A girl and her pet rock (4)

So I just realized that I owe a post for today. I spent my entire day working on my geology term paper, so I have nothing all that clever or interesting to say. So I guess instead of falling down on the job completely, I shall share the rough draft of my paper. Yay?

Unfortunately I can't really include the pictures, so you will miss the treat of my extremely awful, juvenile-looking hand-drawn cross section. It's one step up from MS Paint, but a small step at that.

I've also now submitted my two grad school applications. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Also as a note, the pictures of what I'm referring to in the petrochemistry section can be found right here.

Genesis of the Green Mountain Kimberlite
Introduction
The Green Mountain Kimberlite is located in a mountain park/open space near the city of Boulder, Colorado, at approximately latitude and longitude 39º59.431'N, 105º18.09'W.

The Green Mountain Kimberlite intrudes in to the Boulder Creek Batholith, which is primarily composed of Precambrian granodiorite. There are no rocks other than the granodiorite and kimberlite exposed in the immediate area, and no evidence of other intrusions at the surface.

The exposed kimberlite contains no identifiable rock fragments that are younger than Precambrian in age. Larson and Amini (1981) attempted to track the age of the kimberlite using fission track ages on apatite and sphene within the rock. The apatite fission tracks yielded the highly suspect age of 77.1 ±5 million years, while the sphene fission tracks yielded a more reliable age of 367 ±15 million year. This number agreed with other kimberlite emplacements near the Colorado-Wyoming border and was considered reasonable at the time, under the assumption that all kimberlites in the region were emplaced at approximately the same time during the Devonian. However, a later study used 40Ar/39Ar of phlogopite from the kimberlite to determine a maximum emplacement age of ~865 million years, though that age was considered suspect within the study due to problems with Ar degassing and anomalously low initial 40Ar/39Ar ratios. Using 147Sm/144Nd ratios taken from megacryst samples from the kimberlite, the same study found an age of 572 ±49 million years for emplacement (Lester et al, 2001). This dating of the Green Mountain Kimberlite agrees with that of the Chicken Park Dike in the same study; the two kimberlite intrusions are compositionally similar to each other, while being significantly dissimilar to other kimberlites in the area, making the difference in age seem both reasonable and logical. At this time, the evidence points to the Green Mountain Kimberlite being emplaced in the Paleozoic, at 572 ±49 million years ago.

Lester et al (2001) have suggested that their dating of the Green Mountain Kimberlite as Neopaleozoic in age puts the emplacement in line with the break up on the Rodinia supercontinent and suggests a tentative link between the two events. If this is the case, the Kimberlite resulted from an extensional tectonic setting, in which the kimberlitic magma flowed up through deep fissures and zones of crustal weakness related to the extension. The formation of the kimberlite came from the melting of mantle peridotite mixed with volatiles, most importantly CO2, though the source of these volatiles is not immediately apparent in the scenario of the Rodinia breakup. Another possible scenario for the generation of the kimberlitic magma is hot spot activity, though the evidence for such activity in North America is so thin as to be nonexistent (McCandless 1999).

Petrochemistry
The Green Mountain Kimberlite is a porphyritic, with a fine-grained ground mass surrounding large phenocrysts. The phenocrysts in the thin section examined were serpentanized olivine sometimes with apparent remnant olivine, phlogopite, biotite, and large calcite crystals. There was also a 1-2mm in diameter opaque of unknown type in the sample, and infrequent but identifiable orthopyroxene. The ground mass is fine grained and rich in calcite, as well as opaques. Boctor and Meyer (1979) identify the major mineral components of the kimberlite as diopside, ilmenite, Cr-rich and Cr-poor almandine, olivine (serpentanized and not), orthopyroxene, biotite, phlogopite, and calcite. No large garnets were identified in the thin section, but it is very possible that some small garnets exist in the ground mass, which remains mostly dark at all angles under crossed polars. Ilmenite is an opaque mineral and as such cannot be identified with true certainty in the thin section, but considering its abundance within the kimberlite, it is likely that a significant percentage of the opaques in the ground mass are ilmenite. The ground mass is also rich in calcite.

Boctor and Meyer also note the presence of Perovskite within the Green Mountain Kimberlite, though it is a mineral not easily identified within the thin section. However, the presence of the perovskite does suggest that the mantle peridotite source of the kimberlite interacted with CO2-rich fluid, which allowed the chemical interactions to create the abundance of Nb and REE in that mineral.


Conclusions
The formation mechanism for kimberlite magmas in particular is still a topic of great discussion among geologists (Heaman et al, 2004), and unfortunately the genesis of the Green Mountain Kimberlite remains murky. In general, the kimberlitic magma that produced the Green Mountain Kimberlite must have formed due to the interaction of mantle peridotite with volatiles, particularly CO2 and water. This volatile interaction is further supported by the abundance of calcite phenocrysts and in the ground mass of the kimberlite, as well as the Nb and REE-rich Perovskite found within the kimberlite by Boctor and Meyer (1979). Probably prior to the partial melting, the peridotite had undergone at least one episode of metasomatism. The source of the volatiles for this metasomatism and melting is unclear; there is little evidence for a mantle plume in the area, and the existence of a nearby subduction zone is likewise unclear (Heaman et al, 2003). After the formation, the magma was forced upward under high pressure, most likely following deep crustal fissures or zones of weakness related to the break up of the Rodinia supercontinent. This rapid, pressurized intrusion (and ultimately extrusion) of the kimberlitic magma explains the existence of granodioritic xenoliths within the kimberlite, taken from the surrounding Boulder Creek Batholith during the kimberlite's intrusion. With even the age of the Green Mountain kimberlite still a matter for debate, little more can be said about the rock's formation with any degree of certainty.


References
Boctor, N. Z., Meyer H. O. A. Oxide and sulfide minerals in kimberlite from Green Mountain, Colorado. In: The mantle sample – inclusions in kimberlites and other volcanics (F. R. Boyd and H. O. A. Meyer, editors), Proceedings of the Second International Kimberlite Conference, AGU, Washington DC, v. 1 (1979), pages 217-229.

Heaman, L. M., Bruce A. Kjarsgaard, Robert A. Creaser, The temporal evolution of North American kimberlites, Lithos, Volume 76, Issues 1-4, Selected Papers from the Eighth International Kimberlite Conference. Volume 1: The C. Roger Clement Volume, September 2004, Pages 377-397, ISSN 0024-4937, DOI: 10.1016/j.lithos.2004.03.047.

Heaman, L. M., B. A. Kjarsgaard, R. A. Creaser, The timing of kimberlite magmatism in North America: implications for global kimberlite genesis and diamond exploration. Lithos, Volume 71, Issues 2-4, A Tale of Two Cratons: The Slave-Kaapvaal Workshop, December 2003, Pages 153-184, ISSN 0024-4937, DOI: 10.1016/j.lithos.2003.07.005.

Larson, E. E., M. H. Amini. Fission-track dating of the Green Mountain Kimberlite diatreme, near Boulder, Colorado. The Mountain Geologist, v. 18 (1981), pages 19-22.

Lester, A. P., E. E. Larson, G. L. Farmer, C. R. Stern, and J. A. Funk. Neoproterozoic kimberlite emplacement in the Front Range, Colorado. Rocky Mountain Geology, v. 36, no. 1 (2001), pages 1-12.

McCandless, T.E. Kimberlites: mantle expressions of deep-seated subduction. In: J.J. Gurney, J.L. Gurney, M.D. Pacsoe and S.H. Richardson, Editors, Proceedings of the Seventh International Kimberlite Conference vol. 2 (1999), pp. 545–549.

Beautiful... poop.

Lava Cave Minerals Actually Microbe Poop

Actually, that's the real title of the article, too. National Geographic tells it like it is, baby.

My two main thoughts upon reading this:

1) So wait, we may be able to find evidence that life once existed on Mars by hunting down ancient lava tubes and scouring them for poo?

2) I bet our microbial poop is TOTALLY prettier than that substandard Martian microbial poop. Suck it, Mars.

Cats are manipulative little brats.

But we already knew this.

Cats 'exploit' humans by purring; apparently there is a particular sort of purr - or tone that can be put in a purr - that motivates humans to get moving and fill the food bowl because it's just that annoying. It's plausible, considering the "soliciting purr" does have similarities in frequency to a baby crying... and anyone that's heard a baby cry knows that it's one of the most annoying sounds in the world, and we're just biologically programmed to do whatever it takes to make the awful noise stop. From the paper itself:

Embedded within the naturally low-pitched purr, we found a high frequency voiced component, reminiscent of a cry or meow, that was crucial in determining urgency and pleasantness ratings.

Now that is interesting. It's even more interesting that it may well be a learned behavior, though that makes sense as well. Cats are quick to learn anything if it means they'll get food or a treat. Meow in mom's ear in the morning? Gets your thrown off the bed. Purr in the world's most annoying fashion? Normally mom's fair enough that a purr won't make her mad.

I actually don't think I've got personal experience with this "soliciting purr," probably because I've got both my boys on a gravity feeder. Which would explain why they're both chubbing up. In the future I may have to switch to rationing their food, so we'll see if I get to hear the annoying uber-purr then. As things stand right now, when my bad kitty (Loki) wants me to get up, he does it by throwing things off the shelves, on to the floor. Or licking my eyelids. (I'm not making it up.) I think a manipulative purr would definitely be preferable.

By the way

The world didn't end yesterday.

Next in big news: Sun STILL rising in the east!

A Klingon Christmas Carol

Seriously. Why can't this be playing in Colorado? Curse you, Minnesota!!!!

“Klingons wouldn’t care if Scrooge wasn’t charitable and nice,” added Kidder. The tale, as it is told in the translated version is that of a Klingon who has no courage, nor honor: two virtues of Klingon society. “The spirits that visit Scrooge are all trying to help him become an honorable and courageous warrior.”

Will Phillips Is My Hero

You may not have heard about Will Phillips until now. I hadn't either; this morning I was going through the Friendly Atheist RSS feed and saw this post that links to several video clips about him.

Will won't stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance because:

"I've always tried to analyze things because I want to be lawyer," Will said. "I really don't feel that there's currently liberty and justice for all."

He's taken a stand (by sitting down) about the way LGBT Americans are treated, and he's gotten sent to the principal's office over it. He's faced a lot of loud hostility from his fellow students. And he's not backing down.

Oh yeah, and he's only ten years old.

So this is me adding my voice to all of Will's supporters on the internet. You're my hero, Will. You're one smart, strong kid, and I can't wait to see the name taking and ass-kicking you'll be doing when you grow up.

Like most people who are no longer in the public school system, it's been a long time since I've been put in a position where I'd have to say the Pledge of Allegiance. The last time that I can remember was at a city council meeting that I attended as part of an assignment for my basic political science class. On that occasion, I stood up for the Pledge, but I didn't put my hand over my heart, and I sure didn't say it. Like Will, I feel like there isn't "liberty and justice for all" in the US right now. (Not that there really has been in the past.)

And I have the added utter contempt for the phrase "under God," for its absolute hypocrisy when we live in a country with the separation of church and state enshrined in the constitution, for the disgusting stain of McCarthyism that has still not been expunged after fifty years, and for the hatred and attacks aimed at me and my fellow atheists by the people who like to point at that single stupid phrase to justify the lie that we're a "Christian nation" and I should "love it or leave it."

We adults don't encounter the Pledge often, and I'm grateful for it. The whole thing makes me uncomfortable, because I don't agree with the Pledge, and I don't like the nationalist overtones. As an adult, you don't have many opportunities to take issue with the Pledge (unless you're in public office, maybe) other than writing cranky blog posts about it. It warms my heart that Will (and some other kids here and there across the country) are taking their chance to make their point, and strongly. If it gets other people of any age to think about what's going on, it's surely worth it.

A bouquet of Jellyfish and Algae

Jellyfish swarm northward in warming world

Harmful Algal Blooms - HABs

So, Japan is being invaded by swarms of jellyfish, and we're being inundated with stinking, toxin oozing slime of the variety that doesn't carry firearms to townhall meetings. The simple fact sheet on the algae doesn't speculate as to cause, but the jellyfish are being pretty strongly linked to rising ocean temperatures.

Really, the jellyfish article is fascinating. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the image of a fishing boat capsizing due to a net bulging with giant, alien-looking jellyfish.

Hm... I wonder if that means out the next bizarre theory about what took out the dinosaurs will be jellyfish... of DEATH. Or maybe the jellyfish are in cahoots with the algae. You never know.

More on the Boobies

What Orac has to say about the new USPSTF recommendations on breast cancer screening:

Whether the cost is worth it or not comes down to two levels. First and foremost, what matters is the woman being screened, what she values, and what her tolerance is for paying the price of screening at an earlier age, such as a high risk for overdiagnosis, excessive biopsies, and overtreatment in order to detect cancer earlier and a relatively low probability of avoiding death from breast cancer because of screening. Then there's the policy level, where we as a society have to decide what tradeoffs we're willing to make to save a life that otherwise would have been lost to breast cancer. Although screening programs and recommendations should be based on the best science we currently have, deciding upon the actual cutoffs of who is and is not screened and how often unavoidably involves value judgments.

That's putting it well. Somewhere in the comments on the post, he also states that he wishes the whole "anxiety" thing weren't being so generally overplayed. That I agree with as well, since it's the thing that many women have grabbed on to, and it also the source of the accusations that the recommendations are "patronizing." Considering that the detrimental effect of anxiety is not being played up in the recommendations, but rather that's coming from the reporting, I think it'd be more fair to say that the press is being patronizing. Which isn't a surprise for anyone.

Anyway, a good post. And unlike me, Orac knows what he's talking about. His second post on the subject is also very worth reading.

A plethora of nifty links

Many cool things that require little comment today.

Eric Lusito - After the Wall: Traces of the Soviet Empire. Link via io9. Haunting pictures of the modern, skeletal remains of Soviet Russia.

Dwarf Goat More Reptile Than Mammal. They apparently were doing just fine in their little evolutionary niche... until they ran in to us. That's what they get for tasting so good.

Crocodile Gets F***ed Up by Angry Hippos. Not the real title of the article, but accurate. And scary. Really scary. I will never forgive Disney for their lies in the original Fantasia.

Many scientific experts say using Mayan end-is-near calendar is off base. Just another good anti-2012 nonsense article. And I linked to it because I'm an unabashed Phil Plait fangirl.

The Going Rogue Index. The unauthorized index of Sarah Palin's book by Slate. It made me giggle. And the single sentence from the book they included certainly made me feel better about myself as a writer. I still wish that woman would just go away, though.

Everyone's favorite: Boobies.

From Skepchick: No, Ladies, the New Breast Cancer Guidelines Aren’t Patronizing

I mean, not a lot for me to say here. I agree. The guidelines aren't patronizing. From the AP article about this:

"Overall, I think it really took courage for them to do this," she said. "It does ask us as doctors to change what we do and how we communicate with patients. That's no small undertaking."

Considering the reaction that this is getting, courage is a fairly reasonable word to use. I did go look over the recommendations myself, just to see what kind of impression I got. It certainly wasn't patronizing or patriarchal. I tend to think of myself as a woman with a big feminist chip on her shoulder, but the reaction to the recommendations has just left me stunned.

I think the issue is over the use of the word "anxiety." As in, the panel that came to these conclusions feels that earlier screening causes a lot of unnecessary anxiety to go with the false positives and unnecessary biopsies. Perhaps the women who have latched on to the word "anxiety" are probably imagining an avuncular stand-in-for-the-patriarchy sort of doctor, telling us to not worry our pretty little heads over things, because anxiety causes wrinkles. While I think the assumption is understandable***, and perhaps the use of "anxiety" could be a bit better explained, the women who are saying bitter, nasty things about the patriarchy need to chill the hell out. The anxiety we're talking about here is the soul-crushing, sleep-killing fear that comes with a false diagnosis or (even worse) a false positive off of a biopsy. Fear and anxiety like that could significantly affect the health of the person feeling it, particularly when we're talking about an age group that's moving in to the chronic conditions of later life (e.g. hypertension) that can be severely exacerbated by stress.

Another quote from the AP article:

"The task force advice is based on its conclusion that screening 1,300 women in their 50s to save one life is worth it, but that screening 1,900 women in their 40s to save a life is not, Brawley wrote.

On its face, I almost agreed with this quote before I sat down and really thought about the anxiety question. If there are negative effects and even mortality associated with the added stress of breast cancer screening, and if those negative effects mean that more women of this hypothetical 1900 suffer and die than the one woman who is saved... then yes. The numbers would say that it's more beneficial for the population to stop the screening. If you're that one woman in your 40s, that's not a lot of comfort, though - and that's how these things tend to work. (Very similar to vaccinations... it's not comforting if you're the 1 in a million that has a rare adverse reaction to the vaccination, but ultimately more people are saved when the population is vaccinated.)

The real stunner for me was the recommendation in regards to breast self-examination. I grew up in a time when that was really big. When I lived with my parents, my mom always had a card hanging from the shower head on how to do the self-exam. And recently, I also read The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde. While there are many things in that book I disagreed with Lorde about (particularly her stance on alternative treatments) I was right there with her on the importance of exams. From what the report says, the practice apparently just doesn't have enough efficacy and carries too many of the anxiety/false positive risk factors. Still, I have a hard time just letting the self-exam go as easily as the idea of having my boobs smashed wafer-thin between two plates of glass. In many ways, I think the self-exam has become a little ritual women do to ward off the specter of breast cancer - and if the recommendations are true, it's about as effective as throwing salt over your shoulder to ward off bad luck.




*** Consider, for example, the way women are both demonized and patronized in regards to abortion. Laws that require women to view ultrasounds, or have multiple consultations, are certainly patronizing since the implicit assumption is that we're incapable of understanding what an abortion functionally does.

BIFs are BFFs

Short and sweet, since I'm trying to work on my grad school application today. I've gotten to the most terrifying part - the "statement of purpose."

Banded Iron Formations: A New Depositional Model

I don't personally know that much about banded iron formations (BIFs); we talked about them a little in geochemistry. They're basically very old rocks (between 1.7 and 3.8 billion years old) that show a very distinctive banding of iron rich and iron deficient layers. There's been a lot of debate about how they might have formed, so the new possible model is interesting. If nothing else, BIFs tell us something very important, just like the old komatiites we can still find, namely that you can't find any younger than 1.7 billion years. That means around that time, something big changed in the Earth's geochemistry, as well as in its internal heating system. (Or really, several interconnected somethings.) I'm looking forward to when we know what exactly the change was, because that has a lot of implications in regards to how planets like ours form and change over time.

ZOMG SQUEE

I finally got off my behind and started e-mailing faculty in regards to grad school. And the professor that I most desperately want to work with just let me know that she's currently got an application pending for NSF funding for a project which - if it gets funded - is EXACTLY what I want to work on. And that IF it gets funded, she will need a student who is interested in working on that project and getting a thesis out of it.

OMGOMGOMG WHY AM I IN CLASS RIGHT NOW SO I HAVE TO SIT STILL AND CAN'T RUN AROUND IN CIRCLES AND SHRIEK?????

Breathe, girl. Remember to breathe...

(I think this calls for nightly funding rain dances. Pleasepleaseplease keep your fingers crossed for me!)

2012: The Infographic

This wonderful infographic does a very good job of summarizing the whacky beliefs of the 2012 doomsayers and the rational answer to them.

My favorite dino debate

Bones Show Biggest Dinosaurs Had Hot Blood

The first time I ever heard about the warm-blooded/cold-blooded debate was when I was quite little, courtesy of my older brother. He was going through his dinosaur phase at the time. (I'm convinced that all little kids - particularly of the male variety - go through a dinosaur phase.) At the time, it seemed kind of ridiculous, since everyone knew that dinosaurs were big lizards - hey, that was even what their name means, right? But I've felt more and more drawn toward the warm-blooded camp the more I've seen about feathered dinosaurs - and also the more videos I've seen of large modern day reptiles. My imagination just likes the idea of a fast, scary, warm-blooded T-rex a lot.

The new research fits well with a previous study on dinosaur cardiovascular anatomy, based on a CT scan of a 66-million year old dinosaur fossil with a preserved heart.

...wow. And I thought the preserved soft tissue thing was cool. However, I did some googling around trying to find more about this bit of awesomeness, and was pretty disappointed. There are some articles that mention it, but then there's this: Dinosaur with a Heart of Stone which basically says, "Well, we thought it was a heart but it's actually a normal concretion." The link in the article isn't that helpful, other than to confirm that the article from Science and the Wired article are talking about the same thing. But from what I've been able to sniff out so far on Google, there are a lot of articles from 2000 about how awesome the dinosaur with the heart is, and then a couple in 2001 claiming that it's actually just a concretion. There's this site about the dinosaur, Willo but it doesn't really address the counter claims at all. So I have no idea what to think, here. If there are any more recent papers or refutations, they're not to be found easily with internet searches. Maybe that means the initial paper stands as far as people are concerned, and that's why it comes in to play in this newest round of the debate.

Other than the article on Science, I'll also note that there were a lot of creationist sites trumpeting that "the dino heart isn't real!" Because, don't you know, the entire case of evolution hinged on a preserved dinosaur heart. Or something. Whatever.

I also thought this was pretty interesting:

But other anatomical studies have led to different conclusions: A survey of dinosaur noses, for example, found that dinos lacked special bones in their nose, called turbinates, that protect against water loss during rapid breathing and are found in 99 percent of warm-blooded animals.

It just kind of makes me wonder where the turbinates came from, since presumably birds have them. Or what kind of pressures would cause them to evolve in birds... and when that happened. (Since what I'm thinking is... well, what if the dinosaurs were warm blooded, but conditions on Earth were such that they didn't need these special nose bones at the time, and things changed later.) Lots of interesting questions there. I could probably go looking for papers about it, but I doubt I'd be able to understand much in them.

And the debate rages on.

The link between rock music and oil

From the Department of "Correlation Does Not Equal Causation" I bring you this amazingly awesome infographic:
Rock (and U.S. Oil Production) Is Dead

I think we should just point at this one every time someone starts committing that fallacy. Or I guess we could just argue that the rockmeisters of old used gasoline powered guitars, and when US production started to fall off, that foreign stuff just didn't have the oomfta.

What, you mean my ladybrain can do math?

The Math Gap

The majority of the girls who have been chosen to represent the United States in international mathematics competitions come from a set of about 20 high schools with elite math teams.

This extreme concentration of talent strongly indicates the crucial role that environmental factors, not just innate ability, play in shaping the accomplishments of students. “It’s significant that the top girls are coming from a very, very small subset of schools with strong math programs,” says Ellison. “That suggests most of the girls who could be doing well, aren’t doing well. The thousands and thousands of other schools in the United States must have a lot of talent, too, but it’s not coming out.”

That is very interesting. And something that, as a nerd of the female variety, I don't find all that surprising. I may spend a lot of time complaining about those darn kids I'm in university with right now, but high school wasn't that long ago. I remember the general pressures from teachers and peers, and I have no doubt that those can effect one's ability to learn and perform academically. I was actually lucky, at that age. I was on my school's quiz bowl team, which was composed of unabashed nerds, and I think that was good for me. I also did get to go to a math competition one year - I didn't make it past the first round - but I do recall how few other girls were around. The only reason I was even there myself was because I'd been encouraged by my parents and my math teacher at the time.

I have something of a tortured relationship with math, to be honest. I'm not too bad at it. I'm even good at it, sometimes. But I crapped out after I finished my third semester of calculus because, simply, I don't really like it. The third semester of calculus was actually one further than I needed to go for my degree, but at the time I did it because I was considering a minor in math, and because the professor I'd had for calculus II talked me in to it. And I'm not sorry. But I'm also mostly not sorry I stopped there.

That's where the love-hate relationship comes in. Sometimes I love math. It's beautiful. It's fascinating. It's a puzzle. Sometimes I hate it, because I find it so incredibly frustrating, and it makes me feel so incredibly dumb, and those times inevitably lead to me screaming and throwing my book across the room. (You think I'm kidding, but I'm not.) In the interest of not causing my fiance or my cats to end up with PTSD, it's probably a good thing that I did call it quits. I may be smart enough - more than smart enough - for math, but I don't have the patience, or the right attitude for it, I guess.

But sometimes, I still feel a little guilty. Because every time this issue is brought up, this idea that Maybe Women Just Aren't Good At Math, I'm forced to remember that I was, and that I gave up on it. Then again, if you're struggling up the ladder to upper division mathematics, you should probably have a better reason to do it than to make a point to a bunch of dicky misogynists that will dismiss you as the exception rather than the rule anyway.

Scientology at CU

This semester, two of my classes are in Munzinger, the psychology building. Never mind that neither of them are psych classes (one's my Japanese History class, the other my Women's Lit class). I'm guessing it's a space consideration.

Yesterday, I saw several signs posted around the building, which said things like, "Ritalin: Sterility is only one side effect" and along the bottom it had little bits of paper you could pull off for CCHR.ORG. So, I was curious and did a bit of googling and looking around so that you don't have to.

As I suspected from the anti-psychology messages on the fliers, CCHR is a front group for the Church of Scientology. Actually, the organization admits almost as much on their own website; they say that they were co-founded by scientologists and Dr. Szasz (a fairly well-known mental illness denier), but then quickly go on to say that there are plenty of non-scientologist members since people from all faiths can recognize how utterly evil psychology is. Perhaps; there are vaccine denialists of all faiths and shapes, and I imagine there are a similar spread of psychology deniers. CCHR is basically dedicated to promoting Scientology's lies about mental illness. They have a very lovely virtual "museum" that's all about how utterly evil psychology is. I'm pretty impressed by their website, honestly. It's slick.

After reading through their FAQs, the basic thesis of CCHR is that psychiatric illness should be treated with nutrition and a healthy environment, that it's caused by physical illness that should be treated medically only, and that the mentally ill who are violent should be remanded to the criminal justice system because they cannot be cured by the evil psychiatrists.

Wow, but that makes me angry. Now, the vast majority of mentally ill people are not violent in any way, and from what I've been able to find, those with increased risk of becoming violent also have substance abuse problems. But I found NEJM article that sums it up nicely:

Thus, symptoms of psychiatric illness, rather than the diagnosis itself, appear to confer the risk of violent behavior. So patients with schizophrenia who are free of the acute psychotic symptoms that increase this risk, such as having paranoid thoughts or hearing voices that command them to hurt others (called command auditory hallucinations), may be no more likely to be violent than people without a mental disorder.

So the idea of tossing someone who has been afflicted by an illness and may not have been responsible for their own actions in to the criminal justice system is pretty disturbing to me. Particularly when you'd be throwing them in to the criminal justice system and then not treating them if CCHR had its way.

But this is also the sort of attack I'd really expect from a Scientology front group. This goes right along with the infamous Tom Cruise attack on Brooke Shields for her decision to be treated for postpartum depression:

There's ways, [with] vitamins and through exercise and various things... I'm not saying that that isn't real. That's not what I'm saying. That's an alteration of what I'm saying. I'm saying that drugs aren't the answer, these drugs are very dangerous. They're mind-altering, antipsychotic drugs. And there are ways of doing it without that so that we don't end up in a brave new world. The thing that I'm saying about Brooke is that there's misinformation, okay. And she doesn't understand the history of psychiatry.

As a profession, psychology's got a spotty, scary history, to be sure. It's certainly not perfect, and it's certainly got a long way to go. (Consider, for example, how long they kept homosexuality in the diagnostic manual.) There are a lot of fields right now, including medicine, that have the same sort of cringe-inducing history. Nearly any institution you could look at, from the mental health field to democracy in the United States, has some stupendously awful things that you could pull from its history.

And as an organization eager to attack on the basis of historical malfeasance, Scientology hasn't got a leg to stand on. But we already knew that Scientology as an organization is cowardly, underhanded, and hypocritical.

The big question is if the institution as it stands works in a provable way.

Modern medicine? Yes.

Democracy in the United States? Most of the time.

Psychology? For therapies that have been well researched and proven, such as the treatment of scizophrenia with antipsychotic medication, yes.

Scientology? Well, it depends on how we're going to classify "working." If we're talking sucking money out of people while mentally abusing them, it's a definitive yes. If we're talking about just the very basic accomplishment of doing more good than harm, no.

What warms my heart is that several of the fliers already have a handwritten note on them that links the organization to Scientology.

Further reading:
Neurologica Blog: Mental Illness Denial - Part I
Neurologica Blog: Mental Illness Denial - Part II
Neurologica Blog: Mental Illness Denial - Part III
Neurologica Blog: Mental Illness Denial - Part IV
Neurologica Blog: Mental Illness Denial - Part V

Save the Weenies!

Penis tissue replaced in the lab

You know, this story just begs for clever things to be said about it, ranging from the cute to sarcastic, about the surgical answer to bunny Viagra. But honestly, today I don't have the heart, which is sad because I'm sure I could normally think of an at least mildly funny thing or two to say.

I can't make jokes about sex, of the bunny variety or not today, because I'm still too depressed and angry about the Stupak Amendment on the House health care reform bill. Because you see, when we start talking about weenies and the importance of curing erectile dysfunction (and don't get me wrong here, my heart goes out to the guys that can't get it up, because everyone deserves to have a decent sex life), then that inevitably makes me think of Viagra and all the jokes that go with it. And of course the cruel, ironic non-joke from several years ago when I was on a health insurance plan that made me shell an absolutely stupid amount of money out of pocket every month for my birth control pills, but would have covered my Viagra prescription if I were a man.

So yeah, it's great. Save the weenies. The story itself is cute, funny, and honestly fascinating from the perspective of science.

But after getting punched in the face by yet another reminder that the reproductive concerns of women don't mean - pardon the expression - dick in this country, I just can't.

Algae... OF DEATH

There are a lot of things I think about, on the topic of algae. The intensely creepy hair-like strands of it that live in the McCauley Warm Springs near Valles Caldera spring instantly to mind, for example. It was a nice hike and a fun soak, but I've seen The Ring and Ju-On too many times to be comfortable around anything that basically looks like long strands of black hair floating in water. Or I think about the Marimo that I got in Sapporo when I was visiting my friends Nick and Chelsea, which are still happily living on my bookshelf and looking adorable. And of course, we cannot forget the distinctive fart-like smell that algae tends to produce any time it's having a party somewhere.

But murder? Not even on the list.

I'm not sure if it's deadly fart-smell or something else that have a few scientists thinking that cyanobacteria have helped murder a lot of species throughout Earth history.

It's an interesting hypothesis, right up there with insects killed the dinosaurs. I'm not sure if I really buy it, though. If nothing else, there's the pretty darn good geological evidence for at least the Creataceous extinction, which is pretty hard to work around. It strains my credulity just a little to envision that, despite the fact that a giant rock came rocketing out of space to punch the Earth in the face, it was actually algae or bugs that took out the dinosaurs. As a contributing factor, or Mother Nature kicking the dinosaurs while they were down, okay, maybe.

It sounds like there are a lot of people on the case with ideas on how they could disprove the idea, like seeing if algae could even pump out that many toxins, so we shall see what comes of that. (Woohoo! Stromatolites!) Sadly, once you get further back than the Permian extinction we really don't have much evidence at all on what caused other mass extinctions - not that the evidence for the Permian extinction is even that clear. The rocks are just too old and too rare, so I suppose murderous cyanobacteria is fair enough to throw in to the ring for a try.

The Tsavo Man-Eaters

I really love the movie The Ghost and the Darkness; if you've never seen it, go forth and do so. I'll wait.

The topic of the movie is the two man-eating lions that terrorized the railroad camp in Tsavo, in Kenya. The movie itself is based off of the account by the engineer in charge of designing the bridge over the river there, Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson. As you can imagine, just how close Patterson's account came to the actual truth is something of a point of curiosity. Patterson did indeed hunt down and kill the two man-eating lions, and their remains now reside at the Chicago Field Museum. The lions on display there look a little to the small side now, but that's apparently because they were put together for display from the original lion skins, which had been cut down to be rugs for Lt. Colonel Patterson.

Anyway, since the original remains exist, there's been some very cool research done about the historical incident - including a new study about how many people the lions actually ate. I find it fascinating, particularly since they could track this by looking at various isotopic ratios. You really are what you eat.

The other thing I've found interesting are the possible reasons why those particular lions started eating humans. Apparently one of them had some bad dental problems which would have made it difficult for him to hunt and eat normally. There's just something sad and a little beautiful about two male lions hunting together, the one helping the other get food that he could eat.

...of course, considering that food was humans, well... brrr.

A girl and her pet rock (3)

Well, I did my photomicrographs of my thin section today, and I think they turned out really well! There's some beautiful examples of what calcite looks like in thin section if nothing else. I'm still sad that all of my olivines have been altered by weathering, though; normal olivines are very bright and pretty. Altered, they're just interesting shades of gray.

Pictures of my thin section!

Also, I've got some nice phlogopite mica in my sample. Phlogopite is a hydrated mica; in the pictures that I have, it's very hard to tell it apart from biotite, actually. The tip off is that it's in kimberlite (very hydrated) and that under plane light it looks different as you rotate it. It goes from honey-colored to almost transparent, which is unfortunately not something you can really show with photos.