Off-shore drilling safety improvements

Shell oil was explaining the things it would do to make drilling in the Arctic safer. There were some surprising omissions, in view of the BP gulf disaster. It is generally acknowledged that BP's blow out preventer failed to shut off the flow of oil up the drill pipe. The blowout preventer is a giant valve installed on the sea floor to shut off oil flow in an emergency. BP's blowout preventer didn't work when activated. Reports have been circulating for some years that standard blowout preventers are not strong enough to shut off the thicker tougher pipe used in off shore work.
First thing Shell ought to propose is to test each blowout preventer on the pipe they will be using to insure that it will squeeze shut or shear off the pipe. This test ought to be down above water, before the blowout preventer is sunk to the bottom of the sea.
Second thing is to insure the blowout preventers have redundancy so that a single failure won't mean catastrophe. The blowout preventer should be required to successfully shut off a real pipe after sustaining damage. For instance, the preventer should work properly with a single hydraulic line or wire bundle cut, a single battery, or single air tank, or single hydraulic accumulator discharged, or run down. In short the preventer ought to have a dual everything, so that it works if any single item fails.
Third thing is to beef up the fire fighting capabilities of the drilling platforms. Out at sea they have plenty of water to spray on a fire. With enough pumps, water piping, sprinkler heads and fire hoses, they ought to be able to put out the worst fire. BP's platform should have been able to put its fire out. Clearly more fire fighting capacity is required.
I'm surprised that Shell mentioned none of these things.

Seven year old girl shot and killed in no-knock raid

Detroit police raided a two family home and a little girl was shot in the neck and pronounced dead at the hospital. The cops threw a flash bang grenade into the home and a scuffle occurred as they entered. A shot was fired with tragic consequences. This was filmed live by a TV crew from Arts & Entertainment network for "First 48", a reality TV show.
Cops should not be doing no knock raids, it's just too dangerous for all concerned. If the inhabitants have a gun, they always shoot, the cops shoot back and somebody gets killed. Occasionally the inhabitants kill an officer, and then face murder charges. There is just no reason to subject citizens and officers to OK corral style shootouts.
Radley Balko wrote that Army units in Iraq are subject to much more oversight on no-knock raids than civilian police in the US. In Iraq it requires a general officer to OK a no knock raid. As general practice in Iraq the house is surrounded and then surrender is demanded. Most of the time the Iraqis surrender and come out with their hands up.

Facebook trashes profiles

The software wienies at Facebook have been messing with the code. Most of my profile information (favorite books, movies, music etc) just dropped out of sight, like gone for good. I spent a little time typing some of it in again, but I wonder why I bother.

Bye-bye TV

Over the air TV was converted to digital last year. That means plain old TV sets with rabbit ears do longer work. You have have cable, or a converter box ($50 now) or a nice new TV set.
Visited my daughter last weekend. As a modern art sculpture, they have three old no longer functional TV sets piled up artistically in the dining room. That house no longer does TV. They have broadband Internet but no cable TV.
I'll bet the TV networks didn't see that one coming when they were pushed on board the high def digital TV bandwagon a few years ago. In effect, the switch to high def digital has reduced the TV audience, partly from people not converting, and also because the new high def digital signal doesn't go very far. Where I am we used to get 8 over-the-air TV stations. Now that we went all digital, we only get one station over-the-air. That's seven TV stations with a smaller viewership.

Can we Revoke Faisal Shahzad's Citizenship?

So reads the headline on a Wall St Journal OpEd piece by Peter H. Shuck, professor at Yale Law School.
To which I say, why in the name of all that's holy would we want to? He attempted to commit an atrocious crime on American soil, was apprehended by American police on American soil, and will face American justice. Since he is a US citizen, our foreign enemies cannot bad mouth us for being mean to foreigners. If convicted, the usual punishment is jail time or execution. Revocation of citizenship is surely unusual, and possibly cruel as well. There is a clause about that in the Constitution.
My other question is, what is this clueless lawyer doing teaching law at Yale?

Physician's Town Hall

We had one last night up here. It was kinda scary. The doctors, all respected local practitioners, known to and respected by the audience, tried to put a happy face on Obamacare. But as discussion went on it became clear that they see a grim future. Higher prices, less service. Rationing of care, extinction of new drug development, more and more paperwork. Mandatory electronic medical records that allow the government, the insurance companies, potential employers, and personal enemies to access your medical records. Bureaucratic OK's required before expensive treatment which are Sarah Palin's death panels under another name. The extinction of private medical practices, all doctors becoming mere employees of hospitals or health care organizations.

Follies of the Main Stream Media

So I'm getting a little breakfast in a greasy spoon on the way out of Washington DC. I skim a copy of the Washington Post that's lying on the counter. The editorial page is a classic. First article urged the administration to go postal on Egypt. Here is a friendly middle east power that has, and is still, doing good things. They called off the war with Israel 40 years ago and have kept their word. The outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood (root of Al Quada) in the 1920's, and imprisoned and executed Fawzi el Qutb (dangerous Islamic extremist) in the 1960's. Egypt has been a better friend and ally than even the Saudi's. Yet here is the Post calling for the administration to do regime change on them just cause Hosni Mubarak is a military strongman rather than a democratically elected politician. The world is not a perfect place, but but Mubarak is a better man than that nutcase with a funny name running Iran. If you want to pick on middle eastern governments why not pick on the really bad ones?
Next editorial down is praising the DC teachers union for finally coming to the contract table. Here we have the worse school system in the country, and the Post is siding with the teacher's union? As opposed to the parents and students? The DC system didn't fall to it's current nadir without a lot of help from the teachers.
No wonder the Post is loosing money, it isn't focusing on matters that readers care about.