The oil catastrophe could have been averted were it not for the US government rejecting the help of people who know what to do in an oil spill and have the equipment for dealing with it. Why didn't the US government want help (which was offered at no charge and which BP wanted)? To appease unions? It should make your blood boil.
FTA: "Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill, one much larger than the BP spill that then appeared to be underway... To protect against the possibility that its equipment wouldn't capture all the oil gushing from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch also offered to prepare for the U.S. a contingency plan to protect Louisiana's marshlands with sand barriers... The U.S. government responded with "Thanks but no thanks," remarked Visser, despite BP's desire to bring in the Dutch equipment and despite the no-lose nature of the Dutch offer -- the Dutch government offered the use of its equipment at no charge... the U.S. had also turned down offers of help from 12 other governments, most of them with superior expertise and equipment."
DISCUSS!
Original posting by Braincrave Second Life staff on Jun 27, 2010 at http://www.braincrave.com/viewblog.php?id=244
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Sep, 2017 update: Although Braincrave resulted in two confirmed marriages, the venture didn't meet financial targets. Rather than updating our outdated code base, we've removed all previous dating profiles and retained the articles that continue to generate interest. Moving to valME.io's platform supports dating profiles (which you are welcome to post) but won't allow typical date-matching functionality (e.g., location proximity, attribute similarity).
The Braincrave.com discussion group on Second Life was a twice-daily intellectual group discussions typically held at 12:00 PM SLT (PST) and 7:00 PM SLT. The discussions took place in Second Life group chat but are no longer formally scheduled or managed. The daily articles were used to encourage the discussions.