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Be careful, though, when using your feet. That's a good way to hurt an ankle, or flip.

The voyager program is one of the coolest things we've ever done as humans.

I saw sleater-kinney play at the showbow, with basically every lesbian in the city. It was a good show, though.

Right on. Do you have any rope? You can practice a lot of stuff at home from a book. Learn the common knots forwards and backwards. Practice them while watching TV or something. Throw a rope over a tree branch and prusik up and down it. Practice rigging a z-pulley in your back-yard. Read about rope travel and crampon technique. Just geek out on the stuff. If you get a lot of that theoretical knowledge down, you'll have an advantage.

This is really top notch. Feature idea: Calculate the best place to go skiing (by region?), based on recent and predicted telemetry, and ordered by avalanche risk, over a set date range.

Hey Bill, would love to help you out, but I don't have a lot of time for climbing lately (raising two kids). But, this site is a great resource. Good luck! Couple of questions: How old are you? Are you more interested in mountaineering, or in alpine climbing? Do you know how to belay? Cheers!

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."-- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

It's also an enabling component in acid rain. Without sufficient quantities of DHMO, acid rain is not possible. It also corrodes metal, and is lethal if inhaled. It's even found in cancer cells, and unfortunately high quantities of it have been found in every major river and lake in the United States. The cleanup would take hundreds of years -- that is, if the government ever decided to take their responsibility seriously. But why spend money on DHMO cleanup, when you can buy more bombers???

Hey Larry, have you heard of the dihydrogen monoxide coverup? This lethal chemical kills people every year, and yet our government refuses to ban it. Maybe you have a point http://www.dhmo.org Spread the word!

That's great to hear. DO you know how that compares to US funding of fusion power? I know the japanese are spending money on it, too.

Imagine if scientists stopped researching subatomic particles in the early 20th century, because the electron microsope or the particle accelerator seemed plausible. Hell, 50 years before that, chemists still thought that organic compounds could only come from life (VITAL FORCE!!!!), until synthetic urea was finally created. People were convinced humans couldn't even live in zero-G until somebody finally did it. You can't just say, "it doesn't seem likely, so let's abandon it."

You're right -- that proves our entire system of elections is broken. Let's all stop voting, and just tweet instead.

Just because it's not the closest to be fully developed doesn't mean it shouldn't be funded. However, note that I didn't say it should be getting THE MOST funding. Just more. There are lots of forms of alternative energy that should be getting more funding. I think that we should be investing more money into long-term scientific research. This would also include things other than nuclear, obviously, but nuclear is still something that deserves more funding than it is currently getting. So is the space program. You can't think only "near future." You have to also think long-term. Fusion power is a necessity for the human race, IMO. It deserves funding -- more than new bombers do.

Another thing that should definitely get more subsidies is nuclear research. We should be investing into advanced technology, like fusion power. It's just a matter of time.

Why do you think that people spend so many hundreds of millions of dollars on political advertising, if the election is all just rigged anyway? WEIRD, isn't it????

Hey, Larry -- what do YOU do to actually attempt to influence poltics? Since you say it doesn't work, I'm assuming you've tried. I'm curious, what did you try? How did you attempt to enlighten your fellow citizens about issues important to you? What did you do to try to enact change, before you decided it all just didn't work? You can't stand in the closet whispering, and then complain that your voice isn't being heard. You seem to have great faith in your fellow citizens that they didn't actually elect any of our corrupt leaders, but unfortunately, most of our citizens have their head up their ass. If you're unwilling to help educate them, then of course the "system doesn't work." You'd rather be at the mercy of social networking? May I remind you that Lady Gaga has the most followers? Good luck with that.

I recall it as AE does: Arbeit macht frei. What quote / reference are you getting this from? Buchenwald's gate.

Close, he developed that while at Buchenwald.

You know what seems like a more liely scenario to me, Larry (instead of hidden, massive fraudulent schemes involving the wholesale faking of elections) is that a) Half of us don't vote b) Most of the half that do, have no idea what sort of person they're voting for. There are many reasons people don't seem to get it (Media, taking advantage of social habits of humans, exploiting ignorance, brainwashing, conspiracy theories, etc.) -- but I don't see any evidence at all that our system of voting in America is systemically broken. In fact, I see every indication that what we have is exactly the result of a functioning democractic vote constituated by ignorant voters, heavily influenced by special interests and billions of dollars of political advertising. But, that doesn't mean our vote is broken. Social networking won't fix the problem of an uninformed electorate. Suggesting we'd be better off without our vote strikes me as a form of treason that I just can't respect. Cheers!

You're right, Larry. Listen, one of my neighbors who escaped from a death camp, swam across the pacific, spent 7 years in the US gaining citizenship, then joined the military, finished special forces training, invented the jet and the time-machine and flew to Germany in time to free the Jews, agrees with you. He also says that we'd all be better off getting rid of our vote and relying on twitter. In a strange string of coincidences, he also has a cousin whose friend's sister's boyfriend's father's neighbor's uncle worked for diebold and says he threw the switch to give Obama the election. They only made it look like 50% of americans voted, just to screw with people. That's why I think we should abandon democracy, and rely on social networking instead, because social networking is so much harder to manipulate. I take it all back, and bow to your superior grasp of logic.

I suspect think we all might be pitching in on that one... I don't do unnecessary judeo-christian guilt trips but I certainly do all I can to stop this train wreck by opposition to people who do all they can to prevent sustainable policies. Read: Arguing on CC.com about politics is more valuable than real-world action.

Chan Marshall

Are u guys still arguing about this? Didn't anyone win yet? I'm pretty sure nobody has made a new argument in at least three days.

THIS fight is about the kids http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/81350844/