vpozzoli

it's a real shame, 8 years of school, 4 years of residency, long hours, year round work, holding living organs in their hands - teachers have it rough yup, a real crime that teachers don't make the same as doctors Actually, as one of their former "victims", I'm of the opinion that teachers are actually overpaid for the (on average very poor) service they provide to the public ù Their constant requests for more recognition of their work (i.e. money) sounds like little more than baseless whining. I used that comparison simply because the question I was replying to was expressed in those terms. Cheers, Vale

My home country (Italy) surely fits the bill. I have yet to see a lower-income-bracket doctor. Yes, those that can move to private practice are definitely better off, but even your average GP who gets 100% of his income from socialized health care has no problem making ends meet. Teachers on the other hand are paid a pittance... Cheers, Valentino

'course not, there is always the "be a lazy bum and indulge myself" one, but that tends to be a tad bit tricky, at least in my experience Vale

Frankly I don't see what you're example has to do with socialized medicine, unless you are referring to some sort of co-pay scheme based on income, where for example you start with the lower income group getting everything really for free and then as income goes up you get to pay progressively more. These has (unfortunately ) been implemented here and there more as a stop-gap measure to increase contribution based not only on income but on a sort of combined income/usage metric. In other words a way of raising taxes without actually saying so . This can be considered a perversion of the ideal social model, which is the one where, as mentioned previously, everybody contributes based only on income and takes based on their actual (in this case medical) needs. In the ideal system you should never get to pay more because you need more, this would strongly detract from the social aspect. But even if this happens keep in mind that even in the worst case scenario you'll never get to pay for something really major (like an organ transplant) out of your own pocket, no matter how much you earn. Also while you can live without higher education (although your lifestyle will probably, but not necessarily, be adversely affected) you cannot live without a heart or a liver (or any fatal but curable condition), so I fail to see such a strict a parallel between subsidized education (which is part of a wider welfare scheme) and socialized health care by itself. Incidentally, personally I'm not a great fan of welfare, but as I'm sure you can tell have a completely different attitute towards health care, and see no contradition in that. Cheers, Vale

I think that what you are proposing would not really work out in reality. Think about it, who would'nt prefer private health care to socialized care? One such group would definitely be made up of those who cannot afford to pay for private health care, because they are too poor and/or hav no stable source of income. Another group would be made up of those who are "uninsurable" in the private sector, either because of demographics or because of pre-existing medical conditions. These also happen to be the people that are most likely to take more out of the system than they put in, and that's exactly the reason why private insurance companies try as hard as they can to get rid of them. One very likely scenario is that socialized health care will be de-facto the domain of those who have little to contribute but a lot to demand. Such a system will be affected by a largely negative overall balance and as such would not be able to operate for long, if at all. I think the whole idea of "socialized anything" is (or at least should be IMHO): everybody contributes as much as they reasonably can, everybody takes exactly what they need, not more but especially not less (i.e. nobody is left behind for any reason). This is what gives it a "social value", what you are proposing sounds more like an alternative, government run insurance for those who cannot afford anything alse, and that's not strictly "universal health care". Also the idea behind "universal" is that it should indeed be so, no exceptions are allowed. Kinda like there cannot be "nearly universal" moral values, they are are or they aren't, universal that is (just messing with you a little ). Just my .02 "socially cared for" Eurocents Cheers, Vale

This makes absolutely no sense. Apart from the fact that you can get sucked in from the side, you are using your own personal definition of 'suction', which implies that when you suck something through a straw you're not really sucking as the fluid only gets sucked in at the tip, and not from the sides or the top. Makes no sense at all. You must be confusing suction with gravity. Spare me the BS. I make one frigging post and all I get right away is gratuitious insults and summary dismissals of my statements without any real discussion. When I try and discuss I get dismissed because "I haven't been in skydiving long enough". Long enough for what? To know about the wheather and how it relates to fliying? I think not, sounds more like I need enough jumps just to be able to speak back to the "skygods". Please. Now I'm really out of here, this is just a big waste of time. Vale

Are you really saying there are no vertical air currents in a storm cloud? If that is the case you really have no idea what you're talking about. As for me triying to act important, well I could literally pave roads with the amount of attitude I'm getting from some of you people out of a single post of mine. I've had enough, I'm out of here. Back to places were the attitude does not 'suck' as much, like Speaker's Corner. Bye bye, Vale

Got it. Vale

Clouds don't suck. Air temps can cause changes in pressure, which can cause masses of air to move, but clouds don't suck. Go look up 'convection currents' and the physics of water condensation and then you'll understand why some clouds do indeed 'suck' Hint: you can ask any glider or hang-glider pilot and he'll surely be able to explain it to you. Cheers, Vale

No, you were being insulting on a personal level.If you can't tell the difference then there is no sense in discussing it further. From your second post it looks like you don't know the difference between this type of cumulus cloud http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cumulus_cloud.jpg and this one (which is actually called a cumulonimbus) http://scijinks.jpl.nasa.gov/en/educators/gallery/clouds_atmos/cumulonimbus_L.jpg I doubt you have ever had the chance to 'punch through' one of the latter type. Some have (in reverse) and not all lived to tell the tale. And it's also not a single instance as you erroneously believe. I suspect cumulonimbus have a much higher chance of forming in the OP's location (equatorial Africa) than in Northern Italy so it may actually pay not to trivialize the risk too much. As some people are fond of saying it's all fun and games up to the point someone dies. Cheers, Vale

Go program something. Are you just being rude for the sake of it or are you claiming that this never happened? http://www.cornizzolo.it/accadde.html Here is a short summary in case Babelfish should do too poor a job of translating it into the language of your choice: On July 24th 1988 three hang-gliding pilots lost their lives in the Italian Alps (near mount Cornizzolo) as they where sucked into a suddenly forming cumulus cloud. A fourth did not die immediately but died thre days later in the hospital because of the severity of the injuries he suffered. Others escaped more or less miraculously without major bodily harm. Their names are Memo La Rocca, Guido Baruffini, Antonio Legranzini and Marco Lietti, just in case you might want to get in touch with their families and tell them you do not believe their loved ones dies as described in the article I referenced On the same day in Aosta a Static Line student was sucked into a luckily much smaller cumulus cloud and landed some time later about 40 miles from the actual airport, only half conscious from exposure and oxygen deprivation and suffered serious injuries upon landing (she was to all practical purposes unresponsive). She survived but never jumped again, if you like I can try and get in touch with her and suggest she give you a call to confirm my version of the facts which is still only 2nd hand (I only got it from my instructor who was instructing her on that fateful day)? In the future if you have no idea what you're talking about may I recommend to you a good dose of STFU? Cheers and safe jumps, Vale

You where likely experiencing suction from a big cumulus cloud. Hence the strong winds on the ground (it's air rushing in to replace the air that's being sucked up by the cloud), and the subsequent wheather hold. This is what happened to the lady in Asutralia. Vertical winds in a well developed cumuls can exceed 30 m/s which is impossible to escape short of cutting away your main and then opening your reserve waaay low hoping not to be sucked back in. That is if you happen to be directly underneath and actually get sucked in, in your case there must have been enough distance between you and the actual cloud for you to only experience some difficulty losing altitude. Should it happen again I suggest you start spiralling like crazy or better yet do not jump at all. I'm not kidding, people have been killed or maimed by cumulus clouds, some of them where actually skydiving and not paragliding. Cheers, Vale

Huh??? When I was growing up it was no meat on any Friday and no meat at all during Lent. Every restaurant in town had fish for the special on Friday. Fortunately we weren't catholic. That's how I learned it too, although it was already quite obsolete in my time. I believe some Pope or other actually changed it from being a strict rule to simple 'advice'. The good thing about arbitrary rules is they can also be changed arbitrarily Cheers, Vale P.S. Lapsed catholic here too.

Nope. But I once forgot to flip the faceplate of my Havok down before doing a poised solo exit (low jump numbers, first time being last out of the aircraft, let's say I forgot I even had a helmet ). Thankfully, flipping the faceplate down on a Havok while in freefall is trivial, but I'm sure it did spoil the 'poised' part somewhat Cheers, Vale

Well in the case of Google could it possibly be that YouTube has been acquired by Google so they're pushing it up in their rankings in order to channel more visitors there? I think Google's ranking policies are hardly indicative of a whole country's culture would'nt you think? Cheers, Vale

You're kidding right? She's a woman who's lost her child (along with everything else). He's a child and he's going to be killed. Pretty much 'splains it

Nope, not a myth. A friend of my father's went through airborne school in the '60s all the way to his instructor rating and, as an instructor, he he had to get rated for that type of 'chute as well. I don't recall what they where called and have no idea whether they're still in use today. Obviously the rationale behind this mod was to spend less time playing shooting target for the enemy when dropping into a hot area. In reality it only caused a lot of preventable injuries as a result of its own peculiar brand of "low pull contest" (in this case a "low release" of the mod line). Cheers, Vale

Not necessarily. We had a similar case here in Italy with the well known "Armani" clothing company suing some unknown Mr. Armani who had put up a rather shoddy website under domain armani.it, advertising the services of his small family-run printing shop. They lost. In the end Giorgio Armani had to buy the domain off of his less-well-know counterpart. I don't know the exact details but I'm pretty sure the final price was even steeper as a result of Mr. not-Giorgio Armani having to recover his legal expenses. Sometimes it's best to settle things out of court although I understand things might be quite different on your side of the pond. Cheers, Vale

I've actually more than once seen pilots happily taxi to the active without removing the pitot cover which, of course, has a big red "remove before flight" streamer attached to it. If it can be overlooked, eventually it will. The best thing is not to disable the rig in any way, unless you are actually taking it apart (i.e. there is no way you could actually put it on by mistake). Cheers, Vale

I seem to remember the final ruling was it was a suicide. From some evidence that was only found at a later time it appeared that Mr. Hilder sabotaged his own rig. Of course no one has any idea why he would have done such a thing, as is often the case with suicides no one sees the warning signs (if there are any!) until it's too late. This just goes to show that it's not always as clear cut as it seems at first glance. Cheers, Vale

You just lost you visiting visa..... But then he wouldn't need a visa. All he'd have to do is commit some crime to get full citizenship Where do a sign up for it?

He's referring to running drugs across the border. I'm not sure that he's not at least half serious...

Yes, I'm aware that the Christian Bible is not made up of the New Testament only, I targeted that specifically since, as I'm sue you'll agree, it's what's most specific to Christianity. For the old Testament things get even worse since the difference between the time when the events allegedly took place and the time when the earliest documents we have relating to those events (150 A.D. at the earliest as you said yourself) can only get bigger and bigger. On this we agree, but only up to a point. If the earliest copies we have are admittedly just that, i.e. copies of documents of which the originals are forever lost in time, we can only show without a trace of doubt that the copying process was quite reliabale only up to the earliest copies. We have no direct evidence that the originals where not significantly different from what we have, actually we cannot even prove the existence of an original document. For all we know the earlist copy could be the original, in the sense that somebady made up its content out of thin air and attributed it to a different epoch and a probably not existent author. Thanks for those links, I'll check them out as soon as I can. I cannot help but notice that you seem to have completely ignored the whole translations issue, which is IMHO really important as it deals directly with the issue of "meaning" and not just coherence and writing style. Even if I were to accept that the original Bible was indeed the word of God on purely blind faith, what assurance do I have that after dozens of translations spanning over 2000 years of language evolution, the original messages hasn't been garbled out of all recognition? I'd really appreciate your thoughts on this. Cheers, Vale

Yeah, and the fact that they often (it's not just MockingBird) refer to the authenticity of the original documents to defend their doctrine despite the fact that the current Bible(s) bear(s) little resemblance to the original docs How is the content of the original Gospels different from the content of current versions? Specifically? As Nightingale pointed out we do not actually have the original gospels, the earliest copies we have were written when the apostles could not possibly be alive any more, so they have to be copies. Also I seem to recall that they were written in some form of ancient Greek that the apostles did not speak themselves, so we know that they are not just copies but also translations. And in 2000 years of history there have been many more translations as languages evolved, I suppose the Bible you read is written in English, a language that came into existence over I thousand years later. Believe me when I tell you that a lot gets changed or lost in a translation, sometimes it is unavoidable (i.e. some things simply do not translate and have to be approximated), sometimes some people have ulterior motives for slipping in a few changes here and there. For example, are you aware of the controversy about Mary's virgin birth? Some scholars say that the word used in the earliest (Greek) copies of the Gospels in reference to Mary actually meant "young woman" and not necessarily "virgin". Curiously, the German word for "virgin" is "Jungfrau", which is a composite word and read literally means young (Jung) woman (Frau). If somebody where to find a German text let's say 500 years in the future when German might not be spoken any more, surely not as it is spoken toaday, and found the word "Jungfrau" used in reference to some female character. Let's say they do not know the meaning of this word but know the meanings of its components, they might make an educated guess and translate it as "young woman" which has no relations to the character's marital status. It's a good guess but it's also very wrong, that word at the time it was used actually meant "virgin" which implies a lot more than just young age. And then there is the whole thing about the Gospels that did not make it into the Christian Bible at all, they where discarded for various reasons by the early Roman Catholic Church. As Kalled pointed out it's a well documented dirty little secret, i.e. no secret at all.

This clearly shows that the joke is quite old. Which is not to say it's not funny, just really not that valid any more. Nowadays most young Italians drink a lot more beer and soft drinks than wine and almost if not all of the people currently employed in the building trades in Italy are North African immigrants. As for the talking with one's hands, well okay I'll have to plead guilty to that myself. Ok you win 1 out of 3 ain't that bad Cheers, Vale