Drusy Quartz for Dummies

Drusy quartz -- but not a geode!

If there are freelancers out there who are worse than the journalism majors for misstating facts and making up bull, it's people who – at least in theory – ought to know better. You know, someone who claims to be an astrophysicist but can't properly define "perigee," or a medical student who doesn't know what pruritis is. Either they've padded their resumes or they graduated last in the class... like eHow's Alexander White, who claims to have degrees in geology and geophysics, but still managed to make a complete mess of "What is Drusy Quartz?" at Leaf Group's Sciencing.com niche site.

Maybe we should cut Alexander some slack: after all, eHow's contributors are at the mercy of "content editors" to whom format is far more important than fact, but even if one of those editors munged up his article, there was a method for White to correct such rubbish as 

"[Drusy quartz] occurs within geodes and lines the walls of cavities called vugs that occur within hollows and veins of rocks."

 After doing a fairly good job of rewording the definition of "drusy," we simply can't let White get away with saying that "vugs occur within hollows," since a vug is a hollow! Besides, drusy quartz (or any mineral) also lines fractures and other open spaces; not just geodes. Heck, drusy minerals aren't even always found lining cavities. 

Alexander continues on in that vein (groan...), chattering about geodes and thundereggs. Problem being, of course, that he starts saying stupid stuff to fill out his minimum word count, rubbish like

"Druses in vugs are usually found in mines constructed for harvesting other types of minerals or gems. They are sometimes combined with other minerals, such as yellow barite found in the Rock Candy Mountain Mine in British Columbia..." Hate to tell you this, Alexander, but vugs are found just about anywhere there is limestone, not just in "mines constructed for harvesting..." minerals and gems. What's this "harvesting" bull, anyway?  Any geologist – heck, any third-year undergrad geology student – knows that geodes aren't the only places drusy quartz is found. As the image demonstrates, not all drusy minerals line cavities, either. White's obsession with geodes suggests a lack of general knowledge about elementary geology, which we find rather curious for one who claims to have multiple degrees in the subject.

The only real positive about Alexander's post is that, even though replete with dumbassery, it's a vast improvement on the version it replaces, random garbage cobbled together out of metaphysical tomes by someone claiming to be named Mame Dennis. If we could find her, we'd name her our Dumbass of the Day, but we can't; so that honor goes to Alexander.

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