You Know You're a Phylogenetics Geek When...

...you try to model the human mind in the same manner that you model trait evolution. Last week I sat on my second thesis defense committee. The student who was defending did an excellent job; in fact, my biggest criticism was that he was being overly ambitious in attempting distinct empirical and theoretical studies that could have been better integrated. The goals of his empirical study were very well-defined and goal oriented, but, by his own admission, his theoretical interests were evolving in a manner analogous to a random walk. My spur of the moment suggestion was that he switch the model underlying his theoretical meandering from something like Brownian motion to something that more closely resembles an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process constrained in some non-deterministic manner to the same general area occupied by his empirical work. Bask in the glow of my dorkness.