Tortoise versus Hare: the definitive race.

Posted at 09:31 PM | Comments (1)

BP proudly announced today that it was siphoning off 5,000 barrels a day of oil. 5,000 barrels being the estimated rate of flow that BP has steadfastly refused to alter for weeks. Well, that should mean that we're getting ALL the oil now, right?

But wouldn't you know it: Oil is still gushing into the Gulf, forcing BP to admit that it's initial estimates were wrong.

Lies? Ignorance? Both? You be the judge.

Posted at 03:16 PM | Comments (0)

Since I have no good news to deliver, certainly everyone's stopped paying attention by now. I haven't gotten any comments from anyone on the matter. Nevertheless, I'll stay vigilant and attempt to educate.

Oil in the Loop Current: Some sources are beginning to confirm part one of the disaster scenario. Meteorologists at the Weather Network posted some recent pictures from NASA's MODIS satellite, which seem to confirm that the oil slick is entering the loop current. This says nothing about the ecologically devastating oil plumes that are below the surface, and extremely difficult to track.

I Drink Your Milkshake: Well hoo-rah, BP is siphoning off 2,000 barrels of oil a day from the leak. So now BP can pat themselves on the back and claim that they're getting "40%" of the oil before it comes out. Which would be a fairly piss-poor effort even if the well was only spilling 5,000 barrels per day. But since many scientists suspect that it's much more, this effort is more akin to putting a band-aid on a shotgun would.

The problem becomes apparent: BP refuses to revise it's estimates of "5,000 barrels per day". Meanwhile, it pumps huge amounts of toxic chemical dispersant to keep the oil from floating on the surface, where we can easily see it. Instead, it hangs underwater, unmeasured, except through the terrible harm it causes to the very foundations of sea life.

We may never know how much oil was/is/will be spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, but the impact will be recognizable for decades to come.

Posted at 07:09 PM | Comments (0)

NO! BAD PRINTER! NO TONER FOR YOU!

via Geekologie

Posted at 10:04 PM

More news on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill today. I'll try to break things down succinctly as best I can (ie: not succinctly at all).

The Invisible Disaster: The New York Times posted an article today that confirms what we suspected: giant plumes of oil under the surface. Indeed, the floating oil slick is quite literally just the surface of a much bigger problem. The column of oil depletes oxygen from the water, killing sealife.

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics: An article on the BBC News website made me scowl. Admittedly, it's a week old, but it includes an infographic that claims that the Deepwater Horizon spill isn't that bad compared with other spills. This is crazy, because it relies on the wildly conservative estimate of "5,000 barrels a day" as quoted by BP officials. BP has refused to revise this number, even though a growing chorus of scientists say the number is at least 20,000 barrels a day and could be as high as 100,000. How do scientists get these numbers? It's because ever since we've had video of the leaking well, scientists have been able to use very well-established methodology relating to fluid dynamics to calculate the rate of flow. So either BP is lying/incompetent, or a lot of resident university scientists are. It think the former is more likely.

This place has a substantial dollar value attached to it: said Carter J. Burke in Aliens, to which Ripey replied, "They can bill me!" First it was the containment dome, now the so-called top-hat. Both of these methods will siphon off most of the oil to the surface where it can be collected and refined (and then sold). But the most likely solution will be to plug the well permanently (possibly with a junk shot, which was suggested very early on and still hasn't been attempted). You can bet that BP will first try everything they can to continue collecting the oil and preserve the investment they made drilling that well. Meanwhile, the environment suffers. (To extend my analogy, I sincerely hope that the only way to be sure does not turn out to be nuking the site from orbit, which could make things much worse.)

Making Comparisons: If Ixtoc I is indeed the worst accidental spill ever, and the quintessential comparison for the current Gulf Oil Spill, we have much to be concerned about. Like the current spill, crews were unable to seal or cap the blowout preventer. The only way to cap the damaged well was to reduce the flow pressure by drilling several relief wells, a process which takes months. Sure it was 30 years ago, and technology has improved, but the Ixtoc crews only had to work 49 meters below the surface, not 1.6 kilometres (they didn't call it "Deepwater" for nothing, folks). Ixtoc I leaked at roughly 30,000 barrels per day. Disregarding BP's incredibly deflated statistics, 30,000 would be at the low end of scientific estimates. If Deepwater Horizon is indeed leaking 50,000 or more barrels a day, and can only be capped once relief wells are drilled, it's well on its way to being the worst accidental oil spill in history.

Posted at 08:39 PM

Shortly after the beginning of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, boingboing quoted someone who said that the event was America's Chernobyl. Chernobyl was an event that, for practical purposes, permanently contaminated huge amounts of land, rendering it either completely uninhabitable or unsafe. Agriculture in parts of Europe as far away as Britain and France is continually monitored for radiation levels. The event was cataclysmically far-reaching and helped to hasten the demise of the Soviet Union, then one of the world's only two superpowers. As such, many scoffed at the comparison, including me.

I also scoffed because I feel nuclear power is generally safe when handled properly. The analysis of Chernobyl reads like a comedy of errors: no containment structure; a positive void coefficient; poorly trained staff; and a pseudo-scientific experiment that seemed like an open invitation for armageddon. Most of the world's nuclear power stations are run with far more respect for the power and poisons they yield. That being said, at some point people must ask themselves if the risks outweigh the gains.

Now, a full three weeks after the initial incident, the oil is still flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. Initial estimates were 5,000 barrels per day, then 10,000, then 25,000. Some scientists estimate that the number is even higher. Chemical dispersants are being used to break up the oil so that it doesn't reach the surface and create a slick. Nevertheless, that oil, and the toxic dispersants, remain in the Gulf underwater, where it can cause just as much if not more environmental harm than the much less media-friendly oil slick on the surface. The slick itself is easily visible from space and is larger than the U.S. state of Maryland.

But this isn't just an "Oh no, what a bad thing we humans did" scenario like the Exxon Valdez disaster. A growing number of scientists are becoming VERY WORRIED about the state of affairs.

You see, as the oil blasts out into the ocean unrestricted, it carries bits of sand with it. That high-pressure oil and sand mix acts like a sandblaster to slowly wear away what remains of the well's blowout cap. Already, it has come to light that the U.S. government is concerned that the cap could eventually be blown away entirely, causing the well to become an uncontrollable, deep-sea gusher.

If this happens, scientists say, the Gulf of Mexico's Loop Current could spray oil all throughout the Atlantic Ocean, and further currents would carry some of it everywhere else.

That would almost certainly cause a mass extinction event the scale of which humans have never seen, and would radically decrease the liveability of our planet for us resource-intensive humans. This would make the environmental mess of Chernobyl look like a stain on the carpet when your house is burning down.

Am I telling you this because I'm a fear monger? Because I like brandishing a sign that says "The End is Near"? No, there's still plenty of time to stop this from becoming a global environmental catastrophe. But BP and the US government need to stop dicking around and come up with a plan to stop the flow of oil sooner rather than later. Countries around the world need to start demanding a fix before the situation threatens us all.

I will have more to say on this matter, because the media seems to think that this has become a "stale story" or "just another oil spill". It's much bigger than that, and only by putting pressure on those responsible can we make sure it does not reach its terrifying paramount.

UPDATE 05/14: Discover magazine cites some sources that say the rate of flow is in fact much higher that originally estimated. The fact that BP has admitted that the reservoir probably contains at least 10 million barrels (about 1.6 billion litres) of oil, combined with the fact that experts admit that we have no idea what it will take to stop this gusher makes for very sobering considerations indeed.

UPDATE 05/15: The Wikipedia article on the Ixtoc I oil spill make for interesting reading. Apparently in 30 years we've learned absolutely nothing. It took them nine months to seal their wellhead.

Posted at 10:31 PM | Comments (0)

Protesters were at it again at Main and Hastings today. Apparently, the protest is not related to Marc Emery, but the closure of a health clinic in the downtown East side.

I today feel that the closure of said clinic was an excellent idea, and support it ho-heartedly.

Posted at 05:48 PM | Comments (0)

Thank you, supporters of Mark Emery, for blocking Main and Hastings during rush hour and forcing thousands of us commuters to spend an hour or more making stressful and complicated detours around you. Your actions have definitely increased both my awareness of the issue and my opinions regarding it. From now on, I will vehemently support Emery's extradition to the U.S.

If this reaction is the opposite of what you intended, perhaps you should re-examine your methods.

P.S. - To Vancouver's professional protesters: If every issue is a protest issue, protest will never underline your opposition. By shouting all of your opinions, eventually people just stop wanting to talk to you.

Posted at 10:34 PM | Comments (0)

For those of you who haven't lost all faith in democracy yet...

The latest word from Canadian Copyright watchdog Michael Geist is that our Conservative government is completely ignoring the feedback it received from last year's Canadian Copyright Consultation, which showed that the majority of an overwhelming number of Canadians opposed draconian, U.S.-DMCA-style copyright legislation. After discussion with Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Tony Clement, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has decided to simply resurrect the majority of Bill C-61 and rush it through parliament within the next six weeks.

Personally, I am shocked and disgusted. It would seem that our government staged this "consultation" for good media-PR and is now choosing to completely ignore the voices of Canadians. That an elected official could be so purposefully un-democratic shakes my faith in democracy.

Obviously, the Prime Minister and his Conservatives see this not as a serious question about the evolution of civil liberties in the information age, but rather the pet issue of a small and vocal minority. The government figures that if they just keep assaulting the people with their zombified legislation, eventually the people will roll over and give up.

That isn't democracy.

Bill C-61 contained strong and broad anti-circumvention measures which, if passed into law, would criminalize a number of common activities, including, but not limited to:

- Ripping a legally-purchased DVD to play on your iPod/iPhone: All DVDs and Blu-Ray discs contain encryption. Ripping a DVD/BD is not like ripping a CD. If you break encryption, under C-61, you are breaking the law.

- Unlocking any carrier-locked cell-phone or jailbreaking an iPhone/iPod: These devices have been deliberately limited by their manufacturers and/or cell-phone providers in order to force you to use them in a specific way. Scores of small businesses who unlock cell-phones for a living would become criminals. If you want to use a phone on a network that doesn't sell that phone, you're out of luck.

- Transcoding DRM-protected content to use on a different media-player: Want to use that DRM-protected iTunes file you bought on a non-Apple device? Too bad: to do that, you'd have to break the encryption, which is illegal. You paid for it, but somebody else gets to decide how you use it.

- Breaking DRM when a company shuts down: Apple shows no sign of going anywhere. But in the past 10 years there have been multiple cases of DRM-protected content providers (Wal-Mart and Major League Baseball, to name a couple) who decided one day to simply shut-down their DRM-authentication servers, leaving all of those who had purchased content unable to play it. The consumers' only recourse was to break the encryption and transcode to a different format, which would be illegal under C-61.

It's not just the action that is illegal. It becomes illegal to create the tools that do these things. It's going to become harder for you to find a copy of Handbrake or whatever other tool you use for ripping DVDs. Companies get to dictate how you use your content, and consumers get the shaft.

There's not much more I can do but the usual: advise you to contact your local MP, and the Prime Minister; and watch this space for further updates. Go back and read my posts on the original C-61 and my response to the bogus copyright consultation to immunize yourself with knowledge.

My fellow Canadians, over the years, my appetite for arguing left-versus-right politics has dwindled. But in it's place has grown a virulent passion for the protection of civil liberties and functional democracy in our country. This latest move by the Conservatives threatens both. We may not prevail, but I for one intend to go down fighting for my rights.

Posted at 10:04 AM | Comments (1)

via señorgif

UPDATED: Because animated GIFs suck.

Posted at 07:43 PM | Comments (0)