Andy9o8

Depends on your defintion of "our". For some people that may depend on whether their ancestors emigrated from Africa 50,000 years ago or 200 years ago. Personally, I define "our" as all humans beings ever subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.

I will say it's kind of funny to see something about skydiving in SC . Wendy P. Yeh. Why would this not be in the USPA BOD forum? Whatever.

Damn them! White Christians beware. You know there's a War on Easter, don't you? Pretty soon all the Easter bunnies will be jungle bunnies.

80% reduction in traffic fatalities per mile traveled since 1960. I think a seat belt mandate is a small price to pay. I reckon even Sun Tzu would wear one. You may think it's a small price to pay. Other people don't. Even some people who wear seat belts can understand that it should be a choice whether to wear it or not. Fine, then I will count on you to pay the resulting increase in my auto insurance premiums. Thanks for volunteering.

Your post is so disjointed it borders on the irrational. You see all these connections from Point A to Point Z that frankly I just don't see. Other than that, I'm still on my first cuppa joe, so I'll just take a pass.

I'm no doc here, but I'd speculate that the whole sub-cohort of skydivers probably has more people who engage in other physical/athletic activities (the type that generally result in overall lower resting heart rates) than the general population at large. Just tossing that out there. My buddy the cardiologist tells me that one of the reasons regular emotional stress can cause or exacerbate heart disease is that repeated exposure to bursts of adrenaline while otherwise at physical rest (like during an argument at home or dealing with job stress) can cause the cardiac arteries to constrict, thereby accelerating the rate at which they tend to accumulate plaques along their walls. (Or, an artery already partially blocked can constrict, temporarily causing full blockage and a resulting cardiac event.) Can this be translated to include people who are basically couch potatoes, but also skydive? I don't know, but would be interested in hearing feedback from some physicians on the matter.

Really? Damn, and here I've spent the past 15 minutes researching and composing a rebuttal to her post #226.

I was a resident working at the trauma center in TN. I remember reading a study that showed the health care costs to the state of TN went down after passing a law stating that a helmet was optional. I assume it was from people dying before making it to the hospital to incur the big bills. That's probably a reasonable initial supposition. As evidence, consider this example: serious combat injuries to the extremities have increased over the past 20 years or more. Why? Because nowadays most developed nations' combat troops wear body armor, so more of them survive getting blown up than used to be the case; but of course, the extremities are unprotected. Before body armor became commonplace, alot of those troops would simply have been KIAs; but now more of them survive to require long-term medical care. So the real lesson isn't that extremities wounds are increasing, it's that as the result of greater usage of body armor, the survival rate has increased.

As a scientist, you should know that one study that shows a barely statistically significant result does not prove a fact. To quote from the source you provided. "We think our findings indicate comprehensive background checks may help, but it would be a mistake to think of them as a panacea," Sen explains. Better if you said background checks may work. It appears your own bias is clouding your scientific judgement. In the 1960s scientists researching road accidents thought mandating improvements to brakes, installation of seatbelts, etc. *might* help reduce accidents. People like YOU decried the idea. However, turns out the scientists were correct. Traffic fatalities per mile down by 80% since 1960. It's not an all-or-nothing proposition. frankly I don't believe people said that seatbelts (or motorcycle helmet laws) wouldn't improve safety - I believe they said it was their freedom to choose whether they wore them or not, despite that it might be less safe for them if they chose not to. So the problem was never that they didn't think safety would improve, but whether the state had any business taking away the right to choose. And I still believe the state has no business mandating it's civilians wear them, although I have no problem with them recommending it. I have a problem with states w/o helmet or seatbelt laws: it causes everyone else's auto insurance premiums to go up, to offset the increased risk that your insurance company will have to pay-out larger indemnities for worse injuries sustained by un-helmeted motorcyclists and un-belted motorists who get into accidents with their policyholders. And that, unlike, for example, skydiving, is what does make it everyone else's business, and not simply a matter of personal choice and freedoms. Take away an un-helmeted motorcyclist's ability to sue when he's hit and injured/killed by another driver, and I might change my position - not otherwise.

I like the scruffy-looking guy. One step up from selling your blood for Boone's Farm, I guess.

[yelling] YOUR ATTEN.... never mind.

I don't have any problem with them exposing the mere existence of the flaw. It was publishing information gained via that flaw that crossed the line. (And if they argue that publishing the info was the only credible way of proving the flaw, I call bullshit.)

I felt, and still do, that that was morally and ethically repugnant. That being said, the paper neither violated any criminal laws nor committed any torts. Trust me, there was nothing to charge them with (aside from bad judgment), and nothing to sue them for.

It's really not. Did you actually read the article? You know, all of it. Granted, there are no pictures to hold one's attention.

They spell different-like on the island of Cypres. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences#-re.2C_-er

Well it appears this is not outlawed in some countries and who knows, how men and women will progress... [/url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoophilia[url] That's just stupid. You're not even trying anymore.

It sounds like your grandparents violated at least two Mississippi laws: the one requiring them to truthfully represent their race on their marriage license application, and the anti-miscegentation law itself. That could easily have gotten them prosecuted and jailed under Mississippi law as it existed then. They had guts, I'll grant you that.

My dog is very elderly, and usually just plays dead.

Not true in the places I've worked. Everything I've seen would indicate the layoff choices are totally random. Examples: - At a large cable company, the clueless fools layed off the *only* guy who was doing telco circuit provisioning. By the time they finally put enough people on the job to catch up on the provisioning work-load, they had FOUR people replacing the guy they axed! - At another company, the new VP went into his office and spent a few days totally re-organizing everything under him, with NO INPUT FROM THE EXISTING MANAGERS. He just drew a new org chart, populated it with names from the old org chart, then layed off anyone left over. The result was total chaos, and many responsibilities fell through the cracks because there was no one assigned to do them. After 20 years in corp IT, I expect nothing but cluelessness from management, so nothing surprises me anymore. Decades of experience has shown me that, unfortunately, confidence that slackers get cut while productive ones get kept on is usually naive and mis-placed. Sad to say, but all too often it's all political, and merit counts for nothing. For example, sometimes I consult with large firms to help them design, and then manage, large-scale, major litigation support projects. These are the kind of projects that will hire about 50 lawyers and paralegals as subcontractors to work the project for a few months. The work is all done on computer, so we can (and do) track each contractor's production very minutely. All too often, when the project has to get pared-down into Phase 2 or 3, unproductive (sometimes shockingly so) slackers who have connections to some senior partner get kept-on to the next phase, right through to the end of the project. I'm talking about people who do so little work that the weekly timesheets they submit to get paid literally constitute fraud. And in the meantime, other people who've busted ass and done great work are part of the first groups of layoffs.

Where do you think your "food" comes from?

Quite possibly. I don't know much about his personal hacking history, or whether it was done merely recreationally, with little harm to others, or more maliciously and/or with some harm having come to others. Those are relevant factors.

I'm a big proponent of organ donation, but oppose making it mandatory. Consider the slippery slope from that to mandatory cadaver donation for scientific research or to train all the med students and OT majors taking their gross anatomy classes. Or consider Soylent Green.

I think that, both legally and ethically, yours is the correct perspective. He crossed the line from whistle-blower to thief. I do think that pressing the felony charge was unduly heavy-handed and the sentence was extremely harsh.

Apparently UK licence renewal uses a form called DL1R. So, curious to see it for myself, I've done quite a search - and while there are many downloadable UK driver's and vehicle forms available online, interestingly enough the DL1R is not. Apparently one must either obtain a hard copy; or to proceed to the renewal form in the online system, one must first establish an account and then log-in. Which I won't do. So, I guess I'm stuck at this point.

This was my first thought upon reading it, too. But it seems that he's now past the 6-hour window programmed into this website. Thus I would urge the OP to contact a moderator and request that his OP be edited. -------- To the OP: Lots of good advice here, most of which is don't put your own self in harm's way because this guy and his supervisor are twats while you're doing an honest day's work. If you feel you must do something, the best thing (for you) would be to try to set him (and his supervisor) up so that what's going on gets noticed by someone higher up without it being traceable to you. If that doesn't work, then just keep this in mind: you're there to earn a wage for yourself, not to be the self-appointed cop in the company. We can't all be Inspector Javert.