ClimbingPanther

I was waiting for someone to say that... What do you think natural selection has to say about homosexuality?

Off White, I never have thought, at least from a Christian perspective, that racial and homosexual issues are equal philosophically. Ethnicity is an intrinsic trait, but homosexuality is an action/choice. Laws cannot be based on who you are, but on some level laws always govern what you do. You make a really interesting point about re-naming marriage in secular society. Definitely outside-the-box thinking.

minx, I sympathize a lot actually with your sentiment. I am pretty conflicted on how I where I ought to stand on issues like this. I have not forgotten that I am incredibly fortunate to even be alive while holding my beliefs, let alone be a perfectly equal member in society regardless of them. Many in history have not had this privilege. Laws will never conform to people's beliefs because you can't get that many people to agree on one thing, so there must be some latitude. The problem, as always, is where do you draw the line? But this isn't even the root of the matter. WHY do you draw the line? That's the heart of the issue. Why do we draw lines as to what's acceptable in society? There's tons of reasons, and different reasons go with different laws. As to homosexuality, ericb's post probably constitutes at least part of the reason for the majority of those who voted to ban same-sex marriage. Regardless of all that, I think in general Christians ought to be wary of legislating Christianity, and not just because legislating religion can and will backfire. The real problem with it is that "righteous" laws will not "save" America. That is not how Jesus taught to change the world.

I was trying to resize an image the other day and couldn't figure out how or if I could.

For those of you who may honestly want to understand the predominant Christian position on homosexuality and why we don't want it sanctioned in America, read a little about Sodom & Gomorrah. Wikipedia has a relatively concise but complete and fair article on it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodom_and_Gomorrah [good references too] Worth noting is that homosexuality isn't by any stretch the only thing they were doing wrong. Their litany of sins included gluttony, pride, selfishness, and more. 49"Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy. 50"Thus they were haughty and committed abominations before Me Therefore I removed them when I saw it. So as you can see from the Christian's Bible itself, homosexuality wasn't the only or even explicitly the main reason God destroyed them, as some may have you believe. However, we believe God does judge and punish nations/cities/whatever when he sees fit. Considering America already sounds a lot like those other things mentioned (even the most liberal of folks could agree we're overfed and selfish and our current leadership doesn't seem geared toward helping the needy in the world), we don't want to see it become any more like Sodom & Gomorrah. However, I for one think Christians miss the boat when we focus so much on one issue. What about the others? Surely being overfed is much more of a problem than homosexuality, especially in the church itself! Shame on us. "Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission."

You are all blowing this way out of proportion. The east side is where the real mind-blowing records are being broken. Data for the Tri-Cities, taken at Pasco International Airport Get a load of this: Most rain in one week: A monstrous 0.45 in. Most rain in one day: A terrifying 0.20 in. Most days in a row with recordable rain: Un-freakin-believable 5 DAYS!!! 0.45 in. is approximately our monthly average for precip. and we got it in just 5 days! WOW!

I'd hate to fall on THIS thing!!! shoot, doesn't look so messed up when the image is small try: http://web.mit.edu/custer/www/rocking/cams/cams.body.html#introduction Seriously though, cool find with that website!

Whatever oly , that may be fine for you if you want a smooth computing experience with a fraction of the glitches of the average PC, but who wants that anyway?

Gary's right, the real world is often difficult to describe with equations, but everyone should know the basics which are important. There are a lot of concepts which can be put to good use if you never read a single climbing book. Like how large angles in an anchor's cordelette astronomically increases the force on the piece. Like when you fall, the force of your fall is (in theory) doubled on a piece above the belay because it's like a pulley. Average physics ignoramus Joe may think, "Hey, my rope won't let a force happen more than X kN, so I can fall all I want on this little nut!" However, it's impossible to make exact predictions because there are so many variables (friction in various places, rope stretch and age, static-ness of belay, weight of climbers, etc.).

Yeah, the master/slave thing is definitely the way to go. It will work; you'll not lose all your data. However, if I were you, since you're going to be wiping the whole thing anyway, I'd suggest somehow saving important files to someone else's HD (keep your new one in the box) first, wiping your old HD clean (not just a system restore or something), and installing XP fresh on it, sequentially installing programs/hardware one at a time to discover if/when it dramatically slows down. I REALLY doubt there's any problem with your HD. Maybe after every 5 programs/hardware, create a system restore point so you don't have to waste time reinstalling everything if uninstalling the problematic program/hardware doesn't help.

Well, so you did! I swear I looked TWICE for it! Unless you secret-edited it

Arch, you really took the "Subject" line to heart, eh? I would get fired for reading books at work if I read your whole reply now, but I'll take a look on my own time. I appreciate what I for now assume is a thoughtful response though!

This may need a new thread, but the real question in all of this moral wrangling is: Who or what defines "morality?" If it's individuals, then why condemn murderers (I doubt many ascribe to this)? If it's a societal convention (which I suspect many here believe) then it's all relative to your place in history and geography. If it is a (or THE ) supreme God then it's whatever he says and our opinions don't matter. It's simple and doesn't require much philosophy for those on either end of the spectrum, but I think it would be interesting to see some discussion on what people really mean when they say "morality."

That's not true!!! Don't beat yourself up like that. It's just that yours doesn't matter

REI does have a lot going for it, especially that they are the only remotely climbing-related shop in the Tri-Cities. It is sad that they're moving away from climbing in general though. However, it's a stupid, lame excuse that it's not profitable. It's only not profitable because they've neglected the real climber community and we rarely shop there for climbing supplies anymore, so even if they put stuff on the shelf it won't sell enough to justify stocking it. There's too many little guys who, with the advent of the internet, can and do compete very well. REI would really have to turn itself into a true Wal-Mart and start carrying everything imagineable at discount regular prices if they wanted to start selling climbing stuff as a profitable sector.

Mike, I appreciate your inclusion of the Pink Panther, but you left out in my opinion the funniest movie ever (also starring Peter Sellers)... DR. STRANGELOVE, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Maybe for you. Actually, I find it refreshing that I am no longer considered stupid enough to spend too much money for a shirt with some letters on it. Nobody cares what you look like except you. And maybe

I don't know if I'd use that word, but definitely all of us don't act in accordance with our own beliefs and values 100% of the time. Hypocrite goes a little farther than our innate imperfection and implies a lifestyle of saying one thing and doing another

Quote from the male prostitute: "I cried many nights; I got sick tormenting myself about whether I should do this," he said. "I finally had to come to peace with myself. ... I had to do the moral thing." Seriously guys, don't string the pastor up just yet. We don't know the whole story. Maybe he is a hypocrite, but don't call him one until we know he is one.

You'd better!

Yes, ian, that is the supposed problem, but how does that happen if, like the guy said, the girth hitch was still tight? If so, then there's nothing but air to abrade it.

That's an awful clean cut! The psychology of it may not make sense, but it's possible to have been mostly cut, and the cut hidden in the knot, unless he untied and retied the knot every morning. I wonder if he can be sure nobody was up there with a knife during the night or even while he was on rappel? 30 feet back from the edge... you're not going to see anyone. He said the ends were soft, not fused, which makes friction-related abrasion & cutting highly unlikely, and it was not in contact with the rock. He also said the girth hitch was tight. Now how could the knot be tight if it was responsible for the break? How else do you get such a pretty cut without a knife and without any heat? Especially in light of other testing which has recently been discussed, I think there's something very suspicious about this failure and don't believe it has anything to do with the girth hitch. That said, it's your life not mine so believe what you want and be as safe and cautious as you want to be! Someone ought to be able to reproduce that with those exact components if it was really just the girth hitch which caused the failure. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Look at this picture and then read the tag closely.

There's no question, regardless of what Taser says, that this thing can kill, and police need to keep that in mind when they think "Do I REALLY need to taser this guy?" It's a great tool to have, but shouldn't be used lightly as a "safe" alternative to just using brawn to control uncooperative people. Senseless death pisses me off.

Google search: girth-hitch There's very little good info out there about girth hitching slings to slings, but it seems like it's not a death-wish activity. Some of the more reliable testing indicated a 25% drop in strength, which isn't anything to think twice about. There is one type of girth hitch connection that possibly should be avoided ("linked girth hitch") ["possibly" because one sample is statistically stupid] http://www.climerware.com/knot.shtml Mike: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.climbing/browse_thread/thread/3055c154ad4348bd?hl=en&rnum=1 This site shows results from testing sling-girth-hitched-to-wire combinations, but is a little hard to comprehend what's really going on. The wires themselves were tested over a tiny nut, then the wire-sling combo did not involve the tiny nut. So, the comparison is kinda stupid, but the absolute value of the breaking strength is still informational. Also, they do not indicate where the break occurred so we can't know if the sling stregth was reduced by 60-85% or if the wire was reduced by some unknown amount. The one concrete result that you should take with you is that doubling the sling through the wire is better than girth-hitching it. edit: oh yeah, I should mention that this was done with nylon 11/16

point repeated for emphasis