As a “public service” I repeat this invitation–at the very least take a look at the submissions document; it contains many good ideas to make mining safer:

The Department of Labour would like your feedback on effective ways to improve the identification and management of hazards in the underground mining industry. The submissions document is available download in PDF format and outlines some of the approaches that could be used to achieve this.

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For an example of what a good conference powerpoint presentation should be, take a look at Cameco Corporation: Northern Saskatchewan Strategy Mining Division.   This is from the CIM Edmonton conference just ended. 

I must thank the company for making this presentation available for public dissemination so fast.  And congratulate them not only on a fine presentation but on a commitment to fine work.  

The presentation tells it so well, that the absence of a live presenter is no impediment to understanding and benefiting from the time spent browsing through the presentation.  Go take a look and support and invest in their efforts. 

                                                                Key Lake

Here is a link to a precious document.  Sure to be of interest if you are a student of mining and international politics.  If the promises set out in this document are fulfilled, it will change the course of things in African mining. 

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Tribes fighting tribes for control of resources, for revenge, and for the shear thrill of being young and vicious.  Here is a haunting picture from the New Yorker that has just published a superb piece by Jared Diamond in which he traces the deeds of Daniel Wemp in the New Guinea Highlands as he goes about organizing his relatives to kill in order to revenge the killing of his “beloved paternal uncle Soll.”  

Reading Diamond’s article, we soon come to realize the power of family and tribe to induce irrational loyalties, to induce murderous acts, and to substitute for the reason that is at the basis of a lawful society. 

On a seeming unrelated topics, I notice in a document the date of which I cannot establish and which seems to be issued by the Secretariat for the Ministry of Mine and Industries, Kabul, Afghanistan, the following: 

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