Interbreeding Between Homo Neanderthalensis...Thing is, my friend, BP, if the expenses pile up too high, will file bankruptcy to try to get out from under them. I'm sure they have about 500 lawyers looking at every bit of law regarding "responsibility" for environmental disasters. I'm expecting them to follow Exxon's model and hang it up in the courts for 20-odd years.
I have an idea that those dirty $%*# at Goldman Sachs are hoisting pitchers of champagne because when this is said and done, you are going to make the damage they have done look like a Chihuahua pissing on a rug compared to the damage you greedy f**kers are about to be responsible for.
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An interesting piece on the impact of an oil spill beyond the images of dead animals.
In focusing on the suffering of an individual animal, it's easy to overlook the less emotional and impossible-to-photograph impact of an oil spill on an entire ecosystem, which includes more than animals. An ecosystem comprises animals, yes, but also plants and chemical processes and physical processes. That's not to say coverage of the oil leak fails to consider the environment as a system of relationships. The New York Times is exploring this very well, looking into oil's impact up and down the Gulf's food chain, and how oil could kill off marsh grasses and thus reduce wetlands already disappearing at a rate of a football field an hour — marshes that are home to a bevy of species but also offer humans protection from the full impact of hurricanes.
It's hard to capture systems, eco- or otherwise, in a single image.
The image of the oil-soaked bird isn't powerful because it suggests the threat to the species, and the food chain, and the entire ecosystem. It's powerful because it's a bird, and it's covered in oil, and you know it doesn't want to be, and that it may be in pain, and that it is, at the very least, terrified. A dirty or dead bird — or turtle or shark or fish — is proof that an oil spill is bad news…
Would an oil spill that lacked these oily animals be any less dangerous? No, but to know that you'd have to motivate your brain to read science news and dissect the infographics and maps. This is hard work. Pictures are easier. You see a dead turtle, and your heart thinks it understands just how bad this situation is. And if you don't, well, how bad can things be?
"Attacks on the pope and the church come not only from outside the church, but the suffering of the church comes from inside the church, from sin that exists inside the church," Benedict told reporters aboard his plane en route to Portugal, speaking about the abuse crisis.This my free advice: Stop using the word "persecution." To say that someone or something is being "persecuted" implies that one is being attacked unjustly, because of prejudice, for no real reason.
"This we have always known, but today we see it in a really terrifying way, that the greatest persecution of the church does not come from the enemies outside but is born from the sin in the church," he added. "The church has a profound need to relearn penance, to accept purification, to learn on the one hand forgiveness but also the necessity of justice. And forgiveness does not substitute justice."
That is most assuredly not what is going on. There is no reason to rehash the history of the church in this regard, not the abuses, which were systemic in many locations, and which were covered up by the hierarchy. "Persecution" is not what is going on here. This is more of a bitter harvest. There is a proverb about that.
Furthermore, forgiveness, in this regard, is not something that is in the church's power to grant, it can only beg it from those who were abused.
It will probably help a bit in that regard if the church stops regarding itself as the victim, here. The word "persecution" should be purged from the church's vocabulary for the duration.
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