Oh good, now we won’t have to drive all the way down to the coast to see it.

nola.com gallery: Oil has reached Lake Pontchartrain “Strong southeast winds [have] pushed [it] into Lake Pontchartrain Monday July 5, 2010.”

Update: 1,020 pounds of oil waste removed from Rigolets and lake

The Oil Drum | BP’s Deepwater Oil Spill – Not Everything is Clearly Successful

And at that drilling speed, they should be perhaps [be] there by now, in fact this number would suggest that they might have reached it. There then still remains the delay while they run that casing, which could be some significant additional time, depending on conditions.

… The voyage of the A Whale to sweep up large quantities of oil has so far been inconclusive and, despite the large fleet of vessels employed for the process, only an average of 900 barrels a day is reported as having been skimmed and recovered, initially by the two companies BP relied on.

nola.com | Media, boaters could face criminal penalties by entering oil cleanup ‘safety zone’

“The safety zone has been put in place to protect members of the response effort, the installation and maintenance of oil containment boom, the operation of response equipment and protection of the environment by limiting access to and through deployed protective boom,” the news release said.

… In order to get within the 65-foot limit, media must call the Coast Guard captain of the Port of New Orleans, Edwin Stanton, to get permission.

We’re free! But, freedom isn’t! Oh well, neither are gasoline and fireworks. Load ’em up!

Some reading as you go into this 234th birthday of America.

Scientists Discover Thomas Jefferson Wrote “Subjects” Before Replacing Word with “Citizens” when Drafting Declaration

Preservation scientists at the Library of Congress have discovered that Thomas Jefferson, even in the act of declaring independence from Britain, had trouble breaking free from monarchial rule.

In an early draft of the Declaration of Independence, the famous founder wrote the word “subjects,” when he referred to the American public. He then erased that word and replaced it with “citizens,” a term he used frequently throughout the final draft.

Fast Company | Video Suggests BP Literally Covering Up Oil Damage on Louisiana Beaches

There’s no question that BP has lied extensively over the past few months about the growing Gulf oil disaster. The company has bullied journalists, fudged numbers, and even deployed fake journalists to the Gulf to write about how everything is fine. Now BP may be literally trying to cover up oiled beaches by dumping sand on top of them.

WWTJD?

Julie Starr of Evolving Newsroom makes a compelling case for consumers going to the news and actively filtering it instead of waiting for repetitive and useless bits of it to wash over us. One of Starr’s suggestions is a challenge for journalists: Fix How the news gets out before What goes in it. I ask: Why not both?

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard someone say or said myself in a fit of pique that ˜the news is rubbish“, ˜we need more investigative journalism“, ˜we need better analysis“, ˜who cares about that celebrity nonsense“ or ˜if I see one more crime story under the heading of National News I’m going to spit.“

… There“s an uncomfortable truth in here, of course, in that we, the audience, can be hopelessly lazy about ˜staying informed“ and the best filtering tools in the world won’t help us if we don’t take the time to set them up.

The battle to get us to pay for news is as much a battle to get us to want to read much of it in the first place.  Same goes for a more informed citizenry.

… Maybe, then, we future-of-news types should focus on how to better get the ˜news we approve of“ out to people in a format, time and place that makes them interested. Maybe we should focus on how to get that daily 10 per cent working better for people now before we throw buckets of money at funding ˜better journalism“ that may only get lost in the mix.

This is a conundrum I’ve often encountered when fine-tuning my feed-reader: How do I know what to read if I don’t know it exists?