Frodo

Wanted to see what y'all can say about train travel. I'm arriving in Milan mid-june and will have 5-7 days to see a little bit of Europe. I've bought a 4-country Eurorail pass good for Italy, Switzerland, France, and Benelux, which really makes it 6 countries. Will I need reservations on any trains? Will I need to pay for individual rides even if I have the pass? How are the sleepers and couchettes - are they worth getting or can I sleep in a regular seat?

How high above the river is it? (left side of the photo)

Me and a friend came up with what sounds like an interesting little puzzle. When you first hear it, you feel like the answer is too obvious to even bother with it. But then we realized we don't really know the answer. We have a couple of possible explanations, but nothing solid. I'll state it as clearly as I can. If a helicopter only has the main rotor operating, it will start spinning in the direction opposite to the rotor's. Basically that's explained with Newton's 3rd law -- the engine is exerting a force on the rotor, and in return the rotor exerts and equal and opposite force on the engine, and thus on the helicopter. The problem is solved by having the tail rotor, which compensates the helicopter's tend to spin up by generating lift in the opposite direction (horizontally). That's clear enough. Now, why doesn't a small airplane with a single propeller at the front spin up (around the propeller's axis), even though it doesn't have an equivalent of the helicopter's tail rotor? In other words, shouldn't the propeller's rotation force the airplane to start doing barrel rolls?

Ahh, so there IS justice in the world after all. to our unknown hero - you da man!!

worked for me... only thing is, I'm in the computer lab and I don't have headphones, so had to watch it w/o sound. But I could tell everyone was pretty excited (which they should be).

Pink Floyd - "High Hopes" (last track of their last album, Division Bell) mp3 here

Yeah Nick I also thought those are more like BASE-ants Wonder if Jeb Corliss has read the article...

very nice

Thanks for the links. I was especially impressed with the woman's account of the incident in the Antarctic Sun. It's rare to see someone outside of the skydiving community trying in all honesty to understand the motivations, etc. Especially when strangers come to the place that you call home, and their actions result in three deaths and totally knock you out of your normal mental state and working routine. But then again, she is not a whuffo, she used to jump in the past. In any case it was nice to know there are very open-minded people out there.

Same here yeah his voice and manner of speaking are unique. Too bad he stopped doing the Morning edition a while ago.

NPR Story The story is about 7 years old now, but I dont remember seeing a discussion of it here (and the search didn't turn up anything related) ... There are details that I'm wondering about. First, what do you think of the guy's account on what happened? He sounds pretty confident in their planning, he was very satisfied with their preparation and all. I'm sure they realized a south pole jump is not your typical skydive in many ways. And sure they knew about difficulties of visually judging your altitude in an area such as Antarctica. But in that case how could some of them choose not to have an AAD on this jump? The guy also says that when he realized the group got too low, he went for his reseve. I guess that's a good thing to do, if you can overcome your normal reflex of reaching back to pull your main. But later he praises AADs and says "it saved my life". So which one was it - did he himself or the AAD save his life? Is it common for people realizing they're too low to consciously choose to pull the reserve, in hopes of a faster opening (or to avoid a two-out)? One more: since the landing area was 9,000 ft MSL, is there a problem in using the AAD? Can this large an altitude correction be set on the Cypres?

I got a nice surprise from my JM, right after my landing yesterday. He cleared me for solo jumping! I've got 11 jumps so far. Of course I need, and want, to do lots of coaching. What things should I focus on? Some important things that come to my mind, which must be learned first: * Packing * Canopy control - accuracy, better understanding of risers, crosswind/downwind landings, etc. * Good tracking skills * back-to-earth * 2-way RW * sit-flying In the long run I'm interested in wingsuits (among other things). Oh and of course I'd love to do night jumps (but i guess i need a B license so thats gonna be a while). I'm not that interested in big-ways, or mastering RW, although I understand that RW gives any jumper a solid base for whatever discipline they choose to progress in. Any thoughts on which of these I should focus the most? Thanks!

Yes, I know about these tab archives (my favorites are olga.net and ultimate-guitar.com), but the thing is I'd like to see some particular song names, b/c I just can't think of more than a handful of songs that I like and aren't too difficult to learn (but not too easy either, i.e. not the Happy Birthday 'theme'

d'you know any nice/familiar and relatively easy to learn songs? i mean solos, rather than songs mainly consisting of chords. preferably for the electric guitar. examples of what I'm looking for: Metallica's "Bass and Guitar Doodle" from the Cunning Stunts American anthem (or another) Godfather theme Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Child" (ok not an easy one but memorable, even unique) Santana's "Europa" the only catch is there has to be a tab for it. (on olga.net or one of those websites) thanks!

oh and we also had a B2 Stealth fly-by (but obviously noone could see it), F-16 and F-18, spectacular aerobatics, Tora Tora Tora (recreation of Pearl Harbor air battles, with "explosions", smoke and such), etc.