Kimmo

oh i'm convinced vaccines work. and have worked effectively to eliminate certain catastrophic illnesses. there seems to be no real question about that. my concern is the number of vaccines that the orthodoxy pushes parents to get all at once, and also the types of vaccines (hep b vaccines one day after birth? let's wait til she entertains notions of iv drug use first! and chicken pox? come on now....). another concern i have is again in conjunction with the amount of vaccines administered concurrently: most if not all vaccines contain aluminum (mercury has mostly been removed); just last night at PEPS, someone from microsoft mentioned their child being diagnosed and treated for aluminum toxicity after multiple vaccine administration. i'm still trying to get all the specifics to confirm the authenticity of the claim, but still of at least a little concern to me.... and, i think the link between autism and vaccines is quite inconclusive, and warrants further study. the alarming increase in autism itself is reason enough to look at any possible source, including vaccines.

yeah i'm sure most people would have confidence in someone to honestly handle government affairs if that person lies to their family.... real integrity there, oh boy.

I don't know what bonehead's take on vaccines was/is, but to indiscriminately accept the current establishment doctrine concerning vaccines is rather....unscientific.

head injuries seem to be more prevalent in down-hill snow sports than in sport climbing or bouldering, yet i don't know of any resort that enforces a helmet policy; am i mistaken here? if head injuries were prevalent, i would assume that liability issues would force the adoption of helmet policies across the board. having climbed for quite a few years, i know of very few (one?) head injuries, and only from alpine trad climbing. i don't recall a single head injury from sport climbing or bouldering. if one wishes to wear a helmet, that's awesome, but to denigrate others for not following suit seems a bit over-reaching. if someone has relevant stats on this subject, i'd love to see them.... it could be that wearing a helmet while driving a car to the crag would be more in order, statistically speaking, but if this is not the case, please inform me.... and, after having recently been graced with the birth of a baby daughter, this subject will probably be even more relevant to me in the near future (right now i'm so paranoid that i barely can handle her being taken to the crag, for fear of a quick draw being dropped on her head!).

ya really think i care about your preferences? and your arbitrary differentiations between spray and non-spray? you guessed it. so go ahead and ban me, bitch; you'd be doing me a favor. and thanks, buddy, for sticking up for me; that raindawg is a meanie!

the way you both get peed on, i'm kinda thinking you're into the whole watersports thing; any truth to this observation?

i think your above list simply indicates you are a sport climbing prodigy, whilst sucking at trad. i've climbed all the routes listed above sans yose and devil's tower, and that's the only explanation i have. maybe you can teach dwanus to get up that 5.13 he keeps mumbling about? should be easy, with your combined talents.

yeah well he's old and fat too. but i'd also like to know what 10+ routes he's talking about that he claims to be harder than smith 11+....maybe pope's just a very gifted sport climber, and sucks at trad? he is (was?) built more like a sporto! index sport harder than trad, at same grade: -model worker, harder than sagg full (and i think harder than jap gardens, even tho jg rated 11+). -same with wham. -little jupiter, also a lot harder than jg, or iron horse. little si comps with index trad: -aborigine, similar to sagg full, same rating. -iron horse, similar to rainy day women, same rating. -thin fingers, easier than psychowussy, same rating. i'm not up on trad harder than 12-, so my comparisons stop there, but up to this point, it's all in the same ball-park to me. and like you said rudy, it's kinda funny and silly to quibble over a couple of letter grades, since it is all so subjective and dependent on particular beta and conditions and body size etc etc etc. climbing doesn't lend itself quite as nicely to "objective" criteria, like a 4 minute mile or somesuch. bottom line, try harder than you can, have fun and never say "take" on rp burn.

uhh, 5.X- at most, fat guy.

wherever i've climbed, i've noticed no great difference between sport and trad "difficulty" at any given rating. in fact, at index, i can name a number of sport climbs that seem to me to be a bit harder than some trad lines at the same rating. maybe it's different where this donini fellow climbs? or maybe it's just the old skool meme about "sportos" being weak and not nearly as strong and as manly as yester-year's gangsters? and someone mentioned not caring about grades: in my twenty+ on and off years of climbing, i've never met someone who was really into climbing who didn't care about grades at all, at some point in their lives. but i certainly have met climbers who denied caring!

if i will for a moment assume to know what you are talking about in the rather vague and contorted sentence above, then it sounds like this would logically lead into the ol' "what does 'intelligence' mean" discussion . it sounds like you might assume to know already, but for me, "precise definitions" are a bit harder to come by (and certainly not indicated by the administration of an iq test). in other words, your assumption about a "precise definition" even existing (no matter what world you live in) is patently false.

dave page seems unreliable, from all the second hand info from friends. my only dealing with him showed non-existent pr skills, so even if he did good work, i'd never go there.

i'm not sure if you are posting the above as evidence of your point, or mine....

i hope you are right.

and herein lies the problem. i certainly won't feel better about the product if 5 or 10 samples are pulled at spec rating, and my point is that nobody else should either. all i see this testing doing is possibly creating a false sense of safety (if samples pass), because potentially the cause of the problem is not being remedied.

"extremely intelligent"? that's kind of a funny assertion....i guess "intelligent" can mean many different things to different people. what i always loved about hayek was his buddhist sensibility.

in other words, contributing cash to testing individual pieces is like throwing money down the drain.

the problem here is that ok you might hit good quality with the ones you test (what will your sample size be), but will that in any way attest to the quality of untested samples? there seems to be a problem with manufacturing protocols, and until that is remedied, spot testing does nothing to assure anyone about the quality of all individual pieces.

and in response to the above concerning a lower kN rating: if they had a lower rating, but an obviously flawed brazing process which accounted for this lower rating, it would be just as unacceptable as the current fiasco.

I'm a little aghast with the arguments being made regarding aliens, and the defenses being posited. Christ, we are presumably talking about people's lives being put in danger by a company producing defective products, and that company's unwillingness to provide accountability and a proper remedy. The above is another example of the ridiculous comments being offered in CCH's defense: If the brazing process is flawed, one will never know what the actual failure rating will be with any particular piece, which again makes any claim about their safety a statement about the utter ignorance of the claimant. Hopefully it will not take a death (and the following lawsuit) before this circus act comes to an end.

unless yer doing fast pull-ups on the hang-board, i don't think yer training power; sounds more like yer training strength (which i think is a great power precursor). power is work done over time, so the faster you apply x force, the more power is involved. campusing can be a good power developer, but this requires speed (a campus board can be great for developing strength; just depends on how it's used).

the idea that "climbing is the best training for climbing" can certainly be overly simplistic at best, and refuted by the performances of some of the best climbers: think gullich, simpson, moon, woods, usobiaga, bereciartu, etc etc. it helps if you like training, but i've certainly seen my own climbing (sport and bouldering) go way up from dedicated bouts of training, and much faster than when i only boulder or sport climb. i believe i just read about trotter doing nothing but fingerboarding for 4 months before sending Just Do It. something i'm diggin on lately are intervals on the campus board. right now i'm using 3/4" edges only, and laddering up what would correspond to 1 3 5, then matching and reversing back down, holding each hand position 3 seconds. total 20 seconds on, then 10 seconds off, and repeat 6 to 8 times for one set (i'm not there yet! only doing 4 or 5). i'd like to build up to 4 sets in a workout, meaning ~150 to ~200 moves at a pretty high intensity, then move to 3/8" edges and/or longer pulls like 1 4 7. i'm siked to see how old standards feel after incorporating this twice a week into my existing workout for the next 6 weeks. considering how it duplicates the burn of harder routes, i think i already know the answer though....

bump. any takers? steep sport climbs at fossil, just waiting!

i could only guess that it would be really dry, considering the weather we've been having and what the other areas are like.... there's some steeper stuff there anyways, right? with the harder stuff? d'be cool to head out for a few hours. saturday would probly work the best for me.... lemme know!