DrewEckhardt

Go naked. Especially since summer is not yet over.

With 98.2% of households (impoverished included) owning at least one television in 2005 it seems to support wants which should get filled after needs.

If you ignore inflation. Real house prices in America have been essentially flat for the last 60 years with periodic bubbles that inevitably revert to the mean because the real wages needed to buy homes are not increasing. Here's the Case-Shiller index adjusted for inflation through the end of 2011. Case-Shiller looks at resale prices for individual homes so it provides more useful information than other metrics like the median sales price which is distorted by things like the trend towards bigger homes (the average new home was 1400 square feet in 1970 and 2700 in 2009).

It's about how much time you have to correct your flying mistakes close to the ground. A steeper dive makes getting out of things harder. Openings aren't a big deal. You screw up, you cutaway, and land under a conservative canopy. The repack is mildly annoying although you can sometimes bribe a rigger to get it done sooner so you're not out of commission for the weekend when you only have one rig. OTOH, what happens after a low turn to get back into the wind is a big deal. Here's a Stiletto 150 fatality with just a 1.2 wing loading and 480 jumps: [URL]http://www.dropzone.com/...rum.cgi?post=3709212 [/URL]

There's more to canopy flight than landing fast. Classic accuracy is its own thing. You could upsize and do that. Those skills are very useful in a BASE environment where a 5 meter miss means flying into a cliff or trees not landing outside a pea gravel pit. Landing on thedownstream edge of a 10x10' boulder top so you can pull in your pilot chute before it lands in a fast moving river is pretty exciting. In that sport you can get out really low, as in 100 meters not 1000.

Really? All the reviews on this site talk about 1000ft snivels and super soft openings :/ The Sabre and Sabre2 are both nine cell canopies made by Performance Designs. Beyond the name and that they have nothing in common. The Sabre is PD's first zero-P rectangular canopy. It does not snivel unless you've modified it using something like a pocket slider. Many of the complaints you hear come from newer jumpers used to the softer opening designs made later. Some are due to out-of-trim examples that no longer open as they should. The Sabre 2 is tapered and follows a handful of other non-square ZP designs. It was designed to open slowly like skydivers expect modern canopies to.

Quote Given how rare it is to find second-hand canopies over 200sqft (even 190s are uncommon), I could be waiting a long time to find anything a bit bigger. I have a decent offer on a Sabre 2 190 which I’m tempted by, but my first thoughts were that I ought to take something a bit bigger. A chart I’m looking at here suggests I stay on 210s and 230s until I’ve got over 200 jumps or so, and PD’s Sabre 2 sizing chart recommends a 190 for only "advanced" and "expert" jumpers of my weight range. Are my instructors and others being reckless in saying that a 190 is ok? [/QUOTE] Yes. A 230 is the best idea. Most skydivers think we're special snowflakes all unique with our own strengths. This leads to the canonical new skydiver advice to "listen to your instructors" "who've seen you fly" when it comes to down-sizing, the implication being that those instructors can some how recognize skydivers' specialness and approve of more aggressive downsizing protocols which is complete crap. People should be sizing their canopies based on the worst possible situation: It's the sunset load, cute chicks flash the pilot for extra altitude, some one in your group gets hypoxic and catches their foot on the seatbelt so you take forever to climb out, you have a long spot so you're landing off, and the low light means you don't see power lines until you've almost on top of them so you make a low turn to avoid them for a down-wind landing on an asphalt road. not the sunny-day scenario of into the wind in a sunny wide-open field that's neither hard nor taxing and gives skydivers an incomplete picture of their abilities. Instructors and a skydiver could only observe that they're ready for a premature down-size if they're getting into such situations on a regular basis and handling them successfully. Either that hasn't happened and there's no basis for the special snow flake recommendation, or the skydiver in question is short bus special in the judgement department and shouldn't be downsizing faster. Other sides to this are operating at a sufficiently low mental arousal level, developing muscle memory, and learning situational awareness. People perform best in situations that are stimulating enough that they're not falling asleep, but not unfolding so fast that they're overwhelmed where things like freezing become common. Premature down-sizing makes it easy to over-stimulate yourself and do incorrect things like hanging onto a front riser or two until impact. You need enough jumps in slower situations with bigger canopies to get used to it so that's less likely to happen. Although you can almost yank controls as far as you'd care to with impunity under larger parachutes, canopies get more sensitive to control inputs as they get smaller, whether intended or not. People with too few jumps on intermediate sizes instinctively make the big movements which worked on large canopies but turn little ones into the ground at unsurvivable speeds. Situational awareness means you've been doing things long enough to notice that things aren't right hundreds or thousands of feet before you're in a dangerous situation. People need to ease into things, with a hundred or few jumps on the next larger size and easing into larger turns making it easier to notice what's wrong so they're less likely to hang on controls until it's too late. Following Brian Germain's 1.0 + .1/100 jump wing loading formula (with more complications) seems to work well on those counts and combined with practicing the skills enumerated by Brian and Bill von Novak radically reduces your chances of ending up in the incident reports. Instead of telling skydivers to follow their instructors' advice which probably won't be based on enough information and allows people to ask around until they get an answer they like we should be telling them to follow Brian's writings unless complicating factors (bad depth perception, poor accuracy, not flaring far enough to avoid running, etc) noted by them or some one else suggest they be even more conservative.

Either 1 round was excessive (lethal force was not justified) or 100 would not have been an issue (you shoot until the targets no longer pose a threat). With the FBI hit rate in the shooting I referenced 46 might have just about done the trick on one suspect. Nothing strange there. Escalation of force doctrines allow the officers to exceed a suspect's level of force by one level. Non-violent resistance can be met with compliance holds. Unarmed resistance can be addressed using less lethal weapons (taser, pepper spray, bean bag rounds). Unruly school children have learned this the hard way. Advancing towards police officers with a deadly weapon can be met with lethal force.

Properly. When lethal force is justified you generally shoot at your attacker's center of mass until he no longer poses a threat (individuals with more training may shoot for the head too in case their attacker was wearing body armor). If aiming for an arm or leg is good enough lethal force is not justified and you should not be shooting a firearm which is a lethal weapon. Guns don't work like they do in the movies and on TV. People don't stop fighting when shot or even mortally wounded. In 1986 _after_ the FBI fatally shot a Miami bank robber he killed one agent and wounded five before they managed to end the fight with six more hits. The other criminal took twelve hits. The 18 hits came from at least 77 shots fired by the FBI. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout It's also simpler for private citizens than police. We pay police to assume additional risks and give them training and equipment so they're more likely to survive when they do. In violent confrontations this means having them practice an escalation of force where they apply one level beyond a suspect's (approaching with a knife merits shooting). Most places don't expect private citizens to subject themselves to the same level of risk so the shoot/no-shoot decision is more straight forward. He can. Easily. Simply. With lower risk of injury than if he complied with his attacker, resisted some other way, or even tried to run away in many cases. Usually without shooting - most criminals stop when they see the gun. One shot stops with handguns are only practical on sound stages in Hollywood and in ignorant peoples' imaginations especially with erratically moving targets.

......................................................................... Old (lightly-used) gear works great with older jumpers and older riggers, because they understand the limitations (e.g.don't load more than 1:1) and know how to fly it. The danger crops up when young skydivers try to load old reserves at 2:1 and wonder why they break so many bones. DOUGH! so you're saying a falcon reserve is just as good as a PD optimum reserve? For all practical purposes provided that you have a light wing loading, don't do anything likely to cause an over-speed deployment (no freefly, no Cypres which might fire if you get knocked out and then fall head down), and don't care about container size. That's nice but doesn't necessarily mean it does a better job saving your life. My Super Raven II (prehistoric by new jumper standards) and Tempo (not reinforced) both worked well enough when I needed them. That said if you're going to freefly or have an AAD you want a modern reserve with span-wise reinforcing tapes. I watched a guy spiral in under a reserve with one reinforcing tape at the tail connecting 2 and 5 cell chunks after he got knocked out on an AFF jump, was last seen falling head-first at a high rate of speed, and was saved by a Cypres fire falling at faster than belly speeds. If not the old designs are fine. I don't think anything of the Raven in my accuracy rig - if needed it'll get me to a safe landing just like an Optimum. Unlike the Optimum it's paid for and came in a $700 package deal with the container as opposed to costing $1000+ alone. That makes it _much_ better than the newer reserve.

I changed my mind about responding to another anti-engineer rant; although not before normiss responded so I'll put it back to provide context. Good engineers use a fact based approach to these sorts of things. Engineer Vs. Warranty True story. Engineer buys a laptop with a nice warranty. The M key breaks its bottom hinge and has a decidedly unpleasant feel. He thinks for a second about fixing it, notes that his time is still worth over $100/hour which justified buying the nice next-business day on-site warranty service, and puts in a request. He lets the technician in, sets him down at a spare desk, and is back in business with no effort expended.

Engineer Vs. Warranty True story. Engineer buys a laptop with a nice warranty. The M key breaks its bottom hinge and has a decidedly unpleasant feel. He thinks for a second about fixing it, notes that his time is still worth over $100/hour which justified buying the nice next-business day on-site warranty service, and puts in a request. He lets the technician in, sets him down at a spare desk, and is back in business with no effort expended.

Why oh why is the CEO not being shipped off to GITMO! Why! He broke the law and supported hell help fund a terrorist nation of Iran! Why is this asshole not being fucked up the asshole and being water boarded for his crime? Because such punishment would preclude him collecting more money and diverting a share to politicians' campaign funds. Being a Senator pays $174K. The average successful campaign runs $10M or $1,666,666 per year of term. The arithmetic is pretty simple - the job costs 10X its salary to land so some one else has to pay for it. A little quid pro quo goes a long way there.

Only if the current asset holders die in the next 4.5 months. In 2013 it reverts to $1M with the remainder taxed at 55%.

What an idiot. A more appropriate response would have been laying on the horn and screaming at the instructor "Hey asshole driving instructor! Take your fucking students somewhere they'll get in fewer peoples' way than a crowded mall lot! Grow a few brain cells and take remedial thinking classes so can come up with this stuff yourself!" Even better would be following until the car gets stopped for the inevitable car waiting for people to get in their car and free a space which creates the opportunity to tap on the window and opine to the instructor "Excuse me sir, but I believe your student will impede fewer people and cause less stress for you if you adjourn to a parking lot with less traffic." Stupid and oblivious people need someone else to think for them and are more likely to accept that thinking when you're polite about it. Around me there are abandoned office complexes with unoccupied parking lots, convention center parking lots where people remain parked all day, and a fine selection of low traffic residential streets. All of those are a much better choices for familiarizing a still hesitant driver with motor vehicle operation than a busy mall parking lot.

The death tax is horribly unfair. The "tax free" money has already been taxed at least once (as income) or twice (as corporate income then as dividends when it was distributed) so the remainder has been taxed at least twice or thrice.

How would you prevent sex slavery, and ensure that prostitute are only voluntary participants? That's the big problem, not the morality aspects. While you can't prevent that you can make it less likely by providing people safe, legal prostitutes that they prefer (ex - certified disease free monthly or whatever) which are also past the age of consent and working that way on their own volition. As it stands now johns get illegal prostitution period with less ability to separate the immoral from the illegal. Moonshine which may be contaminated with methanol is a _much_ smaller problem now that alcohol in general is legal.

Negative. The market has historically returned 10-12% and that's far, FAR better than SS. SS also has the new historic honor of paying out less than than what people put in ( http://moneyland.time.com/2012/08/07/social-security-now-takes-more-than-it-gives/ ) and it's only going to get worse from there. SS is not a good retirement plan, and it won't be long before its a complete wash. In 2005 I did the analysis and found that assuming the retirement age wasn't increased, FICA tax rates didn't increase, and social security benefits increase with inflation I'd need to outlast my statistically expected lifespan by five years to get a 0% inflation adjusted return on my "investment". Other investments which are just as safe do much better. Even 3 month T-bills yield 0.5% after inflation . 10 year T-notes have averaged 1.7% since 1900.

You want to reconsider and aim for seven figures so you can continue your middle class lifestyle. The rule of thumb is that you can only spend ~4% of your assets when you don't want to run out. 40K/year = 4% of $1,000,000 Social Security is already means tested to a degree - retirement withdrawals of that magnitude drawn from most tax-advantage accounts constitute income which is high enough to make 85% of your benefits taxable. One would expect that to get worse if things get tight and people who spent extravagantly in their youth complain about "wealthy" people collecting Social Security. Skip the new cars, live in a smaller house, and save now so things don't get worse when you're forced to stop working for the wage you earn now due to health, age discrimination, or just because your boss would rather hire a less expensive person.

That's what the wealthy would of course say. Just like they say 'trickle down' works. The best course of action for America is to promote wealth through personal initiative, hard work and sound management... Certainly not by getting an unearned inheritance. An inheritance can let your descendants focus on being entrepreneurial instead of making ends meet and keep the venture capitalists' paws off the fruits of their endeavors.

That's what the wealthy would of course say. Just like they say 'trickle down' works. The wealthy wouldn't say anything because that might upset the proletariat and disturb the status quo. You'd have to let their actions speak for them. Mark Zuckerberg just transfered $37M tax free to heirs he has yet to conceive with no inheritance tax, no gift tax, and no dent in his or Priscilla's lifetime exemptions. (Generally you only give your children enough to be comfortable but not obscenely wealthy so they're more likely to be productive people. The rest can go to charity tax free).

As an oppressive 1%er I might agree with you since abolishing inheritance would help me keep the riff-raff down. When you have enough millions you don't need them all to live off and can afford to transfer assets to your heirs before you die without inheritance and things like the death tax getting in the way. For instance, in my next company which I hope to sell for eight figures I may give what I don't need to the kids a year before I expect it to pop with the obligation to repay the current (low) fair market value or return the stock which has a net zero value at the time of the gift. After it pops they'll have millions taxed as long term capital gains without eating into my gift tax exemption. Zuckerberg did this to transfer $37M tax free to his yet-to-be-conceived children. Or perhaps I'll give the two of them 24.5% a piece as soon as the ink on my incorporation papers dries and it's literally worth zero. No gift or death tax their either and also taxed as long term capital gains if things go very well. If things only go moderately well they'll be able to take profit distributions from the company which are taxed as ordinary income where their rates are much lower than mine so they keep more of our money than if I paid taxes on it and then gave it to them like a wage slave would do. OTOH, when you're middle class and can only acquire 25X your final salary you need all of it to maintain your standard of living through retirement because you can only draw 4% a year without risking running out of money. In theory you're no longer saving for retirement so it could take less; although you need to worry about radically increased costs of living due to requiring skilled care. In theory Social Security can provide 1/3 of your pre-retirement income; although the retirement age continues to increase and it may become means tested so you need to hedge your bets. Your children can't have your money until you die and they inherit what's left. IOW, death taxes are more likely to punish children of prudent frugally living middle-class parents than the wealthy. As a 1%er working to stay on top I might not mind them much.

It also changes the break-even point for market alternatives. My corner grocery store has no cashiers making close to minimum wage (and none above it either) because the labor market costs were higher than financing or depreciation on the machines to replace the people.

The amounts look right, work for Olympians not in high tax brackets although the article authors did not consider that, and I agree that they're too high. A single athlete who doesn't make it past the Social security cap should be paying 4.2% FICA 1.45% Medicare 6.2% employer's share of FICA (this is self-employment income) 1.45% employer's share of Medicare sub total 13.3% on top of normal income tax rates. Assuming they make enough to support themselves that would put them in the 25% bracket 13.3% + 25% = 38.3%, $9575 on a gold Where the athlete in question is also a Californian they'd be subject to SDI at 1% and probably be in the 9.3% bracket 38.3% + 10.3% = 48.3%, $12,075 on gold

Garry Johnson 94% Ron Paul 90% Mitt Romney 70% Barack Obama 64% Libertarian 93% Green 73% Republican 70% Democratic 64%