DirtPriest's 75-Offensive Linemen Unite-2nd Semester

Here's my new thread, complete with an introduction to Michigan's unique geology, in lieu of book discussion for the time being. My current summer class schedule has almost reached the midpoint, so I go from a ten credit term to four, which will open up some reading time in a week or so. Back to my old thread here.






(By the way, these are cut from a public domain poster from the University of Michigan, and I saved them as small .gif files)

Interesting beginning to your new thread.

I've got to do something to keep my thread from becoming stagnant as I have had almost no time for recreational reading for well over a month. Might as well educate and inform a bit. I suppose I could have spread them out a bit though.

I just heard on tv the other night that after the NBA finals are over, there is going to be a lockout. So I guess we are going to be really short on pro sports next year.

3: Might as well educate and inform a bit.

I was just looking at your old thread -- the post on the golden ratio, and the link to the geologic time scale. More of this sort of thing, and you won't have to do any reading at all. :-)

Sometimes it's nice to just kick back under a shade tree and read some Asimov without having to worry about taking notes or acing exams.

Thanks for the book links on your previous thread. I'm fascinated by geology, not in small part because I grew up on a delta which has lots of dirt, plants, and animals, but no rocks.

Dirt and river sedimentation are cool geology too. I'm assuming you mean the Mississppii Delta, right? We had a big lecture on that just today. Dr. Clarey used to live in Slidell when he worked for one of the oil companies because it was the nearest town to New Orleans above sea level. He went into great detail about the levee system that will eventually fail and how the city of New Orleans is slowly sinking into the soft sediments, just like Venice, because the river doesn't flood where the city is anymore, which would naturally lay down the sediments to keep the area above sea level. That's not good for a major port city but great for farms. Also, the river wants to naturally drain out through that 'spillway' that was opened in the spring to alleviate the flooding in the big ports upstream, like Memphis. Building a town in the natural bed of the Mississippi with only a steel and concrete wall between your house and one of the world's great rivers doesn't make much sense. It might make some dollars, but no sense.

The Saginaw river in my area doesn't form a delta into Saginaw Bay/Lake Huron, even though it is a good sized river with a large drainage area, because it is too slow to carry much other than ultra-fine clay silts (and chemical pollutants) to the end of the stream. It just makes a mess for the shipping channels and the marinas which need constant dredging, and the former state park beach is so overgrown with weeds and algae from farm runoffs that it is just a recreation area and not a park anymore.

I need to remember to ask if the newer editions of that Geology of Michigan book are updated or just reprinted. You could easily find them online if the edition doesn't matter. I got the impression that some of the material is dated, not the results and data so much, but just skeptical about plate tectonic theory. I do know it has an extensive database of regional fossils which is handy for dating rock layers around here. Must... have...

They are just reprinted (from #8). I just ordered a copy for $12, as well as Geology of the Lake Superior Region for $15.

Yeah, MS delta, very far south Louisiana (Houma, further south than Slidell even though further from the Gulf). Glad to hear you had a lecture on the region. The ecology there is fascinating. The levees have been (and unfortunately will continue to be) problematic, but over half the nations population lives in levee protected regions.

I highly recommend John Barry's Rising Tide about the 1927 flood. It goes into a lot of the history of levee boards and the Army Corps of Engineers involvement. The beginning has a lot of great information about the political battles for how to deal with river flooding, and how it's completely shaped the way we operate now. It's amazing how much of the way we live is shaped by someone's political clout.

9 - Crossposted, but I added them to the wishlist. I'm on a vacation budget this summer. :)

I'm on a student loan budget, whatever that is. No problem getting stuff school related but I have a hard time justifying buying books for fun with it. My professor has Rising Tide on his little bookshelf in his office. My old habit of scanning and memorizing shelves comes in handy sometimes. The whole MS delta is a pretty amazing thing really. Trying to control nature is simply going to end in disaster eventually.

Got my copy of Geology of Lake Superior Region Saturday. It is making catchup reading of my American History textbook very hard, but I think I can overcome it with an all A's report card looming. All I have to do is carry on with my 94%, then figure out Statistics in a few weeks, all while not screwing up the Fitness Walking class. If I do get all A's except for gym class I will be mad. I can walk all day and hate sitting around. That's the hardest thing about class so far, the seven hours in a chair.

Just thought I'd do a quick 'lesson' before bedtime on the Niagara Escarpment, for fun. The escarpment is a ring of dense dolomite limestone that circles the Great Lakes, then bends around by Toronto on its way to Niagara Falls. It is most visible on a map from Green Bay, WI, the southern UP of Michigan, Manitoulin Island and the 'arrowhead' of Ontario. Basically, it formed around a shallow equatorial sea hundreds of millions of years ago, which opened to the southeast into a primeval ocean. The dolomite refers to the magnesium content, which differentiates it from basic limestone made exclusively (more or less) of calcium carbonates from old shells and whatnot. It is much more resistant to water/acid weathering than a standard limestone. The height varies by quite a bit because of both erosion and the rebound of the crust after the two mile thick glaciers over the area melted. In the north, it is quite high above the water level (rebound) but further south it is lower. In fact, it forms a dam that keeps Lake Michigan from draining through Chicago, which it has done a couple of times in the past.

One of my favorite rocks that I have found so far is a sandstone that formed from a 'puddle' of sand inside a limestone cliff. Basically, the thin layer of sand was buried by the lime accretion and became an isolated plate of sandstone. It is way harder than limestone and was awesome for chopping Petoskey stone samples out of a no-tool zone cliff face. Nothing better than a perfect 'hand axe' for that. Ha ha.


Just to stave off a question, Georgian Bay is the lobe of Lake Huron to the NW of the 'Niagara Escarpment' indicator on the right hand side of the map. Manitoulin Island is between that bay and the Upper Peninsula. It is the largest freshwater island in the world, and is mostly shaded black on the map.



Wikipedia has some good photos here, of the escarpment itself, but I'm just going to post an aerial view of Niagara Falls eating it's way backwards through the escarpment, towards Lake Erie. Niagara Falls has eroded away the whole valley that trails off to the top left of the photo. A google image search of the escarpment has lots of photos for anyone interested as well.

Also, great job by Rory McIlroy at the US Open. What a dominant win, and two straight US Opens for Northern Ireland after McDowell last year at Pebble Beach. Who would have ever thought? In the post match interview, Bob Costas asked him about McDowell saying that the odds of that happening were more than winning the lottery, and McIlroy made a funny face before saying that he thought he had 'A pretty good chance' this weekend.

He did play great except for that one hole towards the end. It got me wondering if Tiger would ever get his act back together, because there is some new tough competition out there.

I love the photo of Niagra Falls. I have always wanted to go there. My daughter and husband got to see it in January a couple of years ago in below zero weather. Even with all the ice crystals in the air, they found it quite impressive.

I look forward to hearing about your Stat class. I have never taken that, but it seems pretty useful. Good luck with all your classes. Sounds like things are going well.

I have to say that was the wackiest US Open I've seen. The course setup was very strange, but mostly that was the fault of the weather. The rough was nowhere near as thick as it should have been which was blamed on the ridiculously hot week or more before the tournament. Apparently it was so hot that the grass refused to grow. Add that to the daily rain keeping things soft and the scores were freakishly low, by far the lowest ever. McIlroy simply hit almost every fairway (something like 50 of 56) and had a great weekend of putting, which is easy to do if you have one or two clubs less than everybody else into a green. That was the secret to Tiger's success by the way. Basically it was set up like a PGA Championship instead of a US Open.

McIlroy was featured on the cover of the last Tiger Woods Golf game as part of a Ryder Cup/US versus Europe deal. Maybe Tiger can take some lessons in how not to overanalyze his swing and just go out there and smoothly smack the ball. I doubt it though. My brother has the same issue of thinking too much, have to do this then do that, going through a long checklist before and during every swing. It is bad for the swing in the end. Driving range thoughts belong there, not on the course. That's why you have to practice, so all that stuff just happens naturally, Tiger. Quit ruining yourself and use the stuff your dad taught you, get rid of that Foley guy as your coach and do it yourself. End of Tiger rant...

14: Excellent lesson, and the aerial view is fantastic!

Hi DP!! Stopping to check up on you!!

Thanks for the kind words. This is all I have going right now as far as reading so I will just continue to pass on the knowledge.

Got my copy of Geology of Michigan. I opened it and thought, jeez that looks familiar... and so does that. In fact, I've read this before. Turns out the booklets that Dr. Clarey assembled for the field trips were taken in part from this book, with permission of course. The books are out of print so U of Michigan had no problems with it. Another nice thing is that it is a discontinued book from La Salle University Library with the card pocket in the back and an LoC call number on the spine, still in outstanding shape. That's cool.

I read this on Porua's thread, who 'nicked it' from someone else, and thought it would make for an interesting thing to do before bed, as opposed to working on my final exam essays for my early American history class...

Favourite childhood book? - The Three Investigators, which was even better than the Hardy Boys (the grade school kid mysteries, not the wrestling tag team, even though they were great too. (A Tables, Ladders and Chairs match?... Oh my!) And Encyclopedia Brown. There were alot of great ones I could mention.

What are you reading right now? - Unbelieveably nothing, just adding to the TBR pile for after my essays are done. Then, Geology of Michigan I guess, maybe Gustavus Adolphus the Great, just to read about one of the great unknown figures of history who carried his native Sweden to a better place during the Thirty Years' War by sheer force of will. Oh, and my Statistics textbook too. And a few Early Reviewers snags that look tasty, Bolivar as well as The FARC

Bad book habit? - Buying books that I have to read, then not reading them, like Milton or Norman Mailer.

Do you have an e-reader? - Yes. I love my Sony for the convenience of reading the pirated books that I would never buy, nor have room for. I have a complete set of the Brother Cadfael mysteries and a nearly complete set of ninety some Agatha Christie books that only take up hard drive space and a chunk of an SD drive that is in my ereader.

Do you prefer to read one book at a time or several at once? - I prefer to read one book at a time as well, even my textbook time is at the loss of recreational reading.

Least favourite book you read this year (so far)? - James Blish's The Star Dwellers just wasn't as great as the rest of his legendary scifi, more of a YA vibe, and Tad Williams' Shadowmarch books were a ilttle bit of a letdown. Not bad at all, just not as great as I had hoped. e: The Story of a Number was probably the 'worst' I suppose, but it just didn't have a point that I could see, and I'm a mathematician.

Favourite book you’ve read this year? - Probably Galapagos, but any Vonnegut is hard to top. Heaven's Mirror would be the best of the non-fiction. My history textbook was pretty good too.

How often do you read out of your comfort zone? - I don't have time to waste reading some pop culture hooey like Twilight or anything touchy-feely slash romantic. If there is romance involved, I run away quickly as well.

What is your reading comfort zone? - History, science and exploratory fiction, basically good fantasy/scifi.

Can you read on the bus? - Probably not, but I used to do most of my homework on the bus before I was a cranky old cuss. That's as close to poetry as I get.

Favourite place to read? - In my bed. Alone. Mostly because my reading chair is usually piled with laundry or extra blankets that I don't need.

What is your policy on book lending? - I have no problem lending them but bad karma juju follows those who don't return them, or damage them. I have two copies of a loan sheet, one as part of my card catalog spreadsheet and one written on paper in my desk.

Do you ever dog-ear books? - Never. I do tear off a small corner of a particularly good book and eat it, which is probably exceedingly strange, but yet symbolic.

Do you ever write in the margins of your books? - I do. And I like buying used copies of books that someone else enjoyed enough to take notes in

What is your favourite language to read in? - English. Like I have a choice. I can puzzle out words in Greek or Latin but I am monolinguistic.

What makes you love a book? - Great characters that are believeable, plots that are based on reality which are in turn extrapolated into a different reality. That makes for a more clear examination of trends at the risk of coloring (colouring?) them with opinions by the author.

What will inspire you to recommend a book? - I simply like to explain why I thought something was worth reading and if the listener feels compelled to read it themselves then so be it.

Favourite genre? - Well thought out Science Fiction. That stuff seems to rise above the rest for me

Favourite biography? - Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life by Carlo d'Este. The book about Gustavus Adolphus isn't technically a biography per se, but it is a very detailed story of his life and his beloved Sweden. I read it ten or more years ago and have been wanting to reread it for a long time.

How do you feel about giving bad/negative reviews? - I luckily don't read very many books that suck, but if they do then I have no problems letting the world know. The books that get a bad review from me will either be for a different target audience, or a genre piece that is either unbearably cheesy or too unbelieveable.

If you could read in a foreign language, which language would you chose? - Greek. Actually Egyptian Hieroglyphs, but they are such a long dead language that it is not possible to fully comprehend meaning.

Most intimidating book you’ve ever read? - The White Goddess by Robert Graves. A dense exploration of bronze age religious ideas through an examination of the extant poetry. Yeah. Well worth the work though.

Most intimidating book you’re too nervous to begin? - Wolfram's A New Kind of Science. Not only is it a multi-semester textbook in length, but it is a complex analysis of the inadequacies of simple equations as a modelling agency for reality, and their theoretical replacement with simple (?) algorithmic systems, like a short computer program. Programs that are based on equations at their root, by the way, so it just seems to tedious to bother with right now.

Favorite Poet? - Robert E. Howard, or, if you prefer a traditional poet, Robert Graves.

Favourite fictional character? - Binabik from Tad Williams' masterpiece Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy.

Favourite fictional villain? - This is a telling question. As pure villains go, Sauron. However, two of my favorite characters are in some ways world saving heroes and yet also self serving bastards as well. Raistlin from Dragonlance and Michael Moorcock's Elric.

Name a book that you could/would not finish. - Ancient Evenings by Norman Mailer. Lewd and sexually disgusting for no good reason, I might go so far as to call him the Andy Warhol of literature. Completely inane and overrated.

Favourite film adaptation of a novel? – Can't think of too many other than Lord of the Rings, which had some flaws but, in my opinion, made a great accompaniment to the novels. The books should be read first, no excuses. Also, the X-Men movies are outstanding, and the comic books they are based on were great stories too, probably the best of the genre. At least over years of time, there are quite a few outstanding comics but they rarely last very long, like Lady Pendragon. That would make an awesome movie, but the King Arthur story seems to have faded a bit from the popular culture.

How often do you skim a book before reading it? - I always read a few samples from the first third of the book, a page or three in total.

Do you like to keep your books organized? - My shelves are divided into genres and shoehorned into that spot as best I can to fill it. I have no space for anything other than a foot or so of paperbacks. I literally have small stacks of a few new things piled on top of my game cards and baseball card boxes.

Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them? - I am a major book hoarder! As well! I have gotten very selective over the last two years or so and concentrated on finishing series or collecting a few authors, like James Blish, or Weis and Hickman's under-appreciated fantasy tales.

Are there any books you’ve been avoiding? - The recent spate of supernatural YA lit (featuring vampires, werewolves, fallen angels, fairies, etc, etc.). etc. again. Pride, Prejudice and Zombies? Really? Sense, Sensibility and Sea Monsters? That is insulting and I'm not even a fan of classic English Lit stuff like that. I just try to read one every now and then just to do it as a serious reader. I didn't like Dickens that much, but The Woman in White might have been interesting to read in novel form, the comic format I read was enough to show that it was an interesting story.

Name a book that made you angry. - Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. The title should have warned me a bit, but I couldn't stand the main character's whiny refusal to participate, or obviously even believe in the amazing fantasy realm that he was drawn in to. It was so frustrating to read an award winning and highly recommended series that featured such a worthless character. Rise and Fall of the Third Reich was a different sort of angry, and it is well worth reading. Shady politics has all been done before, it isn't new to the last few decades.

A book you didn’t expect to like but did? - Stranger in a Strange Land, which went from a sex romp hippie commune at the start to a serious analysis of social and religious structures.

A book that you expected to like but didn’t? - Great Expectations, also the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant

Favourite guilt-free, pleasure reading? - There is just something delightful about the way Isaac Asimov writes, whether it is a scifi novel or any of the myriad non-fiction books that he also wrote. His Guide to Shakespeare or Ask Asimov science columns are just as fun to read as Pebble in the Sky or The End of Eternity (which should be subtitled '...and the Beginning of Infinity.') I am saving The Gods Themselves for a recap reading of all of the Robot, Empire and Foundation books. Robert E. Howard and Agatha Christie earn an honorable mention here, just on principle, as does Graham Hancock.

(I didn't check all of the touchstones, and also made it all the way through without mentioning Sherlock Holmes. That's a surprise to me!)

Interesting! I noted the description of Norman Mailer's Ancient Evenings, which is a book that I have had sitting around here for over 15 years. It was handed down from someone else who was through with it, but now I am not sure that I will give it a try. I have never read anything by Mailer.

By the way, do you know anything about The Gormenghast Trilogy?

Gormenghast is a very long and intricate fantasy tale that I would like to eventually read. The setting of Gormenghast castle where the story takes place is very detailed, the whole story is set in a city sized castle. As I recall the basics are a scullion boy becoming a prince or some such. I would however recommend watching the well produced BBC miniseries first to see if the books are worth the effort. I'm not sure if they are for me but it might be more up your alley than mine. Christopher Lee is one of the stars and he rarely makes a bad film. It is an amazing visual feast and the story is written the same way, very descriptive.

I do apologize for the length of my prior post...

22: Most intimidating book you’re too nervous to begin? - Wolfram's A New Kind of Science.

Heh. Yeah. That and Gould's The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, which I got at the same time for the same reason: significant life works. But Wolfram's has cooler illustrations.

23: I do apologize for the length of my prior post...
It was fun to read.

I enjoyed the post, too. Thanks for the info on Gormenghast. :)

Cultural Encyclopedia of LSD by Wayne Glausser
Again, I feel I should post a review of an early reviewers book, even though I haven't read it cover to cover. At least this one is an encyclopedia, a short one which compiles many interesting entries of LSD related culture. I have read several of the entries randomly and was impressed with the interesting data it contained. For example, the first page I opened it to had entries about Kennedy (JFK), Jack Kerouac and Ken Kesey, followed shortly thereafter by Kool-Aid and Stanley Kubrick. There is also a very well done introduction explaining the history of LSD as a military weapon, which became something else entirely in the 1960's. Basically, my interest in the subject is through music, namely the Grateful Dead and the melting of Syd Barrett's (of Pink Floyd) mind. It is a gate key to different areas of the mind. If you think you would like this book, then you certainly will, and you should add it to your library.

----
I couldn't figure where I had heard of Stephen Wolfram, and it took me a few days to recall that he developed Mathematica, which is an advanced computer graphing program that was used to create the graphs in my old Calculus book. Thanks again for stopping by my lemonade stand of a thread...

My history class is done, finally. I just haven't had the time to immerse myself in it, but I learned more than enough to do well. My final presentation today was on baseball in Civil War prison camps, leading into a thought about how the post war Reconstruction of the south sort of failed. Economies are still very different, and one example of that is that the National League began play in 1876 and the American League began in 1901 and yet there was no team in former Confederate states until the Braves moved from Milwaukee in 1966. Mrs. French loved it.

I also have an addendum to my long rant above. I actually have one page dogeared in a book and used it just today. In Superstars and Monopoly Wars: Nineteenth-Century Major-League Baseball I have a folded corner marking the long list of managers in direct sequence from the 1870's until today. Unfortunately it is out in the garage so I'll slap it up later.

Here's that list which, if nothing else, shows the remarkable continuity of baseball in the face of constant social change. Frank Bancroft, a Civil War veteran, managed several teams between 1880 and 1902, in Detroit, his protege was Ned Hanlon, who managed the Orioles in the 1890's; There he taught third baseman John McGraw, who managed the NY Giants on and off (mostly on) between the 1900's and 1920's; his protege was outfielder Casey Stengel, who managed the Yankees in the 50's and 60's, and his protege (that word got used too much in this paragraph) was Billy Martin, who managed several teams in the 70's and 80's. At least three players he managed are current or recently retired managers themselves, Mike Hargrove, Willie Randolph, Lou Pinella and Chris Chambliss (who deserves a chance to manage). Pinella was around a long time and he alone will carry on the 'family tree', plus anyone managed by the other guys. I have a feeling Omar Vizquel will manage when he finally retires (he's still playing at 44) and he played many years for Hargrove in Cleveland

Not much to add here, but I have some time to kill after missing my bus home from campus. I will have the Bolivar book done before the weekend starts for the Early Reviewer program, after that, I don't know what will be next. My Statistics class is pretty fun, at least for me. A friend from my history class last semester has set up a study group for after class and I hang around with them to help everyone cram an easy class into five weeks instead of 15. It is pretty elementary, unless you have issues remembering how to calculate 68% of 75, or little things like that. So far, we have done basic data organizing, frequency charts and the like. Not anything complicated at all.

I liked Statistics, too. Much better than Accounting!

Procrastinating is a bitch. I didn't have time to post anything for a while, and hadn't read anything in weeks, now I'm woefully behind and I've put off typing all of this stuff for too long. My last review was on June 10th, and before that, April. Highly unlikely that I get to 75 this year!

Mamzel, the Stats class is part of why I haven't been online lately, but that has been under-appreciated as well. A mix of 'too easy' and 'too much other stuff to do'. What a useful class. I've been waiting many years to finally take it, I was in it when I had to quit college way back when in the pre-bus service Stone Age. I'll write up a few insights in the very near future after I get my business done. I have a half-hour each way to read on the bus and it has been great...


18. Bolivar: The Liberator of Latin America by Robert Harvey
This is one of the better books I've gotten from Early Reviewers. I have always wanted to learn more abour Simon Bolivar, but it never materialized, until now. Harvey's book is clear about his life and deeds, and gives details about his friends and enemies as well. It is a bit complicated to read, but I believe the final published edition will have maps interspersed about, which is always handy for keeping things straight. My biggest problem was that there were so many places named after cities in Spain that it was easy to trip over them, so to speak. The only issue I had with the writing is that it required one of three things. Being either a bit simpler, or more detailed, as people and events were thrown out for discussion then quickly shuttled to the background to be seen later only as a name later in the book, or thirdly, being read by a more informed reader. Harvey's book might not be the ideal place to start studying the history of the Enlightenment and Revolution Era of South America, but it certainly works as one if the reader is serious and dedicated to learning about that time and place, which is high praise for a history. Harvey is always fair in judgements, which are stated as conclusions from other sources. I could detect no personal agenda other than relaying the qualities and faults of Bolivar as both a person and leader of men and nations.

Honestly, I have no idea how Bolivar could have accomplished the feats he did, and considering what he was up against (The Spanish Empire at a late peak, the terrain of Venezuela, high frozen mountains, inhospitable tropical river plains, and backstabbing political and military rivals at home), he was either a lucky man or a singular example of the good that exists in humankind to free itself from oppression. Either way, and I lean towards the latter, the world needed, and still needs, more Bolivars. The most impressive thing to me was that he was in a position to not only grab the reins of imperial power, but to also create the very chariot that he would rule from, and, unlike almost every 'liberator' before or since, he refused to do it. Bolivar preferred to attempt to set up an idealized governmental system that would never work, unless it was staffed by people who believed as he did. Namely, that everyone had the right to be free of oppression of all kinds. The very layering caused by a governmental society seems to eventually create an elite society that takes advantage of those beneath it, so his may have been a fool's dream, but one that must be explored.

The other reviews before this are also excellent, and they get the point across as to the quality of writing.

I should post this here as well...


19, 20, 21 & 22) Yes, I polished off the set of 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010: Odyssey Two, 2061: Odyssey Three and 3001: Final Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke (as every schoolboy should know). That hour of bus reading has already paid off. As a novel, 2001 is by far the best of the series, the other books simply relay certain events of a future that is completely believeable and realistic. As individual books, though, the sequels are lagging in the quality department, relative to 2001. That one should be required reading for anyone who considers themselves a SF fan, but the sequels exist only for the readers interested enough to see what a genius like Clark can imagine.

2010 tells the story of the monoliths activating and creating a new sun out of Jupiter (sort of a spoiler, but I felt like I had read the book before somewhere the whole time and knew it was going to happen. Just not how. Oh yeah, and showing how the Russians and Americans can cooperate...

2061 is about the rescue of a downed exploratory ship on the wildly modified version of the ice covered ocean world of Europa, dragging the ancient Heywood Floyd out into space for a final adventure with the monolith.

3001 is the best of the sequels, as it shows the difficulty of someone removed from their time and forced into a new one. Astronaut Frank Poole ('killed' in 2001 by the computer HAL in 2001)is found drifting, Buck Rogers style, in an orbit out near Neptune. He is rescued by a comet wrangler, out nudging icy comets towards the sun to harvest their water in a project to terraform Venus, and resuscitated a thousand years after his 'death'. The story is rather humdrum, but Clarke always has an interesting idea working, even if it doesn't make for the most gripping of stories.

An odd thing to quantify, how to phrase a recommendation of the series. They are good stories from a great imagination, but if SF isn't your cup of tea then the sequels are honestly best left at the bookstore. They are simply a vehicle for his idea of a future world of space faring and space living humans, really.

(The cover images are not showing up, no idea why. Oh well.) Ah yes, (img src=... not (a img src=... It's been so long I didn't notice the error.

Nice review of the Bolivar book. And I loved seeing the review of the Space Odyssey books as I was hoping to get the first one read this year some time.

Time to catch up again...

Thanks BJ. 2001 is definitely a classic of the genre, and a quick read too. Clarke's Childhood's End is also required reading.

I should write that summary of statistics that I promised. Basically it can be a fairly easy class if you are comfortable with doing math at the level of intermediate algebra. It can be more advanced, but the thrust of most classes is analyzing data tables and statements (55% of people think that...) on a calculator. There are only a few technical things to remember. One of the basic tools is the 'variance' of a data set. This is an 'average' of the distance from the mean score, squared. It is squared because the mean distance from the mean will always average to zero, whereas the squares give useful data. The zero average comes from the fact that for every inch right of the average, there is an inch to the left as well. Like a big ball and small ball average out to a medium ball. In practice, the standard deviation is used, which is the square root of the variance of squares. It is similar to an |absolute value|. Anyway, it is a fairly friendly, real world applicable course.

An example is the media polls that you often see, especially during election seasons. Basically you can tell how many people are polled by looking at the Margin of Error that is stated. If it is +-5%, the survey was about 100-200 people or less, +-4% around 400 ish, +-3% is a survey of 1000-2000 people, where a good sampling that fits the true and pretty much unmeasureable population value, and to get to +- 2% you need to survey at least 10000 people. What that truly means is that the pollster is 95% confident that the sample range from a survey covers the true score of the population as a whole, the range being the stated value in the survey, plus and minus that Error Margin. There is some math involved in deriving the formulas involved, but those are reserved for a more advanced analytical statistics class, as opposed to a basic introduction to ... class. Pretty easy unless you are plumbing the depths of the magic hat that the equations are pulled from.

I have a couple of book reviews to type up over the next few hours as well, but little Bailey needs her breakfast and the other half of a bottle.

OK then...


23. Supercontinent: Ten Billion Years in the Life of Our Planet by Ted Nield
Mr. Nield has offered up a fine book on what amounts to the history of Continental Drift, both as an idea and as a science. Things get a bit tricky here and there, but it is accessible to the interested layman. He explains the obstacles Alfred Wegener and a few others encountered as they tried to gain acceptance for their ideas of drift, which had a plethora of circumstantial evidence but no mechanism for movement (Convection currents in the mantle and still a debated argument between pushing along by oceanic rift spreading or pulling down by subduction at the opposite edges). There were contiguous rock layers and mountains broken off on either side of oceans, with fossils that matched as well, not to mention the fairly obvious fit of some of the continents, like Africa and South America, which had first been noticed, in print anyways, by Francis Bacon in the 1600's. He goes on to delve into the complex history of the continents merging together and splitting apart several times over literally a few billion years, how the basic chemistry of the Earth has changed over that span, and so on. I liked it, and it has the simplicity for a casual reader, with the level of detail that a college geology student can still use it for basic research.

24. Pre-historic Mackinac Island by George M. Stanley AND Geologic Story of Isle Royale National Park by N. King Huber
I decided to put these together as they are little more than pamphlets.

Pre-historic Mackinac Island is a Michigan Geologic Survey from 1944, updated a little bit in 1957, which details the geology of the fairly famous Mackinac Island of Northern Michigan. (It is pronounced Mackinaw, the town at the tip of the lower peninsula, Mackinaw City, has frankly given up explaining that it isn't Mackinak and now sticks the 'w' on to simplify their lives). The bulk of it is about the various lake levels during and after the Ice Age, which I have discussed a little bit on my thread. The lakes have made their erosional marks around Mackinac Island in the form of beaches at all heights of the island, as well as cliff terracing at two points of stable water levels over the last 10000 years or so. These terraces are very prominent on Mackinac. First, the Natives called it 'Turtle Island', which is what it looks like, and second, Fort Mackinac sits atop the lower terrace overlooking a decent harbor and the town along the waterfront. It is pretty imposing. There is an older British fort (Fort Henry) on the highest point, which is called the Ancient Island, as it was the only point of land for at least twenty miles in any direction at the highest water level, if not much more. Also to be considered is the rebound of the land itself, caused by the weight of the ice being removed from it, which has lifted Mackinac above the water even further. There are also sections on the breccia that makes up the bulk of the island, and current variations in water levels of Lake Huron (and Lake Michigan, they really are one lake separated by a narrow neck at the Straits of Mackinac). Definitely a book for the geologist, but not too textbook-like for someone interested enough to read it.





The book on Isle Royale is in the same mold as the one above. Isle Royale is in Lake Superior, off of the Keewenaw Peninsula. They are composed of the same basic rock layers, but the middle between them is sunk down and covered with water. Most of the book details the layers, their formation and subsidence (sinking) that separated the island from the mainland, and its changes during the varying water levels during and after the Ice Age. The island is heavily eroded by glaciation and it can be clearly seen by any decent aerial photo. There is also a nice section on what are called Isle Royale Greenstones, which are technically not classical Pre-Cambrian Greenstones, but that is a matter of professional nomenclature. I had a photo of a true greenstone on my previous thread, and here is a picture of the Isle Royale Greenstone, which is more in the semi-precious gem category of things. (It is technically called Chlorastrolite...)

P.S. The Keewenaw Peninsula is the prominent horn pointing Northeast from the western Upper Peninsula, basically north of Wisconsin. It is full of copper, both in huge raw chunks which can weigh several hundred pounds or more, and as an ore. Isle Royale is only 15 miles from Canada and Wisconsin, but almost 60 from Michigan.



This shows the glacial scouring fairly well, from the east and north towards the southwest. The land to the NW in the picture is Canada.

Thanks for the tip on Childhood's End. I added it to my wishlist. I wonder if we have that one around here somewhere?

I thought Colt McCoy looked pretty good today. I hope he has a great year. I heard that my beloved Longhorns Freshman QB looked the best. To redshirt or not to redshirt, that is the question. And I am distraught to hear that Directv has no plans to carry The Longhorn Network.

Really nice photos, especially of the little one.

There's always some controversy about TV providers carrying programming. There was a big fiasco a few years ago when MLB gave exclusive rights to DirecTV for the MLB Network. We have Charter cable up here and there was a huge outburst over no cable outlet anywhere in the country carrying it, with Charter being a large portion of the country's service, and lots of areas they are the only choice other than satellite. That didn't last long. Maybe DirecTV isn't bothering with a regional network?

The only thing uncomfortable about Childhood's End is that it is a similar premise to the Thomas Pynchon book and twice done TV series "V". The story is totally different, but the setup is alarmingly similar.

I'm glad you liked the pictures. I had to put a few up to illustrate my points. That one of the fort is great for showing the erosional terracing, how waves smash a mound of limestone into a cliff like that. There are little caves and arches all over the island that were one part of cliff features similar to that, at all different heights. The local water level has swung from over 200 feet above the current level to almost 200 feet below over the last 15000-20000 years or so.

Above the big fort is another small terrace about the size of a couple of city blocks, the Ancient Island, where a second and smaller fort was built by the British. The first battle there in the War of 1812 was won by the crafty Brits when they snuck ashore on the opposite side of the island and shelled Fort Mackinac from behind with cannons hauled up to the top of the island in the dead of night. Not a bad achievement given their lack of GPS and radios (The woods are very dense and rocky still, and the roads were barely horse paths at the time). The Americans tried to assault the forts in 1813, but were unable to capture them, mostly because the naval guns couldn't reach the top of the island to support the attack. The British continued to hold the island until a truce was agreed to in 1815 after a long fight in the Detroit area and Lake Erie ("We have met the enemy and they are ours...", Oliver Hazard Perry). Mackinac was basically a backwater area in the War of 1812, and was given back to America.

To be clear, it is Fort Holmes, NOT Fort Henry as I erred on earlier.

To be even more clear, the top fort was built by the British after they shelled the imposing Fort Mackinac in 1812, and they called it Fort George. It was renamed Fort Holmes in honor of the Major who led the ill-fated attack against the British in 1813.

Sorry to carry on like that, but I'm waiting for an email before bed. One last check...

25. Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science by Peter Adkins
This is a fine attempt to make some advanced ideas accessible to the layman, but I think it comes up a bit short of that goal. The discussions on some seminal ideas are a bit complex, but not unreasonably so. The writing is light-hearted, with some jokes and puns slapped in here and there, in a typical British fashion. There are particularly interesting discussions of Einsteinian spacetime, matter at the atomic and subatomic levels and a good overview of genetics, but the chapter on mathematics was a bit over the top. It tried to show the difficulty of formulating a logic system from a few basic axioms, or assumptions, a la Euclid's Planar Geometry, but it just serves up a confusing mish mash of set theory summaries that do more harm than good. I still enjoyed reading it, and it would make a fine choice for a bookshelf spot near you, as long as you are interested and moderately well versed in the sciences.

Nice review!

Thanks. I'm starting a couple of books on geology. The first is about conservation versus mining issues, it is assigned reading for Environmental Geology that I'm taking in the winter semester. The other is a biography.history of James Hutton of Edinborough, the grandfather of geology as a science. He put forth some basic principles in the 1700's, newer layers are deposited on older layers in horizontal lines, interpreting unconformities (when a layer of rock ceases from a formative period into an erosional period, then has new layers of sediments piled anew on top, sometimes the lower layer is tilted, making it more obvious), molten intrusions into older rock layers, etc. It seems basic now, but it revolutionized the science of its day, when the prevailing theory was that all rocks were laid down during the biblical flood. He is more widely remembered, in the small circle that cares to remember such things, for opening the window on what we now call geologic time, when he showed that the Earth was millions of years old at least, as opposed to the Biblically based guess of 4004 BC added up by Bishop Ussher from the genealogy of Noah in Deuteronomy or whichever is loaded with those things. Another recommendation from Dr. Clarey.

I finished my first semester back in school Monday, wrapping up my A in statistics, putting a nice little bow on my first ever all A semester. It is a bit embarrassing considering how easy it was.

Hutton's Unconformity, Siccar Point, East Scotland. Note the different tilts in the layered sandstone, each representing a widely separated time during which the old rock layers were twisted around and partially covered with new layers, which are then tilted themselves.

40: The Man Who Found Time, perhaps? I have it in my (too large to be practical) TBR pile.
Congrats on the all A semester!

Indeed it is, and thanks for the congratulations. In a related genius move, I have the same professors for the fall. Mrs. French for History of Michigan and Dr. Clarey for Dinosaurs, Geology of MI and two field trips.

My 'TBR' pile is about half of my roomful of books, but the 'official' pile is the stack on my gargoyle table.

By the way, qebo, you get a tech point for that identification.

Congrats from me, too, on your wonderful semester. And I look forward to hearing about the upcoming one.

Where are your field trips going? That seems to be a big plus to studying geology.

Field trips to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on Lake Superior and the Canadian side of Whitefish Bay (E. Lake Superior) to explore the pre-Cambrian volcanic rocks that are among the oldest rock structures in the world. It is part of the Canadian Shield, each of the continents has a billions of years old shield at its center. The North American shield is from Lake Superior north up to and surrounding Hudson Bay. There are sandstones older than oxygen breathing life on earth, which means that the rocks that the sand was weathered from are much older than that. If you get bored some afternoon, the area on Whitefish Bay (NE corner)looks like a rumpled bedsheet on Google Earth. Going to see this sort of stuff is a huge help in learning it. When you see a 70 foot high bank of Ellsworth shale in a quarry, it becomes alot easier to remember that the Antrim shale (and all of it's natural gas) is right under it.

Thanks for the congratulations as well. We'll see how that GPA hangs around when I get to the university level and start into some advanced stuff like Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology, where you learn rock identification at a microscopic level, as opposed to going over 8th grade Earth Science in review. I must have gotten one heck of an education at Bullock Creek High School. We still get looked down upon in Midland proper, but there are so many cornfield dummies out this way from town that it makes it hard for those of us who actually do well academically. In fact, the only people I know who do fiendishly hard crossword puzzles are all Creekers.

Google Images-Pictured Rocks
Google Images-Canadian Shield

The photos were magnificent! I think Googe Earth is fascinating. When my daughter studied in Spain one summer, we were able to find where she was staying there and see her route to school (which involved a long walk and long bus ride).

26. Encounters with the Archdruid by John McPhee
So, this is apparently assigned reading for Environmental Geology. It is basically three conversations between David Brower, an early member of the Sierra Club and friend of Ansel Adams, and three 'opponents' who have more utilitarian views of nature. One is a mining expert and they walk through Yosemite National Park to view some valley before a copper mine is dug there (based on a claim from before the wilderness tag was placed on the park. The second is a visit between Brower and the developer of Hilton Head Island on nearby Cumberland Island, owned mostly by the Carnegie family, and the final (and best) is Brower and the Commissioner of Reclamation arguing about the pro's and con's of dam building.

As literature, it isn't particularly gripping, but as a discussion, it does a fine job of pointing out arguments on both sides of the conservation fence, how nature people can be pig headed and unwilling to reason when it comes to protecting wilderness at times, and those who 'abuse' the wilderness have the best interests of humanity in mind (as long as it is making money). The point of it is to show how taking strict one-sided views on a complex issue (and extending that idea to ANY issue) is usually a bad thing which leads only to arguing, even among friends. I would rank it as so-so for casual reading.

Google Earth is pretty cool. I particularly like to trace the paths of rivers to see where they start and what is along them.

27. The Man Who Found Time by Jack Repcheck
This is a fine book about not only James Hutton, but the Scottish Enlightenment of the Late 18th century as well. Most people have never heard of such a social movement, but the University of Edinborough put forth a long list of major figures, like David Hume and Adam Smith, to name a few more widely known figures. Hutton is remembered for codifying some of the fundamental principles of geology (see #40 above), and should be remembered as a revolutionary figure in science in the same breath as Galileo, Newton and Darwin. It is clear and takes the time to explain any technical terms that come up. One of those cross-platform (so to speak) histories, like The Calculus Wars, which covers an array of levels of history in an effort to highlight a particular stratum.

Hutton was the first 'scientist' to challenge the accepted Biblical age of the earth and his theories were highly controversial in his time. Add that to the fact that his book was rushed to completion while he was literally dying of kidney failure, which compromised its quality, and that it was published in London during the American Revolution, it was basically ignored by the general population. A few esteemed professors throughout Europe fought against it bitterly, having their own competing theories that pounded the round peg of fact into the square hole of Biblical chronology. The winner of the two views was Hutton's, which has been supported over and over again by many avenues of experiments and observation. A view that all rocks were created either at the Creation with a capitol C or precipitated into their current form by Noah's Flood, and any evidence to the contrary had been deemed heretical until Hutton's ideas were accepted.

I added that to my wishlist.

I can't recall. What classes are you taking this semester?

History of Michigan, Geology of Michigan and a Dinosaur class (also Geology), plus the two field trips to the UP. Should be fun. I haven't seen the Mackinac bridge in over twenty years and then three times in a couple month span.

That book is interesting on several levels and also both short and new. Your local library probably will have it, and I'd bet it is on the shelf. Geology just isn't a high demand book classification. By the way, your Wishlist must be getting pretty long by now...

Yes, I am afraid that soon my wishlist will pass my library. However, I have not entered all of my library yet. I was planning a big summer project for my daughter, but work got in the way. Plus, I think she was more interested in reading for a change. She doesn't get to read much during school. However, this semester she has signed up for an English class on zombies, which should involve lots of fun reading. I don't like zombies myself, but her first book was Frankenstein, which I thought was a terrific read (and not really a zombie book). Plus she gets to watch zombie movies. So far she saw Night of the Living Dead and agreed with me that it had a terrible ending.

Wow. The class choices at a nice university sure are diverse. I am assuming you are referring to your daughter at Rice? There's some online pages I've found about classes on Tolkien, it must really be nice to go to a big school, or at least one that has the funds and incentive to offer classes like that for interested students. My community college (hereafter referred to by name, Delta) is a very meat-and-potatoes school, but they do offer some good specialized classes. Nothing like they used to, though. They had a Civil War history ages ago, at a HST 267 or so rating. The teacher was a very obnoxious she-wolf who was very specific about using Union terminology. Automatic markdown for using a name like Manassas or Anteitam (Antietam?).

The textbook for Geology of Michigan is apparently highly thought of. I read a few reviews online and one was by a soil engineer who bought it for reference and said he wished that textbooks were that good when he was in college. The problem is that some wires got crossed when Dr. Clarey added the class over the summer and the school store won't have it for a few weeks, with a claimed price twenty bucks lower than I could find it on Abebooks or whatnot.

Oh yeah. My cousin goes to Bowling Green in Ohio and they have a Zombie Week on campus where the students stage a mock combat between the 'Zombies' and 'Humans'. Not something I'd want to bother with. I wouldn't mind learning where all the fascination with zombies stems from in literature. There has to be more to it than the greatness of Frankenstein. Not my cup of tea, though, but I'm mostly tainted by the spate of ridiculous video games like Resident Evil, etc.

I had a bad moment over the weekend that was hard to watch. I took my nephew out for a round of disc golf on my birthday and he got mauled by hornets while sitting on an old log behind a teepad. They were up his shirt and pantlegs and I got a few stings ripping a handful of them out of his hair. Not a good time. __He's totally fine__ and the mosquito bite on his shin is the only mark left other than a light bruise around his eye that I might have gave him frantically swatting the hornets off him.

(Added Frankenstein to my wishlist...)

I am so sorry to hear about your nephew's brush with hornets. I can't stand them at all. One day my husband ran across a nest of yellow jackets going up an outside staircase for work, and I thought the swelling in his arm would never go down.

I was pretty surprised by the zombie class, too. It sounds like fun. It doesn't count for her degree at all, though. Dracula is also quite a nice read. But they are not going to read that. They are going to see movie clips from Frankenstein and Dracula. I guess for an alternative version of undead. Their next book is World War Z, which she already happened to have.

She is at Rice and in the MOB. I asked if she was going to travel to the UT game (which is only on The Longhorn Network, which I do not get!!!), and she said that she might. I told her that Rice could win because UT is playing Gilbert at QB. Why did they not ask my opinion on that? Now she will probably want to go for sure (although ordinarily she would root for UT). And to top it off, OU is number 1. I have very ambivalent feelings about this upcoming football season.

I have always wanted to visit the Bowling Green campus because I thought it was such a great name for a school. Seems to me that their school colors do not include green, which kind of surprised me. For some reason, I am thinking orange. But I am probably wrong.

My daughter and I were discussing Night of the Living Dead some more. She thought it was totally ahead of its time for such an old movie. I did not really think of it as so old, but maybe it is from the 60s? It was kind of ahead of its time. Really scary. I have only managed to watch it a couple of times, but parts of it are vividly in my memory. I haven't seen any of the Resident Evil movies, but I know that lots of people like them.

I hope that you get your textbook soon. It is different now. Seems like college bookstores don't do as good a job of keeping the books in stock because of amazon. Now if you need a tshirt . . .

Are you watching the OU-Tulsa game on FX? It is a pretty big deal in my neck of the woods.

I'll watch the Tulsa game. I try to peek in on as many schools as I can. Texas is probably in big trouble at a national level, just from the coaching turnover alone. But Michigan has a whole new staff and I think they will be vastly improved. Weird. Texas didn't bring in the Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator like the Wolverines did, though. Heads will roll again in Ann Arbor. Now two of the most hated football people in Michigan history have big TV jobs. Matt Millen does Big 10 games for ABC and RichRod is at CBS. They shouldn't be allowed across the border.

Bowling Green is definitely not green. Their colors are Cleveland Browns orange with white, and a brown falcon thingee on their helmets. I'm told it is a nice campus, but I stay out of Ohio at all costs.

billiejean - Night of the Living Dead was released in 1968, so for her, it's an old movie! It was indeed ahead of it's time. I got American Zombie Gothic as a ER book a few months ago. It had a pretty good discussion of Romero's work. I can also send you paper on zombie epidemiology I came across on the 'net last year some time. It's a fun discussion of models of contagion using a zombie invasion as the context.

#56> Thanks so much for the info and the book title. I am going to see if I can get it. I am planning an amazon order soon. My daughter just loves zombie books!

#55> My husband was just saying we should try to go to the UT-Rice game since our daughter will be there in the band. But we have no tickets and right now he is working around the clock. By gameday, I don't think we will be able to make the drive and stay up for the game and drive back. It is so much fun to be at a game in person, though. We are hoping to watch it online somehow. And I am still hoping Directv will come through. I am glad that Michigan is looking at a good year. Looks like OSU might have a rough one. And Miami. I wonder how Nebraska will do?

Nebraska should do pretty well but who really knows at this point in time. Just too many new players. There are a several teams at about the same level, plus their first game is against Wisconsin, who have the exact same colors. That will be weird.

Wisconsin has been a pretty good team lately.

Wisconsin crushed UNLV. Now I hear that A&M is going to the SEC and UT, Tech, OU, and OSU are back to going to Pac. I miss the old SWC. Every day I check for the Longhorn Network with no luck. At least the US Open is on. I am worried that Thanksgiving will never be the same again. My entire life Thanksgiving has meant turkey and UT-A&M football.

Oh, and Florida is ranked with our old coach, and we are unranked. I don't think either team deserves to be ranked really, but I wish that we were both ranked. Can you tell that I am anxious about the season?

Obviously, I am posting too much! Sorry. Looks like we are driving to Austin to try to get tickets to the game. Our older daughter lives in Austin with her new husband, and our baby is playing in the MOB at the game. Wish us luck. If we drive all that way and lose to Rice, it is going to be a long, long drive home.

Maybe A&M/UT will still play. I like the tradition of college football, but sometimes money makes things change. What can you do? At least your thanksgiving football tradition isn't watching the Detroit Lions get creamed.

You should go see that game. If you don't, you know you will regret it someday, no matter the score.

I don't think ANY team deserves to be ranked until early October or so.

Why do I always forget a point? We're getting a taste of your Tulsa heat, almost 100° totally out of the blue. It has been between 75 and 85 for several weeks. Back to low 80s on sunday and mid 60s by mid week, so they say.

Wow. The Tigers layed a lickin' on the White Sox on Sunday Night Baseball for everyone to see. When the score was 18-0 it was the most lopsided game in the history of ESPN's Sunday night baseball, which goes back over 20 years now. Sadly, the bus of reserves from Toledo showed up towards the end of the game and the White Sox scraped out a few runs. It ended at 18-2 or 3. Still, Chicago left in tears for their ride to Minneapolis to play a doubleheader.

These lightning delays have to stop in football. The West Virginia game was delayed 4 hours and called in the 4th, Michigan's game was called in the 3rd, Eastern Michigan was delayed until Sunday, Notre Dame didn't finish their loss until 7 hours after kickoff. I'm all for safety, but this seems a bit much. Michigan looked outstanding, granted against Western Mich, but their touted QB had his whole season ruined by getting walloped repeatedly. He blew a gasket on his linemen who had no chance at all to block the Wolverines pass rush. After things settled in, it honestly looked like the Ravens defense with a delightful blend of physical dominance, blitzing through gaps, and outright trickery. Finally! That RichRod farce of a defense is gone. So is most of his basketball offense. Hark! is that a fullback? It is!

We did go to the game and it was a lot of fun. The team was kind of a mixed bag with the best plays by Freshmen -- no surprise there! We were also surprised to see a fullback in a few plays in our game and a tight end. Definitely a move in the right direction. We arrived at the game at the same time as the Rice band, which was nice. So we got to spend a little bit of time with our daughter. Overall though, I thought we played lackluster football. I hope that we see improvement. Sounds like Michigan is rebounding better than we are.

I am sorry that you have had some of our hot, hot weather. I guess today we got some of your really nice weather. Lows in the 60s and highs in the 80s. It was a glorious day.

On a happy note, the Longhorn fans all around us really enjoyed the Rice band.

It was hot for one day is all. The seasons are a-stirring the air all over. I'd bet that was a fun game to go to, and it reminds me of an old country lyric. "If you're gonna play in Texas, you've got to have a fiddle in the band." Doesn't your daughter play fiddle in what has to be the second best band in the college realm (after UM)? I'm also curious to see if you can delve into the archives of AM country radio and name that band...

In honor of your ever expanding wishlist, I added another to mine, from the Early Reviewers list - And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life. What's not to like about a biography of a master writer?

Yes, she does! And it took it's toll with two E-strings snapped and even her bow broken. She is not playing her best violin (that one can't take the abuse), but still! :) Believe it or not, Rice has field violins, but she prefers her own.

Was it Charlie Daniel's Band?

We are having the best weather ever. I am loving it.

Nope, it's Alabama. If I had a violin, I'd prefer my own too, unless I was playing in the rain or some other bad-for-wood situation.

Just felt like saying that Michigan had no business being in that game to win it like they did. That was a great couple of series on offense at the end but they should have been down by more, both by Notre Dame scoring more and by Denard Robinson being a pretty poor passer as far as accuracy goes. Several of his completions should have been picked off. I don't like that guy as a QB very much. He is great at backyard shenanigans but does poorly in a structured setting where he has a specific task to read through. And the intentional underthrowing puts his receivers in tough spots that they won't always make the plays in.

I only saw the very end of the game, and it reminded me of a game between our high school and big rival long years ago. It was for the State Championship and my girls were both little. The temperatures were unbelievably cold. So with almost no time left, we decided to go home. There were three scores in the last minute or so of that game. Needless to say, we could hear lots of cheering after leaving! I really could not believe all the scoring that took place in the last two minutes of the ND-Michigan game. It was something to see!

It was probably the most exciting game I've seen, but they still had no business being in a position to win like that. ND really made some horrible unforced errors, to use a tennis term.

The Tigers clinched their division last night, their first outright division win since 1987 and their first ever AL Central title. I was happy to see that Mingey was smart enough to not only wear swim goggles but a snorkel as well. Nobody likes an eyeful of champagne, no matter how dominant the season has been. We're probably the only group of fans that call Brandon Inge Mingey, though.

Skipping past the football... I finished The Man Who Found Time last week. A useful book, though I wished for more illustrations.

Congrats to the Tigers!

The soap opera of the demise of the Big 12 continues. Did you see the OU-FSU game? Looked like lots of powerful hits going on. They are definitely playing on a whole other level than UT -- although we did win three in a row. Maybe we will be bowl eligible. :) Now if we can just beat Iowa State this year . . . they did beat Iowa, and could be a tough opponent again for us.

Did you see that the OSU-Tulsa game started after midnight due to a big lightning storm here and finished after 3 AM? They should have just canceled until Sunday. No way would I have stayed to watch it. Or even have watched it on tv.

This delay business is for the birds. The Texas Tech vs New Mexico game was delayed for three hours and it never rained at the stadium as far as I know. Starting after midnight is beyond silly. It won't be long before there are four regional major conferences, which according to rumor may split from the NCAA. Imagine the ramificussions of that.

I did see much of the OU game. That was two pretty good teams butting heads, which is a penalty anymore. The Atlanta Philly NFL game last night was ridiculous. There was a perfectly clean shoulder to chest hit that was called for a foul, and the Eagles got away with so many penalties it was ridiculous. Whenever they were called for a bush league hit the refs would find an offsetting penalty against the Falcons. Cris Collinsworth even went so far as to say that the days of the big hit are over in the NFL. But he was a pansy WR for the Bengals so that sounds like something he would say. I'm on the verge of not wasting my time watching a three plus hour game with twenty minutes of actual action, especially when you can argue that the league is doing everything they can to ensure that the 'sexy' teams win games and go to the playoffs at the expense of teams like Atlanta, who are just as good as the Eagles but aren't overloaded with other teams' pro bowlers. The NFL is more concerned with neutral fan TV ratings than fair play. Atlanta made a nice comeback and won, by the way.

Anyway, to qebo...
That book on James Hutton definitely could have used some color plates to show the ideas it described, like Siccar Point in #40 above, or some photos of Edinborough to show it's unique geology, let alone diagrams of concepts like an unconformity between rock layers. Still, it was quite good. There are books out there on the Scottish Enlightenment based around the University of Edinborough, but they focus more on Adam Smith and other more well known figures in more well known areas of science.

Time for an overdue update. I've been dealing with an inner ear problem which is screwing with my balance and hearing, but the biggest problem has been the crushing fatigue. Very little reading and a struggle to keep ahead with my college work, especially after picking up an independent study credit reviewing calculus in preparation for differential equations. Now I'm getting the cold my nephew had last weekend which he picked up at school. If I get head lice in my beard, some little kid's parents are going to pay dearly. So, with all that plus two history of Michigan papers and two Thursday night through Sunday night field trips I have read very little with the exception of...

28. Building Blocks of the Universe by Isaac Asimov
As literature goes, not the pinnacle of science writing, but this is a perfect introduction to basic chemistry of the elements. It is written with a difficulty level of something a smart middle schooler could figure out, but yet anyone can get a good deal of use out of it. Asimov goes through each and every element, not necessarily in order, and in the classic 'families' that make the Periodic Table such a great fundament of science. He explains the makeup and uses of simple compounds and why the families even exist (It's the outer electrons), basic definitions like Alkaline and Halogens, and describes many of these compounds in surprising detail, considering that many of them only get a paragraph or two. Not particularly dated, and has a few references to things that 'will be' that are in current use, like the exploitation of Titanium.

The field trips to the Canadian Shield and also to Pictured Rocks National Park were enlightening and amazing. The rocks of the Shield are among the oldest rocks in the world. Each continent has a 'shield' that makes up its oldest core area, with the rest of the continent smushed on at a later time through accretion of offshore volcanics or simply adding volcanic rock directly. Anyway, there are some amazing places to study like the Devil's Trail and the Agawa Petroglyphs north of Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario, as well as a few fascinating roadside stops, like Ripple Rock (A very old sandstone with a record of ripples, oddly at right angles to each other which is rare.) Google Image search them.

Pictures Rocks is more picturesque, ironically. In a geologic nutshell, the Canadian Shield rocks were broken and overlain in places with basaltic lava during a the Mid-Continent Rifting of about 1 billion years ago (see message 1), while the Pictured Rocks are made from sandstones created by the sediments washing into the Rift. The Painted part of the name comes from several cliff faces where minerals are leaching out and staining the rock faces in several different colors, reddish iron streaks, green copper, etc. These are best seen on a boat tour, which we had to pass on because of rough seas and high wind. Chapel Rock, however, was well worth the three plus mile hike each way to see. I consider it to have all of the majesty and mystique of the Grand Canyon scaled down to a manageable size. It is made of extremely thin sandstone layers less than a half inch thick.

From lake level...


From the top. This was pretty shocking as it is perfectly situated so that you turn around a blind corner and almost stumble over the ledge...


The thinly bedded sandstone, the red thing is a Bic lighter, in case it isn't clear scaled down a bit...


Now, The Shield. Chippewa Falls, maybe a half hour north of SSM, Ontario. Billion year old black basalt lava, like in Hawaii, overlying two billion year old granite, the sort of stuff that was fractured, intruded and overlain by the later rift...

Nice photos! Good luck with differential equations! I always wanted to learn that. And seems like I noticed that the Tigers are having a good year.

The Tigers had a decent year and then went on a nearly unprecedented tear, slaughtering their division in August and September, which they won by 15 games. Ironically, that was about how far over .500 they were, meaning they were about even against the rest of the league. Basically, their team is set up for Leyland-ball, meaning a roster of players who don't mind never playing small ball and don't care about not knowing where they will play each day, or where they will be in the lineup. All that matters is ripping a ball when you get to hit, no trying to bloop one over the infield. The roster is good enough to dominate any game, but that style is prone to stalling out, like last night against the Rangers. The only pressure they put on defenses is that a ball will be smashed, they rarely bunt, steal or hit-and-run to make things hard for an opposing defense. Can't take the chance of giving up an out, apparently.

I am still nursing my wounds from the OU game. OU is playing on quite a high level this year. I am just hoping my beloved Longhorns will be bowl eligible this year. On a happy note, the Rice Owls won making my daughter ecstatic! They are having a pretty good year. She said that it rained early in the game, so she had to play "air violin" in the pre-game to protect the wood. But the sun came out in time for halftime. Still no Longhorn Network for me, and I am not a happy camper about that. I guess I will miss the Kansas game. I kind of like that we play all the teams in the conference this year. That was one thing I really liked about the Southwest conference.

What little I saw of the OU game looked like quite the thrashing. And the divisional play in the big conferences has that same sort of feel to it, playing the same teams year after year. I'm anxious to see what the conference setups are going to be after about five years. TCU is abandoning the Big East before even playing a game to join the Big 12, which they should have done in the first place, and A&M is off to the expanding SEC, which will need to add another team at least, if not three (UAB, Memphis, another Texas team like SMU or Rice, Troy, Southern Miss, USF? There are lots of smaller programs in the Conference USA to pillage from.) By the time this all settles out I'll be able to afford a new video game system and the newest NCAA Football title, with all of the crazy realigned conferences!

I should post some interesting data from my dinosaur class over the next few days. Some neat stuff....

Lots of radio said that OU wanted to win big because of the Boise State embarrassment. Plus, they fell from #1 to #3 for no apparent reason in one of the polls. But lets face it, they were lots, lots better!

Honestly, I don't care all that much about the ranking system anymore. Actually, the bowl games are fairly meaningless moneymaking ventures that ought to be replaced by a short playoff series between eight teams, which would be the eight conference champions. No rankings needed. All they do is create conversation points and sell newspapers, assuming people still read newspapers for the sports, which was their original intended purpose. Ahem...

As to some dinosaur data that someone might find interesting, there is a scientific definition that must be fulfilled to technically be considered a dinosaur species. They must belong to a specific class of the reptile family, obviously now extinct (Living in the Mesozoic Era, or the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods covering 225-65 Million years ago or so), which has an upright hip structure more like a horse or dog, and not some sort of crocodilian sprawling posture, or push-up posture like this.



It also must be a land dwelling creature, so coincidental reptiles like a plesiosaur or pterodactyl are not dinosaurs, just distantly related reptiles from an assumed common ancestor. Also, the Dimetrodon, which is included in every box of dinosaur toys is in reality a Permian reptile that is actually considered to be an ancestor of mammals. The Permian was the period before the Mesozoic Era of the dinosaurs, and ended with a mass extinction of some kind, one of the largest ever, called the P-T Boundary for Permian-Triassic. The geologic subsets of vast spans of time like these are primarily based on these sorts of extinctions and typically coincide with global changes in the rock structures that the fossils are found in. There is also an assumption of a moderately representative fossil record, which is a pretty broad assumption.

Dimetrodon


There is much debate over the purported ancestry of birds, which has pros and cons both ways, so we might never know for sure, given the incomplete data to work with. Also hotly debated in certain circles is whether they were cold blooded like reptiles today or warm blooded like mammals. Again, there is some evidence pointing in both directions, like the way blood is thought to have flowed through the bones and the fact that there are no large cold blooded creatures around today. Everything of decent size with cold blood either lives in warm swampy or tropical areas or is quite small. Discounting the crocodiles and certain critters like Komodo Dragons, everything bigger than a dog is warm blooded today.

Also, the theory of a comet or asteroid being the prime suspect in the extinction of the dinosaurs around 65 million years ago is questionable. Not that it didn't happen, because there is plenty of evidence for it, but that an event like that would have first disrupted ecosystems on the scale of frogs and clams in sensitive water environments, based on increases of acid rain and changes in pH of ponds and runoff streams, which is definitively not shown in the fossil record. There are no breaks in the species of things like frogs, clams and snails at 65 Ma, and there is fair evidence that dinosaurs carried on for several million years into the Tertiary, after the supposed Cretaceous extinction, or K-T Boundary (German initials). Something happened, but for the most part only larger land animals were affected. One plausible theory is that all of the extinction boundaries occurred at periods of low sea level, allowing migration between the continents and spreading diseases, over land bridges of one sort or another. Remember that the continents were closely aligned over this span of time. Tricky plate tectonics throwing a monkey wrench into picturing a mental map of the situation.

Last thing, the periods are named for specific reasons. The Triassic is so called because it was marked by three distinct layers of rock in Germany, named in 1834, the Jurassic is named after the Jura Mountains, an extension of the Swiss Alps into southern France where the rocks of that time were first recognized, and the Cretaceous is named for the extensive chalk deposits lain down at this time in the Lowlands of Europe and into southern England, as in the Cliffs of Dover. Creta is Latin (and French) for chalk, and is also the origin of the name of Crete. Chalk is a soft rock made entirely of microfossil plankton thingees that look like this.

The pictures in #76 are wonderful! I especially like the 2nd!

Oh, the chalk is cool! I did not know this.

My professor, Dr. Clarey, likes to joke that he and a colleague chained themselves to the chalkboards in the Geology Lab when the school replaced them with dry erase boards to prevent dust from fouling the new electronic projector systems, all in the name of geology and microfossils. The lab and a few rooms in the overflow section that are rarely used are the only chalkboards left.

I should have added a picture illustrating the upright posture...

Did you ever see the Far Side cartoon about the real reason dinosaurs became extinct?

Right!

Boy do I miss that comic! The only classic left is the Lockhorns. Hagar the Horrible can be funny once in a while, but comic strips in general seem to be a dying art.

29. Michigan Rocks & Minerals: A Field Guide to the Great Lake State by Dan and Bob Lynch
Another book read that isn't particularly literature. This one, however, is an excellent field guide, with clear pictures of what particularly fine samples look like. The wide majority are only found in the western UP where there is a long history of volcanics, which brings all sorts of fairly rare or at least unusual minerals to the surface. There is one particular vein of granite that has imbedded greenish topaz. It is very specific and singular apparently. There is even a page on 'Junk', which is man made artifacts rolled around on beaches. I wouldn't mind finding a balled up glob of what was once a beer can. There is a bit of humor here and there with lines like, 'Most rock collectors actually would like a lump of coal for Christmas.' There are several pages of different types of agates and pictures of extremely rare crystals like Kinoite, which are only found in two places in the entire world, the tip of the Keweenaw and in Arizona, both in copper mining areas. It is made of tiny crystals less than a millimeter in length. Arizona's look like this, (a museum quality specimen)



whereas Michigan's are typically a few isolated crystals imbedded in quartz or calcite. Literally a needle in a very large haystack. As opposed to most guidebooks, the photographs actually look like something you might find in the field, albeit particularly nice samples, as opposed to a museum or rock shop. There is also an introductory section with everything broken down into color. If it is red, try..., etc., with warnings of radioactive or lead/arsenic/asbestos bearing rocks. Also, the authors repeatedly explain terms each time they come up, like cleavage or tabular or striated. Should be handy, now to find out how comprehensive it is.

Happy Thanksgiving Ryan!!!

Thanks!. You too. It's the best time of the year...

Nice win for Michigan over tOSU. And let's not forget the big win by my beloved Texas Longhorns over the Texas A&M Aggies. I mourn the loss of this Thanksgiving tradition.

Hope your holidays were great!

The actual holiday part was nice, as always, with the exception that I have to wait until Friday. Sitting home alone on Thanksgiving Day is pretty lame, especially when the Lions get shafted like that. Their reputation as a dirty team preceeds them and they get called for cheap penalties as the opposition interferes and blocks them by grabbing helmets. Whatever. The days of physically dominant defenses are pretty much over in the NFL. Points and fantasy league touchdowns plus player safety overrules all of that nasty defense that I miss.

I did enjoy the last Texas Bowl. It is a shame that it's ending, but somebody on TV brought up the point that Jerry Jones might fork over some cash to buy the teams out of contracted games so they can play in Dallas, or Irving, or wherever he built that huge stadium.

UM escaped a shafting in that game. They scored a touchdown on a rollout run and got penalized for blocking after the play in the end zone. Two OSU guys were lining up Robinson and UM's tight end smeared both of them. That plus a holding took them from a winning touchdown to a dicey 43 yard field goal. Why that program has never had a good kicker is beyond me.

Anyway, I'm behind in reviews (can you tell I've been reading on the bus again?)...

30. Clark Griffith: The Old Fox of Washington Baseball by Ted Leavengood
This is an excellent book on old-time baseball, whether you are a Washintonian or not. Griffith had a big influence on the creation of the American League, and was a stalwart of old-school baseball into the 1950's. He was a tough yet smart pitcher who transitioned into a wily player/manager who would insert himself in to games in relief. His biggest impact on baseball as far as I can see is the early use of the bullpen to extend careers and close out games. In the old days described in this book, the relief pitcher was an almost embarassing afterthought, only used to mop up games. Most pitchers threw routine complete games, win or lose, sometimes both games of doubleheaders. An interesting note about how things never change, the Yankees were created to put an AL team in New York to compete with the dominant Giants of the early 1900's and Griffith was their first manager. He struggled for a few years until the cash was available to buy the best players, which is exactly what happened after he was fired. (They were actually named the Highlanders at the time.)

The detail of research is excellent. The book could have taken a bit more storytelling about the players, but the focus is on the Old Fox so I'll let that slide. There are a few very minor typos, like 'ant' for 'and' at one point, and 'Idaho, State League', but nobody's perfect, especially in this age of automatic spellchecking. The only bone I can pick at is that the author is recounting the transactions going into a season (1933) and Firpo Marberry is traded away, but on the next page he is still pitching on the staff with Walter Johnson. What's the deal with that?

Other than that, this is the best book on early baseball that I have read in quite a while. Clark Griffith is an interesting and worthy subject of this fine biography.
(For Early Reviewers)


31. Earth: An Intimate History by Richard Fortey
I can't recommend this highly enough as an introductory geology book. The writing is very clear and entertaining, being written almost like a travel guide as Fortey trots around the globe, using specific examples to illustrate general processes. The amount of science sneaks up on you, though, and you might not realize just how much geology you are actually learning. One of the other reviews mentions that the very early parts are a bit overwhelming. Fortey describes at length the different rocks around Naples, and Mt. Vesuvius, which kinds of drones on a bit. What he is doing though is showing how the local stone is used in building, how it blends into the scenery. My impression is that both he and the reader are preparing to dive into some cold water. After a few moments (or pages) it isn't all that bad in the end, and the swimming can begin in earnest. Outstanding science writing.

Hopefully I'm being neutral here as I'm a geology major, but this is a rare book that honeys up the science to make it seem pretty easy.


32. Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution by Richard Fortey
This reads similarly to Earth: An Intimate History, in that it has a storybook feel to a science book. There are certainly more jokes here. Fortey is a trilobite expert, and this shines through this book as he trots around like a kid in a candy store going on and on about his hobby. I mean profession.

He uses the myriad species of trilobites to sketch out a world long gone, where continents were in different places and orientations, the atmosphere was different, an alien Earth. But, Earth it is. We just call it the Cambrian, or Ordovician, or Silurian or Devonian Era. Each had their own different ecologies and endings. Hence the divisions. Trilobites were a key player in those ecologies and lasted longer than most other families of animals.

Not quite as general as his Earth, but the style is quite similar. Definitely read Earth first. If you like it, this one compliments it nicely, like icing on a cake.

Ooh, I have Trilobite! but I haven't read it. I read his Life some years ago.

And I think I have the Earth book!

Back to football penalties, I think they have gotten to the point of being so ambiguous that different refs call totally different games. For example, targeting. I can understand why the penalty is there, I just don't think that there is a clear definition of what it is. And how does one run forward with his head back? So that one needs further definition. I have seen it not called when it should and called when I couldn't see it at all.

Nice reviews!

To me the penalty issue just brings up the specrte of NBA style game fixing. Not that it is happening, but to my eye it seems that the teams that will get playoff tv ratings (Eagles, Packers, glory-boy teams with big stars) get beneficial calls way more. Also, the NFL now has representatives watching the game who can call the team trainers at will and demand that so-and-so be removed from the game and checked for concussion, which has to take place in the locker room by rule. The league 'Command Center' (their title, not mine) can call that guy and demand that he make a call also, so that brings the game fixing spectre up again as a possibility. 'Oooh, the Saints are losing to the lowly Buccaneers. Better get on the horn and demand that the Bucs linebacker be checked out..."

A good example was in the Saints Giants game Monday night. The Saints TE got waffled hard on a legal hit, but since it looked like they smashed helmets three flags flew in. After looking at it, their helmets never touched at all, just shoulder to chest. The ensuing touchdown wrapped the game up for the Saints. The poor guy literally got bent backwards. We thought he was dead, but he just popped right up and missed one play. Not a penalty at all. But the Packers can interfere all day with the Lions. That play where Suh was ejected and suspended he had one guy holding his leg and another guy with both hands on his helmet. First off, you can't chop block like that, second, Suh really wanted to cave in the refs skull with his helmet. That Packer player would not let go of Suh's helmet even after Suh had thrown off the guy on his legs and whipped Mr. Helmet Grabber to the ground.

I was taught to keep your head up when tackling for three reasons. One, so you can see what you are doing, two, preventing neck compression injuries which are bad, and three, preventing the crowning penalty. The problem is that it is hard to run into anything face first. Now it seems to be up to the ref's discretion when a hit is just too violent. Not illegal but just violent. So that is the crux of it and you are totally right BJ.

And you should read that book on Trilobites. It is better than The Man Who Found Time. Both are highly recommended.

I added it to my wishlist. But I bought so many books in Joplin, I guess I will have to hold off on that amazon order that I wanted to make.

33. Dinosaur Odyssey: Fossil Threads in the Web of Life by Scott Sampson

Another fine 'geology' book. Sampson is probably most famous as being Dr. Scott on the pretty good PBS Kids show 'Dinosaur Train'. He shows that he is a preeminent scholar of the dinosaur world with this book. It examines in detail not only the dinosaurs of the Mesozoic, but what we can piece together of the ecosystems in which they lived.

Successive chapters on the world of the Mesozoic begin with the Permian extinction of the assembly of Pangaea through the breakup and separation of the continents, each with their own compliment of species now branching off into separate rafts of evolution. After that are detailed chapters on ecosystems, both on the big dinosaur level and the theoretical plant life and microbes of the era, and examinations of how the dinosaurs interacted and changed over time and space.

Sampson does a great job of showing dinosaurs as a part of a system, using analogies of today's wilderness to extrapolate ideas of herd sizes and feeding ranges, as well as how a somewhat alien world changed vastly over that time. Probably not for everyone, but if you think you are ready to tackle it, then you are. The clarity of explanation will be all the guide you need. Also full of data for a fine research paper on the evolution of Pangaea. Thanks Dr. Scott!

99: Another one for the wishlist.

Good deal! I've been on quite the roll with well written and recommendable science books. Geology of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan probably ends the run. More in the textbook category but fun bus reading for a weirdo like me, the only member listing it in a user catalog/collection.

Merry Christmas Ryan!!! Hope you have a wonderful holiday!!!

Happy Holidays!

Thanks everyone. Best time of the year!!!

Happy Christmas to all!!!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Hope that you have many wonderful classes and books in the new year.

Hi DP!! Sending you Best Wishes and Happy Reading in the New Year!!!!!

Thanks. Shouldn't be a problem with the fun classes and books, either! Happy New Year to you all as well.

34. Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks by Ken Jennings
For an afterthought on my Christmas list this year, I got a dandy of a book. And yes, it is by that guy from jeopardy. I suppose that a more discriminating reader would consider it to be the ramblings of a mad genius, but I thought it was full of insight into a fading culture of people like me who love old maps, or maybe just paper maps. He does bring up the point that most mapheads excel at spatial relations puzzles, but mostly that they tend to be embarrassed about being a nerd of some kind. He also expresses his opinions on digital maps and how they are quickly rendering paper maps obsolete, and the subtle insinuation that a car GPS is little more than a talking map that always puts forward at the top as opposed to north. That sort of thing might be detrimental to direction sense, but possibly in a way similar to how our ancestors told time by the sun as opposed to a perfectly fine wristwatch. Anyway, maybe map lore is like dinosaur lore, something kids are interested until about 4th grade then they don't care anymore.

I've passed by Maphead several times now, and been tempted... Onto the wishlist it goes.

Looks like I made it through 34 books officially, not counting the textbooks that I read large chunks of. (Was that a dangling participle?) That's pretty low for me, but I'm comparing my total to pre-return-to-college years. I think a fine way to wrap up my thread would be to list my favorites of the year.

Ranked roughly in order---
Richard Fortey's books, Earth and Trilobite!
Alfred Bester's masterpiece, The Stars My Destination
Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos
Ted Leavengood's biography, Clark Griffith: The Old Fox of Washington Baseball
Ken Jennings' Maphead
AC Clarke's 2001
Henry Petrosky's The Book on the Bookshelf
Richard Feynman and Friends (auto)biography of anecdotes, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman

Also interesting--
Ted Nield's Supercontinent
Peter Adkins' Galileo's Finger

So, another arbitrary calendar year has passed, and the fateful year of 2012 is set to begin. I fail to believe in any of the end-times prophecy that swirls around this date. It is all based on Mayan mythology, but their unique calendar has a large part in it also. Basically, the Mayan calendar is a set of 'gears', one for a 360 day solar year, one for the 260 day short year and a 52 astronomical year gear. Start them on 1,1,1, spin them around interminably, one solar day at a time, until you get back to 1,1,1. How long does it take? 5200 years, starting on August 12 3112 BC, running until December 21, 2012. That's all. Obviously there is more to it than that, but as a nutshell version it ought to do.

YouTube Video of the gears in action

Looks like a great reading year to me. I am hoping to get the rest of the Foundation books soon. I have a gift card. Yea!

Hey, I need to set up my thread for the new year. There is a link right here.