Swan song
A few reflections on the AGU Blogosphere’s long, strong run, and a vision for Callan’s future online outreach.
blogs
Bird update March 2023
Click to enlarge I’m still birding voraciously. I’m up to 89 species in my county for the year. So that means I added a dozen since last month. A few of those are freshly-arrived migrants from southerly climes, and some are just me putting in the time to go rack up waterfowl at nearby lakes. … Read more
Qwitter
On April 25th, it was announced that Elon Musk had arranged to buy the social media company Twitter. He had just attained majority shareholder status a few weeks earlier. I’ve been an avid Twitter user for twelve years, accruing 11.5K followers over that interval, and very much enjoying the conversation — but I decided to … Read more
Ten years of Mountain Beltway
Callan has been blogging about geology for a decade. Here are a few reflections on those ten years behind the wheel of “Mountain Beltway.”
Year in review
We approach the end of another calendar year, and with it comes my ninth anniversary of beginning to write about geology online. (A year from now will mark a decade of geoblogging for me!) It’s been a rough year, health-wise for my friends and family. Loved ones have suffered strokes, brain cancer, Alzheimer’s, and other … Read more
Hitting a nerve with popular posts
I blog here a few times a week, when I can manage it. Mostly I focus on new things I discover on field trips, advances in geologic imagery, and structural geology. I get about 500 readers per day. But occasionally I write about other things, like creationism or current events disasters like earthquakes, and those … Read more
Blogging → science
I thought this was pretty cool. Remember the blog post a year ago wherein I documented a slump on a hillside on the campus of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, adjacent to Interstate 81? Well, a student at JMU, Dan Rowson, ended up doing his research on that slump, and it turned out that … Read more
Callan describes what he does in #upgoerfive language
Okay, I’ll bite. I work at making people understand more about the big rock that we live on. I use pictures and drawing on the pictures to show how the rocks have changed because of pushing on the rocks. This pushing happens because of blocks of rock that move together and sometimes push into other … Read more
5-year blogiversary
Half a decade ago today, I wrote my first blog post. A lot’s happened since then. Blogging is fun, and it’s brought me a lot of great opportunities and new friendships. Any thoughts on the material I’ve produced since that initial foray? Want more of something or less of something? Thanks for reading…
AW 52: Dream geology courses
Shawn at the blog Vi-carius is hosting this month’s Accretionary Wedge. He asks for a geoblogosphere-wide brainstorm on “dream geology courses” – an inspirational topic! I have a few ideas: A travel course dedicated to exploring the roots of geological thinking and the geological timescale. It would clearly need to be based in the U.K. … Read more
Migmacatization
Evelyn put up a cat photo on Geokittehs earlier today, and it reminded me of anatexis, the process of partial melting. Anatexis is my favorite way to produce a migmatite. In this model, the light-colored (felsic) ginger cat is derived from the partial melting of another cat, partly dark (mafic) and partly felsic (ginger). Where … Read more
Friday folds: Turpan Depression
Rob Simmon of NASA’s Earth Observatory is the source for today’s Friday folds. Last week, he tweeted this image to me: That’s a excellent example of the outcrop pattern of a more or less horizontal outcrop of folded rock. To the north is a synform (notice that where streams have eroded it, the bull’s-eye pattern … Read more
Scott Mandia, climate communicator
Callan has a conversation with Scott Mandia, a community college professor working on the national level to improve the public’s understanding of climate science.
The top 10 reasons I love structure
In the past 24 hours, Erik Klemetti and Siim Sepp both gave us their top ten reasons for loving their branches of geo-science. Their lists demonstrated their passion for (respectively) volcanoes and sand, and so I feel inspired to make a list, too. Here are the top 10 reasons I love structural geology: 10. It’s … Read more
Crisp limestone syncline
Nice straight-limbed syncline in the Helderberg Group of West Virginia (Devonian limestones, mainly): Alan Pitts shot a sweet GigaPan of this outcrop which you can explore here, or you can just look at this zoomed-in detail: Aaron Barth is down there in the lower right corner for scale.
AGU 2011, day 1
I got to San Francisco on Saturday afternoon, flying in on the same flight from DC as Rob Simmon and Maria-José Viñas. MJ and I took the BART downtown, and then met up with Jess Ball for Thai dinner and a yummy dessert of banana wrapped in roti with Nutella and coconut ice cream. Then, … Read more
William & Mary geology: 50th anniversary
The geology program at the College of William & Mary turned 50 years old this year, and last weekend they held a party to celebrate. Of the 800 or so geology majors the department has produced in 50 years, about 100 came to this event – that’s a pretty great ratio, I think: 1 out … Read more
Geoblogs as a device for student engagement
Here’s the talk I gave at GSA last month: [youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXt5aZIu5Xk”] It’s presented here at a slower pace than the actual talk was, since I didn’t have to run and catch a plane 45 minutes after presenting it, but there are some PowerPoint bugs with some of the animations. Oh well – recording it and … Read more
Geoblogger/Geotweep Rendezvous, summer 2012?
At the end of the summer, there was a conversation on Twitter about having a meet-up (“rendezvous” sounds more authentic, it was pointed out) for folks involved in geology social media: stuff like geoblogs and Twitter, but pretty much open to whoever’s into meeting up in some interesting place and exploring some geology together. Following … Read more
Friday fold addendum
Lee Allison, State Geologist of Arizona and exemplar of public outreach via blogging, sent me an e-mail yesterday regarding that awesome coastal Greenland shot by Alistair Knock that I featured as the Friday fold. Lee, like many of you, found the image entrancing and intriguing, and as he explored the unannotated version, he made some … Read more