Several years ago, during a movie-watching phase, I put up a pair of posts at the old ETEV describing the symptoms of someone bitten by the geology bug. They never made it over here, so I’ve decided to repost them, with some added visuals. If you recognize yourself in these vignettes, you may be assured you’ve been bitten, too.
Fortunately, it’s not (usually) fatal, and leads to a lifetime of healthy fascination with a gorgeous science. It can also lead to vigorous outdoor exercise, which I’m told is often good for you. Huzzah!
How You Know You’re a Geologist at Heart
When you’re watching a movie, and during one of those beautiful scene-setting shots with the house perched on the sea cliffs, you catch your breath and whisper, “Ye gods, look at that tilted strata! I could live there just for that!” And then you drool over the way erosion has exposed the bedding planes.
Any geologist who’s seen The Shipping News probably knows precisely which shot I’m talking about.
Geology Strikes Again
Okay, so you know how in Sleepless in Seattle, they roll the opening credits over a relief map of the USA? Yeah. And no shit, there I was, thinking of the vagaries of plate tectonics. ‘Twas the angle on the map, y’see. It showed with amazing clarity just how flat the Midwest is (where it’s tectonically relatively quiet), how low the mountains in the East are (passive margin), and how mountainous the West is (active boundary, whole lotta squishing going on).
I’m sure I’ll start thinking of the actual movie here soon…
Yep. In Anatomy of a Murder there are all of those lovely old buildings made of Jacobsville Sandstone. And in Shrek, there is the glaciated hanging valley, complete with erratics, where Shrek & Donkey sit and admire the Moon.
Ugg the Shipping News. Newfoundland has some really awesome geology; whenever I’m going down the highway I always have to stare at all the road cuts, and just outside a walmart is an amazing cross-section of an anticline (which my family members don’t appreciate as much as they should). But that movie is terrible, may I suggest instead Rare Birds.
I do this, though I have learned to keep the geological excitement to myself, as sometimes, it turns out, other people watching are trying to pay attention to the characters and their dialogue, rather than the amazing rock formations in the
forebackground.