It's not the camera...

...it's the lens.

Recently my victims have been complaining about the size of my camera. I thought this may be because cameras are shrinking, but whatever the reason, a frightened victim does not make for good pictures. At the AGU I tried an experiment and took 3 little prime lenses along with my "enormous" DSLR camera body. Not a single one of my victims flinched, most didn't notice they were being photographed, but some of them actually smiled!

Harry Elderfield being Keynotey. Harry has a calm soothing voice, the room was dark and it was Monday morning, but I read later on some blog that he gave a good talk. Actually I only slept through the review part of his talk, and woke up for the newer work part of his talk, which was interesting.

Americans "like comparing Apples and Oranges", but I find this phrase extremely irritating. At least Mark Boslough knows which he prefers.

Donald Lucas explains his poster to 2 interested people. This is atypical. AGU poster sessions are mostly crap.

A geologist...I suppose. They all have beards don't they? He reads his newspaper under the table like it was shameful, because he is the only person in the room without an electronic gizmo in front of him.

At beer o'clock on the 3rd floor of Moscone West, the light gets nice. I don't know any of these people, but it was apparent that most of them also prefer Apples.

She looks a bit dubious about his dodgy results.

Behind her is the queue for the beer!

She's got no beer so I suppose that's gin in her flask. At least it matches her Apple.

A real scientific discussion finishes with a smile.

Andy Ridgwell, the one person at the AGU worth photographing... but he can be quite elusive. Still, nice of him to pick a t-shirt to match his eyes. The T-shirt says "Are your cats old enough to learn about Jesus?"

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"unusual landing"

"unusual landing", originally uploaded by julesberry2001.

Actually it was an unusual takeoff too, which was, I suppose, the first tyre popping, and the second one was on landing. It's a pity - we had wanted to attend a fun event in Yokohama this evening - the aeroplanes normally land on time or early at Narita, and it takes 10mins to get through the airport (for a Japanese resident with no checked baggage). But today we missed our train as we had to sit on the runway for an hour (so that if we caught fire we wouldn't take the terminal with us?) and then the aeroplane was towed slowly to the gate.

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Greenwash

Fortunately, the recyclable beer cups entirely offset the carbon emissions of everyone's travel to the AGU making it a truly environmentally friendly conference. Sarcasm aside, I think they should allow people to pull a Pielke, and give their talks by Skype.

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AGU Day 3

At 15:30 beer is served at the AGU, inhibitions are overcome and even us scientists become kind of chatty. After all, there would really be no point at all in gathering all those air miles if we never actually spoke to each other. 

Quaffing with Ben Booth.

Kneeling humbly at the feet of Mike Mann.

Annan-Schmittner face-off sharing a joke about skeptics or some such frivolity.

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AGU Day 2

The day was as sunny as hoped.

As James already mentioned, we sprinted round the Embarcadero for a morning pastry, and then got a bus back to the hotel. In the peace and quiet of lunchtime we toured Tuesday's posters, on regional climate, tsunamis, and bit of paleo. My favourite poster was one on using Twitter to chart climate change expressed in terms of the location of armadillos. Second favourite was a study which analysed whether the climate change people thought they had experienced was consistent with actually observed trends. The answer seemed to be on the whole yes, but sometimes no.

Meanwhile, I am getting quite concerned about the San Franciscans' want of taste. Who would paint their house a color (sic) that clashes with the sky?! And then there was this in the window of the supposedly top notch bakery... I read Hello Kitty Hell for a few years but gave up recently, finally overwhelmed by the horrors it reports.

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AGU Day 1

The day began with a chemistry experiment...

on thin films and rainbows...

Apparently this is called siphon coffee. It was nice but the music was a bit dystopian, which probably wasn't good for the jet lag. The rest of the day was much as expected and involved science and stuff. The "stuff" being the highly entertaining late afternoon philosophy session. 

Can't find any must-see talks to go to tomorrow, so hoping for another sunny morning... and a walk round the posters in the afternoon.

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Political Correctness Gone Mad

Many San Franciscans have a Portuguese water dog of just the right age. Bet they're feeling silly now it's not cool to like Obama anymore.

[beach - on the west side of San Francisco]

Sadly, for the rest of the week we must once again sit in windowless rooms and listen to geeks like us present interesting science badly.

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Health and Safety

Today we had health and safety origami with advanced knotting. Actually it was the most interesting and involving CPR/first aid/safety thingie I have attended. When we arrived in Japan a decade ago, I don't think the phrase health and safety had been invented yet, but there seems to be a bit of pressure towards it now, especially from the boat people of JAMSTEC (boats being such excellent places for losing body parts if you don't know what you are doing).

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Let's pink

In case anyone was wondering who on earth buys those brightly coloured SLRs... young women are powerful consumers in Japan... 

"The real world is the one on the back of my camera"  

[Hachimangu, Kamakura, Japan]

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Vitamin C overdose

I suppose it might be the same in all those exotic countries in which citrus grow easily, but I find it odd that Japanese people don't eat the fruits of their own trees. Instead, like in the photo, the fruits remain on the garden trees as decoration all winter long. A British person did once tell me that he walked the lanes and successfully gained access to his neighbours' trees in order to make marmalade. Japanese people do eat a lot of citrus at this time of year. There are many different varieties of delicious satsumary things available, and a family may have a big boxful to work on during the New Year holiday. I'm not sure if what my Japanese friend told me can really be true - that children sometimes turn orange from eating too many!? I also don't know why the Japanese do not grow grapefruit - they are available but imported from the USA. The grapefruity thing in the picture is probably a yuzu, which is generally smaller and sweeter and less juicy than grapefruit. The tree was growing in someone's garden in Kamakura, with the boughs overhanging the road. I could have picked it if I was James' height.

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