Running behind again, I’m afraid. Let me distract you with a cute cat and shiny rock:
Okay, one more:
Month: November 2011
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Rising Up
I’m making an exception to my “no links to HuffPo because they are a repository for woo and wackaloonery that should not be rewarded” because this is important:
Jesse Kornbluth: The Police Riot at Berkeley: If They’ll Beat a Poet Laureate, Will They Kill a Student?
Go read it in its entirety before coming back here. Yes, even if you despise HuffPo as much as I do.
I Adore Labradorite
There’s a word, begins with s, means something like coincidence. Synergy? Sorta kinda not really. Szygy? Awesome word, totally incorrect. Synchronicity. That’s the word. This is synchronicity. Synchronicity has just happened. Because, you see, I wrote a bit about anorthosite and labradorite doing up my geolantern for the Accretionary Wedge, and whilst I was babbling about how totally amazing the mineral labradorite is, I thought that someday, I’d have to get round to photographing my bit of it and write it up. Along came a meme, and it seems someday is today.
Here she is:
I know, right? She doesn’t look all that exciting. You certainly don’t look at her and immediately think, “ZOMG the Moon is made of that stuff!” But it is. Anorthosite is what the lunar highlands are composed of, and anorthosite is predominately labradorite. This makes me want to grab a moon rock, polish it up, and start playing with its labradorescence, but NASA would probably become upset.
(If anybody’s got a bit of anorthosite from the moon that doesn’t belong to NASA and is within the price range of a second-tier cell phone tech support person, do let me know.)
So. We’ve got a rock that has exotic cousins and comes from a pretty exotic locale – I mean, Madagascar, amirite? But it’s just this dark little lump with a hint o’ shimmer. Pretty, but not extraordinary. Why all the fuss? It’s about this time that geologists and rock shop addicts in the audience start grinning that little oh-just-you-wait grin and do something that’ll make your eyes pop.
Interlude with Cat: The Assistant
I’m working on something which won’t have tremendous substance, but will have links to substance, and yummy photos. But it’s taking forever due to a few technical difficulties. Don’t talk to me about getting cats to pose with rocks, or getting enough light out of one bloody bulb, or trying to figure out why the computer won’t load the photos, or photo editing, or…
Anyway, here’s a cat. Helping me write. Enjoy that while you wait. Send it to PZ and tell him you’d like to see a cephalopod do that without suffocating in the open air or getting the paper wet.
Dana's Dojo: Progress? What is This Progress You Speak Of?
Today in the Dojo: Your progress mileage may vary. And that’s perfectly fine.
Anne Jefferson started a SciWrite challenge to coincide with NaNoWriMo. Now, before we have any talk of word counts or other arbitrary measures of success, go read her post on progress. I mean it. Do it now. Then you can head back over here and listen to me natter on.
Continue reading “Dana's Dojo: Progress? What is This Progress You Speak Of?”
Los Links 11/11
This week seemed to last 10,000 years. Enormous amount of stuff going on: earthquakes, child-rape enablers getting fired, women fighting back against misogynistic assholes, anti-vax freaks sending infectious agents through the mail, Occupy Wall Street ongoing…. And, of course, this incredibly busy week is the one in which our server upgrade went horribly awry. Not to mention trying to do a fair bit of writing.
Fortunately for those who love the links, there was actually a bit of time to read in between calls at work at times. And if we’re very, very lucky, our long-suffering in-house tech has managed to put out most of the fires, so this post will actually stay up long enough for you to enjoy said linkage. If this one goes away whilst my back is turned, let me know via Twitter, Facebook or G+. I’ve got it backed up to Blogger in case we have to seek an alternative. I will not deprive you of your linkfest. Not during the last long week before Thanksgiving!
There Are Lines That Should Never Be Crossed
Telling a suicidal Marine Corps veteran that she must “return to the light” and that her friends are “still in darkness and going to hell” is one of those lines.
This, in a nutshell, is why I am a New Atheist. I haven’t got a problem with religion, not as such. If that’s what you need to get you through your life, if you can’t give up the idea of god either singular or plural, I find it rather silly and sad, but that’s fine. Whatever floats your boat. Believe if you must.
But when those beliefs cross the line from personal to public, there’s a huge problem. And Christianity (amongst others) has a very hard time staying private. Far too many believers believe their way is the only way, that all of the rest of us are going to be condemned to eternal suffering if we don’t bow down to your sadistic little “loving god,” and then you do remarkably damaging things like trying to legislate your morality, and pushing a suicidal Marine very nearly over the edge.
When you cross that line from personal belief to public crusade, you demonstrate why your beliefs can’t be treated gently, but must be fought. You don’t understand how much suffering you cause, because you think you’re preventing suffering in the life to come. You harm people because of a myth. And then you scream persecution at the least little criticism. You demand your dreadful, damaging beliefs be shielded, uniquely respected, while you strip the shields away from good and hurting people and disrespect them in the name of god.
You don’t get to have it that way.
You can have your faith. But if you think that gives you a free license to bully, berate, and belittle people, if you believe the rules of your profession don’t apply to you, you’ll have consequences to face. And there will be people there, some atheists, some more compassionate and tolerant believers, who will confront you, criticize you, and if you have broken the law, ensure you face the penalty.
And those of you who have asked me why I speak out, why I can’t just leave well enough alone, what’s the harm if people believe, this is part of the answer.
This is the harm.
And when we set religion apart as something we cannot criticize, we perpetuate that harm.
Oh, Yes. Very Frivolous reprise: Susan Saladoff Smacks Tort Reform on the Colbert Report
A long time ago in a blogoverse far away, before I was ever a member of Freethought Blogs, I wrote up a post on a documentary called Hot Coffee, which had taught me that what appears frivolous on the surface (ooo she burned herself with coffee and now wants to sue!) is often not (life-threatening burns requiring surgery to repair).
I became upset. I’ve written angry posts before and since, but that was one of the angriest.
Susan Saladoff, who directed Hot Coffee, appeared on the Colbert Report recently, and it’s well worth taking a few moments to watch her rip apart the notion that tort reform is any good to anyone except those causing grievous harm.
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Susan Saladoff | ||||
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Ge o’ the Lantern
Otherwise known as a geolantern, subspecies of the common jack o’ lantern.
And yes, I painted the damned thing. Trust me, you don’t want to let me near a pumpkin with a knife. The results could put you in mind of Jack the Ripper crime scene photos.
This all came about through an interesting confluence of events. As I said, I am teh suck at pumpkin carving, so I was going to give Michael Klaas’s Accretionary Wedge topic a miss. Didn’t have time, tools, or a pumpkin, right? Busy doing NaNo, even so. But then, on Sunday, on the way out to the car to retrieve soda, I saw this beauty of a pristine pumpkin sitting forlornly by the dumpster. So I fetched it up the stairs. I have a soft spot in my heart for orphaned members of the squash family.
Hmm, I thought. I could turn it into a migmatite.
Out, Out, Damned Dam! White Salmon River
Did I mention it’s a bad year to be a dam in the Pacific Northwest? Well, it’s a bad year to be a dam that’s outlived its usefulness, providing a pittance of hydroelectric power at great cost to salmon runs and so forth. Just ask the Condit Dam. Oh, wait, you can’t – we killed it dead.
Andy Maser, the outstanding photographer who shot the dam being blown open, gave me his kind permission to embed the resulting video for the two or three of you who may not have seen it yet. I’d advise you to get a good grip on something before you press play. Ready? Steady? Launch!
Look at that sediment go! Aside from that breathtaking burst of muddy water from beneath the dam as it was breached, that was my favorite part. I’m hoping one of our lovers of fine sediments will weigh in below to discuss the slumping and sediment transport and relevant bits. Hard rock folk may sneer at those sedimentary softies (all in good fun, o’ course), but you have to admit that was awesome.
A lot of you linked to this on Twitter and G+ and in the comments on our last installment of dam-busting mayhem. Fact is, Condit’s demise is what inspired me to write up Elwha. I wanted a warm-up. The dam removal on the Elwha River was impressive, I grant you that, but kind of pales in comparison to what they did to the Condit. Explosive breaches make for awe-inducing footage, especially when you’ve got photographers like Andy around to capture the moment.
So why the pyrotechnics rather than a slower breach like we saw at Elwha?