Up-Goer 5

In homage to Randall Munroe's brilliant, now-classic, comic, Up-Goer Five, the Geoblogosphere's meme du jour is to write about what each of us does using only the 1000 (10 hundred) most common words in (I presume, American) English. The Up-Goer Five text editor makes the job pretty painless. Here's my entry:

I like rocks. Also high places that sometimes act like they're on fire. But what I really like is sharing what I know about rocks and high places, and how those things came to be. What made them? What moved them? Why are they the way they are? I think the answers to these questions are important, and I think people should know more about them. So I use words and pictures to show everyone how beautiful and amazing rocks and high places are, why they're important to us, and why it's important to know about them. Sometimes I even get to take people to see rocks in real life, which is the best part of what I do.

When I saw the first example, from Anne Jefferson (@highlyanne) yesterday, I dismissed the exercise as frustrating, and very time consuming, as I expected to burn hours trying to find synonyms. But when I finally decided to give it a shot, it only took a few minutes- I probably spent more time on the second sentence than the rest of the paragraph, when I tried to find some way to say "volcanoes."

Highly Allochthonous is keeping a running list, with new additions coming into the comments. So additions will be rolled into the list later this evening. If you haven't already, give it a shot!

Update, Jan. 18: Anne Jefferson and Chris Rowan have created a Tumblr, "Ten Hundred Words of Science," to archive all the terrific entries, which have come in torrents. And not just earth science, but across the board. Don't miss it!