Leaderboard

The Republicans should be forced to carry Trump to term, even if it threatens the life of the Republican Party.

I'm not sure it makes sense to conflate Walmart shootings with personal defense shootings or to lump all personal defense shootings together. I personally am opposed to open and concealed carry , pistol or long gun, as a matter of constitutional right. I do think that having a dedicated personal defense shotgun in a home of adults is a good plan for individuals skilled in the weapons use. I also think that regulation of firearms is good policy and the confiscation and destruction of war looking weapons would be acceptable but that would not include shotguns and bolt action rifles with 3-5 shot magazines. So I would segregate all instances where someone with a dedicated home defense or other shotgun or a bolt action hunting rifle was successful in a home invasion situation from all other instances.

Using absolute number instead of rate is meaningless when comparing entities of different sizes. Doing that, the way you do, is deliberately misleading. As Wendy already pointed out, using absolute number makes El Salvador look like paradise compared with the USA, since it only has 3,500 or so murders each year, compared with over 16,000 for the USA. However, when you look at rate per 100k population you see that El Salvador, with a rate of some 52 per 100k, is in fact some 10 times more dangerous.

It would be good if we can stick to discussing the suspect and the information. This is not the first time someone has questioned Flyjack’s information. So I’ll step in and say that I am one of the people who has seen it and heard about other information. I find it compelling and even possibly useful to parts of my case, but it is his info and he can decide what he wants to share. I won’t discuss things told to me in confidence. I find he is rarely wrong, and I have not known him to lie. He is pretty well known in certain circles for the guitar find. I like music, but not as much as some people in the industry. I’ve had people very well versed tell me how cool that guitar story is. Once someone gets on the radar outside of the Vortex, they have to play by new rules, especially with the media. So if he is waiting to reveal info about Hahneman then that’s his choice. Hahneman has a story of his own outside of DB Cooper. I’ve seen more than one Cooperite have to play their cards close once they get a little famous. I’m happy for them. The spotlight is not where I want to be a lot. When it comes to information sharing, I find it much better when we all generally get along. I understand there is some bad blood between some of you. I’d like to see all of you stay on the case. I come to DZ almost exclusively to interact with Fly and Georger because they are not on the other boards much. Not using them as a resource is a loss for anyone who wants to learn more. Flyjack was the first one I interacted with who had the bills cataloged and searchable and all the 302s searchable. Long before I met many of you, I said he was the best researcher on the case. That bothers some of my other friends. Oh well. He could probably cool down here and there, but so could some of you. I’ve learned that once you have a suspect, you’re going to get called out. It happens to all of us. It happened to Eric with Sheridan, and to me, and to Reca and others. Fighting every battle will wear you out.

OK... this user considers you both very valuable assets - hands down! Civility Please . There has been enough turmoil in Cooperland. Thanks to you both and everyone else. Life is tough these days and I have had a very shitty week so far ..... I have coffee brewing and am going to get it now and curl back into my office chair .... Just blame everything on Georger.

No fighting on D.B. Cooper Day!

Darren: We all love your podcast and can appreciate your neutrality. But I don't have the same obligations you have. The difference between the Reca group and the rest of us is that they get the facts of the case completely wrong. We all argue about suspects, but that is around the interpretation of information, not making up information. Complete fantasy. I have serious issue with people like this, especially if they vote in our elections. I'm a few miles from the January 6th incident. I've served in the military and come from a decent family line of service. These guys invoking Walt's embellished military career is a disgrace. No I haven't read the book or seen the movies or whatever else they have. I didn't finish Mein Kampf either, but I read enough know what is in there. If someone reads one paragraph on Wiki and comments, then ok, I get that they should probably get more information. But how many in the Vortex have only read one paragraph on Reca? Did I hear that one of their editors came to them about their uncle? No bias there. Walt assassinated someone in The Netherlands? Lisa was a nice woman, but she really wants to believe this. Vern says a gust carried Walt to Cle Elum. A wind gust carried him 100 miles? He discounts the side door of the plane as an issue. I've skydived many times, and not tandem. You don't go out the side door of a 727 going that fast. This group comes across as better than the rest of us. Like we are stupid, like we should believe things they believe. If I lie to you and you take a lie detector test, you will pass. You are being honest.

I suspect these guys would like nothing more than to set up a wide-ranging, airtight scientific inquiry, given unlimited time and resources. Short of that, they are working with what they have.

That’s exactly the kind of thing a KGB agent would say.

My KGB name is Math of Incepts.

It is amazing that in the 21st century, we still have people so naive as to believe there is no such thing as: 1. Corrupt law enforcement. (Chicago PD Det Reynaldo Guevara framed 51 people for murder). 2. Corrupt prosecutors. 3. Charlatans posing as "forensic experts". (see "bite mark analysis" and "polygraph").

New episode out now! DB Cooper’s taped confession with Vern Jones. Enjoy! https://thecoopervortex.podbean.com/e/db-cooper-s-taped-confession-vern-jones/

I personally find the interpersonal sniping to be a drag. Maybe inevitable, but it’s counterproductive. If I want to see people who are generally the same undermining and impugning each other, I’ll go to my family’s Thanksgiving meal. What is the guitar story?

Long post warning. Your statement was "I doubt that any of the 600+ dead would care that the death rate was lower in Chicago than other locations," and yes, rate doesn't really matter. However, it's still a false equivalency, because Chicago is a large area, and it would be just as intellectually honest to say that zero people in Easthampton died last year from gun violence. It's picking a single data point. I use statistics to inform my decisions; I don't necessarily control them with statistics, but if the statistics say that something is more likely to help than hurt in the kinds of situations I get into (RSL's, seat belts), then I'll probaby use them. Even if there is some percentage of people who are hurt by them (videographers often don't use RSL's because they have so many snag points on their heads and, in the case of handicams, hands). Take, as an example, motorcycles (I rode for nearly 30 years). Lots of hard core people say that loud pipes save lives, that earplugs make you unaware of traffic dangers, and that helmets make you less free. There is no statistical evidence for either of the first two, and loud pipes hurt my ears, helmets demonstrably help in a lot of head injury situations, and earplugs help me to focus better wtihout the distraction of the noise. And I had a horn on the bike that was hard to ignore. Anecdotal evidence is just that, one person's experience. You can't take that from that person, but you have to take that experience in the context of all of the situation -- in the case of a car cutting you off (i.e. "loud pipes save lives"), were you traveling in that car's blind spot? Were you following closer than is good? What was the visibility? How much traffic was there? All of those things enter, and if you take an anecdote, you have to make sure that your experience matches all of them, because otherwise you're prepared for the last link in a chain of circumstances, rather than the first link. Kind of like the guy who doesn't maintain his gear, never checks his steering lines for twists, packs in a hurry, and doesn't use an RSL because it "might make for a bad body position," and has a cutaway where he was unstable. Well, the first three of those already contribute to his likelihood of having a cutaway, and the steering line twists contribute to its being a spinner. So address any of them, and you've removed the reason why he doesn't think the RSL is a good idea. That's where statistics help. They inform, and provide more insight into how a LOT of situations developed with a particular characteristic. Wendy P.

Anyone who thinks having a gun in the home makes them and their family safer is dead wrong. The data make that very clear.

All I said was "That piece of halibut was good enough for jehovah"

Hi 13, IMO this answers your question: . . . the mfr decided that they did not want to give a free canopy away. Jerry Baumchen PS) Back some time ago, when I was still in the mfg business, I bought a number of no-longer-in-service Demo Reserve Canopies from PD. They were the owners of the canopies until I bought them. They had written Not Airworthy on each of them. They had told me this prior to any purchases. Their explanation was that the canopy(s) did not pass their porosity checks as examples of their reserve canopy(s). When they arrived some of them seemed to be in very good condition to me. I would have considered them airworthy. I then talked to PD again as I thought some of them were airworthy. PD said that 'some of them' would pass PD's test standard for porosity on re-certification by PD. However, they would not pass PD's in-house standard for a Demo Reserve Canopy.

How about crucifixion?

No, you didn't. But if you compare (say) the number of murders in the US with the number of murders in Honduras or Haiti, it makes Honduras and Haiti seem pretty tame, too. That's why rate matters. Wendy P.

The other reason, is that gun nuts are DUMB. Despite all evidence, they still think this works.

Hi guys, My name is Mike Pelkey. Brian Schubert and I are credited with being the first BASE jumpers. We made the first jump from the El Capitan on July 24, 1966, 12 years before Carl Boenish and company began BASE jumping. Just thought I would say hi and see if anyone remembers me from Basejumper.com.

Sounds like you handled it well. I would have stalled the canopy and flown it backwards for a bit to see if it would clear, but YOU made the correct decisions based on YOUR equipment and experience. Bravo.

In that very long middle paragraph--the one that gushes over Gunther and speaks informedly about his work, including correctly identifying the date and exact title and punctuation of a 9-year-old magazine article, down to correctly placing the comma within in the quotation marks. But he can't spell "extraordinary" correctly? Can anyone on this board correctly relay the title, year, and author of a magazine article they read a decade ago, without Googling? I am finding this far-fetched.

As far as I'm concerned the only possible thing that just maybe you might have done better would be to cut away a little sooner. Like when the spiral began at 2600 instead for attempting to fix it. But you did good work in any case.