champu

True, False, and False respectively. Here's a fairly recent publication discussing the matter if you're interested: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/RS21900.pdf

Is having an absolute temperature scale useful to anyone besides photographers and electrical engineers that deal with comm systems? ...not to discount either, of course, as I'm both.

I would love to hear you elaborate on this.

I learned pretty much all I need to know about Assange when I read his Q&A session back around late November early December last year. He panders to his fans and responds to ernest questions about diplomatic damage with "tldr;" He's a "useful idiot" like so any before him and very much unworthy of donations, sympathy, etc.

School board, school staff, I really wouldn't try to pin things on a political party either way. When I was in high school I had the privilege of going to lunch off campus. I also worked 30 hours a week and thus was able to have a car. One day, one of the friends in my group decided to throw a ketchup packet out the window of my car at another student's car because he thought it was funny. The guys in the other car (who were your classic jock idiots, not that that's important to the story) reported my car to the assistant principal. A couple days later the AP pulls me out of my English class and tells me in the hallway that going off campus is a considerable privilege and that I was pushing my luck letting people do that kind of thing from my car. I said that I agree, and that I told my friend after he threw the ketchup packet out the window that if something like that happens again I'm pulling my car over wherever we are and he's walking back to school. The AP laughed (he laughed the dishonest asshole) and said, "well I'm glad we're all able to handle this like adults.... go on and get back to class." Two days later my parents got a letter from the AP detailing how immature I was and threatened to suspend me if I caused the slightest stir from there on out. Luckily my parents had more respect for me than the AP did so they signed and gave me the letter and I took it to the AP's office the next day, placed it on his desk in front of him and said, "...like adults, huh?" and walked out of his office.

There're a lot of questions you can ask as a newbie that might get smart-ass responses, but gear choice is generally not one of them. The worst you'll get when asking, "should I buy X or Y" is generally "Z kicks X and Y's asses... idiot!" The reason I cast my vote against buying new gear to start is that most people only put a few to several hundred jumps on their first rig. I don't know where you jump but, particularly in places with ample grassy landing areas that are kind to rigs and canopies, you can buy a used rig, put a few hundred jumps on it, and resell it for damn near what you paid for it. Whereas custom rigs all suffer from the "drive it off the lot" syndrome that new cars are infamous for. Worst case scenario is you "lose" a couple hundred bucks jumping the used rig for a while and deciding that you want a custom rig that's the same size.

The "party line" at PD is large mil-spec rubber bands double-wrapped all the way. So whether you talk to John or Nick or Isaiah or Crystal or whoever (I feel pretty out of the loop these days) that's what they're going to tell you. [end of PD-backed content] If you stow your lines this way and use a pilot chute that isn't worn out, it will give you nice consistent openings because there's less difference between the pull force to release a new double-wrapped band and an about-to-break double-wrapped band than there is between a new single-wrapped band and an about-to-break single-wrapped band. Personally? I use Ralph Ponce's small sky-bands (black rubber bands) on all stows and replace them all every 50 jumps.

Something I should point out is that rig designs don't always scale. Tiny rigs and big rigs are very different animals, so if you get input from someone who loves their tiny Mirage or Vector or whathaveyou, your milage may vary significantly when you buy a container sized for a 230. Same goes for harnesses. If you're not an average height / build, some manufacturers may be better at making a rig that really fits you well. Most are pretty good about this if you call them and just talk to them for a while about it. Of the larger rigs that I've seen, Mirage, Infinity, and Wings have been the ones that impressed me. I've seen more than a couple big Javelins, Talons, and Vectors that just looked like hell, constantly had flaps and covers not staying closed, etc. Now, did it just happen that all the bad looking rigs I saw were either overstuffed or understuffed? I dunno... maybe. I think larger rigs in general tend to get overstuffed and understuffed far more often than smaller rigs, so I don't know why some manufacturers would stand out to me as they have. All that being said I'll cast another vote that you shouldn't buy new for your first rig, even if it falls on deaf ears.

non-mobile-phone-mangled-url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mA3voZUZrk The job interview bit was always my favorite.

Hey, who you callin' "folks"?

A coworker of mine says, "jigga-hertz" which reflexively makes my left eyelid twitch a little bit. Worse, though, is that in my industry we seem to really love our acronyms, and some people attempt to pronounce all acronyms initialisms no matter how many vowels they have to pretend are present but aren't. /edited: don't want to poke a pet peeve while complaining about mine.

Degrees. Although a more empirical answer would be, "it's not." By the way it's "the Kelvin scale" but the unit is the "kelvin".

Do you mean correctly classified? By the way (and this isn't necessarily directed at you normiss) I'd recommend some people here actually read E.O. 13526 if you're not familiar with how classification works. It's long, but at least take a look at sections 1.1, 1.7, and 1.8. Other than that I don't have much to add beyond what I've already written on the matter.

Do you think I would be misunderstood if I wore a t-shirt that said, "I'll stick to the WHITE dice, thank you." Maybe if there was a Risk map underneath it, it would be safe...

Too lazy to actually research this... How often do well-meaning students bring actually dangerous weapons to school and the result is an injury or fatality? I know the "if it bleeds it leads" mantra but really all you ever hear about are school shootings (too late for ZT, people already dead) and people getting busted with completely non-dangerous items like in this story (ZT punishes someone who was not a threat to safety.)

I agree... I'd be willing to bet that if you sat down with W in a social/private setting he would tell you he personally couldn't care less about banning gay marriage. But in his past political statements he had a constituency to please. I'd be willing to bet that in doing so he would really be placating you just as he claimed to be doing to his constituency. I'm sure plenty of people who voted for prop 8 in California would tell you in a social/private setting that they had nothing against gay people. Doesn't change the fact that they demonstrated their bigotry at the polls.

"Thank you" does not require admitting a mediocre student. Hey, remember when you posted this link? I remember it like it was yesterday. Did I say that I agreed with him? Do you agree with him? When someone posts a link with no additional commentary it can be difficult to tell what they really think of it, especially if it's at all humorous. Scott Adams generally tries to make insightful points in a humorous way, so I figured your post was, at a minimum, an endorsement of the thought exercise posed. The portion of the article relevant to me bringing it up here I do agree with, which is that not enough people get offered appeasements in exchange for their huge sums of money to get hot and bothered about it. The money does the school and the students who attend the school more good than admitting the mediocre student does it harm. If you feel this open secret of an arrangement irreparably degrades the reputation of the institution, fine, don't give them any money and don't encourage your children to go there. You could even reserve the right to not be impressed by someone who earned a degree there if you so desire.

"Thank you" does not require admitting a mediocre student. Hey, remember when you posted this link? I remember it like it was yesterday.

Common sense says, "fix it with duct tape." IQ says, "The design should be corrected for the next time around." Integrity says, "Don't just incorporate the duct tape into the design."

The wire services are a great way to just get the "what". I read from them directly without going through news outlets.

Virtually everyone at my place of work has at least a master's degree, but you still see plenty of typos and misspellings when it comes to informal (i.e. internal) communication such as e-mails and whatnot. If I, say, fat-finger a decimal point I'll generally make fun of my own mistake whether it's me that catches it or the recipient. This is especially fun if running with the mistake would have had absurd or catastrophic consequences. When it comes to formal communications you get all the technical information down, and then you spit-shine. You can't give a technical lecture to customers, write a white paper, submit a proposal, or write a spec for a subcontractor that has typos and misspellings in it. It would be embarrassing because those kind of mistakes suggest haste, and you can't do that if you're trying to convince someone that you're speaking with authority and that they can trust you to sweat the details so they don't have to. This doesn't have that much to do with what letters we put before or after our names. dropzone.com is not a peer-reviewed journal of politics, and there is really no expectation that arguments presented here are in any way polished. So if a typo or misspelling creates a malapropism then laugh at yourself and encourage others to laugh with you, but don't shrug off what might be a piece of a good thought just because you attribute an inappropriate level of formality to the venue.

MElton John? No.

Does this stance of yours apply if the person has constructive ideas for integration of illegals or only if they say something you think is wrong? To be completely honest, I think your last post paints you in a very negative light.

Your thesis was that if you're not familiar with the term you have no authority in discussing hispanic illegal immigration. Or, in other words, if you're not close to the problem, you don't have anything to offer on the matter. It's a pretty silly argument. ...that's what people are getting on you about if it wasn't clear.

This. It's surprisingly easy to cross the line and lose track of the whole point of the financial industry. Is anyone actually investing anymore or helping facilitate investments? Or all we all a bunch of day traders treating markets like a drunken weekend in Vegas?