Arctic sea Ice pool: 4 weeks to go

With 4 weeks left to guess, the graph for the 2009 Arctic sea ice minimum gaussian guessing game is looking like this:


Contestants have solid, colored curves. The thick black/grey curves are the Ensemble 1 and 2 outputs from the Wegener Institute’s June 2009 Sea Ice outlook. The collective contestant’s pdf is the dotted light grey line (click to embiggen). It has grown from a bimodal distribution around the 2007 and 2008 minima, to a trimodal distribution with a third peak around 4000. Nick Barnes (4700 ± 200, pink) still needs to take another guess, if he so desires.

The current value (as of Friday) is 9,500 thousand km².

Happy Fourth of July

It's time to celebrate freedom from despotic tyrants, pyrotechnics, and BBQ. The first two aren't really big here in Australia, but the following suppliment to the third category makes up for all that.


BBQ sauce. Made from beer. What more could you want?

Naughty Geology

A few months back, I blogged about the client with a spam filter so tight that it embargoed emails about single young zircon dating. After conferring with said clients, it turns out that they’ve had other issues as well. In its animatronic zeal to rid the internet of pornography, this filter also blocks image files that it suspects are explicit. What sort of images? Well, anything containing a lot of pink, as it turns out. So, rose quartz, rhodocrosite, Mg-rich garnets, and other titillating mineral images have been known to disappear into the computer program’s private locker. Luckily they ship geologic maps as GIS files instead of images, or I’m sure they’d be targeted as well.

This got me thinking. How common are explicit geologic formations? You’d think that will all the zillions of folded, rounded, curved, or protruding structures on this planet, at least a few would be shaped like something that would constrict the coronary arteries of a shrill old censor. So, this is my challenge to the blogosphere: Find juiciest, most risqué geologic image that you feel comfortable posting, and put it out on the internet. Your traffic in tragically maladjusted lapidarians will expand tremendously, I guarantee.

Sadly, all I can offer in this department is this backscattered electron image of a rutile. To most people, it is simple igneous compositional zoning of Nb, Sn and W, which reflect electrons more efficiently than titanium and therefore appear bright. But to the dirty regolithic mind, this only needs legs, arms, and a head to become a swimsuit model. And no, I don’t need to leave the lab more often.


Figure 1. Detrital Phanerozoic rutile believed to be of pegmatitic origin See Birch et al. 2007 for geochronology and trace element characteristics.

Non-violent protest

As the 20th anniversary of the Chinese student crackdown comes and goes, my daughter has decided to celebrate by learning the methods of passive resistance and non-violent protest. The other day, Mrs. Lemming went out, and LLLL did not think that this was a fair or just activity by the leadership of the family. So, she staged a lie-in at the front door, complete with chanting and refusal to clear access to the front door. I suspect that the only reason she didn’t make a sign to wave is that she doesn’t know how to read or write. Her ability to render the message “My Mummy” in print will be limited until such a time as she learns the letter M. She does understand other visual statements, though. He shorts over jeans says only one thing: Until mummy comes back, I’m dressing even worse than dad.


Figure 1. LLLL organizing a lie-in behind the front door.

Where the side shows are lightyears from the main tent...

Carnival of Space 108.
Carnival of Space 109.
Carnival of Space 100.

Back atcha, Lemming

Last week I posted that the entire inner solar system was visible in the predawn sky. The reason for this is that Venus (and Mercury) were in between Earth and Mars. One of the reasons Mars (the dim red dot in the picture) was so dim is that it is on the opposite side of the inner solar system.

Figure 1. positions of the inner planets on June 19. Note that Mars, Venus, and Earth are co-linear.

Of course, any Martians looking back at Earth in the evening sky would see something very similar. Venus and Earth would be close together in the evening sky, with Mercury low on the horizon. Figure 2 shows a simulation.


Figure 2. What Venus and Earth would look like as seen from Mars.

This may seem like a silly thing to wonder about, since there is obviously nobody up on Mars looking back at us. But here’s the catch: even though there are no people on Mars, there are several robots controlled by people. And those robots have cameras.

Figure 3. Spirit rover picture of Venus and Earth in the Martian twilight.
Picture from here.

Arctic sea Ice pool: 5 weeks to go

With 5 weeks left to guess, the graph for the 2009 Arctic sea ice minimum gaussian guessing game is looking like this:


Contestants have solid, colored curves. The thick black/grey curves are the Ensemble 1 and 2 outputs from the Wegener Institute’s June 2009 Sea Ice outlook. The collective contestant’s pdf is the dotted light grey line (click to embiggen), and shows a bimodal distribution around the 2007 and 2008 minima. Thusfar only Nick Barnes (4700 ± 200, pink) has been mathematically eliminated at the 2 sigma level. Nick, you can take another guess, if you so desire.

The current value (as of Thursday) is 10,224 thousand km².

Proof God exists

Recently, every man and his dog has been yammering on about whether atheists should be fundamentalist dickheads or not. As long-time readers of this blog know, two years ago, when my daughter was barely 2 months old, I left my cozy, stable university technical job for a stint as an exploration geologist.

This meant leaving Mrs. Lemming home on her own for up to a month at a time with a very little child and no-one to turn to. Time has passed, and the chaotic unpredictable-by-science economy has come and gone, causing me to get sacked, rehired in a short term contract, and finally unemployed as of three days from now.

As a result, Mrs. Lemming is going from part time work to breadwinning, and I'm becoming the full-time Dr. Daddy. The timing of this change corresponds perfectly with the Littlest Loveliest Lab Lemming's potty training. And that, my friends, can only be described as Divine justice.

As Divine justice implies a divinity, I can only assume that He or She (probably She, considering the situation) is smiling at one member of the Lemming family and laughing at the other.

Edit: due to transition hecticness, this blog is on autopilot for a little while.