The Reaction: Dances with Oil

By J. Thomas Duffy

Hey, why not?

BP (Better Profits) is so fucked, I mean they don't know whether to piss, or wind their watches, and the Obama people keep patting them on the back, rather than putting them in handcuffs, and getting them as far away from the crime scene as possible.

Especially so, being that Better Profits has been low-balling the amount of oil flooding into the Gulf, so they can mitigate, and lower losses in future court cases.

So, whether this works, or not, it isn't anything worse than what these Oil Criminals have been doing;

Kevin Costner may hold key to oil spill cleanup

So reads the LA Times headline, adding "Costner has invested 15 years and about $24 million in a novel way of sifting oil spills that he began working on while making his own maritime film, "Waterworld," released in 1995."

Waterworld?

Scott Weinberg in his post "Kevin Costner Defends Waterworld" noted

"But there seems to be a small fistful of movies that are "generally" accepted as big-time garbage -- and as this amusing Sydney Herald story points out, Kevin Costner's Waterworld is pretty much one of 'em."

[snip]

Kev, stop. You've got a better chance at making a Sizzle Beach U.S.A. sequel than you would at convincing people that Waterworld doesn't stink to high heaven. Sure, there are varying degress of movie suckitude, and Waterworld may have earned a little extra abuse because of its ridiculous production problems ... but the thing's a turkey, man.

Back to the LA Times;

Costner has invested 15 years and about $24 million in a novel way of sifting oil spills that he began working on while making his own maritime film, "Waterworld," released in 1995.

Two decades later, BP and the U.S. Coast Guard plan to test six of his massive, stainless steel centrifugal oil separators next week. Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser welcomed the effort, even as he and Louisiana officials blasted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for delays in approving an emergency plan to build sand "islands" to protect the bayous of his parish.

[snip]

"The machines are essentially like big vacuum cleaners, which sit on barges and suck up oily water and spin it around at high speed," Houghtaling said. "On one side, it spits out pure oil, which can be recovered. The other side spits out 99% pure water."

If all goes according to plan, he said, "We could have as many as 26 machines dispatched throughout the gulf. Our largest machine is 112 inches high, weighs 2 ½ tons and cleans 210,000 gallons a day of oily water. We are hoping to have 10 machines that size out there — meaning we could potentially clean 2 million gallons of oil water a day."

Oh My!

Giant water Hoovers - Brilliant!

The Right Wing Freak Show Flying Monkeys are going to be flinging their feces around over this one.

Big, bad commie-filled Hollywood riding to rescue?

Better, they will likely adopt our Ran Kan Kan man, Rand Paul's take, channeling Donald Rumsfeld with his "Sometimes Accidents Happen."

But wait, there's more!

This isn't the first time Hollywood has rode, not just cinematically, to the rescue;

Meanwhile, "Avatar" director James Cameron has said that he would make his underwater vessels available, and actor-director Robert Redford appeared in a commercial, sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council, that uses the spill as a clarion call to move forward on clean energy.

It is not the first time Hollywood has come to the rescue with cutting-edge technology. Paul Winchell, a versatile ventriloquist and the voice of Tigger in " Winnie the Pooh," was also an inventor who patented an early artificial heart in the 1960s. In 1940, glamorous movie star Hedy Lamarr helped design an un-jammable communications system for use against Nazi Germany.

So, perhaps there's a good vibe there for Costner, something other than 'Waterworld', and, maybe, maybe he can squeeze out a sequel, along the lines of "Sea of Dreams";