Some one searched for Chances of dying while skydiving and my blog came up as hit #2…

Then I wanderer about the link forest. looking for link trees and found this article. From “Living the Risky Life?” by Gene Charleton, beginning with this:

A Risky Day
Few of us think of ourselves as risk takers. Skydiving, bungee jumping or street luge are not in the vocabularies most of us use to describe our daily activities. Yet we live with risk all day, every day, without jumping out of airplanes or off bridges, or zipping down the street on our backs. Most risks we take are unseen among the minutiae of getting through the day. They’re there, but few of us spend a lot of effort thinking about them.

Most of us live our lives as if we could escape from risk by being careful. Engineers look at risk differently.

But…the money quote I like is:

Through the looking glass Risk is often in the eye of the beholder. Here’s an example:
which is riskier, skydiving or commuting to work? Here’s what the numbers say: About 350,000 sport parachutists make about three million parachute jumps each year in the United States. About 30 of them die in accidents. That works out to one death for every 100,000 jumps. If you make one parachute jump each year, your chances of dying are about 1 in 100,000.

On the other hand, more than 40,000 people die each year in traffic accidents. That’s 1.7 deaths for every 100 million vehicle-miles driven. If you drive 10,000 miles a year, your risk of dying in a traffic accident is about 1 in 6,000. You’d have to jump 17 times in a year before your odds of dying in a skydiving accident equaled your odds of dying in a car crash. So why do so many people consider skydivers to be danger junkies while these same people happily risk their lives on the way to the office? People’s perceptions of what is risky and what is not are colored by how they see themselves in relation to the risk.

Oh, and it you drive about 20K/year….think of the odds…

So, all of you ground pounding “legs” out there will get in your car, but think I’m crazy? The joke is on you: I know what it’s like to hurtle towards the earth with others, making formations while going 120+ mph, yet all reaching the ground safely to begin to concoct the “jump lies” we will tell while drinking the free beer from the first timers (name the “first” and someone had to buy a case or beer/soda) just after the sun sets and we pack gear up before heading home; To meet people from all over the world, just because they were in the area of the drop zone you’re at, and they came by to get some air time, not because it was a special event; To be able to say “I can trust them with my life” and really know you can and that you mean it. Yes, and there’s lots more interesting things I’ve had happen in the 28 years worth.

Come Oct, there will be some video posted of two big ways. No one got hurt and we made a record….

Just thought you might like to know…and here’s the USPA drop zone locating page.

On the back of a lawn maintenance company trailer:

No More Saying:

“I Fought the Lawn and the Lawn Won”

On the rear bumper of an old Dodge van:

“I’m not a tourist, I’m an armed native”

1905. Marine Guard escorts the body of John Paul Jones from France, landing at Annapolis July 23 for interment at the U.S. Naval Academy.

P.E.T.A. eats its own. NO MEAT FOR YOU TODAY!!!!! Jerry Sienfeld, contact your nearest P.E.T.A. Chapter, I think there’s a consulting/stand up gig in it for you.

On 6/28/07 at the Democratic Debate, Hillary comments that we’re holding a lot of non-violent offenders in prisons and we need to get them out and figure a better way to handle it. On 7/02/07, she decries the use of Constitutionally appointed Presidential powers over the topic of a man sentenced for lying. Ironic on many levels: If lying is no longer non-violent, has she been living with a violent man? As someone who has had a close, personal relationship with a man who used the very same provisions during his time as President….and a lot more than 80 some times…more like around 400, to include someone convicted of trafficking and selling weapons silencers.

OK, many years ago, an Army Officer said something the media excoriated him for during the Vietnam War. The Live Earth is now of the mind to “Make carbon in order to reduce it.” Funny, throw a concert on each continent (I guess they haven’t figured out that ticket sales in Africa and India might not cover the expenses). Sure, mega-wattage for amplifiers, lights and associated electrical systems during the concert, heating and cooling for the performers and their massive entourages, not to mention people up and going somewhere they might never have traveled to, just because they will feel better about helping the cause, while stomping all over the virgin land mass of Antarctica. Crazy idea. What about raising funds by just passing the word and bringing people on board with your cause. Maybe they’re afraid of getting nailed by anti-SPAM laws of the Federal Government.

And, the capstone of the week: Humans using more than our fair share of solar energy. Scary. I wonder if they calculated from the number of people turning their skin to leather on the beaches of the world. And….if some snail darter isn’t inland where I might be, am O supposed to package up the sunlight raining down and ship it to someone living near a pond, so they can release the energy over the water and let the darter get some quality rays?

Geez…it’s getting nutty out here, but I will draw the line at providing free cars to lemmings. They’ll only take a one way trip to the nearest cliff and careen over it, no matter what they tell you about their plans for the day.

CDR Salamander got a “G” rating….:(Something about using “shoot” got me in the have to be a little more mature bin….

I grew up not far from the Boeing Plant in Renton, WA. My parents worked and met there. My uncle worked there. He once took me on a tour of a 707 being built for the King of Saudi Arabia….(a “dual seat” side by side gold plated set of “thrones” were present in the head)…He also showed me the very simple “DB Cooper” lock installed on B-727s to keep jumpers from leaving before arriving at the jet way at the planned destination.

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B-52Ds in Action over Vietnam But…the big news is the B-52A made it’s first flight 53 years ago today. 3 were made, and Boeing used them for flight testing.The story of the genesis of this aircraft, from the initial design with propellers, to a radical new idea, hatched out of the requirements placed by the USAF, overnight, in a hotel room by the Boeing design team, to install 8 jet engines instead, brought this country a flexible, solid aircraft that will serve almost a full century in the military.Over the years, my path in life crossed that of the B-52. Living on Guam from ’67 to ’71, I watched the D models, bellies painted shiny black, take off and land at Anderson AFB, wing tips flapping up and down. One time, while on that base for a swim meet, a B-52 lost a wing just after lifting off the very long runway. It barrel rolled to it’s death on the reef at the north end of the island, taking it’s crew to a watery grave.

My uncle was a navigator in the C-5A Galaxy. One of his friend was a B-52 Bombardier. Jim bombed out of Thailand, and later Guam. One night, we had dinner with him at the Anderson O Club and he told me the last B-52 rolled off the line in 1962 and all of them had been reskinned twice and had flown over the originally planned lifespan for the large strategic bomber. The white paint on the bottoms of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) bombers cost $75/gallon (we’re talking late 60’s dollars here) and was designed to reflect the heat of a nuclear explosion the aircraft would be speeding to escape, with no hope of outrunning all of the blast effects. Later, Jim took us on a flight line tour of his planes, which included a trip to the bomb farm. The ordnance guys handed us yellow grease pencils and let us write on the built up dumb bombs on the trailers getting ready to head out to the revetments to be loaded. I used to see the vertical contrails on the western horizon in the early afternoon, then hear them in the landing pattern an hour or so later. It was a puzzle piece in the daily life of that small Pacific island.

The parent of one of the swimmers from the Anderson team was an Air Force photographer. He got me a 1/2″ high stack of 8″x11″ pictures of B-52s, covering a full mission from bombing up, through the attack, refueling on the return leg and landing. Not sure where they went, but he took most all of them. Official stuff we’re talking here.

The evolution of this fine airframe is remarkable and in the last few years I read we will keep the B-52 in service until about 2050. As a Surface Warrior Officer, the B-52s found a maritime mission by being outfitted to carry the AGM-84 Harpoon Anti-Ship Missiles. Yes, we had the P-3s, the S-3Bs and the A-6Es to do that, but nothing says Doom like many more than 4 sea skimmers (I think they could bring 12 to the party) headed to you on a multi-axis, coordinated time-on-top attack, all from one platform with some serious “on station” time.

As a student at the Naval War College, I read and read and read, then read some more. One of the books I came across, which is excellent reading from the “other side” was “A Vietcong Memoir” by Truong Nhu Tang, the VC Minister of Justice. He described being on the receiving end of the carpet bombing of B-52 raid. It made strong men go insane.

My uncle spent a tour on Vietnam on logistics missions. He said when a B-52 raid was going on, the vibration, even from many, many miles away, would cause your chair to basically in the stay about an inch off the floor because of the severe vibrations….

There is so much to the history of this plane that served in Vietnam, Desert Storm, the GWOT and will be flying long after us old reader may be gone. It is a testament to the genius of those men and women of Boeing, who gave the American taxpayer a lot of return on our investment and the enemy, lots of bang for our bucks:

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A Prius? 100 mph? YEEHAW! Maybe Tom Cruise should get one to have a ground based version of his P-51 Mustang…

But…I wonder how this flies in the Global Warming discussions at the family dinner table?

July 4th. I don’t have a specific sea story relating to a 4th of July I was somewhere where something profoundly patriotic was done for me. I was pretty lucky, with all my deployments, I was home most summers. Cruises generally happened in Oct-Apr time frame it seemed, so even when on sea duty, I was stateside. Dennis Prager, in his column yesterday, suggests that America needs a 4th of July Seder. Having once attended a Passover seder, I agree.The purpose of the seder is to recount the history of the people, including playing out certain skits and conducting some set rituals in remembrance of the moment.Dennis begins his editorial thusly:

Perhaps the major reason Jews have been able to keep their national identity alive for 3,000 years, the last 2,000 of which were nearly all spent dispersed among other nations, is ritual. No national or cultural identity can survive without ritual, even if the group remains in its own country.

Americans knew this until the era of anti-wisdom was ushered in by the baby boomer generation in the 1960s and ’70s. We always had national holidays that celebrated something meaningful.

When I was in elementary school, every year we would put on a play about Abraham Lincoln to commemorate Lincoln’s Birthday and a play about George Washington to commemorate Washington’s Birthday. Unfortunately, Congress made a particularly foolish decision to abolish the two greatest presidents’ birthdays as national holidays and substituted the meaningless Presidents Day. Beyond having a three-day weekend and department store sales, the day means nothing.

Columbus Day is rarely celebrated since the European founding of European civilization on American soil is not politically correct.
[…]

He goes on to discuss how holidays such as Christmas have been plowed under, not to be named or discussed in public, by the plowshares of the brain washingpolitically correct thought process. It is detrimental to lose this memory, of how our Nation grew from small settlements along the shore, experimented for one year in what later became to be called “Communism,” and was rejected because it almost killed them, of how the right to be equal, laid out on this day in 1776, has become far closer to universal for all our citizens, that it every has been in any country in history. How only the rich, landed men used to determine our fate and course in history, and now we all have that right to voice out opinion at the ballot box. How the error of slavery was understood, and rectified, without foreign powers coming across our shores to tell us how to become more civilized. How millions of young men have left their families and gone overseas, never to see their homeland alive again, because there was something bigger at stake than their lives.

We all know it, but how long, now with only about 1% of our men and women and their families comprise the military that hands our food, candy, soccer balls and encouragement to the oppressed around the world?

Yes, a seder in the name of Freedom is something worth looking into. Dennis ends with a challenge:

[..]
But someone — or many someones — must come up with a July Fourth Seder. A generation of Americans with little American identity — emanating from little American memory — has already grown into adulthood. The nation whose founders regarded itself as the Second Israel must now learn how to survive from the First.

Could you be one of those “someones?”

My suggestion: It all begins with family and friends gathered in the presence of ,a href=”http://www.townhall.com/columnists/BenShapiro/2007/07/04/the_stars_and_stripes_forever”>Old Glory, standing if they are able, saying the Pledge of Allegiance, followed by the reading of two documents; The Declaration of Independence, and the Gettysburg Address.

I urge you to consider this effort by Dennis Prager, and forward your suggestions.

Research indicates the severity of lightning in Africa may directly foretell the severity of hurricanes….

Of course, the research is being done in Israel and doesn’t blame the Atlantic storms on Global Warming®….

Aside from the snarking value, this has real possibilities of alerting the Atlantic region further in advance of really nasty blows headed our way.

H/T: Post-Postmodernist Blog

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The ‘CLEVER’ Car I first saw this on “Future Cars.” It gets my attention at several levels, like 2D fast maneuvering, great gas mileage, looks like a 2 seat fighter (that’s the “pure” F/A-18 pilots).More info here, here, and here, with the project main page being here.Using compressed natural gas, you’d be getting some serious distance for your energy dollar. The main site has some great cutaways of the frame structure, the steering and tilting systems, and other info….

H/T: A Soldier’s Perspective Blog