Land and Living posted about the current state of the art in mining technology: bucket wheel excavation. Or, as they dubbed it, “Frankenmining.”

I’m sure that there are places where these behemoths serve some economically vital function. Perhaps this type of mining makes possible all the technology I take for granted. Heavy metals come from somewhere, I guess.

My absolute favorite use, however, is mining for diamonds. Check out the De Beers site, boasting their ultra-efficient diamond extraction tech. The bucket wheel extractor is at the bottom of the page, tearing up some West African hillside at 255,000 cubic meters a day so that every Westerner can spend two months’ salary to show someone how special they are.

Yeah, I’m in a bad mood.

Oh, and Logan insists that I change the image header. He thinks it looks like a gaping anus. Which, I think, is simply indicative of what’s on his mind.

Related Posts:

• Productivity and Wealth (October, 2005)
• Toyota Kicking Some Major Ass (February, 2006)
• I Heart Sketch (October, 2008)
• Facebook Business Solutions (December, 2007)
• TED Talks: Humanity’s Violent History, Developing Rwanda, Redefining “Bioenergy” (December, 2007)

This entry was posted on Monday, October 17th, 2005 at 1:16 pm and is filed under profit, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.