wit...

it is raining in san francisco this morning. as i rolled out of bed i made a mental note to wear my shell jacket to the conference today. riding the elevator down to the lobby, the doors opened on the 4th floor and three people got on, all obviously heading to the agu conference... one of them looked around at the rest of us and checked inside his coat, where he had a small umbrella that looked like a permanent fixture in that article of clothing. i was the second most prepared person with a coat, while the other two men had nothing.

this particular gentleman said, in a foreign accented wry tone,"this (nodding to his umbrella) ...is what sets the hydrologist apart from everyone else."

i thought that was the funniest thing i've heard in a while.

~t

mega-conference

here i am, sitting at one of the very long and very crowded tables set up in the moscone convention center in san-francisco, typing on my laptop like a hundred other geo-scientists. it's monday morning and there are already thousands of people here... throughout the week, the number of attendees is expected to top 13000. across from me are a couple of russians talking about something or other, and down the table are some korean researchers. agu is an interesting mix of people... from nations all over the globe and familiar with very different niches within the earth-sciences, yet all in one place and for the most part all speaking the same language: sciencese. for all the faces i don't know, i'm surprised by how many people i do know. colleagues from universities in the united states, france, italy, argentina and taiwan.

the geoscience community is actually pretty small, even when walking through a crowd of ten thousand people makes it seem like anything but.

~t

i should be...

busting arse on my poster for the huge american geophysical union's annual fall meeting which is coming up in all of 5 days, but lo... i am writing a blog post instead.

as usual, i find it a little hard to motivate until the last possible moment. i will say that i already have the whole thing laid out, and notes roughed out for all the text (it's all written in various places, just not put together) and figures (except what i think is the central figure). so basically there is lots to do, but not that much to do.

back to work,
~t

the bomb

finally downloaded pics from my camera... here's a very large lava-bomb that was ejected during an eruption at dish hill in the mojave desert. the somewhat aerodynamic shape is formed when the red-hot and still fluid blob is shot into the air. contact with the cold atmosphere allows the blob to 'freeze' mid-air and fall to earth as a solid "bomb". think about being close to an eruption when 100 pound smoking-hot chunks of rock are getting lobbed out the top of a volcanic vent... they must leave some impressive craters when they hit. this one actually broke in half; i found the two halves about 5 feet from each other and fit them back together... the fracture was perfectly preserved allowing a tight fit of the two pieces... that hammer is about 16 inches long.

~t

"dogmatic indoctrination"

what a load of crap. i've just run across a story published by the bbc about a new group in the uk who are attempting to introduce the concept of intelligent design to public school curricula. like most well-funded religious groups, they have 'freely' distributed learning materials to many schools... middle-schools mostly. the group calls itself, "truth in science" and states that much of what is, "taught in school science lessons about the origin of the living world has been dogmatic and imbalanced."

now... to hear a group (which touts intelligent design and creationism as having valid scientific value) call a system, based on empirical evidence and which has withstood the rigors of the scientific method and community at large for nearly 150 years, "dogmatic and imbalanced" just cracks me up. granted, the bible (among other religious texts, but specifically the bible) has been around for well over a thousand years, but was never written based on observed data. it was written by a large group of men about what other men had said, and has been subsequenty subject to innumerable interpretations because of this. moreover, little or none of what is stated in the bible about the creation of the earth and species was directly observable by anyone involved in writing it. strictly speaking, it could qualify as hearsay. i know that is a harsh term (one that i'm sure some people would be willing to kill over), but one that i think applies and is impossible for anyone to logically refute.

"truth in science" does bring up some interesting points on their website about the fact that school curricula are limited in their scope... but these are 10-year olds, for god's (facetious pun intended) sake! I fully agree that discussing the short-comings of darwinism and exploring the scientific ramifications of the idea of intelligent design is a completely valid and potentially very useful exercise, but that discussion has a place and time: college philosophy, ethics, molecular biology and divinity courses, to name a few. civilizations have risen and fallen before philosophers or religious groups have been able to agree on any universal truth, while science has 'designed' a reasonable explanation for probably 90% of our level of understanding of reality (allowing that there is potentially much we still do not understand).

---

I think the issue of "indoctrination" is an interesting one, especially when it concerns two groups of opposing (or at least mutually exclusive to a certain degree) 'understandings' of reality (rather than use the terms 'knowledge' or 'belief'). one group's education is another's indoctrination, when said education excludes an understanding held to be 'truth' by one group or another.

i argue that a well-balanced curriculum should be attempted, but that 6th grade classrooms are not the place to introduce complicated metaphysical concepts to our children. for now i would focus on observables; dna progressions & gaps, taxonomical evidence for (and against) evolution, age determintions based on scientific (radiological and cosmological) evidence, etc. most importantly i think, is that children be taught to question things, to resist indoctrination... which of course includes questioning religion from a critical and scientific standpoint (something which i think is often glazed over by religious interests), as well as questioning our ever evolving science-based understandings of the world around us.

~t

local airy isostacy

still working on that stupid problem. not because it's particularly impossible, but because i am still only nominally motivated to finish it. the deal is: local airy isostatic compensationally derived elevation as a function of variable thickness of mantle lithosphere under thermally driven expansion of mantle rock and correlated changes in material density in the presence of a steady-state geotherm. joy. it's an interesting problem actually, but since i lack the calculus skills of your average m.i.t. mathematics grad student, i am attacking the problem from a graphical / geometric standpoint. luckily, all the base assumptions i'm making allow me to look at the problem this way, since "steady-state conduction" generally means linear geothermal gradient... i.e. a straight line that is easy to assess with simple algebra. it's the feedback from variable thickness and multi-material (varying material properties) layering in the model that throw a wrench in the works. the equation i've derived has 20 terms at the moment. i'm sure if i'd attended a normal highschool that actually taught math worth a damn i could probably boil this down to a simple integral with something like 5-6 terms, but lo; the alternative community highschool was better at teaching things like comparative literature and global economic politics.

anyway, i need to go buy batteries for my calculator before i can really finish this thing. here's a quick pic of my scratching and scribbling.



~t

if i had a backhoe....

...i would totally do something like this. probably the coolest use of heavy machinery i have ever seen... some might think it cruel, but i think it's hilarious....

watch the video ...

~t

turkey day

i feel like a turkey. well, not precisely, but this stupid homework makes me feel about as intelligent as one. once again, i reaffirm my opinions that a certain professor here at my university is one of the worst professors i've ever had when it comes to giving out work. professors "A" and "B" co-teach a class. professor "A" writes some of the homework questions, so does professor "B". professor "A"'s questions are intelligible and clearly presented. they take me about 10-20 minutes per question on average. professor "B"'s questions are muddled, obtuse and perfunctory melanges of vaguish hints, which i imagine "B" thinks are practically obvious. these take me days, and i'm lucky if i actually finish one all the way through (these are the classic 10-part questions which build on themselves... meaning that once you're stuck, you're totally screwed when it comes to answering the rest of the question; this is poor design and does anything but contribute to learning). once again, the engineer holds the upper hand, not in superior ability or intelligence, but through their odd inability to articulate in spoken language what they understand mathematically.

anyway, i'm sitting in my %&#$ing office on thanksgiving, beating my ahead against the desk and hoping that this stupid problem will solve itself soon. at least it's quiet here. i think i will be riding my bike tomorrow.... before trying desperately in the next couple of weeks to finish my poster for a.g.u. and classes.

google universe

so far this morning i've been preparing for my trip to death valley tomorrow by touring google earth and recording gps coordinates into my garmin e-trex so i can point out specific features when we're in the field. invariably google earth sessions turn into daydreaming exercises in things like folding space, super-fast personal space-craft and teleportation. oh the places i would go (to borrow from dr seuss) if i had the ability. with the ever-increasing resolution and data comprehensiveness offered by the service, i wonder how long it is before google mars is launched, and then google sol system. (side note: our sun is named "sol"... which has led to our system being referred to as "solar-system", but since the astronomical status quo is to call a stellar-system by the name of it's primary star such as 'the alpha-centauri system', i prefer the name "sol-system".)

...if only there was some way to select your desired destination on the computer screen and click on a button labeled "add to cart" or even "make it so" (appropriately nerdy quote from captain picard, who by the way has one of the most complete biographies imaginable on wikipedia)... resulting in instantaneous travel to your chosen location.

well.. enough of that for now. back to work.
~t

monday morning...

phooo. i've been in the office since about 7:45 this morning. i plan to be here till at least 4pm. lots on the plate for this week, but it's all work related. meeting today and tomorrow as well as friday. presentations wednesday and friday. will probably get another homework assignment today for next week. field-trip guide due friday. i think i have to go for a ride at some point today or i'm gonna pop.

so, the life of a grad: busy busy busy. it's certainly made me long for my days as a consultant somewhat... i think i need to get back to taiwan sometime soon; even though taipei is a frenetic city, it feels much more relaxed than boulder at times, i gues mostly because i don't have to go to class everyday there.

i've also decided (sort-of) on my next big adventure trip: mountainbiking through switzerland and italy on the alta rezia route; gondola serviced descending of about 60,000 vertical feet in 6 days. we'll see if that ever really happens...

~t

down week

hey all..

so far this week has been mediocre. some good points, a few bad points, but mostly just so-so. i suppose starting the week off on sunday with a class "a" hangover from the beer-luck wasn't necessarily a huge help. monday i got a test back from school that was quite a bit lower than i thought it would be, and i've just felt very undirected with work this week. had a few chances to get out and ride my mtn bike so far, which has been great. the trails are still drying out from all the snow recently... in some areas they are still covered with snow... which is great; i tend to equate riding through mud and snow with my adventures in new hampshire. The rest of the week, all the parts in between the good and bad, just sort of happened. overall it seems like i've just been distanced from my normal mode for a few days. hopefully towards the end of the week things will start to look up, and next week won't start off in a low.

~t

snow!

hey all,

today is the second time in a week that i have woken up to see several inches of snow on the ground. the odd thing about it, at least when compared to the eastern snows that i grew up with, is that it is apparently always bright and sunny the day immediately after a snow. it's saturday morning at 830... normally i would never be awake much less up at this time, but this morning i was awakened by the bright sun bouncing through my window; amplified by the bright white blanket of ice crystals that coats the ground and clings to the trees outside. i think i'm going to take a quick lap around the backyard on my skis, and then start my day...

~t

festivities

yes... it's that time of year again...

the Third Biannual Boulder BeerLuck is upon us. this saturday the 21st, malted barley and hops will abound and many brews will be enjoyed. to be honest I have no idea how many people will be showing up to this event... it could be 15, it could be 50+. it's a good thing in any case that we now have a whole house to host the event out of. i've even posted a new blog: BeerLuckBlog, in preparation for the weekend. i hope to have some interesting pictures and maybe even a list of all the beers from this fall's beerluck posted at some point in the near future.

so... come one, come all... and email me if you didn't already receive the invitation... chances are you are welcome as well.

~t

Navajo

ahh sunday... a good day to sit at home and relax after yesterday's adventure: climbing navajo peak in the indian peaks wilderness with tim and cynthia. we got an early start (5:30) and hiked the four mile approach in a couple of hours. from the end of the trail, we headed across the talus fields (which are an interesting mix of natural talus and glaciers' morainal material) towards the base of the peak. the climb starts with a medium angle snow-climb. the snow slope is probably about 50 degrees, but the snow was perfect; nice styrofoam texture with a crispy crust. it's amazing to me how fast you can gain elevation on snow. you just sort of plod up the face, focusing on foot placement and balance (we all had packs on) and sooner or later you pause and take a look around. the sudden realization that you are hundreds of vertical feet from where you were, staring down a perfectly planar slope, can be vertiginous. ...that and the fact that you can see nebraska from that same vantage point. the snow climb ends in the saddle between najavo and it's neighbor, and the technical rock climbing begins. now, i said it was technical, which is a bit of a misnomer. the hardest pitch out of the two-or-three pitches there is 5.4, so it's not demanding... it's just cold and high and can be awkward if you're wearing plastic boots and a pack. we scrambled up to the climb and roped up... just as the weather was starting to really turn from clear to snowy. after topping out, we ate some food and headed down the descent route; off the south ridge of the mountain and into airplane gully. airplane is interesting because there's actually an old plane-wreck there. lots of twisted aluminum and distorted structure make it hard to identify what's what, or what's left, but it reminded me very much of reading old tintin comics where on several occasions there where rescue missions mounted to remote crash sites in high mountains. we finished out the descent and backtracked through the valley towards the car. as we walked, a wet snow fell languidly from the clouds above, muting everything in the valley. the spruces took on a familiar look and brush came alive with subtle yet distinct lavender and sage colored hues.

as we reached the car at dusk we were wet and tired but in high spirits... it's not too often that you get to spend an entire day on an alpine adventure with friends.






~t

lenticular soup

riding into school today was very nice... chilly for sure, but nice. the main thing was that the entire front-range was capped with lenticular clouds. altocumulus standing lenticularis... the result of stable moist air that's forced into a standing compression wave pattern after flowing over mountainous terrain, is always cool to see. here's a shot from the cu-boulder web-cam... they were a lot better earlier this morning.


~t

aspen

~t

creationism

kent hovind is nuts. someone just sent me a link to one of his 2 hour long lectures... the videos of which you can watch on the net. this guy is a creationist through and through... with all the pompous self importance you would expect from someone who thinks they are enlightened and everyone else in the educated world is not only incorrect in their assumptions about the nature of physical reality, but also stupid for it. he sells himself as a humble and god-fearing man, but is anything but. he tries to be funny, but succeeds at only the most sophomoric levels. i do recommend reading one of the articles on his site (pick one, they're all equally entertaining)... i still have yet to speak with a creationist who can logically and intelligently come up with an explanation for their beliefs that allow the existence of things like nuclear physics... things we have not only theorized but observed and practiced (nuclear fission wouldn't work if certain uranium isotopes weren't unstable, for instance). anyway... take a look...

~t

(*&@!#$*&

i don't hate math... i hate it when professors are incompetant at writing understandable assignments... relying on mathematic expressions to fill in for their inability to explain things in words. things like, "recall the simple analysis we made to develop the rayleigh number" (said analysis was something like 3 pages long). i will n e v e r take another class from this professor.

~T

french press

ahhhh...

i made a brilliant decision today: i brought my small one-cup french press into the office. it now occupies the shelf next to my desk. though i relish the opportunities that walking to the coffee shop offers (procrastination-wise), it's nice not to spend two or three dollars everytime i want to drink some coffee. i think i finally realized that i wasn't ever going to drop $400 on a nice espresso machine, so this little $20 press will suffice.

~t yeah... the picture is taken on my cell-phone. I still don't have a real memory card for it, so this isn't even the full resolution.

*thud*

... the sound of my head hitting the desk. it's almost 2pm on tuesday and for some reason i am exhausted... or unmotivated.... or something. i am trying to get through some homework for my class (it seems to be less odious than the last assignment was) but i am having a real problem focusing on anything in particular. i slept for something like 10 hours last night too...

anyway... back to work (if i can concentrate on it)

~t