khannula
Posts by this author
April 7, 2009
Along with the stories of tragedy in Italy, there are also stories that the earthquake was predicted, and that the predictions were ignored. Was the tragedy made even worse by authorities who wouldn't listen to a scientist who knew what he was talking about?
Now, I'm not a seismologist, but I know…
April 6, 2009
The estimated death toll from last night's M 6.3 earthquake in Italy is currently 150, with 10's of thousands of people left homeless. My thoughts are with the people there, especially those still searching for their loved ones.
As you can see from the USGS map and moment tensor (and from Highly…
April 5, 2009
There's a little tangent in the course design tutorial I'm working through, and I think it's worth considering outside the context of any particular course. How are my students different from me, in terms of how they learn best?
The tutorial uses the Index of Learning Styles to get participants…
April 3, 2009
I've been watching an aspen in my front yard this spring, and sending data to the National Phenology Network. (That's phenology, the study of recurring plant and animals phases, not phrenology.) We've had warm weather, cold weather, and windy weather, and blooming violets, crocuses, and dwarf…
April 2, 2009
My husband and I both had goals for our visit to the Grand Canyon at the beginning of this week. He wanted to give himself a workout that would leave him feeling sore all week. I wanted to check out the Trail of Time, an exhibit that some of my colleagues from New Mexico and Arizona had been…
April 1, 2009
It's the Small Human's spring break, which means all kinds of work-juggling. The family took off for four days and went to the part of Arizona which is not apparently being auctioned off on e-Bay to balance the state's budget.
It's strange enough driving through eastern Arizona during daylight…
March 27, 2009
This month's Scientiae is about overcoming challenges: our worst moments, and how we survived them. I've had trouble deciding which story to tell. Field camp? Running out of food while dropped off by helicopter? Not finding the rocks that were supposed to be in my dissertation field area? Bad dates…
March 26, 2009
I've got one wallet-sized version of the 1983 Geological Society of America time scale in my field pouch, and another page-sized version that used to be taped to the wall in front of my desk. I relied on it a lot, especially when starting work in a new field area. In the early 90's, when I was…
March 25, 2009
Geologists are quirky and interesting. We study this planet we live on (and others), we get to think about volcanoes or earthquakes or landslides or floods, we can tell you a gazillion ways that the earth could kill you (and then say that they'll all happen tomorrow... on the geologic time scale).…
March 22, 2009
This is a post for World Water Day. See more posts about transboundary water at Cr!key Creek.
For the past two years, my intro Earth Science students have been doing a project monitoring one of our local rivers. On the one hand, it's just another stream, small enough for students to safely wade…
March 21, 2009
Calls to arms:
Chris at goodSchist is looking for help to work on the wikipedia page on the mantle. Since he posted, some people have taken on the challenge, but someone who thinks the mantle is too cold to convect is arguing that the revisions violate wikipedia's neutral point of view.
Eric at…
March 18, 2009
I've been blogging my way throug the redesign of my upper-level general education course, "The Control of Nature," using a course design tutorial from SERC. I've talked about what's gone wrong in the past, about who my students are and what they need from the class, and about my tentative goals for…
March 17, 2009
From the Association for Women Geoscientists' e-news:
The deadline for applications for the 2009 AWG Chrysalis Scholarship has been extended to March 31st.
The Chrysalis Scholarship provides degree-completion funding for women geoscience graduate students whose education has been interrupted for at…
March 17, 2009
My other half and I are both working from home today. I'm revising the first draft of a paper that I'm working on, and he's doing remote network engineering. Last time I sat down with this paper, I realized that, if I plotted my data in a certain way, I would be able to see whether it really did…
March 16, 2009
Callan Bentley has declared a meme:
What are ten things that every geology major ought to know about? The only restriction is you're not allowed to list anything that has already been listed by a previous geoblogger. You don't have to list everything, just ten important things.
Before I add to the…
March 15, 2009
Geotripper got a new camera for his birthday, and has been taking pictures of mountains. I haven't posted enough pictures since I got my camera in December, so here's a view of my daily commute:
Here, let me label it for people who don't make a habit of seeing geology in landscapes (picture below…
March 13, 2009
I'm rethinking one of my courses, an upper level general education course called "The Control of Nature." I've been blogging my way through the course redesign process, starting with past problems with the course and with my various practical constraints (class schedule, physical space, student…
March 13, 2009
Erik Klemetti's blog Eruptions has just joined ScienceBlogs. Yay!
Now you know that geology is the hottest science. (Well, except maybe for solar physics, but they go to American Geophysical Union meetings too.)
March 12, 2009
I'm working on re-designing an upper level general education course called "The Control of Nature. Yesterday, I talked about the problems I've had in the past. Today, I'm going to start thinking about the context of the course, and what that means for improving it.
One of my commenters yesterday…
March 11, 2009
I've got a course that (IMO) is broken, and I'm working on fixing it.
I've been teaching a course called "The Control of Nature" (after John McPhee's book) for 16 years, after thinking of the idea on my way home from my first academic job interview. (Yes, that was a bad time to come up with an…
March 10, 2009
Spring has sprung in the geoblogosphere! In Virginia, Callan has been hiking on the Billy Goat Trail. In Colorado, Geology Happens has crocuses. And spring fever has even hit the New York Times - Andy Revkin is posting Youtube videos of Pete Seeger singing about maple syrup.
Hey, I can play, too.…
March 9, 2009
I had no idea there was magma beneath Socorro, New Mexico. When I read about it in this month's Geology, my first reaction was OMG WE'RE GONNA DIE!. (I've been occasionally using the electron microprobe at New Mexico Tech to look at rocks that were metamorphosed around a 380-million-year-old…
March 7, 2009
Cr!key Creek invites bloggers to join him on World Water Day, March 22, and post about water basins and aquifers that cross political boundaries.
Here's what he said:
There are hundreds of water basins and aquifers that straddle our political boundaries, at both international and national levels.…
March 6, 2009
Earth is going to be here for the foreseeable future. Will there be geoscientists to help everyone else figure out how to deal with it?
The people who organize the Cutting Edge geoscience teaching workshops have another set of workshops, aimed at helping geoscience departments figure out how to…
March 4, 2009
There has been a lot of cool stuff posted while I was getting this blog set up. From my Google Reader shared items:
Exotic rocks. There's an art exhibit in Oakland, California, that includes metamorphic rocks from Maine. Why? Because the schists sound like xylophone keys when they're struck. I knew…
March 3, 2009
I've got a question for all sorts of different scientists. What kind of skills do undergrad science/technology/engineering/math majors need in order to survive and thrive?
If you're a student, I've got some bad news for you. When you're not around, professors have a tendency to rant about the stuff…
March 3, 2009
I know it doesn't feel like spring on the East Coast of the US, what with the big snow day yesterday. But it's been in the 60's here for the past three days, and in the 50's before that. At my elevation (6800 feet), the snow is gone except in the shade and on north-facing slopes. It's nice, but…