mattp

Spend an hour arguing with JayB and you've got a lobotomy.

Are you truly arguing that the broad range of things that attorney's do is in any way comparable to the provision of health care in terms of the actual need for such services? Public defenders in criminal cases certainly are, and what you derisively term "ambulance-chaser" services in the case of personal injuries might be, but much of all the other stuff lawyers do is more akin to cosemtic surgery for someone who wants to work as a model but may or may not be "qualified" or already established in the profession, or maybe they want to work in the cosemtic surgery clinic or want to or already own it, than it is to actual health care. Surely you realize that a great deal of what attorney's do is related to the accumulation of or persevation/protection of wealth rather than the maintainance of any basic standard of subsistance or well being.

Faced with yet another brilliant argument from JayB, I am totally flummoxed. You're right, Jay: socialism sucks. Clearly what is good for roads and public health and even individual health care would have to be good for the civil side of our legal system. The older clients that I serve with guardianships and estates, or the businessmen who are doing real estate deals and the corporate acquisition investors all deserve equal protection under the law, by god! If they don't have it provided for them, nobody should have public education or basic health care.

The way I've drawn it, there were not any really long runouts and the pro was adequate - though I was having a bad day and let Mr. E. lead what I show as pitch 4 which should have been my lead so all I really know is that it seemed maybe a tad bid spookier than lots of "standard" climbs but it certainly didn't seem like any horror show. I don't know about Carla's traverse, either, but it sounds as if Gary may have id'd the bolts we used for the third belay as the traverse but I think it is higher, after looking at old guidebooks. Anyway, there was a long sling hanging on a flake 25 feet above there, just above where I gave a 5.9 rating, indicating our "detour" was part of what many climbers consider to be the route, and this is what Telemarker describes as "the route." This version of the climb lies completely out of the corner system, at least 30 feet to the left, for 75 feet or so and as noted above rejoins below the (fun) roof. The corner did look unfriendly in the portion that we avoided and it sounds as if this is the part Gary found poorly protected and scary. I drew that topo from memory, and I'd need to field check it to be more confident I've got the details right. I've checked two Whitelaw guides, three Kramer books, and two by Smoot and none of them show this route in significant detail. For those who don't want to have to sniff it out, it would be nice to have a topo for this climb.

I'm with you on the part about providing "charity" for things we don't agree with. Homeland Security is a joke. Farm aid is a disaster. And on and on. But comprehensive postal services? Public health? Roads? Winning wars? The list of things that really only the government can do well, and which our government in particular does a very good job of, is huge. [i include postal services because I know it drives many anti-government freaks nuts to think about the inefficiencies of the USPS, but I think it is amazing that for 41 cents I can drop something in the mail and it gets to anywhere in the country in three days - so reliably that I have no compunction about mailing checks and receiving them in the mail.]

Say what? Private business was going to win WWII? Eliminate diseases like Polio? Provide drinking water? Sewage treatment? Postal services that are better than USPS and get a letter to your grandma in what-the-heck Idaho for almost nothing? Put a man on the moon? Build an Interstate highway network that is all at the same standard? Patrol the streets of Seattle? .... That's a laughable assertion.

You cold hearted bastard!

I'm not surprised that the American Spectator and Weekly Standard would make such arguments. Uggh.

That's some hardcore politics there. I don't know who your heroes are but I can think of few but maybe Ayn Rand who would even set forth such a simple argument [here's where JayB chimes in about blah blah blah damn liberal doesn't read much does he blah blah blah]. It seems to me that virtually every society - and in fact may be every single one - since Mesopotamia has included the notion that government can and should provide various services and utilities. Further, I bet there are extremely few that have actually eliminated all provision for "wellfare." I have not studied the issue, but it seems to me that even in a feudal society there is a need to maintain the serf class for labor and etc. and it seems likely that there are going to be some organized (government) provisions though perhaps minimal by any modern standard. I could see some argument that healthcare is not a basic human right or something -- but wow.

Why not?

You can't agree. I take it back.

I don't understand why there is any healthcare debate at all. Hell: even Nixon tried to put national health care in place. If you think health insurance companies are going to look out for your interest, you are nuts.

For sure, the various motivations or greed, world power, religion, oil, whatever it is, are not mutually exclusive. However, you wrote that you felt the religious motive was primary - and I assume you were talking about Iraq? I just don't think that stands up as a good explanation as to why we attacked Saddam: I don't think it was #1 religion, and #2 economic interest. Dick size? That may have something to do with it but I think that is a pretty poor explanation as well. GW may well have felt the need to make up for his, erh, shortcomings, but he had to talk an awfully lot of people into going along with him and surely not ALL of them were insecure about their genitalia.

Certainly the cold war was a big factor in our thinking post WWII, but even still I think most of the invasions/coups/assasinations had as much to do with economic interest as the Commies. Many of the cases where we ousted or undermined a "communist" just happened to be places where the nationailzed or threatened to nationalize something we were invested in or made deals with the bad guys that happened to be harmful to American business - this was the case in conflict after conflict throughout Latin America, the Carribean, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Like the "clash of civilizations" (religion), the "clash of civilizations" (economic theory) has certainly been a factor - but U.S. economic interest is virtually always at stake - though I'm not sure it was in Somalia or Tibet. However, what about Cuba, Guatemala, Panama, Venezuela, Chile, Angola, Congo, Iraq, Iran, Indonesia, Philippines, .... ? Sudan and Libya? I don't really know. Lebanon?

For the most part, Jay, we have tended to prop up "friendly" ones and topple "unfriendly" governments so that "freedom" can take hold much more than actively invading. I'm sure you are quite aware of this.

I think it is pretty clear that a systematic catalog of where we've invaded or intervened over the last sixty years (post WWII) has a lot closer relationship to where we have had economic interests at stake than it has had with the religious beliefs or internal politics or even the target government's political rhetoric, though clearly the bellicose leader like Saddam or the anti western Taliban is going to draw some extra attention.

The parallels in a nutshell?

Clearly there are multiple factors, and this "clash of civilizations" does in fact exist, but when someone is presenting it as the primary reason for our current involvement in Iraq it really doesn't hold up - does it? Consider that 19 of the 22 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, one of the most Islamic nations in the entire region. Osama was from Saudi Arabia. Yet our leaders, including virtually everyone in the Bush administration if not absolutely everyone in it, completely ignored the "Saudia Arabia" connection in all their post-911 rhetoric. By contrast, they have been going out of their way to suggest, and in the case of Cheney directly state over and over, that there was a connection between 911 and Saddam's Iraq. Also, Iraq was one of the more secular nations in the region. It is not a clash of religious influence that led us into Iraq.

Hey Archie: I was at a party last night and I spoke with a guy who kept repeating this "clash of civilizations" idea - insisting that it was the heart of what is going on in Iraq today and that if we don't address this issue, it is going to define our future for us. The argument reminded me of your posts here, all the more so because he refused to acknowledge that control over oil and oil business had anything to do with it. I said "OK, I am aware that Islam, which was in fact far more enlightened and tolerant that Europe for several hundred years, took a big right turn about a thousand years ago, and has since then tended much more toward restriction in areas related to civil rights and many religious and political leaders have in fact urged war upon the "infidels" of the West. However, you can't ignore the component of oil in our foreign policy as it relates to the mideast. Look at our history, both in actions and in written and spoken word for the last 100 years, starting with ... blah blah blah...." This guy was pretty smart, and he knew a fair amount of history. This led me to wonder: is there an organized effort or a prestigious publication I am unaware of that is seeking to plant this overriding focus on the "clash of civilizations" in the American psyche? I know we've heard lots of speeches urging this view of events, but where is the meat of this idea coming from?

How is the turn around and parking option where it gets "really bad?" Would some brushing there improve the situation?

Focus? Maybe so, but I think it is mostly just plain scary. I used to do a fair amount of solo climbing - not hard rock climbing, but alpine mountain climbing and easy rock routes - but it seemed I usually found a way to scare myself and I eventually decided it just wasn't worth it.

That is what expert witnesses are for, Jay: they are to explain to the jurors what standards may apply to ski jump construction or describe how the exhilaration of moving down hill or through the air at high speeds is important to many skiers, or whatever other advanced concepts that you think a non-skier would not inherently understand. You are right, there will always be a limited ability of jurors to comprehend complex science or maybe some advanced economic theory or something, but they generally try pretty hard. Not always - I was on a jury once where all my peers refused to follow the judge's instructions and did not decide the case on the merits, but rather determined that the plaintiff's attorney was a slimeball so his client deserved nothing.

This is getting silly, Jay. Where did I get the idea you said what you said? Your rhetoric is vague, perhaps, but the arguments against juries are prevalent and you not only echo those broader arguments here, but you expand them. Hell, just now you are suggesting that a jury should not be composed of regular people but should include skiers and others with "expertise" in such matters. Maybe you think the jury system would be OK with certain tweaks or something, but you clearly misunderstand the entire theory of juries and jury trials. So we are arguing with what the other guy is not arguing. Wow. What a new pheonomenon for cc.com. By the way, who or just exactly what ever suggested this statement: Like you said. Reading comprehension would help here.

matt_m, I hope you weren't there on Sunday, as I bet it wasn't a good day. Yesterday was OK, though, and I bet Saturday was as well.

In light of the long-standing history of ski operator liability that I referred to above, citing just a couple of cases that I happen to have stumbled across in my own practice with has almost nothing to do with tort liability issues, I'm not sure this particular result will put the huge damper on terrain parks that you fear. I am also not sure that the jury made a mistake in the first place. However, if you want to fall back from suggesting that "the jury system is not in the public interest" (or something like that) to juries make mistakes sometimes I won't argue. If you want to argue that THIS jury made a mistake, or that the concept of "contributory negligence" is sound, I won't put up much argument either. Note: the basic idea of "contributory negligence" is not a new one, and in fact I think it is a several hundred year old idea that we borrowed from English common law. If your gaper is skiing like an idiot, not watching where they are going, and "eats shit" because a cornice fell off and sits in the middle of a ski run, their degree of responsibility for said accident is in fact taken into account. I don't know but I bet a trial lawyer would be hesitant to take the case unless they thought there was some way they could show that the ski area responsibility was greater than your scenario suggests.