bradleym

Having read your drivel for months, I've concluded that you are coming to a close tie for the most ignorant guy to post on this site although with a grander vocabulary and a much meaner spirit (I won't mention ubiquitous #1 who is constantly ridiculed here on a daily basis). I suggest you spray less, read more theology, philosophy and physics and perhaps get off the computer more and enjoy the outdoors. Really...you don't seem to know much about which you babble...it's very, very shallow. Good luck, dude. was it you who put 'ole pigweed in the mulligan stew?

I like that one! Good job! i'm afraid that this line of thinking (or not) is pretty pathetic. i suppose that it seems pretty unlikely as well that a mountain range could come to be where once there was seafloor.

hah! if you remove the bias then nothing remains. this article is a jingoistic hackjob, dressed up in some high-falutin' lipstick. i don't know anything about this guy, but would suppose from this read that he is a dis-credited neocon, who is angry that his cozy, simplistic view of the world has been so thoroughly discredited by events and results. the author sets up (yet again) a false dichotomy between the 'warrior' and the defeatist from the left. he dresses his argument up in subtle and reasonable sounding language, but he no more cares about the real subtleties of the historical picture and the present situation than cheney does. he portrays mccain's rival as a 'post-modern', arugula-eating, elitist and 'aloof' strawman with no military experience (as though that were some sort of requirement to understand the foreign situation), who will always shrink from the use of force and who feels guilty about what has happened since 9/11. he also apparently believes that nationalism is a good thing, and expects his audience to agree. there is patriotism, there is healthy love of country, but nationalism is pure evil, folks, and has been employed by nutjobs for a couple of hundred years now to dupe and manipulate the public into supporting evil and myopic actions, not just in this country, but everywhere. ultimately, the writer appeals to a past, simpler time when men were men and knew how to take care of things (o tempora, o mores), but now we're called upon to become uncertain, moral relativists who no longer believe in our 'exceptionalism' and who will become weak if we heed the siren call to being cool and modern. and to add to the farce, he then claims that mccain will be nuanced whereas Obama is glib. mccain delivers a simple message that rings true, whereas Obama is befuddled by his desire to appeal to foreigners. none of these assertions is correct, or recognizes the subtlety of the situation, the error of our ways, nor does it take note of the fact that hundreds of thousands of non-americans have died since 9/11 due to our wrong-headed and very simplistic actions. they didn't need to die, but they are nonetheless dead now. the only thing the writer is correct about is that mccain may in fact be in tune with the majority view, and that will win him the election. whatever. might makes right.

I don't see any need to make it personal either, but humans often become threatened by differences of opinion, belief, etc. Primarily, however, there is a sizable group of Christians who have politicized their religious beliefs in the past 30-40 years, and who have drug us through endless 'culture' wars (we seem to have 'wars' about many things). What you and I may regard as a private matter has been converted to public policy or at least the attempt to make it public policy, and to dictate morality, etc. If, like mccain (in the old days) and others, we'd just keep that to ourselves, regard religious belief as a private matter, and support a public sphere where debate is rational, open and honest, then we'd all be better for it. But that seems like an impossible dream at this point. The public sphere is degraded and degrading, and so much religious-based and wrong-headed claptrap passes for real debate on real issues. This is not to paint all Christians with the same brush. We are all responsible for the current state of affairs, where talking points have more to do with disparaging community organizers or religious hockey moms. There is a guy who works for me who is a very devout Christian, but whose politics are pretty left-leaning, and who keeps his religious and political beliefs separated (though, of course, they color one another). I don't think he is just a small minority either. so, inasmuch as a group within the Christian community have employed their belief system to attract political power and to implement public policy based on an anti-enlightenment and irrational approach, some will eventually grow tired of it and attack back.

defeatism is a hallmark of liberalism 'resistance is useless'

please define this 'knowledge of science' thing. most scientists i've hung around with claimed not to 'know' very much.

ever read 'Darwins Black Box'? same sort of drivel.

you are setting up a false opposition here. no one in the scientific community slavishly or maniacally 'follows' Darwin. What they do find is that his theories contain a great deal of explanatory and predictive power, and they have in the main been validated by 150 years of continuous research and observation. Have they 'proven' everything, and do they have a complete story from beginning to end? No, of course not, that isn't the point. does everyone in the scientific community agree on all points concerning Darwin's theories (or any other scientific theory, for that matter)? No, of course not, and that means the scientific method is working. Being sceptical and finding some place to peck away at and improve or replace a theory or sub-theory is the way to make your science career. what such people might get 'maniacal' about from time to time is the sheer idiocy of those who don't understand what science is, asking for something that science cannot provide (and frankly doesn't care to). your argument is a cheap attempt to claim equal standing for creationists v. scientists by pointing to shadowy, unsubstantiated 'maniacs' out there in science land. it evidently works for those who are bound and determined to be creationists, but it is pathetic anywhere else.

I find it frustrating that people who engage in this issue from the ID side rarely seem to acknowledge the most fundamental recognition that science is a method, not a belief system. ID hucksters place scientists in an impossible position by requiring that they be able to posit an explanation for the entire mechanics of the universe. Scientific endeavor is founded on the assumption that "we don't know, but we have the means to find out". That intelligent designsters are able to point unequivocally to God because "this I believe" or "well, science can't explain it so..." is not a strength. It represents a failure in the desire to push the boundaries of human knowledge using the scientific method already at our disposal and a return to medieval systems of belief to explain the natural world. Not good. That ID seeks to discredit "science" because it can't explain the life in the first instance as it occurred some billions of years ago is patently absurd when human being didn't know what germs were 150 years ago. if my post-graduate degrees taught me anything, it is the limits of human perception and the fallibility of human reason. the scientific method was invented as a way to press against those limitations, not in order to present absolute conclusions. there are few 'answers' in the scientific community that are not challenged in some way, which means it is working (as well as anything human can, i suppose). the lack of answers to someone's particular fundamental question is not a liability, and the way certain types frame the 'debate' illustrates that they do not get it.

great idea! sorry if i've gone overboard here, but i just love to get out with my kids, and they love it too... hoping others will post lots of pics. chinidere mountain - 2007 cape falcon - 2008 beacon - 2008 Trillium Lake - 2007 White River - 2008

you forgot the other path there tex - you discover sport climbing, change your name to carl, start wearing pink spandex, then wake up one morning next to some guy named gary that you met at a rest stop bathroom i want to learn trad, but i used to be a competitive runner so i'm very familiar with the spandex. pink though...

this is already happening, but i have a plan. take it slowly - the boiled frog approach - and get my kids involved. they already love climbing at the gym...and my wife has offered to belay. and after 20 years with me, she's already been through several other obsessions of mine -- grad school, running, guitars, etc. we just joke that this is my latest mid-life crisis. she's cool.

i've walked up beacon several times, but never climbed there. the thought makes me pucker a bit, but maybe sometime you real climbers will let me tag along to carry stuff or be the belay slave or something. but it will have to be next july, as next saturday i'm off to Scotland for 3 weeks......

it was super fun! thanks, and i'm glad to be here.

Trip: Broughton's Bluff -- Rock climbing newb - Sesame Street, Sheer Stress, Classic Crack, Sickle Date: 9/5/2008 Trip Report: For a little over a year, I have been learning to climb rock. Apart from a few bouldering skirmishes down at the beach, I have always climbed indoors at a climbing gym, either Stoneworks or The Circuit. Before the summer was out, I wanted to climb outside at least once, to get the experience and to see how well I might do. So yesterday I hired Matt from Stoneworks to be my ropegun, and we spent several hours at Broughton's Bluff, a basalt crag located right next to the Sandy River and the entrance to the Columbia Gorge. First, we warmed up on a few approach pitches to the 'Sesame Express' route which is up higher. The first one, shown below, is rated 5.7, and was not bad for my first outdoor climb. You work your way up the central pillar with the two prominent cracks on either side of it, then, once above you traverse a bit left, heave yourself over the block and scoot through a small chimney towards the tree visible at the top. Then we tried the route just to the right of the first one, rated 5.8, which requires a bit of stemming and chimney work, but which wasn't too difficult either. On each of these first two routes the hardest thing for me was trusting the rope, the holds and my feet to keep me on the rock. The third route was my first real challenge. Rated 5.9, it is straightforward column work until you get about a third of the way up. Then you must use a largish crack off to the left and heave yourself up over a hump, where the beginner feels a lot more exposed, and you must stem in a much more committed way to succeed. By the time I got over the hump, which required a bit of fisting inside the crack, I was a bit torched and had to rest splayed over the hump. Then it was (for me) very slow careful work on my tip-toes and some small crimpers, all off-balance a bit, before I could reach some nice edges and complete the route. I did it! After a short rest, Matt thought I could try something a little more difficult, so we hauled our gear up the trail to the 'Red Wall'. Its a beautiful series of basalt flows that turns a more reddish hue as it climbs. The photographs don't do it justice. First I had a shot at 'Sheer Stress', rated 5.10. You start on the chalky holds a bit left of the corner. Then you traverse right towards the little crack with all the chalk, and work your way up to the bomber hold about a third of the way up. It feels great to match both hands on that hold and just lean back on your arms to stretch. Above that, you traverse a bit left to share a ledge with some spiders and nettles. I accidentally destroyed a spider's beautiful web, for which I apologized profusely, but I was paid out by getting a tiny nettle barb in my left pinkie, the kind you cannot see but you know is there. I rested a bit, before pressing onward and upward to the right of the nettles towards another chalky edge that felt good to get on and hang. Then comes the crux. The bolts, and end of the route, are on the little face to the right, at about the same level as the tree branches that are visible in the upper right of the photograph. Hanging on the edge, you bring your feet up high, so you are stemming on either side, then reach with one hand up and around to where there is a nice flake. For me, it was a minimal dyno-move, and I was nervous. But I did it, then hauled my carcase up to the bolts, to complete a 5.10a. I was pretty stoked! Being all impressed with myself, and after some rest, I next decided I wanted a go at 'Classic Crack'. Matt warned me that the hardest thing about that route is that it has been climbed so much that the holds are all polished smooth. He ran up (as always) without apparent effort to set the rope, and I watched what he did. Then it was my turn. Things began well, and I made my way steadily up through the large crack at the bottom, and fisted into the smaller crack above it and hauled myself up, left foot on small holds off to the left and my right foot torqued into the back of the large crack. The next move was to fist thumb down into the next smallish crack with the right hand, place your weight on your left foot and bring the right toes up to torque into the small crack you just left. While in that position, you then bring your left hand up and fist, thumb down, just above your right hand. I was able to do that, but my left foot kept popping off and it was taking a lot of strength to keep my right hand in the crack. Those holds are indeed slick! I just didn't have the strength or balance to press up on my right, torqued, toes (my knee was in my chest) and here I collapsed and took my first fall of the day. A toprope fall isn't really a fall though. I rested a couple of minutes and tried again. I managed to get a bit higher, and then I tried a little lie-backing to see if that might work, but the realization eventually came that I wasn't getting up there today. So I came down and we packed up to go back over where we had started. There is a good 5.8+ route, known as the 'Sickle' for a curved crack about two-thirds of the way up. First, we hiked up around the back and set the rope, and then I rappelled down, and Matt got a couple shots of me. I wore my helmet on all climbs, but had forgotten to bring it up here. My final route of the day involved relatively straightforward climbing up some vertical columns and some chimney work to get onto a ledge about halfway up. I went up the line followed by the right-hand strand of rope in the photograph. Above the ledge, it got hard, at least for an old guy who was already a bit tired out. The name of the route comes from the curved crack, shown below, in which you have to make several big-fist moves. There weren't many available toe-holds (at least not obvious ones to a beginner) and you feel pretty exposed (about 40 feet up). Setting my right arm into that crack, making a fist, then pushing out with my feet to lever myself up was probably the scariest thing I did all day, followed by doing the same with my left fist and releasing my right. At that point you are close enough to an arete on the left, that you can stabilize yourself and get your left foot on some good holds. Above that, there is a flake running diagonally up and right, and you work your way along that, bringing feet up to provide stability. Then it is a small chimney, which I did by fisting into cracks either side of a small block at the back. It felt good to slap those bolts! I must have sounded like a steam train as I went through the crux, and it gives me shivers to imagine leading it. Then Matt lowered me off, I sat gasping for a few minutes, and we packed up to leave. I was toasted, and Matt didn't want to climb anything at his level since he had climbed hard each of the preceding three days. It was a fantastic day (for me) and Matt at least acted as though he'd had a good time... When I arrived home in mid-afternoon I discovered that Sally and the kids had been doing scientific experiments. One had gone horribly wrong, and now Ewan was transformed into a zombie. See what rock-climbing can lead to? Gear Notes: toprope, couple of cams to lead up to set toprope. Approach Notes: shoes, feet

her speech was vapid and devoid of substance. it just might work.

actually i was just ripping off george orwell Fine. He who does not know history is doomed to repeat it. now you're ripping off Lord Acton or somebody. doesn't matter. he was wrong anyway.

Stalin slaughtered almost all his experienced generals in the late 30's. This left a huge leadership vacuum when Hitler invaded, leaving the Red Army in woeful disarray. They were very luck to have found Zhukov and a few others to save their asses. God job, Uncle Joe! they were far more lucky to have a few million peasant boys who were more afraid of their officers than the nazis.

i'd say that Lenin and crew really, really wanted to witness/participate in/lead a marxist revolution and, as it turned out, the ancien regime in Russia was the creakiest one around. problem was, there was no proletariat there to speak of, so once they were in charge they set about a rapid industrialization project. once he was in charge, the brutal and extremely paranoid Stalin turned the volume up a bit, sped up the forced collectivisation and hurried the transformation of the Soviet Union into an industrial power. which was good for them (and the west) in that Soviet industry was enormously helpful in stopping the Nazis. It might have gone even better for the Soviets (and the west), except that Stalin killed off the best officers in the thirties and promoted yes-men and political hacks. but that was ok, because Hitler was a bigger idiot and wouldn't allow his generals to make tactical retreats, but i digress. i think his brutal treatment of his own people was only partly due to watching the west and wanting to industrialize. what was i talking about again?

Historical revisionism is pretty common. It was pretty successful here in the good ol' USA with regards to the civil war. Pretty much every school text lists slavery as the reason Abraham Lincoln went to war, whereas reality was a little different. The real reason was to "preserve the union", which brings up a less morally sound debate. This is not to bring up the debate on whether that particular war was just or not, but to the prevalence of historical revisionism. historical revisionism is normal, natural and healthy. cycle times run from 1-20 years typically. it assists in uncovering the multiplex reasons and causation behind events. sometimes it is political in nature, sometimes it is something else, but in general it is a good thing. I haven't checked in a while, but I wonder if you are correct that 'Pretty much every school text lists slavery as the reason Abraham Lincoln went to war'. I don't think that is true, perhaps not even provable.

nationalism is guaranteed to make us stupid.

dude, she just wanted the old guy out. take a hint...

because we love jeebus, you idolatrous pagan. and the good lord gave us dominion. just followin' the good book.

true, this is a single example of a contraceptive-forbidding, abstinence-only, anti sex-ed vice presidential candidate whose teenage child has gotten pregnant out-of-wedlock. not too many of those around. i suppose it doesn't mean anything.

years ago, when i was in Eugene, there was a guy who lived in my apartment complex (low-rent student housing) who carefully cultivated the eco schtik (sp?). he had the correct sartorial habits, wore his hair the right way, owned an old combi-van that was plastered with 'love your mother' and 'gaia' stickers. problem was, his combi-van spewed clouds of blue smoke, and he drove it everywhere...