![Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill_-_May_24,_2010[1]](http://fredbubbers.com/wp-content/uploads/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill__May_24_20101.jpg "Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill_-_May_24,_2010[1]")
Although BP has said that all is going as planned with operation “Top Kill,” nothing will be conclusively known about its success until sometime Sunday. While most articles about this environmental catastrophe refer to this as a spill, that word hardly describes what has happened and what continues to happen. The word spill implies that there is some finite amount involved, however large it may be. The Exxon Valdez spilled its contents into Prince William Sound twenty-one years ago. There was a finite amount of oil onboard and the flow eventually stopped. When the flow of oil from the Deepwater Horizon well is finally stopped, we can call it a spill. Until then, it should be called what it is: an endless eruption.
The status reports issued by various sources since BP began pumping drilling mud into the well in an attempt to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. First there were reports that all was going as planned. Then there were reports that the operation had been suspended sixteen hours before. Then there were reports that the operation was resumed and again, everything is going as planned. Since not one single thing about this drilling operation seems to have gone as planned since the very beginning, taking BP’s word, or the President’s for that matter, about what is happening requires a moon-sized grain of salt.
Continue reading →
On Tuesday, May 18th, we reached a grim milestone in Afghanistan: 1,000 American deaths. The death count started slowly and we didn’t really pay much notice as we were distracted by our larger presence and the higher death count in Iraq. But there it was, steadily growing for nine years. As we have increased our presence with yet another surge, the pace has increased and suddenly here we are a milestone, a marker, a checkpoint.
One thousand.
It’s an impressive number, but not too large that it overwhelms us. It’s not a million, or one hundred thousand, or even ten thousand. those numbers are too large allow us to see the individual trees for the forest. Or the individual people in the crowd. One thousand people would fit comfortably in a single section of a single deck in a modern sports stadium. Or comfortably fill the floor seats in an arena at a political convention.
Continue reading →
Posted in General
|
Tagged war
|
As part of my continuing experiment with electronic publishing, I have added my short story “Natural Selection” to my eBook store. When this story was originally published last October in Cantaraville, wrote extensively about how it came to be written in my post “Into the Abyss.” When I workshopped this story nearly two years ago at The New York State Summer Writers Institute, it was the summer before the economic meltdown, from which we are hopefully beginning to recover. In previous years, my workshop had been a fairly even mix of young and old writers. That year, however, the workshop was a lot younger, including a group of undergraduates from Princeton who I assume were students of Joyce Carol Oates, who teaches there. There were some very talented writers among them and the analysis and criticism of the stories we workshopped during those two weeks, including mine, was excellent. I could tell, however, that they were a bit shocked by my offering which gave them a bleak preview of what awaited them out in the working world. By now most of them have finished, or are finishing, their four year degrees. Maybe my story convinced some of them to stay away from the corporate world and are now in graduate school. For those who aren’t, those who chose to enter the lion’s den, I hope the story resonates with them in a positive way and shows them the dangers of cynicism and how easy it is to forget what really matters in life. We’ve been doing that too long in this country. Hopefully, those students will choose a path with a heart.
In the coming weeks, this mini-eBook, along with the others, will also be available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the Apple Bookstore, Kobo, and Sony. The folks at Smashwords have been working their butts off implementing all of the distribution deals that they have been put in place. Given the fragmentation of the eBook market that currently exists, where the retailers each have their own formatting requirements (unlike the world of print publishing), Smashwords is solving a real problem in bridging the technology gap and helping authors reach as many readers as possible. It’s exciting to watch and to be a small part of Smashword’s quest.
Two of my mini-eBooks (After the Fire and A Couple) made it into the first electronic shipment of premium catalog titles from Smashwords to the Apple iPad bookstore. It took quite a big effort on the part of the people at Smashwords, and I suspect at Apple as well, to pull it all of in time for this past weekend’s release of the new device. I’m a sucker for new electronic toys, but I have far too many computers and electronic gadgets as it is. I also function as the IT director and help desk for the home network I share with my wife and daughter. I’m trying to simplify. If an iPad could replace my smartphone, my desktop media center computer (which feeds the xbox in the den), my personal notebook, and work notebook, I could justify it. But since it can’t, it would only be just another sexy toy. And sexy it is.
A coworker got his iPad this weekend, so I checked out what my eBooks look like on it. I’m very impressed and eBooks may end up being the killer app for the iPad.
Posted in General
|
Tagged music, politics, video
|
