Congratulations, you've made it through the week!

Have a Happy Thought:   If you’ve ever put something down, and then when you go to look for it, it’s moved… you’re not alone. This is even happening on a global scale – continents are shifting, moving, colliding, and separating all the time. One cool result of this is that landmarks really far away from each other were actually formed together, or even once were a single thing. Take, for example, the Appalachian Mountains of eastern North America, the Scottish Highlands, the Atlas Mountains of northwest Africa, and the islands Corsica and Sardinia. Image: Google Earth W hat do these all have in common? Well, it turns out that 300 million years ago, these were all part of one single mountain range – the Central Pangaean Mountains. This mountain range was created when Laurasia ran into Gondwana to create the “super-continent” of Pangaea. Pangaea, with modern-day locations noted. Abbreviations: WV: West Virginia; IM: Iberian Massif; Aq: Aquitaine; AM: Armorican Massif; M...

Have a Happy Thought: At some point in your life (maybe even still now), you were obsessed with Dinosaurs. Getting to see dinosaur skeletons, preserved as fossils, is always amazing.   The last few decades of dinosaur research have focused just as much on ichnology, or: the study of dinosaur traces . These are the signs that dinosaurs left on their environment : imprints of skin (or scales, or feathers!!), nests, or even just footprints. Image: photo of a dinosaur trace fossil, on display at St George Dinosaur Discovery Site, Utah, USA in 2016.   “Just” footprints can tell amazing stories – about the interactions between adults and young, or hunting scenes .   The lovely thing is when you start looking at footprints and other trace marks around us today, and realise that every trace you see can tell a story.   Sometimes, those stories are transient, like the looping path this shelled creature took on the beach. This story would have been washed away ...

Have a Happy Thought:   Trees are awesome. They take up carbon, give us shade, sometimes give us food, and are there for hugs even if they’re tough and usually a bit prickly. Also, they do definitely make a sound if they fall , but even if you’re in the same forest, you might not hear it: Image: this tree fell across our track last weekend. It was not there on Sunday when we walked in, but it was definitely there on Tuesday when we walked out! And no, we didn’t hear it fall.   Trees also take all sorts of shapes and sizes, in fact some would say that there is no such thing as a tree, the way there is no such thing as a fish. Meaning there is no way to genetically (or plant-relationally) draw a circle around everything that we call ‘tree’ without including so many other things that it’s meaningless. Or, as one arborist put it: tree is a strategy .   Tree has been a strategy, as it turns out, for a very, very long time. But what that looks like has changed a lo...

Have a Happy Thought: You’ve not only survived the week, you’ve survived the entire first month of the year! On the other hand… how are we already in February?! If you ever feel that time is moving too quickly, there are lots of ways to slow down. One way might be to listen to music. Especially if you can do so in a beautiful location. Maybe you could try the Halberstadt Cathedral in Germany: Image: Hoger .  Cathedral of Halberstadt, Nave looking east . CC BY-SA 3.0 As for the music, try the composition As Slow as Possible . As in, that’s literally both the name and the intent. This piece of work is written for the organ, which can hold notes for a really long time – especially if you have a continuous bellows and you weigh down the keys and pedals with sandbags. (It probably helps that they built an organ specifically for this performance.) The special organ for playing Organ2/ASLSP, which will last 639 years, in the Halberstadt Cathedral or Church of St Stephe...