So the Tibetan Plateau is old..

Well, that might be a bit of a "No Joke" moment for most folks, since most geologic formations on the earth's surface are old in comparison to a human's lifespan (discounting the more ephemeral landforms created through erosive or deposition processes). Still, I had read previously that the Tibetan Plateau was estimated to have been formed somewhere between 10-15 MYA. New research put out in Nature Geoscience indicates that it might be as old as 30 MYA, perhaps even older!

Being more of a theoretical researcher in the first place, the part that really interests me in this is the description of using Fission Track Dating (FTD) to accurately quantify the rates of temperature change in the rock strata to estimate rates of being exposed by erosion and uplift. That's so awesome! When I go for a PhD, one of the things I want access to is a mass spectrometer, it seems like a lot of the really accurate dating techniques involve using one. Dating alluvial benches is somewhat haphazard, and it would be nice to be able to constrain dates better.

Desert Solitaire

I actually finished reading Desert Solitaire about a week ago, but it's taken me some time to really express what I thought of the book. First, let me say that I know Edward Abbey spent a lot of time alone in the Arches, but to be honest most of his book was about his adventures with other people, or cattle wrangling and he didn't spend much time talking about being alone. It's just kind of weird. Other than that nuance, I really liked reading Desert Solitaire. It's like taking Thoraeau and mixing in a healthy dollop of anarcho-capitalist reasoning. Well, maybe not so much the capitalist part because I think Abbey had some far left-leaning positions on economics in general. At least his positions on society, armaments, and the rights of the people are laudable.

And then there's the plants. Abbey spent an awful lot of time describing plants. It's almost a mania; there's just not a ton of life out there, so seeing plant life is like getting that drink of water you desperately need. The paradox of the desert being that the life there is perfectly adapted to exist there. It's just that people aren't. And the desert, like all landscapes is completely indifferent to that fact.

It's that indifference that has attracted explorers, adventurers, and romantics throughout history. Here's where I insert my own opinion on being out in the wilderness; my idea being that if you can find a way to co-exist with the rhythms of nature and ultimately survive being out there you can accomplish anything.  I don't think that's what Abbey had in mind, since he seems to connect to the desert the way that I connect to woods and streams. At the end of it I wanted to see the desert through his eyes, but I knew that I couldn't because my place is elsewhere. Instead I found a sort of kindred spirit, as I understand where he was coming from.

A lot of people give Abbey grief for the way he takes tourists to task. My question is why didn't he take them to task more often? If anything, the penchant for people to be lazy when on vacation has only increased. I'd love it if you had to go 4x4'ing about ten miles and then hike all day in order to see something truly beautiful instead of driving right up to it. Isn't the journey ultimately more worthwhile than the destination? Let people suffer so that they might enjoy the end more. Alas, such is not the way, but in no way was Abbey being spiteful or arrogant for heaping scorn on people that richly deserve it.

I'm revising my scale somewhat; a simple 10 point scale doesn't leave a lot of room for comparison. On a 100 point scale, with 50 being absolutely neutral in all respects, Desert Solitaire is about a 85 or 86. I think Abbey's writing style grates because of his focus on the minutia, but that's just my personal opinion and it may appeal more to others. I think Abbey was a great writer but there was room for improvement. That's all. Still, this book now has a permanent place on my bookshelf, along with Thoreau, Muir, and Crowe. Go buy and read this book.

Farmer's Markets rock!

Okay, maybe not literally, but they are pretty awesome nonetheless. It did my heart good to see people supporting local farmers and eating healthy produce.  The agricultural system in the USA is set up to support huge factory farms  to the detriment of the nutritional health of all of the civilians. This is voting with your dollars in action,  my friends.

Mini blogging?

I think I've figured out what the blogger app on my phone is good for; mini blogging. I use twitter for micro blogging, those thoughts which only take a sentence or two to compose. I think the blogging platform on my phone is best for sharing perhaps a single link, or perhaps a paragraphs' worth of information.

Incremental Progress

I've been working on getting the house back in order after my better looking half procured a byzantine treadmill from her mom. I use that move as an excuse for the house being in such disarray but the truth is that its a mess from a combination of my not being home for the 10 of the last 14 days, and that it was a little messy before I left to be at Nonnie's house.

15 minutes a day of incremental progress can have a profound impact on the sanitation level and overall organization of a household. Throw in washing a load of dishes and a load of clothes a day and the progress has a compounding effect over time.

Image from Britannica

One of my favorite things to ponder in geomorph is the removal of mountains. Mountains are by definition massive, being created by the slow motion collision of certain types of plate boundaries which shove the earth's crust into the air. Both the Rocky Mountains and my own native Appalachian Mountains were once taller than the Himalayan mountains, if you go far enough back in geologic time. They were slowly eroded, drop by drop, by moving water carrying sediment down-slope on its march back to the ocean. A single small stream on a mountain removes as much material as a fully loaded industrial dump truck. Multiply that by the number of streams, and that by the number of years since that mountain stopped being uplifted, and then you've got an idea of how large that mountain once was.

Mountains, then, aren't torn down over night. They are worn down over geologic time by a stream working *just* hard enough to complete the work. No more, no less.

Should your house be any different?

Too bad I can't really get away with only mowing the lawn for 15 minutes a day though. That Sisyphean task has to be undertaken in a single day. 

Why Kindle and Lubuntu are Life Changing Tech

Today's project was ripping Ubuntu 11.10 out of my old Asus Eee netbook and putting Lubuntu 12.04 in its place. This was done out of necessity, post upgrade from Ubuntu 10 my netbook was running very slowly. It would chug along doing just about anything; opening Chromium (linux version of Chrome) took about fifteen seconds and once it was open it was slow and laggy. Lubuntu is positively snappy in comparison. I do notice some screen lag and it sucks and running video. Then again, it sucked running video even before I switched the OS from XP to Hexxeh's Chromium Lime.

I think if I could get a Chromium OS running on this again then it would probably be superior in speed to Lubuntu, in both boot up time and how smoothly it runs; but I haven't been able to get a chromium OS running on this thing in quite a while. I might take another crack at running chromium off of a USB drive though.
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My Kindle is truly awesome. I have the Kindle 4 (non-touch, ad supported) version. I love it, it's the best thing since sliced bread and it's thin enough that it could probably slice bread too. It's light, at just under 6 oz (awesome for backpacking), holds over a thousand books (awesome for backpacking), and can last about 30 hours of consistent use on a single charge (awesome for backpacking). In short, the Kindle 4 is awesome for backpacking, but it's also just an upgrade from reading a regular book in general.

What do I mean by that? Well, for starters lets talk about the spatial and volumetric requirements for storing your previously read books within your home. You'll need at least one bookcase, in which books will start to pile up as you've read them. You can pull them down easily enough if you want to read them again, but after you reach a certain threshold in sheer book numbers you need to start pairing down the books you actively try to display so that your favorite books are the ones that you can easily access. When it comes time to move, down come all of those books into boxes which have to be packed and labeled and carried, adding weight and increasing your burden.

Now. With the Kindle, all of your books are either stored on the device or in Amazon's cloud. That means your two hundred books, instead of weighing close to a hundred pounds and being spread over fifteen or twenty boxes, are now stored in a 6 oz piece of electronics which you can slip in the small pocket of your backpack on the way out of the door. Want to show off your book collection? Just organize your collection on your kindle the same way you would on your bookshelf; throw the crap books back onto the cloud and organize your favorites into folders. Leave your kindle on your reading table and suggest to guests that they can read anything on it at their leisure.

Using a Kindle is an upgrade in the terms of the actual act of reading itself. The screen stays a consistent color and reduces eye strain because it lacks properties which produce glare. Try reading in direct sunlight with your smartphone to see what I mean. It's easier to hold in one hand and to flip pages with due to its light weight and ambidextrous page turning buttons (easily reached with the thumb when holding the Kindle).

One more thing; when I was out and about previously I would take the paperback I was currently reading with me to work on during lulls or downtime. If I polished that book off then I was reduced to twiddling my thumbs or looking for reading material afterwards. Now I just keep all of my books I want to read on the Kindle, so that if I happen to polish one off my next book is right there waiting for me.