I write The Motley View, a column of occasional pieces for the Newsletter of the Berkeley Geoengineering Alumni Association (BGAA) hosted by the GeoEngineer website. Why Motley View? I wrote the first article, so I named the column. Motley is appropriate for several reasons:
Motley is an assemblage of various fabrics and colors, as described by Jacques, a character in Act II, Scene VI of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It”: “… I met a fool i’ the forest, a motley fool…”. Motley thus describes a clown, a harlequin, a tricky buffoon dressed in the patchwork garb of the Court Jester, a role I have played in a few jobs. The column is intended to be a quilt of opinions, advice, and harangues with professional and practitioner hues, based on my experiences and those of other contributors.
Motley describes the complexity of geoengineering, which encompasses geotechnical engineering, geological engineering, engineering geophysics, geoenvironmental engineering and many other geo-whatevers. (Note to myself: we need some guidance on when and where we stick the prefix “geo”).
Motley aptly describes the heterogeneous appearance of chaotic melanges, fault rocks, weathered rocks and other complex geological mixtures: such messes are bimrocks, my professional specialty
Motley is my professional career, a patchwork of experiences gained during over 40 years of mineral exploration prospecting, geological engineering, geotechnical engineering, and world travel.
Motley (mixture) is Medley (mixture) – not a bad name for someone writing a Motley column, is it??
Here are the Articles to May 2008:
