Increased offer
The story points to what is purely a business decision. After all, why should a company pay more for something when it can pay less? Part of that 101 course, if you will. In Nebraska, the firm that wants to push a pipeline south from Alberta to the refineries in the deep south has upped their offer to landowners. By 700%. And that’s the figure that we should retain. The amount of money to be made in this gamble is enormous. Enough to push the bean counters out of their parsimony. And this is probably a reasonable figure, which means that the return on investment is much higher than most of us realize.
Not my affair, though. I have no direct (or indirect) interest in the success of the tar sands (oops, we’re encouraged to say oil sands; in the Newspeak, it sounds better.) Still, if anything, my desire to “never have an oil truck in the driveway” remains. I’ve gone for three decades, now. Electricity is cheaper, and cleaner.
Hollywood has a talent for turning comic books into movies. This afternoon, that Captain America flick from last year was available on one of the movie channels, and when I wasn’t “practicing” for my quiz on dB levels, I leaned back and enjoyed the escapist fare. Oh, yes… dB levels. My most recent online course is nothing more than hours of exercises. I listen to short sound clips and try to identify charactieristics. This week, we’ve played “louder or softer?” For what it’s worth, the formula for calculating dB now makes sense, but my final score was still a fail. I don’t hear as well as I used to.
