tagged w/ Pensacola
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Time Warner Cable Inc. customers from Portland, Maine, to Pensacola, Fla., could lose access to one of their network TV stations because of a contract dispute with Sinclair Broadcast Group....
indiareport.com/India-usa-uk-news/ap/Entertainment/71998Time Warner Cable Inc. customers from Portland, Maine, to Pensacola, Fla., could lose... more
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...Alfie: Do you ever get recognized?
Charlie Laine: I actually did coming here. I was at the airport. I was on my phone, had glasses on, no makeup, a hat—completely dorked out—and I look up and there’s this guy handing me a stack of eight by tens to autograph. I’ve never had that happen. I was weirded out, not like in a creepy way, but like whoa, what’s this person doing. Then all the security guys were like, ‘Who are you?’ as I’m signing pictures with my ass spread.
Alfie: What’s your favorite bad title of a film you’ve appeared in?
Charlie Laine: I just found one: Charlie Laine is a Filthy Whore. They didn’t even tell me they were going to call it that. I didn’t know I was a filthy whore but I guess it’s true if there’s a movie about it...
http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/dailyloaf/2010/07/23/pornstar-charlie-laine-on-%E2%80%98cootering%E2%80%99-weed-threesomes-being-bisexual-and-why-she-can%E2%80%99t-fake-it-nsfw/...Alfie: Do you ever get recognized?
Charlie Laine: I actually did coming here. I... more
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Crews connecting oil vessel to ruptured well
By the CNN Wire Staff
July 6, 2010 9:11 p.m. EDT
(CNN) -- Crews are in the process of connecting the vessel Helix Producer to the ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, said the man leading the federal response to the Gulf oil disaster. The hookup has been partially completed despite rough seas.
The vessel should draw up to 53,000 barrels of oil a day when it becomes operational, newly retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said Tuesday afternoon in Houston, where he traveled to meet with BP officials. He also said progress continues to be made on two relief wells.
Despite rough weather in the Gulf of Mexico, Allen believes that the placement of a new containment cap and the deployment of key air and sea resources will eventually stop the massive amounts of oil now gushing from the well.
Once the Helix Producer is fully connected to the well and operational, officials will decide within 10 days whether to proceed with replacing the containment cap, Allen said.
Federal estimates say between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels (about 1.5 million to 2.5 million gallons) of oil have been gushing into the Gulf daily since April 22, when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig sank in the Gulf, two days after it exploded in flames.
High seas continue to hamper cleanup efforts. Allen said officials are closely watching a weather system near the Yucatan Peninsula.
Allen is meeting with BP in Houston about several "significant" developments. "You can't be successful if you can't coordinate, collaborate and integrate together," he said.
Allen told CNN earlier Tuesday that officials will be monitoring weather patterns to determine if and when they would try to install the cap, a process that will involve unbolting the jagged edge that exists on the structure now. Once completed, the new containment cap, he said, will achieve a perfect seal and keep oil from escaping.
Allen said the new cap "would let us get to a capture rate of 80,000 barrels a day." Crews currently are capturing up to 26,000 barrels a day.
Another tool in the effort to contain and stop the oil flow is a relief well that is "very close" to being completed, Allen told CNN, guessing it will be ready sometime in early or mid-August. Over the next week, relief well rig workers will drill 100 feet at a time until they can intercept the wellbore at just the right place, he added.
In early June, during an exclusive 48-hour embed with Allen, CNN's Kyra Phillips visited the site of the oil disaster and gained access to the Development Driller III -- the rig that is drilling the primary relief well some 16,000 to 18,000 feet below the sea floor.
"The intention is to intercept the wellbore, well down below the surface near the reservoir, then pump heavy mud in to counteract the pressure of the oil coming up," he told her. "That will allow them to basically plug or kill the well. Once that's done, you could do things like remove the blowout preventer, bring it to the surface and try to find out what happened."
Also, a massive airship, or blimp, and a ship that can suck oil out of the ruptured well are expected to arrive in the Gulf region at the end of the week to aid in oil disaster response efforts. Their arrival is being delayed because of rough weather, said Stephanie Hebert, spokeswoman for the cleanup effort.
The U.S. Navy airship will be used to detect oil, direct skimming ships and look for wildlife that may be threatened by oil, the Coast Guard says. It had been scheduled to reach the Gulf on Tuesday. The 178-foot-long blimp, known as the MZ-3A, can carry a crew of up to 10. It will fly slowly over the region to track where the oil is flowing and how it is coming ashore.
The Navy says the advantage of the blimp over current helicopter surveillance operations is that it can stay aloft longer, with lower fuel costs, and can survey a wider area.
The Coast Guard has already been pinpointing traveling pools of oil from the sky.
"The aircraft get on top of the oil. They can identify what type of oil it is and they can vector in the skimmer vessels right to the spot," Coast Guard Capt. Brian Kelley said.
But the problem since last Wednesday has been the ability to clean it up before it approaches land. Bad weather has made that task more difficult.
Tammy Mitchell of the Unified Command's Joint Information Center in Houma, Louisiana, said she believes no skimmers, aerial dispersants or onshore activity were deployed or operated Tuesday in Louisiana because of the weather. Teams are on a 48- to 72-hour standby watch because of the weather.
Poor conditions also canceled a boat tour for BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles, although he did manage to meet with workers.
Suttles said improvements have been made in cleanup operations. "The program will more effectively deploy boats to oil recovery activity and better utilize local commercial and charter fishing vessels to advance the effectiveness of the Gulf of Mexico response."
Meanwhile, Bob Grantham, spokesman for TMT Offshore Group, said progress has been made in testing the company's A Whale oil skimmer, the world's largest.
The delay from high seas "has allowed us to make valuable observations and to develop some additional technological innovations designed to improve the channeling of oily water into the ship's large capacity tanks," Grantham said in a statement issued Tuesday. "Over the next few days, we will have our first real opportunity to test the new technology under conditions that we hope will maximize the effectiveness of collection and ultimately decanting."
Earlier, officials said A Whale's abilities so far are "inconclusive," meaning the massive converted oil tanker -- which is 3.5 football fields long -- has yet to prove its Taiwanese owner's claim that it can skim between 15,000 and 50,000 barrels of oil off the sea in a day.
The Coast Guard said the testing period for the A Whale has been extended through Thursday.
So far, crude oil floating in the sea has not been concentrated enough for A Whale to skim effectively, according to oil company BP, even though it appears the ship has been surrounded by pools of oil just a few miles from the gusher.
"We've got oil coming up from over a mile below the surface. And it doesn't always come up in one spot. It's not always predictable. So, in fact, we need to locate the oil first, and then assign the ship to the areas of heaviest concentration," BP spokesman Hank Garcia said.
Bad weather has hindered cleanup efforts, he said. "When you've got 6-foot, 8-foot seas, it's not going to lend itself to good capture of the oil."
On Monday, authorities said tar balls linked to the crude gushing from BP's ruptured deepwater well had reached Louisiana's Lake Pontchartrain and hit the beaches near Galveston, Texas.
The Coast Guard reported over the weekend that a shift in weather patterns could send more oil toward sensitive shores in Mississippi and Louisiana, and bad weather over the past few days has significantly hampered cleanup efforts.
Anne Rheams, executive director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, said Monday that the pattern was expected to persist for at least three more days.
The National Hurricane Center said Tuesday afternoon that a low-pressure area located near Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula in the southern Gulf of Mexico was producing showers and thunderstorms, but it was not likely to develop into a tropical cyclone in the next 48 hours. A system that had hovered over the Louisiana coast Tuesday morning moved inland.
CNN's Allan Chernoff contributed to this report.Crews connecting oil vessel to ruptured well
By the CNN Wire Staff
July 6, 2010 9:11... more
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Gulf Dispatch: An aerial view of ruthless oil's impact
Philippe Cousteau Jr. is the grandson of legendary ocean explorer and filmmaker Jacques Yves Cousteau. Philippe heads the nonprofit organization EarthEcho International (www.earthecho.org).
Photo: Philippe Cousteau, Gov. Charlie Crist and others fly over the oil disaster.
Editor's note: Philippe Cousteau Jr. is the grandson of legendary ocean explorer and filmmaker Jacques Yves Cousteau. Philippe heads the nonprofit organization EarthEcho International (www.earthecho.org).
Thump-thump-thump went the heavy blades as I felt the Black Hawk slowly start to whir to life and heave its hulking weight forward.
As a part of my mission to tell the stories of what is going on in the Gulf states affected by the oil crisis, I had been told we would take a helicopter trip out to survey the Florida and Alabama coasts, but I had not expected to travel in one of these huge military machines so familiar to anyone who watches modern Hollywood war movies.
Across from me was Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida, and next to him sat Gen. Douglas Burnett, the director of the Florida National Guard.
As the ground slowly fell away from us, I peered out into the glaring midday sun and braced myself for the worst.
It is no secret to anyone who knows me that waking up early is not my favorite thing to do, especially when four or five hours of sleep has been the norm over the past several weeks.
However, a 5:45 a.m. wakeup call is made all the worse when instead of birds singing, the only morning greeting is the slight smell of noxious oil hanging in the air and the sight of thick black muck slowly seeping into what would otherwise be beautiful fine white sand.
Unfortunately, that has become the usual for many of the people who live along the Gulf these days, and so it was for me.
Now I was flying in a machine designed for war, only this time it was not hunting any human adversary. Instead, our mission was to fly reconnaissance over a different type of enemy, one that has no rifles, no rockets, no tanks, but that has nonetheless infiltrated our country as effectively as any spy and as ruthlessly as any guerrilla warrior.
The oil that we have grown addicted to has now reared its ugly head and is slowly laying waste to a huge swath of our country.
As we flew over the Florida coast and made our way toward Alabama, we could see patches of thick orange oil interspersed with sheen dotted throughout the water beneath us.
On the beach, a solid black line of oil lay along the white sand like a long black snake sunning itself. Just offshore, pods of dolphin could be seen swimming through the oil. After over an hour, we landed on a dry patch of land near the beach and held an impromptu press conference with the governor and various VIPs.
We visited the crews along the beach as they worked to pick up the oil, wearing hazmat clothing in the 90-plus-degree heat. Oil was everywhere, and it seemed overwhelming. The men and women would work for hours, shoveling and raking up the oil, but despite their efforts, large black stains still dotted the shoreline as the sticky mass sank into the sand.
My colleague Denny Kelso, executive vice president of Ocean Conservancy, one of the leading ocean conservation organizations in the country, looked at me, and I could see the grim look of horror in his eyes. Denny had been the commissioner of the environment for the state of Alaska during the Exxon Valdez oil spill 21 years ago, and this scene was all too familiar.
As we headed back into the hulking Black Hawks, I felt the magnitude of what lay before us: This enemy was not going away without a formidable fight, one that will last for years and even decades.
But as we lifted off and flew over the beaches, the workers toiling away in the sun, I also felt a renewed sense of determination. The men and women on that beach, fighting the relentless heat and the even more relentless oil, were not giving up. Many of them were from Pensacola, and to me, they represent the best of us, people determined to fight for what they love in the face of overwhelming odds.
We landed at the Pensacola airport and headed toward Mobile, where I was due to co-host a fundraiser for the Mobile Baykeeper alongside Bobby Kennedy Jr., one of the greatest environmental heroes in our country today. The Mobile Baykeeper is another group of individuals determined to do whatever it takes to defeat this new foe.
Just like the workers on the beach, I knew that groups like the Mobile Baykeeper could be found across the Gulf and across the country, people who would never give up. I knew that as long as they continued to fight, there would always be hope.Gulf Dispatch: An aerial view of ruthless oil's impact
Philippe Cousteau Jr.... more
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http://wbx.me/l/?p=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fintbirdrescue.blogspot.com%2F2010%2F05%2Fday-15-from-center-of-gulf-oiled-bird.html
Day 15: From the center of Gulf oiled bird care
After a very small break this weekend in Louisiana, Jay Holcomb is back with his daily updates from the BP Deepwater Horizon Gulf Oil Spill response:
Louisiana - On Saturday we had a visit from Ken Salazar, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Rebecca Dunne from Tri-State Bird Rescue and I gave him a tour through the Fort Jackson Center and allowed him to get a close up view of our team washing the latest oiled Brown Pelican that we received. The female pelican is a two year old that is a very sweet bird found in Grand Isle to the west of us. She is now outside with the other pelican and doing well, both are eating a lot of fish. Media report: AP video: Cleaning Oiled Pelican in Louisiana
For the last two days our capture teams in Louisiana were mostly grounded due to intense thunderstorms and lightning strikes on the water. Not safe! We took this time to check out land based pelican and tern roosting areas but no oiled birds were spotted.
The reports we are getting now are about birds out in the deep water oiled areas and on some of the islands but you have to have safe access to those areas. We are wading through politics and weather to get to those places to assess and capture oiled birds.
Yesterday afternoon we did receive an oiled Gannet that was luckily plucked out of the water by a fishing boat that was coming back to the harbor. Its an adult Northern Gannet, heavily oiled and will be washed today. (Photo, above, oiled Northern Gannet)
Alabama - Our oiled bird rehabilitation center in Alabama received 7 sick non-oiled, lethargic brown pelicans and 1 laughing gull from that area. They were discovered soon after a fish die off in the area and there are concerns that they may have botulism and it may be connected to the fish die off. 5 pelicans and the gull are still alive and they are temporarily being cared for at that facility until plans for their transfer to a rehab facility are completed.
Mississippi – Our center in Gulfport received an oiled Gannet on Saturday and it is doing well. The bird will be washed soon. The center development and problem solving is coming along well.
Florida - Our center in Pensacola received an oiled gannet on Saturday also and it is doing well. The bird will also be washed soon.
Back at Home at our California Bird Rescue centers- It has taken a few weeks for us to get the wildlife centers on line here in the Gulf states and get a handle on this program and to understand and infiltrate ourselves into how its all working in this spill. In the mean time our centers at the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas are in spring mode and getting busier by the day. In that sense this spill could not have come at a worse time.
In order to support our staff and volunteers back at home in Cordelia (Northern California) and San Pedro (Southern California) we are hiring on extra summer help at both centers to make sure that the clinics are supported and run as smoothly as possible.
Also, we will probably be shifting our main clinic rehabilitation staff out to give each of them opportunities to work in the Gulf. We will be evaluating and are developing this plan daily as things progress here in the Gulf and we gain a better idea as to how long we may be staying. I will post more on how we are managing the spill, the centers back home as I have something to more to report.
Thanks for your continued support and words of encouragement,
– Jay Holcomb, IBRRC Executive Director
http://wbx.me/l/?p=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fintbirdrescue.blogspot.com%2F2010%2F05%2Fday-15-from-center-of-gulf-oiled-bird.htmlhttp://wbx.me/l/?p=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fintbirdrescue.blogspot.com%2F2010%2F05%2Fday-15... more
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Kurta
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Intro (partial) to World Video classic featuring Shot Down in Equador Jr., Bongoloids, Mamou, Kelly Willis Last Roundup...New Orleans, Athens, Atlanta, Pensacola, Austin...from the flyer: "A moment preserved in time as members of the musical group Shot Down in Equador Jr. careen through storm and sun on a southern musical adventure in what the Cosmic Ray Deflection Society terms "A 1990s version of Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road.'"Intro (partial) to World Video classic featuring Shot Down in Equador Jr., Bongoloids,... more
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World Video classic featuring Shot Down in Equador Jr., Bongoloids, Mamou, Kelly Willis Last Roundup...New Orleans, Athens, Atlanta, Pensacola, Austin...from the flyer: "A moment preserved in time as members of the musical group Shot Down in Equador Jr. careen through storm and sun on a southern musical adventure in what the Cosmic Ray Deflection Society terms "A 1990s version of Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road.'"World Video classic featuring Shot Down in Equador Jr., Bongoloids, Mamou, Kelly... more
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