Alternate characters are an interesting topic: controlling two avatars at once can be obscenely difficult with some games (in Halo, trying to drive a warthog with my feet on one controller while firing with my hands on a second….didn’t work out too well). In WoW, most tasks went one of three ways: either you killed the dude trying to kill you, he killed you instantly, or he killed you after a long battle and you came back and managed to kill him by pressing the right buttons at the right times. Controlling one character with any degree of control took skill, and two characters at once when each one required a different button to be pressed depending on the situation every 1.5 seconds was an experience in frustration. Not that I couldn’t get it to work, but it was just annoying.

Eve continues to set itself away from other MMOs with an almost reliance on alts. Living in a WH with only contracts to go on to work out market prices, or even living in nullsec or having a really low security rating nigh demands having alts that can check the market for you, and then there’s the matter of convenience.

When I just started mining, apparently I was so pathetic that no-one even bothered to steal from my can of veldspar. But as I progressed to mining barge, can flippers ceased to be someone to muse upon as a dude whined in local and started becoming a very irritating problem. I was wary to let one can or more float in space before I brought my hauler out, which was a pain, especially when I got killed by a battle badger while trying to re-ninja my ore.

Here’s the strategy I finally figured out: When someone flips you, dock immediately. get your hauler out, warp to the cans. Pick a celestial at random. maneuver your hauler so that the can is directly between you and the celestial. Engage warp without aligning. as your ship lines up with the planet or whatever, open your ninjaed can and make ready. Half a second before your ship reaches 75% speed, drag as much ore as you can into your cargo. The moment your ship hits 75%, it should shoot off like a rocket and you’ll have saved one hauler load of ore. Hide in a station for 15 minutes, come out, start mining in a different system.

After a few weeks of this I was fast running out of throat lozenges for after cursing at flippers and made an alt using the buddy system. My slim justification to myself that since the activation fee was 20 bucks, I’d only have to pay 4 extra bucks once to never have can flipping problems ever again. I started the alt, closed out of all the tutorials immediately and trained gallente industry V.

Suddenly, flippers were a thing of the past. Any ore I had mined went immidiately to the station with no loss in productivity, and Eve was fun again. The hauler account stayed with me, hauling for corp ops and regular ops, following me into nullsec and hauling there; then coming to WH space with me.

Having two accounts in eve is different from two accounts anywhere else because of the sheer utility of having two separate persona for you. One can scout for the other, rep for the other, mine for the other, shoot for the other, and with Eves auto-repeat managing both of them is fairly intuitive.

Awkwardly, I’ve accidentally left two alts in WHs we left and had to pod them both >.<

I think this topic has been covered by someone else already, but the psychological experience of an MMO is essentially obtaining what others don’t have. Whether it’s gold, ISK, a battleaxe bigger than yourself, a navy domi, faction fit mauraders or every single damn item in the game, everyone wants more than everyone else in order to say “look at me, I’m awesome”.

Since training an alt requires you to stop training on your main, this goes against the average MMOer instints of being better than everyone else, making the thought of stopping training on your main nigh unbearable. So, making an alt account is a pretty easy step for most committed players, which is why I now have an orca pilot, another WH goer has two hulk accounts and a third has two with a third still training.

Assuming you can either provide the 30 bucks a month or 600 mil a month, a second account will make your Eve experience significantly easier.

Oh, and the nullsec dude apparently multiboxes four hulks in his infinite ABC nullsec system.

Fly safe.

Fly safe.

Also, arguing with yourself in front of new guys in the corp channel is hilarious.

Ramiro Rivera Gomez, assassinated on December 20th

This just in from Rights Action:

A CANADIAN MINING COMPANY (Pacific Rim)
MAKING A KILLING
IN EL SALVADOR … AGAIN

December 23, 2009

On December 20th, Ramiro Rivera Gomez was assassinated. He was vice-president of the Comité Ambiental de Cabañas (Environmental Committee of Cabañas). Rights Action has funded their work in favor of community development and environmental justice, against harmful openpit, cyanide bonding gold mining.

See “The Real News” report on the death of Marcelo Rivera in El Salvador, an assassination linked to the struggle against the harmful interests of Pacific Rim Mining Corp.

WHAT TO DO

WRITE TO PACIFIC RIM ASKING THEM:

• To renounce all intents to mine gold in El Salvador
• To drop their “law suit” proceeding via the World Bank to sue El Salvador for “lost profits” at this controversial gold mine in El Salvador
• To accept the establishment of a fully independent, international commission to carry out a complete investigation into this and previous repression and killings related to their gold mining interests in El Salvador

PACIFIC RIM
Toll Free: 1-888-775-7097
Tel: (604) 689-1976
E-mail: general@pacrim-mining.com
#1050 – 625 Howe Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6C 2T6

After three years of planning, the Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC) has finally launched its certification system, which is desperately needed in the jewelry industry. Unfortunately, the proposed system falls short of meeting expectations for a number of valid reasons.

Though the RJC system is supposedly based on the Forest Stewardship Council program (FSC), they have failed to take the best parts of the FSC and incorporate them into their own system. For starters, the RJC system was not designed in the context of an open forum with input provided by various stakeholders. Additionally, the system was created and is being monitored by the industry itself rather than a third-party verification agency. This indeed has raised concern by Earthworks, an international nonprofit agency working to address issues around ‘dirty gold.’

Civil society groups also expressed concerns about the content of the mining standards being proposed by RJC, which they said would allow companies to operate mines in conflict zones, allow dumping of tailings waste into lakes and deeper ocean waters in protected areas, and provide limited or no control on emissions of toxic substances to the environment, according to Earthworks. That means that a company could be certified based on manufacturing by RJC, but that they would ignore the source of materials used.

In a press release, Silver Dragon Resources Inc. (OTCBB: SDRG) announced the termination of its previously announced definitive agreement to sell its 70% equity interest in the Erbahuo polymetallic project in China and its 70% ownership in the Chinese subsidiary, Chifeng Silver Dragon Resources & Technologies, Ltd.  In lieu of selling the mine, Silver Dragon will implement an alternative strategic plan which includes a 2010 listing on a major Canadian stock exchange.

Under the original signed definitive agreement the Chinese investor committed to pay Silver Dragon a deposit of RMB 1.8 million, or ~US$260,000 within three business days after signing the definitive agreement, with the balance of RMB 4.2 million, or ~US$622,000 due upon Chinese Ministry of Commerce approval. 

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Diggin' for stuff.

Excerpt from: THE PROPHET, a play in process.

(Night Court, JUDGE, AL JONES & Mr. GREENE & Mr. BROWNE,  farmers). 

JUDGE:  Mr. Jones, you stand accused of being a disorderly person and an impostor.  How do you plead?

AL:  Not guilty, your honor.

JUDGE:  Did this man come to your farm and promise to find gold, Mr. Greene?

GREENE: Yes, your honor, he did.

JUDGE:  How about you, Mr. Browne?

BROWNE:  That’s what the rascal claimed.

AL:  I did, your honor.  I never denied it.

JUDGE:  Defendant will remain silent ‘less addressed di-rectly by the court.

AL:  Yes, sir.

JUDGE: How did defendant say he could find the gold, Mr. Greene?

GREENE:  He looks through a magic stone to find it.

BROWNE: You see, your honor?  See how foolish?  Nobody in his right mind would believe such a thing!

JUDGE:  Order, Mr. Browne. You let him do it, so you must have believed it, if  for just a moment. Mr. Jones, do you look through a magic stone?

AL:  I don’t use the stone anymore, your honor. It hurts my eyes.

JUDGE:  He says it hurts his eyes. What kind of stone was it?

BROWNE:  Just this plain old black rock, your honor.  I thought it should be a diamond, at least.

JUDGE:  I warned you, Mr. Browne. You’ll have your turn to speak.

BROWNE:  Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.

JUDGE:  What kind of stone did you say it was, Mr. Jones?

AL:  A sorcerer’s stone, your honor. It’s not here, or I’d show it to you.

JUDGE:  It sounds remarkable.

AL:  It is, sir.

JUDGE:  Did either of you two gents see any result from it?

BROWNE:  Not at all, your honor. I knew it was a fraud the minute he said it.  How can you find gold by looking at a plain old black rock?

GREENE:  Your honor, this man looked in three places on my farm: two old hills and a salt spring. He said one treasure was five feet down beside this old stump and there was a tail-feather buried with it. Well, we dug down and found that feather – he found the feather – but we didn’t find no gold, because it moved on down, he said.

JUDGE:  “Moved on down,” was it?

GREENE:  Yes, sir.  It kept sinking deeper and deeper, slipping away from us.

BROWNE:  Sure it did. 

AL:  Excuse me, your honor.  That will happen with haunted treasures.

JUDGE:  “Haunted,” you say?

AL:  Yes, sir. Treasures are buried by men in all manner of strange circumstance. I know one that was fought over by two savages what put it down. One killed the other and throwed him in beside the treasure. The murdered spirit still haunts that hoard and won’t let anybody near it. If you dig for it, it just keeps slipping farther and farther down, faster and faster, and you can’t catch up!

JUDGE:  Doesn’t sound reasonable.

BROWNE:  Ha!  (Draws JUDGE’s frown) Sorry, your honor.

JUDGE:  What was it you heard again, Mr. Greene?

GREENE:  I heard the spade clunk on the old wooden chest, your honor, but you couldn’t dig fast or far enough to catch up with it.

JUDGE:  That happen to you too, Mr. Browne?

BROWNE:  I don’t know about clunks, your honor. All I know, I paid for “certain” digging operations and have got no satisfaction, and only thing “certain” is holes and this man owes me money!

JUDGE:  What have you got to say to all this, Mr. Jones?

AL: Your honor, if I found money, I would give this farmer some money. That was our arrangement. But I didn’t find nothing, so why would I owe him?

BROWNE:  Because there never was nothing to find, you swindler!

JUDGE:  Order, goddammit, Mr. Browne! You was saying, Mr. Greene?

GREENE:  I heard the clunk, your honor. On the end of Albert’s spade, but it just kept slipping down…

BROWNE:   “End of Albert’s spade,” your honor! That says somethin’, don’t it?

JUDGE:  I’ll fine you a hunnerd dollars, if you don’t shut up, Mr. Browne!  (Mr. BROWNE shuts up). You was saying, Mr. Greene?

GREENE:  If I get more men and we all dig faster yet, I bet we could catch right up with it, and we’d all be richer than Croesus!

JUDGE:  If he said there was gold and there ain’t any gold, you was flimflammed, sir.

AL:  Your honor, I told him I could find a “certain” treasure. I didn’t say nothing about gold.

GREENE:  “Three treasures,” you said.

AL:  …and I found them, your honor, but the spirits protected them – as will happen, as previously noted – and I told these gentlemen beforehand that that might happen.

JUDGE:  Is this true?

GREENE:  Yes, sir, it is. He told me right off it might all go to bird poop in the end.

JUDGE: Same with you, Mr. Browne?

BROWNE:  Well, yes sir, but he said we’d all get “certain” rich and…

JUDGE:  Then I see no reason to award any money to anyone. There ain’t nothing “certain” in this life, Mr. Browne, but death, taxes, and my judgments. You’re  old enough to know that and be able to protect yourself from silly business, or should be! However, I do find the defendant guilty of disorderly conduct, because he agitated his employers, made people angry, wasted the court’s time, and irritated the hell out of me. Defendant is fined $2. Anything to say before sentence is carried out, Mr. Jones?

AL:  Your honor, I didn’t waste the court’s time. I didn’t bring this case.

JUDGE:  If I could fine you for being a smarty-aleck, I would. You are also accused of being an impostor.

AL:  Please, your honor, how have I been an “impostor?”

JUDGE:  You lead folks to believe you are a wizard by reason of this so-called seer stone and possession of the sight. Do you really have those things, Mr. Jones? Aren’t you just a carnival pitchman, a cheap snake oil salesman? Maybe even a bunko artiste?

AL:  I have the sight, your honor, yes, and I can see in the stone from time to time, but I am no wizard and I never claimed so. I’m just a humble ordinary man, so I can’t always be right, but the parts that are right come from God.

BROWNE:  Now he claims to be talking to God! (JUDGE bangs gavel).

JUDGE:  Did he claim to be a wizard, Mr. Browne?

BROWNE:  Well, he said he had the seer stone…

JUDGE:  Enough. There’s so much confusion and bad feeling here, I’m going to go ahead and declare defendant guilty of being an impostor too. You did give the distinct impression that you are a wizard, Mr. Jones, and made no attempt to correct the misunderstanding.

AL:  I didn’t know there was a misunderstanding, your honor.

JUDGE:  Do you really mean to argue with me, Mr. Jones?

AL:   No, sir.

JUDGE:  Then herewith, court fines you one additional dollar.

AL:  Yes, your honor.

JUDGE:   I also order you to cease and desist treasure hunting and stone staring, for fun, or profit, and to entice no more good citizens of this county to go digging with you anywhere for anything.

GREENE:  You mean we can’t go digging for gold anymore, your honor?

JUDGE:  You may dig clear to China for anything you want, sir, but Mr. Jones can’t pretend to tell you where to set your spade, or lift a finger to help. Court is adjourned! (Bangs gavel).

BROWNE:  Yippee! Jones is out of business!

GREENE:   Oh, no, I’m ruined! I mortgaged my farm to pay for his digging! I’m stone-broke!

BROWNE:  At least, Jones won’t be foolin’ no more stupid people!

(Mr. GREENE assaults Mr. BROWNE.)

 THE END

Editor’s Note: Mr. Jones went on to become the founder and first leader of a major international religion, but never used seer stones again.

Whitman Mission model.

The father.

Let me just start this with a phrase I’ve always, always wanted to use but could never achieve the correct context:

I effing called it.

As of Dominion, WH mining is no longer the best mining profitable task, having been completely outstripped by nullsec mining. For the chain of logic that lead to this conclusion, look no further than the following paragraphs:

I was sitting in a WH belt, mining and thinking about how much I love mining in WHs, when I saw probes on the directional. Entering a professional state of panic, I told my ship to warp to PoS and waited the agonizing seven seconds before my 200 mil ship was safe, all the while asking if the probes were ours or someone trying to kill us for the fun of it.

The probes weren’t ours, so you can imagine my surprise when I wasn’t trapped in a bubble on my way to the PoS; and the greater surprise I had when the pilot convoed me to say hi and not “Grrr, Grrr, you win this time, but we will have your very expensive ship for our killboards. Arrrrgh” or whatever pirates say. Apparently, through some act forgotten to me and him, our respective corporations had set each other to blue, which was strange, as his corporation was a nullsec habiter and we were a highsec mining corp. He revealed himself as an old WH miner that left the WH for nullsec come Dominion, with good reason, so he said. He invited me for a look around his nullsec, as his alliance and all nearby alliances were NBDS. Immediately suspicious, I took my sister gear off my covops, slapped on a normal scanner and flew after him. After flying past an impressive warp bubble on a gate:We made it to his alliance’s industry V system, and he excused himself while I scanned out some gravs. The small ones were easy to get too, and contained about 80k of ABC ores, and the large ones were slippery, but similarly had a goodly amount of ABC ores and some BS wrecks, one of which I found a survey scanner on, one of the items we never seem to have in the wormhole.

The dude explained to me that the belts would refresh themselves about every 36 hours, and were able to support thirty hulks with orca and rorqual bonuses happily, aside from some hostile stealth bombers who liked to AFK in system.

The feeling I was experiencing at this moment was akin to beating your head against a brick wall when suddenly someone walks up and points out a Styrofoam wall a few feet to your left. That… dispenses candy or something when you beat your head against it. This nullsec system had cyno jammers up for five systems in any direction, local chat, an intel channel to point out threats five jumps before they came near, and most mortifying of all, a station where the ABCs that in the WH we had been carefully compressing and hauling slowly to Jita, were being refined at a 4% tax w/ a 100% yield.

In Apoc, the WH was king. It seems that the WH has been king for too long, and I have heard from CCP from somewhere that “We never intended to have long-term habilitation in wormholes”, which would probably explain why grav sites stop appearing in our WHs after a week and a half, and why we can’t set up moon miners.

If CCP wants to shift focus from WH mining to nullsec mining, that’s fine. I mean, Apoc made WHs king, now Dominion comes along with vast changes to nullsec, they’re gonna want attention to nullsec more, and better belts seems the best way to do it. It just seems ta me that they overdid it just a tad. Unless a nigh-infinite source of every conceivable ore type next to a perfect refiner seems reasonable to someone out there?

(Actually, the dude told me that they don’t have enough tritanium for their manufacturing, so they’ve been jump freightering it in. I kid you not)

Similarly heard from the dude, CCP made the belts overly rich because they expected the changes in sovereignty to make everyone and his dog start fighting bloodily over every square mile of space-dust. Since in actuality, the big alliances are consolidating their space to conserve cash and there really being no reason to expand, there’s much, much less fighting than expected, the market is going/already has been flooded w/ lowsec minerals, ecetera. I really hope that CCP makes a few small tweaks to these gravs before WH turns into the equivalent of mining veldspar in lowsec with local minimized, one jump from highsec.

Also, the dude explained to me how to use that newfangled sovereignty button for something other than remembering how to spell sovereignty, and it’s pretty detailed on every concivable system, but it is odd that there’s been seven ships and one pod destroyed in my wormhole’s “region”, whatever that is.

No drill results? No worries. Good geology, good management, a good cash position and a good stock price are good enough to coax renowned exploration analyst (and geologist) Brent Cook into buying junior prospect generators and explorers. He finds his sweet spot being near the top of the batting order. If he waits for drill results to confirm what he expects them to reveal, he may miss the best time to buy. With year-over-year returns on his Exploration Insights portfolio averaging 80%—and one superstar at 10 times that!—Brent’s clearly hit a few homers with his strategy. But in this exclusive interview, he cautions Gold Report readers against believing everything you read and hear. He says, “It’s really, really critical to evaluate what a company’s telling you.”When we chatted in August, you were looking at a gold price in the $900 neighborhood, indicating that fear of another financial disaster was driving gold prices. Since then, gold broke through $1,200 and has now corrected down to about $1,120. Is fear still the driving factor or has the dynamic changed?

The Gold Report: When we chatted in August, you were looking at a gold price in the $900 neighborhood, indicating that fear of another financial disaster was driving gold prices. Since then, gold broke through $1,200 and has now corrected down to about $1,120. Is fear still the driving factor or has the dynamic changed?

Brent Cook: I was probably wrong in my assessment at the time. I didn’t take into account the amount of liquidity—money being pumped into the system. I think what is driving gold now and drove it up through $1,200 is greed much more than fear. In my view, gold has become part of the global asset bubble—which includes foreign real estate, stock markets and base metals. So it’s actually greed that’s been driving gold, at least over the past few months.

TGR: How long can greed support a rally?

BC: It’s all tied to the dollar carry trade and the irrational actions of the crowds. You can borrow U.S. dollars at essentially negative rates and invest it in any other asset. Fund managers and bankers are just piling into whatever is hot, and that includes gold. The problem is that new participants in the gold market really don’t view gold as an alternative to the U.S. dollar and don’t fear fiat currencies as many of us do. They don’t believe gold is money; it’s just another asset to pile into with the crowd.

I am concerned about what happens if the dollar carry trade gets reversed and/or if the Fed jacks up interest rates. Then we’d see gold come crashing down and maybe the market as well. Except for the U.S. dollar, this has been an extremely positive year for almost anyone investing in the markets.

TGR: So you’re looking at the asset managers piling into gold as the “flavor of the month” lately. Would the Fed have to raise interest rates for asset mangers to tire of gold and just dump it on the market?

BC: Yes, and that—basically the carry trade unraveling—could really put a damper on the gold market. If economies really are on the mend, interest rates will go up. It’s happening already in Australia.

TGR: But once interest rates rise, that’s going to be the signal that inflation is starting, and gold is a good asset to hold in inflationary periods. So are you thinking the gold price is just coming down temporarily? Or is it a viable long-term investment?

BC: Tough question. I don’t necessarily buy the line that rising interest rates mean rising inflation and therefore a rising gold price. We have seen gold’s most dramatic rise in the face of falling interest rates and it may be a bit too optimistic to assume it goes up when the opposite happens. So, in the short term—coming into the first half of 2010—I believe we have a bubble in gold and other hard assets that could very well pop. Long term, given the amount of money being created by the government and pumped into the system, I think we’re looking at an inflationary period in which gold could at least hold its value relative to the dollar, at least after the short-term players move on. So looking at two or three years down the road, I do believe gold will serve as a good investment.

Honestly though, I don’t know what the gold price is going to do next year. But that doesn’t really affect my investment strategy that much. I prefer to focus on things I do know and base investments on those while letting others debate about the direction of the gold price. So I do know that the major mining companies are unable to replace the gold they’re producing. Knowing that, all I have to do is find the junior exploration companies that are set to discover the deposits that the majors need to replace their reserves and production.

TGR: With gold at $900, $1,000 or $1,200, would we see a lot of junior companies that really don’t have viable projects get financed along with the ones that do?

BC: Yes, definitely. The market is indiscriminate and mostly run by people that can’t differentiate between a good and bad gold property. Minerals exploration is a very tough business to understand, because you’re dealing as much with information that you don’t know as you do know. It’s all subjective interpretations. No one really knows the geological setting beneath a particular project or what its economics will be. So lots of money will go into worthless exploration projects, for sure. That’s a real danger. Something like 1,600 junior exploration companies are listed in Canada alone. I can guarantee you that not even 1% of them will find viable deposits.

TGR: Do you just use your smarts as a geologist to identify companies, or do you diversify across the whole range, expecting some to find nothing, some to find something, and some to hit home runs?

BC: Other people may have strategies to buy everything and talk about the ones that work. I am very focused in what I buy for the Exploration Insights portfolio. I have about 14 companies now, and I’ll never have more than 20. Of the 14, nine are true exploration companies with projects scattered across the world, mostly looking for gold deposits. I distilled that group down from approximately 200 that I actually looked at in detail. So I am very focused on a small number of companies whose projects and people I know very well; for me, that’s the way to play this game.

TGR: And your portfolio has done quite well this year.

BC: We’re up on the order of 80%. Early in the year I dumped a couple of losers and that hurt because they came back. It was a bad time to be dumping things but I didn’t see how they were going to raise money to stay in business at the time. But overall we’ve done quite well. We have one that’s up 600%. What’s probably more important, though, is that since I started the portfolio—which takes in two and a half years of stock-picking and the disaster that 2008 was—we’re still up a decent amount.

TGR: Impressive.

BC: I think it has to do with selectivity. Certainly, we’ve had some companies that failed to find what we were hoping for, but those have been in the minority.

TGR: Of the companies that have been in and out of your portfolio, what percentage just haven’t produced—didn’t get to the find that you were expecting? And how about those that surprised you to the upside, really producing and coming up with even more than you expected?

BC: Probably 20% failed to find what they were looking for, whether a diamond deposit or a gold deposit. Another 50% probably have done reasonably well, and the remaining 30% have done really well. We have stocks that are up 150%, 250% and, as I say, 600%. That’s based on legitimate good work, good progress in delineating, defining and expanding the mineralization they’ve encountered.

TGR: Considering some incredible run-ups we’ve seen in 2009, as you look into 2010, do you anticipate opportunities for more of those the triple-digit increases?

BC: Definitely. A huge amount of money’s been pumped into the exploration sector, and some of it’s being spent on good projects. The real opportunity lies in finding the few companies out there with good projects and finding them early. I go out and look at projects when they first pick them up, when they do the initial soil and trench sampling and initial drill results. That’s the sweet spot for me.

The rest of the market needs more drill holes and such to make an assessment. But if I can get in early, that’s the place to be, and I think we’re going to see a number of those opportunities over the course 2010. In fact, I know it. There are things I looked at in Colombia and Mexico, and although I am not buying them right now, I know the geology and I know the concept. If the results confirm what they think is there, I’ll have a distinct advantage in buying in before the rest of the market understands what it means.

TGR: Can you give us an overview of what you saw on your trip to Colombia?

BC: Colombia is El Dorado. That’s where a lot of the Inca civilization’s gold came from. The geologic setting and evolution has been such that gold precipitated in the rocks in any number of geologic environments. Some recent major discoveries have been in the range of 10 million, 12 million, 13 million ounces. There’s gold in epithermal environments, mesothermal, porphyries—you name it; there’s gold. There are literally hundreds of gold prospects there, and I have no doubt there will be more major discoveries.

TGR: Aside from the attractive geology, doesn’t Colombia have a reputation as a rather scary place to be?

BC: The country’s come around; I just published a 14-page letter on the country and many of the companies working there. At one time, it was too dangerous to work there. On this trip, I drove out into the countryside on dirt roads and paved roads and went walking around at night in Medellín, and had no issues. It’s really improved dramatically over the past four or five years. The homicide rate is down 45% and kidnappings 85%. Not to say it’s not still dangerous; you’ve got to keep your head about you because there are still certain places in Colombia you wouldn’t go. But I think we’re seeing a country open up that hasn’t really been explored for decades.

TGR: As you execute your investment strategy, you check out the business, you kick the rocks, you find some really good prospects, you identify the projects even before they’re putting out drill results. Then what? Do you wait for the assays before investing?

BC: Oh, I much prefer to get in before the initial drill results, and then have those results confirm my thinking. Sometimes we buy a company before I can get to the rocks just because it’s run by very intelligent, geologic people with good business sense at the right price.

TGR: So you’ll buy based on management quality, track records and so on?

BC: Of course.

TGR: How do you determine if the price is right with no drill results?

BC: It comes down to the business strategy. I like prospect generators, companies with smart geologists who generate ideas and concepts that they can then joint-venture out to a company with the cash to take on the high risk and expense of actually drilling the property. That way, my position in the company is not diluted through equity financings, and I get a shot at many more possible discoveries with an intelligent group. Probably three or four companies in the portfolio fall into that category.

TGR: You’ve described yourself as fairly conservative, but you’re going after junior miners before drill results are produced, which seems highly risky. How do you reconcile that?

BC: The selectivity helps a lot. By not getting too scattered around this investment sector, I can avoid most of the disasters. Yes, I have had some disasters, but I’ve managed to avoid most of the bogus companies with inadequate or unimportant mineral showings. That’s one way. Also, the portfolio is hedged to some degree. We buy companies that are selling at or below their net asset value, usually cash, and are run by intelligent business people. If the market crashes they are in an ideal situation to employ their cash.

PhosCan Chemical Corp. (TSX:FOS) is one of those companies, and in fact it’s still selling for less than money in the bank and has essentially gone nowhere since we bought it. It has $69 million in the bank, and its market cap is somewhat less than that. They own a major phosphate project in Ontario that we should see a bankable feasibility study on soon. Until the phosphate market comes back it costs them nothing, you own it for free, and they are in a position to use their cash when intelligent opportunities come around.

Same is true of Altius Minerals Corporation (TSX-V:ALS). So, within the portfolio, those types of companies are sort of the hedge against things going wrong. Altius is now selling for a more than cash and liquid assets in the bank, but you’re still getting smart people doing smart things. Altius has gone up recently because of its investment in IRC— International Royalty Corporation (NYSE/AMEX:ROY), which is being taken over by Franco Nevada Corp. (FNV.TO) or Royal Gold Inc. (TSX:RGL, Nasdaq:RGLD). Altius owned about 9% of IRC at $3.50 and are receiving about $7.45, so they’re making good money on that trade.

TGR: You said that probably three or four companies in your portfolio are prospect generators. Would you highlight those for us?

BC: Sure. Altius is an obvious one, and I’ve already talked about it. We’ve had that for quite a while—smart people doing smart things. Altius explores; they do intelligent investments; they bring smart ideas to the table. AuEx Ventures Inc. (TSX:XAU)—another company active in Nevada, Argentina and Spain with a number of joint ventures and its flagship Long Canyon Project, a gold discovery in Nevada, with partner, Fronteer Development Group (TSX:FRG) (NYSE.A:FRG). Eurasian Minerals Inc. (TSX-V:EMX), another company I’ve been in quite a while, and is executing its business strategy all over the world.

TGR: Is that it?

BC: I guess the last one I’ll mention would be Mirasol Resources Ltd. (TSX-V:MRZ), which is active in Patagonia and Chile. What pushed me over this line to add this to the portfolio was the geology and surface results I was seeing on their joint venture project with Coeur d’Alene Mines Corporation (NYSE:CDE) on the Joaquin properties in Patagonia early this year. A couple of weeks ago they drilled a hole, 25 meters of 1,600 grams per ton silver. That’s over a kilo silver over 25 meters that really took the stock up. I’m watching carefully for what happens on trend from this drill hole. If they can duplicate those results with a 50- to 100-meter step-out, this is a significant discovery.

TGR: And you’re happy with all these companies you just mentioned?

BC: Absolutely. They have all done well; all up 100% to 600% since we bought them.

TGR: That’s a nice return. That’s over what timeframe?

BC: That’s just for this year, and we’ve done it with very minimal risk. Although these companies have raised money, it has been at much higher prices than we bought in at so we have not been overly diluted because of it.

TGR: You’ve said that you’re basically buying these companies before the drill results come out because that’s where you feel the real opportunity is. How does an investor begin to evaluate an opportunity pre-drill hole?

BC: What a good prospect looks like before a drill hole? Unfortunately, this isn’t really something that most laypersons understand, but the geologic target or concept that the company puts forward has to make sense. Assuming you understand the context of the drill hole or surface samples, you can start to make sense of it and get a feel for what’s going on. The company’s method of testing it has to be intelligent, and they have to know when to quit. If they don’t reach a goal, or don’t see what they need to see, they stop and pull out right then. Too many companies continue with projects and spend millions of dollars exploring them when obviously the data shows there’s nothing there of economic interest anyway. This is where most investors lose most of their money.

But in the earlier stage, it’s all conceptual, and every geologist out there will tell you the property has the potential to be the next big thing—but the fact is, it doesn’t.

TGR: But you’re a geologist, too. What do you know about geology that those others don’t?

BC: A lot of geologists in the private sector certainly know a lot more about certain projects and types of deposits than I do. Probably the number one difference is that my money is directly at stake. I’ve been in this business for 30 years now, and I’ve been consulting to major mining companies, banks, government-owned mining companies, that sort of thing. I’ve just seen so many different properties in over 60 countries and been in on everything from the very early stage to the actual mining that I’ve developed a good sense of what makes sense and what doesn’t. It’s just the experience I’ve gained. This is what I do. That’s not saying that I think I know everything or am more of an expert than anyone else. But you would no more give me a knife and a scalpel than send a doctor into the jungle to look for gold.

TGR: So you bring a practicality to the geology excitement.

BC: I think so. I’m focused on turning the rocks into money. Being a geologist is a great job if you enjoy the outdoors, but to be in the exploration business, geologists have to be optimistic by nature and believe that this next property is going to be the big one. If they didn’t believe that, they couldn’t go to work in the morning. And the reward if they do find the big one—both financially and from a personal standpoint—is great.

TGR: Other than the prospect generators, what sorts of other companies do you keep in your portfolio?

BC: We do go after companies that are actually drilling and exploring, too, and that’s based on what I see as a good risk-to-reward. These are higher risk, but it’s worth the risk if I see the potential for a major discovery, something that a large mining company will buy. It’s all price-sensitive, of course, and dependent on the market cap.

For instance, we put San Gold Corporation (TSX-V:SGR) in the portfolio about a year and a half ago. We bought a small miner—it’s getting larger—for the exploration potential. Over the past year or so, they’ve shown that their geologic concepts work and they’re finding more high-grade veins in the district that they control. San Gold’s certainly not a prospect generator; it’s an exploration company with a small mine. The exploration has been going well, they pulled 2.5 meters of more than 1,000 grams gold recently. That was a good hole.

TGR: Any other examples?

BC: There is a platinum-palladium explorer that I don’t want to name right now. We bought in early and took profits on half the position at about a double. We are left with a nearly free position and still a chance at a 10-bagger. I am hoping the stock backs off some so we can do it again.

That’s the sort of things I like to get into as well. But, again, it has to be something with the potential for a major discovery. I am not interested in small mines at all.

TGR: But you said San Gold has a small mine.

BC: It was the exploration potential that I bought into, not the mine—which I am looking at as getting bigger. When I went up there, I walked the ground and could see parallel structures that should amount to a lot more gold on the property. That turned out to be the case.

TGR: So you still see some upside potential on it?

BC: Yes, depending on the gold price. Keep in mind that everything I’m saying here is based on the context of $1,100 gold.

TGR: Are there any new up-and-coming projects that intrigue you?

BC: Lots of them. I spend half the year on the road looking at the properties. Nine times out of 10, I come back without buying anything, but I see things intriguing enough to keep watch on. If the results seem to confirm what might be there, I’ll certainly add it to the portfolio. I’m obviously not going to talk about those stocks now, but I have my eye on a number of them.

Another one is Kiska Metals Corp. (TSX-V:KSK). Kiska is the result of a merger of Rimfire Minerals Corporation and Geoinformatics Exploration Inc. (TSX-V:GXL). I’d visited Geoinformatics’ Whistler gold-copper porphyry project in Alaska. Quite honestly, it’s too small for at this time to be worth a lot of money, but it’s part of a series of similar intrusive mineralized systems that have never been tested before. Next year they will test a number of other targets that we don’t know much about yet. But certainly they’re highly prospective, and this is a company I’m watching very closely. I’ll give you one that I own: Lara Exploration Ltd. (TSX-V:LRA). It’s a prospect generator run by Miles Thompson. I’ve known Miles since we were involved with the World Bank valuation of CVRD (NYSE:RIO) in Brazil when it was privatized. He’s done some very intelligent joint ventures in Brazil, Venezuela and Peru, and he recently acquired Maxy Gold Corp. (TSXV:MXD), a company with assets in China and Peru.

TGR: Any other insights you would like to give to our investors to wrap it up?

BC: I think next year’s going to be good on the exploration side of things if you’re in the right companies, the ones that are actually working on developing legitimate and viable deposits. I think it’s really, really critical to evaluate what a company’s telling you, and make sure they can back it up with hard data. That’s probably the most important thing in the junior exploration sector. And again, you’re all welcome to three free reports on my website that discuss geologists, drill holes and resource estimates.

Brent Cook brings 30 years’ worth of experience to his role as geologist, consultant, investment adviser and newsletter editor. His knowledge spans all areas of the mining business from the conceptual stage through to detailed technical and financial modeling related to mine development and production. His hallmarks include applying rigorous factual analysis to the projects and companies he examines. Spending six months a year on the road doing on-site field evaluations to augment his analyses, he has worked in more than 60 countries on virtually every mineral deposit type. Brent’s weekly Exploration Insights newsletter focuses on early-discovery, high-reward opportunities primarily among junior mining and exploration companies. Paul van Eeden, who produced Exploration Insights’ predecessor publication, claims Brent “has always been my primary source of information and intelligence with respect to mineral exploration investments.”

Article published courtesy of The Gold Report – www.theaureport.com.

In a press release, Silver Dragon Resources Inc. (OTCBB: SDRG) announced the closing of a private placement consisting of 3,739,198 units in the Company at a price of US$.28 per unit, for gross proceeds of US$1,046,976. Each unit is comprised of one restricted common share and one common share purchase warrant. Each warrant entitles the holder to purchase one common share of the Company at an exercise price of US$.50 per at any time within one year from the date of issuance.

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In a press release, Avanti Mining Inc. (TSX-V: AVT) announced that Resource Capital Fund has voluntarily exercised 12,221,019 warrants that do not expire until November 5, 2013 at an exercise price of $0.216 for proceeds to Avanti of $2,639,740. Use of proceeds will be for permitting applications and general corporate purposes.

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Runescape was a very fun game were i met some good friends, I started my first acount in 2005, when my friends told about it, it was my first MMORPG. I didn’t know what to do when i first logged on, the world was just… big. Once out of tutorial island, my friends helped me and gave me some money, the first thing i did was woodcutting, I sold all wood i had to the general shop, a thing i would later regret, so when i heard players would pay 80x the price of the general shop I was shocked, when I tought “this is getting boring” I moved to mining, I leveled up quickly and got 99 mining,but i still had a money shortage, so i began reading guides about how to earn money quickly, when they said there is no real quick wasy to earn money in the free world, i bought a Runescape Membership Card – 90 Days, the member world was great, there were more skills i could practice and also a bigger world to eplore. When i trained some more skills up to 99 it became boring, and i stopped with it.

Don’t know what Runescape is?
It’s a MMORPG set in the Middle Ages, where mythical creatures along with humans reign. There are 24 skills, such as fishing and mining. There are 99 levels for all skills, if you want to level up you need to do the thing related to the skill, for example you need to catch fish if you want to advance in fishing. Of course how higher the level the more you need to catch. I will post some ways to earn money later.

This week politicians were unable to come to a decision that could lead to climate change. This failure, according to Christian Aid, means the number of people a year currently dying as a result of climate change (300,000) will increase.

And according to Lord Stern’s report, a temperature increase by 3c could bring hunger to 550 million people, could cause flooding in London, New York, the Netherlands and Bangladesh, and could cause the extinction of half the world’s plant and animal species.

But while richer countries are unable to make a commitment to do what is right, developing countries, which historically were pushed to industrialise to improve their economy, are finding their way alone.

Take inspiration from a village in Gabon, known as ‘the nature village’ just a decade after it was transporting manganese ore for a mining country.

The story of Bakoumba, told in this month’s edition of Geographical magazine, explains how mining company Comilog decided not to abandon those who had worked so diligently for them when technology meant their role in transportation had come to an end. Instead it turned the areas into an eco-tourism safari park, complete with pig and fish farming, and the opportunity to spot leopards, buffalo, and the variety of monkeys.

One of the nicest examples of recycling was its reuse of cable used to transport the ore into a 365-metre long hanging bridge high above the forest where guests (example itinerary) can easily spot a range of primates.

French speakers can access www.sodepal.com for more information.

When I first started Eve, after struggling through the tutorial, giving up halfway through, getting lost twice, losing a cruiser in nullsec, lowsec and to some very prepared rats with a warp scrambler(Still have no idea how that happened), I started mining in, in order, rookie ship, navitas, two navitas’, an exequror, a brutix, a retriever, a covetor, a borrowed mawkinaw and my first hulk, followed soon after by my second, third, fourth and fifth hulk.

With highsec mining, you can practically fall asleep at the laser with no problems (Only practically, lost hulk #3 that way), and with WH mining you need to constantly be aware, but with good returns promised. Grinding level one missions, however, is the most annoying thing I’ve done in Eve since I got into an argument with some Dead Terrorist gate campers on whether or not they were simply stargazing. After they blew up my industrial

“We thought it was a comet about to hit us and took preemptive measures”

With what I would laughably call my combat alt, a month old character able to fly up to Caldari BS and baseline missile skills, L1 missions have that special combination of arduousness and simplicity that leaves me irritated out of my mind. This ironically coming from the person who mines for five hours straight often and doesn’t complain about the monotony.

Even with my inhuman tolerance for boredom, these things are irritating. My alt is compitent enough that her caracal eliminates frigate threats before they even know they’re threats, which was fun for the first ten-odd missions, but every other mission, the frigates take three to four missiles before they’re blown ta smithereens, and when you can’t tell which kind of frigate is going to take three missiles, I usually assign two assault launchers to my first two targets and a heavy missile launcher n target painter to the third and hope my missile find some sort of exhaust port.

And, even with the mission type I’m running (Internal security), I’ll eventually get chain missions with courier requirements, which are similarly samey while different enough it takes conscious thought to work out where to go.

Here’s my problem: with mining, you can unfocus your brain to the point that every three minutes, you drag the ore to the can then unfocus your brain again, hence the name “miningzen”. WH mining isn’t too different. You click the mouse every ten seconds, if your directional doesn’t scream at you, you get to live another ten seconds. The excitement and terror wears off about three days after your last ganking encounter and it’s back to monotonous clicking over and over.

With l1 missions, you have to click the mouse all over the place, finding where to go for the mission, who to shoot/not shoot/look at until you get a complete flashy journal, warp back, ask for a new mission. It’s so mind-numbingly boring while at the same time requiring enough thought that I can’t fall into a stupor while doing it.

While missions are the way they are, I’m afraid to ask CCP to change them or for people to rally behind me for more excitement, since if I do they’ll probably make mining more exciting in a completely horrible way, like make you keep your ship pointed at the asteroid or something silly. What I’m asking from the missioners who read this blog to laugh at miners or for something to do as their t2 fitted domi’s slice through L4 missions, is what Caldari ship n fit should I be using to make this task easier? I’m currently running w/ 4 assault launchers w/ random missiles, one heavy missile launcher, two ballistic controls, a medium shield booster, target painter and afterburner. Suggestions?

P.S. Anyone else find it silly that “prototype exploration ship”, the Zephyr, is one of the ship types acceptable for combat missions?

Fly to the warp-point and wait for your serpantis contact to show up.

Went to Peru in September and saw some amazing wildlife in the Amazon River Basin. But will the Rio Madre De Dios survive humans. The Washington Post talks about the dangers of nearby strip mining to the environment.

Our guide told us about how these people are desperate for work and looking to earn money. The men leave their families and live in rough camps. They live in bunks and go out on the River for long periods of time to try and find gold.

They trade the gold in the town of Puerto Maldanado. Here’s the stores in the town.

With all this talk about the Copenhagen Climate control talks, this is why the most developed countries must give money to poorer nations with valuable areas to preserve in order to maintain the rain forests.

As befits the weekend before Christmas, we attended two parties, one in a West Vancouver and one in Whistler.  Both were well-stocked with people working in the mining industry.  The short story that received the most votes for capturing the feeling of the current times was this one:

Have you hear about the pessimist, the optimist, and the miner?  They all walked into the bar.  On the counter was a half-empty glass of beer.  The pessimist bemoaned the half-empty glass and the lack of a complete serving.  The pessimist happily praised the glass for having good beer to drink.  The miner called for a small glass, poured the contents of the half-full glass into the small glass and loudly proclaimed: “Now we all have a full glass.”

Like all stories that make the rounds, this probably started life in a Roman legion’s camp on the eve of an invasion of Gaul.  No matter, the party-assembled miners liked it and stated that that is the way they feel.  It snowed in Whistler and that seemed like a full glass.  It rained in Vancouver and that was decidedly a full glass, for while snow is beautiful, in Vancouver it is disruptive. 

We trust you had a good celebratory weekend and have a short work-week runup to a long weekend.  And here are  links to two sites with mining  jokes:

• Coal Mining Jokes
• Mining Jokes

It is with heavy hearts that we report the assassination of Ramiro Rivera yesterday in Cabanas.  Though we have few details, he was apparently en route to his rural village, Trinidad, the Canton outside of Ilobasco, Cabañas, when he was gunned down.  There are also reports that 2 others were killed and that a 14-year old girl was injured in the attack.  While the motive for the killing is unknown, many in the community believe that is leadership role in the anti-mining movement made him a target.

This was not the first attack on Rivera or others in Cabañas.  On August 7 a would-be assassin shot Rivera 8 times in the back and legs, but he survived. Earlier in the summer, Marcelo Rivera – also a leader in the anti-mining movement – was disappeared, tortured, and killed. And employees at Radio Victoria, which has provided communities in Cabañas with a platform to speak out against mining and other issues, have also received numerous death threats, including an attack on the station itself.

Despite the attacks and threats, the police and attorney general’s office have yet to conduct a proper investigation, other than to write Marcelo Rivera’s murder off as gang related, a claim his family and friends vociferously argue is false.

We at Voices join our friends at Radio Victoria and others in demanding that the Salvadoran government conduct a thorough investigation of this and all other attacks in Cabañas.

Protests against a Canadian-based mining company linked to a Mexican murder investigation escalated Friday as about 1,500 people took to the streets to honour a slain anti-mining activist.

The protesters marched through the town of Frontera Comalapa, about 20 kilometres from Chicomuselo where Mariano Abarca Roblero was gunned down last month.

Protesters blame his death on Calgary-based Blackfire Exploration, a company that Abarca Roblero and others have called a chronic polluter. Blackfire has said it is not connected in any way with Abarca Roblero’s death and denied it has caused any environmental harm.

Organizers said Friday’s protest was about more than the activist’s slaying and was also meant to give a voice to other social issues.

“The reason for the march was for everything that happened to Mariano because there’s a lot of insecurity, impunity, militarization and police presence,” said organizer Gustavo Castro.

“This wasn’t exclusively a protest against Blackfire but against the criminalization of social protest, and violence, and Mariano’s case is an example of this.”

The number of people at Friday’s protest far exceeded the turnout at similar events against Blackfire held in front of the Canadian Embassy in Mexico City and during Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean’s Dec. 9 visit to the region.

The protest was the latest in a series of actions meant to draw attention to Canadian companies with mining operations in Mexico. The demonstrations began days after Abarca Roblero was shot outside his home in southern Chiapas on Nov. 27.

He had been an outspoken critic of environmental practices at Blackfire’s barite mine, saying the company was contaminating local resources. Mexican police arrested three people in Abarca Roblero’s death, all of whom have ties to Blackfire.

The Canadian Press, 2009

Mountaintop mining battle gains groundCan’t say if federal stimulus is working: watchdog

One of the least appreciated aspects of the 19th Century gold mining boom in North America was the necessary and parallel boom in quicksilver, or mercury. Numerous mercury bearing minerals are known, but by far the bulk of historical mercury production has come from cinnabar, or HgS. For clarity, cinnabar is distinct from vermillion which is a pigment derived from cinnabar. 

Recovery of gold can be performed by methods as simple as plucking nuggets from a pan or by gravity separation in the form of sluicing. Unfortunately, in many areas placer gold is quickly exhausted by eager miners. Where there is placer gold there is often a lode formation to be found. Gold in a lode can be much more problematic in its recovery.  

Gold from a lode may be found comingled with quartz in bulk form, partitioned in a vein, or dispersed at high dilution in a host rock at a large scale. Lode gold very often has to be extracted from a problematic matrix. In this circumstance, chemical means are necessary to extract and concentrate the value from the rock.

A chemical solution to gold isolation is limited to only a few economically viable possibilities. Beyond macroscopic placer gold there is amalgamation with mercury, borax, cyanidation with NaCN, and chlorination with Cl2 or NaClO. 

Amalgamation has been attractive historically because of its great simplicity. First, cinnabar is readily coerced to liberate mercury by simple roasting and condensation. Dispersed gold is contacted with mercury and selectively extracted. The resulting solution of Au-Hg is relatively easy to isolate by natural phase separation. Finally, gold is easily recovered from the amalgam by heating in a retort. Chemists would call this a simple distillation.

Some silver will also be amalgamated, but it is separated by roasting to silver oxide followed by amalgamation of the residuals. Unfortunately, gold tellurides are problematic for direct gold amalgamation. Gold tellurides must be roasted first to liberate volatile tellurium oxides and native gold residues. Energy becomes a major cost driver at this stage.

Cinnabar ore (Image from Mineral Information Institute)

US cinnabar ore deposits are found predominantly  in California and to a lesser extent in Nevada, Oregon, Arizona, Texas, and Arkansas. The geology of cinnabar ore bodies share a few general features. Cinnabar ore is found in zones historically associated with volcanic activity and alkaline hydrothermal flows.  Ascending flows of metal sulfide saturated water infiltrated faults and fractures and deposited HgS rich mineral.  This is a common ore forming mechanism and is responsible for diverse metalliferous deposits, including mercury. 

Figure 1. Franciscan Quicksilver Ore Body Structure (C.N. Schuette, The Geology of Quicksilver Ore Deposits, Report XXXIII of the State Mineralogist, January 1937.)

According to Schuette, a common feature to economically viable cinnabar occurrences was the presence of a cap rock formation over the ore body. The infiltration of cinnabar laden hydrothermal fluids into fissures and shrinkage cracks in basalt intrusions as well as deposition in brecciated rock in the fault zones lead to enrichment of the mineral.  An impermeable layer above caused a pooling accumulation of mineral and a barrier to oxidation. 

Figure 2. Diagram of Sulphur Bank Mine (C.N. Schuette, The Geology of Quicksilver Ore Deposits, Report XXXIII, of the State Mineralogist, January 1937.)

In these California formations cinnabar is regarded as a primary mineral, meaning that it is the direct result of transfer from deeper source rock. An example of secondary rock would be serpentine (Fig 1) which is formed as a result of aqueous alteration of another mineral. Serpentine is a group of minerals comprised of hydrated silicate which may contain some combination of  Mg, Fe, Al, Mn, Ni, Ca, Li, or Zn. According to Schuette, serpentine is often found associated with cinnabar formations. 

The Sulphur Bank Mine near Clearlake Oaks in Northern California offers an interesting example of cinnabar mineralization. Figure 2 shows a fault that provided a channel for fluid flow to upper level rock formations. Over time oxygen and water caused the oxidation of sulfur to sulfuric acid which aided the decomposition of cinnabar and the host rock. 

Note that the uppermost layer is said to be white silica which resulted from extensive demineralization of solubles from a silicate matrix. Further down, native sulfur was discovered in more reducing conditions and was actually recovered in early mining operations. Cinnabar was located below the layers of oxidized mineral. 

This phenomenon of surface oxidation of an exposed ore body is observed in gold and silver mines as well. Miners often lamented that the nature of the lode changed as the mine operations got deeper. Of course, what was happening was that oxidized formations are encountered near the surface and as the mine gets deeper, progressively greater reducing conditions are found with a corresponding change in mineral species present. 

Air oxidation or infiltration of meteoric water with dissolved air and CO2 would cause the alteration of sulfide minerals to more water soluble H2S and sulfates, leaving native gold behind. But at greater depths, the composition of the ore changes to afford heavier sulfide loading and therefore a requirement for a different kind of milling. 

As it happens, the recovery of mercury from cinnabar is quite simple and has been done since Roman times. Typically, the ore was crushed and roasted in the combustion gases of a reverberatory furnace. This kind of furnace was constructed to isolate the fuel from the ore by a partition and rebound or reflect the hot gases off the ceiling of the furnace onto a heap of ore. Despite the name there is no acoustic aspect to the process. 

The hot gases would produce HgO and sulfides which would oxidize in the gas stream to volatile sulfur oxides. Thermal decomposition of HgO at ca 500 C produced mercury which was condensed out of the exhaust gas stream and collected as the liquid. 

After what seems to be months and months of crafting battlestaffs it finally paid off. I had over 1k saved up from all the daily runs I do and decided today would be the day. I started my day by using the many seaweed and and sand from Bert with superglass make to get my orbs. I continued on to enchanting them into air orbs and then finally attached them to the staffs and alched them. After this long process I was granted the levels of 81 Crafting and 89 Magic!

After all this I headed off to do some stuff in real life. As for tonight I leave for bed and a Silly Coopee awaits me in the Caverns for a day filled with Mining tomorrow!

Anyone think Christmas Event tomorrow? pls?

*edit* Sorry but just noticed that I have been posting really late and that day is actually going into what for me is tomorrow. I guess I will have to start posting earlier about the previous day. >.< Sorry

This time last year I was holed up in my bedroom trying frantically to piece together the hundreds of pages of transcripts, notes and analysis that made up my third-year uni dissertation. My title: ‘Living, Working, Playing: A Discursive Psychological study into how the closure of the South Wales mining industry has impacted today’s generation of young males.’  I was fortunate enough to stumble across a topic that completely fascinated me. It also shocked me consistently, challenged me, humbled me and stirred within me an even greater conviction and realisation that this nation needs to be urgently introduced to my loving Father in heaven.  

I interviewed some retired coal-miners from the Rhondda Valleys alongside some teenage lads who have grown up in the same area. I also spent four months observing the language and behaviour of a gang of sixteen year old boys in Cymmer, Porth and recording what I saw. The questions focused intensely on family life, work life and social life…my intentions being to piece together some sort of picture of how ‘being a man’ has changed over the years in this part of Wales, and how the dramatic economic downturn brought about by the closure of the mines has affected contemporary Welsh masculinities. The results of the study were pretty staggering. I wont bore you with all the details, but here are some of the major things that moved me:

1) The complete absence of positive male role-models…coupled with the undeniable desire for such role-models (not too long ago an eight year old lad in Cymmer offered me a quid to be his dad and play football with him)

2) The bleak lack of aspirations amongst young men in the Valleys – many of them have already got their hearts set on enjoying a life of government benefits

3) The self-destructive nature of teenage lads in the Valleys – many have an attitude of ‘life is rubbish…why care about anything?’ As a result, the Valleys have huge rates of alcohol and drug abuse amongst teens.

4) Exaggerated ‘feats of masculinity’ are vital for social acceptance – prestige amongst the gang of teenage lads I observed was gained through prison terms, brushes with the police, unnecessary violence, bragging of sexual exploits (mostly made-up), bullying others and rebellion against parents/authority figures. In contrast, the ex-miners I interviewed all stated that, in their day, social standing and respect was gained purely through hard-work, caring for your family, being a good steward of your finances, and acting as a positive role-model.

5) The circular and generational nature of all of these problems. One sixteen year old lad who I observed during the study had recently had his first son following a one-night-stand. He boasted to me in front of his mates about how he’d put cider in his newborn child’s bottle and brought the child to the bus-stop the previous weekend for his ‘first night out.’  What a role model. 

I could go on and on with findings from the study that shocked me to the core…..but they all provide a pretty similar conclusion: young men in South Wales today are seriously lacking positive male role models.

This is an obvious observation, but what is less obvious is what is being done about this.

Last week I went and spent some time with the young people in Cymmer for the first time in a few months. I’ve known them for several years through the ministry of Revive, and have had the pleasure of watching many of them grow up. A couple of things happened though which got me thinking about this whole role-models issue (hence the trip down dissertation memory lane). Two young lads (aged 8 and 9) just wouldnt stop fighting. At every opportunity punches were thrown, accusations hurled and threats handed out. Their language was shocking and the rage within them both utterly saddening. We seperated them and walked the younger lad home to make sure he got back safely. On the way we bumped into his mother (she’s about 23), and she could hardly walk under the weight of the crates of lager she was carrying. We’ve known her a while – she’s single, an alcoholic, and struggles constantly with her ex-partner coming home and stealing all the money she puts aside to feed her son. It broke my heart again to have a glimpse into this little boy’s life. When I got back to the church I took the older lad aside and gave him the standard ‘no bullying tolerated at Revive’ lecture. He told me that his dad (a known heroin dealer) had only ever given him one piece of advice: ‘if someone hits you, hit them back…harder.’  This broke my heart too. The boy in question is a right little troublemaker in Cymmer – he was in trouble for arson last time I saw him. However, back in June I had the privilege of playing football with him for half an hour – just me and him. He poured his heart out to me and told me about his life, about how he hates getting in trouble but just cant control himself. He told me about how he has to live with his nan because his mum is in jail and his dad is always in trouble. We played ‘crossbar challenge’ together and I just listened to him. I told him a little bit about his Creator who adores him, gave him some advice about staying out of mischief and I even let him win ‘crossbar challenge’…but more than anything I couldn’t help but feel that this little lad had just experienced his first ever ‘father-son’ experience, and that broke my heart too.

I don’t really have any significant conclusions or strategies as to how this major need for male role-models in the Valleys can be approached, so any comments would be gladly received. All I know is that there are a fair few thousand young men in South Wales who don’t have fathers who love them, guide them, discipline them and provide for them. Therefore, this is surely going to be a major question that churches in South Wales will need to ask themselves in the years to come: how do we share with men the incredible news that they have a heavenly father who loves them, guides them, disciplines them and provides for them….when for many even the word ‘father’ carries connotations of neglect, absence and even abuse?

OIL & GAS

Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras agreed to pay tens of millions of dollars more per year for imported Bolivian natural gas after a price dispute that has dragged on for years (Reuters).

Brazilian increases in oil production, along with Russia, is threatening the OPEC’s (Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries) control over oil prices. The current view of petroleum reserves may be deceptive as production, and most of all exportation, seem to be the determinant variable of the oil market equation (Rio Times).

Petrobras will get a 2.6 billion-real ($1.46 billion) loan from Brazil’s development bank, known as BNDES, to help finance construction of the Suape petrochemical complex (Bloomberg).

BUSINESS

Brazil’s CSN offered to buy Portuguese cement producer Cimpor for 3.86 billion euros ($5.6 billion) as the steelmaker slowly diversifies from its core business outside its home base (Reuters).

Brazilian meat processor Marfrig Alimentos received European Union regulatory approval for its takeover of local poultry export company Seara in a deal worth about $900 million (Reuters).

Fiat’s commercial vehicles unit Iveco has won a $3.37 billion contract to supply 2,044 armoured personnel carriers to the Brazilian army, Iveco said (Reuters). The vehicles will be produced in Brazil.

Junior miner MMX, owned by Brazilian magnate Eike Batista, will invest up to $1.2 billion to more than triple iron ore production capacity by 2015, the company’s president said (Reuters).

POLITICS

Brazil’s central bank chief, Henrique Meirelles, said he was not interested in running for the vice-presidency in next October’s election and had not decided whether to step down in April (Reuters).

The governor of Brazil’s central Minas Gerais state said he would no longer seek to become the presidential candidate for the opposition PSDB party in next October’s election (Reuters).

Brazil’s president will propose a truth commission this month to investigate torture during the country’s 1964-85 military dictatorship. The move by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva could mark a rare step by Brazil toward tackling the thorny question of dictatorship-era abuses (Reuters).

FINANCE

As Brazil emerges stronger than many other countries from the deepest global recession in decades, the time may have come for the largest private equity firms to plant roots in Latin America’s biggest economy (Reuters).

Banco do Brasil, Latin America’s largest bank by assets, is in talks to buy a stake in Argentina’s Banco Patagonia in what would be the state-run bank’s biggest international foray (Reuters).

SECURITY

One minute Victor Javier was rapt in a carefree game of beach soccer; the next he was a hapless victim of Rio de Janeiro’s “shock of order” crackdown. Rio state this month hired former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who takes credit for cleaning up the Big Apple, to help advise it on the Brazilian city’s crime problems (Reuters).

ECONOMY

After months of bullish forecasts from analysts in Brazil and around the world, the economic recovery has proven to have progressed at a significantly slower rate than has been anticipated over the last financial quarter (Rio Times).

The Brazilian government has announced that the bidding process for the construction and operation of a high-speed rail line that will link Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Campinas is to begin (Rio Times).

Chile and Brazil form part of 10- country group called ‘advanced emerging markets,’ Barclays Plc said. Singapore, Korea, Taiwan, Israel, China, South Africa, Poland and the Czech Republic are also part of the group, Barclays analysts including Eduardo Levy-Yeyati wrote in a report (Bloomberg).

Season’s greetings to all readers of Atlantico Weekly!

Atlantico Weekly is proud to present a short forecast for Brazil, Cape Verde, Angola, South Africa and Surinam in 2010.

Read The South Atlantic in 2010

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