arlen

Wagner, who didn't try to hide his jingoism, insisted that Gotterdammerung was about hubris as a fatal fault of humanity and not about Germany's dilemmas of that time. It isn't called a ring for nothing! That hasn't stopped the simple minded from tacking the name on their own crusades ever since then.

RIP On the bright side, there are now eight pages freed up in every month of Reader's Digest.

This new tv/vcr combo is going to make my life a lot simpler!

WWJC? Jesus would climb a fun offwidth, because both are a matter of opinion.

You could start with supplemental pieces for more experienced partners' racks. Like Camalots hands to fist, and Wallnuts, because they complement Stopperoids. Add ten alpine draws and few will weasel out of climbing with you.

Many areas east of, well, the West, have very strong and very modern no-bolting ethics, even in places where apparently fun routes could go up with a couple bolts. There's no "natural" point of equilibrium between grid bolting and trad only--more like a consensus that survives if it fits. If people didn't talk about it, there wouldn't be an ethic for or against any style.

The real secret is that we're all stay at home moms who got banned from parenting boards

Don Mellor's American Rock has a bit to say about climbers self regulating, albeit indirectly. His main point IMHO is that ethics (and probably lack of ethics) are local.

Dear Soldier of Fortune Letters....

Color Balance is good when the original subject was under odd lighting, but most times Hue/Saturation is best for bringing out color contrast. Make sure you check and uncheck the preview checkbox to compare changed and unchanged. And try Image > Adjustments > Levels, moving the middle slider to the right if the image is too bright. check and uncheck, making sure there are no areas of solid color on screen, and then on the precious photo paper printout. The places to look are areas that are similar in color, like a snowfield. Don't save over the original!

And once again, this time in Michigan, another garage sale nerd is giggling all the way to the bank.

Just to counter--the commute from downtown to the burbs is really pretty easy, like working in Tacoma. The sense of history in central DC is big and palpable compared to Seattle (some of these buildings are over twenty years old!). IMHO everybody should sample East Coast life for a couple years, because there's an appreciable difference between candid dog-eat-dog sailing sportos and grumpy peter-pan mountain sportos that quite often slips past the more sheltered view. And it's kind of freeing to not have to claim to be "training for alpine." But it will wear you down, so don't throw away that headhunter's card.

The other night I had this terrifying dream about climbing with a belayer who only believed in socratic beta.

Sometimes the fuzzy image is just due to a low aperture requiring a slow shutter (prolly why the Yashica T4 was so great--you can't zoom the aperture smaller). I've been using a teleconverter on my lowly Canon A60 with pretty good results--it gives you more choices, including removing the52mm lens adapter when you need it to be compact. The W1 takes an adapter too.