yoink

Sorry - I don't know the cut-off for a mass murder rather than acceptable losses. Feel free to elucidate.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33646707 Let me kill the thread right here: Some of us will say "yet another attempted mass murder driven by lax gun control and paranoia of some in the US" Others will say "If only everyone in the cinema was armed it wouldn't have happened!" then it'll come down to bitching about right and left wing. Nothing will change and there will be another mass shooting within a couple of months. Last year there were over 7000 deaths by gun in the US and nothing happens. Less than 3000 people died in the sept 11th attacks and the US goes to war for 4 years over it.... I believe that gun ownership in the US does more damage to its own citizens than terrorism does or ever will do.

No TRAINING is required for a civilian to buy and own a gun. Everyone idiot who owns a gun thinks they're the shit with it - as shown by the moron taking a loaded weapon to a shopping mall 'to protect the troops' and accidentally discharging it. For the 2nd time, apparently... That could have been really bad.

That's the first part. The other part is elimination of plurality rule, i.e., "first past the post" elections, which maintain 2-party rule and make viable, lasting third parties almost impossible. To take its place, and encourage third parties, institute double-ballot majority rule, i.e., if a party or candidate fails to win an absolute majority on the first ballot, a run-off election is held between the top 2 vote-getters. See, Duverger's Law. Yup. there are a few alternative voting options, any of which are better than first-past-the-post. I was so depressed when the UK had a referendum (2011 I think?) to vote on using the alternative vote system and it didn't pass - mainly because the explanations given of why it was important were shit, and the general populace are resistant to any change. Hopefully after the last election result people will revisit the question with some of the blinkers removed.

each one of the questions.. had an OTHER option..... that provided qualifiers to the simpler yes no questions... as well as more important-Most Important and less on the other side. There were also OTHER questions in each area.. and one of them concerned some of the idiocy of gerrymandering and toxic PAC's etc with Corporate "persons" I used those. There were only a couple that I selected a simple yes or no on. And I think my answers to the gerrymandering one and the ranking I gave it was the one which put Bernie Sanders at the top of my list.

The thing it highlights clearly for me is that there's no clear party who is my preference. I'd love to have a party where we agree on most of my really important issues, but that isn't the case, so I have to make macro decisions - what's more important to me? Immigration policy, or domestic policy? Economic vs foreign... As normiss says though, it's all a moot point. Until the electoral collage is disbanded it will ALWAYS come down to a red vs blue decision, decided by a minority of states. If one party seriously ran on electoral reform, that would probably be enough to swing my vote for that iteration - even if I disagreed with almost everything else they stood for.

I agree. Here are mine... 7 out of my top 9 candidates are Republican, which surprises me. And yes... that's Trump at #6. I'm sure there's a bias given the number of republican candidates though! As I suspected, it's not as simple as 'Right or Left' - I agree with some parties on some stances, and others on others. That's why when every single conversation in this forum devolves into a left vs right paradigm, it really frustrates me. I find it interesting that the deviation in the party alignment for me is 11%, but for you is 26%. I must be much more apathetic about stuff!

What am I looking at??

Which website was that? From your posts I suspect we've very different ideals. It might be interesting to see what that website says so we can compare apples with apples.

As a result of this discussion: A sad fact in today's reality, unfortunately. Perhaps posting information anonymously? The profile nazi's would probably go crazy, but at least it could start a discussion. Perhaps we could consider an option which allows people to post Tandem-related incidents anonymously, without having to create a new username. A set of rules for the use of this process would need to be developed. When a post is created with this tag, firstly it's given either a unique and disposable username, (or there's just one account used to post it - "Whistleblower?" maybe ), then it's IP is automatically deleted, and then it has to be approved by a moderator before it's actually posted to the forum. Information can then be posted anonymously while still having a review process to ensure that the system is being used properly. I suspect that the mods will want a 'not necessary for anonymity" button which will send the user a PM letting them know that they should post it under their own username for a while to cut down on everyone using it.

That's probably what Jessica Edgington thought, and is a more reckless attitude than the OP is displaying. You should know better. Instead of being an asshole, just teach the guy. He has 40 jumps and a week-old A license... If he keeps doing it, then you can be an asshole about it.

Glad you had a fun jump. You might not have been told it yet, but it's critically important that you know what's going on at the DZ in terms of landing areas and patterns. Even though it might seem like it's not a big deal, accidentally blundering into a swoop area is extremely dangerous both for you and for other jumpers. You say you know where the other guys on your lift was but you may have missed people, or there may have been multiple loads turning. Make a plan - fly the plan.

No. Because they have a higher-than-average tendency to serious depression and explosive aggressive disorders. (See my earlier post for citations). Honestly (and maybe I'm just a terrible person), but I don't particularly care about suicide by gunshot - at least not in this conversation. I'd like to help those people certainly, but for me forcibly arming a percentage of the population that has a demonstrably higher-than-average number of mental health issues, and then letting them walking around in the general public is nothing short of insanity. I'm genuinely staggered by the number of people here who think that's a good idea. Tangential:One of the things that surprised me (and I really like about the US) when I came here from the UK is the amount of public support, love and trust that you guys give your military men and women. That doesn't mean you just give them free rein though... Personally, I'd be more scared of domestic incidents if that happened than I would be about international terrorism. And it would be a hell of a lot harder to put that genie back into the bottle if things did go south. Can you imagine it? If we did start to see an increase in gun related incidents by military personnel and the government said 'hey - we're repealing the carry law' the right wing guys would go NUTS. We'd be stuck with it.

I'd be more interested if the poll gave your options... 'I wouldn't say anything' 'I'd text them immediately with "wtf?" '

I see where you're coming from, but I disagree, unless you're talking about when they're on a military base. When they're off a military environment (even if they're in uniform) the onus has to be on the public security forces to protect them just as they have to protect every other member of society, otherwise you're creating 2 classes of civil rights. Military people can protect themselves, but not a civilian? You'd have riots on the streets... Terrorists have never been shy about targeting civilians so it'd be grossly unfair to single out military people as the only targets. Not only that, but some studies have shown that military personnel have MUCH higher rates of mental health disorders than civilians. Major depression and intermittent explosive disorder are 5 and 6 times more prevalent in the military than in civilians. Personally, I wouldn't want these people walking around armed. http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/03/health/jama-military-mental-health/ http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140303163153.htm and various publications by Dr Kessler: http://www.armystarrs.org/publications/

The shooting was at a recruiting office, not on base. The first shots were at a recruiting center - no one there was injured. He then drove 6 miles to a training center where he killed 4 marines. BBC are reporting no known links to terrorist organizations, so it may well be that ISIS are just claiming responsibility for the publicity. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33562479

C'mon mods. Lets get rid of racism here, eh?

NO. No jewelery while skydiving. It's not worth it.

If there was a 'entitled asshole support pension' I'm sure he'd qualify for that. Grr. If you need a sign to tell you what level you're at, you're not at a level you should be self-supervising. Eejit.

I'd suggest that the lesson isn't to not ask for advice, but would be to say 'What's your medical reasoning for that, based on my condition?' - If he couldn't come up with a rational answer, find a new doctor who can come to conclusions based on facts rather than on guesses. For the OP - as many others have stated, IMO if you're medically sound then you're safe to train. Lots of people get nerves on the first jump, but only you can decide whether you'll be able to conquer them or not. I'd let your AFF instructors know about the issues you had on your tandem and let them work with you to give you the best possible training. Make an AFF level 1 jump (with 2 instructors) and go from there.

If that's the attitude of your doc, you need to find a new one. A good doctor will do the research and give a useful opinion. Lying to your doctor is pretty dumb IMO.

It depends on what you mean. If there had been an accident, would I run and get the camera and just video the aftermath? Probably not. If I was filming and caught an accident? Absolutely - keep filming. Just don't be that guy who makes it a public snuff video.

That's a good thought. I'll take a look, thanks!

Beneteau First 42s7. And it happened at the worst possible time in the worst possible location. We were tight against a series of navy moorings, so we couldn't head into wind to crash stop without dragging the guy in the water against them, and then crashing the boat. Additionally we'd just put the gib up in preparation for a jibe around a mark but hadn't had time to take the spinnaker down before he (the spin trimmer) went over. So we're lightly crewed, with multiple people out of position reacting to the emergency, with 3 sails up and no easy way to stop. He went over the port side but got an ankle wrapped in a sheet as he went over, suspending him upside down, 3/4 in the water at 4 1/2 knots. 2 guys are trying to pull him back over the side (doubtfully possible) and 2 of us get the transom down to try to reach his head from there to get him some air. That wasn't working so I grabbed a lazy sheet, went over the same side and pulled myself up the line until I was alongside him and managed to work the line loose. We both got dragged back onto the swim step. A knife would have fixed all of it, instantly. Lots of lessons learned.

That's one of the lessons we learned afterwards... We've never had someone go overboard and that's caused complacency. We were racing, but only in the bay in light winds so PFDs aren't a requirement. The racing is also much more casual than it probably should be. All our flotation aids were still stowed as were any knives. I ended up having to go into the water to untangle the guy as we were being dragged by the boat. We used up a tonne of luck on that one. Fortunately we're all still around to learn from it. We'll be making some serious changes before the next race.