The Last Laugh

Ok, so this is the re-generated, made-over quotes post with some fresh material. What was wrong with the first title? It was rubbish! Here goes:

• "Your life span is only finite. I hate to tell you this but someday your going to die!" My Structural Geology lecturer, Paul Kapp reveals the haunting truth to us all.


• "I did gymnastics last night......with my son!" We all think the lecturer's abit weird until he clarifies he took his 2yr old to gym club. I think he just wanted to play on the trampolene though!


• "Is it ok if i bring powdered rock candy?" A member of the geology society wants to bring a bag of sugar as his contribution to the mass rock candy making ahead of the group running the junior stall at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show this weekend.


• "The sign's are different in engineering and geology so i'm like 'screw them'!"Paul Kapp once again shows little regard for detail. He also went on to say that gravitational acceleration (9.81ms) is ~10 for geologist!


• "I wouldn't worry, he never listen's to me!"; "Yeah, but your a woman!" Me and Abi discuss Russ' selective habits.
• "The UK has a rich and diverse geological history, its just doing sod all at the moment - its benign!" I pretty much sum up why i can't do a paper on the active tectonics of the British Isles.

Sigma Alpha Lambda

WARNING THIS POST HAS AN AGE RESTRICTION RECOMMENDATION OF 12+

Whether you've seen the American Pie films or not, you probably have some idea of what fraternities are at American Universities. If you have seen American Pie (including the incredibly awful 6th film, 'Beta House'), you probably have a view they're full of drunk's getting stoned on weed and coke and doing stupid stuff with themselves and various attachments. Since this is a 'PG' level blog, i'd better not elaborate too much more. It was therefore with some confusion and trepidation i received today a rather posh invite to join the "Sigma Alpha Lambda" fraternity.

This is a strictly by invitation only frat house for high achievers (yeah, it's full of geeks) which makes it even worse. If you've seen American Pie, the geek house gets mocked, bashed up and is full of arrogant, two-faced work-a-holics who can write pi to 3 million digits but can't cook beans on toast. Were assuming that American Pie is accurate - a fair assumption. What's worse is the $59 "initiation fee". Its not the fee i would be worried about but the initiation process. If American Pie is anything to go by, i'd need to get half of Tucson pregnant within 7 days to become a member. That's atleast double the reccommended daily allowance! Needless to say, i won't be joining! I wonder if my lecturer back in Leicester (a former graduate of the U of A) was a member???

In other news, i went in the pool today! Yes, this is an outdoor, non-heated swimming pool in February! And it was bloody freezing! Seriously, it was cold!

And finally, since ive had to suffer, a nice little football injury story for you. Saturday's Premiership encounter between Arsenal and Birmingham produced possibly the worse injury ive seen in football from the worse tackle ive ever seen. An Arsenal player was brought down just 2 minutes into the game by some Birmingham brickie. The tackle broke the Arsenal player's leg with bone visibly sticking out of the skin (through the sock!). Match of the Day kindly showed the highlights without any prior warning. Photos can bee seen on my friends blog (http://timnutt.blogspot.com/) but only for the non-squemish. I don't mind blood and gore but even i think this is nasty.

Laters.

28 weeks later

Yep, 28 weeks in Arizona and another 12 or so to go. 28 fast weeks!

This week has been insanely busy with uni work. So much so that on wednesday night i went into uni to do work and didnt get back to the apartment til around 5:30am. A hours sleep later, i got up, showered and headed back in. Hopefully wont be quite as extreme this week but still much to do. Aside from that, it was a relatively interesting week in the news. Indeed Liverpool won in the Champions league, the US shot down a satellite and some stupid Aussie raced a race horse half naked!

I had someone knock on my door yesterday again trying to sell me something. There quite inventive around here, always a cover story first but this one really was an interesting story. Standing before me was an 18yr old highschool senior wanting to raise some money to go to college since he was from a poorish background (you have to ignore his Levi jeans!). As part of his deal in getting into college was overcoming his fear of public speaking. I think he was doing one of these crappy degree courses but anyway. If he overcame his fear, he got to go to europe and visit London, Paris and Rome. He managed to deliver that to me without letting me get a word in - so much for public speaking phobia! He then asked were i was from and if i was "the man of the house" (you might get a feel for where this is going). England and yes were my somewhat puzzled answers. We got round to discussing which city i like the best (London, obviously!) and then how "cool" my accent was. He then showed me the leaftlet for extortionately prices porn magazines he was holding and asked "do i read magazines?". Well in all fairness mate, you don't really 'read' those sort of magazines and no, im not interested. He was persistent and i was patient (i never buy anything from the door so i just waste people's time since they bothered to disturb me). When he started commenting that my accent was "hot", i gave him a funny look and started closing the door. He managed to squeeze in "do you know your neighbours?" No, but hey, you might be lucky!

So the moral of the story is, dont buy anything from people at the door especially if they try to come on to you!

In other news, a competition in London has been set up for the "oddest book title". Its an official prize awarded annually etc. He's some of the titles on the shortlist:

• "How to Write an How to Write Book"
• "Cheese Problems Solved"
• "Are Woman Human?"

an my personal favourite:

• "If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs!"

S'all for now folks. laters!

Liverpool beat Inter!

Liverpool have done it again and produced a remarkable second half display to beat a Milan team in the Champions League. This time it was Inter Milan as opposed to AC whom they beat in the legendary 2005 final. One big question remains - how dear god can Liverpool beat Inter 2:0 yet lose to Barnsley in the FA cup??? All in the space of 3 days!
Meh, its a funny old game!

TGMS

So this weekend was the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show (TGMS), a big international geology exhibition held at the Tucson convention centre every year. As part of the geology society at the U of A, i helped in the junior section all weekend and had a great time although i'd had enough of the kids by the end. Some kids were really smart aswell, they could recognise rocks etc that i didnt know at their age, others just wanted to see the volcano explode (which was fine by me) and others didn't give a toss but a good time was had all the same. I was working with an American friend of mine, Nick - the traditional nutty professor but very knowledgable, he wants to teach, need i say any more.

The show itself was pretty good aswell, lots of rocks, fossils and minerals on show and sale and really cheap too. I brought a fossil sharks tooth for $1 (make into a chain), 3in polished ammonite for $2 and a cool geode for $8. I could have spent thousands though. It was great, even the stone carved bathroom sink was tempting!

Lots of funny stuff to report, most of which i can't recall right now but below are a few highlights.

• Part of the junior section was giving out free minerals to children. Kids would pick up an egg carton and go around and pick up rocks from trays. However, we made one kid cry when he opened his egg carton to find a dead lizard inside! Me and Nick couldn't stop laughing and Derek, the resident reptile guy, picked it up and, just to prove it was dead, started squeezing it.
• Everyone in the geology club is on a geology degree so they know atleast some geology. On saturday afternoon we had one helper who walked over to our table and ask me: "What's this then?". "Granite" i reply, slightly bemused. "Oh ok, what's this then?". "Granite". "There both granite? Cool, whats this one?". "Take a guess!"
• I managed to put a kid off McDonalds milkshakes when i revealed that they contain a sizable portion of Kaolinite (clay). It's true aswell, it thickens the 'solution'!
• One lady came over to me and i showed her the crystals you can grow at home. Despite going through the whole instructions and repeatedly saying these happen over night, she asks: "So how long does this take?" Jesus!
• When we blow up the volcano, i normally try to play the trick with pumice and pretend its really heavy by passing it to someone. This kid cottoned on to what i was doing and when i suggested he passed it to his sister he said: "Nah, i won't bother. She's not strong enough!" Cheeky little sod!

So now, this next week is going to be mega busy with work. By the end of the month ive got a lecture to give on the Tibetan Plateau, paper on the active tectonics of the Kamchatka pennisular, reading for active tect and plateaus, field trip write up to finish, grant proposal to write, Duke of Edinburgh's award ambassador presentation to record and still working Mars and my 4th year project. Busy busy busy...

Laters!

Cottonwood Wash Fieldtrip

So saturday was my first proper fieldtrip of the semester - Structural Geology trip to Cottonwood Wash on the north side of the Catalina Mountains (about 1 hr from Tucson). We went there with the anticipation of a relatively easy day surrounded by some "learning" geologists. And for the most part, we were right. The geology was a little more challenging than our meagre anticipations suggested but still only consisted of 3 units, 2 contacts and 2 faults and we were told to ignore the basalt dyke! You also couldn't ask for better examples of the geology either. The Granite basement was a classic - the clearest ive ever seen (but someone still thought it was a metamorphic rock! How the???) and the fault's even had gauge and an amazing polished surface in one place with great slickenlines.

Other than that, we were completely right. There were people who just drew straight lines on the map, the colouring would give Branney a heart attack and some people were so poorly equiped it was laughable. All in all though it was a great day out in the desert. We had to scramble up some steep rocky hills with loads of loose rock/gravel. It was hairy in places but fun especially sliding/running down.

Today was spent relaxing and doing uni - pretty much a typical Sunday. I improvised the solo to Nothing Else Matters by Metallica really quite well this morning, not sure i can repeat it but it sounded good. Speaking of which, im trying to learn Plug in Baby by Muse the opening rift of which is incredible and quite hard. Any tips anyone?

In the news this week, someone is suing their lawyer (yeah, odd one i know) for an "overly vigorous" handshake! I kid you not, apparently it constitutes assault so be careful all of you office bound pen pushers! Theres more news about a crazy Australian (whats new i hear you scream!) well nothing frankly! This one was trying to blow up Brisbane with a TV remote!

And finally, a reminder of the date - 10th February 2008. Its still 4 1/2 months til my birthday, dont ask me what i want yet!

Laters all!

Quotes Worth Hearing

Ok, so here's a new blog theme ripped quite blatently from one of my friends. Since none of my lecturers this semester are quite as productive as Mihai Ducea in delivering one line quotes, ive decided none of them deserve their own box but instead ill publish a weekly/fortnightly/whenever accumulation of liners as a normal blog. So here goes,

• "This is Giant's Causeway....in Scotland!" Our stand in lecturer gets his UK geography embarrassingly wrong much to Paul and Russ' dispair. Its worse that no-one else in the class realised. It seems that Ireland (North and Eire) is just part of the UK massif.


• "Some nebulus of time we'll call 'Past'" My Plateaus Seminar instructor innocently groups the last 4.5 billion years in one meaningless word".


• "My Philosophy is...'who cares'?" Paul Kapp, Structural Geology, sums up what we all feel.


• "Hz - it really hurts!" Roy Johnson, Seismic Data Processing, with one of his poorer jokes. (Hz is units of frequency)


• "I'm just sampling the turkey! That piece was ok, ill just try the next." I take on the role of food quality control when cooking last nights dinner. We brought a 11lb turkey for $4! It needed testing!


• "That's not real blonde surely?" I finish the structural practical very early so start looking around the room when my eye is caught to this young lady who blatently spends too much money on bleach!
• "Explain why Mary was wrong to propose...". "Because she's a woman!" A funny science exam answer i found on the net. Theres some classics out there!

That's all for now folks

Laters!

Day hike in the Catalina's

Ok, quite a weekend. Saturday i decided to get back out hiking abit and went to the Catalina Mountains just north of Tucson for the day. Seemed like a good idea - get out in some nice February sun and enjoy the scenery. And for the most part, it was. The scenery was amazing (kinda reminded me of the Grand Canyon on a smaller scale) and theres plenty of photos, some of which ill load up in due course. However, the lack of public transport kind of annoyed me. I was prepared to walk the 11 miles to the trailhead but anticipated catching a bus back. So much for that. I ended up walking to the mountains, ~15 miles in the mountains and about 9-10 miles back before just grabbing a taxi the last 3 miles. All in all, it was about 35-38 miles and pretty hard work. To make it more interesting, the path literally disappears at the top of the ridge so, with time constraints in mind, i cut down through the valley back to the path i came up on (it would have been fun if i wasnt so tired). Scrambling over rocks, through scrub bushes and up/down mini cliff faces.
When i eventually made it back to the road, the fun wasnt over yet. It was getting towards sunset and i some how trod on a rattlesnake before it spat some venom onto the back of my trouser leg. There was this weird squeching sound followed by a sharpish jab hitting the back of my calfs. I should clarify that the snake definately didn't bite me but the venom came at some force and i certainly felt it (probably not as much as the snake under my size 12 walking boot though!).

Sunday was a decidedly more relaxed affair. Mostly taken up by chatting to people back home and watching the superbowl. Only a brief comment there but the Patriots didn't win following the biggest upset in American Football history. The New York Giants won by 3 points to deny Tom Brady and New England the legendary perfect season.

On a side note, it seems that the popularity of beating sense into an Aussie teenager is still growing (www.slapcorey.com). I refer to the story a week or 2 back when some people who set up that website where you can "slap corey" down the street. (He's not particular popular in Australia following a series of parties and chav like stuff. The current hit count is 927311!

So now its back to uni and the usual busy reading and working regime. Fun fun fun!
Laters!