JayB

True - and rhetoric was a major part of the trivium/quadrivium (1/7th) model that served as the basis for a signicant chunk of most university graduates until until at least the turn of the century, so the oldschoolers probably had an edge in that respect as well. It'd be kind of interesting to know which of the major figures of the founding era was considered the worst public speaker. My money would be on Washington, as his character, bearing, ability to inspire loyalty, etc seemed to be much more widely esteemed than his rhetorical talents. Patrick Henry and John Adams probably ranked up there with the best, but I suspect the top ranks were pretty crowded at the time.

It'd be really interesting to compare quotes from people who were considered the finest public speakers of their day, and contrast them to the politicians who are the rhetorical standard bearers these days. Ditto for matching up the worst of yesteryear with the worst of today.

"Inside Chiropractic" might make for some interesting reading for you if you haven't already taken a look at it. "Inside Chiropractic: A Patient's Guide Samuel Homola, D.C. (1999) Chiropractic, which celebrated its centennial in 1995, is a curious mixture of science and pseudoscience, sense and nonsense. Much of it is based on the theory that misaligned spinal bones produce nerve interference that causes disease. Many chiropractors claim that correcting these misalignments ("subluxations") can restore health and that regular spinal adjustments are essential to maintain it. Neither logic nor scientific evidence supports such a belief. Although spinal manipulation can relieve certain types of back pain, neck pain, and other musculoskeletal symptoms, there is no scientific evidence that it can restore or maintain health. As a result of expressing my opinion on this subject, I have been called a chiropractic heretic. The chiropractic profession has little tolerance for dissension. Its nonsense remains unchallenged by its leaders and has not been denounced in its journals. In fact, many chiropractic journals continue to publish articles that attempt to justify subluxation theory. Although progress has been made, the profession still has one foot lightly planted in science and the other firmly rooted in cultism. Without appropriate criticism, the good in chiropractic will never be sifted out, and competent chiropractors will not receive the recognition they deserve. This book denounces the cultism in chiropractic but supports the appropriate use of spinal manipulation and the research efforts required to solidify its scientific basis. If you are contemplating or receiving chiropractic care, it might help protect both your pocketbook and your health. Contents Chapter 1 My Personal Story Chapter 2 From Bonesetting to "The Big Idea" Chapter 3 From Cult to Profession Chapter 4 The "Subluxation" Issue Chapter 5 How Good Is Chiropractic Education? Chapter 6 The ABCs of Back Pain Chapter 7 Neck and Head Problems Chapter 8 Questionable Marketing Strategies Chapter 9 Nutrition Nonsense Chapter 10 Gadgets and Gimmicks Chapter 11 A Surfeit of Techniques Chapter 12 Homeopathy, Chinese Medicine, and Herbs Chapter 13 What a Rational Chiropractor Can Do for You Chapter 14 Chiropractic Responses to My Criticisms Chapter 15 Is Reform Likely? "

I think it'd be immensely helpful for people like you to give what you do a new name, as there seem to be two types of chiropractors. The subluxation folks, and people who want to practice a more hands-on style of scientific medicine than M.D.'s do. Since you're a smart guy who falls into the latter category, I'd think that your main beef should be with the chiro's who are members of the Cult of Subluxation, and who fail to limit their practice to treating musculoskeletal pain. As long as you work under the same banner as these guys, the Chiropractor = Quack equation is going to plague your existence.

Just heard that Landis' B-Sample also failed today....

I'll have to let other folks chime in with regards to the enchantments, but since it sounds like you're pretty familiar with the fishing in the Whites - do you have any suggestions for late-summer/fall flyfishing up there? I'll probably be spending a fair amount of time up there once the heat/humidity/bugs start to fade away a bit. Many thanks.

Looks like you're tossing in a grab for style on the crevasse hop. Ultimate alpine-jib steeze would require using the RMI ladders to rail-slide over crevasses.

Bringing up some very painful memories...damped spring-mass systems....taylor series solutions to higher order diff. eq's....the trauma is slowly fading with time.

I've heard that there are some cool lowland hikes through the river valleys there with amazing trees. Hiking through the woods and hitting a swimming hole sounds like a pretty nice day to me.

"Not Fair?! Who's the Nihilist here?!"

You can judge things pretty well by the season most of the time. In May/June and maybe into early July, the odds are good that you'll run into steep snow with a kickable surface most of the time, and most of the time a piolet will suffice for most parties. From Mid-July through mid-to-late August the step-kicking conditions will be pretty much gone - at least during the hours when you are heading up - and you should expect icy conditions on the steep stuff. Any later than that the odds are good that you'll run into hard/blackish ice. For most parties, most of the time, 2-3 ice screws, along with a piolet and a second tool for the leader will cover just about all of the conditions that you'd encounter. More experience people can probably get away with less, less experienced people may want more - but to me this seems like a reasonable setup that's somewhere between lugging along the kitchen sink and finding yourself caught up there with your pants down.

"The crux, isn't it? Well for one I think they (and the US) need a more comprehensive strategy than bomb the crap out of them. Strangling the Palestian state has not worked so let try this: Stop making a land grab with the wall building, get rid of the strategy of cutting up Palestine into cookie cutter pieces with no hope of a functioning state, stop ripping up water projects and other infrastructure put in for the Palestinans by NGOs, foster a moderate government in Lebanon and Palestine through negoiation and less strong arm tactics. Get the land swap deal done already and stop dragging your feet. Stop demolishing houses for a buffer zone around the wall, discard the idea of collective punishment. That's a start at the root problems. If the US pulled the plug on the $4 Billion plus we give to Isarel each year I think we would see negoiations ramp up real quick." These are all good ideas that would definitely help things out quite a bit, but I think that the only way that Israel would go along is if someone they trusted were tasked with insuring that all of these things - like open borders and free commerce - would not result in a weaponry-import free for all. It'd be immensely helpful if some Arab country would step up and take this job, but I don't know of any that could muster the domestic support that they'd need to do so. Maybe if they sold it as protecting the Palestinians instead of putting the corrupt death-cult in check, they could pull it off.

There's a pretty good article in The Economist this week that looks at the role that the Suez crisis had in the evolution of the Middle East into the current mega-cluster. I don't think that the crisis itself was as significant as the article suggests, but it's an interesting piece nonetheless. I think that the best idea I heard of for dealing with the spiraling deathcluster over there came from...Jon Stewart. Declare the boundaries between Israel and Palestine and enforce them with a multinational force capable of holding the line, use our significant leverage with Israel to get acquiescence on their part, and declare Jerusalem an international city that's not owned or controlled by the Israelis or the Palestinians. Toss in a peacekeeping force with real teeth in Southern Lebanon and build up the Lebanese state so that it can actually control what happens within its borders, and call it good. This situation seems like an ideal time for all of the Euros to demonstrate their military capabilities and restore their standing and influence in the region. The French Army in particular seems like it would make a good choice for enforcing the cease fire in Lebanon.

Localisms been on the decline in CA for 10+ years. Aside from a few topoftheline breaks it's more unfriendliness than thuggishness. Yes, you'll still get the stinkeye in Hawaii (maybe more if you are stupid) - but thats what happens to haoles, you'll get it at the bar too. I do most of my surfing down the street from me now, it's a mediocre wave, but it's just me and my neighbors - a big days 5-6 people out. Even the 'big' breaks in town aren't as thuggish and unfriendly as a big ski resort like Mammoth - ski areas are the new frontier of localism What situations do you run into that? Is it the entire mountain/town that they've claimed as their own, or is it just a stash/run/etc? The only time I've ever run into anything like that is people just generally being inconsiderate and/or stupid in parks, snaking past the crowd at the line-up, cutting someone off on the inrun, not waiting to see if the landing is clear -etc - but that seems to have more to do with general lameness and the fact that the demographics aren't exactly conducive to civility.

If you liked that book "The Road to Hell" by Michael Maren might be another that you'd like, but I'd give yourself a breather and read something cheerful and uplifting before you start up. "I am Writing to Inform You that Tomorrow We Shall Be Killed Along with Our Families" was another one, but the same pre-read happiness infusion is a good idea here as well. I'm reading "War Before Civilization" by Lawrence Keeley at the moment, which is kind of uplifting in that despite perceptions to the contrary, for the average person, the world is probably a considerably less violent and terrifying place than it used to be.

Surfing as a physical activity is pretty cool. Too bad about the rest of the sport. The thuggish localism is a major drag, but given the excess of participants relative to the number of easily accessible breaks, perhaps it's inevitable. The attitude amongst surfers has got to be the worst of any that I've ever enountered - even to each other, let alone anyone else who's out in the waves. Kayakers as a group seem to be the coolest to each other by far, and climbing usually falls somewhere in the middle.

Great pics. What software did you use?

Some secondhand Koflach Degre's would probably be perfect for Rainier, and if you are in Colorado, it might be worth checking with Bent Gate Mountaineering or Neptune Mountaineering to see what they have in stock. If you don't already have it, a familiarity with glacier travel/crevasse that'd also be something worth picking up before the trip.

Quite the dramatic retreat of the Whitechuck Glacier in the second link.

"In Yugoslavia during the German occupation Yugoslavian partisans (hiding behind the people) would sometimes kill a German soldier or sympathizer or two. The SS would respond with rounding up 10 times that many civilians and executing them. This 10:1 ratio was, I believe, determined afterward to be a war crime. So far 600:18 that's 33 times retaliation. If that's OK, what would NOT be OK? 100 times? 1000 times? Would Israel be excused if they killed 1 million because "if they really wanted to" they could kill 5 million?" Do you really think that the situations are analogous? To my way of thinking, a more apt analogy would be an army that's shooting at other soldiers in an urban setting and inadvertently hits civilians while doing so, versus soldiers who enter a city with the intention of killing as many civilians as possible, but can't seem to off many despite their best efforts. But whatever. If numerical equivlance = moral equivlance for you, that's fine. I'm just providing a contrary opinion.

To me the balance of the criticism seemed to be falling on Israel, despite the clear distinctions between intentional versus incidental civilian casualties, hiding behind civilians, etc. Your perception is clearly different. Thanks for the rolleyes, though. It's been a while. Not quite the rolleye/"strawman!" combo that I've become accustomed to, but a nice thought nonetheless.

If this arithmatic were the result of Hezbollah's moral restraint, then the respective casualties would mean something. Given that the only reason that Israeli casualties are that low because Israel is prepared for such attacks, and Hezbollah's weaponry is less effective at killing civilians than they'd like, we are once again confusing things which are physically equivalent with those that are morally equivalent. By that logic if the Germans had succeeded in killing only a fraction of the number of German civilians that England had succeded in killing , despite the Germans's best efforts to kill many more, the German's would have been the morally superior actor in that conflict. I don't know about that... the 18->600 strikes me as a disproportionate retaliation, which really has no parallel to WWII. A more apt parallel would be WWI where the assassination of one man escalated into the deaths of millions. I still don't think that you can use the number of civilian deaths as the sole standard by which to determine who has the higher ground. The ratio in this case is solely the result of Hizbollah's inability to kill more civilians, rather than any moral restraint on their part. There's a massive difference between a force which uses all means at its disposal to kill as many civilians as possible, and a force which uses a fraction of it's destructive power and takes measures to limit civilian casualties. I think it's also important to consider the ends for which the two sides are fighting when assesing who's got the higher ground. Even when both actors have taken the gloves off completely, and the civilian casualties are equal on both sides, it's still possible to distinguish between the two sides by their motivations for participating in the conflict and by considering what they'd do if they won.

All indications are that Hezbollah was expecting a rather different response than it got, so I wouldn't give them too much credit for foresight here. However, once things got started, I think you are correct that they realized that they had Israel in a catch-22, and have seized the opportunity that Isreal's actions have provided them. I'd agree that Israel might have been much better off by letting the original offense go unpunished and turning their restraint to their advantage.

Tale of the tape: Lebanon civilian casualties : over 600 Israeli civilian casualties from the "massive" rocket attacks: 18 I'd say the response is over the top. If this arithmatic were the result of Hezbollah's moral restraint, then the respective casualties would mean something. Given that the only reason that Israeli casualties are that low because Israel is prepared for such attacks, and Hezbollah's weaponry is less effective at killing civilians than they'd like, we are once again confusing things which are physically equivalent with those that are morally equivalent. By that logic if the Germans had succeeded in killing only a fraction of the number of German civilians that England had succeded in killing , despite the Germans's best efforts to kill many more, the German's would have been the morally superior actor in that conflict.

And if that was their goal, who limit themselves to an artillery shell or two? It'd be interesting to see the analysis in which Israel concludes that it can advance it's interests by deliberately invoking condemnation and outrage through intentionally killing civilians. I feel like I must be missing something here. Israel has the capacity to kill every last civilian in Lebanon in short order if it chooses to, but only uses a fraction of it's millitary power, and takes as many precautions as is reasonably possible to avoid killing civilians, while Hezbollah holds nothing back and unleashes every bit of its arsenal while trying to kill as many civilians as possible, and use the civilian population as shields - but Israel is the actor singled out for condemnation? Having said all of that, even if they were equally bad, I'd take Israel's side for strategic reasons alone, so I'm hardly an impartial observer on this one.