My Sick Mind

A field of flowers south of Salem, NJ today. (photo by me) NEW ORLEANS – BP began burning oil siphoned from a ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday as part of its plans to more than triple the amount of crude it can stop from reaching the sea, the company said. BP said oil and gas siphoned from the well first reached a semi-submersible drilling rig on the surface of the Gulf around 1 a.m. Once that gas reaches the rig, it will be mixed with compressed air, shot down a specialized boom made by Schlumberger Ltd . and ignited at sea. It's the first time this particular burner has been deployed in the Gulf of Mexico. BP officials previously said they believed the burner system could incinerate anywhere from 210,000 gallons of oil to 420,000 gallons of oil daily once it's fully operational. Work to optimize the new system was still ongoing, and the company did not say how much oil it has burned so far . Is burning the oil a great idea, or just the last-ditch effort ...

The news coming out of big colleges lately is that many of them are jumping from one athletic conference to another for ... anyone ... money. That's right. Texas is staying put, however, Of course, it's not love of conference or tradition or anything as sappy as that. The good folks at Fox TV are paying the Longhorns somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 million per year while still allowing Texas to form its own, all-Longhorn network, an option it probably wouldn't have in the Pac-10... Sweet deal. I find it odd that the same NCAA that puts schools on probation because they may have paid a student-athlete's rent or bought him a nice dinner could sanction the school making a financial deal with a TV network. It's OK for the school to make the money but not OK for the students. Not all of the players are going to sign big NFL contracts. Some are actually attending school for an education, and it might be nice to have a decent meal once in a while that you don'...

There is a new VISA commercial with a huge tie-in to Disney's "Toy Story" movie, complete with requisite Disney VISA card. In the ad, a group of the Toy Story gang are running around a store. Buzz Lightyear's action figure is selected by a kid and the happy character watches the kid embrace the toy Lightyear. Throughout the ad, it's tough to tell whether it's an ad for Disney or VISA. I suppose that's the point of cross-marketing. The thing that struck me as I watched the ad was, why do we get so upset when advertising targets kids the way they do with other products; but we don't say anything when kids are used to sell a product. A happy kid with a toy is a happy kid, even though it winds up costing the parent a hefty 22% service charge. Just don't target fatty foods to kids by marketing Happy Meals . We have determined that to be bad. I'm seeing more ads than usual for Father's Day this year. Maybe I missed something, but suddenly, the...

I'm never sure what is supposed to go in this space. Sometimes I have a coherent thought that spews out onto the page rather easily. Sometimes the page is left open for hours until I can string together 500 words that make both grammatical and logical sense. It ain't always easy, gang. Today, I think I'll just spew at random, if you please. The oil is still gushing out of that pipe in the Gulf of Mexico. You've seen it, right? The incredible thing to me is that the oil has enough built-up pressure to continue to leak out of the pipe without being pumped. That's amazing to me. It would have been great if they could just turn off a pump, but the earth is spitting it out at a pretty nice pace. I'd think that the earth would be interested in keeping it in, since it's a form of slow suicide. It is barely being collected faster than it is coming out, and it will be until Tuesday before another effort is made to stop it. The mind boggles at what effect over 100 mi...