Another day I walked out of town to do a bit of climbing in the mountains behind the airport. I scrambled up and down slopes that contained some of the oldest rocks in the world, isotope-dated at 3,800 billion years, remnants, so the geological rumor goes, of the earth's earliest terrestrial crust.

A few years later, in Inukjuak, I learned that SFU is the Inuit texting acronym for "snowmobile fucked up," and that POOS is the acronym for "passed out on snowmobile.

Natural history is not about producing fables.

Museums have no political power, but they do have the possibility of influencing the political process. This is a complete change from their role in the early days of collecting and hoarding the world to one of using the collections as an archive for a changing world. This role is not merely scientifically important, but it is also a cultural necessity.

It is said that those who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat it. That’s not quite correct. We all forget history. The key is whether we have a way to go back to rediscover what we forget. More directly, the key is whether an objective past can keep us honest.

In the history of the world, no one has ever washed a rented car.