It's time to play a game! Where are all the earth science bloggers? Are geologists genetically inclined to dislike the nontechnical nature of the blogosphere? Or are we being discriminated against by our colleagues in physics and biology?

I combed teh Intarnet and found these (in no particular order):

• Andrew Frederiksen - Seismology, earth science, and society
• Sabine's Garden
• Walter Kessinger - Industry Seismology and Stuff
• RealClimate
• John Vidale - SeismoJournal
• Brian Balta - Left Thinking in a Right Lateral Shear Zone
• Our Take - science of the natural environment, intersection of science and public health and development, what distinguishes the perfect croissant
• David Wininger - Yuccacentric (defunct?)
• Martian Soil
• Rock Blog
• Ron Schott
• Dave Schumaker - Geology News
• Revolving Duck
• My Sediments Exactly
• Yorrike
• Schmerles - auf deutsch
• Wolverine Tom
• Mike Zoldak - a geographer specializing in geoinformatics, who never posts on it
• Irene - a geographer's photoblog (auf deutsch)
• Beth Bartel - live from antarctica and points elsewhere
• Andrew Alden - at about.com
• Zoltán Sylvester - webnotes of a skeptical east european
• Cogdogblog - Was Geologist, Now Technologist
• Twinkling Radiance
• Elizabeth - plans to do something like Geology and Geophysics, or English, or... something.
• Ellery Frahm
• Juan Penalosa
• Tarka Wilcox
• The Oil Drum - Peak oil production and sustainable growth
• Joe Gilbert - Just Another Day

And now there's like a billion LiveJournallers to sort through! I always forget about LiveJournal. But it has geophysics! And geology and geodynamics and hydrogeology. And probably, y'know, all that trendy geobio blah-de-blah and other specialties I'm not so interested in.

So that's the answer. All the earth science bloggers are on LiveJournal. But please do keep suggesting anomalies from the rest of the Internet...

One

From Emma Goldman at War on Error, Class, Part VIII on cultural signifiers and Sorting Hats:

So, really, the conundrum is that, on one hand, we want some kind of shorthand, some way of sorting people, and, arguably, some agreement on an assortment of dimensions of sorting. This isn't even necessarily a bad thing, although it certainly can be (e.g., when people who are hiring employees think of "someone who is like me" in terms of skin color or religion or genitalia, for example). On the other hand, restricting yourself to people who think and look and dress exactly like you is boring, tedious, and likely to lead to literal and figurative inbreeding of all sorts.

We can play the proffered Dichotomy Game and point out that between those two hands lies something entirely reasonable, but - oooh! Look! I've just burped up a piece of old cud!

I've long held a Goldilocks theory of difference: life (or any given aspect thereof) is best shared with people whose (relvant) views and experiences are not too similar, not too alien, but just the right amount of different. Though most Goldilocks statements pass without comment (they're practically tautologies, after all) this is one of the few that seems to provoke disagreement. Not on the cloistered end, but on the end where I feel conversation can degenerate into pointless conflict and talking past one another, disputes where neither party is ready to give up their side of the argument.

I don't think it's particularly respectful or honest of me to participate in a serious discussion if I'm unwilling to come out of it standing on one ear. Maybe in an ideal world we'd all be ready to give up our cherished beliefs at the drop of a hat, but... naw. I don't think that's how people do or should work. Does that make me close-minded?

Two

Rana on the historiography of the American frontier. Yeah, I was fed that line about the expansion of the West...

Many

Gah! Stupid futzy internet connection. A different selection of the Many than what was originally intended: ester on thigh high stockings, Steinn Sigurðsson with an acronym puzzle, and the new Get Your War On.

The most decadent food of all is the kind that (a) is dipped in butter and (b) leaves a huge pile of indigestible crap on the plate: shells, stems, peels, or in this case, stripped artichoke leaves. I never thought of artichokes as either decadent or very filling until tonight - the volume of discarded bits so far exceeds the volume of edible bits it's hard to imagine that you've eaten anything at all, and the more you eat, the less it seems you've eaten - but *burp*!

So I pretty much just ate four ounces of lemon butter. Yum.

But first: For shame, USGS! Falsifying documents related to the safety, or possible lack thereof, of a long-term nuclear waste storage facility! Someone will be getting nothing but lignite in their stocking this Santa's Birthday, for sure.

Now that that's out of the way: This is an outcrop of Bishop tuff, an ash deposit created 760,000 years ago when the Long Valley Caldera exploded - though "exploded" is, if anything, an understatement. This photo was taken 15 miles (25 of your Earth kilometers) away from the eruption; it contains no persons for scale, but the outcrop is about 10m high. Ash deposits from the same eruption are found in Southern California and as far west as Nebraska.

Tuff is what happens when a pile of hot ash ("ash") and fragments of exploded crap ("breccia") consolidates and hardens under its own heat and weight. If the proportion of exploded crap is too high, the result is more properly called a volcanic breccia, but the Bishop tuff is mostly welded ash. If you look at this formation up close, you'll see that it is pink (for the same reason that granite is pink; it's made of the same stuff) and sprinkled with little angular fragments that are often sparkly. Girliest. Rock. Evar!

And I hereby proclaim the Bishop tuff to be the tiara of the Sierra Nevada, and the Sierra Nevada Mountains to be the Princess of California, long may they collectively smile and wave in their mountainy way. The End.

Now that I drive a Mercedes-Benz, I should acknowledge the reality of my comfortable middle-class status. Which would be a much funnier thing to say if I actually had a picture of my car to go with it; I'll put one up eventually, I promise. For now, let me show you my aunt's new vacation condo in the Florida Keys, which has a similar expectation:reality ratio:



But seriously: I make more money now than my parents did when I was little, even adjusting for inflation. And if I weren't planning to quit my job, blow a big chunk of savings on a laptop and a trip to Europe, and retire to a life of quasi-poverty as a graduate student in the fall, I could have easily bought a genuinely nice car, the kind where you have a warranty that lasts for more than a month and you worry about getting little dents and shit.

Whoa.

(more...)

Part N of an infinite series.
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PZ Myers was right to call for a more inclusive vision of Friday Cat Blogging, noting that 99% of the species on the planet are non-chordates while the Friday Ark continues to be dominated by a small number of mammalian genera. Sadly, his progressive vision of a non-phylist Friday is still stuck within the dominant lifeist framework. Chris Clarke's Friday Fossil Blogging is a step in the right direction, however, True Justice demands Friday Rock Blogging! And we are not ones to resist the call of True Justice.

Courtesy the USGS photo library (which is, incidentally, in the public doman, so hoorah!) comes this picture of a chunk of granite from the Precambrian St. Francis Mountains, Missouri. Note the adorable potassium feldspar matrix! Awww.

Without a radio for my morning drive, I can feel ignorance wrapping itself around my shoulders. It's very comforting.

However, not to be missed is that Mount St. Helens is at it again. Check the Volcano Cam, kids, and here are several pretty pictures from last night.

Additionally, there's a new Internet Crackpot of the Week, please get your shards of pottery rattling for Dan Winter and Sacred Geometry!

Only this wave music which makes self-similarity - (Golden Ratio) - allows compression to turn in to acceleration (Gravity). This explains the voltage called LIFE from gravity which fresh eggs, pine cones, and your HEART make. It also descibes for the first time WHY objects fall to the ground (charge has a way out thru light speed)- explaining for example why capacitors in a pine cone make gravity (eliminating for example the embarassing need to drive around in cars powered by dinosaurs farting).

Be sure to catch the Do You Have a Soul? Test - scroll down just below the scan from a German tabloid. I have two-elevenths of a soul.

O Diesel! O Lords of the Highway! O Fickle Imps, who dwelleth in my dash!

What have I done? How can I appease your wrath?

The car worked fine when I bought it. Yesterday, sometime between morning and quittin' time, the turn signal relay died. So here I am this morning, driving along at 65 mph, window rolled down and making absurd uninterpretable arm signals to the traffic, when kerSMACK!!, my back window explodes. Actually it wasn't so much an explosion as a sudden transformation from seamless glass to a mosaic, but it was pretty darn loud and terrifying.

I figured it was a bit of kicked-up highway debris, but no. Nothing hit my car; the window just exploded of its own accord, or more likely the rear defroster's accord. Which shows you what I get for thinking I have a nice touch of luxury in my jalopy! Now I'll need to knock out the pretty translucent mosaic and install some plastic wrap.

On the other hand, my turn signals are working again, hurrah!

Science says: I can't be expected to work in the afternoon, so there.