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I think this thread should be renamed to "old man yells at cloud".

I'm going to respectfully disagree. It gives an element of respect for someone's beliefs while acknowledging that you don't believe the same way.

Happy New Year to all. Let's hope the world finds a way to get a little closer together this year.

And a happy New Year to all as well. I hope that Omicron is the straw that broke the back of the pandemic, and that we are on the back side of it by Chinese New Year. To have family and friends together again for good food and good company will be lovely.

No you're mistaken. I'd be the first to attack the hypocrisy of the Gulfstream owning televangelists. The politicians and religious leaders who use the names of their gods for political purpose. But like other concepts of human behavior that are difficult or impossible to define in scientific terms. For some religion is useful, beneficial in driving positive behaviors and actions. There are many religious charities and adherents of religion solely devoted to helping mankind.

They don't become any more or less ludicrous the more you point it out. All religions that pretend to understand any kind of "creation" are ludicrous. It goes without saying. Calling out believers for believing in magic is pointless. Unless your goal is to antagonize, it works every time for that. You are not smarter than them just because you can see the obvious fallacy. They are all aware of it. Some choose to believe anyway, most choose to pretend to believe because they want to remain in the culture.

If that belief that you find ludicrous helps someone to find community, comfort or strength that they can't figure out how to access without it, then great. If that community is exclusionary and/or divisive, that's a human problem that can happen without religion. It's the exclusionary and divisive community that needs to be dealt with, not necessarily the deity. Making sure that someone knows that you think their beliefs are BS is often just a way of making sure that you assert your perceive superiority. One-upping, as it were. Wendy P.

I am sure there are people like that. But I grew up in a very religious household, and we knew literally hundreds of people through our church. And none of the people we knew there were trying to get books banned, or muslims deported, or get vaccines outlawed. The one thing that I saw a lot of was opposition to abortion - I'd estimate 75% of the people in our social circle wanted it banned, compared to the ~50% of people who wanted it in public polls of that time. I mean, there are plenty of people in the illiberal left who want right wing speakers censored, want minority groups treated differently in the eyes of the law and want GMO's, meat and (up until five years ago) vaccines banned. But those don't mean that liberals in general want that - any more than extremists make all religious adherents extremist.

You regularly go out of your way here to use derogatory terms for religion even when no one is pushing anything on you. And of course no one here has ever pushed anything on the rest of your family. You don't like religion, I get it. I don't like makeup. But I don't go around telling women who wear it that they look like clowns.

This is an important factor that will drive EV charging installations. The most common type of charger in the US is the type 2 - a 240VAC charger that provides anywhere from 16 to 50 amps. The smaller they are the easier they are to install. The smaller they are, of course, the longer the charge takes as well. Several shopping centers around here are realizing that putting in a bunch of the slower level 2 chargers - even making them free - not only draws people to the shopping center, but also draws them there for an hour or so (due to the slow charge rate) AND they tend to be the more affluent customers, since up until very recently EV's have been more expensive than ICE cars. Which is the kind of people many shopping centers want to attract.

A dropzone making correct safety decisions in terms of wind/weather conditions is in my view never a bad thing. Having been at some dropzones where I (at +- 6000 skydives) skipped loads due to weather conditions on landing, and then seeing guys with 51 jumps go up because 'the limit is 50 jumps', it can at times feel like a jump-limit was set with DZ income in mind, as opposed to safety. In the 6 or so weeks I've spent at the dropzone over 2021, I've seen the DZ limit jumping at 50/100/500 jumps, but in almost 100% of those, I had already taken myself of the load. There, at lower jump numbers, its sometimes worth trusting the judgement of people with more experience and eye for local conditions. The landing area is indeed not the lush patch of grass you see on other dropzones, for a large part caused by the all year round warm to hot weather. Summer season (June to August) we also avoid, as it just gets too hot. Though jumping from early to mid-day, and then chilling at the pool of your hotel, is never a bad thing. My main gripe with the surrounding area is not too much to do (sea/beach is an hour away) in the direct area surrounding the DZ, but enough good restaurants to not stress about that too much, as in the end, we're there to jump

There is a long list of your peers that do not think it an illogical belief. List of Christians in science and technology You say I'm just trying to be politically correct. I say I'm trying to be as respectful of another culture as I am of any other.

You don't. But you also don't have to go out of your way to antagonize them. Up to you, I'm just laying out the conclusion I have come to. I make a habit of "kicking against the pricks" when I feel the need. I lay into them for what they do, I leave the beliefs alone.

Response to the nipply one: Your first jump will be a recurrency. To make sure that you obey your jumpmasters, you'll be required to wear eye shades along with the face mask. The instructors will pull off the eye shades when they deploy you. With a frap hat, the options are endless. I'd go with the standard little blue face shield, and just let freefall blow it off. Then you can wait for it to land and re-use it again. Make sure you weight it appropriately -- you do want it to come back down on the airport, after all. There's a whole new sport of mask accuracy, with people building special accuracy masks, studying the wind currents in detail, and adjusting the mask weight based on the exit altitude and direction. Wendy P.

Contributed so much to the sport. All around good guy. He will be missed. RIP John.

There's several disparaging terms. Why not just, "Your God."

That’s right, thanks for setting georger straight Robert. Shame on him for not knowing the super sleuth that’s going to solve NORJAK.

Exactly. And if that helped increase converts and support during the Diocletian persecution of Christians, why, that's a nice side benefit. I mean, no one wants to be "sacrificed." And then there was Vatican II. My grandmother never got over that one.

Do I need to bring out Emo Philips to explain it all again?

We have been visiting Skydive Spain (Seville) regularly the last 1,5 year and they seem to have jumpable weather all year round. No issue with dust devils in summer, but you do get general turbulence making jumping a thing from 7:00 (1st load) to around 14:00 or so on those days, and a few sunset loads if enough people hang around. But September up to around May, the dropzone runs pretty much non stop all day long, and 15.000 ft standard jump altitude (2x Dornier), from 9:00 to sunset. Heading there again next week, February as well as April. It's perfect for EU 'winter' jumping, at a comfy 16 to 18 celcius, even on the colder days...

No they’re not

'Gender' is a grammatical construct, while 'sex' is biological. 'Der Kitzler' and 'die Klitoris' are German for 'clitoris,' one is masculine ('man in the boat' maybe?) and the other is feminine. Either way you describe it, it is usually an indication that a female is present. As far as left-handedness goes, I recall learning to write with the hand that didn't hurt from being smacked with a ruler. I am now very much ambidextrous. I do not get the impression that homosexuality is more prevalent than it was 50 years ago, just that it is less closeted. Perhaps that is due to having grown up in artistic circles. If homosexuality is, indeed, more prevalent, I suspect it is related to conditions described as ''Behavioral Sink." I consider Veterinary Science to be a better standard than similar human studies in the sense that it is fraught with a different range of emotions than are human studies. By this I mean that one can place a bet on a stallion, mare or gelding, an Arabian, Appaloosa or Paint and nobody will freak out with charges of racism and/or sexism. If someone doesn't think there is a difference, they are free to bet on a Clydesdale against a Thoroughbred. Americans like it simple, but life isn't always like that. If you are in Asia and treat Han Chinese, Koreans, Ainu, Annamese, Khmer and Thai as interchangeable, you are in for a rude awakening. The same goes for losing track of the differences between Maori, Zulu, Yoruba, Ibo, Tutsi, Hutu and Mandingo, or between Sicilian, Finnish, Castilian, Norman, Scottish, Welsh, Czech and Albanian. Thomas Sowell has done a rather good job of putting Woke ideologies into perspective. Where he is wrong, if you wish to disagree with him I strongly suggest that you have your rhetoric in order. Having had enough family that went up in smoke, I am sensitive to the concept of 'special treatment.' When a group demands to be treated differently, my feeling is that one should be careful what they ask for. I agree that many things sucked 150 years ago but, even if they require a great deal of improvement, they are by no means the same as they were then. To bitch about things that were true 4 or 5 generations ago is kind of pointless. Also, many of the 'solutions' that were put forth in the mid 19th century have been tried and found wanting, Socialism/Communism for example. What made sense as a means of survival for a Shtetl in the Pale against Cossacks et al. is hardly suitable as a universal basis for government. It's been tried. Like George W. Bush, we have to come to a point where we declare 'Mission Accomplished!' and move on. Of course there is a bit of tidying up to do, but we will make short work of it as usual. If, when someone like George Floyd is killed, and the hue and cry is raised to the effect that no CITIZEN or HUMAN BEING should ever be treated like that, I'm with you. Make it all about race and you've lost me. If I come across a case where a deadbeat junkie without a fashionable skin color similarly comes to grief at the hands of the authorities and nobody bats an eye, I call foul. If the goal is equality, I'm in. If you want to focus on differences, again, be careful what you ask for. Pretending everyone is 'the same' is a fool's errand. That is not necessary to have the standard of 'equal rights, equal responsibilities - no more, no less.' BSBD, Winsor