Monday, May 31, 2010

News'n'such...

"Forty miles off the coast and a mile down is Louisianans' biggest worry..." intoned the voice-over.
"They put Barack on a sub?" mused I...

On the Today Show this morning, a very serious and concerned Lester Holt asked one Ed Overton what the odds of success were for plugging the oil hemorrhage in the Gulf. The reason for Ed's being asked is that he was "Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences" at LSU. I blurted at the TeeWee "Environmental Sciences? What the hell is that? He pays grad students to count tree rings or something?"

As it turns out, no. Ed has worked on petrospills for quite some time and is all published and patented and everything, but mostly in the effects of spills, and measuring and quantifying spills and contamination via gas chromatography and et cetera. Which, actually, has about as much to do with plugging high-pressure leaks a mile under water as paying grad students to count tree rings does. But he had a PhD and was handy and lived in Louisiana, so there you go.

Meanwhile, on another segment, dismay and shocked surprise was expressed that the Israelis, who had said that they were going to stop the Gaza convoy for realz and they weren't kidding, stopped the Gaza convoy for realz and they weren't kidding, yo. (In other news, drunk steps across line, is punched in nose by other drunk. Film at 11.)
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28 comments:

Joseph said...

Wouldn't surprise me if the whole Gaza convoy situation wasan't a setup to get the Israelies to take it on the chin.

9:12 AM, May 31, 2010
Anonymous said...

I wouldn't doubt you, Joseph. And it's easy for the organizers to find dupes who operate under the misguided belief of, "Oh, they wouldn't really shoot at us!"

Or shoot back...

I see from the article that the White House folks don't understand the problem. Figures...

Art

11:20 AM, May 31, 2010
Divemedic said...

According to the press from Al-Jazeera, the flotilla members were armed with iron 'sticks' and knives. How is that unarmed?

11:29 AM, May 31, 2010
Ed Foster said...

To keep things in context, the Mexican oil well blowout of 1978, off the coast of what is now called the Mexican Riviera, dumped 7 times as much oil, and things seem to have survived.

11:48 AM, May 31, 2010
Anonymous said...

So the government sequesters an ethnic/religious minority into a squalid walled ghetto and kills people to prevent humanitarian relief efforts.... hmm, seems I've heard this one before. Didn't they make a movie of it? How'd that turn out for everyone?

12:07 PM, May 31, 2010
Anonymous said...

Let's see, the IDF tells the "flotilla" that they can dock at Ashkelon, unload the approved humanitarian goods and transport them in legally. "Peace activists" tell the IDF to go soak their heads. IDF does as promised and boards ships in order to make sure they are not smuggling weapons in like Hamas/ Hizbollah and company do in Red Crescent ambulances. IDF troopers are attacked and at least one temporarily loses control of his pistol to a "peace activist" who fires it at the soldiers.

Nah, too strained for Hollywierd to make a movie from. Your memory must be slipping. Ah, and "minority" members who do not actively push for the overthrow of the government and death to all non-minority-members are free to: serve in the IDF, to be citizens of the country and even to run for election to parliament. Still can't think of a movie that fits your description.

LittleRed1

12:29 PM, May 31, 2010
Anonymous said...

Watching Turkey accuse Israel of a "flagrant breach of international law," and "disregard for human life and peaceful initiatives." caused me to give pause and wonder if Turkey was promoting an act of war...

Gmac

12:43 PM, May 31, 2010
Tam said...

It would seem that Turkey has decided to score both EU Points and Dar al-Islam Points simultaneously, at the expense of their previous tentative military hand-holding with Israel. (Although why anybody would still want into the EU at this point is beyond me.)

12:51 PM, May 31, 2010
GuardDuck said...

(Although why anybody would still want into the EU at this point is beyond me.)

The immediate drop in credit rating leads to a reduction in unsolicited credit card offers. That's a plus.

1:02 PM, May 31, 2010
Tam said...

I LOL'ed. :D

1:50 PM, May 31, 2010
Kristophr said...

Tam: The Islamic fundies in Turkey desperately want into the EU.

The EU forbids military coups. The military in Turkey has had a duty to dissolve any non-secular government that forms since Attaturk.

They understood back then that Islam will always demand a theocracy, and that the only way to modernize Turkey was to forbid the fundies from getting what they most desired.

Entry in the EU will allow the fundies to use majoritarianism to get what they hadn't been able to get for nearly a century.

2:02 PM, May 31, 2010
Britt said...

Damn Kristopher, I never did connect all those dots.

Oh yay I can't wait for strategically placed nation run by Islamists with European weapon systems to emerge.

2:21 PM, May 31, 2010
Stranger said...

Perhaps curiously, the clearest statement about Deepwater Horizon comes from Mike Stopa, the R candidate for the 3rd district in Taxachussetts. Here's the link:

http://www.stopaforusrep.com/blog/69-oilspill

As Stopa or his speechwriter says, it is too early to tell what the end result will be. But the local marine biology people say the probably result will be much the same as Ixtoc-1. Unless the enviros manage to completely screw things up again.

Stranger

2:45 PM, May 31, 2010
staghounds said...

Two bald men fighting over a comb.

This seems awfully incompetent for the ace, top ranked, super hero IDF to have fouled up, but they managed.

2:54 PM, May 31, 2010
Anonymous said...

I worked as chief engineer on well drilling programs in Oak Ridge, TN back in the 1980s. Learned a lot from the fellers from "The Oil Patch" as the oil well industry is known.
Oil comes out of the pipe or casing that goes down into mother earth. So, you CAN stick an explosive string of charges into said casing and set them off. Then, with the rock pulverized for say 1,000 feet, no oil can come out. Get it?
There are two reasons BP has not done this:
Reason 1: try to save the well. This puppy cost them millions to install. They really thought they could deal with it.
Reason 2: Since Reason 1 failed, they can't blow the well now because everyone from Little Barry Hussien on down to kindergardeners would be screaming "why did you not do this three weeks ago!!" And, BP would be caught with pants down.
There ain't no easy face-saving way out of this for BP.

3:34 PM, May 31, 2010
New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

If that explosive in casing thing is true, BP can announces they are doing on last risky last ditch attempt to stop the flow with explosives they are installing tomorrow. No one will see they aren't, and they can blow the pre-positioned charges you say are already down there, Anon. And wow, miracle of miracles it works. Face saved.

If I can think of that out to the conspiracy, BP can.

6:33 PM, May 31, 2010
Ed Foster said...

They have a small diameter pipe inside the casing now, siphoning off about 20% of the spill.

That would give them a spine to which they could attach the explosives.

They would need solid charges attached to the inside pipe. Pumping slurry down the well isn't an option against all that artesian pressure.

My thought would be a few hundred feet of 3/8" det cord.

I haven't seen any geological prints, so I don't know how much silt is over the actual rock. If they had to sink through a thousand feet of loose muck and sand before they hit solid overburden, blowing the thing wouldn't do anything but make a larger and unpluggable hole.

Still, it might be an option if they can get a couple of thousand feet under the regolith. Does anybody know how far that small diameter pipe goes into the broken feeder? The friggin' media has really shorted us on technical information.

7:21 PM, May 31, 2010
Jack said...

If they can get an explosive down the hole, they can get drill pipe to the bottom and mud the hole off. If you want some expect opinions, check out www.theoildrum.com The real expects there aren't quite so sure about what will work short of the relief wells.

7:52 PM, May 31, 2010
Jayson said...

Hey, Anon, you're a frakking idiot. Those stupid animals have been offered their own state numerous times, and they always turn it down. Why? Because they believe jerusalem is their holy land. To bad the animal f*ckers know jack squat about history. Jerusalem is mentioned nowhere in the Koran, and the so-called "magic flight" or whatever the prophet had went to the "farthest" mosque- supposedly in J-Lem. Unfortunately for those f*ckwits, no mosque was built there until decades after that pedophile was dead.

So basically every beat-down the Palestinians get is their own damn fault. Personally I'd like to Israel let off the chain and solve it for good.

8:44 PM, May 31, 2010
Firehand said...

Gaza’s Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has got the bloody propaganda triumph he was preparing for when he told followers last week that whatever came of the Gaza “aid” flotilla, it would be a win for Hamas – whether the ships reached Gaza, or ended up in a showdown with the Israelis at sea.
If the Israelis let them through, it would set a precedent they'd use to smuggle arms in the future; they stop them, you have the current circus blaming the evil JOOOOOS for harming the poor, innocent, non-violent "We just want to feed people!" activists on the ships.

Israel knew they couldn't win in the eyes of the major media and EU and progressive dirtbags, so...

10:08 PM, May 31, 2010
Geodkyt said...

Actually, the Palestinians have had their own country for decades, at least until they decided to commit treason and try and assassinate the king.

It's called "Jordan".

By and large the "Palestinians" are actually ex-patriate Jordanians. Except of course for the "Palestinians" who live in Gaza. Rational people would refer to them as "Egyptian", except Egypt doesn't want them.

You see, when they started looking at partitioning that area you probably refer to as "Palestine" in its entirity, they satrted by FIRST putting about 2/3rds of it into Arab hands before they tried to look like they were apportioning the area fairly.

ANY OTHER refugee group would have been assimilated by now -- the Palestinians are the only "refugee" group where it is in teh UN bureaucrats' interests to keep them separated. The only "refugee" camps that are decades-old cities, with a road network, water system, and electrical grid ALL built after they were set up as "temporary camps".

When Jordan (Arab Muslims) had 100% de facto as well as control over the West Bank, and Egypt (more Arab Muslims) had 100% de facto as well as control of Gaza, they could have ended the Palestinian "refugee" problem in it's entirity.

Except, the "Palestinian refugee" problem has NEVER been about refugees. It has ALWAYS been about the complete destruction of Israel and teh slaughter of all of teh Jews (and Druze, and Christians, and Samaritans, but they are all almost an afterthought).

Some of teh largest, most vibrant, Jewish communites were found in major Arab cities. . . until 1947, when they were expelled at gunpoint from teh home their families had occupied for CENTURIES (many from even before the Crusades; some from before the birth of Mohammed), generally stripped of all of their possessions they could not literally carry, and ordered to go to Israel.

Right as Arab armies were attacking Israel on ALL fronts, publicly proclaiming that they were going to "drive the Jews into the sea" and "finish what Hitler started". Meanwhile, they told Jordanian and Egyptian citizens living in teh area (i.e., the refugees now called "Palestinians") to bug out, so they didn;t become collateral damage, and that after the massive Arab armies on their cleansing mission were through (estimated as under a week) killing all teh Jews, they could move back in.

Too bad, so sad -- the Arabs got their asses handed to them. And the cheerleaders of genocide who left the area to avoid having to breathe the dust of manly Arab tank regiments? Tough shit.

I note that the Arabs (Muslim and Christian) who chose to stay behind are treated better under Israeli law they they themselves would be treated under ARAB law in almost all Arab nations. I also note that Druze and Samaritans (keep in mind that Jews and Samaritans have had some serious emnity between themselves for MILLENIA, that's why the parable is about "The Good Samaritan") who chose to stick around also get to be Israeli citizens.

Add in the CONSISTANT violation of international law (especially the violation of truce flags and noncombatant insignia), as well as the DELIBERATE targeting of civilians as soft targets (as opposed to regretful collateral damage -- under the Laws of War for centuries, the onus of civilian collateral damage when you fire from behind civilians is on the guy hiding among the civilians for cover -- sort of like "felony murder" applying to you when the cops shoot your accomplice), I have ZERO sympathy for the "Palestinians".

As the Jordanian situation (Black Friday doesn't refer to anything ISRAEL did -- it's when the Jordanians liquidated 30,000 "Palestinians" as threats to the nation), the Palestinians are too untrustworthy to allow in large numbers even into other Arab nations.

11:48 PM, May 31, 2010
Geodkyt said...

For some reason, the words de jure did not appear immediately following the words "100% de facto as well as"

11:51 PM, May 31, 2010
Anonymous said...

Re Israel: They're fighting out of sheer bloody-mindedness now. I'm tired of hearing about it.

Jim

12:07 AM, June 01, 2010
Anonymous said...

Litle-known fact: There is about 20 mles of common border with Egypt that could easily be used to bring in humanitarian aid to Gaza. Oh, that's right! Egypt closed it after Hamas seized control. Why? Something about the Egyptian gov't not wanting anymore terrorists have a base so close to them, sneaking across and doing nasty things to their people. How evil can a country be that would prevent such peaceful groups like Hamas and their supporters from freely doing what they like! Why, those Egyptians are just as bad as Israel! Even though they're Arab, Muslim,....

1:27 AM, June 01, 2010
Ed Foster said...

Geodkyt: Another interesting fact is that almost all west bank Palestinians are Arabs, but in Gaza, Arabs are a minority.

During the 1920's and 1930's, the Israelis imported tens of thousands of North Africans from Algeria and Morocco, who settled on the Gaza Strip.

A number of Arab Jews stayed behind after 1948, masquerading as Moslems. They have been Israel's primary source of information, and also have built strong bonds with the remaining Arabs in Gaza.

Before the last Israeli raids, their army made more than 10,000 warning telephone calls to Arab moderates, warning them to stay away from police stations or political outlets. They know who the reasonable people are, and where the whack-jobs hide.

Several decades ago, Syria ended up executing one of it's intelligence generals when it was discovered he was a Jew whose family were deep cover Israeli assets for several generations.

The west bank Arabs have had their face saving Intifada, and most of them are willing to work with the Israelis, albeit grudgingly.

But, compliments of the UN, Gaza produces the best educated welfare bums in human history, a fact made worse by the emigration of anyone with a real work ethic. UN educated Palestinians from Gaza run just about anything in the Arab world that actually functions, from power plants to computer networks.

If the UN had left in 1949, the Gazans would have had to cooperate with the Israelis and learn to coexist, simply to survive.

By now they would be executives in Israeli corporations, instead of sociopaths proudly watching their 4year old daughters on television, singing songs about becoming suicide bombers.

There are other places in the world as savage, but their average IQ is in the mid 60's. When Joe Blow is a legal moron, the prophets and great leaders have no problem getting them to commit obscenities.

But what we're looking at in Gaza is one of the best educated nations on earth, driven mad by their wounded pride, praying for the day they can destroy the nation of "shopkeepers and clerks" that has humbled their medieval machisimo repeatedly, for more than a half century.

That, and the enabling of it by the mindless drones of the United Nations.

8:10 AM, June 01, 2010
Geodkyt said...

During the 1920's and 1930's, the Israelis imported tens of thousands of North Africans. . .

You mean "Jews living under British colonial government", right?

{grin}

1:05 PM, June 01, 2010
Geodkyt said...

Well, the UN-sponsored (and funded) education system doesn't help "Palestinians" in scoring high on standardized tests.

When your world view is INTENTIONALLY warped away from realtity in several major fields (including all fields of history for the last 2500 years), biology, current events, etc., you simply cannot perform well on a test that is predicated on you having a common level of understanding.

And "Palestinian" schools make the most shill cries of "ZOMG! FUNDIES WANT TO TEACH OUR KIDS LIES!!!" from progressives complaining about people driving our pseudo-Druidic theology and failed Marxist historical lies out of school systems look likefrakkin' Ivy League prep schools.

1:12 PM, June 01, 2010
Kristophr said...

Jayson:

You realize that when you started calling a class of people "animals" and "animal fuckers", you caused all reasonable people to simply stop reading your spew?

Personally, I'm sympathetic to the Jewish settlers ( gee ... maybe people have a basic human right to buy a piece of land, build homes on it, and be left alone? ).

That kind of rabid-ity ain't helping you persuade anyone.

7:32 PM, June 01, 2010

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