Kurt Friehauf

Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It happens every day.
N'attendez pas le Jugement dernier. Il a lieu tous les jours.
- Albert Camus, “The Fall”

Why would anyone want to become a geologist? - photos of travel
Additional websites I've created for general education
Hobbies
Recommended links
Favorite quotes

Why would anyone want to become a geologist?

Geology is largely for science-loving people who like travel, nature, and working with diverse people. I've really enjoyed my career as a geologist because it gets me out of the office and puts me in strange new environments with little mysteries to solve. Geological problems require me to really look carefully at things, bring together my knowledge of many other fields of science, and analyze the data in a logical and creative way. Creativity is an essential facet of science that many people overlook! Personally, I'm particularly attracted to the practical aspects of applied geology that have direct value to people, but many geologists also do fascinating research on fundamental processes.

In addition to scientific adventure, my geologic studies allow me to work with a wide variety of people from different cultures, many of whom I would never have otherwise encountered, and seen places relatively few folks back home have seen. I believe that a lot of the conflict between people in the world is due to a lack of understanding of each other's viewpoints. Ignorance allows us to think of strangers as less human than ourselves and so can enable us to become callous, uncaring, disdainful, and even hateful. Traveling and meeting people in person helps destroy that ignorance, enables us to see people as more than simple stereotypes or abstract, symbolic icons on a map, and so paves the way for new friendships and opportunities for productive cooperation. I have yet to visit a place inhabited solely by monsters - most people are pretty cool, although there are admittedly a few jerks everywhere you go.

(The photos are coming - as with my life itself, this web page is a work in progress.)

Additional websites I've created for general education of people surfing the web

Hobbies

Home brewing	Playing violin	Origami (but I'm no Robert Lang, yet!)
	Backpacking / Camping

Favorite quotes

Dr. Seusss

Be who you are and say what you think. Those who matter won't mind, and those who do, don't matter.

Thomas Berger

The buffalo eats grass, I eat him, and when I die, the earth eats me and sprouts more grass. Therefore nothing is ever lost, and each thing is everything forever, though all things move. ("Little Big Man")

Michel de Montaigne

Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.
How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.

Horace Mann

Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

All appears to change when we change.

Benjamin Franklin

It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.

Thomas Jefferson

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.

Voltaire

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.

Will and Ariel Durant

History is subject to geology. Every day the sea encroaches somewhere upon the land, or the land upon the sea; cities disappear under the water, and sunken cathedrals ring their melancholy bells. Mountains rise and fall in the rhythm of emergence and erosion; rivers swell and flood, or dry up, or change their course; valleys become deserts, and isthmuses become straits. To the geologic eye all the surface of the earth is a fluid form, and man moves upon it as insecurely as Peter walking on the waves to Christ. (The Lessons of History, Chapter 2)

Harry S. Truman

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.

Will Rogers

Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.
Never let yesterday use up too much of today.
If advertisers spent the same amount of money on improving their products as they do on advertising, then they wouldn't have to advertise them.
[I believe that this principle applies to time and complaining, as well.]

Mahatma Gandhi

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

Mother Theresa

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

Greek Proverb

A civilization flourishes when people plant trees under whose shade they will never sit.

Raymond E. Feist

Never accept the proposition that just because a solution satisfies a problem, that it must be the only solution.

Latin American proverb

Mal de mucho consuelo de tontos.
([Only] fools find consolation [or delight] in the misery of others.)

Albert Camus (from “The Fall”)

Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It happens every day.
(N'attendez pas le Jugement dernier. Il a lieu tous les jours.)

Albert Einstein

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Mark Twain

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great ones make you feel that you too, can become great.

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Kurt Friehauf

Contents

Why would anyone want to become a geologist?

Additional websites I've created for general education of people surfing the web

Hobbies

Recommended links

Favorite quotes