highly perfect basal cleavage

highly perfect basal cleavage
Originally uploaded by Twm™.

I'm celebrating South Africa's National Cleavage Day in a geographilic way. Yay.

Basic map stuff - How colors are used

Years ago, in physical geography, we had to color in a physiographic map of the United States. I loved that activity, with colored pencils, and thin pens, and geology references. The teacher told us that we could choose our own colors, and one student showed him her map with the sea colored orange. He said, "I know I told you that you can choose your own colors . . . but just no. No. The sea cannot be orange." And he had her start over. It was sad, but . . . just no.

lightning at Redoubt Volcano

lightning at Redoubt Volcano
Originally uploaded by marymactavish.

I titled a previous post "that's right it starts with an earthquake, birds, snakes, and aeroplanes," and it's tacky to do that again, and so I won't.

Instead, I'll just give you this, a whole set of Redoubt photos, most showing the eruption, and a few, like this, with dramatic lightning.

I wouldn't mind watching this, with protection from the ash, and some distance.

Wow.

I did not take this photo, it comes from the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

Me and California

2009-03-25 Mary and California
Originally uploaded by juverna.

And yet a bit more fluff .... but this is me. And this is me doing what I always do when I encounter a big map. I have to touch it (if I can) and find recognizable features, and talk about it, and triangulate.

This is a big, flat map without most labels, and I had to wander around it and talk about it, and tell my companion about the White Mountains and the Bristlecone Pines, and (here) the various drainages of the Feather River, and about the Sutter Buttes and how they're a tiny mountain range, and we had to find the original Brokeoff Mountain remnants around Mount Lassen, and I could have stayed and looked at it for another thirty minutes or so.

I want this for my house. Is that too much to ask?

It's near the climate change exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. Go check it out. Say hi for me.

"Daylight Savings brings back Rose, the two o'clock titty."

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/around_town/the_scene/SF-Cathedral-Hosts-Topless-Peepshow.html (worksafe, geographilic)

(quickie, sorry -- off to do naturey things, more substantive post tonight)
(and yes, shadows cast on the earth by the sun are pure geography)

Behold: The Ice Worm

As glaciers on the west coast of North America melt, we will lose countless millions, or even billions of representatives of a creature that lives only in those west coast glaciers.



Mind you, these are just the ice worm. We'll also lose alpine plants and animals that have migrated to as high and cool as they can go or as dry as they can go, water storage in snowpack and glaciers, riverflow, and some existing air circulation patterns. More will be revealed. We shall see, we shall see.

Tonga's doing a little remodeling

Underwater Volcano Tonga
Originally uploaded by roan lavery.

Near Tonga, last week, a volcano exploded with an earth-shattering kaboom from below the sea.

I love the shapes and drama of the black, white, and grey of the ash, steam, and other ejecta.

Boston.com's The Big Picture has some pictures that made my heart pound. I actually made a squeak when I saw #10.

There's no real evidence at this point that the volcano is related to today's quake, and it almost certainly isn't.

.

I love this planet. This is an awesome planet.

can there be enough cephalopods?

totally random find while stumbling around in slow motion videos on youtube

Holy cow this is amazing lightning video! The annotations label the various leaders.

I grew up in a part of California that has summer lightning storms, but even those amazing storms weren't like storms can be in other parts of the US and the world. Lightning still enthralls me, rather than scaring me.

I sat through one storm in Arizona, once, under shelter, watching the occasional distant glow of a transformer exploding under a strike. That was enough of the big stuff.

savoring the world, for now

When you're humming down a railway line in Germany, and you see the most intense rainbow you've ever seen before, what else is there to do but to take a picture through the grubby train window?


by @cosmos4u

I arise every morning torn between the desire to save the world and the desire to savor the world. It makes it hard to plan the day.
  -E B White

those coincidences

Triple Rock
Originally uploaded by Ingorrr.

I stopped into Triple Rock brewpub in Berkeley, California tonight, for some of their Black Rock Porter (my all-time favorite beer) and what turned out to be the best hamburger I've ever had, anywhere. It wasn't a fancy burger at all, it just tasted perfect.

While I was there, a nice person turned to me and said, "Do you know anything about geography?" I cracked up and said, "You're kidding, right?" I'd already had a pint of beer, so wasn't thinking modestly or tactfully.

Then we spent a couple of hours doing his crossword (he wanted to know the largest country in Africa) and talking and drinking beer, and it was nice.

So *waves* to Elijah. Did I spell that right? I think so.

-Mary

Why study geography?

I just got my first-ever geographilic spam!

UN flag
Originally uploaded by gebauer.

In whole:

Congratulations beneficiary,

Your email has been selected by the united nations organization(UNO)for a
cash grant award of 1,000,000.00 USD(One Million Dollars). The united
nations authorities has decided to give this award to 15 beneficiaries
from all
over
the world to help facilitate the preparation of submissions to the Commission
on the
Limits of the Continental Shelf for developing States, in particular the
least developed countries and small island developing States,and compliance
with article 76 of the United Nations Convention on the
Law of the Sea.This grant is been aided by the united nations development
programme and the united nations trust funds for human security.
Your cash grant pin number is (UNO-154/4456/011)
Our corresponding office
in the (AU)African Union will give details on how
your funds would be remitted to you.Do contact our payment office immediately
with the information's below.
Full Name.
Address.
Age.
Sex.
Occupation.
Mobile Number.
House Number.
State.
Country.
******************************
A Scanned copy of a valid identification card should also be attached(either
an International passport or Driver's License) and send with the listed
information for claims of your won prize.
******************************
Payment Officer:Mr.Terry White
Phone Number:+234[redacted]
Email: unitednations.2009@[redacted, nothing resembling UN]
Regards,
Mr.Ban Ki-moon.

----------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.

I know that can't be true. Ban Ki-Moon would never say "PIN number," as that is redundant.

Animaniacs - 50 State Capitals

Trying not to let the spelling of "capitals" in the youtube description get to me. Seriously.

I am endlessly fascinated with cephalopods

basic school educational flick - The Five Themes of Geography

River processes

This is a pretty little school presentation.

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.

holy writing from my religion

The remnant of a supernova located 6000 light years from Earth in the constellation Taurus.
Originally uploaded by Smithsonian Institution.

At least, it's spiritual for me:

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars -- mere globs of gas atoms.
I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?
The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination --
stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one million year old light.
A vast pattern -- of which I am a part...
What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why?
It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it.
For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it.
Why do the poets of the present not speak of it?
What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia
must be silent?

This was a footnote in one of physicist Richard Feynman's books, The Feynman Lectures on Physics. It's become one of my favorite poems ever.


(And I'm being a little silly, I don't really have science/nature/wonder as a religion, so much as that it's just a major source for things spiritual in my heart.)

Philippine geography

Trying to come up with something important to say and all that occurs to me is "it's neat to hear the three languages work together like that."