Ignoring EV Pollution for Fake Climate Crisis – The amount of fossil fuel it takes to make an EV, not to mention the extra wear and tear on the roads, combined with the disposal of wind turbines and EV batteries makes them less climate friendly than a diesel. It’s about a war on C02 and money laundering. Look at the drop off of EV sales when they take away the government subsidy.
Europe’s Energy Transition Destroyed its Economy – “Germany now has the highest domestic electricity prices in the developed world, while the U.K. has the highest industrial electricity rates, according to a basket of 28 major economies analyzed by the International Energy Agency. Italy isn’t far behind. Average electricity prices for heavy industries in the European Union remain roughly twice those in the U.S. and 50% above China.”
I’d like to say that I was dedicated to a job goal in school, but I just tried to get good grades, like it or not. I was only interested in either getting into college or getting a job, but there wasn’t any subject that blew wind up my skirt.
I was small and the youngest kid in my class due to the birthday cut off, but I enjoyed PE class because it was a break from studying. It’s tough being the youngest and usually the smallest. Once I caught up to the other kids, I held my own and even kept up with the team athletes at the end.
It was the break from the monotony of class that made me enjoy it.
The valedictorian and salutatorian were in my chemistry class. They ruined the curve for everyone. The kids always messed with their experiments, and they could never figure out why they didn’t get the results that they were supposed to, although their write ups got them the A’s they strove for. Neither went anywhere in life.
The real smartest kid placed 3rd behind these two shrimp girls because he took weightlifting in PE and got a B, his only one ever. I give him credit for sticking his neck out in life. Straight A’s got a lot of people nowhere, but life lessons did.
Which brings me to my greatest learning in school. I had to try harder in everything. I was so young that social things, intuitive to others, were a hard learned lesson for me. It was tenacity over talent in everything. If I’d known that I was an introvert, I could have used my observation skills even more. What I did was just intuition back then.
So while it was the toughest subject for me, life was the class I studied the most. I had to figure everything out without someone to show me how. Like the Bob Seger song, I was working on mysteries without any clues. It was the best lesson I learned.
I wound up playing Tennis for my college, the only sport I made the team on. I was president of my fraternity and dated a cheerleader. None of that really mattered to me then. I expected it after all that I’d been through. I worked hard enough to get the job that opened doors to people and travel, and the success I’d defined for myself.
As it turns out, my 50th reunion was last weekend. I didn’t go because I never related to the other kids, or wanted to. They were just people I learned from, mostly what not to do or how to act.
At high school graduation, I vowed that I’d be more successful by any measurement. A few became actors, pro sports athletes, or a doctors here and there. As I’d come across their stories before I ditched Facebook, the pinnacle of life was high school for them. It was all downhill from there. I was just starting, but the seeds of motivation to succeed were planted and fertilized. I’d met my goal set way back in high school.
Life was the best class. It had nothing to do with the classroom.
I will say that my German teacher was hot and not that much older than me. Why didn’t they throw a high schooler a break like they do now?
What to Know About Obamacare Rates for 2026 – Costs are going up for everyone, quality of service will go down for many. It was a lie from the beginning to move us to Socialized healthcare, a failure every time.
Britain In the Balance – Like a monstrous experiment in social engineering, the profoundly anti-patriotic immigration policy of New Labour has brought about demographic changes that, right from the outset, were intended to be irreversible.
‘Unprepared and entitled’: College grads unpopular with hiring managers, survey finds
A recent survey from Intelligent found that “1 in 4 hiring managers say recent grads are unprepared for the workforce” and “1 in 8 managers [are] planning to avoid hiring them in 2025.”
The main reasons for this are lack of preparation, a so-so work ethic, and a sense of entitlement among the grads, according to the survey.
“24% of hiring managers believe recent college graduates are unprepared for the workforce, while 33% cite a lack of work ethic, and 29% view them as entitled,” the survey found.
“Additionally, 27% feel recent graduates are easily offended, and 25% say they don’t respond well to feedback.”
The survey results appear to mirror a trend found in recent headlines. A “2025 college graduate job market” search conducted by The College Fix produced the following headlines:
“Class of 2025 College Grads Face Uncertain Job Market”
“Job Market is Getting Tougher for College Graduates”
“New Grads Struggling to Find Work in Job Market
“No Hire, No Fire: The Worst Market for Grads in Years”
An Only Fans thot who banged over 1000 men in the space of 12 hours in an attempt to gain more subscribers can’t even post the video on the platform, meaning she essentially carried out the stunt for nothing.
As we previously highlighted, OF ‘creator’ Bonnie Blue posted a video on social media bragging about breaking the most disgusting world record in history, claiming that a total of 1,057 men had their way with her.
“This is what my face looks like after taking 1,000 men less than 12 hours ago,” she announced, claiming that she slept with a different guy every 41 seconds.
Good riddance. They were the poison on both social media and at their schools.
Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, or X as it’s now called, has brought an abrupt shift in the dynamics of the platform. For years, X functioned as an echo chamber where progressive academics freely exchanged ideas, often without much opposition. It was an exclusive club, and Musk’s open-door policy shattered it. With censorship dialed back and banned accounts reinstated, Musk’s version of free speech drove many academics away, leading to a marked decrease in engagement among their ranks.
This article addresses a narrower empirical question: What did Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform mean for this academic ecosystem? Using a snowball sample of more than 15,700 academic accounts from the fields of economics, political science, sociology, and psychology, we show that academics in these fields reduced their “engagement” with the platform, measured by either the number of active accounts (i.e., those registering any behavior on a given day) or the number of tweets written (including original tweets, replies, retweets, and quote tweets). We further tested whether this decrease in engagement differed by account type; we found that verified users were significantly more likely to reduce their production of content (i.e., writing new tweets and quoting others’ tweets) but not their engagement with the platform writ large (i.e., retweeting and replying to others’ content).
The data points to a familiar pattern: when left-leaning narratives lose control of the conversation, proponents either cry foul or flee. Now, if you combine this exodus with the insights from Mitchell Langbert’s 2018 study on the political affiliations of elite liberal arts college faculty, the story becomes even clearer.
Langbert’s study from 2018, Homogenous: The Political Affiliations of Elite Liberal Arts College Faculty, reveals a staggering imbalance: liberal arts faculties are overwhelmingly Democratic, with many departments having zero registered Republicans. Across 51 colleges, the average Democratic-to-Republican ratio was 10.4:1. Excluding the two military colleges in the sample (West Point and Annapolis), the ratio jumped to 12.7:1. In the most ideologically driven fields, like gender and peace studies, there were no Republicans to be found.
Why Political Homogeneity Is Troubling
Political homogeneity is problematic because it biases research and teaching and reduces academic credibility. In a recent book on social psychology, The Politics of Social Psychology edited by Jarret T. Crawford and Lee Jussim, Mark J. Brandt and Anna Katarina Spälti, show that because of left-wing bias, psychologists are far more likely to study the character and evolution of individuals on the Right than individuals on the Left.2 Inevitably affecting the quality of this research, though, George Yancey found that sociologists prefer not to work with fundamentalists, evangelicals, National Rifle Association members, and Republicans.3 Even though more Americans are conservative than liberal, academic psychologists’ biases cause them to believe that conservatism is deviant. In the study of gender, Charlotta Stern finds that the ideological presumptions in sociology prevent any but the no-differences-between-genders assumptions of left-leaning sociologists from making serious research inroads. So pervasive is the lack of balance in academia that more than 1,000 professors and graduate students have started Heterodox Academy, an organization committed to increasing “viewpoint diversity” in higher education.4 The end result is that objective science becomes problematic, and where research is problematic, teaching is more so.
College admissions expert sends shocking message about Ivy League prestige: ‘Is it worth the investment?’
What’s in a name like Harvard, Yale, Brown or Princeton? If you ask college admissions strategist Greg Kaplan, the answer might surprise you.
It’s an age-old question that resonates among a slew of ambitious soon-to-be college students and their aspirational parents caught in the fervor of the rankings race, pursuing the dream of “going Ivy” – or having some other elite university’s name stamped on their resume – with unrelenting zeal.
But Kaplan warns that such tunnel vision can obscure what truly matters in the search for success.
“We really have to ask ourselves, ‘what are our kids learning at these schools and is it worth the investment?’ Because if they’re going to be exposed to this groupthink where there’s no room for civil discourse, that is unacceptable because they’re not equipped to go into the real world. And what you see is our young people who are getting fired from tech companies because they’re using their jobs as a chance to do political protest, and then they’re complaining about it,” Kaplan said in a recent interview with Fox News Digital.
“We really have to ask ourselves, ‘what are we getting in return for this? And are they going to be able to do what they want to do?’ It’s okay to spend less on college because guess what? That allows you to invest more in their futures, so I think when someone says, ‘I’m going to community college, I’m going to transfer,’ that’s fantastic. You’re increasing the return on investment.”
The California-based expert works with families to help students gain admission to colleges of their choice – looking beyond recognizable names to help students get accepted to schools that are great matches for them.
A group of university professors are circulating a petition and a statement among their colleagues to support the Republican ticket in the upcoming presidential election. The project is titled “Lesser Evil.” These professors are not MAGA-hatted hardcore conservatives, but citing Adam Smith, they have reached the logical conclusion that fundamental freedoms will be better preserved under a Republican administration than a Democratic one. The project is the brainchild of Daniel Klein, a professor at George Mason University, and Daniel Mahoney, professor emeritus of political science at Assumption University. On the website, Klein explains the rationale behind the effort.
For college students arrested protesting the war in Gaza, the fallout was only beginning
Since her arrest at a protest at the University of Massachusetts, Annie McGrew has been pivoting between two sets of hearings: one for the misdemeanor charges she faces in court, and another for violations of the college’s conduct code.
It has kept the graduate student from work toward finishing her dissertation in economics.
“It’s been a really rough few months for me since my arrest,” McGrew said. “I never imagined this is how UMass (administration) would respond.”
Some 3,200 people were arrested this spring during a wave of pro-Palestinian tent encampments protesting the war in Gaza. While some colleges ended demonstrations by striking deals with the students, or simply waited them out, others called in police when protesters refused to leave.
Many students have already seen those charges dismissed. But the cases have yet to be resolved for hundreds of people at campuses that saw the highest number of arrests, according to an analysis of data gathered by The Associated Press and partner newsrooms.
Along with the legal limbo, those students face uncertainty in their academic careers. Some remain steadfast, saying they would have made the same decisions to protest even if they had known the consequences. Others have struggled with the aftermath of the arrests, harboring doubts about whether to stay enrolled in college at all.
They should get what they deserve, kicked out and jobs at Starbucks
After graduating from high school, a group of us decided to play in an organized softball league. Our choice at that time was down to church league softball. While we played and did OK, which I’ll talk about later, the extracurricular activities were more interesting. It’s later on in the post.
Our team was part of of the same group who lost almost every game in church league basketball, mostly because we were a bunch of white guys thinking we could play. There were some people who resembled athletes on this team. My roommate George and I both played tennis for our colleges, but that didn’t qualify us as good softball players. We had a couple of players who were little league stars, but as a group we weren’t that good.
Before I get started, this is a good lead in to the story.
We didn’t have a fistfight, at least on our team, but it did happen, between two other teams, both of which we played. A lot of other growing up stuff did happen though.
We were in that stage of just being out of high school, but growing up late and were starting to experiment with life. We also weren’t the star players on the baseball team either.
I guess we started out serious. We had just enough people for a team, All Saints Episcopal (we would be anything but Saints). I don’t remember if we had a team name, but it wouldn’t have been the Yankees. Misfit’s would have been more accurate. If anyone bailed, we’d have to forfeit. It was close some days whether enough guys would show up, but we managed to play the season. Of the nine guys, I think we had 4 that who actually played organized baseball. They put up with the lack of skills by the rest of us.
We picked positions and somehow I got 3rd base, far too close to home and a position I’d never played before. I’m pretty sure I was the kid in right field in my one year foray in little league at 7 years old. After a few practices, we thought we were ready to play and tear up the league. I think we believed the same thing in the basketball failure a few years earlier when we won 1 game all season.
In the first game, damn near the first batter of the year, a hard grounder was hit right to me. I was as shocked as anyone when I fielded it. I turned and fired a throw to the first baseman about 5 feet above his head. Since this was over 40 years ago now, I can’t remember whether we won or not. I’m pretty sure we lost as we did a lot of that.
In a subsequent game, another batter hit a line shot and I stuck my glove up and actually caught it. I was as surprised as anyone on the field, but had the sense of awareness to look like I meant to do it.
What saved us in a lot of games was enough singles by us to get batters on, but count on our big sticks, Pat and Mark Greene, Chris Patterson and an occasional lucky hit by others to score enough runs to overcome the errors in the field. Occasionally, we’d actually pull off a great play like a throw from deep left to home to get the runner out. Since the catcher never played before, it was a crap shoot whether he’d catch it or not and that we got the out surprised everyone on the field. He was a Dad who was a good sport to put up with us. He had no idea what we did off the field and was as (in)capable as the rest of us on the field (barely).
We’d go on to be about a .500 team. Being a church league, we were fortunate to face groups of people without any little league players who were actually worse than us, or a forfeit.
In the last game of the season against St Margaret Mary, my parents finally came to see me play. They had Ryan Sanderson on the other side, who was a starter at the University of Florida. Ryan also starred at our high school and it would be like playing pick up basketball with Michael Jordan on the other team. Ever at bat went over the fence.
I hit my only homer of the season in that game, in front of my Dad. It was a perfect ending to my only year of somewhat organized softball. Our team went on to hit 16 homers in that game and lost. The other team hit over 20. I’m sure Ryan had at least 5, or how ever many times he got up to bat. Hitting one out in front of my parents overshadowed the loss. Plus, the following made us forget everything.
EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
On the field, we’d try stupid stuff like our first foray’s into chewing tobacco thinking we would be like the big leagues. I remember putting a wad of Red Man into my mouth and heading out to third. By mid inning, I was spitting everything I could and dying for the inning to end so that I could get that shit out of my mouth without embarrassing myself in front of my friends. We routinely had macho contests to prove our masculinity and I couldn’t fail at this in public.
Here’s Robert Earl Keen on dipping snuff, funny song
Fortunately, it was a quick inning and I escaped embarrassment as well as losing my dinner.
After it became clear that we weren’t going to the world series, our other adventures in life crept in. We decided that it would be a good idea to get high before the games and see if we could play. Mark Imhoof who was a regular user provided the goods and the bong. He was the kid who got high in High School, had long hair and a van. He was a good player and the friend of someone else on the team, but he never went to our church. Come to think of it, most of the rest of us had stopped going to church by then also. Since I was high, I’m sure we didn’t play our best, but by then we didn’t really care as much. We came out of that van like Cheech and Chong, trailing smoke.
My roommate George and I lived in his parents house. It was my first home away from home. His parents were missionaries in Guatemala at the time. When the cat’s away, we were the mice. It was the place our friends from the team came to to do stuff they couldn’t do when they were in town and at their parents, meaning drinking and getting high. Many of us lost our virginity there, to the same girl on different nights in different rooms in the house.
AFTER THE GAME
Being a church league team, we celebrated after the game spiritually by going to wherever the pitchers of beer were the cheapest. I recall one dive called the Copper Top. We also went to the Steak Out where you got free Sangria with an order of a steak tough enough to wear as a desert boot. I’m sure they lost money on us given what we drank and we’d go out afterwards for more. We finally got kicked out and got banned from coming back.
There was always beat the clock at Big Daddy’s. If you know the game, the price goes up after a certain time, so you drink as fast as you can at first to keep the price down. We were in college working for minimum wage at the time ($2.00). The beginning price was a nickel a beer and it doubled every half hour. I was hammered by the first tick of the clock as were the rest of the team.
On the off chance that we played on Wednesday, it was also nickle beer night at Rosie O’Grady’s in downtown Orlando.
Nevertheless, a healthy activity sponsored by a religious organization turned into a night of us getting fucked up. I don’t think I had early classes, but I missed them if I did.
That of course led to…
LATE NIGHT GREASE TO SOAK UP THE ALCOHOL
We hit a number of places. Back then, the Grand Slam was $1.99, affordable and enough food to soak up some of the beer before bed.
The other place was Krystal’s. I think the burgers were a nickle there also. It became a dick measuring contest to see how many you could eat. I topped out at 11, but Marc Greene regularly at 25 and went over 30 on some nights. I was in awe of him being an eating machine.
In the end, we only lasted that one season. We were kind of done when we started getting high before the games.
I lost track of most of the players. George and I wound up being best men at each other’s weddings and today are still friends. He transferred out of state to another college and I moved on campus at mine. We never went back to that church again, except for my parents funerals.
Growing up comes in many flavors. This was just the start of my fucking up in life. I had many adventures to come that made this tame.
If they still believe the Covid vaccine actually works on the population least likely to get sick from it, you shouldn’t waste money sending kids there. They proved they don’t believe the facts or science.
No College Mandates, an advocacy group that argues against the Covid-19 vaccine for higher education, counts 79 colleges and universities that require their students to be vaccinated this fall semester.
“There are 79 colleges in the US still mandating COVID vaccines when there should be zero just like the rest of the world. Do Not Comply!” No College Mandates posted on X.
The advocacy group said “COVID injections for one of the lowest risk populations” is “insanity.” They added higher education has “zero efficacy and safety data for the the newly approved COVID injections. It is incomprehensible that this remains a reality.”
Many of these schools mandating Covid vaccines are situated in or around Democratic-controlled metro areas (map courtesy of X user Broken Truth).
If you are curious about which colleges have lifted mandates, the group has published a spreadsheet listing those institutions (read: here).
I was listening to Steely Dan play My Old School, one of my theme songs. Click on it, it’s a great song.
I realized I went to school to grow up in life, not really to learn. I went to classes and did did stuff, but it was just a step in life I had to take first. My real education was when I got out and started in life. School was just learning how to learn, mostly what not to do. Life is a big picture that I saw. I knew I had to get through this time and had a need to have my success being in life, not following the crowd in my teens. I watched the cliques and instinctively knew I didn’t want to be held hostage by them. Even then, I just knew I was going to be a bigger success and do much more than any of them. Other than a few sports stars and a doctor here and there, it came true. It’s not really important to me as I expected it. It’s because I didn’t pin my identity to that time of my life.
Most of all, I didn’t get stuck in my hometown and got away from those who stayed in the mud pit of mediocrity.
I know some people never leave college and re-live school every Friday night or Saturday during football season, but I am fortunate to have Mauerbauertraurigheit. I never wanted to be a part of what they were. Maybe it was just the introvert in me coming out, but I moved on and the memories weren’t strong enough to make me long for that, ever.
I went to school with some people from kindergarten through the end of college, yet I never think of them as friends. Just going to the same school isn’t the basis for a relationship. I never wanted to be in their clubs or fraternity’s, even when I had the chance. They weren’t the type of people I wanted to be a part of. At a college party one time I told Brad Hurd, who I knew since kindergarten that my best life decision until then was not pledging his fraternity. It was just the same elementary, middle school and high school people that I instinctively knew weren’t going to be significant, or my friends.
I also remember college graduation. I thought to myself, I may never step foot back on this campus and 43 years later, I never have. I’d had enough of college life and wanted to grow up and experience new and different things. People I knew still get together and pretend they are still there, but I can’t bring myself to do it. It was a chapter in my life that has closed. Life expanded so much for me after I got out that I feel no connection with the people anymore.
I still have friends from that time, but it had nothing to do with school. We are friends because of our relationship, mutual interests and experiences in life.
So, like the song, I’m never going back to my old school. I’ve passed up the 10th, 20th, 25th, 30th and 40th high school reunions so far, and have no plans to ever do it again.
I always thought that my life was going to happen after I left school, and it did. Those I went to school with act like they never left. Their pinnacle in life was either high school or college. They are like Al Bundy, high school football star, but loser in life. They relive the past at a time we were juveniles. I saw much more than that. Being a part of it wasn’t something I ever wanted to do.
On LinkedIn, I don’t even list my university. Instead I use Faber College, Knowledge is good.
Occasionally, I hear about someone from that time. Almost to a person, they didn’t amount to not much past that time of life. I hope they enjoyed their moment in the limelight, but it’s too bad that it came so early in life. When I see the pictures, they faded into old looking people who fell out of shape or didn’t realize their dreams. It’s sad. I wish they could have seen the big picture that what seems important to teenagers is not.
When I think about why, it was the people that I wanted away from, not the school. I continue to have highlights in life, rather than re-live an immature time of my life.
I’m never going back, to my old…..school, because I grew up to so much more.
When I was first on fake book (an early adopter), it was great until people came back that I didn’t want to ever see again. That’s pretty much the way it is for most of my life. When you are in the past, you stay there. It’s too much drama for me to catch up. I have trouble with seeing people I haven’t seen in a while and it’s awkward.
It’s not just people from school or social groups I’ve been affiliated with, it’s family also. It’s very awkward as I know that were we not related that I’d never talk to them. I don’t with most anyway and have lost contact with a lot of the others.
Why haven’t we talked? The answer is usually because I didn’t want to. I have a hard time lying about that. I can fake being excited to see someone, I just refuse to do it anymore. It’s personality turn off when I see it in others.
I didn’t want anything connecting me to memories I didn’t want. It was painful enough the first time around. Why do I want to relive part of my life that are best left as experiences to learn from? I’d already moved on in life having parted ways once. Those memories of my early life don’t make me want to try and pretend it didn’t happen for me. I was glad it was over, dead and buried. It’s easier for me to deal with.
They kept wanting to connect. I did, but muted everyone, but finally I put them back in the history box where they belong, for a good reason. I had to dump it and remain true to myself.
If we were really friends, we wouldn’t need social media. I’m still friends with those who were my real friends. The rest are people I don’t connect with because we mutually don’t want to. To be fair, I mostly don’t want to connect with them, but that is my nature as an introvert.
I have listed other reasons in different posts that point out how fake people are on social media and that it is a time suck.
My life is better not seeing others. Let’s keep it that way.
I think they are a bit too much. They all share the same trait we all know. It’s the first thing they tell you. I think it is the first rule of being one, you have to tell everyone as soon as you meet them.
They lose it if meat or eggs touches something of theirs, but no meat eaters are losing their shit over their dinner being touched by Tofu (we’ve already thrown it away if it makes it in the house). I thought that made them the maddest, until the funny meme above.
I can be hard on some groups, but the most I can say about the vegans is they are annoying. It’s another group with a passion in a strange direction in life. Most vegan groups through history died of malnutrition (or because of excessive annoyance) and their attempts at this trend usually die out.
Even the traveling whore (flight attendant with legs spread for all) I dated in college reappeared to tell me she is vegan. I didn’t need to know that she was any crazier than she already is. I already got rid of her once. Why reappear to tell me something this silly?
Were I a doctor, I’d prescribe bacon. Vegans make a bunch of fake stuff to look and taste like meat, why not enjoy the real thing.
Because that is what it is. It’s like the longest drive, fastest car, number of wins your team got, name it.
There are some that are hard to top. They are conversation stoppers, also one of my favorites.
I won’t compare it to my schools because I put as much distance as I can from both my high school and college, both school and people. Those people would lose every time to the non-woke army.
If it weren’t for the Nazi thing, this would be the ultimate dick measuring contest for a school. Based on my work experience, I’ve noted how overrated the Ivy League schools are, and you can include others like UNC-CH, Duke and most California schools. They turn out losers now that are more concerned about gender and race than history and education.
Still, if it came down to it and someone started giving me the Harvard or Notre Dame speech. I’d like to say I’m from the Panzer School and we’d blow your doors off, literally. That’s a show stopper.
It’s like someone bragging they play golf and you answer, Hi, I’m Tiger Woods.
Or you could be like everyone else and just not talk to them because your life is better that way. I know mine is and there isn’t a one of them worth talking to, especially the one who turned into a traveling whore as a flight attendant for Delta.
Most of what I really learned happened after I started working. I get that an Ivy League degree gets you into the club in New York, but the rest of the world doesn’t care. The good workers rise to the top no matter where you studied.
Now, what you study matters. See below for examples.
I made some references below to everyone going to school. It’s not true. I’ve worked with plumbers who didn’t graduate high school, but had a Ph.D in their hands. They are as successful or more than a lot of college grads I’ve had to put up with.
I think the right college and the right degree are good and can be useful in life. You have to make the right choice on both. I don’t see a lot of that these days by those who need loan forgiveness.
Hello Harvard. The working world is pointing at you.They teach you to be a victim and to blame othersThe Meathead in the family thinks everyone has to go to college.More evidence for Meathead.
And finally, the truth of the whole student loan crisis.
On October the 9th, Felix Baumgartner will jump from the edge of space at 120,000 feet, breaking the speed of sound as well as all the records for a human parachuting.
Normally, this would have been only mildly interesting, but I went to school with Fred Kittenger, son of current record holder Joe Kittenger. Fred was one of the nicest, most motivated young men that I went to school with. Unfortunately, his father didn’t seem to be a part of it.
Nevertheless, I was still fascinated with the feat and I liked Fred, plus it was a tremendous show of testicular fortitude which I admired. Many died trying to break his records and given the technology then vs. now, it was quite a feat. KITTENGER PLUNGE
Kittinger made his highest jump, and set the still unbroken high altitude jump record, on the third and last jump of Project Excelsior. On Aug. 16, 1960, Kittinger lifted off from an old abandoned airstrip north of Tularosa, New Mexico in an open gondola; his pressure suit was his only defense from the harsh environment of near space. At the tests starting altitude of 102,800 feet, Kittinger had 99.2 percent of the atmosphere beneath him.
Then he jumped, and the Beaupre multistage parachute system worked perfectly. After a 13 second free fall, a 6-foot parachute opened and stabilized his fall — this is the one that prevented the spin dummies that had fallen before experienced. After another four minutes and 36 seconds he was down to about 17,500 feet where the main 28-foot parachute opened. He floated the rest of the way to Earth.
BAUMGARTNER’S TECHNOLOGY
Francis F. Beaupre came up with the system built around a series of parachutes that would deploy in sequence to stabilize the pilot. Here’s how the sequence was designed:
Right after bailing out, the pilot would pull a cord to release an 18-inch pilot parachute after a few seconds of delay. Once it was fully inflated, the pilot chute would pull out a 6-foot diameter stabilization parachute. Next would come the main parachute release. It would inflate partway until the pilot passed through 14,000 feet as measured by an aneroid barometer on his person. Passing this altitude would trigger full release of the 28-foot diameter main parachute. It would inflate fully, and he’d make a soft landing on Earth.
Beaupre’s stabilization parachute system worked at altitudes where jet aircraft were normally flying, but it needed to work higher. Aircraft like the X-15 were brushing the fringes of space, and they would need a safe way to bailout of the rocket plane just like pilots did from jet aircraft. So the Aeromedical Research Laboratory at Holloman Air Force Base began a series of high altitude parachute tests where pilots jumped from balloons. This was Project Excelsior.
Project Excelsior wasn’t a long term project. There were just three tests, but they were manned, most famously by then Captain Joseph W. Kittinger Jr.
Delusions of Adequacy 
