h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have been having the following conversation with my advisor, spanning the past few weeks:

[Me] You know, I think finding the slip rate on this fault using alluvial fan channels is a fantastic idea! I want to do it for my thesis!

[Advisor] It would be great, but the lab that does cosmogenic dating is backed up a year and a half. You'd have to get the samples now.

[Me] *, rummage through GeoRef and Google Scholar, come up with successful dating techniques in arid environments.*

[Me] What about electron spin resonance?

[A] Notoriously unreliable.

[Me] Paleomag? I know I could pick up some strong secular variation at least!

[A] Too coarse time resolution.

[Me] Fission track in diagenetic minerals?

[A] No diagenesis.

[Me] Optically stimulate luminescence?

[A] Maybe in the fine stuff... but you'd have to get lucky.

[Me] NOTHING??? Cosmogenics is the only thing I can use?

[A] Unless you get lucky and find some charcoal.

[Me] Can I learn to do cosmogenics? I mean, I can use an ICP-MS.

[A] Good, but it takes an /Accelerator/ Mass- Spec. That's a particle accelerator attached to an MS, and there's only a few of those in the entire world.

[My Inner Child] **

[Me] But won't I need dates for all the /other/ stuff I could do?

[A] Yes, but there's some preliminary numbers out there already... what? I didn't tell you that?

[Me] No... ohgeelookatthetime! see you tomorrow!

*Runs upstairs and bangs head on wall.*

Geez, what a dork. Make friends with the lab NOW! And try to find another lab, somewhere else, who could help - somebody out there migh need samples to learn to use those things, in order to do her thesis!

Despite not understanding half the words in that post, I can see you are incredibly frustrated. If I could do anything to help, I would.

How about building an AMS?

Nah- really, it's no big deal. The other projects were closer to what I thought I wanted to do, anyway. Now that I understand what I would be doing, and that I'm not so dependent on cosmogenics, I think I'm going to be OK.

The big problem was relying on cosmogenics- I mean, if that was the only technique I could use, and the lab was backed up that long...

I swear, the only person alive who can rile me up faster than my advisor is my mum...

Aye, I can't stand my mother sometimes. She nags way too much.

Well, it's just that they have a tendency to make mountains out of molehills. I told them sometimes the way the express concern for me kind of leads me to believe they don't have confidence in me. Several times. The last time I just put it in an email.

You would have thought I had accused them of starving me and my brother the way they reacted. My mum didn't speak to me for two days.

I just wanted a little more communication... I guess this is just going to be one of those bumps in the road.

That has the ingredients of a comedy sketch.

What would I give for my mother to not talk to me for two days.

Fnagh... don't say that, Paol. You don't realize how bad it is until you've been there.

It does have the makings of a comedy sketch, doesn't it? Sometimes I feel like SNL would get a lot better ratings if they'd fire the hack writers they've got now and air scenes from my autobiography.

Lessee- puns, check... odd situations, check... physical humor, check... ethnic jokes, check... double entendres, double-check... the only thing missing are sex jokes, and those can be made up as we go along.

Well, you've got dating in the title, so why not...

You could just let the writers be inventive. Possibly a side romance between a badger and a squirrel (It wouldnt work out in the end but theyd have fun along the way)