JDBoston

I moved to Baltimore a month or so ago, and summer's a-comin'... I think I know all the major DZs within a couple of hours of here. I've already jumped at Delmarva, X-Keys, and Skydive Virginia in the past, and Orange I will definitely check out at some point. Any I'm missing? But I'm more just looking for some jumpers in Baltimore to party with, since I barely know anyone here. Speak up! I promise I'm a fun guy. Joe

The fact that some people still think Bush is a straight shooter never ceases to amaze me. Just because the man uses small words and short sentences, and maintains good eye contact, does not mean that what he says is true. IT'S AN ACT. If you actually listen to his words and compare them to reality from time to time, what you get is a smorgasbord of misdirection, excuses, and flat out lies. If I'm ever arrested for something, I would like one of you folks that thinks Bush is honest to be running the interrogation, so I can lie my ass off and walk, without anyone suspecting a thing. Joe

Ya know what, I don't have a problem with brothers and sisters marrying each other at all. Think about it: all it means is that the few reprobates out there who would actually WANT to do this will eventually breed themselves out of existence by producing ever-more-fucked up mutant offspring. What's so wrong about that? Joe

Ethics aside, good luck proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that you didn't deploy in a sit and that you packed it completely according to the manufacturer's instructions. Of course, you could always videotape the entire jump at very close range from the start of the pack job through deployment, if you have a cooperative video person. But I think they would need to deploy right alongside you for comparison purposes - since otherwise they will only get about the first second of the opening and that won't be too much use either. Better yet, don't even waste the mental cycles thinking about it. You pays your money, you takes your chances. Joe

Finally, a sensible suggestion. Joe

Clones have been created since the beginning of time. They're called TWINS. Nothing unnatural about it. Joe

I did understand your point. I just don't think it holds water. As much as people piss and moan about the "definition" of marriage, maybe they should look around at the people who do get married every day, and ask themselves if every one of those is up to snuff in terms of producing kids, or being "beneficial to the social fabric," or whatever. The answer is twofold: no, and it doesn't matter, because it's none of our business. Joe

Caution is one thing. He dodged a plain, honest, and very important question. In order to make important changes to government practices or documents, you should theoretically have a strong reason THAT YOU CAN ARTICULATE. The strong reason in this case appears to be to get votes. The silence is deafening... Joe

That's disingenuous. We're talking about consenting adult humans here, straight or gay. It's just plain silly to compare that to objects or animals. Joe

Gimme a break, man. It's painfully obvious that he is dodging the question because he does not have a good answer. That is CENTRAL to the political issue at stake. If the Administration is sponsoring a constitutional amendment, but can't give a coherent answer to the simplest, most logical question about WHY, don't you think that's just a wee bit important? What sort of response from him WOULD strike you as intentionally evasive, if this one doesn't? BTW, I've got some oceanfront AZ property to sell you. Joe

This country would never have been established in the first place if it had been populated by a bunch of yes-men. Joe

That is a compassionate, well-thought out viewpoint and I wish more people with faith shared it. Unfortunately it seems like there are also a lot of people out there who pick and choose elements from their faith to suit the attitudes they've already formed - the tail wagging the dog, so to speak. Joe

I think what, something like 80% of the adult population carries the virus? I would imagine it's even MORE prevalent at DZs given the, er, demographics. Just plan on having it. I would be more worried about catching a cold. Joe

The fact that people blithely assign full credit for good macro events to Presidents they like, and deny it to those they don't, or blame them for the bad things, is just further evidence to me that people have a purely emotional viewpoint about politics that they cloak in whatever facts they can find to try and make it appear logical. Imagine the real complexity of the economy and world affairs for a second, think about how many variables are affecting each other, and then think about how many people and organizations there are in the government and the private sector who have an effect on those variables and therefore on how things turn out. Then think about whether it makes sense to say that one person (the President) was "responsible" for what happened while they were President. They can be contributors, sure, but it seems ridiculously simplistic to me to argue back and forth about "my guy did THIS" and "your guy did THAT" when you're talking about events that were larger, more complex, and longer in the making than anything one person could possibly control. Sometimes the evnts happen in part because of them, sometimes the events happen despite them, and sometimes their particular contribution doesn't affect the outcome much. Not aimed at you, Rick, it's just a general tendency in these political debates that I think is silly. I mean shit, it's practically primitive. Everyone line up behind their totem pole now! My bear totem will bring back the sun! Ooh look, there it is! See, I was right! Your horse totem sucks! Hah. My $0.02, Joe

IMHO, it would be pretty pointless for uninvolved laypeople to try and debate the effectiveness of various intelligence gathering methods. Anyway, one of the most important determinants of what gets listened to is the known/perceived reliability of the source, i.e. the person it came from, based on previous intel they've provided and other factors. I.e. it's something that NO ONE outside the CIA, and probably only a few people within it, could ever have first-hand knowledge of, or an intelligent opinion on. Unfortunately that does make it tough to form an ironclad opinion about the validity of intel from the outside, but I guess that's just how it is. This debate seems to come down to the same thing as all other political debates, which is the fact that most people have a purely emotional allegiance to a certain point of view for personal reasons, and then cherry-pick a few known facts that suit them and call it a logical argument. On BOTH sides. People aren't interested in truth. They're interested in being right. The shitty thing in this case is that there will probably never be definitive proof one way or the other - making the debate something of a waste of time, but on the flip side, enabling it to go on pretty much forever. My $0.02, Joe

Hear, hear. FOP = Fucking Old Person I love 'em but for God's sake, some of them really need to GIVE THE KEYS UP. Joe

NYC drivers going upstate or to VT to go skiing do the same thing. It's not bad, it's just funny. I love when they pass me at 70 while I'm doing 40 because the road's covered in black ice. I just think to myself, "that's OK, I'll be seeing you again soon." Joe

I swung by Skydive Monterey Bay the other day. They had a parrot named Claude. On my way out of the hangar I could have sworn I heard him send me off with a "fuck you." I stopped by manifest to confirm, and was told that this was indeed part of his vocabulary. Love those DZ parrots! Seriously, I do think they're very neat animals. Joe

The fact that something seems confusing when you look at it in an incredibly simplistic way should not be taken as evidence that it is not true. Evolution doesn't suggest that one generation you had a giraffe with a short neck and then all of a sudden it had a baby that looked like today's giraffe, and it doesn't suggest that monkeys turned into humans overnight either. These things happened over intervals of time that the human mind cannot even really imagine. Evolutionary "theory" and Creation "theory" are NOT EVEN CLOSE to the same kind of thing and likening faith in Creation to faith in science is disingenuous in the extreme. There's really no logical reason to prefer Creation "theory" to, say, the "theory" Scientologists have that we all came from space aliens or some shit. There's nothing to "teach" about Creation "theory," besides whatever dogma its adherents decide on a whim to propose. It's not science and never will be. You can't base experiments on it. On the other hand, people at little places like MIT and Stanford and Harvard and everywhere else in the industrialized world have been running experiments based on evolutionary theory for decades. And when you're talking about what to teach kids, scientific principles that have true predictive value, like evolution, and, as a previous post noted, can be proven FALSE, are the ONLY things that are worth talking about. Proposing teaching it side by side with evolution is just a way for people to feel good about their own willful ignorance. It has nothing at all to do with being "open-minded." It's a ridiculous idea from start to finish, it's harmful to kids and to the country as a whole, and it frankly does not deserve to be treated with any courtesy or seriousness. It's 100% exactly the same as saying that if no one can PROVE to me that the moon doesn't have a core made of green cheese, then I think we should be presenting that theory to kids side by side with the "scientific" ones and let them choose which one to believe. The only difference is that more people believe in the Creationist stuff than in the moon being made of cheese. And that's the ONLY difference. By the way, to head off any splinter threads, the Earth isn't flat, and the Sun doesn't revolve around us either. And gravity, thankfully, really does work. Joe

So when Ron makes a comment about the reason his teammate and friend died, and you tell him he's lying, because you read something different in a whuffo "chute didn't open" newspaper article, it must be an example of you adhering to this belief... ? Joe

Because when you include tandem jump data, the predictive value of the stats re: solo jumps is reduced. IF I am correct that the tandem incident rate is significantly lower. Which I think I am. Also, BASE is not skydiving and those stats should not be mixed. Joe

This stuff honestly makes me sick to my stomach. The more this kind of thing happens, the more jobs we will lose, and the less of a leader the US will be - in ANYTHING. Why are people so gullible and stupid? It's so frustrating. Intelligent Design cannot be tested and PROVEN WRONG, therefore it is NOT science. Meaning: it makes assumptions that cannot be proven or disproven. Real scientists laugh at it. It's a fucking joke, and it's absolutely flat-out CRIMINAL to present it to impressionable kids as anything but. Can you tell I have strong feelings about this? Joe

Stats don't mean too much when you lump all the tandem jumps in with all the other kinds of jumps and jumpers. I believe there are far fewer tandem fatalities relative to the number of tandem jumps. Re: the "one mistake" issue, it's very simple common sense and at the same time very easy (and not very useful) to over-analyze. As Ron says: we're soft and mostly water, and we splatter easily. Skydiving involves high closing speeds with solid objects (other jumpers, and the ground). Given these speeds, it only takes a moment of inattention, or the failure to make the right adjustment, when you're really close, to fuck up and collide. And, if you're going fast enough or hit wrong, to die. When people hook themselves in, that's EXACTLY what's happened. Sure, there can be contributing factors leading up to it, like trying to make it back from a bad spot, or canopy traffic, or whatever, but the fact remains that there was still only ONE specific point during the dive where their situation/trajectory became truly unrecoverable. Missing the chance to change course prior to that point, intentionally or unintentionally, is what killed them. Joe

God, that's just fucking sick. These people are IDIOTS. What's next - stop teaching kids about gravity? What a crock of shit. What I want to know is: what are the other 5 states that I should never attempt to raise kids in? Joe

In driving, not only are you often aware of the danger, but you're moving at speeds slow enough that you have time to at least partially react. Hence there are usually skid marks etc. at accident sites. Might not save you 100% but it's better than nothing. And in a car, you can change your trajectory or speed dramatically, MUCH, MUCH more quickly and easily than in skydiving or skiing. In skydiving, you can eliminate a lot of the risk, sure, but the very nature of the activity (high speed and lack of protection) means that small fuckups and moments of inattention will still often have very magnified consequences. If you freeze or get distracted for a moment in most activities, no biggie. If you do it skydiving at the wrong time - say, close to the ground, or diving on a formation, you're broken or dead. Joe