Professor Toke's Geoscience Blog

Today I wrote three pages of the Thousand Lake Fault Manuscript, finishing a draft of the introduction and abstract. I also did some business emails and communication with recent graduates. 5 hours worked. 

Well, I did about two hours of work and 7 hours of work-relevant reading from July 14-24th while in London, so that was some nice and very real vacationing! Since returning, I've only worked about 3 hours, but that will change soon. I rented a bike while in London, so I managed to bike about the same number of hours that I spent doing work-related things over this timespan. Perfect!  Also, as an aside, London is certainly much more civilized than anything I've experienced in the US. Everything is walkable. Transit is amazing. Biking is easy, there are separated bike routes in many places, but even where it's not like that, the speed limit in the city is 20 kmph (i.e, less than 15 mph), so you can just bike in the flow of traffic... easy as pie. Also, speaking of pie. The food in London is so good, so many options, so abundant, so much fusion (Brits have added spice to their own cuisine at this point). AND we definitely need to get rid of tipping culture in the US. The waits...

Well, I finalized two more figures and completed the video tutorials for the Advanced GIS book today. This represented about 24 hours of work this week so far.  Other work I have been doing: Finally finished going over all the talks from SCEC 2024 (about 3 hours of work).  Started reviewing IMW grant proposals for the reviewer panel I am serving on in August (about 3 hours of work this week).  Total work = 30 hours M-R.  I also got over my cold and got back on the bike and am gearing up for our trip to London/Brussels. Reserved a gravel bike to ride for 3-4 days while in London.  I am going to pause on book writing for now. Next work planned: Reviewing Proposals.  Start writing papers! 

Getting sick is so random. I did an intense 2-hour bike ride (nearly maxed out on HR and claimed some strava trophies) on the morning of July 2nd and by the evening I was feeling off and on the 3rd I had a fever and was clearly under the weather. This was after 5 rest days coming in with the best total fitness I've had in at least two years (though I was traveling during those rest days, so who knows what my exposure was). Oh well. Seem to be recovering quickly (fever gone on the 4th).  I've been spending the illness watching more SCEC 2024 talks (Earthquake Engineering Resilience AND Communication about Earthquakes During Crisis) and reading a few chapters (as best I can) of Don Turcotte's treaties on Fractals in Geophysics. Of course I was well aware of the fractal nature and natural chaos of most geophysical phenomena (scale-independence and getting wildly different end results from just minor changes in initial conditions), but it is nice to see it formalized mathematic...

Sabbatical academic calendar year has now officially begun! I watched three awesome 2024 SCEC videos about opportunities for research as SCEC has now become the Statewide California Earthquake Center. George Hilley advocated for looking at geomorphology and geology to track long term shifts in vertical fault rates that can be used to model how the system is evolving and he profoundly advocated for a plate boundary system wide approach, looking from triple junction to triple junction to see how these micro blocks/plates have evolved through time leading us to the system we see today and is manifest in the seismic hazard we have. Steve Wesnousky advocated for looking at the Walker lane, its complexities and transitions between ECSZ and the Basin and Range and there was another talk about the Medicino Triple junction and how the SAF transfers slip there… 

We were on a 5 day road trip to SFO and back, brought the laptop but didn’t write anything! Oh well, listened to Mark Arax’s  West of the West (highly recommend this creative non fiction if you are interested in California's history surrounding water, immigration, monopolies, and much more!). We also stopped by B-Street Books (rare and out of print used bookstore) and I picked up three gems related to what I do and I have already finished the two about California geology:  8 hours of reading over the trip!