Just how big is BP's oil slick?

Here's how it sizes up compared to the city of Chattanooga (and its environs):

You can move it around to other global points (here it is around Hawaii, and here's the slick centered on BP's London headquarters) at In Perspective: Visualizing the BP Oil Disaster.

UPDATE: How sad is the fact that it's growing and can't be stopped?

Discouraged

I want to return to the blissful ignorance I enjoyed while I was frolicking in Europe earlier this month -- on my feet and on the go all day long, enjoying great art, breathtaking landscapes and inspired architecture. And in the evening, kicking back with some refreshing local beers, and some lovely food and wine. No newspapers, no TV, no internet. Forgetting for a while that this world is run by greedy, idiotic bastards who are dragging all of us down with them into their pitiful, toxic stew of incompetence.

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I'm starting to think the only way to fight back is to opt out. How can I sit here and insist that there should be no more drilling when I just filled my car up with gas a few days ago? How can I bitch and moan about the toxic sludge spilled at Harriman, TN -- or the coal mined by blasting off the tops of mountains -- when I suck power off of TVA's grid? If I don't stop giving them my money, what incentive do they have to change? Clearly, they need more motivation than they've gotten over the past thirty years.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I wish I knew how to stop it.

Sunday Links

• A team of paleontologists have discovered a huge Stone Age cemetery in the Sahara desert. Here is a woman and two children who were found holding hands, arms outstretched toward each other, with evidence to suggest they were laid to rest on a bed of flowers (follow the link for more photos and a video about the find from National Geographic).

• American team members to watch now that the Olympic games have moved on from swimming to track & field.

• What if Karl Rove were working for the Obama campaign?

• This is just the kind of thing that long ago made me resolve to never do business with AT&T again. I found myself on more than one occasion trying to get my money back from AT&T after they over-charged me for lame or inept reasons. For them, screwing customers while hoping they're not paying attention is the #1 item in their business practices manual. And in this case, someone turned their frustration into to a bit of silliness.

• Everyone's favorite East Tennessee politician is back once again! This time, she's talking about Jesse Helms, who she says is a great American. (Of course, as much as I loves me some Griffiny Juneness, I gotta wonder what sort of crack heads are running the KNS these days!)

• Sunday roundup of Tennessee liberal bloggers!

• The McCain behind the myths.

Go Away, Bush

Isn't it time for an 8-week vacation or something? I don't think we can take any more of your presidentin'.

• Last night, AAA's national gas price average reached $4 a gallon for the first time in history.
• Last month, unemployment saw its biggest increase since 1986 (that jump was under Reagan).
• On Friday, the Dow was down 400 and oil prices had the largest single day jump ever -- to nearly $140 a barrel. Volatility is expected to continue indefinitely (or at least through January 20th, anyway)
• We have no idea when or where the real estate market might hit bottom (thanks for that go, in part, to John "I love lobbyists!" McCain's campaign co-chair).

At this point, I think the best you can do with your last months in office, George, is to go back to being a clown.

More: from R. Neal, Newscoma (also here!), Louise, and Jon Perr.

Buh-bye, Bolthouse!

This was a beverage I used to buy quite often. Who would have thought that such a seemingly freespirited product could have come from people who work against equal rights and general kindness/compassion? Thank goodness for Pam and wikipedia. More here.

Of oil and tax holidays

Everywhere I've gone for the past few days, everyone has been talking about how Hillary (and McCain, for that matter) wants to have a gas tax holiday. No one I've met who has an opinion about it thinks her idea is a good one. I'd like to suggest an alternative.

Hillary likes to frame her position from a people-vs.-the-big-bad-oil-companies perspective, which is a pretty smart approach to the situation. They are big and they are bad. Some of them are downright disgusting, if you ask me (I'd rather push my car than buy gas at Exxon/Mobil).

Lee Raymond

But, the problem with Hillary's tax holiday is that it offers nothing that would change the behavior of Big Oil. In fact, it would be doing them a terrific favor because gas prices would drop, which would in turn raise demand. They could sell more oil without lowering their prices! It's almost like Hillary has worked out a deal with these guys.

But here's another idea.

[Let me note here that this proposal does not offer any sort of long-term solution to our energy problems (neither does Hillary or McCain's for that matter). It just buys us a bit of time, which I would hope we could use to take drastic and dramatic steps to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.]

So, there's the idea. At this moment, we have 700 million barrels of oil in the US Stretegic Oil Reserve. What would happen if we suddenly unleashed just a million of those barrels on the market? Well, I'm guessing prices would drop precipitously, which would help out the consumer quite a bit. And, there would be the special bonus benefit of screwing over the oil companies, too, because they'd be forced to drop their prices in response to the sudden increase in supply. Ha! Teach them to screw over their customers for the sake of record-breaking profits and hundred-million-dollar golden parachutes.

Then I would go one step further. I would pull our troops out of Iraq. If the oil companies want Iraq's oil, let them use those all record profits to fight their own freakin' oil wars (hell, send Lee Raymond over there to fight), but leave us out of it. We've already spent over half a trillion dollars (and counting) trying to secure their oil supply. Now it's time for them to do their own damn dirty work.

And there you have it. That's my proposal.

Thursday Links

If you're getting tired of politics, scroll down. Today I've got some non-politics links after the <hr>!

George W. Bush: he's "confident [the GOP will] hold the White House in 2008" and understands "the mentality of the American people." OTOH, he doesn't even know how much Americans are paying for gas. And has been lying to us about about the cost of his war.

John McCain (just like Bush, and the most anti-child!): keeps digging deeper when it comes to his attempts to game the campaign finance system (efforts which appear to be falling flat). In other news, is he even eligible to run?

Tennessee: One one hand, we're finally beating back the shameless partisans who would cynically use disingenuous attempts to amend our constitution to GOTV. On the other hand, our GOP is really making us look stupid -- just ask the RNC, John McCain, Lamar Alexander and Karl Rove, who are embarrassed by the TN GOP's bigotry. Fortunately, they were spanked quickly and soundly! Sorry, world. Please don't hold this against us. The latest news is here. UPDATE: and here.

Texas: early turnout is huge (why wait for results?).

Alabama: Don't even get me started.

Europe: were you planning a European vacation this summer? Maybe not so much?

Ratings: people are paying attention these days.

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Autism and vaccinations: the US Government concedes there's a link (here's the doc). Will this news give fuel to the anti-vaccination community? And speaking of autism, the autistic community has been doing some networking online. Perhaps their efforts will help to counter the ignorance of so many people when it comes to autism.

Bees: they're still disappearing (or perhaps they're all headed to one particular attic in Florida).

Pools: when I was a kid, I was kinda scared of the deep ends of pools -- and maybe I still am because the picture on the right here made me feel a little dizzy-ish. It is a cool collection of images, though.

Billboards: AT&T + NSA!

Counting cash: How do you do it (video)?

Help at the pumps: do you ever have trouble remembering which side of the car has the gas tank (this can be especially tough with rental cars!)? Sometimes there's a clue in your dash.

Video: A History of Evil

And finally, if you just want to skip to the results of the 2008 Presidential Eleciton, here's your chance!

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Net Neutrality

Here is a great update on where we are with regards to net neutrality, and includes this observation regarding (the lack of reasonable) competition when it comes to broadband:

[...] Comcast competitors AT&T and Verizon "are two of the same companies that have been accused of participating in the warrantless wiretapping program. So my choice is a company that throttles my bandwidth without telling me or a couple of companies that hand my data off to the government without telling me. I guess that still qualifies as competition, but it's not much."

Exactly. What kind of a playing field is it for consumers when they're forced to choose between giving their business to a company that actively discriminates against legal usage of the service, and companies that have participated in widespread violation of their rights? Why should we be forced to compromise our ethics for companies that clearly have none?

The answer is that we shouldn't have to. More robust competition that serves the entire country, and not just rich urban and exurban areas, will go a long way towards giving consumers more options for their communications services.

This is why EPB's Fiber to the Home is going to be good for the Chattanooga market, but only if they make a strong committment to net neutrality and privacy. Are you listening, EPB?

Unlock the iPhone

Use it with T-Mobile or other GSM cellular networks -- anything's better than the incomparably evil AT&T...

The iPhone inches a bit further away from AT&T

The hacker community is on the problem.

Apple Computer Gets Ugly

It's really starting to give me a bad taste in my mouth. It niggles at me.

The fact that there isn't a better alternative to an Apple computer will probably keep me buying them, but maybe I won't be such a fanatic any longer. Apple, Inc., long the underdog in the computer world, has, it appears, finally started to grow up. Or they're at least getting a bit too big for their breeches, anyway.

They started out small in their journey towards the dark side, with a few unholy alliances. Steve Jobs got cozy with the Walt Disney Company, owner of the famous propagandist, ABC (remember the sham "docudrama," Path to 9/11, that Disney/ABC foisted at us?).

Then they really broke away from their good guy image when they decided to force all iPhone owners into servitude with the unbelievably evil giant, AT&T.

But now, Apple has really gone bonkers. They've decided to charge an entrance fee to their stores and track customers while they shop (via dburr).

Wow. I'm speechless. It didn't take long for Apple to go from scrappy innovator to Big Brother. I'm very disappointed. What do you think? Is this their Fonzie moment? Have they jumped the shark?

Update: ah. it's a joke. doop! more here (and more from my "source" here).

iPhone without AT&T servitude

More on using the iPhone without forming an unholy alliance with the evildoer, AT&T.

iPhone without AT&T

Release the device (via towleroad).

The iPhone finally comes out today (let the boycotts begin!)

I'm not especially excited about it anymore. I mean, I'd love to get one (and my current cell phone contract is up later this year), but I just can't bring myself to sign a contract with AT&T. Every single time I've done business with AT&T, from their credit card company to their long distance service, or through buying their cheaply made, overpriced consumer products, I've been screwed somehow. And whenever I think about how cool it would be to have one of these new iPhones, I also realize that I'd be crazy to get involved with AT&T again. I'd feel like Charlie Brown taking another swing at Lucy's football. It pains me (I'm a big fan of Apple), but I just can't do it.