Mistakes

I feel kind of sad to discover that the myth that Persian rug makers put deliberate mistakes into their rugs to show respect to Allah is just that, a myth. I liked the idea that skilled artisans that probably didn't knowingly make mistakes in their craft felt the need to muddy the potential perfection of their craft by introducing a mistake. In our mind's eye, anything we make will be perfect. Reality just get's in the way.
    Some people would argue that the 'deliberate mistake' is something of an arrogance. Make a deliberate mistake because an accidental one couldn't possibly happen. I instead like to think of the 'deliberate mistake' as a kind of prayer. A stitch knitted when it should have been purled, the wrong coloured thread on a tapestry. That action feels like an acknowledgement to God that the skills, talents if you like to draw that parable parallel, are God-given. To the person who later finds the mistake perhaps they too will think on the devotion of the maker of the item and perhaps their own spirituality.

    OK, I now feel inclined to link this in with science.
A true scientist of the scientific method must admit mistakes. If they collect data that contradicts their hypothesis they must admit that this is what they find. There should be no shame also in admitting they made an error in an experiment. Something broke, someone read a figure out wrong. To quote The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy book 4 So long and thanks for all the fish by Douglas Adams:

"But the reason I call myself by my childhood name is to remind myself that a scientist must also be absolutely like a child. If he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether it was what he thought he was going to see or not. See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting.”  - Wonko the Sane

While looking for that exact quote I also found this one by Jules Verne from Journey to the Centre of the Earth:

“Science, my boy, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.” 

Too much science it seems, especially in geology these days, is firmly set in dogma. People don't admit they are wrong after being shown evidence to the contrary. Data is manipulated. Lines are drawn in the sand. 

The deliberate mistake is not searched for. The null hypothesis isn't sort.

When I was at high school we were taught to calculate errors in every possible way. The errors of the ruler, the container, how much liquid was lost in transference, how actuate the mass balance was.

There's no such thing as a 5 sigma error test in geology like there is in physics. More shame on us.

Why we need sci-fi: An amble on the topic.

Thinking about the formative books of my late teenage years several of them were science or speculative fiction. Ben Elton's Blind Faith, Orwell's classic 1984 and Ray Bradbury's off-kilter, chilling vision of parlour walls and firemen Fahrenheit 451 shaped my view of the world a lot. They also scared the living daylights out of me.

Strangely I believe that sci-fi manages to frequently go to darker places than any other genre. The horror of a spin-chiller is solely contained within the pages of the book. Although a few nightmares of monsters and murders may follow those terrors are primarily cathartic. We observe horror in film or read it in books, it maybe part of humanity we find distasteful or bestial, we can then examine it within the story and by the end we feel a release, a purging of the emotions associated with secret shames or untold fears. Not being a fan of scares like that I can only comment on other commentary I've heard on the matter (video game commentary actually of the likes of Silent Hill 2) but I think that is the basic psychology behind horror.
Science fiction does not offer that catharsis, if anything the reader is left with a sense of unease at what they have read.

Before I continue I should say that yes, not all science fiction does this. Space Westerns like Star Wars, Star Trek and Firefly or serials like Doctor Who are a little more light-hearted and fanciful but even they manage social commentary in a futuristic or alternative technology setting. (No I will not go into whether Star Wars is true sci-fi right now. However, I will say that some of the more recent novels have certainly elevated the series with more social commentary than usual including elements such as what a Sith meritocracy looks like and whether the Dark Side is grounds enough to plea diminished responsibility to a murder).

Science fiction has often been viewed as the purview of the nerd, geek and cult follower. Things like The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy are often referred to as 'Cult Classics'. Most people will admit they have one favoured romance book, action flick, historical television show et cetera but science fiction  may be dismissed in its entirety. Which is a shame because sci-fi is not just robots, mad scientists and aliens. In fact in what you would call 'hard' sci-fi these things might be present but not the focus. They are narrative devices. Sci-fi is probably one of the most 'message' heavy genres out there because a lot of it is allegory.

1984: Fears of communism
District 9: Apatite South Africa
Do androids dream of electric sheep?/Blade Runner: What makes a person human?
X-men: Social issues of race and sexuality oppression and phobia.
Ghost in the Shell: The internet as the new primeval pools of life and trans-humanism
Ender's Game: Are all things fair in (love and) war?
And that shouldn't be seen as a bad thing, far from it. Allegory is a way into thinking about issues by introducing them through a narrative.

Today I read in a newspaper (code name: The Tea-leaf-graph) that three Shakespeare plays now have to be taught as part of English before GCSE. Setting aside for a moment the limited selection of appropriate plays that one can teach to a 12 year old (is this a dagger I see before me?/A rose by any other name/ If he was in my books I would burn my study maybe?) I fear this is removing space for other genres to be taught.

(My next point requires a bit of set up, bare with me). Now I went through reading Lord of the Flies kicking and screaming (seriously, what is with that pig's head?!) and the less said about Cold Mountain the better, but Regeneration by Pat Barker was a revelation for me (yes I did actually do A Level English, non, je ne regrette rien). I was introduced to a kind of fiction I never thought I would enjoy. For those unfamiliar, Regeneration is a World War I semi-biographic work about Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen during their time at Craiglockhart Mental Hospital. For me, the book was a way into Sassoon and Owen's real poetry and prose as well as giving me a better feel for life for the mentally ill at the time. It also taught me that just because a book might not sound my cup of tea doesn't mean a darn thing!

I really hope that perhaps a classic piece of sci-fi will make it's way into the English curriculum alongside the compulsory Shakespeare and give some young people the opportunity to discover a book, and genre, they probably never thought they'd like.

DVD extras:

Books I would suggest as one's to be taught in schools (with approximate age ratings):

1984 by George Orwell. 16 years and up for the best level of appreciation.
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. 14 and up (younger if the children are fairly mature).
Star Wars: Truce at Bakura Kathy Tyers. (11 and up) Don't laugh! Everyone's seen Star Wars and this follows on directly for Return of the Jedi. It has some interesting ideas about the human soul and mind control.
The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. (13 and up, or basically over an age where a child can hear the word 'sex' without giggling uncontrollably).
Anything by H.G. Wells or Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov. (I wouldn't include my favourite non-Douglas-Adams sci-fi author in this list though, because Philip. K. Dick is a bit.... odd).

Scotty, beam me up!

Broadband seismometers meme

Yeah, this is one of mine... Yes, I know it's bad...

To make up for it, here's the 8th funniest joke from the Edinburgh Fringe 2013 by Liam Williams:

The Universe implodes. No matter.

Hi ho Silver, away!

Ah, the Lone Ranger.... or as Jasper Carrot once pointed out, the Lone Ranger... and Tonto. (Yes my last post was a bit heavy, so time to lighten the mood)
Despite warnings to the contrary by American critics I went and saw the new 'Lone Ranger' film anyway. And despite its narrative short comings (which is the main issue) it sort of played out like a live action cartoon complete with implausible survival from ridiculous injuries and a quasi-supernatural horse. The plot about maybe-maybe-not-cursed silver was silly but at least I wasn't bored at any particular point which is at least a point in its favor.
    But I'm not here to review the film more use it as a jumping off point to talk about precious metals and silver in particular.

Gold, Silver, Platinum and the more exotic Palladium and Rhodium very much call to mind a certain romance. Throughout human history where ever precious metals have been located humans have coveted it. It's quite easy to tell if an element was known about by an ancient people because it usually don't have an '-ium' on the end of the name. Copper, lead, zinc, tin, sulphur, iron et cetera as well as gold and silver have been known about for a good number of years either because the element was found in a native, pure, form (like silver) or was easily liberated from an ore. Silver is found, often, with native copper although several ores exist.

So here's a few quick (fairly) interesting facts about silver (no not the horse):

1. Many silver compounds, including silver nitrate, are used in photography development.

2. Mirrors were often made by 'silvering' glass. During 19th century silvering was produced by the direct coating of silver onto the glass surface. The process is quite simple, requiring a few chemicals that will cause the precipitation of silver onto roughed glass (to provide a surface of deposition).

3. High quality wind instruments will often have solid silver mouth pieces or whole bodies for superior sound quality.

4. Silver has anti-bacterial properties. You might have noticed silver plasters for cuts in pharmacies.

5. Sterling silver bares the hallmark '925'. Pure silver is marked as 999. Since this is a total out of 1000 (the millesimal system), sterling silver is therefore 92.5% pure silver with the remaining 7.5% often made up with copper. Silver is alloyed like this to improve silver's relatively soft nature.

6. Silver bullets are quite popular in fiction. In myth a werewolf can only be killed using silver bullets. The Lone Ranger also carried silver bullets to symbolize how valuable a life is.

And we're back around to the Lone Ranger again,

Hi, ho, Silver, away! 

An open letter to the 'frack off' community

Dear Frack-Offers,
                            I'm going to assume that the majority of you do not live in a cave or wooden hut, wear hemp and wool only and use candles (beeswax not paraffin) for lighting. I'm going to assume you own a phone, probably traveled to your protest site by a means of transport that wasn't walking or bareback horse riding and have drunk out of a plastic bottle at some point.

    We live in the Oil Age, just as our ancestors lived in the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages. Almost every part of our modern lives is fueled in some way by oil. It is unfortunate but many of the wonderful things about life today, plastics, medicine, the internal combustion engine require drilling for oil. And yes, it is a finite resource. But tell me, if we do not drill for oil in this country, under some of the strictest laws and regulations on the planet, where would you like to get your oil from?
    Your answer would probably be either, 'nowhere' or 'not here'. Neither of those are particularly selfless recommendations. Until we perfect cold fusion or whatever is the next big breakthrough in energy we need oil. Yes, we should recycle, lower our energy usage and really think about whether driving to work and school is necessary but we will still need oil even if that is the case. Just less of it. (If, by the way, you are part of the NIMBY lot, I've nothing to say to you except people in Saudi Arabia probably don't like having whacking great oil refineries all over their landscape).

    Now to the crux of my letter, so I hope you're sitting comfortably,
I am a geologist. I have study geology formally for five year of my life and have held a keen interest in it for probably nearly 15 years. I don't say this so I can pretend I am qualified to pass judgment on the situation. No, I tell you this to prove I am a scientist and apply logic, knowledge and the scientific method to things and that my knowledge is mainly based in geology.
    Here's a home truth: Fracking causing earthquakes because any breaking of a rock below ground produces thermal and seismic energy which we would call an 'earthquake'. But, do you know how big an earthquake has to be to actually be felt by a human? 2 on the Local Magnitude (Richter) Scale. Do you know what size most fracking earthquakes are? In the negative numbers, -2, -1 etc. Richter, who made the Local Magnitude scale thought that any earthquake less than 1 (a size only rarely felt by humans) would be so insignificant as to not be relevant.

    Now, the larger quake in Blackpool I can't pass much comment on as I've not read any literature on the causes of the quake or what people think happen but that kind of event is not likely and not supposed to be a regular event when fracking happens. Besides, the UK government is currently enforcing a policy of no fracking. I mean, what more do you want? As old and as fractured as Britain is, it is also extremely well mapped, geologically. A company knows what they are drilling into and, wait for it, will always mitigate risks to the environment, people and their workers because they are legally obligated to do so, and also for the sake of any future contracts they may wish to acquire.
     Cuadrilla is not fracking at the site you are protesting. They are drilling an exploration well for oil and even admit the site might not go into full scale production at all. Also, and this may have escaped your notice, the company does not possess a licence to frack at the site.

Please, go home. Leave Cuadrilla alone. Groups like the RSPB who have real concerns about drilling occurring within protected sites I sympathize with. After all, once a nature reserve has an oil well developed on it, there isn't a nature reserve there any more. And yes, mechanisms must be put in place to protect against contamination of ground water. But the type of individual who is prepared to brake into private property and use bully tactics through volume of numbers to get what they want, regardless of the cause, I do not sympathize with. I'm sorry.

Might I suggest you take a holiday to Dorset and visit the coast around Wytch farm instead?

Yours,

LostTimeLady, geologist

Here is the permits that Cuadrilla has for the site at Balcombe, East Sussex:  http://www.cuadrillaresources.com/our-sites/balcombe/

The chock cycle

My high school geology/geography/RE teacher (she taught a lot of subjects over the years, it was a small school with a lot of teacher overlap) used to do fun things with us in geology class including what she liked to call edible geology. This involved taking a geological concept and explaining it with food.

This one wasn't one of her ideas per se but does slightly borrow from her idea of how Mars bars are a good analogy for folding.

Also, before continuing know that I've made this for a bit of fun and any student of geology who happens across this should know that that is the case and bare that in mind!

OK, so first of the ground rules so to speak, how rocks and chocolate are similar:

Both can melt.
Both can be fractured or mechanically weathered.
Both have variable composition.
Both can be found in different forms.
Both have variations in colour and texture.
Both have a variable viscosity as they cool and solidify.
Both can be combined with other chocolate/rocks to form new rocks of variable composition. i.e. Magma mixing or those nice sea shell chocolates with the praline in the middle.

How chocolate and rocks aren't similar:
There's only a handful of rocks on the planet that make their way into foodstuffs. The main one is salt.

OK, so this is the rock cycle:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Rock_cycle.gif

So now with the ground work done let's think about the rock cycle:

Imagine your block of nice solid chocolate. What are the things you can do to it? (Apart from eat it!)

Well, you can grate it. This would be like mechanical weathering of a rock leading to particles that can be transported.

This grated material can be transported then compressed with minimum heat and temperature to form a new, if crumbly, slab or be set inside some kind of matrix, like on top of the icing on a cake. This represents a sedimentary rock.

Next you could deform the chocolate. Apply enough heat to cause folding but not for it to melt. This represents low grade metamorphism. If this happened to a rock it would still be identified as the original rock. If you really bent and squished the chocolate beyond all recognition this could be seen as higher grade metamorphism. Throw in some raisins and hazelnuts and you've got some fruit 'n' nut metamorphosed chocolate with porphyroblasts.

Finally, you can melt the chocolate. This would be your magma stage of a rock. In reality rocks don't so much melt due to a temperature rise than a fall in pressure causing melting. Think about it this way, you can boil water on top of Everest at 30 degrees because the pressure is much lower. The atmosphere is thinner. As mantle rock rises the temperature will remain within the rock because it's a poor conductor of heat but the pressure drop leads to melting.

But since this is the rock cycle there are many different ways all this can happen so I've made a handy chocolate diagram:

Now here's another thing about chocolate, it's called tempering.

Nice shiny chocolate with a crisp 'snap' is caused by the alignment of the fat molecules in the slab. If you melt the chocolate beyond a certain temperature the chocolate is no longer in 'temper' that is when it resets it will not set to a crisp shine and instead it will melt at room temperature! (Depending on your type of chocolate temper is about 40 degrees C, approximately). If you melt an igneous rock and cool it again the the same way you will get the same rock. But, if you cool it down differently you'll end up with a different grain size and rock texture. This is the reverse of the chocolate since it's the heating not the cooling that effects chocolate.

OK, so in the end not the most perfect analogy for the rock cycle but still fun to think about.

TTFN. 

Fun geology fact: A trilobite fossil is named after Harrison Ford's character from Star Wars, the fossil is called H. Solo. 

Non-Newtonian YouTube video playlist

I love Non-Newtonian fluids!
From the first time I saw the cornflour and water experiment to now, when my Masters project will focus on particle suspensions causing Non-Newtonian behavior in fluids I've been captivated.

Here's a playlist of some good videos on YouTube about it. It mainly focuses on shear-thickening behaviors but it's a good representation of how odd liquids can behave:

This is Veritasium's take on the cornflour/water mix on a speaker video and had a great analogy for shear-thickening by describing it like traffic in LA.

A three way comparison of water, silly putty and cornflour/water: http://youtu.be/bLiNHqwgWaQ 

Hank Green's Sci Show video on Non-Newtonian fluid

Some slow motion footage of impacts on cornflour/water mixtures.

Some more home economics level cornflour/water experiments.

Prof. Brain Cox talks about promoting science

A little off-topic once again but I think in keeping with the science theme of this blog.

I think it is desperately important for people of all ages to engage in science. Science isn't just that lesson you fell asleep in in High School because your teacher was a stuffy bore. It's live, relevant, exciting, constantly progressing.
When I was a small child I thought I couldn't be a scientist because everything had been discovered, gravity, electricity, wave-particle duality et cetera ... how wrong I was and woe betide any teacher who makes a child think otherwise!

Part of the reason why I chose the field of Earth Sciences as my subject (despite my love of bangs and sparks of physics and chemistry) is because at a grass roots, non-high powered electron microscope, level there are still discoveries to be made. Although I've discovered that high powered scanning electron microscopes do produce some intense images of samples. Like this:

This is a piece of volcanic ash

In recent times great advocates for science have appeared on television, the airways, the internet and in books. Chief among these is Professor Brian Cox of the University of Manchester. With his boyish good looks and a winning smile he's woo'ed the hearts of the nation and with any luck their ears too while he plainly, effectively and, most importantly, enthusiastically, shared his love of science.

I saw an article about the science shows being put on at the Edinburgh Fringe this year. One of the scientists doing a show and self-identifies as a nerd said this:

"We're trying to redefine nerd as not being someone who sits in their room and never talks to anyone.
Being a nerd is being unable to stop yourself communicating this cool stuff.
 We cannot conceive that people would not be interested in this stuff."
- Helen Arney

It's no surprise that enthusiasm for material is what gets other people engaged. It's infectious. 

I think back to the teachers I really loved in High School and I know that the reasons why I loved them and loved their subject is because they did too. They wanted to show us how cool their subject was, they bubbled with enthusiasm and where even more excited when you showed interest back. (I'm sure it must be crushing though to have people in your class who don't give a damn. I mean, I find it hard when my friends eyes glaze over when I talk about rocks).

But I promised Brian Cox so here he is giving a speech at the Institute of Physics after being presented with the President's Medal:

And if you want even more Brian Cox, here's his BBC programme 'A Night with the Stars':

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TQ28aA9gGo

Vive la Science!

References:

More info and origin of the ash picture: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/about/pglossary/ash.php

Science at The Fringe: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23571166

A drastically off topic post on gender-blindness and gender-shaming...

Time for a change? Always!

So the new Doctor has been chosen for Doctor Who.
For the record, I loved him in Local Hero and think he's fearsome and intense in The Thick of It but I do remember when Chis regenerated into David and... ummm, I had very little clue who he was, partly because I wasn't into Doctor Who that much at the time (having only discovered it properly watching re-runs before 'A Christmas Invasion') and I think the excessive hype over the casting of future characters may just have reached fever pitch.

Case in point, the debate over whether the Doctor should have been a woman this time round...

Ugh...

Look, for years people labelled me as a feminist and my response was always 'no, I'm an equalist' (egalitarian) but this never worked so I gave up, threw my hands in the air and embraced the label in vain hope that perhaps I could do some good with it...
What I discovered when digging into feminist theory, especially that which is pervasive on the internet, was a group of people, chewing the cud, who think that misandry is progressive, would sooner moan than actually instigate political change and over-state trivialities while failing to focus on true inequalities (whether purely a female issue or just a people issue).

A truly equal society is meritocratic. Meritocracy as a pure concept therefore should be inherently gender-blind. I won't delve into the issue of CEOs and boardrooms because my point of view on it all is too liberal (read, not angry) and I don't want to be shot through the lungs by radical feminists.

So with that groundwork down, do I think the Doctor should have been a woman this time?
My answer: No.
Tokenism is a horrible thing and the exact opposite of a meritocratic system. If a woman had been chosen it wouldn't have been because they had done open casting for men and women and chosen the best out of a mixed line up. No, they would have auditioned only females. If the former had occurred I would probably say 'well, I will take what they give us' but I don't think that would happen. The choice to make the Doctor a woman would have been a narrative one before casting even would start.

Yes, I'm that cynical.

What I object to now in the fallout is the gender-shaming of Peter (this isn't even mentioning the producers' need to justify casting a white, British man, or the tittering about him being 'too old'. Good grief!)
To paraphrase the feeling of some people (read, some feminists):
"Oh look, another man being cast in the lead of a hit TV show, this is once again a sign of the institutional sexism in this patriarchy."
Quite.

What we need is good female characters in fiction not retrofitting a current one to be a woman.
Doctor Who has always had great female characters: Romana, Sarah Jane Smith, Rose Tyler, Harriet Jones (MP for Flydale North), Susan Forman, Barbara Wright, etc etc two of the above named were characters who sat in the highest seat of power possible (Romana as Madame President of the Time Lords and Harriet as Prime Minister!)

Sci-fi in general has a good track record for strong females (more so that a lot of genres) so what we really need to ask for is more well-written females for young girls to want to grown up to be and young boys to admire, in Doctor Who and other original stories. I'm hopeful on that count.

This is what the internet calls 'Rule 63':
gender-swapping characters to see what would happen. Ok...

References:
Picture 1: http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llvt76J6vn1qk2h0eo1_500.jpg
Picture 2: http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/374/557/005.jpg

The only legitimate reaction to academic papers you don't understand....

It's been a long day. Maybe you've been doing revision, maybe you have an essay due and what are you faced with? A long, esoteric journal article that you just know contains the perfect piece of data/info/trivia-to-woo-your-marker-into-giving-you-a-first. But there's one tiny little problem...

You don't understand a single word written on the page because it's an esoteric journal article written by super-geniuses for the reading pleasure of other super-geniuses.

After the existential crisis of realising that if you can't ever understand this paper how will you ever know enough so that you too can also be a academic super-genius you conclude you have only one option left...

No, seriously, there is only one true reaction when all other options have failed you, and it is this...

Nah, I'm only joking, I just wanted to write a bit of satire before bed.

(The head-desk is courtesy of John Green, noted American Vlogbrother, thanks goes to a person on tumblr (probably) for making the .gif).

Getting a sense of scale.

xkcd, as many will know, is a web based comic on science, satire and (sometimes) silliness. But he also does some rather excellent info graphics, like this one. Note in particular the volume of the Marianas trench verses Mauna Kea! Slightly mind blowing...
(for a full size version go to: http://xkcd.com/1040/large/)

Blue John and other geological oddities in fiction

 



Recently a vein of fluorite (fluorospar if you're old-fashioned) has been rediscovered in the Castleton mine after 68 years. (See below for the link).
Blue John, a corruption of the French bleu-jaune, is so named after its distinctive purple-blue colour with yellowish banding. Personally to my eyes I've never really seen the blue in even good pieces of Blue John, more just extremely attractive shades of purple but apparently no one sees colours the same as someone else so I guess such debate is moot. (I've probably only seen one real piece of Blue John in the stone so to speak anyway).

Rare geological curios always seem to make their way into fiction, in fact one of my very-guilty pleasure reads, the Lovejoy novel, 'The ten word game' by Jonathan Gash features two Blue John pieces, Edwardian set Amethyst, the legendary Amber Room, a page on the rarity of early Russian set Alexandrite jewellery and why perfume is a killer for pearls (amongst other things).

The Koh-I-Noor has featured as a major plot device in an episode of 'Doctor Who'  for instance ('Tooth and Claw' for the interested) and thefts of rare diamonds, both fictional and non-fictional have featured in crime stories for many years. Quite a lot of gems have stories more romantic or gripping than many made up tales.

Gems, with their great wealth and rarity are symbols throughout fiction.
In 'Stardust' by Neill Gaiman the symbol of power of the Stormhold thrown rests in a Topaz crystal. In the 'Lord of the Rings' Aragorn possesses the Ring of Barahir ("Two serpents with emerald eyes. One devouring, the other crowned with golden flowers.") which represents his true heritage, and, in the film adaptation, he carries the Evenstar given to him by Arwen half-elf as a symbol of their love.

But there's one geological oddity that doesn't get much good press in fiction and that is geologists themselves. Often portrayed as a stereotype, the film geologist is slightly dorky, often bearded and never the hero. There's no 'Indiana Jones' of geology. At least not yet. (The closest we've come is probably the faux-docu-drama 'Supervolcano' produced by the BBC).

You could argue the reason for this is that geology just doesn't have the same romantic history as Archaeology. True for every five digs outside Cairo that Archaeologists dug during the Edwardian there was only one geologist... and he was probably walking around a muddy field in Scotland being paid by the mile of geological contact he found. (You could also make some jokes about a film about geology moving at a glacial pace but that would be mean).

Now I'm not here bemoaning the lack of geologists in fiction. I'm sure a lot of professionals whose professions are represented in literature and television cringe at the miss-representation so I'm certainly not asking for that. My point is more that it's nice to see the very romantic side of geology, gemmology, enriching literature. Perhaps the mention of a Alexandrite necklace in a book might be just enough to lead someone to find out about the Russian emerald trade and Tsar Alexander II.

It's like that word association game....
Black,
White,
Snow,
Cold,
Antarctica,
Ice,
Diamonds,
Jewels,
Queen Elizabeth,
Prince George... (Sorry, couldn't resist since everyone else is going on about him!)

I might write again soon on other geological curios in fiction et cetera.

References:

The Blue John mine discovery: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-23559735
Blue John bowl picture: http://www.bluejohn-cavern.co.uk/products/blue-john-bowl.php