SivaGanesha

Yes, Contact is a work of fiction, but the figure of 26 l.y. as the distance to Vega was bandied about by all astronomers prior to 1997, when it was corrected (ironically the very same year that Contact the movie came out). I took an astronomy class as an undergrad in the 1980's. The professor turned out to be one of the biggest drunks on campus. Usually he didn't even show up to class, but on one of the days when he was able to stagger in, he commented on the Hyades star cluster. He said that all of modern astronomy depended on the computation of the distance to the Hyades star cluster, and that if that proved to be incorrect, it would completely screw up modern astronomy. Because he was drunk, he was letting us students in on a few of the secret vulnerabilities of astronomy that a more sober professor would have kept secret. What happened in 1997 is that--true to this drunken professor's prediction--the distance to the Hyades star cluster was, indeed, discovered to have been miscomputed--and the whole structure of the universe had to be reassessed as a result. Hence--among many other things--the correction of the distance to Vega. "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

Like? Again, see my example about the distance to Vega being previously cited as 26 light years. It is, of course, understood that certain numbers in science are known only to a certain degree of accuracy. However, generally when a non-round number like 26 light years is used, there is an assumption that this figure is valid to at least two significant digits. In this case, it turns out it was only valid to, at most, one significant digit. In stating the figure of 26 light years as the distance to Vega, Sagan (and many other popularizers of science--the 26 l.y. figure was quite commonly bandied about) was claiming a level of certainty he did not actually have. "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

See my comment on Vega. If Carl Sagan was off by a year over a time scale of about a quarter century (25 light years being the current alleged distance of Vega from Earth) how can we possibly be certain about claims of "seeing back millions of years" having any degree of accuracy at all? "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

The difficulty is that scientists rarely, in presenting material to the general public, distinguish between those statements that they are reasonably certain are accurate because of repeated experiments--and those statements that are speculation or of dubious accuracy. Scientists are almost certainly more honest than religious types, but they could help their own cause a lot more by being more willing to admit when they might be wrong. An example: Carl Sagan made much of the fact that the star Vega was allegedly 26 light years from Earth in his novel Contact. However, right around the time that the movie Contact came out, new scientific measurements came out showing that Vega is actually only 25 light years from Earth. Kind of embarrassing for Mr. Sagan, wouldn't you say? The average person does not have time to pursue a PhD in all of these fields to be able to fully evaluate all claims made by scientists. If we cannot count on a certain level of honesty from scientists about when they might be wrong, then unfortunately (and tragically) science does drop to the common denominator of religion in terms of the reliability of their claims. "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

In other words, the scientist provides strong, repeatable, evidence of speciation occurring within relatively short time frames. The scientist then extrapolates as to what would happen if the same process were extended over millions of years. The extrapolation is not a repeatable experiment unless the scientist has millions of years on their hands. That is where the faith comes in. I'd be very skeptical of a claim to have identified the remains of Jesus. Scientists weren't able to fully identify the remains of all the members of the last Russian royal family, and that is less than 100 years ago with many living relatives, with a known relationship to the family, available to provide DNA evidence. "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

How is evolution--or indeed any scientific theory which makes hypotheses about processes that require many human lifetimes to complete--testable by the scientific method? I have no doubt that small pieces of the theory of evolution can and have been tested by the scientific method. But it is not clear to me how the scientific method can fully validate--within a reasonable time period--evolution--or indeed theories in geology or astronomy about processes requiring millions or billions of years to complete. Isn't there a strong element of faith on both sides of this issue? "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

I'm not sure if anger is quite the right word but Christianity has caused a huge amount of trouble over the years. It's unfortunate because there is actually more about the Bible that I do believe than that I don't. But there is just something so twisted about the Christian need to back up their message of 'love' with the threat of eternal torture if you don't quite believe their way. It also doesn't make sense. Why should a finite number of sins in mortal life lead to eternal (infinite) suffering? The threatened punishment doesn't fit the crime, but there is too much sadism in the hearts of church leaders (Jesus himself was, fortunately, an exception) to see this. And Jesus' finite (though admittedly great) suffering paid for the sins of all humans throughout history? Again, doesn't add up. I'm not an atheist, but a lot of people in my life became Christians of the punitive, fire and brimstone school at about the same time, and that caused me a lot of problems, and really turned me off of organized Christianity. I saw the movie 'Judas' over Easter weekend. It portrays Jesus as someone who loved unconditionally and Judas as someone continually trying to manipulate Jesus into punishing others. The attitude of most Christians, to be honest, seems more like Judas than Jesus. They want to use Jesus as a tool to punish those they don't like. Again, I don't know if anger is quite the right response to all this, but it certainly gives one pause for thought. "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

It seems Google has turned to the dark side. Their corporate motto is "evil is anything Sergey says is evil." I can't imagine a more evil attitude than that. "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

I believe the instructors at Skydance are technically independent contractors, not employees, although I don't know what effect this would have on drug testing, if any. As of the last time I jumped there, when you pay at manifest for tandem/AFF, manifest gives you an envelope with cash enclosed to give to the instructor. This may mean that, legally, the instructor is working for you and not Skydance--since you pay them directly in cash--although I am not a lawyer and cannot claim to be certain about this. I'm not a big fan of drug testing at the DZ or anywhere else. At the DZ, or anywhere else, I want an atmosphere where the people trust one another--and nothing conveys an atmosphere of mistrust more than drug testing. If you need to test people for drugs before you can be sure if you can trust them, then something is very wrong with the relationship from the beginning. That being said, I think Skydance is as safe as anywhere else in this sport. I think they've had a few fatalities in the past but not out of line with what you'd expect given that Skydance is a fairly large DZ that has been around for awhile. It seems that about 1 jump in 100,000 jumps ends in fatality. I think the way to look at this is that if you only intend to make one jump, the risk is very very low--it probably is indeed safer than the drive out to the DZ. But on the other hand if someone makes it their career and ends up doing 10,000 or 20,000 jumps--then the probability that their life will eventually end skydiving becomes significant. Activities at Skydance have been featured prominently in many recent issues of Parachutist magazine, including an article in the current issue. If there were anything going on there that was an embarrassment to the sport, I doubt they'd be getting this kind of positive publicity. "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

Is this a bill that will be voted on? Or is it simply a regulation that may ultimately come into force through an administrative procedure without a vote in the House of Commons? "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

Hmmm...so either it wasn't really a total (ie he had something out to pull him to an upright position to do a PLF) or he was able to assume the PLF position in freefall. Wouldn't the latter require him to be a freeflyer and I didn't think people knew how to freefly back in 1980? "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

I joined but couldn't stay...I'm back in now but no one else is there. "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

The world's population is expected to peak at 9 billion in 2050: World's population Less than 50% higher than current levels--that hardly qualifies as exponential growth in my book although it may have been exponential in past decades/centuries. Furthermore I think it reasonable to assume that the US will account for a less than proportional share of the remaining growth. The potential for increase in terrorist attacks is much higher. The seriousness of terrorist attacks, at least up to and including 9/11, seemed to be growing at a rate that would give Moore's Law a run for its money. "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

Of course from the point of view of the individual families, the 3000 deaths were far more than a blip on the radar. From the point of view of national policy, though, 3000 deaths is indeed not large when looking at national mortality statistics. What justifies a strong national response to 9/11 is not just the number of deaths on 9/11 itself, but the risk of future attacks orders of magnitude larger. Domestic terrorist attacks seemed to be growing in seriousness by orders of magnitude. 9/11 was more than 10 times as serious as the Alfred Murrah Federal Building bombing, which at the time itself horrified the nation. Without a strong response to 9/11, the next attack could have claimed 30,000 or 300,000 lives. That's why we responded so strongly as a nation to 9/11. By contrast, it is very unlikely that the threat posed by automobiles or alcohol will increase exponentially in the near future--hence not as strong a response to automobiles or alcohol is called for. "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

I don't know whether your wife is right or wrong. I do know that if your wife is right, it is actually an extraordinarily strong argument against the candidacy of H.Clinton, because her candidacy could then be seen as a backhanded attempt to get around the 22nd amendment (both by herself and by B.Clinton). It is much smarter for H.Clinton to base her qualifications on her own experience as US Senator. She is running against two other US Senators so this shouldn't be hard for her to do. She should avoid discussion of her prior status as First Lady wherever possible. If it is indeed true that First Lady/Gentleman is a role almost equal to that of president, then it would give one couple direct influence for 3 or 4 presidential terms--something the 22nd amendment quite rightly wanted to avoid by limiting presidents to 2 terms. "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

What about Kathy Soliah? (aka Sara Jane Olson?) 1. Some people think she's a "douchebag". 2. She's known to have some skill with a pipebomb. 3. She just got out of prison and is free for dinner. "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

Well, unless he has some skydiving experience that we aren't aware of, I think the question assumes that, from a skydiving perspective, he'd start out as a student like everyone else. So since I'm guessing the above would be your reaction to any new student, you'd pick whichever 'yes' answer most closely correlates to your love for beer . "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

Let's hope the new president proves to be better than Nixon. I'm not being silly--like Nixon, the new president is going to be inheriting an unpopular war from an unpopular war. Like Nixon, the new president will have greatness within their grasp. Let's hope they do better than Nixon and achieve greatness. "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

So with all the attention that Mr. Dubya seems to be getting in these forums lately, I'm thinking, hypothetically: Bush seems to be the kind of man who likes to follow in his father's footsteps. I mean, whether we're talking about the oil industry, running for president, or beating up on Iraq, he's done a lot of the same things the elder Bush did. So it seems to me not inconceivable that Bush will also follow his dad's lead and become the latest skydiving ex-president when he leaves office. Furthermore he'll be a bit younger than the elder Bush when he leaves office so will have a much better chance at an extended skydiving career. So hence the poll--would he be welcome at your DZ or not? "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

True but RW stands/stood for "Relative Work" and it could equally be said that many disciplines including freeflying and CRW, not just traditional RW, involve movement "relative" to other skydivers. "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

My parents have been divorced a lot longer than they were married. My grandparents were married 69 years until my grandmother's untimely death. "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

Here's the link: rats learn behavior from across the world "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

How would you explain the fact that William McDougall observed that if you train rats to solve a maze, it takes them 165 times on average to learn--but after a few generations, their descendants take only 20 times to learn? Also I recall reading--so far haven't been able to find the reference--that rats in Europe were trained to run a maze, and then rats in America--with no contact with the European rats--were able to solve the same maze much faster. "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

The problem with the quiz, as they present it at that link, is that there are no questions related to religion. I generally find that religion is the issue that separates the true libertarians from the posers. When I find someone who is willing to extend their notions of civil liberties to those who worship a different god/goddess/savior/etc--or no god/goddess at all--then I consider that person a true libertarian. Many republicans would pass as libertarians if you allowed them to slide by without asking the tough questions re their attitudes on religion. "It's hard to have fun at 4-way unless your whole team gets down to the ground safely to do it again!"--Northern California Skydiving League re USPA Safety Day, March 8, 2014

If I bounce on the first load of the day, I sure hope someone will cremate me in time for me to have my ash dive on the sunset load the very same day (surely someone can throw me in the furnace between loads without slowing things down). Oh, and before you cremate me, grab my wallet--there's usually enough cash in there for one (or more) last cases of beer on me