AMax

There is a great skydiving book - "The inner game of tennis" Just replace "tennis" with "skydiving" when you read it.

Correct, even though we made a lot of progress understanding the role of each region, there is still a lot to be learned. Again connectivity between different modules is a biggest problem. Take stem sells. There are some fantastic examples of stem-cell induced regeneration of neurons damaged by spinal cord injuries, however there is a still huge problem – we cannot reproduce the exact pattern of innervation. We are not there yet, but I have to agree that we know a lot about basic principles of synaptic transmission. Exactly! We cannot ignore the details because every basic element of network (synapse) is not constant. Synaptic plasticity (modulation of the strength of individual synapses) plays a huge role in neuronal network. Agree ... I just do not see it happening in near future.

Representing the activity of simple neuronal networks in a digital manner is relatively straightforward. There are a few groups that already made a lot of progress in this direction. Essentially the communication between neurons in a network is a bunch of discrete signals where every input (synapse) is either silenced or gets triggered at certain frequency. However, modeling the activity of human brain will be extremely challenging because of the following reasons: 1) There are approximately 100000000000 neurons in brain. 2) Anatomically, the brain is composed of multiple regions and each region is formed by several different types of neurons. 3) The neurons form multiple synaptic contacts within the same region of brain and make projections to the other regions. The number of synaptic contacts per neuron depends on particular cell type (up to several thousands per neuron). 4) Synapses constantly form and disassemble in activity-dependent manner (not to mention developmental regulation). 5) We are still far from understanding how the damn thing works Plus, guade already mention I/O problem. I just cannot imagine how to plug in and read simultaneously from 100 billion cells.

It is exactly the opposite - people began to open higher because of new canopy designs. The opening speed isn't the only reason. Many of new canopy types are much more aggressive than the old designs – they loose the altitude quicker, especially in case of spinning malfunctions.

I am not allergic to Tequilla but always get strong symptoms when I mix multiple Tequilla shots with red vine

I jump a 150 and haven't had a single hard opening so far (including about 50 jumps with 30 inch PC). Off-heading openings is a different story but it always opens slow.

Is there any experimental data?

Reminded me a Russian story/joke about a company that claimed to identify the sex of child at very early stages of pregnancy by urine test. The "doctor" would say you gonna have a boy and then indicate “a girl” in company records and vice versa. An idea was very simple: the probability of success is 50%. Only few of those who were not pleased with the results of prediction would complain and then the company records would indicate that the prediction was correct ....

It is sad that two people on this picture are no longer with us R.I.P.

Yup just a tad Now what about the guys in skates chasing a little round black object, trying to hit IT with a stick and then beating each other up? Whuffo they do that? Lol ... fortunately this is very uncommon for skydiving teams

Rick had a reserve PC in tow and cleared it manually at what people on the ground estimated around 200ft. He dropped the handles and later found them on the ground near the place where he landed.

Huh ... AggieDave's muscles are quite impressive. How many times a week do I need to go to gym to look like him?

I imagined for a sec that a few years from now there will be back flying 4-way league with open and advanced teams doing mirrors and slot switches and pushing 20+

Are you guys doing intermediate, advanced or open?

LOL I had mine on hot summer evening and at the end of the ceremony I was freezing since the desperate attempt to cheat and warm the beer up before the pooring procedure did not work ...

I think it is normal for those who just made first few jumps to encourage the others to start skydiving. I was like that. The understanding of real danger and responsibilities usually comes with time so does your position change. In general, I don't like talking to non-jumpers about skydiving simply because the conversations are always reduced to answering very simple questions over and over again. When some new friends find out (usually because the old friends forget the instruction not to bring the skydiving topic up), I would tell them what they want to know but I never encourage anyone to make a jump. Adults should decide for themselves. In addition, I would not want to deal with the guilt in case someone whom I encouraged gets injured of goes in. This is personal point of view. Of course we see a lot of advertisement by DZ's but this is a part of their business.

But this kid would still have had his LEO grandfather to kill and take the guns from. Any particular incident liker this is a part of distribution. In any distribution there are points that are close to the center (general tendency) and points that deviate. I believe there is a tendency in school shooting problem (kids have easy access to the weapons). You cannot argue against this tendency using examples that deviate from the center. The proponents of gun banning laws always operate by impressive statistics. I would really like to see if there is a correlation between the gun laws and school shooting.

the problem is that these guns would STILL be easily accessible to criminals even if we passed a law banning all guns. The world doesn't change magically just because some politician signs a bill. The guns would still be out there, and easily accessible especially to those who don't care about obeying the law. There isn't a doubt in my mind that this incident would still have happened. A guy who is as f&*ked up as this guy was would not have stopped because of a law. To steal a line from the move The Jerk: "We don't have defective cans laws, we have a defective person!!" Disagree The kids involved in school shooting cannot be mixed with 'ordinary' criminals and/or psychotic adult individuals since their (kids) motifs are different and their course of action is usually less predictable. I seriously doubt that defective kid with unstable personality would cause as much harm is he did not have an easy access to his parents weapons. It is hard to imagine a 15 years old buying illegal guns through a dealer.

This idea is just totally absurd Lol ... Managers need guns to protect themselves from employees. Employees also need them to protect themselves from managers. I think I need to start carrying a gun every time I go shopping since there is no guarantee that a sales girl in Banana Republic will not open fire ... Fill out the list

Yes it is and the fact that the kid got the weapon at home only poves this.

If you really believe that your gun can be effectively used for self defense when someone attempts to rob you on parking lot at gun point, you must be a well trained and current combat professional. Ok, you might be, what about the average gun owner? If you really believe that you need this gun to protect your house at night, you should probably keep it close to your bed. A weapon does not do any good when it is locked in a safe, but then it becomes easily accessible for a kid who for whatever reason got pissed off at his classmates.

This has been discussed many times. The numbers for 2000: Total US population 281,421,906 (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004997.html) Died in car crashes 41,945 (1 in every 6709) (http://www.unitedjustice.com/stories/stats.html) The fatality rate for active skydivers is about 1 in every 1000. In addition, take into account that we spend more time driving than freefalling. Do the math

Fire has three 20+ average skydivers (including two 2004 World champions) and one 19.9 average skydiver. Fastrax progressed with the same lineup from 13.2 in 2003 to 17.1 in 2004 and their 2005 training plan is extremely intense. Both are professional teams with high goals. What makes you think they cannot pull the scores comparable to Airspeed Majik and GK’s?

For 5-point random sequence: 42 by Maubeuge (French National team) 41 by Majik I had heard that neither of those were "official" and the old 38 or 39 (one of those two) are still listed in the books........ I don't know all the rules though. Let's hope for some all randoms this year, last year had a couple... Was the old one by FX or Airspeed?

This is mind blowing ... less then 730 milliseconds per point ...