JayB

"But it was a FAKE TURKEY!!!!! Can't you see???? The TURKEY-WAS-A-FAKE!!! IT WAS A FAAAAA....." Link to the Iraqi Blog the Pic Was Linked From.... This and the other Iraqi Blogs linked to the site do make for some interesting reading. While neither they nor anyone else would claim that they speak for all Iraqis, it is nice to get ahold of some unedited commentary directly from the people of Iraq.

Saw Steve Firebaugh's name on that site - too bad we lost him to the mounties board - he had some good information to share.

I am sick of the US subsizing the rest of the world's health care too - but I would rather change that through means other than bringing the development of new drugs to a standstill - like trade negotiations. You put price caps on drugs manufactured by companies headquartered in the US, we throw punitive tarriffs on a wide range of products that your most important industries export to the US. This is not the right time to pursue this project, but at some point the rest of the world will either have to start paying up for the new drugs they enjoy or go without - either as a result of pressure from the government and big pharma or the US consumer getting fed up and refusing to subsidize their health care any longer and demanding the price controls that will ultimately bring about a drastic reduction in the number and frequency of new drugs coming to market. I'd personally much rather go through a trade war than see people with potentially treatable diseases go without new medications that might help them. As far as the new prescription drug benefit is concerned, I don't understand how adding a massive infusion of government cash to fund drug purchases for the elderly is going to make sick old people any worse off. It may not be the best plan, and there may be some sops to industry in there - but it's hard to see how more funding would make the seniors any worse off. There's also the matter of paying for the benefit - which seems to be where the restrictions come in. We can have two of the three following things in this country, but not all of them: universal coverage, unlimited care, and sustainable cost containment. Pick any two you like - but one of them has to go. That's not being cruel and conservative - that's being sober and rational. Even if you eliminated defense spending entirely there wouldn't be close to enough money to pay for the whole package. This is true now, and it will only be more so as the ratio of retirees to workers declines further in the very near future.

I think that any study comparing the performance in public versus private institutions would have to control for the quality of the student popluation to be valid. Put the public teachers in private schools with children that come from homes where the parents are willing to make great sacrifices to insure that their children are getting the best education that their children provide, with the kids that attend public schools. This will include a significant percentage of children with parents like the ones that I've just described, but will also include kids from all manner of homes who's parents are utterly indifferent to their children's educations, at best - and kids who have taken the lessons that their parents have provided to heart. My bet is that if you put public shool teachers in private schools and throw private school teachers into the average public school the desparity in their performances will dissapear. As far as the teachers unions are concerned, one would think that promoting excellence and accountability would be in their self interest - at least in terms of increasing the value and respect that the public bestows upon the profession, and that some reform in that direction is long overdue. Taking an example from my own experience, I had the privilege of studying English Lit with the best teacher I ever encountered - we are talking Dead Poet's caliber here. She left a lucrative job in the private sector, forked over $30,000 and two years of her life to get her Master's and her certificate - and did such an amazing job while student teaching that both the students and the faculty were demanding that somehow the administration find a way to keep her at our school. She blew away any college professor I ever had in terms of command of her subject, ability to transmit that to her students, and most importantly in her ability to inspire them. After staying at the school for one year the number of students dropped to the point where one English teacher had to go - and it was a choice between her and a fat, lazy, incompetent piece of shit that couldn't decide which he hated more - his job, his students, or his subject. He also happened to be the the school's union representative (there seems to be a pattern here). The other teacher was his superior by every standard imaginable except seniority - so she went. She ended up teaching 1st grade level stuff to a bunch of delinqents for a year, stayed on for another in the hopes of teaching high-school English again - then quit the profession in disgust when the spot she had been promised ultimately went to - drumroll - the union member with more seniority. This wasn't the first such travesty, and it surely won't be the last - but if I was a teacher this and other incidents of its kind are precisely the sort of thing that would inspire me to demand reform from within before the public imposes it from without.

Yeah Dru, I understood the analogy that they were trying to extend here, but I still think that their choice of topics was poor enough to have entered the realm of inadvertent self parody. I mean seriously "IT WAS FAKE TURKEY!!!! And it's not JUST the turkey that's fake...." Shrill - yes. Puzzling - yes. Effective - not in the least. The funniest part about this is that all of this hand-wringing is ostensibly being exercised on behalf of the troops. Yeah - they face death every day as part of their job but their pysches are far too fragile to deal with the psychic blow that eating turkey cooked on a steam table instead of a bird served up by the President has dealt them. I wonder who is more popular with the troops? The President who served them fake turkey, or the folks who have singled out this momentous issue for their reader's consideration?

Or is it a pun? "Maderator" = Angry Moderator????? Maybe he's just too subtle for you Kurt.....

Here's another. He liked to play the part of the poor college student/climbing bum while in Bellingham but after spotting this masterpiece on the road - in Bellingham of all places - it's fair to say his secret is out. We are all onto you now, and know that you will be heir to all of the wealth generated by the Layton MFG Co one day. The kegs at the next ropeup are on you, kemosabe.

Took a look at it while heading elsewhere. Methinks some of the snow that is coating it in abundance needs to be converted to additional ice before it would be worth making the trip - but if you are there for some other reason it might be worth doing. What ice I could see throug the snow looked thin but protectable if you have lots of stubbies.

The fact that the Angry Left has dedicated a significant amount of tortured editorial coverage to this story is the closest thing to a literal cry for help that I have seen from a political movement in my lifetime. If people were just chuckling a bit at this as a minor PR gaffe that would be one thing, but that is not the case. It is astonishing to see people who take themselves and their causes seriously who literally believe that they are somehow advancing the credibility of both when screeching "Sure he flew into hostile territory to spend Thanksgiving with the Troops, but - IT WAS A FAKE TURKEY. Can't you SEE!!!! IT............WAS........A......FAKE......TURKEY!!!!!" in a manner roughly akin to Heston denouncing Soylent Green, then attempting to transform it into some kind of a grand political metaphor. Amazing. All of you salivating over the prospect of a TurkeyGate have no doubt made Karl Rove a happy man indeed.

As far as the pharmaceutical angle is concerned, Canada and all other companies that impose price caps are effectively being subsidized by Americans, for pay full price for drugs and in so doing pay for the R&D that ultimately generates the new drugs that benefit the rest of the world. In the end, if the world wants new drugs, the world is going to have to pay for them. Paying for them, in essence, means providing rewards for investors that are sufficent to compensate them for the enormous risk that investing capital in developing new therapeutics involves. There's no other industry where the time from investment to payoff is as high, or the number of false starts is as great - so cut off the return by placing price controls on the products that they produce and you'll have cheaper existing drugs, but no new ones. This would be great for people with diseases that we already have effective treatments for, but bad for those suffering from maladies for which there is no cure yet. If you are advocating price controls, this is a guaranteed outcome that you have to take into account. The rest of the world has been able to avoid such an outcome because of our effective subsidy of drug development on their behalf, and I hope that in developed countries we either end this by way of negotiation or that drug companies force them to face the consequences of their actions by refusing to sell new products in markets where price controls are in effect. Not sure why they ever did otherwise - so in some respects they are reaping the consequences of their own poor decisions when they allowed the Candian government to dictate the prices in the first place, as any rational consumer living within driving range of the border is going to buy their drugs where they are the least expensive.

Nice work Chuck

I think in this case it comes down to a question of talent more than anything else. The ability to climb 14's is, to a large extent, something one is either born with the potential to do or not. Amongst those that have the natural talent, the good fortune to find the sport, and the drive to hone their gifts to their highest possible level - experience is probably overrated when it comes to crushing hard trad lines. For everyone else, though, it's a different story altogether.

This was a cool thread - maybe someone could cut out the good bits and return them to the N. Cascades forum....

Yup - they've got a pretty slick system that plugs your measurements into a computer that generates a custom pattern based on these inputs, which then shoots the data over to a robotic cutting machine, and then they're sewn together by the folks that work there. Perfect fit with all of the mods I wanted for around $150 - at my door in a week with shipping thrown in for free, and no tax on the sale. Not sure why anyone looking for a new softshell would buy it elsewhere if they knew about these folks. Custom made stuff in the mid-100 range versus mass produced stuff in the mid-to-low twos. It was an easy decision for me. Also serious for the WB-400. First softshell fabric that looks like they it can serve as a stand-alone winter pant fabric for use in the PNW IMO.

I bought some WB-400 pants from them this fall and will buy from them again in the future. I had to make a couple of changes after I placed my order and they updated the specifications instantaneously - and ultimately I ended up with a pair of very well put-together, custom-fit pants for about $80 less than mass produced competitors about a week after placing my order. Definite

Gotta disagree with you here. If a company can manufacture goods or generate services less expensively elsewhere, a couple of things happen that are good for this country. The first is that the consumers of the said goods or services have to spend less money to aquire them, which leaves them with more resources to spend elsewhere on other products. When reducing manufacturing costs cuts the price of a given car from $25,000 to $20,000, the consumer can use the additional $5,000 in his pocket to remodel his house and provide work for contractors, business for the home improvement store, etc, etc, etc - the end result being that money that would have formerly been confined to those persons and companies involved in the production of a single automobile can now also generate effective demand (demand+the ability to put it to use with $) for a much broader range of goods and services. This is analogous to a farmer spending $5,000 to generate 20 tons of grain using antiquated equipment and dated production methods versus spending the same amount of money in conjunction with the most up-to-date equipment and production methods and producing 50 tons of grain. Which farmer is better off? Similarly - which country is better off - the one that generates goods and services worth 10 trillion dollars with a given input of capital and labor or the country that produces 15 trillion dollars with the same expenditure of both? The other good thing that happens is rather than squandering resources in industries in which the US no longer enjoys a competitive advantage, lowering production costs increases profitability and liberates capital for reinvestment in sectors in which the US can still compete effectively. Successful companies expand operations in the divisions which generate the most profit, which ultimately translates to more workers employed in these fields, and these workers are far more secure than their counterparts working in fields where workers in other countries can do the same job at a lower cost. The other factor to consider is that when measures are taken to protect workers in a given industry that is threatened by foreign competition, like certain kinds of steel production, the tarriff barriers enacted to help them end up doing more harm than good. In the case of the steel tariffs, the dwindling pool of steel workers benefitted, while the far greater number of workers in fields that consume steel and convert it into finished goods were harmed by an artificial increase in prices that rendered the goods that they produced less competitive by the exact percentage that the tarriffs inflated prices. In the end the result was a net loss of jobs in the US. Not to mention the damage done to consumers who paid higher prices, and all of the workers in other fields who suffered when consumers had less money available to buy their products or services. Ultimately, tarriffs and other protectionist schemes end up protecting a narrow sliver of the workforce while compromising both the purchasing power and the competitiveness of other workers. The effects are subtle in most economies where such protections are both inconsistent and incomplete, but one only needs to look to North Korea, the former Soviet Union for an example of the consequences such economic policies in their full glory.

Word. Way to scope and score! Thanks for sharing your find. When Paco and I were up on Shuksan in early November there were hundreds of frozen cascades visible beneath all of the glaciers. Just about all of them looked like low angle gulleys from a distance, but my guess would be that there are quite a few worthy lines like this that form up on the periphery of glaciers every year. -

I think that there have been a few folks keeping that aspect in mind since those photos were posted last year Matt. Hopefully Layton's goading will persuade someone to get up there and hit it. Wasn't there some mention of a washout that would cut off Sloan's would be ascenscionists a few miles short of the trailhead? That alone might keep all but the most determined away from the mountain this winter if it's true....

If only CO had better skiing...

Do you even lead ice these days, let alone mixed routes?

I lived in CO for four years and got at least 100 days of skiing in while I was there and have to agree with Kurt. With the exception of A-Basin and Crested Butte, the terrain in CO is just plain weak. Add that to a heavy reliance on man-made snow, a skimpy-ass base, massive-overgrooming, three weeks between storms, and a preponderance of wankers from the Texas and the plains and you have the overhyped conglomeration of express-quad served dissapointment that is skiing in Colorado. Anyone who's idea of great skiing involves meandering down weak-ass groomers with their knees locked together in a neon-accented one-piece will absolutely be in heaven in CO. Anyone who values terrain, vert, and skiing on new snow more than once a season will be much happier in WA. The worst part of it is that just when the good snow starts falling, the wankers that run the resorts start shutting down most of the lifts. And as far as the snow is concerned, anyone who can't ski in the powder we get out here isn't much of a skier - and presumably has little interest in hucking. Hop off anything over 10 feet high and you'll be much happier landing a bunch of dense coastal powder resting on a 10 foot base than when punching through 18" of month old snow on top of dirt. I grew up dreaming about skiing in Colorado, but learned the cruel reality once I moved out there, and soon began dreaming about the day when I could get back on some real terrain in the Crystal backcountry or Blackcomb/Whistler. The sunshine was nice though.

I love discussions of peripheral aracana that have very little to do with climbing. Let's combine this with the "Dynamic vs Non-Dynamic Belay" thread for an all-time classic. If you keep both the height-to-weight ratio and the body fat percentage between a large climber and a small climber then the glycogen reserves per Kg should be approximately equal between the two, while the actual amount of work per-Kg done by the taller climber to do a single pull-up should always be greater by the difference in the distance-pulled-up-per Kg. Moreover, a given climber will have quite a bit more in the way of glycogen reserves a few hours after scarfing down a heaping pot of pasta, but that of course will not diminish the force necessary to do, or the work involved in doing a pull-up. I am not sure that one can really keep things constant in such a fashion as for tall people their surface to volume ratio is greater, and I imagine this has implications for skeletal-mass as a percentage of BMI, etc, etc, etc. In any event, all things being equal if I were choosing an optimal build for all types of climbing (including alpine slogs, etc) it'd be tall and thin with a positive ape-index. Carrying all of the gear necessary for alpine slogging has got to suck that much more when you are tiny. The only time when I think short people have a clear advantage is in moves that involved being scrunched up, as their compact physique seems to enable them to keep their center of gravity closer to the rock and helps keep them from levering off.

Another vote for option number three. I hope that everyone that wants to reduce RMI's heavy footprint on the mountain chimes in before the November 25th deadline expires.

I'm into the long day with a single run down sometimes, but I also like finding decent run and doing laps on it all day long. Any suggestions for places to go that feature a reasonable approach and some open, 500-1000 vertical foot runs to cruise up and down (other than the Paradise/Tatoosh area)? Many thanks.

Last time I checked there had been something like two times as many people have been waxed in the CO backcountry than in all other states combined. Of course part of that is simply due to the extremely high number of skier-days logged in the backcountry there, but even after accounting for that what the statistics reveal is a snowpack that demands respect. Reading through the chronicle of burials and fatalities here: http://geosurvey.state.co.us/avalanche/Colo_Accidents/accidents.html did it for me, and I more or less decided to wait until the spring snowpack showed up to ski anything but ridges and supermellow terrain. YMMV.