Garnet for the Dummy Miner (OurPastimes Week 7)

Pyrope garnet crystal

Among the many cute little signs that decorate the walls of Antisocial Network world headquarters is one that baldly states, "Those of you who think you know everything are annoying to those of us who do." No one here will ever claim to know everything, but all of us know more about some things than the members of the eHow contributor staff whose factual butchery we expose on any given day. Take today's example: our staff geologist just groaned when he saw what English major J. Lang Wood had to say about "How Is Garnet Mined & Processed?" at Our Pastimes.com.

Wood's inept attempt to reword her resources starts with a clumsy introduction:

"Garnets are a type of mineral deposit with a crystal structure that is abundant throughout the world."

No one here could parse that bold statement into a sentence that makes sense. One of the definitions of a mineral is that it has a defined crystal structure, so the first half of the statement is redundant. The second half is just plain nonsense: a crystal structure that "is abundant"? Apparently, J. Lang thinks that having a crystal structure is big news...

...which may be why she trots out some big words that (she thinks) describe garnet's crystal structure (but actually don't): "When miners extract garnet crystals from the earth, the garnets may be quite large and well-formed in dodecahedral (12-sided polyhedron) or trapezohedral (24-sided polyhedron) shapes. They can also form in small clusters of crystals that are stuck together." Of course, the real information, which Wood probably didn't understand, is that garnets are in the isometric crystal group, and may be found in aggregates or massive deposits. Be that as it may, supposedly J. Lang's job here was to describe the steps involved in mining and processing garnets. All she was able to come up with, apparently, was some boilerplate about how gems are mined:

"Miners extract garnets in a number of ways... open pit mining... vertical shafts... Miners then go into the shafts and cut the garnet out of the veins and carry them to the surface... placer mines [sic], areas of low water velocity in rivers, creeks, and natural hollows where the crystals collect naturally and you can remove them by hand." 

We won't bother going into a great deal of detail. Instead, we'll just point interested readers to a website that has... let's just say "Information written by people who know what they're talking about." You can read about garnet mining and processing  here... but we can't leave without sharing what J. Lang has to say about the steps involved in processing garnets:

"Workers must remove garnets from the surrounding rock, wash, screen and sort them by quality. This happens on the surface above the mines, often with machinery and conveyors built specifically for the purpose."

Wait: processing is "often with machinery"? Do workers do this by hand part of the time? And what machinery does she mean: table saws? screwdrivers? vacuum cleaners?

No wonder we're giving Wood her fourth Dumbass of the Day award.

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