You may have seen this elsewhere, but just in case, BP today announced Nov. 15 that it’s “agreed with the United States government, subject to court approval, to resolve all federal criminal charges and all claims by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against the company stemming from the Deepwater Horizon accident, oil spill, and response.”

Just about the time I have let myself be convinced by all the chatter among the talking heads that the print media (aka, "dead tree ware") really are dead, along comes a story that reminds me of why reading the papers is still a worthwhile exercise.

I really am sticking to my policy of not playing the shoulda, woulda, coulda game over the Situation in the Gulf. Believe me, if I had anything close to a workable solution that would stop the flow in the next half hour, I'd share it. But earlier today, I did come across a couple of interesting takes on this Situation that I think may have some implications beyond just the current mess.

My dad always said that if you couldn't help solve a problem, the least you could do was get out of the way of the people who were working on it. That's why I have deliberately not given voice to my feelings, opinions, off-the-cuff comments and snotty remarks about The Situation in the Gulf of Mexico. I'm sure if BP could have fixed it by now, they would have.

However, a couple of pieces of email have crossed my desk today regarding The Situation that I thought I'd share.

Got the following short email from our columnist and process control guru, Bela Liptak this morning. If you read our pages regularly, you know that Bela has some pretty definite opinions on the way things ought to be in process manufacturing. Here is the drawing he sent of how the Deepwater Horizon oil rig should have been designed.