billcoe

Classic!

Ouch! Last year I did the afterwork run to Beacon twice, Ozone once and The Far Side several times instead of the Butte. One time it was a 2 hour drive, means you have to sprint up the routes out there and all your time is in the car. Stuck for almost a full hour to get on the bridge to get to the couve. btw, 143,808 views of this thread. Some of you need to step away from your puters and get out more:-)

LOL! Nice internet beatdown Hound! damn, hate to see you get pissed off. BTW, I have never ever known anyone who ever owned a vibe, so I'm ignorant, but unlike Choda, I can admit it. Check yer pms

Hard working cleaning crew If they'd been able to collect a buck for each Himalayan blackberry plant pulled maybe they'd be gazillionaires.

They say it's going to excellent weather tomorrow, Thurs.....what does everyone think? Should we all get our tired out of shape asses outside for some apre-work TR laps? Despite the extra winter lbs and out of condition things I can still belay to 5.10 without too much effort:-)

http://www.rockclimbing.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2304089;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;

I almost spewed water onto my desk. Thanks for the laugh!

I am still left wondering why we fought in WW1?

Ivan, the amount of innocent civis we killed during the war was massive, although often unintentional. How many do you think we killed from high level B52 runs as we ramped them up as part of an exit strategy? ? Truthfully, those folks suffered bad, and they were not really counted and were generally impossible to count, unlike the Mai Lai massacre. Lemay again in Vietnam from wikipedia: "LeMay advocated a sustained strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnamese cities, harbors, ports, shipping, and other strategic targets. His advice was ignored. Instead, an incremental policy was implemented that focused on limited interdiction bombing of fluid enemy supply corridors in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. This limited campaign failed to destroy significant quantities of enemy war supplies or diminish enemy ambitions. Bombing limitations were imposed by President Lyndon Johnson for geopolitical reasons, as he was afraid that bombing Soviet and Chinese ships in port and killing Soviet advisers would bring the Soviets more directly into the war and destabilize the European Cold War. Some military historians have argued that LeMay's theories were eventually proven correct. Near the war's end in December 1972, President Richard Nixon ordered Operation Linebacker II, a high-intensity Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps aerial bombing campaign, which included hundreds of B-52 bombers that succeeded in widespread destruction of previously untouched North Vietnamese strategic targets. These arguments state that the intense bombing compelled the communist government to quickly conclude negotiations that finally ended America's longest war. Others believe the impact was smaller, as the peace negotiations were only temporarily stalled and the North Vietnamese were trying to get better terms." ____________________________________________________________ And the moral still is? _________________________

Yeah, but they'll know who Martin Luther King is even if you folks aren't teaching who George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are any more. BTW, the leaftlet that the US dropped into the targeted cities before the bombing campaign started so as to give them a heads up was this. " Front side of OWI notice #2106, dubbed the “LeMay bombing leaflet,” which was delivered to Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and 33 other Japanese cities on 1 August 1945. The Japanese text on the reverse side of the leaflet carried the following warning: “Read this carefully as it may save your life or the life of a relative or friend. In the next few days, some or all of the cities named on the reverse side will be destroyed by American bombs. These cities contain military installations and workshops or factories which produce military goods. We are determined to destroy all of the tools of the military clique which they are using to prolong this useless war. But, unfortunately, bombs have no eyes. So, in accordance with America's humanitarian policies, the American Air Force, which does not wish to injure innocent people, now gives you warning to evacuate the cities named and save your lives. America is not fighting the Japanese people but is fighting the military clique which has enslaved the Japanese people. The peace which America will bring will free the people from the oppression of the military clique and mean the emergence of a new and better Japan. You can restore peace by demanding new and good leaders who will end the war. We cannot promise that only these cities will be among those attacked but some or all of them will be, so heed this warning and evacuate these cities immediately.” (See Richard S. R. Hubert, “The OWI Saipan Operation,” Official Report to US Information Service, Washington, DC 1946.)" The Japanese military responded by executing all but a few captured Air Force officers and US civilians in detention.

Opps Steven, I added Curtis Lemay while you were posting, he got promoted.

It was universally decried and it's not a pus speck on the pimple on the ass of Stalin, Mao, Franco, Pol Pot, Idi Amin or Hitler. If you want to bring up how shitty we are as Americans, google Curtis LeMay and lets have celebratory bonfires of remembrance for this that and the other. Hard to calculate but in 5 months it looks like Lemays "successful" firebombing campaign killed @ 500,000 Japanese civilians and left 5 million homeless. And the moral of that story is:??? Bombs have no eyes.

Yeah: My wife and I just got part of an all natural no hormone free range fair trade pig for the freezer from some friends who raised it on their farm....I have to say, I prefer the pork that comes out of the store that's been fed condoms, trash and cockroaches and also pumped full of hormones and antibiotics. Must just be use to the trash, it just tastes so much better to me.

LOL! technology, love it. Someones new sig line? "Drop a knee, squat to pee."

The silence is deafening.... ....

I have the Panasonic with the massive 10x or 12x zoom and the sweet Leica lens. However, they don't really like the abuse I've been heading out with it recently, and I think my second one within a year has just succumbed, this one perhaps to the dust. It has High Def video, awesome image stabilization and video capture, and a great zoom, but I can't recommend it to anyone who's not a millionaire and prepared to keep replacing them. Non-climbers who want to film their kids wedding or capture the lil ones first baby steps in 1080p hi-def or get crystal clear long range shots -so good that stuff shows up you didn't see, get this and a good case with it too. Climbers - pass on the Panasonics.

The problem with linking the frontpage and not copying the text is that the front page changes Tom. Your link headline says "Taliban: Kandahar bombings a ‘warning’" We are already paying for that.... __________________________________________________________ In other very sad news: Katie Huether was finally found: deceased at the base of a 800 foot cliff they say after apparently falling over it. Plenty of volunteer SAR had been looking for some time for her, and the rescue had finally been called off. Her father and some other volunteers had still been looking.

OK< but it's still not there. PS, REI still has the 8.5 ropes for $94.93

Sounds like the word "tag" could be replaced with the word "jam" here. LOL

REI closeout, when they're gone, they're gone. REI Link

uh uhh, nope

nope, not there

Still not there.

http://redtape.msnbc.com/2010/03/poodle-in-tin-hat-at-center-of-facebook-rights-fight.html?GT1=43001 Poodle with Tin-Foil hat wins. Thursday, March 11 2010 at 04:32 am CT by Bob Sullivan You don't hear the words "poodle," "tinfoil hat," and First Amendment in the same sentence often, but they are indeed linked in a classic Facebook melodrama. Dale Blank runs a Facebook page devoted to accumulating as many fans as possible for a farcical picture of a beloved poodle named Bitsy sporting a tin hat -- perhaps a bit like the one you might mentally draw on someone who was espousing tiresome conspiracy theories. Blank's intentionally clumsy Photoshop job, and his quest for fans, has a specific target -- Fox News broadcaster Glenn Beck. On Feb. 8, Blank created the page with the stated intention of proving that his tin-hatted poodle could accumulate more Facebook fans than Beck, a favorite among conservative talk-show fans. Within a week, thanks to several bumps from the blogosphere, the poodle was well on his way, claiming nearly 300,000 fans -- and enjoying logarithmic growth. Beck's page stands at about 500,000. (Full disclosure: both easily dwarf the Bob Sullivan fan page, which sits at a modest 3,400. Take from that what you will). But on Feb. 18, the Facebook police arrived and broke up the party. Blank's page wasn't removed, but it was "publish-blocked." He could no longer post updates or solicit fans in other Facebook ways. The fan-base growth ground to a halt. That put the tin-hatted poodle at the center of a dispute over First Amendment free speech rights and censorship. There were virtual howls that Facebook was actively siding with Glen Beck over the Poodle, that perhaps someone at Facebook was siding with the conservatives, or at least had developed a hatred for left-wing sarcasm. In the grand tradition of the Internet, that's overstating things a bit. Facebook, as a private company, has wide latitude in its ability to take down posts and pages that it decides run afoul of its terms of service. Even Blank said he doesn't want to raise the possibility of a conservative, subversive anti-poodle attack -- that's just the kind of knee-jerk reaction he's trying to mock. "I'm not coming from a place where I think everything is a conspiracy," said Blank, who lives near Milwaukee. In fact, he didn’t really have his heart set on poking fun of Beck. He simply picked the most popular target, in part to demonstrate how cheap popularity is on the Internet and on Facebook. “I’m not so much anti-Glenn Beck as I am pro rational thought.” Still, the conspiracy theories appeared. It didn't help that Facebook initially failed to give Blank an explanation for taking away his ability to publish. Then, when an explanation finally arrived this week, its vagueness only added fuel to the fire. "A Facebook administrator looks into each report thoroughly in order to decide the appropriate course of action. If no violation of our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities has occurred, then no warning will be sent," wrote a woman identifying herself as Marissa from Facebook's User Operations department, according to an e-mail provided by Blank. "If a violation has occurred, then a warning or more severe actions are taken. Unfortunately, for technical and security reasons, we are unable to provide details regarding the removed content. We apologize for any inconvenience." Blank wasn't buying that. "Technical and security reasons? That's just a cover for the real reason," he said. "I like to think it's not a political thing. When I see some of the pages out there devoted to (criticizing President Obama) that haven't been publish-blocked, you wonder a little. But I don't want to delve into that. I just want to know why I was blocked." Facebook offered a generic explanation to msnbc.com in an e-mail. “Pages are meant for entities like public figures, musical artists, businesses, and organizations so they can share information, interact with fans, and create a highly engaging presence on Facebook. They're distinct from groups or personal profiles and designed specifically for these entities’ needs to communicate, distribute content, engage fans, and capture new audiences virally through fans’ recommendations to their friends,” the statement said. “We restrict the publishing rights of Pages that impersonate other entities, represent generic concepts, spam users, or otherwise violate our Pages guidelines. Unless they also violate our content policies, however, these Pages are left up so that those who are interested in seeing their updates and interacting with them can still do so. These policies are designed to ensure Facebook remains a safe, secure and trusted environment for our users.” Some might find that explanation vague as well. But before providing some helpful speculation on Facebook's actions, it seems necessary to offer some context for Blank's Poodle-vs.-Beck vote-off. When creating the page, Blank drew on a Facebook fan-building technique that's been around at least since January. The "bet this can get more votes than that" format has exploded in popularity in recent weeks. There's even another Facebook page that asks, "Can this dung beetle get more fans than Glenn Beck?" But Beck is hardly the only target. The trend appears to have taken off with a page devoted to discerning whether a picture of a pickle -- yes, the kind you eat -- could amass more fans than the Canadian band Nickelback. The pickle, with 2.6 million sign-ups, has won the battle, at least for now. Nor are the groups limited to witty liberals or music haters. A group allowing people to vote for a picture of a steak over the animal rights group PETA has amassed hundreds of thousands of sign ups. To its credit, Facebook has recently taken a hard stand against the presence of hate groups on its site, and is working much more quickly to remove offensive material. That, in some cases, includes pages which serve no purpose other than to criticize famous people or organizations. Facebook users have reacted by creating these "this can get more fans than that" as a clever end-around to counter elimination of these "hater" pages. So Blank thinks that Facebook might be putting a halt to these new pages, too. HerbboxBlank spent a lot of time reading the Facebook policy for fan pages. They require that a fan page be devoted to some kind of sincere commercial enterprise, and the creator have a real link to that enterprise. The rules became an issue during the Olympics, when a user created a fan page devoted to the wacky Norwegian Olympic team's curling pants. Facebook temporarily shut the page down, until the creator linked to a Web site selling the pants. Blank feels he's satisfied the requirement by purchasing the domain BobTheWonderPoodle.com, and linking to that site. Fast growth might be the problem. Another possible explanation, according to Blank: Facebook keeps a close eye on groups that experience overnight, logarithmic growth. In the wake of the Haiti disaster, hundreds of groups sprang up claiming that they'd donate $1 for each new member, or offering some similar crowd-gathering incentive. The groups enjoyed astronomical growth, but -- again, to the firm's credit -- they were quickly removed out of concern that spammers might take advantage of members, and that many of the claims were fraudulent. "There seems to be a crackdown on anything that shows rapid growth," said Blank, a Web developer by trade. "But if they are trying to crack down on that, there is no clear policy." Also unclear – and a question that might never be answered– just how popular could a photo of a dog wearing tin hat be?