Mining and the Future part of Earth and Mind:Posts
The world's mining industry is booming, and the US is being left behind

Further exploration of the boundary between truth and untruth part of Earth and Mind:Posts
Christopher Columbus is said to have balanced an egg on its end by cracking the shell, to demonstrate how an insight can be obvious once the trick is known. The story is untrue in a literal sense and yet it ...

Be Prepared part of Earth and Mind:Posts
× I just finished a three-year term as Department Head. I had high hopes and expectations that I could work for departmental development: curriculum revisions, young faculty professional development, alumni ...

Older but Wiser part of Earth and Mind:Posts
Kim suggests that disciplines in which "case-based reasoning" is abundant (like geology) may permit practitioners to be productive longer in life, because of the benefits of accumulating knowledge of more ...

Bad Diagrams part of Earth and Mind:Posts
Author criticizes two diagrams of the Earth/Sun/Moon system from the August 2011 New York State Regents exam, one for using two different vantage points within the same diagram, the other for showing the Earth ...

The story behind "Last Call" part of Earth and Mind:Posts
The documentary film "Last Call" depicts the making of the book Limits to Growth in the early 1970's, its subsequent vilification throughout the 1980's and 90's, and then finally the ...

You Map It; You Own It part of Earth and Mind:Posts
Geologists who map a part of the Earth feel a proprietary sense of ownership towards that bit of land. Why?

Pitfalls of Metaphors: Does Warm Air Hold More Water? part of Earth and Mind:Posts
Using "warm air holds more water" as his inspiration, guest blogger Glenn Dolphin explores how the way that the human brain processes metaphors can foster durable misconceptions that obscure more than ...

J. Harlen Bretz, Spatial Thinker part of Earth and Mind:Posts
The work of geologist J. Harlan Bretz is reconsidered through the lens of spatial cognition. Bretz interpreted the scablands of Washington and Idaho as the result of gigantic floods let loose when the waters of ...

Using Logic Diagrams to Organize Knowledge and Pinpoint Ignorance part of Earth and Mind:Posts
Essay recommends the use of a type of concept map in which all of the links express influence or causality as a means to help both instructor and student organize what they understand and isolate what they ...