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Wrong

When I was a teacher, I layered the security for my classroom and my students. First, I installed a Nightlock on my door.

I have Level IV body armor that I kept in my classroom. It had a blowout kit, 4 TQ’s, a huge label on it that said “PARAMEDIC” and a sewn on badge with my blood type. The file cabinet between the door and the blind corner where I planned to shelter my students in the event of a shooter had been modified by me. It has a 1/4″ aluminum plate lining the inside of the sides of the cabinet. With us behind the cabinet, the bullet would have to go through the cabinet, through the first plate, through whatever was in the cabinet, then through the second plate, and the backside of the cabinet.

Dude, use your head.

By Divemedic, ago

AMA and BMI

I wrote a paper that discussed why body mass index wasn’t an accurate measurement of anything.

To get an idea of why I feel this way, let’s use some professional athletes to illustrate why BMI is not an accurate measurement of obesity:
This is a link to the roster of the Tampa Bay Lightning, a professional hockey team made up of athletes from all over the world, most of whom are also on their country’s respective Olympic teams. They are provided, as part of the team, with a full time nutritionist, the best medical care available, and they each work out 6-8 hours a day, every day. In other words, they are in the 99.9th percentile of health and fitness. According to Body Mass Index, every one of them has a BMI higher than 25, meaning that all of them are overweight.

In science, if you can prove that a hypothesis isn’t always correct, then it must be rewritten or discarded. BMI isn’t correct.

Now the American Medical Association now agrees that BMI isn’t accurate. Not because of its inherent issues, but now because they claim it is racist.

By Divemedic, ago

Sister

Back in April, you will recall that my sister had a meeting where she was going to have to face a parent that was, I suspected, going to accuse her of racism. Now that the school year is over, we can close the books on that.

During the meeting, the school would not allow her to have union representation. The representative was there, but the school said that since the meeting was not going to include discipline, the union could not be there. As soon as the meeting began, the parent began with the racism accusations.

The good news here is that the parent was hated by administration, because she keeps complaining and demanding a new teacher for her little hell spawn. This is the fourth teacher that this parent has made racism complaints against. This time, it didn’t work. My sister finally wound up not getting in trouble.

By Divemedic, ago

Test Message

Just testing out some stuff. Most of you can disregard.

OTP 98730 90U77

OOOOO LIHH4 LJNF6 KLJB3 LIBE5 LCJY6 CDJH2 LHKB7 IKUG8 JHVG1 LJVV7 CEJB9 HYEC6 JYVB8 KBDB8 HVVE7 WFRA8 VWVP9 WVVR8 WRDK9 LWNR3 WRLR3 XXXXX

By Divemedic, ago

11 Times

Since we are on the subject of cops and corruption, I want to update an old post. In the last 23 years, I have had 9 interactions with with the police, and I can’t say that any of those interactions were positive:

  • In 2000, my car was broken into, and my stereo, radar detector, cash, and other items totaling about $600 was stolen from it. The crime scene investigator came out and took fingerprints. They got a hit, gave me the name of the person, and asked me to sign a paper saying that this man did not have permission to be in my vehicle. A month later, I was told that the criminal would not be arrested because the crime was too minor to waste resources on.
  • In 2001, I was pulled over for running a red light. I let the cop know I was carrying, even though Florida law doesn’t require me to. He then threatened to kill me. I don’t inform any more.
  • Same year, I got a traffic ticket for $184, which I paid. Eleven years later, the court sent me a letter saying that they miscalculated the fine for the ticket, and I owe them another $32. I refused to pay it because the statute of limitations had passed and there was nothing that they could do about it.
  • In 2004, a cop told my girlfriend how to use the courts to steal my stuff by claiming that I had committed domestic violence. It took me months to get it straightened out. 
  • I foolishly told the above story to a GF in 2012 and that one copied the scheme. When I beat it in court, she openly told the judge that her new boyfriend was a cop, and he would find a reason to have me arrested. My attorney asked the judge to make sure that statement was entered into and part of the record for the trial.
  • In 2005, I had someone steal a check for over $200 from my mailbox, forge my name and deposit the money into his bank account. The number of the account that the check was deposited into was printed on the back of the check. I went to the station to report the crime. I had a copy of the check. All the cop had to do was go to the bank, get the name of the account owner, and make the arrest. Anyone could have done it, it wasn’t a hard crime to solve. The cops told me that they didn’t have the manpower to solve a crime for such a small amount of money. On the way home from the police station, I passed 6 cops with cars pulled over, writing traffic tickets.
  • As a paramedic in 2010, I ran a call on a report of man who was unconscious and slumped over the wheel at an intersection. When I got there, he was obviously drunk, so I reached in and took the keys out of the ignition and put them on the vehicle’s roof. When the cops got there, they let the man call his girlfriend and let her give him a ride home. They said that they couldn’t prove that he was behind the wheel. I told them I would testify, but then the cop told me that his shift was over soon, and he didn’t want to stay late to do the paperwork. I found out later he was a friend of one of the cops.
  • In 2016, I had to draw a gun on someone who then fled the scene. I called the cops and the one who showed up didn’t even take a report. Exactly zero effort was made to catch the guy.
  • In 2018, I had a police supervisor tell me that silencers and machine guns were illegal. I offered to bring in NFA items with the proper paperwork, so the cops could be trained to recognize the proper forms and know the law. They refused, and told me “Keep that stuff out of my town or you will be arrested.”
  • Also in 2018, an armed man was burglarizing cars in my neighborhood. He was caught on my security cameras. The cops used my footage to catch the burglar, but he reached a plea deal that included expunging his record. All he got was probation, even though he broke into four vehicles, stealing one of them.
  • In 2022, I was assisting in the treatment of a patient who got violent with me and had to be physically restrained. He was a retired NYPD detective. He swore that I attacked him for no reason and tried to choke him. He called me a “punk ass bitch” and said that he was a retired NYC police officer, and that he would find me on the street and “fucking kill” me. I was interviewed by police detectives, and suspended without pay until I was cleared of criminal wrongdoing.
  • In January of this year, a woman threatened me at work. She threatened to follow me home to see where I lived, then wait until I went to work and murder my family. I formed my employer to call the police, but they did nothing but take a report. That’s fine. At least there is a record if I have to smoke the crazy bitch at the end of my driveway.

We could get rid of the cops and just let citizens take care of it, and I can’t see how things could get much worse. What do today’s cops actually DO that is a net positive? Yes, we need police, but not in their current form.

By Divemedic, ago

Didn’t Happen

There is a tale being circulated through various blogs and news channels about a man who was locked out of his home for six days for supposedly making a racist comment. When I read this story, I thought that it must be bullshit. The reason that I didn’t believe the story is that Alexa can’t be used to unlock doors. This is a simple security precaution to keep someone from yelling, “Alexa, open the door!” and gaining access to your home. Alexa devices can be used to LOCK doors or even check their status, but not to unlock them.

The second reason that this can’t be true is that most smart locks have PIN access, so even if Alexa won’t lock the doors, you can unlock them with the PIN pad. Now I am willing to admit that there are door locks out there without pin pads, so I decided to investigate. The original story appeared at Medium.com. It turns out that yes, the story was blown far out of proportion. The author of the story even states it in the story:

 I only lost the ability to use Alexa. My home was fine as I just used Siri or locally hosted dashboard if I wanted to change a light’s color or something of that nature…I was not truly in the dark for a week. My smart home runs mostly locally and Alexa really is just a polymorphic interface. I was just able to use Siri. Though out of habit I’d sometimes say “alexa” only for her to remind me how stupid I was.

No, this is simply a case of luddites who don’t trust that new fangled technology and are gleefully willing to believe any negative story about anything new without bothering to question it. This article should have focused on the poor customer service that Amazon delivered in this case, but instead the story became one about distrusting technology and convenience features.

I have a smart house, and many features in the house can be controlled by voice. It’s fucking cool to be able to say, “Alexa, turn on the ceiling fan,” or “Alexa, turn the thermostat down to 65 degrees,” when it gets hot in the living room. It feels like living in the future. Instead of being afraid of technology, learn to understand that you can get up and do it yourself if there is a failure there.

No, this is purely about providing confirmation for people who are opposed to any sort of technology.

By Divemedic, ago