The fashion for fact checking I’m preachin’ dis sermon to show It ain’t nessa, ain’t nessa ain’t nessa, ain’t nessa Ain’t necessarily so! (Ira Gershwin, 1935) “Fact” and “Truth” are abstract ideals that you can seek, but never be certain to have achieved. To claim a piece […]
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THE UNRAVELLING OF SCIENCE The development of the Scientific Method was one of the great achievements of the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th Centuries. The method is based on three pillars: reproducible evidence, deductive reasoning, and hypotheses that can be tested by experiment. It freed scientists from the […]
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Aboriginal Heavy Mineral Separation Technology in the Pilbara of Western Australia More than 50 years ago I observed a heavy mineral separation technique being practiced by aboriginals in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The technique was simple, effective and probably unique. I have never seen it […]
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The philanthropist of Nullagine The town of Nullagine, in the Pilbara region in the northwest of Western Australia, is situated 1400 km NNE OF the State capital Perth, where the old Great Northern Highway crosses the broad, dry, sandy bed of the Nullagine River. The town was […]
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Climate change: naming of parts Reed, Henry. “Naming of Parts.” New Statesman and Nation 24, no. 598 (8 August 1942): 92. NAMING OF PARTS To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday, We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning, We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day, […]
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The purpose of Science is to seek truth, not proclaim it. “Science is an ongoing race between our inventing ways to fool ourselves and our inventing ways to avoid being fooled.”- Saul Perlmutter, Astrophysicist and Nobel Laureate. Is there such a thing as a geological fact map? […]
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FEAR OF FAT In 1841, Scottish journalist Charles Mackay wrote a book called Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. The title is self-explanatory, the book became a classic, still in print today. Mackay’s examples are drawn from the corruption of religion and capitalism, but today’s […]
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How to Salt a Gold Claim: Part 2 – Karpa Springs and Busang In my previous post I described my encounter in 1984 with claim salting (or at least, alleged salting). These were early days, the late 20th Century gold boom was still young, and claim salting […]
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How to Salt a Gold Claim: Part 1 – Queensland Interlude Looking through a box of my old field notebooks the other day I came across one which contained a cartoon sketch I had made of an old Queensland prospector and remembered the story behind it. In […]
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TARGETING DRILL HOLES It is a truism that ore bodies are rare and hard to locate. If this were not so, they would hardly be worth finding. Explorers search for them by drilling holes into the ground. A single drill hole produces a very small sample […]
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