Curse you, passive voice!

I've been reading a lot of scientific papers lately; I'm in two classes, and I'm trying to get in a sufficient amount of reading on topic before my research starts up. Easier said than done... for the most part, scientific papers tend to knock me out, even if I'm not tired when I start reading. And it's not a fatigue issue, anyway; if I'm reading something that I'm interested in, it doesn't matter how tired I am. I'll stay up until four in the morning just because I need to read One More Page.

I think papers just knock me out because, for the most part, they're badly written. There's a lot of jargon, but that's unavoidable in a specialized field. I think the bigger problem tends to be writing style. I'll go out on a limb and guess that most scientists aren't like me (writing fiction as a masochistic hobby) or my friend Evan (who has a BA in English). When I took my "writing in the geosciences" undergrad course - which I wasn't terribly impressed by - most of the other students were just miserable about being there, because they hated writing so much.

Actually disliking the process of writing is not going to help when it comes to producing a coherent, interesting paper. I suppose the more the writer feels like he or she is fighting with the English language, the more the reader will feel like it, too.

There are a lot of things that make scientific papers a giant slog to read. I think one of the major ones is the ubiquitous use of passive voice. In prose, passive voice is the kiss of death. It's something to be avoided entirely or used only sparingly, because it tends to interfere with the reader's ability to connect with the action.

Of course, scientific articles aren't fiction. Most of the time.

But the thing is, a lot of people who write scientific papers tend to use passive voice. I think it's because it makes them sound somehow more impartial - one of the big uses of passive is to remove the doer from a sentence. "A simulation was run" as opposed to "we ran a simulation." I can understand that desire, but it makes it damn hard to read and stay interested, particularly when it sounds like the methods section is just kind of running itself without any sort of human intervention.

I bring this up because I read an article in Geology over the weekend that didn't hammer the reader with passive sentences, and it was a treat to read. I was tired, and it didn't knock me out. I was interested. I felt engaged by the writing. Now, I can't really say too much about the subject itself, since it deals with climate modeling and that's not something I personally do. But the writing was definitely a step above most of the other articles I've read lately.

Go check it out for yourself, if you have Geoscience World subscription: CO2-driven ocean circulation changes as an amplifier of Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum hydrate destabilization (Lunt et al)

It's a sad statement on the writing in this field when article that doesn't make me fall asleep at my desk warrants an excited blog post.

The Weekend That Wasn't

I did survive the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous, though at this point I'm still not sure if that's an entirely good thing. Two days of questionable food and a ridiculous amount of stress have taken a toll on my insides. I'm a miserable human being at the moment.

I did all of the driving, which was awful in a special way. I normally drive a Honda Civic with a manual transmission. On the trip I drove a Suburban with an automatic transmission. It made me feel strangely bloated. I think the only reason I was able to handle the car without going completely out of my mind was that I've still got some memory of the ol' ambulance driving days. As it was, the defensive driving I learned then served me well when someone did a dead stop in front of me on Grand Avenue without signaling their intention to turn. I apparently did a masterful swerve into the right hand lane, which I got a lot of compliments for once my passengers had gotten their hearts restarted. I also apparently reached across the seat to hold on to my friend Gaby with my hand that wasn't clutching the steering wheel. I don't actually remember this, but Gaby insists it's true and it likely means that I'm turning in to my mother.

The Suburban and I disliked each other to the bitter end. I managed to lock my luggage in the car and then returned the key before I noticed, and I blame the Suburban for that as well. I had to drive up to the motor pool early this morning to retrieve my luggage. The woman behind the counter handed over the key without argument, though she did accompany it with a look that clearly said, "You are a moron." Which I suppose I richly deserved.

And if you haven't figured out how this works yet, the minute I do something mortally embarrassing and stupid, I have to tell everyone about it.

Generally I feel like the weekend was a colossal, stressful waste of my time, and I'm sorry to say that. I only had three interviews, so I should be grateful just for the chance at practicing my interviewing skills. However, once I got there I realized that the meeting was more supposed to be a chance for students to schmooze potential recruiters. And to say that I'm not much of a schmoozer is an understatement. A couple of my fellow students were Born To Schmooze, so to speak, and watching them in action just left me feeling like the awkward fat kid on the playground.

We'll see if I get an internship out of this, but I'm not going to hold my breath. I only feel like one of the interviews went really well. And everyone was surprised that I only got three, since I have five years of industry experience on my resume. Considering that in one of the interviews I was asked pointedly if I couldn't just go back to my old company and get a job this summer, I'm thinking it's something of a two-edged sword.

There was also some excellent highschool-style drama during the trip, which is a good reminder for me that while we all can't help but get older, we definitely aren't required to get any wiser. And I ruined my dress shoes somehow; the sole on one of the shoes developed enormous cracks in three places. Cracks bad enough that they cause me to wobble as I walk. This means that there is shoe shopping in my very near future. All I can hope is that the evil fascist conspiracy taking place in my digestive tract will finish me off before I get that far.

On a positive note, the Comfort Inn we stayed at had waffle irons in the breakfast room, so I got to make a fresh belgian waffle for myself two days in a row. And that's certainly worth something.

Meandering thoughts

The last two weeks have been absolutely ridiculous, in terms of my free time suddenly melting away and drying into a gross chalky powder like an unattended ice cream cone in the Mojave. I somehow got myself put in charge of a wad of department funding for the student trip up to the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous this weekend (an event where students go to beg petroleum companies to hire us and shower us with wads and wads of dirty oil money) so maybe that's what's been sucking all of my free time away.

What little time I've had left, I've used to do kung fu, or writing stuff. I just finished polishing up about five stories, so I'm bouncing those around and collecting an exciting new round of rejection notices to pin to the wall over my desk. No, I'm not kidding. I actually do that. It makes a rejection feel less like a punishment and more like an exciting collectors' item.

Last night I didn't actually make it home until midnight, since I was late at school working on a stratigraphy lab and finishing up my grading. I'm thankfully starting to figure out some grading strategies that make the process faster, or I probably would have ended up just sleeping in my office. Or I hear the couch in the undergraduate lounge is quite comfortable.

At least we're in to October now. This is my favorite time of the year; the September heat is finally going away, and we're getting cool, cloudy skies. It feels like autumn ought to feel. And of course the leaves turning makes it extra pretty.

Anyone starting the betting pool on if it'll snow this Halloween? My money's on yes, since we've had such nice weather the last several years. It can't last. And the kids need a good Halloween snow storm. Makes 'em work for the candy.

A child should be a choice

Today I hung my No On 62 sign on my patio door. I don't actually have a yard, so yard signs aren't really possible. I also got my Blue Book today, which I tore in to immediately. Mostly because I was curious about what the Blue Book had to say about Amendment 62, since the proponents of the measure tried to sue over it a couple weeks ago.

"They have not included a single word — not a single word — of our arguments," Garcia-Jones said.

Likely because the arguments of the proponents are either filled with emotionally charged language, which has no place in the exceptionally dry and matter-of-fact style of the Blue Book, or because the arguments were patently untrue.

Garcia-Jones said that the Blue Book's arguments against Amendment 62 are false because it could never, as the booklet states, cause women to be denied medical treatment for a miscarriage. The amendment could not, he said, put doctors and other health professionals at risk of legal action for providing medical care to women of childbearing age.

I will Give Garcia-Jones the benefit of the doubt and not accuse him of lying in this case. I think he simply does not understand the unintended consequences of banning abortion absolutely. Take a look at what's happened in El Salvador; doctors become reluctant to give care for miscarriages, since they may be afraid that they will be accused of causing the miscarriage, or the miscarriage itself might be the result of an illegal abortion. And frankly, I think if abortion were made absolutely illegal, doctors might very well not want to treat women of childbearing age because they may become pregnant at any time and not necessarily realize it. If you want to define a fertilized egg as a person, well, last I checked even if you accidentally kill a person, you don't just get a pat on the head and a wave to go on your merry way.

Of course, I'm naughty for even using the phrase "fertilized egg." One of the proponents said:

“I think it's important to note with the term fertilized egg, that's the same thing as using the N word for an African American,” said Mason. “Because it's a dehumanizing term and it's not based in science. The term would be a zygote, or an embryo, speaking of a unique individual.”

A fertilized egg is a zygote is a fertilized egg. ACOG certainly uses the term "fertilized egg" without blushing. I think it's really an attempt by the 62 proponents to up the emotional charge on the language, because they know that they can't win with either logic or science. I'm actually quite surprised Mason isn't insisting on calling it a baby from the instant of conception onward, but that's probably a little too extreme.

I'd like to throw one more quote at you, where the proponents try to squirm out of the fact that the amendment would ban many extremely popular forms of birth control, including my favorite, the pill:

True contraception prevents fertilization and personhood for pre-born babies will legally protect every baby from the beginning of his or her biological development," said Hanks in an e-mail. "Only those forms of "birth control" that extinguish a life that has already begun will be impacted. Many of the oral "contraceptives" have an action that makes the womb inhospitable to a developing embryo and hence, the new living, growing baby is prevented from residing where his or her Creator intended until birth."

This quote characterizes everything that is wrong with the position of the Amendment 62 proponents - and delineates why I don't just think they're idiots, I actively hate them.

To begin with, Hanks brings up the "Creator" and the Creator's intentions as a means to justify banning birth control. For those of us that don't believe in gods, this is an argument that holds no water. It makes the point very clear that Amendment 62 is about making a personal religious belief into a law that would control the lives of all women that live in Colorado.

But even more to the point, everything in that quote is about the baby. The woman is reduced to a womb, to "where his or her Creator" intends the baby to reside. In their efforts to grant "personhood" to a fertilized egg, they simultaneously remove "personhood" from the woman involved.

That is what makes me angry, and filled with hate, and very afraid. Since I first became aware of the abortion debate, I honed in immediately on the fact that efforts to ban abortion reduce women to less than full citizens, chattel who do not truly own and control their own bodies and can be forced by the state to complete a pregnancy. I don't appreciate my rights, my life, my existence being reduced to the state of one organ within my body.

And perhaps that's the cruelest joke of this horrible debate. These people have made me resent the very idea of being pregnant, have made me resent babies. Because I can't help but resent anything and anyone that would reduce my life from a glorious adventure that I (mostly) direct to an existence that is wholly outside of my own control.

I often see bumper stickers around here, that say: "It's a child, not a choice." I could not disagree more. It is a choice. It should be a choice. It must be a choice.

I have several friends that have children, who they love very much. Each and every one of these amazing women, whether the pregnancy was intentional or not, ultimately chose to change the course of her life and become a mother. That choice made the baby a cherished and loved member of the family, rather than a burden forced on the mother by the state.

I don't want to be a mother right now. I may never want to be. But I want that chance, to decide for myself. I want that choice. I want all women to have that choice. In the future, I want my niece to have that choice.

No on 62.

Fluffy Kittens Are Good (II)

Tengu would like to take this opportunity to remind you that he, too, is freakishly adorable.


Not much going on at the moment; it's been a very busy week, but not in what could be even broadly defined as an interesting way. I did have an interview with ExxonMobil earlier this week, but I'd like to hold off saying anything about that until I know if the super exciting possibility with them comes true.

So yes. Kittens.

CRUNCHsquish goes the cockroach.

So yeah. That was one of the highlights of my day. And by highlight, I actually mean OH GOD WHY. As I was leaving the geology building to head home after sequence stratigraphy, I decided to hit the bathroom. Except the doorway of the women's room in the basement was guarded by an enormous cockroach. It was at least the size of a cocker spaniel.

I was planning to just slink quietly away and use one of the restrooms on the upper floors, where the cockroaches have at least had the good taste to remain hidden. Instead, one of my mineralogy students popped up and informed me that I should squash it, since I was wearing real shoes and he was wearing moccasins. I made gagging noises to signal my disagreement. Part of this is because I'm too soft hearted to even squash most spiders, and part of it was because I couldn't begin to imagine what it would feel like to try to step on a bug that size - what if I only wounded it, and made it angry? What if it had a knife?

So then he told me to give him my shoe. Which I did. And he slammed it down on the cockroach. Twice. Then ground it in to the floor, at which point it made that awful CRUNCH noise that almost made me gag.

And then he threatened to wipe the bottom of my shoe off on my shirt sleeve before giving it back to me.

My students. They really know how to ingratiate themselves.

I ended up using one of the other bathrooms anyway, since I didn't want to go near the gross, squashed cockroach. Gah.

Other than that, decent enough day. Had my weekly meeting with Mary, discussed some basic isotope geochemistry for the PETM and I think I understand at least the broad strokes of it okay. I also asked her if there was much on the petrology of the basin, and it turns out there is basically nothing. I have to see if I still like thin sections by the time I'm done with this sedimentary petrology class, but it sounds like there might be a good opportunity for a project there if I can find money to have approximately a bajillion thin sections made. Also talked to her about masters versus PhD, since I've started wondering if I made a mistake just applying for an MS. Apparently that's something that can be changed pretty easily mid-stream, so I'm going to stop worrying about it until I settle on a project, at which point I'll see if the scope of that project is more suited to an MS or PhD.

The Inescapable Gravity Well Located In Mikael Blomkvist's Shorts

WARNING: Major, MAJOR spoilers ahead for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. At least the book. I have no idea what the movie is like.

I am not going to spoil the central mystery of the book, by the way. I actually enjoyed that part enough that it's what actually got me to finish the thing. No, my problem with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo begins and ends, like all things in that book, in Mikael Blomkvist's shorts.

Which is to say, I'm talking about his penis. Or more specifically, his penis and the inability of every female character in the book under the age of 50 to not immediately latch on to said organ and take it for a joy ride.

I'm not a prude. I swear. I read Laurel K. Hamilton, for gods' sake, at least until the killing stuff to sex ratio slipped into values of less than one. I don't have a problem with characters getting it on... as long as it actually makes sense and doesn't interfere with the story.

So it made sense when Blomkvist was banging his female friend/coworker/lady he was having an affair with that caused his divorce. Sure. I can dig that. She's a pretty cool character, actually.

Then he goes to the island, and one of the Vangers immediately squirms into his pants. Because she's apparently wanted to do that since she clapped eyes on him. Which I think is kind of a dumb reason to bang some guy you barely know, but hey, people do it all the time.

Then Blomkvist hooks up with Lisbeth, and that's about where I went WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK and just put my foot down. For starters, the sudden hop into Blomkvist's bed made absolutely no sense from the character Lisbeth had been built to be - at least in my opinion. Moreso, because in the beginning of the book she'd been the target of a very violent sexual assault, and that's something that didn't seem to even cross her mind once she encountered Blomkvist. Some very thin reasoning was given as to why she decided to ride his baloney pony, but frankly, I still think it's total crap.

Add to that the fact that as Blomkvist is described, he's not really anything all that remarkable in looks, is maybe a bit above average in the intelligence department, and it becomes more of a puzzle. If Blomkvist's beauty were at least described in creepy, cooing detail like that of D in the Vampire Hunter D Novels, I could at least buy everyone around wanting to bang him. Since hey, it apparently works that way if you're a half-vampire. Which Blomkvist manifestly isn't.

So, all I can conclude is that there's some sort of inescapable gravity well centered around Mikael Blomkvist's penis, and as soon as a woman gets within about two feet of him, she goes tumbling past the event horizon and can't escape.

And I further concluded this morning that if, during my fanfiction days, I had wrote anything remotely like a male character with a black hole in his shorts, the fan community would have cut me to shreds. And they wouldn't even have paused to sharpen their knives first, because sharpenin' is too good for dirty, lowdown scoundrels that write Mary Sue fanfiction.

The hell of it is, I really liked Lisbeth Salander as a character up until she started working with Blomkvist and slipped past the foreskin event horizon. And then to add insult to injury, not only does she bang him for no discernible reason, but she then decides that she's in love with him, for the thinnest of thin reasons. I almost threw the book across the room, except that it's not my book and my mommy raised me better than that.

I rather think the author's fallen into the gravity well, himself.

Also, the book once again continued the sad pattern that occurs in almost every action novel - if there's a small, cute animal, such as a cat, the evil killer will do something awful to it, just to show how awful and evil he is. Kind of like the way all psychopaths in the movies and on television are also avid scrapbookers.

I wanted to like the book, but considering the plot is caught between a horribly dead cat and a penis black hole, I just can't bring myself to recommend it.

It's hard to write with your brain full of snot.

I have a cold. In fact, the cold, the one that's been slowly burning its way through the geology department. It got Dave (my fellow TA) last week, and my advisor, and one of the nice ladies from the office. To put it lightly, I feel like poop on a stick.

I somehow survived the second field trip today. Don't ask me how. I think it's entirely up to the wonderfulness that is TA!Dave, who came along to help do the driving and ended up running most of the field trip. Which I guess works out, since he's done the field trip many more times than me. Joe was along yesterday and basically ran everything then, too. I only had a little bit to add about sedimentary rocks at that stop, but in all honest, from the perspective of mineralogy, sedimentary rocks are pretty damn boring. Today Joe was off seeing if he could salvage anything from his house... hopefully it's not as grim as it sounds, but it's hard to feel hope on the subject of wild fires. We actually caught a glimpse of the burn damage on the drive. The ridge we passed by was black with a few skeletal trees still clinging to it. The entire area looked like a shadow with clear skies overhead.

I think I may just not go in tomorrow, since I've only got a BS class in the later afternoon. And I've already canceled my office hours.

The real question is... will I get any writing done when my brain has been replaced with snot?

Also, I want to write a ranty thing about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - the book version that is. As a sneak preview, the intended title of the post will be: "The Inescapable Gravity Well Surrounding Mikael Bomkvist's Penis." Or something along that vein.

Field Trip Called on Account of Fire

Just in case you hadn't heard, bits of Boulder are on fire. That made today at school a little unpleasant. Campus isn't in any danger, but it was very hazy (I could barely see the Flatirons from the geology building) and everything smelled like smoke. My sinuses are feeling extremely irritated now.

The only mineralogy field trip for the semester was supposed to happen this week as well. I must say, canceling a field trip because of fire sounds a lot more butch than canceling it due to rain. Maybe next time we'll be able to ratchet it up even more and cancel it on account of alien invasion or giant panda attack.

People weren't talking about it that much, but the smoke is pretty oppressive, and fire that close to town is a little scary. At least one of the faculty has had his house burn down. He seemed to be taking it a lot better than I ever would, but at least he had his computer with him when everyone got evacuated. So he might have lost a lot of books and other prized possessions, but at least he didn't lose any research he was working on. Another person I met in the building today mentioned that he'd been evacuated from his house, and he hoped that it didn't end up burning down because he had all of the literature reprints he needed for an article he's been working on for 10 years in his office, and if that goes up in flames he'll pretty much just have to give up on it.

Maybe it's that both of these gentleman are a lot older than me, or that when you live out where you can see something approaching wilderness from your front door, you have to come to terms with the fact that sometimes nature is one mean mother. But man, they both seemed pretty calm and resigned.

This is one more thing that makes me glad to live in the suburbs, though. Stuff is just stuff, but I also have kitties to worry about.

Also: Phil Plait has pictures over at his blog.

The picture of the sunset freaks me out a little - it makes me think of the Hayman Fire, when at midday in south Denver the sky was orange and ash was raining down. Brrr.

Don't fuck with mother nature.

Dispatches From Grad School: Still Alive, But Dumber

I've now officially survived my second week of grad school. Well, technically yesterday was the official survival date, but I was in Colorado Springs for most of the day. And then when I got home, I decided that a round of Plants v. Zombies was more interesting than writing anything. I think Popcap has figured out a way to inject heroin directly into the eyeballs of anyone who plays its games, through the internet.

So after two weeks of grad school, how do I feel?

My panic has converted to stress, so that's good. Maybe.

This week I taught my first two labs. There wasn't really a whole lot of teaching involved this time, since it was mostly just going through the syllabus, then turning the students loose on an array of minerals so they could test the physical properties. I'm going to try to be incredibly nice about grading this one, I think; some physical properties can be pretty subjective (luster, for example) and I remember how much I loathed the physical properties lab as an undergrad because of it.

I'm also finding it interesting how a class as a hole can have a certain attitude with it. One of my lab sections was much more sociable than the other. One of them buckled down and got through all of the work a lot quicker, and there seemed to be a lot less questions. I'll be interested to see how things change once all of the students get to know each other better and hopefully become less shy.

Next week I'm going to have to start attending Mineralogy lectures regularly, I think. That's when lectures about the things I don't remember and was never that good at (eg: point groups) start up. It'll help me survive teaching lab, but I'm not all that thrilled about having three hours a week less to work with.

And time is the big, big thing. The last two weeks, there's been a couple of days each week where I haven't even left school until about 1900, because I've been in the library trying to pull articles. I'm hoping that will calm down soon, once I've got at least a decent library for the Bighorn Basin established. That time may ultimately be spent with thin sections instead, though, since I feel like my free time during the day (and when the petrology lab is free) is pretty limited.

I'm trying not to make myself crazy about Bighorn Basin, though. I had a good chat with my adviser on Friday about that. My big problem is that I want to feel like I'm doing something toward the project. And right now, I've got to face the reality that for the time being, all I can really do is read. A lot. And then some more. The Bighorn Basin is an area that's already had a lot of study, so I need a thorough understanding of what everyone else has done before I can really get to any questions that haven't already been answered. For me, that feels pretty frustrating, since reading doesn't really feel like work. But I just need to calm down, and do it, and not let my impatience get the better of me.

Maybe that's my first big lesson.

My classes are going all right. I dropped down to two, since the Surface Process Modeling class didn't sound entirely relevant, and two classes is already a pretty damn scary load. Which is another thing that takes getting used to. As an undergrad, I felt like I was seriously slacking if I wasn't taking at least four, if not five classes. Not so, here.

I've also been joking that in just two weeks of school, I'm already dumber. What I really mean is that I already feel like I know even less than I did before - college has always had that effect on me. The more classes I go to, the less I feel like I actually know.

Case in point would be the lab exercise we did for sequence stratigraphy on Friday. The professor gave us a log section to correlate. This is something I thought that I could do in my sleep, because I've been correlating logs for the last four years. So I went on my merry way, and royally screwed it up.

Most of the fields I've worked with span two, maybe three sections, which makes them three miles "long" at most. And because of the very small area a field covers, I tend to make a couple little assumptions - (1) the formations of interest should be present throughout the field, and (2) they should all be about the same thickness, unless you have a good reason to think you're working with something like channel sands. These little assumptions tend to be useful because sometimes you get logs that aren't of the best quality, and also mean that if you can't hunt down your formation (or something that just might be your formation if you turn your head and squint because Jesus, what were the loggers on?) then there's something pretty interesting going on.

This mindset basically made me mis-correlate a big part of the section on Friday. Because I wanted the various formations to be continuous, and about the same thickness. Which might work in a field, but not in a region, where pinch-outs and facies changes are the rule rather than the exception.

Scale. It's all about scale.

See, that's what I mean - I've only been in grad school for two weeks, and I already feel dumber.