JayB

Pretty much everything East of the Rockies sucks in a massive way compared to skiing out West. It's expensive, crowded, cold, icy, and in the Northeast every parking lot, lift line, and lodge is infused with the special East coast vibe that has driven untold millions in Southerly and Westward directions for the past two hundred years. Having said that - it's still skiing and it still beats just about anything else that you could do with your time out there in the winter, and living anywhere where you can consistently get out and make some turns is a massive plus in my book.

Central bank dropping rates + banks tossing out lending standards when they learn they can transfer the downside risk onto the public have quite a bit more to do with it IMO. Same story as the US, told with a different accent. Should be fun times at the CMHC when leverage starts to work the other way. Ditto for folks who bought in at historically low rates with non-recourse loans that will reset in 5 years. Anyone who has significantly more debt than equity should price to sell and enjoy their windfall. I'd wager It's much easier to live with the regrets that come from missing the absolute peak of the market by a few points than it is to live with a crushing debt burden that will haunt you for the rest of your life.

"If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." Herb Stein.

Spicy.

Seemed like the snowpack in the Crystal area was composed of fresh snow, on top of a rain-crust, on top of a less cohesive layer near the ground. All things being equal - loading the snowpack with moisture and breaking off the weak bits before things get cold again could be a good thing for the snowpack.

Had a chance to take these for a spin at Crystal today and they rip. They deliver the kind of float in powder that you'd expect with 115mm at the waist, and they're easily the most stable skis I've ever had underfoot at speed. There was definitely some structure/texture under the deep stuff today, but the skis stayed on line like champs even after getting pretty solid bumps from below at top speed. They got even better once things got chopped up, and made it super easy to carry speed through heavily tracked up powder without getting knocked off line. I had no problem with floatation while keeping my weight neutral when I was on steeper stuff and carrying speed, but found myself leaning back a bit on flatter stuff. I didn't spend much time on the groomers but they felt like the kind of ski that's happiest on edge. The lack of tip rocker and the conventional tip geometry means the tips engage easily, and when you couple that with the lack of much sidecut means that once they engage and start to turn towards something you'll be heading rapidly in that direction soon thereafter. I was avoiding stuff that was completely hacked up and packed down, and that's probably a good rule of thumb for these skis, and I'd stay well clear of hardpacked moguls or any other firm surface that's got a bunch of texture. No one should take these skis East of the Rockies, but after spending three years on the Ice Coast I can say that taking any skis east of the Rockies is a fools errand. I'm kind of at a loss to explain why there's a bunch of these skis on ultra-closeout four years after the production run (they're currently on sale for $159 at the link I posted above). I can see how other skis with tip rocker and the narrow-to-wide tip geometry would de-tune the ride a bit and make skiing powder easier, but I'm not sure it would make them ski better. For $159, I'm thinking of buying a second pair just in case this sort of ski goes the way of the dodo and all of the powder skis in the future are de-tuned and noodly.

"Occupy French Guyana" I think a side by side review of the goals and tactics of JJ and OWS is in order.

No one said that the people who are working work less hard when they're at work. What the data shows is that since the early 70's their trend labor-force participation rates and annual hours worked have been declining versus the US. Percent of adults working * years worked * average hours per year. Aggregate those differences over millions of lifetimes over a few decades and the difference in total output per capita is quite large. Factor in declining fertility and they get even larger in the future. Matters quite a bit if you want to borrow money from people now in exchange for a claim on your population's future earnings. Factor in superior outcomes from working smarter and making better decisions and the total hours worked doesn't even begin to reflect actual human output and contribution. But then, to someone where everyone is a 'unit of production', that might be tough, non-linear concept to grasp. You'd be a great manager...cerca 1875 or so. Yeah - expanding existing technology and capital stock can only account for a fraction of growth. The rest comes from innovation. Think that was Sollow who pointed that out in the mid-60's. It's not clear to me that Europe has been significantly outpacing the US in the innovation department for the past few decades, either - but the differential between the US and Euroland is probably smaller than most think. I'm all for working smarter and all of the rest of it, and the output per hour in most European countries is equal to or greater than the US average. The question is whether it's possible for more productivity-per-hour-worked to compensate for a smaller percentage of the (shrinking) working-age population working fewer hours for fewer years in a way that allows them to finance their own consumption plus that of everyone who isn't working. I'm not convinced that it is,and it's looking more and more like the gap in hours worked and labor force participation that opened up between the US and Europe in the 1970's (they used to work more hours than their American counterparts) was paid for by deferring the real costs of the gap between consumption and production into the future via deferred benefits and borrowing. FWIW I think the US is heading for the same waterfall, but a few yards further away on account of the average person rowing a bit harder and longer before they hang up their oars.

"I must confess that my satisfaction with my first theories of an automatic civilization and a decadent humanity did not long endure. Yet I could think of no other. Let me put my difficulties. The several big palaces I had explored were mere living places, great dining-halls and sleeping apartments. I could find no machinery, no appliances of any kind. Yet these people were clothed in pleasant fabrics that must at times need renewal, and their sandals, though undecorated, were fairly complex specimens of metalwork. Somehow such things must be made. And the little people displayed no vestige of a creative tendency. There were no shops, no workshops, no sign of importations among them. They spent all their time in playing gently, in bathing in the river, in making love in a half-playful fashion, in eating fruit and sleeping. I could not see how things were kept going." H.G. Wells - "The Time Machine"

Want rocker but not willing to forgo the deals on the non-cambered stuff. Should be plenty of rockered skis in the bargain bin by the time the current set wears out. Sometimes I kind of find myself missing the left-right pogo-stick action on the dead-straight skinny skis from the old days. Not often - but occaisionally. Seems like the old-school skis still do pretty well in the moguls, but no one seems to like those much either. Maybe it's too much like old-school powder skiing.

No one said that the people who are working work less hard when they're at work. What the data shows is that since the early 70's their trend labor-force participation rates and annual hours worked have been declining versus the US. Percent of adults working * years worked * average hours per year. Aggregate those differences over millions of lifetimes over a few decades and the difference in total output per capita is quite large. Factor in declining fertility and they get even larger in the future. Matters quite a bit if you want to borrow money from people now in exchange for a claim on your population's future earnings.

It's not only the size of the debt that folks with money to invest in bonds worry about, it's the ability to repay it. If it was all about the numbers, the yield on Spain and Italy's debt wouldn't be heading north rapidly despite the ECB's best efforts to keep a lid on them. We could find ourselves in the same boat, and rather quickly. I would agree with this. The numbers posted re: debt quickly point to a need for a change in the US budget policy. And yes, forward looking debt obligations play a big role here. While the neoliberal financial creeps had a major role here, some of this is just shining some light on unsustainable practices. Greece did a good job of shinning up a dented penny and the other Europeans casted a blind eye to it when cobbling together the EU. Really, their debt obligations, population curve, reiterment age, and tax collection structure was already heading them for a cliff. Simialarly in the US we have unsustainable promises to federal and state employees, flushing of treasure down the worldwide military adventure toilet, and a Congress with not too much on their mind but re-election. Difficult to be optimistic about where this is going. Whoah! Vaguely reminds me of the bit in 1984 when Winston hears Symme accurately outline the political functions of Newspeak and thinks to himself "This one sees things too clearly, he won't last long." Like I said before, better learn to self-censor at cocktail parties unless you happen to stray into a gathering of The Cato Institute's non-existent Seattle Chapter.

-We've been through the literature before - and the comparisons are bogus because they don't control for the actual degree the person has (EE and sociology count the same, ditto for a PhD in physics and Education, etc), they don't control for hours worked, and they don't count the actual cost of pension and retiree healthcare obligations - only the employer's contribution them. -The only place where the comparisons suggest that people are are actually making less are the people with advanced professional degrees.

The regime run by those with the stagnant trillions that aren't hiring anyone and thereby preventing them from working? Oh right, it's us that's supposed to come groveling to them. -There are times when the most valuable function of cash for a business (or a person) is as a bulwark against uncertainty, rather than investment that may or may not provide a return that's sufficient to cover the total cost of buying it. -Without the cash hoard to keep things humming in the face of variable and uncertain revenue, we'd probably see even more lay-offs and capacity reduction as businesses cut fixed expenses to the bone and shed the least essential workers and/or those with the lowest marginal product. -Then there's the obvious point that the owners of the said assets aren't storing this trillion dollar plus hoard as pieces of eight in Scrooge McDuck's vault. They're invested in a Treasuries, money market securities, bank deposits, etc - all of which are actively being used to finance either investment or consumption. Imagine two families - one with two years worth of savings, one with nothing in the bank. The breadwinner(s) in each all lose their jobs. Who's going to keep their spending/consumption patterns basically the same and who's going to immediately cut as much of their spending as possible as quickly as possible? In the face of uncertainty, companies sitting on substantial cushions of liquid assets are less likely to cut payrolls, investment, etc than companies with no such cushion - not more so.

Amazing.

And it's the left that's always charged with "social engineering". Priceless. Adopting the values of the bohemian counterculture never works out very well without a big fluffy cushion of money to insulate you from the consequences of doing so. People who decide they want to work are much better off under a policy regime that doesn't prevent them from doing so.

Ebenezer Scrooge? Good guess. He's had several European dignitaries visiting him pleading to buy their bonds lately.

Way back when I remember hearing about folks that had fairly good luck with wiring a hidden toggle switch into the ignition line. Probably redundant on most modern cars. Saw a couple of dudes trying to break into my truck not long after I bought it and installed a GPS-tracking unit. ~$175 for the unit and $5 to track. Only installed one in the truck because no one makes a unit small enough to install in my Credence tapes. http://www.rmtracking.com/gpsproducts/vehicle_recovery/smart_tracker.php

-AFAIKT your definition of surplus population is more or less the same thing as the zero-marginal-product worker, e.g. someone who can't generate output that makes his employer more money than it costs to employ him. That's clearly a function of fixing the price of labor so high that you price out the least skilled and educated, and prevent them from ever entering the work force. If it weren't, you'd see almost universal unemployment in less developed countries where folks are vastly less productive since their efforts aren't amplified by capital investment, and are thwarted by poor infrastructure, corruption, etc. -Bonus points for the source of the quote below: "If you look at the troubles which happened in European countries, this is purely because of the accumulated troubles of the worn out welfare society. I think the labour laws are outdated. The labour laws induce sloth, indolence, rather than hardworking. The incentive system, is totally out of whack. "Why should, for instance, within [the] eurozone some member's people have to work to 65, even longer, whereas in some other countries they are happily retiring at 55, languishing on the beach? This is unfair. The welfare system is good for any society to reduce the gap, to help those who happen to have disadvantages, to enjoy a good life, but a welfare society should not induce people not to work hard."

It's not only the size of the debt that folks with money to invest in bonds worry about, it's the ability to repay it. If it was all about the numbers, the yield on Spain and Italy's debt wouldn't be heading north rapidly despite the ECB's best efforts to keep a lid on them. We could find ourselves in the same boat, and rather quickly.

I was going to say that these things are heavy, stiff, and unforgiving (at least according to the reviews) and are probably best suited to making super-long radius turns down untracked or lightly tracked open bowls/runs, and supposedly okay on wide-open groomers as well - and they're probably absolutely terrible for touring or anything where you need to be nimble (particularly with an AT boot on) - but since you bought them, for the price they might be worth keeping for big-inbounds stuff. Sierra Trading Post has a bunch of K2 and BD skis that are touring or sidecountry oriented in their inventory, and normally you can scrounge around on the internet for good coupons.

Not sure how it'll all end, but Greece is looking like a Lorenzian strange attractor for the modern welfare state. The eastern block countries were fortunate in that there were people around with both the wealth and the shared values necessary to subsidize their transition away from a system where consumption perpetually exceeded production. Rome had the Ostrogoths. Seems like the latter of the two scenarios is the more likely in this instance. Or something like the status quo that existed between the Morlocks and the Eloi. Having said that, looting the future to bribe the present makes for a fun generation or two of first-world hedonism, sans the dreary responsibilities of working, saving for your own old age or reproducing. Gave a lovely light, no?

Agreed - if you've got the extra cash to drop, look elsewhere and buy something else...with rocker. I just found myself having the fatty-envy on the rare big deep days and wanted to add a set for $400 or less including bindings. Don't think I'd have been interested if the original retail was in the sub-$200 range, but I'm also not surprised to see a big unforgiving ski from Ninthward on super-closeout. I'm actually kind of surprised that Ninthward is still in business, though.

Are you sure it's not a chatbot? Evidently they're sophisticated enough to fool lonely psychiatrists... http://www.radiolab.org/2011/may/31/

Eurozone bond yields rise again despite ECB buying November 16, 2011 | 11:37 am European government bond yields mostly continued to rise Wednesday, even as the European Central Bank apparently ramped up purchases to try to calm investors. The jump in interest rates in recent days signals a further spreading of the debt-crisis contagion from Italy to other countries, as investors grow increasingly fearful about governments' abilities to pay their debts. The ECB’s purchases did help push Italian bond yields modestly lower. The 10-year Italian bond slipped to 7.00% from 7.07% on Tuesday. But 10-year bond yields rose in France, Spain, Austria and Finland. The French 10-year yield edged up to 3.71%, the highest since April, from 3.68% on Tuesday. Can't help but wonder what kind of exposure US banks have to Eurodebt via CDS contracts... "Market yields rise as bond prices fall. Over the last week, nervous investors have been dumping Eurozone bonds, even those of countries still rated AAA, such as France and Austria. Financial markets have been looking to the European Central Bank to halt the contagion. In theory, the ECB could commit to buying unlimited quantities of bonds to try to hold down rates. But the bank has seemed reluctant to act aggressively, and Germany and France apparently are clashing over how big a role the ECB should play."