Royd

Where have you been during this whole discussion? Setting us up for the big fall? I could have been outside enjoying this North Fl. sunshine instead of carrying on a needless conversation with a couple of guys from the UK!

Where did you get those numbers? From an expert. 10 million years is a big gap. That's what I'm talking about throwing numbers around. It sounds impressive to some. If you had a dinner date and the person showed up one day late would you put any credence in what they said? That kind of time line would never stand up in a court of law. So, was it 90 million, 100 million, or could it have been 4,000 yrs? Touche!

The only viruses that have cause to mutate are those which have been tampered with by man, by the use of antibiotics, or overuse. Nowadays, we run children to the doctor for the least little reason. They get a dose of antibiotics popped into their ass, and their natural immune system is never allowed to recognize, or deal with an intruder, thus, never building up the natural immunity. I'm just having fun now. They were put for the same reason as the mosquito, and the flea. To keep us humble and to realize that we are not the masters of our destiny. A herd of elk trapped in deep snow that gets thinned out by a pack of wolves is natural selection to those who survive. It does not cause the DNA of the elk to change one bit. The elk will never grow snowshoes in order to run on top of the snow. That's the kind of crap that we've been fed as evolution. there are plenty of times in my work where I've needed three hands. Just recently, learning to pack a zero-p canopy. Ain't gonna happen. I am a gardener and observe, and practise natural selection all of the time. I plant ten zucchini seeds in a group. Four or five come up strong. The rest are runty. I pull them up in order to give the good ones room to grow. At the end of the season every thing that came from those plants were zucchini.

My question to you is: What is the cornerstone upon which all law, i.e. fairness and truth is based. If one man or group of men were allowed to set the laws without an overriding authority, they would always try to throw things to their advantage. This is the selfish nature of man. As for the animals, Feed one dog by itself, and it will eat slowly. put two dogs together,and they will both scarf down their food in order to get to the other dog's bowl. As for social hierarchies within the animal kingdom, we still have one animal in the group who is the ultimate authority, and everyone else falls in line. It is the nature of man to rebel against such authority. I believe that this is one reason why people don't like the idea of something or someone who they can't see or touch insisting that they live their lives according to certain standards.

Animals crossbreeding within their own species is not evolutionary change. I know that when you cross a donkey and a horse you come up with a mule, which cannot reproduce. Also there are many plants, certain corns, that have good characteristics, but they are hybridized and new seed must be reproduced each year by crossing two other plants. The seed will reproduce, but will not be true to form after one or two generations.It will tend to revert to its original form. As for viruses, I'll give that one to you. They are probably there to wipe out the weak of the human species, thus, natural selection at work, not necessarily the evolutionary process.

The question that must be answered is, Where did the original authority come from? Very few people are going to impose upon themselves a set of rules of conduct if there is no consequence for not obeying them. There are many people who call themselves parents, who think that laws don't apply to them, and in order validate their attitude within their own minds, they allow their children to act like idiots and criminals. Then, they want to defend them, saying that children ought to be free to express themselves.

Most varities of new plants are caused my man's meddling, and in most cases are hybrids, which does not allow them to reproduce themselves. As for animals changing over time, you believe this without actually observing it. So, you accept something by faith.

Proverbs tells us that foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him. Nature, itself, proves this. In Africa, in one of the game preserves, some young bull elephants were placed into a new area. Apparently, overpopulation. Anyway, they suddenly found a bunch of rhinos and hippos dead. Upon observation, they saw that the young elephants had become a rogue band of hoodlums. They introduced some mature males, and in short order, the foolishness stopped. So, no, without guidance from some higher authority, whether it be parental, religious, or some other source, people's moral compass becomes skewed. Let's face it. You don't have to teach a baby or a child to throw a tantrum when they don't get their way.

I can't decide if that message is filled with kudos or sarcasm, so you're pretty good, yourself.

The Bible tells us that Jesus is our advocate to the Father. Noone, in todays legal system would try to defend himself without a lawyer. The judge doesn't want to have to deal directly with your sorry ass, so he appoints a lawyer as a go between. In the case of Jesus, he has enough compassion for you that he is willing to stand in your place, and take your punishment. As for repentance, you must first believe that you have done something wrong. If you don't believe that there is a supreme set of laws that apply to all humans, you can't possibly be sorry that you took something that someone else worked really hard to earn, and you won't have a problem saying that you know nothing about it even though it's been proven that you took it. What is your problem with Jesus. By all accounts, He sounds like the best friend a person could ever have.

My problem with some evolutionists i.e. those who produce such magazines as National Geographic is that everything has morphed into something else. A fish turned into a reptile, and a reptile turned into a bird, and so on. Give me a break. The word evolution implies constant change, so why don't we observe animals in transitory stages between one species or another. When did it stop? The only species that seems to change is the humans, and they are going downhill mentally and morally as if there was never a divine law of truth. That would be the Ten Commandments- no revisions , no amendments, which, according to the story, was written into stone by the finger of God, and given to Moses to be delivered to the Jews.

Looked at everything else on the website. Listened to Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show. Looked at some other websites. That only takes a few minutes!

You mentioned that your icon was your avatar. I heard that word back in the 70's from some wandering acidhead who thought that he had a direct line to the Divine. I just looked the word up. Here's the definition. Decent to earth of a Hindu deity and his incarnation as man or animal. By the way, this is almost as good as a good chess game. Your move.

I'm new at forum talk, so I don't know how to break up and repost portions of a message, so I'll just answer. There was a Jewish historian, Josephus, who witnessed the crucifiction, and the subsequent hours of darkness in the middle of the afternoon. Solar eclipses only last a few minutes, so we can eliminate that from the mix. You might Google Josephus, or go to a good library to find his writings. Just spend some time exploring. I believe that most of the "unbelievers", especially amongst the scientific community are afraid that there is a reckoning day coming, and they are desperately trying to prove there is no god. Why would any sensible man spend billions of dollars looking for life in other solar systems, just to prove a bunch of nutcase believers wrong. I find it amazing that the evolutionary community can throw numbers around, like 1 million, or 30 billion years, and we are supposed to buy this crap without question. I've got news for those people. An alligator has always been an alligator, and a monkey has always been a monkey. By the way, they pretty much accept their place in life without question. Why would we humans, who, according to the Bible, were created in the image of God, be the only creatures to question his sovereignty, or our appointed place in his design. There's that word "creature." Unbeleivers cannot legitimately use such a word.

I just replied to you, and then saw where you had gotten into religious discussions on other threads. Methinks thou dost protest too much! Is there something way down deep inside that is eating at you. Examine all of the evidence with a truly open mind whether or not a man named Jesus Christ ever walked this earth. If you say no, then you can't believe that there was ever a writer named Socrates,or Plato. What about Gengis Khan, or Hannibal. or Alexander the Great. Now, those all sound like made up cartoon characters to me, yet, I beleive they existed, and the stories of them are fairly accurate.

First off, it's ironic that your icon is a statue of Jesus. Are you telling me that there is nothing in this world that you accept by faith? Do you personally pack every chute that you jump with, or did you watch when the rigger last packed your reserve? As for no evidence that any of it is true, what year did you write down on your last check when you paid the bills. It wasn't 6006, was it? How could a simple, humble, lowly carpenter- fisherman affect the whole of time if there wasn't something different about him. The muslims have to force their faith upon the masses at the pont of a sword, even today. They have no message of love.

I know of a whole team of dolphins that wear helmets and shoulder pads. As to the intelligence of some of them, that's questionable!

I've heard that dolphins will kill a shark. We consider them to be smarter than us humans. Maybe, they are on the right track, or should we think about punishing those mean little dolphins?

The flow and beauty of the dicipline is what really catches my eye. It is about as close to physical art as you can get. It is obvious that this is going to be a long term goal because, financially, every other weekend will probably be the best I can do. I'm still working on getting my own rig. Obviously, finding a camera person to be part of a team would be a real benefit, as opposed to paying someone from the dz to jump with you. One more question. Do the camera person and the acrobat trade places, so that both people can understand what the other person needs during flight?

I also heard that there was global warming on Mars. Could it be that the sun is just having a bad day, or few years, and every planet in our solar system is being affected? I agree that we do not do enough to keep forests restored. Here, in America, we think nothing of bulldozing a square mile of trees in order to convienently build an ugly housing development, and I do mean UGLY! Eighty years ago, we could build beautiful neighborhoods with sewers, streets, and electricity, and leave trees that had been standing for a couple hundred years. No more. Too much trouble, and not enough profit.

I saw an incident at my dz last weekend in about a three mph wind. The arrow got stuck in the downwind position. It is rather primitively made , in my opinion. I watched one girl hurt an ankle, and about six others do some serious tumbling. I only have fifty jumps and would have done the same thing, had I been on that load. I learned to first check the wind direction before I enter my approach. Then, check the wind sock.

Hey people. I am very interested in the disipline of freestyle. It looks like hard work, but alot of fun. From what I see around the dz it seems to be non-existant. If so, what are the reasons? If there are any dinosaurs still in the disipline, how do I get started seriously, other than just jumping out, and going for it?

I heard this one in the packing tent at Zhill last weekend. A Jew, a Catholic, a Protestant, a black guy, and an Irishman all walk into a bar. The bartender looks up and says, "What is this, a joke?"

It's the same with most of the big store mentality. When they go into business, they provide quality products, and good service. Then, someone with a business degree decides that the company can make a few more cents by selling generic, look alike crap, and they think that the masses are too stupid to notice. All of the local stores have been shut down because most people seem to prefer a few extra cents in their pockets than good service. Thus, unless you choose to shop with catalogs or the internet, they pretty much have you by the short hairs. Try standing in line at one of the home improvment stores at noon. You make thirty to forty dollars an hour, and have to stand in line for fifteen minutes for a $5.00 box of screws. It's a good thing that I don't run the show.

Hey There, I got my first tandem for my 52nd BD. I jumped in mid Oct. at ZHill, Fl. I did Aff1 in mid Dec. I realized immediately that I was losing 10 seconds of my life when I went out the door, and knew that the only way to get my head around this whole thing, was to make several jumps. So, I bought the A license course. I've got 28 jumps but still have to get close to the target three more times. Easier said than done. Then, it's on to the next level. I really want to make a high altitude jump, and learn freestyle. I don't see alot of men in this disipline. Any thoughts on that? P.S. I can't think of a better reason for having a credit card!