When I was a little girl my father told us stories about anacondas, the biggest snake in the world. He told us how they could wrap themselves around a whole deer until he was dead and then swallow him whole. He was probably particularly interested in anacondas because he used to work for Anaconda Wire and Cable. (Electric cable with improved resistance to moisture penetration, United States Patent 3315025 Google Fu is strong! I found my dad's patent in under a minute.) Anyway, while Anaconda Wire and Cable was being sold and resold until they ceased to exist as a company the real live anacondas and other large constrictors were also being sold and resold as pets. Unfortunately they don't become less valuable until they disappear. They become big and scary and their owners just stupidly let them go in the wild. Stupid isn't even a strong enough word. This is an irresponsible, egregious, and ILLEGAL thing to do.
379.305. Rules and regulations; penalties
(1) The Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission may prescribe such other rules and regulations as it may deem necessary to prevent the escape of venomous reptiles or reptiles of concern, either in connection of construction of such cages or otherwise to carry out the intent of ss. 379.372-379.374.
(2) A person who knowingly releases a nonnative venomous reptile or reptile of concern to the wild or who through gross negligence allows a nonnative venomous reptile or reptile of concern to escape commits a Level Three violation, punishable as provided in s. 379.4015.
I looked up s. 379.4015. That's a first degree misdemeanor which is jail time under one year and a maximum fine of $1000. If you do it twice the fine is no less than $750. I'm not sure that's much of a dis-incentive. I think they should be made to have that nightmare I had about the Inland Taipan (see comments) every night for a month. Invasive exotic species are one of my real pet peeves.
I clicked a link in the USGS Twitter feed today to the Giant Constrictor Risk Assessment:
Frequently Asked Questions. It was a pretty good read. I'm still gradually coming to understand how little regular people understand about nature. OK, about anything. People are really ignorant. They don't seem to think very far ahead. When you try to tell them what you think might go wrong they tend to dismiss it because their brains aren't trained to think that way. Hopefully explaining very specific instances where your worst case scenario has ALREADY played out will help, like this comparison to Guam.
Q: How could these giant snakes change South Florida’s ecosystems? What about other ecosystems?
The most likely avenue for ecosystem change would be that introduced giant constrictors would change food webs by eliminating or depleting vulnerable native species. If enough species are lost, entire ecosystem processes could be changed. For example, on Guam the introduced brown treesnake has eliminated most native vertebrates (birds, bats, and lizards) that pollinate trees and flowers. Consequently, these native animals are not available to disperse seeds. As a result, some of the native trees have greatly declined in abundance, and may disappear.
Similarly, as fish-eating birds have been lost from Guam, the natural nitrogen transport from aquatic and marine systems to bird rookeries on land has been lost as well. Some Burmese pythons in the Everglades accumulate extremely high levels of mercury in their body tissues, potentially poisoning higher level predators that might eat them, such as alligators and panthers. We do not yet know how a specific system in South Florida would be disrupted by the addition of a novel predator, but from experience with other ecosystems disturbed by introduced snakes we know that serious disruption is a distinct possibility.
Today I also came across this incredibly elaborate flow chart regarding the social suitability of certain partners. So people have no problem working through what-ifs for stuff like this because it's about people? But they don't give a crap about snakes and bats and fish and birds and trees? What a bunch of weirdos.
Have you heard about Vance Gilbert? He was the black man looking at a picture of a 1921 Italian tri-plane on a flight out of Boston that returned to the gate so he could be questioned by Massachusetts state police. Because the flight attendant thought his book looked suspicious. He was wearing a shirt with airplanes on it. He was CLEARLY a fan of airplanes. Here's his letter to the American Civil Liberties Union.
My first impression is that this was prejudice against technology. Nobody would have blinked if he'd been looking at People magazine, even if he was coloring in teeth and drawing mustaches on the models and otherwise being antisocial. If people were more accepting of technohumanists this wouldn't happen.
But I realize a flight attendant HAS to know there are people who are fans of airplanes. They have those special toys for kids and stuff. I think Vince Gilbert is right that they were suspicious of him because they think black men don't read books.
And also because the flight attendant was utterly ignorant of technology. What did she think the picture of a triplane WAS?! She thinks he's studying a diagram of an elaborate weapon that he's carrying in the bag at his feet? RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER? Does she imagine the 911 hijackers passed the time before takeoff stropping their razor knives on their belts? And why didn't she just say, "Oh, that's a cool schematic! What is it, an old clothes dryer?" I mean her job skills are being able to deal with people. She can fake caring about the drawing.
Well I guess the good news is the instructional designers will have a new assignment coming up with a Lunch-n-Learn to teach flight attendants one more thing not to do. They probably already told them not to question suspicious passengers. Now they just need to hire people with a well-rounded education who aren't technophobes.
*Update: I've decided the more precise name for this affliction is "schematophobia."
I am in a BAD mood. I mean really dark. Grrrr. I got up this morning to go take pictures of my friend's house and to measure to make a floorplan to help him sell it and before I left the house I got the news that the resupply ship bound for the space station crashed into Siberia instead of going into orbit. Fucking great. Way to go. Glad Atlantis dropped off so many extra supplies. But dammit this just sucks. We have no capacity for contingencies anymore. And by we I mean the whole fucking planet's worth of engineers and scientists that are unappreciated and hindered by the economies of idiots.
Spending three hours trying to sketch up a simple floorplan in Google Sketchup did nothing to improve my mood. I guess considering it's free and I didn't bother to learn it I got what I deserved. Fortunately I have a high resolution 27" Apple monitor so I was able to get decent output by taking a screenshot. I quickly abandoned trying to print to a PDF file. No idea what it thinks is the part I want to print. And why it pans the drawing and leaves the text where it is makes no sense. I guess I was supposed to place it on a surface or something. I just wanted lines and words and the convenience of feet and inches. Nothing is easy.
Then it was too hot to stay upstairs because it's FUCKING 105°F outside and forecast to be 109°F on Friday and Saturday. So I went downstairs to find some food and found out Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple. Had to come back to the computer to check the news. Concern and worry on MacRumors.com in the comments and then I looked at some business websites and was just horrified by the terrible things people were saying. He's a man dying of pancreatic cancer! Don't be mean! Damn you jealous bastards! I had pancreatitis once. It was the most pain I have ever experienced. I have no idea what Steve Jobs is going through but it must be bad and I feel terrible for him. I appreciate him making it possible for me to have beautiful machinery in my life. I am not interested in the least what happens with Apple's stock price. But I hope some of those mean bastards guess wrong and lose money.
And there's this. Just... dammit all to hell. What are we going to DO?!
*Update: Senator Hutchison released a statement related to the Progress crash. Pats herself on the back for funding STS-135 and wants to halt layoffs? Really? Can that happen?
"We strongly encourage NASA to immediately announce this week - not next month - the design for their next launch vehicle, which will halt the further loss of skilled aerospace workers now poised to be laid off from the NASA manned spaceflight program."
Oh neato! An earthquake just happened! I was sitting here watching my Twitter feed and the first mention of it I saw was Patton Oswalt feeling it in New York City. Then Treelobsters felt it in North Carolina, then PaulandStorm [P] in Pennsylvania, then Felicia Day commented that her timeline was full of earthquake news from NYC, then ThinkGeek reported it in Fairfax, VA, NASA_SDO reported feeling it at Goddard, then PaulandStorm [S] reported it in Rosslyn, VA. Next Patton Oswalt claimed to have caused the earthquake, which originated in his hometown, because when he was a teenager he and four friends banished Thra'axx the spider-demon to a chymic chamber and forgot to keep up the spell to hold him for eternity. He apologizes for the inconvenience. Neil DeGrasse Tyson quips that earthquakes are "clever ways Earth is telling us to get the hell off. Yet another reason for a space program." PaulandStorm [P] is speculating on how Fox and Friends will report this, "I just find it *interesting* that Obama goes on vacation, and today there's a quake. Poor leadership?" Astroengine notices that East Coasters have a much more dry sense of humor about earthquakes than West Coasters.
Well that's because there is no plate boundary anywhere near there. The Oatmeal jokes "goddamn Mid-Atlantic ridge keeps trying to grab my ass" - North America. Only I don't think that has anything to do with it. This 5.9 earthquake was less than a mile deep and poorly constrained. {Update: they changed it to say it was 3.7 miles deep} (USGS info) The little hiccup thing I remember from my Coastal Geology class in grad school is that the East coast is still rebounding from the weight of the ice from the ice age, so a sudden jump up could cause an earthquake. And also they have some large regional disturbances from withdrawing too much water from aquifers. I think it would be really neat if this was related to subsidence and rebounding combined. Those smug oil tycoons might have to admit that the acts of mankind can have a drastic effect on the physics of the planet. Urban planners might finally get some decent funding for infrastructure and research if a giant earthquake was caused by providing a seemingly endless supply of cheap, clean water to oblivious city dwellers.
I searched the USGS site for subsidence and rebound and as you might expect their site is slow to respond right now. I repeated it a few times and got some papers to look at. Most of them are about California though so it will take me a while to find the ones about the other side of North America. I could just wait a few days and one of their experts will write it up for me. I'm excited to find out what they think!
This image has not yet been reviewed by humans. The other link above has been reviewed and calls it 5.9. This is based on a 5.8 magnitude.
*Update, Phil Plait made an animation of sensors across the country showing the traveling waves
*Another update: USGS News released a statement. Apparently they changed the number back to 5.8 in the link I gave above. They give this explanation for why the shaking was felt so far away.
Western rock is relatively young, which means it absorbs a lot of the shaking caused by earthquakes. Thus, western earthquakes result in intense shaking close to the epicenter, but fade more quickly the farther the earthquakes travel.
In the eastern United States, on the other hand, the rock is far older, and so earthquakes can have a much larger and more widespread impact. Earthquake energy can therefore spread farther and have a greater impact.
What? That sounds... stupid. Age is not a variable I have ever seen in a physics formula of motion. Give some physical parameter, like density or friability or permeability. Say something about the Piedmont or the fall line. Mention eroded mountain ranges and sedimentary deposits. That is a weak cop-out. USGS I am disappoint.
* Update: I'm really geeking out. This is definitely beyond the tl:dr point. I doubt even my brother wants to read this.
I found a great USGS paper about the geology and aquifers of the Piedmont. I can't see enough detail in the maps to tell where exactly today's earthquake was in relation to the what they're talking about in this paper, but it's in the vicinity. I'm not claiming in any way that this earthquake is man made, I'm just investigating if it COULD be. Or even if mining or drilling could be just one factor. Or how it might be affected by the earthquake itself.
Check out this part of the paper where they talk about fracturing. They aren't talking about it in terms of how a sudden fracturing would feel as an earthquake, but if you think about it the other way around, today's earthquake could have implications for well water. Also coal mining definitely affects this whole geologic system:
FACTORS THAT AFFECT GROUND-WATER FLOW
Underground mining of coal disturbs the natural ground-water flow system when the mines are active because artificial drains are constructed to dispose of unwanted water and mining activities can create new fractures and thus increase permeability. The regional water table can be lowered when the drains are effective, and ground-water flow directions can be changed in some cases until flow moves across former ground-water divides into adjoining basins. Ground water tends to flow toward mines, which are usually dewatered by pumping. Adverse effects of mine drainage on well yields are greatest where the mines are not much deeper than the bottoms of the wells and where vertical fractures connect the aquifers and the mines. Abandoned mines can collapse, which causes fracturing of the rocks that overlie the mine and might be accompanied by an appreciable depression on the land surface. These conditions are likely to enhance recharge to the ground-water system and to reduce surface runoff and evapotranspiration.
Uncased boreholes that penetrate several aquifers, which might have different heads, provide artificial interconnections, or "short circuits," between the aquifers. The water that enters the borehole from aquifers with higher heads moves up the borehole and then laterally into aquifers with lower heads so that the composite head in the well is different than that in each of the aquifers. Flow within the borehole will continue, even when the well is not being pumped, until the head in the two aquifers becomes equal. The freshwater flow system of an area can be significantly altered where numerous uncased wells exist and may result in a change in the potentiometric surface.
Although bedrock formations in the Appalachian Plateaus Province can be traced over many miles, the distribution of local aquifers within these formations depends, in most cases, on the distribution of fracture permeability. Erosion is one factor that controls the distribution of fractures. Local aquifers, in some cases, are in valleys (fig. 92). Near-vertical tensile fractures and horizontal fractures are associated with slumping that takes place along valley walls, and recharge tends to be concentrated by the fractures. Under the valley floors, the most significant fractures are parallel to bedding, or nearly horizontal. Relief of compressional stress results when the weight of the rock that overlies a valley is reduced, because part of the rock is removed by erosion. This causes the remaining rock to separate along bedding planes and also results in the formation of vertical fractures. Fractures that underlie the valley are interconnected with those along the valley walls, and the interconnected fracture set enhances the permeability of the rock. Away from the valley walls, fractures are scarce and less likely to be interconnected; accordingly, wells in these areas will tend to have lower yields than those in the valleys. Furthermore, water in the shallow fractures on hilltops tends to drain in dry seasons, and yields of some wells might accordingly decline. In general, well yields are directly proportional to the number of interconnected fractures.
Here's another quote about how oil and gas exploration have changed the natural situation.
Contamination of ground water by the improper construction or plugging of oil and gas wells is a common problem in the Appalachian Plateaus Province. The area is the cradle of the oil industry in the United States; drilling for oil began in the 1860's, and drilling for brine began even earlier. Natural brines are associated with accumulations of oil and gas and are at shallow depths in many places. Wells that penetrate aquifers that contain brine, if not properly cased and cemented, can provide conduits for the brine to enter shallower freshwater aquifers. It was once a common practice for brine produced with oil and gas to be discharged into open pits from which it seeped downward to contaminate fresh ground-water bodies. Such practices are generally prohibited now, but effects of the past remain.
Oh I found the geology map in this paper that shows the fault lines in the area of today's earthquake. I got to it from here. I'm not sure it's cool to link to their server so I copied it to mine. This is from the USGS HA 730-L Regional Summary. Man I love I can just get this right off the internet. Comparing this to the map that shows the location of the quake it looks like the point of interest is just below that little owbow feature, sort of at the tip of the dark pink that represents felsic gneiss and granite formation where it meets the green colored cretaceous sedimentary rocks. Man I really hope my brother isn't trying to read this. I bet this map is useless for a colorblind person since the text key is unreadable.
*Update 8:45: Now that there's been time for some other people to wonder about man-made effects, let's see what I've found online. Anybody blaming big oil for earthquakes yet? That would be so fun!
Donald Gilliland wrote about the connection between oil and gas exploration and earthquakes in Pittsburgh. Marcellus Shale drilling to blame for Virginia earthquake? No fracking way, industry officials say He says deep well injection has been connected to earthquakes before, and there are 70 such wells in Virginia. I don't know how many drinking wells there are. I know there are a lot of municipalities that depend on well water instead of surface water in Virginia. This paper I found only has data from 1985 where Norfolk was the biggest user of well water.
So even if the oil industry had nothing to do with CAUSING the earthquake this wastewater injected into the earth could now be connected to drinking water wells through new fractures. This kind of disaster could motivate some spending on science to determine the risk and on engineering to come up with a back up plan when municipal wells are suddenly contaminated with heavy metals from deep well injection of byproducts of the oil and gas industry. Tax them already! We need money for engineering! Science! They are GOING to screw us over. It's just a matter of time. We need to be ready.
I also like the rant in the comments hating the headline. " Are we supposed to feel giddy and naughty about mentally substituting a vulgarity in its place? Why not just use the word you wanted to so you could get fired and some more professional journalists could replace you?" I think somebody isn't up on pop culture. It's a Battlestar Galactica reference. A joke. Relax.
In 2012 I did a Small Year. My intention was to spend as little money as possible and stay home all the time. In January 2012 I bought two Spartan Aircraft aluminum caravans, 31 feet long, 8 feet wide, manufactured in 1949 and 1951.
In the spring of 2013 I completed the conversion of the 1951 Spartan into a permanent lab and laundry room. It is now my knitting and sewing lab.
2016 was my smallest year yet.
2017 was on the medium size of small. I started working on 20 versions of the Royal Game of UR in 2017.
2018 was not as small as 2016 but smaller than 2017. I kept working on Royal Game of UR.
2019 was been slightly less small than 2018 so far. I went to the coast so that expanded my range by two counties. I've got 20 versions of the game of 20 squares ready for 2020. They're all 20% off on my Etsy shop all year.
In 2020 I am launching a video series for the Buck Rivet Report and restarting that blog.
