Day: June 7, 2010

Happy birthday, Dad!

Today is my father’s sixty-third birthday. He’s diabetic, but I managed to get some sugar-free chocolate muffins which stood in for cake, and my mother gave him some presents. He’s difficult to buy for, but he enjoyed HBO’s recent The Pacific miniseries, so I bought him the companion book and With the Old Breed, one of the two books the series was based on. Now I just need to figure out what to buy him for Father’s Day.

Monday various

  • There’s no lack of unpleasant news still spilling out of the Gulf and the colossal fuck-up that is BP’s effort (or lack thereof) down there. From these New York Times photos (“Putting a Face on the Gulf Oil Leak”) to this Google Maps application (“Visualizing the BP Oil Spill Disaster”) [via] to just about every evening’s news broadcast, it can be incredibly disheartening when faced with the overwhelming scope of the disaster, and the apparent ineptitude of the people in charge of cleaning it up. That’s why Cherie Priest’s list of Things you can do about the oil spill — from volunteering to donations to consuming less petroleum overall — is so important, a welcome reminder that there is something we can do.
  • Meanwhile, in other environmental catastrophes…don’t call it a sinkhole [via]:

    Instead, Bonis prefers the term “piping feature” — a decidedly less sexy label for the 100-foot deep, 66-foot wide circular chasm. But it’s an important distinction, he maintains, because “sinkholes” refer to areas where bedrock is solid but has been eaten away by groundwater, forming a geological Swiss cheese whose contours are nearly impossible to predict.

    The situation beneath the [Guatemala’s] capital is far different, and more dangerous.

  • As if that wasn’t bad enough, now it turns out children’s books are incredibly eco-unfriendly [via]
  • But at least they’re recycling in Hollywood. And no, I don’t mean the endless parade of reboots, like this wholly misguided Alias one. (Even though I’ll be the first to admit the Rambaldi stuff is what eventually did the show in.) I mean this: Every actor reads the same newspaper. [via]
  • And finally, if things get too screwed up here on Earth, maybe we can go stay with our neighbors on Saturn’s moon Titan. [via] Presumably they’re hanging out with Winston Niles Rumfoord…though, frankly, I think they get the better company on Jupiter’s moons.