champu

I don't know that the statement needs that qualification. From the sled tests it's concluded that loose restraints will not perform as well as snug ones, but overall the single point restraints on aft-facing passengers did little more than serve as a pivot point to rotate about and slam the passenger's head and limbs into the fuselage and other passengers. Picture yourself in the plane belted in and imagine the full range of translation and rotation all your limbs, your torso, neck, and head are allowed. During a crash the only fair assumption is that your body will make full use of this freedom of motion.

Generally, pretty good. It'll be cool on the ground during the day and cold at altitude and at night. We get some clouds/rain during that time but not a lot. The cool air keeps the winds steady, whatever they're doing, and they don't do crazy stuff like they can here in the summer. Late February / March / Early April is usually our cloudy and rainy season.

Synopsis: Single point restraints looped through the parachute harness don't do anything for you in a crash, and more research should be done to determine how best to improve restraint systems in the various types of jump aircraft.

um yeah, All you have to do is stay in one place and the flyers just present grips to the video. Right?! How hard could that be? It's amazing how many times I keep reminding my team to build the formations in the center of the frame, but they just don't listen.

A cross ring sight, imho, does just as good a job at getting your helmet on right every time as the concentric ring, and costs about 100 bucks less. I would still recommend Brent's though as its construction with the glass covers is more durable than some of the others out there. You will want one of the articulated mounts be it removable or otherwise when mounting on a Rawa due to the helmet's shell not extending down your forehead very far. The post mounts only work well if you have a fairly vertical place to start from. I don't have a Rawa so I'm not sure entirely how it would work out, but on my FF2, I mounted a sight over my left eye to keep any mounting hardware away from the sides of the helmet to help mitigate the snag hazard. Even if you're right eye dominant (as I am) you'll probably find the sight works well in this configuration.

I'm not really supposed to tell anyone this... but VRW video really isn't all that hard.

I think the defensiveness taught when learning to skydive and, to a lesser extent, learning to drive sinks in pretty deep with people of a certain demeanor. I've begun to realize that simply staying aware of my environment in day to day life can keep me calm and able to make good decisions rather than just having to react to things. Does that mean I think skydiving has changed me a whole lot? Not really. It just connected some dots. I think, like many things, it's polarizing. "Inherently safe" people will grow "safer" and "inherently dangerous" people will grow "dangerouser." (quote marks used to indicate my understanding that the meaning of these terms could be a whole other topic of debate.)

Open: Az Arsenal Deland Hybrid Az Drive Mandrin Norcal Alliance Advanced: Elsinore Jedi Dysfunction NorCal chicks Joe's Team Dallas Evol Dallas Vibe Also, I think 4-speed (the French team) is planning on being there as a guest team to train for the world cup. The same might also be true for Outbreak Vertical, though I don't know.

Elsinore Jedi will definitely be there. Also, there was an Elsinore/Perris pick-up team (conveniently named "Sith" har har) that competed in the Elsinore VFS meet back in June and you may see some of those folks bring a team to Nationals as well.

My money is on "no". Probably not a bad place to put your money.

Well, many of them haven't figured out how to get their own branded locks off my checked bags without cutting through them, so aircraft instrumentation may be a ways off.

Even if I didn't choose California and I went and paid the ridiculous fees to take another bar exam, I wouldn't be taking my income or assets to another state, because I'd be making less money and the bank owns my home. But if the CoL is less elsewhere, it would cancel out. So your higher income allows you to live in the Golden State and not have to live in Illinois like me. The rich have more options than the poor. Were you forced to choose IL? I grew up in Illinois and had plenty of inertia keeping me there, but I moved to SoCal because I can skydive year round here, because designing satellites is a lot more fun than designing cell phones, and because living about a mile away from the beach is kinda neat. The starting salary scaled to the CoL pretty well, and I imagine your profession would share the same mobility. Someone not having the drive to seek out a location they enjoy doesn't make them richer/poorer/more taxable/less taxable, it just makes them a fool.

Those are actually two of the points I see pretty much eye to eye with the GAO on. The crux is that you have a politician from Washington dictating to the Air Force what type of plane they want, and doing it in a most underhanded way (and no doubt with Boeing money in his campaign fund). I honestly have nothing to gain/lose from either company winning this contract, but I'm concerned that it won't be long before a self-serving congressman a dozen states away takes a crap on something I do care about. I don't think politicians from Washington, California, Illinois, Alabama, or Kansas should be able to get anywhere near this decision.

Nonsense. I have one over at the office that we pulled off an alien spaceship that I'm &$*&^(*%*©ç¥√¬¥∑ç∫¬NO CARRIER

So... a little while back some folks from Boeing and the Air Force went to jail over a no-bid tanker contract resulting in the Air Force reopening the contract for competitive bidding. A Northrop Grumman/EADS team won the contract earlier this year, but the award was protested by Boeing on the grounds of about 100 issues. 8 of the issues were confirmed by the GAO, and were related to preference/credit given to the NG/EADS team in ways that were not made clear in the initial RFP. The Air Force (and Robert Gates' office who has taken over the acquisition process) announced they had plans to clarify how these areas would be treated in a revised RFP they planned to release some time in August. But before they could, Norm Dicks (a congressman from Washington) has used his seat on the Defense Subcommitee to add language to a bill originally intended to provide supplies to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan requiring the Air Force to obtain a plane that matches Boeing's offering and attempts to disqualify the NG/EADS offering. Am I the only one who thinks this might not be the most honest way to award a $100B contract?

It's generally not a good idea to refer to a successful swoop as, "hooking it in." Although I suppose "hooking it in" does generate quite a bit of speed, and so your statement was technically correct. In a similar vein, it always sounds bad to me when another person asks while loading the plane, "anyone else gonna hit the pond?"

Thanks for the reply, it's nice to know there might be at least one [accidental?] positive outcome if this proposal goes anywhere. It raises a couple more questions though... A couple times now you challenged another poster to try and schedule an abortion at a local OB/Gyn to make it a point that most don't perform the service on an elective basis, and that one would have to go to a planned parenthood clinic to have the procedure done. You then stated you agreed if a nurse worked at a planned parenthood clinic but was morally opposed to abortions that it would probably be in his/her best interests to find another job that didn't ask that of them (even if you wouldn't necessarily fire the person.) From the sounds of your challenge above, this would not pose a significant hardship. So my questions are, even if we agree on employee rights, do we really need this law? Most of the discussion I'm hearing suggests that aspect isn't even a real issue, that there isn't a pandemic of people having surgical implements forced into their hands, and that the hospital policy part is what will actually have the greatest affect on people. And if one of the desired outcomes of that half of the proposal is the more widespread use of medication to terminate pregnancies, aren't there a vast number of better laws that could be written to achieve that more directly?

whoops, I was referring specifically to this post. Thank you for the clarification on COCP though.

I'd still be curious to hear what Karen, or anyone, thinks about the other half of this proposal that I tried to call attention to 50 posts ago now...

This is the part of your argument that I disagree with. COCP or "the pill" doesn't work by preventing implantation, it prevents ovulation (and therefore conception.) It can't be considered "abortion" even under the language of this proposal. You'd have to come up with a "zeroth" or "negative first" trimester to make it fit the definition. Or just... you know... become a devout Catholic.

I agree that a hospital/clinic should not be able to fire a doctor because they object to performing late-term abortions for moral reasons (and your other arguments regarding employee rights.) But it would appear that the employee rights aspect is only half of this new proposal. This is pulling out stops for hospitals (including state-funded institutions) to refuse to perform abortions (as defined above) as a general policy. First it was, "abortion is wrong and therefore illegal," and that failed. Then we had, "leave it up to the states," and that didn't work. Now it's, "leave it up to the [potentially state-funded] hospitals." I guess we'll see what happens on this one. Maybe I'm reading too much into this part, but it really looks as though someone is trying to boil a frog.

And which one was related to ballistic missiles or nuclear weapons? /Marg A very good point, and I'm interested in your take (and of course anyone else who feels like chiming in) on the following... It seems we (the US) have a couple somewhat independent goals when it comes to Iran. A) stop supplying combatants, mortars, rockets, IEDs, RPBs to insurgent groups in Iraq and B) stop pursuing nuclear weapons / delivery systems. My question is are these two goals best lumped together or treated separately? Do the same kinds of tactics / diplomacy stand to make headway on both?

So do we. Why is it only wrong when they do it? While Iran may have very well learned this strategy from the US and what we did to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, I wonder if they paid much attention to how that worked out for us in the long run... I think we agree, though, that improved diplomacy with countries like Iran and Pakistan are needed to stop the support they provide to militant groups, not saber rattling. Interestingly, Iran may prove to be an easier nut to crack than Pakistan. Call me crazy, but I'm hopeful of Robert Gates' abilities.

If anything, the overweight consumers (i.e. the remaining human population) were depicted as victims of a runaway corporation that had crapped on the planet. They certainly weren't made out to be villains. On the other hand, though, I'd hardly call the movie "leftest" as it was clearly showing the downside of simply taking what's given to you by the government / big companies, and that if you want anything worthwhile you have to work for it. Long story short is that it's a cute story with some good lessons that's entertaining for kids and has plenty of subtle humor that adults will enjoy too. It's right in line with other Pixar offerings, but if people want to read more into it simply because it mentions the environment or fat people then they're welcome to, but doing so is pretty silly.

I've always gotten all my jumps signed off by another jumper. I do, however, log all my jumps in a given day on one line of my logbook to save space*. Technically once you have a D license you only need to get a jump signed off once every 6 months to be considered "current" no matter where you go, but I get my book signed off anyway because it's cool to have the record. * I started logging that way about 1000 jumps ago because I started going through logbooks too quickly.