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14 November 2013
The Road to Samarcand, by Patrick O’Brian
The week before last, I finished a fun adventure novel, The Road to Samarcand. This is the first book I’ve read by Patrick O’Brian that’s not part of his epic (21 books!) Aubrey-Maturin series. I chose it because it was available as a (free) download from my public library, which meant I could “read” it while driving in the car back and forth from the Fort Valley to Annandale. I’m …
13 November 2013
A congress of salamanders
No, that blog post title is not a dig at the goons on Capitol Hill. It’s apparently the proper term for a group of salamanders. We’ve been seeing a lot of them lately ’round these parts. Take a look… Red-backed salamander: Unidentified black salamander: Red eft: Another one of the unidentified black salamanders, with little white spots all over… …and missing the distal-most portion of his tail! Lovely creatures. We …
11 November 2013
Monday macrobug: milkweed bugs on milkweed pods
Monarch butterflies aren’t the only insects that like visiting milkweed…
9 November 2013
Fishers are back in Virginia!
I got word yesterday that the fisher, a medium-sized mustelid (Like a marten, an animal that I’ve seen once up in the Adirondacks of New York), has begun re-colonizing wild parts of Virginia. This is pretty exciting news – a friend from high school shared the image below with me: That’s from a wildlife camera on my friend’s family’s land in northwestern Shenandoah County, in the Cedar Creek Valley. That’s …
8 November 2013
Friday fold: mystery calc-silicate from the USGS
The Friday fold is a cast-off specimen from the USGS. A lovely little orphan, its marble and micaceous layers have polished up nicely. Two sides of the sample are presented here.
7 November 2013
How to apply for grad school in geology
I had a conversation the other day with a former undergraduate student (now two years past the acquisition of a B.S.) who was considering graduate school. I shared some advice with the student, emboldened by the fact that previous students I’ve shared it with said it was very useful and helped clarify their thinking. And as I was relating it again (for the fifth time in as many years), it …
6 November 2013
Natural Bridge, Yoho National Park: Bedding/cleavage relationships
Check out the scene at Natural Bridge in Yoho National Park, British Columbia, Canada: Don’t confuse this “Natural Bridge” with the one in Virginia. Here, in the western Canadian Rockies, the structural geology is much better. You may recall that I’ve previously featured outcrops from nearby this site as a Friday fold. It’s a great place for examining bedding / cleavage relationships in the rocks. Here’s the previous picture, annotated: …
5 November 2013
Coal: A Human History, by Barbara Freese
Last week on the flight to and from Denver, I consumed (via audio book, freely downloaded from my public library system) the 2004 microhistory Coal: A Human History, by Barbara Freese. It’s light on the geology, and heavy on the historical implications of coal. As with many of these sorts of books, it’s basically a compilation of related nonfictional explications of topics of diverse scope, all of which have a …
4 November 2013
Monday macrobug: backstroking grub
The Monday macrobug is a juvenile beetle with an odd means of locomotion.
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.