PhreeZone

We spend about $2000-3000 per year in classroom supplies out of our pocket since the total budget for classroom supplies from the district is about $100 for this year. That needs to do all the construction paper, printer paper and ink, classroom books, posters, bulletin board supplies, and everything else that goes into the class each year. We just had to go buy new seat covers, headphones and whole list of new items since the kids this year just destroyed them, notes we’re sent home asking for parents to replace what their child broke and were met with replies of “ your a rich teacher, you do it yourself” or were flat out ignored Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

In the majority of the cases if you pay the ransom you never get the data recovered anyways. Ransomware is big business. FakeAV was the big thing a few years back in which it would scare and force people to pay up to get access to their computer, now they just lock up the files and put a ticking timer on screen announcing that it all gets deleted in X hours and it counts down. The files are locked by being encrypted so there really is no way to recover the data with out the decryption keys. Airgapping systems is difficult and expensive - even most secure networks have large gaps in their airgaps since you need to have access at some time to those systems with out being in the room. Maintaining airgapped systems is multiple times more costly since you have to pay for personal to actually touch each system and to run seperate management platforms to get things like patches, updates and new software deployed. You also get to double your hardware costs since you need systems online and systems offline. Thats Computers, networking gear, power, AC and everything else you need to own two of. Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

He is already going to retire at the end of this term. He has a few more chances to file this still this year but the clock is running on his time alrady.0 The larger issue is if he makes a run at the Senate in 2 years. Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

Generally asking for your Birthday/name is only used when they can then also validate that information against something else such as the credit card or drivers license. Passwords are a horrible idea to use since they are the weakest form of authentication there is. The most important thing is to never reuse one which is exactly the issue that most people have. Credential reuse has lead to more issues than most people are aware of. With massive breeches at Yahoo and other major providers the passwords you used there along with your email address is in the hands of hackers. The ability to then plug that same combo into other sites and have it work has a surprisingly high success rate. Last I checked I am running over 200 separate and unique strong (15-20 in length, random case, symbols and numbers) passwords on all the sites and accounts I have out there. There are lots of password manager software packages out there that I would recommend everyone takes a serious look at and then start using the one that fits your needs best. Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

Or in the History forum Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

Word is they will have to go to court to then put out a court order that specifics that a plan has to be created and passed within a defined period to pay for it. Issue is that they courts can not look at the case until after the June referendum is voted on. If it passes then the case has to be filed and accepted. It might be 90-120 days before the courts work the case unless an emergency order is filed. At that point both sides have figure out the needed funds and who will do all the work and see if it can be completed before the November elections. The parties in control right now are hoping that the work can not be done by November and then it gets them 2 more years to figure out and implement the solution (and stay in their current seats). Whats interesting on this is that the first election the plans are to basically say that anyone that meets the requirements can get listed - that means you might see 4 R's and 2 D's on the ballot and you have to rank vote them. The parties are trying to limit it to only one per party since having multiple people on the ballot basically eliminates the value of the primaries. Past that they are then wanting the primaries to be ranked voting also. Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

I'm awaiting the cases that will be brought from Maine over their changes to their elections. Maine via referendum has enacted ranked voting for federal positions, they attempted to enact it also for state elections but the elected officials in office figured a way out to have those changes declared unconstitutional at the state level so it only works for the federal positions in this upcoming election. The change to the ranked voting is being fought by the currently elected officials since it looks like it will really change the structure of power in the state and only the more moderate candidates that are able to build a larger collection of votes from across multiple parties will be able to win. Just having a D or R beside your name will not win a position anymore and this is going to make it so that the parties lose a lot of the control they have so they are fighting it at every level but via direct vote the voters seem intent on enabling this. At the state level the state house republicans have defunded all actions to update their voting machines to reflect the changes needed to enable this so if it passes again in June it might be back to paper ballots for everything in Maine. The issue with paper ballots is the state has also pulled all funding to create, print and pay for the counting and security for paper voting. The democrats in the senate have pulled all funding to have the rules updated and the legal clarification needed for how odd situations need to be dealt with such as a ballot that does not have a #1 choice but starts at #2. The establishment from both parties has a lot at stake and is fighting to keep the status quo in terms of how they get elected - look for other states to start similar movements if Maine enables this and look for a lot of lawsuits to prevent it from happening. Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

Nothing has really changed on them for the last few years except the introduction of the Boost. They are still in my lower 1/3rd of containers I like to pack. Racer's still hold the bottom spot after all these years and hundreds of repacks though Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

Mid-west manufacturing is never going to come back the way it was. The skills gap is just too large., If you look at the newest factories they are increasingly replacing as much labor as possible with robotics. When you decrease the number of workers needed and then require the remaining workers to be more highly skilled its not looking good for the local areas. SpaceX has decided to build all their rockets in Los Angeles - not exactly the home of cheap labor. This was due to the skills and knowledge needed. Ford just retooled another factory last year and converted another 800+ jobs from factory worker positions to higher skilled Robotics repairs / tool makers so the workers were told to train up or find another position. Older workers are not being replaced, they are just hiring new skilled labor instead. Environmental rules impacted some but not near at the level of the robotics revolution that occurred in the 80's and is only accelerating today. When the number of workers can be cut in half if not to a quarter and the output increased - it works great for profits but it comes at the cost of lower skilled jobs. Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

Here was an interesting situation around prison for profit: http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2018/03/etowah_sheriff_at_center_of_ja.html Basically state law said that the sheriff could keep any excess funds from the inmate food budget to use as needed. This sheriff put all the inmates on minimum rations and then pocketed $750,000 over 3 years on top of his normal pay and went out and bought a beach house with it. The original intent was to use those funds for department needs post WW2 - in this case he kept the money as income and spent it on himself. Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

If you spin the one map and play with it a bit it even pops up "Shortcut from Mill Ave to Lave View Ave" on the worn paths in the desert. Its clearly getting a lot of use! Thats one of those situations where you are coming out from under a bridge at night and then someone steps out from the pillar and into the road way - you are not expecting it at all and its essentially something you would have a really hard time preventing. Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

The house is only being shown on Sunny days too Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

Question is will a divorce in the White House even mean anything? There have been presidential weddings in the past while in office (Tyler, Wilson, Cleveland) and Reagan had a divorce prior to getting elected - would a divorce in office even matter? Would the president lose any voters for having a third divorce? Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

I've looked at starting a day care center since its pretty much a gold mine if you can get a program going and get some staff that sticks around. Staffing tends to be the issue since you tend to attract people looking for the free child care and as soon as their kids no longer need it they quit and go somewhere else. My sitter clears 50-60k a year on the kids she watches at her house. Thats more than my wife makes with a masters degree as a teacher. I know that corporate centers pay their managers in the 45-60k range as starting pay with no degrees needed, assistant managers make 30k ish. And they all get free childcare on top of it! Here are the ratio's for Ohio: Child care centers must comply with the following caregiver-to-child ratios and group sizes: for infants from birth to 12 months, 1:5 or 1:6, with no more than 12 infants per group; 12–18 months, 1:6, not to exceed 12 children; 18–30 months, 1:7, with no more than 14 in a group; 30–35 months, 1:8, with up to 14 children; 3-year-olds, 1:12, not to exceed 24 preschoolers in a class; 4–5 years, 1:14, with no more than 28 children per class. For mixed-age groupings, the ratio appropriate for the youngest children applies unless there is only one child over the age of 30 months in a group of older kids. The general goal is to clear at least $2500-3000 per classroom per week and most mid size centers have 5-6 classes. $12k per week or $625k a year per center. As kids grow up they increase the number per room so their price drops a tad but more of them are there to make up the margins. The cost of running the business comes out of it but its generally assumed that a midsize full time center will gross $650K a year at a min with larger centers clearing 1mil plus easy. One of the local centers here charges $250 per week and they have 24 kids in a classroom so that room is making $6000 a week and the two teachers are making about $15 an hour is my guess for 40 hours a week. That one room is making about 4800 profit a week and the building has 8 rooms of various ages but they have a waiting list to get in. Simple guess - they make 1.2-1.5M a year and have a staff count of 20ish that they have to pay out for at about 30k a year per person minus management. Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) the real name for WIC only offers food and nutrition - nothing to do with Day Care. WIC has been getting its funding cut and its looking at a massive gutting with the proposed overhauls of federal programs that Congress is proposing right now. The concept is the same as what they are doing with food stamps - you get a basket of food every week or two and that's it. It does nothing to help provide child care stability for a working parent. Lots of single parents have to rely on grandparents and other family to watch their child since the cost of care is so much - if those resources are not the most stable (grandparent needs to go to treatments every few days, friend gets sick, shifting hourly schedules, etc) it causes a trickle down effect of the parent always scrambling to take care of the child, usually at the expense of the employment. Lots of non Parents and older generations do not understand the current costs since inflation has his childcare at a rate faster than the rest of the economy. My parents used to be able to get a babysitter for me and my brother for an evening for $5 and a $8 pizza, cost now days is $20 per child and the Pizza is another $20 at least. https://www.cnpp.usda.gov/tools/CRC_Calculator/default.aspx Here is the breakdown from the USDA on the cost to raise a single child as a single parent: Overall Annual Estimated Costs (Household Type = One Parent and Income = Less Than $59,200) Housing Food Transportation Clothing Health Care Child Care and Education Other Total Your Costs: $4,234 $2,029 $895 $504 $769 $2,444 $580 $11,453 National Costs: $4,234 $2,029 $895 $504 $769 $2,444 $580 $11,453 Middle class Married couples with two children are looking at a good chunk per year also: Overall Annual Estimated Costs (Household Type = Two Parents, Income = $59,200 to $107,400, and Region = Midwest) Housing Food Transportation Clothing Health Care Child Care and Education Other Total Your Costs: $7,000 $3,090 $3,470 $1,630 $2,250 $5,460 $1,890 $24,790 National Costs: $7,360 $3,270 $3,630 $1,350 $2,290 $5,740 $1,770 $25,410 Current estimate is for a married couple to raise two children to age 17 will be at a cost of $238k (not including college costs). Single parent with one child is about $145k. Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

Twins were a fear when we were having kids since it is about $40k per year until they get to about 18 months old and then the cost drops to about $30k a year until school since you are paying double for everything via full time care. I know of several mothers that dropped out of the workforce completely when they had twins since it was going to cost them as much if not more than they would make in childcare expenses. I feel bad since that's a big hit if you were planning on one child (can cover the expenses and everything) but got twins and now its a pretty big bill to cover that's unexpected. Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

We have two kids and are doing an in home daycare that is at a fraction of the "Daycare Centers" that advertise and seem to have dedicated buildings for that thing. We only need care for the school year and don't pay anything for the summer since they are with us during that time and we still payed out almost $13k in child care last year. Had we went to one of the center places our bill was looking to be 25-30k between the kids at least since they make you pay year round to hold spots. I pay as much in child care as my first mortgage was. Depending on what he is making he can qualify for Title XX payments at some of the centers which will split/reduce his amount owed out of pocket but that's assuming that he can even find a center that has openings that takes Title XX. Most of those centers have waiting lists since its the only way that people can send their kids for care and work if they make less than a certain amount a year. Simple math is the cost is about $40 per day per child for an in home care and about $60 per day for a center. Add $10-15 per day if the child is under 18 months since they have to have a certain ratio of kids:adults and that ratio is much lower for infants. The racket I am currently dealing with is half day kindergarten - its a serious pain to have to arrange transportation for a pick up at noon everyday to get the kid to a day care center for the other half of the day. I am paying more for that then I was for them to go to day care all day and then I still have to pay for day care on top of that. I've seen multiple employers offer onsite daycare or day care benefits and that is a massive help as a parent and would serve to attract me if I was in that situation. If you have the ability to help offer that as a benefit you might find that will solve this employees issues since its just such a drain to work all day to find out that day care took 30% of your pay off the top and with out stable care its always a concern about I need to take them to X place today but X is out tomorrow so I have to find somewhere else and its just a snowball of issues at that point. Not justifying it but I can see why if a single mother is in a situation where they could go work all day for $9 an hour (360 a week) and end up having to pay $200 a week for child care its just not worth it for them since their take home ends up being $50 or less a week at that point. Title XX should cover that but its not always an option since not every center takes it and those that do are on long waits sometimes. Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/iowa-senate-leader-resigns-video-shows-him-kissing-lobbyist/ar-BBK8BON Married politician caught on video making out with a lobbyist. I am shocked that he resigned over a simple video instead of just saying everyone else does it and how he is working to be forgiven by his family. Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Rare-NOS-krytron-trigger-tube-NIB/253217204230?hash=item3af4ebe806:g:I4gAAOSw5ixZzIKK This one is not and its even a buy it now option for anyone that really wants to get a jump start on building their own 1-5 kiloton yield warhead in their garage. Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

Here is the issue with the bulletproof doors - students need to be able to open them when they are not in lockdown mode. A level 2 wooden door that will stop a Jacketed 9mm has a weight of 275-300 pounds. A high school student might be able to able to open that but elementary school and some older teachers will not be able to open something that heavy dozens of times a day. If you want to stop 5.56 /7.62 ammo you need to step up to a level 7 or 8 door - those are steel only and are starting at a weight of 300-350 pounds per door. Door Jams need improved to support that type of weight not to mention the need to upgrade all the rest of the building materials to be bulletproof also. Most of the shootings happen in open areas such as hallways, cafeterias, outside the classroom and other spaces where doors like this will have no impact. If we look at the Parkland shooting it happened when lots of students were not in classrooms and it had them running in a panic to get away from the shooter. The shooter never had to try to enter a classroom directly since all the students were just there in hallways and stairwells to shoot at. The existing doors worked just fine to deter the shooter from trying to get into a room after the door was shut. As an aside it looks like some teachers might be getting disciplined since they broke protocol and opened their doors to get more students into their classroom after the shooting started. I'd also recommend reading the piece in the Washington Post this weekend to get some insight into the planning most of these shooters do: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/inside-a-teen-school-shooters-mind-a-plot-to-kill-50-or-60-if-i-get-lucky-maybe-150/2018/03/03/68cc673c-1b27-11e8-ae5a-16e60e4605f3_story.html Student basically was going to kick / shoot a window in from outside the school, get into a classroom and start shooting 5-7 year olds. Then he was going to take the teachers keys and start roaming the hallways and using the keys to unlock everything he could and shoot his way until he ran out of bullets or classrooms to shoot. When you are facing plans like that - thats a whole new level of preparedness needed to stay safe. And to mix this up he was not going to go after the typical middle or high school to target his peers but instead an elementary school where they typically do not have resource officers or other items that are found in upper grade buildings for rapid response. Students are already taught to barricade doors and to turn off lights and cover windows if anything happens. Some schools teach to actively fight back by throwing books, book bags and classroom materials at the shooter to get them to miss and allow more students to escape. Question is - do you want to turn schools into prisons where students are dealt with like inmates where they have bulletproof glass and doors around them, that they have to move only in supervised groups and have armed guards at all the entrances and exits? Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

My impression was that any time a police officer rolled up on an active shooting they would establish a parameter and then would move in with backup to then deal with the situation after gaining some insight. It does little good to rush into a situation where you know the opponent has superior positioning, potentially superior weapons and a massive tactical advantage unless you know you are going to become the main target and probably die in the process. Going back to the North Hollywood shootout years ago officers learned then that if someone is attacking with the advantage it made little good to go rushing up since most of the officers that did that were seriously wounded. Depending on how the resource officer and the sheriffs were equipped (9 mm vs AR5.56 is not really a fair fight) and if the officers were not wearing body armor there is a high possibility that rushing in would have just left 3 more dead at the scene. Rushing into a situation where there is more than one gunman like Columbine would have turned out just as bad if not worse. I am yet to see why this shooter finally quit and tried to flee with the students - out of ammo? Got scared and ran? Hit his target and just got bored? Had he holed up in a room and wanted to he could have just kept shooting anyone that came in after him thus adding to the body count. Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

As mentioned this only solves a small portion of the issues and the reality is that there is no way this is enforceable. The number of children that need to come and go from a classroom (at the elementary level especially) is extremely high. Restroom, office trips - coming and going, parents bringing items, needing to get supplies, class moving to another area, etc - the door would be unlocked and the teacher would need to basically stand next to it for most of the day. I visit to a school that was built in the last 6 years quite a lot and the doors are made with kick resistant glass and most of the windows are obscured so that you can not see in nor out. The poured cement wall hallways have thick wooden doors in them that are always closed so you can't see more than 2-3 classrooms down to see what is happening past that point. I was told that the thought process is that the teachers would be locking those doors shut to allow all the kids to escape away from a situation - thus forcing the shooter to either shoot blindly through the door or find targets elsewhere in the building. The front door is a double buzzer system where you need to be buzzed into the lobby and then again into the school, all the other doors are on a key card system to access. Shy of installing bulletproof glass and bag scanners across the entire building the level of security is about equal to that of several federal government facilities I work with. The school has lockdown and active shooter drills for grades K-4 all the time in addition to fire and tornado drills. None of these measures really will stop someone, they are all about slowing a shooter down bit by bit. We live in a state where Teachers could carry and non of the teachers in this school will. Some are very Pro 2A but the issue is that any failure to control the weapon 100% at all times in 100% of any possible situation could result in a weapon now ending up in the hands of a child or youth. This just increases the possibility of issues either via accident or on purpose too much. In regards to the original proposal there are some items I was not seeing addressed and I'm not sure if its needed or not and that's the need to define the needs for any sort of registration. I know way to many people that have been buying up receivers on the secondary market just to make sure they have something with a serial number that no one knows any history on and will never register. If the intent is to start a registration process is there a penalty for not doing it and is the penalty high enough that one is not willing to risk it? Also what is the enforce ability behind it? Similar to the Colorado magazine restrictions - if no one wants to enforce it (aka having someone randomly attempting purchases and then auditing or popping into gunshows and inspecting everything, checking out ownership via ammo sales, etc) is it worth the paper to pass anything? Is a $100 fine for not doing it enough? Make it a felony and you are going to have a LOT of accidentally incidents occurring when you have firearms being passed on from generation to generation or even just being loaned out for hunting. Too high of a price and its going to never pass, too low of a penalty and no one will do it since the fine is pocket change for someone that will send 300 rounds down range in an afternoon. Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

There is a difference between a single resource officer being on campus to deal with issues vs having full screening like what was proposed earlier. As evidenced by Florida even an armed officer onsite does not mean anything. Most larger schools have a single campus police officer that they pay for at the high school level only. In this latest case there was one there too. One in California just stopped a mass shooting by overhearing some conversations, getting a warrant and finding the student had collected an AR, some hand guns and a few hundred rounds of ammo at home. These are sometimes funded at the national level via a few grant programs (one of which is being proposed at being cut via the latest proposed budget) and other times they are funded at the local level by cutting teachers to pay for it. The sheer numbers do in fact show that its going to be that expensive even if you use your example of "1 or 2 local military per school". There are almost 100k school facilities nationwide when you break it down. At 2 or 3 per school thats 250,000 people that are needed. How many of those "Combat ready/experienced - highly armed vets" that can pass the needed back ground checks to be in the presence of youth all day are willing to work for min wage to be a security officer? None in this economy - they could be making real money anywhere else. You are looking at creating jobs at 30k per year for it or are you expecting them to volunteer their time to sit around all day for this service? Is your thoughts to only install an officer in a "high risk" school? How do you identify those? What happens when one of those military vets goes on vacation or moves? Is the school now unprotected or do you have to bring in others to cover that gap? Who supplies the weapons? The ammo? The body armor? Who has the liability for the vet if they injure someone accidentally? Who is conducting the assessment drills and auditing these guards to validate they are ready? Who pays for the recurrency training and on going education classes for these officers? Are they only charged with being the "front line in a shooting" or are they allowed to break up fights, arrange for discipline and coordinate with the court systems that resource officers do currently? There is a reason that even most high schools only have 1 resource officer only and sometimes only get hem a few days a week and have to share them with another school- the cost to hire in a police officer is 50k+ due to all the extra training beyond just the academy that is needed. That officer makes more than most teachers with 8-10 years experience in the classroom do almost always. Its a patriotic thought process to say that vets will set up and protect schools but there is nothing stopping them from going down and doing it today and yet its not something anyone does. The type of people that this tends to attract are the same ones that join militias to be Walter Mitty- are those the ones that you want overseeing hundreds if not thousands of children every day? Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

TSA's budget for airline passenger screening is $4,822,911,000 per year for 180 airports. Per their own numbers they set a record of 17,089,533 passengers screened in a single week (7 days) in 2017. There are 26000+ public High schools, 16000 middle schools and 9000+ private seconday schools with the number of students estimated to be 15 million in grades 9-12 with an additional 9 million students in the middle schools. The math on this works out to needing screeners in 42000 locations with an average of 571 students per location. TSA officer pay is $25k-38K per year. Staffing one officer at every school would cost 1,050,000,000 (Thats 1.05 Billion) Per year. There is no way that 1 screener could do 570 students in a timely manor in the morning with out students waiting hours in line so you would need to have 15-20 screeners per school (cost 15-20 Billion annually) to run multiple lines and have extras for subs when needed. Add in the scanning equipment (10k per metal and 170k per millimeter scanner) and thats another 2-4 Billion in start up costs. Most schools would need modified to have a screening area set up and a queue area to keep students while they are in line to gain access to the school each morning. Issue is that as soon as everyone is in the classroom for the day almost every screener would no longer be needed so in reality you are looking for armed, trained part time workers for 2-3 hours every day but have the flexibility to come in for longer if there are school delays. Said workers would need to be able to pass drug tests, background checks and then be issued firearms so they would need to attend that training and certification annually also? This could be done if someone was able to get a 25-30 Billion annual program up and running in the US and increase US government employment by another 650,000 employees. Just as an example the US military has a total of 1,200,000 members in all branches worldwide. My wife could not get the school to buy a iPad for her computer literacy centers that was a few hundred dollars and they even had it budgeted (PTO eventually did after she bought one on her own)- where the hell are they going to come up with the budget for a program like this? If you take the $25 Billion and divide it over every taxpayers return annually - each person would need to pay about $200 more per year for this type of program to be funded. Oh - I forgot about the 67000 elementry schools needing the same program. (Another 30 Billion on them and another 300000 screeners) Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com

The whole needing a plane thing is a big hurt as is the whole lack of being able to sell tickets to watch it. The IOC is nothing if not a business and likes events that they can sell tickets to and can sell the television rights to. Watching a tunnel comp is hard since the facility would need to be built to hold a few thousand people and none of the existing facilities designs could come close to holding even 250 people watching it let alone needing to hold 2500 plus all the cameras and media. Watching a freefall Skydiving comp would be impossible for selling tickets since the only thing anyone on the ground could see is the canopies opening and everyone landing. Watching canopy piloting could happen but the sport would need to then be held at a location far away from the general Olympic facilities due to airspace restrictions that it would be hard to get people to go 25-50+ miles away just to watch the events and it would be very weather dependent. The weather is actually an issue this year and they have had to cancel many of the alpine events due to extremely high winds and blowing snow. CP has an even tighter tolerance than the alpine events do, its possible to see the events get delayed or postponed for multiple days on end depending on location. Tunnels have the best option for anything but the problem is that there needs to be a recognized sport at the international level with a history of professional level competition and a full anti-doping policy and testing in place for all athletes. This presents an issue since I know that passing a random drug test is going to be hard for some of the teams. The Olympic Charter indicates that in order to be accepted, a sport must be widely practiced by men in at least 75 countries and on four continents and by women in no fewer than 40 countries and on three continents. The sport must also increase the ‘‘value and appeal’’ of the Olympic Games and retain and reflect its modern traditions. There are numerous other rules, including bans on purely ‘‘mind sports’’ and sports dependent on mechanical propulsion. This last one is why Water Skiiing was dropped years ago after being in for a few years. If you look at the last few tunnel comps there are consistently only about 20-25 countries represented so there needs to be a large uptick in the number of people coming from other countries that are doing tunnel comps to even get on the list that could be considered in the future. Further there would need to be the establishment of Women's only teams at a level that would meet the requirements. Tunnels are now in 5 continents (only one in all of Africa though) so that would need to change to help get tunnel flying as a sport. As a comparison if you look at the sport of Curling (since its considered a fringe Olympic sport) its US organization has a current membership similar to the USPA but worldwide its membership numbers of active club level registered participants is about 1.2-1.5 million so its a multiple of the number of worldwide active skydivers at any given point and tunnel flyers are an even smaller number than skydivers. There are curling clubs in 6 continents and in terms of TV rights its a goldmine since a game is about an 2 hours in length and 4 games occur at the same time so it lets them be able to steam multiple ones at the same time. Best bet is for tunnel flying to be an demonstration level sport - never up for medals but able to showcase the athletes talents. Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com