April 22, 2011
One year ago on this date, not too long after the Department of the Interior exempted British Petroleum's Gulf of Mexico drilling from a detailed environmental impact study and then a detailed blowout plan, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, killing eleven men. The resulting oil spill turned out to be one of the worst environmental disasters in modern history.
Lives can never be recovered. Livelihoods in the Gulf have returned, uneasily. The oil may have been dispersed and the worst parts of a surface slick avoided using conventional oil leak technology, but it has not just gone away. At the cold temperatures deep in the Gulf of Mexico, it may not go away for a very, very long time.
Only an estimated 25% (or possibly even less) of the total oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico at that time was actually removed through direct recovery, skimming, or burning. Virtually all the oil that was dispersed, dissolved, or evaporated -- well over three million barrels -- is still in the local environment.
Dispersed and dissolved oil persists in plumes and oily sediment permeating the Gulf floor for dozens of kilometres in all directions: affecting phytoplankton and other microscopic lifeforms that form the base of the Gulf of Mexico food web. Sea molluscs from the Gulf still contain both oil and dispersants. Oil still continues to wash ashore along the Gulf sands, thousands of kilograms at a time. Evaporated oil will be raining onto Gulf-adjacent lands for years -- perhaps decades -- to come.
Thousands of carcasses are slowly rotting in the Gulf. Perhaps one in fifty reached the shore. Seventeen dead baby dolphins washed ashore during January and February, the dolphin birthing months; with at least another 200 dead dolphins still out in the Gulf -- from the first three months of this year alone. (The rest of that research has been placed under a gag order due to criminal charges pending.) The rest are out of sight, out of mind: but not out of the ecosystem. They will slowly rot: and as they rot, they will pull oxygen out of the surrounding waters.
British Petroleum has settled some lawsuits out of court, and is still dealing with others. BP, in turn, is suing Transocean, Halliburton, and Cameron, the manufacturer of the blowout preventer which failed.
A six-month deepwater drilling moratorium was overturned several months early by court order. Current unrest throughout the Arab world has virtually ensured that no one will move too hard to endanger 23.5% of domestic United States oil production. Safety regulations and planning are essentially what they were before. Deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico has now returned to previous levels, less one rig and eleven lives.
Lives can never be recovered. Livelihoods in the Gulf have returned, uneasily. The oil may have been dispersed and the worst parts of a surface slick avoided using conventional oil leak technology, but it has not just gone away. At the cold temperatures deep in the Gulf of Mexico, it may not go away for a very, very long time.
Only an estimated 25% (or possibly even less) of the total oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico at that time was actually removed through direct recovery, skimming, or burning. Virtually all the oil that was dispersed, dissolved, or evaporated -- well over three million barrels -- is still in the local environment.
Dispersed and dissolved oil persists in plumes and oily sediment permeating the Gulf floor for dozens of kilometres in all directions: affecting phytoplankton and other microscopic lifeforms that form the base of the Gulf of Mexico food web. Sea molluscs from the Gulf still contain both oil and dispersants. Oil still continues to wash ashore along the Gulf sands, thousands of kilograms at a time. Evaporated oil will be raining onto Gulf-adjacent lands for years -- perhaps decades -- to come.
Thousands of carcasses are slowly rotting in the Gulf. Perhaps one in fifty reached the shore. Seventeen dead baby dolphins washed ashore during January and February, the dolphin birthing months; with at least another 200 dead dolphins still out in the Gulf -- from the first three months of this year alone. (The rest of that research has been placed under a gag order due to criminal charges pending.) The rest are out of sight, out of mind: but not out of the ecosystem. They will slowly rot: and as they rot, they will pull oxygen out of the surrounding waters.
British Petroleum has settled some lawsuits out of court, and is still dealing with others. BP, in turn, is suing Transocean, Halliburton, and Cameron, the manufacturer of the blowout preventer which failed.
A six-month deepwater drilling moratorium was overturned several months early by court order. Current unrest throughout the Arab world has virtually ensured that no one will move too hard to endanger 23.5% of domestic United States oil production. Safety regulations and planning are essentially what they were before. Deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico has now returned to previous levels, less one rig and eleven lives.
April 20, 2011
A comment by Perfectly_Craumulent in What will the universe look like in one trillion years?, in response to repeated outright rejections of all things beyond the known equations. Minor spelling corrections by me. - T
My point with the electron [quantum physics] is that it "seems" to defy logic, like the belief in a creator may "seem" also, but both only because of our limited understanding. I'm an objective person, but it really bothers me when someone says there is no evidence for creation.
DNA sequencing, mathematic patterns in biology,the human brain and body. Just admiring the artistry of a beautiful woman. Things like the degree of tuning of just the 4 primary forces [electromagnetism, gravity], [where] minute differences would equal a radically different universe.
Don't hold me too closely to this; Michio Kaku theorizes that the only way to account for the level of perfection in natural laws, is an infinite number of universes. Imagine that, every conceivable universe HAS to exist. Maybe time will prove this theory true, but for now, personally, design outweighs it.
I should say that I'm no expert, just an enthusiast who's passionate about theoretical physics and science in general. Some days I have doubts, and that's a good thing. Only a fool believes everything he/she is told without asking questions or coming to a level of personal understanding, whether in science or religon.
If you don't believe in a god of creation, then you believe in the god of nature, a lifeless idea who creates beauty out of chance and chaos [BOTH require faith]. Perhaps, in 2 trillion years the universe will collaspe unto itself, into a singularity, and the whole thing will happen again, and again, in an infinite loop.
Don't get me wrong, folks, I'm NO fundamentalist genesis pusher, just a slightly biased enthusiast.
My point with the electron [quantum physics] is that it "seems" to defy logic, like the belief in a creator may "seem" also, but both only because of our limited understanding. I'm an objective person, but it really bothers me when someone says there is no evidence for creation.
DNA sequencing, mathematic patterns in biology,the human brain and body. Just admiring the artistry of a beautiful woman. Things like the degree of tuning of just the 4 primary forces [electromagnetism, gravity], [where] minute differences would equal a radically different universe.
Don't hold me too closely to this; Michio Kaku theorizes that the only way to account for the level of perfection in natural laws, is an infinite number of universes. Imagine that, every conceivable universe HAS to exist. Maybe time will prove this theory true, but for now, personally, design outweighs it.
I should say that I'm no expert, just an enthusiast who's passionate about theoretical physics and science in general. Some days I have doubts, and that's a good thing. Only a fool believes everything he/she is told without asking questions or coming to a level of personal understanding, whether in science or religon.
If you don't believe in a god of creation, then you believe in the god of nature, a lifeless idea who creates beauty out of chance and chaos [BOTH require faith]. Perhaps, in 2 trillion years the universe will collaspe unto itself, into a singularity, and the whole thing will happen again, and again, in an infinite loop.
Don't get me wrong, folks, I'm NO fundamentalist genesis pusher, just a slightly biased enthusiast.
April 19, 2011
[A] recent Gallup study ... found that 6 percent of Americans in households earning over $250,000 a year think their taxes are "too low." Of that same group, 26 percent said their taxes were "about right," and a whopping 67 percent said their taxes were "too high."
And yet when this same group of high earners was asked whether "upper-income people" paid their fair share in taxes, 30 percent said "upper-income people" paid too little, 30 percent said it was a "fair share," and 38 percent said it was "too much."
- from Rich People Still Don't Realize They're Rich
Take your average American earning $100,000 a year ...
- attributed to Nelson Rockefeller
We never see the cars we pass, only the ones we have not yet caught up to.
We never see the the incomes below us, only the incomes above.
We know all too well how difficult it is to make ends meet at our current income. We can see only the things we cannot afford, while the things we have become so much an expected part of life that they become invisible to us. Though we be told repeatedly the mean income in our part of the world is far below our own, we cannot conceive of it. The knowledge reluctantly slips in, and then slips out again as easily as the cars we have passed and forgotten.
We are all middle class. (Unless we happen to be on welfare or stratospherically rich.)
And of course, we never speed.
And yet when this same group of high earners was asked whether "upper-income people" paid their fair share in taxes, 30 percent said "upper-income people" paid too little, 30 percent said it was a "fair share," and 38 percent said it was "too much."
- from Rich People Still Don't Realize They're Rich
Take your average American earning $100,000 a year ...
- attributed to Nelson Rockefeller
We never see the cars we pass, only the ones we have not yet caught up to.
We never see the the incomes below us, only the incomes above.
We know all too well how difficult it is to make ends meet at our current income. We can see only the things we cannot afford, while the things we have become so much an expected part of life that they become invisible to us. Though we be told repeatedly the mean income in our part of the world is far below our own, we cannot conceive of it. The knowledge reluctantly slips in, and then slips out again as easily as the cars we have passed and forgotten.
We are all middle class. (Unless we happen to be on welfare or stratospherically rich.)
And of course, we never speed.
April 15, 2011
Atlas Shrugged has finally been made into a film, with a release date carefully timed for tax day in the United States. Hollywood was reluctant (purely on a return on investment basis, nothing to do with any attempted censorship): but the rise of the Tea Party demonstrates that times have changed, and it should be a more than adequate moneymaker.
Although it is also being seen as a polariser, I rather doubt that this one film can polarise things any more than they are already. Those who oppose an objectivist libertarian stance will keep on opposing it. Those who agree with it will keep on agreeing, and will consider this film long overdue. Those who look at the book for its literary value will continue to wince, seeing the fiction solely as an excuse upon which to hang a theory, and a painfully poorly written fiction at that. Strongly opinionated authors of fiction have ever fallen into the trap of making their fictional characters and fictional scenarios
Curiously, its producer does not see Atlas Shrugged as a polemic: because Ayn Rand is not right wing in her attitude towards social issues -- or, more accurately, in promoting the freedom to practice any vice she wishes while being largely left alone to earn money and not have it taken away and redistributed by the federal government. (He also claims that she is in favour of paying taxes. It may be an idea to reexamine the essays.)
The claim is often made that the Tea Party draws from both sides: and yet during right wing governments, the movement now known as the Tea Party is little more than a determined grumbling about taxes. The demonstrations only come out during left wing governments.
Yet this ought not to be too much of a surprise. Unlike right wing freedoms, which primarily cost private money (at least to superficial inspection), preserving left wing freedoms costs tax money. As soon as general social freedoms touch in the slightest on the individual wallet: watch them evaporate.
(Somehow I doubt that Ayn Rand herself would have overlooked the indirect tax money that right wing freedoms cost.)
The dangerous thing about isolationism in this day and age is the "unless" -- we don't want to spend money on foreign wars "unless" we are attacked on our native soil. Yet in this day and age, especially in a free society, attacks on our native soil are inevitable. When -- not if -- that happens: watch the drive to isolationism vanish like a soap bubble.
In true libertarian fashion, the armed forces are under intense pressure to cut down costs: and thus we have entered the era of the contractor wars. In the short term, maybe cheaper. Maybe. In the long term, not: not least because a contractor war will always be longer than its non-contracted equivalent. Where is the drive to keep it short?
Although it is also being seen as a polariser, I rather doubt that this one film can polarise things any more than they are already. Those who oppose an objectivist libertarian stance will keep on opposing it. Those who agree with it will keep on agreeing, and will consider this film long overdue. Those who look at the book for its literary value will continue to wince, seeing the fiction solely as an excuse upon which to hang a theory, and a painfully poorly written fiction at that. Strongly opinionated authors of fiction have ever fallen into the trap of making their fictional characters and fictional scenarios
Curiously, its producer does not see Atlas Shrugged as a polemic: because Ayn Rand is not right wing in her attitude towards social issues -- or, more accurately, in promoting the freedom to practice any vice she wishes while being largely left alone to earn money and not have it taken away and redistributed by the federal government. (He also claims that she is in favour of paying taxes. It may be an idea to reexamine the essays.)
The claim is often made that the Tea Party draws from both sides: and yet during right wing governments, the movement now known as the Tea Party is little more than a determined grumbling about taxes. The demonstrations only come out during left wing governments.
Yet this ought not to be too much of a surprise. Unlike right wing freedoms, which primarily cost private money (at least to superficial inspection), preserving left wing freedoms costs tax money. As soon as general social freedoms touch in the slightest on the individual wallet: watch them evaporate.
(Somehow I doubt that Ayn Rand herself would have overlooked the indirect tax money that right wing freedoms cost.)
The dangerous thing about isolationism in this day and age is the "unless" -- we don't want to spend money on foreign wars "unless" we are attacked on our native soil. Yet in this day and age, especially in a free society, attacks on our native soil are inevitable. When -- not if -- that happens: watch the drive to isolationism vanish like a soap bubble.
In true libertarian fashion, the armed forces are under intense pressure to cut down costs: and thus we have entered the era of the contractor wars. In the short term, maybe cheaper. Maybe. In the long term, not: not least because a contractor war will always be longer than its non-contracted equivalent. Where is the drive to keep it short?
April 01, 2011
In years -- decades -- of watching April Fool's jokes go by, the crass and the clever: never have I seen so stiff, so rigid a general response, even to the lightest attempts at humour.
Where the humour hangs on an ambiguous turn of phrase, the attempt at humour is increasingly met with a demand for literality. Twists in meaning are struggling, metaphor failing, irony a lost art. If the resolution of the ambiguity falls in lines with the original expectations, no humour is seen because no other meaning has ever been seen. If the resolution does not match the original expectations, the original statement is seen simply as being wrong.
I recently completely rewrote the Wikipedia article on "At The Hotel", an underappreciated Ken Finkleman production which plays with multiple layers of realities, the discovery of which causes the viewer to reevaluate all that has gone before. Yet every single review I tracked down -- and the original article I rewrote -- completely missed that key point, and evaluated the show accordingly. It did not even seem to matter that the shift had been stated explicitly within the show itself, multiple times. Once the original assumption had been made, it stuck.
The Wikipedia volunteers take pride in their April Fool's page. Not a single item is made up! Every item on a Wikipedia April Fool's page is genuine -- but almost always turns out not to be quite as the lede implied. We can learn that in Australia, high risk sex workers are required to wear full mask respirators; that Batman is half female; that the final resting place of Rudyard Kipling is on the ocean floor. On a different day, I would expect different things from the lede: but is not this day of all days about questioning assumptions?
(I even learned about the not-so-secret candy desk on the floor of the United States Senate: one of the few front-page links which had no need for a hidden meaning lede. I had never before considered that the acquisition of candy could be so politically laden.)
Yet somewhere along the line, among a growing segment of the population, a willingness to reevaluate expectations and laugh at oneself has quietly morphed into resistance and then outrage: How dare you find us something to be laughed at? At that point, it is only a very small step to conclude: How dare you laugh at me! You need only read the comments following any April Fool's event on a major Internet page to track the trend for yourself.
When did we become so rigid? When did we become so stuck-up?
The Wikipedia Overlords have heard your request and agree. It will take several hours for your concerns to be addressed, but rest assured that we will have returned to the regular wikipedia by tomorrow. Be aware, however, that issues like this one may occur in 1 out of approximately 365 days of the year.
- Quietmarc (talk) 15:31, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
Where the humour hangs on an ambiguous turn of phrase, the attempt at humour is increasingly met with a demand for literality. Twists in meaning are struggling, metaphor failing, irony a lost art. If the resolution of the ambiguity falls in lines with the original expectations, no humour is seen because no other meaning has ever been seen. If the resolution does not match the original expectations, the original statement is seen simply as being wrong.
I recently completely rewrote the Wikipedia article on "At The Hotel", an underappreciated Ken Finkleman production which plays with multiple layers of realities, the discovery of which causes the viewer to reevaluate all that has gone before. Yet every single review I tracked down -- and the original article I rewrote -- completely missed that key point, and evaluated the show accordingly. It did not even seem to matter that the shift had been stated explicitly within the show itself, multiple times. Once the original assumption had been made, it stuck.
The Wikipedia volunteers take pride in their April Fool's page. Not a single item is made up! Every item on a Wikipedia April Fool's page is genuine -- but almost always turns out not to be quite as the lede implied. We can learn that in Australia, high risk sex workers are required to wear full mask respirators; that Batman is half female; that the final resting place of Rudyard Kipling is on the ocean floor. On a different day, I would expect different things from the lede: but is not this day of all days about questioning assumptions?
(I even learned about the not-so-secret candy desk on the floor of the United States Senate: one of the few front-page links which had no need for a hidden meaning lede. I had never before considered that the acquisition of candy could be so politically laden.)
Yet somewhere along the line, among a growing segment of the population, a willingness to reevaluate expectations and laugh at oneself has quietly morphed into resistance and then outrage: How dare you find us something to be laughed at? At that point, it is only a very small step to conclude: How dare you laugh at me! You need only read the comments following any April Fool's event on a major Internet page to track the trend for yourself.
When did we become so rigid? When did we become so stuck-up?
The Wikipedia Overlords have heard your request and agree. It will take several hours for your concerns to be addressed, but rest assured that we will have returned to the regular wikipedia by tomorrow. Be aware, however, that issues like this one may occur in 1 out of approximately 365 days of the year.
- Quietmarc (talk) 15:31, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
