Squid

Mark- Those others don't really want your tricams; they're low-grade poseurs hoping to buff the luster on their bloated self-image by buying more gear that will never leave the closet. You want to give your tricams a happy home- send them my way.

ELephant

They're in the playoff round.

Bears: 2 Sharks: 1

This aggression will not stand.

toasterleavings belongs here. somebody teach it to climb.

first you google one subject, then you see a tangentially related topic that looks mildly interesting. You follow that link, then another, and another, and then you're looking a something like this and wondering how you got here, and why the hell are you wasting your life on the net. the internet is an efficient machine for funneling all the white noise in the universe into my brain.

BTW- Some painful hammering on my tool (not Ushba) this weekend has inspired me to doctor my shitty nut-tool. I'm thinking about getting some rubberized tool-dip for the butt of my nut tool. Does anyone have any recommendations on materials that will give a good, cushioned surface for pounding?

You are forgiven. That is my good deed for the day. Now I can guiltlessly be a complete asshole for the remainder of the day.

The cool part about the Ushba isn't the material, but the shape- you can really punch the end of this thing without trashing your hand. The shape is better than Metolius' equivalent device.

Glad to help. Lemme know if you need pointers with the related topics of flinging poo and/or nesting in public.

You need to do it further from public thoroughfares.

This sucks. Tragedies like this inspire politicians to 'Take Action!' which I fear may be misguided. Obviously there were bigger issues at work here than whether or not the customers were wearing helmets, but the take-home message to the casual observer is that rock walls/rock gyms need to be legislated such that all participants need to wear helmets. This isn't the first time I've heard rumblings like this. I think state licensing & regulation of climbing gyms is just a question of time. I hope as a community we're pro-active enough to make the regulations reasonable, rather than protesting all regulations. Even if you're not a fan of pulling plastic, it's worth considering whether or not incidents like these will influence public policy & your access to rock climbing.

Your boobies are pretty, but they look a little peckish.

That's Canadian for "My boss can't stand me & he can't afford to send me all the way to Siberia."

Where's the splitter?

Gary, I think you're going off the deep end. Leave the computer and go for walk in the nice summer air.

Where or how?

The blue route in the gym.

The matching shorts are nice, but a really Squid School Student wouldn't be caught dead in anything but Tiger Stripe Camo after Memorial Day.

A common misconception is that Earth's varying distance from the Sun causes the four seasons. In fact, the 23.5-degree tilt of our planet's spin axis is more important. The tilt of the north pole toward the Sun in June causes summer north of the equator, while summer south of the equator comes six months later when the south pole is facing the Sun. The ellipticity of Earth's orbit does cause a small change in solar heating from July (aphelion) to January (perihelion), but it's not the dominant factor in shaping seasonal weather patterns. "Sunlight falling on Earth is about 7% less intense in July than it is at our closest approach to the Sun in January," says Roy Spencer of the Global Hydrology and Climate Center. You might expect northern summer to be cooler because it occurs when Earth is farther from the Sun. Not so, explains Spencer. "The oceans and land on Earth are not evenly distributed around the globe. The northern hemisphere has more land; the southern hemisphere has more water. This tends to moderate the impact of differences in sunlight between perihelion and aphelion." Editor's Note: Do you have trouble remembering the difference between perihelion and aphelion? An old astronomer's trick is to recall that the words "away" and "aphelion" both begin with the letter "A". At aphelion the land-crowded northern half of our planet is tilted toward the Sun. For a given amount of sunlight, land warms up more than water (in other words, land has a lower heat capacity). Sunlight is therefore more effective at raising the temperature of the northern hemisphere. This results in the surprising fact that northern summer is a little warmer than southern summer even though Earth is farther from the Sun in July. On planets like Mars with orbits much more eccentric than ours, the varying distance to the Sun can have a big influence on seasonal conditions. For example, northern summer on Mars lasts 24 days longer than winter because the planet is close to aphelion when the north pole is tilted toward the Sun. Planets move more slowly at aphelion than they do at perihelion (see Kepler's 2nd Law of planetary motion) and, so, seasons occurring near aphelion last longer. During the long martian summer, so much CO2 frost at the north pole sublimes into gaseous form that the global pressure of Mars' atmosphere increases by up to 30%. Imagine leaving for a lunchtime picnic on the 4th of July only to arrive at the park and discover the humid summer air to be one-third denser than normal! This won't happen on Earth because our orbit is more nearly circular than the Red Planet's. Earth has one of the most circular orbits in the solar system. Only Neptune and Venus follow more perfectly circular paths around the Sun. The other six planets trace paths that are significantly elliptical. Pluto, the planet with the greatest orbital eccentricity, follows a path so lopsided that it sometimes travels closer to the Sun than Neptune. Just last year Pluto ended a 20-year stint as the eighth planet when it crossed Neptune's orbit in February on its way back to the outer solar system. After Pluto, the second and third most elliptical orbits belong to Mercury and Mars, respectively. As this diagram illustrates, their paths around the Sun (solid lines) depart significantly from that of a circle (dotted lines). Future astronauts visiting Mars or Mercury would notice that the apparent size of the Sun varies a great deal throughout the year. On Mars, for example, the aphelion Sun is 0.30 degrees across. At perihelion it would grow to 0.36 degrees in diameter, an increase of 20%.

Please take this 'I am so smart' crap somewhere else. School is not in session. This is the thread about slip-n-slides, tank-tops, space helmets, new tats, and dumb stunts. If you want to sound smart, this is not the thread.

So, have you seen a physician yet, NOLSe? Doing ok?

Sweet! Are you prepared for an all-day revolution, or should I bring tea & cookies for an extended safety seminar?