Last night, Friday, I went to a dinner party with the upper crust of the mining community in Vancouver. My small Civic cowed out of sight amongst the BMWs and other large cars that hogged the impressive driveway up a steep incline to an imposing house tucked away high in the hills of West Vancouver.
At first, the conversation was of the best seats at the upcoming Olympics, Christmas in Hawaii, real-estate investing, Tiger Woods and the local golf club. As the wine flowed, the conversation became more interesting: how the local Olympics Committee intends to prosecute innocents who display the five rings, how “sweet and charming” it is to see the lower classes delight in the passage of the Olympic torch, why ex-teachers in British Columbia deserve better medical coverage than mere miners, and ignorance of Americans about the wonders of British Columbia.
Desperate to flee this arrogant belly-gazing, I asked what these intelligent and informed folk thought of Bill C-300. That set a gentle cat amongst the pigeons. Sad heads were shaken in despair about how Canadian mining has a bad reputation; about the silliness of common folk in not realizing where the good things in life come from (mining of course); about those venial NGOs trying to make a case–”just like the people who threw marbles beneath the horses hooves at the start of the Olympic torch parade in Victoria.” Then the loud, repetitive lady remarked that she thought Canadian mining companies should be held to account for their behaviour overseas. Reminded that mining had paid for her BMW, she backed off just a bit.
Luckily the wine continued to flow. Conversation turned from Chinese mining to Chinese foot-binding: “It was barbaric and resulted in the death of one in ten whose feet were bound.” A sweet lady noted that the bound foot had a certain sexual look to it. I opined that it was all part of the evolutionary principle called the handicap principle. The loud lady remarked that one night, unable to sleep, she had Googled foot binding only to land up on a number of porn sites. “I did not look at them, of course,” she protested. All the gentlemen present nodded in agreement—no looking at porn sites on the web. Sort of as nasty as watching American TV, they agreed.
Except me. Getting drunk and desperate for honesty at this stage of the farce, I told of the statistics of this blog. It is interesting that some very old pieces on this blog, written a long time ago, continue to get a substantial number of hits. The keywords for one of them include “ladies in hard hats.” Keywords for the other blog posting include “mining machines”. Curious to establish the reasons for the continued popularity of these postings, I undertook Google searches using the same keywords. I was delighted to see that the resulting lists included this blog, but also a substantial number of porn sites. I confess, in the interest of research of course, that I examine those sites. Throws a whole new light on mining, machines, and hard hats, not to speak of foot binding.
By this time the upper crust was discombubulated. Opinions and invective flew free and fast and the truth seeped out. In the interests of the reputation of miners everywhere I will tell no more.
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