champu

Not if NASA has anything to say about it! Seriously though, sometimes NASA worries me.

If you want to hire people to provide security for low pay, you aren't going to get top notch people. In most other jobs this wouldn't be too big a deal because you can create processes and essentially "engineer out" the incompetencies you can expect to encounter. But in security it's a ridiculous practice because processes that can be documented are processes that can be circumvented. A little while back now, a collaborative intelligence effort resulted in the apprehension of a group that was planning on using liquid/gel explosives to take down several aircraft. As a result of this discovery liquids and gels in containers larger than 3oz are now considered prohibited items. This ever-expanding list that grows purely in a reactionary manner is worse than what we had before 9/11. The longer the list gets, the more focused screeners will get on looking for items on the list, and nothing beyond that which, in the absence of a list, might have raised suspicion. You know why those people were going to use gel/liquid explosives? Because they weren't on the list of prohibited items at the time. One thing should have become very clear that day, terrorists are always going to be one step ahead of the TSA, we just have to hope our intelligence communities can stay two steps ahead.

You should keep in mind the money spent on defense isn't ceremoniously loaded into a volcano which then errupts bombs and bullets. It pays a lot of salaries (from which SS and medicare are then deducted, again) and many companies that provide a great deal of civilian goods live and die by their military contracts. Also, while probably not a huge portion of it, it wouldn't surprise me if "defense spending" included programs to pay for soldiers' educations. The Pentagon could stand to do some house cleaning, but your argument against the people in that building seems a bit clouded by anger at folks in a different building on the other side of the Potomac.

So if I were an asshat in this life, my hell is that one or two generations remembers that I was an asshat? Oh, the pain! 'Ep, and after that, no one remembers you. Or maybe you show up a couple generations down the road as a name tag on a push pin with some yarn around it as part of a 5th graders family tree project for history class. The only thing we get to keep after we die is our name. That drives many people to be a positive contribution to the world around them. Meanwhile, the hoi polloi get told a story of fire and brimstone to keep them in line.

Actually, yes. I think it's hilarious that on our money it says, "In God We Trust."

In a literal sense? Absolutely not, no. I interpret any description of an afterlife as simply a metaphor. Everyone's remembrance will outlive them for some finite duration. If you've been a generally positive contribution to this little adventure we're all on, your memory will carry on in a positive light. If you've conducted yourself exceptionally poorly, that remembrance will reflect negatively on your existence for quite sometime. The knowledge of the latter as your consciousness fades to black when you die is the very definition of hell.

Steve, you're one of this atheist's favorite Christians. Take that for what it's worth. As with most silly arguments, people impose upon their opponents a lot of characteristics that just aren't true. Surprise, surprise, not every theist is riding around on a horse eviscerating unbelievers with a sword, just like not every atheist is out raping children because, "he or she doesn't have the proper fear for the wrath of the lord." It gives me a good laugh following it sometimes. I think the comparison to love is an excellent one. Love, because the subject is tangible, is more accessible to skeptically minded people (Only half the equation is in your head, instead of all of it.) But when theists use the, "have you ever been in love?" defense to counter the "prove god exists" offense, they should realize just how personal a thing like love is, and that it might not be quite the argument they had in mind. Just like your love of anything, your faith in something doesn't really mean anything to 3rd parties. To further the similarities, people do some crazy shit under the influence of love. Love brings out the best in some people, and the worst in others. But love tends to operate on a shorter wavelength than faith. People often come down off of love and see their actions for what they were, we could only be so lucky in many instances of faith (or lack thereof.) Instead, we just have to hope it brings out the best more often than it brings out the worst, and control that to the best of our abilities in ourselves.

"The Total Perspective Vortex had proved that, in an infinite universe, the one thing sentient life cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion." Whether you choose to beleve a sentient god created the universe as we know it, or you feel that its existance can be adaquately explained by secular means, one should try and appreciate as frequently as possible just how lucky we all appear to be.

Almost always. Except, as history seems to show, on Safety Days.

I jump with a Pro-track as an audible (which I've had for ~1300 jumps) and a Viso as a visual mounted on a small pillow on my chest strap (which I've had for ~100 jumps) I really like the Viso as it provides me with very reliable altitude information when I'm setting up my swoops. It's a good feeling when you lean over on the climb up to altitude and compare with someone else's Viso and they are dead on with each other. (within 10ft) The Viso comes with a hand mount, wrist mount, and a whole bunch of zip ties which allow you to taylor your mounting setup to your liking, which is nice. While the Viso has operated flawlessly and I haven't had to fall back on it, my experience with L&B customer service in the past would be hard to beat, they really stand behind their products. As a logging device, it leaves something to be desired. Navigating menus to retrieve jump info is very awkward, so I leave the logging and jump info duties to my protrack, which is much more friendly. Still, this altimeter provides an excellent day-to-day alternative to the annlog altimeters of old. I would definitely buy a Viso again.

The kit lens is an excellent place to start. You can do a few jumps with the zoom ring gaffered to a particular focal length and get an idea of what the composition at that focal length looks like (roughly anyway) and decide what works best for you for each of the subjects you mentioned. Plus it's nice to have a cheap lens on the thing the first time you whack it into the bar when climbing out. Personally, I have two lenses I jump. If I want to get a particularly close exit shot, or I'm going to take photos while touching (or almost touching) the subject, I'll use a Sigma f/2.8 15mm. Virtually everything else I use a Canon f/1.8 28mm. /edited to add: regarding Jon's comment. I don't know anyone who (regularly) shoots stills in freefall with a focal length long enough to warrent the extra weight of a Canon IS lens. You just don't need it in the 10-50mm range which is probably all you're going to be shooting in freefall. For ground shots though, I agree, the IS/L series Canon lenses are pretty incredible.

Pascal's Wager, which masquerades as an application of what later became known as bayesian decision theory, is intellectually bankrupt. It presents only a weighting function and no probabilities, and then claims any probability function will result in a likelihood function that always chooses, "believe in god." As it happens, that latter claim is not only false, but furthermore, the only valid probability functions in regard to whether or not god exists, all result in a likelihood function whose value is undefined. In other words, because god is, by definition, not allowed to exist in a probabilistic sense, the best choice between believing and not believing is not a function of the consequences attributed to either decision.

I've generally focused on one thing at a time, but it certainly hasn't been for an entire career. Focus is healthy, but the right amount is, of course, different for everyone. Particularly if you're going to be jumping a lot, as we can here in SoCal, I would highly recommend setting some goals for yourself. I don't mean something team/competition related, just "general ability" goals. Then take a step back and figure out what's going to get you there. It could mean getting on a team and doing hundreds of jumps and hours in the tunnel in one and only one discipline, or it could just be setting a day aside once a month to do two-way freefly jumps with a particular person, and doing all other sorts of flying any other time you're out jumping. Don't fool yourself into thinking you can only ever get good at one thing, but don't fool yourself into thinking that being good at everything means thrashing around in the sky with different jumpsuits and helmets on.

I'm confused. A small depth of field around the subject does not make the background "look really close." In fact, the opposite is usually true. There are a few tricks to get the look I think you're going for: 1a) Longer focal length and get further from your subject 1b) Smaller aperture These both give you a longer depth of field. You can either slow down the shutter speed (at the expense of motion blur) or speed up the sensor/film (at the expense of image noise) to allow you to squeeze the aperture and get as much depth compression as possible out of a given focal length, and still get a good exposure. 2) Get right over the top of your subject This literally makes the ground closer to your subject in the image frame and, as one might guess, makes the ground look closer to the subject in the photo. Convenient Recent Example taken with a Canon 350D and 28mm f/1.8 lens. (ISO100; f/7.1; 1/500sec) In this instance I wasn't specifically trying to compress the formation onto the background. Had I been, I could have gone with ISO200 and a 1/250sec exposure and turned the f-stop "up to eleven."

While I'm glad to hear that your progression has involved coaching, my statement about flying a Xfire-129 at 150 jumps still stands, it is an incident report waiting to happen. It's good to hear you've decided to hold off. I also got a sabre-135 at about 30 jumps. (just as you said, not recommended, but I'm not going to get hung up on it) My landings were always excellent, I took canopy control courses to learn all I could, I was a very conservative and safety minded jumper, and by the time I had 150 jumps I was quite comfortable under it. I'm sure I could have very easily handled a Xfire-129 at that time in good conditions, but I can't tell you how happy I am that I didn't. Day to day landing in various sub-optimal conditions (which is probably putting it lightly) and learning more and more aggressive maneuvers under that sabre-135 over the next 450 jumps lead to countless mistakes on my part, but none of them resulted in any injuries, just dusty jumpsuits. I can think of at least two occasions where I would have definitely broken myself had I been flying a higher performance canopy.

I'm not a professor, so I figured I was safe. Some people say they don't like internet message boards as a form of communication because meaning and emotion embedded in tone is lost, but I'd have to disagree. Furthermore, if you really believe in your signature line, you'd mind your tone. You got your hands on a physics factoid regarding mass vs weight, and decided to share it on an internet message board, a place well known for its rampant infestation of smart-asses. You were then out-smart-assed by a physics professor, and things went down hill from there. At this point, trying to salvage any nobility from the matter is probably a lost cause. If I were you, and I could manage to garner kallend's support in just one goal, I would have it be, "letting this thread die."

I never said I hadn't read the thread, I just said the intended destination of the man at the helm was no longer apparent. You do have a goal here, do you not? It would be a shame to expend this much effort if that weren't the case.

The point was not true, pound IS a unit of mass, AND wiki mentions the vernacular use all over the place, so the revisionism is particularly lame. I thought his point was that Wikipedia was not an accepted reference (which is true) and he was trying to support it by pointing out that someone had carelessly listed pounds among units of mass, when it fact it is only sometimes a unit of mass (which is a lame nit-picking example.) Now I'm a bit befuddled, however, as to what his point is. It's not clear now if it ever was.

Or your launch vehicle CATOs, or you drop a satellite on the floor, or your landing craft smashes into a planet, and you wind up stumbling upon that elusive bad press some people claim didn't exist. Skepticism of sources is healthy, and there's plenty of reasons to be careful with what you read on Wikipedia, but anytime you raise a point (as true as it may be) and support it with such a lame nit-picking example, you can expect to get nit-picked back.

Is NASA an acceptable reference for scientific information?

On spacecraft, most components have specified weights measured in pounds... ...figure that one out.

Okay, now you've got me practically doubled over in laughter picturing a couple kids in a three-leged race, one tripping up causing the other to fall a whole foot and a half to the ground resulting in an explosively gory compound leg fracture. This image shouldn't be as hilarious as it is, but I seriously can't breathe right now.

I don't think objects get much less dangerous than eggs and spoons.

I'm kinda slow today. I didn't watch the video but upon reading the grandparent post I thought to myself, "Uruguay... Uganda... Uzbekistan... Hmm, why is that strange that Americans can't answ- oh... right..." [smacks forehead]