DrewEckhardt

Nope. I eventually got fed up with all the ads which were blinking or driving across my screen and got the Adblock Plus plugin for Firefox so I wouldn't need to deal with it. Places with generally inoffensive ads have them disabled too.

Maybe it can handle more. Maybe not. Ravens were designed back in the 1980's, when no one loaded anything over 1.0. Even if it was built after most jumpers started flying zp mains, it's still ancient technology. It probably won't blow up on you I saw a guy spin in under a reserve without span-wise reinforcing tapes across all the line attachments that had split in two and five cell chunks on deployment which were held together only by the single strong tape at the tail. That was an AFF instructor knocked out by a student on deployment who left the video unconscious in a head-down position and presumably traveling fast when his CYPRES fired although I'd guess a premature deployment freeflying could do the same thing. For classic accuracy or flat RW I would and do jump old designs at appropriate wing-loadings (the Raven-III in my accuracy rig is 250 square feet), but for freeflying I'll stick to something like the PDR, Smart, R-Max, etc. (even Tempos made after 2001 got span-wise tapes).

I've got some pixie dust that will allow you to drive for 100,000 miles on one tank. I can get it to the market if the government will just give me $70,000,000 to develop a pixie dust converter. In all seriousness LS9 created an e. coli bacteria that eats sugar and poops Diesel fuel, has a small scale production plant in San Francisco, and expects to scale up to production quantities with a Florida plant they're building (millions of gallons not billions but it's a start).

I saw Clearance Clearwater Revisited (CCR minus the Fogerty brothers) last summer and they rocked. Three Dog NIght played the same show and was good too.

Many are in California cities where property values got even more inflated - in my last neighborhood it took $1,200,000 to buy a 1200 square foot 3 bedroom "starter home" in the form of a 1950s ranch house with updated floors, kitchen, and paint. California real estate loans for purchase (as opposed to refinance) are no-recourse loans. In effect there are two ways to comply with such contracts: pay the mortgage off, or return the collateral to the lender which produces no forgiven debt that constitutes taxable income.

It's just the tax implication. Home debtors are temporarily being treated like businesses for whom forgiven debt is not considered taxable income. Presumably the debt needs to be written off before a 1099 form is generated, and that happening before the law expires for some one who's yet to default seems unlikely.

What's it do to your credit rating and the possibility of getting another mortgage later on? Not to mention your employability. Credit checks are pretty standard procedure in the hiring process. It depends on the industry and the impact can be different if the default ends in a short sale instead of the nuclear option.

Since there is no equity I'd say renting for 1/3 or 1/4... With a 6% loan, .5% PMI (or 80/20 loan with a similar effective interest rate), and 1.5% state taxes Shah could be paying 8.7% of his property's value to "own it" and with a 30 year amortization would have paid principle totaling 10% after 7 years. At half the cash to rent he could put 4.35% of the property value in safe instruments like CDs and end up with 28% of the value after 7 years or 180% more equity.

I see a difference between being able to meet your commitments and walking away, vs walking away because you have no other choice. So I would call a company or business that just walks away because it is better for them deadbeats as well Walking away from a situation where the other side acted honorably may be ethically questionable. Walking away when the other side wrote large mortgages on which they collected origination and servicing fees where the loans were less likely to be repaid but written anyways because some one else shouldered the risk (The government sponsored enterprises that bought or insured most mortgages and private investors who bought most of the remainder) thus causing property values to spike is less questionable. Some would call it justice.

What's it do to your credit rating and the possibility of getting another mortgage later on? It makes it more difficult to get a mortgage with a good rate for the seven years it's on your credit report. You won't get back to an 780 credit rating for that whole period time but starting at 680 it'll only take about 3 years to recover. Where renting an equivalent property takes half the cash flow that can be a sensible trade-off.

Right. Also note that when a residential recourse loan is forgiven the deficit is considered taxable income (although the prudent home owner would note the exemptions for insolvency where the amount beyond your net worth at fair market value isn't taxable, the temporary legal accommodation for the housing crisis, and that consulting lawyers and accountants knowledgeable in such matters is prudent). When a business walks away from commercial property the balance is not. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

So fulfill your sense of responsibility by walking away thus helping property prices to revert to their historic mean so homes are more affordable for young people with limited job prospects. It's called "efficient breach" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_breach where you note that the penalties for breaching a contract are less than the costs of complying with it and walk away. No reason once you'll come out ahead when the dust settles unless your mortgage + HOA + taxes - tax deductions are less than renting an equivalent property which make the arithmetic more ambiguous.

Its happens in business all the time. The Mortgage Bankers of America (the same guys telling you that you have a moral obligation to pay your mortgage) would have defaulted on their Washington, DC head quarters but settled for a short sale where their lender got $41M on the property with a $75M loan in 2010. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704829704575049111428912890.html In 2009 Morgan Stanley returned their San Francisco skyscraper keys and walked away from a $2B loan after commercial property prices dropped 40%. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aLYZhnfoXOSk Do they teach that the world works like this in business school or do you need to pick it up in on-the-job experience?

Sure I can. Confrontational crimes against people (robbery, rape) go down when restrictions on concealed carry are lessened. Burglaries go up.

Absolutely. Heart abusers need to be regulated. Perhaps we can require a license to purchase and consume fatty foods which is denied to people who can't produce a doctor's report showing they have normal weight and blood pressure. After people get used to that we can go a step farther and require evidence of exercise. My bike computer records GPS coordinates, heart rate data, and power which translates into a range of calories burned. Presumably with a little technological evolution we can get that sort of device combined with a cell phone and implanted in people. They're amusing which is most significant when it comes to internet discussions which have been pretty much the same for the last few decades apart from the move from Usenet to web forums. They're also not entirely invalid. What should we care about? Too many people dieing because of things done by other people (murders and auto fatalities apart from the driver at fault) or people doing themselves in (suicides fast by bullet or slow by fast food). It's logical to address the most serious issues first. Or we could concede that it's just about emotions, discussions aren't going to go anywhere, and forget about it except at the ballot box Lessee.. I like my guns and candidate A believes that more restrictions on hand-guns and sport utility rifles are appropriate which affects me. He wants single-payer health care which doesn't because I get insurance at work, better schools which don't matter now that the kids have graduated, etc. Candidate B won't pursue anti-gun legislation, but is against abortion (I'm a guy, and if anything happens I can fly the women in my family to other states or countries), wants school prayer (the kids have undergraduate degrees), and hates gays (I'm straight). Candidate B!

Americans own approximately 300,000,000 guns and 255,000,000 motor vehicles. Fewer motor vehicles kill more people. Ergo they are more deadly. Q.E.D. A rational person would see that and concede that they're under-regulated or firearms are over-regulated. I believe firearms are over-regulated. Why can't the anti-gun crowd admit that deaths from gun misuse guns are a much less significant problem than the fatalities resulting from other objects with much less regulation? Yup. Heavy weapons like artillery shells and tanks work well.

Bad technique. A lot of people seem to stop short of getting enough closing loop through each grommet to finish the job and end up cranking on it to get enough slack at the end when it's got the friction and tension from all the flaps. I say that having closed rigs painlessly with tiny t-rex software engineer arms, just a pull up cord, and no yoga moves after the owners were cranking on them with their power tool.

I agree completely that's how things should be. Unfortunately that's not how things currently work. Firearms are involved in approximately 11,000 homicides each year and under 1000 fatal accidents. Motor vehicles kill over 30,000 people each year in the United states with alchol involved in 1/3 of those. Living in a country where that sort of thing is acceptable we need to treat guns like cars. People should be able to own any gun they want (bb gun to Howitzer) and be allowed to use it in public after taking a simple practical test (good for a life time) and written test (repeated every decade or so) leading to a license which is honored in all 50 states. If that's not how we want to live cars need to be treated like guns. Federal licensing for high-powered cars capable of illegal speeds (75 is enough for any road in America) with chief law enforcement officer sign-off, a $200 federal tax on transfers, and notification prior to any road trips where these dangerous goods cross state lines would be a start. One serious moving violation should lead to a lifetime ban on driving. Suicides are a problem with firearms involved in nearly 19,000 of them. In 2005 the CDC revised their prior estimates from 400,000 deaths due to obesity in 2000 down to just 112,000. Heart disease claimed nearly 600,000 lives If we care about what people are doing to themselves, stricter controls on fast food would be a much better place to start. Maybe we can require all of them to have narrow doors "You must be this thin to eat" and a timed run to the feeding trough where the slow and unfit aren't allowed.

Compare them against the MILLIONS of citizens that own guns (polling organizations come up with ~40 Million admitted gun owners in the US) and you are crying wolf about the dangers. The government thinks that there are 80 million of us. Assuming that you have average chances for involvement in the illegal drug trade, youth gangs, and risk factors associated with being black where I suggest economic disparity is the causal factor. To cite an infamous anti-gun "researcher," Kellerman's data in "Handgun regulations, crime, assaults, and homicide: A tale of two cities." shows that as a white guy in Seattle my chances of being murdered (6.2 per 100K in 1980-1986) are about the same as a white guy in Vancouver (6.4 per 100K). Right. The numbers are insignificant. My neighbors are much more likely to mow me down with their SUVs after drinking a few too many beers than they are to shoot me, and I'm much more likely to kill myself slowly with too much fast food and too little exercise than quickly with a bullet to the head. Of course mundane causes of death like those don't make for exciting news coverage or push as many peoples' emotional buttons.

Nope. The banks are not on the hook for most of those loans since they were insured by government sponsored enterprises, sold to the same entities, or sold to private investors. The bankers did exceptionally well with the piles of money from loan origination and servicing fees that would have been much smaller with customers acting in their own best interests. While ethically wrong that's not a huge mistake. The Aaa bond ratings and GSE mortgage purchases were big mistakes or malfeasance. The GSEs could also refuse to buy or insure loans totaling more than 3X area median income with the increased costs of credit to buy homes that will become unaffordable, illiquid, and likely to default when interest rates revert to historic norms keeping prices more affordable. They could also exclude loans resulting in total housing costs 20% higher than renting an equivalent property. Sure.

Because civil rights in general aren't a local issue and the US Constitution doesn't include an "except by the states" exemption to the second amendment prohibition on infringing our right to keep and bear arms. Sure. That's why most towns ban discharging firearms within city limits except as needed to protect people and in facilities with proper back stops to catch bullets. Increased population density also implies more economic disparity and an increased crime rate due to that so people are more likely to need to protect themselves. A gun is the safest way to do that when assaulted (lowest risk of injury to the crime victim) and beats everything except running away when people are being robbed (complying with the attacker yields a 23.6% injury rate vs. 7.7% when defending oneself with a gun). It's like alcohol and cars. Although drunk drivers can cause more damage with more cars and pedestrians around we don't place additional restrictions on alcohol sales or deny people drivers licenses in high population density areas. We just outlaw the destructive act itself.

It's too small so the question is moot. Either you weigh over ~110 pounds and the wing loading is too high or you weigh less, should have a larger main canopy because smaller canopies are more sensitive to control input, and want a reserve matching its size. The age should be fine, although after 40 repacks (13 years if it didn't sit in a closet for a fraction of that and was jumped year-round instead of seasonally with two repacks a year not three) it's required to go back for an inspection and you'd want to have that happen before you bought it.

Lots of us have suggested researching your state laws (for instance find out if New Jersey is a single-action state, etc.) and potentially doing something like that.

And if you were a cat, you wouldn't give a hoot what anyone else thought. My cat would be _very_ upset if I decided he was too fat and stopped feeding him kitty treats and salmon/crab/shrimp/meat scraps.

So if some athletic girl who once dated a out of shape guy in the past who was incapable of keeping up with her and her desires to hike and rock climb and go on long bike rides now only dates guys who are equals to her with respect to physical ability.....she is discerning? Right, noting that thirty pounds past their bicycle racing weight guys can still do that plus have blood pressure so low it'd be considered a medical condition if not "normal for children and athletes." Exactly.