The demise of G4

Do you remember that place we used to go?

You know, that windowless place that had a moss green carpet and seats you'd need a tetanus jab for? Remeber now? With the macs that seldom worked and the rows of old desks. We'd be in there at all hours, sometimes working, sometimes drinking, sometimes bowing our heads in dispair or roaring with laughter. "Ahh, good times!" I hear you sigh. Remember playing your guitars in there, or practicing presentations?
Remember learning about taphonomy and ichnology, remember being handcuffed, or falling off the desks? Or watching Rob stuff oranges up his t-shirt and parading round like he had breasts? Well, all those memories have been ripped out folks. Yes, G4 is no more! The desks have gone, the carpet will probably go (i hope), it's all being binned to make way for a spanking new office that Bristol are going to try and cram 50 MSc and MESci (grrrrrrrrr) students into. (Yes I did type 50. This is paleontology battery-farm style!).

So as you're sitting at your computers, think back for a few moments for all the times that were. Because now, my fellow palaeopadwans, they exist only in memory............

Oh, and also....Rob's MSc paper has been accepted!!! He wouldn't write to tell you but I have no shame. I'm very proud.

That's all for now.

Hello from Boston

Life is hard here, too.

Now that the semester is finally over, the hectic pace of life has slowed considerably, and (although there's as much to do as before) there's time to gallivant about the country. In the last three weeks I have been to see Kennebunkport, Maine (where the beloved G. W. Bush goes on holiday -- sorry, vacation), Kennebunk, just down the road, where Tom's of Maine toothpaste is made (they sell fabulously cheap seconds in their factory outlet store), Ohio (to see, amongst other things, the world's biggest basket), and to Cape Ann (Massachusetts' other cape, where there are fantastic beaches and very delicious seafood).

On the academic front, things are going as smoothly as dragging a dead dog across a boulder field. I was planning to go on a summer field camp in LA, but it was cancelled, so I'm in Boston for most of the summer. I hope all of you who chose the UK route are rejoicing in the absence of a taught component -- I am still working on an (exceedingly) overdue term paper... Other than that, I still have no idea what I'll be doing for actual research. I've decided to stick with the silica cycle for the time being, and have been looking into using silicon isotopes to reconstruct the palaeo-cycle, but it looks like a very sketchy and unconstrained system to be working with. And who knows about the effects of diagenesis?

Is anybody going to GSA this fall/autumn? I am going to submit an abstract about the radiolarian stuff I did with Dani.

I hope everyone is doing well. Come visit!

Hello from California

Life is hard. As hinted at by John in a previous post, he, myself, and Graeme are currently residing in Santa Barbara, taking part in the Paleobiology Database summer course. So far, we've been confused by the philosophy of statistics, and befuddled by the basics of programming. Tomorrow, we will blunder headlong into the quagmire of geometric morphometrics.

Anyway, today was a day off, and, amongst other things, we went to have a look at the Santa Barbara mission (as Saint Barbara is the patron saint of geologists, it's of course very appropriate that we're here). Here's a photo of the three of us outside of said mission, with the Santa Ynez mountains in the background.

As I say, life is hard.

Right then, must be off. I dare say either John or I will put in an update when something exciting happens.

P.S. We saw a skunk the other day!

Linneus 300th bash

Hello all

I trust that you are all well and engaged in interesting activities. I thought I might post a quick update on the most recent conference attended by paleopadwans (myself and Emma), since we're not really using this site for much palaeo talk (owing, of course, to having better sites to vist, like facebook for example). Anyway, the Royal Society held a tercentenary evolution themed extravaganza earlier this week for good old Linneus and these were the main events: Dick Jeffries (whom some of you may know) got arsy with a lot of people, there was a mass debate about whether we should refer to one half of the Protostomia as lophotrochozoans or spiralians (joy!) and I may have inadvertantly let slip that I thought some aspects of the MSc were a load of poo to Paddy Orr, Nic Butterfield and Mat Wills over lunch in Pizza Hut (the pepperoni had really gone to my head). And that was about it. Oh, there were some interesting advances being talked about too but these mainly involved gene expression experiments and loads of pictures of embryos with supernumary limbs etc, there wasn't much talk of fossils. Anyway, for those of you attending Paris in a few weeks, good luck! Who's going to Palass and what are we all doing with our grant money? I am rotting thiomargarita (I got bored of embryos) and contemplating lophotrochozoan (not spiralian) decay paths and planning to make Briggs' mineralization experiments look like kindergarten projects. Them there's fightin' words!
But enough about me......what about you????

Photos

I was going through my photo collection the other day and came across a bunch of pictures from Bristol. They're mostly from early in the year, and I'm afraid they're not all the most flattering shots in the world, but given that a) it was decided that my photo looked like Beavis and b) that a shot of me gawking at the walls of the Avon Gorge (actually, I'll admit that I'm a bit perversely proud of that), I don't think any of you have anything to complain about. The last shot may not make much sense to most of you, but I'm sure Koen remembers it...

Updates

In all fairness, I think most of us joined the dark side a long time ago. Still, I don't suppose that should keep us from staying in touch with one another; that is the whole point of this blog, after all. In that spirit, I have a few updates from my end of things. I just submitted an abstract of my proposal to the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in hopes of presenting at their conference the Fall (In Texas! Yeeha!). Any of you all planning on being there, by any chance?
Also, while I imagine that Phil's admirable English reserve kept him from bragging about this, he and I (and Graeme, for that matter) will all be attending the Paleobiology Database's summer course in sunny Southern California. I'm planning on spending the rest of the summer in the deserts of Eastern Oregon looking for a good site to focus on for my PhD project, studying the effect of the mid-Miocene warm spike on mammal communities. Thrilling stuff, I know. At any rate, I hope you all are doing well, and keep those updates coming!

-John

No one talks about their work anymore...where are the phylogenies, the theories, the papers, the updates??????? Are we palaeo-padwans or have we turned to the dark side...................