I don't know what it is about this place.

You know those kind of people who only hang around with people who are "cool"?
Well, to be perfectly honest, I spent most of my life being considered "uncool" by those kinds of people. I wasn't usually mocked, or tortured, usually just completely ignored. This arrangement suited me just fine, but it also meant that I was never particularly choosy with my friends, because I needed all of them. Sometimes I just needed *a* friend, especially in middle school. All anyone needs in middle school is *a* friend.

But for a long time, I didn't have one. I knocked around from table to table- they had the dreaded "only 8-person per lunch table" rule... which was the worst rule a middle school could impose, as you were immediately ejected from your seat with your "friends" if a cooler friend of theirs needed a place to sit. A one point I found a table. It was pretty secure, I was an old friend of one of the presiding members, Stacey. But she hated my friend Brenda. She thought she was so lame, uncool, talked about dumb things. She hated her, she didn't want to be seen sitting with her. Brenda was a free spirit, she liked unicorns and playing pretend and she had a rough home life and snored like a train.

But she was my friend. She was one of those friends of mine that had been my friend when I had nobody else. So, for once, I made a hard decision and I stood up for Brenda against Stacey, and when they ejected Brenda from the table, I took a stand... and as a result they ejected me too. She was unhappy. She was miserable. She transferred schools. I was on my own again.

Having once betrayed my old table, there was no going back, so I had to find someone new. I finally ended up sitting with the foreign kids, because even though the conversation was a little spare they didn't know how to tell me to go away. And if anyone needs a friend, it's a foreign kid, let me tell you. Being the foreign kid is one of the loneliest feelings in the world.

I guess the point of this conversation is that lately, whether due to me becoming a more confident and charming person or just because I hang out with all nerds now (probably the latter), I've started to become accepted as one of the "cool kids". It's a weird feeling. It started a little bit in college but I was still not quite there. I really felt like a cool kid one day when I gave a performance in acting class and at track the next day this football player that the track girls liked came up to me after practice and said, "I really liked your scene yesterday. It was great." and then he didn't say a word to anyone else and left. I didn't even "like" him but just to see the look on the other girls' face could have given me unsinkable confidence for a month. The scene was so cliche it was delicious. But the only reason that was so satisfying is because everyone on the track team thought of me as "barely passable cool", even the younger kids. A little bit awkward, don't drink much... hang out with people that nobody "knows"....

But now... now the "cool group" has been formed and by accident (and mostly by virtue of keeping my mouth shut) I'm in it. But I don't get it! They're so content to be their little group of cool, and they don't see those people who aren't in it. They don't see the people who fade into the shadows. They don't see the foreign kid and they never talk to him unless I talk to him first. It's like he's invisible. Everyone's invisible except the people they choose to see.

But me... me. I AM one of those people. I LIVE in the shadows I LIVED on the sidelines I scraped the bottom of the barrel for a friend... JUST ONE friend. So I see them. And now my friends see it as some interesting trivialty about me that I go out of my way to include them in things we do. Because it never occurs to anyone except me.

And it's so weird, because it's not like "the group" has so many people in it. It's not like they're so much more popular than everyone else. It's the difference between three friends and no friends at all.

But that makes ALL the difference, doesn't it?

I feel like I'm living in that movie, the 6th Sense. I see these people, I feel their pain, I see when they're upset and how they feel when they're not invited, when they're ignored, when people laugh and they think they're all laughing at them. They are me.

And I know that the other people don't exclude them on purpose. They forget to invite them. They don't realize that they're talking. They are laughing at their own inside joke and they don't see how it looks to anyone else. They just don't notice that they exist, it's as simple as that. They see no further than their comfortable sphere, filled with people who are good enough for them, and they don't need anybody else.

Well let me tell you: you ALWAYS need EVERYONE. You can't afford to turn down the chance to have a friend.

Or at least, I can't. I'm not that rich. I'll never be that rich.

Even though I might mean I leave the table. It's worth it, even eventually my friend leaves me. I know how to fend for myself. I've been on my own before.

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My favorite Christmas carol, "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear"

It came upon a midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth
To touch their harps of gold:
"Peace on the earth, goodwill to men,
From heav'n's all gracious King!"
The world in solemn stillness lay
To hear the angels sing.

Still through the cloven skies they come,
With peaceful wings unfurled,
And still their heavenly music floats
O'er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains
They bend on hovering wing;
And ever o'er its Babel sounds
The blesséd angels sing.

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song that they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.

And yet, beneath life's crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Take heart, for comfort, love, and hope
come swiftly on the wing;
O rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing.

For lo, the days are hastening on,
By prophets bards foretold,
When with the ever-circling years
Comes round the age of gold;
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world send back the song
Which now the angels sing.

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Sometimes you just have to take a break from work and stare up at the ceiling and think about what it would be like if suddenly gravity pulled you in the opposite direction as it does now (or the entire local world were turned on its head). For the love of heaven, don't do this outside, or you will fall into the sky and you may never return. A stairwell is a good place, though. And it's usually a good idea, for the sake of neatness, to assume that everything that is on the floor or shelves is fixed to it, so that you are the only thing suddenly on the ceiling.

Or are you? Look at the ceiling! What an odd shape it has. If it's made of ceiling panels you're going to have to be very careful or you're certain to fall through. You might need to climb up the bookshelf until you can grab onto a chair or a table so you can start swinging across along the floor. You might think the best way out is to leave the room and seach for a more sturdy ceiling, but if you'll notice, the bottom of the door is more than three feet from where your feet are right now. You'll have to climb through, and then maybe hang by your arms to reach the ceiling on the other side. Lord help you if the other side is a foyer. You might have to jump, and the whole thing's covered in dust and at an extremely inconvenient angle for walking.

Now to get from the top of the stairs to the bottom. Good Lord, who made the stairs this way??? You'll have to climb up using the floor-to-ceiling pipe and jump and grab onto to the railing (thank goodness there is a railing!) and then you'll have to climb, inch by inch, legs dangling down toward the ceiling or woven through the banister railing to make your position more secure. Oh, but you are tired! who ever knew going "down" the stairs would be such a lesson in hardship. If only this were that type of staircase where you could see the stairs in relief on the bottom of each set!

Finally, you reach the end of the banister. But what now? The foyer rises below you. There are some five to ten feet of vaulted ceiling and a door before the ceiling from this floor comes in. Look, over there, on the other side of the foyer. There is a "ledge" comprised of a short ceiling right before the door to the outside. You have precisely the time it takes to fall through the y-distance from first-floor floor to the first-floor ceiling-ledge (minus the length of the banister) to cover the x-distance between the banister post and the outside wall. Can you do it? Can you muster that much of a swing after that long and treacherous climb from the third floor? Do it! It's your only chance to figure out what's going on here! AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

That was reallly close. The dust made that ceiling slippery, and you didn't even think about whether or not that ceiling was a flimsy ceiling panel before you jumped, you just jumped! But luckily the ceiling was made of wood backed with stone, because it is part of the fancy entrance way into the building. You can jump for the door handle, but you're going to need some leverage so that you can push the handle up while you're hanging from it, because it's one of those doors you see when you exit public buildings with the bar handle that goes all the way across the door width-wise. And you have to push it, which isn't easy either considering you don't have any floor to push off of. Maybe you can swing back and get it all done at once. Ready?


Oops. You forgot about what I said about not going outside.

goodbye...

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So the big news of today: my advisor is coming back this Friday instead of next Tuesday. This is even bigger news than the whole "we just found flowing water on Mars" thing from last week. At least for us in the department.

As Sam so succinctly said, "I think it could be worse... I just can't think of how right now."

AHHHHH!

As PI said, "So... one more... maybe one and a half more days of peace and quiet... and then all hell breaks loose. Son of a bitch. Don't tell him I said that."

A little ditty keeps running through my head, it goes a little bit like this: "My advisor's back and you're gonna be in trouble (hey-yah, hey-yah, my advisor's back)"
hmm... I don't think those are the original lyrics... hmmm....

Accordingly, upon the completion of my remote sensing term paper this afternoon I turned my attentions not to my cratering term paper nor my geophysics final but to Wrinkle Ridges.

Don't know what a wrinkle ridge is?


These are wrinkle ridges.
Got any idea how they form? Cause I would sure like to know. Preferably before Friday but really any time in the next 5 years would do.

Some folks think that wrinkle ridges are formed when you have a sheet of lava pouring out and it kind of folds over itself or bunches up or whatever and ta-da, a wrinkle ridge forms. Other people think that they're caused by the whole globe shrinking just a little bit and the surface contracting in response (meaning that the ridges themselves are reverse (thrust) faults that don't quite reach the surface). Still others think that the ridges are indeed blind thrust faults, but that they are caused by a huge change in the atmosphere, which, instead of causing the planet to shrink, causes just the surface layer to expand a little bit because it's warmer. Once again the crust is a little too big for the planet, and faulting occurs. My leading theory right now is that the lava layers laid out on the planet were so thick that they didn't cool right away, and they were sort of flowing downhill ever so slowly, and as they did they bunched up and froze. That would kind of mean they were buckling like thick rug rather than faulting, but they could fault too, if they wanted to. I'm not going to stop them.

You see a lot of times wrinkle ridges come in sets, they look like sand dunes almost, only they're made out of the crust as opposed to sitting upon it. They're parallel and evenly spaced. That would suggest some kind of geophysical mechanism like buckling, rather than volcanism or something like that. But the volcanism could be evenly spaced because the surface cracked evenly and then the lava just took advantage of the cracks!

Obviously I've been focused on wrinkle ridges way too much today. As Sam was holding out a card to me I found myself watching his arm and thinking about how his criss-crossing veins looked very much like anastomosing wrinkle ridges on the surface of Mercury. Point of fact they actually called wrinkle ridges some crazy word in latin or greek that mean "vein" because they look like veins protruding beneath the surface.

Well, t-5 days til All Hell just became t-1 day, so I guess I'd better get my act together, which means for the moment cranberry juice, colby cheese, wheat thins, and a bit of repose.

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The Moon too has its awkward transitions
From slender crescent to beaming gibbous
The half-moon intervenes, geometric.

A Dream, still wet from his midnight swimming
Is dripping moonbeams upon my dark floor
It forms pools in squares beneath my windows.

My eyes spy by the mirror's reflection
His footprints that I will mop by daylight
Careless dream, he whirls away with the sky

And myself, dark-eyed observer of night
Reflected: Here, not safe in starless void
Once full, hoping to be made new again

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If you woke up tomorrow morning

and everything was totally as it had been

only that everyone in the world had disappeared...

how much time would have to go by before you stopped locking your door?

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SOURCE ROCK AGES AND PATTERNS OF SEDIMENTATION IN THE LAKE SUPERIOR REGION: RESULTS OF PRELIMINARY U-PB DETRITAL ZIRCON STUDIES

Although most commonly applied to Phanerozoic orogenic belts, U-Pb age analysis of detrital zircons has great potential for illuminating the sedimentary evolution of cratonic regions. Here we report preliminary results of U-Pb dates of detrital zircons from Paleoproterozoic, Mesoproterozoic, Neoproterozoic, and early Paleozoic sedimentary rocks from Minnesota and Wisconsin. U-Pb analyses (n = 120 grains per sample) were conducted using laser-ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) at Washington State University.

Pre-Animikie (>1.85 Ga) sediments (Denham Fm.) contain zircons with two age populations (3.5–3.4 and 2.8–2.5 Ga). Basal sandstones of the Animikie (Pokegama) and Marquette (Palms) Supergroups (~1.85 Ga) contain mostly Neoarchean zircons (2.9-2.6 Ga). In contrast, overlying basin sediments (Rove, Thomson and Tyler Formations), deposited in a migrating foredeep north of the Penokean orogen, consist mostly of zircons with ages from 2.05-1.80 Ga; few Paleoproterozoic or Archean grains are present. Sediments deposited during the early stages of Midcontinent Rifting (Nopeming and Puckwunge Sandstones) have three zircon populations (2.8–2.5, 2.1-1.8, and 1.2-1.1 Ga), whereas those from interflow sediments of the North Shore Volcanic Group are dominated by zircon ages of 1.15-1.0 Ga. Post-rift (<1.09 Ga) sediments, including the Jacobsville, Fond du Lac, and Hinckley Sandstones (Mesoproterozoic to Neoproterozoic?); Franconia Fm. (Late Cambrian); and St. Peter Sandstone (Middle Ordovician) contain zircons that are mostly 1.5-1.2 Ga, or less commonly 2.0 - 1.5 Ga. Archean populations (>3.2 Ga; 2.8-2.5 Ga) are poorly represented in the Mesoproterozoic to Neoproterozoic(?) sediments, but become increasingly more abundant in the Late Cambrian sandstones.

Many of the observed zircon ages can be correlated with known source rock ages in the Lake Superior region. Some zircon populations (e.g., 2.5–2.1 Ga, 1.6–1.5 Ga, and 1.4–1.1 Ga), however, have few obvious local sources and must have been derived from more distal sources or from regional sources with unrecognized multicyclic components. In particular, most of the post-Midcontinent Rift sediments that we studied have abundant ages between 1.5 and 1.1 Ga that might have been derived from Grenville Province sources.


Just so you know, the Paleoproterozoic was between 2.5 and 1.6 Ma, so all of my samples (from the Tyler and Rove Formations) actually have zircons that are almost ALL in the paleoproterozoic, not "few".... there aren't any that are NOT in the Archean or paleoproterzoic!!!! AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

it's cool, I didn't write this one, I just worked my ass off getting data for it.

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Spectroscopy of GRB 051111 at z=1.54948: Kinematics and Elemental Abundances of the GRB Environment and Host Galaxy
Journal-ref: Astrophys.J. 646 (2006) 358-368

We present a high-resolution, high signal-to-noise optical spectrum of the afterglow of GRB 051111 obtained with the HIRES spectrograph on the Keck I 10-m telescope. The spectrum exhibits three redshifted absorption systems with the highest, at z=1.54948, arising in the GRB host galaxy. While the Ly-alpha feature is outside the range of our spectrum, the high column density of weakly-depleted Zn suggests that the host is a damped Lyman-alpha system with N(HI)>10^21(Z/Z_sun)^-1. The bulk of the gas (>80%) is confined to a narrow velocity range of |v|<30 km/s exhibiting strong dust depletion of refractory elements such as Fe and Cr. The depletion pattern is similar to that observed in warm disk clouds of the Milky Way. We also detect absorption from all ground-level fine-structure states of FeII, the first such example in a QSO-DLA or GRB-absorption spectrum, which indicate conditions that are consistent with the "warm disk" depletion pattern. The absorption profiles of FeII and MgII extend over several hundred km/s, with a depletion pattern that more closely resembles that of QSO-DLAs, suggesting that the sight line to GRB 051111 probes the halo of the host galaxy in addition to the dense disk. Thus, detailed diagnostics of the interstellar medium of GRB host galaxies continue to provide insight into regions which are generally missed in quasar surveys.

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