This is Uncyclopaedia's list of ways to spot a geologist in the wild. I have written 'YEP' (and sometimes other comments) beside all of the ones I can admit to being/doing/having, or that I know one of my friends or professors has done.



* Hand-lens, compass, pen-knife, handcuffs etc. tied round neck with string.
[Yep, all of us.]
* Someone with a beard and Sandals... Jesus was a Geologist (actually, carpenters back then were also stonemasons, so there is some truth to that statement)
[Yep, most of my professors.]
* Someone who owns a pet rock and is not eight (in the case of paleontologists, this will be their closest friend), with said 'pet' often found hanging from keys.
[Yep, I do. It is not my closest friend, but I do. And I am never without my lucky brachiopod.]
* Someone with not much enthusiasm on the subject of dinosaurs. Geologists consider an event a 'mass' extinction only if 80% of the living organisms die and get buried in sediment for conservation.
[Yep. Well, most geologists have little enthusiasm for dinosaurs because they're sick of the subject, and it's true about the mass extinction, and yes, K/T did only wipe out 60% of life on Earth, but it is still considered one of the Big Five ... I'll shut up now.]
* Someone explaining to airport security that a sidewall core covered in gunpowder residue isn't really a weapon.
[Yes, ditto rock hammer, ditto power gel, ditto most geophysics and drilling equipment, and disturbingly, for a friend of mine, ditto Brunton compass that she had to spend a fraught half hour explaining wasn't a bomb...]
* Someone who only includes people in photos for scale, and has more pictures of his/her rock hammer and lens caps than of family and friends.
[Yes, all of us. Flatmate Gary is particularly guilty.]
* Some who, if they could travel to Jupiter's moon, IO, would think the coolest part about it was the volcanoes and not the space travel.
[Yep. Friend Matt-the-Volcanologist most of all, unsurprisingly.]
* Someone with a collection of beer cans/bottles that rivals the size of his rock collection.
[I suspect Prof. Tim of this, as he runs the Geological Society homebrew night.]
* Someone lighting a cigarette with a handlens focussing the sunlight, or a coat hanger stretched between the battery terminals of a University van.
[We don't smoke on fieldtrips in NZ, technically, because of fire danger cos we do most of our fieldwork in summer when everything is desiccated ... but if we DID smoke, then probably we would.]
* Someone who brings beer instead of water when hiking.
[Yep, flatmate Gary again. To be honest, most people would bring BOTH.]
* Someone whose lunch consists of rocks, instead of ordinary bread.
[Well, more that their lunch has been jettisoned to make room for samples...]
* Someone who consumes tonsil-killing chili for dinner every night of the week, and warms it up in a can on the drill rig engine block.
[Yes, especially Neville the Technician. ]
* Someone whose child is trained to know the geologic timescale before being able to walk. [I suspect that I will make this so ...]
* Someone with hair in a pony-tail (this applies to male or female geologists).
[This is common, yes.]
* Someone who considers a "recent event" to be anything that has happened in the last hundred million years.
[Yes. Everyone.]
* Someone who licks and/or scratches & sniffs rocks or in case of china clay will eat it to prove its perfectly safe.
[Yes, everyone. Except our Head of School, who was horrified to find out that the first year lab organiser had taught us this.]
* Someone who eats dirt and claims to be "getting an estimate of grain size"
[Claims to? We are!]
* Someone who will willingly cross an eight-lane interstate on foot to determine if the outcrops are the same on both sides.
[Of course! How else will the mapping be accurate? Eight lanes is a long way.]
* Someone who can pronounce the word molybdenite correctly on the first try.
[Well, it's not hard.]
* Someone who has hiked 6 miles to look at a broken fence that was "offset by a recent earthquake".
[Well, of course. If you want fault offset this is the easiest way ...]
* Someone who says "this will make a nice Christmas gift" while out rock collecting. [Valentine's Day gift, actually, but same diff. right?]
* Someone who thinks a "sexual exploit" is lying naked on an outcrop so the satellite will photograph them on the next pass.
[Can't speak from personal experience, but wouldn't be surprised ...]
* Someone who hires student assistants with an eye to whether they can run slower so the bears get them first.
[We don't have bears, but we do have irate farmers .. so yep.]
* Someone who can jump start a campfire in wet weather with the judicious application of a beer fart.
[Of course.]
* Someone who from personal experience knows the difference between Arctic grade and summer grade diesel fuel.
[Yes.]
* Someone who even on an average day in the field can make Indiana Jones look like a bit of a klutzy wuss.
[Yes, including my 71yr old ex-sedimentology professor.]
* Someone who looks at scenery and tells you how it formed.
[Guilty as charged]
* Someone whose pockets tend to be filled with bits of rock.
[Guilty as charged]
* Someone whose rockery moved into their spare room.
[Spare room? It's moved into MY room!]
* Someone who has more pairs of hiking boots than shoes.
[Most of my friends ...]
* Someone who wears hiking boots constantly, even for formal functions, and occasionally sandals with (obligatory) socks.
[Er, I do this. The boots, not the sandals with socks. Promise.]
* Someone who thinks of woodlice as trilobites but would tell anyone off who said so.
[Er, me?]
* Someone who, when on a beach, will collect shells and try to explain their muscle scars to you.
[*hangs head in shame* I do this EVERY time I go to the beach. My friends who are not geologists refuse to go to the beach with me now (what do you mean you don't believe I have friends who aren't geologists?)]
* Someone who prefers to explain the sequence of events shown in a cliff face to sunbathing. [Sunbathing is BORING. Cliffs aren't.]
* Someone whose collection of petrified wood samples is stacked like cord wood
[If I had that much petrified wood, of course.]
* Someone who plans extra time on trips to investigate road cuts along the way.
[Been there, done that, collected the ignimbrite samples.]
* Someone who almost crashes his/her car looking at road cuts while driving.
[Been in the car when it's happened ... also a transit van we nearly lost over the side of a cliff because we needed to use it to get up a sheep track to look at a fault offset. Apparently transit vans aren't offroad vehicles. Who knew?]
* Someone who often explains how their boozy coffee with whipped cream resembles a layered igneous complex.
[Can imagine it happening without much difficulty.]
* Someone who knows the phylum, kingdom, and genus of every ancient creature lodged in stone, some of which look nothing like an animal, but can't remember his/her mother's, or spouse's, birthday.
[I've got in trouble for this one ...]
* Someone who uses a geologic hammer to halve a boiled egg.
[No, but I know a dude who can open his beer bottles and cans with his rockhammer.]
* Someone who modifies his/her one yard pace to one meter in order to simplify pace-and-compass mapping.
[Doesn't everyone?]
* Someone whose radioactive ore specimen collection glows in the dark. It is so bright you can:
o use it to read by.
o illuminate your front yard.
o use it as a landing beacon.
o see it from Mars.
[Well, I do know for a definite fact that the time we took a Geiger counter into the petrology lab it went apeshit ....
* Someone who can identify the chemical formula for Cummingtonite...and chuckles like a junior-high kid every time.
[Yep. Heheheh]
* Someone stuck on the side of the road without a spare tire because it was removed to make more room for samples or alcohol (or the spare is already being used on the other side of the van).
[This is inevitable]
* Someone who, when asked what this rock is says, "Leverite, so leave her right there." [Yay, rock puns]
* Someone who walks out of a bathroom and asks if you noticed the fossils in the stall dividers.
[If there are fossils, of course they will be noticed]
* Someone prone to Linnean mnemonic devices such as Keep Privates Clean Or Forget Getting Screwed.
[Dirty mnemonics? Check]
* Someone who can only relate to one "Rock Band" (besides BIF): Are We Not Men, We Are Devonian!
[Heheheh]
* Someone who enjoys their topography: Subduction leads to orogeny, and orogeny leads to relief. [Yep. Also, don't forget intertonguing, crossbedding and sand blows ...]
* Someone who walks into an art museum and looks at the floors and columns commenting on the stylolites and fossils, rather than looking at the paintings. [Esp. if this is a modern art museum, yep]
* Someone whose shorts expose way more leg than you ever wanted to see.
[Prof. Joel is very bad for this]
* Someone who rocks the party and is the schist everywhere they go.
[Er, all of us?]
* Someone who can say, "Gneiss Cleavage" or talks about slaty cleavage and means it in a non-derogatory sense.
[What's derogatory about it?]
* Someone who takes special interest in your granite countertops in the kitchen and after a few minutes will even produce handlenses before giving other guests an igneous petrology lesson. [Have done this]
* Someone who gets really upset when the countertop, which is obviously mafic/aphanitic/metamorphic, is called granite and takes 20 minutes to tell you why you're wrong.
[Have done this too]
* Someone who can't use a street map because it doesn't have contour lines.
[Totally me, but others are very good with maps of all kinds.]
* When helping someone move and you ask "is this box full of rocks?" They answer "yes, be careful."
[Happened to me when moving house last time ...]