before they started playing Steep Grade, Sharp Curve in my link @179
#181 boygenius
??
I’ll go join the party soon…
Yeah, I’m really
really
really wishing I hadn’t done that so early.
Or at least had eaten something first.
Ouch.
boygenius,
Lost Sailor? Terrapin Station?
oo!
OO!
I know! (so does SC)
Thanks a bunch, Pharyngulytes. You could have warned me before I eventually got to play my DVD of Watchmen.
I’ll never again be able to listen to Leonard Cohen singing ‘Hallelujah’ without the remembered image of a naked Malin Akerman.
How could you do this to me?
I’m with Rorschach on this one. WTF? But how can all the nude strippers look great without the alcoholic haze? And isn’t a drink or two helpful in the realm self-delusion as well — as in, “that woman is dancing just for me” and such like delusions?
And as for the concept of nude male strippers and no alcohol to ease the pain of that …. aiyiyi. That’s got to be harder on the eyes than Drew leaving mormonism and getting caught up in the knitting cult (link @168).
What has gone wrong in Nyssa, OR? Did the mormons invade?
Sven? SC OM? You both appear a tad fragile this morning. Hope you feel better – going to go have some runny eggs on toast, smoked kippers, haggis and blood pudding, and some smoked oysters. Hope I have some of the chili cheese topping left for the oysters. (evil grin)
Ciao folks
And here we find ourselves on the other side of this arbitrary line. I hope everyone is doing well. It’s a fairly warm first morning of 2010 here (cloudy, 43F (6C)). I just finished a long ruck* and now I’m about to head to brunch. mmmmmmmmmmmmm…brunch. I think we should officially propose that all work weeks close with brunch.
*I’d write “a nice long ruck” except it wasn’t particularly nice (probably due in no small part to last night’s festivities).
Josh’s Ruck ‘n’ BrunchTM
Franchises now available!
SC, a quick reminder that my comment is still waiting for you over on this thread.
Ha!
I love it, but who the hell would our clientele be? Most people aren’t going to be thrilled about six-twelve miles of punishment before they get their bacon…
We would serve a bad ass Bloody Mary, though.
Ooh, offer discounts based on length/time/weight of the ruck, downgraded to civilian standards. Old farts like me could watch the younger folks exercise while swilling bloody Marys and eating omelets, while paying full price.
Eating pork medallions wrapped in bacon right now.
The alt-text at the “quick link to the latest endless thread” has changed to “Rock it.” :-)
Wrong.
It’s hard to overemphasize how important it is that this is wrong.
It’s also hard to overemphasize how… peculiar it is that this discovery, made in 1927, still hasn’t become common knowledge!
:-) :-) :-)
¡¡¡Ay, ay, ay!!!
What a fucking weird world, but you’re right–it would probably work. Shit, now I have all sorts of ideas flowing through my head (like an ruck route that surrounds the open-air deck).
YUM.
Okay, I’m off for some bacon of my own. And a couple of Bloody Marys.
OUT
SC OM wins 2 internets. Technically it’s Lady With a Fan but Terrapin Station is close enough.
Lynna, the strippers at Miss Sally’s needed more than dim lighting and alcohol to look great. There is a bar directly across the street, and most people probably tie one on prior to going to the dance. *Or so I’ve heard*
I think a few people here can probably relate to this:
I know I can relate. It might explain my random italics above. :0
Lynna@186:
Plenty of Mormons in the area, of course. There is also a fairly large Mennonite population and they are far more conservative than the Mormons, believe it or not.
http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/I32.html
Ooh, ooh. We have Quakers around here as well. It’s a good thing they’re pacifists.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15751662/
Anybody else in need of some hair o’ the dog this morning? All I have in the house is beer, and it’s going down like rust. I would kill for a Bloody Mary, but I’m not willing to leave the house just yet.
boygenius, Thanks for the link to the Mennonite colonies in Idaho. Odd that most of them are clustered around heavily mormon areas. I wonder if they siphon off discontented mormons. People who think mormons are not conservative enough … whoa, nelly!
A school in Nampa, Idaho has been in the news lately for its plans to use the Bible as a textbook. But I don’t remember what flavor of crazy they are.
I don’t have any bloody mary ingredients in my house, and it’s snowing like crazy here. I wish Josh’s Ruck ‘n Brunch was next door. I already shoveled snow for about an hour and a half, and I’ll have to do it again this afternoon. I think this should qualify as a substitute for a ruck.
Lynna, the Nampa Classical Academy is right down the street from me. I can’t believe my tax dollars are funding this “school”. The uniform policy and student handbook are… interesting.
http://www.ncacharter.org/
Here’s an interesting article from our weekly liberal rag:
http://www.boiseweekly.com/boise/classical-class/Content?oid=1098884
The girls at the Nampa Classical Academy are required to wear bike shorts under their skirts? That will be nice in the hotter months. It’s also not a medically sound requirement.
Nobody’s tax dollars should fund schools like this. I notice that they also list “patriotism” as one of the main subjects they teach. Wonderful.
And what, exactly, is a “gender appropriate hairstyle”? (/asks the Deadhead who’s had hair halfway to his ass for 20 years)
re: curriculum
I agree, patriotism is not something that can be taught. “My country, right or wrong” written 100 times on the blackboard?
As an ex-Yooper, I would definitely say that shoveling that much snow qualifies as aerobic exercise. I’ll back your claim to Josh.
Josh’d Ruck’n’Brunch
If you already carry 20lbs of extra weight around, do you get the discount, or does it have to be in a rucksak?
You’re a mean one, JeffreyD! Fortunately, I had returned to sleep and was feeling somewhat better by the time I read that.
Seconded. Brunch is the best meal. Eggs Florentine. Yum.
Yes, Walton, I haven’t forgotten. I’ll get back to you later today or tomorrow. Unless you remind me again – then I won’t.
:)
Yay! Only hours into the new decade and I’ve already won two internets!
Yes. Blame the hangover.
I’ve never been a hair-o’-the dog person. Can’t conceive of wanting a drink when I’m feeling like that (other than the occasional brunch mimosa). More of an I’m-never-drinking-again kind of girl. I may be up for a walk along the water, though, if I can get out in the next few minutes…
Speaking of Mennonites and the like, the Doukhobors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doukhobor
are an interesting community that I heard of because Peter Kropotkin helped arrange with the Canadian government for them to migrate from Russia to Canada. I was just checking out the Wikipedia entry, and parts of it sound ridiculously biased and lacking documentation, e.g.:
Sorry. Hangover makes bad typong.
Nerd, what is the origin of the term Yooper?
Is it some mangling of Upper in the regional dialect?
“Share and Enjoy”
Real Geology Series (with GOOD rocks)
I left you last time** staring in amazed enjoyment at some REALLY GOOD rocks. Well, one really big rock – Southstone Rock.
It is pretty unusual because it is a young tufa, only around 6000-7000 years old i.e. formed as Britain came out of the last Ice Age (or just before the Universe was created if you are a YEC delugionist).
What you are looking at is a modified quarry face. Stone (tufa) was removed from this face and used in a variety of places locally, notably in churches and in Worcester cathedral for reasons we will come to. Since then parts have been modified for storage and what was probably a hovel (later a chapel) was built on the flat top of the rock. This was replaced by a cottage, remains of which are visible if you walk round the front and up to the top. Since then the cottage was removed and stout saplings have taken over.
Over time the rock has slowly moved down the steep hillside. Splits and cracks in the bulk of the rock makes it an interesting area to explore and imagine being in a “Lord of the Rings” fantasy land. No doubt the rock will eventually crash down the hillside. Hopefully with no geologists busy measuring the downhill displacement!
The rock is remarkably open in structure with large pores, some of which contain pieces of moss that are intimately mixed in with the rock. Also, the surface is covered with spider’s web silk which has put off a number of climbers from what is quite an attractive ascent.
The stream that cascades down the valley (dingle) is displaced to one side of the rock and there is an attractive waterfall over more of the tufa. The stream goes back well beyond Southstone Rock to a spring high up on the Bromyard plateau above. More interesting is another spring which skirts the table top and joins the valley stream just above the waterfall. This emerges at the junction of a calcrete layer (probably the Bishop’s Frome Limestone) and an underlying marl (calcareous clay). This is, of course, a classical location for a spring with water flowing into and through the limestone but with it being blocked from percolating downwards by the impermeable clay layer. There are several calcrete layers in the side of the Teme Valley and the springs arising feed the many dingles (steep-sided valleys).
The spring water is saturated with calcium carbonate in solution as calcium bicarbonate. It is common to find stones in these dingles covered with a thin layer of calcium carbonate and the waterfall covered with tufa shows the process going on today. The difference comes in that the layer formed is a superficial coating. Where did this thumping great block of rock come from?
There are two keys factors:
1) The moss growing in the spring water. This is an unusual variety (Palustrielle commutata) which causes calcium carbonate to precipitate from the cold water of the spring. My guess is that it takes the carbon dioxide (plant food) out of the water causing the calcium carbonate to come out of solution. In many places the moss can be seen surrounded and apparently being engulfed by the tufa it forms. Eventually, the moss dies leaving a highly porous matrix of low density but high strength.
2) From the sheer volume of the rock produced it is believed that the spring water collected in the past in a pool, perhaps formed by trivial amounts of coating gradually producing a lip to hold back the water. Thus, instead of being whisked down the valley, it ponded and there was time for more tufa to be formed and to collect. Over several thousand years the rock built up to form a partial plug in the dingle.
While there are other places where water cascades over tufa terraces in the side of the Teme valley, there is nothing else with the scale of Southstone Rock. It is more widespread than it appears at first site. There is a path up the dingle which ends up at the top of the woodland and onto a minor road. Part way up I have seen evidence of badgers. Where they have dug out their earths, the “soil” has many pieces of tufa. This suggests there have been other springs in the past higher up the dingle which have contributed to the formation of tufa over a wide area.
**Comment 630 on the huge pulsating brain thread:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/12/the_huge_evergrowing_pulsating.php#comment-2172303
(Next part to follow quickly)
What is the importance of the tufa?
First of all its the largest block of tufa anywhere in England and possibly in Europe. Roderick Impey Murchison (of Silurian and Permian fame) comments on it in his exploring of the Welsh Marches. It should be noted that the method of formation (i.e. in cold water and encouraged by mosses) is quite different from the travertine formed in “volcanic” hot springs in Italy and elsewhere. There the calcium carbonate is laid down in a more dense form.
Secondly, it is likely that the tiny spring that formed this great mass of rock was sacred in pre-Christian times. The rock was at one stage “home” to a hermit and later to a small number of monks. They may have been involved in helping travellers and visitors to this holy site.
Thirdly, the tufa makes a remarkably light-weight building material. For a rock so open in structure it is surprising how much load it can take and how resistant it is to weathering. The initial construction of some of the local churches was entirely of tufa and other churches further afield have incorporated tufa into the building. In some places this might be because of the lightness combined with strength (e.g. in the roof vaulting of Worcester Cathedral). There are so many churches in Herefordshire in particular that contain small amounts of tufa that it is believed that it was incorporated deliberately. The theory is that the spring was sacred and hence the rock produced by the spring carried some of the same holiness with it into the new church building.
Fourthly, the rock, unexpectedly emerging from the woods, has a beauty and a stature that demands attention. The lack of visitors is primarily that it is “off the beaten track”. Unlike when the monks were there you have to take your own picnic lunch and find suitable places in the woods for other requirements.
Or, perhaps, not enough people enjoy looking at REALLY GOOD rock!
Footnotes
For a geology trail guide and more information unload a pdf at:
http://www.geopark.org.uk/documents/publications/SouthstoneRockTrailGuide.pdf
(Photograph 8 shows tufa used in a local church to frame a medieval window. At 150% or 200% zoom the open structure is easily seen)
For a local church built entirely of tufa (St Andrew’s, Shelsley Walsh) see:
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1172257
(Shelsley Walsh is the site of a world famous (car) hill climb where the enthusiasts are allowed (encouraged) to mix with the competitors in the pit area. But that is another story!)
That’s what Wiki says. It is also the way way it sounds in Finglish. When I lived up there, the most popular local show on the PBS station was about Finland and in Finnish.
Nerd,
I should have guessed, being 1/2 Finnish myself. I have fond memories of my maternal grandmother speaking Finglish to me when I was a lad.
SC OM,
Thanks for the link to the Doukhobors. Very interesting. I had never heard of them before, although I have walked past the Nelson, BC courthouse that was bombed. Nelson is an awesome little town with phenomenal back-country skiing/boarding in the Kootenays. Anyone who is up for the experience of a lifetime should check out Baldface Lodge:
http://www.baldface.net/
Shoveling definitely counts.
You still have to wear a ruck, but it can be 20lbs lighter than whatever the weight would be.
Discounts for All.
Yum.
I had turkey Benedict (same as traditional, but the Canadian bacon has been replaced), a pile* of really good home fries, toast, and a side of bacon, chased with coffee and…a Bloody Mary.
*And I mean a pile.
The Redhead is making me grill steaks later, and already has put in her demand for a Bloody Mary. Ten dollops of Salsa Brava, extra hot…
David, Get a grip.
Leucippus was alive at a time long ago, our knowledge today is built upon the succeses and failures of those before us, just as those who come after us will build upon our knowledge base.
Really…try to understand the inflection within the context of the whole.
You act as if Heisenberg uncertainty principle is a secret known only to you, thatsa mighty high horse your riding.
Sounds like me today.
Bah.
Hooray! Alan B is giving geology lessons again.
Thank you, Alan.
My favourite xmas present is a book called ‘F in Exams’. It[‘s a collection of daft answers to simple exam questions.
For example, in a history exam:
Q: What did Mahatma Gandhi and Genghis Khan have in common?
A: Unusual names.
While, in a maths exam:
Q: What is a six-sided polygon known as?
A: An empty bird cage.
I’m still trying to find the correct answer to the first question. All I came up with on UGoogle was they met on Celebrity DeathMatch.
I’ve never understood the I’m-never-drinking-again mentality.
Like cures like, doesn’t it? At least that’s what my homeopathist tells me.
Apropos of nothing much:
Earlier today, I suddenly realised that tomorrow would be a palindromic day (in my preferred YYYYMMDD date format): 2010 01 02. Of course, the Australians will already be living it by now.
There’ll be another one along at the end of next year but a bit of a gap before the next two. Then they only turn up singly for a while.
@ Sven DiMilo #160:
If only. It has been nearly 3 years since my last newt. :-(
I do have the promise of getting some newt-spawn this year if possible though (from a friend of a child of a friend!). At the moment I’m just hoping most of my frogs survive the ice and snow.
Ref #209 – really interesting because my impression is there isn’t much of it in the UK to view.
The only bit of fossilized/ late glacial tufa in Britain I have actually seen was a recently described set at White Scar /Witherslack area in the South Lakes UK on an OUGS trip. Westmorland Geological Society mapped the whole area as a managed project that the BGS accepted and have just released as a new 1:10,000 map of the area. Shows that geology, like astronomy, is one science where you can actually produce new findings that enter the literature.
http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/7302/
boygenius re: Yooper
It’s a contraction of U.P.’er, or someone from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
~~~~~~~~~~
Home made eggs Benedict and mimosas at our house this morning. No rucking, though I am dismantling Christmas decorations.
But s/he is right! You just forgot the “dilute dilute dilute dilute dilute and dilute some more until there’s no ethanol molecule left” part. :)
(In short, rehydrate yourself.)
What did Mahatma Gandhi and Genghis Khan have in common? – eddie@218
One possible answer does concern the “names” they are commonly known by: neither is actually a name, both are titles. Gandhi was Mohandas Gandhi – “Mahatma” means “great soul”. Genghis Khan was called Temujin: “Genghis Khan” means “lord of the Earth”.
Just remember not to confuse Yooper with Youppi.
Ack, Thanks ‘Tis for reminding me of my manners. Excellent posts Alan B. You made today a good day as I learned something.
I lived there for 15 years, and I was only considered an honorary (because I lasted over 10 years) Yooper by the locals. Only those born there are considered “true” Yoopers.
Dania@224:
But… doesn’t the dilution and succussion make make it even more potent? Wouldn’t the “dilute dilute dilute” approach result in my demise due to alcohol poisoning?
Okay, I think I easily win today’s dumb ass award. I just stubbed by toe and it hit the wall just right so that I actually tore off a toenail (little toe). There is blood all over my goddamn sock.
I hereby propose that weeks do not end with brunch + toe stubbing.
Fuck.
Josh- OUCH!!
Just popping in to say- I love “Monolith Monsters”. One of the coolest 50’s sci-fi flicks.
That, and “Kronos”.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050610/
Josh:
I feel you, brother. Nothing can bring a grown man to tears more easily than a stubbed toe. If we actually had an Intelligent Designer (TM), you would think he would have placed fewer nerve endings in a portion of our anatomy that is prone to kicking things.
Hey Alan, the .pdf you linked to in #209 didn’t open for me.
#229 Josh
I second that
emotion!Indeed. Actually, I’d have some words for it regarding the overall anatomy of the little toe. Nothing on a person much more poorly designed I fear than my stupid stubby little toe.
Josh, you sound like my sister. She was practicing a cheer (back in Jr. High) and kicked the wall in her bedroom, breaking her little toe. I keep stubbing that toe on a number of things, but it remains intact.
Here’s some from failblog:
Q: Can a man still reproduce with only one testicle?
A: No, girls don’t find that shit attractive.
http://failblog.org/2009/11/16/answer-fail-2/
Q: Given linear transformation f with f(1,1)=(a,3) and f(2,1)=(1,2a), find all values of a, if any, such that f(1,2)=(5,5).
A: [Attempts problem] I couldn’t figure out this problem, but here is an amateur drawing of a Charizaras, I hope that helps…
The marker gives the solution and draws a Blastoise with remark: “Blastoise uses water canon. It’s Super Effective! Charizaras fainted.”
http://failblog.org/2009/12/09/calculus-fail-2/
Note: actually more of a linear algebra fail, though the fail by no means ends there.
Your sister’s experience sounds pretty dreadful.
My little toe is strange. It’s a tiny bit smaller than you might expect and it articulates slightly more proximal to the ankle than the rest. As such, I’m rather prone to stubbing the little bugger. But, of the stuff I’ve actually broken, my toes aren’t to my knowledge yet on the list.
Good point. If homeopathists are correct, then yes, it will make it more potent. But then again, from a homeopathic point of view that’s a good thing because like cures like. So you will only die from alcohol poisoning if they are half right. Or something like that.
Ouch… not pleasant. Hope it’s not hurting too much. :/
*shrug*
It hurts pretty damn good, but now that I’ve gotten it bandaged it’s much better than it was.
Dania @238:
So… let me get this straight. I can cure my hangover by drinking myself to death?
Er… Look, whatever you try to do, I have nothing to do with it I have not given you any ideas. ‘Kay?
Homeopathy is confusing. :(
Indeed, it is. And you’ve confused me even more! :)
Well, I’m off to bed… I really need a good night* of sleep.
G’night everyone.
*Several, actually. I’ve successfully fucked up my sleeping patterns in the last two weeks or so… and I WANT THEM BACK!
Alan, in comment #208 wrote:
It’s actually pertinent to The ThreadTM that you referenced the delugionists here. This is pretty young for a GOOD HARD rock, but you can find tufa that’s younger. Heck, you can find it being deposited now.
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/geosci/Downloads/pdfs/John%20Webb_Jan%2009/Geomorphology/Ihlenfeld%20et%20al%202003.pdf
http://www.newcastle.edu.au/school-old/environ-life-science/our_staff/downloads/Sedimentary%20Geology%202003%20KC.pdf
References herein:
http://www.newcastle.edu.au/school-old/environ-life-science/our_staff/downloads/Sedimentary%20Geology%202003%20RD.pdf
Zák et al., 2002, Climate-induced changes in Holocene calcareous tufa formations, Bohemian Karst, Czech Republic. Quaternary International 91(1):137-152. Abstract: About 70 localities where Holocene calcareous tufa is formed recently and/or was formed in the past are known in the Bohemian Karst, a small karst area located SW of Prague. All known tufa accumulations display a very similar pattern of lithological and biostratigraphic evolution, reflecting climatic changes, erosion events and biota succession. A 17 m thick tufa accumulation at Svatý Jan pod Skalou was selected and thoroughly studied as a typical, well developed representative of local tufa deposits. Tufa formation started at about 9500 BP, on a flat fluvial gravel terrace of Late Glacial/Early Holocene age. Deposition of lithologically uniform, pure hard porous tufa continued until about 6500 BP. From that time, a more unstable climate with several dry periods and erosion events produced a lithologically varied complex of loose tufa alternating with embedded soils and scree layers. Termination of the tufa deposition occurred about 2500 BP, and was followed by partial erosion connected with relocation of the spring below the tufa body. Holocene climatic changes were recorded in lithology, molluscan assemblages, and oscillations of oxygen and carbon stable isotope ratios in carbonate. The observed patterns are in good agreement with the evolution of calcareous tufa deposits throughout Central Europe.
Viles et al., 2007, Facies evidence of hydroclimatic regime shifts in tufa depositional sequences from the arid Naukluft Mountains, Namibia . Sedimentary Geology 195(1-2):39-53. Abstract: The Naukluft Mountains on the eastern edge of the central Namib Desert contain numerous, largely inactive, fluvial tufas within headwater streams of the ephemeral Tsondab River which currently terminates in a vlei in the Namib sand sea. Extensive tufa barrage deposits have been mapped and described along the Brandfontein River, a small (6.5 km long) tributary of the Tsondab River. Here, a series of large barrages have developed along the river system which culminate in a large tufa cascade feature at the mountain front. Tufa facies at Brandfontein include cemented colluvial and fluvial gravels and boulders, moss tufas, as well as reed and root facies. The sequences provide evidence of several cut and fill phases which are interpreted as indicating alternating periods of tufa deposition and fluvial downcutting. The Brandfontein tufas are used to propose a three phase arid fluvial tufa deposition model in which erosive high magnitude, low frequency floods punctuate periods of quiescence and tufa deposition. Extensive downstream prograding ramped barrages and tufa cemented fluvial gravels are key components of this tufa deposition model, which illustrates the role of climate and topography in shaping tufa deposit morphologies.
Tufa is a great carbonate because it’s easy to study. It’s ambient temperature and it’s fluvial (forms in rivers and from spring flow), so you don’t have to be a diver in the Bahamas* to watch the deposition happen. The delugionists are fond of asking us why we never see the processes that we infer for the past happening today with respect to sedimentology. Tufa is one example of how ignorant this question is. It’s forming today in shallow fresh water all over the world. A world that’s far more interesting than the deulugionists would have us view it as.
Good stuff, Alan.
*I know, because that would be fucking awful, right?
Ahh,
Checklist:
1. Confuse Dania2. Confound Sven re: Jerry phrasings.
3. Learn something about Mormons that Lynna doesn’t already know.
Q. What do Bozo the Clown, Bullwinkle the Moose, and Attila the Hun have in common?
They have the same middle name, the.
I don’t know how one makes Duck a l’Orange…hell, I don’t even know if there really is duck in it. But I assure you, my friends. It is a delicious dish*.
*Go Bucks
Janine has shown that she is a 4th Grade graduate by knowing the correct answer to my silly question.
Damn you, ‘Tis Himself, OM.
Do you have any idea how much time I spent searching Google to find the answer to your silly question? The Amazing Randi would be proud of you!
Antiochus inspires me.
I’m a pretty slack cook, but if I say so myself I make a damn good pseudo-Coq au vin which is quite cheap too:
* a couple of tablespoons of olive oil
* an onion or two, sliced roughly
* some slices of short bacon, chopped-up fine
* a couple of garlic cloves, chopped quite small
* a couple of cups of stock
* a couple of pounds of chicken thigh¹ fillets, chopped-up
* a decent glass of red wine
– brown chicken pieces, set aside
– fry up the onion on medium heat, until nearly caramelised
– then add bacon bits, fry some more
– add garlic, fry for a little bit (burns easily)
– add wine and use it to thoroughly deglaze
– add browned-up chicken pieces
– add enough stock to cover chicken
– simmer uncovered, stirring ocassionally, until liquid is well-reduced.
PS Like a curry, I think it better when reheated on the second day.
—
¹ Breast meat is too dry and not robust enough for this, IMO.
No, no. It means from the U.P. A “Yoo-Pee-er.” A Yooper. I knew a bunch of em in college and they referred to folks from the lower penninsula as flatlanders or trolls (from under the bridge…this was long, long before even usenet).
As already pointed out
*shrug*
+1
I once heard this one:
Q. Why was there no room left when Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem?
A. Because it was Christmas.
I can has sign in?
Yesssss!
Only, now I don’t know where all the posts in all the threads I wanted to comment on, are. *sigh*
Turnips for TypeThing’s stocking, this year.
Um, I see no evidence that you’re signed in, cicely.
Alan B, 208 and 209
So tufa is something that grows on you.
Returning now to a conversation from the last thread, here’s a link to a skeptic’s look at skeptic’s fail. Or how skeptics can blow their chance to convince others by being rude, snide, sarcastic, and irrational. My personal favorite is #10…
@ Josh #229:
Nasty! :-o
At least I haven’t done that (so far). Mine dislocate so easily that the lightest brush against a mat will do it, no significant impact is required. A toe does hurt a bit (and feel “nervous”) for a couple of weeks after I’ve wrangled it back into its slot though. (Yes, mostly I do do it myself rather than having to go to A&E.)
Do you know how long your toe is going to take to get better (insofar as it will at all)?
#222 Tigana
Thanks for the information! I was unaware of the mapping project and of them finding tufa is substantial amounts (by UK tufa standards).
Are you studying with the OU or tagged onto the OUGS field trip? (Don’t answer if you don’t want to – I know personal information is rarely asked for or given on the internet).
I shall have to have a read of the report. I’m interested in the environment in which it might have formed and whether there is evidence of moss – ancient or modern. Hopefully, I shall find it there otherwise I will probably contact the survey team.
Thanks again.
Well, the area under the now-absent nail is still really damn tender, as you might expect (but it’s also currently bandaged, which is putting some pressure on the wound). I just need to wait for the nail to regrow, which will take a few weeks. From previous experience with my other foot, the area in question should toughen up to the point where it’s functionally no different from the toes around it by next weekend or so. I’m not going to run this morning in order to give it a moment to heal up some, but I’m going to be rucking again on Monday, so that’ll be…pleasant.
And because this is my life, the timing is poor. I’ve got a PT test coming up in a couple of weeks where my running speed is going to matter, so this is not when I need to be skipping run (or ruck) days. Fuck.
What about Plitvice? Is that tufa?
Erm, no, the article you cite says comments 223 and 252 are right.
What, if anything, was the point of citing Leucippus when you know full well the quote has been falsified?
WTF?
Does it? What about the “ruler who is as the ocean” idea, with chinggiz from the word for “sea” in Turkic languages (tingiz/tengiz/dengiz… Turkish deniz, because Turkish has turned every ng into n… Mongolian always turns ti into chi)?
“ruler who is as the ocean” – David Marjanović, OM @263
That’s much more poetic! I’m only repeating what I read in a history of Central Asia – my knowledge of Turkic languages is limited to the fact that they are agglutinative. Possibly your phrase could be a literal and ine a metaphorical translation?
Yes. And it’s one of the best examples of this sort of precipitation/deposition. Waterfall turbulence and resultant precipitation, formation of tufa dams in active fluvial channels, vegetation getting actively interred. Classic. Happening right now.
On another, topic, Irish atheists strike back!
Yes.
http://books.google.com/books?id=9XMPAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA633
On a “qui custodiet” note (including physical but non-sentient “guards”, eg on the “watcher” device itself). Although it’s slightly worrying that it’s pretty much only being covered in The Sun and a bunch of foreign copyists. :-/
Ok this thread needs music !!! Dont think we’ve had Queen for a while…
Play the game !
Bohemian Rhapsody
Show must go on
@ Josh #262:
That’s pretty speedy (even given that it’s probably your smallest nail)!
Alan B #261
They interpreted the Witherslack tufa as forming in an ice tunnel, we looked at a couple of easily accessible large blocks of tufa in a field but there were many more in the woodland following the line of the tube, so they may be no moss to identify. Try Michael Dewey at Cumbria RIGS / WGS for more details.
I have just finished the Geology S260 course & am starting “Understanding the Continents” in Feb, plus go on fieldtrips with number of groups inc OUGS. I tend to lurk on this thread for the geology links. Hopfully, the more I study, the better I will be able to contribute to the conversation.
Regarding continental rises and slopes and such: It’s really not appropriate to refer to them as talus slopes or alluvial fans or anything like that. These are complex geomorphic features that reflect the rifting origins of the ocean basins that they edge. They are not talus slopes or alluvial fans.
Talus is a weathering product.
These are talus slopes:
The person is standing right on the edge of the talus slope.
3dparks.wr.usgs.gov/landslide/images/arroyo_seco4.jpg
This mesa-like outcrop is skirted by talus.
depts.washington.edu/natmap/habitats/images/talus_slope_kmd.jpg
Slightly vegetated.
http://www.colorado.edu/geography/class_homepages/geog_3251_sum08/05_talus_slopea.jpg
http://www.boliviaweb.com/travel/jason/images/day4_camino%20a%20titisani.jpg
This is a closer view of the talus material itself.
spanishpeakscountry.com/images/mountainimages/mestas/talus2.jpg
Alluvial fans are depositional features.
These are alluvial fans:
The black line is a road that’s running on the fan itself and basically traces is geography.
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/earth/geology/images/alluvial_fan_lg.jpeg
and
3dparks.wr.usgs.gov/landslide/images/copper_canyon_fan.jpg
Nice clear one. The v-shaped or cone-shaped feature at the bottom of the canyon that is in contact with the lake.
http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/Atlas/Images/Glossary/Alluvial_fan.jpg
gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/landscapes/photos/ne/baffin/brodeur/fans.jpg
img2.allposters.com/images/RHPOD/29-1117.jpg
Nice very small one that is the result of high-energy fluvial transport.
http://www.rmnp.com/Scenery/RMNP-AlluvialFan001.JPG
And, just to be an ass, here is an intermittent alluvial fan developing between two talus slope lobes.
http://www.restondigital.com/banff/images/alluvial_fan.jpg
Now, these are continental slope images:
3dparks.wr.usgs.gov/landslide/images/monterey_small.jpg
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/image/2minsurface/1350/45N090W.jpg
See the differences? Now, there can definitely be talus and alluvial fan development on the large-scale features that are the slopes, but the slopes themselves are rather more complex than fans and talus slopes.
http://geology.isu.edu/Digital_Geology_Idaho/Module3/Passive_Margin.gif
http://3dparks.wr.usgs.gov/nyc/images/fig112.jpg
You can feel free to conflate these terms if you want, but what you’re really doing if you do that* is analogous to looking at a tiny stream draining across a beach,
http://clasticdetritus.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/dscf5206.jpg
that’s depositing a small fan in a gully, and asserting that this fan is the beach and that the processes that formed the fan are those which are responsible for forming the beach. In reality, however, the processes that built that little fan aren’t at all the same ones which are responsible for producing the overall beach.
*Or at least, this is what appeared to be happening in the previous installment of The ThreadTM when the term talus slope was being used to refer to the continental slope, which is why I’m bringing it up.
Now, if you look at this figure from that last comment I wrote,
http://3dparks.wr.usgs.gov/nyc/images/fig112.jpg
the abrupt contact between the oceanic crust and the continental crust is probably going to piss you off. But you really need to remember that any of these margin cross-sections(1) are going to be schematic. Far more important than that, however, is the fact that the contact between the oceanic crust and the continental crust in this case(2) is pretty abrupt. Remember, you’re discussing an ocean basin that was initiated and continues to open because of processes that are broadly explained by the hypothesis of sea-floor spreading.
References and Notes
1. http://www.lisrc.uconn.edu/images/geology/images/225-145mya.jpg
2. The eastern coast of North America.
Oh, sorry SC OM, I had no idea that what I said might have made you ill. (silent chortling)
I am one of those rare people who just never seems to get a hangover or ill from drinking, even to excess. I also wake up chipper, fully alert, and wanting to converse. Yeah, I know, I know – every women who has ever shared a bed or room with me hates that. On the other hand, I do like to snuggle in the morning so none of them ever actually tried to kill me for being the way I am. Well, not in the morning at least. The one attempt on my life was entirely unrelated to my morning behaviour. Or have I said too much again?
Josh, sorry about your toe man. However, I am willing to trade my foot issue with you if you accept without knowing the details. (grin) Try some Tuff Skin or Betadine on the area to toughen it up before you have to run.
Ciao y’all
FUCKING SB!
Please ignore #273. I’m working on something.
Thanks, man. Yeah, no trade–I can live with this… :)
OK David I’ll try to clean up your “WTF”.
Notice the date and time of the original post.
It was New Years Eve.
It is customary to look back at the past as you look forward to the future.
If you know who Leucippus is, then you know that he is considered the first Greek to develop the theory of atomism.
His work is approximately 2444 years old.
Whether he was right or wrong does not matter in this context, it was the fact that not much survives of his writing, yet that which does has helped to lead those who followed in the direction of Atomism.
“admire a glimpse into the dawning of light”
It was a new years greeting that was perhaps *to abstract for the uninitiated.*
Apropos of nothing, I think this is cool:
http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/project-pages/coastal_mass/
But then, I just like maps. :)
***
I’d want to kill you more. :)
***
The nails on my pinky toes are so small as to be very difficult to find (mm or two). I’m sure I’d notice if I lost one, but it wouldn’t take long to heal, that’s for sure.
Aren’t you able to report any injuries that might interfere with your training/performance?
Did you hit submit instead of preview or are you sure you hit preview but it somehow got submitted instead?
I ask because the later situation has happened to me once and I’m still not sure who’s fault it was.
Yeah, they don’t take long to regrow, but they do hurt like hell when they come off.
Of course, but it has to be something that’s perceived as a “real” injury. Something that really would prevent you from getting the job done if it happened in the suck. Otherwise, injuries are an unfortunate part of being down range. In the case of something as trivial as a toenail getting ripped off, my teammates are gonna be like “WTF? It’s a toenail…get on the fucking chopper. We’ve got shit to do.”
No, I absolutely hit submit instead of preview.
Fuck. But the latter has happened to me in the past.
It’s snowing. The third snowstorm in four days. I just get dug out from the last one when the next one shows up. The weather people are threatening snow for tomorrow and Monday as well.
Looks like I’ll have time to finish my Civ4 game this weekend.
Thanks, Alan B, for the posts on the tufa. I especially liked the details regarding the placement in the dingle, and the relationship of tufa formation to water flow(s).
A “dingle” quote from Dylan Thomas’s “Fern Hill”
Here’s a good example of tuff (not tufa): Photos and geological info on Crystal Peak
Geology: still boring.
Josh’s toe: also boring.
2010: kind of a disappointment so far.
PZ: still a poopyhead.
Cool map SC OM. Also a map freak.
Re snuggling, always been lucky that my partners are snugglers – wonderful on a chilly morning when you don’t have to be anywhere in particular.
Well, coffee and food time – Ciao y’all
Well, of course. But we’re not talking about that situation. It’s training. I guess I look at it from a sports POV: you get injured during practice or just on your own time and the trainers tell you to sit out some practices or even games to allow it to heal properly. That’s the rational thing to do from a long-term perspective.* (I don’t know what complications could result from running with that specific injury – Rorschach? – but there probably are some; though of course it’s not like a possibly-broken bone – you’d have to be crazy to run/ruck with that ;).) I don’t understand the mentality that thinks some level of toughness will magically make things heal quickly or correctly despite not allowing them to. Madness.
*Ah, there’s the problem right there – I was somehow expecting rationality from the military.
:)
Completely unrelated to anything going on before in the comment section (I presume, I scrolled past).
I’m leaving for a vacation in Perth, Australia tomorrow – most of the time is going to be spent visiting family, but can anyone tell me if there is anything I should make sure to see while in town?
Thanks, Josh. Sounds reasonable to me. I do think you should require ruck weights that are a percentage of the rucker’s weight — that way this petite female will not have to carry the same weight as a 200 pound man.
I lost a toenail while rafting the Bruneau River. The raft and I were popped up like toast in a rapid, and then further tossed around individually. When I was finally able to tow my one-man raft into an eddy and crawl out on the bank to recover, I discovered that I was minus one toenail. The cold water, plus the adrenaline rush of swimming for one’s survival, made the loss more an object wonder than of pain … at least for a little while.
The problem with wounds that are foot-associated is that one has to keep walking on them, hence the horror of blisters.
Warning: Should the discussion here continue to concern toenails, I WILL post graphic descriptions of mine, one by one, and, should it become necessary, photos. There may be fungus involved, but I am neither confirming nor denying that possibility at this time. This is your only warning.
I’m so fucking sick of the snow. I was able to get out for my walk yesterday (not that fun in any case – too many people, too dark, too hung over), but it wasn’t really relaxing since I knew it would be the last chance I had before the multi-day storm hit. I have things to do here at home today, but if I’m stuck inside through Monday I may lose it.
aah, home, sweet home :-p
*looks around to see if anyone is creeped out by this*
*sees no one*
Looks like slack withers, does it?
The Iguazu Falls are a little out of the way, but well worth a visit. Here’s an overhead view.
Well, Sven, I say, “Bring on the fungus, if you must.” However, I hope you’ll note that I did try to change the subject to slack withers.
I’m outta here for an hour or so. Gotta shovel snow again. I shoveled enough yesterday to make my muscles sore, so I know I earned brunch at Josh’s Ruck and Brunch. I’ll have to take it slow today until I break a sweat. The break-a-sweat point usually coincides with muscles loosening up and deciding that they will work after all … if I insist.
Looks like a classic nor’easter.
Don’t worry. I found it. Put it in the mail for you if you want.
Jadehawk,
Sorry for derailing the thread (since there seems to be an unwritten rule that all open threads have to be devoted to snow, interesting rocks, bad music, bacon and inventive uses for the word “sniny”), but I wanted to continue a discussion about consumerism we were having a few weeks ago on this thread before it got derailed by
insanityseasonal high spirits. :-)Having given some thought to it, I still have to disagree with your perspective on consumerism. Consumer capitalism gives us so many things which it would be difficult to live without. I’m not talking about wall-mounted singing fish; rather, I’m talking about refrigerators, computers, central heating, mobile phones, digital watches, and all the other technology we use on a daily basis without even noticing. And the idea of living on “local food” is great if you happen to live in an agricultural region, but not so great if you live in, say, Iceland or the Falkland Islands and are allergic to fish.
In the end, a person who has, for instance, a refrigerator has a better quality of life than a person who does not have a refrigerator. This is not a culturally contingent truth; the need for refrigerators is not artificially created by “consumerist culture”. Ditto for computers, and heating, and air conditioning. And thanks to consumer capitalism, more people in the world than ever before have access to these things – a situation which, sadly, is probably unsustainable because of limited environmental resources.
The point I’m trying to make is that while I recognise the necessity for environmental action to be taken, I don’t think we can kid ourselves and claim that we’ll all be happier without a “consumerist lifestyle”.
I already grew another one, so you can keep the bloody thing if you like. Better yet, sell the toenail to Mr. Fire for his creepy basement display of Lynna-related oddments. Mr. Fire claims to have the vibrating lingerie (technically the property of Smoggy Batzrubble, but stolen long ago by Lynna), but I fear Mr. Fire has been bamboozled by sellers of faux Lynna undies. He should have checked the DNA. Perhaps you could check the DNA of the toenail found in Bruneau Canyon before you set your price for Mr. Fire.
A calm stretch of the river on which the toenail was lost is pictured here.
‘Tis Himself, yes South America is a bit out of the way when I’m in Perth, Australia. Iguazu Falls looks breathtaking though
Here’s something covering geology, geography, and oceanography, Drain the Ocean; 8pm Eastern Time, 5 pm Pacific Time on the National Geographic Channel. (Thought folks would be interested.)
Josh, #273
Actually, that’s what I was talking about; a abrupt transition from oceanic to continental crust, no blending of the two.
Where toenails are concerned, I’ve lost a grand total of three from my big toes. The first time I lustily jammed the big toe of my right foot against something hard. I think a street curb, but it’s been awhile and I have the Asper’s malfunctioning memory. The nail grew back, then fell off again. The second regrowth took.
The third time it was the nail on the big toe of the left foot, and this development required a bad case of toenail fungus plus the application of a toenail fungus treatment. Unlike the other two times this occasion included a fair amount of bleeding.
Yeah, as you can see from my accidental posting, I’m working on a reply to that issue. I was working on it pretty well, but then got distracted by some other stuff. I doubt I’ll finish it tonight. Sorry about that.
I just struck me, over at American Scientist there are people working there who visit this blog on regular occasion (it’s in their list of links on their front page) who read these comments. I have to wonder how often they wonder if maybe their fellow scientists are a few light bulbs short of a chandelier.
Josh, #303
Better late and correct than early and wrong. BTW, I don’t know if I’ll be able to check out all your links, but I do appreciate you providing them. I expect others will be able to take advantage of the leads you provided.
Definitely.
I’m going to fly to Paris tomorrow, er, later today. Something tells me that’s not the right destination.
On what do you base this, specifically? Can you point to some comments in particular? I can’t find that, by the way. Could you provide a link?
And I think you mean chanderlier:
http://www.yousuckatcraigslist.com/?p=3746
well, I’d mail you some snow (FSM knows we have more than enough of it… and it’s snowing again right now), but something tells me it won’t make it to Paris intact :-p
Walton,
1)Before I even get into this conversation, let me make something very clear: if you ever again dismiss data simply because you don’t like the uses/conclusions of the source without providing evidence that the data is faulty, I will permanently killfile you. This is a strategy used by creotards and AGW denialists as an excuse to never read anything on TalkOrigins or RealClimate, and I do not have the time or the patience for that crap.
2)You seem to either conflate capitalism and consumerism, or you think consumerism is the only form of capitalism that has ever existed/can ever exist. This isn’t a conversation about capitalism; it’s a conversation about the consumerist version of it, which is a very modern phenomenon, a deliberate consequence of the fact that everything a person actually needs can be made relatively cheaply and quickly and little human labor, thus resulting in need saturation and labor glut. A good article about the birth of consumerism is here.
3)Consumerism is a flavor of capitalism that requires people not to buy, own, and use things, but to consume them. Things aren’t used, they’re used up. There are two ways of achieving this: one is by making people feel like they need more than they actually do, and by planned obsolescence.
I’m not even going to bother with the former, because if you don’t think desires (i.e. “needs”) can be artificially created, you clearly don’t live on the same planet as me, where advertising is ubiquitous and highly profitable.
The latter is what happens when things that are actually useful and even needful are made in such a way that you will have to buy them over and over again even when theoretically buying it once would be quite enough. American cars are the best known example of this: they were specifically designed to fall apart almost instantly so that people would have to repair them all the time and replace them often. This is true for a lot of other things too: most regular clothing, tools, appliances etc. are of such low quality that they need to be replaced every couple of years. Especially since fixing/”upgrading” broken things has become severely sidelined (by stigmatizing it, or by making it impossible via design of the object in question, or simply via the fact that buying a new item can be cheaper than fixing the old, due to various price distortions).
This is all done on purpose, but is often not visible to the public at large. For example, bra companies such as Victoria’s Secret are pushing hard to make every woman out there believe the myth that she needs to replace all her bra’s every 6 months, and that a woman can’t just wear the same bra-size for decades. Those are both absurd statements: firstly, many women do wear the same size for many many years, so of course they can; secondly, 6 months is ridiculous*, even in times of severe change such as puberty and childbearing. And yet, that’s precisely what they’re telling their customers, and their products are also not designed to last longer than 6 months (usually they do, but wear and tear is visible very quickly, and as I just mentioned, most people don’t fix clothing, they replace it). Add to this the fact that “old” is being pushed as a sufficient reason to replace something (even something that still works just fine), and you have the wasteful, neurotic consumerist culture in which we currently live. This isn’t necessary or even particularly conductive to actual happiness (because no addiction ever is, and consumerism is addiction to buying stuff): my mom has had the same furniture and appliances since she moved to Germany 20 years ago; my boyfriend’s family has appliances that are almost 30 years old, and cars from the 50’s and 60’s; my car is 20 years old, my furniture is older than I am, and several of my clothes have been worn by my mother and my aunt when they were in college. And this despite the fact that none of these things were ever meant to last that long, because we weren’t supposed to FIX them, only replace them**. How much better still would it be if things were designed in such a way as to make them durable, fixable, and modular (i.e. upgradable in parts***)? Stuff made, sold, and bought that way would still be part of a capitalist system, but one that doesn’t sacrifice resources and quality of life at the altar of the consumerist economy.****
4)No amount of “environmental protection” is going to be even remotely effective as long as the world continues to function according to the rules of consumerist growth economics. We’ve touched on this in the discussion about population growth (these economies need constantly increasing
customer basespopulations, which is obviously counterproductive to trying to stop and reverse overpopulation), but exactly the same thing applies to resource management; it even applies to energy efficiency: where electricity is handled by a business rather than a non-profit or government itself, efficiency will be actively hindered by the fact that an increase in efficiency is likely to hit the provider hard or even drive them out of business, because suddenly they can’t sell enough electricity to make a profit. Thus, they will actively resist any such developments, or alternatively find loopholes that promote efficiency at one end, but increased energy use at another.5)Ecosystems that are completely incapable of supporting large populations shouldn’t have large populations. The environmental cost of shipping food halfway across the globe aside, such ill-placed population centers do immesurably more damage to the environment than population-centers in more sturdy, suitable environments. Las Vegas is an example I’ve used of a city where none should be… but pretty much all of the American Southwest is overpopulated for its carrying capacity, especially in terms of water. Aquifers underneath Nevada, Southern California, Arizona and New Mexico are being sucked dry at alarming levels; the same goes for the Colorado and the Rio Grande. The population-centers in this area (Las Vegas, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Santa Fe and LA)are responsible for the rapid , total, and irreparable destruction of ecosystems which stretch for many thousands of miles, and which could have otherwise supported the populations residing there. Just think about this: the settlement of these entirely unsuitable places has dried up one of the largest rivers in North America, and is on its way to do the same with another!
Anyway, the point here being that areas like that will have to be severely depopulated if we’re to prevent the environmental death of these areas. And if that sounds draconic, please keep in mind that they’ll end up depopulated eventually anyway, because of the destruction going on (you can transport water only so far before it becomes too expensive or before you run out of places willing to sell you their water); the issue is merely to do it before the damage is done, not wait until afterwards
6)As far as agriculture is concerned, there are only two directions this whole thing can go: we can continue with the current system which is more or less feeding the current world population, but is destroying arable land at a ridiculous pace and is therefore unsustainable and will eventually collapse and result in mass starvation; or we can make the (admittedly painful) switch to sustainable agriculture, which we would be able to continue indefinitely. Now, the main “argument” against sustainable and local agriculture is that it can’t feed all of the world’s population. Which is true only in a very shallow sort of way, i.e. when you think of sustainable agriculture solely in terms of quaint, “organic” family farms that produce much less food than industrial agriculture. If that’s all there were to it, then switching to sustainable agriculture would result in starvation. This isn’t the case luckily. Part of developing a sustainable agriculture is solving sustainability and productivity problems with the help of technology. And for places that have sufficient water but insufficient arable land (either because of poor or non-existent soil, or because of urban sprawl), the vertical farm is probably the best solution i’ve seen so far. Which would solve the “fish allergy in Iceland” problem just fine :-p
eh… yeah, that’s enough for now I think.
——-
*they even unknowingly admit that this is crap, because they will also tell you that a woman needs to gain/lose 25lbs before she needs a different bra size; what woman constantly gains and/or loses 25lbs every 6 months?!
**incidentally, at this point I’d commit murder for a sieve that doesn’t break every 8 months, ffs. My mom’s strainer is also fucking ancient, why can’t they make them like that anymore?!
***think of this as a desktop vs. laptop issue. When you buy a laptop, you’re stuck with whatever specs you started out with, so when one part becomes obsolete, you have to replace the whole thing. OTOH, desktops are more modular: you can add and replace individual parts, so that overall you waste less resources and money on it. The same concept can and should be applied to other things; part of this being the compatibility of newer parts with older machines, which is one of the main reason a lot of old things cannot be fixed: the parts just aren’t made anymore.
****two things I remembered in regard to this: the first was an article at the beginning of the current economic crisis giving people advice on how to weather the recession. It actually told people that while they should limit their spending somewhat, under no circumstances should they completely stop spending money, because then they’d make the economy even worse. This was advice to people who were losing their houses, jobs, etc, and yet they were told to sacrifice their shrinking, insufficient incomes for the betterment of the economy! The second one was an article about china, in which it was mentioned that the chinese (I don’t remember if they were talking specifically about the chinese middle class, but I suspect so) save 20% of their incomes and how they must be coaxed and tricked into spending much more money, for the good of the economy. Both of those were pretty damn good examples of how consumerist economies are bad: for one, what’s good for the consumerist economy is bad for actual people; two, once you are stuck in a consumerist economy, you’re in a lose-lose situation where both spending and not spending money will bite you in the ass
Jadehawk,
I see your point. And obviously I can’t argue with the obvious fact that manufacturers design products that will break or become obsolete after a certain length of time, so as to compel people to buy more and therefore increase demand. Nor can I argue with the fact that businesses artificially stimulate demand through advertising.
But I disagree that this is necessarily a bad thing. Think about it. The cheap, low-quality consumer goods we consumer are now largely manufactured in the developing world. Making cheap products for Western markets has already lifted South Korea and Taiwan out of poverty, and is doing the same for many parts of China and India. For the first time, people whose ancestors were peasant farmers living at subsistence level now have jobs, incomes and a chance to climb the social ladder. If we stopped buying cheap stuff in vast quantities from foreign factories, these people would be put out of work, and those countries would be denied the chance to enrich themselves.
As you acknowledge (and as the linked article also acknowledges), modern industrial technology allows us to produce far more stuff than we need, meaning that manufacturers are compelled to create markets artificially. But think how many people rely on this whole process for their livelihoods. Not just industrial workers, but advertisers, retail staff, warehouse and logistics workers… in fact, our economy is built almost entirely on this process of producing too much and creating demand for stuff. Get rid of that, and you put millions out of work, as well as destroying the tax revenue base which sustains the public sector.
Walton,
But that’s precisely the problem, that our economic system requires rapid growth to provide full employement. In qunatifiable terms, we know that our system demands an average yearly growth rate of ca. 3.5% per annum of its output in order to provide full employement (at NAIRU). But you can easily see that this is doomed to collapse one day, and that day will be some time in this century : if the output needs to double roughly every twenty years (and the consumption of resources with it), this means that before the end of this century, the world population will need to consume more than 16 times what it is consuming today.
This is of course not sustainable, and we will need to transition towards a much more resilient system most probably within our lifetime…
Which one ? Thats is the question, and I don’t think there exists a complete answer yet, but I hope that when a growing population will recognize the need to move away from the current system of finance-led capitalism and consumerism, we will find a new satisfactory way forward.
Oh and about fish allergic people in Iceland, read this:
negentropyeater: I agree that the present system is unsustainable, but I think it’s wishful thinking to believe that there can be a “new satisfactory way forward” which jettisons “finance-led capitalism and consumerism” while maintaining a high quality of life for ordinary people.
Realistically, my prediction is that, as you point out, the global consumer capitalist economy will eventually run out of resources and collapse. Billions worldwide will then be plunged into poverty and deprivation, and the result will be a new Dark Age. The simple truth is that there is no alternative to capitalism that provides equally high material living standards to the average person. Every other socio-economic system ever attempted has produced poverty and misery.
The best thing we can do, IMO, is find more inventive ways to exploit the world’s resources so that they last for longer. Hopefully, given the impetus of impending doom, we will eventually develop means of colonising and exploiting other planets, though I don’t know enough about space science to know whether this would be technologically possible.
Walton,
we haven’t tried anarchism yet. Abolishing property and money-as-debt would be a good start.
But, sadly, I tend to agree with your prediction : we will probably have to wait first until the current system collapses, with the unavoidable resulting misery and wars, before we find a new way forward…
And about colonizing and exploiting resources from other planets, I don’t see a physical reason why it should be technologically impossible.
But we do need to have more visionary leaders, who decide to invest more seriously in the kind of programmes that will be needed to enable it.
Unfortunately the current growing libertarian trend of distrust of government isn’t helping : the more it continues, the more we will end up with the kind of leadership we expect, untrustworthy and short-sighted.
And I sincerely doubt private businesses will ever find it sufficiently attractive to invest there.
I am not malthusian because I believe we can develop the technologies that will enable us to go beyond our current ecological limits on planet earth.
SC would strongly disagree with this statement.
One of my concerns for the future is that a system of commercial feudalism will replace the present capitalist-democratic system we have now in the Western World.
Kristjan Wager @ 285,
In Perth itself there are various parks with the famous black swans and plenty pubs with live music and awesome local beers, a few hours to the north and east respectively are the spectacular Pinnacles and Wave Rock.
These Black Swans ?
Jadehawk, OM #309
The basis of Keynesian economics is that money circulates. If money is removed from circulation then the economy shrinks.
In a recession or depression even people with jobs and income are worried that they won’t have a job next month. So they save their money in case there’s a problem putting food on the table rather than going to the movies or to a restaurant. When enough people aren’t going to the movies then the woman who sells popcorn loses her job. The cycle continues.
As I said in a post from last April:
Same with me, brother, and uncles. And there are two 40-year-old pieces my dad wore in communist Yugoslavia that I still wear often…
Even his Soviet-made wind-up watch, about 50 years old, still works, though it’s only used in emergencies (which may be why it’s still not broken, who knows).
Glenn Beck’s popularity is dissected by columnist Dana Milbank in the Washington Post Excerpts:
SC, #307
Why link to Pharyngula if you didn’t think it worth your time?
Christopher Hitchens wrote an interesting article for Vanity Fair, In Defense of Foxhole Atheists Excerpts:
There’s a video on page two of the article, “U.S. Soldier’s Bible Group in Afghanistan”.
On the subject of tufa (you do remember tufa), the January 2010 issue of Scientific American has an article on The Truth About Nanobacteria
Basically, animals such as molluscs and vertebrates take advantage of the tendency of certain minerals — calcium carbonates and calcium phosphates for example — to self assemble and have evolved mechanisms for guiding that self-assembly in certain locations; leading to the formation of such things as bone and shells. So you could think of your bones as a sort of tufa variant.
The article also reminded me of an essay I read years ago on how sea urchins regrow spines once they’ve been damaged. In a sense we use tufa all unknowingly all the time, and even manufacture the stuff — depending on how you define tufa.
Kurt Andersen talks about the Large Hadron Collider. Excerpts:
Geology: still boring.
Economics: not even boring. Beyond boring.
PZ: still a poopyhead.
Jadehawk @309: I appreciated all your comments, and will add some comments to your listing of Las Vegas as being one of the cities in a place where there should not be a city. Yes! And it’s not only because of the water problem, but the city also sits in a nature-made bowl, so it traps all the bad air created by auto traffic and industry. The air quality is horrible, unhealthy in the extreme. Also, the city is surrounded by power stations, with tremendous pressure to build more. The march of power-carrying lines and poles into Vegas is astounding.
Vegas uses a lot of that power (and a lot of water) for show, including landscaping and what I’ll call “architecture scaping”. It’s a sin that Sin City is not known for these sins instead of the hookers and gambling, (not to mention the Osmonds).
WTF are you talking about?
You asserted that “people working at American Scientist” who read comment threads at Pharyngula might “wonder if maybe their fellow scientists are a few light bulbs short of a chandelier.”
SC asked what you were talking about–care to mention specific comments or scientists that might evoke such wonder?
You also claimed that Pharyngula is “in their [=American Scientist] list of links on their front page”
SC said she couldn’t find this. Me neither. Can you clarify?
You’re hurting my head. Try to follow along. My post contained two parts.
Part 1: On what do you base this, specifically? Can you point to some comments in particular?
I read your comment as suggesting that there was reason for (a doofus like you or) scientists to find indications in the comments of scientists on this blog that they were “a few light bulbs short of a chandelier.” I asked for some examples of the comments on which you based your suspicion. And I’ll do so again: Which specific comments indicate to you that the scientist-commenters here are “a few light bulbs short of a chandelier”?
Part 2: I can’t find that, by the way. Could you provide a link?
This was unrelated to my first request, as indicated by “by the way.” You had mentioned a link to Pharyngula on the front page of American Scientist. I looked for it (cursorily) and didn’t see it, so I was simply asking for a link. Thanks.
It’s not exactly on the front page, but it is there (under “Science Blogs”):
http://www.americanscientist.org/science/
obviously, SC can speak for herself.
Hey SC, what part of New England do you live in these days?
I also wonder what the point was supposed to be re:American Scientist employees. It’s a fun magazine that explains things in easy to understand form and has some good comics and some really thorough book reviews. Why exactly do you think that they regard Pharyngula commenters as stupid?
Thanks, Dania.
Ahem. I included you when I sent out my new contact information.
…Maybe it went to your spam folder. I’ll email you in a moment.
Ah, OK, there it is. Thanks Dania. That’s a click past the front page.
negentropyeater says, “And about colonizing and exploiting resources from other planets, I don’t see a physical reason why it should be technologically impossible.”
So, are you sure that this isn’t a case of the Dilbert principle: “Anything you don’t understand must be easy?”
Barriers to exploiting the resources of space include:
1) Launch costs. The cost of launching anything into space is about $25000-35000/kilogram and has remained about the same for 20 years despite considerable effort to lower costs. Most efforts to lower cost have wound up compromising reliability, and subsequent efforts to improve reliability have raised the costs into the $25-35K range.
2)Space is a hostile environment. Radiation, spacecraft charging, micro-meteorites, high UV and x-ray flux… They all limit the lifetimes of materials and electronics in space. In addition, radiation and spacecraft charging can result in errors and failures of spacecraft software and hardware.
3)Space is largely empty. Most of the stuff we’d be interested in is a really long way away from us. Getting there would take time. Getting back would take more. Searching for, identifying and accessing promising sources of rare materials would be time-consuming and costly.
4)Getting resources back to Earth is a fraught proposition. Somehow you have to slow down a projectile hurtling toward Earth at several km per second to speeds where it won’t burn up on re-entry. Even if you have your factory in space, you still face this hurdle.
5)Control, communications, manned vs. unmanned. The success of the Mars rovers was unprecedented and has completely overshadowed the fact that the distance covered by the little beasties is less than a man could cover on a short, brisk walk. Recovery from errors via ground control takes time, but autonomous recovery risks damaging valuable assets.
And so on.
It is not merely a lack of will at work here. The problems posed are quite hard to solve. I am not saying that surmounting these obstacles is impossible, but anyone who sees exploitation of the solar system as a solution to our problems in the near or even the medium term either hasn’t looked very deeply into the issue or is delusional.
I’ve been ignoring my work e-mail account for the last week or two. I’m sure it’s full of students with queries about their grades that I can’t answer by e-mail anyway. And probably a series of increasingly alarming notices from the registrar that my final grades are not reported yet.
New Year’s Resolution: Deal once and for all with the chronic procrastination problem.
yeah, it’s exactly the same as the last 30 years of resolutions, but hey [whine] it’s haaaaaaard! [/whine]
But I didn’t get the “their fellow scientists are a few light bulbs short of a chandelier” comment either. So, yeah, an explanation/links to relevant comments would be nice.
Good list, rids (@#334), but you forgot that one of the most daunting barriers to long-term space exploration or colonization is not our technology, but our physiology. Disuse atrophy of skeletal muscles and (especially) bone tissue under conditions of microgravity are big, big problems without easy solutions.
Hey, that reminds me… I have stuff to do! What the hell am I doing here…
Sven @337. I am assuming that any scheme to exploit the rest of the Solar System will be robotic. A manned program would be ludicrous! Every day spent in space would require several kg of expendable cargo, plus other support equipment. And if you think it’s hard to get resources back down to Earth, humans are so fragile they require re-entry in a frigging egg carton.
Robotics is definitely the way to go. We lose nothing and save a whole helluva lot of problems.
There ya go. Robots ftw.
so alton, your response to the looming resource cliff is: “there’s no easy fix, so I’d rather just drag it all out long enough so the collapse comes after I’m not around anymore”?
how incredibly cowardly and selfish.
Hey Sven: Just sent you a note, so you should get it whenever you can bring yourself to check them.
Walton: I haven’t forgotten the other thread. Haven’t been up to writing anything that requires any real concentration, but I will respond soon.
***
The sun is out! The sun is out!
…Well, sort of. At least it’s not snowing for the moment. Out to the beach soon!
Except that the robots get to make first contact. You don’t think they’ll steal the credit and turn on their former masters, allying with the aliens in an invasion of the earth? Goddamned robots of the future!
I concur, and have thought so for many years. Which reminds me, I haven’t checked in on the rovers this week.
Wht s th ptml tmprtr f th plnt?
2 degrees above the boiling point of stupid.
Fuck off, troll.
Hw ntllgnt! Dd y cm p wth tht ll by yrslf r dd Dddy hlp y wth t whn y wr n bd wth hm lst nght?
Ah, our loser idjit troll thinks he has something cogent to say. Never mind that while he could post, he never said anything scientific or cogent. Total abject loser, with no redeeming features. Pure unadulterated attitude without cogency. Bye-bye fuckwit.
Just for the hell of it.
janphar at yahoo dot com
Nrdy Rdhd = Qn f Prjctn
In reply to WhatIsOptimalTemperatureOfThePlanet:
Modern humans have existed for about 100,000 years. But only during the last 10,000 years has civilization developed. Those 10,000 years have been the most climatologically stable years of the last 100,000. Further, the historical record clearly shows that very small local climate changes – much smaller than 2 C – have done severe damage to many past civilizations, and some of them have collapsed as a result. Rapid change in climate is demonstrably a bad thing for human civilizations. Therefor, it is best to keep the temperature of the planet as close to the pre-industrial as possible.
But wait. You’ve already heard that answer. You’ve already been presented with the enormous evidence in support of it. Not once, and not a dozen times either, but hundreds of times. You have never offered any good arguments against it. But you continue to deny. Why? Because you are fundamentally dishonest.
How do you explain the Medieval Warming Period?
you mean that elusive “period” that in some places lasts from 600 to 800CE, in other places from 1200 to 1400CE, and in most doesn’t show up at all?
don’t make me laugh.
No, iamjadehawk!
Sorry, I could not resist. I can resist everything except temptation.
As I said, temperature loser never presents any peer reviewed information. After all, one would think scientists like myself could be swayed with the proper data instead of ignorant attitude. But then, that data must be validated as being scientific.
WhatIsOptimalTemperatureOfThePlanet
I will say this once:
If you write without vowels I will never read it!
No matter what you think you stand for or how clever you think you are, you loose all credibility in my eyes with your stupid messages.
Sven di Milo,
You fuss too much.
I’m going to preface this comment with the following disclaimer: I’m not a goddamn structural geologist. This continental transition bullshit isn’t in my comfort zone.
Okay. Now, if you look at this figure from that last comment I wrote,
http://3dparks.wr.usgs.gov/nyc/images/fig112.jpg
the abrupt contact between the oceanic crust and the continental crust is probably going to piss you off. But you need to remember that any of these margin cross-sections(e.g., 1) are going to be schematic. But far more important than that is the fact that the contact between the oceanic crust and the continental crust in this case(2) really is fairly abrupt when you consider the scales at which they are drawn.
Okay, so why is the transition abrupt? Well, recall that we’re discussing an ocean basin that was initiated and continues to open via processes that are broadly addressed by the hypothesis of sea-floor spreading(3, 4). The Atlantic dates to the Late Triassic(5) and opened in a sequence schematically along the lines of this(6), which won’t be news to anyone likely to actually wade through this comment. What is pertinent for us here are the beginnings of that opening. That’s where the key(7), such as it is, to this abrupt transition between oceanic and continental crust lies.
Right. So you’ll variously see the initiation of the Atlantic depicted like this(8), and it will seem ridiculously oversimplified and cartoonish. And yes, like so many illustrations in science, it is ridiculously oversimplified. However, despite everything that it doesn’t show, this cartoon actually does basically address the point of contention here, which is the continent-seafloor transition (at the scale at which the diagram is depicting the process).
Recall that we started out in the early Late Triassic with Pangea all welded together into one big happy fucking continent(9), to which we of course have to append the label “super,” because we’re people and we like to do that kind of shit. So how did a big beast of an ocean like the Atlantic come out of situation like we see in (9)? Well, it began with rifting, like we see near the Red Sea today. Indeed, as I’m sure everyone still reading this knows, the East African Rift(10) is usually offered up as perhaps the best modern analog to what happened during the initial opening of the Atlantic. The process is very similar to what we infer from the rock record with the Atlantic.
So pretty much as soon, geologically speaking, as Pangea got assembled, it began to think about fragmenting(11). The detailed story of this is way beyond a foolish blog comment, but in essence, massive regional extensional stresses led to crustal thinning and stretching(12). The stretched crust fractured and split (because a parcel of crust can stretch by a factor of 2 for 4 times during this process), so we ended up with lots of normal faulting and subsidence along the faults(13, 14). The result of this was the formation of a bunch of fault-bounded basins(15, 16), the remains of which are preserved all up and down the eastern seaboard of North America(17) and in various places in Europe and Africa.
Now, note the volcanics shown in (13). Because of the crustal thinning and stretching that causes rift-basins to form, the faults that bound the basins and the blocks end up having not too far to travel before they intersect mantle material. Some of them thus provide easy conduits for that mantle material to travel (refer to that schematic in (15) again). This is why rift-basin sediments are so commonly associated(18, 19) with volcanic rocks (and, incidentally, why rift-basins are such great places to search for fossils(20): lots of accommodation space for rapid sediment accumulation and intercalated datable igneous rocks).
This is a complex system of extension. There are rips and tears occurring in numerous places, sometimes geologically at the same time(21-23 these are key to the whole point of this comment; go look at them). Over time, as the crustal thinning continues, the sediment accumulation in the basins becomes increasingly subordinate to the magmatism in the basins until finally you start forming really shallow basins that are dominated by volcanism (see Figure 8B and C in (22)). You are also, at this point, starting to large scale subsidence, partial melting of continental material, intrusive activity, etc. You’re at the boundary between the continental crust and the incipient ocean basin (see Figure 8C and D in (22); see also (24)). There are some great figures in this paper:
http://geology.rutgers.edu/~schlisch/aapg_inversion_98.pdf
which is a really nice overview of passive margin tectonics in the Atlantic. I’d spend some time with it. You also might start at slide 31 of this:
http://geology.rutgers.edu/nbhydro/abs/Roy-Schlische-I.pdf
The transition zone isn’t completely worked out nor totally understood. But it isn’t some huge mystery, either, and it’s certainly nothing that requires a subduction zone (that we can’t see) to explain. And the problems that I raised before with the Subduction-on-the-now-Atlantic model remain. Look at Figure 1 in (21). Look at the cross-sections in the other papers. The sections in most of these papers are balanced cross-sections based on outcrop data, well data, and seismic data, to name a few sources. There is a lot of depth that is accounted for, and we know where the oceanic crust isn’t. If you’re gonna try and stuff a pile more oceanic crust under the eastern seaboard, then where is it? And how does it fit?
References and Notes
1. http://www.lisrc.uconn.edu/images/geology/images/225-145mya.jpg
2. “This case” being the eastern coast of North America.
3. I don’t think we need to get into the specific mechanisms operating here in much more detail than the level of the image in (1). In this comment, I’m really only concerned about the issues that were raised (in the previous installment of The ThreadTM) regarding the abruptness of the transition between the continental and the oceanic crust on the North American edge of the Atlantic Ocean. I think that the level of resolution/precision/understanding/whatever suggested by (1) should be sufficient for my purposes (and should help prevent this comment from becoming book-length…).
4. For those who want it, the basics of SFS are addressed fairly well here: http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/10i.html.
5. See the Introduction on page 11 of this .pdf: http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~polsen/nbcp/olsen_et_al_89_all_sm.pdf
6. museum.gov.ns.ca/fossils/geol/images/globe2.gif
7. And in writing key, I of course mean “currently accepted understanding of…”
8. faculty.mccfl.edu/rizkf/oce1001/Images/seafloorspread1.gif
9. geology.rutgers.edu/103web/Newarkbasin/Pangea_NB.html
10. astro.wsu.edu/worthey/earth/html/im-geology/east-african-rift.gif
11. geology.rutgers.edu/103web/Newarkbasin/ENAtectonics.html
12. geology.rutgers.edu/103web/Newarkbasin/extension_origin.html
13. http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/documents/2007/07024ianev/images/4s_4.jpg
The sub-vertical black lines are normal faults. The little arrows beside them indicate direction of fault block motion. To envision the stress directions, imagine another red arrow opposite and opposed to the one that is shown.
14. Here too: geology.rutgers.edu/103web/Newarkbasin/halfgraben.html
15. maps.unomaha.edu/maher/GEOL3300/week14/TrRiftUSGS.jpg
16. As shown here too. This is kind of a crappy figure, for which I apologize. The intertubes really are lacking: http://www.amnh.org/learn/courses/images/W2E2_3.jpg
17. See Figure 1 (page 7 of the .pdf); the black and brown represent basins that we know are there: http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~polsen/nbcp/olsen_et-touhami_08.pdf
18. http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~polsen/nbcp/dosecc_fieldtrip2.pdf
19. See Figure 6 on page 21 of this .pdf. This is a map of Jurassic basalt dikes associated with the rifting: geology.rutgers.edu/~schlisch/CAMP_schlische.pdf
20. http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~polsen/nbcp/GAC-MAC_field_whole_sm2.pdf
21 this is important. See Figure 7A, here (page 7 of the .pdf): geology.rutgers.edu/~schlisch/SEPMrifts.pdf
22 this is important. See Figure 8A here (page 31 of the .pdf): geology.rutgers.edu/~schlisch/A42_2005_GCSSEPM.pdf
23. That this system of extension is so complex is reflected in the number of basins which are preserved (refer to (17, 19) again).
24. See Figure 15 on page 19 of the .pdf (note the caption of that figure…): faculty.gg.uwyo.edu/holbrook/papers/Holbrook_1994_JGR_Mid-Atl.pdf
Oh, the troll doesn’t write without vowels. It’s just that this troll is banned here and gets disemvoweled at sight.
What?
mythusmage,
Show some character – examples or a retraction.
#244 Josh said:
I agree. I did not express myself well. Tufa is indeed being deposited now in many places in the Teme Valley, including the waterfall right alongside Southstone Rock and terraces in another stream with public access.
Incidentally, there is a detailed paper on Southstone Rock in the “literature”. It is a paper produced by members of the Woolhope Natural History Society, now “Woolhope Club” (one of the oldest such societies, formed late 1851). I have a copy buried somewhere. It is not available in electronic form.
Incidentally, thanks for the references – it encouraged me to look further and I have found others via Google & Google Scholar.
#258 mythusmage said:
Only if you lie down in a freezing cold stream and allow moss to grow on you first.
Did we just gain some insight into what Alan does in his spare time…?
#272 Josh
One of your urls may be curtailed:
http://www.colorado.edu/geography/class_homepages/geog_3251_sum08/05_talus_slopea
If this is the full url then it is no longer available.
Fuck. Well, there are plenty of images out there. All I did was a Google image search for talus slope.
And you’re right–that one doesn’t seem to work. Damn. Sorry.
just so I’m clear is mythusmage = Alan Kellog?
Alan, #365:
It works for me when I add “.jpg” to the end of the url. Like in Josh’s post.
http://www.colorado.edu/geography/class_homepages/geog_3251_sum08/05_talus_slopea.jpg
It occurs to me to ask: Is it correct to refer to all carbonate deposits as “tufa”, as implicitly done @#323?
I mean, if it’s defined as freshwater-fluvial-deposit carbonate, then all other examples of carbonate deposits should not be confused with it.
The talus slope URL is just missing a “.jpg” extension, hence:
http://www.colorado.edu/geography/class_homepages/geog_3251_sum08/05_talus_slopea.jpg
#282 Sven DiMilo said:
Alan B says:
No, iamjadehawk!
that reminds me:
That’s correct. Tufa refers to freshwater spring or fluvial carbonates. It shouldn’t be confused with other kinds of carbonate deposition.
#305 mythusmage said:
Do you realise how discourteous this sounds? You come to a site. Shoot your mouth off saying a mixture of nonsense with some good stuff. You are directed to sites which help you understand the basic science and a highly competent geologist takes time to help you understand and you casually dismiss it.
You bet! But why not you? Or don’t you want to learn more? I do and I am in my 60s. Never too young to learn.
Or too old!!
#316 Rorschach
Thanks for the info on pinnacles and Wave rock – looked them up and how they formed. Fascinating – especially the calcrete rout for formation of the pinnacles.
#321 mythusmage
Wow! Just, WOW (see #305/#373) I would remind you that SC did not launch into a dynamite-into-a-garden-pond post on geology but you did!
Slowly catching up and I see I still have a huge post by Josh to come …
#365, #366, #368, #369
Thanks for that. I got the message from the earlier pictures. The url was still curtailed on several of your messages. Presumably mixture of screen width and print size?
#363/#364 Josh
The locals don’t call me “The Hard Man” for nothing!
[Ed. They wouldn’t call him “The Hard Man” even if he paid them …]
Alan B, you are begging to have dick jokes told at your expense.
Damn! You got to it before I could.
:P
#360 Dania
Ah! You learn something every day! So he’s not being clever/stupid. Just a run-of-the-mill-lurking-under-bridges-type troll.
I tried to find the old song: “I am a troll … follderoll”
But ended up with something rather more nasty:
Make sure young children aren’t watching:
Ha! “First of all, Jim…I do not fa la la.”
Yup.
Alan B,
I posted those links to Wave Rock and the Pinnacles for K Wager as travel tips, but could have guessed it would interest the geologists…:-)
In other news, Pakistan is making Australia look silly by being 0/73 in reply to our measly 127 all out yesterday !
#378 / #379
Serves me right!! You guys have a wonderful way of taking people down.
Just for that, here is one of the real hard men of soccer: Vinny Jones
(How to do it – in eye-watering detail)
(And doing it to music)
Economics: not even boring. Beyond boring.
PZSven DiMilo: still a poopyhead.Fixed it for you, Sven. That’ll be $29.95, cash only please. Have to keep that currency circulating.
I think we’re all poopyheads on this bus.
Yeah, but only one of us poopyheads is driving the bus and collecting fares from those annoying advertisers at the top and in the sidebar.
PZ is a paid poopyhead.
I prefer the term “professional poopyhead.”
I’ll be paid too, as soon as Sven coughs up my $29.95.
The rest of us are just amateur poopyheads.
your check is in the mail
poopyhead
Darned atheists and their poopyheadedness!
Here’s a Mormon Moment of Madness (mmm) for my fellow poopyheads. The info is from an ex-mormon who is anonymous for now:
Big Mormon Brother.
Monolith Monster Poopyhead => Coprolithhead
Keep Han in Hanuka…
Keep Kwan in Kwanzaa…
Keep Saturn in Saturnalia…
And keep Chucks in Nunchucks
That image reminds me of WARNING NOT FOR THRE SQUEAMISH this one, posted by somebody nymed Quidam on another thread.
Note to self: Do NOT try to catch up with The Thread while having breakfast.
Note to self: But also not a few minutes after having breakfast… And pay more attention to warnings.
Owlmirror,
Might as well go the whole hog: Copropetrocephalos.
SC,
Just in case you haven’t seen it yet: http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/
a-ray,
I didn’t write anything that implied that I thought it would be easy.
Clearly, colonizing and exploiting resources from other planets is going to be orders of magnitude more difficult (and costly) than landing a man on the moon. And it’s certainly not a solution to our problems for this century.
BDC, #367
mythusmage = Alan Kellogg
A person who looks at the world from a strange vantage point. Think of me as the Strange Quirk of Pharyngula.
Not as a corny flake then?
So wait, was that a yes?
Jadehawk,
No, that’s not at all what I said. Rather, I’m arguing that we should keep the current consumer-capitalist economy going for as long as possible because, at the moment, the only alternative is poverty and deprivation for billions more people; and, since I care about other human beings, I would like to stave off that poverty and deprivation for as long as possible. The only hope, longer-term, is to find technological solutions which will allow us to access and exploit more resources.
On a personal level, I’m doing my part: I’ve pledged never to have children. I think others should do the same. This helps on two levels: first, it reduces population growth and therefore lessens the impact of overpopulation on scarce resources; and secondly, it ensures that if there is a total collapse of civilisation and a new dark age of poverty and misery, there will be fewer people there to experience the consequent suffering.
Aside:
Is the fabled G-spot more or less real than the god-shaped hole many people claim (others) to have? Are both merely convenient fictions (for some), like gods. Or do some people genuinely have a random physical advantage or psychological defect respectively.
Not to intentionally offend the more squeemish (cover your eyes walton) my wife definitely has what would be considered a G-Spot. Now what that means I don’t have a clue.
I believe the “myth”…
Does your wife have a twin?
Goodness.
I come home from work and have to give anatomy lessons !
*NSFW*( but not pornographic)
G-Spot anatomy
You failed to read the linked article on the apparent non-existence of this piece of anatomy. Otherwise it is the BBC and the researchers whom you should be trying to teach.
I read it.
Asking women whether they think they have one does not equal them having one.
Men suck at finding it and playing with it, so women mightn’t know about it, I sure have found it in some women who didn’t know they had one !
So the researchers would somehow need to control for men who were rubbish at it vs those who were proficient (despite the men being predisposed to lie and claim to be the bestest lover ever or being the victims of false reporting by their partners) – or have a crack squad of G-spot activators on hand to try out with all the study subjects equally … somehow I don’t think that version of the research is going to fly.
If it’s men which “suck” rather than women, then an alternative and less controversial version might be to collect only reports of G-spot presence or absence from women who have masturbated (ie ditch the need for an adequate sexual partner altogether). Or do you have personal reason to believe that wouldn’t work either?
I appreciate the stimulating topic after a hard day’s work LOL.
My experience is, a lot of women are not very familiar with their bodies and its sexual functions, be it through lack of experience, or religious/social inhibitions, that’s one, the other thing is women fiddling themselves is not the same as being fiddled, if you know what I mean, not in the head, and not in the field….:-) A lot of women’s masturbation is via clitoral stim, or vibrators, not aware of any woman that fingers her g-spot routinely….
And of course, everyone is different, while I’m pretty sure every woman has an urethral sponge, women are stimulated by different things, nipples, bottom, cuddling, biting, whatever, and for some the g-spot might just not be the main area of stim.
Need more female commenters on this…:-)
Walton,
you do realise that our current system is far from staving off poverty for all of mankind.
Also, you seem to assume that the Economic Problem (how to determine what is to be produced and how the factors of production are to be allocated in a world of finite resources) is more difficult to solve than the Technological Problem (how to expand the ecological limits of our scarce resources).
It is true that, so far, this has been the case. But it doesn’t mean that it will still be the case in the future.
Keynes wrote that he thought the Economic Problem could be solved before the end of the 20th century. He was too optimistic. But it doesn’t mean that he will still be wrong at the end of this century : the world surely can produce enough resources for 9 billion people to live comfortably and in a sustainable way, but clearly not if they consume and waste as much as we do today in the West. It’s strange, but understandable, that you think that it is harder to solve that problem than to exploit resources from outer space.
Also, don’t forget, about 10% of women (in the US, probably similar elsewhere) are anorgasmic and have never climaxed, so they wouldn’t have a clue about whether they have a g-spot.
Source
Rorschach, why is the G-Spot in that video not touched on by this new G-Spot research? Isn’t that the urethral sponge that is being stimulated in the video?
I think it would be interesting to find out if there is a correlation between believing in the G-Spot and not believing that male circumcision, which cuts off an innervated organ, reduces pleasure during sex. In the former case, some people believe in an erogenous zone despite the inability to agree on where to pinpoint such an area. In the latter case, some people disbelieve in an erogenous zone even though the area under question does contain sensitive nerve endings. To me, these seem like exact opposites, and I wonder if the holding of one implies the holding of the other (or some other relationship).
Oh noz, not the foreskin discussion again !!
Which by the way is not an organ, but a piece of skin with nerve fibres, of course it’s sensitive.
Had a guy with a little technical accident to his today which led to a torn foreskin and frenulum, he was not a happy camper !!
How would I know, ask them ! Wasn’t so much research then an opinion poll though, this “do you think you have” business.
If they had gone and specced the ladies and gone looking for it, that would have been different.
Well, as far as anecdotal evidence goes, I have yet to find a woman who doesnt have one. Go me, I guess…:-)
SC, have you seen this? (Honduras, Iran, what’s the difference?)
I hadn’t! Added to my feeds, thanks.
Possibly of interest here:
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/421-faith-science-and-the-flood/
I had read something brief about it the other day, but not the longer piece in Rebelión. Thanks! The amazing thing is the fact that they gave the same images the opposite spin in the real vs. the fake contexts: in Honduras (real)*, legitimate police actions against violent anti-democracy miscreants; in Iran (fake), outrageous human rights violations against peaceful pro-democracy forces. So clear.
BTW, I was going to post this recent talk by Chomsky about Honduras on my blog, but I’ll do it here first:
The US as mafia don.
*(when they were shown at all, which was rare)
Sorry. I thought it would be an interesting comparison is all.
They are just not functionally equivalent tissue….
So what’s happening in Honduras ?
Well, given that the penis’ nerve endings can be trivially shown to physically exist, the burden of proof in the foreskin controversy falls squarely on the side claiming that the loss of that tissue and its nerves doesn’t make a difference. The only people then qualified to have an opinion would be those males who were circumcised relatively late in life and had experienced sex fairly extensively both ways. Although one should probably also have kept their excised tissue to double-check that the nerves removed did appear to have been viable ones (and it might be necessary to check whether, for some people, any nerve regrowth occurs on the “stump” left behind).
However, I think I might have a new twist on that topic. Given the problem of pain in phantom limbs, are there any reports of phantom foreskins still giving pleasure to their former owners? Or is this one of the universe’s manifestly unfair double-standards in which only sensations of pain persist.
Good nite….:-)
Nerve endings transduce a variety of stimuli, even in the penis skin. It’s an unjustified leap from “more nerve endings” to “more pleasure.”
Phantom Foreskins: Excellent band name.
Phantom Foreskin and the G-Spots
The claim is that the G-Spot is not tissue at all according to the referenced twin study. That’s why it is interesting to me: one erogenous zone (which is debatable) clearly is sensitive tissue, the other is not doubted as being erogenous but it is debatable as to its corporeal existence (your reference to real tissue notwithstanding but in this case it is said to be all in the head). Put in tabular form:
I didn’t actually make the claim of “more pleasure” in #422, merely that the physical evidence indicated there was quite likely to be a difference of some sort (which would be worth investigating). It’s possibly notable that the reverse claim, viz of getting better sensation after circumcision, doesn’t tend to be made though. The closest claim I can recall from the pro male-circumcision lobby amounted to one of admitting less sensation by claiming it results in fewer cases of premature ejaculation. However, I haven’t bothered to keep track of any links on this perpetual argument.
I can’t decide if this is a false dichotomy of simply an argument from incredulity, but either way, your inability or unwillingness to accept that consumer capitalism isn’t the best, or even particularly good, at producing happy, healthy people* is not a valid argument for not doing anything to try to prevent the whole world falling off the resource cliff.
—-
*and incidentally, happy and healthy people are more important than merely wealthy people. wealth itself doesn’t make anyone’s lives better, especially when there’s wars being fought over diminishing resources, and western levels of wealth can create stupidly high levels of mental disease and life dissatisfaction.
Go evacuate Bangladesh, troll.
2 degrees above the flash point of stupid.
Assuming, that is, that stupid oxide isn’t a greenhouse gas. If it is, that might explain why the warming is happening according to the upper end of the range of IPCC models…
…and would finally give Thomas Lee Elifritz his runaway greenhouse effect, unless it’s such a weak greenhouse gas that there isn’t actually enough stupid in the world for…
…
I’ll just stop here.
#383 Rorschach
204 behind, 1 wicket in hand end of 2nd day. There’s going to have to be some hard grafting at Sydney.
On Test Match Special from S Africa, one of the commentators mentioned that someone from either Pakistan or Australia was suggesting that Test Match cricket had run its course and should be dropped. Can’t quite remember which of the 2 countries he came from …
Seems nicely balanced in S Afica …
#359 Josh
Working through your magnum opus. Problems with figure in 6. I tried copying and pasting several times but something was making it go astray (perhaps it did not like bypassing the set-up for the moving plates?). It worked for me only by getting into the museum site:
http://museum.gov.ns.ca/en/home/default.aspx
Choosing “Online resources”
Then learn about fossils of Nova Scotia – the 5th bullet. This took me to:
http://museum.gov.ns.ca/fossils/
and then manually typed in the rest. It then worked fine.
(Carrying on reading …)
Or rather coprolithocephalos (λίθος is already Greek…)
But Little Professional Poopyhead Ped Zed doesn’t scan quite as well as (and is harder to type than) Little Poopyhead Ped Zed. I suppose Professional Poopyhead Little Pee Zed is a possibility…
Rorschach, thanks for the advise. You can’t know this of course, but I have actually been to Perth several times before (6 or 7) and have visited both the Pinnacles and Wave Rock in the last (the later just last year) – I agree that both are spectacular, and would recommend them for anyone.
I just realized that I haven’t actually done much in actual Perth, so I wondered if there was anything I was missing.
It’s primely a family visit, but I will be getting to Perth (and Fremantle) regularly.
Oh, so that’s why I’ve seen him called Betrayus.
…would interest me a lot. Unfortunately the link doesn’t work.
:-) :-) :-)
I have already mentioned my SUPPORT A UNITED PANGEA T-shirt by the Pangean Unification Foundation (One continent. One world.™), haven’t I? Buy your own at the next SVP meeting or… wherever in teh intarwebz!!1!!eleventyone!!
(Alas, the map on the REUNITE GONDWANALAND T-shirts is all wrong. :.-( )
Today I have to go to bed. Will I find time to work tomorrow?
And the sight of poopyheads isn’t perfect, as comment 353 shows !!
Not just such people and not just such functions. I had long read that some people have that, but I was over 10 years old when I found out I have functional, innervated ear retractor muscles. In fact, I can’t (or would have to train to) smile without using them! It took me perhaps another 10 years to figure out that I have separate ear retractors and lifters that I can all operate independently.
(I do seem to lack ear protractors and have to wait for elastic recoil. Takes only maybe half a second, though.)
May I ask about the order of magnitude of the sample size…? Because… I, too, “I have yet to find a woman who doesnt have one”, but I also have yet to find one who has one… :o)
<duck & cover>
Going to read up on the urethral sponge tomorrow. <vehement nodding>
Temperature, most conspicuosly.
-u-
Oh noz !! More headache for creationists….
Single atom controls motility required for bacterial infection
Hey, Pope Ratzi said some good stuff the other day. Any more of this kind of shit and I’m going accomodationist.
Sven – If he ever mentions over population I’ll join you.
First the Pope goes green, then George Will goes all spacey? Unsettling.
David Marjanovic, #437
On Nanobacteria
Dang. I can only advise going to the SciAm site itself and clicking on the “current contents” link on the right. Or picking up a copy of the issue itself.
I also liked the article on life in alternate realities using variant physical constants, even though it was metaphysically conservative. :)
A connection?
Single Atom Responsible for “G-spot”: Hidden Markov Model for Assessing Quantum Contributions to Frustration.
Wow, windy…did somebody dose Will’s Earl Grey?
Patricia: excellent point
“this tea has the most extraordinary aroma”
*clears throat*
Thank you for coming.
*clears throat again, spits*
I have been authorized by the Central Committee of Commenters on Pharyngula to make the following announcement:
Not only am I truth machine, I am also SC. As you might imagine, this keeps me rather busy. So if I’m not answering my messages, go on and forward them to Nerd of Redhead, whom I aspire to be next.
(Yes I realize this is an extraordinary claim, and no I can’t cite the peer-reviewed literature. Use your other ways of knowing, people.)
Hm, as an unsnipped male, I will note that (in my experience) the function of the foreskin is to protect the extremely sensitive glans rather than to provide pleasure in itself, and I imagine that its removal cannot but desensitise the glans (since we all wear clothing in intimate contact).
At the risk of providing too much information, my bit excruciates upon contact with anything not moist and soft if the foreskin is retracted for whatever reason.
He’s lying. I’m Knockgoats and occasionally truth machine
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/fyi.php#comment-981664
Who is Jadehawk?, is the question…
SGBM,
you have been commenting for 48 hours straight, get some rest man…:-)
And not only am I SC and have always been( I love Honduras), but I’m clearly and obvious to anyone also truth machine, I reject your ludicrous claim !
;)
I have slept! I swear! At least I’m pretty sure I remember waking up. It’ll be another four hours before I can again though.
before I can what again… wake up? go to bed? I’m pretty sure it’s the second one.
“sinister, Leninesque demagogue” was a classic.
must
sleep
I am the goat
But are you on fire? Or are you one of those splitter goats?
If you learn that you’re actually me please be aware that you’ll find yourself espousing some really odd things, reasoning in a really odd manner, and stating things that will strike others as non-sensical. You may find that you may now be an avatar of God, or even more importantly, a Glenn Greenwald sockpuppet.
For the sake of your sanity please remember that we are all PZ Myers strawmen.
#359 & #433
I have found 2 issues with the websites Josh has put up.
1) I have problems getting into about 1 in 3 sites. I have now worked out that several problems are caused by my own ham-fistedness and lack of knowing quite what I am doing! Occam’s Razor suggests it is likely that any remaining problems also result from the same cause.
2) However, by having to chase round some of these University sites I am finding a lot more interesting stuff! Especially when you can get back into the list of files that are accessible by going to the Directory. I’m not explaining myself very clearly but I know what I mean!!
[Ed. Pity nobody else does!]
Thanks Josh. Not got to the end of #359 (yet) but I will do …
goo-goo goo-joob
Alan, please clarify–is there something I’m doing with the reference citations that is making things difficult? Aside from typos, of course. I’ll change the format if that one doesn’t work.
Link sez…
It also says the whole thing is pretty similar to the prostate, compressing the urethra during arousal and containing glands that are… said to be homologous to the prostate in their own Wikipedia article, which then goes on to connect them to female ejaculation and to state that they’re absent in some women. How nicely it all fits together.
By “the link doesn’t work” I meant that you had screwed up the HTML – nothing happens when I click on it. But anyway, I followed your suggestion, went to the main page, and searched for “nanobacteria”. The result is this article. Most of it is inaccessible, but the rest presents the main finding anyway, so thanks for making me notice it! :-)
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
I finally need to start using this term!
You win one (1) sniny new Internets.
Obviously. At the risk of providing way too much information*, mine never retracts for more than leaving a hole of half a cm in diameter, and even that much is impractical even when it doesn’t hurt (remember my infamous and unexplained hypersensitivity – Asperger’s is supposed to correlate with the opposite).
Never had any urinary tract infection or anything. Nothing gets in. And that even though I live a less hygienic life than most of you probably do.
* Actually… no, I think I already mentioned that in my first circumcision thread several years ago.
I do, but I think the guy who blew the whistle on that one simply didn’t know what “sockpuppet” (…not “strawman”…) means.
Unless he’s just another of PZ’s sockpuppets. B-)
I now clearly remember I did, because the hygiene argument was getting trotted out. I gave details on my hygiene habits, so don’t try to search for it :-þ
well, usually I’m either a stoopid American who doesn’t know anything about Europe, or a stoopid European who doesn’t know anything about America.
I was gonna say “not bloody likely”, but then I googled* for the relevant post, and I have to admit we’re about equally unhygienic
*you have only yourself to blame; shouldn’t have told me not to.
Strange Gods, I missed the sinister, Leninesque demagogue the first time around. Damn, I love it. No surprise that it was Hyperion. I give you greetings from one of the organizers of The Beer Hall Putsch.
Change it to ‘Lennonesque’ and it seems accurate enough.
#459
No. I was self-correcting #433 which implied there was something wrong. Having looked further I found I was making mistakes on at least some of the references and without going back on all of them, I suspect I was making mistakes on all the “problem” references. I won’t say what the nature of the mistakes was. Just to say they were idiosyncratic (read “stupid”) mistakes made by somebody who is not aware of the finer points of what he is doing (but learning).
Needless to say, I am interested enough to find a way through …
The second comment is still true. Because of the mistakes I made I got to look further into some of the sites and found lots of interesting Figures and papers.
David, #460
We are all PZ Myers. And considering some of the things we do, it makes you wonder about PZ’s sanity.
A Thread-appropriate image.
= 16376
Hey! Sven! How ’bout Lennon’s good drinking buddy? Is it Beatlesque enough?
“You’re my friend. I poopyhead you for nothing.”
On foreskins: I once had one that wouldn’t retract (my early teens and before). Then one time it did, suddenly and with some pain. Now it it, as far as I can tell, normal.
I figured it’s a male analog of the hymen but I’m not an anatomist.
On g-spots: I’m not an expert :-(((
Let’s listen in as Bill Dembski has The Talk with his teenaged son.
Janine, do you know about this museum of all things Schmilsson?
One of my favorite singers covers Nilsson.
I am the Walrus
The Walrus was Paul.
goo-goo goo-joob
Ah Neko…I am so totally infatuated with that woman…
Just dropping in to say “phimosis”.
As you were.
A decade ago, I was able to see Neko Case play at very small venues in Chicago.
All of her albums are wonderful but her second one, Furnace Room Lullabies is my favorite.
Mood To Burn Bridges
Furnace Room Lullaby
And Sven, if you like Neko Case, you have to check out Kelly Hogan. They are friends and have sang on each other albums.
Over on Highly Allochthonous, Chris posted about processes that cause isotopes to be differentiated, or occur in different ratios.
Apparently the enzymatic processes used by life use 12C over 13C, so finding 3.85 billion-year-old residues with a high 12C/13C ratio suggests that life may have evolved that far back.
http://home.earthlink.net/~douglaspage/id87.html
Alan B: He’s also discussing the terranes that make up the British Isles, which you also might find of interest.
:-D
:-) :-) :-)
You didn’t know that? Photosynthesis is especially famous for it. Methane generation and methane eating have much stronger effects, though.
So, while catching up on the news, I noticed this:
Six arrested in Indonesia for ‘sexy dancing’.
Pullquote:
Okaaaaay… based on the first paragraph, I technically have phimosis, but I don’t suffer from it, and it’s nowhere near as extreme as in the photo.
The photo looks painful for a number of reasons.
Meanwhile, in Malaysia:
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/malaysian.government.and.catholic.church.in.high.court.over.allah/24887.htm
If I ever knew it, I forgot it.
Is there any reason known for why the chemistry of isotope differences exists?
Seems that it’s down to the metabolic pathways in photosynthesis that favour lighter or heavier atoms.
I understood most of the wiki article but the hard science is here;
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1310735?cookieSet=1
The jstor page only gives abstract and first page of the article unless you pay. Wiki here;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopic_signature
First page of the paper:
OK, but is there anything that describes exactly what those “small differences” are? ¹³C is more massive than ¹²C, but why should that affect the chemistry?
What is going on at the chemical/physical level that is affecting the chemical reaction?
Owlmirror,
this might help explain it.
Owlmirror, the heavier isotopes are slightly harder to move during the transition state formation in biosynthesis. This difference isn’t usually seen with regular chemical reactions as they don’t run at the edge of being energetically favorable to form the transition state. This appears to be due to difference in mass, or one part in twelve for carbon. This is only seen for the lighter atoms. It is much higher for hydrogen/deuterium. In fact, there have been a couple of sci-fi stories where dideuterium oxide was used to kill someone by slowing down their metabolism.
Owlmirror, #486
The science article on isotopes in the March 2010 Analog mentions this. The most extreme example being the chemical differences between hydrogen and deuterium. Why this occurs I do not know, but it would appear that mass does have an impact.
Willie Mitchell just died, he was eighty-one. Here are a couple of songs he produced.
I Can’t Stand The Rain
Could I Be Falling In Love
Tired Of Being Alone
(This link may not work, if it doesn’t look for local Savannah GA media sites and have a look at their weather news).
Observation: San Diego CA is north of Savannah GA (when you adjust for longitude). San Diego is found next to a cold water current coming down from the north, while Savannah is found next to a warm water current coming up from the south. Yet San Diego (at 70°) is supposed to have a warmer day than Savannah (at 47°). Could it be there is something more to the story of local weather than told in popular accounts? :)
Prevailing winds, both from the west. Blow ocean temps inland in San Diego, but land temps blow to the ocean at Savannah. I see this all the time where I live, since I live about a mile from Lake Michigan. The lake will give us a microclimate slightly warmer/cooler than inland areas unless the wind is strong from the west. Then we get prairie temperatures.
There is a massive high pressure system covering eastern North America. Miami has a current temperature of 37°F (or pretty damn cold for Florida in °C). It’s actually warmer in southeastern Connecticut than it is in Atlanta.
Janine,
Ann Peebles singing I can’t stand the rain is just… perfection.
Thank you for this.
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‘Tis: This is on PBS right now:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/killersubs/
That’s also why the Willamette Valley in Oregon and Puget Sound in Washington have milder weather than the eastern two-thirds of the states. Here, we actually use the phrase, “It’s too cold to snow.” I found there is no such thing as “too cold” when living in Michigan.
Owlmirror, keep in mind that chemical reactions are mediated by atomic FORCES, and F=Ma. A lighter isotope will simply react more quickly, leaving the heavier isotope as a wallflower.
This is one of the ways we know that the carbon that is increasing atmospheric CO2 content is from a fossil source–and hence anthropogenic.
SC,
One of the miniature subs involved in the Pearl Harbor attack is at the Submarine Force Museum, about five miles from my house.
A Bob Seger classic:
There’s a (brief) discussion of the kinetic isotope effect and biosynthesis and I missed it whilst Nerd and Rorschach get there first….
MUH-THA-FUCK-AH!!!!
The one time my field is mildly relevant to this blog and I miss it. Excuse me, I’m off to commit seppuku to assuage the shame I have brought on my ancestors.
{shakes fist}
DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU ALL!!!!! And you punk kids get off my lawn while you’re at it!
Louis