DrewEckhardt

No. While airspeed is pretty much entirely a function of wingloading, canopy control responsiveness is more a function of the system's physical dimensions (how long the lines are, canopy chord, etc). You should be fine as long as you don't decide to skip a size.

Would that be the Democratic party which kicked people off well-fare and balanced the budget according to accepted acounting practices and the Republican party which made the tax system more progressive and was responsible for the largest non-defense discretionary spending increases in history? One can also argue that the Democrats are a hair right from the Republicans.

No, it's not like voting for Republican and Democratic presidential candidates where your vote doesn't count unless you live in a contested state (think about it - voting with the minority doesn't help your candidate win, and voting with the majority doesn't change them being president). Your vote for "neither" may help determine which political minority the big two parties court in subsequent elections. Things have been "greener" since Ralph's supporters didn't vote Democratic.

No. I think tax collections should be required to match spending and that there should be a small minimum tax (say 10 or 15%) with no deductions which is due in lump sums annually or quarterly. If we want a tax system that's more progressive than that we can provide debit cards for food or housing subsidies paid directly to banks and landlords so the poor aren't actually worse off. The problem with half of America paying essentially no income tax (I don't include Social security here because most of the "tax" is effectively contributions into a mandatory retirement savings plan) is that there's no direct motivation to limit spending and government waste. Taxing everybody and making it feel painful would provide a feedback loop to correct things. Practically speaking that will never happen because it would limit politician's spending power and cause the 80% of Americans whose taxes went up to throw them out of office. So we have the current system, where it's practical for 5% of the population to pay most of the costs that go with a big government. It works until the burden becomes too great and people start cheating more and stop working so hard. If I can't have a reasonable chance at compressing my remaining work life into five years I'm going to consult just enough to pay for a double wide trailer and steel building containing the shop in which I build stereo equipment and Danish modern furniture.

I did! Dont really give a shit about them either. Just gonna sit this one out. The locals are full of shit to. Every year they say they wont raise taxes ect. ect. Then they raise them anyway. We got fed up with that in Colorado and made it illegal for the governments (state or local) to increase total tax collections beyond the product of inflation and population growth unless a popular vote allows for an override. When they accidentally get to much they have to give it back unless the voters choose to let them keep the surplus. When the economy contracts and the rest of us are making less money, the government is not immune to belt tightening.

While you probably can't do something in the voting booth about the presidential choice (you need to live in a swing state for your vote to "count"), the ballot often includes a number of state and local issues that will affect you, ranging from whether to renew the cable company's contract (where the schmucks won't let you have the cartoon network; Boulder, CO) to a freeze on taxes (only allowing increases in total collections without a popular vote majority for inflation and population growth, Colorado) or effectively legalizing prostitution (San Francisco, CA this election). Some places you may even get to vote out the judge who wouldn't plea-bargain the speeding ticket you got on a 4-lane divided highway where they dropped the limit to 45 just to write such tickets. Locally your vote counts - one year my preferred candidate for county comissioner lost by just 7 votes. While you're there, you might as well at least cast a presidential vote for your favorite neither party. The last two presidential elections were won by less than 2% of the popular vote. Minorities get courted like the Republicans with Evangelical Christians. You might get a bone thrown your way in another election cycle. I hadn't voted for a Republican or Democrat for president for 16 years.

While I don't usually watch TV, I got stuck in a long-term-stay hotel for over a month and saw a few episodes. The brush, record, and airplane propellor episodes were much less predictable and therefore more interesting than popular night time TV shows. I mostly get a kick out of those other shows by predicting the plot and providing my own dialog for the characters. Out loud.

It's nice to see you can now exercise your good taste and sense of style in the world of wing suits. It wasn't always like that. Although they make hot air balloons in many colors and I found a maker that would sell me cloth in pleasant colors like royal blue, Birdman told me I couoldn't provide my own material and was stuck with the bounce-and-blend fall selection with orange, red, yellow, brown....

It doesn't wash. On paper it does. The top 1% of income earners cover 37% of the income tax, top 5% 57%. Obama draws the lines for no change and tax increases within that top 5%. You can reduce taxes on everyone else and still come out ahead as long as you don't make the taxes painful enough that the people paying most of the taxes would rather avoid (accepting less pre-tax income) or evade them.

I like my favorite Colorado latin fusion band Cabaret Diosa's annual Haloween show. The last time we went (2005?) it was _Somewhere over the Mambo_ complete with rapping midgets (Representing the Lolipop Guild, of course) and appropriate pop songs mixed in with the latin rhythms - Strawberry Fields Forever when they fall asleep in the poppy field, a little Led Zepplin Immigrant Song for the flying monkeys. Rush always has a good show too.

How much of the "welfare" section would be buying plasma TVs for worthless lazy people who refuse to work? Even if we knew that we wouldn't have the whole total because of people who choose to work for less money (due to time or job), shoulder less of the tax burden, and leave more for the rest of us. The middle quintile of Americans are averaging a 6% tax rate. 30% of American workers pay no income tax. The bottom two quintiles actually have negative average income tax rates. Some of those people are working in easy low-paid jobs that they're over qualified for. Even after earning under graduate and masters degrees from two separate private colleges my sister decided she'd rather work low stress part-time jobs like summer camp counselor and yoga instructor. Some of those people are capable of learning skilled labor but chose not to exert themselves and go to college or trade school while working.

I have over 1500 parachute landings, so I know a lot about flying. Even though I only have 30 hours and 150 landings in airplanes I think my skydiving background is enough to handle a Pitts S1.

No. You want to go to a store with a decent beer selection. Some place with a name like "Liquor Mart" (my favorite, which has a beer department aranged by countr) or "The Beer Store". This is especially true in states with wierd laws like Colorado where they can only sell "3.2" beer in the grocery stores or small towns where they consider "Coors" a fine imported beer. You might put it in a cooler with ice so that 1) it's cold and 2) you can deliver it personally so you meet the other skydivers. You want to personally meet the other skdivers because you'll want to jump with some and they might have used gear they want to sell you cheap. If you put it in the DZ fridge and you go up on the sunset load, you may find that it's all gone and miss most of the benefits which usually go with buying beer. Get good beer. You're spending thousands on the instruction, jump tickets, and gear. An extra couple dollars isn't going to hurt. A "case of beer" is 24 bottles. Also note that you don't want to anger the beer gods. I knew one girl who didn't take the beer rules seriously and didn't buy any. She broke her wrists on landing. After that she bought her beer. There are a few exceptions. If you own a Mexican restaurant and have a killer marg recipe you can bring a few gallons of it. If you're a wine person you could bring that instead. If you're under aged, you can send your money out with some one else to buy beer. And introduce yourself.

Of course not. It's a real plane. They just had to "make a movie" when it leaked, the price of which was inconsequential compared to programs like the B2 which eat billions.

Almond Joy and Mounds. I can't stand the texture of coconut. As a kid all other substances with piles of sugar were good. Now I prefer chocolate that doesn't seem to have a high wax content, but have been known to inhale things like Kit Kats when I'm hungry. Speaking of which, I'm hungry and therre's a bowl of M&Ms and Hershey Kisses on the table.

Then get a pair. I have moobs... does that count?? I just tried feeling myself up. I like my wife's breasts better. I am working on growing bigger man boobs; perhaps they'll reach a satisfying size in another year or two.

Just reached $3.50 at the corner gas station.

I don't consider gas being about as expensive as it's ever been in inflation adjused dollars since 1920 or 50% more than it was during the Clinton administration to be "low". Currently, gas is averaging $3.17 gallon which ties the 1981 average which was the highest since 1920. For 50 of the last 100 years gas has been under $2.50 a gallon in current dollars. http://inflationdata.com/inflation/images/charts/Oil/Gasoline_inflation_chart.htm As a fun tangent, the rise in gas prices above $.50 a gallon in dollars (not inflation adjusted) started right after Vietnam got expensive and Nixon abandoned the gold peg ($35/ounce). Nixon was a Republican. Republicans were in office when gas broke $.50 a gallon and $4 a gallon. Republicans and their optional wars correlate strongly to unprecidented gas price increases.

Most of us get cranky working instead of skydiving. I pretty much just sleep and work during the week, although I did manage to watch one episode of MASH on DVD last night for fun.

I think if you work for Micky D's and while you might pay taxes, but you get every penny of it back at the end of the year, you should still have a right to vote. The problem here is that electing people who spend too much has no appreciable immediate direct impact on most voters. 30% of working individuals pay no income tax. It appears in their best interest to vote for candidates that will kick thousands of dollars back to them. Positive tax rates don't start until the middle quintile, where an average 6% effective income tax rate isn't much of a disincentive to spend more. Taxing some people would literally lead to starvation if they complied with the tax code, but something needs to be done to close the feedback loop.

It's not the right way to do a water landing. Doing that can break your bones and burst your intestines which are not good. You land, PLF if necessary, and then cutaway. Follow a seam to the end of the canopy if there's no wind and it lands on top of you. This all is covered in water training which you need for a B-license and to make night jumps.

You can't blame Karl for doing what he has to do when his party won't provide a candidate that can when in a fair election.

Yeah, but a lot of that knowledge is case law and the courts have been generous in the constitutional infringements they've allowed.

You'll have awesome landings. If you learn a bit about energy management you can even have landings where you take a step and stop.

I do something like mkdir ~/small for file in *; do jpegtopnm < $file | pnmscale --reduce 4 | pnmtojpeg > ~/small/$file done for quarter size photos. all it takes is the unix of your choice with netpbm installed. You might be able to get the netpbm package for cygwin which runs under windows.