ivan

there's plenty of skepticism out there, just not too much from americans it seems, or at least americans being interviewed by fox most of my students yesterday said they thought it was fishy and wierd that the body was dumped, but didn't jump to saying it was b.s., nor do i, mostly b/c i don't care - dead or not, osama had become a footnote in history - if he's still alive (and not making music w/ elvis, tupac & jim morrison) i'm sure he'll have a new diatribe ready for podcast in a couple days i liked the random paki i heard interviewed on npr y-day - he said he didn't much believe the annoucment b/c he'd heard it before, and that it didn't matter b/c regardless there were still plenty of violent jihadi dickheads in his country, and that the usa would go on violating paki soveriegnity b/c there was fuckall they could do about it

just playing the devil's advocate, mind ye, but our august country has routinely destroyed innocents in the pursuit of the greater good as we saw it - trail of tears, sherman's march, the 8th air force leveling every town in axis europe, hiroshima, agent orange, yadda, yadda, yadda - the actual people we've killed on these occasions we've justified just as quickly and easily as those joyous dickheads in the street a decade ago the defintion of a "just society" is inseperable from the culture that produces it - from the vantage point of the pro-9/11 crowd, which obviously takes a psycho-conseravtive view of islam, the twin towers and pentagon were appropriate targets as symbols of an imperialist empire that routinely killed innocents in iraq and supported governments hostile to their one-true-interpretation of islam, which is not as crazy as more than a few other things folks seem to accept w/o blinking an eye, like the existence of invisible beared men in the sky hanging out in bathrobes and fuzzy slippers again, not looking to shed tears for osama - just agreeing w/ the basic point that its odd that Modern Men would be dancing in the street over the taking of any human life - is it a colonel kurtz thing? "You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment! Because it's judgment that defeats us."

feel like it took me a damn decade to finally get his name pronouced right - betcha had to look up the spelling though! the big v was a damn site more sympathetic figure for sure.

not saying you (we) don't have a reason to have a beer and reminsce on the osamas of yesteryear, but you are missing the moral relativism element - the folks who cheered on 9/11 were as convinced as you are that the murders de juor were justified - who's actually right? who fucking cares. whoever's left standing to make the movie of the week out of it i reckon.

"civilized" never has meant much - the romans were civilized - they woulda made certain osama lived for obama's triumph - christ on a cracker, we spend a trillion dollars catchign homeboy and can't make a quality reality-tv event out of it?

careful there, lest you get sucked in and spend the rest of yer climbing life stuck in your etriers!

pretty certain the folks cheering on 9/11 didn't think the folks killed WERE innocent maybe we should just stop cheering for the murder of folks for any reason? funny thing, by law of averages, if osama was a us citizen and had been arrested and found guilty on a capital charge, he'd likely still be alive today

odds that we'll be making may 1st osama day, just to compete w/ the lousy brits and their lame-o guye fawkes, who, let's be honest, didn't succesfully do a damn thing?

a teacher can't help but shed a tear to see the student exceed the master

not 10 minutes ago me n' my son gave up on the final page of a "where's waldo" - "that rat-bastard's playing a bin laden" i said. maybe i should go take a 2nd look at that page?

where's the pix? can't imagine not having help on that gigantic goddamn drive wtf where you hauling 5 gallons of water for? even if you're out for 2 full days, 2 gallons oughta be just fine, and you hardly have time to drink anyway when soloing!

meow!

15 year-old compulsive pizza-eaters' faces are the best nature can do?!? elizabeth hurley in "bedazzled" is my vote for nature's finest shape

i don't know him, so clearly he is gay, or a sport-climber, but in either case not deserving of my august attention

where's the chick doing handstands on summits though?

that's the via ferrata dude so popular w/ the anti-bolting crowd dood!

my hair doesn't look this good even when i'm not clutch-fucking my way up somethign steep!

Nature is not cruel, pitilessly, indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous -- indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose. - Richard Dawkins but doesn't he contradict himself?

team-building activity 1999? mostly just helping entropy i reckon...

shit, it's much easier to spot a cougar at pike's place

is that half-dome?

this is when you can expect to be heckled about not skiing i'm a gargantuan goddamn mammal, several stones heavier than you at any rate, and your standard msr-denali sized slowshoes worked just fine for me

fucking awesome. "anything built like that just gotta be called lucille"