Divemedic

Watch this video, beginning at the 54 second mark:

Now imagine for a second that you are the one who walked into that convenience store, saw what appeared to be a dead body, and were then confronted with a man wearing a clown costume, covered in blood and carrying a bloody axe, who then chased you through that store into the corner.

You can look at this video:

Now imagine that you are in this convenience store and are faced with a person who is obviously, to you, an armed robber.

Would you draw and fire? I know I would, and you know what? I would be completely justified in doing so. You are presenting me with a situation where I am in reasonable fear of my life, where I reasonably believe that I am facing an imminent forcible felony. After all, you are after the fear reaction from your victims in order to obtain a few laughs.
In fact, since the people making this video have not secured a release from the “victims” of their prank in advance, I submit that they are committing a crime. A felony, in fact. Several of them. The European prankster filmmakers think that putting people in mortal fear for their lives is funny.

This is a warning to you idiots: pull a prank like that in a concealed carry state, and you are likely to be shot, and the shooter will be blameless. The members of the film crew who survive will be charged with murder for the death of their accomplice.

There are people who will claim that shooting them would be morally wrong, because it is a prank and no one was harmed. I say to you: bullshit. People are not put on this earth to be your playthings, you sadistic pieces of trash.

Within hours the kid that built a clock that looked like a bomb had an invite to visit the White House.

How long will Chris Mintz Have to wait before the president picks up the phone and declares him a hero?

Being a teacher sometimes means heartbreak. I am in the middle of my second year as a High School teacher. One of my students, a 17 year old girl who is a senior, was also one of my students last year. She is an A student, and works hard. She has a sweet disposition, and is one of my favorite students. The only family that the girl has is her mother, so she confided a lot of secrets to my girlfriend and me. She came to us for advice all of the time.

This morning, the girl woke up to a knock at the door. It was the police. They were there to tell her that her mother, the only family that she has, was killed the night before in a car accident while on the way home from work. This girl is a ward of the state, has no one, and doesn’t know what to do with her life. She and some of her friends just left my house, and I am heartbroken for her. She has nowhere to turn, and no family to help her.

I don’t know what else to say. What do you say to a 17 year old girl who just lost all of the family that she has in her life? Her first question for us was, “Will I still be able to stay in this school and graduate in June?”

Her entire life is in turmoil. She missed school today, and when she came over she tried to turn in her homework. Tomorrow, I am going to see about setting up a fund at the school for donations.

According to some, the average American commits 3 felonies a day. In fact, I have blogged about this numerous times in the past. It used to be that felonies were serious crimes that placed the public in danger of the perpetrator. A person who has been convicted of a felony cannot vote or own a firearm. This case is a good example of how we have defined felony down to mean almost anything, including taking a selfie.

Two 16 year old children from North Carolina were facing a total of 14 years in prison for taking nude pictures of themselves and sending them to each other. They were charged with producing child pornography, transmitting child pornography, and possession of child pornography. Each of these crimes is a felony, and would earn the children a lifetime label of “sex offender,” meaning that they would not be permitted to be near children, and could only live in communities that are filled with sex offenders. That is how we are protecting children, by convicting them of the crime of looking at themselves while nude, and then forcibly placing them in communities where they will live with actual sexual predators.

The most egregious part of this whole thing is that the law charged them as adults, for taking pornographic pictures of themselves, who are legally considered to be children. This means that they are considered to be both adults and children simultaneously. We will call this Schrodinger’s pornography.

The children had to take a plea deal, or they would have had their lives ruined. The Huffington post would have defended them if they were a gay couple, but since the case involved a boy and a girl, they are not interested.

I have spent the four years since I retired largely without health insurance. Since I was paying as I went, I only saw a doctor when I had a problem. I finally got a full time job that offers insurance, and I paid for the best plan they had, which costs me $40 a month by payroll deduction. I went to see a doctor. I had some complaints that I needed addressed, the largest of which was my high blood pressure. Over the past few years, I had been going to Mexico and buying blood pressure medication over the counter there, because it is cheaper to do so than seeing a doctor here.

I had also noticed, over the past six months some odd things with my health, and I thought I knew what the problem was, but needed a doctor to confirm it. It turns out that I was correct: I am now a diabetic. What this means is that I have to watch my diet, and I am going to be taking about 11 pills a day for the rest of my life. Failure to do so will result in my losing finger, toes, vision, kidneys, and finally having a heart attack. I would rather take the pills, thank you.

Diabetes can be managed, and it isn’t the death sentence that it once was. However, it reminds you that you are mortal. 50 years old is just around the corner, and I am closer to 60 years old than I am to 35. It seems like just a few weeks ago that I was in my 20s.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

As to the insane cost of health care and medication:

I blame the insurance companies and the government for this. Why? Because every time I went for a checkup, the doctor wanted to do $500 worth of blood work. The fact that most people have insurance contributes to the cost of this blood work because this divorces the person receiving the service (the patient) from the person providing the service (the lab and the doctor) and the person paying for the service (the insurance company or the government, in the case of Medicare).

This distorts the supply/demand curve, as increasing prices do not reduce demand. What you get then, is people demanding for a product, cost be damned. When it isn’t your money, it is easy to claim that money is no object. Once that happens, there is no market force to prevent costs from going up, but lots of demand for products and services, which drives prices through the roof. The other force that reduces supply, thus increasing cost, is government licensing of health professionals, but that is a post for another day.

Wanna find a way to reduce costs? The purchaser and the user HAVE to be the same person. In a government run healthcare system, the government is the purchaser AND the payer, and you as the patient get whatever services that the purchaser decides you get. In a private system, the user is the purchaser and payer.

Three years ago, I opened an account at Prosper. I opened the account with $50 as a test of the company. I loaned $50 for 60 months at 23.96%. the borrower had requested 25,000, and I supplied $50 of that.

The borrower made timely payments for about three years, and I rolled over the $35 that had been repaid to me into a 36 month loan at 16.90%.

Both borrowers have since defaulted. I wound up getting $20.12 of my original $50 investment back. In other words, I lost 59% of my investment.

Then I ran across this article about how the big banks have taken over peer to peer lending.

I have decided that I do better in the casino than I do investing. I played in the stock market, and lost more than half of my money when the market crashed in 2008.

I tried peer to peer, where I lost 60% of my money.

I tried real estate when I bought a house in 2007, only to see it lose half its value two years later.

I am actually on the plus side from playing Craps in the casino.

The anti gunners keep saying that they want a reasonable discussion about gun control.

Here is how a recent discussion that I had with an anti gunner went:

Anti gunner:

A strong majority of gun owners and non gun owners support stronger restrictions on firearms, according to a national survey conducted by Johns Hopkins University.

Divemedic:

You know that reading a news story about a study is not the same thing as seeing the study, right? Let me look at the study and see what it says. I have been searching the databases, but can’t seem to find the study anywhere.Would you happen to know the author or the title of the study?

Antigunner:

I really don’t care. I think Most NRA member lie though their teeth. Their a bunch of sick evil people in my book. I compare them to being members of some demonic church of the gun. Feeding on the Blood of the Innocent.

So much for reasonable discussion. That is what they think of you.


Another anti gunner on the same site came out with the “we should treat cars like guns” meme, and I countered with LawDog’s theory on why that isn’t REALLY what they want. My post was deleted. Reasonable discussion, indeed.

When I was in school, we were all taught that the period of time between the collapse of the Roman empire and the beginning of the Italian Renaissance was called the Dark Age. The reason it was referred to as such, was there was a general collapse of society, resulting in a loss of knowledge, a decline in the arts, and great societal upheaval. Of course, there are now historians who are attempting to deny those ideas, and since I am no historian, nor was I there, I cannot say either way.

***EDITED TO ADD: I am a Science teacher, and we are required to give students a certain number of literacy assignments each year, so that the kids can practice their writing and reading skills. In this assignment, they had to discuss a science topic of their choice, describing the facts and science behind their subject, and providing evidence for their statements using valid, peer reviewed references. END EDIT *****

What I can say is that we are seeing the dawn of a “Dark Age” of our own. Perhaps we can call it “the Great Unlearning.” As a teacher, I can say that the children who are making it to High School  are functional idiots in many cases. Let me show you an excerpt of a paper that I received this week. This paper was written by a High School Senior, and I looked at his grades from the first three years of English class, and they are all B’s. This year in Senior English, his average is currently a 93%. Read on, and see the language skills that net you a 93%:

Next there is many emotions related to music, their can be high alerting if the tone of a song or pitch is high or low in a song. According to songs with positivity, this will put a high amount of good emotion on a person who was in a bad mood.  If someone listens to “Eye of  The Tiger” by Savior, they are going to be put into a better mood because there is a positive message involved with this song. Your brain is effected by your emotions when you listen to certain music such as mellow tunes, or heavy metal.

Now I know what you are thinking: You think that this cannot be typical, and I can understand where that comes from. Let’s look at another student’s work. This student is a Senior who, according to her father, is leaving next fall for college as a pre-med student. She has 2 A’s and a B for her previous three English classes, and is currently earning a 91% in her Senior English class:

Plants are very important for us to live. The oxygen that is made for millions of dollars, they give us for free. Plants have some requirements in order to sustain life, stay health, and green. Every living thing on earth has some requirements to live. For example, alligators need fish for survival, hens need insects for survival, fish need water for survival and tiger need meat for the survival. Every living thing in the world has different requirements for the survival and if one of their requirements is not met, they will have some kind of loss.

One more sample of what I have been dealing with. This student is a Sophomore, and he earned a 79% for his final grade in English last year. He currently has a 78% in English this year.

If you were to listen to music while working. Which music genre way to help you focus more. This project will come in handy for teachers that allow students to listen to music so they can prefer what the student will listen too.
First Off, It would help us in many ways such as stops us from talking and also let us focus and finish our work quicker. During class say you have headphones on and keeping your brain focus on schoolwork you would be focus and not be able to get distracted by friends and people sitting around you. Also while listening music it helps you get your work done Quicker so you’re not stranded during class and also it will keep you out of trouble from talking and interrupting the teacher.