Ben Beckerich

This time o' year, can you drive all the way up to the trailhead?

They stayed in a closet in my office/gear room all summer... so climate controlled. I imagine it probably got up to 80 a time or two when we weren't home, but definitely never got hot-car hot. I found the box and I believe the receipt is inside... I'll fill out a warranty claim and wait another couple days. I scoured the website and could not find a phone number anywhere. Damn Canadians. If all else fails, I'll take 'em back to Mountain Shop. Anyone know what exactly the glue is made of?

I bought a pair of G3 splitboard high-traction skins at a local shop last year. First time I took them out, I rolled them up glue-on-glue for the ride down, like everyone does. When I got home and pulled em apart to hang em up, some chunks of the glue peeled off in spots. It was irritating, but it wasn't a huge amount, and didn't seem like it would affect anything. I still had the factory "skin savers," so I trimmed to fit, and started using them. I used these skins about 5 times last spring, always hanging up to dry post-climb, and then always stored on the skin savers. Fast forward through the summer into last weekend, I took the skins out for the first time and when I peeled them off the skin savers, the glue had become like fresh pine pitch. Got everywhere- all over the skins, my hands, my pants, my splitboard base, the skin savers... Total bullshit. I sent G3 an email a couple days ago. Haven't heard back yet. Anybody else experience this? is there anything I can do for 'em? no way I'm using them ike this

Finally gonna go all in and go to the TLT binding. Would love to keep these for using with climbing boots, but I can't justify spending any more money on this season while I have gear I can convert. 11/12 season, blue, LT pins and hinges, and I will include the steel pins also. Will come in the original box with shims and the Sparks multi tool. Will have to post pics later. Good condition... Really haven't been ridden much.. Only thing to mention is the bottoms where the Mr Chomps crampon wire coating wore through and marred the underside of the plates. Straps and ratchets are in great shape. Looking for $180 in Portland Emails best - benjaminbeckerich@gmail.com

I've mixed and matched shells and liners so much I really don't even know what I have or what I use... but my current "oh shit mitt" is a set of insulated OR mitts with a pair of primaloft GLOVE liners.... very, very warm, and I can still rip the mit off and use my fingers when I need to. Hard climbing is not possible with them on, but they're "oh shit mitts," not hard climbers. Breaks, belay, descending, unexpected bivy, etc.

shoot a pic to benjaminbeckerich@gmail.com por favor, if you've still got 'em? Thanks

10' topping out on running water next to highway 30 south of the 'Poose All the swinging I'm gonna get during this snap.... fuckin' finals. Yea!

You basterds need to wait until I see a pic!

pic?

I'm not a socialist, by the way. I'm a die-hard capitalist. But I'm a progressive, and believe you can have a free market AND ensure everyone gets a fair deal.

The reason we can't (you and me, your side and my side) see eye-to-eye on this is because we don't agree on the problem to begin with. You think the problem is guns. I think the problem is socioeconomic disparity. I support my theory thusly: -Crime rates in this country have always followed the economic status in this country -Despite many big federal encroachments on gun liberties over the last century, not a single ban, registration requirement, background requirement, has ever had a marked effect on violent crime -The single most heavily regulated parts of the country continue to have the most persistent violent crime problems- more people are murdered in Chicago with hammers than assault weapons... hammers are legal, assault weapons are utterly banned -These other western cultures you're comparing us to have varying degrees of gun control- some are extremely restrictive, some are even laxer than ours (arguably)... but what they DO have in common is socialism. They take care of their under-classes far better than we do. -Canada has as many guns as we do per capita, yet their gun crime rates are comparable to the EUs, not ours. In summary- banning guns, registering guns, restricting magazine capacity, requiring law-abiding gun owners to deal with even more red tape, fees, wait periods, and authoritarian assholes to engage in something that's supposed to be a fundamental, uninfringeable American right is completely missing the point to begin with, and STILL will not save lives or reduce crime. Things that would be helpful- -Single payer healthcare -Establishment of a job, a home, and food as basic human rights -Single payer education -Broad integration tactics aimed at getting poor blacks/minorities off the reservations (inner city projects) and out amongst the opportunities for wealth and prosperity the rest of us enjoy Do these things, and I'll bet another month's salary violent crime drops not only rapidly, but permanently. And we can keep our guns.

I'm also going to point out the fact that the ATF NFA registry division is currently taking about 10 months to approve people's applications for registered weapons. I got my Mk18 approved in about 3 months like 5 years ago, and THAT was an insane amount of time to wait for some bureaucrat asshat to glance at my info, type my name into NCIS to see if I'm a felon, and affix my tax stamp to my form. They were promising THEN that they'd steamline their process, hire new agents, and improve their approval times. 5 years later, their average turnaround time is about three times LONGER than it was. So fuck registration.

This guy is being charged with a felony because cops shot bystanders. That's right.... he's being charged for the actions of the cops.... Cops missed him, shot bystanders, are claiming he was the reason they fired, so he's responsible for what they did. Nevermind the fact that there isn't a police training manual in the WORLD that doesn't require officers to know their backstop before firing. And nevermind that even if they had hit him, they still would have been in the wrong- dude was unarmed and having a crisis, not robbing a fucking bank or raping a child. http://reason.com/blog/2013/12/05/how-do-you-charge-an-unarmed-man-with-sh

Military are the cronies of the government- they kill, destroy, invade, assault, occupy, and generally aren't really about "rights" and stuff. Police are civilians. They exist to serve the community and protect it. They do NOT exist to kill, destroy, invade, assault, occupy, and they ARE supposed to care a LOT about your rights. That's why there's a difference- that's why our military isn't our police, and our police aren't our military. Totally different purposes, totally different training, totally different results. The question shouldn't be "why don't you like the militarization of police?" The question should be "how the fuck are you OK with this?"

Law enforcement in much of this country is paid to get "collars," especially in the major cities. If they are not producing the arrest numbers the mayor wants to use for reelection, they get in trouble- they literally get in trouble. Every day they get to the station and do the shift-change briefing, and every day again when they get off... and are told the craziest shit you wouldn't believe. "You need to be getting collars any way you can. Bust them on ______, bust them on ________- whateva, I don't give a fuck how you do it, but this mothafuckin pricinct is required to pull in 8,000 collars a month, and you sonsabitches are only pulling in 7,500. Y'all wanna sit around on ya asses and eat donuts and sip on ya cawfees all damn day, but ya sonsabitches are gonna be earnin ya pay or ya gonna be out on ya ass. Ya'nderstand what I'm sayin?" I'm not making this stuff up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft If they can pop you on felonies, they WILL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Aitken This guy was arrested, convicted, sentenced, imprisoned and paroled, and will remain a violent/irresponsible/detestable felon for life... for following New Jersey's constitutionally-vague gun laws. That's right, I said FOR following them.

If committing a felony was hard to do, or necessarily involved great harm, or even some harm, then you might have a valid point. Unfortunately, that's not the reality of our criminal justice system. You are a felon, and so am I. We will continue to commit felonies throughout the rest of the day. Google Computer Fraud and Abuse (Title 18 U.S. Code §1030). There are so many laws making so many things felonies we don't even know how many there are- literally. Did you know pirating a song on the internet is a felony? Downloading a $.99 song without paying for it.... FELON- can't vote, can't own a gun, can't get public assistance, can't get a lot of jobs, can't get a lot of apartments, etc, etc, etc, for life, unless expunged- which is never a given and is not easy. http://www.threefeloniesaday.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.aspx Think you aren't a felon? And yes, simple possession of marijuana is still a felony in many places in America.

Most "gun deaths" are suicide- so any time I see "gun deaths" instead of "felonious slayings," aka "murders," I pretty much stop paying attention... As to the sentiment that it'll be a hassle for nothing- that IS the argument against them. It's making 100% of people jump through hoops and spend money for no reduction in crime. How can I say no reduction? Because this has been done before. 1934, 1938, 1968, 1972, 1986, 1994, for major federal bans/restrictions/regulations, plus a few thousand state and local bans/restrictions.... and yet, crime rates never follow. Crime has always been locked money- when we're in a recession, crime goes up.. when we're in a period of growth, crime goes down. Crime is high in poor areas, crime is low in wealthy areas. On the flip side.... if you look at gun laws as they relate to crime, you'll ALWAYS find that the most restrictive areas have the highest crime, and the least restrictive areas have the lowest crime. Which one is "the problem" that needs fixing?

Since my whole position is based on the numbers, it's really relevant to the conversation. Yet I can never get anyone to really address what the numbers actually look like. It's like trying to tell a cop his job isn't dangerous. What? My job is hella dangerous! Don't you watch TV?? Well, if you look at the actual numbers, you'll find that police officer isn't even on the radar. Garbage collector, pilot, roofer, logger, fisherman, taxi driver (always top 10)..... all substantially more dangerous jobs. In fact, there are only about 75 felonious slayings of police officers in this country every year- out of about a 1,000,000 police officers, that's 0.000075 or 1 in 13,333. NON-law enforcement citizens have substantially better odds of being murdered in a given year. But there's just no way in hell people will ever believe it when you say it.

We're looking at numbers... not making subjective statements about how bad crime is or isn't.

I knew this was where we were leading, but just wanted to see it play out. It's the old, "actually gun violence isn't even really that big of a problem" argument. Meh No, that's not the argument I made. 10,000 murders with guns isn't a small number- that's 10,000 lives, with 10,000 mothers and 10,000 wives/sisters/brothers/sons/etc whose lives are destroyed because of the malice of another. But I was asking you if you thought, based on a figure of 0.000029% odds any gun will be used in a crime, if that warrants making tens of millions- 100% of people buying and selling guns jump through hoops and spend money and bear liability? Please factor the change we could expect in that 0.000029% figure upon implementation. For more perspective, .000029% comes out to 1 murder for every 3,448,275 guns, both legally and illegally possessed(and only factoring for legally owned guns, that number is sure to rock pretty hard).

Let's say you like to throw hatchets. It's a hobby and sport, and maybe you even do it competitively. What percentage of people wielding hatchets will use them to kill people? You can kill the hell out of people with a good hatchet. What if .000029% of hatchets were used to murder someone every year in this country? Should we start regulating them based on that? There are about 270,000,000 privately owned guns in this country. There are 8,000-10,000 murders with guns every year. On a given year, that means that .000029% of guns are used to murder people. And remember, that includes all the illegally possessed guns too. So for something so incredibly small.... we should hold people liable, upon pain of felony (can't vote, can't get food stamps, can't get section 8 housing, can't own guns, can't get a decent job, can't get federal school grants, etc, etc, FOR LIFE), for selling a gun to someone they didn't run through a background check? Or for possessing a gun in the wrong place? Or for..... anything, really, when we're looking at the actual numbers? Wouldn't it be better to just leave the guy alone, and punish him when he actually does harm?

I'm not saying nothing should be illegal. I'm differentiating between laws that punish bad behavior, and laws that go so far as to control otherwise harmless behavior because of a perception that the otherwise harmless behavior can lead to bad behavior. It's illegal to murder. Murder kills people. That's a good law. It's illegal to possess a handgun in DC. Possessing handguns doesn't kill people. But there is a perception that it increases the likelihood that you will kill someone, so they're banned. Prohibiting peaceful activity or possession is crossing the line of crime and punishment. The same retarded (in my opinion, being very liberal) mentality is applied to our "war on drugs." The mere possessing of a plant is illegal, because of the fantastically incorrect perception that it will lead to behavior that could lead to harm. Are we a nation of free men, free to go about their business so long as they're not doing harm? Or are we to toe-the-line at the whim of incorrect perceptions? As to the nuclear question, I can't answer that. Nuclear devices are so incredibly expensive and laborious and difficult to obtain that only 6 (IIRC) nations on earth possess them. We might as well be asking if it should be legal to own a hand of God. The fact remains that as our species progresses, a time will come when nuclear weapons are obtainable, and people will obtain them. Will a law against possessing them stop people?

The problem with these "common sense solutions" is that they generally seem to completely gloss over application. It's stuff that sounds very reasonable to people who aren't actually really thinking about it. There's never any direct linkage between cause and effect, nor promise that the restriction will positively affect the problem (if there is one).

Do you think you're an authoritarian? Do you think marijuana should be illegal? Do you think it should be regulated? Do you think free, independent citizens need a lot of regulation in general? Or do you limit this application of law to just certain things?