{"id":3360,"date":"2008-06-19T06:52:13","date_gmt":"2008-06-19T06:52:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/2008\/06\/geology-the-almost-musical\/"},"modified":"2008-06-19T06:52:13","modified_gmt":"2008-06-19T06:52:13","slug":"geology-the-almost-musical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/2008\/06\/geology-the-almost-musical\/","title":{"rendered":"Geology: the (almost) musical"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whilst reading through the song<\/a>–related<\/a> submissions<\/a> to the current, geo-arty edition of the Accretionary Wedge<\/a>, my mind was cast back to my dim and distant undergrad days, when no field trip was complete without sem-drunken final evening entertainments, and the highlight was usually a trio of our years’ finest wits (not me) getting together and summarising our excursion through the medium of modern pop music. The following was composed during a tectonics field trip to Greece; it’s possible that you had to be there (and possibly also pickled in retsina) to find this funny, but I’ll give some background after the fold.<\/p>\n

\n

(to the tune of Pulp’s Common People)<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We came to Greece we had a thirst for knowledge.
\nWe studied geology at a Cambridge college;
\nthat’s where I
\ncaught James’ eye.
\nHe told me about vertical fissures.
\nWe said, “In that case all faults must be vertical”.
\nHe said, “No!”
\nand then in thirty seconds time, we said: <\/p>\n

We want to know about normal faulting;
\nwe want to know whatever normal faults do;
\nwe want to sleep under a normal fault;
\nwe want to sleep under a normal fault – like you.<\/p>\n

So he took us to a rubbish dump.
\nWe don’t know why but he had to start it somewhere –
\nso he started it there.
\nHe said, “Pretend you’ve got no compass-clino”
\nWe said, “In that case we can’t measure any dips and strikes”
\nSo we went home.<\/p>\n

Are you sure…
\nYou want to know about normal faulting;
\nYou want to know whatever normal faults do;
\nYou want to sleep under a normal fault;
\nYou want to sleep under a normal fault – like me?
\nBut we didn’t understand,
\nwe called it fault breccia and raised our hands.<\/p>\n

Drink retsina,
\ndraw a log,
\ngrow your goat and look at rocks,
\nsmoke cigars and play the fool,
\ntell the kids “Go back to school!”.
\nBut you’ll never get it right
\n‘cos though you think you’ve seen the light,
\nyou’ll draw your faults as vertical,
\nand if you called Doctor Jackson you could stop it all- yeah!<\/p>\n

You’ll never know about normal faulting,
\nyou’ll never know what normal faults do;
\nyou’ll never fail like a normal fault,
\nyou’ll never bust like normal faults do.<\/p>\n

Like Rachel Flecker at the outcrop,
\nshe will quiz you and never warn you.
\nLook out! She’ll draw your knowledge out.
\nCos demonstrators hate the students
\n– especially ones who think it’s all such a laugh,
\nand that gyros stains from Greece
\nwill come out in the bath.
\nAnd you’ll never understand
\nhow the big guys control the land.
\nYou’re amazed that they exist,
\nand their slip’s so big that you can only wonder why…<\/p>\n

You’ll never know about normal faulting,
\nyou’ll never know what normal faults do;
\nyou’ll never fail like a normal fault,
\nyou’ll never bust like normal faults do.
\nWe wanna know about normal faulting like you,
\nwanna know about normal faulting like you,
\nwanna know about normal faulting like you…
\nla la la la la la la,
\nla la la la la la la,
\nla la la la la la la – oh yeah!<\/p>\n

<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


\nGreece is an area of active extensional tectonics, where most of the major topographic features, such as the Gulf of Corinth, are grabens formed by large normal faults. What makes this region particularly interesting is that it is all above the sea: you can drive up, over and around fault escarpments (which often seemed to have rubbish dumps at their base – the Greeks knowing what to do with a convenient hole in the ground), map how different fault segments interact, and even seek out and trace the surface ruptures formed by modern earthquakes. The latter are the ‘vertical fissures’ referred to in the first verse: this is often what you get when the earthquake rupture propogates through weak and unconsolidated surface sediments, even if the actual fault plane beneath the surface is dipping at an angle – as most of them are. This has apparently been a source of some confusion in the past, and it was only by bringing together surface and seismological observations in a geologically active area like this that people realised that they should stop extrapolating vertical fault planes down into the lower crust. Our trip leader, James Jackson, also talked a lot about how most of the regional deformation in the area could be understood solely in terms of the motion of the ‘big guys’ – the biggest faults which produced the largest earthquakes.
\nAh, this brings back memories, some of them rather fuzzy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whilst reading through the song–related submissions to the current, geo-arty edition of the Accretionary Wedge, my mind was cast back to my dim and distant undergrad days, when no field trip was complete without sem-drunken final evening entertainments, and the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloggery","category-geology","category-tectonics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}