Divemedic

Borepatch writes about how some women think that a man treating a woman differently is sexist. I wrote about this last year. The problem is that women don’t want to be treated the same as the men are. They want to be treated differently, they want to have advantages over men, and are using the fact that they are women against men.
I was lecturing an Anatomy and Physiology class for the newest class of
paramedic students one day, part of the class was about reproduction,
and I talked about spermatazoa, oocytes, and genitalia, and how they
worked to pass on genetic material in humans. The entire lecture was
from a clinical and biological standpoint. Two female students filed a
sexual harassment complaint against me, and said that talking about
those things is offensive.
When she got the complaint, my boss flew
off the handle and pulled me off the class. She said that I need to be
aware that the younger generation is more easily offended than people of
my age. I was on the verge of resigning from teaching. If you can’t
mention body parts in an anatomy class, how can you possibly teach it?
So
this morning I went to the director of the school, who questioned
several other students from that class, and they said that the lecture
was professional and well done. I finished the second half of the
lecture today. To protect myself in the future, all of my lectures are
going to be video taped, and the recordings saved. It is shameful that I
have to do that, but this is the liability world we live in. Are there
any other instructors out there who feel that they have to do this? What
about you new female medics? Is this really that offensive to you? Am I
really that old and out of touch?

There is a petition on Whitehouse.gov that is pushing to prevent the relaxing of the TSAs rule against knives on aircraft.From the petition:

Before the morning of September 11, 2001, the threat of using commercial
aircraft as a weapon was unknown. At great cost, we know better today.
The TSA was created because blades on airplanes were used to cause this
deadly attack on U.S. soil.

 It isn’t the box cutters that caused the attack. It was Muslim terrorists, aided by the prevailing attitude towards highjacking: Comply with the highjackers, get the plane on the ground, and let the government deal with them. In other words, forced helplessness. What caused the attacks on 9-11 was accomplished because people depended on government for their protection, and the terrorists found a hole in the government’s plan: the government can’t have agents everywhere, all the time.

The government’s plan depended on one thing: the assumption that the terrorists wanted to survive the encounter. Once the attackers decided that they didn’t want to survive, this changed the rules of the game, and the government’s plain fell apart. 

So would such an attack, given the rules that were in place at the time, work again? Do you really think that an aircraft filled with 30 or more people are going to sit there and allow five men to take over the plane? On 9/11, Flight 93 had the lowest ratio of passengers to highjackers, 33:5. Yet outnumbering their attackers 6:1, once they realized that they were doomed to die, the passengers of Flight 93 succeeded in overwhelming the terrorists and saving the Whitehouse from attack. The other flights had even more lopsided numbers, with Flight 11 being 76 to 5.

No, an attack using box cutters or other small knives will never work again to take over an aircraft. With alert and wary passengers, reinforced cockpit doors, and other procedures, an attack like 9/11 just isn’t possible.

Let’s blame the terrorists and the complacent attitude and not the object. The next attack will come from a direction we are not expecting, and will use a hole in our security. it won’t be like anything we are prepared for.

The DJIA is the sum of 30 stocks on the NYSE, divided by the Dow Divisor. As I write this, the DJIA stands at 14,438.

The Dow divisor is currently 0.130216081. If we used the same divisor as they did in May of 2001, which was 0.153694, the DJIA would be 14375.

So
adjusting for changes in the Dow divisor, the DJIA is actually
unchanged from where it was 12 years ago. These numbers are so
manipulated, it is ridiculous.

Originally, the Dow divisor was intended to adjust for stocks that split, so that a company could not manipulate the DJIA merely by splitting their stock. Otherwise, a stock that sold for $50 today could split, and cause a large drop in the DJIA when it sold for $25 after the split. 
The Divisor approach worked well for the first few decades but in
recent decades the Divisor has become very small. In 1986, the Dow
Divisor fell below 1.0 for the first time, effectively becoming the ‘Dow
Multiplier‘ since to divide by a fraction, we invert it and multiply, resulting in a larger number.

The math is simple. Now that the Dow Divisor is .130216081, a one dollar change in the price of a stock results in a 7.67 point movement of the DJIA. Mathematically, the system is set up to oscillate out of control as the Divisor approaches zero. After all, dividing by zero causes an infinite result, so as the divisor approaches zero, the DJIA will approach infinity.

 Another problem is that the Dow treats all price increases the same, regardless of relative magnitude. For example, a $2 change in the stock price of IBM, which is selling at $209, would offset a $2 decrease of Alcoa, currently selling at 8.64. The IBM change is an insignificant 1% movement, but the Alcoa change is a staggering 25% movement. This allows for easy manipulation of stock prices. An entity can manipulate the DJIA by buying large amounts of low priced stock, and cause large movements in the Dow.

9mm Ammunition is now selling for over $800 a case. The last 9mm buy I did was last February, and I got it for $180 a case. One of my usual suppliers is still selling it at $280 a case, but they have a 2-8 month back order.

.45 ACP Ball is selling at $600 a case, up from $250.

I am tempted to put in an order for a few cases of that 9mm, and when it is delivered in two months, sell it for $1,000 dollars a case.

So the University of Cambridge says that they can predict things about you from your Facebook postings, even if those postings don’t reveal the information. Color me unimpressed.

They claim that they can predict a male’s sexual orientation with 88% accuracy. Yawn. At best, 90% of males are heterosexual, meaning that I can beat their numbers merely by calling all men heterosexual. It isn’t as if I can’t guess the sexual orientation of a guy who posts pictures of himself kissing other dudes, or of a woman who looks like a man, with short hair and her arm around another woman.

Likewise for the claim that they can predict religion and political leanings. If I click the ‘like’ button on the NRA page, the Pope’s page, and the page for Rush Limbaugh, it is a safe bet that I am not a Democrat.

The thing that bothers me the most is that this study was likely done with tax dollars. This is why we are broke.

I have to say that I can no longer trust any public reviews from Google. There is a local (to me) school that teaches paramedic and EMT classes. They periodically will have a bad review come up, and it will remain there for a week or so, and then will disappear. There are currently 8 reviews up there, with five of them written since the format changed to only allowing Google+ users to rate a business. Of those 5 reviews, one is written by the owner of the school, and all of the reviews are positive. I have seen at least three negative reviews get deleted.
In short, I will no longer trust Google reviews.

So yesterday, I had a friend decide that she wanted to buy an AR15. I shopped around a bit and discovered that Spike’s Tactical has an 8 to 12 month wait. L&R armory, not too far from my house, is selling stripped lowers for $900 each.
Well, considering that the Florida legislature is considering a law that would make it illegal to purchase an “assault weapon” after July 1, and a felony for those guns already owned not to be turned in by December 1, one has to wonder if people are paying $2000 and more for an AR15, are they planning on turning them in this summer?
I doubt it.

More on the bill: It would require proof of an anger management class to buy ammo, make it illegal to manufacture, import, possess,  purchase, sell, or transfer any “assault weapon” or large-capacity magazine. Any weapons or magazines that are in your possession as of July 1, 2013 would have to be turned into the police by December 1. Violations of this law are a second degree felony, punishable by no more than fifteen years imprisonment in a state prison and a fine of up to ten thousand dollars.

Possessing a 15 round magazine for your handgun would now be a greater crime under this bill that possession of cocaine, selling and growing marijuana, burglary, and battery of a law enforcement officer. It will be treated the same as Aggravated Assault with Deadly Weapon No Intent to Kill, Unlawful Sexual Activity with a Minor,  Sale of cocaine, DUI with Serious Bodily Injury, DUI Manslaughter, and certain forms of Homicide.

There are enough prohibited items in my house to get me a couple of centuries in prison.

This is the mindset that we are dealing with: A democrat that says we gun folks are approaching crime all wrong. They way to prevent rape, and presumably all crime, is simply to tell people not to do it:

This is the mindset. Why, if we just put up a sign that says “No guns” or “Rape free zone” or even “No robbing of this store allowed” then no one will do so.

This is why some people cannot be argued with or reasoned with on the gun debate. They simply do not have the mindset to have an intelligent conversation. I try to see things from their point of view, but I just can’t get my head that far up my ass.

Yet another relatively minor crime that has been blown up to the point where it will cause the removal of a person’s right to vote and to own a firearm for the rest of his or her life.