My Chemical Romance in Tucson

So last night MCR came to Tucson on the first night of their sell-out current tour. I'm not a huge fan but Black Parade is such a great album i thought i'd go to check them out. The support acts were kinda rubbish as always but MCR played well, sounding less of an emo band and more punk-rock which was good to hear. I was surprised at the mix of people present aswell - ok, yes there was some emo-skinny kids but also older adults (what the???), normal uni people like me just up for a show and the occasional fat guy just there for the moshing.

They performed all the usual songs from the Black Parade album - Welcome to the Black Parade, Cancer and Famous Last Words were my favourites, and also some older songs, ending with Helena during which the crowd went mental and ended the night nicely. But now its back to work and another busy week at university. However, something a little different this week.

The UofA holds an annual student run symposium in the geoscience department allowing students to present and view other peoples work accompanied by a guest speaker, party and fieldtrip. That runs from Thursday to Saturday so ill be sure to be there.

And finally some quick news from Texas. A woman travelling through Lubbock regional airport was stopped by TSA (the American airport security branch) and ordered to remove her nipple ring before going through the scanner. She's kicked up a big fuss about it and described her emotions as... "I felt surprised, embarrassed, humiliated, scared and angry". Wow!

Running in Motion

Time is flying by! And I'm definately the first to admit it. I'm thinking this week about flights to the UK and trying to work my way through the minefield that is airline pricing. Its only 7 1/2 weeks away and i really need to book something before they go through the roof.
With that in mind, the next 7 weeks or so are going to be busy but fun - the works not particularly hard theres just plenty of it.

Just a short post today unfortunately. I'm off to a post-fieldtrip meeting shortly and will hopefully get a pile of photos from our lecturer so i'll load a few more up in due course. However, a bit of news from India just to brighten everyone's day. A farmer is reporting this week that one of his cows can milk itself! I kid you not, everytime it eats food (morning and evening) it releases up to 8lts of milk. Reuters picked up on the story and described it as "Udderly Amazing"!

Utah Spring Break Fieldtrip

Some people go to Cancun, some to the Bahamas, some to Colorado, most don't remember much about it (Huon know's what i mean!), yes its the spring break time of the year - the infamous week of alcohol, partying and more alcohol for all of America's college students. Instead i was in Utah with 3 other students and Professor George Davis, one of the greatest structural geology and tectonics professors of our time...... and it was awesome!

We travelled up on Saturday last weekend, the journey taking pretty much all day with the usual traffic delays over the Hoover Dam and Las Vegas. The campsite was basic but nice especially when complimented with the amount of food George brought in coolers. Over the following days we took in the stratigraphy and mapped a transition zone in the Hurricane Fault. It's essentially a disperse zone of faulting inbetween 2 big segments of the Hurricane Fault. We must have mapped 50+ faults and the map looks really good. Aside from the mapping we also got a guided tour of the Springdale Landslide (a consequence of the 1992 St George Earthquake), a 3hr tour of the St George Dinosaur tracks with the founding Palaeontologist and visited Zion National Park. A brief selection of photos are in my online albums so check them out.

So now its back to work at the University of Arizona for the final 8 week run to home time in mid-May. There's a heck of a lot to do aswell. A tectonics paper, a plateaus presentation (again!), a fault paper, structural geology labs, possible mid-term exam, final exams, Mars work, Utah fieldtrip write up. The list is long! However, things are looking good. We've (me and Dr Byrne) have hopefully cracked the issue with the Mars radar data so that looks good to be get going soon. We're aiming to write up the Utah work and present it at this years Geological Society of America (GSA) conference in October so all is good. Despite all the work, theres some interesting stuff coming up aswell. My Chemical Romance are playing in Tucson next weekend and the following weekend is the Geodaze symposium and fieldtrip - its all go!
S'all for now guys, laters!

Back from Utah

Yep, back from a great trip to Utah for the last week. Great people, great professor, great scenery, great photos and great geology! Now tired so will post this weekend sometime.

Laters!

The Last Laugh

It's been ages since i've posted one of these so here goes:


• Abi - "GPS (global positioning system) is getting so accurate now that they reckon airplanes will eventually be able to fly themselves. Takeoff and landing included!" Paul - "I'd be careful about that. It'll probably be a Microsoft computer in which case it'll crash! Excuse the pun!" Russ - "Haha, you'll get an box flash up in the cockpit 'Do you want to send an error report?'. Yes i want to send a f*****g error report!"
• "Tie-bet" A fellow Structural Geology student adds yet another reason to think American's are illerate and poor at geography.
• "I like working with people who are more intelligent than me so i can steel their ideas!" Paul Kapp reveals the key to success.
• "Have you ever watched Ave Ventura with that slinky going down the steps in Tie-bet?" A fellow student asks a completely random and pointless question - as it the norm with some of these sophomores and juniors.
• "We've got no labels to tell us where it is - its abit of a mystery geology settling." Our Tectonics lecturer questions the location of a students structural diagram he sketched on the board. The student then wrote "Asia" in a large land mass. "Ah, that solves it!"
• "Let's call our Promax process 'Fred'", "That means when we click this button we'll be doing Fred!!!" Russ points out a somewhat tricky scenario when we name our seismic data processing data set. We ended up calling it Lucy!

Dead Man Rolling

Bizarre news from New York emerged a while ago (credit to my housemate Russ for bringing this excellent story to my attention). Two men were arrested after pushing a dead body around the streets of Manhatten on a wheel'ed office chair. When Mr Cintron, 66, died of natural causes, the polite thing to do is report the it to the authorities and arrange a funeral. Well, not before cashing in his social security check first! The duo wheeled the guy down the street, one of them holding his head upright, (why they didnt drive i dont know!) and took him into a cheque casher place. The went to the clerk and presented the check but she said Mr Cintron needs to cash it himself. "He's outside!" came the reply, in the chair! A crowd gathered round and the police were called. Exactly what the suspects will be charged with remains unclear. Grevious dead-bodily harm perhaps?



And back in Arizona: - at last i have a relatively quiet period of university work. The last few weeks have been mad but its easing now. Saturday i went out hiking pretty much all day - 6am - 6pm. Photos will follow. This coming weekend i'm off to Utah with George Davis and some other guys to do some fault mapping. Word has it we could be able to publish something as a result of our work so should be a really interesting trip.

And finally, i saw the most surreal thing walking into uni yesterday. A big chav'd up pickup truck drove by with jacked up suspension, big exhausts etc - all the pointless crap to make you ego that little bit bigger. Anyway, there were 4 guys inside and blasting out of the stereo was the Barbie Girl song! I have to say i never thought i'd see the day! It left a smile on my face for a while.
Anyways, got to go. Will post again before i go to Utah.

Much to talk about this fine March day

March 1st in Tucson, Arizona hit 28 celcius with clear blue skies - perfect short 'n' t-shirt weather. The day for me was spent on a fieldtrip to Posta-Quemada wash in the nearby Rincon Mountains, mapping some overturned folds and generally getting confused by some very messed up geology. It was fun though!

The end to february was something of a milestone aswell - in terms of work, it got a lot out of the way and means i fly home to the UK in about 11 weeks time. The UK was hit by its biggest Earthquake in 25 years with the epicentre just 60 miles or so from my house and i wasn't there to feel it! That annoyed me for a few days!

Liverpool play the return leg of their champions league tie with Inter Milan this week - at the San Siro. Inter will do well to overturn Liverpool's remarkable 2:0 victory at Anfield - i shall be watching with interest.

In some more interesting news this week, a baby girl was literally born in the toilet in a train in India. The heavily pregnant mother went to use the toilet and (as the news agency put it) "The baby just popped out into the bowl!"

Laters all!