Geotripper

Let's see...geology and earth science programs are imperiled at a number of colleges and high schools around the country. Teachers are being laid off. Federal and state geologic surveys are having their budgets deeply slashed, and some are proposed for elimination. These kinds of programs are critical to the health...

Read more

I was leading my students today on a geology field trip through California's Mother Lode. We were in the southern reaches of the 1848 Gold Rush country between the towns of Mariposa and Jamestown, with stops at some of the (near) ghost towns, the California State Mineral Exhibit with...

Read more

It's a Friday! I've been grading midterms and lab reports non-stop for two weeks. I am geologized out for an evening. I'm heading up into the Mother Lode tomorrow with my students for an exploration of the gold rush mines and ghost towns, but tonight, it's a Friday Cat Blog....

Read more

This is an ongoing exploration of the "Other California"; the wonderful geological places in our state that are rarely found on a postcard. After some geological distractions (like giant earthquakes in Chile and tsunamis in Hawaii), we are back on the road looking at some peaks that look strangely familiar....

Read more

I look at my posts for the last week and I see that I have been on quite a rampage of "munching Cheetos in the basement" blogging, complaining about treatment of geologic topics in the media. It was set off when I experienced the full brunt the appalling coverage of...

Read more

Retreat of Athabasca Glacier in the Canadian Rockies, 1919-2005 (photos from different angles, but most of the foreground of the recent picture was covered by ice in 1919)In my previous post, I made some comments on a report that I hadn't read on dinosaur extinctions, and had some questions instead...

Read more

What Bryan at In Terra Veritas said (and he said it better, but read on if you wish!)...What's going on? Another group of headlines on scientific topics/events and the media response that I've been complaining about in the last week: a tendency to overstate, overhype and overdo things. A week...

Read more

The first time I saw any data about women in the geological sciences was a long time ago, but a brochure dating from the 1960's pointed out that only 2% of geologists were women (no link; this is from an old memory), and by 1989, that number was 10% (although...

Read more

This was a false alarm? Photographs from CBS News and APTwo situations:In the first, it's a school day, and some kid pulls the fire alarm. Bells ring and students have to evacuate even though there is no evidence of a fire and everyone knows it was a prank. This is...

Read more

I know that the Hawaii tsunami is now officially old news, but it was an important geological lesson. Why does it take amateur video to adequately explain what was happening? As I watched cable news yesterday, the activity was hidden by screen banners and obscured by blathering newsreaders who didn't...

Read more

Photo of tsunami surge from West Hawaii TodayI have a dream, or more a fantasy, because dreams are more likely to come true. I fantasize about the day that a cable network newsreader (I know they like to call themselves "anchorpeople", but forget it) stands up in front of the...

Read more

If you were watching the coverage of today's tsunami in the Pacific Ocean basin, you could be forgiven for thinking that this was what was converging on Waikiki, given the breathless reporting that took place on the cable networks. This photo began life as a photoshop effort that circulated...

Read more

Photo from MSNBC I take back the nice things I said about the media coverage. They have the tsunami directly affecting Hilo Bay, but they keep putting their "breaking news" banner right over the most visible aspect of the receding water as the tsunami hits (see the unblocked picture above)....

Read more

There wasn't a whole lot of information when I wrote about the 8.8 earthquake in Chile in the earliest hours of the morning. Information is starting to flood in now from many sources, and my first impression is media coverage is a bit better than it was for the Haiti...

Read more

A huge earthquake has struck offshore of Maule, Chile. Initially reported at magnitude 8.3, the quake has been upgraded to 8.8, making it the sixth largest quake recorded in the world since 1900 (if the revision stands). A tsunami warning has been issued, but there are no reports out of...

Read more

An exploration of the Klamath Mountains of California is not complete without a discussion of...well, let me mention a field trip story. The punchline isn't very exciting, but here goes.We take a field studies trip to the Cascades every other September. To split up some of the long drives,...

Read more

Map derived from Correlation of the Klamath Mountains and Sierra Nevada by W.P. Irwin After a busy couple of weeks in other places, I'm getting back to the Other California, the exploration of the places in my fair state that don't always show up on the postcards...In most parts...

Read more

Are you interested in geology field guides for the northwestern United States? You might want to check out a new blog by Dave Tucker at Western Washington University: Northwest Geology Field Trips. It has a wealth of information and some fun looking trips; check it out! Dave is also the...

Read more

A swarm of small and moderate earthquakes has been shaking things up in Southern California in and around the town of Redlands. The largest, on February 13, was magnitude 4.1, with five additional events between 3.1 and 3.6 in the days that followed. Well over a hundred smaller quakes...

Read more

I am always kind of haunted (in a good way) by ancient petroglyphs and pictographs. Most of my teaching in a classroom involves delivering information using one kind of rock (chalk) to form images on another kind of rock (slate, or an artificial derivative of slate). My images are...

Read more

Who in the world chose this particular slope to build the offices and dormitories for the mine complex near by? Maybe the perspective makes it look steeper and more dangerous than it actually is, but every single piece of rock on that slope came down quite rapidly from the cliffs...

Read more

I am writing this blog post today in penance for my faux pas the other day in describing the "climate" at Death Valley as "unusually wet" this week. It was the weather that was wet, not the climate. It was a sophomoric mistake, made worse in my mind because...

Read more

Not a particularly geologic entry tonight, but I have never had the chance to photograph a coyote from a reasonably close distance. The morning patrol at Stovepipe Wells Campground was in full swing today, and Wily E. Coyote was cooperating with yours truly. It could have been the breakfast burrito...

Read more

Looking over the blasted barren rocks of Death Valley National Park, one is struck by the apparent lack of life. A region that averages less than two inches of rain in a year, with summer temperatures regularly topping 120 degrees, is just not going to have a lot of moisture...

Read more

Blogging from the road! There is actually some web access in Death Valley...slow, sensitive, moody, but it works, sort of. I'm out here with nearly three dozen students and volunteers, experiencing an unusually wet climate (correction: "weather", see the comments) by Death Valley standards. They've received a year's worth...

Read more