In the Humorous Vein #9

Blogging will be a bit (more) sparse in the next two weeks, as I'm escaping the heat and humidity of NOVA to go to...Costa Rica. (Hmm. Perhaps this plan would work better if I hadn't chosen to escape to a tropical country...)

I'm not sure if I'll be able to post while I'm there, but I'll be back with fantastic volcano photos! In the meantime, I'm going to set up a few posts to go live while I'm away. Comments may be delayed until I get back home, but feel free to post 'em anyway.

And, back on its regular Sunday schedule:

In case anyone's interested...

If you really like any of the "Humorous Vein" posters, and want to print a copy for yourself, let me know and I'll send you the hi-res version.

Thanks for all the compliments, by the way - I hope they're as fun to read as they are to make!

In the Humorous Vein #8

Earth: The Biography - Impressive footage, but lacking in substance

Last night I watched an episode of the BBC's new series Earth: The Biography, which is currently showing on the National Geographic Channel. The series has 5 episodes - "Atmosphere," "Ocecans," "Ice," "Volcanoes," and "Rare Planet" - and is hosted by Dr. Iain Stewart of the Science Channel's Hot Rocks. It's been pretty heavily promoted by NG, and since it's a BBC production I'm assuming it's showing on their science channel as well (neither of which is very helpful to people who don't have expanded cable or satellite, though). The BBC News announcement from last year is here; their blurb says that

"The new series will highlight the delicate balance of life on the planet and how its history has lurched between disaster and recovery."

I watched the "Volcanoes" episode, which is described on the National Geographic website as follows:

"Volcanoes are one of nature’s most awesome and destructive forces, but they are also the life force and architect of our planet. They can raise up great mountains and create new land, or they can level cities and destroy entire civilizations. They provide a glimpse of the power of Earth’s internal heat source, without which it would have become a dead planet millions of years ago. In this episode, Iain takes us on a journey to some of the most dramatic places on Earth, starting in Ethiopia."

I was hoping for another good addition to what seems like a recent trend in popular science programs featuring geology or environmental science, and I had pretty high standards, since the BBC is one of the few media outlets that still thinks science is newsworthy. What I found was that while some things about the show impressed me, there were a number of things going on that I didn't like at all.

On the plus side, "Volcanoes" featured some really spectacular photography. The episode begins on the slopes of the Erta Ale volcano in Ethiopia, which is the site of a famously long-lived active lava lake (it's been around since at least 1967). Dr. Stewart does what any good crazy geologist would do - rappels over the edge of the outer crater and makes his way as close to the inner crater edge as possible, where we (somehow) get so see some wonderful "flyover" shots of the lava lake. The footage is really beautiful, although I hope the cameraperson had a really long telephoto lens for some of those shots. The rest of the episode is equally well-filmed, with a number of great aerial and satellite images as well as very good groundwork (my personal favorite being a shot of an erupting Icelanding geyser that's perfectly lined up with the sun overhead).

The show makes a pretty dizzying series of jumps to different places around the world - Ethiopia, Iceland, Pakistan, New Zealand, South Australia - but shows off a number of geologic locales that don't usually get a lot of visibility. I was pleasantly surprised to see Shark Bay in Western Australia featured in the discussion about volcanoes and the early Earth, and Thingvellir in Iceland in a segment about mid-ocean ridges. The field trip Dr. Stewart took to a South Australia outcrop containing Ediacaran fossils was very neat, especially the clever use of Silly Putty to make the fossils more visible without damaging them.

While the views and localities are definitely worth seeing, the narration is very light on science. Dr. Stewart discusses the basic ideas behind plate tectonics and convection, and is (thankfully) very careful to say "hot rock" instead of molten rock, but then the focus skips away from volcanoes and settles on tectonic mountain-building processes. For several minutes we hear about how mountains are built through collision tectonics and then eroded by weather and water, but there is absolutely no tie-in of volcanoes - indeed, there are several opportunities for discussing how "subduction volcanoes" build mountains that are completely passed over in favor of flyovers of the European Alps and (I believe) the Southern Alps in New Zealand.

Another disappointing aspect of the show is that there are very few interviews with specialists. While Dr. Stewart is certainly a qualified geoscientist himself (he currently lectures at the University of Plymouth, and he's been a lecturer at Brunel University and the West London Institute of Higher Education in the past), his narration is very broad and shallow. Two interviews are presented in the course of the hour - neither with a volcanologist - and while one does touch on the role of volcanoes in fostering life in geothermal springs and undersea vents, the other interview is with an expert on the Cambrian explosion, and concerns fossils. Granted, the show's focus is on the interaction between life and geology, but it's a little strange that the producers chose not to avail themselves of all the volcanological experts out there for an episode on volcanology. (They didn't even bring out Don Swanson, who's practically a fixture for popular science programs on volcanoes.)

I was equally unimpressed by the animations. I've been watching programs like this for a long time (all the way back to reruns of the PBS Planet Earth series that came out in 1986), and the animations in this one were pretty underwhelming. They were overly-simplified and, if Dr. Stewart hadn't been so careful to note the difference between hot rock and magma, could have been misleading. I much prefer the ones that appear in the recent Faces of Earth series, which also gets my vote for better science content and interviews. (Faces of Earth occasionally runs on the Science Channel, but can be purchased through the American Geological Institute or the Discovery Channel store.)

I found the attempt to link geology and the evolution of life a bit confusing, and frankly clumsy. There was a little too much discussion about how "amazing" it was that volcanoes and life were "able to fine-tune" atmospheric CO2 levels, for example. While it's true that there is a global cycle involved (CO2 is emitted by volcanoes, trapped by biota, captured in ocean sediments and then returned to volcanoes by subduction), it's misleading to describe the process as if there was any active intelligence involved on the part of the volcanoes or the plankton. In reality, the biologic elements adapted to the conditions created by the volcanoes; much as we like to anthropomorphize things, it's simply not appropriate for a geological discussion. The portion of the episode where hot springs and geothermal vents are pointed out as the probable locations for the origins of life does actually come up at a logical point, but some of the other instances where life and geology are linked seem slapped-on, like the producers couldn't decide what kind of focus the show was supposed to have. It made for a very disjointed progression, without a good flow of ideas and easy-to-understand linkages between concepts.

Ultimately I would recommend the series for its cinematography, which was excellent, but I was let down by expectations that it would be a more in-depth version of the Hot Rocks show. Even for a casual audience, the science was sparse and terse, thrown out in little tidbits that seemed more like photo captions than anything else. And while it's certainly fun to listen to Dr. Stewart (since he is an engaging speaker, and I think he has a neat accent), and I'm sure he had a great time getting to visit all the beautiful locales, it doesn't make up for the fact that there's more geological eye candy than content in the epsiode I watched.

Oooh.

In other silliness, someone gave me this to put in my new apartment. I've been staring at it for hours now. It is so incredibly cheesy, but I can't stop watching it.

Yep, my brain is toast today. I do, however, love this thing. It's the perfect time-waster for a volcanologist.

A musical interlude

With all the things I've been doing to get ready for my move to Buffalo, I haven't had much time to write much on here. I've noticed that Julian has been posting about geology in music, and it got me thinking about how I associate geology and music.  

I play violin and various other obscure stringed instruments, which meant that I was steeped in Classical orchestral music (and later Renaissance and Medieval chamber music and English country dances). I listened to other things - mainly oldies and swing and jazz - but it wasn't until I started going on geology trips that I really paid attention to what other people were listening to. My undergrad department runs a one- to three-week-long field course each spring, and since we spent a long time driving, everyone would bring recordings of their favorite music to listen to. The recordings evolved from tapes (for one very old van) to CDs to predominantly MP3 players, but the one thing that was consistent was that I began to associate various songs or pieces with different locations. Even now, hearing a particular song conjures up images of a particular time and place and even a specific event, and I thought it might be fun to go through them. (And it's a list, and lists are easy. It's Friday and my brains are shot. Enjoy anyway!) 


Cruising into/around campus, plus countless other places on the Colorado Plateau: "Hot Lava" by Perry Farrell. (We blasted this when we got back to campus very early one morning, and freaked out just about every townie and jogger we saw. The best part is that the song has a line that says "The hydrostatic pressure of seawater tends to inhibit the vesicle size of the basalt.") 


Winslow, Arizona: "Take it Easy" by the Eagles. (We drove through Winslow playing this song. Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, that.) 


Outside of Capitol Reef, Utah: "Why Don't We Get Drunk" by Jimmy Buffett. (Somehow, this seemed totally appropriate for rural Utah.) 


Big Bend (Nighttime): "Knights of Cydonia" by Muse (Cowboys. Aliens. Perfect for late-night trips to the hot springs. Also comes with an awesome music video, although we didn't find that out until we got back.) 


Big Bend (Daytime): "Pop Goes My Heart" by Hugh Grant in the movie Music and Lyrics (This was banned by the end of the trip due to excessive cuteseyness.)


Terlingua, Texas: Multiple songs and commentary on the government shutting down an illegal radio operation by a local guitarist/DJ. (Fortunately, they didn't find his pot.) 


Big Island of Hawaii: "The Final Countdown" by Europe, "Volcano" by Jimmy Buffett, "Hot Lava". (Final Countdown has been banned indefinitely for any field trip.) 


Uninhabited portions of the Fish Lake Plateau: Theme from The Great Escape. (Whistled by several trip members at precisely the same point in a long hike, which resulted in a very long break so we could all stop laughing.) 


Inhabited portions of the Fish Lake Plateau: "Ticks" by Brad Paisley (I actually spit water on someone the first time I heard this.) 


Drive to Utah: Louis Prima & Keely Smith, multiple albums, way too many repeats. 


Graduation: "Invincible" by Muse 


Somewhere in Arizona near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon: "Drunken Lullabies" by Flogging Molly (Hmm. Beginning to see a trend here.) 


Kilauea Military Camp, Lava Lounge: "Footloose" by Kenny Loggins (Oh, the Lava Lounge. Oh, the dancing. Oh, how glad I am that no one filmed this. I think.) 


Drive from Volcano to Hilo: Timeline audiobook and an NPR segment titled "Tings I Neva Know 'Bout Hummingbirds". (Okay, so they're not all music, but the hummingbird segment was priceless.)  


St. George, Utah: "Build Me Up Buttercup" by the Foundations. 


Undergrad student workroom AKA "Torture Chamber": "I Saw the Sign" by Ace of Base. 


Drive to Knoxville, TN for the 2006 SEGSA meeting: "Jump in the Line" by Harry Belafonte. 


On the way to the Guadaloupe Mountains, Texas: "Livin' on a Prayer" by Bon Jovi. (Again, totally appropriate, as our van, which had made it all the way across the country, stalled when we tried to turn into the campground.)  

I'm sure there are many more, but I can't seem to remember them and it's getting late. I'll be coherent later. Feel free to add your own recollections in the comments!

I've got the Blue Ridge Blues (Quartz, of course)

After realizing that I hadn't been camping for more than a year (yikes!) I immediately jumped on an opportunity to help my undergrad adviser with some fieldwork in the Blue Ridge last weekend. It was great fun to work with all the old hands in the department again, although bushwhacking through tick-infested thornbushes was not my favorite part of the weekend. (Not to mention that making an eight-hour trip up to New York immediately after two days of intense hiking was, to say the least, a bad idea.) Anyway, in examining the basement rocks of the Blue Ridge, we came across a lot of blue quartz. Blue quartz is common in the granites and granitoids out there, and it's not unusual to come across large veins, most often in the middle of cow pastures. (Cows can be very good at exposing outcrops, but they also do their best to...ahem...cover them up again.)

Blue quartz has been found in Texas, India, Norway, and up and down the East Coast of North America from Rhode Island to South Carolina - mainly in the Blue Ridge. The examples I've seen have all been in the Old Rag granite, a Grenvillian-age (900-1600 Ma) coarse-grained granite that crops out often in Shenandoah National Park, and especially at Old Rag Mountain. (For a really good photo of Old Rag granite, look at Callan's Geology of Shenandoah National Park page.) The Virginia Division of Mineral Resources publishes a quarterly called Virginia Minerals, and the best description I can find of Old Rag blue quartz is in the May 1981 issue. (The online copy is, sadly, in black and white, so it's impossible to admire the quartz, but a 2002 Virginia Minerals article about the VDMR's rock garden has a nice color photo.)

Blue quartz is, mineralogically speaking, pretty much like other kinds of quartz, but there are a few significant differences. The Virginia Minerals article says that

The uniqueness of blue quartz is due to properties that are uncharacteristic in ordinary quartz, opalescence, chatoyancy, and asterism. In addition, all blue quartz specimens are highly fractured and contain inclusions of rutile or other minerals.

Blue quartz has an opalescent or "waxy" (according to them) luster, which is changeable ("chatoyant") depending on the light. Asterism is defined as the "illusion of a star-like figure" in a mineral, and seems to show up in photomicrographs of blue quartz.

There are several things that can cause quartz to look blue. The first is the presence of inclusions that scatter visible light in the blue part of the spectrum - usually zoisite, tourmaline and rutile. The blue color may also come from closely spaced, subparallel microfractures, which are found in all blue quartz samples. Finally, it has been suggested that the presence of titanium (in the form of rutile or ilmenite) could cause the blue color, although there are specimens of blue quartz with no titanium, and quartz of different colors that contains large amounts of titanium.

Here's the photo from a 2002 Virginia Minerals (from the rock garden in front of their building in Charlottesville):
   
On the "woo" side of things, blue quartz, apparently, helps balance the lower and higher chakras, brings a sense of order and courage to life, releases fear, and boosts creativity and expression. It also brings mental clarity, helps one see and accept reality, lifts depression, reduces stubbornness and emotional tension, and enhances spiritual development. 

Wow, really? Mine must be broken, because my living space is still a mess, I'm stressing about writing a paper and moving to a different state, I have to deal with obnoxious mood swings every month, and I haven't seen a single indication that I'm less stubborn than I was when I picked up the stuff. Stupid defective minerals. The Old Rag granite owes me a refund. ;)  

References: 

Wise, Michael A., 1981, Blue Quartz in Virginia: Virginia Minerals, v. 27, no. 2, p. 9-12. 

Marr, John and Sites, Roy, 2002, A Guide to the Educational Rock and Mineral Garden: Samples of Virginia's Geological Diversity: Virginia Minerals, v. 48, no. 2/3, p. 15.