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1000 Most Common Words to Describe What I Do (a new meme!)
Some Internet memes are irresistible. If professors are known for anything, it is verbosity. So it was that I was looking over the tweets and posts this morning and found that a meme has exploded in...
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Leaving the Abandoned Lands for Greener Pastures: Wrapping up a Tour of the...
We'd been on the road for a while, back in June of 2012. Our tour of the Abandoned Lands had taken us on a grand loop that included Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, the pueblos of New Mexico, the Jemez...
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Moon and Jupiter in Conjunction: Last chance until 2026!
Courtesy of "Science is Awesome" over at Facebook, here is a list of some of the most impressive astronomical events of 2013, including the hopefully spectacular show of Comet ISON in November and...
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The Airliner Chronicles: Wrinkles Tell a Lot About a Person (and the Earth, too)
My grandfather had wrinkles. Lots of them. He was a man who spent a large part of his life working outdoors in the days before sunscreen lotions. You could see in his face the rigors of the Great...
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The Airliner Chronicles: Three Faces of California's Great Valley
According to this interesting article from the New York Times, it's larger than 9 American states. It is the largest patch of Class 1 Soil in the world (i.e., the best for agriculture). More than 230...
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The Airliner Chronicles: There Were Glaciers Here...
Have you ever wondered about recessional moraines? I guess not too many people have pondered such a deep question, but on my recent flight over the Sierra Nevada, I was excited to see what was without...
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Living in the Shadowlands (for the time being)
"We live in the Shadowlands. The sun is always shining somewhere else. Round a bend in the road. Over the bough of a hill..."C.S. Lewis (movie quote from "Shadowlands") This quote from the movie...
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The Airliner Chronicles: A Broken Land of Unspeakable Violence
That's an inflammatory title, and yet in the context of geology it is quite literally true. The land in today's picture is indeed broken, and was the scene of unspeakable violence 760,000 years ago. If...
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The Airliner Chronicles: Glory in the Skies (not a religious post, though)
Pilots and frequent fliers are no doubt familiar with the phenomena, but for infrequent fliers like myself (I will qualify for a free flight sometime in the middle or late Anthropocene epoch), this was...
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Time Beyond Imagining on the Colorado Plateau: You can imagine it too, on...
Antelope Canyon, on the Navajo Reservation near Page, ArizonaThe Colorado Plateau, the region encompassing large parts of Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado, is one of the great geologic showplaces...
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A Maybe Not So Hard Quiz...Where Are We?
We are in a national park...it is perhaps the most geological park in the entire National Park System. The park contains rocks from every major era, ranging in age from as much as 2.3 billion years...
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The Winged Messenger: Appearing Now on Your Western Horizon!
I saw something I've only seen once before in my life last night: the planet Mercury. It's not that hard to see it, but being so close to the sun, it must be at the highest point in its orbit to avoid...
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The Answer to Sunday's Mystery Quiz...And Where I'm Headed Tomorrow
The answer is: Death Valley National Park!I admit that I was trying to be a bit deceptive with my pictures. Many people have a stereotypical image of Death Valley that includes salt flats, sand dunes,...
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Cheating Death One More Time: Home from the Field
Sunset in Death Valley near BadwaterHey, I'm back, after five days in the wilds with no wi-fi access, and no television. Did anything happen while I was gone? What about that asteroid that was making a...
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Hunting for Fossils in the Sierra Nevada...Wait a Minute, What Fossils are...
Photo by Mrs. GeotripperLast night I attended a great presentation on the dinosaurs and other (more interesting) Mesozoic reptiles found in California. It was given by Dick Hilton, a former prof at my...
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Accretionary Wedge #55: Blood on the Rocks, and Bad Karma on the Plateau
This month's Accretionary Wedge is hosted by Maitri at her Vatulblog, and it concerns our injuries incurred in the field: "Show me your injuries! ... You don’t have to be a geologist to play; simply...
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The Joy of Roadcuts: A Few Friday Mystery Photos
Photo by Mrs. GeotripperRocks are easy to find in California. In places like Death Valley and the Mojave Desert, and in the high peaks of the Sierra Nevada and White Mountains, the rock exposures are...
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What Was The Greatest Moment of Your Life?
In my imagination, I could see someone, doing a job that he obviously hates, working as a (fill in hated occupation here; I don't want to insult anyone's choices), talking about the greatest moment of...
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Science on Screen Series at the State Theatre: Robot and Frank on March 10
For my Modesto region readers, I would like to encourage you to consider an interesting movie-going experience, our Science on Screen Series. The State Theatre is a nicely renovated 1930s era movie...
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Memorial Service for Lauren Wright, Death Valley Geologist
Jim Calzia, Geologist Emeritus, USGS, has asked me to pass on this announcement about a memorial service for Lauren Wright, long time explorer of Death Valley geology, who passed away in February:...
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