Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
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It’s a classic plot device of murder mysteries: an evil killer slips poisonous mushrooms into the frying pan of an unsuspecting victim who dies an agonizing death. But in real life, poisonous fungi typically sicken and occasionally kill people for quite different reasons. Recently I learned a lot about what can go wrong in the world of mushrooms from Dr. Denis Benjamin, a medical doctor who is also a fungi and poison expert. As the weather improves over so much of the nation,...
As events in Japan this past March showed us, “Big Ones” really do happen. Richter 9 is about as large as they come, an event so enormous it takes away the breath of even a geologist like myself. It’s no comfort to think that quakes of that same general size are likely along the western boundaries of the Lower 48 and also in the region where Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee come together. In short, major quakes here in the U.S. simply must be expected. And there are other...
It’s obvious that miners focus on the highest concentration of gold or copper they can find. And geologists like me are always on the lookout for unusually high concentrations of metals in veins and rocks. We go where the best stuff is, and make a living helping to bring it to where it’s used in everything from the lead and zinc in your car battery to gold crowns for your teeth. I know the geological perspective about resources pretty well. But recently I had the chance to...
One of my mother’s friends was raised decades ago on a few acres at the end of a gravel road in Idaho. As she puts it, her family’s basic challenge was eating what it produced before other critters did. In other words, it was useful to consume the eggs in the henhouse before the foxes got to them. Those images sometimes come to my mind when I look at a bag of potatoes in the grocery store. Potatoes are relatively cheap and nutritious food, a good source of the basic food energ...
By DR. E. KIRSTEN PETERS Scientists have studied natural climate change for quite a while. Part of what we have learned about past climates comes from tree rings, and thereon hangs an interesting tale going back more than a century. Flagstaff, Ariz. was a pretty small burg in the 1890s, without the street lamps of big cities ‘back East.’ It also has an elevation of 7,000 feet, making it well over a mile above sea level. It was those two conditions that brought a young ast...
Those of us who have been around the block a few times will remember that the last time gasoline hit $4 per gallon a new industry sprang up. Drivers could buy magnets to attach to fuel lines to allegedly boost a car’s gas mileage by 20 or even 30 percent. The devices didn’t work, but the brisk market for them reflected the pain we were feeling at the pump. The Rock Doc confidently predicts the current spike in gas prices will lead to yet another round of activity by the cha... Full story
