There's been some interesting articles in my media subscriptions lately. Thought I'd use today's post to share.

In the June National Geographic, a study of the geology of Stonehenge reveals the source of the monoliths ("polyliths?") there. They came from the Preseli Mountains of Wales. That's a long journey for such big rocks. Also in the same issue is an eye-popping pictorial piece on sea slugs. You must check it out, because it features dozens of David Doubilet images like this one:

WIRED's cover story this month is about environmental "heresies": ideas that supposedly environmentalists aren't supposed to like, but need to happen. The basic premise is that "only cutting carbon matters," and so they come up with some interesting recommendations like: (1) use A/C more, and heating less, (2) "screw the spotted owl" (don't worry about the loss of biodiversity), and (3) buy a used Geo Metro rather than a new Prius. I found this last of particular interest, as it recounts a web rumor that it took less carbon to make a Hummer than a Prius, and therefore Hummers were more environmentally friendly. (The Prius' battery has a lot of high-carbon-cost nickel in it.) WIRED breaks it all down into BTUs, and runs the numbers. According to their analysis, it takes the Prius 100,000 miles to catch up (i.e. be more carbon-efficient) than an old Toyota. Bummer... Big bummer. (At least the Hummer bit has been debunked.)

As usual, Smithsonian had a bunch of interesting pieces in it. Almost everything in there catches my imagination. It's a very well done magazine.

The New Yorker had a couple of articles, too: In their recent "innovators issue," Alex Ross profiled John Luther Adams, the man responsible for the mesmerizing "the place where you go to listen" in the Museum of the North at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. If you haven't ever been there and find yourself in Fairbanks, I would recommend this museum highly, and this one room / art installation in particular: it plays certain notes and tones and changes the lighting depending on what the aurora, seismic activity, and other Earth processes are doing. And Margaret Talbot profiled Irene Pepperberg, who raised the parrot Alex and taught him to talk. This article explores the insights into intelligence gained from this serendipitous longterm experiment.

On the commodities front, the New York Times reports today that thieving biofuellers are stealing vegetable oil in Oregon, and that guano stocks are being closely guarded in Peru. Telling quote from the latter: "Before there was oil, there was guano, so of course we fought wars over it," (Pablo Arriola).

Labels: alaska, birdies, environmental, mollusks, news, prius, wales

Thanks to Andrew Alden for addressing the issue of the tidal influence on recent Cyclone Nargis' flooding of southern Burma. NASA recently published this before/after image online:

Thought I would pass it on.

Labels: asia, floods, hurricanes, news

On Monday, my Physical Geology students and I experienced a magnitude-2.0 earthquake during our final exam. The hypocenter was 1 km south and 6km down.

I pulled out the geologic map of the Annandale quadrangle (1986) by Avery Drake and A. J. Froelich to check for faults in that area. Here's a scan of the map:

You can see our campus in the northwest, and I've highlighted the epicenter of the quake with the red and green concentric circle. Interstate 495, the Capitol Beltway runs north-south through the center of this area. To the south and east of NOVA's campus, you can see that there's a mappable thrust fault (the Red Fox Thrust) which dips to the northwest, presumably under the epicenter and under the campus. However, the map provides no information on the angle of dip of this thrust. Is it steep enough to get to 6km depth a mere ~3km north of its surface trace? (The map's cross section shows it dipping at about 52 degrees, but that's pretty speculative.) Or if the dip is shallow, is there a deeper (perhaps parallel) thrust underneath it? (There is none shown within the map area, though there is one to the north of campus that dips to the north -- making it unlikely to be the culprit.) Alternatively, was Monday's quake caused by a new fault? Perhaps a normal fault which cross-cuts these Paleozoic thrusts?

No new answers -- only more questions...

Labels: earthquakes, news, nova

Holy cow! Chaiten is continuing to erupt, and witnesses are posting some incredible photographs of the event.

I highly recommend you check out these two sites, which I am only aware of thanks to James Annan who posted the links at his Empty Blog.

Seriously: check them out. It's like Independence Day down there.

Labels: news, south america, volcano

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!

Labels: art, geology, news

So, this is weird: a new insight into the planet Mercury is that it has a big long tail which extends away from the planet, strung outwards by the solar wind (a stream of charged particles shooting away from the Sun in every direction). Comet tails are also due to the solar wind's erosive effect, vaporizing particles & dragging them "down-stream" (i.e., away from the Sun). The tail is long: At 1.6-million miles in length, the streamer of sodium atoms is more than 100 times the planet's radius. Read more here.

Labels: news, planetary geology

Yesterday, Florida's state board of education felt obliged to stick the word "theory" into their description of the teaching of evolution. See this Reuters article for all the moronic details. Of course, evolution is a theory (i.e. well corroborated by many years of scientific testing & explanatory of a wealth of biological phenomena), so I don't have a problem with this definition per se, beyond exasperation with the motivations for its inclusion. I expect we'll see another lawsuit (a la Dover, PA) regarding this move, but in the meantime, it's an opportunity for science teachers to elucidate the difference between "theory" as it's used in science versus "theory" as it's used in casual conversation. So, the battlefield for teaching proper science shifts from Kansas to Pennsylvania to Florida. What would the Flying Spaghetti Monster say?

Labels: evolution, news, politics

In case you haven't yet heard the news, the school shooting that took place yesterday afternoon at Northern Illinois University's Dekalb campus was in a geology class. I don't know what class, but it was in a "large lecture hall" (CNN) and the instructor was apparently a graduate student (Washington Post). The shooter was apparently an ex-sociology graduate student (Post). I can't imagine how awful that must be. There have been plenty of previous school shootings (unfortunately), but hearing that it was in a geology class really clarified in my imagination the horror of such an event unfolding.

NIU's website with updates.
More from The Washington Post.
More from CNN.

Labels: geology, news