“The biggest hole in California, with the exception of the current state budget, is Rio Tinto’s huge open-pit mine at the town of Boron, near Edwards Air Force Base, eighty miles northeast of Los Angeles. Seen from Google Earth, it is easy to imagine that the 700-foot-deep crater was blasted out of the Mojave Desert by an errant asteroid or comet. From the vantage point of Highway 58, however, the landscape is enigmatic: a mile-long rampart of ochre earth and gray mudstone, terminating at what looks like a giant chemical refinery. At night, when a driver’s mind is most prone to legends of the desert, the complex’s intense illumination is startling, even slightly extraterrestrial, like the sinister off-world mining colony in Aliens.” (03/11/10)