Thursday 20 September 2007

Geodetic Journey

Had a great day at work today as I got to e-mail the directors about ETRF89, ITRF and the geoid. Perhaps I overdid it?! I was trying to track down what the IAG ICP1.2 were up to but couldn't find anything on their website. However I did stumble on a wonderful site entitled "geodetic journey". What a ball - travelling from Beijing to Lhasa and Shanghai all with a geodetic perspective. What more could a geodesist want wink

Well ... I was in a meeting today and talked about geodesy. A guy looked at me and said "what on earth is geodesy?". I thought I did well with my response as (a) it took less than a minute and (b) his head wasn't spinning by the end (or he hid it well). It's a tricky path we walk. We don't want to scare people with our geoids and spheroids (don't worry, you can get cream for them) but there is no point glossing over facts so much that nobody gets the impact of what you are saying. There is an immense skill in being a scientist preaching to non-scientists. But it's invaluable that we do it, and do it well.

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