Monkeyfister

Labels: Canning, Food Independence Challenge 2010, Food Preservation, Pickles

Unfortunately, food recalls have become such a regular feature of daily life that it takes one really out of the ordinary to get people's attention.

Maybe this recall will grab you. Valley Meat Co. in Modesto, Calif., just recalled 1 million pounds of beef patties and ground beef produced late last year and in early January.

You read that right: 1 million pounds. If you figure that each head of cattle yields about 432 pounds of butcherable meat, then the recall would be the equivalent of more than 2,300 animals.

The problem: 7 people came down with nasty infections caused by E. coli O157:H7 that may have come from the meat, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says. That bug produces toxins that can wreak havoc on your intestines and, in some case, damage other organs.

The suspect meat was sold in California, Texas, Oregon, Arizona and overseas. Most of it was frozen. To identify products from Valley Meat, look for "EST. 8268" in the USDA inspection mark. The company's website is supposed to have a full list of the affected products, but the computers there seemed overwhelmed when when we tried to check late Friday.

But you can get also get a rundown from the USDA.

Labels: Corporate Values, Factory Meat, Food Recall, Tainted Foods

BP said Friday that it might someday drill again in the same undersea pocket of oil that gushed millions of gallons of its crude into the sea, crushing livelihoods and fouling beaches and wildlife habitat along hundreds of miles of Gulf of Mexico shoreline.

"There's lots of oil and gas here," Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said at a news briefing. "We're going to have to think about what to do with that at some point."

The vast oil reservoir beneath the blown well is still believed to hold nearly $4 billion worth of crude. With the company and its partners facing tens of billions of dollars in liabilities, the incentive to exploit the wells and the reservoir could grow.

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man on the spill, said he had no information on BP's future plans.

Labels: BP, Corporate Assclowns, Corporate Sociapaths, Corporate Values, Corporatists, Kill A Corporatist For Jesus, Murder By Oil

Paul Stamets is a mycologist - a mushroom guy. He's been hunting and researching edible and medicinal fungi for thirty years. But he doesn't have a PhD or work in a university lab. He's an entrepreneur and self-made scientist. His company Fungi Perfecti sells grow 'em at home edible mushroom kits, and most of the profits go toward funding his numerous fungi research projects. In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Paul thinks mushrooms could help clean up the oil and toxins, and heal the Gulf of Mexico's damaged ecosystem. Paul talks to guest host David Brown about saving the world one mushroom at a time.

Labels: Oil Remediation, Paul Stamets

Labels: Blogaversary, Meta

Labels: Food Independence Challenge 2010, Food Preservation, Oil Disaster

Labels: Canning, Food Preservation

Labels: Life in the Armpit of America, My Life As It Is, Southern Politics

Labels: Atomic Warfare, Hiroshima, World War Two

The vast majority of the oil is gone,” said Carol Browner, President Obama’s top energy and climate adviser, on the Today Show.

The New York Times reports that scientists say Browner’s claim “is not backed up by either the report or the conditions in the ocean.”

The Times adds, “The scientists say that although much of the oil is out of sight, it is still present in the water. The report estimated that 26 percent of the oil has dispersed… the dispersed oil is less visible but is not gone from the ocean.

Pedro Alvarez, chairman of Rice University’s civil and environmental engineering department, said, “What they’re not saying is that probably most of the oil is still in the water. That’s my main beef.”

Alvarez adds that dispersed oil “migrates easier, and therefore it reaches more eco-receptors, more marine life… Dilution should not be the solution to pollution.”

New BP CEO Bob Dudley wasn't kidding when he announced last week that it was time for the company to scale back oil-spill cleanup operations. In fact, by the time he'd said that, the responder force had been drawn down by about 25 percent.

On July 13, the Deepwater Horizon Joint Command was reporting 46,000 responders. On July 23, it was down to 30,000, and the numbers have hovered around the low 30s since. Included in this tally are some Coast Guard and National Guard staff, but BP and subcontractors comprise the vast majority. (I've been trying to get the exact breakdown from the Coast Guard for four days, but to no avail, and BP said it didn't have it on hand, though the Coast Guard has told me it just reports BP's numbers.) In Grand Isle, Louisiana, cleanup workers (none of whom can be named; you know this drill by now) say their coworkers were either told to go home for Tropical Storm Bonnie and then never called back or fired in a massive and sudden drug test.

"Friday, the day before Bonnie, they sent a bunch of people home until further notice, and a lot of people didn't get the further notice," one supervisor told me. "Then last week, they shut the whole [cleanup operation] down. It was 'Piss in a cup or throw your ID in the bucket.' This was a BP drug test, not a [subcontracting] company drug test. It's the first time BP tested us."

Labels: BP, Corporate Assclowns, Corporate Values

HOUSTON - BP today completed cementing operations at the MC252 well at 14:15 CDT, as part of the static kill procedure. Monitoring of the well is underway in order to confirm the effectiveness of the procedure.
Operating with the guidance and approval of the National Incident Commander and government officials, BP continues the ongoing relief well operations. Depending upon weather conditions, mid-August is the current estimate of the most likely date by which the first relief well will intercept the Macondo well annulus.

Labels: BP's Gulf Of Mexico Environmental Catastrophe

Labels: Bot Love, Nature

Labels: Meta, My Life As It Is

Labels: Chickens

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Labels: BP Fail, Corporate Values

Release date: 04 August 2010
BP announced today that the MC252 well appears to have reached a static condition -- a significant milestone. The well pressure is now being controlled by the hydrostatic pressure of the drilling mud, which is the desired outcome of the static kill procedure carried out yesterday (US Central time).

Pumping of heavy drilling mud into the well from vessels on the surface began at 1500 CDT (2100 BST) on August 3, 2010 and was stopped after about eight hours of pumping. The well is now being monitored, per the agreed procedure, to ensure it remains static. Further pumping of mud may or may not be required depending on results observed during monitoring.

Labels: BP Static Kill Ops, mia culpa

Dear Media--

Please curb your enthusiasm right now, and get down to reporting what is happening. The truth does not begin, nor end with the words of Thad Allen or Kent Wells.

--mf

Labels: BP Static Kill FAIL

There has been so much information (or mis-information) on the disaster it is difficult to separate the facts from the myths, let alone decide who is or are to be held responsible for the oil spill disaster. There is a need for a working geological model to integrate all the scattered pieces of information and evidence together, so that law makers can zoom into areas where data had been lacking (or withheld) and the wrongs be corrected in order for the industry to move forward. The fact that so many wells (even in deeper waters) had been drilled successfully in the past in the same Gulf region suggests that there may be more “hidden” factors that caused this blowout to be so disastrous.

The geological model presented here is based on facts derived from past blowout investigations that had been equally puzzling. It provides a fresh perspective into the blowout investigation which until now had been overly focused on the drilling itself. If the well blowout was already a disaster in waiting, there is absolutely nothing the drilling crew could do to prevent the blowout, short of abandoning the well prior to reaching the reservoir. The fact that this geological model had been independently generalized from data and information available on the public domain means that there is room for more detailed infill and ample opportunities for BP’s technical experts to prove the model wrong. On the other hand, if subsequent revelations (from yet to be published data or information) substantiate or improve on the accuracy of the model, then this geological modeling effort, is heading the right direction in providing a more sound basis for corrective measures towards making the oil industry safer from such future disasters.

Labels: BP Fail, BP Braintrust, BP's Gulf Of Mexico Environmental Catastrophe

Energy giant BP began pumping mud Tuesday into the blown-out oil well in the Gulf of Mexico as part of efforts to seal it off for good.

In a statement, the company said the "static kill" procedure began at 3 p.m. (CDT). The company went ahead with the step without waiting for a pair of costly relief wells to be finished.

For months, BP maintained that the only sure and permanent fix was to drill a relief well to pump heavy mud and cement up into the ruptured well — a procedure known as a "bottom kill."

But company engineers now say a top-down approach called a "static kill," in which mud and possibly cement is forced down the throat of the damaged well, could be enough.

BP Senior Vice President Kent Wells said Monday that even if the bottom kill proves unnecessary, drilling on the primary relief well would go ahead anyway.

"Even if we were to pump the cement from the top, we will still continue on with the relief well and confirm that the well is dead," he said. Either way, "we want to end up with cement in the bottom of the hole."

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man on the spill response, said earlier Tuesday that the bottom kill will be done regardless of whether the static kill works.

"This thing won't be truly sealed until those relief wells are done," he said at a news conference in Houston.

Wells said it likely would take up to two weeks to finish drilling the first of two relief wells, which can cost about $100 million each.

Labels: BP Static Kill Ops

Labels: BP Fail, BP Braintrust, BP's Gulf Of Mexico Environmental Catastrophe

Labels: BP Static Kill Ops

THE devastation wrought by the great recession is still all too real for millions of Americans who lost their jobs, businesses and homes. The scars of the crisis are fresh, and every new economic report brings another wave of anxiety. That uncertainty is understandable, but a review of recent data on the American economy shows that we are on a path back to growth.

The recession that began in late 2007 was extraordinarily severe, but the actions we took at its height to stimulate the economy helped arrest the freefall, preventing an even deeper collapse and putting the economy on the road to recovery.

One and possibly two coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are heading toward Earth, propelled by the solar eruptions of August 1st (see below). NOAA forecasters estimate a 10% chance of major geomagnetic storms and a 45% chance of at least some geomagnetic activity when the clouds arrive on August 3rd and 4th.

Labels: Aurora Borealis, Nature

Labels: BP Static Kill Ops

Labels: Olduvai Theory, Peak Energy, Population Growth