lurch

That is the coolest exit that I have ever seen. I laughed so hard the cat freaked out and took out my coffee, which in turn took out my keyboard... this was typed on a spare. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Yup. I kinda thought we covered all this back before jump #1 when we all had to decide for ourselves if living THAT brightly was worth the chance of dying that quickly. I think pretty much all bad shit that can happen is a subset of or covered by the term "dying." Could be a crater tomorrow, so I'll be a bird, today. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

"To get federal tax money. New Hampshire is the only state in the union that has had the spine to keep the seatbelt a personal choice. Live free or die." AMEN! (among many reasons why I don't want to live anywhere else... the fading illusion of freedom still looks most convincing, here. ) Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

It's a priviledge to fly, not a right. With all due respect, THAT is so much bullshit. That attitude, slowly penetrating into almost every activity you can think of, is why the idea that this is a free country has become a bad joke. I've grown rather tired of hearing this or that is a privilege not a right and I only get to do it by another man's leave. Travelling freely about the landscape is NOT a privilege. Ask any animal. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

What, is your resolution set at 320 x 240 so everything is one huge block? At 1280 x 1024 looks quite paragraphed to me. THIS is no paragraphs.... You ever heard of Occam's razor? Its a logical construct. Commonly referred to as the "least hypothesis", it can be boiled down for practical applications to a method for judging things like truth and probability. The idea is, you ask the question "what is the least unlikely outcome?" Occam's razor, man. Very handy logic tool. You know what the razor tells me? Tells me theres a very slim chance Osama Bin Asswipe will even still be heating his immediate environment to 98.3 by 2012. If we don't bag him, his own kidney failure will. Occam's razor also tells me America will still be in business in 2012. Because that is far, far less unlikely than a bunch of muslim cave men scoring a nuke or three and ending the existence of a nation big and wealthy enough to build a global commercial empire. I'd even go so far as to say even if they did, even if you removed NY and Washington DC, that won't end America any more than nuking Mecca would end islam. There is enough leftover cold-war redundancy in America's military machine to ensure one glass crater here leads to several more in muslim lands. And the Israelis? They got their own nukes. Half the reason their neighbors are so permanently bent out of shape is because much like your belief system demanding that a fantasy is real, their beliefs demand that Israel can NOT exist. and it stubbornly continues to do so, and do so armed well enough that no matter how big a temper tantrum the arabs throw, they can't make it obey their beliefs and cease to exist. Last time they tried ganging up on it, it kicked all their asses at once, remember? I kinda like the idea... No more being stomped, no more mister nice jew, backs to the wall, what do you expect? I'm rooting for em mostly because of what they're up against. Not everyone is surrounded by nations that have vowed to utterly annihilate you. And everyone loves an underdog who happens to be armed better than all their opponents combined. Natural democracy....well armed sheep contesting the vote, you know? Destined by god....which one? Yours? Dagon? Ahriman? Mabuko Tambui the congo god? I THOUGHT you were supposed to be one of my elders. That includes a certain expectation of maturity and responsibility of mind. You are falling down on the job. Most of your reply post is at a third grade level. You'll have to do better than that if you expect to be taken at all seriously....right now with you arguing the way you do you're hurting your own god's cause. With friends like these.... Or would you prefer a carriage return after every sentence? (sticks tongue out at GM) Thppphtht! So there. I feel so juvenile... Here I was all high and mighty and logical and shit and you come along and kick me right in the starfish steak. Don't step on my gerbil, man I was having fun here, and at someone else's expense.

You ever heard of Occam's razor? Its a logical construct. Commonly referred to as the "least hypothesis", it can be boiled down for practical applications to a method for judging things like truth and probability. The idea is, you ask the question "what is the least unlikely outcome?" Occam's razor, man. Very handy logic tool. You know what the razor tells me? Tells me theres a very slim chance Osama Bin Asswipe will even still be heating his immediate environment to 98.3 by 2012. If we don't bag him, his own kidney failure will. Occam's razor also tells me America will still be in business in 2012. Because that is far, far less unlikely than a bunch of muslim cave men scoring a nuke or three and ending the existence of a nation big and wealthy enough to build a global commercial empire. I'd even go so far as to say even if they did, even if you removed NY and Washington DC, that won't end America any more than nuking Mecca would end islam. There is enough leftover cold-war redundancy in America's military machine to ensure one glass crater here leads to several more in muslim lands. And the Israelis? They got their own nukes. Half the reason their neighbors are so permanently bent out of shape is because much like your belief system demanding that a fantasy is real, their beliefs demand that Israel can NOT exist. and it stubbornly continues to do so, and do so armed well enough that no matter how big a temper tantrum the arabs throw, they can't make it obey their beliefs and cease to exist. Last time they tried ganging up on it, it kicked all their asses at once, remember? I kinda like the idea... No more being stomped, no more mister nice jew, backs to the wall, what do you expect? I'm rooting for em mostly because of what they're up against. Not everyone is surrounded by nations that have vowed to utterly annihilate you. And everyone loves an underdog who happens to be armed better than all their opponents combined. Natural democracy....well armed sheep contesting the vote, you know? Destined by god....which one? Yours? Dagon? Ahriman? Mabuko Tambui the congo god? I THOUGHT you were supposed to be one of my elders. That includes a certain expectation of maturity and responsibility of mind. You are falling down on the job. Most of your reply post is at a third grade level. You'll have to do better than that if you expect to be taken at all seriously....right now with you arguing the way you do you're hurting your own god's cause. With friends like these.... -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Dude.... I thought you had "facts" hidden in your religious fiction novel proving America gets nuked before the next presidential election. If we get nuked, theres nothing left for osama to do in 2012....or did your god call you back and reschedule? Blessed is the man or woman of true quality, those who are the hope of others. Jeremiah didn't know jack. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I know one guy whos son went a bit funny so he glued the sword to the scabbard and drilled a hole through the centre and nut & bolted it so that it couldnt be drawn in a rage. ...And when the son found his sword had been fucked with he flew into a rage and killed his dad with an improvised sword made out of a tape-wrapped lawnmower blade, causing a legislative crisis and calls for the banning of lawns, because lawns lead to ownership of lawn tools and lawn tools lead to murder... Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Anyone notice the hysterical drama-queen phrasing and presentation of the article? Designed specifically to overwhelm logic and reason and get people to act quickly on hysterical fears without considering the sanity of the proposed idea. As if the uncontrolled availability of big sharp things has suddenly become an intolerable crisis and imminent threat to life and limb to anyone in the UK. The only thing will cure UK society of this bizarre "gotta control EVERYTHING" disease will be when a whole bunch of whackos, in seriously mass numbers goes on a killing spree armed with... Golf clubs, gardening machetes broken vases 3-inch kitchen knives cricket bats farming implements umbrellas and billiard balls in socks. (. "It is incredible that our reporter was able to buy such a terrifying weapon, no questions asked. I was shocked at just how sharp and heavy the blade is.) ...Why aren't they being shocked and horrified about how easy it is to buy a new lawnmower blade? In a pinch I could use a lawnmower blade with one end wrapped in electric tape as a very effective improvised sword. So much for banning shit. I'm stunned that they are willing to do such insane things to their own citizens for such insane reasons... Collect the guns. They'll use knives. Collect the knives. They'll use broken glass. Outlaw glass. They'll use rocks and sticks. Outlaw rocks...? UKers around here get justifiably tweaked when some around here (JR?) endlessly attack their policies. I can understand that, but there is a reason. JR is trying to help be America's immune system against that disease. He is quite justifiably scared the disease will spread and establish a beachhead here in the states and he strikes at anything that could be an outbreak, hoping to kill it before it establishes itself as "reasonable" to control and restrict sales and ownership of swords knives guns lawn equipment etc.... Is there anyone left in UK society who is allowed to consider themselves adults except for politicians military and cops? I know it must suck getting bashed by us unruly trigger happy Americans and all but from where we stand, it looks like the UK is being turned into one giant elementary school under perpetual "lockdown" where there are no adults except of course politicians, who can have whatever weapons they want. After all, THEY can be trusted, right? Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

someone set up us the bomb. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Robinson is rad. On the subject of good movement skills, check this out: Hey. I'm an occasional practitioner of that art. Not too bad at it either since to date I haven't broken anything, although part of that is not having the balls for some of the wilder aerial moves. What I want to know is, who the hell is THAT? And WHERE? Abandoned housing complexes? Heavy industrial environment? Railroad trestles pipes and shit? That is hands down the most incredible jungle gym I ever failed to find and have ever been looking for. Knowing my luck it will turn out to be in the Ukraine somewhere.... Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Bill... Thank you for not destroying that lifeform. I'm not a treehugger, if I need to build a house I chop a tree... But the totally pointless mass destruction of one of nature's better lifeforms always depressed the hell out of me this time of year. Something about a dying lifeform killed, decorated for amusement while it dies and discarded in the trash later always struck me as both horribly bleak and disrespectful. You're going to a lot of trouble to celebrate with a tree without killing it. Thank you. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Agreed on all points. But you don't just see that incompetent management in companies, its the default state of most politicians. The fact that an honest politician is an astonishingly rare thing, even a joke, says it all. The default expectation is corruption, usually "for the children" or "to help the disadvantaged". People who think it should be "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" are EVERYWHERE and that scares the shit out of me. I have a bunch of family members elsewhere who personify that mentality, living off the system by choice. The result is always another new tax or an increase in one, or some "give you back a buck then take two for a different reason and tell you you're saving money" bullshit. Argue against it and you'll be accused of not wanting to shoulder "your fair share" of someone else's expenses. Oh and as for the lead pipe? You said you're about halfway through. You ain't seen nothing yet. Wait till you get to the central lecture of the book, John Galt's big radio speech... all seventy-odd nonstop pages of it as subtle as a brick in the face. Reading it is the mental equivalent of heart surgery with no anesthetic... fascinating, technical, agonizing. You'll collapse in relief when its over and desperately want to go do something totally mindless that doesn't involve words. Ayn Rand's personality was... unique. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

He already did. The planet is massive however and takes time to fall. All joking aside... I've been a fan of Rand's work since high school, with qualifications. She had the basics right I think, the underlying lessons...you can't eat what you didn't produce, and the world is going to hell largely because of people in power freely granting themselves the right to help themselves to as much of YOUR income as they feel like, all in the name of a diseased form of altruism. Her image of economics and reality was strangely rudimentary, though. Almost childish. Kinda like a cartoon or something, it left out all the billion other factors involved in politics and economy... and all her characters....all of them....seem to be reflections of her own mind. They all think the same way, use the same terms patterns and perspectives. But you know she was dead on accurate in a lot of ways. The job I'm at now is the latest in a long line of collapsing factories I've worked at, which all died due to either enron-style management looting, or being dependent on a company that died that way. And the people with brains are making themselves scarce, leaving plants staffed and run by incompetents. The motors do in fact wind up stopping because management thinks they can do without expensive brains and replace trained techs with illiterate Mexican gangbangers who run around writing their names on the walls and peeing in the corners. I'm one of the last techs left at THIS plant and its dying the same way, eerily reminiscent of Atlas Shrugged. Go figure. Bummer theres no techno-atlantis in the mountains to run to. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

"Now, how can we make the air be quiet because it's too damn loud!" One word. Wingsuit. Freefalls long enough to take a nap too. Feathers get ruffled regardless, though. If they are not being ruffled, you are on the ground. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Wow. This is cool. An instant Ugly Rig Generator. I pushed the button 50 times and every rig was uglier than the last. After this I feel so much better about my neon green black blue purple and pink RW suit. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Pic #54 has got to be one of the coolest shots I ever saw. Whoever that is looks like he's happily being clotheslined by God. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

china would so fuck over the u.s. it is not funny. BWAHAHAHAHA.... Scuse please. Um, Rhys, you don't know Americans. We invented the phrase "can of whoopass". We invented the portable hellgate commonly called a "nuke", remember? And just how many unmotivated chinese peasants with pitchforks does it take to stop an F-16, anyway? Or a whole squadron of em? Or a Trident? ICBM? MIRV? They have primitive human wave warfare strategies left over from the past 4000 years of dynasties kicking each other out of power. We have everything else. The chinese are making toys for us as fast and cheap as they can hoping trade and entertainment will keep us from completely overrunning their culture with Levis movies and Mcdonalds. Their kids don't want war they don't want stupid hokey childish slogans about great leaps forward and long marches and communist mind control crap their parents bought into. They want what we got, what they see on TV. Nice clothes. Malls. Infinite food-they gotta be sick of just rice by now. Refrigerators microwaves and a dvd player for everyone. Xbox. Cheap used cars. Convenience stores. Electricity. Running water. Paved roads. I could go on.... They fuck with us, they lose all that, and what little stability they have. Their half-fossilized commie leadership values social stability above all else, to the point of being willing to slaughter a few hundred students to maintain it. They'd never risk it just to start a pissing contest with us. I'm just worried about what happens when they ditch the commie crap and free themselves. Unleashed and clawing for first-world status they will be unstoppable. But by then they won't be the same china we currently see as a possible enemy so its a moot point. They're the best trading partner and biggest consumer market in all human history. China is patient. It will dominate, in time. LONG time. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Excellent link, I just learned a shitload more about pogroms than I knew yesterday. I just find it disturbing that "Lets go kill all the jews we can find" has been such an institution for so long it has its own jargon. GTA got it right... By virtue of the particular window in time in which you exist you haven't seen it because we're in that "calm before the pogrom" and there aren't any communities of jews anywhere except Israel itself who have to worry about their neighbors suddenly rising up and slaughtering them. It just isn't something people have been doing much lately, probably because the whole planet knows what happened to em under the Reich and even anyone pogrom-prone winds up deciding to leave them alone thinking they've taken enough of a beating already. Before the mid-20th it happened all the time, all over the place. Its why anti-semitic is a word you come across so often. Anti-semitism is an institution itself. Other races don't have to deal with this shit. You don't come across mention of antijapaneseism, antichineseism, antiitalianism, antigreekism. Lot of people got grudges against Russians what with them spending most of the last century going places Russians don't come from and notifying them that you are now our client state, please enjoy the tanks. But Russia kind of outgrew that shit and the anger will fade. My own exposure to Russians has been flight-loving friends in wingsuits, far cry from their media portrayal from my childhood as the bad guys. 2 centuries from now, people will still have "annihilate all jews" on their agendas. Some evil ideas just never die. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Chicken and egg, man. The complex is a result of the persecution not the cause. My own ancestry includes old-school royalty and nobility a few centuries back, vikings even further back. My ancestors did the conquering ruling ass-kicking and name taking. The only persecution my line has had to deal with was several of my great x5 grandmothers got hanged as witches by whacked out locals a while ago. The autobiography of every jew's ancestors for the last 3000+ years has included "Ran like hell to escape the current jew-stomping" at some point in their lives. With a background like that, I'd be a bit paranoid about people persecuting me, too. Hindsight is always 20/20, and if you use a mirror with your hindsight it tells you the future. If I was a jew, here, now, I'd be like "Well, I'm not being attacked right now which means watch out! Someone is about to appear to try to kill me! Every moment of peace for the last 3000 years was the calm before the pogrom, whos the next attacker?" You've never had to personally deal with prolonged forced cohabitation with truly violent people, have you? It makes you jumpy. Edit: If it'll give weight to my point, consider the fact that jew-stomping is such a popular sport a word was coined just for the occasion? Pogrom. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Can anyone explain to me wtf is humanity's problem with the jews? Why the fuck have they been singled out for ongoing nonstop endless hatred by whoever the fuck, wherever the fuck they go? I mean look, hate or pc-ism aside, different race/cultural groups have generalities which apply loosely to the group, and may or may not apply to individuals within that group. I.E. Japanese are small, fierce, want to take over Asia and have a big cultural thing for small complicated gadgets, Italians tend to have big noses and fiery passionate personalities, Irish love to drink, Mexicans tend to hot spicy food and grab crotches at each other as a form of greeting, Russians love to build big shit and take things over, Bantu-descended African negroes have oversize genitalia, Germans are big on authority und ordnung, French are big on culture, wine and dining and declining to go to war in favor of staying at home and getting laid, etc. And jews have a lot of money, big noses, and tend to get picked on a lot. WHY? I'm familiar with at least the general outline of their history as a culture and racial group and I just don't understand what has made them targets for thousands of years. If it ain't the Romans its the Arabs, or the Germans, or whoever, but theres always someone out there who wants to kick their asses and kill them off. I know a few jews. They're just people. Whatever it is, I can't see it. My most recent prolonged interaction with a guy I knew was jewish consisted of him loaning me a rig for several months when I didn't have a canopy. Yeah, thats real offensive and deserves persecution. They don't even have any offensive or obnoxious cultural habits, for christs sake. They don't have it on their agenda to force everyone to submit to their religion or die, (arabs, islam), they don't tend to try to forcibly export their ideology or form of government or take over other countries and use them as pawns or weapons, (Americans, British, Russians...) They don't have a built-in tendency to internal genocide and self-slaughter over internal differences, (Africans,(Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Somalia etc), Russians, (think Stalin's purges+ 10 million dead) Balkans/eastern Europeans, (Kosovo, ethnic Albanians, "ethnic cleansing"). Follow my drift here? There are some groups that are just kind of like leave me alone to do my own thing, don't seem to feel collectively entitled to just take someone else's shit, and don't have a hate-on for anyone else in particular. Tibetans, Buddhist types in general, Laotians, American Indians, Roma, Eskimos, Aleuts, Amish and a number of similar small harmless self-contained and slightly eccentric christian subsects come to mind. Jews seem to fit in that category. The palestinians currently would disagree with me on that one, but prior to the artificial creation of the Israeli state (the jews didn't take over the region loosely referred to as palestine, the freakin' UN did, said now its Israel and said hey jews thats your homeland we made it official now go there if you want) and the current conflict caused by its existence the Jews weren't a force to be reckoned with, didn't have an official unified representative national presence, (Israel itself). Just a racial identity and a set of cultural feeding and family habits with an optional religious component. Which in itself recommends them highly since with most religious groups tied to race, religious participation isn't optional. Try being an atheist arab in any country that identifies itself as islamic. Penalty for simply deciding I don't want to BE a muslim is death, lot of places. Used to be the same with christianity too, although last century or so christianity seems to have matured a little bit and currently does acknowledge atheists and other religions' right to exist without bending knee to the cross. Jews seem to have a lot of internal tolerance...You're not big on all that God stuff? Fine, you're still family, here have some gefilte fish and matzo balls. So what the fuck is the problem? Jews are one of the less-offensive human subspecies, certainly less than my own, far more harmless than most and with a tendency to boosting the local economy whereever they go. You'd think they'd be welcome. End irritated rant. -B Postrant: Or is my perception here flawed and a mere reflection of media representation and incomplete awareness of history? Educate me here. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

...wow. Unforgettable. Yeah. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Jesus wept. Anybody here ever read Atlas Shrugged? If she was still alive to see this Ayn Rand's head would explode like a grenade in a bucket of hamburger. We are witnessing corporate suicide in the name of pleasing the almighty god Political Correctness... That, and pleasing the shareholders of today with stellar profits by wiping out the jobs of everyone necessary to make things function tomorrow. No longer does hiring have anything to do with the skills or ability of the applicant to actually DO the job... Just whether they are cheaper and anything but white. Anyone ever notice how these days racism is still perfectly acceptable in public and as official corporate and social policy just so long as its against whites? The plant I work at has the most openly racist policy I've ever seen. They absolutely will not hire a white man unless forced to by simple technical necessity. They have methodically attempted to replace every white male with an illegal mexican....scuse me... "undocumented worker". I am one of the last non-hispanic names on the payroll. The problem is the class of people they try to use cannot be trained. Most of these guys are wannabe mex gangster types, 5 year old children in adult bodies who can't stop themselves from pushing buttons and turning knobs at random just to see what they do. Half of them literally need to be toilet trained, and if you object to them peeing in the corners and writing their names and home provinces and gang shit all over the walls, the forklifts the equipment etc, you are "dissing" them and being a fucking gringo from their perspective. The only reason I still have a job is straight out of Rand's works.... I'm one of the last ones left who can DO the job. The discrepancy is so dramatic terminating me would increase the materials waste and scrap by several tons a week. The other so-called operators do setups changeovers and troubleshooting largely by random button pushing, I shit you not. Much like the shakespeare monkeys, they will eventually stumble on some settings which sort of work, but it typically takes days sometimes weeks, produces thousands of pounds of scrap plastic and the resulting product (plastic bottles) looks like shit. I'm a tech freak. I self-trained on the hardware and programming a long time ago. A typical setup for me requires about 200-250 scrap bottles to be made while fine-tuning the program. Not 250 hoppers full, not 250 cubic yards, not 250 kilos, 250 individual bottles. At 23.5 grams of resin per bottle thats 5.875 kilos scrap. I've come back from vacation to find changeovers done and since theres nobody left who speaks english or understands tech, they simply accepted that they were manufacturing unusable scrap and ran the machine anyway for days or weeks, filling the warehouse with tens of thousands of kilos of unusable scrap bottles. The price of resin has more than doubled this year alone to over 1$/Kg. The company is literally pouring money into the scrap bins as fast as they can and its ok because at least they aren't hiring white guys. After all its PC, and theoretically the illegals are cheaper, right? The company is slowly going under. Gee I wonder why. White men: We're the new niggers! And just as Rand said, so it is happening at every plant I've worked at in the last 9 years....the motors are stopping... -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

What the heck is CF? And why? Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.