I was based in Hawaii between 1979 and 1989. At the time there was a popular car bumper sticker showing a rainbow and the wacky observation: Ho Hum, Another Shitty Day in Paradise. That bumper phrase cracked me up then, and still does. Even a really bad day in Hawaii is not like a bad…
Category: Geopractice
Geological Engineering, geotechnical engineering and engineering geology
Buccaneering BIM/Geoengineering
Updated November 23 2021 It is with increasing amusement that I peruse the subject lines of emails containing the acronym BIM. Many years ago I coined the acronym bimrocks (block-in-matrix rocks). The bim bit has prompted gleeful scribbles over the years, what with bimbo and bimba. This past month an architect in Iran offered to…
N.T.U.A, N.T.U.A….
Between March 20 and March 31 2010, I was a guest on a 12-day European Grand GeoOdyssey: Engineering Geology in Engineering Works in Greece-Italy-France-Switzerland with Emphasis on Case Histories of Great Failures. The trip leader was the late Prof. Paul Marinos, guiding 230 Third Year Civil Engineering students from the National Technical University of Athens,…
Hard Hats (1982)
Hard hats are often awkward, sometimes inconvenient and occasionally dangerous. Nowadays hard hats are compulsory in construction. But in 1982 they were less common, especially when working in the jungle. They probably have rarely been useful as a means of commanding respect – yet a hard hat on steroids once almost got me into big trouble.