Mother's Day

Every mother's day I tend to balance my general dislike for the Hallmark Holidays with my overwhelming love, thanks, and appreciation for my mom. My balance usually ends up with me calling her, something I should do more often. While in grad school I was lucky enough to attend a poetry reading by then Poet Laureate Billy Collins. I like Billy Collins a great deal. One of my favorite poems of his is called "The Lanyard."

OK, time to connect the thoughts in the previous paragraph. As Apparent Dip's mother's day offering, I bring you "The Lanyard" by Billy Collins. You can hear him read this here, or on this excellent CD. As a copyright note, I am only putting the text up because NPR did, and I figure if NPR thinks it is OK, then so does Apparent Dip. I think most poems are best listened to, so check out the links above.

The Lanyard - by Billy Collins

The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the pale blue walls of this room,
bouncing from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one more suddenly into the past --
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sickroom,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift--not the archaic truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hands,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Brett Favre Shrimp Dip

And other search terms Apparent Dip is the #1 Google hit for:

brett favre shrimp dip

electric triscuit disaggregation

severely emotionally disturbed thermochronology

extraneous Ar reservoir

urlacher apparent moses

I found the "brett favre shrimp dip" one from looking at my StatCounter, the rest I came up with sitting here.

Being chased by Marc Bolan

vs.

According to this article on cnn.com, T. Rex could reach maximum speeds of 18 mph, fast enough to out-run L.A. Galaxy superstar David Beckham! Not bad for an early glam rock superstar, although they don't mention if that was with or without the super tight pants. They also didn't mention if it was Manchester United Beckham, Real Madrid Beckham, or L.A. Galaxy Beckham.

Towards a complete Thermochronocracy

Thanks to our good friend at ...Or Something, I have been inspired to come clean. His post relates to a rather sad opinion poll from the retreads at World Nut Daily, whose readers overwhelmingly believe that "behind the junk science of global warming is a globalist power agenda." (Although in fairness it should be noted that the second most popular response was "[global warming] is the biggest scam in the history of mankind", well, perhaps behind the Apollo moon landing and Bigfoot.)

So, in the spirit of the international globalist agenda...

We all know that if you are serious about world power and total domination, you first must go into earth and/or atmospheric science. Just think of all of the despots, dictators, and great world leaders started out as scientists working on very complex problems, I mean, I'd name them all if they weren't so obvious. The power that the average university scientist wields over the country, the world, hell, over all of mankind, is just staggering, if you think about it. I can see why they are such suspect characters. I mean, it isn't like they are normal people, with jobs and families, retirement accounts, bills, neighbors, hobbies and the like; they are power hungry wanna-be conquerers, why else would you go to grad school?

Thermochronologists are no different, we too have a plan in action for world domination. I am only writing this because of my anonymity in the blog world, the punishment for going against the inner circle is harsh. The thermochronolongic plan for world domination was formulated high in the mountains outside of Salt Lake City back in 2005, when the worlds most powerful convened for a secret workshop. Here we developed our plan to overthrow the world order, and install in every country a thermochronocratic government.

I outlined some of the principles of thermochronocracy in my comments to ...Or Something's post, but I feel the need to expand.

A thermochronocracy is based in a strict adherence to classic Dodsonian principles. The free market will be replaced with volume diffusion of capital. Non-Arrhenius behavior is forbidden. GDP will now be described in terms of activation energies, all temperatures will be converted to 10000/K notation, and all errors must be propagated with both the x- and y-axis variables taken into account. Worker activity must increase with temperature, but not linearly. On really hot days, everyone's age is reset to zero, although larger people or people with high Cl/F ratios may reset much more slowly. LabView will be standard in all classrooms and become what Esperanto should have been, and ³⁹Ar will be declared the official national man-made isotope. Every house will install an electric pulse disaggregator, and the country's brightest minds will focus on developing non-toxic, low-viscosity alternatives to SPT and MI (this is actually an altruistic goal since the leaders of the (r/r_o)evolution will immediately make underlings perform all of our future mineral separates.)

It will become a capitol crime for reviewers to suggest thermochronologic studies "belong in a more regional journal," or to question why we cleaned the separate in both acetic acid and hydrogen peroxide. All makers of mass spectrometers must automatically include LabView drivers and guarantee free software upgrades at least once a decade (this is of course the most unrealistic goal so far.) Diffusion domains must equal the grain radius, unless it doesn't, but might fall out of the equation anyway, and all worthwhile procedures must not appear in an easily accessible and readable form, but must instead be spread out through at least a dozen appendices and figure captions in no less than 6 separate journals spanning at least a decade (this was a special request from one of the inner circle members-who-shall-not-be-named.) Oh, and of course, anything you put on a poster must be guaranteed to not agree with "some data I collected a few years back but never published [and won't share]." Reactor constants are constant, and there is always a good reason to disregard standards that don't quite fit. All atmospheric pressures must be reported in terms of millitorr, or mean free path. We will commission famous landscape artist Andy Goldsworthy to create a tribute to the leaders of the coup made entirely of discarded ConFlat gaskets and broken heating tape.

As powerful as we are, I do fear for the future of the thermochronocracy. I already see divides, disputes over standards and decay constants, for-profit labs are becoming a serious threat to the forces of unpublished data, and the multi-collector mafia has placed their people in very high positions. We must be wary.

That is why I am getting the word out. Register thermochronocratic. Vote thermochronocratic. Let's show the "readers" of World Net Daily just what kind of future despots we scientists are!

Activate interlock! Megathrusters are go!

I have yet to see the new Transformers movie, but in a related movie post.... A few days ago I made a comment on Ron Schott's blog comparing the geoblogosphere to Voltron, Defender of the Universe. The basic idea is that we as a community are all creating something much larger and greater than our own blogs. That reminded me of Voltron, and no, not the lame-o vehicle Voltron but the excellent one where there were 5 lions that formed Voltron. Long story, but I was then messing around on iMDB and found out that there is a Voltron movie in production as we speak, ready for 2008.

Apparent Void

My posting has been pretty poor lately, all due to my preparation for my upcoming field work. I am leaving this evening for an obliquely convergent Cenozoic orogen, and will be back in July. At least then there will be plenty of field pics to enjoy! Cheers, and enjoy the rest of June.

Broader Impacts

I spent most of the holiday finishing off the last of the bajillion temperature steps I ran on a k-feldspar from my new field area (collected by someone else, but mine now!) I got to thinking about my thesis, and then about how much I contributed to the world's knowledge base. Here is a diagram I came up with, in case you are curious.

Yes, they are different.

Apparent Dip Music Club Update - David Francey Concert

I took advantage today of a repetitive lab procedure to reserve a ticket for my first concert in a long time, and the first since I made it to the northeast. This Sunday David Francey is playing in a nearby town (not much of a drive at all), and Thermochronic has a ticket! I blogged about David Francey when I first started Apparent Dip, I even embedded some YouTube videos of him performing. Unfortunately the videos are no longer available on YouTube, but for just $15.00 I'll be able to see him live. This will of course lead to the first Apparent Dip concert review, but that's it for now. I post this mainly because I am excited, but also to point out that David Francey has a pretty extensive tour he is in the middle of, so if he is coming to a little opera house a short drive from you, my bet is that it will be well worth the travel.

Springtime at ESRU

Mild, sunshiny days, chirping birds, bright flowers...Spring is such a magical time of year, even here at ESRU. I thought I'd share some pictures I took yesterday morning.


Odd weather abounds in my first year in the northeast, we had more snow on easter than we did on christmas, and now weeks past opening day I am wishing I hadn't taken off my snow tires.

And So It Goes, R.I.P Kurt Vonnegut

Author Kurt Vonnegut died last night at the age of 84. In memorium and related to my last post, the following quote can easily be adapted to our discussion of reviews of scientific papers

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

Mike Slackenerny, Ph.D.?

If you've ever taken the tour down my sidebar, you've seen the link I have to the Ph.D. Comics strip. This has been one of my favorites for years, it appeared regularly in the student paper at my graduate institution, and the online archives got me through one overnight mercenary shift on an ion probe blasting zircons. Today's comic shows regular character Mike Slackenerny turning in his thesis to the university registrar. Now, if you follow the strip, you know this is significant because Slackenerny has been in grad school for some untold and absurdly long period of time. What I loved about this strip though was that it is actually true. When I took a "final" copy of my thesis to the university registrar (same registrar, by the way, that is alluded to in this strip), I was told I needed to adjust the margins, I had to add 1/10th of an inch to the right (non binded) side. I luckily had not printed this version on the insanely expensive all cotton thesis paper I later had to use (which, of course doesn't count as a qualified tuition expense on my 1098-t). What got me was that the official measuring stick was an old wooden ruler that was worn down on the corner, you actually couldn't see the markings on the last 1/4 inch, which made me confused about the need for such precision. Allegedly, even though the margins in my thesis LaTeX file were set right, paper has enough lateral movement in printers that you need to add extra width. Anyways, not that anyone cares about the trials of printing final thesis copies, but I thought it a good way to advertise Ph.D., the comic strip. Check out my sidebar for the most recent comics, or click through to the site for the complete (free) archives. Here are a few of my favorites...