Jump to content

ashw_justin

Members
  • Posts

    2531
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by ashw_justin

  1. Regardless of breed, a dog that finds itself in an abnormal (read: stressful) situation is going to fall back on its instincts, which for pretty much any dog includes territoriality, protectiveness, mistrust, attempts to dominate, etc. Particularly when separated from anyone familiar.

     

    Someone familiar to the dog should be with the dog, hanging out with it, taking it for a walk, or whatever while waiting for their turn to climb. For some dogs, and it sounds like for the one in question, belayers don't count.

     

    it is not the breed but but the dogs BREEDING, owner, training and experince that determin temperment. period.
    Care to explain the difference between 'breed' and 'breeding'? Both positive and negative temperamental traits are ABSOLUTELY ;) heritable.

     

    Proper nurturing goes a long way though. Most dogs with a genetic predisposition to aggressiveness are quite loving and friendly, even to strangers, due to proper upbringing.

     

     

  2. Exiting times. Is it time to jump off the roof yet? :grlaf:

     

    How much does the relative illiquidity (and physical necessity) of housing make it resistant to a market meltdown?

     

    Are too many owners willing to give up the roof over their heads in order to plead bankruptcy and cop out on their debt?

     

    Are there enough foreclosures to poison the market?

     

    Will we be able to buy houses for 90's prices?

     

    Can you short sell in real estate?

     

    How is the government going to respond to outcry when it becomes more obvious that their greedy property tax reassessments should never have been indexed to volatile market values? When they find a way to refuse to repeal these property tax hikes despite a return to the prices of several years ago?

     

    When are the beneficent Corporations going to figure out how to take care of and manage their precious people-crops properly? :P

  3. BoC is... BoC. All you need to know is that it is a steep widening hand crack that protects well. The rest you can figure out for yourself.

     

    I'm sure the sportos who brought you 7 distinct letter grades could even come up with a special term for when you 'onsight' something for which you may not know the precise consensus grade to 3 decimal places. :rolleyes:

     

    But for the sake of promoting immensely entertaining threads like this one, let's instead randomly change the rating on every climb by a 'full grade' every year, so that we always have something to bitch and moan about. Next year's thread: "Softest Index wussroutes!"

  4. Combined with some early winter faceting and weakening of several layers near the ground, this sudden and sustained warming of the Northwest snowpack should result in a significant spring avalanche cycle, with some slides possibly involving all of this past winter's snowcover.
    That would be a sight to see... from a safe distance. Would love to see photos if anyone sees it happen (I think I'm gonna pass anyway--skiing megamush would blow even if it weren't dangerous).
  5. This open source GTK program viking is a decent basic map browsing client that supports a number of different web-fetched formats including USGS and Google. It has a neat layering scheme that supports semi-transparent overlays. It's not a finished product and I'm not sure about Windows/Mac support.

     

    USGS topo overlayed on USGS aerial, auto-downloaded/displayed in 'browse-time':

    3936.jpg

    3936.jpg.4737f802de5b746c569ecac924b3cd7d.jpg

  6. I have never heard of this happening either. I guess people are wiser than this.

     

    However, I once climbed at a crag where you approach from the top and normally climb by setting up a clean gear anchor first (there are no bolts and nothing to simply sling with rope or webbing) and then lowering/rappelling down to the start of the pitch. The thought of anyone intentionally tampering with my gear placements worried me less than the thought that any of several other climbers that were buzzing around at the edge of the cliff might trip over my anchor setup and cause damage to it and/or themselves.

  7. But seriously though, if the officers really witnessed these guys shooting people, I'm surprised that they are even alive. The police would have been totally justified in taking these guys down in the act.

     

    All of the cheap shots in the video are incredibly unnecessary and unprofessional though. Cops can't be thugs. They have to be better than that.

  8. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7387755.stm

     

    Looks that evil left-biased news media is at it again, showing 'footage' of police 'brutality.' :rolleyes:

     

    Maybe FOX and her fanboys will come through and save the day by praising such professional heroism in the line of duty, and pointing out how much incredible restraint is shown in that the enemy were not shot 50 times, [HYPERBOLE ALERT FOR ROB ET AL!] per standard response to threatening black men in vehicles.

  9. With regard the discussion that started this thread, I wonder if we might talk about under what circumstance we might think it appropriate to hold a cop accountable if they shoot somebody who was unarmed and did not pose a threat. We've read here that "they do it all the time and are never held accountable" and that "they are adequately (or maybe overly) punished for such action" yet I haven't seen any evidence or even a suggestion that anybody has any statistics or other basis for such statements.

     

    Statistics aside, there is a historical reason that we generally don't hold police officers and a variety of government representatives responsible for their actions in the same way we would a private party and it makes sense: we value what these folk do and they need to have the ability to do their job without undue fear of being personally punished for it or they would be less effective. However, there certainly are limits.

     

    We read about the spectacular cases where police officers shoot unarmed civilians. Is this really a distortion based on sensationalism? Or does it reflect the reality that 1 in 10,000 encounters go bad? Are there cases where good cops are unfairly punished for an accident or something that maybe they didn't even cause to happen? What could be a reasonable inquiry other than what a cop saw/heard etc. and what they thought of it?

    You're certainly describing some of my hysterical collateral damage, but I want to clarify again that what started this thread was not my personal views on the police, but the idea that we have to ban toy guns because kids could be killed for having them.

     

    Using a toy gun that is indistinguishable from a real one, in a way that makes the police think that you are going to shoot someone, is the problem. This does not necessarily have anything to do with the sale, purchase, or possession of toy guns. We already have more direct and logical solutions to the real problem. Kids--don't point guns at people, period, and do exactly what the police tell you, while slowly putting your empty hands up. Parents--think hard before buying guns, toy or not, for your kids. Police--um, don't kill people unless you really have to. :mistat:

     

    I'm sorry, that's already just as good as it gets. Trying to ban harmless shit instead of focusing on the real problems/solutions is ridiculous.

  10. True or False: the police { can, are trained to, and are legally protected if they } shoot you for any reason, as long as they swear that this reason is that they 'felt threatened,' regardless of the circumstances (quotes because an officer's mind state upon firing is completely subjective and completely unprovable).

     

    Dude, you're so full of shit it must be seeping out your eyes. Sure, police brutality is real and I'm no fan of the swine, but you are so way over the fucking top you sound like a total asshat.

     

    Regardless of the circumstances? You actually believe that? So, you believe a cop could walk up to a 5 yo girl at a school crosswalk, and for no reason at all fire 50 bullets into her head, and he would be legally protected, REGARDLESS OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES?

     

    Fucking hyperbole

     

    Wow, I see that I am really reaching people here. I don't even have kids, but if I did, 1) I wouldn't buy them toy guns (or real guns), 2) but hypothetically if I did, and the cops shot them just because they had a toy gun, and then were able to use their schizophrenic fear as a legitimate defense, I feel that justice would not have been served.

     

    The critical part of this that I take issue with is the implication that, assuming there is a true problem here, that the solution to a potential misuse of force does not include rectifying police training to take this possibility into account. Just what is the current standard protocol for deciding when it is justified to shoot?

     

    I think this is a slippery slope because the very situation you describe* is hypothetically possible if the sole basis for the use of lethal force is that a cop simply feels threatened. And you may disagree with me but I think that the direction in which things are heading, highlighted particularly by weird laws attempting to ban inanimate, harmless objects simply because they might frighten police who are trained to shoot at the slightest provocation.

     

    (*although you failed to include the critical trump card that the law enforcer can play if they can claim to be threatened somehow by the 5yo)

     

    In high school I had guns drawn on me by police out of the blue for walking down the sidewalk with my friends while simply holding paintball guns non-threateningly. We simply walked normally past a cop working on his lawn, and the next thing we know there is a three car response and we're three hair triggers away from death. Luckily no shots were fired as we were quite obviously nonthreatening. But it made me wonder--what if I had sneezed, or tripped or something? Would I be writing this right now?

     

    I don't hate the police. Most of my interactions with them have been positive, and I believe that they are mostly honest, and do their best to protect me and everyone else. But that doesn't mean I think they are infallible, or that they should be immune from scrutiny.

     

    I never actually said it, so I will now: toy guns don't kill people! That is what I started this thread. The rest is spray. Obviously.

  11. To not limit this to the brandishing of nonlethal objects,

    True or False: the police { can, are trained to, and are legally protected if they } shoot you for any reason, as long as they swear that this reason is that they 'felt threatened,' regardless of the circumstances (quotes because an officer's mind state upon firing is completely subjective and completely unprovable).

     

    To break that up into three parts:

    can? yes

    are trained to? it seems so

    are legally protected? Amadou Diallo (41 bullets), Sean Bell (50 bullets), Roger D. Holyfield Jr. (tazered repeatedly while handcuffed?)...

  12. I think you guys are missing the point. The news story is about banning toy guns, because cops might shoot kids holding toy guns. It's as if somehow the toy gun itself could be responsible for something fundamentally wrong with law enforcement--the police are trigger-happy against even the harmless, are legally totally unaccountable for it, and in fact are trained to murder immediately at the slightest hint of perceived danger. But it's the toy guns' fault.

     

    Now this kind of thing is rare, and I believe that no good man wants to kill someone who didn't have to be killed. It's a hard job, and sometimes things go wrong. Even trained police officers with 16 in the clip (and one in the hole) make mistakes. It's a rough world out there and good men get taken down by really dangerous criminals. I understand why they are very ready and willing to use force to protect themselves and others. In fact I appreciate it, as long as it is just[ified].

     

    But banning toy guns? Come on! How about not shooting to kill at children (or anyone for that matter) who simply might have a lethal weapon? These are trained professionals with the prerogative to use legal force, so it is imperative that we hold them to the highest standard of behavior. But I suspect that part of the professional training itself is to blame.

     

    So let me get this straight.

    You are advocating eliminating all police forces in the US?

    Or are you saying you are going to become a Police officer and show us all how easy the job is?

     

    Or is it just that you have issues with authority figures?

     

    Um, no, you absolutely did not get this straight. You want to try again? :sleep:

     

    I got a problem with authority, it's true, but damn, I take a back seat to you evidently. Most police are real fine people, there are a few bad apples here and there, and the deal is to weed them out. It sounds like you need to stop reading the news or watching the evening news so much. The news tries to shock and scare you as a tactic to get their ratings and thus the ad revenue up. Must be working with you.

     

    Thats that game plan anyway.

    Interesting, so you think that the article was a meant to shock people? Well, feel free to start another thread about media propaganda systems and how they make you not want the police to kill you for, say, trying to turn off your i-pod. This thread is about how banning toy guns is a completely ridiculous denial of a much more fundamental problem.

     

    ...which is that if kids were packing for real then cops might think it dangerous to open fire on just anyone, and hence might more receptive to a more peaceful resolution. :mistat:;)

     

    ps. You guys have no f'ing sense of humor or irony. Where is the appreciation for the title of this thread???

  13. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004391165_fakeguns04.html

    "It's important that a child cannot walk into one of these little convenience stores, plop down a dollar and walk out with something that can get him shot on the spot without question," Deberry said.

    That's 'funny,' I didn't know you even needed a toy gun for the cops to shoot you on the spot without question.

    Anything to avoid challenging a cop's right to murder out of fear and fear alone...

×
×
  • Create New...