Geotechnical News• December 2019
33
And I Can’t Resist Including This
This year is the 100th anniversary of
the Amritsar Massacre, in which the
British army in India opened fire on
unarmed Indian civilians, killing hun-
dreds. A recent documentary on our
TV interviewed the grandchildren of
the British general who gave the order
to fire. They were in denial, claiming
that the army acted in self-defence:
clearly this is untrue. The interviewer
responded with what I think is a clas-
sic quote, one that we could use in
future when a professional lecturer
uses outrageous logic.
“You have conveniently not sought
objectivity”.
Another wonderful quote!
Closure
So this closes the door on GIN, after
93 episodes in 25 years. Some regret,
some relief! I will miss having an out-
let for my blatherings, but I will NOT
miss all the editing! Most important
of all, I will miss the interactions with
John Gadsby, Publisher of Geotechni-
cal News and Lynn Pugh, Managing
Editor. Thank you to John for allowing
me access to your space. Thank you
to Lynn for your outstanding coop-
eration, which has regularly ‘gone
beyond the call of duty’. It’s been a
motivating partnership.
Post Script
As explained elsewhere in this issue
of Geotechnical News, this is the last
issue. Early next year Canadian Geo-
technical Society will initiate a new
magazine,
Canadian Geotechnique,
and this will have a section
Instru-
mentation and Monitoring
, edited by
Pierre Chouquet of RST Instruments.
Following these parting remarks of
mine, Pierre shares with us his plans
for future articles. Thank you, Pierre,
for keeping the tradition alive.
John Dunnicliff
Little Leat
Whisselwell
Bovey Tracey
Devon TQ13 9LA
England
Tel +44-1626-832919
A word from the next editor
Pierre Choquet
I am truly happy and honoured to
become the new editor of the column
on Instrumentation and Monitoring,
starting in the first issue of the new
Canadian Geotechnique
magazine in
early 2020.
I have read John’s episodes of GIN for
as long as I can remember and always
with such great interest. I have always
thought that these quarterly updates,
articles and discussions on geotechni-
cal instrumentation were very perti-
nent and very original in the variety of
topics that were covered. I know that
I have always looked forward to the
next magazine to find out what John
had dug out for us in our wide world
of instrumentation.
I wish to thank John a lot for all that
he has done for the geotechnical
instrumentation community and geo-
technical community at large as well,
and I will elaborate on this in a future
column.
I hope to continue the tradition of
great insights in this field of instru-
mentation and I have suggested to the
editors of
Canadian Geotechnique
to
name the column “Instrumentation
and Monitoring” in order to reflect not
only the means but also the objectives
of our geotechnical instrumentation
programs.
For my first column, I am thinking
of offering the opportunity to GIN
readers to send tributes for John’s
efforts over the years to write so
many episodes and how it has been
instrumental (yes!) to foster so much
improvement and progression in our
community and how the state of the
practice has improved so much under
his guidance.
Can you email me your contributions,
especially the tributes, prior to January
15, 2020 (as my deadline for the first
magazine issue will be January 18,
2020)? I will be very glad to publish
them in the first edition of my column
in early 2020.
I’m also very open to your sugges-
tions on what you would find useful to
include in future columns. Of course,
if you have already an article to send
to me, please do so. I have not yet
prepared my own publishing guide-
lines, but they should be very similar
to John’s guidelines. Please email if
you need them.
On a legacy theme, I would like to
assure you that all GIN episodes will
remain available online. The exact
form has not yet been finalized as we
are still working on the details with
the editor of
Canadian Geotechnique
GEOTECHNICAL INSTRUMENTATION NEWS
