NASA has given us this amazing shot of the oil spill about 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana. To get an idea of the size of the spill, New Orleans is labeled on the left.
Of course, nowadays, drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico is perfectly safe, since any spill could be contained before say, 42,000 gallons of oil a day escaped into the formerly clean waters. And robots can be used to activate the blow-out preventer valves located 5,000 feet under water, except of course, when weather conditions hamper such efforts and days later, the wells are still pumping. The thing is, relief wells can also be drilled that isolate or “kill” the leaking well. And since it only takes months to construct one, we can expect good news in this case by oh, maybe sometime this fall. The bottom line is that, thanks to new technology, drilling for oil and gas off the shores of wildlife refuges and tourist meccas is perfectly safe, and at least 11 people will not go missing and be feared dead.
Update: And the Coast Guard would not have to consider burning the crude oil because it’s reached 42 miles wide by 80 miles long and is threatening land, and the people who live along the northern Florida Gulf coast wouldn’t report waking up to a strong, acrid chemical smell, and we could never have what is now being called the worst oil spill in the history of the country.
Not everyone is thrilled by Florida Gov. Charlie Crist’s announcement that he will continue his run for the U.S. Senate as No Party Affiliation (NPA) rather than Republican. In his news conference announcing the decision, he assured partisans he would keep his personal voter registration within the GOP fold. This tiny gesture doesn’t seem to be enough to appease many of his 15,376 Facebook friends, some of whom were taking the news poorly judging by comments (unedited) they left on the governor’s wall.
