martin-o

I believe there is three main reasons for the obesity in the western world, the first being the lack of exercise that is allowed. More people than ever can, if they choose, sit on their arse day out and day in. The second is the crappy food products that Bill describes. The third one is the lack of meaning in people’s lives; depression and anxiety syndromes have been at a constant rise for a long time. Depression in itself is an easy way to gain weight as many self medicate with food. As an extra twist, most of the antidepressants have the side effect of weight gain. To put it simple; People sit in their couches feeling sorry for the selves and eating shitty food.

We should at least be able to agree that George didn’t do such a good job communicating the reasons and goals. Otherwise we wouldn’t be having all these debates on what was actually said. I think we should also be able to find some common ground regarding the success of the Iraq war; it’s just not going very well.

After cheking this Annica up a litle more it's geting freaky. She has her office in the same builings as I have lectures ... whats the ods of that ??? /Martin

Trust me, there is no banning of books in Sweden. It’s against our constitution. It’s as probable as George marrying Dick (even though we all can see the sparkles in their eyes when they se each others ;-)) It’s a extremely interesting example as Annica works at the university where I study I got 7 matches from my university libraryon her name http://webbgunda.ub.gu.se:8000/cgi-bin/chameleon?host=sunda.ub.gu.se%208010%20DEFAULT&submittheform=Search&usersrch=1&beginsrch=1&function=INITREQ&search=KEYWORD&lng=sv&charset=UTF-8&pos=1&conf=./chameleon.conf&u1=1016&t1=Annica+Dahlstr%C3%B6m I even got her address and phone number: http://katagu.gu.se/katagu.taf?oid=9000&pid=817 If you would like to call her and get first hand info… But there is a big women’s rights movement in Sweden and they are not that very impressed by biology, which saddens me but that’s another story. Seems as if we are getting somewhat of track here though. Glad your dad liked his SAABs. Some guys at my DZ have worked in that factory. Doesn’t that scare you, that a skydiver might have assembled the break lines on your fathers car

My point still stands: Turkey would like to be a part of the EU. If you want to test who have the best knowledge about the country where I have lived for 27 years, just bring it on ;-) And … GM only bought the automotive part of SAAB and we thank you for pouring billions of dollars into that losing battle :-) /Martin

I agree with you but my point wasn’t to try to determine the exact cause of why European leaders are sceptical towards Turkey. My point is that Turkey is quite eager to join the EU. There is a quite big resistance towards the EU in some parts of the Union. I think you and I live in probably the most sceptical parts (UK and Sweden). Here people are very sceptical and voted against EMU and the Euro but at the same time there is no support for leaving the Union. You can’t live with them and you can’t live without them… Edit to ad: By here I mean Sweden. /Martin

Speaking of assumptions… The European project is from the very beginning a peace project, a way to secure long lasting peace between the big countries in Europe. Peace through strong economical bonds. Everything else is just a modern bonus. Look up “History of the European Union” in wikipedia. Well I live in a monarchy that has a socialist government. Despite this we have one of the highest growth numbers in the western world today (4% last year), and I would say that my freedoms surpass that of most Citizens in the US. The monarchies in Europe today don’t live because they have the power to do so but because the people want them to live on, mostly for reasons of tradition. Something I guess you maybe don’t truly understand since you live in a nation with very short history. When it comes to socialism the same rule applies. If you live in a part of the world (maybe everywhere else but the Anglo saxian part), the word socialism hasn’t been feed to you coupled with speeches of evil. In Europe it has been socialist and liberal forces that ones overthrew kings and dictators to allow democracy, not rightwing parties. That Is something I can fully agree on, maybe with the exception that I’m uncertain witch promises has been told. /Martin

Well, I too voted against the Euro when I had the chance, but that doesn’t mean that I think that my country should withdraw from the European project. As a person “in the middle of your assumptions” I can quite frankly say that you might have a clue about Great Britain (although the UK is nowhere near pulling out of the EU) but when it comes to Turkey you are disturbingly misinformed. Turkey has driven a loud campaign for decays to try to get in and has come along way closer but isn’t there because of many reason. A big one is that it’s a country that doesn’t respect human rights, another one is that many (read most) European countries is afraid of the implications of a country with so fundamentally different viewpoints having as much power as it would. It’s hard to get along as it is… When it comes to France and Germany I hope your kidding me, what about peace? Spain has gone from being an agricultural dictatorship to a modern nation during the last couple of decays (Franco died 1975 and Spain entered the EU in 1986). Most of that has come from hard working Spanish people, some from massive EU financial support… I don’t think they are too sad about their nation’s evolution. /Martin

What did you mean by that? Just as a clarification: Turkey has sought membership in the EU for years but haven’t yet been accepted for negotiations because of the lacking respect of human rights in the country. UK is a member of the EU… /Martin

Apparently these people also hate me because I'm Swedish -> http://www.godhatessweden.com/ I'm proud, in a strange kind of way... /Martin

I disagree, because, at a refinery you have a cracker. The Cracker breaks down long carbon-chains to shorter ones, thus making it possible to convert the crude oil to the products in need. As a side note, one should be aware that the bottle in itself is only half the problem in this equation. The energy consumed when transporting the water, from for example France, is probably a much bigger problem.

Hmm, strange, I always believed Europe was a continent and not a country. Or is a continent a legislating institution. Would that then mean that Canadian laws are enforced in the US? Please shed some light upon this subject since what I’ve previously learnt doesn’t seem to be right…

Hmmm, which way is it JR?

You don’t know that much about rally, now do you? Just to set the record straight, yes Subaru were dominating the WRC years ago, but that’s history and the Impreza has become a little outdated. It’s 8 years since they won the Manufacturers Championship. If any company should be called the “dominator” in rally right now it’s Citroen. As a little bonus fact of the day: There is actually a ford driver (Grönholm) leading the 2006 championships. For more info check out: http://www.wrc.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Rally_Championship#World_Rally_Champions_List

Do you mean psychopaths? If so I will agree that that is an incurable mental disease, and as such it should be treated (mental ward for life…) Don’t get me wrong, of course there are people that need to be behind bars for the rest of their life, but is that really the problem in today’s society? The risk of getting killed by psychopath is extremely slim, but the risk of getting killed by some little punk who was raised in a rough environment is far greater. Since a lot of people seems worried about their safety I have a suggestion: If everyone on this thread takes a long walk today, and maybe skips the beer this weekend (I wrote maybe ;)) I would gues that we have compensated for the average life expectancy los because of the risk of murder. Who’s with me? ;)

Don't make them hardened

The more brutal the law enforcement system is the more brutal criminals you get … It’s as simple as that. If you lock someone up in a place where he or she have nothing else to do than to learn crime from others then, surprise surprise, he or she will learn crime. I was not trying to put moral in my previous statement, I only wanted to point out that brutal punishment doesn’t lead to less crime. America is one of very few democracies in the world that still have the death penalty. What do you think is the reasons why all these other countries have abandon this system? And how come America has so very high murder rates? Forgive me if I’m sounding like a basher but I feel that USA is the best example to use here. Empathy is required because of the same reasons as I mentioned above. If the system is brutal the people will become more brutal. If the system is filled with empathy, this will also affect people. There is of course a limit for how “nice” you can be, where the punishments are not effective any longer, but I doubt that is a problem anywhere in the world. Beside the punishment there are of course thousands of other factors, like class differences, the risk of getting caught, cultural values and so on… This makes isolating the role of punishment hard to evaluate but there is still overwhelming evidence that harsh punishment is an ineffective way of lowering crime. Getting more cops on the street and educating them is a far better one…

The only thing that seems certain in this story is that one or two Pakistan families were killed. How can so many people here be so cheerful? At least have the decency not to cheer when innocent people are blown to pieces even if it is for a greater good. Try to imagine yourself being a mother of 5 living in a village in northern Pakistan. There are almost no mass media or means of communication with the rest of the world. The standard of your living is that of barely surviving and with very little power to change that situation. Your knowledge of the outside world is slim and America is something you heard of and had been told bad things about, but because of your place in life you did not have much motivation to do anything about that. One sunny day a missile hits your neighbour’s house and 3 of your children dies. You are told that this “America” did this… How would you react? Enormous amounts of people around the world mourn their dead family members each day, is it so hard to see why new jihad warriors is popping up everywhere? Violence is not a god method to stop violence. If you are forced to use it anyway, be very sure not to kill innocent people.

Actually studies show that countries with less harsh punishments have considerably less crime. The point of a healthy legal system is not to avenge people but to lower crime. I would gladly be called a bleeding heart liberal, as that seems to mean that you still have some empathy and logic left in you.

Point taken, but do you believe that the chance that the student has a stable pull is greater with the S/L method? Is there any risks that are specific for AFF? As the question that started this thread is in the student perspective, let's keep it there and skip the AFF-JMs safety. Just for the sake of this argumentation, please. I'm just trying to get to the core of the problem here and don't wish to stir up a fight.

With a horseshoe an AAd won't help you much, as long as a students don't always pull with their belly in the relative wind they will have a safety disadvantage. If we would try to switch focus a little bit, what are the safety disadvantages with AFF during the program? (not caring about how safe they are when they are done) /Martin

I finally found the source of the numbers I was talking about (or at least some of them). An MD named Anton Westman (University of Umeå, Sweden) has written a report where he has examined all fatalities the last 50 years in Sweden (there is 37 in total). The conclusion is that the skydiving is a lot safer today than 50 years ago but there is one group that has especially bad statistics and that is S/L students on their first free fall, but these figures are not statistical sure because of the small population (Swedish skydivers) This doesn't mean that it is proved that S/L is more unsafe but it's an indication that you may want to consider. It's hard to have any proof for anything in this sport (this could be another interesting subject...). Partly because we aren't that many people and partly because we are so secret with the few statistics we got. What I mean is that there is some info that point's in this direction but to call it proof would be an exaggeration. Martin

It's almost the same here but we do 6 drcps. The last one must be uber perfect and the next jump (first free fall) must be done within 24 hours of the last jump. /Martin

Sorry if I'm not clear enough ... what I wrote was "exit in the S/L program" I did not mean a S/L exit. Maybe I'm not using the correct definitions here... Regarding the numbers; of course they are not statistically sure because of the relatively small statistic population, Sweden only got about 2500-3000 licensed jumpers, but… In the last 10 years we have had a number of student fatalities and the only thing that is repeating itself is students on the first jumps where they are supposed to pull by themselves. The last place I saw the numbers where at a national conference for chief instructors, unfortunately I have only seen these numbers “live” and don’t have anything saved. I have tried surfing the FAI site but it seems that we (skydivers in general) don’t like to put our statistics ”out there”. I should say that I don’t think that the S/L program (at least as I define it) is unacceptably unsafe; after all I have a S/L rating and not an AFF rating. Martin

First a little correction, you don't do direct bag throughout the whole program I don't have any numbers for the whole world but here in Sweden the most Dangerous jump you can do is the first one where your supposed to pull by yourself. This is from the statistics that is reported to FAI every year, unfortunately there is very few countrys that keeps track of their statistics. Even the numbers from USPA (at least used to be as late as 2002) to FAI is only estimates. Personally I've seen far to many students make a perfect last automatic and then just forget everything and tumble out the door on their first jump without the static line. Martin