At some early age, I came up with a motto that pretty well characterizes my life. It states that "I live my life in defiance of dullness." Things have certainly worked out that way. For one example, when I was in the registrar's office in graduate admissions at the University of Colorado, he looked at my transcript from Dartmouth and told me that I'd just wasted four years of my life. The professor of geology who was to be my graduate adviser agreed,...