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Going to change the subject completely for a minute. Alcohol. Cooper ordered one bourbon and 7 Up at the beginning of the flight to Seattle, spilled it, and did not order another. A drink menu from around 1959 has circulated listing the various bourbons available en route. However, by 1970, as near as I can tell, NWA had ceased listing brands and had resorted to listing styles such as Canadian, rye, bourbon, etc. So, that said, in the 1970s, one of the most popular drink orders was a "7&7" which was Seagram;'s Crown 7 whisky and 7 Up soda. Catchy name, and that meant catchy marketing. Today, if you order a 7&7 you're probably in your 70s. Also, today, Crown 7 is considered a "cheap booze". It's a dive bar whisky intended for bar flies and homeless people. Bourbon was, and still is, a more sophisticated choice for drinkers. While there are varying tiers of bourbon - some expensive and some not - by and large, bourbon is a better whisky than Seagram's 7. Why then, would Cooper choose a bourbon over the ubiquitous Seagram's 7? Was Crown 7 not available on board? Seems unlikely considering its popularity at the time. Perhaps Cooper chose bourbon to appear more sophisticated? To appear above his station in life? If that's the case, then why mix it with a cheap soda like 7 Up? Whisky snobs will tell you that bourbon is sweet enough to be indulged in neat or over ice. They eschew using bourbon as a mixer in a high ball. To me, this indicates that Cooper was trying to appear like a sophisticated, well-to-do man with high brow drink choices, but was still a blue collar or middle class guy who enjoyed his 7&7s and Schlitz beer. This was his one chance to show off, yet he failed by mixing a good liquor with a crummy soda. Also, bourbon is made from corn mash. This makes it sweeter than rye whisky which is made from rye wheat, or scotch which is made from barley. Thus, mixing a sweet whisky with a sweet soda might indicate that Cooper had a bit of a sweet tooth. Lastly, the fact that Cooper ordered just one drink and did not order any after he spilled his first, indicates that Cooper was not a heavy drinker. His ordering the drink was probably more for show than to actually get intoxicated. So, in the end, Cooper's order of a bourbon and 7 Up demonstrates an inexperienced drinker trying to appear sophisticated and upper class while revealing his true blue collar or lower middle class social standing. It might also demonstrate Cooper's sweet tooth. This is all elaborate conjecture based on a very small detail of the case, but I got tired of hearing people argue about people who obviously aren't DB Cooper.

"The company believes the unit can be operated by someone very stupid. LOL

We did a tour of the Stanton Energy Center the other day. It's a small-ish (100 megawatt) hybrid peaker plant near Disney in Anaheim. It's a good example of the new generation of peaker plants. Older peaker plants are just natural gas turbines that the utility contracts with to provide emergency power (during heat waves for example.) The utility pays them three ways: -They pay them some small amount to always be ready to go. -They pay them significantly more to go to "hot standby" (turbine running at idle, connected to the grid, ready to go) -They pay them top dollar for power when they need it, usually on the order of $200-$1000 per megawatt. The Stanton plant combines two turbines with a battery plant. Now when they need to go to hot standby they use the batteries to provide grid services (like frequency control.) If they get the order to operate they do the first 10 minutes or so on batteries. If they have to go past 10 minutes they spin up the turbine with the batteries, without needing to use any natural gas to keep it at idle, and connect it to the grid. If they go past 20 minutes they fire it up and start generating with both turbines. Since they usually don't have to start the turbine they are seeing huge savings. The plant operator estimates they have reduced their costs by 50%, reduced gas used by 80% and reduced total emissions by 90% (mainly by being able to run at 100% power any time the turbine is providing power.) And since they don't have to store 4 hours of power in the batteries on site, the battery plant can be much smaller. This plant went from approval to operation in less than 2 years. They are adding more battery storage now; that took less than 9 months. And plants like this are the reason we are not having rolling blackouts here despite higher demand, hotter summers and longer/more intense heat waves.

The affect on kids sports is really devastating. Every parent thinks their kid is going pro at 8 years old. I grew up playing very competitive hockey and skated in a very minor league like Slapshot only worse. I have coached and refereed hockey since the late 70s. A few years ago we finally had to sit down about 300 parents in our San Diego youth hockey program to set them straight. One of our coaches was a high draft choice in the NHL and never played a game, toiling in the minor leagues for 12 years. He laid it out to them. They STILL thought little Billy should be on line one and make it to the LA Kings! Youth sports has become an entire industry in its own right. It’s crazy. The fun is gone for a lot of kids.

In 1993 my friend Dot had told me about her exhilarating experience skydiving up in the Mojave Desert, and I decided to give it a shot. I was working 4 tens Monday - Thursday with every Friday off, and had a regular group from the project that played golf on Fridays and another group of friends that worked as little as possible so there was Skiing locally, plus Mammoth, Tahoe, Donner and various other places in season, or camping in the Sierras or Big Sur, and or any number of different things a 25yr old dope smoking idiot could do on a 3 day weekend. So along comes April and my 26th birthday, so we make plans to drive up to California City on Thursday night. We spent the night in the hangar and were up early took the static line class, and I still remember "Feet and knees together, Identify ripcord, grasp it with both hands, Pull and throw it away" I also remember the PLF, watch out for a line over, if risers are twisted (mine were) grab with hands and pull apart to remove twist, and of course if chute starts to open while on the plane, get out fast, or it will violently pull you out. Class ends, we get our chutes put on, and they are so tight I could not stand up straight. We get on plane, and Bill being shorter has to sit where there is no side to the plane "N29173" as we start to taxi, and then leave the ground Bill has a death grip on the only thing he can grab, my knee. I get him to release me and I see the "No Fear" sticker in the rear window, first reaction to the sticker was "Bullshit" I'm full of fear. we get to 3500' drop the flag thing to check winds and the Jump Master tells Bill to get in the door, then ready position, and Go, and he just disappears, fuck.... well I gotta go now. We banked right so the Jump Master can make sure things are ok, and get lined up for my run. He tells me to get in the door, and I swing my legs out and am sitting with them being blown back, then it's ready position, and I turn my body to face mostly forward with my ass hanging half in and out of plane, my left hand on the edge of the floor and my right on side of the fuselage, I am look at the JM and waiting for his signal when I come to the conclusion that if I don't go right now, I will chicken out and crawl back to the other side. At the same time I push off and arch he points and yells GO. it was a surreal experience at first, the wind has stopped, and it becomes really quiet as I am hanging in midair watching the plane just zoom away as I seem to have become motionless, and Hear the flapping then a slap / bang kinda sound and the chute is open. Lines are twisted so I grab the risers and pull them apart and I remove the twist. I then hear a voice in the speaker "if you can hear me turn to the left" I grab the toggles and pull on the left one. I then notice that where the chute harness was so tight when it was put on , it's not anymore and it feels like I'm sitting like on a swing. I start to fly the chute, pulling on one toggle then the other and having the time of my life, a feeling like no other, no drug or any physical activity has been nor ever was any better. The guy on the ground gives me instructions and lines me up with the landing, I can see the ground rushing up he gives the command to flare and I touch gently down on both feet, which is followed immediately by my ass bouncing off the desert floor. I get up gather my chute and have a smile on my face that could not be wiped of with a brick. He asks me if I had fun and before I answer yes, he says that he knows I did because he could hear me laughing all the way down. I don't remember the ride back to the hangar, but I know I didn't walk. I get my Logbook and the JM has put "good arch, very aggressive exit, good jump" or words similar. Last night I was looking at the photo which I believe is the one from the first jump, many months later someone had found the camera that had slid or rolled out of the plane when they banked to watch me, and the film was still good, I had another photo taken on my second jump just shy of the 3 month expiration date on my training, and we did make a third jump a week or two after that. So I got two photos for the price of one, and in the 31 years since I have misplaced the logbook, and both original photos, I posted a copy under the static line heading last night. I was able to identify the LZ from the Google satellite shot but was saddened to see that the big circle with the large black dot in center doesn't exist anymore and while researching what had happened to the jump school I stumbled across this webpage. The photo of me in arch leaving the plane with the LZ below, and a tiny sliver of the runway visible has been my desktop wallpaper since 2000 or so. Back when we were all stuck with a top three shittiest Windows edition of all time "ME" Millenium Edition, it has also been used on every work desktop I have had since, and XP, followed by Windows 7 which is just NT by another name. I am still using 7 and avoided 8, and don't want 10, nor 11, 7 works fine, and I have never had any issues with it. I still remember using DOS when it didn't even have a number, and only 5-1/4 floppy drives. I fucking hate microsoft, and have used Linux Ubuntu, but not enough to learn the tricks, 7 / NT was proven for 15+ years so I'm keeping it, like my copy of Office 2007, since I absolutely refuse to conform to the new FUCKED UP you no longer own the software, you rent it yearly BULLSHIT. I started using these things when my Dad was given one before it was released to the public for sale, we got the complete software suite, with Basic, Excel, Word, etc. and none of them had any numbers or editions we also had Adventure. anyway sorry for the anti microsoft rant. I want to thank ZigZagMarquis and the youtube videos that were posted. specifically the following link which gave me the tail number of the plane I left while still in working order. https://youtu.be/ybd2cZIAqWg?si=dE7vkA5zEYqkbcnb

I'm not sure some of them are exactly fixable. Society changes all the time, whether in response to increasing population pressure, technology change, or other social or physical change, so "solving" them is a moving target. But the ability to recognize change, and adjust to it, seems to be variable within and among groups. Of course, my standard trope is trying to respect people as they are, but to expect them to respect others as well. Which really means that "fixing" isn't exactly the same thing for me as for anyone else, either. But I completely agree with people either not accepting (or understanding, or tolerating) complexity that doesn't align. It just seems to most of us (me, too, sometimes), that it's just not worth it under those circumstances. Generally wrong. But time saving, eh? I also think most people are inherently lazy and self-serving. Not that it's bad, it's just what people are; we save energy for what's most important. Wendy P.

There was a Cooper documentary that said Larry Carr found a consumer profile of Bourbon and 7up drinkers. At the time I tried to find that profile but I've never been able to find it or anything similar, nor have I seen it in the FBI files. Perhaps we should ask Larry about it on FB.

Oooh this is great! What a truly compelling and thought provoking post. This most definitely brings to mind the final scene from the Thomas Crown Affair, because you just know that's what he was evoking. I'm in a bit of a hurry now, so more later, but you've provided much food (and drink) for thought. Cool.

Frankly, given his posting history, I think SK wants to sow chaos — just as Bannon seems to deliberately, and Trump and much of the hard right out of a lack of understanding of complexity Wendy P.

Avatars were unfortunately lost in the transition to the new forum software. Wendy P.

An old classmate of mine, Lindy Elkins, proposed a mission to NASA years ago - she wanted to visit an all-metal asteroid, which is likely a remnant of an ancient planetary core, and run experiments. She didn't expect to win the competition for missions. But she did, and she's spent the last 7 years working on this mission. It is scheduled to launch today after a lot of delays on a Falcon 9 Heavy. It will take almost 6 years to get there, using Hall-effect ion engines. This is the first time these engines will be used in deep space. It will then spend two years on station running experiments and making observations. Good luck Lindy!

Laurent Duvernay-Tardiff was drafted by the Chiefs in 2014, he graduated medical school at McGill in Montreal in 2018 with a Doctor of Medicine and Master of Surgery. He studied mostly during the off season. in 2019 he enrolled at Harvard for a Masters in Public Health. He sat out the 2020 season to help in a long term care facility in Montreal during COVID. in 2022 he signed with the Jets and this year announced his retirement from Football. He is only the fourth NFL player to have graduated from Medical School. He got a lot of support from Andy Reid at the Chiefs to accomplish this. Reid's mother is also a McGill Medical School graduate.