Wood Bison Thrive Amidst Alberta Oil Sands Production

The Good News: Wood Bison are thriving amidst the massive Alberta Oil Sands project and the United States could become energy independent and claim the title of the world's leading producer of liquid energy. (details below)

                                              Male Wood Bison (Bison bison athabascae)

Two articles in the Eurasia Review caught my attention today. I learned that Wood Bison, the largest terrestrial animals in North America and long extinct in the U.S., have been brought back from the edge of extinction and may be found placidly grazing near the massive Alberta oil sands project in Canada. This formation contains the third larges proven reserve of crude oil in the world. 

The last woods bison in the United States was apparently shot by a hunter in West Virginia around 1835. For many decades, the woods bison was presumed extinct – until an airplane spotted an isolated herd in the muskeg swamps north of Alberta, Canada...The bison living at the oil sands recovery site are direct descendants of the remnant herd found in 1957. They were busily browsing about 300 yards from a huge diesel shovel that loads 400 tons of oily sand at a time into a lineup of huge trucks. The trucks carry the sand toward a giant “cooker” where the oil is steamed out...

The oil sands extraction methods are twofold: surface mining with shovels and trucks;  drilling and steam extraction from the deeper beds. As one area is exhausted the Canadian government reclaims title to the land and complete restoration of the landscape is undertaken.

...The tar sands are a geological marvel: an 84,000 square miles deposit – an area the size of Kansas – but the sand is soaked with 5–25 percent heavy petroleum. In total, the Alberta sands are estimated to contain 169 billion barrels of oil, making it one of the largest petroleum deposits in the world. Experts say the oil sands’ operations could produce 465,000 U.S. jobs in construction, refining, petrochemicals and other sectors by 2035, if President Obama finally lets the Keystone XL pipeline go forward...(emphasis added)

The oil sands article led  to another in the same publication asserting the U.S.could become the world's largest supplier of liquid energy surpassing, at some point, the output of Saudi Arabia. U.S. output of liquid energy is increasing with the development of oil shale formations in North Dakota, Utah, and Colorado. October 2012  oil production in North Dakota hit 747,239 barrels per day, The Green River oil shale formation in UT and CO, yet to be tapped, is estimated to contain upwards of three trillion barrels dwarfing the output of OPEC.

                                                            Shale Oil Exploration Rig in Rifle CO
(Article also published today at The Middletown Insider)

Memorial Day 2012

Go HERE for enlarged image

A Year's Output of Our Planet's Chromium Mines Visible Here: Motorcycle Mania 2011

Thousands of motorcycles with their drivers and passengers. plus thousands more spectators filled the entirety of Main Street and some of the surrounding streets with a sea of chromium and brilliant paint. This was Motorcycle Mania 2011, an annual event in Middletown, Connecticut for the past several years. Follow are a sampling of photos from the event.

I don't know what motorcycle they rode in on but I am pleased they agreed to be photographed (obligatory eye candy)!

Note: Click on any photo to enlarge

There were a great variety of machines on display including Harleys of every description, Honda comfort bikes, Spyder trikes, and conventional  trikes; also spotted was a single Ducati and a Victory. There were quite a few female drivers but always solo and of course the usual pairing of guy driving and gal holding on in back.

No motorcycle rally would be complete without a cast of colorful characters and this event was no exception:

Bikes and more bikes:

The End (time to partay!):

Reposted from Conservacity (Aug 12, 2011)
Tags: motorcycles,motorcycle rally,motorcycle mania, middletown ct

The Afghan Front: Excellent Photgraphic Slide Show

The afghan front

View more presentations from guimera.
Tags:afghan war,afghanjstan,afghan people,afghan children

Shooter Jared Loughner a Leftist Loon

This photo from the Tucson Book Festival, March 2010 shows volunteer Jared Loughner.
Arizona Daily Star Photo

By Aaron Klein
© 2011 WorldNetDaily

"The Communist Manifesto" and Hitler's "Mein Kampf" were among the favorite reading materials of Jared Lee Loughner, the suspected gunman in today's fatal shooting that reportedly left six dead and gravely injured a U.S. congresswoman.

Lougher, 22, listed those tomes among his favorites on his YouTube channel, in which he wrote that "conscience dreams" were a "great study" at his college, Pima Community College.

One user on Twitter, Caitie Parker, wrote she went to high school, college and was in a band with the gunman. She said she hadn't seen him since 2007.

Parker wrote of Lougher, "As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal and oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy."

She also described him as "more left."

Lougher also left a trail of bold political statements.

On his now deleted MySpace page, Lougher wrote a series of disjointed rants, including:

• "If there's no flag in the Constitution, then the flag in the film is unknown. There's no flag in the Constitution. Therefore, the flag in the film is unknown. Burn every new and old flag that you see. Burn your flag!"


• "I bet you can imagine this in your mind with a faster speed. Watch this protest in reverse! Ask the local police, 'What's your illegal activity on duty?'"


• "If you protest the government, then there's a new government from protesting. There's not a new government from protesting. Thus, you aren't protesting the government."

Three months ago, Lougher made a YouTube video in which he proclaimed, "I know you're illiterate! This is the greatest protest for exposure into a wrongful act. The school is breaking the Constitution. If you watch the video then you'll understand. The teachers are taking advantage of you in the First and Fifth Amendmen the United States Constitution, which is the law, can be broken at this school."

With research by Brenda J. Elliott

Note: Loughner's name is mis-spelt throughout except in the first mention.

And, speaking of Loughner's left wing influences:

The Fascist New Frontier by Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs

Ayn Rand delivered this lecture at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston in 1962...(read more)

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/01/who-said-that.html

Tags: jared lee loughner,gabby giffords,gabrielle giffords,tucson shooting,u s rep shot,federal judge killed,atlas shrugs,nazism left wing,pamela geller,ayn rand

Update: Said Sisters Honor Killings: Fox News Investigation

Honor Killings: The Said Sisters Amina & Sarah from John Brush on Vimeo.

Stephen Foster: Born on the Fourth of July (Hard Times)

Stephen Collins Foster was born in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania,now part of Pittsburgh, on the Fourth of July in 1826. That was a most important Fourth; it marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It was on that day too that the second and third presidents died - John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

(John Tasker Howard, from historical notes to book below)

(born July 4, 1826, Lawrenceville, Pa., U.S. — died Jan. 13, 1864, New York, N.Y.) U.S. songwriter. He began writing songs as a child, influenced in part by black church services he attended with the family's servant and by songs sung by black laborers. In 1842 he published "Open Thy Lattice, Love," and in 1848 he sold "Oh! Susanna" for $100; it quickly became an international hit. He later entered into a contract with the publisher Firth, Pond & Co. He was commissioned to write songs for Edwin P. Christy's minstrel show; his "Old Folks at Home" became one of the most popular songs of the century. In 1857, drinking heavily and in financial difficulties, he sold all rights to his future songs to his publishers for about $1,900. In 1860 he moved to New York; he died penniless at age 37, leaving about 200 songs, including "Camptown Races," "My Old Kentucky Home," "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair," and "Beautiful Dreamer," and he is universally regarded as the greatest American songwriter of the 19th century. Source


-----------Oh, Susanna! Foster's Greatest Hit?

Oh, Susanna! sung by Pete Seeger: Oh, Susanna

"So far as is known, only one song has ever made the Hit Parade eighty-seven years after it was written and seventy-seven years after the death of its composer. That song is Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair by Stephen Collins foster. In 1940 and '41, when the broadcasters and the American society of composers, Authors, and Publishers were feuding, the radio suddenly discovered Jeanie. She was sung, she was played as a ballad, an aria, a chorus, a fantasy, a ballet, a foxtrot, a swing tune. It is a safe wager that during those two years Foster's ballad had more performances and was heard by more people than in all the years since its creation. The wonder is that it survived such mauling, that it has not departed into Limbo together with Yes, We Have No Bananas and the Hut Sut Song..." (Deems Taylor, in the forward to A Treasury of Stephen Foster; Random House, New York; 1946. The illustrations here are from that book and are by William Sharp.)

Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair-Sung by Jan Degaetani: Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair


-----------Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair


Hard Times "Hard Times was the second of the two songs which were based on fragments of folk songs which Stephen heard as a child in the Negro church where the family nurse, Olivia Pise, worshipped. Hard Times was published in January of 1855, four and a half years later than the other song of Negro derivation. Oh Boys, Carry Me 'Long, and its words were tragically prophetic, for it became one of the songs that Foster sang most frequently in hi last days, when "hard times" were on him in full force indeed"


---------Hard Times Come Again No More

Here is Hard Times.. sung by Renee Fleming and Garrison Keillor:
Hard Times Come Again No More Garrison Keillor-Renee Fleming

...And, another version by Emmylou Harris:
Hard Times [Come Again No More Emmylou Harris

This post is reprinted from Steady Habits, July 4, 2010

Tags: emmylou harris,garrison keillor,Jan Degaetani,renee fleming,stephen foster,oh susanna,hard times,jeanie w light brown hair,