opurt

Tetranike vests. By LBA International. David Hackworth swears by his. See his article. LBA International's web site

I've discovered that the type of car you have REALLY decides the comfort level of the commute. And that determines how tolerable the commute is. I used to drive an underpowered subcompact with vinyl seats and no air conditioning. Now I drive a very comfortable, loaded, powerful coupe. It makes a TREMENDOUS difference. First, it gets me there faster. Second, it's quiet and comfortable and handles very well, so maneuverability and driving comfort are significantly increased. This significantly decreases how taxing the commute is. A 45 minute commute in the older vehicle would translate into a 30 minute commute in the newer vehicle. Forty five minutes in the older car is much more taxing than 45 minutes in the new car. The newer car is an automatic, which makes stop-and-go traffic MUCH more tolerable. The older car is a manual. The newer car has a pretty comfortable ride. It's not a harsh-riding roadster. My $0.02. YMMV.

Check out the attachment. - opurt

... and lived like a thick fascist twat! There is a bit of the dragon in the dragonslayer. There has to be else he couldn't slay the dragon. Love bombs would not stop a Nazi division. Hugs for Hitler might have warmed his heart but done little for the victims of his aggression. It requires a Patton to stop a Hitler. Neither love bombs nor hugs will stop a Zarqawi or a Bin Laden either.

My $0.02 regarding the risk of skydiving versus the risk of driving: In order to compare two things, you must use a meaningful common unit of measurement. For example, to compare how loud two car stereos are, you compare how many decibels each puts out. Comparing the number of speakers of one system to the wattage of another won't let you know how relatively loud they are. You determine the maximum number of decibels each puts out and compare those. Decibels are the common unit. To compare skydiving risks to driving risks, a meaningful common unit is "fatalities per million hours" (FPMH). This is how many fatalities occur per million hours of the activity. The fatality rate per 100 million miles driven in the US in 2003 is 1.5 (reference - second paragraph) . Assuming an average speed of 50 miles per hour, the hours driven are 2 million (100 million miles divided by 50 miles per hour). Thus, per million hours, the fatality rate is .8 fatalities per million hours (I know, the average speed seems rather high, but more on this later). For skydiving, the number I've seen bandied about is 3.3 million skydives a year. Each skydive starts when the skydiver dismounts the aircraft at altitude and ends when the skydiver is on the ground and his canopy has collapsed. Aircraft accidents would fall under general aviation incidents, just as car accidents driving to/from the DZ would fall under automobile incidents. A minute of freefall plus say, seven minutes under canopy. Eight minutes per skydive times 3.3 million skydives is 440,000 hours of skydiving a year. For 2003, there were 24 fatalities per 440,000 hours. This extrapolates to 55 fatalities per million hours. (Fatality data comes from skydivingfatalities.info. I couldn't find the USPA link for the number of skydives per year but have seen the number referenced several times). 55 FPMH for skydiving versus .8 FPMH for driving. What about tandems? Over the past 4 years (2000-2003), there have been three tandem fatalities. It seems to me that tandems have similar risk factors as solo skydives so I'm not breaking them out separately (more on that below). 3 fatalities over 4 years or 1,760,000 hours comes out to 1.7 FPMH. So tandems are about twice as dangerous as driving a car. Interesting result. Why is this? My conjecture is that tandems are related to solo skydives like small private plane aviation is related to commercial jet aviation. In tandems, you have an experienced, certified instructor who's primary goal (and job) is to get the passenger down safely. Plus there are multiple people in whose interest it is to see that the equipment is in top shape. Since the entire focus of a tandem is seeing that the passenger strapped to the instructor gets a taste of the sky and gets down in one piece, the actions taken before and during a tandem are oriented to that end and much less likely to result in injury or death. Some notes: a) Should tandems be broken out separately? The Strong site says a million tandems are done a year. I don't know the accuracy of that data. It would kick the tandem fatality up to about 1.9 FPMH over the 2000-2003 period (4 million tandems = 533,333 hours. 3 fatalities over 533K hours extrapolates to 1.9 fatalities per million hours). b) I would be shocked to find out the average speed during those 100 million miles of driving is 50 miles per hour. I would guess that the speed is much lower, 20-30 mph, but I used 50 mph to maximize the FPMH rate for driving. Regardless, even with 50 mph, the relative risk between driving and skydiving is still clear. Drop the average speed 50 to 35 mph, and the driving FPMH drops to .5 FPMH. 55 FPMH versus .5 FPMH. c) These numbers are not exact. But I think the methodology is generally sound - converting to FPMH and then comparing - and can yield some useful information about the relative risks of driving and skydiving. Conclusion: It seems to me that the skydiving risk level could be lowered to a low multiple of the risk from driving IF all skydivers were well trained, could react effectively in a malfunction and THE primary goal were to get down safely to the ground. I guess everyone has to reach his or her own risk/reward equilibrium regarding what kind of risks they want to take in skydiving (and in life). It appears that the observation that "Skydiving is not safe. But it's sure as dangerous as you want it to be", is true. - opurt

The woman was smart and prudent in deciding to effectively incapacitate her assailant after a lull in the assault. The assailant had demonstrated he was clearly willing and able to brutalize the woman by assaulting her without provocation. Whether he was walking away or not matters not - he was still a threat. Who knows whether he would resume his attack or not. Few, other than cougar-enthusiasts, would consider a cougar walking away from a freshly-attacked, seriously injured man to be harmless. Similarly, few, other than defense attorneys, would consider an unprovoked assailant walking away from a freshly-attacked, seriously injured victim, to be harmless. The woman, in order to protect herself, was prudent in fully incapacitating the assailant. Just as an injured man would be prudent to fully incapacitate the cougar, if he could. She likely saved others when she rendered the assailant harmless. Should she have taken the chance that he might continue the assault on her or others? I think that would have been foolish and selfish. Permanently incapacitating the assailant in this case was the safe and smart thing to do. - opurt

Interesting video of a commute (3.95 MB) in a hot zone. Unfortunately, I have no additional information on it. Puts the daily commute in perspective though Anyone have any details on this video? - opurt

"Oh shit - did he just turn us into raccoons?" - opurt

All that I ask is that news of my death should not appear in any column entitled, "News of the Weird", "Offbeat News", or anything similar.

Holy guacamole! This is the first time EVER that I've been able to see one of these things! I seem to recall that the first one of these I saw (and wasn't able to resolve) was in the late 80's! Thanks very much to crwmike and mikeJD for their hints. I combined their hints in order to see this. This is a fricken revelation. Wow wow wow. So here's what I did: 1) Unfocused my eyes and tried to look through and beyond the pic. Got that unfocused "thousand yard stare". I physically relaxed my body. Just let my eyes relax. This by itself didn't work. 2) Then, I pretended there was a piece of glass on top of the image and that there was a reflection in the glass. I started to pull my focus back from the thousand-yard stare and try to see the reflection on that imaginary glass over the image. As I tried that a few times, the image started to separate. I never pulled all the way back to full, regular focus. I continued focusing in the manner I already was, and eventually - the image went 3-D and I saw what was there. I continued focusing in this new manner and eventually the image became crystal clear. I could soon hold that focus with little difficulty. There was a little more focus on the periphery of the objects but still no significant focus outside the image. It seems as though there's a focusing muscle there that I've never controlled in this particular fashion. I liken it to riding a bike - at first, it was inconceivable that I could balance it - then suddenly, both training wheels are off the ground. I got the muscle control and balancing sense to be able to balance the bike as I pleased. Same thing with this focusing muscle and the ability to see these stereograms. Another note - don't get too close to the image. Fifteen to twenty-four inches is how far my face was from the monitor. Also, the magic in seeing it for the first time seems to lie in slowly going from full unfocused thousand yard stare to maybe 50 to 75 percent unfocused and using the imaginary glass with the reflection. Man, I am delighted and deeply satisfied. It's been well over a decade since the first time I saw one of these things. Rock and roll - opurt

I'm trying to keep my posts to a minimum here as this is a skydiver's forum but I felt like I had to say something here: The best thing you can do for your companion animals is to give them the best life you can, and when the time comes, the best death you can. You rescued him from the pound and gave him all those great extra years. Sounds like your bud had a great life, and a great death. Well done. "Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened." - From a signature file I saw on here. "In my car, my dog is no longer fat and slow. He is a god. A fast, drooling, beautiful god." - From an Audi commercial. He's fast again. You did great. Smile at the memories. And I personally am certain that the life spark is not extinguished when the body gives out, either for us, or the beasties. I've been there too. Rock on. - opurt

off-topic - Berkeley's back: http://www.berkeleybreathed.com I saw the first new images of the whole Bloom County crew - Milo, Steve Dallas, Binkley, Bill, Oliver - in like over a decade, in one of his strips recently. In the immortal words of Martha, it was a Good Thing (tm)

Hey all, Thanks very much for sharing your experience and observations. This is another data point that lands in the 'for' column for trying skydiving I was kind of expecting that experienced skydivers would say something like "Expect an immobilizing injury at least every other year." I was delighted to see many say exactly the opposite - they've had extensive skydiving careers and have seen and had very few immobilizing injuries. That "sense" is what I was looking for. I didn't hear any "Skydiving and running? Get real, the two just don't go together" -type input. Thanks to everyone who took the time to share some observations or experiences. Of course, under no circumstances would I ever be lulled into complacency and accept the notion that skydiving is low-risk. My risk analysis has made that apparent. I guess everyone has their metaphor for skydiving. From my perspective, it seems skydiving is kind of like riding an irascible wind dragon. If one has a light touch and lots of respect, it'll provide one heck of a ride. If one doesn't respect it and what it can do, one day it will unexpectedly rear back and grab you in its jaws. Pretty good metaphor from a whuffo, eh? Thanks again for the input! I'll keep you all posted on how my journey is going. Right now, I'm on the ground, looking in wonder at the sky while I imagine what it holds. If everything works out and this penguin-esque creature manages to get airborne and "ride the dragon", I know I'll be sharing that experience here

Are there any significant numbers of skydivers who are runners? Is running compatible with skydiving? It seems like skydiving involves a non-trivial number of leg injuries that could immobilize a person for a while. I do jog on a regular basis and I wouldn't want to give that up. I'm a whuffo currently doing risk analysis on all this before I think about trying to get involved. I've been reading this forum a lot, did the "per million hour" calculations, and look at all the safety- and skydiving-related sites I can. I have my own ideas on this topic, but was curious to get some skydivers' takes on the issue. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance for any input