Awesome.

Awesome. Simply Awesome. H/T Gambit.

Transocean Safety Rap

Story and video here. Filmed on the Deepwater Horizon in 2009.

"They're all dead"

H/T AZ.

Tulane Law School to begin wholesale grade inflation

Tulane will now tack on 0.3 to every law school student's GPA. Apparently, too many recent grads are unemployed, so law schools across the nation feel like they have to give their students a helping hand. Above the Law has the details.

At least they're not stealing shoes anymore...

[Insert obligatory Cowen and Tulane Engineering comment here; I'll take your suggestions in the comments]

P.E. Exam Application Status

Sorry the posting has fallen off a bit. I've still got a lot of studying to do.

My application to LAPELS is now complete and it's now "being reviewed by the committee. It takes 6-8 weeks, allegedly. NCEES registration starts on July 6th (Tuesday), but stays open until September. Right now, I'm waiting on LAPELS to give me the OK to register to take the exam. I'm playing a waiting game...

In the meantime, more studying. I'm going through machine design and I'm very glad I still have my old textbooks. Shigley's is fabulous. I've also borrowed Machinery Handbook from a coworker and I've found it really comes in handy. I wish I had bought that instead of Rourke's. It's much easier to find what I need in Machinery Handbook than Rourke's.

After all the machine design problems I've worked, I think I'll stick with either Thermofluids or HVAC for the afternoon section.

Treme vs. After the Catch

First off: Pistolette reviews Treme. Go read it.

I've been watching Treme and it definitely has its moments, but all in all, I'm finding that quite a few born-and-bred locals, including myself, are lukewarm about it.

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Contrast Treme's depiction of New Orleans with Deadliest Catch's "After the Catch". Let's be honest, while Treme is an artistic piece put together by HBO's premier 'auteur', After the Catch is a way for Discovery to milk a few more nickels out of one of the top products, but the results have been fantastic.

For those of you that don't know, this year's ATC is being filmed at the Blue Nile here in New Orleans. Here are some of the funny moments from ATC so far:
* Phil's sons (and all the other captains, as well) talk about New Orleans being the perfect fisherman's town ("The bars! They never close!").
* As opposed to Treme, which beats you over the head with New Orleans culture, ATC just sort of presents it and there it is, like the gumbo cooking segment.
* They had a Chalmatian shrimper on the show and he took Sig and Keith shrimping and, while they didn't catch a thing, they had a blast. What was amazing is Sig, totally unscripted BTW, was blow away by the fact that these fisherman have their house right on the water with the boat tied up by the back and go out shrimping for these big hauls in only 10 or so feet of water. Sig's feeling was, 'that's the life. What have I been doing wrong all these year?' {The obvious, 'Wow, it would be a shame if we lost this' was left for the audience to figure out instead of throwing the brick at them.}

* The same Chalmatian shrimper told the Deadliest Catch captains about surviving Katrina and about how being fishermen is a genetic disorder. While Treme is depicting New Orleanians as running around fucking everyone except who they're supposed to ("Do what you wanna...") with their "defective work ethic", here you have ATC presenting a real, heroic portraits of South Louisianians to Middle America in a way you can honestly be proud of. The guys from the Time Bandit praising Louisiana shrimpers is the best defense against bullshit like this: Michael Savage Calls the Gulf Oil Spill Victims Welfare Deadbeats.

Video of the Deadliest Catch captains being interviewed about their time along the Gulf Coast:
CNN Video

NOTE- Some minor edits after posting.