NPR | Hungry For Oil: Feeding America’s Expensive Habit

A nice quick look at America’s current hydrocarbon extraction technologies.

But this:

New technology has changed oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico too. As seen in the wake of BP’s blown-out well in the Gulf, companies have sophisticated technology like remote-controlled submarines. That means they can explore for oil in places humans can’t even go. Sometimes the projects resemble a space mission.

I seriously thought the next line was going to be “Can you say hi to Gaston The Gator, kids?” Oh dear. Where do I start? Remote-controlled submarines have been around for decades. Inside the crust of the earth, where humans could never go, is normally where hydrocarbons come from. Remote sensing, seismic … oh, never mind. Yes, operating in deeper water depths is cool. Now move along.

While I developed and utilized some hella amazing and new Sophisticated Technology as an Energy worker, the way NPR and the rest of the media utters the phrase, you’d think it is a special, infallible weapon bestowed on us mere mortals by a fearsome sky god. Oh, drill rig of omens, give me petroleum beyond petroleum.

Technology is not magic, it’s a set of tools and processes developed by humans to address our problems. Thus, anthropomorphizing it, imbuing it with super-human powers and, worst of all, not questioning its effectiveness is not exactly productive on the part of the news media. Why? Because even the most Sophisticated Technology on the planet is only as good as its human operator. Again, the potency of any technology ultimately comes down to the humans in control of it, all the way from proper design and maintenance to not cutting corners and taking the proper, prescribed safety precautions during a malfunction. If the humans in charge are lazy, incommunicative, penny-pinchers with limited imaginations, chances are the technology will not do what it was made to do and maybe even … wait for it … fail. So quit ooohing and aahing at a company’s New-Fangled Technology and investigate and report the human culture behind its use.

Speaking of chance, there’s something amiss about the usage of “low-probability, high-cost event” to describe this oil spill. One problem with such an event is that it doesn’t occur in isolation and the effects of many events of varying magnitudes are cumulative in a finite-resource environment. Another issue I have with it is, all things remaining equal, one doesn’t figure out the probability of recurrence until another such event occurs. Will it? Won’t it? Who knows? If this can’t be answered with a certain degree of confidence, calling it a low-probability event is probably a waste of time. I offer to our esteemed media that the language shift to that of true prevention and effective, scale-sensitive disaster management, away from probabilities of recurrence and other buzz-concepts dropped by corporate PR departments.

And then this: “Focus on the low-probability side of that equation … The fact that you can count on one hand the kind of blowouts that have occurred in the face of these tens of thousands of wells is a pretty remarkable testimony to the safety and the risk management that the companies provide.” Gee, think of all the blowouts that could have happened! We’re doing you a favor. Even if it’s our job!

It appears a possible BP pipeline leak is being investigated in the Midwest. Not low-probability and not high-cost when compared with the Gulf. But not Sophisticated either, I fear. We have a long way to go.

I’ve written this post several times now and deleted it. The manufactured Ground Zero Mosque controversy is not worth talking about, in so many ways. Like Manish, I figure that ultimately “nobody is repealing the 14th Amendment, Muslim-bashing will simmer down after midterms and so on. This is just politics as bread and circuses. Anything to turn the crazybase out and avoid talking tax cuts for the rich.”

Law-abiding Muslims and browns in turbans are vilified in the process, justice is shattered once again, Harry Reid still hasn’t found a spine, and the dissonance hurts ears and brains alike, but Fear & Loathing is an ancient Washington game. And fools rush in … Fool me once, shame on, shame on you. Fool me … you get the picture.

A new episode of Rescue Me airs tonight. For those of you don’t watch the show, here’s a quick rundown: Denis Leary plays a New York City firefighter whose alcohol-drenched and dysfunctional family life is thrown into a serious tailspin in the years following 9/11. There’s life and then there’s trauma. You get over both, if you’re lucky. Two weeks ago, the show introduced a firefighter from another house; Pat Mahoney is dying of cancer he came down with after working in the rubble of the World Trade Center in the months following the attack. The character Mahoney is symbolic of many firefighters, police officers and relief workers who have developed blood cell cancer from inhaling benzene and other toxic chemicals during the search and cleanup.

Ground Zero is hallowed ground. I know, I was there. In 2007, long after the last piece of rubble was taken away, I stood at the corner of Washington and Liberty Streets in Manhattan’s financial district and stared into the crater, past the hole. I thought my heart could shatter no further after Kuwait, 9/11/2001 and The Storm, and yet whatever remained was shredded.

Can you look at a picture or hear or watch footage from that day without fighting the urge to lose it and run screaming into the wilderness? Not I.

But it shouldn’t turn us into animals, into barbarians. Barbarians who tout our nation’s freedom of religion on one hand and, on the other, deny it to a group of Americans who want to build a religious and community center in a former Burlington Coat Factory building three blocks away. And the worst, most hideous act of all: referring to Ground Zero as hallowed ground and then turning around to deny vital monetary aid to 9/11 first responders under the pretext that it “creates a massive new entitlement program, exposes taxpayers to increased litigation, and is ‘paid for’ with tax increases and potential job losses.”

If anyone should have their citizenships revoked, it should be these asshole politicians we put in power, who would rather play with the lives of real American heroes and their families, only prolonging the greatest mass murder in American history for their own gain and not helping heal it. Furthermore, instead of loudly bringing up these inconsistencies and injustices, We The People more often tuck our tails and watch the moral-relativist ball tossed back and forth between two parties who purport to work for America.

Would you like to keep Ground Zero truly Hallowed instead of using just the word over and over again until it loses its meaning? Want to put that America F**k Yeah sentiment to good use beyond linking to a favored opinion on your Facebook wall? Here’s what you do:

– Donate money at any time to the Fire Fighter Cancer Foundation, Inc., P.O. Box 2830, Wilmington, DE  19805

– Team up with your local fire station for the Save Our 9/11 Survivors program, to “help raise funds to provide 500 air purification units that will help ailing responders breathe clean air, avoid secondary infections, and suffer less. Please organize fund raising activities to help your brother & sister responders and send donations by 9-11-2011 (10th anniversary).”

– Stop watching the greedy hate fomented in cable news and reading that which raises anger and self-righteousness as well as your inactivity. Your patriotic bravado followed by no positive action does nothing for the people who are living and dying the real fallout of 9/11.

– Write your congresspeople and political action committees and ask them what the hell they are doing anyway. Soaking in their pre-packaged tea or beer or whatever it is today is what they want you to do. Get away from it. Break truly free.

– And stop fearing. Fear is the mind killer. Think. Be decent. Be American. It’s about time.

nola.com:

Herman Leonard, a photographer who created some of the most famous images of such jazz greats as Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and others, died Saturday at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. Mr. Leonard, 87, lived in New Orleans until Hurricane Katrina struck and destroyed much of his collection.

He was born and raised in Allentown, Pa [and] attended Ohio University in Athens, which offered a degree in photography.

Fundraising in 2005

George Takei to Prop 8 Supporters: “Mind Your Own Marriage!”