nacmacfeegle

"You just let them mislead themselves. They really do believe the conclusion, and you didn't have to do anything." Ah Tom, the 'they duped themselves' theory. Definitely worthy of consideration and one that is probably closer to reality than many would like to admit. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"Could you provide a few links so I can read about it. No wacko sites please." Its easy, google for Bush Skull and bones, you'll get plenty of respectable sites, eg http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/02/01/wyale01.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/02/01/ixnewstop.html from the UK's Telegraph (albeit a right wing media source, its usually fairly accurate). I found this stuff out while investigating claims that Bush's grampa was found guilty of doing deals with the Nazis. Again Google Prescott Bush...... http://www.nhgazette.com/cgi-bin/NHGstore.cgi?user_action=detail&catalogno=NN_Bush_Nazi_2 He was also a 'Bonesman', and I make no claims over the reliability of this particular factoid (the Nazi dealings thing). Back to the Skull and Bones society, to be fair it looks like student high jinks, oh, and Kerry was a member also, if thats any compensation.

Okay, I appreciate the budget constraints, cut backs etc, but lets look at things from the outside. 2 of the best (allegedly) and most extensive intelligence gathering communities in the world both came to he same erroneus conclusion, at the same time..... This smacks of either collusion, coincidence, or conspiracy. So budgets and cut backs aside, who was yanking our chains? More importantly, due to 'group think' explanation nobody will lose their jobs, how do we prevent the same situation (duff intel being fed to our decision makers) arising again? I like Wendy's theory. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Okay, just for the sake of some discussion, I'm willing to accept that both Bush and Blair, along with the entire CIA, and MI6 are claiming they were duped, conned, misled, lied to whatever. So...... Who was doing the duping? The third man on the grassy knoll, aliens, OBL? Bring along your sense of humour, lets see where this one goes..... Personally, I reckon it might have been the Iranians (no offence Darius). Manipulating and humiliating two old adversaries to destroy a third old enemy was, IMHO a master stroke of subterfuge. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

I'll probably get myself some kevlar. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"Do on to others, as you want done to you." As opposed to Do unto others, before they do it to you...... -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"I think if you're a dirt-bag, whether you're Republican, Democrat, or Independent, you should be called on it. " See?, we are more alike than we might care to admit sometimes. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"It works." Obviously..... -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"Plenty of scumbags to go around, no party has a monopoly." No single country has that monopoly either. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Google>images type DHC8 into the search box, or go here http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1155404#1155404 -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"looks like a DHC Dash-8 Q400 to me..." I'd go with that, only cos I was looking at Dash 8s for another thread -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

There are 13 different Snell standards, so selecting, say, a Snell rated helmet may not necessarilly be pertinant to our particular suite of hazards and mitigation requirements. EG a Snell rated horse riding helmet might not be an awful lot of use, but its still Snell 'compliant'. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

You are really looking for great value, as opposed to cheap, surely. Have you thought about South African gear? -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"The people have given the power to the two big parties." We have a multi party system here, it has its good points and bad points. Good side is that our elections can be real fun, The Monster Raving Looney Party for example fronted by Screaming Lord Sutch http://www.omrlp.com/ Aside from entertainment we also have a forum to raise some issues the big boys might note be so interested in, eg environmental concerns, age support etc, and quite often even one member elected on these grounds can create change. Ah, but there is an inherent down side, that is the nightmare of a hung parliament. It is quite feasible that the party that wins the election can be outnumbered by the other parties, who each do not have as many seats as the winning party, but if they combine their votes on things like changing legislation, can stop changes being passed. Basically legislative and constitutional change can be stalled, making the government pretty ineffective. Under this system we also see a lot of tactical voting where you may not necessarily vote for the party you want to win, rather you vote to keep certain individuals out of power. And that is just plain crazy to me. I don't really know which is better, all I have experience of is the way we do things here, and its certainly not perfect. Our elections have a lot less mud slinging in them though, they are in fact pretty boring to watch as an outsider, unlike yours which provide new entertainment on an almost daily basis. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"This is not a viable (econimical) option for many or most manufacturers of skydiving helmets (wild guess here)." I reckon the major cost would be reworking non conforming models, redesigning, retooling, re-testing etc. That said, an 'approved' helmet would almost market itself, as the first one would set the bar for all others to follow. But I'm taking a SWAG (scientific wild assed guess) on the hassles involved with testing and conformance requirements. "Thus i like to think they are build tough enough but simply didn't run through the cert process." I suspect so as well, although I've seen some pretty flimsy looking lids around (Gath for example), it would be interesting to see how they all stack up. I think that devising suitable test criteria and actually testing some existing models would be a great college/university project for someone. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

"Have the base built out of people like me...big and fat." Tsk, we are 'aerodynamically optimised for hybrid dives'. The Shiner diet works better and is more effective than the cocaine diet for velocitous descents. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1152555#1152555 Kennedy likes it, so do I and a few others, but I'm on the right side of the pond. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Unless Deuce has a TriBand phone, it will be useless. European cell phones work on different frequencies from the states. But....if Deuce has your cell number, you may get an occassional drunk text from a stranger with a strange accent speaking funny. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

I took the Mininac to see the real live Thomas, and Percy, Douglas, Bertie, and a walkling talking Fat Controller this weekend. He was kinda phased by seeing real life steam belching, fire breathing full size locomotives, but it was fun. Kids are cool. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Bon voyage, I'll catch up with you to speak funny in Edinburgh on monday. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

You'd be surprised by the image quality Ivan. I haven't tried any of my booby movies on it yet, but later today I'll be testing it with some skydiving footage to see how it handles rapid movement..... -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Y'know what pisses me off most about mobile phones? Its those tossers who leave them on their desks when they go walkabout in the office. Unattended mobile phones ringing on desks are fair game for being dropped out the window (its okay we work at ground level, but it is fun and therapeutic). -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Okay, the following is intended to discuss helmet design and testing, its not intended to contradict anybody.

On the CD changer for the ride into work this morning:- U2's Joshua Tree Stevie Ray Vaughan's Greatest hits Led Zeppelin's Later Years (a best of) JJ Cale's 5 Buddy Guy's Feels Like Rain And Paul Rodger's Tribute to Muddy Waters (a load of MW's cover versions by Free and Bad Company's front man). I arrived in a remarkably good mood. -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson

Dave Man, get with the programme, all you need is some duct tape and an Ipod. But Ipods are soooo last year, what you really want is an Archos, then you can have skydivingmovies.com (or for that matter, the complete series of The Dukes) wherever you go http://www.archos.com/products/av300_series.html Paired with a some of these.... http://www.gadgets.co.uk/eye-top-eyetop-video-glasses-screen.html The goggles can be paired with just about any camcorder, so you could run them from a hand mount........ Mmmmm....gismos...mmmm..... -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson