I’m exhausted by BP’s rhetoric of petroleum engineering garnished with failure:
“blow out preventer”, “top hat”, “containment dome”, “top kill”, “junk shot”, “relief well”. All nothing but argot for shit that has yet to help as they “proceed to the next option…”

Collectively, neither the federal government nor the three commercial interests involved in this massive CF have done a good job of explaining the the “normal” process of deepwater drilling or the resulting problems in this case.

And they are now unlikely to. As lawyers and congresscritters circle and drool, all we get from BP, Transocean and Halliburton (and to a lesser extent, MMS bureaucrats) pointing at each other as they try to protect their bottom lines.

And while the live video feed of the leak that Congress delivered is terrifying: there is no scaling, and precious little perspective provided to help us understand exactly what we are looking at.

Which leads to comments like I heard on CSPAN yesterday:
“Can’t they just drop a giant boulder on it?”

At first I thought it was a stupid question. And then I looked at the video feed…and got it.
http://globalwarming.house.gov/spillcam
Besides, given BP’s track record: they could be showing us anything.

I’m lucky: I got to enjoy the gulf before it turned into a petrol wasteland. Right now, I’m pessimistic that my kid will get to do the same.

God Bless our neighbors along the gulf coast.

No matter how much you might be enjoying some extra time off, and some extra shopping opportunities as the U.S. heads into its “unofficial beginning of summer”…

Take a minute to pause and consider the tremendous debt we owe to those who gave everything in the service of their citizens.

I used to regularly travel past a roadside monument to the war dead of one southwestern Pennsylvania town, Brier Hill.

The primitive statuary is compelling. (each figure is about 5 feet tall). During winter, the site is so forlorn, it made the deaths the statues honor seem so much the sadder:

War dead memorial in Brier Hill, PA (winter)

Brier Hill has a different look in summer (and after somebody gave the monument some TLC):

War dead memorial in Brier Hill PA (summer)

Full resolution versions of these pictures:
http://www.punditry.org/rmas/brier-hill-pa-winter.jpg
http://www.punditry.org/rmas/brier-hill-pa-summer.jpg

Finally:
You can move the venue from Belgium to whatever other battlefield you like, and change the generation from WWII to that of any other generation…but the utter sadness of death from war still applies, and is captured elegantly below by one who presumably saw his own fate. God bless them all. Gone far too soon, and left in our hearts, forever young.

Now you can fire up the grill for Memorial Day.
—–
In Flanders Fields

by Lt. Col. John McCrae, M.D. (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.