JayB

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.

I partially agree. But once that distinction is made it should not follow that there is no rule of law. There are quite a few stories of people caught up in this web who were innocent, dragged out of line at JFK (for instance) and eventually sent to Jordan and such to get beaten and tortured - all four naught. They were innocent and were released. The rule of law is there to protect all, innocent and guilty. To make sure there is due process. If they are guilty and we can prove it - lock 'em up and throw away the key. If you can't prove it what then? Keep them locked up anyway, just in case? That is not what our country (supposedly) stands for. I am in total agreement with you here, Jim. I just think that we'd be better off if we initiated a new international treaty that specifies how to treat and try terrorist suspects. As things are now, I think that using the Geneva Conventions as the immutable standard for detaining and trying terrorist suspects is like applying the rules for civil aviation to aerial combat, and we'd be less likely to see renditions, etc if there was some kind of standard in place that addressed some of the aspects that make terrorism different from interstate warfare. As things stand now, I'd rather have the US follow the Geneva Conventions because I think that the strategic losses that not being seen to do so are more costly than the benefits we're likely to gain from the intelligence that we get. However, I would like to see us at least press the case with the Euros and others and get them to spell out exactly how they intend to apply the conventions to terrorist suspects, so that they have to abide by the same principles that they're asking the US to apply.

I'm not saying anything about innocence or guilt, actually. Just arguing for a set of standards that distinguishes soldiers from terrorists. I could care less if they get trials that make the Milosevic trial look like a model of brevity, so long as there's some recognition that there's a moral distinction to be made between the average private in an interstate conflict, and Mohammad Atta et al. Applying the Geneva convention to members of Al-Queda or their jihadi counterparts seems to repudiate the notion that such a distinction exists. Damn, you just don't get it, man. Everyone should have the same standard of justice applied to them. EVERYONE. I'm not sure I'm the one who's not getting it, actually. We don't use the Geneva conventions to try people who are guilty of shoplifting or failing to use their turn signals, and soldiers tried for war crimes are subject to the UCMJ rather than, say, civil law. Just because you have different set of legal principles that you apply to massively different offenses in completely different contexts doesn't mean that you are betraying all of your legal traditions, so long as you apply the same rules to any individual who is in a situation where the pertinent legal standards apply. If anything - setting a single internationally recognized standard for the treatment of terrorist suspects would probably improve the odds of their getting treated in a manner that the grand vaporosity known as the "international community" recognizes as humane and just.

I hear the snarky "They hate freedom, tee hee." kind of thing all of the time, and I'd agree that the argument that terrorists hate some kind of grand nebulosity known as "freedom" is neither serious nor accurate. However, if you take the time to read through some of the rhetoric that issues forth form Islamic extremists, I think that you could make the argument that they do seem to harbor a considerable amount of hostility towards the kind of society that results when people are free to dress how they want, drink what they want, sleep with who they want, and think what they want in an environment that's free from religious compulsion in general, and the sort that results from a rigid enforcement of Sharia law in particular.

I'm not saying anything about innocence or guilt, actually. Just arguing for a set of standards that distinguishes soldiers from terrorists. I could care less if they get trials that make the Milosevic trial look like a model of brevity, so long as there's some recognition that there's a moral distinction to be made between the average private in an interstate conflict, and Mohammad Atta et al. Applying the Geneva convention to members of Al-Queda or their jihadi counterparts seems to repudiate the notion that such a distinction exists.

...and the rest of the world, seeing our self-imposed lack of liberty, will like us. Looks like the Euros are way ahead of us on this one. "Opera Canceled Over a Depiction of Muhammad BERLIN, Sept. 26 — A leading German opera house has canceled performances of a Mozart opera because of security fears stirred by a scene that depicts the severed head of the Prophet Muhammad, prompting a storm of protest here about what many see as the surrender of artistic freedom." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/27/world/...&ei=5087%0A Maybe next, virtually every newspaper in the western world will refuse to publish some editorial cartoons which are mildly critical of Islam.

So I found a copy of what I think is the most recent update of the bill here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.+6054: I have limited time today, so can somone post a link to a source that pinpoints the pertinent section of the bill? If the arguments have merit, then I'll contact any representatives that may have voted for the bill, but considering the fact that I'm currently represented by John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, I hardly think it'll be necessary to get in touch with the folks in that branch of Congress. Folks like Padilla and the lad from Marin County who engaged in a voyage of self discovery and spiritual growth by joining Islamic millitants are pretty well covered by existing law concerning treason, so I don't see any need to change the law concerning the manner in which US citizens that voluntarily take up arms against their country are treated. Having said that, I think that the odds are pretty good that from this point forward, the number of conflicts we're in that involve non-state actors who have no formal affiliation with or obedience to a millitary operated by a nation state warrants a bit of serious thinking about how well the Geneva conventions apply to the type of people that we're likely to be apprehending in the future. Maybe they're appropriate, maybe they're not, but I haven't heard or seen much in the way of folks asking whether or not their isn't something fundamentally different about a uniformed soldier acting at the behest of his government, and the likes of Osama, Richard Reid, etc. My main reservation about the application of the Geneva Conventions to the likes of Osama is that by extending conventions which were primarily intended to govern the treatment of soldiers acting in a conflict between states, we've announced that we consider both the conflicts and the participants to be morally equivalent. I think if the world were serious about this issue, there'd be an effort to define a set of standards for the treatment of terrorist suspects that everyone could agree upon. I could care less if these standards guarantee terrorist suspects weekly massage treatments and a suite at the Hilton with pay-per-view footage of beheadings, car-bombings, and the occaisional stoning of a pregnant adultress to keep their morale up, so long as there was some formal recognition of the distinction between them and say, you're average Canadian private serving in Afghanistan.

Sorry for the hack edit job here but - it's painful enough to lose someone close to you to old age or disease, so I can hardly imagine how distressing it is to lose someone to an accident like this. When there's a local accident like this, we might all do well think about how we'd express ourselves if the deceased's family were in a room with us. If you wouldn't say something in their presence, maybe think twice about posting it on a thread that gives notice of the the accident and/or their death.

This is true, but it's all about how precisely defined the restrictions are, and how much leeway the government has when interpreting these laws. There are restrictions on speech everywhere, yes, but it's quite ironic to hear folks from Canada decrying the creeping fascism and complacency south of the border, when Canadian population currently lives with a set of statutes restricting both speech and expression that's considerably more onerous than anything than citizens of the US have to contend with. This is especially humorous when you consider the likes of our resident wingnut/mountainguide, who, in addition to lacking the critical faculties necessary to asses the validity of the claims put forth in "Loose Change," is fretting about the prospect of the US invading Canada to get our hands on it's resources. Aside from the fact that Canada can't seem to turn over it's resources to us fast enough, with no more coercion necessary than paying the market price, its seems clear that on balance the scope and range of the political liberties enjoyed by the average Canadian citizen would only increase as a result of such an invasion. Look out, we're coming to take your "Hate Speech," and sedition laws off of the books. Better arm yourselves, oh wait....