A Dummy View of Mining Exploration - The Freelance Files MMCLXXXIV

These are not diamonds

One of the staffers was paging through the file of potential DotD nominations the other day looking for a different website (our last four awardees were all from HomeSteady.com. So sue us: it's a target-rich environment!) when she came across the notation "cockamamie!" That caught her interest, and when she visited the website she knew exactly why the word had ben applied. She only needed to read one sentence of the twaddle posted by Esther Ejim to WiseGEEK.com on the question of "What Is Mining Exploration?" before she started choking on her kale chips...

Yes, dear readers, Esther did try to tell anyone unlucky enough to come across her dreck that,

"Mining exploration is a term that may be used in reference to the exploration of mines by visitors, tourists or individual prospectors for the sake of leisure, education, excitement and the hope of possibly discovering something."

Well, we guess Ejim did cover her hiney with that "may be" crap, since she did just apply the term to tourism – something no one involved in the mining industry would ever do. But no, Esther continued in that vein, regaling her readers with such demonstrably ridiculous factoids as,

"In the case of individual mining exploration, some people regard it as a sort of pastime or recreational activity that involves both preplanned or organized tours of old mines and the more individual efforts that are initiated by the respective prospectors..."

Whatever the hell all that means. We suppose that's an attempt to describe prospecting for fun; weekend panning for gold, or mineral-collecting trips by hobbyists; or perhaps tours of played-out mines in places like Cripple Creek, Colorado. Maybe even spelunking! But let's be real: that ain't mining exploration! Esther sort of got to the point in the second half of her rubbish when she gave up on the "tourism" bit and allowed as to how,

"In the case of a mining exploration conducted by mining companies, the preparations for such mining expeditions are usually more elaborate and detailed than that by individuals. These companies usually conduct a thorough assessment of the plans for the exploration through feasibility studies that will include the application of data collated through numerous scientific and geographic sources in order to rate the possibility of success for the mining exploration."

That's a heckuva lot of words to say pretty much nothing... and, of course, Esther had some "examples" of how such exploration is carried out:

"Such a venture will include the use of technology like the analysis of data collected from satellite imagery or photographs taken from aerial vantage points [sic], which will give professionals like geologists evidence from which they can determine the presence of conditions that support the mining potentials."

Esther moved on to conflate mining exploration with petroleum exploration and supposing that a mining company might,

"...have their own crew of professionals, such as scientists and engineers who will carry out the mining exploration process."

All of which bushwa carefully skirts the actual process of mineral exploration, which entails such activities as field geology, remote sensing, and exploratory drilling. With the exception of  "geology," none of those words appears in Esther's text.

Oh, yeah, and our four-time Dumbass of the Day (or some equally dumbass person at WiseGEEK) included the image shown above purporting to show "diamond stones discovered in the soil." Our staff geologist would like to point out that diamonds are in the cubic crystal system, and the image shows what appears to be trigonal or hexagonal crystals... probably quartz. Such stupidity is the wages of believing that Alamy stock photos of science topics are accurate... 

SE - MINING