billcoe

I'm totally with you on this important point.

Saved for posterity in it's entirety. BTW, as long as we are asking important questions, where'd all dem glaciers git off too? "November 29, 2009 Climate change data dumped Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based. It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years. The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation. The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building. The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data. In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.” The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible. Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’. So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said. Jones was not in charge of the CRU when the data were thrown away in the 1980s, a time when climate change was seen as a less pressing issue. The lost material was used to build the databases that have been his life’s work, showing how the world has warmed by 0.8C over the past 157 years. He and his colleagues say this temperature rise is “unequivocally” linked to greenhouse gas emissions generated by humans. Their findings are one of the main pieces of evidence used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which says global warming is a threat to humanity."

Great pic: was this thing just sitting in the parking lot at Paradise all casual like and you took a picture? Whats the story?

Hoping that the holiday was good for all of you. For myself, I got in a short new pitch with 2 super dudes and my kid, and some great bouldering with the lad as well in between rainstorms. Good times. Kids are all crashed out now, but they are all going home today after the extended family (nieces, nephews etc) does brunch at my moms house. (insert sad face emoticon here) Lots of great family time. The climbing highlight was not in grabbing some bouldering time inbetween rainstorms and family time but in getting out with long time local stalwarts and all around awesome dudes Jim Opdycke and Jeff Thomas to get a new route in at The Far Side. Jeff took the usual great shots and Jim contributed some key humor! Here's my son, Shaun, following me up the route which Jim suggested we (and we did) name, "Child Abuse". LOL! You can see where Jeff was located to take that great upper shot in the photo below. I stood on that ledge in my barefeet the whole time I belayed 4 folks up on 11 30 2009 which shows ya the weather (and company) was awesome! Nice to get a route in with my son - great times!

What Clint, Mark Hanna and Catbirdseat say all appears to be the case. Aluminum hanger/Stainless bolts appears to be an unusual, but bad combo so keep an eye out. Steel/Alum was not uncommon back in the day and seemed as good as anything else (knowing of aluminum's weakness to cycling wear breakage of course) however, stainless/alum was rare. I wanted to cross copy this post from Rockclimbing.com from: http://www.rockclimbing.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2246519;page=unread#unread

[video:youtube] Music with meaning.

Oh no, this post was copied over from another thread with a pic of Ujahn on the 2nd pitch of Lost Warriors. Then Porter later brought over that entire thread as well.... We were all referring to this picture of Ujahn following my on Lost Warriors....

Copied from the very first climbing guide to the gorge: "A Climbers Guide to the Columbia River Gorge" published December 1958 by the Mazamas. Author Carl A. Neuberger "On new explorations it is often necessary to remove quantities of rotten, outer material before pitons can be driven that will hold. A short pinch bar is recommended equipment for such work, and because the of the wind updraughts in the gorge, a pair of clear goggles is also recommended to prevent the dirt that is loosened from such operations from getting into the eyes. It is very disconcerting to be working on a face or in a chimney with one hand while trying to remove dirt from the eyes with the other."

Oh man, don't ya just wonder in amazement at some of the crazy shit they must have to investigate massively stacked up in front of them. I don't envy them their work load, but hey, job security is job security and there are those gov't bennys..... ...wait till the mans been in office for 3 years....bet the line of whack jobs will be crowding over from Idaho all the way to pdx....

Is Pierre Trudeau still Prime Minister up there? Any recipes for Moose Jerky?

Angelina Jolie and you agree. "Barack Obama does not have Angelina Jolie's seal of approval. "She hates him," a source close to the U.N. goodwill ambassador, 34, tells the new issue of Us Weekly (on newsstands now)." Gratuitous picture of Jolie expressing displeasure.

Crazy stuff: full story for posterity with advertisement for the Twawna Brawley school of self hate mail order promo coupon not included. Investigators: Kentucky Census Worker Killed Himself A Kentucky census worker found hanging from a tree with the word "fed" written on his chest killed himself and staged his death to look like a murder, authorities said Tuesday. Kentucky State Police said Bill Sparkman died at the same location where his body was found Sept. 12 near a cemetery in a heavily wooded area of southeastern Kentucky. A man who discovered the body in the Daniel Boone National Forest said the 51-year-old was bound with duct tape, gagged and had an identification badge taped to his neck. Police told a news conference Tuesday that Sparkman was naked except for socks and had his glasses taped to his face "so he could see what he was doing." Kentucky State Police Capt. Lisa Rudzinski said the investigation revealed that the letters "fed" scrawled on his chest in black pen had been written from the bottom up and Sparkman's DNA was the only forensic evidence found at the scene. He was touching the ground, and to survive "all Mr. Sparkman had to do at any time was stand up," she said. Sparkman spoke to a witness they wouldn't name about hanging himself and making it look like someone else killed him, according to Rudzinski. Authorities say Sparkman acted alone in manipulating the scene to conceal the suicide. "Our investigation, based on evidence and witness testimony, has concluded that Mr. Sparkman died during an intentional, self-inflicted act that was staged to appear as a homicide," Rudzinski said. Sparkman's mother, Henrie Sparkman of Inverness, Fla., bristled at the conclusion: "I disagree!" she wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press. Investigators believe he killed himself and made it look like a murder because he'd recently taken out two life insurance policies that wouldn't pay out for suicide. But they didn't say what motivated Sparkman to end his life in the first place. He didn't leave a note, Rudzinski told reporters. If Sparkman had been killed on the job, his family also would have been be eligible for up to $10,000 in death gratuity payments from the government. He was not eligible for a separate life insurance policy through the government because his census work was intermittent, Census Bureau spokesman Stephen Buckner has previously said. The Census Bureau suspended door-to-door interviews in the rural county after Sparkman's body was found. Anti-government sentiment was initially one possibility in the death. Authorities said Sparkman had discussed perceived negative views of the federal government in the area. A friend of Sparkman's, Gilbert Acciardo, previously told The Associated Press that he warned Sparkman to be careful when he did his census work. Acciardo, a retired Kentucky state trooper, said he told Sparkman people in the rural area would perceive him differently because he worked for the federal government. Henrie Sparkman has said her son was an Eagle scout who moved to the area to be a local director for the Boy Scouts of America. He later became a substitute teacher in Laurel County and supplemented that income as a census worker. Friends and co-workers have said that even while undergoing chemotherapy for cancer, Sparkman would show up for work smiling with a toboggan cap to cover his balding head. They said he was punctual and dependable. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

shouldn't he be "the climber formerly known as Walla Walla Ken" now that he is up in the emerald city? Maybe...broken ankle Chris's ankles have long since healed and he hasn't seen that girlfriend for years, so should he then be "The Climber formerly known as Broken Ankle Chris"?

Josh, great meeting you as well! Who has pics of those fetish pit chicks? We should break those out right here:-) I'd never met you but I was a tad embarrassed to not recognize Walla Walla Ken at the same table! Here's the last time I saw him he was wandering under the route we were on at Beacon and invited him up with us and dropped him a rope. I think I was on the top of Rhythm Method belaying Joseph leading Menopause. He's seen here laughing at my cluster* - I had all the lead stuff clipped in and then Ujahn came up and clipped his crap in (backpack, water bottle, etc, I can see his brown daisy in this picture. I took this pic, so I should have no excuse to not recognize him. Guess if he'd had that helmet on I could have guessed it was him...... Did you get any of your pics posted? How about you Sherrie? Links?

Blame the victim. Actually, I believe you made a poignant observation on paying for these wars a couple of years ago. The bill for all that used ordinance is coming due and is still being put off as yet, thus the larger budget figures and accumulating debt...... Last night I finally finished off the book, "Lenins Tomb". Basically the fall of the USSR and of the Communist party becoming illegal in Russia. The party and the USSR economy got rocked in Afganistan, and it couldn't afford the bill and the psychic wound. There are those in Russia predicting the same for us now. Total collapse of the capitalist system.....I don't buy into it, but there are plenty of reliable institutions and people mapping out gloom and doom scenarios for our country in the next few years.

Your children are about to get hosed down in a big way with the big gov't schlong sans lubrication. We, reading this, will be seeing this pain all of our life as well more than likely. Thank both Bush and Obama. Wave of Debt Payments Facing US Government Published: Monday, 23 Nov 2009 | 6:29 AM ET Text Size By: Edmund L. Andrews The New York Times The United States government is financing its more than trillion-dollar-a-year borrowing with i.o.u.’s on terms that seem too good to be true. But that happy situation, aided by ultralow interest rates, may not last much longer. Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed. Even as Treasury officials are racing to lock in today’s low rates by exchanging short-term borrowings for long-term bonds, the government faces a payment shock similar to those that sent legions of overstretched homeowners into default on their mortgages. With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. Other forecasters say the figure could be much higher. In concrete terms, an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The potential for rapidly escalating interest payouts is just one of the wrenching challenges facing the United States after decades of living beyond its means. The surge in borrowing over the last year or two is widely judged to have been a necessary response to the financial crisis and the deep recession, and there is still a raging debate over how aggressively to bring down deficits over the next few years. But there is little doubt that the United States’ long-term budget crisis is becoming too big to postpone. Americans now have to climb out of two deep holes: as debt-loaded consumers, whose personal wealth sank along with housing and stock prices; and as taxpayers, whose government debt has almost doubled in the last two years alone, just as costs tied to benefits for retiring baby boomers are set to explode. The competing demands could deepen political battles over the size and role of the government, the trade-offs between taxes and spending, the choices between helping older generations versus younger ones, and the bottom-line questions about who should ultimately shoulder the burden. “The government is on teaser rates,” said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group that advocates lower deficits. “We’re taking out a huge mortgage right now, but we won’t feel the pain until later.” So far, the demand for Treasury securities from investors and other governments around the world has remained strong enough to hold down the interest rates that the United States must offer to sell them. Indeed, the government paid less interest on its debt this year than in 2008, even though it added almost $2 trillion in debt. The government’s average interest rate on new borrowing last year fell below 1 percent. For short-term i.o.u.’s like one-month Treasury bills, its average rate was only sixteen-hundredths of a percent. “All of the auction results have been solid,” said Matthew Rutherford, the Treasury’s deputy assistant secretary in charge of finance operations. “Investor demand has been very broad, and it’s been increasing in the last couple of years.” The problem, many analysts say, is that record government deficits have arrived just as the long-feared explosion begins in spending on benefits under Medicare and Social Security. The nation’s oldest baby boomers are approaching 65, setting off what experts have warned for years will be a fiscal nightmare for the government. “What a good country or a good squirrel should be doing is stashing away nuts for the winter,” said William H. Gross, managing director of the Pimco Group, the giant bond-management firm. “The United States is not only not saving nuts, it’s eating the ones left over from the last winter.” The current low rates on the country’s debt were caused by temporary factors that are already beginning to fade. One factor was the economic crisis itself, which caused panicked investors around the world to plow their money into the comparative safety of Treasury bills and notes. Even though the United States was the epicenter of the global crisis, investors viewed Treasury securities as the least dangerous place to park their money. On top of that, the Fed used almost every tool in its arsenal to push interest rates down even further. It cut the overnight federal funds rate, the rate at which banks lend reserves to one another, to almost zero. And to reduce longer-term rates, it bought more than $1.5 trillion worth of Treasury bonds and government-guaranteed securities linked to mortgages. Those conditions are already beginning to change. Global investors are shifting money into riskier investments like stocks and corporate bonds, and they have been pouring money into fast-growing countries like Brazil and China. The Fed, meanwhile, is already halting its efforts at tamping down long-term interest rates. Fed officials ended their $300 billion program to buy up Treasury bonds last month, and they have announced plans to stop buying mortgage-backed securities by the end of next March. Eventually, though probably not until at least mid-2010, the Fed will also start raising its benchmark interest rate back to more historically normal levels. The United States will not be the only government competing to refinance huge debt. Japan, Germany, Britain and other industrialized countries have even higher government debt loads, measured as a share of their gross domestic product, and they too borrowed heavily to combat the financial crisis and economic downturn. As the global economy recovers and businesses raise capital to finance their growth, all that new government debt is likely to put more upward pressure on interest rates. Even a small increase in interest rates has a big impact. An increase of one percentage point in the Treasury’s average cost of borrowing would cost American taxpayers an extra $80 billion this year — about equal to the combined budgets of the Department of Energy and the Department of Education. But that could seem like a relatively modest pinch. Alan Levenson, chief economist at T. Rowe Price, estimated that the Treasury’s tab for debt service this year would have been $221 billion higher if it had faced the same interest rates as it did last year. The White House estimates that the government will have to borrow about $3.5 trillion more over the next three years. On top of that, the Treasury has to refinance, or roll over, a huge amount of short-term debt that was issued during the financial crisis. Treasury officials estimate that about 36 percent of the government’s marketable debt — about $1.6 trillion — is coming due in the months ahead. To lock in low interest rates in the years ahead, Treasury officials are trying to replace one-month and three-month bills with 10-year and 30-year Treasury securities. That strategy will save taxpayers money in the long run. But it pushes up costs drastically in the short run, because interest rates are higher for long-term debt. Adding to the pressure, the Fed is set to begin reversing some of the policies it has been using to prop up the economy. Wall Street firms advising the Treasury recently estimated that the Fed’s purchases of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities pushed down long-term interest rates by about one-half of a percentage point. Removing that support could in itself add $40 billion to the government’s annual tab for debt service. This month, the Treasury Department’s private-sector advisory committee on debt management warned of the risks ahead. “Inflation, higher interest rate and rollover risk should be the primary concerns,” declared the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, a group of market experts that provide guidance to the government, on Nov. 4. “Clever debt management strategy,” the group said, “can’t completely substitute for prudent fiscal policy.”

OMG, no way! What is deja vu when it happens twice!? Is it deja deja vu vu or should it just be referred to as a "glitch in the Matrix? Especially if you bring a link like the mighty Mito just did upstream to prove the existence of said Vu Proof of the glitch in the Matrix link _________________________________________________________________

LOL! I still have that Petzl in the bag. _____________________________________________________________________ OK, bros, you've been watching the dollar slide and oil go up. Know what that means? It means that we are fu*ked vis a vis rope prices. The many Euro ropes will go up due to the dollar value and the core material is petrochemical. Yet today, our fellow bros are coming through with what may in fact be the LAST spectacular deal. The wonderful folks at Climb Max have this one. http://www.climbmaxmountaineering.com/edelweissally103x60standard-1.aspx So you dudes with old "Contractor grade extension cord" lines get on it, support the local good guys and get yourself a new cragging rope in the process. Edelweiss makes good stuff and they've been making it a long time. This is dirt cheap and most likely not a price you'll see again so unless you just got layed off and have to support your pregnant wife and 5 kids, no excuses. Get one. You get the $99.95 price at the checkout, although it makes you select the $139.95 rope first. You listening Ivan and Timmy?

well I read this stuff even if no one else does. LOL!!!!

Good stuff....but Gorge? Hmmm, (he goes off to look in a map)

Trip: Red Rocks pictures - Date: 11/8/2009 Trip Report: We just got back from Red Rocks where instead of the mid 40s and 50s and wet, it was mid 60s-70s and dry. Pretty much did easy long routes. Here's some pictures mostly of Ujahn and Bryan, 2 great dudes to hang with anytime. Sorry, I only took pics mostly one day despite carrying it around for several. Most of these were of Hot Flash, Which I pretty much got a free ride on, we took a 70M rope and climbed it as a party of 3 in 3-1/2 hours with the middle guy clipping into a biner 30 feet or so from the end. This route is is the route just to the left of Josephs FA he did up first creek with Larry DeAngelo. We also did Lucky Lady as well a few buttresses closer to the car in 1st creek. Gear Notes: Don't take a #4 for Hot Flash unless you need the weight to train.

Speaking of sharing, is Tim Olsen putting this in his upcoming guidebook revision?

Very righteous gift! ...Speaking of gifts, I've been watching Jh quietly go and search out strange and exotic gear for Stephans Nut Museum, then just buy it and ship it off to the museum with no fanfare for quite sometime. Preserving our early history and asking nothing in return. To your health !