Visitors to Chhattisgarh see dense jungle, small huts, and immense mines, but few schools, health centers, or hospitals.
Since 2007, when all three got new bosses, Anglo's shares have fallen by 25% whereas Rio's are up by 40% and BHP's by 115% (see chart).Slow-moving Anglo failed to strike transformational deals of the sort that built BHP and Rio into immense, diversified mining groups.
The Obama administration's decision last year to revoke a permit for a huge mine in West Virginia inspired hope that mountaintop mining, which has caused immense environmental damage across Appalachia, would soon be coming to an end.
In the past decade, the company has advanced plans to excavate an immense open-pit mine, the Pebble Mine, right near the headwaters of some of Bristol Bay's major salmon rivers.
Even more important, the development of compressed-air drilling machinery on the Hoosac helped launch the American pneumatic-tool industry, which assumed immense significance in mining and construction.
Over time, by mining immense databases with superhuman speed, data giants will get closer and closer to knowing what each of us is willing to pay.
In the wake of 9/11, the potential for mining immense databases of digital information gave rise to a program called Total Information Awareness, developed by Adm. John M. Poindexter, the former national security adviser, while he was a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Further across the altiplano, past the immense long-abandoned mining ghost towns, and the world has been bleached - salt flats stretch in every direction until blue and white fuse; the light blinding.
Most of Suncor's production comes from an operation resembling an immense open-pit mine.
Dr. Tilly mined immense piles of original documents for raw data and contemporary accounts — including municipal archives, unpublished letters and diaries — that he used to develop theories applicable to many contexts.
