Greasy lazy pythons

How rich is it that when various woomongers try to fill their cracked pots with abiotic oil, one of their favorite processes is serpentinization?

Come on guys, how about some effort. If you’re gonna sell snake oil, fine. But isn’t it a bit obvious associating snake oil with serpentinites? At least pretend it comes from lizardite*. Or crocodilite. As it is, you're giving yourselves away.

*In a nomenclatural twist designed to foil zoologists, lizardite is a serpentine, while crocidolite is not.

Not a Koala

Just in case anyone out there mixes up large tree-dwelling animals.

Stuff left to do on this paper

make tables
format tables
decide which values to normalize to*
sort out references
streamline methods section
keep optional figures.
Wait for co-author to send me his paragraph.
Get feedback from boss.
Reformat references once target journal is confirmed.

*I've used the oldest, most widespread, most comprehensive, and least correct literature values for my reference materials. I'm hemming and hawing about whether or not it is worth changing, as the composition isn't that important to this particular paper- Homogeneity is vital, but the exact number doesn't really matter as long as it is constant.

and then I can get back to blogging, housework, and/or life.

Your kids are poisoned. Deal with it.

The Australian newspaper reports that:

“Queensland health has refused to conduct extensive soil and water testing in Mount Isa despite its own study confirming 11 percent of children in the town have dangerously high levels of lead in their blood…
...Instead, the Queensland Health report recommended that a “living with lead” alliance – made up of government, council, and mine representatives – develop more “mitigation strategies”...

Lead poisoning causes brain damage in children, resulting in behavioral and learning problems. Traditionally, it is prevented by not poisoning the kids in the first place, but actually asking Xstrata to meet the same environmental standards as the rest of us must be economically disadvantageous, so they want to mitigate instead. I wonder, how do you mitigate against brain damage?

Some possibilities:

• Remedial math lessons for kids (remedial ethics for mine execs is optional).
• Heavy metal scavenger hunt (according to the report, they “could not find a source of the contamination”).
• Brain damage? Well duh! They’re from Queensland!
• Give the kids careers as labor ministers, or Queensland Health professionals.

On a more serious note, this sort of thing makes me wonder how much “economies of scale” are actually “economies of graft”. The theory says that bigger companies can be more profitable because they can use size to be more efficient. But in the case of Mt. Isa, the company simply uses its size to ignore environmental laws and poison any children that get in its way. If a company is the biggest dog in town, then it is not surprising that, as was the case here, Xstrata was able to vet the government press releases on this matter. As local labor MP Betty Kiernan said, “We wanted a partnership.”

Needless to say, if big companies can have “partnerships” instead of compliance, they have an advantage over those of us who actually have to obey laws. But the real pisser is when well meaning but ignorant activists assume that the answer is more regulation. Because then we end up with one more layer of rules that we have to follow while the bad guys can simply ignore, vet, or mitigate.

Reference management system open thread

When I was a student, I used endnote to organize and manage all of my references. In hindsight, this was probably one of the stupider decisions that I made. It meant that as soon as I finished and left university, the index that I spent 4 years building turned into an unreadable file, and I was left with the 14 pages in the back of my thesis as the only hint as to what my filing cabinet of papers contained.

While it would be melodramatic so say that this was a main contributor towards my poor record in publishing mostly finished work, it is one more annoyance that I don’t really need. And this year I am trying to make a renewed effort to get some manuscripts out the door- both old stuff that is still relevant, and recent stuff from my old university job.

I’ve heard all sorts of odd-sounding names when the subject of reference management comes up- words with non-transparent meanings, like Zotero, or JabRef (the indexer of choice for smugglers on Tatooine?). I have no idea what any of these things are. So I’m asking y’all to pitch in. Do you use a non-institutional program to manage your references? If so what is it? And most importantly, is it the sort of thing that is accessible to a computer semi-literate like me?

Help save the Australian solar industry

One of the less well-known features of the budget announced last week was the means testing of the solar energy rebate. Starting July 1, households with a combined income over $100,000 will no longer qualify for this rebate. Losing the rebate can increase the price of solar power by up to 200%. And with today’s interest rates (our mortgage repayments have doubled since we bought our house- how about yours?), most people on a combined income of less than $100,000 can’t afford solar even with the rebate. So this proposal will basically kill the domestic urban solar business in Australia.

The most straightforward approach to stop this from happening is to ask the Coalition to block the means testing in the senate. It is obvious to both the supporters and detractors of the Coalition that their response to the budget hasn’t been terribly effective so far; this will give them a badly needed win.

The Greens have already come out against this cut. If the Coalition joins them, then Labor will actually have to defend their decision to cut solar in favor of increased coal subsidies. If we’re lucky, that might mean that the Greenhouse and Environment Ministers will have to start answering questions on this issue, instead of ducking them.

How to do it:

• Look up your senators (Wikipedia has a list).
• Google the contact info for the listed Liberal and National senators from your home state.
• Send them a short snail mail or email asking them to block the means testing of the solar rebate in the Senate.
• Ask your friends to do the same- even if their politics differ from yours, this is an issue which should appeal to just about everyone who isn’t a coal-fired denialist Ruddbot.
• Sending a thank you note to your Greens senators for opposing this measure wouldn’t hurt either.

Note: While I am a proponent of bringing nuclear power to Australia, I still think that energy diversity is important, and cutting renewables to fund clean coal corporate handouts is shortsighted.

RIP Tom Krogh

Professor Tom Krogh died late last month. He was the father of modern zircon U/Pb geochronology, and his contributions are easier to illustrate than to tell.

In 1970, when he started working on the U/Pb system in zircon, the smallest single zircon grain that could have its age determined was about this size:


As a result of professor Krogh’s achievements, grains considerably smaller than the ones below can now be analysed using solution chemistry.


But size isn’t everything. He also pioneered chemical and physical abrasion techniques for removing the metamict portions of zircons, allowing the resulting material to be dated more accurately due to the elimination of isotopically open material.

As one of my old bosses said, though, “He wasn’t just good. He was one of the good guys.” While the business of geochemistry can sometimes be secretive, possessive, and petty, Krogh acted in the interest of science. We are all better off as a result.

His son has set up a remembrance page here.

Limerick Friday

It is Saturday evening here, but in the far western reaches of America it is still Friday, so here is a limerick for the founder of the day:

The science of mutating rhymes'
been unearthed by DC many times.
But without his oddity
He'd be a commodity
and sold off for nickels and dimes.

Click image to enlarge.