A method for discussing climate change

I saw this link today, its an outline for how to talk and discuss the common misconceptions about climate change and global warming.

Its great because in addition to being a great primer on the issues associated with climate change, it can also be effective in getting stupid people to shit the hell up.

its actually pretty interesting to read.

Goodnight Sweet Prince

Christopher Hutchins gives Jerry Falwell one of the best eulogies ever.

"By The way, Its official...I can't have children!"

I'm pretty sure Saturday Night Live isn't as funny as when phil hartman was on. I'm also pretty sure Jimmy Fallon has NEVER been funny.

I did however, find this sketch to be hilarious:



good times.

Drug Tested and approved!

I went to go take a drug test today and I have to say, that I can't fucking believe it. In addition to the myriad reasons for drug testing to being a complete fucking waste of time and money, I found the experience to be really insulting.

I mean here I am, I’m over 10 years into my professional life, I’ve passed their job interviews, and I’ve amassed a respectable resume that can easily be verified by calling both references and former employers.

But they still don’t trust you with what you choose to do in your personal life. I just got done going to a piss-broker, not even a real doctor’s office. I got to stand there with my coworkers, all of us with our piss-cups standing in line:

“empty your pockets and don’t flush the toilet when your done”

“the sink has been turned off, you can wash your hands after the test is over”

There’s nothing better than getting to see your coworkers carry a warm cup of their own urine around.

“How was it Bob? Damn, you really had to go, and all that orange in there…better lay off the carrots…oh, the temperature sticker on the side says its nice and warm!”

Its also really awesome to get to stand there with the piss-broker and sign your piss vials with your coworkers

“sign and date across the seal”

You know what? Fuck you.

And don’t give me that “if your not doing drugs, you have nothing to worry about” acceptance speech anyway. Its that same fucking apathetic mentality that put a criminal in white house. Its that fucking apathetic horseshit attitude that allowed habeas corpus to be retracted. It’s the same bullshit fucking idiocy that allowed a war to be launched without close public scrutiny. Maybe this paragraph is a stretch, but acceptance of a policy that is embarrassing, invasive, and fucking asshole just because your clean doesn’t make it right. If so, you’d probably also be in favor of a morning rectal probe at the front door, hey why not right? You’ve done nothing wrong!

And if you don’t buy my bed-wetting liberal arguments, then consider this: I’ve already done the fucking work that this drug test was for. I went out in April, performed the field work and already submitted the report draft for the work. My drug test was to verify the fact that I was fit for the field work, 1 month AFTER the field work was completed. You want to talk about a waste of time and money? Your damn right I billed the time to the client, it’s costing $100’s per hour for us to be pissing in cups for work that’s already been done. I also had to take an alcohol brethalizer test. WHAT THE FUCK FOR? In case I’m drunk? What?! If you’re a company, why not just fucking throw the $250 for the test down the toilet?


Drug testing, I’m completely against it.

GREENWASHED!

So my wife and I have been trying to be more "green" in the world. WE've planted a massive garden this year, in preparation for our "edible landscaping" - a type of xeroscape where you grow vegetables.

I also take mass transit every day.

we recycle, you know we do pretty much the same shit every other yuppie couple does.

Lately, rather than just chuck our cans into the recycling, I've been keeping them and I'm gonna turn them in at the end of the year. I figure if we turn them in ourselves, we may get like $50 or $100 - enough for a nice dinner out or something.

So I take an extra bag along with me when I take the dog for a walk and pick up all the cans in the neighborhood that I find and put them in the recycling to cash in on later.

So tonight my wife and I were arguing about who was more "green" and she threw down the gauntlet and accused me of "greenwashing"...which is the idea that I'm only cleaning up the neighborhood and recycling because it has a direct cash benefit to me. Of course I protested, and said that there are multiple motives for cleaning up the 'hood...but she wouldn't have any of it.

so there you have, I've been Greenwashed. I'm just another asshole out there tryin' to make a buck....by the way...are you done with that can of beer?





just another greenwashing yuppie asshole from denver colorado.

The Rage is relentless!

There's been alot of bootlegs and hype and talk on the internets since Rage Against the machine reunited for Coachella.

Here's one such video calling for the trial, conviction, and execution of the current administraton for treason. "And this current administration is not exception...they should be hung, and tried, and shot...for Treason"

My sentiments exactly.

I'm not ready to start rounding up people and shooting them, but a trial for treason? certainly reasonable especially when you see articles like this.

Pathetic. ridiculous. sad.

Here it is, HARDCORE

I love hardcore music...lately I've been a little out of the loop, and disenchanted by the local hardcore scene, but you only have to look as far as youtube to figure out why HARDCORE is the best genre in music ever....I FUCKING LOVE IT. its in my BONES.

the shows, the energy, the feeling, the music, the message... everything PERFECT.

Here's a compilation video from youtube for Judge's "Where it Went"....one of the best hardcore songs ever written, by one of the best underground hardcore bands EVER.



DO YOU FEEL WHAT I FEEL? DO YOU FEEL THE SAME?!....."

FRiday PUNK Video!

Here's some old school punk for people that really know and give a shit:

Stiff Little Fingers - Suspect Device LIVE!



and

Bad Brains - Intro/I Awesome 80's set live track. the crowd is insane!




and finally, Gang Green - Alcohol! This version is censored...the real chorus? "I'd RATHER DRINK THAN FUCK!" "YOU GOT THE bEER, you got the time...you got the coke, gimme a line...!!!!"

OUT OF HAND.

New Municiple Waste track!

Check the song "Headbanger Face Rip" its a new song by Municiple Waste, probably one of the best thrash bands in the world right now.

They should have a new album coming out in a few months, I can't wait to download it.

my book review: The Sparrow

So while I was in AZ, I read two books. There's not alot I usually feel like doing after work in the field...I mean besides my excercise routine of running 20 miles, and then doing my usual 200 pushups.

I read In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick and The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell.

In the Heart of the Sea was great, a quick and pretty easy read about the ramming of a whaling ship by an 85 foot sperm whale, a true story that formed the basis for Moby Dick....but thats not what this post is all about.

I also read the Sparrow...and I liked it, but I hated it. It was good, but annoying.

Here's the premise (in short): A group of people, a few of them very religious, one or two of them "spiritual", discover intelligent life on another planet. They decide to go directly there and meet this intelligent life, assuming that since one of them is a Jesuit Missionary with language skills, they are the best suited, and in a religious sense, are directed there with the help of god.

They go there and get all religous, live pleasantly, hang out with the natives, and then they realize that the basic social organization of the aliens are a lot like Human's relationship to cows. There are two races on the alien planet, one that is like cows in that they serve as a herd-like animal that the other race routinely slaughters for food.

They land and first make contact with the "cow" group. Needless to say, things go horribly wrong when they figure out that the other race kills the cows. They all die except one of them, the jesuit priest, who spends the time reconciling his horrible tragedy with god.

I think the main theme of the book is that "you just have to have faith"...sometimes bad things happen to good people, and what you EXPECT from god, isn't necessarily what god has in store for you. The Book is heavily faith-based, and written in an almost nauseatingly warm-fuzzy tone: everyone gets a hug when things are good, or when things go bad, there's this naive expectation that good is in everything, and descriptions of beauty include references to spiritual experience.

So...there you have it. God is awesome, we're all filled with such love, and sometimes shit-happens, but that can't change the awesomeness of god in the heart of the faithful.

The book is a lesson in maintaining faith in the face of life's greatest tragedies.

How else can a believer in god deal with evil in the world?

There's an even easier explanation for why there's evil: There is no god. If you step back from the story for a minute and think "if good things can happen to good people, maybe there is no god". Things can just happen, the Universe just is what it is, and we are here dealing with it. Maybe because you’re a religious zealot and can’t see past the narcissistic delusion of your faith, you couldn’t notice that you were about to get sodomized by an alien.

In fact, I think if you look at the premise of the story, and say that it was religious arrogance and ignorance that directly lead to the demise of the characters.

1. They assume at least latently that somehow god was involved with this trip, and that they were doing gods work in going to the planet.

2. They assume that social and cultural values that we have on earth are also true on other planets. They also assume that there is equality and harmony with all species on the alien planet.

3. By immersing themselves within one social group on the planet, without understanding ANYTHING about the planet itself, they place themselves in direct conflict with the cows and the carnivores.

4. They assume that the killing of the cow race of aliens is morally wrong.


If you think about it for a minute: Its ignorance of the alien planet, its culture, its intelligence, the roles of different intelligent races lead directly to their downfall. Also, Their arrogance that they should just zoom right in and start hanging out with aliens as having something to do with gods plan is ridiculous.

I’m not sure if this book was supposed to reinforce or help to bring people into a spiritual life, expose and highlight the human folly when it comes to faith, or to provide a discussion on the mere existence of god, any god.

I also browsed the Amazon.com customer reviews for this book, there are more than 400 of them, and it seems that many people thought the same thing. There are comments from actively theistic people arguing that Russell has no idea what it means to be religious and faithful, and some who say that it’s a great book that all Christians should read, even though Russell is a Jewish person.

I’m still confused by it a bit, and If I had to say anything about it in short: 1. people acting on religious principles are ASKING to be slaughtered. 2. if there’s anything we should learn from history its that religious missionary behaviors lead to death of a few at the least, and fucking genocide at the most and 3. if you want to explore new planets, new cultures, new ideas, send a scientist, not a naïve, kooky group of religious bubbleheads.

Anyone else read this book and get as frustrated as me? If not, you should read it and enlighten me.

Back in Denver; survived eating Pipe Grease!

I survived the field work I was doing! hooray! And I'm sure you're all wondering what the hell I was doing so far away from home for so long. Well, here's the fruits of my labor:



Neat. It doesn't look like much, but the thick middle post in this picture is a 520 ft. deep borehole that has a big ass length of PVC pipe in it. There's a really expensive instrument that goes into that pipe that is used to measure any horizontal offset in the borehole. Assuming the borehole is completely straight when it was drilled, any offset in the borehole measured at a later time means that the actual mesa in which the borehole resides is moving....a scary prospect, but one that needs to be monitored nonetheless.

To be sure, AZ was fun. the work was interesting, and for some reason, and maybe its just me, I've come to the realization that it is almost impossible not to play with this stuff:




its joint grease that they use to grease the threads between pieces of drill pipe. its also this cool copper-metallic thick grease on a modified toilet brush that makes you want to dunk the brush into this margarine-thick (pleasantly spreadable, even when taken right out of the fridge!), and then run around smearing it on your rental car, on other people, on the ground, on someones lunch bag, etc... I also had this hard-to-resist urge to eat it...like some wierd piss-smelling kid in elementary school eating the paste off the craft tables. It tastes kinda like strawberries.

just kidding, I didn't eat it.....ok i did..no I didn't..I just tasted it...no I didn't, but I wanted to..

MIA in Bagdad!

Sorry for almost no updates here from the AZ trip. I've been moved to Bagdad AZ, and there's no internet, no phone, nothing. Since the drillers will be late by about 1 hour today, I thought I'd check in.

I'm on a random field computer out here at the Bagdad mine. tons-of-fun. Unfortunately, where we're working is nowhere near the pit, or the big trucks, or near anything else that might be considered exciting.

After thinking I'd come out here and see tons of those HUGE-ass trucks, and massive diggers, I'm sad to say that I've seen almost nothing. THe picture I uploaded in my previous post is about all I get to see out here. No trucks Nothing.

Then...just as I was feeling like GS Schaller and the snow-leopard last night, a truck crossed my path:




neat.

AZ stories,,,

I'm down here on a field job in Wickenburg Arizona, which in addition to its ridiculous density of Upper-midwestern Retirees, has more than 4 hardware stores to service its less than 2,000 person populace. Its like if people over the age of 70 took over and started a wierd cult based around the old west, chrysler luxury sedans, and national breakfast chain restaurants (country kitchen, dennys, village inn, etc...)- instead of "children of the corn" think "elderly of the joshua trees"

WHen I got here, I had some big plans for cataclasite documenting this job because its both interesting (I'm core-logging a borehole in a HUGE active copper mine). I thought I could get a bunch of great pictures, but so far I've only been able to get this:



Today, the drill rig broke down (long story there) but suffice it to say, that I ended up in town hanging out at about 2 pm today. So, I decided to find an outdoor patio-type bar, have a beer, and read my book.

Unfortunately the only "patio" was some lawn furniture outside of the local off-track betting place that also served beer. Not suprising, at 2 pm the off-track betting bar in wickenburg AZ is full of marlboro-sucking 75 year old women.

I go in, order a modelo negro, and sit down to read. About 10 minutes later, this fucking wierd-looking, busted homeless lookin' guy comes up to me and says "I was just thinkin' about getting a new motorbike".

Now. I normally hate talking to people I don't know, no matter who they are. If they creep me out, its even worse, I thought "aww...fuck this shit." but I kept my mouth shut.

Anyway, I said "thats great man...", and immediately the guy says to me "mind if I sit down?"

..So he did. In the first 5 minutes of talking to me he mentioned that:

1. He's amazed at the property prices in wickenburg
2. the motor bike that he wants to buy is a custom trike because he got in a bad car accident and has trouble holding up a motorcycle while stopped at stop-lights or stop-signs
3. his left femur bone is actually from a cadaver as a result of said car accident
4. he doesn't like '57 chevy's but he thinks that the chick in the advertisement he's pointing to is good-lookin'
5. he also doesn't like Camero's because everyone wants one...and he's already owned a few.

At this point I was moderately interested in what he was saying, and was pretty convinced he wasn't gonna shank me, so I engaged him..

"so you've owned some camero's eh?"

"Yeah, I also owned a '73 dodge charger, some trans ams, a '69 z28 camero with a 302, and a '70 chevelle SS454"

"Is that the big block?" (I don't know shit about cars, but I think I heard that 302 or 454 or something had to do with the size of engines)

"mmmhmmm, It could do the quarter (1/4 mile drag strip?) in the low 10's (close to 10 seconds?)"

This entire time I had my field notebook with me and wrote the entire conversation down, to which this guy apparently took no notice.

"sweet car, how come you don't have it now?"

"I joined the navy...plus my parents were holding on to a Dodge dart that I drove around"

"hmm"

"yeah, I also got hold of a '69 roadrunner - you know the 440 with a six pack"

"oh, you hold on to a car that cherry" (this is actually a line from the movie tommy boy, I'm glad I worked it into a conversation...I know the words to this entire movie, and its not because I watched it over and over, the reason I do know the words is a long story...)

"yeah, there were only 460 of them ever made, because the '69 came with a 383...if you wanted one with the 440, you had to custom order it"

right at this very moment, one of those car-carrier trucks came by, and on the back of it was 3 SS454 Cameros. it was probably just a fucking crazy coincidence, but I kinda got that freaked out hitchiker-in-the-desert vibe...like I was about to find out that this entire town was populated with classic car-owning elderly people wielding hand-tools recently purchased from small hardware stores, and I'd soon be chopped up.

Luckily:

him: "well, didn't mean to talk your ear off..."

me: "alright"


and then he left.

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!