In happier news, it's my birthday, and although I didn't really get fete'd, thanks to the 94% humidity and 64 degree dew point, plus my 2 mile walk home from work, at least I got fetid.
Also my awesome housemate with the same birthday made strawberry rhubarb pie.
Also I used my bully pulpit on FB to agitate for industrial action. Go nurses!
Happy Brirthday, NP.
There is no capping the oil well. Shit-all is happening until August and the relief well.
And August is the best case scenario.
Yes, 2 should have read "Finish the relief well". I just meant "Stop the oil". Everything other than the relief well is just theatre, or so I'm told.
Happy Birthday Minne!
Happy birthday, Natilo! Wishing you many more good years.
Thanks, all. I'm halfway through my biblically appointed three score and ten, so every day from now on is just another day closer to the grave. Never really thought I would live this long, actually. But it's been worth it.
You know what would be a good name for a band? "Little Ester and the Acetones"
Happy Birthday, NP. If it makes you feel any better, every day since your birth has been another day closer to the grave.
On the bright side of the oil leak, remember how BP was insisting for ages that the flow from the well was 5k barrels a day? Well, the containment cap captured 14k barrels yesterday. It's like, we're running out of oil, and this thing is magically making oil. They should call it the Hanukkah cap.
every day since your birth has been another day closer to the grave.
Then he saw his ghosts glitter with golden hands,
the Emperor sliding up and up from his tomb
alongside Charles. These things are not obliterate.
White gobs spitten for mockery;
and I too shall have CY GIST written over me.
Remember, imbeciles and wits,
sots and ascetics, fair and foul,
young girls with little tender tits,
that DEATH is written over all.
Worn hides that scarcely clothe the soul
they are so rotten, old and thin,
or firm and soft and warm and full--
fellmonger Death gets every skin.
All that is piteous, all that's fair,
all that is fat and scant of breath,
Elisha's baldness, Helen's hair,
is Death's collateral:
Three score and ten years after sight
of this pay me your pulse and breath
value received. And who dare cite,
as we forgive our debtors, Death?
Abelard and Eloise,
Henry the Fowler, Charlemagne,
Genée, Lopokova, all these
die, die in pain.
And General Grant and General Lee,
Patti and Florence Nightingale,
like Tyro and Antiope
drift among ghosts in Hell,
know nothing, are nothing, save a fume
driving across a mind
preoccupied with this: our doom
is, to be sifted by the wind,
heaped up, smoothed down like silly sands.
We are less permanent than thought.
The Emperor with the Golden Hands
is still a word, a tint, a tone,
insubstantial-glorious,
when we ourselves are dead and gone
and the green grass growing over us.
Allow me to be the first to wish Natilo a feliz cumpleaños.
Hey now! This is a family blog.
Happy Birthday, NP! Or, I guess, what Witt said.
Only 364 shopping days left until Natilo's birthday, in his presumed time zone.
Hey now! This is a family blog.
The Manson Family, maybe.
For the Anniversary of My Death
Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star
Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what
W. S. Merwin
For Natilo's birthday:
The witch that came (the withered hag)
To wash the steps with pail and rag,
Was once the beauty Abishag,
The picture pride of Hollywood.
Too many fall from great and good
For you to doubt the likelihood.
Die early and avoid the fate.
Or if predestined to die late,
Make up your mind to die in state.
Make the whole stock exchange your own!
If need be occupy a throne,
Where nobody can call you crone.
Some have relied on what they knew;
Others on simply being true.
What worked for them might work for you.
No memory of having starred
Atones for later disregard,
Or keeps the end from being hard.
Better to go down dignified
With boughten friendship at your side
Than none at all. Provide, provide!
Who wants to sex Mutombo?
R. Frost (mostly)
The really sad thing is that, in our world of superfast information, leading to information overload, it seems that so many folks are now suffering from oil spill fatigue. 50+ days now? I feel like my children's world is turning into a Margaret Atwood novel.
Well, that was depressing.
Oh, and Happy Birthday NP!
Since this appears to be the vile liquids thread, it appears that icing bros has hit the regular media and thus will soon fade.
Happy Birthday NP. Late, but what the heck.
23: This cheered me up when I saw it this morning. Don't necessarily agree with all of his analysis, but the trends are good.
I notice Natilo appears to share a birthday with Fred Clark at Slacktivist. Clearly a good alignment of the stars (or something).
25: Those survey results are good news (though the absolute percentages are still kind of depressing), but fuck a bunch of Charles Blow.
To the OP: My closest colleagues are leading the science in the Gulf. They say it is far, far worse than we're hearing, and BP is doing its utmost to obstruct sampling access. My one consolation is that the science crew is very sharp and very determined and very, very ready to testify against BP, in the media and in court.
Mr. President, can you give us more details about what activities are being obstructed and how?
I enjoy being infuriated.
Live on the scene reporting today's news first on the front page, it's icing.
I never know just how widespread a meme needs to be before it gets to the NYT, but it is wide.
Econolicious, BREAKING PWNED by 24.
Now you have to drink this warm malt beverage I've been saving in my trunk.
Stanley, you can have a regular, appropriate temperature beer if you want.
Per NPR this morning, much (most? I was half asleep) of the oil being recovered by BP is too degraded by seawater to be used for petroleum products, so the oil will just be either pushed down under sand 7,000 feet deep (or something like that; again, grogginess) or turned into solid waste in barrels that are then put in a landfill.
I assume there's a faucet on the far side of the collection vessel to take care of the problem of accumulating oil.
much (most? I was half asleep) of the oil being recovered by BP is too degraded by seawater to be used for petroleum products
That seems totally screwy to me -- they can't put it in a big holding tank somewhere and wait until purification technology improves? Not that I know anything about it, of course.
36: Given what I remember from salad dressing, you'd think they could separate oil and water. Only the spices would have to go to the landfill.
BP's obstructionism takes the form of saying that stopping the leak is top priority, and stopping the leak necessitates loading five million tons of tenuous excuses onto vessels in whatever port, so, sorry, you can't come into port to load your research vessels today. Or tomorrow. And if you do get out to sea, you certainly can't get within five miles of the origin of the spill. These things may not sound like a big deal, but timing and proximity have a very real impact on what science can be done.
Given the timing issue, when does the testimony in the media start?
25: Interesting numbers. . . nice to have something positive to think about.
Of course, it will all be moot when the CorpSeCorps are in control.
Apparently my funk is not to be overcome today.
M/ndy J0ye has already started. CNN and Good Morning America visited her cruise last week, and she's blogging. (Actually, the second-to-last post there suggests that she was able to get to within about a mile, at least sometimes. So that's less thoroughly awful than I'd heard.) Another cruise that departs this week is being led by a media hound, which bodes well. What I'm really waiting for is Chr/s R/ddy's testimony, but that won't be until the eventual trial, because he's serving as a DoJ expert.
so the oil will just be either pushed down under sand 7,000 feet deep
How perfect. The whole thing is like environmental performance art.
I do wonder how this event will get covered this year.
From the Festival History page: "1967 will always be remembered as a landmark year for the festival. This is the year that a marriage of shrimp and oil took place that would forever change the face of the festival."
45: This is an event that will prove that oil and water really do mix if you use enough dispersants.
i don't get how you exclude someone from the open sea. and surely you can load up something in corpus christi. renting every harbor in the gulf sounds a bit expensive.
Oil rigs always maintain a big exclusion zone, and scary men on fast boats always come out and investigate anyone who strays into it. BP has widened that zone and is maintaining the boundary aggressively, not with the scary men on boats but with the slimy men in suits. The tide may be turning a bit, but at least initially the Coast Guard was deferring to BP, and federally funded cruises don't get to defy the Coast Guard.
Yes, we can use other ports, if we know what the rules are going to be on the day we need to load the vessel. Each of these cruises has science crews converging from all across the country, bringing several moving trucks' worth of equipment, materials that need to be kept cold, etc. If essear would just hurry up and develop a wormhole deployment device that we could use to jump from port to port at will, everything would be fine.
I wonder if the Saudis have any prototype portable GOSPs we could borrow for the job. Alternately, we should just fill up a couple of supertankers and ship it over to the Gulf. Probably uneconomical, but still.
materials that need to be kept cold
I won't go on a boat without beer either.
It don't mean a thing until I see a ring.
Much as I hate to interrupt the Knecht-Moby lovefest, I find it quite interesting that the National Guard is being deployed to help people fill out the paperwork for claims against BP. I instinctively like the idea, but my questions are these: Has the Guard been deployed for something like this before? I don't remember hearing anything similar re: Katrina or other natural disasters. Would they be better used for clean up?
Now wondering if Woody Woo and I have mutual friends/acquaintances along either of two possible tracks.
56: And isn't there a large pool of unemployed people who could manage that kind of work?
59 cont.: but probably not, and I don't intend to try to figure it out, Mr. President.
61: True, though this is one of those times when a centralized command structure and logistics could be helpful. If only we could enlist the unemployed into some kind of civilian army, a corps, if you will.
63: Brilliant! If only there were some sort of precedent for it.
39: Maybe the oil got mixed with too much mustard or egg yolk?
I have no idea what 63 and 64 are on about.
66: Just the usual socialist pipe dream of Things That Could Never Happen Here So Don't Even Try.
66: Dirty socialists proposing ways in which the government could improve the lives of ordinary citizens. Don't worry, no one takes it seriously, sir.
Kraab. What kind of last name is that anyway?
56:Using the National Guard to "help" file claims could intimidate restrain folk, from false and frivolous claims only, of course. The non-com lays the form on the dining room table and slides it towards you with the tip of his weapon, while the two privates answer cute questions from your fascinated children.
56:Using the National Guard to "help" file claims could intimidate restrain folk, from false and frivolous claims only, of course. The non-com lays the form on the dining room table and slides it towards you with the tip of his weapon, while the two privates answer cute questions from your fascinated children.
Better
Now try it with everything struck out except "non-com", "slides", "tip", "of", "privates" and "your fascinated children".
72: Maybe it would all be better if they descended into your yard ropes dangling from helicopters.
74: The neighbors all live in awe of date night at the Stromcrows.
I'm pretty sure all the unemployed people are busy building solar thermal electric plants and electric lines
'scary people in fast boats' seems like it would go to an actual critique of the administration's handling of this
or something that would make for some good television