[jolepp]

The offshore drilling firm responsible for running the Deepwater Horizon rig has given its top executives bonuses for its "best year" for safety.

BBC News - Transocean gives bonuses after Gulf of Mexico BP spill

[shooz]

This safety bonus was based on the FACT that no CEO stubbed a toe in their office, and only three paper cuts were reported.
This was a 50% improvement over the previous year.

[Wheatfield]

"The company's annual report acknowledges the explosion on the rig, but goes on to say that it exceeded internal safety targets"

If you set the bar low enough, success is guaranteed.

[ihasa]

"Notwithstanding the tragic loss of life in the Gulf of Mexico, we achieved an exemplary statistical safety record as measured by our total recordable incident rate and total potential severity rate," the report says

Makes you wonder what a really BAD year would be like.

Does this not put some of the Nuclear Power worries into perspective?

[Parallax]

If you set the bar low enough, success is guaranteed.

Unfortunately, that philosophy is often applied to a broad range of endeavors, including education.

[normhead]

Unfortunately, that philosophy is often applied to a broad range of endeavors, including education.

Damn, that was a low blow. I have to say though, in my years as a teacher, I never received a bonus. There were no bonuses to be had. One teacher of the year award for 25,000 teachers, and no cash with it. I actually coached basketball, tennis and football for 25 for years, for free. Paid to get my kids to their Tennis matches with my own car and gas. It's not like you were going to pay me more for doing a great job. I mean, I did a great job anyway, but not for some stinking bonus. That's what you call integrity. Teachers have to have it. In industry it's a weakness. Find some other whipping boys for you biased attitudes.

Comparing teachers and the education system to CEOs with bonuses when their company fails miserably falls into the category of uninformed beyond belief. Sometimes, it's better to just stop before you say something really dumb.

[Parallax]

...........Sometimes, it's better to just stop before you say something really dumb.

You mean like writing a full paragraph chewing my ass for blaming teachers for the crappy education kids are getting, when I said no such thing?

---

Last edited by Parallax; 04-03-2011 at 07:18 PM.

[Ratmagiclady]

Wow, what a racket.

[mikemike]

Transocean is HQed in a landlocked country even though they conduct their risky business on the high seas. The Swiss don't have very strong maritime pollution laws.

Likewise, the "Marine Preservation Association" the parent corporation of the "Marine Spill Response Corporation" which owns all the oil spill equipment is HQed in the landlocked desert state without any oil, Arizona. Guess what kind of laws are in place regarding marine oil spills, deepwater drilling, or oil spills in general in AZ... None.

RE whether or not Transocean's safety last year was good or not, BP will be found responsible for the operations and everything that happened on that ship. Leasing a drill rig like that is almost like leasing a car, the dealer (Transocean) is responsible for it until the leasee (BP) takes delivery while it is being operated by the leasee, the leasor will have little liability if the leasee was not using it properly. People I have spoken to in the industry with Shell, Chevron, and Exxon say that BP and Anadarko are going to be the ones who take the thrashing. BP will probably take the most and still be able to survive but they will throw Anadarko under the bus as much as they possibly can and Anadarko will probably die from it since they are so much smaller.

[normhead]

Unfortunately, that philosophy is often applied to a broad range of endeavors, including education.

There's what you said dude. You compared the education system to companies that dangerously underfund their safety preparedness. What warped viewpoint would enable a person to do such a thing. Now you improved that by mentioning the "crappy education system." "Crappy" isn't a constructive criticism, it's a pejorative adjective. It doesn't define knowledge or analysis, it defines lack of respect. You obviously have some issues here, I suggest therapy. Not only that it has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Apparently your hate for the system is so strong you have to inject it in to topics that it has nothing to do with. My condolences.

[Parallax]

There's what you said dude. You compared the education system to companies that dangerously underfund their safety preparedness. What warped viewpoint would enable a person to do such a thing? Now you've improved that by mentioning the "crappy education system." "Crappy" isn't a constructive criticism, it's a pejorative adjective. It doesn't define knowledge or analysis, it defines lack of respect. You obviously have some issues here, I suggest therapy. Not only that, it has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Apparently your hate for the system is so strong you have to inject it in to topics that it has nothing to do with. My condolences.

Once again, I said nothing about teachers. Teachers do not allocate their own budgets. Teachers do not dictate curricula. Teachers do not determine class size. Teachers have virtually no control anymore where disruptive/problem students are concerned. Teachers have to play the hand they're dealt.
In short, my issue is with the (crappy) education system, not the teachers.

[ihasa]

Slightly off topic for this thread, but related to Deepwater Horizon:

Here are some other things you surely recall. Crude oil from the crippled well was going to travel south to the tip of Florida and smother the reefs around the Keys. Thereafter, it would curl around to the east coast of the state and catch the Gulf Stream into the Atlantic Ocean. If enough of it spewed from those broken pipes under the sea, who was to say it wouldn't reach Cornwall and become Britain's new Torrey Canyon? ...As it shifted east, the oil would foul not just wetlands, but also beaches. Alabama, Mississippi and Florida were all in the target zone.

One year later something surprising and shocking – and ultimately reassuring – emerges. Little of what they said was going to happen actually did. The wetlands, in all their beauty, remain. The beaches in all four impacted states are all open to the public again. The fisheries that were closed at the peak of the crisis are all reopened for this spring's harvests and, according to the US government at least, is entirely safe to eat. Indeed, because of the closure of the fisheries last year, fish stocks this year appear to be at record levels.

Ed Owens, with his company Polaris Applied Science, has been contracted by the federal government and BP to conduct an assessment of the damage to the wetlands and Louisiana beaches, and recommend actions to return them to perfect health. "What we can say now with legitimacy is exactly how much heavily oiled shoreline there is and it won't be a BP number and it's a number that can't be debated," he said. And that number is 300 acres.

"The political hysteria was never fact-checked against the science," he explained. "Our data was freely available on the web, but no one was looking".

Perhaps one of the most curious, not to say shocking, episodes of the spill was the push made by the Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, in partnership with Bill Nungesser, the president of Plaquemines Parish, which at the time seemed at risk of the most peril from any oil reaching shore, for the construction of a line of sand barriers – or berms – at sea that they envisaged more or less encircling the entire Mississippi mouth area and keeping the oil out.

It seemed mad to BP and mad to many scientists, because to complete them would have taken years at a cost of at least a billion dollars. But at a meeting on Grand Isle last May, Jindal and Nungesser managed to persuade President Obama that the berm construction was vital to the survival of the state.

Approval for 40 miles of the sand barriers was given and a small portion of that was eventually built. According to Owens, it is already sinking back into the sea.

Deepwater Horizon: This was no Armageddon - Environment - The Independent

[Ratmagiclady]

Abominable. And they wonder where the money goes. To feed the pockets of the poisoners and polluters and profiteers.

[jolepp]

The good news is that the damage was much less than one would have expected from the huge amount (14x Exxon Valdez) that was spilled (?).

[Ratmagiclady]

The good news is that the damage was much less than one would have expected from the huge amount (14x Exxon Valdez) that was spilled (?).

Well, so it is claimed, at least... But by whom....