I have been to a couple of drag races with top fuel dragsters. (Benefits of having redneck friends)
Hmm...there seems to be significant contextual variance in the meaning of the phrase "friends with benefits.";-)
Note to self:/. != CL (though they are equal in the limit)
Granted, at equal distances the shuttle will be far, far louder.
You mean I can get a starting line pass for the shuttle? Cool! (Or rather, hot, very hot!)
Since you brought up the two, how would you compare the experience of a shuttle launch to the launch of a top fuel dragster or funny car? I've never been to a shuttle launch (mostly because the trip from ~Ames to KSC was too painful given the r**2 falloff for those of us not working for NASA), and as a person with a lifelong love of fuel racing (no redneck friends, either, just a love of sensory overload and technological excess) I've always wondered.
I will make the pilgrimage to see the final launch, though. Not to compare the two experiences, just to honor what's been an amazing technological and human achievement.
Maybe I'm missing it but this analogy seems to weak to support your argument.
The point wasn't that the analogy was identical (unless one's home is in a high-pressure oil formation under miles of rock in the Gulf of Mexico), but that rather than thinking of the well as just a first-order infinitely thick layer of solid rock, it was better to think of the well as being a hole in the roof of the oil formation. (I suppose one could also use the analogy of a hole in a bucket, if one prefers to think of the direction of fluid flow and not the orientation relative to gravity.) Thus the leak isn't a thing to be covered up (in the physical as opposed to PR sense:-/ ), but something more fragile that needs to be patched.
Which then leads to your next question, about "brittle" rocks. The relevant geology of this part of the Gulf and this canyon in particular is salt domes and shales. Salt domes are formed as salt is extruded through breaks in "brittle" rock (e.g. the Merriam-Webster definition of diapir). The notion of what constitutes "brittle" is different at a geologic scale than at a human one, but the fairly standard reference to these structures is "brittle." Just do a search for the terms "brittle" and "caprock" - that should get you started. You might also read about blowouts in similar structures, such as the famous Spindletop.
The wikipedia article on the spill states BP rejected conventional explosive use and that no one has ever considered a nuclear option, because of treaty issues and environmental impact.
As you observed, the notion there's some meaningful concern about "environmental impact" is ludicrous.
The reason BP would reject explosive use (if it could even work) is it would destroy the well and seal this part of the field permanently - leaving all of that money forever trapped under the ocean, instead of in the bank accounts of BP where it rightfully belongs.
(I'd say a somewhat broader "national security"-political-monetary rationale is why the Obama administration and BP are clearly partners and not adversaries - their mutual goal is to preserve access to the oil.)
I think BP's actions have been quite easily predicted if one understands 1) they have no concern for anything other than money (BP's a corporation, that's what corporations do), and 2) oil is money. Thus the goal is to mitigate the expense of any environmental effects, not the effects themselves, and to preserve access to the money, i.e. the oil.
Having not seen such a fix makes me think they have no idea about how to fix it.
They do have an idea, and that's the relief wells. (Capping the well from the top isn't an option because the integrity of the well casing is compromised - cap the top and the oil will just squirt out further down the pipe and then leak out the sea floor somewhere.) The relief wells aren't done yet because 1) they're even harder to drill than the first well because they have to go sideways and 2) instead of hitting a huge mountain of oil they have to intersect a tiny sliver of well bore. And all that's happening under a mile of water and two miles of earth..
The idea they really don't have is what to do if the relief wells don't work. That's environmental doomsday. I suspect in that case they effectively give up on stopping the spill, drill as many new wells as possible as fast as possible to get more oil out this field (arguing that oil pumped out is oil that won't be spilled out - it's just a complete coincidence that these new wells will make BP tons of money!), and fall back to using the legal system to limit their financial damages.
I think the problem you're experiencing is BP's definition of "fix" is very different than yours or mine. To BP, "fixing" the well means making sure as much oil as possible can be extracted for sale. In that analysis, if 10 million barrels are pumped into the ocean but 40 million are eventually extracted, that's a far superior "fix" than making sure our environment is completely protected but at the cost of losing access to the oil.
How sad that a person could read a post about moving from a world of horrific collective sociopathy to one in which we care about and for each other, and their reaction would be to consider that hope a "Troll."
Putting these psychopaths in charge of the cleanup is like putting the same cast of characters who crashed the economy back in charge of the economy.
That's exactly right (although I would argue the sometimes subtle difference that they are sociopaths, not psychopaths, as I wrote earlier).
And there's a reason for that symmetry, too - all the old systems are tearing themselves apart in order to make way for what comes next. Part of that clearing (which is great if one's part of what comes next, but not all that happy if one's part of what's dying) is making undeniably clear the unsuitability of the old ways of being to direct the next stage of our existence.
Any truly transformative moment has only two outcomes: change or death. And by making things ever worse, the systems we have previously used to guide us are fulfilling their final responsibility to us - waking us up and letting us know that's the choice we face.
It's collectively the moment when an adolescent, who previously could depend on their parents to protect, guide and care for them, must leave innocence, dependence and childhood behind and fulfill their destiny as an adult.
The "villain" in any great story is actually the force of transformation and healing, the one who awakens the sleeping hero who can face and master those forces. BP, Wall Street, Bush-Obama, all our existing social structures - they're no different. They're faithfully serving their role for us.
It's now up to us to wake up, face ourselves, and fulfill our collective destiny.
Unfortunately, that's sort of like using a hand grenade to patch a leak in the roof.
While I agree BP will probably go to almost any lengths to preserve access to this field, the big problem with using explosives to attempt to cap this blowout is the roof of the chamber seems very brittle. Any explosion large enough to cap the well could fracture the roof of the chamber to the extent it would start leaking over a wide area of sea floor, which could then never be stopped, or a large section of the roof would collapse entirely, resulting in a catastrophic release of oil and gas.
So it's probably best if our British Clampett family doesn't try to use dynamite to stop that bubblin' crude in the swamp.
The larger Macondo field has potentially billions of barrels of oil. (There are arguments about whether it's merely tens of millions or as many as billions, the size of fields is always a closely-guarded corporate secret, and the geology of this area and how it's connected to other deepwater fields is not known.) That's perhaps the biggest reason why both BP and Obama are willing to sacrifice the environment to keep it open - BP for the enormous long-term profit, Obama because it would help cover U.S. energy needs during a joint U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran (which would close the Straits of Hormuz).
But while your comment seems like it might have been simply expressing frustration with the slow pace of BP's efforts to stop the fouling of our planet's waters, it's a very, very real possibility that this flow can never be stopped.
Again, we're considering somewhere between tens of millions and billions of barrels of oil being pumped into the world's oceans over a period of decades. So assuming the top of the chamber doesn't collapse (releasing all the oil at once, the worst of all outcomes), if the relief wells don't work we're looking at this going on for 3, 4, 5 - or as many as 30, 40, maybe even 50 - years.
I don't know to what deities all of us pray, but we ought to start praying.
Another factor that may hinder containment even more is the increasing potential for tropical storms in that area of the Gulf.
The biggest factor that will hinder containment and cleanup is that BP has no inherent motivation to either contain or clean up the oil, other than an economic one. All of the normal human responses, that it's a horrible disaster that will cause unimaginable human and environmental suffering for years if not decades, none of that matters to BP at all.
BP's interest isn't to "fix" the problem. BP's only interest is to make the problem go away.
If that's most cheaply done by hiding the problem by keeping people away from the ocean and beaches that's what they'll do. If that's most cheaply done by spinning the effects with PR so it's no longer seen as quite the disaster they'll do that. If it reaches the point where it's cheaper to declare bankruptcy, walk away from the whole thing, and (like with Exxon Valdez) use the legal system to deny the victims any care until the victims simply die then they'll do that.
Corporations have only one motivation and one thing to which they respond - money. They "care" about others only to the degree that the other might affect their own interests.
In other words, corporations are - by explicit design - sociopaths.
And so what we have in the Gulf is a situation where we have in charge of fixing the problem and caring for those injured by it an agent who has no interest whatsoever in either of those things. Their only interest was, is, and can only ever be what is good for BP.
(The U.S. Government works much the same way, which is why Dubya and Obama are themselves both sociopaths. Business and government in the U.S. aren't separate, but cooperating parts of a single, larger business/government/media entity. A larger discussion of that needs a separate thread, but the essential characteristic to recognize is action without concern for the feelings of the other party, action without empathy - i.e., sociopathy.)
So the biggest factor that will hinder containment and cleanup is the parties we have in charge have a completely different set of motivations, and resultant behavioral choices, than those of us who actually feel the pain their actions cause.
It's our false assumption that corporations (and governments) are anything other than sociopaths that leads to such cognitive dissonance when they repeatedly act in a sociopathic manner. It's not that they won't act with empathy - it's that they can't.
Ever expecting them to act empathetically, and leaving them in charge of the care for our society and our world, that's not their failure. It's ours.
One positive outcome of this horrible disaster, if we manage to live through it (and many people and possibly many species won't), is it will make undeniably clear the consequences of basing a society on values that are at their core sociopathic. The system self-destructs - by design! - which is what we're all witnessing now.
The only way out for those of us who survive will be to create social structures that have empathy intentionally and explicitly built into them, and for each of us to act moment by moment with an understanding of, and care for, each other.
I'm very curious to see whether people will notice the change in news bias if most of the major MSM sites go behind paywalls.
For decades the MSM, which functions essentially as the marketing department of the business/government/media oligarchy, has been western society's way of defining reality.
How might people's view of the world, and their own worlds, change as paywalls muffle that particular voice and allow others to be heard?
If this does lead to of any kind social change, it will be quite beautiful that it was their own unstoppable quest for more money that led the plutocracy over the cliff.
What a complete asshole who thinks he's so much better than everyone else.
Of course, the reason that behavior's reached such extreme levels is that it's compensation for his internal belief that he's not as good as everyone else.
While I find the asshole behavior very unpleasant, more than anything I just feel sympathy for him. That the poor bastard (and those driven like him) would have spent his entire life so insecure, trying each day to prove his value, and even with billions of dollars and millions of people telling him he's great it's still not enough.
Of course, it can never be enough, because the hole he's trying to fill with external things is a hole on the inside. The same is true of us all.
He's very likely near the end of his life. Say a prayer for him that before he dies he just can accept himself and feel loved.
At least this answers the question of whether Jack Valenti has internet access in his coffin.
"Hey Bert, what's goin' on down there at grave 44D? Looks like somethin' outta that movie 'Tremors'..."
1984's future resonance was clear and predictable
on
15 Vintage Tech Ads
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Apple's "1984" is included, and it has a strange and unanticipated resonance these days.
The "1984" commercial's resonance is neither strange nor unanticipated if one understands the nature of projection.
Knowing that, it was obvious even 25 years ago what was (unintentionally) being revealed.
And while it's startlingly clear here in the case of Apple, the larger reason I mention projection is so more people learn how it works and how to use it to understand the world. It's both incredibly useful and incredibly beautiful. And if we want to create a world where we can do more than look at the mess and say "how strange and unanticipated," it's essential.
Every day statements are made with just as much future significance as "1984."
Main Entry: 1 slaughter
Pronunciation: \sl-tr\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, of Scandinavian origin; akin to Old Norse sltra to slaughter; akin to Old English sleaht slaughter, slan to slay -- more at SLAY
Date: 14th century 1 : the act of killing; specifically : the butchering of livestock for market
Though I suppose your "I don't think that word means what you think it means" could still be technically correct. You could think it means anything at all, like "giraffe" or "fun." But regardless of what you think, it's clear you don't know - and most importantly, refuse to accept - what it means.
It's deplorable you find slaughtering innocents "an easy choice."
Slashdot Mirror
A hollow voice says "BÜTTPLÜG"
There's a reason Will Crowther changed the name of the game from "Colossal Cave Adventure" to just "Adventure."
(Sadly, an entire line of Infocom fetish followups was never to be.)
I have been to a couple of drag races with top fuel dragsters. (Benefits of having redneck friends)
Hmm...there seems to be significant contextual variance in the meaning of the phrase "friends with benefits." ;-)
/. != CL (though they are equal in the limit)
Note to self:
Granted, at equal distances the shuttle will be far, far louder.
You mean I can get a starting line pass for the shuttle? Cool! (Or rather, hot, very hot!)
Since you brought up the two, how would you compare the experience of a shuttle launch to the launch of a top fuel dragster or funny car? I've never been to a shuttle launch (mostly because the trip from ~Ames to KSC was too painful given the r**2 falloff for those of us not working for NASA), and as a person with a lifelong love of fuel racing (no redneck friends, either, just a love of sensory overload and technological excess) I've always wondered.
I will make the pilgrimage to see the final launch, though. Not to compare the two experiences, just to honor what's been an amazing technological and human achievement.
Obligatory: "You must be new here."
Maybe I'm missing it but this analogy seems to weak to support your argument.
The point wasn't that the analogy was identical (unless one's home is in a high-pressure oil formation under miles of rock in the Gulf of Mexico), but that rather than thinking of the well as just a first-order infinitely thick layer of solid rock, it was better to think of the well as being a hole in the roof of the oil formation. (I suppose one could also use the analogy of a hole in a bucket, if one prefers to think of the direction of fluid flow and not the orientation relative to gravity.) Thus the leak isn't a thing to be covered up (in the physical as opposed to PR sense :-/ ), but something more fragile that needs to be patched.
Which then leads to your next question, about "brittle" rocks. The relevant geology of this part of the Gulf and this canyon in particular is salt domes and shales. Salt domes are formed as salt is extruded through breaks in "brittle" rock (e.g. the Merriam-Webster definition of diapir). The notion of what constitutes "brittle" is different at a geologic scale than at a human one, but the fairly standard reference to these structures is "brittle." Just do a search for the terms "brittle" and "caprock" - that should get you started. You might also read about blowouts in similar structures, such as the famous Spindletop.
The wikipedia article on the spill states BP rejected conventional explosive use and that no one has ever considered a nuclear option, because of treaty issues and environmental impact.
As you observed, the notion there's some meaningful concern about "environmental impact" is ludicrous.
The reason BP would reject explosive use (if it could even work) is it would destroy the well and seal this part of the field permanently - leaving all of that money forever trapped under the ocean, instead of in the bank accounts of BP where it rightfully belongs.
(I'd say a somewhat broader "national security"-political-monetary rationale is why the Obama administration and BP are clearly partners and not adversaries - their mutual goal is to preserve access to the oil.)
I think BP's actions have been quite easily predicted if one understands 1) they have no concern for anything other than money (BP's a corporation, that's what corporations do), and 2) oil is money. Thus the goal is to mitigate the expense of any environmental effects, not the effects themselves, and to preserve access to the money, i.e. the oil.
Having not seen such a fix makes me think they have no idea about how to fix it.
They do have an idea, and that's the relief wells. (Capping the well from the top isn't an option because the integrity of the well casing is compromised - cap the top and the oil will just squirt out further down the pipe and then leak out the sea floor somewhere.) The relief wells aren't done yet because 1) they're even harder to drill than the first well because they have to go sideways and 2) instead of hitting a huge mountain of oil they have to intersect a tiny sliver of well bore. And all that's happening under a mile of water and two miles of earth..
The idea they really don't have is what to do if the relief wells don't work. That's environmental doomsday. I suspect in that case they effectively give up on stopping the spill, drill as many new wells as possible as fast as possible to get more oil out this field (arguing that oil pumped out is oil that won't be spilled out - it's just a complete coincidence that these new wells will make BP tons of money!), and fall back to using the legal system to limit their financial damages.
I think the problem you're experiencing is BP's definition of "fix" is very different than yours or mine. To BP, "fixing" the well means making sure as much oil as possible can be extracted for sale. In that analysis, if 10 million barrels are pumped into the ocean but 40 million are eventually extracted, that's a far superior "fix" than making sure our environment is completely protected but at the cost of losing access to the oil.
I most definitely would mod you up with one of these here mod points, but...well, you know the rules. ;-)
How sad that a person could read a post about moving from a world of horrific collective sociopathy to one in which we care about and for each other, and their reaction would be to consider that hope a "Troll."
Putting these psychopaths in charge of the cleanup is like putting the same cast of characters who crashed the economy back in charge of the economy.
That's exactly right (although I would argue the sometimes subtle difference that they are sociopaths, not psychopaths, as I wrote earlier).
And there's a reason for that symmetry, too - all the old systems are tearing themselves apart in order to make way for what comes next. Part of that clearing (which is great if one's part of what comes next, but not all that happy if one's part of what's dying) is making undeniably clear the unsuitability of the old ways of being to direct the next stage of our existence.
Any truly transformative moment has only two outcomes: change or death. And by making things ever worse, the systems we have previously used to guide us are fulfilling their final responsibility to us - waking us up and letting us know that's the choice we face.
It's collectively the moment when an adolescent, who previously could depend on their parents to protect, guide and care for them, must leave innocence, dependence and childhood behind and fulfill their destiny as an adult.
The "villain" in any great story is actually the force of transformation and healing, the one who awakens the sleeping hero who can face and master those forces. BP, Wall Street, Bush-Obama, all our existing social structures - they're no different. They're faithfully serving their role for us.
It's now up to us to wake up, face ourselves, and fulfill our collective destiny.
Just, fyi, one of the best solvents you can use to remove duck tape is gasoline...
You must work for BP. :-)
Don't forget about the methane hydrates too.
"Note to self" - Halliburton
Unfortunately, that's sort of like using a hand grenade to patch a leak in the roof.
While I agree BP will probably go to almost any lengths to preserve access to this field, the big problem with using explosives to attempt to cap this blowout is the roof of the chamber seems very brittle. Any explosion large enough to cap the well could fracture the roof of the chamber to the extent it would start leaking over a wide area of sea floor, which could then never be stopped, or a large section of the roof would collapse entirely, resulting in a catastrophic release of oil and gas.
So it's probably best if our British Clampett family doesn't try to use dynamite to stop that bubblin' crude in the swamp.
Possibly decades.
The larger Macondo field has potentially billions of barrels of oil. (There are arguments about whether it's merely tens of millions or as many as billions, the size of fields is always a closely-guarded corporate secret, and the geology of this area and how it's connected to other deepwater fields is not known.) That's perhaps the biggest reason why both BP and Obama are willing to sacrifice the environment to keep it open - BP for the enormous long-term profit, Obama because it would help cover U.S. energy needs during a joint U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran (which would close the Straits of Hormuz).
But while your comment seems like it might have been simply expressing frustration with the slow pace of BP's efforts to stop the fouling of our planet's waters, it's a very, very real possibility that this flow can never be stopped.
Again, we're considering somewhere between tens of millions and billions of barrels of oil being pumped into the world's oceans over a period of decades. So assuming the top of the chamber doesn't collapse (releasing all the oil at once, the worst of all outcomes), if the relief wells don't work we're looking at this going on for 3, 4, 5 - or as many as 30, 40, maybe even 50 - years.
I don't know to what deities all of us pray, but we ought to start praying.
Another factor that may hinder containment even more is the increasing potential for tropical storms in that area of the Gulf.
The biggest factor that will hinder containment and cleanup is that BP has no inherent motivation to either contain or clean up the oil, other than an economic one. All of the normal human responses, that it's a horrible disaster that will cause unimaginable human and environmental suffering for years if not decades, none of that matters to BP at all.
BP's interest isn't to "fix" the problem. BP's only interest is to make the problem go away.
If that's most cheaply done by hiding the problem by keeping people away from the ocean and beaches that's what they'll do. If that's most cheaply done by spinning the effects with PR so it's no longer seen as quite the disaster they'll do that. If it reaches the point where it's cheaper to declare bankruptcy, walk away from the whole thing, and (like with Exxon Valdez) use the legal system to deny the victims any care until the victims simply die then they'll do that.
Corporations have only one motivation and one thing to which they respond - money. They "care" about others only to the degree that the other might affect their own interests.
In other words, corporations are - by explicit design - sociopaths.
And so what we have in the Gulf is a situation where we have in charge of fixing the problem and caring for those injured by it an agent who has no interest whatsoever in either of those things. Their only interest was, is, and can only ever be what is good for BP.
(The U.S. Government works much the same way, which is why Dubya and Obama are themselves both sociopaths. Business and government in the U.S. aren't separate, but cooperating parts of a single, larger business/government/media entity. A larger discussion of that needs a separate thread, but the essential characteristic to recognize is action without concern for the feelings of the other party, action without empathy - i.e., sociopathy.)
So the biggest factor that will hinder containment and cleanup is the parties we have in charge have a completely different set of motivations, and resultant behavioral choices, than those of us who actually feel the pain their actions cause.
It's our false assumption that corporations (and governments) are anything other than sociopaths that leads to such cognitive dissonance when they repeatedly act in a sociopathic manner. It's not that they won't act with empathy - it's that they can't.
Ever expecting them to act empathetically, and leaving them in charge of the care for our society and our world, that's not their failure. It's ours.
One positive outcome of this horrible disaster, if we manage to live through it (and many people and possibly many species won't), is it will make undeniably clear the consequences of basing a society on values that are at their core sociopathic. The system self-destructs - by design! - which is what we're all witnessing now.
The only way out for those of us who survive will be to create social structures that have empathy intentionally and explicitly built into them, and for each of us to act moment by moment with an understanding of, and care for, each other.
...when it comes to sex, they think of children.
"Don't jizz on me"?
Sounds like the Gadsden Flag of the sexual revolution.
"Wank Free Or Die"
FTFA: "One man's quest to liberal all government information"
:-/
Whatever "to liberal" means, of one thing we can be sure: it has no meaningful real-world effects.
When did 'we' decide this?
You don't have clearance to know that.
Another one rides the bus.
I'm very curious to see whether people will notice the change in news bias if most of the major MSM sites go behind paywalls.
For decades the MSM, which functions essentially as the marketing department of the business/government/media oligarchy, has been western society's way of defining reality.
How might people's view of the world, and their own worlds, change as paywalls muffle that particular voice and allow others to be heard?
If this does lead to of any kind social change, it will be quite beautiful that it was their own unstoppable quest for more money that led the plutocracy over the cliff.
This is my current pet-peeves : flat forum and phpBB are killing the art of internet discussion.
Oh, how painfully, painfully true.
I feel like I've departed the internet age of letters and found myself in the age of tweets.
Those were good times. Thanks guys.
What a complete asshole who thinks he's so much better than everyone else.
Of course, the reason that behavior's reached such extreme levels is that it's compensation for his internal belief that he's not as good as everyone else.
While I find the asshole behavior very unpleasant, more than anything I just feel sympathy for him. That the poor bastard (and those driven like him) would have spent his entire life so insecure, trying each day to prove his value, and even with billions of dollars and millions of people telling him he's great it's still not enough.
Of course, it can never be enough, because the hole he's trying to fill with external things is a hole on the inside. The same is true of us all.
He's very likely near the end of his life. Say a prayer for him that before he dies he just can accept himself and feel loved.
"bad masturbation jokes"
The jokes just write themselves.
It appears the MPAA are commenters here at /. !
At least this answers the question of whether Jack Valenti has internet access in his coffin.
"Hey Bert, what's goin' on down there at grave 44D? Looks like somethin' outta that movie 'Tremors'..."
Apple's "1984" is included, and it has a strange and unanticipated resonance these days.
The "1984" commercial's resonance is neither strange nor unanticipated if one understands the nature of projection .
;-)
Knowing that, it was obvious even 25 years ago what was (unintentionally) being revealed.
And while it's startlingly clear here in the case of Apple, the larger reason I mention projection is so more people learn how it works and how to use it to understand the world. It's both incredibly useful and incredibly beautiful. And if we want to create a world where we can do more than look at the mess and say "how strange and unanticipated," it's essential.
Every day statements are made with just as much future significance as "1984."
We might wanna learn to recognize them.
Main Entry: 1 slaughter
Pronunciation: \sl-tr\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, of Scandinavian origin; akin to Old Norse sltra to slaughter; akin to Old English sleaht slaughter, slan to slay -- more at SLAY Date: 14th century
1 : the act of killing; specifically : the butchering of livestock for market
Though I suppose your "I don't think that word means what you think it means" could still be technically correct. You could think it means anything at all, like "giraffe" or "fun." But regardless of what you think, it's clear you don't know - and most importantly, refuse to accept - what it means.
It's deplorable you find slaughtering innocents "an easy choice."