It's Friday Beaver?

No Thought I'd throw a couple of pussies at you for a change up.

Yesterday's not asked question was about the toxicity of the drilling mud. come to find out that at one time it contained asbestos. (Thanks Tim) The only reason I can think that they would use asbestos would be that it is chemical resistant and would provide increased viscosity.

Today's question being tied to the latter and as well not asked. At least I haven't heard this question asked as of yet would be: What are the pressure limits of the drilling casings (pipes) of the Deepwater drilling rig? I know that it has been reported that the maximum flow rate from the leak is 13,000psi and you would assume that the max would be massively higher as a safety factor. I've scanned the web for an answer with no luck. I bring this up because Bill Nye our notorious science guy has stated that BP will be using some 400 tons of force to try and stop the leak. Much like trying to stop the flow of a fire hose with a bigger fire hose I question the feasibility. As we know as any pressures put inside the pipe are just being blown out the top of the BOP. We see the constant video of the plume hour after hour as yet more and bigger drifting plumes are discovered headed towards shore.

I'll have a bit more later and of course the bank failures.

Update: One of the primary ingredients in the drilling mud is propylene glycol which has been discussed a few times before. It's not super toxic in fact if you read labels you'll find it in cheap ice cream (sorry make mine Bryers) but in digging through the old gray matter I remembered doing a spill of pure propylene glycol. The stuff has unusual properties. It's designed to lower the freezing point. It is after all a type of alcohol. It also very slippery and prevents ice from sticking to the surfaces of aircraft. Now when the complete mixture is used on the oil it has one slight drawback. An absorbent pad will not soak up propylene glycol. I know this for a fact because I tried using the pads. I also found out that the dispersants that BP is using were the exact same ones they used some 20 years ago and they didn't work very well then. So now we have four toxic things in the ocean from this spill. There's the oil the dispersant the oil and dispersant combined ( it just changes oil to a smaller size) and the drilling mud.
Lastly consider that there has never been this amount of a chemical or oil or combination there of in our entire history dumped in the ocean. Entirely new industries may spring up from this because what else can they do?

Bank Failures: Five more banks beat it this week 3 in FL. 1 in CA. and 1 in NV. making 76 so far this year.