EffJot » On the road

Survey design

fj — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:47:11 +0000

I’ve bought a “Bavaria Ticket Single”¹ online. Afterwards, I was asked to take part in a little survey. Having time and being in a friendly mood, I agreed. But then, this rather weird questions pops up:

Translation:

Are you traveling with the Bavaria Ticket Single alone or with several people?

alone

group of two

group of three

group of four

group of five

In case I didn’t answer “alone”, would the Online Conductor visit me and make me pay the 40€ elevated transport fee²?

You can travel with all local and regional public transport in Bavaria for one day for 20€. There’s also the “normal” Bavaria Ticket which is valid for up to five people.
This is the nice official expression for the fine for traveling without a valid ticket.

Visited countries meme

fj — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:40:20 +0000

Again, I’m a bit late to the party: there’s a meme going around about which countries of the world (and states of the USA) one has seen. So far, NOLÖGIC, Looking for Detachment, Ethical Palaeontologist, Clastic Detritus, Highly Allochthonous, ReBecca’s Blog, Hypo-theses, GeoChristian, Mountain Cat Geology and Lost Geologist have posted their maps in English, and GeoBerg and Amphibol in German.

ETA (2009-01-14): ~~Two~~Three more: Through the Sandglass, NOVA Geoblog and In Terra Veritas.

Counting everywhere I’ve been so far, I got 21 countries (9.33% of all countries of the world). This surprised me a bit; I didn’t think it would be that much. However, I never managed to cross the equator.

All countries I've visited: 21 (9.33%) .

Chris of Highly Allochtonous points out that “the more interesting question is how many of the countries above I can say that I’ve visited geologically, in that I’ve actually seen and thought about the rocks”. For me, then, the picture looks a quite bleak, even if I am considering not only geology proper, but other geoscientific fields:

Countries where I have spent at least some time with a geoscientific perspective: 8 (3.55%).

I won’t present the US map – it’s abysmal (3 states, if I recall correctly).

You can make your own maps on Douwe Osinga’s site.

Cattle like hydrogeology too

fj — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 12:15:14 +0000

Brian’s Friday Field Foto clearly shows sheep’s interest in Paleogene geology. Some years ago I learned that cattle (at least in Northern Thailand) are also quite curious about the earth sciences – hydrogeology in this case.

We have built some shallow temporary “wells” for shallow groundwater observation. My colleague is measuring water level here, closely supervised by the local cattle.

The well is not really visible here. In the beginning, we let the well pipes protrude almost one meter from the ground for better visibility. This proved to be especially popular with the cows for scratching their hides, until the pipes broke… So the next generation welltops were level with the ground.

Cow (left) and me pumping out water for pH and conductivity measurements. (At that time, our foot-valve pump wasn’t available, so we experimented with this suction “pump” for water containers.)