My Sick Mind

Hey, remember that big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? I do . Suddenly, we don't hear anything about it. Since Chevron put the cement cap in the well the news from the area has slowed to a ... drip. As is the usual, our federal government may have withheld some information from us when the well initially started leaking, as a panel reported today : WASHINGTON - The Obama administration blocked efforts by government scientists to tell the public just how bad the Gulf of Mexico oil spill could become and committed other missteps that raised questions about its competence and candor during the crisis, according to a commission appointed by the president to investigate the disaster. In documents released Wednesday, the national oil spill commission's staff describes "not an incidental public relations problem" by the White House after the April 20 accident. Among other things, the report says, the administration made erroneous early estimates of the spill's size, a...

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...

Damn those researchers and scientists. If you can't trust your government, can you trust researchers and scientists? Yeah, probably. Researchers are claiming that the Gulf oil spill is bigger than the government claimed, and that at least 80 percent of the oil is still remaining in the waters. Wow, who'd-a-thunk? Me and you, I'd guess. Consider this: "The oil is not gone, that's for sure," University of South Florida's David Hollander said Tuesday. "There is oil and we need to deal with it." University of Georgia's Samantha Joye said: "It's a tremendous amount of oil that's in the system. ... It's very difficult for me to imagine that 50 percent of it has been degraded." Marine scientist Chuck Hopkinson, also with the University of Georgia, raised the obvious question: "Where has all the oil gone? It hasn't gone anywhere. It still lurks in the deep." They say most of it is lurking underneath the surface...

Tonight saw me at another Wilmington Blue Rocks baseball game. One of the charms of minor league baseball is the proximity to the playing field. A treat for a baseball geek like me is to go down toward the bullpen and watch the starting pitcher warm up before the game. From there, you can see his grip on the ball and watch it head toward the plate. That's Blue Rocks pitcher Chris Dwyer on the right. He pitched 5 innings and gave up 2 runs. The best thing about being at a baseball game is that it makes me forget about what else is going on in the world. NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AFP) – Tropical Storm Alex veered away from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill Saturday but experts warned that strong waves and winds could still upset efforts to halt the environmental disaster. With oil continually gushing into the fragile waters after 68 days, President Barack Obama's pointman on the disaster cautioned that volatile weather conditions could set back oil recovery operations for up to two...

Similar to those new traffic lights that spring up at suddenly "dangerous intersections," the region is now being alerted to several fiduciary indiscretions committed by the Delaware River Port Authority (lovingly referred to as the DRPA) ever since one of their legions loaned an EZ-Pass placard to one of his relatives a few months ago. Ever since the Inquirer reported this incident, the headlines have been rife with stories about misspent money and other such problems with an agency that sees fit to charge $4 to cross a bridge and pay about $3.50 of that to the people who take our money. Similarly ... WASHINGTON – The government said Monday it is toughening environmental reviews for all new deepwater oil drilling, ending an easy path to oil riches that allowed BP to drill its blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico with little federal scrutiny. The step is meant to help redress a history of lax oversight leading up to the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers and led to t...

"You turn on the television and see this enormous disaster, you say to yourself, 'Why would we want to take on that kind of risk?'" California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger at a news conference near Sacramento. No, the "enormous disaster" he was talking about wasn't his administration, it's the big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But it wasn't a risk in 2008 when the governor signed a $100 million deal between some environmental groups and Plains Exploration & Production Co., known as PXP, that was estimated to bring the state some $100 million a year. Interesting. A hundred million made it a good idea - then. Imagine how he'd feel if he had never turned on the TV. But like a lot of things, risky endeavors were good ideas when the state needed money. Now that there has been an accident - and it's been on the TV - drilling for oil under the water is suddenly a bad idea, which it probably was all along. Now that we have seen (on TV)...

After losing my Internet connection due to a bad phone line, I am finally back on the air. Since the good folks at Verizon were going to take 4 days to dispatch a repairman to my home to fix my line, I shitcanned them. Subsequently, I signed up with Clear, but had some problems hooking up the air card to my PC. A quick fix and a few swear words and I'm back on the air. Soon, I'll be mobile-blogging, once my new laptop comes from the gang at Dell who, I'm sure, are busily building it as I type because they know how important it is to me. Anyway ... what did I miss? Oh yeah, that oil spill in the Gulf is almost gone - to hear the people at BP tell it, anyway. What happened to the oil? Most of it evaporated, they say. Here's a little experiment you can try in your backyard. Open a quart of oil and leave it on your back porch. Tell me how long it takes for a quart to disappear into the atmosphere. While you're at it, throw in a few shrimp and some fish just to...

Geez. First of all, thank you to the thirty of you who have taken the time to follow me on this little Internet voyage. If you feel like the rantings get tired, there are 4 years of stuff to search. Start going back over the things you missed since you joined me and you might think I was either (a) funnier or (b) the same as now, only older and more tired. Either way, It's been an interesting time, and I wonder where my pent-up rants would have wound up if it weren't for the Internet. I haven't written much about the big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Partly because I figure that you're already aware of it and partly because I'm at a loss to describe how I feel about it. I think I said that it would make the Exxon-Valdez look like "a Bounty commercial," but it goes beyond that now. The thing I can't figure out is how BP didn't have a plan for a pipeline break. As a driller and a major player in the oil industry, you'd think that they would ...

This is the beauty of Newark, NJ as seen from my hotel window, with the lovely view of the roof and air conditioner vent. I'm in the garden spot of the Garden State attending a conference. Fortunately, I have Internet access courtesy of my company at the bargain rate of $9.99 per day. So, I'm under a little pressure to make the content worth the price. Fat chance. The first thing I saw when I flipped on the TV was the Miss USA pageant, proudly proclaimed as being broadcast "LIVE" from Las Vegas, Nevada - seemingly the last place where a beauty pageant could be tolerated. I really thought we had progressed as a society beyond such mundane rituals, but sadly, we have not. Donald Trump is the sponsor, which should tell you everything you need to know about the content. However, it was made to look like a MENSA convention by contrast when I changed channels and saw "Survivor" contestants stacking dishes on a stick. What has happened to TV? I had it on long eno...

“We’re going to be wearing a bulls eye . But that’s what you play for,” Dwayne Wade said. “We enjoy the bulls eye. Plus, there’s going to be times when we lose 2-3 games in a row, and it seems like the world has crashed down. You all (media) are going to make it seem like the World Trade is coming down again, but it’s not going to be nothing but a couple basketball games. Dwayne Wade apologized for that remark. Why? Because it was seen (or heard) as being offensive to people who remember the events of September 11, 2001. We call it Nine-eleven around here. "In an interview yesterday , I attempted to explain how some people may view the Miami Heat losing a few basketball games in a row during the upcoming season. It appears that my reference to the World Trade Center has been either inaccurately reported or taken completely out of context. I was simply trying to say that losing a few basketball games should not be compared to a real catastrophe. "While it was certainly not m...