The book tour continues, this time at David Williams' Stories in Stone blog. Through the Sandglass participated in David's ground-breaking tour last year to celebrate his terrific book and now it's a great pleasure to reverse the roles. David starts...
A friend sent me the link to this image (without annotations), yet another spectacular and provocative high-resolution image of Mars. The crest of each dune runs along the boundary between the light and dark blue-gray flanks, and the surface between...
OK, time for another commercial break - but with entertainment. The North American edition of the book is now out in paperback and, I have to say, very handsomely so, thanks to the production standards at the University of California...
And if those dunes are in Israel's Negev Desert, then you might be in for quite a big surprise. We are constantly surprised by the discovery of new species on our planet - but then, on reflection, not surprised, given...
Much has been written on the chaos and the tragedy of Haiti while I have been offline, but I thought it worthwhile highlighting a couple of excellent sources. Chris Rowan at Highly Allochthonous has put together a very helpful summary...
A quick note to apologise for the extended blog silence. I returned to the UK last Friday night, preparing to set to work on several projects, blog posts - of course - amongst them. On Saturday I didn't feel great,...
Ron Schott recently posted some spectacular outcrop photos of the Navajo Sandstone showing superb dune cross-bedding – aeolian processes at work 200 million years ago. He wrote that “Sure, I’m a hard rock geologist, buy who wouldn’t be moved by...
Concerned about the origin of the sand covering your car after the kids have borrowed it? Or where that cowboy builder is getting his supplies from? Curious about why the sands on one beach make much better sandcastles than those...
“You’ve never heard speak of The Theory of the Grain of Sand? The little nothing, the detail that can be enough to change everything…” With a title like that, this was a book I had to have. In France, the...
OK, so I didn't notice the wave coming in - but the sentiment (as well as the lettering) remains! The Mediterranean coast of France, where the Pyrenees come down to the sea, is, to say the least, a pleasant place...
HOLIDAY BEST WISHES TO ONE AND ALL! Sandglass will be taking a short break to focus on the cultural, festive, and scenic delights of the Catalan Pyrenees - for example, Mont Canigou, above, as seen from my research base. Back...
My kind hosts for the Café Scientifique event were Ann Lackie and her husband, John. They had set up the group originally and are to be commended for their devotion and the enthusiasm of the community that they have established....
In many ways, I can't think of a better way to start the day. Last Wednesday morning I had the pleasure of walking on the beach near Mawbray on the Solway Firth, the great estuary that marks the boundary between...
Since Spirit has been travelling backwards for a long time, dragging its right front wheel behind it, it's easy to lose track of orientations and what's going on where. The image below is taken from the front of the rover,...
“It’s way out of warranty,” said Ray Arvidson, director of the Earth and Planetary Remote Sensing Laboratory at Washington University in St. Louis. “It’s like an old ’55 Chevy.” He was talking about the intrepid Mars Rover, Spirit, that has,...
No, that voice is not mine, but any voice of reason in the smoke and dust and the hysterical pronouncements surrounding the leaked e-mails is difficult to find; once found it deserves to be shared. I try, imperfectly, to operate...
It was, of course, inevitable: once Dubai hit the headlines with its financial woes, the sand vocabulary usage would rocket into high gear: "Glittering ambition built on sand" reflects a common theme - "emerging market," "palaces," "dreams," and the entire...
Last week, I wrote about the strange history of wind-blown sand in the pastoral English countryside, and the dunes that invaded Santon Downham in the "great sand flood." This area of East Anglia lies at the eastern end of the...
Once again I shall cast all modesty aside and insert a bit of advertising. Meet the Author is a great idea - writers record very short podcasts talking about their books; this is available on the net both in the...
