Brian Switek linked to this on Twitter, and the English major in me laughed and squeed and decided it was essential to share it with you:
Where was this shit when we were in school?
bit o’ fun
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One Good One
I just spent an hour out on the porch waiting for the Perseids to put on a show. I got one good one and a couple of small ones. It’s times like this I miss living out in the middle of nowhere. Too much light pollution, too many damned trees here. The cat got disgusted with the whole enterprise and abandoned me halfway through.
Of course, some folks didn’t get a thing – Neil Gaiman and Suzanne, alas, got clouds. So, for them, some second-hand meteors from the Komo News website:
And, in honor of the Perseids (and Neil Gaiman, who inspired this song), Lunascape’s Raven Star:
Did any of the rest of you see anything good?
The Biology of Squee
Jerry Coyne explains the evolution of adorable, and reminds us that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, in a truly excellent post – complete with squee. I commend it to your attention. While you’re distracted, I’m going to sneak off to bed with my extremely adorable kitteh.
That is, if I can extract her from the tissue paper she’s currently bunking on. Maybe Jerry should look into the evolution of the feline attraction to all things made of wood pulp…
Things to Keep You Entertained Whilst I'm Away
Oy. It’s early morning, my body thinks that early-to-bed stuff was all just a slightly extended nap, and my intrepid companion won’t be up for hours. What else can I do but surf the intertoobz and present you, my darlings, with a jumble of links that should keep you occupied until my return?
I mean, it’s not like I can knit or anything.
Besides, the folks I devotedly follow on Twitter have found some fascinating bits. Chris Rowan, aka Allochthonous, discovered a post revealing the best exposure of the K/T boundary evah!
Wait – Paleogene? ZOMG WTF??? Who went and changed the name of the Tertiary, for fuck’s sake? And Paleogene? Hey, name guys – couldn’t you have come up with something a little snappier? I mean, K/Pg Boundary? It doesn’t bite, it doesn’t sting, it doesn’t have that ring! The death of the dinosaurs needs to be marked with something short and sharp that cracks like a whip on the tongue, not this “Gee” stuff.
Looks like I shall have to get my geology degree after all, then get myself on the International Commission of Stratiography, because they definitely need a writer in the house.
Still – awesome boundary!
Orac found this gem. Got some Celtic sea salt and some fermented morning dew? Then you, too, can become an alchemist! But be careful with that Philosopher’s Stone!
It allegedly turns lead into gold: one milligram of the Stone can turn 20 pounds of lead to gold. But you are warned to be careful:…the alchemists warned that you must be careful not to transmute too much gold at once, or it will become radioactive and the radiation will harm you and eventually kill you. And selling gold is considered a trite waste of the Stone in alchemy. You will feel like a **** if you make all your money selling a product of alchemy and disgracing and defiling the Holy Art.
Nonononono. Ur doin it rong! You not only warn them off with the radiation and stuff, you have to tell them that if your mind is not pure, your silly stone won’t work. That way, y’see, when the sea salt and water completely fail to do anything to lead at all, it’s not alchemy’s fault! The alchemy would’ve worked just fine if it wasn’t for the icky impure brain of the idiot trying to use it.
Ye gods. The woomeisters have gotten so overcome with their own woo that they’re forgetting the first rule o’ woo: make sure that if the woo won’t work, the practitioner rather than the woo gets the blame. Maybe I should start selling Philosopher’s Stone just to show ’em how it’s done.
In pollytickal news, Rep. Ed Markey ripped climate change denialists a new one, complete with the kind of high-quality snark you usually only get from Barney Frank. Rand Paul isn’t denying the Aqua Buddha. Even “moderate” Cons are now jumping on the anti-14th Amendment bandwagon.
And with that, I’m off to brave the occasional thunderstorm in order to bring you a mountain. Stupid @#!$% Washington weather….
Pretty Rocks for Karen
One of our cantina regulars, Karen, is working on her thesis. I’ve never had to do one, but from what I’ve heard, it’s pretty much like that time I had major papers due for Western Civilization II & III and Islamic Civ, all on the same day. To get the true flavor of a thesis, I’ve imagined combining all those into one enormous paper, added a career-making-or-breaking proposal to be pitched to unforgiving corporate overlords who have it in for you, and thrown in the MCAT for good measure.
Hopefully, it’s not as bad as all that. But I can’t imagine it’s easy. And I haven’t provided her many pretty pitchoors lately. So, from last year’s road trip, here’s a couple of shots of lovely strata:
If I’m reading the geological map right, what we’re looking at is andesite capping rhyolite tuff, both laid down during the early Oligocene to early Miocene. As to what formation that might be, well, I spent absolute hours interrogating Google and couldn’t get an answer. There’s a reason I never became a cop. Silver Fox, who is not only a damned good geologist but someone who knows Nevada intimately, might be able to tell us.
You don’t want to know what I went through to tentatively identify these rocks, but I’ll tell you all anyway: first, I had to wrack my piss-poor memory for some idea as to where we were when I shot this photo from the car window. Then I had to get it wrong by several hundred miles. Then I realized that two shots before, we’d been at the Extraterrestrial Highway. So I was able to determine from the timestamp where we might have gotten to. Et voila! Google Street View to the rescue:
Huzzah! Coordinates! From there, a simple matter of matching them up to the map. And now I haz the resources necessary to do a little bit o’ yammering on our trip through the Basin and Range at a later date. Woot!
Here’s another awesome shot, taken near on Highway 93 near Las Vegas by my intrepid companion:
It’s just possible that those magnificent mountains are part of the Arrow Canyon Range, which include lovely layers of Mississippian to Early Permian limestones, dolomite, siltstones and sandstones. What I love about this shot is how well it shows the contortion of the formerly-horizontal rocks. Someday, I shall know very much more about Basin and Range folding, faulting, stretching and general shenanigans, and I shall share that with you. Of course, you might want to give that a miss and just go brush up at Silver Fox’s site instead, which would probably be the wiser thing to do.
Good luck on ye olde thesis, Karen!
Bookstore Kittehs!
We haven’t had enough of the cute and furry round here lately. Happily, thanks to Brian Switek and Brian Romans, that sad situation is remedied:
When they aren’t trashing the occasional pricey manuscript with their teeth and claws, cats – in all their blissful sloth – serve as wonderfully calming (if sometimes haughty) hosts: Have a seat, take it easy, get lost in a book. A bookstore cat is a shop’s mascot and keeper, equally adept at charming customers and, when the lights go out, chasing away rodents.
Whiskey on the Rocks
Thank you, Chris Rowan, for abandoning us all for Scotland and then coming back to rub it in. This improved my mood instantly:
Yeah, that would 6-8 hundred million year-old diamictite he’s standing next to. Is it a sign that you’re seriously addicted to geology when you look at something like this and literally start to drool?
Then the bastard had to tell us how he went off and had some famous Scottish whiskey. I may have to someday follow in his footsteps. Who’s with me?
Relative Dangers
I’m currently reading Fire Mountains of the West. It has caused me to reconsider certain of my assumptions, namely that Seattle’s far enough away from all the fire mountains to be relatively safe from their upsets. This assumption turns out to be wrong.
Facts must be faced: I’ve decided to live in one of the most tectonically interesting parts of the United States. If the volcanoes don’t get me, the megathrust and regular ol’ subduction zone earthquakes might. There’s also a reasonable chance of a tsunami. Oh, and don’t forget the landslides. Additionally, if a new ice age were to suddenly strike, I’d be under 4,000 feet of ice. Conversely, should global warming get much worse, I could end up unintentionally living on an island. That’s not even to mention the traffic woes.
So yes, there are times, like now, when I think that perhaps I should return to the quieter climes of Arizona, where all I have to worry about is running out of water and perhaps getting barbecued during the next fire season. The place is, for the most part, tectonically dead boring. But then I consider the assorted fucktards in charge, and the fucktards that vote them in, and the fucktarded shit they do on a daily basis.
Thank you, but I’ll take my chances with the fire mountains et al. They’re statistically less likely to kill me. Should I return to my dear old home state, I’d probably die of apoplexy within the first six months.
Important Lessons in Physics
Yes, summer illness has reduced me to watching “Destroyed in Seconds.” In my defense, I’m watching it whilst also reading various science-bloggers. My brain may be flagging, but it ain’t dead yet.
Anyway, so I’m sort of half-arsed watching this program, and I see a grain silo tilting like so:
(No, I know that’s not a grain silo, it’s the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Tell yourself, “It’s just an illustration of a concept. I should really just relax.”)
Right, then. So, a genius in a Bobcat
decides he’s going to push it all the way over. He’s shoving in the direction it’s leaning. What could be easier, right? It’ll just topple right over.
Physics quiz time!
If itty-bitty Bob pushes against the base of the great big leaning cylindrical thingy, will the tower a) keep falling in the direction it’s leaning, b) bonk Bob, or c) vanish into another dimension?
Yup.
Now, I’m sure there are equations that govern why, precisely, a tower will fall on top of you if you knock out its support, even if it was leaning the other way. I don’t know ’em. But I know enough about physics to know that if you’re very, very short, you’d best not undermine the bits holding up a tower and expect it to fall in the opposite direction.
And you don’t even have to take physics to understand this. Hasn’t Bob ever watched a teevee show about logging?
This, my darlings, is yet another reason why even average Bobs should be taught basic science in school. And if they start whining about its inapplicability to their own lives, well, the teacher could play an episode or two of “Destroyed in Seconds” to demonstrate why everyone needs to learn this stuff. At least enough of it so that they will not end up wearing grain silos on their heads.
I would appreciate it, too, if they would teach elementary PhotoShop, because as you can see, my skills in this department are minimal at best.
Study Proves Cats Rule
If you’ve ever wondered who’s in control, you or your cat, a new study points to the obvious. It’s your cat.
Household cats exercise this control with a certain type of urgent-sounding, high-pitched meow, according to the findings.
This meow is actually a purr mixed with a high-pitched cry. While people usually think of cat purring as a sign of happiness, some cats make this purr-cry sound when they want to be fed.
[snip]
Previous research has shown similarities between cat cries and human infant cries.
McComb suggests that the purr-cry may subtly take advantage of humans’ sensitivity to cries they associate with nurturing offspring. Also, including the cry within the purr could make the sound “less harmonic and thus more difficult to habituate to,” she said.
Cunning little fuckers, aren’t they? Ah, well. I always knew “cat owner” was a complete misnomer anyway.
(Tip o’ the shot glass to John Amato at Crooks and Liars, who also has the exquisite good taste to be owned by a tuxedo cat.)