active margin

AGU monday 12/13

2010-12-13T22:53:00.000-08:00

Being at AGU reminds me that it's almost the solstice, and that the short days are coming to an end.I went to John Holdren's lecture at lunchtime today. It was a listing of all of the ways that the President is the most pro-science chief executive we've had since, probably Jimmy Carter. Thing is, I don't really doubt that.There are a number of sessions this week on communicating science. I'm

Geo Tours in South Orange County: San Onofre State Beach

2010-11-30T20:35:00.000-08:00

California is a geologist's paradise. In southern Orange County, opportunities for class field trips less than a half-hour from campus are abundant. A short drive up Silverado Canyon covers a significant fraction of the Mesozoic. We have world-class fossil beds in Mission Viejo with Miocene and Pliocene marine mammals and abundant shark teeth. Granitic mountains, active faulting, beaches backed

Don't Misunderestimate the Author

2010-11-06T11:18:00.000-07:00

President Bush has apparently written and stated that the worst moment of his Presidency was when rapper Kanye West, in response to his lack of response to Hurricane Katrina, said of him: "George Bush doesn't care about black people."I was taken by the total narcissism of this -- that in a Presidency that included almost 3000 Americans killed on 9/11, almost 2000 Americans killed in Katrina, a

It’s Perseid Time!

2010-08-11T11:27:00.000-07:00

The Perseids are one of the most watched meteor showers, partly because they generally put on a fantastic show and partly because they hit their maximum intensity every year in mid-August, when staying up and partying all night in the middle of the desert is relatively comfortable (the Leonids can put on a much bigger display but they peak in mid-November, so -- come on!).I was going to do a post

Little Boy

2010-08-07T12:56:00.000-07:00

Note: I began writing this post on Friday, the 65th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, but wasn't able to finish."We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his

Accretionary Wedge #26: The Evolution of Geoblogs

2010-07-28T15:37:00.000-07:00

This topic interests me because I’m very interested in how the collection, storage and dissemination of information has changed in less than two decades.Douglas Adams gave a talk at a tech conference in Cambridge in 1998 (audio - transcript, in which he described the leaps in human knowledge in terms of the Four Ages of Sand (perhaps appropriate as Michael is co-hosting this month): The first two

In praise of green rocks

2010-07-12T16:33:00.000-07:00

I've been following the hoopla/outrage over the California state legislature's latest intrusion into the byzantine world of state symbols for the past month, but have been reticent to dip my toes into the metaphorical waters -- I still feel bruised and abused over the battle between my beloved banana slug and the evil abalone for official state mollusk -- a battle that never so much ended as it

Accretionary Wedge: Geo-image Bonanza!

2010-05-28T23:12:00.000-07:00

I've chosen to share an image (okay, several images and a video) from the field locale for my dissertation, an area already familiar to many geobloggers.38° 24' 14"N; 110° 56' 15"W; bearing 200°After sorting through several images from this set, I've chosen this picture taken from the eastern peninsula of North Caineville Mesa, just east of Capitol Reef National Park in southern Utah. We're

How big was that one?

2010-01-24T09:47:00.000-08:00

Every semester I spend time explaining the methods of measuring earthquakes to students. I explain magnitude, with a primer on how logarithms work. I talk about the limitations of the Richter scale in measuring larger quakes, as more energy is released at low frequencies, and how the Seismic Moment, though more difficult to calculate, provides a better snapshot of the released energy.I always

Who can believe a scientist?

2009-12-16T23:05:00.000-08:00

Dave Petley already wrote about Richard Alley's talk on climate feedbacks; aside from reiterating his call for everyone to go to the archive and watch the webcast, I have nothing to add except that I wish I could tell a story half as well as Richard...I also attended Leo Hinzman's lecture on arctic hydrology and permafrost response to climate change, and an education session this morning on

Pseudo-plutonic rocks of Moscone South

2009-12-15T08:25:00.000-08:00

Granodiorite: low mafics, plagioclase dominant.Granite: quartz and orthoclase.Gabbro (?): mafics dominate, apparently as aesthetic choice to include orthoclase.

AGU, monday night

2009-12-14T21:23:00.000-08:00

I attended a session on early solar system dynamics this morning. It included a talk on orbital eccentricity and distance (and how they change as the sun loses mass) in which the author concluded that the Oort cloud cannot exist, but I need to look more closely at his numbers before I comment on any of it. Suffice it to say I'm a fan of the Oort cloud with its long period comets and highly

AGU, monday morning

2009-12-14T09:24:00.000-08:00

I arrived in San Francisco last night at around 5. First let me praise technology -- there was a time when any long drive between population centers meant fumbling with CDs/cassettes/8-tracks (yes, I remember those: I also remember a two-week period when 4-track tapes were going to replace albums altogether, like the big album-sized laser disks, BetaMax, DAT, etc...), or listening to Rush or Dr.

GSA -- Tuesday October 20

2009-10-20T20:57:00.000-07:00

About 15 years ago at AGU, a friend agreed to present a poster for an acquaintance who could not get a flight to San Francisco. This was before large format printers, when posters were printed on standard paper and mounted on poster board, when men were men and things we learned in arts and crafts in kindergarten were directly applicable to grad school.My friend's friend e-mailed the text of the

October 19 -- Geobloggers

2009-10-20T00:07:00.000-07:00

Geoblogger meet-up at the tug boat brewing company tonight. Didn't get enough sleep last night and compensated by consuming 3-4 depth charges today (large coffee with a double shot), and of course there was free (good) beer at the end of the afternoon session, so if Max and Darren hadn't dragged me out for a meal before the brewery, I would be -- well it just seems wrong to call it drunk since

GSA -- Sunday October 18

2009-10-18T22:48:00.000-07:00

I went to the lunchtime seminar by Patricia Woertz on Carbon Sequestration. I don't have a general problem with geo-engineering, as pretty much every part of our lives has been geo-engineered (ok, sometimes just engineered). But I admit that I'm concerned at the degree to which major players have declared that the solution to climate change need not involve any kind of behavioral change on our

What I remember about October 17

2009-10-16T22:37:00.000-07:00

I was halfway through my third semester at Cal and on my way home from my geomorphology lab on Tuesday afternoon. I was trying to talk myself into spending more of the evening on my lab write-up for geomorphology than on the ball game. I was waiting for the campus shuttle bus by the Hearst Building at about 5 in the afternoon when it started, but I wouldn't feel it for several moments later,

A late starter...

2009-07-10T23:25:00.000-07:00

When someone asks me how I got inspired to study geology I usually reference a field trip to the Mojave desert during my first intro class. I can point to a moment, still clear in my mind's eye, where the group was sitting around the campfire after dinner on Saturday night. We were drinking tea and hot chocolate (yeah, I know, but it was junior college and most of the students were underage), the

United Breaks Guitars

2009-07-09T16:11:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago the odds caught up with me and my luggage was lost on my trip to Denver for the GSA conference. It was annoying but I understand it is all part of life's rich pageant.What I did not comment on at the time was how frustrating it was to deal with the United Airlines bureaucracy. The DMV and the Post Office are rank amateurs compared to UA in terms of their ability to create

Where is my vote?

2009-06-24T21:33:00.000-07:00

Like many people (certainly not all) I've been following the situation in Iran much more closely than the situation in South Carolina/Buenos Aires.The Iranian government is clearly taking its cues from the Chinese government of 20 years ago. For all of the talk about new media (will the revolution be Twittered?) the degree to which Khamenei will be successful will depend largely on how

Was it the big one?

2009-05-17T20:58:00.000-07:00

Actually it was the little one. Again.A magnitude 5.0 (preliminary) just southwest of LA, near the airport... Not huge, but we felt it here in Laguna. My brother felt it about five seconds before I did. The cat seemed singularly unconcerned, but then she's sleeping on towels fresh from the drier...It appears to be on or near the Newport-Inglewood fault 13.5 km depth with a minor thrust component.

Don't Panic!

2009-03-15T13:10:00.000-07:00

Happy 2009, everyone!I've been intending to revive this blog for a while, and I wanted to begin with a post on geology; I have a few in the works, but in the mean time there are a couple of things I"ve come across in the past week that I wanted to acknowledge.First, I came across this Op-Ed yesterday: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable (I saw it first on, of all places, Gawker.com). I don't

Not the Big One -- yet...

2008-07-29T12:50:00.000-07:00

Magnitude 5.8, Chino fault... USGS and SCEC are getting good at updating their sites, info was up within 2-3 minutes.No damage to the building, but I felt a pretty solid jolt when it first hit, followed by a good 10 seconds of moderate shaking (including a dull cracking as the building -- 3 stories, c. 1973 -- flexed). I got on the floor, waiting to see if the shaking would accelerate, like I

Temple Butte Channel

2008-07-17T10:17:00.000-07:00

Garry at Geotripper is posting a beautiful account of the history of the Colorado Plateau, based on his recent field course. In his most recent post he discussed the formation and subsequent erosion of much of the Temple Butte Limestone, but laments that he had no good photos. I offer this one for illustration.Exposure of Temple Butte in south-facing wall in morning light near mile 45.The erosion

29 years +1 day ago...

2008-07-16T12:50:00.000-07:00