Branner Blog

Street view, the latest feature on google maps, is, in a word, phenomenal. To check it out, put in an address, click on the new “street view” button, and if the street is highlighted in blue, you’ll be able to see a street-level view. You can use the “man on the street” to navigate around, or the arrows and zoom options within the image itself.

The view from our very own Palm Drive is quite nice as always.

Edited to include one of my critiques of the new feature, this one from NYT. I’ll let you do your own research if you care to follow the buzz regarding the more provocative views from the Farm.

You may have noticed a new feature in the sidebar of the BrannerBlog. We are experimenting with a service called “LibraryThing,” an online cataloging application that allows us (or you) to catalog books, tag them, and generally engage in the whole web 2.0, social networking thing: think facebook for your home library. Read more about library thing, visit our catalog, or start your own.

Right now our “catalog” is small, home to the first of our recommended reading lists. And of course you can visit good old socrates, our comprehensive catalog, to find countless other books, maps, and journals held by Branner.

One hundred years ago on May 27th, Rachel Carson was born in rural Pennsylvania. Author of three classic books about the sea, she also helped launch the environmental movement of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, with the publication of Silent Spring in 1962. Every literate denizen of the earth should read this book, as relevant today as it it was forty years ago. Check out the online bookclub, commemorating the anniversary of her birth; a website put up by the Fish and Wildlife Service, for whom she worked for many years; and another informative site.

The plaque in the thumbnail photo is attached to a rock (granite?) on the banks of the Sheepscot River in Newagen, Maine, where Carson’s ashes were scattered, following her death, too young, from breast cancer. It reads, in part:

RACHEL CARSON
Writer, Ecologist, Champion of the Natural World
1907-1964

The current issue of Stanford Magazine (May/June 2007) features School of Earth Sciences Dean Pamela Matson, in its lead article. Read about the career and work of an inspiring and influential biogeochemist.

Check out the blog of one of our GES grad students: …Or Something. Brian offers a nice mix of posts about earth science (with an eye towards sedimentary geology), general science news, as well as great visuals.

I’ve been surprised about how few dedicated geology-related blogs there are, so I’m always happy to hear about one. Let us know if you blog about the earth sciences, or if you read any ones of interest.

The USGS has created a neat Web site that allows you to look at the geology of the National Parks in 3-D. Yes, you have to wear the funky glasses with the red and green filters. There is a link on the bottom of the page that tells you where to get the glasses if you didn’t save a pair from your youth. The site also includes the same photos in standard format. This works surprisingly well over the Web.

Today is the first day of the Lyell Collection trial period. It runs from today, 5/17 through 6/18.

The collection is offered by the Geological Society of London in commemoration of its 200th anniversary, and includes electronic access to the Journal of the Geological Society, Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology, Special Publications, Memoirs, and Engineering Geology Special Publications.

Read more about the collection here.

We welcome feedback and questions from Stanford users regarding the collection.

We just heard about a new search engine: MetaCarta’s GeoIntel for Petroleum, an “online geographic search for the energy industry.”

The resource bills itself as an “easy to use and efficient tool for discovering Web-based energy-related intelligence that is related to specific geographic places.”

I like the spatial aspect–being able to place your results geographically is a nice feature–but the results themselves don’t appear to offer much more than a google search. I was excited to try GeoIntel because some of our most difficult reference questions deal with energy, specifically requests for oil field related data. The proprietary nature of information in the energy industry makes these questions particularly challenging. This resource doesn’t offer any new insight into that dilemma, but nonetheless, it’s an interesting concept. Try it out and let us know what you think.

Fakeisthenewreal has a nice comparison of subway maps of the world presented at the same scale. It really makes you think about geography and transportation, infrastructure and development, or if you’re in the mood, just the abstract beauty of a line.

Compare our own BART

to Beijing’s system, for example:

An interesting online only journal has been created entitled the Journal of Maps. The journal was created to give researchers and scholars a place to publish their maps as the print cost of producing maps is becoming prohibitively expensive. They have had a couple of special issues including glacial geology and “maps in motion,” primarily dealing with transportation of all types. Their current issue has just been released and includes maps on the subjects of karst geomorphology, glacial geomorphology, and ecology. In order to look at the maps you need to register. But, hey, it’s free!