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Giving a Talk

Mar 12, 2010 2:24pm

Next week I'll be giving a talk to the general public—at least, that subset of the general public that is deeply into their local watershed. After 13 years of writing here on About.com, I have some idea of what interests the public; also an idea of what the public needs...

My New Friend Beryl

Mar 10, 2010 9:17am

Another highlight of the rock show last weekend was a big tray full of aquamarine crystals, from which I chose this specimen the size and shape of a fat pencil for just a dollar a gram. It reminded me of being a kid at the coin store, where there was...

Rock Shows and Collections

Mar 9, 2010 8:20am

One intriguing table at the rock show last weekend was full of boxed rock collections, like the ones that so many of us had as kids. These were good ones: decent-sized specimens, sturdy cases, explanatory material, inexpensive, geologically sound. They fit all of my criteria for starter rock collections, but...

Rock Show

Mar 8, 2010 8:35am

Yesterday was the last day of the big local gem and mineral show. I'm not a big mineral collector, but there are some things I buy and lots of things I'm always tempted by, like bricks of raw jade. But I got two nice little things, one shown here—because who...

Geologic Maps of All 50 States: The Upgrade

Mar 4, 2010 4:45pm

Ten years ago, in 2000, I compiled geologic maps of all 50 states in straightforward, easy to understand images. It was the first and is still the only such compilation on the whole web. Now I've upgraded this collection using larger images and a brief introduction to the geology of...

Does Wikipedia Deserve Credit?

Mar 4, 2010 4:58am

Wikipedia, the crowd-sourced encyclopedia, is both bad and good: On the bad side, teachers don't let their students rely on Wikipedia as an authority. It isn't written for a consistent audience, reflecting its anonymous authors' idea of what they want to say rather than what you need to know. On...

Earth Art by Geologists

Mar 2, 2010 5:00pm

I've appreciated and written about Earth artists for a long time: People like Andy Goldsworthy or Robert Smithson, who take their artistic practice off the easel and out of the atelier into the wide open spaces. I've collected examples in a gallery. But yesterday I found a group of Earth...

Living Plant Fossils

Mar 2, 2010 12:14pm

Living fossils are species that show up fossilized in ancient rocks, looking just like they do today alive. Let me introduce three of them from the plant kingdom: ginkgo, dawn redwood and Wollemi pine.Living Plant Fossils originally appeared on About.com Geology on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 20:14:28.Permalink | Comment...

M8.8 Earthquake Strikes Chile

Feb 27, 2010 6:59am

A great earthquake, magnitude 8.8 occurred off the Chilean coast at 3:34 a.m. local time. A tsunami warning was issued for the whole Pacific Ocean basin except the continental United States, Alaska and western Canada (where a tsunami watch was issued), and seismic sea waves have been recorded in many...

Infrasound Monitoring

Feb 26, 2010 4:06am

Remember a year ago when Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, got widely ridiculed for disparaging the money spent on "volcano monitoring" less than a month before the eruption of Redoubt in Alaska? That money is now appearing in the Mariana Islands, one of America's more obscure territories but a...