ashw_justin

YEAH man, that is s00p3r helpful d00d11! L0Lz2!1

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you didn't link the actual image url's ('quote' message to see)

Ah hell. Buy! Build! Battle! BEEFCAKE!

My point is that in a country this rich and resource-hungry, expanding supply of certain resources can only supplicate demand temporarily. Expansion is the holy grail of a growing economy, but ceases to be an option once resources are limiting (which is what I meant by "static supply"). There will always be high demand for water, especially in a desert metropolis. The sooner they figure this out, the better, because no matter how many rivers they divert into Phoenix, even if the can afford to, they will always be short on water. They will have severely molested the environment in an attempt to escape this fact, and in the end, they will have to learn to conserve anyway. Might as well leave the rivers alone and figure it out sooner than later.

Yes, obviously the population growth has equilibrated in the most developed countries. It is of course a clever insult to imply ignorance of this fact by reference to Malthus (whom I haven't read, but whose narrow models are obviously dated). While our population may be leveling off, we are still highly dependent on other forms of growth--supply, consumption, investment, interest, etc. The economy has functioned beautifully as a grand pyramid scheme, as long as broad economic growth is guaranteed. The limit to this is what I allude to by mention of zero-sum. What happens when there is no more 'free money?' Aren't we already ignoring this to the tune of 9 trillion? The 'tragedy of the commons' manifests in water usage when even a relatively small population manages to consume so much of the supply that it becomes scarce. The usage explodes to fill the limit of supply. Any increase in the supply results not in less scarcity, but in more consumption. The same model fits for many other resources. The basic assumption this allows is that at equilibrium, water will always be scarce. Any attempt to escape this equilibrium, such as the diversion of rivers to irrigate the growth potential of Phoenix, is deluded. Surely it is time to draw the line, and let the system of market principles that you mention go to work in the context of a static supply.

It'll be 'the end' of this rockin' party when this is no longer possible, or in other words, when we've grown to our limits. It is also important to recognize that growth is not strictly defined by population size--the quantity and growth rate of consumption per capita is a far more appropriate measure.

It's not about 'the end,' it's about whether we'll be smart enough to choose the nature of the state at which we stop growing [gasp].

soon we'll reach the dreaded (esp. in the U.S.) equilibrium condition--the end of simply growing into cheap, limitless abundance. Only question is whether we will make it happen, or it will simply and brutally just happen to us. Hopefully we'll be a little smarter than these guys.

"Tuscon and Phoenix — with populations of a million and four million, respectively — are sprawling toward each other, and are expected to merge in the next decade. Planners project a Phoenix-Tucson population of 10 million within 30 years. Even without worsening drought, that will exceed the capacity of existing water supplies — and Phoenix has supplemented its groundwater supplies by diverting rivers, such as the Colorado. Further increasing Phoenix's water capacity could mean impoverishing water supplies elsewhere." Ooooh I have an idea! How about we don't build a megalopolis in the middle of the f'ing desert.

Oooh, there's poetry too? Puh-lease! "Why boasteth thyself, oh evil men, Playing smart and not being clever? I say you're working iniquity to achieve vanity, yeah, But the goodness of JAH JAH endureth forever. If you are the big tree, We are the small axe. Sharpened to cut you down, Ready to cut you down. These are the words of my master. Keep on telling me No weak heart shall prosper, Oh, no they can't. And whosoever diggeth a pit, Lord, Shall fall in it, shall fall in it. Whosoever diggeth a pit shall bury in it, Shall bury in it. If you are the big tree, We are the small axe Sharpened to cut you down, Ready to cut you down. And whosoever diggeth a pit shall fall in it, fall in it. Whosoever diggeth a pit shall bury in it, shall bury in it. If you have a big tree, We have a small axe Ready to cut you down, Sharpened to cut you down. If you are the big tree, we are the small axe Ready to cut you down, Sharpened to cut you down." ps.

Yeah, I jaywalked today in protest of the government's sanction of the automobile. Can I be flown to Syria for torture now? I wonder if this could have counted as biological warfare. This guy's getting off pretty easy. Probably ratted out the rest of his terrorist cell.

No, apparently it would only be terrorism if were a hippie, or a gangsta.

Where is the option where we put all of the republicans and democrats in jail, and just start over?

I was up there on June 3rd. The only obstacle was a washout at Scatter Creek, ~3 miles(?) from the trailhead. We walked from there, but others with big trucks (and one Ford Explorer) were able to drive through the creek. Here is a picture from the morning, at low flow. Josh at cascadecrusades.org has a picture of the creek at the end of the same day, at much higher flow (daytime snowmelt).

I don't think you should willingly leave anything on the mountain. Pack it in, pack it out.

Is he right? Seems wrong to consider chopping without making sure you have enough support for it though. Two wrongs and all... better be sure.

I vaguely remember climbing at Clem's several years ago, long before I ever owned any pro. It was my first time in the area and it seemed like the only place to find decent sport climbs out there. But Gun Rack and Perils of Pauline as safely protectable gear routes? My memory must be failing me. I only remember the crux moves, and on the latter there was hardly even a damn thing to hold on to, much less protect. What do the Leavenworth regulars think about it? Seems like someone out there would have dealt with it already if there was really a problem.

Yep, don't ever try to make a street cop think. Silent pity for their toolness will get you through it just fine.

If the situation seems unjust it is the law itself we should consider, not its proper enforcement. What are the consequences of a system under which all labor standards are dissolved? But realistically now--how do you feasibly deal with the workers once you put a stop to their illegal employment? How (let's forget about the 'why' for second) should we take care of them? Would there still be a demand for their labor once it is no longer illegally cheap? Do you punish the offending companies by forcing them to hire the workers on as legal employees? Would that be fair to more competitive legal workers?

Who does he think forms his constituency? Illegal workers who (rightly) can't even vote? Complicity is guilt. "officials arrested three managers for knowingly hiring undocumented workers and supplying them with false documentation." And that is how to stop illegal immigration, folks. No little fences will ever stem the tidal pull of dirty money. (edit: removed profanity)

Ye Olde English 'system' is almost completely ad hoc; there are few constant conversion factors, and even these are almost always coincidental. There is little to no standardization between what were primitively thought to be unrelated physical phenomena. Metric is a start, because of the relatedness by a systematic factor (ten), and because of its awareness of the need to convert between measurements of different physical qualities that are always related in one way or another. But... base ten? Base ten is a truly handicapped system. Factors - LCM 1 - 1 1,2 - 2 1,2,3 - 6 1,2,3,4 - 12 1,2,3,4,5 - 60 1,2,5 - 10... WTF? http://www.dozenalsociety.org.uk/ "The merits of base twelve are due to the great factorability of the number twelve, the next really useful number being sixty, but this latter number is rather too large to be chosen as an every-day number base. Ten is unsatisfactory because its factors 2 and 5 include the prime 5 which in turn is not as useful as the prime 3 (though one professor of mathematics complained that I was not being really fair to the number 5 when I said this ... ). The dozen, and the dozen dozen, or gross, have shown their usefulness in packing and packaging over many, many years." http://www.dozenal.org/index.php?u=31 "A Misconception Some people wrongly believe that the ability to multiply and divide by powers of the base by simply moving the fraction point is an advantage special to base ten. But such is not the case. It is not "ten- ness" that gives this property (after all it wouldn't work with ten-based Roman Numerals). No, this advantage exists in every base, for it is a property of the place value notation we use for expressing numbers along with a symbol for zero. Thus we see that 110.11 x 10^2 = 1.1011 is always true, no matter what base one is using."

Yes... if only we'd gotten the whole hemisphere on board... who dropped the ball on that one? Lazy Reaganites. http://members.shaw.ca/gw.peterson/moratorium.html 1983 eh? Let's see, Reagan for pres 1980... of course!

I wonder how Canadian lumbermills feel about having to make "2x4's" for the silly unitedstatesians. Or is it even worse--we buy their trees and sell "2x4's" back to them. Luckily they can measure close enough with their little 'millimeters.'

40% of WA students probably can't do the math necessary to be 'fluent' in two systems of measurement. Are we resisting the metric system? Or did we just drop the ball? Perhaps it makes us feel more 'special'...