The Mad Hatter was mad as a result of poisoning from the mercury used in curing felt. Today’s artisanal gold miners are poisoned by the mercury used to extract the precious metal. Perhaps 15% of gold production today still comes...
Kiribati. OK, I knew the name, but I had to check the map, too. A group of atolls straddling the equator over an area of 3.5 million square kilometres that host a population of 113,000 people; south of the Marshall...
Cue sounds of timpani, stage left and stage right. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a drum-banging post about coastal management myopia; now, recent reports compel me to continue my instrumental activity. So let’s think a little about the...
A while ago, I wrote a couple of posts on “the European sand belt, a great swathe of lowlands covered, more or less, by aeolian sand deposits originating from the chaos left behind by the retreat of the Ice Age...
As someone who tries to write regularly on diverse topics that not only interest me, but, hopefully, interest others, an occasional gift horse appears, or, to mix metaphors, a whopping great drum that is just asking to be beaten –...
I realise that, in the grand panoply of the global blogosphere, this is but a mote of dust, on a scale more diminutive than a grain of fine sand tossed into the vastness of the universe. BUT, if you had...
A few weeks ago, Chinese New Year was being celebrated. In Indonesia it’s known as “Imlek,” and Jakarta certainly celebrated. For us, this was truly remarkable since, when we were last here 20 years ago, you still had to vouch...
Last September, my report on a day out in Java was illustrated with the output from my new Sony a55 digital SLR camera (although strictly, it’s not an SLR because it uses Sony’s remarkable translucent mirror technology) – it’s an...
Geometrically, geomechanically, and geomorphologically, the pyramid is a natural shape that reflects a stable response in the constant conflict between landscape construction and erosion. The stability of this shape has been exploited by humans for a long time, by many...
This time, imagine that you're a scorpion, a fattail scorpion to be precise (sorry, but I never said anything about this role-playing being about cuddly and loveable, handsome or cute, but it’s often critters from the less celebrated realms of...
Imagine for a moment, if you will – or can – that you’re a coral. You find yourself in the lap of luxury, ensconced on a cosy bed of sand in a carefully maintained aquarium, far from the vicissitudes of...
The owners of otherwise delightful beachfront homes on the Oregon Coast near Waldport, Oregon, must feel like responding as the Walrus and the Carpenter did – except that their situation is much, much, more serious. Many thanks to Howard Allen...
Well, sorry, no, this is just too easy: guess “World’s biggest bunker!” or “World’s biggest sand trap!” (depending on which side of the Atlantic your golfing perspective comes from), and you’d be – predictably – spot on. When I first...
I discovered that DigitalGlobe have recently held their contest for the best satellite image and GeoEye have issued their 2012 calendar images. Both are stunning galleries of our planet’s surface, natural landscapes and manmade features, but my eye was, of...
The plan to dig down to the workshop at the starting point of the tunnel known as Harry, where the wartime fliers began their effort to tunnel beneath the barbed wire, was aborted when engineers failed repeatedly to prevent tons...
By Zen Faulkes South Padre Island in Texas has a world-class beach, with lovely fine-grained sand that is wonderful to walk on. The sand grains close up seem to be mostly grains of light or transparent quartz, with just the...
A hundred million years ago, over the western ocean horizon, loomed yet another impending tectonic disaster. A gigantic plateau of volcanic rock was lurching its way eastwards towards an inevitable collision with North America, the oceanic plate that carried it...
It has become a sarcastic proverb that a thing must be true if you saw it in a newspaper. That is the opinion intelligent people have of that lying vehicle in a nutshell. But the trouble is that the stupid...
It’s that time of the year when I, for one, am grateful that the endless reflections in the media on the previous twelve months must come to an end – the events and non-events, the ups and downs, the highs...
