Where on Google Earth #249

Elisabeth Kosters, who correctly identified the Bay of Fundy in WoGE #248, asked me to host her challenge for the next instalment. So here we are again. Welcome to WoGE #249.

Where on Google Earth is the best use of a high-speed internet connection since e-journals. If you are new to the game, it is easy to play. The winner is the first person to examine the picture below, find the location (name, link, or lat-long), and give a brief explanation of its geological interest. Please post your answer in the comments below. And thanks to the Schott Rule, which Elisabeth is invoking, newbies have a slight edge: previous winners must wait one hour for each previous win before playing.

So: where and what on Google earth is this?

Where on Google Earth #248

Where on Google Earth is the best use of a coffee break since reading geoblogs. Despite not knowing much about the last one (no-one really knows how mima mounds form, even at Mima Mounds Natural Area, in Washington, USA), I happened to know where it was. So it is my honour, nay duty, to present WoGE #248. 

If you are new to the game, it is easy to play. The winner is the first person to examine the picture below, find the location (name, link, or lat-long), and give a brief explanation of its geological interest. Please post your answer in the comments below. And thanks to the Schott Rule, which I am invoking, newbies have a slight edge: previous winners must wait one hour for each previous win before playing. This seems punitive, given how quickly some WoGE's have been solved recently, but there it is. 

So crack open your favourite virtual globe, and good luck!

Unsolved problems

One of the recurring dreams I've had this year is about unsolved problems. I've always loved these lists, the best known of which is perhaps the German David Hilbert's 1900 list of 23 unsolved problems in mathematics. There are several published versions of the list; take look at a later manuscript describing some of the problems.

A year or two ago, I read this meta-list in Wikipedia. Natch, I immediately wanted to create a list of unsolved problems in geoscience. It could help researches find big, interesting problems. It could help software developers focus their talents. It might just be a bit of fun. However, articles in Wikipedia need something to reference^{[citation needed]}, so even if I were capable of such a thing, one can't just sit down and hack one out. 

But you can try. Earlier this year, I drafted a proto-list for geophysics, drawn mostly from chats with friends. Please feel free to vote on the list, or add problems of your own. It is, I admit, a bit biased towards problems in seismology in pursuit of hydrocarbons. The list should be much broader, but I'm not yet the polymath I strive to be and quickly get out of my depth!

Here are the top five (per today) from my Google Moderator list of unsolved problems in geophysics:

• How can we represent and quantify error and uncertainty from acquisition, through processing and interpretation, to analysis?
• What useful signal or information can we extract from what we usually call 'noise' (multiples, refractions, reverberations, etc)?
• How can we exploit the full spectrum in acquisition, processing, interpretation, and analysis?
• Is there a 'best practice' for tying wells; if so, what is it?
• What exactly is AVO-friendly processing?

What might a list of unsolved problems in geology look like? My likely-ignorant outlook suggests some:

• Is it possible to predict the location, severity, and/or timing of earthquakes?
• Do mantle plumes exist?
• How do magnetic reversals happen?
• Are mass extinctions cyclic?
• Do the earth's physico-chemical systems mostly drive, or mostly respond to, changes in climate?
• Does eustatic (global, synchronous, uniform) sea-level change happen, or does the ubiquity of local tectonism obviate the concept?
• What exactly was the sequence of events that resulted in the end-Permian extinction? The end-Cretaceous?

I am proposing a workshop on the topic of unsolved problems in exploration and development geophysics at SEG next year in San Antonio. Ideas welcome.

Resumé 2.0

Click for PDF

Is your resumé boring?

When I was a confused postgraduate researcher (if there's any other kind), I applied for a job in marketing and product development. The company asked for a pitch, rather than a straight curriculum vitae. I made something up in Adobe's Illustrator drawing tool, with some product development ideas (shower gel you could shave with, IIRC), and got an interview. After that, I made slightly weird CVs for a few other jobs, including ones at the British Antarctic Survey and EnCana (see image, right). Nowadays I tend to think that if I can't get a job with a weird CV, then it's not the sort of job I want.

Recently I have started just giving people my LinkedIn profile, which contains most of the information you'd usually put on a resumé. 

I have also looked at VisualCV, an online resumé tool, but never actually taken the time to try it. I'm not convinced it lets you be as creative as you might want to be. 

If you need more inspiration, check out this list of efforts. Most of them are for what are sometimes called 'creative' jobs like graphic design, but I would argue that geology and geophysics are creative jobs too!

I don't know how much I really need a resumé any more, but I've enjoyed maintaining this geological timetable since 2005; click to download the PDF. [Click here for 2016 version, now with fewer typos!]

Update

on 2010-12-21 11:35 by Matt Hall

LinkedIn just added a resumé builder to their Labs... Click here to try it out. It seems to work quite nicely, though the output is quite conservative, and I've run into a couple of bugs. Worth a look.

Giftology and giftophysics

Geologists are not difficult to buy gifts for. In fact, you could do worse than just filling a shoe box with rocks from your garden. But if you want to, you can excite and inspire a geologist with some new kit, a nice map, or a piece of meteorite.

Geophysicists might be slightly trickier to please. A book on Fortran? A couple of ki's of dynamite? Best thing is to accidentally on purpose treat them like a geologist. After all, it's the thought that counts!

Compasses

Features to look for include clinometer, declination adjustment, and a sighting mirror. A bubble level and a scale bar are nice to have. Seasoned field geologists will already have a favourite, so steer clear unless you know what they need.

1. Good — Silva Expedition 15TDCL, about $60
2. Better — Suunto Tandem with declination adjustment, about $220
3. Best — Brunton GEO Pocket Transit, about $820

Hand lenses

Features to look for include German manufacturer, metal housing, glass lenses, triple lens configuration, no chromatic aberration (this property is sometimes called achromatic), no spherical aberration (aplanatic). The 'gold standard', as it were, is the Bausch & Lomb Hastings Triplet, which usually sells for about $40 to $50 (for example, here). But there are others out there, like these:

1. Good — BelOMO Triplet Loupe, about $35
2. Better — Celestron LED illuminated loupe, about $40
3. Best — Harald Schneider triplet loupe, about $280

Random stuff

You can't go wrong with any of these excellent gifts. 

• Hammer — Estwing pick with leather grip, about $40
• Holster — Estwing pick holster, about $10
• Landforms — Extremely cool models of landforms, about $340
• Moon rocks — Well, almost... terrestrial analogs to some lunar rock types, about $160
• Map — A geological map of the world, €10
• T-shirt — Brilliant T-shirt, $cheap but sold out so please vote for its return!

For the geologist who has everything

These gifts speak for themselves. Joy guaranteed.

1. Awesome — UGOBE PLEOrb robot dinosaur, about $470
2. Awesomer — Andy Paiko glass seismograph, about $5000
3. Awesomest — Triceratops horridus skull, about $70 000