DrewEckhardt

That might work out OK. The last time the Democrats did that they lost, the Republicans gained control, and we got nice tax cuts. I care more about my guns than other peoples' abortions and government entitlements and when push comes to shove there are plenty of other gun owners who'll ignore issues like those not affecting them personally.

It depends on how much of both jumpers height is in their legs versus torsos. The rule of thumb is that the main lift web should be your height in inches - inseam (no shoes, feet flat on the floor, measured to your crotch) - 20. Ex: 5'10 = 70" - 30.5" inseam - 20 = 19.5 and my custom rigs are 19-20". A 6'3" guy with a 35.5" inseam would fit them well if he wasn't too heavy. A shorter guy probably wouldn't have stubby enough legs for a good fit. You can have some one take your measurements as needed for a manufacturer's order form, call them with those and the rig's serial number, and have them tell you how close it'll fit and what it will cost to make it right if you want to.

No, although it does reduce your risks of injury by a criminal. This may be especially attractive to little old ladies that are unlikely to have more weight and fitness than their attackers. It's like having a fire extinguisher. I'm not scared of fire although it doesn't cost much to have a fire extinguisher and it may make a big difference in my life.

We mostly buy guns because we like to shoot them and enjoy them the same way we like do cars, motorcycles, watches, power tools, and other things stereotypically testosterone endowed people like. We buy sooner when people elect politicians who are likely to increase prices and/or limit our selection. Over a dozen times that. .22 rifle .223 sport utility rifle .308 sport utility rifle .22 pistol 1911. It's a classic. 9mm pistol for target use (affordable to shoot as far as centerfire pistols go) high capacity .40 pistol with scoring advantages in some practical pistol competitions concealable center fire pistol for self defense shotgun for trap (preferably an over-under) shotgun for 3-gun single action revolver for cowboy lever action in the same pistol caliber rifle caliber lever action plus whatever else you need for your chosen game animals, terrain, and whether you're hunting with a pistol or long gun. Some places also have separate muzzle loading seasons which call for their own tools. Venison is nice, but elk and antelope are tastier. Yum!

you only have 30000 jumps/year in the US? I would believe it is quite a lot more, no? thanks for info ingo 30,000 active skydivers. Many more jumps. Looking at the rate of fatalities relative to total jumps is less appropriate than relative to the number of jumpers because 1) The jump total includes tandems which are atypically safe 2) It doesn't fit currency into the equation which is significant.

That'd be one way to get Republicans back in office like after Bill Clinton insisted Congress include a sport utility gun ban in HR3355. I'm not a woman and can afford to fly those in my family to other states and countries if abortion is banned, save at least $17,000 a year towards my retirement so I won't be collecting Social Security after it becomes means tested, our kids have undergraduate degrees and won't be indoctrinated by school prayer, and therefore don't consider such issues first when voting. OTOH, I like my guns and will vote for almost any Republican in a winnable race who isn't anti-gun over his or her Democrat opponent that is. Other people have done the same and will do so again. There aren't enough guns. All these firearms enthusiasts understand arithmetic and are stocking up on guns now because we like them and have good reason to believe that the government will pass laws banning new production for civilian sales which can increase prices up to 20X (FOPA 1986 means that M16s can run $16,000 not $800) although 2X on guns and 5X on regular capacity magazines is more likely. It'll cost us much less to buy now. That reminds me - I have some online shopping to do. Maybe the increased gun sales will have a trickle down effect on the economy like the $40B of mortgage backed securities bought by the fed each month.

How does the math work on that? Just curious and numbers challenged. USPA membership is required to jump at most drop zones, especially turbine ones where lots of jumps occur so we can assume that its 30,000 member total is a good approximation for the number of skydivers in the US. Annual US fatalities average about 30, or one skydiver in 1000. For those small odds repeating the annual skydiving experience makes your career odds about # of years / 1000. People "should" graduate from college in 4-5 years which is around age 22 and 20 years from now for a 2 year old son. 20 in 1000 is 1 in 50. 1. "Big" is a relative term. These days many (most?) people think it includes canopies loaded at 1.2 pounds per square foot (permitted for skydivers with 200 jumps under Brian Germain's formula). It's still enough to kill you, especially with non-rectangular wings that like to dive when given some control input. 2. The incident reports are filled with "not hook turn type people" that were generally conservative under canopy and just didn't know what to do once they got in an unusual situation. For example: 1.2 pound/square foot loading, Stiletto 150, 480 jumps, not swooping, dead anyways. http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3709212 The numbers are reasonable evidence suggesting that skydiving is not safe, perhaps to the same degree as riding motorcycles on the street. For some people at some points in their lives that's entirely acceptable. For some it's not. The people between the two points should take appropriate measures to make it safer for them and/or provide for their heirs if it doesn't work out.

Just another tip...when the winds are high, you usually don't need as much toggle stroke to get the same "power" when you flare. Your canopy doesn't care what the wind speed is and requires the same control input to achieve a given airspeed, sink rate, and attitude regardless of wind strength and direction. Of course with a healthy head wind you can get away with putting your feet down with much more air speed than without since your ground speed is lower and under a smaller canopy neglecting to finish the flare more aggressively to pop back up won't have your feet moving like Fred Flintstone.

The problem is our antiquated plurality rule election system, which guarantees two parties run the country. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law Run-off elections, or approval ballots would enable us to actually have 3rd-party options. Some form of proportional representation in congress would also be a huge improvement over the current geographical sub-divisions which disenfranchise people even when not Gerrymandered. Although libertarians make up 15 - 25% of the population we're geographically dispersed and get no representation in Congress. This also holds for various professions. If there were tech worker candidates they couldn't win on that even in Silicon Valley where we make up just 29% of the work force. OTOH with proportional representation San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties together would likely have enough of us to support one representative and lumped in with Austin, Boston, Boulder, Raleigh, and Seattle we'd probably net even more. Congress would probably be able to pass fewer laws with proportional representation although that would be a good thing.

They don't. Sure. With a tight fit it's easier to skip the first S-fold at the warning label end, do the remaining S-folds, bag the canopy, and then make the first S-fold than it is to mess with getting a split D-bag around the whole stack. That also works real well with small canopies too short to make a nice defined first S-fold that wants to stay put. As other posters have pointed out split bags also mean velcro near your lines and one more maintenance item.

My vote for Johnson counted more than a vote for Obama or Romney. With the California pre-election polling preferences and the same voter turnout as in 2008 2 million Obama supporters would have needed to vote for a third party or stay home, 2 million Romney suporters who weren't voting would have needed to show up, or 1 million Obama voters would have needed to choose Romney to change who got our 55 electoral votes and none of that was going to happen. Obama would have still won 55 electoral votes if I voted for him and Romney would have still lost 55 electoral votes if I voted for him. All 210,000 third party voters (even the real socialists) getting behind Romney wouldn't have changed things. OTOH, in the next election cycle the Republicans may attempt to gain a plurality by swinging a little more libertarian at least in their messaging.

6 months is what you need to survive an injury or job loss after which you'll be earning about the same sort of money which is unlikely to be the case when one member of a couple dies (if you were a dual income couple before you aren't now and with one wage earner the other doesn't have enough recent experience to command top dollar even with the same skill set and salary history). To support a non-working spouse indefinitely at the same standard of living you need 20-25X your present income of which about 4% can be spent each year without depleting the principal. Obviously doing the arithmetic for your personal situation and purchasing enough life insurance to yield the required amount would be prudent. Don't forget that kids these days often do not earn enough after graduating from college to support a middle-class lifestyle and you may still be helping yours financially when he's 30. While deaths are fairly rare skydiving is not safe. Statistically speaking you have a 1 in 50 chance of not living to see a 2 year old's college graduation (assuming you don't get killed in a skydiving related plane crash which is a separate issue).

Confirmed: billvon and those like him, who failed to answer a simply question about expendatures, believes the Federal Government should pay more for that same corn than it needs to, to feed the hungry. For me the corn discussion is over. Paying the farmers billions in "welfare" to grow the corn never seemed an issue for the Republicans, but it's always smelled of communism to me. Nope. It's corporatism which is a huge bipartisan problem. Before this election it used to average $10M (or $1.7M per year) to land a Senate seat paying about $170,000 a year which is just 10% of that. The arithmetic only works because because those campaigns are paid for by other people, specifically powerful groups of people (the real estate agents' PAC, mortgage bankers PAC, California prison guard's union, defense contractors, etc.). Those other people pay for campaigns because it benefits them (cynics call it quid pro quo). Compliant congress critters get re-elected and sometimes get the option to move into more lucrative lobbying positions. For instance, Billy Tauzin sponsored the $1T (over 10 years) Medicare part D funnel to pharmaceutical companies and was subsequently appointed president of their PhRMA lobbying organization with a seven figure salary. American politics make a lot more sense once you notice this and stop thinking in terms of "liberal" and "conservative."

Just saw it on Netflix and enjoyed it. I was really surprised in a good way by Bobcat's screen writing and directing abilities. Yup. Some where in the beginning I saw something which had me thinking about Howard's "mad as hell" monologue.

It's safe to say they mostly lost in the primaries meaning many of the races on Tuesday were between two liberals like Obama and Romney. Compare and contrast what the two presidential contenders actually did (as opposed to what they said, because politicians can say anything to get elected and then do the opposite) on health care : As governor Mitt Romney passed a universal health care law we call "Romneycare". It requires citizens to buy health insurance from private industry. It imposes tax penalties on those who fail to purchase plans deemed affordable to them. It subsidizes those purchases from private industry for citizens not far enough above the poverty level. As president Barack Obama passed a universal health care law we call "Obamcare". It requires citizens to buy health insurance from private industry. It imposes tax penalties on those who fail to purchase plans deemed affordable to them. It subsidizes those purchases from private industry for citizens not far enough above the poverty level. Then there's guns. While Obama talks about banning assault weapons, Romney actually signed a ban. This liberal take-over of the Republican party is nothing new. Bush 43 saddled America with the most progressive income tax system (defined as the top earning decile's share of tax to share of income - although people make a big stink about the cuts that went to "the wealthy" his tax cuts on the less affluent moved us from second to first place) out of the OECD 24 including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, The Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, The Slovak Republic, Sweden, Switzerland, and The United Kingdom. Even Reagan was a liberal. He contributed to the 47% by expanding the earned income credit. He got the capital gains rate raised to match the earned income rate (something which had never happened before and hasn't happened since). He signed off on amnesty for 3 million illegal alliens of all ages (nearly 4 times the 800,000 kids who got here before they turned 16, have been here at least five years, and are still under 30 let in by Obama). If Obama ran against him he'd probably have lost as the more conservative candidate.

I agree with Steve who already responded with an obligatory Walter Röhrl clip. Things have really gone backwards over the last few decades. 1. Back in the 1980s we had group B rally cars that hadn't been neutered. 2. Spectators still had the courage to line rally courses instead of watching remotely on their mobile devices. 3. We were much better at making cheesy videos. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AQmgeMoM0A&feature=related

I remember not really being too shocked, just dismayed at another fatality. Anyone who's jumped with students knows (or should know) they can kill you if you let them. Tom's scenario is why I prefer to never be in the air with more than one noobie at once. It DID start a dialogue about AAD's and how you should use them. I remember Cypres's ad in Parchutist saying "Just turn it on in the morning and forget about it. " When I bought my first AAD years ago my DZO/gear dealer questioned why I, an experienced jumper, was buying one. I said "I'd feel really stupid going in with $1200 left in my checking account." That, of course, was the purchase price back then for an AAD. Although a handful of DZOs thought having one was a good idea and sold them at cost to jumpers, which was $850-$950 depending on how the dollar was doing against the Deutsche Mark.

Even Boulder has a significant libertarian contingent, rifle + pistol range within city limits, and trap at the VFW post.

Neither. The election will be decided whether or not I pay much attention so I won't be wasting my time on that. I also don't do these new fangled games. I'll work lots, play Super Puzzle Fighter 2X a little (the Japanese arcade ROMs with 3-round matches and diamond glitch intact), and play a few games on my Twilight Zone and No Fear pinball machines which I setup in the break room at my office.

Yes. This is why many states exempt things like food... and clothing from sales tax. Well if guns are such a vital thing to own for personal protection, then we should exempt them from sales tax too, right? Having tax-free food doesn't help if some thug can just walk into your apartment and steal it from you. You gotta have a tax-free gun to go with it to protect your milk and cookies. Right! Now you're thinking logically.

Right! It's like those other third world countries where over half the people have no toilet (as of he 2008 638 million Indians out of 1.1 billion didn't have one). Oh wait... the 2000 US Census revealed that 99.36% of us had indoor plumbing and they stopped asking about it. America is not like a third world country.

Yes. Many of our political leaders are members of the wealthy elite who see such people as less than full citizens. Yes. This is why many states exempt things like food (for consumption at home; Richie Rich dining at a restaurant pays tax on his food, but Joe Six Pack buying it at the grocery store does not) and clothing from sales tax.

It's a 50% price increase on an inexpensive gun. Inexpensive guns like that are a danger to the operator. They are not. They are not. Given our litigious society no one would be dumb enough to sell such guns and examples of such designs would not have remained on the market for over 40 years (George Jennings designed the Raven Arms MP-25 in 1970) especially with millions (the original Raven Arms company made over 2 million of these pistols before their factory burned down in 1991 and they sold the design to Phoenix Arms which continues to make them today) sold providing plenty opportunity to uncover such flaws. They are not as pleasant to own and shoot compared to many higher priced designs but will usually do the job just fine in the typical defensive encounter which usually occurs under 7 yards with no shots fired. That is a fine idea. We could also give them government surplus like M1911 pistols left over from the move to Beretta M9 or the .38 revolvers used by local police that have since moved on to semi-automatics.

Pulling a voting booth lever doesn't cause of the death of another person. Pulling a gun trigger does. but this tax is to buy a gun, not pull a gun trigger. You argument was that this tax wouldn't prevent someone from exercising their rights. $25 wouldn't keep anyone from voting either, right? Buying a gun was a planned expenditure of hundreds of dollars to begin with, so adding $25 to that is not a significant burden. It's a 50% price increase on an inexpensive gun.

Pulling a voting booth lever doesn't cause of the death of another person. It can. In this election Californians voted on whether or not to keep the death penalty. Voter directed changes in police and fire department funding may result in people's deaths. Does not. I've never killed or even shot anyone in spite of firing thousands of rounds because like nearly all of the other 80,000,000+ gun owners in America with our 250,000,000+ guns that's not my intent. Even using a gun for self defense usually doesn't kill or injure anyone (criminals tend to flee before a shot is fired).