This blog is a way for me to supplement and support the content of this course as we go through chapter by chapter. This is not an easy course, but it will be very rewarding if you put time into it. There are a number of hurdles that you will have seen already.The first hurdle is an apparently endemic fear of science and scientific notation that plagues the liberal arts field. Let’s deal with that one first. There is a good deal of scientific convention used in this book and, no doubt, some of this will be unfamiliar to you. Let me state quite clearly that there is nothing that you need to know, nothing that you need to understand in order to do well in this course, that is beyond you with just a little help from me and the other students.
A second hurdle is created by the vast amount of material available on the web and through the electronic library. You need to discipline yourself, limit the time you spend surfing around, and just focus on reliable and acknowledged sites such as the USGS or foreign equivalents and, of course learned societies and universities. By all means look more broadly, but do not forget to keep your focus. Please do not be tempted to use Wikipedia or other online encyclopedias as more that a starter option. We will go much deeper than that, and anyway, I know all of that so well that I am bound to spot it! 🙂