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Category Archives: Geology
Will our digital lives leave a fossil record?
In the library of Earth’s history, there are missing books, and within books there are missing chapters, written in rock that is now gone. John Wesley Powell recorded the greatest example of gone rock in 1869, on his expedition by boat … Continue reading
Posted in Geology, history, Nature, personal data, problems, Technology
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The universe is a start-up
“Pillars of Creation” is a live view of stars forming in a neighboring region of the Milky Way. (Inside the Eagle Nebula, 5,400 to 6,100 light years away.) The Solar System, formed 4.6 billion years ago. Earth became a planet .46 … Continue reading
Posted in Art, astronomy, Geology, Science, Technology
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Saving the Internet—and all the commons it makes possible
This is the Ostrom Memorial Lecture I gave on 9 October of last year for the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University. Here is the video. (The intro starts at 8 minutes in, and my part starts just after 11 minutes … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Future, Geology, Ideas, infrastructure, Internet, Journalism, Ostrom Workshop
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Revolutions take time
The original version of this ran as a comment under Francine Hardaway‘s Medium post titled Have we progressed at all in the last fifty years? My short answer is “Yes, but not much, and not evenly.” This is my longer answer. … Continue reading
Posted in Geology, Law, Life, Personal, Politics, problems, Technology, war
Tagged anthropocene
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Shooting the Bluecut Fire
To get away from the heat today—into a little less heat and an excuse to exercise, I drove up to Mt. Wilson, where I visited the Observatory and walked around the antenna farm there. As it happened, the Bluecut Fire … Continue reading
Posted in Geography, Geology, Photography
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Desert warfare training in live ghost towns, seen from the sky
I’ve been fascinated for years by what comes and goes at the Fort Irwin National Training Center— —in the Mojave Desert, amidst the dark and colorful Calico Mountains of California, situated in the forbidding nowhere that stretches between Barstow and … Continue reading
Posted in Aviation, Geography, Geology, history, Military, Science, Strange stuff, Travel, war
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Oil and Water on California’s South Coast
Oil in the water is one of the strange graces of life on Califonia’s South Coast. What we see here is a long slick of oil in the Pacific, drifting across Platform Holly, which taps into the Elwood Oil Field, … Continue reading
Posted in Aviation, education, Geography, Geology, Health, history, Personal, Photography, Strange stuff, Technology, UCSB
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