likearock

Solos are common among experienced freefliers. While it would be rare to see a 1,000 jump belly flier do a solo, someone can do a HD or sit solo and really challenge themselves to get stable in different body positions. In fact, sometimes a solo is the best way to work on some of those drills. I'm not saying your wrong.... but I don't know many FF'rs that "commonly" do solos whether they have 200 or 2000+ jumps. I suppose that would depend on what your definition of "common" is. If you interpret it as "the majority" of jumps then I agree, it is rare to find a freeflier who does the majority of his jumps as solos. If you recall, the poster I replied to was surprised that an experienced freeflier would ever do a solo. But as I said, it's a lot more useful for a freeflier to do solos, working on transitions or difficult body positions, than for a flat flier.

Solos are common among experienced freefliers. While it would be rare to see a 1,000 jump belly flier do a solo, someone can do a HD or sit solo and really challenge themselves to get stable in different body positions. In fact, sometimes a solo is the best way to work on some of those drills. This is a very disturbing incident. It may just be a very distracted skydiver who forgot to secure his harness. It's happened before - not just the Lodi occurrence, but there was even a camera flier who actually exited without a parachute.

That's really a non-sequitor. The post you responded to compared two scenarios, both of which assumed an American victory.

Indeed!

That's the only statement you're going to make after all your nanothermite talk? Where's that 500 post thread we're waiting for you to start? After all, the U.S. just killed a completely innocent man!

Agree. Besides, the daughter is already confirming he was killed (although, big surprise, she's claiming he was taken prisoner and summarily executed). Any of the tin foil hat crowd that still believe he's alive would not be persuaded by a photo either.

Good analogy. Just like with the birth certificate release, it would be completely unnecessary for the majority of rational human beings. But the yahoos are a distraction, I agree.

Eloy.

Great article! Should be a required read for everyone on this forum.

Perfect opportunity for this guy.

Thomas, as long as you stick with it, I'm sure you'll get there. No worries. As far as the issue at hand, there's a lot conflicting information out there. I've been trying to process all of it, and that includes the worst case scenarios whose probability may be low but is still non-zero. And that's really an important metric, isn't it? Whether the heat/radioactivity emanating from the plants is increasing or decreasing over time. Because until they've restored the fully regulated, sealed pipe cooling system, it just appears to the outside world to be a crap shoot one way or the other. But it is encouraging that both of you see a reasoned path out of this. Let's hope that events prove out that optimistic view. Meanwhile, here's a bunch of articles on the topic that underscore the complexity of the situation.

That was not my experience when I used to spearfish in Mexico. As you say, the dead coral is typically surrounded by living coral, but the latter is fed upon by a great number of fish. That's why divers and other fishermen tend to hang out by the reefs in order to get the best prey. In terms of absorbing radioactive material, I'd think that the living coral would be more likely to do that since it is ingesting water as part of its natural life processes. Don't discount the significant numbers of people who have been displaced by the radiation leaks, especially now that the evacuation zone has been officially expanded from 20 km to 30 km. Japan is not what you would call a sparsely populated country - a 30 km zone will encompass a lot of people. In terms of human life, once again, the incident at Fukushima is ongoing. We don't know how bad it could get and, worst of all, there doesn't seem to be a cogent plan for getting back to a stable situation. I'd love to believe that somehow they'll figure out a way out of this but their strategy hasn't changed much from day 1 - dump as much water as possible on the problem reactors to reduce the chances of any further fuel rod melting. Believe me Bill, if you with your knowledge of science has anything encouraging to say about the Japanese prospects for dealing with this mess, I'd love to hear it.

Call me Wayne. If you look at my DZ.com profile, you can see that's my real name. And while we're on the subject, mind if I call you Thomas? I suppose in spite of the fact that you haven't filled in your profile yet, it is possible your name really is Thomas N. Thomas.

You would be wrong. I actually argued on some other forums that this incident showed the resilience of the nuclear plants. From all accounts, the reactors survived the initial 9.0 earthquake - they did exactly what they should have done in terms of disaster recovery. It was only because the subsequent tsunami took out the backup generators that we're even talking about this right now. I'd like to continue to believe in nuclear power as part of our energy policy, but it's hard not to be alarmed at the Fukushima situation as it stands today. No one can say with any confidence when it will even be stabilized, let alone when it will end.

Two things: 1) After a month of nothing more than desperation measures, there is still no visible end game in the works. 2) While Chernobyl dealt with one reactor, Fukushima has six (three in immediate danger) and the amount of radioactive material at risk is several times that of Chernobyl. Focusing on the immediate fatalities alone does not give the full picture of how this disaster will ultimately impact the Japanese. For a month now, their strategy has consisted of dumping large amounts of water continually on the problem reactors to keep them from going critical. That highly radioactive water then has to go somewhere and it does, either into the ocean or into the ground water. How long do you think they can keep doing that without creating permanent no-man's lands similar to areas around Chernobyl? What do you think that's going to mean for the long-term health of the people in the area?

The headline asks the question "Worse than Chernobyl?" and given that their "end game" continues to be to indiscriminately dump water on the reactors, I'd say it's still an open question. Another measure of comparison is how many people are permanently displaced by the disasters. With the Japanese widening the evacuation zone, I wonder if they're already on track to pass Chernobyl by that measure.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/world/asia/12japan.html: Japan Nuclear Disaster Put on Par With Chernobyl By HIROKO TABUCHI and KEITH BRADSHER Published: April 11, 2011 TOKYO — Japan has decided to raise its assessment of the accident at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant from 5 to the worst rating of 7 on an international scale, putting the disaster on par with the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown, the Japanese nuclear regulatory agency said on Tuesday. According to the International Nuclear Event Scale, a level 7 nuclear accident involves “widespread health and environmental effects” and the “external release of a significant fraction of the reactor core inventory.” Japan’s previous assessment of the accident puts it at level 5 on the scale, the same level as the Three Mile Island accident in the United States in 1979. The level 7 assessment has been applied only to the disaster at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union. The scale, which was developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency and countries that use nuclear energy, requires that the nuclear agency of the country where the accident occurs calculate a rating based on complicated criteria. Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said at a news conference Tuesday morning that the rating resulted from new estimates by Japan’s Nuclear Safety Commission that suggest some 10,000 terabecquerels of radiation per hour was released from the plant into the environment for several hours in the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. (The measurement refers to how much radioactive material was emitted, not the dose absorbed by living things. ) The scale of the radiation leak has since dropped to under 1 terabecquerel per hour, the Kyodo news agency said, citing the commission. Commission officials in Tokyo said they could not immediately comment. Michael Friedlander, a former senior nuclear power plant operator for 13 years in the United States, said that the biggest surprise in the Japanese reassessment was that it took a month for public confirmation that so much radiation had been released. Some in the nuclear industry have been saying for weeks that the nuclear accident released large amounts of radiation, but Japanese officials had consistently played down this possibility. The announcement came as Japan was preparing to urge more residents around a crippled nuclear power plant to evacuate, because of concerns over long-term exposure to radiation. Also on Monday, tens of thousands of people bowed their heads in silence at 2:46 p.m., exactly one month since the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and ensuing tsunami brought widespread destruction to Japan’s northeast coast. The mourning was punctuated by another strong aftershock near Japan’s Pacific coast, which briefly set off a tsunami warning, killed at least one person and knocked out cooling at the severely damaged Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station for almost an hour, underscoring the vulnerability of the plant’s reactors to continuing seismic activity. On Tuesday morning, there was another strong aftershock, which shook Tokyo. The authorities have already ordered people living within a 12-mile radius of the plant to evacuate, and recommended that people remain indoors or avoid an area within a radius of 18 miles. The government’s decision to expand the zone came in response to high readings of radiation in certain communities beyond those areas, underscoring how difficult it has been to predict the ways radiation spreads from the damaged plant. Unlike the previous definitions of the areas to be evacuated, this time the government designated specific communities that should be evacuated, instead of a radius expressed in miles. The radiation has not spread evenly from the reactors, but instead has been directed to some areas and not others by weather patterns and the terrain. Iitate, one of the communities told on Monday to prepare for evacuation, lies well beyond the 18-mile radius, but the winds over the last month have tended to blow northwest from the Fukushima plant toward Iitate, which may explain why high readings were detected there. Yukio Edano, the government’s chief cabinet secretary, said that the government would order Iitate and four other towns and villages to prepare to evacuate. Officials are concerned that people in these communities are being exposed to radiation equivalent to at least 20 millisieverts a year, he said, which could be harmful to human health over the long term. Evacuation orders will come within a month for Katsurao, Namie, Iitate and parts of Minamisoma and Kawamata, Mr. Edano said. People in five other areas may also be told to evacuate if the conditions at the Fukushima Daiichi plant grow worse, Mr. Edano said. Those areas are Hirono, Naraha, Kawauchi, Tamura and other sections of Minamisoma. “This measure is not an order for you to evacuate or take actions immediately,” he said. “We arrived at this decision by taking into account the risks of remaining in the area in the long term.” He appealed for calm and said that the chance of a large-scale radiation leak from the Fukushima Daiichi plant had, in fact, decreased. Mr. Edano also said that pregnant women, children and hospital patients should stay out of the area within 19 miles of the reactors and that schools in that zone would remain closed. Until now, the Japanese government had refused to expand the evacuation zone, despite urging from the International Atomic Energy Agency. The United States and Australia have advised their citizens to stay at least 50 miles away from the plant. The international agency, which is based in Vienna, said Sunday that its team had measured radiation on Saturday of 0.4 to 3.7 microsieverts per hour at distances of 20 to 40 miles from the damaged plant — well outside the initial evacuation zone. At that rate of accumulation, it would take 225 days to 5.7 years to reach the Japanese government’s threshold level for evacuations: radiation accumulating at a rate of at least 20 millisieverts per year. In other words, only the areas with the highest readings would qualify for the new evacuation ordered by the government. But the Soviet Union used a lower threshold — five millisieverts per year — in eventually offering resettlement to people who lived near the Chernobyl reactors in 1986. Mr. Friedlander, the former nuclear plant operator , who is a specialist in emergency responses to nuclear accidents, said that the Japanese decision to evacuate more communities made sense not just to protect people, but also to make the eventual decontamination of farms and communities easier. Allowing people and nonemergency vehicles to continue moving through both radiation-contaminated areas and safer areas farther from the Fukushima reactors runs the risk of spreading radioactively contaminated particles, which could result in more square miles of territory ultimately being contaminated. “Unless you gain control, it will be like trying to mop your kitchen floor with the kids running in and out of the house,” Mr. Friedlander said. Masataka Shimizu, the president of Tokyo Electric, visited the tsunami-stricken area on Monday for the first time since the crisis began. He called on the governor of Fukushima Prefecture, Yuhei Sato, but was refused a meeting. He left his business card instead.

Great talking point. But where exactly in the supporting documentation for this claim? You point to M11-13 but there's no mention there of the military or of overturning any previous OMB directives.

Perfect campaign slogan for a party that has no one to put in his place.

U.N. Staffers Killed in Afghanistan Over Terry Jones Koran Burning, Police Say Police: 4 Guards, 4 Protestors, 3 U.N. Officials Killed in Violent Attack on U.N. Compound By NICK SCHIFRIN, AGHA ALEEM, LEE FERRAN and MATT GUTMAN April 1, 2011 At least eleven people were killed, including some United Nations officials, today in Afghanistan, apparently in response to Florida pastor Terry Jones burning the Koran last month, Afghan police and U.N. officials said. The deaths followed a protest march in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif today against the Koran burning last month in which Jones supervised while another pastor, Wayne Sapp, soaked the Koran in kerosene and burned it after finding it "guilty" in a mock trial. Police told ABC News the protest started peacefully but took a violent turn after a radical leader told those gathered that multiple Korans had been burned. In a fury, the people marched on the nearby U.N. compound despite police firing AK-47s into the air in hopes of subduing them. Police eventually turned their weapons on the protestors, killing at least four, police said, before they were overtaken and had their guns stolen. Using the police weapons, the protestors killed four U.N. guards from Nepal and then three foreign workers in the U.N. building -- a Norwegian, a Romanian and a Swede. An Afghan official said one man has been arrested for his role in allegedly masterminding the attack along with 19 others, according to a report by the Associated Press. Despite an onslaught of attention Jones garnered when he initially made his threat to burn the Muslim holy book in September 2010 -- including a personal plea from President Barack Obama -- the actual burning of the Koran last month went relatively unnoticed in western media. In a statement to reporters, Jones was unrepentant and called the U.S. government and the international community to respond to the killings. "We... find this a very tragic and criminal action. The United States government and the United Nations itself, must take immediate action. We must hold these countries and people accountable for what they have done as well as for any excuses they may use to promote their terrorist activities," the statement said. President Obama condemned the attack "in the strongest possible terms" in a statement. "The brave men and women of the United Nations, including the Afghan staff, undertake their work in support of the Afghan people," Obama said. "Their work is essential to building a stronger Afghanistan for the benefit of all its citizens. We stress the importance of calm and urge all parties to reject violence and resolve differences through dialogue." U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon joined Obama in his condemnation of the attack today. "This was an outrageous and cowardly attack against U.N. staff, which cannot be justified under any circumstances and I condemn it in the strongest possible terms," Ki-moon said from Kenya, where the U.N said he is making an official visit. Terry Jones Cancelled Previous Burning in New York Jones, a pastor from Gainesville, Fla., initially cancelled his plans for the book burning on the ninth anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks. The stunt, according to Jones, was a protest for the Muslim-backed community center that was to be built near the site of the September 11 attacks in New York. During that incident, Gainesville's mayor told reporters Jones does not speak for the community. "He's a really fringy character," said Pegeen Hanrahan, a two-term mayor who left office in May. "For every one person in Gainesville who thinks this is a good idea there are a thousand who just think it's ridiculous." "He's a person who has a congregation that's exceedingly small, maybe 30 or 40 people -- 50 on a good day," Jacki Levine, managing editor of the Gainesville Sun newspaper, said in September. "He is not at all reflective of community he finds himself in." Spokespersons for the U.S. State Department did not immediately return requests for comment on this report.

But doesn't that just open up a different window for "when the AAD won't result in an open canopy for a incapacitated jumper"? While trying to deal with the problem of a snivelly reserve, you've just introduced a "no man's land" between 1200 and 1800 (actually 1700). If someone has an emergency exit within that range and is rendered unconscious, the AAD will not be armed whereas it would have been with the current configuration.

Dude, have they recently changed your meds? Dude, that's uncalled for.

Compared to an uncontrolled leakage of radioactivity 150 miles from Tokyo with no clear strategy to stop it, then no, it really isn't that scary.

It's incredibly short-sighted to assess the full threat of Fukushima by simply focusing on the fatality rate so far. We should be asking ourselves "how will this end?" Unfortunately, no one can give a good answer to that question. Blaming the media is sometimes justified, sometimes it's just a way to avoid looking at an unpleasant truth.