Geology
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Geology by plane
I’ve been looking gratefully and often, over the past few years, at Louis J. Maher, Jr.’s Geology by Lightplane. The shots themselves date from 1956-1966, and he put the page up in 2001; but their subjects are the sort that don’t change much over a span of time so short as the last thirty-five years.… Continue reading
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Geography forever
When I was walking to school in the second grade, I found myself behind a group of older kids, arguing about what subjects they hated most. The consensus was geography. At the time I didn’t know what geography was, but I became determined to find out. When I did, two things happened. First, I realized… Continue reading
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Igor vs. Bermuda
It’s a safe bet that most people don’t know where Bermuda is. Here’s the answer: In the middle of the ocean, close to nothing. It’s not like the Bahamas, or the islands of the Caribbean, which are arranged in chains, or near to a continent. Instead Bermuda pokes above the Atlantic eight hundred fifty miles… Continue reading
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Bomb sights
Last week I flew back and forth from Boston to Reno by way of Phoenix. Both PHX-RNO legs took me past parts of Nevada I hadn’t had a good look at before. One item stood out: a dry lake that looked, literally, like a town had been built on it and blown up. In fact,… Continue reading
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Hey Jules, bring me another fifty skulls
While walking around Paris for the last month, I’ve became fascinated by the highly fossiliferous limestone that comprises so many of its iconic structures. At one point I thought, Hmm… The City of Light is built with materials of death. I had no idea how much farther that thought would take me. Without abundant death… Continue reading
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How about just making mesothelioma the state disease?
The California state rock is serpentine (correct name, serpentinite), which comes in many varieties, some which contain asbestos, which doesn’t get dangerous unless you grind it up and spread it into the air. Just sitting there, as it does through much of California and in other parts of the world, serpentine is mostly a greenish… Continue reading
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Dig your Ordovican great-Xth granddaddy/mommy
Or let the paleontologists dig it for you. That’s what a team led by Yale researchers did last year in southeastern Morocco’s Lower and Upper Fezouata Formations. The result is covered by LiveScience in Oldest Soft-Bodied Marine Fossils Discovered . Specifically, “The animals represented by these newly discovered fossils, including sponges, annelid worms, mollusks, and… Continue reading
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Borg’s Woods News
I just learned by Eric Martindale’s comment to my Borg’s Woods post in February that the March 13 storm knocked down many of the trees in the old growth urban forest that was our neighborhood playground when I was a kid. For more here’s a post in the NJUrbanForest blog, and here are some pictures… Continue reading
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Ice stories
For most of Winter in the Northeast, skating is possible only during the somewhat rare times when the ice is thick and not covered with snow or other unwelcome surface conditions. And bad skating has been the story, typically, for most of this Winter around Boston. After an earlier snow, there were some ad hoc… Continue reading
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Passive Assistance
Four more of my aerial photos now illustrate their subjects in Wikipedia: Nebraska National Forest and the nearby town of Thedford, both in the Sand Hills region; and Morgan Hill and Dunaliella Salina (a micro algae that colors salt ponds, such as those on the left), both in the Bay Area. There are now 120… Continue reading
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Los Angeles vs. Nature
John McPhee is the best nonfiction writer alive. My opinion, of course. But I happen to be right. Nobody describes anything better. No writer does a better job of digging into subjects most would find dull (rocks, pine barrens, river levees, minor species of fish) and making them not only interesting but relevant. Sometimes extremely… Continue reading
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Hanging with Haiti
I posted a lot today, but nothing matters more — or has been more on the front of my mind — than Haiti. What hell that such an already troubled country should be hit by an earthquake so bad, and so close to its most dense population centers. So, as I try to get my head… Continue reading
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Matterhorn by Moonlight
There are mountains, and there is the Matterhorn. It’s all a matter of sculpture and presentation. Great art, great framing. The Matterhorn is ice sculpture. It was carved by ice out of rock pushed to the sky by a collision between Italy and Europe that’s still going on. The ice was as high as the… Continue reading
alps, blue, Cervino, Matterhorn, night, Pennine Alps, Photography, snow, switzerland, white, winter, Zermatt -
Fire seasonings
I’m on the East Coast for the rest of the current fire season in California. Which is cool, literally. I miss Santa Barbara, but not the fear of destruction (which I generally don’t have there, but I need my rationalizations). Speaking of which, here’s The Mania of Owning Things, my EOF column for August 2009… Continue reading
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Getting quakes straight
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has an excellent Earthquake Center for all the earthquakes in the world, which is very handy at a time when many are happening at once, followed in some cases by tsunamis that cross seas to strike coastlines minutes to hours later. For example, this list of earthquakes of magnitude… Continue reading
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Shaking and baking
My postings last week on the Station Fire (below) brought an invitation from Dave to contribute something along the same lines for InBerkeley. I did, and the title is The Next Berkeley Fire. Since fire is one of the two big dangers of living in this corner of paradise, I visited the subject of earthquakes… Continue reading
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Living on Borrowed Land
Why do mature redwood trees have trunks that rise two hundred feet before branches commence, live for centuries and have bark that’s a foot thick? Because they are adapted to fire. Why does the silver-green chaparral that covers California’s hills and mountains burn so easily? Because it’s supposed to. Why, other than its color, is… Continue reading
Future, Geology, Ideas, infrastructure, Life, News, Past, Photography, Places, problems, Science, Technology“John McPhee”, California poppies, California poppy, carbon, coal, diaspora, evolution, Figueroa Mountain, Figureroa loop, geologists, Geology, human, humanity, ophiolites, Plant Sherer, redwood, redwoods, San Gabriel Mountains, San gabriels, Station Fire, stationfire, subduction, The Control of Nature, UCSB, Uncommon Carriers, wildfire, wildfires -
Geology vs. Weather
I love this: … and I hope the good (or evil, depending on your perspective) folks at Despair.com don’t mind my promoting their best t-shirt yet. (If it helps, I just ordered one.) You’ll notice that blogging isn’t in the diagram (though Despair does feature it in four other purchasable forms). I bring that up… Continue reading