JayB

If you can Troll the conscience of the Great White North with the guy he's okay by me. Actually I think I discovered the guy through the Wall Street Journal's editorial page quite a while ago, but it appears he's permeating the anglosphere these days. And now Mac...gasp! hahahaha It will probably come as no surprise that I thought the piece was both dead-on and hillarious, as is the case for most of his stuff that I run across. Read More: www.steynonline.com

Hozomeen via Ross Lake?

Yeah but McClean's... I mean, Soldier-of-Fortune, Guns&Ammo, The John Birch Society Newsletter or whatever fine, but McClean's?????????? Hahahahaha..... I am duly noting the absence of ironic/irreverent detachment as evidence of a successful troll.

And this guy writes for "McClanes." McClanes! The official mouthpiece of the bland-center-left-let's-not-rock-the-boat-after-all-this-is-Canada-eh consensus. The horror. The horror. Hahahahah.... QUEBEC--Remember the conventional wisdom of 2004? Back then, you'll recall, it was the many members of George Bush's "unilateral" coalition who were supposed to be in trouble, not least the three doughty warriors of the Anglosphere--the president, Tony Blair and John Howard--who would all be paying a terrible electoral price for lying their way into war in Iraq. The Democrats' position was that Mr. Bush's rinky-dink nickel-and-dime allies didn't count: The president has "alienated almost everyone," said Jimmy Carter, "and now we have just a handful of little tiny countries supposedly helping us in Iraq." (That would be Britain, Australia, Poland, Japan . . .) Instead of those nobodies, John Kerry pledged that, under his leadership, "America will rejoin the community of nations"--by which he meant Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder, the Belgian guy . . . Two years on, Messrs. Bush, Blair, Howard and Koizumi are all re-elected, while Mr. Chirac is the lamest of lame ducks, and his ingrate citizenry has tossed out his big legacy, the European Constitution; Mr. Schroeder's government was defeated and he's now shilling for Russia's state-owned Gazprom ("It's all about Gaz!"); and the latest member of the coalition of the unwilling to hit the skids is Canada's Liberal Party, which fell from office on Monday. John Kerry may have wanted to "rejoin the community of nations." Instead, "the community of nations" has joined John Kerry, windsurfing off Nantucket in electric-yellow buttock-hugging Lycra, or whatever he's doing these days. It would be a stretch to argue that Mr. Chirac, Mr. Schroeder and now Paul Martin in Ottawa ran into trouble because of their anti-Americanism. Au contraire, cheap demonization of the Great Satan is almost as popular in the streets of Toronto as in the streets of Islamabad. But these days anti-Americanism is the first refuge of the scoundrel, and it's usually a reliable indicator that you're not up to the challenges of the modern world or of your own country. In the final two weeks of the Canadian election, Mr. Martin's Liberals unleashed a barrage of anti-Conservative attack ads whose ferocity was matched only by their stupidity: They warned that Stephen Harper, the Conservatives' leader, would be "George Bush's new best friend"! They dug up damaging quotes from a shocking 1997 speech in which he'd praised America as "a light and inspiration"! Another week and they'd have had pictures from that summer in the late '80s he spent as Dick Cheney's pool boy. Mr. Harper, the incoming prime minister, will not be "George Bush's new best friend"--that's a more competitive field than John Kerry and Jimmy Carter think. But at the very least a Harper government won't rely on reflexive anti-Americanism as the defining element of Canadian identity. No cheery right-wingers south of the border should exaggerate what happened on Monday. It was an act of political hygiene: The Liberal Party was mired in a swamp of scandals, the most surreal of which was a racket to shore up the antiseparatist cause in Quebec by handing out millions of free Canadian flags, a project which so overburdened the domestic flag industry the project had to be outsourced to overseas companies, who at a cost of $45 each sent back a gazillion flags that can't fly. That's to say, they had no eyelets, no sleeve, no halyard line for your rope and toggle and whatnot. You have to lean a ladder up against the pole and nail it into position, which on a January morning at Lac St-Jean hardly seems likely to endear nationalist Quebecers to the virtues of the Canadian state. Millions of dollars were transferred to "advertising agencies" and "consultancies" run by the party's pals and in return they came up with a quintessentially Liberal wheeze: Even if you wanted to salute it, you can't run it up the flagpole. As a forlorn emblem of Trudeaupian nationalism, that's hard to beat. And yet and yet . . . in throwing the bums out, Canadian voters declined to subject them to full-scale humiliation. Even with viable alternatives for all tastes--conservative, socialist and Quebec separatist--it seems one can never underestimate the appeal of a party of floundering discredited kleptocrat incompetents led by a vindictive empty suit who fought one of the most inept campaigns in modern political history. They clung on to over 100 seats and the votes of Canada's three biggest cities. Truly, the Liberals are one of the most amazingly resilient parties this side of Kim Jong-Il's. Stephen Harper has to live with that political reality, but, as he's done with his party, he'll move the country incrementally. On the environment, his views are compatible with Mr. Bush, John Howard and now Tony Blair: That's to say, if "climate change" is a problem, Kyoto's not the answer to it. On missile defense, the Conservatives will string along with Washington because it's the easy option and we'll be covered by it anyway: Even Canadians aren't prepared to argue that if there's something headed toward Winnipeg or Montreal, we'd rather the Americans minded their own bloody business and didn't tell us about it. But it's a good gauge of the deterioration in U.S.-Canadian relations that a quintessential piece of postmodern, humbug multilateralism--an issue that required Canada to be minimally supportive without being helpful, at no political cost and in return for some lucrative contracts for northern defense contractors--was whooped up by the Liberals into a big scare about Washington's plans for the "weaponization of space." On missile defense, Mr. Harper will be more down to earth in every sense. But will there be Canadian troops in Iraq or wherever's next? No, not in any meaningful sense. The sad fact is, even if we'd wanted to liberate Baghdad, we have an emaciated military worn to the bone. But it goes beyond the lack of equipment and lack of transport that now afflict what was, 60 years ago, the world's fourth largest military. In April 2002, the Pentagon wished to confer the Bronze Star on five snipers from the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry in Afghanistan for their service in . . . killing the enemy. Ottawa put the request on hold, relenting grudgingly only after the matter was made public. It seems the Canadian government's main objection was a reluctance to let it be known that our military still, er, shoots people, and extremely accurately. The backs of our five-dollar bills celebrate the armed forces, but they're all unarmed--peacekeepers, elderly veterans, etc. Like much of the European Union, we're so heavily invested in the idea that we've found a kinder, gentler way we can scarcely bear to contemplate the reality. At the Washington state/British Columbia border last week, two guys on the lam were hightailing it through Blaine heading for the 49th parallel with the cops in hot pursuit. Alerted to what was coming their way, Canada's (unarmed) border guards walked off the job. For a country whose national anthem lyrics are mostly endless reprises of the line "we stand on guard for thee," we could at least stand on guard. A few years back, I was chatting with a border guard at the Derby Line, Vt./Rock Island, Quebec, crossing. A beat-up sedan came hurtling northward and we jumped out of the way. She sounded a klaxon. By then the driver was halfway up the Trans-Quebecoise autoroute and, if he ever heard her stern warning, he declined to brake and reverse back to the post to show his papers. "Oh, well," she said to me, "it's probably nothing." Canadians have been reluctant in the last four years to accept that we no longer live in an "it's probably nothing" world. Many Continentals feel the same way. Unlike his hollow predecessor, Stephen Harper is a thoughtful man who understands the gulf between self-mythologizing and the harder realities. You can't change a free country unless you persuade free people to change their minds, and he will at least start that tough job. He doesn't have to be George Bush's best friend, and he may even be more effective at opposing him on trade and agriculture disputes. But he could try being Tony Blair's and John Howard's best friend and reconnecting us with other traditional pals from whom Canada's become increasingly estranged. He could honor our small but brave contribution to Afghanistan by flying out and meeting them on the ground. But even if he does nothing else, he'll bring to an end a decade of self-defeating sneering. The ayatollahs at least flatter America as a seducer--the Great Satan--which is a more accurate and sophisticated construct than deriding her as the Great Moron. The difference between sniping at the Taliban and sniping at Washington is that in the latter case we're firing blanks. Mr. Steyn is a columnist for Canada's Western Standard and Maclean's magazine, as well as for National Review and the Atlantic Monthly.

I had an injury that sounds like it was pretty similar to yours (MCL tear, etc) a few years ago and experienced atrophy of a similar caliber. I can't recall the precise nature of the rehab I did, but I think it went something like: Range-of-motion stuff ---> 1 leg-workouts on the stationary cycle ---> weightless/extremely low-weight deadlifts, squats, straight-leg deadlifts, and lunges and gradually bumped up the weight and intensity over the course of a couple of months. By that point, when combined with lots and lots of snowboarding in a knee-brace (never really wanted to snowboard but since skiing was out for the season, at least, and I had a season pass, I figured I'd give it a shot) I couldn't see any difference between my two legs, nor could I really feel any, but I'm sure that it was there. I was still aware of the injury for 2-3 years, in the sense that I was a bit more mindful of not injuring it again, and decided to stick to snowboarding as a precaution. Other than a bit of extra pain on extra-long hikes, or approaches/deproaches involving lots of talus, I can't say I've noticed all that much. At the time it seemed like it would take forever to get back to normal, but in hindsight it was just a blip.

I am not too familiar with the TGR forum, but in the original thread about the jump there was a comment there from someone who sounds as they work at the company, which I've posed below: "There was a lot of discussion about this jump. Obviously the consequences are huge. Naturally no one thought it out loud, but in the back of my mind, and I'm sure in others was the knowledge that if this jump went bad we were talking about more than snapping an ACL. This is life and death. At what point do you decide that you don't want to be apart of that? Is the fact that you’re shooting it encouraging something that maybe shouldn't be done? All questions that were swirling in the vortex. What is going through Jamie’s mind? Is this personal demon haunting his sleep every night? Does he have to do this to find peace with himself? What does his new fiancée think of all this? When it was obvious that the deed would be done no matter what we did, (as evidenced by a willingness to hire a private crew to shoot it even if we didn't show up) Our cameras were turned on. You know how when you are going to do something big, you don't want to sit on top of it to long? If you do you start to second guess, get the butterflies, all that? Well a film shoot has to be perfect. Jamie had to sit up on top for over 1/2 hour before he could go. When it came time the count down began “5” is he panicked or is he calm? “4” is he going to have enough speed? “3” oh holy shit, should we even be here??? “2” Did I leave the stove on at home? “1” and ....... learn more in TGR's next movie....currently titled “um, our next movie” Hopefully Jamie Pierre will be content with this, and no one will be foolish enough to attempt a new record. Skiing, climbing, kayaking, etc - have all made tremendous gains in the past quarter century, and much of what has driven these sports forward has been people changing the definition of what's possible. However, at some point you cross the line where survival depends on luck more than skill, at which point you move from sports to something else. In most cases, the line is different for everyone, but in others it's clear that we've reached the limit of what it's possible to survive, no matter how good you are. I think that this is one of those cases. There's something similar going on in kayaking, where the world-record drop is something like 110 or 120 feet, and I'm sure that the same is true for mountain biking, etc. Some may argue that it's impossible for a sport to progress is you accept such limits, but I'd disagree. In the case of skiing, I've seen quite a few seqments where skiers link together a series of much, much smaller cliffs in a continous line that encompasses an entire mountain face, and do it with speed, style, grace, and control. It seems like it's still possible for the sport to evolve along those lines and advance, and doing so seems like a better match for the "spirit" of skiing as I understand it, which has never been solely about risk.

TGR Link Lived. Maybe there's something to that faith in Jesus stuff he was spouting after the 165 footer...

Yeah, no shit. Thinking about the DFA "Have you outlasted your nemesis" thread, methinks um, maybe the folks who left actually have more of a life, or got cool jobs or something. Doubtful in the case of my vanquished nemesis. My money is on knocking on doors peddling the Socialist equivalent of "The Watchtower."

I think if McCarthy were going after Klansmen rather than Communists, his place in the Left's pantheon of demons would be rather different, but that's just a conjecture on my part. With respect to McCarthy, you'll recall that the US governments attempts to counter Soviet infiltration involved rather more actors than McCarthy, and a longer chronology. The popular mythology surrounding the episode is such that the going consensus in progressive quarters seems to be that "McCarthy was a loose cannon and a bad man, ergo there was never any collaboration between the American Communist Party and the Soviet Union for the purpose of obtaining intelligence about the design and construction of nuclear warheads, etc, etc." The historical record is actually quite clear with respect the latter half of this myth, and it doesn't jive with the popular notion that anyone who was ever tried for passing along secrets to the Soviet Union, by any branch of the US government, at any time, was the victim of a frenzied witch-hunt. The de-classified archives not been kind to the Rosenburg's et al, and in many cases the evidence was there but the government declined to bring the strongest material forward as doing so would clue the Soviets into the fact that they'd broken their diplomatic code.

Nice non-sequiter at the end there. Maybe it's the history major in me coming out, but I just thought it was funny that people were making glib comments about Bronco's grasp of history didn't seem to be terribly well aquainted with the facts that have emerged in the past two decades.

Maybe if he knew an acutal number instead of making them up for effect as he went along he'd have some credibility. But then again I suppose bad data is fine when you're commie hunting, but not climate changing. There's plenty of good data on the topic available these days, and while it certainly hasn't redeemed McCarthy, it's been damning for a considerable number of the erstwhile "progressive" martyrs that the Leftist apologentsia spent four decades weeping over. From the inbreds at Yale. Revise away, kemosabe.

Really long skis. I think I maxed out with 207's.

Who else needs to be added to the back of the cc.com milk-carton?

I think I have. No Evil Homonym sightings for months....

Where will the folks from moveon.org pretend that they are going to move now? Venezuala?

VENONA.* Cough, cough. Methinks the Dr. may have some revising of his own to do with respect to the Rosenbergs et al. *Not the Russian word for "Denial."

That was probably the funniest thing about the trip. My own sense of smug superiority was seriously crimped by the fact that I lost my hat and had to cruise around in a bright-blue sun-hat thingy that said "Costa Rica" right across the front in order to keep from frying my dome. That and a powder-blue button-up with a palm-tree logo sewn on the front that I picked up at some sort of a discount clothing joint in central San Jose made me a clear contender for the high-score. I also added to the champion status, when some older lady cruised up to me on the beach and asked me the location of something in machine-gun Spanish. My reply was "Lo siento. Yo no se porque yo soy un gringo." She laughed and moved on... It was really, really interesting to encounter an entire town filled with people who consider themselves to be too cool to be considered tourists, and where they could get away from all of their tourist brethren. The name of this town was Montezuma, and it seemed like it was essentially purpose built for tourists, although it must have actually been an obscure little coastal hamlet at some point.

Heh. I like approaching obvious canadians (accent) adorned with Canadian flags and asking them "So where are you from in the States?" #11 - Tourists adorned with multiple cameras. Bonus points for multiple points for each top of the line SLR in posession. Double bonus points for bright neckstraps emblazoned "Canon" or "Nikon". Triple bonus points if they have an assistant to carry their gear. #12 Tourist haggling for more than x minutes over monetary amounts less than $5x. i.e. more than a minute for amounts less than $5, 2 minutes less than $10. Should perhaps be a log scale. While I was down there someone clued me into another secret for distinguishing between Candians and Americans. Just let fly with the observation that Canada and America, or Canadians and Americans are exactly alike. Most Americans will shrug their shoulders, most Canadians will lose no time in correcting you on this point.

I neglected to mention that I would have scored quite highly myself. If I had the cash for a high-end SLR I might have possible taken top-honors. Yeah - the trip was cool, saw some interesting stuff, met some usual people, relaxed a bit, did some reading. Nothing unusual. Typical vacation stuff.

I already got a couple of suggestions from my wife: 1. Bad local jewelry. 2. Fanny-packs. Bonus for black leather or neon, triple bonus for any fanny-pack that incorporates both. 3. People who seldom use the word "Eh?" yet carry packs festooned with multiple immaculate looking Canadian flag patches.

While travelling through Costa Rica and gazing at some of my brethren from the Northern Hemisphere, I was overcome by a sudden inspiration for a new way in which to pass the time whilst traversing any given country in the developing world. Much like the time when Layton passed the umpteenth mounty in shorts-over-poly and was overtaken by a sudden epiphany...."Hey wait a second - how about shorts that come with zippable polypro legs, straight from the factory....," I was about to doze off while waiting for a bus when a gaggle of my tan-and-sage-supplex clad compatriots ambled past. Then it hit me - the perfect way to enliven the interminable waits and delays that accompany routine travel south of the border. Gringo Bingo. Then, just as quickly, the vision faded and I was left with a dim vision of some critical elements of the game - but I was left without a clear vision for the final product. The game will involve a competitive scoring system of some sort, and involve spotting the following wardrobe elements and other bits of travel paraphenalia, alone in combination. These include: 1) Zippable nylon pants. Bonus points for extra colors or for unusual zipping motifs, such as an the deployment of one, rather than two, zippable legs at one time, or creative zipping strategies to maximize ventilation, such as partially unzipping the lower-leg units to allow maximum airflow about the knees, while still retaining optimal skin coverage. Double bonus for fully-loaded "cargo" pockets. 2)Safari shirts. Bonus points for shirts which incorporate technical elements such as the mesh-back-vent-covered-by-rollable-flap, zippable side vents, tabs to keep sleve-rolls in place, foldable collars, etc. Odd-sized pockets in places that are difficult to reach will also increase the score. As is the case with the pants, spotting an individual who has engaged in an especially creative deployment of all of the shirt's zip, vent, and "cargo" capacities will result in a higher score. 3. Synethic "Sombrero" style hat. Bonus for spotting a fellow traveler who deploys the Synthero with unuzual zeal or gusto, such as an individual who secures the aforementioned piece of technical headware with chinstrap at maximum tension, while eating indoors, 40 or 50 feet from the nearest window, at the ready in the event of an unpredicatable UV event, such as the reflection from the windshield of a passing truck, or some other such sudden solar misfortune. Pentuple bonus for the solid pith-helmet with leather chinstrap. 4. Tactical camera or binocular harness with three or more buckles. Double bonus for spotting an individual who has tethered an eight-ounce digital point-and-shoot to an especially elaborate harness system, or a fellow at the other end of the spectrum, who has elected to deploy a 20 centimeter spotting-scope/zoom in conjunction with the harness in order to capture the action at the tropical buffet, or an indivual who has the tandem camera-bino combo in effect at any location within 100 meters of a resort, hotel, or other tourist facility. 5. "Sport" sandals with webbing/buckles that extend at least one-inch above the ankles. 6. Individuals who elect to compensate for their limited Spanish by speaking loudly, slowly, and adding an "O" to the end of every noun. E.g. "Forko," "Drinko," etc. Bonus for spotting individuals who become visibly frustrated, impatient, and ultimately exasperated with those individuals who speak only the local tongue. 7. Rare items such as a folding, carbon fiber, tungsten-carbide-tipped, cork-handled walking stick with a camera attatchment dealy on the top so that the entire contrivance can work in "monopod" mode. Surely there are more. Contribute your own! With photos! I envision a folding, laminated card two-track scoring system, with one column for spotting single elements, and another column for individuals who are displaying one or more of the items or behaviors on the list simultaneously. The sum of the scores will then be divided by the number of days spent abroad. We'll make millions!

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18565

No and no. Longer version above.

Nope. I am not sure that you can make a global determination about what constitutes adequate compensation for a given degree of risk - but if someone decides to enter a given line of work for a given wage/salary, then its fair to assume that they concluded that the compensation was adequate at the time. I suspect that quite a few miners, and others in dangerous professions often feel very different about the compensation-to-risk ratio that their job entails once they get married and start a family, but feel trapped because they know that they can't make the same wages anywhere else, and have financial committments that preclude any kind of a career change. The accident in the mine is tragic, but even with perfect enforcement of the pertinent safety regulations - there will always be accidents, and as long as society allows people to choose what field that they want to go into - there will always be people willing to assume higher risk for higher pay.

If I'm remembering correctly I heard the reporter on NPR say that they were making $70,000 per-year on average. They also said that most of them had mixed feelings about the work, at best, and that they worried about the risks - but that the money was so much better than they could make in any other line of work that they were qualified for that they were willing to endure the unpleasant aspects of their jobs and live with the risks. The mines weren't paying higher wages because they wanted to, but because they had to. As long as energy prices remain high, the differential between mining wages and non-mining wages will continue to increase throughout coal-country.