Geobulletin alpha

In an Environmental and Political Conflict Zone, Hope for Peace 

By Omer Ben-Nun As typical of the Middle East, many people were curious when they heard that I would travel to Jordan, our neighboring country and friend. After a few hours driving in a car from Tel Aviv you can cross the border, making you think that you are in another place entirely for a... read

Toronto Luxury Condos -- The New Urban Wasteland 

Toronto condo rents downtown, per person, are up to Palo Alto levels, without the Palo Alto incomes.  I always had hope for the city to be the next Palo Alto, but they are doing everything to stop this, mainly by attacking Uber and making things unfriendly for bright young people. I am astounded by my son's condo security for letting in two armed gangs, and the fact that they could have

Back Again 

Over a decade ago, we established 19 long-term study sites in four different vent fields here on the Eastern Lau Spreading Center. We placed small, floating markers on each of these sites in the hope that one day we would return to see how they had (or had not) changed. And now, here I am again, floating over our long-term study sites and preparing to launch the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to visit one of my favorite environments on the planet: an active hydrothermal vent

windows 

Spent the week in the cat room. It has been quite exciting, especially on Tuesday afternoon, when, through the miracle of Skype, we were transported to a meeting room in Reading University to discuss paleoclimate research with some colleagues. Hope they enjoyed the occasional cat appearance.  The reason for our retreat is windows, or rather, the hole created when a window is removed.

El Nino defeated, normal pattern resuming 

All hope is not lost, the dead can still rise.  While touring crypts in Guatemala, we found there were all sorts of tricks to make sure you weren't buried alive.  But when excavating old coffins, they found a lot of scratch marks inside.  This El Nino might sit up and say "I'm not dead yet!". For us in Toronto, our strong westerlies have ended and we are getting the dreaded "Polar

From Copenhagen to Paris: Holding onto Hope 

I don’t believe for a second that we are on the brink of global destruction. We are on the brink of a global re-distribution and whole scale re-balancing of global goods and bads. But we have been there before and

What I want to be when I grow up 

Suddenly, someone official was asking me for an opinion.  I feel that there is a 'New Hope' flowing through Ottawa.  I shall look just in front of my nose, and not think about 6 months from now. I don't do well with stupidity.  My performance reviews always said "Does not work well in a corporate environment.".  I remember being on the committee that was looking at the Y2K issue.  As

Moving into the realm of the polar bear 

When we venture into the Arctic for research for most of us there is the lingering hope that a polar bear will appear on our watch; at least as long as we are safely outside of its

GPS didn't do much for early warning 

Reference The one hope I had for a seismic early warning system (actually, it wasn't much hope) would be that a real-time GPS network would catch the pre-slip of a large fault system. For a large fault, you never know at the beginning if the rupture will continue, or how far.  Thus, you have to wait for it to finish.  That's a critical 60 seconds.  These GPS things are slow

Minor earthquake stupidities 

I'm finished with my big list.  These are stupidities that could easily be fixed, and will be fixed only after the next big earthquake.  For now we stuck with them.  I write all this in the hope that it might help a bright young thing sometime down the road.  One day he (she) will be sitting in response spectra class and will want to scream "THIS IS SO STUPID!".  But he better not and listen

Premiered This Day (1956): The Creature Walks Among Us 

image Back on this day in 1956 the second sequel to The Creature From the Black Lagoon debuted. It's long been considered the weakest film in the trilogy, and it's hard to argue this given that they drag The Creature out of the Amazon, burn him in a fire, and convert him into an air-breathing humanoid with no hope of ever returning to the lagoon. But, when viewed today, the film reveals

A Brief Season of Hope, But Dashed Hopes for a Better Year. Some Thoughts on the California Drought 

It's such a beautiful moment in time, being able to travel through the Sierra Nevada foothills, and seeing the glorious splash of color across the hillsides. The flower show was among the best I've seen in years. It wasn't necessarily good that we were seeing such a show. The green hills and flowers give the impression of something approaching a normal precipitation year. Unfortunately it

Prehistoric Prognostications 2014: The Results 

At the end of 2013, we called for predictions for the palaeontological discoveries of 2014, and due to my pathetic love affair with alliteration, we called the post Prehistoric Prognostications. After the LITC crew made their guesses, we compiled those from commenters. Check those posts out for the full field of predictions. This post is all about sharing those that came the closest. Please let me know if you notice any I missed - I tried my best to be complete, but the fact is that in this [...]

Linux - New Kernel a bit rough 

All of a sudden my usb disks stopped mounting for me, only as root.  No hope with anything on the Internet.  I had to run a new kernel 3.17rc5.  It gave an error, and lots of bling on the startup, but it works ok.  I can now mount my usb sticks with my ordinary user. Dolphin is now giving extra options, so I think that was a problem. Update:  If you want those search options then install

Shift-ing and seasickness and sunrise 

I took to my bed mid-afternoon yesterday in hope of shedding my jetlag and getting onto my midnight-to-noon shift in one fell swoop. It ALMOST worked - I was up in time for my midnight watch, but my body insisted I should be in bed, making me rapidly cross-eyed as I tried to compile and examine chemical data for boninites to use as a reference frame for examining what we'll drill. read

Are deadly landslides becoming more common? 

standard.net Afghanistan suffered one of its worst natural disasters in more than a decade last week, when a massive landslide buried a third of the village of Abi Barak in the northeastern province of Badakhshan. A rescue effort is ongoing, but hope is dwindling for the more than 2,000 people buried by the mountain slope,

New Wind Turbines to Reduce Bird Kills 

For decades wind turbines have been killing lots of birds and bats. New designs are being tested with the hope or reducing the number of

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Happy Pi Day! 

Young folks celebrating Pi Day at San Francisco'sExploratorium. Photo from CNN.com here.When I saw the wonderful faces of these students celebrating Pi day at the, yes again I'll use the word, "wonderful" Exploratorium in San Francisco, my mind went back to life in the 1950's and the science teacher who inspired me. So, I thought that I'd put up a photo of a 9th grade exam that I've saved all these decades, and hope that these kids get the inspiration that I got from that teacher (in spite of [...]

POTD February 17, 2014: Wellsville Mountains near Honeyville, Utah 

Hope you all enjoy the President’s Day holiday! Here’s your photo for the day. Wellsville Mountains near Honeyville, Utah Photographer: Chris DuRoss; © 2011 Limestone clasts deposited by a debris flow (fast-moving mixture of sediment and water) at the base of the Wellsville Mountains near Honeyville. Debris flows form as saturated hillslope sediments move or