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Alberta’s brush with the H-bombThe headline on the Toronto Star story was tantalizing: “Will H-bomb Solve Riddle of Tar Sands?” It was a serious question, posed in December 1958. The writer of the article, the Star’s George Noordhof, wondered if Canada’s first hydrogen bomb explosion would “free the oil from the athabasca tar sands of Alberta?”
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Natland suggested that Richfield explode underground a nine-kiloton atomic warhead (a “baby nuclear bomb,” as Alberta’s then premier, Ernest Manning, called it) to test his hypothesis. His theory was that the heat from the explosion would melt the sands and release liquid hydrocarbons with little risk to the atmosphere above. The molten sands would solidify into a huge glass bubble, trapping most of the radiation inside. The liquefied oil would then flow into the cavity caused by the explosion, and the oil companies would pump it out just like they did with conventional well drilling. If the experiment was successful, Natland added, the industry would have a proven scientific way to “create an oilfield on demand.”Alberta oil industry officials and politicians embraced the nuclear proposal with enthusiasm. A former lawyer for Imperial Oil, Gerry Burden, recalls that one of his Calgary colleagues, a researcher named Jim Young, had been talking for some years about using nuclear power in the same way. Premier Manning, whose Social Credit administration had been actively seeking bids from oil companies to build the first commercial separation plant in the athabasca region, said the proposal “makes an awful lot of sense.”
For better or worse, viewers then tend to make snap judgments about someone’s personality or character from a single shot.
We can alter our facial features in ways that make us look more trustworthy, but don't have the same ability to appear more competent. A face resembling a happy expression, with upturned eyebrows and upward curving mouth, is likely to be seen as trustworthy while one resembling an angry expression, with downturned eyebrows, is likely to be seen as untrustworthy. However, competence judgments are based on facial structure, a trait that cannot be altered, with wider faces seen as more competent.
Image courtesy of Jonathan Freeman and Eric Hehman Selfies, headshots, mug shots
[h=1]When psychologists “go wrong”[/h]
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