We interrupt your regularly scheduled blogging…

I’m going to be busy for the next few days, then away for the weekend (although LotStreetWiz will be back from Vancouver by then to hold the fort). Then I’ll be busy next week and busier the week after as my client’s wiki project gets ready for its debut.

So I might not be able to queue up three blog posts a day, even with my extensive collection of links that I mean to post about some day. Some of them are stale and even the briefest takes time. I’ve set up a series of morning LOLcats that will take me through the weekend and I’ll try to intersperse them with actual science posts. But there are other things in my life.

If you get bored, browse the archives. There are lots of good posts in them.

Glacial Lake Missoula

I watched a nature program tonight, which made a great mystery of the “scablands” of the Columbia River in the U.S. This giant and mysterious landscape has deep, vertical pits called potholes; a huge, dry waterfall; and, most impressive of all, giant ripple marks 13 metres high. It’s scattered with huge erratic boulders of granite.

The consensus is that the landscape was carved by a huge glacial lake that formed behind a glacier perhaps a kilometer wide. When the dam collapsed, the lake flooded the river valley and carved the features. The flow would at times be 250 metres high. Within a hours or a day, the water would pass by on its way to the Pacific ocean at about 60 km an hour.

Volcanic ash between the layers made people realize that there were repeated floods. Closer dating methods showed that there were 20,000 years between the top layer and the bottom layer. The glacier had re-formed and collapsed again and again. The flood was repeated about 60 times.

It took scientists about 100 years to accept the fact that the history of this valley included catastrophic, rapid events and then to tease out the details.

You can get a virtual tour here.

The gloves come off!

Chris Comer, the former director of science curriculum for the state of Texas, has sued the Texas Education Agency for firing her. Her offence? Forwarding an e-mail that discussed the use of Intelligent Design as a stalking horse for creationism. Chris Comer sues Texas Education Agency. Hat tip: Darwin Central.

Excellent, my minions!

more funny caterpillar pictures

This very cute caterpillar is steepling its fingers… er, hands… er, pods.