johenrik

Of all wingsuits produced the last 15 years it is pretty much only the V5 that doesn't have any fin-like shape at the bottom of the suit. On all other suits the feet of the jumper sticks down doing the same as the fins does. I know you asked the question as a joke, but lots of inexperienced jumpers watch this and wonder the same thing. -Jo Henrik

A good friend of mine with a few thousand skydives died on a wingsuit skydive using one of these last year. The official report is not out yet, but after what I have heard the helmet mount was the cause. Not trying to tell you what to do (or not to do), but just be careful. -Jo Henrik

It depends on your skills and suit of course, but I usually feel my suit start flying pretty good after about 3 seconds. That should be about 50 meter of altitude. You should of course have quite a the room for margin of error and I usually don't jump anything that doesn't have a rock drop of 6-7 seconds (150 meters or so) but I am a pussy. Although a cliff in Norway with 4 seconds (about 75 meters) have been jumped quite a lot. This is pretty sketchy and your exits need to be perfect. People like to say that they fly a ratio of 3:1 (3 meters forward to one meter down) but most people fly about 2:1. Of course again all this depends on the suit and pilot. Also making lots of turns will cause your ratio to be worse. -Jo Henrik

Everyone knows that wingsuits produce lift. The question is if a wingsuit can create more lift than the force of gravity pulling us down. -Jo Henrik

I saw the jump form the ground and have to say that it looks completely different from the top than from the ground. Espen was flying a bit lower and do therefore lookes a lot further back on the video, but standing on the ground I would not tell who was the winner as it was so close. You can see all the times here: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150912759615868&set=a.101066005867.101470.43724640867&type=3&theater and you will see that the six fastest times are all done in Vampires. That doesn't take away the fact that Tony won fair and square and did a great job in the contest. I also have to mention that Tony looked in a lot better shape hiking up the hills this year than last Congrats to the old man

During the World Base Race this summer Odd Martin (Tiger) was flying very steady with a time between 19:30 and 19:40 and jumping a BlackJack 260. In his last jump of the competition he switched to a low profile rig (Hybrid i believe) and his time was suddenly 18:66. Not a huge difference, and it could be related to other stuff too, but it seems like increases are in around 0.5 to 1 second faster for everyone who switch on the 750 meter race. The speed walking up the mountain on the other hand increases a lot more :) -Jo Henrik

isn't finding the best trajectory part of a race, wich makes your suit look fast ? Tony was flying outside of his lane giving him a shorter distance to fly than the other flyers. Tony (and some others) were clearly told that if they did this again they would be disqualified, but as it was more of a warm-up round measures wouldn't be taken. Regardless of him flying a shorter distance than the others he still showed himself as a fast flyer and the Apache X looks like an interesting suit. Marketing himself as the fastest in the race though is not fair. -Jo Henrik

The problems isn't that the US is playing the global cop, the problem is that the way you are acting is not fair. Cops should follow the laws. If you want to be a cop you should enforce the laws, not help people break them. -Jo Henrik

Does it matter? It's just as bad if it was done a year ago as if it's done today. Edited to add: Of course it matters for the people involved and should be stopped. But it doesn't matter for the case on how the US should be held responsible. -Jo Henrik

Most countries in the west is pretty far from the extremity of the US in these matters. An example from my own country is this guy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mullah_Krekar . He is on the UN terrorist list and the Norwegian supreme court has judged him as a "threat to national security". Still he is allowed to go free i Norway and do whatever he pleases as we have laws against deporting people who faces the death penalty. Lots of people hate him here, but details of the law stands stronger than the political will. The big question is what is in his insurance file. It might be big enough that he will go free. I'm very curious of whats in there. Will one of the big conspiracy theories be proven? -Jo Henrik

Nothing is clearly in these cases, but I see what you are saying and I don't think the world will react too much if he get's punished. The interesting thing is that in the Nuremberg Trials in 1945 the US (and it's allies) set a standard on how to deal with war crimes. German foot soldiers were trailed and executed for only following orders. The standard set was that if you know that your commander is committing war crimes you are obligated to deny following orders and report the issue in a way as it will get dealt with. You might therefore argue that the one who leaked the information had to do this, otherwise he might be held accountable to the war crimes he knew about. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. The American supreme court decided in "Gravel v. United States" that this is not illegal and it would be unconstitutional to prosecute anyone for release information obtained legally. This case was done based on the Pentagon Papers which showed that the government was just as deceitful back in the 70s as they are now. Unfortunately the American constitution doesn't mean much anymore if the people in charge want to do something. These papers obtained the information legally through a source just like the Wikleaks and any excuse used to prosecute Wikileaks can therefore be used on them. -Jo Henrik

Luckily all European countries have signed an agreement not to transfer prisoners to countries if the prisoner may face capitol punishment. Not that this will happen anyway here though, Europeans still see the importance of freedom and democracy and I don't think any government who would agree to transfer a prisoner charged of free press would survive long. Even though I have lots of respect for Assange I think it almost would be worth it to sacrifice him in order to put Cheney in a Nigerian prison We have seen this for decades (especially the last decade) and aren't really that surprised. The deal is that finally we can bring these things up in a discussion with Americans and have solid evidence and avoid being told we are just talking about "crazy conspiratory theories made to hurt Americas effort on turning the world into a free and democratic place".

That's what they should be doing, but American diplomats aren't following normal rules: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cables-spying-un This is illegal after the Vienna Convention and therefore prosecutable in 186 countries of the world (including the US). Clinton and Rice should be prosecution for this, and so should the diplomats, but they are slipping away because people are too busy being angry at the guy who revealed it. -Jo Henrik

Quite a lot of American diplomats will be killed if the rest of the world was as blood thirsty as you. He was not in the US and American laws are not valid. Did you make sure you didn't break any Norwegian laws today? -Jo Henrik

The leaks have proven that American diplomats do lots of spying. Do you think we in Norway should treat the American ambassador as a "state sponsored spy" and execute him? Because you don't think one set of rules in the world should work for America and another set of rules for everyone else, do you? -Jo Henrik

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but English is not my native language. As far as I can see antonija is asking for action taken towards the people who publicly ask for his death. I.e. punishing Fox News, Sarah Palin, former Canadian govt minister and so on because calling for someones death is illegal in the US. -Jo Henrik

His own lawyer is on his side? Gee, what a surprise. How can Fox News be so stupid that they accuse a non-american for being a traitor? You can't be a traitor towards any other countries than your own. They also accuse him of breaking American law. American law is only valid inside America. This is pretty basic, and I'm sure Fox News knows this. If an American breaks Saudi Arabic law while in the US, can he then be prosecuted by the Saudi Arab government? If so there will be a lot of people getting their head chopped off for blasphemy here in the Speakers Corner. I think the American officials and main stream are acting pretty horrible in this case. The only exception is Ron Pauls great comment on the subject: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywoInPNXZJk -Jo Henrik

I totally agree and I see your problem. But as long as the US haven't been able to pay their own bills for 30 years, little is saying that will change soon. How do you think the next loan negotiations with China will go if China looses contracts where they have the best offer, on the only basis of they being Chinese? In the longer run it might be cheaper to give them these kind of contracts. I'm not saying I like it, nor that this is the kind of politics I want the world to evolve around, but seeing all the Wikileaks lately it's obvious that this is a game the US government knows very well. Although this time they're on the other side of the table. -Jo Henrik

I didn't mean that they directly get contracts or money as exchange for the loans. What I meant was that what they would get back was an understanding that China and the US are "friends" and that Chinese companies should be able to compete on the open American market. The fact that they are Chinese should not be a deciding factor when it comes to getting a contract or not. Although when it comes to bribes and extortion, a lot worse things has happened in the American government so who knows if it's happened here too. Just look at the "relationship" between US and the Maldives during the Copenhagen climate summit: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,733630,00.html -Jo Henrik

Of course this is correct. Now that the rest of the world have solid facts that the US government is deceiving, lying, breaking international treaties and are responsible for war crimes it will of course change the way people deal with the US. But I don't think it's a bad thing that a country is held responsible for it's actions. If you want the rest of the world to treat you like a saint, then act like a saint. -Jo Henrik

Here is an interesting article from BBC about the dangers of the release: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11882092 I believe the argument of putting lives at risk is mainly to have people facing their anger towards the messengers instead of focusing on the actual content of the information. -Jo Henrik

I guess you can't borrow billions of dollars from China year after year without expecting they want something more back than the tiny interests on the loan. -Jo Henrik

I guess all news papers and TV channels needs to be charged now then. What do you think about releasing secret information that the Chinese and North-Korean government are hiding for their citizens? Is it right that people are seriously prosecuted for that? I find it ironic that Hillary in China earlier this year said this: "(the US government) had defended the right of people to freely access information, and said that the more freely information flows the stronger societies become." I agree with what Hillary say, I just wish she meant it. -Jo Henrik

Wikileaks has not done any economic terrorism. Just because supporters of Wikileaks decide to fight for freedom if press themselves doesn't meen Wikileaks should be held responsible for it. Do you think it's a crime to let you know that your tax money is spent this way: http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2010/12/wikileaks_texas_company_helped.php -Jo Henrik

Interesting things in the publications: -Hillary demanded surveillance of all major UN officials to get personal information like credit card numbers, frequent flyer numbers, encryption keys, fingerprints, DNA-profiles and so on. This breaks the Vienna agreement and other international treaty's. -US is paying loads of money for oil from Saudi Arabia. At the same time Saudi Arabia is the biggest funder for extremism in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Basically money from US is spent killing American soldiers with the help of Americans closest Arab ally in the middle east and the American government knows all about it. -CIA kidnapped a guy in Germany (without the knowledge of the German government), transfered him to Afghanistan for months of imprisonment and "interrogation". After months they found out they had the wrong guy and he had innocently been kidnapped. When the German government wanted to prosecute the kidnappers the US put heavy political pressure on Germany in a way that they had to drop the case. There are loads of these "small" but bad stories that proves that the US' foreign politics are a fight for some american interests, and not "for the good of the free world". -Jo Henrik