DrewEckhardt

Negative. I want killers to not be able to get guns. You can't have that because it's not possible. Jamaica decided in 1974 that only the police and military can legally own handguns with illegal possession carrying a life sentence. They created a special gun court with secret trials. The conducted warrant-less searches. Following the ban the murder rate skyrocketed past 60 per 100,000 inhabitants although at only 41 per 100,000 in 2012 it's near the post-ban low. The simplest repeating arm to manufacture is an open-bolt sub-machine gun. An AK47 machine gun is one of the most common small arms in the world. When you manage to reduce leakage from the legal market of low cost guns, the relative difficulty of getting such weapons decreases and more criminals use them instead of cheap pistols. Like the Yardies in the UK. You may be able to reduce the murder and violent crime rates by addressing the economic disparity they go with. People's income generally comes from their educational attainment and there's a huge gap there. Part of the education gap is due to how we run our schools. Public schools are paid for (through property taxes) and controlled (as in the curriculum) by the local populations. Students generally attend local schools. Black children are more likely to live in statistically poor neighborhoods. White children are more likely to live in statistically affluent neighborhoods where professional parents insist the schools provide college level courses so their kids can get into name-brand universities. Black children are therefore less likely to have the same educational opportunities as white ones. Part of it is social. Children tend to follow in their father's footsteps when it comes to education and earnings. Poor people living among the relatively wealthy will continue to kill each other until we deal with this regardless of the legal situation involving firearms. It's the economic disparity which disproportionately affects back and Hispanic Americans. People like to cite _Handgun Regulations, Crime, Assaults, and Homicides: A Tale of Two Cities_ (Sloan at el) as an example showing how American access to guns makes us less safe than Canadians where similar cities (size, geography, etc) are compared although this is incorrect. Although Seattle and Vancouver are similar cities on opposite sides of the border they have radically different demographics. At the time of the study white people on both sides of the border had similar economic circumstances and were safer in Seattle with 6.2 murders per 100,000 versus 6.4 per 100,000 in Vancouver. In Vancouver the minorities were more affluent than average and their murder rates were not out of line with those of the white population. In Seattle the black and Hispanic per-capita incomes from the 2000 census were about half the white population's ( $18,328 and $17,216 respectively vs $35,641) and murder rates consequently many times higher at 36.6 and 26.9 per 100,000. Sure, although putting a band-aid on the problem isn't going to fix it.

In nominal dollars although they're decreasing in purchasing power and real terms $48,855.00 in 2009 dollars is $50,397.12 in 2010 dollars and $51,223.77 in 2011 according to the United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI Inflation calculator. Or to look at it another way, the 2011 median income is just $46,595.77 in 2009 dollars which is nearly 100 sky dives a year less than it was. http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

Hardly anything is actually free. Some VWs Audis (like the B5 A4 and same vintage Passat) share the same platform, although the Audi with its higher end dealers which tend to provide nicer loaner cars also comes with a bigger price tag. A rental program is fine which allows people who want the service to pay for it and people who don't to skip the necessary up-charge (have another rig to jump, live someplace which gets cold enough they don't want to jump in the winter, grew up jumping without an AAD and don't mind having it out for maintenance).

$25 doesn't affect the people doing the killing. As a capital investment in your chosen trade of "street thug" $25 is not much compared to the contents of a single wallet. It does affect crime victims. $25 more to protect yourself is significant compared to the other expenses which go with feeding, clothing, and educating your family and poverty level wages.

So choosing a Cypres left you unprotected for a while. That's not a good advert for the unit. It beats having units with no inspection program to discover latent failures before they become issues and where the manufacturers are only looking at the small number of units behaving badly enough for their users to notice and send them back.

It's a case of non-terminal Kodak Courage. Jumpers do stupid things trying to look good in front of cameras and/or crowds.

HUGE grass landing area (pause the youtube video at 9 seconds) with obstacles and people on the one side he chose to fly over. He'd have been fine if he made a sedate final approach into the wind down the middle of the grass instead of approaching over the crowd and making a low turn to a cross-wind landing. Of course doing that wouldn't have looked as good on video as if he successfully pulled off this landing (standing up without damaging the car).

Can't you just leave it turned off? No. If an AAD is installed it needs to be maintained as required by its manufacturer. Turning it off is not enough because its presence could still affect reserve operation. For instance, hypothetically speaking the batteries of an AAD left past its due date could leak and lead to a reserve failure. If it has timed out and is passed the allowed window for service (ex - Cypres maintenance is at 4 year intervals from date of manufacture although a six month delay is allowed. You can also have it serviced six months before the 4 year interval) it needs to come out before the rig is jumped again.

Blacks comprise only 13% of the population. Even if every single one of them was "poor", there would still be more poor white people then there are poor black people. So this gun tax isn't something that discriminates against blacks, and your racism argument doesn't hold water. They're also half of all murder victims and disproportionately in need of self-defense. Only if we amend the constitution to state that the right of the people to own and drive cars shall not be infringed. We give EBT cards to poor people to help with the food budget, 31 states exempt most food purchased for consumption at home from sales tax entirely, and only two tax it fully. It is way too much to ask and reeks of racism like overt bans on niggertown Saturday night specials (especially as $25 becomes $250 or $2500). It's also stupid. Accidental deaths from other causes are much more prevalent (fewer than 700 people are killed in firearms accidents each year). Major causes of accidental deaths from other objects (in 2009 34,485 peopled died in motor vehicle accidents, 24,792 died from falls, 31,758 died from poisoning, etc) far out number those murdered (11,493 in 2009) and accidentally killed with guns together. People who care more about other people than their own paranoid fear of guns should be focussed on those bigger threats to safety instead.

A good firearm will cost $500 or more. An extra $25 shouldn't stop anyone from being able to afford it. Usually _a_ firearm is enough to defend yourself (thugs tend to flee when people draw on them long before shooting starts) which needn't be good or expensive and $25 could well keep people from being able to buy _a_ gun. Back in their 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford ruling SCOTUS opined that if blacks were to be considered citizens “It would give to persons of the Negro race, ... the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, ... the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.” and the 14th Amendment made their fears come true. While we can't legislate a stop to that we can progressively increase prices through taxation so the disproportionately statistically poor blacks can no longer afford guns to protect themselves. While $25 isn't much folks like us it is a 50% price increase on $50-$60 used Raven .25s and a nice start to making sure only our kind of people can afford to arm themselves. A tax like this would be a conservative step back towards 1689 when the English Bill of Rights only allowed peasants arms "suitable to their conditions" before the American riff-raff started granting privileges to commoners. Few people are entirely for (a few libertarians) or against (a few pacifists) armament. The rest of us just disagree over who are the right sort of people to arm - only non-felons, just police, police and the political elite, mostly white folks, etc. I believe the right to keep and bear arms doesn't stop below some class line but fear that I'm in the minority amongst citizens and our governing elite like Dianne Feinstein with her concealed carry permit and anti-gun laws.

were you able to write that with a straight face? California -55 With all 55 votes going to the Democrats. A Republican vote here doesn't matter and it'd take a couple million Democrats staying home to change the result. Candidates fly through to pickup campaign contributions to spend elsewhere, although they don't need to campaign here.

No. Tempos made before 2001 do not have span-wise reinforcing tapes which makes them more likely to fail in over-speed deployments, like if you have a premature deployment freeflying or your AAD tries to save you after you get knocked out and are last seen on video in an unconscious head-low back track. (PD reserves of the same vintage do, Precision added them when they got to the R-Max, Aerodyne's Smart reserve always had them) Having seen a guy spin in under a reserve split into 2 and 5 cell pieces connected by a single tape at the tail I wouldn't choose to jump such a reserve except in limited circumstances (I'll bet against a high speed deployment when doing classic accuracy starting with a hop-and-pop). The price doesn't seem too good either. 1997 is about the time when $900-$1000 got you a brand new container and IIRC I paid $550 for a brand new Tempo.

Yes. Telling her that you're xx not 5 and living your own life might not hurt either. You could try asking.

Voting for either Romney or Obama at this point is throwing your vote away when you live in most of the country. For example California and its 55 electoral votes will go to Obama regardless of who I vote for. Assuming 12 million people show up to vote like they did in the 2008 presidential election with the current 55 to 39% lead nearly 2 million third party supporters who dislike Obama less would need to defect and vote their conscience to change the election with no Romney supporters doing the same. That's not going to happen. Those missing 2 million votes for Romney aren't going to show up either so third party people who dislike him less gain nothing by wasting a vote on him instead of the third party of their choice. OTOH, more support for third parties in the popular vote leads to shifts in our direction by the loosing party, at least for marketing purposes. According to the Republicans' VP candidate: Third party supporters' votes in swing states may change the election results although that still might not matter to them. Once in office neither candidate will make a significant change in us spending 7X #2 on defense/homeland security and about 30X the nearest country with similar land mass and border length (Canada, eh?). Both will nominate Bernanke for a third term as Fed chairman which will be confirmed by the senate and savers will continue to see negative real interest rates and an inflation target of 30% per decade. Neither is going to work to change the government's meddling in the housing market to artificially inflate property values to the detriment of everyone but the real estate industry, mortgage industry, and boomers down-sizing or taking out reverse mortgages. Neither is going to actively support drug decriminalization.

I usually send and receive international shipments via air mail (ex - US Postal Service outbound, UK Royal Mail inbound) where brokerage fees aren't charged and inbound tariffs usually aren't applied. Outbound shipping itself is usually much less than UPS or Fedex too especially where you're shipping a bulky item because most options avoid dimensional weight (you ship a bulky 5 pound item via FedEx and you might pay for 20 pounds of weight).

When you buy used at a fair price, mains and containers each depreciate about $1 per jump. Assuming you don't buy custom gear in your colors too soon you can spend the same money whether you go through 1 container or 3 and 1 main or 6 in 1000 jumps although it'll probably cost less to go through more mains because that lets you avoid getting to where you need new lines ($200-$300, which can happen in just 500 jumps with Spectra lines that go out of trim) and with good negotiating skills you may even turn a small profit through buying low and selling high. Health insurance deductibles can be $500 on a good employer provided plan and $5000 on a catastrophic plan, co-insurance can run a few thousand more, and disability insurance usually only replaces 60% of your pre-injury income. This can really add-up, especially when one injury can imply three surgeries over a period of years to get you back to your original state. This disregards how much things like stretching nerves hurts. Think about that a little bit and you'll realize that trying to buy one parachute and container that you'll grow into isn't buying you anything but could cost you a lot. As people have noted the skills outlined by Bill von Novak and Brian Germain are good pre-requisites for down-sizing. Brian's 1.0 + .1/100 jumps with adjustments dictating larger canopies is a reasonable minimum with bigger being better.

I'm 5'10" with a 30.5" inseam and my custom rigs have 19-20" harnesses matching the rule of thumb which is height - inseam - 20. When some one loaned me a parachute in a container that small I pulled it out and put it in one of my rigs instead of jumping it as is because there was no way I was going to be comfortable. It depends on how much of your height is in your legs versus your torso. Without an inseam approaching 36" it won't as another poster noted. You can get your measurements taken as if you were buying a rig (have some one else make the measurements so they're accurate), get the serial number of the used rig you're thinking about buying, and call the manufacturer to ask how they match up. If the rig is really inexpensive or you're a really odd size you might end up buying it anyways and having a new harness put on ($400ish, depending on whether or not you have rings that simplify the problem).

I always vote by mail and the weekend before is a more convenient time to read through everything than election day itself.

I think this illustrates the situation best: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/08/24/sports/top-finishers-of-the-tour-de-france-tainted-by-doping.html I especially like the 2003 tour results. Seven of the top 10 in the general classification tested positive, admitted to doping, or were sanctioned by an official cycling or antidoping agency so far 1st: Armstrong 2nd: Ulrich 3rd: Vinokourov 4th: Hamilton 6th: Mayo 7th: Basso 8th: Moreau It's a safe bet that many others were doing the same thing - Armstrong passed over 250 drug tests and wasn't outed until stepping on too many toes winning the most Tour de France races in history. Perhaps all of the real contenders were doping. It's not unreasonable to look at the evidence and conclude that for practical purposes (the testing process didn't keep up with the doping process) doping was permitted. It's also worth noting that drugs were allowed in the Tour for longer than they've been officially banned - 1903 through 1964, with the first testing in 1965. In the 1930 rule book they actually had to remind riders that drugs were not among items with which they would be provided.

In Britain where guns are more regulated gangsters have machine guns. I believe the relationship is causal. In America criminals get inexpensive leakage (Raven .22 and .25 pistols) from the legitimate market. With everything they buy coming from a black market it's less of a stretch for British hooligans to pickup AK47s from Eastern Europe or open bolt sub-machine guns which may be locally produced (they're the simplest repeating firearm to manufacture).

Broken clocks are right twice a day.

You mean "won't get their names straight." Any one smart enough to get elected is smart enough to have no problem understanding simple technical details. Any one smart enough to get elected is also smart enough to know that taking credit for "getting automatic weapons off the street" will do more to keep them in office than "seizing grandpa's bird gun" or the trivial things they actually do personally like passing a bill to dedicate the new Arts Center to the late philanthropist John Smith. Intentionally misleading the public also serves the elite ruling class's anti-gun agenda. To quote Josh Sugarmann (of "The Violence Policy Center" anti-gun group) who coined the term "Assault Weapon" "The semi-automatic weapon's menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons -- anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun -- can only increase that chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons." The correct descriptive phrase is "sport utility" followed by rifle, shotgun, or pistol. Here's a sentence illustrating its use:"My sport utility rifles were stolen from a Washington State storage unit because The Peoples' Republic of California wouldn't let me immigrate with them."

That means manufacturers haven't made fully automatic weapons since 1968. The only people who can posses them are police and military. So with these exceptions, if you find one manufactured after 1968 in the hands of a citizen, it probably means that person does not legally own that weapon. Making ownership of fully automatic weapons mostly illegal. Now go ahead and show us how brilliant you are. Nope. Although automatic weapons made after FOPA passed in 1986 are not legal for civilian ownership apart from Special Occupational Tax payers (dealers and manufacturers) people who live in free states, pay the $200 transfer tax, and are willing to pay extra for the scarcity (a transferable M16 might run $8000+ instead of $800+ although you can get open bolt submachine guns like MACs for half that) are welcome to own them and the price tag isn't out of line with other big boy toys. Only one such legally owned machine gun has been used in a crime, when a crooked Ohio police officer used his personally owned MAC to murder a drug dealer.

Bell or Cessna?

Whatever. As an engineer I worry about big things and ignore little things below the measurement noise floor. The "hundreds of millions in government support" are 1/1000th the extra hundreds of billions we're unnecessarily wasting on our military which makes them irrelevant. Or to take a "conservative" view hundreds of millions are 1/1000th the extra hundreds of billions we're wasting on welfare which makes them irrelevant (except as sound bite fodder when you have a campaign to run).