A word from Arizona...: Geodaze

Sunday, 6 April 2008

Geodaze

So thursday, friday, saturday of last week was the annual Geodaze symposium here at the UofA. The event is organised and ran by graduate students and is seen as a change for all geology students to present their research to win prizes (up to $1000 for best talk!). There's also a party and fieldtrip for good gesture and best of all, its free! So i was there watching the talks, eating and drinking the free refreshments at the party and rocking on the fieldtrip (excuse the pun). This weekend infact has been all in the field. Saturday was the geodaze trip up in the Catalina Mountains with George Davis - good trip, interesting rock, very hot weather. Sunday was the last structural geology fieldtrip towards the Tanque Verde area in a canyon. The scenery was great, great rocks, plenty of climbing to do - all in all a good couple of trips. This week, however, is back to work at uni! 6 weeks til home!

And finally, a story from the US state of Georgia. A classroom full of 9 yr olds are being investigated by police for plotting to tie up and hurt their teacher. The children had brough in a steak knife, handcuffs and electrical tape with a plot to tie up and repeatedly hit the teacher over the head with a paperweight. Aparently the knife was just their to cut the tape!

Laters!

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Quality one-liners from our Tectonicist

"About 6 yrs ago (im not sure if he went nuts!) he said there are no mantle plumes. He thought he was so good he could form the minority of 1!"
"For geologists pi is a number between 2 and 4"
"Frenchy guys"
"He must have used a substance to heighten his creative ability somehow."
"I dont like people in general!"
"I shouldn't slate him, i dont really know what his diagram means"
"I'm never gonna complain again about my field-camp students being retarded!"
"If you've had enough wine, you can probably convince yourself of it!"
"It's a stupid interpretation"
"Its a pretty retarded diagram"
"Ive got 10 minutes left??? I'll finish in 5!"
"Ive just noticed it says 'please erase whiteboards when finished'. I'm not going to draw any more!"
"My parents come from a cave!"
"No questions? Everything is clear??? Wow!"
"See, you do have a purpose (in life)!"
"Thats all petrological...you know...stuff"
"The more guest lecturers i have, the less work i have to do!"
"The Mother Ship" - referring to North America
"There not different are they??? There all the same really!"
"This is just a load of local geology crap"
"Turn out some of the lights so you can fall asleep"
"Uncompressed decompressor"
"Undoubtedly wacky guy" (a self portrait perhaps!)
"Walla Walla - an insignificant place in the middle of no-where"
"We couldnt see why people didnt work here then we found out that a grad student from Texas went there on private land without the right permissions. They shot and killed him!"
"We don't have much access to the place - the owners are crazy people!"
"You can run a marine seismic line across the oceanic trench - kill a bunch of whales!"
"You mineralogy people just waste your time plotting phase diagrams to see if a mineral containing magnesium, alumina and orange juice can exist."
Mihai's phone beeps - Mihai gives it the finger!
Mihai's phone rings again - "Ignore"
Mihai: "Do you think i can write on the board with this pen?". Class: "NO!"
Refering (quite possibly) to the geophysicist sitting on the front row: "I'm not sure its worth wasting your time with that!"
Refering to a guest speaker coming in next week: "He's a nice guy......he's a got a little ADD!"
Refering to a honored guest speaker - "I didnt understand what he was talking about, i wasnt paying attention to him"
Refering to a well know tectonicist (who shall remain nameless) who recently completely changed his view on a current hot topic. "Mr X was blind to call it an adakite - it clearly isnt! Then again Mr X is Mrs X's husband so he was probably blind all his life!"
Refering to his interview when starting at the UofA, the interviewer asked if he wanted to meet anyone in the department to make his visit complete. He chooses the famous geologist whom he is replacing. Mihai: "I'd really like to meet Peter Colley since im replacing him!" Interviewer: "I'm sorry, thats not possible. He's been dead a while!"
Refering to his key note talk at a recent symposium: "My presentation was like a car crash!"
Refering to how awesome the geology department at the UofA is: "I finally realised that this POS state university is actually one of the best!"
Refering to some diagram: "Its constructed by a bunch of retarded people"
Refering to taking some business people on a fieldtrip - "Most of them werent professionals so it was easy to tell them whatever i liked!"
Refering to the apparently random locations of hotspots: "Hotspots don't really know what their doing"

A Small Selection of Stupid Signs (all genuine)