A Few Random Geologically-Related Things of Note

-The Yellowstone swarm is picking back up? Frequency of quakes have risen in the last couple of days.

-If being a geology (or old-style environmental geosciences) major and religious simultaneously doesn't make you question your beliefs, you're not doing it right. Some friends of mine in this department who have had a religious influence in their lives have had one hell of an ideological struggle between the two at times. And no, you can't compromise with "Creation Geology." That stuff's utter BS. The arguments are compelling for both sides. Some, however, are presented with data acquired using widely accepted techniques by the worldwide scientific community, and others are presented as data, possibly legitimately acquired, possibly not (possibly bad data, which unfortunately also happens now and again in the research community), and wrapped in compelling prose and argument. It's up to the reader to decide. Check out the first link in particular - though proceed with caution. It asks, in some cases, very good questions, but watch out for ones that are based on assumptions taken from the Bible and using it as a preconception in the logic used there.

-On a similar note (and I can't tell if the kid's joking or not), I read through a timeline someone wrote up for today's in-class assignment and he used a Creationist timeline. If I hadn't been reading it on a bus, head would've met desk. Hard.

-If I'm wrong about this whole science thing and the Bible is actually right, I'll be damned. Literally. But I'm okay with being wrong now and again. It's much more interesting.

-I must spend more time bonding with the rock saws - er, cutting cracks out of my aplite samples. Some of them are bad enough that I fear they'll take me the rest of my natural life, but I don't trust anyone else to help me. They're not easy to see and it's easier to blame myself for any mistakes than others. It's immensely satisfying when you hit a fracture just right and it un-cements itself. One can then proceed to taking the fracture surface off without much additional effort.

-I sleep better outside. In a tent, anyway. And yes, that includes in sub-freezing temperatures. Best sleep in recent memory was when the ragtag bunch of field campers I spent a glorious half-summer with headed south to the San Rafael Swell and camped/did geology for a couple of nights. At our second campsite, which looked out over the Little Grand Canyon, the night temperatures were so mild that many of us didn't even bother to put up tents, choosing instead to lay out sleeping bags directly on Nature. I woke up once in the ferociously-early morning hours because the Moon was rising bright.

I woke up to a grand sight:


Then I found my glasses:

(Yes, I really slept that far away from the edge of the canyon. Note I placed my bag carefully perpendicular to the edge in case I was restless at any time during the night, which wasn't the case. These pictures don't do justice. Too bad they don't make filters for point-and-shoots. Watch out PhotoShop!)

-One thing I've noticed of late. The class I'm co-TAing should, in theory, be an unbiased cross section of the University demographic. Everyone has to take an ISP (Integrated Studies in Physical Science; the same with ISBiology and ISSocial [Science] x2) class at my university, as it's a public and non-liberal arts institution. Science majors don't have to take the ISP and ISB classes as long as they take at least basic biology- and physical science-related classes as part of their core.

But I digress.

What I've noticed is that the average layman has absolutely no conception of the inertia of a system as large as what's seen on the Earth. For that matter, they have no conception of the inertia of Earth's internal system (and I, a burgeoning geoscientist/petrologist/whatever) only have an inkling of the internal dynamics of Earth -- as much as everyone else in my field. We can't directly observe, so we have to find other reliable methods by which to measure. Not everyone outside of the mode of thought into which I think I shaped myself many years ago takes that at its word. However, we are all creatures of repetition and are as one susceptible to it, so when a misnomer such as "global warming" is screamed in your ear via the popular media a few hundred thousand times, you take it as fact and go with it. This cross section of the university almost as one think that "global warming" means "a uniform increase in temperatures around the world."

What, as scientists, can we do to change these widespread and flatly WRONG notions? Not to bash the media (because they do what they have to do to sell their product, as does everyone else), but once they get a bone, they go with it. Simplify and deliver to the masses with the least amount of energy, so they can absorb it with the least amount of energy.

Empty calories of the mind.

What do we do to get folks to take five minutes of their time, log onto teh Wiki (should I be pooh-pooing? No. Wikipedia's surprisingly accurate, and if you want to be thorough, follow the citations, people. That's how I find some of my research papers when I get desperate!) and look up some of these terms we hear so much in the modern media.

Ask questions. Train yourself to ignore social, cultural preconceptions (okay, the latter is not as easy as it sounds) when addressing such popular topics and look past the term. Look at where it came from, what it evolved into.

There's always so much more we never knew behind these topics.

-Is this why I can't sleep?