Taylor Jones, Politicalcartoons.com This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

On the fourth of May Adam Sharp of Energy and Capitol saw BP as a buying opportunity. By the first of June he had done an about face. Three weeks ago I wrote an article titled, “Hold Your Nose and Buy BP Stock.” That made writing this piece a bit… awkward. But I’m not one to shy away from mistakes. It was a bad call. That said, I sold my BP shares for an 8% loss a few days later (and...

Some details are coming out now via Richard Wolffe, writing on The Daily Beast, about what President Barack Obama knew about the oil spill, when he knew it — and why the administration is so angry at Democratic strategist and Clinton ally James Carville. In a nutshell: the administration knew in April that it had a major catastrophe to deal with — which is going to raise a lot of questions about...

Bravo Gizmodo: In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer. Even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists. The legal justification...

Patrick Corrigan, The Toronto Star This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

You’ve likely had a good dog say a blue tick, or a cat who you gladly wore as a nightcap, or any pet you cared for who was either suddenly killed, or spiraled down in old age. If/ when the time came to ‘put the child down’, most all of us pre-grieved and grieved after, even though the spirit of the creature, the furry relative’s spirit, remained nearby somehow for many. What takes us...

Amid reports as yet unverified that Britbitch Petroleum has attempted to keep journalists and photographers from covering its egregious damage to human beings, land, water and creatures –by alledgedly threatening to arrest them if they try to enter or fly over the sticken land… photos are coming out anyway. I memorialized at TMV last week the Deepwater Eleven, the 11 family men who lost their lives...

If Rupert Murdoch’s announcement that he plans to withdraw his news content from Google’s index is any indication, the value of the link is still a topic of debate. Proponents of the “economy of the link” who consider the hyperlink to be the ultimate form of flattery — from which revenue will flow — argue that the aggregators, search engines, and blogs send firehoses of traffic...

If you’re a fan of the movie Apollo 13 — starring Tom Hanks, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris, et. al. — you’ll likely recall the scene where one of the characters (either Harris’ or Sinise’s character, I can’t remember which) pulls a NASA team together, hurls an array of stuff across a table, tells them that this stuff is what’s aboard Apollo 13 and what they have to work...

Is there hope for guarded — very very guarded — optimism that perhaps at least part of the Gulf oil spill flow can be stemmed? The big news is that BP has succeeded in cutting the riser pipe:

While the Oil Gushes by Tina Dupuy The term “deep water” usually means you’re in trouble and “horizon” is what lies ahead. So the ill-fated drilling rig Deepwater Horizon is aptly named. Doom has arrived on our shores and our prospects are tacky with tar balls. The geyser of crude, a mile down in the Gulf of Mexico, exposed America for what it is: bent over a barrel of oil. The party that defiantly...

In London he told The Guardian that the new interface is not transparently intuitive. It’s inherently confusing and has to be learned: “There were really a lot of usability problems in this first-generation of iPad applications. It’s often quite difficult for people to discover what they have to do because the options are not very visible. I have to say of both the device itself and the content,...

There are plenty of people, corporations and organizations to blame for the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico but if you want to see one of them go look in the mirror. We are the ones who are addicted to oil. David Strahn: It is easy to understand American hostility to BP, but it is fundamentally misplaced. Never mind that Transocean and Halliburton were also involved and it seems there is plenty of blame...

An excerpt of Nicholas Carr’s new book is featured in the June Wired. In it Carr says the Internet “is turning us into shallower thinkers, literally changing the structure of our brain.” A shallow neuroscience explanation: The depth of our intelligence hinges on our ability to transfer information from working memory, the scratch pad of consciousness, to long-term memory, the mind’s filing...

According to a new survey [pdf]. Still, we’re happy with the service. Ars Technica: Clearly, broadband is the business to be in—a trade in which most of your customers have only a vague idea what they’re actually getting and don’t necessarily think you should always give it to them. But whatever it is, they like it just fine, thanks. These reported plateaus of technological savvy seem to...

AT&T’s $30 “unlimited” smartphone data plans are going away (though if you’re on it you’re grandfathered in and if you want it you can still get it). Starting June 7 pricing is either a $15 per month “DataPlus” plan for 200MB ($15 for each additional 200MB) or $25 for a “DataPro” 2GB plan ($10 for each additional GB). You can switch on the fly, including...

In the 90′s I believed in multitasking. I was wrong. The human capacity for multitasking is a myth. In the aughts I believed in links — still do. Maybe I’m wrong again. Nick Carr thinks so: Links are wonderful conveniences, as we all know (from clicking on them compulsively day in and day out). But they’re also distractions. Sometimes, they’re big distractions – we click on...

The heated Android competition with Apple over the iPhone isn’t stopping the search giant from favoring Macs as it ditches Windows over security concerns. FT reports: “We’re not doing any more Windows. It is a security effort,” said one Google employee. “Many people have been moved away from [Windows] PCs, mostly towards Mac OS, following the China hacking attacks,” said another. New hires are...

It is said the first news accounts are the rough drafts of history. It is also promoted that history is a guide to prevent making the same mistake over and over again. If that’s the case, we learned nothing, saw nothing and did nothing to prevent the largest oil spill in our nation’s history that is fast approaching the world’s greatest accidental man-made environmental and economic disaster. We’re...

Carol Browner, Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy in the Obama Administration, says the Gulf Oil spill now qualifies as the worst environmental disaster in American history: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy She says there will be a full investigation: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy And...

Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) had a good idea to slow or stop the Gulf Coast oil spill from reaching shore. Build artificial barrier islands, he told the federal government. He wanted the Army Corps of Engineers to dredge the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River to strengthen and connect the existing barrier islands. The $350 million plan, which Jindal demanded be paid for by BP Oil, would establish an 80–85...

Has the effort to plug the Gulf oil spill via the “top kill” method failed? Some news stories coming out suggest that, at best, the effort hasn’t succeeded yet — or that at this stage it may have actually flopped. What does it mean? A drip-drip-drip — or, rather, a gush-gush-gush — of bad news as the oil continues to spew, ruining the ocean, killing off fish and wildlife,...

Brian Fairrington, Cagle Cartoons This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

We are all aware of ecological Armageddon going on in the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the Deepwater Horizon disaster but Dave Cohen reminds us that the Gulf was already in trouble. The oil leak on the Mississippi Canyon seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico proceeds apace. It is not clear that recent actions have succeeded in plugging the leak. The widely dispersed petroleum is a great disaster, but I get the distinct...

Is it possible that the explanation for the incredible irrationality and incompetence shown by world political and business leaders comes down to a usually dormant piece of DNA? For Switzerland’s Nachrichten newspaper, Patrik Etschmayer writes in part: Presumably like me, you my dear reader have the occasional sneaking, creepy feeling that a good portion of humanity is more or less crazy. Indeed –...