Roger

Why haven't we heard from CBS on this issue?

Tucson used to be home for me also - finding good places to climb is the least of your worries. Mt. Lemmon is awesome ... great variety of trad and sport routes on stellar rock, and a cool local climbing community (at least that was the case 10+ years ago). The problem is that the city itself is not so great, unless you like spending a lot of time in your car. Still way better than phoenix though. Feel free to PM me for tips about the handful of neighborhoods worth checking out if you make the move.

"I eat acid and I vote" On a shiny new Volvo wagon on SE Hawthorne - "You don't need a miracle - you need $42.50"

Newsflash for sailboy regarding that map and the associated BS quoted above: more people actually voted for Gore. Last I checked, sagebrush doesn't get to vote, but I'd be interested to hear your theory about the significance of uninhabited land in presidential elections. More importantly, most of that garbage you quoted above was actually made up and circulated by your fellow wingnuts: (edited from snopes, full text here) 3. The quote from "Alexander Tyler" is very likely fictitious. His name was actually "Lord Woodhouselee, Alexander Fraser Tytler," and he was a Scottish historian/professor who wrote several books in the late 1700s and early 1800s. However, there is no record of The Fall of the Athenian Republic or The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic in the Library of Congress, which has several other titles by Tytler. This quote has also been cited as being from Tytler's Universal History or from his Elements of General History, Ancient and Modern, books that do exist. These books seem the most likely source of the quote, as they contain extensive discussions of the political systems in historic civilizations, including Athens. Universal History was published after, and based upon, Elements of General History, which was a collection of Professor Tytler's lecture notes. Tytler's book, Universal history, from the creation of the world to the beginning of the eighteenth century, is available for viewing and searching on-line. The complete text was searched for each of the following phrases: Athenian Republic democracy generous gifts public treasury loose fiscal fiscal bondage 200 years two hundred years spiritual faith In no case was text identified that was remotely similar in words or intent to the alleged Tytler quote. 4. Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University is not the source of any of the statistics or the text attributed to him. Professor Olson was contacted (by me) via e-mail, and he confirmed that he had no authorship or involvement in this matter. And, as Fayette Citizen editor Dave Hamrick wrote back in January 2001: I really enjoyed one recent message that was circulated extremely widely, at least among conservatives. It gave several interesting "facts" supposedly compiled by statisticians and political scientists about the counties across the nation that voted for George Bush and the ones that voted for Al Gore in the recent election. Supposedly, the people in the counties for Bush had more education, more income, ad infinitum, than the counties for Gore. I didn't have time to check them all out, but I was curious about one item in particular... the contention that the murder rate in the Gore counties was about a billion times higher than in the Bush counties. This was attributed to a Professor Joseph Olson at the Hamline University School of Law. I never heard of such a university, but went online and found it. And Prof. Olson does exist. "Now I'm getting somewhere," I thought. But in response to my e-mail, Olson said the "research" was attributed to him erroneously. He said it came from a Sheriff Jay Printz in Montana. I e-mailed Sheriff Printz, and guess what? He didn't do the research either, and didn't remember who had e-mailed it to him. In other words, he got the same legend e-mailed to him and passed it on to Olson without checking it out, and when Olson passed it on, someone thought it sounded better if a law professor had done the research, and so it grew. Who knows where it originally came from, but it's just not true. 5. The county-by-county murder-rate comparison presented in this piece is wrong. According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), in the year 2000 the national murder rate was about 5.5 per 100,000 residents. Homicide data by county for 1999 and 2000 can be downloaded from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NAJCD), and the counties won by Gore and Bush can be identified using the county-by-county election results made available by CNN. (The NACJD provides not only the number of reported murders for each county, but also the population for each.) The average murder rate in the counties won by Gore vs. the rate in the counties won by Bush can be determined from this data. By calculating the murder rate for each county and then taking the averages, we find a murder rate (defined as number of murders per 100,000 residents) of about 5.2 for the "average" Gore county and 3.3 for the average Bush county. But since people, rather than counties, commit murders, a more appropriate approach is to calculate the total number of murders in the counties won by each candidate and divide that figure by the total number of residents in those counties. This more appropriate method yields the following average murder rates in counties won by each candidate: Gore: 6.5 Bush: 4.1 There is a distinct difference between these two numbers, but it is nowhere near as large as the quoted e-mail message states (i.e., 13.2 for Gore vs. 2.1 for Bush). Note that the average of these two figures is 5.3, which, as expected, is very close to the reported national murder rate of 5.5.

I heard rumors about a project in Govt. Camp... anybody know any details?

It sure is... but yikes, what a procedural clusterfuck. Even the court sounds confused about how to deal with it. Nice work! Did you guys take up the LUBA decision on the ballot measure?

"Weapons of Ass Destruction" "On Golden Blonde" "Schindler's Fist"

hmmmm... and McVeigh and this Mayfield guy were both in the US Army... why does this obvious Army-terrorist link not surprise me? The guy is actually from Aloha - he's being held under a material witness warrant, so he hasn't been charged with anything (yet), and he has a lawyer.

Mr. wind specifically mentioned his 'jorts' twice, so I think we're still on topic. But if this turns into an ugly jorts vs. gorts debate, we should probably take it to spray.

are 'jorts' the same thing as gorts?

Nice job on remembering the keys... you must not have had any snowboarders on your tour. Sounds like the road was open all the way up to the trailhead?

my bad - I missed the part about how he worked on the anti-obesity campaign. I'll admit that moves the needle on the irony-o-meter. I'm not so sure about croaking at the convention, though. But I suppose irony is somewhat in the eye of the beholder... unless the beholder is Alanis, who pretty much fucked up the entire concept.

dammit dru, this thread was almost dead.

maybe this is just a troll for grammar geeks, but actually, no its not ironic. It might be ironic if the CEO of McDonald's died while running a marathon. Or, better yet, if he became a vegan for health reasons and then choked to death on a garden burger. But a heart attack is pretty much what you'd expect.

another pagetop junkie, trolling the 7-month old threads for an easy score. It's not pretty, man. I've seen the snaffle and the damage done.

dude, get a grip.

well, that's not really the point... there's no reason to to let the facts get in the way of a good

well, since we're now in SPRAY... Nice shorts over polypro, gaper.

mmmm.... sauce!!

If you do the mazama-style midnight start it will definitely be bulletproof up high, but still worth it to leave the skis somewhere above the top of the palmer and avoid slogging all the way down the ski area. Of course, this assumes the extra... I'm guessing at least 35 lbs of skis, bindings, and downhill boots on your back doesn't make you want to call it off at the silcox hut on the way up.

The short and non-nuanced answer is apparently good old fashioned economics - these guys are among the best at what they do, and they can make a lot more money doing it in the private sector. From today's NYT - Private U.S. Guards Take Big Risks for Right Price By JAMES DAO Published: April 2, 2004 MOYOCK, N.C., April 1 — Nestled inconspicuously amid the pinelands and horse farms of northeastern North Carolina lies a small but increasingly important part of the nation's campaign to stabilize Iraq. Here, at the 6,000-acre training ground of Blackwater U.S.A., scores of former military commandos, police officers and civilians are prepared each month to join the lucrative but often deadly work of providing security for corporations and governments in the toughest corners of the globe. On Wednesday, four employees of a Blackwater unit — most of them former American military Special Operations personnel — were killed in an ambush in the central Iraqi city of Falluja, their bodies mutilated and dragged through the streets by chanting crowds. The scene, captured in horrific detail by television and newspaper cameras, shocked the nation and outraged the tightly knit community of current and former Special Operations personnel. But it also shed new light on the rapidly growing and loosely regulated industry of private paramilitary companies like Blackwater that are replacing government troops in conflicts from South America to Africa to the Middle East. "This is basically a new phenomenon: corporatized private military services doing the front-line work soldiers used to do," said Peter W. Singer, a national security fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington who has written a book on the industry, "Corporate Warriors" (Cornell University Press, 2003). "And they're not out there screening passengers at the airports," Mr. Singer said. "They're taking mortar and sniper fire." The Associated Press identified three of the victims as Jerry Zovko, 32, an Army veteran from Willoughby, Ohio; Mike Teague, a 38-year-old Army veteran from Clarksville, Tenn.; and Scott Helvenston, 38, a veteran of the Navy. Blackwater declined to identify the dead men, but issued a statement: "We grieve today for the loss of our colleagues and we pray for their families. The graphic images of the unprovoked attack and subsequent heinous mistreatment of our friends exhibits the extraordinary conditions under which we voluntarily work to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people." Though there have been private militaries since the dawn of war, the modern corporate version got its start in the 1990's after the collapse of the Soviet Union. At that time, many nations were sharply reducing their military forces, leaving millions of soldiers without employment. Many of them went into business doing what they knew best: providing security or training others to do the same. The proliferation of ethnic conflicts and civil wars in places like the Balkans, Haiti and Liberia provided employment for the personnel of many new companies. Business grew rapidly after the Sept. 11 attacks prompted corporate executives and government officials to bolster their security overseas. But it was the occupation of Iraq that brought explosive growth to the young industry, security experts said. There are now dozens, perhaps hundreds of private military concerns around the world. As many as two dozen companies, employing as many as 15,000 people, are working in Iraq. They are providing security details for diplomats, private contractors involved in reconstruction, nonprofit organizations and journalists, security experts said. The private guards also protect oil fields, banks, residential compounds and office buildings. Though many of the companies are American, others from Britain, South Africa and elsewhere are providing security in Iraq. Among them is Global Risks Strategies, a British company that hired Fijian troops to help protect armored shipments of the new Iraqi currency around the country. Blackwater is typical of the new breed. Founded in 1998 by former Navy Seals, the company says it has prepared tens of thousands of security personnel to work in hot spots around the world. At its complex in North Carolina, it has shooting ranges for high-powered weapons, buildings for simulating hostage rescue missions and a bunkhouse for trainees. The Blackwater installation is so modern and well-equipped that Navy Seals stationed at the Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base in Norfolk, Va., routinely use it, military officials said. So do police units from around the country, who come to Blackwater for specialized training. "It's world class," said Chris Amos, a spokesman for the Norfolk Police Department. In Iraq, Blackwater personnel guard L. Paul Bremer III, the head of the civilian administration, among their other jobs. Around Baghdad, the Blackwater guards, most in their 30's and 40's, are easily identified, with their heavily muscled upper bodies, closely cropped hair or shaven heads and wrap-around sunglasses. Some even wear Blackwater T-shirts. Like Special Operations Forces, they use walkie-talkie earpieces with curled wires disappearing beneath their collars and carry light-weight automatic weapons. In the northern city of Mosul, where Mr. Bremer met with about 130 carefully vetted Iraqis on Thursday, Blackwater guards maintained a heavy presence, standing along the walls facing the Iraqi guests with their rifles cradled. More than once, Iraqis and Western reporters moving forward to take their seats in the hall were abruptly challenged by the guards, with warnings that they would be ejected if they resisted. The company also received a five-year Navy contract in 2002 worth $35.7 million to train Navy personnel in force protection, shipboard security, search-and-seizure techniques, and armed sentry duties, Pentagon officials said. The rapid growth of the private security industry has come about in part because of the shrinkage of the American military: there are simply fewer military personnel available to protect officials, diplomats and bases overseas, security experts say. To meet the rising demand, the companies are offering yearly salaries ranging from $100,000 to nearly $200,000 to entice senior military Special Operations forces to switch careers. Assignments are paying from a few hundred dollars to as much as $1,000 a day, military officials said. Gen. Wayne Downing, a retired chief of the United States Special Operations Command, said that on a recent trip to Baghdad he ran into several former Delta Force and Seal Team Six senior noncommissioned officers who were working for private security companies. "It was like a reunion," General Downing said. Sheriff Susan Johnson of Currituck County, N.C., where the entrance to Blackwater is situated, said several of her deputies had been lured away by the company to work overseas. "It's tough to keep them when they can earn as much in one month there as they can in a year here," Sheriff Johnson said. But critics say the rapid growth of the industry raises troubling concerns. There is little regulation of the quality of training or recruitment by private companies, they say. The result may be inexperienced, poorly prepared and weakly led units playing vital roles in combat situations. Even elite former commandos may not be well trained for every danger, those critics say. Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois, has also argued that the United States' growing use of private military companies hides the financial, personal and political costs of military operations overseas, since the concerns face little public scrutiny. In particular, Ms. Schakowsky has objected to administration plans to increase the number of private military contractors in Colombia, where three American civilians working for a Northrup Grumman subsidiary have been held hostage by Marxist rebels for more than a year. The three were on a mission to search for cocaine laboratories and drug planes when they were captured. "I continue to oppose the use of military contractors who are not subject to the same kind of scrutiny and accountability as U.S. soldiers," Ms. Schakowsky said last week. "When things go wrong for these contractors, they and their families have been shamefully forgotten by their American employers." Eric Schmitt, in Washington, and John F. Burns, in Baghdad, contributed reporting for this article.

Great thread. This is what I love about this site. telenut, you and I probably don't have much in common politically, but I think your experiences and perspective have added a lot to the discussion on this board. It's good to have a reasoned military viewpoint from someone who has clearly given it some thought... so thanks for putting it out there. Bad news about the crampons - last time I skied off shasta it was bulletproof down to about 8k and I started to wonder if maybe AT isn't such a bad idea...

Blake - it is definitely worth it to be able to ski back down to timberline. But are you talking about actual heavy-ass alpine gear and ski boots...? I'd leave the skis at the bottom of the hogsback - you can pretty easily ski down past crater rock from there.

Looks like your buddy "Already" found him over in a 2002 MRNP thread. so it's over now. you can get on with your life.

I'd climb with you if you hadn't spelled 'pretense' wrong. Come on, we've got standards on this board, mister...