champu

You're naive if you think the world stops for you to set up and run a computer simulation every time something goes wrong and you need to understand why.

It may be hard to grill someone during an interview on certain liberal arts degrees (and I certainly wouldn't be the right person to do it), but it's not difficult to interview a new engineering grad against their resume and tell if they're legit.

Ultra left-winger does not equal libertarian. On the bright side, I enjoy my humor.

Even more bizarre thought experiment: Remove all term restrictions on public offices and just shoot everyone who fails to get re-elected in the head.

I don't think anyone is talking about "judging one's worth." It's entirely possible for someone to have value regardless of where they stand. On the other hand, if someone takes the evaluation and they are plastered anywhere on the edges of the plot it may not be worth your time to discuss certain things with them. Personally, I think you're being a little paranoid. Really? Because I think that's the entire direction of this thread. That somehow "right wing" equals "right way" and "liberal" equals "wrong way" when in fact most people on this forum don't even have an accurate description of what the word "liberal" means. I don't think that's the predominant direction of this thread. I think the couple claims that any leanings affect moderator performance have fallen pretty flat. ...of course if you DID post your results and it turned out you WERE an ultra left-winger it might explain why you've been failing to meet your warning quota lately.

Mostly because I don't agree with a number of assumptions they've made, I don't like two dimensional testing as a means for judging ones worth and they've never revealed their methodology. In other words, I think the test is flawed to begin with. I don't think anyone is talking about "judging one's worth." It's entirely possible for someone to have value regardless of where they stand. On the other hand, if someone takes the evaluation and they are plastered anywhere on the edges of the plot it may not be worth your time to discuss certain things with them. Personally, I think you're being a little paranoid. Also, they have a fairly extensive FAQ that talks about most of the statements explicitly, so I'm not sure it's fair to say they don't reveal their methodology.

I know I'm not a moderator (nor would I volunteer if asked, I feel for those folks for what they've bitten off) but I do sometimes wonder how I'm perceived to lean. I figure if you get half the people calling you a right-winger and half the people calling you a left-winger you're probably pretty well balanced... ...or you've completely lost your mind.

Skeeter, Billy Jo, Bobby Jo, Betty Lou, Buck, Bud, Cooter, Duke, Garth, Jim Bob, Patty Sue, and Woody. Nah, those are "red names". "White names" are things like Sveinn, Jóhanna, and Ingólfur.

FAIL The actual spoof is Dihydrogen Monoxide and it is funny as hell. I love a good hoax! I know. I also found it funny that the author screwed up the name and thus was inadvertently ranting about a free radical which is an area of active research with respect to atmospheric pollution and ozone regeneration.

FAIL

There's a lot of old school exit advice for 4-way FS that's counter-productive, like telling the point to keep their feet on their butt or telling the tail to stick their legs all the way out. I think it stemed from the desire to have the formation pointed at the ground regardless of where the relative wind was coming from. Likewise the old school rolling of a head-down flower out the door sideways doesn't present anybody to the relatively wind correctly.

Kind of an eclectic set of characteristics you are after. > Soft, on heading openings. > Some body position forgiveness. > Wingsuit friendly. ...these are all kinda the same thing. > Easy to dial in for accuracy. > Good range for long spots. > Good double front riser dive/wind penetration. These are somewhat conflicting traits. When people talk about being good at getting back from long spots they generally mean that the canopy is trimmed to fly flatter which means more forward speed on straight-in landings (which can make dialing in accuracy more difficult) and that can affect front riser pressure as well. These boil down to personal preferences and have more to do with how you like to fly the canopy. > Fast toggle turns with a short recovery arc. Again, this is kind of a personal preference thing, do you mean fast as in "not a lot of input"? This can run against the openings you're looking for or how easy it is to dial in landings. > Stability in turbulence. > Easy to pack and forgiving of some sloppiness. These are probably not going to be major discriminators for you. Dos and Don'ts are more important than canopy design here. > Great rear riser turns. > Flies like an original Sabre. I have no idea what you mean here. (and I have 700 jumps on original Sabres.) In any event, I would recommend demoing at least a Pulse and a Safire 2 before buying. Obviously you can also try other canopies too to see what you think. The size and wing-loading affect a lot of the things you're talking about even more than the design, but you should have no trouble finding what you're looking for in the range you're talking about.

Well it doesn't help that virually every assumption based on party affiliation these days is a total non-sequitur. Nah, people are just as staunchly opinionated "in real life", it's just that the internet seems to be the only venue where people experience diversity anymore. When people get together in person they are usually like-minded and so unlike here they just get drunk and agree with one another.

Tomas, the time to stop dating emo high school girls is when you're done with high school.

Your reaction to wage increases at an overseas corporation where hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs have been outsourced would be to inflate the gap between foreign and domestic labor costs further?

Have they? There are much better places to test rover technology and it's not directly related to how "dead" they are. I suppose if any of the mining equipment companies headquartered in Sudbury were designing something, which is entirely possible, it would make sense to test it locally.

Agree/Disagree questions that were included: Agree/Disagree questions that were excluded (on the premise that, "they are not as useful in gauging economic enlightenment, either because the question is too vague or too narrowly factual, or because the enlightened answer is too uncertain or arguable."): To put it bluntly, this study is all manners of jacked up. All but a few of the 16 questions could be excluded based on their stated criteria (and not all of those are in the included list.) The somewhat/strongly nonsense only makes matters worse, especially for questions like I5 where the "correct" answer is (... [shrugs] maybe?) or questions like I6 where it depends on whether you attach a negative connotation to the word "exploited." I think the best you could do even if you had the raw data from the survey would be to determine what groups were more modest about their economic prowess by giving credit to answers of, "not sure."

Sticking with the "relative wind" approach that you prefer... Having a wheel-driven propeller and having it be the dominant mechanical coupling path from the wind to the vehicle allows the vehicle to travel downwind at a speed greater than the wind while maintaining an apparent relative wind at the coupling interface. The steady-state top speed of the vehicle will always be a function of the wind speed passing through the origin. The two ways to increase this top speed are to increase the dominance of the propeller (e.g. by streamlining the rest of the vehicle) or increase the apparent relative wind at the coupling interface at the steady-state top speed (e.g. by adjusting the gearing between the propeller and wheels.)

I think this is an interesting example of how the information age is slowly but surely adding more and more weight to our shoulders and will most likely be a component of our collapse. Kinda like how it only takes one idiot for warning labels to start showing up on a product, it only takes one news article for people to get up in arms about something. The problem is that regulations that offended people create, much like warning labels, never seem to go away. Don't get me wrong, I think having a strict "unemployed need not apply" policy is a bad idea both for the company and for the economy, but this article appears to reference 3-4 (3 if the Sony/Ericsson thing really was a mistake) anecdotal instances of this happening across the country and you're off talking about justifying higher taxes and welfare programs.

They don't have to be, they only have to be Mirandized if the cops/prodsecutor wants to admit evidence. Close but not quite. A suspect only has to be mirandized if (A) they are in custody and (B) the police want to ask them questions about the crime. ...the suspect doesn't have to be Mirandized, as you said they must before arrest. Where did he say that?

You're absolutely correct, American 11 and United 175 were 767-200 series and American 77 and United 93 were 757-200 series. The 767s are 20-50% more massive depending on the config. Hopefully my point was still clear. But speaking of all these airplanes, why are folks that are upset with the building designers not also upset with the Boeing engineers? Why didn't the plane just fly right out the other side of the building? What a piece of junk.

Over-engineering, by definition, isn't necessary. If it were necessary, it would just be engineering. If you want the building to withstand a run in with a fully fueled 757 at full throttle, tell the engineers and architects up front. Anything that can be built can be destroyed.

Whenever I'm in a diner and see someone use two things of jam on one slice of toast I think, "What a liberal use of jam! That person probably supports banning guns and a 100% marginal tax rate to create more welfare programs." But if they split a thing of jam across two slices of toast I think, "What conservative jam application! I'll bet they're pro-life, hate the gays, and want creationism taught in science class."

Awesome The best plan to harness this resource that I've heard so far is to give people a free lotto ticket if they run in a giant hamster wheel for five minutes. I think it was in one of Scott Adams's books. I bet you'd get more takers if you gave them 5 tickets for 15 minutes. Better still, offer both options.

Awesome The best plan to harness this resource that I've heard so far is to give people a free lotto ticket if they run in a giant hamster wheel for five minutes. I think it was in one of Scott Adams's books.