Figger_Eight

harness and rope so I don't kill myself cleaning out the gutters

You're pretty much screwed in an avy either way - but if you can get rid of your planks or board you do have a better chance of swimming to the top in smaller ones. I have friends who've use the ripcord setup in case they fall in treewells - that seems like a good idea.

WHAT WOULD $87 BILLION BUY? If you can't get through this list without wanting to throw up, I'll understand. But pass it around anyway. This is the nail in the Iraq War's coffin for any sane, thinking individual, regardless of their political stripe (thanks to TomPaine.com and the Center for American Progress)... To get some perspective, here are some real-life comparisons about what $87 billion means: $87 Billion Is More Than The Combined Total Of All State Budget Deficits In The United States. The Bush administration proposed absolutely zero funds to help states deal with these deficits, despite the fact that their tax cuts drove down state revenues. [source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities] $87 Billion Is Enough To Pay The 3.3 Million People Who Have Lost Jobs Under George W. Bush $26,363 Each! The unemployment benefits extension passed by Congress at the beginning of this year provides zero benefits to "workers who exhausted their regular, state unemployment benefits and cannot find work." All told, two-thirds of unemployed workers have exhausted their benefits. [source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities] $87 Billion Is More Than DOUBLE The Total Amount The Government Spends On Homeland Security. The U.S. spends about $36 billion on homeland security. Yet, Sen. Warren Rudman (R-N.H.) wrote "America will fall approximately $98.4 billion short of meeting critical emergency responder needs" for homeland security without a funding increase. [source: Council on Foreign Relations] $87 Billion Is 87 Times The Amount The Federal Government Spends On After School Programs. George W. Bush proposed a budget that reduces the $1 billion for after-school programs to $600 million -- cutting off about 475,000 children from the program. [source: The Republican-dominated House Appropriations Committee] $87 Billion Is More Than 10 Times What The Government Spends On All Environmental Protection. The Bush administration requested just $7.6 billion for the entire Environmental Protection Agency. This included a 32 percent cut to water quality grants, a 6 percent reduction in enforcement staff, and a 50 percent cut to land acquisition and conservation. [source: Natural Resources Defense Council] There you go. In black and white. A few million of you will receive this letter. Please share the above with at least a half-dozen people today and tomorrow. I, like you, do not want to see another approval rating over 50%. - from Michelle's link. Sweet.

With the digital SLR's this lag time, called the "refresh rate" will not be as long as the point and shoots, but not as fast as a conventional shutter. Yes, you can change the number of pixels per image - and the pictures don't all have to be the same size. Cameras usually come with a dinky 16 meg card. Memory is getting cheaper and cheaper though, so you can load up as much memory as you want. The cards are just a little bigger than a postage stamp, so you can carry an enormous amount of memory in a really small space. Digital SLRs use the same lenses as their conventional film counterparts. For example, if you already have a Canon body with a bunch of good lenses you'll only need to buy the digital SLR body.

Yes, digital cameras use memory cards instead of regular film. You can either hook the camera up directly to your computer, or use a media card reader to pull the pix off the card (this is the better way because it won't drain the camera batteries). If you're out for a long time, you can either get more memory cards, download you pix to your computer (if you have laptop), or take your memory cards to a Kinkos or something and burn them onto a cd. The number of pictures a memory card holds depends on how big you want the picture to be. For digital output, I can take over 1,000 on a 128 meg card. Bump it up to 2 Megapixels, I can get around 90, but I can print up to 5x7 (8x11 okay) photo quality on good paper. Some of the better digital cameras will allow you to take multiple pictures before storing them on the disk. Is that what you mean by lag time?

That's one of my favorite Mexican restaurants.

Tough question because it depends on what kind of trip you're on. Lately I've been too lazy to carry around a lot of stuff, so I use a digital point and shoot, then touch it up in Photoshop later. I can get pretty decent 5x7's from them. Otherwise whatever Necro said, maybe a zoom lens, a tripod and a graduated neutral density filter if you're going in snow. Make sure to keep a uv filter on your lenses just to protect them from scratching.

Oooh...okay I'm busted. Guns are neither good, nor bad - but if yer packin I wanna see it.

Bunglehead - it could be both and it wouldn't matter if you were just simply going to output to digital (post on the web, "slide" shows on Powerpoint with a digital projector, etc.) because you would reduce the pix to a low resolution anyways to manage the amount of hard drive space they take up. When prints are scanned, they look just like digital obviously. You're correct about slides - their color saturation is entirely better than prints. If you want to blow a picture up to poster size and retain the crispness and color, you would ideally shoot slide film, not prints. If this is what you want to do and keep the price reasonable, get a decent, middle of the road, camera body (like a Rebel) and some kick ass lenses. I recommend Canon, but that's only cuz that's who I'm most familar with.

Anyways...if we go with Erik's logic - we should shoot the white man and feed them to the Native American homeless.

The genus Equus was here 3 million years ago per your quote. Given, the modern horse started as a descendant of the ones brought over by the Spanish to Mexico, but there are breeds who are from the original inhabitants. Whatever...I dunno what I'm talking about - I just wanted to say CBS was busted.

Oooohhhh...Catbirdseat is busted.

It depends on what you want to do with those pictures. Pro photographers are using digital SLRs in order to update news sites in almost real time, and its a lot easier to take hundreds of pictures at a particular site and toss out bad ones in the field. If you plan on shooting slides or blowing them up, 35 mm or medium format cameras are still the way to go. Pro-sumer digital SLRs do a good job of providing enough resolution to get a big print, but the body alone is gonna be over a grand.

The funny thing is "Zone" sounds gayer than Fairydown

Don't forget the Canon L-series lenses. Those are still some of the best in the biz. Trask is right though...it's the quality of the lens that determines how good the picture is.

It kinda looks like Beck

Heh heh.

No, you're absolutely right Matt. Back in the "cave" thread I mentioned this as a possible reason for the restrictions there - I didn't once mention bolts. It's not bolts they're concerned about, but rather the increasing impact climbers are having as a user group. Where the whole bolting debate is relevant for me is that gyms and sport crags are shifting the climbing culture in a direction that is bad for the environment, meaning bad for access, bad for relationships with land owners and bad for being regulated by The Tool. Learning to climb from a mountaineering/alpine/trad (whatever) perspective meant abiding by low impact, Leave No Trace ethics. I see it all too often now that a new generation of climbers coming from the gyms and learning at sport crags don't have those same ideals. I would just hate for climbers to one day be lumped in the same catagory as snowmobile and dirtbike riders in terms of how we affect whatever areas we choose to recreate in. My 2 cents.

So, yeah...what's the aluminum block for?

"The Sweet You Can Eat Between Meals Without Ruining Your Bolted Crack."

Hey...are there gonna be shirts at Smiffy rope-up?

Put this guy on a shirt.