nathaniel

I'm interested more in why he thinks otherwise rather than that. Whenever this subject coms up it seems like there's always a lot of hushed tones... I really wish we could muster up the courage to reason our way through it. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Rubbish. To the original poster: what's your * age (old/middle/young), * sex (F/M), * type of employment (blue/white collar, public sector/private sector is detailed enough), * height (short/average/tall), * income class (low, middle, upper is detailed enough, or don't say if you don't want to) * level of education ( bachelor) The reason for these personal questions is that for an average-sized person 150 sqft might be on the risky side, and your answers to these questions help us determine how likely it is you actually mean to be seeking out risk. Nobody is going to tell you to go ahead and make a risky decision because we live in a litigious society and as a community skydivers are terrified of lawsuits. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I've got about 2 jumps on my new pilot and no issues yet. The slider is HUGE. Much larger than the slider on my old Sabre-1 that's 2 sizes bigger, and which always opened briskly but not painfully, except once before I started jumping a wingsuit Also the slider on the pilot seems relatively long / thin compared to the shape of the slider on the sabre-1. I wonder if that contributes to on-heading openings. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Well then, lets start from scratch. What justification do we have for believing the 45-degree rule to begin with? Other than you heard someone else say that it works, of course. I believe the 45-degree rule might "work" because it will take a reasonable person at least 5-7 seconds staring blankly out the door before they realize they have no freaking clue where a 45-degree angle line might be, and that's often enough time to survive. I'd prefer they actually counted off seconds in accordance with the ground speed...but there's a lot of risk in this sport, eh? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

That's quite an epistemological theory you've got there. How would you prove it? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

atypical? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

But hey the housing market hasn't crashed yet! My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

is it wrong to laugh at the google adsense ads at the bottom of this Chicago Tribune story about it? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

That's not quite a valid argument. Lots of companies do stupid things, like spending hundreds of dollars on a Verisign SSL certificate instead of dozens of dollars at one of their competitors. Lots of companies also do not test their employees (such as mine), yet manage to stay in business. That doesn't prove it's malarkey either. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Actually I believe it's the other way around. Risk taking is correlated with wealth. Presumably people with bad credit take fewer risks / worse risks. It's not risk taking itself that puts a business in harm's way--generally small businesses face enormous risks in their day-to-day operation under any circumstance. The threat to a business is taking bad risks, eg, using the company car excessively for personal purposes, and / or failing to seize good ones, eg breaking rote procedures in order to retain customers. How many people do you know who have maxed out their credit cards that are also investing in their 401k (a form of risk taking) vs taking vacations and buying useless crap with their take home pay? edited for word choice My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

To expound on this, it's not just some concocted HR mumbo jumbo, there is actual science that shows people's risk taking is fairly uniform between finances & other aspects of their lives. So someone with a terribly poor credit history is in fact likely to be someone who may put the business at risk--including other current employees who could lose their jobs if the business goes belly up. Which is not to say that all people with bad credit have poor judgement, but the odds are good enough for many employers to play them. It's not fair to everybody. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I got hooked on jasmine tea on a work trip to hong kong a couple years ago. Seems like they served it with every meal, and in between as well. One thing that it took me a little while to get used to as a coffee drinker is that teas are often better when rather dilute, even 45 seconds for some green teas or else you'll get all kinds of bitter flavors out of the leaves. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

That about sums it up for me. MS may be a software company, but their content is 100% pure unadulterated mediocrity. Even after they purchased Bullfrog they've turn out nothing but crap. What MS is good at is marketing, so they do tend to sell reasonably well and make you feel good about what you bought. Until you realize it's mostly just hype and playing their games is just meh. Presumably the marketing drones have influence over the high level decisions about game design like everything else at M$, so they create this wonderbread crud that nails the center of the market and sells reasonably well and is 100% retrodding over familiar ground. Although I do suspect that the PS3 launch lineup will be even worse than the X360's is. Seeing as the PS3 is more of a departure from current game hardware architectures ... and the X360 launch lineup wound up including a bunch of regular Xbox games missing functionality that couldn't get ported to the new platform in time for the launch... So the answer is...too soon to tell. When the PS3 is launched the X360 will just be getting its first quality titles, and it'll probably be a few months after that for the A+ material to hit the shelves for either console. Developers are still wringing hidden performance out of the PS2--just compare the smoothness & scale of GTA:SA vs GTA3 and God of War vs any other fighting game on the PS2. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Depends on what you want out of it. It's not a pda, but there are at least a few good games out for it. Some of the guys I work with have em and like them, and it does appear to be solidly constructed. But I couldn't imagine trying to watch a movie on a little 4" 480x272 screen. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Aha! My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

This site says that red phosphorous produces white phosphorous by condensation after burning. I suppose that's a good reason not to burn sparklers indoors. Tho it's probably not nearly in the original concentrations of the red phosphorous after burning and condensation. edit to add: actually that site and several others I've come across indicate that red phosphorous and WP are just allotropes and produce the same P2O5 when burning (which then chemically converts to H3PO4), and that the advantage of the red stuff is primary its stability as a solid. Which makes me wonder about the safety of red phosphorous smoke in relation to WP. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Well, it's been used as a weapon for decades, I conclude that its proposed reclassification is not due to the novelty of its employment or effects. Do you suppose they'd ban its advantageous use as a smoke screen if it were used on allies instead of enemies? Or is this never done at all -- you can tell I'm not in the military. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I believe it's used in certain types of pest traps as a poison, and was used in old types of matches My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

That's not what the CDC found. Their remarks we more consistent with a dilute acid, in my non-professional opinion. It all depends on the concentration of the smoke. They found that it's physically possible to saturate the air with a concentration that would probably be toxic. The only study we have on acute inhalation in humans shows what appears to be a fairly high concentration of gas in the air (and I may be wrong about this), much higher than the concentration by mass of the gases used in WWI and resulting in only minor effects on the subjects. What's your reference? edited for a minor clarification. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I think it's lost on some people that it's the concentration and amount of a substance that makes it toxic. Nearly all substances can be toxic if the right concentration and conditions of exposure can be found. This includes our absolute necessities such as air and water at room temperature and pressure--hyperventilation, drowning and hyponatremia. And it includes lead in bullets as well as WP smoke. Toxic isn't a black/white scenario, its a sliding scale. WP smoke and lead are definitely further toward the nasty end than the worst things I'd like to keep in my living room, but I don't think exposure to either is equivalent to mustard gas or drinking/breathing concentrated acid. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Perhaps then I misread markharju when he wrote Or perhaps I didn't That's not the whole picture that I picked up from the CDC profiles. Maybe you should go read them yourself. It's definitely their conclusion that a high enough concentration of WP will kill, but that's a far mark from saying that WP smoke in Vietnam o Fallujah is toxic. I didn't pick up that the subjects in the 1935 study suffered permanent effects, and the CDC report on WP says that no long-term studies of acute exposure could be found. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

The devil, of course, is in the details. I think the precise toxic effect is far from clear from the CDC profiles. But I detect a bit of a contrast between the profile of Sulphur Mustard, which states and and the information put forth about WP, which includes studies of humans in 1935 that produced only minor effects at concentrations of 500-600 mg / m^3 in exposures of 3 - 15 minutes. The question to me is not whether it could be toxic at any arbitrarily high concentration (which it probably can, according to the CDC) but whether the concentration it reaches in the method of employment is likely to be toxic. Right now I don't think there's any definitive scientific evidence either way, but I think the scant scientific evidence we have and the available empirical evidence suggests that it is not. Do you have another source of information that would show differently? Or shall we engage in more armchair chemistry? A little bit of evidence is all it would take to change my mind. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

If you want security in your transaction get a mutually trusted person or a person with a reputation (eg, a DZO, or a well known rigger, or a gear store, etc) to vouch for each other. If that's not possible & it's a complete stranger consider using an escrow service. There are many types of fraud, some of them subtle. Most transactions are not fraudulent. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I don't believe it, this is the president who said he'd bring dignity to the white house [/sarcasm] My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I'd say because they were looking for excuses to start a war. They also touted mobile homes as chemical weapons factories. I think in retrospect a lot of the stuff they came up with was specious. Although after reading some of the CDC stuff I'm increasingly of the mindset that WP could be used as a poison, for instance if it was used to contaminate food, or if it could be delivered to people continuously over a long time like an occupational exposure instead of as an incendiary with an acute exposure among victims. I don't consider lead in bullets to be a chemical weapon, but I'm sure we can think of ways to use lead in bullets in contravention to the CWC. So it depends on how Saddam planned to use it as far as whether stockpiling it could be evil. It's certainly a dual-use chemical with the primary industrial and military uses being other than chemical weapons. So I'd say now it depends on how the US uses it if it's to be considered illegal today. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?