catbirdseat

I'd be interested to read up on what it is that makes people need religion. There has got to be some innate aspect of the human brain that requires us to create an orthodoxy. The closest I can get to explaining it is that as we evolved big brains and weak bodies in the African savannah, it became important that groups bonded with each other for mutual protection. The need for an orthodoxy helps ensure that individuals don't leave the group and thereby weaken it. My definition of religion versus philosophy is that religion is something that desires to pull people into a group by making them all think alike. A philosophy is a way of thinking that encourages personal exploration. "Good" philosophies encourage individuals to think for themselves, while at the same time encouraging them to consider the needs of others.

Yep. We are all related.

If you want to read a good book, go read A Brief History of Just About Everything, by Bill Bryson. It is a whirlwind tour of the history of scientific discovery. He doesn't spend too much time on any one subject, always moving on. One thing I like is how he mentions all discoverers who were first but got cheated by history because they weren't good self-promoters. For example, Louis Agassiz of Harvard usually gets credit for the theory of Ice Ages, but it was in fact two other men, Carpentier and Schimper who came up with the idea before him. Also, I read how a poor janitor, James Croll, at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow was the first to explain how cycles of the Earth's orbit could explain why ice ages ocurred. This and other stories may have provided inspiration for the movie Goodwill Hunting.

Story

Nope, it wasn't Dru, it was Iain and the mom didn't hire a stripper, she WAS the stripper.

This is not the first time this sort of thing has made the news. In the last one that I recall, the mom hired a stripper for the boy's birthday party. It may, in fact, have been posted here by Dru.

I heard that some UW students were hassling two Army recruiters who were on campus. I may be liberal and anti-Bush, but I think that sort of thing is total bullshit. Our military personell are supposed to do exactly as our elected official order them to do. To hold them responsible for politicians you don't like is stupid. Rally and protest against the politicians, not our servicemen. We should be proud that we have a military that keeps itself apart from politics. Other countries like Pakistan have militaries that do get involved and that is why they have the dictator Musharrif.

What is so frustrating, as Ricardo mentioned, is that so many people just parrot the sound bites they are fed in political TV commercials. Nobody bothers to read the news anymore or understand what is going on in the world, let alone the US.

Come on, you can do better than that! An answer might be, "I think that America will be safer because Bush pushed through the Domestic Security Enhancement Act, and beefed up the number of Border Patrol Agents". A negative answer might be something like, "Bush is making us less safe by supporting Israel unconditionally and by antagonizing Islamic peoples around the world". Of course there are no absolutes, but a person who thinks at least can make a reasoned argument.

Laguna Beach! My home town.

Remember "tolerance" is a BAD WORD. We shouldn't teach it to our children. They need to taught by us who to hate and who not to hate. God forbid they decide for themselves.

Do you think so?

To me a ski pole glissade is when I am doing an easy snow scramble in boots or snowshoes using ski poles as an aid. If I don't have an ice axe or don't want to bother taking it off my pack for glissading a minor slope, I'll put both poles together and grasp them just above the baskets with one hand and half-way up the shaft with the other and use the poles to control speed while sliding down the hill.

I was just reading about the hot spot that underlies Yellowstone National Park. The geologists were looking for a caldera that they knew must be there, but they weren't finding it. Then they looked at aerial photos and they said, "holy crap, the whole park is a caldera ". The Yellowstone region has produced three caldera-forming eruptions in the past 2 million years, two of those among the largest eruptions known to have occurred on Earth (each more than 1,000 cubic kilometers). In one explosive event at Yellowstone, enough material was ejected to cover Nebraska under 10 feet of ash. If St. Helens' eruption of 1980 were the size of a golf ball, the Yellowstone event would be equivalent to the Topanga Boulder. I don't want to be around the next time Yellowstone blows.

Hell, even Coors Lite tastes good in a can if it is hot out, and you are thirsty enough, and it was a hard day, and and...

It was some time after the spill had been cleaned up, but the odor remains in the soil.

I don't care how good it is, they'll have to sell it for less if it is in a can, before I'll buy it.

This being Bellevue, some were sitting in Hummers, but I didn't see anyone getting one.

I know of a guy who kept a significant part of his wealth in the form of gold coin, buried in a plastic bag in the soil of his crawlspace. One day there was a large sewage spill that filled the entire crawlspace. He had to dig through the filth to recover his treasure.

I was at my local park today for a run. It was nice and sunny. I had a great run. There were lots of other people there too, the vast majority of whom sat in their cars the whole time, either eating, smoking, or talking on the cell phone.

I hope I am not missing smth. If each piece is holding mostly on its own, why have opposing setup at all? Is this for the (belay) anchors? I thought opposing is necessary for horisontal placements... Please elaborate. Thanks. This particular setup is most often used as an omni-directional as the first placement set after leaving the belay, when you really want to protect the belay by having a bomber placement that won't jiggle out as you go by it. It is good when you want something that absolutely won't pull out when the rope is pulling out and up when you fall on a higher piece, that is to prevent zippering. So basically, it is a situation where the upper piece would hold a downward fall just fine, but might jiggle out from rope drag and the lower piece might fall out by gravity.

Iain, that isn't far from the truth. Hey, where the heck is Dru?

It looks like a fat butt sitting on someone's face.

Yep, I know about that one. ChrisW taught it to me. It is very fast.

They should put the returns in a display case along with the name of the person who returned them.