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| Crystal daddy by Adam Ellis. |
Beware of studying Geology and Geography, they will make you weird!
Be careful!
I bet if you have gotten the idea of this entry by the first statements or the address of the site you do not have to read it, but if you have free time, you want to laugh for a while and then get bad or you have doubts come, to read. Maybe I entertain you for a while or I become a fan of these branches of science.
And it is that studying Geology and Geography can become your headache, in your annoying school subjects after the mathematics, especially if you do not understand them at first, but if you manage to understand even a small part of all the wonders that are study and investigate in these areas of science you will become a weirdo, very strange, very ...
I will describe a few things that could happen to you after undertaking this adventure in your learning; and I tell you that I do not have the certainty that it could happen to you if you dare to delve into the books, or into the investigations that finally make these books, which speak of such rare topics in Geology and Geography as the Sedimentology, Climatology, Mineralogy, Oceanography, Biogeography or Biogeochemistry; Geosciences are rarer the more you get into their specialties. So much that they combine with other areas of science that you did not imagine! What a damn fear!
Although I notice that the worst comes if you get excited and you understand them to the point of wanting to dedicate your work life to it, you could become a paleontologist-trilobite or even worse, an explorer of underwater caves. You imagine? What a horror to explore parts of the planet that very few have had the opportunity to observe in their lives! Imagine the solitude and stillness in ecosystems unchanged by man and the effort to discover strange chemical events such as those caused by fossil fragments accumulated in water, rocks disintegrated by rain and more water being acidified by carbon dioxide that produce small colonies of algae, bacteria or decaying plant and animal remains that have been transforming our landscape of majestic and impressive forms and the rest without knowing it! Imagine it!
But coming back, perhaps, with the least serious, but no less ugly, that could happen to you if you study Geology and Geography:
- You will become a fan of the minerals that you will not want to stop collecting, you will understand the physical and chemical processes they went through to have those shapes and colors and you will stop seeing those quartz like simple trinkets of beautiful colors; of those that sell in that store at exorbitant prices for people even stranger than you, who think you can "clean" or "drain their energy" with them, something like a pile (I do not know, I'm not 100tifiko).
Can you imagine having a collection of minerals that show you the result of incredible chemical processes that give mixtures of many colors and structures on a huge shelf? Now imagine cleaning them while you remember their chemical composition and the years it took to be formed! Not everything in the garden is rosy, like corundums with slight chromium impurities and are known as pink sapphires, unless the impurities are abundant enough to be considered rubies... Save yourself. - You will admire the landscapes you visit for hours and hours and want to visit more, while you recreate with your imagination, and with the help of the books that explain the movement of the plates, the climates and the occasional astronomical event, the amazing transformations by the that have happened over time and you will try to find out if there is something that can give you clues to it. You will be amazed and will say completely sure of you: what a beautiful landscape!
Now imagine the costs of your little trips. - You could be one of the thousands of victims of Paleontology and you will know amazing things about ancient species (of those that your favorite religion hides you because they do not like the business) like the mega-predators of the different eras that have passed on our planet, although some they were much smaller than a child and others as colossal as a bus. You will do strange things like remembering names of dinosaurs! Can you imagine annoying the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies to your friends by saying, like a babbler, the names of the weirdos that appear (and I do not mean the actresses and actors)?
What a tragedy to be aware that the predatory giants of the Cretaceous are related for millions of years to your breakfast and lunch! - You will be thrilled to see mountains and ravines like a madman, you will want to know the history of the stones that you kick, and many other strange things will make sense for you. You could know shocking things about how the age of the earth is measured. The ordeal of knowing how continents move, why it is known that they were once united and moving! Even knowing where there were natural disasters such as eruptions or asteroid impacts!
Be careful not to study them, you will be a prey to charlatans!
Yes, it goes without saying that not studying it is worse. And it is what I have unfortunately seen in many people in these last days with the earthquakes that occurred in Mexico.
It may seem that I will take the exaggeration with which I started the entry to aberrant limits and that they are no longer fun (if it made you a little funny); but from now on I will not exaggerate a bit, with the disturbing memory that reality is worse.
Not studying Geology and Geography (or simply and without dizziness, not studying science) makes you a potential prey for liars, slanderers, charlatans, swindlers or those who suffer a rather severe cognitive dissonance because of their beliefs and dogmatism.
This becomes much worse when you have not only been convinced by their erroneous statements and in addition you defend them and, you swear and shout, stressing that they are not wrong, that they are professional investigators or people with good intentions, who warn us of things that we they hide the scientists (the real ones) who "have sold themselves to the government
Perhaps there is no person who goes against what is desired by many corrupt politicians that a scientist (or researcher, as they call the majority in Latin America) who dedicates his life, his effort and his time to discover, know more and contribute your grain of sand to the endless mission of obtaining knowledge, no matter if it is for cultural, economic or philanthropic purposes.
In these branches of science we can find a theme that is constantly distorted by charlatans and yellows, earthquakes or earthquakes. They are charlatans who claim to be able to predict earthquakes and are even more shameless who insist with the lie of predicting undesirable catastrophes to what they call "mega-earthquakes."
If you have ever believed in an earthquake diviner, in such a hurry to not verify your doubts, or if you have seen someone make such statements out of sheer curiosity to know what it says or because it says it, I have some bad news for you: Earthquakes can't yet be predicted.
Why do some people insist and say that yes, they can and that they can?
The sole purpose of these people is to maintain the fear, confusion, hysteria, frustration, pain and concern of those affected and those who feel close to being affected. These "ingredients" are very useful to earn money with the attention they receive, and they do it in many ways (although for many this is not so obvious), in the "best case". At worst: they are people with irrational beliefs, who can't identify the difference between their imagination
Once you've been caught by these charlatans, you become a number of the bunch, part of the guarantee of their fame and helps them generate considerable amounts of money and other people come to listen to their nonsense to see that they are increasingly more those who share their material, everyone who talks about them, everyone who recommends buying their books, manuals or audio-visual material, every time they attend their conferences, and this is even more beneficial when their material is available on social networks with billions of users such as YouTube, Twitter or Facebook to give like, share and apart visualize the advertising that includes monetizing their content: they help spread their fame and lies with incredible speed and more people than you imagine.
This also comes with consequences, for example: when the same charlatans or their followers discredit scientists and researchers, who work with fewer resources than they should and who do the best they can, when you try to make comparisons to defend their heroes... Because yes, not studying Geology and Geography causes these charlatans who "predict" earthquakes and mega-earthquakes (but who never predict the lottery) can become your heroes. And when it happens, you collaborate to take away the attention that should be received by people who have dedicated their lives to being professionals in the field and who have the correct information for those who need it, the algorithms on the Internet work to facilitate attention to the most popular and Most times, that popular is not the most correct or accurate.
No scientist, however brilliant, has been able to predict an earthquake until now. And this maybe in a very distant year could change with the improvement of the technology and a lot of research, too much, that could only be covered by many number of researchers and with a technology quite expensive and difficult to achieve, and there is not even certainty of this. But not by a charlatan who claims to be a researcher with unusual analytical skills, even if he only plays with numerology, a little-known pseudoscience that plays with invented meanings in numbers and with simple arithmetic operations attributing mysterious properties to them.
Something that, to make matters worse, caused many people to believe the charlatans' idiocies is the effort that has been carried out in countries like Mexico to try to prepare ourselves to prevent disasters from becoming bigger due to the civil chaos in cases of earthquakes And, as the world has seen, we can't prevent the total fall of many properties (although some should have resisted more) or the whole number of people killed and wounded or the destruction or damage of many assets, but the simulations, the building permits and their strict requests are because in Mexico you have the experience of suffering the little preparation before a natural disaster of this kind, the earthquake of September 19, 1985 showed us.
Although now we have been able to cope with it in a better way, with fewer deaths despite the terrible losses of loved ones, fewer buildings have fallen despite the fact that many people lost much or everything in the landslides, and the way in which the civilians we organize with the authorities and the military, with the much appreciated support of people who came from other countries, it has been quite impressive, and the rush of many people to help with food and donations to the most affected was something wonderful and , being honest, we have acted with more passion for supporting us than with good logistics in the face of disasters.
But this is not done by the warning of these "researchers with a magic gift to predict these events", no; the charlatans in this have not had a place, not a little.
Efforts have been made to be prepared for this type of disaster because Mexico is in an area of intense seismic (and volcanic) activity known as the Pacific Ring of Fire, has always had and will always have to suffer from strong earthquakes, and even the geography of Mexico City in some areas amplifies the movements produced by earthquakes because the terrain below several parts of the city is soft and humid (the result of building a city on a lake), which amplifies the waves of the earthquake and what in turn can cause liquefaction, which is when the sediments beneath the city become as dense as a heavy liquid. From technological developments and well-planned strategies for the authorities,
Being even more accurate, these charlatans do not even predict anything. You can't call "predict" to lose vague statements until one hits. I'll give you a simple example of how to imitate your predictions: in front of several people roll a dice several times and try to guess the number that will come out before releasing it, the times you fail do not remind anyone, but when you guess it reminds everyone present and tell them you can predict the numbers that will come out by rolling a die. Makes sense? No, they will tell you that you are an idiot and, of course, they will not pay you more attention and much less will they give you money for your show. For it is exactly what these people do: say every day of the year that there will be an earthquake on that day, and if that day trembles they will say that they have predicted it by their abilities and investigations, by the angels,
So, do you really think it's worth defending, advertising them and consuming the material of these charlatans for not wanting to study Geology and Geography? Do not do it anymore: ignore them and learn to deny them, in the process you get an incredible learning about the world.
We can't predict earthquakes, nor prevent the total damage caused by them. That does not mean living with fear and with less reason because they appear one or several imbeciles who claim to predict earthquakes, they are not researchers or scientists or fortune tellers or people blessed by angels or gods with the gift of premonition; they are charlatans who earn money, advertising and followers at the expense of worry, fear and pain of others, and it is despicable that they continue to provoke that kind of emotions in people after what happened only for their benefit and that of their own.
What we can do is have emergency measures and give us a hand with the same passion to help those who need it most, which we have already shown and hopefully will never change.
