Armed societies

So this morning, my wife got a flat tire. We exchanged cars, and she continued on her way to work in my pickup. I went to the tire store, they told me the hole was irreparable, so I told them to replace the front tires while I went next door for breakfast. $300 later, I went to her work to again exchange cars. I needed my truck to run an errand to Home Depot to haul some supplies home.

I found that the teacher’s lot is blocked by traffic cones, presumably to keep students from parking there. I moved ONE cone to get into the lot and exchange cars, with the intent of putting the cone back where it come from on my way out. I parked her car, and as I was getting out, I was met by the head of school security, whose first words were: “You are going to put that cone back, right?”

Me: “Well, yes. I was going to get it on my way out. I am swapping cars with my wife.”

He then went on about how much time it takes to set up the cones each day, and how I am making his job harder. Note that at no point did he seem to care that I was a person unknown to him on school campus during the day.

I was VERY polite, and I told him that I was intending on doing so. Even though I was tempted to run over 6 or 8 of those cones on the way out, I did not.

Why do security people have to be assholes? It’s like you give people a bit of authority, and they let it go directly to their heads. This is what people talk about when they talk about de-escalation. It isn’t about negotiating with knife wielding maniacs, it is about not TRYING to throw the weight of your authority around. It is about basic human decency.

There is an old saying about “An armed society is a polite society.” The truth behind that saying is caused by a balance of power. If both people involved in an interaction are on equal terms, they tend to be more polite. It is only when one feels that he has more power than they other that he feels the need to flaunt that power.

My guess here is that, if he had suspected that I was armed, he either would have been VERY nice to me, or would have run scared in order to put the school on lockdown, even though I presented no threat to him. I don’t need to push other people around in order to validate my own inadequacies.

Hey Biden: GFY

Biden says that he will cancel 4th of July unless people do as they are told. You aren’t my boss, you fucking dictator wannabe. I am gonna buy fireworks, beer, and have myself a big, fat, tasty BBQ. I am checking the Constitution, and I don’t see jack shit in there about the President having any power over that whatsoever. So, Biden- Go Fuck Yourself.

Anyone who voted for him can go fuck themselves, too. You told me Trump was a dictator. You hadn’t seen anything yet.

Chicom PLAN is growing quickly

So we have talked about how China has two ski-jump supercarriers, and two with catapults under construction. Now it turns out that they have built a Navy base at the southern entrance to the Red Sea that has piers long enough to handle those carriers. What’s more- the base is less than 5 miles from the US Camp Lemonnier, a Naval Expeditionary Base in Djibouti, on the horn of Africa. It looks like China intends to have a carrier based in the Indian Ocean/Persian Gulf/Red Sea area of operations.

I used to say that a Chinese war against the USA was impossible because the PLAN didn’t have the ships to wage an overseas war. That is not going to be the case for much longer. Interests in the IO and WestPac need to be on alert. I think we have less than two years before there is a war in the area that involves China and one of her regional neighbors, and the Biden/Harris administration doesn’t have what it takes to do a thing about it.

another bad apple or three

There is also a south Florida cop who was a Sergeant and member of SWAT that was using his police powers to force women to have sex in order to avoid arrest. In that case, five different women came forward (one of whom a police cadet he got pregnant, ending her career) and said that he had raped them.

In the case of the cadet, the woman was a student where the cop was working as an instructor. They were having an affair, and she got pregnant. The rest of the class urged her to come forward and tell the academy. She did. After that, our amorous Sergeant told the class that he had enough pull to make sure none of them got hired unless the pregnant cadet recanted. Under pressure, she did.

He then bragged that he was protected by a fellow cop in the Internal Affairs division that he was also sleeping with. It didn’t hurt that his father was a chief of police (now retired).

No one would do anything until the Feds stepped in. It took four years. One thing that slowed it down was much of the evidence against him was kept in an evidence room that his police chief father had access to, and much of that evidence remains missing. In all, a total of 7,877 evidence and property items are missing, including 19 weapons, 177 valuables, 19 bikes and 44 items from the narcotics cage.

This appears to be a crime family. The police chief father was alleged to have ties to a drug kingpin, and the chief’s brother (who worked for Miami PD) was an “inside man” who was assisting in the smuggling of drugs into South Florida.

The charges against the son for his sexcapades were filed in December of 2019. It is still tied up in court, and he is a free man. He is still working for the police department, but in a desk job in the communications division.

More bad apples

Here is a song I have heard before. Cops caught issuing traffic citations to people that were never pulled over. In one case, the motorist had received 10 bogus traffic tickets. Another woman had received 6 bogus traffic tickets in a single month.

Also don’t forget the South Florida cops who took cover behind a family while engaged in a shootout.

I don’t think the issue is that cops need defunding. I think that we need fewer laws, and the laws that we do have shouldn’t be set up to be funding sources for greedy politicians.

Sensationalism

The story is that honey is contaminated with nuclear radiation. OMG! Panic. The press loves them a scare story. Radiation is scary because most people don’t understand it, can’t sense it, and know it can kill. Look at the facts, and understand them. Then you can see how ridiculous it is:

The highest level of contamination was detected to be 19.1 becquerels per kilogram. A becquerel is one decaying atom per second. So in this case, there were 19.1 atoms decaying per second in each kilogram of honey. The average American eats half a kilogram of honey per year.

The atom that is responsible for this detected radiation is Radiocesium, or Cesium-137, which has a half life of 30.17 years. Nearly all of it decays by Beta emission (emitting an electron) into Barium-137m, which itself decays 153 seconds later by emitting a fast photon in the form of a gamma ray.

How much Cesium-137 is 19 becquerels? The average human contains 100 Becquerels of radioactive materials per kilogram, mainly due to Potassium 40 and Carbon 14. These are natural, background radiation sources, and are always around. In fact, there are a host of things in your home that are far more radioactive than this honey (source– PDF warning):

  • Coffee 1000 Bq/kg
  • Phosphate fertilizer 5000 Bq/kg
  • Ionization Smoke detector 3000 Bq

Anything that has Potassium and Carbon in it will contain radioactive isotopes of those two elements. Even the air itself. In short, 1 kg of honey is far more likely to present a danger of diabetes than it is a danger of radiation. This is just another example of sensationalist journalism.

But science! In this case, the press is using ignorance to scare people into reading their pseudoscientific nonsense.

Ghetto Lottery

You remember this story about the three “black teens” who were pulled over when police mistook their vehicle for one reported stolen? So the story goes that once the cops tried to pull over the vehicle, the driver attempted to run over the cops, shots were fired, then it turned out that two were killed, the survivor was a convicted felon, and three stolen guns and drugs were found in the car.

Yeah, well now the parents of the two dead ones have teamed up with race baiting ambulance chaser Benjamin Crump (of Trayvon Martin fame) and are suing the Brevard Sheriff for millions.