Geology is Detective Work Everyone likes a good book. Now days the genre has changed. With the proliferation of the internet, reading books may go the way of the Wooly Mammoth. Geologists, while having read their fair share of text books and technical articles also spend a great deal of their time (besides web time) reading [...]
Geologic Column By Frank Bliss Folks are always telling me they have found some really cool "dinosaur eggs". I tell them they are probably not dinosaur eggs. These rounded, spherical or elongated rocks that are often rusty red or yellow in color often fall out of sandstone outcrops. These objects also often take on the persona [...]
There is nothing like making a U-turn. Having invested a significant amount of time and resources to a particular path, it seems like our wise voters (some of which can't tie their own shoes) have arranged to change horses and paths mid-stream. So there we are. May the winners save the economy because the options are [...]
Our lifestyle living on the Wyoming/Montana border and being over 14 miles from the nearest asphalt road is just a bit different than the average urban dweller. It is a fact of life up here that the power could go off at any time, we could get snowed in for weeks, roads have been taken out [...]
Living down wind of one of the largest volcanos on the planet has it's advantages and it's disadvantages. Certainly the Yellowstone ecosystem is one of the last bastions of what North America used to be like. Even though the park service messed with the ecology back around 1900 in a mostly disasterous fashion, life finds a [...]
Ground Water Geology 101 The saying goes we are what we eat. I wish to stretch that bit of wisdom a tad further by saying we are also what we drink. Here is another case where Geology affects our daily lives. The water that we drink comes out of the ground most typically unless you handle [...]
A little rock appetizer with that salad? On a "global warming" 60 degree day this January, I was out working on a fence line less that 200 yards from my house. I habitually scan grass less areas of ground looking for indian artifacts or traces of dinosaur fossil material. (Though I need glasses for every other [...]
I became aware of an email from the group at care2.com concerning a petition to prevent opening federal land in Utah to oil and gas exploration. Here's a quote from a page (http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/192320016) on their site: "Without consulting the National Park Service, the BLM has opened thousands of acres for lease to oil and gas development [...]
You can't even trust your compass anymore. (You actually never could!) Most people incorrectly believe that a compass needle points directly to the north magnetic pole. There are many complicating factors involving the molten iron/nickel core of the earth and multiple magnetic poles that average each other out as well as local effects. The net effect [...]
I would like to talk about breakfast for a minute but to do so I will have to take you across Wyoming for a while. I love the drive on St. Rt. 26 from Dubois Wyoming to Riverton Wyoming because the highway takes you by some amazing geology. The Wind River Mountains (like the Bighorns) are [...]