Bob_Church

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Everything posted by Bob_Church

  1. Bob_Church
    There are many ways to do something like this, but this guy seems to have gone straight for the worst. And from the way he's talking I don't think he gets the down side. It's like in the James Bond movie when they've just got him back from North Korea and Michael Madsen's character says something like "look at him, he still thinks he's a hero." Every time I read the article I'm more amazed. "Rewind to November 2017 and Arsalan was a member of a WhatsApp group with other people in the university's Bracton Law Society But the tone of the messages turned nasty - and Arsalan decided to post some of them to Facebook. They were shared thousands of times." http://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-43987148
  2. Bob_Church
    If you practice your flares at altitude, above 1k, are you able to stall the canopy? If not you might try wrapping the brake lines around your hands a few times to shorten them. But practice your flares at altitude and see what happens.
  3. Bob_Church
    I suspect that if the UK-US stayed completely out of Iran's workings they'd have ended up another Soviet Shithole. I mean Soviet Satellite, of course.
  4. Bob_Church
    And always remind them "you only get one chance at recording your first jump"
  5. Bob_Church
    I think it's impossible to exaggerate how much the nuclear standoff affected things. Right or wrong, real or faked, it justified anything. "Should we do this?" "If we don't they'll nuke us." "ok"
  6. Bob_Church
    Thanks,
  7. Bob_Church
    Yep. Keep in mind though that the original poll asked about liberal vs. conservative, which no longer has much to do with democrat vs republican. Sorry, but I'm missing something here. I'm not getting what you're saying.
  8. Bob_Church
    "US policy needs to have a more moral center.Sure. But the world has some tough actors. Putin, Erdogan, Kim, Duterte and others. Sometimes a sub rosa operation to move bad actors in the right direction shouldn't be discounted. " People have gotten very good at ignoring what isn't convenient to their world view. At lunch this week one guy said "you know Hitler killed six million people and the world went after him, but Stalin killed many more and nobody noticed." Nobody noticed? Well, I suppose it would seem that way if you're one of those who have somehow decided that the Cold War never happened. Decades of the world divided in half and nukes aimed at each other made for some rough calls that even the people making them didn't like, but the alternatives were sometimes just too unacceptable.
  9. Bob_Church
    We are definitely on the same page. I never thought it would get quite this strange.
  10. Bob_Church
    That would have scared me to the point of just jumping out of the plane right then to get away from it. I didn't say it would be a smart move, just one of those primal fear things that usually earns you a Darwin award. I was sitting on the floor of a D-18 once and looking out the space where the cargo door would have been I could see a thin cloud, sort of like a contrail, very high and it looked solid against the blue sky. As cold as it was I started sweating and wanted to jump right then. I kept it to myself though. It's just a strange phobia I've always had. When I was a kid I'd have nightmares about standing at the base of a cliff or tower, not on top of it.
  11. Bob_Church
    At this point I really can't think of myself as anything more than an observer in the ultimate political farce. As for Democrat or Republican I never lost sight of the fact that they're both a bunch of politicians. Period. They aren't our friends, they're suits, even when it happens to be pants suits.
  12. Bob_Church
    This story reminds me of my first and so far only balloon jump in 1982. No, we didn't take the balloon near a tornado, but the pilot/owner, John Firor, had actually flown a sailplane very near one once. For Science, just like these folks. I'll type up the jump down in the History and Trivia section, but I thought people might like this story. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/noaa-scientists-chasing-studying-tornadoes-from-the-sky/
  13. Bob_Church
    That's the "beat them into submission" approach. I.e. wait until things are so bad that they change. Of course, sometimes they don't change. Another approach is to understand what the issues are that one can affect one's self (i.e. things I can impact that might have an effect on crime elsewhere). So in other words, rather than rich people waiting for poorer people to get so poor and downtrodden that they come begging, instead, rich people stop behaviors that increase division (like waiting for domestic help to get so cheap, or buying cool stuff just because it's cheap, when it might not be made here). Wendy P. I couldn't agree more but how to get there. And believe, it's not just rich Republicans that will shoot you down when you bring up these problems.
  14. Bob_Church
    A couple of the jumper/riggers at Bidwell built their own Strato Flyers by looking at other people's. I ended up jumping one of those for my first two square jumps, which was almost my last jump. But it wasn't the canopies fault, I stalled it then just let go of the wooden toggles. Blammmm. A couple of years later Neil Drain bought a brand new Strato Cloud and it came with a manual and everything. He read the disclaimer and said "according to this, I could cut this canopy into 12" squares and they don't guarantee I could wipe my ass with it."
  15. Bob_Church
    "Not really, we explain that the pay goes directly to the TI for the additional pain and suffering we endure. Most of the big jumpers are heavy because they're built, not because they're fat so it's rarely embarrassing to them. If we get the feeling that we're going to embarrass someone by putting them on a scale in front of all their friends and charge them extra because they're fat we'll take them with no extra fee" That's a great way to do it. The only real problem I remember at TAS was when Steve, who visited the DZ to do heavy tandems, took a body builder up. You'd think a guy with near zero body fat would be a good health risk but he damned near died. It turns out that without that layer of fat your blood vessels get pinched off. He was bright red and unconscious when they landed.
  16. Bob_Church
    Extra $$$ and a tip, I'd be cool with that. Esp. considering the dude was in great shape, I bet. I'm just tired of lugging couch potatoes out the door, way over our posted weight, for not a dime more. My back is tired. Yeah, I wouldn't either. I get all the beefcakes since I'm the lightest TI and I have no shame in taking every cent of the fat tax since my Monday morning breakfast comes with a side of Ibuprofen. Just curious, but have any of you been given grief for being anti-fat, or whatever they're calling it this week?
  17. Bob_Church
    Maybe the answer is in The Cloud.
  18. Bob_Church
    Anyone who can convince the world that Windows is a viable option for computing must have the gift.
  19. Bob_Church
    Comcast has partnered with Independent Health to, well, I'm not sure what the reasoning is. But here's a quote "Companies say the cross-sector partnership will create open source platform that it hopes other tech companies will use to innovate." Has Open Source become the new term for "yeh, we'll be hacked and all your private information will be stolen in no time at all?" http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/comcast-partners-independence-health-create-digital-health-company
  20. Bob_Church
    "As a newer jumper I had to work through feelings of guilt and bruised ego when more experienced jumpers told me I should be jumping a smaller canopy, "what's wrong with you, how come you're still on that beast?" A couple more years in the sport and I've seen friends get hurt - and one died - because they downsized too quickly. And that guilt and "need" to get smaller vanished, and I was glad my coaches support a conservative progression. So if you're content on your current wing, tell your "friends" that you're quite happy on the wing you're flying, thanks; and if they keep pushing just tell them to stuff it. Longevity is more important than looking cool. " And the loss of jumpers isn't just from injuries. A jumper is doing fine and having great time but gives in to pressure to downsize. Now every jump scares them, sucking all the joy out of skydiving, and they start showing up less and less often until eventually someone says "whatever happened to..." and the Sport gets a little smaller.
  21. Bob_Church
    The article also mentions an increase in cooperation between residents and police. I wonder if citizens in the hardest hit areas are just fed up with being victims and have gotten to the point where day to day life is more important than tired 60s rhetoric.
  22. Bob_Church
    Plants love electrolytes
  23. Bob_Church
    Probably not. Much of the utility of a school network involves being connected to email and other services (emergency school closings, communications with parents, transmission of school records to colleges etc.) And even airgapping isn't foolproof. All it takes is a USB drive, or even connection of a battery powered router in an inconspicuous location. Ok, and yet we insist on using this system and storing and moving confidential information this way. Why? Who decided that the convenience of a network over the ways the information was shared before outweighs the damage that will be caused when it gets hacked?
  24. Bob_Church
    Atlanta had something similar happen. Don't know the details but the ransom was something like $50K but they spent a couple million fixing the systems that were compromised. We're overdue for moving past the yahoo stage of computer networking.
  25. Bob_Church
    Probably not. Much of the utility of a school network involves being connected to email and other services (emergency school closings, communications with parents, transmission of school records to colleges etc.) And even airgapping isn't foolproof. All it takes is a USB drive, or even connection of a battery powered router in an inconspicuous location. What we need is a real life version of U.N.C.L.E.. Remember, they were international and a law unto themselves. Their agents would track down hackers of all and any sort, wherever they are, and do really bad things to them when they find them.