dorbie

The production of CO2 and the consumption of the products that require the production of CO2 are two different things.

Well I disagree. The US showed a lot of restraint when it let the Soviet Union build up it's nuke program and it almost cost us everything. w.r.t. making valid comparrisons I think it's a bit of a stretch to say my comparrisons are invalid. You can't know all outcomes and you can't conduct policy based on the unknown. Bin Laden or someone else may have arisen anyway, probably would have. Should we have left SH in Kuwait to assuage Bin Laden over US presence in Saudi? That was his real flashpoint. Abstract governmental systems and people enforcing doctrine and rules blindly can have a devastating effect on individuals. To argue otherwise seems naive. The dehumanizing effect of this is as bad as computers running a society, it happens in all countries in authoritarian states it is unbridled. I'd rather not trust my future to that if it can be avoided. If two guys had not compromised painfully over the Cuban Missile Crisis my country would have been wiped off the map, the wrong guy in charge in the wrong place under a bad set of circumstances could lead to equally terrible things down the line. Freedom of thought and expression is the best safeguard IMHO. North Korea had heavy backing from China & Russia or the US would have won outright and shaped them into the success South Korea is. NK fighting the USA into an impasse was the worst thing that ever happened to their nation. We did jack about Chinese and Russian support for NK and it cost us dearly. I think the days of fighting the U.S. by proxy are over.

Because you have not offered a means to produce data. You have just criticized the lack of it. Like I said, if you can come up with more information, do it. If not, you are just making noise. I am done with you. Knowing use of this raw data is flawed is in itself useful IMHO. Quit shooting the messenger. Without factoring it's a bit unreasonable for you to claim I'm the only one making noise. I don't have the data, the best source would be USPA records, they keep track information like numbers of jumpers and jumps per year with membership renewal. I have absolutely zero access to that data and don't know what the quality is.

Your response after my simple observation make it clear you were advocating a position, the followups certainly did. In this thread you wrote this: You ignoring my contribution does not mean I haven't made one, thanks. I'm not missing your point, you're ignoring mine. I will never understand why you've repeatedly attacked me for offering a means to produce data to arrive at fact base WL limits..

This just isn't a fair representation of the information we have or the tools at our disposal. The data produced for example covers several years. There are also some more sophisticated subsetting techniques (not even going to get into it here) to guage the significance or randomness of the information we do have. The sparsity of data does not justify making no attempt to quantify it accurately instead of using it as an emotional stick to beat people with. You use numbers when it suits you then accuse anyone who neutrally points to the flaws as not getting it or being irresponsible. You're not taking the moral high ground claiming to advocate training, I advocate training, but not the same way you do. I don't claim to have numbers to justify my position without doing the proper analysis.

The right action? I've seen several proposals including regulations using numbers someone just guessed(or even just question marks for numbers). Proper analysis might actually produce useable data and numbers. Pretending someone advocating proper analysis of the data just doesn't get it is ridiculous. I'd expect better than appeals to emotion in any rational discussion.

He needs to work on his arch, or is that a freefly position?

The U.S. use of A-Bombs saved countless lives, both U.S. and Japanese, the circumstances matter, it's not merely words. It would not have been a superior moral decision to send millions of Americans in to be killed while killing even more millions of Japanese. w.r.t. the Soviet Union, they were oppressive and expansionist (ask the people in Afghanistan) and eventually they were stopped (in Afghanistan with the man portable Stinger missiles you object to the U.S supplying the Mujahideen). Some abstract systems of government care not whether the people love their kids. In contrast the U.S. leaves democracies in it's wake which are then free to do what they like rather than act as puppets (witness France now). We were damned lucky to come through the cold war as unscathed as we did (luck, the CIA, the DoD and trillions in treasure). One longer term strategy to avert proliferation problems is the one the US is successfully implementing in the Middle East today. Seed genuine freedom and democracy in the greater middle east and have faith that it will give rise to accountability and rationality. WMD and terrorist sponsoring theocracies like Iran (and Syria to a degree) don't mix well. The whole concept of deniability and asymmetric warfare makes it untennable and that's exactly what Iran (for example) has specialized in since they freed the U.S. hostages snatched from the Embassy. They've been sponsoring terrorism in Lebanon and denying it for years, including seeding the suicide bombing obsession in returning Palestinians. You are absolutely right proliferation cannot be stopped. The best we can do is shape the world in which we must deal with it (opinions differ on the best way

Congratulations, you missed the point … again. The job that needs to be done is to provide better canopy control training. Go play with your numbers and move on. Sigh, very clever. This thread started by using numbers to make a case, if you don't want to use numbers fine, if you do then it's incumbent upon you to use them correctly. The best way to ensure the right action is to process the data, not the opposite.

Without dividing by jumpers or jumps you have no useful data. It's not about crunching that data forever it's about applying a simple divide by the most accurate number you can lay your hands on to get closer to the real risk jumpers are taking either per jump or per year in the sport (on average) by category. That's just a generic observation, you don't have to be a subject matter expert to know this. You may not like that message but it's a simple fact. Do the divide, do the work, it's not enough to total deaths by category and match it to anecdotes from your experience, that's just not doing the job that needs to be done. That's not an observation that takes sides in this debate it's just a simple completely obvious fact about statistics.

The devil's in the details. http://www.big-boys.com/articles/bottlebomb1.html Heh I've been looking for that video since I started this thread, idiots and bombs don't mix well. Really some parents have changed into a bunch of hysterical sissys, OTOH it really depends on the details of what he was teaching. "bomb" covers a lot of ground.

http://www.big-boys.com/articles/thatsmyboy.html

Get even, go out and lamp a dozen foxes tonight.

Actually it matters critically how many were in each category, "the population". I'm less concerned about things like age but maybe it needs to be looked at, we have the data so why not (it's actually fraught with pitfalls generalizations). However Kallend was absolutely right when he said a useful analysis is impossible without at least the total number of jumpers per category, and IMHO the jumps per category in whatever form you can get it.

You don't understand what I mean by population information. I'm not talking about census data or anything as irrelevant. In the absence of action we'll be better informed about the risks we take, that alone is justification enough for me. If there is action it could help make it the right action, that's the whole point. If you just want to contemplate a tragic total and learn the minimum from it, or worse take the wrong lesson away, then no. What risk factors/indicators were involved? That's why the initial attempt was made to break this down by category. If I know this is flawed then I have a responsibility to point it out. Simply breaking down the totals by age or jumps is utterly meaningless without at least the information Kallend asked for and the additional information I suggested be used. If you don't understand what I've written then move on or try to learn a bit about statistics but don't blame the messenger.

What this shows is that since 12/14/1995, 112 people died under good canopies in the US. That statistic supports one thing, that is way to many people dead. Now pull a "metric" out of that and support any damn thing you want. 112 PEOPLE DEAD UNDER A GOOD CANOPY. Sparky Stating the obvious gets us nowhere. It's just wildly inappropriate to get all hot & bothered about asking for population information and jump numbers to be factored in. Why anyone would object to this is beyond me. It's the absolute minimum requirement before drawing meaningful conclusions backed by data. P.S. w.r.t. statistics supporting multiple positions, that would really refer to my suggestion of factoring in jumps per fatality (This is NOT the total jumps of the individuals involved in the incidents, these things are very different), and what it means when you consider the overall risk to a jumper vs the risk per jump. You can easily see that someone who does a lot of jumps adopts proportionately greater risk and this might offset experience unless you factor in jumps per fatality in a population segment. That is specifically why I suggested that normalization and why you might draw multiple conclusions from the same data. One would be a risk per jumper(per year presumably) (as Kallend initially requested) and the other would be a risk per jump, the results could (would IMHO) look very different and support different conclusions.

A key part of the bible code searches is that they are found at regular letter spacings, not just any old order. It's still bullshit. An interesting thing happened in the 'debate' over the statistical significance of the findings. Detractors claimed that it was random, the inventor of the bible code system said 'if you find predictions of the assasinations of world leaders in Moby Dick then I'll believe it's random'. The detractor then went and found the assasinations of several leaders including Gandhi in the first chapter. He may still be waiting on a response. Ahh... a quick search found this: http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html Ahh.... an even better one pulled from Moby Dick, it predicts the death of the bible code author, gotta love this: http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/drosnin.html

Some utilities for this came bundled with my Jump-Track software. It included all sorts of counters (like cypres 4 year services) not just repack dates.

You are so totally not winning right now... $52??? Man, that other kid got thousands!!! -Of course, you're being pretty stingey with your usable advertising, Pop. 24 hours? Naw, f*ck that. You'd prolly just lay in bed for that day. Actually its a total of 224 hours.....tahst a frigen loooong time That would be 240 hours.

Call it morbid curiosity, he probably just found the site & felt like sharing. I sometimes watch these videos for the "holy shit" factor too. It don't make me a bad person and it doesn't mean I wish anyone ill. The base video is particularly horrendous I thought because of the aftermath, the audio track really brings home the consequences when things don't go smoothly in a way nothing else I've ever seen or been taught does. That base video for me is unique and should be mandatory viewing (and listening) for jumpers.

No I just think the majority of them will vote Democrat no matter how deeply flawed their candidate is or how far off the rails their party runs. But again the real issue is the other people who won't be persuaded not the people who can't see this because they'll vote Dem anyway. Take heart thought, Hillary and Kerry are trying to recruit felons into the fold now so Democrats may get back in the game through a rule change.

The concept of the bible code is to search the text of the bible for equally spaced letter sequences that actually spell other words then assume prediction from these random coincidences of recent past events and of course for our future any old random predictions despite evidence that this is a completely random phenomenon and similar findings are easily made in books like Moby Dick. For example see the message embeded in my post. It's complete hogwash.

Tried a hammer?

England? Oh, wait, no, it was the Mongols, wasn't it? Errrrr, was Alexander there? Just what I thought when I read that but I kinda figured he meant Russia & let it go.

Well that is infact wrong, the substance of my post for the third time is that you don't see the problem with Dean and that he's a poisoned pill for many Americans who view the Democratic party with a critical eye. Go back and read the first post instead of repeatedly mischaracterizing it as an attack.