Divemedic

Police Dogs

JKB over at GunfreeZone and Wirecutter over at Knuckledraggin My Life Away each posted an article about a woman who had her scalp removed by a police K9. Now I don’t feel sorry for that particular woman, but the comments over at Wirecutter’s took a turn into whether or not police should be using dogs for law enforcement. I found the topic to be interesting enough for its own post.

On Using Dogs as Weapons

Dogs are unreliable as weapons. They frequently bite those that they shouldn’t, and refuse to stop biting when commanded to stop. As a medic, I had two memorable wrong bites. One was a female police officer that was bitten high up on her thigh when a police K9 bit her during a foot pursuit, instead of biting the suspect that she was chasing.

The second was a guy who was fleeing a traffic stop. When his vehicle got stuck in traffic, he fled on foot. The pursuing officer released the K9, and it caught up to him a quarter of a mile later. During the several minutes that it took for the handler to arrive, the dog removed the suspect’s right but cheek. Was that a proportional use of force?

Constitutional Rights

A dog can’t read the Constitution. It can’t understand the finer legal issues involved in the use of force or probable cause. All the dog knows is that if it pleases its handler, it gets a reward. It doesn’t know that if it removes a suspect’s butt cheek for nothing more than running from a cop, that this level of force is legally lethal force. The dog’s cop handler would know that, but he is sometimes blocks away. If a cop isn’t authorized to shoot someone, why should they be permitted to sic a body deforming fur missile on them?

Dogs Want Treats

Dogs are very good at reading people. They know that if they give their handler what he wants, they get a reward. If the cop wants the dog to alert on a car, the dog will alert on a car. There was one study that actually supported that, but once the study was published, cops have refused to participate in any more studies unless those studies are being performed by pro-policing organizations.

Cops don’t even keep records of how often dogs alert to drugs and then no drugs are found. The police say:

“There’s been cars that my dog’s hit on… and just because there wasn’t a product in it, doesn’t mean the dog can’t smell it,” says Gunnar Fulmer, a K9 officer with the Walla Walla Police Department. “[The drug odor] gets permeated in clothing, it gets permeated in the headliners in cars.”

The problem here is obvious- even giving the dog the benefit of the doubt, probable cause means that the search is being done because drugs are probably there. What the cop in the above quote is saying is that by alerting, the dog is indicating that drugs may have been there at some time in the past. The dog indicates the odor of drugs, but not the presence of drugs. That isn’t the same thing and shouldn’t be enough to trigger a warrantless search of someone’s property.

So in short, I think that dogs should not be used to attack people or manufacture probable cause. I would be OK with them being used in bomb or cadaver detection (as long as they don’t trigger warrantless probable cause searches of people’s property) and in tracking people, rescue work, and searching for missing people or bodies. K9’s have been misused and abusing people’s rights for too long.

By Divemedic, ago

FEMA on Fallout

In keeping with my post on fallout, FEMA has come up with some “helpful” advice concerning shelter from radioactive fallout. I am not kidding, this is the newest plan from the Federal Government agency that is in charge of disaster response:

Go to the basement or middle of the building. Stay away from the outer walls and roof. Try to maintain a distance of at least six feet between yourself and people who are not part of your household. If possible, wear a mask if you’re sheltering with people who are not a part of your household. Children under two years old, people who have trouble breathing, and those who are unable to remove masks on their own should not wear them.

I did take the liberty of bolding the dumbest part.

They go to tell you what supplies you should bring with you:

If you are able to, set aside items like soap, hand sanitizer that contains at least 60 percent alcohol, disinfecting wipes, and general household cleaning supplies that you can use to disinfect surfaces you touch regularly.

Again, I was going to bold the stupid parts, but I decided to leave their links in place.

If you have to take shelter from nuclear fallout, whatever else you do, make sure that you don’t expose anyone to the illness that 99.6 percent of the public manages to survive.

By Divemedic, ago

Pitchforks Needed

This needs to be spread far and wide:

Scientists have found that a section of the genetic material that makes up the COVID virus is the same as one that Moderna patented in February of 2016. The sequence is 19 base pairs long, meaning that there is only a one in three trillion chance that this happened naturally.

COVID is the only coronavirus of its type to carry 12 unique letters that allow its spike protein to be activated by a common enzyme called furin, which allows it to spread between human cells with ease.

If in fact the virus is engineered using genetic material that was patented by Moderna, this would explain how a vaccine was ready for market within months. They already knew how to vaccinate against it- it was their property.

By Divemedic, ago

Armored Brigade

The US Army has deployed the 1st armored brigade of the Third Infantry Division by mating them up with war materiel that has been stockpiled in Europe. More than 7,400 personnel from the US have interrupted their courses in using the correct pronouns to be issued tanks, APCs, and other equipment from storage depots in Europe. This will really interrupt the sexual reassignment surgery schedule for the next few months.

Note that the preparations for this began a month ago, weeks before the Russian invasion. Also take note that it took the combined efforts of the  405th Army Field Support Brigade, U.S. Army Garrison Bavaria, 7th Army Training Command, 624th Movement Control Team, 16th Sustainment Brigade, 409th Contracting Support Brigade, 21st Theater Sustainment Command and U.S. Army Sustainment Command. How many Bronze stars will be awarded as a result?

By Divemedic, ago

CRT Macht Frei

You need an ID to open a bank account, use public transport, receive welfare, food stamps, or even enter many Federal buildings. However, asking to see ID to make sure someone only votes once is racism or something.

So many things are racism now that even claiming that you aren’t racist makes you a racist in the eyes of the Federal government. According to recent CRT training given to Federal employees, the things that make you racist include:

  • Asking someone where they are from
  • The belief than anyone can make it, if they try hard enough
  • Opening a liquor store in a minority neighborhood
  • Not opening a store in a minority neighborhood
  • Offering to play sports with someone who is a minority
  • Refusing to play sports with someone who is a minority
  • Interrupting a minority or a woman while they are speaking

So pretty much anything you do or say, including doing or saying nothing, makes you a racist, if you are white. In other words, if you exist and are white, you are a racist who wants to keep minorities from voting.

The boxcars will be coming soon. Refusing to get into them is racist.

By Divemedic, ago

Funny

A 71-year-old man was accused of inappropriately touching a 12-year-old girl at the Walmart in West Mifflin Sunday afternoon

https://twitter.com/GuyFrees/status/1498791098835214336
By Divemedic, ago

It’s Official

I was having some difficulty at work. My diversity hire of a boss hated me and was making my job hell, so I have been working essentially two jobs by working in my regular department while also working 24 hours a week as overtime in a second department. When I first suggested this plan to my wife back in December, she was skeptical and didn’t believe that I could cut my hours and simultaneously increase my pay.

By working overtime in the second department, I was able to showcase my skills and ability. This is the deal I worked out:

First, the downside:

  • I will no longer be eligible for any benefits. No insurance, no 401(k), no paid time off.
  • I am no longer guaranteed more than 12 hours per two week pay period.

Here is the plus side:

  • I will receive a $3 an hour raise from my current pay
  • I have to work a minimum of 1 twelve hour shift every two weeks.
  • Any shifts beyond that one, and I will receive a $350 bonus for each shift.
  • That is an effective $32.17 per hour increase in pay.
  • I still receive a shift differential of 10% for hours worked after 3pm, plus another 10% for working weekends, and 25% for holidays.

What this means is that I will have to get insurance through my wife’s work. I also means more time off and more money in our pocket.

We finalized the deal yesterday, and I went in to tell the (current) boss. My last day working for her is April 2. She told me that the door was always open, then asked if I would be willing to come back and work the occasional day for her. I was nice in return, knowing that I have no intention of ever working for her again.

I should have made this move 6 months ago. We are already making travel plans.

By Divemedic, ago

Chemistry

Wirecutter posts about his first chemistry set and how he built the mother of all stink bombs. Something similar happened to me when I was a kid. My parents had given me a chemistry set, and the experiments that came with the kit were deemed too boring by me.

One of the chemicals was labelled “DANGER: DO NOT MIX WITH ACID.” Well, being an inquisitive sort of lad, I decided to mix it with acid. Hiding in the bathroom, I mixed it with one of the containers of acid. As soon as I did, copious amounts of blue-green smoke began issuing from the test tube. It looked like I had rubbed the lamp with the genie inside.

I panicked. My bathroom had a door that led to the outside, and I rushed out there, quickly dug a hole, and shoved the test tube inside, burying it where my parents would never notice what I had done.

Until my parents moved out of that house some eight years later, my father could never get grass to grow in that spot. That bald spot in the lawn drove him nuts.

I didn’t tell either of my parents what had happened until I related the story at my father’s funeral, 17 years ago. My mother found the story to be uproariously funny, telling me that he tried everything to get grass to grow in that spot, but nothing ever worked. Even sod placed on that spot would wither and die within days.

I wish I knew the name of that chemical. It is a great weed killer. The people who live there now probably have cancer.

By Divemedic, ago

Fallout

Since nuclear radiation appears to be the preparedness theme of the week, let’s take a look at what it means to survive a nuclear event. After the initial blast and fires, the biggest risk is radioactive fallout. All fallout is, is ash and other products of combustion that have had pieces of the bomb itself attached to them. These pieces are going to be radioactive isotopes, and this radiation is produced as unstable isotopes decay into more stable ones. This decay process gives off energy in the form of radiation. There are over 300 different fission products that may result from a fission reaction. Many of these are radioactive with widely differing half-lives. The half lives of some of these are measured in fractions of a second, while a few are long enough that the materials can be a hazard for months or years. Their principal mode of decay is by the emission of beta and gamma radiation.

We measure radiation in the form of RADs (Radiation Absorbed Dose). This relates to the amount of energy actually absorbed in some material, and is used for any type of radiation and any material. One rad is defined as the absorption of 100 ergs per gram of material. The unit rad can be used for any type of radiation, but it does not describe the biological effects of the different radiations. For that, we use REM (Roentgen Equivalent for Man). The metric version of the REM is a sievert (1 sievert = 100 REM).

A dose of approximately 100 REM will cause mild radiation sickness, and will increase your chances of premature death from cancer by about 6%. Severe illness occurs at 200 REM, and half of those who are exposed to 300 REM will die within days. A dose of 800 REM is fatal to everyone within hours, even with prompt medical care.

About 5% of the energy released in a nuclear detonation is transmitted in the form of initial neutron and gamma radiation. The neutrons result almost exclusively from the energy producing fission and fusion reactions, while the initial gamma radiation includes that arising from these reactions as well as that resulting from the decay of short-lived fission products.

The good news about fallout is that the isotopes that produce the most radiation also tend to decay the most quickly. The rule of thumb that is generally applied here is called the 7:10 rule. Let’s look at that:

If fallout of 1,000 REM per hour arrives at your location 1 hour after the blast, you have to be sheltered or you will receive a fatal dose in less than an hour. The 7:10 rule states that after seven hours, the rate will drop to one tenth, or 100 REM per hour. In another 7*7 hours (forty-nine hours) it will have decayed down to 10 REM per hour. Then 7*49 hours (~ 2 weeks), it will be down to 1 REM per hour. Once the rate drops to 0.5 REM per hour, you can leave your shelter, which would take about 25 days.

Shelter is where we are screwed here in Florida. At least in other areas of the country, there are basements. Shelter means being shielded from radiation, and that means a couple of things: mass, and not ingesting radioactive material by either breathing it or consuming it in food and water. More on shelter later.

By Divemedic, ago