A Bit about Rosemont Copper

I received, via email, this promotional video about the proposed Rosemont Copper mine in Pima County, Arizona, and decided to post it. In some ways, it's a typical coroporate PR video, with an overly bright, cheery voice in the background — worth watching, neverthless. We used to view a lot of things like this at Former Mining Company: movies telling us how great the company was, how great our mines were, how great our hiring practices were, etc. Is there some reason these PR vids can't be made by real people? The real people in the video are, for the most part, much better spokespeople for the mine, IMO, than the PR voice that talks mostly about the nice day, pleasant festivities, and good food.

The fact booklet, made by the same PR company, is worth reading: it goes into some of the uses of copper, why we need it now, and why we will continue to need it in the future. If you are reading this blog post, you are using copper.

Rosemont Copper is a project of Augusta Resource Corporation. To learn more about Rosemont, see these posts at Arizona Geology, and read this pro and con list at Green Valley News & Sun.

I make my living through mining and through exploration to find ore for mining, and I don't find open pits as unsightly or unpleasant as some apparently do. In fact, I find them fascinating — small or large, active or inactive, old or new — and they are great places to see geology exposed in a three-dimensional setting.

Snow and Light in the Morning

The inside of my truck on the morning of March 25th: I'm all packed and ready to go, but I haven't yet shoveled the snow off the truck and scraped the windshield. The clock reads 6:45 am: Ack, I'm late!
Light from my headlights illuminate the untracked snow of the driveway and street in front of me. (Yay for 4WD!)
I attempt to get a photo showing the snow falling in one of those starburst patterns, like this one that someone linked to recently (was that you, Dana?).
Illuminated snow ruts on the main road, which hasn't yet, at 6:53 am, been plowed.
A street light glows through the falling snow and my spotted windshield.
The old schoolhouse at Lane City almost blends into the snow-covered sagebrush.
I never saw a single snow plow once that morning!

New Blog Viewing Formats

Blogger (i.e. Google) has created some new ways of viewing Blogger blogs, this first one being the Mosaic view of LFD, which shows posts roughly in time order from left to right, and then down the page apparently forever or as long as your browser can stand adding pictures and information. If you put your cursor over one of the blocks, like I've done over the Where it All Began II block, that enlarges; clicking takes you to a white-background version of the post. This is the Flipcard view: moving your cursor around will cause the smaller postblocks to flip (see fourth block from the left, top row); clicking gets you to a similar white-background version of the chosen post. These first two viewing options are the best, IMO. The Snapshot view isn't too bad: it shows all the pictures I've uploaded to the blog, but doesn't show posts without photos. Not so good, or best for true photo blogs, although it appears to make copying photos a little too easy, and my copyright statement isn't shown anywhere in any of these new views. Nor can my own personal blog sidebar be reached via any of these views. The Timeslide view isn't too bad, but is a little confusing as to actual timeline, presenting more of a general timeline. Some of the views, including Flipcard, Snapshot, and Timeline, move sideways to show you the white-background view of my blog. I find the sideways motion annoying and potentially migraine triggering. This Sidebar view is nearly useless in my opinion. Stick to my artistically formatted blog instead of this. It is, however, fairly fast in showing a blog post, which comes up just to the right of the post list.

These views can [no longer] be reached by adding "/view" without the quotes to the end of my blog URL. [Though you can try views on other Blogger blogs that haven't turned the option off like I just did.] You won't be able to reach them in IE unless you switch to Windows 7 and download IE 9. I didn't find them at all viable in Firefox, mostly way too slow. They are designed — surprise! — to work in Chrome: designed by Google to work in Google's browser. [And as noted by Chris Rowan in the comments, they work in Safari.]

For now [no longer - see update info below], these new views will be available here at LFD. I can turn off the new views in my formatting settings, but haven't decided whether or not to do that. I might like to choose one or two or three views to be available, but as of now, it's all or none. I think the views are interesting, but they take away from my own personal formatting and make everything look a little like a Picasa photo album (surprise, again). Only the first one, Mosaic, looks at all artistic to me.

/semi-rant

UPDATE 1April2011: These views are now turned off and are no longer available. I can't pick and choose, it's all or nothing, so therefore nada.

Recent Morning Views

Sunrise from the road to work, March 19th.

A dusting of snow in the parking lot, March 20th, the vernal equinox.

A messy road going into the canyon, March 21st.

Early morning moon over two limestone formations, March 22nd. Snow blows and drifts deep later in the day.

Getting gas amidst the falling snow, March 24th.

And some call this spring. Maybe next month.

Light at the End of the Culvert

Looking through a culvert on a recent hike.

I'm in the midst of starting a new consulting job (after an enjoyable to cabin-feverish three month hiatus), so I have - at least for the moment - ceased updating the earthquake and tsunami links post I started last week when I had more time and before I knew how many, many posts the geoblogosphere could write about essentially one subject in six days. As noted in an update to my links post, continuing information (along with a lot of other geology and geoscience) can be found at Chris Rowan's AllGeo Feed, Ron Schott's GeoPicks, and GeoBulletin: News from the Geoblogosphere.