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Archive for June, 2011

First Nations to the Rescue as Miners of the Future: The Myth of Insufficient Mining Employees

Posted in Jobs and Salaries, tagged , , , , on June 30, 2011 | 1 Comment »

Mining Graduates

The story that accompanies the picture posted above starts as follows: (more…)

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Mine Tailings Factor of Safety

Posted in safety, Tailings, tagged , , on June 29, 2011 | 1 Comment »

Here is a question posed of me in a recent email: (more…)

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Mining advertizing on Discussion Sites

Posted in blogs, Investing & Finance, tagged , , on June 29, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Pleaseaskit appears to be one of those sites where you post a question and others are supposed to come in and post an answer.  The mania for similar sites is irrepressible.  There seems to be no dearth of idea-men in media, call them IT companies, convinced that a cheap way to generate traffic, hence justify high advertizing rates, is to get questions, comments, ideas, any-old-dumb-junk posted by the community out there, and hope that these dumber-than-dumb comments elicit other dumber-than-dumb comments that keep people coming back.  (more…)

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2011 Canadian Mine Benefits

Posted in Jobs and Salaries, tagged , , , , on June 28, 2011 | 1 Comment »

If you work on a Canadian mine, you probably get a reasonable wage.  We all think in terms of and compare wages and salaries.  But have you taken a look at the benefits that you “get.”  Maybe not in real check dollars, but in “extras.”   Now none of us can compare with Canadian Postal workers who get something like seven weeks leave a year, accumulate untold days of “sick leave”  and drive A Lexus on retirement (I know at least one fellow who does!) (more…)

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2011 Survey of Canadian Mine Salaries, Wages, and Benefits

Posted in Jobs and Salaries, Oil sands, tagged , , , , , on June 28, 2011 | 1 Comment »

CostMine has just sent me a copy of their most recent publication, namely the 2011 Survey of Canadian Mine Salaries, Wages, and Benefits. (more…)

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Lost in the Woods: Eagle Mine Superfund Site

Posted in Mining history, Oil sands, Software, Tailings, tagged , , , , , , , on June 23, 2011 | 2 Comments »

Yesterday we walked in the forest behind the town house.  The sun shone through the trees and the boys ran with glee along the bright paths.  Their father stayed on the  dock vainly fishing.  The picture shows some of the fun. (more…)

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The Basic Principles of Mine Tailings Management

Posted in Geotechnical, Software, Tailings, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 23, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

The story of tailings management is the story of application of a few basic principles.  All involve control of the forces of nature.  Once we worked on the  basis of observation and judgment.  Today we have computer codes for almost all and the work is done in back rooms by the junior engineers who feed printout to the senior engineers who still rely on judgment, albeit now quantified judgment.  Here follows a brief overview of these changes as they relate to the principles that always have and probably always will rule in the art, science, and engineering of tailings management. (more…)

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Merrispruit Tailings Failure from Tailings And Mine Waste 1998

Posted in Mining history, Tailings, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 22, 2011 | 1 Comment »

Browsing through the proceedings of the 1998 conference on Tailings and Mine Waste I came across three papers on the failure of the Merrispruit Tailings Impoundment. At this remove of time it is still instructive to reread these old papers and ponder the lessons learnt.   Here is a paragraph from the conclusions of one of the papers: (more…)

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Choosing A Career in Mining Engineering

Posted in consulting, mining, tagged , , on June 21, 2011 | 7 Comments »

This past week I received two separate emails for two young mining engineering students.  They spoke of what they are studying and what their hopes & dreams are.  For example one writes: (more…)

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Delusions of Disaster-Prone Mining Companies

Posted in consulting, Human relations and mining, mining, tagged , , , , , on June 17, 2011 | 2 Comments »

Here is an abstract from the CIM conference in May 2011.  Beware that this is a baffling abstract—hardly clear what the point is, but somehow I get the impression there is a new idea there.  If only the authors were forced to prepare papers instead of being let off the hook with some pusillanimous abstract.  This abstract proves the stupidity of lazy organizations and presenters in wasting their time and ours with half-baked abstracts.  The CIM and hence the Canadian mining industry should be ashamed of itself in cutting trees to prepare paper volumes with such trivial stuff.  (more…)

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