I have overstated things in saying that geologists are always the bad guys of course. I mean neither Hitler nor Stalin were geologists after all. And to be clear… what follows is tongue-in-cheek. Geologists are necessary adjuncts to successful mining engineers but sometimes they think that mining engineers are necessary adjuncts to successful geologists and that really ticks me off when it happens.
I have often speculated on why geologists are always the bad guys and have decided that it comes from their strange proclivity for wearing plaid flannel shirts. That seems to be the common denominator and in my mathematical modeling of this phenomenon I get a 95% correlation coefficient between flannel wearing and bad guy. I know what you are thinking but if I am going to be making provocative statements I insist on having the scientific facts before me to validate my claims.
That is the thing about engineers – if it can’t be modeled with an equation it is probably not worth thinking about. Geologists, on the other hand, would phrase this as, “If it can’t be described with 10 words, 5 of which are Latin, then it is not worth thinking about.” How else can one rationalize such phrases as “bifurcated igneous greywacke with pink overtones and ectopic pigmentation”.
Or maybe that is just how it sounds to me. I call geologists nature’s little librarians because everything has to be described and documented. I say it is a rock and then have to listen to a 30 minute lecture on why it is no mere rock but a very special rock.
So if geologists are our necessary adjuncts then it follows that when things go wrong it must be their fault. Mining engineers are too altruistic and pure to be capable of original sin much less technical or stock exchange sin. It is a ‘day follows night’ kind of thing. And that is why geologists are always the bad guys.
