Conferences and Colleges in Cambridge

These last three days have been excellent both because of the conference I attended and because of the city in which it was held. First things first: I did present my completeness of the dinosaur fossil record research, and all in all I think it went pretty well. I did have a mild last-minute case of nerves when I realized that the author of one of my favorite dinosaur books while growing up was going to be in the audience. Still, it went off without any significant hitches, and I was even able to respond to the questions posed to me in a fairly intelligently. I'm happy to say that the other two Bristol presenters also did well, and all in all I think we did the university proud.
The conference itself was interesting, as paleontology conferences always are. The presentations were limited to graduate students, but the Cambridge paleo faculty were there as well, which is a fairly big deal, as it's widely recognized as the second best program in the UK (Guess who's Number One!!!). There was not a huge crowd of attendees, but those people that were there were all a lot of fun. The conference was very well-run, too: drinks in one of the oldest pubs in Britain, lunch at the only good pizza place I've encountered on this side of the Atlantic, a reception in the very old-school Sedgwick Museum, and an extremely posh dinner in the dining room of Selwyn College (which in retrospect was probably a once-in-a-lifetime experience; if you ever get the chance to eat in an Oxbridge dining hall, I recommend jumping at it).
Cambridge itself is, of course, beautiful, and almost impossibly steeped in history (the list of the alumni of various colleges reads like a "Who's Who" of world history; from the scientific realm, for example, they can claim both Newton and Darwin, which is about as distinguished as it gets). Lord knows there's plenty of pomposity about it already, and while I don't want to add to it, you can see in Cambridge (and, to be fair, presumably in Oxford as well) what universities around the world have been trying to emulate for centuries. Cambridge is the real deal, though, and I really don't think its atmosphere could be duplicated anywhere else. I wandered around some of the 30-some college this morning and afternoon, but it turns out the best way to take it all in is from a punt. Punts are flat-bottomed wooden boats propelled (slowly) by a pole, and they go up the River Cam, right through the middle of the nicest colleges. The Bristol contingent rented one for the hour between our meetings and reception, and it was well worth it. A few of our crowd even got a chance to actually punt the boat, and no one fell in which is, apparently, a fairly major accomplishment. It really was an excellent time, and wherever I go for the remainder of my time in Britain, it'll be hard to top Cambridge.