rob

is something happening in Israel or something? I've been busy skiing....

I love how his belayer just stands there like nothing happened.

I LITERALLY GOT THAT ON VIDEO!

I ain't yer mama, but have you been paying any attention to the avy conditions out there? Pretty dismal.

please let us know before you go around chucking explosive devices in the bc so we can stay the fuck away

i knew i didn't trust those things

Hmm, but on a similar note, I'm an atheist to the core, but that doesn't stop me from yelling "Oh My God!" a couple times a night. go figure

I fear I'll have to start carrying in NPs to protect myself from the gun-nuts who will start carrying in NPs

So. Yesterday, my team and I are presenting a prototype to our Dear Leader. Dear Leader surprises us by giving us a deadline much earlier than anticipated. Of course, our guy doing the presenting rolls with the punches and says, "no problem," because that's just what you do when the Bossman asks you to do something. Afterwards, when we're alone, we all start stressing out about this new deliverable and how we hope he isn't expecting much, etc. Today, across the hall in Dear Leader's office, I hear one of the guys who was there yesterday telling him all about "what he missed" after he left the meeting and having a bit of a laugh over it. So, what do you do with a guy like this at work?

OMG, he has a banana in his rear???

he's talking about this

I read yr whole post, Bill. I guess I just don't subscribe to the chicken little school of political science, wherein the federal government is sekretly trying to unburden us of our civil rights. I agree that civil liberties need to be constantly defended. Yeah, and sometimes it takes time to challenge disenfranchising lagislation. But it happens, and we do what needs to be done. In the end, things always seem to come out right. Our country is better now than it has ever been, IMO. Sure, we've got our problems -- but we always will. We'll get through these, too, and I don't see any evidence that things will stop getting better. How's that?

I had the same experience with leather climbing boots. The foam solution above is interesting, but I was able to successfully solve the problem by simply not skiing in leather climbing boots anymore. Problem solved!

I'm surprised a supposed libertarian like you would espouse such a cavalier opinion about your privacy rights and the danger of giving them up, particularly the naive "I've got nothing to hide" argument. Sarcasm, like Pink lays out so well, often doesn't translate well Pat. I'd like to commend you on both a well thought out, and non-attacking response too! My take is that it's really like boiling frogs. You toss a frog into a pot of boiling water and it will jump right out they say. While if you put in in warm water and slowly crank the heat up, it will eventually boil to death. Like that here, a little bit at a time and pretty soon your cooked. Gun rights are but a small part of this government intrusion into our lives. Slowly the institutions we are use to seeing in place are being attacked very slowly and gradually. Hopefully it will change under our new gov't, however, our rights have not been one of their issues, and the gun restrictions are on their agenda even if the other items are not. Politicians, by their nature, tend to seek power for it's own sake, often at someone else's (in this case-ours) expense. Today's news is the federal governments intent to crank the heat on us frogs one more degree on a new burner. Often these take years to get through the courts to be found unconstitutional. The wiretapping was just overturned in district court as the defendants could not prove they WERE being wiretapped, and thus have no standing to challenge the law. Back to square one. Link "8:46 p.m. PT, Sun., Nov. 30, 2008 The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials. The long-planned shift in the Defense Department's role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said. There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military's role in domestic law enforcement." Each one of these can be difficult to argue on their own. Sure they are tapping every phone call in the US, but don't you want to be safe? (insert sarcasm sad face emoticon here). Sure they are going to start inserting federal troops into civilian areas in violation of a 130 year old law, but don't you want to be safe? (insert sarcasm sad face emoticon here) Sure they will be restricting your ability to own firearms...but don't you want to be safe? (insert sarcasm sad face emoticon here) It's true that they can suspend habeus corpus,....that the president can order you and your loved ones held without a trial, or as long as he damn well feels like doing so: in clear violation of our laws since our very founding, but don't you want to be safe? (insert ANOTHER sarcasm sad face emoticon here) I guess the question is, don't we all want to be safe from all these real or imagined things? (insert final sarcasm sad face emoticon here) I guess I'd like to be safe and left in peace by my own damn government. I want this for all of you as well, because if you don't get it, I sure as hell won't, despite the fact that I'm a lot more establishment than some of you yazoos on this board. Today they're kicking in the door and dragging some poor American off to be tortured because the poor bastard has an Arabic name, but tomorrow it's us. If the bastard is guilty of terrorism, no sane judge will let him off. Except that the NSA would have to provide the details of how he was caught, and they got that illegally. So it continues. This might be a good time to send some money to the ACLU, they must be working overtime. ACLU Web site link Bill, your "frogs in the pot" analogy would be a great one, if only we were frogs, and if gun control were a pot of boiling water. I really don't get the point of this popular little analogy. "Frogs will sit in water and boil to death if the temperature is increased slowly. This proves that the gummint will take away our guns eventually." I don't get it. It sounds like pretty retarded logic. Are you familiar with the slippery slope fallacy?

wow bala, great post. I'm glad you came out ok -- sounds like you were very lucky. I've never had a bad fall on lead, and haven't ever pulled gear or hit anything, but even still -- a lead fall rattles me for quite a while. It reminds me that I'm not immune, and it reminds me of all the spots where I could have fallen and didn't have good gear. It makes me realize how many times I've pushed it and just got lucky. I don't like feeling lucky, cause it's so unpredictable. I know some people say if you're not falling you're not progressing. But, overall, I think I'd rather just not fall.

Also, don't you lose redundancy if you clip through the shelf? Imagine a two-piece anchor; if the shelf is loaded and one side of the anchor fails, couldn't you have some catastrophic consequences for whoever is clipped into the shelf? But the powerpoint would still be redundant.

Hmm, when a crazy person has holed himself in a building with hostages, I wonder why the police negotiators are willing to talk to them without preconditions? The Bush method of hostage negotiation would be something like this: "Hand over ALL your hostages, and then we'll negotiate." BZZZZZZ! Try again!

I know you're being sarcastic, but I'm not sure what the point you're trying to make is. With your sarcasm, are you actually trying to state that terrorists are a large fraction of Islam, or that Islam is fundamentally a religion of violence, and that closing gitmo will lead to more terrorist attacks? Or are you just being sarcastic because you don't really have a point, and forgot to wipe yr ass this morning, so you figured you'd smear your nasty ass-grease all over this forum? Speak up.

The problem now is we lack a slogan. We need something along the lines of "better dead than red," but retooled for the 21st century.

They hate us for our freedoms.

Because it's a trip report. There's actually a special section for them, which is why he posted it there. Did you know there is a climbing forum, too?

I'm just checking in to see if anyone here has solved the great debate yet. Would someone let me know? TIA!

OK, I'm no avalanche expert by any means. But, what is this magical 30dg number you keep throwing about? Are you saying dry slab avalanches never occur under 30dg? I've never read that. I've always heard that the range was more like 25dg-55dg. I also got the impression that avalanches science was in its infancy and avalanche prediction was somewhat mysterious, and that "there are no avalanche experts." But you seem to know quite a lot, and seem pretty certain. You seem to be judging the likelihood of a slide based on a very small range of slope angle, which seems contrary to what I've read. Granted, I'm no expert. Are you really saying that I just don't have to worry if the angle slope is below 30?

will I get a bailout at least?

You should have no problem finding a partner at Tonsai, bill Also, you can check out this partner's wanted forum