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Fact: Geologists Love Beer


Beginning with the bold pronouncement, “Fact — Geologists Love Beer,” Wired magazine explains Why Geologists Love Beer.

This week in San Francisco, the American Geophysical Union is having their annual convention at Moscone Convention Center. According to Wired:

“Every other convention assumes that if you have a beer, your brain goes soft,” said Kathy Sullivan, who has been serving beer at the AGU meeting for 26 years. ”But not the geophysicists. They think if you have a beer, you can still learn things. So they do.”

At the Thirsty Bear, the closest brewpub to the Moscone Convention Center where the annual meeting is held every December, the waitstaff claims this is the busiest week of the year for them. I heard from the Borehole Research Group at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory that one server at the Thirsty Bear said the staff can’t take vacation days during the AGU meeting ”because the geologists are coming.”


Betsy Mason, the author of the article — and a geologist and beer lover herself — polled the 16,00 convention attendees to try to figure why a love of rocks translates to a love of beer. Her results make entertaining reading. And, this insight is personally good news, because it explains yet another one of my own peculiar obsessions. I, too, love rocks. From childhood, I’ve been fascinated by them and to this day always pick up interesting rocks during vacations to bring back home as souvenirs. Throughout my house, I have jars and plates displaying the rocks I’ve found all over the world. Before now, I just thought it was another one of my odd obsessions, but I’m happy to learn it’s just part and parcel of my love of beer, the two apparently go hand in hand.

Watch the video below, bartender Kathy Sullivan is my new favorite person. Listen to what she has to say about the geologists drinking beer at their convention.

“It’s the only convention that thinks adults know whether they can drink and pay attention or not. Every other convention assumes that if you have a beer your brain goes soft, but not the geophysicists, they think if you have a beer you can still learn things … It’s treating people like adults as opposed to children.”

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