mattp

I first learned to use and appreciate the EDK when climbing in - you guessed it - Europe. My German partner said the German Alpinverren Norm was 30 cm tails on your EDK used for rappel ropes. They were even using it for rappel slings, where we exclusively use the water knot and where I see no advantage in the EDK.

The EDK is not exactly the same as an overhand with long tails. The "EDK" is not a follow-through knot like what I believe folks in this thread are calling "overhand" (it is also called a "water knot"). In the EDK, the two tails are on the same side of the knot, rather than on opposite sides. Water Knot, commonly used to tie runners and rappel slings: Euro Death Knot, commonly used to tie rappel ropes together: I have never seen the EDK "flip." Has anybody here ever experienced that? I only use it for tying ropes to rappel, so the loads are generally relatively small and I assume that more than body weight plus a little bouncing must be needed to make it flip.

I am usually skeptical of the idea that a hard catch may cause pro to fail. In hard rock, anyway, I generally think your gear is usually either good or bad and even twice as much or half as much peak force probably won't make the difference, but in sandstone doesn the pro sometimes just rake out of the parallel sided crackes? If so, I suppose it could have made a difference here.

I agree with Dan about McHale pack volumes. I have a 7k McHale pack that I never use. If you really want one that size, I'll sell you mine cheap. I also have a SARC, and it is plenty large even for extended winter outings or expedition climbing, but more appropriately sized for the regular overnight or even a day-trip with a boatload of gear. I'd second Dan's suggestion about considering the lighter fabric, too, though at risk of inflaming the gram counters around here I'll say that for a pack of this type, which you are going to fill with at least 30 pounds of gear, and often more, the extra two pounds of pack weight saved will not be all that significant. (If you take a lightweight approach to everything, however, like food, tent, ropes, miscellaneous camping gear you don't need, sleeping bag AND pack, it will add up to great savings in weight.)

Katahdin, in particular, is an awesome mountain. If you climb Washington and Katahdin in the winter you are well on your way to being ready for a trip to McKinley. In the spring, they'll offer good opportunities to learn some mountaineering skills, and in the Summer you need a guide for neither unless you go out of your way to find some rock climbing in one of the cirques. At any time of year, you can probably learn a lot from your friends at Acadia. As to your gear purchases, you should probably try to purchase gear that will serve what you are going to focus on for the next year or two. The tent you describe sounds as if it would be great for general use and the large panels of fine mesh will be great in a New England black fly season but extra zippers and potential leak areas will not serve you well if you take that tent to Mt. McKinley. Down v. synthetic? I believe that with care you can learn to keep your down dry enough that the advantage in terms of weight and compactness outweighs the worry of soppage, but you may not need to focus on light weight and compact packing at this point in your career and the synthetic is also probably cheaper and in some respects more comfortable. You'll likely get different advice from everyone you talk to and good luck sorting it all out.

Like I said, Jay, I could be wrong about my assumption that the mortgage deduction proportionally benefits the middle class more than the wealthy, and your first reference appears to make good arguments about how the deduction is larger for wealthier families and may even encourage people to buy bigger homes or borrow more than they should, but neither of your references actually disputes my guess that, as a percentage of income and considered in comparison to other tax planning measures (both with respect to earned and unearned income), the mortgage deduction is probably more important to the middle class. Both references seem to make a good argument that the mortgage deduction costs the US a lot. I'm not a tax policy expert, but my wealthy clients all seem to have bigger fish to fry.

Put another way: JayB is frequently defending Bush's handlling of the war; by his logic he is a hypocrite if he doesn't enlist.

Rhetorical? Yes. Subtle? No. JayB is making an absurd jab that shows only that he is cynical and derisive toward those he disagrees with on tax issues. To begin with, I don’t think the mortgage deduction is aimed at the rich so much as the middle class. (My bet is that the wealthy may have sizeable mortgages in some cases, but the resultant tax deductions are peanuts on their tax return. Certainly, the amount of their income spent on the mortgage pales in comparison to their actual income, especially if you include not just wages and other taxable income, but long term income in the form of capital gains. It is those who strain to meet the mortgage obligation that take a tax deduction that is really meaningful in terms of their tax burden.) Even if I’m wrong, I'd wager a guess that nobody here has ever decided to contribute to good governmental policy by deliberately paying excess taxes or refusing a deduction -- least of all JayB. He may have donated $ to some right wing interest group or other worthy cause, and he might have even given money to help the needy at some point but I'm pretty sure he hasn't sent a check to the general fund and expected it would have any effect on the plight of his less fortunate brothers or that it might help reduce the budget deficit. There is nothing hypocritical about taking honest and legal tax deductions even IF some of us feel we are under-taxed as a class. Voting for or otherwise supporting tax reform is one thing; sending extra money to the IRS would be just silly. And singling out the mortgage deduction and saying we ought to eliminate it in order to make the tax code more progressive is damn near as silly.

Didn't somebody else point out (maybe it was Kerry) that of all the people in Washington, there is no prominent player with LESS credibility on Iraq than Cheney? Go Dick!

Last I remember hearing much about this, trickle-on economics was generally agreed to be a political idea that had no substance --- even by most Republican economists, I thought. Jay is truly hard core. Two questions I have to add to Chuck's query: Is there anything here that shows that reductions in the top marginal rate actually CAUSED the poor to be able to buy more TV sets? Are the poor getting richer if they have more TV sets? How do you determine their actual wealth?

Ok then, Mr. Nuance, tell us what he's done WELL. Then tally up what he may have handled in a less than stellar manner. Let's get a little "balance sheet" going.

and proud of it. You gotta admit, though, this latest "duck" looked like a "quack."

Are you referring to Bush's obvious attempt to divert attention from his being caught lying to us? He's obviously lied again when he says that a senator from New Jersey or a governor from Vermont had access to the same intelligence he did.

I agree here, too: the Democratic party is a disgrace. But that is no reason to give the administration a free pass on this nor is it a valid reason, in my opinion, to suggest that only a very small handful of politicians can complain: the fact is we WERE misled and manipulated even though some of us knew something about some of it at the time.

Roger that.

Yes, even the pro's can screw up. I had a guy at Marmot fail to realize that you need to tap the holes when there is a metal top-sheet, and the tech at REI once told me that I had destroyed my skis by drilling those holes in the tip an tail (the holes supplied by the manufacturer). They'll likely do a better job than most of us, however.

I understand how they may think this is a good argument for much of their base who may be looking for a reason to ignore the current criticisms of their great leader, but this may or may not turn out to be a good tactic. For one thing, it makes an easy target for nit-picking: for example, the Dem's are idiots if they allow the President to maintain they had access to the same intelligence (does anybody think some senator from New York or the governor of Vermont had or should have had access tot he same intelligence as the President?). For another, they are only going to look like worse liars if it turns out there are more leaks that show they actively twisted something. And given the statement from Powell (UN Speech was low point of his career), the Downing Street Memo, statements from El Baradi, and the ongoing Plame affair, do they really want to argue that it is the Dem's who are rewriting history? Even Wolfilwitz has said that the WMD's were really not the reason we went into Iraq.

He could be a companion to that Jim Wittacker doll upstairs at Paradise.

I don't think we want the press to portray everything as a two sided issue as your post may be read to imply. In fact, there is sometimes something called "truth." In the run-up to the war, the press published stuff that they KNEW was crap, and they repeatedly allowed the White House to lie without ever questionning it. Even if the Democrats were too weak to do so, the press had a responsibility to ask real questions, to once in a while stand up and say "Hey, Mr. Secretary -- that is not what you said last week..." and to allow American readers to learn of the fact that, for example, nobody has ever made any connection between Saddam and AlQueeda. They do us equal disservice, I think, if they print the Democrats talking points uncritically now. Well not quite equal disservice, because the Democrats have better points. But the point is, these important issues cannot be explained by two contrary political statements. First of all, sometimes one or the other of thse statements is complete B.S. and to give it credibility at all is a complete distortion in itself, and second of all, the issues are much more complex than partisan sound bytes can tell.

I think you're getting a little over optimistic there, Dave. Yes, they have been printing some information critical of the Bush administration lately but,in case you haven't noticed, that is all the rage and they are simply resurrecting old news that they buried three years ago. It'd be nice to see the press "come out of its coma" but I don't think we are seeing that yet.

Yeah. I'd have a hard time picturing BG pulling the lever for Bush. Look at his father's politics and his wife's charities. It just doesn't compute.

I bdelieve the reason for the access threads restriction, Fairweather, was announced some time back. You apparently missed it. The first post for Access issues and Events appears on the front page. I assume it is set that way because Jon and Tim want to keep the front page clear of trolls, speculation, and other nonsense like uninformed personal attacks. (It is only the first post to a new thread that has this restriction, as far as I know. And I don't know how the interface works - so I can't tell you how you get a post approved. Whenever someone brings something to my attention like the current mining giveaway thread, all I know how to do is post a couple of quotes from somewhere else.)

Kiss my a**, Fairweather. I had nothing to do with any decision about how to set up permissions for that forum, and not only that but I don't even get the messages of any proposed post. I would have put that thread on there immediately if I had.

SexualChocolate added: Westerners for Responsible Mining