Joy wrote:

Quote:
I gave away my geology texts cuz I kept falling asleep whenever I tried to read them. BTW, I dropped the Geology class, lol.


There was a geology course designed for those bored by geology at one of the schools I attended. Geology 100, affectionately known as "Rocks for Jocks.":rollin

Seriously, though, when I first became interested in geology was when I realized that all the esoteric stuff discussed in the texts was right here in the Pacific NW, all around me.* The geology of NW Washington state has the advantage of being diverse, to say the least; in some areas the nature and the composition of rocks literally changes from valley to valley. In addition to this, there are pieces of islands that originated in the South Pacific which continental drift has welded into the Northern Cascades. Or a piece of the Earth's Mantle (the Twin Sisters) sticking up at a crazy angle, a ways down the line from Mount Baker, etc. Lots of neat stuff.

For some reason, the fact that it is possible to pick up a rock, turn it over in your hands, examine it, and read some part of the distant past in that rock inspires me. I would literally pay money to be able to hold the "Genesis Rock" brought back from the moon by one of the Apollo missions. A simple rock, but formed 4 billion years ago, virtually unchanged since then. Ages and ages before anything oozed or crawled or walked upon the surface of the Earth...

I think I'm waxing poetic (or corny), however.

There's an old maxim that the science of geology could never have gotten started in this part of the world(the foundations of early geological science were laid down in the U.K.), because the geology is just too complex. Without standing on the shoulders of all those who came before, it would probably be impossible to make sense of it.

The geology in the U.K. is much more uniform, thus providing the perfect setting for laying down the "first principles of geology."

Anyway, this all pretty much a vast digression from the subject matter of this board, but I don't get much of an occassion to talk to people about these things, and I sometimes get carried away.

Best,
Dean
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*This is something I always tell young people. Math is not just about doing your homework problems. Math is a kind of language we have devised to help us understand the world around us, and ourselves, and as such it has a place in everything from computers to crab migrations (the marine variety, that is). The same goes for science.

When you can look at a page of math, and see beauty and symmetry in having understood a little piece of the universe - that is when you truly understand what math is.

I think it would be a big step in the right direction if the applications (word problems) in modern math texts were about subjects that young people can relate to - questions that intrigue and inspire, rather than dry and boring shit such as "this train left San Antonio going such and such a speed..."
Better to have loved and lost than to be married to a PSYCHO.