DrewEckhardt

And your point is? Between when I first dated my wife in 2003 and married her in 2005 some of the grey-hairs at our drop zone broke out a 1967 Para-Commander in a conventional rig with a belly reserve. I jumped it. It worked fine. It was 36-38 years old at the time. Forward drive didn't even match my classic accuracy setup, but it probably did the job as well as it did when new nearly 40 years prior. I'd jump it if I didn't weigh much over 200 pounds and it passed the thumb test. More paranoid people might want an actual pull test. Come to think of it my 1980 something accuracy setup has a Raven 3 that's at least as old as yours. It passes the thumb test and I do jump with it in the reserve container. My favorite BASE canopy has over 75 pack jobs and I do use it as a reserve.

People are already imagining similar possibilities. http://tacocopter.com/

No. The collision between first and developing worlds should cause it to worsen as improved education and infrastructure there allow more jobs to be exported and lower wages overseas keep it practical. Technology improvements are also eliminating expensive jobs (my local grocery store has no baggers or checkers - it's all self service, with one employee in the checkout area to check IDs for alcohol purchases and deal with machine malfunctions). Eventually the costs of labor (labor shortages places like China are causing wages to increase) will normalize and things will be stable. I'm hoping that at the same time the costs of living in Seattle, Stuttgart, and Shanghai end up about the same too but expect government policies here that keep it high so our standard of living ends up being lower. Don't worry about being on the same footing. Instead you should worry about how far behind we'll be. The IMF predicts that China's economy will pass ours in 2016. While we're unlikely to starve, there will be more intergenerational housing and spartan living conditions for the working classes as economic forces reduce real wages and the governments act to keep property prices high for corporatist interests.

As your link demonstrates we need more guns in public. Most places in California apart from law enforcement officers only the politically connected are allowed to have guns in public to defend themselves if necessary which creates public places with large pools of unarmed victims for crackups to choose between. Instead of bystanders stopping the attacks after few if any victims have been shot such sprees end when the murderer decides to quit or the police show up much later. That can take a while, like when Anders Breivik went on his 90-minute Norweigian summer camp spree killing 69 and wounding 66. Federal shall-issue concealed carry permits would be good step towards ending such violence.

The US military. When you're spending more than the rest of the world put together but don't expect your allies to turn on you it's no longer primarily about defense. It's a Socialist make-work program directly employing 1.5M people and countless more indirectly. A few libertarians are. Most people are corporatists that want their groups' interests looked after by the governments. Young people want government student loans and subsidized educations. Breeders want quality public schools with small class sizes for their children. Old people want a retirement income stream and subsidized health insurance. The prison guards' unions want more people incarcerated which implies more prisons and jobs for them.

It's a socialism issue. How about Wickard v. Filburn? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn Roscoe Filburn grew wheat to feed his livestock in excess of his permitted allotment under a depression era law intended to keep prices high. His lawyers argued that since he wasn't selling wheat Congress couldn't limit his production under the commerce clause. SCOTUS rejected that stating that if he wasn't growing his own wheat he'd have to buy it on the open market thereby effectively compelling him to purchase a product.

95% of college students taking student loans manage to stay below $100K. Over 40% don't rack up $10K in debt and the bottom 2/3 are still under $26K. State school tuition and fees someplace like CU Boulder is about $11,000 a year. 4 x 11,000 = $44,000 Of course, your degree still says "CU Boulder" when you get core classes out of the way first at Front Range Community college which runs only $105 per credit hour or about $3150 a year. Doing so doesn't even preclude graduating summa cum laude. 2 x 3,150 + 2 x $11000 = 28,300. Fees add a few hundred more so you might round to $30K. Some of the guys I know did this recently and they're not drowning in debt.

Indeed. There are problems with that approach: (1) Funding it. Gotta raise a shitload of taxes. Can't win elections by doing that Many countries with universal health care spend less per capita to cover everyone than we do Medicare which only coger the oldest and least profitable for private insurance companies. There's the rub. Unions have multiple issues and will spend less than the private insurance companies that stand to see significant profit drops under a universal care plan that doesn't involve them.

+1

You need to fall at the same speed as the people you're jumping with in a neutral enough body position that you can still move. Providing some place to take grips other than your leg hair is a fine idea too. If you've got that covered you don't need a new suit. Many people need more drag for free flying, so it's likely the same suit won't work well for belly to earth and other body positions.

That's only the case if you're still living like a college student with a $300 sublet room. Peoples' rent and mortgage payments don't magically drop when they become unemployed. It depends on what you were making before becoming unemployed and how long you'll be unemployed for. 1) In the states that I'm aware of you get no more than 50% of what you were making before up to some limit (in California that happens at a $49,400 annual salary). If you were making less than double minimum wage you're better off working if you can get a job. 2) There are total benefit limits. In California it's about 26 weeks worth of benefits and Colorado it's similar. Don't work at all, you don't get a dime after six months, and if you were at or above the wage limit you'd make $2700 less in your first year of unemployment than you would have at a minimum wage job. There is a dollar for dollar reduction in benefits if you are working, but that means the benefits stretch out longer. Your employer pays about $500 a year in Federal and State unemployment insurance taxes unless they make a habit of laying off people in which case they pay more. Provided that you don't become unemployed very often or for very long more goes into the system on your behalf than you take out.

Every state I'm aware of has a total benefit limit of some sort that runs out before the clock does. For example, although California law allows a 52 week unemployment claim the maximum payout over that period is 26 weeks of benefits. Colorado has a similar limit. You don't get a dime past then and if it's not going to interfere with your job search you're better off financially doing anything.

When the last of my ancestors came over everyone was welcome except the Chinese. That seemed to work pretty well for us (the open borders, not the Chinese Exclusion Act).

although under the German Reinheitsgebot it isn't even considered beer because rice is not among the permitted ingredients (water, hops, and barley).

IPAs are a subcategory of "Ales" With IPA an acronym for India Pale Ale that should be obvious unless one has had a few too many.

I bought a 1970 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40 with a 350 Chevy in college. I swapped the stock 4-wheel drum brakes for discs and a friend said "I used to be afraid to ride with you because we couldn't stop. Now I'm afraid because I know we will" One fine summer day I was driving around with no doors and just the bikini top and picked up a hitchiker. I heard some banging coming from the front end doing maybe 50 MPH down a winding canyon road. A few seconds later the hood flew open and hit the windshield. The hinge pins sheared off, the glass shattered on the steering wheel, and the top was fluttering in the breeze behind us. The hood picked up a dent where it hit the steering wheel stopping a few inches from my head. I stopped and latched the hood (that model year lacked a safety latch) like I neglected to do before (oops) and the hitchiker asked to be let out as soon as we reached city limits. 8 years later I had a real job with a decent paycheck and bought myself a 1998 Audi A4 that just came off lease. While I really appreciate the handling, air conditioning, heated seats, and fitting in every parking garage it's not quite the same. I miss the respect I got with a rusted C-section steel girder for a front bumper. People _did not_ cut me off.

This is one thing guns are good for. Travel with one or more and the TSA will close the case with real locks (to which only you are permitted the key) and seal it under your direct supervision. Nothing in the rules says you can't lock other sporting equipment in the same case.

Oh, they make real beer here. Finding real ale (with live yeast in it pumped from its cask by hand instead of sprayed under pressure) is harder though. Those guys seem to be afraid of flavor although the British deserve some credit for inventing styles that American microbreweries were able to improve on like the IPA.

Sure but you could pay a _lot_ less with the strong dollar versus the Deutsche Mark and DZOs who were selling them at cost because they thought everyone should have an AAD I paid $850 for one of mine in 1998 and $900 for one in 2000. In 2010 dollars that's $1131 and $1128 respectively.

3" out of trim doesn't sound too out of line to me. After 500 jumps on my Stiletto 120 the outer lines had shrunk 6" which was 4.5" more than the inner lines. A bigger canopy with longer lines would have had more shrinkage. I couldn't speak to when PD considers a canopy out of trim enough that they'd want to correct it.

I saw a blind solo (apart from the landing assistance by radio) jumper one year at Couch Freaks.

Divided by 83,000 units sold (Cypres 1, there are another 70,000 Cypres 2 units out there) that combination of exchange rate and inflation would yield $20/unit development costs.

Because 1) The market is willing to pay that much for them. In a sport which costs $5000 a year $125 on AAD life isn't much. 2) A lower price limit is set by R&D and fully burdened costs of employees needed to design, build, maintain, and market an AAD which are divided over a rather small number of units sold.

So was this one. Carcano possibly owned by Lee Harvey Oswald who helped the stocking firearm dealers get limits on mail-order competition in GCA '68.

It depends what those 2500 jumps were under. 250 jumps under a same sized non-rectangular ZP canopy would be a lot better preperation for a down-size than 2500 jumps under a conventional rectangular canopy. Or not. Try to fly a Stiletto at even relatively large sizes like a less responsive canopy and it can kill you (example at 1.2 pounds/square foot, not a hook turn type person, just neglected to add enough opposite toggle turning back into the wind) http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3709212 Learning to fly (notably the survival skill of 0-90 degree turns at 0-50 feet) a modern canopy design before going any smaller is a fine idea.