Me (Ross)– I’m a sometime biologist/computer network designer/endurance athlete. My Ph.D. was in things evolutionary and ecological. My job is to design and build fairly complex communication networks. I’ve done innumerable runs and a fair number of bike rides, many of the longer ones involving crossing mountain ranges or big holes like the Grand Canyon. I like figuring out how the world works. My wife and friends help.
The Photo– Old Dinah was the height of transportation technology in the later part of the 19th century, just before petroleum-powered vehicles came to dominate our civilization. This was taken at Furnace Creek Ranch in Death Valley National Park.
The Name– The geologists divide the geologic record into eons, eras, periods, epochs, and ages extending back 4.6 billion years. The last few epochs end with “cene”; Holocene, Pleistocene, etc. I was looking for a catchy name using “petroleum” (Greek: petra-rock, oleum-oil) and found no one was using “petroleo-cene.” I bought the name and used if for the website. Technically, the -ocenes are Epochs and what we’re in is at most a Age or a Chron, but Petroloian isn’t as catchy. Hey, I’m a biologist, not a geologist.