A trio of recommendations for a Tuesday morning:

• Thomas Friedman on the three bombs (nuclear, climate, debt). Wise words. (Hat tip to Cathy Manduca, via the Earth and Mind blog)
• Betsy Kolbert on how the Internet enables non-rational thinking, from last week's New Yorker.
• And another one from Ms. Kolbert, on the 'geoengineering solution' for climate change, from this week's New Yorker. (It's a review of both Superfreakonomics and Al Gore's new Our Choice, and guess how she feels about those two books? Hint: she uses the word "horseshit" several times, and she's not referring to Mr. Gore.)

Labels: blogs, climate change, economics, global warming, politics

Article in today's Post: "Community Colleges Get Student Influx In Bad Times"


"One-quarter of the enrollment growth at all two- and four-year colleges in Virginia over the past year occurred at Northern Virginia Community College."

Labels: economics, nova

The Commonwealth of Virginia has put up a website soliciting suggestions for the expenditure of the state's share of the federal stimulus package. Got a good idea? Drop them a note.

(The Washington Post reports on a decaying bridge in Arlington County as a good candidate - I drove under this bridge on Tuesday morning. Thursday morning at 4am, softball-sized chunks of concrete fell off the bottom onto Route 50. Yikes.)

Labels: economics, politics, virginia

This just in from the office of Virginia's governor, Tim Kaine:

"In higher education, our October actions reduced schools' 2009 base budgets by 5 to 7%. For 2010, I have increased the reductions to 15% for all schools, except the community colleges and Richard Bland, which will have the reduction level increased to 10%."

Especially in light of what I posted earlier today, this does not bode well.

Full text of the governor's remarks here.

Labels: economics, news, nova, politics, virginia

Student geobloggers: this has you written all over it! Have fun with that $10,000. Learn some good stuff, and keep on blogging about it.

Labels: blogs, economics

As has been mentioned elsewhere, Virginia governor Tim Kaine made some big budget cuts last week. The Commonwealth of Virginia has a rule that they must have a balanced budget every year. So with the economy in such shabby shape and Virginia's income predicted to have significant shortfalls, Governor Kaine has decided to trim the Commonwealth's budget. The official revenue projections forecast a shortfall of $973.6 million for fiscal year 2009 and $1.54 billion for fiscal year 2010, or just over $2.5 billion for both years. According to a press release from Richmond, "Governor Kaine will balance the FY 2009 budget through state agency savings and spending reductions of over $348 million and additional steps, including a withdrawal of about $400 million from the Revenue Stabilization Fund."

Two entities in the state government that are getting hit particularly hard by the proposed changes are (1) the Division of Geology and Mineral Resources and (2) higher education.

(1) As I mentioned earlier in the week, this was an issue of much discussion at the Virginia Geological Field Conference last weekend. I would like to share here an excerpt from an e-mail I got after the conference from Chuck Bailey (W&M), the president of the VGFC:

Unfortunately, with Virginia's looming budget crisis, the State is planning to severely cut if not eliminate the Division of Geology and Mineral Resources (DGMR). Here are some of the planned cuts:

• 9 (out of a staff of 21) will be laid off
• 1 staff member will be transferred to the Division of Oil and Gas
• 4 staff members will be reassigned to support the Abandoned Mine Land project
• DGMR will be left with a staff of 4 on state-funded positions (of which 3 are currently supervisory) and will not, in any substantive way, be able to serve the Commonwealth. Details of the plan are on pages 14-15 of the Governor's budget reduction plan.

We have an obligation to fight these cuts with vigor. DGMR has served the Commonwealth well and needs to be maintained, even through the lean times. For
me it is clear that these cuts are a deliberate action to eliminate DGMR; consider the fact that within the Department of Mines, Minerals & Energy, of which DGMR is one of six divisions, the only layoffs are being incurred by DGMR.

Not only are these cuts are extremely shortsighted, but inherently unfair.
What can be done about this?

The most important decision maker who is likely to consider input from DGMR customers is the Secretary of Commerce and Trade. He needs to know how people use DGMR products/services, especially if they use them to make money or protect people and property, and why DGMR is important to the Commonwealth. Company letterhead is preferable. He is:

Patrick O. Gottschalk
Secretary of Commerce and Trade
P.O. Box 1475
Richmond, VA 23218

The Acting Director of the Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy (which includes the DGMR) is:

Benny R. Wampler, Acting Director
Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy
P.O. Drawer 900
Big Stone Gap, VA 24219

A letter to the Governor can't hurt either:

Governor Timothy Kaine
Patrick Henry Building, 3rd Floor
1111 East Broad Street
Richmond, VA 23219

People should contact their own Delegates and Senators.

A Virginia Geological Field Conference Yahoo! listserv has been set up to facilitate discussion for those who wish (search "thevgfc"). [Note: I would encourage you to read this discussion, as it points out that the total savings are pretty meager (~$10,000 for the upcoming fiscal year, because of severance pay and what-not) considering the crippling cut in services. -CB]

We need to act quickly and with forceful clarity on this matter.

Thanks,
Chuck Bailey
President, Virginia Geological Field Conference

Please take the time to write a letter to one or more of these officials to let them know what you think of the proposed cuts. Also, I'd like to give a shout-out to Lee Allison, state geologist of Arizona, who posted on this issue earlier today.

(2) The second major area where budget cuts are hurting this blogger is in the 5% cuts to higher education in the Commonwealth. Though I utilize the maps and studies produced by the DGMR, their budget cuts don't effect my paycheck. But when the Virginia Community College System has to slash its budgets by 5%, that does change my bank account balance. NOVA faculty and staff got an e-mail from our president last Thursday (10/9), informing us that though the College would continue to provide its services essentially uninterrupted with a 5% cut, faculty salary increases, scheduled for November, would be "delayed until July of next year." This is a real bummer, though for me personally the bright side of it is that I got my promotion before all this went down, so at least I secured that pay raise before things went sour. Just the same, I'm going to miss the extra cash that was 'promised' on the contract I signed at the beginning of the academic year. With everything getting more expensive, it's a tough on faculty when their salaries don't keep up with inflation.

So it's looking kind of grim in the Commonwealth, folks. While I don't think a letter-writing campaign will effect the higher education cuts much, the DGMR is a small entity that has gotten hit disproportionately hard. If you can write a letter to help save the DGMR, please do. It's an important state agency that does great work. Thanks!

Labels: economics, nova, virginia

This weekend, I spent three days on an extended field trip down to southwestern Virginia with NOVA adjunct geology instructor Chris Khourey and four of my Honors students. We left Annandale on Friday morning, and made our first stop at Willis Mountain, Virginia, site of one of the most productive kyanite mines in the world.

Here's a Google Map of the mountain:


The Kyanite Mining Corporation was very gracious in hosting us. I'd particularly like to thank Mike Morris, who took two hours out of his day to show us the site and the mining operation.

Why mine kyanite? It's used as a refractory mineral: that is, one that won't melt under high temperatures. A lot of their kyanite is heated in kilns to produce a second mineral, mullite. The mullite is even more stable than kyanite in high temperature refractory situations. (It won't melt until it hits over 1800 degrees C!) Additionally, they cleverly saw up big blocks into dimensional stone for countertops and the like.

The kyanite mined at Willis Mountain is in a quartzite which also includes a fair amount of pyrite and hematite. We heard about the different procedures used to extract the non-kyanite minerals so that their end product is relatively pure and of constant quality.

Here's Mike showing the overall anticlinal shape of the deposit:

It's a plunging anticline, as you can probably make out from the Google Map terrain view up top.

Some of the dimensional stone, which I think is pretty spectacular:


Close up of the kyanite (light blue, on left) in the dimensional stone.


Nearby Baker Mountain also hosts kyanite deposits, which show a deeper blue color (Mike wasn't sure why, but suggested that chromium may be responsible):


Inside a huge storage building where the mullite (white powder at our feet) is stored:


Atop Willis Mountain itself, showing the weathered kyanite quartzite exposed there:


Honors students ask questions of Mike:


Mike and Chris standing near some fresh boulders of kyanite quartzite:


It wasn't all metamorphism and mining... I also noticed these nice raindrop impressions in a drying mud puddle:


After lunch atop the mountain, we hopped back in the van and hightailed it for southwestern Virginia, on our way to the Virginia Geological Field Conference. More on that tomorrow.

Thanks again to Mike and the good folks at the Kyanite Mining Corporation for hosting our visit!

Labels: conferences, economics, field trips, metamorphism, minerals, nova, piedmont, teaching, virginia

The New Yorker had an interesting article in last week's issue about the economic utility of pennies (or lack thereof).

Here's the opening two paragraphs, to give you a taste of how this issue relates to geology:

Several years ago, Walter Luhrman, a metallurgist in southern Ohio, discovered a copper deposit of tantalizing richness. North America's largest copper mine - a vast open-pit complex in Arizona - usually has to process a ton of ore in order to produce ten pounds of pure copper; Luhrman's mine, by contrast, yielded the same ten pounds from just thirty or forty pounds of ore. Luhrman operated profitably until mid-December, 2006, when the federal government shut him down.

The copper deposit that Luhrman worked wasn't in the ground; it was in the storage vaults of Federal Reserve banks, and, indirectly, in the piggy banks, coffee cans, automobile ashtrays, and living-room upholstery of ordinary Americans. A penny minted before 1982 is ninety-five per cent copper - which, at recent prices, is approximately two and a half cents' worth. Luhrman, who had previously owned a company that refined gold and silver, devised a method of rapidly separating pre-1982 pennies from more recent ones, which are ninety-seven and a half per cent zinc, a less valuable commodity. His new company, Jackson Metals, bought truckloads of pennies from the Federal Reserve, turned the copper ones into ingots, and returned the zinc ones to circulation in cities where pennies were scarce. "Doing that prevented the U.S. Mint from having to make more pennies," Luhrman told me recently. "Isn't that neat?" The Mint didn't think so; it issued a rule prohibiting the melting or exportation of one-cent and five-cent coins. (Nickels, despite their silvery appearance, are seventy-five per cent copper.) Luhrman laid off most of his employees and implemented his corporate Plan B: buying half-dollars from banks and melting the silver ones (denominations greater than five cents aren't covered by the Mint's rule); mining Canadian five-cent coins (which were a hundred per cent nickel most years from 1946 to 1981); and lobbying Congress.

Other factoids related to copper and the declining value of the penny:

• The U.S. Treasury incurs an annual penny deficit of about fifty million dollars.
• Breaking stride to pick up a penny, if it takes more than 6.15 seconds, pays less than the federal minimum wage.

Read the rest of the article online here.

Labels: economics

Oil has hit $100/ barrel before, but it dropped back down to mere double-digits before the close of the market. Not so today: When the closing bell rang, "light sweet crude" was at $100.01. Blame Hugo Chavez, or blame Hubbert's Peak. It's some expensive stuff.

Labels: economics, oil, petroleum

We've been expecting this for a while, but now it's finally happened. Happy new year, everybody: oil costs a hundred dollars a barrel!

Oil prices have quadrupled since 2003, for multiple reasons. At its simplest, though, it's Day One in Economics 101: there's less of a supply (that's what non-renewable resource means) and there's more of a demand (especially due to nascent industrialization in China and India). Everybody wants more of what there is less & less of -- so we pay more for it.

Coverage: New York Times, Fox News, CNN, & Washington Post.

Labels: economics, oil, petroleum