Doings of Learned Stupidities

(Eruditarum Stultitiarum Acta) We've been doing this for more than five years, but we lost the first year or so of archives. Frightening...

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Location: Laodicea, Ionia

Friday, April 23, 2004

Summer Fun

Already, it's looking like my 9th and 10th weeks are going to be horrible, as I try to complete all my work before flying out on June 5th to Houston. Yes, June 5. I found out that I probably will be living with a University of Houston student (to be named later, but not in the blog). Random room assignments are disastrous at the U of C. Imagine mixing people from two very different universities. On the other hand, the apartments look cool, so I think I am going to have reasonably good living arrangements. My favorite part is when they described the LPI as a long walking distance away from where I'm living. Long (yeah, I know Houston is a swamp, but so is Philly) comes to 0.9 miles. My biggest problem was church (the nearest Episcopal Church is 5 miles away...). However, just 1.1 mi. to the south is an ELCA church. Full communion with the Lutherans never looked so good!

On the agenda for the day:
Seminar (two meteorology/climatology seminars, yes!)
Problem set (I get to do a little bit of fluids in a rocks course.)
Movie: Hellboy (which looks like a cross between Buffy and Indiana Jones...)
Thoughts about radiative convective equilibrium models of the mantle can wait.

ESA(20040423.1)

Monday, April 12, 2004

Recount, Recount!
If the taphonomists find out, I'm in a world of hurt. How did I ever pass Earth History?

I'm a Creationist!



Which Enemy of the Christian Church Are You?


Take More of Robert & Tim's Quizzes
Watch Robert & Tim's Cartoons




ESA(20040412.1)

Thursday, April 08, 2004

What Was I On During The Last Post?

Well, nothing, but still.

Recent Quotes

I always thought a good use for nukes would be to split Venus in half and see the planet in action right away

CS: I guess I don't have time for diving into petrology. A: Why would you want to do that anyway?

You will never get anywhere with politeness, Nicholas

CS: I'll try to come to your talk. A: Really, you don't have to

The Day

Finished sermon. Tried to do petrology. Went to Physics of the Earth. Saw new way of doing determinant. Decided to stick with old way. Preached. Went to lunch. Did more petrology. Met with adviser. Tended adviser's office. Probably made fool of myself without really trying in front of visiting faculty member. Went to dinner. Came home. Handled correspondence. Wrote biography. Wrote terms of service for web site. Need to do petrology and Physics of the Earth.

ESA(20040408.2)

Of Course, the Framers Did Not Have Digital Recording

Ah, Antonin Scalia, how I laugh at thee. How I bristle at thy dissents and rail at thy duck hunting. But you have gone too far this time and offended me as a Pennsylvanian and shown enmity to my radical constitutional foundations. Recall that "A free press is necessary to the security of a free people." This is not Parliament in the 18th century. Hansard is not the only authoritative journal for your speeches. You are a public official who derives his income from public service. If you speak publicly, what you speak is in the public domain and is the intellectual property of the American taxpayer. When you retire from the Court, you have more rights over your words. Until then, you ought to put up with the press.

But of course, all that I say falls to dust if you did not ask one Melanie Rube, "a deputy federal marshal" to make sure that your speech was not recorded. But if you did, you ought to be impeached for abuse of your office.

ESA(20040408.1)

Monday, April 05, 2004

The Coolest Thing I've Heard In A Long Time

I'm a Biblically fundamentalist Jew...Today, I took a lamb shank and made a burnt offering to my God, and since I'm a Levite, I got to eat it...My loins are girded. My sandals are on my feet. My staff is in the basement [of my dorm]."

What is Happening in Canneto Di Caronia?

The official view of the Italian government's civil servant scientists (as of February) is either geomechanical generation of very strong electrical fields under the town or that the geodynamo in the core is "shaped like a sea urchin" and one of its spines has emerged at the surface, transferred along a geothermal gradient directly from the core. The first explanation would need evidence of extreme displacement near the village. The second, if possible, plausibly would coincide with the initiation of hotspot volcanism very near the village.

And of course, there's the pesky problem that it only happens when people are there to see it.

( http://www.ebicom.net/~rsf1/cann-for.htm

ESA(20040406.1)