JackC

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Everything posted by JackC

  1. JackC
    Except there is no evidence, subjective or otherwise. In fact when you're talking about the physical existence of an actual thing, the phrase "subjective evidence" is an oxymoron. I hate to break it to you but this story has been shared ad nauseum already and the more it gets dredged up, the more rediculous it sounds.
  2. JackC
    If you go and look up what constitutes evidence (you can ignore the objective and verifiable provisos) and then look up the word faith, you will see why your argument fails by its very definition.
  3. JackC
    Which belief system says that people are internally dead, organic automatons? But you have to wonder, would the fact that some people still haven't moved on from the superstitions of a bunch of iron age goat herders make some sense anthropologically speaking if they actually were a kind of internaly-dead organic automaton?
  4. JackC
    Emotional blackmail is a dirty trick to try and pull. Anyone resorting to such deplorable tactics should be ashamed of themselves.
  5. JackC
  6. JackC
    Why would I? Pop science is almost entirely junk and the short route to misunderstanding.
  7. JackC
    But we are not talking about tennis in the macroscopic world compared to tennis somewhere else in the macroscopic world. We are comparing lawn tennis to quantum tennis where the balls tunnel through you racket and exist only in a cloud of probability. But yeah, if it makes you happy, it's the same game, nothing changes, the article is about nothing, why did you even post it?
  8. JackC
    And you haven't been paying attention. If the games are the same, it shouldn't matter what type of computer you choose to play the game on and the whole point of the article is that it does matter.
  9. JackC
    Which makes it an entirely different game. Poker is a card game played by people sitting round a table. If you make the betting process different by putting in quantum rules, it ceases to be the same game.
  10. JackC
    No. It's not poker. It's quantum poker. The basic rules share a superficial similarity but the mechanism of playing the game is entirely different. English is superficailly similar to C++ in that they are both languages with syntax and grammar, but they are not the same language, not do they seek to convey the same types of message. People always get the wrong end of the stick from pop science books when they don't understand the underlying science. It's a fundamental flaw in trying to explain abstract concepts using concrete analogies. Reading pop science really is the fastest route to misunderstanding science.
  11. JackC
    A bunch of people sitting round a table dealing out cards do not behave like quantum particles. What this author describes is not poker, it's quantum poker. They are not the same game.
  12. JackC
    My point exactly. You do not have an absolute, unalienable, god-given right to anything. Your rights are dictated to you by laws which are man made and therefore subject to the whims of man. And he who has the biggest guns and the greatest will to use them decides who has what rights.
  13. JackC
    Your rights are an illusion maintained only because society deems it in it's interests to do so. As soon as your rights become inconvenient, the rules will be changed and your rights will vanish. You have the right to remain silent and they have the right to waterboard the information out of you. You have the right to an attourney and they have the right to exraordinary rendition. Like God, rights only exist while people believe in them. Anything that ceases to exist when people stop beliving in it can only ever be conceptual, never real. Fight all you want, that is the reality of it.
  14. JackC
    The concept of rights is entirely man made and it exists only for as long as society allows it to exist. Whatever rights you think you have, they're only tollerated for as long as they don't get in the way of some other, better funded right. You may think you have a whole heap of rights, but ultimately that doesn't mean a thing.
  15. JackC
    Be careful with reverse turns, if you're jumping something a bit twitchy and you're overly agressive with it, the canopy can spin up on you so do it high. For me, the first thing on my list is find the point where your brakes start to have an effect and the stall point in deep brakes to get your total flare range. Then a progressive flare trying to maintain level flight all through the flare range. Find the stall point on rear risers and how it reacts to rear riser turns. How it handles on toggles, how fast you can turn and how much height it loses in a turn. Front riser turns and dives. Slow flight characteristics, flying in half brakes and deep brakes. Then harness turns and combined inputs.
  16. JackC
    I cannot think of one single positive reason why a person wouldn't apply critical thinking to absolutely everything, assuming they are capable of it.
  17. JackC
    Stand up landings don't necessarily mean much on their own, it depends on what else they did prior to that and on who's doing it and under what circumstances. If a pro swooper does a well controlled 450 and screams in pulling off a blindman, waving at the crowd and then fails to stand it up, that doesn't mean he's crap at landing. But a jumper performing straight in approach under a lightly loaded relatively low performance canopy should ideally be able to stand up (or run it out) at the end of it if he did everything right. But just because they stood it up, doesn't mean it was all good and just because they fell over doesn't mean it was all bad. Either way, mockery or sympathy won't help a person who has just biffed their landing through lack of skill. If you're going to say anything, it's better to give them a way to improve, either by explaining what they did wrong and what they can do right next time or by pointing them in the direction of someone who can coach them.
  18. JackC
    As I see it, full face helmets are quieter, give better protection for RW where you're quite likely to get kicked and are more comfortable in colder climates where you might fall through rain or ice. On the downside, they can restrict your vision, they can fog and freeze up when it's cold, the visors can be hard to operate and they can make you feel claustrophobic and divorced from the reality of what you're doing. I also noticed the wind in your face can be a useful indicator of which way up you are if you find yourself unstable in cloud and a full face takes that away. Having said all that, my preference is a full face for RW and an open face for FF jumps. But check your local regs, you might need to be licenced before you can jump a full face.
  19. JackC
    Why? What's different about the reserve canopy in a skyhook equiped rig?
  20. JackC
    Student and tandem Icons only. Not sport Icons. The Aerodyne rep I spoke to said it will be at least a year before they will be available and that current sport Icons will not be able to have skyhooks retrofitted to them. Who is MaRRs?
  21. JackC
    Obviously you don't understand it much at all either, but we do have some "magic beans" to sell you..... Could you explain that a bit more please?
  22. JackC
    Most new rigs have good pin protection and are comfortable. In fact there isn't really much to choose between any of them, except of course for proprietary stuff like Skyhooks, magnetic riser covers and Miniforce 3-ring systems and other stuff like waiting times, aesthetics and price. If I'm buying a rig, I'll put safety first in my list of requirements and a Skyhook is a big plus. I ordered a Vector3.
  23. JackC
    So is the derivatives market, but the Black-Scholes equation still makes useful predictions.
  24. JackC
    You just need to ask the right question.
  25. JackC
    While that is certainly true, the EU elections are a slightly different animal to a general election. The EU elections are a sort of a regional proportional representation system whereas a general election is a true first past the post system. Couple that with the popular view that EU elections are less important than general elections, and as such are sometimes used as an oportunity to cast a protest vote (or abstention), and you have a system where all sorts of otherwise unelectable parties get representation in the EU parliament. Is that a good thing or a bad thing, I don't know but I doubt a general election would yeild similar results.