Divemedic

I want to address a comment left by a reader on Tips. Why is it that a server feels like they were ‘screwed’ when they get paid $50 for what represents an hour’s worth of their time? Servers get their noses out of joint when they get a $10 tip on an $80 dinner bill. Who decided that you should get 15%? I went out to eat for fathers’ day, and the three of us were there for an hour, and the bill came to $84. We were just one of four tables assigned to that server. Assuming that the $84 was representative of the checks for those four tables, a ten percent tip nets that server $38.77 an hour. I can’t see how that is ‘screwing’ anyone.

Sorry, but being a waitress is not a high tech job that requires any special knowledge or education.

Many people refer to the Third amendment as useless, by claiming that no one in this day and age has to worry about your home being turned into a training barracks. I think that statements like this miss the point of the Third Amendment.

This amendment was considered important enough to be the third listed
protection in the bill of rights, right after the freedom to associate
with other citizens, speak out against abuse, and to keep arms to resist
tyranny. In the colonial era, the practice of billeting British troops in
private homes was a widespread. One of the complaints against King
George III in the Declaration of Independence was “for quartering large
bodies of armed troops among us.”

Why do you suppose King George III did this, and why do you suppose the
colonists were so upset about it?  It is a fairly effective form of
intimidation: putting an agent of the State inside the houses of people
whom the State considers “troublesome.” Having an agent of the State
live with the troublemakers has an absolutely chilling effect, and most
especially when the agents start abusing the power—”pushing the
envelope,” as such agents so often do. This would have been known to
the authors of the Bill of Rights. The Third Amendment was put there to
prevent just this sort of thing.

It was impossible for the founders to foresee the advent of
electronics, video cameras, microphone “bugs” and the like, but the
fact remains the same: the presence of agents of the State present in
people’s homes, intimidating them by their very presence, and by their
presence also enforcing the State’s policies, as well as reporting any opposition towards the State has a chilling effect on the liberties that we hold so dear, whether the government agent is present, or is merely “virtually” present.

The news that the government has been listening to our communications comes as no real surprise to anyone that has been paying attention: they have been eroding our freedoms for decades.

Today is the ninth father’s day that I have spent without being able to thank my dad for all he did for me. I leave you with a post that I wrote 6 years ago:

Dealing with life and death issues as often as I do, I really felt like I
knew what was coming when I learned of my father’s passing. I was wrong.

Like
any boy, I loved my father. A boy’s love for his father is not the
affection you show for a lover, nor is it even remotely like the love of
a mother for her children. You see, boys have a need to seek the
approval of their fathers. They are driven by an overwhelming need to
grow into even a fraction of the man that they perceive their fathers to
be. Most of all, they want to earn the respect of their Dad.

I
fought in a war. I gave him grandchildren. I became the first person in
my family tree to graduate from college. I have delivered babies, and I have
held others as the life slipped from their bodies, and felt the pain of being the last person to speak with them as they left this world and entered the next, all the while wondering if there was anything else that I could have done. I have pulled dying
people out of burning buildings. I once jumped in a lake and saved a drowning
man from an alligator. When my dad had a heart attack, I was the medic
who treated him. I have filled sandbags in Missouri to save flooding
homes, sifted through ruined homes looking for the dead after hurricanes and tornadoes, spent weeks in the woods fighting wildfires,
and fed the survivors of dozens of disasters. All of these things I did, trying to be half the
man I perceived my father to be. After his death, I began to teach classes on medical
procedures, hoping to teach the next generation of providers. Again, for
him.

Then he was gone. I carried him to his grave, and since
that time, I have carried my grief around in my heart like a lead
weight, and at times it has been nearly overpowering. I asked myself
countless times if I measured up.

This morning, my son came to me
with 2 movie tickets and asked me if I wanted to go out with him. We
spent the afternoon with each other. I am proud of my son, as he starts
his new job on Monday as a firefighter. As I looked at him on the way
home, I realized that my son was trying to be larger than life.

Just like his Dad.

I finally did it Dad, I am just like you.

and
to you, son: You have indeed earned my respect. You have fulfilled
every expectation and dream that any father has a right to hope for his
son.

There is talk of police and industry leaders wanting to put a so-called “kill switch” into the software of your phone, ostensibly to reduce the market for stolen phones. Samsung phones will have the feature beginning on July 1. I see this being used for all sorts of unannounced purposes. The most obvious of these is easily demonstrated by the market for college textbooks.

For decades, colleges and their textbook publishers have relied on the sale of textbooks to increase profits. The college goes with a certain publisher and gets a slice of the proceeds. At the same time, students reduced costs by buying and selling used books. The small scale of these sales was not a real problem for the publisher’s bottom line. Until online giants like eBay and Amazon came along. Schools tried all sorts of methods like changing the book every year by adding chapters, but that didn’t work well. Then schools and publishers found the secret to shutting off used book sales: Make the homework part of a digital, online packet, and then force used book buyers to purchase an access code. This access code often accounts for 2/3 of the original book cost, and shuts down used book sales.

The same will be true of cell phones, now. Cell phone companies already enter into contracts with phone makers, where the phone maker sells a particular phone model to the public for a greatly inflated price, say $500, and then sells that same phone to the cell company for much less, and the company then uses that lower price to trap a consumer into a multi-year contract that carries very high early termination fees.

Once the contract is over, the original owner of the phone sells it to places like Gazelle, or sells the used phone on their own. Users that want decent phones without being locked into contracts purchase the used phones for much less than the inflated prices charged by the phone maker. This causes the service provider and the manufacturer to lose money.

Now picture that a phone company activates the “kill switch” as soon as the original owner’s contract expires and they upgrade to a new model. Good bye to the secondary phone market. You could try to jailbreak the phone to remove the kill switch, but that would be a felony.

Korea gets it. Last year, that nation fined cell phone carriers and manufacturers for inflating prices, offering complicated discounts, and using the resultant confusing price structure to deceive consumers into coughing up more money. In contrast, the US government is in the pocket of big business and throws people in jail for daring to alter a product that they purchased.

There are other uses: Cops shutting down phones during protests, riots, emergencies, or any other time they feel like it. Didn’t pay your traffic ticket? Your child support? Are you a TEA party member? An election organizer for the wrong candidate? You may find that your phone shuts down when it is most needed.

If a private citizen harms a police K9, he will be charged with several felonies, including injuring a police animal, aggravated battery, and others. For all practical purposes, attacking a police dog is the same under the law as attacking a police officer.

If a person locks their own dog in a hot car, they can be charged with various charges like “animal cruelty.”

In 2012, there were 18 police K9s that were killed. 8 of them died of heat illness when their handler left them locked in a hot patrol cruiser. In fact, more police K9s died last year because of neglect or errors that their handlers made than died from any other reason.

In the past month, three police K9s died from being left in a hot patrol car in three different states: Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Ohio. Stop the double standard. These officers need to be charged with a crime.

A woman walks into a restaurant and pays the dinner tabs of everyone in the place, and tips each server $50. Many of the comments on the article complain that the $50 tip is less than 10 percent, and say that the woman “screwed” the servers. I don’t see how it is screwing anyone when a person receives a $50 tip for an hour’s work.
I am so sick of this “tip should be a minimum of 15%, or you are screwing the server” mentality. A server who works at a place that has a mid level menu (like Olive Garden, Red Lobster, or Outback Steakhouse) averages a $50 tab for two diners. If each server covers three tables of two diners each, and the diners take an hour to eat, that server is seeing $150 an hour in sales. At 10%, the server is getting $15 an hour. At 15%, the server gets $22.50 an hour. Not too shabby for doing nothing more than writing down what I want and then carrying it to the table.

More on the Zimmerman jury selection. It turns out that the Defense team in the Zimmerman case caught one of the prospective jurors committing perjury. He stated that he didn’t know much about the case, had formed no opinion about the guilt or innocence of Zimmerman, and had not posted on social media about it. It turns out that he had posted comments on Facebook about the case, demanding that Zimmerman be jailed.

So will they charge him for this? Or is Zimmerman’s wife the only one that the court is out to crucify?

The Zimmerman case here has gotten quite a bit of coverage. So far, all that is being done is jury selection. One of the jurors questioned today firmly believes the media is biased, and avoids Fox.  When asked about
the difference between opinion and news, she responded: “The difference
between FOX and CNN.”

She voiced that she thought the case presented a “very, very tough”
concept, regarding the fact that “someone who was unarmed being shot by
someone who is armed.” This has interesting implications for those of us who carry a firearm. If the time comes that you must shoot an unarmed person because you are in fear for your life, your attorney is going to have to explain how a person who is unarmed can present a realistic threat of great bodily harm to you. Many people think that the possession of a firearm is some sort of talisman that will protect you from harm, and see an unarmed person as non-threatening.

Another prospective juror took the position of many antigun forces when he said that he believed “murder’s murder, no matter what. Even if it’s
self-defense.  Self-defense doesn’t make it right to kill somebody.” In other words, this man believes that no matter what, you must accept that another person is about to kill you, and there is nothing that you should or could do about it.

A husband and wife are shopping in their local Wal-Mart. The husband picks up a case of Miller Lite and puts it in their cart.

“What do you think you’re doing?? asks the wife.

“They’re on sale, only $10 for 24 cans,” he replies.

 “Put them back, it’s a waste of money,” demands the wife. He does, and they carry on shopping.

A few aisles further along, the woman picks up a $20 jar of face cream and puts it in the basket.

“What do you think you’re doing?” asks the husband.

“It’s my face cream. It makes me look beautiful,” replies the wife.

Her husband retorts: “So does 24 cans of Miller Lite, and it’s half the price.”