Bob_Church

When did we start calling "Trash Packing" "Pro Packing"?

I'm just curious, but not enough to dig through all the stuff. They keep saying "Russians." There are millions of Russians. Are they actually saying "representatives of the Russian government" or just people with Russian IP numbers?

The first rule of Carnival Fight Club is: You don't talk about Carnival Fight Club. The behaviour of the Carnival staff is mind-boggling. If I ever considered taking a cruise with them, the thought is long gone now. If they'd spent half as much time doing something about the problem instead of trying to keep anyone from videoing it.... From the things we keep seeing in the news over the last few years I suspect they've dropped the prices to the point that pretty much anyone can go on one, like the way the airline passengers are bus riders in the sky. Only now you're not stuck with them for a couple of hours flight, it's ten days and nights. Cut rate nightmares.

One of the best ones I've seen yet! Would have loved to see the look on her face if this were to actually happen. Here's something I actually saw once. It was back in the 80s or so in a Krogers in Marietta Oh. It looked like Ma and Pa Kettle and their 14 year old boy had come in from the hills. Ma must have needed a box of kotex but then they didn't want anyone to know so they had the kid hold them under his jacket the whole time. And the kid looked so intent, he was helping his Ma. The jacket didn't cover them, just the front but the side of the big box was really visible and the thing is nobody would have even noticed them otherwise but now you couldn't help but look and wonder.

It would take a stun gun and a roll of duct tape to get me on a cruise ship. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/carnival-legend-cruise-liner-brawl-australia/

I never used one but I can't see how they wouldn't. You're just surrounding the cable loop with a different configuration. The yellow cutaway cable is one piece, not two, if that helps picture it.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/comedy-sketch-china-variety-show-features-woman-blackface-article-1.3824737 Has to be seen to be believed. And be sure to read the last few lines of the article.

But was he dumb enough to think he could get away with it, or dumb enough to accept it as real from someone?

OK! How? Derek V We need to repeal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. It's been legally impossible to sue gun manufacturers since 2005. Anyone who has been in power since then is complicit in the carnage. Repeal that, forget the NRA, they're smoke, and publicize where the guns are really coming from. Sorry Joe Lieberman, the curtain is coming back. Let the lawsuits take care of it. First of course, someone let Trump know this law exists.

#ReleaseTheDress !!! http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/stormy-daniels-allegedly-gold-dress-supposed-trump-fling-article-1.3823010 If the dress does not fit, you must aquit

I think what would make skydiving work is the advances in video. Free style would be amazing, CRW with good camera coverage, even accuracy.

They're beautiful, and that's a big part of the problem. I owned a Sturm Ruger 41 Magnum long enough to know I shouldn't have one. I traded it to my Uncle for a Corvair van. Now that was a strange deal.

Bob who? I don't own a gun and there aren't any in my home. They allow things to happen too quickly.

I was never scared once I left the aircraft but sometimes the ride to altitude would give me a stomach ache I was so nervous. No, not nervous, scared. It just took a lot of jumps in a short time which I didn't have much of a chance at. The DZ I started at went under a few months after I got off student status and I just sort of spent time looking for another DZ until I found Ravenswood. I think a big problem for me is that Bidwell went under while I was still a novice. The jumpers there were very supportive and helpful but then I'm jumping at another place where they were all nice but I was seen as regular jumper just not with many jumps. My theory about fear in the plane is that it's part of your mind trying to talk the other part out of jumping. It gets really bad. But then once you take that step it realizes that there's no going back now, shrugs its shoulders and tries to help out. I wish I could help more with the fear but all I can really say is that it does get better. A lot better.

Dammit I was just about to post some good news for a change but this beat me to it. Two police officers were shot and killed in Columbus Oh, which was bad news of course, but instead of just arresting the shooter they then tracked down the person who had gotten the gun for him. The shooter was a felon who couldn't legally buy a gun so a friend bought it for him. Now they're both locked up and looking at serious time. No legitimate gun owners lost any rights, the laws were used to punish the criminals, it wasn't a lot but at least it was right.

True. There's always a snag. I wonder how much of the difference is environmental and how much salary. If you look at some of those factories they aren't all that efficient, just cheap to run.

Why wouldn't they buy them? By skipping the environmental laws, which we're ok with, they'd be cheap.

No, like I said, I'd like to include those but I know it doesn't work. The main problem with trying to change those things is that we're then telling them what they have to do in their country. They don't send their dead workers to us, but their pollutants go everywhere. We can't force them to treat their people like humans. But we can, and in many many cases do, tell them what they can bring into our country. So if we say "you follow the same EPA guidelines that a manufacturer in the US does or don't bring it here." It's like saying to some non-specified country "if you want to sell narcotics over the counter to your people that's up to you, but if you try to bring it across our border the DEA will be talking to you." It's their business until they make it our business. But think about this. If we're willing to let products made that way be sold in the US then why not just make them here? Sure, it would be a mess and all, but at least we'd cut out the shipping. This country has a serious case of "out of sight, out of mind." and it's going to be the death of us.

It would be a big job but I don't think it would be as complex as it sounds. When you buy a package that says kosher or organic or buy beef with at least some level of confidence that it's not horse it's because there are agencies that inspect this stuff and try to keep it within compliance. If you buy a tv and sit it in your living room you assume that someone made sure it probably wouldn't burst into flames during the night.There are agencies that attempt to assure these things. There would need to be another agency who's job agency who's job was to do spot inspections of facilities and check that they followed certain guidelines. We do it here, and this would just mean that it gets done there too. A manufacturer who wants to get that all important "approved for US import" sticker on his products would subscribe to this agency, get the guidelines and follow them. The agency would do inspections. It would be paid for by the subscriptions of companies that wanted to export to the US. And if this sounds difficult or complex I don't think it is when you look at other import/export rules. There are lots of them, you could probably fill a library with their guidelines. I just want to add one more. Think about this. A couple of years ago a shipment of toys arrived from China and were found to have too much lead in the paint. Everyone was horrified. So they sent them back. If the Chinese factory then just scrapped the lead off, dumped it in the ocean and sent the toys back it would have been legal. Personally, I think it should apply to how workers are treated too. If some kids from Vietnam are kidnapped and chained to the work bench in China to make USB cables then I'd rather that product didn't get sold here. But I know that's reaching kind of high for now.

I'll throw mine out there if you don't mind. It would combine the ideas of equality that you talk about, including, no especially, having equal access to good jobs with fixing current importation laws so that those jobs would be available. Equal access to nothing just doesn't help. In the mid 20th century Americans realized that manufacturing with absolutely no pollution control was bad. We're killing the planet. So, despite the fact that it will make each product cost more we require them to be made in certain ways. I open a factory to build televisions in Ohio but a heavy metal waste product is produced. I'm forced to safely dispose of that despite the fact that it will make my TVs more expensive than if I didn't. Ok, it's worth it. Except the guy who build his tv factory in China has no such restriction and dumps this poison into the ocean. And, and here's the part that makes absolutely no sense to me, there is no law preventing him from bringing those TVs here and selling them. And since producing them while poisoning the planet is much much cheaper US TVs can't even compete and now this is all you can buy. So we destroy our environment by pumping out more pollution than ever and kill off our middle class at the same time. And who is this middle class? More and more it was becoming the black urban citizen. The factory where he or she would have gone to work and made a decent life for themselves is gone, shipped off to China. So sure, urban blacks have a tendency to get pissed off and burn things down, but what else do they have to do? In the meantime a tiny percentage of already rich Americans get even richer while handing a cut to the politicians who enable them. Imagine the difference to this country if we passed one, simple and very reasonable law. If you could not have legally produced that product the way you did in the US, then you can't sell it here.

You don't really feel the variations in personal tastes until you see who some people would actually pay to have sex with.

That was the same weekend I got my first jump out of a Twin Otter. It was over at Daytona Airport, or someplace like that, and we got discount tickets if we bought them the night before, got up early and road the van over. We did an eight way and I messed up. I remember I was supposed to come in on Lew Sanborn's right and I came in on his left. I finally meet one of my heroes and screw it up, and in a way he can't miss. I felt like dirt. Speaking of dirt, I wondered about this aircraft situation when I saw the plane. It had wood trim around the lighting, nice carpet and the real thing that made me think this won't last long, a pilot and co-pilot wearing honest to God uniforms. So there we are on jump run with floaters hanging off the wood trim. I think they did one more load then took it home.

Oh I know what Billy is saying. I just think you can't eliminate the possibility of controversy over a win (in events with possibility of human/human contact) But like I said, go ahead and advocate for it. You will get nowhere of course. The future is not eliminating judgement calls, but making them more accurate. With computers and cameras, eventually the question "what score will that triple axel get?" will be just as accurate and reproduce-able as "how far did that long jumper go?" But you could look at the video of a discus throwing contest 20 years ago and see who won even with no volume or explanations. You look and see which person threw it the furthest. You can't do that with, say, figure skating or (God Help Us) synchronized swimming. You'd have to find out what the judges decided to see who won.

There's stuff like this every day now. I honestly think we're starting to see the results of college grads who were never, ever able to put their phones down. I still chuckle every time I think about the prank someone pulled on the news reporting about the Korea airline crash at SFO a few years back, when the list of the crew names were shown. Capt Sum Tin Wong We Tu Lo Ho Lee Fuk Bang Ding Ow That was incredible. I wonder whatever happened to her? I've worked for people that I hated so much that I'd let them go ahead and read it.

I watched the 72 way build. It was something to see, even from the ground. About the 100 way, I remember someone projecting films of the funnels on the wall at Z-Hills one night, but I'm pretty sure that was before anyone had actually built and held one. They were impressive funnels though.