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Which part of your rant is the subject?

I went through surgery and radiation for colorectal cancer last year. Got two doctor appointments this week and then off to the drop zone. Both, surgery and radiation was painful but, I’m still here to jump another day.

At this point I need the Mods to come clean and admit the truth - Brent is on the DZ.com payroll to drive engagement and generate traffic. There's no other explanation for the amount of clickbaity, substance-less threads being churned out by a single poster almost daily...

I haven't posted or even lurked on these forums for a number of years, but I was inspired to share a quick note today. My name is Scott Miller. A couple of decades ago I started something called The Canopy School at Skydive DeLand, which became the Freedom of Flight Canopy School. Later, in collaboration with some awesome gentlemen from the PD Factory Team, that canopy school was transformed into Flight-1. I've been away from the skydiving world for a while, but I still stay in touch with some old skydiving friends and visit DeLand from time to time. I'm always impressed to see what Flight-1 has become thanks to all of the work that Ian, Shannon, and the rest of the crew have done. Back when I was teaching my canopy courses, students would always fill out a registration form at the start of the day. For all of these years, I've had all of those forms sitting in a couple of boxes in a closet. It always seemed worthwhile to keep them around, but yesterday I decided to run them through a scanner so I can finally get rid of the paper copies. Looking through all of those forms—almost 3,000 of them, from 8 years worth of canopy courses—brought back a lot of memories and emotions. It's hard to describe what it was like to look back at all of the DZs that I visited and to see some of the peoples' names on the forms. There was one feeling that percolated to the top, though. Above all else, I felt very, very grateful. I was, and still am, grateful for everyone who supported me and believed in what I was doing back then. I'm grateful for all of the jumpers who signed up and attended my courses. I'm grateful to the DZOs who invited me to come teach at their drop zones. I'm grateful for the local jumpers who did all of the planning, organizing, and coordinating to make the camps happen at their DZs. I'm grateful for the manifestors, managers, and everyone else who made all the moving parts fit together during the courses. I'm grateful for the pilots who flew extra passes at 5000' even though it's extra work, and who were willing to drop people way the hell upwind when we did the "long spot practice" jump at the end of the day. I'm grateful to Bob Hallett for supporting this whole project from the very beginning, and throughout. I'm grateful to all of the Relative Work School, Freedom of Flight School, and Flight-1 coaches with whom I had the honor of working and collaborating. I'm grateful to John LeBlanc for teaching me most of what I know about how canopies really, actually work. Gratitude is powerful. Taking a few moments to be grateful for someone or something—to think and feel a deep, genuine sense of gratitude—can bring so much joy into our lives and put things in a very different perspective. If I could go back in time, back to when I was a kid or even when I first started jumping, and pass myself a note, it would say, "be grateful for the people you have in your life and for the time that you have with them." That's why I'm here today. To share something that I'm very grateful for, and to pass you that note. Be grateful for what you have in your life. Be grateful for the people in your life and for the time that you have with them. Take some time every day to think about what you are grateful for: in skydiving, but also in other parts of your life. Practice a little gratitude every day, and watch it transform your life. Thank you for letting me share this with you today. BSBD Scott

that's what you add to this discussion? improving the odds somewhat? of course it wasn't much of a discussion i guess, not sure what i was thinking when i posted this, but for a brief time i actually thought i may be able to get a real discussion going about some solutions. then i realized the nature of this forum and what happens here that i had forgotten. once again i am actually doing something about it rather than argue semantics. in a week or two i should be conducting my first class in the program i came up with to help the problem by working with troubled youths in a juvenile detention center. i've even been collaborating with a couple of drs of psychology. but you carry right along with improving the odds and arguing. i'd rather try to stop school shootings entirely.

i was fortunate enough to not have any radiation or chemo. glad you made it.

When Herschel dies, they should check his brain for CTE. It might explain a lot.

So show us where one of these evil white-hating courses is taught to primary school kids. Just one.

Good Lord what a brilliant piece of writing. Nothing there I could even begin to dispute. You are a genius and very stable too.

Hi 13, I applaud your efforts. Jerry Baumchen

I searched this forum for posts by hominid, and found six, dated between 09.29.2011 and 01.31.2012. The most detailed post is on 09.30.2011 (post #26003). Are there any others? Evidently hominid interviewed a number of aviation professionals with direct knowledge of the case. As far as I can tell, he did not post transcripts of his interviews on this forum. Does anyone know if he did so on any other forum? Incidentally I see that in his post of 09.30.2011, hominid believed that at some point the crew of Flight 305 received (or may have received) instructions to disable the B hydraulic system. But the flight engineer, in his interview with hominid and georger in 2014, attested that the system was not disabled: "We didn't want to disable the airstairs by defusing electrical power to hydraulic actuators."

I wish. Here in the UK we're about to hit £10 per gallon ($12.30). A significance in impact being that the UK has much better public transportation options around the country, and particularly in the densely populated areas, than the US does. I have no doubt that this is not perfect, but I can guarantee it beats options available in the US. Had areas like California, Florida and Texas initiated rail systems supporting and connecting major population centers when we had these fuel hikes 13-14 years ago, the current situation wouldn't be nearly the issue (especially for lower income citizens) that it is now. Unfortunately, at least here in the Tampa area, right when proposals were up for consideration the prices came back down, so the ideas were put in a drawer. Now we're back where we started with no new infrastructure to support a different response.

Can we launch a campign for American Muckrakers to hire a copywriter? Or at least a proofreader. Regardless of accuracy that press release is a shambles.

When Americans are born. The doctor slaps them on the bum and declares their sacred birth-rites. "You are entitled to guns, gas and god. All are to serve you".

CRT arose as a study of racial injustice in the US legal system. The people studying it are supposed to be lawyers. Is maths bad because it's taught by mathematicians, not historians?

One of the central themes of CRT - and one of the reasons that so many on the right are violently opposed to it - is that some racism is structural and not individual. In other words, the guy at the bank who is implementing redlining may not be racist (and has a black friend, and supports civil rights etc) - but the structure itself causes racist outcomes. This is anathema to many conservatives who feel as long as THEY are not being racist, there is no racism, and therefore nothing to fix. And if you are trying to fix something given that they are not racist, you're a demented social justice warrior who is actually the real racist, because you are trying to help people who, by conservative definitions, do not need any help. Winsor regularly posts along these lines. So they create a carciature that's easier to attack. FOX and Breitbart have the clown-car carciature down to a science - as soon as an old claim loses its ability to outrage, a new one pops out of the back of the car. CRT is racist! CRT teaches white kids to hate themselves. Why, my poor daughter cried for weeks when her teacher blah blah blah. Oh was that story fake? Then CRT is intolerance, and will divide America! The intolerance claim is especially funny. After living with being literally enslaved for a few hundred years, then treated as non-citizens for decades, then as an official government-sanctioned underclass for decades more, black people now hear that conservatives will not stand for intolerance when it might be directed at them.

I found a single mention of Bald Mountain in the 302s, it comes from a newspaper clipping from '75.

Those 4 points would have ZERO effect on prices in the short term. Any 'new lands opening for exploration and drilling' would take several years before production starts. Not sure how something that would take years to implement would have any effect on gas prices today. But then again, I don't understand any of the crap he posts. It's pretty clear he doesn't either. He just posts shit to get a reaction.

I think you are thinking about this the wrong way; Time he spends watching TV, is time he isn't posting on here. To me that is a big plus!

Then stop watching Morning Joe EVERY SINGLE DAY. I've watched some clips on news blogs but have never once watched a whole show. You can do it. Seriously.

They are covering the attempted overthrow of American democracy. It's a complete horror that so many on the right think a buck less a gallon of gas and minority rule is more important.

My astigmatism isn't that bad, only -2.75 sph on my worst eye, but I found it was better to jump with a full face, and either use my regular prescription lenses or sunglasses, or my contacts and cheap sunglasses like shady rays. Full face helmets tend to press the frames pretty tightly to your temples, and they don't shift much at all. Have you looking it whether you are a candidate for ortho-k. They are hard contacts that you wear over night and they give you a temporary physical correction to your vision that last for the next 24 hours.