Almost all good ones. So, so long and thanks.
Hey, how come my comment didn't post when I hit <return>?
US soldiers 'killed Afghan civilians for sport and collected fingers as trophies'
Twelve American soldiers face charges over a secret "kill team" that allegedly blew up and shot Afghan civilians at random and collected their fingers as trophies. [...]
It's amazing that ANY corporation can drill for oil since NONE have stepped up to the plate with a viable solution.
Of course there are solutions: three, in fact.
This is a very unusual disaster - the first of it's kind. Plenty of other safe deep-water fields being safely operated around the world. My guess is that once all the wailing has died down, the great American public will basically accept the cost of one of these every 20 or 30 years in exchange for cheap petrol. (You know petrol's roughly $8 a gallon here in the UK? And look, no riots in the streets. Don't tell me -- that's because we let the Marxists take our guns away, right? )
Did you know that petrol here in the UK is about 122p/l == £5.50/gal == $7.95/gall at current sterling:dollar exchange rate?
Once the US population are happy to vote for gas prices that include some of the externalities that result from oil extraction, refining and consumption, this Brit might start taking the wailing about BP's incompetence and the corrupt regulators and Big Oil and all.
...of the tests because the conditions these tests will have to deal with vary from amount of dust, to concentration,composition (chemically) and type of equipment to be used. [...] To me, I see the results as those that will be of no consequence.
You're failing to take into account that hundreds of thousands of jobs and tens of very large strategic companies (airlines and airport operators) are losing money at a completely unsustainable rate. If this goes on another week, people WILL be laid off. Then there's the political pressure from all those people stuck abroad, and their families friends and employers, are putting on all their national governments to, well, you know... do something.
Those economic interests are now starting to make themselves heard - increasingly noisily. The question is, though, how much ash is too much? And if it's safe to fly from Heathrow to Cardiff, as the British Airways CEO is doing tonight, or for the KLM chairman to fly to Germany from Holland, does that necessarily mean it's safe to fly across the whole of Europe?
Seriously, what do you do? Gradually open up more and more routes, and keep doing it until the first plane falls out of the sky and kills a few hundred people? If that happens, who resigns? Who gets sued? Who gets blamed - by the families, the press, the courts?
In summary then I think you're wrong: these tests are going to have enormous significance. Firstly the international aviation regulators are in danger of (a) looking very silly (b) getting sued to hell and back for damages (c) losing all credibility in the event that, say,Katla goes off in a month or two's time, and a bigger or denser ash cloud drifts over Europe in the same way. Secondly, we don't know what's going to happen if they start trying to fly 25000 flights through European skies on Tuesday, say, until they try it... you fancy being on one of those first-day flights?
Those who can, do; those who can't, write. Those who can't write work for the Bell Labs Record.
