yoink

This is where we disagree. - conceptually, at least. I'M prepared to do whatever it takes to limit the availability of guns to the dangerous minority - even if that means I suffer through loss of rights. In the same way I can't make skydiving 100% safe, I can't stop ALL shootings. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to stop as many as we can, or try to make skydiving as safe as possible... (Warning - this next sentence may well give some of you a conniption fit. Don't worry, it's a thought exercise only. Even I'm not daft enough to suggest it!) Constitutionality aside (bear with me), if you made guns ILLEGAL - all of them, in every form, (selling, trading, owning etc) and asked law abiding citizens to hand their guns in for destruction (however that worked) it would reduce the availability of these weapons to both criminals and nutters - primarily the latter, I admit, but then these are the guys shooting up schools. It wouldn't do too much in the short term, but a hundred years from now? Two hundred? When the CULTURE of gun ownership has changed? That's a different prospect. My issue is that pro-gun people have 2 arguments that they trot out: 1) It's not constitutional... What would it take to alter that? What if 50 people went on a rampage every month and killed a hundred people each? What is the NUMBER or SITUATION that would make you even consider altering the 2nd amendment? It's just an old document. Laws get changed every day and have done since society evolved. What's so special about this one? 2) Nothing you can do will fix it all, instantly. So we should do nothing instead...

In effect you're saying that you don't want to take personal action to protect yourself or your kids enough to take away rights from citizens for an illusion of safety. That seems profoundly selfish to me.... Well, if we're playing that game... In effect you're saying that YOUR wishes to own guns that prevents us from stopping nutters and criminals and getting hold of them, FORCES me to have to take personal action to protect myself and my kids, thereby increasing the risk that criminals and nutters will get hold of them... we can't all be responsible gun owners like you, you know... STOP OPPRESSING ME! We could go round this all day... your turn.

OK. I don't necessarily disagree with something you wrote for once! Where we do seem to disagree is that where I'm willing to give up some rights to ensure that the dangerous people don't have access to these weapons while you're not. In effect you're saying that you value your own wants in the ability to own a gun to take precedence over the known danger of allowing 'criminals and nutjobs' access. That seems profoundly selfish to me.

Don't be rediculous! This wouldn't have happened if every teacher was armed with machine guns. You could also arm every student I suppose, a la Battle Royale.

No tax refund this year? huh... That $1,900 that I just got must have been a mistake... What the actual headline says is 'Fewer people expect tax refund this year' - that's an ENTIRELY different spin. I'd say you should be in politics if your spin wasn't so poorly executed.

http://friends.banksophilia.com/ Bad news man. Iain M Banks, a massive contributor to the sci-fi genre of writing is dying of gall bladder cancer. While he's not my favorite sci-fi writer, I have thoroughly enjoyed most of his books and would recommend most of them to anyone interested in that type of fiction.

Man, I'd have loved to have seen that proto-cross brace with external bracing and getting my hands on it.

You cant guarantee anything in this sport, thats the point. There are people out there who can fly these wings as well as most can fly the bigger ones. Of course you cant guarantee anything but I would rather jump with a confident 5000 tandem ti, who knows the ins and outs of canopy flight and has tested himself under all sorts of wings, under a 250 than a guy with 1000 jumps total under a 365. The funkier the conditions the more I want to be attached to the former. You're missing the point entirely. Of course you'd rather be attached to the more experienced instructor - so would I. But would you rather be attached to the experienced instructor doing the safest possible landing, or attached to the same guy NOT doing the safest possible landing? Which would you rather a member of your family was attached to?? Likewise, I'm not suggesting that technology of the wing itself is a bad thing. I'm all for advancements (particularly in canopies!) but this isn't about that. It's about instructors wanting to have their cake and eat it at the potential expense of a student - to get paid for skydiving by being a tandem instructor AND getting their swoop on and thereby INCREASING the danger to a non skydiver. And THAT'S the unacceptable bit.

How Sci-Fi do you want to go? Personally I'm a fan of trilogies or longer series of books - I find stand alone books are too short to do the genre justice. There's the classic 'Dune' series by Frank Herbert, although some of the latter ones in that series are really hard going. For a cracking sci-fi / fantasy mashup I really enjoy the Nights Dawn Trilogy by Peter Hamilton. I believe it starts with The Reality Dysfunction.

There is no way that deliberately INCREASING the level of difficulty of a landing doesn't result in an INCREASE in the danger to the passenger. If you can guarantee with 100% certainty that the instructor will never, EVER mess up a swoop then maybe there would be a point, but then they'd be better then every skydiver who has ever lived. Ian Drennen said in a recent post "It is an inevitability of swooping. I don't know a single pilot (in the top groups) who hasn't skipped at least once. " Now what happens when you skip with a passenger attached to you... If you can't do that, then you have no right as an instructor to pass on the heightened level of risk to a passenger - no matter how small you may think that increased risk is. It's irresponsible, selfish and unprofessional. There is no rational reason other than arrogance why people would think it is appropriate to perform a high performance landing with a passenger attached.

Good point. It's been a while since I did fluid dynamics!

I believe he's saying that in the environment of a canopy cell it is incompressible - being an open system as it is. Try pushing on a fluid in a pipe with two open ends... bet you can't compress it. At least that was what I took from his post.

John, That brings to mind several questions - firstly are all turbulence induced collapses a function of detached laminar flow over the wing? Can collapses be caused by external mechanical turbulence exerting a direct force on the surface (flying through rotors behind trees for example) and if so, secondly what are the relative advantages to the prevention method you describe, vs maintaining a high internal pressure via full speed flight to increase the force necessary to induce a collapse. From my flights on speedflying wings almost all of those resist collapses better at full drive, and also reinflate almost instantly after a collapse in that configuration - this may be a peculiarity to that wing design and may not be applicable to skydiving canopies.

PD got a Petra. Pulled it apart, put it back together. Stuck a PD logo o. There and called it a peregrine. Icarus did the r&d PD put their spin on it Thanks for your informed opinion. Now, just so I can check - you're basing this assertion on Personal familiarity with both parachutes? Knowledge of the construction patterns of both? Firsthand information of the PD / Icarus R&D process? come on - You're posting this as fact on a public forum, so I'm asking you for your evidence. Put up or shut up. By the way, 'I heard' doesn't cut it... I'm bored of all the Icarus vs PD bullshit that's been going on for years. The fanboyism is rediculous.

He took an oath to defend the constitution of the united states and he broke that oath. It's not that that bothers me. Having a system of justice for the general population, and then a separate system where legality and due process don't apply if the powers that be don't want it to (for whatever reason) just seems wrong to me. This is irrespective of his crime, or the punishment. If the law is there to execute him, use it. If the law need amendment to ensure that people don't abuse a guilty plea for a more lenient judgement, change it. But having a fundamental result that can be changed at the whim of one person seems wrong.

I'm not going to LET you plead guilty, so we can punish you more? Even though you are guilty... Is this allowed to happen because it's a military court? Seems kind fucked up to me.

QUICK! THEY'RE COMING TO TAKE YOUR JERBS!

Once again you're talking nonsense. Ammo is scarce because gun owners have been panic buying it for the last 4 months, like it was water and tinned food before a natural disaster. That information is first hand from my better-halfs family who OWN a gun store sell out of ammo within half an hour of receiving a shipment. They do the same with rifles... What's your source? Seriously, at this point you're displaying all the trends of one of the nutters who goes on a rampage. Hoarding guns and ammo? Check. An imaginary enemy? Check. Mental disorder? ... Please. Go and talk to someone. A therapist. A friend. Get away from the internet, put down the conspiracy theories that you're coming up with and go and get some help. I'm absolutely serious that you're ticking all the boxes for a nutcase....

Yup - that's the pain in the arse. I'm tied to my company on an L1. It DOES really limit your options, but at least it counts towards green card application eventually. I'm hopefully starting my green card application next month - lawyers willing.

I found this absolutely fascinating: The Lyndon Johnson tapes: Richard Nixon's 'treason' The world was so almost a VERY different place

I doubt it's something that simple. If it were, you could swap out the lines and take it to terminal all day. Designing a canopy is full of tradeoffs. You might want an ultra long dive which could come in part from an extremely steep trim, but a steep trim might be BAD news at terminal opening. We deploy at half brakes for a reason! You want lots of lift and control of wing tip vortices, so you go with a Schumann planform, but maybe the hyper-responsiveness that comes with that planform and that trying to reliably control a terminal deployment aren't compatible... Usually designers compromise to get the best of all the factors they want... I'm guessing the design brief for the Peregrine went something along the lines of 'we want a primary swooping machine. Not a skydiving canopy that can be used for swooping. Focus on the former...' My guess as to why it isn't meant to be taken to terminal? It wasn't designed to be.

It doesn't have to be perfect. Trust me on this one. Lines tight and up the middle, cloth flaked to the outside. That's the basic rule of packing ANY parachute of any shape and size. and slider hard against the stops.

Does the PC completely collapse? Might it be fluttering in flight partially collapsed? I can only imagine that wear pattern comes from a collapsed state as the bridle is cinched. That's either in flight or packing. The latter seems unlikely to me - I just can't imagine enough friction or force being being generated in that stage to cause that sort of wear. Having said that I'm neither a rigger nor a parachute designer. I'm prepared to add 'profoundly unimaginative' to that list too... How many jumps on the system?

'Remember: Politicians are lying shitheads' It's more pithy and fits on a bumper sticker.

You might want to look into your green card options. The lottery is but one of several ways to get one. Your chances increase significantly one you have your masters, and again if you get a doctoral or post doc. Additionally, it depends on whether you're work sponsored for a green card, or are applying personally. Speaking as someone in exactly your situation, I'd be really careful about working while on a holiday visa. Particularly if you've previously worked here and still want a green card. If you're caught doing that you can say goodbye to ever getting approved. In fact, you can say god by to ever even getting a holiday visa again...