JayB

Not quite in Washington but there's the NE Buttress on Slesse. Grade V 5.9 - Not sure how many pitches but I think you'll get your 20 in for sure.

There is a stunning disparity between the response when an Arab regime slaughters its own people in the thousands - which is usually a shrug or no response whatsoever - and the outrage that erupts over something like the French banning headscarves in schools. This is striking because the vast majority of all of the misery and repression in the Arab world in the past 60 years has been entirely self-inflicted, yet they continue to lay all of their problems at the hands of their colonial experience. These two tendencies are part of a larger set of problems associated with the ever-growing disparity between their own power and that of the Western world. The ironic thing about their anger is that the more millitant they become, the farther they'll fall behind. The angry/violent "Arab Street" will be a geopolitical certainty for all of our lifetimes, at the very least.

I bought some pants from Beyond Fleece, and will buy from them again the next time I need another softshell - which might be a while as the ones I have already have been pretty durable. The service was excellent, the fit/workmanship was great, and they were in my hands one week after the order. The price is comparable to mass production stuff, and the fit is way better so there's really no choice IMO. Plus you can customize the options - something else you can't get with the mass market merch. If you are looking for an all-around pant, go with the Schoeller Dryskin fabric. Dryskin Extreme and other variations will be too warm for all around use.

I'd say that a very high percentage of the people doing condition dependent trade routes check here for information, though I would wager that about 90% are lurkers.

Is that Oats from Hall and Oats on the right? Too funny - a decidedly less than stunning female (on the right) preemptively screening out another fraction of the meager population of men who happen to be drunk enough to be interested in buying her a drink...

Sub-Aqueous is harder than 10b - I'd put it in the 11a range for sure.

Those imploring others to see the film on the grounds of exposing themselves to the material, Moore's perspective, et al should honor their own advice and consult any of the myriad critiques of the manner in which Moore handled the facts. Dismiss all of the critiques from all of the rightist/conservative media and pundits and there's still literally dozens of sober, hard-hitting critiques out there that cannot be dismissed and that must be addressed by anyone who aspires to a truly informed perspective on these matters.

Sweet TR Homes. Loved the photos.

Nice

Every politician comes into office with favored constituences, and many of these more than likely attained the favored status by means of their campaign contributions. But in a world of flawed leaders I'd much rather have someone in office that looks after large businesses and small business owners than unions and trial lawyers.* Lose the former and the entire economy implodes. Lose the latter and... What would we ever do without $100K a year dockworkers with GEDs and class action lawsuits? *My general term for the sub-fraction of attorneys that make their living from class-action lawsuits in particular.

For talking shit about the guy you dealt with Anonymously over the internet. Lame. I too think that you are describing Todd, who has always been very low-key and cool every time I've encountered him inside or outside of the store.

The neat thing about most other countries is that they "encourage" pharmaceutical companies to sell their drugs at fixed price by informing them that if they refuse to do so, they will be unable to enforce the patent protection on the said drug. Nice. Brazil, which recently blackmailed the pharmaceutical companies into such a pricing scheme for anti-HIV drugs, had a health minister crowing about how he saved the Brazilian taxpayer a couple hundred million dollars in such a manner. What he did not say was that Brazil was simultaneously engaged in an effort to cultivate the biotechnology/pharmeceutical sector into a major contributor to Brazil's GDP. By demonstrating that Brazil will refuse to acknowledge intellectual property rights whenever it sees fit, the said minister just killed off whatever chance Brazil had to compete in this sector, and any other sector that requires such protections (like software) and in so doing cost his countrymen several times more than a couple hundred million dollars in direct investment in the biotech/pharmaceutical sector alone, not to mention any future tax yields that the additional investment in those sectors might have generated in the future. Classic.

From this week's Economist... "DURING the first three years of the Bush administration the White House rolled over liberal America relentlessly. George Bush began with surprise on his side: the Democratic Party never expected a “compassionate conservative” with a doubtful mandate to morph into a fiery apostle of tax cuts. After September 11th, he benefited from the instinct to rally round the flag. And then he had the Democrats' fear of being seen as wimps when it came to dealing with Saddam Hussein. But liberal America is no longer willing to be rolled over. Bookshops are piled high with Bush-bashing tomes. Democrats in Congress have more fire in their bellies than they have had in years. John Kerry has already raised more money than any presidential challenger. George Soros is pouring millions into Democratic think-tanks and pressure-groups. This liberal counter-insurgency has its own pudgy Che Guevara. From the moment Mr Bush “stole” the election from Al Gore, Michael Moore launched fusillades against “the thief in chief”. “Stupid White Men”, whose publication was delayed by September 11th, went on to sell around 4m copies worldwide. Mr Moore is the perfect antidote to dreary diatribes in the Nation, a man who believes there is no contradiction between left-wing politics and popular entertainment. “Fahrenheit 9/11” is Mr Moore's harshest blast against Mr Bush yet. The film has already garnered the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival (along with a 20-minute standing ovation). It made $24m on its opening weekend in America. It must be said that, as cinema, the film is not up to the standards of “Roger and Me”, Mr Moore's anti-capitalist documentary of 1989, in which he stalks Roger Smith, the General Motors suit who had closed a plant in Mr Moore's hometown of Flint, Michigan. Nonetheless, it gathers some fascinating footage. Mr Moore's vicious wit scores points, as in the scenes of Paul Wolfowitz slobbering saliva over his comb and John Ashcroft warbling a patriotic ditty. His portrayal of the attack on the World Trade Centre—sound only against a blank screen as the planes hit the towers—is a stroke of genius. And Mr Moore can spark genuine outrage even amongst Republicans: what on earth was the White House doing shuttling the bin Laden family out of America straight after the terrorist attacks? Yet “Fahrenheit 9/11” is unlikely to change anybody's mind. Mr Moore takes too many cheap shots. Wanting to accuse the president of stupidity and idleness, but also of shrewd and unceasing efforts in the cause of evil, he keeps contradicting himself. He lashes Mr Bush for spending too much time on holiday, and then shows him hobnobbing with Tony Blair at Camp David. (Maybe, just maybe, they were discussing affairs of state.) He presents Saddamite Iraq as a land of jolly weddings and kite-flying children. He flirts—or appears to flirt (his method is to insinuate not assert)—with deranged conspiracy theories. Can he really be implying that the White House, and the sinister forces it strives to serve, were glad that September 11th happened? In so far as the film has a central argument, it is that the war on terror is a confidence trick. Mr Bush is not serious about homeland security, let alone about tackling bin Laden and his Saudi friends. He is simply using terrorism as an excuse for keeping the population in a state of panic while launching a grab for Iraqi oil. Mr Moore ends the film reading a passage from George Orwell's “1984” about how the purpose of war is not to defeat the enemy but to keep your own people subjugated. What does Mr Moore's success at the box office say about American politics and American opinion? Plainly, it says that Mr Bush has failed to build a national consensus behind his war on terror. This is partly his own fault. Back when his job-approval ratings were at 90%, he cut taxes in ways that conspicuously favoured the rich, even as he called the nation to arms: so much for shared sacrifice in a noble cause. (In a telling passage in the film, Mr Moore innocently urges conservative congressmen to enlist their children in the armed forces and send them to Iraq; he claims only one congressional child is serving there.) Mr Bush also exploited the war on terror for partisan gain in the 2002 congressional elections. His approval ratings are now around 45%, support for the war is waning, and Mr Moore's views have moved from the margins of the disaffected to a cinema near you. You could say that the White House is reaping what it sowed. The deafening silence of John Kerry But “Fahrenheit 9/11” also has some worrying implications for the Democrats. It reminds middle America that liberal activists like to blame their own country for the world's problems. So far no prominent Democrat has seen fit to denounce Mr Moore's view that the war on terrorism is a fraud (the silence from John Kerry has been deafening). Instead, party elders including Tom Daschle and Terry McAuliffe attended the film's premiere in Washington, DC, and other Democrats have helped publicise it. Mr Moore is a dangerous man to flirt with: remember how Wesley Clark's campaign collapsed when Mr Moore simultaneously endorsed the general and described Mr Bush as a deserter? Mr Moore has a long record of denouncing the United States to foreigners. The Republicans are citing him as proof of their charge that the Democrats are “a coalition of the wild-eyed”. If they have any sense, they may even steal a Moore cinematic technique: show the Democratic elite traipsing along the red carpet to see “Fahrenheit 9/11”, and then cut to a grainy shot of Mr Moore telling Britons that Americans are “possibly the dumbest people on the planet.” Mr Moore is a formidable ally if all you want to do is attack Mr Bush. But the Democrats want to govern the country. With Messrs Bush and Kerry running neck-and-neck in the polls, they should be careful whom they hang out with."

I don't begrudge either. Americans need to realize their is no intrinsic advantage to using us over any other 1st world work force. Yes we produce more, but we are also paid commensurate with our production - so on an outsourcing basis, Americans are no different than Dieter, Francois, Geoff, or Giovanni; all equally reproducable by Chang or Sandeep All true, but if I'm an employer who's looking at an expensive American who is willing and able to work 50 hours a week to keep his job and and a Euro who can only legally work 37.5 hours a week - and we are just talking pay here - I am going to give Jacques' job to Sandeep first. More likely, I will simply do mire hiring elsewhere and let Jacques retire early.

Me too, but I won't begrudge the guy next to me if he chooses to work himself to death in order to drive a Lexus home to his McMansion. The Euros can collectively do whatever they wish, but they should neither be surprised nor angry when they get their collective macroeconomic asses handed to them by the untold milions of people who are determined, ambitious, and hungry. There's just no way that the 26 year old programmer in Bangalore with an entire extended family to think about is going to cut Jacques and Heinrich some slack so that they can enjoy their six week vacations without the gnawing anxiety that comes along with knowing that somewhere out there, a hard-working person is eating their free lunch.

Kudos to you for reading the Economist though. My favorite magazine for the last dozen years. There may be hope for you yet.

"Despite such statistical quibbles, however, it is undeniable that the average person in the euro area is still about 30% poorer (in terms of GDP per person measured at purchasing-power parity) than the average American, and this gap has barely changed over the past 30 years. Thus even if income per person is growing at almost the same pace as in America, Europeans are still stuck with much lower living standards than Americans." This was the gist of the article I cited Carl, which supports my contention that definitions of poverty are relative and contingent upon the standard that was used to establish the benchmark. In the US, this bar is pretty high, and figures like "The poorest 20 percent in the nation" aren't terribly useful when they are used to define poverty in this country. In some countries like Portugal, I would wager that some of the people classified as poor would qualify as lower middle class.

"If the European Union were a state in the USA it would belong to the poorest group of states. France, Italy, Great Britain and Germany have lower GDP per capita than all but four of the states in the United States. In fact, GDP per capita is lower in the vast majority of the EU-countries (EU 15) than in most of the individual American states. This puts Europeans at a level of prosperity on par with states such as Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia. Only the miniscule country of Luxembourg has higher per capita GDP than the average state in the USA. The results of the new study represent a grave critique of European economic policy. Stark differences become apparent when comparing official economic statistics. Europe lags behind the USA when comparing GDP per capita and GDP growth rates. The current economic debate among EU leaders lacks an understanding of the gravity of the situation in many European countries. Structural reforms of the European economy as well as far reaching welfare reforms are well overdue. The Lisbon process lacks true impetus, nor is it sufficient to improve the economic prospects of the EU. EU versus USA is written by Dr Fredrik Bergström, President of the Swedish Research Institute of Trade, and Mr Robert Gidehag, until recently Chief Economist of the same institute and now President of the Swedish Taxpayer's Association." Full Text in PDF form here: http://www.timbro.com/euvsusa/pdf/EU_vs_USA_English.pdf Poverty is relative.

Here's the story: 'I'll show you how an Italian dies': Hero Hostage Sydney Morning Herald April 16, 2004 The Italian hostage executed in Iraq tried to tear off his hood seconds before he was shot dead and screamed: "Now I'll show you how an Italian dies." Details of the final moments of Fabrizio Quattrocchi deepened Italy's shock and outrage at the hostage crisis as it awaited further news of the three other men seized with him on Monday. The Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini, praised Mr Quattrocchi, 36, a former baker, was a hero. He told of the killing after Italy's ambassador to Qatar was shown the footage by the Arab television station Al-Jazeera, which has not broadcast the video. "I have been authorised by the [victim's] family... to reveal the final words of this boy who died what I would call a courageous death, I would say like a hero," Mr Frattini said. "When his assassins were pointing a gun at him, this boy tried to remove the hood and shouted: 'Now I'll show you how an Italian dies.' And they killed him." Mr Quattrocchi's abductors shot him in the neck at close range. Al-Jazeera said that he was forced to dig his own grave....

They also showed restraint when they declined to show the execution of the Italian hostage because it would offend their viewers' "muslim sensibilities." This was an interesting editorial decision, because in the final moments before his execution the hostage apparently rose to his feat and struggled while screaming "I'll show you how an Italian dies!" If this is true, it would certainly speak volumes about the nature of the "sensibilities" that the network is trying to protect. Footage of helpless, prostrate Westerners being slaughtered is okay, but footage of defiant Westerners summoning the courage to resist in the face of certain death is unpalatable. For my part, I think that they should show every-last second of every execution, with surround sound so that their audience can get a glimpse of the true nature of the folks that they are cheerleading for with every broadcast. Dittto for the aftermath of all of the suicide/car/whatever bombings.

"that is certainly not true. the mullahs are terrible and they have to go, but the palhavis were bloody dictators whose actions hardly left a family untouched by repression and torture. moral relativism and revisionist history are leading you astray. let's not forget as well that before we installed the shah, iran had a democratically elected government." Where are you getting your facts? There's no relativism here - I'm talking straight body counts. That's it. My understanding of this matter comes from "Iran Between Two Revolutions," and "Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran," both by the same author. Here's what an Iranian has to say about the latter: "I read this book and it did not add anything to my knowledge about Khomeini's regime. As a person who has lived in that country and his dearest friends and families were killed under the torture or by firing squads this book was not really informative. 1. Its statistics about political prisoners who were executed is not accurate. For example in page 129 it talks about 12500 prisoners who were killed by the Iranian government. It says that 74 percent of them were executed but in page 130 talks about 7943 executed people, obviously 74 percent of the 12500 is not 7943. Iranian regime has killed thousands of political prisoners but the government does not publish the names only the names of 25000 of them were published by opposition groups so you can imagine that the real number should be over 100000. 2. Mr. Abrahamian does not really analyze the reason of the public recantations of some of the prisoners but the heroic resistance of others. What was the reason that some people were so strong and some people not as strong as they were? 3. He does not talk about Khomeini's religious decree to rape virgin girls before execution. 4.He does not talk about Khomeini's religious decree to take the blood of political prisoners before execution. But as a whole, this book has some information about Iran under the Islamic regime for Western scholars. You can read it and you will get a sense of what has gone to our generation." If anything, I think I am giving the Mullah's too much slack.

I oppose the death penalty in practice (many reasons)but have no problem with the principle that underlies it, namely, that some acts deserve the maximum penalty -death. Whether or not this serves as a deterrent to those intent on commiting other crimes is largely irrelevant - what matters is that the person committed the crime gets the punishment that they deserve. Further - most who argue against the death penalty on the grounds that "taking a human life is always immoral," or "now the state has reduced itself to the killer's level" are missing an elementary distinction between physical and moral equivalence.

BTW - Anyone remember the USS Cole? Kenya? The 1st round of the WTC bombings? I seem to recall a different man sitting in the White House at the time. I am waiting for someone to start spewing the same lines about Clinton squandering the global goodwill that we enjoyed under Reagan, learning why they hate us now that Clinton is in office, etc, etc, etc. If he thought that Al-Queda was the number one threat facing America, he certainly did very little to counter it during his tenure.

You certainly recall Iran, no? Popular uprisings do not necessarily lead to democratic regimes that abide by the rule of law and respect basic human rights. In fact, just the opposite has true in most cases. Our own revolution is very much an exception to this rule. In the Middle East, it is nearly a certainty that any regime that gets overthrown will be replaced with an Islamofacist regime like the Taliban, that will make the present dictators look like Mr. Rogers. The Shah was hardly a saint, but if you compare the death toll under his reign to that of the Mullah's, he certainly starts to look like one. For the realists amongst us, the central problem in the Middle East is fostering democratic reform amongst regimes that, while unsavory in many respects, at least pay lip service to the principles that will be wholly abandoned by the people most likely to seize power in their absence, e.g. after a popular uprising spearheaded by millitant Islamists. On a related note, I think that one of the central problems in the middle east is that the people there have not, for the most part, had to live with the consequences of their millitant rhetoric. "Islam is the Anser!" "Bring back the Great Caliphate!" "Purge the Holy Land of the Unbelievers!" etc, etc, etc. Great stuff. In some ways I hope that the Islamofacists take over for a while and the population gets a taste of the very things that they've been agitating for. After a generation of repression and retrogression on every front, they will have a very concrete understanding of their folly.