Off_White

wow - never seen that until now - the approach looks a bit intense - how much do you reckon it'll cost you? Friends of mine liked it so much they did it twice while they were there!

Naw, that first cove vid place is Spain, your vid is Germany. The sounds of vehicle traffic are a dead giveaway that it's not the same place you walk that wild sidewalk to get to.

That'd be pretty sweet on a mountain bike...

Ken, that's because in Rwanda gasoline costs 1.46 times the world average. The US is at 77% of the average, and if you lived in Turkmenistan you'd pay about $ .03 per liter. Source: NationMaster.com At the same station in Olympia where 99% Biodiesel was $4.99 a gallon, petro diesel was $4.29 and regular unleaded gasoline was $3.29. In relative terms, you've really got to pay a premium if you believe using BD is the right thing to do.

At least they're not wearing them backwards. My favorite fashion advice I ever read was, "Never wear your baseball cap backwards unless you're giving head." Runs though my mind every time I see some dude slouching down the street in his backwards cap, and I can't help but snicker.

4.99 a gallon at the pump in Olympia this morning.

Is that your snazzy new piercing or do you have a hook in your mouth?

I've always thought of Twight as a nihilist, and to quote Walter Sobchak: "Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos." "Ve are nihilists, ve believe in nusink."

Trip: The Mace - Sedona, AZ - Original Route Date: 4/6/2008 Trip Report: On a recent visit to Flagstaff I got to climb this classic Arizona tower. A pleasant 5.7 chimney/face/bulge first pitch and wild lean-across-the-gap fifth pitch bookend the meat of the route: three pitches of wide crack workout that covers all the sizes from hands in a flare to wide chimney, with plenty enough squeeze to put scabs on knees and elbows. Highly recommended, but note that it is significantly more work than something like the NW Corner of NEWS. I didn't have a camera with me, but here's a topo and a few photos pirated from the web, because what's a TR without some eye candy? Yarr. Topo pilfered from Climbing magazine Spot the tower. Pitch 1, it won't get any easier or friendlier than this. The upper part of pitch 2, save something big for this section. looking down pitch 3 Pretty damned scenic when you start tunneling in on the 4th pitch. Someone went to some trouble to perch on the adjacent spire to get this picture of pitch 4. pitch 5 FA by Kamps, Rearick, and Herbert in 1957 with a bunch of pins. Holy shit, those folks were badass. Gear Notes: > Cams from 1/2" to #5 camalot, doubles in the hand to wide fist size. > Lots of shoulder length slings. > Every belay ledge is a winner, one giant glue in eyebolt with supplemental gear. > Two double rope rappels down the backside to a notch - be sure to shift knot over edge on first rappel. I bet you could get down with a single 70 meter rope. who brings a pack on this route. Approach Notes: Casual 20 minute approach via trail and red rock slabs.

"Is it such a shock that your mom wants to fuuuuucck?"

You mean aside from making an accurate call about our trillion dollar debacle?

I'd think it was pretty silly even if she was Republican. Friction between the two parties seems like a pre-existing condition, and this was just a handy pretext in an ongoing spat.

You play with the cat, sometimes you bleed.

Yeah, I gotta go with pitch 4 on the Evil Twin Arete.

Merkin? Your invocation of a pubic wig is insulting and uncalled for sir!

I don't know all your reasons, but I really respect that you followed through on your convictions.

People join the military for a lot of reasons. A friend of mine enlisted in the Navy the day she turned 18. As the eldest of 10 kids, there was no way she was going to stay around in the podunk southern town she was born in and help raise her siblings like her parents expected her to. Her folks were very angry with her. She's now retired from the military and a department head at an art school.

Let me get this straight, McDermott is being fined for warrantless wiretapping? Silly fool should have waited a decade until it was legal. What was Boehner worried about anyway? If he wasn't doing anything wrong, he's got nothing to be afraid of. FYI: Boehner is house minority leader John Boehner, not Boner as in KK's pet name for Kevbone.

Oh, perhaps I meant we're coming around to the question, I haven't seen much in the way of solutions.

Doug, it was probably better for the guy to make the effort and have it not work out than to just give up and feel guilty over whether you should have tried.

Thanks DeChristo, agree or disagree, Hitchens is almost always worth reading. It's funny how what is billed as a book review is much more about Hitchens, he even goes so far as to write the summary points he'd put in the book if he wrote it! It's worth taking the time to read the article. This quote from an article Sam Harris wrote in the Los Angeles Times alarmed Hitchens, perhaps because it's quite possibly true. It seems to me that a defense of Liberalism that isn't fascist is a part of what we're talking around here.

Oh, perhaps we can agree: Christianity AND Islam generally suck and have ample examples of intolerance. I don't want either of them in charge of my government. Better now?

I'd hazard a guess that it could be what happened for the west that didn't happen for Islam: The Reformation. The fracturing of the Catholic Church and the plethora of Protestant sects that sprung up led to a diversity that slowly diluted the power of any one church, and led to both the flowering of Liberalism and encouraged the development of rational science. I'm weak on my middle eastern history. When did Wahabbism come about? Wasn't that essentially a fundamentalist reformation within Islam, something that put the blinders on and hit the brakes? I know it's what my step grandmother would have liked to see happen here, she used to complain that God didn't want people to know so much, and that too much education was a bad thing. Seems like I recall it was WWI that really put the nail in the Ottoman Empire's coffin, but things must have been slipping for quite awhile before that.

Bug: That was an interesting article Recycled posted, though the actual source appears to be Canadian: link

You made me curious, so I did a little searching. In fact, it only appears to have been used once on this board in a pro-war context in the form "fuck the towelheads" by Gotterdamerung back in 04 in a thread about Abu Ghraib. Every other occurrence of the term is by someone on the left rebutting or recasting someone's anti arab opinion, or in quoted material from elsewhere. Our right wing on Cascadeclimbers is more politically correct than they are given credit for, and the phrase is more often used here as a dirty arguing trick to denigrate another's position by applying an extra wash of rascism. You know, like I've just done. So, maybe that bumpersticker is way out of line, at least within the context of this website. better?