jonege

Right. I got all that. But when you did make your specific response to Ian, you started out by saying you understood HE wanted to be able to call people names, and then you go on about how you are not going to let this forum degerate into the flame fest that BLiNC became, as if Ian was the prime offender here with the name-calling. If YOU go back and read carefully, you will see that Ian was not engaging in petty name-calling like Nick was. He WAS commenting on Nick's motives, his attitude and the hypocrisy in many of his rants about glory-seeking, the good old days, etc. But his comments, although very critical of Nick, were generally civilized and mature. Yet your response to him makes it sound like he was the instigator and the one determined to take this forum down the path BLiNC got sucked down. It seems like you want to give your buddy, Nick, a free pass (or at most, a love tap on the wrist), but you want to slap Ian, and that just doesn't seem right. I'll leave it at that, though, because I'm pretty sure you are not going to admit any bias in your moderation on this, and I am positive you are not going to be able to convince me that there wasn't any here.

You still haven't answered my primary question: why didn't you say ANYTHING to Nick about calling everyone who attended the event assholes but then you blast Ian for name-calling in response? The only thing you said to His Holier-Than-Thou-ness was how sorry you were for splitting out his post. Not a word about the personal attack that was in the original un-edited version. (And as I understand it, because many of the jumpers who attended the event also post here, calling them all assholes is a personal attack prohibited by the rules here.) While Ian's post may have technically been a personal attack, at least it was based Nick's own words. Nick's post was just a blast at a bunch of people he doesn't even necessarily know who attended an event he knows nothing about. Yet not even a word of warning to Nick about that. I know I am not the only one here who thinks that's crap and would like to hear your explanation as to how that is fair or equal treatment of posters, so how about it?

So what about the points Ian made in his last post? As he points out, it doesn't make a lot of sense for you to apologize to Nick but then crack Ian. Nick is the one who started with the name-calling in the first place, and Ian just responded to that. If you are unsure about that, go back and read his unedited original post. Fine if you want to slap Ian for a bit of name calling (he was totally right, but whatever), but if you are going to do that, you should be slapping Nick for starting it off. And under no circumstances should be you APOLOGIZING to him! WTF?!

I'm not going to get in the middle of all aspects of this little drama, but I have seen MANY posters hammering Jimmy about HIDGAF and referring to it as his "philosophy" of life (or words to that effect) as if it supposedly applied to everything in his life. I've been reading here a long time, and while I have seen HIDGAF thrown around a lot (obviously including by Jimmy), I have NEVER seen Jimmy say that applied to everything in his life. Maybe you and the others here who want to take shots at him have taken it that way, but I am pretty sure you can't find a single post where he has said that applies to everything. I mean, after all, it's HIDGAF, not HIDGAFA[bout]A[nything]. There is nothing inherently contradictory about him caring about some things and still touting HIDGAF with respect to other matters. So enough about HIDGAF. If you want to keep hammering him about his views regarding the list, go ahead. But get off the HIDGAF shit! It's really not part of the issue here. It's just something associated with Jimmy that you are now using to get in some digs at him with.

Fair enough. It still seems to me that the jump would have posed less risk to others if it has been done well after rush hour, but your point about the movement of traffic (or lack of movement) at rush hour also makes sense. As for your current predicament with the civil suit, it you really don't have anything left for them to take and are effectively judgment proof at this point, you might check with your lawyer about the possibility of just completely not defending the suit and taking a default judgment and then taking a personal bankruptcy to have the judgment discharged. I know that used to be possible, but when they revamped the bankruptcy code a year or so ago, they may have eliminated that possibility. If not, it would be something to think about because you wouldn't have the huge legal bills you will rack up if you defend the suit. Thanks for responding. I don't necessarily agree with all of your views on this matter, but I do appreciate you discussing it. Good luck to you.

Again, though, all of that assumes everything went according to your plan, at least up to the point of opening. But unexpected shit happens in freefall, as well. You could have easily hit unexpected turbulence that would have prevented you from opening where you had intended. Additionally, I work in a highrise office tower and see work crews on the roofs of adjacent buildings all the time. So even if you did open over an adjacent building and slam into the roof, you could still take out someone else. My point is not that you are some callous asshole with no regard for others. My point, is that there is so much uncertainty in BASE and so many variables in that situation over which you had no control (unpredictable movements of cars and people on the streets and in the surrounding buildings, funky windshear, stuck traffic signals, etc.) that you can't say you posed no risk to anyone else, certainly not as a matter of law, which is what it appears the judge effectively ruled in tossing the indictment. If you really are committed to avoiding injury to others as a result of your actions, why did you choose to jump during rush hour? You could have timed the lights at any other time of day, and the observation deck is open all day and well into the evening (maybe weekends, too?). You could have easily chosen a time when there would be far fewer people around on the ground, thereby reducing the chances of injuring someone else if everything did go to shit. But instead you chose one of the very busiest times of the day when the volume of people on the ground was near its daily peak. How come?

How many building jumps have been made during rush hour in major cities? (Not trying to be a smartass--I honestly don't know. My impression is that most are made at night, or at least at very low-traffic times.) If there have been relatively few, it seems like it weakens the argument that because no one on the ground has ever been crushed by a jumper doing a building jump, the chances of that happening must be remote. If there have been thousands of building jumps but most have been made at times when the streets below are mostly empty and only very few have been made in major cities during rush hour, I don't think you can properly use the results from the jumps made in low traffic times to predict the probability of an accident resulting in inury or death of someone on the ground from a jump made during a peak traffic time period in a very crowded city. Also, it appears the judge in your case was impressed with how you had studied traffic patterns so that you could time your jump and if all went well, land in a lull. But did anyone (like the prosecutor) point out to the judge that if you had had a mal, you easily could have been completely out of your timing pattern and landed when there was lots of traffic below, and you possibly traveling at high speed? Did anyone point out that, even as skilled as you are, unexpected shit does happen in BASE, and in fact, has happened to you before, like when you had that off-heading at the waterfall and you hit the falls and your canopy collapsed and you pounded in at pretty high speed? My point here is that even though you planned everything very well so that the risks to others would be minimized, all that planning appears to have had as one major assumption that all would go according to plan, that you would not have a malfunction or an off-heading resulting in an object strike and a high-speed (or at least uncontrolled) impact. But generally people don't plan on having a problem. They may plan FOR it, but they don't plan ON it. And it seems to me that given the very real possibility that shit easily COULD have gone awry and your awesome plan easily could have become irrelevant, if the judge ruled that as a matter of law your conduct was not reckless because you are skilled and put a lot of planning into it, the judge erred and should have at least let the case proceed to a trial before a jury. Kudos to your lawyer for getting you off, but if the judge really did conclude that because you are skilled and put so much planning into the jump you could not have been a danger to anyone, the judge doesn't know much about BASE.

Dude, if it sucks so bad here, why DO you keep coming here?! Seriously, why? And yes, it is the virtual world and people frequently adopt online personalities that do not corelate with their real personalities, but that does not mean that you can't tell ANYTHING about people from what they post online. Like in your case, maybe I can't tell much about what you are really like overall, but the fact the you keep coming back here and creating new IDs and just can't seem to let go of something you continually insist sucks DOES tell me one thing about you for sure--YOU are fucking OBSESSED with this place. And each time you come back here to stir the pot just further confirms that. Let it go, dude, LET IT GO.

So what? The issue here is not the risk. It's the amount of pub BASE is getting. Back in the good old days it was much more low profile, and now not so much. That's not a function of risk level, so I'm with MyTwoCents--I don't get your point.

If both of his legs were broken, wouldn't it have been pretty difficult to pull off an unpacked jump? It sounds like he tried that anyway and just didn't make it.

Just because he responded doesn't mean he cares what you think of him. Wondering how he is "shitting all over us" is not the same as wondering what you think of him. Hell, when I read that "shitting all over us" remark, I wondered the same thing. His posts may not add much here, but I don't see him "shitting" on you or anyone else.

All hail Mac, the mighty champion of truth and personal responsibility and model for all! What a crock of shit! As you well know, the "personal responsibility" that BASE is supposedly about refers to the person stepping off the edge being completely and 100% responsible for his or her own fate. But that doesn't fit with your agenda, which is to slag people you perceive to be (and resent as) "BASE Gods." So instead, you try to take the BASE mantra of personal responsibilty and turn it around and use it to suggest that it was NOT Brian's fault and he was NOT responsible for what happened. Rather, it was the ORGANIZERS' fault and THEY are responsible for Brian's demise. That is utterly absurd and completely the opposite of what personal responsibility in the BASE context has historically meant. Every other time the concept of "personal responsibility" has come up in connection with a BASE fatality, it has been used as a shield by BASE jumpers to fend off attacks from non-jumpers coming in after the fact and trying to blame someone else for the death of their loved one. This is the first time I have seen a BASE jumper try to use it to absolve the deceased of responsibility for his own fate and lay the blame on others. Absolutely ABSURD, not to mention completely hypocritical.

I think when Kris said his approach was to follow that advise "with caution," he was saying he was following it and now being very cautious, as well. Or at least that's how I read it. I didn't read that to mean that he was only selectively following robibird's advise. Seems like maybe you are seeing only what you want to see because of some personal issues you have with Kris as a result of his past actions. It also sounds like he has acknowledged he fucked up in the past and is now doing things the right way, so maybe you should just let it go and move on. Or maybe you just really get off on cracking people.

He may know full well and first hand the dangers, but 16 year-olds still tend to believe, consciously or subconsciously, that they are bullet-proof. They may say they don't, and on an intellectual level they may understand they really aren't and they really can die, but most of the time, there is still some part of them that has not yet accepted their own mortality. And until that happens, I am not sure a person is really capable of appreciating the risks of an activity like BASE well enough to make a mature determination as to whether or not they want to go down that path. Not saying that applies with your kid (or 841's either), but I think that does apply to the overwhelming majority of 16-year olds. Just think back to when you were 16, and think about the perspective you had then as compared to the perspective you have now. I am 40, and I remember that when I was 16, I was pretty damn sure I was an "adult" capable of making my own life decisions, despite my parents' views to the contrary. I look back now and am glad my parents stuck to their guns and didn't just turn me loose.

The first post looked serious, but I didn't post a reply because I thought you might be joking. But then you made the second post offering support for your position in the first, and that definitely made it look like you were serious. Apparently, I was not the only one here who thought that, either. Glad to know you ARE just kidding, but the second post sure made it seem otherwise.