dorbie

I have no issue seeing JJ's breast, or with Howard Stern's titilation or lots of other stuff the morality obsessed loud minority gripes about. I do object to JJ hijacking the superbowl with her tit flash. Context is important. She can do what the hell she likes as long as it's somehow labeled and families don't have it shoved in their face when enjoying a national tradition. Is everyone in the US incapable of seeing the difference between one set of circumstances and the other? While we're at it why lump nebulous "standards" issues with each other? A backlash over activists forcing gay marriage on a populace has nothing to to with issues of spicy broadcasts but it's being taken as carte blanche green light for all sorts of crap. Some pretty dodgy decisions are "crackdowns" being made because Americans seem incapable of articulating the differences between obviously different situations. They're so busy lobbing verbal grenades at eachother to make some silly point that they lose sight of the big picture.

The point is if they're not competent on their current canopy they won't be downsizing until they are. It prevents someone going smaller when they should be staying where they are (at best). It is limited to the next size AFAIK, i.e. +0.2 WL on most proposals. It's just a filter, it doesn't predict competence it prevents someone going with a demonstrably bad downsize decision.

This has been said many times before but the fact of the matter is, we are jumping out of planes with nothing but some material to stop us flattening ourselves on this beautiful planet, it's as safe as it can be made, but I would definately not consider skydiving a safe sport. Any one of us could be in the incidents forum next week even if we do everything right. Does that sound like a safe sport? Edited to add I dont think tandem passengers realise they are greatly increasing their risk of death by doing it. Of course its fun for them, I don't think they know just how much can go wrong, and how quickly it can go wrong. It's been said before for good reason. I understand your sentiment, however any one of us could die in a car accident next week. This is not some subtle point, RISK is at the heart of my definition of safety. It doesn't matter how you describe it, "Leaping out of a plane with a chaotic deployment of fabric & line separating you from certain death with a thousand things that could go wrong.". The numbers of tandem fatalities compared to tandem jumps compare reasonably with DoT statistics on highway fatalities by passenger journey for example (in one report I read). Contrary to your statement tandem passengers are not at a greatly increased risk of death IMHO, they could die yes, they take a chance of death or serious injury when they jump for sure, but I suspect most people perceive skydiving as far more dangerous than it is when compared to other things they do, for example driving many miles in a car every day. What does the probability of dying per jump have to be before you would consider skydiving a safe sport? Hint: zero is not an acceptable answer.

kelpdiver has mentioned the existing accuracy requirements regularly, I think he was just asking about actual witnessing vs any honor system that is applied. I think it's a mix. I try to get people who actually see me land to sign any accuracy jump (I'm pretty fastidious about this), I never see anyone lining up witnesses for their B or C license accuracy jumps. I *suspect* the only time this happens with any reliability is people on student status (AFF-I witnesses) and those trying to meet strict demo-pro requirements (S&TA for that right?), correct me if what you see happening at DZs is any different.

Well by the same token driving to the DZ isn't safe. In fact I saw a study that suggested it was about the equivalent risk on average (compared to tandems, fun jumpers take about double the risk on a jump in the study I saw). Most people would consider going on a car journey safe. By safe they don't mean zero chance of death or injury. Going on a ride in Disney Land is also considered safe: http://www.mouseplanet.com/btmrr_accident/030905btmrr.htm When people complain that tandem passengers treating a skydive like a fairground ride I immediately think about incidents like the one above. Getting annoyed at people's use of the word safe w.r.t. skydiving is a bit unfair when you measure risk objectively.

P.S. The S&TA had to discipline the skydiver with a grounding because when practicing his freefly discipline he showed a lack of discipline and pulled too low. 3 different uses of the word "discipline".

You're confusing the noun "discipline" and it's multiple meanings and the verb "discipline" and it's multiple meanings. i.e. when you talk about a skydiving discipline (as in your dropzone.com profile) you're talking exclusively about definition 6: 6. A branch of knowledge or teaching. When you talk about military discipline or to discipline someone you're using the word in a distinctly different way and it has a different meaning. Mixing the two uses will only bring confusion.

I bet Jefferson is spinning faster than Franklin.

This is complete and utter bullshit on a number of levels.

I'll add this to my list of reasons to get a skyhook RSL.

I think the following word may be useful in this discussion: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=gratuitous AFAIK it's long been understood to have relevance w.r.t. the application of censorship laws.

It sounds like this guy would have been the first to join your neighbourhood watch scheme.

There are actually two ways to view this risk. There's the risk of having unprotected anal vs vaginal intercourse with a stranger of your sexual persuasion and there's the risk of being infected if you have unprotected anal vs vaginal sex with an individual who is infected. The total population only matters when considering the former. Assuming the discussion is about the latter then the total population does not matter. The specific acts between individuals in the infected population matter and you cannot know this accurately (or more vaguely the size of the infected populations and their behavior). Even given this, my observation that heterosexual couples have unprotected anal sex is a completely valid one (as is a bisexual's unwillingness to admit gay partners, or a drug addict's unwillingness to fess up). Statistics can easily catch you out both ways. You have to be clear what you mean by risk and what your're discussing because it affects the outcome massively. Abusing raw data to attempt to refute the long established recommendations and knowledge of researchers in the field is never right.

That's not proof. You don't know how many unprotected homosexual vs heterosexual acts between infected people there were. Moreover anal sex between a man and a woman is a heterosexual act. He's literally and absolutely correct probably by at least an order of magnitude. You're abusing this data terribly.

Or maybe there are too many weirdos to worry about and almost none of them are serial killers. In fact by all accounts even normal looking folks might be serial killers so it's probably not true that serial killers reliably present as weirdos. How many weirdos do you know? Do you think they consider you weird? Do you think they're serial killers? Are you a serial killer? If not then when did you stop being a serial killer?

I had an MD (who is gay) tell me this. You have proof to the contrary? Did you see me say that "women don't get aids from sex"? No. I said that the transfer risk was greater with anal than viginal. So: 1. Please don't say I said things I did not say. 2. Provide proof if you call me a liar. Ron you are quite right, the facts are the facts and while there are many cases of females contracting aids it's clear to most people there are a lot more hetero females than gay men. Once again we should be cautious about using unfactored data to draw a dangerously irresponsible conclusion. Responsible health professionals have been advising for years that unprotected anal intercourse is a particular risk factor for the very reasons you stated. Additionally some hetero females do drugs and/or have unprotected anal sex and/or have sex with many partners placing themselves at grave risk of infection. The contention over your post is a classic example of trying to replace the factually accurate information that is out there with inaccurate information that will affect human behavior to force the social change that is desired. In short scare the heck out of everyone with bad information because it's for their own good. By telling everyone they are all equally at risk do you get the desired change or do you blow the credibility of the health services trying to mitigate the risk to all? Worse, do you increase the risk because gay men no longer see themselves as a high risk group and do you endanger young women because bad information has misled them to believe that anal sex is not particularly risky? The road to ruin is paved with good intentions. Just put the information out there and stand by it and don't bend in the political winds that want to doctor the facts presented to send the "right message".

I don't think they'd look as good on me.

Try this one for size.

Most DVDs have 5.1 audio tracks (at least). The key to getting the best video for your HDTV tv is to get a DVD player with progressive scan capability and good deinterlacing technology (like a Faroujda chip for example). Then you want to make sure you get the widescreen editions of any movies you see. By widescreen I mean anamorphic widescreen rather than letterbox this is a key difference, letterbox will use fewer lines but anamorphic will stretch a full screen worth of lines wider. You need to set your DVD to a 16:9 full screen output, and a progressive scan and feed your HDTV with either a digital video (best) or the 3 component Y cB cR connections. Once you have done this I recommend getting any of the SUPERBIT collection DVDs, they use the space on the disk for more compressed video data instead of "special features". You get the movie at better quality for the DVD. I also recommend Lord of the Rings special editions they have a lot of extra stuiff but the movie is spread over 2 DVDs and is great quality. The first movie intro will give your sound system a workout. Make sure you set up for correct progressive anamorphic output and get the anamorphic vesrions of the widescreed DVDs. Sometimes they don't say anamorphic on them but instead say specially formatted for 19:6 televisions, these are good too. The difference is MASSIVE if you only get letterbox widescreen or don't set up your player correctly so it's important to get this right (to my great disappointment "The Abyss" has no anamorphic widescreen release for example). Even then you won't be at HDTV resolution just progressive NTSC stretched to 16:9 but that's pretty good on a decent TV, for full HDTV you need some form of HDTV receiver & apropriate broadcast. The difference is incredible when you see this for the first time, things look so crisp it's hypnotic. There are a couple of competing HDTV format discs in the works right now, eventually you should be able to get a player for them to feed your TV with real HDTV content from rented discs.

Prince Charles - "I want to be reincarnated as your tampon" (1991) to mistress Camilla Parker- Bowles. This was intercepted in a cell phone conversation they had while he was married to Diana, the conversation went on to discuss being flushed down the toilet as a tampon. They're a class act, you yanks will never understand class like the Brits (for you confused southern yanks who don't know you're yanks, "yank" here is used in the British parochial).

Alcohol and a hot tub.

Adds new meaning to turning points.

I don't know, what do they taste like?

Why can't it be a stupid sport?

This legislator needs to reduce the hours he spends watching gay porn, clearly it's getting to him: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion/article/0,1299,DRMN_38_3571025,00.html