Hoo boy. This one made me yelp… While on the glacial geology of western Pennsylvania trip last Saturday, we visited a gravel quarrying operation. The operators were extracting gravel from a glacial lake delta deposit, and it was full of glacial outwash — sediments washed out from the melting front of the Erie lobe of … Read more
A new resource for the Japanese earthquake is online this morning, a “supersite” similar to the ones that exist for other huge events. Checking it out this morning, I found some interesting stuff. Over night, there have been more aftershocks, and here’s the most recent 600 or so events in the area, taken from IRIS’s … Read more
Callan begins a new series on the geology of Mount Washington, New Hampshire with a look at a roadside outcrop of metamorphic rock bearing enigmatic inclusions. Tourmaline-bearing pegmatites are also spotted.
I just got an e-mail which screams “scam!” Apologies for having to reach out to you like this, but I made a quick trip to the UK and had my bag stolen from me with my passport and credit cards in it. The embassy has cooperated by issuing a temporary passport, I just have to … Read more
So here’s how I made that cake I showed you Monday. Step 1: Collect the necessary ingredients: (Nice job with the stitching, Photoshop… jeez!) Step 2: Clear your schedule and start baking. My first layer was to be “the basement complex” and so I wanted something marbled in appearance. Mixing chocolate-powder-stained batter with regular yellow … Read more
Callan showcases his contribution to this month’s Accretionary Wedge blog carnival. The theme of the Wedge is “Bake Sale,” and Callan shows a cake he “discovered,” describing its geologic origin in detail. This would be tongue in cheek, except that his mouth is already full of dessert.
Just got this in an email: “Hi professor Bentley, This is [redacted], I had you for Geology last Spring. I just wanted to email you to first off, thank you, and second off, to ask some questions. Before I took your class Science was my worst subject , and I did everything to avoid taking … Read more
A diagram on “how science works” betrays an “experimentalist” bias. This sets Callan off on a rumination on the much-maligned validity of historical science, and that leads to a discussion of the Big Experiment, which is humanity’s influence on the Earth system.
Outcropedia launched yesterday, and I think it has the potential to be a cool resource for geologists and amateur geology aficionados. I’m particularly excited about the strong structural flavor of the featured outcrops so far. (The site was initiated by three structural geologists.) However, there are some issues that will need to be resolved. Ron … Read more