Rocks Formation Quotes

That is when I understood the magical meaning of the circle. If you go away from a row, you can still come back into it. A row is an open formation. But a circle closes up, and if you go away from it, there is no way back. It is not by chance that the planets move in circles and that a rock coming loose from one of them goes inexorably away, carried off by centrifugal force. Like a meteorite broken off from a planet, I left the circle and have not stopped falling. Some people are granted their death as they are whirling around, and others are smashed at the end of their fall. And these others (I am one of them) always retain a kind of faint yearning for that lost ring dance, because we are all inhabitants of a universe where everything turns in circles.

The present is the key to the past.

This is where I would've taken Daniel. I would've told him to write poetry about space rocks and impact craters. The sheer number of actions and reactions it's taken to form our solar system, our galaxy, our universe, is astonishing. The number of things that had to go exactly right is overwhelming. Compared to that, what is falling in love? A series of small coincidences that we say means everything because we want to believe that our tiny lives matter on a galactic scale. But falling in love doesn't even begin to compare to the formation of the universe. It's not even close

How indifferent he was to Carol after all, Therese thought. She felt he didn't see her, as he sometimes hadn't seen figures in rock or cloud formations when she had tried to point them out to him.

It did not feel momentous, yet when I tore my eyes away from his I found that nothing looked quite the same, as though the world had fractured and sheared away from itself to reshape in almost - but not quite - the same formation. As though I had looked at a waterfall and realised with a faint jolt that the water flowing over the rock was ever-changing, that it would never be the same water again.

In the space beyond was Hedra Ka. A cracking scab of a planet, choked with storms and veins of lava. A mist of rocks floated in orbit, a reminder of its recent formation. It was a young world, unwelcoming, resentful of its existence. ‘That is the angriest looking thing I’ve ever seen,’ Ashby said.

It was the first time the features and formative processes of the desert had made me pause and absorb just how small and brave we are, we the human race.

How can I number the worlds to which the eye gives me entry? - the world of light, of colour, of shape, of shadow: of mathematical precision in the snowflake, the ice formation, the quartz crystal, the patterns of stamen and petal: of rhythm in the fluid curve and plunging line of the mountain faces. Why some blocks of stone, hacked into violent and tortured shapes, should so profoundly tranquillise the mind I do not know. Perhaps the eye imposes its own rhythm on what is only a confusion: one has to look creatively to see this mass of rock as more than jag and pinnacle - as beauty. Else why did men for so many centuries think mountains repulsive? A certain kind of consciousness interacts with the mountain-forms to create this sense of beauty. Yet the forms must be there for the eye to see. And forms of a certain distinction: mere dollops won't do it. It is, as with all creation, matter impregnated with mind: but the resultant issue is a living spirit, a glow in the consciousness, that perishes when the glow is dead. It is something snatched from non-being, that shadow which creeps in on us continuously and can be held off by continuous creative act. So, simply to look on anything, such as a mountain, with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain of being in the vastness of non-being. Man has no other reason for his existence.

I loved Tolkien and while I wished to have written his book, I had no desire at all to write like him. Tolkien’s words and sentences seemed like natural things, like rock formations or waterfalls, and wanting to write like Tolkien would have been, for me, like wanting to blossom like a cherry tree or climb a tree like a squirrel or rain like a thunderstorm. Chesterton was the complete opposite. I was always aware, reading Chesterton, that there was someone writing this who rejoiced in words, who deployed them on the page as an artist deploys his paints upon his palette. Behind every Chesterton sentence there was someone painting with words, and it seemed to me that at the end of any particularly good sentence or any perfectly-put paradox, you could hear the author, somewhere behind the scenes, giggling with delight.

Tolkien’s words and sentences seemed like natural things, like rock formations or waterfalls, and wanting to write like Tolkien would have been, for me, like wanting to blossom like a cherry tree or climb a tree like a squirrel or rain like a thunderstorm.” — Gaiman on J. R. R. Tolkien

GEOLOGY, n. The science of the earth's crust --to which, doubtless, will be added that of its interior whenever a man shall come up garrulous out of a well. The geological formations of the globe already noted are catalogued thus: The Primary, or lower one, consists of rocks, bones or mired mules, gas-pipes, miners' tools, antique statues minus the nose, Spanish doubloons and ancestors. The Secondary is largely made up of red worms and moles. The Tertiary comprises railway tracks, patent pavements, grass, snakes, mouldy boots, beer bottles, tomato cans, intoxicated citizens, garbage, anarchists, snap-dogs and fools.

It's water from beneath the mountain, and its full of of the taste of bones and rocks. She's bought five cases of bottled to keep from having to serve this, even in ice-cube format. There's something awful about it. It feels full of ghosts

Mother Nature is a master sculptor and in no place is that more evident than at Arches National Park.

How indifferent he was to Carol after, all, Therese thought. She felt he didn’t see her, as he sometimes hadn’t seen figures in rock or cloud formations when she had tried to point them out to him.

He flipped through the book as he ambled toward her. "Good God. There are whole pages of description. The roguish wave of my hair. My chiseled profile. I have eyes like... like diamonds?" "Not real diamonds. Bristol diamonds." "What are Bristol diamonds?" "They're a kind of rock formation. On the outside, they look like ordinary pebbles. Round, brownish gray. But when you crack them open, inside they're filled with crystals in a hundred different shades.

If the rocky ejecta from an impact hails from a planet with life, then microscopic fauna could have stowed away in the rocks’ nooks and crannies. Third, recent evidence suggests that shortly after the formation of our solar system, Mars was wet, and perhaps fertile, even before Earth was. Collectively, these findings tell us it’s conceivable that life began on Mars and later seeded life on Earth, a process known as panspermia. So all Earthlings might—just might—be descendants of Martians.

Through their discomforts Dom and Phil were missing everything of interest: the sudden strip marshes, the faces in the rock formations, the perfect lakes, the awesome måskoskårså valley grooved into the earth during the Ice Age, the golden eagle circling above it, and the views of a landscape it was impossible to believe existed in Europe.

Forming Holiness with filthy hands and heart which leads to a disastrous future is like trying to impress or form when your life is without formation.

How indifferent he was to Carol after all, Therese thought. She felt he didn’t see her, as he sometimes hadn’t seen figures in rock or cloud formations when she had tried to point them out to him. He

While I was busied in reflection, my eyes fell upon a narrow ledge in the eastern face of the rock, perhaps a yard below the summit upon which I stood. This ledge projected about eighteen inches, and was not more than a foot wide, while a niche in the cliff just above it, gave it a rude resemblance to one of the hollow-backed chairs used by our ancestors. I made no doubt that here was the 'devil's seat' alluded to in the MS., and now I seemed to grasp the full secret of the riddle.

By the age of twelve, he was using the family typewriter to correspond with a number of well-known local geologists about the rock formations he had studied in Central Park. Not aware of his youth, one of these correspondents nominated Robert for membership in the New York Mineralogical Club, and soon thereafter a letter arrived inviting him to deliver a lecture before the club. Dreading the thought of having to talk to an audience of adults, Robert begged his father to explain that they had invited a twelve-year-old. Greatly amused, Julius encouraged his son to accept this honor. On the designated evening, Robert showed up at the club with his parents, who proudly introduced their son as “J. Robert Oppenheimer.” The startled audience of geologists and amateur rock collectors burst out laughing when he stepped up to the podium; a wooden box had to be found for him to stand on so that the audience could see more than the shock of his wiry black hair sticking up above the lectern. Shy and awkward, Robert nevertheless read his prepared remarks and was given a hearty round of applause. Julius

Deadwood sure isn’t thriving, but it’s still standing. And the landscape is breathtaking. It’s sitting right on the edge of the Black Hills National Forest, with its eerie rock formations, beautiful pine forests, barren rock, canyons, and creeks. I can’t think of a more beautiful place on Earth. I can understand why someone would want to build something there.

Sorgan tried his very best not to think about how long it must have taken for a stream that small to eat its way down through solid rock to form its current bed. Sorgan knew exactly what the word “hundred” meant, but when numbers wandered off toward “thousand”—or even “million”—and the people who used those terms were talking about years, Sorgan’s mind shied back in horror.

By the age of twelve, he was using the family typewriter to correspond with a number of well-known local geologists about the rock formations he had studied in Central Park. Not aware of his youth, one of these correspondents nominated Robert for membership in the New York Mineralogical Club, and soon thereafter a letter arrived inviting him to deliver a lecture before the club.

I’ve been queen for ages and ages,” Sunny went on. She strutted across the cave floor. “No one dares challenge me for my throne! I am the strongest SandWing queen who ever lived!” “Don’t forget the treasure,” Tsunami hissed, pointing at a pile of loose rocks. “Oh, right,” Sunny said. “It’s probably because of all my treasure! I have so much treasure because I’m such an important queen!” She swept the rocks toward her and gathered them between her talons. “Did someone say treasure?” Clay bellowed, leaping out from behind a large rock formation. Sunny yelped with fright. “No!” Tsunami called. “You’re not scared! You’re Queen Oasis, the big, bad queen of the sand dragons.” “R-right,” Sunny said. “Rargh! What is this tiny scavenger doing in the Kingdom of Sand? I am not afraid of tiny scavengers! I shall go out there and eat him in one bite!” Glory started giggling so hard she had to lie down and cover her face with her wings. Even Tsunami was making faces like she was trying not to laugh. Clay swung his stalagmite in a circle. “Squeak squeak squeak!” he shouted. “And other annoying scavenger noises! I’m here to steal treasure away from a magnificent dragon!” “Not from me, you won’t,” Sunny said, bristling. She stamped forward, spread her wings, and raised her tail threateningly. Without the poisonous barb other SandWings had, Sunny’s tail was not very menacing. But nobody pointed that out. “Yaaaaaaah!” Clay shouted, lunging forward with his rock claw. Sunny darted out of the way, and they circled each other, feinting and jabbing. This was Clay’s favorite part. When Sunny forgot about trying to act queenly and focused on the battle, she was fun to fight. Her small size made it easy for her to dodge and slip under his defenses. But in the end Queen Oasis had to lose — that was how the story went. Clay drove Sunny back against the wall of the cave and thrust the fake claw between her neck and her wing, pretending it went right through her heart. “Aaaaaaaargh,” Sunny howled. “Impossible! A queen defeated by a lowly scavenger! The kingdom will fall apart! Oh, my treasure … my lovely treasure . . .” She collapsed to the ground and let her wings flop lifelessly on either side of her. “Ha ha ha!” Clay said. “And squeak squeak! The treasure is mine!” He scooped up all the rocks and paraded away, lashing his tail proudly.

It did not feel momentous, yet when I tore my eyes away from his I found that nothing looked quite the same, as though the world had fractured and sheared away from itself to reshape in almost - but not quite - the same formation. As though I had just looked at a waterfall and realised with a faint jolt that the water flowing over the rock was ever-changing, that it would never be the same water again.

The Murchison meteorite was found to be 4.5 billion years old, and it was studded with amino acids—seventy-four types in all, eight of which are involved in the formation of earthly proteins. In late 2001, more than thirty years after it crashed, a team at the Ames Research Center in California announced that the Murchison rock also contained complex strings of sugars called polyols, which had not been found off the Earth before.

And here I give the proof. One can see the primeval rocks which have never seen the light of day, granite formations which form the globe’s solid base, deep caves hollowed out in the mass of rock, and everything outlined with the incomparable clarity and shading of certain Flemish masters. Then in the background there is a horizon of mountains. I cannot describe this ensemble of smooth, black, polished rocks with no moss or other growth to spot.

192,000 years, my gallant Conseil, which significantly extends the biblical Days of Creation. What’s more, the formation of coal—in other words, the petrification of forests swallowed by floods—and the cooling of basaltic rocks likewise call for a much longer period of time. I might add that those ‘days’ in the Bible must represent whole epochs and not literally the lapse of time between two sunrises, because according to the Bible itself, the sun doesn’t date from the first day of Creation.

The arches themselves, strange, impressive, grotesque, form but a small and inessential part of the general beauty of this country. When we think of rock we usually think of stones, broken rock, buried under soil and plant life, but here all is exposed and naked, dominated by the monolithic formations of sandstone which stand above the surface of the ground and extend for miles, sometimes level, sometimes tilted or warped by pressures from below, carved by erosion and weathering into an intricate maze of glens, grottoes, fissures, passageways, and deep narrow canyons.

Through all these times and formative young years, Lara, my sister, was a rock to me. My mother had suffered three miscarriages after having Lara, and eight years on she was convinced that she wasn’t going to be able to have more children. But Mum got pregnant, and she tells me she spent nine months in bed to make sure she didn’t miscarry. It worked. Mum saved me. The end result, though, was that she was probably pleased to get me out, and that Lara finally got herself a precious baby brother; or in effect, her own baby. So Lara ended up doing everything for me, and I adored her for it. While Mum was a busy working mother, helping my father in his constituency duties and beyond, Lara became my surrogate mum. She fed me almost every supper I ate--from when I was a baby up to about five years old. She changed my nappies, she taught me to speak, then to walk (which, with so much attention from her, of course happened ridiculously early). She taught me how to get dressed and to brush my teeth. In essence, she got me to do all the things that either she had been too scared to do herself or that just simply intrigued her, such as eating raw bacon or riding a tricycle down a steep hill with no brakes. I was the best rag doll of a baby brother that she could have ever dreamt of.

About 4.6 billion years ago, a great swirl of gas and dust some 15 billion miles across accumulated in space where we are now and began to aggregate. Virtually all of it—99.9 percent of the mass of the solar system—went to make the Sun. Out of the floating material that was left over, two microscopic grains floated close enough together to be joined by electrostatic forces. This was the moment of conception for our planet. All over the inchoate solar system, the same was happening. Colliding dust grains formed larger and larger clumps. Eventually the clumps grew large enough to be called planetesimals. As these endlessly bumped and collided, they fractured or split or recombined in endless random permutations, but in every encounter there was a winner, and some of the winners grew big enough to dominate the orbit around which they traveled. It all happened remarkably quickly. To grow from a tiny cluster of grains to a baby planet some hundreds of miles across is thought to have taken only a few tens of thousands of years. In just 200 million years, possibly less, the Earth was essentially formed, though still molten and subject to constant bombardment from all the debris that remained floating about. At this point, about 4.5 billion years ago, an object the size of Mars crashed into Earth, blowing out enough material to form a companion sphere, the Moon. Within weeks, it is thought, the flung material had reassembled itself into a single clump, and within a year it had formed into the spherical rock that companions us yet. Most of the lunar material, it is thought, came from the Earth’s crust, not its core, which is why the Moon has so little iron while we have a lot. The theory, incidentally, is almost always presented as a recent one, but in fact it was first proposed in the 1940s by Reginald Daly of Harvard. The only recent thing about it is people paying any attention to it. When Earth was only about a third of its eventual size, it was probably already beginning to form an atmosphere, mostly of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, methane, and sulfur. Hardly the sort of stuff that we would associate with life, and yet from this noxious stew life formed. Carbon dioxide is a powerful greenhouse gas. This was a good thing because the Sun was significantly dimmer back then. Had we not had the benefit of a greenhouse effect, the Earth might well have frozen over permanently, and life might never have gotten a toehold. But somehow life did. For the next 500 million years the young Earth continued to be pelted relentlessly by comets, meteorites, and other galactic debris, which brought water to fill the oceans and the components necessary for the successful formation of life. It was a singularly hostile environment and yet somehow life got going. Some tiny bag of chemicals twitched and became animate. We were on our way. Four billion years later people began to wonder how it had all happened. And it is there that our story next takes us.

Unkar Delta at Mile 73 The layers of brick red sandstone, siltstone, and mudstone of the Dox formation deposited a billion years ago, erode easily, giving the landscape an open, rolling character very different that the narrow, limestone walled canyon upstream, both in lithology and color, fully fitting Van Dyke’s description of “raspberry-red color, tempered with a what-not of mauve, heliotrope, and violet.” Sediments flowing in from the west formed deltas, floodplains, and tidal flats, which indurated into these fine-grained sedimentary rocks thinly laid deposits of a restful sea, lined with shadows as precise as the staves of a musical score, ribboned layers, an elegant alteration of quiet siltings and delicious lappings, crinkled water compressed, solidified, lithified.

In what commanders and technicians realized in hindsight was a bad decision, the test messages were identical to the real alert messages that’d be used in an attack, but simply used zeroes to indicate the number of missiles in the air. The real totals would be filled in during an attack. The faulty computer chip began inserting the numeral 2 in place of zeroes—hence the quickly escalating alert from 2 missiles to 220 to 2,200 Soviet ICBMs. It had been a disaster just waiting to happen. The government’s after-action report reported dryly, “Now, that message is in a different format which just indicates the status of the communications system rather than the any indication of numbers of missiles.” The Pentagon’s classified talking points tried to put lipstick on the pig, celebrating that “The human safeguards which are a central part of our system worked as designed.” •

No event "creates" another event, but is merely a preceding link in the great orderly chain of events flowing from the creative energy of THE ALL. There is a continuity between all events precedent, consequent and subsequent. There is a relation existing between everything that has gone before, and everything that follows. A stone is dislodged from a mountain side and crashes through a roof of a cottage in the valley below. At first sight we regard this as a chance effect, but when we examine the matter we find a great chain of causes behind it. In the first place there was the rain which softened the earth supporting the stone and which allowed it to fall; then back of that was the influence of the sun, other rains, etc., which gradually disintegrated the piece of rock from a larger piece; then there were the causes which led to the formation of the mountain, and its upheaval by convulsions of nature, and so on ad infinitum. Then we might follow up the causes behind the rain, etc. Then we might consider the existence of the roof. In short, we would soon find ourselves involved in a mesh of cause and effect, from which we would soon strive to extricate ourselves.

Children, teenagers, and young adults frequently attempt to duplicate their cult hero’s mannerisms. Sometimes when we observe youngsters attempting to emulate the gestures and behaviors of a celebrity whom they admire, we state that they are putting on airs or engaging in pretensions. Adults tend to fob off such pretentious behavior as a frivolous act engaged in by children. In actuality, pretentious behavior is an important learning rubric for behavior and character formation. Imitation is more than a form of flattery. When young people mimic admired celebrities they are displaying telling behavior regarding what subjects spikes their interest and this in turn might provide clues to their future vocational and recreational activities. By engaging in mimicry, we are able to audition our future self. Just as many athletes begin in their youth attempting to impersonate the style of their sports idols, young people universally attempt to copy the mannerisms and behaviorisms of people whom they respect. Mimicry is one way that people feel safe exploring what persona they wish to adopt. How many rock stars and other successful people endorsed the mantra, ‘Fake it ‘till you make it.

The crust [of the earth] is very thin. Estimates of its thickness range from a minimum of about twenty to a maximum of about forty miles. The crust is made of comparatively rigid, crystalline rock, but it is fractured in many places, and does not have great strength. Immediately under the crust is a layer that is thought to be extremely weak, because it is, presumably, too hot to crystallize. Moreover, it is thought that pressure at that depth renders the rock extremely plastic, so that it will yield easily to pressures. The rock at that depth is supposed to have high viscosity; that is, it is fluid but very stiff, as tar may be. It is known that a viscous material will yield easily to a comparatively slight pressure exerted over a long period of time, even though it may act as a solid when subjected to a sudden pressure, such as an earthquake wave. If a gentle push is exerted horizontally on the earth's crust, to shove it in a given direction, and if the push is maintained steadily for a long time, it is highly probable that the crust willl be displaced over this plastic and viscous lower layer. The crust, in this case, will move as a single unit, the whole crust at the same time. This idea has nothing whatever to do with the much discussed theory of drifting continents, according to which the continents drifted separately, in different directions. [...] Let us visualize briefly the consequences of a displacement of the whole crustal shell of the earth. First, there will be the changes in latitude. Places on the earth's surface will change their distances from the equator. Some will be shifted nearer the equator, and others farther away. Points on opposite sides of the earth will move in opposite directions. For example, if New York should be moved 2,000 miles south, the Indian Ocean, diametrically opposite, would have to be shifted 2,000 miles north. [...] Naturally, climatic changes will be more or less proportionate to changes in latitude, and, because areas on opposite sides of the globe will be moving in opposite directions, some areas will be getting colder while others get hotter; some will be undergoing radical changes of climate, some mild changes of climate, and some no changes at all. Along with the climatic changes, there will be many other consequences of a displacement of the crust. Because of the slight flattening of the earth, there will be stretching and compressional effects to crack and fold the crust, possibly contributing to the formation of mountain ranges. there will be changes in sea level, and many other consequences.

About 4.6 billion years ago, a great swirl of gas and dust some 24 billion kilometres across accumulated in space where we are now and began to aggregate. Virtually all of it – 99.9 per cent of the mass of the solar system21 – went to make the Sun. Out of the floating material that was left over, two microscopic grains floated close enough together to be joined by electrostatic forces. This was the moment of conception for our planet. All over the inchoate solar system, the same was happening. Colliding dust grains formed larger and larger clumps. Eventually the clumps grew large enough to be called planetesimals. As these endlessly bumped and collided, they fractured or split or recombined in endless random permutations, but in every encounter there was a winner, and some of the winners grew big enough to dominate the orbit around which they travelled. It all happened remarkably quickly. To grow from a tiny cluster of grains to a baby planet some hundreds of kilometres across is thought to have taken only a few tens of thousands of years. In just 200 million years, possibly less22, the Earth was essentially formed, though still molten and subject to constant bombardment from all the debris that remained floating about. At this point, about 4.4 billion years ago, an object the size of Mars crashed into the Earth, blowing out enough material to form a companion sphere, the Moon. Within weeks, it is thought, the flung material had reassembled itself into a single clump, and within a year it had formed into the spherical rock that companions us yet. Most of the lunar material, it is thought, came from the Earth’s crust, not its core23, which is why the Moon has so little iron while we have a lot. The theory, incidentally, is almost always presented as a recent one, but in fact it was first proposed in the 1940s by Reginald Daly of Harvard24. The only recent thing about it is people paying any attention to it. When the Earth was only about a third of its eventual size, it was probably already beginning to form an atmosphere, mostly of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, methane and sulphur. Hardly the sort of stuff that we would associate with life, and yet from this noxious stew life formed. Carbon dioxide is a powerful greenhouse gas. This was a good thing, because the Sun was significantly dimmer back then. Had we not had the benefit of a greenhouse effect, the Earth might well have frozen over permanently25, and life might never have got a toehold. But somehow life did. For the next 500 million years the young Earth continued to be pelted relentlessly by comets, meteorites and other galactic debris, which brought water to fill the oceans and the components necessary for the successful formation of life. It was a singularly hostile environment, and yet somehow life got going. Some tiny bag of chemicals twitched and became animate. We were on our way. Four billion years later, people began to wonder how it had all happened. And it is there that our story next takes us.

There were three great comedians in my formative years—Bill Cosby, Bill Murray, and Richard Pryor—and they wrecked comedy for a generation. How? By never saying anything funny. You can quote a Steve Martin joke, or a Rodney Dangerfield line, but Pryor, Cosby, and Murray? The things they said were funny only when they said them. In Cosby’s case, it didn’t even need to be sentences: “The thing of the thing puts the milk in the toast, and ha, ha, ha!” It was gibberish and America loved it. The problem was that they inspired a generation of comedians who tried coasting on personality—they were all attitude and no jokes. It was also a time when comedy stars didn’t seem to care. Bill Murray made some lousy movies; Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy made even more; and any script that was too lame for these guys, Chevy Chase made. These were smart people—they had to know how bad these films were, but they just grabbed a paycheck and did them. Most of these comic actors started as writers—they could have written their own scripts, but they rarely bothered. Then, at the end of a decade of lazy comedy and half-baked material, The Simpsons came along. We cared about jokes, and we worked endless hours to cram as many into a show as possible. I’m not sure we can take all the credit, but TV and movies started trying harder. Jokes were back. Shows like 30 Rock and Arrested Development demanded that you pay attention. These days, comedy stars like Seth Rogen, Amy Schumer, Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, and Jonah Hill actually write the comedies they star in.

The ridge of the Lammer-muir hills... consists of primary micaceous schistus, and extends from St Abb's head westward... The sea-coast affords a transverse section of this alpine tract at its eastern extremity, and exhibits the change from the primary to the secondary strata... Dr HUTTON wished particularly to examine the latter of these, and on this occasion Sir JAMES HALL and I had the pleasure to accompany him. We sailed in a boat from Dunglass ... We made for a high rocky point or head-land, the SICCAR ... On landing at this point, we found that we actually trode [sic] on the primeval rock... It is here a micaceous schistus, in beds nearly vertical, highly indurated, and stretching from S.E. to N. W. The surface of this rock... has thin covering of red horizontal sandstone laid over it, ... Here, therefore, the immediate contact of the two rocks is not only visible, but is curiously dissected and laid open by the action of the waves... On us who saw these phenomena for the first time, the impression will not easily be forgotten. The palpable evidence presented to us, of one of the most extraordinary and important facts in the natural history of the earth, gave a reality and substance to those theoretical speculations, which, however probable had never till now been directly authenticated by the testimony of the senses... What clearer evidence could we have had of the different formation of these rocks, and of the long interval which separated their formation, had we actually seen them emerging from the bosom of the deep? ... The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time; and while we listened with earnestness and admiration to the philosopher who was now unfolding to us the order and series of these wonderful events, we became sensible how much farther reason may sometimes go than imagination can venture to follow.

So it’s not the sight of stromatolites that makes them exciting. It’s the idea of them – and in this respect they are peerless. Well, imagine it. You are looking at living rocks – quietly functioning replicas of the very first organic structures ever to appear on earth. You are experiencing the world as it was 3.5 billion years ago – more than three-quarters of the way back to the moment of terrestrial creation. Now if that is not an exciting thought, I don’t know what is. As the aforementioned palaeontologist Richard Fortey has put it: ‘This is truly time travelling, and if the world were attuned to its real wonders this sight would be as well-known as the pyramids of Giza.’ Quite right. Stromatolites are rather like corals in that all of their life is on the surface, and that most of what you are looking at is the dead mass of earlier generations. If you peer, you can sometimes see tiny bubbles of oxygen rising in streams from the formations. This is the stromatolite’s only trick and it isn’t much, but it is what made life as we know it possible. The bubbles are produced by primitive algae-like micro-organisms called cyanobacteria, which live on the surface of the rocks – about three billion of them to the square yard, to save you counting – each of them capturing a molecule of carbon dioxide and a tiny beat of energy from the sun and combining them to fuel its unimaginably modest ambitions to exist, to live. The byproduct of this very simple process is the faintest puff of oxygen. But get enough stromatolites respiring away over a long enough period and you can change the world. For two billion years this is all the life there was on earth, but in that time the stromatolites raised the oxygen level in the atmosphere to 20 per cent – enough to allow the development of other, more complex life forms: me, for instance. My gratitude was real. The

Thrasher" They were hiding behind hay bales, They were planting in the full moon They had given all they had for something new But the light of day was on them, They could see the thrashers coming And the water shone like diamonds in the dew. And I was just getting up, hit the road before it's light Trying to catch an hour on the sun When I saw those thrashers rolling by, Looking more than two lanes wide I was feelin' like my day had just begun. Where the eagle glides ascending There's an ancient river bending Down the timeless gorge of changes Where sleeplessness awaits I searched out my companions, Who were lost in crystal canyons When the aimless blade of science Slashed the pearly gates. It was then I knew I'd had enough, Burned my credit card for fuel Headed out to where the pavement turns to sand With a one-way ticket to the land of truth And my suitcase in my hand How I lost my friends I still don't understand. They had the best selection, They were poisoned with protection There was nothing that they needed, Nothing left to find They were lost in rock formations Or became park bench mutations On the sidewalks and in the stations They were waiting, waiting. So I got bored and left them there, They were just deadweight to me Better down the road without that load Brings back the time when I was eight or nine I was watchin' my mama's T.V., It was that great Grand Canyon rescue episode. Where the vulture glides descending On an asphalt highway bending Thru libraries and museums, galaxies and stars Down the windy halls of friendship To the rose clipped by the bullwhip The motel of lost companions Waits with heated pool and bar. But me I'm not stopping there, Got my own row left to hoe Just another line in the field of time When the thrasher comes, I'll be stuck in the sun Like the dinosaurs in shrines But I'll know the time has come To give what's mine. Neil Young, Rust Never Sleeps (1979)

Land and Sea The brilliant colors are the first thing that strike a visitor to the Greek Isles. From the stunning azure waters and blindingly white houses to the deep green-black of cypresses and the sky-blue domes of a thousand churches, saturated hues dominate the landscape. A strong, constant sun brings out all of nature’s colors with great intensity. Basking in sunshine, the Greek Isles enjoy a year-round temperate climate. Lemons grow to the size of grapefruits and grapes hang in heavy clusters from the vines of arbors that shade tables outside the tavernas. The silver leaves of olive trees shiver in the least sea breezes. The Greek Isles boast some of the most spectacular and diverse geography on Earth. From natural hot springs to arcs of soft-sand beaches and secret valleys, the scenery is characterized by dramatic beauty. Volcanic formations send craggy cliffsides plummeting to the sea, cause lone rock formations to emerge from blue waters, and carve beaches of black pebbles. In the Valley of the Butterflies on Rhodes, thousands of radiant winged creatures blanket the sky in summer. Crete’s Samaria Gorge is the longest in Europe, a magnificent natural wonder rife with local flora and fauna. Corfu bursts with lush greenery and wildflowers, nurtured by heavy rainfall and a sultry sun. The mountain ranges, gorges, and riverbeds on Andros recall the mainland more than the islands. Both golden beaches and rocky countrysides make Mykonos distinctive. Around Mount Olympus, in central Cyprus, timeless villages emerge from the morning mist of craggy peaks and scrub vegetation. On Evia and Ikaria, natural hot springs draw those seeking the therapeutic power of healing waters. Caves abound in the Greek Isles; there are some three thousand on Crete alone. The Minoans gathered to worship their gods in the shallow caves that pepper the remotest hilltops and mountain ranges. A cave near the town of Amnissos, a shrine to Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth, once revealed a treasure trove of small idols dedicated to her. Some caves were later transformed into monasteries. On the islands of Halki and Cyprus, wall paintings on the interiors of such natural monasteries survive from the Middle Ages. Above ground, trees and other flora abound on the islands in a stunning variety. ON Crete, a veritable forest of palm trees shades the beaches at Vai and Preveli, while the high, desolate plateaus of the interior gleam in the sunlight. Forest meets sea on the island of Poros, and on Thasos, many species of pine coexist. Cedars, cypress, oak, and chestnut trees blanket the mountainous interiors of Crete, Cyprus, and other large islands. Rhodes overflows with wildflowers during the summer months. Even a single island can be home to disparate natural wonders. Amorgos’ steep, rocky coastline gives way to tranquil bays. The scenery of Crete--the largest of the Greek Isles--ranges from majestic mountains and barren plateaus to expansive coves, fertile valleys, and wooded thickets.

Monstrous shiny black beetles the size of goats unfurled their wings, writhed and festered at the very top of the sharp rock formation.

There was no sign of the hound. As she went deeper, the play of light and shadow on the walls became disorienting. The crevices and rock formations bounced as she walked, though she tried to hold the lantern steady. She stopped frequently, listening and scanning the shadows for any sign of movement. She

Although in 2005 compact discs still represented over 98 percent of the market for legal album sales, Morris had no loyalty to the format. In May of that year, Vivendi Universal announced it was spinning off its CD manufacturing and distribution business into a calcified corporate shell called the Entertainment Distribution Company. Included in EDC’s assets were several massive warehouses and two large-scale compact disc manufacturing plants: one in Hanover, Germany, and one in Kings Mountain, North Carolina. Universal would still manufacture all its CDs at the plants, but now this would be an arms-length transaction that allowed them to watch the superannuation of optical media from a comfortable distance. It was one of the oldest moves in the corporate finance playbook: divest yourself of underperforming assets while holding on to the good stuff. EDC was a classic “stub company,” a dogshit collection of low-growth, capital-intensive factory equipment that was rapidly going obsolete. In other words, EDC was a drag on A that added little to B. Let the investment bankers figure out who wanted it—Universal had gone digital, and the death rattle of the compact disc had grown loud enough for even Doug Morris to hear. The CD was the past; the iPod was the future. People loved these stupid things. You could hardly go outside without getting run over by some dumb jogger rocking white headphones and a clip-on Shuffle. Apple stores were generating more sales per square foot than any business in the history of retail. The wrapped-up box with a sleek wafer-sized Nano inside was the most popular gift in the history of Christmas. Apple had created the most ubiquitous gadget in the history of stuff.

garden to be a tranquil oasis within the bustling city. There was a fragrance of trumpet lilies and a pleasant rustling of shade trees. In the darkness he couldn’t well distinguish the outcrop of quarry rock above the garden, notable for a formation that very much resembles a human skull. It was precisely this deep-socketed natural sculpture that led Charles Gordon, a British general visiting Jerusalem in 1883, to explore the site further: as stated in the Gospels, of Jesus and the crucifixion, “And he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew, Golgotha” (John 19:17).

One million arid acres stretch out in the afternoon sun. The mile-high crust, layers of umber, russet, charcoal, goldenrod, burn sienna, and ochre, exposes two billion years of geologic history. We stand awe-smacked. We're the newest things on earth. Everything at the rim—all of the particles that big-banged themselves through the universe to be alive in just these forms—has been set in motion. Our lives are the vestiges of these events, events that seem to happen ceaselessly. As tired and grief-stricken as I am, there's still a part of me that knows that Richard's loss of memory, the death of his identity, his coming back as a new man, it all has its place in the order of things, or perhaps the chaos of things—just like these ancient, awesome rock formations.

The brown ant had already forgotten its home. To the twilight Earth and the stars that were just coming out, the span of time may have been negligible, but, for the ant, it was eons. In days now forgotten, its world had been overturned. Soil had taken flight, leaving a broad and deep chasm, and then soil had come crashing down to fill it back in. At one end of the disturbed earth stood a lone black formation. Such things happened frequently throughout this vast domain, the soil flying away and returning, chasms opening up and being filled, and rock formations appearing like visible markers of each catastrophic change. Under the setting sun, the ant and hundreds of its brethren had carried off the surviving queen to establish a new empire. Its return visit was only a chance passing while searching for food.

Stone on stone she builds, rock on rock formations. With every stone, she hopes to complete her transformation.

Earthquakes were another concern, particularly after swarms were felt in Oklahoma. Follow-on studies attributed these quakes not to drilling but rather to disposing of wastewater in inappropriate locations, causing slippage of rock formations and thus quakes.

Because traditional drilling techniques didn’t work on shale rock formations, the land above those formations had never been leased, which meant that when fracking made those hydrocarbons accessible for the first time, the market to acquire those mineral rights was completely wide open.

Right here is my favorite sanctuary in Tokyo," said Ryuu. "It's called Momijidani. It means 'autumn leaf valley.'" We'd reached an artificial ravine with a waterfall tumbling down from a high rock formation about three stories tall, surrounded by a variety of rocks, and maple trees with red autumn leaves. A stream ran below the waterfall, with a picturesque bridge path over it. The effect was spectacular, like being deep in a valley surrounded by mountains- serene, private, magical- but with Tokyo Tower looming over it, a reminder of the bustling city just beyond.

Interestingly, the formations that lie beneath the Coconino Sandstone seem to support this interpretation. The Tapeats Sandstone, for example, is a 525-million-year-old Cambrian sandstone that was apparently deposited by an encroaching sea (Figure 4A). Since it was deposited 250 million years before the Coconino Sandstone (Figure 4B), and about 465 million years before the uplift of the Colorado Plateau (Figure 4D), it too should have completely consolidated into solid rock. Consequently, the faulting responsible for injecting sand into the Hermit Shale should have shattered and faulted the Tapeats Sandstone. But it didn’t. Instead, the same faulting that injected sand into the Hermit Shale caused the Tapeats Sandstone to bend like plastic,4 sometimes at angles of 90° (Figure 3D). Of course, it is impossible for sand to stay wet and pliable for 225 million years (producing the sand injectites), let alone 465 million years (producing the 90° bend in the Tapeats Sandstone).

Beautiful world provides the best information and photos of the world's most stunning natural wonders. We cover their location, how to get to them, when to visit, trails, hotels, and their special features. National Parks and UNESCO sites are mixed amongst individual mountains and lakes. Islands and beaches feature as do some of the world's most amazing rock formations and caves. Beautifulworld.com is a great resource for travelers and students.

There stands upon the horizon a new figure of self yet to be unfolded that one must...honor. All of this will be the same, but it will look and feel different upon one’s return—it is important to know this now. One can stand upon a ridge high above the valley, upon a formation of jutting rocks and look over the precipice of what one has known. Even in its multitude of permutations, all looks familiar: the mountains, the fields, the skies—all of it connected to one’s eyes as though by invisible threads. The idea of breaking free from them is now rather troubling. Do those threads have the tensility to endure the stretch of a journey? Will these specters of recognition remain immutable and intact and hitched to the undulating satchel through one’s peregrinations to yet unseen territories, or do these delicate snares snap, relegating these identities only to the wake, sequestered in their purity even from one’s keenest reminiscence? Irrespective of the case, one should assume there to be a reconstitution of both identifier and identified over this inexorable trek—the unyielding essence of each layered, nevertheless, by the sediment of accumulating circumstance until there exists an uncertainty when they meet again. The landscape of then is a petrified visage—the organic layers of tree barks are supplanted by crystalized molds of mineral simulacrum, grass stalks of ages ago have dried and yellowed, autumn blossoms breathe new scents unaware of previous aromas whose places they now occupy, ambling figures have crumbled to bone whistles stacked in cylinders in muted sarcophagi with their predecessors. Faces meet landscapes—there is a vague recognition between the overlapping partners, an attempt at translation to identify elements once apprehended, but inevitably no solution is available in the moment that can bridge pristine artifacts with reconfigured forms.

Clad in white silk, her long curtain of dark hair unbound, the Grand Empress strolled, silent and grave as a wraith, down a walkway wending through the rock formations of the garden. Only moonlight filled the space—moonlight and shadow, as the empress strode alone and unnoticed, her simple gown flowing behind her as if on a phantom wind. White for grief—for death. The Grand Empress’s face was unadorned, her coloring far paler than that of her children. No joy limned her features; no life. No interest in either. Nesryn lingered in the shadows of the pillar, watching the woman drift farther away, as if she were wandering the paths of some dreamscape. Or perhaps some empty, barren hell.

The winter garden turned out to be a glass conservatory, two stories high and at least one hundred and twenty feet long. Lush ornamental trees, ferns, and palms filled the space, as well as artificial rock formations and a little streamlet stocked with goldfish. West’s opinion of the house climbed even higher as he looked around the winter garden. Eversby Priory had a conservatory, but it wasn’t half as large and lofty as this. An odd little noise seized his attention. A series of noises, actually, like the squeaking of toy balloons releasing air. Bemused, he looked down at a trio of black-and-white kittens roaming around his feet. Phoebe laughed at his expression. “This room is also the cats’ favorite.” A wondering smile spread across West’s face as he saw the sleek black feline arching against Phoebe’s skirts. “Good Lord. Is that Galoshes?” Phoebe bent to stroke the cat’s lustrous fur. “It is. She loves to come here to terrorize the goldfish. We’ve had to cover the stream with mesh wire until the kittens are older.” “When I gave her to you—” West began slowly. “Foisted,” she corrected. “Foisted,” he agreed ruefully. “Was she already—” “Yes,” Phoebe said with a severe glance. “She was a Trojan cat.” West tried to look contrite. “I had no idea.” Her lips quirked. “You’re forgiven. She turned out to be a lovely companion. And the boys have been delighted to have the kittens to play with.” After prying one of the kittens from his trousers as it tried to climb his leg, West set it down carefully.

From the Bridge” by Captain Hank Bracker Pebbles, Rocks & Mountains Rocks can be formed in many different ways and are found in just about every corner of our planet, the Moon, up in space and who knows where else. Now pebbles are the mini-me’s of rocks and generally are about one to three inches in size. Geologists will tell you that they are about 5 millimeters in diameter, but who’s counting? In fact there are two beaches that are made up entirely of pebbles such as the Shingle Beach in Somerset, England. Generally pebbles are found along rivers, streams and creeks whereas mountains are usually a part of a chain that was created along geothermal fault lines. The process of Mountain formation is associated with movements of the earth's crust, which is referred to as plate tectonics. See; now that I looked it up, I know these things! What I’m about to say has absolutely nothing to do with geology and everything to do about human nature. In the course of events we never trip over mountains and seldom over rocks, but tripping over pebbles is another thing. Marilyn French, a writer and feminist scholar is credited with saying, “Men (she should have included Women) stumble over pebbles, never over mountains.” She was the lady (I should have said woman) whose provocative 1977 novel, “The Women's Room” captured the frustration and fury of a generation of women fed up with society's traditional conceptions of their roles (and this is true). However, this has nothing to do with the feminist movement and is simply a metaphor. Of course we’re not going to trip over mountains, not unless we are bigger than the “Jolly Green Giant!” and so it’s usually the little things that trip us up and cause us problems. What comes to mind is found on page 466 of The Exciting Story of Cuba. This is a book that won two awards by the “Florida Authors & Publishers Association” and yet there are small mistakes. They weren’t even caused by me or my team and yet there they are, getting bigger and bigger every time I look at them. Now I’m not about to tell you what they are, since that would take the fun out of it, but if you look hard enough in the book, you’ll succeed in discovering them! I will however tell you that one of these mistakes was caused by a computer program called “Word.” It’s wonderful that this program has a spell check and can even correct my grammar, but it can’t read my mind. In its infernal wisdom, the program was so insistent that it was right and that I was wrong that it changed the spelling of, in this case, the name of a person in the middle of the night. It happened while I was sleeping! I would have seen it if it had been as big as a mountain, however being just a little pebble it escaped my review and even escaped the eagle eyes of Lucy who still remains the best proof reader and copy editor that I know. When you discover what I missed please refrain from emailing me, although, normally, I would really enjoy hearing from you! I unfortunately already know most of the errors in the book, for which I take full responsibility. The truth of it is that my mistakes leave me feeling stupid and frustrated. Now, you may disagree with me however I don’t think that I am really all that stupid, but when you write hundreds of thousands of words, a few of them might just slip between the cracks. None of us are infallible and we all make mistakes. I sometimes like to say that “I once thought that I had made a mistake, but then found out that I was mistaken.” And so it is; if you think about it, it’s the pebbles that create most of our problems, not the rocks and certainly not the mountains. I’ll let you know as soon as my other books, Suppressed I Rise – Revised Edition; Seawater One…. And Words of Wisdom, “From the Bridge” are available. It’s Seawater One that has the naughty bits in it… but that just spices it up. Now with that book you can really tell me what you think….

But of all that he saw, what gripped him the most were the light flashes in the darkened atmosphere that he had seen before—but always high, high above him. Meteors blazing through the atmosphere, shooting stars beneath him, the fireflies of space dashing blindly through cremation. Then came the moment. Deke would never forget it. He became part of a wonder that opened all space to him. Meteors flashed in greater number than he had yet seen, the spattered debris of ancient planetary formation and collisions of rock consumed by the atmosphere of Earth. Something he could not measure in size, but unquestionably large, perhaps even huge, rushed at earth with tremendous velocity. The meteor hurtled in toward his home planet, but at an angle that would send it skimming along the upper reaches of the atmosphere, almost parallel with earth’s surface below. Deke first saw the intruder when it punched deep enough into earth’s air ocean, grazing the edges of the atmosphere with a speed he could not judge, except that it was a rogue body, gravity-whipped to tremendous velocity. It tore into thin air; instantly its outer surface began to burn, its front edges blazing like a giant welding torch gone mad. It skipped along the atmosphere and gained an upward thrusting lift, like a flat rock hurled across smooth water. Deke gazed in wonder at the sight and watched the burning invader continue its journey along the atmosphere and then flash beyond. Away now from the clutches of air, still burning, it left behind an ionized trail of particles and superheated gases. Now away from Earth, it lofted high and far until it raced beyond Earth’s shadow. Sunlight flashed through the ionized trail, and the departing mass created its own record of passage, enduring long enough for Deke to watch until the last flicker, the final gleam, was gone. He felt he should not lower his gaze. His vision moved along the arrowing path of the now invisible wanderer of the solar system, and Deke stared, unblinking, as the mass of stars in his own galaxy shone down on him, an uncountable array of suns, stars he knew were smaller than his own sun, many vastly greater in size and energy, but all members of the great pin-wheeled Milky Way of which Deke and his world were one tiny member. He was

Our disagreement rises with the timing of the formation of these rock layers! Where the evolutionists say the fossiliferous rock layers “were laid down slowly over millions of years without any major catastrophes,” the creationists say that “most of these rock layers were deposited by the Flood of Noah’s day.” So it is the same evidence based on the same observations, but we simply have two different interpretations of that evidence. Creationists start with God’s Word, which informs us of the global Flood (e.g., Genesis 7:19–201) that was a major catastrophe about 4,300 years ago

Two different geologists (who simply do not have a hand in this debate since they are secular), who were searching for oil deposits, have mapped the regions that include the mountains of Ararat and beyond extensively.10 What we find are layers intrinsic to the formation of the mountains of Ararat (Armenia and Anatolia regions) that include: 1. Permian 2. Lower-Middle Triassic 3. Middle Triassic-Middle Cretaceous 4. Paleocene-Lower Eocene 5. Lower Eocene 6. Middle Eocene 7. Middle-Upper Miocene For much of this, the Eocene and Miocene rock layers are inverted and pushing up the Cretaceous and Triassic rock layers. In other words, without the Eocene and Miocene rock layers, the mountains of Ararat cannot exist! What can we glean from this? It means that Miocene and Eocene rock layers existed by day 150 in the mountains of Ararat. These layers are tertiary sediments much higher than the K/T boundary. What we can know is that these Eocene and Miocene rock layers were formed prior to the post-Flood period.

Adolin,’ Shallan said, turning back to the small rock formation in front of her, ‘would you slay this moss for me, please?’ ‘Slay . . . the moss.

First digital-only full-length album release. In 1999, four years before the launch of iTunes, the quirky rock band They Might Be Giants released Long Tall Weekend via the music-download service eMusic. Though it was later released on CD, at the time, downloading the album was the only way to get it. The first album released in digital and CD formats simultaneously was Mezzanine by the electronic music act Massive Attack.

After nightfall, when most of the American planes had been taken aboard, a new formation of planes arrived over the task force. First, the drone of their engines could be heard above the cloud cover; then they slipped into view, at about the height of the Lexington’s masts. “These planes were in very good formation,” recalled Lieutenant Commander Stroop. They had their navigation lights on, indicating that they intended to land. But many observers on both carriers and several of the screening vessels noted that something was awry. Captain Sherman of the Lexington counted nine planes, more than could be accounted for among the American planes that were still aloft. They were flying down the Yorktown’s port side, a counterclockwise approach, the reverse of the American landing routine. They were flashing their blinker lights, but none of the Americans could decipher the signal. Electrician’s mate Peter Newberg, stationed on the Yorktown’s flight deck, noticed that the aircraft exhausts were a strange shape and color, and Stroop noted that the running lights were a peculiar shade of red and blue. The TBS (short-range radio circuit) came alive with chatter. One of the nearby destroyers asked, “Have any of our planes got rounded wingtips?” Another voice said, “Damned if those are our planes.” When the first of the strangers made his final turn, he was too low, and the Yorktown’s landing signal officer frantically signaled him to throttle up. “In the last few seconds,” Newberg recalled, “when the pilot was about to plow into the stern under the flight deck, he poured the coal to his engine and pulled up and off to port. The signal light flicked briefly on red circles painted on his wings.” One of the screening destroyers opened fire, and red tracers reached up toward the leading plane. A voice on the Lexington radioed to all ships in the task force, ordering them to hold fire, but the captain of the destroyer replied, “I know Japanese planes when I see them.” Antiaircraft gunners on ships throughout the task force opened fire, and suddenly the night sky lit up as if it was the Fourth of July. But there were friendly planes in the air as well; one of the Yorktown fighter pilots complained: “What are you shooting at me for? What have I done now?” On the Yorktown, SBD pilot Harold Buell scrambled out to the port-side catwalk to see what was happening. “In the frenzy of the moment, with gunners firing at both friend and foe, some of us got caught up in the excitement and drew our .45 Colt automatics to join in, blasting away at the red meatballs as they flew past the ship—an offensive gesture about as effective as throwing rocks.” The intruders and the Americans all doused their lights and zoomed back into the cloud cover; none was shot down. It was not the last time in the war that confused Japanese pilots would attempt to land on an American carrier.

But China has gone too far in the South China Sea with the island building.” For years, the Chinese had been building military bases on the islands. They had vastly expanded their footprint by dumping sand and muck dredged from the ocean on top of the rock and reef formations, building man-made islands in order to set up more bases with an alarming array of military installations in the highly valuable international trade passage that threatened the U.S. Navy’s Pacific domination.

It was something in the tone of the madmen and their type of formation. They were a scratch company of barbarians and slaves and poor and unimportant people; but their formation was military; they moved together and were very absolute about who and what was really a part of their little system; and about what they said. However mildly, there was a ring like iron. Men used to many mythologies and moralities could make no analysis of the mystery, except the curious conjecture that they meant what they said. All attempts to make them see reason in the perfectly simple matter of the Emperor’s statue seemed to be spoken to deaf men. It was as if a new meteoric metal had fallen on the earth; it was a difference of substance to the touch. Those who touched their foundation fancied they had struck a rock. With a strange rapidity, like the changes of a dream, the proportions of things seemed to change in their presence. Before most men knew what had happened, these few men were palpably present. They were important enough to be ignored. People became suddenly silent about them and walked stiffly past them. We see a new scene, in which the world has drawn its skirts away from these men and women and they stand in the centre of a great space like lepers. The scene changes again and the great space where they stand is overhung on every side with a cloud of witnesses, interminable terraces full of faces looking down towards them intently; for strange things are happening to them. New tortures have been invented for the madmen who have brought good news. That sad and weary society seems almost to find a new energy in establishing its first religious persecution. Nobody yet knows very clearly why that level world has thus lost its balance about the people in its midst; but they stand unnaturally still while the arena and the world seem to revolve round them. And there shone on them in that dark hour a light that has never been darkened; a white fire clinging to that group like an unearthly phosphorescence, blazing its track through the twilights of history and confounding every effort to confound it with the mists of mythology and theory; that shaft of light or lightning by which the world itself has struck and isolated and crowned it; by which its own enemies have made it more illustrious and its own critics have made it more inexplicable; the halo of hatred around the Church of God.

So our dream was to combine the feeling and the emotional rock potential of The Who and even Zeppelin and bring the complexity of a band like Genesis and Yes. “And we wanted to do that in a three-piece format. We wanted to be the world’s most complicated three-piece band.

Steadily the Sleuth plowed northward. Joe shaded his eyes with his hand as dots of land appeared off the coast ahead. “There are the islands where Chet and Biff wanted to camp,” he noted. “Say! They’re pretty isolated—and would be likely spots for hiding kidnap victims! We ought to search them if we don’t find some clue to the boys in Northport.” “I’ll pass them as close as I can,” Frank offered. “Maybe we’ll see something.” One by one the line of islets could be seen. Though the Hardys watched carefully, they saw only sand, pines, and huge stone formations. Some of the islands were surrounded by dangerous half-submerged rocks.

On the border of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire sits Creswell Crags, an area with many cave formations. In the rock known as the Church Hole at Nottinghamshire, engravings were discovered on the cave walls, dating from about 13,000 years ago.[2] Birds, buffalo, deer, and bears are shown in the engravings, which is the earliest form of cave art found in Britain.

As we circled the small lake, passing the castle-like rock formation beneath the skylight, I spotted a dark crevice in the cliff wall ahead of us.

Oil and gas wells produce from hydrocarbon-bearing geologic reservoirs deep under the surface of the earth which are either characterized as conventional reservoirs or unconventional reservoirs. For all oil and gas reservoirs, there are three important geologic characteristics that oil and gas companies consider when exploring for oil and natural gas: porosity, hydrocarbon saturation, and permeability. In plain English, porosity describes the capacity for a rock formation to hold liquids or gases, hydrocarbon saturation describes the percentage of total pore volume occupied by hydrocarbons, and permeability describes the ability for liquids or gases to flow through the rock pore space.

Natural rock formations looked like ancient temples, while ancient temples looked like natural rock.

Swedish democracy is based on a single premise: the Right to Free Speech (R.F.S.). This guarantees the inalienable right to speak, think and believe anything whatsoever. This right embraces all Swedish citizens, from the crazy neo-Nazi living in the woods to the rock-throwing anarchist – and everyone in between. Every other basic right, such as the Formation of Government and the Right to Freedom of Organization, is simply a basic extension of the Right to Free Speech. On this law democracy stands or falls.

Third, the idea that venture capitalists get into deals on the strength of their brands can be exaggerated. A deal seen by a partner at Sequoia will also be seen by rivals at other firms: in a fragmented cottage industry, there is no lack of competition. Often, winning the deal depends on skill as much as brand: it’s about understanding the business model well enough to impress the entrepreneur; it’s about judging what valuation might be reasonable. One careful tally concluded that new or emerging venture partnerships capture around half the gains in the top deals, and there are myriad examples of famous VCs having a chance to invest and then flubbing it.[6] Andreessen Horowitz passed on Uber. Its brand could not save it. Peter Thiel was an early investor in Stripe. He lacked the conviction to invest as much as Sequoia. As to the idea that branded venture partnerships have the “privilege” of participating in supposedly less risky late-stage investment rounds, this depends from deal to deal. A unicorn’s momentum usually translates into an extremely high price for its shares. In the cases of Uber and especially WeWork, some late-stage investors lost millions. Fourth, the anti-skill thesis underplays venture capitalists’ contributions to portfolio companies. Admittedly, these contributions can be difficult to pin down. Starting with Arthur Rock, who chaired the board of Intel for thirty-three years, most venture capitalists have avoided the limelight. They are the coaches, not the athletes. But this book has excavated multiple cases in which VC coaching made all the difference. Don Valentine rescued Atari and then Cisco from chaos. Peter Barris of NEA saw how UUNET could become the new GE Information Services. John Doerr persuaded the Googlers to work with Eric Schmidt. Ben Horowitz steered Nicira and Okta through their formative moments. To be sure, stories of venture capitalists guiding portfolio companies may exaggerate VCs’ importance: in at least some of these cases, the founders might have solved their own problems without advice from their investors. But quantitative research suggests that venture capitalists do make a positive impact: studies repeatedly find that startups backed by high-quality VCs are more likely to succeed than others.[7] A quirky contribution to this literature looks at what happens when airline routes make it easier for a venture capitalist to visit a startup. When the trip becomes simpler, the startup performs better.[8]

the spire, then stopped. Up close, there was nothing interesting about it—it was just a tall rock formation sticking up out of the mud. “Look!” Skeleton Steve said, pointing to the north with a bony finger. I glanced toward the mountain

oil companies study the rock formations carefully before they drill a well. Yet, despite their scientific analysis, seven out of eight wells drilled turn out to be dry holes. Oil companies are persistent in their search for oil, not by digging one hole to ridiculous depths but rather by experimenting with a new well when good judgment says the first well won’t produce.

Fortunately for us, the sedimentary sink is transitory. Sediments are transported on the giant crustal plates that float like rafts on the hot heavier material of the underlying mantle. When plates converge, they can be either uplifted or they may be withdrawn into the underlying mantle. Uplift results in the formation of mountain ranges. Carbon (and other life-essential elements) may be cycled directly back to the atmosphere/biosphere system, in this case by weathering of the uplifted rock material. If the sedimentary material is carried down into the mantle, it will be raised to high temperature through exposure to the hot mantle material. The carbon and other volatile materials included in the sediments may be released and transferred, often explosively, back to either the atmosphere or ocean as a component of hot springs and volcanoes. The average carbon atom has gone through this tectonically driven cycling sequence at least 10 times over the course of Earth history. How

Ancient Ways Considering their favorable strategic location, pleasant climate, and natural beauty, is it any wonder that the Greek Isles became the cradle of Western culture? For millennia, the Greek islands have exerted a powerful magnetic force on people around the world. Seafaring conquerors have long recognized the importance and beauty of these islands. Ancient Phoenician ships came ashore as early as the third millennium B.C.E., followed by would-be conquerors from mainland Greece, Rome, Venice, and Turkey. Invaders have laid claim to these islands from antiquity well into the modern era. Pleasure seekers have also been drawn to the area. Ancient Minoan kings built their luxurious palaces among the citrus groves and rugged hillsides that overlook the placid seas. Scenes depicted in ancient wall paintings and on decorated pottery suggest that the islands have been a center of hedonistic activity--dancing, drinking, and romance--for eons. Today, visitors from around the world indulge in these same activities, drawn to the beaches, tavernas, and discotheques that pepper the many island harbors. Contemporary travelers to the Greek Isles come for myriad reasons and find a dazzling array of unexpected delights, for each of the more than three thousand islands has its own particular character. From the larger, bustling islands of Crete, Rhodes, and the island nation of Cyprus to the quieter havens of Folegandros and Kárpathos, to the hundreds of tiny, uninhabited islets of the region, the Greek Isles present a collage of diverse landscapes and customs. Mykonos is fun-loving, with lively tavernas and populated beaches. Delos is stoic, protecting the ruins of its ancient sanctuaries in solemn dignity. Milos is magical, with its volcanic rock formations and stunning village vistas.

When I am having a bad day or a difficult moment, in my mind's eye I often return to the soothing images of the sea. I recall the roar of the surf as it explodes over ancient volcanic rock formations that decorate the majestic Oregon coastline. Gorgeous waves roll in endlessly and disperse impressively over the the sandal-covered beach front. I invite you to go to your secret place and allow your spirit to dance with the magical visions of inspiration you perceive.

water,” he rasped softly whenever he was thirsty. It never sounded like a request, but an observation, as though he was seeing in his mind some mountain stream whose crystal clear water was babbling through a formation of rocks. He would repeat the words at almost exact intervals, never certain anybody was close enough to hear. I was

Golgotha, Place of a Skull. The name is not attested in any ancient documents outside the Bible. It was located outside the city wall (by both Roman and Jewish law) and along a major roadway (by common practice) rather than in an isolated area or up on a hill. These conditions may be met at the traditional location known as Gordon’s Calvary, where a rock formation that looks like a skull can be seen today. This has been a favorite spot for visitors since the nineteenth century. A longer running tradition places Golgotha at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was built in the fourth century by Constantine. Both places are outside the second wall of the city, which was the outside wall at the time of Christ. The third wall was not built until the next decade.

The earliest expression of an artistic sense in our region is very likely to have been the one visible on rocks in the 'heart of India' -- an expression coined by a geographer to describe the rocky area of hills and plateaus between the Gangetic plains and the Deccan. This hilly landscape is spectacular. It comprises long finger-like ridges and jaw-dropping rock formations, and masses of scarped plateaus dotted with rock shelters, often to be found in the midst of scattered jungles and grasslands. This stretch was once home to prehistoric inhabitants living remarkably basic lives.

The temptation is always to think of Las Vegas as a gambling mecca, the ‘Entertainment Capital of the World’. Well, it’s that. But, it’s a lot more than that as well. There are beautiful natural rock formations, rare plants and animals, and even pseudo-alpine regions. Just because you can see for a hundred miles doesn’t mean that there’s nothing there to see, and open desert allows you to see things in a different way. There is nothing to block your view, and nothing to hide behind.

To be an adult was to be a river rock blasted by an endless torrent of mundane terrors — from resume formatting to electricity bills — that would inevitably smooth all my hard edges until I looked and felt just like everything else.

She carried him down into a lush cavern. It was a sprawling acre and a half, the floor a beautiful rolling meadow of wildflowers split by a zigzag freshwater stream which was fed by five cascade waterfalls streaming down in roaring torrents from towering one hundred fifty foot sheer walls. There were mineral-rich hot springs and abundant vegetation. Giant ferns, mushrooms, heather, blueberry, alpine strawberry, huckleberry. All thriving in the warm, wet air generated by the nearly constant emission of steam hissing out of geothermal vents. Eerie lava rock formations sprouted up throughout the grotto floor. Curving, organic shapes forming alcoves and niches and cozy recesses offering solitude to whomever, or whatever, required it.