Beneath the Rising, by Premee Mohamed A novel of adventure, science fiction, and magic. Two teens from Canada embark on a mission to save the world. Though “mismatched” in terms of their demographics and wealth, they are united by the fact that they met as children when one terrorist’s bullet pierced them both. The story … Read more
Callan shares a few outcrops from coastal Maine, part of the Avalonia terrane that accreted to ancestral North America during the Acadian Orogeny. They are volcaniclastic rocks, coarse and fine, and showing both overprinting kink bands and cross-cutting basaltic dikes.
Five books get the Callan mini-review treatment: two novels from Amor Towles, an account of life in prison under solitary confinement, a history of Virginia slavery during the War of 1812, and finally a family account of the discovery of the fossil Hesperornis, a toothed bird, and various associated tangents.
Fresh from the field, Callan shares a quintet of beautifully preserved desiccation cracks in Mesoproterozoic Belt Supergroups sediments, exposed in Montana’s geological gem, Glacier National Park.
A quick Friday fold that I observed last month in a boulder of riprap at Chippokes State Park in Surry, Virginia. I have absolutely no idea where this rock was quarried; but it doesn’t look like anything I’m familiar with in Virginia, so maybe the Baltimore Mafic Complex??? Anyhow, it’s not native to the Coastal … Read more
Happy Friday! Here are some kink-folded metasediments from Virginia’s Lynchburg Group to help usher in the weekend.
One of my favorite tricks is using bedding / cleavage intersections to identify tectonically inverted strata. On a field trip yesterday to check out soapstone quarries in the Albemarle/Nelson border region, I got to see this lovely example of Lynchburg Group metasediments that showcased a textbook example of the phenomenon: Bedding was initially horizontal, or … Read more
The Lost Coast of northern California shows geological evidence of deep sea turbidity current sedimentation, tectonic accretion during Mesozoic subduction, and then isostatic uplift interacting with shoreline erosion. Check out a few photographs taken by Callan’s wife on a recent backpacking trip through the region.
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
Callan reviews the debut book by volcanologist Robin George Andrews. It details the diverse eruptive histories of Kilauea, Yellowstone, Ol Doinyo Lengai, the oceanic ridge system, our Moon, the planets Mars and Venus, and the cryovolcanoes of the outer solar system moons.