crackers

Rob, Jared, Anybody else: Shoot me an email for the RA number, and then take your pack down to Rainy Pass, and they'll fix it up. Thanks! Graham

I'm terribly sorry Jay, but again, you've wandered off from whatever your specialty might be. It's clear it's not health care economics. It's not mine either, but I am married to one of the heavy hitters in the field, and have spent many interesting evenings reading her work. * Cost controls and rationing are not "a fixture of single payer systems" in any way that reflects your use of language. I'd recommend examining Kaiser Permante California's management of doctors as an example of the standard of cost controls used in single payer systems. Doctors believe they don't need management, and they rarely keep up with advances in their field except from drug peddlers. KP ensures that their docs are informed in the best practices in their speciality, and manages them by tracking their outcomes and inputs. Interestingly, KP patients and doctors spend more time on preventive care than anywhere else in the USA as it is clearly a results effective method of controlling costs. * The vast majority of allocation of health care resources is currently done by the government through planning that is partially research driven and partially driven by lobbying by major insurance companies. If a particular procedure will not be covered or funded by CMS or NIH, there will be little to no research or practice of the procedure in the USA. No research means none at all. The "market" does not drive health care research in the USA; as the research arm of the single largest by expense health plan in the world, CMS drives virtually all health care research. If you're interested and in DC, I'd suggest that you go to some brown bag seminars and read some papers from the health policy groups at APT, Urban and Mathematica-MPR. Most of the studies are funded by CMS, and are therefore freely available. CMS also has a large body of freely available papers. Somebody wrote above that docs are humans too. That is so damn true. You've got a responsibility to doctor shop, just as you try to find a good mechanic, school for your children or anything else. Remember, you're HIRING them, and they work for you... Some basic questions you should at least consider asking before any invasive procedures: 1) how many times have you personally performed this procedure? 2) how many times was the procedure successful, and what is your definition of success? What was your follow up procedure? How long is your time interval of follow up? 3) how many times did the procedure fail? what were your follow up procedures and how did you correct the error that lead to the procedure failing? Doctors hate it; they trained in school to think that they're gods, not humans. It's your body. EDIT: Personally, I loathe Michael Moore. He has a track record of embellishment and truth bending that I find offensive and just as dangerous as the demagogery of Rush Limbaugh. While his "health care numbers" may or may not be accurate, I must question the integrity of his argument and the specific use or abuse of any statistic he might (mis)use.

the address is: CiloGear 155 Sullivan St. #1 Brooklyn, NY 11231 BTW: it's been between 99 and 104 in my office for the past few days. It's just too hot to work for me. My new A/C was supposed to be delivered yesterday, but they didn't show. Hopefully, everything will cool off tomorrow and I'll be able to get back to work.

That would be a great freaking link-up. Madam G is a single pitch is a blast, as far I am concerned it is the only way to do that route. Ejoy the free hanging rap in that too, it is as good as the one off of Monkey Face in Smith. But the rap is going only go about 1/3 of the way the first time, cause you'll be rapping directly over Le Teton. Then you can see exactly how crazy the route is...

Trapps: I'd say Strictly-Shockley's link up, then Madame G's in one pitch, then Le Teton. CCK Direct. Over to Modern Times or Directissima. Optionals that would just be wild: Traverse of the Clods. MF. 5.8 Pitch of Erect Direction to Keep on Struttin' Retribution, then top rope No Solution. Nears: Disneyland Baskerville Terrace Yellow Ridge Birdland Main Line

The C is a glottal J in Turkish. But who cares? How to you pronounce tange or dead bird or ... The Cilo - Sat massif. Also:

Damn pesky citizens. Except that the over 4000 radioactive waste containers dumped in and around the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary haven't been cleaned up. Yeah, it might be difficult to argue. Then again, it's usually fifty years or more before you figure out that your cool new industrial technology or chemical process really sucks. There is part of Brooklyn that would certainly be extremely valuable property if it wasn't the site of some of the oldest oil refineries in the world. It's so polluted that they basically plan to ignore it until clean up skills and technology are significantly better. The economic costs of resource degradation are a nascent area of study. And as long as people are using parametric statistical models and the hilarious concept of rational actors, those models and studies probably won't convince me of very much.

There have been some real doozy's this year. I watched a guy place five pieces in fifty feet that all fell out, and this was about three weeks after a guy decked from about 60 feet up on a 5.9, pulling all his gear out with him. As the winner of the luckiest guy in the Gunks award for 2007, he landed on his packs and suffered no injuries. The store is Rock and Snow. They've got absolutely fantastic staff. They all really know their stuff and I think they're probably the ideal store for gear knowledge and local conditions. They've got one of the largest selections of clean climbing hardware I've ever seen, and they are intimately familiar with the pros and cons of every piece.

Like love canal, the stellwagan banks, blahblahblah. Let's face it. If we screw up the environment, it means more jobs for treehuggers when we try to fix it.

If you want a guide that's chill and will show you around, you can definitely get a ton of mileage in. This week the weather is terrible -- hot and high humidity -- but next week is supposed to be better. You can also find people to hook up with pretty easily, but you're always taking a risk as a partner whore. If you want to partner whore, I'd recommend sitting in the uberfall and propositioning folks walking past...

I was taking a much needed break from work this weekend. The shoulder strap twisting is a Bad Thing. I am happy to take care of it for you. Just get in touch with me. It takes about ten minutes of work to get the tacks in and a pack back in the box. However, the shipping thing is definitely a PIA...so, for Seattle area folks, I'll call Rainy Pass this morning and see what kind of deal I can work out with them. The packs currently being shipped out have tacks in the shoulder straps so that the twisting doesn't occur.

Just for you ken, via thepiton... HYhGYDNc1kw

Just briefly, I climb sometimes with rg@ofmc of that whole thread. He can set up his wacky anchor that Mal Daly made for him in about as much time as it takes me to put my shoes while keeping him on belay. While sometimes I'm willing to suspect that's because of his 40 years of climbing in the gunks or the thousands of times he's done any particular route, I do vaguely remember that it took him longer to do the set up with his old cordalette method or his old clove hitch method.

stairmaster. You're only level on a treadmill at "8% elevation", and there is less impact on your knees on the stairmaster to boot.

I'm in dissent as well. Find the highest quality doc ASAP. As some may know, the foot in the liability page of my company is that of my wife. http://www.cilogear.com/corp/liability.shtml Fractures of the bones in the feet have nothing to do with fractures of tib-fib or any other high blood flow area. Fractures of the talus or calc do not always heal, and can take months to recover. They can die in the meantime, and then you're in for a world of hurt, expensive surgeries and very bad outcomes. You probably aren't so bad, but why even potentially allow yourself to go there if you don't have to. Please don't take this the wrong way everybody, it's just that when you enter into the world of ankle fractures, it's not broken legs and it's not normal medicine. Find a superior orthopedic surgeon who specializes on feet and ankles immediately, doctor shop your heart out and see what you can find. Make sure you find a doc who knows ankles, knows that you intend to do sports and even land on your ankle again. You do NOT want to experience avascular necrosis of anything in your foot. Previous conversations I've had with marylou lead me to think that I remember that she knows some good docs.

stories are that the tick is what drove Raf to the edge...

Yes, I did place an "aid" piece on a free climb. I've done it before, and if I have to, i'll do it again. I'd rather have the piece disintegrate under load than have nothing at all. And yes, the Z3 and Z4 are rated to 6kN...But think about what happens when a 240 pound person falls on an early piece. Shoot, one guy I used to climb with was 6'7" 325#. He wouldn't trust anything under 9kn to hold him, and he'd screamer the little stuff and back it up if at all possible. We busted the Metolius stuff by taking repeated whippers on them, turning them after they got bent, and fully recognizing that we were way, way, way beyond what any piece of gear should be able to survive. I trust the Metolius TCU's much more than the Zeros. You can tell when they're, erm, under stress. Like I said, I don't blame them for failing...they didn't fail, they were exposed to greater than their limit. But if you even think about comparing Zeros to (perfectly made, therefore mythical )Aliens, I'm arguing that it makes sense to consider that my experience is that a 200 pound guy will fail all of the Zeros first. Just one of those many things that makes leading fun, huh?

So would I, but I'll never trust CCH. I logged a lot of air time on my vintage black, and it's been fine. Then again, I don't get much time on granite. I've broken a #2 Zero and saw the remnants of a friend's broken #3 or 4 Zero. They're just not made for leading climbing and horizontal placements if you weigh 200 or more pounds. BTW, I've also watched purple TCU's get mauled and wrecked a couple of 00's myself. We knew the potential for failure, and we honestly were never very surprised when we failed the gear. Horizontals and big guys aren't a very safe mix for cams.

I think the OIA and the member companies are scared because the core market demographics and user days are falling like a rock. If the industry is going to be as profitable as it hopes, it needs more than technically sophisticated white males to be involved, or it has to teach them that the prices should be much much higher. The OIA's standard figure for the size of the core "outdoor business" is only about $3 billion, which is for manufacturers of "core" products. Coke sells a lot more water than that each year. You only get the hundred billion mark with ancilliary sales, the multiplier effect and hunting and fishing and bicycles. Most of the foundations are incorporated in the US because that's the easiest way to reduce graft, bribery and malfeasance as required by US law for publicly traded companies. Do you really want people to spend more than the amount of the grant auditing a NGO in Nepal? My wife works for one of the world's best funded science oriented NGOs, with offices in Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, Brazil, India, the US and a few other places. In almost all of these places, funding is given out on a per project basis from the US branch. To my mind, it gets ridiculous quick. Which brings my mind to food aid. Did you know that a USAID grant for, say, stationary has to be used to purchase US made stationary? And that the USAID logo must be prominently displayed on it? If you want to talk about subsistence farmers trying to market their goods, let's segregate food aid, relief and disaster response food aid. And then let's wonder about the long term consequences of enclosure via market flooding versus keeping a population alive with food relief. There are good reasons I chose not to become a development economist.

i also loved the busted nut sack. Flathead definitely has the best rock.

I could fix up one of the new ones to have a removable hipbelt. Or I could sell you one of the old ones with a removable hipbelt for very little indeed...

Uh? What? Would that be the new european country of Morocco? Or Kenya? Or the USA or even Canada? Or East Germany? Or Spanish runners? Or Austrian biathalon team? With steroids, you can overtrain and rest at the same time. Frankly, I couldn't care less about olympic athletes. Been there, don't have the needle marks, don't need to go back.

2nd ade... val de mello pluses: long awesome routes. fun bouldering. streams to swim in.

I go to cult meetings three to four times a week. I climb in the gym twice to three times a week. I usually stack these activities. For example, last night I climbed for about an hour doing moderates as fast as I could, and then did the cult wod in 11:10 as rx'd. I spend another workout slot or two doing sport specific and agility training, one of the tragic flaws in the cult. One of the workout slots goes to pulldown training and one goes to stairmaster training. I hate running. Nonetheless, I do try to get out and run every month or so.

Howdy Scott, Nice post. So do you actually have 100 women signed up? When I got your email, i talked to some friends in Turkey. After some discussion, we agreed it would be hard to find 100 women in Turkey to do/find time such a course, and that's a far richer society than Pakistan, although Pakistan does have far more climber tourists and a background in climbing. We excluded Army etcetera 'volunteered' participation. How successful do you expect to be in getting participants from the Northern Areas? graham www.cilogear.com