Google+ for geologists

I am not certain if this is a good idea or not, but when a friend sent me a Google+ invite to my personal email address, I used that address to send an invite to the address attached to this blog. After all, this is the address that I keep logged in and have my GoogleReader geology feeds set up. Unlike the account associated with my personal email address, which had no suggestions of people I may know, this address came with a bunch of suggestions, several of whom I recognize as fellow geobloggers. Therefore I created a circle called "geologists" and added them to it. I have no idea if it tells you that you are now in my circle, but if it does you now know why…

It let me set up "sparks" for "metamorphic petrology" and "orogenesis", but they don't look like they have much information available at this time.

I couldn’t help myself

This morning one of my friends posted as her facebook status update the comment "Tell me something I don't know..." "Without mucus, your stomach would digest itself." "Ok, tell me something ELSE I don't know. Something less... disgusting...".

Since she isn’t a geologist, I couldn’t resist typing up the following paragraph to share with her, as something she (and, likely, most of her other on-line friends) probably didn’t already know.

The presence of even a small amount Mn lowers the temperature at which garnet first starts to crystallize in a metapelitic rock; Mn is preferentially incorporated into garnet as compared to the other minerals. It substitutes into the same position in the garnet crystal structure as Fe, Ca and Mg (all of which are usually far more common). As a result the earliest garnet grown in a metamorphic rock is usually the highest in Mn-concentration, and as the crystal grows and depletes the reservoir of Mn its composition changes, gradually incorporating less and less Mn and more and more Fe into its crystal structure. The analysis of a typical crystal of garnet in such rocks will usually show a bell-shaped curve for Mn—decreasing in quantity towards the edges of the grain, while Fe increases. (Ca and Mg are also usually zoned, but they tend to respond more to changes in pressure to dictate which has the greater concentration.)

starting the day right

Compared to the rest of my family, I am a morning person. I am able to wake up instantly, and without being grumpy about it. This trait has become enhanced in recent years as I have discovered that my morning series of sit ups, leg lifts, twists, etc. all conspire to get my blood flowing and brain functioning, even when I didn’t get as much sleep as I might have liked (because I am also a bit of a night-owl, with a tendency to stay up late working on projects, reading, or visiting with loved ones. However, despite my ability to function in the morning, I also prefer a slow start to my day, and I consistently choose to start my morning with the more passive entertainment of reading e-mail/blogs/facebook/livejournal while eating breakfast (and for some time after the food is done) rather than the active options of replying to any of the above or working.

Given that I’ve always been one to read while enjoying my breakfast (going all the way back to reading the cereal boxes when I was a child), the surprising thing is that it has taken me so long to hit upon the idea of combining my reading of 1000 words a day of the geological literature with my breakfast reading session. In the 2.6 years since I first set myself this goal I have mostly done my “1000” at the end of the day, before going to sleep. Occasionally, it would be done during the course of my working day as it became necessary to look something up for my own writing. As a result of the random time of day it has happened fairly often that I would occasionally forget and miss a day.

This month (after taking most of December off from reading my 1000 words a day while I was travelling and visiting family and friends in Alaska, Seattle, and California) it has finally occurred to me that the best possible transition from by breakfast social networking reading to work is to first check the geoblog sphere for interesting posts and then do my 1000 words a day. By the time I’m done with my 1000 I have made the mental transition from wondering what my on-line friends have been up to recently to thinking about geology and why I find it exciting. In turn this helps me get ready to actually do some work for the day. This time it has only been 23 days since I started my current count of reading 1000 words of geologic literature a day, but I am hopeful that this time I will break my previous record of 118 days in a row. I think it will be harder for me to “forget” to read over breakfast than at any other time of day.

nearly done with the post-AGU travel adventures

After a plethora of posts during AGU, I then spent the next several weeks visiting friends and family in Alaska, without making time to post. This was my first visit “home” in five and a half years, and it was wonderful. There is nothing like living or eight years in climates which have lush green grass in the winter and brown grass in the summer to really make me appreciate the beauty inherent in a snowy environment. Winter has always been my favourite time of the year, but part of what makes it my favourite is the snow. I love to see trees covered in fine crystals making them look like ice-sculptures. I love the contrast of snowy peaks and blue sky, or the way dark clouds glower over land smoothed white. Some people may have looked at me odd to be heading to Alaska for winter solstice and staying through New Years, but to me it was a perfect way to celebrate the season.

However, in addition to enjoying the weather, the visit was a constant round of socializing—hurrying from one gathering of friends or family to the next, with no time to slow down. I didn’t even make an attempt to read my 1000 words a day during this trip! It was fun, it was exhausting, and it was so worth it. Two weeks in Alaska wasn’t enough time to see everyone I would have liked to have seen, but it was enough to completely recharge my personal batteries and have me ready to enjoy working once again. I’ve got just one more large gathering of friends to attend—a Medieval themed event in California (which was added to my schedule when I realized that I could save 400 Euros on the cost of my flights by flying on the 11^th instead of the first week of January) and I will return home to Europe and dive back into doing experiments once again. The peace and quiet of the lab sounds very appealing at the moment.

A tale of two Conferences

Like many scientists, I have a variety of interests, in some pretty diverse fields. The past two weeks were spent indulging two of them by attending two very different conferences.

The first conference, on Micro-Analysis, Processes, Time, was sponsored by the Mineralogical Society in the UK. Like many geological conferences, it began with a pre-conference field trip, the first stop of which I’ve already posted (and will be getting back to post about the other stops soon, now that I’m home). The conference itself had around 200 people attending (small compared to some!). The schedule was fairly typical for geology conferences, with talks running during the days (generally business hours), and people scattering to the four winds in the evenings. There were enough people presenting that Monday and Wednesday had four tracks of talks happening at once, meaning that one had to pick and choose amongst them, but, generally, things were arranged such that it is likely that if there is one talk in a session one is interested in, the others may well also appeal, meaning that I was able to simply find the appropriate room in the morning and stay put all day, rather than trying to bounce from one session to another, and risk missing the start of a talk in another room. Tuesday morning there was a single track of talks, followed by the poster session. Since my contribution for the conference was a poster, I took the time during lunch to read the other posters, so that I’d be available during the session to speak with people reading mine. I met a variety of interesting people during that afternoon session, but only had a short chat with each of them. After the conference there was a post-conference field trip (post with photos to follow). I did meet a few of my fellow field trip travelers, but the bus ride was mostly quiet or people speaking with their seat-mates, and, as it turned out, I didn’t have a seat mate.

The second conference, the Textile Forum, was quite a contrast in organizational style. This conference was set up as a setting to an experiment. The experiment was designed to quantify the changes that result in the quantity and quality of yarn spun with drop spindles with different masses and moments of inertia. Therefore the experimental part of the conference involved two one-hour sessions of spinning a day for five days in a row—each session using a different spindle whorl. As a result this conference worked on a very different schedule than the geology one. There were roughly 20 of us in attendance, from a variety of different countries.

Most of us stayed on site in the Iron-Age style “hut”, which is equipped with straw mattresses and sheepskins to supplement such bedding as we brought with us. Therefore our day would start with a communal breakfast, followed by a session wherein the spinners did their two one-hour sessions (with a break in between) and the rest of us worked on other hand-crafts and everyone chatted about any number of topics of interest before lunch, then after lunch we’d scatter to the four winds (many of them to see museums), and reconvene in the evenings for the talks, followed by social time spent around a campfire before sleeping.

The combination of the very different time-schedule for the conference, with the much smaller number of attendees resulted in the opportunity to get to know my fellow Medieval Textile enthusiasts much better than I did any of the geologists at the first conference. I will be happy to recognize the geologists at all next time I see them, but I now call many of the textile people friends. In short, while I found both conferences very enjoyable, with many interesting things learned, I think that I liked the format of the textile conference much better. Alas, off of the top of my head I can’t really think of a way to do a parallel sort of thing in the geosciences. What task do geologists do that would permit them to gather in a small group around a table, doing said task while conversing with one another? And what would it take to get them to do it? The spinners did their spinning (with some very oddly shaped/sized/weighted spindles “in the name of science” to see if there is a difference in how spindles behave which isn’t directly related to the spinner. But when geologists do experiments it usually involves setting something up and then going away for a period of time. This practice wouldn’t be conducive to a similar environment as was achieved in the Textile forum.

The temptations of social networking

I was extremely fortunate to have attended an “open-concept alternative” school for “self-motivated” students from 7^th to 12^th grades. This was a publicly funded school which drew students from all over the school district who wanted to take active control of their own educations. We students were responsible for selecting our own classes, showing up to them on time without any bells to remind us, and participating in the school government—including serving on committees to interview prospective new students and teachers. Yes, even the students had to pass an interview before being admitted—they needed to understand that not only did we have a greater degree of freedom than the “traditional” schools, we also had much higher levels of responsibility, and anyone seeking to avoid responsibility was encouraged to stay within the traditional system. Because of the unique environment of our school, we had a very high percentage of “weird” kids. Avid readers, D&D players, actors, artists, students who were “gifted” in any number of categories, from science to literature and everything in-between. We came from every neighbourhood and every economic class in the community, and we chose our friends freely amongst them without regard to age, gender or social standing.

I remember one of my teachers telling us during a lecture (he was a psychology teacher) that we should all enjoy and appreciate this phase in our lives, for we would never again have so many and such varied friends. That it is “normal” for adults to settle into their working lives with only a small handful of people they see socially outside of work. I was actually very, very sad when it was time for me to graduate and leave school behind—not only was I concerned about his warning with respect to the potential bleakness of our future social lives, but I truly loved my time there, despite the complications associated with adolescence. However, what that teacher didn’t know was that in just a few short decades after I left high school behind me the Internet would provide everyone with the potential of surrounding themselves with friends and acquaintances on a daily basis, all without leaving the comfort of their own home or office. There is literally something for everyone on line to help us connect with one another. The GeoBlog sphere keeps geologists in many diverse sub-disciplines connected and informed of the latest news. Some of my friends choose a very artistic form of expression on MySpace, others swear by the intimate, coffee shop feel sharing their deepest thoughts on LiveJournal, and I’ve re-discovered the many of the joys of being a High School student again through our little reunion on FaceBook, where the people whose company I so enjoyed when I was young have proven to still be entertaining, witty, thoughtful, and considerate in the casual banter which is exchanged “wall to wall” or in “comments”.

Someone recently commented to me that I shouldn’t feel guilty about taking a break from my thesis work to reply to e-mail, as it “doesn’t take very long”. Yes, he is correct; any one reply doesn’t take very long. However, for those of us who move often and make a whole new bunch of friends each time we do, and who wish to keep in regular contact with our old friends, it all adds up. I suspect that were I to let myself, I could spend many more hours a week than I already do, just hanging out with my friends on line. However, it is also important to have a life—one needs to do interesting things away from the computer if one wishes to continue to hold the attention of others via the computer!