JayB

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.

Funny. I remember being at Spire Rock about 10 years ago, not too long after I picked up my first pair of shoes, and running into a guy that was cruising up and down the toughest sections of rock there while casually chatting with whomever happened to be hanging out at the base. The guy seemed pretty cool in person, and I remember asking this guy what he did for a living and hearing something about teaching and doing a bit of coaching on the side. A few years later, when someone told me that this guy was the source of an online persona that I'd taken a pretty strong dislike to, I couldn't believe that the two personalities belonged to the same person. I still get annoyed with the online persona from time to time, but would probably still be way more favorably disposed towards the real person if we ever ran into each other.

Argh. Another reason to lament the exile from Washington.

Many thanks, Murray. Could you sell those tickets too if you wanted to, or would that cause hard feelings with the folks that run the 7-11?

Hahaha. As little as possible, Murray's shop excepted.

Pretty humorous riff on the beer commericals:

Is the 7-11 in Squamish the best deal around for discount tickets? Anyone know if you can get multi-day tickets there. If all of the cards fall into place we'll be there in early April and will probably buy tickets for 7 days, so multiply whatever a daily ticket costs by 7 and then by two and it seems that even saving a few percent could make it worth scrounging around a bit for the best deals.

Watching it now... Hahahaha.

J. McKay, this one's for you..... http://www.thepoliticalpitbull.com/2006/10/video_south_park_slams_911_tru_1.php

"Schoolgirl arrested for refusing to study with non-English pupils" Link I'm not familiar with laws governing speech/action in England. Is the "section five racial public order offence" referenced in this article something new? Or has this been the law of the land in England for years. I can vaguely recall an article about a guy in England getting arrested and being charged with a hate crime for telling a policeman that his (the policeman's) horse was gay, but I've never heard of anything like a "racial public order offense" before. Quite odd that they feel they're in a position to chide us about the erosion of our liberties, unless they're offering their experience as a cautionary tale.

I think you'd have to take the matter up with the offending parties later, and keep your head together on the route and either bail or just live with it/make the best of it if no amount of verbal persuasion, nice or otherwise kept them off of your gear. Seems like a mid-route fist fight would have a higher potential to result in a fatality than gear that's been messed with - especially if you are on the losing end of the altercation. I heard rumors of some swinging ice axes at the base of an ice climb outside of boulder, and some cases of someone lowering off or rapping down and brawling, but never of two folks that are tied in brawling mid-route. If the story about the guys brandishing the ice axes is true, they must not have been too serious about using them as it's hard to see how an ice-tool fight could get very far along without things getting fatal for one of the participants.

Most alternative energies start to look like this when you really pencil out all of the imputs/outputs, which is why they remain "alternative." The odds are quite high that if there were real profits (outputs>inputs) to be made with any of these things that energy companies would have figured this out a while ago, as would consumers. You can argue that settling for higher overall costs and lower efficiencies are worth it as they'll contribute to genuine improvements in efficiency/conservation once they evolve beyond the first couple of iterations, but everyone who wants to see such improvements should be honest about the current status of each alternative and their true limitations. Inflated expectations based on incomplete or incorrect information can be more damaging to new technologies over the long run than an honest reckoning of their limitations. Ethanol from corn starts to look especially bad when you take a hard look at the inputs and outputs, and quite a bit worse when you look at the environmental effects of expanded corn cultivation, and then there's the many negative effects of expanded subsidies to consider as well.

I guess it depends on what you consider bike commuting. If you are riding too and from work everyday, all year long, the odds are pretty good that it'll cost more than you think, and you'll spend a bit more than you planned on things that might seem necessary. If you carry anything that needs to stay dry to and from work, the odds are good that you'll want to pick up a truly waterproof bag of some sort. The trash bag thing is okay for the odd trip in the rain, but if you are riding in bad weather consistently you're probably going to want to opt out of the hefty-bag-and-backpack cluster and get something that you can just toss your stuff in and go. For the sake of efficiency and safety, you'll probably eventually go clipless. Even if you go cheap you'll be spending at least $100 on the pedals and the shoes. If you ride much at night, you'll probably be investing in some lights. If you are out there every day, the odds are also pretty good that you'll be spending more on maintenance and repairs than you expected as well. I think I spent at least $60 on break pads alone last year, and way more replacing rims, cranks, sprockets, chains, cables, etc. Then the money I spent on tools to do most of the maintenance on my own. Studded tires for the winter, etc. The point is not necessarily that commuting by bike is expensive relative to driving your car in, but that the odds are good that if you make a lifestyle out of it, you'll spend more than you expected to. Pretty much everyone I know that's done it every-day for at least a year has said the same thing. There's also the fact that aside from cutting down on your gas money, most people keep their cars and still fork over a significant portion of the fixed costs of owning a car every month. That's a choice, but it's a choice that most people that commute by bike make, so the average savings that they realize aren't as great. I still think that compared to buying a bus pass and hopping on a bus everyday, that I'd be just about even in terms of expenses.

I am with you there Dinomyte. However, If I had to pick a couple of guys from the board who seem to at least walk the walk in such a way that their lifestyles and politics/rhetoric are in synch, it'd be Jim and Dave Shuldt. There are some things that we'll never agree on, and could probably argue about until the end of time, but those guys get some points for commuting by bike year round, and putting some money/time where their mouth is by investing time and money into causes that they support.

While I'm certainly in no position to claim to dismiss Greenspan, it's worth noting that there are plenty of other economic heavyweights out there like Volcker, Krugman, Roubini, etc, etc who would probably take issue with that position, and if you read the NAHB reports, you could be forgiven for not including them in the list of those who agree with that assessment either. Their stocks did enjoy a bit of an uptick recently, but from what I read in the journal that was largely due to some large institutional value-players taking a position once HB stocks declined to somewhere just north of book value, at which point the long-term downside risk must start to look pretty limited. Yesterday's journal also had a full-back page spread highlighting some fundamental metrics, none of which looked especially good at the moment, and all of which are trending downwards. Add in some long overdue regulatory tightening with respect to no-doc/stated-income/neg-am/option/arm and combine that with both negative real-income growth, the 1-2 trillion in ARM resets that'll hit in '07, rent-vs-PITI ratios that are off the charts, the record number of homes in the hand s of non-occupant owners, significant increases in short-salea nd foreclosure activity, and most significantly - the clear change in market psychology that's been manifesting itself over the past several months - and it's hard to argue that we'll be looking at anything reversion-to-mean (RE appreciation fractionally higher than inflation)for this asset class in the long term, and a continued adjustment in the short term. My prediction for King County in general is a continued seasonally adjusted growth in inventory, more days on the market, and fractionally higher YOY median sales prices throughout the winter and early spring, followed by flat YOY prices throughout the late-spring early-summer, until mid-August or thereabouts when the combination of rising inventory and a still-slower sales pace finally starts forcing the fraction of the market who need to sell their homes to capitulate and start pricing the homes to move by late-summer/early-fall next year, and which should be followed by steady declines in real home prices through 2010. This process should be most dramatic on the outskirts of commuterland and in the condo market, and lessening in severity as you get closer to the city. Places with lots of buildable land that are well away from employment centers - like Bellingham - are going to get a mercilless pounding that should be both more severe and protracted than anything that happens in KingCo. One new variable that'll get tossed into the equation is that now there's way, way more information available to the consumer, and anyone can get the previous sales price and current loan terms for any property that they're interested in with a few mouse clicks, and instantly compare that with as many other listings as they choose. I don't think these things are terribly important in the midst of a mania in which people routinely wave inspections , etc - but in a more normal market I suspect there's going to be a bit of psychological resistance to personally financing someone's unearned windfall, and it'll also be quite a bit easier to see if the seller's likely to be willing to negotiate on price because of his financial condition. There's already people out there who have refused to rent homes after they've looked into the landlord's finances/loan-terms and have discovered that there's a high probability that they'll lose the house to foreclosure. None of this is terribly important if you're an existing homeowner with a mortgage that you can handle under all but the most dire circumstances, or if you are intent on buying in such a manner that this will describe your situation - but buyers planning on stretching themselves to the max and/or using an exotic loan, or anyone looking to make a quick buck should tread carefully for a while.

Not to mention the fact that I think that there's quite a few heavy hitters that would probably be willing to contribute to the efforts to preserve the rock. Krakauer, Hornbein, and probably quite a few other folks with names that the general public would recognize have probably logged some time there, and might be willing to join an effort to preserve it if it's actually threatened by this proposed plan. I can't see why they couldn't, at the very least, build over it - although that would pretty dramatically degrade the climbing experience there. I'd much rather have it moved than have it coated with the patina of particulate grime that invariably coats all concrete structures close to highways.

Here's another one for the "Yea - they, like, hate our freedom- tee hee hee." Files. "Meanwhile in France, a philosophy teacher is under police protection after receiving death threats over an op-ed article [French text here] which he wrote in a national newspaper. In the article, which was published in the conservative daily Le Figaro of September 19th, Robert Redeker accused Islam of "exalting violence." Mr Redeker has not attended classes at his school near Toulouse since the article was published. Pierre Rousselin, the editor in chief of Le Figaro, apologized on Al-jazeera for the publication of the article. A number of Islamic countries, including Egypt, banned Le Figaro following the publication of Redeker's piece. Mr Rousselin said the publication of the op-ed was a mistake. He said the article did not express the paper's opinion. The article is no longer available on the Figaro website. Mr Redeker has written a letter to his friend, the philosopher André Glucksmann, describing his ordeal [French text here]: "I am now in a catastrophic personal situation. Several death threats have been sent to me, and I have been sentenced to death by organizations of the al-Qaeda movement. [...] On the websites condemning me to death there is a map showing how to get to my house to kill me, they have my photo, the places where I work, the telephone numbers, and the death fatwa. [...] There is no safe place for me, I have to beg, two evenings here, two evenings there. [...] I am under the constant protection of the police. I must cancel all scheduled conferences. And the authorities urge me to keep moving. [...] All costs are at my own expense, including those of rents a month or two ahead, the costs of moving twice, legal expenses, etc. It's quite sad. I exercised my constitutional rights, and I am punished for it, even in the territory of the Republic. This affair is also an attack against national sovereignty ­ foreign rules, decided by criminally minded fanatics, punish me for having exercised a constitutional right, and I am subjected, even in France, to great injury." "

Why should there be one? The terrorists of today are far better armed, educated, trained and unified than soldiers were at the first geneva convention, or even compared to sections of the North Korean or Chinese militaries. I'd argue that it's possible to make moral distinctions between two individuals who are equally well armed according to the manner in which they use their weapons, the ends for which they - and by extension the entity that they represent - are using them to advance.