BP: No Stranger to Disaster

[Chomsky]

Re: BP: No Stranger to Disaster

Oh ASH, why indulge him? Like Oakland, there isn't any there there.

[Rajiv]

Re: BP: No Stranger to Disaster

Like Oakland, there isn't any there there.

One of the most misquoted quotes ever.

The original Gertrude Stein quote

The trouble with Oakland is that when you get there, there isn't any there there.

But it is not so much in the detail than in the meaning that Gertrude Steins statement is misquoted

From A Meditation Calling into Question the Regions of American Literature

Ever since Gertrude Stein wrote that there was “no there there” during a return trip to her childhood home in Oakland, California, her words have been distorted to imply that Oakland was a “nowhere,” a dissing along the lines of Neil Young’s “Everyone Knows This Is Nowhere,” which was funny for Young, a transplanted Canadian singer, to write for an U.S. pop market, because Young had really been a Californian before he transplanted himself to California, as Stein had been really been an American in Paris long before she left the U.S., and returning to her “there is no there there,” she later clarified that the Oakland of her childhood was gone, she was commenting on her great theme, not just hers, of course, a great thread in American literature concerning place and memory, we all lose the place of our childhood, and in adulthood clutch that place, or more accurately, a complex tangled image of that place, close to our bosom

[GRG55]

Re: BP: No Stranger to Disaster

Another great play might be RIG, Transocean limited. Rumours say:
- their NAV is $106/share; before the spill they traded around $80, but have plunged to about $50.
--they have billions of contracts in-hand
- might entirely escape any liabilty for this spill for two reasons -BP really WAS calling all the shots, and their contract have ironclad indemnity clauses.

RIG is a fine company, and no matter what the media spews there is no way in hell that we are going to stop drilling offshore due to the blowout. Yes, there will be new regulations and rules, new procedures, new levels of redundant equipment required, and most of that will be for the better. But RIG isn't the company that is being vilified here, it's BP. And the level of hysteria over the past week or so reached the usual ridiculous levels commo0n in these situations. People like Matt Simmons claiming new leaks, claiming BP was incompetent, claiming only a nuke could fix the problem is just classic. As are all the politicized threats of criminal lawsuits and so forth. Once I saw a fellow iTuliper state that BP was a "criminal enterprise" it became pretty clear a good speculative opportunity was nigh. Tuesday's washout provided it.

[Starving Steve]

Re: BP: No Stranger to Disaster

No disagreement here. I think it would be cool to have a bit of cinnibar to look at.

For some reason, your anecdote about the mercury -- which you shared earlier -- stuck in my mind. I think it struck me that "a lot" of your stories (well, really only two) are about how you were exposed to potentially hazardous substances in your youth, and came through just fine.

For my part, I too have encountered the odd ball of tar on the beaches in Santa Barbara, resulting from crude seeping from the ocean floor. But concentration matters a lot, and the amount of crude oil that is released into the ocean by natural processes is a rather different scale than the spill in the Gulf of Mexico. For that matter, the human body is 'made out of oil' and 'requires oil in the diet' only in a very general sense. You already know this, but "oil" is a very general class of compound, and specificity matters a lot when it comes to chemistry. I'm not signing up to drink or bathe in crude; are you?

To me, something very interesting about ecosystems is that evolution has made them anything but "vulnerable and delicate". Darwinism teaches us that the fittest survive and evolve, and eco-systems in nature evolve-tough and esquisitly adapted to survive changes and stress in their habitat.

So the EPA has it all wrong (as usual), and eco-systems are not in need of protection from habitat planners in government. So I used the anecdote of my swim through tar and oil in the Pacific and my exposure to mercury as a child as an example of how nature has helped me to survive poisons in the environment.

I don't recommend eating tar balls, nor drinking crude oil, nor do I recommend playing around with quicksilver. But the human body and other life-forms have evolved tough and resistant to certain toxic substances in the natural environment.

The human body deals with mercury by excreting it through the urine. It also tries to deposit mercury in bones to keep the mercury out of the blood-stream. Nature takes care of toxins, but common-sense would dictate to not push the limits of poisoning too far.

[Chomsky]

Re: BP: No Stranger to Disaster

One of the most misquoted quotes ever.

The original Gertrude Stein quote





But it is not so much in the detail than in the meaning that Gertrude Steins statement is misquoted

From A Meditation Calling into Question the Regions of American Literature

Thanks for the elaboration (which I knew), but not sure why it was needed as I didn't misquote at all. Most people say "there's no there there," but it's clearly "there isn't any there there." Fits Starving Steve like a glove.

[Master Shake]

Re: BP: No Stranger to Disaster

I have a rich ore sample of cinnibar, the native red-coloured ore of mercury, here next to me on my desktop, above my computer screen.... If anything, the cinnibar sample has helped my critical-thinking, or would you dis-agree?

That explains a lot.

BTW, elemental mercury has low vapor pressure and evaporates slowly at room temperature.

[Rajiv]

Re: BP: No Stranger to Disaster

I think it is really a mischaracterization of Oakland -- as it is generally taken in a rather mean spirit, rather than as Gertrude Stein originally meant it, which is as a state of one's own idyllic memories to which we cling.

[Master Shake]

Re: BP: No Stranger to Disaster

I think it is really a mischaracterization of Oakland -- as it is generally taken in a rather mean spirit, rather than as Gertrude Stein originally meant it, which is as a state of one's own idyllic memories to which we cling.

Although I've never been there, I've always got the impression that Oakland is a shithole, the Detroit of northern California. That is not the case?

[Rajiv]

Re: BP: No Stranger to Disaster

Not really. Not much different from any other city its size in the US. It has its good parts and its bad parts. Because of the large port, it has a larger blue collar work force than the surrounding municipalities, and the resulting income levels tend to be lower.

However, It is the city of Jack London and Amelia Earhart.

[Chomsky]

Re: BP: No Stranger to Disaster

I think it is really a mischaracterization of Oakland -- as it is generally taken in a rather mean spirit, rather than as Gertrude Stein originally meant it, which is as a state of one's own idyllic memories to which we cling.

Right, but it's a perfectly legitimate rhetorical device to appropriate a literary phrase and apply it in a humorous way.

And I agree, Oakland is perfectly nice, or large amounts of it are anyway. My parents are from there (I was born in San Francisco).

[Master Shake]

Re: BP: No Stranger to Disaster

Not really. Not much different from any other city its size in the US. It has its good parts and its bad parts. Because of the large port, it has a larger blue collar work force than the surrounding municipalities, and the resulting income levels tend to be lower.

However, It is the city of Jack London and Amelia Earhart.

And Bubb Rubb and L'il Sis.





Bubb Rubb - Whistle goes woo-woo @ Yahoo! V" target="_blank">
Bubb Rubb - Whistle goes woo-woo @ Yahoo! V" />

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: BP: No Stranger to Disaster

RIG is a fine company...no way in hell that we are going to stop drilling offshore ... But RIG isn't the company that is being vilified here, it's BP. .. it became pretty clear a good speculative opportunity was nigh. Tuesday's washout provided it.

That's what my source said about RIG -that they are excellent technically and commercially (perhaps the best in the world) and should continue to thrive, so one could expect a quick bounce back in their stock price. I fear buying any stock in this market, RIG included.

[don]

Re: BP: No Stranger to Disaster

Nature's Disaster Pictorial

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/0...ignment-35/?hp

[bpr]

Re: BP: No Stranger to Disaster

RIG doesn't give dividends?

It does now:
http://www.businessweek.com/news/201...-update1-.html

May 24 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder should investigate Transocean Ltd.’s proposed $1 billion dividend to shareholders, 18 Democratic senators said in a letter.
The payout may be a way to limit the company’s liability following the April 20 explosion of its Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the letter released today by Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon.
“We are concerned that such action to quickly move money out of corporate coffers to individual investors may make it more difficult to pursue liability claims against the company,” according to a copy of the letter.
In February, the company recommended the $1 billion dividend, which shareholders approved on May 14, according to Transocean spokesman Guy Cantwell. Cantwell declined to comment on the letter. It is the company’s first dividend in “several years,” he said.

[flintlock]

Re: BP: No Stranger to Disaster

Steve, you have been watching too many movies.