DrewEckhardt

After every significant jump. Student program graduation, first rig, license, first night jump, etc. This is heavily weighted towards people just starting which is a good thing. After you're experienced it's less important because every one knows you; unless you go to a new drop zone, in which case you should bring a case of beer for first jump at a new DZ. While not rude, it's not in your best interest. The point of buying beer is that you'll meet up to 23 (24 in your case) other skydivers. Some will invite you on loads, one might teach free packing classes on the condition that you later pass it on to two new jumpers, one might have a used rig sitting in their closet that's your size and available for a low price, etc. You're loosing out on that experience if you don't hang around.

A flopping slider can cause line wear, especially when combined with beat-up grommets.

After stepping out of the way and turning around to watch for other canopies I set my brakes with the toggle tip in the cat-eye + elastic and velcro mated so the lines don't get twisted or worn from contact with hook velcro. I stow the excess brake line when I pack because that's easier to do on the ground.

I guess the ~$14K per year that my employer and I pay to Anthem isn't enough to get that nice of a plan. Group size and state have a lot to do with it. $6000 for an individual/$12,000 for a couple/$18,000 for a family was enough to get a 0-deductible, 0 co-pay plan when I was at Microsoft in Washington State in 2006. In practice you may be better off with a higher co-pay/deductible plan with the difference going into a use-it-or-loose-it flexible spending account. At my current company we can select among a number of options offered by our Professional Employer Organization, and at one point putting the price difference between the $500 deductible and $1000 deductible plan into an FSA effectively made it zero.

Social Security largely isn't a socialist program. For practical purposes it's mostly a mandatory retirement savings program with an atrocious rate of return, with the average earning male born after 1966 getting a .5% inflation adjusted rate of return. The last time I looked I'd have to outlast my statistically expected lifespan by five years just to break 0% assuming benefits increase at least as fast as inflation and the rate + wage cap grow no faster. If the money was invested to yield just 3% (with the stock market good for 7% after inflation) I could get 4X the benefit over the same 15 years, 2X until I died at 100, or 30% more forever with 1.5M in today's dollars going to my heirs. For higher income earners Medicare is more like a pre-paid health plan. You pay thousands of dollars a year as a younger person and get relatively affordable care as an old person.

It's not America where health services cost more. The per-capita spending on Medicare (which only covers the fraction of us who are old and has premiums) exceeds what other countries spend to insure their entire populations.

The Tenth Amendment is irrelevant because of the Commerce Clause.

I've sent a handful of packages international via USPS global express, which was often 1/3 the cost of Fed Ex or UPS since they don't charge dimensional weight. Some how they managed to loose one. After 30 days they officially declared it missing. After another 30 days the investigation didn't find that. Within a couple weeks I had the $500 I insured it for plus $80 in postage or whatever.

Nope. We passed a law which says people have to buy insurance from for-profit insurance companies who can charge what they want with a maximum 3:1 price difference based on age, unless that gets to be too much and they pay a fine instead. Other civilized countries' governments provide health health insurance as a not-for-profit government plan without premiums.

Your finger prints will have no effect on your ability to get health and life insurance if they find their way into the MIB database. Having your finger prints on file is less likely to have you targeted for special monitoring, put in a mental facility, or sent back to prison "to protect society" than genes which show a predisposition to psychological illness.

is it easier to tax the gold coin hidden under the bed or the land, cattle and chickens you own? It's easiest to tax database entries. For instance, new entries over $10,000 automatically get reported to the federal government.

You mean "American-educated people," because the text book companies maximize their profits by printing fewer editions. With Texas being a big place with one state standard for text books, it gets a lot of influence in terms of what's offered to the rest of us. Statistics on who shares the same text books are hard to come by, although this puts it at 80% of the country. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100315/ts_ynews/ynews_ts1253

NATO? huh? ... NATO Countries and their annual military budgets include UK - $58B France - $44B Germany - $38B Italy - $33B Turkey - $31B Canada - $18B Spain - $14B Netherlands - $10B Greece - $7B Poland - $6B Norway - $5B etc. Currently: US - 47000 troops UK - 9500 troops Germany - 4415 troops France - 3750 troops Italy - 3150 troops Canada - 2830 troops etc. In the future: These sorts of things are world problems (no one wants terrorists feeling free to attack them) which shouldn't be paid for mostly by the US with lives and dollars. Of course not. We spend more than the rest of the world combined on our military.

Sure they can. There's also NATO. I doubt any of the other member nations to encourage invasions or terrorist attacks by failing to respond to such activity in Canada or the US. Russia hasn't been a problem since the Soviet Union went bankrupt trying to keep up with US spending. China would probably rather sell you guys cheap consumer goods than invade although if that changed there's always NATO.

It doesn't. A note from the pilot's handbook reads: "If the engine quits in instrument conditions (blind flying when you can't see the ground) or at night, the pilot should pull the control column full aft (it won't stall) and keep the wings level. The leading-edge slats will snap out at about 64 km/h (40 mph), and when the airplane slows to a forward speed of about 40 km/h (25 mph), the airplane will sink at about a parachute descent rate until the aircraft hits the ground."

$685 billion on a military where other first-world countries with comparable land size and borders to protect spend just $21B (Canada).

If you wear heavy clothing, tighten the leg straps, and lift the bottom of the rig you want a bit of clearance (like an inch) over your shoulders. If you have that you should be fine. Looks about right. A good approximation of required main lift web length is to take your height in inches, subtract your inseam measurement, and subtract 20" In my case I take 5'10 - 30.5" inseam - 20 = 19.5". Not coincidentally I have main lift webs in the 19-20" range which is long for my height - people double and triple check that they measured right.

It doesn't matter since no car can outrun Motorola at 670,000,000 miles per hour.

The majority of Americans are quite into wealth confiscation. 43.4% of American workers (up from 38% when Obama took office) pay no Federal income tax or have a negative tax rate due to refundable credits. The bottom earning 50% of the population leave 97% of the country's expenses to the rest of us. America has the most (with the top earning decile having the highest tax share) or second most (ratio of tax percentage to income share in the top decile) progressive tax system out of the OECD 20. We're ahead of allegedly socialist places like Ireland, Italy, Australia, the UK, New Zealand, Canada, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Germany, Finland, the Slovak Republic, Luxembouorg, Belgium, Austria, Korea, Poland, Japan, Norway, France, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, and Switzerland. Although I don't earn enough to buy a home where I live, after I've saved for retirement and paid for insurance (like a lot of those countries would cover) I get to take home just 56 cents out of every dollar I earn. Since I've opted to save for a comfortable retirement instead of blowing money on consumer junk, assuming no inflation or tax changes before I die the government will take 41% of what's left over. Personally, I'd rather my heirs have that money so they can have homes and education which government policies have priced out of people's reach. Fortunately things aren't too bad yet - only a small percentage of Americans are relinquishing their citizenship (the US is unique in taxing citizen's earnings regardless of where they live).

It's all relative. IMHO, any beer you can see light through is a lite beer. Especially IPAs; with less body than extra special bitters and American strong ales they're just the thing for a hot summer day.

It's available on DVD via Netflix.

Seems reasonable to me. It's cheap publicity which doesn't require any work (like taking care of orphans in Haiti) and won't make her uninsurable for motion picture work (like too much partying which leads to rehab). Without stuff like this people wouldn't even know her name.

Shanna Hiles had her legs amputated after she passed out on her 20th birthday and cut-off circulation to them: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/12/09/national/main5951408.shtml

Paypal does have a good level of reliability, but its level of protections is probably less than wire transfers between established, reputable, highly regulated, highly-insured banks. It's kind of like insurance: to get more protection, you pay more premium. Banks won't pull the money back out of a wire transfer recipient's account if the goods you buy aren't delivered. Paypal will. You get more protection from paypal.

Paypal. They'll take a few percent off the top although that's a lot cheaper than a US wire transfer and the convenience is worth it. Yesterday I bought pinball machine parts from Germany; and on other occasions I've sold things to various European countries and Australia.