10 Things

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Okay, I've resisted temptation up until now, but like Oscar, "I can resist anything but temptation." So my list of ten things most others might not have done:

1. Won first prize in an annual James Joyce writing competition for a poem composed in a composite language modeled on Finnegan's Wake

2. Named a species of fossil after my wife. (It was a compliment not any implication about the spouse.)

3. Had dinner and a knock-down drag-out fight with Stephen Jay Gould over the theory of contingency and whether it properly understood was science or not. (Okay, I admit it, that's an exaggeration. Let us say an animated and lengthy discussion complete with table napkin drawings and other paraphenalia.)

4. Went to a poetry reading (and read) in a State Penitentiary

5. Demonstrated origami for International Children's Days on the National Mall.

6. Assisted in digs on Mount Vernon Grounds and Williamsburg.

7. Helped excavate a mammoth, a dog-faced bear, and a peccary the size of a horse.

8. Went on a field trip to San Salvador, Bahamas to study modern carbonate depositional environments and joined the islanders in an iguana and conch feast.

9. Sat on Sophia Loren's lap in a helicopter shuttle for Kennedy Airport to La Guardia.

10. Presented a paper in a National Geological Convention on the periodicity of Mass extinctions and was congratulated and assisted by no less than David Raup and Jack Sepkoski themselves.

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5 Comments

Excellent list Steven; I'm amazed at how much other bloggers have done. Number 9 begs to be fleshed out though.

I'd love to see you do a long post reproducing that conversation with Gould.

And I trust you were a child when you sat on Sophia's lap, i.e., not yet old enough to wish the situation reversed.

Dear TSO and Mr. Luse,

Mr. Luse correctly divined the event--about six.

shalom,

Steven

Desperately envious here. Okay, not desperately, but experiencing significant feelings of "dangit, I need to get out more."

Wow!

Perfect example of why I don't do the list.

I can't keep up.

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This page contains a single entry by Steven Riddle published on March 9, 2005 7:30 PM.

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