Author: Gary

Returning to the subject of how bad Mac football is….

They lost this weekend to Northwestern Bible College, 40-14.

The noteworthy part of the game?

…..Norhtwestern Played another game previously on the same day!

They got blown out by a bible college who had just exhaused themselves a few hours before hand playing another game. Go Scots!!

I shy away from religion and politics on this blog, but I’m going to hit them both head on in this post.

The New York Times had a cover story today on creationist geology.

The article starts off with this winner:

Tom Vail, who has been leading rafting trips down the Colorado River here for 23 years, corralled his charges under a rocky outcrop at Carbon Creek and pointed out the remarkable 90-degree folds in the cliff overhead.

Geologists date this sandstone to 550 million years ago and explain the folding as a result of pressure from shifting faults underneath. But to Mr. Vail, the folds suggest the Grand Canyon was carved 4,500 years ago by the great global flood described in Genesis as God’s punishment for humanity’s sin.

“You see any cracks in that?” he asked. “Instead of bending like that, it should have cracked.” The material “had to be soft” to bend, Mr. Vail said, imagining its formation in the flood. When somebody suggested that pressure over time could create plasticity in the rocks, Mr. Vail said, “That’s just a theory.”

Wow. Where to begin.

1. Its not a theory. There are two labs here at the University of Minnesota where they deform “hard” rocks. They do it by applying extreme temperatures and pressures to rocks. (the type found deep below the surface). Rocks are mineral assembelidges and their behavior is pretty well known based on the properities of the minerals.
2. Sedimentary rocks like the type found in the Grand Canyon were never “soft” like magma is soft when it comes out of the earth. They started out as loose grains and gradually cemented with pressure and time.
3. If all the sedimentary rocks on Earth (or most) were deposited in one big catalysmic event, you should see an ordered layering of sediments by grain size. You can prove this yourself with a bucket and some dirt. Fill it with water, throw in some sand, silt, small rocks, clay and soil. Stir it up and let it sit for a while. Like a week. What you will see is that the big chunks fall to the bottom first, the smaller chunks go next, and the really small bits which are suspended in the water column take a long time to settle. You wont find a layer of small stuff below a layer of big stuff. However, you see this all the time in the field. You see layers of shale below layers of sandstone. This can’t be if you had only one major sedimentation event.

They don’t spend much time on geology, because its way easier to prove them wrong than with biological evolution and natural selection. Also, when you start to look too closely, you quickly come to the conclusion that if geology is wrong, then the basis of all physics and chemistry have to be wrong too.

Some quickies this morning after 5 hours of sleep:

• An excellent article from The New Yorker about how admissions to Ivy League schools really works. Of all the critisims against Harriet Meirs, I think the lamest is that she didn’t go to an “elite” school. There are plenty of other good ones.
• One of the best blogs out there, in terms of the quality and level of the writing, has to be the Becker-Posner blog. Gary Becker is the winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Economics and probably the greatest microeconomist of the 20th Century. Richard Posner is a judge in the United States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and probably the guy that Bush should have tapped to be on the Supreme Court. Regardless if you agree with them, they are treating a blog like a personal outlet for serious writing that would othewise be in journals and take months to get published.
• The New York Times has a great article on how technology is increaing the responsiveness of the economy and making recessions less severe and shorter. They primarily look at FedEx, but the same is true for many large companies which have large logistical operations, or worth with companies that do.

The next 3.5 days are going to suck ass.

I have a test in Structural Geology on Wedensday. I got a presentation to give on my Argentina trip on Thursday morning. I have a problem set in Isotope Geology due on Tuesday along with last weeks Structure lab. I’m also behind on some problem sets and a lab. I got my Earth Systems lab and some random Structure stuff to do too.

I also am working a grant proposal tonight which I sort of caught me at the last minute. (not that I didn’t know about it before hand, I just didn’t know how involved begging for money was).

Without exaggerating, I think I could just sleep in Pillsbury and shower at the rec center for the next three days.

I’m considering doing it.

Every aspect of my life is sucking right now. Every single one.

I’m off for the next 36 hours or so to Wisconsin for a Strucutral Geology trip. I’m not entirely sure how great the structure is, but when you live in the midwest, you take what you can get I guess.

This trip is pretty much mandatory for the class, and it comes at a pretty bad time. I really could use today to study and get work done. I spend 6 weeks this summer doing the same shit, so I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to be learning. Its also going to be cold.

Also, if you use an RSS reader, you should take a look at Google Reader. Its still sort of slow and buggy, but its worth goofing around with.

Bietz also got me into an online game of Diplomacy in which I hardly know anyone…..and I think that works to my advantage.