Blog - Through the sandglass

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Thinking like a pile of sand

It sometimes seems to me that managing my thoughts (and memories) resembles trying to control a pile of sand grains as they sift through my fingers. Now, new ne...

July 1, 2009 4 min read

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July 2009

Musings and news on the extraordinary stories sand has to tell of our planet and daily lives

July 1, 2009 5 min read

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Writing in sand - sedimentary structures

Just as literature students develop the craft of analyzing the structure of a story, so do geologists analyze the structures of sediments and the stories that t...

July 1, 2009 2 min read

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Fleeting Fame: "Sand" on "Fast Draw"

Amazon sales rankings are somewhat like Fermat’s Last Theorem - what they’re saying makes apparent sense, but discerning how they work is seemingly impossible....

August 1, 2009 4 min read

“Sand to Chips” - what’s the real story?

whats-the-real-story" original_url: “ https://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/through_the_sandglass/2009/08/sand-to-chips—whats-the-real-story.html ” canon...

November 24, 2025 11 min read

art books climate_change coastal education environment geology geomorphology history photography rivers_water sand science travel wildlife

The mother of all extinctions and the perils of correlation (1)

Nature abhors a vacuum, continuity and the status quo. Variety is the spice of life and change is the order of the day. Such things make life complex for a geol...

August 1, 2009 10 min read

art books climate_change coastal education environment geology geomorphology history photography rivers_water sand science travel wildlife

The mother of all extinctions and the perils of correlation (2)

The previous post, instalment one of this saga, looked at what a geologist must do, faced with rock exposures in, say, a cliff face, to read the ledgers of our...

August 1, 2009 14 min read

art books climate_change coastal education environment geology geomorphology history photography rivers_water sand science travel wildlife

The Poetry of Sand: Guest Writer, Richard Bready

Times of Sand Richard Bready In science one tries to say something that no one knew before in a way that everyone can understand. Whereas in poetry . . . - Dira...

August 1, 2009 13 min read

art books climate_change coastal education environment geology history photography rivers_water sand science travel wildlife

August 2009

Musings and news on the extraordinary stories sand has to tell of our planet and daily lives

August 1, 2009 9 min read

art books climate_change coastal education environment geology history photography rivers_water sand science travel wildlife

USGS beach health advice - but let's hear it for meiofauna

The US Geological Survey newsroom has just put out an advisory on the importance of washing your hands after playing in the sand on the beach: By washing your h...

August 1, 2009 7 min read

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Arenophile genetics, Jedi, and another submarine canyon

Geology doesn’t exactly run in my family. My parents weren’t geologists, I married someone to whom dip and strike will eternally remain an arcane concept, and n...

September 1, 2009 6 min read

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Mont-Saint-Michel: a massive sedimentology experiment

The bay of Mont-Saint-Michel, in the coastal corner of France between Normandy and Brittany, boasts the fourth-largest tidal range in the world – up to 14 meter...

September 1, 2009 7 min read