sfzombie13

i don't know any of that for certain, just repeating what was on the other thread. just fyi.

damn, i worked on ibm mainframes back in the day. tacfire systems for the artillery fire direction. i loved that, but it was mostly hardware, not software. they didn't really have an output, just a bank of lights. had to have a secret clearance to go to school.

yep, and on that thread, it said she was the vice president and that he had his ti rating for about 3 months. said the producers asked for a scary looking landing or something like that. they got it.

seems to some sort of pattern for a particular group of people, always blaming others, attacking instead of helping, deregulating things to make more money, etc, etc. must be a gop thing.

there is a thread on reddit that said on of his parents is on the uspa board. dude should have his rating revoked permanently for that. that's a whole lotta negative press for skydiving. not to mention pretty stupid, or at least it looked that way, i'm not a ti.

interesting article, says that extremists have trouble with complex mental tasks. small sample size, but it appears that some people actually DO see in just black and white, ideologically at least.

but it isn't wrong, it's just viewed from a different perspective. just like your views are not necessarily wrong, even with no personal experience to add. your views are based on others' opinions and words, which could just as well be as biased as anything else. his views from his part of the military showed him that racism was not a problem. i didn't see it either, until i came back in, almost 10 years after i got out. it also isn't based just on his personal experience if i recall correctly, as he has talked with many others, and i believe he mentioned once that it was a topic of discussion he had in the past. some of my information is based on talking with vets, and soldiers, just to confirm what i saw or the extent. i even had one friend who was very much race tolerant who said that his years in the 82d turned him into a racist, based on his experiences with blacks in his unit and on bragg.

now i'm not one to assume many things, but it looks like you're arguing this black/white thing again @jakee. @BIGUN can be right on this one, since he is using anecdotal evidence and you are not. the military isn't a thing like amazon. it's more like the country, in that it's made up of different subsections of the country. some areas (units, or bases) are doing a lot better fighting racism than others. some types of people (different jobs like infantry, artillery, etc.) are doing better than others. for example, it looks like ft hood is struggling with females and assaults, while most other places are doing better with it. another thing he didn't account for is the difference between special operations and the regular military. they are mostly better at a lot of things. he was also in a long time ago, so some of his observations don't match mine. also, it's hard to get a thorough look at the whole military while you're in. you see maybe one or two units in a four year tour, and even then, you only see the part you're involved with, unless you reach a level of command so you can see more, but then you lose the troops' perspective. not to mention the tabbed guy factor he had that i didn't. sometimes it let doors open for you, sometimes it was easier to get around unnoticed without it. i think it's the time factor more than anything here, since i saw some shit back in the late '80s that would never fly today. platoon sgt wiping coke off a mustache during in ranks inspection, walking down a pt test 2 mile run passing a bottle of jim, and some self incriminating things i'd rather not mention. it's not like we were looking over our shoulders either, i could trust that any of our guys had my back regardless of color. same goes for anything i post about the military, my experience ended in '04, and it has changed a lot since then.

yeah, that most certainly shouldn't happen, unless absolutely necessary. i prefer to look at things and judge them on the merit of the thing rather than assume something, then look for evidence to support or debunk it. starting with an open mind helps a lot of things. too bad THAT isn't taught in school.

it's only astonishing when you give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are NOT racist. this is another great example of the passive racism. when examined under the assumption that they WERE racists, it loses the astonishment factor.

ya know, it could be connections held open by internet scans or something like that. some sort of a dos attack exploiting a vulnerability in the software that needs patched. i have done that before with a scanner sending malformed packets that open a connection and hold it when the server is waiting on a response that never comes. i'd be curious to see a packet capture from the server when it happens.

it means i question what they are saying. anyone who uses certain phrases which have been identified as being dog whistles, a term i just learned of this past year, or other things that some are saying are now racist needs to have their words examined to see if they really are just passive racists, as some are, or are just not up with the times and how language evolves. for example, i used to say "i don't see color" to mean that i see everyone as equal. that term has since become a dog whistle used by passive racists. i stopped using it so as not to be associated with racism. does that mean that everyone that still uses it is a racist? of course not. but that, taken along with other dog whistles and the tone of speech used can be combined to point to that. it's not the only thing i use, since that can just mean the individual is repeating things they hear, and not familiar with the changed nature of the words. or it can mean that person is in fact a racist. in your case, i have determined that you did not mean anything racist when you said that, not that it matters much what i think about you, but it does need to be said. and know that i have been wrong before, and have misjudged folks both ways, so i tend to keep a judgement like that to myself anyway so as not to alienate everyone in my life. when i was the eo nco in the special forces, not tabbed of course just a support mos, there was an incident when i learned that blacks were referred to as a #5, which comes from crayons, since the black crayon is the fifth one in the box of eight. i never reported that person, and i should have. at the time, there were no black soldiers in the unit, so i let it go. that was a mistake, but i have since moved on after finding out there were much deeper issues than that. like when one of our b team guys got himself a plane ticket out of theater when he thought his wife was cheating on him. she was, but that was desertion, yet the guy got a promotion and a full time agr job after the deployment. it took me years to connect his last name, root, with kbr who had major contracts and lots of money. i don't know that he was part of that family, but it fits. what did you think it meant? i'm curious now.

this is the heart of the matter. the military is a subset of society. not a truly representative one, but one nonetheless. i was eo nco in my unit, and we only had one person of color, and about a few dozen latino folks, no women. there were still cases of discrimination, and cases where things were overlooked, depending on who was being looked at. not just the tabbed guys, but almost like high school in the nature of what happened. i fell on the wrong side of one of the guys, but since he died of stage 4 lung cancer and i got to piss on his grave, i's say i won that one, even though i didn't get to retire from the military, and seeing the direction it went, am pretty glad i didn't. anyone with a military background who says there is only one color, green, should be looked at very closely. i too used to have an idealistic sense of what the military was all about, then i kept getting slapped in the face with reality.

it's sad to see one so totally under the control of propaganda. if it were me, i would be ashamed of myself for being led so easily, but then again, i was taught to think for myself.

you need a third parachute attached to legally do that. not a good idea though, you can lose your freebag and pilot chute.