Jeff.Donohue

That took a lot of balls.

That's not safe?!? I am having a word with my instructor!

After (accidentally) giving a fellow jumper a bloody nose on a botched exit, I'm in the market for a full-face helmet for when I do RW. What do you like/dislike about full-face helmets you've used? If it makes any difference, I have a freakishly large head (think Charlie Brown-sized and -shaped). I currently own a XL Bonehead Mindwrap (open face), which I like a lot.

I always took mine off, because I noticed that mine became considerably looser in the cold and I jump without gloves. IT easily fell off when swimming in cold water, so I suspected that the combination of cold air and wind would even more easily take it. (I pictured a wave off in which I watched it fly off my hand right before line stretch...) Ironically, the last time I took it off, I thought I left it in my car, but after jumping I discovered I apparently didn't. I checked all throughout the car, at home, and at the dropzone. It's utterly gone. So, in short, if you take it off (and I'd recommend that!), don't be careless with it.

That's an image [skydivers sniffing each other] that I'm not going to be able to wash out of my head no matter how much bleach I use. Then again, I have seen some tightly packed 4-ways exiting the Otter...

So here's an interesting thing I discovered: Every time I'd come home from skydiving, the T-shirt I'd wear would smell terribly. I mean really nasty. I'm not OCD or anything, but I'm a relatively clean guy (I like my shower time!). But I was amazed at how much stinkier my t-shirt would be after a day of skydiving than, for example, a 10 mile run. This puzzled me: I figured I probably would sweat a lot more on a long run than on, for example, a skydive (and I still think that's true). So why the difference in aroma? I thought I was emitting "fear pheromones" or something, but I'm a lawyer, not a scientist... Whenever I get puzzled by things biological ("you mean he puts THAT in her WHAT?"), I ask my microbiologist friend for an explanation. Here's what I learned from her: "Sweat is different for anxiety than exertion. When you work out it is salty sweat (eccrine); stress sweat (apocrine) has a lot of lipids. The bacteria loooooove the lipids, and that's what you smell (the bacterial by-products, actually). Additionally, more testosterone results in more apocrine, which is why guys' stress sweat smells so much worse..." I realize that I'm probably reducing the chances of anyone sitting next to me on the next lift up, but I thought you might find this interesting from an "Ask Dr. Science" perspective. Now where's my Right Guard?

I have a similar problem. With the season starting up, I'm wondering if anyone has tried "Earplanes" or similar flight ear plugs, for the same problem.

You might want to check this out. http://www.marathontraining.com/marathon.html Change the program to make it fit days when you can run. Try not to increase your mileage by more than 10% per week to avoid injuries. Not sure how far you're running now. I'm sort of in the same situation: I run 12 miles on the weekend, and do at least two file mile runs during the week. I am trying to build up to be ready for one in April, but I'm not sure I'm going to make it at the rate I'm going. In short, you can do it, and you don't need to kiss away jumping (you just need to be willing to run at night when you can't jump).

Talking to the Taxman About Poetry was a great album. Met him in 1992 after a show in Boston. It was the day after I saw one of this shows. He was walking around in a local mall (which itself is sort of funny, if you know the guy's music), but he acted like a ginormous jackass when I acknowledged that I knew who we was and that I thought he put on a good show. Notwithstanding that, I still liked the guy's music, which goes to show how much I liked it. I don't like Wilco (I keep trying and trying, but after 6 months of listening to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, I am left wanting to scream "whiny water torture!"). Needless to say, I preferred Billy when he was on his own.

I wonder what the cost of a lift ticket on the Space Shuttle is.... I'm still trying to figure out how she generates enough drag...

I think that (a) my friends were not necessarily representative of society (they were a whiny lot), and (b) while some mainstream Danes would say "the gypsies are the cause of gang violence", they would then go on to say, "so we should fund further initiatives to give them better housing, education, etc." I never heard anyone say, "the gypsies are the cause of our problems, let's have fewer of them." I think here's the key to understanding it: the Danes were "tolerant" but not "assimilative". For example, on a per capita basis, Scandinavian countries spend more on foreign aid and take in more refugees and asylum seekers than we in the US do. However, foreigners in Denmark aren't assimilated into becoming "Danes." They may be Danish citizens, but few Danes would point to someone of Turkish descent and say, "ah, that's a Dane." The Turkish minority are treated well by the government and by people in general, but they are a sort of permanent alternate culture, not assimilated as part of the mainstream culture. Compare this with the US, where most people consider that immigrants will be (sooner or later) integrated into "mainstream culture" and are all considered "Americans". After all, three generations ago, my family would have been an immigrant one -- now I don't feel "Irish" in any sense of the word, except for my genetic-based love of beer and redheads. Admittedly, sometimes it takes longer (multigenerational assimilation), but generally it happens in the US, sooner or later. Yes, I know there are exceptions. That's not the same in Denmark, from what I saw. But this is just my perspective on it. I can be shown to be wrong.

I'm with you, except Buddhism prohibits beer. Oh, and lustful thinking. So I'm not with you.

Hey, man, as long as I gets my soma, everything is AOK.

This is NOT the product that Windcatcher (Jenn?) mentioned, but it describes the brain implants I mentioned. http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=182802&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=802105&highlight= It's currently in 2 patients, but will be others soon.

Probably better than if they switch to retina scanning technology, though, right? When I was in private practice, I had a client (Cyberkinetics, Inc.) that developed a chip that could be implanted on the surface of a quadriplegic’s brain. The chip read the activity of the neurons (a statistical sampling of only 100 neurons, believe it or not), and a computer that was linked to the chip could convert data from the chip into useful, patient-controlled information. So, for instance, the patient could "think" a mouse on a computer screen to move up, down, left, right, and “click”. Now, when you start thinking of the implications of this technology, it’s pretty amazing. Expand the technology to a wireless chip (relatively easy to do) or a non-invasive technology, so that it's not a chip, but a helment (relatively harder to do, but not impossible), and you've got the making of a really amazing technology.

Yes, nanook is right. Or maybe that's just what they want us to believe.

All I know is that HH Princess Alexandra of Denmark is easy on the eyes. And she's single (again)! Too bad my wife isn't too keen on that plan...

I'm not quite sure that the consequence you described what was intended by the majority of the people. Based on a Palestinian friend of mine's comment, a lot of people were pissed off with Fatah's corruption and lack of progress in peace negotiations, and he thinks that a lot of people voted fpr Hamas in protest. His most telling comment: "I guess the lesson here is don't vote in protest..."

You said rape twice...

I know precisely what Rasmack is talking about. I lived in Hørsholm for a year, from 1992 to 1993. Attended Universitetet København. What an amazing city! I guess, looking back on it over 10 years later, what I realized is how easy going everyone was. Productive, business like, but at the same time not pretentious or arrogant. At the time, the big question was whether DK should sign the Maastricht treaty, which made the EU out of the EEC. I remember a lot of "nej" banners and a lot of pro-Europe banners. But most of all, I remember Tuborg Grøn, and the most important phrase in all of Danish: "Jeg vil gerne ha' en øl, tak..." To answer another person's question: Denmark's population is rougly 5.5 million. About the same as Massachusetts (6.2 million). Copenhagen is a modern, industrial city by any measure - and the roads and public facilities are a hell of a lot nicer. Oh, but one quibble, Rasmack: would you let your grandma walk through frei Christiania? (Is it still as wacky as it used to be?) For those not in the know, Christiania is sort of this semi-autonomous area in part of Copenhagen. Basically, it was taken over by hippies back in the 1960s and they turned it into a self-govening commune. Back in the early 1990s, when I was there, it had a reputation as being a little seedy, and a slightly dangerous. The police sort of let it do its own thing, and it more or less did fine. Most Danes, though, thought of it as a bit of a wild and dangerous place. (Although all things are relative -- I walked around there at 2:00 a.m., drunk, and the only person who made any sort of contact with me was a guy in his 40s who was trying to give me directions, since it was clear I was not going to make the Night Bus out of town without help... I would not have felt so comfortable in the equivalent areas of many of the US cities I've been to -- places like Boston, New York, LA, SF, etc.) Rasmack, a question for you. Is Cafe Blasen (a bar) still there? I was there so much, I used to get mail there (no joke). It was at Nørregade 6. Also (apologies for all the additional edits), something occurs to me: one of the reasons why Denmark is so egalitarian and trouble free is that it is a very socially homogenous population. 97% or so are Danes, and the balance are about half Turks and half "others". Mostly protestant, some Catholics. My Danish friends used to complain about "all the gypsies", by which they meant Turks. That used to make me cringe. So I think one of the trade offs is that Denmark is not much of a multi-cultural society. It is a very tolerant one, by most standards (including more so that a lot of parts of the US), but it's not in the same situation.

WHO TOLD YOU ABOUT THE PETTING ZOO!?! .... ahem... I mean, ummm... that sounds interesting, as if such a thing would happen...

I like the "Gravity Test" for the Twinkies. How do we find a skydiving application for that? I'm thinking "Cypres, but with cream filling..." (Where's my patent agent when I need him...)

It's always good to have empirical data on these matters, and I suspect these MIT researchers know what they're talking about... http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/

Did you mean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminati Personally? I think there could have been a grain of truth at one point that a bunch of second rate European nobility may have formed a secret society. Do I think they still exist in any meaningful (as in "influential") sense today? Nope. I'm also not afraid of black helicopters, space aliens controlling government, or alligators in the sewers. So maybe I'm overly bold.

Green Lantern! Wh00 h00! OK, is anyone else bothered that a superhero's weakness could be the color yellow? I mean kryptonite, I get. But "yellow"? (Waits for the Lantern Corps fans to explain how the Guardians of Oa didn't want the power rings to be too powerful, so they built in a weakness, blah, blah, blah... Dumb, I tells ya!)