Memnison Journal

Longtime readers will recall that I’m a great fan of the Dutch-American author Hendrik Willem Van Loon, a taste that I got from my mom and her brother, my uncle.   There’s an online exhibit at the Ohio State University site of Van Loon’s illustrations (crude, but charming) for his best-known work, The Story of Mankind.   [...]

BBC article about a cave full of skeletons from the Bronze Age in Germany, and how they matched the DNA to a couple of locals…3000 years down the line.

http://www.unb.ca/passc/ImpactDatabase/images/des-plaines.htm
http://bulletin.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/73/8/959
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Des_Plaines_crater
http://www.isgs.uiuc.edu/maps-data-pub/cook-atlas/fault.shtml

The short version is that 280 million years ago, an asteroid decided that it didn’t like Bill Roper’s music and decided to nail what is now Des Plaines, Illinois.  Unfortunately for the asteroid, Roper wouldn’t be born for a number of years, so by the time he showed up, there was a 25 square mile [...]

This is the waaaay early part of my timeline; edits or comments welcome. It’s going from 35.7 mya to .5 mya, with special note to the major level 8 eruptions, big impacts, and a smattering of human development events thrown in.  There are different colors for events - orange for impacts, red for eruptions.

At various times, I get into research projects; some simmer on for decades in various forms, and some break off and pick up speed because I happen to run into something that really fuels the fire, so to speak.
My library here is largely one that I use for reference. I have a huge amount [...]

On T. Boone Pickens trying to corner part of the water market, especially out of the Ogalalla Aquifer:
In all, Pickens, CRMWA, and Amarillo have spent about $150 million to buy up nearly 80% of the water rights in Roberts County, undermining and outbidding one another along the way. One unsurprising effect of their competition is [...]

An article (circa 1995) written for the Findlay Times by my mother about Ohio’s Serpent Mound.
jarandolph_findlaytimes_serpent_mound. (PDF, 700k)

Set of covers from APA-69 # 79, drawn by Giovanna Fregni. Gorgeous stuff of dinos getting together in a PG-13 manner, with one catch in the fourth section cover…
I’m scanning up all of the APA-69 covers that I have around - 99% of the APAs were shredded a while back in my effort to [...]

Article on how there very nearly wasn’t a human race after a drought 70,000 years ago.  Details after the cut:

New geological map of Ohio available; below the cut is more for Ohioans and geology buffs from the Dayton Daily News:
 

See these articles at the Washington Post on the megafauna extinctions:

New Theory on Old Debate: Comet Killed the Mammoth
Science: The Demise of the Woolly Mammoth

To follow up on my post about my new page on Paleoclimate and Paleogeography, there’s stuff in today’s NY Times on the movement of the continents over time.  Interactive graphic (flash) is here.
Also a shoutout to Hal O’Brien for referencing the post, and his own post with an interesting graphic on the Nazi votes vis-a-vis [...]

Hey, Susan, here’s a knitting project for Meredith…
“They’re still over at the bar talkin’ about which Bronte sister they think would be the best in bed.” “Why settle for one when you could have all three?”
Now, you’ll believe reindeer can play a bad game of rummy with Santa.
A football for Grandma by Allan Sherman. [...]

Does anyone out there have any good leads on the theories on Kennebec Man and the concept of pre-1000 AD European(ish) people migrating to North America?  Yes, I’m fully aware that it’s a wide matter of controversy.  Mormon theories not included.
Similarly, is there anyone out there who can give me a lead on the stability [...]

Article underneath the cut.