Things have changed a bit from the "good old days" when I was a student. In all of my undergraduate overnight field trips, the first stop at the end of the day was the beer stop where we picked up cases of beer for the evening around the campfire. When I was in graduate school, the department had Friday afternoon symposia and one rotating job among the teaching assistants was to collect money from the graduate students and faculty to make the beer and chips run for after the talk. It's a damn shame that these days young men and women are judged old enough to travel half-way round the world to kill people yet are deemed too immature to imbibe in a glass of beer or wine back home.
One of the good things about October, a time when one is reminded of the inevitable onset of winter, snow, and cold, is the appearance of good Oktoberfest beers from local breweries in the local tavern. By the way, for some of you who need edumacatin', beer looks like this...
Anyway, on another blog, my attention was drawn to a dating trends blog from OkCupid, an online dating site. They had a post on the Best Questions for a First Date - in other words, what can you ask on a date that will give you the most useful information about that person?
What's the most important thing most guys want to know when they're on a date? OkCupid knows and they did some statistical analysis of their member's profiles and found a clear correlation.
What's the biggest predictor of being willing to sleep with someone on the first date? Liking the taste of beer! Geologists drink a lot of beer. Ergo, geologists are easy! Can't argue with logic.
Being married for 18+ years, such information is useless to me today but in the interest of science I thought I'd share it with my readers. If you want to get laid quickly, find a geologist. You have to be willing to be seen with someone who's sometimes a bit dirty (with real dirt) and wearing jeans, hiking boots, and flannel (and that's the women geologists!). But geologists really do know how to make the bedrock (ha, "bed rock", get it?).
Fear not, things have not changed. The first stop at the end of a field day is still a connivence store and grad students still need a treat for staying awake through the entire seminar!
ReplyDeleteI think math teachers and mathematicians like beer too...especially IPAs.
ReplyDeleteAs a current undergrad geology student at one of Arizona's fine universities, I can assure you that beer is still a staple of field work. In some ways it's a right of passage when you finally reach those upper division courses, often mixed with graduate students, where real field work begins and beer becomes the beverage of choice. There really is little that compares to sitting down with a frosty brew at the end of a good day spent in the field...or even a bad day.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's great to share a brew and informal conversation with a professor. Some of the best geology knowledge I've gained thus far has been in this fashion.
One of my favorite meetings is the annual San Francisco AGU. Here are some interviews done by Wired at the 2009 meeting:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/15943/
It was quite a hit at the meeting.
Cheers,
Frederick
Oops, I missed your first link! Anyway, I can confirm that it was a great meeting.
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ReplyDeleteCatalog of Stratigraphic Names for Montana-Special Publication 54
Clifford A. Balster, Editor
excerpt-Used extensively by Parker to confuse unwary associates and thus avoid buying his "round"
geocipher@aolc.om
The alcoholic Geologist phenomenon is a bit strange. I guess if you are stuck doing what they do for a profession the need to have a psychological escape route must be overpowering.
ReplyDeleteI work with Geologists, they drink beer in the break room often during working hours and also see going out for beers after work as a normal pastime. Pretty sad existence. Also kind of amusing how they always cover for each other when they make mistakes/bad calls.