Dolph

Yup, stop means stop. Even with girls who're just dick teasers. It's kind of disheartening that there even is any ambiguity about it. Now, if you've fallen victim to a true dick teaser you'd still be well served by stopping your activities. The sooner your stop, the sooner you can start to plan your counter-attack. It's so nice when people give you a carte blanche, allowing you to be insidious, devious, petty minded and cruel.

Looks like roughly the size of the Russian MI-8 (maybe a tad bit smaller). The MI-8 is a nice jumpship, readily accessible to skydivers if they take the trip to Russia. I imagine the Chinook is similar in performance. Noisy though.

I earn peanuts. Luckily, all skydivers are monkeys, so it's good for something.

Sure. The US is kinda special, with there being no official language and all. Now, a nation like Denmark is different. Here we should be able to purge the unwanted elements. Danes should be given certificate of language-mastery. Along with the certificate comes a gun and a mandate to use the fully loaded clip inside it. The test is simple: you walk up to someone and ask "Nu skyder jeg dig i hovedet. Har du noget imod det?"

Having met Ras, yer probably gonna regret that . He's a big huggy-bear type of dude and as such I doubt he would require protection. Except from people with bear-hunting licenses. Ya coming to the Easter boogie at NJFK next time Ras?

I don't know about harsh. It's pretty much the same I got out of that book. I have no basis to comment on her personally (Objectivism and objectivism aside) bút I found Atlas Shrugged as pretty hard to get through, not because of the intellectual content but because of the style it was delivered in. The money speech had a part comparing gold to paper money (something about destroyers or something-something iirc). When I read it, I went "dude, WTF. As if gold doesn't have some arbitary value given to it by - well, humans. Birds would shit on gold as much as on paper. Gimme the next point, please, and stop that nonsense.". Essence of moral is to make money was the next point, after which I threw down the book in favour of a reread of Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. The latter at least didn't pretend to be serious. Then again I don't like Hemingway either

My bad. Country was set to Germany in reference to a comic Danish character (the blue hippo Dolph, who worships all things German). I'm talking about the Danish regulations.

Easy to answer. We have wingload restrictions in our regulations. If he sneaked a jump in on that canopy and was found out, he'd be grounded. Perhaps this is canopy-nazism and doesn't take into account various circumstances. I'm pretty happy the rules are there though. It's not fun losing people and it's not fun to try to beat the media, calling your parents and friends saying "wasn't one of us". In the end we can die under any canopy but inexperienced jumpers on small canopies do tend to be more at risk than inexperienced jumpers on mid range canopies.

Kinda strange - in this country there used to be almost no freefliers. Now they're at every DZ and small groups are getting their levels up and training pretty hard too. I gather it is easier to put together a jump-together-every-now-and-then 4-way RW team that can actually do competitions than it is to put together a three way freefly team with enough experience and skill to be able to compete. I know at 100 jumps, I could do four ways and actually turn a few points. It's only now, around 800 free fly jumps later that me and my two buddies have started to do the freefly thingies with any degree of consistancy - eagles, HU/HD grips in various configurations and so forth. I suspect bringing a freefly team up to a level where it can actually ponder competing takes longer than doing so with an RW team. There's also a bit of cultural attitude in it. I don't know how many RWers who've dismissed hard training freefliers with comments such as "but they're just up there doing fun stuff for the fun of it". There is (here at least) a perception that freefliers are just fun jumpers who really don't know what to do on a jump other than to stay in relative proximity of each others - and sure, there are a number of such freefliers. There is also a growing group who "really wanna get good at this stuff" and who invest as much time and money in it as serious 4-way RW teams do. I dunno. FF seems to finally be moving forward here. The situation in the US may be another one.

Muenkel: Yeah I hear ya man, I'm just givin' my response to your response . Free world, free will and all that. Speedracer: No doubt, and you won't find me arguing against that in my post - quite the contrary. That's the splendour of it, ainnit? We can do whatever we please. We don't even have to accept the consequences. They will come whether we accept them or not. If this ain't freedom, I dunno what is.

Dude, if the price for finding out if someone loves me or not (or even creating the possibility for them to have the choice) is massive suffering, I dunno, I probably would say "it's not that big a deal"- It is hard to believe that a powerful entntity such as the Christian God had not the foresight to understand the consequences of free will. As such, someone less declined to see only positive values in God could make the argument that he is a selfish bastard. "B-b-b-ut I want you to CHOOSE to love me, even if it means you'll run around skinning each other and killing at will. I WANT I WANT I WANT it this way!" Now it seems far fetched to me to think that a deity as powerful as the Christian God would have such a human trait to such a degree - or any human traits whatsoever. So, as far as the Christian God is concerned, I'll give the dude-entity the benefit of the doubt. I'll say that there are probably other more compelling reasons free will is part of the deal. Such as "hey, now you can fuck up as much as ya want. I'm here if ya need me, but go ahead, put fire to your neighbors house. In case it doesn't catch fire easily - I placed some dinosaur bones and some sticky black goo in the ground you can refine. That'll help the blaze. Oh, and there's water too, in case you change your mind.Pretty clever, eh ". The Greater Goood argument is absolutely worthless if, well, you're not part of the Greater Good. If you're part of the minority who has to be sacrificed for the greater Good, I pretty much thinkk you'd be inclined to view the Greater Good as something Greater Evil. Having said all that: Which is spot on regardless of God, gods, god, Gods religion and free will. One just have to be careful with love. You may love virtue and hate sin. Then we enter the age old definition game. To Islam extremeists, their love for God and all things righteous makes 9/11 an act of love, not hatred - love for God, for his righteousness, for virtue. I'd call it tainted love, if love at all, but to be sure, many Christians hate sin with a passion. For me in essence it boils down to: if someone else uses their free will in a way that threaten me or my loved ones, I shall use my free will in an attempt to remove the threat. The exercise of free will in such a case will be dependent on circumstances and violence cannot be excluded.

The question is: what can be done in such a situation to minimize the descent rate? Looks like a stuck slider in an asymmetric position that induces a hard turn. if it had been on a main, it'd be a quick "oh shit" and CA-CLING, cutaway. But it was on a reserve. Of course in a chain-of-events like this, it could have been prevented, but let's take the actual situation after the cutaway. Pumping toggles might help but the jumper stated that she did this and it looked like some fabric from the canopy was stuck in a slider grommet. If this was on one side it'd explain the rather quick turns. Basically, you're in deep trouble if this sort of thing happens. On a sub 100 sgft reserve, it gets a lot worse. My immediate reaction when I saw the video was "go for toggles. See if it helps. If it doesn't, yank risers, different combinations til something is found that at least slows the descent.". What else can be done? Any good ideas?

Straight from the horses mouth: Brief intro to atheism by the atheists themselves. Re: atheism: Some atheists go beyond a mere absence of belief in gods: they actively believe that particular gods, or all gods, do not exist. Just lacking belief in Gods is often referred to as the "weak atheist" position; whereas believing that gods do not (or cannot) exist is known as "strong atheism". Re agnosticism: The term 'agnosticism' was coined by Professor T.H. Huxley at a meeting of the Metaphysical Society in 1876. He defined an agnostic as someone who disclaimed both ("strong") atheism and theism, and who believed that the question of whether a higher power existed was unsolved and insoluble. Another way of putting it is that an agnostic is someone who believes that we do not know for sure whether God exists. Some agnostics believe that we can never know. In recent years, however, the term agnostic has also been used to describe those who simply believe that the evidence for or against God is inconclusive, and therefore are undecided about the issue. To reduce the amount of confusion over the use of term agnosticism, it is recommended that usage based on a belief that we cannot know whether God exists be qualified as "strict agnosticism" and usage based on the belief that we merely do not know yet be qualified as "empirical agnosticism". Words are slippery things, and language is inexact. Beware of assuming that you can work out someone's philosophical point of view simply from the fact that she calls herself an atheist or an agnostic. For example, many people use agnosticism to mean what is referred to here as "weak atheism", and use the word "atheism" only when referring to "strong atheism". Beware also that because the word "atheist" has so many shades of meaning, it is very difficult to generalize about atheists. About all you can say for sure is that atheists don't believe in God. For example, it certainly isn't the case that all atheists believe that science is the best way to find out about the universe.

Yeah, the finger thing can be useful. However, one has to take into account that if you're a freeflier, the finger thing can be interpreted as just a friendly "Fuck You" which is returned in just as friendly a way. This happened to me twice (one loose reserve handle, one main pin cover open, both times on other jumpers) so i decided to use another hand signal simply because the universal one finger salute is interpreted differently by different skydivers. I use a pistol like gesture and tell people I jump with about it. Usually not a problem since I jump with the same people mostly. I hope it helps. Sometimes things just happen very quickly. Saw the main flap flopping around on my jump buddies rig, gave 'im the signal. he had time to just start going to his belly and pooof, out came the main. His pilot chute, still in its pocket, came out a split second later, in between the lines under the slider, wrappedaround the canopy and slam - instant canopy that sort of could fly a little. This was at 2500 meters and I spent the rest of the jump wondering if my friend was OK and conscious. Didn't really start to breathe properly til I saw him cut away and (after a good time delay) deploy his reserve. Was his last jump on that container. The container wasn't in bad shape as such, but it had a too-small-for-container sized canopy in it. Friend got a new one a few weeks later.

In still water the medium used to control your orientation is more or less static. That is, it's not flowing at you in any particular direction. When you do something, such as pushing your arm out, no matter what direction you do it, the same force will be applied against it (roughly). You can remain in a asymmetric position indefinitely if ya want - no forces acting upon you, except the ones you yourself cause by physically moving. In freefall you have a force acting directly on you, which you can use to perform maneuvers. Those $20 ya spent on a lift ticket translate to plenty of energy, so sticking a hand out, tapping into it is gonna do stuff. Which is really, really cool. . Easier? I dunno. In terms of pure energy, you may use less or your internally stored energy, depending on maneuver. I think you will find though that being head down in water is a good deal easier than in the air, til ya get the hang of the air thingy.

Darius, what is your opinion on the matter of Muslim occupied Palestinian land? A huge slab of land is under the control of Muslim neighbors (Jordan I believe). They don't seem too keen on allowing autonomy on the territory they first occupied and then annexed. The violence so far has been directed at Israel - it's a sore spot on an otherwise Muslim area of the world, and to make matters worse it's a powerful little nation. Losing three wars to it probably hasn't made things better. Do you believe an Intifada, complete with suicide attacks against civilians is warranted (against Jordan, that is)? They occupy land, the Palestinians are rather unwanted there and are treated comparatively worse. I understand your perspective - I consider the Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the occupied zones disgraceful.I am not blind however to the environment the Israelis are in - they've been to three wars in their short existence and their neighbors have called for their total annihilation. And tried to ensure it. there is as always two sides of the coin and wrongs are made on both. One really has to get outof the vicious tit for tat thing. Someone killed someone. The other side retaliates. A retaliation follows. And so on. Doesn't even matter who started it, it has its own momentum until someone puts the foot down. The blame game ain't helpful here. The Iraelis want the terror to stop and the Palestinians want control of their territory. Extremist groups in both camps don't want peace at all and continue to wreck the efforts of a valiant few. I still wonder though; why no suicide attacks in Jordan?

Puts things into perspective, doesn't it? Westerners bicker about minor infractions on what they consider high profile issues. Meanwhile thousands are slaughtered in some far away country. A classical case of SEP (Someone Elses Problem).

Nope, they don't. There's a lot of standard-rising done before Turkey as a nation is ready to join the EU. Turks as a people - I like 'em a lot. Really cool friendly people as long as you're on the good side. Not so friendly if you're not though and it carries over in their political processes and structure. That doesn't stop US and EU leaders from force feeding it down our throats however. The EU is one big nest of corruption, nepotism, a real old school Old Boys network where politicians can squander or money away subsidizing farmers because they are "special", screwing the third world in the process. There's low transparency and the democratic process is out of tune with the population. We vote for our leaders based on national matters for the most part - and get all the EU stuff attached with it. I used to be pro EU, back when I was a little idealist. Lately, I've begun to see it as nothing more than a massive bureaucracy put in place to primarily let leaders wield more power and steal more money from the population. People wanting power shouldn't run nation states and above. Fuck 'em all.

Respect! Was gonna say the exact same thing. I have one of those a-lot-more-than-40-hours-a-week type jobs and being able to be at the DZ on a weekday is pure coolness. It's a nice time-out period where ya get to relax with friends and family and catch up on things.

Thanks everyone! You've been more than helpful. It's nice to see different thngs being debated and learning some new stuff. It's been very enlightening, so thanks again.

Not sure what forum to lace this post, so moderators, feel free to move it if there's a more appropriate one. Yesterday, I managed to pack a malfunction it seems. A spinning malfunction. Canopy is a Katana 97, loaded about 1.7. Upon opening, there were line twist even before the jumper had looked up to verify the canopy was looking good. Did the classical "spin you around while you kick out of line twists" thing. After the jumper had kicked out of the line twists (3-4 of them), the canopy was still in a sharp turn. Both brakes still set, slider fully down. She tried to correct it by using back risers for input, but the G-load made it ineffective and she was rapidly running out of altitude. Jumper checked alti again: 500 meters, hard deck reached, cut away main, open reserve. Uneventful reserve opening and smooth landing. We found the main in a tree. There was no visual damage anywhere, except on the outermost right C line. Here, some fraying was evident. The fraying was inconsistent with what you'd expect from being hung up in a tree - some needles (pine tree) from the tree could be found stuck to other lines but no fraying apparent there. No needles attached the frayed line. Now, I'm wondering what usually causes an elliptical to spin up like that. I know the jumper in question very well. She has about 400 jumps on the canopy (1200 something total) and it hasn't misbehaved before. Jumper doesn't have a problem with bad body position either (although certainly that can happen to anyone, so I will not dismiss it). Which leads me to believe it was my packjob. Packed it like I always have and I usually take my time. Only modest activity at the DZ, so I wasn't in a rush. Lines straight and no slack, cascade points matching. Decently stowed afterwards, with some excess line stowed in S folds at the bottom of the container. I'm in no way an expert in gear and aerodynamics. It bugs me that I may have packed a malfunction. It bugs me even more that it was for someone else. So there is a) the delopyment, which the jumper can affect) and b) the packjob, which the packer can affect. Any thoughts, aside from the normal flaming?

Got me wondering. I've always assumed that this had to be done in a head down position. The only indication I can find of this being the case is: The testee dives after (not before) the space ball leaves the hand of the instructor and retrieves it. Of course doing it in a head up position is not precisely easy either. I wonder what the consensus is on HD/HU. Given Zipsers "ff is all positions" philosophy, it may be quite OK to do it in HU.

Well, this bring something else into focus: Believe, OR ELSE. Essentially a form of Pascal's Wager that easily is refuted. But still, the fundamental moral/ethical problem with this argument is that it's an argument of fear. One can discuss which is the greater good: doing something because it results in a reward, doing something to avoid being punished or just doing something because it "feels like the right thing to do". Heh yeah I loaded that point pretty heavily :D. I'm almost a little disgusted with people who "act in moral ways" in order to get a reward (heaven). I can to a certain extent understand those who "act in moral ways" to avoid eternal torture. But it is my personal belief that true moral living is acting out of conscience, not in order to get or avoid something. How this relates to the original posters dilemma...I guess it begs the question: "but why? What is the basis for him wanting so save his sister? Reward, because God will be pleased that he follows his commands and he won't have to worry about her burning in hell forever? Avoidance, as in not having to live (on earth and in heaven) with the knowledge that a loved one burns forever in torture, as well as God's Wrath for failing to do his bidding? Or does it comes from a sincere desire to do good? In other words, what are the intentions of the brother? Edited to fix speeling stuf

Ok

Ah, gotcha. Makes sense. Here we need a minimum amount of jumps, have demonstrated the needed abilities (for demo ratings) and the approval of the Instructor's group (for jumpmaster, tandemmaster, instructor training). Both methods appear to work :).