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You say that like it's not being done on purpose.

The high cost of a university education is a direct result of states shrinking their support, which was a consequence of the political lie that you could cut taxes over and over and not cut services. As state support decreased, the shortfall had to be made up in increased tuition. Also tuition is just a piece of the puzzle, as a student you also have to come up with money for books, computers, supplies, rent, food, transportation, etc. None of the costs of just living are suspended while you are in school. Getting an education beyond high school is an investment, but like all investments there is no guarantee of a big profit. Many careers are highly competitive, not everyone who earns a degree turns that degree into a high-paying job. Nevertheless, if you are passionate about making a career in a particular field that requires an advanced education, you cannot even compete unless you have made that investment, which means taking on that debt just to have a shot. The alternative is to give up your passion and not take the risk. Just settle for stocking shelves at Joe's Auto Parts or something. I think that as a society we would be better off if access to careers could be determined by commitment and willingness to work hard, not by the wealth you happen to be born into or your willingness to risk soul-crushing debt. Some countries have a system where university is essentially free, but only the best students can make it through the training. That way the country benefits from having the best people in their professions, and they end up repaying the investment in their training in the form of the taxes they pay on their income.

Hi Robert, From your link: some companies put more effort into the pursuit of federal student-aid money than into teaching or learning IMO this is the crux of the problem. Jerry Baumchen

Circling back to your earlier observations, it now seems apparent that there is a difference between home schooling and university when it comes to engineering.

Could be. On the other hand you really have to shout out Ed Scott who was first to theorize that fewer USPA Officials would result in fewer embarrassments for USPA Members.

^This. Big time. Luke has done enough 'Hollywood stuff' that he knows what needs to happen, what needs to be approved, the people who approve this sort of thing, all that. He's done it before. Why he chose this one to simply 'go for it' after approval was denied is something I find appalling. Did he not start the approval process early enough to have 'wiggle room' for appeals if it was denied? Did he just expect the approval to be rubber stamped because of who he is and what he's done in the past? Was the 'investment' (both money and time) in the stunt so high that breaking the rules was considered worth it? The thing about it is there was virtually zero chance of the plane 'flying away'. It was in a vertical dive over uninhabited desert. It had a BRS for the 'emergency landing'. It didn't quite work properly, but it did work. Not sure if they had 'remote activation' capability, but I can see that being implemented without too much trouble. The risk to 'persons or property on the surface' (I agree that it's a good rule) was VERY low. I can see a good argument for getting the FAA to change their minds on this. Don't know if that could or would have happened, but I don't see it as impossible.

Because if you just get out and let it fly away, it could crash into the desert, or into that shopping mall 10 miles away. The FAA requires any aircraft to be able to make "an emergency landing without undue hazard to persons or property on the surface" which is, really, a pretty reasonable rule.

For the exact same reason banks and other credit providers won't tell you precisely how you didn't meet their lending criteria, if your application is unsuccessful - it prevents people from learning what the actual criteria are and gaming the system. It's what makes Musk's statement that he wants to make the algorithm open-source AND also combat bots/spam absolutely and completely laughable, the two actions are in direct conflict with each other.

A well educated citizenry benefits everyone. It's not all about career options. Thanks to the poorly educated we got a pussy grabbing con-man for our last president.

Neil Parish was a UK MP who just resigned from parliament for watching porn in the House of Commons. So different from the GOP. Where you get votes for having sex with minors and "grabbing pussy". As long as you can satisfy the Christian right with right amount of hate for LGBT people. Its all good..

Replying to Yoink (who started another thread but Wendy locked it and directed people to post here): The guy in the video is Paul Bertorelli, a main contributor at the AvWeb aviation news site. Who is also an active skydiver. So he'll understand flying & skydiving stuff better than your average youtube commenter.

The thought that the Hayduke had a disproportionate number of tension knots led to a survey and year long study that resulted in a change in brake line design for the Hayduke, the Hayduke 2 and a 6-grommet slider to reduce the propensity of tension knots. A fairly comprehensive white paper should be released, soon, that outlines the work and findings.

Oh, I think everyone else gets it. If you’d like, I can explain Wendy P.

Semi Stowless Bag Review by Sandy Grillet I first started jumping the semi-stowless bag from UPT with the two locking stows and 4 tuck tabs, prior to them going into production because the designer wanted his design to be field tested using mostly an everyday jumper with what he thought would be typical skydives and pack jobs. I make 325-350 jumps each year. Roughly 1/3 of which are camera jumps - filming tandems. The rest are belly jumps as 4 and 8 way training, competing, coaching and FS organizing at boogies and events. I make use of packers for about 275-300 of my jumps (one of the reasons for the designer to give me a prototype of his bag). I now have more than 2500 jumps on the semi-stowless bags using Katana 120s, Velocity 103s and Valkyrie 96s. I have zero jumps (that means none) on wing suits. So my opinion is based on my personal experiences and my general knowledge of skydiving and deployment sequences. I have nothing but good things to say about the semi-stowless bag. It is essentially set up the same as a reserve bag except it uses a flap with tuck tabs for figure-eighting the lines instead of sliding them down into a pouch. This allows the packer to see what the lines look like as they are being figure-eighted - a good thing IMO. As recommended by the designer, I use large rubber bands for the two locking stows and double wrap them around no more than 1 1/2 inch of line bite. Some people will tell you double wrapping is not a good idea and may cause bag lock. This is a myth (assuming the use of large bands and the proper maintenance of your pilot chute and kill line length). I've been double wrapping large bands for 18 years on all my stows (locking stows included) even before the semi-stowless bag). I love the openings of the semi-stowless bag. I've had mostly very controlled on heading openings. Any off heading openings (90-120 degrees) usually happen on my pack jobs because I've been told I sometimes pack a bit hastily. Thank God for packers. The bag does allow you to get to line stretch quicker and cleaner than a conventional bag. I like this because I believe the majority of line twists start and are caused before the canopy comes out of the bag. Most jumpers replace the rubber bands only when they break or are extremely close to breaking. How many times have you wrapped a band around a line-bite thinking "come on don't break..... just hold for one more jump"? This means our bands are generating varying levels of force on our line bites. Some hold better and longer than others due to better (newer) strength. This imbalance of line bite strength often initiates rotation of the bag as the lines play out causing line twists. I believe the single wrapping of line bites sometimes allow the lines to deploy out of sequence allowing one or more lines to sneak out early and wrap around another line bite which can and has caused bag locks and hard openings. I also believe too much line bite helps cause line twists and out of sequence line deployment which can also cause line twists and bag lock. I've seen footage of quite a few opening sequences using high speed cameras, which means you can slow the footage down by roughly 2/3 of a normal video camera slow motion. The footage is quite enlightening. I think most people would be shocked to see how much bag dance and out of sequence line deployment is actually going on above our heads. Now, this doesn't mean that it happens all the time but it does happen pretty regularly. It also does not mean that it couldn't happen with the semi-stowless bag but the design is such, and testing along with hundreds of thousands of jumps has proven that bag dance and out of sequence line deployment is dramatically reduced to almost nothing. I like my lines to come out quickly and cleanly (like a reserve) so my canopy can hit the air with the greatest chance of an on heading deployment from the bag. After that, it's a matter of how well you packed and placed the canopy in the bag (especially the control of your slider), how well your canopy is in trim (lines), your body position during deployment and the design and wing loading of the canopy. As I mentioned earlier, you do get to line stretch quicker but it does not cause faster or harder openings. The openings are controlled by the slider and the packing (and canopy design). If a person gets a hard opening it's usually because the slider was not well controlled during the packing and bagging process. There can be other factors but it's almost always the slider. The semi-stowless bag does not affect the hardness or softness of the openings. It only affects the speed to line stretch which I like. It also allows the lines to play out in a more orderly fashion. We must remember, we only use rubber bands to keep the lines in place until they are needed and then to allow them to play out in a relatively orderly fashion in what is otherwise a fairly chaotic couple of seconds. But those bands can and do create other issues as I mentioned above. The semi-stowless bag does exactly the same thing but simply allows the lines to play out more consistently. All of this can and has been debated by those who are naysayers. And I believe healthy, sensible, civil debate is good and necessary for further development of ideas in our sport and gear. And I welcome the debate by those who have actually given some rational and original intellectual thought to this or any subject. Of course this is just my humble opinion – Sandy Grillet Full disclosure >> I am a UPT Vector dealer.

The navajo and the Seneca are 2 entirely different airplanes, they do not share any interchangable parts. A seneca would only carry 5 or 6 jumpers max. It only has 4 cylinder 360 cubic inch Lycoming engines ranging in horse power from 180hp to I think 210 hp.