DrewEckhardt

Economic disparity also goes with pleasant climates that attract people willing to outbid each other for limited land. People kill each other more often when their neighbors are a lot wealthier than when they're more uniformly well-off or poor. Here's one study: http://psych.mcmaster.ca/dalywilson/iiahr2001.pdf Seattle and Vancouver are pretty close geographically, although there's more economic disparity and a higher murder rate in Seattle (unless you exclude the minorities which are disproportionately poor in Seattle and look only at the economically similar white populations where you find those in Seattle are safer). East St. Louis is in Illinois across the Mississippi river from St. Louis, MO.

The opposite. It's harder to fly head-up in "freefly" pants and a T-shirt than a full freefly suit. Especially when you're trying to take grips.

Woah.. sounds like all headdown freeflyers earn quite a penny in their jobs.. or did you guys all sell your house or car to learn headdown? I just can't afford to blow more than 10000$ literally in the air for that Maybe I should apply for a part-time job at a tunnel in order to get free airtime It's a lot less expensive than the old way. I think I had about 1000 jumps when I built my first successful 4-way vertical round (2 head-up, 2 head-down) which would be over $20,000 for my share of lift tickets. The newest guy might have had 500 jumps with the others somewhere between so as a group we'd spent better than $60,000 to get that not bad.

I like the chart which shows that eating fast food (heart disease) was more dangerous than BASE jumping in the US circa 2002.

I hope that works for you. A few weeks ago I took my wife and daughter to see Cirque du Soleil on the light rail and some kid in his 20s jumped across the isle and hit an old man in the face. The old man moved and no one did anything. Then the kid got up and started pumelling the old man. I got my family out of the way to reduce the risk to us and everyone else did the same thing or stood and gawked. Fortunately the kid didn't have too much fight in him and stopped. He even had the decency to wait around to be arrested. I hope things go as well for you. Other people get beaten worse and/or raped in public places with plenty of people around who do nothing or at best call the police who can pull the surveillance footage and perhaps arrest a perpetrator later.

Only if you define "assault and battery" as not bothering anyone which is what the physical evidence suggests.

Probably "none of the above".

There isn't much theory. Pull, pull at a safe altitude, and be stable if you can. Don't run into obstacles when landing, don't conflict with the landing pattern, land into the wind if you can, be prepared to PLF, and do it to save your joints and bones if needed. You have a few numbers to memorize surrounding USPA authorized pull-altitudes and FAA required cloud clearances but that's not much. Packing main parachutes isn't much harder than folding laundry. I hung out for a few hours with a couple of hippie skydivers, practiced once my self, and then got a little help on parts of the next few pack jobs "How does that burrito thing go?" One condition of the packing class was teaching other people to pack and I don't think any of them took much longer. Packing faster takes a few tricks and experience, although without paying customers waiting on you taking closer to 50 minutes than 5 doesn't matter. Proficiency should be higher for people finishing in a week instead of months because they didn't let any time lapse before trying something again and made fewer jumps where they didn't learn as much because they weren't fresh enough to still be comfortable jumping out of a plane. I finished 3 AFF levels in one day, was making 4-5 jumps a day after I had my own gear for jump 13 and was packing for myself, and don't find a week at all unreasonable given perfect weather especially with long summer days and/or a jumper who does not sleep in. That's different. As a tandem master you're responsible for a passenger and expected to jump in arguably marginal wind conditions. As an A-licensed skydiver you only have yourself to worry about and should be choosing not to jump in gusty and/or high wind situations in the unlikely event that your DZ lets you.

If you're doing it right, you don't have any excess withheld from your paycheck. You do far better to tailor your withholding exemptions so that you keep more of your own money all year long, rather than let the government accumulate it and make you have to ask for it back at the end of the year. If your salary is fully predictable and your only taxable event, this is straightforward. But if your's moves around and you earn decent money in interest and dividends, then it doesn't work so well. It's entirely doable. 1. Some HR departments will allow you to withhold a fixed amount from each paycheck. That's _MUCH_ simpler than working backwards from how much you need withheld to some number of withholding allowances. 2. Where they won't it's still just arithmetic and if needed you can claim 29 allowances or whatever. I get 2.26% interest on the first $25K in each of my two checking accounts. A 5K refund at the end of the year would mean forfeiting $56 in interest before taxes. While not a lot it's a meal.

It benefits a lot of people and means the government sponsored enterprises (which often buy or insure the majority of mortgages in this country) have fewer losses due to foreclosure. Unemployment tends to replace half of your working income up to a low cap (~$50K/year) which isn't adjusted for high cost/high wage areas where it may total 1/4 or less of your salary so at the time of unemployment people are really squeezed for cash if they didn't save for the situation. If an unemployed person was making very little money they won't have a tax liability and it doesn't matter. People with good incomes who stay unemployed for a while will have a drop in effective tax rate although they withheld for the higher rate and came out fine. People who are unemployed for a long time won't be paying much in taxes. With the standard deduction and personal exemption a single person getting the maximum unemployment benefit in a year will have about $2200 in taxable income with $220 due in taxes ($12K maximum benefit, $5950 standard deduction, $3800 personal exemption). It's only a potential problem for people who are unemployed for a short time and might not have things 'just work out' who'd need to come up with $500 per month they were unemployed with a 28% federal rate.

1. He's an unguided meat missile in the pattern and landing area that poses a danger to others. 2. At many DZs the fun stops to accommodate ambulances and helicopters and a fatality can mean no jumping for the rest of the day. Even if he doesn't hurt anyone else he's likely to put a damper on peoples' weekend which is rude.

Exactly.

It's a function of design. People were making Cypres ready rigs without velcro and reserves with span-wise reinforcing tapes in 1996. People were also still making older designs.

That is a horrible generalization to pass on to a newbie. So very much wrong with that. It's reality. I'd much rather see some one get a rig that can accomodate what's likely to happen than get a less tolerant rig, be short on funds so they don't buy a smaller rig when they run out of closing loop, and have their smaller main fall out in the plane (seen that in person, it's a little scary) or on their way out (seeing a main fall out in the plane is scary because I've seen pictures of skydiver sized holes in the side of planes and "exciting" videos with plane + main entanglements). Lots of us start out with the impression that we'll never jump small parachutes, "hook turn" (that's crazy!) or BASE jump (that's even more insane) and later find out that we were wrong. Preparation for something that's likely (but really not necessary) is a fine idea especially when it doesn't cost any more. I'd also much rather see some one get a rig with a safe sized main now that'll accomodate two sizes smaller than a parachute one or more sizes smaller than conservative because the rig they want will only go one size smaller or a rig that starts out on the small size which has them delegating to packers who won't be quite as attentive to things like frayed steering lines as an owner packing their own rig.

There's insufficient evidence which has been presented publically to convict on _second degree murder_. Conviction on a lesser included offense like some form of manslaughter or assault (in some places "brawling" is enough for a conviction) looks a lot more likely.

Having seen a guy spiral to a "landing" under a reserve (he got knocked out on an AFF jump, was seen falling away head-low in the video, and had an AAD fire at faster than belly to earth freefall speeds) which had split into 2 and 5 cell chunks connected by its one reinforcing tape at the tail seam I wouldn't choose to buy anything that didn't have spanwise tapes across all the line attachments. All modern designs do this - PDR, Smart, Tempos made after 2001 IIRC, the Raven R-Max. Older Precision Raven variants like the Raven, Super Raven, Micro Raven, and -M do not. Older Tempos do not.

Right. Skydivers with averaege testosterone levels want to down-size. Those making 100-200 jumps a year with the sense to follow Brian Germain's chart (about 1.0 + .1/100 jumps. Assuming you load a 190 at 1:1 that gets you to a 170 in 100 jumps after you have your A-license and 150 in another 150 jumps) may get 6-12 months out of each canopy. Those with bad-judgment often down-size in less time. Those with the worst judgment get an unsafe canopy now which they can "grow into" so they get more life out of their first container and don't need to put too much effort into reselling gear. With the closing loop on the flap there's much less tolerance for smaller canopies (one the grommets are touching you can't make the closing loop any shorter) than on the reserve container wall and with a new canopy every 6-12 months those guys are likely to get less life out of such a configuration.

Sure. The initial credentials for all the enumerated professions are all just a starting line. The years to get good at any of them total a lot more time than the initial training and everything beyond the minimum counts for more. An A-license is similar but less significant. It's evidence that you probably know enough not to hurt yourself in a limited set of skydiving situations (but isn't enough to teach you the judgement you need too) although a half hour of freefall and couple dozen parachute landings (before the recent changes it just took seven minutes of supervision under canopy plus the corresponding landings) aren't anything compared to the hours and hundreds it takes to be decent.

In the movies. Real life isn't that clean. Like the FBI? It took them eighty rounds and two dead agents for just one pair of bank robbers (one took six hits and the other a dozen before dying, and fatal wounds weren't enough to stop their attacks on the FBI). [URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout[/URL]

There's Cannibal the Musical which tells the Alfred Packer story. Not quite the same thing (he's not undead) but close.

He might not be that stupid. Anti-gun activist Josh Sugarman who invented the term "assault weapon" opined that the public could be misled "...the public's confusion over fully-automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons [sic] -- anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun..." with the confusion exploited to ban semi-automatic guns.

Mary's doctors should sue her and collect their judgement starting with her unprotected assets (in California this would be everything but her retirement accounts, the first $50K in home equity, and a vehicle worth up to $5000. Her business and bank acount balances would be up for grabs). If that's not enough her wages should be garnished at the statutory maximum (25% of after tax income) until the balance is paid off including interest (10% in California) or she dies.

We're seventh using GDB per capita which accounts for population unless you use the CIA's numbers which rank us eigth. This also ignores the validity of relativism. American exceptionalism is about being as good as we can be in absolute terms, not sucking less than the other guys.

Right. Right. A lower rate on capital gains is needed to make it fair since the tax code does not include an adjustment for inflation. With 3% inflation you're earning nothing before taxes when you're money isn't doubling in 18 years. A lower rate on interest is also fair for the same reason; although the fair answer is to make interest elligible for a lower rate so all savers benefit instead of increasing the rate on capital gains so people who can afford to loose some benefit less while the rest of us continue to get screwed.

If true (things like retirement savings and health insurance aren't counted in Adjusted Gross Income, and the exemptions and deductions aren't part of Taxable Income) dropping your tax rate would be more fair than increasing Romney's to nearly 50% more. With the 1913 income tax introduction even robber barons weren't punished with a tax rate over 7%.