Clarion Blog Post Up! And Skepticamp!

New post of mine up over at the Clarion Blog. I talk about my seven days of drilling in the Bighorn Basin, this time from the perspective of what the experience felt like.

Skepticamp Colorado Springs was today, and it was awesome and tons of fun. This one was split into two rooms, which put us all in the unfortunate position of having to choose between speakers - but also meant there was more variety. There were a lot of fun talks. As always, I loved Bryan and Baxter, Karen Stollznow, and Stuart Robbins. John Rising did a great job organizing the event, and also did an interesting talk on the history of ghost photography.

We also had a couple of guys from the Airforce Academy: Dr. Carlos Bertha and Dr. Barry Fagin. Dr. Bertha started the morning with an interesting talk about Fideism, which is basically the position of unreasoning "because I said so" faith. It was enough philosophy to be interesting but not so much it made me want to tear my hair out, and it was generally interesting. And it was a good explanation why sometimes, you just have to give up an argument and agree to disagree, because no amount of logic will really penetrate. Dr. Fagin I had more mixed feelings on. He gave two talks, actually. The first in the morning was basically a libertarian ranty rant about how we should be skeptical about politics, where he said he'd be goring his own ox as well but didn't really. He said some things about economics that I desperately wish Mike had been there for, since I'm pretty sure I've heard Mike say bitchy things about just those things in the past. But Dr. Fagin's second talk was absolutely awesome, about how skepticism brings with it a rich inner life. It was extremely well done and was a nice end cap for the day.

I did a talk as well, about the basics of the Bighorn Basin Coring Project, what we're hoping to find out about the PETM, what the PETM and ELMO are, and why this is an important topic to discuss. I moved my talk so that I could see Stuart's entire topic. This meant that I actually gave mine at the same time our local global climate change denier was giving his. Which I think was probably for the best, or we might well have just been heckling the crap out of each other during our respective talks and never would have gotten anywhere. I feel like my talk went pretty well. I was nervous as hell. I always am about public speaking, and this I was trying to talk about some basic isotope ratio stuff, and I still get so turned around with those at times. But apparently I didn't sound nervous at all, and I was enthused and interesting, so go me! I think that teaching has helped my public speaking, to the point that I at least manage to not throw a lot of garbage "uh" and "you know" in, even if I'm nervous.

Correction from my talk: I got on an excited roll and said something about there being a rainforest of some sort in Antarctica. Let the record show that this was a mistake on my part, where I confused two separate and interesting things in my head. There's evidence of a very high-latitude (80N paleolatitude) seasonal rainforest in Arctic Canada during the middle Eocene¹. And there's evidence that during the PETM, Antarctica had a subtropical humid episode - so it got a lot warmer and a lot more humid than today's Antarctica². So there was season rainforest that moved up into the Arctic, but I have no idea what the vegetation might have been like in Antarctica during the PETM. I tried to do a quick and dirty paper search and didn't come up with anything, so it could be that we just don't know. Antarctica isn't the most hospitable place to go searching for fossilized pollen. But if you don't believe me about the proto-Potomac, read this cool paper.

Boy, is my face red.

Anyway, my parents came to Skepticamp! It was their first one. Though I'm sure it wasn't at all intimidating after going to TAM. But my parents are super awesome.

Afterward, we all went to Jack Quinn's, and I drank two ciders despite the fact that I had no business drinking anything stronger than water after the Evan-induced beer binge last night. (Though I somehow managed to escape my richly-deserved hangover this morning, so who knows.) I had some excellent bangers and mash.

Where will the next Colorado Skepticamp be?



1 - Jahren, A.H., and Sternberg, L.S.L., 2003, Humidity estimate for the middle Eocene Arctic rain forest: Geology, v. 31, p. 463-466.

2- Robert, C., and Kennett, J.P., 1994, Antarctic subtropical humid episode at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary: Clay-mineral evidence: Geology, v. 22, p. 211-214.

Fright Night

I have never actually seen the original Fright Night, but my best friend Kat has, and she seemed to think the remake did just fine. As someone completely new to the franchise, I felt like it was well worth my $8.50 at the local AMC.

I don't think I need to get spoilery, since it's not the sort of movie that I want to dissect when it comes to plot and characterization. It was just fun. The pacing was excellent, the humor and horror were mixed well. Colin Farell was delightfully creepy in both the "holy shit, vampire" and "yucky dude from next door that hits on your mom" kind of way. David Tennant was in leather pants.

Let me repeat that for my fellow Doctor Who fangirls: David Tennant was in leather pants.

There was suspense, and creepiness, and just enough ridiculous gore to remind me that even though I was squirming in my seat at times, the movie was one big nodding, winking joke about vampires. ("Jerry the vampire?") It makes me happy when I see movies where vampires are giant, gross bastards instead of whiny drama queens who want to spend all eternity writing poetry and gazing soulfully at teenaged girls.

And the part I liked the most? The characters weren't dumb. It's so rare to see a horror (even if it should be "horror" here, I suppose) movie where the characters are actually competent. There wasn't really a time in the entire movie where I felt like shouting at the screen, as if that would prevent someone from doing something hideously stupid, and that's rare indeed.

I recommend it, definitely.

Loki's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

This is not a happy kitty.

The kitties went to the vet today for their annual checkup. Or rather, I took them to the vet, because it's not like they were just going to hop in the car and drive themselves over there.

Tengu has gotten wise to my normal trick of leaving the carriers out and open, then luring the cats inside at the appropriate time. I ended up having to corner him in my bedroom and stuff him into the carrier. However, Tengu also got a Gold Star from the vet for being in a fine example of a cat his age and in perfect health. It was apparently the only gold star the vet had given out all day.

Loki, on the other hand. Loki. There was screaming and growling and hissing and spitting. There were one or two swipes at the vet, though he didn't seem to have his claws out for it. They had to try to wrap him in a blanket, he was being so bad. And there was no way in hell he was going to quietly let the vet look at his ears, which he's still having problems with. So he got a jab in the butt (plus hissing, spitting, and snarling) with some sedatives.

And he fought the sedation the whole time. He's still fighting it now. This cat will not just go to sleep. I always knew Loki was stubborn, but this is a whole new level of Fuck You I Ain't Gonna And You Can't Make Me. At home, Loki is slowly wobbling around like a drunk, and every time he looks like he's going to fall asleep he gets up and wobbles around some more. I was trying to just keep him in my bedroom to start with, but then he just would not stop trying to get up on the windowsill, even after I had to rescue him because he almost fell off. I think I've got him contented with a sunbeam coming through the patio door now. Maybe.

And he keeps glaring at me with this eyes barely open and his nictating membrane at half mast, which is both hilarious and creepy at the same time. It's a look that promises there will be hell to pay, just as soon as there's just one of me instead of seven or eight wobbling around his field of view.

However, all of this did have a good purpose. It turns out the ear problems he's been having for years are because he has ear mites. A weird, asymptomatic case of ear mites. Because the gunk coming out of his ears doesn't look like ear mite gunk, and he's never given them to Tengu despite the fact that they're very contagious and Tengu will not leave his ears alone, yet Loki's ears are just crawling with mites. Bizarre. And the vet also said ear mites tends to be a young cat thing, and a farm cat thing, so maybe Loki got them before I picked him up (since he was born on a farm if memory serves) and has just had them ever since. Either way, I've got a treatment for him, so hopefully that means his ears will clear up and we won't have to go through this drama with him again.

Hopefully. Next time they go to the vet, it's for vaccinations, so there may be more of the good drugs in his future.

Gilmore Hill pictures and videos

Here's my Picasa album of all the pictures I took at Gilmore Hill: Gilmore Hill Drilling

And a few videos:
Core water cannon
Breaking pipes at sunset
Lowering the mast
Moving the rig to the new location

My BBCP: Nights 6 and 7, That's All Folks

The night shift, from left to right: Gabe, AJ, Brandon, Brady, Bianca, and me

As of right now, drilling is finished! We turned the B-hole (not to be confused with the Gilmore Hill A-hole) over to the day shift with less than fifty feet left to drill, and they got that done in a bit over an hour. So Gilmore Hill is finished, and that was our third and final site! So now it's just about analyzing what little initial data we have, and biding our time until January, when we all get to meet up in Bremen and do another marathon of SCIENCE!

Will ended up deciding to go deep on the first whole, so on night six that's what we did. The returns took a lot longer, and we had a lot of down time during the night shift because the drill bit had been worn almost entirely smooth. That required tripping out of the hole and back in, so that was like two hours gone. After that, we drilled at a reasonable pace, but by the end it was taking 20 minutes per core and there were some really clay-rich intervals that took forever (relatively speaking) to drill through. There was still a hundred and some feet left on the first hole when we handed it over to day shift in the morning, and they finished it up.

However, that night we did have some entertainment. Some of it was not so fun, like the part where I got bitten seven times by various mosquitoes. The most exciting part of the night was when a bat flew through the open door of the RV and couldn't find its way back out. It eventually flew into the cabinets and hid. The poor thing looked so scared. Gabe ended up using a dish towel to grab it, then let the bat go outside. It flew away alright, so hopefully it was fine and caught a lot more bugs that night!

This last shift we started off just waiting for the first hole to get logged, then we moved the rig to the new location, a whole fifteen feet away from the first hole. When we finally did start drilling, it was just gogogo like the first night. Except since we weren't doing sampling on this second core, it felt a lot less hectic because we effectively had at least one extra set of hands at all times. So even though we were getting core every ten minutes, I think poor Gabe was getting a little bored at times. AJ seemed determined to get through all 200 feet on his own - we're not sure if this was because Doug spent like half an hour at the start of the shift telling him it just couldn't be done, or because he and Brandon were just convinced that if they didn't see the thing through to the end themselves, they'd somehow get suckered in to one more night shift. But in the end, we had to call it good at about 150 feet since the rig needed to be refueled.

But it's done for sure now! And day shift has to clean up the drilling site HAHAHA. We went and got breakfast, and now I'm going to try to have a short little sleep and be up by around 1 or so. Our plan is to go hang out in Cody for a couple of hours, and then have a big dinner for all the Gilmore Hill crew. This will hopefully help me get back onto normal hours. And then I'll be heading home early tomorrow morning, so I will be back in Denver before the weekend!

My BBCP: Night 5, I'll Be Sleepin' Like a Log

The previous shift was so ridiculously busy that you'll notice I didn't even post about it until tonight. Because it was GOGOGOGO and then I sort of fell into bed and passed out for seven hours.

We're at Gilmore Hill now, which is our third and final site. In good news, it's a lot less windy than Polecat Bench, which I'm a fan of. And while we no longer have the most scenic portapotty in Wyoming, it's also not a wobbly hellbooth on the edge of a very steep drop, so I'm counting that as a win too. In more challenging news, we're on BLM land that's a preserve for wild mustangs. Which means that we have to keep everything in a 50 by 50 foot pad of land that's marked by little pink flags. So everything is very cramped together. And BLM has been by to check multiple times to make sure we're not leaving our box, so trust me, we're being very good about staying in the allowed area. This means the portapotty is right next to the RV, which could get unpleasant a few days into the project. It also means that the noise from the drill is pretty crazy at times since we're really close to it.

And the area is also absolutely beautiful. check my Twitter feed for many pictures. The great thing about being on nights (aside from the impossibility of getting a sunburn and the lack of heat) is that we get both the sunrise and the sunset every day, while day shift gets only OMGSOHOT AHAHAHAHA.

Last night, we didn't really get to enjoy the picturesque location. As soon as AJ and Brandon (our driller and his assistant) were on site, it was gogogo all nigh. Day shift had only drilled for a couple of hours, so we were rocketing through the shallowest part of the hole, with only a short break so AJ could eat a salad for his lunch. We processed well over 200 feet of core last night, which is a new record for the project. Pretty much as soon as we had one core packaged and logged, we'd have another one waiting. As you can see, we literally filled the rack and had to start double stacking.

So yeah, by the time day shift came to relieve us, we were all ready to drop. And unfortunately, Gilmore Hill is further from Greybull than Polecat Bench was from Powell, so we get a bit less sleep due to the longer drive. Plus night shift is borrowing Dr. Gingerich's old blazer. I get so motion sick in that car when it's on regular roads, it's not even funny. So it's a 40 minute hell drive for me, and on the other end I have about an hour where I just can't even look at food.

Thankfully, at the rate this project is going, I don't think I'm going to have too many roundtrips in the Vomit Comet. We already hit the original target for the first hole during the day shift. Will Clyde (the man in charge on this shift) decided to just go as deep as we could, so we'll keep going like we did on Polecat Bench and drill until we're out of pipe. That'll probably finish tonight or tomorrow, and then the second hole is going to be a nice shallow one just so we can try to catch ELMO twice.

ELMO is the thing I'm interested in - it was a smaller carbon excursion during the Eocene, and if we get good data I want to see if I can do some comparative work between it and the PETM in this area. (Of course, this is all pie in the sky and we won't really know what I'm going to do probably until January when we're finished in Bremen.) We've all been nervous about getting ELMO in the cores here, since this is our chance - but there are some big channel sands in the area. And sands, while cool in their own right, won't have climate data for us like muds do. So I was very tense last night as we were going down to 150 feet, since Will projected ELMO here is 150-200 feet in depth. And when we started the evening, we were in a big sand. Then around 80 feet deep we started getting muds, and that lasted until below 200 feet. So I think we're good! It's pretty exciting.

(Also as a note, ELMO is what we're at Gilmore Hill for. We're not going to get the PETM at all here, since drilling to that depth would require a bigger rig and a lot more time in funds, since it's so deep.)

So that was our day yesterday. This shift is turning out to be much more relaxed already...