Bill Lukens

Same goes for Ridley Scott's Napoleon (2023). When I was the only person in the theater laughing out loud at the Phoenix's amazing and clearly childish outbursts, I realized the audience had no sense that it wasn't meant to (only) be a war epic. Super underrated and misunderstood imho.

It is a law of nature that if you provide HCl to students, they will put it on any rock or mineral.

Mudstone? yeah, why not.
Sandstone? sure, I guess.
Granite? ok...
Amphibole? c'mon now people...

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Education enriches our lives.

Today I shoved a dusting of snow off the thin sheet of ice coating my black driveway. It was 14°F (-10°C), but I did this to lower the surface's albedo, hoping the sun will do the rest.

And for a good 30 min I thought about climate feedbacks and had a lovely time. 🧪

While this is true, they forgot to delete sections about anthropogenic causes on the Future of Climate page:
www.epa.gov/climatechang... 🧪

I'm wrapping up my first semester (finally) solo-teaching an upper-level core Geology course that is in my domain of expertise.

I know I love this stuff bc as I wrote the final exam, I kept thinking "heck yeah, this stuff is awesome!" Hopefully the students agree. (ha)

#AcademicSky 🧪⚒️

That is a little bit of a head-scratcher. Some possibilities: 1) erosion/reworking of older soils would speed up the CIA signal delivery to marine basins, or 2) the CIA "peak" is muted in marine sediments relative to soils on land, bc it's too fast for mature pedogenesis + soil erosion and transport

As others have mentioned, I think critical "minerals" is just a popular use of the term, similar to the "vitamins and minerals" in nutrition.

Geologically, CMs are almost always elements hosted by minerals (and rarely native element minerals). But don't tell the mineralogists. 🤫😆

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"Consequently, deep-sea archives effectively preserve climate-driven weathering changes only on timescales exceeding sediment residence time (generally >10^3 years)."

Interesting! Soils usually require about the same magnitude of time to integrate clear climate signals.

Calling all soil scientists!

Did you know it's 1 week til December?

Apply to join our amazing faculty at the link below.

Does anyone know where I could find examples of NSF final outcomes reports? I have one due but haven't written one before. Thanks in advance!

#AcademicSky #NSF
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A group of smiling students and their professor wearing earth tones and bright orange safety vests, in front of a red outcrop that contains mudstone on the lower 2/3 (with green drab halos around fossil burrows and roots) overtopped by a big, red channel sandstone.

A geologist in bright orange and earth tones, doing the airplane dance (arms extended and leaning to the right) to indicate the tilt of bedding. In the background, a wall of fluvial sandstone contains lines dipping to the right, indicating bedding, and some more steeply inclined lines indicating lateral accretion sets in the meandering channels.

We had a lovely #JMU Sed/Strat field trip yesterday, exploring Devonian strata in West Virginia that tell the story of the Acadian Orogeny.

We survived hail and bitter cold winds in the AM, giving way to sunshine, paleosols, and fluvial channels in the afternoon.

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A 3D rendering of a simple soil profile, with four horizons depicted as simple line drawings. A total of 11 rectangles representing thin sections are depicted.

Recently I've been refreshing myself on #soil micromorphology.

Here is the suggested thin section sampling scheme from Fitzpatrick (1993). Eleven thin sections for one (1) soil profile.

lol sure my man, I'll just get one of those 50-yr mortgages to pay for that. 🧪⚒️🪨

Looking for a PhD in climate science?

Great opportunity to help modernise one of the iconic climate time series - Central England Temperature.

Led by @timosbornclim.bsky.social, with myself and Met Office collaborators: www.uea.ac.uk/course/phd-d...

A red dutch oven filled with mutli-colored soup, includin coins of carrots, chunks of white potato, slices of bacon, and slices of celery, all topped with thyme and oregano. The soup liquid is a delicious golden yellow.

Close-up image of carrot coin, bacon slices, potato chunks, and herbs.

Happy #SoupSeason to those who celebrate!

My mouth started watering when I was writing the alt text.

Yet another nail in the coffin for the "what about China" argument against bold climate action in the US.

An outcrop of red mudstones, consisting of three crumbly intervals separated by thin, blocky sandstones, and a thick, purple-gray sandstone on top (to the right of image). A sign on the left edge of the image reads "State property no trespassing)". Green trees line the slope in the background.

Stacking up some coastal plain paleosols (fossil soils) for #FossilFriday. They're relatively immature and heavily overprinted with tectonic cleavage. Poor little guys.

Devonian Foreknobs Fm., Rt 33, West Virginia
(the runaway truck ramp outcrop)
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Agreed! I was a sophomore Film & Media Arts major, and my 8 am geology course is what sent me down my current career path! :)

Are other people seeing a big shift in aptitudes this semester? I don't worry about the upper echelon - they did fine even in Covid.

I worry about the C- student who has great potential and just hasn't figured out how to excel in college yet.

#AcademicSky

6/6

I wonder if this is the start of AI brain rot inflicting some students? For the first time, I started seeing some students asking ChatGPT to answer questions on in-class activities (paper handouts). I always intervene and explain why AI can't help in this setting. Usually works.

5/6

The effect of mandated attendance has seemingly worn off. Perhaps it's a post-post-Covid swing, where students are responding to our mechanisms emplaced to normalize behavior after the pandemic peak. Or...

4/6

There was always a sizeable chunk of GenEd students who coast, not engaging even with frequent in-class activities. I require attendance and use QR codes/surveys to track it.

This used to result in a consistent 65-70 / 80 students to show up regularly. Now? Often only 55-65 students show up.

3/6

I usually see a bimodal distribution of exam scores in this class (13 semesters). Typically the lower mode centers on ~70-75%, and only a handful of non-attending students fail.

Not the case here. The lower mode was ~55%, and that group includes many students with perfect attendance. ???

2/6

In GenEd Climate Change, I give 3 exams total. The first deals with geologic systems, the second covers modern climate systems, the third deals with anthro climate change + paleoclimate analogs.

Exam 2 was wild this year: 26% of the class failed, big time.

Some thoughts.
#AcademicSky

1/6

It's a bit of a hike even for us! Takes 1 hour, minimum, to get on any outcrops, and up to 1.5 hrs if you're headed out toward the Allegheny Front. Worth the trip, but not frequently!

Red mudstone rock with curvilinear fractures (pedogenic slickensides), thin, pale green squiggly lines (fossil root traces), and in the upper right corner there are tubu-like features interpreted to be burrows.

Annotation of the first image. ss = slickenside.

Took my Sed/Strat class out to WV48 (Corridor H) for a lovely fall field trip Sunday. We had a blast examining the incredible paleo-Vertisols of the upper Devonian Hampshire Fm.

Pedogenic slickensides in 3D, root traces, plant fragments, and lots of burrows (lung fish?)!

I love #paleosols.

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👻Real life ghost story!👻

I arrived at work this morning, sleepily carrying out my daily routine. Log on to computer🖥️, bring lunch to fridge🍱, make coffee☕...

...But THE COFFEE SCOOP HAS VANISHED!😱🙀

What creature would torment me in such a way??

Vampires?🧛 Ghouls?🧌
#Spooky #GhostStory #Halloween

The Best Chili Ever Recipe The best beef chili combines puréed chiles, short ribs, tender kidney beans, and an array of umami-boosting ingredients.

"[Dried chiles] come in a baffling array. To make my selection easier, I decided to taste every variety of whole chile I could find..."

Kenji López-Alt is a madman.

www.seriouseats.com/the-best-chi...

two men in suits and ties are standing next to each other in a room . Alt: A gif panning inward on Michael Scott from The Office biting his lip nervously

www.reuters.com/world/china/...

Every radiocarbon lab....

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Alrighty, ready to see something really cool? (and maybe a little nauseating)

The evolution of Hurricane Melissa's mesovortices at peak strength.

I am begging people to include the uncertainty interval on their regression plots