Crescent Moon

Crescent Moon
Originally uploaded by lrargerich.

‎"The Church says that the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church." — Ferdinand Magellan

Cotopaxi volcano

What a lovely Milky Way, just rotating right over the top of it!

(Found via Lane Hartwell, a local photographer.)

Earth from the ISS, cloud shadows

"From space I saw Earth,
indescribably beautiful
and with the scars of national boundaries gone."
Muhammad Ahmad Faris, astronaut

Ah, India

Bangalore to Mysore distance by road is about 140 kilometers. The approximate driving time is 3 hours, including a short brake in between.

orographic terminology

My friend Joe asks a specific cloud question:

Joe: Okay, an earth sciencey sort of question for you. In greenland I often saw cloud formations that sort of formed a belt half way up a cliff, e.g.,

Roughly speaking, my question is "does that have a cool name?" and "what's up with that?" Okay, that's two questions. :)

Can you explain? Is there a name for that kind of cloud position/type?

(I did tell him why the cloud formed there - but beyond that, I know not.)

Joe's going back to Greenland in a few days to take more pictures. Check out the rest of his Above the Arctic Circle work, -- he's good at making geography visible.

Maybe I need a geotat theme blog

Another geotat off tumblr.

In Santa Cruz, once, I saw someone with California on his entire right arm, Lake Tahoe at the elbow, etc. Seeing it move was weird, especially as there aren't any fault that make the state move just like that. ;)

And if you like tattoos, you should definitely check out Carl Zimmer's Science Tattoo Emporium!

way slow lightning

Watch the timestamp move. The whole video is slowed down to 1/300 speed.

It's interesting to watch the big bolts form, and disappear, but I am in love with all the tiny baby bolts.

I love this tattoo so much I could pop

The caption on the tumblr page says,
"pangaea. hoping it will stretch into it’s current positions as I get older and fatter."

Oh yeah. :D

(Note: This is not ink on me. I found it tumblrward.)

that weird green stuff

How cool is this?
As I explore my Yosemite astro-timelapses, I realize my Canon 5dM2 was picking up faint aurora borealis the whole time! (from @YosemiteSteve on twitter)

What an awesome treat, and it looks hard to have noticed in the moment.

2009's Atlantic/Caribbean tropical storms, all at once

NASA and NOAA have put together a four-minute time-lapse animation of the 2009 hurricane season:



I find myself trying to peer beyond the bottom right corner, to see what's going on between the Caribbean and Africa.

At least as interesting as watching the tropical depressions form and move, though, are the way clouds form over Central America. I'd like to watch a time lapse of Panamanian skies from the ground below, based on this.

Galilean thermometer in the sun

Galilean thermometer in the sun
Originally uploaded by battyden

My friend Den posted this pretty danged awesome time-lapse video of a Galilean thermometer slowly warming up and moving in the sun.

I have no idea how these work. Are you willing to explain to me, or shall I look it up? ;)

the sky is falling

Here's some fascinating video from Yosemite Park, showing and discussing the process of rock falls:



Geologists discuss the rock falls, and their effect on park visitors, and there's some great video from a park visitor.

The video's a granite-lover's dream, with obligatory spectacular views of Yosemite as well.

I'm feeling less inclined to scramble in the talus looking for pikas than I might once have been.

Does the information in this video affect how you would use Yosemite, or whether you would visit the park or similar areas?

it's like alabaster

NEM ACREDITO QUE TIREI ESSA FOTO
Originally uploaded by JOSÉ LOPES.

What a lovely photo of our moon. When I was little, I thought the daytime moon was translucent, like the little alabaster elephant lantern my grandmother had on a table in the hallway.

death by clam?

That's a horrible and fascinating phrase.

I have no idea when this short National Geographic web exclusive on Hulu.com will last, but it's here now:





I'm a big fan of molluscs, I find them endlessly fascinating. (I also find them occasionally tasty. I'm about 99% vegetarian, but small bivalves rock my culinary world.)

I didn't really know much about giant clams. I guess I assumed that they lived in the deep sea (they don't), and that they were a lot like large versions of normal clam species. But they have nifty skin not unlike a squid's (less shiftingly chromatophoric*), and I had no idea about their relationship with algae!

Also, let it be said that the diver at the end of this clip is a doofus. Don't go messing with sea animals or coral reefs, Doofus Diver.

*It's amazing what blogger labels as incorrectly spelled. What, that's not a word?

I am surrounded by bad influences

cern_aerial
Originally uploaded by riowight.

My husband and his friend Andy discuss CERN placement:

Andy: I wonder why it's specifically on the French-Swiss border.
Casey: Probably more to do with geography than politics
Casey: CERN is a pragmatic bunch.
Andy: I mean, won't that sloow the particles down? They have to whip out their little particle passports and go through particle customs twice per loop.
Casey: Sorry, didn't see the joke coming, you must have sent it faster than the cluons could reach me.

Around the world

Found via Design is Mine, a gorgeous collection of globular glory.

flickr friday : around the world.
Originally uploaded by indierocket.

I spent hundreds of hours in my childhood poring over globes. I loved the relief globes best, ours at home was worn over the Alps and Andes and Himalaya and Rockies where I'd run the tip of my index finger over the ridges time and time again. I'm currently smitten with a globe I saw in a catalog a couple of years ago that has your basic political map on it until the light inside is turned on, when it becomes a star map. Our local plastic-epoxy-and-stuff store, mostly used by sign-makers and fiberglass-molders, sells inflatable globes that are only so much vinyl and poppable, disposable stuff, and what would I do with one? But I want one.

I think my favorite globe-fact, over my life, has been that if the relief on my favorite kind of globe were true scale, I wouldn't be able to feel them.

Get under the pool table, dude

It goes dark, but listen to the end, or almost to the end. I'm not sure I'd be as copacetic.

Solstice is serious business

Four years ago, at a friend's Solstice celebration, I caught a shot of my dear friends Kimberly and Sue trying so hard not to giggle during a quiet moment that they were nearly crying.



How could they explain that from their angle, they could see a cat trying to find a use for the sand in the bottom of the straw man at the center of the ritual?

The cat, apparently, had missed the memo about rituals being serious business.

Multitouch Mapping Exhibit at Oakland Museum of California

Multiotuch Mapping Exhibit at Oakland Museum of California
Originally uploaded by ideum

The Oakland Museum of California has been one of my favorite places since I first visited in the eighties. It's always been a relatively simple, lovely, open museum, with a California focus. The top floor had art from California artists, sculpture and furniture and huge, gold-framed oils showing Yosemite waterfalls in the 1800s. The second floor was a rather overwhelming but comprehensive walk through California history.

The bottom floor, my favorite, was all about the California natural history, the river otters and acorn woodpeckers and bivalves in the bay mud.

There was a gigantic relief map, and a huge whirling globe (in my icon!), and outside a koi pond with a big acrylic sculpture in it.



The green central (roof?) area sometimes hosted musical events, small festivals, wine-tastings. The lecture halls had a regular schedule of California-relevant educational events. The cafe was lovely, inexpensive for fairly good food, with a window above the pond, looking out into the peace.

Then it closed for awhile, for a deep remodeling. At first I was fussed that I couldn't attend, then I sort of forgot about it. When it half-reopened (the natural history section is due to open next year), I sort of forgot to go back.

Looking around for maps on Flickr tonight (I am a special kind of nerd) I found this little video about Ideum's interactive historic map display at the museum. OMG. The internet is indeed for (map) porn. I'm checking my schedule for the next week or so to find out when I should go to the newly reopened Oakland Museum of California.

smart, but not always well-spoken

The Raging Grannies have an opinion

Okay okay one more! But I promise content just as soon as I finish dinner dishes.

srsly

1999 ad.

Now I need to get working on content. Too much fluff and image-linking lately.

Ah, Kansas

(Yes, I know this is from the Onion. But still, Kansas. And Texas. Nuff said.)

Irony

(via MoveOn on Twitter)

geocake!

Oh, the things we find on Tumblr!



Geocake!

I'm back from vacation in Alaska and will write some bloggy stuff about it very soon, as soon as I rest.

That might be as soon as the SF Bay Area gets over this uncharacteristic combo of heat and humidity.

South What?

This oil leak is almost exhausting to think about

Oil and gas stream from the leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico:



Of course, this is wreaking havoc on animals and ecosystems in the area. Tuna have no eyelids, you know? They can't protect themselves from the oil. Dolphins and birds are becoming hurt, many are dying.

There are many ways to help, including advocating for an end to offshore drilling, for alternative energy sources, and by working to help clean up beaches and marshes, and to take care of animals.

Here's one:

layers on blended layers

I've had this picture of my friend Heather's yarn up in a tab for hours because I keep coming back to stare at it. It reminds me so much of the layers of the Earth.

Geography Girl

Geography Girl
Originally uploaded by brentdanley.

I love that this geography picture keeps getting new notes appended. It reminds me of my urge to decorate a family room in maps, with globes and orreries and and old navigation tools everywhere.

Now all I need is my own family room, with a house to put it in.

(Click through to the photo on flickr to add your location to her maps.)

World back-up

World back-up
Originally uploaded by Daniel Montesinos.

Randomly found while looking for old California maps. I have nothing to say about this (except that I'd spend my life having detail added).

earth-shattering kabooms!

Brian Romans, from Clastic Detritus, pointed out on twitter that in recent Icelandic volcano footage, one can see amazing shock waves propagating through the ash cloud after explosions.

Wow! The air vibrates beautifully. Have a look. It happens several times in this video.



Wikipedia says, incidentally, that

The name Eyjafjallajökull is made up of the words eyja (genitive plural of ey, meaning eyot or island), fjalla (genitive plural of fjall, whose nominative plural is fjöll, meaning fells or mountains) and jökull (meaning glacier, cognate with the -icle in icicle). A literal translation would thus be the "island-fells glacier" or the "island-mountains glacier". The name Eyjafjöll describes the southern side of the volcanic massif together with the small mountains which form the foot of the volcano. The village and museum of Skógar are also part of the region undir Eyjafjöllum (meaning "under the Eyjafjalls").

So it's Eyjafjöll that's erupting? It's complicated.

so much left to explore

(as usual, there's more to the comic if you click through and mouseover for the alt text.)

our tiny world

I had the opportunity and pleasure today to listen to a live-streamed lecture from Professor Brian Cox, at Manchester University, about the LHC, exploring space, and curiosity-driven science.

He talked about the LHC, and the math involved in research of subatomic particles, quarks, Higgs, a little about electromagnetism. He pointed out Earth in one of my favorite solar system photographs.

He reminded his listeners that it's important to know why we're doing what we're doing, and that for him, like for Sagan, one must start with the beauty and wonder, then get into the details as part of that. Richard Feynman was another scientist who held that mastery, who was delighted at the world, the universe, and for whom science was an expression of that delight.

Prof. Cox wound down his lecture with this, from Carl Sagan, who was responding to a photograph taken from Voyager, as it looked back on the solar system it had just traveled through:

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.



It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

I was going to put together an Earth Day post today, and I might still -- it's a busy day, I wasn't prepared ahead of time.

But I think that Sagan had it all, right there. The rest is just detail, it's about how to do it. That's what I'll get into later.

I'm so glad someone did this

from @banger1977 on twitter:

happy tinkling lava

It's flash, so I can't embed it, but just *listen* to the cooling lava tinkle like broken glass as it falls off the face of the flow:
Awesome volcano video, not so pleased about non-embeddable flash, but heck, it's a Canon ad, no?

This (radar?) image from April 15 looks ominous:

Playing with the Devil

Playing with the Devil
Originally uploaded by skarpi.

Yahoo has very cleverly made a "yahoo editors' picks" account on flickr to organize pictures in galleries.

These are their favorites for the Iceland volcano:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yahooeditorspicks/galleries/72157623855495574

Goodness gracious

Dan Satterfield linked on his facebook page this news video of the meteor that lit up the midwest last night:



The Christian Science Monitor (which has a great photo of the fireball) says

A large flash of light at about 10 p.m. Wednesday night – described as a fireball in the sky by eyewitnesses from Wisconsin to Missouri – was most likely a meteor from the ongoing Gamma Virginids meteor shower.
It is unknown whether the meteor in Wisconsin, which was seen flying eastward at an altitude of 6,000 to 12,000 feet, hit the ground or burned up in the atmosphere.

There's more at that link.

Updates on the European ash situation

From AlJazeera, an information-filled and relatively accurate story (text story at that link) about the effects of Eyjafjallajokull's eruption:




The BBC has more too, on their site, including this important tidbit: "The UK's air traffic control service (Nats) said no flights would be allowed in UK airspace until at least 0700 BST on Friday amid fears of engine damage."

• Icelandic volcanic ash alert grounds UK flights
• Photo of ashcloud from the air, changes once an hour
• Iceland's volcanic ash halts flights in northern Europe
• Why a cloud of ash has grounded flights
• The National Post has a map showing closed airports

Today's ashcloud from space:



Because the clouds make it hard to see a visible-light photo, the Norwegian meteorological office released this one


(I'm a tad embarrassed to ask: What wavelength is this? not infrared.)

The glow from the ground:

Eyjafjallajokull volcano still erupts dramatically

My initial reaction was actually (in text, to a friend), "omg omg omg omfg geology."



Right now, several airports in Europe (specifically Norway and the UK) are closed because of ash.

Boston.com's "The Big Picture," one of the best photoblogs on the web, collected pictures of the volcano and its effects today. Some aren't the usual fare, some are especially dramatic, but I think one that most caught my eye was #11 - people in snow gear, standing on dirty snow with ski poles stuck in it, watching flowing lava from a few feet away.


(And for the sake of fun: KCBS said, on twitter: "Why we're just calling it 'a volcano in Iceland'. Try saying this: Mt. Eyjafjallajökull (ay-yah-FYAH'-plah-yer-kuh-duhl)" Wikipedia provides the IPA [ˈɛɪjaˌfjatlaˌjœkʏtl̥]) and an audio clip to unconfuse things.)

Addendum: My friend Ailbhe, in the thick of things, clarifies the current airport closure and flight diversion issues -- "UK, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, north Finland, Belgium, north France, the Netherlands in parts" -- and provides a link to a good reason: Volcanic ash destroys airplane engines catastrophically.

Fascinating Northridge quake coverage

I did spot one major technical/factual mistake, though.



(Have I posted this before, years ago? I should look. But it's a cold, rainy morning, and the dog is asleep on me, and that sounds like a lot of work for today.)

time-lapse lava flow and rock-making in hawaii

The Earth is a living thing, truly.

Whoa, earthquake

(Clicking through, of course, gets you to the alt-text for the comic, which you can mouseover for more info, and/or humor.)

7.2 quake in Baja California today

What scientists are guessing so far:

The fault that triggered the quake was probably located on one of the many faults south of the San Andreas fault, [seismologist Lucy] Jones said. The fault is probably about 40 to 50 miles long, and probably shook for 20 to 30 seconds. The worst shaking would have occurred closest to the fault, said [seismologist Lucy] Jones .

She said scientists would not have enough information to identify the fault until geologists survey the area.

The quake occurred at the junction between two tectonic plates, the Pacific and the North American, that grind against each other through Baja California and California. The quake is probably on a strike-slip fault, which splices through the ground vertically and causes land to move horizontally.

A house collapses in on itself in Mexicali.


A telephone pole pulls wires down in Mexicali


Cars drive over a slightly buckled road in Mexicali


Commercial buildings crumble slightly in Mexicali


A picnic area shifts dramatically


In Ensenada, a twitterer's laptop sits open in front of gaping wall cracks. (Note Tweetdeck open, perhaps following the news.)


And in El Centro, California, a family's deck lies in their back yard. I thought we had better construction standards than that!

Animation: Dust (or smoke? probably dust) rises from the Mexicali area following the quake

More news is coming in, of course, the "did you feel it?" map is still changing. The quake was only 10 km deep, and I have no doubt we'll hear about more damage than is known so far. As quakes usually are, this one will be another learning experience.

Science communicators are climate heroes

USGS Science in Action
Originally uploaded by U.S. Geological Survey.

The general public really needs a good bridge between sometimes complicated science and what we are able to assemble into a useful picture. Clear, simple, fact-rich science communication is essential, good science communicators are priceless anymore.

That's why Dan Satterfield is one of my favorite science communicators. He's direct, smart, and really gets to the point, understanding what his readers need filled in. His most recent blog post really makes that clear to me. Dan goes step by step through not only the reasons why climate change is now scientific reality (with some amazement at the TV weather people who dismiss it as myth), but he also insists its the TV meteorologist's obligation to sort it out for the watchers, for the folks at home whose only exposure to real scientists and balanced science throughout the day might be what they get from their trusty TV weatherguy.

Dan's also just plain good folks. But he's good folks with a sharp mind, and the kind of understanding of his audience (both for his blog, and on TV in Alabama) that teaches rather than preaches, that informs rather than lambasts, that gets the point across in the way we need right now.

He's the kind of science communicator that we can point at as part of the solution to the problem. When you hear people saying, "If only we could communicate science to the masses," point them to Dan's blog, and say, "You mean, like that?"

frazil ice in Yosemite National Park

Steven Bumgardner, who produces Yosemite Nature Notes for the National Park Service, shot some video of "frazil ice" on the Merced River in the park this week, as a cold early spring storm moved across California.



I'd never heard of frazil ice before. Now, because I must look things up compulsively, I'm learning about it. Wikipedia says, "Frazil ice is a collection of loose, randomly oriented needle-shaped ice crystals in water. It resembles slush...," which probably explains why I'm imagining margaritas. And Hajo Eicken at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, says

The word frazil means fine spicules or blobs, which gracefully describes the morphology of the crystal. Sea ice growth always begins with frazil ice production, the only true dendritic ice growth phase. Active convection aids sensible heat transport at the ocean surface, thereby super cooling the water and allowing dendritic growth of ice crystals.

This is so cool. Spicules and blobs. Scientific terminology rocks. ("Dendritic," of course, means it's like branches of a tree, like drainage in a river delta, or the shape of a neuron.)

The waterfalls of Yosemite must be delightful just now.

The shaping of the Great Lakes, in an hour

The History Channel's new series, "How the Earth was Made," is mostly just scientific enough for me today, as I'm fighting a low fever, and wanted to stare at something educational without spraining too many neurons. Today I sat down with Hulu and watched an episode about the creation of the Great Lakes.



I knew some of it, such as the glacial history, but hadn't known about the igneous origins of the floor beneath Superior and Ontario. The series is presented in steps, giving evidence for theories (with a bit of the History Channel's typical "but that's not all" and "there's more they didn't know," and "but still, mystery remained" drama), then before each ad, recapping the bits. I appreciated those, it helped me knit the story in stages before going on to the next chapter in the story.

As it turns out, I had no idea how fast Niagara Falls was receding. Do you know? What would you guess? Watch the show and see. I was a tad stunned.

(If the Hulu.com video expires, you can find the video for sale at the History Channel website, with a few clips and full episodes still available.)

Do I corrupt my friends or do they corrupt me?

My friend Andy sent me this IM conversation with our friend Paul:

Paul: what is the tensile strength of ROCK AND ROLL quick I need to build this city on it
Andy: The tensile strength of ROCK AND ROLL isn't relevant. Unless you planned to build this city out of it.
Andy: Since you want to build the city *on* Rock and Roll, you'd want to know it's ductility.
Andy: The ductility determines how big the buildings can be without risking sinkage. also, in earthquake zones, low-ductility Rock and Roll would lead to liquifaction, damaging entire regions of the city.

I might be weird, but my friends might be weirder.

Simple Pleasures

I just had one of my best bird experiences ever.

I've been paying attention to birds since I was pretty young, but I rarely go out and seek the rare ones. I tend to marvel at what's nearby.

I'm very happy that I got to see a Long-tailed Jaeger once, when it was lost in Mono County, and I was very excited when my husband (decidedly not "a birder") identified a Heerman's Gull along a path a bit west of Monterey Bay Aquarium. But mostly, I revel in the air-coasting of Turkey Vultures, and the way the American Robins fill my yard every March, and the markings of the hundreds of Cedar Waxwings in our local trees (they have a wheezy, tuneless song that is irrelevant given their gorgeous fancy clothes).

I like birds for learning about what they do. I like being able to spot a Western Scrub-jay without glasses on (my glasses, not the jay's) from the way its short swooping glides bring it down from a tree, and I like knowing that we have Black Phoebes because we're near a stream, and they eat bugs (they're at the local dog park for the same reason: flies love those trash cans!), and I like knowing that though the Cooper's Hawks in the neighborhood might be after our chickens, the Red-shouldered Hawks would prefer our pocket gophers. Our garden is grateful for Red-shouldered Hawks.

Today's event was both wonderful for its commonness and what it told me about basic bird behavior, and exhilarating for its sheer wonderfulness.

I was out in the driveway collecting mail, and as usual, our rooster jumped up onto the chicken pen's gate to let me know he was Still The Man. He crowed, and I said "Hi, Rooster," then over my head, in the tulip magnolia tree, a male Anna's Hummingbird began his squeaky territorial chirping. It's fully spring here, so the hummingbirds are nesting, and Anna's Hummingbirds are the kings of the "Gerroff my LAWN!" attitude. (I remember reading an article years ago in Smithsonian magazine describing the hummingbird migration in Arizona. One ranger at a state park told a visitor that if hummingbirds were the size of ravens, it would be unsafe to go outside. When a visitor exclaimed about the belligerent males, "They're so sweet, and so tiny!" he replied, "Yes ma'am, they are tiny.") I noted to myself that the rooster and the hummingbird (also a rooster, in his tiny way) were doing the exact same thing, crowing at the entire world to say that they were indeed The Man.

I couldn't see the hummingbird (no glasses on, and he was in a tree with hummingbird-sized leaves and blossoms), but when he flew over to another tree and began to chirp there, he was obvious. The sun was behind me, and as he moved slightly on his stick-end, he flashed with an almost inorganic magenta, the refractive feathers on his head and gorget throwing photons back at me. And then in a flash, he went up, up, and vanished. I kept my eyes on him as long as I could, but he was, it seemed, nearing escape velocity.

Anna's hummingbirds have the most amazing behavior. Sometimes they swoop down in huge, steep parabolas, making a sort of … ding? bing? musical pop? at the bottom of the dive. They'll fly up, out of sight, then down. I've seen them do this before, from slightly to the side, watched them form the parabola shape. But this time it wasn't quite overhead, I craned my neck up, staring directly at the sky, and the bird quickly became a dot, then disappeared. I knew he had to be diving in a moment, but where?

Then bam! or rather BING! Right over my face! The bugger had dived at my head as I stared and I never saw him. They are very, very fast. From the sound's direction and volume and the sudden bzzt! of wings, I estimate that the vertex of his dive was 2 to 3 feet over my head, and that's close enough.

My heart pounded, I clasped my hands to my chest and said, "Oh BOY!" The little hummingbird was up again, and gone.

It's quite easy to make me happy, really.

Hummingbird Diving In Action from Science News on Vimeo
Photo on top from Alan Vernon.

Imagine being terrified of tiny tremors, for good reason

The recent 5.6 earthquake in Cuba brought down a house in Haiti, and killed two people (at least, so far).



In a country as shaky with aftershocks as Haiti has been, and recent torrential rains making life miserable for people who live under tarps, and still live in gullies (as they have for a long time), imagine if every time the earth shook just a little, you feared for your life. The people under tarps are wetter, but perhaps safer.

Army Street, San Francisco

Then and Now: South Van Ness at Army Street, 1953
Originally uploaded by Telstar Logistics.

This is the sort of thing that eats my brain. Someone on livejournal asked where Army Street got its name. It's been 15 years since the name was changed to Cesar Chavez, but a lot of locals still think of it as Army Street, just as there are parts of Martin Luther King Bl. in the east bay that I'll always call Grove Street, just because I was living near there, or knew someone who lived near there, or shopped there, when it was Grove. I have nothing against Chavez or King, it's just that I'm old, and my brain settles into patterns.

At any rate: Now I'll be digging half the day looking for the origins of the name Army Street, because it's the sort of thing I can't let go, and I have things to do, and don't have time.

If you know, please help out here, or on livejournal at the link.

Thanks!


Edited to add:

Found by @silvercrone on twitter:

"As for Army, Loewenstein says it was named by John and Robert Horner, who bought two ranches in the area for $200,000. They named the street to honor the military. There was also a Navy Street, but it did not survive. Its name was changed to a number."

So far, the only relevant Horners I've found were in San Francisco in the 1860s. They did have ranchos, were they the Horners? Probably. Still searching.

geobloggers r us

IMG_1809
Originally uploaded by Ron Schott.

Ron Schott and I agree that there are a lot of great geobloggers out there who are worth your attention.

Ron, however, has made a list.

Check it out. You're unlikely to find that every writer on that list is to your taste, but you're quite likely to discover someone just right for you, who you didn't yet know existed.

Washing into the sea

Madagascar is falling apart geologically and biologically.

Today, Soichi Noguchi posted a gorgeous picture of the mouth of a river in Madagascar, pouring mud into the sea with a design like an abstract painting:



Sadly, that mud is flowing off the hillsides with every rainstorm, every one of Madagascar's not-infrequent cyclone hits, and blows off with the wind. Deforestation began in Madagascar with the first European colonization, and the demand for exotic wood (or any wood, eventually), and continued as slopes were cleared for agriculture. Between the general population of Madagascar, with people simply trying to get enough to eat, and shelter, and work, and the corporations driving the agriculture, it will be amazing if Madagascar can keep from dying, biologically, before any sort of control or balance is found.

Pi Day at the Exploratorium, San Francisco

I love dorks



I'm trying to find a way to connect this to geography, and struggling beyond circular lines of latitude slicing up the earth. I welcome ideas - because I couldn't resist the post.

To drink forever alongside Odin

I can't always figure out where Geography ends. Does it include our atmosphere? I think so. Magnetosphere? Why not?



Of course, astronomy fascinates me, too.

At any rate, the auroras are clearly in the zone where astronomy and geography overlap.

Astrospace Now has a great podcast discussing folklore about the auroras.

I've only seen an aurora once, and it was an Aurora Australis. I was at only 32.7 degrees south latitude, in South Australia -- very far north to see them. They oscillated and shimmered like a bright green gossamer curtain. I hope to see the Aurora Borealis this coming spring, when I'll be in Alaska.

(Photo in the creative commons by Chantal Steyn.)

... but not as we know it

Mono lakeshore
Originally uploaded by marymactavish.

Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a geobiologist, thinks Mono Lake may host "...alien life forms, or 'weird life'." She is investigating whether, in the mud or water, there live microbes "whose biological make-up is so fundamentally different from that of any known life on Earth that it may provide proof of a shadow biosphere."

Wow.

I love the Mono Lake basin because it's stunning and fascinating.

The Sierra Nevada rise along its western side.

Panum Crater, to the south, is a small volcanic cone a few hundred years old. When you hike up into it, first you walk over crunchy pumice, then over pieces of obsidian that tinkle underfoot like broken glass, making the thought of a stumble slightly nerve-wracking.

I once saw a Long-tailed Jaeger in a freshwater pond just north of Mono Lake. It's a pelagic bird that was lost ... or interested. Many species of bird feed on the brine flies at the edge of the lake. Eighty-five percent of California Gulls (the species, not the geographically-placed) breed here.

And Mono Lake plays an important role in the history of the environmental movement, its healthy future being the impetus for the Mono Lake Committee, one of the most effective and inclusive grassroots environmental movements in California.

But now, the possibility of parallel evolution? arsenic-based life? Mono Lake just gets cooler.

At least the birds got a few extra mud-critters for lunch

This covers the first two-thirds or so of a tsunami surge cycle at Point Loma, in San Diego. A small tsunami sloshed around the entire Pacific Ocean on February 27, 2010, in response to an 8.8 earthquake in Chile.

As much as that this video is nearly ten minutes long, I wish it had been longer. I'm not sure I'd want it edited, either -- I like the everydayness of it, the way people are talking to each other, and their wonder at the water.

I'm working on a bigger post about Chile, which I'll post in 12 hours or so.

The Mimic Octopus

Mimic Octopus
Originally uploaded by Daniel, Daniel Kwok.

Like everyone, I sometimes have days on which I do little but watch octopus videos:



This species, the Indonesian mimic octopus, was just discovered twelve years ago. It is fabulous.



It's known to mimic at least 13 different animals or corals, some of them deadly poisonous, though scientists admit they don't always know what they're seeing.





They're lost due to habitat degradation, fishing bycatch, recently even the pet industry.



It saddens and sometimes horrifies me that we can be doing such damage to species that weren't identified by scientists until our current crop of high school students was first learning to read.



I don't eat octopus, and I do what I can to help protect its habitat and the creatures in it. Biodiversity is essential, no species is completely expendable, but octopuses are just too damned cool to lose.

Frankly, I'm a little disappointed

Alexander von Humboldt
Originally uploaded by Sebastian Niedlich (Grabthar).

Matt Rosenberg pointed out on twitter that the Einstein geography quote I posted (which I'd found on a university's geography department homepage, so trusted without thinking) was debunked: ".... this quote was actually written by Duane F. Marble, Professor of Geography at Ohio State University." The rest of the story is at the link.

I'm a little disappointed. It would have been an awesome thing for Einstein to have said.

Winter topography

The Grand Canyon from the ISS, by Soichi Noguchi

"As I mentioned, Mr.President, Grand Canyon is breathtaking!"

Soichi Niguchi is way up on my list of all time favorte astronauts, if for no reason other than his sheer delight in photographing the Earth.

Geography's hard, let's do physics

it's a small world
Originally uploaded by frerieke.

"As a scholar, I wanted to study Geography. However, upon examination of the subject matter, I found it too difficult and reluctantly turned my attention to the study of Physics" - Albert Einstein


(possible correction)

Wallpapering with rocks and dirt

Natural History Book from 1888
Originally uploaded by Valeriana Solaris.

A huge chunk of my time for the past couple of days has been spent reinstalling Windows. It turns out that one can save a lot of time doing it right the first time --who knew? But I have a cranky old laptop, and only moderate computer skills (and a life, with other things to do), so I've been stuck with my old Treo for internet use for awhile.

While I was looking for interesting replacement wallpaper (eagerly anticipating a switch either to a Mac or to Windows 7, so I can rotate wallpaper -- decisiveness isn't my forte, I'd rather rotate nice wallpaper than have to decide) I stumbled on this neat blog I'd never seen before:
Geological Musings in the Taconic Mountains and today's relevant post, Geology Desktop Images.

I haven't yet poked around on it (still setting up my laptop) but will as soon as I've truly up and running.