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Never managed a 24-hour afterglow before, and yet I was still feeling the rush from the skydives after that time... Maybe I just have a hypersensitive endorphin system.

*gah* Sorry, happens when I think about something a lot, start typing, editing, re-typing, editing some more, etc.

Thanks, but while I do indeed control how much I let skydiving take over my life, I cannot control things such as the pattern of endorphin relase or receptor site proliferation -- that's what is worrying me. Not a loss of control over jump numbers. Sorry if my longwinded post caused confusion on that matter.

Little more than a week ago, I graduated AFF and jumped my first solo. Then I stopped. Why? Basically, I am worried – not about the jumping as such, otherwise I wouldn’t have started; but about the addictiveness. I received some strange looks at the DZ when stating that there would be no question about my continuing if it weren’t for the kick (i.e., I’d jump if there wasn’t one). I started skydiving because I wanted to feel the absolute freedom of flying through the air, and will be the first to admit that I immensely enjoyed it. What I didn’t enjoy, relatively speaking, was the endorphin rush that accompanied the jumps. Again, one might ask, why? Longish answer... It’s the little things in life. I am one of those terrible people that tend to notice even the minutiae around them. When chatting with friends while on a stroll through the park, I will be the one to detect a butterfly drinking a dewdrop from a blade of grass, a song bird outlined against the dappled leaves, or a beautiful lady crossing our path. All this happens without breaking stride or conversation, making me smile inside and cheerful. To me, loosing that ability to gain joy out of the shortest moments, the glimpses of life around me, would be devastating. Enter skydiving – FUN! Wonderful! Great! And yet... I have met skydivers with +3k jumps that still get the shakes every time, just from the rush. People compare it to taking drugs, and I can understand them. As a personal choice, I don’t take drugs, don’t smoke, don’t drink. Instead I try to hone my senses, my knowledge of the world around me, want to feel it with every fibre of my being – that’s MY drug. Like any addict, I am scared of those things that would take this away from me, and am worried that skydiving could be one of those. Will its kick drown out that wondrous cacophony of life around me? Make me numb for those little jolts of joy that a new day can bring? While I realise that my reasons for starting with skydiving are probably not too typical (“...I don’t want a kick – I just want to fly...”), I very much doubt that I am the only one. So my question to the forum would be: is there anyone else, active or retired, who started for the same reasons and can put my mind at ease, either by confirming or denying my worries, thereby helping me in my decision of whether or not to continue with skydiving? Thank you. - Julius

...and yet only cut his lip -- guess it really was his lucky day: Sure was...

-13F (-25°C) near Munich, Germany... (with 104F / 40°C as the high point last summer) -35F (-37°C) in the Swiss alps...

Actually, mud volcanos have very little indeed to do with "classic" volcanos. There is no actual volcano involved, not even a magma chamber... It is believed that the outbreak was caused by a company drilling for oil. The geological structure at that area on Java is such that there is a limestone layer at a depth of couple of hundred metres, underneath which groundwater flows. The water itself is at high pressure due to the weight of the earth above it. The puncturing of the limestone layer during the drilling caused the water to shoot up the borehole, mixing with the earth, causing the "mud eruptions". Typically, oil boreholes are sheathed with steel to prevent such incidents, but this was neglected for the one on Java.

An alternative would be to drink Mate tea (aka Jesuit's tea) instead. It relieves hunger pangs, and is actually good for you...

"At age 84 you will perish under strange circumstances involving a gallon of lotion, two nine volt batteries, and a photograph of a bicycle." So not going there... _______ Edit: Retrying it gives another prediction, which seems, eerily enough, all the more likely: "At age 43 the artificial intelligence software you programmed becomes self aware and devours you. You will be saved to disk though, so no worries." Think I ought to change jobs...

From what I've heard, horse meat is supposed to be the closest equivalent (a bit richer and sweeter in taste than either pork or beef).

Predator? An easy one: "End of line."

This link was originally posted in the BASE forum as part of the thread on the stuntman that jumped from the London Eye on Thursday last week: http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/basejump.shtml What struck me as maybe being of interest in terms of this forum was the bit at the end of the article, where it is stated that: "Gary now plans to jump from a plane one mile up with no parachute. He hopes to land safely using only a wingsuit - a specially made jumpsuit which contains wings - a feat that has never been attempted before. He is now looking for sponsorship to make the attempt possible, and hopes an aviation company will back him." Somehow this made me cringe...

- George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series might be an idea (the first book is "A Game of Thrones") - Roger Zelazny's "Amber" books (the first series at least) - John Crowley's "Little Big" - Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" series - Pretty much anything by Isaac Asimov - Maybe something by R.E. Feist, Julian May, or Gordon R. Dickson In the UK there are two series, entitled "SF Masterworks" and "Fantasy Masterworks" that are (re-)publishing pretty much all of the classics (e.g., Olaf Stapledon, Alfred Bester, Cordwainer Smith, E.R. Eddison, Jack Vance)

From the results I got by googling this one a bit, that might be a tad difficult. It seems as if Yves Rossy shot the actual video, but never released it to the public. That being said, Lionel Charlet did use some of the footage for his movie "Vols Blancs", but not all of it. Your best bet would probably be to send a really nice mail to Yves and ask him whether it might be possible to get a high quality copy...

Gandhi The Falcon and the Snowman Dune Tron Wargames Where Eagles Dare Star Wars Chariots of Fire Dead Poets Society The Mission Animals are Beautiful People

Why bother, when being a misanthropic cynic is so much more fun...

Seems to be... Len Lesser _____ Seems I've got to learn to type faster -- PhreeZone got there two minutes ahead of me...

...although it may be argued that the French, of all people, would be the ones most likely to use them in the right manner (the 300 years following the invasion of 1066 had a bit of influence on the language after all)...

LAMO I sure hope it was staged though -- they can't seriously expect people to go through all that just to see whether they're drunk or not, can they?

Thanks. That also explains why I never heard of it... Allow me to reciprocating with the recipe for the aforementioned "Spanish Vanilla Cake" (all measures are in the metric system though). For the dough: 80 grams dark baking chocolate (70/30/38) 50 g candied lemon peel, chopped 50 g almonds, chopped 110 g flour 50 g butter 150 g marzipan base 150 g sugar marrow from two vanilla pods 6 egg yolks 5 egg albumen Start mixing butter with marzipan base, add 1/3 of the sugar, the vanilla marrow, and 1 egg yolk and beat until frothy. Add in other egg yolks. Froth egg albumen and slowly add the rest of the sugar, continue beating until mass can be cut. Carefully add the whipped egg whites to the marzipan/butter mass using a wooden spatula. Cut the baking chocolate into medium sized pieces and mix with the almonds, candied lemon peels, and flour. Carefully combine with the marzipan/butter mass. Bake for 40-45 minutes at 190 degrees centigrade (use a round cake tin with a diameter of 24 centimetres). For the frosting: 40 g strained apricot jam 160 g marzipan base 90 g icing sugar 300 g standard baking chocolate (60/40/38) Let the cake cool down for about 10 minutes, then overturn and let it cool to room temperature. Spread a thin layer of heated strained apricot jam over the top and sides of the cake. Mix marzipan base with icing sugar; roll out to a thin layer and use it to cover the cake (should be a smooth surface). Melt baking chocolate in a hot water bath and spread over cake. Enjoy.

Having met a few women that were quite offended by me trying to help them into their coat, or offering to carry something for them, I couldn't agree more... (And no, I was not a total stranger to them, before anyone asks... )

Most women I've met fall into one of three categories when it comes to intelligence: 1. The type that insists on cheap pickup lines, as they think that it is the holy grail when it comes to identifying "cool" guys. 2. The type that either believe or act more stupid than they really are, since they seem to think that guys aren't interested in intelligent women. 3. Intelligent women. Sadly type 3s tend to already be in stable relationships...

The question is – why should you? It is a damn inefficient way of doing things. If you need a liver, grow a liver. Growing an entire clone is one hell of a waste of energy and resources, seeing that there is really only one person that can truly use the corresponding organs. How many times does it happen that someone needs a "full organ set replacement"? I am not saying that I would not abhor the idea of using clones as spare part donors. I'm just not too worried about it, as all other methods are more efficient, and I therefore assume that there is no reason to even try to move in that direction. Using pigs as organ donors is a debate that has been going on a long time. There are multiple issues associated with the idea, not among the least being diseases crossing the species barrier after xenotransplantation. Another interesting titbit is that the pigs used for this type of research tend to be genetically modified to make the organs more compatible by introducing human genes.

A pity really, "proper" baking is fun!

Thinking of most of the restaurants I frequent, they'd have to reprint their menus, adding about 2 pages convering the list of ingrediences. On top of that there is the difficulty of rotating cooks, who tend to have distinct styles of preparing the same dish, thereby changing the fat / calorie component somewhat. Prepackaged products are produced in a controlled environment -- hard to enforce in an average restaurant, and nigh impossible for certain types of cuisine. I think that a ban might even be warranted in that type of environment, guaranteeing some sort of minimum standard for food purchased in restaurants. In my view I'd agree though that for supermarket goods a ban seems superfluous.