Rocks: Miscellaneous Fragments of Geology

• Happy 6013th Birthday, Earth! According to the biblical calculations of Archbishop Ussher, the earth was created in the wee hours of October 23, 4004 BC.
  

• Via Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog, some excellent tee designs featuring planetary parks of the UN Department of the Exterior. Full-size here, for sale here.

• NASA's Earth Observatory image of the day a few days ago was this gorgeous portrayal of the Ouachita Mountains- click for larger or visit the link for other size options and a full discussion.

• For those who have been burning with curiosity about how the trapped Chilean miners whiled away their long two-month-plus exile underground, The Onion ("America's Finest News Source") has you covered.
• Chilean President Sebastian Pinera arrived in London, bearing rocks as gifts for British officials. Charlie Brown isn't the only one lucky enough to get rocks for Halloween, I guess. (tee below from here)

• Bill Watterson was (is) a great comic artist, but he really didn't (doesn't) know much about geology did he? Via GeoCastAway: Blooger fuzzes images when I resize (thanks, Blooger!), so click for clarity. (Followup: Silver Fox left a comment saying that the last panel may be doctored, and not Watterson's original word choice, and also explaining how to fix the blurriness- it seems to have worked. Thanks!)

• Michael E. 'Aquadoc' Campana, writing about a recent conference and visit to the confluence of the Ohio River with the Mississippi, pointed out some interesting statistics regarding river flow. Obviously, flow is going to depend not only on basin area, but on the amount of precipitation in that basin. The tidbit that really blew my mind was this one:

I've noted this kind of discrepancy before: where I live, the Willamette River drains an area about 5% of the Colorado River's, yet its mean annual discharge is about 60% greater than the Colorado's. And the watersheds of the Colorado and Columbia Rivers are about the same size, yet the latter's mean annual discharge is about 13 times that of the former.

• Uncertainties in the Mayan-Gregorian calender conversion may be as much as 100 years... meaning that the world may have already come to an end. Not exactly what you want to hear on your birthday, is it?