The explosion of the BP oil platform in the Gulf on 20100420 will certainly be amongst the worst, if not the worst, oil release into the environment in United States history.  Already at over 2.6 million gallons of oil split, there is no plan to contain the gushing until it will exceed the Exxon Valdez incident decades ago.

I have in intention of speculating on the cause of the explosion at this point, because a proper investigation has yet to be completed.  As attractive as is might be to blame Halliburton, there is, in my opinion, a dire dearth of information to blame anyone at this point.  Investigations will uncover the facts.  This incident is too big and too well publicized not to have sunlight.  However, I do intend to voice my thoughts about events prior to the explosion that were not done that should have been, and actions (or lack thereof) after the explosion for good or ill.

People try to make us drill,

Just to try to get a gill.

The things they do look awful bad

I hope it stops before it gets more mad.

You have to love George Takei.  Not only is he an excellent actor, he has what one might call “personality”.  He also has an Arkansas link to me, and this sort of exposes the foul underbelly of racial prejudice.

He was born in 1937 of American and Japanese ancestry, putting him well into the Social Security crowd now.  I really like the new adverts that he does for the TeeVee manufacturer.  He is looking more youthful now than he has for several years.

Electricity is the movement of electrons one way or another.  The electron is a very small mass particle that is classified as a lepton, meaning that is has mass and has a spin quantum number of +/- 1/2.

An electron has a mass of 9.0166 x 10^-31 kg, making it about 1/1800 the mass of a proton, which is a hadron.  Hadrons account for most of the mass in normal matter, as opposed to dark matter, the nature of which has not been elucidated nor ever proven, but that is for another series.

This series is concerned with the storage of electrical energy in the form of chemical energy, and converting the two into useful currents.  Most of the electricity that we use is quite transient in nature, but that stored chemically in batteries is much longer lasting, if not as intense.

Many people think that lots of space is required to grow a big garden.  This is not always the case.  Part of it depends on what you grow, but another part of it depends on how you grow it.

I have a garden space that is approximately 16 x 16 feet, for a total of 256 square feet.  I chose those dimensions because landscape timbers are eight feet long, but this is not a raised bed garden.

I had originally planned to post pictures of each step, but the weather has been extremely dry in the Bluegrass, and the plat has been too dry to till.  It is now raining, so I can get to it as soon as it stops, although it may take a day to dry out enough first.  I can post pictures as comments during future installments of What’s for Dinner?.

Most of you who read my posts will agree that I prefer environmentally friendly industries, transport, and food.  You also know that I grow quite a lot of my own food, and a guide will be published here, this coming Saturday, at 7:30 PM when I guest host What’s for Dinner.

However, I am not a fanatic.  I understand that there are tradeoffs that are essential to maintaining our standard of living.  One of them is the semi trailer and the truck that pulls it.  Ten or twelve years ago, they were very polluting, but with the new standards for low soot and sulfur emissions, they are not bad these days.

Once there were several Snakes who could talk.  These are related to the one mentioned in Genesis, but are even more devious.

Before we go any further, I want to let everyone know that I have no aversion to, and actually like very much, real snakes.  They are extremely useful reptiles, and keep the rodent population at an acceptable level.  Without real snakes, our ecology would be quite less tolerable.  The former Mrs. Translator has one in the classroom (not a venomous one) and we together kept a Ball Python until he became too big for safe handling, so we donated Kaa to a university.  Please in no way think that I personally dislike snakes, except for the metaphorical ones.

Coins minted by the United States have change dramatically in design, size, denominations, and alloy since the birth of the Republic.  Whilst the basic units of dollars, cents, and mills has not changed, the relative value of these units is quite different than in 1794, when the first US coin was minted.

The most significant change, other than appearance, in US coins is that over the centuries, our coins have gone from being items of intrinsic value (gold, silver, and copper mainly) to becoming tokens.  This has been the general worldwide trend for coinage.  One reason is that there is simply not enough gold and silver to go around for coinage any more.

Once there was a deer walking through the break between the woods and the meadow.  As ticks do, they climbed onto tall grasses and attached themselves to the deer as she walked through them.

They do this instinctively, almost like they were directed by some of the radio talk show blowhards.  As the deer walks past, they sense it and fall onto them.  The deer never realize that they are being bitten until the the itch starts.