Friday Fun: A Periodic Table of Science Bloggers

Just for the fun of it, check out Dave Bradley's Periodic Table of Science Bloggers at ScienceBase.com. Yours truly is hidden in there, but you have to know something about my recent blogs to track down the right "element" symbol. There are still a few elements available, so if you blog, jump in (I see Magma Cum Laude is there too)!

Who Sacrifices?

I'm off geological topics today, but I am talking about education, my other life concern...

I heard stories from my grandparents about life in the Great Depression and World War II, and I have heard and read plenty of accounts about how the country came together to try and deal with threats and the intractable problems of those times. My grandparents still had some of the ration stamps that they used during the war. It was an astounding time in the country's history that we came through a horrific war and terrible depression all the stronger for our collective pain.

This week, a number of my friends and fellow earth science teachers got some of the 23,000 pink slips that were handed out in California because of the pathetic budget situation in our state. I know that similar things are happening elsewhere across the country, and I share their fears and uncertainties. I'm one of the lucky teachers that continues to have a job, but the budget cuts have cut close to home, and I am concerned for the future of education in this state, and in the nation.

Shared sacrifice...it's how our society is going to survive and thrive.

For the last few years, the sacrifice has fallen disproportionately on different groups of people.

We have been and still are fighting two of the longest wars in our nation's history. Who is paying the price? Mostly our military personnel and the reservists who have been trapped in a de facto draft. They fight the wars of wizened old men in Washington, and 5,000 have paid the ultimate price. Tens of thousands more are maimed and scarred for life. Who has benefited? As far as I can tell, it is the companies and corporations that build the weapons, and oil companies who are securing future petroleum resources.

How many people have followed the rules and followed their dreams to buy their own home? Because of the greed and stupidity of the banks and insurance companies and their financial shenanigans, we are sacrificing in a big way now. Foreclosures and lost equity have devastated millions of families and destroyed the budgets of states all over the country. Those responsible for the financial meltdown sit in their Wall Street offices and continue to collect billions in bonuses.

How many people have followed the rules and purchased or tried to purchase health insurance, only to have their coverage denied or canceled because they had the bad form to actually get sick? The so-called "death panels" are with us now, and have been for a long time. They're called health insurance companies. People are sick and dying, and the company executives collect record salaries and bonuses.

So here we are in the worst recession since the 1930's, and where I live, some counties have unemployment rates comparable to the Great Depression. So who is sacrificing now? It is the unemployed, a massive group of people who want to work, are ready to work, but who cannot find work. It is the homeowners, who were buying into a dream, but were being sold a bill of goods by con men. It is the teachers, who have given over their lives to make the lives of children better, and the students, who will be all the more ignorant and ill-prepared for life.

Of course, there is a resource that we could draw on to help in these terrible times. Those in the uppermost tax brackets had their taxes cut a decade ago, and they have seen their incomes double, triple, quadruple and more while the wages of the middle class have lost ground to inflation. These people are the bank presidents, the executives of the weapons companies, the health insurance CEOs. Why haven't they been asked to sacrifice in these difficult times? We haven't asked them to sacrifice because our elected politicians who should be doing this are no longer elected, they are bought and paid for by the people who sit in those executive offices. Heaven forbid that we ask them to pay a price, in the form of slightly higher taxes, equal to what they would have paid a decade ago....

A simplistic stream of consciousness today, I know. But I recall a certain uncomfortable Bible passage, Luke 12:48: "And to whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required: and to whom they commit much, of him will they ask the more."

Earthquake Activity in Puerto Rico

There has been a fair amount of earthquake activity in the vicinity of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic in the last few days, with the largest at magnitude 4.1 (near Monte Plata, Dominican Republic), and more than a dozen at greater than magnitude 3. These quakes are happening several hundred miles east of Haiti, which was struck by the horrific quake in January.

Earthquake swarms like this are not unusual, and probably don't signify a threat of greater quakes to come. We have swarms in California constantly, but they quiet down, and nothing comes of it. If anything, though, the quakes should be a reminder that Haiti is not the only Caribbean Island to experience serious earthquakes. Puerto Rico has a "rich" history of earthquakes, with magnitude 7+ events in 1670, 1787, 1831, 1844, 1846, 1865, 1867, 1875, 1890, 1906, 1918, 1943 and 1946. Science Daily has a good rundown on the geologic environment and associated earthquake risk in the region.

Thanks to Edie for the tip!

The Other California: Getting All Excited About Natural Disasters....

I was kind of hard on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox cable "news" for their overwrought coverage of the Chile earthquake and resulting tsunami a few weeks ago (and it was justified, too, the coverage was terrible). Just the same, it's easy for anyone to get overwrought in the face of intense geologic events.

A few weeks ago, I was discussing the geologic story of Lassen Volcanic National Park, which erupted in the years of 1914-17, the last time any volcano erupted within California. Not too surprisingly, the eruption generated a tremendous amount of interest in the state and across the country. Kurt was kind enough to send along a photo of a page from the register of a hotel in Chester, which lies just a few miles from the national park. It provides a taste of what it was like to be caught in the middle of geologic events, and how easily rumors can be passed along. The eruptions began in May of 1914, and steam explosions and ash falls were happening almost every day for the next year. This passage is from June 14, 1914:

"June 14 blowouts 10:00 AM-6:45 PM

Man killed by flying boulder from the blowout this morning.

Same man came to life June 15.

He died again -----June 15.

Second man injured & two lost."

As far as I have heard or read, no one was killed by the eruptions of Lassen, but given the date, the notation is a garbled early mention of the story of three men who climbed the volcano, only to have it erupt while they were standing on the crater's edge. One of the men, Lance Graham, got hit by a rock and was knocked unconcious while his "friends" hightailed down the mountain, thinking Graham dead. They came back to get his body, and he later related having an out-of-body experience on top of the mountain*. In reference to the "died again" comment, Lance lived until 1955.

I was aware about the story of the three men, and I knew the story of a famous set of photographs taken by B. F. Loomis of one of the ash eruptions (one of which is shown below), but for the longest time I did not know that the two were of the same eruption. The three men are in the ash cloud in the picture!

One last coincidence...I was telling this story to my California Geology class a few years ago when a student in the back row chirped up and said I was talking about her great-grandfather! A small world...

*Hill, M.R., 1970, Mount Lassen is in eruption and there is no mistake about that: California Geology, November 1970, volume 23, no. 11, p. 211-227.

Hope for Taz, and Natural Selection in Action

A form of cancer has been devastating wild populations of the Tasmanian Devil in their homeland on the island south of Australia. Devil Facial Tumor Disease is being spread among the creatures as they fight and scratch each other; the tumors cause horrific disfigurement of their faces, ultimately making eating impossible. Something like 70% of the Tasmanian Devil population has died out since the disease was discovered in 1996. Estimates were that the entire species could be wiped out within 25 years.

There have been recent news reports that a colony of the Taz has been found that is resistant to the cancer. This is wonderful news, and if it is correct there may be a future for the species. The Taz is a unique animal. I'm not sure I would use the word "cute" to describe them, but they are part of one of the world's most interesting ecosystems, and they have much to teach us about how evolution shapes the world. I wrote extensively about the marsupials in one of my earliest posts (The Long Strange Journey of the Marsupials), and I continue to be fascinated by paleontological research in the Australian region.

The story of the day tells us of a different aspect of how evolution works. A common misunderstanding of natural selection is that animals somehow change in response to changes in their environment. If it gets drier, animals somehow magically develop a way of surviving on less water. If the vegetation changes, the animals survive by changing in a way as to better digest the new leaf types. If drought leaves foliage out of reach, giraffes develop longer necks to reach the higher leaves. In other words, animals somehow change themselves in order to survive. Natural selection doesn't work this way at all, and this model, Lamarkian evolution, was discredited long ago.

What does happen is that natural variations exist within species: some are taller, some smaller, some are darker, some lighter, some have slightly thicker fur or longer feathers, and these variations result from the recombination of genes in the the reproductive process (you don't look exactly like your parents; you have aspects of both of them and are a unique variation of their genetic material). Sometimes these variations are introduced by mutations in the DNA sequence. When the environment changes, some individuals are better adapted to survive those new conditions. It is the animals that possess these variations in advance of the change that are the ones who survive. They tend to be the ones that are able to pass along their genes to future generations.

No one could have predicted the rise of Devils Facial Tumor Disease, least of all the animals themselves. But in a small subset of the species there was a genetic trait already in existence that recognized the tumor cells as foreign. Who knows why or how it developed? That part doesn't matter. What matters is that the variation exists. And now the species may survive, and the descendants of this colony will be the ones who are able to pass their genes on. It is a great example of natural selection and evolution in action. And I hope a positive future for one of my favorite animals.

Today's picture was taken at a wild animal park outside Sydney, Australia. The photo may have been featured in the movie Inconvenient Truth, though I haven't found it there yet (you can find my name in the movie credits, though!).

Does Anyone Really Care About Rocks and Minerals?

Let's see...geology and earth science programs are imperiled at a number of colleges and high schools around the country. Teachers are being laid off. Federal and state geologic surveys are having their budgets deeply slashed, and some are proposed for elimination. These kinds of programs are critical to the health of our society as we face practically insurmountable problems of global warming, the end of plentiful fossil fuels, shortages of safe water, and many, many others. The programs and organizations are being cut because of a general lack of understanding of the geological sciences by legislators, and because they lack the kind of constituencies that other disciplines might have. Geologists don't have a lot of powerful friends. Is it due to a lack of public interest? I don't think so.

I'm drawing my conclusion from a totally non-scientific observation, seen in the photo above. You are seeing a huge crowd at a rock and mineral show. I'm not usually a real fan of these things, as in my experience, they are sometimes little more than highly commercialized ventures designed to separate cash from customers. There is, of course, nothing wrong with this, but so many times an opportunity is lost. I've got to say that our local rock and mineral show is a huge exception. The Mother Lode Mineral Society puts on a great show every March at our local fairgrounds. Thousands of people show up every year. What makes their effort so unique?

In a word, education! They devote a huge amount of space to displays and hands-on demonstrations for the visitors. The members of the society offer up wonderful displays of fossils, rocks and minerals, and presentations by paleontologists and mineralogists are going on practically every hour during the two day run.

Our corner of the Central Valley in California is generally lacking a good foundation of earth science education. Only a handful of our high school educators actually have degrees in the geological sciences, and most of the elementary teachers never take a geology class to fulfill their science requirements in college. Our children hardly have an opportunity to learn about subjects they are naturally curious about like volcanoes, earthquakes, fossils, rocks and minerals.

A child attending the show may arrive thinking dinosaurs are cool enough, but when they leave, they will know that our corner of the country had creatures more interesting than regular ol' dinos: there were sabre-tooth cats, woolly mammoths, giant sloths, and in earlier ages, giant mosasaurs and 45 foot long megalodon sharks. That's a Tylosaurus in the photo below. One of its relatives was found just thirty miles away from the fairgrounds in the Coast Ranges. If they pay close attention, the kids will know the difference between igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks.

The show does have vendors; lots of them. It's just so very nice that their wares are interspersed with so many wonderful displays and educational resources. Did I fall for their siren songs of crystalline temptations? Of course I did! I apparently have a weakness for isometric crystals. Put a beautiful crystal of pyrite, garnet, or fluorite under a bright light, and I melt. I got a little sample of green fluorite from the Rogerly Mine in northern England, courtesy of Rocks in a Hard Place of Modesto.

A Denizen of the Underworld in the Land of the Living

I was leading my students today on a geology field trip through California's Mother Lode. We were in the southern reaches of the 1848 Gold Rush country between the towns of Mariposa and Jamestown, with stops at some of the (near) ghost towns, the California State Mineral Exhibit with the 13-pound Fricot Nugget, and a surface exploration of one of the Gold Rush era mines.

It is a fascinating region to explore, with a wide variety of interesting rocks and minerals, including familiar ones like quartz and pyrite, and rarer minerals like mariposite and ankerite. For today's short post, I share a moment of reflection at a stop high above the Merced River in a canyon called Hell's Hollow.

The name is appropriate enough. The rocks are exposed along the canyon walls are serpentinite with some occasional pods of slightly altered peridotite, the rocks of our own physical underworld, the mantle. Like the underworld of myth and religion, the mantle is a place of unrelenting heat and metaphorical fire (the term igneous has the same root as ignite). Although we are finding that certain forms of life (like extremophile bacteria) survive deep within the crust, the mantle is not a place for the living. But sometimes, the rocks from deep places in our underworld are brought to the surface, and life can be tested against the chemistry of the land of no life.

As I walked along the ridge top, I was struck by the juxtaposition of this chunk of altered peridotite and the small yellow flowers that were growing in profusion across the thin soil. It turns out that few plants can tolerate these soils, as they contain high amounts of toxins such as nickel or chrome, and low amounts of needed nutrients like nitrogen and potassium. But some rare plants adapt to the harsh chemical conditions, and they are able to grow in profusion, and to our human sensibilities, beauty.

As I looked at this life among the rocks of the underworld, I thought of the strangeness of life on earth, our unlikely survival on this rock in space. Life is a struggle against the elements, and so many times that struggle is against the odds imposed upon us by society. Land of the Living is the title of a song by Lucy Kaplansky that I have always found haunting (lyrics here; listen here). The song is about surviving in bad times and bad situations. There has been too much grief in the world recently, in Haiti, in Chile, in Afghanistan, and so many other places, whether caused by natural disasters or human ones.

There are shadows of the lost on the faces I see
Brothers and strangers on this island of grief
There's death in the air but there's life on this street
There's life on this street

This is the land of the living
This is the land that's mine