JayB

Hey - it's the "I'm losing both the argument in one thread so I'll restate it somewhere else" tactic. Neat. The absolutist statements that you were spewing out before you ran away to another thread have way more in common with the "It's in the bible therefore I believe it" perspective that you are referring to than anything that I've articulated. Only people that live in some kind of a cloistered dreamworld or refuse to acknowledge the kind of moral complexity that one normally encounters in the real world, beyond the age of twelve, could possibly hang onto the kind of perspective that you bring to pretty much any political realities that get discussed here from time to time.

Yeah dude. If Americans were on the receiving end of a friendly fire incident like that we'd all be marching in the streets and denouncing them and the Army they're part of as terrorists. Good counterpoint, there, soul-brother. I can't hang with a rhetorical heavyweight of your caliber, so I'll have to sign-off on this one.

How about if you take gratuitous potshots from north of the border, I return the favor, and you lose your cool for a bit and come up with a crazy-ass hypothetical that made me laugh my ass off here in the office? Eh?

This is quite the impressive display of someone uncritically reciting strident positions most often jettisoned shortly after adolescence. Keep it up. Per this reasoning the cop that shoots the guy attempting to murder other people is the moral equal of the murderer, the surgeon who bungles a prodedure and has his patient die on the table is the moral equal of the guys who behead their captives, the pharmacist and the crack dealer are indistinguishable from one another, etc.

No.no.no. Clearly there's no difference whatsoever between an Iraqi that's killed by one of the insurgent groups or death squads that our troops have been fighting since day one killing another Iraqi, and the US Army making it a point to use their weaponry to the utmost to kill every civilian that they can get their hands on. Exactly the same thing. And if that was our objective, surely the best way to go about it would have been deploying hundreds of thousands of troops and billions of dollars in an attempt to build up the country instead of just using B-52's to level all of the population centers. So if Dru is fumbling with his radio while driving, and collides with a van full of prisoners, and one of them escapes as a result of the crash and runs off and kills someone, I fully expect Dru to act in a manner that's consistent with his reasoning and insist that he be tried and convicted for the murder.

Some of my ancestors rode the underground railroad to get away from American genocide. Maybe you would have preferred Uncle Sam to gun them down at the border? Maybe if they could look into what lay ahead and catch a glimpse of their future progeny channeling ChuckD, they would have prefered that as well. Way to appropriate a past you never experienced and hardships that you never suffered to support a dubious point and the use of a hillariously innapropriate source, though.

Maybe he's realized his error, and is searching the internet for "Ace of Base" lyrics so that he'll have something more consistent with his identity to cite in defense of his very closely reasoned "physical = moral" argument.

And if a member of the Canadian Army inadvertently kills an Afghani civilian in the midst of a firefight with an enemy that makes commingling with civilians a central part of their stategy that's.....

See above. Jesus Christ. Now we've got white guys in one of the whitest nations in the world Channeling ChuckD to make their points. Maybe you should have that fear_and_greed guy come over and beat box behind you while you record the video for consumption on you-tube.

Ah yes. Canada. The geopolitical eunuch that never tires of applauding its own chastity. The fact that you guys can't distinguish between physical and moral equivalence is one of the more telling signs that your country essentially gave up any pretence of playing a serious role in world affairs. Better get rid of that Harper guy while you can lest things change.

Yerba mate' is the new latte'.

If it makes you feel better JayB, if it makes you feel better. All sides of the American electorate - from right of Attila the hun (Ayn Rand followers) to those left of Lenin (chomskyists) seem to prefer spectacle to substantive debate now. I could go on and tritely characterize your Hayek quoting cigar smoking conservatism, but it's just another actor in the tragedy, a rather sad and boring opera. You can argue whatever causations you want; it matters not to me - but it illustrates well why we don't give a fuck. Excellent retort. Thanks for the missive from the realm of world-weary, cigarette-on-an-extender smoking/waving dramato-nihilism mixed with a dash of self-dramatizing ennui.

Try learning how to dance. Want respect? Show some. We've gotten the bellicose conservative and the witty condscending conservative to post - now I need a self described independant chiming in with their disgust for tic-tac-toe. Ah, this thread, so perfect, so perfect. We've turned death into sideshow laughter and amusement. What's really a shame is that there's no hot latina socialists nearby that you can impress by pointing out these shortcomings. "Look at them. [shakes head with a slow, wistful thoughtfulness]. Just look at them. They've become so morally anesthetized and easily distracted by the wanton consumerism that their society is errected upon that...[sighs briefly for effect and looks skyward for a moment] they skip from genocide to glib inanities without missing a beat. They're so unlike...[pauses and turns to her]..you"

Except that in so doing they'd nuke the value of these same T-Bills, which make up a non-trivial part of the states assets, and then they'd have to turn around and invest at least as much money buying dollar-denominated assets of some sort to keep their currency stable relative to the dollar, lest they crush the competitiveness of their exports and the leading market for them all at once. The T-Bills are like a financial suicide belt around their waists, and I doubt they'll be inclined to detonate it aboard the American bus any time soon.

Oh nonsense JayB - I'm far to bohemian to hit on disaffected americans. I prefer being rejected by the local latinas who've seen 50 of me. As for the sugarcoated bit - look at our politics. We want people to tell us "the positive" and have a "positive agenda" and value that ahead of the negative. Look at the last election - W's brand of incompetence was preferrably to the absence of an agenda Now back to your standard effete liberal critique, oh coddler of cuban terrorists After I posted this, I realized that I forgot to include drinking the organic yerba-mate out of some authentic indigenous drinking vessel AND using the correct straw/filter thingy. Many apologies for tossing you in with the posers who drink the yerba mate' without the straw thingy while doing the theatrical ritual-denunciation of his yanqui counterparts.

I agree with alot of what you said, but I'd say that acknowledging certain realities and limitations indicates at least a bit of moral and intellectual seriousness. Slapping a "Free Tibet" sticker on the back of your Subaru and calling it good is a completely worthless excercise in moral vanity that's about as likely to be effective as pretending that a "Stop Aids" bumper sticker is likely to make the virus dissapear from Sub-Saharan Africa. The bottom line is that China is never going to "Free Tibet." There are various means that concerned people all over the world can use to convince the Chinese that it's in their interest to treat the Tibetans better, but anyone who wants to change the reality over there should at the very least be serious enough to start by recognizing the facts on the ground, and by differentiating between what's it's possible to accomplish and what it isn't, and what is likely to be effective and what's not. I work with a lot of Chinese folks, and my discussions with them concerning topics like Taiwan makes me think that any who wishes to persuade them to change their behavior will need to be mindful of Chinese sensibilities if they're going to have any chance of being effective.

So typically American. Tell us the hard truth - but make sure it's sugarcoated and doesn't hurt to much Something tells me we've glimpsed a part of Carl's pick up routine when abroad. Choose the appropriate setting, then throw your hands up and exclaim " So typically American. Tell us the hard truth - but make sure it's sugarcoated and doesn't hurt to much!!!!"... Then dig out the latest Chomsky tome, crank-up the Manu Chao on the ipod and slyly but furtively dart eyes about the room to see if the euro/latin/backpacker chicks within earshot happen to notice the dissafected/yankee-dissident/sophisticate/citizen-of-the-world-that-has-yet-to-emigrate-despite-his-grievances who's so different from his more noxious gun-toting-banjo-playing-sisterhumping-fundamentalist countrymen, understands the sheer infallibility of the grand globo-euro-lefto consensus, etc - and stands out from all of the other dissaffected/sophisticate/yankee-dissident types cruising around tyring to churn up a little action with the well-rehearsed Chomsky/Zinn/Said riff while they're traveling between semesters.

I think if you expand your frame of reference to include The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, it's not quite so clear that liberalizing trade with the Chinese has been innefectual with respect the manner in which the Chinese treat the people that live within their own borders, whether they be Chinese or Tibetan. The hard, cold, fact of the matter is that there's nothing that the rest of the world can do to "Free Tibet" that runs contrary to China's perception of it's own interests. If the Chinese can be convinced that it's in their own interest to act in a particular way with regards to Tibet that we also happen to favor, then that change will happen. As things stand now China is growing more sensitive to the manner in which it is perceived abroad, and they actually have a monetary and diplomatic interest in the manner in which they are perceived abroad. The aren't hosting the Olympics because there's nothing the Politburo likes more than a good party. I think that if the US government were to slap sanctions on China for this kind of conduct, you'd get a defiant nationalist backlash that would in all likelihood make things worse for the Tibetans. I also think that Carl is right that the trading links between China and the US are too well developed to permit any serious disruption over human rights issues, but if they start to feel an impact on their collective wallets and global image due to changes in consumer behavior and sentiments, they may eventually accept that it's in their interest to reform their conduct a bit.

Looks like the Independent's turned the link to premium content, but you can read the whole thing here: http://johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=1002

Good interview in The Independent. http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article1868548.ece Excerpts: "If tomorrow the Israel/Palestine issue was resolved to the total happiness of all parties, it would not diminish the amount of terrorism coming out of al-Qa'ida by one jot. It's not what they're after," he adds, his foot tapping against mine as he leans forward. "Yes, it's a recruiting tool, rhetorically. Many people see there's an injustice there, and it helps them to get people into the gang, but it's not what they want. What they want is to change the nature of human life on earth into the image of the Taliban. If you want the whole earth to look like Taliban Afghanistan, then you're on the same side as them. If you don't want that, you're not. They do not represent the quest for human justice. That, I think, is one of the great mistakes of the left." He senses soft racism in the refusal to see Islamic fundamentalists for what they are. When looking at the Christian fundamentalists of the United States, most people see an autonomous movement of superstitious madmen. But when they look at their Islamic equivalents, they assume they cannot mean what they say. "One of the things that's commonly said by Islamists is that it's acceptable to bomb a disco, because a disco is a place where people are behaving in a disgusting way. Go away and die - that's all bin Laden wants you to do. It's not just about Iraq, it's about ham sandwiches and kissing in public places and sex with girls you're not married to." He pauses. "It's about life." It horrifies Rushdie that so many people in his natural political home - the left - don't get it. They seem to imagine that when people call for a novelist to be beheaded for blasphemy, they are really calling for a return to the 1967 borders, or an independent Kashmir, or an end to the occupation of Iraq. As he says this, I blurt out a repellent question: was there a small part of him on September 11 that felt almost relieved - that thought: " Now they'll understand"? He pauses, a long pause, the only one in this interview. Have I offended him? But he answers with the same contemplative calm as before. "It wasn't, actually. What an awful thing to think. But... but I remember after 9/11 that a lot of people did finally get it, and I remember thinking - it's a shame that 3,000 people had to die for something pretty obvious to get through people's heads."

Somehow a few dozen million folks in his demographic category manage to work their way through financial hardships of this sort without volunteering for, so how anyone can invert this from a personal shortcoming to a blanket indictment of the entire country's social services is beyond me. The odds are pretty good that all of us will be laid low by circumstances that we could neither forsee nor control at some point in our lives, and we'll have to rely on something beyond ourselves - friends, family, the state, whatever - to help us make it though. There's no shame in accepting help when you need it, but there should be quite a bit of shame in refusing to do everything you can to get yourself out of the bind once you've accepted the assistance, or in taking more from your friends or family or society than you really need to get back on your feet. I can pretty much guarantee that if this guy had actually gone to see a social worker and explained his situations he would have probaby been put in touch with a number of agencies that would have been willing to help with housing, employment, etc and would have given the guy access to some of the tools he needed to help himself, but it doesn't seem as though that was his objective. The real shame here is that the money that's going to fund this guy's autoincarceration could have been spent on people who actually need it.

I don't think I'll ever take a guided climbing trip so take this for what it's worth, but unless you have a gross annual income of something north of $200K, the odds are pretty good that a guided trip will represent a significant expense that you worked long and hard to save up for, possibly for years. I am not sure what the financial situation of the average guided client looks like, and if everyone who takes guided trips is someone who won the stock-options lottery, or works as an investment banker, big-firm law partner, MD in a high-yielding specialty then the average guided client will probably shrug off an extra grand or two like nothing. However, if we're talking about an average guy/gal with a mortgage, tuition-bills, retirement savings, etc to worry about the odds are pretty good that how you handle getting them to chip in the extra 20% will matter quite a bit. I may not speak for everyone, but I'd much rather have all of this stuff explained and put in writing before the trip, so that I'd be aware of them and could work the cultural norms and financial outlays into my expectations and my budget ahead of time. I'd even go for working the guides personal tip/bonus into the contract price, with the expectation that I'd pay the guide an additional amount when the trip is over, unless I was unsatisfied with something and was willing to document what that something was. However, if I were a week into a trip and had someone casually tell me "by the way, you'll need to tip persons X, Y, Z, A,B, C, D, E, and then of course there's my 20%," that would not go over nearly as well. But maybe these precise tipping protocols are so well known that anyone who's pondering a guided climbing trip overseas already works them into the amount that they set aside for the trip.

I know that there's been quite a bit of a discussion on this and other message boards about some of the difficulties that come along with getting private life insurance if you are a climber. It seems to me that the odds of getting permanently disabled, or disabled to the extent that you can no longer continue working in your field or that your income takes a serious hit are at least as high as dying, and if you toss skiing, mountain biking, etc where you have lots of high-impact crashes then the disability-to-death ratio has got to be even higher. So - having said all of that - has anyone applied for private long-term disability insurance and had to contend with specific questions/objections concerning climbing or other risky hobbies? In the hubris of my relative youth I've been pretty complacent about covering these kinds of risks, despite always making sure that health/home/auto/short-term disability were covered. However, you don't have to dig too deeply into the bankruptcy literature to find out that a pretty siginificant portion of all bankruptcies come about as a result of expenses associated with disease or disability, and the stories about folks that were basically had everything in place except coverage for lost income and lost everything - house, life-savings, family falls apart - are pretty sobering. A few years ago someone pointed out that your most valuable asset isn't your home or your savings, but your ability to earn an income - so I hope to get this sorted out in the next few months and at least figure out what kind of coverage we've got currently and what might need some augmenting.

Well, I'd say that given the fact that several years worth of exposure to your position on bolting has done nothing to alter my opinions on bolts or ethics, nor anyone else's that I'm aware of, your estimation of the challenge that they've presented anyone's perspective may be a tad overstated. Since I'm dealing with the online persona that I don't particularly care for, and once again that entity is flinging a bit of shit my way despite having said some moderately complimentary things about the person associated with it, I guess I should feel free to respond by telling the online persona that I also find the contrast between the persona's rhetorical aggressiveness on the internet to be an amusing contrast with the characteristics of the said persona's real world build, and that the said contrast between the two just about always makes both the on and offline parts of my persona chuckle while recalling the figure that Dorothy et al uncovered at the conclusion of their wanderings about Oz.

Seems like hybrids would actually be a pretty well suited for the stop-and-go-and-idle driving that most taxis do, and idling in electric mode has got to be way more efficient/cleaner than keeping all cylinders going all of the time.