Canadian Oil Sands -- The Largest Oil Reservoir On Earth? -- RBN Energy

Active rigs:

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RBN Energy: an incredible story.

Western Canada’s vast bitumen sands are estimated to contain reserves of 575 billion Bbl of recoverable crude oil. The largely untapped bitumen carbonate formations lying beneath the oil sands could contain another 243 billion Bbl of recoverable reserves. When added to untapped tight oil shale reserves these huge hydrocarbon deposits potentially could make the Province of Alberta the world’s largest crude oil resource. Today contributor Mike Priaro concludes his description of Alberta’s crude oil reserves.

The Wall Street Journal

 Russia takes steps to annex Crimea, despite threat of new sanctions.

Food prices are surging as drought exacts a high toll on crops.

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And God said, "Let there be light."

Discovery bolsters big-bang theory. The story sounds almost as important as the Higgs boson.

Scientists said Monday they have detected the earliest signals reaching back to the birth of the universe almost 14 billion years ago, buttressing the big-bang theory of how the cosmos was formed.

Using a radio telescope at the South Pole, a team of astronomers and astrophysicists said they found telltale patterns of gravity waves in the primordial microwave radiation that lingers in space today. Scientists consider this the faint afterglow of the big bang. The discovery offers what scientists say is the first direct data on the creation of the universe.

Until now, cosmologists had theories but few facts. If the work proves correct, it demonstrates that gravitational waves, which squeeze and stretch the fabric of space, were created in abundance during the early expansion, or "inflation," of the universe, the instant when space grew from a pinpoint smaller than an atom to the entire observable universe seen today, several experts said.

This theory is the keystone of modern cosmology. "It is direct evidence that inflation [of the early cosmos] happened," said physicist James Bock at the California Institute of Technology, who helped conceive the experiment at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It is amazing to me that 14 billion years after the big bang we can peer back into the first moments of creation and learn something from it."

Gravitational waves also are a significant prediction of Einstein's theory of general relativity. Researchers have been seeking evidence of these waves for years, and now scientists say they have found it.

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Buffalo to move farther into Montana, where the deer and the buffalo roam.

Bond insurer seeks to challenge Detroit suit; could derail whole thing.

The Los Angeles Times

The top story is also the discovery of gravitational waves supporting the big-bang theory. Note to newbies: this has nothing to do with the wildly successful Fox television sitcom.

A 4.4 earthquake in downtown Los Angeles: The epicenter is on a fault beneath the Santa Monica Mountains that hasn't seen a quake this size in 80 years. 'Earthquakes happen in places you don't expect,' a Caltech expert says. The memo goes on to not mention anything about the fact that there was no fracking in downtown Santa Monica prior to the quake. Somehow this is going to be blamed on either George Bush or Mel Gibson. [Later, March 18, 2014: I guess I was premature. The Los Angeles City council has directed a study to determine if fracking was the cause of this 4.4 magnitude earthquake. One more nail in the coffin of fracking in California. LOL. -- from the linked article:

Seismologist Lucy Jones, a USGS science advisor for risk reduction, said she would need to know much more about nearby pumping in the area, such as whether someone was changing the water pressure deep in the ground, to say whether it could have been a factor in the Monday temblor.

However, "my first impression is that sounds implausible," Jones said, "just because the earthquake was so deep. Induced earthquakes are almost always shallower than this."

Monday's quake struck in Encino on the northern edge of the Santa Monica Mountains in an area that has not seen much recent seismological activity. Comment: I doubt science will have any place in the findings and/or conclusion. ]

Retirement? I don't think so: Eighteen percent of Americans say they are very confident about retirement. But more than a third of respondents had saved less than $1,000.

The New York Times

One story to highlight:

The first turn to the west that diverted the missing Malaysia Airlines plane from its planned flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing was carried out through a computer system that was most likely programmed by someone in the plane’s cockpit who was knowledgeable about airplane systems, according to senior American officials.

Instead of manually operating the plane’s controls, whoever altered Flight 370’s path typed seven or eight keystrokes into a computer on a knee-high pedestal between the captain and the first officer, according to officials. The Flight Management System, as the computer is known, directs the plane from point to point specified in the flight plan submitted before a flight. It is not clear whether the plane’s path was reprogrammed before or after it took off. 

The fact that the turn away from Beijing was programmed into the computer has reinforced the belief of investigators — first voiced by Malaysian officials — that the plane was deliberately diverted and that foul play was involved. It has also increased their focus on the plane’s captain and first officer.

I believe "themilliondollarway" was the first non-commercial site blogging on the Bakken to discuss this likelihood. This was simply a pilot who snapped; nothing more, nothing less. The one possibility that he was going to use the passengers as hostages to get his friend released from prison becomes more and more unlikely as the days go by. He would be feeding a lot of passengers by now to keep them alive to use as hostages.