Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Paul Levy describes redesign of the pharmacy in the hospital he runs, making use of Lean principles, including mock-ups and heavy participation from those who will be using the new space. (via Lean Blog)
Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn) is working hard….to make sure the Feds are watching your every move. Unless you are an illegal alien of course.
What passes for Liberalism these days is a strange ideology – American citizens are to be treated as criminals to be kept under continuous government surveillance but if you are a foreigner who enters the country illegally, you should get special dispensations from police questioning. Or unless you are a foreign terrorist overseas or in communication with one. WTF?
The Battle of Cowpens captures American strategy in microcosm. Meet Daniel Morgan, the “Old Waggoner”. Morgan was a Virginia frontiersman whose first taste of military life came during the French and Indian War. He also learned to hate the British: after he punched a British officer, Morgan was whipped 499 times. He survived this experience, leaving him stronger and thirsting for revenge. So Morgan was ready for action when, after Lexington and Concord, Virginia made him captain of a company armed with accurate but slow-loading rifles for sharpshooting instead of the fast-loading but inaccurate muskets issued to regular infantry. He served with distinction in campaigns like the abortive liberation of Canada and Saratoga, rising to the rank of colonel with command of a regiment. But, repeatedly passed over for promotion to brigadier general and racked with pain from various ailments, Morgan resigned his commission and went home. He refused repeated requests to serve again until the American disaster at Camden finally drew him back into service. Morgan was quickly promoted to brigadier general by Nathanael Greene, commander of American forces in the South.
Morgan was blessed with a stereotypical British antagonist. Banastre Tarleton was a British lieutenant colonel famous for his aggressive cavalry tactics and his propensity for killing American prisoners and civilians. Tarleton was the fourth son of a prosperous slave trader, foreshadowing his later taste for innocent human flesh. Having squandered most of his inheritance on a life of aristocratic dissipation, Tarleton, reflecting the proud British tradition of military meritocracy, bought an officer’s commission. Recognizing that war could be highly profitable to a broke nouveau riche aristocrat on the make, Tarleton volunteered for service in King George III’s War on Freedom in 1775. Throughout the early years of the American Revolution, Tarleton served with distinction, even unwittingly helping the Americans by relieving them of Charles Lee. Tarleton transferred to the Southern theater of operations in 1780, where his talent for murder found full expression. His most notorious crime was a massacre of surrendering Americans at Waxhaws: “Tarleton’s Quarter” became notorious.
An incredibly clever and sick individual has tried to use this to his advantage. A man obsessed with a coworker tried to frame her husband for child pr0n. He did this by repeatedly breaking into the victim’s house while the family was asleep, copying the family computer on a portable hard drive, and then going back to his own home to prepare and insert the doctored evidence.
What doctored evidence is that? It seems that he also broke in to the family’s house while they were away so he could take photos of the place. He probably Photoshopped some pics of kids being abused into the images of the home.
Months later he broke in again to steal the family’s hard drive from their computer, which he mailed to the police. Lucky thing suspicion fell upon the perp, and that he wasn’t half so clever in covering his own tracks. When the police investigated the criminal, they easily found all the evidence needed for the scheme to be revealed.
There are many elements of this story that I find shocking in the extreme.