Sunday, March 28, 2010

AW #23 Busy People

Hi all, The 23rd installment of the Accretionary Wedge asked a simple question: What are you working on right now? It was sort of a twitter-on-steroids where we were encouraged to use more than 140 characters in our description. I hope I spelled everything correctly!

My first impression of just how busy everyone is came from Silver Fox who told me she was waay busy but we could use this post about her visit to the Turnagain Arm mudflats. Thanks for the virtual visit to the Alaskan coast.

Our favorite hydrophillic geologist (what a great name for a blog), Anne writes about her many and varied interests concerning the hydro-geosphere from watershed/ climate change interactions to examining landscape evolution in response to changes in hydrologic regimes.

Lockwood sent in his comments about his current project. It doesn't involve geology as much as it involves geologists and the making of a virtual community in the geoblogosphere. A great post with some great ideas.

Another geologist with much on his plate is Kyle at Geologic Frothings. His post comes from his "all about me" page on his blog. His note to me was to look under the biographical stuff and there is a pile of stuff that he is currently working on.

At this point I could see that my question, while seemingly simple was actually difficult for our multi-tasking geo-scientists and bloggers.

Callan at his new home the Mountain Beltway, describes a day in the life of a NOVA geologist. Between teaching and grading and getting ready for the next presentation, Callan paints a picture of a busy guy.

One problem many geologists faced this month was that they can't share their current research because of industrial demands. The Lost Geologist decided to instead share potential research passions.

After a few visits to the volcanoes of Guatemala, Jess over at Magma Cum Laude shares her current work on the long road to become Dr. Volcano, by creating maps and learning the tools necessary for studying samples taken from the mountain. Good luck Jess.

Another geology teacher is Garry over at Geotripper. His post is about not falling through the cracks. This is a common teacher-ism but can also be used by geologists and by actors in certain end of the world movies.

This question seemed to open up some deep thoughts among the geoblogosphere. We have already seen that everyone is busy working on a variety of projects. But some posts have gone beyond the current project list and started looking at their online work as geobloggers. Ron Schott at the geology home companion blog, who was the very first geo blog I ever read writes about where blogging has taken him and where he would like it to go. In his own words, an introspective blog post.

If you want to read about earthquake dynamics, take a look at Julian's research over at Harmonic Tremors . Like others, he is working on a PhD and starting down that long slippery slope. Good luck Julian.

Poor David at Cryology and Co. has to work in Alps as a field area. His current work looks at the formation age of rock glaciers. He discusses some of the issues when trying to date when the rock and ice started behaving as a glacier.

The Riparian Rap blog discusses the Little River Research and Design company. Steve's comments concern not only the issues of a small company in the current economic climate, but also the new ideas in creating river modeling systems. I know my students enjoyed even the simplest of stream tables.

Chris at Highly Allochthonous discusses the ideas of a snowball earth while studying in Oman. Not only is the post good, but the comments are also worth reading. I think it has something to do with who reads science blogs, compared to the comments on my blog which are usually just long strings of Chinese characters.

Sediment grains are the star attraction at Research at a Snail's Pace. Pascal is looking at how individual grains interact with each other.

Another geologist in the private sector, Brian at Clastic Detritus reminds us that he does not blog about his for-pay-work, but does discuss his published research and everything that is turbidite related.

The depth and breadth of the different research areas discussed here is amazing. The Lab Lemming's research is in a totally different area than everyone else. He explains that the subject of his study is a few orders of magnitude larger than his usual subjects, zircons. The subject's name is LLL-Y and the pictures are worth the visit to this site.

On-The-Rocks at geosciblog is another geo-scientist with a full plate, including retyping a thesis from the 1980's when electric typewriters were all the rage. Good luck with that project!

As for myself, I am still working with teachers to help them share geology with their little kids. Next week is a field session in the canyons of Utah where I will examine friction coefficient between my mountain bike and several different sand stone varieties. Later in the month I will be with National Geographic again with their new geology curriculum which will be rolled out this fall. I hope everyone enjoyed The Accretionary Wedge #23

4 comments:

Lockwood said...

Thanks for a great edition! There's quite a bit to chew on here, and I'm looking forward to going back and reading the ones I haven't looked at yet.

I'll put up an announcement at the AW site, and thanks again for hosting.

Silver Fox said...

A great Wedge!

Minor note: some blog links are double http'd starting w/ about Callan on down.

BrianR said...

thanks for hosting!

Geology Happens said...

Links are fixed.

That is what happens when you get interrupted often during a computer project

sorry