Bob_Church

My personal opinion, after reading that and looking at the numbers is that this was just for information gathering. They wanted to see what worked and how well. They knew that whichever of the clowns were were to choose from won we in the US were royally screwed so they weren't really concerned about results. But that's just me.

But what about the actual numbers of views as recorded by Facebook? Are you assuming those are falsified or just don't count?

It's looking as though the answer is no. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/10/congress_russian_facebook_troll_ads/

Really? I give the five of mine I've used big points for openings but not so much for landing and getting back from a long spot. The 24' flat round wasn't much for getting back from a long spot and the 20 SAC wasn't reassuring for landing, though that wasn't fair since it set me down in the driveway to Z-Hills sewage plant with me only going down on one knee.

A question in another thread got me to thinking about what canopies I've owned that felt the safest. I'd have to say that it was my Cruiselite. Whether we're talking about opening, getting you back, landing, any of it, I just never worried with that canopy. So what parachute do you remember, or have now, that made you worry the least?

"As another, individual soldiers were expected to 'die courageously and honorably' rather than surrender and submit to capture. " Ok, wait, I said I'd stop and I am but this is photography related. Honest. Cliff McCarthy took a lot of photos around Japan just after the war and one of them shows a huge shed with one man submarines. Here it is https://www.flickr.com/photos/ohiouniversitylibraries/4669326875 by the way, do you notice something about this car? https://www.flickr.com/photos/ohiouniversitylibraries/4669328297/in/gallery-huffstutterrobertl-72157624851437820/ edit: I'd first written one man suicide subs but I don't know for sure from the photo if those are Kaiten or not. I know a lot of them were dual purpose but I removed suicide just in case.

I think the Nazi thing gets complicated by the emerging facts, well, emerging acknowledgment, that while the Nazis brought German precision to killing Jews it didn't come anywhere near to starting it. The pograms started as early as the end of WW1 and a LOT of Europeans were already trying to wipe out all Jews long before Hitler came to power. One survivor of it all said that the nastiest people she encountered were Romanians. I think there's a valid question of "Did Hitler come up with the idea of the Holocaust or did he jump on the bandwagon because it was already such a popular idea?" OK, sorry, I'll stop now. I promise.

Of course not, that would be racist. It's OK provided it's an historical reference to a white European ethnicity. Oh you poor oppressed western, white male. It's such a hard world for people like us, isn't it? No, it's more that it's easier for most of us to identify with people who became Nazis than it is with Japanese. We understand the Nazis, while Japanese culture as a whole is quite alien. Besides, the Japanese didn't meticulously plan the slaughter of their own people (as far as I'm aware), their atrocities happened during conquest and occupation of foreign territories. That means the slur of "imperialist" is quite sufficient to describe them, the same as it would cover British atrocities in southern Africa or India, Belgians in the Congo, the French in North Africa, Australians against the Aboriginals or Americans against native tribes during the wetsward expansion. Now that you mention it, the Japanese did plan the slaughter of their own people through conscription. There was a saying in the Japanese military that the grunts were only worth X because that was what it would cost to replace them with another conscript (I forget the amount, but it was not much) most of whom were peasant farmers. And giving school children on Okinawa two hand grenades each with orders to pull the pins and run into groups of Allied troops while holding them.

Nips, Slopes, slants (those two refer to their eyes), Japs. Most have fallen into disuse because of their blatant racial overtones. There's also the issue that, to a large degree, the Japanese people were following their 'leader'. They thought they were following the Emperor and to a degree were, but it was largely the military who was in charge. As a culture, they have a history of blindly following their leaders. They believed that the Emperor was God incarnate. OTOH, the Nazi party was a group of people who took charge, seized power and led the world down a deadly and destructive path. The equivalent insult to "Nazi" for a Japanese national would be something along the lines of "Emperor Lover", "Military Lackey" or something like that. The downright inhumane way Japanese captors treated people doesn't back up the "only following orders" thing. Look at how prisoners were treated while building the railroad across Burma. This went way beyond policy or orders. And their constant refusal to even accept responsibility didn't help.

Of course not, that would be racist. It's OK provided it's an historical reference to a white European ethnicity. But since you mention it, how about we come up with a few? I'm thinking 'stomach stabber' or 'zero chucker' would be a good start in reference to the kind numbing brainwashing of the country. We used to get a lot of US bashing rhetoric around August 6 with the "why was the US in such a hurry to end the war" stuff. "Couldn't we have just waited awhile" Then we started getting a lot of Korean and Chinese students. Try telling someone who's great aunt was being raped 24/7 on a pleasure boat that there's no rush to end it, or tell the Chinese students with great grandparents or other relatives that had been dying daily from japanese experiments wiping out entire villages by infecting them with different diseases. Once it became little people with different colored skin and names we couldn't pronounce the slaughter of civilians just didn't count for much.

"Well, sort of. Their objective was to wipe out the Pacific fleet and the aircraft carriers stationed at Pearl. Fortunately for us their Intel was off and the carriers were out to sea when they hit us. Strangely enough, WWII ended the US policy of international isolation and created what is being lamented and bad-mouthed by the same countries that sucked us in. funny old world, ain't it? " What I've never understood is how calling someone a Nazi is one of the worst slurs we have (that part makes sense) but there isn't a Japan version.

If you guys forgive the intrusion by a noob who has nothing to add here, but has a noob question: I am wondering why, especially given lives are at stake, people don't just buy the safest canopy? I understand that all canopies are designed to do the same thing, and I assume that all canopies have to meet minimum safety regulations. However, I also assume there is a reason that students undertaking AFF have "student canopies". If I'm assuming correctly that it's because they're the safest, why would anyone stray from those types of canopies? Hanging under a 28' 7TU it was very easy to start believing that the only reason to wear a parachute was so you could open it at the end of your skydiving so you'd survive to do another. Then my paracommander opened my eyes to a very different reality, one that's been evolving ever since.

Yeh, but Washington, either by intent or more likely just good old inertia tends to go too far with that stuff. It's like Pakistan, we keep sending them bags of money because they're our friends and they seem to spend most of it on US flags to burn.

"Admittedly, nowhere near as good as we have it. They are for the most part, a starved and impoverished population that even suffered a famine in the 90's IIRC" But if they can see that another famine is coming I wonder how far he'd go to prevent it or at least get more food sent in. I was watching a documentary about Tanzania (Darwin's Nightmare, great movie) and it was chilling to hear the radio in the background announcing which regions were facing upcoming famines. It was so matter of fact that it sounded like something about the stock market.

Whoops, sorry. I rebuilt my computer then didn't notice that I'd started at page one of this thread. Sorry about that.

I heard people say that a lot but I never understood it.

Coke had this contest where you had to collect a cap with every state, or something like that and the neighbor girl, being almost grown up at 12 was trying for it. Back then pop machines had an opener on them which also neatly caught the cap. She had me and my other first grade friends going along Camden Avenue to the darkest sleaziest pool halls and bars in Parkersburg Wv. We'd ask the guy if we could go through the caps, they'd alway grunt yes, and finally got every state for her. Now they'd remove you from the home and charge your parents with a second degree felony for just walking past the place at noon.

Gone, along with (thankfully) Ben Murphy. I don't mean to keep jumping on your posts only, but we seem to have grown up in the same time/dimension.

Yeh, but it was 90 percent seeds. I remember one guy holding a plastic bag with a pound up to the light and getting excited because there were three buds in it.

That was one advantage of growing up in West Virginia. Everyone hated and distrusted the Federal Government, even in the 50s. I remember in maybe second grade, 1960 or so, a teacher came into the room and started talking in low tones to our teacher. These two ladies were discussing Duck and Cover. The one was new and didn't know what to do. I was close enough to overhear it and it's the first time I heard the joke about "In case of nuclear attack put your head between your legs and kiss your butt goodbye." We never did do the drills

My dad used to load his own ammo, too. My sibs and I used to play with molten lead on a regular basis. All of which was unsupervised, too! Soldiers, bullets, toy cars, etc... None of us got hurt either, beyond a minor drip of lead on a finger which we just shook off. I do remember a neighbor kid getting a pretty nasty burn from an Easy Bake Oven. Those light bulbs were pretty unforgiving edit to add: Every time we would stop for gas, one of us would be tasked with the job of getting out and scouring the gas station for lead tire weights that had fallen off vehicles. The reward was first melting rights. But those Mattel Vacu-Forms, you could do some real damage with those. But you couldn't remelt the metallic sheets.

r I didn't even know they changed it.

Ongoing support. Strong Enterprise has very good support, but the other factor in going with my Quasar 2, which I love is that the dzo/rigger where I jumped had one for himself AND his girlfriend jumped one. If anyone is going to know about any issues that comes up he would. This doesn't happen everywhere but a lot of times most of the people at a DZ jump a certain brand and being around people who are knowledgeable about the rig you jump seems like a good idea to me.

I don't think this would be good. For instance, there is someone on here that I was convinced was trolling me. And the posts seemed to fit the definitions but I've since come to realize that this is just how that person talk to other people. Back in the AFU and rec.skydiving days I saw a lot of trolling, and it didn't look anything like what's being posted here.

Prior to my retirement I never allowed a female student or staff member in my office unless the door was wide open. While the probability of a false accusation may be very low, the damage it can cause is extreme. I was very very lucky. I've never had children so I have a habit of adopting them, so to speak. I'd become more than friends with many of my student workers and those who used the labs. I didn't try anything with them, for one thing I assumed they had better taste than that, and I always thought of them as children as a safety device. But over the years I'd gone and done a lot with several of them including one young woman who I can honestly say is one of the most beautiful women in the world accompanying me to Joe's (the director) house in the country to feed and play with his dog when he was out of town. I never tried anything with them but to say I'd left myself vulnerable is a gross understatement.