4.5 Billion Years of Wonder

Spec Tech post up

2011-11-16T22:07:00.000-07:00

Okay, a little belated, but I wrote a post for the Clarion blog about sandstone as a building material, since a commenter had asked about it a while ago: Sandstone: It's a Living.

My next post will be due mid-December... I'm trying to decide what to write about. I'm kind of tempted to talk about undersea hydrothermal systems (black smokers, white smokers, carbonate chimneys) because they're really cool. And it lets me share something I've learned in oceanic geochem this semester.

Republicans Attack the Obama Administration.... on science?

2011-10-20T23:04:00.008-07:00

If you haven't read this yet, prepare to have your brain melted.

This letter caused me a lot of incoherent sputtering this morning.

First, I'd like to address the specific claims made by Senators Inhofe and Vitter and Congressman Issa, then I'd like to say a few words about the main premise of the letter itself.

I'll go through this section by section. What I have to say here is the result of me spending some quality time with Dr. Google. My findings are not necessarily definitive, or complete. So if you dredge up any points that I've missed or gotten wrong - or have arcane knowledge that I manifestly do not possess - please let me know and I'll add any new facts to the pile and swiftly correct mistakes.

Inspector General Investigation of the National Academy of Engineers Report

The criticism here is in regards to the report Secretary Salazar used to justify the six month moratorium on deepwater drilling following the blowout at the Macondo well that ultimately spewed millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. I do not have a link to the report, but rather the Investigative Report, Federal Moratorium on Deepwater Drilling, US Department of Interior, which responds to criticism of the original report.

The Republican letter implies that there was misconduct in the report, because scientific peer review for findings was claimed where none existed.

From the IG's report:

All DOl officials interviewed stated that it was not their intention to imply that the moratorium had been peer reviewed by the experts, and that when the experts' concern was brought to their attention, they promptly issued an apology to the experts via conference call, letter, and personal meeting.

And:

All DOI officials interviewed stated that it was never their intention to imply the moratorium was peer reviewed by the experts, but rather rushed editing of the Executive Summary by DOI and the White House resulted in this implication. After reviewing different drafts of the Executive Summary that were exchanged between DOI and the White House prior to its final issuance, the OIG determined that the White House edit of the original DOI draft Executive Summary led to the implication that the moratorium recommendation had been peer reviewed by the experts.

So basically, the Inspector General's report says that any implication that there was peer review - and it was only an implication, not a stated fact - was a mistake that the preparers of the report freely owned up to and apologized for.

Also from the IG report, in regards to the complaint that information quality assurance was violated:

While the 30-Day Report's Executive Summary could have been more clearly worded, the Department has not definitively violated the IQA. For example, the recommendation for a moratorium is not contained in the safety report itself. Furthermore, the Executive Summary does not indicate that the peer reviewers approved any of the Report's recommendations. The Department also appears to have adequately remedied the IQA concerns by communicating directly with the experts, offering a formal apology, and publicly clarifying the nature of the peer review.

The Republican letter also alleges blatant political influence. Having read the Inspector General's report, that's a baseless accusation on their part.

I will note that the Inspector General's report was requested by Senator David Vitter (and Congressman Steve Scalise). To be honest, after reading through the entire thing, I wonder if Senator Vitter is just feeling a little aggravated that the Inspector General didn't find the steaming heaps of politicized scientific misconduct he was desperately hoping for. What's in the Republican letter reads like a mountain being made from a mole hill.

National Research Council Review of IRIS Formaldehyde Assessment (EPA)

The NRC's review can be found here if you'd like to read it yourself.

This seems to be the most damning part of the NRC's review:

The report finds that EPA supports its conclusions that formaldehyde can cause irritation to the eyes, nose, and throat; lesions in the respiratory tract; and genetic mutations at high concentrations. Furthermore, the report finds that the evidence is sufficient for EPA to conclude that formaldehyde exposures are a cause of cancers of the nose, nasal cavity, and upper throat. However, the draft assessment has not adequately supported its conclusions that formaldehyde causes other cancers of the respiratory tract, leukemia, or several other noncancer health outcomes. Also, the assessment should consider additional studies to derive noncancer reference concentrations (RfCs), which are estimates of lifetime concentrations to which someone could be exposed without appreciable risk of particular adverse health effects.

This one is a little less clear cut, I think. The NRC makes valid points about the EPA overstating the research to pin leukemia on formaldehyde, for example. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies formaldehyde in group 2A, which means "probably carcinogenic to humans." This is generally not the same as "you will get leukemia."

Here's a news article that has the rainbow of reactions in black and white. The Sierra Club is disappointed. Industry groups are happy. And Senator Vitter is quoted as saying:

"I'm extremely glad I fought so hard for this review by the National Academy of Sciences, which really is the gold standard in terms of scientific assessment," Vitter said. "It confirms what I feared -- serious shortcomings and bias at the EPA. Louisiana citizens should be able to count on EPA conclusions and advice. This study shows that we can't."

Which I think is a very nicely crafted attack, since it implies that the EPA is completely unreliable instead of overcautious, which seems to be the case here.

Personally, I'd rather agencies were too cautious about health risks than not cautious enough. Though that is no excuse for a lack of scientific rigor.

US District Judge Oliver Wanger's Decision Criticizing Agency Scientific Work and Testimony in Federal Court

I find it rather curious that the source cited in regards to lives and local economies being ruined is an opinion piece: California's Man-Made Drought, The green war against San Joaquin Valley Farmers

The snide tone of that particular opinion piece notwithstanding (because hey, I'm not going to begrudge someone a bit of snideness when I revel in it myself!) the job losses seem to be more about drought than pumping restrictions. (Estimated 16,000 jobs lost due to drought, 5,000 due to the restrictions.)

However, the rest of the points in the Republican letter are a bit more difficult to tackle. If you'd like to read the entirety of the judge's opinion here it is, and I'd recommend you put on your asbestos underwear first, because it's a doozy. Judge Wanger has some very nasty things to say about the scientists in this case, the juiciest bits of which are cited in the letter to the Administration.

This is where it gets muddy, I think. Judge Wanger has apparently faced some criticism:

But at times, Poole said, Wanger has gone too far. "We have argued in certain cases … that he has basically made scientific calls when there's a dispute between scientists that are improper for him to make" under the provisions of the Endangered Species Act. "He shouldn't be the arbitrator for scientific disputes. Congress has given that role to the expert agencies."

I haven't been able to find any detailed information about the testimony given by the two scientists. So at this point, I feel like it devolves into a he-said she-said, where Judge Wanger feels that the witnesses are not credible, and the EPA says it continues to support their findings. I've found several articles that have questioned Judge Wanger's accusations that the scientists are contradictory on the grounds that he has mistaken scientific uncertainty for attempted deceit. I really can't say one way or the other.

For more information on the issue at hand, I found this post helpful.

GAO Report on Yucca Mountain and IG Investigations into the Actions of DOE Secretary Chu and NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko

In this case, the NRC is the Nuclear Regulatory Agency, NOT the National Research Council.

The GAO report on Yucca Mountain can be found here.

I have little to say about the Yucca Mountain criticism, because FSM help me, I actually kind of agree.

The attack on Chairman Gregory Jaczko has me rather floored, though. Specifically in regard to his recommendations for evacuating Americans in a fifty mile radius around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor. The nuclear disaster at Fukushima is still really an ongoing thing, and will be for years to come. In March, radiation levels at 60km were hitting the threshold for increased cancer risk. The Japanese government has faced very strong criticism for redefining safety levels of radiation in proximity to the plant. In April, high radiation levels were being found outside the 10 km evacuation zone.

What just boggles my mind is that Chairman Jaczko is basically being attacked for taking a "better safe than sorry" approach to a nuclear disaster. One can only wonder what the reaction would have been if he'd just stuck with the evacuation zone that the Japanese government had drawn.

But really, this is all beside the point.

Public trust in federal scientific work is waning and the academic community has gone so far as to call the situation a "crisis." Accordingly, we request that you provide us with an accounting of your activities in response to serious questions raised about the quality of science utilized by this Administration.

Looking over the list of issues in the Republican letter, one thing struck me the most - scale. They want to talk about public trust in scientific work? I'd be curious to know how many people outside of the San Jaoquin valley - and outside of those that have a serious hate on for the EPA - knew about Judge Wanger and the never-ending delta smelt war? How many people have had their trust of science scarred by the EPA overstepping and placing leukemia risk in a report about formaldehyde instead of just sticking to nasal cancer? How many people had their trust in the government shaken by Chairman Jaczka recommending Americans not remain within 50 miles of the meltdown at Fukushima instead of a more modest 20 miles?

I am not in any way saying that scientific misconduct - whether it involves overstating one's case or acting with too much haste - is acceptable. (Though sometimes in the intersection of science and policy, haste is required and mistakes are made.) But I think I am well within my rights to talk about scale.

What hurts the public trust of science more? The DOI erroneously implying that something had been peer reviewed when it hadn't, or Senator Inhofe calling climate change (and thus the robust science backing it), "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people"?

What hurts the public trust of science more? Judge Wanger calling Dr. Jennifer Norris a zealot, or Congressman Issa dogpiling on the Climate-gate-that-wasn't and saying, "It’s very clear that an inconvenient truth has been replaced by a convenient lie – we’d like to get to the bottom of the lie."?

What hurts public trust of science more? The EPA insufficiently documenting its methodology, or Senator Vitter stating, "I do not think the science clearly supports global warming theory"? Or perhaps Senator Vitter trying (and thankfully failing) to quietly earmark money for an anti-evolution group?

What hurts public trust of science more?

The hypocrisy fills me with rage.

The shear sack required for these men to continually attack biology and climate science then set themselves up as "defenders" of science to score a few cheap political points, is breathtaking.

With "friends" like these, enemies need not apply.

At Bad Astronomy, Phil Plait has previously had a lot to say about these newly-minted defenders of federal science:
Vitter: Fail
Deniers abuse power to attack climate scientists
A firehose of global warming news, both good and bad

Join me in squee.

2011-10-11T22:06:00.002-07:00

Because I have nothing of interest to say. So here, the Avengers trailer:

Because Robert Downey Jr + Joss Whedon banter is my new OTP.

Grad school is keeping me very busy. I'm also jut trying to decide what I want to do with this blog, since I mostly just write about more personal stuff on my LJ and I haven't had much interesting to say about geology because it's all class work at the moment. (Though I will note that anyone who doubts or denies carbon-induced climate change should be forced to take a geochemistry course.) Are my non-geology diversions into random nerdery or obsessing about my writing fun? Annoying?

I'd probably be able to blog a bit better if I knew what I wanted this blog to be, really.

Two Earth Science Items

2011-09-13T16:12:00.000-07:00

Everyone should read this post. It's by Dr. Bailles, one of the co-discoverers of the so-called "diamond planet" that the media was having squee spasms about recently. He pointedly notes that his discovery wouldn't have been at all gleefully received if he was, say, a climate scientist, despite the fact that the scientific process and peer review is the same.

Which I think is a really good point. Everyone loves hearing about awesome astronomy things, and you never see the media seeking "balance." And by "balance," I mean, "finding a dissenting voice on the fringe of the science to provide the illusion of fairness when, in fact, the dissenting voice is the minority and has often failed to address the criticism of his or her peers."

But, you know, "balance" is way easier to type.

And Brian Dunning of Skeptoid just put an episode out about fracking. I did a couple of posts about that myself, almost two years ago. Generally, I think Brian did a good job, and the episode is worth a listen. His ending point is excellent - it's important to separate the science from how much you loathe Halliburton, for example.

The only complaint I've got is for part of the episode he refers to natural gas drilling as "mining" for some reason I can't fathom, and even refers to wells as "mines" in a couple of instances. That started driving me a little crazy after a while. But then he uses "wells" and "drilling" in other parts of the podcast, so I'm not sure what's going on with the vocabulary choice.

Also, I would have liked to hear Brian mention that fracking fluid is exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act, due to a 2005 amendment. This is something I still personally think needs to be changed due to the possibility of surface contamination. There are sites like FracFocus, which sounds like it's built on voluntary disclosure. As far as I know there's no other federal requirement of disclosure (please, correct me if I'm wrong) though it sounds like a lot of states have laws now. Ultimately, your mileage may vary depending upon how evil you may think the various oil companies are, but I do have my doubts that fluid additives would be disclosed without a legal requirement; if nothing else, a lot of the additives are proprietary.

Anyway, good job, Brian!

Read one of my stories!

2011-09-01T21:52:00.000-07:00

Last year Anotherealm bought one of my short stories, and now it's published online and available for reading! Go here!

I was a bad girl and worked on doing some queries and such today instead of doing my geochemistry homework. Geochemistry this semester is looking pretty interesting, though. The class is actually focused on marine geochemistry, ~~where we use chemicals to make rocks yell HOORAH~~ which is pertinent to my own research since the ocean is very involved in the carbon cycle, and climate. And thus, very involved in climate change.

I'm also going to be doing a one hour independent study this semester, as long as the paperwork went through. I need to learn about paleosols in thin section anyway, so that'll be the aim... research micromorphology and then apply what I've learned to thin sections that Mary has from two sites in the Bighorn Basin. I'm pretty excited about that. I just need to get someone to show me how to use the automated stage on the microscope in the sed lab. Or tell me where the left occular for the other microscope's gotten to. Because trying to use a binocular microscope only looking through one eyepiece... it started doing funny things to my vision after a while.

So expect some pretty pictures of paleosol thin sections at some point in the near future! (Near future meaning this semester... as was pointed out to me at Skepticamp, geologists need to qualify what we mean when we say things like "quick" and "soon.")

Clarion Blog Post Up! And Skepticamp!

2011-08-27T22:06:00.001-07:00

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

2011-08-20T23:57:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-11T15:18:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-06T17:57:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-04T08:47:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-02T21:24:00.000-07:00

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...

Clarion Write-a-thon Day 34: KO BABY!!!!!

2011-07-30T06:08:00.005-07:00

HEY GUESS WHO JUST FINISHED THE ROUGH DRAFT OF HER NOVEL??????

Today's word count: 7857 (NEW RECORD!)
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 99231
Average daily word count: 2918.56

~~OH YEAH BITCHES~~

I DID IT WOOOOOOOOOO! I haven't written anything novel-length since Throne of Nightmares in 2007. And I admit, I was scared - maybe I couldn't do it any more. But I just did it! And I finished my write-a-thon goal with a week to spare! Now to let it stew and percolate a bit, give my head time to clear, and the dreaded editing process will begin. I feel like this one will edit a lot faster than ToN (which took three years), because if nothing else I think I've grown a lot as a writer since then and have a much clearer sense of how I want to put this bad boy together.

Soundtrack for writing this was primarily from Serenity, Firefly, and the three Transformers movies. Yet in spite of the latter, my novel contains only one explosion, and it doesn't happen in slow motion. And no one runs away from it. So yeah. (What can I say... didn't much like those movies, but I think they have excellent scores.)

And yeah. That's all I have to say. Because my brain has now lost its ability to produce words.

EXCEPT OH YEAH YOU SHOULD TOTALLY PLEDGE MONEY NOW THAT I'VE DELIVERED THE GOODS! :D

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Favorite sentence I've written today: The rocks snarled like living things and then the world cracked, lightning and gunshot and bone, a sound that touched her at the base of the brain and told her to fucking run.

Polecat Bench Pictures and Videos

2011-07-30T01:23:00.000-07:00

I have been remiss - I posted all of these on twitter, but never collected them in to a blog post. Also, some additional pictures, and even some from Basin Substation, the site I wasn't involved with. So:

Pictures
My Polecat Bench photo album
Elizabeth's night 1 pictures
Elizabeth's Basin Substation day 1 pictures - She worked a 24 hour day on the first day. Crazy!
Elizabeth's Basin Substation pictures July 15-18
From the BBCP Facebook page

Video
Coffee sloshing in the pot in the RV, just to show how freaking windy it got
Bringing up core at Polecat Bench - what happens every core barrel. Video super noisy due to drilling rig and wind.
The last core at Polecat Bench - you can really hear how darn noisy the rig is on this video...

Clarion Write-a-thon Day 33

2011-07-29T04:08:00.001-07:00

Today's word count: 3427
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 91374

It's much harder to write thinky, feeling-ish scenes instead of action-y ones. Particularly when one of the characters is all, I DON'T HAVE FEELINGS, DAMNIT. I think she's still bitter because I made her murder her first ever boyfriend when she was a teenager. (I totally had a good reason. I promise.) The exciting part is that I wrote up to the start of the FINAL EPIC BATTLE^TM and after that, it's just basically a bit of tying up loose ends and general plot post-mortem. The ending is so close I can just taste it! GO TEAM GO!

Favorite ~~sentence~~ bit I've written today:
"You called me with blood."

She snorted, then gently probed at the back of her head with one hand. Her fingers found stitches, which was story enough for her. "Didn't work the last two times I tried to do that."

"You used a lot more blood this time." He looked down pointedly toward the gun still pressed against his side.

"You should be more careful about how you wake a body up. Some folk get mighty sensitive about it."

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Clarion Write-a-thon Day 32

2011-07-28T05:22:00.000-07:00

Today's word count: 4142
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 87947

Tonight was a bit tougher to write, and I got kind of bogged down between point A and B for this section. It's definitely something that'll require some smoothing over when I edit. If I end up keeping it at all, since once again I feel like it's stuff I wrote just so I made sure I knew what was going on. But it's moving on. Ticked off another plot point. It's going to be hard, but I still feel like I can get this thing finished before we start drilling at Gilmore Hill. I mean, it's okay if I don't, but it'd be nice to not have to do this crazy level of writing while drilling, when you only get like 5 or 10 minutes at a stretch.

Favorite sentence I've written today: Raff pulled a dusty deck from his pocket; the cards scraped and scratched as he shuffled and dealt them each a five-card hand.

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"Make Sure That Your Question's a Question"

2011-07-28T01:16:00.003-07:00

Whether you're a skeptical person or not, atheist or not, carbon-based life-form or not, if you have ever in your entire life gone to a convention/conference/seminar/large meeting, you want to go listen to this week's Geologic Podcast. Particularly the bit that starts at 26:25.

George Hrab was the MC for TAM this year. He kicked off the conference with a little musical medley, and the bit at 26:25 was my favorite part - "Make sure that your question's a question." The essence of this little musical ditty should be squeezed into spray bottles and handed out to moderators and MCs at every convention. Or perhaps it could be crafted into a branding iron with which to mark the worst offenders. Or maybe George should just be personally sent to every convention ever, and he'll be able to soon retire on the proceeds of just being paid to sing this song by grateful attendees the world over.

I understand that there's a real desire to engage in dialog with the (at least locally) famous people on a panel, and impress them with the wit and thought behind your own opinions. Goodness knows, I've had my more psychotic moments where I've imagined that, if I could just make it into a Presidential Townhall, I could totally straighten every policy in the goddamn country out with the 1000-watt beam of my scintillating political thought.

But then I punch myself in the face until I stop hallucinating, and it's all better.

Seriously. No one else in the audience wants to hear your long-winded and grandiose story of personal experience that normally culminates in a question that sounds like, "Having said that, what's your favorite color?" Most of the time, it just sounds sad and tacked on, like you desperately wanted to tell a story to a large (and ever more hostile) captive audience and just had to come up with a question at the end so you didn't feel completely dishonest.

That's what blogs are for. With a bonus of not even needing to come up with a faux-question for the end.

Also, since audience members aren't the only ones that can bogart a microphone and make innocent bystanders contemplate the possibility of crafting some sort of hangman's noose from the pages of the program book, there's this too: About conventions, panels, and bad panelist behaviour: a rant

Looking back, I wonder how much I was guilty of this sort of awful behavior at anime conventions. My ego is particularly ravenous, and that can lead to all sorts of unfortunate conversation topics that absolutely no one but me gives a shit about.

And this blog. Hey. All I can hope is that my boundless reserves of sarcasm provide some kind of cushion for times like that.

So if you were ever at an NDK or Yaoicon or AnimeFest where I bored you to absolute tears, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize. And I hope that some day I will have an opportunity to show off just how much I've grown as a person and a writer since those days. My ravenous ego demands it.

Clarion Write-a-thon Day 31

2011-07-27T04:18:00.000-07:00

Today's word count: 6226
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 83805

A new, new daily word count record! I'm pooped. And sadly, I didn't tick a point off of my outline, because most of this was stuff that happened between my major plot points. Unexpected stuff, which is nice. Editing this bad boy is going to be mighty interesting...

Favorite sentence I've written today: Its head was bigger than his, its breath a meaty furnace.

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Clarion Write-a-thon Day 30

2011-07-26T06:50:00.000-07:00

Today's word count: 5744
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 77579

New daily word count record! This one was really dialog heavy... I feel like some of it's a bit shaky, but I'm mostly pleased. I just have to firm up a couple of plot decisions in this section, but I think that'll need to wait until I've given the whole novel time to percolate. I also ticked another plot point off my outline! :D

Favorite sentence I've written today: "Stupid happened."

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Clarion Write-a-thon Day 29

2011-07-25T05:11:00.000-07:00

Today's word count: 1247
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 71835

Had a rough time of it. Can't seem to sleep since it's not my bedtime yet, but couldn't buckle down to write at all this night. Bleh. Anyway, my goal is still to finish this bad boy up this week if at all possible. Hopefully I'll get more writing done tomorrow since I won't have been trying to get all my sleep in a car. I think it's do-able. I've only got five major plot points left.

Favorite ~~sentence~~ two sentences I've written today: "Ambition is a laudable quality in man in our business, Mr. Rolland. Curiosity, not as much."

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My BBCP: Night 4, Which Wasn't Hard At All

2011-07-24T05:07:00.000-07:00

My fears of interrupted and awful sleep yesterday were unfounded it seems. The people at Americas Best Value Inn actually let us check in immediately, at 9 in the morning, and we were all able to get a good night (day) of sleep. Woot!

And then tonight was a short shift, as shifts go. When we got to the site we were down to our last three sections of drill pipe, which basically meant at most an additional 24 feet of core (I think that's right) could be drilled. So that went fast. I took a little video of the last Polecat Bench core being brought up, so that will hopefully end up on youtube sometime soon. Dr. Gingerich came back to the site after dinner just so he could put the last of the core into the truck, which was cool. The site is totally finished, and now we're all off for at least another week until we start at Gilmore Hill on August 1. And some of us are done with drilling (everyone on the night shift but me, actually :/ ) and we won't be gathering up again until we meet in Bremen in January.

After we had the last of the core (which was, I'm sad to say, a fairly unexciting mix of gray sandstone and gray mudstone from the Paleocene, no final red bed for Dr. Gingerich) buttoned down, the rest of the night was all site cleanup. We got everything ready so people can just go up to the Bench in the morning and haul all the trailers out.

It'll be fun to be the experienced hand at Gilmore Hill. We also have the same drilling crew for that site, so I'll be seeing AJ again. He seemed a little nervous about it being mostly new people again now that he's just gotten us trained up, but at least I'll be there! Until then, I'm just going to try to get all this mud out of my boots...

Also, just a little progress report from Dr. Will Clyde, on the project in general:

To date we have completed two 450 foot (138 m) cores at Basin Substation, one 425 foot (130 m) core at Polecat Bench, and one 790 ft (240 m) core from Polecat Bench. All of these cores should span the PETM.

Just so you have all the numbers. The 790-footer is the one I was there for most of. :D

Clarion Write-a-thon Day 28

2011-07-24T04:56:00.000-07:00

Today's word count:
2827
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count:
70588

Two thirds of the way done and still going strong! Ticked another plot point off on my outline tonight and made headway into another. I'm very pleased. I'm hoping to make a big push this next week and get the entire thing done before I go back out to Wyoming on July 31. It would be nice to just write whatever during night shift and not be trying to concentrate on a gigantic Plot Of Doom. So we'll see! No favorite sentence tonight either, I'm sorry... I don't have time to hunt one down.

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My BBCP: It's Been a Hard Day's Night 3

2011-07-23T05:56:00.000-07:00

It was a busy night, though not as busy as last night. We only did about 25 meters of core, which is a major drop off from last night. This is because the hole is getting deeper, so that means it takes longer to drill, and longer to trip in and out of the hole.

It was also a night where we had a LOT of problems with slipped core. Which was probably partially because of the depth and partially because of the sands and muds we were drilling through. Other than one core that had some red banding in it, it's been nothing but gray sands and gray-green mudstones. Which makes it really hard to tell where the contacts are through the liner, so that's been frustrating. We also came across some really neat things in the sands, though - some bits of coal, and we found a fossilized leaf as well, so that was exciting.

The sad news for us night shift people is that it's been decided we're going to drill past our intended depth, so we'll probably have another shift tomorrow night. This wouldn't be a big deal except no one has a motel room past today, so we're all having to move to a different motel. In the middle of the day. So that's going to make sleep rough, which will in turn make work even rougher.

Tonight felt tougher than last night, though, because it was so cold! And windy! And it rained! So we had to race outside around midnight and take all the core on the drying rack and put it in the truck. That was not fun.

But hey, it's after sunrise, the day crew is here, and it's time to get some sleep! After Sander makes us a crazy huge bacon and egg breakfast, that is. :)

Clarion Write-a-thon Day 27

2011-07-23T05:33:00.000-07:00

Today's word count:
2908
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count:
67761

Tonight was calmer, so I got some good writing done! I also did a third draft of my outline for just the ending portion of the story this morning, so I'm following that now. I'm pretty excited about this. :)
Still no favorite sentence today, since I've got to get this finished up so I can go back to the motel and sleep!

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Clarion Write-a-thon Day 26

2011-07-22T05:10:00.000-07:00

Today's word count:
1283
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count:
64853

Today was rough just because we were getting slammed all night shift with core after core. Drilling was going fast. So I didn't really get to sit and write for more than a few minutes at a time, and it really shows in what I did produce. Also, I've hit a plot issue where I need time to sit and think about what sequence things ought to happen in - logically - and I can't really do that sort of thinking when I'm running back and forth. And tired. So tired. The tired doesn't help. So I'm just going to give up on the writing for the day since I managed to do *something* and there's less than an hour left in my shift. After which I'm going to go collapse into bed.

No best sentence today. It was a lot of fucking around with something I'd already written and then adding to it, and I'm not happy with the quality of what I came up with. Thankfully, it looks like we may get done with this hole sometime tomorrow night, so I might get part of my shift as writing time while we log it.

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My BBCP: It's Been a Hard Day's Night 2

2011-07-22T03:29:00.001-07:00

Anders says: Oh noes they've brought up ANOTHER core barrel!!!

In the very brief breaks between cores, Anders and I have been sitting across from each other in the RV with a slowly diminishing block of cheese between us. Because when you're working around heavy machinery, it can't be something classic like whiskey - so cheese is the next best thing when it comes to drowning one's sorrows.

Seriously, yesterday gave me no idea what I was signing up for. We spent most of the night sitting around while logs were run and the location moved. Tonight has been a different story entirely. We've been processing core constantly, outside of the drillers' midnight break. Aaron actually asked them to please take another 30 minutes off because we're just running ragged.

We've brought up 45 meters of core already, and we've still got three hours left before day shift takes over. Now that they've started using a polymer additive and bentonite in the drilling mud, they're even cutting through the mudstones fast. (The sandstones, they cut through crazy fast.) Basically, we'll finish labeling and describing and whatever else the core. I'll sit down for about two minutes, look at an e-mail, and then there's that change in the sound of the rig that says they're pulling up a core barrel, which takes about 3-4 minutes to run up. Then we do it all over again. And I swear the cores are getting heavier and heavier as we go through the night.

The downside of the polymer and bentonite is that it makes the cores harder to handle. The polymer is extremely slippery, and the bentonite tends to make everything more or less mud colored. The polymer stuff reminds me a lot of the "animal birthing agent" that was featured in the episode of Mythbusters where they try to slip on a banana peel. Now consider how awesome it is to pick up a core liner and have that stuff draining out all over your hands. ICK.

We've had a couple of big sand bodies. Normally I like sand, but in this case we want as little sand as possible since the paleosols are going to tell us a lot more about the chemistry and other stuff. Lots of gray mudstones, and then we've had some really big bright red paleosols, and a little bit of purple and brown. Some of them have huge (3cm in diameter or more) carbonate nodules in them, which is really exciting.

I'm going to sleep really, really well as soon as I get back to the motel.

(Remember: You can follow my adventures as they happen - if you're up WAY TOO LATE - on Twitter)

My BBCP: Night 1

2011-07-21T02:40:00.001-07:00

My first evening shift has been uneventful so far. Drilling is way ahead of schedule, and they had about 400 and some feet of core drilled on Polecat Bench when the hole started to collapse. So this meant that this evening has pretty much been dealing with the collapsed hole and then moving the rig over to start on the second hole for the site, which we're hoping we'll get a full core out of. We'll be drilling the second hole with polymer additives instead of just straight water, so that ought to keep things more stable.

The funny part is, all the trouble is coming from poorly cemented sand collapsing into the hole. Which was not something that we were all that worried about in planning - everyone was more focused on the abundance of swelling clays. But it's not something I find particularly surprising, since we had a similar problem with some gas wells when I worked for Noble. Sand can be a bitch.

So I've spent most of the evening hunkered down in the RV on site. It's pretty windy out on the Bench (because gee, it's a treeless plateau, in the middle of Wyoming) and there's not really anything much to do until we start getting core out of the second hole. And now that the rig's been moved, we have to drill through the cap of Quaternary gravel to get to the good stuff that we actually want. Apparently on the first core, the gravel took something like six hours to get through. We're hoping that it'll go a little faster with the additives in the water, but we'll see. It's a very real possibility that I'll go through my first shift without seeing any action at all.

This isn't a surprise, though... everyone already knew that tonight would be uneventful due to the collapsed hole, etc. I just chose to come out to the Bench anyway because the other option was just puttering around in Powell (which rolls up its sidewalks around 9, I hear) or in the lobby of the motel. I'm sharing a room with my advisor, which is great, but she needs to be sleeping while I'm awake, so I couldn't very well hang out here. So instead I got to meet the other night shift people. We played a game of Dominion, listened to The Book of Mormon, and did some other silly stuff to entertain ourselves. I wish I had some pictures of our beautiful crew, but most of them aren't looking too lively right now, and I have a policy against taking picture of people who are asleep.

Four hours left to go until shift end. The motor on the rig is going now, which means they're drilling slowly through the gravel. We'll see how far we get before it's time for the day shift to take over.

Clarion Write-a-thong Day 25

2011-07-21T02:00:00.000-07:00

Today's word count:
3422
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count:
63615

Got a good amount of writing done while we waited for the rig to move to the new site for drilling. And we're still waiting but I think I've done enough for now. The next part, I'll hopefully get to work on tomorrow. Preferably in my motel room, but beggars can't be choosers.

Favorite sentence I've written today:
Mr. Green smiled like the warping of half-melted wax.

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I'm Going to Wyoming, for SCIENCE! (and this is why you should care)

2011-07-20T03:27:00.010-07:00

In a few short hours, I'll be on my way to the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming, to participate in the coring portion of the Bighorn Basin Coring Project. Things are moving much faster than expected - the rig is already at Polecat Bench, where it wasn't planned to be until Friday, because coring went so quickly at the first location, called Basin Substation.

(All of the amazing pictures for this post taken from the BBCP Facebook page.)

This was kind of a surprise, but a good one. It also means my advisor and I are scrambling to get up to the Basin as soon as we can. And that instead of one two week stretch, I'll be coming back to Denver with her, and then flying back out to Wyoming on July 31 to help out at the third site. (The third site, Gilmore Hill, is on BLM land and we're literally not allowed to start until August 1.)

I've set up a twitter account for just BBCP-related stuff. I don't know how many good pictures I'll get, since I'm on the nightshift, but here's hoping! Please follow and spread the word. It's a chance to see some science in action.

So why should you care about this project? Two words: climate change. In geology, the present is often the key to the past - we can observe processes today and use them to figure out the how and why of ancient rocks. During the PETM, the Earth's climate changed remarkably, and in a fairly short period of time. I've written about it in more detail here, and you can also get more information on the project's website. While the Bighorn Basin Coring Project is focused on understanding the PETM and many related issues, there is also this to consider:

This will allow us to investigate, in an unprecedented way, the high-frequency climatic and biotic variability of a continental depositional system during greenhouse conditions.

There are no guarantees in science, but there's a possibility that this time, the past might provide a key to the present. Climate change induced by a rapid influx of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere? While it's not a perfect parallel (for the PETM it was methane, rather than our own carbon dioxide), it still could be very relevant. And I would think it's something we want to understand well before our personal contributions of carbon get anywhere close to the rather voluptuous 6800 gigatons of methane that went into the atmosphere during the PETM. (As of 2004 we were at ~500 Gt.)

One thing we're hoping is that we'll not only capture the PETM, we'll also maybe get some data for the other, smaller hyperthermals in the Eocene. How much carbon input equals how much climate change? As part of a species with a vested interest in climate not changing much, that's a question I'd personally like to examine, and I'm hoping I'll get my chance.

(And don't worry, Mom, I'll watch out for snakes!)

Clarion Write-a-thon Day 24

2011-07-20T02:45:00.000-07:00

Today's word count: 4149
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 60193

New single day word count record! I got to tick two points off my outline. I am pleased.

Favorite sentence I've written today: Because it was those little, silly similarities, so easily dismissed by someone who was overworked and focused on a different goal, that could be the difference between a living spy and a 'We regret to inform you' letter to one's parents.

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Clarion Write-a-thon Day 23

2011-07-19T02:13:00.000-07:00

Today's word count: 3725
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 56044

The time period for the write-a-thon is now half over, and I'm feeling reasonably certain that I'm going to meet my goal. I'm still adding ever more notes to my outline, but I think it's not adding too much plot bloat and I seem to be on track. Also, the schedule for my field work got changed around in a kind of annoying way - but on the bright side, it means that I'll have almost a week at home between two separate trips to Wyoming, and that ought to give me ample time to work on finishing up all of the points on my outline before the end of the write-a-thon. At least I hope so.

It's been so long since I've written something of this length that I'd almost forgotten how much fun it is. I did a crazy amount of word count tonight. And I didn't even actually hit all the plot I was hoping to finish up tonight, but I'm starting to feel kind of punchy now and I could tell the prose was really starting to suffer and I was kind of straining to keep going.

Had a fun discussion with my dad over dinner in Las Vegas about the technology on the planet. I've got a nice little MacGuffin that explains why the tech level has to stay low in certain regards, and my dad made an offhand comment about how silly something was in Road Warrior, where they were burning ridiculous amounts of gas just to get a little bit more gas. So then I realized that while I've got my beloved ZOMG MOTORCYCLES IN THE DESERT, it really made no sense to have them be gasoline-powered... and there are plenty of other options available for a place with a ridiculous abundance of solar energy. So yeah, that was kind of fun. I've also had to go back and leave myself notes in previous chapters to fix certain inconsistent technology things, such as GPS shouldn't be able to work.

So that's fun. Considering my other novel was pretty much fantasy and more fantasy, it's been nifty to have to think hard about technology, and what makes sense and what doesn't within the limitations of the world. (Not that you don't do that with magic if you build a world with consistent rules, but it feels a lot different when you're doing it with tech.)

Favorite ~~sentence~~ two sentences I've written today: Mag stared at the little square made by the cigarette case in the pocket of Hob's coat. "Don't know what could be givin' his lungs fits," she said, tone edged with sarcasm.

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New Spec Tech Article Online!

2011-07-18T21:18:00.000-07:00

Actually, it's been online for a few days, but there was this whole TAM thing (you may have heard of it) and I had no real internet access for four days because the Southpoint Casino is run by vampires¹.

It's 1000+ words about tuff, which is a good example of how geology influences culture. And there are also bad puns. Because, you know, tuff: The Whole Tuff and Nothing But the Tuff

1 - Leave my non sequitor alone. Something about bloodsuckers. I'm tired.

Clarion Write-a-thon Day 22

2011-07-18T04:37:00.001-07:00

Todays word count: 3105
Cumulative word count: 52319

I have successfully stayed up through the night in preparation to getting on night shift for drilling. And wrote a lot in the process! Next hurdle: sleeping through the day when I get home.

Clarion Write-a-thon Day 21

2011-07-16T22:40:00.001-07:00

Todays word count: 2061
Cumulative word count: 49214

More than I expected to get in today thanks to an extra long lunch break. Stopped early since I'm feeling punchy and would rather be in full possession of my faculties before I write the next conversation.

Clarion Write-a-thon Day 20

2011-07-16T01:35:00.001-07:00

Todays: 1087
Cumulative: 47153

Not my best effort but I'm just too tired. Tomorrow will likely be bad too. Will just have to catch up next week.

Clarion Write-a-thon Day 19

2011-07-15T00:34:00.001-07:00

At a hotel with ridiculously expensive internet access so I am posting from my phone. That means no fancy post format, and no favorite sentence since it's too much of a pita to retype it.

Got an okay amount of writing done. Surprising really since I'm at TAM and I had to say no to drinking with friends to write. And because I was already tipsy. And sleepy.

Today's word count: 2133
Cumulative word count: 46066

Almost a highly amusing number, considering one of my characters is named Old Nick and another is named Hob (though she isn't old yet).

Clarion Write-a-thon Day 18

2011-07-13T23:22:00.000-07:00

Today's word count: 3396
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 43933

I did a second draft of my outline today, since I was starting to drift pretty badly. At which point my plot underwent a terrifying sort of mitosis; it would be almost impossible to fit so much plot into one book, I think, without it being an absolutely ridiculous length. So I think I may have two novels on my hands. We'll see how it looks when I get to the first major endpoint, what length the thing is. I threw together a rough outline for what would happen in the second half of the plot, and it's sort of horrifyingly long.

Favorite ~~sentence~~ 2 sentences I've written today: "Girl bit him when he was little. Never got over it."

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Clarion Write-a-thon Day 17

2011-07-13T00:40:00.000-07:00

Today's word count: 2352
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 40537

I feel very, very bad for one of my characters now. Enough said.

Favorite sentence I've written today: People ate chicken with dirty fingers, wiped dust from their faces with the corners of tablecloths.

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Clarion Write-a-thon Day 16

2011-07-12T00:35:00.000-07:00

Today's word count: 2871
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 38185

Finished up a really long section that's probably multiple chapters. This part, I'm very pleased with. I think the next set of things I need to write will be from the viewpoints of several different characters, which should be pretty cool. Not that I'm tired of writing for Hob, just the other people are going to be doing some interesting things. I hope.

Favorite sentence I've written today: "You smell like blood," he whispered, his tone almost flirtatious.

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Clarion Write-a-thon Day 15

2011-07-11T01:32:00.000-07:00

Today's word count: 3888
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 35314

So much for just planning to write like 500 words and go to bed. I'm sleepy, and I have a headache. But instead, I just kept going and going. I would say that this section is probably the worst writing I've done so far. It's going to take a lot of work to make it satisfactory. Though that will obviously be work that I do later. I also think that the section is much too long, and I'm going to end up cutting a lot out of it. But I'm starting to feel like half of this is just overthinking/overexplaining what's going on to myself so I can make sure everything actually makes sense. And then later, I can remove all that crap because it's very behind the scenes anyway.

If that makes sense. I'm not sure, considering just how sleepy I am. Sleeeeeep.

Favorite sentence I've written today: The mark she left on Newcastle was three corpses in a huddle and a trail of red footprints that vanished at the city's edge.

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Clarion Write-a-thon Day 14

2011-07-09T23:48:00.000-07:00

Today's word count: 1455
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 31426

Day 14 and still going strong! (Please, feel free to reward my persistence with a pledge at the Write-a-thon page! :D) I didn't quite make my word count today, though that's more because I really need to go to bed soon (so I can wake up in time for kung fu in the morning) and not because I'm actually at a place where I really want to stop.

It's all feeling adventure-y at the moment, and I feel like I've had a little humor today. Which is odd, since I haven't had much funny up until now. But then again, a little funny is necessary; I don't like it when a story is nothing but grim.

I'm trying something a little different this time, in that I'm making notes in previous chapters as I write. As things develop I'll find scenes that need to be changed or modified or added; before I just tried to hand write the occasional note about it. Hopefully this will work a little better.

I'm also still trying to figure out how I'm ultimately going to put this story together. Right now I'm just writing it all out in chronological order, but I think ultimately it would be better to rearrange things a little bit. I'm just not sure how, yet. And I'm thinking probably some of the stuff I wrote about Hob's (the main character) childhood is way more detailed than it needs to be, so streamlining that should help too.

Having so much fun!

Favorite ~~sentence~~ three sentences I've written today: "You're not crying. Or screaming. Those are the reactions I've seen most often."

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Clarion Write-a-thon Day 13

2011-07-09T00:17:00.000-07:00

Today's word count: 2746
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 29971

Had a rough time getting going today, but I think it worked out alright. After kung fu in the heat and humidity, my brain felt pretty melted. Still, good progress, even if I'm not really happy with much of my prose. I'm still moving forward and getting the story together, and that's the important part. The rest, I can fix later with editing.

Favorite sentence I've written today: At the cellar pit, he unrolled the severed finger from the handkerchief and stuck it into the sand, holding it under as if he expected it to come alive and struggle.

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Clarion Write-a-thon Day 12

2011-07-07T23:39:00.000-07:00

Today's word count: 3410
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 27225

Got on another roll tonight. I'm very excited about the scenes I've been writing, which is funny since they aren't really even in my outline. But I like this direction the story is taking. Hopefully it keeps coming this easy, though I think I may be in for a few tough days while I figure out what happens after this, and if I'm going to bridge it back to my outline or just have to come up with something completely different.

Favorite sentence I've written today: Hob held Phil's hand between hers for a moment, fingers gently touching his knuckles as if that could urge him to un-die somehow, to erase the horrors of a body left for days in the sun.

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Clarion Write-a-thon Day 11

2011-07-07T01:00:00.000-07:00

Today's word count: 3457
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 23815

What can I say... I was on a roll tonight. Must be the two helpful kitties. And the full-size keyboard.

Favorite sentence I've written today: When she'd finished reading the pamphlet, just hungry for the words, she tore it up and started playing games with the disassembled bits.

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Clarion Write-a-thon Day 10

2011-07-06T02:41:00.001-07:00

Today's word count: 1235
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 20358

Short chunk, since I need to go to bed... and since it was a scene that had me feeling completely creeped out and gross and I just don't want to write any more tonight. Ew ew ew.

Favorite sentence I've written today: But after three years, Hob was just another goddamn fairytale like smiling Mr. Rollins, family friend and good man.

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Clarion Write-a-thon Day 9

2011-07-05T01:44:00.000-07:00

Today's word count: 2388
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 19123

This novel is turning out different from the other ones I've written because now I'm starting to use multiple characters to tell the story. It's fun, but also a little scary. Life is easier when you only have to worry about one viewpoint, I think.

Favorite sentence I've written today: He stacked the money on the kitchen table, then spilled the little blue crystals from their burlap sack again, stirring them around on the wood with one blunt finger.

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Clarion Write-a-thon Day 8

2011-07-04T01:57:00.001-07:00

Today's word count: 967
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 16735

Another day of almost not writing, but this on was worse since I didn't even start until after two. Not that I'm complaining, since the late hour is because I was hanging out with Michelle and Julie. Really, I only wanted to get in 500 words just to have something on the calendar for today, so I did almost twice that. Wrote a scene that I'm kind of on the fence about. I'm not entirely happy with it, though some of that is probably because I'm just so tired. But as such, no favorite sentence from today, because I don't have one.

Favorite sentence I've written today: None :(

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Don't Use This Argument Because OMG Children Are Starving in Africa

2011-07-04T00:15:00.003-07:00

Raise your hand if this is a familiar source of tooth-grinding frustration: "Shame on you for being concerned/upset/worried about thing X, because thing Y is way worse."

(This post started as a comment over at a post Jen wrote about comments Richard Dawkins made. But this annoys me enough, I want to just make it a post all its own. And also, I want to detach it from GettingHitOnInAnElevator-gate. Because really, it's a more general complaint and what Richard Dawkins said is just one example.)

Now, I've run across this faux-argument mostly when I bring up an issue as a feminist, but I'm sure that it happens on other topics¹. In one instance (among many), a couple of years ago I got in to the middle of a dogpile on the World of Warcraft forums because several of us female type humans had the audacity to say that we thought there was a particular thing in the game that was probably intended to be cute, but we found it sexist, creepy, and insulting. And immediately, that argument got pulled on us. We're not allowed to complain that something in the game sexist and insulting because women in less socially liberal countries are under the thumb of some really horrible misogynists.

There are a multitude of reasons that this "argument" is a steaming pile of bullshit:

1) We are capable of being concerned with more than one thing at a time. And we can be concerned about an array of both large and small issues and speak out about them. Feminist women and our feminist male allies are - and this comes as a shock, I know - capable of multitasking.

2) You (directed at the general "you" that uses this ridiculous argument) do not have any way of knowing what I have and have not done toward the cause of women in less privileged countries. And further, it does not matter because you have no right to dictate to me what I can and can't be concerned about.

3) You may think that thing X is less important than thing Y, but you must also acknowledge that I am directly affected by thing X, and that potentially gives me more power to do something about it. There is a limit to what one of us can do on our own about a giant issue in a far away place; we can donate money, we can volunteer, we can work to raise awareness. A "smaller" issue that affects you personally is something that you can act much more directly on. So you know what? I cannot personally end the practice of female genital mutilation. But I can personally try to change something that affects me directly - to use the WoW example, as a paying customer of the company that's doing something offensive, I can make a stink about "Hey, I think this is BS."

4) EVERYONE performs this sort of mutlitasking and issue triage. Everyone. Trying to tell someone they shouldn't is frankly hypocritical.

5) Also, if you are that concerned about thing Y, why the hell are you wasting your valuable time and energy arguing with silly wrong-headed feminazis on the internet instead of combating thing Y?

6) Every time I hear this argument, this is what I hear: "The issue you have chosen to speak about is one that I dislike or makes me uncomfortable, and I don't really have a good answer to it. Therefore I will try to shame you with my powers of sarcasm in to shutting up because OMG children are starving in Africa."

Ultimately, it comes across as almost less insulting if your "argument" is just a baldly stated "go make me a sandwich," because at least then it doesn't sound like you're pretending to be on our side.

Please, just let this argument go; it's not going to convince anyone, and is frankly going to fan the flames of anger because it sounds so damn condescending. There are a lot of other ways to deal with something you think is turning in to a tempest in a teapot. Ignoring it could be one course of action, since for some reason basically telling people to shut the hell up on the internet doesn't work unless you have the power to simultaneously kill everyone's broadband and melt their smart phones. Maybe just saying "I don't consider this an issue so I'm going to go do something else" would come out as more positive, and you can have a smug little thrill that you're totally the only adult in the room as you go flouncing away.

Or hey, maybe trying to understand why people are freaking the hell out about something you consider to be a non-issue could be worth a shot. You never know.

1 - Hm, maybe along the lines of "You shouldn't whine about 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance because there are countries where being an atheist will just get you executed!" And so on.

Clarion Write-a-thon Day 7

2011-07-03T01:49:00.000-07:00

Today's word count: 2183
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 15768

I almost didn't write today. I was completely exhausted after sleeping less than three hours last night, and then of course I needed to catch up with my friends. Michelle let me catch a three hour nap on the couch in the afternoon, though, and that carried me through until now. Even then, I was thinking about just going to bed, and she convinced me to write a little bit, just so I wouldn't miss a day. Well, I got on a roll, and here I am, with another chapter finished. I'm pleased with it. Or at least as pleased as one can be with a rough draft.

And now, bed. For realz.

Favorite sentence I've written today: “That's because I don't have a name, dear one.”

(Not impressive in and of itself, but I like the conversation it's part of...)

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Clarion Write-a-thon Day 6

2011-07-02T00:38:00.000-07:00

Today's word count: 2190
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 13585

I love it when my story jumps off the outline, when the characters decide that they're going to do something completely different. Particularly when I realize that it makes a lot more sense this way.

Would have loved to keep writing longer, but as it is, I should have been in bed hours ago. I'm flying to Salt Lake City in the morning, and will have to head to the airport in about, oh, four hours. So yeah, I'm going to be pretty worthless upon arrival.

Favorite sentence I've written today: But it still had that wolfish tilt to it, the predatory glint in his eye that said he was just waiting for her to fuck this up.

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Bighorn Basin Coring Project Website!

2011-07-01T14:38:00.000-07:00

I'm less than a month away from my Wyoming adventure, and it's getting exciting. The Bighorn Basin Coring Project now has an official website, and there are some great pictures there if you want to take a look at where I'll be spending two and a half weeks of my summer. Check it out!

Clarion Write-a-thon Day 5

2011-07-01T00:25:00.001-07:00

Today's word count: 3114
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 11395

Wow, that was intense. There was murder. Heartbreaking murder.

Favorite sentence I've written today: And she cut off those words, that lie, before they made it all the way through his throat.

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Clarion Write-a-thon Day 4

2011-06-30T00:26:00.001-07:00

Today's word count: 2087
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 8281

Barely made my goal today. I just had a hell of a time settling in to write, and probably would have given up if I weren't so focused on just getting to 2k words. I was starting to feel my groove when I finished up the scene, but the next one's going to be intense and I'd like to be a little more on my game when I work on it. So I'll save it for tomorrow.

Favorite ~~sentence~~ 3 sentences I've written today: Some day, perhaps, Nick would figure out that seeing probabilities did not mean seeing the future. It meant seeing a tangled mass, one likely outcome after another that he remembered as if they had already happened, and unweaving each to find its source was no mean task. But he also recalled that the probability of Nick ever understanding that fine point was so small, it might as well have been zero.

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Clarion Write-a-thon Day 3

2011-06-29T00:01:00.000-07:00

Today's word count: 2434
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 6194

Finally! I made my word count goal for the day and then some. Which I'm quite pleased with since once again, the bulk of my day was completely wasted on non-writing things like spending quality time at the DMV. I didn't get to start writing until after I got home from trivia¹, which was still a little earlier than I've managed the last couple of days. And I'm even letting myself stop before 2, which is even better. I also worked a bunch on my outline, since I'm still very much developing the ideas for the last third of the novel. So I feel like I managed to pull some success out of an otherwise ridiculous waste of a day.

Favorite sentence I've written today: "Hope it was worth damnin' his soul to Hell."

1 - We got fourth (otherwise known as FUCK YEAH NOT FIFTH) place tonight, thanks for asking.

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Clarion Write-a-thon Day 2

2011-06-28T01:00:00.000-07:00

Today's word count: 1775
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 3760

Well, I was hoping to make up for yesterday and failed soundly. Mike was home all day so I didn't really get anything done then (since having a human person around to interact with is horribly distracting), but figured I'd be able to get in three or more good hours once he went to bed. Alas, instead of a reasonable bedtime, there was a round of loud vomiting that emanated from the bathroom. My poor husband unit wasn't even feeling well enough to crawl in to bed until close to midnight; needless to say, I spent my time continually asking if he was sure there wasn't anything I could do to help him feel better, rather than writing.

Hopefully he feels better tomorrow. Poor Mike.

Anyway, it's almost 2 again, and apparently that's when my brain shuts off and refuses to cooperate any more. But at least I got a little writing done.

Favorite sentence I've written today: "And that's why you got so nasty mad, 'cause I ran off to do somethin' all manly and dangerous?"

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Clarion Write-a-thon Day 1

2011-06-27T00:58:00.002-07:00

Today's word count: 1985
Cumulative Write-a-thon word count: 1985

Not bad, considering today got off to a very rocky start. I technically didn't start until just after midnight on the 27th. But it's still day one as far as my brain is concerned, since I haven't gone to bed yet. And despite that, I even managed to almost hit my informal daily goal of 2000 words. Woo!

Considering I spent most of my day pretending to be part of a galactic empire bent on ruling the universe in Twilight Imperium (which I won, by the way) I'm surprised I got my head into the story at all. Not that I'm complaining one bit. I actually feel like I was on a roll by the time I finished the little section I set out to write, but I decided to stop since it's nearly 2 am now and I'm getting a tad punchy.

Which may explain why this is...

Favorite sentence I've written today: He shook his head; blood whipped in a red thread from his nose.

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Vote for Me!

2011-06-24T13:36:00.000-07:00

Beneath Ceaseless Skies is going to do a best of anthology for their second year, and stories are being chosen for inclusion with a poll. Book of Autumn is eligible, so please consider voting for me.

And so I can totally feel like a politician, I'll ask for some money too while I'm at it! Don't forget that the Clarion Write-a-thon starts in two days - please consider donating to show your support. It's ~~patriotic~~ supportive and awesome, and I've heard it will also make you more beautiful, cause you to spontaneously lose 50 pounds, and may even generate a mysterious, winning lottery ticket in your mailbox¹!

1 - Okay, so I'm practicing lying, too. Just to round out the politician act.

Eye of the tiger

2011-06-22T22:43:00.000-07:00

It's funny, but no matter how much I do kung fu, I always seem to be finding new and creative ways to make all of my muscles hate me and constantly whine. You'd think by now they'd be used to it and just have gotten over the whole soreness thing. But maybe it's a sign that I'm doing something right and continuing to compete with myself and constantly push.

I remember once upon a time, I went home when class officially ended. Lately I've been staying an extra 30-60 minutes since I'm trying to learn sword. Among other things. There's always another thing to add on.

I was tempted to crap out and go home early tonight. I finished learning Tiger form, which involved learning two entire rows in one night. I thought my brain was going to melt trying to remember everything, and my muscles were all feeling melty as well. Since apparently a flying crescent kick is just the devil, and there's two of them in that form. And I'm rotten at them so I keep doing it over, and over, and over.

But I kept going. Because I refused to let myself win. Or maybe let myself lose. Or both. It's a weird thing, when you're competing against only yourself. But I guess it works for me, since the only sport I was ever good at (weightlifting) has the same sort of self-competition.

I hope to practice Tiger more tomorrow. I also hope to do so without gathering a group of staring, creepy neighborhood children, which has been happening with distressing regularity now that school is out.

Parents, please, if there's a strange lady out in the grassy common area doing spinny kicks, be kind and tell your children to just leave her alone. Because she's probably mentally imbalanced anyway.

On a completely unrelated note, I'm trying to decide what my second Spec Tech post should be about. I'm kind of leaning toward writing about tuff formations (such as the Bandelier Tuff), since it's an awesome example of how civilizations use local geology to their advantage. But if anyone's got any cool ideas, throw them at me.

Wait, don't be a what?

2011-06-20T23:03:00.001-07:00

In preparation for TAM, Daniel Loxton wrote a very interesting (but non-exhaustive) review of occurrences of the "Don't be a dick" argument in skepticism prior to Phil Plait bringing it up last year.

For some reason, it just made me think of things like, "Kids today are so rude" and "We're worse off now than we were XX years ago" and other such things. Arguments and feelings that just never seem to go away or get resolved. Human nature? Will we still be arguing back and forth about dickishness in fifty years when colonists on Mars are using homeopathy and side A wants to call them fucking morons while side B wants a more nuanced approach that involves leaving off the word "fucking?"

It's the sort of depressing thought that makes me laugh and laugh and laugh.

I am curious to see how TAM will end up going this year. Will there be another DBAD moment? Will the South Point be able to contain all of the incoming awesomeness for another year? Will we get another random moon hoaxer? How much battery life will I drain from my phone with endless tweeting, and how much will I drain surfing the web because yet another person is talking about atheism and I just don't care? Will I be able to resist my urge to shout at Richard Dawkins about elves¹? Will the terrifying packing foam green dessert make an appearance or has it finally hatched into the broodmother Xi'gl?

And so many more questions. Really this entire post seems to be made of nothing but questions. I guess that's what happens when I try to write something semi-coherent at midnight after a day of beating my head against an uncooperative short story.

Less than a month until TAM!

1 - Depends on how many beers I've had at that point, I suspect.

Story Post

2011-06-18T22:24:00.000-07:00

Did my weekly 15 minute fic, so here it is to make sure I've got something posted for today. Honestly, I doubt it'll make all that much sense to anyone I haven't cursed with reading a draft of my novel. But I've been thinking about one of the characters, and it seems like the best way to get to know him is to write random things about him.

(Fantasy, World of the Old Gods)

Azarin was never meant to be a warrior; he was supposed to be his father's son, follow in his footsteps, be a scholar and a story teller and a mediator and a leader, a man who gives of himself without question for the good of his people. It is profane to allow blood to touch his hands, even that of a slaughtered animal, let alone that belonging to a single human. That makes him the most profane thing he knows, a living, breathing blasphemy.

So he does the only thing he knows how; he makes a study of violence. He pursues every lesson thrown his way with single-minded intensity: first the simple training to strengthen the muscles of an invalid, then one sword, and two swords, and bow, and spear. Anything the armsmasters will teach him, he learns, practices over and over until his muscles have crossed burning fatigue and into a state of numbness, at a point where he can no longer grasp anything heavier than a piece of bread. And even as he eats, he stares into space, reviewing each movement he has learned, each string of cuts and feints and parries, how each thing felt and should feel if his body were perfect and every nerve listening.

There are other things he should study instead. He still does not know the language, cannot understand what the armsmasters say when they demonstrate a technique, but he doesn't need words for that. It's about movement and energy and balance, and those things he understands without the distraction of words. He is uninterested in etiquette, in history, in any of the other more scholarly areas that are closed to him because he has no wish to speak or listen.

And almost, almost he is content, except there is someone who can speak to him, and he has no choice but to listen because the words are warm in his ears and allow him to believe that something of his tribe has survived.

"I would think by now you'd be tired of talking to only me," Iazen says. "There are much more interesting people than myself around."

Azarin shrugs. "I don't need to talk to anyone else. I understand what they want well enough." He settles his weight, practices sweeping his spear in a perfect arc.

Iazen catches the haft with one dark hand, refuses to let go even after an impatient tug and a warning glare. "Normally, I only see this sort of behavior from those on the path of vengeance. But I know that cannot be true in your case."

"Because I already killed all of them." Azarin gives the spear one last tug, then just lets go of it and step away. His too-short hair is plastered to his forehead in spikes and drips sweat down the back of his neck.

"This, I saw with my own eyes."

"I don't feel like it."

Iazen returns the spear to the rack. "In my experience, even when you have had justice, it often doesn't feel like it."

Azarin simply walks away then, goes looking for a new place to practice where he can hide for a few hours before Iazen comes to badger him again. He cannot express the hunger he feels, which he knows can never be sated. That hunger is the stone on which he sharpens himself into the weapon he was never meant to be.

He still stops, at sunset, pauses to watch the light go from gold to orange to red, straining to hear as if there is still song on the breeze, just out of earshot.

"You don't sing any more."

He glances over his shoulder at Iazen. "You normally give me longer before bothering me again."

"I find I'm particularly bored today." Iazen stands next to him, uninvited, but it feels better than watching the sun set alone.

"I don't sing because there's no point. There's no one to hear me."

"There are many people around who would hear you."

"None that matter."

For a moment, he detects just a hint of hurt in Iazen's dark eyes. "As you will. But I think you should consider just what you are training for. A sword with no hand to wield it is useless."

"As useless as a Traveler with no Tribe," he agrees. He is beyond feeling sad now; it's all bitterness and rage hot in his throat.

Iazen reaches out and lays a hand on his shoulder, as no one has dared touch him since he woke as an orphan in this strange place. Azarin tells himself that he should step away, because this too is profane, but it makes no difference any more, and the warmth of Iazen's hand is something foreign and human and wonderful. Something twists in his chest, and when he feels the pressure lessen, he can't stop himself. He puts his hand over Iazen's, holding it there.

"Kaarseit," Iazen says. "That is the word for sunset."

And Azarin repeats it, the inflections tangling his tongue, until he gets it right.

X-Men: The Apology

2011-06-17T22:36:00.000-07:00

Which is really what the title of X-Men: First Class ought to be. since it is an apology, I think, for at the very least X-Men 3: Insert Inane Subtitle Here and the howling comedy that was supposed to be Wolverine's movie. Though if you're me, it's also an apology for the first two movies, because I'm still not ready to let go of the Halle Berry as Storm thing, and I probably never will because the nerdrage is strong with this one.

Though I'm also forced to admit, I'm not exactly X-Men fan number one. I have only read a few of the comics, and kind of gave up on them because it was just too difficult to figure out which comics I should be reading and in what order and if there was any sort of continuity. My hat's off to you, comic book fans. I don't know how you keep track of it all. It's right up there with the time my grandmother tried to describe the current set of plots for The Young and the Restless to me. Except with mutant powers and more love children.

I actually liked the X-Men because I watched the cartoon when I was growing up. I don't know if this makes me a hopeless noob. I have no idea how it meets the standards of the comics, and if I'm being honest, if I watched it now I'd be surprised if it was half as good as my memory claims it is. As is often the case with one's beloved Saturday Morning cartoons.

Anyway, I was ready to give up on X-Men movies completely. I'm glad that Isaac and David told me how awesome this one is, and went with me to see it.

I think out of the summer movies so far, I still like Thor a bit better, but I liked First Class enough to go see it a second time (by myself) this morning. This is mostly due to James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, though I liked most everyone in that movie other than Rose Byrne, who just never convinced me she was a CIA agent let alone a viable love interest for Charles Xavier. I'll admit to a certain amount of prejudice since I do like me some slash, but I'm also not one to insist on an OTP that makes absolutely no sense. So nyar.

(A few small spoilers)

Anyway, I think the thing I really liked about First Class was what it did for Magneto as a character. It made his entire attitude a lot more understandable, and really set up an interesting dynamic between him and Charles. To be honest, by the end of the movie I was really rooting for Magneto's viewpoint, because to hell with all of that hippy dippy love everyone shit when the fleets of two nations that were five minutes ago almost at war decide to settle their differences by killing the poor mutant schmucks on the beach who technically just saved the goddamn world. Particularly when the best defense Charles could come up with was, "They were just following orders." Ouch.

So yes, it's excellent, go see it.

Also, as ridiculous as this is, Magneto's power is really giving me fits. And yes, I know, that's stupid considering the dude in the movie who can shoot red hula hoops of energy out of his chest. But it just bugs my little geek brain that it's implied to be some kind of magnetic thing, when he spends all of his time messing around with metals that aren't actually magnetic.

Which sort of gives a new twist on him not being able to move the coin for Shaw at the beginning of the movie. "I can't! I can't! It's not actually magnetic!" YES I KNOW IT'S RIDICULOUS.

It was suggested that maybe it's more of an inducing a current and therefore a magnetic field because hey, that at least opens up any metal that's conductive. That's about the point where I fell off the physics train, so I have no idea if that's even a plausible half-assed explanation for being able to saw through someone's head with a piece of currency. Though if that is Magneto's actual power, it would make sense he'd want to stick to a more magnetism-sounding name. "The Inducer" just doesn't sound that intimidating... more like it would be his stripper stage name.

(/spoilers)

Enough overthinking things that really ought to be covered under the suspension of disbelief anyway. But I find it entertaining.

I'm hoping they'll do another movie with the younger Professor X and Magneto, though at the same time I'm a little scared of it, knowing how Hollywood does love to fuck up a sequel.

Speaking of, saw the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Not even Johnny Depp doing his Keith Richards impression was enough to keep me from checking my phone to see how much longer this could possibly go on. Pirates failed abjectly where the X-Men succeeded.

The better men, indeed.

Creationists at GSA

2011-06-16T16:33:00.000-07:00

I didn't actually go to GSA, even though it was in Denver. Mostly because I didn't want to cough up the registration fee, and had projects I should be working on besides. And of course, no one I know heard about this at the time, probably because I don't think people tend to get excited about field trips into their own backyards when it costs money.

But apparently, there were young earth creationists at GSA. And they ran a field trip to Garden of the Gods without telling anyone that they were young earthers. And then later bragged about how convincing it was to the real geologists. Please see PZ's blog post, since he's already done a lovely job of laying it all out and I see no reason to reproduce his links and do my own less entertaining version of the commentary.

I'll just note here for anyone not familiar with the geology of Colorado, that the pretty bits of Garden of the Gods are mostly from two formations: Fountain and Lyons.

The Fountain Formation is a series of alluvial fan deposits that run up and down the Front Range of Colorado (and have a sister formation on the western side of the continental divide, called the Maroon Formation) which was laid down on a probably dry plain at the feet of the Ancestral Rocky Mountains. The formation was mostly deposited by flash floods screaming out of mountain canyons, carrying loads of poorly sorted sediment. So in it, you see rocks ranging from conglomerates to sandstones to mudstones, which vary depending upon which flood stage they were laid down in. And you see these layers repeated over and over. You also see some very nice sedimentary structures that indicate successive floods, such as scours and channels cutting through lower layers.

So technically, the Fountain Formation was laid down by water, but it was fresh water. Fresh water in what was likely an otherwise dry environment. And it was also technically laid down by flooding, but by a lot of flash floods rather than one enormous Noah's flood. I think trying to fuzzy the two together is pretty disingenuous.

And then there's the Lyons. The Lyons is a quartz arenite, which means it's almost pure quartz. All the grains are super well-sorted and well-rounded. (And those of you that remember undergrad sed/strat are probably now nodding your heads, because you know what sort of thing typically makes these deposits already...) It's got enormous cross-beds as well as fissile ripple laminations that occasionally show as classic reverse-graded pinstriping, though pinstriping in the Lyons is much less common or pronounced than it is in other similar formations.

Dunes. In a desert. Giant sand dunes. We see formations like this all over the world, and we understand pretty well how they form.

I personally have a very, very hard time believing that any honest (as in not self-deluding) geologist who can even dimly remember anything about undergrad (let alone graduate) sedimentology/stratigraphy would look at the Lyons in particular and say, "Oh yeah, totally a giant flood."

But it sounds like the young earthers spend a lot of time muttering their more wacky assertions or dropping them in to the discussion quickly and moving on, so those not listening for it just didn't notice. From the article in Earth magazine, that's certainly what it sounds like.

The Earth article also makes this point:

Creationists may come to conclusions that the geological community challenges, but as long as they present their conclusions as derived from accepted scientific methodology, rather than religion, it is unfair to reject their participation. In any event, the field trip I attended was not a platform for proselytizing to participants, but involved real observations on real outcrops — even if the perspective was slanted towards a nonstandard interpretation. No harm, no foul.

To me, this seems like a really tricky thing. Because Mr. Newton makes a good point that completely excluding the young earthers from meetings isn't really going to do us much good. It just gives them ammunition. And to a certain extent, I think it's healthy for geologists who aren't necessarily involved in organized skepticism to run across young earthers, because if you're in academia it's pretty easy to forget that cranks like this exist or just dismiss them out of hand. They're a lot harder to forget if you're actually confronted with them and forced to consider what they're claiming, which then calls for a response.

On the other hand, what causes the downside of participation is the basic dishonesty the young earthers displayed at GSA. They're not being upfront about what their driving hypothesis is. They're being very subtle and cagey about their most scientifically insupportable views, and then running off to claim that they've convinced people. Because let's be honest, it's pretty easy to nod vaguely at a poster at GSA or AAPG or SEG or any other meeting when it's extremely technical and not precisely your area of expertise; it's easy to make fine details sound reasonable when the main crux of the research - trying to prove a young earth - is hidden precisely to prevent academic disagreement.

There's not any easy answer to this problem. You can't really make young earthers wear dunce caps at meetings, as amusing and righteous as that idea must feel, because it ultimately leads to the same place as excluding them entirely. I think maybe the best solution would be outreach and education to let geologists know that hey, these people are out there, and by the way, they're coming to meetings to try to give themselves a veneer of credibility so you ought to pay attention. Not that I think turning GSA into a pit of seething hostility is the way to go, but it'd also be a good idea to make sure people know why there will occasionally be confrontations at presentations. And also maybe give some hints on how to be listening for the subtle, cagey distortions that are apparently all the rage.

Ultimately, it's just a bitch and a half to try to engage in a scientific debate with people who aren't being up front and honest to begin with. But I think this also makes the point that we need to be a little more cautious about our nods of vague approval when we're browsing the posters.

Thoughts?

Hilarity Ensues: We've Declared War on a Glacier

2011-06-12T19:46:00.004-07:00

My friends, I present you with: 2012: Ice Age

There's a volcano. It unleashes a glacier. Don't ask me how. But it's a fast glacier. A really, really, really, really fast glacier that like a ~~brazillion~~ thousand miles across and can get from the Arctic to the US in a day or two, because it is seriously pissed off and has installed a turbo. And then it destroys New York City, because that's what you do when you're the world's fastest glacier that's been set free by a volcano. Because New York City once spat on your shoes and called your mom a fucking ice cube.

I think I may have to watch this movie. It looks even more hilarious than The Day After Tomorrow.

The sad thing is, I want to believe this is some kind of ridiculous parody. But I don't think it actually is.

ETA: One of my guildies suggested that this movie should actually be Speed 3, with Keanu driving the glacier. I am not ashamed to admit that I would pay perfectly good money to see that.

Story Post

2011-06-04T23:13:00.002-07:00

Finally got around to doing another 15 minute fic. So much for having a little practice each week. The first 600 words I wrote in the 15 minute time limit. The other 1500 were in the hour after, since it kind of got away from me. So kind of failtastic all around.

Fresh from Tanegawa's World: The First Bone

The First Bone

He was a man grown before he set foot in a town, set eyes on a human being that wasn't half dead of thirst or baking to jerky in the sun. He came drifting in on a southerly wind, strange and too pale for a creature of the desert, wearing mismatched shoes and the tattered remnants of clothing he'd taken from those that no longer required it.

The man made quite a stir in Pictou, a little mining camp that was barely more than a cluster of houses and a train depot huddled in the shadow of the mine works. There were questions and demands and people trying to do all but check his teeth, and all he did was smile in answer until the good folk came to the conclusion that he was dumb, and possibly simple, a miracle he'd survived out there in the dunes.

Most of the good folk looked to the town's preacher to take him in, since that was the godly thing to do. But he couldn't, you see, already had two orphaned mouths to feed, and a traveler coming in from out of town soon that he was required to keep a bed open for. And then there was a lot of shuffling, staring at shoes and kicking up dust, until finally a woman with hair gone half iron gray stepped forward and said she'd take him.

And they stared at her, the good folk of Pictou, and said nothing one way or another. She made a face like she'd just eaten a lemon, then grabbed the traveler by the sleeve and led him off to her house.

Her house was little better than a one-room shack, sectioned off with worn curtains, but it was neat and organized. The woman shut the door, cutting off the noise and heat from outside, and said, "You can talk, can't ya?"

And he smiled. "I can."

The woman laughed, throwing her head back. "Well, don't that beat all. Got a clever brain under those baby blues, son. Have a sit." She waved over at the bed crammed into one corner. "I'm Clara Barton. You got a name?"

"I don't think so. Would you like to give me one?"

Again, she laughed. "I'm not in the habit of giving out names, friend. Never had children for that reason. So you think hard, and pick something you like."

He laughed softly. "Nothing springs to mind."

"Then you'll be 'friend' for now, and that's good enough for me. Just say the word when you got it figured out."

"I will, I promise."

She hauled up a trap door, then disappeared down into the cellar beneath. A moment later, shoes and clothes came flying up to thump on the floor around him. She followed a moment later. "Those're my husband's clothes. He ain't gonna need 'em any more, and they ought to fit you well enough."

"Why won't he need them?"

"It's a pretty way of sayin' he's dead," Clara said matter-of-factly.

"I am sorry to hear that."

"Not as sorry as I was five years ago, but time's got a way of takin' the sting off." She shoved a rolled-up shirt at him with the toe of one shoe. "Get changed."

But when he rose to his feet and started stripping off his tattered rags, she turned around, the back of her neck and ears going bright red. "Got no sense of shame, do you?" she asked.

"I haven't done anything to be ashamed of, I don't think."

She laughed again, shoulders shaking, the sound coming up from her toes. "Mayhap you are simple."

"Maybe," he agreed. "But no one has minded yet."

Three days he spent in her care, sharing her food and sleeping on her floor. She seemed to find it strange that he needed no blankets, that he slept in one position the entire night without moving.

On the fourth morning, he opened his eyes to find her standing over him, staring at him, carving knife clutched in one hand. He eyed the knife curiously, unafraid. "Is something wrong?"

"You were a statue," she said. "When you slept. I touched you, god help me, felt your skin. Cold, smooth stone. And you didn't breathe, nor have no heartbeat neither."

He sat up, and that forced her back. "Doesn't everyone do that when they sleep?"

"Not a chance in hell."

"Oh." He shrugged. "That's how it's always been. It's safer that way."

"Safer?"

"It's hard to hurt stone." He tilted his chin toward the knife still clenched in her hand. "If you tried to prick me with that, the blade would break before I would."

"What are you?" she demanded.

He shrugged. "What I am. Why is that so frightening?"

"Because it ain't normal," she said, voice dropping to a low hiss. "It's... witchiness. You don't tell a soul about this. Not a soul." And she refused to say anything more than that, though she did put away the knife and fetch a bowl of pottage for them both.

And he learned: I am not like people.

And it was easy enough to tell not a soul. No one bothered with him, thinking him simple. The preacher dropped by twice, very briefly, to say a few words and smile vaguely in his direction. But he didn't mind; it left him free to wander the town, to investigate and explore and see what the people were doing.

What they seemed to spend most of their time doing was going into the mine, bringing up loads of ore and putting it on to a train, which took it even farther.

He didn't like that. It felt wrong, made him sick to see it.

"Why do you people do that?" he asked Clara one night when a particularly large shipment went out.

"What they get paid to do." She shrugged. "All sorts of stuff gets made with the ore, off world."

And that somehow made it worse, knowing that pieces of the world were being taken elsewhere. Clara seemed so puzzled, seeing him blink back tears.

She was sick the night they did a series of large blasts in the mine, so sick that he asked if he should get someone to help her. Because he felt the ground rumble, heard it grown with the thump from the explosions, and it just made him angry, like watching somebody twist a knife. But Clara was curled up in her bed in an agonized ball, groaning fit to die with every underground whump that rattled the plates in the drainer.

"It'll pass," she said, eyes squeezed tight shut. "It always does."

He crouched down next to her bed, mouth close enough to her ear that all he had to do was breathe out the words. "You feel it, don't you. The pain of the world."

"Don't say it," she hissed.

"What did you do, Clara? Did you mine? You don't go down there any more..."

Another whump, and she bit back a scream. "We were both miners, me'n Jeremy. But there was a cave in... goddamn foreman, rushing us... not enough timber. But it killed Jerry, and it near killed me... thought I was dying, blacking out, couldn't breathe, but I heard singin'... singin' from the rocks..."

"And you've heard it ever since..." he breathed.

"You tell a soul... and I'm dead. We don't have no truck with witchiness, here..."

He stroked her hair. "I wouldn't let anyone hurt you."

Because the new lesson was this: There are people like me.

He tried to talk to her about it more, when the blasting was done and she felt better. But she refused to say a word, and when he tried one time too many, she slapped him across the face and told him to shut his fool mouth.

Because she was afraid. And that made him afraid.

It happened so suddenly, on a day when winds from the east were starting to really kick up, a sandstorm stirring on the horizon and getting ready to blow into fury. Clara was ironing one of the foreman's shirts – that's what she did for money, since she refused to go into the mine – and then just dropped the iron and ran out the door.

He paused to set the iron right, since she'd told him many times it could burn down the house if left in place too long. Then he followed her outside, where she was almost doubled over but still stumbling forward, trying to run to the mine, straight down Pictou's main street.

And then he felt the strain of breaking rock, too much pressure against not enough support with all those empty spaces drilled into the mountain.

"It's caving in!" Clara screamed. "There's gonna be a cave in, get out!"

The few people not down in the mine looked at her curiously, women pausing as they took down their laundry, the preacher stepping from his church to grab her arm, ask her if she was all right.

The earth gave. Dust and rock came bursting out the mine entrance, the rumble lasting longer than any of the explosions ever had.

Clara screamed, loud and long, the preacher's grip on her arm like iron. He forced her down to the ground, made her kneel in the street, his face gone white and mouth huge.

And he, the man with no name, stepped forward to help her, running to her side. Another man came from the church, and the preacher shouted, pointing a finger at him.

He could stop a knife if he saw it coming. A bullet was too fast, too unexpected; no one had ever tried to shoot him before. It punched through his side, set him tumbling back. His belly screamed, and he covered the hole with one hand, trying to keep the blood in while his mind reeled with confusion.

Dazed, he turned his face toward Clara. Her mouth was moving, but he heard no sound, just a high-pitched whine in his ears. But he could make out the shape of her lips, could read them well enough.

Get away, you damn fool. Save yourself. Go!

There was no helping anyone, with so much red leaking between his fingers. He closed his eyes and let go, sinking down into the dust and dirt and returning to stone.

He dreamed, as he slept in the earth, as he always dreamed.

Of a well filled with light and song.

Of wolves.

Of the wind sighing his name, though he could never quite hear.

And because he dreamed, he didn't know what they did to Clara above. Didn't see them lock her in the church basement, didn't hear her calling for him to come save her, now that she was surrounded by stone and please god, where are you, where are you. He didn't seem them pull body after body from the mine, all that blood gone into the earth and no gift given in return. He didn't see the preacher tell a town half mad with grief about Clara and her witchiness and how could she have known if she didn't bring the disaster?

And he didn't see them burn her, in old-timey style outside the town gates, the good folk of Pictou retreating inside as the sandstorm blew in before the fire had even burnt itself out.

It was into the sandstorm that he rose from the earth, weak and a little dizzy from a half-healed wound and an interrupted dream. The storm blew around him, howling hard enough to blast the flesh from any living body, but no sand touched him. He caught the faint whiff of char and burnt flesh before the wind tore it away. And he listened, for the sound of Clara, the musical note in the world that was her, but it was faint and sad and un-alive.

He walked from the gates of the town, found the pyre where there was nothing but charred bones, all the ashes blown away. He picked up a finger bone and pressed it against his lips, tears slipped from his eyes and whipped away by the wind and sand. He took a string from his pocket and laced it around the bone, hung it around his neck. The other bones, he saw the earth swallow, giving Clara back to the rocks that she should have by right loved like he did, if she hadn't been so twisted up and afraid of the very thing that had happened to her.

He turned back to Pictou, crouching down and resting his hands on the hardpan that surrounded it. It made him dizzy, made black specks threaten to overtake his vision and blood begin to seep from his side again, but he reached through the earth and tore at the foundations of the church basement until the building collapsed in on itself.

And then he walked away, out into the storm, one hand clutching the finger bone.

The last lesson: They will kill people like me.

By the way: Squee!

2011-06-04T22:34:00.000-07:00

A little more good news on the research front - I got one of the grants that I applied for! $1000 will shortly be added to my research funds, thanks to the Gulf Coast Section of the SEPM.

For this grant, I'm going to have to send in regular (every six month) updates on my research. The first one is due at the end of July, so at least I'll have something to report - drilling!

The money will either be going toward grain size analysis or thin sections... either way, it's going to be super helpful. Yay!

Geology photos for you...

2011-05-30T17:21:00.000-07:00

It's been a long, long weekend. I am only slightly sunburned, but my brain has melted. Have some photos:

Core photos:
Orchard Core
Almond Core

These are the two cores that were the final project for the facies analysis class I took last semester. Lots of pretty sands and muds.

Snowmastadons - these are pictures I took of some of the fossils recovered in Snowmass. I had the privilege of seeing them while I was at the Bighorn Basin Coring Project meeting at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The pictures really don't do these amazing remains justice. For more information, please see the Snowmastodon Project at DMNS. There are a lot of absolutely amazing pictures of the dig site and more fossils there.

The Amazing Kung Fu Adventure in Moab - the Shaolin Hung Mei Kung Fu School went to Moab this Memorial Day weekend to perform at the Moab Arts Festival. While we were there, we spent a few hours at Arches, and I got some beautiful pictures. I love Moab so much.

Magnetic Bacteria Fiesta on the Proto-Potomac

2011-05-25T13:00:00.001-07:00

I met with my advisor last week, and she asked me to do some background research for her on a couple of papers she's working on. So I spent the last week-ish doing a lot of searching across the internets for papers, and then reading of papers. Considering how I feel about reading most papers, this was no small task. My schedule pretty much ran like this:

Wake up
Read papers until brain melts
Lunch break
Read more papers until hysterical giggling starts
Afternoon walk
Read papers because we live in a godless universe of pain
Mike gets home, incoherent gibbering commences

But I got this round done, and my advisor is pleased with my results so WOOOOOO GO ME. And here's a tip for my fellow newb grad students - get yourself a copy of the John Williams Superman theme song. Play it while you're writing, and then it feels like not only are you doing science, you're SAVING THE GODDAMN WORLD OH YEAH.

So anyway, I wanted to share with you all my favorite paper I read over this last week:
An Appalachian Amazon? Magnetofossil evidence for the development of a tropical river-like system in the mid-Atlantic United States during the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (Kopp et al 2009)

I don't think you'll be able to read the entire paper without an AGU membership (or without using a university library computer), but if you can give it a read. It's a fun, fun, fun, and cool paper. The summary goes like this:

1) At the PETM in the Salisbury Embayment (which runs from northern Virginia to southern New Jersey on the Atlantic sheld) there's a clay layer called the Marlboro, which is "...the thickest single-domain magnetite-dominated sedimentary unit yet reported in the literature."

2) The magnetite is all from magnetofossils produced by bacteria and other organisms that need crystals of magnetite for their own nefarious purposes.

3) The conditions necessary for that kind of bacterial block party are pretty specific, since it's got to be conducive to the little critters being able to live and make their magnetite.

4) Hey, in modern day, the best example of these conditions are tropical river shelves, like the Amazon shelf. So what if the Potomac during the PETM was like that?

Of course, there's a lot of really fascinating detail from the paper that I'm leaving out. But even just the concepts are awesome and interesting.

Slow Motion Landslide

2011-05-20T08:49:00.005-07:00

This is just awesome:

The flow looks like it's really cooking along... until people make an appearance in the video and you see just how much it's been sped up. The flow is actually moving at around 50 cm per hour, which to us fast-living humans makes it practically solid ground.

More info over at the AGU Landslide Blog.

And I totally agree with the first commenter over at the post. This thing needs some Benny Hill music, starting right when the first person pops into the frame. WIN.

Spec Tech Article Online

2011-05-17T14:25:00.000-07:00

When I first joined the SFWA, I admitted on their forums that I'm a geology sort of person. This eventually led me to being contacted by the wonderful lady that runs the Clarion Foundation Blog and offered the chance to write the occasional bit about geology. My first piece is now up over there:

The Making of Mountains

It's a basic overview of the tectonic processes that are involved in creating most mountain ranges - and what those mountain ranges generally look like on maps. Which I hope will be helpful for people who are worldbuilding.

Not that I'm implying anyone making a map for a fantasy world is at all interested in realism, or ought to be. If your mountains are that way because the god that created the world wanted them there, good for you.

But I'll admit, there's been a time or two where I've looked at a map for a fantasy world and giggled - I'm looking at you, Mr. Tolkien. Which is silly, I know, since this is fantasy. But what can you do, I guess we each have a little item or two that just destroys the suspension of disbelief. It's the same reason I can't look at maps from WoW without snickering - I could practically write a book about how silly they are.

I may be done with teaching, and a ficlet

2011-05-10T13:14:00.002-07:00

So, I may actually be done with teaching, though that kind of depends on how long I actually end up staying in school to finish my degree. But it sounds like I won't be teaching sed/strat next spring after all. While I like the idea of not having all the grading, I was kind of looking forward to teaching the lab again now that I know what to expect out of it. And of course, the evil, niggling Doubt Monster that lives in my brain is already wondering if I'm not going to be teaching because, really, I'm just that bad at it.

Shut up, Doubt Monster. Or just go back to making nasty comments about my weight and the state of my wardrobe, please. That's so much easier to handle.

So I've spent my morning getting the files in order for whoever ends up teaching next semester, since I've been trying to improve the assignments as I go. I'll be up at school all day Thursday to organize the drawers in the lab and make sure everything is there and working. So that'll be fun. I'm planning for grad student life as normal to resume next week, and until then I'll read some papers and think deep thoughts. And tool around on my bicycle. Yeah.

Oh, and there's this little thing I do most weeks, for an LJ community called "15 minute ficlets." They post a word, you write for 15 minutes about it, and there you go. I'm quite terrible at it, because if nothing else, trying to write something extremely short that feels complete is an impossible task for me. But it's fun and a source of ideas. So I thought I'd drop the results here, behind a fold so that they're not annoying to people who care little for my obsession with writing.

* * *

Life had become boring: that was the crux of the problem for those that cared to summarize. She had separated herself from polite society, retreated to a deserted mine in the mountains, and turned it into a veritable mechanical paradise for outcasts and misfits like herself. Which was not to disparage the years of hard work and invention it had taken to do that, but now that everything was fine-tuned and the air pumps all hummed quietly along instead of clanking and the last of the dripping faucets had been successfully twiddled and rerouted, there was simply nothing left to do.

So she had taken to peyote, acquired from one of the southern Indian tribes, as a way to pass the time. It provided some intellectual stimulation where listening to societal misfits complain about the quality of the tea certainly did not.

"Captain."

She roused herself slowly, dreamily, prying one eye open. Through a drug-induced haze, Simms was certainly more pleasing to the eye than normal, the colors surrounding him a distraction from his somewhat misshapen nose. "Ah, Mr. Simms. Has some little waif lost her kitten in pump room again?"

Simms shook his head, crouching down next to her chair and crossing his arms. "I don't think this particularly healthy, Captain."

"More healthy than boredom-induced madness, I suspect."

"The Mayor--"

"Oh goodness, he's calling himself Mayor now? What an adorable little village we've set up." Even as she mocked the idea, she did find it gratifying; if Cesar had set himself up as some sort of political leader, it meant that the people who had taken up residence in the mine would stop troubling her with their headache-inducing squabbles.

"We had a proper election and everything," Simms informed her. "Whilst you were brewing up that horrid stink last week. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised you didn't notice."

"Politics of are little interest to me." In fact, refuge from politics was the first reason she'd retreated to the mountains.

"Well yes, but someone's got to keep thing in order, and it's apparently not you." Simms shook his head. "Anyway, Captain, as I was saying before you interrupted, the Mayor's quite worried, as am I."

"Unless your worry translates into a feat of engineering, Simms, I find myself unconcerned."

"It well may," Simms said. "For all your bellyaching about boredom, you never seem to treat your own problems as things to be solved."

She laughed. "Well, if I could think of a solution, I wouldn't be bored, now would I? How dull."

He sighed. "And you say that I'm unreasonable."

"Did you actually have anything to tell me, Simms or is this your version of an afternoon's entertainment?"

"Oh, I'm sure I've better things to do in an afternoon than watch over you," he said. "No, I thought I'd just mention a little thing me'n the Mayor noticed. Guess the Grand Duke in Denver's got over his little tizzy with the Duchess in Provo, because traffic on the road's been going up and up over the last week."

This did hook into her attention, tease at her brain. "Really."

"And it's looking rather well guarded, if you take my drift. So might be a thing of interest there."

"How well guarded?"

"Hard to tell from the distance, so you might want to go out and check for yourself tonight."

"Right..." And suddenly, Captain Ramos was on her feet, pacing, though a little unsteadily. "If we're looking at larger caravans and more guards, I think our engine will need a bit of improvement. It's a project I've been putting off far too long."

Simms let out a quiet sigh of relief when the Captain's back was turned. "Indeed, sir. And while life isn't too bad for us these days, there are always bits and bobs we could use, more money for food, things like that."

But she wasn't listening any more; already, she was at her worktable, tearing through a stack of blueprints to find her original plans for the small engine they'd used to traverse the old, broken mountain roads.

Simms stood up and let himself quietly out of the room. If he didn't have such a cherished hatred for the Grand Duke of Denver, he'd feel almost sorry for the man. Becoming Marta Ramos' new entertainment was an uncomfortable prospect for anyone.

And Then There Was This Skepticamp Thing

2011-05-09T11:11:00.000-07:00

Which I really should have posted about before I went in to full-on Loki fangirling mode yesterday, but what can I say. I must be true to my inner fangirl.

Skepticamp Colorado (the sixth?) happened on Saturday, and I made certain to be there from the start. The event was at CU again, though this time we used one of the business school buildings, which I've never been in before. It was nice, and new, and there were pop machines that took credit cards, which I've never seen before.

The event was a lot of fun, as usual. The individual talks that stand out most in my mind were:

- Kim Saviano on the science of intersex. In her presentation she said that she has a blog, but I haven't been able to find it and can't remember the exact title - so if you recall or have the link, please let me know. Anyway, this was a very interesting talk and definitely a new topic for our Skepticamps, and Kim got some extremely good audience response. She made a lot of good points and had a lot of good, basic information in her presentation, but her point that struck me the most was: "We're all assigned a gender at birth."

- Karen Stollznow on Braco the Gazer was just a lot of fun. I'd only heard of this joker in passing (since he was mentioned in a meetup), but the more Karen talked about him, the more absolutely ridiculous it got. Braco supposedly heals people with the power of his gaze, which amounts to him standing on stage and blankly staring at adoring crowds for minutes on end. It's hilarious, and also a bit scary because people really do buy this, and he seemed to be making a tidy living. Braco (pronounced more like "Bratzo") also is now the default toast for the Denver skeptics. Blame Rich Orman, because it really is his fault.

- Bryan and Baxter from Rocky Mountain Paranormal were absolutely hilarious, as always. I'm not going to say too much about their presentation since they will hopefully be releasing some awesome video in relation to it soon, but it did involve Joe Anderson with a pornstache at one point. And Rich Orman. And Froot Loops. And that's all you get for now.

- DR. Stuart Robbins did an overview of physics for skeptics, which was useful - particularly since he tried to explain some basics of quantum mechanics. And I just love Stuart to bits anyway.

- And Shawn Yasutake finally did a presentation! Yay Shawn! He did a slide show about his trip to a low-budget Creation Museum in California, which was another funny but also sad thing to see. My favorite bit from his presentation was the museum sign that claims thermodynamics is God's punishment on the world for sin. I swear I'm not making that up!

This year's event was smaller than last year's, I think - we were all just in one room for the day. I think that was nice, though, since it meant not having to choose between speakers. I also noticed that this was definitely the most argumentative year yet, mostly with the audience going back and forth with speakers about either logical fallacies, or the definition of energy. This occasionally caused some audience squirming, but I think the interaction is also sort of the point... if it can be conducted in a less squirm-inducing way. Though Joe, monkey suit and all, did his best to keep things from becoming completely derailed. But being able to address disagreements directly is valuable, since it's too easy to get into a lecture mode where you just sort of absorb what you're told by a speaker, whether it's right or not.

I didn't speak this year, mostly because I just wasn't motivated enough to get my shit together in time. I will be signing up for sure next year, since I'm going to want to do an awesome "What I did over my summer vacation" slide show about the BBCP and paleoclimate change. So we'll see how huge of a presentation that ends up being. And if I get to pick a fight with anyone in the audience when the time comes.

Can't wait for next year!

Thor Loki Makes Me Go Squee

2011-05-08T22:36:00.000-07:00

I liked the hell out of Thor; it's a fun movie, and I hope I'll get to see it again while it's still in theaters. Watch out, mateys, THAR BE SPOILERS AHEAD!

SPOILERS

I liked Thor as a character well enough, and I appreciated that his major arc was realizing that he was kind of a dick and getting over himself. But it actually surprised me a lot that my favorite character out of that movie was Loki. I'm used to feeling fairly meh about comic book villains, but Loki felt like he had a lot of complexity to him.

And I swear, it's not just because I've got a cat named Loki too.

Tom Hiddleston does an amazing job with the character. Loki's constantly broody and thinky and plotty, and is obviously the smartest guy around, but at the same time just gets screwed again and again by his own issues. I've now read a couple of interviews with Mr. Hiddleston where he says Loki just really needs a lot of prozac and a lot of therapy. I'd definitely add a lot of hugs in there too, because damn I ended up feeling really bad for the guy for most of the movie. Yes, a lot of the bad stuff is his own fault for being all plotty and wanting to cause trouble, but the whole bit where he finds out he's actually just a runty frost giant that Odin adopted... yeah, man needed a hug right then. It's really not the sort of thing that you want to discover on your own.

I really see his major head-explodey moment there as the reason Loki just goes off the rails and crosses from being a crafty trouble-maker to an actual bad guy. I've read a bit of summary from the comics now, but the way it was really presented in the movie was:

a) Odin really does seem earnest that he loves both Thor and Loki equally.

b) Loki seems just as genuinely convinced that Odin can't possibly love him that much. And there's a certain logic too it even if you just look at the movie and nothing else... considering how everyone in Asgard seems to feel about the frost giants, it's probably hard to imagine daddy genuinely loving you at all if you're actually one of them.

c) Thor is the default good son, even though he starts off as kind of a douchebag.

d) And Loki is actually right when he points out that Douchebag!Thor would be a horrible king that Asgard needed "saving" from. Though at that point, you can't quite be sure if he says that because he really means it, because he's trying to convince himself that he's got a noble reason for doing what he's doing, or if he's once again just really trying to fuck with people.

So of course it's all wonderfully angsty, and that rolls into a lot of anger and that weird sort of love/hate that only siblings can manage to have for each other in these sorts of stories. The final epic fight that Loki has with Thor was definitely Loki trying to prove something to someone, but there are just so many ways that it could be read. If nothing else, I really wonder about Loki deciding to destroy the frost giants, as if that sort of over the top gesture would somehow make him not one of them by showing that damnit, he hated frost giants more than any other Asgardian possibly could.

Now, from the comic summaries I've read, it sounds like Thor really was the golden boy that daddy loved best, and that even if no one necessarily knew what Loki was, he also lacked the sheer physical presence in the form of enormous muscles that residents of Asgard seem to prize. But to be honest, I actually prefer the movie take from the standpoint of character complexity; it's more interesting if dad really does love his sons equally, I think.

I am definitely, definitely, DEFINITELY looking forward to seeing Loki in the Avengers movie. If nothing else, I cannot wait to see what Joss Whedon does with him in the script, since Joss is the absolute king of the the complex and interesting evil-but-not-really-just-needs-a-hug villain. And from the little stinger that comes after the credits on Thor, Loki seems set to be prominent in the next film. Though considering that Thor also left the title character stranded in Asgard, I'll be interested to see how the Avengers actually all manage to get together to begin with.

/SPOILERS

Wonderful stuff. Makes me wish I still wrote fanfic, to be honest.

Off the topic of my new fan obsession, Heimdall was amazing as well. Even without taking in to account that casting Idris Elba pissed off the white supremacists to no end (WIN!) he did a really good performance as an immensely intimidating and exceptionally patient god. I loved it.

The Epic of Honda Buying

2011-05-06T11:09:00.001-07:00

I will not be melodramatic about this. I'm not going to claim that I'd rather go to the dentist and have a cavity filled than buy a car, because we all know that would be an enormous lie. But it's a close thing.

I spent the last day and a half trapped in a car dealership, trying to buy a new car. I have noticed that, of all the major purchases I've made in my adult life, cars are by far the ones that take the longest and are the most painful. Buying a fricking house didn't cause this much drama in my life.

I hadn't actually expected to buy a new car this week. We were planning to start shopping today, actually, and just take our time with it. Our old car was starting to have some serious transmission problems, but I figured we could nurse it along for another couple of weeks without too much difficulty. However, my dad started looking around for cars in advance (I think he was way more excited about shopping for a car than I was, which... well, that's not hard to do, really) and discovered that right now, trying to find a used Honda in the northern metro area is no easy task. According to the dealer, it's apparently a combination of the gas prices and a lack of new Hondas coming in from Japan, so the used cars are getting snapped up almost as fast as they're coming in. So my dad did find two used cars at Go Honda, and I went to look at them on Wednesday. They were both good, so I figured I might as well get Mike to try them out since getting a car earlier than expected wasn't going to hurt anything.

The drama started when I decided that I wanted to have my mechanic look at the car we wanted before I was willing to throw down the money. Our actual salesman, a guy named Brandon, didn't seem to have a problem with it, and even joked about putting the car in a remote corner of the lot so no one would see it until I picked it up the next morning. I think he believed me when I said that I'd made an appointment with my mechanic and would be back for sure. But his boss was not so convinced, and the hard sell started.

Seriously, I could just buy the car and then have my mechanic look at it and return it if something was wrong. And it was a Honda certified used car so it was insulting that I didn't trust that. And they take the three day return policy very seriously. And you know that Hondas are hard to find right now, so someone might just buy it out from under us. And they only had four new Hondas left so what did I think would happen if those got bought - the used ones wouldn't last long after. (Seriously dude, how many fucking cars do you sell on a Wednesday night?)

It felt like most of the pressure focused right on me, maybe because he sensed that Mike was an impenetrable wall of Britishness that wasn't going to take any crap. It got to the point that I literally said, "You both have to go. I want to talk to my husband. Leave." And then as soon as they left, we ran for it.

If I hadn't really wanted that car, I wouldn't have come back. It pissed me off that much. I have no idea why this is acceptable behavior to anyone... all I can guess is that it works sometimes. But no wonder buying a car is one of the most horrific purchasing experiences ever.

Anyway, I did go back the next day, and took the car to my mechanic. After having it for several hours, Dale called me back up and asked, "Is this car supposed to be Honda certified used? Because if so, there are some problems..." He found three things on the 150-point checklist that shouldn't have been checked off - the battery, the brake pads, and the air filters. But he said that if those things got fixed, the car was very worth buying and would last us for years and years.

So, armed with a yellow piece of paper that said the dealership was trying to pull a fast one on us, I went to the dealer, with my dad to watch my back. I plunked the piece of paper down and said I'd love to buy the car, but these things had to be addressed first or no deal.

Our salesman scurried to the back room with the paper, and chaos ensued. Another salesman came out with him and seemed pretty ticked off - he made some pretty unkind comments about our mechanic, then dragged us downstairs so we could look at the car and see for ourselves that Dale was totally lying. I let my dad take the lead, since when it comes to cars, someone could point at a random part and inform me that it's actually alien technology from Area 51 and I'd be able to do nothing but nod wisely in agreement.

So their mechanic pulled the front wheel off and pointed out the brake pad, saying that it looked fine. My dad asked for a ruler, since he wasn't just going to take someone's word for it. Which meant that they had to disassemble the brake and actually pull the pads out so they could measure them with a caliper... and the caliper said that the brake pads were only 4mm thick, which is quite a difference from the 7mm they claimed.

At this point, the sales guy that dragged us down there looked like he'd pooped in his drawers a little. Another mechanic tested the battery and said it was fine, but then I asked him to check the air filter since he was in the engine anyway. The filter was black, and his response was, "Yeah... that's kind of dirty."

Score one for my mechanic. Two, actually.

They shooed us back to the showroom then, and made a copy of the paper. The supervisor of the mechanics apparently wanted it so that he could go have a chat with his guys. Possibly with a sock full of pennies in hand, though that's only speculation.

After that, it was just waiting and paperwork and more waiting and more waiting and then I pointed out they had to give me two master keys and a valet key, since that was required if the car was Honda certified too. And then more waiting while that got taken care of.

Despite the fact that I did little but sit in the showroom and feel intensely bored, I was stressed and exhausted by the end. It was like I put in eight hours of work at the damn dealership and then paid them a giant wad of cash at the end of it.

I hate shopping for cars. But look, it's so shiny!

I think the moral of this story is, though, make sure your mechanic looks over a used car before you buy it. And don't let them push you.

School's Out All Summer!!!!

2011-05-03T15:25:00.000-07:00

DONE WITH GRADING DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, other than the grading, I had way more fun teaching this semester than I did last semester. Probably because I like sed/strat WAY more than I ever liked mineralogy. Hopefully everyone had a reasonable amount of fun with it. Though the one problem with teaching a class that I really enjoyed when I was an undergrad is that I wanted all of my students to just love it as much as I did... and of course, that's not going to happen. Some geologists are sedimentary people, some just aren't.

I'm already working to improve the assignments and materials for next semester, since no matter what I'll be teaching this lab at least once more. One of the harder things I'm trying to do is develop a grading rubric for one of the major projects, since I think that'll help me grade, and also help the students figure out exactly what I'll be expecting from them. I ended up using the rubric for grading this semester, but only as a very fuzzy guideline where I erred on the side of being nice. It seemed to work out mostly, but I've got to do some fine-tuning before next spring. Which really means doing it some time this week, before all the motivation gets sucked out of me.

One thing that's really starting to drive me nuts is just how many points get lost over students just not reading the directions, or not answering the actual question that's asked, or things like that. And I always feel just a little guilty, taking points off if something is done in pencil instead of pen, but then again, damnit, I said on multiple occasions that it needed to be done on pen.

Though I feel less guilty for deducting points for the assignment being handwritten instead of typed. My eye strain on all the terrible handwriting makes me feel much, much less charitable.

But anyway. That's pretty much done with teacher stuff for the semester. Grades have been sent off to my advisor, and all that's left is a bit of cleanup. I think I did pretty well for my first semester on this class - next spring ought to be even better!

And many thanks to Loki, who helped me in this time of great stress by laying on top of the papers and refusing to be moved.

Also, my friend David seems to have a blog now: Unintelligently Designed, which wins for its name if nothing else.

I Will Be Installing a Turbo on My Fountain Pen

2011-04-29T14:09:00.000-07:00

From June 26 through August 6 this summer, I will be attempting to complete the rough draft of my current novel-in-progress. I can't tell you how many words that will end up being, but my guess is I'll be putting in at least 80,000 words in that six week period. A good portion of this writing will be done while I'm in the middle of the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming, with only other geologists and inquisitive snakes for company. Why?

~~Because I'm fucking insane!~~

No, I mean because I'm participating in the Clarion Write-a-Thon. Clarion is a Big Deal, intensive writing bootcamp for writers who want to improve their scifi/fantasy short story skills. It also needs money, so that it can keep training the budding authors in our favorite geek genres. And I can always use motivation to write, so it's like a match made in heaven.

(And if you all love me enough to pledge dirty wads of cash, I might win an iPad. But that's beside the point, I promise.)

Here's my writer page, complete with an en-hatted picture. Because I am nothing without my hat. It's for a good cause, and it's getting me to do things with my summer other than throwing rocks at rattlesnakes, so please consider donating!

I Have No Words

2011-04-28T22:24:00.001-07:00

Photos of Pictures and Documents found after the April 27, 2011 Tornadoes

Words fail me. Tears don't.

* * *

After a breather and several kleenex, I think I've got a few words in me. It's scary as hell, how much of these things are ending up 60, 80, even close to 100 miles away from their point of origin. Which really shows the terrifying force that nature is capable of - as if we needed another reminder this year after the Sendai earthquake.

It's scaring me that there have been this many tornadoes, and this strong, and this early in the year already. Makes me wonder what the rest of the summer has in store for us. Makes me wonder what hurricane season is going to bring. And makes me wonder if we may be lining up for more years like this, considering one of the predicted effects of the current climate shifts is storms of greater severity. You know, the climate change that a horrifying percentage of Congress isn't even willing to admit exists.

We can't fight nature. In the end, nature wins. Nature always wins; it has more time, more power. We've got each other, though, and that shouldn't be downplayed. And I was crying because there's something indescribably sad about pictures torn and cast into the world by a storm, when you don't know what happened to the people in those pictures - you just know that the person, the moment, was important to someone. But I was also crying because humans are amazing, though I wish it didn't require tragedy to remind us of that fact.

Red Cross

Hydrocarbon Formation at Depth

2011-04-25T22:53:00.002-07:00

I think this got mentioned on this week's Skeptic's Guide to the Universe in the science or fiction. I thought it might be the fiction, but wasn't all that surprised when it turned out to be science:

Hydrocarbons in the deep earth (press release...?)
Stability of hydrocarbons at deep Earth pressures and temperatures (PNAS article)

And this of course ties back in to my previous linking and random ruminations about abiotic oil.

Mostly, I think this article is interesting, but not something explosive in terms of what we know about the formation of petroleum. I actually found this PNAS article via a post with the faceplam-worthy title "Oil and Gas Forever?"¹ on the website of The Global Warming Policy Foundation - which is apparently supposed to be "devoted to challenging conventional wisdom about climate change." I do think that if you just check the front page of the site (The GWPF's, not the Daily Mail's), the axe they're grinding is evident. Though maybe it is with the Daily Mail's too, I wouldn't know.

But I digress.

Despite the murky chain of links I followed to find the little PNAS article, I think it's interesting. And will probably be horribly misused by excited people who think "Oil and Gas Forever" sounds like a lovely concept in general. The article itself is about computer simulations run to see if methane could form in to longer hydrocarbon chains at deep pressures and temperatures, and according to the simulations, the answer is yes. Which can be considered a point in the camp of abiogenic oil, but I would add the following cautions:

1) Whether long hydrocarbons can form abiogenically or not, that doesn't in any way mean that all hydrocarbons - or even the majority - form in that way. Please see the bit about kerogens in my previous post.

2) This doesn't really address any of the other questions important to developing hydrocarbons, such as: What's the migration path, and how long does it take to get there? (And many more...)

3) It's also not necessarily a realistic simulation. Quoting the first article:

"Our simulation study shows that methane molecules fuse to form larger hydrocarbon molecules when exposed to the very high temperatures and pressures of the Earth's upper mantle," Galli said. "We don't say that higher hydrocarbons actually occur under the realistic 'dirty' Earth mantle conditions, but we say that the pressures and temperatures alone are right for it to happen."

Emphasis mine. So, like much science that gets slapped with melodramatic headlines, this is more of a, "Huh, that's interesting," than anything else.

1 - Actually, it's not what you'd imagine out of an article with that title... it's just the LLNL press release, and a C&P from a blog post that also pretty much emphasizes that there's not really evidence for this being a major source of hydrocarbons, but that this is just sort of interesting.

One Down, One and a Bit Left...

2011-04-25T22:07:00.000-07:00

Today was officially my last Petroleum Reservoir Characterization class and the final project is out of my hands, so that's that. It's been an interesting class, but between wrestling with Petrel and wanting to stick my head under a pillow and scream every time I have to read about geostatistics, I'm pretty sure I don't want to go into reservoir modeling when I grow up. But it's certainly given me an appreciation of just what it takes to do that sort of job.

What I have left now is my last Facies Analysis project, which is ticking along quite nicely. Today I did a rough description of the last core, though I'm going to give it a pretty strict second pass through. This core and I are not getting along well, which I find strange since it's from the Almond formation, which is the same formation as the Stagecoach Draw cores. I loved those cores to bits when I looked at them as an undergrad, and have still found them quite loveable while inflicting them on the current class of sed/strat undergrads. They've got the same lovely black lagoon shell that's laced with oyster shells, even.

As weird as it is, I think I just don't like the Almond core because:
a) It's in a different sort of box, which makes it harder to look at the cores without pulling them out.
b) There's a ton of swelling in clays in the upper part of the formation, which means all of the mudstone is covered with a crackly gray skin of clay. And if you want to look at those core sections, you have to clean them off thoroughly (in the process covering your hands with deep gray mud) and then look fast, since they get their clay skin back as soon as they dry off.

But I'm almost done. There will not be pictures of this core, though, since it's not very pretty and I'm not getting along with it. I do have pictures of the Williams Fork core I just finished looking at. I'm hoping to post those for anyone who might be interested, but I think I want to check with my teacher first to make sure it's okay to do so. I don't see why it shouldn't be, but my grad bff is doing her thesis on that core (and a few others) and I don't want to risk stepping on toes or messing anything up.

But anyway, that ought to all be done by the end of the week, if all goes well. Though I unfortunately won't actually be done then - I still need to finish grading! The Stagecoach Draw core projects are stacked in the plastic crate next to my desk, glaring at me accusingly because I've been too chicken to even look at them thus far. Once I get this last project done, though, I'll be out of excuses and I'll need to get started on them. Particularly since I need to have grades turned in as soon as possible next week.

And then I'll be done with my second semester. This one's gone better than the first semester... and has been a lot less stressful. But I'm definitely looking forward to the summer!

Also, from the department of It's The Little Things: When you e-mail someone and specifically mention that your advisor is female, it's pretty sad when the reply steadfastly refers to said advisor as male.

I Wrote a Story!

2011-04-22T13:23:00.001-07:00

A story of mine (The Falling Star) got picked up for an anthology that's now available! The New Fairy Tales Anthology can be bought from Createspace, and because I love you all so very much (or rather, Mike Pennington, the head honcho of Aurora Wolf loves you all so very much), there's a discount code that you can use for $2 off the cover price, which makes the book an even $10: 9RWWE4QP

This code ought to work for all Aurora Wolf offerings if you buy them off of Createspace, if there are any other books of theirs that you'd like to pick up.

And you can get the book on Amazon, if you'd rather, though no discount then.

I think the story's a little different from my usual stuff, in that it's a bit cute and sweet, and I don't generally do cute and sweet. But I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, and I hope that you'll like it whenever you get to read it.

In less happy news, I got a rejection note (it wasn't big enough to be called a letter) that came on a square of paper barely bigger than a business card. I'm not sure how I feel about this, but I guess if nothing else, it's certainly appropriate for Earth Day - it's a reduction of paper use. Though I admit that I won't be recycling it, since it's now decorating my wall. But that counts as reuse, right?

Happy Earth Day!

Boy Fiction Versus Girl Fiction

2011-04-18T07:06:00.002-07:00

A quote:

The true perversion, though, is the sense you get that all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise. While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to “The Hobbit” first. “Game of Thrones” is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half.

(Emphasis added by me.)

Okay, so let me first admit that I should probably get my nerd card taken away, since I don't give much of a crap about Game of Thrones, having not read the books yet since I've heard so many people whining about the series being unfinished and I don't like to be left hanging. And at this point, so many people have been going on and on and on about it that I'm just kind of tired of hearing about it and the contrary little gremlin that lives somewhere around my pituitary gland is whispering, "Well if it's that popular you don't want anything to do with it anyway."

So this has really nothing to do with Game of Thrones per se, but rather the mind-boggling stupidity that it's brought out in some people. Namely the person that penned the above quote, in a NYT review.

Seriously, can we please dispense with this absolutely stupid notion of boy fiction and girl fiction already? Can we please let go of the tired, ridiculous notion that women don't like things unless there's like, sex and romance or some shit, because apparently we just don't enjoy politics or watching people getting blown up or whatever?

I'm actually not even sure if Ms. Bellafante is saying that she thinks women couldn't possibly like Game of Thrones if it weren't for all the sexy-sexy time, or if she's just saying that studio execs must believe that, or what. Though after reading the paragraph over and over, through the red haze of sheer annoyance I feel pretty sure that it's a ridiculous statement any way you read it. And by the way, if we're being stereotypical and sexist, isn't lots of sex a boy thing? Because chicks just want relationships and romance and shit, and then all the subsequent sex is candle-lit and arty and there's a mushy soundtrack with piano and lots of strings.

I could go on and on about just how many women I know who utterly love the book series and are excited about the TV series. I could also go on and on about how I got hooked on fantasy in general because my mom read The Hobbit to my brother and I when we were little kids. But I'm not.

My gripe is actually a lot more general. You know, from high school on I've been exposed to a lot of sneering comments about how, of the available nerd genres, fantasy is girl fiction and scifi is boy fiction because our pitiful ladybrains can't handle all the science and guns and whatever in scifi. And now apparently fantasy isn't girl fiction any more either, not unless it includes a sufficient quantity of mushy stuff to go with the violence, because our ladybrains just can't enjoy anything if people aren't frantically humping each other.

FFS, could you assholes make up your minds about what women are allowed to like? At this rate, I'm going to have to give up reading all together, and then I'll apparently only be allowed to watch Jersey Shore or something similarly vacuous. At which point I intend to put a hole through my skull with my dad's cordless power drill.

Or maybe we could just dispense with all the stupidly sexist generalization and - I admit this is a radical notion, but hang with me here - just let people like whatever the hell it is they like without linking it to their gender?

You'll get my copy of Old Man's War when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

Climate Change and Plate Tectonics

2011-04-14T22:07:00.008-07:00

My awesome mom found the following article on Alternet and sent it to me, with the question "Plausible or wingnutty?" : Scientists Find Link Between Global Warming and Earthquakes

At this point, I know better than to accept at face value what an article claims that a scientific paper says, so I set out to find the paper - particularly since for once I have a chance of understanding at least some of the paper since it's about geology! I had to comb through the RawStory article that the Alternet article links to in order to actually find the paper in question. Which is:

Giampiero Iaffaldano, Laurent Husson, Hans-Peter Bunge, Monsoon speeds up Indian plate motion, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 304, Issues 3-4, 15 April 2011, Pages 503-510, ISSN 0012-821X, DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2011.02.026.

The article is available on ScienceDirect, though you may not be able to read the whole thing for yourself if you don't have a subscription to the service. You should be able to at least read the abstract, which should give you the gist of it.

So what does Alternet take out of this paper? "Climate change can affect plate tectonics, oh shit, that's why we've got all the huge earthquakes OH MY GOD."

I will point out that there's one VERY salient quote from Giampiero Iaffaldano (the lead scientist) that's in the RawStory article that Alternet leaves completely out:

Iaffaldano stressed that his study did not mean that global warming would translate to stronger earthquakes happening more often, with the relevant patterns developing over "the order of millions of years."

"Of course earthquakes do occur at the boundaries between plates because of plate motions, but our work doesn't imply at all that we will see an increase in these types of events," he told AFP.

Emphasis added by me. This little omission really leaves me wondering about the motivations of the Alternet author.

As for the paper itself, what does it actually say, and is it interesting? The paper does make a reasonable case for linking climate change with an effect on plate motion and speed. However, the important part that also gets left out of the Alternet article is that this link is explored on a million year scale. It's an examination of how the change in climate over the last 10 million years or so - the climate change in question being a strengthened Indian monsoon - has affected the erosion of the Himalayas, which ultimately lead to decreased resistance in the convergence between the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates.

Now, personally, I find this fascinating, since it links relatively "fast" surface processes (eg weathering and erosion) to much slower tectonic processes. I think that opens up a lot of very interesting research questions - Iaffaldano points out that he's curious to see if there's a climate signature to be found in other fairly recently uplifted areas.

But I think for general interest, it's VERY important to note that when we're talking a scale of millions of years - which is what plate tectonics operates on - the current climate change we are inflicting on the planet is NOTHING in terms of duration. It's not even a blip. Now, if we keep pumping carbon into the atmosphere and manage to really fuck things up in the long, long, long, long term, maybe in ten million years future humans or aliens will be using simulations to wind the tectonic clock back and say, "DAMN, look at those plates move!" But this will have no measurable effect on our short little human lives.

It really bothers me that an interesting study is being misrepresented in this way. While I appreciate wanting to add some urgency to the issue of climate change - trust me, I do, BIG TIME - this is not the way to do it. It smells like a scare tactic, and it plays into the hands of the climate change deniers.

Abiotic/Abiogenic Oil

2011-04-07T21:27:00.003-07:00

You know, the stuff I squeeze out of people who ask me what abiotic oil is on Twitter.

Today, shortly after I admitted (gasp) to being a geologist, one of the guys on my judging team asked me about abiotic oil, saying that "there's been some study in Russia about this." Which I hadn't heard about, but he then said that it was a recent thing.

To the best of my knowledge, abiotic oil is a fairly laughable theory. But I decided to do some googling around, just so I don't get caught off guard by this again.

The first post that I find via google is from FreeEnergyNews.com, which gives me a tingle of apprehension to begin with, just from the website name. Abiotic Oil: This post has a bunch of links for stories from WorldNet Daily, which I'm more familiar with as WingNut Daily, insert logical fallacy here (possibly poisoning the well?). It also posts links to two books from an author whose name I recognize, Thomas Gold. And my recognition of his name comes from this mention of him at the Oil Drum, which is not terribly complimentary. Thomas Gold was also an astrophysicist, not a petroleum geologist.

Now, the post over at the Oil Drum brings up one example where people got all excited about oil being abiotic because OMG IT'S COMING OUT OF BEDROCK, when the facts really looked more like it was oil migrating through faulted horst blocks of the bedrock, since tectonics had partially shifted source rocks so they were under the basement rock in some places. This conclusion comes from this AAPG article, and I will say that AAPG is a professional organization of petroleum geologists and puts out several trusted publications, including the one this article appeared in (Explorer), so I'm going to take their word for it.

However, the "abiotic" oil of Vietnam is not what I'm after here, rather I'm looking for Russia in particular. By adding Russia to my search, I came up with some interesting sites:

An introduction to the modern petroleum science, and to the Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins: I think this pretty much outlines the theory, and is in favor of it. As an amusing aside, there's a link to a discussion of plagiarism of the theory. Specifically Thomas Gold plagiarizing the theory from Russian scientists.

One of the sections in the Russian-Ukrainian theory post talks about refuting a biotic origin of oil. While at this point I could see trying to find some wiggle room to allow for both biotic and abiotic oil, but trying to claim that no oil is biotic makes little sense. As just one example, one thing we look for when exploring possible oil sources are kerogens, which come in different types (dependent upon original depositional environment) and release oil when sufficiently cooked. Trying to take kerogens out of the equation (or claiming they're not organically sourced) really flies in the face of a lot of well-established science.

I will also note that going on the theory that oil comes from sedimentary source rocks (where you find those kerogens) has proved to be extremely predictive in oil exploration. Which is a good sign for oil coming from dead critters.

On the other side, a post at FromTheWilderness.com examines many of the fields considered to be "abiotic" proof, and finds them wanting. This post also has found a special place in my heart because of this:

While everyone is free to form his or her own opinion, when people start talking about a conspiracy of scientists to cover up the supposed abiotic origin of oil, then all an honest scientist can do is to shrug her or his shoulders and say that he or she is not aware of any such conspiracy. In fact, such a contention makes numerous logical errors; based on the logical fallacies listed at http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/index.html, I can count at least 17 errors of logic frequently made by those who argue that the biological origin of oil is a conspiracy. Such errors of logic are the province of a politician, not a scientist.

Back to the Oil Drum post, they recommend reading Richard Heinberg's The "Abiotic Oil" Controversy, which I wholeheartedly recommend as well. Heinberg makes a very well-thought out, reasonable argument, and here's the summation of his take-home point:

There is no way to conclusively prove that no petroleum is of abiotic origin. Science is an ongoing search for truth, and theories are continually being altered or scrapped as new evidence appears. However, the assertion that all oil is abiotic requires extraordinary support, because it must overcome abundant evidence, already cited, to tie specific oil accumulations to specific biological origins through a chain of well-understood processes that have been demonstrated, in principle, under laboratory conditions.

I don't think it's possible to, in detail, refute every claim of abiotic oil genesis. Because if nothing else, we don't know everything there is to know about how most oil is generated, let alone how all of it is generated. And Heinberg makes another good point - even if we eventually reach the conclusion that some hydrocarbons are generated abiotically, this does not really change the energy crisis our dependence on fossil fuels is causing. He says:

What if oil were in fact virtually inexhaustible—would this be good news? Not in my view. It is my opinion that the discovery of oil was the greatest tragedy (in terms of its long-term consequences) in human history. Finding a limitless supply of oil might forestall nasty price increases and catastrophic withdrawal symptoms, but it would only exacerbate all of the other problems that flow from oil dependency—our use of it to accelerate the extraction of all other resources, the venting of CO2 into the atmosphere, and related problems such as loss of biodiversity. Oil depletion is bad news, but it is no worse than that of oil abundance.

To a certain extent, I think the attraction of the abiotic theory is that it means people can ignore the thought that we might some day (some very soon day) effectively run out of oil. But whether we can run out of oil or not changes nothing about the environmental damage we are causing by recklessly burning a natural resource that really deserves to be treated with more care.

Colorado State Science Fair 2011

2011-04-07T18:08:00.000-07:00

And yes! I made it to the state science fair! After mono stopped me last year, I was kind of wondering what the follow-up act might be.

This fair wasn't really any different from the other fairs I've done, other than being bigger - and of course, the projects generally being incredibly high quality. Which makes sense, considering these were the winners from the regional science fairs. I think that everyone in my category did a great job and had a lot of enthusiasm for science, which makes me happy.

There were five judges in my group. I was the only woman, and also the youngest by far. The latter isn't really a surprise; the average age of a science fair judge is pretty high. Probably because science-y people don't have a lot of volunteering time to use in the middle of the week until they're long out of grad school or their entry-level industry job. I'm also used to there not being many women in my normal category - Earth sciences - because that's really what the demographics for older people working in that field look like right now. And all of the guys were really nice, as usual - downright avuncular, truth be told.

The surprising thing was that every student in my category was female. For reals. I think the other judges were a bit shocked, and were kind of wondering where all the boys had gotten to. (One of them made a joke about none of the boys going outside any more because they're all playing too many video games...) I'm guessing that this was just some kind of fluke, since I have no idea what the makeup of the category looked like last year, or will look like in the future. But it was pretty exciting to see that many young women that enthusiastic about earth sciences.

One difference from the regional fairs was the huge number of "special awards" judges, which isn't something you normally see in smaller fairs. This was a bit frustrating at times, since some projects were in line to be judged for a lot of special awards, and that made it really hard to get in and actually talk to the student. I'll have to check tomorrow to see what all of the results ended up being. As soon as we'd done places for our category, I got to go home... our poor team captain has to stay until late tonight, since that's apparently when the knock-down drag-out fight between judges over best in show happens. Good luck to him.

From the Department of Squee

2011-04-06T21:23:00.000-07:00

First, huge congratulations to the amazing Stuart Robbins, who kicked butt at his dissertation defense and is now... Dr. Robbins! YAY STUART!

In personal squee news, I just found out I won one of the department research awards! So I get money to go toward my BBCP project, which at this point I think will be going toward big girl scientist grain size analysis, which involves - rather than a microscope or screens - a very fun-sounding piece of equipment called the Mastersizer. (No, really.) YAY GRAIN SIZE!

And tomorrow is the Colorado State Science Fair, so I will be up in Fort Collins all day looking at the projects of budding young scientists. I even get to be the co-captain of the Earth Sciences junior division team. YAY SCIENCE!

The Bighorn Basin Coring Project

2011-04-02T09:41:00.000-07:00

From mid-July to the beginning of August, I'm going to be outdoors, in Wyoming. No, I'm not crazy. Yes, I have a good reason for doing this. Because in the summer, that's when we'll be coring through the Willwood Formation in the Bighorn Basin. And this is a big deal.

The Willwood Formation is about Eocene in age, and sits on top of the Paleocene Fort Union Formation. The Willwood Formation is mostly a lot of paleosols (lithified soils) and river sandstones. And more importantly, the sediments that form these rocks were laid down during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, and then the later, smaller thermal maximums during the Eocene. As a quick summary, taken from a thesis proposal I've been using in order to beg for money¹:

The sedimentary geologic record can be used as a window into the past conditions of the Earth, including the climate in which sediments were laid down. In the Cenozoic, there are many examples of shifts in global climate. Potentially significant to the modern climate in which humans live are the hyperthermal events that occurred during the Eocene. Hyperthermals are relatively brief (~100,000 years) warming events that coincide with the release of massive amounts of carbon from terrestrial reservoirs. The most well understood of these hyperthermals is the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which occurred 55.5 million years ago. During the PETM, 6,800 Gt of carbon were added to the shared carbon pool of the atmosphere and ocean, and global temperatures rose 5-9° C (Sluijs et al. 2006, Zachos et al. 2008). Slightly more recently (53.7 Ma), the Eocene Thermal Maximum 2 (ETM2, also called ELMO) occurred. ETM2 is about half the size of the PETM isotope excursion (Lourens et al. 2005), and generally much less well understood.

This project is a big deal, for several reasons. Just to start, coring is not a cheap process, and this project is funded by a pretty major grant from the NSF. But what's more important is what we hope to learn from the cores. The PETM is of great interest to climate scientists and geologists right now, because it's perhaps our best historic example of what humans are currently doing to the planet. There weren't a bunch of little proto-horses in the Eocene burning oil so they could roar around in ridiculous cars, but it was a sudden, rapid surge of carbon being put in to the atmosphere, even if the source is being debated.

This is important because, no matter how many people² in the world are short-sighted and basically sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting "Lalala can't hear you" every time someone brings up this science, that doesn't make it any less real and pressing.

The paleosols, which are what I'm mostly interested in, can tell us a lot about how the local climate shifted in response to the PETM. This is important, since most human beings have a vested interest in their local environment not suddenly changing and, say, making it impossible for them to grow food. Also, one of the cores will be through the ELMO thermal maximum, which I think will end up providing a valuable set of comparative data. There's already some pretty robust data for the PETM in the Bighorn Basin, and the cores will give us even more. If we then compare that data to what we come up with from ELMO, that may give us a sense of just how far a local environment will shift pushed by how much carbon - because it may not need an input as big as that in the PETM to really mess things up.

Hopefully, that's enough to get you interested! The BBCP has a facebook page now, here. When we're actually coring during the summer, there will be a blog for the project hosted by Smithsonian, which I'll link to when it's up. I'll also no doubt be blogging about it here, and I think I'm going to be responsible for tweeting about it as well.

The coring is going to run from July 13 through August 8. I'll probably be on the rig from July 19 through the end of the project, since I'm going to try to go to TAM before I head up to Wyoming. I'll also be on the night shift the whole time - coring is a 24/7 process - so I guess I'll be documenting BBCP - After Dark³.

Once we've got our cores, we'll actually be sending them out of the country (since this is a project with multinational investigators!) to Bremen, Germany. They'll be living at the Marum core repository, which is also where all of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program cores go. That means in January 2012 (if I can find the funding for it!) I'll be heading off to Bremen for three weeks of intensive core prep, description, and sampling.

And then, science! Lots of science!

Year two of grad school is looking ridiculously exciting.

1 - It's a time-honored scientific endeavor. I wish I was joking when I say that.

2 - Here, I use the term people in place of the perhaps more true but less polite term: idiots.

3 - I actually volunteered for this. If you knew how badly I sunburn, you would understand why. I also don't like the heat, and it'll be much cooler at night.

References
Lourens, L. J., Sluijs, A., Kroon, D., Zachos, J. C., Thomas, E., Rohl, U., Bowles, J., and Raffi, I. 2005. Astronomical pacing of late Palaeocene to early Eocene global warming events. Nature, vol. 435, p. 1083-1087.

Sluijs, A., Schouten, S., Pagani, M., Woltering, M., Brinkhuis, H., Sinninghe Damsté, J. S., Dickens, G. R., Huber, M., Reichart, G.-J., Stein, R., Matthiessen, J., Lourens, L. J., Pedentchouk, N., Backman, J., Moran, K., and and the Expedition 302 Scientists. 2006. Subtropical Arctic Ocean temperatures during the Palaeocene/Eocene thermal maximum. Nature, vol. 441, p. 610-613.

Zachos, J. C., Dickens, G. R., and Zeebe, R. E. 2008. An early Cenozoic perspective on greenhouse warming and carbon-cycle dynamics. Nature, vol. 451, p. 279-283.

Of Fishnets and Fully Automatic Weapons

2011-03-28T15:21:00.009-07:00

I saw Sucker Punch yesterday.

And I really liked it.

Which actually came as something of a surprise to me, since I generally tend to agree with the reviews over at io9 when it comes to saying mean things about movies, and Sucker Punch got a solid thumbs down there.

Now, part of it might be that I went into the movie with extremely low expectations. I'd already read a couple of reviews which, to summarize with nice words, characterized the movie as completely vacuous. And boring. I actually felt more than a little shocked that I found it neither boring, nor vacuous.

Now, to be clear, I am in no way claiming that Sucker Punch is a great movie. It's no Inception. But as Zack Snyder movies go, this one was - as expected - extremely pretty, and much, much better than, say, 300. If you like that sort of eye candy, I think it's worth spending the money to see it. If you don't like that kind of movie, don't waste your time.

Also, the soundtrack is excellent.

I've got a few thoughts about it, so there are going to be SPOILERS all over the place. You have been warned.

In General
I don't regret spending $8.50 or two hours of my afternoon to see this movie. In fact, I really enjoyed it, and found most of the action sequences quite exciting. A lot of the movie - and not just the action sequences - really did make me think of anime. While the action, especially the first sequence with the huge samurai robots, obviously owe a lot to the tropes of anime, a lot of the narrative logic put me in mind of anime as well. And since I have a record of really liking anime, I think I was a lot more willing to to just accept certain things about the story and the way it went. I also most definitely did not find the non-action sequences boring.

So, About That Whorehouse Thing
I've seen a lot of snippy commentary about Babydoll "escaping" into a bordello as her first layer of fantasy. I would agree that it doesn't make sense for that fantasy to be an escape. However, it also really didn't strike me as an actual mental escape for a character, but rather a fantasy in which she was attempting to make sense of the way she and the other women were being treated in the mental institution.

It's made very clear at the end of the movie that Blue Jones, the super creepy orderly that sports a sad little pornstache in Babydoll's bordello fantasy, has been sexually abusing Babydoll in the real world. Which I think also heavily implies that the other girls who are shown being abused or used by men in the bordello fantasy were also being abused by those same men in reality. I think that in light of the story, it's reasonable for Babydoll to make sense of that real-world sexual abuse by transforming the hospital into a bordello - because while the bordello is still a prison, it's at least a prison environment where it makes some kind of twisted sense for the men to be using the women in that way.

Blue Pornstache was incredibly creepy. Beyond his basic concept as an orderly that abuses powerless mental patients, he had some excellently evil dialog in his guise as the bordello's owner. In a scene near the end, he scares the hell out of the women (and then murders two of them) while going off on a classic abuser rant that left me squirming in my seat - not because it was badly done, but because the character was just such a horrific person. He verbally sets up a false situation where the women are somehow in a "partnership" with him (instead of being his victims) and not keeping up their end of the "bargain," which means they're forcing his hand and giving him no choice but to, you know, shoot them.

Ugh. The actor did a good job. It's a wonder he could stand to be in the same room as himself.

I also think it's interesting that we don't actually ever hear Babydoll speak outside of the fantasy bordello world. (At least not that I recall after a single viewing.) I think that's partially because in her own fantasy, she has more strength and control. While obviously she and the other girls are still very much abused prisoners within the pretend bordello, turning them from mental patients in to whores at least allows them to use their sexuality as a weapon. Because in most [patriarchy-owned] narratives, the only women who get to make use of their sexuality in any way are whores.

So with the bordello as the coping-fantasy, then the action sequences become the actual escape-fantasy. I suppose it's where Babydoll mentally runs off to when she's doing something so personally destructive that she can't even handle it in the context of bordello. And that's the place where the women are all a kick-ass, elite team that are accomplishing their goals in a way that they can perhaps feel some pride in.

Though I Will Say One Thing About the Sexy Costumes
In the action sequences, there were sexy costumes. But what struck me was how... unsexy everything but the sexy costumes were. Which I actually really, really appreciated. The sexy costumes just sort of became the idea of a uniform for each of the girls. I found that very interesting... because it made the thing feel stylized rather than titillating.

Empowerment
All that said, I think that anyone who claims that this movie is somehow about female empowerment needs to have their head examined. Or possibly needs to get sent to a remedial women's studies class. Or maybe both.

The basic argument seems to be that there is female empowerment in the movie because:
a) Women with guns
b) Women take control of their own sexuality by the end (NOTE: they don't.)
c) In the end, the women win because Sweet Pea escapes and survives.

In Sucker Punch, we have Sweet Pea escaping, triumphing over abuse by surviving, and Babydoll also gets her own sort of revenge by being released from the bonds of the real world via lobotomy and sets off a series of events that get her abuser brought to justice. Neither of these things ultimately help out the other women, who all get murdered.

I think that there is something very valid to the narrative of triumph over one's abusers by surviving them. I think there's also a lot to be said for revenge fantasies - the desire to take vengeance on one's abuser is a powerful one, whether the victim is male or female, and no matter what sort of abuse is occurring. But I also think that it's very sloppy to equate those things with empowerment because it still presupposes a world where abuse is the norm and the victims defenseless.

So, what would the for reals female empowerment version of Sucker Punch look like? Honestly, I have not clue one. Considering the basic premise of the movie - women trapped in a mental institution where they are abused by their male caretakers - I don't know if it would be possible to write that into a narrative of true female empowerment. At the very least, I don't think you can call it empowerment if the woman who survives is the exception, rather than the rule.

But the thing is, I also think that's just fine... as long as it's actually understood that this isn't what empowerment looks like.

It's a pretty movie where women shoot and stab things. Occasionally at the same time. It's got an interesting concept and a great soundtrack. I specifically bought a small popcorn so I could munch along with the movie, because that's just the sort of film it is. There's really no need to make it out as more than that, is there?

The Sendai Earthquake

2011-03-14T21:57:00.002-07:00

I haven't had anything to say about the Sendai earthquake; it has quite literally left me speechless with horror, and pain, and agonizing worry. I know and care about people who live there. I've been to Japan twice, myself, and hope to travel there many more times in the future. There is something more personally horrible about knowing a place - if even a little - remembering its sights and sounds and smells, and knowing that something terrible has happened there.

I can't really focus enough to think about the science behind what has happened. If you're interested in the details, the USGS is the place to go. Or Chris Rowan has an excellent synthesis of the data at Scientific American.

Garry at Geotripper has tried to put things in a perspective of why the geosciences really are important to each and every one of us, whether we realize it or not. It's an excellent post. You should read it. The one thing that really stuck with me is:

Many will watch an event like this unfold and try to find some meaning. In one sense, there was no meaning; this was something the Earth does.

There is a quote that I have in my e-mail signature, which I've seen attributed to Will Durant - though there's a good argument that it's probably an anonymous quote:

Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.

The Earth is so very, very old, and so very, very vast. We are tiny, and frail, and even the longest life any one of us can hope to have is less than the blink of an eye in the history of our planet. The Earth does not care about us. We have no special significance. We have only each other.

(photo from Getty Images)

In a way, studying geology has been the most humbling experience of my life. There is not a day that goes by that I am not reminded that our world operates at a scale that we cannot even begin to grasp, and that it did so long before we existed, and will continue on long after the last human is gone.

I've seen people - and here I use the term loosely - cheer, as if this is some sort of cosmic vengeance for Japanese misdeeds during World War II. I have seen others try to use this tragedy to justify the self-satisfied little voice in their head that they think is god, but is only actually themselves. First I was angry. Now, I'm just sick. I'm sick that there are people so small-minded and cruel that they take joy in the suffering of others. I'm sick, and worried, and I hurt for my fellow humans who are in so much pain, and so far away.

There is no meaning to the Sendai earthquake. There is no capricious god, no vast karmic wheel. It is simply a thing that has happened, that we as humans must struggle against, and fight to overcome, and mourn those who have died afterward. Because there is nothing more to it - it's just the summation of physics and time - what we do is so very important. We have only this world, only this life, and only each other.

(photo from the Sacramento Bee)

Doctors Without Borders
Red Cross
Japan America Society of Colorado

The Adjustment Bureau, and a Day I Really Needed

2011-03-05T21:59:00.000-07:00

The Adjustment Bureau is two hours of lovely fun laced with just enough suspense and paranoia and Matt Damon looking both earnest and tasty, which is then completely ruined by the last three minutes of ridiculous feel-good cop out ending.

Seriously. If you're going to make a movie out of a fucking Philip K. Dick story, DON'T GIVE IT A FUCKING HAPPY ENDING.

If you do go see the movie - and I actually recommend that you do, since it's mostly very good - I recommend just walking out of the theater when the two people are kissing on the roof. (Being intentionally vague since it could be spoilery.) Just pretend the movie ends there, and you won't get that moment of enraging let-down that comes with the credits rolling.

Also, and this is a SPOILER:

Anyone else that has seen the movie - do you find it a bit odd that the only non-white character in the entire film is the "renegade" angel? There's the bit where Matt Damon says something like, "You seem different from the others," to him, and it's hard not to snort considering that everyone else from the Bureau is a Middle-Aged or Old White Dude.

/SPOILER

Day was a lot of fun, and something I desperately needed after the hellish, stressful, and morale destroying week I've had. It's been one of those weeks where I spent a lot of time asking myself why the hell I'm in grad school. Though I did manage to finally beat the cold that's been hanging on to me for two weeks, after I decided I was exhausted and just didn't give a shit any more and then went home and slept for nearly ten hours. So yes, kids, sleep is still important, even when you're a (sort of) grown up.

Today Mike and I saw Kat and Aki and Mina, ate food, watched a movie, talked a bunch. Much relaxation had by all, I think. Normally Mina wants Mike to read to her, but it was my turn today I guess. I spent quite a bit of the day stretched out on the floor next to her, reading her little picture books and adding occasional sarcastic commentary.

Most amusing part of the day: Showed up in the morning while Mina was watching Sesame Street. Bert was singing a song about how he couldn't find Ernie in their bedroom. I suggested, "He's probably in the closet."

Another reason to love the Dropkick Murphys

2011-02-27T11:37:00.000-07:00

I already love the Dropkick Murphys to a ridiculous degree - they're right up there with Flogging Molly as one of my favorite bands. And now they just released one of the songs from their upcoming album in support of the Union protesters in Wisconsin. You can listen to it on their website:

Take 'Em Down

Sure gets my blood going.

Lyrics:

When the boss comes callin’ they’ll put us down
When the boss comes callin’ gotta stand your ground
When the boss comes callin’ don’t believe their lies

When the boss comes callin’ he'll take his toll
When the boss comes callin’ don’t you sell your soul
When the boss comes callin’ we gotta organize

CHORUS:
Let them know
We gotta take the bastards down
Let them know
We gotta smash them to the ground
Let them know
We gotta take the bastards down

When the boss comes callin’ you’ll be on your own
When the boss comes callin’ will you stand alone?
When the boss comes callin’ will you let them in?

When the boss comes callin’ will you stand and fight?
When the boss comes callin’ we must unite
When the boss comes callin’ we can’t let them win

CHORUS

We gotta take the bastards down

When the boss comes callin’ they’ll put us down
When the boss comes callin’ gotta stand your ground
When the boss comes callin’ don’t believe their lies

When the boss comes callin’ he'll take his toll
When the boss comes callin’ don’t you sell your soul
When the boss comes callin’ we gotta organize

CHORUS

CHORUS

What I've been doing lately...

2011-02-26T20:22:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy week... couple of weeks... month... well, from about January on. But I've been doing things with my time, at least.

For example, today I went to Denver, CO's Rally for the American Dream. With 3000 of my fellow Coloradoans - including my husband and my parents - I was in good company indeed.

We did a lot of cheering, a lot of chanting. There were maybe ten or twenty "Tea Party" counter protesters. One of whom wandered around in the crowd and tried to start trouble with his bizarre "Can't get a taxi? Blame the Dems" and "Shame on Colorado Dems for Voting for an African" signs. He was completely ignored by the crowd, and then the cops chased him off.

The IAFF was out in force, as were a lot of other union people - and ordinary citizens. At the end of the rally, the Walk for Choice took off. A lot of us joined in, since it's another important thing to support. We walked from the capital to Writer Square and back, shouting chants like, "Not the church, not the state, women must decide their fate!"

At the end of the Walk for Choice, there were maybe ten crazy anti-choice people waiting at the capital, on the other side of the street. It was standard "OMG THE BABEEZ" bullshit. It was also the most surreal moment of the afternoon - there was a very odd old guy with the anti-choicers, holding a very standard sign in one hand. His other hand was raised in a fist and covered with - I swear I am not making this up - a sagging latex mask of Ronald Reagan. Overcome by just how bizarre it was, I shouted across the street, "Dude, you've got a severed head on your hand!"

So yeah. The disembodied zombie head of Ronald Reagan doesn't want you to have an abortion. Or something. Weird. Eerie.

I have also been putting a lot of time in at the core lab. If you want to see what's been eating up most of my spare time, here are some pictures from our current core, which is from a meandering river deposit. I've tried to add some description to the photos, and hopefully it's not too technical.

Busy busy!

Adel Needs Your Help

2011-02-21T13:47:00.001-07:00

One of my fellow grad students at CU is named Adel Aboktef. Adel is a generally good human being. He helps out the undergrads in the tutoring room a lot, and he's always ready to lend a hand to his fellow grad students. I actually got to know Adel when, one evening, a bunch of us gathered in the undergrad lounge and we had a discussion about languages and all their interesting little quirks. Adel can also tell the difference between different kinds of feldspars using a petrographic microscope, if you give him a 100x lens and immersion oil. Which, just in case you didn't understand that statement, is damn impressive.

Adel is also from Libya.

Today, he sent several of us this e-mail:

Is there any way you may help me contact US government to help stop the massacre in my home "Libya". The government is killing Libyan people. Fighter planes are bombarding the demonstrators in Tripoli and Bangazi. Please if you have any connections don't hesitate to contact your parliament representative asking to help stop the kill in Libya.

Adel Aboktef

Sometimes, what it takes is putting a face, familiar or not, on injustice and pain. Adel is hurting for his people, and I feel for him. To ask for help like this, from people you barely know if at all, is a difficult thing, and I think it shows how desperate the situation feels. I passed Adel's e-mail on to my representative and both my senators in the hopes that might do something. I'm also putting it out here on the internet, with Adel's permission, to maybe help put a face - or at least a name - on one small part of a peoples' pain.

If you would like to contact Adel, his e-mail address is: Adel dot Aboktef at colorado dot edu

Also: Science! (Bill Nye is coming to CU!)

2011-02-07T16:20:00.000-07:00

I haven't heard much buzz about this from my fellow Colorado residents, so I'm guessing this is just not a well-known event. Bill Nye the Science Guy will be at CU's Macky Auditorium on February 15th - which is a week from tomorrow. General admission tickets are $10, and tickets for CU students are $1 if you can wave your student ID at them.

According to the CU Distinguished Speaker's Board, tickets are currently sold out. But if any of you out there in the Colorado portion of internet land would like to see Bill Nye, LET ME KNOW. I will haunt the CU Connection and see if I can scare up some more tickets so long as you promise to pay me back.

Congratulations. You Have Survived Your Battle With ::Dentist::

2011-02-07T16:10:00.000-07:00

I survived my six month check up! Yay! Considering how much I hate going to the dentist¹, I feel like this is really an accomplishment.

Also, I'm finally on Mike's insurance! Double yay! I was ridiculously excited to find this out, since it meant I could finally afford to have x-rays, and a consult with the dentist. And the fact that I was excited about both those things is probably the most clear signal to date that yes, I am now thirty years old.

The news was mostly good. No new cavities, the problem areas between a few of my teeth that seemed to be developing four years ago (the last time I could afford x-rays) have either not gotten worse or even cleared up entirely. So that's happy.

However, the bad news is that my issue with clenching and grinding my teeth has gotten worse. Way, way, way worse. To the point that it's apparently messing up my teeth so badly that it shows up on the x-rays, and has caused me to partially dislodge one of my old fillings. This apparently also explains the headaches I sometimes wake up with, and why my jaw sometimes locks. Awesome.

So Dr. Jason (the world's tallest dentist) told me to get an over the counter mouth guard thingy to wear at night. Not every night, but just during periods of time when I'm feeling really stressed (HAHAHA) and seeing signs that I might be starting to grind or clench my teeth. He said that would either fix my problem entirely or make it way, way worse. In the latter case I would then need to get fitted for a custom mouth guard thingy that will run $300-$400, because Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas would not pay for piss if you were on fire, unless of course you had already reached your ludicrous deductible, and then maybe, well we guess, if we have to, grumble grumble.

And at the end of the month I get to look forward to having the filling I've destroyed replaced. Which supposedly is only going to take five minutes, but will still involve me getting poked in the gums with a needle.

I can feel my teeth clenching already.

1: If anyone ever tries to convince you to get your wisdom teeth done without being put under, tell them to shut the fuck up and just give you the drugs, because you're carrying a hand grenade and have absolutely nothing to lose.

The longest day of Chinese New Year survived

2011-02-05T21:56:00.000-07:00

Well, I survived the long, long day of performances for kung fu. We hit the road around 0830 and finished up a little less than twelve hours later. The most brutal part was actually going to Colorado Springs and back. The drive was awful because it was snowing, and being stuck in a car for basically 3.5 hours straight with only a short kung fu break in the middle left everyone extremely stiff and sore. We did kung fu numbers three times, which meant I had to do basic skills with hitting the concrete-filled cylinder three times, and make it look good and energetic all three times. My arms are really banged up now, and toward the end I was actually getting burst veins on the surface of my skin, which is kind of unusual and very unpleasant. My hands and arms are really tired too, from just playing cymbals all day. But yay, we survived! And I got to have a ridiculous amount of amazing food at the end of it, which is always great.

At least I did all my driving around with four extremely awesome people. We had the party car, no mistake. The saga of Porknbuns will forever remain in my memory... it's been a long time since I've laughed that hard about anything.

In bad news, we just found out that Mike's mum is in the hospital with severe vertigo, and the cause could range anywhere from an ear infection to a stroke. Please think some good thoughts her way if you're so inclined. I'm really, really, really hoping it's just an ear infection. We're both incredibly worried.

Bed. Very, very soon.

Science Fairs and Wind Chill

2011-01-31T18:55:00.001-07:00

The DPS District Science Fair was a lot of fun, as usual. We had a kind of ridiculous number of judges this year - not that a large number of volunteers is a bad thing - so we did most of the fair in teams. I actually rather like team judging, since it means that the kids tend to be more thoroughly questioned about their project. Judges seem to have a couple favorite lines of questioning, and as long as they don't overlap that means we're generally more thorough.

Of course, my own favorite sorts of questions are:
- Now that you've done your whole project, if you could change one or more things about your experiment design or your hypothesis, what would you do? (I like this question, since it shows if they've really thought about what they did and picked out sources of error.)
- Can you explain [insert basic scientific principle behind the experiment here] to me? (Which shows if they actually understood any of the research they did.)

This time I got a boot up into middle school, looking at eighth grade projects. To be honest, the three my team looked at didn't really wow me... they all had some serious design issues, and in one case the student couldn't explain the basic scientific concept behind their experiment. Which was sad, since the experiment itself would have been a good one if there'd been some deeper understanding there. Also, as usual everyone had "literature" cited on their boards, but very few students incorporated it into their discussion or conclusion.

So parents, if you're reading this - make sure your kid actually incorporates their research into their experiment and understand it! Otherwise, it really gives the impression that they looked up a bunch of sources and just stuck them on the board because they had to, without actually reading and understanding anything.

Which, I suppose, really prepares them to be freshmen in college, huh.

The thing that set all of the grade winners out this year was definitely use of research - the first place in each grade actually did additional research after their project was done, so they could discuss their possible sources of error or reasons for unexpected results. Which is quite charming. And the winner for all of middle school was a sixth grader, which was pretty surprising. He did a model rocket project which involved testing different design elements, predicting how they would affect the flight of the rocket, and then figuring out why things didn't go the way he predicted when they inevitably didn't. It was pretty impressive.

Anyway, for a bit of excitement, I realized that the Colorado State Science and Engineering Fair has its judging on a Thursday. Now that I've dropped a class, I'm free that day, so I can participate in that one! And it's even more exciting because this year, I can be sure I won't come down with mono again. Wahoo.

It's cold as hell here right now, and only going to get colder. I'm doing an experiment of my own - I pinned blankets over the patio door, since that seems to turn into a little wind tunnel at times, and I'm going to see if the house stays a little warmer. Tengu is already mad as all get out because he was content to stay away from the patio door until the blankets went up, and then he had to OMG LOOK OUT THERE RIGHT NOW. Except I won't let him, since he might pull the blankets down. Yay for cat drama.

Really, I'm just looking forward to making like The Day After Tomorrow and running away from the cold air. It's something to do, since in a moment of brilliance I left my homework at school, where it's going to do me a lot of good. I'm really not looking forward to trying to get to school tomorrow morning, considering this morning it took about two hours each way.

Also, I've added some amazing entries to my "Undergrads say the darndest things" file, but I feel like I shouldn't share them until after the semester is done.

Science Fair Season

2011-01-17T21:59:00.001-07:00

Ah, it's that glorious season, when the sale of tri-fold boards spikes, and eager young scientists stand ready to excitedly tell judges how they grew mold on bread or watered plants with a variety of appalling substances. It's science fair season!

I actually feel a little sad about it this year. Because of my class and teaching¹ schedule, the only one I can possibly volunteer for is the DPS District Science Fair, since it's on a Saturday. The rest take place on weekdays, when I can't afford to miss. I'm particularly disappointed that I'll have to miss the Colorado state science fair again. That's the one I missed last year because I'd just come down with mono and, I was informed, looked like I was going to die.

Bread mold jokes aside, this sort of volunteering is something that anyone who cares about science education should take seriously. Particularly when it comes to people who make their living in the sciences (either in academia or in the private sector) it really does make a huge difference for kids to meet us as judges. It's one thing to hear about how cool science is in school, and another entirely to meet real grown ups who do real science for a living.

To my fellow Coloradoans, particularly any Denverites that might be reading this, it's time to get involved!

Denver Public Schools science fair information
Denver metro science fair information
Colorado state science fair information

If you're not a Colorado resident, don't despair - there are science fairs everywhere in the country, and this is the time of year they get started, preparing for the International Science Fair. If you're interested in judging for a fair, a good place to start looking for your local events is on the Intel ISEF website. Though that's by no means an exhaustive list and all you really need is some Google-fu.

Make a kid's day. Make a difference. And as a bonus, there are normally cookies.

1 - Still feels so, so weird to be saying that.

Agora

2011-01-01T19:26:00.000-07:00

Home from England, safe and sound. I've been fed (thanks to my parents) and have also taken a shower so I no longer smell like the inside of a plane. So really, I'm feeling refreshed and human again, but incredibly tired. I knew we'd gotten back into the US of A when, upon entering the immigration area, there was a TSA agent wandering around and telling everyone that we had to keep our cell phones off because it was illegal to have them on. For no apparent reason. Oh capricious and ridiculous airport security, I haven't missed you at all.

I spent most of the flight back watching movies. One of them was Agora, which is a movie about the fall of Alexandria to the Christians and the death of Hypatia. So, I expected it to be a very depressing movie, because we all know what happens to Hypatia.**

What I didn't expect was how angry the movie made me feel. Not angry at the movie, but just angry, the emotion building up from helpless frustration.

One image the movie kept coming back to was the library of Alexandria, after it had been ransacked by the Christians. The movie showed it as basically being destroyed inside, the scrolls torn up or gone entirely because they'd been burned, and animals were then penned inside it. The willful, gleeful disregard and hatred of knowledge made me angry, even if it was just a movie, even if it was an event that happened over a thousand years ago.

Then I think about our modern day situation, say, with John Shimkus on the Energy and Environment subcommittee, claiming that global climate change can't be true because of something the Bible says. And I feel exactly the same sort of building, helpless frustration, because I don't think we've really changed at all since Hypatia was flayed and dragged through the streets of Alexandria.

It's a good movie. Watch it. Be prepared to cry at the end. And to feel angry, so angry, every time you see the destroyed library, every time someone makes an argument based completely on illogic and blind belief that simply can't be refuted because no one would listen.

** - Just in case you don't know, let's just say that the Christians didn't give her chocolates and an award for being female, outspoken, and interested in science.

2010: Year in Review

2010-12-31T03:57:00.001-07:00

Writing

Since one of my major projects for the year was writing, I want to cover that first. And it's exciting, because I finally got to put my big girl writer pants on this summer! I'm now officially an associate member of the SFWA, which was a giant personal accomplishment for me, to go with getting my first story published at a pro rate.

Written This Year

Novels: I started work on two novels and am still having a hard time figuring out which to work on first. Which is fine, since I haven't had a lot of time or attention span for working on something long anyway. I also got about a third of the way in to a second draft of one of my old NaNos, but let it fall by the wayside in favor of Throne of Nightmares

This year I also completed three separate drafts of Throne of Nightmares, which Isaac and Sin were good enough to critique. I also have started sending out queries for Throne of Nightmares, which is exciting and terrifying at the same time. We'll see if I have any luck there...

Shorter stuff:
Written total: 8 short stories, 1 novelette, 1 novella
Finalized: 5 short stories, 1 novelette
Consigned to the Trunk of Awfulness, never to emerge again: 1 short story

Publishing
Queries Sent: 48
Rejections Received: 38
Most rejections received: Transportation at 14

Published this year: The Book of Autumn in Beneath Ceaseless Skies issue #49.
Slated for next year: Transportation in Anotherealm in September, The Falling Star in the New Fairytales Anthology by Aurora Wolf which should be coming out in early 2011.

So I feel that generally, I did a good job with writing this year! I'm hoping to do as well next year, though I think my productivity will be lower since I won't have half a year off of school this time around.

Blogging

This, I didn't do so well at. Total, I did 165 entries this year, which is okay I guess... averages about one every three days or so. But I was trying for every other day. Up until about September I did all right (we shall not speak of April... my excuse is wedding prep!) but after that my productivity just tanked. I honestly don't think next year will be much better thanks to that grad school thing. In the grand scheme of things, if I have to choose between writing a blog post and writing on a story, the story is bound to win.

Everything Else!

2010 was a massive, crazy year for me. And mostly filled with good instead of bad, so I can't complain at all.

The Good

1. I got married! (I have many photos, by the way...) That was exciting, and involved some wonderful cake and a lot of British people wandering around in Colorado and feeling faintly bemused. Married life has, honestly, not been much different from unmarried life considering Mike and I had been living together for five years before the wedding. But it was still an incredibly important milestone in our relationship and I couldn't be happier.

2. I started grad school! I've still got my doubts, worries, and uncertainties, but I survived my first semester, and I think I survived it fairly well. Of one of my classes, the less said of it the better, but the other - sedimentary petrology - I did really well in. I even got the highest score in the class on my sandstone practical, as far as I can tell. I haven't started my research yet, but I read two articles a week and am slowly coming up to speed on the Bighorn Basin.

3. I survived to my 30th birthday! And then I got very drunk.

4. I've managed to get myself back into good enough shape to start kung fu back up. I'm incredibly excited about that. I've learned the entirety of the sze sze chuen suong ta now, and I've gotten deep into ching men chuen. I feel like that's extremely good for only three months back.

5. I got an Exxon-Mobil research grant, so I'll be able to spend a month or so up in the Bighorn Basin next summer. That'll hopefully give me a good start to my research. Once I figure out what my topic is.

6. Got my first short story published at a professional rate! Yes, I know that I already mentioned this, but it's so exciting I think it's worth mentioning again.

7. I rescued a cat and helped find her a new home. I got to cat sit for her at the beginning of December, and she's thriving. Crazy, but thriving.

8. I got to go to TAM for the third year in a row and hang out with all of my friends - and got hugged by DJ Grothe (omg Squee). I also was able to go to MileHi Con for the first time in years, even if only for a day. I was very excited about that and had a blast. And, of course, capped that day with getting to go to a Not-Quite-a-W00tstock.

9. Made it back to the UK for Christmas this year, after skipping last year so we could save up for the wedding. It was really nice to get to see everyone, and have our (mostly) annual walk along the beach in Brighton.

The Bad

1. The furnace springs immediately to mind, since it also only just happened. While it's only a thing, and it didn't kill or harm anyone, the harm that it's done to our bank account still has me reeling. I also realized that if it had gone up before we headed to the UK, we wouldn't have made it this year. So a thing falling apart in and of itself isn't that big of a deal, it's the stress that it puts our household under that makes it bad.

2. In the same vein, getting the news that the car is going to fall apart soon and really isn't worth repairing was rough. On the good side, it's still running, even if it sounds so awful you feel like you should have a bag over your head when you drive it somewhere. But we know the day is coming, and now our money that was reserved for the car is gone, thanks to the furnace.

3. The class that shall not be named in grad school made the last three weeks of the semester a living hell during which I didn't even get to see my husband for more than a few hours a week. This is probably for the best, since if I had seen him I likely would have started screaming at him for no good reason, just because of the stress.

4. Being completely unable to find an internship for next summer. This was a major blow to my self-esteem, particularly since everyone assured me I had a rock-solid resume. Maybe I just suck that much at the interview part of the process. Of course, this also adds to the financial distress, since it means I won't be earning nearly as much in the summer of 2011 as I should. But what can you do... we'll survive.

So... twice as much good as bad. That's always an excellent sign! Hopefully 2011 will be even better. A little less woe in the finance department would be nice.

The Mid-vacation Post

2010-12-27T23:44:00.003-07:00

So far, it's been a nice visit to the UK, which is really no surprise to anyone. Christmas and Boxing Day were big family get togethers, which I enjoyed and only got a little drunk for. My jet lag problem is still present this year, though I think not nearly as obnoxious as it's been in years past. I've had to take naps on a couple of days, and have had a little bit of insomnia, but not to the point that I've been up at 3 in the morning and completely unable to sleep like I have been in other years.

The weather in the UK has been just fine as far as I'm concerned. There's been a lot of do about the temperature being below zero C, but I went for an hour and a half walk in it on Christmas morning while everyone else was at mass, and it was perfectly fine other than my ears getting cold since I forgot my hat back in the US. I think the bigger problem is just that the cold temperatures means the ice doesn't melt, and I guess this part of the UK doesn't know the wonders of car-destroying mag chloride the way we do in Colorado. I did have to avoid some terrifying icy sidewalks during my walk, to be sure. But other than that, it hasn's been any kind of Snowmageddon. Yesterday when we got back from London (around 2200) it was actually raining fairly heavily, so that's hopefully a sign that it's getting a bit warmer and the ice will go away. We ended up taking a cab from the train station at Wokingham, since the line west of it was shut down and the rain was nasty enough we didn't feel like waiting for the bus, or walking home once we caught said bus.

Speaking of Snowmageddon, we landed all right, but Heathrow has still apparently not gotten its shit together. Once we landed we had to park somewhere in the back of beyond for a good twenty minutes because there was nowhere for our plane to go, and then moved to a slightly less far away parking spot so that we could take buses to the terminal. Immigration was fast, but then we spent a stupid amount of time waiting for our luggage. I was also insanely thirsty the entire time, and there was nowhere to get anything to drink, though I could have apparently bought a SIM card from a vending machine if I wanted to. Maybe you can suck on those like mints. Anyway, our flight landed not long after 0900, and we didn't get our luggage collected and get out of there until after 1100. There was also a frightening graveyard of lost and unclaimed baggage taking up one entire section of the claim, which did not inspire confidence.

It's also worth noting that I didn't get to sit next to Mike for most of the flight, since the television for his seat was broken, and they moved him to the only empty seat on the airplane so he had something to do. I mostly used the flight to catch up on movies... I watched Toy Story 3, which I thought was very good and don't feel at all ashamed about sniffling through. I also watched The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The funny thing is, when Mike and I met up after landing and were talking about the movies we watched, we could each name two of them and it took us forever to remember which one the third was. For both of us, it was that movie. Which I think pretty much says all you need to know about how utterly unremarkable it was as a film.

Yesterday Mike and I went in to London. I paid a quick visit to Harrod's - the store was insanely busy, but everyone apparently just desperately wanted to buy perfume. After we got out of that section of the store it was just fine, and we were in and out in less than twenty minutes. After that we met up with Sam and Rick, and spent the rest of the day taking up space in a pub and playing board games. The game we started off with was Ticket to Ride, which was a lot of fun and I'm going to have to pick up a copy once my checking account stops crying about the furnace.

Oh yes, translation for any UK readers: by furnace, I mean boiler. Even though it has nothing to do with boiling water. I do not in fact own any sort of smelting equipment. This announcement brought to you by Mike's parents, who found that particular vocabulary mix-up very entertaining.

The Doctor Who Christmas special was pretty good, I think. I wouldn't place it higher than the first Christmas Invasion, or even the Runaway Bride, but I definitely liked it better than the silly episode with the space Titanic, or the one from two years ago that was kind of about the cyberman and all it really had going was a lovely steampunkish Victorian setting. I'd say this one was as close at Doctor Who's really gotten to just out and out producing a fable, and while it had the normal plot holes that you could drive a truck through, it at least had a lot more life in it than the last couple of episodes I've seen. (Which were, for the record, Victory of the Daleks and The Adventures of Spitty Timothy Dalton as the Most Underused Rassilon Imageinable [not its actual title].) Really, considering that I feel like the entire episode was based around someone saying, "I've got this awesome mental image of a shark flying through the air, pulling a rickshaw... let's combine that with Christmas!" the end result was surprisingly coherent and fun. It's also convinced me to give Matt Smith another chance as the Doctor... considering my first exposure to him was the underwhelmingly written turd of a Dalek episode from his season, he really needed something to recommend him.

I think a some point I may have to devote a post to how I feel about the way the Daleks have been used in recent episodes. It won't be a very nice post.

Today Mike and I are headed off to Brighton to see Sam and Dan and Rhi and hopefully Captain Stu, so that's exciting. It's hard to believe we're already at the midpoint of our trip, though this one's a few days shorter than trips we've taken in the past, since Mike ran out of vacation. Something to do with a wedding.

Also, Anotherealm has now published its 2011 lineup. Transportation will be the September offering - I'm really excited about that!

Furnace Installation

2010-12-23T08:35:00.001-07:00

There are scary noises emanating from my downstairs closet, which must mean that a nice man named Wayne is installing my new furnace. I hope.

As you can see, Loki is hard at work helping.

For Christmas, I Got You an Empty Bank Account

2010-12-22T15:07:00.001-07:00

I woke up this morning and the house was cold. Cold, and silent except for the sound of the cats and the hum of my laser printer in power save mode.

I'm sure everyone who has ever owned a home feels an empathetic sick, sinking feeling in the pit of their stomach just about now.

I called the HVAC people. They sent out a nice young man named Chris. His nametag helpfully informed me that he'd been both tested for drugs and undergone a background check. (They also e-mailed me his picture in advance, I suppose so a person posing as an HVAC technician couldn't get into my house and monkey around with my broken furnace.)

Chris, with Loki close by, ready to assist him at a moment's notice, fixed the furnace-not-turning-on problem very quickly. Unfortunately, he also found another problem.

"Look in this hole. See where I'm shining my light?"

"Yes?"

"See how this little tiny ring is missing from that aperture?"

"Yes?"

"That means your furnace is trying to kill you."

Okay, that last thing is not actually what he said. Rather, he told me that it was the symptom of a badly cracked heat exchange, and that if it was that badly cracked, my furnace might start filling my house with carbon monoxide at a moment's notice. So effectively, that last statement is what I heard.

That is why, the day before leaving the country for Christmas, we now only have about $500 in our savings account. I guess the good news is that we were saving all of that money for a new car next year, so we had it on hand to pay for a new furnace. The bad news is that we no longer have that money for acquiring a new car. But hopefully the faithful old steed will keep limping along while we try to rebuild our savings.

Chris brought in an electrician, who looked around and within five minutes found over $6,000 worth of reasons my house is not up to building code. Thankfully most of that can be ignored until I've managed to sell a kidney on the black market, several years from now. The stuff actually related to the furnace he took care of today, and the price seemed very reasonable in comparison to the number he quoted for, say, replacing my electrical panel, which comes direct from the 70s and is chock full of aluminum wiring. As far as I can tell, the sole purpose of aluminum wiring is to set houses on fire.

The new furnace will be installed tomorrow morning. Chris the Technician put a brand new carbon monoxide detector in that will warn us if the furnace tries to kills us, so that we can use tonight to prevent ourselves from freezing to death.

I guess I'm glad that this happened now, after I did all my Christmas shopping. It means all of our friends are getting nicer presents than a candy bar, or a used bookmark that Tengu has chewed up. I've now managed to take in enough alcohol that I no longer feel like screaming hysterically.

Santa, if this is how it's going to be this year, I just can't wait to see what surprises you have in store for me at the airport.