livendive

Of course we all know this argument didn't work in Madolyn's favor, given that Roger Nelson and Jessie Farrington WERE on the ballot. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

No Paul, that's not what he said. You made an amazing leap of logic there that seems to have included USPA not only depending on the GM program for survival, but for the GM program to be dependent on the dues of one or two specific dropzones for its survival. It's entirely possible that a person can support Mike Mullins, his kids, and the USPA, all at the same time. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

I seriously doubt Mike has made much of a profit off his sons. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Actually it's relatively expensive coffee that I buy each morning, but the additional cost to the individual members to replace ALL funding of the GM program would be less than one cup of that coffee per year. Then again it would be silly to replace ALL the revenues generated by the GM program. Why reimburse for advertising space in Parachutist that could either be a) not printed, or b) sold at market value? Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

I'll go one better. In the last BOD election, one of the candidates sent me way too much money toward an ad I ran in Skydiving magazine. When I ended up collecting more than needed, I asked him for his address to send the balance back to him. He asked that I please keep it and spend it paying for the slots of newbies I was jumping with. That reminds me...I need to e-mail him and tell him about the slot he bought yesterday. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

I agree. However it hasn't always been this way and it would be quite easy for skydivers to take the reins back, if we were motivated en masse. Unfortunately that seems less and less likely these days. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Group membership status and safety are wholly unrelated topics. Asking if group member DZs are safer is like asking if gray cars have better transmissions. As for the topic drift later in this thread, it's absurd. Rating courses are *supposed* to be a benefit of individual membership, not group membership. I'm currently in the process of trying to give an instructional rating course for a couple guys who want their IAD ratings. I called USPA to find out how far in advance I have to notify them (i.e. could I do it the following weekend) and was told "One day, day of, whatever, we just need to know beforehand...as long as it's at a group member dropzone." Now given that myself and the two candidates are USPA members (and instructors for that matter), why should the group membership status of whatever DZ we do it at have any impact on the scheduling? Also, if we were to do it at a non-group member DZ, why should those two guys have to pay a penalty of $200 apiece in order to attend a rating course that would be EXACTLY the same in terms of content if I held it at a group member DZ? One last thing. Mike Mullins is a fucking excellent BOD member who's there to support skydivers, not to try and sway policy for the benefit of his DZ, or get an inside track on Nationals, or anything like that. We need more people like him and Gary Peek on the BOD, not fewer. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

AAS - Environmental Restoration, just finishing up my last two classes for a BS in Environmental Quality. I did environmental compliance work at a National Lab for about 10 years, and have spent the last 6 months working on groundwater protection at the Hanford nuclear reservation. I have no idea what the average salary in the US is these days, but if I had to guess, I'd say I'm probably leaning slightly to the right of it Edit to add file attachment from the BLS showing median incomes for a fairly diverse set of jobs and segregated by gender, just in case anyone else is curious where you fall. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

"aaanndd......got it." "Oh my god that feels better! I guess that explains all the snide comments about the way I walk!" "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

We don't even have to go to her site, just really look at the Cantwell's cash page you cited. The general tone is childish in the extreme, which is a bit telling in consideration of the bottom right hand corner "Paid for by the Washington State Republican Party" Additionally, the "facts" are just plain not facts, as their own link gives testament to (i.e. the Center for Responsive Politics) Search for her then read the "Important Notice" that precedes her list of supposed PAC contributions: Maria comes across as very intelligent (something I consider critical to being a good President), as well as honest, and she seems truly interested in doing what's best for her constituents. She often takes the high road rather than getting into the mudslinging so common in today's political realm, and her positions parallel mine on many issues. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

1. John McCain. 2. Maria Cantwell. 3. Colin Powell. "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

1:7:1 1 airplane landing (tandem student wouldn't jump) 7 jumps 1 case of beer bought and drank for no particular reason Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Ten things I don't know about women? OK... 1. Who's idea was it that the proper response to "What's wrong?" should be "nothing" and why? 2. Why do you go to the bathroom together? 3. Why do you answer "I don't care, you pick" when we give you a choice between two options, and then suddenly care after we flip a coin to decide it? 4. What is the proper response to "Does this make me look fat?" 5. Why is it the man who is always expected to "fix" a bit of silence during a phone call? We fix things we can get our hands on. Phone conversations are your thing. 6. Do you honestly think we can tell the difference between 15 different shades of lipstick? We see "slutty red", "regular red", "purple", and "black". That's it. 7. Why in the world would you want 5 different pairs of black "pumps"? And while on the topic, what the hell ARE "pumps"? 8. Why do women's bathrooms have couches in them? ... To be continued... DZ just called and needs me on a load. :-) Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

In keeping with this thread, there are LOTS of things some of us men don't know about women (and their clothes, gadgets, make-up, etc). What the hell are "sidecutters"? You mean toenail clippers? Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Agreed. If McCain had won the Republican nomination in the last election, he'd have gotten my vote (not that it would have mattered). Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Pet peeve much? Pomposity is not a prerequisite of intelligence. A profoundly gifted person is only slightly more likely to run a country than a person with profound mental retardation. Both represent extremely small percentages of a population and are unlikely to desire such a position. Additionally, the skills that make a successful politician do not require that a person be gifted at all, much less highly, extremely, or profoundly gifted. That's not to say that intelligent people haven't done some horrible things, but so have morons. The vast majority of horrible things that have been done in the world have been accomplished by persons with an IQ that is within two standard deviations of the mean, i.e. neither gifted nor retarded. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

You make some good points. I do however believe that treatment of the SAT as an IQ test has become fairly well accepted. That doesn't make it right, as it has a significant cultural bias and tests more memorization than cognitive ability, but the practice has not been limited to college campuses. For example, SATs taken before 1994 still count as qualifying exams for Mensa membership. (Those taken after 1/31/94 "no longer correlate with an IQ test") That said, verbal acuity is a valid parameter to include when trying to define someone's IQ. Unfortunately it's also the one most difficult to guage in an unbiased manner. You speaking four languages is testimony to your ability to understand the processes of communication, but not necessarily the nuances. The best analogy I can think of is woodworking. Imagine a framer who can visualize walls, angles, joists, trusses, etc the first time through and then frame a house without all the mistakes someone else might make. It just comes naturally to him. On the other hand imagine a man who handcrafts furniture. He might not be able to build a house like the other guy, but he can take blocks and dowels etc and make something that is both functional and visually appealing. Both men are craftsmen in their own right, but at different things. It would be unreasonable to expect either of them to immediately excel at the other's work. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Mostly a hunch, based on conversations in which both the originator of that table and I have been involved. Granted he never claimed that he got the numbers from "IQ and the Wealth of Nations", but rather that he got the idea to include a column of mean income for each state from that book (the original had such a column). He claimed the IQ data to be from Ravens APM tests, but has not provided a source for that data. Subsequent publications have kind of screwed it up and attributed the data to the book. Anyhow, given the nature of the data, and the fact that it so perfectly supports his normal perspective, I'm inclined to believe he made those numbers up. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Apparently "The Economist" has been suckered. I do not believe "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" offers a breakdown of average IQ by US state. In fact, I'd be somewhat surprised to learn that anyone has defensible data of that sort. Even if such data exists, I'm quite confident this is not it. Consider that the US average IQ is ~98, and the standard deviation is ~16. State lines are just not that discriminating. Sorry to rain on the parade, I'd like to believe it myself. Oh well, you can still hang your hat on higher IQs loosely correlating with more liberal outlooks, just not quite this neatly. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

I'm guessing they'll have a hard time selling such a notion (one I suspect to be true) to today's society that doesn't seem to blink at the concept of prosecuting 10-year-olds as adults. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Well, not in it's "entirety." When we hit a building with a big-ass explosive device, we pretty much "mean" to kill everyone in the building. Other forms of denial include "We didn't KNOW those women/children were in the building", and more recently/disturblingly things along the lines of "Well we knew they were in there but didn't have a choice." Real world examples of this one include those people who said "If those people didn't want to die, they shouldn't have gone to a mosque where they knew combatants were holed up." and similar variants. I don't see any purpose in trying to dehumanize the enemy. If you think about it rationally, I imagine you'll reach the conclusion that they don't do these things "just because they can," but rather because they think these kinds of actions are justified by their goals (whatever those may be). If it were "just because they can", they'd kill each other off and save us the trouble. Well shit. I thought we were in there to find WMDs or oust Saddam Hussein or something. If someone had simply told me at the outset that the main reason for invading Iraq was because the people there are inhuman, barbaric, and evil, I'd have been supporting it all along. Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

I've heard the same thing, but decided last night that my source MUST be wrong. Two years ago we took our Persian cat in for a haircut and she came home deaf as a result. Last night we took our rabbit in to get his nails trimmed and he's having surgery this morning to have his tail amputated as a result! Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Nope. It would take considerably more than fifty grand to get me to eat some of that stuff. I mean, if I was *assured* of winning maybe, but when the eating thing is the first competition, five people go home having tried that nasty-ass stuff for nothing! Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

Nope- The beheading was a dramatization. Sensationalism. i.e. a very public discouragement to others, as I said before. I can absolutely differentiate between the two. I'm also perfectly confident that the young children we've killed were not combatants in a war. We call them regrettable losses but supposedly worth it in the big picture. I can imagine the insurgents qualifying Nic Berg's death the same way. I'll grant you that we likely don't intend to kill those children, while these guys did intend to kill Berg, but both sides have taken actions they knew would result in the gory, horrible deaths of innocents. As I said in my initial post on this topic, I believe the biggest difference is denial. I think a fair amount of the outrage over Berg's death is that we can't imagine doing such a thing face to face. It seems inhuman to us to cause such a horrible death without a "get out of jail free" card to play afterwards, such as "we didn't KNOW there were children in there" or "we didn't MEAN to kill those particular people". Blues, Dave "I AM A PROFESSIONAL EXTREME ATHLETE!" (drink Mountain Dew)

How many of our bombing targets do you think we have identified as factories of any sort, much less unoccupied factories? I'll grant you there have likely been plenty that we ID'd as weapons caches, but it's just as likely that those represent