sharing the wealth

FIVE SEA LIONS
Originally uploaded by SparkyLeigh.

"A sea lion was picked up by Oakland police Monday morning after it wandered onto northbound Interstate Highway 880, a California Highway Patrol officer said.
The sea lion was spotted around 5:45 a.m. as it walked south in the center divide of northbound I-880, just south of Park Street, the CHP reported. "

The CBS blog goes on to say that there have been more malnourished babies coming up out of the bay lately, and that their prey is decreasing locally.

Protecting fisheries and choosing sustainable seafood protects sea lion food, too.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program offers printable sustainable seafood guides and lists of good alternatives for non-sustainable favorites.

We're sharing that big ocean full of meat (and vegetables now, too) with lots of other creatures. We need to find a way to share it fairly, and to save it for the future as well.

Rock galleries on about.com

Serpentine boulder, Oakland, California
Originally uploaded by marymactavish.

Andrew Alden of geology.about.com has been redoing his gallery of rocks, starting with igneous, but moving on to the other types eventually. You can visit his newly remodeled igneous section here, clicking down one layer will lead you to his current metamorphic and sedimentary pages, as well -- and eventually, to the redone versions.

I chose serpentine for this photo, because
1) it's in Oakland, and Andrew also does an Oakland Geology blog, which is fascinating if you're someone like me and
2) it's my all-time favorite rock. I've got a long and fancy serpentine post sitting there in notepad waiting patiently for me to finish it for this blog.

I think there may have been an earthquake

I think there may have been an earthquake ... ;)
Originally uploaded by Evan Sims.

When an earthquake happens around here, you run and fill out the "did you feel it?" page -- FOR SCIENCE.

When you do that, among the questions is, "How did you respond?" You can choose between "No answer/don't remember," ""Took no action," "Moved to doorway," "Dropped and covered," "Ran outside," "Other." I mentioned to my partner, "They're missing one." He said, "Run to the computer and look up the quake on the USGS site?" "YES!" So I chose "other," and told them we ran to the computer, and that I thought from how it felt that it wasn't on the Hayward fault (it wasn't, it was on the Calaveras), and that I thought it was a 3.2 or so. Then I saw how deep it was and said, "That's pretty deep, it was probably a 4 or so." And bingo, I nailed it. I used far fewer words to explain this to the USGS.

(If you actually want to read the text in the image, which is a twitter-and-other-things friendfeed screenshot of folks responding to the quake, VIEW BIG.)