Primary v. Secondary Industry
There is a lot being said these days about bringing back our nation’s lost glory. This causes me indigestion on multiple levels. Fortunately, two of them are easy to reconcile: I cannot agree with...
Category: Technology
Deep Sea Mining: Part 2
Before we jump into the deep water, a couple possibly irrelevant tangents: I love the earth, am fascinated by its processes, and wish it a long and happy life. Anybody who has opened their...
Reflection v. Refraction
It was late afternoon on Christmas and I was driving west into the setting sun. It had been wet most of the day, but the rain machine had turned off for a bit, the...
Going, Going… Gone?
In their continuing efforts to dismantle the United States and remove it from its traditional place as a leader in scientific research and understanding, the current administration is now taking aim at the National...
Warp Speed Now
The year was 1969, and my buddy and I — a pair of newly-minted high school graduates, full of juice and looking for a bit of excitement — decided to head to the Mojave...
Minerals and Economic Warfare, Part 2
Click here for Minerals and Economic Warfare, Part 1 It was early in the 1980s and Central Africa was again in turmoil. Very little of what transpired made it into the homes of the...
The Magic of Density
Before we get started, we need to agree on a couple bits of background information gleaned from the realm of physics (sorry, but it’s gotta be done). First, all matter is composed of tiny...
Follow the money…
Sorry. This one may stray a bit from the earth sciences, but I have to ask: How ridiculous can we be? It reminds me of the early days of the railroad, when the gauge...
Deep Sea Mining
I read an interesting article in Mother Jones (7/16/23) about mining on the deep-sea floor (aka the abyssal plain) for metallic nodules. This follows up on another article on the same site that discusses...
E-waste and rational resource management
How many of you still have your original cellphone? Not your flip-phone, I’m talking about the brick you had before that. But hey, what did happen to your first flip-phone? Or your first beeper...
