At last, our long national nightmare is reaching it's middle

11 deaths. 86 days. Up to 9,000 square miles. Up to 8,600,000 gallons of crude oil.

It's stopped. Probably. Temporarily. It won't really be fixed, truly for-good fixed, until they finish drilling relief wells and plug it from the inside, which won't happen for quite a while now. So there'll probably be more crude oil spilling into the Gulf yet. And if we continue living the way we have, it's really just a matter of time until there's another offshore drilling accident just like this one.

In other BP news, they've admitted that they strongly lobbied for the release of the guy who blew up a commercial airliner in 1988, because he was Libyan and the Libyan government wanted him released, and BP wanted to drill for oil off the course of Libya. The bomb this guy planted killed 280 people.

Dear gas-guzzling morons:

Putting a bumper sticker on your car saying "Slow down, save gas, reduce oil profits" will do precisely nothing to reduce oil profits (or, for that matter, to reduce the degree to which oil companies rape the planet).

You know what will help to reduce oil profits?

STOP DRIVING YOUR RIDICULOUS FULL-CAB, EXTENDED-BED PICKUP TRUCK. ALSO YOU JUST RAN A RED LIGHT AND NEARLY HIT ME SO MAYBE DON'T DO THAT ANYMORE EITHER.

Seriously - you want to reduce your carbon footprint/stick it to the man/etc? Buy a bicycle and/or a bus pass! You can't - I repeat, *can't* - claim to be making any sort of meaningful effort to reduce your oil consumption if you drive. It's not a priority in your life? Fine. I personally think you're at best a short-sighted dick if so, but fine, it's your choice. If that's the case, stop with the stupid bumper stickers and t-shirts and slogans. Shut up or step up.

Pretty pretty

The library has acquired the four-disc set of BBC's Planet Earth series. I grabbed first two discs for my viewing pleasure over break, and have watched the first and second episodes.

All I have to say is holy crap. The filming is magnificent. The narration is fascinating. The scenery is jaw-droppingly, 'I want to crawl through the screen and be there' beautiful.

Thus, my unrequited crush on the BBC continues.

Remember that thing about reduce, reuse, recycle?

The 80's/90's environmentalism push was, in my mind, best summed up in that little phrase. It's best to just reduce how much stuff you use, and find new uses for what you already have used. If you must toss things out, recycle them. Common sense, right? And it's clearly tied in with the current push to increase the efficiency of cars and trucks.

The new Toyota Tundra truck gets, at absolute best, 20 mpg on the highway and 17 in city driving. The least efficient model, with a 5.7L V8* gets 14/18.

18 miles per gallon.

For comparison, a relatively comparable truck, the Chevy Colorado 'crew cab' gets 18/24. A 2007 Honda Civic Si gets about 23/32mpg. The 2007 Civic hybrid gets about 40/45. Interesting.

*In all honesty I don't actually know what this means beyond 'bigger engine'.

The ground's a-movin!

Unexpected news stories: Earthquake in Kent, England.

Not big earthquake territory, England.

Animals that I am oddly fond of

The Great Panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is, genetically speaking, a bear. They have the digestive system of a bear, that is, best suited to a carnivorous diet. However the panda is not deterred by this and instead greatly prefers bamboo. This means that the panda almost entirely exists on a plant which it cannot digest well.

The Hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius) or, to those of us who can bring the Greek, the River Horse, is really neat. I don't know why on this one, but it has something to do with being so very big and awkward. I think I like animals whose evolutionary protection against predators mostly comes down to "stomp on it". Bonus points for uncertain plurals.

The Platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus). If I were a creationist I would have no choice but to assume that God had some spare bits left over, so he put them in a box, shook them up, and beheld the might platypus. The name is silly. It's a mammal, but it's got a venomous stinger and lays eggs. The females have two ovaries, but only the left one works. They can sense electrical fields with their brain. They look like you took one part duck, one part beaver, and one part rat, and taped them together. Early white colonists called them Duckmoles. Plus, uncertain plurals.

Red Pandas (Ailurus fulgens), because oh god so cute!

Snails. No particular type, but they have an odd, slimy elegance to them.

Spiders. Two legs bad, four legs good, eight legs awesome.

Today's non-story

Mansions use more energy to heat/cool/maintain/whatever than normal-sized houses!

Holy crap, NO WAY!

However, if you A) take great steps to minimize your energy consumption and B) counter what you do use by purchasing carbon offsets, you're contributing a lot less to the problem than most people in most average houses.

Sigh. Thank you, Drudge Report. Thank you, America, for yet another stunning dive into "it's still true even if I lie by omission".

Oh holy *crap*

A large, 330-foot deep sinkhole just spontaneously opened up in Guatemala City. It consumed, for lack of a better word, at least two houses, three people, and a truck.

I know what I'm going to have nightmares about tonight! The ground suddenly not being there, sending me plummeting hundreds of feet to my death!

Global warming *does* have a solution.

Newsweek's Robert Samuelson is going on about global warming, saying that politicians et al don't really care and aren't willing to make the sacrifices required to help fix the problem.

I'm not going to argue with that. I think there's a distressing level of apathy in governments around the world about the problem, and if the populace expects politicians to take the first steps, they're going to be disappointed.

But I hate the fatalist attitude he's exhibiting here. So the government's not going to do anything? That sucks, but that doesn't mean no progress can be made. Know how the majority of hugely-influential movements in the modern world started? A bunch of average Joes started doing what they thought was right. The then-government didn't start with much enthusiasm for America, for god's sake: a bunch of people saw a problem and took it upon themselves to fix it.

Here's what the average person can do to fight our inevitable drowning: Write letters to your congressional representatives. Walk up to the post office to mail it; don't drive. Even better, show some support and take public transportation to the post office if you can. Spend a few extra bucks when you need to replace a lightbulb and use a compact fluorescent one - you can get one at Wal-Mart or any hardware store. Call your congressional representatives, your governor, your state representatives. When it starts getting warm, turn off the air conditioner and open the windows instead. Carpool to work. Write another couple letters to your senator. Call your representatives. Unplug your TV and read a book instead. Keep your TV unplugged when you're not using it. Write a letter to your governor. Next time you have to run up to the store for some orange juice and bread, skip the plastic bag. Skip the paper bag, too - surely you've got a backpack or a tote bag or a messenger bag or even a stash of plastic bags sitting around at home. When you get home and put your bread away, write another letter to your representatives telling them what you're doing and maybe the should get off their asses as well. Delay turning your lights on for an extra twenty minutes and watch the sunset instead.

See? It's easy.

Don't get me wrong - it would be pretty great if the American government would at least take some slight environmentally-friendly steps. In Ireland if you want a bag for your groceries, you're going to pay extra for it - even something like that's a step in the right direction. But we don't need to sit around waiting for the government to initiate large-scale initiatives. If a big enough number of people start helping out in little ways, it's going to add up, and it's going to set an example for the government: this is want we want. Listen to the people.