Norman_Clyde

If you run on that platform, I'll vote for you.

OK, here is a glaring counterexample to your unqualified statement: Bush went out of his way to reach out towards American Muslims immediately following 9/11 - irrespective of their political affiliation, and appealed to the American people not to make the mistake of demonizing these fellow Americans. That is integrity and tolerance exemplified. For a brief period after 9/11, this country showed unity, compassion and moral tolerance, while not losing its focus on the need to pursue and destroy the primary perpetrator of the terrorist attacks. I remember those days. I had real hope that Bush would show moral leadership that would inspire the entire world. Our nation had that chance, and we lost it. Boy, did we lose it. Does the current moral standing of the nation today seem even remotely similar to what it was after 9/11? Why not? What changed, and why? How did America get from that moment of true integrity and tolerance to this moment, which sees our president enshrining as morally superior such phenomena as pre-emptive war, indefinite detention of US citizens without trial, and state-sanctioned torture? Is this the integrity and tolerance you are talking about?

Does anyone remember when the Teletubbies were shown to be stealth promoters of homosexuality to kids, because the purple one carried a purse? Thank God Jerry Falwell exposed that horrid scandal. Clearly, where kids' cartoons are concerned, eternal vigilance is the price of moral purity.

ChucK, your optimism is an inspiration. I'm sure the Bush administration will seek to bring people like you on board for its more controversial policies, just before stabbing you in the back. Did I say that? Sorry, I meant: the Bush administration will seek bipartisan support of its policies, as long as this suits its own ends. It will reach across the partisan aisle as long as it perceives the potential for increasing and consolidating its own power thereby. I would love to believe otherwise, but this administration's actions speak so much louder than its words, it's hard to take its words at face value. I too found parts of Bush's inaugural speech inspirational, and part of me wants to believe that Bush truly wants to do good rather than to simply rule. But time and again Bush has proven that he believes the truth is subservient to power, not the other way around.

Hearing Bush's speech today, having recently read a few quotes from Woodrow Wilson, prompts me to post the following. "The example of America must be a special example. The example of America must be the example not merely of peace because it will not fight, but of peace because peace is the healing and elevating influence of the world and strife is not. There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right." -Woodrow Wilson, 1915 "We are now about to accept gage of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the Nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no evil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and freedom of nations can make them." -Woodrow Wilson, 1917

we're all descended from primates - remember? Obviously you weren't taught about Intelligent Design in school. But don't worry-- within four years, all public schools will lose their funding if they don't teach that God made the earth in six days, 6000 years ago.

Thanks Iain. I figured someone had delved this deeply. I can't wait to read the whole thing. I haven't myself had any close calls that I was aware of (i.e. if you come within a hairsbreadth of triggering a fatal slide, you usually won't know it), but I suspect that I've had more moments of risk in medium terrain which I crossed casually than in scarier terrain approached with greater care.

On NPR today (between noon and 1 pm if you want to go to their website and stream it) they interviewed an avy expert from Utah who has studied demographics of avalanche victims, plus apparently other victim characteristics, in an attempt to peg the psychology behind the decisions to ski in risky backcountry terrain. Except that I heard a few interesting factoids, especially the one that mixed gender groups get nailed more than same gender groups, I found the piece disappointing. True, it was aimed at an uneducated audience, but even so, it said very little beyond "Why on earth would anyone ski past a sign with a scary skull and crossbones on it? Well, because they've done it before and not gotten killed, so they stop feeling scared about it." I find it interesting that, in spite of stories like the one above at Baker with ignoramuses skiing the BC, most North American avy deaths seem to involve people with quite a bit of BC experience. The NPR piece dug a very shallow pit that IMO did not reach the critical unstable layer, which is: when experienced people, who know the risks and make a habit of practicing more or less risk-averse behavior, get nailed precisely because they venture into unstable terrain even when they know better. What makes this happen? Please respond.

I can't make it this weekend, but I was up there yesterday. Table Mt. area and all the nearby high points were looking excellent. There was about 8 inches of fresh, pretty light stuff, cut up a little near the lifts but untouched elsewhere. The very worst parts of the drive from Seattle, as of yesterday, were I-5 by Lake Samish, and the first ten miles of 542 from Bellingham. I put chains on near the top, but only because the sign said I had to. I understand they had more precip last night, but if your car can make it, don't think twice!

That would be the 222, which is a weaker version of the American Tylenol 3. About half of the Seattleites in my former medical practice seemed to stock up on these every trip to Canada. But if 222's are caffeinated, that's news to me.

I find it ironic that republican senators are all of a sudden willing to slam Rumsfeld, not for completely bungling the war, but for being insufficiently sensitive in his symbolic gestures. Although this does seem to express the Bush philosophy: it's not your gross mistakes that matter, it's the thickness of your wall of denial.

Vioxx and Celebrex are both way overrated, overmarketed and over-hyped. When the drug companies won the right to market directly to the public in 1997, they abandoned any public health mission they ever may have had, and since that time have been morally and ethically equivalent to Philip Morris. When you look at their pattern of behavior and the way the FDA and other government agencies have functioned as enablers, it starts to look like it was inevitable (though only because the companies have not been able to suppress all unfavorable study findings, not that they haven't tried). I'm glad there is at last an event to show the public how ill these companies have served us. Yes, it's too bad for all of you who have been cashing in on drug company stock. You should have traded it for Philip Morris or Halliburton instead.

The route looks like it's well in regarding snow and ice coverage, some water ice on the vertical step near the summit. It was way too warm today for safety, probably 50 degrees at noontime. Wait for a cold morning.

Terminal Gravity weekend, of course.

When I was living in D.C. in the 90's I stood next to Liddy at a crosswalk. He wasn't particularly small or frail looking at that time, but with exception of the shaved head (which was still unusual in 1992) he didn't particularly stand out from the crowd.

I've met doctors such as you describe, so I know what you're talking about and I don't take your observations personally. I'm still embarrassed over my remark to you at a Pub Club once about not being able to "get rid of" patients in a busy ER. I didn't mean it that way, honest! Regarding tendons, these days I even get to see finger tendons right out in the open, and sometimes even stitch them back together. Cool to watch, bad if it's your own hand. But these are usually bagel slicing accidents not involving climbers. I give them plain old Keflex for infection prevention.

Hey ChucK, I finally figured out what a tendon is.

In case you couldn't figure it out from the last post, I believe that labor is superior to capital, because without labor there is no capital. This idea was not first stated by Karl Marx, by the way, but by Abraham Lincoln. I believe that government tax policy should favor labor over capital: to a mild degree, but enough to keep the system in balance. Otherwise, capital reinforces its own holdings at the expense of labor, causing the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer... hey, isn't that what's happening in the USA right now?

It fits with the Bush mentality, which is that capital is superior to labor. How else would W. be expected to think? Labor is for the little people. Capital is for the big people. Labor is something other people do for you, the person who has the capital. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall any point in Bush's job history, outside of his illustrious tour in the National Guard, where he was simply an employee who worked for a living and did not share in profits. Instead, as a favorite son, he was given heaps of cash (capital) to play with, didn't have to pay anyone back when he lost other people's money, eventually got some sweet business deals which gave him heaps of capital (business investments, a phenomenon distinctly different from that of working for pay). Since then, he's been in the business of investing capital and getting returns on it, like all his ultra rich cronies. Bush was born into this elevated world of capital, where he and all his peers got their money from profits but never had to simply work for pay. Naturally, they consider capital to be sacred, so they support the economic theory that taxing capital is bad for the economy. I'm not an economist, as I have said, but I can see the pattern behind the Bush economic strategy: tax labor, not capital. Let the people who work for a living support the infrastructure. Let those of us who never had to work, but who own the capital, invest it and gain profit from the people who work for us, but don't expect us to pay taxes on that money. It's capital, we were born with it, it's our sacred right to keep every penny. Paying taxes is the duty of the little people-- those pathetic souls who have to work for a living.

I have the program and my discs are fine so far. Send a pm--but only those of you who really own the program, since I don't believe in piracy. (Insert jolly roger graemlin here)

ChucK, Regarding socialized medicine/single payer, I support the idea in principle, though I think it's currently a political impossibility. I suspect that a few years of a national health program would improve the USA's health statistics to where we might approach other developed countries like Canada (you know, the ones that spend less on health care than we do). A national health program would also mean that healthy climbers with, let's say, a sore knee or shoulder would not be able to get an MRI after only a week's wait. But if any of you have a problem like this and are uninsured, you're out of luck with the current system anyway. At least with national health insurance, you'd get your MRI within 6 months or so. The two main single payer gurus are Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein, who work out of Boston (Booga! Booga! Liberal Taxachusetts!). One of the most interesting stats they put forward is that a full 70 per cent of US health care expenditures are currently shouldered by the federal government, between Medicare, Medicaid, and subsidies to health insurers. Taxes already pay for most of health care, but we also get the massive inefficiencies due to insurers devoting masses of employees to denying/reducing charges by physicians and hospitals. I work part time at the VA hospital in Tacoma, probably as close as we have to fully socialized medicine in the USA today. There I get to see the good side (integrated medical record, nothing falls through the cracks, people really do get their needs taken care of) and the bad side (long waits for appointments and consults with specialists, and I'd say that federal employees in health care are indeed less motivated and work less hard than those I know in the private sector-- though this is a gross generalization). JayB, I'm not an economist, but I stand by my previous assertion that Wal-Mart and other huge warehouse retailers suck the life out of communities. They are all about externalizing costs (like, for example, health insurance) onto the local community, while all profits return to corporate headquarters. This is in marked contrast to locally owned businesses, where profits are not siphoned away and there is more hope of a community being at least partly self-sustaining. Are you saying that thousands of people with marginal buying power were at the brink of starvation until they suddenly became able to buy cheaper groceries at Wal-Mart? Don't you think there might be other effects on employment rates, local wages, etc. that might not be all good?

It is non-negotiable only if you do not have representative government, i.e. taxation without representation. Here in Washington you can choose to support people like Tim Eyman who will put an anti-tax referendum on the ballot for you. In fact, the "representation" in Washington is so good that the voters, in their infinite wisdom, can approve a referendum cutting taxes at the same time that they clamor for more government services. Libertarian, free market fundamentalists love to go on about how taxes limit their freedom. The argument suggests the potential existence of a tax-free paradise where the free market creates a blissful world of absolute liberty where anyone willing to work for a living can have anything they want. But it's not so hard to see how unfettered free markets lead to big corporations getting bigger, squeezing small business out, consolidating their holdings, until the average person's economic life is controlled less by the government than by a host of huge corporate entities. A few percentage point changes in tax rates may affect lives less than the gutting of a small business community by warehouse retail. The Wal-Martization of the USA, arguably a result of less government, has changed the face of America. We used to be composed of small communities of independent businesses, tied together by mutual economic cooperation and dependence. No more. It is getting harder every day, and may soon be impossible, for any American to make an independent living, i.e. not as either an employee of a huge corporation or having a huge corporation as a customer. How about freedom from the massive consumer advertising onslaught that assaults us every day? This is what the "freedom" of the glorious free market has brought us: freedom to chase and possess anything and everything that can be bought and sold. Intangible things that have no price vanish from this equation, from public discussion, and eventually become invisible. Freedom isn't just about taxation, just as money isn't everything.

[quote the greatest harm and danger is violence itself, greater even than death? And when one has gone beyond violence and fear entirely and absolutely in one's life, then the taking of life under any circumstances becomes inconceivable due to one's insights? This is the Gandhian point of view. These days, his approach is usually dismissed as naive and unrealistic, but in my opinion he gets too little credit for his bravery. If one investigates what he means by Satyagraha (literally translated as "truth force"), one begins to realize that active resistance, which renounces violence, requires significantly more bravery than fighting.

Went up Si instead. Nice running weather.

Squak Mt. at 2 pm. I'll be heading up the Squak trailhead at the cul-de-sac. Be there-- aloha.