Top Killed?

As of about an hour ago, BP is claiming to have stanched the escape of oil from the well in the Gulf of Mexico, using a mixture of drilling mud, golf balls and shredded tires.

HOUSTON — By injecting solid objects overnight as well as heavy drilling fluid into the stricken well leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico, engineers appeared to have stemmed the flow of oil, Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, the leader of the government effort, said on Friday morning. But he stressed that the next 12 to 18 hours would be “very critical” in permanently stanching what is already the worst oil spill in United States history.

As that passage makes clear, this is not absolutely the end, but I am hopeful.

While the worsening of the disaster may be coming to a close, the actual size and impact is still unknown, as are future repercussions. Unsurprisingly, sensing the possibility of blood in the water more intensely than oil, Republicans are screaming bloody murder about the moratorium barring new drilling. "Drill, Baby, Drill" is still in vogue in some quarters.

Followup: here's a mapplet that overlays the outline of the spill on your location- it's quicker than the one I posted a while back, and automatically recognized where I was. I do wish that people who design things like this would note the date that the template is based on.