NWFlyer

Sigh. Really? Your DZ doesn't teach you to think for yourself and that training aids (be they radios to talk you down, or target assistants) are just aids and that you should still be able to plan and execute a landing on your own? If they haven't taught you that I hope they will, and soon. If they have taught you that and you're just following the target assistant blindly, I hope you'll soon recognize how much of this sport demands personal accountability. My advice still stands. The canopy portion of the flight should be at least as important in your jump planning - on every single jump - as the freefall portion. Now and throughout your skydiving career. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

Please have a canopy plan as well as a freefall plan. Spend at least equal time on each. It'll make you a better and safer skydiver all around. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

I think the show pretty accurately portrays them all as assholes. If you have Amazon Prime, you might also enjoy Alpha House - the main characters in it are Republicans. It's a much goofier show. Also Veep, though I find that to be a bit uneven, it's still fun. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

A-fucking-men (though I didn't watch the original), I feel the same about Zoe. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

See, this is why I also advocated having someone else read your work. Thank you, jakee, for providing that valuable editing and thus helping me to prove my point! (Edit to add: It was particularly smooth of me to make an error in the very sentence in which I advocated for the importance of a second set of eyes. I meant to do that. Yeah, that's it, that's the ticket.) "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

If it's an all day event, one successful model I've seen is to have different "stations" that people rotate to throughout the day. Some can be interactive like having several rigs intentionally mis-rigged with things that should be found in a thorough gear check, one might be putting people in a hanging harness, other stations might be more of a lecture type format. People could have a card that they'd get marked at each station; anyone who gets all the stations completed gets entered in an end of day raffle. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

And now, since quade is sad about my joke, I'll try a "for real" response. Dropping the essay requirement from the SAT could be looked at in two ways. The first is to acknowledge that it's a fundamentally flawed way to evaluate a student's writing skill, and, as such, we should get rid of it because it sucks so hard. The second would be to say that we're just further dumbing down the test by taking away the essay requirement. There's probably some validity to that, too, but it gets into the larger debate about the quality and relevance of standardized tests as a predictor of college academic success, and I don't think that's what this thread is about. Prof. Kallend has significantly more exposure to the writing of college students than I do, but I see the writing of many college grads both at work and in other contexts and it makes me sad, too. I'm well-known within my department as being the go-to person if you need something edited, because the chances are very high that I'll catch 99.9% of errors in spelling, grammar, and style. Edited to add: Spell check is a nice tool to use as part of this process, but it's far from the be all end all, as it won't catch errors/typos where the writer used the wrong, but correctly spelled, word. But it's nice for the first pass. Not only will I do that, but I'll also polish the writing to a high shine so that it clearly represents the idea being communicated. Despite my own editing skills, I'm also very cognizant that I'm human, and thus will regularly and consistently ask for editing from others on high-visibility communications. It's so easy to overlook errors in your own writing, particularly if you've read and re-read something a bunch of times. It's also really easy to think you've communicated a concept clearly when you're intimately familiar with it, but a fresh set of eyes will find that sentence or 10 where you've obfuscated a key point, and bring it to your attention. The interesting part is that I got to where I am through a few different influences: 1) a mother who is just like me in this regard, so there's both a nature/nurture component to my own language skill development. 2) a stellar high school English department with incredibly high standards that not only taught us how to write, but how to edit our own work and that of our peers and 3) a 4-year stint writing and editing on my college newspaper. So I probably could have knocked the SAT essay out of the park if it had been part of the test when I took it, but who knows, I might have been marked down for not using enough big words. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

Such as identifying sarcasm when you see it? (I realize I didn't use the sarcasm font, but I would hope that given my long history of fairly obnoxious grammar policing on this forum, that it might have been fairly obvious that I was joking). "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

Very true. I've attended two meetings myself, and in both cases there were some fairly "heated" topics on the agenda, with highly opinionated supporters on either side. If you'd tried to tell what really happened from any of their Facebook posts, it would have been like trying to figure out what someone actually said in a Congressional hearing, not by watching C-SPAN but from reading writeups from the Daily Kos and Breitbart News. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

I interpreted that one more along the lines of the "really really drunken hookup" first time. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

And you're a newlywed??? Mocking the Cochrans Only allowed in haiku Get with the program. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

Safety Day weekend Someone do something stupid Video needed "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

http://www.tagroom.com/reddit-users-were-asked-to-sum-up-their-first-sexual-experience-with-a-gif-the-responses-were-magnificent-sfw-49278 This is a pretty awesome collection of gif representations of "the first time." (And while the site says SFW, I'd say it depends on your work...) Mine was a solid #12. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

Southwest just added Fat Tire. Now I can finally use my drink coupons for something other than mediocre wine in a plastic cup. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

You're the one who set up the conversation to include safety as a factor. If you'd decided you "didn't abide by it" then just put up a poll saying "which one of these combinations do you think looks the coolest?" or just order the fecking canopy. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

But why do they need to know how to write anymore? Isn't that what spell check is for? "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

The folks at Spaceland Lite spearheaded the effort - here's the analysis they posted and the results of a survey they conducted to try to have some data to bring to the board. I think it gets to most of your questions. USPA says it'll be similar to 4-way, so the Open/Advanced pool will be the same. http://www.spacelandlite.com/8-way-advanced-survey/ http://www.spacelandlite.com/8-way-advanced-survey-results/ "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

Of course no color will "keep you safe" but certain colors sure make it a heck of a lot easier to SEE canopies when you're keeping your head on a swivel. I had an all black canopy for three years... never again. Too many people told me it "disappeared" in lower light situations. They may still not see me on my (mostly) yellow or (mostly) orange canopies now, but I'm sure as heck going to make it as easy as possible. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

And they're still officially known as Uninsured United Parachute Technologies, LLC. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

I've been charged by PD at a boogie for the last pack job, as they prefer to get the demo canopy back unpacked so they can pack it themselves. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

If you're going to have a heart attack... IT people help please? "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

Site "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/20140302/NJNEWS/303020017/Morris-Catholic-HS-senior-suing-parents-who-won-t-pay-college There's quite a bit more detail in this article (linked from the one you linked to), but it's a lot of she said/they said back and forth. FWIW, the child welfare folks asked to look into abuse found no evidence thereof. Conclusion: they all sound like assholes. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

...if you're Usain Bolt and you're on Titan, that is! http://phys.org/news/2014-03-usain-superhuman-power-flight-titan.html Via the most awesome IFLS on FB. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

Don't most of the "sick kid" waivers get approved by some subset of the BOD and then get "approved" by the full BOD retroactively? Somehow I suspect the other "under 18" waivers won't be able to slide through that easily. "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke