planetwater

ground- water, geo- statistics, environmental- engineering, earth- science

Archive for January, 2011

Identi.ca Weekly Updates for 2011-01-19

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Written by Claus

January 19th, 2011 at 11:11 am

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Water, Geology, Science: Early Year Top Ten Lists

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The web is full of top-10 lists. There are even sites whose only purpose is to publish top-10 lists. Do I need to mention Letterman? For some reason, I came across four “top ten lists” early this year that are worth to be mentioned on this blog due to their connection to water, geology, and science.

  • what do scientists think what’s next in science (NYTimes). Directly related to this blog: ocean science, climate change. For mathematics, they talked to Steven Strogatz, who I have previously mentioned on this blog a couple of times, (here, f.ex.). In this interview he says an interesting thing: “We’re going to see scientific results that are correct, that are predictive, but are without explanation. We may be able to do science without insight, and we may have to learn to live without it. Science will still progress, but computers will tell us things that are true, and we won’t understand them.”
  • the ten most polluted places in the world (by Der Spiegel, in German)
  • the top 10 science books of 2010 (at skepticblog). Nothing geo-/water- related; mostly science-philosophical stuff (maybe because of the title of the blog?)
  • the top 10 water news stories of 2010 by “circle of blue

Geology Cake

Cian Dawson shared this picture of a “geology cake” (also on Flickr). He was eager to point out, that groundwater does not exist in underground lakes! Still, nice cake!

Geology Cake

Geology Cake

This picture inspired a new Accretionary Wedge. For the less geologically inclined, here’s wikipedia’s definition, and here’s what this is all about.

Written by Claus

January 13th, 2011 at 7:57 am

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Identi.ca Weekly Updates for 2011-01-12

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Written by Claus

January 12th, 2011 at 11:11 am

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Twitter Vs. RSS

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It is wild, how on one day a topic can be discussed so wildly on the internet. Today it seems like RSS is the hot topic.

  • First I noticed this post on camendesign: complaining that RSS won’t be on the top GUI layer of the new generation of web-browsers;
  • Oliver Gassner wrote about it (in German): The RSS reader is dead, but not RSS per se, because notifications are important and RSS is the underlying technology;
  • even Seth Godin wrote about it: In contrary to Oliver Gassner, who uses it to keep track of only a few blogs, Seth Godin uses it to keep track of many blogs;

Here are my thoughts:

  • RSS is dead and twitter took over its role. This is the impression I get at least often when using twitter. A lot of people seem to use twitter to announce their blog posts. I think this is not what twitter is good for and neither what twitter is intended for. Why waste twitter posts?
  • It still is very useful for me to use an RSS reader. This is how I keep track of blogs that are of interest to me
  • It is easy and tempting to subscribe to too many blogs or RSS streams. I am trying to unsubscribe to blogs on a regular basis

Written by Claus

January 5th, 2011 at 4:46 pm

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Identi.ca Weekly Updates for 2011-01-05

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Written by Claus

January 5th, 2011 at 11:11 am

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Happy New Year

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Dear readers,

the AGU fall meeting was the last big thing last year. And it was a source of a seemingly infinite number of ideas, also for this blog.

Let’s see what 2011 will bring! I wish you all the best!

Let’s get started with some cool shots of water! 🙂 (via PhotoEditor)

Water Sculpture from Shinichi Maruyama on Vimeo.

Written by Claus

January 3rd, 2011 at 10:58 am

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