It’s awful humbling, even embarrassing, when for all our hyped-up 21st century technology (twitter! Wired! Foursquare! iPad!) we find ourselves fighting what is now officially being called “the greatest environmental disaster in US history” (with months of leakage go, perhaps) with…hair and golf balls.

Still, it’s a little bit inspiring that communities across the US have been sending millions of pounds of oil-absorbing hair, including now some of my own, to shield our fragile coasts from the endless wreckage we’ve wrought.