I'm a consulting geologist for a small company in the Denver area. I study problems related to active tectonics, using geomorphology, structural geology and remote sensing.
More for the color than anything, but also for the light. There have always been certain houses I've lived in that stuck in my mind... and the single unifying aspect of all these memories is light. The lines, the angles... how it hit my face in morning or crossed the floor in afternoon. My house will have light... bright light that wakes me at sunrise and easy light in the evening. Artificial light is always important, and so much can be achieved with it, but there is nothing like the sun. Two houses I've lived in so far have had dedicated "sun-rooms", overflowing with plants and framed by large windows on at least two whole sides. My mothers was open and clean, with hand woven hammocks hung across the corners offering spots to swing in the afternoon with a breeze from the windows and the sweet smell of the hand-spun fibers filling my nose. My fathers was small and cloistered, but jam packed with books and every issue of national geographic since the forties. A rocking chair in the corner was where I sat, or on the small single bed that made this a guest room.
I could have been an architect... I thought about it seriously for a time, but chose to pursue my love of mountains and rivers instead. That particular choice is the reason I am writing this in the SFO airport, after a 12 hour flight from Taipei. I suppose I could travel as an architect too, but I have the feeling that no matter what I do, I will always lust for more.
Houses in memory... brasil, bali, taiwan, all tropical. Factories, industrial plants, museums, research institutes. airports even. The idea for the green-house is minimalist... open studio-style rooms with kitchen/living downstairs, large sliding glass panes frame the back of the house which would look onto a small yard. This is designed for a city lot, neighbors on both sides, the large completely translucent, fogged acrylic pane covering the utility/closets/bathrooms on the front of the house (with perhaps additional opaque white acrylic panels on the upstairs shower). The roof serves as a sun deck with a full length planter built into the walls for herbs and flowers, maybe some strawberries and cherry tomatoes too. Stairs aren't shown here, but I'd like to put them somewhere out of the way, but central to the house, maybe by increasing the space between the front addition and the main-house enough to put them in between, accessing all the three floors of the main and two of the front. obviously still a design in progress, but for a time-waster to tide me over on a long flight I think it's a decent first cut. Back to work though... -drawn with google sketch-up
from "I can has cheezburger?", a random website of funny cat pictures; also a bit of a response to a big country hair statement by blogger JustsomeGirl...
yes, there is a cat in there somewhere. back to all lowercase at the moment, no other reason than i am feeling very tired and kinda lazy. it's humid and warm here, but since the sun is down and moon is up (somewhere behind all the haze) the result is just a clammy feeling that permeates my very being. like standing next to ocean spray from waves in cool fog mixed with sweat. the breeze tonight merely acts stir the air, since it is already at saturation with water vapor. no chance to dry out... even MY hair is acting weird. thankfully not as bad as kitteh tho...
I just found the reference for a paper I helped with a few years ago... it was finally published! "River terrace development in response to folding above active wedge thrusts in Houli, Central Taiwan", Journal of Asian Earth Sciences, Volume 31, Issue 3, 2007. Those of you with access to science-direct or subscriptions to elsevier journals can access the article here.
I am the fourth author of five, but I definitely spent a solid month doing the analysis and figures for my contribution. Hopefully my first paper as first author (to be submitted sometime this fall, fingers crossed) will be in a journal that is a little more widely read, but as long as I start publishing before I get scooped I'll be happy...
I thought it felt a little bigger than 5.3.... the Taiwan central weather bureau, monitoring agency for the more than one hundred seismometers stationed on the island, have reported the earthquake from the other night at 6.0
USGS, using a global array and being positioned on the opposite side of the globe, have considerably less constraint on the near-field data of the event... I tend to trust the local knowledge... after all, the Taiwanese are experts on seismicity almost by default of living smack in the middle of not one, but two active subduction zones and one of the most active subaerial orogenic wedges on the planet. Even the USGS seismic hazard map for Taiwan shows almost the entire island scoring off the chart on predicted seismic activity.
A character's quote in a book I recently read said something like, "Genius has its limits, but stupidity is not constrained thusly." The GOP appears to me to be the very embodiment of this fact. "The cost is too high", "The people will suffer", give me a fucking break. It still boggles the mind that the very concept of global disaster seems somehow insignificant to these people when compared to the increased taxation of their beloved corporations. Do they think scientists are lying to them? ..that we as a community somehow harbor some ill-will toward their financial freedoms? I could care less if these same assholes stay filthy rich for the rest of their lives, but what I do mind is their head-in-the-sand approach and belief that they won't have to pay the ultimate price like the rest of the world if they don't realize that we (meaning humankind) are all in this together. we don't get a do-over. climate change and all it's associated challenges is already the primary threat to our way of life, and our very lives... bar-none. get it through your unbelievably thick skulls already.
...maybe they're just counting on The Rapture and are really that selfish, so as to spin around in the air on the way up and yell down to the rest of us heathens,
braise about 10 beef bones with several smashed cloves of garlic, fresh rosemary and a bit of dry lager, Kirin or Asahi. remove the bones (save!) and rosemary once the liquid has been reduced by 1/2 - 2/3, add a little olive oil and a small mixing-bowl's worth of chopped cherry or grape tomatoes and nice chinese eggplant (sweeter and softer than your standard aubergine). toss and coat with the mix in the pot/wok and simmer for a few minutes. add pinches of salt and pepper, then a splash of dry red wine like Tempranillo or Rioja. simmer the wine down, then add a little prepared tomato marinara and tomato paste (not more than a cup combined). this is your sofrito. once the vegetables have begun to soften, turn up the heat to high and add a half pound of finely chopped beef: this shouldn't be too lean but not chuck either, use whatever you like as long as it's fresh. sear the beef and tomato skins, then turn back down to low-med-low... add 5-6 finely sliced porcini mushrooms, a few sprigs of fresh oregano and thyme, stir and simmer for a bit. taste. maybe a little more wine, if not in the sauce then in a glass for you. if needed, add a little more salt, pepper. I add another tablespoon or three of olive oil (extra virgin, of course) and a small splash (1-2 tsp) of balsamic vinegar to brighten the acid a little. done. the texture should be reminiscent of thick chili and the flavor should be mellow but deep and meaty. serve with (preferably fresh) tagliatelle and the rest of the bottle of wine. some fresh brandywine tomatoes with basil and some aged parmesan on the side make it perfect.
back again... Yesterdays recconoitre to Miaoli was mission successful. Of course it wasn't a militaristic exercise (rather one of international cooperation) but sometimes it feels like a battle, just sitting though a 16 hour deluge of intellectual bombs dropped on you by your academic superiors and industry experts. It's no wonder to me, that given the opportunity on the free market, the Taiwanese (painting with a broad brush, I know) have very quickly dominated certain markets... they are smart, motivated and tireless.
It certainly didn't help that I only managed a few hours of sleep the previous night... thanks in part to a nice dinner that went on later than it should have (I made a rustic bolognese sauce that started with braising beef bones, more on it later). The real shock came in the form of Surface Wave arrivals from the 5.3Mw earthquake we had that night. Granted, 5.3 is pretty small. By a seismologist's standards it's barely worth putting down your coffee for (though if you did put down your cup it might not even spill the coffee) but it was certainly enough to wake me from sleep. Oddly, this was the first earthquake I've experienced that actually woke me up... I've slept though a few before. It's an odd sensation to describe; like having your bed attached to elliptical orbit linear actuators, or more simply being shaken very smoothly but strongly. The first acceleration is a bit like the feeling of nodding off in seminar, smooth and suave but enough to grab your attention. Then the accelerations quickly build and oscillate and, then, slow as smoothly and suddenly as they started.
I woke with a start and got out of bed, pulling on pants and walking into the hallway where my hosts (PhD's currently working on post-doctoral work in coseismic neotectonics) were also a bit wide-eyed but all of us were smiling. "Cool" was what came out of my mouth and the statement was echoed by my hosts. The frogs in the garden outside had been quiet till now but spent the rest of the evening nervously singing in noisy concert and stopping in perfect unison at each humanly imperceptible aftershock. My fight-or-flight response had been triggered by the sudden awakening and so I spent a good deal of time trying to fall asleep, all too aware of the frogs' sensitivity to vibrations in the ground.
curves arcing lines in skin, form perfect in the expression of a nature, both carnal and caring, silk and cool with depth and wonder, fluid grace of muscle memory from pain and practice, seem born to you and yet earned unequivocally, thunder and lightning reminding of my impressions electric and blinding but soothing and captivating, water flowing and feeling of rivulets on flesh, goosebumps rising to greet sensation and arousal of so many things deeper than surface, reminded constantly by images and occasions simple and new but familiar in recognition, of truths and dreams, unconscious coming to life and realizations sometimes late or even frightening or unsettling in the power of their roots, like trunks of maple and oak, firm and unswaying though attempting to look past, paths separate at once and similar if not parallel, merging or perhaps only linked through anastomosis, life currents carrying quickly but ultimately steerable ways wended, priorities questioned to be introspectively analyzed, logic has little place in the ultimate end when subconscious wants persist beyond these arguments, returning to blue and black and pale alabaster peach epithelium, a smooth scar of recognition not painful but permanent, enriched by the experience but torn twixt divergence and finally bewitched.
~t
...it started with the word, walking through the streets of Taipei as lightning sparkled in the heavens, then a rhyme rolling around as the thunder came and it was jotted with keys in the subway in less than a minute. sometimes flow of consciousness works that way...
...but I just can't not share this vid. I know most of you read this blog for the writing that occasionally shares some interesting insight into the world as I see it, be that the eastern or western worlds, academic or sporting worlds, occasionally creative worlds or just my own world... right now I'm not feeling very motivated to write anything insightful or even do work (yeah it's saturday and I'm in the office at NTU Tai-Da) so I'll post yet another youtube video that caught my eye. Japanese phenoms DJ Sara (9 years old) and DJ Ryusei (6 years old) scratching and cutting to some electro beats. pretty amazing; they have already played gigs like the Warner Music Group's 2008 Grammy Show.. they have to be the coolest kids in their class (uh, what, that's 1st and 4th grade???)
Random culture of the day: experimental scratch-artists -->
Microtone kitchen is a group of young turntablists from "Quebakistan", Canada (their term, not mine). They've attempted a melding of melodic composition and DJ scratching techniques and met with some varied success, but it's interesting to see the result even if they don't always achieve the most smoothly flowing rhythm. They're still fairly new and the reality of getting four or five turntablists spinning in synchronous concert is harder than one might think. That being said, I think they're on to something and will only get better as they learn to limit the Technical and favor the Fluid. A word of warning... if you're not a fan of highly modified percussive syncopation in music, don't even bother with the clip below.
From their myspace: "The use of turntables, piano and guitar, together in one musical breath, is based on an effort to bridge the gap between musical devices of different traditions. Whereas guitar and piano have extensive histories in practice, the saga behind the turntable's use as an instrument (both rhythmically and melodically) is relatively new. Technically, the fusion of these instruments combines various pitch articulations in both diatonic and microtonic scales. Examining microtones with a ground in the classical system reveals new ways in which the psyche reacts to music."
note: their recorded sessions sound a bit more well-polished than the live clip above... I still like it.
I've spent the last week traversing the longitudinal entirety of Taiwan. A new bed every night, hours in a car each day, probably close to ten thousand meters of cumulative elevation change. A swim in the Pacific ocean, hikes in both the Hsueshan and Alishan mountain ranges and a plethora of terrestrial, aquatic and benthic organisms ingested. Besides the mild exhaustion resulting from a week of traveling over eight thousand miles (ok I admit some of that was in a plane) I feel enthused about extending my stay here an additional two weeks. At least now I get to sleep in the same bed each night.
While here I've managed to make some very important new connections with researchers and also reconnect with some who I already know... I have also managed, by the greater grace of who knows what, to acquire a newly expanded dataset provided by the researchers at a certain eastern hemisphere oil company. This of course is data that only a handful of western scientists (read: three of us) have access to and is not published anywhere (at least not in English-language journals) so I have decided to extend my stay here another two weeks in order to work closely with the people who have been instrumental in this acquisition. The goal, as it stands, is to reach some new understanding of this information and be able to act on it immediately while I can still meet with the creators of it face to face and ask questions, so that when I get back to Colorado I am able to synthesize everything into a paper which incorporates my existing/previous works and the new info. Exciting, a bit daunting, but overall very positive. ...perhaps "fuckin' awesome" is a better descriptor. I'll be submitting a manuscript to 'Tectonics' hopefully by the end of the summer.
On a side note, I'd like to share something that made me laugh out loud recently. While driving over the Alishan range our group stopped for lunch at 2500 meters, near the terminus of the train-line that joins WuShan Mountain to ChiaYi city. The weather up there was a welcome escape from the sweltering foreland of Taiwan; so often swamped by high humidity and crushed by the weight of this planets tropical latitude atmosphere. In stark contrast to the lowlands, the mountain parks offer breathable air and cooler climes worthy of light sweaters and rain parkas (in Taipei, wearing GoreTex gives one the sense of being zipped into a body-bag with an electric steam-iron). We chose a small restaurant that looked inviting and most importantly offered some refuge from the ceaseless drizzle and served hot Oolong tea. A quick scan of the menu (which had english transliterations) showed that there were the standard assortment of traditional chinese dishes, but also some more interesting offerings of aboriginal taiwanese origin... the second item in this list really caught my eye:
I ended up going for the stir fried wild boar, which was quite tasty. I decided to leave the fried guts (from an unspecified animal) for another time.
If you want to know what a true "Active Thrust" is capable of, read the USGS summary. Scary stuff. This is why I want to go into geo-hazard assessment.... ~t
Sheesh... I had this post all planned this morning, but after reading about the 7.8 it's kind of weird.
Anyway, today marks the eve of my next trip to Taiwan... a short two-week jaunt with my advisor throughout the island. I've been running around and feeling a bit scattered for the last few days, and today isn't really any different, except for the fact that it's the eleventh hour. The odd thing about me is that this is when I am the most calm, and the most productive... I have a lot to do, but I know that it will get done.
This morning I stopped by the neighborhood cafe to get some coffee, and decided to get a fruit smoothie instead. I suppose I should have asked, but the menu says simply "raspberry mango smoothie", not "raspberry mango fruit smoothie"... Upon lifting the very bright pink slush to my lips, I was overcome by a wave of high fructose corn syrup and citric acid. I asked the barista if there was sugar in the smoothie and she sort of looked surpised, answering "it's from a mix". I left the drink on the counter and said I wasn't worried about a refund when they asked (they were really busy). I suppose it's only in Boulder (I'm sure in NYC I would have been told to get bent for complaining) but when I politely suggested that perhaps they should let people know that there isn't actually any fruit in the beverage, or at least that there's lots of sugar, they apologized and gave me a card for a free drink. It seems likely that it's a result of doing business in the people's republic of Boulder... that if something's not made of organic fruit, it's justifiable grounds for complaint, apology and refund. As ridiculous as that sounds, I'm not complaining about those standards.
I know it sounds like something Velma Dinkley would say, but actually it's the name of my new favorite You-Tuber, Ronald Jenkees. I ran across his stuff completely by accident, but I was captivated by his quirky style and impressive musical talent. Ronald is a self taught Keyboardist and Beat Producer who, at 4 years old, started lessons on piano but soon quit because his teacher wasn't into letting him Jam. He took it upon himself to learn the keys and it shows in his unique finger style ... it almost looks like a four year old playing sometimes, combined with the skill and soul of someone who's played their whole life. The most striking thing about watching his videos is the apparent bliss that playing brings him, and for anyone who has really played any instrument before it is instantly recognizable. Check out the video below, and then go see ronaldjenkees.com.
why does the coffee that I make out of my french press always taste a little off? Still trying to get things done, realizing that it's friday and I only have 4 days (max) to do it in. I know that these will be done before then, but I also can see myself pushing too hard and getting sick, so I'll be trying my best to remain relaxed... it's too bad that my motivation doesn't spike until dealing with deadlines. It's also too bad that I'm such an whore for inane anal-retentive details. I obsess about crap like whether an active axial surface is oriented at 78, or 77 degrees from the fault surface at depth. Anyway, it's about the time when I finally realize that I just don't have the time to be worried about fine details, and I need to get the whole thing roughed out.
Friday feels like Monday today, but seeing as how Monday is the eve of my departure to Taiwan I'm going to try to treat that like a Friday... makes sense, no?
heheh, I just saw the most recent PhD comic strip... I'd like to share ;)
I just had a brief exchange with my advisor about work this week, and getting ready to fly out from Denver to Taipei this coming Tuesday... Apparently he didn't understand that when the ticket says we arrive in Taipei on the 14th it means we leave Denver on the 13th, so his plans to lead a trip into the needles district of Utah this weekend just got more complicated. I knew we were leaving on the 13th, but it doesn't make the work that I have to do before then any easier.
At the moment I'm taking a minute to look around the net for new news (check out the eruption in Chile) and enjoy my "Rizzbapple" fruit smoothie. Today is also the first day that I'm letting my finger air-out after almost cutting the tip off on sunday; my obsession with keeping my cooking knives razor-sharp has its downside. Maybe I should get my hands on some "pixie-dust".
I found a few fun pictures on my morning internet news & random image surf and thought I'd share them here. The Bakfiet is the cargo-bike with all the dogs in it. They're from the Netherlands and most of the images on the net of these shows parents carting loads of kids around in them, they are awesome, I'd love one. The second image is funny because of the little kid sitting in the saddle-bag... it's probably on a par with me riding in a plastic milk-crate bungeed onto the back of my dad's road-bike when I was a kid. The last one is funny just because the woman is commuting while wearing some pretty high-heels. That last image is from a blog site called 'Copenhagen Cycle Chic', which is dedicated to images of nicely dressed people commuting in European cities...
I know it sounds like a headline from The Onion... a man in a U.S. prison is suing the county which runs the facility for "literally being starved to death". First off, no one has been named as having died from malnutrition in this case. Secondly, the guy who is bringing the suit weighs over 300 pounds, but complains that he doesn't receive enough food and lost 100 pounds (meaning that when he was committed to prison he weighed over 400 pounds). The best part is that he complains about feeling dizzy and having blurry vision when he tries to exercise... not to appear callous or prejudiced, but come on!! --DUDE-- YOU ARE MORBIDLY OBESE, I would be shocked if he DIDN'T feel light-headed and short of breath when trying to exercise.
So, I would hope that this 'plaintiff' realize that he could probably stand to lose another hundred pounds, and that even with an intake of 3000 calories a day he's experiencing the benefits of expensive and dangerous surgeries like Ring Gastroplasty without having to go under the knife. I'm not saying he should be happy he's in jail, I'm just saying it's ridiculous for him to be suing over 'starvation'.
Hacker attacks on governments and countries are going to become much more common and much more severe in the coming years, according to the world's elite hackers who met in an international conference on the future challenges and foci of hacking recently.
From the BBC:
Roberto Preatoni [is] the founder of the cyber crime monitoring site, Zone-H. He told the audience that the attacks in Estonia were a harbinger for a new era of cyber warfare. "Even though Estonia is one of the world's most advanced countries in IT technology, the whole economy was brought to its knees... That's the beauty of asymmetric warfare. You don't need a lot of money, or an army of people. You can do it from the comfort of your living room, with a beer in your hand."
___________
Hmmm.... this guy sounds like a moron in my opinion. The "beauty of asymmetric warfare" he talks about is surely lost on the ethnic and/or political minorities of nations like Darfur or Zimbabwe. In the mind of a hacker, it seems, the intellectual triumph of the individual over the establishment is the pinnacle of war... but no matter how "beautiful" they perceive such attacks to be, I'm sure that any hacker would change their tune if they ever found themselves on the losing side of asymmetric warfare.
As I was walking to my office this morning, I passed through the physics department and paused to read a comic that some grad students had put on the door to their basement-dungeon-office... I thought it was funny enough to share:
...how would you feel if a creepy replica of your head was affixed to a walking robot body? It kind of reminds me of Matt Groening's cartoon, "futurama" where the disembodied heads of famous politicians and actors live on in big jars and interact with people from the 30th century. ..kind of gives a new lean to "heads of state".
hahaha... I have a meeting with my advisor tomorrow and I have tons of work to do tonight!! I had a peek at what my existing cross section looked like after not working on it for quite a while and I spent most of the morning hours deleting things from it. Then I spent most of the afternoon hours double checking data and then finally re-entering corrected, reprojected, carefully selected and newly collected data. Basically I started over and kept a template. It's surprising to me how much time I can spend taking care of details in preparation for work... I just hope that all that prep time translates into efficient and productive work-time. Take a gander at the gaping white space on the section, and realize that by tonight I aim to have it filled with the somewhat calculated structures that I (hope to) constrain with a host of corroborating data from geodesy, geophysics and geomorphology.
Snow... it just won't leave us alone here! The pics below are all from the last week, but what you don't know is that it was 80 degrees and sunny on tuesday, then snowed all day wednesday. Snow also fell this past saturday, so all in all the thermometer has been getting a workout over the last week; up down up down.
I'm kind of fed-up with snow, I wish spring would hurry up and get sprung...it's pretty though.
ok, I'm ready for it to end. Today I checked the weather before riding to school. The website said 50 and partly sunny. I looked out the window, a ray of sun was shining through patchy clouds. I headed out and it started to snow. it was 37 degrees.
Unlike some lucky folks, who get thunderstorms and 70 degree days with sun in April, I get stuck with snow and gusty winds... I am jealous.
rain drops, mist, patchy clouds hang low around the sandstone slabs that form the flatirons. light snow peaks through the clouds there, barely dusting the slabs but a mere few hundred feet lower we get rain drops. the sun occasionally shines through, cutting the chill of the wet morning for a few seconds. early spring. more snow will fall, but from here on precip will mostly be rain. the chance for another verdant april and may is on the horizon but no one knows for sure whether the fire hazard signs will be dialed to green or red. only one month left to catch up on things that have eluded my scholastic focus (or lack thereof) over the last three. plans for taiwan in may, completing incomplete works from december, revisiting what I was supposed to be doing all semester. Somehow the last couple months have just slid by, practically unnoticed; now I find myself feeling lucid and aware but still questioning wtf happened during that time and how. was I so far out of it that I was just here in body?
Periodically I disappear. my thoughts unravel and I'm left with base yearnings for escape, idyllic and various indulgent experiences outside of time. grad school seems to provide a major barrier to experiences such as these, at least in the real world. the last few weeks have seen me spend inordinate amounts of time on introspection: wants and desires, fears, plans, etc. So many of these are manifold, complex in their designs and some might even say pie-in-the-sky, but worth working towards - fighting for. Pure academia appears less and less attractive and public work, policy work, private sector consulting on affairs of human risk, etc all seem more worth everything I am putting myself through here now. What is the real benefit of spending more than a hundred thousand dollars of tax-payers money (yes you are all paying for my education) to pursue a lifetime career of personal mental mollycoddling?
For now I resign myself to doodling cross sections, extracting channel morphologies from digital elevation models, and waxing cerebral about four-dimensional orogenic kinematics.
there's a wall that I like to ride on near campus. one who wishes to ride the wall must hop from a parking lot, up onto the wall, then jump off the end onto the sidewalk below it. this is of course on a bike, just in case that wasn't clear. my riding style is much more about linking objects and keeping rhythm and less about sessioning single tricks. so, check out the wall:
...for some reason I decided it would be a good idea to go ride aggressively immediately following a week of sitting in a car, no mind the fact that I was exhausted and a little off-balance. I made a half hearted attempt at the wall (weak effort, not really committed) and what do you know, it kicked my ass. Luckily I guided my face away from the stone walls edge (I was wearing a helmet) but plenty of other parts got hung up on it, I was ejected, flipped and unceremoniously dumped on the sidewalk. Lots of people driving by were treated to the rare sight of a 28 year old man eating it hard. below is a diagram, made with google's free 3D sketching software.
valley that is. Spring break was spent crawling through the desert over indurated boulder fields and having salty dust blown in my face. I huddled in my sleeping bag at night, fighting off the chill of freezing winds blowing down from the high ranges bounding the basins. I woke every morning before dawn to watch the rose glow of sunrise wash over the snowy peaks and creep down to the valley floor. even though I slept in a different place every night, traveled far during the days and let my mind wander as much as possible I was always thinking about one thing.
Heh, Scientists are an odd lot... I've just read about the discovery of (the organic compound) Methane existing in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet. The importance of this being obviously that now we are starting to gather real evidence of carbon based organic compounds existing elsewhere in the universe, and even more interestingly, within range of our relatively crude techniques of detection... this means that the likelihood of finding another rocky planet with an atmosphere containing both organic compounds and water keeps increasing with the continued development and application of these techniques. quoted from the BBC today:
"The key to this search is the so-called "Goldilocks zone", an area of space in which a planet is "just the right distance" from its parent star so that its surface is not-too-hot or not-too-cold to support liquid water." (Read the BBC article here)
I just think that is freakin' awesome. On a remotely related note, the primary author of the study, Dr. Giovanna Tinetti, says that her "personal view is it is way too arrogant to think that we are the only ones living in the Universe." Oddly, she also looks a little like the actress Jenna Elfman, who is a renowned Scientologist... don't confuse the two. Personally I agree with Dr. Tinetti.
Mmm, it smells like spring outside. With spring comes the unimaginably irresistible urge to get back on my bike and head up into the peaks... too bad for me there's still another month or two before passes are clear and trails are firm enough to support tires. In the meantime however, I can always live vicariously through the lucky few who actually get paid to ride all year round. Check out the teaser for the new Collective film, "SEASONS". ...just click play on the controller. COPYRIGHT 2008 THE COLLECTIVE, PLEASE DON'T SUE ME.
...and not the good kind; surfing powder on the steep slopes of local mountains or skipping bike tires across the tops of rock gardens in the woods... this is different. Feeling a bit like wheels are spinning in the air. The feeling of a possible impending collision after hitting brakes on black-ice, although in my case I don't necessarily see anything to hit... it just feels a bit like sliding. It seems to me like I can actually identify when this started, and it surprises me that it's been a few months. I guess as long as I'm moving forward I can call it progress, but I'd sure like to feel a bit more in control. Not much to do but stand by convictions and remember I'm doing this all by choice... hopefully traction comes back soon.
seem to both connect us, and keep us at arms length from one another. It's easy to ring a Taiwanese colleague and discuss plans for field work from the swiveling comfort of my office chair, but telephony also severely stifles communication sometimes. So much of what people communicate is non-verbal; posturing, eye contact, muscle control, breathing rate... these cues are often the only absolute evidence we can garner about the emotional state of whomever we are communicating with. Not that a statement of "I love you" or "I miss you" is empty without the external cues of a gentle smile or squeeze of the hand, but sometimes that one touch says it all and more without the necessity of uttered words. How frustrating then, when faced with the case of wanting badly to support loved ones experiencing loss or stress or crisis, to be restrained by the disembodied audio-only limitation of a long-distance phone call.
That's the windspeed right now... 32 sustained with gusts over 70mph. I had thought I might go for a bike ride today, but with my chances of being blown over approaching certainty I'll opt instead to go do some work in a solid brick building that doesn't shake when the wind blows. If you were to stand on top of the flatirons with a paragliding chute today, you'd end up in Kansas, or at least Denver.
just reading up on the Great Sumatran Tsunami and Mw 9.2 (Mw=Moment Magnitude) "megathrust" earthquake of Dec 26th, 2004. Megathrusts are actually very common all around the globe, but the term has only recently reached a status of common recognition amongst the scientific community. It refers to the faults that run along subduction zone boundaries, which are larger and more laterally extensive than normal continental thrust faults. Anyway, I just like the word "Megathrust"... it kind of reminds me of Megatron (the leader of the evil Decepticons of the fictional Transformers characters)... of course megathrust earthquakes are morally and ethically neutral, being hazards of a geologically active planet, but I suppose if one were to think of a particular natural disaster as evil it would have to be this kind of earthquake. The 9.2 EQ and tsunami four years ago caused the deaths of more than a quarter-million people.
in procrastination mode. Not that I actually have any work due for this semester yet, but I'm referring to work that needs to be completed from last fall.
Fall 07 was probably my second-least favorite semester of my entire academic career, but unfortunately it's not really over yet. I still have a few unfinished loose ends to take care of but I feel so burned out on them. I finally seem to be over the cold that floored me a while ago, and every neuron in my brain is telling me I should be out enjoying the snow and the sun... except that one single brain cell that's tied directly into my guilt gland.
Anyway, I'm heading home (from my office) and I'll try to keep working on this stuff, but if my work over the past week is any indication, chances are I will not get much done. ugh.
So, as a result of further procrastination today, I've just run across something called the ULHS, or "Ultimate Lindy-Hop Showdown" series. It's a swing dancing contest series that runs annually. The funny thing about this is that these competitions feature a guy I went to highschool with quite prominently... apparently he's a dance instructor in DC now. It's interesting to run across people you've known in such a random way, but Skye seems like one of those guys who would naturally be visible to a lot of people (in a good way). I was actually looking for some you-tube videos of "Locking" and found some old videos of the Charleston dance style (from the '20s and '30s), which is very similar to some modern kinds of break dancing, and then into swing dancing. Anyway, check out the following clip... Skye's not in this one, but his regular dance partner (Frida) is.
I'm back (more or less) from meetings, holiday breaks, injury (a badly sprained ankle) and sickness. At the moment I'm just sitting in my office and procrastinating while I should be working on some loose ends from last semester, but I decided to finally put some new material up here and let people who check this blog know that I'm still alive.
After the harrowing suck-fest that was the fall semester I'm eager to start the next few months of work. I'm finally done with the banal classwork that has been the bane of my graduate career to date. I will be working more closely with my advisor on my research and attending lectures on active tectonics and structural kinematics for the first time since coming back to school... it only took three years!
Anyway... I'm back, hopefully this finds all of you well and healthy at the start of this new year.
The following was written while flying from VA to CO about a week ago... ___________________________________________________
wow... it's really been a while. as I recall, my last public post of anything related to my life was something about having passed my comprehensive exam. I think that happened about two months ago, but I suppose in reality it was really about 4 weeks ago. plenty has happened since that time, and I'm not referring to political elections in the united states and political demonstrations in Africa, united nations peacekeepers involvement in Darfur, political assassinations in Pakistan and also in Africa, and the opening of bidding for oil rights in Alaska's wilderness...
yes there have been many interesting and mostly disturbing developments in world politics and policy over the last few weeks, but I'll talk about things on a more personal level. I think I mentioned during my last post that I was in the midst of a most-hellish semester, which saw me approach historical levels of stress bordering on mental breakdown. luckily for me, that semester is over. I'm flying home now, leaving the south-eastern united states ( a region of the country which I have never enjoyed, but now holds a new and worthy reason for my renewed attention) and headed back to Colorado. as much as I enjoyed myself over this holiday break, I find myself breathing a sigh of relief as I return home. I'm grew up in the east, albeit the northeast and newengland, and many things about returning to the countryside and forests of the eastern seaboard were wonderful. I immersed myself in the smells and sights of oak and laurel forests... the aroma of wet soil and fallen leaves heightened by the cold rain overcoming my senses and reminding me so vividly of fond memories from my childhood. ...also, but to a much lesser degree of some memories from my childhood which were decidedly bittersweet, or in some cases just bitter. ___
I recently attended the annual American Geophysical Union's meeting in SF, along with some 15000 other geoscientists, in early December. AGU is always an amazing and overwhelming collection of talks, posters and many of the most influential minds in our field of science. The climate change researchers were out in force, and were a major contributing factor to the increase in general attendance this year... up a few thousand from last year alone. I myself gave a talk to room of close to 100, thanks in large part to going immediately after one of the most influential structural geologists of the last two decades, John Suppe. My interpretations and field models actually clashed somewhat with his, but I only received two questions which were very benign during the Q&A portion of the talk. The more time I spend at these conferences the more I realize that these researchers and scientists, who are held in such high regard, are really my colleagues; people who I will be working and arguing with for the rest of my career... assuming I end up in an academic position and continue along the path that I have begun to follow.
Growing up in the hills of maple and gorges of slate in central new york, I was surrounded by academics for as long as I can remember. Cornell University was always a fixture in my life, in some way or another. I was friends with children of professors, my parents were students there, my dad taught there for a short while, and many of their friends were on staff there. I rode my bike through the campus, often at irresponsible speeds down crowded staircases and through the plazas, to eventually attend, teach and work there myself.
The soils in Ithaca are of higher organic content that the red clays of the southeast; clays which when wet can wreak havoc on a sprained ankle during an easy walk in the rain if one is not careful. the overall feel of the forests is similar though, and so different from the open grasslands and evergreen forests of Lodge-Pole and Ponderosa in Colorado. Revisiting those eastern forests brought to light just how much I have accepted the western mountains as my new home and how free I feel here... but also reminded me quite vividly of my Yankee roots.
Hah! I endured the 3 hours of oral interrogation by my committee members and emerged victorious. ..or, at least alive.
In doing so, I've cleared the first significant (and according to many, the largest) hurdle I will be faced with during my graduate education. Now, after some paperwork and red-tape, I will be advanced to the status of "candidate", and return to the normal grind of research and classes... except that I'm pretty much done with classes now, so I've actually cleared two hurdles. I look forward to another year and a half of being mired by wishy-washy research directives before finally reaching the ultimate stage of the doctoral program which entails productive work and dissertation.
..anyway, it feels good to be through it, and I've been able to breath a small sigh of relief over the weekend. Now I just have to get back to grading students work (which, after tonight, I should be done with also)... I can't wait for winter break.
yup, I'm still writing, rewriting, thinking and re-thinking. I hate this stage of work; you realize that you're wasting time being critical of yourself but you still can't be satisfied with what little has (or how much has not) apparently been accomplished. Anyway, I'm just going back through my introduction (again) and seeing some interesting things. Like the fact that when I sum up what it is I study, the following chain of uber-dry terms appears: "...spatial and temporal scales of steady-state critical-taper orogenic evolution". My undergraduates would experience the instantaneous onset of unconsciousness if I ever said that phrase to them (either by fear or boredom, I'm not sure which). But yeah, I guess, that's more or less what I study in a nutshell.
this post is going to be mostly pictures, I think, but first some words. I've been holed-up in my house for the last couple of days, not really venturing out for reasons other than getting food or getting something from my office. I'm in the throes of writing my comprehensive exam research proposal, which means I'm being forced to look back at what I've done over the last two and a half years, and make some kind of statement about what I plan to do for the next two and a half. I suppose maybe I've done a fair amount, but it doesn't feel like it. Anyway, I recently developed a few roles of film that had been sitting around my house for a while, here are a few results. one is from a day of climbing last summer, where I was apparently unaware of the f-stop setting on the camera, so only a very shallow focal length appears clearly defined but I still like the pic. The others are from the last winter, after an evening of powdery snowfall. The tree also shows a ghost of the film border in the sky... apparently a reflection from inside the housing of my pentax.. I kept it in though, rather than remove it with photoshop. I think this is all on Fuji Reala 100 stock...
~t
Thursday, November 08, 2007
a pic of sunset in death valley, CA... taken about a year ago.
The last several months have seen me turning away from blogs and more towards the things on my desk. Work, teaching and preparing for candidacy have more or less ruled my life recently, with the occasional escape for an hour or two to ride my bike. It seems like the semester is winding down, which of course means that everything is actually winding up, towards a culmination of a couple major events, namely my comps exam and a presentation at AGU on my recent(-ish) findings in Taiwan. As always during November, I've been feeling my internal stress-meter climbing steadily for the last couple of weeks... but I seem to have temporarily plateaued for the last couple of days. I've been thinking less and doing more, and trying to come to some quieting realization that even though I'll be busting ass for about the next month straight I'll come out the other end just fine and ready for a break.
they might as well be called mathemagicians. I spent my morning rolling my eyes at the lecturer (a well known, highly respected professor and researcher) this morning, as he recited (practically verbatum) the same lecture he gives in another class (which I've already taken, and also struggled with). ...which is all fine and good, except for the fact that he spent a large amount of time making mistakes, stalling the class and generally confusing everyone who hadn't already mastered fluid dynamics (grad students were correcting him throughout). I never should have taken this class.
Between my roommate's computer dying this week and the structure lab computer data drive eating it this afternoon, I'm backing up my entire hard-drive to my extra external drive right now. the gremlins are running wild here...
then again... both of the computers in question are PC's running Windows XP... thank god I use a Mac.
Fall is here, no doubt about it. Yesterday morning I went up to NCAR, with my coffee and bagel, to sit at the edge of the mesa and take in the view. When I got there, several model glider enthusiasts were perched at the edge of the mesa, guiding their planes through the steady updrafts blowing along the edge. These were no balsa wood gliders... the models were fully radio controlled, and large. Several were in the 4-5 foot wingspan range, but one in particular had a wingspan approaching 8 feet. As that glider sliced through the air, the wings arced upwards and whistling, the pitch changed from a low hum at level flight to a high 'Wfhuee!' during the pilots swooping dives. The air was chilly but the sun still provided enough warmth to sit comfortably and its light dappled the front range through the breaks in the clouds...
More 'purple prose', I know but recently that's about all I've had time for with respect to these blogs. hopefully I'll be able to put some more interesting narrative down before too long..
thank you for taking over two-thirds of our security deposit. I hope your new tenants enjoy the upgrades you financed with our money. I hope your children enjoy the thirty-dollar-an-hour rate you paid them (skilled laborers) to paint one wall in the house. I also hope that the two-hundred something dollars you charged us for a carpet cleaning lined your pockets well after you rented the same steam cleaning vacuum we used. your combined efforts as property managers have to be of the lowest caliber I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing. your efforts to weasel money out of us were evident long before you sent us the return, on the last possible day of the 60 day grace period you gave yourselves in the lease. the fact that the majority of the things you charged us for actually go against legal precedents is obviously of no concern to you, since you are both most likely aware of the fact that renters have almost no legal recourse against landlords of your breed and creed. honestly, my best option for requital is to educate your current tenants as to the similar misfortune they will most likely face when they leave your property. I hope this karma comes back to you someday, as it should.
cheers, and don't come around my door if your car radiator starts smelling like limburger ;)
yesterday evening found me pedaling a bike along an old jeep road, wending my way through meadows and stands of aspen up meyer's gulch to the outlook between boulder and eldorado canyons. the climb is steep and long, a little less than 3 miles, and pedaling close to fifty pounds of metal and rubber up this trail seems like the pursuit of a crazy person. the views behind me are worth every bead of sweat every heavy breath. the great expanses of the central plains stretch out beyond the abrupt edge of the foothills... the continental divide looms in front of me, backlit by the setting sun. hues of heather and gold, set against shades of green from sage to pine, pick up the last light of the day. it takes less than ten minutes to descend from the bench at the ridge back to the trailhead... the feeling of leaning through sweeping turns at ground blurring speed pulls me towards home, back through the meadows and past the old abandoned homestead, or barn, or whatever it used to be that sits off to the side of the trail. things i complain about during the day, or whichever particular bit of red tape i got stuck with earlier, are all just minor annoyances when considered against the privilege of experiences like this.
i realize that it's been quite a while since my last post... at least a month. i have been in taiwan most of that time, and L.A. for a part of it too. i've been bouncing around boulder for the past few days just trying to regain my footing here and get things in order before the semester starts. i'll be teaching the two lab sections of structural geology this fall, to 42 kids. i still need to complete a draft of my paper in the next week or so. i have to finalize my thesis committee and schedule my comprehensive exam for the end of the semester. i'll be taking advanced geomorphology and participating in a reading seminar on the same subject... since neither my own advisor nor any other professors who specialize in structure or tectonics (any of about 6 people now) are offering any courses or seminars on those topics, at least none that I haven't already taken. i'm off to run home and grab reciepts and a brunton compass from my trip, then back to the desk. more (and more upbeat) posting to follow....
visualization is important for all athletes; it allows you to see where you're going before you get there... to see yourself completing a task and thereby enabling you to complete that task. two pics follow, one is pre-vis... the other is completion.
that's me at keystone, sending a small drop (~6 feet?)...
sitting in my office on this sunday afternoon, because it's the only air-conditioned place i can be and pretend to be productive at this time. wunderground.com was reporting the temperature for boulder as 102.8 degrees farenheit until five minutes ago, when the temp dropped to 99. it's $#@!ing hot here. my house is a relative inferno, and there's not much i can do about it until the outside temp goes down, aside from doing something silly like buying an air conditioner (which i refuse to do, at least at the moment). ... i can say they cost 139 bucks at the home depot though... not like i was looking or anything.
some quick pics of the new place... note the hardwood and gas range... sweet! no art on the walls yet, still trying to figure out where to put things.. two kurodas, a kuniyoshi and two other contemporary japanese prints (i can't remember the artist at the moment), as well as a bunch of my own photographs. still need to stop by the boulder restaurant supply store for a few things and the lumber store for some raw materials... need to build a table (rectangular, long and thin, to go under the chandelier in the living room) and a futon frame (the metal one i have is crap). that chair design in a previous post is still on my mind, but i probably won't get a chance to really get to that for another couple of months... thought about modeling the legs of the table after those of the chair though... maybe?
i know it's been a week since my last post, and i've been pretty lazy about posting regularly, but hey... it's summer.
so: updates... yesterday it was 99.5F in town here, i finally bought tickets for taiwan, i'm still reviewing comments on my paper from my advisor and still trying to move things over to my new place, bit by bit. the title of the blog is due to the fact that i've been shooting in b&w recently... something i always get away from, but always come back to, since without the distraction of color the true nature of photography comes through, the study of light and texture and form... take the following picture, pretty boring if it was in color, but the simple tones of black and white capture the shades and reflections of light, the shiny surface of the ugly textured walls in my old apartment contrasted against the matte finish of smooth skin, and the bright white of diffuse light vs the shocks of black in hair and shadows. i just like the simplicity of greyshade. hopefully there will be some more b&w pics pretty soon.
i like chairs. rather, i like well designed chairs that have appreciable aesthetic appeal. i've even made a couple chairs in the past, including things made from interlocking hardwood frames. i've been knocking around a few sketches recently, and today i decided to take the next step, putting together a little scale prototype made out of cardboard. the proportions are still a little off, but the basic design elements are solid, and i think i will try to take this to a full size m.d.f. prototype sometime in the next couple of months, with the ultimate goal of doing this in a wood laminate. my favorite pieces are the cross beams, which are identical in shape, but flipped relative to each other to create the sloping seat. the pics don't really do this 'justice', but hey... it's just a piece of cardboard.
fugh. today has sort of been one of those days that makes me wish i had become an architect or graphic designer. academic red-tape bs has been plaguing me for the last couple of days, but today i was dealt the coup de grace, in the form of a cruel twist of fate related to my financial aid from this last year. it's nothing i can't fix by relegating myself to a strict diet of ramen and tofu, and collecting on debts from roommates, but it's still a pain in the ass.
in deference to my graphical urges, i spent the last half an hour meditating on an old still life photograph of mine by tweaking it a bit in photoshop to come up with the image below. i may end up printing this out in large format and using is as decor in my new apartment. hope you like it - "untitled" digital photograph, 2007.
it never ceases to amaze me how concepts and creations of science fiction frequently end up coming to fruition in the 'real-world'. communication satellites, space travel, cell phones and robotics are all things which we take for granted, but which all were born from people's wild imaginations of the things which might someday be possible, at a time when none of these concepts were anything more than 'science-fiction'. never mind another underlying unifying theme of all of these items, the birth of the practical applications of these gizmos as the public sector offspring of the brainchildren of the military industrial complex cartels.
it's one thing for for a concept like a dick-tracy wrist video communicator to be realized as something like a motorola flip-phone... the concept is similar but the form is constrained by cost and technology... but it's entirely another thing for new robots rolling off production lines to almost perfectly mimic characters out of highly stylized japanese anime series. i'm referring to vecna technologies' new "bear" (battlefield extraction assist robot)... a robot that utilizes dynamic balance behaviour (like the segway personal transports) which allows it to balance upright as well as roll on tracks while supporting the weight of a soldier with a high 'strength' hydraulic upper body, and sports a teddy-bear head to reassure the wounded (seriously). the funny thing here is the fact that this is something that is almost exactly out of shirow masamune's anime, "appleseed". see below, and see for yourself.
