April 2010 Archives

When did Arizona completely lose it's ever-loving mind? We haven't discussed the controversial immigration bill yet, but I'm sure everyone is well aware that recently, Arizona passed a law requiring state police to stop any person who looks illegal and require them to show proof that they are U.S. Citizens.   We've seen some supporters of this law contend that it's about illegals, and those hispanics shouldn't have anything to hide if they're not illegals, and...

This morning, I was invited to appear on Fox News America's Newsroom to talk about the blowout on BP's Mississippi Canyon Block 252 well.  Here's the segment:...

David Axelrod is on ABC's Good Morning America right now, announcing that the President is ordering no drilling in "new areas" until they know what caused the BP Mississippi Canyon Block 252 blowout.  In making the announcement, Axelrod said,"No additional drilling has been authorized and none will until we find out what happened here and whether there was something unique and preventable here."I've already written about the possibility of this last night after it was...

Louisiana's biggest enemy this weekend?  10 to 15 knot winds out of the southeast, pushing thousands of barrels of oil into sensitive and already threatened wetlands of the Mississippi Delta.  The blowout, fire, and rig sinking in the Gulf, bad enough on their own, has developed into the oil industry's, and indeed, the United States', nightmare scenario - uncontrolled flow of 5,000 barrels a day of deepwater crude washing ashore in environmentally sensitive areas after...

If you will forgive me my indulgences, I want to talk to you about the complications I have had in my brief career of writing books. Every writer great and small has dreams of making the NYT best-sellers list. Those dreams are fainting dreams that become a realistic dream of making a few bucks. I just wanted enough to buy my wife and I the occasional treat. As it turns out, the treat has been the...

My oldest son shared a link to a YouTube video with me last recently. He found it amusing and posted it on my Facebook page. As it turns out, it wasn't a unique video. As I watched it, it became apparent that videos like it are all-too-prevalent on the web and in the media. It had to do with a Teabagger event which shall remain unpublicized in my writing. It was an 11-minute video,...

Today, the Coast Guard started a program of controlled burns in an effort to keep the spreading oil slick from BP's Mississippi Canyon 252 well from coming ashore in Louisiana.  They do this by capturing the floating oil with a fire boom that holds it in place so it can be lit off.  The photos, from the Minerals Management Service, are impressive.  Here's an example: The unified command, who is managing this incident, also posted...

I love Matt Taibbi (in a manly sort of way, of course) and he has written 2 more great pieces recently, one in the Guardian about Goldman Sachs and one at True/Slant about Sarah Palin. Both are worth reading in their entirety, but here are a couple of excerpts. First from the Guardian:"So Goldman Sachs, the world's greatest and smuggest investment bank, has been sued for fraud by the American Securities and Exchange Commission. Legally,...

Not much new information since my last update, but I found a good video that demonstrates the importance of the BOP systems for deepwater drilling and basics for how they work.  Older technology uses an umbilical that runs from the rig floor to the sea floor to control the BOP.  New technology, shown in this video, uses sound waves for the same controls without the umbilical.  I don't know which the Transocean Horizon was using,...

Update:I have been following the massive effort to contain spilled oil and get the well, located in Mississippi Canyon Block 252, shut in to stop the flow.  A joint effort of the Coast Guard, the Minerals Management Service, NOAA, Department of Homeland Security, BP and Transocean has been formed to coordinate response the the disaster.  Efforts to close the BOP (blowout preventer) have, so far, been unsuccessful, and reports are that there are 4 ROVs...