champu

3000 jumps? ...you whore.

I would recommend reading through the above mentioned thread backwards as it spans about 5 years and some of the stuff at the beginning may be irrelevant (unless you decide to buy a used setup to begin with, in which case some of those older configurations may be similar to what you'll be shopping for.)

Thanks Saskia, I knew I was forgetting one of the boxes out there when I made the poll, but sounds like it's out the race anyway. Do you have any photos looking straight down into the open box with and without a camera in it? I feel like this would be one of the most helpful views but manufacturers love putting up only isometric views on their websites (an almost useless perspective for judging clearances.) This request for top down photos goes to anyone who might have the other boxes too.

...most interested in knowing which of these require or don't require cutting to fit the Hypeye connector. Also, comments on how well any help support (or just don't interfere with) a Raynox 3032 are welcome.

There were other ducks in the area, but Bill repeatedly signaled "get away! get away!" when they approached indicating he was aware of the danger his combustibility posed to others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States Education in the United States is mainly provided by the public sector, with control and funding coming from three levels: federal, state, and local. Child education is compulsory. A sub-type of compulsory education is public education. Do you have any data as to the proportion of expenses bore? I didn't see any, but the feds do pay and that goes on the rubber check. Look at the recent stimulus additon to pay someteachers salaries to keep them on. I should have said "state sales tax and local property tax" rather than just "state and local property tax," but here is what I was reading through when I wrote the response. It's somewhat Illinois-centric but there's a great map on page 12 that shows the breakdown of federal, state, and local funding for education across the country. Dr. Kallend argues that a tax is a tax is a tax, but the truth is, the further that a dollar gets from its taxpayer, the less likely it becomes that that dollar will be spent in that taxpayer's interest (directly or indirectly.) This makes taxpayers understandably skeptical of federal social programs intended to benefit "the masses." I think that's the concern at the heart of the thread. You and he can think yourselves too altruistic to be pestered by such concerns, but well... flies, honey, vinegar, etc. That's real nice and all, but I was rippewd and had to fend for myself as a kid; I basically had no parents, which is why I don'y pay hommage to the diddy rule. Also, I had to run away to the military when I was 17 and get my own education as an adult. So I envy your position, but in soooo many cases a little utopian. It sounds like you went through something very similar to what my father faced. He went from a bad send off, to giving his kids every advantage he could in just one generation. I'm thankful for the kind of effort he put in and owe a lot of where I am now to him. I'm reminded of my sig line when I think about it.

By the responses from the right: quite a few. I hate to interrupt your high-fiving, but public education costs are largely funded by state and local property taxes, which means if you went to the schools, you paid for it. Or, more accurately, your parents paid for it, and they were the ones in charge of making sure YOU got THEIR money's worth. My parents actually researched high schools and moved to a neighborhood so my sisters and I would go to a particular public high school. They also paid more in property taxes at that home. This is in contrast to... well... anything financed by federal income tax. Fortunately we have a republic instead of a democracy so the "bread and circuses" effect is usually limited. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to ignore the possibility or mock those who would bring it up.

Well, actually what I said was that most people want what they want out of the government and don't really care what falls by the wayside (most commonly a balanced budget) as a result. Whether or not the person is paying taxes doesn't seem to change that. Getting things for free doesn't automatically mean you don't appreciate or care for them; it depends on the person. We all know people who you can loan something to and they'll treat it better than they treat their own possessions, and may even return it in better condition than when they borrowed it. We all also know someone who we've stopped loaning things to altogether because they can never seem to get it back to you without missing parts or damage. On the other hand, I have something for the, "got a free car and babied it" crowd to consider. If someone gets a free car they're probably in a situation where they couldn't have afforded it themselves, and it was probably from a relative who gave it to them at some sacrifice. If they don't take care of it, no one is giving them another one, and they may find themselves taking a bus. This is a little different than guaranteeing someone a car. If, when someone drives their car into the ground, they just get another one at no cost, and none of these cars are particularly nice, why would they treat any of them very well? For example, would you ever even consider buying a used Taxi? (other than as a collectible) /edited: fixed a few grammar mistakes. Turns out they have a more detrimental effect on the clarity of your writing if you habitually use cumbersome run-on sentences.

Here is billvon in a photo I took of him down in San Diego a few months ago. If you look closely (second photo is an enlargement) you'll note the small spheres which are presumably metal and indicate conclusively that a thermite reaction had occurred.

I'm used to option 'C' except with 3 and 4 switched in the stair-step diamond. "Longy" formations always present multiple options and depending on what else happens in the jump, different engineering methods may be faster than others. Are you trying to establish fastest possible engineering with no respect for how confusing the dive may become for any given team member?

Does this mean that they will be refunded anything they've paid in as income tax over the course of the year or simply that at the end of the year they've paid in as much as necessary and don't owe anything additional? The former.

Difficult in an "elephant repellant" sense, or in the sense that levels of violence aren't expected to decrease in a time frame on the order of the attention span of civilian leadership (regardless of whether someone, somewhere believed things were getting better?)

Utter nonsense. In terms of governments, there's no reason to believe that anyone involved (the electorate, taxpaying or otherwise, representatives, or lobbyists) can be made to care about matters outside their personal agendas, so the second half of the above statement may be true, but I'm not sure "being free" is a necessary condition.

Our camera guy had the opposite problem, but there were other variables. HC5 with two element lens (not sure on make/model, not a particularly expensive one) had no problems but had the help of a d-box. His backup camera, a DCR-HC... something or other, had a single element royal lens and no box and fogged every time. As for last minute changes, I was our team's camera guy all season, and ended up jumping as inside center to replace their player coach who jumped on another team (this part was planned but time ran out on finding a new inside center.) Luckily we were able to do some jumps a couple weeks prior (I hadn't done 4-way since the 2008 Nationals) because we got weathered on the warm up days.

Well... they did put their dropzone near the gulf coast in Texas and then host nationals in October. In all seriousness, it's a really nice facility. My only complaints (rain, mud, humidity, and bugs) have everything to do with the gulf coast and nothing to do with Spaceland. As far as sponsors goes, as long as at least one (usually PD, in this case Vigil) advertises using bright orange wind blades so I can tell which way to land, I don't really care.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=somH2V19BjE ...seriously people.

Use of corrective lenses certainly correlates positively with age but if 30-40% of people in their prime* have corrective lenses it's hardly irrelevant. Using technology to nullify the selective effects of a negative trait isn't that interesting though. What's more interesting, imho, would be a situation where it became "cool" to have glasses, or perhaps one in which having glasses became associated (rightly or wrongly) with a positive trait such as intelligence, and became preferred in the selection process. That would be a true "bastardization" of natural selection. * sorry for the old data but I'm lazy.

I've posted this before, but I believe evolution is still taking place on humans, just at the level of societies instead of individuals. Individuals get ahead or fall behind at the whim of the society they live in, which isn't guaranteed to promote traits beneficial to the individual absent of that society. Societies rise and fall and are usually modeled in the image of or in opposition to societies past. The number of truly discrete societies at this point is very low, however, and the fragility of the non-diverse "ecosphere" becomes apparent in situations like the crises of the cold war. /edited to add the italic clarification.

It's a tripod page, but it does cite primary sources which is nice. The author has some trouble staying coherent in his arguments particularly in acknowledging certain accomplishments and writing off others, but there're an important conclusion in here I agree with... I think you're trying to pin economic misery on low taxes when what you should be trying to pin it on (even according to the source you brought to the table) is deficit spending. If you want to spend more you have to pay for it responsibly. If you want to tax less you have to get spending under control first.

Shhhh! I'm trying to be Socratic here.

Again, I agree with you on most aspects of the safety net concept and making education readily available so that people end up using the net less frequently, but when you start talking about limiting people's ability to become rich as an actual stated goal of progressive taxation you completely lose me. If you define what is desired as a bare minimum for everyone, and social programs are put in place to ensure everyone has that, then who gives a shit how much more rich than the bare minimum people get? You have your bare minimums provided for and you also have class disparity. So what?

My only problem with the 4-way FS world record was that all competition was shut down for an hour so they could hold a world record ceremony in the middle of the event. I like the SLD Force guys and am happy for them, but this was really frustrating. We lost two warm up days to weather and spent two stressful competition days on and off of weather holds getting in only five rounds (twice I was geared up in the loading area on a five minute call when the weather hold was announced and one time I was on the plane rolling down the taxiway when the plug was pulled.) One of our team members had to leave Wednesday afternoon so it was apparent by that morning we weren't going to finish the comp, but I would have liked to have spent my last couple hours in Texas jumping instead of looking up at wasted blue sky. I pled my case to manifest that the shut down was going to cost us our shot at getting one more round in and they told me to take it up with Scott (the meet director) who was unavailable at the time because he was hosting the ceremony that prompted the shutdown in the first place. Hopefully we'll be able to get the jumps we didn't do refunded.

For reference, here's the text of the amendment: And the whole bill is located here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/C?c111:./temp/~c111bWN2ON (note that the amendment ended up as Sec. 8118, rather than Sec. 8104 if you want to look for it.)

Here are a few of those very successful people of whom you write. www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/business/17insider.html There will always be people who will try and cheat the system to get ahead regardless of what that system is. The people in the article are not a product of capitalism. Don't group the Sergey Brins in with the Kenneth Lays.