culture-society-history

Québec City Was Founded On A High Cape Of Utica Shale

July 18, 2011

Québec City sits between the Laurentian highlands of the southeastern Grenville Province of the Canadian Shield and the Appalachian Mountains that were formed during the Taconic and Acadian orogenies. Bedrock here is the Upper Ordovician Utica shale that “overlies the predominantly shallow marine carbonate facies of the Cambrian-Ordovician St. Lawrence Platform” (or St. Lawrence lowlands).The [...]

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But If Obama Had Made Jobs We Could Employ People To Install Sidewalks

January 20, 2011

Athenae points us to today’s searing death ray of political brilliance: Michelle Obama’s ‘Get Moving’ Program Linked to Pedestrian Deaths. Ignore my jaw on this keyboard and keep reading. The Governors Highway Safety Association says pedestrian deaths increased in the first half of 2010 and the First Lady’s program to get Americans to be more [...]

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Of Interest On January 17th, 2011

January 17, 2011

For what it’s worth, I’m with Ricky Gervais on deflating the self-important bloat that is Hollywood and organized religion. It would do us Americans a world of good to include the phrase “take the piss out of” in our vocabulary and engage in it from time to time. And not get offended ourselves while preaching [...]

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Random Science Observation

January 12, 2011

I am doing a lot of reading on deterministic and stochastic computational methods. If you’re in the field, it’s the usual stuff: parameters vs. probability distributions, Bayesian prior and posterior probability density factors, Markov Chain Monte Carlo. Wikipedia on the Monte Carlo method: The term “Monte Carlo method” was coined in the 1940s by physicists [...]

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Downward Facing Derp

December 30, 2010

It was a cold evening in the American southwest. I pulled my favorite shawl around me a little tighter. A woman smiled at the shawl – a burnt-orange, paisley piece my mom picked up in India – and said, “I know why you wear that. It’s because of your religion.” “Actually, I wear it because [...]

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If I Have One More Pie A La Mode

December 15, 2010

I’m gonna need my own zip code. Because I’m fat, I’m fat, sha mone. – Fat by Weird Al Yankovic Two nicely-written opinions on America’s love-hate relationship with body fat. Despite the crazy amount of travel and delicious baked goods on my schedule this time of year, I’ve managed to fend off the Christmas 10. [...]

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Give Me Ideas For A New Professional Women Geoscientists’ Network

November 12, 2010

I belong to a professional geophysical society whose executive committee has proposed the formation of a women’s network. Similar networks are American Association of Petroleum Geologists’ PROWESS committee and Society of Professional Engineers’ Women’s Network. Why bother? Who’s going to fulfill your energy requirements, for starters? Consider it a staffing problem. A large hurdle for [...]

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The Plan

November 3, 2010

Nothing is going to significantly change in America in the next two years, ok? I’m a football fan, remember? The gridiron gridlock. I can already feel it. This is why I don’t care what happened last night as long as funding cuts to education are not carried out and science classrooms remain sacrosanct and supported [...]

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Rally To Just Kinda Be Ourselves For One Day, Part II

November 2, 2010

The costumes. This is why you have to go vote today. So I stop inflicting these nerdy, quadruple-entendre getups on you. The sad part is D’s costume didn’t take all that much effort and HE got high fives and “Duuuuude” all day long, while people came up to me and said, “What are you?” (or [...]

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Dia De Los Muertos

November 1, 2010

We, too, will be ancestors one day. Tweet

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