Good Morning 2011

I wanted to post this picture last night, but I was actually out and about for new year's eve despite this awful head cold. Anyway, yesterday's Bad Cats calendar page sums up my dreadful feelings pretty well.

You may have noticed fewer blog posts in 2010. To me there is no mystery why: in April, I became unable to read the news -- the ecological catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico was utterly depressing. For three straight months, oil gushed from the Deepwater Horizon rig -- 205.8 million gallons of crude oil total. Then they added chemical dispersants into the water to hide the oil. The poisoning of the gulf is just one aspect of this disaster. The other big story is that, no matter how often the oil companies tell us to trust them, they don't have absolute power over nature, there are no fail-safe systems, and people in charge will often make crucial decisions that ultimately kill people in order to save money.

Don't tell me BP couldn't have predicted the catastrophe. The UK firm suffered a similar blowout on an Azerbaijan gas platform 18 months earlier. BP's little secret was revealed by WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks was another big story in 2010. The whistleblower site may not be perfect, and its editor in chief, Julian Assange, has been likened to a terrorist, but don't let that overshadow the disturbing truths they have revealed. I'm coming to the realization that we need WikiLeaks now more than ever and they are now very much a part of the fourth estate... even as the media and the government would like to convince you that any real journalism is warfare.

Although I take some solace that WikiLeaks is doing the difficult and dangerous work to publish the truth, I'm very much dismayed that the 2010 U.S. electorate was grossly misinformed. Hello teabaggers! Most Economists who have estimated the effect of the health insurance reform law believe it will NOT increase the federal budget deficit over the next ten years. And notice how none of your conservative candidates gave a rat's ass about the "Ground Zero mosque" after the election was over? Now please take your misspelled signs and go home and enjoy your tax cuts.

I know I'm making 2010 seem like a real downer, but I suppose it had some bright spots too -- like health insurance reform, student loan reform, the end of "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell," and the economy -- it seems to be getting better.

Good morning 2011. Don't disappoint me!

Government Oversight

I don't have anything much to add to that.

Dreaming

Get a free BP sticker from Sticker Robot, put it on your car, and try to ignore the cognitive dissonance this may cause.

Getting My Life Back

You have no idea how a broken computer can rattle my life. I was so dismayed when, on Wednesday, the power supply crapped out on my desktop system that I actually took up a new hobby:


Yea, I transformed my computer desk into an origami station. As you can tell by the paper plumbobs, I was missing The Sims 3 more than I was missing blogging or Facebook or any of those other computer things. Also, notice the pink origami crane. I heard that if you fold 1000 of those wicked little birds you'll get a wish granted or something.


But that's not going to happen because I got my life back. Or I mean I got a shiny new quad-core gaming machine. I mean productivity machine.

So after five long, arduous days of near Ludditism, I feel alive again.

Just like BP CEO Tony Hayward who I hear is enjoying the yacht races. For some strange reason I thought the guy wouldn't want to be anywhere that reminded him of oceans, but I guess I overestimated his conscience.

What Not To Say

"It's a beautiful day, the beaches are open and people are having a wonderful time." — Mayor Larry Vaughn in Jaws.

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Politicians along with BP CEO Tony Hayward seem to be having a difficult time with words lately. They want to spin this environmental calamity into some kind of delicious milkshake, or on the other hand, make the world feel sorry for them. "What the hell did we do to deserve this?" whinged Hayward. Well, let me remind you Tony about the 760 "egregious, willful" safety violations, and oh yeah, don't forget your company is destroying the Gulf of Mexico!

Oh, and while I'm on the subject of unhelpful cretins, let's not forget the religious nuts. They, of course, also have something predictably irrelevant to say. I don't have a specific quote, but I'll sum it up for you: "See, this is what happens when you sinners don't listen to us!" They say it gleefully because they secretly look forward to the apocalypse. And yes, the oil does kind of look like blood, and I'm sure you can find many references to the sea in Revelation, but no, this is not the end of the world.

But let's for a moment assume it was Judgment Day. Wouldn't you prefer that your God found you trying to make the world a better place rather than piously sneering at others?

You Can't Have Your Life Back

I've been reading this odd little detective novel from 1908 -- The Man Who Was Thursday. I came across this passage, and well, the more things change, the more they stay screwed up:

"Mere mobs!" repeated his new friend with a snort of scorn. "So you talk about mobs and the working classes as if they were the question. You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists, as you can see from the barons' wars."

Now I think of the whiny-ass rant from BP CEO Tony Hayward and I imagine that he's planning an escape to New Guinea or wherever, but probably not in a yacht -- he wouldn't want anything to remind him of oceans:

"There’s no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back."

Hayward wants his life back? How much does he make? Five million a year or something? Wow, he certainly benefited from anarchy in the form of chummy EPA officials letting BP get away with crimes.

And as always, it's the working class who will suffer the most. Louisiana fishermen are feeling desperate as they see their livelihoods destroyed. They're the ones who can't have their lives back.

Save us Aquaman!

SNL missed the obvious solution -- tampons:



Okay, so now that we've all had a good laugh, I have to say that this entire oil spill disaster has been, to me, one of the most soul crushing man-made disasters ever. Millions of gallons of oil have gushed into the Gulf of Mexico since the Deepwater Horizon blowout. The amount of oil could be "the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez tanker every four days."

And it threatens the entire ocean food chain. We've all seen the illustrations where the little fish is eaten by the big fish, which is eaten by an even bigger fish, etc? Well...

Scientists say bacteria, plankton and other tiny, bottom-feeding creatures will consume oil and will then be eaten by small fish, crabs and shrimp. They, in turn, will be eaten by bigger fish, such as red snapper, and marine mammals such as dolphins.

The petroleum substances that concentrate in the sea creatures could kill them or render them unsafe for eating, scientists say.

"If the oil settles on the bottom, it will kill the smaller organisms like the copepods and small worms," Montagna said. "When we lose the forage, then you have an impact on the larger fish."

Making matters worse for the deep sea is the leaking well's location: It is near the continental shelf of the Gulf where a string of coral reefs flourishes. Coral is a living creature that excretes a hard calcium carbonate exoskeleton, and oil globs can kill it.

The reefs are colorful underwater metropolises of biodiversity, attracting sea sponges, crabs, fish, algae and octopus.

And that's just the effect of the oil. The 400,000 gallons of dispersants (chemical mixtures designed to bond to the oil molecules and separate them from water molecules) are also toxic and do not actually reduce the total amount of oil entering the gulf, but they do make the oil less visible. If that sounds to you more like a political "solution" than a scientific one, you're probably right. But some people are more gullible...

Brit Hume at Fox News recently asked, "where is the oil?" The guy has the critical thinking skills of a toddler. Put a little toy out of sight and it's "all gone!" Except it's not a toy, it's oil. And it's not all gone, it's deep in the ocean.

But it's going to take more than dispersants to clean up BP's political mess. Eight US senators are calling for criminal and civil charges against the multinational oil company. I'm not sure how we can even put a price on a disaster we'll be feeling for years, but I'm certain that $75 million won't be enough.