To help people make up their minds about Tom Shales’s complaints about Christiane Amanpour’s first show as the anchor of Meet the Press, here are their relative accomplishments from their Wikipedia entries:

Tom Shales has worked in Elgin, Illinois and Washington, DC.

Shales worked as Entertainment Editor at the Washington Examiner from 1968-1971. He joined the Washington Post as a writer in the Style section in 1972, was named chief television critic in July 1977, and was appointed TV Editor in June 1979. The Washington Post Writers Group has syndicated his column since 1979…

During 1998-1999, Shales was a frequent film critic for Morning Edition on National Public Radio. He was twice a guest co-host on the television show Roger Ebert & the Movies after the death of Gene Siskel…

Shales received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1988, for his work at the Washington Post…

His latest book is Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live. New York: Little, Brown and Co. 2002

Christiane Amanpour, CBE has reported from “Iraq, Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Somalia, Rwanda, the Balkans and the United States during Hurricane Katrina.”

Honors

Her body of work has earned an inaugural Television Academy Honor; nine News and Documentary Emmys; four George Foster Peabody Awards; two George Polk Awards; three duPont-Columbia Awards; the Courage in Journalism Award; an Edward R. Murrow award and other major journalism awards – as well as honorary degrees from The American University of Paris, Georgetown University, New York University, Smith College, Emory University and the University of Michigan.

In 2007, Amanpour was made a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE), by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for her “highly distinguished, innovative contribution” to the field of journalism…

Shales has spent decades watching television for the Style section of the Washington Post while Amanpour has seen more more wars than the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He talks to the judges on American Idol, while she interviews world leaders.

McClatchy reports on the latest solution for the Well from Hell: BP begins ‘static kill’ of Deepwater Horizon well

MIAMI — BP on Tuesday finally began slowly strangling its blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, injecting heavy drilling mud slowly but steadily into the well in a plan to drive the crude back into the deep rock formations from which it first surged more than three months ago.

The company and the Obama administrations cautioned it would take another step and a week or more to officially pronounce the monstrous gusher dead, but a successful “hydrostatic kill” operation would drive one huge nail in the coffin. Early on, the signs from a mile below the Gulf’s surface were encouraging. BP said it began the process, which injects a dense “drilling mud” tipping the scales at 13.2 pounds a gallon to muscle oil and gas back down its ancient reservoir, around 4 p.m. Eastern Time after what BP Vice President Kent Wells called some “text book” tests.
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For some reason the Mobile Press-Register decided to do some fact-checking on the “oil just evaporated”. and sent people out to same the water along the Alabama coast.

Ben Raines, the paper’s environmental reporter, covers the early results – Tests suggest oil dispersant washing up on Alabama beaches

The stained, brown water seen washing up in pockets along Alabama beaches for the last two weeks appears to contain the dispersant widely used on oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill, according to a preliminary analysis.

The Press-Register collected samples from multiple locations along the Fort Morgan peninsula during the last several weeks and provided them to Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University chemist.

While heavy oil sheen was visible in the areas where the material was collected, little if any oil was found to be present in the samples, said Overton, who is analyzing oil samples for the federal government.

“We didn’t see oil in the analysis we do, but I passed some of these water samples to a colleague who does fluorescence analysis,” Overton said. “We saw some preliminary indications that there was a dispersant signal in the sample.”

Fluorescence analysis provides ultra-fine detail and can measure chemicals to the parts per billion level or better. Overton said it was too soon to say definitively that the material in the samples was the Corexit dispersant, but the signal was similar to a Corexit sample.

Later in the article is another piece of bad news:

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From Weather Underground

Cinco Bayou – Pocahontas Dr., Fort Walton Beach, Florida (PWS)
Updated: 11:00 AM CDT on August 3, 2010
Partly Cloudy
90.3 °F [32.4 °C]
Partly Cloudy
Humidity: 75%
Dew Point: 81 °F
Wind: 0.0 mph
Wind Gust: 2.0 mph
Pressure: 30.05 in (Falling)
Heat Index: 110 °F [43.3 °C]
Visibility: 10.0 miles
UV: 10 out of 16
Pollen: 3.90 out of 12
Clouds:
Few 15000 ft
(Above Ground Level)
Elevation: 16 ft

Excessive heat warning in effect from noon today to 6 PM CDT this evening…

Position: 15.8N 53.8W [ 4 PM CDT 2100 UTC].
Movement: West-Northwest [285°] near 35 mph [56 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 40 mph [65 kph].
Wind Gusts: 50 mph [80 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 35 miles [ 55 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1006 mb.

It is about 540 miles [ 865 km] East of the Lesser Antilles.

Colin seems to be degenerating. A small storm, it appears to be shedding its support in a burst of speed.

Update: The National Hurricane Center has given up on Colin which is now a low pressure trough.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]