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Never managed a 24-hour afterglow before, and yet I was still feeling the rush from the skydives after that time... Maybe I just have a hypersensitive endorphin system.

*gah* Sorry, happens when I think about something a lot, start typing, editing, re-typing, editing some more, etc.

Thanks, but while I do indeed control how much I let skydiving take over my life, I cannot control things such as the pattern of endorphin relase or receptor site proliferation -- that's what is worrying me. Not a loss of control over jump numbers. Sorry if my longwinded post caused confusion on that matter.

Little more than a week ago, I graduated AFF and jumped my first solo. Then I stopped. Why? Basically, I am worried – not about the jumping as such, otherwise I wouldn’t have started; but about the addictiveness. I received some strange looks at the DZ when stating that there would be no question about my continuing if it weren’t for the kick (i.e., I’d jump if there wasn’t one). I started skydiving because I wanted to feel the absolute freedom of flying through the air, and will be the first to admit that I immensely enjoyed it. What I didn’t enjoy, relatively speaking, was the endorphin rush that accompanied the jumps. Again, one might ask, why? Longish answer... It’s the little things in life. I am one of those terrible people that tend to notice even the minutiae around them. When chatting with friends while on a stroll through the park, I will be the one to detect a butterfly drinking a dewdrop from a blade of grass, a song bird outlined against the dappled leaves, or a beautiful lady crossing our path. All this happens without breaking stride or conversation, making me smile inside and cheerful. To me, loosing that ability to gain joy out of the shortest moments, the glimpses of life around me, would be devastating. Enter skydiving – FUN! Wonderful! Great! And yet... I have met skydivers with +3k jumps that still get the shakes every time, just from the rush. People compare it to taking drugs, and I can understand them. As a personal choice, I don’t take drugs, don’t smoke, don’t drink. Instead I try to hone my senses, my knowledge of the world around me, want to feel it with every fibre of my being – that’s MY drug. Like any addict, I am scared of those things that would take this away from me, and am worried that skydiving could be one of those. Will its kick drown out that wondrous cacophony of life around me? Make me numb for those little jolts of joy that a new day can bring? While I realise that my reasons for starting with skydiving are probably not too typical (“...I don’t want a kick – I just want to fly...”), I very much doubt that I am the only one. So my question to the forum would be: is there anyone else, active or retired, who started for the same reasons and can put my mind at ease, either by confirming or denying my worries, thereby helping me in my decision of whether or not to continue with skydiving? Thank you. - Julius

...and yet only cut his lip -- guess it really was his lucky day: Sure was...

-13F (-25°C) near Munich, Germany... (with 104F / 40°C as the high point last summer) -35F (-37°C) in the Swiss alps...

Actually, mud volcanos have very little indeed to do with "classic" volcanos. There is no actual volcano involved, not even a magma chamber... It is believed that the outbreak was caused by a company drilling for oil. The geological structure at that area on Java is such that there is a limestone layer at a depth of couple of hundred metres, underneath which groundwater flows. The water itself is at high pressure due to the weight of the earth above it. The puncturing of the limestone layer during the drilling caused the water to shoot up the borehole, mixing with the earth, causing the "mud eruptions". Typically, oil boreholes are sheathed with steel to prevent such incidents, but this was neglected for the one on Java.

An alternative would be to drink Mate tea (aka Jesuit's tea) instead. It relieves hunger pangs, and is actually good for you...

"At age 84 you will perish under strange circumstances involving a gallon of lotion, two nine volt batteries, and a photograph of a bicycle." So not going there... _______ Edit: Retrying it gives another prediction, which seems, eerily enough, all the more likely: "At age 43 the artificial intelligence software you programmed becomes self aware and devours you. You will be saved to disk though, so no worries." Think I ought to change jobs...

From what I've heard, horse meat is supposed to be the closest equivalent (a bit richer and sweeter in taste than either pork or beef).

Predator? An easy one: "End of line."

This link was originally posted in the BASE forum as part of the thread on the stuntman that jumped from the London Eye on Thursday last week: http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/basejump.shtml What struck me as maybe being of interest in terms of this forum was the bit at the end of the article, where it is stated that: "Gary now plans to jump from a plane one mile up with no parachute. He hopes to land safely using only a wingsuit - a specially made jumpsuit which contains wings - a feat that has never been attempted before. He is now looking for sponsorship to make the attempt possible, and hopes an aviation company will back him." Somehow this made me cringe...

- George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series might be an idea (the first book is "A Game of Thrones") - Roger Zelazny's "Amber" books (the first series at least) - John Crowley's "Little Big" - Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" series - Pretty much anything by Isaac Asimov - Maybe something by R.E. Feist, Julian May, or Gordon R. Dickson In the UK there are two series, entitled "SF Masterworks" and "Fantasy Masterworks" that are (re-)publishing pretty much all of the classics (e.g., Olaf Stapledon, Alfred Bester, Cordwainer Smith, E.R. Eddison, Jack Vance)

From the results I got by googling this one a bit, that might be a tad difficult. It seems as if Yves Rossy shot the actual video, but never released it to the public. That being said, Lionel Charlet did use some of the footage for his movie "Vols Blancs", but not all of it. Your best bet would probably be to send a really nice mail to Yves and ask him whether it might be possible to get a high quality copy...

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