ericb

Coming soon to a Seattle Street near you - thank you Smart Car

Ummm....wouldn't that be Eastside drivers? Fair enough....I use the term "Seattle Drivers" pretty loosely for the entire metropolitan area

Yes....these dipshits keep holding his sign across the Lake Sammamish I-90 pedestrian bridge slowing down traffic all the way back to Factoria....I don't know who I'm madder at, Ron Paul, or Seattle drivers that can't read at over 40 mph.

Spot on! little late to the game, but just to clarify, I was talking about the smartcar, not about covering my plow when plowing in land that hasn't been fallow for more than a couple weeks - in case context has been lost on this thread that is.

40 MPG for the US version is pretty unimpressive. The description of the safety features makes me pretty nervous... "Over 10 miles an hour, the tridion safety cell transmits impact over its entire surface to dissipate energy and protect its occupants (assuming a perpendicular impact involving the entire front width). " "You might have noticed that the smart fortwo has a pretty short wheelbase, but you probably haven't thought of that as a safety feature. If you suffer a side impact in your smart fortwo, chances are that the car hitting you will hit the wheels and tires of your car. Those wheels and tires are connected to either longitudinal structural members or axles that help to displace the crash energy. Each door also has a side brace installed." I wonder what happens when one of these things gets hit at an angle....but that just about never happens. Perhaps the steel safety cage remains in-tact, but the forces exerted on the driver would be much greater given the limited crumple zones. The special force-limiting shoulder-belts don't give me much comfort. Tvash would probably fare pretty well given the energy absorbtion inherent in his "standard option peckage", however.

Stick....if you check Hood history, you'll see that often the greatest hazards are falling rocks, and getting taken out by parties falling above you - often beyond your ability to control. I'd second the recommendation for a helmet and face shield at a minimum. The question I'd have for you, as a father myself, is why? Is this really for his experience, or for you to be able to say you carried him up to the top of Hood. Odds are you would make it up and down with no problems but If something were to happen to him, you'd be infamous. From an objective hazards standpoint, Mt. Adams might be a better consideration, although it's a much longer approach.

i've seen a couple on the freeway, pretty interesting. The big concern for me would be safety....the SUV ratio in this country would make them a bit frightening for the commute.

How unfair....I deserve at least honorable mention for the general fat f*ck theme of late. All FW did was zero in on certain protrusions.

You mean they didn't use a .557 and motor boats back in the day?

Makes total sense now....they were just trying to protect the brand new paving job from unanticipated design loads

Does anybody here, liberal or conservative, think that Native American whaling rights should be protected??? This is ridiculous http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004017427_whale16m.html "A gray whale illegally killed by five members of the Makah tribe in the Strait of Juan de Fuca in September took nearly 10 hours to die because the hunters didn't know what they were doing and shot the animal in the wrong place, according to a new tribal report" "The five men set out into the Strait from the downtown dock at Neah Bay and quickly found a gray whale. They harpooned the animal four times and shot it 16 times. They had taken with them the right gun for the job: a .577-caliber rifle, the same gun that had been powerful enough to quickly kill the whale legally in 1999. But the gun was misfired and wound up overboard. The men also had a Weatherby .460 Magnum rifle and a shotgun aboard. But the .460 did not have the power to kill the whale quickly unless fired directly at the brain stem. The untrained marksmen shot at the wrong part of the whale's head and didn't hit its brain stem. They also may have used the wrong ammunition." "Instead of swimming normally, during the first 3 ½ hours of his observation the whale used its tail to swim only two or three times, Scordino reported. The whale used only its pectoral flippers to swim, trying to keep its head above water. Only the top of the whale's head and blow hole were visible, and it swam in a slow, counterclockwise pattern, with no apparent recognition of where it was."

Met him???.....Jim let me try on his Montbell Thermawrap in his shop

Question....the Nepal Extreme you mention now has the Gore/Duratherm liner as well. What's the point in having a full leather [assumed fully waterproof(able)] upper and a goretex liner?

whether you agree with the content or not, I find it pretty f*cked up that our tax dollars are paying for this programming. Clearly there's enough of a NOVA following that advertising dollars would be easy to come by.

world wraps

THnaks man....we are flying in and out of Ontario...cheaper with more (direct) flights....little more driving time

Aren't you just a little curious to know if those suckers are real

So heading down for our second annual trip in in a few weeks, and curious... Last year, one of our party arrived really early in the day and was able to pick up isobutane cannisters somehweres around Ontario Airport. This year we are all arriving late (~9PM on a Wednesday night), probably too late for REI etc. Are there any late night mini-marts where we could get cannisters, or alternatively who sells them in town if we can't get there until the following day/evening?

archenemy, KKK, JayB, Fairweather, Trashtalkmanziero

And it would appear your plate has been far too full lately

I used to work with highschool youth ~ 4 hours per week, but since the new baby (and my more than full-time employment), not too much right now. Why do you ask? So Eric, exactly how many hours per week should us liberals be volunteering again? Nice selective quoting, and not exactly my point but nice dodge nonetheless

Actually - I don't think everything is A-OK.....I think the trickle-down part of our capitalist ideology is broken - specifically, thanks to our greed and consumerism, the wealth doesn't "trickle down" in practice like it should in theory. The current administration rightfully believes that NGOs are far more efficient at distributing aid than the government, so it relies heavily on this mechanism. Unfortunately, all they can do is make you rich, and give you tax breaks for donating to these organizations - they can't make you give. To sit here and bitch about what the government is not doing is not particularly constructive - if you can see holes in the system, do you part to plug them. In Tvash's case, the evil government enabled a free market system that made him a lot of money and let him keep most of it...enough that he apparently doesn't need to work. And what does he do with the excesses that have been afforded him??? Nepal, the Caribbean....you know the rest, or you can ask Fairweather.

I used to work with highschool youth ~ 4 hours per week, but since the new baby (and my more than full-time employment), not too much right now. My wife and continue to contribute financially to water and HIV related projects in South Africa. Why do you ask?

FW....I think a better analysis is to how much time he spends screwing around on this site vs. actually taking action to remedy the victimization by the govermental system that he rails against. If Tvash donated half the time he spends bitching on this site to organizations that actually are working to fight poverty and injustice, he could truly make this world a better place. As it is, his big contribution to "the cause" will be 45 minutes of his time next November.

actually AS seems to have served Bill Gates well....more fodder for the "limousine liberal" tag