“Without data, you are just another asshole with an opinion”, said John Ferm standing at the blackboard, chalk in one hand and a cigar in the other with smoke swirling around his head (this was, after all, 1985). It’s a phrase John (my MSc and PhD advisor) would often use when we, his students, started […]
I have an old fish on the wall, and I get to ponder it’s life every time I walk into my loo at home. I’ve been pondering this fish for the last 24 years. Considering its age, it is not a stinky, yucky fish. In fact it is over 48 million years old, so any […]
I just couldn’t let it go. Even after 27 years I still looked. Not continuously of course, but whenever I discovered a book that I’d had for a long time but not opened in a while I’d turn it upside down and riffle its pages to encourage anything jammed in there to fall out. Or […]
It looked like machines and the weather were conspiring against us. The last flight from Denver to Gillette, Wyoming was ‘temporarily’ delayed (which in airport speak means “quite possibly cancelled”) and then there was the weather. I had flown the previous day from Brisbane, Australia to Denver to meet the field trip participants at one […]
While attending the International Geological Congress (IGC) in Brisbane in early August, I and my partner Aretha and son Micah stayed at my good friend and colleague Joan Esterle’s house. Joan is a professor at University of Queensland and notably (to myself and Aretha) is the godmother to Micah. Also staying at Joan’s house were […]