So, some clowns are going to rename the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Willis Tower.

For a start, it sounds crap. But this is hardly the biggest cultural affrontery of the whole thing.

No. This is where Ferris Bueller's Day Off went.

SAVE FERRIS

I tend to get in a bit of a pattern in the field; later and later and later, and then I run out of energy and crash out, as now, at 9:00 or 9:30.

Its hard when you only have a few hours of "recreation" after work.

This whole brouhaha with Stern Hu has been interesting, then annoying, then interesting, tedious, fascinating, shit and retarded and stupid.

it is understandable why the Australian press may be partial; certainly the opposition is understandable when it carries on like bogeymen of communist evuls are thundering down upon us from the north and all that shit.

However.

We assume he's innocent. Certainly it is hard to believe that Rio Tinto, one of the largest and most anal of all megacorporations, would consciously allow one of their executives to engage in underhanded (dare I say, illegal) practises in securing a commercial advantage oin iron ore negotiations. Certainly that is the opinion of everyone in the Western world.

We assume this is unjust. We just seem incapable of believing in the due process of Chinese legal process and investigations. We see bogeymen behind every curtain and sinister Chinese government interference in what we assume is a fairly straightforward matter of deciding whether China spends $50Bn or $35Bn on iron ore to sustain its needs this year.

I think we have forgotten some of the facts in our hysterical craziness to see our man (who a week ago we didn't even know the name of) sprung from prison - apparently he should walk free because he is an Australian, and a captain of industry. Simple as that.

Sure, he has been detained. So have at least half a dozen others - not only from Rio Tinto, but from its customers. The allegations of treason, espionage and the like are worrying, but as yet unproven. They involve, as I've said before, billions of dollars. In Queensland today we saw a former minister jailed for 7 years over $360K; how much more important IS it to ensure that $15Bn of negotiations are done properly? We just don't know; maybe he's innocent and will be proven to be so, maybe he isn't. Certainly, there is a fairly big justification to say that if there is a whiff of conspiracy and graft, temporarily detaining a man while the investigation is conducted is warranted - certainly someone so prone to flight risks as a Rio Tinto executive.

In the end, we must await the investigation and the due process of Chinese Law. It may indeed be that this is a reaction to Rudd, to the government, to Rio Tinto deciding to scorn Chinalco. But that is beside the point this side of the allegations being aired, the evidence presented, the charges laid. We are just coming across as hysterical guailou shitheads in demanding and assuming and presuming innocence and subterfuge.

I think, also, we should not assume that Rio tinto is not above some skullduggery when billions of dollars are at stake. Certainly, Stern hu may have just been playing the game in China; a game notorious for kickbacks and graft and corruption. perhaps his only crime has been NOT greasing the right palms.

Think about that, Turnbull.

Urrrrgh. More brain meltage.

Heh. I heard someone say "Paraburdoo? More like Paraburdon't."

Quite apt. Tom Price is a much nicer town, perhaps because of the hills and the trees and the actual presence of amenities. Amenities in Paraburdoo include random palm trees.

It has also been cold up here. Frost, in fact. Brr.

But anyway, this now is my last swing. This is good. Mo' money is always of advantage in these tough economic times. Sadly I'll miss a Goths Invade Pubs, and this weekend's Shadowrun won't occur, but aside from that its all positive.

Even though my brains are melting.

So, to the rant!

Murchison Metals has been drilling their Rocklea channel iron deposit (CID) for nigh on 18 months now. They have +100Mt of relatively average CID, as far as the raw assays go. The trick to iron ore is, however, not exaclty as simple as the head grade. Most if not all iron ore requires beneficiation and blending. CID is no exception; aside from the iron oxyhydroxites (goethite-limonite) and occasional hematite, CID has two main contaminants; silicon and aluminium.

Silicon (as silicon dioxide aka "quartz") is present either as grains of sand or detrital material (rock fragments), or as chalcedonic flooding and cavity infills. The former can be washed out in a desanding plant, the latter is death if it gets above 3-4%.

Aluminium is generally present in clays. Clays are omnipresent, but if the aluminium content stays below 5% you just don't worry and throw it in the furnace and, together with silica, it forms a slag. Too much begets too much slag, and the "ore" is trash.

So, to see if you can get rid of the silica and alumina content, you subject the deposit to a rigorous round of metallurgical testing as MML has sasid is underway in its 'scoping study'. Enter the PQ3 diamong met drilling, bane of my life this past month.

YOu see, some tight-ass manager who is seeing $350/m plus costs (and labour, etc) going out the door wants to get grade-A top-notch met results. They approach this via several demands, prime amongst them being that the driller achieves 95%+ core recovery.

Then you have to work out several things from the core. One of these is density, expressed as specific gravity. This is the typical weight-volume thing; so you can do this several ways, including it must be stressed, doing it in the lab via gas pycnometer or water-immersion, etc. But this costs money, see, and our ever-vigilant bean-counters hate spending money.

So, you want to work out SG via direct measurement. You wish to achieve this by measuring the volume of the core - length, diameter, etc - and weight of the core. Great idea.

Now this is where my gripe begins. This is drilling. Of rocks. Very, very fragile spodgy rocks. Stuff that real rocks feel insulted by being compared to because its basically a sediment. Rocks break, even when you have a 67 year old anal retentive driller babying them out of the ground. Rocks do not break in perfectly planar fractures perpendicular to the core axis. They break unevenly, with rough undulating surfaces with a relief of up to 5cm.

So when I was told "we want you to measure the length to 1mm accuracy" i thought it was a joke. When they spent $2K on secondhand commercial fish scales with +/- 5 grams accuracy and they wanted the last digit (grams) I was bemused. When I was informed that this was so they could get a third significant figure for their whole-of-deposit specific gravity determination, my brain fled out my ears.

You see, in science (which these spongebob squarepants anal retentive ex-BHP idiots are assuming they are performing) you can only honestly quote a measurement to a certain extent after the decimal point known as 'significance of measurement" or significant figures. ie; you have to work out if you can use 2 or 3 digits after the decimal point.

So, you come to the core. It is 1.50 +/- 1cm long, and 82.5 +/- 0.5cm in diameter. It weights 21.25 +/- 0.005 kilograms. The amount of uncertainty in SG is composed of;
+/- 0.025 of diameter
+/- 0.013 from length
+/- 0.0006 from weight
Totaling +/- 0.0386
So you should have a SG measurement of 2.05 +/- 0.0386 (0.04 rounded to 2 sig figs).

Therefore, the second digit after the decimal point is significant - barely - because the errors don't exceed +/- 0.05. However, that still proves my point; the third significant figure of the measurement is below the inherent uncertainty in the measurements.

So. I wonder, indeed, why they insist on millimetre accuracy over a 1500mm length of core? You can spend all day measuring the core to 1mm, and then get a barrel full of rubble and you have to assume ONE length of core's true length and the inaccuracy in that one stick of core washes away all the ridiculous bullshit agonising you've done for the past 12 hours.

Amazing. In the quest for 3 sig figs a supposed "expert" and a supposed "experienced" geo both fucked themselves in the ear hole by ignoring the nature of the beast.

Oh, and over 100Mt, a +/- 0.001 is only 100 kilotones of ore anyway. Problem is, they could only ever accurately measure it to +/- 1 Mt.

Hasta la Vist, MML.

So. I have suffered through Eclipse by Meyers, avidly read Name of the Wind by Rothfuss (5 stars), done The Bone Doll's Twin by Flewelling (3/5) and avoided some airport thriller. But now, now I have started the COMPLETE CHRONICLES OF CONAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNN.

Centenary Edition.


Some observations.

Always with the naked slave girl. Always.
Almost always with the girdle, loincloth, and sword.
Some very colourful language. For instance, this edition is written (it mentions pointedly) in R. E. Howard's original words. Such that you get the great phrase "'By Crom!' Conan ejaculated!"
Hehehehe, he said Ejaculated.
It mentions his barbarian cunning. His primal vitality.

Everything is written as if by Dom DeLousise speaking through a voice modulator. IT COULD ALL BE WRITTEN IN CAPITALS!!!! Everything is dramatic. DRAMATIC I tell you!

Its actually getting better the further into the serials I am getting. Which isn't saying terribly much for the first couple of stories.

Serious fantasy purity points being earned here.

(p.s. please let this drilling end)

Donate wisely. *sniff* Those poor bastards.

Anyone who has seen the Retravision ad will now hate me. But fuck you too.

Useless EOFY.

One of my duties around here, aside from the weighing, measuring and logging of core (which I shall venomously rant upon later) is to make up for the IT deficiencies of Gulfodo Afrodo (aka Justin) our Sudanese immigrant driller's offsider, Tony the father of an AFL player driller who is 62 and a crazy mulleted bogan, Mal the 65 year old alternate driller who was conned out of studying geology to become a driller (and look where that got him), and Mr Bean AKA Gary (one R otherwise it's wasteful!).

This involves photographing their timesheets and plods and emailing them to their boss. Who has only now just sent a satphone up with them, so I've had to be the receptionist for them in this way as well.

The only real annoying thing about all this is that I missed out the plod on the 30th of June and this needed to be sent for them to complete the EOFY's, so guess who had to drive back from the drill site? ordinarily this would be a great distraction from TEH_BORING but not in the Nissan Patrol ute.

It is shod with pogo sticks, I swear. Jesus. No wonder the Hilux and the Landcruiser win. Also, the sub tank is fucked for 2 reasons. 1, its only 42.5L - that gets you nowhere out here. Secondly, it doesn't feed directly into the engine, it is pumped into the main tank. And when you switch the car off the pump stops, so you might forget to turn it on and drive off down the road blissfully unaware that Japanese people CAN make fucked-in-the-head decisions on how to build cars.

Feh.

Drill holes are otherwise known as boreholes. Which would make the creation of them boring.

Urgh, kill me now.

T minus 6 days.

Nivea ad: what men want, blah blah blah

Roli: What men really want is tits in a bottle.
Wife: Not pussy in a flashlight?

<3

Yesterday we kidnapped imuin and took her out for lunch in Freo. I won't say it was a gorgeous day, but it certainly had an added something when you had two lolitas trailing along after you stopping at every sweets shop and icecream parlour known to man. Sum total of our shopping: Starbursts, liquorice allsorts, sour candies, capsicum and milk bottles.

I guess when our impending US trip gets closer we can go down there and buy knick-knacks, tschotski's and assorted "souvenirs".

Thankyou for coming out with us old fuddy-duddies.

Today is a day for staying inside. 150kph wind gusts, horizontal rain, you name it. Bear weather.

The movie. It was funny in one of those shlock-horror movie ways.

Best line EVAR:
"What about the sheep?"
"Fuck the sheep!"
"I don't think we've got time, bro!"

So says the milk bottle.

Still good.

Pikachewbacca: (random "rarr" MSN message to wife)
Skwerlie: you have a one track mind
Pikachewbacca says:
it's got a pit lane for food, beer, work and other stuff

Oddly enough, bad swill like Stephenie Meyers gives me as much impetus to write as reading Banks, Mieville or others who have actual skill.

I finished Eclipse, the third in the Twilight series today.

I guess the thing which disturbs me most of all....aside from;
1) the fact a werewolf "imprints" on a 2 year old baby and fall in love with it (le vom)
2) the fact that Edward is a controlling psycho and Jacob a controlling bad boy psycho and Bella laps this creepy stalker domination up
3) the fact Bella falls in love with jacob (spoiler) the werewolf and discovers this after kissing him (this being after he kissed her against her will, something she described as "an assault") and then whines about...oh, like i give a fuck

Yeah, aside from the creepy pedo-themes and crazy bullshit teen girl emotional shit (which Meyers does very well) is this: Bella seems to "love" Edward only because he's hot "like a male model" etc (cue hyperbolic diamonds, amber, topaz descriptions).

Is that what Meyers is telling bazillions of teenage girls; it doesn't matter if your boyfriend is a creepy abusive psychopath, and it doesn't matter if you semi-cheat on him with some other bad boy biker hunk, as long as he's physically attractive? Oh, and rich like all vampires are.

I mean, wtf does Bella bring to the relationship (FOR ETERNITY)? Average looks, being immature (but everyone tells her she's older than her age; proof is lacking), cooking poorly, and gawping.

Edward brings being a domineerring ass, and hot alabaster pecs and smokin' eyes.

He can't fucking cook. His life skills extend to, well, being a vampire and disabling Bella's truck so she can't do whatever she wants (znot creepy!), he can't fix the tiles, change a lightbulb or bring home le bacon. He's ust a useless vapid pretty boy, and a fuckload of young tweenage girls are going to grow up and think that as long as their boyfriend is hot, it doesn't matter if he's a complete control freak dickass jerk. As long as he's hot and rich they can get away with self-flagellating guilt; forget having any life skills at all either of you, you can fucking get takeout. YOU ARE THAT FUCKING HOT!

BLAAARRRR!

This is Mills and Blecch romance.

Zomg, so I was like, totally bored at work today, and like, the fat fieldy loaned me this book. It was totally Stephenie Meyers Eclipse which is one of those sparkly vampire novels, duh-huhhhh. Yeah, and I was like, "this beats beating myself in the head with a pair of stilsons, so whatevs bitch gimme the pages!" LOL

Yeah, and like, totally the whole Edward thing. Totally creepy. Like, creepy to the max! I know that skwerlie and [Unknown LJ tag] had like, totally ragged on Meyers and the whole Twilight thing, and yeah, we all know that teen girl fic which gets teen girls all riled up is totally lame and shit and awful and tardbastardly but I was like, "You know, girlfriend *finger snaps* fuck it, this is a matter of mental life and death".

Until the bit where the werewolf totally like, you know, falls in love with his soulmate who is like, 2 years old.

NOT. CREEPY. AT. ALL.

Though, yeah you know, to be fair Meyers does take the piss where the werewolf's psychically linked packmate and on-again badboy off-again alternate love interest to Bella, Jake Black, rags on Bella in a totally unwholesome way about Edward's creepy domineering psycho-stalker relationship of ULTIMATE CONTROLLS! But then Bella is like, "Tee hee motherfuckers cause he sparkles. With diamonds. And shit."

Blecch. Excrable. Is all teen girl romance this lame and retch-making? I srsly was having mini-voms in the back of my throat at how Edward was so cold and hard and blah blah and he loves her so dearly and she's torn by the whole being a vampire thing but Rosalie is so cool, and she'd be immortal and he wants her to wait but then abducts her and has so much self control and whatevs.

And then Bella is riding around on a motorbike, and like, her dad is so worried and Edward is so worried, and then after like, 3 books, they finally fucking buy her a helmet and jacket and she's like "Yeah this was a good idea." and everyone was like "Yeah, duh, shoulda thunk of that before" and crap, and WTF YOU RETARDS?!?!

Probably not so worried about TEH_DETHFS if you're all planning to vampify your ass, but SRSL WTF.

FUUUCK!

Can you see how BORED TO DEATH I am? Sweet mother of fuck, can these rod monkeys not drill 40m a shift like the Ausquest drillers boasted they could do? WTF is with PQ? Srsly lamezors.

ZOMG I am bored. Bored. To. Death. 8m days where you have to - absolutely have to - sit at the rig for 10 hours, are the sucks.

*Brain dribbling out nose*

Its the correction we had to have! At last.

The Dow has been down 1.8% and 1.2% these past two trading sessions. Metals took a walloping last session, down 3-7%; gold down, oil down, US dollar down.

The green shoots seem to have been hit with a frost (an analogy I am sure the professional commentators will think up by themselves). And why not? Its not like this worldwide recession is going away. It just had a bit of an Indian summer here when our economy didn't contract two quarters in a row, saving us from technical recession. Housing data looks like its bottomed, the banks are putting up rates, which are typical signs of recovery. But consider that higher metals, gold and money prices here are going to stifle growth - of which there is pretty much zero - and you'll see why there has to be a correction.

So we'll have a bit of an infarction on the stock market the next week or four; down perhaps to 3400. There will be much gnashing of teeth.

Metals will be sold off. China is buying stockpiles, scrap, whatever it can get its hands on. Used rail from Russia etcetera. But this is stockpiling; look at the import/export data from China. They aren't making anything or selling anything to the USA or anywhere else. They are consuming less, especially in the domestic construction sector; you think our real estate market was overblown? Ha.

But the moment you see the CBA and NAB bump rates up you know the rate cutting cycle is essentially over. The bank stocks are therefore at their nadir; only way is up. The real estate forecasts are crap, and maybe the bubble won't burst (gasp!) for a while (till rates climb to 7-9% again by mid 2010). They have stayed profitable in the worst, and the worst is not exactly over, but its behind us.

Commercial property is also a good place to be - in the right REIT stock which isn't over-leveraged - because the moment the property market stabilises and the risk seems to go down, people will fly back in there. Yields in some are at 10% - and OS competitors are in at 5% yield or less. So the moment people get over the loss of Ruddbank, and the property markets stabilise a bit more and the economy begins actually growing, then this will see people fly back in.

Metals...leave them alone for at least a month.