In 1979, the worlds's worst oil spillage occurred as a result of a marine blow-out beneath the drilling rig Ixtoc 1 in the Gulf of Mexico.

CNN: Tuesday,

Will Honeybourne, a First Reserve managing director in Houston who helped spearhead the deal--and beat out rival buyout shop Candover--notes that Abbot's rig-building and operating subsidiaries Bentec and KCA Deutag are particularly strong in Russia, West Africa, the Middle East and Libya.

FORBES: First Reserve Bets On Abbot

Fresh off unveiling its BlackBerry 10 operating system and two new phones, the company tried to keep its badly needed momentum going with a 30-second spot in which a guy uses the new BlackBerry Z10 to set himself on fire, grow elephant legs and magically turn an out-of-control big rig into an exploding pile of rubber duckies.

CNN: Breaking down the Super Bowl tech ads

But the cost will be steep: Wal-Mart's customers aren't the kind of big spenders who will splash out for a high-margin gaming rig.

FORBES: Dell Goes Direct To Wal-Mart

They buy boats that look as if they were extruded from the same hunk of plastic and gather at events like Antigua Sailing Week to brag about how they've cut a few pounds out of their rig by switching to carbon-fiber composites from aluminum.

FORBES: Two Sheets to the Wind

Before she ruled, the judge heard an apology from a BP executive and emotional testimony from relatives of the 11 workers who died when BP's blown-out Macondo well triggered an explosion on the rig and started the spill.

NPR: Judge OKs $4B BP Oil Spill Criminal Settlement

British oil company BP, one of the firms operating the rig, has not been able to activate a device known as a blow-out preventer, designed to stop oil flow in an emergency.

BBC: Growing concerns over Gulf of Mexico oil leak

AMD's latest should be available right now for an undisclosed price, but we'd wait for a few hands-on opinions before rushing out and skipping over a dedicated GPU in your next rig.

ENGADGET: AMD integrates ATI Radeon X1250 into Vista-certified 690 chipset

You could build your very own rig, piece-by-piece, or you could buy one of the many, many pre-fab options out there (or some mixture of the two, of course).

ENGADGET: Hands-on with Razer's Edge, a $999 gaming tablet / home console

Let Democrats have what they want, in a decade when it has brought us to Soviet Union Style growth rates and people cannot figure out what went wrong THEN we can help them understand the difference between real growth and this regulatory rig-a-morel that is going on.

FORBES: The Fiscal Cliff For Dummies, Part 2: The Economic Implications Of Extending The Bush Tax Cuts