You Can't Silence Us

Wasting Time and Money

This is an event designed for charity, where students placed boxes of donated cereal as if they were dominoes. Apparently, schools all over the United States participated.

Racine, Wisconsin’s Red Apple Elementary placed 7,000 boxes of cereal. Here is the story behind it:

Glad to see that property tax money is being spent so efficiently. See, the taxpayers of Racine Wisconsin are paying these schools to educate children and have every expectation that their money isn’t being wasted. Instead of learning, these kids are playing dominos, meanwhile the students at this school are only score 26% at or above proficiency in math compared to the Wisconsin state average of 40% to 55%. In reading, 38% proficient, with a state average as high as 53%, Science they scored 44% proficient, compared to the state average of 53%, and social studies saw them 50% proficient with a state average of 63%.

Other schools that participated in this are no better. Watervliet Elementary School in Watervliet, New York, should be more concerned that 33% of students are proficient in math, 33% in reading, and 28% in science.

In fact, our schools are a total waste of time and money. We are pouring money down a black hole, and have turned schools from a place of education into a taxpayer funded daycare center. Schools need to get back on task and stop wasting time and money on this shit.

The state AVERAGE is only about half of students know how to read, write, and perform arithmetic, and these schools can’t even manage that anemic standard.

It’s not just teachers. There are teachers who care and are quite good at what they do. Then there are the parents who just don’t give a shit. Students who tell teachers (quite literally) to go fuck themselves, and administrators who do absolutely nothing about it. Truancy laws are generally ignored, with about 22% of all students being chronically absent (meaning absent more than 10% of the time). In urban schools (which are overwhelmingly black), that number rises to more than 30% of students being chronically absent.

When the kids DO come to school, they spend their time playing dominos with cereal boxes instead of learning.

People who have read this post: 126
By Divemedic, ago

DIY Medicine and Plumbing

I see and hear this all of the time…

Let me share a couple of stories from the past month.

The first is a man who came in complaining of abdominal pain. There are a lot of things that can cause abdominal pain, and coming in to the ED with that complaint guarantees that you will get an abdominal CT scan. In this guy’s case, he had an appendicitis. It was already inflamed and looked about to burst. The doctor admitted him to the hospital, and the surgeon was prepared to do the emergency surgery that evening. The man refused, saying he had a job interview that afternoon and couldn’t stay. He signed out against our medical advice.

He returned to the ED at 8am the next morning, said he was ready for the surgery, but only if we could get it done and have him out by noon. When it was explained to him that he would have to spend the night in the hospital, you guessed it, he said we were only doing that so we could make more money.

Then there was the guy who had an abscess and calcium deposit in the tip of his penis. He came to the ED for treatment. He wanted us to cut open his penis to drain the abscess and remove the calcium deposit. He explained that his urologist had refused to do it in the office and wanted to admit him to the hospital in order to perform the procedure. The ED doctor said, “If your urologist, who specializes in this sort of thing, won’t perform this surgery on an outpatient basis, what makes you think I will do it here in the ED?”

The man then looked at me and asked, “Can you just do it?” My response was “Uh, no. I’m a nurse, and I am not performing a surgical procedure on you.” He then said the magic words: “You are all doing this just to get more money out of me. I will just have my wife do it.” Then he stormed out.

Are we well paid for our high degree of knowledge? Of course we are. Have you tried to have a plumber come out and do anything? I wanted to put a sink and a water conditioner in my house. The plumbing company I called wanted $600 to hook up a sink or $900 to hook up a water conditioner. The difference is you don’t die of sepsis if you get the sink’s piping incorrect, and when the plumber gets it wrong, no one sues him for millions of dollars.

Oh, and here are a few things that have been cured by modern medicine:

  • Hepatitis C
  • Tuberculosis (TB)
  • Syphilis
  • Chlamydia and gonorrhea
  • Trichomoniasis
  • Stomach ulcers caused by H. pylori
  • Cataracts
  • Testicular cancer
  • Smallpox

People who have read this post: 223
By Divemedic, ago

Mud

Today, I woke up to the first sunny morning in the past five days. A week of clouds and rain (more than 5 inches of it). I had to drain water from my pool on five different occasions to keep it from overflowing.

When I walked outside this morning, humidity was at 100% with a dewpoint of 74degF. It smells like mud outside. Now that it’s sunny and the ground is wet, the grass is going to grow like it’s mutated, but it will be hot, humid, and the ground too muddy to mow for the next few days.

Because the hurricane passed to our west, winds are now out of the southwest, and we are back into heat and moisture being blown at us from the Gulf. For the next week, we are back to hot and humid, with temperatures in the upper 80s.

I like it much better when storms pass to our south or west. That side of the storm pulls the cooler, dryer air towards us.

People who have read this post: 188
By Divemedic, ago

Enemy Combatant

I have long said I am opposed to the death penalty on practical grounds. That is, I support the death penalty in principle, but don’t trust the Government to not execute the innocent. The case of Nidal Hasan doesn’t fit into my opposition.

According to The Washington Post, Hasan made a presentation titled “The Quranic World View as It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military” during his senior year of residency at WRAMC; it was not well received by some attendees. He suggested the U.S. Department of Defense “should allow Muslim soldiers the option of being released as ‘Conscientious objectors’ to increase troop morale and decrease adverse events.” He explained “adverse events” could be refusal to deploy, espionage, or killing of fellow soldiers.

Hasan represented himself in trial and admitted responsibility for the shooting, claiming to have switched sides in a “war on Islam” waged by the United States. Unrepentant, he bragged about striking a blow for Jihad. That admission is good enough for me.

He killed his comrades in arms, and I hope his upcoming execution hurts like hell.

People who have read this post: 211
By Divemedic, ago

Smug

Some Americans pretentiously think they are better than you because they can pronounce names from foreign languages like native speakers of that language:

Just like the people who insist on pronouncing the name of our current hurricane as if they speak Spanish:

Then there are Americans who don’t give a shit:

People who have read this post: 153
By Divemedic, ago

Better Than You

One of the things I don’t like about some of the dickheads in the military is how they denigrate their comrades in the service. The “You weren’t in the shit like I was, so your service doesn’t count for as much as mine did” bullshit. Like this:

Everyone who served had a job to do, and none of those who served could have done their job as well without the contributions of every one of those who were there. The Army can’t fight without tanks, fuel, ammo, and other supplies. That takes a Navy to keep sea lanes open.

The Marines open the beachhead. They need follow on heavier troops from the Army. The Air Force and Navy provide air support. It’s a cooperative mission. Stop tearing down the others who served. You did your job, so did they. It’s not a dick measuring contest.

I had an Army guy at a previous job tell me my job didn’t count because he was Army, and my service in the Navy was just sitting at sea, watching TV.

People who have read this post: 190
By Divemedic, ago

Regret

One regret I still have is not following my gut. There was a day, I think it was in 2001 or 2002, when an old lady came to the fire station. She pulled up on to the driveway while another firefighter and I were doing some training with our brush truck. (We were standing on the back of it, playing with the water.)

She told me her husband, a Vietnam war veteran, had passed away. She told me she didn’t know what to do with some of his old things and decided to bring them to us. In the trunk of her car was an ammo can. Inside of that can was half a dozen hand grenades. I still regret letting the cops know about it. The bomb squad came out and took possession of them.

I also know a guy who was a Combat Engineer. He had a few blocks of C4 and some detonators located in ammo cans in his garage. I forget the guys name, but I am sure he turned them in. yeah.

I am thinking there is a lot more military ammo and ordinance out there than anyone knows about. Remember the M60 that turned up in a Chicago buyback? How about the time that National Guard unit lost an M240? (It was never found) In fact, the US military loses about 200 weapons a year, on average, that they know about. Many times, a weapon goes missing and it’s covered up by people who don’t want to get in hot water.

People who have read this post: 179
By Divemedic, ago

Hurricane

We officially got our first hurricane of 2026’s season at 2330 Eastern Time on October 7. 23:30 EDT on October 7 is 03:30 UTC on October 8, which is the time NHC confirms it upgraded Isaias to a hurricane. Hurricane records use UTC, so its official date is October 8. That means 2026 ties 1905 for the latest first Atlantic hurricane on record by calendar date, matching a mark that stood for 121 years, making it the latest first hurricane in the Atlantic basin since we began spotting them with satellites.

While we here at Sector Ocho always monitor Hurricanes that are near Florida, this one is forecast to strike LA (Lower Alabama), which is what we here in Florida call the Panhandle. For us here on the Florida Peninsula, it will be a rain event only. We aren’t even forecast to get any wind from it. There is nothing to get excited about unless you are in the central path of a storm that’s a CAT 3 or higher when it makes landfall. For that reason, our daily routine here at Sector Ocho will remain as normal. I will not be activating any of my storm checklists or plans at this time.

What *has* happened this week is a cold front has been stalled over the central part of the state, and my rain gauge says we have received a steady rain for the past three days- four inches of rain. Since the area has been in a rain deficit for the year, this is going to nearly completely erase that problem. We were nearly 7 inches of rain below normal for the year, and the combination of stalled cold front and tropical moisture from the hurricane will erase nearly all of that deficit.

On a side note, this is a fall more like the one from my Florida childhood: lots of rain. I remember one year, we had a cold front stalled over us for over a week, and it completely ruined our Thanksgiving break from school. A week off of school, and stuck inside watching it rain.

People who have read this post: 233
By Divemedic, ago

Misspent Youth

As yesterday’s story probably hinted at, I was a bit more reckless and prone to doing stupid things. As further proof, I point you to a post I first made back in 2012 about an incident that occurred back in 1991, where I used the same shotgun as yesterday’s story to confront some teens who claimed to be members of a street gang.

Part two was posted here.

Part Three is found here.

I am a lot more circumspect in my older years, but I also have to say that I still rarely back down from a fight. I’m pretty good at tilting at windmills like that. There have been times that trait of wanting to right wrongs and rescue damsels has cost me. I am glad my current wife moderates my wilder tendencies as much as she does. Even though she did get in my way while I was getting robbed in Las Vegas. We will retell that tale tomorrow.

People who have read this post: 207
By Divemedic, ago