271–275 of 275 posts
HN attempts to sound authoritative on yet another subject it doesn't understand. A few people pretend to be skydivers after studying the wikipedia entry about the sport, but give themselves away through improper terminology.
I have a three digit BASE number! I'm legit! I swear!
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You've used an unsourced figure from a website that used faulty logic to evaluate the risks of skydiving relative to driving, in an intentionally misleading way. You've done some calculation based on this unsourced number, while ignoring the mortality rate that the USPA publishes. The USPA themselves says the annual risk of mortality is 0.63 per thousand members. That's about 1 in 1600. You are off by an order of mag…
I agree that the reference to 350,000 is unsourced - the article claims that number comes from the USPA, but I can't find any relevant data on the USPA site. non-members jump an average of once. At least 90% of the 3.2 million jumps are repeat jumps by members That was the figure that I was struggling to source, but 90% feels high to me. At 90%, that gives a mean of 82 jumps per member per year, which feels high to m…
> 90% feels high to me.
Well, I'm guessing on top of the unsourced 350k number you shared, so maybe it would be best if we stop guessing. But most non-members that jump are doing a tandem jump. A tandem jump in the US involves a USPA member doing a repeat jump, and most of the time a non-member making their first jump.
All we can say firmly is that 1 in around 1,600 trained and qualified USPA members die each year. That is the actual mortality rate for people who continue to participate in skydiving. Since you're in the UK, the BPA also publishes safety info separately http://www.bpa.org.uk/staysafe/how-safe/
The one thing you can't say is that canoeing is more dangerous than skydiving. According to the sources we have, canoeing mortality rate is 1/10k while skydiving is 1/1.6k. Skydivers die ~6x more per year than canoers.
Drivers in the US die at the rate of 1/6k per year according to the sources you shared. So skydiving is ~4x riskier than driving. And canoeing is less risky than driving.
We can ignore the question of how many jumpers are USPA members if we look at the per-jump fatality statistics. The 1 death per 101k jumps lets you evaluate the risk of doing a single jump vs doing 100 jumps in a year. Let's use the current USPA numbers instead, which is now averaging around 1 death per 140k jumps (shown here http://www.uspa.org/facts-faqs/safety).
Your chance of dying doing a single jump is 1 in 140k. That seems low, but it's a single jump. Your chance of dying in a given year, if you make 100 jumps, is 100 in 140k, or 1 in 1,400. Some people do more than a thousand jumps per year, so if you jump 1000 times, your odds are 1 in 140. Looking at it this way, it's easier to gauge the risks because jumping more means risking more.
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Changes in speech drives changes in writing — every linguist will tell you that (I should know, I am one). Writing is — and always has been — way behind speech in terms of innovation. Edit: Downvoting isn't going to change that. But you're welcome to show me an example of a linguist that claims that writing is the driving force in linguistic evolution.
I completely agree, but I can't see how that contradicts anything I just said. Using "of" here is not an example of "language evolution" any more than confusing "to" and "too" is.
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I completely agree, but I can't see how that contradicts anything I just said. Using "of" here is not an example of "language evolution" any more than confusing "to" and "too" is.
You're both right - it's evolving the language, just like lies evolve the truth, and a kid's clumsy drawing of a flower is a creative and unique artwork. Not being flippant. There is an inherent conflict between how people want it and how it is. The future might not care either way.
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This is why I always wish I went into game development. Maybe it can't be the same thing, but the experience can still be extraordinary. Even playing a game like Kerbal Space Program makes you feel like an astronaut. I can't imagine how good virtual reality can get.
But you get the rush from playing those games, not developing them. I mean, you do get a rush from releasing something you finished and believe in, but it's not what you're looking for, right?