gowlerk

Oh no! Frosty and Rudolph and Santa and all the elves will survive and not be cancelled. But Mary and Joseph and Jesus? Get out of here now!

I don't disagree with that. USPA is a needed and important thing for the sport. But just the same, most jumpers would not spend the money to join if they did not have to. I have been on the CSPA BoD. I get it. As a part owner of a DZ I am one of the people explaining all too often why we require jumpers to have a current membership.

No, most don't care. And they only belong and pay dues because they have to if they want to jump at most DZs. And that is the fact of the matter. Not that I don't think you are doing a good job, but really it is a trade group mostly run by insiders from the industry that skydiving has largely become.

So.....the product formerly sold as "Aunt Jemima" pancake mix. (not that hard for a reasonably literate person to spell btw) is made by the Quaker Oats Company, which in turn is owned by PepsiCo. Why would Pepsi risk the damage to their brand that the heritage of this name could cause? No one from the outside asked for the brand to be "cancelled". Pepsi, which is run by marketing geniuses just decided to get ahead of the curve because they are not stupid.

So if you have faith in the EPA, which is just another branch of government that enforces policies for the common good why do you object to government policies that encourage less carbon emissions? Neither clean air and water, or reductions in climate change will happen without organization. Individuals will tend to take the easy and cheap way of dumping sewage. We have been there and done that.

This whole site used to be more active and better in many ways. The shift to FB and other forms of social media easily accessed on small devices has been the main driver of its decline from its peak. I still find it very worthwhile, even though I have not found many of your posts to be helpful. You get what you pay for I guess.

I suppose you have already heard of the new book out focused on Wayne Lapierre and the house of cards that is the NRA. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/nov/06/misfire-review-tim-mak-nra-gun-control-lapierre-congress The man is pathetic apparently.

Winsor, you are stepping over the line in a way that makes you look more than just a little bad. you are clearly going out of bounds. By accident I'm sure.

Just consider yourself lucky to be using Midway and not O’Hare.

Fuck you is rapidly becoming my philosophy toward vaccine refusers.

I believe tax rates were much higher then. edit I see others have already made that point.

Well.....except that all Optimums are orange.......

We actually have not been told if anyone involved has permanent injury. It seems at least one participant may have a memory problem.

Two things seem to be happening. As John just pointed out, more people are dropping precautions. This allows the newly mutated and more efficiently transmitted virus more opportunities. At the same time we are finding that the vaccine confers resistance to the worst sickness, but often does not stop infections from occurring. We were all hoping for a magic wand to make the pandemic go away, but we were warned about possible limitations. The benefits of vaccination are still very large as evidenced by the declining number of hospitalizations. There is now room in ICUs for more people with other conditions and more elective surgeries are finally being done. The exception being those areas with stubbornly low vaccination rates. Vaccines are the reason we have been able to open up our society to a point that is not far from pre-covid days. Your call for treatments and drug therapies is being worked on. But as always, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Because it has never been a common problem, unlike large turns can often be. BTW, the BSR about turns over 90 is regularly ignored. Especially on tourist focused DZs located in windy places. Of course these TIs are highly experienced and have high jump numbers so they feel it is ok for them. Which is similar to this situation.

Turns over 90 for tandems is against the USPA BSRs. Something that Tom Noonan was the driving force behind as well as the BSR requiring handles checks on each jump. He was in a position where he wore two different hats. On the one hand he was responsible for the UPT tandem program including safety and training and it was his job to do what was best for the industry. On the other hand he was someone involved in technically difficult tandem jumps with higher degrees of risk.

I believe that existing mines are still viable even at lower prices. But the cost of expansion is too high. The uncertainty over long range pricing and the difficulty of getting the product to market will combine to limit their output to something similar to current levels for the time being.

The cure for trolls is ignoring them. Nothing else is effective.

Apparently not everyone believes in the free market. Oil prices have always been highly cyclical. The pandemic fall in demand and price now has a mirror image.

You really don't have any idea who the passenger was, or how aware they were made of the risks, or how much training they received, or even that it was a wuffo. You are making a lot of assumptions. I agree that just selling this thing to anyone who can come up with the cash like an ordinary tandem is never going to be acceptable.

Effective communication is the art of using the fewest words possible, not the most.

Again, there is no "woke" or "ultra-woke" ideology. This is nothing more than a man stating that "if only you were as smart as me you would agree" with as many words as he can muster.

You not only want to place unneeded limits on people, now you want to incorrectly impose limits onto the English language? I guess I should at least be encouraged that you will address a pair if these people correctly.

Since we have lost Tom Noonan in a unexpected way during an attempt at a 41,000 ft tandem jump that also included successful sport jumps the discussion in the incidents forum has included talk of whether or not such jumps should even be done. The forum mods have now twice suggested that this discussion should take place in the General Forum. This very high profile incident has many facets worthy of talking about. This topic is meant to be about the wisdom of selling jumps this risky to the general public. My personal feeling is that there should have been more testing before this attempt. My understanding is that there were test runs, but all at somewhat lower, athough still very high levels. The aircraft owner put a lot of time money and effort into this program and is someone well known for excellence in the quest to go higher and faster than anyone else. Now I am wondering if his program will be able to recover from this setback. I believe that if further attempts are made they should be done with several loads of solo jumpers and an improved supervisory system on board. As I read more about the conditions at this height I am somewhat astounded by the small margin for error in the systems.

Good grief, I keep seeing his words quoted even though I have ignored him. I didn't know about the enforced holiday he has been complaining about. But it was quite a bit better in here while he was away. I guess I know who the sock puppet was now. You would think he was feeling that his sexuality was somehow threatened the way he goes on.