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Rad

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Posts posted by Rad

  1. Southeast asia is a cheap place to travel, particularly Indonesia, Laos, Nepal, and India. You can probably teach english to earn $. I didn't do that but know plenty who have. However, whatever you're making now will probably dwarf what you'll make overseas so saving now might be the better way to go. It may be different post-9-11, but people out there are awfully friendly - much more so than anywhere I've been in the US. Go for it!

  2. For all you :nurd:

     

    New research on mice could explain why you remember a breakup (or epic Pickets bushwhack) so vividly but can't for the life of you recall that meeting you had at work.

     

    With information bombarding our senses like the billboard lights in Times Square, our brains can get overloaded. That's why memory-storing regions of the brain weed out the trivial and give priority to the significant, which can then get transformed into long-term memory.

     

    The new study, published in the Oct. 5 issue of the journal Cell, reveals how emotions could help the brain "decide" which memories to seal in and which to toss out.

     

    Memories are thought to form with the strengthening of connections between neurons. These connections rely on receptors to send and receive "brain data."

     

    Past research has shown that emotional stress is linked with an increase in the hormone norepinephrine in the brain. Yet, exactly how the stress hormone influences the processes involved in neuron connections and thus memory formation has remained mysterious.

     

    Hailan Hu of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and colleagues say they have figured part of it out. They ran lab tests on mice, finding that norepinephrine, as well as emotional stress, leads to a chemical change in certain brain receptors. The change strengthened connections in the memory regions in mice brains, they say.

     

    "Stimuli that would not be enough to form a memory now can form a memory," said study team member Roberto Malinow, also of Cold Spring Harbor Lab.

     

    Since mouse brains have many of the same regions as human brains, the researchers expect the same memory mechanisms would apply to us as well.

     

    While both highs and lows in life can spark the memory-boosting chemical, Malinow notes that too much of the stress hormone can backfire, causing a lapse in memory.

     

    "If you have too much norepinephrine it works the opposite way," Malinow told LiveScience. "So there might be an optimal amount of norepinephrine so that if you're too emotional, you might not remember things as well."

     

    He stressed the finding is just one piece of a large puzzle linking emotions and memory.

  3. Bummer about the fine bump up. One idea: write a wicked nasty letter, wait 24 hours, then burn it and pay the fine. It's not worth the negative energy in your life.

     

    I've learned that mea culpa plus hat-in-hand puppy eyes works better than a stream of semi-logical excuses.

     

    ..........

     

    But since you're venting, here's a story someone shared with me:

     

    I was going to bed the other night when my wife told me that I had left the light on in the shed. She could see from the bedroom window. As I looked for myself, I saw that there were people in the shed taking things.

     

    I phoned the police, and they told me that no one was in the area to help at this time, but they would send someone over as soon as they were available.

     

    I said "OK," hung up, and waited one minute, then phoned the police back. "Hello. I just called you a minute ago because there were people in my shed. Well, you don't have to worry about them now 'cause I've shot them." Within five minutes there were half a dozen police cars in the area, an Armed Response unit, the works. Of course, they caught the burglars red-handed. One of the officers said: "I thought you said that you shot them!" I replied, "I thought you said there was nobody available!"

  4. Believe it or not, we established a 25m all-trad-protected corner at Exit 38 that has a chimney crux (maybe 10b) and several other chimney sections (5.8-5.10). It also has a cool lieback in the middle. If you are interested in checking it out send me a pm and I'll take you out there. When this and other new lines are ready for public consumption we'll post something on them.

    cheers,

    Rad

  5. Truth really is stranger than fiction!

     

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    LOS ANGELES - O.J. Simpson was charged Tuesday with seven felonies, including kidnapping, and one misdemeanor in the alleged armed robbery of sports memorabilia collectors in a casino-hotel room.

     

    The fallen football star was arrested Sunday after a collector reported a group of armed men charged into his hotel room at a casino and took several items Simpson claimed belonged to him.

     

    Simpson was booked on suspicion of assault and robbery with a deadly weapon. Clark County District Attorney David Roger filed those charges and added kidnapping and conspiracy to commit kidnapping, according to court documents.

     

    The judge may set the bail in excess of $1 million because of the kidnapping charges, a local expert told NBC News.

     

    Simpson, who was accused along with three other men, was also charged with one misdemeanor. He faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted.

     

    He was being held without bail and was scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday in the robbery reported at the Palace Station casino.

     

    Details of complaint

    According to the charges, Simpson and the others went to the room under the pretext of brokering a deal with the men. Once in the room, Simpson prevented one of the collectors from calling 911 on his cell phone "by ripping it out of Bruce Fromong's hand" while one or more accomplices pointed or displayed a handgun, the document says.

     

    The complaint does not specify which of the men involved was carrying the weapon.

     

    Two others named in the complaint, Walter Alexander and Clarence Stewart, have been arrested and released. Authorities were seeking an arrest warrant for a fourth man, Michael McClinton, 49, of Las Vegas, a man police describe as "a key player" in the alleged theft.

     

    "We hope to have him in custody today," said Officer Ramon Denby, a police spokesman. "Hopefully, he'll be cooperative and surrender with his attorney."

     

    Earlier Tuesday in California, a judge gave Fred Goldman a week to come up with a list of sports memorabilia O.J. Simpson is accused of stealing from the Vegas hotel room, but he refused to order Simpson to hand over his earnings from everything from autograph signings to video games.

     

    Simpson's friend: Seems ‘like a setup’

    Simpson was acquitted more than a decade ago of the 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Goldman's son, Ron. He was later found liable for the slayings in a wrongful death trial.

     

    The civil jury returned a $33.5 million judgment against Simpson, but it remains largely unpaid. The Goldman family has waged a campaign to claim Simpson's assets since then.

     

    Alexander, one of the men arrested with Simpson, said Tuesday that Simpson may have been tricked because another memorabilia dealer who tipped him off also recorded everything on tape.

     

    "It sounds like a setup to me," Alexander told ABC's "Good Morning America." He said Simpson had thought the memorabilia belonged to him after getting a call from the dealer.

     

    One of the collectors in the room at the time, Bruce Fromong, spoke publicly about the incident on Monday and described Simpson and a group of men coming into the hotel room "commando style."

     

    Later Monday, Fromong had a heart attack and was in critical condition, a spokeswoman at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles said Tuesday.

     

     

  6. My son is 3.5 now and just expressing an interest in climbing. I haven't started him at all yet. I don't see a hurry. I want him to have fun, safe experiences.

     

    I see no reason why kids can't get a lot of learning and experience TRing and following before they lead. Are you trying to train their lead heads!? How about math and science and history. I see no benefits for the increased risks of having kids lead - particularly at the changeover to lowering/rapping at the top.

     

    For that matter, I think newbies head into leading too soon. Many could benefit from a lot more following and TRing first IMHO.

     

  7. Dave Page, Cobbler, 3509 Evanston Ave. N., 206-632-8686, www.davepagecobbler.com

     

    I've never had problems there, but some have made noises about poor customer service. Dave told me during the summer he has/had guys working on the rock shoes on the weekends. I dropped my shoes off Friday afternoon and had them back Monday morning. No shipping reqd. You might ask him if/when this summer thing is ending.

     

    I had called Ramuta and was told the wait would be at least 2-3 weeks (that was about 6 weeks ago). That may have changed.

  8. Climbed this route Sunday, with a variation finish. Gorgeous rock and fun climbing. Thanks Dan and Blake! Photos first:

     

    One of many overlaps

    gene_copy.jpg

     

    The underback variation (part undercling, part lieback).

    underback_copy.jpg

     

    Underback finish.

    lieback_end.jpg

     

    Snaffle eating nuts.

    eatnuts_copy.jpg

     

    If you want your own adventure stop reading here and go climb.

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    Approach notes: turn uphill when the trail crosses a small creek. Stay left of the creek and veer slightly left up to the West edge of the cliff above. We went straight across the creek, ascended through the brush to another steep cliff past the entire basin, scrambled to the ridge, and then traversed all the way back to the route. Doh!

     

    There are some deathblocks that could use trundling. There was a party below us so we refrained. The first deathblock is on p3 in the topo below. It is about 8ft long, one foot wide, and two to three feet high, and it is only suspended by its ends. You can avoid this by veering up and right. A small loose block is in a spot where you really want to step later in that pitch. This probably would come off with a tug. Deathblock 2 is on the exit from the zebra corner. It is 6ft long, 2 feet thick, and three feet high, and it overhangs the lip of a ledge. It may be heavy enough to be stable, but climb gingerly ON it and don't do a hand traverse on the outside of it. Ouch.

     

    Variation finish: We wanted to go straight up the zebra corner but it was still wet in a key spot. I really wanted to get on something new I'd seen in the photos, so at the end of our p5 I veered left and belayed at cracks 10 feet left of the large tree that is the base of the dihedral in Blake's photo. Just above that is a short, steep fingercrack (5.10a/b?). This leads to an amazing clean corner (the underback - see photos above). I belayed at a nice tree atop that corner. From there it is 60m of mostly easy ground to the summit. If you go over the roof at the end of the zebra corner you'd find a tree to belay and a great handcrack leading up to the start of the variation mentioned above.

     

    We lead and TRd the dihedral in Blake's 2nd to last photo before lowering back to go up the variation above. This pitch has a loose block that needs to come out.

     

    Go late in the day to be in the sunshine. The rock here is superb. Enjoy!

     

    Where we went:

    topo_copy.jpg

     

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