Delicious Internet Noms

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Finally, this week's geoblogosphere fad is to post pictures of yourself doing something very dumb. Geotripper started it, Chris, Kim, Ron, and The Lost Geologist have all joined in. Mine's below the fold.

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Yup, this was pretty dumb. Now, I also have a picture much like Ron's, where I am poking a long metal pipe into an active lava flow. But that's actually quite safe, as these things go - you might fall into the lava if the terrain is rough and you are clumsy, but in Hawaii the lava is not likely to explode on you. In order to take this innocuous-looking picture of the business end of a lava tube, though, I had to clamber down a little scarp and onto a lava bench.

Lava benches are unstable accumulations of new land that frequently collapse into explody boiling ocean. You really don't want to be standing there when they do that.

This is one of the reasons that BACK OFF, I'M A SCIENTIST makes such a great bumper sticker.

Update: Geotripper is keeping a running list of all the death-defying geologist stories.

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