The Cover of Anolis Newsletter III, in which Ernest Williams revealed the POUM
Here at AA, we’ve often discussed Ernest Williams’ Principle of Unsympathetic Magic [1,2], which states that any hypothesis formulated in the field will immediately be disproven by the next observation. Janson Jones has recently uncovered its corollary, the Kakakairos of the Unprepared, which proclaims that whenever one goes into the field without a piece of equipment that one normally has, a situation will arise in which that equipment is needed. Or, more generally, whatever one is unprepaped for will happen. Janson explains it much better at Dust Tracks on the Web. All I can say is, it happens to me all the time.
Professor of Biology and Director of the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University in Saint Louis. I've spent my entire professional career studying anoles and have discovered that the more I learn about anoles, the more I realize I don't know.
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Pat Shipman
Oh yes. A guiding principle (or two) of the universe.
Miguel Landestoy
Both are specially true: 1. (Williams’) in lands where subjects remain relatively unknown; and 2. (Jones’) where subjects can be difficult to photograph while you are collecting or doing research, it is difficult to carry all the photo gear at same time when you are collecting data/specimens. I personally have had “bitten that bitter” many times, however, I can’t complain on doing one at once when it comes to fieldwork.
Ambika Kamath
I have another corollary, based on the last three days of fieldwork in Miami: when rain is in the forecast, the period of time when it actually rains the hardest will be exactly the period when you are in the field!