ashw_justin

or that an experienced person can navigate just fine without one. Yeah I know, but that's sort of like saying that if you know ways to navigate without a compass, then you shouldn't bring one. There are situations when your eyes can be more useful than a compass, and vice versa. The same is true for GPS vs. compass. Like I said it is just another source of potentially useful information. I think your argument is based on an inherently irrational (although very romantically appealing) philosophy: to bring as little as possible for reasons other than logistical ones (weight, space, organization, etc.), usually either to 'keep things simple,' or to pride/challenge/train oneself on needing as little as possible. The concept of training oneself to bring as little as possible is predicated on the fear of dependence, which need not be the consequence of carrying and knowing how to use anything that might be useful. Just because you bring an extra tool doesn't mean you have to use it. (Feel free someone to retort with the "if you bring bivy gear, you will bivy" incantation.) Of course we all know that irrational romanticism can result in a more fulfilling recreational experience, so on that basis, I'm totally with you.

how about poverty and an acknowledged lack of training w/ one too? Well I bought my GPS new for $100 6 years ago and that's only a fraction of the value of gear that even the 'poor dirtbag' climber carries on their person on a typical climb. I don't believe in GPS training. It's just not that complicated, and the best way to figure out how/if it can be useful to you is to play with it in non-serious situations (it's just another source of information).

Even without a proper heading you'll get distances to pre-programmed waypoints and/or your current tracklog. Yes GPS is stupid to rely on, but it pwns in low visibility when properly used, and especially when retracing old tracks. It's definitely cheating. The only rational reason not to bring a GPS receiver is the weight/pack space (that's probably the only reason that I normally don't carry one).

This is just the next excuse for the permanent occuploitation of Iraq by US Corp. At least, that is the best case scenario at this point, sadly.

I think the more appropriate analogy is that we "don't have to own" the television or radio channels--even though they were supposed to be public domain before they were stolen by large private interests for profitmaking. Now look at how unbearable and devoid of information broadcast TV and radio have become. The internet, another free (in multiple senses) and publicly-developed infrastructure, is facing similar plunder, and this is how it 'begins.'

I agree with that to a certain extent, but the cost of old age is not limited to terminal visits to the ICU; there is a huge industry for selling the 10 extra years of life (however agonizing) immediately prior. However I agree that high health care costs could be explained by something as simple as good old supply and demand... for eternal life. After all we can't put a price on lives, can we. The ultimate commodity. A glimpse... I hope it doesn't give him cancer like what happened with the X-SCID patients. (Although companies selling cancer treatments may hope otherwise.)

Have you considered the possibility that Medicaid and Social Security were two of the more significant factors that brought about the genesis of the "Nursing Home?"That's a good point, it's a form of collective support that can take the place of "taking care of your own." But are people are ineligible for Social Security and Medicaid if a relative is putting a roof over their head? (I actually would like to know.)

But how much of this extra expense is due to an artificially inflated, profit-driven health care system, or the notion that people should be kept alive for as long as is profita-er-possible? Not to mention that the cost of being old would be greatly reduced if children provided similar support to their parents in their old age as they received from them as youth, instead of leaving them in (or forcing them into) expensive 'independent living' (a.k.a. invisible dying) sitations.

One of the biggest chipmakers to sell pocket supercomputers designed expressly around the idea of powering personally invasive and context-dependent internet advertising... yay. Big Computerstuffs says: Just like TV?

Wait, let me consult the oracle... ah yes, here we go:

Given the near certainty that the families of any potential victims affected by the ski area doing control work (or even allowing access for that matter) would try to sue, patrol would be asking for it if they didn't discourage backcountry travel as much as possible. If you really want to ski, all you should have to do is to let them say their piece, and then continue into the backcountry one way or another. It's not really their job (or right) to stop you if you are determined. (Nor is it their job to rescue you either. But they may try to do both.)

Finally getting around to watching the R's debate (you know, to pretend that there are multiple political parties and stuff). Best things heard so far: (from the NH CNN one on youtube) Guliani (candidate for the president of 9/11) [ ]: "It's a typical Washington [...pause...] uh [...pause...] mess." (translation: I am even less qualified than Obomb) Tancredo [ ]: "What we're doing here in this immigration battle, is testing our willingness to actually hold together as a nation, or split apart into a lot of Balkanized pieces. We are testing our ability to hold to something called, 'the English language.' Something that is the glue that is supposed to hold us together as a nation. We are becoming a bilingual nation, and that is not good. And that is the fearful part of this, it has--the ramifications are much much more significant than anything we have been discussing so far." (translation: Oye, ya renuncian el otro parte de Mexico! A fiesta, heuvon!)

Weird. Given the emphasis on the childrens' needs in these cases (assuming the mothers in question are suing out of desperation to satisfy them), will we see applicants for artificial insemination subject to a similar scrutiny as applicants for adoption any time soon? That is, given the mothers' implicit inability to raise these children on their own (that is after all why they are suing?), should The Man have stepped in to make sure they were prepared to raise children in the first place? My gut says no, but rulings for the mother in such case, which are a essentially a retroactive attempt to simulate an originally suitable child-rearing situation, suggest otherwise. One could imagine a Brave New World-like scenario based on such an extension of the government's jurisdiction over procreative relationships.

Actually Bush may be the greatest actor of all. The more idiotic they make his public persona, the more likely he is to be forgiven for delivering the dynasty's unconscionable and contradictory lies... er, intelligence mistakes.

Actually the most (perhaps the only) surprising thing about Galeano's diatribe was that this contrast was directly addressed, with clear envy for the United States' ability to assert its right to economic independence from the colonial empire. As one would expect he says nothing of the revolutionary spirit, and instead chalks it up to a relative lack of external economic pressure in North America, due to the relative dearth of immediately exploitable natural resources coupled to a lack of a native civilization large enough to enslave for the extraction of said resources had they been found. But one could consider how things could have happened differently in North America if the colonies had been sitting on a literal gold mine. In any case it is truly sad that the South American people did and continue to roll over into submission when confronted with foreign money or violence (whichever happens to be speaking louder at any given time). They haven't and will never have a chance as long as they never produce anything. While the only nationals that see even a penny of return for opening up their countries to foreign "investment" are the exceedingly few aristocratic politicians who are willing to sell out their countries' futures in exchange for their own immediate personal gain, I fail to see how a country in such a position stands to lose anything by attempting to foster a competitive domestic economy. ps. here we observe a depiction of the American Colonists protesting economic protectionism, by putting tea back onto the boat of a British tradeship that has come to grace them with cheap foreign goods.

Oh Ronny, those were the days, eh? WUEnvRz7JW0 "Freedom from the threat of the bomb"? Whose bomb would that be again? And such a gracious actor, even spelling out the lefties' surrendermonkey agenda for them. :swoon: :swoon: Sorry, trying to get the thread back on track here

How much income would I need today to be able to compete with corporate political contributions? Methinks more than I would have needed yesterday. Ah well, political representation is not that important tho as long as I can has cheeseburger.

Actually the story goes that South Americans have been denied foreign capital and technology, precisely because the development of a true internal economy, with the means to manufacture domestic products from one's own raw resources, would result in an escape from a kind of economic slavery where a country gifts its natural resources to foreign interests and is forced to buy it back in manufactured goods at 100 times the cost, because it is actively prevented from developing its own means of domestic production. Asymmetric trade may still be "fair trade," but manipulating the political affairs of foreign countries, violently if necessary, to institute and maintain it is quite another thing, and it seems one would have to ignore a lot of recorded history in order to dismiss the fact that we have been involved in doing just that.

Dependency Theory?A bit off the mark. It's more of a leftist view of European and then U.S. support of repressive regimes, including the violent overthrow of independent nationalist governments, in order to maintain the exploitation of raw goods by offshore capitalist interests--our wealth and rights secured against the forceful denial of others' in their own countries. But more to the point is that it amounts to a biased criticism of a foreign power, much like this Black Book of Communism promises to be.

Other things aside, honestly, JayB, I think you are way off in your estimation of the average education and historical awareness of the voting public. I'm just as idealistic as you about a democratic government of well-informed citizens, but this is exactly why it is so painful when such ridiculous issues as the fear of terrorists, a thinly-veiled guise to use the concept of evil to promote our domination of the Middle-East, dominate public politics instead of the truth. What percentage of your esteemed voters know anything about the history of Iraq prior to the first Gulf War? Since I'm aware of the U.S. support of Iraq and Saddam (even during the atrocities that we now condemn) prior to our change of heart, the general public must have voted with full and/or exceeding knowledge of this fact, since everyone else must be so much further educated than I am. No, I think I bit off base here. Just how educated do you think the voting public is? Where is the data on this? Apparently we had $500 billion lying around, but we sure as hell didn't use it on education.

Ok, but only if you read "Las Veinas Abiertas de America Latina." Deal?

Wrong. Only some of them are considered evil. Are the Brits "evil", from whom we gained our independence and fought again in the war of 1812? Nope. The Spaniards or Mexicans whom we fought in the 19th century? Nope. How about the Indians - evil? Nope. They were all demonized and you know it. At least you should, since you speak as if you were a witness to these wars.

Surely we could have something remotely similar to a democracy if the average voter were as educated as you suggest. Unfortunately, that you criticize me for invoking a lay public only supports my point. Supposing that I represent a reasonable expectation of the average historical education in this country, the public in general is far enough removed from the facts of history and politics that the remaining choices are skepticism or dogma. Now I will not concede utter ignorance as to the course of history, but I will admit a preference for rational doubt over blind political faith. Your references are well taken and I'm well aware that there are plenty of examples of indisputable atrocities by enemies of the U.S. There are also clear atrocities committed by the U.S. or its allies/subordinates that we are expected to support/excuse on the basis of a double-standard--US (The Good Guys) vs. Them (The Bad Guys). That the truth is not that simple is not being debated. It's not debated here because it's obvious; it's not debated in popular politics because it's "demoralizing."

Moral equivalency? You seem to want to say that I am singing praises of former enemies. You mistake my refusal to assume that everything that we do as a country is good, for gushing sympathy towards the other side (whoever that happens to be at any given moment). Just because an enemy is bad, doesn't make us immune from making things worse. The only moral equivalency I'm advocating is that we look at our own actions through the same lens as we do others'. I don't see anyone interpreting casualties of the American Civil War as "the Americans killing their own people, a testament to the brutality of capitalist economic development." As is clearly demonstrated by the winners' history, all enemies and/or victims of the U.S. are automatically considered evil. While I'm willing to assume that in many to most cases it is justified, the one-sidedness of our self-propaganda is so consistent that the vilification of our enemies has long since lost any true meaning. The lay public are stricken with a myopia in which we don't actually know anything about the enemy except that they are the enemy, because a constant string of "evil, evil, bad, evil, terror" is exactly meaningless, especially when is expected. (Up in the ivory tower we call it a lack of dynamic range, or an informational entropy of zero.) As it turns out this is a desirable situation for a government that would like to minimize the scrutiny of its foreign affairs, since a public which knows little truth about its enemy is easy to manipulate into a frenzy of hatred, or whatever collective emotion is necessary given the strategy. (T - 8 posts before JayB accuses me of a being a wanna-be Chomsky fanboy, or something to that effect...)

Yeah, that's exactly why we were the good guys - we got the bomb first. You're a fucking ass clown. Did you even read the last clause? Do you have a problem with grammar?