tvashtarkatena

You're probably not going to like the Neiman Marcus cashmere hoodie I just ordered for the back country, then.

You're Hernia Free on Lincoln Peak You're hernia free! Lower gully. by PatGallagherArt, on Flickr Ivan raps off the summit of the Lost Arrow after our Venusian style ascent. Ivan raps off the summit by PatGallagherArt, on Flicker The logistics and commitment it took to get there: Camp 4, 5 AM by PatGallagherArt, on Flickr and the heavy toll afterwards: Post send gear sort by PatGallagherArt, on Flickr Ass and Wolf's Head Still Life: Creep! Liz (CO) and partner on the Wolf's Head by PatGallagherArt, on Flickr Josh Kaplan, Alpine Morale Officer - Central Corner of the Haystack, Wind River Range Central Corner P 3 by PatGallagherArt, on Flickr

I suppose a Midnight Meat Train reference would be out of the question. I thought the only demographic unaware of Army of Darkness included recent immigrants from non-electrified societies and the comatose (and the latter may simply be due to certain difficulties in communication), but you learn something new, if not always useful, here every day. Not everyone shops Smart.

I never know which forum I'm in. 3 pairs of gloves for ice climbing. Mitts for the approach and/or belay if you need em.

Decent mitts are especially nice if you're a skier.

I use OR alti mitts on all cold trips and love them. After painfully rethawing my fingers after a chilly April approach six or so years back, I decided it was time to solve that problem for good - and, with the Altis, I did. When it gets chilly, there's really no substitute for a solid pair of mitts. The down liners are great for skiing in the cold. You hardly know they're there.

$85: Mountain Hardware Phantom Large 800 fill down puffy w/snaps added for Feathered Friends removable hood. Used around the town only. One Tenacious Tape repair near front zip (shown). Just cleaned and nicely puffed out. P1040419 by PatGallagherArt, on Flickr $20: REI Mountain ax 75 cm P1040420 by PatGallagherArt, on Flickr $20: Italian army wool blankets x 2 (one has a couple of 1" holes in it, the other is hole free $20 P1040416 by PatGallagherArt, on Flickr

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LOL. I seldom follow my own advice, of course, but I'll drop a strap on occasion when plying some particularly holy land. I have half a kayak paddle with a canoe handle that looks like it might hail from similar ingearbreeding.

Assumption is the most pervasive form of learning disability.

You can self arrest with skis on. When skiing on a glacier, stow the ax and use a whippet and a poles, both with hands out of the straps (you'll be tossing one if it all goes wrong). You then have the choice of a quick self belay with the whippet or a standard ski pole arrest without. Up your chances by avoiding slick outer clothing like hardshells. Not as good as a standard ax arrest but then, skis provide other advantages, on and off the glacier. Anyone who uses poles might consider learning how to arrest with one. Very useful. A note about falls without skis: If you lose everything on the way down, arrest with your elbows (more effective than you might think) and toes (crampon free) or knees (w/crampons).

Pre-rig it. Much better than screwing around with having to do it once yer in the hole. The same for prusiks or tribloc. NEVER pre-rig a tibloc. A prusik may just snap if it catches the fall (which it will the way most folks rig it)- leaving you in the hole without a means to ascend, but a tibloc will tear your rope a new asshole, leaving you in the hole period. Rigging tiblocs quickly while dangling should be straightforward with a little practice.

Freedom requires equal treatment under the law and equality of opportunity, it doesn't 'accommodate' it. FW's misunderstanding of the value of equality, and the strawman it necessarily generates, is the number one excuse for opposing the value of equality in this country. Our system has been gamed by the haves to increase for increase income disparity for decades, primarily in the form of a regressive tax structure, so that's the unhealthy condition our nation currently enjoys. Rising income disparity and the erosion of the middle class's basic financial security is a huge problem in this country - perhaps our biggest. We're going to have to take it on at some point, and sooner is usually better than later when fixing systemic problems that are worsening.

Drones are coming - in force. The companies that produce them are commercializing their products for the domestic market. They're cheap now - they'll practically be free in the future, as will microrecording devices. FFA rules will need to change - but that is certain the happen in the face of the staggering automated utility drones offer. The ACLU had a drone bill last session that was shot down by Boeing - we'll try again next year but the effort will only succeed if we can convince Boeing that it is their best interests to address the public's substantial concerns about drones rather than quashing them. Amazon through everyone for a loop - no one is even discussing commercial use of drones and the privacy issues there. Micro surveillance/recording devices, commercial, public, or personal, will be everywhere. That's just what's going to happen. Restrictions on the use of that data is something we can control, to a degree. The inevitable ubiquity of the technology is not. Embrace it, fight that part of the fight you can win, or move underground. BTW, 3 more weeks to make your donation before the FY ends.

That is a huge and ubiquitous problem. No entity has much control over a unionized police force in a major city. Any attempt to alter their training - decrease racist behavior or unnecessary violence, often opens up their contract for renegotiation - a back-off poison pill that gives departments lots of autonomy. The SPD is a case in point. It is currently operating under a memo of understanding negotiated, in part, by the ACLU following a federal investigation and subsequent court order that documented over 50 cases of excessive use of force, often with an explicitly racial motive. It's been two years, and no real plan of action for the SPD has emerged, although all parties remain hopeful. If Seattle's experience doesn't serve as an example for self reform in other cities, and it may not, then our effort will have to be duplicated in every major city in the US, because they all have a violence/racism/training problem to varying degrees. Where those resources would come from - even the feds don't have that many people, is beyond me.

Fortunately, the bar for removing basic constitutional rights in this country is a bit higher than labeling someone 'irresponsible' because they happen to enjoy weed. And no, not every one of the 600,000 people in prison for weed in this country are drug kingpins. Prisons (my bro's a public defender - in Humbolt County) are full of people with learning disabilities, addiction disorders, psychological disease, and African Americans, the majority of them poor. After more than a decade running the public defenders office down there (he just retired), my brother still found how our system treats these people heartbreaking. The general public simply doesn't realize what's actually happening in our criminal justice system.

To clear up some misconceptions, not that I'm not flattered by the attention - Well over 50% of felons committed non-violent, primarily drug related crimes. 25% are were convicted for pot. I believe these folks should have their gun ownership rights restored. They are often forced to live in low income/high crime environments that are inherently more dangerous, and so often have a gun for protection. The police find the gun and its often an excuse to tip them over the top of our 3 strikes laws - life in prison, for having an illegal gun in the house. I also believe convicts who've served their time should have their voting rights restored. Many don't because of outstanding court debts - which they can never repay because they can no longer find employment. That's about it on that front. Pretty simple.

Look, WA is one of the 48 states that guarantee the right to carry in their constitutions, in our case explicitly for personal defense. In that sense, we are solidly in the norm. The DC ruling really didn't matter for shit from a practical standpoint, except, of course, in DC itself. If the constitutional landscape of the States were different, it might have mattered more. In any case, WA is not at all unusual regarding its gun laws.

Anecdotal experience, including mine, doesn't matter for shit when looking at long term national trends. We all live in our own local bubbles. The data's pretty clear, and its no secret to the gun industry. They market accordingly - fewer people are buying more guns and gun related toys each, and that's who they market to. Whether its a guy with 40 tre-bark outfits in his ATV garage or a cook with 10 years of canned food and 10,000 rounds in his bunker, the gun industry's primary focus is deeper, not broader. That's not to say they don't do both, as you would, but repeat bidness has lower marketing costs, especially as the gene pool shrinks. Far fewer people are hunting these days, Rob's got that one right, but those who do spend many times more on fancy, high tech gear per head than ever before. Industry sales have continued to go up as a result. A lot of military tech has, as it usually does after war, found its way into the domestic market. ATVs, clothes, electronics, packs, tents - the days of your dad going out with his buddies in an F150 with a WWII canvas tent are long over. Hunting is WAY less popular the younger the demographic - the rise of virtual entertainment and urbanization of the population are probably primary factors. Why freeze your ass off in east bum fuck when you can kill 100 aliens while tucking into a bag of Haribo frogs and giving shit to friends from 5 different states? Plus - no humping those fucking bloody loads. You've got to admit, the kids have a point.

With all due respect, a static line always puts more force on all parts of the system because deceleration, and therefore peak load, is greater. That's why its never a good idea to lead on a static rope, and that's why ice climbers with sketchy shorty screws love climbing on double skinnies that stretch like rubber bands, even if that means a longer length of fall. Force and energy are two different things. The energy absorbed in a fall is the same for both dynamic and static ropes. The force on the system is not, because force depends on deceleration rate at which the kinetic energy of a fall is absorbed. The faster the deceleration rate (ie, the more static the rope is), the greater the peak load or force on the system. This is why the old timers used dynamic belays like sitting hip etc with those old static hemp ropes - they didn't want to a) tear each other in half and b) they wanted at least a prayer that some part of that system would actually withstand the peak load. If you have anecdotal experience that dynamic ropes cut more, its likely because a) they are significantly skinnier than the static line with which they're being compared or b) their stretch reduces their diameter such that its significantly smaller than the static line-thus overriding the latter's lower forces on the lip, or c) the conditions at the lip weren't the same during the test.

Regarding guns, the gun industry, as represented by the NRA, has been very busy putting out some effective messaging for parroting in their efforts to stem a long term decline in gun sales and interest in blood sports in general. Hunting is a dying sport, plain and simple. Culturally, it just doesn't resonate with the younger crowd. After all, Dad's always full of shit, but bagger-infused-Dad-who-rants-about-how-his-peashooter-collection-is-going-to-save-freedom-or-puffs-up-his-chest-because-he-shot-a-defenseless-coyote is container ship level full of shit. Kids these days are smarter than their parents so their call regarding gun fetishists and their BS is easier than ever to make.

China executes about 5000 people a year as compared to our 70 to 100. On a per capita basis, they execute about 15 times more people per year than we do. The vast majority of US executions occur in only 5 states, so its kind of spotty. Conversely, the US has 7 times more people in prison per capita than China. The US criminal justice system also discriminates against Africa Americans on a 3:1 basis as compared to whites. The measure doesn't matter much - arrest rates, conviction rates, denial of bail rates, longer sentencing - they're all about 3:1. I'm not aware of any similar racial discrimination in the Chinese criminal justice system, but that doesn't mean they don't also have a similar issue. Which country is the larger human rights violator with regards to its criminal justice system is a discussion that quickly becomes complicated when the actual data comes into play. It's a parlour discussion at best anyway - we should seek to improve our criminal justice system regardless of what the Chinese or anyone else does.

That sounds about right. Make sure you've got enough tail on the water knot for your anchor webbing to counteract any slip. fold the webbing over the branch - stronger than girth hitching it. Put a little tension on the rope with a weight or tie off to make the start of the ascent a bit easier. If you're looking to upgrade those tiblocs with real ascenders (easier on the rope, safer, etc), I'll sell you my old pair for 20 bucks. I also have a 9.4mm x 60m rope in darker colors you can have for 30 bucks if you promise never to lead climb on it. It's fine for what you're doing, though. Chop it to length as required.

Yeah, spacing is the most important thing for novices, all other things being equal. A nit, perhaps, but a static line increases the force on the lip - and all parts of the system - so it should cut through the lip more than a dynamic. I wouldn't think the very minor change in diameter of a dynamic rope due to stretch would not be enough to overcome this factor, given two ropes of equal diameter.