Personal Log
Current Work


The great thing; if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's "own" or "real" life.  The truth is of course that what one calls interruptions are precisely one's real life--the life God is sending one day by day; what one calls one's "real life" is a phantom of one's imagination.  That is what I see at moments of insight: but it is hard to remember it all the time.                                      C.S. Lewis
I am employed by The University of Alabama.  My title is Director of the Central Analytical Facility and I also am Manager of the Bevill Research Facility.   (Click this hyperlink to find out about the Central Analytical Facility?)

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Other Things in Progress  ( It is great to have much to do.)
Some things long overdue:
       The Moon:  Some long done research but never properly written.  This I must do. 
    

                                                                                Lunar Spinel-Troctolite 67435

Dating rocks and minerals using the electron probe:
        I became interested in this and can't seem to let go.  Some minerals contain large amounts of uranium and/or thorium.  If the mineral has remained a closed system since it formed, and contains no original lead.  Then if the concentrations of uranium, thorium and lead can be determined, a date can be calculated.
        Fun stuff!

CHIME - MONAZITE FOLKS CLICK HERE FOR MONAZITE DATA

 

Gold in Volcanic Hosted Deposits:
        I am currently working with a large American gold mining company in what promises to be a major study of the alteration and gold distribution of a very large volcanic hosted gold region.  This is neat stuff. 
      

Magnet Cove, AR:
        Carbonatites, lamprophyres, weird rocks and minerals.  Nathan Green (Univ. of Alabama) and I are working on this project together. Lamprophyres and other ultramafic rocks in general.

We see Sr sea shells down by them sea shores:
        Douglas Haywick (Univ. South Alabama) and I are looking at aragonite diagenesis.  Mostly Doug looks at diagenesis, mostly I look at Sr lines in shells.

Gold and skarns:
        Minas de Oro:  An interesting Copper-Gold skarn under exploration in Honduras.
        This area is still under exploration.
SKARNS - you got to love them.

Unusual garnet zoning.

With Harold Stowell and Carlos Zuluagal
Yes, I am a lawyer too!   (I am loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.   Samual Johnson)
       Natural resources law, religion-science-law-environment interplays.
       

And last but not least:
        I am working on a book manuscript, but no talk of it until I have something substantial.