MikeJD

Peculiarly British insults are usually good value. Wassock, pillock, numpty. My favourite non-English word is schadenfreude.

Hmm, well I think both Cloverfield and Signs are decent movies (although I agree we've been getting diminishing returns with Shyamalan - and his most recent stuff is just plain silly). Alien Autopsy is pretty woeful - not sure whether that one will even have made it across the pond. Trust me, if it's a rarity in the States then you really don't want to go to the trouble of hunting it down.

I thought over there it was a Glock compartment. But moving swiftly on before this thread gets sent to another forum, I guess driving gloves have been on the decline ever since cars came with roofs - but still I remember my parents using them when we were kids. I guess they finally became unneccessary when they replaced those hard, cold, slippery steering wheels with the soft, padded ones.

Still I'd have to ask: is it more likely that these are supernatural events, or that they're perfectly natural events that you just don't have an explanation for? Why would a ghost cast a shadow? Why would a ghost open and close doors? As for the 'feeling' of not being alone, or of anger - well, that's about as subjective as it gets. We already know how susceptible the human mind is to all sorts of stimuli. Under the right circumstances we literally jump at our own shadows.

Point Break generation here, too. I had actually already made a handful of static line round jumps at the end of the eighties - those started with a charity gig, but the original inspiration probably went all the way back to the days of throwing my Action Man (read: GI Joe) out of the bedroom window in his Red Devils gear. The friend I'd been learning with broke his ankle in 'eighty-nine (feet and knees together, Matt!) That in itself didn't put me off - I just had less incentive to carry on without his company. Fast-forward to 1992 when I caught Bodhi and Utah doing their thing on VHS - that's a video format your grandparents used to rely on, promise - and I thought, 'I want to give this another go'. I booked myself onto an AFF course a few months later.

What strange things were they? The trouble is that people want to believe in ghosts, often to the detriment of common sense. I think the way to treat a 'ghost' sighting is to put it in a list of all the possible explanations for an apparently strange experience - then arrange that list in descending order of likelihood. Unless you've already some other reason to believe that ghosts exist, then I would say the manifestation of a dead person's spirit would end up pretty low down the list. No matter how unlikely some of the other options might seem, they're still more likely than that one.

I'm not a follower of team sports so it always seems a little alien to me when those who are say 'we' won a game, or 'we' are top of the league. If you were there physically cheering on your side then you might get a little credit for contributing to victory, but it's still pretty tenuous - likewise if your team suffers a humiliating defeat there's no real reason for you to feel wretched as a result. But it's all about belonging, I guess, and you could extend the sporting model to lots of different realms. Someone might be proud to be an American, without ever asking themselves what they as an individual have done to earn that pride. When Gary Connery landed his wingsuit, I enjoyed the fact that it had been achieved 'by Britain' even though I personally didn't do so much as stack one cardboard box on top of another. And it's not even limited to current events. Some improbably young people are ashamed of 'their' part in the slave trade. Others are proud of 'their' contribution to the liberation of Europe. These associations make little sense - but they're just the way we are.

Yeah, trailers often do . I'm reading the book at the moment - has an interesting approach. I can't see there being much correlation between it and the movie.

Did you just imply that I have a big ass??? Nonono! From the photo posted not too long ago, I'd say it was just exactly the right size.

...or alternatively show your appreciation of a good movie by giving something back to the people who invested the talent, time and money to make it, rather than ripping them off. Old-fashioned, I know.

We don't call it The Daily Fail for nothing...

Tandem seems a good way to go - there's too much potential for big-way ash dives to turn into zoos. They're a bit like centenary jumps in that everyone who's a friend of the 'subject', regardless of ability, wants to be on them! Things get more challenging still when the best friend of the deceased wants to do the release rather than leave it to someone with the right experience. On the whole I've never really understood the scattering of ashes, because after all that's all they are. I think you can do something symbolic that's just as meaningful, and honours the person just as much, without involving their remains.

I share my name with a reasonably famous sportsman, and there's actually some comfort in the fact that he'll always push me well down the Google rankings. On the other hand, if you type in my full name together with 'skydiving'... there I am, top of the list.

First time I've come across this version. It used to be that the word 'gullible' isn't actually in the dictionary.

I seriously doubt Tarantino would have made a movie that he thought black people would be wary of watching. As for director cameos, they're usually a bad idea and just seem like vanity to me. See also M Night Shyamalan

I use it at work, in emails. To me it's just a show of diligence/ willingness: 'Hope you have the info you need, but if not please feel free to contact me.' It is a little redundant, because I doubt anyone would otherwise sit there fretting about whether I'd mind being contacted.

There have been lots of great, riveting movies made where we already knew the end of the story. And some terribly tedious ones where we didn't. I haven't seen Zero Dark Thirty - probably catch it on Blu-Ray. I do rate Bigelow in general, although I thought The Hurt Locker was over-hyped.

'Ascension scattering... has no carbon footprint'. Really? How do they launch that glider?

I wouldn't really expect you to. I'd say 17 is too small a number to do much statistical analysis on - but God knows, that's a nice problem to have! The sample size could be increased somewhat by looking at fatalities worldwide. I'd expect the same things to be killing jumpers in the States as elsewhere. Ideally we'd be able to factor in all the serious injuries and near misses - after all, the difference between surviving and not surviving an incident is often only a matter of luck - but those won't be reliably documented.

I guess rules are always going to involve some generalisation or you wouldn't be able to administer them - and they'll generally err on the side of caution. Obviously each person's oxygen requirements will be slightly different, and especially for people local to your DZ if they're already acclimatised through living at a higher altitude. I'd have thought that a visiting jumper from a lower-lying area might feel the effects of 18K. Certainly it'd be at the back of my mind if I was going to that altitude, even though I've jumped many times from between 15 and 16K.

Of course, but you'll rarely see it when there's a fatality involved. And certainly not in here.

If I had to choose between the two, I'd want an AAD over an RSL - so I guess that answers the question for me. But I'd give up both before I had to jump without an audible altimeter, since generally speaking it's lack of altitude awareness that makes the other two more likely to be needed. Just look at the ratio of AAD 'saves' that are caused by people simply going too low.

Can never understand why we think it's ok to laugh at people and call them stupid when they're killed doing other dangerous activities - and yet we get all uppity when it's one of 'our own'.

Agreed in most cases, and where I don't think the loss of something would be a disaster I prefer to put away the money that I would have spent on insurance premiums. However (at least in the UK) you must have motoring insurance to drive, and you must have building insurance to get a property mortgage.

Happening over here, too. My nephew's just had one installed, so I'll feed back his experience if he has anything to say about it. He's only just started driving - I'd assumed it was a young driver thing. It's not for me though - I feel enough like a lab rat these days as it is!