rob

Well, certainly many of them deserve it. Esp. M$oft execs! Robble, robble!

Then we'd all have enough free time to spend our days lazily dancing around fields of flowers and butterflies to the sound of lutes while nature's glorious bounty provided the life of a King to one and all.

you might define "work" - historically, it's been plenty succesful in producing wealth and conquering the world - if our space exploration is ever to get anywhere significant, it'll take capitalism to underwrite it i bet. A better question is, how well does it work in comparison to other economic systems. Despite it's many flaws, I'm not sure humanity has yet to find a better system -- although we keep modifying capitalism in various attempts to squash its darker, nastier aspects, to greater or lesser degrees of success.

Yeah, I don't see the problem. If you're going to sign them up for ski lessons and pay for someone to teach them to ski, then who cares if you ski or not? Once they're going down easy groomers by themselves it's moot, isn't it?

Well, certainly many of them deserve it.

Yeah, and how much of that GDP would vanish the minute the working poor no longer had to keep working in the factories and sweat-shops? Much of our economic value is at the expense of many. All simple-minded bumper-sticker platitudes aside, if you just equally divided the planet's wealth (even if you had enough to distribute), things as we know them would basically collapse.

on the other hand, my brother called State Farm to ask if he was covered racing his Porsche on the track and they cancelled all of his auto policies on the spot.

Jeez, now I feel lucky. My experience was much more simple: "Hey, I'm a climber, btw. That a problem?" "Nope, whatevs."

Why can't money just be free????

I have a life, but I still like to peruse cc.com and touch myself. Nothing wrong with that.

I have a window in my office now. Productivity MINUS MINUS!

everyone is busy being harassed offline by Ed Hobbick?

Except for in the icicle where all the granite is all being polished into glass by kids in tennis shoes

Yeah, and "aggressive bouldering"

Hey Sobo - did you make a Planet Killer for Barry?

I need just enough disability insurance to pay for my physician-assisted suicide.

You are correct, it is a proper emergency device, not a commercial wilderness message service that masquerades as an emergency device.

Is that a racial joke?

Huh. I never ran into any trouble. I have pretty large life & disability policies (through my current employer) and neither of them care about climbing -- I asked specifically. And when I was insurance hunting, I looked at 3 or 4 different companies (I can't remember whom, but definitely State Farm was one of them) and none of them cared at all about climbing, either -- I asked, specifically. Strangely, nearly all of them had exclusions for piloting a small airplane, though.

Speaking of rastle cock, I didn't see The Bone on that list. But I didn't look very hard.

I would never recommend a SPOT locator -- if you want an emergency beacon, buy a real PLB, like this one. This is the one I purchased for my parents. The SPOT is sort of a Fischer-Price "My First PLB" and it relies on a commercial, civilian call center and the GlobalStar satellite system that is already being abandoned by users of satellite phones for it's poor coverage and reliability -- and they'll charge you for the privilege. I used to volunteer with a SAR/Mountain Rescue unit and the few times I was involved with a SPOT emergency, it was always a total clusterfuck working with the cheap, hourly employees in their call-center. I remember one time it took them several hours just to figure out how to contact us, and they were useless at helping us actually pinpoint the subject. I borrowed a SPOT once for a winter Rainier trip -- I was there for like 4 days and I could never once get an "I'm OK" message out through the cloud cover. Or some other reason. But it never worked. Good thing there was no emergency! A real PLB actually transmits on a free, government-operated search & rescue satellite network which is monitored by NOAA and will work anywhere on the planet, for free, and typically have a local radio "ping" so that you can be pinpointed once help is in the area. Cheers!

back before they invented 'the icicle', dirt piles were all we had...and the Pinnacles. I'm still puzzled why my climbing friends always want to head up the icicle before we've climbed the dirt pile out.

No no no, the names should be more like "Sweet Fucker" and "My Naked Balls"

Oregon "secret crags" are always the best

People forget that the brain is the biggest erogenous zone