JayB

I have to agree with E-Rock here. Any guy who wants to talk smack about the ladies that were brave enough to post here had better damn-well post some photos of themselves before opening their mouths. Any woman who is passionate about climbing, skiing, biking, paddling, fly-fishing, or anything active in the outdoors and is brave enough to post a photo here is a 10 in my book.

Youth. 1990. 17 years old. I think the idea was to spoof the random-flexing-guy-in-nature photo genre, but it's well worth mocking in it's own right. As my wife is fond of saying, all downhill from here... Non-Epic Minor Epic: Note Hairline Contrast vis-a-vis early 90's shot. Moderate Epic Major Epic

Yup.

The odds are high that at the very least it'll make them think twice about who they hit and when. If the parents don't fulfill this role, someone else will. This reminds me of a coversation that I had with my wife's Aunt and Uncle a while back, who have 3 very nice kids to their credit. The said they never relished disciplining their kids, but they knew that if didn't do it, someone who loved them quite a bit less inevitably would. If it wasn't them, it'd be the teacher, if it wasn't the teacher, it'd be the principal, and a couple of steps later it'd be the police, the warden, or worse. A kid that hits his parents is going to be on the receiving end of a peer-delivered ass-whupping at some point, and the younger they are when it happens, they better of they and everyone else that interacts with them will be for it.

well, i think perhaps you're a tad bit on the lucky side too. my kid has thrown more than his share of tantrums, publicly embarrassed me and annoyed other people. h/e that doesn't mean that i hadn't drawn the line. he was just more stubborn about accepting his inability to get what he wants. i think the key is that he doesn't win them. now that he's older, he's a great kid that behaves himself, mostly does what he's asked with a normal amount of pre-teen grousing, still hugs his mom, opens doors for strangers and says thank you. i think it's a gross oversimplification to say that tantrums in younger children is a reflection of an unhealthy sense of entitlement. True - but if the tantrums are indulged, you can be pretty sure that they'll develop one. What really freaks me out is seeing little boys that hit their Moms - like in the face, with a closed fist - and no one does anything but say "Now Joey, It's not nice to hit Mommy" or something like that. To my mind, a boy that hits either parent - but especially his Mom - knows absolutely no limits or boundaries, and will pretty much hit anyone he feels like. Hell - I can still remember quite clearly what happened the one time that I stuck out my tongue at my Mom, so I can't even begin to imagine the spanking/grounding/toy-removal/and iterative "Never do that again, here's why, and if it ever does happen again, here's what's going to happen" lectures that would have resulted from that. My only hope was that at some point a good, prolonged, and severe ass-whupping on the playground by someone who hits back would send these kids the message that their parents never did, and/or that the violence and misery that their kid would inflict on the rest of the world would primarily be visited on his parents, rather than those who weren't responsible for creating a human with the morals of a goat and the manners of a baboon.

"Impact of global warming on Glacier Termini and Survival: I read in the 2002 North Cascades National Park-Natural Notes that: " More than 90 percent of the North Cascades glaciers could disappear within 40 years if the annual temperature increases by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit)." We have observed the response of North Cascade glaciers to a climate change of nearly this magnitude at the end of the Little Ice Age and we did not lose nearly 90% of the glaciers, nor did most of them finish their retreat, adjusting to the post Little Ice Age climate in less than 40 years. Thus, this figure is not correct. Annual mass balance surveys on nine glaciers in the North Cascades indicate that North Cascade glaciers have lost an average of 0.5 m of thickness each year from 1984-2005. This 11-12 m of glacier thickness lost is approximately 20-40 % of the entire volume of North Cascade glaciers, gone in twenty one years. What do recent trends suggest about the likely future of North Cascade glaciers? First, a 1.5-2.0 warming following the Little Ice Age led to retreat of all North Cascade glaciers. North Cascade glaciers lost 35-50% of their volume in the last century and a somewhat lesser amount of glacier area (Pelto and Hedlund, 2001). There are a significant number of glaciers in the North Cascades that have not fully adjusted to the post Little Ice Age climate, thus their response time can be as much as a century." http://www.nichols.edu/departments/glacier/globalwarming.html Colorado: "According to Madole (1976), during the latter part of the Pleistocene (~1.8 million years before present - 10,000 years BP) and into the early Holocene (10,000 years BP - present) large valley glaciers were present across most of the higher mountain ranges of Colorado and a small icecap even formed in the northwest part of Rocky Mountain National Park. Valley glaciers in the Front Range were typically 15-25 km long and 1-3 km wide, reaching down to elevations of 2440 to 2745 m. These valley glacier ranged in thickness from 215 to 460 m and the longest was 45 km long (located in the valley of the Cache la Poudre River and fed by the icecap). In Colorado only two Pleistocene glacial advances are recorded on the landscape: Bull Lake and Pinedale (The names come from the Wind River Range where these glacial advances were first identified.). The Bull Lake glaciation is thought to have occurred 125,000 to 50,000 years BP, while the Pinedale glaciation has been dated to 29,000 to 7,600 years BP. Generally the Bull Lake glaciation was more extensive. Additionally there have been three small Holocone (10,000 years BP to present) glacial advances termed, from oldest to youngest, Triple Lakes, Audubon, and Arapaho Peak advances. Collectively these minor advances are termed Neoglaciation, and the largest glacier during these advances was only 1.6 km long. The Arapaho Peak advance is local evidence for the Little Ice Age (the popular name for a period of cooling in the northern hemisphere lasting approximately from the 14th to the mid-19th centuries). Most of the glaciers and perennial ice patches in Colorado today are the tattered remnants of these small Little Ice Age glaciers." http://glaciers.pdx.edu/gdb/maps/all.php?page=co_glaciers.html

Whew... that took a while to parse. Let’s see if I understand correctly. Intelligent Design implies that a directed consciousness underlies the biotic changes that have occurred since the dawn of life on earth. It is a form of teleology. And that is a sort of metanarrative, so there’s some linearity inherent. In contrast, we take an orthodox view of evolution that says that there is no linearity with respect to design. There is in the sense of contingency in that the eye developed from primitive photoreceptors, not ex nihilo. But, even though plants also respond to light, they will not develop eyes. So, you have to have suitable precursors for it to evolve into something more complex. The ear, for example, it evolved from the modification of the jaw bones. Evolution is not forward-looking; rather it is backward-looking. It does not have an end-design in mind. It cannot even be said to have ‘mind’. Intelligent Design differs in that it postulates that an end-design informs everything. The disbelief in metanarratives characterizes the postmodern view of history. But wait, conspiracy theory implies specifically that a human agency is the director, and often, in that view, a human agency strives to disproportionately acquire power at the expense of the masses, I mean, with respect to a grand conspiracy. I’d have a hard time believing as Philip K. Dick said once, “The Empire never died.”. But in more recent history there is a sense of the formation of political blocs much as in the way outlined by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, etc. Add technological advances into the mixture and one can imagine the very real possibility of a ‘total control state’. How 'bout some potential paranoia with your morning coffee, eh? I don’t know about anyone else but I tend to lump things such as political machinations, cover-ups, covert operations, etc. into the conspiracy category. There are very real examples of the preceding, but one would be hard-pressed to claim that there was some ‘evil’ intent behind the actions. I’ll try to make a list now…Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the MkUltra Project, Gulf of Tonkin incident, … Here’s one you may be familiar with…when the Hunt Brothers tried to corner the silver market in the ‘80s. Shit, the metals market is replete with scandals…does anyone want to buy some Indonesian gold? Anyway, back to your statement. Yes, I agree in the general case. I disagree in particulars. That's a thoughtful extension to the analogy I was trying to make. I only had the general case in mind.

Care to explain? Are you saying that these kids would be burning books instead, if the trillion dollars were being spent on books instead of bombs? Their message (albeit offensive) is pretty clear: down with the war. But let's go ahead and keep pretending that only radical fringe groups feel this strongly about it. My response here was directed towards the line of thinking contained in this comment: "OTOH, they're doing something to effect the change they want to see. That's cool." One could extend the same logic to Klansmen burning a cross in a public square. While all of us are legally obligated to respect any particular groups rights to use political speech to promote whatever agenda or message they want, there's no such obligation upon anyone to feel as though what the group of protestors is doing is "cool" simply because they are "doing something to effect the change that they want to see."

Very interesting research. Video here: http://glumbert.com/media/spiders

My money's on Obama taking the Democratic ticket and the Oval Office unless he makes a mis-step of Muskie/Hart/Dean proportions somewhere along the way. Not sure who will take the Republican ticket, but Romney made a massive mistake by trying to burnish his far-right cred at the last minute. The last minute changes of heart pretty much hosed his appeal amongst moderates, and did little or nothing to increase his standing amongst Jerry's kids.

High quality rant by John Long on the Potter/Davis thread at supertopo: "Doug Thompkins (North Face and later Esprit) was the original golden thumb, fat cat textile tycoon and meta oranginc Andy, and every other 60s era Yosemite climber with bid-ness aspirations followed Doug's coattails - Chouinard, Robbins, and who knows the rest. (Little known secret: it was Thompkins' wife who had a little clothing line called Plain Jane which triggered the whole shebang). The Thompkins work model was a great one - plenty of time off for adventuring (kayaking in the 80s, mainly), make exciting and comfortable clothes, have them made in Hong Kong (one year he exported more than a billion dollars of threads out of HK). The advertising (especially with Chouinard) was 60-70s faux coolio, always anchored at some level with real folks who were projected to be just a little more connected, smelly, hip, talented, natural, and basically more lyrical than the rest of us. These meta cool "common Joes" were seamlessly woven into the branding, which on the face of it was always a grass roots kind of fandango but in fact was spun that way and orchestrated down to the last adverb per what was said and who said it. Again, the unstated credo behind all those photos and all that ad copy was that these were the authentic folks, the real people, devoid of put-on, guff, ego, self consciousness, et al. They had more meaningful relationships with their dogs than you did with you wife or boyfriend. The result was a proto spontaneous wheat grass yubba dub concoction of yams, organic burgers and precious new-age mottos declaring most anything that would vouchsafe their current stand as being the nee plus ultra of organic swank spiritual back room hand job tomfollery, all for the price of their 100 dollah organic under wear. There's cult aspect to all of this jive, as well, and manifests in the negative judgement toward anyone who fails to embrace their "save the environment" campaign as the only viable pursuit of mankind, now and forever. What you have when you scrape off all the social accretions and insider hip hoppery is an expensive but great product you are likely to get sick of before it wears out. Admit it--Patagonia product is peerless and it always has been. Just about all the other stuff, especially the core message, suffers mightily not from lack of content, importance and relevance of theme, and commitment to same, rather the method of discrimination is such that it's in-grown and hierarchical. It's not an intellectual organization nor should it be one, or could it ever be one, but you'd like to see a little more original thinking coming out of the place. But that's their business. I just think it's a shame that they have decided to use a grass roots approach of featuring real people doing real things and then show those real folks the back door once it came time to pay some little bit for the pleasure."

one man's sum-total is evidently quite different than another's; selectivity is often the hallmark of theories of conspiracy. But, since we were talking about mortgages....won't Hadrian's wall protect me from danger? ARMs aren't practical for my needs. 30 yr fixed works best with what we are doing. now if I was to plan a quick re-sell, then an interest-only would be the only logical option. You see, it's really about your needs, jayb. were you calling for federal intervention in the mortgage market, btw? things are really heating up it seems, with Goldman Sachs' quote "The direct macroeconomic effects of subprime stress are likely to be small" seemingly becoming dated rather quickly. Do you think that the "market" should have been more tightly regulated by the feds inre to the lending practices seen in the last decade? Selectivity may is a minor element in relation to the conviction that events cannot be explained satisfactorily without recourse to a particular intelligence or agency that orchestrated a particular set of events. Conspiracy theories are to history what intelligent design is to evolution. Did I specify a particular actor that orchestrated global affairs over the course of the past thirty years with the specific intention of cultivating paranoid tendencies in the political left? "Do you think that the "market" should have been more tightly regulated by the feds inre to the lending practices seen in the last decade?" In short, yes.

Agreed. Much easier to understand how folks came to hold such perspectives, and to a certain extent absolve them of responsibility for them when they are shaped under such circumstances. Much tougher to extent the same sentiments towards anyone who lives in a free society.

The folks burning the effigy were Anarchists. Again, not sure that will change the analysis, but...

wow, a conspiracy theory about a conspiracy theory. Interesting. If the conspirator in question is the sum-total of all of the political realities that have characterized the last 30 odd years, then perhaps. And - shouldn't you be feverishly compiling the documents necessary to refinance out of the option-ARMS before the incipient credit-tightening precludes your ability to do so?

" dunno. I expect that if my city and country were occupied under similar conditions, I would come to hate/fear the combat troops on the ground, who are responsible for going door-to-door to secure the area, the people who daily make decisions about who lives, who dies, because they carry the weapons. I'm not sure which would be more rational, but I think focusing a fair amount of your hatred on the physical, local representatives of the occupying power would be a natural response. And I expect that I also would partake in subversive measures to take back my country." You do realize that the folks burning the effigy in question were Americans, not Iraqis. Not sure this will alter your analysis of this matter in any way, but thought that it would be worth pointing out.

The Islamic man on the street and the left-wing commentariat here at cc.com evidently have quite a bit in common when it comes to their perception of those events. Might make for a good game show: Theory Espoused at Moveon.org or...Madrasah in Waziristan? I thought his damnation of the MSM quite rightwing. C'est verdad. If he had only used the term "corporate media" instead the overlap would have been seamless. What's interesting is the prevalence and persistence of this kind of paranoid conspiracy mongering in an open society. I used to see think this kind of thinking was symptomatic of the limits on the distribution and exchange of information that were only possible in politically repressive states, but I've had to reconsider that point as of late. Despite the proliferation of information sources available to the average citizen over the course of the past 15 years or so, these tendencies, if anything, have increased, especially on the Left. In light of this phenomenon, I've become convinced that paranoia has less to do with poor access to information than a kind of persistent political frustration that results when it appears as though your side is either marginalized and powerless, or has lost the argument has seen the tides of culture and popular opinion turn decisively away from the values, politics, and beliefs that you would like to see prevail. Not only that, but things are so far gone that attempts to redress the problem through conventional political or intellectual means seem completely hopeless. One can see how certain elements of the Right must have felt this way in the period that ran from roughly 1932-1980, and this may explain why - whatever the faults of the political Left during this period - feverish conspiracy mongering was almost completely confined to various elements on the Right. This seemed to be true even during the broad reverses that occurred during the broad reverses that the Left sustained during the Reagan administration, and right through the Clinton Era - although his moderate third-wayism may have have left the true believers who had been holding out for the Anti-Reagan feeling even more marginalized and embittered. The arrival and persistence of GWB in the oval office, coming on top of the failure of any of the various 60's utopia's to materialize, the collapse of the Soviet Block, the broad retreat of Socialism in nearly every venue around the world, the ascendance of the religious Right, etc, etc seems to have been to much for certain elements in the Left to accept as a consequence of anything that could be understood or explained outside of the paradigm of a monumental conspiracy that's far too intricate and subtle for the average person on the street to notice or comprehend, much less resist. Hence, among certain elements of the political Left, we have witnessed the emergence and popular appeal of paranoid delusions that rival anything dreamed up by the black-helicopter crowd in their intensity and scope. Once a virtual monopoly owned and operated by the Right, now a shared franchise.

Spell it out for us, comrade.

The Islamic man on the street and the left-wing commentariat here at cc.com evidently have quite a bit in common when it comes to their perception of those events. Might make for a good game show: Theory Espoused at Moveon.org or...Madrasah in Waziristan?

Now compare and contrast the crew in the above video with their black-clad counterparts shown in the footage here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXQ9KHEC7FY

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The best part of Vancouver is the flat concrete deal that bypasses the town and leads to the greater Squistler area. Be there in eight days....

"Unctuous, Oleaginous, Saponacious"

The tele-gear doesn't seem to hold the Hummel bros back too much. Just imagine what they could do with AT gear!

BTW - sorry to hear about your back, Matt. That sucks.