Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Why are the oceans salty when...

#11
Secular Sanity Offline
Well, I for one, appreciate your input, MR. As it so happens, I used a link that you posted a while back to help me convince my youngest to reduce his risk taking behavior.

He’s visiting a few friends in Hawaii and won’t be home for Mother’s Day. He asked me what I wanted and so I said just a few pictures would be fine. He told me to check out his Instagram. There was a video of him cliff diving, complete with a few somersaults.  After I saw that video, I told him that I just wanted a simple promise for Mother’s Day—a worry-free-day. Promise me that you won’t jump or dive from anymore cliffs while you’re there. 

I sent him the link to that trailer that you posted and told him that this was one of the saddest films that I’d ever seen.

The "Salty" Sea Inside   

Thanks, MR!
Reply
#12
C C Offline
(May 11, 2019 01:50 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: Oh, and BTW, you’re not a moron or a simpleton.


I'm pretty sure (or maybe I should mitigate that to "I suspect that") MR was already familiar with the subject matter. But as has happened at irregular instances in the past (especially in the earliest days of this place), was just interrogatively introducing a topic of interest or conversation.

However, an opportunity for psychologically tweaking somebody into animated reactions could have contingently presented itself, as a form of covert background amusement. Or maybe it was even an entertainment-goal mind game from the start, but that's being too presumptuous in terms of diabolical possibilities.

The bottom-line is that one never knows for sure what MR is up to, so I usually try to play it straight till a better reveal of any Oz-like "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" sub-activity in the interplay. Or not, since the best stuff is never publicly disclosed or acknowledged. (Ruins everything, kind of akin to how those sarcasm, irony, or wry humor emoticons did with the advent of the web. Authors and writers of the past never depended upon that -- if something zoomed over the reader's head then that was the latter's problem).
Reply
#13
Syne Offline
Boy, a lot of cheerleaders making excuses for obvious ignorance.

I hope MR appreciates all the effort.
Reply
#14
Magical Realist Online
(May 11, 2019 04:25 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: Well, I for one, appreciate your input, MR. As it so happens, I used a link that you posted a while back to help me convince my youngest to reduce his risk taking behavior.

He’s visiting a few friends in Hawaii and won’t be home for Mother’s Day. He asked me what I wanted and so I said just a few pictures would be fine. He told me to check out his Instagram. There was a video of him cliff diving, complete with a few somersaults.  After I saw that video, I told him that I just wanted a simple promise for Mother’s Day—a worry-free-day. Promise me that you won’t jump or dive from anymore cliffs while you’re there. 

I sent him the link to that trailer that you posted and told him that this was one of the saddest films that I’d ever seen.

The "Salty" Sea Inside   

Thanks, MR!

I will no longer jump off a cliff into water much less dive off after seeing that film! Thanks SS!

(May 11, 2019 04:15 AM)C C Wrote:
(May 11, 2019 12:36 AM)Magical Realist Wrote: ...all the rivers flowing into them are freshwater?


They've always been saline to some extent. As far as ordinary table salt goes, submarine volcanism ejected applicable compounds into the primeval oceans. Salty crystals have also been found in meteorites, and presumably abides in the water of comets and asteroids.

Whether you go with the idea that much of the water of the Earth's oceans came from heavy space-object bombardment 3.9 billion years ago or leached from the rocky debris that formed the planet, and both -- those origin materials themselves would doubtless have contributed some salts or chemicals for combining into such.

When continents rose above the oceans, then the weathering of their geological features delivered minerals and faint degrees of salts to the huge bodies of water. Edmond Halley of comet fame may have been the first to document that some lakes were being fed the stuff over time from mountain and land runoff, with rivers and lesser water systems thus carrying it to the oceans.

Which prompted him to also propose that ocean salinity could be used to date the age of the Earth, via how fast the concentration of salts would have built up over time in the water. By the 20th-century the method was recognized as a failure not only due to radioactive dating, but because there was never zero salinity as a starting point and the oceans are not really a closed system preventing levels from being reduced. Cyclic intake and extraction of ingredients over geological periods permits an equilibrium.

But some research and estimates, blended with theory, suggest that the early oceans may have been twice as saline as today. That would have made it difficult for oxygen absorption and diffusion, when later in the game that chemical finally became abundant enough in the atmosphere to become a potential player.

Plate tectonics caused seabeds to rise and evaporate during erratic intervals leading up and into the edge of the Paleozoic Era, creating vast salt deposits, of which some remained to be buried on land masses while others subducted deep into the Earth. Which lowered salt concentrations, enabled more oxygen dissolving into the oceans, and perhaps not so coincidentally the Cambrian explosion of biological diversity took off.

Yet other accounts paint a much more complicated tapestry of oceanography explanations for how primeval oceans handled their salinity in terms of either having significantly reduced it or established equilibrium from the start well before the origins of certain helpful circumstances (including extensive continental shelves and their assorted effects).

There's always the pat science textbook answer, and then there's the thoughtful nuanced answer. Thanks for providing the latter CC.
Reply
#15
Secular Sanity Offline
(May 11, 2019 07:40 PM)C C Wrote: I'm pretty sure (or maybe I should mitigate that to "I suspect that") MR was already familiar with the subject matter. But as has happened at irregular instances in the past (especially in the earliest days of this place), was just interrogatively introducing a topic of interest or conversation.

However, an opportunity for psychologically tweaking somebody into animated reactions could have contingently presented itself, as a form of covert background amusement. Or maybe it was even an entertainment-goal mind game from the start, but that's being too presumptuous in terms of diabolical possibilities.

The bottom-line is that one never knows for sure what MR is up to, so I usually try to play it straight till a better reveal of any Oz-like "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" sub-activity in the interplay. Or not, since the best stuff is never publicly disclosed or acknowledged. (Ruins everything, kind of akin to how those sarcasm, irony, or wry humor emoticons did with the advent of the web. Authors and writers of the past never depended upon that -- if something zoomed over the reader's head then that was the latter's problem).

Yeah, I think you’re right. Similar to clueluss, eh, and at times, perhaps even Ben?

I’m not quite sure why, but Ben reminds me of this character.

I haven’t read his trilogy of short novels, but I might read his new one, "Nietzsche and the Burbs" that’s coming out in December.
Some of his notes for the book remind me of this place.

Quote:The suburbs already parody themselves. They already ironize themselves. They’ve already incorporated the whole of the negative.

We’d say, help us, but we don’t know if we can be helped. We’d cry out, help! help!, but we think we’ve gone too far to be helped.
Who could help us anyway? Who could know the trouble we’re in? Who could we ask about our psychic trouble, our spiritual trouble?
Our parents? But what would they understand? God—but God doesn’t exist.
We’re alone. We’re stranded. We’ll have to help ourselves.

Which of course, reminds me of Allen Wheelis.

"We are plunging down a cataract, and what’s important is to call out. Not for help, there is no help. Not in despair-what can anyone do but shrug, look away? But to give a signal. A gesture of love and humor to acknowledge drowning so others who drown will know they are not alone. We are all drowning; deny it with blindness, transcend it with laughter. The laughter I seek is that which looks straight in the eye of despair and laughs. The proper subjects for comedy are fear, loneliness, and death."

See you later, C C.  Smile
Reply
#16
C C Offline
(May 11, 2019 08:46 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: Yeah, I think you’re right. Similar to clueluss, eh, and at times, perhaps even Ben?

I’m not quite sure why, but Ben reminds me of this character.

I haven’t read his trilogy of short novels, but I might read his new one, "Nietzsche and the Burbs" that’s coming out in December.
Some of his notes for the book remind me of this place.

Quote:The suburbs already parody themselves. They already ironize themselves. They’ve already incorporated the whole of the negative.

We’d say, help us, but we don’t know if we can be helped. We’d cry out, help! help!, but we think we’ve gone too far to be helped.
Who could help us anyway? Who could know the trouble we’re in? Who could we ask about our psychic trouble, our spiritual trouble?
Our parents? But what would they understand? God—but God doesn’t exist.
We’re alone. We’re stranded. We’ll have to help ourselves.

Which of course, reminds me of Allen Wheelis.

"We are plunging down a cataract, and what’s important is to call out. Not for help, there is no help. Not in despair-what can anyone do but shrug, look away? But to give a signal. A gesture of love and humor to acknowledge drowning so others who drown will know they are not alone. We are all drowning; deny it with blindness, transcend it with laughter. The laughter I seek is that which looks straight in the eye of despair and laughs. The proper subjects for comedy are fear, loneliness, and death."

See you later, C C.  Smile

Maybe you've got something there, SS. A bit like some abandoned town in the Old West that a handful of offbeat drifters gradually collected at. Each running about in their own direction of performance art, as if asylum characters in the streets of King of Hearts.

With a therapeutic church nestled in the middle of parody, ritual, the surreal, the absurd, dark comedy -- both a drunken celebration of futility and a sober defiance of it. We even have a kind of "hellfire and damnation" preacher lecturing about the wages of political sin -- a staunch symbol of traditional establishment, and yet lingering here amongst the loathsome sinners like a fellow outcast washed up on a beach.  

Town Of No Exit (Big Valley episode)


https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/otaB_aDm19w
Reply
#17
confused2 Offline
I'm going to assume I'm dreaming and in the dream I'm going to post about rivers not being salty.
When water evaporates from the surface of the sea it is like distilled water - the salt gets left behind in the sea. So when the water from clouds falls as rain or snow it contains no salt. So the water that makes up most of the water that flows back to the sea doesn't start off with salt in it. But any teensy bit of salt it might dissolve gets carried back to the sea - and stays there. I'm a bit hazy about this but I think the Bible records God turning someone (Lot?) into a pillar of salt. It may be that God turned a lot (Lot?) of people into salt but zzzzzzzz. So there it is. The original source of the salt is God saltifying people and it stays in the sea because it does.
Reply
#18
Secular Sanity Offline
(May 12, 2019 03:54 AM)C C Wrote: We even have a kind of "hellfire and damnation" preacher lecturing about the wages of political sin -- a staunch symbol of traditional establishment, and yet lingering here amongst the loathsome sinners like a fellow outcast washed up on a beach.

Boy, ain’t that the truth?  Big Grin
Reply
#19
C C Offline
(May 14, 2019 05:45 AM)Secular Sanity Wrote:
(May 12, 2019 03:54 AM)C C Wrote: We even have a kind of "hellfire and damnation" preacher lecturing about the wages of political sin -- a staunch symbol of traditional establishment, and yet lingering here amongst the loathsome sinners like a fellow outcast washed up on a beach.

Boy, ain’t that the truth?  Big Grin


The motley assembly of released eccentrics and mimes gazed about the once forsaken village, in which they each sought to assume a community role to play, to parody. A hollow despair arose when their eyes fell upon the derelict church. "It ain't just lack of a judge, we ain't got no brimstone paladin of the Lord to deliver condemnation and purge wickedness!"

Suddenly, an elongated shadow stretched portentously down the dusty street. A wayworn figure outlined in the crimson demise of the setting sun was approaching on horseback...

   
Reply
#20
Secular Sanity Offline
(May 14, 2019 07:10 PM)C C Wrote: The motley assembly of released eccentrics and mimes gazed about the once forsaken village, in which they each sought to assume a community role to play, to parody. A hollow despair arose when their eyes fell upon the derelict church. "It ain't just lack of a judge, we ain't got no brimstone paladin of the Lord to deliver condemnation and purge wickedness!"

Suddenly, an elongated shadow stretched portentously down the dusty street. A wayworn figure outlined in the crimson demise of the setting sun was approaching on horseback...

Oh, you're good. Bravo!

*A room in a small village of the United States. White walls. A couch. To the right, a window; to the left, a bathroom door. In the background an echo chamber leading to the street. The bell rings.


*La Putain respectueuse answers the door. A little time passes. Shit happens.

He: Cover that!
She: What?
He: Cover the bed. It smells of sin.
She: Sin? How come you talk like that? Are you a preacher?
He: No. Why?
She: You sound like the bible.
He: Cover the bed.
She: All right, all right. I’ll cover it. You seem to be in a bad mood. Tell me your first name. You don’t want to?
He: No.
She: I’ll call you the stranger then.
Stranger: Who hurt you?
She: Why would you ask that?
Stranger: Well, you’re the devil, aren’t you? Just look at your behavior and the way that you protect the lowly ones. Why are you protecting them?
She: I’m not protecting them. I just want to tell the truth, that's all.
Stranger: The truth? A devil who wants to tell the truth! There is no truth. There’s only libtards and respectful republicans.
*He pushes her to the ground.
*A confused gentleman enters the room and offers her is hand.
Gentleman: Get up. Let her speak her truth.
Stranger: She’s the devil. She’s aiding in killing millions of unborn children. The females are getting out of hand and chaos will soon engulf the entire world. Men are acting like women. Everything is reversing—the opposite of the way things should be.
She: I’m sorry.
Gentleman: Why should you be sorry, when you have told the truth?
She: I’m sorry that—that that’s the truth.
Stranger: No. She's lying. There are various kinds of truths. Are you a libtard?
She: Good Lord, no!
Stranger: Then Uncle Sam would have many things to tell you. He would say that you have reached a point where you have to choose between the two. What can you do in a case like this? Well, you’d choose the better one, wouldn’t you? Will you?
She: Yes, I want to. My oh my, how fine you talk.
Stranger: Do you suppose that the whole village could be mistaken? A whole village, with its ministers, and priests, chemists, engineers, analysts, artists, and its mayor?
She: No, no, no.
*And then like magic, she sees reality.
Wait! Wait! I’ve changed my opinion. (Something tells me I’ve been had—but good!)
Stranger: The whole village will hate you. You’ll be despised. Is that what you want?
She: No. God, no.
Stranger: There’s only a handful of them and they don’t even appreciate you. Why on earth would you choose to defend them? You are the devil, aren’t you? You’ve bewitched me. What have you done to me? I came running here. I didn’t even know if I wanted to kill you or argue with you. Was it true what you told me?
She: What?
Stranger: That you enjoyed a good fight?
She: Yes, it’s true.
Stranger: Then everything is back to normal again. [A pause] My name is___.

To be continued…

I betcha know where I got that from, dontcha, C C?  Tongue
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Article Microplastic-eating plankton may be worsening crisis in oceans, say scientists C C 0 57 Nov 15, 2023 02:08 AM
Last Post: C C
  Article How many shipwrecks are there in the world's oceans? C C 0 83 Jun 13, 2023 03:29 PM
Last Post: C C
  Are scientists contaminating their own "microplastics in oceans & rivers" samples? C C 0 70 Nov 16, 2021 04:39 PM
Last Post: C C
  Enceladus oceans currents + New Marsquakes give NASA a shake-up in seismic theory C C 0 84 Apr 1, 2021 07:19 PM
Last Post: C C
  The plastic ‘missing’ from our oceans has been found C C 1 149 Mar 14, 2020 06:19 PM
Last Post: Zinjanthropos
  What Earth looks like with oceans dried up + Regulating deep ocean mining destruction C C 0 333 Feb 5, 2020 02:10 AM
Last Post: C C
  Human impacts on oceans nearly doubled in recent decade, could double again C C 0 284 Aug 14, 2019 02:32 PM
Last Post: C C
  Distant Shores / Oceans of Mars + Possible life adrift in Venus’ clouds? C C 0 441 Apr 2, 2018 07:36 PM
Last Post: C C
  How Hot Were the Oceans When Life First Evolved? C C 1 525 Jun 13, 2017 04:06 PM
Last Post: Yazata
  Titan canyons filled with liquid methane + Early Venus may have had oceans / life C C 0 604 Aug 13, 2016 01:07 AM
Last Post: C C



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)