DrewEckhardt

That's not possible. 1. The Democrats and Republicans collude with each other to Gerrymander the districts to keep their piece of the pie. In the 2004 elections no California legislative seats (Federal or State) changed parties. In 2006 people got pissed enough at one Republican to throw him out. We finally changed things and it will be interesting to see how that works in 2012. 2. In America the politician with the largest plurality generally takes a geographically defined district which effectively disenfranchises significant minorities that don't live in the same area. With the inevitable result of a first-past-the-post electoral system being two parties nearly alike many of us don't get a real choice. 3. The largest media outlets limit coverage of candidates which don't serve their corporate interests. Ron Paul in the current debates, paper editors directed not to put a candidate's picture on a lower numbered page than Bush 43, it's a mess. We might stand a chance in jurisdictions where citizens have legislative powers which could be used to gain proportional representation although that's still unlikely in a post-litereate age where it's against the interests of the people who own the media. That's not fair. I agree. We're almost at the point where half the American electorate has no skin in the income tax game.

The numbers for Buffet's secretary have a disproportionate influence from pay directed to our mandatory retirement savings plan (Social Security), disability insurance (Social Security), and medical insurance (for people who've grown too old to be profitable for private companies with a pre-payment when we're young). Social Security has dejure benefit and contribution caps which is a fair combination. Warren neither makes contributions beyond the 100K and change cap nor will receive higher payouts. Medicare has a dejure benefit cap (the delta between private insurance and medicare costs) but no cap on what the benefit costs which is un-fair, although capping the secretary's contributions so her costs are a smaller multiple of the average worker's is more fair than making Warren pay an even more disproportionate amount for the benefit.

I once landed on a 10x10x8' boulder near one bank of a river. It was _very_ exciting. Scrap the tuffet so you can't just get close and crater the landing, add obstacles that will break you if you miss, and accuracy with a big F111 seven cell becomes a lot more interesting. At a drop zone with a remote landing area where they ferry jumpers back in a pickup truck one might use its bed as their landing area. Exciting! Don't try this at home, it's for trained professionals only! Definitely don't crash into a pickup truck - we christened one guy who did that "Ram Tough" and were constantly saying another guy was "Like a Rock!"

Either find a new dropzone or get into classic accuracy, buy a bigger rig, and start landing in small and exciting areas.

When people order pizza to share they usually divide up the bill by the number of people. That's fair. While a flat tax rate is less unfair than the current system, it's not fair like capitation where we divide up government spending by the number of citizens and send everyone their bill. The flat tax rate is a lot more workable though.

No it isn't. Yes it is. It shows that this is a feel-good measure with a negligible effect on the bottom line and . Nope. A tax system like the one we have in the USA depends for its effectiveness on a sense of fairness. The Buffett rule is a way of eliminating the perception and reality of UNfairness that allows billionaires to pay tax at a lower rate than middle class workers. Using examples from this thread 65,000 AGI, 6.9% due in income tax 100,000 AGI, 10.6% due in income tax and Mitt Romney 20,900,000 AGI, 15.4% due in income tax shows a progressive tax system with many believing progressive taxation is "fair" It is in fact the most progressive income tax system (defined as the top earning decile's share of tax to share of income) out of OECD 24 including includes 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. Making it even more progressive is taking things way beyond fair to punitive.

The recommended instrumentation package is optional.

It has wheels for landing too. The biggest problem is probably the price tag which starts around $85,000.

No it isn't. Yes it is. It shows that this is a feel-good measure with a negligible effect on the bottom line and distraction from the real issue which is that taxes are too high on both "the wealthy" and rest of us who pay income tax. It might be good marketing for Obama. Prior to 1913 there was no federal income tax. The 1913 income tax law allowed a $3000 exemption for single people ($65,331 in 2010 dollars) and $4000 for married couples ($87,108). The next $20,000 ($435,544) was taxed at 1%. Robber barons raking in $500,000 a year ($10,888,595) paid the top tax rate of 7%. The current standard deduction plus personal exemptions are $9650 for singles and $19300 for couples, which are off by a factor of 6.8 and 4.5. The lowest tax bracket is 10% capped at $8500 and $17000 so the rate there is off by a factor of 10 and bracket end off by factors of 51 and 26 for single and married people. The highest tax bracket is 35% starting at $379,151 with a rate off by a factor of 5 and minimum income a factor of 29.

You mean different choices. Stilettos are enjoyably responsive to control input, have a flat glide, and don't take too long to open. More modern designs are detuned (John LeBlanc observed jumpers having roll-axis stability problems landing their Stilettos and reduced the responsiveness on all the following PD designs like the Velocity and Katana), are generally trimmed steeper (sometimes with an option for steeper still "swoop" linesets, and have openings slowed down to accomodate today's wimpified skydivers. If you neither swoop nor pull at metaphorically high "AFF" opening altitudes a Stiletto might be a fine canopy. If you do swoop and are willing to pull a bit higher to make it back from longer spots and keep the same cutaway decision altitude there are better choices. Less experienced jumpers will probably do better with non-rectangular designs with reduced control sensitivity now that there's a choice.

No. Criminals have murdered law enforcement officers after being fatally wounded by gunfire. Consider the FBI shoot out with bank robbers which led them to trade their 9mm pistols for more powerful guns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout When deadly force is justified you shoot at the center of mass until the threat stops. If it's not justified you don't use a lethal weapon at all.

Henry Ford didn't give his workers 48 then 40 hour work weeks because he was a nice guy. He did it because it built him more cars with acceptable quality for less money. When people average too many work hours productivity drops to less than what they would have done working 40 hour weeks with no overtime. This holds whether they're factory or knowledge workers, with some studies suggesting the tipping point is 35 hours for people using their brains. An increased error rate goes with the decreased productivity (this source http://www.ewin.com/arch/overwk.htm cites 10% after 8 hours and 28% after 10 hours). The lack of creative 'white space' means sollutions to problems are more likely to be brute-force, labor intensive, and therefore expensive rather than simple, elegant, fast and therefore inexpensive. After a few weeks at 60 hours a week people are getting less done than they were at 40 hours a week. Demarco and Lister write about this some in _Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams_. You can get short bursts of increased average productivity with more hours provided recovery time is included bringing the average back to normal although some of that comes from working around sub-optimal environments ("I can't get anything done until the office gets quiet after the sales guys go home at 5 pm") and you'd be better off fixing the root causes. There are a few people in a few situations who can sustain much more work for a lot longer; but those are the exceptions not the rule. The people probably have mild cases of Aspbergers and the project is probably some sort of all-consuming passion. I've done that (105 hours a week for a few months or 60-80 for a couple years) but it's not really something you just decide to do or can order up and people are notoriously bad observing their own productivity or lack thereof (it sure feels like you're getting a lot done when you're working too much). Managers who don't know this have their heads in the sand and are bad due to ignorance. Ones that do and still over-schedule people because the hours of work are a metric that makes them look good to their bosses are bad for putting their appearances ahead of the company's productivity. Ones that just can't schedule don't have management skills (this does take some feedback - although people are good at estimating the scope of projects they're bad at accounting for interruptions and turning that into calendar time. So you track things, figure out that Mary takes 1.5 weeks to do 1 week of work and John takes two, and build that into the schedule. Some organizations scope things in points, gumdrops, or other non-time units to avoid the negative connotations that go with the work hours and calendar time disconnect) All this ignores the indirect effects that arrive via increased turnover. It can take 6-24 months for a new employee to be fully up to speed depending on how much domain knowledge their job takes (Demarco and Lister have specific examples). Combined with the cost of interviewing and recruiting commisions you can spend another year's salary on some one who quits with even less productivity to show for it (you also loose productivity from your existing team members that spend time brininging the new people up to speed).

In a lot of states the prosecution can use "lesser included offenses" where a jury finding the defendant innocent of the greater crime then consider the lesser crime(s) lacking the aggravating factors of the greater crime. The prosecutors start with the greatest offense they have probable cause for and work down from there. http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Lesser+Included+Offense When I got jury duty we found the defendant guilty of one felony, innocent of two more, but guilty of lesser included misdemeanor offenses for the later crimes. In Florida manslaughter, third degree (felony) murder, culpable negligence, aggravated battery, aggravated assault, battery, and assault are all possible lesser included offenses for second degree murder. There are rules concerning when juries must be instructed about lesser included offenses and when they may be told; perhaps someone more familiar with or interested in Florida law can look it up. The text of Zimmerman's information may shed light on this too.

Would you prefer a dictatorship to elections? I share George Bush's thoughts on the subject: "It's important that President-elect Obama is prepared to really take power and begin to rule day one" - Valerie Jarrett Mr. Obama has told people that it would be so much easier to be the president of China. As one official put it, No one is scrutinizing Hu Jintaos words in Tahrir Square. "As I mentioned when I was at La Raza a few weeks back, I wish I had a magic wand and could make this all happen on my own," Obama told a meeting of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. "There are times where -- until Nancy Pelosi is speaker again -- I'd like to work my way around Congress." Yup. The parties and their presidents are two sides of the same counterfeit coin kowtowing to the corporatist interests that paid to elect them and taking whatever liberties with the Constitution they can get away with. Apart from that it's a nice change to have a conservative in the oval office. Bush 41 was the first to use executive orders to ban guns. Bush 43 made America's tax system the most progressive (ratio of income tax paid to share of income in the top earning decile) out of the OECD 24 (also 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). Obama 44 eliminated capital gains taxes for venture capital firms on their seed money and many series-A investments and his stepped up immigration law enforcement has nearly equalled Bush 43's felony illegal rentry prosecutions over eight years in his first term! Too bad we're stuck with the same money funnels to those corporatist interests. Obama 44's federal subsidies to insurance companies are going to be as big as Bush 43's Medicare Part D redirection to pharmaceutical companies. There's also the whole "defense" mess (long before you're spending as much as the rest of the world put together without building an empire it's no longer about defense and is instead about either getting money into private industry or a socialist make-work program).

Would you prefer a dictatorship to elections? I share George Bush's thoughts on the subject:

Hey the more we have the better! Maybe these guys will have a reason to start dressing to impress! And some will discover the power of soap+water! But this is great news.

Jean Potvin and Gary Peek of the Parks College Parachute Research Group studied opening forces in the late 1990s using the rectangular parachutes which were prevalent at the time. http://www.pcprg.com/s01out.htm Here's a graph from their PIA presentation showing opening forces (in G) on Sabre 120, 150, and 230 canopies with a 205 pound suspended weight. http://www.pcprg.com/pia01f2.gif where peak forces are 4.5 - 5.5g with the quicker openings pretty much done in 3 seconds (back then parachutes opened faster and harder and kids these days would complain about that). You could integrate to get speed if you wanted (true airspeed started at 120 MPH) or just find some contemporary altimeter recordings if you want speed.

When I moved to the People's Republic for work I had to leave my favorite black rifles in storage out of state to stay legal. They were stolen. Fortunately I have replacement value coverage and will be able to get ones my government approves of.

He can be both a victim of an attack (assault and battery for which words no matter how harsh are not legally acceptable as incitement) which led to his justifiable homicide and idiot (risking your health to protect some one's insurance deductible by confronting suspicious people that may be armed, under the influence, and/or just mentally unstable isn't a logical exchange) not deserving financial help out of the situation he got himself into. Of course given the costs of defending oneself from a civil suit in this country soliciting donations might be the smartest thing he's done lately especially if he lacks a personal liability policy.

Sometimes. Many people need more drag for popular fall rates in vertical positions than flat and compensating for the extra drag can put you too far from a neutral position to have range left over. Depends on how tight it is, the material it's made of, how much you weigh, how flexible you are, aerodynamic belly enhancements from a few too many six packs...

You can also genetically engineer e. coli so they eat waste and poop diesel fuel, figure out how to harvest electrical energy directly from plants, come up with an addictive casual game with tens of millions of people paying to play it, design autonomous quadracopters that can track potential criminals or deliver tacos, build a space elevator...

How about drop zones where they're hung over from a few too many beers the night before?

Right. Is there an ulterior motive for wanting CU Boulder? Like skiing, for example? The skiing is very good, very close (the nearest ski area is 45 minutes from campus), and affordable season passes are available especially for young people. The nearest airport for general aviation is 2-3 miles from campus and turbine DZ 12 miles. Hiking (40,000 acres of open space and mountain park for 80,000 residents) and biking are quite fine too.

I attended CU Boulder in the college of engineering. They were rather serious about making sure non-residents didn't get their tuition subsidized by the tax payers and see through tricks like trust funds and I wouldn't count on any scheme that doesn't involve a whole family relocation to CO or your son actually supporting himself. My stepson earned his degree there, graduating summa cum laude although he got the first two years done at Front Range Community college (we were Colorado residents at the time) where tuition is substantially lower. Your son could probably do something similar with community college near you, getting at least the core classes (when I was there it was three semesters of calculus, differential equations, three semesters of a science plus a lab course, and three semesters of English including writing for engineers) and any remedial work (some people who hadn't studied a foreign language long enough in highschool got it out of the way there) out of the way. Two years of local community college with no rent + 2-3 at CU is a lot less expensive than 4-5 years there with the mandatory year long dormitory stay for freshmen. Doing the whole thing at in-state institutions would be less expensive still.

Marijuana consumption is fine in any situation where more than one drink of alcohol is not inappropriate since the effects are of the same order. Smoking instead of eating it is fine any place smoking tobacco is OK or marijuana is specifically tolerated. If drinking two beers would have gotten the kids grounded the punishment is consistent. If not it's especially stupid. The rationale is wrong. The detection of THC metabolites seven weeks later doesn't imply that the test subjects are still under the influence.