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OT: The News Thread

MindzEye said:
Huge dollar investment. Refineries are multi-multi billion dollar facilities. There's nobody who really needs one who is big enough to do it imo.

Syncrude was recently purchased by Exxon, but they have full upgrader facilities to turn out synthetic crude

Suncor also has an upgrader

CNRL....Ditto

Shell/Albian Sands has Scottsford in Edmonton.


The DilBit heading towards Houston in the Keystone XL will be from sites like Conoco Phillips, Nexxen's Long Lake project, Cenovous, Kearl Lake, Total, Husky, etc, etc, etc. The public image of the oil sands are these huge open pit strip mining operations, and the 4 big boys mentioned above do major strip mining. They all have in province upgrade/refinery capacity. Like I said in my earlier post, the real expansion in the oil sands are in these 30-65K barrel per day SAGD projects in the middle of ****ing nowhere. They're small facilities with only primary upgrade facilities (they basically heat the bitumen, add diluents and some naptha to it and done...just do enough to it to make it able to flow...secondary upgraders *SUG in oilsand parlance* remove the coke and basically produce a synthetic crude oil when all is said and done) and use directional drilling and steam injection to basically suck bitumen from the ground...all they need to do is shift their drill pads around from time to time and run the steam and product piping to the new drill pad location....the sites basically run themselves.

None of those sites are big enough to justify it....a company like Total, one of the biggest energy companies in the world, could afford to spend 20+ billion on a refinery...but why? When you can get a pipeline company to spend their own coin to build you a pipeline to Houston.
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Cheers for the explanation.
 
LeafGm said:
There were plenty of Reformers in Ontario too, just not enough in any one riding to ever get a Reformer elected. My grandfather was one of them, actually.

But yeah, "stupid" is an even better description of this particular guy than "Reformer" is.
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First, in 1993, Ontario did elect a Reform MP. Small detail, I know, but it did happen. He's the sasquatch of Canadian Politics.

Second, Woodworth has been severely discouraged in this effort by several high ranking Tories. Let me assure you.
 
IrishWolfman said:
First, in 1993, Ontario did elect a Reform MP. Small detail, I know, but it did happen. He's the sasquatch of Canadian Politics.

Second, Woodworth has been severely discouraged in this effort by several high ranking Tories. Let me assure you.
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Of that, I have absolutely zero doubt.

As for Ontario electing a Reform MP, you learn something new every day. What riding?
 
theREALkoreaboy said:
i call BS. if you were:

A) old enough to have been around and aware when mulroney was PM, and
B) had seem him, a conservative PM, try to bring oil refineries here,

you would have screamed like a little girl and called him a pollution-spewing dinosaur.
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I call BS on your BS. Who did YOU vote for when Buloney first ran as leader of the Tories? Oh... that's right. You weren't old enough yet.
That might also be why you are totally clueless as to what Trudeau's vision was for Petro Canada - a plan that was totally ripped apart soon after Buloney won the election.
But again... you weren't old enough yet. So **** YOU and your BS.
 
blacksheep said:
I call BS on your BS. Who did YOU vote for when Buloney first ran as leader of the Tories? Oh... that's right. You weren't old enough yet.
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uhm, i was actually old enough to work as a volunteer on that '84 campaign. i remember going to PC headquarters in ottawa to see the official launch of his '84 campaign and was there to shake his hand. i have very clear, very fond memories of (st.?) brian mulroney.
 
I'm just going to leave this right here...and hope that we never look back at it conspiratorially.

http://news.yahoo.com/details-lab-made-bird-flu-wont-revealed-223114982.html

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government paid scientists to figure out how the deadly bird flu virus might mutate to become a bigger threat to people — and two labs succeeded in creating new strains that are easier to spread.

On Tuesday, federal officials took the unprecedented step of asking those scientists not to publicize all the details of how they did it.

The worry: That this research with lots of potential to help the public might also be hijacked by would-be bioterrorists. The labs found that it appears easier than scientists had thought for the so-called H5N1 bird flu to evolve in a way that lets it spread easily between at least some mammals.

"It wasn't an easy decision," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious diseases chief at the National Institutes of Health, which funded the original research.

The scary-sounding viruses are locked in high-security labs as researchers at the Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands and the University of Wisconsin-Madison prepare to publish their findings in leading scientific journals. That's the way scientists share their work so that their colleagues can build on it, perhaps creating better ways to monitor bird flu in the wild, for example.

But biosecurity advisers to the government recommended that the journals Science and Nature publish only the general discoveries, not the full blueprint for these man-made strains. Tuesday, the government announced that it agreed and made the request.
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MONTREAL — Canadian astronauts could be stuck on the ground for years following Chris Hadfield's space mission scheduled for 2012. That six-month visit to the International Space Station, which begins next November when Hadfield blasts off in a Russian spacecraft, will mark the end of a busy era for Canadian space travel.

It's not clear when another Canadian will leave the planet, says an official at the national space agency.

"According to our agreement on the International Space Station we don't have a flight -- beyond Chris Hadfield -- before the end of the decade," Gilles Leclerc, the Canadian Space Agency's director-general of space exploration, said in an interview.

In the 27 years since Marc Garneau became the first Canadian to fly into space, a total of eight Canadians have taken 15 space trips, many of them enjoying several voyages into the cosmos.

For the next while, the Canadian space program will focus on sending not people, but machines into space -- like rovers and satellites for earth observation and military applications.

At one point Canada had six active astronauts. Now there are two young ones, but David Saint-Jacques and Jeremy Hansen still have to undergo a few years of training before any trip.
They will still get their chance -- eventually.
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Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/SciTech/20111226/astronauts-hadfield-space-111226/#ixzz1hf6d2pZE

I doubt this is much of an issue. On paper, there may indeed be no more Canadians, but once agreements get renewed, I'm sure there will be.

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We would be remiss not to check in with Toronto’s most memorable infant of 2011, the baby aptly named Storm.
This May, a Star story about Kathy Witterick and David Stocker’s decision to keep the sex of their baby under wraps went viral.


Within days, Storm’s image — cherubic cheeks and wispy blond hair — appeared online, on televisions and in newspapers around the world.


Nearly seven months have passed. Storm turns 1 on New Year’s Day and is already standing up and nearly walking. A few teeth have popped through his/her gums, which came in handy on Halloween for a jack-o’-lantern imitation.


For the family — which also includes Kio, 3, and Jazz, who turns 6 on Tuesday — life has been joyful and busy. Day to day, little has changed. But they have new friends now, and have found support, even from surprising places.

This spring, only seven people knew whether Storm was a girl or a boy. That hasn’t changed.
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link

Jazz's favourite colour is Pink. He gets teased for that. That's partly why nobody knows Storm's gender. It will be interesting to see how this all pans out.
 
GRAPEVINE, Texas (AP) – Police said the man they believe is responsible for a Christmas Day shooting that left him and six members of his extended family dead was dressed as Santa Claus.

Grapevine police spokesman Sgt. Robert Eberling said Monday the shooter "showed up shortly before the incident took place" in the Santa outfit and was a member of the family opening gifts in the apartment.

Eberling said the identity of the man and the victims will be released after autopsies are conducted Monday.

Police went to the apartment Sunday after dispatchers received a phone call in which no one was on the line. They found four women and three men, aged 18 to 60, dead.

The apparent murder-suicide involves the first homicides in this Fort Worth suburb since June 2010.
Four women and three men, ages 18 to 60, were found in an adjoining kitchen and living room area when police entered the apartment around midday, Eberling said. Two handguns were found near the bodies in the apartment that was decorated for the holiday with a tree, he added.

"It appears they had just celebrated Christmas. They had opened their gifts," Eberling said.

Grapevine Police Lt. Todd Dearing said investigators believe that all the victims were related, but that some were only visiting and didn't live in the apartment. He said police are looking for other relatives to inform.

"Seven people in one setting in Grapevine, that's never happened before. Ever," Dearing said.
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Not exactly a "Merry" Christmas.
 
Louis CK basically proves that modern media companies are dead concepts simply doing their best to bribe our governments into forcing their continued existence on us.


Comedian Louis CK has proved a point: People are willing to pay a reasonable amount of money for DRM-free content from a performer they love, even though it would be trivial for them to pirate the same content for free.

Twelve days ago, Louis CK decided to skip the distribution, DRM, ads and everything else that goes into marketing and sale of a video, and simply offer the video of his latest performance on his website for $US5.

It took four days for Louis to earn $US200,000, and another 8 days to earn a whopping $US1 million.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/te...ith-5-video-20111227-1pb6g.html#ixzz1hmeq1Mv5
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Previously, when the overhead in developing an artist cost a shit load of money, these companies with their inhouse marketing departments, distribution networks, etc just made sense. Every arm that made them worthwhile corporations actually providing a service has been made obsolete or is in the process of being made obsolete. Their only function now is as a gateway to content that they own. As celebrities come to realize that they don't need these monstrous vampire bats clinging to them, they'll continue to move away from it. For an artist to earn a million dollars off of a DVD, they'd typically have to sell 20 million dollars worth of DVD's.

and before the "well...Louis has to pay employees, etc, etc" argument comes out....he already had to, except he would have been paying the employees of the corporation he had his publishing deal with...they recoup all of that shit before they calculate your cut on the vast majority of contracts.
 
Been meaning to start a thread about that for a while, encouraging people to go buy that special.....it's damn good, and more people that buy it, the more that type of delivery system will become the norm.
 
Well...I imagine that if in 8 days it cracked a million, once it starts to pick up a bit more word of mouth traction, it will continue to roll and probably quite easily hit 3-4 million by spring.
 
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