murraysovereign

This just in: Stawamus Chief Provincial Park - 2004 Peregrine Falcon Breeding Closures The voluntary closure of part of the Stawamus Chief is again in effect, until July 31st. All routes from the Black Dyke to Freeway are closed (including both those routes), generally from about two pitches/100 metres off the ground and Bellygood Ledge. A pair of peregrines has a nest in the Western Dihedrals again, as has been the case for many years. The voluntary closure is part of the Rock Climbing Strategy, under the park's master plan, and is from March 15th - July 31st each year. If there is any change in the time or location of the closure, it will be posted on signs on trails and bulletin boards in Squamish, as well as in a further Access Society e-mail, and other communications. Thanks to Jesse Brown for his observations of the falcons, and reporting. For clarity, the following routes are included in the area of the voluntary closure: Black Dyke Clean Corner Cloudburst Sports Illustrated Sea of Tranquillity Getting Down in the Brown Negro Lesbian Crap Crags Warriors of the Wasteland Western Dihedral Slow Duck Illusion Planet Caravan Millenium Falcon Freeway Routes that remain open: Arrowroute Rutabaga Cleaning the Brain Deadend Dihedral Time Passages Sticky Fingers

That's OK - you can still be a whiny bleeding heart sociology major from UVic: it's not like it's a really exclusive club.

It's the student newspaper at the University of Victoria. Bunch of whiny bleeding heart sociology majors.

I used to be a "Hacker", but I stopped shortly after I quit smoking.

Do we have the text of that Press Release? I'd be interested in seeing just what it revealed, and how it was worded. Was it actually informative, or was it one those "technical formality" type of press releases that don't really say much of anything and are usually ignored?

From the "well-known left-wing publication" article cited earlier: How do those moonbat liberals dream up this stuff?

Could we please move this topic over to the "Testosterone-deficient Girly Men" thread?

As of a couple of weeks ago there had already been over 100 fires in the B.C. interior.

Ummm, it's a private distribution company that's on strike - nothing to do with government at all. The provincial government is actually working to arrange alternative distribution so Labbatt's and Molson's can still get their beer onto the shelves in order to allow all you sorry piss-tanks to fend off the D.T.s a little longer. And regarding the Hospital Employees strike, just so people understand exactly the implications of a "retroactive pay cut": not only do you not get a pay increase (which most people could have accepted), but you actually have to write a cheque to your employer to refund them some of the money you were paid over the past couple of months. That's just petty, vindictive, spiteful behaviour on the part of Gordon Campbell, and it blew up in his face. No surprise there, either: this guy has demonstrated a rare talent for incompetent bungling. You could conceivably argue that some of his ideas are valid, but his implementation of those ideas has been laughably inept.

No kidding, eh? I'm so glad I live in a free country instead of a police state.

Hey Snoboy - time to change your location to "Drinking town w/ a Climbing problem"

You have to carry the clean urine inside your body to get the temperature right, and to avoid any chance of detection. Here's how some Olympic weightlifters and wrestlers used to do it: take a clean urine sample, load it into a syringe, take a good long piss to make sure your bladder is completely empty. Now - here's the squeamish part - insert a catheter all the way up your urethra , attach the syringe, and pump the clean urine into your bladder. Then go to your appointment and provide the sample (nicely warmed to internal body temperature) in the usual way. Personally, I think if you can get past the part about pushing a catheter up your John Thomas into your bladder, you deserve a gold medal just for that.

Essential services are being maintained, so emergency medical is still in place. Only elective procedures are shut down. So if your femur is sticking out the back of your neck, they'll fix you up, but don't bother asking them to do a tummy tuck while they're at it. The last time support staff Wobbled all the hospitals a few years ago, some friends of mine discovered that the fertility clinic at VGH is classified as an essential service , so she was able to have embryoes implanted at the same time that some forms of open-heart surgery were being cancelled. How are the essential/non-essential determinations arrived at, I wonder?

Sorry, but your "quick" question doesn't really allow for a "quick" answer. It's a contentious issue, to be sure. Up here in Canada we're facing the same demographic choke point as you in the U.S., and our Canada Pension Plan fund is in danger of drying up about the same time as your Social Security. In order to stretch things out as much as possible, Ottawa has institued some income tax measures. Basically, anyone can collect their CPP, but if your taxable income is above a certain level your pension benefits get "clawed" back (seriously, that's what it's called - the Claw-back provision. At least they're honest about what they're doing). My parents, for instance, both collected their pensions but most of it was clawed back through income taxes because their retirement income was high enough to put them over the cut-off point. In effect, the choice comes down to (a) keeping the program universal, which means everyone gets a cheque so small as to be virtually meaningless, or (b) restricting eligibility to those that have no alternative resources, in order to ensure those people get cheques that might actually be useful or © some intermediate compromise between (a) and (b). As already stated, Ottawa opted for (b) as a starting point. Washington will have to make some similar decisions in the years to come - some combination of re-financing the program, raising the retirement age, restricting eligibility, or ... But my point was mainly that reliance on Social Security won't be as big a factor for a great many people because they'll be cushioned by their inheritances. And that fact alone allows for more flexibility in determining the best way to deal with the problem. But it's still a problem, for sure.

One mitigating factor that doesn't get a lot of play is that the parents of the Baby-Boomers are dying off right now. In the process, their collected wealth (which is/was considerable) is being passed down to their children - the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in human history. It changes your retirement outlook dramatically when that inheritance cheque arrives, and there are a lot of those cheques being sent out every day. So an awful lot of Boomers are going to be pretty comfortable in their retirement simply because their parents were able to accumulate so much wealth, and that will allow SS funds to be redirected toward those who don't benefit from such inheritances. It won't eliminate the problem, but it could ease it somewhat.

Must be very serious indeed - even FOX is reporting it - including photos.

I think it's a little miniature "WHAAAAAAMBULANCE"

I think at least some of the morale problems in Vietnam were due to the fact that thousands were dying in a useless, pointless war that no-one really understood - not even those directing it. Then, when the lucky ones like Kerry escaped with their lives they went home and told anyone who would listen that thousands were dying in a useless, pointless war, and suggesting that maybe it should stop. In other words, the anti-war campaigning by people like Kerry wasn't the cause of the low morale, but rather an extension of it. The low morale itself was caused by sending conscripts half-way around the world to die by the thousands in a useless, pointless war. All Kerry et al were doing was trying to bring and end to something that probably never should have been started in the first place.

Are they legal yet? Have they got their first "Training Implants" yet?

Sophie's Cosmic Kitchen? Hockey sticks are OK, though. Don't bother with those fancy composite things - they're only good for one or two whacks before they fall apart. Good old Sherwoods aren't very sexy, but they can lay on a serious beating and still have enough left to cross-check your guy in the throat when he tries to get back up.

In the real world, that's true, but we're talking cartoons here. Why bother having a character with only one leg if you're going to depict him walking normally with a prosthesis? Might as well let him keep his leg and save everyone the trouble and expense. Putting him in a wheelchair, or at least on crutches, provides much more fertile ground for plot scenarios. Remember Cutter John from Bloom County? He had lost the use of both legs, but it was the wheelchair that defined him, and made him such a versatile, compelling character. And funny - they never could have done the Star Trek gags if he'd been hobbling around on braces, but with the wheelchair, the possibilities were endless.

Some of those things have been attempted, but there's a hitch. Any time anyone submits a resolution to the Security Council that would sanction Israel in any meaningful way, Israel's staunchest ally uses its permanent seat on the Council to veto the resolution.

Yeah, about 25 years ago. I don't claim to have memorized every word verbatim, but if you boiled down the young Fuhrer's prescription for Germany it wouldn't sound very different from "being ruthless, efficient, and willing to take criticism from the rest of the world without backing down or being ashamed of what you want for the Fatherland." I wasn't trying to accuse Tele Nut of plagiarism. I was just pointing out that if Hitler had been a better writer, he might have distilled his message down into just such a clear and succinct statement. Do you think that he would have disagreed with anything in that sentence?

This reads like it was lifted straight out of "Mein Kampf".

BD has always been depicted wearing a helmet. Initially he wore a football helmet in college, then Army (Vietnam?), then football again, now Army again. Looks like he'll be wearing a wheelchair from here on. Maybe Trudeau bought the rights to "Cutter John" from Burke Breathed?