lurch

Not true. The solar neutrino problem has been solved after various experiments at the Superkamiokande solar neutrino observatory in Japan. The shortfall is explained by neutrino "flavour" oscillations. The downside is that flavour oscillations are not predicted by the current Standard Model of particle physics but other models do predict this behaviour. 2-question answers anyone? I'll be interested to see how they reconcile or integrate the two models, then. I don't know enough about the subject to know if theyre mutually exclusive or overlap, i.e. describing different behavior in different conditions. I'll bet the current gray area winds up explaining a lot of other minor discrepancies in other areas as well, that we can't answer yet. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

_lurch stands there aghast, watching as the others pick up his fallen baseball bat and commence beating the daylights out of the now long-dead thread with more ferocity and accuracy than he could manage himself, thinking "wow this is getting gruesome"_ Jeez, jackc just did a better job of arguing my point for me than I did and with less words and more accurate specifics. I feel like an amateur. Um, yeah, what HE said! Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I gotta admit it, the man is good... here I go again..... Sodom and Gomorrah...only problem I see with your comparison is that the only documentation we have of the events there is unrecognizably distorted tales and cities long crumbled to dust. We don't know and can't prove what happened there, unlike an MRI. You can't go back and forth along the logic train and trace it all out, go "ok heres the theory heres how we implement it heres how it does its thing and heres the resulting image." There's math and hardware docs that could lead you every step of the way through the process... NMR you can research and prove. LOADS of documentation exists in incredible detail, you could follow the process every step of the way through from theory to hardware to image if you feel like spending years comprehending the exact functions methods and implementation. Hell, you could do little lab demos of the basic concepts at home if you got really arcane with it...I spent my childhood in a little room with a lot of scavenged electronics gear doing just that with everything I was interested in....radio control, arc physics, (the parents did NOT appreciate the fused smells crackling sounds and nova flares coming from my room...most parents worry about the kid playing with matches. mine worried about me attracting the notice of the FCC or the NRC, setting lightning bolts and small aggressive looking robots loose in the house and electrocuting the cat. Inquisitive ignorant mind with access to electricity metals wire and common industrial junk=dangerous child.) ttl and cmos logic, motors robotics...you name it. The proof of MRI is in the end product...the image itself. Kinda like back in school working math problems backwards to prove you solved it right. If your representation matches the reality all along the logic train, done both ways, its accurate. if not, not. If your representation predicts the existence of something, and you look for it and find it, (neutron stars/pulsars anyone?) you know you were right. We haven't watched the stars do their thing "in person" due to the slight problem of timescale of the viewer, but we CAN see so many out there that we find thousands of examples of stars currently in every stage of stellar evolution from nebula to black hole/nova/dwarf/pick your ending depending on stellar mass... and every stage in between...a timeline slideshow, if you will. Every once in awhile we see an actual nova or supernova...we happened to be looking right when one of them hit a dramatic stage in the cycle. More weight added to confirming theories. In some cases the picture we have doesn't match the reality yet, so the picture keeps getting tinkered with to make it more accurate....such as the neutrino thing. They may find a loophole in the neutrino thing that revolutionizes our understanding of stars due to that neutrino discrepancy...or we may find we just didn't build a decent neutrino detector. Its another one of those 2-question answers I referred to earlier. I guess one of my problems with the idea of god is when people attribute something to him, I'm supposed to warp my perception of the picture to meet expectations...water to wine? resurrection? Not in the real world. The basic assumption is believe first ask questions later and doctor/alter the results as necessary to support the idea of god. Whereas with science, the current pet theory may be junked grudgingly, especially if it was oh-so-close to accurate...but if it doesn't match what we know now, the theory does get junked. Personally I'm still rooting for someone to find the loophole that blows einstein out of the water and gives us the stars with the resulting technology...but I'm not holding my breath. Even if we can't see the hole, everything else we know implies a hole there. From the viewpoint of a great many people you've just defined god. As for this, for now, all I can do is shrug. I think I see a fundamental difference in perspective or basic assumption here. Everything else we know implies a hole there. We are seeing the logical shadow of the hole, literally. From that viewpoint of so many you mention, this is the cause of their certainty and faith, I think. Even if they can't see him, everything else they know implies a god there. They're convinced they see god's shadow. I see it differently. We are the blind men identifying the elephant and we don't even know its an animal yet, let alone what kind of animal it is or anything about its life.... I think what looks like the shadow of god is really the shadow of something a good deal more complicated than that. Every other direction you look, up, down, in, out, telescope, microscope...everything continues on to infinity as far as you can resolve it, on every scale, infinite fractal complexity...the smaller you look, the more you see...and the bigger you look, the more you see...why should it be any different regarding that shadow? I think what looks like god is the manifestation of laws and cause and effect trains we can't even guess at yet. Personally I've given up on ever understanding enough to be satisfied with the picture...I can't follow all of what's currently known let alone what might yet be known. I can't possibly self educate enough....so I just chase the questions I come across and focus on that. I'd rather be lost in a fractal maze of neverending questions than secure in a rigid belief set... Oh hell will you quit making me think? Like I said, I can't much affect black holes or religions either, but at least the time wasn't entirely wasted. I think I'll put this thought train in my book someday. Maybe itll even make sense. What, were you on a debating team somewhen? Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Huh? I did? How? when? what? (lurch drops his baseball bat with a clatter) Oh forget it this thread is beaten to death and I've spent way too much time thinking and typing here. -lurch Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Whatever you do, don't try spinning the chair. I spun my computer chair to get the cat uncomfortably dizzy and train her from kittenhood not to take my desk chair. It went quite well I think, the cat successfully trained me to spin the chair and give her a ride on demand. She will spread eagle latch on and ride as long as I'll spin her till I stop the chair or get tired, then jump off, wobbling and staggering everywhere, funniest damn thing you ever saw...as soon as the dizzy wears off, in seconds, cat is back on the chair looking at me expectantly.... Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

If thats a fake its one of the best fakes I've ever seen...I went over it frame by frame, I can't tell. It also does sound like i think it should, man hitting flat on what sounded like thick packed straw and mud. I wonder how many takes it took to get it right? Volunteer number 345 please step up to the board... Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Billvon, you'd be loads of fun to meet in person and debate things with, from religion to particle physics. re: your reply: I take your point, but then I put one TO you, based on it. An MRI works whether you believe in it or not, it is objectively provable by direct observation. See a picture of a brain tumor? Open the skull, there it is. It isn't necessary to understand or believe. Its existence and effectiveness is objectively undebatable, it's solid reality, or a trickily obtained picture thereof. Same goes for that theoretical black hole. All the available evidence put together forms a picture that says "the only thing that explains what we see here is a black hole in the middle". We know most of the plain old non-dark matter in the universe is hydrogen. We know all mass attracts other mass. We know given long enough hydrogen will attract more hydrogen till we have a ball big enough to ignite under its own weight in gravity, at which point radiation pressure and convection keep it from getting any smaller and we have a stable star. We can see em. We know if the star runs out of hydrogen it changes till it meets new conditions needed to burn whats left, helium, and again, lithium, oxygen, and every element until it reaches iron, which doesn't give a net energy gain under fusion. We know if the star was too big to merely burn out and settle down to dwarfhood it'll keep collapsing until it either novas out, (which we can see) or collapses so far the escape velocity exceeds that of light, it goes dark and a singularity point develops with a one-way event horizon....literally a hole right out of spacetime itself. The star is receeding in all directions simultaneously faster than the speed of light and no matter how close you get to it, the gravity well is so steep distance is stretched so much you'll never reach it. the distance is effectively infinite, and it's what the square root of -1 looks like when seen in the physical world. All this is observable mathematically provable objectively testable fact. We can "see" black holes by observing stars orbiting totally invisible companions...If its a mass big enough to make a nearby star orbit around it, and it's totally invisible, you probably have a black hole. Holes also can emit gamma ray jets from the poles, at the weakest part of the field, where matter accelerated to beyond lightspeed escapes the hole degenerated into nondifferentiated high energy radiation. Since nothing IN the universe can go faster than lightspeed, when the matter reenters the universe by escaping the field it exchanges its mass and speed and existence as matter for enough energy to exist as radiation. Kinda leaves me wondering what state it was in BEFORE it was radically downshifted by being squirted out the hole's pole. But again we have stuff we can mathematically verify and test using real solid hardware and tools and even SEE with a good enough Hubble....(why the hell is that star orbiting in a tight little circle near an invisible gamma ray source in the multibillion-terawatt-range?) If the picture doesnt match the reality we see, we update the picture. Anything religious I've seen on the other hand requires faith, belief in something with no objective evidence to support the belief. Even if we can't see the hole, everything else we know implies a hole there. I can't see god either but I have zero evidence to lead me to believe or imply he's out there. The picture looks complete without an omnipotent judgemental paternal creator entity. But I'm just calling it as I see it, and letting it be, since I can't much influence black holes or religions either. I know this is by now a very old and off topic thread hijack but since the original owner mined it and seems to have abandoned it, it seemed a good place to continue the debate it spawned rather than create a new thread to continue an in-progress topic as was previously suggested by somebody. What the hell, it IS making me think, which is why I'm still posting here. If you came to my dz, steve, I'd leave you alone like I would any booth advertising or selling something I don't need, but I'm pretty sure nobody would mind or give you a hard time about it. You'd be another booth for people to cluster around like the Mirage tent we had last boogie. Good luck. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

and try not to land out...because there are NO outs! ok, let me rephrase that.... How comfortable are the trees around SNE? Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Jeez, I use flat turns every time I want to turn but don't want to sacrifice any real altitude or position, even up high, and especially when coming in on final in iffy winds. I'm still a lousy judge of final and tend to overshoot/underestimate my glide, but far better to overshoot than turn hard, chop through my last 200 feet, and eat it. I had top notch instruction. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Nice video...I too wanna bird so bad....I got out with a birdman this weekend, (at the same time, he followed me out on my heels) and despite my terrible floating problem I promptly fell away on my back flapping my arms watching him hang up there and fly away with the otter, just kinda following it...dammit wheres my wings? oh fuck I don't have any. nuts. ah, but in a year or two, I will.... Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Oh. Mujie is hot. very very hot. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

>Atheists are eternal. Uh, there was a universe with atheists before, and there will be one again. All of us (atheists, christians, wiccans, whatever) have been here for a tiny sliver of time in the billions of years the universe has been around, and the somewhat less billions of years the earth has been around. >If I ever have kids I'll be doing my best to ensure nobody infects them with ANY religion . . . I hope you don't present religious belief to them as a disease. I've seen (or heard) that done with blacks, homosexuality, communism, islam etc. and it usually just generates more hatred. I hope my children are open minded enough to hear about religion and accept (or reject) it based on their own beliefs, not on what their parents told them they had to think. Pardon me. The atheists are eternal phrase was a theatrical way of trying to get my point across. Point being that there have been people who didn't know about/care about/believe in any gods since before recorded history. Seen from a long enough time frame christianity islam and the rest of current religions just look like the more popular cults of the times, ones among many. The "god" trip is something thought up by people. I wouldn't present it to them as a disease, I simply view its behavior life cycle and propagation in much the same light. You're familiar with the concept of infectious memes? Information structures with behavior patterns? A real good example of a weird infectious meme is the All Your Base phenomenon. The internet provided a perfect medium of transmission, the humor part of it ensured its livelihood and virulence, and it still spreads wildly today. Its possibly the funniest idea virus I've ever seen. Ask the guy with the sig line "HOW ARE YOU GENTLEMEN". Or, call up any search engine or msn homepage and type in those 3 words, all your base. you'll get some 23 MILLION results with all the answers to questions about all your base in the first few. All Your Base is a simple meme with a short code and I view religions as similar memes but with much more complex structures usually well blended with cultural aspects of the lives of the people carrying them. Some people are simply immune to some infectious memes. Some people learn about all your base and just go "uh whats so funny?" Personally I found it hilarious. I'm pretty much immune to religion, although I consider myself a deep person (think "spiritual", but I don't believe in spirits) I know what I see and no religion in all its complexity resembles the reality I see. Lots of people have tried to "save" me, I listen patiently, then write it off as "yeah right. sure ok." I would present religion to my kids as a cultural thing somebody else does for their own reasons like hindus or buddhists or wiccans, just don't believe it when someone presents you with religious information presented as fact. (creationism, concepts of "sin" concepts of being in need of "salvation" having a "lord" or talk of personal relationships with god) Its not just religion I would explain this way. Same dubious "yeah right" perspective applies when an advertiser tries to convince you that somehow his product will make your hair shiny and turn you into a supermodel and you absolutely cant get by without it, or some aryan nation asshole tries to tell my kids anything not white is a lower lifeform. Theres only one standard I judge people by in person...are they good people? Do they make me smile or do I want to get the hell away from them? Do they stand on their own two feet or whine demand and expect the world to revolve around them? Most people seem to have a religion of some sort so if I judged everyone I met wearing a cross badly I'd be rejecting way too many possible friends. Same goes for color culture and nationality. I bet there aren't too many racists skydiving...in the past year I've sat stuffed in a plane cheek to jowl and trusted my life with a jordanian, a kuwaiti, a brazilian, some hispanic rico suave looking type I couldn't quite identify, (spain? puerto rico? mexico? fucked if I know) a japanese, a russian, a korean, a chinese, some french guy whose helmet didn't fit him right and a whole lot of the generic who-knows-what-exact-flavor white folks that are the majority here. If I had hangups about race or culture I'd have gone insane by now. Most of them are better in the sky than I am so I listen carefully to all who speak to me. Is there any other way to be? Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Who is mujie? Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

You got me, man. Last weekend I did 3 jumps back to back on 3 different canopies which gave me a great basis for comparison. The sabre 190 main has medium-hard pressure. I have to do basically a one armed pullup on the toggles to get it to spiral. Next was a 218 reserve. I was a bit busy on that flight but it had very easy toggle pressure. After that was a borrowed student rig with a skymaster 230 in it which had toggle pressure so easy and light it was ridiculous. Granted it was like flying a school bus with zero performance and cornering, but easy to fly. This is giving me the impression that when I get down to a 150 it'll be a hard pull to make it corner....bigger the canopy/easier the toggle pull? Just my impression....limited experience means I could be wildly wrong about other canopies. my .02$ Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

The atheists have completely hijacked this thread. whoa. Religious belief sets come and go through history...someday all forms of christianity, islam and everything else worshipping what is now called god...someday all these religions will be as forgotten as the greek and egyptian gods, the sumerians, the romans. Christianity is temporary. The notion of god himself is temporary. But there will always be people who refuse to believe the currently popular mysticism. Atheists are eternal. This fact is the one hammer that dismantles any religion, as I see it. This stuff was thought up only in the last few thousand years but everyone who believes it thinks it applies to eternity. How unimaginative. If I ever have kids I'll be doing my best to ensure nobody infects them with ANY religion, whether it be born again baptist, protestant, mormon, jehovahs, islam, wahabbism or hari krishna. So when someone tells them "we're all sinners we're all guilty" my kid will say "whatever, man". Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Saw Point Break, at age 16. 3 years later having forgotten all about the temporary resulting jumplust, while wandering back from this carnival I worked at I drove past....Jump School? WTF? Investigate later... Oh. I find out I'll need lots and lots of money to do that. I was broke at the time. 7 years-ish later, I had enough to do aff. Jumplust can last a long time and require great patience...but it pays off. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

The tune you're looking for is by The Offspring, called "the kids aren't alright." kickass tune. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

It's been done. The following is from memory many years ago in Indiana. Age: unknown, probably less than one year. Sex: unknown, too many feathers to tell. Number of jumps: 1 Time in sport: 1 day Cause of death: impact Description: Deceased exited aircraft at 2000 over the peas. After initially flapping wings, deceased folded up wings and made no further effort to flap until impact. An AAD and a reserve may have prevented this fatality. System: none Main: none Reserve: none AAD: none RSL: none This has got to be LMAO the funniest thing I've seen here yet. My guts hurt. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Isn't that ironic? I'm the antisocial solitary type. Having spent too much time around screamingly dysfunctional people I find myself better off with no company. For me, solitude just sorta happens and I long ago got ok with that. Sorta. The immortality crash resulting from loss of religion makes the deaths of others suck more, though. The whole "only here once could be gone any day better make it good" thought train. I been thinking about that a lot lately what with all the skydiving accidents lately...added to which I just lost 2 not-quite-distant relatives (a great uncle and a cousin) to brain/lung cancer and a car wreck, respectively, in the past eight days and had my first reserve ride last friday. Also had two extreme near-miss accident evasions on highway in the same period. I'm beginning to feel like an endangered species and starting to expect snipers in trees and ninjas waiting for me around corners any day now. I'm continuing to skydive every chance I get, but very, very carefully.... Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I think possibly the hardest part of discarding the last traces of my childhood religion structure was accepting the loss of the promised immortality. As a christian there is always the fundamental assumption of conciousness awareness and existence after death. Realizing over time that that was just one of a bunch of different and equally wrong belief sets sucked. None of them (religions)ever even refer to reality for reference, they all just claim to offer answers to questions that don't have answers, and thats the end of it, take my word for it, it's all in this little book right here.... This makes no sense to me. Ever notice how when you find one of the answers to one of the great questions in life the answer itself comes in the form of two more questions? This is why I'm an atheist. Religion begins and ends in one single cipher point thats supposed to explain everything. They call that point GOD. "I am the alpha and the omega". For all questions, refer to that. Closed system, dead end. I choose the exact opposite of that. I'm curious and inquisitive and I want to know why. So I ask questions. Look for the 2-question answers. Answer them. Chase the four questions that result. Answer em. Now I got 16 questions well, that was 4,345,961 questions ago.......I look forward to a lifetime of futile but totally satisfying question chasing. It's fun instructive and rewarding and much easier on the knees. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Hoo I got three jumps! I got a rock solid standfly! I got out last and dumped high on the sunset load! I outflew line twists with aggressive riser handling and harness shifting! Fixed a stuck slider and half deployed canopy with loads of room to spare! Perfect long gliding no-wind landings right on target! WOOOOO! Sorry, hadda get it out of my system. Just got a big old slice of pie in the sky. While I'm alive. VERY alive. VERY. Being an atheist CAN be lonely...days like today I wish there WAS a god...so I could thank him. I had to settle for parking in the sunset at 2300 feet in deep brakes for awhile and watching traces of cloudstuff chase the last of the sun off and let the stars out, finish a cigarette standing by the car watching shooting stars and satellites arc over the parking lot in the most crystal sky I've seen in a while. Someone tell me how the hell it can possibly get any better than this. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

P.S. I wish I could believe in a God of some kind, it would make my life a lot easier(sometimes). Yeah but could you, would you, exchange the clarity of vision granted by a modern educated viewpoint for the old comforting fantasies and illusions of established religious beliefs? Thought not. Old school: Pie in the sky when you die or: Fry in the sky when you die. I'll take neither. Gimme plain old oblivion afterwards, and I'll have my pie in the sky now, while im still alive, please. Sunset load, anyone?

An atheist is someone who "denies" the existance of God. Big difference. Thanks, That is not quite how an atheist sees it. Judging by the perspective from which that was said, you must be a theist. "An atheist, by definition, does not believe in the existence of any deities or an afterlife." Using the word "denies" implies underlying belief and deliberate verbal negation. An atheist has no belief to "deny"....there is no god who needs to be "denied" an atheist rejects the entire belief structure as no more real than santa claus or the delivery stork. If you don't believe in the stork you aren't "denying" it, you just don't buy it because you know better and reject the simplistic explanation of childbirth in favor of understanding the mechanics of reproduction. An atheist views the concept of "god" the same way as the stork. Doesn't need denying, its self evidently inaccurate, like the stork thing. Like you said, big difference.

When I used to bitch about the neverending bullshit and small stuff in life my dad had this saying... he said "fly above the shit." Meaning pull yourself up, move on, move up, move out, do better. Awhile ago after earning my A and racking up 70 or so jumps and basically completely rewriting my life and perspective and prospects and attitude I showed my dad one of my videos full of aerial maneuvers grinning faces and canopies, I said "You once told me fly above the shit. Is this high enough dad?" He busted up laughing and said hell yes, its high enough. I think I finally succeeded in making him proud. Having the wholehearted support of family members you care about is beyond price. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

You can still talk to Claude because his voice box is in the hands of Cruz BWAHAHAHAHAHA I'm sorry, I'm not snickering at the loss of another great jumper. I'm snickering because THAT is damn funny. I hope Claude wouldn't mind some freak deriving amusement from this. When I read that I almost fell over laughing. Leave it to a skydiver to create humor even with his passing. Blue ones Claude.... Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.