champu

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Everything posted by champu

  1. champu
    Have a rigger make you something like the attached. Cut slits in the top of the helmet to the left and right of the flat lock with a dremel and run the strap through the helmet and around the camera. The wider one inch piece of webbing by the female end is so the plastic connectors aren't rubbing against the camera. If you want to get fancy you can use a one inch wide piece of neoprene.
  2. champu
    From back when LRO/LCROSS launched in June: NASA moon bombing violates space law & may cause conflict with lunar ET/UFO civilizations.
  3. champu
    At first I thought this thread was a swing at people who criticize Jon Stewert for attacking republicans and then saying that he's just a comedian to blow off people who would argue with him. Now I realize this thread is just another you-said/I-said, get a dictionary, learn to read, prove it/it can't be proved, your sources suck, cluster-fuck amongst shit-festivals.
  4. champu
    Who's the bigger nerd really? The guy pulling exponential decay functions out of his ass or the guy using gnuplot? Well, of course, the bigger nerd is - wait, are we arguing over who is the bigger nerd, or who isn't? Based on the principle of excluded middle, we're arguing both.
  5. champu
    Who's the bigger nerd really? The guy pulling exponential decay functions out of his ass or the guy using gnuplot?
  6. champu
    The industry standard, well-known, indisputable, undying, and ubiquitously operative formula for the number of jumps you must make on a canopy before you can have a meaningful opinion as to whether it's a good canopy or not is as follows. jumps on canopy = 1 + 99 * exp(your total jumps / -1500)
  7. champu
    Is knowing not to provide any information to that spamfestival part of the IQ test?
  8. champu
    Sorry... every time I see the term "1000 ft snivel/opening" tossed around casually I kinda furl my eyebrow a little. This is a 1000 ft snivel/opening (note the slight jolt about a half a second into the video, that's the bag hitting the end of the lines. I gave it a couple seconds before I even look up the first time.) After a couple seconds of the that nonsense you're not actually being slowed down anymore. Canopies aren't supposed to do that.
  9. champu
    ...yeah I can remember the room from the video fairly well now that I think about it and it defenitely wasn't one of the chambers in the US Capitol Building. I'm pretty sure it was from one of the states in the... well... I think we all know what region it was from...
  10. champu
    I can't remember if it was one of the state legislatures or if it was federal, but I remember someone posting a link a while back to an expose on representatives pushing the voting buttons for people that weren't there. They had video of it and it wasn't even discreet. People leaning over desks, scrambling to get to unattended buttons before opposing people did... total circus. I guess that would be one way to improve attendence. For this particular bill, however, I wouldn't think it too much to ask to show up at slightly odd hours.
  11. champu
    I know this was a parody thread, but still I took "All joking aside..." at face value. All I ever murder is fun.
  12. champu
    I'm actually curious what you mean by this, I guess I don't follow it. Murphy's Law is an engineering concept that's highly condescending towards non-engineers, or perhaps more generally, towards anyone using anything they themselves didn't design. The Peter Principle is a concept from business management and systems of social hierarchy. The oversight committees you speak of consist of further engineers who, when combating the above two principles are actually protecting people from themselves, not from the original designs.
  13. champu
    How large of a community are we talking here? Respect for anyone within a community will tend towards "modest" when considered over larger and larger "communities."
  14. champu
    It's probably worth noting that his character never actually shoots and kills anyone in that movie. He chases off the gang members at the begining with a bat, after they crash during the driveby he shoots one of them in the leg and leaves them there, and he ends up stabbing the racist surplus store owner in a struggle for his life.
  15. champu
    Thus, HOA's.. It should be my right to buy a $250k house, in an exclusive neighborhood, and park cars and boats, on blocks.... It's just an expression of my true self. I think you'll be okay here... studies have shown that all gay people drive smart cars, so parking won't be a problem. Interesting/disturbing note: I went to google, "all gay people drive smart cars" to find a ridiculous article to link to with that statement and before I'm done typing the attached "popular" search suggestion flashed up there.
  16. champu
    Let me just consult the manufacturer's website for a better explanation of how they work and, if I'm lucky, why they cost $18,000. http://www.atscltd.co.uk/
  17. champu
    Well, and that's in a situation where a quote was actually attributed to someone with a name. It's hard to argue that, "Hey, no unnamed official ever said that!"
  18. champu
    Sometimes. It's the price a journalist must pay in order to gain regular access to a valuable source. But it can only go so far - if you (the source) don't get any credit, you don't get any glory. hmm... maybe I didn't use "play up" correctly. A better word for what I was getting at would be "exaggerate." Of the questions I threw out there, this is the one that actually makes me rub my chin the most. If it is portrayed that the source would be put in some danger (life, career, or otherwise) if they are identified, then we can safely assume that the information is something that someone with power over the source doesn't want said. I think most go on to assume the source has a certain level of intimacy with the matter, and the ability to speak knowledgeably to it. It's the latter assumption that concerns me. I think it stifles the independent review of what is said. And I think this is sometimes (often?) done intentionally.
  19. champu
    When you see the phrases, "...who will not speak openly." or, "...who spoke on condition of anonymity." or, "...said one official, speaking privately." do you take the veracity of the statement with a grain of salt? I think everyone has a desire to believe that journalists, despite often having their own politics or a lack of expertise in a subject on which they're reporting, are actually trying to get the truth out there. If we didn't, we would never read/watch/listen to the news at all. Still, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts about the above caveats. How often does this "play up" the authority of the person making the statement? How often are quotes like this paraphrased / mangled do to misunderstanding on the reporter's part? How often are quotes like this fabricated when the reporter can't find a source to support a hunch?
  20. champu
    The constitution prevents the government from infringing on the rights of the people. Borrowing some language from the end of Lincoln's speech some years later, we can think of this as a limit on "government by the people", in which case it's protecting the few from the overwhelming vote of the many (minorities from majorities.) Or you can think of it as a limit on "government of the people", in which case it's protecting the many from the unilateral decree of the few (the governed from those in power.) Majorities, however, don't need protection from minorities. That's what pitchforks and torches are for.
  21. champu
    I was going to say the same thing. I know several nurses and most end up having a fairly flexible schedule, and have the time and money to do quite a bit of jumping. I would recommend against putting those plans on hold. I started in college. My university had a club that had a great deal for students (FreeflyChile, nerdgirl, FallingMarc, and I were all presidents at one time or another) and I got my A-license for less than a grand. In my first year I did about 40 jumps and at the end of that year I bought a complete used rig with about 400 jumps on it for three grand. The following year I did around 160 jumps, taking it easy because I was going to school and free time was at a premium. Since I finished undergrad I've been making 400-600 jumps a year.
  22. champu
    Not unless you're in one of the major metropolitan areas. California as a state is actually a lot more "red" than people think. /edited to add: Seattle is the new San Francisco.
  23. champu
    http://rescuemarriage.org/
  24. champu
    A friend of mine received an actual snail-mail, unveiled, pyramid scheme letter somewhat recently. I was surprised, I thought those had gone out of style in the 1920s in favor of more convoluted nonsense like MonaVie The letter didn't even attempt to be clever... "send 10 dollars cash to each of the 10 people below, put your name on the top of the list, mail 100 copies of the letter, here's some places you can find names and addresses..."
  25. champu
    erm... I don't know that I would downplay the technical difficulty of shooting down a satellite. From easiest to most difficult I'd order the related tasks as follows - Unmanned sub-orbital flight - Manned sub-orbital flight - Unmanned orbital flight - Hitting a target (CEP < 500m) with an ICBM - Launching a satellite to geosync - Co-orbital intercept of a spacecraft - Manned orbital flight - Direct-ascent/Hypersonic intercept of a spacecraft - Direct-ascent/Hypersonic intercept of an ICBM/RV Difficulty actually trends well with kinetic energy. Note that while co-orbital intercept or "essentially launching lead shot" at a spacecraft is easier than Direct-ascent intercepts, it would also be easier to counter. In other news... DARPA has recently started the ball rolling with cleanup efforts. I wouldn't hold my breath for a program coming out of that any time soon, however, the challenge there trumps all of the above imho.