Oblate Spheroid

Just found this by accident on the Internets: a club called holocene, which would probably have been an appropriate place for the Portland GSA geobloggers meetup last month. Which makes me wonder what other geo-themed booze is there out there? Syncline makes a wine called Subduction Red. Wineries EOS and PEPI share names with geophysics [...]

From one of the reviews: “And in case you find yourself in my position, I can confidently report that Duncan Hines Classic Yellow Cake Mix is also a completely inadequate raw material for the same project. Not to mention the mess it makes in the centrifuges.”

via Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Uranium Ore.

Could not resist re-posting this (as seen at The Kitchen). It’s just too awesome. Earth History students, you will definitely see this in class!
YouTube – Primordial Soup With Julia Child.

Just finished a Cutting Edge workshop: Early Career Geoscience Faculty: Teaching, Research, and Managing Your Career. I found the workshop fascinating and extraordinarily useful. Of course, I suppose the final verdict really awaits the next round of NSF funding. In any case, I highly recommend the workshop to new faculty in the geosciences (loosely defined [...]

Axis Maps has put together a KML-ready (and shapefile-ready) online map viewer that support several different map projections. Not very flexible in terms of symbols, but the projection ability makes this a nice tool to have in one’s teaching arsenal.
indieprojector.

An interesting map of Manhattan from Schulze and Webb – looks like some sort of inverse cylindrical projection. [Update 12:56 PM: On closer inspection, the buildings obey a different projection scheme than the ground!] In any case, it makes you think about the reasoning that goes into making maps, which is something I try to [...]

There is an amazing gummy biodiversity at the Top supermarket in Tacoma. I found a gummy dimetrodon (labeled “dinosaur”), gummy whale (labeled “shark”), scallops, penguins, frogs, worms, etc. The flower-shaped things are supposed to stand for either flowers or barnacles – I think they look more like the latter. The jellybeans are meant to be [...]

I don’t know which surprises me more: that there is a Hand Drawn Map Association, or that they are having a contest.
this is the Hand Drawn Map Association : accepting submissions of hand drawn maps via postal mail and email.