It’s looking like the volume of oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig may be at least 10 times higher than previously estimated. We don’t really know. Neither does BP. [And now we oppose offshore drilling. But we caused the problem. We were for it until this disaster caused us to turn against it.] Yowza! I read that wrong. We still favor offshore drilling though support is falling. This post’s title has been edited accordingly. Still, today the GOP...

More from Henry Blodget, this time noting that Google’s U.S. search share is flat: From a financial perspective, Google is still a one-product company (search). The amount of profit — profit, not revenue — contributed by Google’s non-search products like AdSense, Apps, YouTube, et al, is basically a rounding error. The assumption for a good long while had been that Google would eventually have an 80%-90% share of the U.S. search market. Not happening. I’m old enough...

None of the big four banks had a single day in which they lost money trading last quarter. Henry Blodget says that’s thanks to the government’s near-zero-interest-rate policy: [T]he US government is lending money to the big banks at near-zero interest rates. And the banks are then turning around and lending that money back to the US government at 3%-4% interest rates, making 3%+ on the spread. What’s more, the banks are leveraging this trade, borrowing at least $10 for every $1...

Microsoft officially launched the new Office 2010 in NYC today. In addition to the full-featured version, there will be a free Internet version starting June 15. A mobile application for Windows Mobile phones is available for download today. iPhone and most other platforms will be limited to accessing the applications via a mobile Web browser. With a free version online, will customers want to upgrade? “You can use the Web version of office to do basic things like share documents and edit them,”...

Without mentioning a name, manufacturer, date or operating system — I’m betting on Chrome [LATER: wrong! It's Android] and hoping for BumpTop integration as part of the OS — the WSJ quotes Verizon’s CEO: “What do we think the next big wave of opportunities are?” Mr. McAdam said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “We’re working on tablets together, for example. We’re looking at all the things Google has in its archives that we could...

Daniel Okrent, who served as the first public editor of The NYTimes and most recently authored the new book, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, was interviewed yesterday by Terry Gross on Fresh Air. Here’s how she kicked off the session: GROSS: [C]an you see a style of activism or a moralistic streak in American politics today that you think is descended from the leaders of temperance? Mr. DANIEL OKRENT (Author, “Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition”): Well, I certainly...

Reuters: Smartphones featuring Google’s Android operating system accounted for 28 percent of U.S. smartphone unit sales in the first quarter, according to NPD Group, behind top-ranked Research in Motion Ltd, maker of the Blackberry phone, which had a 36 percent share of the market…. Apple’s iPhone, which is available exclusively on the AT&T wireless network in the United States, dropped to third place as its share of the smartphone operating system market remained flat quarter-over-quarter...

I’ve been MIA on TMV as I managed the graduation celebration of the nephew we brought into our home three years ago in order to help him through college. He made it; with honors and an outstanding student award. We’re proud. Graduation week in a college town is always joyful; this is our first time with a graduate in the family. A good time to reflect a bit on happiness… Ben Bernanke quoted happiness research in a commencement speech at the University of South Carolina yesterday....

Elijah Sweete asks, Does The Roberts Court Favor Corporations Over Ordinary Citizens? If his summary of the Alliance for Justice report, “Unprecedented Injustice,” didn’t get you fired up, maybe this will add some fuel to his fire… For the last two weeks as Bill Moyers wound down his program, the Citizens United decision popped into the discussion. Last week the self-described “America’s #1 Populist,” Jim Hightower, called the decision “a black robed coup by...

Not the Alien Life Form ALF from the 1980s sitcom. The 6’3″ 225 pound Welsh national rugby team star, Gareth Thomas. Alf is the nickname given to him by a friend at age 14 that stuck. Some months ago he gained the distinction of becoming the first, and only, gay man in a major team sport who’s out of the closet. This week Gary Smith has a 7,000+ word profile of him in Sports Illustrated. The moment: “Look, it’s one of two things,” said Johnno [link]. “Do...

…but now Apple is busting down doors in Palo Alto while Bill Gates rids the world of mosquitoes. What the… is going on? Last night Jon Stewart spent 8 minutes lambasting Apple over the iPhone prototype story. Apple has been mostly ignoring what the press says about it, but this is bound to get their attention. A couple more great quotes: The cops had to bash in the guys door? Don’t they know there’s an App for that? If you want to break down someone’s door, why don’t...

A reader writes: I appreciated your column. I’ve heard Wilbert on NPR, and I appreciate that prisoners can be rehabilitated. But I do think your article was a bit one-sided. The DA makes a valid point: Julia Ferguson is gone forever. Julia had a family too. What is a just sentence? What about the victim? How do we reconcile the two sides of this argument? I’m not a vindictive person; I think the death penalty is far too widely applied in the US, but there are some people (McVeigh, Bundy)...

Boing Boing’s David Pescovitz points to Alissa Hamilton, author of Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice for some secrets of the Orange Juice Industry: Think about it; how could it be truly fresh year-round, when oranges are a seasonal product? Sure, it may be “not from concentrate,” but raw juice is often heated, stripped of its volatile compounds and flavor-rich oils, and stored for as long as a year before it reaches the consumer. Something called “the flavor pack”...

In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance, by Wilbert Rideau. Out today. Who is Wilbert Rideau? From his Wikipedia entry: [D]escribed by Life magazine in March 1993 as “the most rehabilitated prisoner in America” … Rideau was incarcerated in Louisiana State Penitentiary (better known as Angola Prison) from 1961 to 2000, convicted in three successive trials of murdering bank teller Julia Ferguson in the aftermath of a botched bank robbery by all-white, all-male...

Gizmodo: Last Friday night, California’s Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team entered editor Jason Chen’s home without him present, seizing four computers and two servers. They did so using a warrant by Judge of Superior Court of San Mateo. According to Gaby Darbyshire, COO of Gawker Media LLC, the search warrant to remove these computers was invalid under section 1524(g) of the California Penal Code. Wired quotes an expert that the warrant was invalid: Jennifer Granick, civil liberties...

My dog died yesterday. With no assist; all natural. Kidney failure. Quick and peaceful. She was a good dog. In her memory I quote this poem. Written in 1773 by the poet wife of the scientist who would be credited with identifying oxygen, it is told from the point of view of a lab mouse contemplating his fate. In The Age Of Wonder, Historian Richard Holmes calls it “perhaps the first animal-rights manifesto ever written.” For here forlorn and sad I sit, Within the wiry grate, And tremble...

Inevitably, Hitler reacts to the Hitler parodies being removed from YouTube… Oliver Hirschbiegel commenting on the Hitler parody memes made from his 2004 film, Downfall, for a January NY Magazine piece: “Someone sends me the links every time there’s a new one,” says the director, on the phone from Vienna. “I think I’ve seen about 145 of them! Of course, I have to put the sound down when I watch. Many times the lines are so funny, I laugh out loud, and I’m...

Jeff Bercovici argues persuasively that the Gawker iPhone scoop was clearly theft: I am somewhat scandalized, even outraged. Put simply, Gawker Media brazenly, publicly flouted the law. It subsidized a crime: the selling of stolen merchandise. Then it published a misleading, whitewashed account of the seller’s actions meant to make it look as though he was not acting with criminal intent. It published this account in order to disguise its own culpability in the matter. From my own reporting,...

Did you know that President Obama is considering banning fishing in America? That and other assertions in New Left Media’s latest video: On Thursday, April 15, Tea Partiers from around the country gathered in the nation’s capital to protest what they perceived to be egregious increases in taxation under the Obama administration, despite taxes having actually been lowered for 98 percent of working Americans. The usual anti-science and nativist rhetoric, and praise of Fox News personalities,...

They say: It was found lost in a bar in Redwood City, camouflaged to look like an iPhone 3GS. We got it. We disassembled it. It’s the real thing, and here are all the details. Whispers have it that Nick Denton paid $10k. [LATER: It turns out it was $5k) And he's not shy, promising the backstory is a corker. The highlights (video): What's new • Front-facing video chat camera • Improved regular back-camera (the lens is quite noticeably larger than the iPhone 3GS) • Camera flash • Micro-SIM...

The NYTimes has a major piece asking why so few women in the Silicon Valley workforce: Tech communities in Silicon Valley and in other hubs — like New York, Austin, Tex., and Boston… — pride themselves on operating as raw meritocracies ready to embrace anyone with a good idea, regardless of education, age or station in life. For women, though, that narrative often unfolds differently. Women own 40 percent of the private businesses in the United States, according to the Center for Women’s...

Fun Protester. Not withstanding this report from the Southern Poverty Law Center finding that rage on the right is expressed as an increase in hate groups, panelists on The Chris Matthews show this weekend suggest that one big element driving the passions of the Tea Party movement is… fun! Joe Klein: It’s fun. I can say as a veteran of the 1960s protests I can say that it’s a lot of fun… The fact is that for people who are threatened, who feel that their government is being...

The NYTimes tells us, Web Coupons Know Lots About You, and They Tell. We redeemed 50 million of them last year. Little did we know: The coupons can, in some cases, be tracked not just to an anonymous shopper but to an identifiable person: a retailer could know that Amy Smith printed a 15 percent-off coupon after searching for appliance discounts at Ebates.com on Friday at 1:30 p.m. and redeemed it later that afternoon at the store. And we thought Google was bad: “We’ve built privacy protections...

Building on Peter’s topic of representation, let’s take a quick look at fair and impartial redistricting. While those of us outside DC have representation, redistricting abuse by both parties distorts democracy… You might remember this Electoral Reform Map by Neil Freeman at FakeIsTheNewReal.org that redivided the United States into 50 bodies of equal size. Longtime reader and commenter DLS points us to a similar kind of map illustrating congressional district reform. Says D: Reconstituting...

From PC World via Boing Boing… Click for full-sized iPad printing hack. BA-DUM CHHH! But seriously folks… Google’s got a proposed scheme for printing from then cloud. You’ll register your “cloud-aware” printer (yet to be produced) with their service or your “legacy printer” through your computer. Sounds like a good idea to me… Discussion via techmeme. Continue the conversation @jwindish #TMVcomments, at my Public Notebook where comment are...