Ane Eventfull Daye

Considering I fully intended not to step foot over my threshold, I've been very active indeed.  I've managed to do a desultory bit of the research necessary for my upcoming treatise on eastern Washington's geology, attempted to make pillow lava, blistered my feet (not related to pillow lava), disturbed ducks, topped up on all-natural vitamin D, and set my cat on fire.

Explanations and photos below the fold.

Memorial Day

Wise words from Hilzoy, recalled by Steve Benen:

I'm also reminded of something my friend Hilzoy wrote last year at this time: "Every Memorial Day (and not only then), I try to remind myself of what it means that people who serve in the military are willing to fight and die when our civilian leaders ask them to, whether they agree with those leaders or not. That's a stunning act of faith in American democracy. In return, we owe everyone who serves the effort to be the best citizens we can be, and to elect the people who are most likely to exercise good judgment about whether and when to ask them to risk their lives."

Agreed.

Tomes 2010: Parte the Third

We have some catching up to do.  My piles of unread books are growing faster than I can read them, but I'm trying to keep up.  It's only gonna get worse after I make my pilgrimage to Powell's in a couple of weeks.

Without further ado, then.

The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution

I adore this book, not to put too fine a point on it.  It's one of the best books on evolution I've ever read: clear, concise and beautifully written.  I know that other books make a strong case for evolution, but I found this one of the strongest.  And it's full of things I never knew about, like "the bloodless fish of Bouvet Island."  Yes, seriously, there are fish in the sea that haven't got any blood.  They're fascinating.

That's just the beginning.  Sean B. Carroll goes on to explain "the everyday math of evolution," which explained said math in such a way that even a complete math ignoramus such as myself could grasp it.  He made it easy to understand how even the tiniest advantage can, over evolutionary time (which is sometimes remarkably short), add up to big changes.  And he doesn't stop there, of course - he shows us the immortal genes, which have been passengers in a great many species; how new genes can be created from the old; explores convergent evolution; sifts through fossil genes, and quite a bit more.

It's not a huge book, but it feels like a huge book - there's so much in here so clearly explained that it feels like taking a full semester of evolution, including evo-devo.  I plan to read this one again and again, not to mention recommend it to anyone who's confused about how and why evolution works.

The Restless Northwest: A Geological Story

I've been trying to learn more about the crazy-quilt geology in my backyard, and Hill Williams's little book is an excellent place to start.  I learned quite a bit in these pages, including about a tectonic plate I hadn't known existed (it's dead now, alas).  This book covers it all, from the time when the Pacific Northwest barely existed to the present, with a glimpse into the future.  It also got me more interested in the Glacial Lake Missoula floods, which led to more informed adventures in eastern Washington than I would have otherwise have had.

Helpful sidebars explore some geological concepts in greater depth, and there are plenty of diagrams, illustrations and photographs to support the text.  This book isn't a big as Northwest Exposures, a book I read last year and found useful, but it feels more substantial and less hurried for all its brevity.  That, right there, is a sign of a writer who knows his craft!

Crater Lake: Gem of the Cascades

The link above is to the 2005 version.  I haven't got that one.  I've got the one from 1982, which proved amusing, because plate tectonics was still a new and astonishing theory rather than a respectable middle-aged one.  I picked it up at Half-Price Books because it was cheap and it was about geology.  It's a good guide to the Crater Lake region, although some of the science was rather obviously out of date.  There were also ten tons of typos and a horrible abuse of the comma splice, which actually made it more fun to read.  It's one of those little guides that don't get a lot of spit-and-polish editing, and the typeface made it look like it just came off the typewriter.  All of these quirks may have been remedied in the 2005 edition, alas.

For all its quirks, it really was a good introduction to Crater Lake, and you can tell that K.R. Cranson loves his subject.  He provides plenty of photographs and helpful information on how to find neat things, which will make my eventual trip to Crater Lake all the more fruitful.

Fossils: The History of Life

Richard Fortey is one of my favorite writers ever, and while this book doesn't contain as much of his prose as Life or Earth, he more than makes up for that with his gorgeous photos.  Page after page after page of glorious, fantastic fossils in full, glossy color.  Yum! 

This is a kind of all-purpose book, which would be a good gift for anyone you know who's just now starting to develop an interest in fossils.  It explores everything from how fossils are formed to how to recognize them, collect, clean and even use them.  Any good fossil guide does that, of course, but this one goes further, explaining what they tell us about life, the Universe and everything.  It's even got a section on fossil DNA - not like Sean Carroll's exploration, which talks about genes fossilized within genomes, but actual fossil DNA dug out of frozen mammoths and such.  That chapter alone is worth buying the book, especially if you have an older copy without it.

This book is perfect: informative, with coffee-table quality illustrations in an actual readable size.  And it's by Richard Fortey, who is not only one hell of a paleontologist but also one hell of a wordsmith.  I actually read this one very slowly, interspersed with other books, because I didn't want it to end too soon.

Stories in Stone: Travels Through Urban Geology

I have one quibble with this book: it should have included color photographs.  That's all it's really missing, though.  David B. Williams, who ended up interested in urban geology because he got stuck in Boston after living in the wild, wonderful geologic paradise of Utah.  Buildings clad in stone became his friends, a link to the natural world.  This book eventually resulted, and you'll probably never look at a city the same way after reading it.

Each chapter is about a different stone: brownstone, limestone, gneiss, marble, travertine and more.  Architecture connects to geology connects to oddball tidbits of history and human endeavor (and sometimes silliness) in one seamless whole.  And there's a website.  And David sometimes does geological tours of Seattle.  I'm so there!

This is another book I didn't want to put down, because it felt like it was introducing me to quite a few friends - the Getty Museum, the petrified log gas station, and others - that I didn't want to part from so soon.  And it's given me ideas for a great many more adventures.  Inspiring, informative, intriguing - perfect!

That's it for the moment.  There's going to be plenty more soon, though, one of which will occasion a discussion about the etiquette of cannibalism.  How's that for a cliffhanger, eh?

What I Have Learned by Watching Carmen

Don Jose is an absolute idiot.

*Addendum: It's pretty damned rude for an interviewer to keep interviewing a singer when the singer's bleeding all over the place.  At least get the poor guy a tissue....

Two Views on NOMA

For those of you who, like me, find the idea of non-overlapping magisteria laughable, some funny bits from Jerry Coyne

And Jesus and Mo

I'd say something deep, profound and possibly even meaningful on the subject, but I went to the mall this evening.  I am two pairs of jeans and a few bras richer, and about 40,000 neurons poorer.  This is why all of the clothes in my closet, aside from a few shirts picked up at concerts and tourist traps, are well over two years old.  Shopping sucketh mightily.  And yes, I'm a female and I'm saying I despise shopping for clothes.  There are a few of us in the world.  I was once tempted to convert to Islam just so I wouldn't have to worry about it, but burkas aren't very comfortable in the summer and there's still the matter of the clothes under them.

Dumbfuckery du Jour

My darlings, I feel like dog meat, and I'm not talking the gourmet you-can-practically-serve-it-in-a-restaurant variety, but the cheap-ass Wal-Mart variety that's likely got more bits of gristle, fat and bone fragments than existed in the actual animal kind.  Yup, Aunty Flow's on the way, and bringing with her all of the aches, pains, hot flashes, and terminal exhaustion she can muster.  It makes it all too easy to look at the floods of stupidity pouring forth from our right wing and say, "Fuck it, I'm going to bed.  Forever."

I'd meant to pull together the remarkable examples of utterly outrageous anti-gay rhetoric pouring forth like explosive diarrhea from the rabid right, but I didn't have the energy.  Thankfully, Steve Benen did:

Unable to come up with compelling justifications for an expensive, discriminatory policy that undermines military readiness, religious right groups have gone off the deep end.

Here's how the Family Research Council envisions things going if Don't Ask, Don't Tell is repealed: first, more straight soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines will be fellated in their sleep against their will. Then, commanders afraid of being labeled homophobes will refuse to do anything about it. Eventually, the straight service members will quit out of fear.

On a conference call with reporters today, FRC Senior Fellow for Policy Studies Peter Sprigg delivered the results of what he said was the first-ever study of "homosexual assault" in the military. Joined by several former military officers opposed to allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the armed forces, he warned Congress that the DADT repeal language currently under discussion with the agreement of the White House will turn the U.S. military into a terrifying free-rape zone where no heterosexual is safe.

The Family Research Council, which is a religious right powerhouse, has quite a case. As the right-wing group sees it, 8.2% of sexual assaults in the military were homosexual in nature. (I have no idea if that's true, and it's best not to take the FRC's word for it.) FRC added that less than 3% of the national population is gay (again, a dubious number). Ergo, gay soldiers commit more sexual assaults than straight soldiers, and ending "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" would unleash a wave of gay sexual predators who will terrorize American fighting forces.

Who could argue with logic like this?

It wasn't just the Family Research Council. The FRC's friends at the American Family Association have begun pushing the line that Adolf Hitler was gay, and he recruited "homosexuals to make up his Stormtroopers," because Hitler believed that only gay soldiers "had no limits and the savagery and brutality they were willing to inflict on whomever Hitler sent them after."

That last one really made me laugh, because I'd been under the impression that the FRC and its fellow travelers hated teh gayz because they don't make bebbies and don't act like manly men.  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that they also believe gays are killing machines par excellence.  After all, this is a crowd that has plenty of practice clinging to mutually-exclusive ideas and are experts in losing all contact with reality.

Steve, alas, missed some of the best hysteria on offer:

Today, right-wing hate-monger Cliff Kincaid’s group America’s Survival launched a repulsive fear campaign against repeal, warning that “disease-tainted gay blood threatens our troops.” The group’s abhorrent video — and the 60 page report that accompanies it — present ludicrous stereotypes of gay men and women, going so far as to claim that “open and active homosexuals into the U.S. military could very well result in the spreading of deadly HIV-tainted blood throughout the ranks”

[snip]

Kincaid goes on to warn that repealing DADT will lead to “transgendered individuals who want to dress up as members of the opposite sex and would cry ‘discrimination’ if they are not allowed to do so.” Ignoring the fact that service members of both genders often wear identical uniforms, Kincaid’s only example of this allegedly real threat is a fictional character from the TV show MASH.

Those of you who actually watched M*A*S*H*will  recall that Klinger wasn't even a real transvestite, but a man attempting to earn himself a psychiatric discharge:

Klinger first appeared in the episode "Chief Surgeon Who?". In that episode's original script, Corporal Klinger was written as an effeminate gay man. However, the writers subsequently decided that it would be more interesting to have Klinger be heterosexual, but wear dresses in an attempt to gain a Section 8 discharge.

So this fucktard not only doesn't understand that gays openly serving in the military aren't going to be rampaging around like vampires subjecting fellow soldiers to STDs (which he apparently thinks can't possibly be introduced by regular ol' heterosexual sex), but can't even comprehend M*A*S*H*.  This is supremely pathetic.  I mean, for fuck's sake, I understood two things about M*A*S*H* quite easily: a) it's fictional and b) Klinger really wanted out of the war, so he paraded around in dresses.  Either I was a freakishly smart child*, or he's far dumber than a five year-old. 

It seems that with majorities coming around to the notion that gays aren't the epitome of evil, and with DADT on the verge of being dishonorably discharged from the military, the rabid right's frothing even worse than usual.  If we're lucky, they'll give themselves apoplexy over this and leave the rest of us in peace.

*Those tempted to plump for the former should bear in mind the fact that math pretty much defeated me.

Oh, the Places We Will Go!

My heart sister recently commented that it looks like we'll have quite a bit of exploring to do when her family's up this way.  We certainly will!  And I know just the place to take my honorary nephew:

They're standing outside the Ginkgo Gem Shop, which not only has the kind of statuary guaranteed to delight a kid, but a lot of educational toys that will edify and amuse at a reasonable price. 

Photos courtesy of my intrepid companion, who snapped these while I was making a beeline for the rocks.

Dumbfuckery du Jour

Heh.  Finally, someone so extreme the Cons On High are scrambling to ensure they don't have to stand about uncomfortably pretending he's not an outrageous fucktard, as they're having to do with Rand "Liberty Means Segregated Lunch Counters" Paul:

North Carolina Republicans are circulating court documents that suggest a far-right Tea-Party-backed congressional candidate claimed to be the Messiah, tried to raise his stepfather from the dead, believed God would drop a 1,000-mile high pyramid as the New Jerusalem on Greenland, and found the Ark of the Covenant in Arizona. 

Tim D'Annunzio also has written that he wants to abolish several key government departments, including the IRS. But there's more going on here than just another wacky conservative politician. The effort by GOP leaders to stop D'Annunzio at all costs offers an intriguing test case of their ability to keep control of the party in the face of challenges from the Tea Party wing. 

Good luck with that.  You know, this is what happens when you try to win the affections of the most extreme right-wing freaks after having fucked up the job of governing so badly that the vast majority of sane people want nothing more to do with you.  Eventually, you end up facing down the barrel of extreme insanity, and realize this nutjob may end up being your candidate.

Horrifying, innit?  Well, for Cons, anyway.  I'm just heartily entertained by their discomfiture.  The only thing that could amuse more is if D'Annunzio wins the runoff and ends up as the actual GOP candidate.  That's a political contest I'd have to put on DVD so that I could enjoy it again and again.

Get A New Room, You Two

Woozle and Mike Debate Thread Mark Something-or-other.  I've lost count and I'm too lazy to look.

Have unmoderated fun, you two.

Side Trip Off the Fossil Freeway

Well, my darlings, I can't take you Crusin' the Fossil Freeway myself, since they don't allow cameras, but the Burke Museum did have a few things outdoors my intrepid companion and I were able to photograph, so you'll have a little benefit from my day's adventure.  And, at long last, I ditched the hairtie, and my intrepid companion snapped a photo of me with my hair down!

The boulder I'm standing next to was hauled off from the North Cascades by a glacier and dragged all the way to Issaquah.  For those who aren't from the area, that's a helluva long way.  And so we have this enormous rock that's all shiny and smooth with grooves in:

The thing's bright and shiny as a meteor.  It's pretty awesome.

For more awesome, follow me after the jump.

Dumbfuckery du Jour

A cornucopia of dumbfuckery for ye today, my darlings.

Let us lead with one of the dumbest states in the union, my old home state of Arizona, where the governor has resorted to puppet shows in an attempt to ridicule her critics:

In recent days, the right has been attacking Attorney General Eric Holder and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano for criticizing Arizona’s draconian new immigration law without having read the entire text of the bill. Now, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) has employed a frog puppet to mock Napolitano and Holder in a newly released campaign video.

[snip]

While Holder and Napolitano should probably have read the bill, they were, as Andrea Nill writes on the Wonk Room, “likely briefed by someone who had read SB-1070 in detail.” Brewer’s video simply attempts to distract the public from the substantive problems with the legislation.

The last refuge of the xenophobic ignorant is a sock-puppet theater.  Oh, and it turns out Arizona's law isn't just very likely unconstitutional, but in violation of international covenants as well.  When my old home state fucks up, they certainly fuck up big.

This year's an election year, and the Cons have quite the field developing.  We have Rand "Fuck Civil Rights and ADA" Paul, whose dumbfuckery only begins with his confusion over the Civil Rights Act and continues on through a veritable bazaar of inane loony-libertarian beliefs.  But don't let his burning stupidity blind you to the glow coming off of other candidates, such as Idaho's Vaughn "Don't Care What It Is" Ward:

In Idaho, Vaughn Ward is running for the Republican nomination in Idaho's 1st House district, and has received a fair amount of support from prominent right-wing voices. On Friday, former half-term Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Fox News) even made a campaign appearance with him.

But Ward is quickly becoming one of the year's most embarrassing candidates.

Idaho Republican Vaughn Ward has already come under fire for mimicking other candidates' policy language on his website, but now the congressional candidate is facing accusations of plagiarizing from another source: President Barack Obama.

In a kickoff speech for his campaign in January, Ward used language that closely followed Obama's 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention, and a conservative Idaho blog spliced together the two sets of remarks to show their similarities, accusing Ward of cribbing from Obama's remarks.

After watching the video released by a local far-right activist, it's hard to deny the fact that parts of Ward's speech were lifted directly, word for word, from Obama's 2004 speech. In fact, it seems more than a little bizarre that Ward and his campaign would assume no one would notice -- that '04 convention speech was pretty widely seen. Someone was bound to think, "Wait, that sounds kind of familiar."

[snip]

What's more, Ward seems to keep running into trouble. Last week, he was asked in a debate whether he would vote in Congress to support Puerto Rican statehood, Ward said he opposes "extending statehood to some, to any other country," adding that he doesn't care "what country ... wants to become part of America." Told that Puerto Rico is an American territory, not a foreign country, Ward said, "I really don't care what it is."

Ignorance and unoriginality!  Quite the combo.  I'm sure he'd be the Teabaggers' most favoritest candidate if he wasn't filching bits from Obama's speeches.  It's apparent no one ever educated Ward on what a U.S. territory is and why it's important to understand the difference between one of our own territories and an actual foreign country, but I'd at least have thought he'd be schooled that Obama = Hitler/Mao/Stalin/TheAntichrist.  Just seems strange to me that a far-right nutjob who thinks all Puerto Ricans are filthy furriners would filch from someone so despised by the rabid right wackaloons he's trying to woo.

And yet, even his weapons-grade stupidity just doesn't seem quite the match for someone who doesn't even realize Jack Bauer's a fictional character:

Chuck DeVore, a California state legislator and Tea Party-backed candidate for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, has a new Web video claiming that "Jack Bauer," the protagonist of the action-adventure show 24, would support him for Senate. 

I wish I could say I was feeling more confident about solid Democratic majorities being comfortably elected this fall, but I'm not sure - too many voters don't pay attention to politics, and so those middle-of-the-road conservatives who reflexively vote R might not notice that all the sane Rs have become Ds, and all that's left with Rs after their names are a bunch of batshit insane fucktards without a lick of common decency or common sense in 'em.  George was right: the Republican party's in trouble.  I just hope staunch Republican voters realize it in time.

Bonus dumbfuckery o' the day: Faux News craftily cut out the applause for Obama's West Point speech.   Fair and balanced in name, but not in game, as always.

And here's another Faux News Moment that makes me wish I had a clip of Rocko's Modern Life handy.  Alas, all I can do is point you to the relevant quote:

Filburt Shellbach: Ed! Ed! You have been charged with treason. How do you plead, froggy-lips?
Heffer Wolfe: He looks funny.
Filburt Shellbach: Shut up! Ed, I am your conscience.
Heffer Wolfe: I'm his conscience, too.
Filburt Shellbach: What?
Heffer Wolfe: Don't say I, say we.
Filburt Shellbach: What?
Heffer Wolfe: We! We!
Filburt Shellbach: All right. Wee-wee!
Heffer Wolfe: [Snickers] You said "wee-wee." Say it again.
Filburt Shellbach: Wee-wee!

Hey, if AZ's governor can attack people with frogs, I can hit Faux with a Nickelodeon kid's show.  At least Rocko is actually funny.

Mount St. Helens Redux

I wish I'd had The Fire Below Us recorded when I did the Mount St. Helens post last week, because it's led me to some awesome extra stuff.  At the beginning of the program, they play the audio of David Johnston's last transmission.  I'd never actually heard it before.  He sounds excited and rushed, the consummate geologist doing his job in the most intense of circumstances, an instant before his death.

That got me to searching the intertoobz for a recording, which I didn't find.  But I did find this amazing audio of the eruption, recorded by a young man in Newport, Oregon who was wise enough to think that maybe those thuds were worth getting on tape.

Then I stumbled across Alan Levine's post on St. Helens's anniversary, which contains this astounding photo of a pyroclastic flow, which I'll let Alan tell you about:

In graduate school, I ended up studying past volcanic activity. I dont recall a decision to be safe and not follow the live eruptions, it just was the flow of my interest at the time. One project I worked on was studying a later, smaller eruption at Mt St Helens in 1980, on August 7. This one was of interest because Rick Hoblitt, another USGS field observer, had captured a series of photos of the front of a pyroclastic flow as it cascaded down a channel of the volcano, and since his camera had a time stamp, he was able to calculate its velocities by location the front of the flow on a map.

You know what, that takes balls of adamantium right there.  I mean, we're talking about snapping photos of the front of a pyroclastic flow.  Y'know, the stuff that can move at speeds approaching 90 miles per hour and run anywhere from 600-1350 degrees Fahrenheit.  I know that the only reason I'd be snapping such a series of pictures is because I'd be figuring, "I'm dead whether I take cover or not, so why the hell not?  Maybe the film won't melt, and the folks who find my body will have pics that grant me posthumous fame."  It would have nothing to do with being cool under pressure and being a consummate professional and all that, and everything to do with mind-numbing, fatalistic terror.  Only, you'd never catch me snapping a series of shots of a pyroclastic flow in the first place because the closest I ever want to get to an explosively erupting volcano is roughly two to three states away, depending on the size of the state.  So the next time I go drinking, I'm raising one for David, and one for Rick's adamantium balls. 

While we're at it, let's have a cold one for Dave Crockett.  He's the gentleman Cujo mentioned in his comment to that post, who was caught by the eruption and videotaped the ordeal.  Here's the news report, raw footage and all:



Pretty intense stuff.

And with that, I must away to bed, or else I shall faceplant in the fossils.  I leave you with my sincerest wishes that you not get to witness a volcanic eruption quite that up close and personal unless you really really want to, and then I hope you're as fortunate as Dave Crockett.

Creationist Sidewalks Must Be Very Dirty

They've obviously never hosed mud off of them.  Otherwise, they would understand why streams cut through loosely-consolidated pyroclastic deposits so much more quickly than metamorphic rock.  And they'd know why we laugh so very hard when they try to compare stream erosion in the area of Mount St. Helens with the Colorado's long saw through the Colorado Plateau.

I feel for the trees that lost their lives so that this drivel could be published.  At least part of that small forest will find a useful new life as post-consumer recycled paper.

What I Did...

...when I was supposed to be working on a post about geology.

No, really, I meant to do the first of many posts about the geology I saw whilst visiting eastern Washington.  But I woke up with this sudden urge to weed through my books for tomes no longer of use which can be traded for fresh meat at Powell's Books in Portland, and that led to a complete rearrangement of my shelves.  This, my darlings, is no small task in this household.  It took hours.

Then I decided the house needed to be cleaned.  The fact that I practically had to excavate to get to the kitchen counters and that the carpet was covered with little black patches of cat hair that caused it to resemble a spotted leopard made cleaning an obvious necessity.

More hours spent doing that, and by the end of it all, my body ached worse than it did after climbing steep, rocky hills in eastern Washington in the blazing heat.  So I took a nap.  Afterward, I started watching Carmen while I regained consciousness.  I didn't know opera was still allowed to extol the virtues of cigarettes, but special dispensation is apparently given to the classics.

There's only so much opera on teevee I can take in a night, so I've switched to 10 Things You Didn't Know About Earthquakes.  One thing I surely never knew about earthquakes was that one of their causes is the melting of ice sheets.  Normally, the ground rebounds slowly and gradually from all that weight (the technical term is isostatic rebound, for those who, like me, take pleasure in knowing such things).  But in some cases, the sudden release of pressure causes earthquakes along weak zones in the crust, and you get things like the Parve Fault in Sweden, which was a helluva big earthquake in its day - probably around magnitude 8.6 or so.  That certainly made my eyes pop.  And, it turns out, it has some relevance to my own dear Puget Sound.

Before I go to bed, I'm probably going to cut all of the nice pictures of Mount St. Helens out of a ridiculous creationist book about same that I picked up off the clearance shelves at Half-Price Books by mistake.  It's amusing to flip through, watching them desperately try to use a volcanic eruption to prove that the earth really truly is only 6,000 years old.  And the pictures are lovely, so now that I'm done laughing at their inane pseudo-geology, it's time for the old snippety-snip.  At least then the book will have been of some good use.

None of this has helped me actually write the damned geology post I meant to write today, and tomorrow's doubtful since I'll be off playing with fossils at the Burke Museum.  But we shall see.

Organizing Digital Photos Should Not Be Physically Exhausting

And yet I feel I just walked the entire length of Grand Coulee.  Argh.

I've very nearly got my shit together, though, and thee shall have treatises on the geological wonders of the Scablands very soon.