Cute Little Totoro

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth, and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.

Chesterton

My hand is currently the property of the Beth Indies Trading Co.

Update! Update! Rory and Beth should shut up now! I have updated. Huzzah.

Indeed.

Nothing much happening. For a few breif moments this weekend, my feet looked like real feet, and not like...ellipsis...something not feet. I'll come up with a better simile later. Later than now. After this point in time.

In case anyone cares, it appeares that my upper wisdom teeth have never grown in. That, or I have forgetten a tooth extraction. Which seems unlikely. Given the nature of the beast. The beast that is tooth extraction.

Beast. That's a cool word.

Ok, that's enough.

No more.

For now.

albatross
bat
cat
deer
elephant
frog
goat
horse
iguana
jackle
kangaroo
llama
mouse
newt
owl
penguin
quetzl
rabbit
squirrel
tiger
umbrella bird
viper
walking stick
x-ray fish
yak
zebra

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

9 c Gregory of Nazianzus, Bishop of Constantinople, 389

Wow, it requires no thought, but is also in no way interesting, probably due to the fact that the only books on hand are the book of common prayer, and Marx made Easy, or something.

Here, I'll make up my own

1) Pick up the nearest copy of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.
2) Open it to the page number that is your birth date multiplied by your birth month, multiplied by 10 (ie, if you were born on April 7, open it to page 4x7x10=280. If there aren't enough pages, don't multilpy by ten.
3) Begin reading it aloud.
5) How far did you read before someone stopped you?
4) Post the first four words that someone says in response. Do not tell them what you are doing. If no one is in the room or house or apartment with you, and you don't feel like calling someone, just put down the last four words you said before stopping.
5) And also post these instructions.

2 pages, and a little more.
"What are you doing?!"

I just got tired of babbling at Beth, so I decided to babble at you, dear reader. How's it going? I'm doing ok. I don't have to turn in a paper for a long time, which makes me deliriously happy with joy. The paper went ok, I guess. When I turned it in, it didn't have an abstract or a conclusion, and I didn't acctually proofread it. Ever. I'm sure it'll be fine though. Everything always is.

Hmm. I had a nice birthday. I got stuff. I saw my family. Easter was also nice, and could be described in the same words, minus the stuff. It was sunny, and full of love. And the catchphrase beeper doesn't carry very far upstairs, which is also nice.

I can't...think...I think...right now. I will perhaps update later. At some...later...date. Ellipsis.

1) Cheese
2) Apricots
3) Adventure
4) Malaria
5) Jesus
6) Beth
7) Toroidal
8) Victimless Crime
9) Victory
10) Ulysses

Why Does Italy Look Like a Boot?
The Formation of Italy and the Tyrrhenian Sea
Ryan C. Wallace
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri

Introduction
The Mediterranean Sea is a very complex region, geologically speaking. It is a place where two huge continents, Africa and Europe, collide. In the midst of this rather epic meeting a debated number of smaller microplates are trapped, squeezed, subducted or otherwise abused. This complexity of plates and forces gives the area many interesting geologic features. Some of the most interesting of these features are the deep ocean basins in the western Mediterranean, and one of the more interesting among these is the Tyrrhenian basin, or, to be very specific, the two basins that make up the Tyrrhenian, the Vavilov and Marsili basins (Rosenbaum and Lister, 2004). Part of the same process that made the Tyrrhenian Basin is thought to have torn Corsica and Sardinia away from southern France and rotated them to a position almost orthogonal to their original orientation (Rosenbaum et al., 2002).
This paper will deal with
An Introduction to the Area
The major plates interacting in the Western Mediterranean system are the African and European plates, and the Adria, Tyrrhenian and Ionian microplates, which are arranged approximately as shown in Figure (Gvirtzman and Nur, 2001). Europe and Africa are moving towards each other in a basically north-south direction at a rate of a few millimeters per year (Faccenna et al., 2001). The microplates are twisted and deformed between them at various rates. The Ionian plate, which is made up primarily of oceanic crust, is currently subducting in a northwesterly sort of way under the Tyrrhenian plate, and the Tyrrhenian plate is moving into the Adria plate.
The Adria microplate underlies the Adriatic Sea and the eastern side of the Italian peninsula. The west side of Italy and the islands of Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia are on the Tyrrhenian plate, though the border between the two is not very clear. In many places the Tyrrhenian plate itself is on top of the Adria plate, which makes drawing a definite line difficult (Rosenbaum and Lister, 2004).
The Adria plate is almost if not all continental crust, and Tyrrhenian plate is continental in all but its basins. The bottoms of the Tyrrhenian and Liguro-Provençal basins (the Liguro-Provençal is a large basin to the west of Sardinia, which was formed by the same process as the Tyrrhenian, but is outside the scope of this paper) are formed from oceanic type crust (Faccenna et al. 2001). The European and African plates are, of course, a delightful combination of ocean and continent, but most of the oceanic crust material has been subducted away in the Mediterranean (Malinverno and Ryan, 1986).
The geologic aspects of the Italian peninsula that are important to know for this paper are the various islands and pieces around and attached to southern Italy and the Apennines. In Figure (Rosenbaum), Sardinia and Corsica are the two islands on the far left side. Corsica in the north, and Sardinia is just south of it. Sicily is the roughly triangular island in the southernmost part of the map, just at the toe of the Italian “boot.” The toe itself is Calabria. The Apennines are a chain of mountains that run along the central length of Italy. They were formed when the Tyrrhenian microplate was thrust on top of the Adria. Finally, not shown in the figure, are the Aeolian Islands. These volcanic islands are in the Southern Tyrrhenian, and were they on the map, they would form a rough semi-circle around the south-southeast end of the Marsili Basin (Selli, 1981)
Early Mediterranean Evolution
Although the tectonic processes that formed the Tyrrhenian basin and shaped the Italian peninsula have occurred in the last 30 million years, it is important to have an understanding of what the Mediterranean area was like before then, and how it got that way. A complete history should probably involve details of Pangea and the Tethys Ocean, but that would be beyond the scope of this paper. To sum the important part of that up, around 250 Ma, the European plate was attached to the North American plate, and the North American plate was attached to the African plate, and they all stayed pretty stationary relative to each other (Figure ,). In the wedge between them was the Tethys Ocean. In the Jurassic age, rifting began between North America and Africa, and Africa and Europe started their long march towards each other. They continued rotating towards each other at the rate of a few millimeters per year, slowly closing up the Tethys, as shown in Figure (Schettino and Scotese, 2002, Faccenna et al., 2001).
Finally, around 70-80 Ma, something vaguely interesting happened. The oceanic lithosphere of the Tethys began subducting off the coast of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Southern France). Subduction was very slow, at an average speed of 0.8cm/yr for the first several million years (Faccenna et al., 2001). A main factor in this was that the trench ran approximately parallel to the direction of Africa’s motion, so there was little force pushing the subducting plate into the trench (Faccenna et al., 2001). This subduction continued slowly and uneventfully until around 30 Ma, when subduction sped up and all the interesting things explained in the later sections began to happen (Faccenna et al., 2001; Rosenbaum et al., 2002).
The Tyrrhenian Sea
Past Models
There has been quite an evolution of thought over the past 40 years as to the formation of the Tyrrhenian basin. The first models, generally from the 1960s to the 1980s, focused on two primary hypotheses: the sea is the result of uplift and collapse, or a back arc basin (Selli, 1981; Malinverno and Ryan, 1986).
The first group emphasized vertical motion as the prime factor in the formation. They proposed that the current lowest areas of the basin had been lifted up during the Miocene by a hot magmatic uprising, and that the sedimentary layers that had covered them slid off to the sides. The exposed crust was then dramatically thinned by erosion, and eventually the hot area beneath cooled and the crust settled back down, only was now much lower and thinner than before (Malinverno and Ryan, 1986).
This theory has two major problems, however. One is that there is nowhere near enough sediment around the current basin to account for the amount that would have to be stripped off to thin the crust as dramatically as in the Tyrrhenian (Malinverno and Ryan, 1986). The other is that if the basin were a remnant of a Miocene uplift of the crust, then it would need to have been subsiding at about 2 mm/yr. Unfortunately, that rate is nearly ten times faster than could be expected from cooling of the lithosphere (Malinverno and Ryan, 1986).
The second theory is that the Tyrrhenian Sea is the back-arc basin part of a trench-arc-back arc system. This has been the most accepted theory since the discovery of plate tectonics. The trench part of the system in this theory is the trench off the southern coasts of Calabria (the toe of Italy’s “boot”) and Sicily, as seen in the present day part of Figure , where the crust under the Ionian is being subducted under the Tyrrhenian plate. The arc part is the Aeolian Arc, a string of volcanic islands and seamounts off the northern coasts of Calabria and Sicily (Selli, 1981).
The process of back-arc basin formation will be discussed in the next section of this paper, as in 1986, Malinverno and Ryan published their paper “Extension in the Tyrrhenian Sea and shortening in the Apennines as result of arc migration driven by sinking of the lithosphere.” The hypothesis they advanced provided a variation on the back-arc basin model that continues to remain the most widely accepted theory today.
The Current Model
In the most recent models, the Mediterranean basins formed when the subduction in the trench that formed off the coast of Iberia increased its speed rather dramatically, from 0.8 cm/yr to up to 6 cm/yr (Faccenna et al., 2001). This increase was due to the beginning of slab rollback.
A Brief Explanation of Slab Rollback
When two plates come together and one begins subducting under the other, one of three very general things may happen. If the plates are moving relative to each other at a speed such that the trench does not move relative to the overriding plate, there is no tension or compression in the system, and the arc is neutral. If the trench tends to want to move towards the overriding plate, the overriding plate is compressed, and if the trench moves away from the overriding plate, the back-arc extension takes place (See Figure ) (Malinverno and Ryan, 1986). The back-arc extension case is the one that operates in the Mediterranean. Basically, the subducting plate moves down faster than it can move forward, and the overriding plate is pulled forward, and extensional features, like basins, can form (Malinverno and Ryan, 1986).
Back to the Model
So, about 30 Ma, the previously slow subducting ocean crust suddenly sped up. The slab began accelerating in part because it had, by slow subduction, gotten enough crust down the trench to begin pulling it down more quickly (Faccenna et al., 2001). Part of the reason that the slab was able to eventually reach the subduction speeds that it did is that it was fairly old, from the Miocene, and so therefore very cold and dense. This coldness and density of the plate give it negative buoyancy, so it is inclined to sink into the mantle (Gvirtzman and Nur, 2001).
When the crust is pulled by the moving

The second stage of subduction, which lasted from 30 Ma to 15 Ma, opened up the Liguro-Provençal basin. It also pulled Corsica, Sardinia, and Around 15

One last entry, then I'll write that page, I swear.

There are a lot of things in this world that I enjoy, but I feel like I shouldn't because it's beneath me. Mostly it's the part of me that wants to be cool that objects. Or really, it's more the part of me that thinks I am cool, and some things just aren't befiting of someone of my dignity and position. I hate that part of me. So in the intrests of thwarting my self-conceit and pride, here are things.

Star Trek. I like star trek in practically all it's forms. All except it's movie forms, anyway.

Shojo manga. I'm not as secretive about this, because very few of the people I know know what this is. If people knew the ridiculous, melodramatic, romantic plots of things like Celestial Lover Ceres and Alice 19th, I would be much less open about their consumption, and part of the careful image that I try to project would crumble. These things are not very far removed from romance novels. At all.

Cop shows. Not like law and order, more like the forensic shows with the dramatic re-enactments.

Geology. I try to hide it (I'm sure very poorly) but I really do think rocks are so cool. So is going out into a cave and standing in the dark and drawing stuff, and stopping by the side of the highway and looking at rocks. I think limestone stratigraphy is interesting. I think crystal symmetry is the coolest thing ever. I really do. I say basalt tetrahedron are boring, but they aren't. They're fascianting. I'm such a terrible underachiever.

The Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series. Wow, they're like romance novels, detective novels and vampire novels all rolled into one. Plus, they're set in St. Louis. They're just the greatest.

Well, that's all for now. I'll be sure to add more things when I think my ego can handle it.

Spike TV is showing Star Trek: DS9 now, and that makes me indescribably happy. It isn't a good show, exactly. Not the hight of artistry or story telling generaly. But it's a great show. I used to watch Sports Night, which was basically the West Wing, only funny and about a TV station instead of the white house. That was a good show. Well written, insightful, funny, despite its decidedly left-leaning worldview.

Couldn't hold a candle to DS9. At least in my heart.

Anyway, just thought I'd share that. I'm now going to comence writing a paper about back-arc extension and slab-pull. I promise not to go to bed until 1 page of useful text is done.

Also, the new pants are on their way.

http://www.virtualexplorer.com.au/2002R/Rosenbaum/Mantovani/mantovani.pdf

Last year, a little later than this time, I was taking a class called Earth Forces. That class had a paper due at the end of the semester, worth about 15%-25% of the grade. I forget which, I think near the higher end of that spectrum. And I just didn't do the paper. I tried to do it, but forces well inside of my control made it impossible for me to finish it.

So here I am, 1 year later, in the same class, and I have to write that same paper. And it's due on Wednesday (my birthday!). I have books to write the paper from, but I haven't actually read them, or anything. So sometime in the next few days, I have to write an 8-10 page paper about the plate tectonics of Italy.

Yeah, I failed a class because I couldn't write an 8-10 page paper. I know people who have to write those all the time. I know people who practically write those in their sleep. My only defense is that writing papers seems to be much more painful for me than for other people. Last time I had to write a paper, it took like 5 days. And at least 2 of those days were almost unbroken periods of sitting in the living room, wearing Rory's hat, the big pants and the moon monster shirt and writing about interference colors and Anorthite lamelae.

Ah, well, off to read about whatever crazy crap formed the Italian Peninsula.

But first, a treat for those who dislike me. Last Monday, while I was out on the side of a highway measuring th e strikes and dips of the limestone bedding planes on either side of the House Springs Anticline, it started raining. I hate being in the rain and doing things. It just upsets me. Next time it rains, I'll write about how terrible the rain is, but it isn't raining now, so I'm feeling magnanimus. Where was I? Ah yes, the Anticline. Measuring strikes and dips on natural surfaces is hard enough at the best of times, especially when you're 5'4" and all the good exposed surfaces are about 5 feet off the ground. But in the rain, it becomes more awful than any other geology related thing in the world. You can't read the compass because it has water on it. You have to be careful not to get your map wet because it'll smear. When you write down the numbers, your pencil either won't just write on the damp paper, or it won't write but it will tear holes in it.

That's all. Keep an eye...um...ear out for Mindy Smith singing the songs "One Moment More" and "Jolene." She's so cool.