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I won't easily agree that 9/11 was far more stressful. What is more stressful now; when 10 GI's get killed in an ambush or when 3 are missing and presumed taken hostage? I think you can agree that it's the latter. The Iran hostage crisis was a big deal. They held over fifty people hostage for more than a year. Every night the tv news started with "Day xxx". It destroyed the Carter presidency. Maybe not quite as immediate and gory as the one-day slaughter of thousands of people, but you draw it out for a year and a half, and can see how it could be very stressfull for a president.

I heard some story about this honor killing in Iraq before the war, so it's not something that didn't exist under Saddam. Funny thing, I thought, maybe we should invade and depose that fucker Saddam so this kinda shit don't happen anymore. Whoops. Now with Iraq to be surely under theocratic Muslim law things are going to be way worse for women now than they were under Saddam. Say goodbye to your personal freedoms, oh, but at least you'll still get to worry about being raped and then stoned to death because it happened to you. Sucks.

Though I agree with most all your arguments so far, I don't get this one. What have seatbelt laws to do with public good other than protecting the body of the wearer? Seems very similar to the drug prohibitions protecting people from themselves. In fact if you buy the argument that addicts turn to crime and hurt more people, then the anti-drug laws are a lot more toward protecting the public good than seatbelt laws. Are they worried someone is going to get out of control behind the wheel because they aren't wearing a lap belt?

Is it actually legal to buy/sell/distribute heroin, cocaine, opium, marijuana in the Netherlands? When I was there (many years ago) there was a nightclub (across from the police statiion) that had a very temporary-looking card table set up to sell MJ. Looked like it could be broken down and hidden real quicklike. Gave me the impression that not all was above board. I seriously doubt one is free to sell Heroin at the A&P in The Hague. A decriminalization deal where users are not prosecuted but major distribution is frowned upon would seem to remove the Walmart complaint.

Black Peak Del Campo Peak West Macmillan Spire Trapper Peak Mt. Thompson Sahale Peak

...and legislating that all profit derived from such sales go to something abhorrent to the current policymakers, such as the govt. of Iran, or the opposition political party.

The G-man is perhaps being truthful but a bit misleading. His friends may not be wankers, but that doesn't mean they're human (or even animate objects). G-spotter's friends

Well, you do have a point there. But also you should consider this probably in no way constitutes a random (i.e. representative) sample of younguns. We have here a survey of middle-schoolers who were willing to hang out and discuss shit with a teacher. Probably over-represented in this bunch are those who trust the authorities.

This is very depressing. There's a reason that we don't let kids vote, drink, drive, live on their own. Before a certain age most kids aren't really capable of making good decisions. Having someone protecting them is a good idea. To assume that kids who live in this kind of protective-bubble world can conceptualize the utility of not being constantly directed and cared for is asking a bit much. Ask that question to kids who are actually out on their own, making their own decisions (like ashw_justin!) and you'll probably get a bit of a different answer than from middle-schoolers. So anyway, this was a long-winded way of saying that the results of Ivan's survey of barely pubescent children is neither unexpected nor too depressing.

Why the fuck does anybody care about first ascent of a bolted route at a crag anyway? The big kudos should go to person who manufactured the thing. Thanks for the public service. Put that in the guidebook instead of the first person who climbed it.

The problem with this overarching war on drugs is not because it is hypocritical. The argument that the legality of alcohol and nicotine logically dictates that all substances should be legal is pretty silly. The problem comes when the public at large disagrees on the prohibitions. When the laws are in conflict with the masses, the govt has lost the "hearts and minds" of the people. If people are branded criminal because they smoke pot or don't fasten their seatbelts, then they're probably not going to consider the police force their ally. If you're exposed to excessive punishment because of something you do, you are NOT going to want to have any contact with police. People say pot is a "gateway" drug. It may or may not be true in terms of directly influencing the escalation of one's drug habit, but it seems inarguable to me that breaking the law (even a stupid law) desensitizes one to breaking more laws. If laws consisted only on prohibitions that a reasonable majority of people supported, you'd have much less problems in enforcement. The ordinary Joe would be the ally of the police, instead of someone afraid of them. Think about it, you'd probably not hesitate too much to turn in some scumbag selling meth to schoolkids, but you'd never narc on somebody smoking pot or driving without his seatbelt.

When the snow is there (like it probably is now), follow a cat road that leaves the furthest N Alpental parking lot. Then follow the ski path up, which skirts the South side of the drainage. This is all further South than the usual summer approach (and all S of Source Lake). View snow level here http://www.summitatsnoqualmie.com/info/winter/cams.asp General approach idea when trail (and brush) is snowcovered

Is this Magic Bus?

re: where the second piece goes The worst case scenario is if you blow the clip on the second piece. That is pull the slack up to clip, but then fall before you've clipped. If the clip you've blown is about at head height, then you've taken one body length out of your safety zone. What I mean is this: say you're 5 feet tall. You place your first piece at 10 feet, have the second one ready at 15 feet but you blow the clip and fall with the slack out. A purely static system would just save you, but rope stretch, imperfect belay and such will mean your feet are going to impact the ground. The moral is, don't blow the clip on the second piece! Make sure you have a good clipping stance, and/or clip low (relative the to first piece and/or relative to your body). Often, pulling out that rope to clip is where you are in the biggest danger of injury. Also, don't get too hung up on the zippering thing. The biggest importance of all that was basically Catbird and G-sporto trying to win an argument; i.e. technical minutiae. Just keep it in mind and make sure the belayer and first piece are lined up in a less-than-stupid way. This rarely has a chance of happening on a multipitch, but could happen if you're not paying attention on a dirt-level pitch.

You think I'm joking or something? I'm the fucking answerman!

I've seen people up there late before too. Hope they made it down.

Instead of chopping an anchor, what we actually need is a NEW anchor atop of JG short. Put one situated on the ledge (the natural spot for an anchor). Then the 10a climbers can set up there. If someone wants to "play through" then you know they'll at least be able to make it the current anchors easily and won't hang all over it. They will then be past the ground-level gang-ropers in quick fashion and will be able to attack the meat of the pitch without hurrying or bothering anyone. In fact, gang-ropers could just set up their toprope gear on a couple of long slings, just for this occasion!

This seems like the major problem with the short Japanese Garden anchors. I doubt it's really an issue of degrading the wall by adding a midpoint anchor (as other have stated, many Index climbs would be problematic by this standard). The main issue is probably that these midpoint anchors turn the start of a classic hard free climb into a (relative) gumby magnet. I feel for the pain of bumbass, but I'm not quite sure what to do about it. People oughta get to climb something if they're there first. But it's also nice to be polite and not take over shit that other people want to do. Gang ropers are the scourge of crowded crags. They suck. They should not only acquiesce to people asking politely to climb through, they should offer to let anyone climb through who is eyeing the thing. Or better yet, just don't gang-rope and monopolize a climb for hours. As for Bumbass, he/she could have perhaps climbed Godzilla/City Park and traversed over to access the climbs above. It's not like Godzilla is ever bunged up.

Yes sounds reasonable. I was just being facetious (and quoting article from OP) with my 134 figure.

$134k/yr

What I don't get is why they need to bother with taking away their rights to buy guns, when they can just arbitrarily throw them in prison? It's starting to look like the Bush admin is trying to alienate every possible constituency. A daring plan! What could they have up their sleeve?

Bush Administration wants to ban gun sales to terrorist suspects Is this a breach of our civil rights? No judge, no jury. Bush says you're a suspect and you can't buy a gun. No legal recourse! Is this a common-sense measure to limit guns in the hands of terrorists? Do the pro's (Keep guns away from terrorists? Keep guns away from civilians, period?) outweigh the cons (registered democrats won't be allowed to buy guns?).

If we are talking about raising children in solely economic terms, in the US and other first-world countries I think it would be hard to show that they represent anything other than a net expense - where the total dollar value of inputs they require to the age of 18 amounts to something like 2-300K or something on that order, and the dollar return that they generate for the household is next to zero - so I'd say we are talking about reducing the magnitude of the losses rather than actually creating something that generates an economic return for the household that exceeds the value of the inputs. Who knows. No, of course I'm not talking about the net economic value of having children. This entire conversation has been about the net economic value of a stay-at-home parent. The entire conversation is premised on the fact that kids are already present. Duh. I really don't see how this is so hard to comprehend. People with kids do this all the time, when one spouse is contemplating going back to work. You compare how much more money it will cost to outsource the domestic duties to how much the returning-to-work spouse will be able to bring in. The amount of money it costs to pay someone else to perform the domestic duties to your satisfaction is the true economic value of the stay at home parent. My calculations show it can range between 42k/yr and 125 k/yr. Simple.

What, you think FDR imprisoned those Japanese Americans because they were Republicans. You seem to be the one linking it to Dems and Reps. I think abuse like is going on should be called on, regardless of what party is doing it. The fact that another president did what you consider bad shit doesn't mean what's going on now should be tolerated. I made no statement that such abuse is new. Wow! Are you sure that politicians through the ages have abused their power? Such a newsflash! Your comment is tangential and uninteresting.

I agree completely. Of course the motivation for my post is that it is seeming more and more plausible that your gross abuse of office scenario is what has taken place. The email trail seems to imply such considerations. The fact that they just don't seem to be able to get their stories straight indicates either gross stupidity or malfeasance.