Divemedic

There is an American academic who was attending a conference in the UAE was arrested for taking a picture of a sign banning photography. From the headlines:

Architect Dr Robert Alan Black was lecturing at a conference in Abu Dhabi when he
innocently took a picture of sign banning photography

No one can “innocently” take a photo of a sign banning photography. He
knew the sign was there, he flouted the law, and took the picture
anyway. He broke the law. 

Dr Black
was lecturing at a conference in the city and was thought to have
innocently taken a photo of the strict sign near his hotel on a
walkabout of the embassy district.
He
appeared to be amused by the sign, and was entirely unaware that it
enforces an ultra-strict code which allows for a five-year sentence for
anyone who breaks no-photography rules.

70-year-old from Athens, GA, was held by police in United Arab  Emirates’ capital
for seven days before a translator alerted his family

OK. And?

Grandfather has been allowed just two snatched phone calls to his worried family
who say he is innocent and just wants to get out

He was allowed to call home twice in the past 2 weeks, which seems to be inconsistent with the implied claim that a translator needed to notify the family because he was being held incommunicado. He isn’t innocent.

Supporters tell MailOnline of fears for health of diabetic academic, who is said
to be losing weight behind bars and cannot afford local lawyer

 So he can’t afford a lawyer? Why did he intentionally break the law then?

Americans travel the world with the attitude that they can ignore the law wherever they go. This is what happens, and why people see us as arrogant.

The Pope has been advocating for the government to take care of the poor. He claims that wanting to care for the poor doesn’t make one a communist. That is true, but when you say that the government should care for the poor, what you are saying is that the government should send armed men to your home to forcibly take money from you and give it to the poor (after they get their own cut, of course) IS communism as it has been practiced.

I cannot listen to a man tell me that I need to give more of my money to feed the poor when he is the guy taking a dump on a solid gold crapper that is crusted with diammonds and said to be worth over US$50 million. . The Catholic church is wealthy beyond measure. Maybe the Pope can start there. Sure, the Pope doesn’t own that stuff, the Church does. Sure, he is technically under a vow of poverty. He does, however, live in a palace filled with priceless works of art, has hundreds of servants and body guards, an armored Limo, and a personal jet.

Communism is for the people, not the communists.

Last week I reported having some issues with my breakers tripping when I transmit with my amateur radio at anything above fifty watts. I have found the problem. It seems that Eaton, the company that made my circuit breakers, shipped out a batch of AFCI breakers that trip when exposed to strong RF interference.

Part 15 of the FCC rules state:

1) The device may not cause harmful interference.

2) The device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation.

I will be contacting Eaton on Monday.

I was having some issues with the IRS. In short, they have been claiming that I owe $8,400 in back taxes. We have been writing letters back and forth since May. I finally got my answer: I owe nothing, and my case is now closed.

That is one bit of drama that is off my plate.

So I spent the day rigging a G5RV JR antenna in my attic. 52 feet of wire antenna, stretching from one side of the house to the other. I ran the coax feeder inside the wall to my radio shack, and hooked it all up. I turned the transmitter down to the minimum output (5 watts) and tested the system. It worked fine. I was getting SWR of about 1.1:1 without a tuner on all bands from 40 meters up to 10 meters.

So I started cruising the bands. I found someone broadcasting from Europe, turned my power up to 100 watts, and pushed the transmit key.

Every light in the house went out. The breaker for the general lighting was tripped. I guess I am getting RF feedback into the power lines.

My girlfriend was pretty annoyed. Have to go up and move the antenna tomorrow.

Regarding the nurse that is refusing to submit to quarantine for Ebola, much ado is being made of the fact that she has tested negative for Ebola, and many are saying that since she has tested negative, this means that she isn’t infected, and that placing her in quarantine is in opposition to science and to her rights.

First, the test. A test for Ebola (and most other infections) is based not on testing for the virus itself, but looking for the body’s response to the virus. That is, when you are infected, your immune system eventually recognizes the infection and begins to produce chemicals to fight the infection. These chemicals are called antibodies. Each antibody is specific to the virus or other pathogen that it is being made in response to. When the levels of those antibodies rise to detectable levels, a person will show as “positive” for that infection. This is called “seroconversion” and is an indicator that you have been exposed to a given pathogen at some time in the past.

A negative test does not mean that you are not infected. It doesn’t mean that you have never been exposed. All it means is that your body has not yet begin to produce antibodies. Some people take longer to develop detectable antibodies than others, and still others never develop them. (Called silent seroconversion) For example, I have been exposed multiple times to chicken pox (vaccination and direct exposure) and still have no detectable antibodies, but I have never caught the illness.

As to her rights, any person who is engaged in an activity that is dangerous to the health of others can result in restrictions. For example, I could say that it should be permissible for me to have a campfire in the living room of my first floor condo. After all, if the fire hasn’t spread to an adjoining apartment, it isn’t hurting anyone, right? How about being able to fire my pistol down a crowded street? After all, if no bullet strikes anyone, no one was harmed. Drunk driving?

In short, that argument doesn’t fly with me. 21 days is not that big of a deal, and this nurse is acting like it is the end of the world. 

(to my biology friends: I know that some of the concepts in here are oversimplified, but that doesn’t change the gist of the argument.)

Police agencies have acquired over a billion dollars of military equipment this year alone.

When do the terms of your employment move from being a voluntary agreement between two parties to being unfair? In this economy, employers have the upper hand, and people are so happy to be offered employment, any employment, they will take the job, no matter the conditions.

I post this because of the newest trend in employment: the non compete clause. Now I’m not saying that the non-compete clause is anything new. Those clauses have long been used to keep key employees from taking valuable company secrets with them to their new employers. A prime example of this, is the lawyer who leaves a firm and takes valuable clients with him to his new firm. However, the non-compete clause is now being used as a club against workers by telling them that not only will they have their hours cut or be fired if they don’t do as they are told, but they will also not be allowed to get a job anywhere else, either.

Places like the Jimmy John’s chain of sandwich shops are requiring their minimum wage sandwich makers to sign non-compete clauses to prevent them from leaving for better employment. The non-compete clause is buried in the fine print on the job application. You can blame a person for not having job skills all you want, but this prevents those workers from ever improving their lives. Suppose that I am a worker at a sandwich shop, and I am making minimum wage. I am working during the day, and attending college at night. I get a degree in restaurant management, and I am offered a job managing a TGIFridays. Under the terms of the non-compete clause, I can’t take it. I am literally stuck in my minimum wage job.

I have been forced to sign a non-compete twice:
Two decades ago, I worked for a company that provided technical services at the Orlando airport. A competitor opened up nearby, and began taking a substantial part of the company’s business away. The competitor was offering $3 an hour more, in addition to a $1,000 signing bonus, to anyone who left my company to work for them. Our ten employee location lost two employees within a week of each other, and one of them was the location manager.
The remaining employees, myself included, were told that we had to sign a non-compete clause that prohibited us from working at any airport location for two years after leaving the employ of the company. The penalty for not signing the agreement was that we would be immediately terminated.

The second time was just three years ago. I was working as an instructor at a private college. To save money, the school told us that we were not employees. We were contractors. We would serve at the pleasure of the company, and had to pay our own taxes (so they would not have to cover the matching half of Social Security), we were not covered by Worker’s Comp because we were not employees, we received no benefits, and we were not promised any specific number of hours. However, we still had to wear the company’s uniform (Polo shirts with the school logo), punch a time clock, teach according to the school’s lesson plans. The non-compete clause said that I could not teach for any other school within 50 miles for two years after leaving employment with them.

It wound up biting me in the end. The school’s director and I had a slight disagreement in 2013, and he cut my hours to four hour lecture every month. I tried to work for other schools, but as soon as they found out where I had worked, I was told that they did not want to get involved with the legal battle that would result if they hired me, and that was that. Even though I was never technically an employee of the school, the mere threat of a lawsuit hurt my chances at working anywhere near Orlando.

That is why I am not IN Orlando any longer.

In short, I think that any time an employer requires that you sign a non-compete clause, that employer should be responsible for continuing to pay you your salary until you are released from the restrictions of the clause. That will ensure that these clauses are only used when they are vital to the employer’s business interests, and not as a tool to punish employees.

In this morning’s post, I forgot the best quote, from a reader calling himself “Jarhead” in Maryland:

the whole thing about how could the cop shoot him six times? Could be
excess, or as anyone whose fired weapons will tell you – – the cop did
not have an old-style police pistol that shoots one round, one trigger
squeeze. He had a semi-automatic pistol, and in an adrenaline rushed
fight-or-flight encounter, the cop could have held the trigger and more
rounds came out as a matter of course. It’s not binary, he brutally
shot him repeatedly OR he squeezed and discharges continued
automatically, but the number of rounds fired is not insane.

This comes from a person calling himself “Jarhead” and claiming familiarity with weapons, yet doesn’t know the difference between semi-auto and full auto.