You are browsing the archive for September 2013 - Mountain Beltway.
Life Everlasting: The Animal Way of Death, by Bernd Heinrich
A few weeks back, when I posted a few book reviews in a post on this blog, a reader recommended a book by Bernd Heinrich, The Snoring Bird. I checked my local library, which did not have it, and so I requested that they buy a copy. In the meantime, I thought back to the two other books by Heinrich I had read: Mind of the Raven, and Ravens in …
27 September 2013
Friday fold: crumpled red argillite
Red argillite (Grinnell Formation?) and white quartzite strata from Glacier National Park, Montana. Heavily adorned with lichens… With bedding traced out… Happy Friday to you!
26 September 2013
The Family That Couldn’t Sleep, by D.T. Max
How do we get sick? Let’s make a list… Genetic disorders; those we inherit from our parents Injuries Environmental issues (obesity, diabetes) Infection by bacteria Infection by fungi Infection by viruses Infection by animals (tapeworms, etc.) Infection by protozoans (ameobae, dysentery, etc.) Infection by carcinogenic cells (e.g. Tasmanian devil contagious mouth cancers) That last one may sound pretty weird, but today’s book is about a weirder one: Infection by proteins …
23 September 2013
Monday macrobug: a lovely new caterpillar
Liquid jewels separated by green rubber bands – that’s what it looks like to me.
20 September 2013
Friday fold: recumbent fold at Two Medicine Lake, Montana
Here’s a photo from Tom Biggs (University of Virginia), taken on the NOVA Rockies field course last summer. It shows a recumbent fold along the Front Range of Glacier National Park, in Montana, just north of Two Medicine Lake. I hope you get some ‘recumbent’ time this weekend… I know I could use some rest. Happy Friday!
16 September 2013
Monday macrobug: Garden spider
Found this lovely garden spider while working in the yard on the last day of August… It’s a big beastie; here’s a pencil tip for scale: I induced her to briefly face upward: …but she definitely preferred to be oriented head-down: I then crouched lower, and aimed the camera up, resulting in a different exposure and a different color “feel”… Then she got sick of me and my camera, and …
13 September 2013
Friday fold: Kink band in Lodgepole Limestone, Sacagawea Peak, Bridger Range, Montana
As I’ve mentioned previously, I spent some time making GigaPans this summer out west. Here’s Lily and me on the crest of the Bridger Range, enjoying the clear skies and great geology: When this portrait was taken (by our friend Lindsay), I was shooting this GigaPan: link Try exploring it to see if you can find today’s Friday fold: a kink band in the Lodgepole Limestone (a thinly banded unit) …
10 September 2013
Summer reading
Periodically, I review books here. Usually, I do them one at a time, but at this point, I’ve been delinquent enough in my book reporting that I’ve got a big backlog. So I intend to just bomb through them, clearing out my backlog of unblogged books in one fell swoop post. This consolidation is probably a good call since few are specifically about geology. Wild: From Lost to Found on …
9 September 2013
Monday macrobug: pine sawfly larvae
These “caterpillars” are the larvae of the pine sawfly, Neodiprion sp. They were grazing on a small pine in my front yard. Sawflies are relatives of bees, wasps, and ants – they’re members of the Hymenoptera. But their larvae look so much like the larvae of butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) and flies (Diptera), don’t they? Beetles, too (Coleoptera) have “grubby” larval morphology. They’re wormy things, long bags of hungry guts …
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.