México is a mountainous place. I spent a week in the city of San Miguel de Allende, which is in the state of Guanajuato, and its 6700′ elevation (2042 m) had me out of breath the entire time.

The view above is from just a few miles east of the city center, on the walk back from the botanical garden (El Charco del Ingenio). And yes, it’s cobblestones the entire way.

This region of the country is known as the Bajio which strangely enough means “lowlands.” As you can see there are high mountains surrounding the broad plains the people inhabit. Thus, lowlands. The Bajio was the economic and cultural center of colonial México and gave birth to the country’s independence movement. Places like San Miguel de Allende and Santiago de Querétaro (the nearest airport) are sort of equivalent to our own revolutionary Boston and Philadelphia. Much of the modern Mexican economy is centered in the region as well as the traditional industries of agriculture and mining. México produces about one-fourth of the world’s silver.

San Miguel de Allende is named for a priest (Franciscan friar Juan de San Miguel) and a patriot (captain-turned-general Ignacio Allende y Unzaga). It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site and a popular tourist destination for Mexicans as well as international visitors.

I was there just after the Day of the Dead festivities which drew 100,000 people. It was still a busy time in the city but the big rush was over. I hear from my contact on the ground that the last of the tourists have left and the Plaza Centro is quiet. When I was in town at least three mariachi bands roamed the place nightly competing for listeners! This really is the off-season.

A large number of ex-pats from the States and other places inhabit San Miguel. It’s been famed as an art colony since before World War II and its allure is still strong. Nonetheless it is also a real Mexican city with schoolkids, senior citizens, taxicabs, commuter buses, shops, and businesses and all the things that make an entire community.

It’s a very interesting place to visit and I’ll have more on that in my next post.

It’s for real:

This should be a bigger story. Alas, it’s the times: Make America Grossly Apathetic.

We can look on the bright side: a warmer Iceland is a more welcoming Iceland. More tourists, more migrants, more economic opportunity. Everyone wins!

Apparently Antarctica is the only place left on the planet that is mosquito-free.

In other news, family matters have induced me to travel to México. I leave today and will be back in a week. I’m looking forward to the adventure.

For about 2200 bucks you can get yourself some platinum. The US Mint has coins with a face value of 100 bucks containing one troy ounce of 0.9995 platinum. Like gold and silver, element no. 78 is a “precious” metal and is used for both bullion (non-coin applications like ingots and bars) and specie (coinage). Of course only an idiot would actually use platinum, gold, or silver as legal tender. We have paper for that! Here’s a platinum coin:

Platinum is rare, similar to gold in crustal abundance. Like gold, it doesn’t corrode. One of its uses is in catalytic converters so all of us are connected with this “noble” metal in some way.

Platinum has a variety of specialized industrial uses but only a tiny amount of the stuff (about 200 metric tons annually) is actually mined and sold on the world market. That’s a little over six million troy ounces. By comparison world gold production is nearly 100 million troy ounces per year.

Platinum is obtained as a by-product from copper and nickel mining.

The first thing I learned in Computer Science 1 at UC Berkeley in the fall of 1977 was GIGO. That stands for “Garbage In, Garbage Out.”

If you write bad code, you will get bad output.

You don’t want the GO or “Garbage Out” part to happen. So, you make sure the GI or “Garbage In” part doesn’t happen!

Today’s AI (mostly Large Language Models) are trained on data. Data is just a fancy word for “all the junk in the world.” Since computers don’t “know” anything, that is, they have no morals, ethics, or values, they can’t “decide” what is good information or what is bad information.

AI engineers started with the assumption of controlled environments and trustworthy inputs. But those things exist only in labs. In the real world there is plenty of garbage. And when AIs can slurp from the entire internet, they can embed corrupt material. They can incorporate suspicious code and ingest poisoned documents. Even if the programming works the way it is supposed to, the outputs can be foolish and stupid because you can’t trust the inputs.

This is the part the AI industry doesn’t want to talk about. You see, the industry has prioritized efficiency over integrity. Doing things right takes time and thus costs money.

From Bruce Schneier, one of my go-to sources on all things tech (along with Molly White):

Integrity isn’t a feature you add; it’s an architecture you choose. So far, we have built AI systems where “fast” and “smart” preclude “secure.” We optimized for capability over verification, for accessing web-scale data over ensuring trust. AI agents will be even more powerful—and increasingly autonomous. And without integrity, they will also be dangerous.

What kind of architectures do you think the Titans of AI will choose for their systems? Which ones have they already chosen?

The so-called “alkali metals” form column one—the first period—of the periodic table. Some of these are familiar, like lithium (#3), sodium (#11), and potassium (#19). We know these things from compounds like lithium carbonate, the medical “lithium” that is used to treat mood disorders. Of course we need sodium chloride (table salt) in our daily diet for its essential role in our physiology. And we eat bananas (or drink OJ) to get potassium salts, another life-sustaining nutrient.

But the actual metals are rare. Outside of chemistry class most folks will never see these things as pure metals. They are typically stored under oil as they oxidize rapidly in the presence of air. I used to toss a chunk of sodium into a bucket of water (outdoors, of course!) for the lovely explosion it made. Lithium, sodium, and potassium are less dense than water and will float. But they will react violently with the water, releasing hydrogen gas which the heat of the reaction will then ignite. Very cool! And the pH of the water surges up, making it alkaline, hence the name “alkali” metals.

Rubidium, #37, has all the same properties as the above except it is denser than water. And it has no known biological function. But it is capable of replacing potassium in organisms and thus can be used as a biomarker.

Rubidium has few industrial uses but has many technical applications in research laboratories. It is used as a laser target, for example, and in atomic clocks. It is named for the ruby color the compounds emit when ignited, and some of the salts are used in fireworks.

I recently finished reading Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species.

The full title is actually On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

It is an extraordinary work. Mostly because it is one of the few scientific pieces of great importance that is immediately accessible to the general reader. One is hard-pressed to read Newton’s epochal Principia, even though it has a helpful diagram on almost every page, because it is mostly a math book. You need scratch paper and a pencil by your side! The same can be said for Copernicus or Kepler. Albert Einstein’s papers from 1905 that established his reputation are short, but dense and obscure. And again the math is a barrier.

Perhaps something like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring compares, although that is a very brief book and was clearly written for mainstream reception. Darwin was writing to his fellow naturalists. Her book, it could be argued, had a similar impact. Carson’s views have ultimately prevailed among the citizenry, few would argue with her claims today. Darwin, not so much. Anti-evolutionary sentiment is very strong in American education and politics despite its widespread acceptance throughout the world.

The discovery of genetics and the means of inheritance only strengthened Darwin’s (and Alfred Russel Wallace’s) evolutionary schemes. No scientist today questions the idea of the mutability of species. Darwin’s book actually addresses a simple question: does life change over time? Most authorities of Darwin’s time (the book was published in 1859) believed that all living species were specifically created. A species, by definition, was immutable.

The Origin demolishes that point of view. What makes it a great book is that Darwin does it with a scalpel and a smile. The book is not a polemic. It’s a careful, humble, and meticulous exposition of something that became obvious to Darwin over the course of his journeys and studies. He brings the reader along with a clear awareness of the arguments against his ideas and shows how the old ways of thinking just don’t work as well.

That’s the key. Darwin shows, chapter after chapter, how natural selection and variation account for what we actually see in the natural world. It becomes clear that the objections to an evolutionary outlook are grounded in philosophy and religion, not in observation of real things.

The Origin shows a powerful but patient intellect at work. Darwin does not like to leap to conclusions despite his passion for his theory. He takes great pains to support his claims and show how evolution, as a paradigm for the study of life, is more illuminating, more interesting, and more encompassing than the existing modes of thought.

He makes his case. By the end of the book you can see how the new theory supplants the old because it has better explaining power. Reading Darwin helps you understand the scientific method. He starts with the facts: his observations and the results of his experiments; and the mountains of evidence from the work of others. Then, and only then, does he postulate the unifying concepts.

Be suspicious of arguments that start with the principles first. The principles should emerge from the evidence. If you state the theory at the beginning, it will be easy to find examples that support your point of view. If you look first, and then examine what you find, you might have a chance to figure out the big ideas. The first method is biased. The second gives the truth an opening.

Earth is known as a watery planet. Problem is, despite all the water, most of it is salty. There’s really not all that much fresh water available.

You can live perhaps for a few days without water. That’s a simple fact of biology that cannot be transcended no matter how smart, rich, or technologically-enabled you are! Our Silicon Valley Tech Bro Overlords can die of thirst just as easily as the rest of us.

It would behoove the human race to take better care of its freshwater resources.

Hafnium (Hf) is found with zirconium and that’s how most of it is obtained. The two elements are very similar although zirconium is about half as dense as hafnium.

The ores of titanium (rutile and ilmenite) are the source for zirconium and thus for hafnium. Zirconium is used as cladding for fuel rods in nuclear reactors. It has to be pure and any hafnium has to be separated out. The hafnium thus obtained is used for nuclear reactor control rods as it is a good neutron absorber.

A control rod speeds up or slows down a nuclear chain reaction due to its ability to regulate the flow of neutrons. Those neutrons are supplied by the fuel rods (uranium, usually). A nuclear reactor is a collection of fuel rods and control rods. Their movement in and out of the reactor core regulates the rate of fission. The heat energy from nuclear fission (atom-splitting) is sent to a boiler that makes steam. The steam runs a turbine which ultimately drives an electrical generator.

Hafnium is used in alloys and its oxides are used in integrated circuits.

Much is being made about “critical minerals” these days. The energy transition—electric vehicles, solar and wind power—will make enormous demands on our supply chains. Big Tech’s obsession with AI and data centers will all also fuel more demand, and this industry is already insatiable. Everyday Americans use more energy and buy more stuff every year.

The usual response to the demand for more minerals (like copper, cobalt, nickel, rare earths, etc.) is to build more mines. The United States is rich in natural resources but the mining industry has left a legacy of pollution and degradation and thus it has engendered mistrust from the public. It’s hard to build a new mine these days. The response by our autocratic regime is a predictable one: cut oversight and regulations and “fast-track” new projects. And throw some money around.

But what if there is another way?

A mine is a big hole in the ground. A lot of material gets moved and has to be dumped on site. The ore gets processed and the “waste” rock gets dumped on site. Some of this material is underwater in ponds. The dams holding back these ponds can break and cause catastrophes, like this one in Brazil (Brumadinho) in 2019 that killed nearly 300 people:

There are tailings ponds all over the world, many with dams just waiting to fail. There are piles and piles of waste rock and tailings all over the world. The thing is, this stuff isn’t waste. It’s processed rock. It contains, albeit in lower concentrations, the very minerals that were being mined in the first place.

A new study from the Colorado School of Mines suggests that 90% of our country’s “critical minerals” needs could be met by mining tailings piles. This would be easy mining. No new holes to dig. The material you want to work is already on the surface and has already gone through a preliminary sorting.

We have the world’s most valuable garbage. When we ship our garbage overseas, poor people there go through it for valuable stuff so they can eke out a living. At some point, we have to stop thinking about waste, garbage, refuse, and trash. These things don’t really exist! They are just resources that have yet to be returned to the system.

Miners should be required to process their tailings and waste rock before they are allowed to dig new mines. Old mines should be rehabilitated before building new ones. Public policy (i.e. government investment) should be directed toward “enhanced recovery” and the exploitation of what we used to think of as leftovers.

The modern metal industry, particularly steel, copper, and aluminum, depends on recycling. Scrap is critical to the production cycle. There are incentives in place to recover used metal. This kind of thing needs to be ubiquitous. It is especially necessary in the tech sector with its toxic obsolescence/upgrade cycle. We throw away functional tech just because it gets “old” and not because it doesn’t work anymore. Silicon Valley depends on voracious consumer demand for fancier, shinier, and prettier stuff every year.

The study I mentioned is in Science and is by Elizabeth A. Holley, et. al. Here’s the abstract:

The US has sufficient geological endowment in active metal mines to reduce the nation’s dependence on critical mineral imports. Demand is increasing for cobalt, nickel, rare earth elements, tellurium, germanium, and other materials used in energy production, semiconductors, and defense. This study uses a statistical evaluation of new geochemical datasets to quantify the critical minerals that are mined annually in US ores but go unrecovered. Ninety percent recovery of by-products from existing domestic metal mining operations could meet nearly all US critical mineral needs; one percent recovery would substantially reduce import reliance for most elements evaluated. Policies and technological advancements can enable by-product recovery, which is a resource-efficient approach to critical mineral supply that reduces waste, impact, and geopolitical risk.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adw8997

Sitting on the patio at twilight there were sleek, black birds overhead, dashing about erratically. In silhouette they resembled accipiters with their long, pointed wings These birds were more slender though, and they moved more like flycatchers or even butterflies. Accipiters like Cooper’s hawks fly in straight lines or in smooth, aerodynamic arcs. This handful of birds seemed like they were chasing insects.

And that’s what Common nighthawks (Cordeiles minor) eat! Flying insects. Lots of them. Nighthawks are classified with Whip-poor-will’s and other Nightjars in the avian family Caprimulgidae in the order Caprimulgiformes. The Latin root “capri-” means “goat” and these are the Goatsuckers.

Why are they called that? It seems they have rather large mouth openings and ancient people believed their nocturnal habits included sucking milk from she-goats. Modern people believe a lot of crazy shit, too.

The nighthawks danced around a bit, darting to-and-for in search of prey. By the time it got dark they were long gone. I guess they need light to see like the rest of us!

Edward Hopper was thinking of night-time predators when he painted his masterpiece:

“Nighthawks” is at the Art Institute of Chicago.