Same as it Ever Was ……… Same as it Ever Was ……… Same as it Ever Was ……… Same as it Ever Was ……… Same as it Ever Was ………

When Boeing rolled out is 777, it decided that the best way to maximize profits was to recruit potential competitors to be risk sharing partners to minimize its upfront costs.

The net result was significant delays and a loss of technical know-how, and now, both Boeing and Airbus are looking to bring these capabilities, because it turns out that they outsourced their profits as well:

The world’s largest plane makers are testing a seemingly simple formula to smooth production, cut costs and fatten profits: Make more of the parts that go into their jets themselves.

In the wake of United Technologies Corp.’s proposed $23 billion deal to buy Rockwell Collins Inc., that push is taking on more urgency. The deal is the latest in a round of consolidation among the world’s biggest suppliers of aviation parts—something Boeing Co. and European rival Airbus SE have eyed warily.

Earlier this week, Boeing said it might cancel some of its parts contracts if the deal undermines competition further in the aerospace supply chain. Airbus had previously expressed its skepticism over it.

Worried about getting squeezed by the consolidation, Boeing and Airbus have moved to protect themselves by building more of their parts in-house. This month, Boeing will start construction of a new production facility in Sheffield, England, that will make some of its own actuation equipment—motors that help move a wing’s flaps. Airbus, meanwhile, is planning to build some of its own nacelles, the metal casings that house a plane’s engines. United Technologies is one of the world’s largest nacelle suppliers.

………
Boeing decided two years ago to make some of its own nacelles after years of buying them. In July, the company also said it is planning to develop and build some aircraft electronics, a market dominated by companies such as Rockwell Collins and Honeywell International Inc.

The wings for a revamped version of Boeing’s new 777 jetliner also will be built at a new plant near Seattle rather bought from a supplier. Boeing bought the wings from a supplier for its last big project, the 787 Dreamliner.
………
Bringing production in-house helps level the playing field.

Those parts makers have also traditionally been able to suck out more profit for their components than plane makers like Boeing and Airbus can extract for selling whole aircraft. Profit margins for plane and engine makers have averaged 9% over the past two years, compared with 14% for so-called “tier one” suppliers such as United Technologies and Rockwell Collins, which make finished parts directly for plane makers. Margins come in at 17% for tier 2 suppliers, which provide smaller components for those parts, according to Boston Consulting Group.

This is not a surprise.

The idea that drove the outsourcing of critical technologies for the 787 was that Boeing could be more profitable and efficient by doing and knowing as little as is possible about the underlying business.

This is classic MBA/High Finance type thinking, and MBA/High Finance type thinking unmoored from the underlying business has ALWAYS been a recipe for dismal failure.

9/11 Thoughts

It’s the 16th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

My only deep thought involves citing a work of science fiction.

I would suggest that anyone who hasn’t read Eric Frank Russell’s magnum opus Wasp, in which a man is sent to be an agent provocateur on the planet of an empire at war with Earth, and his mission is not to collect intelligence or do damage, but rather to provoke an overreaction by the authorities:

“Phew!” Mowry raised his eyebrows.

“Finally, let’s consider this auto smash. We know the cause; the survivor was able to tell us before he died. He said the driver lost control at high speed while swiping at a wasp which had flown in through a window and started buzzing around his face.”

“It nearly happened to me once.”

Ignoring that, Wolf went on, “The weight of a wasp is under half an ounce. Compared with a human being its size is minute, its strength negligible. Its sole armament is a tiny syringe holding a drop of irritant, formic acid, and in this case it didn’t even use it. Nevertheless it killed four big men and converted a large, powerful car into a heap of scrap.”

………

“However,” Wolf went on, “the problem becomes less formidable than it looks if we bear in mind that one man can shake a government, two men temporarily can put down an army twenty-seven thousands strong, or one small wasp can slay four comparative giants and destroy their huge machine into the bargain.” He paused, watching the other for effect, continued, “Which means that by scrawling suitable words upon a wall, the right man in the right place at the right time might immobilize an armoured division with the aid of nothing more than a piece of chalk.”

The country has changed, and none of these changes to our benefit, and none of them were really required, but rather the product of mindless over-reaction.

We are those drivers in that doomed car.

In terms of my personal recollections:

  • My first thought when someone said that a plane had hit the WTC, was, “What took so long?”, because I had always seen private planes and helos flying low around the area, and I assumed that it was a private plane accident.
  • When I realized that it was something big, I wondered if this was done by Chileans, since 9/11 is the anniversary of Pinochet’s CIA sponsored coup against Allende.
  • I wondered whether it was another Reichstag fire.

Interestingly enough the memory that sticks with me is the most trivial:  When I was driving home that afternoon, the roads were empty.

When I passed the I-695/I-83 interchange I marveled how little traffic there was and how easy my commute was.

Normally, I would have at least a 5 minute slowdown, but there was NO ONE on the road that day.

Memory is weird.

Linkage

A promo for the Entwhistle documentary Thunderfingers.

Simply amazing:

Heart on the Left, and Wallet on the Right

A new survey by political scientists at Stanford University suggests a mostly straightforward answer — with one glaring twist. The study is the first comprehensive look at the political attitudes of wealthy technologists, whose views have long been misunderstood to the point of caricature by many outside the industry. The findings of the study, which is currently under peer review, were presented last week to the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association.

The survey suggests a novel but paradoxical vision of the future of American politics: Technologists could help push lawmakers, especially Democrats, further to the left on many social and economic issues. But they may also undermine the influence of some of the Democrats’ most stalwart supporters, including labor unions. And they may strive to push Democrats away from regulation on business — including the growing calls for greater rules around the tech industry.

Over all, the study showed that tech entrepreneurs are very liberal — among some of the most left-leaning Democrats you can find. They are overwhelmingly in favor of economic policies that redistribute wealth, including higher taxes on rich people and lots of social services for the poor, including universal health care. Their outlook is cosmopolitan and globalist — they support free trade and more open immigration, and they score low on measures of “racial resentment.”

On most culture-war issues, they are unrepentantly liberal. They oppose restrictions on abortion, favor gay rights, support gun control and oppose the death penalty.

Now for the twist. The study found one area where tech entrepreneurs strongly deviate from Democratic orthodoxy and are closer to most Republicans: They are deeply suspicious of the government’s efforts to regulate business, especially when it comes to labor. They said that it was too difficult for companies to fire people, and that the government should make it easier to do so. They also hope to see the influence of both private and public-sector unions decline.

“You would think that people with enough money to influence the political system would obviously use that influence to increase social and economic inequality in ways that benefit them,” said David Broockman, an assistant professor of political economy at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and a co-author of the study.

“What’s surprising to us,” he continued, “is that you could find this group that says, ‘Actually, our taxes should go up and more money should go to things like universal health care, or that we should do more to protect the environment’ — but at the same time believes that regulations and labor unions are a problem.”

These people are not liberals.  These people are not progressives.  They are poseurs, and to the degree that the liberals and progressives allow them to exert influence over their agendas, they are working to sabotage themselves.

One only has to remember that Adobe, Apple Inc., Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay colluded to depress wages for ordinary workers.

We are living in a new gilded age, then Silicon Valley are some of the most significant “malefactors of great wealth” in the mix.

They in the same disrepute as their predecessors were held by Theodore Roosevelt over 100 years ago.

The Latin for This Is Cui Bono

The US these days seems to be engaged in any number of failed diplomatic and military initiatives, and it is clear that these are failed initiatives.

This raises an obvious question; why we continue on this path?

The answer is that there are powerful elements of our foreign policy and military-industrial complexes that profit from these failures:

Certain themes of critical importance have been constants in my writing here, in some cases for more than a decade. (See the two collections of Alice Miller essays discussed in this post, for many examples.) One of those themes is captured very accurately in the title of an essay from five years ago that I once again draw to your attention: “The Infinite Human Capacity to Deny the Obvious.”

 I was reminded of that article because I recently read still another piece by a well-known “antiwar” writer bemoaning the fact that U.S. policy in Afghanistan has been a miserable failure. Not only that: it’s been a miserable failure for 16 years! (The particular article and the specific writer are of no consequence, but I’ll probably address a few aspects of this category of analysis in the next few weeks, using that and other examples.)

 To call U.S. policy in Afghanistan a failure is, of course, unutterably wrong. Whenever you hear someone peddling this line, you can quickly and safely move along to find an analyst who actually knows what he’s talking about. In my article from five years ago linked above, I discuss Robert Higgs and what I call The Higgs Principle. Here is that Principle, direct from Mr. Higgs himself:

As a general rule for understanding public policies, I insist that there are no persistent “failed” policies. Policies that do not achieve their desired outcomes for the actual powers-that-be are quickly changed. If you want to know why the U.S. policies have been what they have been for the past sixty years, you need only comply with that invaluable rule of inquiry in politics: follow the money.

If U.S. policy in Afghanistan were truly a failure — a failure, that is, to the actual powers-that-be — it would have been changed in five years at the outside, and probably sooner. The fact that it has not changed, certainly not in terms of essentials, means that the powers-that-be are achieving precisely what they want. In addition to the benefits identified by Higgs, there is one additional over-arching goal that the damnable powers-that-be share, and believe in to the core of their putrid, twisted little hearts: that the United States is entitled to and must have geopolitical dominance.

(emphasis original)

I would also argue that maintaining geopolitical dominance, even while ruinous for most of us,  DOES serve the self interest of the elites who benefit from either the cost of maintaining such hegemony, (defense contractors) or those who benefit from the US’s unique status in the world. (Finance, IP, Pharma, etc.)

The question therefore is how to break the power of these elites.

Business as Usual

Yesterday, I wrote about how to check if your records were a part of the Equifax breach.

Today I observe that in the interval between when the credit reporting firm discovered the breach and when the news became public, senior executives dumped stocks in what appears to be an attempt to to trade on insider information:

The sale of nearly $2 million in corporate stock by high-level Equifax executives shortly after the company learned of a major data breach has sparked public outrage that could turn into another hurdle for the credit rating agency.

The sales all occurred before the company publicly reported the breach, a disclosure that quickly sent its stock tumbling. The timing of the sales could attract federal scrutiny, legal experts say, though proving insider trading would be difficult. A company spokeswoman said the executives did not know about the breach when they sold their shares.

………

Equifax, a major consumer credit reporting agency, disclosed Thursday that hackers had obtained sensitive information, including Social Security numbers and dates of birth, for 143 million people. The breach began in May and was discovered by the company on July 29. Shortly afterward, three company executives — Chief Financial Officer John W. Gamble; Joseph M. Loughran III, the president of U.S. information solutions; and Rodolfo O. Ploder, the president of workforce solutions — sold large amounts of their shares of Equifax stock.

Yeah, sure, “The executives did not know about the breach when they sold their shares.”

I believe that.

3rd Time is the Charm

Federal investigators are probing an internal program, dubbed “Hell,” that Uber used to keep tabs on its leading competitor, Lyft, the Wall Street Journal is reporting.

“Uber created fake Lyft customer accounts, tricking Lyft’s system into believing prospective customers were seeking rides in various locations around a city. That allowed Uber to see which Lyft drivers were nearby and what prices they were offering for various routes,” the Journal reports. “The program was also used to glean data on drivers who worked for both companies, and whom Uber could target with cash incentives to get them to leave Lyft.”

Federal investigators are reportedly probing “whether ‘Hell’ constituted unauthorized access of a computer”—which is a federal crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the anti-hacking statute Congress passed in 1986.

………

As the Journal points out, Uber is now facing three separate federal investigations. In addition to the “Hell” investigation, Uber is also facing scrutiny for creating a special version of its app to mislead local officials trying to enforce tax regulations. The third investigation is considering whether Uber violated anti-bribery laws.

I really want to see Travis Kalanick frog marched out of his house by FBI agents in handcuffs.

When Does the Petition About Obama Start?

In response to a petition by over ¼ million people, the Nobel Prize committee has announced that cannot strip Aung Sang Suu Kyi of the prize for her support of genocide against the Rohingya in Myanmar:

The organization that oversees the Nobel Peace Prize said Friday the 1991 prize awarded to Myanmar’s Aung Sang Suu Kyi cannot be revoked.

Olav Njolstad, head of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, said in an email to The Associated Press that neither the will of prize founder Alfred Nobel nor the Nobel Foundation’s rules provide for the possibility of withdrawing the honor from laureates.

“It is not possible to strip a Nobel Peace Prize laureate of his or her award once bestowed,” Njolstad wrote. “None of the prize awarding committees in Stockholm and Oslo has ever considered revoking a prize after it has been awarded.”

An online petition signed by more than 386,000 people on Change.org is calling for Suu Kyi to be stripped of her Peace Prize over the persecution of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority.

Suu Kyi received the award for “her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights” while standing up against military rulers.

………

Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh have reported being ordered to leave Myanmar under the threat of death. They have described large-scale violence allegedly perpetrated by Myanmar troops and Buddhist mobs that included homes being set on fire and bullets sprayed indiscriminately.

Suu Kyi has dismissed the Rohingya crisis as a misinformation campaign.

I’m wondering where the outrage is over a program of targeted assassination by flying robots, including the deaths of thousands of non combatants hasn’t generated a f%$#ing petition.

Seriously, the Nobel prize committee is really the gang that cannot shoot straight.

How to Check the Equifax Hack Without Signing Away Your Rights

Equifax just got hacked, with perhaps as many as 143 million Americans had their data compromised.

In response, Equifax put a link on their site to see if your link had been compromised.

There was one problem though, they make you jump through hoops, and try to get you into their credit monitoring service, which involves signing away your rights to sue.

There’s also related insider trading by senior executives between when the breach was discovered and when it became public, but that’s another post.

I am now going to walk you through how to check if your data was compromised while not signing up for their bogus credit monitoring service and entering binding arbitration hell. (Facebook users, click through for all the pictures)

The joys of American business: They f%$#ed up, and f%$# millions of people, and Equifax’s response is to try to f%$# these people another time.

Well, here are the instructions:

  • Go to equifax.com and click the marked link:
  • On the next page DON’T click on the link at the top:
  • Scroll down and click here:
  • On the next page click the “check potential impact” button:
  • And you are FINALLY taken to a page where you can check if your record was compromised:

Equifax should be put out of business.

I Need to Make My Web Site Tougher More Confusing and More Complex

A study has been made about so-called “Flat” user interfaces, and it turns out that they are 22% slower for users to navigate a site.

You are no doubt aware of it the trend. It’s the latest user interface fashion, favored by Apple and Google, among others.

It does boggle the mind that an interface created by Microsoft for its Zune® music player has taken user interface design by storm.

First, even by the standards of Microsoft, the Zune® was a miserable failure, and second, who in their right mind would steal user interface ideas from Microsoft?

The only explanation I have for this is a conspiracy theory:  I know from my Google™ analytics account that the amount of time the average user spends on the site is closely tracked. (They call it “Engagement”.)

This means that for advertising supported media, a second wasted is a second monetized.

I’m not actually going to make my site less intuitive, I rely on my ordinary thought processses to confuse my reader(s). It’s a matter of pride.

Neither would I suggest that you leave a tab open to my site in the background, as my making sush a suggestion would be a violation of the terms of service of Google™ Adsense™.

Libel Troll Fraudster Gets Case Thrown Out of Court

Shiva Ayyadurai claimed to have created email in 1978.

The facts, of course speak otherwise.

Email predates his high school freshman programming exercise by at least 10 years, email actually accounted for over half of all ARPANet traffic two years before he wrote his program, but that didn’t stop him from attempting to sue Techdirt out of existence, possibly in collusion with wannabe Bond villain and literal vampire Peter Thiel.

Well, the judge just threw out his whole case.

It’s not a complete win for the defendant, because the federal judge did not strike the case under California’s anti-SLAPP law, which would have have allowed them to sue for legal fees and penalties, but this is still an unambiguous win:

As you likely know, for most of the past nine months, we’ve been dealing with a defamation lawsuit from Shiva Ayyadurai, who claims to have invented email. This is a claim that we have disputed at great length and in great detail, showing how email existed long before Ayyadurai wrote his program. We pointed to the well documented public history of email, and how basically all of the components that Ayyadurai now claims credit for preceded his own work. We discussed how his arguments were, at best, misleading, such as arguing that the copyright on his program proved that he was the “inventor of email” — since patents and copyrights are very different, and just because Microsoft has a copyright on “Windows” it does not mean it “invented” the concept of a windowed graphical user interface (because it did not). As I have said, a case like this is extremely draining — especially on an emotional level — and can create massive chilling effects on free speech.

A few hours ago, the judge ruled and we prevailed. The case has been dismissed and the judge rejected Ayyadurai’s request to file an amended complaint. We are certainly pleased with the decision and his analysis, which notes over and over again that everything that we stated was clearly protected speech, and the defamation (and other claims) had no merit. This is, clearly, a big win for the First Amendment and free speech — especially the right to call out and criticize a public figure such as Shiva Ayyadurai, who is now running for the US Senate in Massachusetts. We’re further happy to see the judge affirm that CDA Section 230 protects us from being sued over comments made on the blog, which cannot be attributed to us under the law. We talk a lot about the importance of CDA 230, in part because it protects sites like our own from these kinds of lawsuits. This is just one more reason we’re so concerned about the latest attempt in Congress to undermine CDA 230. While those supporting the bill may claim that it only targets sites like Backpage, such changes to CDA 230 could have a much bigger impact on smaller sites like our own.

We are disappointed, however, that the judge denied our separate motion to strike under California’s anti-SLAPP law. For years, we’ve discussed the importance of strong anti-SLAPP laws that protect individuals and sites from going through costly legal battles. Good anti-SLAPP laws do two things: they stop lawsuits early and they make those who bring SLAPP suits — that is, lawsuits clearly designed to silence protected speech — pay the legal fees. The question in this case was whether or not California’s anti-SLAPP law should apply to a case brought in Massachusetts. While other courts have said that the state of the speaker should determine which anti-SLAPP laws are applied (even in other states’ courts), it was an issue that had not yet been ruled upon in the First Circuit where this case was heard. While we’re happy with the overall dismissal and the strong language used to support our free speech rights, we’re nevertheless disappointed that the judge chose not to apply California’s anti-SLAPP law here.

This guy is running for Senate in Massachusetts, as a Republican, and he gave a speech at the recent white supremacist rally in Boston.

He also claims that anyone who knows the history of email is a racist.

What a lovely fellow.

This Guy Just Won the Internet

Once more, the usual suspects are trying to create outrage about looting, and this guy just completely destroyed these assholes on Facebook:

You know, I’m pretty much 1000% OK with anyone in Houston jacking a flat screen.

I mean, you’re gonna have multinationals rip rare Earth metals out of Africa at gun point and ship ’em to China to be assembled into a TV in some factory where they got nets on the roof to stop ’em from jumping off. You’re gonna put it on a boat crewed by a bunch of Filipinos who are gonna find out when they get to port that the boat owner defaulted and isn’t paying ’em, and if they complain they’ll get blacklisted. Slap that shipping container onto a truck where the trucker is in debt and working at almost no profit margin, from an owner-operator scheme, and can’t even unionize because he’s “not a worker”. Slap the TV into some big box store where an 80 year old woman whose benefits got cut is working the register because her son can’t support her any more because his factory job got “outsourced” to prison labor and now he works at a burger joint while pundits shout that if burger flippers wanted better wages they should have learned to work in manufacturing. Now, have a hurricane run through town and flood the place, after fossil fuel companies spent decades paying politicians to ignore the warnings while they rip up the mountains and the prairies, poison the water and the air, and hot-box the whole planet, so we’ve got “100 year” and “500 year” storms happening every couple years.

THEN, you take some guy whose farm went belly up because US government-subsidized corn flooded into Mexico, and whose hometown got overrun by cartel fueled by US drug money, so he ran across a border to make a living in Texas, and he and his family decided not to run from the storm because ICE is deporting every undocumented worker they catch back to God knows what future.

– and THAT motherf%$#er decides, once the whole city is flooded and everything is hell, “F%$# it, at least I can watch Game of Thrones in HD next season!”.

THAT’S where you draw the line?

(%$# mine)

This is epic.

Someone Needs to Investigate this Guy, He’s Likely Corrupt as Sh%$

I am referring, of course to Polk County, Florida Sheriff Grady Judd who has announced that his officers will be demanding IDs in hurricane shelters and cross referencing them to existing warrants:

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd is threatening to jail wanted people seeking shelter due to Hurricane Irma.

The sheriff, who is known for his outspoken comments, made the threat in a series of posts to Twitter.

“If you go to a shelter for #Irma and you have a warrant, we’ll gladly escort you to the safe and secure shelter called the Polk County Jail,” Judd tweeted to his nearly 66,000 followers on Twitter.

Judd also posted that officers would be at every shelter checking IDs and that sex offenders and sex predators would not be allowed inside.

When checking IDs, if an officer sees that someone has a warrant, that person will be taken into custody, Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Carrie Horstman said.

Horstman added officers don’t have a way of seeing what crime the warrant is for, so it’s possible those with non-violent misdemeanor offenses could be arrested.

“Officers are legally obligated to take a person into custody if they have a warrant,” she said.

Judd said in preparation for the hurricane, fugitives should turn themselves into the jail because “it’s a secure location.”

When looking at bullies like this, corruption generally accompanies this sort of behavior, because they think that they are above the law they profess to enforce.

Someone needs to do a seriously deep dive into the operations of the Polk County Sheriff’s office Grady Judd’s personal finances.

I’d bet dollars to navy beans that there are seriously irregularities there.

BTW, the Florida ACLU opened up a can of whup ass on him as well:

Our response to the dangerous #HurricaneIrma tweets of @PolkCoSheriff Grady Judd, threatening arrests for people seeking shelter. pic.twitter.com/V4MKC9nfTw

— ACLU of Florida (@ACLUFL) September 6, 2017

It should be noted that Sheriff Judd has a long history of this sort of sh%$; he needs to have an investigative reporting team cohabiting his underwear.

Beware the Threat of Al Gebra Terror Cells

A far right wing candidate for mayor in Germany is promising to eliminate Arabic numerals if elected. I guess that he is concerned about weapons of math destruction:

A mayoral candidate for the far-right, anti-immigrant NPD party promised to get rid of Arabic numerals if elected, German media reported Friday.

Otfried Best, who is hoping to become mayor of Völklingen, near the French border, was asked by a member of Die Partei, a satirical party, during a debate earlier this week what he thought of Arabic numerals used in the town, Stern magazine reported.

“Mr. Best … I find it alarming that in Völklingen many house numbers are displayed in Arabic numerals. How would you like to take action against this creeping foreigner infiltration?” asked the Die Partei politician.

The audience cheered and laughed, but Stern reported that Best gave a serious answer: “You just wait until I am mayor. I will change that. Then there will be normal numbers.”

I have no words here.

I just sit in stunned amazement, with an expression on my face that resembles a cow that has stepped on its own udder.

Where I Feel a Grudging Admiration of an Atrocity Committed by Mao Zedong

I am referring, of course, to Mao’s mass executions of landlords.

I am aware that the later leader of the PRC has a life that is drenched in blood, but when I read about Houston landlords demanding rent for flooded homes, I have an insight into why the peasants might be inclined to support such a policy:

Rocio Fuentes weighed up the cost of getting some new sofas for her new apartment in Pasadena, Texas, and decided the family budget could just about stretch to it. Just one month after moving in, Hurricane Harvey swept through and the Fuenteses were left not only with the ruined furniture but also an ongoing rental demand for a dwelling they had to flee.

 ………

 But while everything has changed for this family, they are still expected to pay for their abandoned home.

 “Our landlords say we have to pay rent and late fees and every day it is going up,” Fuentes said. “We are paying rent for somewhere we can’t live in. They said ‘you aren’t the only ones in this situation’, but what are we supposed to do? We don’t have any money. We don’t have anything.”

 An acute housing crisis is starting to grip thousands of other families in south-east Texas as the floodwaters ebb away, with a death toll put at 60 on Monday. More than 180,000 houses in the Houston area have been badly damaged, with only a fraction of occupants owning any flood insurance. And under Texas law, rent must still be paid on damaged dwellings, unless they are deemed completely uninhabitable.

 ………

 Under the Texas property code, if a rental premises is “totally unusable” due to an external disaster then either the landlord or tenant can terminate the lease through written notice. But if the property is “partially unusable” because of a disaster, a tenant may only get a reduction in rent determined by a county or district court.

We need to send Jimmy “The Rent is Too Damn High” McMillan down there to kick some landlord butt.

Standing Up to Bullies

Recently there was a video of a police officer brutalizing a nurse at the University of Utah for notifying him of hospital policies.

The hospital has now banned police from their wards and forbidden them from having contact with nurses:

The University of Utah Hospital, where a nurse was manhandled and arrested by police as she protected the legal rights of a patient, has imposed new restrictions on law enforcement, including barring officers from patient-care areas and from direct contact with nurses.

Gordon Crabtree, interim chief executive of the hospital, said at a Monday news conference that he was “deeply troubled” by the arrest and manhandling of burn unit nurse Alex Wubbels on July 26. In accord with hospital policy and the law, she had refused to allow a Salt Lake City police officer to take a blood sample from an unconscious patient. Wubbels obtained a copy of the body cam video of the confrontation and, after consulting her lawyer, the hospital and police officials, released it last week.

“This will not happen again,” Crabtree said, praising Wubbels for “putting her own safety at risk” to “protect the rights of patients.”

Margaret Pearce, chief nursing officer for the University of Utah hospital system, said she was “appalled” by the officer’s actions and has already implemented changes in hospital protocol to avoid any repetition.

She said police will no longer be permitted in patient-care areas, such as the burn unit where Wubbels was the charge nurse on the day of the incident and from emergency rooms.

In addition, officers will have to deal with “house supervisors” instead of nurses when they have a request.

Seriously, today’s law enforcement seems to attract more than their share of bullies.

I’m  friend of mine who was a counselor was rather more charitable about such behavior, he believed that that the overwhelming majority of cops had serious PTSD issues after 5 years on the force.

In either case, this guy should not be a peace officer.

Meet the New Queen of Cornwall


Gotta lead with Monty Python

7 Year old Matilda Jones just pulled a great sword from Dozmary Pool in Cornwall, which is rumored where King Arthur received, and returned, the sword Excalibur.

If I understand the finer points of of British governance, and I probably don’t, this means that she is now the ruler of Cornwall:

A seven-year-old school girl had a legendary holiday after pulling a giant four-foot sword from the Cornish Lake where Arthur threw Excalibur.

Matilda Jones was wading through water waist-deep at Dozmary Pool when she stumbled across the blade underwater.

According to local folklore, Dozmary Pool is the spot where King Arthur returned Excalibur after being fatally wounded in the Battle of Camlann.

‘She was only waist deep when she said she could see a sword.

‘I told her not to be silly and it was probably a bit of fencing, but when I looked down I realised it was a sword. It was just there laying flat on the bottom of the lake.

‘The sword is 4ft long – exactly Matilda’s height.’

Legend has it that King Arthur first received Excalibur from the Lady of Lake in Dozmary Pool after rowing out to receive it.

After being mortally wounded he asked to be taken there so he could return the sword to her.

After three attempts, his loyal follower Bedivere cast it into the water and the Lady of the Lake’s arm rose to receive it.

If you look at the photos, I would argue that the sword is no older than 6 months old. Otherwise, the leather wrapping would have rotted away.

Additionally, it appears to be a cheap mass produced sword cut from sheet steel, there is no fuller (center groove), and the quillions (cross guards) appear to be made from rod and welded ball bearings.

Still a Queen of Cornwall wearing pink Crocs?  That would be truly epic.