<\/strong>Why don’t you tell me how your\u00c2\u00a0happy-talk<\/em> can stop the spewing oil in the Gulf? Tell me how being a team player<\/em> would help or how\u00c2\u00a0spin and PR<\/em> will. Show me how the invisible hand<\/em> will fix the glop and the death. Tell me how\u00c2\u00a0innovation that flows from unfettered profit<\/em> can shut off the spigot. And tell me how thugs keeping the press away<\/em> contributes.<\/p>\n No…<\/p>\n Happy-talk doesn’t help when you’ve got a hard problem to solve. Being a team player doesn’t help when you’ve got a hard problem to solve\u00ef\u00bb\u00bf. Spin and PR and lies don’t help when you’ve got a hard problem to solve. Blind faith in the invisible hand doesn’t help when you’ve got a hard problem to solve\u00ef\u00bb\u00bf. Innovation that derives from greed doesn’t help when you’ve got a hard problem to solve\u00ef\u00bb\u00bf. And finally covering up the problem by intimidating the press doesn’t help when you’ve got a hard problem to solve.<\/p>\n When you have a hard problem to solve, you need more than good ol’ boys with firm handshakes and cowboy attitudes.<\/p>\n <\/strong>And boy do the BP guys have a hard problem to solve. They\u00c2\u00a0knew it before it blew<\/a> up.\u00c2\u00a0But\u00c2\u00a0they took off their engineering hats<\/a>\u00ef\u00bb\u00bf and took shortcuts<\/a> because time was money and money is king<\/a> and … you know … bad things don’t happen in the land of happy-talk and free markets and captured federal regulators<\/a>, so who needs good contingency plans<\/a>.<\/p>\n They took off their engineering hats and put on their management hats, and … kaboom … now their bad problem has become a calamity.<\/p>\n It’s the same calamity, is just so happens, that Transocean (nee Sonat)<\/a> had with Ixtoc<\/a> 31 years ago when they poked into the earth and blew up a well and weren’t able to top hat it or top kill it or junk shot it or do anything to stop the spew for 290 days. For years, a trip to the beach meant taking WD40 with you to get the goo off your feet, and heaven help you if it got in your hair.<\/p>\n BP has the same problem:\u00c2\u00a0same problem, same company owning the rig, same inadequate backup plans.<\/a> The same problem … um … except that this one is a mile under the sea. And their engineering hats lay crumpled on the floor!<\/em><\/p>\n I know, I know. I’m a cynic and it gets tiresome. But you know when you’re playing with fire, you really ought to consider that\u00c2\u00a0the sky really could fall<\/a>. BP really ought to have had realistic backup plans that were based on more than cut & paste<\/a>. They didn’t. \u00c2\u00a0(Really:\u00c2\u00a0Walruses\u00c2\u00a0in the Gulf<\/a>!?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A hard problem to solve. Why don’t you tell me how your\u00c2\u00a0happy-talk can stop the spewing oil in the Gulf? Tell me how being a team player would help or how\u00c2\u00a0spin and PR will. Show me how the invisible hand will fix the glop and the death. Tell me how\u00c2\u00a0innovation that flows from unfettered profit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":477,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions\/477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Engineering hats.<\/h3>\n