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Chris Rowan is a geologist specialising in the dark arts of paleomagnetism, and getting people to pay him to travel to exotic destinations for fieldwork. Having drilled up New Zealand during his PhD, and South Africa in his first post-doc, he now works at the University of Edinburgh.
Anne Jefferson has a love of all things water-related and blends hydrology, geomorphology, geology, and climate change in her work. She has a Ph.D. from Oregon State University and is now an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
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Category: bloggery
Posted on: May 29, 2008 11:37 AM, by Chris Rowan
I was just forwarded this, although I'd actually got some chuckles out of it already; it's one of the columns written by James Clarke for the Johannesburg paper, The Star (a tad more upmarket than the UK version). He titled it 'Even TV cameras can't excite geologists' (here's a full scan - pdf).
Of course, I'm not sure that we should publicise this too much, since it looks like an ideal scam for getting TV companies to pay us for fieldwork...
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Comments
Wow, this article from the Unclyclopedia has actually been put into hard print! I've been getting it in emails for quite a while. This post of mine has been quite popular since March!
Can't believe it's in print!
Posted by: Silver Fox | May 29, 2008 1:11 PM
Thanks for the best laugh in a while.
The geologist stories are dead on.
Posted by: Ted B | May 29, 2008 2:40 PM
I find the story to be highly suspect. First of all, any group of self-respecting geologists would never use something like rock-hammer aim to eliminate a contestant; we'd much more likely eliminate whoever passed out from the alcohol first. Second, there's no mention made of any geologist grabbing a camera crew member by the arm and dragging him/her off with, "you've GOT to see this! It's SO COOL!" Third, the complaint about camera footage only indicates one shot where a person was inserted for scale. That's just bad geology. We always use something for scale, and humans are usually the handiest.
Posted by: geotechie | May 29, 2008 10:19 PM
Isn't "Survivor: Paleontologist" called "Aetogate"?
Posted by: Lab Lemming | May 30, 2008 2:21 AM
Kudos to Silver Fox for writing it, and to you Chris for bringing it to a wider audience, and of course, moi!
As a former Anthro digger, I have to say that I have been with groups that would be more likely to cook the camera crew / producers and compare the results than vote one our own off the island.
Posted by: J-Dog | May 30, 2008 9:06 AM
I was lucky. I grew up with one geologist dad. There were never any arguments about what we were looking at while on vacations. Fox should also have mentioned how atrociously bad geologist humour is: "Never take limestone for granite" sums up my childhood humour lessons. Which explains a lot (for example, see http://iambilly.wordpress.com/2008/03/10/i-have-the-flu/).
Posted by: (((Billy))) | May 30, 2008 10:34 PM
Crudescence maximus. That link should be: http://iambilly.wordpress.com/2008/03/10/i-have-the-flu/
Sorry.
Posted by: (((Billy))) | May 30, 2008 10:51 PM
In the original PDF, you'll find the article date: March 28. Perhaps it was published a few days early?
Posted by: Suspect | May 31, 2008 10:22 PM
Geologists in Alaska and seismologists in Antarctica, the end result is the same: one very bored film crew!
Great laugh, thanks for posting.
Posted by: Alessia | June 3, 2008 11:24 AM