Tuesday, September 7, 2021

Codex of 15th and 16th Century Mexican Earthquakes (Tlalollin)

 

"The written chronology in a 16th century codex was created by a pre-Hispanic civilization.

 It is one of the oldest-known records of an earthquake which occurred in Mexico in 1507

(see below).






pictogram showing an earthquake and warriors in a river









       The earthquake is represented by the symbol (to the middle, right) 

composed of four dotted yellow rectangles representing the layers of 

the earth) overlain by four helices (in blue and white) with a red eye 

at the center. The pictogram also describes one impact of the quake

--the drowning of 1,800 warriors in a river (bottom).

          A 50-page codex of colorful, complex pictograms that dates to the early 16th century includes the most complete (and one of the oldest ) written chronologies of early earthquakes in the Americas.

      The Telleriano-Remensis, which was created by an unknown pre-Hispanic civilization, describes twelve separate earthquakes that shook in what is now Mexico and central America from 1460 to 1542 researchers report in the August 25, 2021 issue of Seismological Research Letters.       The famous codex was written by specialists called tlacuilos, meaning “those who write painting” in the Nahuatl language spoken byAztecs and other pre-Hispanic civilizations in the area (Science News, March 13, 2020).

      Using other codices from the region, researchers had previously identified the combination of two pictographs that denotes an earthquake. One shows four helices around a central circle or eye, and stands for ollin, meaning “movement” in Nahuatl. The other pictograph shows one or more rectangular layers filled with dots, and means tlalli, or “earth.” For daytime earthquakes, the eye is open; for nighttime quakes, it’s closed.

pictograph showing a central eye followed by a plus sign and a pictograph showing a box with dots
In codices written by pre-Hispanic civilizations who spoke Nahuatl, such as the Aztecs, the combination of two symbols represents an earthquake, or tlalollin. One pictograph (left) shows four helices with a central eye and stands for ollin, or “movement.” The second (right) is a rectangular box filled with dots, often in layers, and represents tlalli, or “earth.”

      Seismologist Gerardo Suárez of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and social anthropologist Virginia García-Acosta of the Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology, both in Mexico City, pored over the Telleriano-RemensisThe researchers were looking for representations of quakes, comparing what they found to accounts of quakes in other pre-Hispanic codices and texts written later by Spanish friars.


     The Telleriano-Remensis uses a pictorial representation of a 52-year cycle to roughly date the quakes. Years are represented by these four signs:

tecpatl (knife), 

calli (house),

 tochtli (rabbit) 

and acatl (reed) 

which are arranged in thirteen permutations. Those images helped the researchers match some pictorial accounts of quakes, including one in 1507, to later descriptions of the events.

     Little more is recounted about the precise locations of these quakes or the damage they caused, although one image suggests that a quake triggered flooding that drowned several warriors. Other codices may contain more clues, the researchers say, which could help create a more complete chronology of the quakes that shook this part of the Americas."


Knife, house, rabbit, reed?

Codex Steph

110 comments:

  1. Shana Tova to you, hoping 5782 is better than 5781. Not quite as snappy as the Gregorian calendar.

    And congrats and thanks on the new post, which sometimes strikes close to home. I do note the formatting is a bit off in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. Title is fine, first paragraph okay, but the image is encased in a white rectangle that zips wayyyyy off to the right side, as does the paragraph " The earthquake is represented by the symbol (to the middle, right) composed ....)

    The text and images below all that seem to have a right margin only about half as wide as usual, small images and quick returns on the paragraph. Almost like that part was set for a phone app?

    But good and interesting info nonetheless.

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    1. Thanks, eco. I am in complete agreement about the new year.

      I wrote it on my phone so maybe the formatting is weird due to that. I'll play with it tonight.

      Interesting stuff. I am especially intrigued by night earthquakes and day earthquakes and why that would be so important.

      The Nahuatl language, pictographs, and earthquakes together? Yes please!

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    2. My knowledge of Pre-Columbian belief systems is woefully inadequate. But they were remarkable observers of the cosmos, and so my first guess is they considered day and night to be distinct realms. 30 seconds in Google shows some possibility in this, more research and greater understanding needed.

      Fun Facts:
      #1 - the peoples of this continent were unsurpassed as astronomical observers. Chaco Canyon (definitely on my bucket list) is not only laid out in accordance with solar cycles, there's a small spiral engraving in a cave that seems to note the position of the rise of the first full moon after winter solstice, and that the moon's location in the sky changes over an 18.5 year cycle.

      No other civilization is known to have documented this.

      #2 - those same Chaco folk had incredible trade links, stretching at least as far as Peru, and there is some rough going in between. And the people of Peru were apparently pretty retentive accountants for the trade they were doing, but their system of tied strings is a bit knotty to decipher for us European descendants.

      1491 is a great read, but I don't remember the author going into the religions and mythologies.

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    3. I made some changes while on my iPad. See if that helps a bit.

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    4. Yes, the Chaco folks were quite tuned in, weren't they?

      I wonder if anyone has researched whether modern-day (modern-night?) earthquakes occur more often in night or day?

      Excuse me while I DDG...

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    5. I'm not surprised by the lack of correlation, I think I looked into that before. I'm also not surprised that the ancients would have categorized them by some mythology; even today people in the Bay Area talk about "Earthquake Weather," is that different than "Day-Night?"

      The caption under the first image seems better, but the overall still isn't right. Here's a screenshot. Sorry for the low res, but my modem is still acting up. 2 weeks to fiber speed.

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  2. Completely unrelated: have you been following the Jeopardy! trouble (pun intended)? I stopped following the intrigue after Mike Richards tried to pull a Dick Cheney (tried to pull a ... there's some naughty double entendre).

    They're showing Tournament reruns right now, and Buzzy Cohen seems a pretty good host - he's appropriately deferential to the contestants (the show's about them, not him), he's polite and encouraging, he doesn't insert himself, and he is quick with responding they they are correct or not. Other guests, especially the celebrities, made it too much about them, and that slight delay between a contestant answering and the host affirming or negating rankled me just a bit - Alex always seemed to know instantly whether they'd gotten it right - probably could read the cues quickly.

    I've heard Cohen was criticized as a contestant, and it's hard to get past his "Where's Waldo" appearance, but he seems better than any of the other guest hosts I saw.

    What say you?

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    1. I like Buzzy too. He did keep things focused on the contestants. And he doesn't seem to have a lot of baggage.

      Ken Jennings has said inappropriate things about people in wheelchairs, among other things. He's a bit too smug for me.

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    2. Remarkable how many people display poor judgement in what they write for all to potentially see. Never post what you wouldn't want on the cover of the NY Times....

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  3. Sorry, I missed your comment about your timely new post.

    I guess it's not surprising that there's no day/night correlation with earthquakes, but how about tides? I can imagine the weight of all that water affecting plate motions.

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    1. Earthquake link to low tides: quite surprising!"

      There is also some earthquake occurrence link to high tides, but that link is weak.

      Very strange, this ball of earth...

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    2. And there is some research saying that high tides and earthquakes are more strongly correlated.

      Who knows? Maybe the movement at low tides gets things going and high tides continue that movement...

      Hoping it cann be tide together.

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    3. The old cause and effect riddle. I can imagine 3 possibilities, all likely wrong:

      1) Feeling bloated: As Jan noted above there is more weight at a high tide, but I wonder how great the effect is. Around here our most extreme tides happen in January (they call them King Tides) and April-May (not sure why) with a total differential of about 8 to 8.5'. Seawater weighs about 64#/ cf, so 500#/ sf total. The generally assumed bearing capacity of soil around here is #1500/ sf, so the ground generally doesn't collapse. But we don't build buildings over every square foot (yet), so we aren't maximizing loads.

      Could it be that those extreme tides cause earthquakes not so much by total weight, but rather the shift (push/ pull) of the extreme highs and lows. For you snow bunnies it might be like rocking your car to get out of a drift.

      The 1906 earthquake was centered under the Pacific Ocean, about 2 miles off the coast, and it was in early April, often a time of extreme tides. But the Loma Prieta epicenter was well inland, about 5 miles from the Monterey Bay, and happened in October, which isn't usually an extreme tide month. More research needed, is there a geologist in the house? [snark emoji here].

      #2. Push-me/ pull-you: Just as the moon and sun are pulling on the oceans, is that gravitational force also pulling on the plates below, causing movement and dislodging them ever so slightly?

      #3. Grease is the Word: My late geological friend Louise Kellogg wrote her Master's (or maybe Doctoral) Thesis on the effect of lubrication on the tectonic plates. I think good old water was her source for lubrication, do high tides move the underground water sufficiently to get into various joints?

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    4. So many great questions and topics for theses or dissertations. It's fun to speculate; solid research clearly needed.

      I was telling the kindergartners today that at field camp we geologists would make detailed, exquisite illustrated stratigraphic columns showing sandstone, limestone, mudstone, noted fossils, etc. The engineers' stratigraphic columns? A big chunk saying "ROCK." They thought that was very amusing.

      They built "earthquake-tolerant" buildings from marshmallows and toothpicks and placed them on brownies (Canada) and jello (Haiti). They enjoyed the experiment and cracked me up with some of their questions.

      <<< Here's some of their structures.

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    5. Structural link is broken?

      Funny you use marshmallows as a building block. In strawbale construction we talk about the multiple layers of safety.

      Western engineering requires stiffness to resist the seismic forces, and we typically use stucco on the strawbale walls, and perhaps some plywood on interior walls, to meet codes.

      But if there is an event that exceeds the capacity of those stiff elements the strawbales have enough ductility to absorb the energy, and the flexible wire mesh surround (used for stucco lath) provides the binding elements to keep them more or less in place.

      The result is an awful mess of stucco on the floor, but the building hasn't collapsed, and that's pretty good in a very strong earthquake.

      The Japanese believe in very flexible buildings, the connections in traditional wood framing allow for movement without separation of beams and columns, and it's really hard to get seriously injured when a rice paper wall falls on you.

      The story of why pagodas don't fall down is truly remarkable, but probably too much for kindergartners or most architects. I can probably find my copy and upload to Google Doc's if you're interested and can't get it through the link.

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    6. Interesting doc, eco. Thanks!

      On from building buildings with the kindergartners to ROY G BIV and chromatography today. We used water-based markers except for one permanent marker. When we talked about there being water as the liquid in most of the markers and alcohol being the liquid in the permanent marker one kindergartner loudly proclaimed "My mom likes to drink alcohol!"

      After a really long week where high school kids vandalized bathrooms in Denver (apparently a nationwide Tik Tok thing) we took our smiles where we could today...

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  4. Replies
    1. That's great! Now where may I get some marvelous sand?!

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  5. Another volcano stream to enjoy. This one in the Canary Islands, started erupting this afternoon.

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    1. Unfortunately this one is in a populated area, unlike the Icelandic volcano, and thousands have been evacuated.

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    2. Today's NY Times crossword is apropos.

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    3. I haven't done the NYT crossword since they charged extra even for subscribers.

      But here's another phenomenal website. Definitely only for nighttime viewing, and inconsistent.

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    4. Wow, thanks for both links, eco!

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    5. Wow, the beginning of that feed is especially spectacular.

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    6. After Loma Prieta there was a large influx of people going down to the Marina District staring and pointing at the people standing outside with their few belongings. Good times!

      There actually were T-shirt hawkers the next morning on Market Street, I remember one said "6.9 in '89". I wondered how their presses ran without electricity.

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    7. The volcano right now is a much more interesting flower than the NPR puzzle.....

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    8. jan, geez, that Tourism Minister!

      eco, and that flower is?

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    9. I think eco was playing on the two different meanings (and pronunciations) of "flower".

      I don't think silk screening t-shirts requires electricity, at least not for smallish runs.

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    10. Ah, I see. It's been a long week...and it's only Monday.

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    11. Jan is right on both counts - they may have been silk screening in the dark. Ah, American ingenuity, disaster at 5 pm and T-shirts the next morning before 9....

      And Jan also enjoys the cryptic, hence he instantly got my intended flower pun.

      Interesting that the volcano was pretty sleepy early this morning, just some white clouds puffing (a cardinal declaration?), but a bit later when I checked in it came on with abandon. At least I hope the folks whose houses were really close had abandoned.

      When it was daylight the camera was panning up and down the lava flow, and there's a weird guilty pleasure in seeing it come close to the houses, kind of like watching the car crashes at the race track.

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    12. I saw some lava flow into a swimming pool. Quite the flow-er! Still shaking my head over missing that one initially.

      And look! Actual Volcano Flowers

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    13. For some, the volcano is the least of their problems.

      Choosing miles of open ocean over hopping (or swimming around) the fences at Ceuta or Melilla seems crazy.

      Given the volcanic activity, I'm surprised that this study of renewable energy potential for the islands doesn't include much of a contribution from geothermal sources. At least they're not talking about coal mines in the Canaries....

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    14. jan, you're right! It does seem crazy. Geothermal study seems like a good idea.

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    15. And not even a hint of a groan at my "coal mines in the Canaries" line, which was the only reason I bothered looking for that renewable energy paper?

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    16. I did groan. Sorry, should have made it louder!

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    17. Speaking of which, this essay on geoengineering from a couple of days ago. I wrote to the author, "Before implementing either carbon removal or solar geoengineering, we have already begun to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by increasing our use of renewable resources, such as wind and solar," and asking "If we increase the reflectivity of the atmosphere, either by spraying sulfuric acid droplets up high or sea salt down low, won't we reduce the availability of the very wind and solar power to which we're trying to transition?"
      He wrote back, "Impact on solar PV is very small, of order less than 1%." Opinions?

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    18. I could not read the whole article as the paywall appeared. The author addressed solar in your question, but not wind. In any case <1 percent seems quite low; how does the author begin to assess this amount?

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    19. [I tried pasting the whole article, but Blogger rejects anything over 4096 characters.]

      Anyway, I think I'll have a better handle on this after I read Elizabeth Kolbert's new book, Under a White Sky, which I just put on reserve at my library.

      [Lest you think I'm always a book moocher, I actually paid for an author talk with Mary Roach on Tuesday.] [I admit, though, that I'm now reading a copy of her book from the library...]

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    20. OK, Boston Dynamics' robotic dogs and dancing androids are creepy, but I can appreciate Saildrone.

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    21. I sent WW a link to the article, NYT allows 10 free shares per month.

      I start with the belief that we can't possibly know the unintended consequences of geoengineering. Rocket science is child's play compared to planetary science, where physics, chemistry, biology, meteorology are all in play, and perhaps a few more. I remain skeptical that the solution to our technological problems lies in more technology. Fool me once...

      We certainly have evidence that sudden additions into the upper atmosphere will affect temperature, Tamobora proved that 200 years ago. While the sunsets are gorgeous, that cooling has been short lived. To succeed geoengineering would have to go on for as long as it takes the carbon removal process to be fully realized, and the long term impacts on biologic systems is unknown - we do know that there were adverse effects in the short run after Tambora and Krakatoa.

      As far as I know we've only had one period of extensive cooling that is not attributed to a volcano, and that was during the Black Death of the 14th Century. I'd have to look for the citation, but the belief is that the death of about 1/3 of Europe's population caused a dramatic reduction in agriculture, and the newly fallow fields (in a completely "natural" process) absorbed that carbon.

      It's worth noting that this plague was mostly a European and Western Asian phenomenon, but the impacts were global. I have friends who've suggested we need another plague/ population removal device, but I wonder whether we can achieve massive carbon reduction through less dramatic means.

      The author also fails to mention that most carbon is absorbed in the oceans, not on land. Vague memory is it's 2/3 or 3/4. Well beyond my knowledge, but geoengineering should really start with reducing oceanic acidification and restoring that vast ecosystem's ability to absorb carbon. While this "interrupts" current fossil fuel industries, and related ventures like synthetic fertilization, it is likely much cheaper, and certainly safer, than the alternates.

      Oh, and "Don't have a cow, man!" is a really simple, safe, and inexpensive piece of the solution. I take all my scientific advice from Bart Simpson, and haven't had a cow in almost 30 years.

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    22. Jsn,

      I agree about the weirdness and silliness of many robots and gizmos, but if those efforts improve the useful purposes it's something we should tolerate. The saildrome reminds me of the various futuristic probes of Star Trek and Star Wars, or even the webcams and drones that have been flying over and occasionally into these volcanoes. Much better than a "person"-ed mission.

      Of course they have their limitations, as we saw documented in "The Immunity Syndrome", a documentary as true as any episode of The Flintstones.

      PS I was very jealous of your "coal mines in the Canaries" line.

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    23. eco and jan, thanks for the links and your thoughts. I, too, wonder about the side effects of messing with our environment via solar geoengineering. Plus, when someone has skin in the game, even with great credentials, there's a potential issue about $$$.

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  6. I’m intrigued by Eco’s comments about an 18.5 year lunar cycle. And unique astronomical knowledge in the Americas.

    I wonder how the 18.5 year cycle relates to the Hebrew calendar’s 19 year cycle (adding 7 leap months every 19 years to ensure that Passover falls after the Vernal Equinox.).

    Similarly, ancient Egyptian astronomers knew the correlation between the rising/reappearance of Sirius and the annual Nile Flood, on which their agriculture relied. The same also ties in to the Hebrew calendar and Israel’s dry vs rainy seasons. It doesn't rain in Israel from ~Passover to Sukkot (Tabernacles). Our daily prayers recognize this. In the dry season, we praise G-d for bringing dew, in the rainy seasons, for bringing rain…..

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    1. Welcome, SuperZee! Glad to see you here. Lunar cycles are quite fascinating. Thoughts, eco especially?

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    2. One could call it lunacy.

      It's actually an 18.6 year cycle that measures the location of the moon's rise and setting location on the horizon, and it's related azimuth in the sky. It's a side feature of the 29.5 day lunar cycle, so probably not related to the Jewish calendar, nor the Islamic, Chinese, and Vietnamese (among others) religious calendars.

      Somewhat like the solar cycles of solstice and equinox, the change arises because the moon's orbit is at a 5° angle to the earth but the rotation is also affected by the sun's gravitational pull. Not sure I fully understand it, here's an explanation. Maybe Jan could visit UMass for us, probably easier to get to than Chaco.

      It's hard to imagine this having much of an effect on rain or meteorology, perhaps a small effect on tides? More research needed. Volunteers?

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    3. And that should be "its related azimuth in the sky..."

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  7. So, I finished Elizabeth Kolbert's "Under a White Sky", which is good and, in a way, surprisingly optimistic. It's sort of an update of John McPhee's "The Control of Nature", which she cites, and includes input from David Keith, who wrote the op-ed I linked to above. I'd say the gist is, we've been doing geoengineering for millennia (think agriculture), and while unintended consequences have been the rule, we have no choice but to try to get it right.

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    1. It's on my list. Glad to hear Kolbert is hopeful. I am looking forward to reading about the fish that lives only in a tiny pool in the Mojave, among other things.

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    2. Wow, only 35 pupfish existed at one point! What an ominous locale moniker.

      Species with such a limited range are fascinating, including the Great Sand Dunes tiger beetle. This beetle is relatively secure, though, since the entire range is within the national park.

      There are several ranges and basins in Nevada's basin and range that have species endemic to just one mountain range or one desert basin. Fascinating.

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  8. Here's a film production with a lot of shooting, but no one gets killed. Though this weekend camera #3 apparently died, still under investigation. If you are still able to go back to around 7:22:30 am local time (red clock in lower left corner) you can watch the star of the show have a partial collapse.

    Violence with a purpose.

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    1. As cool as the Iceland volcano was, and still is, it's a bit like watching water boil. This seems to have more sound and fury, and more of the "I am Oz" visual effects.

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    2. An evening walk is in order! Clear skies tonight but stormy weather predicted for Halloween.

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    3. Anyone here see the Northern Lights?

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    4. Too cloudy and too far south. Reports are it was good from Iceland, Scotland and Sweden, but they are much farther north than the lower 48.

      But we're apparently at the beginning of the 11 year increase in sunspots cycle, so maybe the future will bring some.

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  9. If you're looking for a quick, fun space thriller written by someone who really knows what he's talking about, you might want to try Chris Hadfield's The Apollo Murders. (I found only one serious technical error, but it was so central to the plot that I've got to assume he was just exercising artistic license. Let me know if you spot it.)

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  10. Here's a book recommendation for this group: Richard Powers' Pulitzer winner, The Overstory.

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    1. I haven't read it yet, but in some ways it seems similar to Daniel Quinn's Ishmael, now almost 30 years old.

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    2. Looking forward to reading his thoughts about trees in a larger and smaller context. Thanks for both book recommendations.

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  11. Thought this item from the latest Scout Report might be of interest:

    TROWELBLAZERS

    A wonderful compendium of information, TrowelBlazers was created by four women dedicated to "highlighting the contributions of women in the 'digging' sciences: archaeology, geology, and palaeontology, and to outreach activities aimed at encouraging participation, especially from under-represented minorities." The four creators - Brenna Hasset, Tori Herridge, Suzanne Pilaar Birch, and Rebecca Wragg Sykes - are based at educational institutions and museums in the U.S. and the U.K., and all have backgrounds and expertise in archeology and related fields. At the heart of the site are two main sections featuring blog posts and articles covering a variety of interviews, biographies, drawings, poetry, videos, and more. For instance, a recent blog post includes a beautifully crafted animation (or "TrowelToon") about Zheng Zhenxiang, who was the first female archaeologist in China. The animation was created by Genevieve Cheung and Sara Duckworth as part of the 2021 University College London TrowelBlazers Digital Fieldwork Project. (For those interested, more information about other students who participated and their projects can be found in a later post.) Another recent article provides a brief overview of the career of Gertrude Labib Nassim, who was an Egyptian geologist and one of the first women in Egypt to earn a science PhD. Her geological research in the 1940s and 1950s concerned desert nickel and oolithic hematite deposits. Interested readers can follow the project on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram (@trowelblazers on all three platforms).

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    1. Thanks, jan! I signed up for their Twitter updates.

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  12. Replies
    1. (Was "bizarre" an intended pun?)

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    2. Just read up on "strange and charmed" in the world of physics!

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    3. It is strange and I am not charmed.

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    4. Continuing the topic: Yesterday's Final Jeopardy was AWARDS: THE THEODORE ROOSEVELT ROUGH RIDER AWARD HONORS INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE FROM THIS STATE, INCLUDING WESTERN AUTHOR LOUIS L'AMOUR. Had to look it up on Wikipedia. Then I had to follow a citation link there to the award web site. There, I learned that two more people had been given the award since the Wikipedia page was last updated. So, I added them to the list of awardees on the Wikipedia page.

      I will occasionally complain that it's the 21st Century, and where is my jet pack. And my wife will remind me that I use Wikipedia much more than I would ever use a jet pack, and that when I was growing up, I could imagine having a jet pack, but I probably couldn't imagine having a device that fits in my pocket and gives me access to all the world's knowledge (not to mention video phone and movies on demand, showing my exact location and route to my destination, etc.). Well, I'd read Asimov's Foundation, but the Encyclopedia Galactica was solidly fictional. No longer. (And the Encyclopedia Galactica wouldn't let just anyone edit it!)

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    5. I only knew it was ND because a boyfriend was a big Louis L'Amour fan.

      Glad you updated Wikipedia. It is amazing to think we hold all that we do in our phones/other devices. Encyclopedia Galactica it is!

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    6. jan, any idea how quickly Wikipedia pulls down incorrect data? I imagine it depends on the topic.

      As to ND, my officemate, ND native Fellow Girl Geologist Gail, was fond of saying "No one who is not from ND goes to ND on purpose. Maybe for the Peace Garden? Nah."

      Apologies to any North Dakotans here.

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    7. Have you ever experimented to see?

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    8. I have not yet edited Wikipedia before but it seems the combination of Wiki overlords and millions of contributors keeps it fairly clean. Yeah for the greater good!

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  13. Glad I missed last Tuesday's Jeopardy final, I was giving a presentation to my non-profit board, and would never have gotten that answer.

    Meanwhile, in the large and strange, is this article about Jupiter. To my ear Ganymede sounds less like R2D2 and more like a dial-up modem from 1996.

    Let me know if you can't break through the paywall, I can send the article as a gift.

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    1. Thanks, eco. I really enjoyed the detailed, colorful images of Jupiter.

      Wasn't able to get the sound to work. I'll try again tomorrow on my laptop.

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    2. I just checked again and the sound worked fine on my laptop. After the loud sounds of the Audi advertisement, of course.

      You can also listen for free (no adverts) here. Some people don't know how to make a buck!

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    3. NASA also produced a surreal real video of the flyby. Ganymede is okay, but the Jupiter flyby is like a 4-d experience of Munch's scream (around 2 minutes in). An acid trip without the acid.

      Also cool are the apparently enormous lightning strikes (30 miles in diameter!?!?), very visible around 1:25, and continuing throughout.

      I muted the accompanying Vangelis music, too distracting. Best on full screen, I have a connected second monitor with a large screen that makes it even better. Otherwise lean very close to your screen.

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    4. Kubrick would be very jealous!

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    5. Thanks, eco. I enjoyed both experiences.

      Dial-up modem meets cicadas meets clown music meets dog whistle? Bruno perked up his ears when I played it.

      The flyby was also spectacular. I liked the accompanying music. At times, the surface of Jupiter looked like a Van Gogh painting.

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  14. Replies
    1. That article was behind a paywall. I'd enjoy having your gift link to read it.

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  15. Replies
    1. jan, thanks for your good wishes and support here at PEOTS.

      MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

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  16. I mentioned that I read Elizabeth Kolbert's "Under a White Sky" a couple months ago. A few weeks ago, I read Kim Stanley Robinson's, "The Ministry for the Future", which came out last year and was one of Barack Obama's favorite books of the year. Now, I'm in the middle of Neal Stephenson's "Termination Shock". I might be getting a little tired of reading about how shooting sulfur dioxide up into the stratosphere is going to save us, even it it is. I'm just waiting for the first pop star to name their kid "Pinatubo".

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    1. I tend to be skeptical of those who advocate that the solution to problems brought by our technology is to use more technology. Rocket science is child's play compared to planet science.

      One of my clients this past year was an "environmental group" of the ecomodernist ilk; they believe we can delink economic activity from environmental impacts. They also advocate for burning methane and expanding nuclear energy - though they have no proposals for what to do with the leftovers.

      Fortunately I was hired by the landlord, so had minimal communication with their somewhat frosty founder and executive director, who did not have the warm response one hoped when I was introduced as an architect with over 30 years of environmental activism.... Go figure.

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  17. Replies
    1. Did you find that on a listicle? "Top 10 January 5 Birthdays!!!"?

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    2. jan, I found it here: The Marginalia . I highly recommend her newsletter.

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    3. And I appreciate the referral of a list of lists on an article about lists...

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    4. Below is one of my favorite snippets by (the other) Eco, from his wonderful essay on America "Travels in Hyperreality." It helps enormously if you have had the good fortune to have visited or stayed in this Masterwork of American architecture, as I've had. Sorry it's long - as measured by blog postings, it's nothing as measured by how we read 20 years ago.

      "But Hearst's castle is not an unicum, not a rara avis: It fits into the California tourist landscape with perfect coherence, among the waxwork Last Suppers and Disneyland. And so we leave the castle and travel a few dozen miles, toward San Luis Obispo. Here, on the slopes of Mount San Luis, bought entirely by Mr. Madonna in order to build a series of motels of disarming pop vulgarity, stands the Madonna Inn.

      The poor words with which natural human speech is provided cannot suffice to describe the Madonna Inn. To convey its external appearance, divided into a series of constructions, which you reach by way of a filling station carved from Dolomitic rock, or through the restaurant, the bar, and the cafeteria, we can only venture some analogies. Let's say that Albert Speer, while leafing through a book on Gaudi, swallowed an overgenerous dose of LSD and began to build a nuptial catacomb for Liza Minnelli. But that doesn't give you an idea. Let's say Arcimboldi builds the Sagrada Familia for Dolly Parton. Or: Carmen Miranda designs a Tiffany locale for the Jolly Hotel chain. Or D'Annunzio's Vittoriale imagined by Bob Cratchit, Calvino's Invisible Cities described by Judith Krantz and executed by Leonor Fini for the plush doll industry, Chopin's Sonata in B flat minor sung by Perry Como in an arrangement by Liberace and accompanied by the Marine Band. No, that still isn't right. Let's try telling about the rest rooms. They are an immense underground cavern, something like Altamira and Luray, with Byzantine columns supporting plaster baroque cherubs. The basins are big imitation mother-of pearl shells, the urinal is a fireplace carved from the rock, but when the jet of urine (sorry, but I have to explain) touches the bottom, water comes down from the wall of the hood, in a flushing cascade something like the Caves of the Planet Mongo. And on the ground floor, in keeping with the air of Tyrolean chalet and Renaissance castle, a cascade of chandeliers in the form of baskets of flowers, billows of mistletoe surmounted by opalescent bubbles, violet suffused light among which Victorian dolls swing, while the walls are punctuated by art nouveau windows with the colors of Chartres and hung with Regency tapestries whose pictures resemble the garish color supplements of the Twenties. The circular sofas are red and gold, the tables gold and glass, and all this amid inventions that turn the whole into a multicolor Jell-O, a box of candied fruit, a Sicilian ice, a land for Hansel and Gretel. Then there are the bedrooms, about two hundred of them, each with a different theme: for a reasonable price (which includes an enormous bed — King or Queen size — if you are on your honeymoon) you can have the Prehistoric Room, all cavern and stalactites, the Safari Room (zebra walls and bed shaped like a Bantu idol), the Kona Rock Room (Hawaiian), the California Poppy, the Old-Fashioned Honeymoon, the Irish Hills, the William Tell, the Tall and Short, for mates of different lengths, with the bed in an irregular polygon form, the Imperial Family, the Old Mill.

      The Madonna Inn is the poor man's Hearst Castle; it has no artistic or philological pretensions, it appeals to the savage taste for the amazing, the overstuffed, and the absolutely sumptuous at low price. It says to its visitors: "You too can have the incredible, just like a millionaire.”"

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  18. <<< New post on graptolites coming soon!

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    1. I can see the writing on the wall....

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    2. It's a stunner! Well, it is for geologists who had all sorts of ideas about what they were when I took paleontology at the U of Arizona my junior year with Dietmar Schumacher. Graptolites and conodonts were so mysterious. They sure stumped Linnaeus! They do look like shiny graphite writings and the sawtooth trademark edges are quite distinctive.

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    3. SNOW DAY! Graptolite post coming today, thanks to the snow gods.

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  19. New post on “Grappling with Graptolites: Paleozoic "Sawtooth" Index Fossils — Are you Jelly?” is now up. Enjoy!

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