Note the BIG grins. Photo: Wyat Drewes
Over the last few months, my sitemeter has shown a number of searches for words to the effect of “what are the odds of dying while skydiving?”My blog ends up in the top ten responses on the search engine of choice. Writing this post will help elevate it, too, but that’s not my point. So, earnest searchers who might arrive at this post, here are a few thoughts from one who has made it though 28 years and 15+ hours of being propelled by gravity towards the “Blue Planet” many more times than once:

The odds? Not much at all. Way better than driving your car. There are many other ways to actually die faster, that you will be involved in daily and not give it a second thought.

Afraid of heights? I have known many a skydiver that wold feel unsafe on their two story house roof, clearing out gutters (way dangerous!), yet be there in freefall beginning at 13,000 feet with the biggest grin on their face you’d ever witness on a human being…quite honestly, from 20 ft, there’s no time for your canopy to deploy, therefore, it’s really scary!

The world looks flat (for the most part), from such heights, even in the low thousands for static line jumps, and the visual cues that make you queasy at 20 feet don’t have the same effect. Besides, a good jumpmaster is making you run through the “dive flow,” to enable the best conditions in your head to achieve success, once the plane is no longer cuccooning you (not even so) safely (but you think it’s a “perfectly good airplane” and that’s good enough for you at this point).

Consider this: The parachuting community, led by the United States Parachute Association (USPA) , begun about 40 years ago at the Parachute Club of America (PCA), has been, with the exception of the “Basic Safety Regulations (BSRs)” self regulating. The BSRs carry the weight of FAA regs, and are nothing to mess with, but is a fairly short, yet well determined list of the very basic safety do and don’ts. Scan them yourself in the Skydiver’s Information Manual (SIM) in Section 2.

Now, enough! Find the closest USPA Group Member drop zone (that means they play by the USPA rules…the ones that make the sport safe and fun…by checking here in the USPA Drop Zone Directory.

Go and make your smiling muscles do what they have never done before. I take no responsibility for the sore face muscles as a result, but I bet you won’t really care.

As a matter of my advice for the type jump to begin with, you ask? Do an Accelerated Freefall (AFF) course. If you can avoid the Tandem jump (which depends on the DZ), I’d just head straight to “doing it!” Being a not current now, but for many years Instructor and Jumpmaster, the fess the JMs and Is get paid are highly appreciated, but the far greater benefit is you will actually have skydived.

Telling your buds you “went skydiving” and did the Tandem “pony ride” thing is like pretending you flew the jet from LA to New York, when you actually sat in the back, eating peanuts and trusting the pilot. Do it for real and see what you have missed.

Oh, and the entire time in freefall is spent having fun, not staring at an altimeter, waiting for pull time…

I have this guy’s signature in my logbook! Lew Sanborn, USPA D-1 (expert license)Met him in CA jumping in 1996. A legend in the sport. And I have met many, many interesting people from all over the world, including Charlie Case…and he’s a legend of old timey jump days, too.There…that should put me higher on the search engines and still get useful info to the inquisitive among us.

Tracked back @: SteelJaw Scribe

Trackbacked to Cao’s blog and Error Theory.Pennsylvania Newspapers Pretend There is No Direction to MeccaIn September 2005, a half dozen different bloggers verified that a person facing into what was originally called the Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93 would be facing almost exactly at Mecca. Some surrounding trees have been added to the design, but the giant central crescent remains completely intact in the Bowl of Embrace redesign:With Tom Burnett Sr. condemning the crescent design and refusing
to allow Tom Jr.’s name to be used, there is now a big public controversy in western Pennsylvania over whether the giant crescent really is oriented on Mecca. In response, the Memorial Project has decided to deny that there is any such thing as the direction to Mecca, and Pittsburgh’s two major newspapers are both backing up this transparent falsehood.Professor Daniel Griffith, who is serving as a consultant to the Memorial Project, told the Post Gazette that: “anything can point toward Mecca, because the earth is round.” …He made similar statements to the Pittsburgh Tribune Review and the Johnstown Tribune Democrat. None of these papers asked for a second opinion from any of the one billion Muslims who face Mecca five times a day for prayer, and it isn’t that the media has been duped by Griffith.Editors and reporters at both the Post Gazette and the Tribune Review are fully aware that a host of bloggers have independently verified the Mecca orientation of the crescent design. It was actually the Tribune Review that first commissioned Professor Griffith to analyze the blogosphere’s Mecca-orientation claims. Alec Rawls, who has written a book about the many Islamic and terrorist memorializing features in the crescent design, has a copy of Griffith’s report for the Tribune Review posted online. The first thing Griffith does is calculate the direction to Mecca:

I computed an azimuth value from the Flight 93 crater site to Mecca of roughly 55.20°.

“Azimuth” is the technical term for “direction,” measured in degrees clockwise from north. Now Griffith is denying that there is any such thing as the direction to Mecca, and the Tribune Review refuses to tell its readers that Griffith is contradicting the report that he wrote for them.

The Post Gazette is even more outrageous. Rawls was told by Post Gazette reporter Paula Ward that she and her editors saw all the blog posts on the Mecca orientation of the Crescent of Embrace back in September 2005 and decided not to publish this explosive information. (Crescent of Betrayal, download 3, p. 108.) At the same time, the Post Gazette was running editorials that called critics of the crescent paranoid bigots:

But like those who look at innocent kids trick-or-treating at Halloween and see only the devil’s work, a few small and suspicious minds couldn’t look past the crescent to see a remarkably sensitive design.

When Tom Burnet Sr. asked the American people last month to please take his and Mr. Rawls’ warnings about the crescent design seriously, the Post Gazette responded with an editorial titled:
“Efforts to sully Flight 93 memorial deserve scorn.”

What is the significance of a crescent that a person faces into to face Mecca? Such a structure is called a mihrab, and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. That is why the surrounding trees added in the Bowl of Embrace redesign do nothing to alter the Islamic significance of the design. You can plant as many trees around a mosque as you want and it will still be a mosque.

One local paper actually did fact-check the orientation of the giant crescent and validated the Mecca orientation claim in print, but the larger papers are all refusing to pass this fact checking on, or to do their own, even though it is simple one-two operation. All that Tribune Democrat reporter Kirk Swauger had to do was use the Mecca direction calculator at Islam.com to print out a graphic of the direction to Mecca from Somerset PA, then place this print out over the Crescent of Embrace site-plan PDF on his computer screen:

The green circle, marked with the qibla direction (the direction to Mecca), is from Islam.com. Graphic shows that a person standing at the midpoint between the most obtruding tips of the crescent structure and facing into the center of the crescent (red arrow), will be facing almost exactly at Mecca. (Hat tip Sarah Wells.)

As Swauger put it in his news
article:

[Rawls’] claims seem to be backed up by coordinates for the direction of qibla from Somerset that can be found on Islam.com. When superimposed over the crescent in the memorial design, the midpoint points over the Arctic Circle, through Europe toward Mecca.

Having suppressed this information for two years, Pittsburgh’s major newspapers are desperate to keep it suppressed now, or they will be ruined. Thus they find themselves camped out on the very spot that the blogosphere ranged with its artillery two years ago. They know full well that the Mecca-orientation of the crescent has been verified numerous times and are counting on their
control of public information to keep this knowledge from getting out to the general public.

The challenge to bloggers could not be more overt. Can the blogosphere retrieve its earlier fact checking from the memory hole and bust these news frauds? Easy and permanent access to existing fact checking is the blogosphere’s natural advantage, but we still have to take advantage of it.

This information was also mentioned at Newsbusters here on September 27, 2007.

———–

If you want to join us outraged protesting bloggers

1. in objecting to planting an Islamic symbol instead of an American one on the crash site,
2. in objecting to its pointing to Mecca and the terrorists’ intended target,
3. in objecting to dishonoring the memory of the people who fought the terrorists on Flight 93
4. in pointing out how Paul Murdoch cleverly and symbolically cast the passenger and crew out of the Islamic heavens in the design while the terrorists are inside the Islamic heavens
5. in pointing out how the date and the site are dedicated to the terrorists
6. in pointing out the numerous redundant mosque design features
7. in pointing out the terrorist memorializing features
8. and post along with us on Wednesdays

Please contact caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com with your website url. She will, in turn, add you to the email list, send you the
blogroll code (if you want to put it in your sidebar), and will send you the prewritten text to post. You should receive the email from Cao a day or two prior to the Wednesday it should be posted, and tracked back to Cao’s blog and Error Theory, if your blog has that capability. This will help us track who in the blogroll is posting the blogburst.

Let’s roll.

Stop the Memorial Blogburst

——————————–

Riddle me this:

What was Paul Murdoch, the design’s architect, thinking? What was his ulterior motive? When controversy over the original name “Crescent of Embrace” and the bald Islamic symbol planted on the crash site brought a public outcry, the entire memorial was hastily re-titled “40 Memorial Groves.”

As Alec is apt to do, he’s having some fun with this: So why only 38 Memorial Groves?

His answer should appear today at Error Theory, go check it out!

Trackedback @: Cao’s Blog and Error Theory

Begun by Cao, the below post found at The Wide Awakes, to support a grass roots movement to change the design of the Flight 93 monument. The details of the design and the relation to all things Islamic are way beyond sheer coincidence. Unlike the case of the Navy barracks in San Diego, we have the opportunity to possibly stop the construction of a site that would honor those who did the killing, rather than those who were the victims. It is in the subtle message, only seen from above, and when sound cartographic scrutiny is used, when the true indignity comes out. It’s not a perspective you’d get being earth bound. Chase the links and see this isn’t some off the page conspiracy of ill-informed minds.

X Posted at Cao’s blog and STACLU

Flight 93 has once again been hijacked by the terrorists.

After deliberating on this for a while, I’ve decided to start a blogburst regarding the Flight 93 Memorial in order to keep the calculations that verified its orientation to Mecca from going down the memory hole.

In addition, I think bringing heightened awareness to the mosque features of the memorial and other facts are important because they’re moving to start construction of this monstrosity at the crash site.

If you want to join the blogroll/blogburst for the Crescent of Betrayal blogburst, email me at caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com, with your blog’s url address. The blogburst will be sent out once a week to the participants, the plan is- we will all be posting simultaneously on this issue on Wednesdays.

Of course, I will fully expect that you will post on this if you join the blogburst. I’ll keep an email list, and if you don’t post on it, your url will come off the blogroll, and your email address will come off the list.

Thanks to Stop the ACLU

This isn’t one of those posts you just read and think about, as you go about your day. It’s one to take action on and pass the word. By blog, by email, by word of mouth, by cellphone. Get to work, of live with the overhead view of a the Muslims crescent to remember the first casualties in our homeland to a new kind of war.

Toys….

Virtual Reality headsets have been a technology I watch from afar.Two things have made them “not just yet” for the run of the mill users: 1) Cost! and 2) Resolution. The second actually drives the first, when you consider the expense in making a small LCD, or now OLED, display less than an inch square have the same resolution as most people run on their laptops and 15/17″ LCD monitors: 1024×768 pixels.

I once was working on the Computer Aided Dead Reckoning Tracer project, when they used an upended Mitsubishi 37″ TV as the viewing surface. There was a quest to replace the CRT technology with a digital projector by the engineers working the project, and at the time, they were lucky to have a 800×600 pixel display for the projectors (similar issue with the LCD in the projector). Pushing the manufacturing process to make 1024×768 yielded significant failure rates in the LCDs produced. That was 1997-8.

Things have come a lot further now, and Vuzix has a series of head mounted displays (HMDs) that are affordable and can display a 1024×768 picture to each of your eyes. Not surprisingly, they also build such equipment for the military/tactical market, which, most likely has been a major factor in driving the cost down for the run of the mill consumer by expending military R&D dollars.

The one headset in particular that I have “my eyes on” (maybe I should say “in”) is the iWearYR920. Besides being able to take a VGA display feed, it also has head tracking built in. That means the unit, while worn, sends a signal back via the interface to tell the computer which direction you are “looking” in the virtual world. Big deal? Yes, it is. For games like Flight Simulator X from Microsoft (check out a video of the VR920 in action with FSX here), when you look around your cockpit, or the outside of the cockpit, the display shifts as though you were looking there, without the operator having the slew the picture about artificially with key strokes. That adds another layer of realism to the game….
Specs:

Technical Specifications:
Twin high-resolution 640×480 (920,000 pixels) LCD Displays
Equivalent to a 62″ screen viewed at 9 feet
24-bit true color (16 million colors)
Visor weighs 3.2 oz.
60 Hz progressive scan display update rates
Fully iWear® 3D compliant and supports NVIDIA stereo drivers
Built-in noise canceling microphone for Internet VOIP communications
Built-in 3 degree of freedom head-tracker
USB connectivity for power, tracking and full duplex audio
Analog VGA monitor input
Support for up to 1024×768 VGA video formats

Features:
6-foot slim, single cable design with miniature USB and VGA connectors
Large field-of-view optics to allow a fully immersive experience
iWear® 3D enabled for automatic 2D/3D control; no buttons required
With built-in microphone users can communicate from anywhere in the world as if they were standing next to each other (or inside the game)
Integrated 3 DOF head-tracker lets users look around inside virtual worlds as if they were there

User Adjustable:
Removable, flexible headphones
AccuTiltâ„¢ viewer pivots up to 15 degrees
Soft, comfortable, hypoallergenic nosepiece extends out up to 3/8″
Custom fit headstrap included for extra secure fit

Supported Media:
Plug and play video with virtually all PC applications
Thousands of pre-existing applications in full 3D (supported by NVIDIA stereo drivers)
The VR920 will completey change the plethora of massively multiplayer applications from World of Warcraft to Internet chat in virtual worlds

Advanced Optics:
32 degree field of view
3/4″ eye relief and 5/16″ eyebox
2.5″ Intraocular Distance (IOD)
Color corrected 10th order aspherical lense with diffractive surface

Box Contents:
iWear VR920
Headstrap
Drivers, manual and software disc
Quick start guide with warranty and safety instructions
Lens cleaning carrying pouch

Price tag? SRP $399. Not cheap, but…not like the $24,000, many, many lb beast I used to find around the net that would do the same thing in military grade simulation applications…

In case you don’t need head tracking, but are in the habit of watching movies, but have the significant other that doesn’t share your choice of movies, or you are on the road/in the air a lot, or just bored and sit and watch movies, there is the AV920 for a savings of $50 @ $349 to plug into your DVD player.

What does it look like? 62″ display at 9 feet. Like sitting in the TV/Living Room with the $3000+ dollar big screen. See, it’s really affordable if you explain it to her that way…and she won’t even have to watch it because you grabbed the remote first and you saved at least about $2650!

What’s not to like?

You know…it could be like this:

Read more about this monstrosity here…

For a long time, I have had my eyes be attracted to earth bound transportation that have the looks of fighter planes.

Thanks to CPU Magazine, I found one more:

It’s the “alé” from Fuel Vapor Cars:

The “alé” features a unique 3-wheeled configuration: 2 in the front, and one in the rear. The front wheels drive and steer the vehicle. This design enables the car to perform at a superb level, particularly in cornering, with the car easily pulling 1.7 g’s in corners during track testing on street tires. The three-wheeled automotive platform also aid in improving fuel efficiency and aerodynamics.

Honda mill, swallowing a highly vaporized fuel mixture, getting 92 MPG on gasoline! Runs lean, low emissions, 1/4 mi in the low 12s, measures side forces of 1.7G in the corners….

But…IT LOOKS LIKE THE BUSINESS END OF A FIGHTER!

Added benefit (IMHO): One seater, so I don’t have to fight over listening to talk radio while I’m driving…Might be in limited production next year, in the $75-100K range. Just consider the pent up frustration those of us with bad eyes can purge ourselves of, especially when they go into mass production.

If, however, you’re more into open cockpits, bugs in the teeth type of pseudo flying experience, and have a “green” streak in your genes:

Then there’s the “Killacycle” (Hot chick not included, void where prohibited, not available if you can’t get your own, and not legal in all 50 states anyhow), the battery powered motorcycle. 8.168 in the qtr mile makes it really fast…but it uses over 1000 batteries to make that happen.

There you are: Today’s gleaned technology news, selected because I think it’s cool stuff.

He deserves to be recognized for his lifelong dedication to serving those humans he lived among, finally giving his life on 9/11/2001, yet saving the employees for the firm he worked for. Why? Because he knew, because he prepared, because he was courageous beyond what I can imagine across decades and continents, in a uniform of armed services, and in civilian clothes.

Black Five posts it again, the story of Col Rick Rescorla, USA (RET), a naturalized American, veteran of the British and US Armies. Hero on the battle fields of Vietnam, and, sadly, the last time, in the stairwells of the World Trade Center.

Read the definitive, detailed story of Rick by Greyhawk of Mudville Gazette and know people like this exist and will sacrifice themselves, not for 72 virgins in eternity, but for that person next to them.

When you’re filled with awe, get over and place your name on the petition to President Bush, requesting “Rick” Rescorla be honored by this nation with the award of the Medal of Freedom.

Some of the pitfalls of John Edwards mandated universal health care have been discussed in DJ’s post yesterday. DJ does point out this plan has been tried in England, and it’s a disaster…

I suggest the overall discussions on this topic of forced probing by doctors, or it’s off to the Gulag with you! hasn’t hit on one of the most critical points…following the money. My “angle?” John Edwards is a lawyer, Hillary Clinton is a lawyer. So are about every other person in the top level of elected government. A “healthy” (pun intended, why, yes!) sum of money is made by the legal profession in suing people. They also do not collect a portion of the money awarded in judgments, either. Bill Bennett’s brother, when hosting Morning in America one day, when asked how much he charged an hour commented that it was a lot, but you should see the ratio of collected to uncollected fees.

Puzzle piece #2: Lawyers, when given a case, do what? They chase the “deep pockets.”

Puzzle piece #3: The Federal Government self-insures. We don’t pay Lloyd’s of London to protect against risk…we hope we’ll find the money “somewhere” when we need to pay off a successful award against faulty/negligent/criminal behavior by those employed by the Government.

See where I’m going? I hope so.

If all doctors and medical professionals become civil servants, you won’t be able to sue them, just as you cannot sue a Government official, who was acting in the capacity of a Government employee now. If the wrong mangled limb is amputated in the operating room after an accident, sue the Government. If you are given a prescription that causes you to have an allergic reaction, one noted in your medical history, sue the Government. If your baby is delivered wrong, sue the Government.

Unlike doctors, who can give all their assets, exhaust all their medical malpractice insurance, and still come up wanting in the money they owe you, the Government has the deepest pockets of all of us, and…it’s not like they will take off to Hong Kong if they don’t feel like paying. There will always be a physical address, and a civil servant you can harass until you get your claim paid, with the added benefit of being able to call your Congress critter to ask them to sick their staffers on the unlucky civil servant, overworked and underpaid, to make sure you get front of the line privileged treatment…

Oh, just forget that not only will we pay for each other’s health care, we will pay for every and all claims against the “universal Health Care” system, regardless of how unfounded and/or frivolous they may be. Sort of a bigger version of when you take your car into the shop with a mangled fender “Are you paying for it, or is this an insurance claim?” philosophy, except it will be the millions of smaller wallets that will suffer…after all, who could deny a compassionate response from the Government, when one of it’s citizens has been wronged?

Think about it. Lawyers will love it…sue crazy America will love it. Judges will be even more overworked, along with the entire court system…and all of that will be a very, very big boost to the legal profession. WhatI ask you not to think about is how the cost, astronomical as it will become, will be buried deep within the Federal Budget’s pages…a mere “drop in the bucket” we will be told, of the over all trillions we need to run the country…so open your checkbook, IRS will be coming to you soon.

Better take up the local diploma mill’s offer to get your degree in paralegal services now!

Next idea: Universal Legal Service. Yeah, like we’d have a snowball’s chance of getting that passed into law by a bunch of lawyers…

‘Nuff Said…(got you thinking, didn’t it?)

Tracked back to: SteelJaw Scribe who joins the land of “OTB”!

Maybe we’ll have to begin paying farmers not to grow peanuts anymore, for fear a small segment of society will demand complete access to all venues, public or private, free from any responsibility to avoid situations that may, in fact be life threatening…

From a local franchise door…no kidding!How soon do we stop driving on roads because it’s too difficult for parents to pay attention, lean out the window and yell “GET OUT OF THE STREET BEFORE YOU GET HIT BY A CAR!” when little Johnny strays off the grass and onto the asphalt? When you see the signs in your neighborhood “No Motorized Vehicles Allowed – Children Might Be on Roadway” you’ll know we’re renounced all personal responsibility…

Some readers may well know of DICNAVAB (“Dictionary of Naval Abbreviations”), but, while chasing links on the sitemeter, I found DICNAVSlang.

enjoy yourselves…and be educated in the ways of the “Fleet.”