JayB

Yeah Pax I'll get in touch...

Dude - the neck beard alone will get you served anywhere!!!!!!! I haven't been anywhere near the campus in years, but there must be a pizza joint or something like it that serves fermented products as well.

I liked the photos Scott. Looks like a cute baby. Congrats - Good work on that one.

Done. I propose a mini Pub Club after the slide show. I'll try to make it to the show/PC.

I actually just pulled the rear bail out, slapped the plate on, and then re-attatched the bail. I've used them on volcano slogs, ice, mixed, scree, etc and they've stayed put with nothing more than the ends of the bail holding them in place. I considered it a stopgap at the time but it seemed to work so well that I haven't bothered to change it.

My guess is that men stay warmer because a greater percentage of their body mass is lean muscle, and all of the mitochondria cranking through the TCA cycle within the said muscle equals more calories burned per unit mass which in turn leads to a higher metabolism and greater warmth. I'd also be willing to bet that men have a lower surface-to-volume ratio than women in the torso, which leads to greater heat loss. I'd also say that social conditioning plays a role as well, as from about the age of 7 any guy that complains to other guys about being cold will have a staggering quantity of shit flipped his way by any male within earshot while most young girls that complained about being cold would get sympathy and an extra insulating layer from anyone in earshot. I think an experiment in which bodybuilder chicks that have attained large amounts of lean muscle and a plenitude of secondary male sexual characteristics from massive roid abuse and pasty endormorphic computer techs with modified mullets and jiggly manboobs are subjected to the same amount of cold, and both the persistence and the tone of the whining that issue forth from both groups are monitored and quantified would settle the muscle-vs-metabolism-vs-sex question once and for all.

How about another MiniSmithfest in the last weekend in March?

Must have touched a nerve there, eh? No pun intended. Just a lot of harnesses out there that keep the leg loops a healthier distance away from the nards IMO. Hanging belays, lowering a heavy partner, catching a fall, taking a fall - all uncomfortable for some of us in this sort of harness. I will say this for the Bod style harnesses - they inspired a few of us to cling to the rock with a tenacity that a simple desire to lead a route cleanly could never have inspired - so perhaps there were some benefits to this design. However - you sired a child recently, no? You are walking proof that my reservations about this harness aren't entirely well founded. All the best to you and your unruptured nards,

Everyone I know who has yet to reproduce and wishes to retain the capacity to do so has sworn off all of the variations of BD's "Bod" harness for ever. - And I use the belay loop.

I thought the revelation that there's some Telemark stuff out there that is so stiff and ungainly that you can't even tour in it anymore was pretty hillarious. Overbuilt tele-gear = skiing's answer to the spork.

The only problem with this is that the these people who were opposing the war were allegedly accepting bribes to keep someone like Hussein in power - something that was completely at odds with the welfare of the Iraqi people. Not sure why this should be considered moral - unless you were consider any use of force under any circumstances to be immoral - which very few people do. Opposed to taking arms against Hitler? Moral. Opposed to the use of force to thwart the carnage in Bosnia and Kosovo? Moral again. The axiom that being opposed to any war at any time is the moral thing to do doesn't always jive very well with reality. When I read things like your last sentence I can only conclude that you believe that there is a sinister cabal of people sitting at the boards of various companies who were able to get all of Congress, the British Parliament, Jose Aznar et al in Europe, everyone in the Pentagon, everyone in the British Armed Forces, etc, etc, etc - to wage a war for their sole benefit and pull off the said conspiracy in such a manner that none of the thousands of people involved in such an enterprise would ever talk to the press, never slip, never attract the attention of opposition parties or critics of the war, had confidence that they would be able to predict every move that the notoriously predictable Saddam Hussein would make at least a year in advance and know for certain that he'd play cat-and-mouse games with the inspectors rather than capitulate, etc, etc, etc -but feel free to correct me if I am off base here. In any event, point me to some credible evidence that any of the companies involved in reconstruction bribed officials in return for initiating the drive to war or using their office to register support for the same and that last sentence will have some basis in fact. Until then it's Grassy Knoll stuff and nothing more.

That tidbit was just one guy's perspective, of which there are of course many in Iraq. It's roughly consisitent with opinion poll data coming out of Iraq concerning these issues, and if you take a look at the random feedback sites like the BBC most Iraqis post opinions about these issues that are in marked contrast to their Western counterparts. This is one such case. One other reason I posted that guy's comments to make people aware of the fact that there are a few Iraqis out there posting info on the day-to-day realities on the ground in Iraq - something people pretended to care about before the war but have now largely been abandoned as a rallying cry for those opposed to it. Largely puts to rest the notion that the majority opposed to the war did so out of concern for the wellbeing of the Iraqi people. As far as this proto-scandal is concerned, the individuals allegedly accepted direct bribes from the regime in return for the cultivation of international support for the regime, and they duly did everything in their power to thwart the US and Britain's efforts to remove the regime by force. The only way that these charges would have an equivalent in the US/Brittain was if documents surfaced that revealed that individuals or organizations that stood to profit from the invasion of Iraq payed officials in the administration bribes with the agreement that the recipients would do everything in their power to cultivate support for prosecuting a war. There is currently no evidence to support such allegations, and there are currently no serious people engaged in efforts to make the case that any such thing actually occured - which is certainly an oddity if there are actually grounds for such charges given that it's an election year and there's an off chance that exposing such things might tilt the odds in the Democrat's favor just a bit. And now we have an outcry over corruption on the part of those who prosecuted the war in the absence of any evidence whatsoever, and evidence of corruption in those who opposed the war with no outcry whatsoever. Interesting.

Also interesting to note the number of people who have worked themselves into a lather about the supposed corruption of the Bush administration's distribution of contracts to Halliburton et al in the absence of any evidence whatsoever - yet have remained silent after a story identifying scores of individuals associated with nations/groups opposed to the war have been identified as direct recipients of bribes from the regime in documents seized after the war. Time will tell whether or not these documents are legitimate or forgeries, but the discrepancy in the responses has been telling. "Wednesday January 28, 2004 12:01 AM By JAMAL HALABY Associated Press Write AMMAN, Jordan (AP) - Arabs and Westerners accused by Iraqis of receiving Iraqi oil proceeds in exchange for supporting Saddam Hussein denied Tuesday they had accepted bribes or participated in illicit deals. The accusations surfaced this week in a report by one of the dozens of new newspapers that have begun publishing in Iraq since Saddam was ousted last March. Since, members of the new provisional Iraqi government and Saddam opponents have distributed a list of the accused, based on documents from the Iraqi Oil Ministry. About 270 former Cabinet officials, legislators, political activists and journalists from 46 countries are on the list, suspected of profiting from Iraqi oil sales that Saddam had allegedly offered them in exchange for cultivating political and popular support in their countries. In Jordan, former parliament member Toujan Faisal, who is on the list, said she never took Iraqi bribes, but had served as an intermediary between the Iraqi government and an Jordan-based oil dealer. ``I wanted to help this dealer who happened to be a good of friend of mine do business in Iraq,'' she told The Associated Press...." Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3676654,00.html

" "You can say that it's great that Saddam is gone and I'm sure that a lot of Iraqis feel it is great that Saddam is gone. But a lot of them gave their lives. And their living standard is a whole lot worse now than it was before." What did Mr. Dean meant by this statement? I didn’t want to write about it from the beginning despite what I felt and the questions asked by some of the readers. I said, “this is an American affair and I might offend some of my American friends through expressing my opinion”. But the statement was too irritating and insulting and as I said before there’s no such thing as an internal affair anywhere in the world, not to mention the USA, the country in which the tiniest change in policy might well have a great impact elsewhere in the world. Anything that happens in America concerns everyone on this planet, and moreover as an Iraqi who his whole country’s future relies considerably on how the things go on in America I have additional reasons to care about such things. To summarize my response I was not surprised, but it added to my confusion about the justification of the position of some Americans regarding this issue. To have such approach from some Arabs and Muslims, it’s more than expected, still nauseating though. To have such an approach from some European countries is also (natural). But to come from Americans? Well, this is just more than I can understand. I’d like to (debate with) Mr. Dean and his supporters on few points. I’m not going to comment about the rightness of the statement with more than saying that only a (blind) man would believe it and only a man blinded by his ambitions would dare to say it, but when you say such words, don’t you mean in other words that the sacrifices made by the American soldiers are all in vain? And that these soldiers are not doing a service to the world, nor to Iraqis and not to America. In fact you are saying that since they didn’t do the world, America or us a favour then they’re only doing a favour to GWB and his administration. Don’t you agree that by saying those words you accuse the American soldiers of one of two charges each of which is worse than the other; You are saying that, either they are stupid enough to sacrifice their lives for the sake of GWB political future, or they are evil people who love fighting and killing and they are doing this only for money, in other words they’re no more than mercenaries. Saying that you only disagree with the way this issue is handled will also not change the fact that you are only harming your men and women on the battlefield. By statements like these you deny any honourable motives for the great job your people are doing here. How in your opinion will this affect the morale of your soldiers? Feeling that their people back at home don’t support them and that they’re abandoned to fight alone in the battlefield. And all of this for what? For staying in the white house for 4 or 8 years? Is it worth it? And this is not directed only to Mr. Dean, it’s for all the Americans who support such allegations without being aware of their consequences. What’s it that you fight so hard for, showing your soldiers as s occupiers and murderers, the soldiers who I had the honour of meeting many, and when talking to some of them, I didn’t see anything other than gentleness, honesty and good will and faith in what they’re doing. Your words and those of others were insults to the Americans, Iraqis and moreover to yourself, and I’m certain you don’t represent the number of Americans you fanaticise about. I’m sorry for being so rude, but I really tried hard to restrain myself from being more direct, and thus nearly as rude as you were. If I wanted to respond just as an Iraqi who is so offended by your words, my feelings wouldn’t have been expressed without using a language nastier than what I’ve committed myself to on writing on this blog. Please consider this for a moment, does winning the elections and getting rid of GWB and the republicans worth the damage you’re inflicting on your men and women’s morale? My heart goes with those brave people and the widows, orphans and mothers of the American soldiers who died while doing this great service for their country, ours and humanity. I can’t imagine what their response would be to such thoughtless words motivated with nothing more than selfish ambitions. -By Ali." Source

Enough of the slagging on bouldering already. It's not like the guy couldn't slog up volcanoes or lug his way up the moderate trad routes with long approaches that seem to occupy most people on this site if he wanted to. He's figured out what he likes most in climbing and is focusing on that, which is spending his time cranking on incredible rock in beautiful settings and warm surroundings while road-tripping all over the country with a mini-harem of fit young climber chicas. Not a bad alternative to the frozen/multiday/death-slog/sausagefest that most alpine outings consist of if you ask me. Anyhow - the original idea here was to get a bunch of point-and-shoot hacks like myself and maybe even some decent amateur photographers - judging from all of the tech-talk on cameras that goes down here there must be a few out there - to post some photos. Post more diss less.

Just tilt your head in the opposite direction when you are looking at the screen to correct this problem. Didn't want to make him look too macho since he is already climbing runout slab in shorts....

Bronco in the mine shaft on the approach to East Wilman's Spire Frostbite Ridge Slothrop on Mt. Stuart's North Ridge Satan's Sidewalk, Mt.Shuksan (Paco's Photo) Paco Heading up the the Second Belay, Satan's Sidewalk Smoker Heading for the crux, Online, Static Point:

I am already popping 50,000 mg of Aleve a day to get a head start on the inevitable bout of tendonitis that seems to plague me after any trip to Smith. Should have the system pretty well saturated by March.

Too bad ClimbXmedia is toast or there would probably be some footage of this guy sending on the net. If there's footage out there somewhere else post the links.....

Some data to consider in light of the statements you made Bug: - When it comes to Christianity, the most devout are the most divorced. Fundamentalist/Born Again Christians have the highest divorce rate amongst all Christian denominations. -Atheists and Agnostics have a lower divorce rate than all major religions in the US (if you include all Christian denominations as a whole). If you parse Christians a bit further it turns out that Atheists and Agnostics have the same rate of divorce as Catholics and Lutherans, who are tied for the lowest rate of divorce amongst all major Christian denominations. Interesting stuff. Source: http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm

Seek vengence on that Gorge-Route Distelator. I am down with a Smith Trip in March.

Oh brother, not another blame it on the '60s culture thing. There's a lot of other social trends going on outside the classroom, disparaties in school funding, movement of wealth out of some neighborhoods, increase in single parent households, decrease in wages (inflation adjusted), increase in shipment of jobs overseas, reduction in social spending. Pick one. Likely any of these are more of a factor than that 60s tripe. All of that is true, but in my opinion there was a pretty profound cultural shift that has nothing to do with macro-economic trends like the decline of the manufacturing sector. Just to take a couple of anecdotal examples from my experience, we have the abandonment of track-and-field day in favor of a day of “sharing excercises” specifically designed to prevent the thwart any sort of competition, ranking by merit, etc, etc, etc. Ditto for the elimination of tracking by ability, “social promotion” onto the next grade regardless of competence, etc, etc, etc, etc – these are all changes rooted in a particular philosophy/belief about the nature and function of public education that don’t seem to have anything to do with more textiles being produced overseas, etc, etc, etc.

MattChuck/ChuckMatt: My post really had nothing to do with the micro-policy issues in the sub-microcosm that Seattle Public Schools represent in the broader universe of American public education. I was just stating my personal belief that both the manner in which people raise their children and the ways that schools govern the behavior of students in the classroom were influenced by ideals which had their popular genesis in the sixties – and that both children’s behavior and the learning environment in the classroom have declined as a result.

Cool TR. Sounds like that thing will be there for a while. P.S. Hey Alpinfox: Wankers? If you were a real CPB protege' it would have been clownpunchers .....

I've heard about the stuff too but it was before my time. You seriously just pounded the ends in and rapped off of the middle?