JayB

Inshallah.

Enjoy... http://chart.finance.yahoo.com/c/3m/_/_tnx

[Cue high-hat..] Why do you hate freedom? [badump-chink...]

"Interesting, because I've never voiced an opinion on vaccinations one way or the other. Ever. How are your reading comprehension classes coming? Have you gotten to the memory improvement modules yet? Hurried response regarding fluoridation in 3, 2, 1...." I hope you won't have your feelings hurt if I confess that I wasn't thinking of you when I made that post. I just finished listening to an NPR seg on autism - which has inspired a fervent vaccination victim-cult that makes the cyanide-jello quaffing, purple-hood-and-black-Nike sporting comet-hoppers look like Aristotle by comparison - and it made me think of the folks in the Pre-K collective on Bainbridge who were withholding vaccination from their children. It was on "Rx for the World," on PBS a while back. Gates Foundation funded thingy on the threat from various scourges, plagues, etc around the world and the various impediments to addressing them effectively. What better way to gratify the request for some Hippie Bashing, I thought... But since you mentioned it, the paralells between the FluoroDissidents and the Cult of Vaccino-Autism are rather striking....

They've informed me that they're busy putting the "Vaccination Free Kintergarden Graduation Ceremony" video together. Should be up on YouTube in a moment, at which time they'll be free to comment. Please be patient. Meanwhile, in Hamastan... http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L13877653.htm Apples certainly aren't falling far from the tree. Or is is the reverse? Getting confusing...

Que the bizzare equivocation "I've seen kids next door playing with toy-guns too," reflexive condemnation of the West, and robotic recitation of the usual stock of trite, dismissive retorts in five, four, three, two, one...

It's really a terrible shame what meth has done to Spanaway. Used to be such a nice place back in the good old days, when the heshers circling their BMX bikes in the 7-11 parking lots with their KISW painter hats with the safari flaps were staring vacantly into the distance after huffing the fumes wafting up from a plastic bag filled from some kind of random industrial sealant, as opposed to twitching and muttering to themselves between 5-hour Galaga sessions next to the Slurpee machines.... Winning Entry From the Spanaway Jr. High Art Show. Someone's got talent..

Hey Ken, lay out your cordalette, start at the center, tie a couple of overhand knots a couple of feet apart, and then tie off your pieces with clove hitches. Seems to take about the same amount of time to rig as a cordalette if you've already got the knots in the middle.

Pretty much everything about the manner in which Mexico is administered and governed has kept it poor, backwards, and corrupt in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Exporting the most desperate reduces some of the political costs and consequences of maintaining the status quo. I'd say the net effect of Mexican immigration has been quite positive, and I'm glad that the country affords the opportunity for some of them to avoid squandering their talents and their lives in a country that doesn't enable them to make the most of either.

If the businesses under discussion have the capacity to pass on higher labor costs to consumers via higher prices, then they'll do so. Otherwise you'll either see increased capital investment driving innovation and mechanization in the sectors that they work-in, or the the production that they are engaged in will cease in the US and occur where the total production costs are lower. That's fine with me. Interesting Case Study: "The WWII Bracero program expired in 1947, but Mexican workers continued to migrate north, and U.S. farmers continued to employ them outside legal channels. In 1950, a presidential commission was asked to review the need for additional Mexican Braceros and, citing distortion and dependence, it recommended that none be admitted. But the Korean War was used in July 1951 to justify approval of a new Mexican Farm Labor Program, PL-78. PL-78 was deliberately limited to six months — at the request of the Mexican government — to put pressure on Congress to approve employer sanctions so that Mexicans would be encouraged to enter the United States under the program instead of illegally. Congress did not approve employer sanctions, i.e. penalties for employing illegal aliens, and the Bracero program grew in size and lasted longer than anticipated — legal admissions of Braceros peaked at 445,000 in 1956. The most important effects of the Bracero program were indirect, and they set the stage for Mexico-U.S. migration in the 1970s and 1980s: U.S. farmers had to pay round-trip transportation from the Mexican workers’ homes to the United States place of employment, so farmers encouraged workers to move to the border area to limit transportation charges. The result was the growth of Mexican cities on the border, even though there were few jobs there. Mexican workers often had to pay fees and bribes in Mexico to be selected as Braceros, so many went north illegally. Illegal workers could be hired without penalty by U.S. farmers. If an unauthorized Mexican worker was apprehended, he was made legal in a process referred to, even in U.S. government publications, as "drying out the wetbacks" — illegal workers were taken to the Mexican border, issued work permits, and returned to the farm on which they were working. The availability of Braceros permitted the southwestern states to become the garden states. California fruit and nut production rose 15 percent during the 1950s, and vegetable production rose 50 percent. Average farm worker earnings, however, rose much slower than factory wages: farm workers’ wages rose from $0.85 an hour in 1950 to $1.20 in 1960, while factory workers’ wages rose from $1.60 to $2.60 an hour, i.e., farm wages fell from 53 to 46 percent of factory wages. Braceros in the fields and a booming non-farm economy encouraged Mexican-Americans to change from a predominantly rural to a mostly urban population. One of the most important lessons of the Bracero program occurred at its end, and showed that those closest to agriculture were most wrong about what would happen without Braceros. As Congress debated whether to end the Bracero program in the early 1960s, farmers argued that Americans would not do farm work and that, without Braceros, crops would rot in the fields and food prices would rise. The California Farmer, on July 6, 1963, said that growers and canners "agree the state will never reach the 100,000 to 175,000 acres planted when there was a guaranteed supplemental labor force in the form of the bracero." (Don Razee, "Without Braceros, Tomato Growers will Slash Acreage in ’64," California Farmer, July 6, 1963, p. 5). These predictions were wrong. Take the case of processing tomatoes. In 1960, 80 percent of the 45,000 peak harvest workers used to pick 2.2 million tons of the tomatoes used to make catsup in California were Braceros, and growers testified that "the use of Braceros is absolutely essential to the survival of the tomato industry." In 1999, about 5,000 workers were employed to ride machines to sort 12 million tons of tomatoes harvested by machine on 300,000 acres. In the tomato case, the end of the Bracero program led to the mechanization of the tomato harvest, expanding production, and a reduction in the price of processed tomato products...." Cut off the pressure-relief valve that the mass exodus of the poorest and most desperate Mexicans has provided for the monumentally inept, corrupt, and innefficient political class that's run the country into the ground ever since the advent of the PRI, and you'd probably see some interesting political developments South of the border.

Hey - a revision to the tagline. I didn't think the Birkenstock was a piece of footwear favored by metrosexuals, but perhaps they've come out with a new line. I do think that repeatedly giggling over lines like "Why do you hate Freedom," - whenever the motives of Islamists and their relation to the US are brought into the discussion - by people who can't identify the group who attempted to assasinate Nasser, or what the aims of the said group were, and what role they played in the eventual assasination of Sadat, etc, etc, etc, or who indulge in a penchant for bizarre conspiracy theories as the default mode for comprehending the world around them, who refer to the folks detonating themselves amongst crowds of civilians in markets in Iraq as "Freedom Figthers," with no sense of either shame or irony, and for whom any national setback is viewed first and foremost as a means of securing a tactical domestic political advantage indicates that they are are either profoundly misguided, unserious, craven, myopic, decadent, and fatuous or embody some dismal amalgam of each. What impact this collective has had and/or will have on the national trajectory is an open question, but it most certainly hasn't been nor ever will be positive. How does your rhetoric about the power-mad administration hell-bent on whatever agenda you've projected onto them square with the administration abiding by the judicial rulings that have not gone in their favor? Their interpretation of the powers granted them under the law is challenged and overruled, they abide by the rulings in those cases, and the administration will vacate the White House at the conclusion of Bush's second term - at which time a candidate from your favored party will likely have to contend with the very same set of problems.

I'd agree, but the question is whether they didn't want to adhere to it because they thought that the subset of searches in question didn't require a warrant per their interpretation of FISA, they believed that the intelligence was so valuable that the ends justified the means and overreached the authority granted them by FISA, or they were embarking on a sinister plot to fundamentally undermine the Constitutional structure that preserves all of the political freedoms that we hold dear in order to impose a corporato-fascism on the public under the guise of promoting national security in order to enrich the sinister cabal that put them in power. I'd argue that the first two are more probable than the latter, and that what will emerge from this dispute is legislation that resolves the fundamental conflicts that have been under consideration.

Calling BS on this one. They were data mining. They said they wre limiting the wiretapping to selecting cases but they were not. The ATT whistle blower showed that they were drift-netting all kinds of domestic and foreign communications with no cause and then sifting it. The Bushies have primarily fumbled after they have someone in custody. There are adequate systems to put someone on trial for terrorism. They have simply detained hundreds of folks (some guilty some not) without any way for people to defend themselves. It's a stick in the eye to a democratic system and our Constitution. BS on the methods or the motives? Using algorithms to evaluate data for the purposes of determining which communcations are suspicious enough to warrant additional surveilance and monitoring seems like something quite apart from actually monitoring the content of the communications that gave rise to the said data sets. This seems like a reasonable activity for intelligence agencies to engage in, but it also seems like an activity that calls for careful statutory limits and judicial oversight because of the potential for abuse. If one were actually serious about reconciling the conflicting perogatives of preserving civil liberties, and intercepting electronic communications from known or suspected terrorists originating from outside the US with destinations in the US - then it seems as though one's primary goal would be to construct a set of rules and a system of judicial oversight that did so as effectively as possible. If the said conversations are taking place in real time, and are over long before the current mechanisms in place for granting warrants can act - then asking if there's some means by which you can get warrants granted quickly enough to be effective would be the way to go. It seems to me like the Democratic leadership in Congress actually went about attempting to take making ammendments to the rules and generally taking constructive action along these lines in order to insure that this sort of intelligence gathering was both effective and legal, while their base went about chanting "Warrantless Wiretapping" over an over again in between hatching an infiinity of conspiracy theories about how a collusion between the Mossad, the Carlyle Group, The Masons, and Dick Cheney brought down the twin towers.

"No further discussion useful," is an interesting attempt to subsititute a nullity for an argument, ditto for endlessly repeating "It's on the books," over and over again. Which sections of the UCMJ or the Geneva conventions applied to Al-Queda members operating in Afghanistan? Which body of law are you referring to that applies when attempting to ascertain the legality of either targetting or capturing transnational terrorists residing in countries that lack either the means or the will to capture or kill them? Congress passed a resolution declaring war on Afghanistan and authorizing the cruise missile attack on Al-Queda's compound there? The point of the Geneva Conventions wasn't to "argue against a nation of laws for expediency's sake," it was to create a legal framework to address phenomena which existing laws weren't designed to contend with. There's a reason that the legal procedures drafted to govern the Nuremburg Trials differed from those which governed the operation of the Small Claim's Court in North Dakota at the time. I'm of the opinion that drafting a body of law that provided specific rules which govern the handling and prosecution of a Yemeni national that's illegally entered Afghanistan by way of the Pakistani tribal areas for the purposes of recruiting fellow Jihadis plotting an attack on Italy and is detained by a Pushtun millitia operated by the local Warlord before being handed over to the Afghan Army who passes him along to Danish troops operating in the Nato coalition would be helpful.

Congress also authorized the use of force in Iraq, there's still the problem of dealing with terrorists in nations that have no desire whatsoever to cooperate with us, etc. The case of the "Warrantless Wiretapping," is also a prime example opportunism trumping seriousness. This term covered the monitoring of phone calls originating outside of the US and answered by known or suspected Al-Queda members operating within the US, not to read Grandma's e-mail. This was a case where serious people should have been asking how to reconcile a sensible intelligence goal with the requirements of the Constitution, but this - to put it mildly - is not what transpired. Unless chanting "Warrantless Wiretapping." over and over again like some kind of tribal incantation without actually reflecting on either the real legal problems or reasonable solutions to the same. So if the US Army had captured Osama in Afghanistan without having the action authorized by an agreement with the Taliban, would that have been kidnapping or capture? What designation should he have had, and what laws should apply. POW, US citizen? In what venue would he be tried, and under which set of laws? What if a country violates it's own laws in capturing a detainee and his rights in his own country are infringed in the process?

The flip side of that coin, is that no one who insists that all of the legal solutions are in place already has much to offer when it comes to specifics. How do you capture the likes of Khaled Sheik Mohammad using traditional law enforcement, especially if he's wisely chosen to reside in a country in which he cannot be detained because the folks in charge of the said country either lack the means, the desire, or both? How well did the current legal structure function in the wake of the Khobar Towers bombing, the bombing of the embassies in Kenya, the attack on the USS Cole? If post-detonation forensics satisfies your definition of "adequate," then I suppose that one could make the case that the responses in all of the above cases were adequate indeed. The subpoena approach doesn't seem to have done much to induce cooperation from the Taliban, either. Was the cruise missile attack that Clinton ordered an Al-Queda within Afghanistan's borders an extra-legal maneuver that would classify as a war-crime? I'm not aware of any provision in international law that covers the legal manner in which one targets and launches cruise missiles into another country's sovereign territory. I'm glad that Clinton did so, but I'm a tad puzzled by the same folks who are insisting that the grand nebulosity called "international law," has it all covered weren't subjecting Bill to the same critique then that they've leveled at Bush since day-one. How about the bombing of Serbia? Per international law, it certainly would have been more legal to do nothing and let the slaughter continue unabated. No UN Mandate for that one either. No protests either. Strange. I'm certain that party-politics had nothing to do with the deafening chorus of silence that greeted the long-overdue use of force, despite it's "illegality." Existing laws are adequate when terrorists either orchestrate or conduct their attacks withing your own borders, and/or have the courtesy to remain within the same border or those of a country that is willing to apprehend them on your behalf, provided they aren't already kicking it with the 72 virgins. If the Democrats gain power, get ready to play the part of Cindy Sheehan. They'll ride the zeal to the voting booth, but don't expect them to pay much attention once they're in office.

So is that last photo "The Quad?" If not, can someone post a link/diagram?

Wasn't the gist of this ruling that since Al Queda isn't a state, members of Al-Queda cannot be classified as enemy combatants, and the guy (legal resident - yes, citizen -no)needs to be tried under laws intended for US citizens, or let go? I support the ruling, but it would be nice to see someone on the Left thinking seriously about trying to develop a legal structure that addresses some of the aspects of handling transnational terror suspects that don't seem to jive terribly well with rules developed to govern situations arising from either interstate conflict or civil/criminal matters pertaining to civilians. There may be cases where one or the other is a close enough fit that they'll work, but I'd still like to see some kind of international effort to craft rules for the classification, apprehension, detention, transfer, and trial of people for whom neither the Geneva Conventions nor routine domestic law provide a very useful structure for handling. I don't think extraordinary renditions and secret prisions are the answer, but neither is showing up at the door of Osama's cave with a warrant and reading him his Miranda rights. There's a very good chance that Democrats will have control over both the exective and the judicial branches in a couple of years, at which time they'll have to play grown-up when it comes to these issues. Whether the tactical opportunism for the sake of domestic political advantage that has characterized both their thinking and that of their base thus far can transmute into something more constructive is an open question. I don't doubt the Democratic leadership's capacity to lead in these arenas, but my prediction is that the more fervent sectors of their base will wind up feelig embittered and betrayed when realism trumps opportunism.

The book thing is at least partly to protect the brand-new climber so he'll have some basis by which to evaluate what the experienced person is telling him. An extreme example is the woman who went out with an "expert climber" who set up a top-rope for her in which the rope ran right through the webbing. Worked fine on the way up, unfortunately, not so well after she weighted the rope and began the lowering process. This kind of thing is super-rare and not really a problem, but I still think it's useful to know if someone is doing something really crazy and attempting to pass it off as "the only way," doesn't protect a traverse properly, etc....

Clove hitch to locker at powerpoint. Even in the exceptionally unlikely event that the knot slips under load, you're still attached to the anchor. If the biner breaks, you're hosed, but this is true no matter how you attach yourself to the said biner.

Watching certainly won't hurt, but your best bet is to read some of the classic instructional books, practice what you can on your own, and then find an experienced climber that's willing to head out with your for a day. Check how they climb, how they rack their gear, how they place their pro, build their anchors, etc, etc, etc, etc.

There were some mondo-discussions elsewhere about this topic, and I started a thread here about the potential shortcomings of the cordalette but it went down in flames at the time. Seems like there was some rough agreement that a doodad called the equalette that combined some of the best qualities of the cordalette and the sliding X in one rig. I think this may have been discussed in Long's latest book on anchor's but I haven't seen the book so I'm not sure. Lower graph and quote poached from gravsports: "The whole concept of equalizing belay anchors has been discussed heavily lately, both over on rockclimbing.com and also on supertopo.com. I've also had some correspondance with Jim Ewing over at Sterling, who did much of the actual lab work referenced. The basic concept is that it's very difficult to effectively equalize multiple pieces in a belay, and that shock loading when one piece pulls is surprisingly minimal. We all want to do the "right" thing when building anchors, but as I've written previously, the "right" thing often isn't. This picture is lifted from supertopo.com, where a user lifted it from John Long's new book (I still need to buy a copy of that, hopefully he won't mind posting it here as it's promo for his book--I've known Long for years, he's not the sort of individual you really want pissed at you, not because of his iron addiction but because he flips words with style). I thought people might enjoy seeing the data, when I got it from Jim it wasn't in a viewer-friendly format. I find the whole discussion sort of humorous because we all used the "sliding X" years ago, then were told that the cordellette was plus bon, now it's pretty clear that the old sliding X is pretty darn good in comparison. I've played with the "equallette," overall it seems like it's more prone to mis-rigging and requires more biners than I'm likely to carry for its performance advantage over a simple sliding X. Might use it on nice sunny days when I have unlimited time to set up an anchor, but for winter climbing it's a right pain. One of the main problems with cordellettes is that the central knot often becomes set for the day after only one use, I see the equalette as being worse. At least with a sliding X frozen knots aren't a problem. I'll likely go with a sliding X with the biner clipped directly into the rope, and the rope then clipped into a third piece as a "All hell breaks loose" backup to the two primary pieces. Or something else depending on what the situation callls for, the bottom line is that no one system for building belays will be the best for all possible circumstances. I'll continue to carry a cordellette as they are very useful for slinging pillars or other features, chopping up for V-threads, rigging rap anchors, etc., but less useful than I always thought for building equalized anchors. All of this discussion has also changed my viewpoint that tying together some "OK" pieces will make a "really good" belay. I'm now more interested in having at least one "bomber" piece in the belay, and then backing that up with with at least one and hopefully two "OK" or better pieces. I've always built my rap anchors around one "bomber" piece (Abalakov or super solid pin/nut/bush/whatever) with a backup, I'm starting to look at belays more like this given how relatively poorly even the best equalized anchor works in the lab. In combat situations systems are likely to work even less well in my experience. Lots of good gear is a good thing, this whole climbing thing is pretty unpredictable when it comes right down to it. I'm very fond of 3.5 inch stainless bolts that I've placed, grin." http://gravsports.blogspot.com/2007_01_21_archive.html To tie.... Take your coradalette, tie a couple of overhand knots a couple of feet apart to create a closed loops in the middle, secure each "arm" of each loop to the biner attached to the pro with a clove hitch instead of clipping the end of the loops through the biner, then clip a biner over each strand in the center loop to create the sliding-X effect. Wouldn't be my default anchor, but worth having in the tool kit for some situations.

The 60's were not clean and free climbing hadn't firmed up with the ethics that ruled the 70's until the very end of that previous decade. Which leads us to... Jay's latest attempt at revisionist history. In fact, the overwhelming majority of climbers in the 70's - get set - actually did live and climb those ideals - certainly I and every human I ever climbed with in that period did. I also distinctly remembering hearing "falling" all day long at Eldo, the Gunks, and everywhere else we went - it wasn't until something like '81 before I heard someone yell 'take' for the first time. What do you suppose what average ratio is heard between those two yells these days? And please, Jump on ST and ask Jello, Werner, JStan or any of the old crew over there if it was just an illusion of an ideal, I'd love to watch that slapdown... More revisionist than the mass of self-aggrandizing conceits shape your perception of the climbing scene today? "Totally bolt dependent blah, blah, blah..." This certainly explains the massive increase in the popularity of, say, ice-climbing since the 1970's. All about the bolts out there on the ice. I'm also left wondering how, if this ethic was so sacrosanct - one can account for it's prompt demise upon the arrival of cordless powerdrills? Since it was climbers from the 1970's who pioneered the practice of powerdrilling while on rappel, it seems to me that the limiting factor was not the sanctity of the ethic, but the absence of the technology that enabled the practice. What percentage of the people who were climbing then stuck with this set of practices? This, too, is telling. This is like listening to people from the 1930's commending themselves for the hardiness and fortitude that they displayed by forgoing antibiotics.

kN for impact forces....

I came of age in the '70's and was climbing beginning in 1973. I had nothing to do with the creation of sport-climbing, and those who were I consider to be sell-outs. "Sell-outs from what?", you might ask. The '70's were a time when climbing was in transition, from piton-banging siege-climbing to a new ethic promoting minimal impact: "clean climbing". Check out the philosophy in the classic and inspiring article in the 1972 Chouinard catalog: "The whole natural art of protection" by Doug Robinson. Read it on-line here: Clean Climbing Manifesto Along with other outdoor recreationalists, climbers were beginning to seriously realize that it was unethical to trash the environment. "Leave little trace" should require little explanation here (but then again, maybe it does....) Lots of bold ascents were being made, leaving the pitons and drills at home. (See for example, the article by Galen Rowell in the June 1974 National Geographic: "Climbing Half Dome the Hard Way") and numerous back-issues of "Mountain" magazine which reported a lot of the advances. As a side-benefit to the new ethic, level of difficulty improved as the gear designed for clean-climbing could usually be placed with one hand and "Friends" allowed placements in parallel-sided cracks, roofs, etc. Lots of great and difficult routes were being put up in this style all over the U.S. Bolts, if they were to be used at all, were to be put in by hand, from the ground up, and few and far between; an ethic which certainly curtailed a lot of their use. Back then, you tried a climb, and if you were up for it, you just might make it. If you fell, you started over...usually from the bottom or came back when you were up to the challenge. The now-accepted charade of hang-doggin was seriously frowned-upon. Sometime around the end of the 70's, early '80's, some dirty stunts begin to appear, most notably at the Smith Rocks. Guys like Alan Watts, to their everlasting shame, started their drilling. I thought the whole concept as it evolved was appalling...from the promiscuous use of bolts, often placed on rappel, to a new type of sieging..."red-pointing" and hang-dogging...with unlimited rehearsals after which one could claim to have ascended a "big" number. [Note: I separate the harmless stylistic affronts - "red-pointing" etc., from the truly serious methodological issues: leaving permanent bolt trails in the wake.] The manufacturers, retailers and magazine-makers loved it! Sport-climbing's cheap, dumbed-down learning curve and limited risks gave it mass-appeal and the sale of shoes, ropes, harnesses, etc. sky-rocketed. Yeah! More $$$$$$! Who cares about crowds or grid-bolting! $$$$$ And now gyms feed into the system as nurseries for new "climbers", sent "outdoors" with little or no ethical training. In my opinion, rock climbing lost its soul when sport-climbing became the dominant paradigm. I spent time at Smith Rocks before it became sporto....it was a different, and I'd say much nicer, place altogether. In terms of environmental ethics, sport-climbing belongs to the Dark Ages: a giant step backwards. I don't believe it's too late to clean up the mess...which is one reason I continue to present my views on places like cc.com, whether you like to read them or not, or like my style of presentation or not. Most people don't want to hear it, because acknowledging the impact of their beloved sport-climbing will force them to confront the fact that what they do for fun has some serious issues attached. Many people have never heard that it's even controversial!....the manufacturers, retailers and magazines don't want you to think about it too much because maybe you won't buy all the crap they're trying to sell you.$$$$$$ Access interest groups who tolerate sport-routes don't want private land-owners to know the various sides of the debate because they're afraid they won't be allowed access....which is fine with me. You can't turn back the clock, but you can try to correct the mistakes of the present and make a better future. And the future ain't all about YOU, it's about keeping things nice for your grandchildren's grandchildren. Call me "crotchedy" or whatever other names you've thrown at me. I'm not ashamed of my ideals. Maybe you should look closer at your own. By the way, I hope the Forest Service and other interested parties are reading EVERY BIT of this "discussion"...it will give them a nice taste of at least two sides of the issue and give them some insights on some of the characters who call themselves "climbers". That's a good historical summary in many ways, but it's hard to see how the prevailing ethos from the 1970's is anything but a step down from the ethics that governed the manner in which the likes of Weissner, Underhill, Ellingwood, the Stetner Brothers, etc, etc, etc, approached climbing. With regards to hangdogging, if I'm not mistaken, there's plenty of documentation out there which establishes that this practice was commonplace amongst the likes of Stoddard et al when they were pushing the grades at the Gunks in the 1960's. I accept the fact that clean climbing and many other worthy practices were the ideals that most climbers aspired to in the 1970's. Accepting them as ideals that most people aspired to is one thing, buying the notion that the average climber never failed to live up to them, and that all of the practices that you malign had their genesis in era of bolted sport climbing is quite another.