Author: Alex

Categories
conspiracy theory oil and gas

Abiotic/Abiogenic Oil

You know, the stuff I squeeze out of people who ask me what abiotic oil is on Twitter.

Today, shortly after I admitted (gasp) to being a geologist, one of the guys on my judging team asked me about abiotic oil, saying that “there’s been some study in Russia about this.” Which I hadn’t heard about, but he then said that it was a recent thing.

To the best of my knowledge, abiotic oil is a fairly laughable theory. But I decided to do some googling around, just so I don’t get caught off guard by this again.

The first post that I find via google is from FreeEnergyNews.com, which gives me a tingle of apprehension to begin with, just from the website name. Abiotic Oil: This post has a bunch of links for stories from WorldNet Daily, which I’m more familiar with as WingNut Daily, insert logical fallacy here (possibly poisoning the well?). It also posts links to two books from an author whose name I recognize, Thomas Gold. And my recognition of his name comes from this mention of him at the Oil Drum, which is not terribly complimentary. Thomas Gold was also an astrophysicist, not a petroleum geologist.

Now, the post over at the Oil Drum brings up one example where people got all excited about oil being abiotic because OMG IT’S COMING OUT OF BEDROCK, when the facts really looked more like it was oil migrating through faulted horst blocks of the bedrock, since tectonics had partially shifted source rocks so they were under the basement rock in some places. This conclusion comes from this AAPG article, and I will say that AAPG is a professional organization of petroleum geologists and puts out several trusted publications, including the one this article appeared in (Explorer), so I’m going to take their word for it.

However, the “abiotic” oil of Vietnam is not what I’m after here, rather I’m looking for Russia in particular. By adding Russia to my search, I came up with some interesting sites:

An introduction to the modern petroleum science, and to the Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins: I think this pretty much outlines the theory, and is in favor of it. As an amusing aside, there’s a link to a discussion of plagiarism of the theory. Specifically Thomas Gold plagiarizing the theory from Russian scientists.

One of the sections in the Russian-Ukrainian theory post talks about refuting a biotic origin of oil. While at this point I could see trying to find some wiggle room to allow for both biotic and abiotic oil, but trying to claim that no oil is biotic makes little sense. As just one example, one thing we look for when exploring possible oil sources are kerogens, which come in different types (dependent upon original depositional environment) and release oil when sufficiently cooked. Trying to take kerogens out of the equation (or claiming they’re not organically sourced) really flies in the face of a lot of well-established science.

I will also note that going on the theory that oil comes from sedimentary source rocks (where you find those kerogens) has proved to be extremely predictive in oil exploration. Which is a good sign for oil coming from dead critters.

On the other side, a post at FromTheWilderness.com examines many of the fields considered to be “abiotic” proof, and finds them wanting. This post also has found a special place in my heart because of this:

While everyone is free to form his or her own opinion, when people start talking about a conspiracy of scientists to cover up the supposed abiotic origin of oil, then all an honest scientist can do is to shrug her or his shoulders and say that he or she is not aware of any such conspiracy. In fact, such a contention makes numerous logical errors; based on the logical fallacies listed at http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/index.html, I can count at least 17 errors of logic frequently made by those who argue that the biological origin of oil is a conspiracy. Such errors of logic are the province of a politician, not a scientist.

Back to the Oil Drum post, they recommend reading Richard Heinberg’s The “Abiotic Oil” Controversy, which I wholeheartedly recommend as well. Heinberg makes a very well-thought out, reasonable argument, and here’s the summation of his take-home point:

There is no way to conclusively prove that no petroleum is of abiotic origin. Science is an ongoing search for truth, and theories are continually being altered or scrapped as new evidence appears. However, the assertion that all oil is abiotic requires extraordinary support, because it must overcome abundant evidence, already cited, to tie specific oil accumulations to specific biological origins through a chain of well-understood processes that have been demonstrated, in principle, under laboratory conditions.

I don’t think it’s possible to, in detail, refute every claim of abiotic oil genesis. Because if nothing else, we don’t know everything there is to know about how most oil is generated, let alone how all of it is generated. And Heinberg makes another good point – even if we eventually reach the conclusion that some hydrocarbons are generated abiotically, this does not really change the energy crisis our dependence on fossil fuels is causing. He says:

What if oil were in fact virtually inexhaustible—would this be good news? Not in my view. It is my opinion that the discovery of oil was the greatest tragedy (in terms of its long-term consequences) in human history. Finding a limitless supply of oil might forestall nasty price increases and catastrophic withdrawal symptoms, but it would only exacerbate all of the other problems that flow from oil dependency—our use of it to accelerate the extraction of all other resources, the venting of CO2 into the atmosphere, and related problems such as loss of biodiversity. Oil depletion is bad news, but it is no worse than that of oil abundance.

To a certain extent, I think the attraction of the abiotic theory is that it means people can ignore the thought that we might some day (some very soon day) effectively run out of oil. But whether we can run out of oil or not changes nothing about the environmental damage we are causing by recklessly burning a natural resource that really deserves to be treated with more care.

Categories
science fair

Colorado State Science Fair 2011

And yes! I made it to the state science fair! After mono stopped me last year, I was kind of wondering what the follow-up act might be.

This fair wasn’t really any different from the other fairs I’ve done, other than being bigger – and of course, the projects generally being incredibly high quality. Which makes sense, considering these were the winners from the regional science fairs. I think that everyone in my category did a great job and had a lot of enthusiasm for science, which makes me happy.

There were five judges in my group. I was the only woman, and also the youngest by far. The latter isn’t really a surprise; the average age of a science fair judge is pretty high. Probably because science-y people don’t have a lot of volunteering time to use in the middle of the week until they’re long out of grad school or their entry-level industry job. I’m also used to there not being many women in my normal category – Earth sciences – because that’s really what the demographics for older people working in that field look like right now. And all of the guys were really nice, as usual – downright avuncular, truth be told.

The surprising thing was that every student in my category was female. For reals. I think the other judges were a bit shocked, and were kind of wondering where all the boys had gotten to. (One of them made a joke about none of the boys going outside any more because they’re all playing too many video games…) I’m guessing that this was just some kind of fluke, since I have no idea what the makeup of the category looked like last year, or will look like in the future. But it was pretty exciting to see that many young women that enthusiastic about earth sciences.

One difference from the regional fairs was the huge number of “special awards” judges, which isn’t something you normally see in smaller fairs. This was a bit frustrating at times, since some projects were in line to be judged for a lot of special awards, and that made it really hard to get in and actually talk to the student. I’ll have to check tomorrow to see what all of the results ended up being. As soon as we’d done places for our category, I got to go home… our poor team captain has to stay until late tonight, since that’s apparently when the knock-down drag-out fight between judges over best in show happens. Good luck to him.

Categories
grad school squee

From the Department of Squee

First, huge congratulations to the amazing Stuart Robbins, who kicked butt at his dissertation defense and is now… Dr. Robbins! YAY STUART!

In personal squee news, I just found out I won one of the department research awards! So I get money to go toward my BBCP project, which at this point I think will be going toward big girl scientist grain size analysis, which involves – rather than a microscope or screens – a very fun-sounding piece of equipment called the Mastersizer. (No, really.) YAY GRAIN SIZE!

And tomorrow is the Colorado State Science Fair, so I will be up in Fort Collins all day looking at the projects of budding young scientists. I even get to be the co-captain of the Earth Sciences junior division team. YAY SCIENCE!

Categories
bbcp climate change geology grad school

The Bighorn Basin Coring Project

From mid-July to the beginning of August, I’m going to be outdoors, in Wyoming. No, I’m not crazy. Yes, I have a good reason for doing this. Because in the summer, that’s when we’ll be coring through the Willwood Formation in the Bighorn Basin. And this is a big deal.

The Willwood Formation is about Eocene in age, and sits on top of the Paleocene Fort Union Formation. The Willwood Formation is mostly a lot of paleosols (lithified soils) and river sandstones. And more importantly, the sediments that form these rocks were laid down during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, and then the later, smaller thermal maximums during the Eocene. As a quick summary, taken from a thesis proposal I’ve been using in order to beg for money1:

The sedimentary geologic record can be used as a window into the past conditions of the Earth, including the climate in which sediments were laid down. In the Cenozoic, there are many examples of shifts in global climate. Potentially significant to the modern climate in which humans live are the hyperthermal events that occurred during the Eocene. Hyperthermals are relatively brief (~100,000 years) warming events that coincide with the release of massive amounts of carbon from terrestrial reservoirs. The most well understood of these hyperthermals is the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which occurred 55.5 million years ago. During the PETM, 6,800 Gt of carbon were added to the shared carbon pool of the atmosphere and ocean, and global temperatures rose 5-9° C (Sluijs et al. 2006, Zachos et al. 2008). Slightly more recently (53.7 Ma), the Eocene Thermal Maximum 2 (ETM2, also called ELMO) occurred. ETM2 is about half the size of the PETM isotope excursion (Lourens et al. 2005), and generally much less well understood.

This project is a big deal, for several reasons. Just to start, coring is not a cheap process, and this project is funded by a pretty major grant from the NSF. But what’s more important is what we hope to learn from the cores. The PETM is of great interest to climate scientists and geologists right now, because it’s perhaps our best historic example of what humans are currently doing to the planet. There weren’t a bunch of little proto-horses in the Eocene burning oil so they could roar around in ridiculous cars, but it was a sudden, rapid surge of carbon being put in to the atmosphere, even if the source is being debated.

This is important because, no matter how many people2 in the world are short-sighted and basically sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting “Lalala can’t hear you” every time someone brings up this science, that doesn’t make it any less real and pressing.

The paleosols, which are what I’m mostly interested in, can tell us a lot about how the local climate shifted in response to the PETM. This is important, since most human beings have a vested interest in their local environment not suddenly changing and, say, making it impossible for them to grow food. Also, one of the cores will be through the ELMO thermal maximum, which I think will end up providing a valuable set of comparative data. There’s already some pretty robust data for the PETM in the Bighorn Basin, and the cores will give us even more. If we then compare that data to what we come up with from ELMO, that may give us a sense of just how far a local environment will shift pushed by how much carbon – because it may not need an input as big as that in the PETM to really mess things up.

Hopefully, that’s enough to get you interested! The BBCP has a facebook page now, here. When we’re actually coring during the summer, there will be a blog for the project hosted by Smithsonian, which I’ll link to when it’s up. I’ll also no doubt be blogging about it here, and I think I’m going to be responsible for tweeting about it as well.

The coring is going to run from July 13 through August 8. I’ll probably be on the rig from July 19 through the end of the project, since I’m going to try to go to TAM before I head up to Wyoming. I’ll also be on the night shift the whole time – coring is a 24/7 process – so I guess I’ll be documenting BBCP – After Dark3.

Once we’ve got our cores, we’ll actually be sending them out of the country (since this is a project with multinational investigators!) to Bremen, Germany. They’ll be living at the Marum core repository, which is also where all of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program cores go. That means in January 2012 (if I can find the funding for it!) I’ll be heading off to Bremen for three weeks of intensive core prep, description, and sampling.

And then, science! Lots of science!

Year two of grad school is looking ridiculously exciting.

1 – It’s a time-honored scientific endeavor. I wish I was joking when I say that.

2 – Here, I use the term people in place of the perhaps more true but less polite term: idiots.

3 – I actually volunteered for this. If you knew how badly I sunburn, you would understand why. I also don’t like the heat, and it’ll be much cooler at night.

References
Lourens, L. J., Sluijs, A., Kroon, D., Zachos, J. C., Thomas, E., Rohl, U., Bowles, J., and Raffi, I. 2005. Astronomical pacing of late Palaeocene to early Eocene global warming events. Nature, vol. 435, p. 1083-1087.

Sluijs, A., Schouten, S., Pagani, M., Woltering, M., Brinkhuis, H., Sinninghe Damsté, J. S., Dickens, G. R., Huber, M., Reichart, G.-J., Stein, R., Matthiessen, J., Lourens, L. J., Pedentchouk, N., Backman, J., Moran, K., and and the Expedition 302 Scientists. 2006. Subtropical Arctic Ocean temperatures during the Palaeocene/Eocene thermal maximum. Nature, vol. 441, p. 610-613.

Zachos, J. C., Dickens, G. R., and Zeebe, R. E. 2008. An early Cenozoic perspective on greenhouse warming and carbon-cycle dynamics. Nature, vol. 451, p. 279-283.

Categories
feminism movie

Of Fishnets and Fully Automatic Weapons

ETA on 11.9.14 to note that wow I basically disagree with everything I said in this. WTF, self. Well, other than the fact that this movie is super, super pretty.

I saw Sucker Punch yesterday.

And I really liked it.

Which actually came as something of a surprise to me, since I generally tend to agree with the reviews over at io9 when it comes to saying mean things about movies, and Sucker Punch got a solid thumbs down there.

Now, part of it might be that I went into the movie with extremely low expectations. I’d already read a couple of reviews which, to summarize with nice words, characterized the movie as completely vacuous. And boring. I actually felt more than a little shocked that I found it neither boring, nor vacuous.

Now, to be clear, I am in no way claiming that Sucker Punch is a great movie. It’s no Inception. But as Zack Snyder movies go, this one was – as expected – extremely pretty, and much, much better than, say, 300. If you like that sort of eye candy, I think it’s worth spending the money to see it. If you don’t like that kind of movie, don’t waste your time.

Also, the soundtrack is excellent.

I’ve got a few thoughts about it, so there are going to be SPOILERS all over the place. You have been warned.

In General
I don’t regret spending $8.50 or two hours of my afternoon to see this movie. In fact, I really enjoyed it, and found most of the action sequences quite exciting. A lot of the movie – and not just the action sequences – really did make me think of anime. While the action, especially the first sequence with the huge samurai robots, obviously owe a lot to the tropes of anime, a lot of the narrative logic put me in mind of anime as well. And since I have a record of really liking anime, I think I was a lot more willing to to just accept certain things about the story and the way it went. I also most definitely did not find the non-action sequences boring.

So, About That Whorehouse Thing
I’ve seen a lot of snippy commentary about Babydoll “escaping” into a bordello as her first layer of fantasy. I would agree that it doesn’t make sense for that fantasy to be an escape. However, it also really didn’t strike me as an actual mental escape for a character, but rather a fantasy in which she was attempting to make sense of the way she and the other women were being treated in the mental institution.

It’s made very clear at the end of the movie that Blue Jones, the super creepy orderly that sports a sad little pornstache in Babydoll’s bordello fantasy, has been sexually abusing Babydoll in the real world. Which I think also heavily implies that the other girls who are shown being abused or used by men in the bordello fantasy were also being abused by those same men in reality. I think that in light of the story, it’s reasonable for Babydoll to make sense of that real-world sexual abuse by transforming the hospital into a bordello – because while the bordello is still a prison, it’s at least a prison environment where it makes some kind of twisted sense for the men to be using the women in that way.

Blue Pornstache was incredibly creepy. Beyond his basic concept as an orderly that abuses powerless mental patients, he had some excellently evil dialog in his guise as the bordello’s owner. In a scene near the end, he scares the hell out of the women (and then murders two of them) while going off on a classic abuser rant that left me squirming in my seat – not because it was badly done, but because the character was just such a horrific person. He verbally sets up a false situation where the women are somehow in a “partnership” with him (instead of being his victims) and not keeping up their end of the “bargain,” which means they’re forcing his hand and giving him no choice but to, you know, shoot them.

Ugh. The actor did a good job. It’s a wonder he could stand to be in the same room as himself.

I also think it’s interesting that we don’t actually ever hear Babydoll speak outside of the fantasy bordello world. (At least not that I recall after a single viewing.) I think that’s partially because in her own fantasy, she has more strength and control. While obviously she and the other girls are still very much abused prisoners within the pretend bordello, turning them from mental patients in to whores at least allows them to use their sexuality as a weapon. Because in most [patriarchy-owned] narratives, the only women who get to make use of their sexuality in any way are whores.

So with the bordello as the coping-fantasy, then the action sequences become the actual escape-fantasy. I suppose it’s where Babydoll mentally runs off to when she’s doing something so personally destructive that she can’t even handle it in the context of bordello. And that’s the place where the women are all a kick-ass, elite team that are accomplishing their goals in a way that they can perhaps feel some pride in.

Though I Will Say One Thing About the Sexy Costumes
In the action sequences, there were sexy costumes. But what struck me was how… unsexy everything but the sexy costumes were. Which I actually really, really appreciated. The sexy costumes just sort of became the idea of a uniform for each of the girls. I found that very interesting… because it made the thing feel stylized rather than titillating.

Empowerment
All that said, I think that anyone who claims that this movie is somehow about female empowerment needs to have their head examined. Or possibly needs to get sent to a remedial women’s studies class. Or maybe both.

The basic argument seems to be that there is female empowerment in the movie because:
a) Women with guns
b) Women take control of their own sexuality by the end (NOTE: they don’t.)
c) In the end, the women win because Sweet Pea escapes and survives.

In Sucker Punch, we have Sweet Pea escaping, triumphing over abuse by surviving, and Babydoll also gets her own sort of revenge by being released from the bonds of the real world via lobotomy and sets off a series of events that get her abuser brought to justice. Neither of these things ultimately help out the other women, who all get murdered.

I think that there is something very valid to the narrative of triumph over one’s abusers by surviving them. I think there’s also a lot to be said for revenge fantasies – the desire to take vengeance on one’s abuser is a powerful one, whether the victim is male or female, and no matter what sort of abuse is occurring. But I also think that it’s very sloppy to equate those things with empowerment because it still presupposes a world where abuse is the norm and the victims defenseless.

So, what would the for reals female empowerment version of Sucker Punch look like? Honestly, I have not clue one. Considering the basic premise of the movie – women trapped in a mental institution where they are abused by their male caretakers – I don’t know if it would be possible to write that into a narrative of true female empowerment. At the very least, I don’t think you can call it empowerment if the woman who survives is the exception, rather than the rule.

But the thing is, I also think that’s just fine… as long as it’s actually understood that this isn’t what empowerment looks like.

It’s a pretty movie where women shoot and stab things. Occasionally at the same time. It’s got an interesting concept and a great soundtrack. I specifically bought a small popcorn so I could munch along with the movie, because that’s just the sort of film it is. There’s really no need to make it out as more than that, is there?

Categories
earthquake geology japan

The Sendai Earthquake

I haven’t had anything to say about the Sendai earthquake; it has quite literally left me speechless with horror, and pain, and agonizing worry. I know and care about people who live there. I’ve been to Japan twice, myself, and hope to travel there many more times in the future. There is something more personally horrible about knowing a place – if even a little – remembering its sights and sounds and smells, and knowing that something terrible has happened there.

I can’t really focus enough to think about the science behind what has happened. If you’re interested in the details, the USGS is the place to go. Or Chris Rowan has an excellent synthesis of the data at Scientific American.

Garry at Geotripper has tried to put things in a perspective of why the geosciences really are important to each and every one of us, whether we realize it or not. It’s an excellent post. You should read it. The one thing that really stuck with me is:

Many will watch an event like this unfold and try to find some meaning. In one sense, there was no meaning; this was something the Earth does.

There is a quote that I have in my e-mail signature, which I’ve seen attributed to Will Durant – though there’s a good argument that it’s probably an anonymous quote:

Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.

The Earth is so very, very old, and so very, very vast. We are tiny, and frail, and even the longest life any one of us can hope to have is less than the blink of an eye in the history of our planet. The Earth does not care about us. We have no special significance. We have only each other.

(photo from Getty Images)

In a way, studying geology has been the most humbling experience of my life. There is not a day that goes by that I am not reminded that our world operates at a scale that we cannot even begin to grasp, and that it did so long before we existed, and will continue on long after the last human is gone.

I’ve seen people – and here I use the term loosely – cheer, as if this is some sort of cosmic vengeance for Japanese misdeeds during World War II. I have seen others try to use this tragedy to justify the self-satisfied little voice in their head that they think is god, but is only actually themselves. First I was angry. Now, I’m just sick. I’m sick that there are people so small-minded and cruel that they take joy in the suffering of others. I’m sick, and worried, and I hurt for my fellow humans who are in so much pain, and so far away.

There is no meaning to the Sendai earthquake. There is no capricious god, no vast karmic wheel. It is simply a thing that has happened, that we as humans must struggle against, and fight to overcome, and mourn those who have died afterward. Because there is nothing more to it – it’s just the summation of physics and time – what we do is so very important. We have only this world, only this life, and only each other.

(photo from the Sacramento Bee)

Doctors Without Borders
Red Cross
Japan America Society of Colorado

Categories
movie

The Adjustment Bureau, and a Day I Really Needed

The Adjustment Bureau is two hours of lovely fun laced with just enough suspense and paranoia and Matt Damon looking both earnest and tasty, which is then completely ruined by the last three minutes of ridiculous feel-good cop out ending.

Seriously. If you’re going to make a movie out of a fucking Philip K. Dick story, DON’T GIVE IT A FUCKING HAPPY ENDING.

If you do go see the movie – and I actually recommend that you do, since it’s mostly very good – I recommend just walking out of the theater when the two people are kissing on the roof. (Being intentionally vague since it could be spoilery.) Just pretend the movie ends there, and you won’t get that moment of enraging let-down that comes with the credits rolling.

Also, and this is a SPOILER:

Anyone else that has seen the movie – do you find it a bit odd that the only non-white character in the entire film is the “renegade” angel? There’s the bit where Matt Damon says something like, “You seem different from the others,” to him, and it’s hard not to snort considering that everyone else from the Bureau is a Middle-Aged or Old White Dude.

/SPOILER

Day was a lot of fun, and something I desperately needed after the hellish, stressful, and morale destroying week I’ve had. It’s been one of those weeks where I spent a lot of time asking myself why the hell I’m in grad school. Though I did manage to finally beat the cold that’s been hanging on to me for two weeks, after I decided I was exhausted and just didn’t give a shit any more and then went home and slept for nearly ten hours. So yes, kids, sleep is still important, even when you’re a (sort of) grown up.

Today Mike and I saw Kat and Aki and Mina, ate food, watched a movie, talked a bunch. Much relaxation had by all, I think. Normally Mina wants Mike to read to her, but it was my turn today I guess. I spent quite a bit of the day stretched out on the floor next to her, reading her little picture books and adding occasional sarcastic commentary.

Most amusing part of the day: Showed up in the morning while Mina was watching Sesame Street. Bert was singing a song about how he couldn’t find Ernie in their bedroom. I suggested, “He’s probably in the closet.”

Categories
music

Another reason to love the Dropkick Murphys

I already love the Dropkick Murphys to a ridiculous degree – they’re right up there with Flogging Molly as one of my favorite bands. And now they just released one of the songs from their upcoming album in support of the Union protesters in Wisconsin. You can listen to it on their website:

Take ‘Em Down

Sure gets my blood going.

Lyrics:

When the boss comes callin’ they’ll put us down
When the boss comes callin’ gotta stand your ground
When the boss comes callin’ don’t believe their lies

When the boss comes callin’ he’ll take his toll
When the boss comes callin’ don’t you sell your soul
When the boss comes callin’ we gotta organize

CHORUS:
Let them know
We gotta take the bastards down
Let them know
We gotta smash them to the ground
Let them know
We gotta take the bastards down

When the boss comes callin’ you’ll be on your own
When the boss comes callin’ will you stand alone?
When the boss comes callin’ will you let them in?

When the boss comes callin’ will you stand and fight?
When the boss comes callin’ we must unite
When the boss comes callin’ we can’t let them win

CHORUS

We gotta take the bastards down

When the boss comes callin’ they’ll put us down
When the boss comes callin’ gotta stand your ground
When the boss comes callin’ don’t believe their lies

When the boss comes callin’ he’ll take his toll
When the boss comes callin’ don’t you sell your soul
When the boss comes callin’ we gotta organize

CHORUS

CHORUS

Categories
feminism geology pictures

What I’ve been doing lately…

It’s been a busy week… couple of weeks… month… well, from about January on. But I’ve been doing things with my time, at least.

For example, today I went to Denver, CO’s Rally for the American Dream. With 3000 of my fellow Coloradoans – including my husband and my parents – I was in good company indeed.

We did a lot of cheering, a lot of chanting. There were maybe ten or twenty “Tea Party” counter protesters. One of whom wandered around in the crowd and tried to start trouble with his bizarre “Can’t get a taxi? Blame the Dems” and “Shame on Colorado Dems for Voting for an African” signs. He was completely ignored by the crowd, and then the cops chased him off.

The IAFF was out in force, as were a lot of other union people – and ordinary citizens. At the end of the rally, the Walk for Choice took off. A lot of us joined in, since it’s another important thing to support. We walked from the capital to Writer Square and back, shouting chants like, “Not the church, not the state, women must decide their fate!”

At the end of the Walk for Choice, there were maybe ten crazy anti-choice people waiting at the capital, on the other side of the street. It was standard “OMG THE BABEEZ” bullshit. It was also the most surreal moment of the afternoon – there was a very odd old guy with the anti-choicers, holding a very standard sign in one hand. His other hand was raised in a fist and covered with – I swear I am not making this up – a sagging latex mask of Ronald Reagan. Overcome by just how bizarre it was, I shouted across the street, “Dude, you’ve got a severed head on your hand!”

So yeah. The disembodied zombie head of Ronald Reagan doesn’t want you to have an abortion. Or something. Weird. Eerie.

I have also been putting a lot of time in at the core lab. If you want to see what’s been eating up most of my spare time, here are some pictures from our current core, which is from a meandering river deposit. I’ve tried to add some description to the photos, and hopefully it’s not too technical.

Busy busy!

Categories
politics Uncategorized

Adel Needs Your Help

One of my fellow grad students at CU is named Adel Aboktef. Adel is a generally good human being. He helps out the undergrads in the tutoring room a lot, and he’s always ready to lend a hand to his fellow grad students. I actually got to know Adel when, one evening, a bunch of us gathered in the undergrad lounge and we had a discussion about languages and all their interesting little quirks. Adel can also tell the difference between different kinds of feldspars using a petrographic microscope, if you give him a 100x lens and immersion oil. Which, just in case you didn’t understand that statement, is damn impressive.

Adel is also from Libya.

Today, he sent several of us this e-mail:

Is there any way you may help me contact US government to help stop the massacre in my home “Libya”. The government is killing Libyan people. Fighter planes are bombarding the demonstrators in Tripoli and Bangazi. Please if you have any connections don’t hesitate to contact your parliament representative asking to help stop the kill in Libya.

Adel Aboktef

Sometimes, what it takes is putting a face, familiar or not, on injustice and pain. Adel is hurting for his people, and I feel for him. To ask for help like this, from people you barely know if at all, is a difficult thing, and I think it shows how desperate the situation feels. I passed Adel’s e-mail on to my representative and both my senators in the hopes that might do something. I’m also putting it out here on the internet, with Adel’s permission, to maybe help put a face – or at least a name – on one small part of a peoples’ pain.

If you would like to contact Adel, his e-mail address is: Adel dot Aboktef at colorado dot edu