En Tequila Es Verdad

Ye Maclargehuge Announcement: ETEV Joining Freethought Blogs

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Oh, yes. I am mean, I am cruel, I am forcing all of you to update blogrolls and RSS feeds and all that rot: En Tequila Es Verdad is moving to Freethought Blogs on October 1st.

Look, was I really gonna say no when the opportunity to get all of my beloved geobloggers in front of more interested eyeballs was presented to me? Would I actually decline the chance to blog alongside so many of my personal heroes? Dude. PZ Myers, Stephanie Szvan, Ed Brayton, Ophelia Benson, Jason Thibeault, Greta Christina, Jen McCreight, and oh so many more... How could I say no? I couldn't. No way.

ETEV will be changing location, the furniture will look different, and the neighbors will be closer, but otherwise, things remain pretty much the same. I'll still be blogging on the same subjects and schedule. Really, the only major change you'll have to endure is ads. Freethought Blogs has to pay the bills, you see. But otherwise, things won't change all that much.

So in that sense, it's not a big deal. But in another sense, this is huge. See: blogging alongside heroes above. I didn't expect that to happen. But I'm very glad it did.

I hope you'll all come over to the new place once it launches. This new venue shall be a fantastic place to meet new folks and make them, like us, adorers of the good science of rock-breaking.

New URL: http://freethoughtblogs.com/entequilaesverdad/.

RSS feed, go here to grab: http://freethoughtblogs.com/entequilaesverdad/feed/.

Tomes 2011: All Science All the Time Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 07:19:00 +0000

Oh, dear. I think I just heard the sound of bookshelves screaming in anticipation. Poor overloaded darlings. They'll just have to toughen up and take it, or rely on e-readers to lighten their load. We've got some excellent books on tap this edition.

Source

The Stuff of Thought

There are two things Steven Pinker always combines that I adore: the science of the mind, and language. This book delivers both in copious amounts. A few myths are dispelled, quite a few more insights given, and there's an entire chapter on metaphor that should have any self-respecting writer screaming for joy.

The chapter on names shall greatly interest those following the Nymwars Saga.

And it's all delivered in the gorgeous, clear, playful prose Steven's known for. There's absolutely nothing not to love in this book that I could find.

It's meant to be third in a trilogy: the first two were The Language Instinct and Words and Rules. But if you haven't read the other two, no worries. This one stands comfortably alone. That's not to say you shouldn't read all three, especially The Language Instinct, which is fantastic.

Source

Crater Lake: Gem of the Cascades

This is a reasonably comprehensive and utterly enthralling book on Crater Lake. I've read a lot about Mount Mazama and the eruption that created Crater Lake, but this book contained a lot of things those other sources didn't. It covers everything from its discovery to its future. The color illustrations are delicious, the geologic information clearly presented and easy to understand without being melodramatic or simplified beyond toleration, and the little info boxes and explanatory diagrams add to rather than distract from the whole. I dipped into it during our Oregon trip, meaning to skim a bit. I finished it before we'd left for home. It's that easy to read, but I didn't finish it feeling like I'd been spoon-fed: my brain felt pleasantly full of completely intriguing information. And it certainly made visiting Crater Lake more interesting.

I really can't recommend this one highly enough. And, bonus, the 3rd edition is practically up-to-the-minute.

Source is moi.

Where Terranes Collide

Okay, so I had to snap a photo of it to get a cover image, and it's rather hard to find, but if you have any interest whatsoever in the North American Cordillera, then the effort to acquire this book shall be rewarded. It was written by C.J. Yorath, who worked for the Geological Survey of Canada for a great many years. The man knows his stuff. He knows it so damned well that even if you are a grammar guru, you will be able to forgive the occasional typos.

There were a lot of ups and downs in this book - up one set of mountains and down another, from the Rockies to the coast. He takes you on a field trip through the chaos of a subduction zone, and it's one hell of a ride. Then, he introduces you to the people behind the data. I love the paeans to the geologists he's known and worked with. And I love the inside look at the way geology happens - arguments over data, banging on rocks, the rough stuff that the public doesn't get to see before beautifully polished results are printed. This felt like being an insider. And now I'm going to have to go hunt down his other books...

Source

Musicophilia

I dearly love Oliver Sacks. I dearly love music. I dearly loved Oliver Sacks talking about music. This book is a total treat. If you've ever read any of Oliver's work before, you know his prose is like really good chocolate and that the subjects he explores are fascinating. This exploration of music and the brain caused me some difficulties, because I had things I was supposed to do and didn't do them. Went to lie abed and read.

There are so many incredible stories in here: of how music affects people who are so damaged it seems nothing can reach them, of how music affects us, the weird things and the wonderful things music can do. I have to admit that it scared the crap out of me at times: when you're reading Oliver Sacks, you realize just how many things can go drastically wrong with a human brain. But it also delighted me right down to my toes. If you have any love of neuroscience, music, or stories about human beings doing remarkable things, you'll delight in this book, too.

Source

Road Guide to Mount St. Helens

I'm not actually going to say much of anything about this book. It's not because it's bad - far from it. It's a wonderful, handy little guide suitable for slipping into a pocket or purse as you explore Mount St. Helens. Pick up a copy at the visitor's center at Silver Lake on your way up.

But I won't tell you all about it, because you can go read it for yourself, right now. Just click the link above. The authors were kind enough to put in online, for free.

So go on, then. Go have a read. Just this once, your wallet and your bookshelves will both be sighing with relief, and you'll still get to enjoy a good book.

Prelude to a Catastrophe: Silver Lake

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 07:18:00 +0000

Let's have a road trip, shall we? Yes, I do know we were in the middle of Oregon, getting ready to shove our noses against some particularly delicious road cuts, but this is a virtual car - we can skip states in the blink of an eye.

So hop in. We're on our way to Mount St. Helens today. The skies are very nearly clear - by Washington state standards, anyway. Warm sun mingles with a cool breeze that snickers about autumn's imminent arrival. You've got your nose plastered to the car window as we drive up Spirit Lake Memorial Highway from Castle Rock. All you're seeing at this point are low hills and a flat bit of valley, plastered with green stuff. Biology is a perennial problem for geologists round here. You can barely see the hills for the trees. And you can't even tell we're driving along the shore of a lake. But here it is: visible in satellite views, anyway.

View Larger Map

We turn off at the Mount St. Helens Visitor's Center. Lovely building, quite a lot of nice displays, and a nice nature trail along Silver Lake.

And you're just burning for your first glimpse of Mount St. Helens her own self, but the clouds aren't cooperating. That's quite all right, because I want you to focus on the lake for a bit. Maybe it'll help if I tell you Mount St. Helens created it.

Silver Lake, looking east.

This isn't the best place to be if you don't like (geologically) frequent lahars. The Toutle River, which has its origins on the north and west flanks of St. Helens, passes by just a bit north of here. It has a distressing habit of frequently channeling lahars. Some of them happen when Mt. St. Helens has a bit of an eruptive episode. Others happen when debris dams holding back bodies of water like Spirit Lake fail. Next thing you know, there's quite a lot of rock-filled mud sloshing round the place. Happens all the time.

Now you're looking for deposits from the 1980 eruption, aren't you? Don't bother. Even if the riotous vegetation wasn't hiding all the lovely geology, you wouldn't see much. 1980, for all it left a mark on us, didn't really touch Silver Lake. Those lahars kept themselves to the river channel, and only left deposits about two meters thick. A mere six feet. Nothing a river can't clear out in thirty years.

Not that it didn't get interesting. Here's a nice USGS photo of a house on the riverbank near Tower Road, not far from here, that shows how much damage was caused even thirty miles from the volcano:

USGS Photograph taken on July 16, 1980, by Lyn Topinka.

See how the paint got stripped and the windows busted out on the first floor? And the poor tree trunks are a bit scoured. Roads didn't fare well, either - State Route 504 wasn't exactly drivable two miles upstream of the Coal Bank Bridge.

USGS Photograph taken July 5, 1980, by Robert Schuster.

Certainly no shoulder now, is there?

I'm showing you these images to impress upon you the power of a lahar, and as a prelude to telling you this: the one that created Silver Lake was a hell of a lot bigger.

The lake's only 2,500 years old. One day, around the same time Greece was starting to really come into its own and the Buddha was holding up flowers and waiting for one man to smile, Mount St. Helens had an episode. It's called the Pine Creek eruptive period. Oh, baby, she blew. Pyroclastic flows everywhere, and four lahars. We're especially interested in PC1, the lahar that created the placid little lake we're viewing.

Silver Lake, looking west.

Mount St. Helens has a habit of unleashing debris flows that dam up lakes. She'd dammed Spirit Lake (or possibly an ancestor thereof), but hadn't done a thorough job of it. The debris dam failed repeatedly. The first massive outburst scooped up all the lovely loose alluvial and volcanic deposits it encountered and mixed them up in a nice, thick lahar that went thundering down the Toutle River. PC1, as it's known, was historic, the largest ever to travel down the river. Above Coalbank Rapids, it discharged at 200,000-300,000 meters per second. To put that in some perspective, imagine the middle bit of the Amazon racing down the Toutle River valley at flood stage. Now imagine it isn't merely water, but a slurry of rocky mud. That's huge. Far larger than those paltry little lahars we witnessed during the May 1980 eruption.

And when it reached Coalbank Rapids, it found itself facing the same problem as a stadium crowd stampeding out the exit at a sold-out concert: a constricted egress. All that mud had nowhere to go but up-valley. It spread out, burying the landscape under thick sediment and rock, and a little tributary creek named Outlet Creek discovered it suddenly didn't have an outlet anymore.

It wasn't strong enough to cut through that enormous quantity of debris, so it ponded behind the lahar. Silver Lake is, in fact, a lahar-margin lake, and a rather large example of the breed. It's over fifteen square kilometers. But before you get too impressed, keep in mind it's only about 5 meters (16ft) deep at its deepest. Some measurements have it shallower. If you stand there waiting for a catastrophic flood as the lahar dam fails here, you're going to be desperately bored. They actually had to install a weir and a drainage channel in 1971 because it got backed up in stormy weather.

Silver Lake shore, looking east

So, as you look east hoping for a glimpse of St. Helens, keep in mind you're looking toward the spot where a ginormous lahar wreaked havoc a geologic moment ago. Go diving - okay, probably more like wading - in the east bit of the lake, and you can find that old lahar under all the detritus. Down here at the western end, where the lahar didn't reach, it's mostly clay, silt and sand, with a bit of peat. I swear this lake's aspiring to become a coal field someday.

The little basin it fills is surrounded by mid-to-late Eocene volcanics, lots of basalts and basaltic andesite. This area's seen a lot of volcanism as continents collided. Kick around this quadrangle (pdf), and you'll even find our old friends the Columbia River Basalts, along with the birth of the Cascades and plenty of deposits from Mount St. Helens her own self.

And there she is, the grand old girl, just barely peeking out from the clouds at last:

Mount St. Helens from Silver Lake

We'll kick round here a bit longer, among the birds and dragonflies and peaceful marshy lake life, before we get back in the car and head up the road to see firsthand just what a lahar does to your nice new house.

References:

Evarts, Russel C., Geologic Map of the Silver Lake Quadrangle, Cowlitz County, Washington
(pdf).

Scott, K.M., 1989, Magnitude and frequency of lahars and lahar-runnout flows in the Toutle-Cowlitz River system: U. S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1447-B (pdf).

Epic Excitement: Reading Quad Map Documentation

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 07:14:00 +0000

I'm not being facetious. I spent a good portion of Sunday reading the pamphlet for the Geologic Map of the Silver Lake Quadrangle, Cowlitz County, Washington (pdf). And I was enthralled.

There's high excitement in that data. There's a whole history contained in it, over forty million years of oceans, deltas, volcanic eruptions, flood basalts, floods, lahars - enough stuff to keep a disaster buff busy for days. Yes, at a glance, it's couched in dry scientific language. There are words in there I had to look up: I had no idea what they meant, my Greek and Latin are still too poor to puzzle out meanings from roots, and even several years of intensive reading in geology hasn't exposed me to all of the terms. I discovered paludal. I love paludal. Now I know it comes from the Latin word palus, which means "marsh," and so means "sediments that accumulated in a marsh environment." I still think lacustrine and fluvial are prettier words, just as lakes and streams are often prettier than marshes, but who cares if it isn't the kind of word that sparkles as it rolls off the tongue? Think of the Scrabble games you could win!

And I came across an old friend: hyaloclastite. Check this out:

The massive to well-bedded, poorly sorted, mafic tuffs typically consist of angular, commonly scoriaceous basalt clasts cemented by abundant zeolites and yellowish clays. Most of the tuffs are thought to be hyaloclastites generated by phreatomagmatic eruptions.

And I squeed, because I remembered: I've even seen a hyaloclastite. Saw it with Lockwood on Mary's Peak, didn't I? Even got the picture, complete with zeolite, to show ye:

Those white bits are zeolites. The whole mass is probably quite similar to what you'd find in the Silver Lake quadrangle. Hyaloclastites form when lava hits water. Yes, I know, you normally think pillows, and those are what happen when the lava doesn't esplode. But let me refer you to another mouthful of a word: phreatomagmatic. In this case, instead of forming nice pillows, the lava hit the water and basically shattered due to sudden cooling. They're talking about tuffs, as well. Tuff is a rock formed from volcanic ash. So, if I've understood me geology correctly, I don't even have to read on to the next paragraph to understand what happened: lava encountered a shallow-water environment, either due to an underwater eruption or a lava flow into the water source, and that sudden quenching caused it to shatter rather spectacularly.

And now we consult the experts:

In some localities the clastic beds appear to grade upward into massive basaltic andesite flows, suggesting that the phreatomagmatic eruptions were triggered when subaerially erupted lavas flowed over water-saturated sands, probably near or at the late Eocene shoreline.

Now we're cooking with geology! (Incidentally, you can cook with geology: you will need a chicken, banana leaves, a shovel and gloves, some seasonings, and 2000° F fresh Lava.)

The whole pamphlet is filled with such things (sans recipes). We learn about ancient shorelines, meet up with our old friends the Columbia River Basalts, witness the birth of Mount St. Helens, and discover that this is a horrible quadrangle to site your house in if you don't want it bulldozed by a lahar. Reading this pamphlet was like parking the TARDIS and watching 40 million years of subduction zone antics unfold: when you began, you had a nice oceanfront view. Then came the eruptions, and the marshes, and continents colliding, and flood basalts, and the incredible violence of the Cascades' birth. I got so wrapped up in it that when it came time to stop and call my best friend, I became upset.

Who would have known reading the documentation for a geologic map could be so damned fun?

But that's geology. It's a very accessible science. Learn a little of the lingo, get a general understanding of how things work by reading excellent pop sci books and palling around with geologists, combine that with Google searches for unfamiliar terms, and you can enjoy the source material. You don't need years of college education. You don't need calculus. You'll run the risk of coming away with a burning desire to go traipse around the countryside and take a petrology class, yes, but you can understand this stuff. You're not reading a science paper so much as a story, one that begins in the middle of things and is still going on right at this moment. And did I mention, explosions!

If you can't get excited by all that, I have very little hope for you.

Bonus delight, here's what I saw when I Googled "hyaloclastite":

That's our Lockwood, that is! I'm not sure when Google started doing this, or how it works, but that's actually pretty awesome.

Dojo Summer Sessions: Steven Pinker Makes Me Feel Better

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 07:06:00 +0000

He shall probably do the same for you.

I fell in love with Steven quite by accident. I was at Bookmans, the most delicious used bookstore I've ever been in this side of Powell's, and I was combing the Buddhism section for some Zen goodness. Behind me stood books on writing, so I turned round for a look. You never know but you might find something of use. And there, fortuitously out of place, was this book called The Language Instinct.

Admittedly, I'm a bit of a sucker for neuroscience, philology, and psychology. This book was all of it. So I clutched it to my bosom and sashayed up to the register to negotiate its release to my custody. Read it. Adored it. Started reading more of his books, and I have to tell you this: few non-fiction authors have made me think as hard or deliciously as Steven Pinker. And I've read a lot of non-fiction authors that made me think hard and deliciously.

The Language Instinct is a book I'd recommend to any aspiring author, especially those who are trying to invent languages of their own. But it's two other books we're quoting from today. First, we have this delight from The Blank Slate:

"Paradoxically, in today's intellectual climate novelists may have a clearer mandate than scientists to speak the truth about human nature."

I've always avowed that fiction is a means for telling truths that are difficult to administer otherwise. It's sad that scientists aren't as well-regarded as they should be, and shat upon by the fuckwits in Congress far too often. Working to change that, in fact. But until their mandate is secure, I'm more than happy to speak the truth about human nature. Well, some truths, anyway - there is no the truth, no one single truth about human nature. It's not only a fun and important thing to do, it makes me feel a little useful.

But it's this second passage, from How the Mind Works, that I wish you to pay closest attention to:

"Geniuses are wonks. The typical genius pays dues for at least ten years before contributing anything of lasting value. (Mozart composed symphonies at eight, but they weren't very good; his first masterwork came in the twelfth year of his career.) During the apprenticeship, geniuses immerse themselves in their genre. They absorb tens of thousands of problems and solutions, so no challenge is completely new and they can draw on a vast repertoire of motifs and strategies. They keep an eye on the competition and a finger to the wind, and are either discriminating or lucky in their choice of problems. (The unlucky ones, however talented, aren't remembered as geniuses.) They are mindful of the esteem of others and of their place in history. (They physicist Richard Feynman wrote two books describing how brilliant, irreverent, and admired he was and called one of them What Do You Care What Other People Think?) They work day and night, and leave us with many works of subgenius. (Wallace spent the end of his career trying to communicate with the dead.) Their interludes away from a problem are helpful not because it ferments in the unconscious but because they are exhausted and need the rest (and possibly so they can forget blind alleys). They do not repress a problem but engage in 'creative worrying,' and the epiphany is not a masterstroke but a tweaking of an earlier attempt. They revise endlessly, gradually closing in on their ideal."

This passage should tell you three things:

It is okay if it takes years for you to develop into the kind of writer that other people believe must have been born with a supreme magical talent, so good are your works. You're not abnormal or useless or not cut out for writing because you can't write a masterwork on the first go.

Being a genius is bloody hard work, and it's not right for everybody.

You're going to have to work your arse off, did I mention?

Reading that passage in that book assuaged many of my doubts. I'd thought there was something wrong with me. Turns out not. And that's what I wish you to take away from this: there's nothing wrong with you, just because you're not finished becoming a genius yet and you obsess over things. Turns out you're just doing what geniuses do.

Now, get on with becoming a genius and telling the truth about human nature, perhaps whilst creating your own language, why don't you?

Los Links 9/23

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 07:13:00 +0000

Lots of amazing stuff this week, my darlings. You'll notice quite a few things highlighted in bold, and I do hope you read all those, but don't stop there! There's so much win in this week's selections that I could've bolded nearly all of them.

DADT

The New Civil Rights Movement: DADT: Gay 88-Year Old WWII Vet Speaks On Repeal Of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

New York Times: Marines Hit the Ground Running in Seeking Recruits at Gay Center.

AP: Navy officer, partner wed in Vt. as ban ends.

Troy Davis

White Coat Underground: Emergency ethics post.

Observations: Eyes (and Minds) Deceive: Witness Unreliability Casts Doubt on Death Penalty Rulings.

Slate: A Killer Issue.

Bad Astronomy: The night the lights went out in Georgia.

Geotripper: The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia...and Texas Too.

Science

Oregon Live: Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition celebrates 40 years as coastal watchdog.

Lifehacker: Forget the Standing Desk; You Just Need to Move Regularly.

Discovery News: Dinosaur Feathers Found in Amber: Photos.

National Geographic: The Beautiful Teenage Brain.

Mountain Beltway: Giant City State Park, Illinois.

Clastic Detritus: Listening to Rivers.

Bad Astronomy: Invaders from Vesta! and The Milky Way from the top of the world.

Not Exactly Rocket Science: Computer gamers solve problem in AIDS research that puzzled scientists for years.

Uncovered Earth: Sometimes You Just Can’t Reach the Top.

Science Cheerleader: “I was skeptical about the Science Cheerleaders.”

Earthly Musings: My 10-Day Rafting Trip Through Grand Canyon - 2011.

NYT Scientist at Work: Northern Lights on the Midnight Watch.

Atomic-O-Licious: An Open Letter of Apology to my Organic Chemistry Students.

Scientific American: Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: Don’t Tangle Two Lines of Thought and Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: Breadth of knowledge is essential.

Wired Science: Q&A: The Unappreciated Benefits of Dyslexia.

Bad Archaeology: I remember why I’ve never wanted satellite television.

Oscillator: Allergy Recapitulates Phylogeny.

The Guardian: Another view on the new Feist album Metals.

Not Necessarily Geology: Pillow Basalt, Bencorragh.

Rapid Uplift: Geological Framework Of the Sikkim Earthquake.

Glacial Till: Meteorite Monday: So you think you’ve found a meteorite.

Science-Based Medicine: Scientific American Mind Is Not So Scientific.

Southern Fried Science: In sexual selection and thermoregulation, bigger is better, at least for fiddler crabs.

Boundary Vision: Students don’t lose their ability to think scientifically.

JPL: Aquarius Yields NASA's First Global Map of Ocean Salinity.

A Blog Around the Clock: The Mighty Ant-Lion.

Speakeasy Science: Dr. Oz and the Arsenic Thing.

Grist: Oceans kept the last decade from being even hotter.

Dinosaur Tracking: Cretaceous Utah’s New, Switchblade-Clawed Predator.

The Scientist: Plant RNAs Found in Mammals.

Degrees of Freedom: Archimedes and Euclid? Like String Theory versus Freshman Calculus.

Surprising Science: Biologist Rob Dunn: Why I Like Science.

Scientific American: Urban Geology: Artists Investigate Where Cities and Natural Cycles Intersect.

Scientific American: It’s Not That Easy Being Green, but Many Would Like to Be.

The Scicurious Brain: One injection makes you older…

Volcan01010: Farmyard Geomorphology.

Respectful Insolence: Reiki: You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you can get what you need.

Highly Allochthonous: Scenic Saturday: Pinnacle in the Piedmont.

Observations: Hackers Use Open Hardware to Solve Environmental Problems.

Evergreen Public Schools: Evergreen Public Schools Names new school Henrietta lacks Health and BioScience High School.

Terra Sigillata: Kitchen Chemistry: Rose Jelly. Sweet!

History of Geology: Large Igneous Provinces and Mass Extinctions.

Geotripper: You Betcha, it's Breccia: Some Otherworldly Pictures.

Writing

The Creative Penn: Trunk Novels Are An Endangered Species.

The Buttry Diary: ‘He said, she said’ stories fail to seek the truth and report it.

Terrible Minds: Writers Hear that All-Too-Familiar Refrain: 'Get a Real Job'.

Mitali's Fire Escape: How To Write Fiction Without The "Right" Ethnic Credentials.

Write to Publish: Branding #3...product vs. author brand.

Take As Directed: Trine Tsouderos on This Week in Virology: When do you fact-check article content with sources?

Password Incorrect: Ebook Specific Cover Design: #2 – Size and Resolution.

Digital Book World: Best Practices For Amazon Ebook Sales.

Atheism and Religion

This Week in Christian Nationalism: A New Ending for an Old Spam Email.

Think Atheist: My Testimony (my journey to atheism).

Unscientific Malaysia: Why atheists must not be silent.

I Heart Chaos: Christian fourth grade textbook, tries to explain electricity but just gives up.

Why Evolution is True: The ugly, vicious, fanatical side of atheism.

BBC: Al-Shabab radio gives weapons prize to Somali children.

Butterflies and Wheels: Don’t think, just live.

ABC Religion and Ethics: Is the Australian Christian Lobby dominionist?

Shouts & Murmurs: God’s Blog.

Women's Issues

Another Feminist Blog: Boundaries.

Firedoglake: Sluts Are Asking the Right Question about Rape.

Almost Diamonds: “Consent Is Hard” and MRA Says, “Yep, We’re Domestic Abusers”.

Strange Ink: Let's talk about sex.

Man Boobz: Violence against women? Blame it on feminism, says W. F. Price.

Downlo: A Useful Rape Analogy.

BBC: 'My cousin wanted me for a passport'.

Madison Magazine: Why Doesn't She Just Leave?

Butterflies and Wheels: We wanted to do a bruised-up Barbie shoot.

The F Word: On Tom Martin's campaign to sue LSE.

MSN CA: Is this the most annoying thing a man can do to a woman?

Biodork: Fighting Kindness with Kindness.

Camels with Hammers: Be Careful About Loving Women Too Much Lest Other Guys Think You’re Gay.

Politics

Spocko's Brain: No Brains. No Heart. The Tea Party/CNN debate.

Firedoglake: Woman Who Watched Her Brother Die From Lack of Insurance Delivers Powerful Rebuttal to GOP.

Balloon Juice: The Modern Inquisition, Starring David Brooks in the Role of Phlogiston Man.

Think Progress: Texas GOP Rep On Cuts To Family Planning: ‘Of Course This Is A War On Birth Control’.

Decrepit Old Fool: “You get what you pay for” – third in a series of things we used to say.

MoveOn.org: The Elizabeth Warren Quote Every American Needs To See.

White Coat Underground: Death cult.

Salon: A real Wall Street takeover threat.

Duluth News Tribune: Sam Cook: Big, bad government sure helped during fire.

War is a Crime: Welcome to Boston, Mr. Rumsfeld. You Are Under Arrest.

Dispatches From the Culture Wars: On the Internet, Everyone is a Criminal.

Society and Culture

The Telegraph: Animal rights group PETA to launch pornography website.

Gawker: The Wall Street Journal Wonders: Should We Let Blacks Marry Whites?

Dangerous Minds: Another heartbreaking gay teen suicide.

New York Times: Autistic and Seeking a Place in an Adult World.

Charlotte Observer: Same-sex marriage ballot skips words.

Pam's House Blend: Will the Catholic Church declare war on Obama over gay equality?

On Top Magazine: North Carolina's James Forrester Tells Lesbian Mom To Move To New York.

Have a Heart of Fire, Have a Heart of Gold: On understanding.

Nymwars

Almost Diamonds: Pseudonymous Service.

And, finally, two of the sweetest compliments I've ever had:

Watershed Hydrogeology Blog: About the best compliment I could get (or, why blogging is worthwhile).

Clastic Detritus: What Rocks: The Week’s Best In the Geoblogosphere.

Banned Books Week Meme

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 07:12:00 +0000

It's that time o' the year again, that joyous and irreverent turning up our ink-stained noses at the fools who think banning books is a good idea. Time for a meme, wouldn't you say?

I got this handy list of the most frequently-challenged books 2000-2009 from the American Library Association's website. I've highlighted the ones I've read in bold. Feel free to do the same, my darlings - and do treat yourself to some delicious literary contraband this week.

1. Harry Potter (series), by J.K. Rowling
2. Alice series, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
3. The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
4. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
5. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
6. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
7. Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
8. His Dark Materials (series), by Philip Pullman
9. ttyl; ttfn; l8r g8r (series), by Myracle, Lauren
10. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
11. Fallen Angels, by Walter Dean Myers
12. It’s Perfectly Normal, by Robie Harris
13. Captain Underpants (series), by Dav Pilkey
14. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
15. The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
16. Forever, by Judy Blume
17. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
18. Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous
19. Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
20. King and King, by Linda de Haan
21. To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
22. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
23. The Giver, by Lois Lowry
24. In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak
25. Killing Mr. Griffen, by Lois Duncan
26. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
27. My Brother Sam Is Dead, by James Lincoln Collier
28. Bridge To Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson
29. The Face on the Milk Carton, by Caroline B. Cooney
30. We All Fall Down, by Robert Cormier
31. What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
32. Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
33. Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson
34. The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things, by Carolyn Mackler
35. Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging, by Louise Rennison
36. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
37. It’s So Amazing, by Robie Harris
38. Arming America, by Michael Bellasiles
39. Kaffir Boy, by Mark Mathabane
40. Life is Funny, by E.R. Frank
41. Whale Talk, by Chris Crutcher
42. The Fighting Ground, by Avi
43. Blubber, by Judy Blume
44. Athletic Shorts, by Chris Crutcher
45. Crazy Lady, by Jane Leslie Conly
46. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
47. The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby, by George Beard
48. Rainbow Boys, by Alex Sanchez
49. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
50. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
51. Daughters of Eve, by Lois Duncan
52. The Great Gilly Hopkins, by Katherine Paterson
53. You Hear Me?, by Betsy Franco
54. The Facts Speak for Themselves, by Brock Cole
55. Summer of My German Soldier, by Bette Green
56. When Dad Killed Mom, by Julius Lester
57. Blood and Chocolate, by Annette Curtis Klause
58. Fat Kid Rules the World, by K.L. Going
59. Olive’s Ocean, by Kevin Henkes
60. Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson
61. Draw Me A Star, by Eric Carle
62. The Stupids (series), by Harry Allard
63. The Terrorist, by Caroline B. Cooney
64. Mick Harte Was Here, by Barbara Park
65. The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien
66. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred Taylor
67. A Time to Kill, by John Grisham
68. Always Running, by Luis Rodriguez
69. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
70. Harris and Me, by Gary Paulsen
71. Junie B. Jones (series), by Barbara Park
72. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
73. What’s Happening to My Body Book, by Lynda Madaras
74. The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold
75. Anastasia (series), by Lois Lowry
76. A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving
77. Crazy: A Novel, by Benjamin Lebert
78. The Joy of Gay Sex, by Dr. Charles Silverstein
79. The Upstairs Room, by Johanna Reiss
80. A Day No Pigs Would Die, by Robert Newton Peck
81. Black Boy, by Richard Wright
82. Deal With It!, by Esther Drill
83. Detour for Emmy, by Marilyn Reynolds
84. So Far From the Bamboo Grove, by Yoko Watkins
85. Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, by Chris Crutcher
86. Cut, by Patricia McCormick
87. Tiger Eyes, by Judy Blume
88. The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
89. Friday Night Lights, by H.G. Bissenger
90. A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeline L’Engle
91. Julie of the Wolves, by Jean Craighead George
92. The Boy Who Lost His Face, by Louis Sachar
93. Bumps in the Night, by Harry Allard
94. Goosebumps (series), by R.L. Stine
95. Shade’s Children, by Garth Nix
96. Grendel, by John Gardner
97. The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende
98. I Saw Esau, by Iona Opte
99. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, by Judy Blume
100. America: A Novel, by E.R. Frank

That's a pathetic showing, I admit. time to get readin'.

Cryptozoology and Cute Fuzzy Critters

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 07:05:00 +0000

No, this isn't about the cat. This time. Although she's pretty crypto - I never can figure out why she goes from cuddly to homicidal with no warning, and she is cute and fuzzy. Even when she is trying to tear you limb-from-limb.

We stopped at the North Fork Survivors Gift Shop at the Buried A-Frame on our way to Mount St. Helens. This is practically a requirement. First off, A-frame house buried by a lahar - tell me that doesn't attract every geologist on the planet. Secondly, Bigfoot statues.

And, this being the Pacific Northwest, Bigfoot's gotta have an espresso.

Coffee and an apparent salmon - looks like he's set.

I have a particular fondness for Bigfoot. When I was a kid, I dreamt I was home alone, and people were trying to break in. Then came a rather loud pounding at the door. When I looked through the window, a big hairy face greeted my terrified eyes. Sasquatch! ZOMG. I let it in so it wouldn't break down the door. It kindly led me over to our enormous oak dining table, turned it on its side, sheltered me behind that makeshift barricade, and proceeded to scare the living daylights out of our erstwhile burglars. After that dream, I kinda hoped my parents would leave me home alone for an evening so Bigfoot would show up.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled reality.

The gift shop is great - you can get lots of loot for cheap. I walked away with a set of five spectacular posters of the volcano for $5. You can't beat that. They also had a cube of ash collected from various distances, showing nicely how finer particles travel further, and lots of Mount St. Helens Emerald jewelry for cheap. They've got a ton more stuff, too, all of it fun and some informative. They've got actual geological signs, too. This little spot has all you can ask for: kitsch to keep the non-geologist occupied while you get on with the geology.

You can get down to the Toutle River from here. And that's where we found some utterly adorable caterpillars.

These, as far as I can tell, are Lophocampa maculata. The orange one on the left is a late instar, and the one on the right an early instar.

I could, of course, be completely wrong about the species, but I defend my assessment of their adorableness. They're rather lovely.

Steamforged and I spent quite a bit of time snapping photos of them. Perfect lighting, perfect subjects, delightful.

On the way back, I nearly stepped on this gentleman:

I have utterly no idea what species he is, and he's not as colorful, but still wonderful, what with all that hair. Loves me some hairy caterpillars!

We Need to Stop Executing Peoplel

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 07:18:00 +0000

Last night, the state of Georgia executed a man who was very likely innocent. Like PZ, I don't care whether he was guilty or innocent. I care that my country is one of the few countries in the world that executes people.

From Wikipedia

I used to be a strong death penalty supporter. Some crimes, I thought, could only be adequately punished by death. I didn't ever believe it acted as a general deterrent, but as former FBI agent John Douglas said in Mindhunter, it surely acts as a specific deterrent: that particular person will never commit a crime again. When you're talking about serial killers, that seems like an admirable thing.

But we kill too many innocent people. We come close to killing far more, before luck and persistence and the existence of DNA evidence, uncovered by tireless investigators, come to the rescue. Those are the lucky ones. Those are the ones who aren't denied the chance to prove their innocence. How many other people have gone to their deaths because no DNA evidence existed, or if it did was never found, or if found, never allowed to be presented? We don't know. And it's unbearable that we don't know.

So what about those cases in which evidence of guilt is undeniable? Where we definitely have the right person, and the crimes they committed are horrific?

I still don't support the death penalty. Not even for them. Oh, I may want them to die, and die horribly; that visceral emotional reaction, that righteous outrage, is certainly there. But a civilized society should restrain itself. All we gain is another dead person, another traumatized family, proof that we aren't able to rise above bronze age ideas of justice. We engage in violence to punish violence, and make our civilization just that much more violent.

Life in prison, no parole, is enough to keep society safe.

We spend an insane amount of money on killing people. That money would be far better spent on improving the conditions that lead people to violence in the first place. A society that takes care of its vulnerable members has less to fear from them, and so much to gain.

Troy Davis should be the last person to be put to death in this country. We're the last country in North America to execute people. It's time we joined Canada and Mexico in recognizing what justice truly is.

Dragonfly in Action

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:52:00 +0000

I meant to post something really nice and substantial tonight, but my darling Aunty Flow is being wretchedly evil this month. We'll have to make do with a dragonfly instead. But whatta dragonfly! I shot this at Silver Lake, where a lovely visitor's center and a nice walk on a nature trail built along and on the lake make for a good introduction to Mount St. Helens.

Dragonflies swooped round us, too active to easily photograph, but I got a fantastic action shot of one of the little buggers.

This is why I love my camera: that little dragonfly was several feet away in a riot of vegetation, and it still managed to capture him. Check out the crop:

Not bad for a little point-and-shoot, eh?

I love this shot, because it shows the weird contortions of a dragonfly's body as it gets ready to launch. They're such interesting little critters. Someday, I plan to park myself along Silver Lake for an hour or two and catch more of these guys - in addition to the blues, there were some delicious reds I didn't get a chance to shoot, although Steamforged got a few and might be kind enough to put them up for us soon.

My Volcano Phobia is Officially Pining for the Fjords

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 10:45:00 +0000

We would have ended the summer adventuring season with a bang if Mount St. Helens had been so kind as to erupt.

I used to have a bit of a volcano phobia. I'd have nightmares of majestic mountains suddenly exploding, threatening me with pyroclastic flows and hot red lava. I remember those dreams: tense, terrified sequences that sometimes began with the first jets of steam and ash from an unexpected eruption, sometimes picking up in mid-drama as I tried to gather cat and loved ones and flee. There was a dream where I lived in my childhood home again: the Peaks were putting on a spectacular show outside the sliding glass doors, lava bombs and ash falling all round, hot bits of volcanic ejecta setting off massive forest fires. Lava flows once chased me all the way from Flagstaff to Phoenix, melting the car's tires and cutting off escape routes. I'd wake up exhausted, heart pounding, eyeballing the nearest mountain for the slightest sign of unrest. I'd run through evacuation plans in my mind and check the news (at the time, rumor had it the ground around Flagstaff was rising by an inch a year, and I believed there was a magma chamber filling up below the mountains). I'd watch teevee shows about eruptions and consider that the oldest volcanics nearby were less than 1,000 years old. The volcanoes were sleeping, not dead, and I was ready: if they so much as twitched, I'd be outta there like a shot.

I never ever in my entire life wanted to see a volcano erupt live. Not even the tame little Hawaiian ones. Nossir. I'd take my eruptions on teevee from a safe distance of several hundred miles, thanks ever so much.

So what did I do? Moved to a subduction zone, where things regularly go boom. My stepmother laughed at me. But as I told her, they monitor these things intensively, and the moment one of them woke, I'd be on her doorstep with cat and suitcase in hand.

I never would have gone to Mount Saint Helens the first time if I'd known she was, actually, erupting. And I would have fled if I'd realized the pretty wisps of steam emerging from the dome weren't merely residual heat, but active dome-building. The parking lot was filled with scorch marks from hot rocks falling from the sky. And I was damned glad we'd brought the fast car - if it looked to be an eruption, we'd be so outta there.

And we got home after a hell of an experience, and I looked some things up, and realized I'd stared into the heart of an erupting volcano, one that had violent tendencies, and nothing bad had happened.

Still, I'd run, wouldn't I? If I saw her start to blow, I'd surely scream and run away.

Then I started studying geology.

And then I went back.

And found myself disappointed St. Helens is sleeping.

The scorch marks in the parking lot are faded now. The dome isn't steaming. The seismometers on her slopes are quiet. And I wished she'd wake up. I wished she was busy dome-building again. I wished I could stand on the viewing platform at Johnston Ridge and watch her put on a show. Not a big one, mind, but just a little something for the kids. Cujo and Steamforged had never seen her in person before. I had the new camera. C'mon, girl, just a little plume for your old buddy Dana. I wrote you a get-well card when you blew apart in '80, remember?

No such luck. But it doesn't matter if she's erupting or not - she's still spectacular. The blast zone is still a virtual moonscape, despite all the wildflowers and alders. You just don't get to see bald slopes and deep, wild erosion in western Washington. There's nothing like a VEI-5 eruption to clear away all that pesky biology.

We took the long climb from the parking lot to Johnston Ridge Observatory. At first, the ridge hides the mountain. She peeks at you, gradually comes into view, and you almost don't notice because you're goggling at the downed trees and nearly-naked slopes of the blast zone.

Note the biology starting to get all uppity. I think we need another VEI-5 to teach it a lesson. Yes, it's pretty; yes, that's how western Washington's supposed to be, but damn it, it's beginning to block the geology views.

And yes, that's a bit of the crater rim rising above the bushes. Stick with me. A few more feet of climbing, and you'll see views.

Reach the top, stand on the shoulder of the ridge, and gaze into the amphitheater left by the 1980 eruption. After you've managed to unstick your awestruck feet, walk toward the Observatory. There's another rise, and nestled at the base of that rise, facing the mountain, a monument.

The names of the dead are chiseled in black against the gray stone. Mount St. Helens killed, because we didn't understand her. We didn't know quite what to expect of her, or where the safe places were, or took risks for science, or adventure. Harry Truman stayed in his cabin with his cats, too old and too stubborn to flee his beloved mountain.

David A. Johnston died on this ridge. He had time for one last radio transmission: "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!" I don't know how much time he had to realize he wasn't getting out. Two miles to the north, also directly in the path of the blast, ham radio operator Jerry Martin knew what was coming: he'd just seen David Johnston die. "Gentlemen, the uh, camper and the car sitting over to the south of me is covered," he said in his last transmission. "It’s gonna get me, too. I can’t get out of here."

You can hear David's last words, in a film at the Observatory named for him. And after the movie, the screen goes up, the curtain rises, and there she is.

Stand there for a moment of silence, then go on.

Inside the Observatory, they have some pretty outstanding displays. They've got a huge scale model that lights up, illustrating various phases of the eruption as a narrator speaks.

This one, I think, was showing the pyroclastic flows.

And some of the lahars:

I have a terrible feeling lots of folks have walked away thinking St. Helens spewed rivers of molten lava, but oh well. I wasn't paying that much attention to it, aside from ooing at the sparkles. No, there was another thing there that demanded attention: a display that you could put your hands on to "feel" earthquakes and other seismic events, with a screen showing you what the seismometers had picked up (running elk, helicopter landing, rock breaking, landslide, various earthquakes) and the thing would shake and shake. This, I have to tell you, could keep a person occupied for hours. Wish I had thought to take a picture, but I was too busy playing with it.

Outside in the Plaza, there's one of those USGS markers I love so much:

We stayed for the ranger talk, which I'll be writing up, and then headed out. One last look back:

And then on down to a viewpoint overlooking Castle Lake, where the late evening light and several enthralled people compliment the mountain perfectly.

And with that, the summer adventuring season is well and truly at an end. Good thing, too. I've got so much geology to write up I'll probably still haven't have gotten it all by the time next summer rolls round.

Ending it here, with the mountain that introduced me to the splendid power of volcanic eruptions at the tender age of 5, seems fitting. Mount St. Helens has been part of my consciousness for nearly the entire span of my memory. She was the most spectacular event of my childhood. She's become a part of me, she and the people who were caught up in that day of catastrophic destruction.

She'll likely put on another eruptive display before I die, and unlike me, she won't grow old. She'll constantly be tearing herself down and building herself back up, long after we are gone. There's something very nearly timeless in that, although she's not eternal. She's a moment in geological time. But what a moment she is!

Dojo Summer Sessions: Writing Inspirations, Good Advice

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 07:21:00 +0000

I'm busy writing a short story that decided it couldn't wait and trying to pre-load meaty posts for this long winter writing season. So I shall foist you off on other, wiser people who had quite good things to say to writers such as ourselves. This is a small collection of quotes I've gathered over some years and meant to turn into a Dojo article someday. They need no help from me: they can stand alone.

"You ask yourself the following question: To what questions in life have I not yet found a satisfactory answer?"

-Holly Lisle, "Finding Your Themes"

"An American editor worries his hair gray to see that no typographical mistakes appear on the page of his magazine. The Chinese editor is wiser than that. He wants to leave his readers the supreme satisfaction of discovering a few typographical mistakes for themselves."

-Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

"There is a curious thing that one feels sometimes. When you are considering a subject, suddenly a whole train of reasoning comes before you like a flash of light. You see it all, yet it takes you perhaps two hours to put on paper all that has occurred to your mind in an instant. Every part of the subject, the bearings of all its parts upon each other, and all the consequences are there before you."

-Lord Wellington, quoted in John Keegan's The Mask of Command

"A writer of fiction, a professional liar, is paradoxically obsessed with what is true..... the unit of truth, at least for a fiction writer, is the human animal, belonging to the species Homo sapiens, unchanged for at least 100,000 years.

"Fiction, in its groping way, is drawn to those moments of discomfort when society asks more than its individual members can, or wish to, provide. Ordinary people experiencing friction on the page is what warms our hands and hearts as we write."

-John Updike, quoted in Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate

If at least one of those didn't make your Muse sit up and take notice, then I despair of your Muse.

Los Links 9/16

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 07:40:00 +0000

All right, people. Stop writing awesome stuff I feel compelled to read. Actually, don't stop, but do allow me to throw my hands up in despair. I need another me who does nothing but read cool shit on the interwebz and can download the results directly into my brain.

Anyway. There's this one post I have to put right up here, because it's about the Cascadia Subduction Zone and it's utterly terrifying, enthralling, and some of the best writing I've yet seen.

Outside: Totally Psyched for the Full-Rip Nine.

And now, on with the rest of teh awesome.

Science

Anthropology in Practice: Pieces of the Human Evolutionary Puzzle: Who Was Australopithecus sediba?

Context and Variation: Menstruation is just blood and tissue you ended up not using.

Andrew Alden: Dietary Minerals and Real Minerals.

Obsidian Wings: A brook, run, creek, branch, or stream runs through it.

Glacial Till: The Molalla River, Oregon.

Scientific American: Wire Up Your Sense of Smell: How the Internet Is Changing the World of Perfumery.

Arya M. Sharma, MD: Should We Outsource Obesity Treatment To Weight Watchers?

Atomic-o-licious: The Smell of it.

Guardian: The versatility of science graduates should be celebrated not criticised.

Georneys: Geology Word of the Week: O is for Ooid.

Uncovered Earth: Sunday Science Photos, September 4 – 10.

Glacial Till: Meteorite Monday: The Hayabusa mission to Itokawa.

Denison Geoblog: Flint Ridge, Ohio.

Scientific American: Nile Crocodile Found to Comprise Two Different Species.

Butterflies and Science: Butterflies and Social Science.

The Atlantic: The Dark Side of the Placebo Effect: When Intense Belief Kills.

Clastic Detritus: Seafloor Sunday #89: Photo From the Deepest Part of the Ocean.

American Rivers: The importance of small streams.

Galileo's Pendulum: A Planet With Two Suns.

The SciencePunk Blog: Five iconic science images, and why they're wrong. (This solar system scale model is a bit more realistic.)

Scientific American: How to Improve Your Life with Story Editing.

Highly Allochthonous: One recipe for flooding: Take a tropical cyclone and add steep topography.

Scientific American: Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: The Situation Is in the Mindset of the Observer and Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: The Power of Public Opinion.

My Modern Met: Town Squeezed Between Giant Boulders.

Metageologist: What you ought to know about metamorphism.

Cosmic Variance: Trusting Experts.

The Conversation: Diamond planets, climate change and the scientific method.

Scientific American: Peace of Mind: Near-Death Experiences Now Found to Have Scientific Explanations.

Decrepit Old Fool: The alien menace.

Geotripper: Vagabonding across the 39th Parallel: A Canyon Along The Colorado River? Really?

Earth Literally: Dynamic Topography: What’s in a name?

Strange Maps: 531 - A Rio Runs Through It: Naming the American Stream.

Anthropology in Practice: On My Shelf: Geologic City (A Review).

Matt Kutcha: Mineral Cleavage Test.

Mountain Beltway: A dismaying course, part II: evolution and Clinker.

Skepchick: Guest Post: Birdchick – Are sea eagles coming after your children?

Not Necessarily Geology: Folded Lakes Marble.

The Last Word on Nothing: Guest Post: Part of Me Forever.

Outside the Interzone: Volcanic Ramblings Part 3: Salt Creek Falls.

Writing

Pub Rants: In The Author's Shoes.

LitReactor: Interesting new tool for writers, might be worth subscribing to.

The Coffee-Stained Writer: Fiction Friday: getting into your characters' heads.

Nieman Storyboard: Story, interrupted: why we need new approaches to digital narrative.

Bob Mayer's Blog: Marketing and Indie Authors: Our Successful Release of The Jefferson Allegiance.

The Book Deal: What authors can learn from the bestseller lists.

The Passive Voice: Is There Anything That Can Take the Pain Out of Ebook Formatting?

A Newbie's Guide to Publishing: Guest Post from Bella Andre (aka Lucy Kevin) (aka Bella Riley).

A Brain Scientist's Take on Writing: From St. Martins, to Self Publishing, to Amazon: Q&A With Barry Eisler.

Write It Forward: The real gatekeepers in publishing now? Authors.

Terrible Minds: Twenty-Sided Troubadours: Why Writers Should Play Roleplaying Games.

Genreville: Authors Say Agents Try to “Straighten” Gay Characters in YA.

Atheism and Religion

***Dave Does the Blog: Man Does Not Live By Bread Alone … but he doesn’t live long without it, either.

Lousy Canuck: Why don’t atheists just shut up and stay home? (a repost) and What is an ad hominem? What isn’t?

Oregon Live: Another faith-healing death of a child puts Oregon City parents on trial.

Camels With Hammers: A Living Illustration of the Problem With Trying To Love The Gay Person But Hate Her Gayness and How Religious Bullying Makes Atheists So Angry: One New Atheist’s Story.

On Humanity, Naturally: Concerns About the Religious Right Are Not Overblown.

Women's Issues

White Coat Underground: A trick question.

Jezebel: County Attorney Accused Of Making Rape Jokes, Ignoring Child Porn.

Emily L. Hauser - In My Head: “Like a girl” – yes, again.

The Guardian: As the Topman T-shirts show, misogyny is now so commonplace it's mundane.

The Guardian: Let's get this straight. Gender studies isn't about 'women good, men bad'.

Slate: The Girl Scouts' Allegedly Radical Feminist Lesbian Agenda.

The Daily Beast: Women: The Invisible Poor.

Science Sushi: Observations: Why do women cry? Obviously, it’s so they don’t get laid.

Ynet News: Cadets dismissed over woman's song.

National Postdoctoral Association: A Postdoc's Guide to Pregnancy and Maternity Leave.

ABC News: Forever 21′s ‘Allergic to Algebra’ Shirt Draws Criticism.

Almost Diamonds: And Then You Wait.

Gamasutra: Gamazon: 'Feminist Whore' Powers Activate.

Politics

ThinkProgress: GOP Legislator: Homosexuality Is ‘More Dangerous’ Than Terrorist Attacks Because We Have To Deal With It Every Day.

Paul Krugman: Setting Their Hair on Fire.

Wisconsin Gazette: GOP memo instructs DMV workers not to tell voters that photo IDs are free.

Thoughts from Kansas: Why science questions matter for candidates.

Media Matters: Murdoch's U.S. Hacking Woes Grow.

Washington Post: Bachmann’s wrongheaded attack on HPV vaccinations.

White Coat Underground: Ignorance, beatified.

Almost Diamonds: Emily for Elizabeth.

***Dave Does the Blog: Lying Talking Points for the 2012 Election (Collect the Whole Set!).

Newser: Debate Crowd Cheers Letting Uninsured Die.

The Dish: Republicanism As Religion.

Politco: GOP grumbles about jobs plan.

Grits for Breakfast: From the off-topic irony department: Fire Follies.

Nymwars

Bioephemera: Pseudonymity: Five Reasons the New Scienceblogs/NG Policy is Misguided.

Society and Culture

Decrepit Old Fool: Dan Savage at Illinois State University.

Stories from the Heartland: Some real Shock and Awe: Racially profiled and cuffed in Detroit.

Jay Rosen's Press Think: We Have No Idea Who’s Right: Criticizing “he said, she said” journalism at NPR.

Def Shepherd: Why A Heterosexual, Married, North Carolinian Father Of Three Cares About LGBT Equality.

Pam's House Blend: Bible-beating Kentucky lawmaker wants to pass a bill to protect anti-gay bullies.

Mike the Mad Biologist: “Why the HELL Didn’t He KEEP HER IN THE HOSPITAL?” and Why Low-Income Parents Rationally Choose Failing Schools.

Foreign Policy: Got Cheap Milk?

The Mary Sue: How To Have An Awesome Wedding: Do it With Dinosaurs.

The Washington Examiner: You have a right to record the police.

Danger Room: How to Beat Terrorism: Refuse to Be Terrorized.

HamdenRice: Most of you have no idea what Martin Luther King actually did.

I Love the Smell of a Scam Crashing and Burning In the Morning

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 08:21:00 +0000

The Internet Age has been kind to scammers, who have used the toobz to find all sorts of hapless victims. But worms can turn. A little bit of Google-fu can turn you from potential victim to fraudbuster.

Case in point: Sai posted this awesome hunt for a fraudster on Google+. This shit's like potato chips for me - I'm not satisfied after one little bite, I've gotta have the whole bag. So I clicked the link over to Popehat, and found myself vastly entertained for a half-hour. Upshot: if you receive an invoice from UST Development, US Telecom, or similar, research before you assume you owe. They're a big ol' scummy scam.

More importantly, however, this series of posts shows you how you can protect yourself by not assuming an invoice means someone in your company actually ordered a service just because there's a slightly-odd invoice landing on your desk, and by doing a few Google searches to check things out. Don't have a company? Doesn't mean you won't get scammed. Research anyone attempting to part you from your cash, or offering you unexpected money, or asking you weird questions.

I actually love this stuff. I think it goes back to the days when I used to watch all the cheesy 80s PI shows, and had a brief desire to become a private investigator. I gave up that dream early on, but still lap up true crime stories. One of my favorites was The Cuckoo's Egg, which almost had me in college learning all I could of computers and networks just for the sheer joy of tracking cybercriminals, before I decided I should just focus on my writing instead. I've read Kevin Mitnick's The Art of Deception, which opened my eyes to social engineering and has served me in good stead in my current job.

That book also helped me impress the pants off our fraud department.

Not long after I joined my current company, they threw a big job fair, where I got to meet really real FBI agents for the first time (they were super-nice and for some silly reason encouraged me to join the Bureau despite my lack of any useful degree, or indeed, any degree whatsoever. They have civilian positions, they said). And there was this booth, all tarted up with balloons and things, prize bags, clipboards, and a nice gentleman foisting a clipboard on me and saying all I had to do was fill out a survey to win.

I don't remember what the banner said - something innocuous. They had a few books displayed. One of them was The Art of Deception.

"Sure," I said, and took the clipboard. I looked at the questions. Mind you, I was already suspicious - with that book sitting there and these folks not saying what company or department within our own company they represented, I figured they were up to something. A glance down the list of questions confirmed it. Mother's maiden name? Name of your first pet? Favorite color? And others, salted with a few questions that might distract you from what they were actually asking.

I laughed, handed back the clipboard without a single pen mark on the "survey," and said, "No thanks."

"Why not?" the squeaky-clean gentleman who'd handed me the survey asked.

"Because these questions are designed to get my passwords."

He broke into a great big gleaming grin, and said, "You're the only person who's gotten that." Which I found super-sad, considering all the classic signs of a fraud were there, combined with that bloody book. I'd thought it was blindingly obvious what was up.

The proprietors of the booth were from our fraud department, and I've still got the calculator in the shape of a cell phone they awarded me for being able to spot the bleedin' obvious. If they're ever hiring again over there, I might give it a go. There's nothing I love better in my current job than getting a whiff o' fraud, doing a bit of account research to confirm my suspicion, and then sending them a referral so they can do a proper investigation. That kind of thing leaves me glowing for days.

Wait, there was a moral to this story. It's not just "look at me, I am awesome." It's this: scammers are clever, but you are more clever. You've got instincts you can hone. Pay attention to what people are taking from you when they're offering you something for free. Are they asking the sorts of questions that often come up on those security questions thingies for password resets? Are they playing on your emotions, whether fear or compassion, a little too heavily in order to get you to give them money or answers? Is a bit of your brain screaming, "Hey, something's not right!"?

If so, take the time to do some research, even if they're all up in your face howling that you'll miss the opportunity of a lifetime or kiddies will die if you don't donate right now or threaten to set the law on you for not paying what they swear you owe them even though you can't remember ever doing business with them. Decline to answer invasive questions. Use Google. Listen to that part of your brain that says, "This doesn't pass the smell test," but can't quite articulate why.

And if some dude claims he needs you to send him money so he can send you a bunch of money from Nigeria, just say no. Unless, of course, you want to have a little fun fucking with the fucktards. In which case, go mad.

Caturday Sunbeams

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 07:19:00 +0000

And I'm spent. Also very, very behind in this week's blog reading, so if you lot want a nice, fat Los Links come Monday, I'm going to have to pawn you off with a little light (ah-ha-ha) entertainment.

The sun has forsaken us now, but last week, Seattle attempted to apologize for not giving us an actual summer. Lovely 80+ degree days with wonderfully cool nights, my favorite. I usually don't open the curtains in the bedroom, because keeping the place a dark cave prevents it from getting warm, but over the last several sunny days, I took to letting the sunshine is for the poor kitteh, who wasn't getting enough quality porch time.

This met with some approval.

About the second or third day (I know, consecutive sunny days in Seattle, unheard of!), she figured out the routine. She appeared at the window before I'd even gone to it and stood there, little nose poked out and eyes half-closed, awaiting that magical moment when Mommy would let Mr. Sunbeam in. And this continued to be her routine most days thereafter. I wish I'd had the camera handy, but the one time I did, she broke her streak. On purpose, I'm sure.

But she did allow me to catch this moment of bliss:

Doesn't she just look smugly self-satisfied? You'd think she was responsible for the fine weather.

You may be wondering about the blue thingy. That's her hair tie. She won't play with cat toys, but for some reason, adores chasing hair ties. She'll even play fetch with them sometimes. And when she's not chewing on Mommy, she likes chewing on them:

Funniest moment ever was when she started dry-coughing due to a developing hairball, but wouldn't let the hair tie go, so it was dangling from a tooth as she wheezed. She's ridiculously cute sometimes. I try to explain this to friends who wonder why I've kept an animal with homicidal tendencies. They just do not understand the power of her Massive Cute.

During the day, her sunbeam would move, but she'd sleep through it. So when I was home, I'd go back to the bedroom every hour or so and drag her a few inches over. I probably shouldn't have done - this just taught her she didn't have to do a damned thing for herself. No matter. Once the sunbeams had well and truly moved on, she'd amble out through the living room and onto the porch for a nice lie-down in the sunshine with her favorite rocks. So she did get exercise. Of a sort.

I'm looking forward to the winter writing season, but I'll miss these times.

Sapere Aude!

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 07:09:00 +0000

This post first sailed on the HMS Elitist Bastard, three long years ago, when PZ Myers hosted Carnival of the Elitist Bastards III. I've been meaning to repost it eventually, as many of you weren't with me back in those halcyon days of joyous elitist bastardry, and I like this piece. I love the Latin phrase I found for its title: sapere aude, dare to know. So many incredible people dared to know, and gave us the modern world.

What will we dare to know? What world will we hand to those who come after us?

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! [dare to know] "Have courage to use your own understanding!"--that is the motto of enlightenment.

- Immanuel Kant, "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?"

The Enlightenment. Those two words send a cascade of awe and delight down my spine. They set synapses to firing like chains of fireworks. Names and ideas erupt from the sparks: Newton, Spinoza and Leibniz released science and mathematics from their classical and medieval cages and advanced them by light years in a virtual instant. Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau struck through chains and risked their lives to set human minds free. Locke, Smith and Montesquieu set forth major components of political and economic philosophy that led to democracy and capitalism. Franklin, Jefferson, and Hamilton created a whole new kind of nation from scratch. Beethoven, Mozart, and Goethe elevated music and literature to heights they had never known before.
Men, and not a few women, dared to know, and changed the world.
There had been hints of an awakening for centuries. A few flames burned dimly in the Middle Ages. A few flames flared up brilliantly during the Renaissance. But the Enlightenment was a conflagration, a wildfire beside a candelabra. In less than two centuries, the scientific method arose and began advancing knowledge at an incredible pace; the foundations of democracy and liberalism were laid and thriving nations built on them; education was no longer a prerogative of the fortunate few, but a practical gift offered to a broad swath of the population. The entire Western way of thinking changed virtually beyond recognition. All of those ideas we take for granted - freedom of religion, equality, political and civil rights, and countless more - emerged because of men and women who refused to remain ignorant.
Look at the lives and work of any group of Enlightenment thinkers, and you'll see similarities. They were desperate to know and understand. They were determined to use rational thought to overcome superstition. They believed in man's ability to understand the world. They didn't believe religion had all the answers, or even most. They weren't afraid to challenge established authority; indeed, they often risked their lives to do so. They found ways to make end-runs around the censors, evaded every attempt to silence them, and believed beyond doubt that what they were doing was right, necessary, and valuable.
They argued with absolutely everyone, each other included. They accepted no limits to their curiosity. There was nowhere to them that Man was forbidden to go.
All is not lost when one puts the people in a condition to see it has intelligence. On the contrary, all is lost when you treat it like a herd of cattle, for sooner or later it will gore you with its horns.
-Voltaire

In the salons of Paris, the coffee houses and Gresham College in London, in the dining rooms and halls of power all throughout Europe, intellect raged. Pamphlets, books, magazines, scientific papers all poured into the streets and captured the imaginations of men and women who then used those ideas to create new governments, societies, and values. Knowledge was passed into the hands of ordinary people, and those ordinary people did extraordinary things with it.
The two revolutions of the 18th century, the American and the French, get all of the attention, but neither would have been possible without the revolution in ideas that preceded them. Never before in the history of Western civilization had common people been entrusted to govern. Even Greece, that thriving original democracy, was more of an aristocracy than anything else. But the Enlightenment thinkers believed that all regular people lacked was education and the freedom to use their native intelligence. Given those things, a peasant could rise to rule. Peasants eventually did.
It wasn't just the aristocracy and absolute monarchy that the Enlightenment thinkers overthrew. They broke the stranglehold religion had over the populace. Religion didn't escape their scrutiny. The sacred got subjected to the same empirical analysis as the natural world, and where it was found wanting, it suffered the same scathing criticism unleashed on politics, pseudoscience, and ignorance. Some of them treated Christianity with respect and reverence, but they were in a minority. Most Enlightenment thinkers had no use for a Church that sought to keep people in ignorance and servitude, a faith that led to intolerance and claimed miracles it couldn't prove, and religions rotten with hypocrisy.
"Let's eat some Jesuit," Voltaire wrote in Candide. Baron d'Holbach proselytized for atheism, churning out a flood of books and pamphlets proclaiming that there is no God, only nature, and that only a society of atheists has any hope of being truly moral. He often had to publish his books under innocuous titles to evade the censors. But other philosophes left nothing to doubt with theirs: among the books on offer was Toland's Christianity Not Mysterious. Pretty revolutionary for a world in which religion still ruled.
Other books might have seemed innocent enough until they were opened. Woolston's Six Discourses on the Miracles of Our Savior proclaimed the Resurrection of Christ "the most notorious and monstrous Imposture, that was ever put upon mankind." Voltaire, when completing the Philosophical Dictionary, wrote, "Theology amuses me. There we find man's insanity in all its plenitude." Jefferson removed all of the miracles from the Bible, a decision which Hume would have applauded.
The only sacred thing was the pursuit of knowledge. Rational thinking, empiricism, science, and intellect reigned supreme. The next world meant very little to them, if anything at all. People had to make a difference in this one. And that was exactly what they set out to do, and succeeded. They brought us the modern age.
A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to Farce, or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
-James Madison

The Enlightenment never truly ended: its results permeate every aspect of our lives. But there hasn't been another time quite like it since. The passion for knowledge has been eclipsed. We've entered an age in which ignorance rather than intelligence is celebrated. As Kant said, it's easier to be immature, to let others do the thinking. We become habituated to the yoke: we become afraid of freedom. "The guardians who have so benevolently taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it that the far greatest part of them (including the entire fair sex) regard taking the step to maturity as very dangerous, not to mention difficult," Kant wrote. "Having first made their domestic livestock dumb, and having carefully made sure that these docile creatures will not take a single step without the go-cart to which they are harnessed, these guardians then show them the danger that threatens them, should they attempt to walk alone."
He could have been describing our age.
Fundamentalist religion is attempting to rein us in. Governments want to control, not serve, the governed. This has always been the case. The powerful never relinquish power easily, and they always desire more power. It's easier for them to take it from people made willfully powerless.
War, poverty, ignorance and despair are rising all around us.
We should be thrilled.
After all, the Enlightenment grew out of a desperate age. Europe was torn by war, crushed by despotic governments, ripped apart by religious strife, and it was from this harrowing that the philosophes grew. When I look at the conditions surrounding the Enlightenment, I see clear parallels. Strife can destroy people: it can also galvanize them.
I think we're standing on the cusp of a new Age of Enlightenment.
Bloggers are the new pamphleteers. What bloggers are saying today about politics and religion, life and learning, show the same spirit as those tracts poured from the pens of subversive thinkers who went on to redefine the foundations of the world.
Comments threads and message boards have become the new salons, where ideas are exchanged and intelligence elevated. Those discussions wouldn't have been out of place in the most illustrious gatherings of learned people.
All we need is the passion, the commitment, and the courage those revolutionaries displayed. Nothing is beyond us. But we have to step outside of the little boxes we've put ourselves in. Scientists need to brush shoulders with artists. Writers need to converse with mathematicians. Political philosophers and musicians should mingle. That cross-fertilization of knowledge is what leads to world-shaking ideas, quantum leaps in human understanding.
Politeness and deference are sweet social ideas, but we can't defer to those who would impose ignorance and superstition. Contention was the order of the day during the Enlightenment. We should never shy away from it. Conventional thinking will get us nowhere. The world is on the cusp of a crisis: we're never going to get anything solved if we don't break away from tradition and habit. We won't solve a damned thing if we don't risk capsizing the boat.
The philosophes changed the world not by force of arms, but force of mind. Their ideas, their writings, their experiments, are what changed the world irrevocably.
It can happen again. Ignorance has no power to stand against those who dare to know. And those who dare have the power to change everything.
Here and today begins a new age in the history of the world. Some day you will be able to say - I was present at its birth."
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A River Runs Through It - Sometimes At Flood Stage

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 07:25:00 +0000

Before Anne Jefferson, floods bored me.

I didn't used to put a lot of thought into how rivers overran. I knew the basics: too much water = overflowing banks. Simple equation, one even an Arizonan can solve. We watched it happen. Rain had a difficult time soaking into hard desert earth. So, every rainstorm, there would be flash floods, and every monsoon season, at least a few people who didn't quite grasp the fact that those floods were, in fact, flash, and furious: they'd get caught by surprise, and stranded, or drown. On one memorable occasion, some New River folk decided it would be a great idea to drive a backhoe into a flooding desert river that was usually a wash so they could see how deep the water was.

It's not a great idea to do that. It's too bad so many of them didn't survive to learn the lesson.

I learned my lessons from other people, and stayed away from flooded things. If the road had water over it (and believe me, Phoenix has lots of roads that seem built specifically so they can flood reliably every summer storm), I'd go another way. I never lived in a place too close to water. I knew vaguely what a floodplain was - it was the place non-natives built houses, and then wondered why they got washed out every few years when the rivers rose. I didn't directly experience a life-impacting flood until I moved to El Norte. Back in November of '07, right after I'd begun working for my present company, North Creek flooded so bad we got evacuated. I had to drive through water that reached the bottom of my car doors - something I'd been told never to do, but the police were there directing traffic, and it was the only way out. I thought I'd come home to find I could float up to my third-floor windows, but Forbes Creek had behaved itself beautifully, and we were as dry as one can get in a Seattle-area winter.

That still didn't make me think much of floods. In some vague way, the waterways in my story worlds would usually behave themselves. I thought of flooding on small scales, sometimes, but never really considered how rivers misbehave and what people who must live beside them do in order to tame them. Floods? Pfft. Boring. We had bigger matters to attend.

Then came Anne.

She's in to something I'd never thought had anything much to do with geology: hydrology. When she wrote a blog post, chances were you'd be getting damp. This is a big world, and more than just strictly local bits of it flood. Some of those floods can impact a region, some an entire country. And, as she said in the title of one memorable blog post, "A flood is a disaster when people are in the way."

Right. So, rivers don't behave themselves all the time. But we like to live by them. So what does a civilization do to deal with it? How do you tame the savage beast?

In order to understand how a river or stream might be at least semi-controlled, you've got to understand how it behaves. What causes it to flood? And what sort of flood does it flood - because I've discovered through her posts that rivers aren't just large generic entities. They have behaviors. A lot of factors influence how they'll flood and what those floods will be like. You get in to geology and geomorphology, even biology. What happens after you've asserted your authority? Because if you change the character of a waterway, you change habitats, and even small changes can lead to drastic impacts. You and I might think nothing of removing a log from a stream so it doesn't get all stagnant and backed up, but the critters who like that large woody debris might have something to say about it. If removing wood from a stream can have such dramatic impact, how much more can a dam, or dredging, or levees cause?

These are things I've never thought about before, not in any but the most fuzzy detail, but my characters have to know it. My civilizations have to deal with it. They have to deal with matters of sediment, how water undercuts banks and digs holes and behaves in different environments. If I want to have a realistic world built, I have to remember that rivers will be rivers, and have a science all their own. And sometimes, quite often in fact, they don't do what you wish them to do.

Because of Anne, I've added a whole new word to my lexicon: hydrogeology. I pay attention to what streams and rivers are up to. I look at watersheds in a completely different way. They fascinate me in ways they never could before. And when I finish this novel and you (hopefully) enjoy it, if there's an authentic ring to the rivers, remember: it began with Anne.

"Adorers of the Good Science of Rock-breaking"

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 07:11:00 +0000

"Make them like me adorers of the good science of rock-breaking," Charles Darwin told Charles Lyell once, long ago. This, from a man who also once said of Robert Jameson's lectures on geology and zoology, "The sole effect they produced on me was the determination never as long as I lived to read a book on Geology." That, of course, was before Adam Sedgwick lectured him in geology and took him out for field work, which seems to have done the trick. He did read another book on geology, Lyell's Principles of Geology, which became his constant companion on his voyage with the Beagle. The concepts of geology prepared him to think in deep time. Without his passion for geology, without deep time sinking deep in his mind, the theory of evolution that changed the world might not be Darwin's.

Outcrop on Doherty Ridge. Photo by Cujo.

I have become, like Darwin, an adorer of the good science of rock-breaking.

It's a love that bloomed late. It's always been there, since I was little and wondered at the mountains rising in my back window; at the vast chasm in the ground that revealed billions of years; at the sea that had become fields of stone. But just a bud, tucked away, unopened. I thought I knew what I wanted and needed from life: a degree in some sort of writerly discipline, like English or maybe History, until I decided the additional debt I'd have to take on wouldn't teach me any more than I could teach myself, and I left academia for the world of daytime wage-slavery and nighttime scribbling. I set geology aside, because what a fantasy writer needed couldn't be found in earth and stone. So I thought. I searched the stars, delved into physics, waved fondly to geology on my way to geography. I knew the basics: plates moved, mountains rose where they crashed. Enough to determine the shape of an imaginary world, wasn't that?

No.

And there was the small matter of a subduction zone, now: I'd moved away from the fossil seas. I didn't understand this terrible and beautiful new place. It wasn't a landscape I'd grown up with. So I explored it a bit, and the more I explored, the more I needed to understand, the more I realized a story world should be so much more than an ocean with a few haphazard continents sketched in. I wanted to understand this world so that I could understand that. So I delved, deep, into deep time, into continental crust and ocean floor. I turned to books on geology. They weren't enough. I found a few geobloggers. They were more, still not enough. I began writing geology in order to understand it, because there's no better way to learn than by teaching someone else. And it still wasn't enough.

The more I learned, the more I realized I didn't know.

And that isn't precisely the problem. If it was, I could decide that knowing a little more than most is quite enough to be going on with, and settle down, content with my little gems of knowledge. If I'd just stayed a bit more ignorant, it would have been okay.

There's a metaphor that explains why those few shining gems, no matter how many more I acquire, will never be enough. It's in the story I'm writing right now, in which Nahash, the Serpent of the Elder Tree, is tasked with giving knowledge and wisdom to a young girl. And this is what he does, the first time they meet:

He led her round the tree, to the spring that bubbled out from between the roots, clear and deep. Another branch hung low there, and there was fruit on it, so heavy and ripe it was ready to fall. He plucked one of the fruits and turned back to her. "This fruit is knowledge. Do you see? It's probably sweet. Could be sour. You won't know until you've tasted it." He held it out. She reached for it, but he pulled it back. "There's something else. Once you've tasted it, no matter whether it's sour or sweet, you'll always be hungry. You'll starve. And that water, there-" He waved at the spring. "Sweetest water in the world, maybe the whole universe, but once you've had a drink from it you'll always be thirsty. Starving and parched. Is that how you want to spend your life? There are other ways of living, you know, and some of them are no less worthy. Some of them are even fun. Or so I've heard."

She held out her hand, but didn't speak.

"Are you quite sure? Because there's no going back, you know. Not ever."

Should I ever become a famous speculative fiction author, people will accuse me of being autobiographical. And, aside from the fact that I was an adult when I ate that fruit and drank that spring water, and didn't actually munch unidentified fruit and drink from the spring of an actual World Tree Serpent, they'll be quite correct. This is completely autobiographical. Since taking a bigger bite and a deeper drink from the fruit and springs of science, especially geology, I've been starving and parched. I'm desperate enough for more that I've considered going deep into debt for a degree I may never earn a living from. I'd beggar myself to get a full meal, and I know I'd walk away with a $30,000+ tab, and I'd still be starving. Add several fistfuls of dollars for grad school, and I'd still feel I hadn't had more than a bite to eat and a drop to drink.

There's no going back, now I'm an adorer of the good science of rock-breaking. There's no end to it, you see. It's a vast old Earth, and there's no way for any of us to know everything about it. And even if we could, have a look out in space - lots more planets out there, all unknown, all fascinating, all with incredible rocks to break.

On Doherty Ridge, with George's rock hammer. Photo by Cujo.

Anne Jefferson asked, "If you are a geology enthusiast but not professional… what do you wish you could get in additional formal and informal education? What would you like from geosciences students, faculty, and professionals that would make your enthusiasm more informed and more fun?"

And these are the things I'll say to you professionals and pending professionals, you professors and students, you who have careers at surveys and for companies:

Do not withhold your passion.

If there's a book within you, write it. Let your love pour onto the page. Put as much of your knowledge and wisdom into words as you are able, and get it into my hands. You don't even need a publisher in this digital age: you can upload it as an ebook. I'll take whatever you've got. And if you need a wordsmith's help, well, you know where to find me.

If something fascinates you, blog it. Even if it's complicated and you think it's of doubtful interest to anyone outside of the geotribe, post it up there where I can see it. If you love it enough to spend time explaining it, chances are I'll love it enough to spend time doing my best to comprehend it.

If you've written a paper, share it. Blog about it, maybe even offer to send me a .pdf if you can. There's a huge, expensive double-barrier between laypeople and papers: the language is technical and hard, and the journals charge so much that even if we're willing to put in the work, we may not have the funds. We've already spent our ready cash on books and rock hammers and various, y'see. But if you're allowed to send out a copy, and you can give me an iota of understanding, I'll read it, struggle with it, combine it with those other precious bits of knowledge until I've made some sense of it.

Show me what you see. Post those pictures of outcrops. If we're in the same neighborhood with some time to spare, put those rocks in my hands. I know you've got a career and a family, and can't lead many field trips, but if you can take even a few of us out, do it. We'll happily keep you in meals, beer and gas money just for the chance to see the world through your eyes, in real time and real life.

Answer questions as time allows.

Point us at resources.

Let us eavesdrop on your conversations with other geologists and geology students.

And hell, if you want to make some spare cash, and you're not in a position where there might be a conflict of interest, consider teaching some online classes for a fee. There's plenty of us who can't quite afford college, but could scrape together some bucks for the opportunity to learn something directly from the experts.We'd practically kill for that opportunity, but the days when you were allowed to break rocks in prison are pretty much over, so there's not quite as much incentive to break the law.

In other words, mostly do what you're doing now, with maybe a few added extras.

That's what those of us without the cash for a college degree and not even a single community college class on offer need. We just need you to share as much as you can, challenge us as much as you can.

And you there, with the students: make them, like me, adorers of the good science of rock-breaking. Send them out into the world with passion, a hammer, and a desire to babble to the poor starving, parched enthusiasts hoping for just one more bite to eat and drop to drink.

Lockwood, Dana, rocks and rock hammer on Doherty Ridge. Photo by Cujo.

This post is dedicated to the geobloggers who adopted me, answer questions and write remarkable posts and answer my plaintive "I can haz pdf?!" cries with a grin and a quick email. Dedicated most of all to Lockwood, who taught me how to properly break a rock, and gave me such rocks to break! Thanks will never be enough, so when you're next in the Pacific Northwest, my darlings, I shall give you a fine road cut (or several), a substantial meal, and more than one beer. And I meant what I said about being your wordsmith, should you ever need help writing a book.

Dojo Summer Sessions: I Shall Require Topics

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 07:16:00 +0000

Summer's drawing to a close, and the winter writing season is very nearly upon us. The Muse is back from wherever she spent her summer vacation. It looks like winter will be coming early. There's a sharp chill in the night air, and a certain gleam in her eye that says I'm in for it. She also appears to have acquired a new whip. Dear, oh dear.

So I'm furiously loading up on posts before summer ends in order to clear the decks for some marathon fiction writing. I'll need at least 30 Dojo posts fired up and ready to go in advance. I've got about half that nearing completion, and I'm running a bit low on ideas.

Topics. I require topics. What haven't I covered in the Dojo that you'd like to see covered? Pepper me with questions about all things writing, whether fiction or blogging. Tell me what you struggle with. Are there contentious issues in the wordsmithing world you'd like to see me tackle with nothing more than my wits and perhaps a rock hammer? Get them to me. If you don't want to go public, you can always find dhunterauthor at yahoo. DM me on Twitter. Drop me a line on Google+, only you'd better do that before October, because I've plans to abandon it willy-nilly if it continues to be evil. You can even find me on Facebook: although I tend to neglect that place shamefully, they always notify me by email when something gets messaged or posted.

Right, then. Fire away.

Los Links 9/9

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 07:13:00 +0000

Slightly less links than usual, I'm afraid. But some great stuff in here. Do enjoy!

Irene

Deshler Photography: Hurricane Irene - Record Flooding in Vermont.

Science

Speakeasy Science: Et tu, Science Magazine?

Scientific American: Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: Don’t Underestimate the Importance of Imagination.

Almost Diamonds: Humor Study Is Funny Peculiar.

Neurotic Physiology: Friday Weird Science: Are men really funnier than women? Who's asking?

Looking for Detachment: Report on an Afterwork Field Trip.

Mountain Beltway: Friday fold: duplex structure in the gastropod limestone and A dismaying course, part I: climate change.

The Open Source Paleontologist: How do you read the literature? Thoughts on academic maturation.

The Thoughtful Animal: Animal Imagination: The Dog That Pretended to Feed a Frog (and Other Tales).

White Coat Underground: You’re all gonna die!

Highly Allochthonous: Scenic Saturday: Sliced, diced and weathered.

Life as a Geologist: Kinky Columns.

AnimalWise: The “Yellow Snow” Test.

Georneys: Geology Word of the Week: N is for Nummulite.

The Last Word on Nothing: Guest Post: Microscope, DIY, 3 Minutes.

Not Exactly Rocket Science: Bacteria use electric wires to shock uranium out of groundwater and Hummingbirds dive to sing with their tails.

Uncovered Earth: Geoblogging the Northwest.

Macworld: FTC: No, your smartphone can't heal acne.

Scientific American: How Accurate Are Memories of 9/11?

Quest: Local Geological State Parks to Close.

Ars Technica: Why my fellow physicists think they know everything (and why they're wrong).

New York Times: Where Early Dinosaurs Lived, Deal Expands a National Park.

Scientific American: What We Know about Black Holes.

Culturing Science: On vaccines: scientists can’t stop doing science because of crazy people.

History of Geology: September 2, 1806: The landslide of Goldau.

Writing

Mad Genius Club: He Beats Me But He’s My Publisher.

Galley Cat: How Publishers & Authors Can Use SoundCloud.

Janet Reid, Literary Agent: Pitch versus query.

A Newbie's Guide to Publishing: Not Caring.

Dear Author: Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About.

The Creative Penn: How To Write Fight Scenes With Alan Baxter.

Atheism and Religion

Choice in Dying: The Bishop of Swindon is an Ass.

Greta Christina's Blog: Diplomacy and Accomodationism Are Not The Same Thing.

The Meming of Life: The power of two.

Almost Diamonds: We Are Indeed on a Slippery Slope.

New Statesman: What would Jesus ban?

Women's Issues

Butterflies and Wheels: How to patronize the wimminz.

JAYFK: Oh No They Didn’t: JC Penney still missing the mark.

Feministing: Finally a beer just for women!

RH Reality Check: Court Victory in South Dakota's Misinformed Consent Law.

Almost Diamonds: Women Can Teach; You Just Can’t Be Obliged to Listen.

Skepticlawyer: Miss Manners and playing the victim.

Tiger Beatdown: CHRONICLES OF MANSPLAINING: Professor Feminism and the Deleted Comments of Doom and “Elitism:” Now, It Basically Just Means “Not Having Sex With Everybody”.

Whatever: Shut Up and Listen.

Love Joy Feminism: Men and Women in Christian Patriarchy: Masters and Slaves or Equals?

Politics

Grist: Conservative pundits grapple with ‘anti-science’ charge, flail.

Talking Points Memo: Columnist: Registering Poor To Vote 'Like Handing Out Burglary Tools To Criminals'.

Forever in Hell: Skin in the Game.

Mike the Mad Biologist: Is 12,000 Lives Worth a Re-Election? Because People Have to Breathe This Crap.

Political Carnival: Tea bagger to TPC reader: You’re “less than human because your husband is half Hispanic & half Irish.”

The Telegraph: Jon Huntsman, the lone voice of scientific sanity in the US Republican Presidential race.

Grist: Rick Perry: Just because global warming is a ‘fact’ doesn’t mean it’s real and Even Tea Partiers don’t think environmental protection kills jobs.

Decrepit Old Fool: The Galileo Gambit; rule number one is…

Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal: Science, The Tea Party and The Dunning-Kruger Effect.

Pam's House Blend: Per Save California, Gay Activists Are “Kidnapping The Brains Of Our Kids”.

Guardian News Blog: Is Rick Perry a 21st-century Galileo?

Bad Astronomy: Republican candidates, global warming, evolution, and reality.

Mother Jones: Audio: Chris Christie Lets Loose at Secret Koch Brothers Confab.

Society and Culture

Time: Beware of the Gonzo Nature-TV Presenter.

Pull My Finger: Dumbest. Blog. Ever.

New York Times: On Flood Plain, Pondering Wisdom of Rebuilding Anew.

The Hermitage: In which Hermitage is a pissy black person.

Lifehacker: How I Got My Stolen Laptop Back Within 24 Hours Using Prey.

Stupid Evil Bastard: Beware cold calls from people claiming to be from Microsoft about problems with your computer.

Inside Higher Ed: A Dissenter Is Fired.

Lousy Canuck: Al, why haven’t I leaped yet!?

Nymwars

Bob Blakley: Google+ Can Be A Social Network Or The Name Police – Not Both.

All Things D: Superman vs. Google+ (Comic).

We Have to Remember

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 22:08:00 +0000

Ten years ago today, the world changed.

It changes every day. Someone, somewhere, each day, finds themselves facing what they'd never expected to face. Wars break out, violence erupts; or there's a fire, or a flood, or some other catastrophic event that means they will never live as they once did. Even if they rebuild their lives, even if they prosper, there's always that memory, tucked away, and it colors everything. The world changed. It will never, can never, be the same.

Ten years ago today, we in America faced one of those world-changing events. And we are not the same.

In Flagstaff, that September day was achingly beautiful. The sun shone like a second spring. I'd woken late, as usual, and pottered around getting ready for work. There was no television in my house, no phone, no internet, no radio. I'd gotten rid of all those things, living in splendid near-isolation, because all of the things I needed to connect with the world were just a block away at work. So I didn't know. The world hadn't changed yet. I walked to work slowly, savoring the last of the flowers, blooming white and gleaming against the bark and cinders in the landscaping at the gym. I listened to birds singing their day away. I basked in the sun, and felt an overwhelming joy in it. Soon, winter would come, kill all the flowers and drape everything in cold, wet white. But right here, right now, it was warm and brilliant and perfect, a perfect moment. I was smiling as I arrived at work.

Where one of my coworkers, hunched on a bench outside, looked up at me and said, "We're at war."

And the world changed.

The Towers were already gone. Televisions wheeled on to the call center floor, tuned to CNN, showed the planes flying in to them, over and over; showed the collapse, the bodies falling, the debris, the end of America's smug sense that it couldn't happen here. I thought it was the end. How could we possibly survive this? This was the end of everything: our dreams, our hopes, our way of life. But the voice of one of my characters said, fiercely, speaking from a future I couldn't see, "We survived."

And we did. We survived. We came together under eerily silent skies. We buried our dead, tended our wounded, we lifted each other up and we became a united nation. We weren't alone: the rest of the world was with us. We could be wounded, but never defeated.

Then our Republican government spent the next several years ensuring we did everything wrong. Invaded the wrong country. Went the wrong way on security and civil liberties. Used the excuse of 9/11 to chip away at what we were and what America meant. America now meant security theater, and torture, and endless wars against people who had nothing to do with bringing the Twin Towers down, and no part in killing so many there and at the Pentagon. We, afraid, followed along, and we never should have done.

A terrorist act cannot destroy a country. A country can only destroy itself.

This is a time to remember heroism: firefighters and policemen rushing in to burning buildings, giving their lives so others may live. It's a time to remember everyday people who rose to the moment and did magnificent things, helping each other survive, cope and pick up the pieces. It's a time to remember that nineteen fanatics can cause terrible damage and pain, and a time to remember that nineteen fanatics aren't enough to bring down a nation.

But it is also a time to remember what we have done since. We're determined to never again let terrorists get so far past our guard, but we've let ourselves forget why they attacked us in the first place: our freedoms, our democracy, our contentious and wild culture, one in which we're free to say and do things they find appalling. We were strong, we were a beacon, we were leaders. We tried so hard to be the good guys, even though we failed so many times to live up to our ideals. But since then, we've become frightened and jaded, we've given up too much of what made us fantastic. We've made horrific mistakes, in trying to face this. We've brutalized people who had no part in the attack. We let it be the opening salvo in a hopeless war rather than what it truly was: a criminal act, the work of outlaws, the risk we take for living in a free society that would like to lead the world. We've acquiesced to torture. We've allowed flying to become an ordeal of security theater in which we ritually remove shoes and sacrifice liquids, topped off with a choice between a grope or being stripped by a scanner. We've let fear get the better of us, too many times.

And we must not forget that.

We must not forget that what happened on that bright September day ten years ago is not unique to America. Other countries have been attacked. We are not alone in this. That's not to minimize the impact of September 11th, 2001: it's a uniquely painful moment in American history, the day we realized we, too, could suffer. And we should never forget. But let's not forget that others, before and since, have been attacked, and picked up the pieces, and carried on.

Ten years on, our economy's shattered, our civil liberties under threat, our political system broken, and we are struggling. But we're not done yet. We can come back. We can be what we were that September morning: strong, prosperous, and admired.

We can do better than we have done. We can become a nation of ideals and inspiration again. And we don't have to do it alone.

We have to remember. We have to remember that we could have been so much better, and then be it.

Ten years from now, I want to look back to that September day, and be able to say, "That day could have destroyed us. But it didn't. We remembered, and we became the best we can be."

Los Links 9/11: I'll be adding to these as more arrive.

Almost Diamonds: On the Importance of Forgetting. In which Stephanie Szvan reminds us of the things that should be forgotten.

Bad Astronomy: Repost: Making new anniversaries. In which Phil Plait explores the importance of making new memories.

The Washington Post: F-16 pilot was ready to give her life on Sept. 11. What would have happened if the ordinary people on United Flight 93 hadn't done extraordinary things.

Superbug: Terror and Bioterror: 9/11 to 10/4. (Part 1). Maryn McKenna describes how disease detectives responded in those first chaotic hours, when no one knew what would come next.

White Coat Underground: Yet another 9/11 remembrance, with commentary. In Detroit, PalMD treated patients and listened to the news, wondering what we all did: is our city next?

The Coffee-Stained Writer: What I will tell my children. Nicole shares memories from herself and her husband, and looks ahead at the day when her infant children will come to her for memories of something they know only from social studies classes.

Respectful Insolence: Ten years ago today. Orac posts a long, harrowing video taken 500 yards from the Twin Towers, and time marches on.

The Friendly Atheist: The Falling Man Is Not In Hell. (Warning: graphic image.).

Greta Christina's Blog: 9/11, and the Shallow Comfort of Religion. By the time you reach the end, the final line rings like a clarion.

Spiegel Online: How 9/11 Triggered America's Decline. Rings painfully true, this.

Geotripper: An Audience Applauded, and Humanity Evaporated Away: A 9/11 Reflection. We have to face the worst of ourselves as well as the best. And Christians especially will find some food for thought within.

Maureen Johnson: 9/11. The experiences of a New York woman on that day. And never forget this: "All those people downtown had names and faces and they all mattered. Everyone mattered. We suddenly remembered that. Everyone mattered."

Neil Gaiman: Memory. Neil reposts blog entries from that time, and includes the one I have never forgotten: "En route today to the home of Maximilian, the rain forced us into a dry space which happened to be holding an exhibition of Robert Capa photographs: astonishing stuff, of the Spanish Civil War, of the Second World War, of the Japanese-Chinese War of 1938, and I found myself looking at the photos of combat, of wounded civilians, of people whose worlds had crumbled and fallen, without any sense of irony. These people were us. Whatever side they were on. They were us, and the images had a truth and an immediacy I couldn't have imagined until recently." 9/23/01

Decrepit Old Fool: Build the right monument. And this, finally, the best post I've read on 9/11. As always, George says everything I've ever wanted to say and never found the right words for.

Geotweeps remember:

@clasticdetritus: "10 years ago today I was doing geological field work in west Texas, listened to events transpire on radio, didn't see images for three days."

@eruptionsblog: "The oddest thing about the 9/11 anniversary is finding out only yesterday that someone I knew in high school died in Tower One. Solemn day."

@rschott: "10 years ago today I was a new prof at LSSU following the events unfold on Slashdot between classes because everything else online was down."

@callanbentley: "10 years ago, I was teaching at Jefferson Junior High in SW DC, directly across Potomac from Pentagon. Saw smoke from my classroom window."

@ugrandite: "Ten years ago I was teaching at WKU and kept trying to catch up on the large TV they dragged out into the atrium btw classes."

@davidkroll (honorary geotweep for the day): "Just going to buy OJ for the kids' sleepover party and now crying in my car upon sight of Kroger's flag at half-mast #Sept11 #neverfoget"

Updates:

Paul Krugman: The Years of Shame. Trenchant and correct.

Blue Texan: Krugman is Right: We Should Be Ashamed of What Happened after 9/11. Ditto.

Trek Into the Past

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 07:00:00 +0000

So. Star Trek turned 45 last Thursday. Wow.

It's been nearly twenty years since I lost my Star Trek innocence. I wasn't much of a sci-fi fan as a teenager, especially not the teevee shows. I loved Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica and... that was just about it. I truly believed most of those shows were horribly corny, with awful special effects and atrocious writing. I was above all that. I would never ever in my entire life become a Star Trek fan. Star Trek fans were pathetic and weird.

Ah, youth. So full of certainty and so full of shit.

Then my friend Ryan spent a few days with us on his summer break from college. This happened at the same time they'd started releasing Star Trek: The Next Generation on VHS. Yes, I am dating myself. Shut up. Anyway, Ryan saw these while we were at Wal-Mart one afternoon and snapped them up with evident glee. His little face just glowed. And he assumed that I, of course, would watch them with him.

"No," I said. "I hate Star Trek."

His face. So shocked. He pitched. He pleaded. He cajoled. He seemed to give up in the face of my continued refusal. I should've known better. Ryan was a man who could hear the word no, but not when it came to entertainment he believed in. And he could be a devious little bastard.

He also knew me very well. Since he was staying at my place with a herd of other friends, he had easy access to both me and backup. So at 8 in the ay-em, when I was still dead unconscious, he came into my bedroom. "We're gonna watch Star Trek."

I think I meant to say something like, "That's nice, dear. I'm going to continue sleeping," but what I really said was, "Groan."

He started in on a let's-watch-Star-Trek-together sales pitch, ending with, "C'mon. Just one."

"If you want me to watch Star Trek," I said, "you'll have to carry me out there."

And so he did. He scooped me right out of bed. He's not the strongest man in the universe, but he was determined. Picture him staggering through my chaotic bedroom, trying to avoid tripping over debris, navigating hazards, while I watched the approaching door with the certainty that I was about to have my head cracked open upon it, if he didn't fall and squish me first. I was about to die because a friend wanted me to watch Star Trek.

We made it to the living room with only minor bruising. He deposited me in front of the television whilst the other houseguests laughed and roared their approval. Ryan may not have been a strong man, but he was a smart man. He stuffed a Coke in my hand, knowing that at this hour and so equipped, I wouldn't have the will to move for at least an hour, and an hour was all he needed. Then he turned on the telly.

The episode, for those interested, was "The Naked Now." Yeah. If you know it, you're already laughing.

By the end of that hour, I was hooked. By the end of summer, I was a full-on fan. I became an officer in our local fan club. I dressed as Deanna Troi for Ryan's next visit (which didn't shock him half so much as the fact that I was wearing makeup). I loved the friend who constantly wore his starship captain's uniform, and didn't think it at all weird that he'd spent months figuring out how to say, "Take your ticket and get on the damned boat" in Klingon. He worked for a boat rental company, it made perfect sense.

I owned the Enterprise's manual. I wrote Star Trek fan fic. I read the books (and to this day, Q-in-Law is one of my favorite reading experiences. Read it. You'll laugh). I watched all the movies. And I discovered a wealth of stories I hadn't even known existed.

Star Trek taught me that sci-fi could be awesome, even in the television industry, even when the special effects weren't all that. It taught me that this genre could tell amazing stories.

I rather drifted away after those halcyon early years of passion. I no longer read the books or write the fan fic. I don't belong to a fan group, or keep up on the new spinoffs, or even all of the movies. But I haven't stopped loving Star Trek.

I'll always want my tea. Earl Grey. Hot.

I'll always want to see them boldly going where no show has gone before, even if I'm not along for every voyage.

Engage.

This Student Gives Me Hope

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 07:20:00 +0000

I don't know who she is, only what she has done. And what she has done is this: become a banned book library. When her school decided upon a list of things the kids absolutely must not read, due to parental outrage and a belief kids can be kept from great literature and harsh truths, she tested their limits by bringing in a copy of The Catcher in the Rye. When it caught the eye of a fellow student, she lent it out. And then things snowballed, and she now runs a clandestine locker-library full of banned books, which kids who had no interest in good books until they were forbidden to read them are now thoroughly enjoying.

Firstly, we have a young woman who's passionate about books. I already love her.

Secondly, we have a young woman who's not prepared to be told what she can and cannot read. Love kicks up a notch.

Thirdly, we have a young woman who's getting other young men and women reading intensely. Love shoots through the roof and becomes adoration.

I have news for parents and school authorities who believe they can shelter children from things they think are too awful for young minds: you'll fail. You have failed. You've always failed. Unless this was a very clever reverse-psychology ploy to get kids interested in books, in which case you've succeeded brilliantly. Bravo. A cunning plan - quite evocative of the way the potato was introduced to Greece.

Too bad I doubt the administration was that smart.

We jaded adults may believe kids these days are incapable of deep thought and literacy and scholarship, and we are so very, very wrong if we believe that. Look at this student. Look at what she and her fellow students are doing. Look at how much books matter to them. Enough to take not-inconsequential risks for. And they are smart enough and confident enough to decide what they can and cannot read, all for themselves, to hell with the naysayers.

I love this to pieces. It tells me that, despite rumors to the contrary, we're not raising a nation of apathetic know-nothings, although we've been trying very hard to do so. No, we've got a crop of brilliant, bold, and brave kids coming up, and the world will be better for them.

I just hope that once my books get published, they're summarily banned. I'd like to have this kind of readership. I want kids like this at my signings. Unleashing that wise, unruly literary mob upon the unsuspecting citizens of this increasingly stifled country would make me twelve kinds of happy, and prouder than I'll ever have words to express.

This Is Madness

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 00:04:00 +0000

I'll be driving down to Burien, WA tomorrow night to take part in some serious insanity: Burien Little Theatre's 9-10-11 fundraising event. 24 hours of delightful chaos. I shall be liveblogging it from around 10pm to the wee hours.

If you're round Burien tomorrow, I beseech you, come down! Join the chaos! Be entertained! Support community theatre! And goggle at the poor souls who won't sleep and will barely eat for 24 hours so that the show can go on.

Yeah, About That Lighthouse....

noreply@blogger.com (Dana Hunter) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 07:17:00 +0000

It was barely bloody visible. No matter. We had one of those glorious, rare, clear, and very warm days that would have led to some spectacular views. Only, those glorious, rare, clear and very warm days have led to quite a lot of forest fires, so there was a remarkable amount of smoke in the air, cutting visibility considerably.

Sigh.

Still. 'Twas lovely. The sun shone, waves crashed, and I got me feet wet. Not bad as far as possibly last adventures of the summer season go. I'd been missing the Sound. Our adventures this summer involved more fire than water, and it just seems obscene to live half an hour from one of the most beautiful bodies of water on earth and not get out to see it.

We went to Alki Point. From there, you can see just about everything round Seattle that makes it so geologically interesting. Shall we take a tour? We don't even have to walk about much.

Discovery

We saw a lighthouse. Sorta. If you enlarge this photo by lots, you'll see the lighthouse at Discovery Park standing at the very end of land, there. And you can see those wonderful bluffs I'm so enamored with.

Continuing on...

As we walked toward the sandy part of the beach, the Space Needle caught my attention, and then this set of steps with waves splashing exuberantly up against it, and the visual artist part of my soul grabbed my throat and said, "You will stand here and take five billion pictures of this until you have one you are satisfied with." So I did:

Splash and Space

If you look closely, just to the left of the Space Needle, you'll notice the Cascades are visible. They're mere shadows through the haze on the horizon, but they're there. Seattle is a city surrounded by mountains, and sometimes you even get to see them.

Speaking of Cascades, we got a rare view of Mount Baker:

Mount Baker

It's still weird to me, living in a city with views of so many stratovolcanoes that look like nothing so much as ice cream cones. It doesn't matter how hot the summer gets, they're always coated in snow, and they're so adorably round. They probably won't look so round and innocent when they erupt, but at least they'll put on a good show. If Baker goes boom, I'll probably hare off to Alki to enjoy the fireworks, weather permitting.

I mentioned smoke. It clung to the horizon, and at times did some very fascinating things, like stream up islands:

Smoke

And yup, the Olympics were out, too. They're big. You don't get a sense of how big most days, with most of them hidden by clouds, but here on a clear day, you get a sense of their enormity. And we saw a fire start up there. Observe:

No fire

No wildfire up my sleeve, ladies and gentlemen. Now I'm going to perform a distracting little gesture with, oh, say, my foot, and then poof!

Fire

We watched it grow from just a little wisp of a hint of smoke to this mushroom cloud. Here's a better view:

Boat and Blaze

This appears to be the Big Hump fire, caused by some idiot, and busily munching along in the understory. It still amazes me that anything at all burns on this side of the state, but we haven't had rain for a bit. Hence all the bloody fires, most of which are burning on the dry side of the state. Oregon's got its own excitement as well. That's what you get when all the biology dries out and things spark. So let me just say this right now, folks: no matter how damp a place seems, please be ultra-careful with any burny things. I know we geo-types joke about napalming the forest, but we don't really mean it. Much. And we'd rather it not burn down, thanks ever so much.

Here endeth the PSA and the obsession with fire. Let's feast our eyes on some color, shall we?

Colors

This is one of the things I love about the Sound: when it's blue, it's blue - but also green, all these lovely bright jewel tones that make the whole world seem just that much more brilliant.

It looks all inviting and stuff, but be careful if you can't resist and dive in. This is northern Pacific water. That means it's capital-C cold.

Moi getting cold feet

That's why you'll only catch me in it up to my ankles. I am a wuss. But a very happy wuss.

On the way back to the car, we noticed an extraordinarily fat seagull on the prowl. Do not leave bags unattended unless you want them filched by a fat bird:

Thief

I don't know why, but I find this kind of behavior hilarious.

On the other side of the point, I caught sight of a cute little diving bird. I have no idea what it is, but did I mention cute?

Diving bird

How do I know he's a diving bird? Because I watched him dive a few times. They stay under a rather long time, actually, and then pop back to the surface like ping pong balls.

The sun was starting to get a bit low, and you know me - I can't resist a good glitter:

Glitter

Nor a majestic mountain. Mount Rainier completes our collection of Cascades volcanoes visible from Seattle:

Mount Rainier

The views round here really are remarkable.

And, if you try hard enough, and go to the end of an alley, at last, you will see a lighthouse:

Alki Lighthouse

And with that, summer adventuring season is pretty much finished. Nice enough finale. And don't worry - there shall be plenty more pictures - we've had enough adventure to keep us in write-ups all winter long.