JayB

Whither thou Mckinzie Brothers? Stange Brew has to be Canada's most valuable cultural export ever. Hands Down. But getting back to the subject - this is some strange talk for someone from a country that has unilaterally inflicted Celine Dion and Bryant Adams on the world...

I am still working on that one. Present circumstances suggest that a substantial thinning over the entire circumference of one's upper scalp is not sufficient to induce the full range of side affects listed above, but I will keep checking in as things progress. Or regress, rather...

Kayaking.

Is that your Prime Minister on the currency up there?

Awesome. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3029263

And - the stop-oil-from-being-traded-in-Euros thing has got to be one of the more ludicrous claims I have yet to come across. Almost self parody/life-imitates-the-onion caliber material by whoever produced that essay. If the China and Japan were to stop buying T-Bills all of a sudden that would have an impact on the currency that would exceed that generated by this oil business by at least a couple orders of magnitude.

If this is a variation on the oil for cash theme, as I've pointed out many times on this site - you have to explain why we left Iraq's oil fields in Husseins hands in '91 after handing him his ass on the battle field, and come up with some figures that demonstrate that the total profit the the fields in Iraq would yield given a target price for oil was equal to or greater than the initial estimates for the costs of the invasion and reconstruction, then come up with some factual evidence to back up the claim that this was in fact the administration's objective. With all of the high level defectors from the administration around - like Richard Clark - it would be quite surprising if none of them spilled the beans on this one.

Found the link: http://www.summitpost.org/cgi-bin/mread.pl?f_id=10;t_id=693

The material on Summitpost where the 2 percenter recounted his bad-ass heli-rescue was priceless. Hopefully there's a way to resurrect it.

Jim - since you put "freedom is on the March" in scare quotes, are you arguing that people in Iraq - the majority of whom will put their lives on the line to vote today - are actually less free now than they were under Hussein? And that in the future they will be less free than they would have been under Uday or Qusay? Would you trade the certainty of a life in a totalitarian state for the chance at a different existence - even though the outcome will be uncertain and frought with difficulty? As far as the threat is concerned - no one from your side has ever - so far as I know - addressed the question of what would have been the most likely outcome if Hussein was left in power. Sanctions would have guaranteed more resources for Hussein via the oil-for-palaces scheme, more misery for the population, and with the progressive easing of the sanctions that his patrons in the UN were continuously arguing for - eventually the world's power to contain his designs in any meaningful way would have been at an end. Are you certain his intentions would be peaceful and he would renounce his ambitions to aquire the most lethal capabilities would have magically come to an end? This is realism?

I've posted quite a few arguments concerning why I think removing Hussein by force was the best option that you are free to look up elsewhere. It is too early to judge whether or not the eventuall outcome in Iraq will justify the costs. Ditto for Afghanistan. In general, armed interventions do not lend themselves very well to monetary cost benefit analysis that you seem to be suggesting as a metric for assesing whether or not an armed intervention is in a given person's interests or not. We surely saved a bundle by not intervening in Rwanda, spent billions on the operation to contain the Serbs - and untold trillions in a decades long test of wills with Totalitarianism. We could have surely saved a staggering sum by making peace with Germany in 1939 - this was quite a popular movement amongst the "peace" activists of the day, BTW - but looking ahead and trying to make decisions based on some sort of objectively verifiable monetary balance sheet would have been impossible then, as it is now. As far as the tax cuts for the rich argument is concerned - every tax cut for whatever constitutes the rich in the Left's eyes has resulted in the people in the top quintile of earners paying a greater share of the total tax burden.

This isn't so much an issue of supply-side economics versus other theories as it is a reflection of some basic realities. If the price of something increases to the point where you can no longer employ it profitably, you will stop using it. Take the price of gas for example. Assume that you are in the delivery business and you use 1 gallon of gas at $2.00 per gallon to make every delivery, and that this is your only cost. You are able to charge $5 for each delivery. Then assume that legislation is introduced that forces you to pay $6 a gallon for gas. Your competitors are free to purchase gas at the market price. Guess what's going to happen to your business? Swap gas for labor and...

The "Which SUV" thread in the "Gear Critic" about a year ago was the best in that forum. Another memorable thread involved some dude who got rescued off of the Kennedy Glacier by helicopter talking about how bad-ass the experience was, and went on to explain that he was a 5-percenter in every activity he particpated in - as in the top 5 percent - and that this outing confirmed that he was well on the way to attaining that status in the climbing world. Classic.

Some replies: 1) Supporting the use of millitary force in particular circumstances does not mean that one is "pro-war" in a global sense. I am sure that the millions of dead in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and now Sudan are resting in peace knowing that that at the very least the nasty pro-war people did not succeed in rallying public opinion for armed intervention on their behalf. 2)The "Values" canard was dispelled by just about every post election analysis that asked the so called "values" voters meant when they checked the box on the roster of limited choices. Once they parsed the results out the percent that actually meant religious values was relatively small. Most respondents who checked the box meant "convictions," which had it appeared on the surveys in the place of "values," would probably not cast the Left into such a tizzy. 3)"I'm not sure how the above ramble applies, but I think the basic question posed was if the majority of folks are voting against their self interest then what are the factors for making their decision. Are there "bigger" issues than their self or children's interest such as "family values", whatever that rehetoric that means" There's no way to look at a given individual and say that voting for X or Y is absolutely in his or her self interest - that implies entirely on the values of the person making the assesment - and this leaves aside the question of whether or not a person voting in his or her true interests, if such a thing could be defined, would make choices that were beneficial to society at large, which would also depend on what one believes is good for society, etc, etc, etc. The bottom line is that for better or worse, for the average decision, each individual is best positioned to decide what is in his or her best interest. I am sure that you would be uncomfortable with a Babtist prison guard from Alabama telling you what's in your best interests, and the said prison guard is would probably be just as enthusiastic about you telling him that contrary to what he thinks - you actually know what's best for him. Take a worker on the low end of the wage-scale deciding whether or not to vote for a "living wage" in the US. For argument's sake let's assume that means $13.50 per hour. I would argue that in voting for that law, he'd be voting against his self interest because if such a law was passed, labor costs would exceed the value generated by a given input of unskilled labor, companies employing such people would see their profits decline or dissappear altogether, and would either shut down, move elsewhere, or lay-off their most marginal contributors in an effort to stay in business. In the absence of a monetary adjustment by the Fed to increase money supply in a static GDP environment, which would drive everyone's real (as opposed to money)wages back down to a level where workers in his wage category could actually produce goods or services equal to the real cost of their labor to their employers, unemployment would skyrocket, the economy as a whole would stagnate or go into recession, tax revenues would fall accordingly - so in the end he'd be out of a job and the nation would have less resources available to help him out. Not to mention the fact that as someone who spends most of his income on necessities, he'd see any real wage increase he got out of the deal (assuming the Fed didn't inflate them away) inflated away into oblivion by increased labor costs amplified at each stage in the supply chain. You'd probably say that he should vote for the measure if he wanted to vote in his own interest. Is my line of thinking really more simplistic than yours? I bet 9 out of 10 economists would concur with my argument and dismiss the "living wage" idea as masochistic populism at its finest, championed by people who shouldn't be left alone at the till of a 7-11, let alone making decisions that would have global effects on employment costs, competitiveness, etc.

I just find it ironic that there's a chorus of people deriding their opponents as simpletons, while espousing one of the grandest oversimplifications I've ever seen. This notion that anyone who holds a viewpoint other than your own is an idiot is comforting to the ego, and easier than actually thinking about things, but isn't terribly useful if your goal is to actually understand the beliefs of your adversaries. I used to dismiss all Creationists as idiots and leave it at that. They certainly espouse a belief that is anithetical to my own, and it is clear that their explanation for the phenomena that they are trying to address is categorically wrong. But - after doing a fair bit of research in them in pursuit of a history of science degree, I would hesitate to dismiss them all as stupid. Quite a number of Creationists are employed in fields that require a high IQ like electrical engineering and computer science, and many of the public spokesmen have advanced degrees in such fields. Call them what you want, but stupid, at least with respect to IQ, analytical abilities, et al doesn't seem terribly accurate. The best explanation I came away with when trying to understand how intelligent people could be ardent Creationists was that they had ideological commitments at the center of their world-views which pre-empted their willingness to believe anything could undermine them, no matter how strong the factual evidence, the theoretical rigor, or the demonstrable predictive capacity of the theory in question. This seems more defensible in arenas where the evidence is quite a bit more mixed, as in politics, than in matters of science - but so be it. Wrong - yes. Stupid - no. People who believe that Communism could really work if it was just given the chance, the the totalitarian regimes that made up the Eastern Block were the moral equivalents of the US, that mandating a "living wage" will actually reduce net poverty in the long run, that high tarriffs, rigid labor markets, and government monopolies will lead to prosperity, the religious faithful of all denominations, the more vapid advocates of alternative medicine, abstinence only sex-ed, advocates of draconian drug laws, etc, etc - are about as mystifying to me as Creationists but I would hardly argue that smart people couldn't possibly believe such things, (or mock them when I see fit.) What it all comes down to is its not what someone believes, but why they believe it, that determines whether or not they are actually an idiot.

Who are the parochial ones that favor simple explanations again? This "people-who's convictions-differ-from-my-own-are-gullible-or-dumb" assertion, while providing some solace and comfort to the ego in the face of successive losses at the polls, is hardly a the nuanced, complex, mutlifaceted synthesis one would expect from urbane doyens of the Democratic party. My advice to turn things around: Make Howard Dean the head of the DNC (or Barbara Boxer), keep Keynesian Mercantilism (trade bad, tarriffs and government monopolies good) at the center of your economic policy, and keep the tepid isolationism going strong. This, in combination with the keen understanding of Republican electorate demonstrated above, will guarantee victory in all subsequent elections.

Spray ecology. The political symbiosis has been broken.

Glad you made it. If you haven't already read Phillip Gourevitch's (sp) book on Rwanda this might be a good time to start. Looking forward to the TR's on Mt. Kenya.

Actually the most strident criticism of Hargreaves came from women - not men. Try searching for the letters that came pouring into the English press after her death. Whenever a woman with children dies doing something dangerous I would also bet dollars to donuts that the condemnation from other women with children is the loudest and most vehement.

I just can't believe the evil homonym hasn't chimed in on this one yet...

"the kind of discrimination that identifies 'feminism' as an idea that seeks unfair advantage, when it has only ever tried to promote equality under the law and fair treatment for both genders." I am for equality under the law - but the extension of this definition to such an extent that one must deny the obvious physical and behavior differences between men and women that manifest themselves on a population level is a bit much. Opinions may differ on this one, but IMO the reason why climbing is and will probably always be a male dominated activity is the the physical and psychological traits required to enjoy and excel at the activity are present in a higher percentage of men than women. There are women that have these traits in spades, and men that lack them entirely, but when you look at a the entire population it's hard to conclude otherwise. If you are a woman, and you climb, you will have to reconcile yourself to the fact that most of the people who participate in the activity will be male, and that the culture and lingo that pervade it will reflect this demographic reality. As far as the derisive-euphemism-as-proxy-for-a society-hostile-to-women argument is concerned, I think that there's probably at least as many for the male reproductive organs. The reason why they don't cary much weight is that men don't respond to them in the same way - which is to say that no man worthy of the title is going to go sulk in a corner and consider himself a gender-victim because someone used a term for his private parts in a derrogatory manner. Ever. Much less dedicate entire textbooks and college courses to the study of the way the English language unfairly victimizes and men and maleness.

This will only be true for weak women, who would never climb much of anything anyways. Seriously. In the case of the woman I mentioned earlier, if someone was talking smack about women or speaking to her in a condescending tone, her response was to size the guy up, look for a route that she suspected would be over the guys head - and lead it right in front of the guy with a smile. If the guy was still displaying the "if she can do it then it can't be that hard" attitude and she had the chance she'd smile, make encouraging comments - and enjoy the spectacle of the dude flailing, taking, and cursing his way to oblivion on the route in question. Even if they succeeded they'd come away with a respect for her skills.

Cross-posting to Spray.... I think one of Bob's points with reference to Wanda whatshername is that the very kind of women who are inclined to do this sort of thing are probably the most likely to recoil at the notion that "achievement X" is automatically more impressive when it has been accomplished by a woman, and consider such thinking more patronizing and retrograde than anything in Bob's post. Perhaps in these women's case being amongst the first women to do so presented them with special challenges that are worth recording, and somehow elevate their ascents to a significance beyond that endowed upon the dozens of male ascents - but I personally think that once the pioneering era has passed - which it has, IMO - then this sort of reportage can easily stray into something like the gender equivalent of Special Olympics coverage. "She climbed X - and ----gasp!---- she's a woman!" The person I did most of my trad climbing with in Colorado was a woman, and she - not I - was the sort of person who wouldn't blink at linking up a couple of Grade V's on The Diamond car-to-car and rolling into work on a couple of hours sleep in the morning and --- this sort of isn't-it-amazing-because-she's-a-woman stuff absolutely made her want to puke.

I think one of Bob's points with reference to Wanda whatshername is that the very kind of women who are inclined to do this sort of thing are probably the most likely to recoil at the notion that "achievement X" is automatically more impressive when it has been accomplished by a woman, and consider such thinking more patronizing and retrograde than anything in Bob's post. Perhaps in these women's case being amongst the first women to do so presented them with special challenges that are worth recording, and somehow elevate their ascents to a significance beyond that endowed upon the dozens of male ascents - but I personally think that once the pioneering era has passed - which it has, IMO - then this sort of reportage can easily stray into something like the gender equivalent of Special Olympics coverage. "She climbed X - and ----gasp!---- she's a woman!" The person I did most of my trad climbing with in Colorado was a woman, and she - not I - was the sort of person who wouldn't blink at linking up a couple of Grade V's on The Diamond car-to-car and rolling into work on a couple of hours sleep in the morning and --- this sort of isn't-it-amazing-because-she's-a-woman stuff absolutely made her want to puke.

Word to Polish Bob.