Chevron Gives Residents Near Fracking Explosion Free Pizza 207
Lasrick writes "Chevron hopes that free soda and pizza can extinguish community anger over a fracking well fire in Dunkard Township, Pennsylvania. From the story: 'The flames that billowed out of the Marcellus Shale natural gas well were so hot they caused a nearby propane truck to explode, and first responders were forced to retreat to avoid injury. The fire burned for four days, and Chevron currently has tanks of water standing by in case it reignites. Of the twenty contractors on the well site, one is still missing, and is presumed dead.' The company gave those who live nearby a certificate for a free pizza and some soda."
Cold Pizza? (Score:5, Funny)
As a bonus, Dunkard Township residence can reheat the pizza with their kitchen faucets
Situation room... (Score:3)
[everyone stares at the skinny guy in glasses]
Skinny guy: What?!? Everybody likes free pizza?
Pizza bread (Score:2)
Industrial accidents happen . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Industrial accidents happen . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
It pays off even better if the small print on the voucher says acceptance of the voucher means they can't sue.
Re: Industrial accidents happen . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
What basement-dwelling numbnuts up-modded this?
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I guess Bushphone sounds too creepy?
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It makes it seem like the residents' exposure to potentially toxic smoke is worth nothing more than a coupon for free pizza.
It is insulting. Maybe they should actually pay to send out some doctors or some other meaningful assistance for the residents.
Assistance such as, you know, actually sending out the pizza itself.
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that was floated as trial balloon but unfortunately the local pizzeria was in fact blown up, thus happily limiting costs for the coupon program
I would boycott Chevron... (Score:5, Insightful)
But... if I boycotted every corporation that did something so outrageous as this, I would have no car, no gas to put in it, no clothes to wear, no shoes, nothing to eat or drink nothing to see, hear, or read. we as a people are deeply indebted to evil, and/or depraved assholes. so thank you, you despicable worms... thanks for making our modern world possible.
It's a form of communication - say it with pizza (Score:2)
I can see the point of "we've fucked up, here have a pizza" as being better than silence.
Re:I would boycott Chevron... (Score:4, Funny)
Fuck you, It's FREE pizza. Get that shit. Nothing to eat? Eat free pizza! It's free, and its pizza!
And they might give you water instead of soda, so your needs are covered. Shut your piehole, except for the part where you shove pizza pie in it. Like the good lord intended.
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I buy all my clothes secondhand. I listend to street buskers. I hang out with musicians. I ride my bike. If you wanted, you could buy an electric car and a lot of solar panels, but I get your point. I buy shoes made in the USA. I buy local food. I drink WATER, it falls out of the sky.
I think you're telling yourself nothing can be done.... so you don't have to do anything. AND you're blaming other people. Bravo. :D
Get off your ass and change your own life. It's not even that hard.
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I would add: and avoid "big brand" clothes.
Seriously - if Calvin Klein wants to use my ass as billboard to advertise his designs he can bloody well pay me rent.
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I think you are trolling? Alcohol and food are just about the only things you can make on that list of yours without corporate help. So you'd "make" your own car (minus the metals, tires, engine, etc.) and it would be unsafe, expensive, and impractical. You'd "make" your own clothes with a Singer sewing machine and you'd still be buying the fabric. You'd "make" your own shoes with Dow plastics or rubber and glue.
The fact is that we are all part of a society, and corporations are part of that. We all have a
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Making your own clothes with a basic sewing machine is clown shoes. Use a Singer Serger, a 5 spool one with mock-safety (3 stitch overlock and chain) and full safety (3 stitch overlock and double chain) stitch.
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not configuring your home computer network properly
You can't realistically make your own computer network without the help of a large company to manufacture the components.
Hot Dogs & Marshmallows (Score:5, Funny)
They should have given them hot dogs and marshmallows instead, to roast if it reignites,
They need to read the fine print. (Score:5, Funny)
There lawyers are really really clever.
Re:They need to read the fine print. (Score:5, Insightful)
They may not even need any fine print. Accepting compensation can affect your right to seek damages later.
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Somehow I doubt any judge would be impressed by a pizza and soda compensation package for anything beyond a bit of fear and inconvenience though, unless it was a *really* big pizza, or you explicitly agreed to waive rights to further complaints. I suspect even fine print on the back of the coupon would be hard pressed to make the cut.
Re:They need to read the fine print. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Touche.
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In most countries of the world contract law provides protection in the form of an expectation in a contract. I.e. I expect not to be able to sign my house away when I sign for a postal delivery.
It's irrelevant what is written in the fine print. It's irrelevant if I read it and I acknowledge that I read it. In Australia I simply can't sign my house away when accepting a delivery because the contract is void on expectation.
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Class action (Score:5, Insightful)
A Pizza is more than most people get as the result of a class action lawsuit...
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But it cost the company less, so it's less effective than a class action lawsuit.
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Also, no lawyers get anything. So it's an outrage.
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Surely the lawyers can at least get breadsticks and beer?
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That covers all the pizza I've had (Score:5, Funny)
I have to say, in many years I've yet to have a pizza explode - no matter how hard you shake it.
Just another notch in the belt of Pizza as superior food item.
Sorry 'bout poisoning your water (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry 'bout poisoning your drinking water. Here, have a pizza and STFU.
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Oh I see we've got someone swallowing tripe again. Let me guess, you also believe that methane only shows up in the water after fracking. And oil never bubbles to the surface to contaminate the ground either.
In all Honesty, Chevron is being a Good Neighbor (Score:5, Insightful)
Chevron has a sizable industrial accident in a community. They take losses in it (insurance likely covers direct losses) and lose a contractor. I'm sure that wherever damages did occur, Chevron is on the hook and is likely paying up. The nearby residents had zero damages and weren't owed a thing. Chevron is not getting off cheap or abdicating responsibility through a pizza giveaway.
The situation is comparable to having a tall tree in your yard that falls over on your car. You don't owe your neighbor a pizza, but maybe you buy him dinner anyway just for giving him the jitters.
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When there's a big explosion and fire, there's definitely a possibility that nearby residents were directly affected.
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Where there is fire, there is smoke. Where there is smoke from an oil well fire, there are carcinogens in the air
Re:In all Honesty, Chevron is being a Good Neighbo (Score:4, Insightful)
Chevron has a sizable industrial accident in a community.
At least we agree on this. :)
They take losses in it (insurance likely covers direct losses) and lose a contractor.
If Chevron was a privately owned little mom-and-pop operation and the "contractor" was their son-in-law I'd have some sympathy. But, in this case, it's hard to imagine that anyone with any real decision making power (that is, responsibility) suffered at all. Somehow I doubt the CEO of Chevron will put a picture of the deceased contractor's family on his desk as a permanent reminder to never let something like this happen again: for a company that size, a few human lives here and there are merely the cost of doing business.
I'm sure that wherever damages did occur, Chevron is on the hook and is likely paying up.
With a fire that burned for four days and the loss of life I'm pretty sure that the local government provided some services somewhere along the line.
The nearby residents had zero damages and weren't owed a thing.
I have a young nephew who, when he gets mad, runs around swinging his arms randomly hoping to "accidentally" hit someone. I suppose technically there's nothing wrong with his behavior because he's not guaranteed to succeed in hitting anyone and, even if he does, it's not "intentional". But real life isn't quite so simple and black and white: there's also this notion of negligent activity that puts others at risk.
Chevron is not getting off cheap or abdicating responsibility through a pizza giveaway.
Last year the CEO of Chevron got about $30 million in compensation [mercurynews.com]. In a standard 2,000 hour work year (50 weeks at 40 hours/week), that works out to $15,000/hour or $250/minute (there was time when I thought lawyers who charged $250/hour had it good). Now, Chevron apparently gave away about 100 pizzas [philly.com] at a cost of $12 or so per pizza - for a total cost of about $1,200. So this pizza give-away is equivalent to just a bit less that 5 minutes of the CEO's time.
The situation is comparable to having a tall tree in your yard that falls over on your car. You don't owe your neighbor a pizza, but maybe you buy him dinner anyway just for giving him the jitters.
A better analogy would be that cut down a tree on your property without taking adequate safety precautions and it all goes horribly wrong and falls on a fedex delivery person who was trying to deliver a package to your house and your neigbor tries to give the delivery person CPR but the delivery person dies in your neighbor's arms - not too mention the tree almost fell on your neighbor's house which might have killed your neighbor's family. So you give your neighbor just one single penny to compensate for the distress and risk you caused - and walk away self-righteously feeling that you've given your neighbor far more compensation than your neighbor actually deserved.
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Chevron has a sizable industrial accident in a community. They take losses in it (insurance likely covers direct losses) and lose a contractor. I'm sure that wherever damages did occur, Chevron is on the hook and is likely paying up. The nearby residents had zero damages and weren't owed a thing. Chevron is not getting off cheap or abdicating responsibility through a pizza giveaway.
The situation is comparable to having a tall tree in your yard that falls over on your car. You don't owe your neighbor a pizza, but maybe you buy him dinner anyway just for giving him the jitters.
Not that Chevron is off the hook with this pizza, but I was actually impressed that they bought the certificates from a locally owned and operated pizza place and didn't just run out and buy 100 gift cards from Pizza Hut or something. At least they were dumping money into a local business with this ploy.
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Right, so you're saying that having a fracking well explode is so common as to be unremarkable. Message received.
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False analogy. It wasn't that big of an accident, and Chevron isn't a small company in danger of going bankrupt over the damages associated with this case.
Also you might want to clean up your spelling a bit.
Fuck the media (Score:2, Informative)
I work for a hydrofrac company, and frankly, I'm fed up with the media and their bullshit. The only relationship this incident has to 'fracking' is that, the well was likely stimulated at some point in the near-past. The frac company has come, got 'er done, and gone. They didn't cause the fire, nor have anything to do with it.
Straight from the goddamn Chevron website:
Update No. 3: Pennsylvania Incident
Feb. 11, 2014, 10:50 p.m. EST – At approximately 6:45 a.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 11, a fire was reported o
Re:Fuck the media (Score:4, Insightful)
So if I cut your brake lines, but you don't drive the car for a week, and end up smacking up the car, I'm not to blame.
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Of course you are.
But if I service your car perfectly. Leave it in a better state than you brought it to me in, and then you crash it because YOU made a mistake then no I'm not to blame.
Stimulating the well will not cause a fire. You need an ignition source in an oxygen filled atmosphere. I have no idea what caused this particular incident but it could have been anything from an electrical fault causing a spark, a failure in a relief valve seeing heat build up to flash point or something as stupid as som
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Explosion Free Pizza (Score:3)
Can I get it too? (Score:2)
Explosion-Free Pizza, that is.
Everyone should get some.
Pictures (Score:3)
From the pictures of the site Chevron didn't have to give out too many certificates. The area is REALLY sparsely populated.
Chevron Read the Research (Score:3)
Might as well throw gasoline it (Score:2)
Bad Technology Is Bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup, don't like fracking - it carries too high a risk of polluting my landscape, and quite likely turning a beautiful view into a rubbish-tip. In the UK, the government has even gone on record [telegraph.co.uk] to say the extracted oil & gas won't reduce anybody's energy bills [theguardian.com]. It will, however, make a shit-load of money for some people who already have too much [youtube.com], and who seem willing to rig [youtube.com] the deck [manchester...news.co.uk] to make sure they get their way.
Don't like nuclear fission power either - it produces *filthy* dirty waste, that we have no idea what to do with. AFAIK, not a single nuclear power station has yet been decommissioned and cleaned up anywhere in the world - quite a few are mothballed, while an alleged "decommissioning" process achieves almost nothing and stretches endlessly into the future at vast expense to the tax-payer (cos poor little private sector can't take the pain, so public sector has to take that task on, or private sector will take its ball home).
Both these technologies are amateurish, half-assed, ill-thought-out, poor examples of our abilities at this climactic moment of the 21st century, and I'm embarrassed to be a member of the same species that wants to do this crap. Come on ... we're capable of better than that.
For some reason, many of my peers in this /. community seem to take umbrage whenever there is any criticism of any industrial process if there is some kind of "technology" aspect to that process. There appears to be a belief that so long as a process makes money and is technological, it must be undertaken, irrespective of the impact on this one uniquely precious planet that we have here. I will continue to try to understand this point of view, but I fear its exponents are blinded by the flashing lights.
Sigh.
Re:Bad Technology Is Bad (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that it's not theses companies doing the polluting. It's you. Look in the mirror. No not the bathroom mirror but the side mirror of your car as you stand at the bowser pouring another 55L into your tank and ask yourself where did the previous 55L go? Lie at home in the comfort of a 23degree room at 40% humidity, carefully controlled for your comfort, watching a TV made of precious minerals and manufactured using a dirty process while you're wife has a 4 gas burner stove running in the kitchen cutting up vegetables and exotic herbs imported from far away countries and brought over on a giant ship run on dirty fuel oil.
Supply and demand. I demand *unlimited* energy, and I'll be dammed if I'm going to pay 4c/kWh more than my neighbour in the interest of being green. If I did that I'd never rise to be king rich bastard of the street.
As a matter of interest remember how peak oil never happened? Can you draw any link to the lack of peak oil and the sudden interest in fracking, and scraping every last little bit of natural tar from sands within a natural reserve.
I've seen the big polluter. It's not Chevron, or BP, or Shell. It's not TEPCO, or First Energy Corp.
It's me.
Pizza for your troubles... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a pretty good deal. Cause a huge explosion, (probably) kill someone, and blow up a truck, and pay the town off with a pizza and 2 liter.
If *I* caused a huge explosion.. no, lets just say a small explosion, like just the propane truck. Say one person caught a tiny piece of shrapnel that was picked out with tweezers and fixed with a band-aid, I'd be in jail for an awful long time.
That doesn't quite seem fair.
fracking special (Score:3)
what said pizza might look like (Score:2)
http://img.myconfinedspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/pizza-extra-crispy.jpg [myconfinedspace.com]
Not Hand-Tossed (Score:2)
the important thing is someone is making money... (Score:2)
I mean c'mon guys, this is Capitalism at it's finest. The people living in the town are to blame.. if they had capitalized on the liquid gold under their feet then no-one else could have. I mean, someone has to get rich out of this don't they? There is no sense of responsibility or ownership of anything anymore.. it's just a 'faceless' corporation making multi-billions of dollars of profit per quarter.. you simply can't expect anyone to actually CARE do you?
What I think is poetic justice is the fact that
Of course, software developers think free pizza... (Score:2)
...Is an adequate reward for an eighty-hour work week.
Re:What the (Score:5, Insightful)
Because wellhead fires, explosions and dead workers are entirely unique to fracking. Nothing like that has ever happened in the oil/gas recovery business ever.
Re:What the (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think it is. I think it's mainly just NIMBY syndrome; same with nuclear power.
Greenpeace likes to cite Fukushima as evidence for why there should be no more nuclear power, but the actual results of Fukushima don't bear that out.
Fukushima taught us that living in an earthquake zone at the time of an earthquake/tsunami hurts a lot more people (16,000 confirmed dead, 2,500 missing) than a meltdown at a modern nuclear power plant (zero dead, liberal estimates of 1,000 potential cancer cases in the future - may never see a single one though.)
Are there risks with fracking? Other than the safety risks common in every other industrial work environment, not really. Some people suspect earthquakes, but so far there isn't anything other than confirmation bias to suggest it actually happens.
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And by the way, I live 50 miles from the largest nuclear plant in the US. Doesn't bother me in the slightest.
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IMHO the biggest problems people had with the US nuclear lobby were the "clean" and "too cheap to meter" lies instead of the reality that is impressive enough in itself. The "clean" thing was counterproductive and held up nuclear waste management for over two decades on synrok alone (I saw an example of it in 1987, almost identical to the finished product when they finally got some funding about five years ago) not even consid
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I made it out in 1984, so I guess I dodged that bullet. Any Polish expats I know that left after 1986 have had thyroid surgery and/or will be taking thyroid meds for the remainder of their lives. All this, just from living hundreds of miles away from Chernobyl when it blew its top.
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Re:What the (Score:5, Funny)
I'm saddened to hear there are ACs in the future. BTW, how does Beta turn out?
Re:What the (Score:5, Funny)
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This topic is about fracking wells, not being well fracked.
Bravo. Well played.
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This topic is about fracking wells, not being well fracked.
That's a well established frack.
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There's a difference between natural disasters and man-made ones.
If anything, Fukushima thought us we shouldn't build nuclear plants in an earthquake zone (I know, all Japan is, this should push us towards better international cooperation, in a perfect world).
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Fukushima WAS a natural disaster, stop trying to pretend otherwise. It was caused by the earthquake!
Or do you consider large numbers of the deaths also to not be natural, because people were hit by debris from buildings that broke up, trapped in
cars, etc? Pretty much the same thing.
The point is it has caused next to no deaths, whereas the main disaster did - and yet people rant on about the one that really didnt impact.
Get some damn perspective.
Re:What the (Score:5, Insightful)
The Colorado floods were a natural disaster, but there were only a few deaths. The environmental consequences are much higher, part of which are all the fracking fluids that got spilled.
Talk about a lack of perspective.
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I'm not sure I'd call a sodium reactor more safe. Heck, liquid sodium explodes in contact with concrete, and the very reactor itself is built out of concrete. They have to clad it in thick steel as a precaution, and after a sodium leak in Japan, the sodium ate over halfway through the steel. Liquid sodium is not nice, friendly stuff.
And I don't think there's anywhere *near* enough data on thorium reactors. All the happy-go-lucky stuff sounds all too much like the sort of sales pitches that accompany each ne
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Are there risks with fracking? Other than the safety risks common in every other industrial work environment, not really. Some people suspect earthquakes, but so far there isn't anything other than confirmation bias to suggest it actually happens.
So, what happens to all that dirty water pumped pumped in deep injections "wells"? Maybe it's "spare" water when surface water becomes even more scarce then in some areas of US already?
I think all this activity is playing poker with the future where one side in the present holds the better card.
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So, what happens to all that dirty water pumped pumped in deep injections "wells"?
Over thousands of years it slowly seeps through the rocks and just kind of hands around down there. These wells are far, far deeper than the deepest wells drilled for pumping water up from underground aquifers and the water table. By the time the 'dirty' water ever makes it anywhere important the rocks will have filtered all the crap out of it.
The actual point of concern from fracking is not about the fluids, the water, or any of the bullshit you see people ranting about. The problem is that they are re-usi
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I think your comment is pretty insightful, but you are mistaken on one point.
Fukushima taught us that [...] a meltdown at a modern nuclear power plant (zero dead
Fukushima taught what happens when an ancient nuke plant melts down, not a modern one. Fukushima was due for decommissioning... it was a second-gen design that had been in operation for over four decades! That's the original planned total lifetime of the design. (Although with upgrades it is possible to keep operating [neimagazine.com] a gen-II past the four-decad
Re:What the (Score:5, Insightful)
Are there risks with fracking?
Groundwater contamination [vanityfair.com], for one. Especially, flammable tap water [youtube.com]. Perhaps you dismiss that as anecdotal, but it's not as if scientist have been given the access, data, and funding to run these claims to ground... that will take another ten or twenty years, by which point the perpetrators will have long since taken off with the profits while the general public gets stuck with whatever environmental catastrophes this created.
Don't get me wrong... I wish fracking was as safe and plentiful as proponents claim. And maybe it's worth some amount of contamination even if it isn't safe. I just wish these things could be determined objectively and scientifically in the best public interest instead of this same old sh*t where the powerful simultaneously exert influence over corporations, media, government, and public opinion to effect the fattest profit instead of the utilitarian good.
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Groundwater contamination [vanityfair.com], for one. Especially, flammable tap water [youtube.com]. Perhaps you dismiss that as anecdotal, but it's not as if scientist have been given the access, data, and funding to run these claims to ground... that will take another ten or twenty years, by which point the perpetrators will have long since taken off with the profits while the general public gets stuck with whatever environmental catastrophes this created.
The thing is, in large groups, secrets are extremely hard to keep. Is it bothersome that they are quiet about these kinds of things? Yeah. But at the same time, I know exactly why they do it: PR is a very delicate thing. A lot of companies are tight lipped about even the most innocuous things that go on within their company because it's stupid easy for somebody to misconstrue it and damage your reputation horridly.
For examples of this, see the recent events where Gabe Newell openly talked about the DNS cach
Re:What the (Score:5, Interesting)
Especially, flammable tap water.
Great, an example of flammable water where they actually have established that something has changed. This puts it leaps and bounds beyond most such claims.
However "the amount has changed" is not a proof that it is caused by fracking (correlation and causation and all that). It would be pretty easy to measure the amount of C-14 in the water, which would immediately tell whether it is old methane or methane from recent biodegradation. Until such a test has been performed, this goes in the "interesting, but not conclusive" category.
Re: What the (Score:2, Insightful)
What I find most interesting is that since 2005 the EPA has specifically excluded the fracking industry from following regulation or reporting results. Until republicans remove this specific exclusion, all we have available is correlation as causation.
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Re:What the (Score:5, Interesting)
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See, guys! Fracking isn't a bad thing at all!
Well, that's a load of felgercarb. Muffit? Sic 'em!
Re:Scientists Create Pizza That Can Last Years (Score:5, Funny)
Scientists Create Pizza That Can Last Years
But that pizza is served just about room temperature. Now, if you store it close to that natural gas well site you could have some fracking HOT pizza!
Re:Scientists Create Pizza That Can Last Years (Score:5, Funny)
And they doused the fire with water? Like, from the toilet?
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Brawndo
www.brawndo.com
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Man, I don't want soda, I want brawno! Because it contains electrolytes!
And they doused the fire with water? Like, from the toilet?
They tried but then the water caught fire too and just made things worse...
Can't seriously expect us to swallow that tripe (Score:2)
When I grow up, I'm going to go to Bovine University.
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Cooked with natural gas, no doubt!
Seriously, though... I mean, "NEWS FLASH: Mass production of gas sought for its high energy and ease of combustion poses a fire risk!" Who here is surprised by this? Are there people in town going around saying, "My god, I knew they were producing *natural gas*, but I had no idea they were producing something that could *catch fire*!"
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Moonshine.
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They didn't say the missing worker's family got free pizza.
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Mmmmm... Ham...
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You killed my brother, but since you gave me free pizza and soda pop I'll let it go this time.
Surely I'm not the only one who thought of the Lorax upon seeing the headline?
"Now I'm offended by this. But I'm gonna eat it!"
Unfortunately, I could not find a suitable YouTube clip of that little quickie to link here.
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OMG, it didn't show up on a 5 second google search so it doesn't exist!
Bobtown is the name of a town in Dunkard, Pennsylvania.
It's safe to assume Bobtown Pizza is in Bobtown.
The phone number on the voucher also has the area code for Bobtown.
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that was tried in limited trial but 80 percent of participants upchucked their pizza upon subsequent Slashdot Beta reloading