dorbie

There you go letting all those inconvenient "facts" get in the way of a good public lynching. I do agree with your conclusion though, it's naked politics and they knew ahead of time it would undermine US security because they themselves demanded the program be put in place in 2001.

How did he not break the law? At the very least, the spirit of the due-process and unreasonable-search-and-seizure stuff? He is not above the law, and the administration should be subject to a broader, not a narrower, interpretation. That said, sometimes having the police office out there on the highway prevents speeders; yes, he didn't catch any, but, ya know -- if fewer people aren't speeding, isn't that a good thing? Wendy W. First we're shooting potential grafiti artists because of their skin color now we're equating terrorism with speeding, you guys need to lay off the analogies it ain't helping. This program did catch terrorists even the Times admits that. Just what do you think the Times was calling for, look only at financial transactions labeled "for Terrorism"? What do you think an intelligence gathering effort like this entails? Hint; Secrecy is high on the list, we have closed door congressional oversight for a reason.

How so? Is it somehow hypocritical to insist that a president obey the law while exercising his duties? If I call for the the police to stop the graffiti in my neighborhood, and they do it by shooting the black people, am I a hypocrite for criticising their methods? He never broke the law, he implemented a legitimate program exactly like the one the NYT bayed for after 9-11, now they'd like to pretend it's a bad idea after demanding it. You do know that in addition to the executive, members of the permanent select committee on intelligence from BOTH parties called the NYT editors to request they not devastate an intelligence effort they themselves had demanded right after 9-11.

Well really what do you say to a case of buyers remorse like this, careful what you wish for? Of course you want a program like this to be as effective as possible and letting the enemy know of it would only undermine it. The Times' hypocrisy revealed by this editorial is just stunning. They called for this, got exactly what they wanted then feigned outrage and in the process blew the whoel program wide open. Now they express surprise that anyone thinks secrecy is justified as they try to pretend that this was an outrageous reach by the President even after they called for this. This is an.... inconvenient editorial for them.

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/014523.php How Times have changed.

Well I've gotten a couple of their forms in the mail recently. Basically they're looking for anyone they can attach blame to for your injuries. They definitely put some effort into recovering their losses, this is not specific to skydiving of course, but I doubt they'd know where to start without some information & finger pointing from the injured party.

Fratricide is a part of war... It has been for a long time. the deaths of our brothers is a sad thing but what do you want us to do about it? Protest? I walk past those fags every day on my way to work... Protesting does nothing but waste your time.. Do you approve of cover-ups? Have you stopped beating your wife? Yes or no?

I tracked right back up jump run just after completing my AFF jumps. I even thought it was pretty cool watching a 4-way zip past, and I suppose it was. I soon learned that this was not the best way to end a skydive.

Perhaps this will help: http://www.mises.org/images3/pacifier.jpg

Nah, the French bomb the protesters then drop the bomb, and of course the French are still at it even in our 'progressive' era. http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/rw/pkbomb.html

What's all this crap about artifacts? There's a difference between diverting and stealing tons of relief supplies and being in posession of a piece of rubble.

I think that turbine has thrown a blade.

Probably, how do probably ...... an ankle tib/fib?

Stopped someone walking into a prop after we rode down, those darned things are invisible and in the "wrong place" when you get OFF the plane. No guarantee they'd wouldn't have realized before the propelocranial procedure.

you mean the one credited with recently downing a US Aircraft?(at that time) Yea this one: http://www.1stcavmedic.com/jane_fonda.htm

More respect for the invalids! Notice that you are just 1 jump away from the wheelchair. He's not dissing the disabled, the "poor bastard" is the TI who is now in the shit.

Wasn't ready to PLF on a jump when my canopy stalled & collapsed in wind shear on final. Probably cost me an ankle tib/fib.

Flyability != Landability. There are canopies that are sweet to fly, but are not necessarily survivable upon arrival. I have been under more than one canopy that was flyable but not landable. Yup and more specific to this thread, I've heard stories where someone thought a canopy with a lineover was flyable but only when they were very low on final did they realize that their true rate of descent was much higher than they thought at altitude. That could get you hurt.

Best way to avoid dragging is to not try to collapse your canopy instantly on the brakes. Unless you're close to stationary or going backwards close to the ground you can keep flying your canopy over your head. Then you can pick your time to bring it down. There are several ways that are better than yanking brakes, one is to fly it down by your side, still facing the wind. Another is to grab a middle line set (if you have gloves) and yank them to stall it completely by deforming the wing. Yanking on the brakes will guarantee you're fighting with it to get it on the ground and stationary, and the best thing in that situation is to preempt it by moving downwind fast on your feet before you're forced to do it on your butt. Ground handling skills will help a lot if you practice them. It took hours of paragliding ground handling to teach me this, more of that in skydiving would help jumpers landing in high wind IMHO.

Took a plane ride down when everyone was hopping & popping at < 2k ft after clouds rolled in. Don't get out below your hard deck. Sure it's no big deal and doable and you'll probably live, but rationalizing this is bullshit in the extreme. The first rule in EPs is your decision altitude and getting out under your decision altitude with no canopy over your head leaves you well... leaves you guessing where your new decision altitude should be at best. Most of the time you get away with it, but one day there will be an incident report that begins with the initial bad decision to get out low and ends with a crater and who knows what in between. You have two square canopies one particularly unreliable, the altitude requirements are there for a reason. Took myself off a load when the winds were switching in the afternoon. Watching the previous load land there was some obvious minor carnage, sometimes it's good to be on the ground looking up. P.S. I just realized both of these were decisions to not jump. Sometimes teh smartest thing you can do in skydiving is to not skydive.

Assuming MSL the pressure at that altitude is gonna be about .5 * sea level pressure. A bit of a difference. http://www.sablesys.com/baro-altitude.html I have no idea regulations though, it's an aircraft and shit can happen in an aircraft beyond simply climbing to altitude. [edited to correct pressure differential]

Yup, it's great if you can persuade 12 whuffos of that. There will be an 'expert' with the opposite opinion w.r.t. your incident on their side. Meanwhile they get to sit and stare at a weeping widow and will hear about the fatherless kids at home. It's not even about packing per se. It's about everything in skydiving. There's a total waiver because it's essential to protect people and force jumpers to regognize and assume the liability for the risks THEY choose to take. If you skydive you might die, you should start that process understanding that it is YOUR decision to assume the risk, people aren't gonna try to kill you but humans are fallible and you HAVE to recognize that everyone around you from the packer to you could fuck up and kill you. People die all the time in skydiving because of fuckups, usually their own but often enough there's a potential contribution from someone else. If you don't like the odds go take up bowling, but when you get on the plane, when you walk towards the aircraft YOU'RE taking a risk of death and injury and that includes all the potential fuckups that might do you in. It is an inherently dangerous sport, statistically it might not be as risky as most people think but when when shit goes wrong gravity and the ground are inevitable and you're relying on a piece of cloth stuffed in a sack by a human to save your life. You'll never meet a rich packer, but it's not even the packer that will be footing the bill, it'll be the DZ owner and all of us. On one level the waiver protects the DZ on the other it protects the sport and allows us all to jump in the face of peopel who want to jump out a plane then blame someone else if anything bad stems from that as it it was a fucking surprise that snuck up on them.

Most often, not really the packing errors that will kill but rather a lack of preparation in dealing with EP's. If a packer's malfunction is a result at deployment time, and mistakes are made in properly dealing with the malfunction then the only person to blame is the jumper for not being better prepared to deal with the situation. When I put a rig on a go skydive, I am the responsible party, no one else. Yup but a jury of 12 whuffos get to see the packing error as a mistake that precipitated the whole event, and even some idiots who skydive think this way. The waiver helps protect against these types and many others.

Because packing errors happen and they can kill you. If you don't understand this then you shouldn't be jumping. Packers make errors, infrequently sure but frequently enough that it's a legitimate concern, at the end of the day they're not avoidabe because packers are human. You're responsible for saving your ass if and when that happens. In addition, even when there's no error the court system lets anyone sue to try and establish that there was an error and 12 people chosen for their lack of knowledge of the sport will make the final determination. Human error can kill you, in fact if you die skydiving it could very likely be the cause, get it? If you don't like that don't jump, there's always bowling.

Grr... I reckon they painted my black FFX with red swirls and sent it to you . I shouldn't have asked, I wish they could manage a queue, they're British for goodness sake, they love queues over there!