Author: Alex

Categories
movie

Wonder Woman in a movie… yay?

I’m going with… not yay.

So this is the thing. Apparently Wonder Woman is going to make an appearance in the Batman vs. Superman movie.

Numbered list, go!

  1. I seriously could not give less of a shit about this movie if I tried, Wonder Woman or no Wonder Woman. I’ve honestly never been that in to Superman as a hero, and then when it’s going to be Zack Snyder’s wangsty collateral-damage-what-collateral-damage Superman from Man of Steel, my levels of meh reach dangerous proportions that might threaten my ability to continue breathing as I am crushed by ennui.
  2. We have been bitching and moaning and asking and begging for a female superhero movie, (but action movies with women in the lead don’t work ever except oh hi Catching Fire) and this is what we get? If you want to win our hearts back from Marvel, DC, make a fucking Wonder Woman headlined movie. Otherwise it’s more well Black Widow doesn’t get her own movie but she’s totally in Captain America 2 and that counts right? bullshit. Forgive me for not being excited that Wonder Woman is going to be the third wheel in a movie where two other heroes get billing. It’s not like it’s going to be a team movie like Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy.
  3. So when you add 1 and 2 together to get 3, I’m STILL not in the least bit excited about this movie.

  4. This is all the more hilarisad considering you know who is getting her own movie? Maleficent. Yes, she isn’t a comic book character. But she’s a powerful female icon and a villain. This just strikes me as even funnier considering the song and dance Marvel has given fans who want a Loki movie because villain movies Just Aren’t Done. But there is a villain movie, about a female villain, and arguably the greatest female superhero of all time is still an afterthought to Orphan McBroody versus Orphan McShouldn’t-Be-Broody-But-Angst-Stands-In-For-Character-Development-Right.

  5. And then the Zack Snyder thing. I (shockingly) don’t have quite the hateboner for Snyder as others do, though god knows why. I think it’s because I actually kind of enjoyed Sucker Punch, quite possibly because it was SUPER PRETTY and I went in with such low expectations to begin with. I also think anyone who thought Sucker Punch was anything approaching a female empowerment narrative needs their damn head examined. Which circles us back to… gosh, yeah, I don’t trust Zack Snyder with the superhero whose underoos I wore as a child. (Could be worse, I guess. Could be Michael Bay. Amirite?)

The reason I even heard about this was a friend of mine posting the above linked article and saying that she really didn’t think Gal Gadot looked like Wonder Woman to her. And that was honestly my initial reaction as well, because Gal is a very pretty but very thin lady in that picture. Which upon sober reflection, kind of makes me cringe at my own thoughts, considering I’d be going fucking ballistic if anyone was saying she was too fat to play Wonder Woman.

I think the reason I had that reaction is Wonder Woman is… buff. Amazonian. And while I don’t have any right to be judging thin ladies, at the same time there is already such a conflation of fitness and thinness (I mean for god’s sake, people are still getting on Jennifer Lawrence about being too “fat” when she concentrated on looking really fit for Katniss) and it already feels like “very thin pretty woman” is the default setting. I desperately want to see some more diversity in body type for women in film, and superhero movies are a great opportunity for, I don’t know, at least some LADY MUSCLES or something. (They are non-threatening because they are lady-like!)

I had a brief Twitter conversation with Chuck Wendig about this (thanks, Chuck! And here is his post on the topic by the way), and he nicely deflated me a bit, which I appreciate. Also, apparently some people in the Twitter-verse are bitching because Gal Gadot is a model? So fucking what? (She’s an actress too. Fast & Furious, hello.) He also pointed out that Gadot was a soldier, which I hadn’t known before. (And hey, I know woman train up for roles like this; Jaimie Alexander did for Lady Sif!) So I will shut up about that now and have a good think about my knee jerk reaction.
My feelings toward the movie in general are still an uncomplicated BLEH. Considering it’s Zack Snyder we’ll probably get something like BONDAGE WONDER WOMAN because that looks strong, right? Gah.
Please feel free to prove me wrong. That would be awesome. And I’d see the movie twice. Okay, at least once.
Categories
holiday politics you need to do better

Black Thursday and Thanksgiving

And once again we’re missing someone from our Thanksgiving table because of Black Friday relentlessly cannibalizing Thanksgiving. Because it doesn’t suck enough already to be working in the retail industry, which spends enormous amounts of energy on pinching pennies away from its employees. Now you have to do the shitty job slog when you rightfully should be sitting around in your pajamas and watching the Thanksgiving Day Parade.

There’s a lot of “don’t shop on Thanksgiving” and “if you shop on Thursday shame on you” and even stronger words going around. And yeah, I get that. It makes me pretty angry that one of my friends won’t be eating turkey with us because profit margins are king in a society that apparently worships capitalism. I can’t even imagine what it would feel like if it was my spouse or kid missing out because of a shitty employer who wants to move more merchandise.

But I was thinking, tonight. I have several friends who are not in nearly so good a financial place as me. I have friends who are shopping on Black Friday, not because they desperately want to elbow some lady in the sternum to try to get an Xbone for a steal, but because it’s the only way they can possibly afford a nice Christmas present for one of their kids or someone else important to them.

And a lot of the time, the people in those situations are the same ones being paid poverty wages by the same (or similar) stores that are fucking their employees out of the one family holiday they used to be able to count on. And those poverty wages are the reason why they’re being forced to depend on the relentless creep of Black Friday so they can try to have something a little nice. The viscious ugliness of that cycle takes my breath away.

I don’t think yelling at people for shopping on Thanksgiving is the way to go. Maybe some people are doing it because they’re bargain hunting assholes, and maybe I’m wrong and it’s actually just plain consumer greed enabling this trend. It’s not like I have data to back up this horrible realization of mine that no doubt has people who have been living it laughing bitterly and shaking their heads. But let’s be real.

The true blame lies in corporate greed, because profits have been and always will be more important than people, and in the complicit spinelessness of the government that insists capitalism is magical and we can’t possibly afford to raise wages to a point where people can survive, let alone thrive. The true blame lies in a class of decision makers so coldhearted that they blame the poor for needing assistance to survive when they aren’t paid enough to even feed themselves, then scold them for having the audacity to want something nice for their families when we’re constantly told that the real American dream is always buying the new shiny.

That’s where the real villainy is. Not in someone who just wants a nice present for their kid. Not even for a crazed shopper punching someone else in the face over a new cell phone because they’re been convinced there’s some kind of fulfillment in owning an expensive toy. We should be questioning the system that makes anyone think it’s okay to place profit at a higher priority than families.

#

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, there’s the standard thing for Thanksgiving, which is being thankful for things, up to and including the fact that your stomach once again refrained from literally exploding when you wedged in that last piece of pie.

I have a lot to be thankful for this year. I graduated with my MS, and I’m thankful to my advisor (Mary!) and my committee members (Jaelyn and Dr. Budd!). I’m thankful for having a job I love and an awesome boss (Pat!). I’m thankful for all the art I’ve gotten to do this year, between participating in filming and then breaking $1000 earned with writing. (Who knows how next year will go, if this was just a fluke, if it will go up or down, but for now that feels amazing for someone still struggling to get going.) I’m thankful I have a lot of great people in my life.

So today after breakfast (at least I got to see my friend who is missing dinner because of work then) I went for a four mile run. Which is a rough prospect in Colorado since I’m no longer acclimatized to the altitude and there are these things called hills. We don’t have those in Houston. But I kept plugging away and a bit before mile three I got that amazing feeling that yes, I was going to do this. It might suck, but I’d keep chugging along. That feeling is worth more than anything.

Sunlight on my face, a light breeze, just my feet on the concrete and grass as green as it ever gets in Colorado scrolling along forever next to the sidewalk. Everything else stops mattering, and in that moment I felt the pure gratitude for the air in my lungs. For being here, in this moment, for existing in this time and place.

Thanks for everything.

Categories
me rants

10 Reasons I Fucking Love My Period

  1. The headache. I know, what could be more fun than bleeding out of the crotch for five days? Doing it while one of your eyeballs feels like it’s going to be forcibly ejected from your skull! It helps you prove you’re a REAL WOMAN by enduring constant pain without losing your temper and snapping the goddamn neck of everyone who tells you to smile because it can’t possibly be that bad. GUESS WHAT MOTHERFUCKERS I AM LEAVING A BLOOD TRAIL THAT A DEAF DUMB AND BLIND SHARK COULD FOLLOW IT IS THAT BAD AND I AM STILL UPRIGHT DO NOT EVEN FUCK WITH ME.
  2. Bloating is FUCKING AWESOME. Severe drought could hit us at any fucking time thanks to all those asshole world governments still refusing to goddamn thing one about global climate change. So you have to be prepared. Well guess what. I’m carrying like FIVE EXTRA POUNDS OF WATER with me. Sure my pants no longer fit but when you’re crawling through the blasted wasteland that used to be river country and pleading for a drop of moisture GUESS WHO WILL BE LAUGHING THEN.
  3. Normally if I want my tits to hurt, I have to go kick my own ass with bench press like other mere mortals. NOT THIS WEEK, THOUGH. OH NO. I get all the boobache I could possibly want, no effort needed. MATCH THAT, FUCKERS.
  4. I smell like blood and that’s how you know I AM NOT EVEN FUCKING AROUND. Sure, this time it’s not the blood of your parents, your kids, and your favorite dog. BUT THAT COULD CHANGE AT ANY MOMENT. [Note: Even if I did not love the smell of salty ruin in the morning, you could not fucking pay me enough to squirt shit that smells like flowers down there, I love my ladyjunk WAY TOO MUCH OH AM I MAKING YOU UNCOMFORTABLE? GOOD.]
  5. Normally a cold ass bitch of my caliber would have to watch a kitten being slowly crushed to death by the weight of societal apathy to even feel so much as a pang of sorrow. But not this week. I GET TO CRY AT FUCKING GUM COMMERCIALS. Emotional release, baby. I get it all out in less than a week and then I’m back to the uncaring gaiety of your average Bond villain for the rest of the month.
  6. Tell you what, I fucking love not being able to take a decent shit for nearly a week. Shitting is for pussies and people who lack conviction.
  7. Cramps are nature’s way of letting you know that you have a fucking pain tolerance that won’t quit because you KNOW if science could even PRODUCE something so badass as the genetic love child of Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Chuck Fucking Norris, if that lantern-jawed piece of pure badassery had a uterus trying to turn itself inside out and crawl out of his [hypothetical] vagina, he’d be on the floor begging for a merciful death by corkscrew. BUT US? We just keep going like the fucking zombie Energizer Bunny and maybe, just maybe, slap a heating pad on that shit if it’s particularly bad this month because AIN’T NO ONE GOT TIME FOR THAT.
  8. I GRIND MY TEETH IN MY SLEEP BECAUSE I AM PREPARING TO TEAR OUT THE THROATS OF MY ENEMIES.
  9. Anyone who thinks life gets more fun than shoving a wad of cotton into your vagina like it’s the cork for a champagne bottle of gore has obviously never lived.
  10. The insomnia is fucking awesome, and then the headache so you like can’t even fucking THINK because thinking is that shit limp-wristed intellectuals do shut up and work with me here. Sleep is for people who don’t got shit to do, and my shit to do I mean sharks to hunt down and murder with your bare hands. I KNOW YOU FUCKERS ARE HUNTING ME I CAN FEEL IT AND I AM READY YOU DO NOT EVEN KNOW WHO YOU ARE FUCKING WITH.
Categories
ask a geologist geology

[Ask a Geologist] Of Meteorites and Jars

The lovely and cupcake-alicious E. Catherine Tobler had a couple of geology-related questions, which I have simplified because sooper sekrit reasons:

1) Pretend it’s before 1900–how do you test if a piece of jewelry is made from a meteorite?

After trawling around on the internet a bit, the most likely thing I could come up with is just checking if the jewelry is magnetic and then doing a double check with a streak plate… basically, if the piece is attracted to a magnet, that at least indicates it involves naturally magnetic minerals. And then if you scratch it on a ceramic streak plate and it leaves a metallic gray streak, that’d be a pretty good indicator that it’s at least not one of the usual suspects. Magnetite leaves a black streak and hematite leaves a red streak.

The streak test is a pretty old school one for mineral identification, so it would at least indicate that something weird is going on if you have this magnetic thing that’s not leaving an expected streak color. I know there are also chemical tests you can do to see if something contains nickel, which would be a big hint since all metallic meteorites are nickel/iron.

I don’t know precisely when the streak test came into wide use or when they really started cataloging streak color for minerals. But Mohs hardness scale was invented in 1812, and that kind of testing has been in use since basically the Greeks, just not standardized. Streak testing is an outgrowth of hardness testing, since when you rub something on a substance that is harder than it, you leave a streak of powdered mineral behind.

That said, I didn’t quite trust my own answer on this, so I e-mail my planetologist buddy John Dee since he knows space rocks so much better than I do. Here’s what he had to suggest:

Easy-peasy – just cut it in two, etch it with nitric acid and look for the Widmanstätten pattern. The pattern is formed when the iron core of a planetismal slowly cools and creates interlocking crystals. When the planetismal is later broken into pieces, it forms the stoney and iron meteorites.

Magnetism won’t be much use, as the planetismal probably wasn’t large enough to have an intrinsic magnetic field. And the streak pattern won’t be diagnostic because you’ll get the same result for native iron. But only a meteorite will give you the Widmanstätten pattern!

I don’t know if cutting the jewelry in half is actually an option, but even just etching the outside of it should reveal the Widmanstätten pattern. And so long as the jewelry was made without completely melting down the meteorite–if you just heated it enough to get it to bend instead, for example–that would be the best indicator for certain.

Question number two was a little less out of this world:

2) You’re in ancient Egypt. What kind of rock would you use to make a container for a liquid?

I found this awesome site that listed Ancient Egyptian quarries and mines and what each one produced. Which made answering this a lot easier. Basically, the material would need to be workable (well, presumably anything in the above quarries were things the Egyptians knew how to work), would need to be durable, would need to not react with what you put in it, and would need to be non-porous (to prevent seeping or desiccation).

So this eliminated things like schist (flaky), sandstone (potentially porous), and gypsum (too dang soft).

That leaves a lot of good options still:

  • Quartzite would definitely work. A good quartzite will be completely cemented with quartz, so that would take care of the pore space issue. Quartz is also pretty resistant to chemical weathering, so wouldn’t interact with much you’d put in it to the best of my knowledge… it’s a tough mineral. And we know that the Egyptians had access to a quarry with quartzite in it.
  • Travertine and regular limestone (which would potentially be cool looking and fossiliferous) also might work all right since as far as I’ve been able to find, and unless you filled it with acid wouldn’t interact with the liquid. (And as long as you keep them in a dry climate, both of those will last forever and ever.) The big thing again would be to make certain it was non-porous limestone–it just can’t have vugs in it, or a lot of dissolution molds. I think Travertine would likely be good since it’s hydrothermal… though the other thing to keep in mind is that hydrothermal sourced rocks might have some other nasty impurities in them since a lot of metallic and heavy elements tend to get kicked up in hydrothermal systems.
  • Granite or diorite could potentially work too. Since all the crystals are interlocking, it’d make for a water-tight or even air-tight vessel, but it could be a bitch to work and polish up I imagine.
  • The one option I like the best is serpentinite. There’s a quarry for that, and it would make a darn cool looking green or black jar. I also found a reference that said serpentinite was used for small decorative containers, so there you go.

Looking up all that information about quarries was really fun!

Categories
movie

[Movie] Catching Fire

This movie made me actually cry twice and tear up an additional four times. What even gave you the right, Catching Fire? You’re supposed to be a big-budget sci-fi action movie. What’s with this actual heart-punching emotion in the middle of all the wacky fashions and shouting and stabbing things?

Effie made me cry. Effie Fucking Trinkett made me weep a silent, manly fashion. (Those weren’t tears. It was just sweat from my heart.) I can only guess that Elizabeth Banks is actually some kind of goddess.

I really enjoyed the entire Hunger Games series as books. I read all three of them in four days because I refused to put them down. The first movie was… all right. I wasn’t quite so excited about it probably because I loved the books so much, but I liked it in the theater even if I never felt compelled to actually buy it on DVD. In the first movie, the only scene that actively destroyed me was Rue’s death, and I’d gone in expecting it. (Though I should have known, you can never be prepared enough for that.)

I really feel like Catching Fire took everything that was good about the first movie and turned it up to eleven. There was just so much more emotion in it, loss and rage and helplessness. And the acting was all around so excellent that scenes didn’t so much tug at your heartstrings as wrap them up in a fist and just rip them right out of your chest.

All the major action points out of the book were there, but I never once hit a point where I felt like the action was going on too long, or like we were getting some big cgi production piece in place of actual character development. It’s incredibly unusual for me to feel that way about big budget movies these days. (I’m looking at you, The Hobbit.) I felt like there was a lot less shaky cam in this movie than in the previous one, and that it was better used as a way to make the action feel very immediate. Considering the movie was well over two house and didn’t feel nearly that long, they kept it cranking along.

There was a lot to put in the movie because there’s a lot of character development and emotional meat, and there’s no skimping on that. I think that’s why there’s so much emotional impact–the movie gives you a chance to get to know everyone, and their conflicts. You get to know that Katniss is not some kind of superhero, but rather a terrified, angry girl who is being pulled in far too many directions at once. The ways she’s being manipulated by nearly every person around her are very clear…as are the multitude of different ways she loves the people in her life. I’m so glad we got that instead of an extra ten minutes of CGI monkeys chasing very fit people in spandex body suits.

Oh, and Jennifer Lawrence? Still the most perfect. I adore her.

And I just want to say that while the guys all did an excellent job, to me the people who really stood out were the women. Jennifer Lawrence, Elizabeth Banks, and Jena Malone (Johanna) were all powerful. And Lynn Cohen as Mags, who did everything without even being able to speak, won the whole movie as far as I’m concerned.

So yes. I liked it. I’d recommend it. However, if you haven’t seen the first movie or read the book, you’re really going to need to do that beforehand. Catching Fire wastes no time at all on retreading the background story. And I’m glad for that.

Looking forward to being utterly destroyed by Mockingjay.

Categories
feminism

“Strong Female Character” – I do not think it means what you think it means.

With apologies to Elise, Kathy, and Mike, all of whom told me to not write this, but you know how crap I am at letting things go and NOW I CAN MOVE ON WITH MY LIFE OKAY I’M GOING TO EAT SOME CAKE NOW.

My friend Andrew linked me to this, because, I don’t know. He’s an evil bastard and likes watching me suffer: Saving Science Fiction from Strong Female Characters – Part 1

Initial reaction: Wow, Andrew, you asshole why would you do this to me I THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS.

Secondary reaction: …there’s more than one part?

Tertiary reaction: Holy geeze that’s a long post why do I hate myself.

Quaternary reaction: Please tell me this is all just a joke and the end will say LOKI’D in blinking text.

But at that point it was just kind of a car wreck and I COULDN’T LOOK AWAY.

Look, I’m not going to write some kind of clever point by point take-down of the post, because frankly, it’s not even worth my time. When you have a blog post full of things like:

Like it or not, nature has oriented female thinking to make them generally better at teaching a child how to volunteer to do a task, so that he will naturally and willingly do his tasks once he is grown; whereas men are generally better at commanding and punishing, so that the task gets done whether the child is willing or unwilling.

And:

The sexes are opposite, and culture should exaggerate the complimentary opposition by artifice in order to increase our joy in them, including artifices of dress and speech: when women dress and speak and act like men, some joy is erased from both sexes.

…with all sorts of contemptuous references to political correctness and ‘sexism’ in scare quotes.

I mean at that point, there’s not really much of a reaction I can even have beyond would you get a load of this fuckin guy? I honestly don’t see a reason in going point by point over what is basically gender essentialism/evo psych bingo run amuck. And it’s not like I expect it would have even one bit of impact on Mr. John C. Wright (yes, he’s wearing a fedora, because of course he is) when he has posts titled things like “Chik Fil A Day For Orson Scott Card.” (I have little doubt I fall into the ‘barbarian’ camp of sexual perverts, and I am proud of it.)

But I do want to say something to the idea of strong female characters and the straw man that Mr. Wright has built, because I’m just so. Fucking. Sick of it.

In other words, when reviewers urge writers to put strong female characters into their works, they are asking the writers, in effect, to add Amazons, women with stereotypically masculine behavior patterns, values and attitudes. The only difficulty with the idea is that Amazons are as mythical as gynosphinxes.

That might be what “strong female character” means sometimes. There’s a lot of conflation between “strength” and “kicking ass” probably because, I don’t know, we live in a patriarchy, “kicking ass” is considered very masculine, and thus all the most awesome characters are viewed as having that quality of ass kicking-ness. So the male characters have been hogging ass kicking all this time, and why can’t female characters have some as well?

But let me tell you something. My two favorite strong female characters of all time? Alanna of Trebond, the Lioness Rampant, and Phedre no Delauney de Montreve. Alanna secretly became the first female knight of Tortall; she exerts power over others by fighting. Phedre is a courtesan, and exerts powers over others not just with sex, but by loving them. I suppose you could argue those characters are opposite ends of the spectrum, spectrum being the operative word here. But both of them are very much active in their own stories, the drivers of their own destiny, and they have rich and complex internal life.

They are both strong female characters.

I suppose what makes me the most frustrated about Mr. Wright’s post is that he almost, almost has a good point in there–female characters can be strong without being ass kickers. (To which I’d add: Just like male characters can be strong without being ass kickers either. And–holy shit–not all “ass kicking” characters are actually that strong! Ward is the biggest ass-kicker in all of Agents of SHIELD but I would never call him a strong character.) But since he wrapped it all up in the lengthily bloviated notion that women perforce must be feminine, that pretty much invalidates his reasoning as far as I’m concerned.

Mostly, this entire thing, with Mr. Wright’s post as the latest spasm to which I’ve subjected myself, just makes me feel sad. It makes me feel sad for Mr. Wright, and it makes me feel sad for people who agree with him, because their views of humanity, sex, gender, etc, are so narrow. It makes me feel sad because they seem to want to limit other people–and characters–into two very narrow boxes where many of us simply do not fit.

You know what makes a strong character? If they are well-written, have an emotional center, have agency, are complex and real, make decisions, and grow. It’s true whether the character is male, or female or anything in between. Whether they are human or elf or alien.

My particular brand of feminism (which is pretty darn mainstream, Mr. Wright’s straw feminists aside) is about seeking for humans in general to be free to reach their greatest potential and happiness in whatever role they prefer. If a woman1 finds happiness in being a hyper-“feminine” stay at home mom, then I want her to be able to do that. If a man wants to do the same thing, I want him to be able to do that as well. And so on, forever, for all the possible combinations along the spectrum that is humanity.

Because I know and love the fact that humans are far more complex and beautiful than can be contained in the sad, old-fashioned binary of masculine versus feminine.

So yes, I want there to be strong female characters. I want there to be strong female characters of all kinds. And I’ll keep asking for them until, say, the majority of lead characters on television aren’t white men. And if some of them do turn out to be “masculine” Amazons? You’ll have to forgive me for really liking that, because everyone enjoys seeing characters in whom they can find themselves. Because I am unabashedly one of those women whose happiness involves dapperness and occasionally punching things.

And by the way? I love dancing. And the last time I did it, I lead. And it was amazing.

 

 

1 – And please note here, I intend “woman” and “man” to encompass both trans- and cis- men and women…and also anyone who doesn’t wish to identify themselves in that fashion to begin with.

Categories
doctor who tv

The Day of the Doctor

Okay, spoilers. Duh. Big duh.

Though I will say this… out of all the fiftieth anniversary stuff for Doctor Who, I actually liked the An Adventure in Space and Time far better than the actual special episode. An Adventure in Space and Time is a mostly historical drama about the start of Doctor Who as a TV show through the time the first Doctor changed over to the second. It was interesting, and funny, and David Bradley as William Hartnell made me cry like a baby, that bastard. If you get a chance to watch it and you’re any kind of Doctor Who fan, I really recommend it.

Anyway, The Day of the Doctor…

Continue reading “The Day of the Doctor”
Categories
ask a geologist geology geomorph

[Ask a Geologist] Before there was terraforming, there were rocks

My friend Andrew Barton asked me, a bit out of the blue via twitter:

Given a now-earthlike planet terraformed 15 million years ago, which previously resembled an Earth-sized Iapetus or something, how obvious would the pre-terraforming rocks be, or what governs how deep they’d be now?

He also provided a bit more background as to the reason behind the question:

I’m still working out a lot of the details; this involves Esperanza, the terraformed habitable moon of HD 28185 b that was the setting of “The Paragon of Animals” in the March 2013 Analog, and hopefully additional stuff down the line. While tectonically active and geographically varied at present, it was entirely lifeless before the terraforming process began.

I should probably be ashamed to admit it, but I didn’t actually have an idea what Iapetus would be like. And didn’t look it up until this very moment (naughty, naughty) but I don’t think that would have changed the answer I sent him. Which is long and a bit rambling, but I was thinking it through as I went since the question was fairly general.

  1. How deep do the effects of the terraforming go? If it’s just a matter of soil modification/creation, I wouldn’t really expect most bare rock to be all that altered. If it’s a change to atmospheric chemistry that will completely redefine the way weathering works on the planet, that’s a whole different matter. Also, microbial life does have a profound effect on how any rock that’s exposed to air will degrade (we even see this deep in mines/hydrothermal vents) but did the terraforming, say, completely alter the habitats of the extremophiles?
  2. How tectonically active is your planet? If you’re getting regular tectonic activity like you see in modern Earth, there’s a good chance that you would get exposures of relatively pristine rock fairly regularly; if there’s a large earthquake that causes a major landscape drop, you’ll get a fault scarp where new rock will be exposed. These aren’t the most common events, but you’d probably get a bit of that happening during 15 million years. Of course, as soon as you expose the fresh rock face to the surface, it will start being effected by the terraforming.
  3. If you’ve got landscapes with a lot of relief (eg: mountains) then you’ll have an ongoing process of mass wasting (landslides, rockslides, etc) that can expose fresh surfaces.
  4. Weathering rates will determine a lot, but 15 million years isn’t that much time to redefine a landscape, particularly if you’re just changing the air and water chemistry and not effecting the tectonics at all. Erosion rates are generally less than 1mm/yr (but up to 10mm/yr in places like New Zealand and the Himalayas that have high relief, active mountain building, and plenty of moisture) and one thing you have to consider is that as material is being eroded from the surface, it’s not necessarily going to just expose something pristine beneath it… whatever is right beneath it will probably be in some way chemically weathered by the time you get to it, because water ruins everyone’s life.
  5. As far as “how deep” the pre-terraforming rocks would be, it’s basically just going to be anything below the zone where your new bacteria/weather can effect it. Which will vary wildly depending on the environment in question. In the classic case of a single non-stacked soil, you could potentially hit bedrock less than 1.5 meters down… but then that bedrock has been subjected to the presumably terraformed water regime. And how deep that water would go would be determined by things like the type of rock, its porosity, and how fractured it is.
  6. So basically your biggest problem, depending on what exactly the terraforming entailed, is trying to find rocks that have not been touched by air/microbes/water from the new surface.
  7. Probably your best bet if your people are digging would be to get below the water table if you want completely pristine rocks. In the majority of places, the freshwater table will stop at about 30-35 meters below the surface, but it can go as deep as 370 meters or so.
  8. Just as a note, for buried pre-terraforming rocks, what you’ll be looking for are sedimentary rocks. Those are the ones that will give you the clearest picture of surface and near surface conditions at the time of their formation (and early diagenesis). And that would presumably provide a very different environmental picture from what currently exists. (Like gosh there are no fossils of any kind in these older rocks…) The good thing is, those rocks have had the entire existence of the planet to form and be buried, so there ought to be plenty of them lurking just below the surface.

Tl;dr: That’s a really complicated question.

Obviously, I’m not the world’s greatest expert on this topic–any other geologists out there have thoughts? Did I get anything completely wrong? Just drop a note in the comments. I’m sure I didn’t think of everything.

Categories
me

Dear Santa (my 2013 wish list)

Okay, I feel weird doing this, but my mom was asking, so nothing for it. And I shall display my mercenary greed in full view of the public! I’m not going to claim that I’ve been a good girl this year, since I know I’ve had my ups and downs, but I’d like to think you’re not so much a judgmental construct as a loving gift-machine. Because that’s what Christmas is about, right? We’re in ‘murica, so stuff must be acquired!

Categories
movie

[Movie] Lady Eve

As a happy birthday to myself, I decided to go see The Lady Eve at the Alamo Drafthouse, since it was one of their special offerings for badass ladies month. The Lady Eve was filmed in 1941, so I wouldn’t blame you if you’ve never heard of it. I certainly hadn’t, until I watched the trailer at the Drafthouse before Thor 2.

“I need him like the axe needs the turkey.”

And that was the reason I decided I had to see the movie. Just for that line alone, which was spoken by Barbara Stanwyck in an utterly predatory tone.

The Lady Eve is a romantic comedy, of sorts. I’m honestly not that big into romantic comedies, because any more they fall into the formula of a man-child causing a woman to give up her independence to become the stand-in for his mom while hijinks ensue. The Lady Eve is definitely not of that mold. Jean Harrington (Barbara Stanwyck) is a con artist who manages to utterly wreck the same man twice while he looks on in deer-in-the-headlights befuddlement.

And this movie is hilarious, with a distinct lack of the scatological humor that bores me half to death in a lot of new comedy movies. This one gets its humor from taking romance tropes and turning them on their ear. There is a marriage proposal scene that could have come out of any cheeseball romance where Jean and Charles are cuddling on a hill at sunset, and the entire time Charles is trying to make a romantic speech, a curious but insistent horse is trying to eat his hair. It’s wonderful.

I think the best part of The Lady Eve (other than that it almost caused me to pee myself laughing) is that Jean is the driving force behind the movie. She’s the one in charge. And even if the trope is that she’s the con artist that made the mistake of falling in love with her mark, she is still in control of the situation. It’s a wonderful inversion of gender roles that just filled me with glee.

Even better? If you want to see it, it’s on Netflix instant. And trust me, you want to see it.

(Also, it will forever be my headcanon that “Colonel” Harrington and Gerald are Jean’s gay dads. GO AHEAD, TELL ME I’M WRONG.)