Your tax dollars at work

We learned from the Florida Keys tourism council that tar found on beaches in the Florida Keys beaches "do not match the type of oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill."

To determine where the tar in question came from, the council tells us, "tar balls discovered on beaches at Fort Zachary Taylor State Park, Smathers Beach in Key West, Big Pine Key, Fla., and Loggerhead Key in the Dry Tortugas National Park, Fla. were flown by a Coast Guard HU-25 Falcon jet based in Miami to New London, Conn., Tuesday for testing and analysis."

Using a military jet to deliver tar to a lab? Have they never heard of FedEx? Did they absolutely, positively, need those results at the speed of sound?

It seems that ships passing through the busy shipping lanes near the Keys often shed oil. Still not a pleasant thought. But where the tar came from is secondary. Clean the beach first, then figure out who gets the bill.

About the Photo: U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Patrick Kelley. The mobile offshore drilling unit Q4000 (near) holds position directly over the damaged Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer, May 18, 2010, as the drillship Discoverer Enterprise burns gas from a tube in the ruptured drill pipe.

Landfill fodder

The environmental champions at Greenpeace sent me a rather hefty envelope today. As is my custom, I opened it up, not because of interest in its contents, but because I am able to recycle white paper at work, so I extract such paper from junk mail.

That this procedure had to be performed on an item from an environmental group is odd enough. Odder still is that the contents included a large sticker (not recylable) a card stock response form (likewise) and a sheet of return address labels (also likewise).

Now, ordinarily I don't mind getting return address labels. They are, at least, useful. But the toner had rubbed off several of these in transit. Further, those that remained legible read "Mrs. Kristen," which is just wrong, as Miss Manners will tell you.

So the obligatory four-page screed goes in the recyle bin, along with the Business Reply Mail envelope. The rest goes in the trash.

It seems to me that heaping up landfills with cheap stickers is not the way to rescue the environment from rampant destruction.

What the Pickens

T. Boone Pickens met with American City Business Journals editors at their annual meeting this week. Pickens explained his plan for diversifying America's energy sources.

His opinion on the two major parties' presidential candidates is particularly interesting: "They do not know anything about energy."



Pickens spent an hour and a half with ACBJ's editors. As of this writing, two video excerpts have been posted. I anticipate more to come.

I am the Lorax..

I probably should have guessed that there was such a thing as a person who would use a computer to paperlessly shop for and purchase a product and then print a paper receipt. Should have, and would have, if I'd thought about it. But that's the sort of thing I actively try not to think about.

But now that I have thought about it, thanks to this paper-saving tip by J.D. Biersdorfer in the New York Times, I'm just sad.

I had hoped that by now, people wouldn't need these things explained to them.

...I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues...