mattp

CJF- I'm not sure I disagree, much as I would like to just because I'm a contrary guy. If you are on a trail, if you are "on snow" where routefinding may not be that critical, or if you already know exactly where you are going, it doesn't matter what kind of a headlamp you have. Most people use their headlamps for camping, not for routefinding, and the Tikka or the Tikka Plus is just fine for that. But when I'm crawling through the jungle and looking for a way accross a roaring stream, looking for a route through an icefall, or trying to find an unknown descent in the dark, or in other words when I really need the lamp, I want as much light as possible. Has anybody tried one of those Silva headlamps?

I was hiking, ChucK. And we did a couple of damn nice moderate hikes, too: Tiffany Mountain and Heather Pass/Maple Pass Loop. Stayed in nice cabin, drank good wine, and smoked a cigar. Thanks for asking.

My nearly new supernova has developed some weird strobelight virus. I can't find anything about it in the directions, so maybe this was not an intended feature. I have to take my lamp back to REI and I'm wondering: does anybody know what the brightest thing is? In my view (as I've said before) more is better; lite is next to useless.

Good question. Do you think the answer is that nobody wants to take responsibility for theirself or that trial lawyers have a stangle hold on the democratic party, or might it be something else?

That's our system. With regard to public safety, I believe there are roughly three choices: (1) exhaustive governmental regulation with real enforcement (2) responsibility is to be determined by individual lawsuits (3) government, business, and your neighbor are free to hurt you or to be as irresponsible as they like, with no consequences. Yes, at a glance it would seem absurd to hold the Port Authority or Boeing responsible for 911 -- unless of course it turns out (for example) that the Port Authority knew the buildings were going to fail as soon as the planes hit them and they decided not to warn the inhabitants, or that Boeing could have installed hijacker-proof doors for little extra cost but decided not to do so without weighing the potential benefit. Do you know anything about the issues being addressed in these lawsuits? Do you know anything about the circumstances of specific plaintiffs? Go to Rush Limbaugh.Com to find out how messed up our tort system is and then come back to spew the spray.

not for the dittoheads. That's what I mean. Rush Limbaugh makes things up to fit a certain message that sells advertisements. Thus, the dittoheads don't know that that Clinton doubled the FBI's counterterrorism budget, they forget that he shot cruise missiles at Bin Laden and bombed Iraq, and they don't believe that the Clinton administration had a plan to hit al queda when Bush took office and the Bush folks sat on it largely out of a general hostility to anything that Clinton had his name on. But that is besides the point: to blame Clinton for 911, when it happened during Bush's term, or to suggest that Clinton is responsible for installing and building up Saddam over so many years or for failing to take him out in Gulf War I, or for failing to get our allies to go along with Gulf War II when we had all that political capital after 911, is ludicrous.

Thanks, Puget. I'm not sure about your numbers, but I'm glad to think that we may in fact be able to afford it because think we have an obligation to follow through as best we can. That part about blaming Clinton for giving rise to global terrorism or allowing Saddam to get in power and then stay there is a bunch of idiotic rhetoric, though.

Jay- We digress, but I can't resist taking your bait. As a society, we took an interest in environmental protection when we did not because we had a capitalistic economic system, but because pollution stinks and we could afford to do something about it. Yes, the governments of Russia and China may not have faced the same kind of electoral politics and therefore didn't have to respond to some growing social movement to recognize environmental goals, but the more important factor is they haven't had the cash to install scrubbers in all their factory smokestacks or whatever. And the "old nations" in Europe, those nations with the disgraceful social programs and high taxes that we hear so much about, are much more likely to engage in long-term thinking than we are. As far as you assertion that leftist fantasies have ben a driving force behind State takeover of private wealth, I again think you are looking at history through some highly distorted lens. Yes, the fact is there have been brutal regimes that were socialistic or communistic, and there have been large-scale nationalizations of industrial production that were driven by socialistic or communistic idealogy. But look at what actually happened, and who profitted from these activities. Did the assets end up in some State-controlled bank account, where they were managed by idealistic leftists? Hardly. Any idealistic goals were quickly sidetracked by individuals who sought to build big palaces and adopt all that wealth as their own. Yes, it would appear that a capistalistic political system MAY offer less of an opportunity for that kind of thing, but who here is arguing that we should adopt the Soviet economic model? Get over your idealistic propoganda, and look at the real world. The current trend toward privitization of everything from public lands to public education and our foreign policy is, in my view, horrific. Do you really think that Thousand Trails or the advocates of private school vouchers and Charter Schools, or Haliburton and Bechtel have ANY real interest in the preservation of public lands, the provision of education for society at large, or in a stable Middle East beyond the time it takes to profit from their current contracts? Do Bush and his buddies in the oil industry or who used to run Enron respect the rule of law? Give me a break.

If you don't want to go to Rope-up, don't. But don't think you're making yourselves look like the big man in town by jumping on the latest cc.com bandwagon. Sure, Beck has been rather offensive in his insistence that rope up belongs to him, but that point has been made, like, a hundred times over. If somebody wanted to change the program for Rope-Up, or the programmer, the time for that was months ago.

I hope your are right, Murray, but I think that, on the whole, we are pretty much known for willful obstinance and short-sightedness. To make matters worse, I'm afraid that as we become more and more polarized on issues related to our rightful place as rulers of the world or to such things as the environment or the value of public education, nobody is going to stand up to corporate greed. One thing's for sure, our friends who run Haliburton are going to come out of this OK even if the whole damn thing falls apart, and they are going to max out every possible donation to GW's reelection campaign (though for political reasons, the money may be "laundered" through intermediate sources).

Sorry, Murray. Most Americans have little interest in any balanced history and even less willingness to be "even handed about it" if by that you mean a willingness to recognized the fact that our foreign policy is driven by corporate greed and a fundamental belief that we are and should be able to run the world.

I think that rather than deal their recruitment a big setback, we have furthered their cause more than they could ever have done on their own. Time will tell, I suppose. I'd agree, however, that the Northern Alliance is probably better than the Taliban, and I hope we can help Karzai to get control over the country. Time will tell on that one, too. Do you think we are going to support the development of an effective and fair and independent government in Afghanistan? Iraq?

Fairweather- I seriously doubt that Bush is going to cooperate with the rest of the world. His past performance has shown that it just isn't his way, and his current plea that all of our former allies write him a blank check doesn't make me think that he has wised up at all. And yes, you are right - he'd have to do more than compromise on just a few issues to get my vote. Are you going to respond to my comments about what we have accomplished in Afghanistan? (Those comments were in direct response to you.)

He'd lose your vote if he supported just about anything I am interested in, Fairweather. Yes, the U.N. has been largely ineffective, but don't you think that has as much as anything else to do with the fact that WE don't support it? Rather than playing "High Noon" in a constant repeating video loop, I'd prefer to see us try to bring as many former allies on board as we can, through showing that we are trying to cooperate with the other civilized nations in this world in making the world a more civilized place.

I don't know about you, Klenke, but I think the Beckey Route is one truly 5.6d rock climb. Many a party has been caught unprepared for what they found there. I saw them in the parking lot and I said it then: "right on" Dryad!!! ( Right on Brian and your third, too.)

I have a friend who insists that his own home-made hardware is safer than anything you could buy from Fixe or Metolius. To my eye, his stuff still looks home-made, but it does look as if it is made well. Could it be that somebody who has been installing this stuff on Lundin has a similar misttrust for "production line" gear? If somebody wants to go up there and replace the stuff, I suppose they could put Metolius rap hangers all over the place - I think those would look plenty stout even to my "doubting thomas" friend and it would also satisfy the rest of us who look at anything other than recognizable brand-name climbing equipment with immediate suspicion.

You may be right about that, Trask. But, sadly, I'm afraid we gotta stick it out. The question now is, how do we get other countries interested in helping pay for all of this. Ms. Rice was correct this morning when she said that they all have a stake in having this mess straightened out, but exactly how and to what extent and under what circumstances should Bush and Co. be willing to give up control? Do you think we'll be able to expect other nations to pay for all of this if they have no say in how their money is going to be spent?

On Friday morning the smoke was so thick in parts of the upper Methow Valley that you could literally not see more than a couple hundred yards.

I'm "fucking serious," Fairweather. Yes, some action against Bin Laden and Al Queda would have been justified but in fact it looks to me as if we did not target them - we took over Afghanistan and let Bin Laden and Al Queda go. If Bin Laden was the real target, wouldn't we have waited to start the invasion until we knew exactly where he was?? MAYBE there are fewer active training camps, but it is equally likely that there will be much MORE support for Al Queda - for the next 30 years or more - as a direct consequence of our recent actions. If you will recall, the 911 hijackers were almost all from Saudi Arabia -- but we did not attack Saudi Arabia. No, I do not believe that 911 was justification for our Afghanistan adventure.

Timmy- I believe you can add my name to the list as well.

RuMR- At the gym she'll mostly meet gym climbers. Yes, some of them have experience and skills appropriate for what I term "real" climbing but I bet that, on any given night, most of the people who she will meet there - the ones that are hanging about looking to strike up a conversation with an unknown female - do not. On this board, I think the ratio of climbers qualified to take her to Leavenworth or Mount Baker to those who are not is probably a little higher. And the gym costs - what - fifteen or twenty dollars a visit? If she's interested in climbing real mountains and real crags she'll probably make at least three visits to the gym before she makes the date to go to Leavenworth or Mount Baker. She could bring that 60 dollars to pubclub and she'd have a partner for the next coming Saturday. Or she could save her money and use it to buy gas and start chatting with whomever sends her a message on this board. She'll still have to figure out how to tell the wheat from the chaff, but at least on this board it is free.

In the interest of offering balance and perspective (sometimes dismissed as dinosaurial delusion) I'll suggest that you skip the gym -- at least until the real winter weather settles in -- and look for people who would be able to safely take you up some "basic" climbs in the "outdoors. " Examples would be Midway on Castle Rock in Leavenworth or one of the easier routes on Mount Baker. You've suggested that you actually like hiking and being outdoors, so I'm guessing you might find such experiences more exciting than hanging out in the gym and, even though I know it goes contrary to modern practice, I think you can learn more about rock climbing on real crags and the only place to learn much about snow and ice climbing is on real mountains. If you want to train, or to develop rock climbing skills that are primarily useful for a very specific type of climbing (sport climbing), or if you want to meet lots of young climbers, go to the gym. Post on this site and you'll find partners (you may already have gotten fifteen private messages) and my guess is you'll be OK if you go to Leavenworth or the Exit 38 with some anonomous poster from cc.com, but obviously you'll have to use some judgment. The same will be true at "Ropeup" (Beckfest), though, and you'll similarly have to be careful about meeting somebody in the gym and then going climbing "outdoors" with them.

Actually, it has become the NEW BITCH ABOUT DWAYNER THREAD. But I suppose that is OK, if we're making progress toward thinking through the perameters of the NEW ROCK CLIMBING FORUM.

The description on the main board says it is a forum for discussing the joys of rock climbing with Peter Puget.