And then there's this. . . .

I wonder if this thing will do the Internets?

What's an Internet?

It's geek porn, I tells ya! Geek porn!

That's it . . . I'm done. As in "done in."

Gone. Lost. Incommunicado.

Just bring me some beer and some Carnation Instant Breakfast, then call EMS to hook me up a catheter. I have been reliably informed of the existence of a website that's the online home of almost every Radio Shack catalog published from 1939 to 2005.

And that's just part of it.

It seems to me that all I need right now is Doc Brown's DeLorean and some period-appropriate cash, and I'll be in bidness. Oh, the places we'll go!

The gadgets we'll buy!

I THINK I'll get me a classic Rek-O-Kut turntable from 1961. And a vintage Harman-Kardon stereophonic receiver.

Maybe an H.H. Scott FM tuner, too!

Oh! And a Tandberg reel-to-reel tape deck! Tapes! I need tapes!

AND WHEN I'm done shopping in the year of my birth, maybe I'll pop over to Radio Shack somewhere during my junior year of high school . . . let's make it Christmastime 1977. I always wanted a DX-160 communications receiver.

And while I'm at it, maybe I'll pick up this, too:


"What is it?" you ask?

It's an iPod.

The 'Feel-Like-I'm-Fixing-to-Politically-Die Rag'

NOTE: Contains one F-bomb.

And it's one, two, three, what are we enlisting in the Marine Reserves to avoid fighting for?

Don't ask Richard Blumenthal, he don't give a damn, the Connecticut attorney general is too busy lying about serving in Vietnam.

SO SAYS The New York Times:

At a ceremony honoring veterans and senior citizens who sent presents to soldiers overseas, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut rose and spoke of an earlier time in his life.

“We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008. “And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it — Afghanistan or Iraq — we owe our military men and women unconditional support.”

There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.

The deferments allowed Mr. Blumenthal to complete his studies at Harvard; pursue a graduate fellowship in England; serve as a special assistant to The Washington Post’s publisher, Katharine Graham; and ultimately take a job in the Nixon White House.

In 1970, with his last deferment in jeopardy, he landed a coveted spot in the Marine Reserve, which virtually guaranteed that he would not be sent to Vietnam. He joined a unit in Washington that conducted drills and other exercises and focused on local projects, like fixing a campground and organizing a Toys for Tots drive.

Many politicians have faced questions over their decisions during the Vietnam War, and Mr. Blumenthal, who is seeking the seat being vacated by Senator Christopher J. Dodd, is not alone in staying out of the war.

But what is striking about Mr. Blumenthal’s record is the contrast between the many steps he took that allowed him to avoid Vietnam, and the misleading way he often speaks about that period of his life now, especially when he is speaking at veterans’ ceremonies or other patriotic events.

Sometimes his remarks have been plainly untrue, as in his speech to the group in Norwalk. At other times, he has used more ambiguous language, but the impression left on audiences can be similar.

In an interview on Monday, the attorney general said that he had misspoken about his service during the Norwalk event and might have misspoken on other occasions. “My intention has always been to be completely clear and accurate and straightforward, out of respect to the veterans who served in Vietnam,” he said.

But an examination of his remarks at the ceremonies shows that he does not volunteer that his service never took him overseas. And he describes the hostile reaction directed at veterans coming back from Vietnam, intimating that he was among them.

In 2003, he addressed a rally in Bridgeport, where about 100 military families gathered to express support for American troops overseas. “When we returned, we saw nothing like this,” Mr. Blumenthal said. “Let us do better by this generation of men and women.”

At a 2008 ceremony in front of the Veterans War Memorial Building in Shelton, he praised the audience for paying tribute to troops fighting abroad, noting that America had not always done so.

“I served during the Vietnam era,” he said. “I remember the taunts, the insults, sometimes even physical abuse.”

(snip)

In an interview, Jean Risley, the chairwoman of the Connecticut Vietnam Veterans Memorial Inc., recalled listening to an emotional Mr. Blumenthal offering remarks at the dedication of the memorial. She remembered him describing the indignities that he and other veterans faced when they returned from Vietnam.

“It was a sad moment,” she recalled. “He said, ‘When we came back, we were spat on; we couldn’t wear our uniforms.’ It looked like he was sad to me when he said it.”

Ms. Risley later telephoned the reporter to say she had checked into Mr. Blumenthal’s military background and learned that he had not, in fact, served in Vietnam.

THE TIMES has broken the story. Politico and The Washington Post will spew thousands of words about what this means for the Democrats' prospects in the Senate come November, and not so many about the cultural, social and moral dimensions of the story . . . not to mention how this very public man has gotten away with such a sick charade for decades.

As for me, I just want to know whether running for political office has become a prime indicator of narcissistic personality disorder and various other mental illnesses.

I love the java jive, and it loves me

Barring a descent into heavy alcohol consumption, there's nothing like a fresh pot of good coffee, made the way God intended it, to take the edge off a crappy day.

Today has been one of those crappy days, and this is my means of self-medication. If this is a total fail -- I don't think it will be, but you never know -- perhaps I will resort to calling Dr. Jack Daniels.

But I don't think that will be necessary.

I just have some simple advice to the world. Or at least some advice for having a happy middle age.

First, never allow your parents to get old. Second, don't let them get weird.

If one or both go weird on you, you're just screwed. In that case, I'd recommend stocking up on good coffee . . . and good bourbon.

Just in case.

Monday morning comin' down

It's 2:30 a.m. on a Monday. This is what I'm doing.

God, I'm a geek.

LipDubbapalooza

When high schools meet lipdub, it's kind of like giving Junior the keys to the Plymouth. You fear the worst and pray for your car -- and, by the way, Junior -- to come back in one piece.

And with a full tank of gas. (OK, sometimes prayer is a long shot.)

Jaded old fart that you are, you are surprised when the old heap comes back not only in one piece, but topped off and detailed, too. Applying the analogy back to the world of lipdub, that's what Shorewood High School did in Washington state (above).

And you find yourself thinking, fossil that you are, "How did they do that?" Then Junior gives you that "This moron is the BOSS OF ME???" look, and explains the patently obvious to the Old Man.

IT GOES something like this:


AND THEN Junior's slacker friend drops by, and you're thinking, "Holy crap . . . here we go," and you discover, to your amazement, that he's been working hard on a project for a principal who's stationed in Iraq with his National Guard unit . . .


. . . AND THEN, a tribute for another one who's retiring at the end of the year:


DISORIENTED, you struggle to understand when the kids tell you about other youth just like them in Florida.

"What the f. . . ?" you start to ask them, then you remember what your wife told you about cussing in front of Junior, and how you're a bad example, and to knock it the . . . hell . . . off.

Then the kids show you this:


"WELL . . . HECKFIRE," you think. "Maybe I've been all wrong about the next generation. Maybe they're smart enough, they're good enough and -- doggone it -- I should like them."

Then the phone rings.

It's Junior's homeroom teacher.


SUDDENLY, your equilibrium restored, you feel much better. And you yell at Junior about that little scratch you just found on the rear-left quarter panel of the Plymouth.

Damn kids.

Oh, crap.

Steve Jobs thought he had a Gizmodo problem.

What's he gonna do about this Vietnamese website that's come up with an iPhone 4G and Apple's newest MacBook? Insist that American authorities rekindle the Vietnam War?

Come to think of it . . . oh, s***.

AS YOU consider the prospects and tremble, here's the latest from Mashable:

A Vietnamese website — the same one that got hold of another Apple 4G iPhone last week — has posted a video and details about the new entry-level MacBook 7.1.

The machine’s CPU was upgraded to a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, increased from 2.26GHz in the previous generation, and graphics were given a shot in the arm with a NVIDIA GeForce 320M GPU. These updates will be the first for the MacBook since October 2009, when the notebook got a longer battery life and overall design reworking.

Apple’s recent round of laptop refreshes has thus far included upgrades to the MacBook Pro, including a standard 4GB of RAM and a choice between Intel’s i5 and i7 processors on larger models. Similar CPU and graphics changes appear to be trickling down to standard MacBooks, as well. Upgrades to the MacBook Air were also rumored but have yet to surface as fact.

AND I'LL BET that for a Vietnamese website, getting a scoop on what Apple's doing next is as easy as driving to the southern Chinese factories that make all this stuff and slipping a little somethin' somethin' to somebody who's more than willing to make a premature sale.

I guess, while Steve is at it, he could have American authorities declare war on China, too. But in the event we didn't get our clocks cleaned in trying to make the world safe for Silicon Valley capitalists, where then would Apple make its premium-priced products?

In American factories? Paying American workers living wages?

That would sooooooo screw with Apple's profit margins and "shareholder value," don't you know?

I guess it's better to just keep kicking around the little guys, then.

Truth in town naming

The driver lived.

This fact, of course, casts doubt on Darwin's entire theory of evolution and "natural selection." I predict this will be another straw at which creationists grasp.

3 Chords & the Truth: Country, rock, jazz

Click above for printable playlist.

This week on the Big Show, you can pick your . . . pleasure.

That's right, on Episode 101 (just a silly millimeter longer . . . sorry, really obscure pop-culture reference there) of 3 Chords & the Truth, you got your country. And you got your rock 'n' roll.

And then you got your great ladies of jazz.

FRANKLY, I think that pretty much covers it. There's not much else to say, except that you need to look for the tie-in to a couple of posts on Revolution 21's Blog for the People earlier in the week.

If you're the first caller with the correct answer . . . give yourself a nice prize.

So remember -- this week on the Big Show, we got your country, your rock and your jazz. A balanced diet of fine music.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Lies, damned lies and government estimates

A 5,000-barrel-a-day oil spill in the Gulf?

Scientists look at the spill, look at that number and say BP and the government are full of beans. Slimy, oily, polluted beans.

The questions are not new. In fact, those doubts are just as longstanding as the government's -- and the media's -- insistence upon using the 5,000-barrel estimate, which a government agency, according to a New York Times report, basically pulled out of its butt:

Two weeks ago, the government put out a round estimate of the size of the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico: 5,000 barrels a day. Repeated endlessly in news reports, it has become conventional wisdom.

But scientists and environmental groups are raising sharp questions about that estimate, declaring that the leak must be far larger. They also criticize BP for refusing to use well-known scientific techniques that would give a more precise figure.

The criticism escalated on Thursday, a day after the release of a video that showed a huge black plume of oil gushing from the broken well at a seemingly high rate. BP has repeatedly claimed that measuring the plume would be impossible.

The figure of 5,000 barrels a day was hastily produced by government scientists in Seattle. It appears to have been calculated using a method that is specifically not recommended for major oil spills.

Ian R. MacDonald, an oceanographer at Florida State University who is an expert in the analysis of oil slicks, said he had made his own rough calculations using satellite imagery. They suggested that the leak could “easily be four or five times” the government estimate, he said.

“The government has a responsibility to get good numbers,” Dr. MacDonald said. “If it’s beyond their technical capability, the whole world is ready to help them.”

Scientists said that the size of the spill was directly related to the amount of damage it would do in the ocean and onshore, and that calculating it accurately was important for that reason.

BP has repeatedly said that its highest priority is stopping the leak, not measuring it. “There’s just no way to measure it,” Kent Wells, a BP senior vice president, said in a recent briefing.

Yet for decades, specialists have used a technique that is almost tailor-made for the problem. With undersea gear that resembles the ultrasound machines in medical offices, they measure the flow rate from hot-water vents on the ocean floor. Scientists said that such equipment could be tuned to allow for accurate measurement of oil and gas flowing from the well.

Richard Camilli and Andy Bowen, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, who have routinely made such measurements, spoke extensively to BP last week, Mr. Bowen said. They were poised to fly to the gulf to conduct volume measurements.

But they were contacted late in the week and told not to come, at around the time BP decided to lower a large metal container to try to capture the leak. That maneuver failed. They have not been invited again.

“The government and BP are calling the shots, so I will have to respect their judgment,” Dr. Camilli said.

IF YOU HAVE the formulas to come up with a better flow estimate, and you have outside experts offering equipment to better analyze the spill rate but still you refuse to employ the better mathematical formulas -- just as you blow off scientists' offers of analytical assistance -- the public is pretty much left with a single conclusion to draw.

The people in charge of this thing don't want to know how bad this oil spill is. More precisely, they don't want us to know how very screwed we are.

That's how junkies operate. Dope . . . oil . . . it's all the same when you're good and hooked. When the last thing you're interested in is kicking the habit.

OUR ADDICTION is going to kill us. But it's going to kill Louisiana first.

Not that we care to know about any of that.

Sell diapers, save lives

While "right-to-life" groups keep busy demonizing health-care reform and slandering those who support it. . . .

And while Nebraska Right to Life is busy endorsing Republicans who make abortion really, really attractive to poor women. . . .

It takes a disposable-diaper maker to get with the program of making a people actually rethink the whole enterprise.

ALL BECAUSE Pampers wants to sell some product, and this iPad app is a hell of a way to do it. Think of it this way: You're taking your standard pro-lifer's plastic fetus combined with all the pamphlets filled with gestational information, and then throw in a 4-D ultrasound for good measure.

You're distributing this around the world, at zero cost after production, and you're distributing it to millions at a time -- not just to abortion-prone women or from an information table at a county fair or somebody's church.

What do you think will do more to make the world safe for unborn children, what Pampers is doing or what the "pro-life" movement is doing now . . . under the covers with politicians whispering sweet nothing in its ear.


HAT TIP: Rod Dreher.

Shindig! + 5

Five years after Delaney Bramlett performed on that second episode of Shindig!, where he was a member of the house band, here he is with a whole new look, pickin' and singin' with his wife, Bonnie.

And with some other feller by the name of Eric Clapton. And another feller named Dave Mason.

I just thought you might enjoy not only some fine, fine music, but also an illustration of the tectonic cultural shifts that can happen in a mere five years.

TV a go go

Shindig!

It's right here . . . just in from 1964, when television was a lot more creative and a whole lot funner.

BESIDES, you couldn't beat Johnny Rivers, in glorious black and white, at the height of his "a-go-go" powers.

Why are you so warped, Favog?

You'd be warped, too, if you watched this guy on television for 25 years.

This is Price LeBlanc. He sold cars around Baton Rouge for decades, and his kids still do today.

And this was his shtick.

I remember this shtick from when he was doing it standing next to a 1970s AMC or Chrysler in front of a curtain in the Channel 9 studios. And I remember it from when he was doing it in a car lot full of Toyotas.

Hell, I remember him walking into the Cotton Club, a watering hole and seafood joint just north of LSU, and nobody letting him leave until he said "Dahlin'!"

This probably not only explains a lot about the mental instability of your humble blogger, but also about the place that spawned him. Dahlin'!

I blame gay marriage in Iowa for this

I think I know what killed Sergeant Floyd.

The Lincoln is weird. I do not like the Lincoln.

I likes sweet pertaters. I had me a hankerin' fer sweet pertaters when I gots off the Greyhound bus in this place called the Lincoln in this other place called Nebrasky, but it might be the other way around because this place is funny, because I ain't seen nothin' likes it before.

I never been out of Pumpkin Center before but I tol' Mama that they was a big world out there and I wanted to see it and I was 34 years old -- because Papa said I was bornded when Jerrald Forde was president and that was 1976 and Miss Hilda at the center said that was 34 years ago, and that's how old I am. That is old enough to go see the world, and I had some money saved up from delivering the Hammond Daily Star, so I tol' Mama I was going to see the world and maybe I would go to Omaha where Jerrald Forde was bornded, and that's in Nebrasky, too, you know, or maybe in Lincoln, because I sometimes get things backwards and get confuseded, so I packed my bag and rode my bicycle to Hammond and I got on the Greyhound that the man said would go to Nebrasky where Jerrald Forde was bornded.

THE BUS got to Lincoln today, and people said Lincoln was real close to Nebrasky, and you can walk to Omaha from there to see where Jerrald Forde was bornded. Anyways, I decided I would stay in the Lincoln for a while because it is interesting, and the people are real different here, and I ain't never seen nothing likes that before. They talk funny and everything, and they seem to be a lot more white but people looked at me funny and somebody with long hair and glasses like my grammaw and a little sack on his back -- or maybe it was a she because I get confuseded -- cussed me when I axed them where was all the nigras and did they know where I could get me some sweet pertaters.

Then a passed by this building that was way taller than anything in Pumpkin Center, and it might be as tall as the state capitol in Baton Rouge but I don't know because I ain't never been there, but I asked somebody and they said it was the state capitol and I said no it ain't because this ain't Baton Rouge, and they said yes it was, too, because this was Lincoln and it was the capitol building of Nebrasky. And then I said I thought it lookded likes a big dick, and they got all flustered and walked off, and I axed them what's the matter, ain't they seen a big dick before and they said they was going to call the police and I got scared and runded away. I sure wish I had me some sweet pertaters.

I kept walking but I would hide when I saw a police car because I didn't want to get throwded in jail, because Mama always said that was where they kept the nigras and the justice of the peace always said you didn't want to mess with them people. But I kept gettin' hungrier and hungrier, and I really wished I had me some sweet pertaters, and I forgot where the bus station was exactly but it was gettin' dark and I saw this building called the Chamber of Commercial, that's what the man I axed to read the sign told me it was, and it sounded like a fancy eatin' place Daddy told me about once that he went to in Baton Rouge, so I went in because I figgerd that if anyplace in the Lincoln had sweet pertaters, maybe this would be the place and I still had $3 left not counting my bus ticket and a savings bond I got for delivering the Hammond Daily Star to people in Pumpkin Center, and that ought to be enough to get me a nice mess of sweet pertaters. And maybe a RC Cola, too.

And I was right that it was a fancy eatin' place because they was all these people in there dressed all fancy and they was all eatin' them fancy little sammiches and them little weenies with toothpicks through 'em and they was drinkin fancy wine but they was all watchin' the TV but they wadn't no football game on, it was the news show and they was showin' numbers all across the bottom of the TV and some people was even lookin' at these little computer books on tables, and I axed where the waiter was and where was all the nigras but them people just looked at me funney like they just pooted in their pants a little bit and they walked away from me, but they ought not a did that because I didn't poot in my pants or nothin' and I tried to tell 'em that but then somebody said can't somebody do somethin' about the homeless people comin' in there, and I said I didn't see no nigras, what the hell was they talkin' about?

I think these people in the Lincoln are a little bit odd ducks and I for the life of me don't know how Jerrald Forde come from such a weirdo place because my Daddy said he was the last normal president we ever had except for President Raygun, because Bill Klinton would screw everything that wore a skirt and Bamack Obamer was a damn communiss Muslin. But it's true, these peoples in the Lincoln and I guess in Nebrasky too is all weirdos because they act likes they ain't seen no normal Americans before like we have in Louisiana.

I even seen the mayor of the Lincoln in the Chamber of Commercial restaurant place and he was the weirdest of all them weirdos because I think he was one a them hermorphadites what was dressed just like a damn woman, and his wife was dressed like a g**damn truck driver, that's what daddy woulda said about her back home, that she was dressed like a g**damn truck driver, only she looked like even more a he-she that the mayor did in his dress and long hair and lipstick, only a opposite he-she, maybe it is that the mayor Chris Biteler is a she-he and his wife is a he-she, I don't know, because I think that all the people in the Lincoln is a bunch of damn oddballs.


This is a picshure of Biteler the mayor.

This is a picshure of Mrs. Biteler his he-she wife.

They was happy about a arena passing but I said it didn't look like no ESPN was on the TV, and they all looked at me like I was stupid or somethin'. I never did get my sweet pertaters and I think I messed up coming to this Nebrasky place where all the peoples is freaks and he-shes and she-hes, and I can't understand where they hiding all their nigras, I guess it ain't no wonder a body can't get no damn sweet pertaters here.

I want to go home to Pumpkin Center people are not weirdos there and I ain't never seed no he-shes and she-hes there. I will go back there as soon as I can find the Greyhound station, I do not like Jerrald Forde no more, and I miss home. The Lincoln can go to hell.

Pope embraces the Holy DUH

Finally.

By the grace of God, the Catholic Church, led by the pope, eventually came around to embrace the obvious.

Slowly, yes. Painfully, yes. But around it does come, usually, to embrace the gospel truth.

TODAY, the news of this comes via The New York Times . . . which had its own role in forcing the issue:

In his most direct condemnation of the sexual abuse crisis that has swept the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday said that the “sins inside the church” posed the greatest threat to the church, adding that “forgiveness does not substitute justice.”

“Attacks on the pope and the church come not only from outside the church, but the suffering of the church comes from inside the church, from sin that exists inside the church,” Benedict told reporters aboard his plane en route to Portugal, speaking about the abuse crisis.

“This we have always known, but today we see it in a really terrifying way, that the greatest persecution of the church does not come from the enemies outside but is born from the sin in the church,” he added. “The church has a profound need to relearn penance, to accept purification, to learn on the one hand forgiveness but also the necessity of justice. And forgiveness does not substitute justice.”

In placing the blame for sex abuse directly on the church, Benedict appeared to distance himself from other church officials who in recent weeks have criticized the news media for reporting on the sex abuse crisis, which they called attacks on the church.

In recent months, the sex abuse crisis has revealed an ancient institution wrestling with modernity and has brought to light an internal culture clash between traditionalists who have valued protecting priests and bishops above all else, and others who seek more transparency.

The crisis has also raised questions about how Benedict handled sex abuse as prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and as bishop in Munich in 1980 when a pedophile priest was moved to his diocese for treatment.

A traditionalist but also a strong voice within the church calling for purification, Benedict met privately with victims of sex abuse on a brief trip to Malta last month, his third such meeting. In March, he issued a strong letter to Irish Catholics reeling from reports of systemic sex abuse in Catholic institutions. And last week the Vatican took control of the Legionaries of Christ, a powerful religious order whose founder was founded to have abused seminarians and fathered several children.

But the pope’s off-the-cuff remarks on Tuesday were his most direct since the crisis hit the church in Europe earlier this year.

On the plane, Benedict told reporters that the church had to relearn “conversion, prayer, penance.”

WELL, DUH. And amen.

Let the Vatican's deeds now match the Holy Father's words.

This apocalypse is brought to you by. . . .

We hold some truths to be self-evident. Likewise, so are some tragedies.

The Gulf oil spill is one of those self-evident catastrophes. The destruction speaks for itself; the plain facts speak to the unspeakable sins against nature and man in all this, and no poor words of mine can add to that or subtract from it.

The plain facts in one Times-Picayune article Monday say enough about what went so horribly wrong on an exploration rig 50 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico.

The plain facts speak to the horror wrought by poor judgment and careless complacency. And the testimony of the living, brought to light by a righteous engineering professor, bears witness to the horror of the last moments of the dead.

What happened in the Gulf in April led to an ongoing catastrophe the coastal states -- most notably, Louisiana -- are just beginning to live now. It is, and will be, an affront to the economy of that region and, especially, to nature and nature's God.

It took just two of the "seven deadly sins" to turn an effort by three horsemen of the capitalist apocalypse -- BP, Transocean and Halliburton -- into the "destroyer of worlds" Robert Oppenheimer referenced upon witnessing the first atomic blast.

Greed and pride. That's all it took.

HERE'S A TASTE of the Times-Picayune's account of catastrophe in the making. Read on, and do go and read the whole thing:

Shortly before the accident, engineers argued about whether to remove heavy drilling mud that acted as a last defense against such catastrophic kicks, and the decision to replace the mud with much lighter seawater won out.

Those are some of the new details gathered by Robert Bea, a University of California at Berkeley engineering professor better known in New Orleans as co-leader of an independent team of scientists that conducted a forensic investigation of the causes for the failure of levees and floodwalls during Hurricane Katrina.

In an effort to piece together the cause of the region's most recent calamity, Bea has been gathering statements, transcripts and other communications from about 50 people since the accident, including workers on the rig, engineers who worked with the rig from onshore locations, and engineers and oilfield workers who have been active in drilling for decades.

"As the job unfolded, ... the workers did have intermittent trouble with pockets of natural gas," said one statement sent to Bea. "Highly flammable, the gas was forcing its way up the drill pipes. This was something BP had not foreseen as a serious problem, declaring a year earlier that gas was likely to pose only a 'negligible' risk. The government warned the company that gas buildup was a real concern and that BP should 'exercise caution'".

(snip)

Bea believes the narrative he is creating raises serious questions about the risk assessments used by BP and the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency charged with determining whether the drilling plans were adequate.

They failed to address what's called "residual risk," those things that planners don't think will fail. And in doing so, they underestimated the risk in ways very similar to the engineers who designed New Orleans' levee system, Bea said.

GREED. PRIDE. And then death -- death of 11 men, and perhaps death of a whole world, a whole ecosystem, a whole culture.

In the incident that forced Deepwater Horizon to shut down drilling temporarily, workers in the rig's drilling mudroom stabilized the situation by putting a heavier form of "mud," actually a mixture of clay and chemicals, into the drill-pipe as a counter-balance, pushing down against the upward pressure of the gas, Bea said.

A transcript Bea collected from a witness says the companies were confident enough they had a lucrative oil source that they decided to convert from an exploratory well to a more permanent production well, a process that requires them to apply a metal and cement casing to the well hole. They chose casing 7 inches in diameter, Bea said, and that was further sealed with cement pumped in by Halliburton. Bea said his sources reported that Halliburton was using a "new" kind of cement for the seal, something the scientist said made him say, "Uh oh."

"The cement is infused with chemicals and nitrogen, and those chemicals and nitrogen form a frothy cement that is like shaving soap sprayed from a can," Bea said. "It was put in there because of the concern about damage or destruction of the seals by methane hydrates."

The crew on the Deepwater Horizon waited 20 hours for the cement job to cure before opening a key valve at the wellhead so they could place a final cement plug about 5,000 feet down the well. Bea gives Halliburton credit for writing "many excellent papers" in the past two years about the challenge of setting cement seals in the presence of large amounts of methane hydrates, which the Deepwater Horizon crew encountered in spades.

"Because of the chemicals they've added, they think the cement can cure rapidly," Bea said.

But Halliburton's awareness of cementing's challenges did not stop the cement from failing in the Deepwater Horizon's well. The chemicals they added for the curing process also create a lot of heat, which can thaw the methane hydrate into the gas that causes dangerous kicks, Bea said.

"I call that 'Uh oh' again," he said.

One of Bea's witness transcripts describes in detail a heated debate among BP, Halliburton and Transocean officials as they are about to add the final cement plug to the well, 5,000 below the wellhead and 10,000 feet below the rig. They argued about whether to set the plug with drilling mud still in the well and riser, or if they should do it with lighter sea water there instead.

HALLIBURTON . . . is there anything (bad) it can't do?

No. No, there's not.

As The Times-Picayune reported last week, Bea's witness claims the decision was made to displace the heavy mud barrier with water before the final plug was set in order to finish the job more quickly.. The crew was planning to temporarily abandon the well, and before leaving, they would need to remove the riser and the blowout preventer, a massive stack of valves and slicing rams that are supposed to shut off the well in case of an emergency, and some time later another operation would re-tap the well to extract its riches.

The mud in the riser would have to be replaced with salt water before the crew could take the final step of removing the blowout preventer, or else polluting mud and chemicals would spill into the sea, angering environmental regulators. But based on Bea's witness, who describes the debate on board the rig and with officials in Houston, there was still a question about whether to replace the mud before the final plug was set.

"The debate comes back that it's been pressure-tested, the coast is clear, so they will displace the upper 10,000 feet of heavy mud and replace it with salt water," Bea said. "This is a crucial step, and the reason it's crucial is if the seal at the bottom is fine, it's OK, but if it's not OK, we're screwed. We don't have enough pressure (from mud) in the column anymore to fight the reservoir (gas and liquid) pressure."

(snip)

"The explosion hurls them against the other wall" of the galley, Bea said. "Here's where I broke down when I read it.... It describes bodies being broken, necks gashed and people bleeding, and now everybody's in the dark. People are screaming for help. People are busy helping their comrades get to two lifeboats.

"People in the lifeboats are screaming, 'We've got to get out of here!' but the lifeboats aren't full," Bea said. "The doors slam and they drop the (lifeboats), and as they do, they can see some of their colleagues jumping into the sea. They can see their outlines because the rig is burning behind them.

"Back on the drill floor, all hell has broken loose. Explosions are propagating from the mud pit room back toward them," Bea said. "At that point, one transcript that's obviously been an observer heading toward the lifeboats says the drill floor disappears in a ball of flame. And at that point, the three on-board transcripts stop."

Bea said the concluding paragraph from one of those observing the explosion summed up the depth of the failure.

"In order for a disaster of this magnitude to happen, more than one thing has to go wrong, or fail. First, a shitty cement job. The wellhead packoff/seal assembly (the equipment directly below the blowout preventer that connects the lower pipe casing to the preventer) while designed to hold the pressure, is just a backup. And finally, the ability to close the well in with the BOP somehow went away," the witness said.

OF ONE THING, I have no doubt. Satan is a libertarian.

Go Big . . . 14?

If this holds up, this is great news for Nebraska.

And a big "Hook THIS" for Texas, which will be stuck in a dead league, the Big 12.

THE WORD comes from sports-radio WHB in Kansas City, and already the website is about to melt down:

The Big Ten Conference has extended initial offers to join the league to four universities including Missouri and Nebraska from the Big 12, according to multiple sources close to the negotiations.

While nothing can be approved until the Big Ten presidents and chancellors meet the first week of June in Chicago, the league has informed the two Big 12 schools, Notre Dame and Rutgers that it would like to have them join. It is not yet clear whether the Big Ten will expand to 14 or 16 teams but sources indicated Missouri and Nebraska are invited in either scenario. Notre Dame has repeatedly declined the opportunity to join the Big Ten. If Notre Dame remains independent, Rutgers would be the 14th team. The Big Ten would then decide whether to stop at 14 or extend offers to two other schools. If Notre Dame joins, sources say an offer will be extended to one other school making it a 16-team league.

In order for the University of Missouri to join the Big Ten, the Missouri Board of Regents will still have to approve the move. Sources close to the governing body say the Big Ten has told officials that Mizzou could add $1.3 million per month in revenue to the lucrative Big Ten Television Network. The Big Ten Network is currently offered on basic cable to very few of over 7 million residents living in Missouri television markets and adding it throughout the state will be a windfall for the conference.

Big Ten representatives have also told Missouri officials they would like to have the entire expansion process wrapped up this summer with a formal announcement coming no later than July.

Edukashun 2day

Biz prof smwhre was sayin smthin abt the prez bein a h8tr on cellphones & web intruding on clsrm.

Fnd articl here while surfin by. Chk it OUTTT!!!!!

In his commencement speech Sunday at Virginia's Hampton University, President Obama suggested that social media and the devices on which they are accessed distract students from learning. The president does not hate your precious freedom to isolate yourself in a cocoon of music, videos and text messages. He just realizes that if students are going to realize their potential, they need to focus more on the classroom.

As a part-time professor, I agree with him. I have to fight students' natural desire to keep an eye on Facebook during class. (I may be a really bad teacher, but Bloomberg Businessweek ranked my Babson College Business department second in the country for teaching strategy to undergraduates.) According to academic . . . 96% of college . . . students . . . Facebook . . . YouTube. . . . hour a. . . .

The stories of the flooding to hit Nashville and the damages incurred have made headlines around the nation. On all the network newscasts there have been pictures and stories of what has happened to our city. Some authorities are calling it, "The flood of 500 years," or The flood of 1000 years," based on the likelihood of something like this happening. One of our dedicated listeners referred to it as, "Nashville's Hurricane Katrina."

The outporing of concern from friends and fans of WSM and the Grand Ole Opry has been overwhelming to all of us connected with each of these businesses. There have been, and there continues to be, a lot of prayers being held up for our city, its resdients, businesses, and all that have been affected by this flood.

The Grand Ole Opry has been mentioned frequently on television and in print and the damages that have happened.

Let me share with you something that I've said for the fifteen years I've been with WSM, that is more relevant now than ever. The Grand Ole Opry is not a place--the Grand Ole Opry is a show, and as the old saying goes, "The show must go on." As many know, the Grand Ole Opry is world's longest continuously running live radio show. What many people don't know is, the Grand Ole Opry is our Saturday show--only. The program that is on Friday nights--started in 1949 as the Friday Night Frolics at WSM Studio C, then became the Friday Night Opry upon moving to the Ryman Auditorium in 1964, is formatted like our Saturday show. Our seasonal Tuesday Night show is the Tuesday Night Opry, and our seasonal Thursday night program is Opry Country Classics. Nothing has happened to any . . . shows and they . . . to continue. . . .

WHOA!!! OIL!!!

BAD WETHR 2-day! YUCK!!!

Whew . . . not here. . . .

RIIIIIINNNNNNNNNG!