The annual American Geophysical Union conference is in town this week and I’ve been fielding a bunch of questions about the strange creatures (known as earth scientists) that are inhabiting downtown San Francisco.

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but Uncyclopedia nails the description of a geologist.

Geologists are ‘scientists’ with unnatural obsessions with beer and rocks. Often too intelligent to do monotonous sciences like biology, chemistry, or physics, geologists devote their time to mud-worrying, volcano poking, fault finding, bouldering, dust-collecting, and high-risk colouring. One of the main difficulties in communicating with geologists is their belief that a million years is a short amount of time and their heads are harder than rocks. Consequently, such abstract concepts as “Tuesday Morning” and Lunchtime are completely beyond their comprehension.

The section on alcohol consumption is pretty amusing (and somewhat apt) as well.

If you ever encounter a geologist who is sober after 6pm, this person is an imposter: possibly an alien; probably a geophysicist or engineer, marine geographer or hydrologist etc. Alcoholism is an acceptable, even socially beneficial, disease for an active geologist.

The whole article is a fun read though, especially if you are or know any geologists.

The Wikileaks controversy has been pretty horrifying to watch play out, at least with regard to various organizations and companies such as PayPal, Amazon, Mastercard, and EveryDNS denying or revoking their access to services.

In case you were wondering, Wikileaks is actually a good thing. Here is a site that lists various reasons why. Of course, by even mentioning Wikileaks, one might jeopardize their chances of ever working for the U.S. State Department.

Interested in some of the more juicy or amusing tidbits from Wikileaks? Check out Cablegate Roulette!

FROM: PARIS, FRANCE
TO: STATE DEPARTMENT
DATE: SEPTEMBER 06, 2006
CLASSIFICATION: CONFIDENTIAL
SEE FULL CABLE

An Unforgettable Scene

¶6. (C) As the Ambassador was about to leave, Sarkozy went to the line of floor-to-ceiling windows that open from the interior minister’s office to the gardens of the interior ministry, and called over his nine-year old son, Louis, who was playing on the lawn (Sarkozy lives with his family in apartments above his office). Sarkozy was clearly happy — and proud — to be in the company of his young son and seemed tickled to be able to introduce him to “the Ambassador of the United States.” Louis appeared at the threshold with a small dog at his feet and a large rabbit in his arms. To shake hands with the Ambassador, Louis put down the rabbit — and the dog started chasing the rabbit through Sarkozy’s office, which led to the unforgettable sight of Sarkozy, bent over, chasing the dog through the ante-room to his office as the dog chased the rabbit, and Louis filled the room with gleeful laughter.

(Emphasis mine)

Via our internal team chat this morning at work. You think there’d be more Project Runway fans around, since we all appreciate good design here.

I noticed that someone reached my site via the following Google query: “Dave Schumaker ugly”

I object to that description! I believe the correct phrase is “horrible faces.”

It’s a face that not even a mother could love.

Oh, you crazy spammers.

My sister and I have been playing a little game that involves texting each other a sentence based on Dictionary.com’s word of the day.

It’s especially fun when we start trash talking each other using past words of the day.

How to quit Civilization, that is. Probably my favorite game of all time, and the fifth iteration is coming this September.

Here is a helpful guide on how one can quit their addition to Civ.

[Via Ryan]

(Yes, at this point I’m just plundering my Google Reader shared items feed… but I’ve been sick!)

If only my habitual tardiness could produce something equally as great.

One day in 1939, Berkeley doctoral candidate George Dantzig arrived late for a statistics class taught by Jerzy Neyman. He copied down the two problems on the blackboard and turned them in a few days later, apologizing for the delay — he’d found them unusually difficult. Distracted, Neyman told him to leave his homework on the desk.

On a Sunday morning six weeks later, Neyman banged on Dantzig’s door. The problems that Dantzig had assumed were homework were actually unproved statistical theorems that Neyman had been discussing with the class — and Dantzig had proved both of them. Both were eventually published, with Dantzig as coauthor.

“When I began to worry about a thesis topic,” he recalled later, “Neyman just shrugged and told me to wrap the two problems in a binder and he would accept them as my thesis.”

[Via]

I’m sure Corona’s marketing department is thrilled about this.

[H]e returned to his residence in Kabul to find it had been burgled. The intruder took money from a drawer and left behind a bottle of Corona beer. The Corona bottle sat on his counter for the next two weeks Yeager says, because Corona is one of his least favorite beers. He finally opened it during a going away party as the other drinks began to run low.

“I pulled it out and when I popped it there was no fizz and the cap was loose,” says Yeager. “Because this one didn’t have fizz you wonder if it went rancid or not, and I just kind of sniffed it and I went ‘Oh, that doesn’t smell like beer.’ “

Yeager, a geochemist familiar with acids, realized it smelled like sulfuric acid – otherwise known as battery acid. He called a friend over who had the same reaction to the smell. Yeager poured the “beer” into the toilet and it foamed and fizzed, leaving “no question” in his mind it was sulfuric acid.

Hahaha. I am in love with all the vuvuzela humor.