You are browsing the archive for May 2011 - Page 2 of 4 - Mountain Beltway.
21 May 2011
Geology LOLcats 2
Another day, another geology LOLcat challenged issued by a geoblogger… Okay, I’ll bite: Other geology LOLcats have been found curling up all over the geoblogosphere in the past 24 hours: Outside the Interzone Georneys
The grave of Charles Walcott
Callan pays a visit to the grave of celebrated paleontologist and geological administrator Charles D. Walcott.
20 May 2011
Geology LOLcats 1
Dana posted early this morning with an invitation to “LOLcat” with a geological flavor. Here’s the best I could come up with: If you’re not familiar with the LOLcat genre, you might want to take a look at a random sampling of LOLcat images for context. Yes: I have the day off today, and can indulge in silliness like this!
Friday fold: “Butt of Lewis” (yes, really!)
Today’s Friday fold comes to us from Alistair Knock on Flickr*, via Dave Schumaker’s Geology News Blog, where there is a daily Flickr feed of photos tagged with the word “geology”: Bigger version here. The fold in question, an overturned synform, is at a place called “Butt of Lewis” (the northernmost point on the island of Lewis), in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Tee hee! Happy Friday! ___________________________________ * Posted …
19 May 2011
Check out my bookshelf
A fresh gigapan, of my office bookshelf. There’s some rocks there: Find anything neat?
18 May 2011
Some cool rocks from DGMR’s rock garden
A brief tour of some cool rocks, shown in close-up, from the rock garden at the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Department of Geology and Mineral Resources in Charlottesville, Virginia, presented as a follow-on to the gigapan of the garden shown a month ago. The post features close-ups of plumose structure in slate, epidote slickensides, and graded bedding in ancient rhythmites.
17 May 2011
More garbage about impending disasters
Hot on the heels of my discussion of yesterday’s “end is nigh” prophecy, here’s another one, an example that more plausibly wears the cloak of pseudoscience. A cousin sent me a link to this video via Facebook, and asked me what I thought. I sat through it (ten minutes of my life I’ll never get back), and now you can too: [youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jpMmjvMwvw”] If you don’t have the patience to …
16 May 2011
Five days until… nothing much happens
Outside a metro station in DC a couple of months ago, I noticed a group of people with signs, pamphlets, and earnest expressions. They were advertising the “good news” that the end of the world was soon: May 21, in fact. They’ve been getting some more attention since, and since May 21 is this coming Saturday, I figured it’s about time I wrote it up. According to this particular sect …
15 May 2011
A gruesome kill
Camping this weekend; when we took the rain fly off the tent this morning, we found this gruesome scene of a predator and its prey, a miniature drama that played itself out above our heads while we slept: I love macro photography of critters like these… tiny dramas revealed!
13 May 2011
Lily’s pet gecko
My fiancée Lily teaches science at a local middle school, and she has a pet leopard gecko there. I went in this morning to give her students a talk on climate change, and used the opportunity to hang out a bit with the gecko, which is named Kimo (“chemo”). Lily affectionately calls him “Kemo-sabe”… I took a few photos, which long-time readers will recall I did with another classroom pet …
Callan Bentley is Associate Professor of Geology at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. For his work on this blog, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers recognized him with the James Shea Award. He has also won the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia, and the Biggs Award for Excellence in Geoscience Teaching from the Geoscience Education Division of the Geological Society of America. In previous years, Callan served as a contributing editor at EARTH magazine, President of the Geological Society of Washington and President the Geo2YC division of NAGT.