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That is one of the truly most beautiful things in life.

[embarrassed-e] I agree.



#52515 01/14/02 02:02 AM
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old hand
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dubdub

Further to the previous post re boulder trains ("tills"), the following URL may be of some interest. It's an academic paper and as such the jargon is full on - but there are some pretty pictures of many of the features associated with glaciers that've been mentioned here. You'll need Adobe Acrobat to read it.

http://www.em.gov.bc.ca/DL/GSBPubs/GeoFldWk/1998/paulen.pdf

stales


#52516 01/14/02 02:05 AM
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I'm with stales on this one. Which is not really a huge surprise as he lives just up the road.


#52517 01/14/02 02:10 AM
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Carpal Tunnel
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Wow, stales--have we hit on another culture variation in names for the same thing? Tills, I've heard of, but thought train must be something new to me. Is that term unique to Oz, do you know? Or is till, to here? (I also just realized how little it would take to make this post very surreal...)


#52518 01/14/02 02:28 AM
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old hand
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> "...thought train must be something new to me"

Not sure where you're going on this one Jackie - perhaps my thought train is coming off the tracks?

Unless they remember their high school geology, most Aussies probably wouldn't know what a till (in the geological sense) is. The most common use of the word here would be as an alternative for "cash register". (Begs the question, why DO we call it a till?)

As for trains of thought, I think we all have those, irrespective of where we live. My problems are that there's far more tracks leading out of my own Grand Central Station than there are stations and there's no map of the network. Consequently many of the trains that depart never get to where they are supposed to, some arrive well after their scheduled ETA and others just crash into each other. I recently sacked the Fat Controller and took over his job, but have yet to fully establish the situation in the marshalling yards.

stales




#52519 01/14/02 11:39 AM
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Carpal Tunnel
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Not sure where you're going on this one Jackie
I'm sorry, Darlin'. Instead of "but thought train must be something new to me", I should have written: but I thought that the word train must be describing something new to me. Man--I said it would take very little to make that post surreal!

And, I thought at first reading, that the end of YOUR post was surreal, but finally caught on. Can you give my Fat Controller some lessons, please? And maybe a map of my destinations?


#52520 01/14/02 04:10 PM
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New England was covered with rounded stones when the first settlers got here. In some places there was hardly enough room to put feet down between them. I have seen areas that were never cultivated because there were just too many of them. I have a mental video of the ice slowly moving forward like a colossal bulldozer, rolling the jagged stones over as it passed over them, then the ice retreating perhaps a quarter of a mile in summer, then advancing a half mile in winter, rolling the stones over again and again, until the sharp edges were gone. I sure would like to see a diagram of how the geologists picture that action.


#52521 01/14/02 06:23 PM
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dr. bill, CK's site gives a different definittion of drumlin: teardrop shaped landforms are created largely from glacial till,, that is, from heterogenous glacial drift material.


#52522 01/14/02 08:00 PM
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Dear Keiva: The drumlin I played on was made of till, to be sure. But it was far higher and more massive than the majority made by till falling into a crevasse. There appeared to be a rock formation that parted the oncoming glacier. allowing the till to be deposited in the empty "V" behind it. In a few places in New England there are remnants of volcanic activity and other magma extrusions that might have made the drumlin I described.


#52523 01/14/02 09:46 PM
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Also the opportunistic Presidential advisor in Carl Sagan's magnificent sci-fi story "Contact".

Cheers,
Bryan



Cheers,
Bryan

You are only wretched and unworthy if you choose to be.
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