nathaniel

Hmm, so if the high man starts backflying it becomes a low pull contest. How about having targets on both front & back My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

It's not a choice of one vs the other. One of the things that the paper addresses is the correlation of financial risk taking with other types of risk taking. It's certainly not the last word on the subject, but it was insightful to me. [podium] There's an attitude on display here, in this thread and in this forum, that skydiving is different from all other human endeavors, and that knowledge from other disciplines is not applicable to skydiving. That's a safety risk in itself. [/podium] My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I suppose driving, healthcare and playing sports have nothing to do with physical risks in your world. For the rest of us there are a couple of relevant points to take away from the article. On average * women are more risk averse than men * older people are more risk averse than younger people * shorter people are more risk averse than taller people These are things to keep in mind as a starting point when a random person asks you what canopy they should buy, whether they need an aad, etc. Certainly not the answer for everybody, but a good place to start a discussion about a person's preferences. Cheers My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I just found this study about factors correlated with risk-loving behaviours: height, sex, wealth, parental education, &c. summary. full study Fascinating. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

The GS1 looks awesome. As far as construction it's pretty solid, but a few quirks showed through. There's a lot of zippers on the suit. The arm wing cutaway is on the arm instead of the body, and a set of 4 zippers & velcro covers are used to connect the suit to your rig. The arm wing cutaway cable was two layers of ripstop nylon, the thin stuff like the wing is made of, cut in 1-cm intervals for an attractive but not very durable looking "tubing". A regular tube of thicker nylon would probably last longer, but on the other hand it's not such a big deal since it isn't necessary to constantly disconnect the cutaway system to attach the suit to your rig. There was a bib with the Jii-wings logo going across the neck to cover up the tops of all the zippers, but the primary value seemed to be cosmetic. The booties are a bit unique as well, with both a toe cup and a heel cup. The toe cup is attached to the body of the suit & the leg wing. The heel cup is attached to the tail end of the top wing surface--the single piece of fabric that's continuous with the arm wings. It was a bit awkward to walk without dislodging the heel cup. Perhaps a snap could be added to affix it to the toe cup to keep it from slipping off. I took the suit on a solo, chased after a flock, and on an acrobatic type dive. The suit fit me pretty well. It was a little short in length, perhaps an inch or so, and that made it hard to de-arch a whole lot, but overall it was pretty comfortable once suited up. On the solo the suit was very solid with legs wide, arms straight out and palms to the earth. The suit seemed to porpoise (or potato-chip) in certain body positions, and not just when maxing out. Arm and torso turns were snappy. Leg turns were a bit more gentle and precise. Some of the other gentlemen that jumped the suit complained of arm pressure, but for me, with arms straight it didn't take very much effort at all to get a 60 mph average. I normally jump a GTi, and I've demoed a Classic, a Firebird, and a Vampire. As Scott posted above the GS1 is most like a Classic in terms of forward motion. The leg wing is really quite tapered up, tho there is a zipper and intake on the suit where an additional leg wing can be attached. On the flocking dive I found myself up about 400 feet above the flock in what seemed like an instant, but I was able to keep up horizontally. I had to take my arms flat in against my body to make the suit dive, and even then it didn't want to get very steep. It seems like the suit just doesn't want to sink very fast. I think a bigger leg wing would probably help with pitching the suit a bit more forward and into a head-down position to pick up some speed & get down to a flock. Rolling the suit & back flying was, umm, interesting. The suit seemed like it didn't really want to roll over...it was /very/ stable along the axis of flight. Although I was a little concerned with how snappy the arm turns were on the solo flight, when I pushed it on this dive it recovered cleanly & quickly. In fact on more than one occasion I rolled it about 90 - 100 degrees & the suit rolled right back into a belly to earth position rather than go onto its back. Once I managed to get it on its back the suit deflated--the intakes are on the belly side of the suit--and it got fairly vertical & spun a bit like a corkscrew, but not fast or uncontrollable. Barrel rolls were slow and tended to result in pitching and yawing. Flying on its back was as steep as I managed to get the suit, tho the average descent was still around 80-85 mph through the acrobatics--all in all a very floaty suit. In sum I was impressed. A nice bit of work for a new suit design. It seemed geared for slow flight, level flying and quick turns. I'm very interested to see how it performs with a larger add-in leg wing. Might also be interesting to see what would happen if it had intakes on the sides or the back so it could be flown inverted. edit with attachment My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I assume you've not yet been touched by His noodly appendage My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

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

So umm, the town is blockaded? Seems like that ought to be a news item unto itself...I thought they ordered it evacuated, not blockaded. Keep in mind I know next to nothing about the roads & ways out of the city... My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Something I've been wondering about is all the able bodied people on TV standing still on the streets, milling about or sitting on their porches passively waiting to be rescued. Queuing endlessly for insufficient resources. In other disasters I've seen on TV, it seems like more people *walked* until they found refuge. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

A topic of conversation came up on the dropzone today. Would it be possible to drag a wingsuit behind a plane on a tether, much like a glider or a water-skiier behind a boat? What do you suppose the risks would be? I don't suppose you'd want to take off with the wingsuit flyer on the ground...perhaps the tether could be extended once the plane reaches 1500ft or so and retracted so that other jumpers wouldn't get smacked by it. Has it been done before, and are there pictures? I suppose it would be quite the ride if you could do it with the Pitts at Rantoul & paid the pilot for acrobatics Seems like it would be a better way to spend the ride to altitude rather than sitting inside the plane

If it were only that easy. "Natural" is one of those terms whose definition is impossible to pin down. Everybody knows what "natural" means, but nobody can explain it in such a way that makes sense & agrees with what everybody else says. I once had a friend who was otherwise intelligent & thoughtful tell me straight faced & honestly that "natural" meant "endorsed in the Bible". Nightshade is natural, hemlock is natural, licorice root is natural, digitalis is natural, ephedra is natural, sulphur is natural, table salt is natural, ergot fungus is natural. But imo they are all still nasty sh*t and they can screw you up to varying degrees. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Yes, you can die from lack of sleep. Among other things, after a while the immune system loses its efficiency and basically stops working. link scary shit. get some rest dude. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

BDL (Hartford, CT) is free, and one or two others I've been to in the last year, trying to remember which... Sometimes you can pick up a signal from cafes like starbucks or nearby hotels, but they are usually for pay only. Several places like ohare don't have totally free internet but a handful of air traffic & weather related sites for free and the rest for pay. Very often I've seen the ones that are for pay don't offer encryption My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

What everyone else said. Also prepare for rain. Even though we're currently experiencing a category 3 "extreme" drought in IL, August is the wettest month of the year, and when it rains it tends to rain all at once. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I'm not all that familiar with scams. I'm wondering how the crime might be perpetrated in this case. Simple failure to deliver the goods, perhaps? Or something a little more sophisticated involving swaps between the actual seller and the buyer? Relisting someone else's ad (with a markup) is the stuff of late-night TV get rich quick schemes... My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Reality check: That's the characteristic of bad ideas! That someone else can or can't do X has no bearing on whether your idea is bad. There are some situations for which we have no solution, or for which we don't know the solution yet. Perhaps no "solution" is needed at all. In the States, we have laws that protect a patient's right to confidentiality of medical information. If the patient decides to exercise his right, who are you to barge in, steal his info & post it for the world to see? My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

OK can you explain this one to me? I'm not being sarcastic, I really am wondering why of all the crap alleged to be going on in Gitmo that people fixate on the treatment of an object instead of the the treatment of human beings! There's dozens (millions) of more copies of that book to be had, what's the problem with one getting dirty? Sure I can understand that it's insulting to someone who practices Islam...but wtf, it's an insult. People get over insults. They don't get over torture. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Sick days could be an enormous drain on the economy. I read a recent article that drew a startlingly obvious conclusion: the main reason that the vast majority of people all work M-F 9-5, and take the weekends off, is that there are huge network effects between workers. The loss caused by one employee's absence is magnified by diminished efficiency among his/her colleagues. Healthy workers might still take days off to care for their elders and their young. Not to mention increased expenditures on healthcare & healthcare products, psychological effects like depression, anxiety, &c. Even the not-so-bad pandemic scenarios are pretty ugly, imo. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

this reply is not aimed at anyone in particular, but I think it's worth pointing out that nuclear accidents have not been confined to reactor cores, there's dozens of accidents that have occurred in processing and storage facilities as well. this report makes a fascinating read, if you've got a few hours to pour into it. even though it's complex and freakish when it goes wrong, imo nuclear power still has a lot offer nathaniel 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 know if that question has an easy answer. Why is always much harder to say than that. It's much easier to measure incomes than cultural influences and leadership. One thing to keep in mind when reading that paper is that most other countries, and "old" Europe / Canada in particular, all tend to be very different from the US in terms of their demographics. That is, the US has a much wider range of incomes and wealth. There's really not that much National Geographic style abject poverty in France/Germany/Scandinavia/Canada. So it's particularly hard even to make sense out of direct comparisons. Those places all have more extensive social infrastructures, but at the same time it's much easier for them to have more extensive social infrastructures because there's relatively few people who need the most support. You could probably say they have less poverty because they have had less poverty. One fact that strikes me in particular is lifetime earnings figures on people who lived through the Great Depression as adults. In terms of sheer statistics, by virtue of having been employable through the Depression one's capacity to produce and earn money was sharply diminished. It is as though a contagion afflicted them. So I think this is where a lot of social activists get the idea that poverty should be cured, even at great expense. Tho, it's not at all clear to me that it could be cured with any expense. It bends the mind. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Without wanting to distract the posters in this thread with facts, this recent paper provides some good information on the subject of social mobility, with contrast to certain european countries. Many people (including many red blooded Americans) seem to think there's a lot of social mobility in the states. This is true in the relative sense when comparing to other parts of the world, such as population centers China and India. But it's not altogether true in the absolute sense--there's still a very distinct correlation between the social stratum you're born in and the one you die. In terms of cohorts, you're more likely to achieve a smaller change in your stratum than a larger change, and the poorer you are the harder it is to move up even one notch. So in absolute terms the picture is actually not all that pretty since the population is weighted toward the poorer end of the spectrum--the number of people moving from the low end to the high end is fairly small. It's better in the States than you could do in most other parts of the world. And certain parts of the world, like parts of Europe, have more mobility than the US. A google search for social mobility usa turns up a lot more than I want to wade through tonight. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

In regards to these comments in the incidents forum complaining about painful hanging harnesses: hasn't anybody ever thought to mount a hanging harness on springs, bungee cords, inertial counterbalance (like on elevators), etc? It seems like this shouldn't be rocket science. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

It gets better, practically all cards on the market only have a unique value as the default setting. You can typically program the hardware to make the MAC address anything you want, and it'll get reset if / when you shutdown and restart. It's pretty straight forward windows , osx and linux. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

It's this line of inquiry that really appeals to me about the book Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. Before Hollywood ruined it with George Clooney. Have we established yet that one can represent thoughts with thoughts? Segmentation Violation nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I read this article and it all of a sudden occurred to me that the idea of intelligent design could be compatible with evolution, if evolutionary tendencies led to cellular "intelligence", which in turn led to better evolution. It's certainly not what Kansas has in mind. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?