A View on Global Warming

Tonight I found this video of a high school science teacher who boils down the global climate change debate to its 'nuts and bolts'. I suggest you watch it intently and think about the issue on the same scale as it put forth....

Thank You.

His YouTube page, with other good vids is here.

WOGE#79

I've been pretty lucky in finding these lately. WOGE#78 posted by Ron took me in all kinds of directions before I tracked it down. From ice lands to the Caribbean to eventually Guinea.

Where on Google Earth?

Photo: WOGE#79. Note North arrow.

The location I chose for #79 is pretty tight zoom. But that was the only good way to show that cool landslide feature. I think you smart monkeys out there can figure it out from here.

No Schott Rule today.

SlingShot Thought *geology*

Tonight I was stumbling through some sites and came across the UBasics and found their solution to the answer "What happens if i dig straight down?"

I first did the obvious thing of finding out that from my house I would end up in the sea south-west of Australia. Great.

Figure Left: Yellow slashes show Chain trend. Green slash, lower frame, Valley trend.

Then, I quickly started just swinging the map around to find where Land and Land would meet. I soon discovered that the hot spot responsible for building the Hawaiian Island chain is located approximately opposite of the Great Rift Valley of Africa. The trends of the Chain and Valley are very nearly similar.

My SlingShot Thought is: Are these features related to internal processes within the earth cores? Some type of...equation balance? force balance? What role does mantle convection come into play? Why have I never noticed this before?

If anyone has thoughts to add or documents for me to understand this potential connection better, please comment.

Art Tuesday

Its Tuesday and if my analytical data is telling me anything, its that Tuesday is my biggest traffic day of the week. So for today I post art. we all need a little more art in our lives. And as usual I will post another piece from Steve Dean.


Of course each piece is for sale and comes framed. Steve will be having a showing on March at Breaking New Grounds in Portland.
Stop by and by something.

WOGE # 77

I will chalk up finding Ron's WOGE 76 to the good clue of 'paradise'. The atolls he posted are Tahaa and Raiatea located northwest of Tahiti. A place I would love to vacation at some day.

Unlike Ron, I have no students. But I will keep in mind that some may visit I will keep it interesting and fun. Plus the colors are cool.

The view is slightly oblique help enhance the elevation.

Schott Rule is active. Good Luck.

Geology Post : 12-3-07

This photo comes from my field work in 1999. It is in the top 5 cool geology pictures I have. Though the picture quality sucks, the geologic principal is stellar.

The rock is a pelitic schist. The two veins are quartz.

The interesting things to note are that one quartz vein (down from upper left to lower right) is pretty much unchanged. This represents a 'zone of flattening'.
The other quartz vein (the squiggly one; down from upper right to lower left) is within a 'zone of compression'. It demonstrates the direction of compression oriented between approximately N18-40 E.
Which fits in with the regional geology of south western Maine very well.

Teachers, feel free to use in class. Questions? Comments?

FAHRENHEIT451 COMES TRUE!

Have you read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury? If not you should. TODAY.

The reason being is that today I found this story.

It seems that Homeland Security may have found a way to circumvent the Fourth Amendment
(unreasonable search and seizure, if you don't know, or'd rather not click the link.)

Firefighters (Men and women trained to extinguish fires) are now receiving additional training to:

"to identify material [books?] or behavior that may indicate terrorist activities" and were also "told to be alert for a person who is hostile, uncooperative or expressing hate or discontent with the United States." reports David Edwards and Muriel Kane Published: Thursday November 29, 2007 on Raw Story.

The story goes on to say:

"Unlike law enforcement officials, firemen can go onto private property without a warrant, not only while fighting fires but also for inspections. "It's the evolution of the fire service," said a Phoenix, AZ fire chief of his information-sharing arrangement with law enforcement."

So, I know my last couple of post have been bordering on governmental paranoia but this is one more red flag that our personal lives are being intruded upon by the public office. The same people we 'elected' to look out for and fight our interests.

Well, I have no interest in being spied upon. Though I'm sure somewhere that some FBI agent is reading my blog and assembling a psychological profile.

How long before the firemen of today completely morph into the firemen written about by Ray Bradbury in 1951?

I think Ill have to go and bury some books in the backyard tonight.

If you'd like to explore more extreme scenarios visit the SHTFBlog.

What say you?

Big Brother Clashes Heat Up

• Reading my morning news sites I found this story about a guy in Tennessee who got busted for using a .30-06 rifle to shoot out cameras with at stop lights. I guess he got sick and tired of being watched over. However, the story indicates he needs some range practice as it took him 3 shots to take out the one camera. Any decent marksman could have done it in one shot.

• Then I find that police in Miami will be adding drones to their skies. I view this as erosion of our personal privacy disguised as 'protection' and 'safety'.
  

"The capability of the unit is phenomenal," said Miami-Dade Detective Juan Villalba.

When will you say something? When the drone is flying over your backyard? Or will it be after they knock down your door because they saw you in the yard sharing some beers with your 18-year old son one summer day?

It is not JUST to keep informed but to RECOGNIZE and ACT.

-Thank you, this has been your daily dose of reality.

Geology Post

After all that excitement of the previous two posts I definitely need to get back to roots. At least for the moment.

Yesterday, I was looking back through some of the pictures and images I got while putting my geology thesis together. I got some really cool pictures and for any of the geologist teachers that may swing through here, feel free to use the pictures for teaching aids.

This is a sketch I made from a thin section (cut parallel to lineation and perpendicular to foliation, is that right? i cant remember) about 9 years ago (*geeze* it dosen't seem that long).
Red/pink colors are garnet.
The green is a chlorite reaction rim contacting the dominantly muscovite matrix.

I believed and still do that there are two generations of garnet growth. The older showing a poikiloblastic internal structure. The younger did not.

On one garnet I highlighted asymmetric quartz tails.
The beige I never actually identify. Though it could have been andalusite. It was very homogenous...almost microscopic oatmeal structure.