There is a new crime trending as of late. The crime is as old as predation itself, where a predator waits at a watering hole. The criminal sits near a bank, ATM, or other source of cash. He follows his prey to a more isolated location, and then violently robs them. This is trending all over the country.
The articles on this always give the same, lame advice. Not once do they ever say something like: “Carry a gun, and if someone tries to rob you, shoot them in the face.” or the one I would REALLY like to see: “If you think that you are being followed home from the bank, call ahead and have half a dozen of your armed friends meet you at an abandoned house as an ambush team. When the robbers pull up behind you and attempt to rob you at gunpoint, your friends can engage them with a heavy volume of fire, achieve fire superiority, and render them crime-ineffective, thus rehabilitating them.”
I tried to find raw video of one such robbery, but every one I could find had some dumb assed reporter voice over, inserting a dramatic description of what happened. Youtube has become a website of professionally produced MSM videos, instead of what it began as, a site of user created content. Useless.
The Utica, NY police department was having a gun buyback. A man identifying himself as “Kern” says he brought them 110 firearms that he 3D printed at his home, for which they paid him $21,000 in gift cards.
“I’m sure handing over $21,000 in gift cards to some punk kid after getting a bunch of plastic junk was a rousing success,” Kem said. “Gun buybacks are a fantastic way of showing, number one, that your policies don’t work, and, number 2, you’re creating perverse demand. You’re causing people to show up to these events, and, they don’t actually reduce crime whatsoever.”
Students don’t learn because teachers don’t teach. The reason for this is that the teachers who try to teach get screwed over and either burn out or get fired when students and parents complain that classes are too hard. So the good teachers either leave or give up and phone it in. I discovered this the hard way.
After I retired, I took a couple of years off before becoming a teacher, which I did part time for two years, and then full time for the next five years. I taught high school science classes during all of that time. For the first couple of years that I was full time, I taught advanced courses like Chemistry and Physics. The courses I taught allowed a student to take an exam after it concluded, and if they scored high enough on that exam, they would receive college credit for the course. In other words, a college level class being taught at the high school level. Students hated the fact that my course was difficult and constantly complained. Meanwhile, school administrators wanted my course to be both more rigorous and easier for students to receive an A.
During that first full time year, I was physically attacked in my classroom by a student because I took his cell phone and told him he would have to get it from the office. I wound up quitting that job and changing school districts.
The second year saw me teaching physics in my new school district. Students were constantly complaining that I was destroying their GPA because my class was too hard. They just didn’t have the math or study skills to be successful. I spent far too much of my time trying to teach things like calculating uncertainty, which isn’t that mathematically difficult.
A quiz in this class would look something like this (you will find the answers at the end of this post, for those of you geeky enough to want to solve them):
A man in a tree stand 5 meters above the ground fires a rifle perfectly parallel to the ground. At the instant the 4 gram bullet leaves the muzzle of his rifle, his 125 gram watch falls off. If the bullet’s muzzle velocity is 1,000 meters per second, which will hit the ground first: the bullet or the watch? (You may ignore air resistance and the curvature of the Earth)
NY Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge hits a baseball. It leaves his bat at a 22 degree angle while travelling at 40 meters per second. The outfield wall is 370 feet away. Does he score a home run? (You may ignore air resistance, the initial height of the ball when it was struck, and the height of the outfield wall.)
You specify that a metal shop cut you a metal plate with the following specifications and margins of error: 32.0mm +/- 0.5mm x 30.0 mm +/- 0.5mm x 1.0 mm +/- 0.05 mm. If the density of this metal is 2700 g/cm3, what will the plate’s mass be (in grams)?(Significant figures count)
They began circulating a petition to get me fired. I caught them cheating. It was a tough year. The average grade for the class of 20 students was an 84, with 3 students getting an A, and two getting a D. The rest got B’s and C’s. When the college exams came around, four of them managed to score high enough for college credit.
So in year three, they gave me standard track Biology to be taught to the students that they euphemistically referred to as “underperforming.” This paper, written by a 15 year old who was in the 10th grade, is what I had to work with. Yes, this is a scan of an actual paper that was turned in to me, and no, he is not retarded:
At the beginning of year four, I was pulled aside by the principal and asked if I wanted to go back to teaching physics to the smart kids. It seems that the teacher that they had given that class to gave 3/4 of the class an A, but every one of them failed the college credit exam, even though the class average was a 92. I told them that the only way I would teach it was if I would not have to catch any static from administrators when students complained about their grades. The reply that I got was “We were hoping that you would agree to find a way to make your class more fun.” I declined and was sentenced to teach Biology to the dumbasses again. Hey, at least the lovable little morons weren’t trying to get me fired.
COVID hit at the end of that year. Teachers were instructed to hold class by Zoom meetings, we were required to give and grade assignments, and were told to enforce it rigorously. So I did. I would up doing quite a bit of effort and work, holding class. Only a quarter of my students did the work. At the end of the school year, the school district gave everyone at least a C. To think I could have done nothing for three months and gotten paid.
My fifth year as a full time teacher was to teach physical science. At the halfway point of the year, we were told that, due to the stress of COVID, we would have to give every student a passing grade. More than a half of my students were chronically absent. Then we were told that our students’ performance on end of the year exams would not affect their grades, but would affect our pay raises. I quit a week later and went back to health care.
ANSWERS TO THE QUIZ ARE BELOW THIS LINE
Since the acceleration of gravity is the same (~9.80 m/s2) for all objects on Earth, the watch and the bullet would strike the Earth at the same time, but the bullet will be some distance away in the horizontal plane.
Yes, he will score a home run because the ball will land 372 feet away.
The plate will have a volume of 0.883-1.04 cm3. That will cause it to have a mass of between 2,380-2,800 grams. (three significant figures) This last problem gave them fits. They couldn’t understand how tolerances could give you an uncertain result.
I am of two minds with this one. I could see the teacher’s point of view here. Organic chemistry is a difficult course. When I took “OrgO” as it is called, I had already been accepted into my grad school program, and all I had to do was get a “C” in the course, which I did. I probably could have gotten a B, but had other things on my mind and slacked off for the last couple of weeks. It remains to this day the only undergraduate course where I received a C. Skill in organic chemistry is not really required to be a doctor, instead it is one of those classes referred to as a “weed out” class, designed to weed out students who want to make a lot of money as a doctor or some other high paying profession, but who don’t have the academic skills or the work ethic needed to complete the rigorous program. There are a few of those courses scattered throughout the undergraduate pre-requisite courses, each more difficult than the last. I understand the academic rigor, and I understand the professor taking pride in teaching his subject. I can definitely see his side of the argument.
On the other side, I can agree with the students. Anyone who has taken any sort of course knows that any teacher can write a test that most students can’t pass. A great example of that is the TV game show “Are you smarter than a fifth grader?” I will say that there are some teachers who use tests as an opportunity to show off just how much smarter they are than their students. Tests are supposed to evaluate the students AND the teacher to see if the course objectives are being met. If most of the students fail the test, the teacher needs to ask where the problem lies: the students, the course delivery, or the test itself. In this case, we don’t know which of these was the case.
Since at least a quarter of them failed, we can surmise that most didn’t fail. This is corroborated by the fact that this particular professor had been teaching for years, and his rating at Rate My Professor for his time at Princeton was pretty good for what he was teaching (most professors teaching difficult material get subpar ratings). Even for his time at NYU, he got pretty good ratings. It’s important to note that the last 14 ratings he received at the time I wrote this were written after the news article came out, and were filled with comments like: “I am so glad NYU decided to fire his a$$. He made all his classes unnecessary harder than they needed to be. Hopefully we get some new profs who have easy chem classes and lower standards.”
Overall, I lean towards thinking that the students were a bunch of snowflakes who expect to receive an A as if it were some sort of participation trophy, then demand to be passed along so they can graduate from medical school and become doctors. I ran into the same problem when I was teaching a difficult course, and my students likewise attempted to get me fired.
But that is a story for a different day.
In this instance, there just isn’t enough data to know which is correct, but I am willing to bet it was the professor. In any case, it doesn’t matter because he is out of a job, and those 82 students are going to be your doctor when you reach the nursing home.
It’s called the First Amendment, assholes. They also called on Big Tech to censor and deplatform individuals who question their faggotry and abuse of children.
So to all of you at the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and Children’s Hospital Association- go fuck yourself. I have a server in a foreign country. I won’t be silenced, and I won’t be deplatformed. I also won’t back down in calling your mutilation of children what it is- an abomination.
You can write a million papers and have them reviewed by a million of your peers, and I will still tell you what few others will- your tranny emperor is not supposed to groom kids into being your little fuck toys in whatever evil games you are playing.
To you in the DOJ- begin your investigation here:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Let me know if you have decided that that document no longer applies.
Roy Johnson, 35, was arrested at the hotel and charged with murdering Kutz with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun. He was also charged with second-degree criminal possession of a weapon. A second homeless man was also arrested: Devin Taylor, 26, was also arrested at the scene and charged with second-degree criminal possession of a weapon for allegedly possessing a loaded .223-caliber rifle that had no serial number. The two also had bomb making materials and manuals in their hotel room. The local press has already jumped on the ‘ghost gun’ angle.
The shooting apparently unfolded when the two homeless men began firing shots inside and outside of the hotel, and the victim was struck by random gunfire. Local homeless agencies say that the two men were not put in the hotel by their agencies. Both of them have felony criminal records and have served time in prison.
So much of this stinks to high heaven. How were two homeless men able to afford guns, ammo, and the materials and books to make bombs? It seems convenient that ‘ghost guns’ are involved. There has to be far more to this than meets the eye.
For nearly 20 years, I have spread the word that communications were lost in disasters. I learned during Hurricane Charley in 2004 that there is a need for communications. Cell service was out for weeks. With no way to reach the outside world or communicate with family members, checking on each other was a severe handicap. So I added getting a HAM license as a step in my preparedness campaign. It was a simple test, and a $10 fee for the license, and you don’t even need to know Morse code. In exchange, I got a license that allows me to operate radios that have enough reach for most disaster communications.
Some try to rely on CB radios. Try it, you won’t be happy. There are only 40 channels, but millions of CB radios. It’s an unregulated wasteland. In the best of times, the channels are clogged with people running illegally high power levels (in some cases over a thousand watts) and effectively jamming the airwaves with nonsense, just because they enjoy being assholes. The last time I listened, there was a guy on Channel 19 who was broadcasting an anti-Trump rant for over an hour. Nonstop, making Ch 19 unusable. There is another group who makes a hobby of doing the same on Channel 6. So CB is out.
Some opt for FMRS radios. With 22 channels and only 2 watts, the limited power and channel options mean clogged communications and short range.
In my opinion, GMRS or HAM radios is the better option. Each has its own benefits and issues. There is a third, better option out there, and we will get to that in a minute.
The license is only $35 for 10 years, one license is good for an entire family, and no testing is required
GMRS licensees can operate repeaters, which will extend your range.
Can use up to 50 watts, but handhelds normally are 5 watts or less
GMRS disadvantages
There are only 30 channels on 22 frequencies, and they are shared with FMRS radios. This means possibly clogged channels
GMRS licenses are only good for members of the same household. Different houses require a separate license
There is also HAM radio. Advantages:
Thousands of channels to choose from, even in just the 2 meter and 70 cm bands
License needed, but only $15 for ten years
Less congested than other radio services
Can be used to patch into telephone service
Can be used in digital modes to connect to Internet, transmit pictures, or other data to other digital HAM sets
HAM disadvantages
One license per person is required, and there is a test
more technically demanding.
Radios have a lot of capabilities, but can be complicated to operate and program
Required to speak plainly. Code phrases are not permitted
Radios are cheap, and can be as easy or as complicated as you need them to be. You can get a GMRS radio that has three controls and doesn’t need programming for only $50 or so. The only controls are on/volume, channel selector, and push to talk button.
Then there is the third option. The best of both worlds, and the one that I have selected: Programmable radios.
Get yourself a HAM license AND your family a GMRS license and buy a mixture of radios. This allows you to have all of the advantages of FMRS, GMRS, and HAM while allowing you to circumvent the issues of all three.
Get programmable radios.
They can be had for as little as $45 each. They come pre-programmed for the GMRS channels, and your family members who need to communicate with them can do so with very little training.
If used within the FMRS power restrictions, non family members can legally borrow and use them
Some, like the Baofeng UV5R, can be programmed for HAM channels, meaning that those with a HAM license can use them for all three services
Adding a GMRS repeater gives you a lot more range and flexibility, can be used as a base station, and costs less than $220.
Possessing the two licenses allows for great flexibility. You could use GMRS on your street to communicate between houses. The ones who are more technically inclined could serve as “communications specialists” and communicate between streets that are several, or even dozens of miles apart. Use your imagination.
The Parkland shooter admitted to a psychiatrist that he had planned a school massacre for over 5 years. He looked at previous shootings and studied what previous shooters had done. He learned to pie corners, he learned police response times, he learned to not let people get close.
He knew that he would have 20 minutes to carry out his plan without police interference.
Think about that while carrying in your day to day life. The shooter has a plan, he has the initiative, and you will be playing catchup.
