Mark1

Would you like me to chew your food and spit it up into your mouth as well? I guess my point wasn't clear. If you're (he's) going to use something as evidence in an arguement you're making you might want to browse through, familiarize yourself with it, and not just take it at face value. If you'd like to know the violent crime statistics in the UK vs. US, go do the necessary research, don't take my word for it. It really shouldn't take any justification however. Common sense should tell you that if the FBI included just the number of times the cops are called to a bar fight where one punch was thrown and then the fight was broken up, the 'violent crime' stats would rise exponentially in the U.S by the UK definition. However, since it seems that nobody is going to actually bother to spend the 12 seconds to READ THE REPORTS (to the point that the discrepancy is obvious): Immediately below the 'definition' of violent crime in the UK report are the statistics you're looking for. They aren't broken down in a way that allows for direct comparison with the FBI stats, but they are defined down to the point that categories of crimes including murder AND a bunch of other shit in the UK, still comes out at far less per capita that the U.S. murder rate alone. A .13 second Google search of "per capita murder rates by country" (or you could just hit "I'm feeling Lucky" because the first result is more than sufficient) yields the fact that the UK's per capita murder rate is 4 times less than that of the U.S. The two countries are comparable in rates of sexual assault, and the UK has about half the robberies and aggravated assaults as the U.S. But then in less time than it would have taken to read my post, or read Stephen Goddard's disgustingly innacurate assertion, you could have found the truth for yourself.

Are you effing kidding me dude? It bothers me that a person of your apparent lack of judgement is trusted in the control of a national asset that has the potential to cause major bodily harm to those around you if not managed effectively. I read your comment and inherently knew it to be wildly innacurate, given that the U.S. is by FAR the most violent (major) developed country in the world. The only countries that compare (with a few small outliers with much smaller populations) are 3rd world shitholes in the depths of genocidal civil wars. I don't know why, but I figured I'd put in the time to figure out how this grade 'A' asshole Steven Goddard managed to cloak his claim in even a modest amount of cover to grant legitimacy to it. I'd estimate it took 12 seconds. Turns out, his only cloak is that of merely PROVIDING two hyperlinks with the mere suggestion that they support his claim. Nevermind the fact that the two links COMPLETELY refute his statement. Just provide a link...looks legit...people like HeloDude who can't/won't think for themselves will spread the gospel. Here's the definition of 'violent' crime from the UK study: Violent crime covers a wide range of offences, from minor assaults such as pushing and shovingthat result in no physical harm through to serious incidents of wounding and murder. Here's the definition of 'violent' crime from the FBI: Murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault Pushing and shoving that results in no physical harm, huh? Damn those Brits are a violent bunch. There's certainly a reason their 'violent' crime rate is 8x higher than in the U.S., but it's certainly not due to whatever crusade you're on about. Your arguement is a legitimate one, so hows about you don't water it down with retarded assertions. Hows about you actually think about what you're saying before you say it. If you'd like a good laugh, read HeloDude's post and then actually READ to the two studies. Then do a legitimate comparison between murders/rapes/etc in the two countries. There is not a big enough, appropriate enough facepalm picture to append to the end of this post.

The last time *I* heard about it? Not long ago. And beyond that, the much more applicable, "when was the last time you heard about pilot error resulting in any kind of incident in those other platforms" I'd be happy to give you a multitude of examples, except I'm not going to shit on the dead. The MAF does not own the trademark on this. It might not exhibit itself in the same manner in the pointy nose CAF because saving a botched landing isn't as difficult when your power/weight ratio is near, or greater than 1, but it exhibits itself in other ways just the same. And I'm not, and have never been in the MAF, so this isn't a pride thing. Eat a bullet.

Like operating the gear handle or landing at the proper airfield?

The mentality that nothing could ever happen to make bailing out either viable, or preferable to riding it in, is usually just due to a lack of imagination. In my community the notion of bailing out was laugable to many, particularly those whose crew stations are on the flight deck. It was a, "sure, give it the old college try, but you're just going to die halfway through the cargo compartment, as opposed to your crew station seat" kind of proposition. Granted it's not a heavy (AC-130), and is based on a platform that was designed to airdrop personnel and thus is configured to make exiting the aircraft in flight safe, but it was usually assumed that in any situation where you'd want to bail out the aircraft would be uncontrollable, dark, and for those who are familiar with the AC-130, full of obstructions in your way. Then one day a crew found themselves over central Afghanistan (good luck finding a viable crash landing location) at a relatively low altitude (typical for the gunship) with a perfectly controllable aircraft that wasn't producing adequate thrust to maintain altitude. The crew was in the process of prepping for bailout when the issue was resolved, but had it not been, bailing out would have absolutely been the best option. Crash landing onto an 70% slope with a sheer cliff face at its end with no power isn't a highly survivable situation. I get that bailing out of a heavy is a much different proposition, but defending the stance that parachutes are worthless in a heavy is going to be a shitty one to have to own for the 5 minutes that you glide down to certain death when that one situation that you couldn't ever have imagined crops up. The probability that they ever save a life being incredibly low, it's still easy insurance for a few hundred pounds.

20 Trillion, here we come!! At least our military members will have the security of their University of Maryland University College University Online University degree to fall back on if they ever find themselves out in the real world.

Yes, yes, yes. It's sad how few share your perspective. It's completely taboo to do anything that affects 'our beloved troops'...and the troops themselves are the worst offenders when it comes to complaints over the issue. It's always boggled my mind that a group of people who said they'd sacrifice their life, if necessary, in this endeavor called the military, won't make other relatively inconsequential sacrifices without bitching and moaning. How many times have you heard 'the entitlement generation' or some similar characterization used on this forum in a negative context? But then when the entitlement is yours, it's all of the sudden a problem. The fact is, sadly, that the military community is as a whole no different than the rest of the nation. In fact, I'd argue that it's worse in some circumstances. To call it the 'entitlement generation' isn't completely accurate. I don't believe that most people truely think they're *entitled* to a lot of the handouts that exist, they just enjoy free stuff and will gripe when it's taken away. Many military members, however, really do have a sense of entitlement, believing that their service somehow puts the U.S. in their debt. Shoveling millions of dollars towards for profit colleges that are specially designed to exploit the TA program while providing the lowest quality (and therefore least expensive) education possible SHOULD be done away with. Whether it's the most egregious waste of money or not. Whether it's a drop in the bucket or not. Whether it benefits our beloved troops or not. Revise the program to be available for enlisted bachelors degrees at not-for-profit institutions only. Officers can pony up their own cash if they want a masters, or use their GI bill. And for those that are inevitably going to complain about that leaving it impossible for them to pass the GI bill on to their kids (it's already been complained about in this thread): that that's the next ridiculous entitlement that should be cut (the ability to transfer your benefit, not the GI Bill in it's entirety). Unfortunately, there's already legislation in the works to restore TA because, god damnit, think of the troops!!! It's political suicide for anybody (republican or democrat alike) to make the difficult fiscal decisions that are necessary right now, and so far, nobody has had the fortitude to do it. Even when cuts are automatically made by faceless legislation they're immediately out in force trying to undo it. This country is ######ed.

I agree that housing is currently priced where the market will bear. AnimalMother is also correct that the market is sustained artifically high. No problem if you buy when the market is in that state, and sell again in the same state. The problem with buying a house in Clovis is that it is a huge gamble. There is absolutely no upside in buying a house in Clovis as far as housing appreciation goes (demand will never be higher), but there is a catastrophic downside if the status quo isn't maintained (I know the base isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but the Clovis market depends nearly solely on manning levels there, which are subject to change). That status quo is about to be upset by the fact that they are working to rebuild/renovate the portion of Chavez West base housing that was previously condemned. I've been removed from the situation for a while, so there may be more up-to-date gouge, but depending on how they roll out the new units there could be a massive shift in the market. There's enough buying in the market to keep prices strong at the moment. That's largely fueled by the fact that REASONABLE rentals are non-existant. You can either live in a dump on your BAH, or if you require a higher standard of living for your family, rent a single-family home for significantly more than a mortgage would run you. This leads a large portion of incoming families to buy against their will because they can't afford, or aren't willing to pay, extortionate rent prices. Give those families the option to move into NEW base housing units at the cost of BAH, and all of a sudden the buyers drop out of the market. My recollection is that its north of 600 units that will eventually be dumped on the market. 600 homes in a Clovis sized market is going to mean large losses for anybody who tries to sell while the market is correcting. And yes, homes do sell for the exorbitant prices that the market currently bears, but I can tell you that of all the families that I personally know who bought homes when they arrived in Clovis circa 2009, none of them has had an easy time selling at a breakeven level. Some are still holding their properties (going on 1yr) because they can't get an offer worth accepting. As far as watering holes go....there aren't any. The few places selling liquor are either not worth your time, or worth actively avoiding. More power to anybody who wants to open a decent bar, it's desperately needed, but I can say that you'd be among hundreds that arrived in Clovis with the same grand plans. Nothing has materialized, and there's a reason for it.

Nope, not even close to 10%. Historically homes don't appreciate at a rate much more than inflation. You'll find plenty of people out there that will tell you different, but their perception is based on the 15yr period prior to 2008 which was artifical. There have been 3 periods of abnormally high appreciation rates in the housing market over the last 100yrs, and all three of them have crashed back to right about where they should have been all along. The one decent thing about using real estate as an 'investment' is that you're not likely to lose money as long as you don't buy at the height of a bubble, but it's certainly not a large growth opportunity. People who use real estate as an investment rent their properties and make their money from their tenants, not from property appreciation. Index funds on one of the large markets will outperform (by a large margin) real estate appreciation over the long run.

Yes, but as much as I'd love it if it was a legitimate correlation, it's basically been completely debunked.

I don't understand. Previous CSAF implemented a policy. Current CSAF says he has no such policy but leaves it up to Wing Commanders to deal with it as they see fit. Until they address it, no policy exists. Unless wing commanders proactively implement a policy, I think you're legal to wear whatever the fook you want.

You will not get separation pay if continuation is offered and you reject it, but your separation date will be set 6 months from the day that you refuse continuation, regardless of any ADSC that you have.

Sigh. I really wish that the people who don't care about this so much to go out of their way to comment on it would at least base their disdain on some informed/legitimate inferences.

You can pay a company to drag a moderately experienced climber to the top of Everest. A moderately experienced climber can't do the same on K2. I referenced K2 for a reason. And no, the fact that "Most people who try to climb the mountains are unable to do it on their own" wasn't different decades ago. They were called expeditions for a reason. Edmond Hillary and Tenzing Norgay didn't climb Everest on their own. They had other sherpas and porters carry as much of the load as possible for them so that they had the strength to make the summit. Yes, the caliber of climber that it takes to get to the top of the worlds highest peaks has lessened over the years, but that's not to say that the purists do it without support. Baumgartner didn't single-handedly design his capsule, weld the capsule together, sew his space suit up, fill the balloon with helium, etc., so I guess the accomplishment is worthless. Anything that takes a collaboration isn't worth doing.

No....Kittinger didn't. Baumgartner will be the first to break the sound barrier if he does it. Some people care, some people don't. Baumgartner didn't ask for your attention, or for you to care. Despite the fact that he WILL be the first to do what is planned: Plenty of people have climbed K2. That doesn't make a modern day climb worthless. Plenty of people have walked on the moon. That doesn't mean that going again would be any less amazing. Bottom line...this guy said, "hey, I'm an accomplished skydiver, what else could I do that would be a new experience for me?". He came up with a high altitude jump, got it financed through a sponsorship, and is making it a reality. This isn't supposed to be a spectacle as far as he's concerned. Red Bull advertises it (although not much...this is no Travis Pastrana 99% fluff prime time stunt special intended to make ratings) in order to recoup some of their investment in the form of brand recognition. Oh yeah, and there is an appreciable amount of research being done alongside the jump.

It's not philosophy, it's cold hard fact. There are only two reasons that its acknowledgement is resisted. 1. There's an incentive to do so by people who profit off of fear mongering. AND 2. A complete lack of understanding of the current state of violence in all forms when compared to the history of violence (largely exacerbated by #1). People tend to perceive things that they're personally subjected to, or witness, as more significant than other more distant accounts of similar events that affect only third persons. Violence is down but exposure to the remnant violence is up. Its pumped into every aspect of our lives 24hrs a day through the internet/media. It creates the perception that violence is rampant when in reality, relative to history, it is strongly down. Nobody seems to remember that it used to be a regularity for the entire township in 'developed' and 'modern' nations to show up to the square to witness a heretic being tortured to death through any number of creative means that could fill a book. And that was a spectacle...entertainment. WWII had a higher gross death toll than any other conflict in recorded human history, but when looked at as a percentage of the human population, it barely breaks the top 10 worst conflicts. Even so, it is an outlier in a strong downtrend in the data. There are historical conflicts in which nearly 10% of the existing human population was killed. If that happened today you're looking at 700million deaths. Now the 5000 U.S. deaths from Iraq and Afghanistan are almost too much for the American public to stomach. 5000 makes up .001% of the U.S. population, or .00007% of the world population (Yes, I'm aware that there is another half to the conflicts to consider...the point remains valid). Violence through warfare, both civil and international, has declined sharply in both frequency and intensity. Homicide rates, instances of rape, hate crimes, spousal and child abuse, and non-violent crimes of nearly all types are in long term decline. Genocide, state sponsored and non-state sponsored torture, even things like state sponsored executions ('justified' or otherwise), institutional discrimination, slavery, and sexual exploitation are on their way down. And yes, I know it's hard to believe if you watch cable news networks, but terrorism is sharply down as well. We live in the most tranquil time in all of human history. Anybody who claims to be an expert in violence and then makes the comment that "we may well be in the most violent times in history" is either knowingly peddling in bullshit for personal gain, or is grossly misinformed. Period. Edit: BB Stacker beat me to it.

I guess my preface of "Understood that it has nothing to do with his point" wasn't clear enough... Regardless, however off topic it may be, anybody who makes that comment is grossly uninformed when it comes to the reality of violence in the world. Another example is this one from the website you linked, "the root causes of the current "virus" of violent crime that is raging around the world". It's sensationalism, no different from Fox News, in order to sell a product. His comment can't be a "sweeping generalization", because the only generalization of violence rates available is that we're living in the most non-violent world that has ever existed since the existence of man. There's still violence, and if you want to acknowledge the reality and then deal with the violence that still exists, great, but don't spout falsehoods in order to make your product more relevant and expect me to pay attention after the fact.

Understood that it has nothing to do with his point, but you lose all credibility when you say something like "We may well be in the most violent times in history". Talk about uninformed. That's where I stop reading.

Yeah, real good sign. Some poor bastard augered in, but not the guy that you know, so it's all good.

God this shit makes me so crazy. Standard. They publish statistics for on/off the job accidents, aircraft incidents, DUIs, etc., etc., and then brief them as if every time there is an upswing, the sky is falling. I won't discount that general cultural changes can have meaningful impacts, but the AF loves to respond to numbers that don't even come close to a threshold delineating anything statistically meaningful. Wing commander to wing: "Last year the base had 8 DUIs and this year we had 12 for a 50% increase!!!! What are we doing wrong? Clearly we need some sort of remediation strategy to be implemented in order to get the trend headed back in the right direction." For ######s sake grandpa. The god damned sample size is meaningless, it doesn't suggest a trend, it's just normal variance. Can you stop wasting my time and let me go back to work? Every other month with this shit.

With the exception of the flight attendants, the only people that got hurt were those that didn't have their seat belts on despite the seat belt sign being on. As far as I'm concerned, it should be a standard maneuver on every flight 10 min into cruise. Probably all the same people who can't turn their damn cell phones off for 10min at the direction of the PIC. They deserve it.

Hope the investigation goes better for the crew than it would if it were an AFSOC asset. Maybe Marine 3-stars have more integrity.

Seems to sum up the general opinion of the masses here. Not sure what has apparently changed in the last few years, but I'll expect to hear plenty of "well, I guess we deserved that...it's only fairplay in war" concessions, rather than the outrage of the last occurance, when two Americans are killed, mutilated, burned, and strung up off a bridge, for example. Because of course, it's normal to dehumanize the enemy, and they're just savages anyway. And given that we are clearly the enlightened half of this conflict, we're smart enough to view things objectively and know that pissing on the enemy is no different than Fallujah, and therefore we should keep our mouths shut and not complain when we experience the same that we apparently condone. ######ing sad.

Unlike Libya, if the U.S. or a consortium wants to impose a no-fly zone in Syria, and the Assad regime decides to resist it, we'd have to be willing to accept (and expect) casualties. I don't think the American public is willing to do so at the moment and as a result I can't see political support for it. It's a VERY different battlefield from Libya, and probably the only reason we're not already overtly involved.

There's only one reason that this stuff can't be applied to the AF...Netflix is willing to discriminate in order to ensure their workforce is comprised of only top quality employees, and the AF is not. 10% of the people in the squadron get 90% of the work done...sound familiar? 90% of the squadron would be fired by Netflix and replaced...or better yet, never hired in the first place. Imagine the freedom you could give your people if the worst of them was an all-star.