pabeaufait's favorites strike again

This is more like what I was hoping for:



The Global Player graphic that appears first is © alles-schlumpf (May 28, 2009).

Remember the Exxon Valdez

Keep off the gas!

This post follows on from Aren't Otters Extraordinarily Cute (pab's potpourri, 2009.04.01), 21 years on from the event that inspired composition of these bits and pieces. Pictures remind us vividly what our dependence on oil costs. If you need a graphic reminder, please check out these collections:

• Seattle Times: Media Center: Photo Galleries: Exxon Valdez Spill;
• Flickr Creative Commons: oil spill; and
• Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council public domain pictures.

Further consequences of the Valdez spillage

Though a corporate piece on Spill prevention says,"The clean-up was declared complete by the State of Alaska and the U.S. Coast Guard in 1992" (ExxonMobil, [no date]), that must have been in reference to  immediate and superficial clean-up, rather than restoration, and Mapes suggests undetected harm was still coming to light: 

"Still to be litigated is a claim against Exxon by the federal government and state of Alaska for $92 million in so-called "re-opener" damages, intended to help pay for environmental harm not detected at the time of the spill."

 (Mapes, 2008, The damage remains, ¶4)

Alaska's Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council paints a grim picture, not three but ten years after the Valdez ran ground:

"...[O]ne of the most stunning revelations of Trustee Council-funded monitoring over the last ten years is that Exxon Valdez oil persists in the environment and[,] in places, is nearly as toxic as it was the first few weeks after the spill."

 (Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, no date, Status of Restoration, Lingering oil, ¶1)

"The amount of Exxon Valdez oil remaining substantially exceeds the sum total of all previous oil pollution on beaches in Prince William Sound, including oil spilled during the 1964 earthquake. This Exxon Valdez oil is decreasing at a rate of 0-4% per year, with only a 5% chance that the rate is as high as 4%. At this rate, the remaining oil will take decades and possibly centuries to disappear entirely."

(Exxon ValdezOil Spill Trustee Council, no date, Status of Restoration Lingering oil, ¶4)

Who has payed what price?

Who was ship's Master during the spill?

"Hazelwood was acquitted on all felony charges, but was convicted of a misdemeanor charge of negligent discharge of oil, fined $50,000, and sentenced to 1,000 hours of community service" (Wikipedia, Joseph Hazelwood, Exxon Valdez oil spill, ¶ 2 [2010.03.22]).

What says ExxonMobil?

A blurb on a corporate current issues web page says they "took immediate responsibility for the spill and have spent over $3.8 billion as a result of the accident, including compensatory payments, cleanup payments, settlements and fines" (ExxonMobil, 2009). That blurb doesn't specify what part of that $3.8, up from $3.5 (ExxonMobil, 2007) includes money spent on legal fees and court costs through appeals:

1. To the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to reduce punitive damages from 4.5 to 2.5 billion (ExxonMobil, 2006), and then
2. To "the Supreme Court [which] slashed those damages to about $500 million" (Lanfitt, 2008, ¶1).

Lanfitt's report, based on Associated Press sources, explains: "The high court said ... punitive damages shouldn't be any larger than the compensatory damages the company had already been ordered to pay" (2008, ¶3). Supreme Court records show the "case remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to remit punitive damages award accordingly" (Supreme Court of the United States, 2008, Opinions, No. 07-219, p. 1035).

A Seattle Times article pegs that figure at $507.5 million (Mapes, 2008, ¶2), and a factoid in the sidebar of that article suggests that it will take Exxon "about 12 hours of sales" to recoup that amount. ExxonMobil calls it $508 million (no date, ¶2).

How are our maths? (in rough billions USD)

3.8 Spent (ExxonMobil, 2009)
- 0.5 Compensation ordered (Mapes, 2008)
- 0.5 Punitive damages (Lanfit, 2008)
2.8 Other expenditures

Do those other expenditures include Exxon's legal costs? Mapes (2008) suggests there were "more than 60 / law firms involved" (sidebar: The spill by the numbers: The money).

When next where: Five more years till double hulls?

The U.S. "Congress has enacted legislation requiring all tankers to be double-hulled by 2015" (Wikipedia, 2010, Other consquences, ¶1). What about other countries?


Better keep our feet off the gas for a few more years.

References

• Exxon ValdezOil Spill Trustee Council. ([no date]). Lingering oil. Retrieved March 22, 2010, from http://www.evostc.state.ak.us/recovery/lingeringoil.cfm
• ExxonMobil (2006). ExxonMobil response to inquiries about 9th Circuit Court of Appeals 12/22/06 ruling on Valdez punitive damages, December 26, 2006. Retrieved March 22, 2010, from http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/about_issues_valdez_sc_022708.aspx
• ExxonMobil. (2006). 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on Valdez, December 26, 2006. Retrieved March 22, 2010, from http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/about_issues_valdez.aspx
• ExxonMobil. (2007). U.S. Supreme Court to hear Valdez appeal. Retrieved March 22, 2010, from http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/about_issues_valdez_sc_103007.aspx
• ExxonMobil. (2009). Information and updates regarding the 1989 Valdez oil spill, March 19, 2009 [the most recent announcement, as of retrieval]. Retrieved March 22, 2010, from href="http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/about_issues_valdez.aspx
• ExxonMobil. ([no date]). Spill prevention. Retrieved March 22, 2010, from http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/energy_impact_spill.aspx
• Lagnfitt, F. (2008). Supreme Court Cuts Damages in Exxon Valdez Spill. Retrieved March 22, 2010, from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91881057
• Mapes, Lynda V. (2008). Supreme Court drastically cuts payouts for plaintiffs in Exxon Valdez oil spill. The Seattle Times, Local News, June 26, 2008. Retrieved March 22, 2010, from http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008018035_exxon26m.html
• Supreme Court of the United States. (2008). Journal: October 2007 Term. Retrieved March 22, 2010, from http://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/journal/jnl07.pdf
• Wikipedia (2010). Exxon Valdez oil spill. Retrieved March 22, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill

Exhibit A in PictoBrowser and Flickr displays

This post displays a Flickr photo set (Exhibit A, public), embedded with a new-found slide show tool, in which I'm just beginning to fiddle with display parameters other than height and width to fit this blog's template.



Thanks to Alan Levine for pointing out Pictobrowser on the CogDogBlog (Slick Flickr Browser, 2008.08.13). It sure is easy to use.

For purposes of comparison, I'm including a Flickr generated slide show the same size below.



The most noticeable differences apart from border shades (colors) and the like are:

1. Thumbnails and jump arrows for navigation appear constantly in PictoBrowser display, while only briefly after starting the show (">") or on mouse-over in Flickr;
   
2. Slides advance only manually in PictoBrowser, but automatically or manually in Flickr;
   
3. Titles get displayed in overlays at the foot of the graphics in PictoBrowser, but only in full-screen view with "Info On" in Flickr (or on the Flickr site);
   
4. Notes - Descriptions from Flickr - appear in PictoBrowser on mouse-over ("Notes"), but only in full-screen view with "Info On" in Flickr (or on the Flickr site); and
   
5. As Alan suggests, PictoBrowsers "spawn" - you can generate another PictoBrowser slide show on the spot, by clicking on the link at the lower right-hand corner of the display frame, while you must got to the Flickr site to accomplish the same feat.
   

Balance, on all fours

Balance, on all fours, seems to be what keeps tails from wagging dogs. For educational technologists, these days, the balance and interplay of humanity and technology seem to keep coming to the fore. The technological end of things has been twisting my noodle since I chewed over Achieving Sleep/Network Balance (Ceraso, ELT Blog, 2007.10.21) in pab's potpourri (2008.01.28).

Call it a rush, or addictive, vacuous pressure to adopt more and more diversified web tools, join more and more diversified professional and social networks, hold further discussions - with more people, explore existing topics more deeply, share and try new ideas, compare findings, pool and package resources, ..., and what do we get?

Loud whooshing sounds as our lives evacuate online, or something graphically represented as an exploding head, for which Alan Levine suggests he is "lacking an easy answer beyond shrugging it off, unplugging, letting stuff slide, or just floating along til the groove returns." Nonetheless, he keeps contemplating "how much 'power' we acquiesce to technology tools" (CogDogBlog, Exploding Heads, 2008.07.22).

Without ever having tried twittering, I'm inclined to agree that doing it needn't make everyone who does micro-thinkers. Yet humans are creatures of habits, and Levine wonders, "If some of the most sharp and clever people I know and respect find themselves overly immersed in something like twitter, what does that portend for the many more people who look to them for guides?"

If collection and recollection of both data and thoughts becomes largely and ubiquitously mechanical and piece-meal, it may lead to flattening of the web, and bode ill for discursive thought patterns, coherent conversations, cogent analyses, and deliberative syntheses. When push comes to pull, which way will online educators be leaning - towards the flat, quick, and transient, or the deep, rich, and stable?

It comes as some relief to hear of folks abandoning twitter accounts before I ever got one. However, I felt a twitch of dismay yesterday discovering So Many Nodes, Not Enough Reciprocity (Yet) (Marielle, Authorship 2.0, 2008.07.03), about which I growled on the LTD Project Blog (2008.07.24). Marielle reminds us "not to get lost in a plethora of solipsistic silos, speaking without listening, [and] reinventing rather than building upon each other’s ideas and deepening the collective dialogue." I wonder how long it may take twitter-free digital immigrants to groove deep enough into the web for the rest of the world to hear the music.

Photo by Andrey Sukhanov (2008)
Creative Commons License BY-NC 2.0

Contrastive habitats

These pictures almost speak for themselves. Please scroll down through and back up through them, and reflect upon what constitutes human habitat.

I'll try something flashier, with captions, later.

Slide show added, 2007.12.15

Blogged with Flock

Flickr uploaders

According to the Flickr tools site, "There are loads of ways for you to upload your photos to Flickr, in addition to the web-based upload form," including Flickr and third-party uploaders for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. I've just downloaded the OS X.3+ version and authorized the program to read, write, and edit my photos on the Flickr site. It works slick as a whistle!

Island in the Sky
Originally uploaded by pabeaufait.

Here's a photo I've just uploaded using the Flickr Uploadr application for OS X.

One or two in 25 without...

One or two student-teachers or practicing teachers participating in the Pigate workshop today reported not having email. Another two participants, an ALT and a teacher educator, didn't have cell phones. So they were unable to complete a workshop activity to learn how to use cell phones to email photos immediately to new Flickr accounts that we all cross-linked to new Blogger accounts. Nevertheless, the workshop was honest-to-goodness techno-fun on a steep learning curve!