Contestants, raise your hammers...

From the Berkeley Geological Association blog (with some snipping):

Geolympics is the ultimate in field geologist competition. This yearly event should put to the test all the field practices geologist's are trained to perform with accuracy and time contraints as parameters of success.

1) The Brunton: Imagine 5 or so rocks with varying strikes, dips, slickenlines, etc. that need measuring whilst being timed.

2) Rock Demolition: Imagine a line of geologists armed with a basketball size chunk of granite and their favorite rock hammer. They are timed to see who can smash their rocks into chunks no bigger than a baseball.

3) Twisted Map Folding: Imagine a new crisp map completly unfolded and a geologist blind folded who must then, by feel alone, fold the map into its original orientation while being timed.

4) Gear Up Gear Down: Imagine a geologist pulling up his/her truck when the clock starts and they must exit the vehicle and gear up with boots, hand lens, brunton, hammer with loop, acid bottle, map, rain gear, the works then when complete screaming ROCK IT! and then undressing again into street clothes, packing away the gear and firing up the truck again.

A few more potential events occur to me:

• Contact free running: A test of mapping skill and athleticism. Contestants have to precisely follow a contact between two formations, across hill, dale, ravine, cliff face, river, bracken, and bog. Points for speed, accuracy and style.
  
• Drilling time trial: One for the paleomagicians amongst us. Contestants are given an hour to drill, orient and extract as many core samples as they can. Scoring is based on the length of the cores as well as the number (i.e. an 8cm core which yields 3 standard paleomagnetic samples scores the same as three cores which yield only one each). Solo and pair events.
  
• Geo-orienteering: Like orienteering, except you have a geological map and specified rock samples must be gathered from each control point.
  

I'm sure you guys can come up with some more events...

Best endorsement ever?

Apparently Highly Allochthonous is 'harder to pronounce than "Pharyngula" '. It's almost tempting to change my tagline...

A geo-historical revolution

I’m actually in work today, despite the building being Officially Closed: you can still come in, but there’s no heating or canteen staff to provide coffee. However, an opportunity to engage in some warming ROFL’ing is provided by Adamant (via Pharyngula): a merging of the sequence of events in the geological record, scaled according to the biblically-based timescale of Archbishop Ussher, and human history. Here are some highlights which appeal to the paleogeographic nerd in me:

• 1384 B.C.: Shang Empire scraps compass research when China drifts over south magnetic pole.
  
• 1314 B.C.: On his way home from Troy ,Odysseus makes wrong turn into Tethys Ocean ;Homer writes it up.
  
• A.D. 1492: Panama's rise from sea thwarts Columbus's discovery of Japan.
  
• A.D. 1522: Sneak asteroid attack by Hernan Cortez smashes Aztec Empire
  
• A.D. 1588: Spanish Armada frustrated by continuing absence of English Channel.

Of course, the Young Earth Creationists think that most geology was confined to the year of Noah’s Flood, so this parody suffers from being rather less ridiculous than the ideas it is parodying.

Spotting geologists in the wild

Here is a good place to start for pointers (although the socks+sandals thing is a lie perpetuated by people jealous of the ease with which we get other people to pay us to go on holiday):

Geologists are 'scientists' with an unnatural obsession with rocks and alcohol. Often too smart to do boring monotonous sciences like chemistry or physics, geologists devote their time to mud-worrying, volcano spotting and high-risk colouring in.

One of the main difficulties in communicating with geologists is their belief that a million years is a short amount of time. Consequently, such abstract concepts as "Tuesday Morning" and Lunchtime are completely beyond their comprehension.

To spot a geologist in the wild, look for:

• Socks worn with sandals, unless the wearer is German.
  
• Hand-lens, compass, pen-knife, handcuffs etc. tied round neck with string.
  
• Ownership of a pet rock (in the case of palaeontologists, this will be their closest friend).
  
• Overenthusiasm on the subject of dinosaurs.
  
• Someone explaining to airport security that a rock hammer isn't really a weapon.
  
• Takes photos, includes people only for scale, and has more pictures of rock hammer and lens cap than of his family.
  
• Someone with collection of beer cans/bottles rivals the size of his rock collection.
  
• Someone who brings beer instead of water when hiking.
  
• Someone with unnatural amounts of facial hair and wears lots of polar fleece.
  
• Someone whose lunch consists of rocks, instead of ordinary bread.
  
• Someone who consumes tonsil-killing chili for dinner every night of the week, and warms it up in a can on the drill rig engine block.
  
• Often has hair in a pony-tail (this applies to male or female geologists).
  
• Someone who considers a "recent event" to be anything that has happened in the last hundred thousand years.
  
• Someone who licks and/or scratches & sniffs rocks.
  
• Someone who eats dirt and claims to be "getting an estimate of grain size"
  

Follow the link to the Uncyclopedia, Wikipedia's "very special" cousin, for more. It seems that they recognise the importance of us Geologists in the scientific ecosystem, because as yet only the Physicists have had similar treatment (well, Geographers have too, but we all know that they're wannabes).

Link to me or the puppy baby squid gets it

People are getting much more imaginative when coercing people to link to them. First we get Acephalous garnering plugs by the bucketloads in the name of science (I’m just hoping that he’s done a control experiment he hasn’t told anybody about), now Transient Reporter is not only begging for comments but getting other suckers to do it too.

Clearly, I need to up my game. I was going to get attention by threatening this sweet little fellow with an ugly demise:


But everyone knows that for the big boys, chordates are so last phylum. So I went down to the waterfront* this morning and took another hostage:


I’m not asking for much in return for letting the little guy to swim free, am I?

Mmmm… kraken crackling….

*look, I know the Solent is thoroughly scoured of all interesting animal life, but bear with me, hey?

Scientific writing for beginners

A letter at the core of a recent bruhaha at MIT, where a prospective hire was caught in the cross-fire of egos higher up the academic food chain (see Adventures and Ethics in science for analysis and links to more), has been brilliantly dissected by wildtype over at Transient Reporter. It's all good, but this bit is a particular favorite with me:

I am most happy to support you if you and I are going to work with some distance between us.
Stay where you are and I won’t cut your grant proposals down during study sessions, or hold up your manuscripts.

because it is a prefect illustration of scientific writing, where withering intellectual assaults (as well as speculative handwaving) are deeply buried beneath a veneer of understatement and superficial politeness. As a semi-homage, I thought I'd reproduce a handy translation guide for certain key phrases in scientific papers, which I originally put up on my now defunct pre-blog website. It dates from those heady undergraduate days when I read many more papers than I have time to now.

A novice or outsider might expect the average scientific paper to be a clear and coherent document. Far from it. Little research produces clear-cut or easily understandable results (it would be quite dull if it did), but a combination of ego and desire for further funding means that few scientists will readily admit this. Fortunately for them, the somewhat formal prose traditionally used in a publication provides many opportunities for deliberate obfuscation (as well as the lobbing of a few choice insults at people who happen to disagree with you).

The list below exposes and translates some of the more common phrases you're likely to find.

"It has long been known"	I didn't look up the original reference.
"A definite trend is evident"	These data are practically meaningless, even when you squint.
"Whilst it has not been possible to provide definite answers"	An unsuccessful experiment, but I still hope to get it published.
"Three of the samples were chosen for detailed study"	The other results didn't make any sense.
"Typical results are shown"	These are the only results which prove my theory.
"These results will be in a subsequent report"	I might get around to this sometime, if pushed/funded.
"In my experience"	Once.
"In case after case"	Twice.
"In a series of cases"	Thrice.
"It is believed that"	I think.
"It is generally believed that"	A couple of others think so, too.
"Correct within an order of magnitude"	Wrong, but I'm not going to admit it.
"According to statistical analysis"	Rumor has it.
"A statistically-oriented projection of these findings"	A wild guess.
"A careful analysis of obtainable data"	Three pages of notes were obliterated when I knocked over a glass of beer.
"It is clear that much additional work will be required before there is a complete understanding of this phenomenon"	I don't understand it. AND/OR Give me more money.
"After additional study by my colleagues"	They don't understand it either.
"Thanks to Joe Bloggs for assistance with the experiment and to Cindy Adams for valuable discussions"	Mr. Bloggs did all the work, and Ms. Adams explained to me what it meant.
"Contrary to the interpretation of Jones (1997)"	Jones is an ignorant fool.
"A highly significant area for exploratory study"	A totally useless topic selected by my committee.
"It is hoped that this study will stimulate further investigation in this field"	I quit.

Of course, these rules sometimes break down - in print, most often in the 'Comment and Reply' section. This is one of the more formal ways that peer review continues long after publication - people who disagree with you, or want to engage in a bit more cite-napping (I do like that term), can submit a short rebuttal to the publishing journal, which is published together with any response (re-rebuttal?) you might have. Outbreaks of 'contrary to the interpretation of' are common, but I am especially reminded of a particular response, which pretty much dropped all pretense at politeness:

Westaway [2004] adds details on the deformation rates in the eastern Mediterranean that do not affect the results of our paper, and need no further comment. He is wrong in saying we suggest no surface uplift of the Turkish-Iranian plateau or Greater Caucasus since 12 Ma, and we refer readers to sections 4 and 11 of our paper for the details [Allen et al., 2004]. We do not cite Westaway's papers on lower crustal flow because we do not believe them and see no need to refer to them: He suggests crustal flow from areas of thin crust to thick crust, against the gravitational buoyancy forces. Our reply is brief because we do not think this was a constructive comment on our paper, and not worth a response on the same scale.

Ouch.