No more Music I"m listening too..

I had to delete my automatically updating "music I'm listening too" thing, because here at my new work, I don't have administrative rights on my computer so I can't install the Last.fm software. which is too bad. Being the asshole music snob I am, I always find it ineresting to think about music, and what people are listening to.

I like hardcore music, music that I think the majority of people find fucking repellent. Thats actually one of many reasons that I like it.

The thing is, no matter how obscure a band I think I know - some hardcore band from nowhereville, USA who put out 1 7" record back in 1986 - There's always someone else who has been listening. Its kind interesting to browse the last.fm site for that reason.

Take for example the band Outspoken. They released 1 full length record, and 7" records in their career, in addition to a few songs on comps and other shit. Not a hugely popular band by any means, but If you go to Last.FM and look around there are at least 6 other people that have listened to this band in the last week....and not just any outspoken song, but "Daydream" one of the best fucking hardcore songs ever written.

There's tons of people in the world, and I know that at least 6 of them listen to the same obscure shit that I do. So there may not be a way for you to see what I'm listening to anymore on this website, but I'll still post about it anyway.

what's the point of this post? FUCK CORPORATE POLICY!

Let me see what we have here...

...Nothing. How come the guy who "runs" this stupid blog never posts anymore? He's just a contributor to the massive amounts of SHIT on the internet. Just another narcississtic scumbag who goes online, spends half of a bored afternoon customizing a shitty little "blog", posts 3 times, and then lets it ROT like so much other internet crap.

Why do people abandon blogs so quickly? its a fact that most people do, and if you glance over the stats, you might say "well Joe's over the age of 29...no one that old fucking wastes time with blogs, or if they do, they've already made the commitment to post on them seriously."

I don't know about that. There's lots of loser websites that try to provide insight as to why people stop blogging. To be honest, there's alot of reasons given, most of which seem to be at least plausible.

I think there's another reason: most people's lives are really boring. I haven't posted in a few days, going on the order of more than a week now, and I think "what can I write about on my blog"? Have I seen any interesting geology? have I done anything cool? has there been a news clip that really interested me or pissed me off?

Not really. There's been some basic things happen, work is more demanding since I took a new job..thats a big thing. I've been trying to get other stuff done, and everytime I sit down at the computer, I end up playing video games or surfing bullshit websites.

But maybe I haven't really tried. I haven't fucking thought about how to express the happenings of my life into blog form - which, to be honest, I thought I'd never have a problem with, because my entire mind-set is based around short 35 second blips of interest and attention span. Case in Point: after starting this post, I'm down here in like the 5th paragraph thinking to myself "damn, wrap it up Gilbert, your not even interested in writing anymore about this"...

The bottom-line? Cataclasite won't fall into the abyss of shitty abandoned blogs. while my posts are a bit more sparse, I'm gonna make a commitment to the many readers of this site to update it...starting with this post.

Cataclasis Confessional #1

Today's Confession: Food that I really like that is really shitty:

1. Ramen Noodles. I love these. they are nutritionally worthless, cheap, shitty, garbage, but I'd eat them everyday if people would let me.

2. Mac and Cheese. Had a serious in-depth barroom discussion about this food group on saturday. its the perfect meal. fuck you if you don't like it. The Whole grain ones from rich organic food co-ops or the cheap shit ones from the grocery store, I like them all.

3. Burger King Chicken Sandwich. yeah, I said it....I like them. I liked them before dane cook worked the bk loungepiss off.

4. Hostess Twinkies. Me and twinkies go way back, and yeah, they're made with animal fat, so your loser vegan-bullshit won't work. I've even made them from scratch before.

What do you have?

what the fuck?!?!

Geology Pic - Ice Grillz!

So I've decided to just keep posting geology shit, regardless of the day, since its obvious that I can't stick to a Friday schedule with work and such.

This past week I was out doing field work in Crested Butte. One of our tasks was to dig out the entrance to this old mine adit, go in, and service a trough that was in there.

As it turned out, the mine adit was buried under no less than 15 feet of snow - completely blocked.

After tear-assing around on snowmobiles for 2 hours, and then 1 hour of shoveling we finally were able to get into the adit, and saw some really really cool ICE.

There were two main types in the adit: nice crystalline crusts on all of the overhanging adit beams, and large completely clear stalagmites of ice that apparently formed from water dripping from the ceiling of the adit.

There's a classic question in Mineralogy: is water a mineral? according to the classic definition of a mineral, Ice is indeed a mineral, it just has a melting point much lower than the ambient air temperature in many parts of the world.

Water crystallizes in the hexagonal crystal system, which means that while it may look wierd and different and that "no two snowflakes will ever look alike", Ice crystals always have six 2-fold symmetric axes.

If you look close in the below picture (as always, click to enlarge), you'll see a number of ice crystals, and they all have six sides. Its kinda cool because ice doesn't usually form nice big crystals like this, its usually snow, or frozen amorphous ice, or in random cubes slowly cooling down a gin and tonic. To be sure, the temperature of the air in which the ice crystals form has more to do with how the crystals will look than anything. Colder air will form different ice crystals than warmer air will.



Here's another pic:



The same principle is true for alot of minerals. In fact pyrite and other sulfide minerals are often associated with copper, gold and silver. in order for gold and silver mineralization to occur, groundwater has to be at an appropriate temperature and condition. So, if you want to find the gold, look for the pyrite crystals that have the right shape. The shape of crystals is called the habit. The same mineral can occur with many different habits.


EDIT: my good friend sara (without the "h") suggested that these crystals look kinda like Depth Hoar- an ice crystal morphology that I was unfamiliar with. Apparently depth hoar forms by sublimation within snowpack, and can contribute to snow instability in avalanche prone regions.

The crystals above were formed inside of a mine adit, where humidity was higher than ambient air, and the crystals formed on the cross-beams in the adit. Could these crystals have formed in the same way as depth hoar - by the nucleation of water vapor? seems both possible and likely... Thanks for the suggestion Sara!


Another Habit in the mine adit was these wierd looking amorphous clear ice stalagmites:





I'm not exactly sure how these formed, but they were everywhere. My wife told me that they all looked like "just a bunch of dildos". Not sure if thats how my Mineralogy professor in college would have classified them, but I guess the resemblance is close enough.

Cataclasite is back online!

Though the quality posts will wait until tomorrow...

On tap:

-A belated geology pic
-My ongoing un-healthy, and self-destructive anger at Denver's mass transit system
-My completely worthless opinion on professional life
-Another Geology pic

Stay tuned!!!!!

Happy Birfthday Uranus

Uranus was discovered today in 1781.......





................ANUS!

Cataclasis, back on Haitus...again!

I've got some field work for the Crested Butte Project next week, so I won't be posting for 3 days after today.

Don't worry, I'm bringing the camera, and I intend to have a "crested butte part 4" completed soon.

this time I hope to have pictures of 3 tons of water samples being jumped by a flaming snowmobile.

stay tuned...

Audio Darwin...

Related to my previous post about podcasts, I saw a link posted on boing boing this morning: a full audiobook of Darwin's "The origin of the species".

Its a large download, but I think it'll be interesting.

The best thing is that it is free and legal.

I also think I'll check out more from Librivox...looks like they have a great catalog.

Defensible Skateboarding!

I saw this post over at digg.com today. Its about little plates, rails, and concrete blocks they are putting on benches and other raised structures. In particular, the Embarcadero in San Francisco, which was an AWESOME skate spot...featured in many skateboard highlight movies, including two movies that played a pretty important role in my high-school/college days; Hokus Pokus, and Shackle Me Not (both H-street vids).

It reminded me of my friend Dave's website, where he has a regular theme called "the anti-sit".

These things are all over denver too, There aren't any "anti-sits" that I've seen, but there are plenty of "anti-skates".

Anyhow, the blogger speaks to a larger issue here. I'm certainly not the one to be able to discuss it well, Dave would be better suited, but the question is this: These things look like shit. Personally I think they look worse than long waxed and scraped up benches that skateboarders make (of course, I'm also an aging skatebaorder). But, Is this how urban planning will continue? rather than designing your city to incorporate public elements to be naturally unsuited for skateboarding or other activities like it, most cities put up these defensive elements that look like total shit.

and its not just brackets on benches, in most of the downtown parks in denver, they've replaced the polished concrete of the parks with cinder gravels to inhibit skateboard wheels from rolling down into the parks to begin with.

It'd be really cool to see new elements and city designs rather than anti-skates and anti-sits.

of course the converse question is will skateboarders and their ilk just find away to change their styles to conform to what city designers put into use?

Friday Geology Pic: Lewis, Clark, and Imbricate thrusting

I've been re-reading Undaunted Courage by Stephan Ambrose, a historical summary of the Lewis and Clark expedition. I forgot a lot of the crazy things they did: For example, Lewis was shot in the ass right at the end of the trip.

One interesting point that Ambrose makes (aside from prefacing every fucking thing with "they were the first white men to....") is that Lewis, while being an excellent naturalist, wasn't a very good geologist. Apparently, he did have a copy of Lyell's seminal text with him, but he rarely (almost never) commented on geology.

I thought this unfortunate, because of the route they took. It happens to coincide with where I went to field camp.

Field camp, or the class that teaches you the basics of field geology - the collection of geologic data, is one of the highlights of any geologists training: Love field camp, and you will be a geologist forever, no matter what...Hate it, and you may never be a good geologist.

I personally Loved field camp, and since my own field camp experience, I've been teaching assistant on 3 years of field camp at UNLV, and another 3 years of Leading my own field classes.

Blah blah blah, who gives a shit?

...Back to lewis and clark...During the expedition, Lewis and Clark needed to meet up with the Shoshone Indians near the 3 forks area of montana in order to get a guide and information about crossing the mountains out to Idaho and Oregon from the plains of Montana. Coincidentally, The three forks area in montana is where Sacagawea was from.

its also a place where some of the best exposures of Cretaceous and Tertiary-aged faulting and folding are exposed. my field camp instructors took us up and down the jefferson river valley mapping all sorts and scales of hangingwall and footwall thrust faults, folds, regional scale folding and faulting..its truely the place where I really learned about and loved structural geology. Within the side of entire mountain flanks are exposed massive anticlines and synclines, faults, joints and other stuctures.

There's a complex geologic history in the region, that is brilliantly exposed in the mountains as you travel through the area.

I took a lot of pictures at field camp, but above is one of my favorites. It was taken in the Jefferson river valley, not more than 10 miles from the 3 forks junction. In addition to showing me much younger, skinnier, and healthier, the mountain behind me is a great example of Imbricate Thrust Faults.

if you look just to the left of my head, you see a thick whitish bed of limestone that is dipping to the right side of the picture. On the left side of my head is another thick whitish bed of limestone. Then again more to the right, but less well exposed is another whitish bed of limestone. These are THE SAME rock unit that have been pushed up and faulted next to each other. Its like if you took a piece of floor tile, cut it into pieces, stacked the pieces on top of each other, and then tilted them so that when you looked at the stack edge-on they would be all leaning against each other.

Lewis recognized how great the foothills and mountains in this area, and described them on several occasions, both on the trip to the pacific, and on the trip back. Unfortunately, he didn't know the geology, Its too bad he didn't understand what he was looking at, or his passages would probably have been twice as exciting.

Take the risk!

So a friend of mine is thinking of taking a new job in another state. She’s a bit nervous about it: taking a new job far away from home can be nerve racking and tough: will you make it? What happens if….?

Her prospect reminded me of the choices I’ve made. Thus far in life, I can honestly say I’ve never really regretted any of the big moves I’ve made. And in fact, some of the most desparate moves have turned out to be some of the best experiences.

Case in point: Right after I finished college, but before I went to graduate school, I had honestly no-fucking-clue what was gonna happen to me. I had no immediate job prospect, no where to really go live, and no way was I gonna stay in River Falls Wisconsin.

In a chance conversation with this other geology grad at my school, he mentioned going out to Denver to look for a job. I didn’t know the guy really that well, but I didn’t have anything else going on and I thought “what the hell…”

I packed up a backpack of clothes, and left my apartment in River Falls, I stayed at a friends house in Minneapolis until we were ready to go, and took off.

The geologist guy who drove out there (I didn’t own a car at the time), Tim, mentioned that he knew the rugby coach for the Colorado school of mines….on the morning we actually arrived in Denver, it turned out that Tim had the inter-collegiate directory of rugby leagues, and just randomly called the coach from a pay telephone at a gas station.

Since Tim played rugby at school, he just figured in his head that the coach of the school of mines would just let us live with him – no questions asked. Amazingly, the coach actually DID. Tim was a total fuck-up, and he would only get worse as I soon found out.

We moved into a spare bedroom with the coach, slept on the guys floor, and I called S. Morrice & Associates, an oil company that I had had an AAPG internship with the previous summer. One of the geologists at the company said that while they didn’t have any job openings, we were welcome to use their office conference room, the fax machine, and a spare computer to look for a job.

(On a Side note, the people who helped me at S. Morrice were some of the nicest and best people I’ve ever met. Despite not having a job, they hooked me up with a desk, a phone, unlimited use of the fax machines, etc..)

So there I was, a week out of school, my last $200 dwindling fast, sleeping on the floor of some random guy’s house, and in the daytime, searching for a job constantly at my former employer.

I felt pretty shitty. Tim was a fucking asshole, I didn’t own a car, I didn’t have any money, and I was leeching off of someone I had never met. Tim would drive us to the office, yell a lot, and overall just be a total dick about everything.

After about 2 weeks, the Coach from the school of mines asked us to leave (can’t blame him). I had just found a job, but because of how the job worked, I wouldn’t be paid until the beginning of the following month.

At nearly the same time, Tim had threatened to kick my ass for something, and steal all my shit. I had to get the fuck away from him, but I had nowhere to go, and only about $150. Tim is kind of a long story, but suffice it to say, I had to get away from him ASAP. Now, I wouldn’t walk across the street to piss in that motherfucker’s mouth if his teeth were on fire.

Luckily, I had JUST met this kid (Rob, another person who I owe a lot to) who was working at an internship for another oil company here in Denver, and to get away from Tim, with no money, I swallowed my last bit of pride and begged this kid to let me stay on his couch until I could get paid.

This was the catch though:

I couldn’t move in until after the weekend because the guy wouldn’t be home. This meant that I was completely homeless for a weekend. I had NO money, nowhere to go, and no prospects.

The previous summer, my Denver internship only paid $3.50 per hour, and I ended up living at a long-term shelter for the poor ($11.99 per week!) That’s another long story…that was a fucking crazy summer.

Anyhow, nowhere to go, nowhere to stay, no money, no car, nothing, just me and my backpack stashed at the office. I thought if it really came back to it, I could walk back up to the shelter and stay there for a few nights.

So what did I do? I asked out the secretary at S. Morrice and Associates. I didn’t own a car, so I told her I’d meet her downtown, and we could go to the art museum (luckily, it was free on weekends). We walked around for the day, and eventually went back to her place that night, got a pizza and watched a movie (I can’t remember to be sure, but I think she paid).

I actually fell asleep on her living room floor and woke up that morning, back hurting and cramped up….but I had managed to find a place to stay for that one night, and I met someone who was and is the awesome-est person on the planet.

That morning, I felt kinda weird, because she told me she’d drop me off where I lived, but instead I think I said something like “oh I’m supposed to meet someone for breakfast”…and I had her drop me off on east Colfax street, a major street in Denver, where I walked around and waited to get into that guys house.

I managed to survive for over a month on about $200 and no where to live. I managed to find both a job and wife – I eventually married that chick that let me stay on her floor when I was homeless once.

The moral of this story: ALWAYS take the risk, don’t be afraid of the world around you. One day you might find yourself walking the street homeless, but in the end, it might help bring together one of the most important parts of your life.

And since that time, my wife and I have moved from Denver, to Las Vegas, to Minneapolis, to Mississippi, and back to Denver. Each time it seemed to be a big risk, but none of it was a mistake. Sometimes we really struggled, but lately it’s been only getting better.

I’d never in a million years change what I’ve done.

Podcast Podcast Podcast

ok faithful readers who have Ipods....let me ask you this. Do you ever listen to podcasts?

I read an article on digg.com once that said that 90% or so of ipod owners don't listen to podcasts.

Suprisingly, I actually do. most of the time its for the bus ride to/from work. Occassionally I try out new ones, ones that end up being shit, but on the whole, I really like podcasts.

here's what I regularly check out:

Dissonance
Escape Pod
Have games, will travel
science friday
Issue oriented


I don't faithfully download every episode, but I download or 2 about every week or so. hooray!

Friday Geology Pic: Lake Superior

Lake Superior from Space!



I've been talking with some friends about a possible trip this year, and we're thinking we might head towards the Lake Superior area...specifically the North Shore (the shore that borders with northern Minnesota).

The great thing about Lake superior, is that 1. Its beautiful. the waters are blue, and overlooking the cliffs and the lake shores, the water is nice and clear.

2. Its geologically great. I went college up in the midwest, and unfortunately alot of the people and professors tend to focus on the glacial history of the area. Afterall, the glaciers created Lake superior, and its the absence of glaciers that are slowly draining the lake via isostatic rebound. But I think there's an even more elegant story along its shores, one thats far more dynamic and spans BILLIONS of years of geologic time.

Lake Superior kind of looks like a finger pointing to the southwest. Its has a long linear axis that trends NE/SW. This axis is actually the trace of what geologists call and aulacogen. Its basically a valley where the old north american tectonic plate actually tried to rip itself in half...it failed of course, and left this dramatic valley on the earth's surface. Similar events are taking place in East Africa right now, you may have heard of the east african rift.

The East African Rift is home to my single favorite volcano ever, Ol Doinyo Lengai - its lava flows BLACK and cools WHITE, definately check out the fucking sweet pics here. But I digress....

...Anyhow, much later, glaciers followed along this valley, and once they melted and receded, the valley filled up to form Lake Superior.

Whenever you drive along the North Shore, or even into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, all the rocks you see are really really really old basaltic lava flows, and related sediments. these basalts formed as the plate was tearing apart, creating large fissure eruptions. Even though these flows are older than 1.8 billion years, you can still see some of their original flow features in exposures all along the shoreline.



Picture of Shovel point at tettagouche state park along the north shore of Lake Superior (its the ridge in the back). Shovel point is a thick exposure of basalt lava formed during the aulacogenic event back in the Proterozoic.

I think thats pretty cool. Most losers will only tell you about huge glaciers forming lake superior, but Lake Superior's beginning was actually Billions of years before the glaciers ever covered the land...and this lake of water, started as a valley of hellish LAVA.

BRITNEY THREAT!

So I found out today that Britney Spears used to be in a raging hardcore band that was immensly influential in the mid 80s, Britney threat:



thanks to Brent on the deathtalk board.



Original is a Minor threat picture posted in Maximum Rock and Roll back in the day:

EARTQUAKE!!!

So this kid is becoming a micro-celebrity because of his ridiculous video blogs (especially his "Last Blog Ever") posted, but I thought this one was classic:



I don't know....

Running!

Here's an interesting article about some crazy bastards running across the Sahara desert.

I started running a few years ago, running quite a bit actually, but no where near the level these guys are at.

Despite my modest running schedule, when I am running, I often fantisize about running the badwater ultramarathon . I'm pretty sure if you finish that race you earn the official title of "badass".

I actually heard an episode of "this american life" on the badwater ultra marathon...its the toughest fucking race in the world, in addition to 135 continuous miles, it starts in death valley and has a cumulative ascent of 13,000 ft. According to the radio show, people who run it often start to hallucinate, and are completely mentally drained by the end (in addition to being completely physically exhausted).

Maybe that will be my goal, the race at badwater...of course, I have alot of running to do before that.

5 things to make your blog better

Digg.com always has an article like this posted every few days. All of them forget the key thing to a successful blog: MAKING A POST to begin with!

As you may notice, I haven't made a post in awhile. Not because I haven't thought about this website much, but rather, because I've been too lazy to write anything.

Have you ever been just sitting at a computer, knowing that there's something you should be doing, and rather than just do it, you stare, get frustrated, do more staring, and then develop this overwhelming inertia that takes at least a day to get over?

Not much has been going on in life, thats another problem. Its easy to make blog posts when your life is full of colorful happenings.

To my credit, I don't live as boring a life as you think, each and every fucking day I get up is a complete adventure. Take today for example, This morning I got up, made some coffee and watched the morning news before work....and now that I'm at work I"ve actually received 4 work related phone calls! HAHAHAHAHA! just call me "Captain Fast and Furious"!!

ugh...Religious people are crazy, part 54983204

Check This out.

I mean seriously. really.

Check out this Awesome Bathroom Sink

While perusing the volumes of great geology blogs out there there, I came across this company that makes a pretty cool looking sink for your bathroom.