tkhayes

perhaps at a trial, yes. Most civil cases never make it that far. motions, preliminary hearings, pleadings and such as all susceptible to pretty much any lame-ass shit that can get thrown out there. Again, this is what tort lawyers do. My point stands. You can sit there are take it, or you can SPEND MONEY defending it. I assure you that you will have to spend money to defend it.

+1, finding a substitute for the wood would be a better choice for Gibson, remove the speculation and maybe even get to use it as a marketing tool, promoting their green product - everyone else does....

If it is OK to buy hardwoods illegally harvested from rain-forests which supply 20-30% of the world's oxygen, then I guess it is also Ok for us to kill whales for blubber, elephants and Rhinos just for their tusks and sell the ivory. There is a line to be drawn somewhere. Life would be great if everyone followed the rules, but some do not. We have law enforcement to deal with that. If the law is stupid, then lobby your congress to change it. I am Ok with the occasional such act to keep these guys thinking about where their supplies are coming from. Do people still buy clothes without at least thinking about the child-labored sweat-shop in SE Asia that might have made them? You bet they do.

people seem to focus on the dreams and premonitions that came true. They forget all the ones that did not. Human nature I suspect.

The prices go up because the cost of running a business gets passed onto the consumer. And if part of that cost is defending yourself from lawsuits then in the end, YOU as the consumer, will pay for that. Right now, about $2000-$3000 of every tandem rig made goes into legal defense funds. Have you bought a skiing lift ticket recently? Does it really cost $80 to operate a lift chair? And FYI, I never said anything about burying negligence. My issue was publicly broadcasting any mistakes we made before a proper investigation or any facts have been actually examined. Would you be happy with every mistake you ever made in your life videod, posted online, then analyzed by the general public for everyone to see and scrutinize? Especially if it involved injury to someone else? Tort lawyers have a job. Their job is to blame someone else and/or find fault wherever they can to make a living. Regardless of the actual circumstances. This will cost money to defend, negligent or not. period. I have landed the same tandem canopy situation as described here before. negligent? Really? Not when you consider that the FIRST time I encountered a line knot, i decided to cut it away and ended up with a worse reserve tension knot malfunction. Second time it happened, I flew the parachute, flared it, tested the controllability and decided that i could land it. These are the facts. The interpretation according to this thread is that I was somehow grossly negligent. This is not the case. I was an experienced tandem pilot in charge of a situation. And I made a call. Now if you are inferring that I would have been grossly negligent in my duties ONLY IF someone had gotten hurt? Well that would be what tort lawyers do. The facts would remain the same. What would be different would be the hundreds of thousands of dollars I would have spent defending my position. Unless you own and operate a business where lawsuits happen or you have had to dish out the money defending yourself against assholes that like to sue, and/or unless you really don't give a shit about the sport of skydiving, then shaddup.....

one man's 'black magic' is another man's satanic worship. It's all bad, on all sides. radicalism. no time for it.

Sure, from a purist point of view, no one should ever hire people who cannot handle every situation possible perfectly. And no instructor should ever have a rating if they ever make a mistake. And I guess it's OK too for dropzones and manufacturers to spend millions of dollars defending frivolous lawsuits too. sure from a purist point of view that would be great. but that is not the world we live in is it? Well, except for the part about dropzones and manufacturers spending millions of dollars defending themselves from lawsuits. Perhaps you think it is OK for jump tickets to be $50 and gear to cost $10K for a rig.

dz.com postings have already been used in lawsuits. I know, because I sat in a courtroom and listened to it.

and it is so nice that all this has been posted publicly so that when the student decides to sue, they have tons of evidence to present which implies that the TI made a bad decision. perfect.

I assume mil h/c is a military rig - so I have no idea what you asre talking about. Is it TSO'd for sport use? Or just a military designation? And tandem rigs are rated for 500lbs TOTAL weight. That does not allow the user to to necessarily put 499 lbs in one harness and 1 lb in the other harness. Most of the harnesses are rated for 250lbs max weight. Plus tandem rigs are not designed for such use and with the litigious nature of todays skydiving environment, and the brunt of the lawsuits brought down on the manufacturers, I kind of doubt that the tandem manufacturers want to see their rigs used for anything other than their intended purposes within the intended limits. SO again, just because you can find someone who is willing to take a 300lb AFF student, does not make it safe, nor right, nor legal, nor a smart thing to do. The answer? lose 50lbs and get to 240lbs and you can jump at almost any dropzone, well within the limits of normal skydiving equipment.

little, if any gear exists that is TSO'd to carry you. Meaning I doubt you can jump. Just because you find a place willing to take you does not mean that it is safe to do so. The PD 281 reserve parachute is TSO'd only to 300lbs max exit weight. You with gear, will be closer to 330-335 exit weight. Few, if any harness containers are TSO'd to that weight.

a firewire cable between them and you use the migration tool. It's all very well documented on the Apple website.

she's a fucking tool and an idiot. I sure hope she get nominated for the republican seat....

whatever, again, if you are going to quote me, then QUOTE me. otherwise, it's just gibberish. And yes, I have been squawking about religion for decades. Looks like I might have to squawk about it for decades more.... You've been squawking about liberals - does that make you a bigot too?

No it's not. we are deathly afraid in this country of extreme islamic terrorists and the threat of islamic law taking over. We invade other countries who have Islam as their main religion. We send troops and then send organizations right behind them with Bibles to convert the masses. If you think there is a difference between a radicalized Muslim and a radicalized Christian......well, I have no idea what to say. Call me a bigot if you want. It's not just Christians. It's ALL religion. I do not want it in my government. not all at, not even a bit of it. Rick Perry and Michelle Bachman are nothing short of dangerous. Mike Huckabee is/was too. The good news is the more fo these nutjobs they put up on the front lines of the Republican Party, the better off the liberal odds of doing well in the elections. And as far as Christians being good folks - sure some are, and some are not. My argument would be that they are neither any better nor any worse than any other facet or demographic of society. But they sure like to put themselves above all the rest....and they like to dictate the way the country should be run based on the Bible. Find me a good Christian, I will find you a bad one. Find me a bad atheist and I will find you a good one. Nothing to do with Christianity other than having it openly penetrate the running of the country. If it would Islam or witchcraft, i would have the same argument. bigot it is.....whatever.

It actually happens all the time, apparently you do not listen to the Christians on the pulpit. we atheists have no moral values. we are communists, we teach children that we descended from apes, we are going to burn in hell, we are the cause of all the problems in the country. From homosexuality to Hurricane Katrina. Rick Perry said it himself. Michelle Bachman believes it and preaches it. So yes, us liberals sometimes do tend to bash the Christian right-wing. And the Christian right-wing firmly believes that atheists are evil.

I'll tell you why John....because some of these people want to run the country based on prayer. That is unacceptable. What they are saying in fact, is that when we run into problems, we should pray. In other words, they are saying "I got nuthin' to offer" since as I noted, prayer does not work. We elected people to do work, not to freakin' pray. Pray on your own time, on your own dime, that is fine, that is your right. DO NOT try to run the country that I live in and am a citizen of by 'praying' for things to work and somehow call yourself an 'elected official'. It offends my intelligence. It embarrasses me as a human being.

I like Ron Paul too, believe it or not. Everything he says makes total sense. problem is that it requires EVERYONE, including corporations to play fair and by the rules. no (or less) government means no (or less) rules. certainly no (or less) enforcement of the rules. the first thing that would happen with Ron Paul's idealism is environmental disaster. corporations would not longer have to answer to anyone. The river next door to your house would be toxic sludge site. Your recourse would be to sue them. you do not have the resources to sue them, so you would look to the 'government' to enforce the rules that everyone agreed to play by. Enforcement costs money. that would require taxes to pay for it. taxes would have to be collected by the 'government'. Those taxes would have to be enforced. those not paying would be unfairly taking advantage of the 'no rules' agenda. the system falls on its face. Every idealism works; socialism, communism, democracy, Ron Paul, Obama, Ron Reagan, whoever you want. All the idealism's work, but ONLY if everyone plays by the rules. Since that is not the reality we live in, we require a funded government to make and enforce the rules that we set for society. The end.

my whole point is that prayer does not work at all.....but thanks for supporting that theory.

Cough - Bullshit- Cough sorry I could not resist. Great that you have had such an amazing personal experience. Keep it personal please, 'cause many of us, perhaps even most of us, aren't buying it. My amazing personal experiences have come from a good upbringing and support by my parents, a decent education, hard work, and some goals - a little bit of luck here and there, but mostly through my own insight, my own drive, my own goals, and my own ACTIONS to achieve those goals.

...since Rick Perry hosted his huge prayer day or whatever-the-hell-it-was-called in Texas. Anyone notice a huge drop in unemployment, or a massive reduction in the deficit? Have the country's morals changed? did ANYTHING change? nothing fails like prayer......maybe now we could ask our elected representatives to roll up their sleeves and fucking well get back to work.....

yes, hence why I asked what the 4th amendment had to do with it - and yes, I did read the post 22. 4th amnedment still made no sense. anyway, the legal explanation holds some weight in my opinion. However the right to bear arms does nto come without tax issues. Sales tax is paid on guns and ammo. registration fees and licensing come with gun ownership. No one is making a constitutional argument against that. I doubt that the churches would become 'subservient' to the government just because of income tax. For that matter, I do not of any businesses that went out of business or became subservient to the government because of income tax.

I think your logic is actually correct. Yes, they could conceivably charge a feee for a registration card. And while that may be true (or not) is does not and should not reflect on the fact that most churches and religions are corporations - they are run for profit and they should be taxed, same as everyone else. IBM donates to charity, but they still pay corporate taxes. Churches donate to charity and still have employees, benefits, pensions, income, expenses, etc. they should pay taxes. We are SO long over that point where it is assumed that the church is 'untouchable' and that is pretty much all it is.

how does the 4th amendment play into this? Religions are mostly corporations. they should pay taxes. The constitution gives you the right to own a gun. Does not mean that govt cannot charge you a registration for that gun.

This country is determined (and I believe it will) to swing WILDLY to the extreme right and it will only realize its misfortune when we start (or maybe finish) another McCarthy era (or worse, a Hitler era) where we take away the most basic of personal freedoms in support of 'God' and the 'freedoms' that we pretend to uphold. Women are likely to be the most hurt. they will put them back into the kitchen, keep them barefoot and pregnant, and if you are not a Christian, expect to be put on trial for whatever heresy you may have committed. After all we are a "CHRISTIAN" nation, so anyone else, must be evil. I believe this will happen in the next 10 years. I also believe that we will eventually wake up and smell the coffee. I pity the poor bastards caught in the crossfire.