Jo Schaper wrote in message ...
don findlay wrote:

Jo Schaper wrote in message ...


We need to move on to something of interest.

Jo


Oh, Dear, ...I wonder what that could be? Gerard Fryer mentioned
something a while back about a graded bed in a river bank needing more
sussing out. (Something to do with Bretz. )

So, nothing takes your interest Jo? ..It's all sewn up, eh? Stu's
retiring, and leaving it all to his protege... Ah, I know what you
mean, ...it's really rough. There's a whole new generation
reinventing the wheel. In a little while there'll be nothing of value
left, ..it will have all gone down the gurgler, spokes and all. Why
not help me think up a new name for plate tectonics - like "Scary
Awsome Tectonics maybe". (George will find us a link.) Git yorn
'tillery, ...we'll git out on th'road thar, ..an' burn 'em.

(Don roughtalks Jo into arson attacks)

Although you have never met me, Don, you know me better than that I will
start arson attacks, or flame wars or something. *|;-)

This is just too, too bad Jo. I have noticed your level-headedness
over the time, and thought this could be to advantage. We could
embark on a 'bad cop' - 'good cop' routine. I could work them up, get
them excited, and then you could give them one in the solar plexus on
your-level headed way past. There's Stuart, not content with the
chill of outer space driving mantle slabs down, envisages polar ice
pushing them around (sideways). I would have thought if there was any
pushing going on it would push the crust first, and give us overriding
zones all around antarctica, but no he reckons it gets stuck into the
mantle straight away. No decoupling. Evidently outer space chilling
makes the mantle go down, but antarctic chilling makes it go sideways.
Very versatile thinking, but he's had 'preparation', learning about
active and passive continental margins. (I reckon he could do with a
bucketting to cool him down on that one.) (....)


There are still lots of things to find out about geology. Plenty of
questions out there. I agree with you, I have been seeing a whole lot of
wheel-inventing lately, especially by young people bucking against the
ever-present 'generation-gap'. My dad taught me ignorance is not a
problem. No one knows everything. But it is the stupid person who is too
stubborn to ask around for an answer.

It is the greatest hindrance to progress: being afraid to let
ignorance show. Can be deadly though.


We recently had a 23 acre lake in an upper-middle class part of town go
down a sinkhole in 3 days.They traced the water to a spring 4 miles
away. The whole thing is a stinky mudflat in the middle of lots of
pricey homes. The home owners, (many professional, white collar college
graduates amongst them) are on TV asking why engineering firms cannot
guarantee that they can fix the sinkhole, so the lake will never leak
again. It is obvious they are ignorant of the behavior of sinkholes. But
instead of picking up a geology text, or listening to the engineers,
they want their lake back, and they want it now, and they want it as
cheaply fixed permanently as possible. That is stupidity.

Just an example of them watching too much telly, and films about
pouring metal to the core, and having their astonishment quelled by
'experts' full of positive opinions about the possibility, themselves
bent on their own agendas. John Hernland a while back was offended
that aspersions should be cast at this sort of publicity, and top
reputations. If we start educating the public about pouring metal to
the core, you can hardly blame them for wanting their ground back (and
a dino in their back yard).

While their
personal situation is unfortunate, they should have learned about
geohazards somewhere along the line. They didn't, even though Missouri
has long been touted as "The Cave State."

At the same time, a local university, about 30 miles from the New Madrid
Fault, which for many years had an excellent earthquake studies part of
there geology department, will have no more geology department at all
once the current juniors and seniors graduate. Geology isn't important,
unless your house sits on the planet Earth.

I don't have many answers. I'm just tired of hearing the same ones (like
iron concretions exist on Earth, something I've known since I was about
10), presented as breaking news,
best regards
Jo Schaper

The issue is not Geology, it's political - funding and who gets it.
It's like the lotto - if you ain't 'in it' you won't 'win it'. And if
you want to be in it to win it, only a fool takes the controversial
position. Reinvention has a special place in that, in that people are
not only softened up, they are jaded as well. It's perfect media
fodder - allows hyping up without being controversial. Like Bjorn
said, I'm the only person he's ever come across who doesn't 'believe'
in plate tectonics. It's not true of course, but it's close enough to
make his point. How can that be in a world full of 'researchers',
bent on 'enquiry'? What 'enquiry' I ask you (all).? I'm still the
only one, amongst the hundred + thousands of entries on plate
tectonics since Google started up has used the string "how transforms
form" and/or "how spreading-ridges form". And some others equally
direct. How's that? It's just not possible to 'enquire' without
using the word 'how?'. And not possible to write up the results
without it either. What are they enquiring about? Expansion,
....even if it's not 'right', gives a geological picture sufficiently
opposite to the one about plate movement, to warrant consideration at
the very least as a hypothetical for understanding earthquake
distribution and pattern. But you can see from the attitude John
Vidale took a while back how that goes down. Concept rules. To my
way of thinking they're a mostly a dead loss.

(bad cop) (rootin' tootin' and SHOOTIN'!) (Yes, I know, ...live by
the gun and die by the gun) But I'm just trying to get somebody to
make sense... of all the stuff that strikes me as nonsense (but not
getting very far), and trying meanwhile to put an alternative picture
around it all. And getting sledged either for being too clever by
half - or too dumb. This is how science (and the community of
scientists) behaves itself. It's a study in itself. (Kuhn) I
reckon a few arsonists around the place wouldn't go amiss, actually.