Swamp Your Own City with BP's Oil Slick

Readers far and wide -- North, East, and West -- may find it hard to imagine the enormous size of the BP river of oil that is sloshing toward us in Pensacola. Not to worry! Google has an app for that, too.

Via Atlantic Magazine editor James Fallows: "If You Think You Have a Sense of the Oil Spill's Scale":

Try this utility from Paul Rademacher's site, which overlays a scaled representation of the Deepwater Horizon spill onto a Google Earth view of any city you choose.

Below, you'll see an idea of what the BP oil slick would look like if it were bearing down on Reginald Dogan's beloved Chicago or the boyhood campus in Boston where Mark O'Brien used to dodge Father McCarthy. (Carl Wernicke doesn't need this; he's living it.)

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To try it yourself for the city of your choice (a harmless, free plug-in is required) --

CLICK HERE