Tree Lobsters: "Science Police"
If you don't read Tree Lobsters already, you should. Today's episode seemed particularly on-target.
Labels: art, humor, pseudoscience, science and society
Monday, November 2, 2009
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
S'more stratigraphy in EARTH
Great graphic by Nate Burgess in a recent EARTH, and now just posted online. I especially like the column, and the punch-line ("proposed cross-cutting relationship"). Brilliant!
Labels: art, humor, stratigraphy
Thursday, October 1, 2009
How to read a seismic cross section
After yesterday's post on a new feature I found on the USGS earthquakes site, reader Tony Edger asks, "After exploring the USGS website and elsewhere without much success, I am hoping you might steer me to a description of how to read a seismicity cross section. " He was referring to these images:
So here's how this works: the top image is a map. It gives you a "bird's eye" perspective on earthquake locations at the subduction zone near Samoa. It shows you the epicenters (location on the earth's surface above a quake's actual location, called its "focus" or "hypocenter") of many earthquakes, along with Tuesday's big quake, shown with a star. The thick red line is the position of the trench, a bathymetric expression of the subduction zone. The epicenters are color-coded for their depth. Orange and yellow are shallow; green and blue are medium depth; and purple and red are the deepest. Notice that they make a sort of "rainbow" pattern, with the shallowest quakes in the east, and the deepest quakes in the west. This is "looking down" on the subducting slab: it's like we're able to "see" the subducting slab as it descends into the mantle.
The lower image is the cross-section. It gives you a "gopher's eye" perspective on the same data. A cross section is drawn along the line A-A' on the map. This is conceptually slicing the Earth open along that line, then removing half, and looking sideways at the remaining half. Note that the A-A' line is now along the top of the figure, representing the surface of the earth. Along the horizontal axis is horizontal distance, measured in kilometers. Along the vertical axis is depth, also measured in kilometers. The two axes are not drawn to exactly the same scale, but pretty close. In other words, 100 km of horizontal distance is approximately equal to 100 km of vertical distance (depth). The same data are plotted, or at least the subset of the map's data which happen to fall on that particular line, A-A'.
With this new perspective, a side-view, what do we see? Well, there's the star, which shows the depth of the quake that triggered all this discussion, and a whole bunch of other (historical) earthquakes. Now, instead of the epicenter being plotted, we're getting a more robust sense of the hypocenter (or focus). Note that the earthquakes are being generated in a big swath, starting at the surface in the northeast, and dipping down deeper and deeper to the southwest. This line of seismic activity reflects the jerking passage of the subducted slab of oceanic lithosphere. As it plunges down, it generates lots of shaking. This zone of seismicity was first described (independently) by two scientists, Kiyoo Wadati and Hugo Benioff: in their honor, it is referred to as the Wadati-Benioff zone. (Wikipedia has more) Their realization is our gain: we can "see" the subducted plate diving at an angle of 30 to 40 degrees. That's what's so cool about this:
Something that no human will ever directly observe is "visible" to us because we can pinpoint the three-dimensional location of thousands of earthquakes. These bumps and jolts reveal the position of the bumper and jolter: the subducting plate!
Labels: analogies, art, earthquakes, plate tectonics, websites
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Awesome: Samoa subduction cross-section
Perusing the USGS page on yesterday's magnitude ~8 earthquake in Samoa, I found a new feature that I had not previously seen on these earthquake data pages: a cross-section! Check it:
Labels: art, earthquakes, plate tectonics, websites
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
More picture maps
Yet five more of the maps I scanned from my recently-entered-the-public-domain copy of Vernon Quinn's book A Picture Map Geography of the United States. As before, clicking on the image will take you to a bigger version of the map. Enjoy!
Labels: art, books, connecticut, maps, maryland, new york, oregon, washington
Monday, September 21, 2009
James Balog on TED
If you haven't seen this yet, please watch it. Nice work, Mr. Balog!
Labels: art, climate change, glaciation, global warming, ice, meetings
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Another five old maps
Five more of the maps I scanned from my recently-entered-the-public-domain copy of Vernon Quinn's book A Picture Map Geography of the United States. As before, clicking on the image will take you to a bigger version of the map. Enjoy!
Labels: art, books, california, georgia, idaho, maps, utah, west virginia
Friday, September 18, 2009
Five more old maps
Here's another group of scanned maps from the now-in-the-public-domain A Picture Map Geography of the United States by Vernon Quinn. As before, clicking on the image will take you to a bigger version of the map. Enjoy!
Labels: art, books, colorado, indiana, louisiana, maps, michigan, new mexico
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Five old maps
I have an old book called A Picture Map Geography of the United States by Vernon Quinn which just entered the public domain this year (most recent edition was 1959). It's got some funky old maps that are kind of neat to look at. Clicking on each map will take you to a bigger version of it. Here's the first five of them:
Labels: arizona, art, books, delaware, maine, maps, new jersey, pennsylvania
Friday, September 11, 2009
NOVA Science Seminar: "Cameras we cannot picture"
The first of our monthly science seminar series is coming up at the end of the month:
"Cameras we cannot picture"
Dr. Ravi Athale, Senior Principal Scientist, The MITRE Corporation
Monday, September 28, 2009, Ernst Center Forum, 12 noon - 1pm
Abstract: The world of imaging has evolved from its humble origins as a pinhole camera to its current incarnations of very large (Hubble Space Telescope) and very small (pill cameras that one swallows). Last 10 years, in particular, has seen more rapid growth in our ability to record static and moving images than anytime in human history. This has been enabled by replacing film with semiconductor devices for recording imagers. Dr. Athale argues that as dramatic as this progress has been, the future will bring even more startling and unimaginable changes due to the integration of imaging with equally spectacular progress in computing, communications and storage technologies.
Ravi Athale is Senior Principal Scientist and Department Head, Emerging Technology office at the MITRE Corporation. Over past 30 years he has worked as a scientist, educator and manager in government, academic and industrial institutions. In 2007, he received Leadership Award of the Optical Society of America and Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service. In addition, he is a co-author of a high school engineering textbook published by Prentice-Hall and is a co-founder of company that develops consumer products based on computer generated holograms.
Please join us, if you can!
"Cameras we cannot picture"
Dr. Ravi Athale, Senior Principal Scientist, The MITRE Corporation
Monday, September 28, 2009, Ernst Center Forum, 12 noon - 1pm
Abstract: The world of imaging has evolved from its humble origins as a pinhole camera to its current incarnations of very large (Hubble Space Telescope) and very small (pill cameras that one swallows). Last 10 years, in particular, has seen more rapid growth in our ability to record static and moving images than anytime in human history. This has been enabled by replacing film with semiconductor devices for recording imagers. Dr. Athale argues that as dramatic as this progress has been, the future will bring even more startling and unimaginable changes due to the integration of imaging with equally spectacular progress in computing, communications and storage technologies.
Ravi Athale is Senior Principal Scientist and Department Head, Emerging Technology office at the MITRE Corporation. Over past 30 years he has worked as a scientist, educator and manager in government, academic and industrial institutions. In 2007, he received Leadership Award of the Optical Society of America and Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service. In addition, he is a co-author of a high school engineering textbook published by Prentice-Hall and is a co-founder of company that develops consumer products based on computer generated holograms.
Please join us, if you can!
Labels: art, meetings, nova, science and society, tech
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Hanging Canyon hike, part 6
(Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5 of this series...)
As we were climbing up a steep snowfield, we saw something that made us rush up to the top:
Interpretive sketch:
At first, we thought this was a big isoclinal synform that was cross-cut by a ptygmatically*-folded granite dike, but closer inspection at the "axis" of the "fold" revealed that it was instead just the trailing edge of a big boudin. It pinched down and then swelled again in the downward direction, hidden in this photo by the snowpack. Not quite as cool... but still pretty cool. And I can never say no to ptygmatic* folding, regardless of the setting.
This is also kind of cool:
What you're looking at here is a gneiss, with alternating layers of coarse-grained mafic and felsic minerals. The view of the photo is orthogonal to the plane of foliation, but the boulder has been weathered so that in some places the uppermost mafic layers has been worn away. There's one spot where you can "see through" the mafic layer into the underlying felsic layer (upper right) and another spot where there's a little isolated scrap of the mafic layer where the surrounding material has been weathered away. This reminded me of a larger-scale phenomenon where the same thing happens to thrust sheets: an erosional hole through a thrust sheet into the rock beneath is a tectonic "window" or "fenster" (German for window). An erosional remnant of a thrust sheet is a "klippe." The Grandfather Mountain Window in North Carolina is an example of a fenster. Chief Mountain in Glacier National Park, Montana, is an example of a klippe. So this little boulder gives us a nice physical analogue for regional-scale tectonic/erosional features.
Ahh... what cool stuff to see and think about. But the sun was setting, and we had to head back to camp and the rest of our team... Tomorrow: the story of the long hike home.
________________________________
* Really, more of a "cuspate-lobate" fold, without the parallel limbs that make for a truely ptygmatic fold.
As we were climbing up a steep snowfield, we saw something that made us rush up to the top:
Interpretive sketch:
At first, we thought this was a big isoclinal synform that was cross-cut by a ptygmatically*-folded granite dike, but closer inspection at the "axis" of the "fold" revealed that it was instead just the trailing edge of a big boudin. It pinched down and then swelled again in the downward direction, hidden in this photo by the snowpack. Not quite as cool... but still pretty cool. And I can never say no to ptygmatic* folding, regardless of the setting.
This is also kind of cool:
What you're looking at here is a gneiss, with alternating layers of coarse-grained mafic and felsic minerals. The view of the photo is orthogonal to the plane of foliation, but the boulder has been weathered so that in some places the uppermost mafic layers has been worn away. There's one spot where you can "see through" the mafic layer into the underlying felsic layer (upper right) and another spot where there's a little isolated scrap of the mafic layer where the surrounding material has been weathered away. This reminded me of a larger-scale phenomenon where the same thing happens to thrust sheets: an erosional hole through a thrust sheet into the rock beneath is a tectonic "window" or "fenster" (German for window). An erosional remnant of a thrust sheet is a "klippe." The Grandfather Mountain Window in North Carolina is an example of a fenster. Chief Mountain in Glacier National Park, Montana, is an example of a klippe. So this little boulder gives us a nice physical analogue for regional-scale tectonic/erosional features.
Ahh... what cool stuff to see and think about. But the sun was setting, and we had to head back to camp and the rest of our team... Tomorrow: the story of the long hike home.
________________________________
* Really, more of a "cuspate-lobate" fold, without the parallel limbs that make for a truely ptygmatic fold.
Labels: analogies, art, montana, national parks, north carolina, nova, structure, travel, wyoming
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Basins: depositional vs. structural
One thing I've noticed when teaching Historical Geology at NOVA and GMU over the past four years is that students get confused between basins. There are depositional basins and structural basins, and they're not the same thing, though they both sag downwards in the middle. The other day while driving out to the Blue Ridge for a hike, a lightbulb went off above my head. I knew what I needed was a graphic that explicitly laid out the processes responsible for each structure, and their development over time. I jotted down a reminder to myself on the lid of the Starbucks coffee cup in my car's cup-holder.
When I got home, I translated the scrawled reminder into action. In my spare time over the past couple of days, I've been composing the basin graphic with CorelDraw. Here's what I drew:
Depositional basins result when there's a low spot on the Earth's crust. Water flows into these crustal sags, carrying sediment with it. Gradually, they can fill in. Sedimentary inputs are shown with arrows. (They can also self-perpetuate, as the heavy sediment keeps the crust sagging downward at that location.) Layers stack up according to superposition: oldest on the bottom, youngest on the top.
In contrast, structural basins have a different story. There, we start with an accumulation of sedimentary layers, and then we deform them into a basin shape. This deformation is the result of tectonic stresses which warp the rock layers. Erosion can then attack the downwarped strata, planing the "nested cups" shape down to a roughly horizontal ground surface. Sedimentary outputs are shown with arrows. The resulting outcrop pattern is somewhat like a bull's-eye, with the youngest layers exposed in the middle and the oldest layers exposed on the outer part of the structure.
In a depositional basin, the downward central sag comes first, and the stack of sediment is a result of that sag. In a structural basin, the stack of strata comes first, and the central downwarp is produced second.
________________________________________
If any educators want a larger version of this graphic for use in teaching, let me know. I'll happily e-mail you one. Also, if anyone would suggest any modifications to the graphic to make it more accurate or more useful for communicating these ideas, I'd be happy to get that feedback.
When I got home, I translated the scrawled reminder into action. In my spare time over the past couple of days, I've been composing the basin graphic with CorelDraw. Here's what I drew:
Depositional basins result when there's a low spot on the Earth's crust. Water flows into these crustal sags, carrying sediment with it. Gradually, they can fill in. Sedimentary inputs are shown with arrows. (They can also self-perpetuate, as the heavy sediment keeps the crust sagging downward at that location.) Layers stack up according to superposition: oldest on the bottom, youngest on the top.
In contrast, structural basins have a different story. There, we start with an accumulation of sedimentary layers, and then we deform them into a basin shape. This deformation is the result of tectonic stresses which warp the rock layers. Erosion can then attack the downwarped strata, planing the "nested cups" shape down to a roughly horizontal ground surface. Sedimentary outputs are shown with arrows. The resulting outcrop pattern is somewhat like a bull's-eye, with the youngest layers exposed in the middle and the oldest layers exposed on the outer part of the structure.
In a depositional basin, the downward central sag comes first, and the stack of sediment is a result of that sag. In a structural basin, the stack of strata comes first, and the central downwarp is produced second.
________________________________________
If any educators want a larger version of this graphic for use in teaching, let me know. I'll happily e-mail you one. Also, if anyone would suggest any modifications to the graphic to make it more accurate or more useful for communicating these ideas, I'd be happy to get that feedback.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Isoclinal fold cut by fault
Another in the photo/sketch series...
This is an outcrop I saw in the Teton range (Wyoming) this summer. It's a nice example of relative dating, I think...
This is an outcrop I saw in the Teton range (Wyoming) this summer. It's a nice example of relative dating, I think...
Labels: art, geologic time, structure, wyoming
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Parasitic folds & boudins: a series
Unannotated photo:
Photo with quartz veins outlined, highlighting boudinage and parasitic folding:
Photo with vein quartz boudins and folds highlighted in yellow:
Sketch interpreting stresses that produced these structures:
This nice example of ~horizontal shortening and ~vertical stretching is seen in metagraywacke muscovite schist with hydrothermal quartz veins, near Potomac, Maryland. It is located on the C&O Canal, just upstream from the bridge going to Olmstead Island and the Great Falls overlook.
Photo with quartz veins outlined, highlighting boudinage and parasitic folding:
Photo with vein quartz boudins and folds highlighted in yellow:
Sketch interpreting stresses that produced these structures:
This nice example of ~horizontal shortening and ~vertical stretching is seen in metagraywacke muscovite schist with hydrothermal quartz veins, near Potomac, Maryland. It is located on the C&O Canal, just upstream from the bridge going to Olmstead Island and the Great Falls overlook.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Rorschach test resolved
Yesterday, I asked you to see what you see here:
And today, I shall tell you what I saw...
Here's what it reminds me of:
Here, I'll sketch it for you:
Garry Hayes came closest to my vision by suggesting the foam pattern resembled Marella splendens, Walcott's "lace crab" of the Burgess Shale.
And today, I shall tell you what I saw...
Here's what it reminds me of:
Here, I'll sketch it for you:
Garry Hayes came closest to my vision by suggesting the foam pattern resembled Marella splendens, Walcott's "lace crab" of the Burgess Shale.
Labels: art, arthropods, contest, fossils, structure
Thursday, July 30, 2009
My favorite analogies, Part 2
In October of last year, I presented a list of my favorite analogies for geological processes. Effjot followed up with a visualization of one that was presented in the comments.
Today, I'd like to add to that list with three more evocative analogies.
Hydrothermal disseminated deposits are sweat stains.
Certain types of ore bodies are thought to be "sweated out" from magma chambers as they intrude to shallow enough levels in the crust. The shallow depths have low pressures, and that encourages the magma to devolatilize. The resulting hydrothermal fluids pick up lots of consitituents like sulfur and metals and stream away from the pluton. As they cool off, the dissolved constituents become supersaturated and begin to precipitate out as mineral deposits. These hydrothermal disseminated deposits end up in the pore spaces of surrounding rocks, or filling in cracks. This is kind of like how your body sweats out a solution of dissolved salts in water. When the water evaporates, the salts precipitate out wherever they find the space:
Sills are a funny kind of peanut butter sandwich.
A dike is an igneous intrusion which cuts across local stratification of the host rocks. Sills, in contrast, exploit the weaknesses between strata and inject their magma parallel to bedding. I think of this as being like using peanut-butter-in-a-tube to make a peanut butter sandwich without separating two pieces of bread. Like this three part series:
Exotic terranes are roadkill.
I show the following sequence of images to my Physical Geology students when discussing how exotic terranes accumulate on the leading edge of a drifting continent:
... and I think you get the idea. That one kind of speaks for itself...
How about you? Got any good analogies for relaying geological concepts?
Today, I'd like to add to that list with three more evocative analogies.
Hydrothermal disseminated deposits are sweat stains.
Certain types of ore bodies are thought to be "sweated out" from magma chambers as they intrude to shallow enough levels in the crust. The shallow depths have low pressures, and that encourages the magma to devolatilize. The resulting hydrothermal fluids pick up lots of consitituents like sulfur and metals and stream away from the pluton. As they cool off, the dissolved constituents become supersaturated and begin to precipitate out as mineral deposits. These hydrothermal disseminated deposits end up in the pore spaces of surrounding rocks, or filling in cracks. This is kind of like how your body sweats out a solution of dissolved salts in water. When the water evaporates, the salts precipitate out wherever they find the space:
Sills are a funny kind of peanut butter sandwich.
A dike is an igneous intrusion which cuts across local stratification of the host rocks. Sills, in contrast, exploit the weaknesses between strata and inject their magma parallel to bedding. I think of this as being like using peanut-butter-in-a-tube to make a peanut butter sandwich without separating two pieces of bread. Like this three part series:
Exotic terranes are roadkill.
I show the following sequence of images to my Physical Geology students when discussing how exotic terranes accumulate on the leading edge of a drifting continent:
... and I think you get the idea. That one kind of speaks for itself...
How about you? Got any good analogies for relaying geological concepts?
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
Geology of Washington, DC video
Student and amateur geologist Greg Willis put together this video instead of writing up the field trip report after June's field courses on the Billy Goat Trail and the Bedrock of D.C. I think it's pretty darned great. I hope you enjoy. Check out Greg's site for more fun stuff.
Labels: art, dc, field trips, geology, nova
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Geologic map overlays for Google Earth
Virginia geologic map overlay for Google Earth -- you can click on the different units and it will tell you what rock type/formation they are. Pretty cool. Kind of clunky when I loaded it up on my home computer this morning, though.
Hat tip to Kyle House's Geologic Frothings blog for the alert.
Other states available too.
Also worth noting is an interactive Potassium-Argon age date map. In Virginia, you can use it to find the age of the lamprophyre dikes at the upstream end of Mather Gorge (~369 Ma) or find Alleghenian-aged pegmatites, or look at Triassic diabase ages contemporaneous with supercontinent breakup.
Hat tip to Kyle House's Geologic Frothings blog for the alert.
Other states available too.
Also worth noting is an interactive Potassium-Argon age date map. In Virginia, you can use it to find the age of the lamprophyre dikes at the upstream end of Mather Gorge (~369 Ma) or find Alleghenian-aged pegmatites, or look at Triassic diabase ages contemporaneous with supercontinent breakup.
Labels: art, geology, google, isotopes, maps, tech, virginia
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Flash animations in geology
Just found out about a cool website with animations describing lots of geologic processes and products. The site is hosted by the University of Tromso, Norway, and most animations are available in both English and Norwegian. Check it out!
Hat tip to Pete Berquist for this link!
Hat tip to Pete Berquist for this link!
Monday, May 11, 2009
Haiku test question
Here's question #17 from last week's Environmental Geology final exam:
Which of the following haiku poems best describes the formation of oil?
Swamp plants leaf out green
then die and get squeezed, sans air.
Carbon gets more pure.
Plates skitter about
plastering terranes on front
like trucks with kittens.
Surface magma sweats,
devolatilizes. Its
fluids drop out ore.
Phytoplankton bloom
in sunny water then get
cooked and leak black goo.
Fossil fuels get lit
and oxidize; humans thrive.
Damn that CO2.
Not the most challenging question on the exam, but it was fun to write...
Other geoblogger instructors -- Do you amuse yourself (and your students) by injecting humor into exams? Is this poor form on my part? Is it genius? Weigh in. I'm curious to know whether this habit is ridiculous or common.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Citizen Science cartoon in EARTH
This of mine doodle accompanied Cassandra Willyard's article on the role of non-specialist citizens in advancing scientific understanding.
Labels: art, humor, science and society
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Recent reads
Here's what I've managed to read over the past month or so...
Al Gore's The Assault on Reason:
A scholarly work on the declining role of thoughtful, logical, reflective, searching thinking in the public sphere. Gore remains upbeat but flummoxed as to how many people buy into evidenceless claims, and pins a lot of the blame on TV, which is "a one-way medium." Gore's current gig (other than promoting awareness of climate change issues) is running a TV channel where users submit content, and he sees this as the modern-day equivalent to revolutionary-era pamphleteering. If Thomas Paine were alive today, Gore thinks he would opt to express himself on Current TV. The book is a good read (I'm a very sympathetic reader, it should be noted -- my opinion is that if the 2000 election had gone to Gore, the world would be in a much better place), but its pages feel a little dated, written as they were during the fifth/sixth years of the G.W. Bush presidency. There's an ominous undercurrent that has evaporated a bit in the present Obama era. Doubtless the book would read differently if it were penned today.
Alan Moore's & Dave Gibbons' Watchmen:
The graphic novel which provided the inspiration (and pretty much the screenplay/storyboards) for the recent blockbuster movie of the same name. I haven't read a comic book in a long time, and a graphic novel... Well, I think this was the first. [Does that make it the 'best graphic novel I've ever read'?] It was really entertaining and full of the same interwoven set of plot elements and 'easter eggs' that makes watching the television show LOST such an intricate, engaging exercise. If you're not already familiar with it, it envisions an alternate 1985 where Richard Nixon is still president of the US, and we're on the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, and costumed 'super'heroes (really just masked 'adventurers') are outlawed. Some of these 'heroes' are really psychos, and others merely emotionally/psychologically damaged goods. It's interesting to see these do-gooders wrestle with life's tricky bits, while simultaneously attempting to avert World War III.
I also read Tyler Volk's CO2 Rising, but that one deserves a blog post of its own to discuss... Stay tuned.
Al Gore's The Assault on Reason:
A scholarly work on the declining role of thoughtful, logical, reflective, searching thinking in the public sphere. Gore remains upbeat but flummoxed as to how many people buy into evidenceless claims, and pins a lot of the blame on TV, which is "a one-way medium." Gore's current gig (other than promoting awareness of climate change issues) is running a TV channel where users submit content, and he sees this as the modern-day equivalent to revolutionary-era pamphleteering. If Thomas Paine were alive today, Gore thinks he would opt to express himself on Current TV. The book is a good read (I'm a very sympathetic reader, it should be noted -- my opinion is that if the 2000 election had gone to Gore, the world would be in a much better place), but its pages feel a little dated, written as they were during the fifth/sixth years of the G.W. Bush presidency. There's an ominous undercurrent that has evaporated a bit in the present Obama era. Doubtless the book would read differently if it were penned today.
Alan Moore's & Dave Gibbons' Watchmen:
The graphic novel which provided the inspiration (and pretty much the screenplay/storyboards) for the recent blockbuster movie of the same name. I haven't read a comic book in a long time, and a graphic novel... Well, I think this was the first. [Does that make it the 'best graphic novel I've ever read'?] It was really entertaining and full of the same interwoven set of plot elements and 'easter eggs' that makes watching the television show LOST such an intricate, engaging exercise. If you're not already familiar with it, it envisions an alternate 1985 where Richard Nixon is still president of the US, and we're on the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, and costumed 'super'heroes (really just masked 'adventurers') are outlawed. Some of these 'heroes' are really psychos, and others merely emotionally/psychologically damaged goods. It's interesting to see these do-gooders wrestle with life's tricky bits, while simultaneously attempting to avert World War III.
I also read Tyler Volk's CO2 Rising, but that one deserves a blog post of its own to discuss... Stay tuned.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Cool cache of photos
Yesterday, e-mailing the link to Cornell professor Rick Allmendinger's stereonet software to my Structural Geology students, I stumbled across Dr. Allmendinger's excellent collection of photos online. There are some spectacular shots there; worth spending a few minutes ogling-time. Here's my favorite.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Simplest plate reconstruction ever
This month's GSA Today includes this image:
It's part of a figure in the featured article by Thomas Servais and colleagues, examining the diversification of life during the Ordovician period of geologic time. I think that this must be the simplest rendering of plate reconstruction I've ever seen (and that's not necessarily a bad thing). While there are certainly many salient details left off of such a rendering, it serves the purposes of the article well, correlating a rise in biodiversity with high sea levels and supercontinent breakup. (If supercontinent breakup produces high rates of sea-floor spreading, the large volume of the mid-ocean ridge will displace lots of seawater and cause eustatic sea level rise.)
Here's the image in the context of the diagram in which it appears:
Reference:
Thomas Servais, David A.T. Harper, Axel Munnecke, Alan W. Owen, and Peter M. Sheehan. "Understanding the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE): Influences of paleogeography, paleoclimate, or paleoecology," GSA Today, April/May 2009, pp. 4-10.
It's part of a figure in the featured article by Thomas Servais and colleagues, examining the diversification of life during the Ordovician period of geologic time. I think that this must be the simplest rendering of plate reconstruction I've ever seen (and that's not necessarily a bad thing). While there are certainly many salient details left off of such a rendering, it serves the purposes of the article well, correlating a rise in biodiversity with high sea levels and supercontinent breakup. (If supercontinent breakup produces high rates of sea-floor spreading, the large volume of the mid-ocean ridge will displace lots of seawater and cause eustatic sea level rise.)
Here's the image in the context of the diagram in which it appears:
Reference:
Thomas Servais, David A.T. Harper, Axel Munnecke, Alan W. Owen, and Peter M. Sheehan. "Understanding the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE): Influences of paleogeography, paleoclimate, or paleoecology," GSA Today, April/May 2009, pp. 4-10.
Labels: art, ordovician, plate tectonics
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
Whale cartoon (New Yorker)
Brilliant! Especially in light of the new fossil evidence about the origins of whales released earlier this year.
From last week's issue of the New Yorker, which I've got time to read today because it's a snow day here in DC!
Friday, February 27, 2009
Sand art of "Sisyphus III"
Amazing stuff...
I found out about this incredible art via Michael Welland's book Sand: the Never-Ending Story, which I just finished reading. [The book is superb, and everyone should read it, but more on that later.] For the moment, just watch this incredible thing. This is art, real art: simple in the extreme on one hand (a ball rolling through sand), but complex in the extreme on the other hand (the two dimensional images that emerge and evolve over time are terrific), and its underlain by some reasonably complex computing. Here's artist Bruce Shapiro talking about his work:
Like what you see? Then download this video and watch it. Showing the "Sisyphus III" sand plotter in time lapse photography set to music, you really get a sense of what this thing is capable of. ...Mind-blowingly cool.
I found out about this incredible art via Michael Welland's book Sand: the Never-Ending Story, which I just finished reading. [The book is superb, and everyone should read it, but more on that later.] For the moment, just watch this incredible thing. This is art, real art: simple in the extreme on one hand (a ball rolling through sand), but complex in the extreme on the other hand (the two dimensional images that emerge and evolve over time are terrific), and its underlain by some reasonably complex computing. Here's artist Bruce Shapiro talking about his work:
Like what you see? Then download this video and watch it. Showing the "Sisyphus III" sand plotter in time lapse photography set to music, you really get a sense of what this thing is capable of. ...Mind-blowingly cool.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Another work of art
I found this image the other day on Geoff Lloyd's research homepage:
A couple of weeks back, I showed you another image depicting structural geology in the British Isles: the gorgeous hand-drawn diagram by Voll (1960). There are some differences between these two similar diagrams. As an exercise in thinking about how to depict rock structures on the two-dimensional space of paper or computer screens, I think they are worth taking a few moments to examine. Let's compare and contrast...
Similarities:
I'd like to point out that some other informative sketches have been popping up elseswhere in the geoblogosphere lately: See (in chronological order): here, here, here, here, here and here.
A couple of weeks back, I showed you another image depicting structural geology in the British Isles: the gorgeous hand-drawn diagram by Voll (1960). There are some differences between these two similar diagrams. As an exercise in thinking about how to depict rock structures on the two-dimensional space of paper or computer screens, I think they are worth taking a few moments to examine. Let's compare and contrast...
Similarities:
- Similar perspective (block diagram with the "front" at lower-left).
- Diagram is drawn with the short end along the strike of the structures, and the bulk of the diagram across strike.
- Both depict structurally complex rocks that vary across strike.
- Both use landmarks to give the reader perspective on where on the land's surface these subterranean structures are changing from one motif to another.
- Both are isometric, with the horizontal scale of the block being equal to the vertical scale.
Differences:
- This one was drawn by computer; Voll's was by hand.
- This one is in color; Voll's was in black and white.
- Voll's was generalized to show variations in rock fabric over a large distance; this one is reflective of specific localized data. (I like how it even side-steps a short distance where it apparently wasn't physically possible to go completely perpendicular to strike; see for instance the short jump at the Maer Anticline, and another larger jump at marker 0740 on the scale.) Voll's diagram, in contrast, smooths out those particular rough spots in the data to produce a seamless "summary."
- Voll's was one long wedge; the one is even longer, and as a result has been split into three separate views that are graphically stacked but connected with dotted line, so you can display them in a square- or retangular-shaped space, but can follow along with the overall story from "front" to "back." I think this is a good compromise, graphically speaking.
- Voll's showed the upper and side-facing-us views of the rock units; while this one shows the lower and side-facing-away-from-us views of the rock units, with occasional structures projected out into space between them to show their three-dimensional shapes.
I'd like to point out that some other informative sketches have been popping up elseswhere in the geoblogosphere lately: See (in chronological order): here, here, here, here, here and here.
Monday, February 16, 2009
7 missing links
National Geographic has a gallery of seven "missing link" species whose fossils have been discovered since Darwin proposed the origin of new species by means of natural selection. It troubled Darwin that the fossil record didn't show more explicitly the transitions between species, but he proposed his hypothesis anyhow. Good hypotheses make testable predictions, and this is a nice example of how the ensuing 150 years of paleontology have validated the notion of species' change through time.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
2/18 PSW meeting
PALEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON
Institutional Memories: The Paleo Art of National Geographic and the Smithsonian Institution
by Angela Botzer (National Geographic) and Mary Parrish (Scientific Illustrator, Dept. of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution)
Paleo art has been an important part of the dissemination of the science of paleontology for two important Washington, DC institutions and their audiences for more than 150 years. The presenters will detail fascinating histories of paleo art via the material housed in the collections of their respective organizations.
Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2009
7:00 p.m., in the Cooper Room, National Museum of Natural History
10th St. & Constitution Ave. Meet in the Constitution Avenue lobby at 5:00 p.m. if you wish to join some fun paleontologists for dinner, at the "Elephant and Castle," NW corner of 12th & Penna. Ave., NW. Non-Smithsonian visitors will be escorted to the Cooper Room at 6:30 and 6:55 p.m.
Remaining Dates for 2008-2009 Season: March 18, April 15, May 13
Institutional Memories: The Paleo Art of National Geographic and the Smithsonian Institution
by Angela Botzer (National Geographic) and Mary Parrish (Scientific Illustrator, Dept. of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution)
Paleo art has been an important part of the dissemination of the science of paleontology for two important Washington, DC institutions and their audiences for more than 150 years. The presenters will detail fascinating histories of paleo art via the material housed in the collections of their respective organizations.
Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2009
7:00 p.m., in the Cooper Room, National Museum of Natural History
10th St. & Constitution Ave. Meet in the Constitution Avenue lobby at 5:00 p.m. if you wish to join some fun paleontologists for dinner, at the "Elephant and Castle," NW corner of 12th & Penna. Ave., NW. Non-Smithsonian visitors will be escorted to the Cooper Room at 6:30 and 6:55 p.m.
Remaining Dates for 2008-2009 Season: March 18, April 15, May 13
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Recommendation: "Watermarks" by BLDGBLOG
Cool idea. Check it out.
Labels: art, blogs, climate change, global warming, ice, oceans
Friday, February 6, 2009
Magazines
Sierra magazine has a cool feature this month: photos of people and their appliances, showing how much coal it takes to run those appliances for one month. A very clever visual technique, illustrated by the talented photographer Lauren Burke. Click through to read the accompanying article about mountaintop removal, and how most of us support it daily at home by doing things like blogging. Hat tip to Mike Tidwell, who showed us some of these pictures yesterday during his talk at NOVA.
Also, the New Yorker this month has its ~annual piece from John McPhee. This one is about the author's experience with fact-checking. It's an interesting read if you're a fan of McPhee like I am. Eldridge Moores is mentioned -- although if you watched the video I posted a while back, you've already heard that Aegean /Adriatic plate mix-up story.
Labels: art, coal, geologists, geology, news
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Clever cover
While completing an Amazon impluse buy triggered by the "Climate Sale" post at The Way Things Break, I noticed a clever book cover:
Labels: art, blogs, books, climate change, global warming, websites
Paper block models for learning structure
For the second time, I'm distributing paper block models by Martin Schopfer at the Fault Analysis Group at University College Dublin. My experience has been that these little models are really useful for helping non-3D-minded students to visualize the subterranean form of geologic structures.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Papallacta
You know what feels really good when you're feeling sick? A hot bath.
And so, when it came to pass that over the winter break, I flew down to Ecuador with a recovering case of pneumonia, my friend Lily and I opted to put our mountain-climbing plans on hold, and go sit in some hot water instead.
From Quito, we took a public bus ($2) an hour east to a series of thermal pools at Papallacta ("papa yacht uh"). This is a lovely resort, nestled in a lovely valley:
Inside the resort (>$2), the architecture was fused with the landscaping in some interesting pseudo-natural ways. For instance, this is in the lounge, where the rocky wall rises up, but then stops some distance below where the wooden ceiling begins. The interval is filled with glass, but the illusion is that the building is open to nature.
They've got nice grounds, too. An organic garden is featured, and they have some neat sculptures. This one is clearly inspired by Andy Goldsworthy.
But there was a mystery... The local river, which carved the valley, was cold:
...So where did the hot water come from? We had noticed some steaming pools on the bus ride over the Andes, at higher elevation. Taking a walk on our second day there, we saw this aqueduct coming down the mountain into the valley:
Aha! It must be that they are pulling the hot water out of the actual hot springs up above, then piping it down to Papallacta for people to enjoy.
Papallacta is just south of the Equator:
At the Equator, Papallacta's elevation of ~10,000 feet (~3300 m) is quite pleasant. A tad chilly when it's dark or overcast, but the snow was at a higher elevation still:
Hiking around in between soaks in the lovely hot water, we saw hummingbirds galore, including the bizarre sword-billed hummingbird, which has a beak longer than its body (Google it to see!) We also saw some cool critters, like this beetle:
...And also some cool plants. Lily's really into plants, but even I can appreciate their numerous and varied forms, especially in as biodiverse a place as Ecuador...
Flower-on-a-stem, within a leaf:
After soaking and resting and acclimatizing at Papallacta, I felt a lot better and we trooped back to Quito to meet up with our guide and start climbing mountains... More on that in posts to come.
And so, when it came to pass that over the winter break, I flew down to Ecuador with a recovering case of pneumonia, my friend Lily and I opted to put our mountain-climbing plans on hold, and go sit in some hot water instead.
From Quito, we took a public bus ($2) an hour east to a series of thermal pools at Papallacta ("papa yacht uh"). This is a lovely resort, nestled in a lovely valley:
Inside the resort (>$2), the architecture was fused with the landscaping in some interesting pseudo-natural ways. For instance, this is in the lounge, where the rocky wall rises up, but then stops some distance below where the wooden ceiling begins. The interval is filled with glass, but the illusion is that the building is open to nature.
They've got nice grounds, too. An organic garden is featured, and they have some neat sculptures. This one is clearly inspired by Andy Goldsworthy.
But there was a mystery... The local river, which carved the valley, was cold:
...So where did the hot water come from? We had noticed some steaming pools on the bus ride over the Andes, at higher elevation. Taking a walk on our second day there, we saw this aqueduct coming down the mountain into the valley:
Aha! It must be that they are pulling the hot water out of the actual hot springs up above, then piping it down to Papallacta for people to enjoy.
Papallacta is just south of the Equator:
At the Equator, Papallacta's elevation of ~10,000 feet (~3300 m) is quite pleasant. A tad chilly when it's dark or overcast, but the snow was at a higher elevation still:
Hiking around in between soaks in the lovely hot water, we saw hummingbirds galore, including the bizarre sword-billed hummingbird, which has a beak longer than its body (Google it to see!) We also saw some cool critters, like this beetle:
...And also some cool plants. Lily's really into plants, but even I can appreciate their numerous and varied forms, especially in as biodiverse a place as Ecuador...
Flower-on-a-stem, within a leaf:
After soaking and resting and acclimatizing at Papallacta, I felt a lot better and we trooped back to Quito to meet up with our guide and start climbing mountains... More on that in posts to come.
Labels: art, arthropods, birdies, critters, ecuador, hot springs, plants, south america, travel
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Too good not to share
New EARTH t-shirt design
EARTH magazine commissioned me to make a new t-shirt design for their "Where on Earth?" contest giveaway. Here's what I came up with...
(I've clipped the left and right edges with this jpg, to make it fit into blog-space.)
(I've clipped the left and right edges with this jpg, to make it fit into blog-space.)
Labels: art, satellite imagery
A work of art
They don't make 'em like this any more. Check out how much information is infused into this one diagram, by Voll (1960) in a paper on the structural geology of the Scottish highlands:
Multiple generations of deformation overprint one another in a diagram that is at once informative and beautiful. It's a work of art. My geology M.S. advisor, Dazhi Jiang, shared this image with me once as an example of an elegant structural illustration. I think that it's just so good, that I have to share it at a larger size (rotated, so it will fit in the blog's space):
Multiple generations of deformation overprint one another in a diagram that is at once informative and beautiful. It's a work of art. My geology M.S. advisor, Dazhi Jiang, shared this image with me once as an example of an elegant structural illustration. I think that it's just so good, that I have to share it at a larger size (rotated, so it will fit in the blog's space):
Voll, G. , "New Work on Petrofabrics," Liverpool Manchester Geol. J. Vol. 2, 1960, pp. 503-567.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Cowhide map of Mongolia
This map of the country of Mongolia was featured on the wall of Mongo's Mongolian Barbeque restaurant* in Quito, Ecuador. It is rendered in cowhide, with colored bits of leather doing all the decoration and adornment. It's really a pretty impressive work of art: cartographically accurate (with some omissions due to space constraints close to Ulaanbaatar), but also beautiful. It did not have a key or legend with it, but blue blobs represent lakes (like these). Yellow areas appear to represent high-elevation areas. Off-white appears to represent steppe, though the distribution shown on this map is not exactly how I would have drawn it. Brown circles are "major" cities, while blue circles represent villages. Of particular note to me was that my Peace Corps site, the itty-bitty village of Ereentsav, is located on the map, probably because it's a border-crossing town with Siberia. It's one of the two little blue dots in the northeast (upper right) of the map. Google Maps can show you the town's location on the Siberian border, though they spell its name differently ("Ereencav"):
Incredibly, the satellite photos for this region of the world are good enough that you can zoom in and see the house I lived in when I served there. See the green building in the middle? I lived in the little shed (half as wide as the green building, a little longer) just to its right (east). My outhouse is even visible -- the little square nubbin in the southern corner of the fenced-in area:
___________________________________________________________________
* "Mongolian Barbeque" is a branch of Inner Mongolian cuisine. Inner Mongolia is an autonomous region in China, with decent food. "Outer" Mongolia is the country of Mongolia, its own nation, distinct from China. I served there in the Peace Corps in 1998-1999, and I can tell you from experience that they do not serve especially good food. Maybe that's being too harsh... Let's just say that in Mongolia, you don't eat Mongolian Barbeque.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
A portrait of the naturalist as a young man
My mom recently had her attic renovated, which meant that I had to go up there and remove all the stuff I'd stashed up there when it was just free storage. Rummaging through that memorobilia this week, I found my old boy scout merit badge sash. It's pictured here, both front and back.
The merit badges are the little circular patches on the front side. As you can see, I earned 28 of those puppies before I got my Eagle Scout award and retired from scouting. They are: swimming, cooking, leatherwork, canoing, mammal study, citizenship in the community, lifesaving, rowing, reptile study, basketry, nature study, environmental awareness (now apparently called environmental science), pioneering, citizenship in the nation, fire safety, first aid, wilderness survival, camping, art, pottery, citizenship in the world, personal management, communications, orienteering, woodworking, soil and water conservation, personal management, and forestry. (Notice that geology is missing...)
On the back of the sash, you can see patches from the Goshen Scout Camps in Virginia, the Philmont axe, the Arrow of Light (the only cub scout award that can be worn on the boy scout uniform), a patch showing that I swam a mile, an Order of the Arrow lodge patch, another commemorative patch from Philmont Scout Ranch, and my Boy Scouts of America Lifeguard patch.
Scouting was really good to me. It gave me a lot of confidence in my skills as an outdoorsman, and gave me a lot of great experiences in nature and in society. I doubt I'd be who I am today without thos formative experiences. Though I don't agree with everything that the BSA stands for today, I think that on the balance they do a great service for our communities and our boys.
Any other scouts out there? Any of you earn the geology merit badge?
Monday, January 19, 2009
Vessels, old and new
I've had a trusty pair of Nalgene water bottles for many years. One of the things I do is collect stickers when I travel, and then slap them on the outside of these water bottles. Here, for example, is one side of the two bottles:
Here's the other side:
The full record of stickers is:
Recreation and Parks program at NOVA
Wilderness Medical Associates (the group that trained me in WFA last May)
Northern Arizona University Department of Geography, Planning, and Recreation
Yellowstone National Park
Sport Rock, a climbing gym in Alexandria, Virginia
Mammoth Cave National Park
Rocky Mountain National Park
Gimme! Coffee, Ithaca, New York
Apple computer
Red Cross' "Give Blood" campaign (I cut up this sticker & distributed its bits across the bottles)
Alaska flag (from the ferry through the Inside Passage)
Pickle Barrel sandwich shop, Bozeman, Montana
Vieques, Puerto Rico
"Certified Organic" from a bunch of bananas
The Red Hand of Ulster (from my time in Northern Ireland)
Puri Saron, a resort in Lombok, Indonesia (I didn't actually go to this one; my friend Kenny did.)
British flag
State Farm Insurance (reflective!)
Mauna Kea observatories (Hawai'i)
KZMU public radio in Moab, Utah
Thyangboche Monastery, Nepal (I didn't go to this one, either. Thanks Kenny!)
"MtP" in an oval: Mt. Pleasant, a DC neighborhood I used to live in, just north of my current digs
There's a lot of personal history there, a sort of visual record of the places I've been. Trouble is, apparently the water bottles themselves were poisoning me. At least that's what they started saying last year; specifically that water bottles containing a substance called Bisphenol A (commonly referred to as "BPA") were not to be trusted. Though I haven't read the studies, they are reported to have found a significant correlation between high levels of BPA and heart disease, diabetes, and high levels of some liver enzymes. Plus, people keep nagging me about giving up my old water bottles, and I'm getting tired of inventing excuses for continuing to drink out of them. So yesterday, I officially retired my old sticker-covered bottles, and bought two new (BPA-free) Nalgenes instead:
You'll notice that I switched color schemes and mouth types (the new bottles have a narrow mouth). And you'll also notice that I've put my first sticker in place on the new bottles: from the Tambopaxi Lodge in Cotopaxi National Park in Ecuador, where I stayed for two nights the week before last. (If you're ever in Cotopaxi, you must stay there: It's really excellent.)
Background fabric for all images is a new tablecloth I bought at a craft market in Quito (for $2).
The old bottles will be hung above the mantle of the library hearth at the Bentley Estate, in commemoration of their usefulness and long history.
Here's the other side:
The full record of stickers is:
Recreation and Parks program at NOVA
Wilderness Medical Associates (the group that trained me in WFA last May)
Northern Arizona University Department of Geography, Planning, and Recreation
Yellowstone National Park
Sport Rock, a climbing gym in Alexandria, Virginia
Mammoth Cave National Park
Rocky Mountain National Park
Gimme! Coffee, Ithaca, New York
Apple computer
Red Cross' "Give Blood" campaign (I cut up this sticker & distributed its bits across the bottles)
Alaska flag (from the ferry through the Inside Passage)
Pickle Barrel sandwich shop, Bozeman, Montana
Vieques, Puerto Rico
"Certified Organic" from a bunch of bananas
The Red Hand of Ulster (from my time in Northern Ireland)
Puri Saron, a resort in Lombok, Indonesia (I didn't actually go to this one; my friend Kenny did.)
British flag
State Farm Insurance (reflective!)
Mauna Kea observatories (Hawai'i)
KZMU public radio in Moab, Utah
Thyangboche Monastery, Nepal (I didn't go to this one, either. Thanks Kenny!)
"MtP" in an oval: Mt. Pleasant, a DC neighborhood I used to live in, just north of my current digs
There's a lot of personal history there, a sort of visual record of the places I've been. Trouble is, apparently the water bottles themselves were poisoning me. At least that's what they started saying last year; specifically that water bottles containing a substance called Bisphenol A (commonly referred to as "BPA") were not to be trusted. Though I haven't read the studies, they are reported to have found a significant correlation between high levels of BPA and heart disease, diabetes, and high levels of some liver enzymes. Plus, people keep nagging me about giving up my old water bottles, and I'm getting tired of inventing excuses for continuing to drink out of them. So yesterday, I officially retired my old sticker-covered bottles, and bought two new (BPA-free) Nalgenes instead:
You'll notice that I switched color schemes and mouth types (the new bottles have a narrow mouth). And you'll also notice that I've put my first sticker in place on the new bottles: from the Tambopaxi Lodge in Cotopaxi National Park in Ecuador, where I stayed for two nights the week before last. (If you're ever in Cotopaxi, you must stay there: It's really excellent.)
Background fabric for all images is a new tablecloth I bought at a craft market in Quito (for $2).
The old bottles will be hung above the mantle of the library hearth at the Bentley Estate, in commemoration of their usefulness and long history.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau by Ron Blakey & Wayne Ranney
Over the winter break, I read the new book Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau, by Ron Blakey & Wayne Ranney. This is an excellent read, and a terrific introduction to the geologic history of one the world's most dramatic landscapes. Blakey's maps have been featured on this blog before, and he has been kind enough to allow me to modify some for use on my field course websites (like here and here and here). The book goes through geologic time and makes extensive use of beautiful paleogeographic maps to reveal the story of mountain-building, transgression, regression, sand-dunes, faulting, volcanism, and erosion that characterizes the Colorado Plateau. It's not just paleogeographic maps, by the way: there are also plenty of shots of fossils, Colorado Plateau landscapes, and comparable modern depositional environments to enliven the story. It's a graphic story, well told with excellent graphics. I recommend you get yourself a copy if you've ever been to the Colorado Plateau, or if you ever plan on going there.
Find the book: On Amazon ... At the NOVA library
Labels: arizona, art, books, colorado, maps, new mexico, utah
Silly doodles
Here's some silly sketches I made the other day...
Graded Bedding:
Cross Bedding:
Stromatolite:
Ripple Marks: (This one may be a bit obscure)
Normal Fault:
Reverse Fault:
Graded Bedding:
Cross Bedding:
Stromatolite:
Ripple Marks: (This one may be a bit obscure)
Normal Fault:
Reverse Fault:
Labels: art, geology, humor, primary structures
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Nope
This is pretty good... from the Coyote Crossing blog:
Labels: art, climate change, coal, environmental, global warming, politics
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Birthday card for a geologist
Two of my bestest students got me this card for my birthday last week:
I do... Also, I really appreciate students who take the time to do things like buy their professors birthday cards. I've got some good ones here!
All those warm fuzzies aside, though, we should point out for the record:
Issue #1: The oldest cave paintings (in Europe) are ~32,000 years old, not "3.2 million."
Issue #2: That's a really old dinosaur. Most dinosaurs are much younger. It's been suggested the divergence from archosaurs occurred ~230 Ma, so this isn't the most representative age for a dino.
The inside says "Don't you feel better now?"
I do... Also, I really appreciate students who take the time to do things like buy their professors birthday cards. I've got some good ones here!
All those warm fuzzies aside, though, we should point out for the record:
Issue #1: The oldest cave paintings (in Europe) are ~32,000 years old, not "3.2 million."
Issue #2: That's a really old dinosaur. Most dinosaurs are much younger. It's been suggested the divergence from archosaurs occurred ~230 Ma, so this isn't the most representative age for a dino.
Labels: art, geologic time, humor, teaching
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Mineral habit and Japanese watermelon
Quick quiz!
What does this...
...have to do with this?
A mineral's habit is the shape that a crystal of that mineral will attain if it gets the chance. When most people hear the word "crystal," the image that comes to mind is of a mineral crystal that has attained its full habit. However, most crystals aren't that pretty. If there aren't enough elemental ingredients, or if there isn't enough time to grow nice and big, or if there are other crystals in the way, then you won't get a nice, sexy crystal. Instead, the mineral crystal's internal structure will fill in whatever space it can, and that will determine its shape. The lower image shows a cartoon of a thin section of rock. In it, you can see a mineral with a "hexagonal" habit, but this actual crystal's shape is jagged and irregular, as dictated by the space available to grow. Most mineral crystals are like this: stunted and "misshapen" as a result of their circumstances.
And that brings us back to the upper image... the square watermelons. As everyone knows, watermelons are approximately ellipsoidal in shape, if given the chance to grow into their full "habit." However, that ellipsoidal shape is tough to cram into a small fridge; it occupies a larger space than its bulk actually takes up. There's a lot of wasted fridge space in the areas adjacent to it. In Japan, a solution has been developed: grow the melons in boxes, so that they are forced to take on a square or rectangular shape. Then, when mature, Japanese consumers can put the square melons in the fridge, confident that no space is being wasted: the melon is taking up almost all of the fridge volume given over to its storage!
Like most minerals, the Japanese watermelons are constrained by their circumstances to grow into shapes that they wouldn't attain on their own.
____________________________
Image sources:
Japanese watermelons - Oddee.com
Thin section cartoon - me, redrawn from a figure in Marshak, 2006.
What does this...
...have to do with this?
A mineral's habit is the shape that a crystal of that mineral will attain if it gets the chance. When most people hear the word "crystal," the image that comes to mind is of a mineral crystal that has attained its full habit. However, most crystals aren't that pretty. If there aren't enough elemental ingredients, or if there isn't enough time to grow nice and big, or if there are other crystals in the way, then you won't get a nice, sexy crystal. Instead, the mineral crystal's internal structure will fill in whatever space it can, and that will determine its shape. The lower image shows a cartoon of a thin section of rock. In it, you can see a mineral with a "hexagonal" habit, but this actual crystal's shape is jagged and irregular, as dictated by the space available to grow. Most mineral crystals are like this: stunted and "misshapen" as a result of their circumstances.
And that brings us back to the upper image... the square watermelons. As everyone knows, watermelons are approximately ellipsoidal in shape, if given the chance to grow into their full "habit." However, that ellipsoidal shape is tough to cram into a small fridge; it occupies a larger space than its bulk actually takes up. There's a lot of wasted fridge space in the areas adjacent to it. In Japan, a solution has been developed: grow the melons in boxes, so that they are forced to take on a square or rectangular shape. Then, when mature, Japanese consumers can put the square melons in the fridge, confident that no space is being wasted: the melon is taking up almost all of the fridge volume given over to its storage!
Like most minerals, the Japanese watermelons are constrained by their circumstances to grow into shapes that they wouldn't attain on their own.
____________________________
Image sources:
Japanese watermelons - Oddee.com
Thin section cartoon - me, redrawn from a figure in Marshak, 2006.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Rock, rock, pebble (repeat)
This weekend, I was procrastinating working on my final paper of the semester for my online MSSE education class, and decided to search "geology" on YouTube. (I knew there were some gems there, as Bryan reminded me earlier today.)
Anyhow, that search brought me to this piece of utter silliness, which I now share with you:
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Iceberg size and transport distance
This image came to my attention the other day via Lutz's Geoberg blog. It's one of the high-res images provided by the newly-launched satellite, the GeoEye-1, which is supplying new images to Google*. The image shows a marginal lake associated with an alpine glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska (just south of Seward):
The top of the above image is not north; it's southwest. Mentally rotate it, and you can see that the resolution is a lot better than the current level on Google Earth and Google Maps:
The thing that struck me about the new GeoEye image, aside from its beauty, is the distinct pattern of iceberg sizes in the lake: freshly calved off the glacier, the biggest icebergs are close to their source, while further away the icebergs are smaller. This pattern struck me as being analogous to sediment. Fresh from its source, sedimentary particles are at their largest size, and the further away they travel, the more weathering they experience. This weathering (in particular of the physical variety) tends to break them down into smaller pieces. Adjacent to an orogenic belt, for instance, you tend to find deposition of sedimentary particles shed off the uplifting mountains. As a general rule, these are of the largest sizes and the greatest volume closest to the source, and then particle size and stratum thickness both diminish with increasing distance from the orogen.
For a North American example, consider the Catskill Clastic Wedge, a tick pile of sediments shed off the late Devonian Acadian Orogeny along the east coast. Here's a cross-sectional view** (pre-Alleghany Orogeny deformation) of the wedge, running from the Bay of Fundy west to Michigan:
Same pattern! Coarse stuff, and more volume of stuff, close to the source. Finer stuff, and less volume of stuff, further from the source. Just like the iceberg, except the weathering of the icebergs is mainly thermal, while the weathering of the sediments is physical, accompanied by depositional sorting by the transporting currents of water.
__________________________________
* An original version of this post misidentified Google as the owners of the GeoEye-1, as opposed to the company called GeoEye, which sells images to Google. Thanks to Bruce Haley for the correction. (updated 8:14AM eastern time on Dec. 9, 2008)
** Image redrawn (by me) from an original in Prothero & Dott (2003).
The top of the above image is not north; it's southwest. Mentally rotate it, and you can see that the resolution is a lot better than the current level on Google Earth and Google Maps:
The thing that struck me about the new GeoEye image, aside from its beauty, is the distinct pattern of iceberg sizes in the lake: freshly calved off the glacier, the biggest icebergs are close to their source, while further away the icebergs are smaller. This pattern struck me as being analogous to sediment. Fresh from its source, sedimentary particles are at their largest size, and the further away they travel, the more weathering they experience. This weathering (in particular of the physical variety) tends to break them down into smaller pieces. Adjacent to an orogenic belt, for instance, you tend to find deposition of sedimentary particles shed off the uplifting mountains. As a general rule, these are of the largest sizes and the greatest volume closest to the source, and then particle size and stratum thickness both diminish with increasing distance from the orogen.
For a North American example, consider the Catskill Clastic Wedge, a tick pile of sediments shed off the late Devonian Acadian Orogeny along the east coast. Here's a cross-sectional view** (pre-Alleghany Orogeny deformation) of the wedge, running from the Bay of Fundy west to Michigan:
Same pattern! Coarse stuff, and more volume of stuff, close to the source. Finer stuff, and less volume of stuff, further from the source. Just like the iceberg, except the weathering of the icebergs is mainly thermal, while the weathering of the sediments is physical, accompanied by depositional sorting by the transporting currents of water.
__________________________________
* An original version of this post misidentified Google as the owners of the GeoEye-1, as opposed to the company called GeoEye, which sells images to Google. Thanks to Bruce Haley for the correction. (updated 8:14AM eastern time on Dec. 9, 2008)
** Image redrawn (by me) from an original in Prothero & Dott (2003).
Labels: alaska, analogies, art, canada, glacial landforms, glaciation, maine, michigan, mountains, new york, satellite imagery, sediment
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Mineral evolution cartoon in EARTH
Just wanted to let readers know that my "mineral evolution" cartoon is now up at the EARTH magazine website, accompanying their article on the new study by Bob Hazen about how the planet's suite of minerals has (a) changed over time and (b) been influenced by biologic processes.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Gustav Klimt's Iranian Alluvial Fan
Saw this amazing image of an alluvial fan in Iran yesterday on NASA's Earth Observatory's "Image of the Day":
All those elongated rectangles called to mind the famous oil painting The Kiss by Gustav Klimt:
Clearly, another case of nature imitating art!
All those elongated rectangles called to mind the famous oil painting The Kiss by Gustav Klimt:
Clearly, another case of nature imitating art!
Labels: art, satellite imagery, sediment
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Marli Miller's geology photographs
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned AGI's Image Bank, and to illustrate it I picked three photos by Marli Miller (at the University of Oregon). Dr. Miller has written me and shared a link to a website she has put together to share high-resolution images of geological features and processes. Educators have permission to download the photos for teaching (non-commercial) use. And everyone can benefit from visiting to check out the many gorgeous images there.Thanks, Marli!
UPDATE: After I posted this, I found one more image I had to share... Look at this gorgeous intrusion! Wow!
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Age of the oceanic crust
The U.S. National Geophysical Data Center has posted a series of updated images of the age of the oceanic crust. They're bee-yoo-tiful, and I recommend you check them out.
Image credits: In general, NOAA/NGDC. Specifically, Elliot Lim and Jesse Varner.
Hat tip: Michelle A. for passing on the link!
Labels: art, geologic time, oceans, plate tectonics
Saturday, October 18, 2008
AGI Image Bank
Browsing through the October issue of EARTH magazine, I noticed an advertisement (p. 62) for a service offered by AGI (the nonprofit which publishes EARTH): they maintain an online image bank with 6000 images of earth science stuff. Pretty cool. While the website interface is a bit clunky, there are some real gems there. In the structure category, here's a few that caught my eye (all three by Marli Miller at the University of Oregon):
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Granite countertop caption contest
At the end of every issue, The New Yorker runs a cartoon caption contest. Readers write in with captions they think would be funny. Here's a cartoon I just drew and submitted for the December issue of EARTH, only to learn that they weren't featuring granite countertops in that issue after all (because they already ran a story on that topic in the current issue.)
So here's my challenge for you: Come up with a caption for this cartoon. I'll post the three captions I came up with after 24 hours or so.
Have fun. The geo-geekier, the better... Here's the cartoon:
So here's my challenge for you: Come up with a caption for this cartoon. I'll post the three captions I came up with after 24 hours or so.
Have fun. The geo-geekier, the better... Here's the cartoon:
Monday, October 13, 2008
Mount Kinabalu, Borneo
My friend Noah is a photographer on a Fulbright scholarship in Malaysian Borneo. He shared this photo with me yesterday... a spectacular image from the top of Mount Kinabalu (the fourth-tallest mountain in southeast Asia). With his permission, I'm sharing it with you, too:
For more of Noah's photography, check out his website: Hope in Light.
For more of Noah's photography, check out his website: Hope in Light.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Virginia's extraterrestrial impact crater
The largest meteorite (or maybe comet?... we don't really know which) impact crater in the United States is in Virginia, underneath the lower Chesapeake Bay. In the Eocene, a large bolide (unidentified space chunk) slammed into the Earth. Dating of microfossils found in the same sedimentary layers as impact ejecta have provided a date of ~35.5 Ma for the event. The impactor hit on the continental shelf offshore of Eocene Virginia, carving through the Atlantic-deposited sediments there and gouging into the crystalline bedrock beneath (igneous and metamorphic rocks like the modern Piedmont province, but buried beneath Coastal Plain layers).
The crater was discovered over a ten-year process that began with offshore sampling near Atlantic City, New Jersey in the mid-1980s. Those drill cores came up with a layer of ejecta (including shocked quartz and little beads of glass called tektites) among the late Eocene layers of sediments. Searching around, eventually the crater was seismically imaged by oil exploration in the Chesapeake Bay in the mid-1990s.
Centered on Cape Charles, Virginia, the crater is about 50 miles across, but appears wider as sedimentary layers adjacent to the hold have slumped inward along listric faults. The James, York, and Rappahannock Rivers all trend into this depression, and ultimately the crater is probably responsible for the Susquehanna River taking on its southerly course. When sea level rose and flooded the valley of the Susquehanna, the Chesapeake Bay was formed.
A similar impact structure offshore of New Jersey, the Toms Canyon Impact Crater, may have formed at the same time as the impactor broke into pieces before impacting.
The lead-off image to this post is by the team at the U-Haul trucking company, which performs a terrific public service by finding out interesting things about the different states (and Canadian provinces) and posting them on the sides of their trucks with eye-catching graphics. A great many of the topics they choose are about geology, from minerals to fossils to impact craters to cartography and canyons. A while ago, I wrote an article for Geotimes looking at their program.
More information on the crater:
Wikipedia's entry on the crater.
W&M Geology Department's page about the crater.
USGS team examining the crater.
National Geographic article (2001).
Labels: art, cenozoic, coastal plain, geology, meteors, new jersey, piedmont, rivers, virginia
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Monday, September 8, 2008
Coprolite cartoon goes to the bathroom!
News: The coprolite cartoon I mentioned last week (published this month in EARTH magazine) is now going to be part of a permanent display on scat and coprolites at the Dinosaur State Park museum in Rocky Hill, Connecticut. My favorite part about this idea is where the new exhibit is going to be... it's in the bathroom! Ha! You gotta love that... talk about a teachable moment!
Labels: art, connecticut, fossils, humor, museums
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Climate/Electricity Cartoon
Just got around to reading the August issue of Geotimes today... I had forgotten I had a cartoon published in there! Anyhow, here it is... really really small, from the page on the Geotimes website where the accompanying story is hosted.
Enjoy.
Labels: art, climate change, environmental, global warming, humor
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Evolution cartoon
I saw Stephen Jay Gould speak once, in 1995 or 1996, at William and Mary. He showed us a series of 'evolution' cartoons, all bearing some humorous variation on the the linear progression of ape-to-australopithecine-to-caveman-to-modern-man theme. Gould used these cartoons an an example of the traditional human way of thinking about evolution: as a linear process leading to us as its final culmination. (Gould argued against this "line" of thought -- suggesting instead that evolution is best thought of as dendritic and arborescent.)
Anyhow: since I saw that talk, I've been very aware of the variety of cartoons on this cliche of a theme. There are a lot of them. I saw another one (by Ward Sutton) this evening while reading this week's New Yorker magazine:
Anyhow: since I saw that talk, I've been very aware of the variety of cartoons on this cliche of a theme. There are a lot of them. I saw another one (by Ward Sutton) this evening while reading this week's New Yorker magazine:
Monday, September 1, 2008
Coprolite cartoon
My first cartoon appears in this month's Earth magazine (formerly Geotimes). Their website is live as of today, by the way. A few formatting bugs to be worked out, it looks like, but I think it looks like it's going to be good. I wish them the best of luck with the transition. Anyhow, here's the cartoon:
Monday, August 25, 2008
Woodcut block print of a tyrannosaur
I used to do a lot of woodcuts. Woodcuts are a kind of block printing, where you start with wood (usually basswood, or something else of medium hardness) and then carve away everything that you want to be white in the final print, leaving behind everything you want to appear black. Once the carving is done, ink your print and press it to a piece of paper, and you get a cool looking block print. The same thing can be done with linoleum, styrofoam, or potatoes.
Based on Googling my personal website, a design firm in Seattle recently contacted me to do a new series of woodcuts. Their client, a housing development in Washington state, wanted a squirrel mascot. So over the course of the past week, in addition to preparing for the fall semester, I busted out the chisels and ink roller. Here's the squirrel that I prepared for them:
Based on Googling my personal website, a design firm in Seattle recently contacted me to do a new series of woodcuts. Their client, a housing development in Washington state, wanted a squirrel mascot. So over the course of the past week, in addition to preparing for the fall semester, I busted out the chisels and ink roller. Here's the squirrel that I prepared for them:
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Enceladus
Every now and again, I like to post an image that just speaks volumes. Check this one out, of Saturn's moon Enceladus. Wow! What a beauty. This photograph was taken on Monday by the Cassini spacecraft. Enceladus may host liquid water below the surface, since it has geyser-like features near its south pole. There are only three places beyond the asteroid belt where eruptions have been seen: Enceladus, the jovian moon Io, and Neptune's moon Triton. Enceladus is only a few hundred miles wide; These fractures are about 1000 feet deep.
Labels: art, planetary geology
Friday, August 15, 2008
Geotimes becomes EARTH
Starting with next month's issue, the magazine Geotimes will change its name to EARTH magazine.
Why? Listen to Pat Leahy give AGI's reasons in a video on Geotimes' website.
I gotta say -- this is a smart move. How many people, browsing the racks at Barnes & Noble, are going to pick up a rag called "Geotimes"? It's a pretty dorky name. On the other hand, how many people are going to pick up a magazine called "EARTH"?
Whoa... Major customer expansion, I'll bet. I'm curious to see how much it takes off.
The magazine is re-inventing itself in several ways, not just switching out the masthead. I noticed in the June issue, they started featuring a crossword puzzle, and next month's issue will be the first to feature my monthly cartoon. It's also going to be longer.
Change isn't just a political word this year...
Why? Listen to Pat Leahy give AGI's reasons in a video on Geotimes' website.
I gotta say -- this is a smart move. How many people, browsing the racks at Barnes & Noble, are going to pick up a rag called "Geotimes"? It's a pretty dorky name. On the other hand, how many people are going to pick up a magazine called "EARTH"?
Whoa... Major customer expansion, I'll bet. I'm curious to see how much it takes off.
The magazine is re-inventing itself in several ways, not just switching out the masthead. I noticed in the June issue, they started featuring a crossword puzzle, and next month's issue will be the first to feature my monthly cartoon. It's also going to be longer.
Change isn't just a political word this year...
Monday, August 11, 2008
Illustration page updated
I spent a fair bit of today updating the "Scientific Illustrations" page on my NOVA website. I'll be adding a few more images there in the next week or so, including another commissioned set, but I figured I'd mention it here now, since I've practically gone cross-eyed working on it all day.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
What should a monthly geology cartoon look like?
This morning, I popped a signed contract in the mail to Geotimes: they've asked me to draw a monthly cartoon for that geology-themed magazine. It will probably start in the August or September 2008 issue. Technical details still remaining to be settled include: what this cartoon will look like, and what it will discuss, and even what it will be called.
Geotimes managing editor Meg Sever and I have discussed a couple of possibilities: probably it will be vary in size and form: sometimes it will be a three panel strip, sometimes it will be a single panel (like The Far Side). The goal is less to be humorous (though that's always a bonus) and more to explain. In fact, Meg initially got the idea from an odd project I did for my senior "thesis" at William & Mary: The Cartoon Guide to Geology (1996). That was peppered liberally with bad jokes, but the primary goal wasn't to be funny -- it was to explain geology through a cartoon medium.
I bring this up now to seek the good advice of the geoblogosphere. Especially those of you who are Geotimes subscribers: what topics do you want me to cartoon about each month?
Also: what's a catchy title for a monthly geology cartoon? Any advice you have would be welcome!
Geotimes managing editor Meg Sever and I have discussed a couple of possibilities: probably it will be vary in size and form: sometimes it will be a three panel strip, sometimes it will be a single panel (like The Far Side). The goal is less to be humorous (though that's always a bonus) and more to explain. In fact, Meg initially got the idea from an odd project I did for my senior "thesis" at William & Mary: The Cartoon Guide to Geology (1996). That was peppered liberally with bad jokes, but the primary goal wasn't to be funny -- it was to explain geology through a cartoon medium.
I bring this up now to seek the good advice of the geoblogosphere. Especially those of you who are Geotimes subscribers: what topics do you want me to cartoon about each month?
Also: what's a catchy title for a monthly geology cartoon? Any advice you have would be welcome!
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
The pulsing carbon dioxide engine that is the U.S.
Take the next five minutes of your life, and watch this video about a cool new imaging experiment done by Kevin Gurney's research group at Purdue. They've taken pre-existing data about CO2 emissions and plotted it in a dynamic map. The most striking feature is the pulsating nature of the United States' CO2 emissions: we put out a lot during the day, and not so much at night. The maps really show this -- demonstrating yet again the power of images (over description) to convey information.
It's long been my contention that one of the biggest problems with the global warming issue is that CO2 is invisible. I'll bet that if people actually saw giant clouds the color of liquid Barney wafting off the coast every day, then they would be more inclined to think of carbon dioxide as something tangible.
It's long been my contention that one of the biggest problems with the global warming issue is that CO2 is invisible. I'll bet that if people actually saw giant clouds the color of liquid Barney wafting off the coast every day, then they would be more inclined to think of carbon dioxide as something tangible.
Labels: art, climate change, CO2, global warming, maps
Friday, April 4, 2008
Collier photo website
Check out the aerial landscape photography of Michael Collier, as showcased on this website.
Labels: art, satellite imagery
Monday, March 24, 2008
Worth a thousand words
This is the image on the cover of the April 2008 issue of Geology:
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Banksy on the cover of Science?
I was somewhat astonished to see this image on the cover of this week's issue of Science:
It turns out that there is an article in this issue about how societies deal with antisocial behavior. According to some, the work of the artist known as "Banksy" counts as antisocial behavior. Here's the caption Science provides for the cover: "An example of' 'art' by self-styled guerrilla artist Banksy, as seen in East London in November 2007. Human behavior that would be characterized as antisocial punishment can also be called art; prosocial institutions, most notably the campaign Keep Britain Tidy, refer to Banksy's work as vandalism."
I don't know much about psychology, and I'm not going to attempt to review the article, but seeing this particular artist on the cover of Science gives me an excuse to introduce others to his (admittedly controversial) work.
I've been a fan of Banksy's work for a couple of years now -- he does a couple of things worth noting: First, his bread and butter is outdoor "graffiti" of elaborate black and white designs, usually done with stencils, sometimes highlighted with deliberate focused use of color, and often exploring the "police state" aspects of the modern world, as in this example:
It turns out that there is an article in this issue about how societies deal with antisocial behavior. According to some, the work of the artist known as "Banksy" counts as antisocial behavior. Here's the caption Science provides for the cover: "An example of' 'art' by self-styled guerrilla artist Banksy, as seen in East London in November 2007. Human behavior that would be characterized as antisocial punishment can also be called art; prosocial institutions, most notably the campaign Keep Britain Tidy, refer to Banksy's work as vandalism."
I don't know much about psychology, and I'm not going to attempt to review the article, but seeing this particular artist on the cover of Science gives me an excuse to introduce others to his (admittedly controversial) work.
I've been a fan of Banksy's work for a couple of years now -- he does a couple of things worth noting: First, his bread and butter is outdoor "graffiti" of elaborate black and white designs, usually done with stencils, sometimes highlighted with deliberate focused use of color, and often exploring the "police state" aspects of the modern world, as in this example:
He also does a few interior art installations, like one in Los Angeles which included painting a live elephant to blend in with wallpaper (a literal "elephant in the room"):
Lastly, he's known for putting his own artwork up in great museums, as if it belongs there. Some museums have even accepted his additions, in the name of art. This YouTube video shows Banksy at work, installing his own edgy artwork when the curators aren't looking:
While I appreciate Banksy's art for his envelope-pushing content and panache, I can see how it would piss some people off. I think one of the cool things about science is that we can go and look into the big patterns of how society deals with even something as esoteric as "guerrilla art." I think it's great that science is even applicable to stuff like this. However, for my purposes, it's enough to sit back and grok on Banksy's art, and the point of today's post is only to share that art with others.
Labels: art, humor, science and society
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Sunday, March 2, 2008
"The Last Iceberg"
Today was the artist's reception at the National Academies of Science for Camille Seaman's exhibit of photographs entitled "The Last Iceberg." I took a break from writing a paper for my MSSE class and went down to check it out.One of my geology honors students, Spencer, showed up too, and we checked out Seaman's glowing icebergs set against dark backgrounds. There were some really stunning images, but the exhibit was rather small -- only fifteen or so separate pictures.
If you're not in the DC area, you can check out a slideshow of images from the exhibit at Seaman's website. Enjoy!
Also, while I was there, I went upstairs to see the excellent "Monkey Portraits" exhibit by Jill Greenberg. As with "The Last Iceberg," only a selection of images was shown -- a total of ten or so. But man, what an amazing ten images! I'll put just one up here, entitled "Undecided":
Labels: art, climate change, dc, global warming, primates
Friday, February 29, 2008
Weirdness with a geologic name
On an odd day, a post about an odd place:
Reading David Byrne's blog last week, I was alerted to the existence of The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles. When I went to this museum's website, I found a phantasmagoria of odd objects and pseudoscientific farce. It's not supposed to be real; it's supposed to be art. But... why "Jurassic?" Like a lot of McSweeney's works, it seems a little too clever for me to "get." Though not a geologist, Byrne seemed similarly perplexed: "the mixture of the real ... and the imaginary... is a bit of a head twister at first."
Reading David Byrne's blog last week, I was alerted to the existence of The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles. When I went to this museum's website, I found a phantasmagoria of odd objects and pseudoscientific farce. It's not supposed to be real; it's supposed to be art. But... why "Jurassic?" Like a lot of McSweeney's works, it seems a little too clever for me to "get." Though not a geologist, Byrne seemed similarly perplexed: "the mixture of the real ... and the imaginary... is a bit of a head twister at first."
Monday, February 25, 2008
Lola dreams of fossilization
Yesterday I found my cat Lola pondering a fish fossil from the Eocene Green River Formation. Because she's more of an Appalchian cat, I explained to her that this fish was preserved in flat-lying lacustrine deposits in southwestern Wyoming. The formation is notable for bearing impressions/carbon-films of many species, essentially an entire fossil lake ecosystem. She seemed interested, so I referred her to a travel article I wrote on the topic once for Geotimes. She padded off to read it.
Later, Lola conveyed to me that during a cat nap, she dreamt of her own fossilization in the Green River Formation style:
Ahh, Photoshop: even better than Facebook for wasting away the hours...
Later, Lola conveyed to me that during a cat nap, she dreamt of her own fossilization in the Green River Formation style:
Ahh, Photoshop: even better than Facebook for wasting away the hours...
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Biofuels cartoon
After last week's CO2 smackdown on corn ethanol and other biofuels as a "cure" for global warming, Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles scratched out this killer cartoon:
Thanks to John Weidner for calling this gem to my attention!
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Geologic evolution of the Grand Canyon
You may have seen Ron Blakely's excellent paleogeographic maps of the North American continent. Browsing around his site the other day, I found this nice sequential cartoon of the geologic steps it took to build up the rocks at the Grand Canyon.
My dad and my two brothers and I are going rafting down the Canyon this summer, and I'm looking forward to exploring the geology firsthand from the river level. My four previous trips to the Canyon have all started at the rim, then hiked down (sometimes to Plateau Point, sometimes to the river), and then back up in the same day. Staying at river level for over a week ought to be awesome.
Labels: art, geology, grand canyon
Thursday, January 31, 2008
The works of Jan Svankmajer
Film du jour: The Collected Works of Jan Svankmajer (available from your friendly neighborhood red envelope-dealing internet DVD subscription service). Svankmajer is a Czech artist who specializes in surreal, experimental film. Some is filmed in stop-motion animation, some is regular animation, and some is live-action. Of the movies on the DVD, some are just plain weird, some are unsettling, and some are whimsical and fun. None of them is more than 10 minutes in overall length: bite-sized bits of entertainment (just like blogs offer "snack-sized" chunks of reading). The first short film is A Game With Stones, and while it isn't explicitly about geology, it does feature a series of beautiful cobbles of varying lithologies, dancing, eroding, and melding with one another. It's eye-catching, though you'll find yourself asking, why do the rocks come out of a faucet? On a clock? As one YouTube user commented: "It looks cool, but I don't get it." Exactly.
Monday, January 21, 2008
The works of Edward Burtynsky
I watched a cool documentary the other night about the Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky. The film is called Manufactured Landscapes. (It's available from Netflix.)It follows Burtynsky mostly through China (with asides to Bangladesh and North America) as he photographs of places where humankind has indelibly altered nature to produce landscapes that are at once disturbing and utterly beautiful. By trailing Burtynsky, the documentarians film the landscape through his eyes, as well as showing his still photos. Burtynsky maintains a website with some of his best images available in an online gallery. It's a remarkable ensemble. I recommend that you check out this visionary photographer.
Labels: art, environmental, movies
Monday, January 14, 2008
Round graphics in today's Post
I was struck by the visual similarity of these two round graphics from the Science section of today's Washington Post. The first shows the circuitous path taken by the Mercury Messenger spacecraft, which is scheduled to fly by the innermost planet in about 2 hours from the time I'm writing this:
The second image shows the changing ice situation in Antarctica on a cool combination of ice-flow velocity map and ice loss/gain bar graph, wrapped around the edge:
The second image shows the changing ice situation in Antarctica on a cool combination of ice-flow velocity map and ice loss/gain bar graph, wrapped around the edge:
Labels: art, global warming, planetary geology
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Historical paleontology art at the Smithsonian
The Smithsonian's department of paleobiology has a webpage devoted to displaying some art that was used in some old scientific papers on fossils. There's a beautiful variety of images there, like this frontal view of a Triceratops skull that was used to prepare a lithograph, which then appeared in a paper by legendary paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh (archnemesis of Edward Drinker Cope). Check out the full variety of art here.Labels: art, fossils, smithsonian, websites
Monday, January 7, 2008
Cloud holder
One final shot from Northern Ireland: me holding up a cloud. Sunset, December 30, 2007: Port Rush, County Antrim.
Labels: antrim coast, art, clouds, northern ireland
Earth science observations, news, photos, teaching, & commentary by Callan Bentley
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