nathaniel

What counts for disposal in the 3rd world (burial) probably would not count in the US. Having enough dollars for quarantine, decontamination, and disassembly facilities is a luxury most parts of the world don't have. Probably the biggest reason the US has diminshed its stockpiles is that simply keeping the things isn't simple with all the care and maintenance they require. Not to mention the chemical half-lives of the reagents being rather short IIRC on the order of a few years. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I would have jumped into this thread earlier, but I was out of town this week. If people could abstractly distinguish between good and bad advice, they probably wouldn't be approaching others for answers in the first place. Right around the time of the Ancient Greeks, after millenia of walking the Earth, mankind finally figured out rules to guarantee the advice they followed was the pure, unadulterated good stuff. The Greeks might not have been the first to do so, but they remembered it long enough to write it down and share it with each other. Then for a while in the middle ages people stopped following the rules the Greeks laid out ... this era is now also known as the Dark Ages. Then along came a bunch of crackpots who dug up the Ancient Greek stuff, modernized it a bit and lo and behold we have the rebirth of mankind. In the ensuing Enlightenment we disseminate the rules of logic and reason in the hopes that they will permeate every facet of our existence. Many people won't (and shouldn't IMO) take advice without good Reason. It is no surprise that advice given without good Reason is that most likely disregarded. The gospel of jump numbers, war stories, willingness to reiterate, etc. for all its glory is not part of what makes good advice. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Of all the reasons to find the man negligent I think using live ammunition in a demonstration would be near the top for me...that together with handing it to an unspecified audience member... nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I've seen all of these things beyond the security checkpoint in every commercial airport in the US I've been to. Jimbo hit the nail on the head. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Also, about monster and online job postings in general: sometimes the people that post the jobs really have no idea what they're posting about, and sometimes the people that post the job are literally the people you'll be working with. When it's not the people you'll be working with it's hard to judge exactly what they're looking for because sometimes they literally don't know wtf the requirements mean. I've seen listings requesting 10+ years of java experience but java was only released in 1995. Listings looking for 3+ years of winxp experience. etc. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I completed a BS curriculum in CS in 2000, and I really urge you to take as much math as you can. I took as many math and statistics classes as I could finish in 4 years and I still wish I could have taken more, in retrospect. Math classes were definitely hardest for me, but it was well worth it. TAs were very helpful for me. Abstract math has less direct application in the work I've done since school--purchasing consultant, systems analyst, and starting a security architecture job at the end of this month--than stat and good ole CS, but it's like the Matrix the way that math creeps in and drives everything. It might not come up in an interview -- most HR people wouldn't understand your transcript if they read it, they have broader issues to deal with anyway -- but it will help you shine once you start the work. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Just had mine out last week...I had an easy case so it was really no big deal. I had local + gas, and really I wasn't aware that the teeth were out till I saw them on the tray. I went out to dinner with friends the day after they came out. For food anything bland, soft and cold to start off with on the first day. Ice cream, yougurt etc. Then just soft for a couple days. Rice+beans, small noodles, and so on. No peanuts, corn, sunflower seeds, etc that could get stuck in the socket and irritate the hell out of you. Can't give any skydiving advice tho...haven't jumped since. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

If I learned only from instructors at the DZ, until two weeks ago I would have been using the 45-degree "method". As we learn altogether too frequently here, the natural process by which knowledge replaces fantasy is slow. It can stand a little assistance. A risk, tho, is that the factors leading to a skydiving decision don't always translate well into an online form and back out again. Neither do they always translate well to a classroom setting, but nobody (AFAIK) is againt FJC's. Like other ways to learn it's a resource. It has advantages and drawbacks. YMMV nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

good advice all around on this thread. I've done a couple raft jumps, one went well the other didnt. Basically the raft wants to be on top like a parachute, so you need to have the weight around it evenly distributed to keep it from tilting and flipping. Put some heavy people on the inside and have them keep their butts on the floor of the raft so air can't get in between. What riddler said about loops is critical. I've seen a terrifying video of a raft that had a rope going along the sides making a "loop" with raft on one side and rope on the other side connected at two points. The raft popped and a jumper's ankle got wrapped in the now-slack rope. In what seemed like an instant the deflated raft twisted up several times putting the jumper dangling head-down from a nasty entanglement. Fortunately the jumper was able to free herself with plenty of altitude to spare... IIRC she lost a shoe tho. moral of the story: keep the ropes short and no loops nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

The scariest thing I know about industrial foodstuffs is about any kind of fortified cereal, eg, Total. They put iron filings in it and you can pull them out with a magnet. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I understand that a panic attack can produce some of these feelings...at least it may have contributed. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Arg. What you're failing to grasp is it's not the person that makes it bogus, it's the method. If a person screws up once they can go back and do it again, but if anybody does it the same way it's still bunk. Has it occurred to you that the people mostly likely to be found at the dropzone are those that jump the most? To get an accurate sample, just polling the people you meet at the DZ is not going to work -- it's probably going to give a biased sample. Conducting a proper sample isn't a thing you can do without proper planning and implementation. It's not rocket science, but it's more than a weekend project. Which is probably why we don't have this data already... nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

PD has a report on a study they did that sides with the SIM. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Sampling isn't a cool name to discredit you or anyone. It's a procedure that researchers and statisticians use to ensure that the data they look at accurately represents the population under consideration. It's a particularly tricky business when you don't have much data to begin with -- it's very tempting to look at the data at hand and extrapolate, but this is in general not a sound technique. It's easy to pick a sample of jumpers to prove anything. In a study of 100 jumpers in the last 10 years, every last one of them died in the sport. Therefore everybody who skydives dies in a skydiving accident. A separate study shows that there's zero risk at all in skydiving -- 100 jumpers that didn't even twist an ankle. A subsequent meta study showed the risk of death to be exactly 50%. Using a proper sampling technique is what prevents us from making mistakes like this. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

The term sampling comes to mind. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

It may pertain to the debate as a whole but it's orthogonal to the arguments. It's a reason for what? I know, it's a purported reason for WL regulations. What's the reasoning? The inductive part of this argument has yet to turn up. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

That's an appeal to emotions, not a rational argument. "then the terrorists have already won" etc. We've gone over this before, and all I've seen so far is some mystical ramblings about individuals' experiences. Hey, I'm impressed, but it doesn't add up to a justification for proposals about wing loadings. Start with cause and effect, throw in some deductive logic and we'll talk. Again, I credit this to the introduction of the reliable AAD. Prevent fatalities no, prevent no/low pull fatalities yes. IMO regulations and devices like the AAD serve a good purpose, but not the one you're thinking. They don't prevent people from hurting themselves through risky behaviour & accident -- it is simply impossible to contain human nature in this fashion -- but to foster the development of the sport. If we didn't have all these rules we'd be killing ourselves with bad gear and poor freefall technique instead of killing ourselves with hook turns and collisions. We don't do it for the killing part, we do it for the immense joy and beauty it brings into the world. Again, I don't think it's possible to separate out the risk with regulations due to essential human nature. Particular risks yes, total risk no. This is a reason I'll respect to support regulations of this sort. Not sure I agree with it, but I'll respect it. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

John LeBlanc gave a wonderful presentation at SDC last weekend regarding wingloading. The main point was along the lines that wing loading alone is not particularly well related to the physics of parachutes, fluid motion, and jumpers. Sure all these things are part of the picture but the simple ratio of canopy size to jumper exit weight misses some big effects [end LeBlanc part] It's not clear who should be subject to the proposed regulations -- based on the limited data we have experienced jumpers have shown they are just as capable of hurting themselves on small (and large) canopies as newer jumpers. Since we have very limited data on injuries, and the fatalities are well distributed across experience levels, it's difficult to assess the relative risks. Are we proposing regulating the more or less new jumpers to the sport, and why? IMO we have a big NIMBY problem here. To reduce the overall injury/fatality rate it seems that many people would regulate anyone but themselves. What justifies taking this decision away from a some or all of the participants? Putting aside the question of whether jump numbers are relevant at all, nearly everybody that participates in this sport is an adult and should be trusted to make their own decisions regarding the risks they want to take. Parachuting differs from general aviation in this respect b/c with the exclusion of tandems parachutists do not carry passengers and are not operating heavy machinery. Better analogies in my opinion would be rock climbing, bicycling, and skiing. Moreover, the theory of risk homeostasis suggests that the net results might not be what you expect -- again putting aside the question of whether there is any wing-loading-jump-number risk factor involved. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I did a couple last year with similar jump #s...they were the most fun jumps I've done to date... Could see Chicago all lit up way off on the horizon...so beautiful and peaceful. Jumpers on the load before said they saw the 10:PM fireworks at Navy Pier. Like others have said your first will probably be solo...and if you do additional jumps with other people you'll want to keep it really simple... They had regulars spotting the loads I was on--even experienced jumpers I think will have a very hard time spotting without some familiarity with the way the dz area looks at night. I honestly had very little idea where the landing area was from 14,000 ft--but by the time I made it down to 6000 or so the landing area was obvious. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

FWIW maybe the administrators of this domain might want to consider how the folks at arstechnica run their openforum Tho it's an IT oriented site, their forum and arrangement faces the same kinds of problems described here. You can see the approaches they take-- they've got a similar approach to this set of forums, what stands out to me is * levels of access: unregistered / registered / paid * ironfisted moderation that's fairly open. To maintain an appearance of order and justice they announce things like bannination, but at the same time they have no tolerance for moderator-baiting. * in particular, the flame oriented forums are paid subscription only but the main site itself is unabashedly commercial and has lots of original content with daily updates...IT seems like a faster industry than parachuting nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I think this goes for the less-new jumpers as well... nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

I'm getting mine out on Thursday. Only two, and only one fullsize...one's a baby wisdom tooth. At least go get xrays so the dentist can tell you if you'll get in trouble by waiting too long. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

Amen Job boards generally don't make jobs, they just post them. Right after school when IT was hot I got several hits based off of the boards...even cold calls from a Big 5 consulting company based off my personal website that had my resume on it. For the last few months until today I've been in the market again, and I got zilch this time from the boards. I'm starting to really believe that bit about career networking. I've heard 50% offhand as the portion of jobs that are filled by referral before they ever get posted to the public.... It's been 2 / 3 for me. nathaniel My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

cosmo 1 part cranberry juice 1/2 part lime juice 2 parts vodka 1 part your favorite of cointreau / triple sec / cuantra y tres / curacao shake with ice and strain, serve in a frozen martini glass white russian 1 part kahlua 1 part vodka 1 part whole milk My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

maybe in a few years all our jump planes will run on soybeans nathaniel edit: ahh, reprinting permitted: Soya-powered planes IT MIGHT make airports smell like a Thai restaurant, but a group of American biochemists think soya oil is just the thing to give aviation fuel a greener future. They say that an aircraft fuel based on soya oil and traditional jet fuel will slash consumption of fossil fuel, and help slow the rise in greenhouse gas levels by using carbon from renewable sources. They will tell a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Anaheim, California, next week how it can be done. Commercial jets run on a petroleum fuel called Jet A. Like all fossil fuels, it releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when burnt. Biofuels like soya oil, on the other hand, are "carbon neutral" because the carbon they release came from the atmosphere only recently. Meanwhile air traffic is a growing contributor to global warming. In 2002 the UK's Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution predicted that air travel could account for nearly 75 per cent of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. "If further research fails to dispel current concerns, then, at some stage, commercial aviation is going to need a completely different fuel," says David Wardle, a fuels expert at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. And, he says, biofuel blends could be one answer. So far, attempts to create a suitable fuel from blends of jet fuel and vegetable oils have been unsuccessful. One stumbling block is the requirement that aviation fuel stays liquid down to -40 degrees C. Vegetable oils generally freeze at around 0 degrees C. But now biochemist Bernard Tao of Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana, and his graduate student Shailendra Bist have developed a blend that freezes at -40 degrees C. They convert fatty acids within the oil into volatile, combustible esters, some of which freeze at higher temperatures and some at lower temperatures. "Remove the components that freeze at higher temperatures, and you will be left with something that will freeze at low temperatures," says Bist. It's here that they have made the breakthrough. The standard method of removing unwanted esters involves chilling the biofuel and removing any crystallised solids. Repeat this at ever lower temperatures and you create a fuel with a very low freezing point. But the process can take days, and is wasteful because desirable esters "co-crystallise" out with the unwanted ones. Yields can be as low as 25 per cent. Tao's team has developed a similar fractionation technology that takes less than an hour and has yields as high as 80 per cent. They are unwilling to discuss details pending a patent filing, but say they can now make a 40 per cent blend of biofuel and 60 per cent Jet A with the right freezing properties. It is the highest percentage ever reported, says Wardle. The fuel is now being tested on a turbo-prop engine to assess its emissions. ### New Scientist issue: 27th March 2004 Written by ANIL ANANTHASWAMY My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?