So, this morning, the BoobToob is filled with the clamor and commotion of MELSANADRAMA! Did he? Did she? Expert opinion! Voice analysis! In DEPTH talking head analysis!! More, following this commercial break!!!
All of which leads me to ask: Why on Gods green earth are we devoting so much time and attention to them and their issues?
They are broken. They have personal problems. So do a lot of other people.
Aren’t there more pressing issues that we should be concerned with? Issues which might be brought to the public’s attention, let alone discussed and demystified, if we only stopped wasting precious media minutes obsessing over the train wreck of the latest celebrity meltdown?
So, Paula goes to the local Farmer’s Market last weekend, brings home a load of goodies, and a bouquet of flowers. Lilies to be exact. They looked amazing, and smelled divine. However, on close inspection I saw that we had a hitchhiker who’d taken a shine to our floral largess. You can see him below:
Call Me "Mean Green"
He appeared to be a member of the family Thomisidae, either the genus Mecaphesa or Misumenops, otherwise known as a green crab spider. There’s a wonderful web site for bugs and arachnids that has other examples of the genus here.
As much as I enjoyed him, I had to gather him (her?) up in cupped hands, take him/her outside, charge her/him with watching over our basil plants and release him/her. Cool, eh?
The Mozilla Organization, the nice folks that bring you Firefox and Thunderbird, have released Firefox 4 Beta 1 and are touting it as “almost ready for prime time”.
They are soliciting your feedback via a button in the main bar of the browser, as well as the Test Pilot Program. If you’re interested in playing around with the next iteration of this popular internet tool head over here and download it.
So far it’s faster, and more responsive than v. 3.6.6, which is my daily bread & butter browser.
Coincidences, we’ve all see them, some so timely that we wonder if they’re not the Hand of Providence in action.
When it comes to the world of Business and Politics though, I question if there is any such thing.
Consider. Good timing, or prior knowledge?
Goldman Sachs dumps over half it’s holdings in BP stock just before the April blowout in the Gulf, on the advice of it’s International Chairman who had stepped down as BP’s Chairman just a year earlier.1
Halliburton, just two weeks before the Deepwater Horizon disaster, bought out the conveniently Gulf based2, premiere oil well firefighting firm of
Judges should be seen and not heard in some cases.
There’s a joke, “What are 500 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?”, the answer is “A good start.”.
As times go on I’m convinced that one word needs to be changed, so the joke reads:
“What are 500 judges…”
Case in point. Last week the Supremes, ignoring common sense and consumer concerns, overturned a lower court ruling by a 7 -1 margin, ruling that a nationwide ban on genetically modified alfalfa seeds will be rescinded.
“So?”, you ask.
Consider the following, members of the jury:
Monsanto, the “winner” in this case, already controls 92% of the soybean
What’s really happening in Louisiana, and the rest of the Gulf Coast? Kindra Arnesen was there, given unprecedented levels of access, and if you think my rants were revelatory, you need to watch the video below.
So, I watched the President’s address on the BP blowout the other night … at least until the bullshit level exceeded the inseam of the hip waders I wore for the occasion, and our Commander in Chief announced the formation of a commission to “advise” how to prevent future disasters.
Oh.come.on.
I’m not the brightest light bulb in the fixture and I *know* the fix. It’s a simple three step solution.
Redunancy
Regulation
Compliance
Redundancy – We all know that there was only a single failsafe device, which had unauthorized modifications, in place at the time of the blowout.
As everyone with half a lobe knows, you.always.have.a.backup. PERIOD. End of statement. But somehow, BP and its peers (with cunning application of drugs, sex and god knows what else), had regulations amended to sidestep this, and other, elementary precautions, while drilling at depths where pressures routinely exceed one TON per square inch.
Air travel today is an adventure, on sooo many levels.
The airports have morphed into increasingly byzantine exercises in demolition derby driving with each new terminal expansion.
The hurdles that 9-11 put into place don’t bear repeating, but that sense of “You have now entered the Land-Of-The-Stasi” as you go through some security emplacements, does.
However, my personal epiphany this month was the amount of hidden costs associated with flying today, as this is my first trip since the economy cratered and the airports and airlines have instituted their “additional fees” to recover fuel costs (or pad the shareholders dividends, you decide).
The gulf oil disaster continues to grow in magnitude, and is prompting responses from the humorous,
Yep, sounds about right.
to the pathetic,
Deepwater drilling, how's that working for ya?
But the sad part is there’s been no real hue and cry about the fact that BP knew, well in advance of this sh*t storm, they were treading on thin ice…ice so thin that they knew what they were contemplating doing off the shores of the Gulf States violated their own internal safety and design standards.
To keep this fresh in your mind, here’s a live feed from nearly a mile beneath the ocean, of what continues to spew from what is now unarguably the worst industrial disaster in history. Sickening, yet hypnotic, like watching a train wreck in progress, isn’t it?
Be sure and let those responsible for oversight of the industry know how much you appreciate the job they’ve done so far and consider taking the time to ask that BP be held accountable, rather than passing the buck.
