May, 2010 archive
Spill Here, Spill Now 1
It looks as if BP accomplished their latest tactic for plugging the wild well.
They’ve slowed, not stopped, the bleeding, and the patient is still in jeopardy. From the same story:
Fresh analysis of enormous plumes of oil just under the surface of the Gulf meanwhile suggested the spill was far worse than previously estimated.
Videos via Bob Cesca,
QOTD 0
Studs Terkel, from the Qoutemaster:
I said, “Suppose communists come out against cancer, do we have to automatically come out for cancer?'” I can’t take back that I’m against the poll tax, that I’m against lynching, that I’m for peace.
Light Bloggery (Updated) 0
Spring fever.
Addendum:
A great day for spring fever.
Sunny, clear skies, 71 Fahrenheits high temperature, soft breeze, long walk, blossoming flowers, and a Phillies game on the telly vision (Good Guys 4, Bad Guys 2, Phillies four games up).
Don’t get much Phillies here, so I take what I can get.
The local rag’s baseball horizon stops with Washington and Baltimore and the sports section is full of NASCAR and Redskins. It is NASCAR season, but it’s hardly Redskins season.
All the NASCAR makes me miss the Inky, where NASCAR was a thing for pages six and seven. Even back when my idea of a good time was driving fast and I subscribed to Motor Trend and Sports Car Graphic (SCG is long deceased and Motor Trend has become a tool of the auto industry), I never cared for races which involved only left turns–seems kind of one-dimensional to me.
Many years ago, I rooted for the Baltimore Orioles and the Washington Redskins, back when when men were men and ships were wood, when Earl Weaver was the manager of the Orioles and the owner of the Redskins (R. I. P. Jack Kent Cooke–you were a class act) knew something about football.
Normal abnormality resumes tomorrow.
Academic Freedom Meets Sexual Repression 2
Blag Hag has the details.
It is truly quite stupid for grown-ups to pretend that sex doesn’t exist.
I know. Your parents didn’t have sex and neither did mine. They were different.
But everyone else’s parents did.
An Armed Society Is a Polite Society 0
Not necessarily very bright, but polite:
Canadian officials charged Harshbarger because they say it was too dark for her to fire a gun safely.
iLaundry 0
Wired weird:
The men used stolen credit card numbers to buy £750,000 worth of vouchers to sell at cheaper prices through eBay.
U. Va. Looks for Nerve. Finds Law Firm. 0
I saw a long post at another blog arguing that “academic freedom” is not a right.
It isn’t. It’s a value, and it is an essential value in the quest for truth. One would hope that the University of Virginia, where I spent a rather unsatisfactory year a long time ago, would stand up for that value against Cuccinelli’s Wingnut Witchhunt.
We Need Single Payer 0
Enough with insurance company death panels.
Pat Buchanan Plays the Jew Card 0
Beyond disgusting.
I have a friend, my once and again best friend, whose father was saved from Auschwitz by Raoul Wallenberg. She still has copies of the paperwork that saved her father’s life.
Had his life not been saved, she would not have been born and I would have missed her friendship.
Is she one too many for Pat Buchanan?
Is there a depth of bigotry and prejudice that the Republican Party and its supporters are not willing to plumb?
I’ll stop now. Another sentence leads to language I prefer not to use in this forum.
Pah!
Suffer the Children 0
And the children suffer (emphasis added):
I am continually amazed at how persons keeping missing the point of the whole “love thy neighbor as thyself” thing. They keep interpreting it as “love they neighbor as long as he’s like thyself.”
Town and Gown in Virginia Beach 1
Well, not really gown. More like grade schools.
I started to write about this earlier this week, then decided that I did not know enough about the background to write competently, since I’ve only been back here in Virginia for a few months.
Instead, I’ll just point you to the editorial in today’s local rag, then second what Joel said Wednesday.
Rather than tap the city’s reserves, the city is tapping the school board’s reserves built up through good management on the part of the school system, just because it can. In this case, competence (on the part of the school board) is its own punishment.
Dustbiters 0
I missed the unemployment figures yesterday (they were more of the same); I was hanging a ceiling fan. Hanging it wasn’t difficult, but it was given to me used and I didn’t have a wiring diagram. That lead to 45 minutes of hooking up the bare leads to an extension cord to figure out what goes where.
It’s a guy thing: the best way to figure stuff out is to take a chance on blowing something up.
Speaking of blowing stuff up, the FDIC has started its regular Friday game of playing Pac-Man with banks. One power pill gobbled up so far:
Later:
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Midwest Bank & Trust Company, Elmwood Park, Illinois
Spill Here, Spill Now 2
Remember back in grade school jamming soda straws together and then trying to suck up your Coke (that’s Coca-Cola, wise guys) through them?
That worked really well, now, didn’t it?
Company spokesman Bill Salvin said BP hopes to start moving the 6-inch tube into the leaking 21-inch pipe — known as the riser — on Thursday night. The smaller tube will be surrounded by a stopper to keep oil from leaking into the sea.
Raw Story reports:
Matthew Simmons, retired chair of the energy-industry investment bank Simmons & Company, said that BP and the US military’s engineers are more or less clueless about cutting off the flow.
“We don’t have any idea how to stop this,” Simmons said. The former banker mocked a proposal to try and plug the leak with trash, saying it was a “joke.”
Listen to Neil King of the Wall Street Journal recite the failures on the Diane Rehm Show (starting about 10 minutes in): A summary of the high points of the litany:
- Halliburton–shoddy cement seal.
- Transocean–“blowout preventer” with leaks and a dead battery.
- BP–choosing to proceed when, four hours before the explosing, sensing equipment showed that something really freaky was going on down below.
I would not recommend listening to the entire hour of the Diane Rehm Show. It’s pretty depressing.
An Armed Society Is a Polite Society 0
Boy shoots loaded school bus:
This happened in the Bailey’s Crossroads area in Northern Virginia, a densely populated old suburb. A .22 calibre bullet, if I remember my readings in Boys Life accurately, can carry at least a mile.
Voting Is Not a Right. It Is a Duty. 0
Jamelle Bouie explains why.
MBA=Masters of Blithering Absconders 0
Alex Beam at the Boston Globe illustrates one of those “MBA oaths” that seem to be fashionable amongst B-schools. A nugget:
Pledge:
Illustration:
“Bret Grebow, a 28-year-old fund manager, bought a new $160,000 Lamborghini Gallardo as a treat and regularly traveled with his girlfriend between his New York office and a home in Highland Beach, Fla., on a private jet. . . . Grebow eventually pled guilty to defrauding investors of more than $7 million while helping to operate a Ponzi scheme. . .’’ Gregory Zuckerman, “The Greatest Trade Ever’’
Supremely Absurd (Updated) 2
The level of stupid regarding the nomination of Elena Kagan is surpassing the stupid about the nomination of Justice Sotomayor.
Dick Polman calls it out.
Afterthought:
Much of the stupid results from her being a generally competent nominee with nothing particularly objectionable in her background, so objections must be manufactured to satisfy the market for objectionablefication.
Addendum:
Oliver Willis has more on the stupid.
Parking Alot 0
It’s automated now:
And if the car’s owner wants to leave, all they have to do is swipe their card in the elevator.
For people too important to walk to their cars.
Unreality Check 0
Newsweek recently ran a review of a play.
The reviewer didn’t like the play. For all I know, it was a lousy play. But the reviewer went a step into fantasy land in claiming that
This has caused a lot of ferment.
What elevates this into the “Too Stupid for Words” category is that gay actors have been playing straight roles convincingly for years. (The same can’t be said in reverse because, until recently, about the time of La cage aux folles, teh gay was unmentionable and officially did not exist in filmdom.)
Anyone ever hear of Rock Hudson, just to pull a name out of a hat?
No wonder Newsweek is going belly up. It apparently has no competent editors.