Every Tuesday at lunch there are seminars which all scientific staff of The Ecosystems Center are tacitly expected to attend. I abscond most weeks: I have a wedding to plan, a cross-country move to attend to, and a job to find. Sometimes I get drawn in by titles though, like today: "Panning for gold in a diamond mine: Tales from an ancient eocene maar lake." Sounds great! But alas such titles are merely ruses, used to draw people into auditoriums and then confound (under the guise of impressing) and bore them with incomprehensible science. I actually didn't go this week, so perhaps the speaker was dynamic and relevant and comprehensible and did tell marvelous tales from the ancient world. Sadly, that's not what scientists get paid to do. Which makes me surer than ever that I'm in the wrong profession.