I quit eating sugary cereal for breakfast when I was a kid. But I can't escape it in the morning news. Today's Pollyanna headline declares Majority of BP Spill Dealt With. So we little people don't need to worry our heads about it and can go back to eating Bubba Gump shrimp.

I'd sure like to have a word with the NOAA scientists who created the graph for that article. It shows only 26% of the oil 'still at sea' and about 75% 'Dealt With.' But there are 2 odd categories in their graph: evaporated or dissolved 25%, dispersed naturally 16%. Since I don't know how much oil evaporated, I'll just go with dissolved. Assuming the oil did somehow dissolve, it dissolved in the Gulf of Mexico and that would make it 'still at sea,' no? It's still in the water whether you can see it or not. Perhaps these scientists could try dissolving some table salt in a glass of water. I think they would find that the salt had not disappeared - my gosh, the salt is invisible but still in the water! Think of that. So let's include that 25% of the oil as 'still at sea.' The next category of oil dispersed naturally. Assuming that dispersed naturally means that aliens didn't suck the oil off the planet, then the oil dispersed where? Oh, it dispersed into the Gulf of Mexico. So we need to include another 16% as 'still at sea.'

Our new total then is 26 + 25 + 16 = 67. A bit of mathematics has shown us that about two-thirds of the oil is still in the Gulf and maybe one-third can be considered 'Dealt With' as described in the NOAA chart. If you're a government 'scientist' you can redefine your terms and declare that 75% = 33%. Who new that the BP oil disaster would lead to the exciting innovation of the new New Math?