Scientists think they've found the lost continent of Mauritia, underneath the Indian Ocean.

It was once part of the supercontinent known as Rodinia, which looked like this as it was breaking up 750 million years ago:



See Mauritia in there between what was on its way to becoming India and what became Madagascar? How do they know it's Mauritia? According to the linked article, it has to do with zircon.



It all fits together.

The Clintonville mystery is solved.

A swarm of microquakes!

Chalkfall.

Massive collapse at the White Cliffs of Dover.

What is the carbon footprint of the 340-ton rock transported on a 196-wheel vehicle on an 11-day journey to an art museum in L.A.?

And why doesn't The New York Times, celebrating the project on its website front page, question the environmentalism of this project?

It's art precisely because it has no practical use. Meanwhile, driving a mid-sized car or turning on an incandescent lightbulb is an environmental sin, characteristic of our ordinary lives, for which the NYT never tires of shaming us.

***

We talked about this art work last month: here.

Here's the rock's Twitter feed: "I'm going to sleep like a rock tonight..." etc. etc.

680,000-pound boulder goes on a 106-mile journey... for art.

It will ride a "294-foot-long centipede-like transporter between 10 and 11 p.m. and travel at the painstakingly slow speed of about 5 mph."

[W]ork crews from about 100 utility districts will have to take down traffic signs, overhead wires and other obstacles to let the rock pass and then reinstall them later.

A signal expert will have to move and rebuild traffic signals that would otherwise be mowed down like blades of grass by the transporter — nearly as wide as three freeway traffic lanes....

During the day, the rock... will have to park in "the middle of the road, the only place big enough"...

The total cost of the project, including the rock, the transportation and construction of the sculpture site, will be up to $10 million, which was raised from private donors....

Of course, the rock is tweeting:

I don't understand how I was NOT asked to be a part of the new season of @DancingABC. I may not move fast, but I'm graceful!

— LACMA Rock (@LACMARock) February 28, 2012

Hey, that reminds me: There's a Green Bay Packer on the new "Dancing With the Stars" — Donald Driver, along with Urkel, Gladys Knight, and Martina Navratilova.

"Wyomans."

“The dictionary-approved term is ‘Wyomingite,’ which is also the name of a type of lava, see Webster’s New International Dictionary 2961 (2d ed. 1957). I believe the people of Wyoming deserve better.”

A Scalia footnote.

On the Tumbling Rock Trail...

... I was wearing dark glasses with yellowish lenses. On the way back, I took the glasses off and suddenly all that gray-looking quartzite rock popped into technicolor. All that purple and rose with tinges of lichen green!









What a crazy thing! Taking those sunglasses off was like dropping acid.

These pictures — all done with an iPhone — were taken at Devil's Lake.

At the Purple Rock Café...

... we felt the cold breath of the devil, but we got away!

The collapse of one of the arches at Arches National Park.

Wall Arch is no more:

All arches are but temporary features and all will eventually succumb to the forces of gravity and erosion.

Related: My photo-trip to Arches.