Waste

Leesburg, Florida is the third fastest growing city in the United States. In fact, the city has increased in population by 18% in the past year. The city manager claims that 99% of that increase is due to The Villages, a nearby retirement community that is infamous for its frat house style elderly shenanigans. The houses in The Villages aren’t cheap- the average home in the area is selling for well over $400k.

Since Leesburg is located about an hour north of Orlando in Lake County, which is the county that wraps around the west and northwest side of the Orlando metro area, these new homeowners are paying school district property taxes, but the Lake county school district doesn’t have to provide any services. This is a huge cash cow for the county’s schools, with each home bringing in about $300 a year in school taxes. This means that the new construction is adding about $4.2 million in new tax revenue annually, and it’s being compounded each year as new homes are being built.

Other towns in Lake county are experiencing similar growth- Clermont, which is located about 20 miles south of Leesburg, has doubled in population in the past decade.

That’s why I was surprised to see that the Lake County School district is crying poor, claiming that they have a $35 million deficit, which they are attributing to a loss of 1,500 students. They said it’s partially because of the drop in birth rates in Lake County and the rise in private school vouchers. The county is claiming that they are losing $50 million a year to private schools. I say bullshit.

The county school board has an annual budget of nearly $730 million with a total enrollment of 48,500 students. If they are losing $50 million to vouchers, that represents 6,250 students, which is about 13% of total enrollment.

No, this deficit is due to mismanagement and waste, like most government money. For $15,000 a year per student, the taxpayers of Lake county should demand better. Our entire government, from the dog catcher to the President, is an exercise in poor management.

Sweat and Drinks

Sweat, or perspiration, is the primary means that humans use to cool themselves through the use of evaporative cooling. Very few mammals actually use perspiration as a cooling mechanism: in fact, other than a few primates, horses are the only mammals that use perspiration to cool down.

Sweat is 99% water. Dissolved in each liter of this water are the following minerals:

  • Sodium 900mg
  • Potassium 200 mg
  • Calcium 15 mg
  • Magnesium 1.3 mg

This means that perspiration has a much lower concentration of electrolytes than does blood. Still, as we sweat, we are not only losing water, but a lot of key electrolytes. If you are sweating heavily, you are losing more than just water, and that needs to be replaced. If you aren’t sweating heavily, then you shouldn’t have a lot of these because too many electrolytes is just as bad as not enough of them, especially if you have high blood pressure or heart failure.

There are a ton of electrolyte drinks out there: Gatorade is perhaps the most well known, but there is also Pedialyte, as well as a plethora of others. My biggest issue with many of these drinks is that they also contain an incredible amount of sugar. That’s why I only drink the zero sugar versions of these.

Gatorade has the electrolytes, but also comes with a lot of sugar. It carries 2 grams of sugar, 13.3mg of Sodium and 4.2mg of Potassium per ounce. I only drink these when I am exerting myself, and even then, I only drink the zero sugar versions. Cost is about 65 cents for a 16 ounce serving.

Liquid IV is a powder that is mixed with 16 ounces of water. When mixed, it carries 0.7 grams of sugar, 31mg of Sodium, and 23 mg of Potassium per ounce as mixed. I haven’t tried this one, but I know a lot of people who swear by it. Cost is $1.38 per 16 ounce serving.

LMNT (pronounced “element”) is another powder. It has 0.8g of sugar,16.5 mg of Sodium, and 12.5mg of Potassium per ounce as mixed. Cost is $1.30 per 16 ounce serving. I have never tried it, but I have seen advertising for it.

Pedialyte is a powder that is designed to replace electrolytes in children. It has about 0.675g of sugar, 16.25mg of Sodium, and 11.25mg of Potassium per mixed ounce. Cost is about $2 for a 16 ounce serving. I know that there are some athletes that like this stuff, but I hear that it tastes like armpit sweat.

I drink Gatoraid zero or another drink called Propel. I think they did well for me because my electrolytes were just a tiny bit low when I was in the hospital. Had I been drinking water, they would have been much lower, due to perspiration losses.

The disclaimer: I don’t advertise, and receive nothing for my reviews or articles. I don’t think that I ever will. I have no relationship with any products, companies, or vendors that I review here, other than being a customer. If I ever *DO* have a financial interest, I will disclose it. Otherwise, I pay what you would pay. No discounts or other incentives here. I only post these things because I think that my readers would be interested.

Heat Stress

One of the things that makes the heat so dangerous here in Florida is the humidity. The dew point temperature is the temperature at which the air can no longer hold all of its water vapor, and some of the water vapor must condense into liquid water. At 100% relative humidity, the dew point temperature and the air temperature are the same, and clouds or fog can begin to form. While relative humidity is a relative measure of how humid it is, the dew point temperature is an absolute measure of how much water vapor is in the air (how humid it is). In very warm, humid conditions, the dew point temperature can reach 75 to 77 degrees F, but rarely exceeds 80 degrees.

The dewpoint for the afternoon that caused my heatstroke was between 71f and 74f. The temperature for that 4 hour period was between 91f and 94f. That results in a heat index of between 100f and 103f.

High dewpoints are dangerous because it is a limit on how well your sweat can evaporate and cool your body. Heat can build up to dangerous levels.

Combined with that, it was a bright, sunny day with almost no wind. The Navy actually has tables for permissible heat exposure. Under those conditions, Navy regulations say that acclimatized personnel shouldn’t perform heavy work for more than 15 minutes per hour. I far exceeded that for more than 4 continuous hours.

Even worse, I am now 35 years older than I was when I was in the Navy. I am also about 40 pounds heavier. All of that makes my susceptibility to heat stress more pronounced.

As I said, I know better. Let my experience in this case serve as a warning to others as we enter the hot summer months here in the South.

I Should Know Better

It’s been several days since my last post. There is a good reason for that. As my readers know, I am installing a pool in the backyard. It’s almost done, and I decided that this was the best time to install the landscape sprinklers. I rented a gas powered trencher and spent a day pushing that thing around the yard as it dug a few hundred feet of foot-deep trenching.

I thought the trencher would make the job easy, and it didn’t. It made the job easier and faster, but it was still a chore trying to maneuver that thing all over the yard. It was hot, and by hot, I mean 95f with dew points around 70f. That’s a heat index of about 102f. I drank four quart sized bottles of Gatoraid during the six hours I was working. When it was time to return the trencher, my wife came with me and we went to dinner afterwards.

At dinner, I began losing my words. It started when I tried to say “skin in the game” and what came out was entirely different. Then I couldn’t really hold a train of thought long enough to continue our conversation. When we tried to leave, I was walking like I was drunk. My wife drove us home. When I got home, I was feeling confused, my pulse was 125, and temperature was 101.9f. I asked her to take me to the ED.

When we got there, the staff thought the same thing that I did- they put me under the sepsis protocol. Another oddity was that my right ankle was swollen to twice its normal size and extremely painful. My vital signs were odd:

Pulse 120, respirations 28, Oxygen Saturation 98%, BP 145/110, temp 99.8f

They also tested my heart, did a CT scan of my brain, and a bunch of other tests. The results that were abnormal was my D-dimer, which was critically high at 1.02, as well as my creatinine levels and liver enzymes were elevated. It looked like my kidneys and liver were being damaged somehow.

For those who don’t know, d-dimer is a protein that is found in the blood of someone after the breakdown of widespread blood clots. Elevated D-dimer levels suggest increased fibrinolysis, which can be a sign of either clotting or bleeding.  Now they got really concerned that I had blood clots, which can cause swelling legs, strokes, heart attacks, and other problems. The decision was made to admit me at that point. I went back to CT for an angio scan.

All of the tests of my heart, brain, and other systems came back normal. That d-dimer still bothered everyone. Finally, the hospitalist came to see me the next morning with what we all agreed was the answer. The combination of fluid loss due to my large amount of sweating, as well as the elevated core temperature from strenuous outdoors work cause a severe case of heat stroke, which activates your body’s clotting mechanisms, causing widespread micro blood clots.

Studies have shown a correlation between elevated D-dimer levels and the severity of heatstroke, as well as with the development of complications like AKI (acute kidney injury). In patients with exertional heatstroke, high D-dimer levels are associated with an increased risk of acute kidney injury. This in turn causes hyperinflammation (hence, the swollen ankle).

The danger here is that I was on the verge of developing disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) and multiorgan failure, which would have killed me. I didn’t even feel bad while I was working, and I thought that drinking large amounts of fluids would keep me from being dehydrated. I was wrong. I lost 12 pounds in that six hour period when I was working. When you consider that I drank about 12 pounds of Gatoraid, that means I lost about 12 liters of sweat in those six hours. Sweating out 24 pounds of fluid in an afternoon is potentially deadly. I am fortunate to be alive.

In short, I had an extremely severe case of heat stroke, and it damned near killed me. I wound up being in the hospital for several days. It was stupid of me not to recognize the signs and symptoms, especially as a nurse, a paramedic, and as someone who has lived in the Florida heat nearly his entire life. I was supposed to work today. I called off. I still feel a bit weak and under the weather, and my ankle still hurts.

Listen to Them

Richard Stengel is a former State Department official from the Obama administration. Now he works for MSNBC. Watch what he has to say about Afrikaners:

He acknowledges that they are not responsible for the sins of their forefathers, but still insists that they must be punished for the acts of previous generations. If the US takes them in as refugees, the blacks who currently live there will get all of the land. That isn’t good enough for the left. They hate whites so much, that they want them to be left there to be raped, murdered, and tortured. For something that happened before they were born.

Now apply that to the United States. He even does so himself by mentioning that it is like the Confederacy. The left keeps saying that the US is on stolen land, that slavery justifies anything done to whites today. They are telling you what they want to do- they want to punish whites for daring to be descended from people who once did things that the left finds objectionable.

They are telling you that YOU are the enemy.

Believe them, and prepare accordingly. This is what Obama’s fundamental transformation has wrought.

Protecting and Serving the Shit Out of You

A woman called police. When they arrived, she claimed that a man kicked in her door, beat her, and fled into the woods on foot. She named him, said he was her boyfriend who had just broken up with her, and was upset over the breakup. The police got a warrant for his arrest for domestic violence.

The only problem? He was a married paraplegic and had been confined to a wheelchair for the past 25 years. Instead of actually conducting a further investigation, the cops arrested him and told him that if he could bring proof that he was actually paralyzed to his trial, he could then prove his innocence. They arrested him and accused him of faking his medical condition to get out of going to jail. Watch for yourself:

The cops inform him 13 minutes into the video that he needs to get a lawyer so he can establish his innocence. Since when has that ever been the law? The cop even admits “She says you kicked down her door, but it doesn’t look like you can kick down anything.” So why are you still arresting him, you fucking idiot? This officer also admits that he spent nine months investigating this. How good is he at investigating when he didn’t even know that the guy he swore a felony arrest warrant for has been confined to a wheelchair for nearly three decades? He even says it’s been in his driving record that he requires a wheelchair and has a handicapped permit.

To make matters worse, the woman had an arrest record for lying in previous cases. This cop, his sergeant, and his lieutenant are all incompetent.

This is one area where Trump and I disagree. Cops don’t need more immunity, they need less. Qualified immunity needs to go away, and cops should be forced to carry malpractice insurance like other professions. I have a one million dollar policy that only costs me $150 a year, but then again, I am not an incompetent idiot who doesn’t know how to think for myself. They can get a policy, too.

To those who would say “Well, there was an arrest warrant, they have to follow it,” that is bullshit. I get written orders from doctors all of the time that I refuse to follow because they are stupid. Just last night, I had a doctor order me to conduct a pregnancy test on an 84 year old woman, and a second doctor wanted me to give a medication to someone when it was right there in the chart that they are allergic to that medication. I can use my brain and refuse to carry out an order that doesn’t make sense. So can cops.

It’s why they make us go to school and have a license. They expect you to not be a complete dumbass.

This story and others like it is why I won’t cry any time a cop gets killed.

Hypocrisy

Here is the problem that I have with the Catholic church: They want everyone to do as they say, and not what they do. A great example:

Shortly before his death Pope Francis updated Vatican norms imposing up to four years in prison for attempting to illegally invade the Vatican as a migrant. At the same time, he billed himself as the pro-migrant Pope and criticized those in the US who were against illegal immigration.

No different than the limousine liberals in Martha’s Vineyard.

Hate Crime

Black woman running her mouth. Guy is tired of hearing it, tells her to shut up. She calls him a cracker then says “back up off me, I got a gun.”

I might even be tempted to draw on her black ass as soon as she said she had a gun. What she just did is a hate crime, and it’s also a forcible felony called “aggravated assault.” I wonder what state this was in…

784.011 Assault.— (1) An “assault” is an intentional, unlawful threat by word or act to do violence to the person of another, coupled with an apparent ability to do so, and doing some act which creates a well-founded fear in such other person that such violence is imminent.

784.021 Aggravated assault.— (1) An “aggravated assault” is an assault:

(a) With a deadly weapon without intent to kill

Then the store owner wouldn’t call the cops. I guess he is afraid of she-boons

This Is All They Have?

The big news this morning that has the left all excited is the Student Newspaper at Princeton has discovered that Pete Hegseth cheated on his homework when he was in school 22 years ago.

This is what the left is reduced to- combing through the history of every member of the Trump administration, looking for something, anything, that they can use against them. They are reduced to being that little narc that turns you in for running in the hallway between classes, or for having chewing gum on the school bus.

Ridiculous. Is this really all they’ve got?