Your Radioactive Kitchen

July 27, 2008

The New York Times had a fun story out this weekend about radioactive granite kitchen counters (also see the posting by Discovery News' Jessica Marshall). This is one of those household dangers that I and my family have been spared. It's not, of course, that I checked my granite at the store with a Geiger counter. Nah. It's just that few people who actually support their families in my field of work can afford to spend several thousand dollars on a real granite counter top (the kitchen pictured here is in the Michigan Governor's mansion). The only granite in my house consists of various fist-sized chunks I've picked up over the decades mostly from the Sierra Nevada. I've never checked them for radon gas and I'm not about to start worrying about it either, frankly.

I did install a natural stone kitchen counter once, with one result that is particularly stupid for a geologist. I used the least expensive stone I could find -- marble -- which came in foot-square tiles (they were floor tiles, really). I installed the new cabinets, then the counters on top. It all looked wonderful. But I forget something that every first-year geology student knows (and many high schoolers as well): Acids etch marble, unless you coat them in some way. I realized my mistake after the first bit of red wine was spilled on the new counter. The mirror-like finish was gone. Duh! My lesson, which I offer to those desiring any natural stone in their house, is that when you work with stone, don't forget the stone's mineralogy.

Oh, and one more thing: If you're now freaking about your granite counter and want to rip it out, let me know if you live within 500 miles of Albuquerque. I might take it off your hands. I have a another kitchen to remodel.

Intelligent Ground

June 14, 2008

Intelligence is in the mind of the beholder, I've heard. This may sound vague and silly, but it's really a very practical matter and can be applied to peat, the black organic layer of earth found in boggy parts of Ireland (and elsewhere). This is intelligent stuff and it's everywhere. You can smell the peat being burned in stoves all over County Kerry, in Ireland's southwest, where I am right now. My cousin Bill Quirke, a long-time Kerry local and biologist, mentioned the other day how peat, like sediments, carries with it all sorts of local climate history. Layers and layers of information that generally goes up the flue. Reminds me of what the early British naval officers allegedly did to power their steamships on the Nile: "Fireman! Toss in another pharoah!" Oh well.

Droughts, floods and who knows what other weather is recorded in every bog everywhere for thousands of years. It's just another great Earth archive. Not intelligent, you say? Depends on your definition. The U.S. Government calls stuff "intelligence" that by all accounts is far dumber than any rock I've ever seen. Then there is Chuang Tzu who put it another way: "Look at the yak. It stands like a mountain in its might. But it can't catch mice." Quibble if you must, but I think peat, and other such repositories, are truly intelligent earth.

Stonehenge West

April 02, 2008

Sometimes Nature accidentally imitates art, rather than the other way around. Here are two images that argue the case, anyway. The first scene was captured by my father on Easter Sunday from the cliffs of Montana de Oro State Park in California. It's an array of sea stacks carved by the waves of the Pacific Ocean. The second is Stonehenge, of course, carved and erected by humans (see the latest news on Stonehenge). Pretty neat, eh?

In both pictures the only things not readily apparent are the extraterrestrial spacecrafts positioned directly beneath the monoliths (which, it turns out, are only known by their flashing green and red lights, which operate only when Earth passes through cosmic fogs).