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.

Massive, impressive, slow-moving rockslide in Italy

Found at Rockglacier via Callan Bentley and Chris Rowan (or Mountain Beltway and Highly Allochtonous)

I don't speak Italian, but I imagine he's saying, "Holy cow, it's flowing like lumpy pudding!" Anyone have other details?

Snowing on blog ideas, or something

The internet is filling up with time-lapse snow photos from the east coast!



(Details on click through.)

I've got a whole list of geographile-seeds on my desktop here, and one hard post I'm working on, I want to explain the difference between climate and weather, and how climate change (or even global warming, gasp) could explain heavy-snow winters. I'm also working on the geography of the setting of one of my favorite book series, and exploring the relationship between HAARP and the Haiti quake - or the lack thereof.

What do you want to read about?

I love David Attenborough almost as much as I love sloths

snowpocalypse

The east coast of the United States is waking up to a world of snow today, after a record-breaking snowstorm.

A couple of people have posted a link to this image on twitter:



There have been no credits for it, nor precise locations, from what I can find. I'd love more information, both for credit and geographic specificity, if you know of any.

Sakurajima blowing ash

Sakurajima at Sunset
Originally uploaded by KimonBerlin.

This post will be dated eventually, but at least right this minute, I can see ash erupting heavily out of the summit of Sakurajima on the live webcam: link here, in English, more languages available with clicky things at top right.

Sakurajima is a composite volcano, and used to form an island in a caldera, but in the past century, eruptive growth has joined it to the mainland.

Big Brothers

Big Brothers
Originally uploaded by Michæl Paukner.

Busy day, without anything organized to write about. Thus, an image - but a neat one. :D

The Golden Gate Bridge from orbit

From Soichi Noguchi on the ISS.
(He says, "Nice shadow.")
Thanks to Marilyn Terrell for the pointer.

Manzanita mandala

Manzanita
Originally uploaded by robherr.

I've written before about how much I love manzanita.

I want to learn to discern the various California species, but Pete Veilleux over at East Bay Wilds, who really knows his local native stuff, says it's a difficult task.

Among my classes this term are a couple or three that focus on local natural history. That should help.

Martin pointed out this gorgeous circle of manzanita leaves from Rob Herr, at Flickr. (He granted me permission to use the photo, it's not in the creative commons realm.)

The leaves are so beautiful and special. They're sclerophyllic, tough and a little leathery, to survive the hot, dry summers of their western habitats. The leaves chemically change soil to make it harder for competing plants to grow. And the colors, oh: they start so delicately green, and toughen to a darker green, turn reddish, then before they're gone, it's as if they self-immolate, without flames, they just dry and blacken. (They sometimes fall off before this stage, too, but it's weird, like someone's lit them.)

Their angle on the plant maximizes sun exposure when the sun is less direct and drying, in the morning and late afternoon, but minimizes it at midday, conserving moisture.

I love manzanita. Later, I'll write about the fire ecology around it and chaparral, and its magical bark, and what I want to do with the wood.

Howard Zinn, RIP - and he will

Howard Zinn
Originally uploaded by teeping.

"We don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." -- Howard Zinn, August 24, 1922 – January 27, 2010

Howard Zinn was a great historian. I encountered him in high school, and if he did nothing else for me, he encouraged me not to take everything my textbooks said as the whole truth and end of the story, but to ask questions and think beyond curriculum. I've applied that to most of what I've read in academia and the media in the decades since.

*knockknock*

checking the weather
Originally uploaded by dave~.

Lately I've been wanting to know more about who's reading Geographile, and why.
I don't get a lot of comments, nor do I troll for them. I'd like to make the blog a little more interactive, but I avoid all those "get more comments" web pages and similar, I'm mostly here for myself. But I know there are readers.

I don't use site metrics. I don't beg for comments. So how do I find out who's here?

I must not have had my creativity hat on, because when I saw this Coyote Crossing post, it was so obvious.

Chris said:

If you’ve been reading Coyote Crossing for a while and never said anything, or even i this is the first time you’ve been here, consider this your formal invitation to introduce yourself, say hello, offer advice or complaints, or just generally mark a little bit of territory.

Go ahead and substitute Geographile for Coyote Crossing, except, in the marking territory category, I must say: Please don't pee on my blog. Thank you.

And while you're at it, check out Coyote Crossing, too. It's insightful, full of good information, and just plain interesting.

ferocious weather

Well - not really ferocious. We just so rarely get tornados, that when we do, it's a bit startling.



Our tornados in California are almost never as high as 2 on the Fujita scale, and are usually 0 or 1. This one touched down, but well away from where it could do damage.

I keep thinking, "Now I'm going to write about this wacky week of weather," but then we keep having more days of it, and I think, "As soon as it's done ..." Rain is in the forecast, but it looks like the wildness is calming down. Perhaps it's time.

Haiti - hoping for recovery, in context

Peacekeeping - MINUSTAH
Originally uploaded by UNDP Global.

When I was little, one of my favorite books was The Stone*. I don't remember the details of it, I just remember the imagery, learning about Heart of Palm, and children's relationships with elders, and the life of a boy in what seemed to me a poor, but idyllic, countryside.

Mind you, it was set back when Haiti still had trees, but still: Life there was anything but as idyllic as the book showed, even then.

The misery wasn't shared in a children's novel, of course. The book made me want to live in Haiti one day. I became interested in French, and more than that in Creole. I imagined wandering jungles and listening to birds sing.



I only recently realized how much that book became most of my rose-colored knowledge about Haiti.

In adulthood, I've known that people thought it worthwhile to float hundreds of miles across open water in rafts to escape Haiti. I've known about Papa Doc and Baby Doc being horrible, fearsome dictators, and that the US somehow propped them up, but without detail.

I've known that Port-au-Prince was desperately crowded and poor,



that slums in Haiti and many towns have open gutters running down the middle of the road to carry raw sewage, and that children there were desperately hungry.



But I realize now with some shame that I had no idea of what the history was really like, Haiti's ancient legacy of debt, and how, between historically oppressive France, and the callous policies of the US, and what seems to be like near-disdain from the IMF, Haiti hasn't been able to get a break at all.

Add onto that its recent hurricanes, its overpopulation and environmental exploitation leading to deforestation and mud sliding, and now, the unlocking of a 200-year-old fault bringing shoddily-built Port-au-Prince to its knees in a pile of concrete dust and bodies, and I wonder how - or whether - they'll recover from their current situation.

My friend Meredith posted a link to a story with a brief history of Haiti, by Alex von Tunzelmann, from the London Sunday Times, May 17, 2009.

Just why is Haiti in such a dire situation, so much worse than any other country in the Americas, and as bad as anywhere on Earth? Some blame the United Nations. Some blame the Americans. Some have theories about the collision of global warming with global capitalism. All are careful to point out that the Haitian elite deserves its reputation for being greedy, negligent and kleptocratic. "I think the Haitian people have been made to suffer by God," Wilbert, a teacher, tells me, “but the time will come soon when we will be rewarded with Heaven."

There's a full summary of Haitian history at that link. Please click through and read it when you have a minute. In Wilbert's words, I hear Pat Robertson giggling. Pathetic slime rat.

I know Haiti needs help now more than ever before (except, perhaps, when they were trying to get out from under the French initially - what might be different now?) but I have no idea what we need to do. I'd start by saying that the US and other countries need to seriously consider more refugee status for Haitians. We need to help within the country more, but they've been a black hole for charity dollars in the past, with their kleptocracy and corruption. Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, the smaller organizations are doing what they can with non-financial help, but in that system, how much can they do?

I'm overwhelmed at the thought. "How to fix it" is not my area of expertise, or they'd have called me long ago. Does anyone really know?

One thing I'm sure of: Knowledge is power. Learning about the history of countries like Haiti (and Iraq, and Israel/Palestine, and Laos, and Bolivia, and even the US) correctly, unsanitized, places current problems in context, so that solutions can be built from a base of fact and strength, rather than on a pile of rubble. We need to make sure other people see and read that story, and others like it.

*Searching now, I can't find The Stone. I don't remember who wrote it. It was about a boy named, I think, Peter or Pierre, and I think he lived with his grandmother, and loggers were cutting the palms, killing them, killing their hearts - so heart of palm, which was loved and precious, could not be harvested.

Images from kafesukre, Tom Haskell - WFP,
UNDP Global, Haley MaeUN

Port au Prince from the hills above it, today

How terrifying to see from above ... but far worse from the streets below.

sfgate.com has a great list of organizations who need your help so that they can help the people of Haiti. It looks like Doctors Without Borders lost their surgical facilities - and Haiti needs them right now. They're on the list. UNICEF needs you, too, as does the Red Cross.

Haiti is already the most impoverished nation in the western hemisphere, and hasn't yet recovered from last year's hurricanes, let alone the decades of political upheaval and violence. There's only so much we can do ... but that's better than nothing.

One year in two minutes

Eirik Solheim compressed a year into 120 seconds of video, to share the seasonal changes he observes from his balcony.



There is a point at which I think I can see the trees grow.

He explains his process in his blog, so you can do it to. Let me know when you're done, so I can post it here.