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snuffy

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Posts posted by snuffy

  1. I think the whole buy local thing gets overplayed. I remember when I was working for a small business in Canmore and Starbucks came to town, the owner said, "I'd buy local if they'd stop treating their staff like $hit and train them to pull a decent expresso, but they won't. All they want is to make sure they stay the only game in town." That about sums it up for me.

     

    I buy my tying materials locally not out of loyalty, but because I generally find it more convenient and the price difference isn't worth worrying about. But if I can get a reel for $190 off ebay that'd cost me $285 at Country Pleasures, it's not a hard decision, especially after I made an emergency stop there in my fishing grubbies last summer and got condescended to by the staff. Over 20 years of spending a lot of $$ in that store - I won't be back.

  2. I used to have Rudy as a sponsor and I'd still recommend them. They've had a promotion going for a while that gives you a free polarized lense:

     

    http://www.e-rudy.com/rudy-project-combo-details.php

     

    The racing red works well for fishing and is available on several models. From my perspective, the best thing about them is their lifetime replacement lense guarantee. They'll replace any lense you manage to scratch for $25, no questions asked.

  3. Calling this terrorism is not just the worst kind of knee-jerk, mouth-breathing populism, but an insult to the millions of people all over the world who legitimately worry if the market is going to explode when they go to buy bread.

     

    That said, PETA claimed responsibility. If we treat this, properly, as a crime, would their claim of responsibility not also be an admission to conspiracy? I say we extradite their board of governors, convict them of conspiracy, and then deport them with criminal records.

  4. I don't think he really thought the DA would go through with prosecuting him, nor did he do himself any favors. He confessed to both the 911 operator and the arresting officer, refused to plead out, and then recanted (and perjured himself) on the stand.

     

    I'll be interested to see how he gets to work again when he gets out of prison (and with the civil suits he'll be facing, he'll need to work). I doubt there's bus service in that neighborhood....he might need to buy a bike :lol:

  5. I'm with rickr, you'd have to do some serious cherry picking to use that survey to do anything but confirm the scientific consensus that global warming is a real anthropogenic threat. That said, this will probably be the next climategate on Fox news.

     

    And by what fevered convulsion did this a left-wing, right-wing issue? It seems to me that it's more of a rational vs sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling "LALALALALALALAICANTHEARYOULALALALALA" issue.

     

    Comments keep appearing here about researchers and their massive research budjets. Someone needs to explain this to me, 'cause research budgets are anything but massive, and it would be a very, very rare PhD who made half as much as a sub-par landman downtown. If you're going to follow the money, it would be better to look into the multi-trillion dollar companies with a vested interest in getting CO2 out of the ground and into the atmosphere as quickly as possible.

  6. I'm glad someone pointed out the ad hominums. The truth of an argument has nothing to do who's making it.

     

    Regarding the poll, it's interesting for what it is, but what is that? I would wager that noone here knows anything more about the field of climatology than I do about seismic interpretation, namely nothing (though I like the pencil crayons). As technology makes us ever more specialized, perhaps we need to accept that are certain subjects on which our opinions are unqualified.

     

    Which brings us full circle to the climate change debate and hating on science that's raging on pretty much every active thread on this board. It comes down to the credibility of your sources and this is where I lose the tune because the choice is a stark one. One the one hand, you have the peer-reviewed literature in its entirety, and on the other you have the Glenn Becks and random bloggers who's claims are not subject to any kind of scrutiny. It seems to me that you'd have to be pretty desparate to believe the later over the former.

     

    Sundance - you keep claiming, in various ways, that the scientific community is a monolithic bloc united by politics and who's findings derive from such politics. But you're contradicting yourself, because, as your friend told you, science is a viciously competitive, backstabbing field. Given this, your claim is comparable to the GWB 911 conspiracy theory. If some post-doc out there, having just finished 5 years of 60+ hour weeks @24K/year to get his degree and now making the king's randsom of 40K, could make a name, and possibly a wage, for himself by blowing the whistle on this grand conspiracy, he would.

     

     

     

  7. Thanks for dummin' it down for me Smitty.

     

    I would think that near 100 years of fire supression would be a big part of the population explosion, but that is just my uneducated hunch..

     

    Nope - the fires that actually burn significant areas are too intense to fight. Generally, the best we can manage is to save structures. You'd have a better argument if you pointed at fragmentation. Now if only someone would get this through the thick head of the fool that runs the perscribed burn program in Banff, maybe he'd spare us another nearly-burning-down-Banff-townsite incident.

  8. Nice personal attack.

     

    Take it personally if you want, but that's pretty ironic given the steady stream of ad hominums and inuendo you've been posting as evidence.

     

    As for the H1N1 I had decided to get the shot after that one post from the guy working at the hospital had valid opinions.

     

    Thought you didn't - my mistake. Anyway, you're welcome

     

     

    If you don't think the $20 million buck a year that CRU gets for funding peanuts...well good on you for being rich. Please tell me how an oil company loses via pro global warming having power? That is not even an issue if you think about it because there is no net loss to energy companies.

     

    There is no net loss to oil if you view their net profits as being aggregated over the lifetime of their finite supply. It would be great if they (and even better we as Albertans) looked at it that way. However, they don't. The industry makes money on the rate of consumption and properly sees any curtailing of that rate as a blow to their profits. Emissions for them are a negative externality, which is why the problem can't be solved by relying on market forces. $20M is a drop in the a bucket.

     

    There is a lot of power in science these days versus just plain science. Sigh...I don't like repeating stuff but some people don't hear it. If you sneakily manipulate data, hide data, delete data, refuse to share data, threaten others for having a differing opinion, threaten journals to not publish...this is not science. This is ideological politics. When this comes into play in science you make poor decisions and biased decisions on biased data. If peer review consists of only those people having the same political and ideological leanings...you will get bias. No question!

     

    Sorry, but I've been working in science for a long time and this is simply nonsense. It has its perks and I like it, but power? Where are you getting your information from? It's one of the most marginal fields out there, which is why it's dominated by Chinese immigrants. Most everyone else quickly gets fed up with the low pay, long hours, and total lack of job security.

     

    What the ideologues that inform you have done is to take a few personal emails and spin them into what they want them to prove. All publications are arguments and there's nothing unusual about sifting data to strengthen your argument. What you fail to remember is that there's a lot of groups out there, and, speaking from experience, that peer review is a bitch. If there was money to be made, it would be going to the group that was saying, "nothing to see here - carry on as normal". However, there simply is no dispute in the peer reviewed literature; there is dispute in the media. What you're suffering from is what Glenn Beck counts on: confirmation bias.

     

     

     

     

  9. This is an impressive 11 pages of parochial bollocks you've managed to assemble here Sundance. Aren't you the same guy who refused to get the H1N1 shot because he didn't trust the science and then ended up bed-ridden for 2 weeks. What is it about science that you despise so much?

     

    Perhaps you could enlighten us as to what would motivate the scientific community to perpetuate what you refer to as a "hoax"? And don't say money again, cause there isn't any in science - none of the PhDs I know (and I know a lot of them) make as much as the average secretary downtown. Contrast that with the billions in your industry, which, faced with the venal threat of having to last a little longer, is pumping out misinformation on a biblical scale, all of which you swallow uncritically, because you have to.

  10. Good to see someone else in the same obnoxious club Canadensis! Studded tires were one of the best $80 investments I put into my truck. I just wish I could put a big neon sign that would point and laugh at those idiots that were still on summer tires.

     

    BTW All-season Tires=spring, summer, fall NOT winter. "All"-seasons are meant for places where people think they get winter when the mercury drops to 0.

     

    Just to be clear, I was talking about studded bicycle tires, but you're right - they're the tits! Now that I know the difference, I'm starting to think that Quebec is onto something with their winter tire law. The difference is so dramatic! I'm aware of the counter arguments (not everone has the space or the capital for 2 sets), but 1. driving is a privledge, not a right, and 2. the same arguments could be made about child seats.

     

    Actually, it's even easier than that, since there are now such things as winter-rated all seasons. I was sceptical at first, but bought a set of these last winter: http://www.1010tires.com/tire.asp?tirebran...ance+TripleTred

     

    Awesome tires on snow and ice and they have a 130000km tread warranty. I'm probably giving up something in the summer, but not enough to notice. Besides, it's a Subaru, not a Lotus.

  11. It not so much the tying quality of most commercial flies that frosts my wagon, but the quality of the hooks. I mostly tie my own, but occasionally need something and end up buying from shops. Nearly every time, the hooks have straightened out on any half-way serious fish, the latest being a batch of #14 backswimmers from Fish Tales that kept straightening out even though I was using 4X.

     

    This has me wondering: do the shops have any wholesale suppliers available that don't use crappy hooks? 'Cause I've starting to think that the best tier in the world is a 90lb, hunchbacked Indonesian woman, all of who's products are fatally flawed.

  12. Not my favorite fish of '09, but definitely the most memorable:

     

    I was having a so-so day fishing for cutts and bows on the Wigwam (I know that that's not why people go there, but I just don't like streamers much). Anyway, late in the evening what risers there were keyed in on Sallys, for which I had no decent imitations. So I started nymphing and was immediately rewarded with a 12ish" cutt. Naturally, I was still using my 4wt and didn't bother to switch off my 5X tippet.

     

    The bull that grabed him was a stubborn sort and proceeded to wander around the pool ignoring me. Several minutes later, I felt the hook slip, but to my surprise, the bull was still on. It turns out that the cutt had got off (and probably eaten), but the bull had been foul hooked near the mouth. It took a long time and a near ankle breaking run downstream when he remembered that tactic, but I eventually got him to shore. To my surprise after such a long fight, he took off pretty quickly. Ecology in action.

    post-535-1258126178.jpg

  13. Yeah I was pretty surprised when I set the hook! I'd done down there a few days before that because i live close to the river and all I caught were 7-12 inch rainbows until then!

     

    It was a while back, when this was annoying rather than illegal, but I once ran into a old bait fisher at the corner pool below Home Rd who had a 3 nice browns on a stringer. It wouldn't surprise me if he cleaned that pool out on his own, since he said he tried to make it down most mornings. Late this summer too, I watched some big browns rising just off the western tip of Prince's Island - too bad I was on my bike and not fishing.

  14. I'm in the market too, having worn through the toes on mine. I'm wondering about the traction and durability of the new felt-less boots. The Simms come with Vibram soles, which sound good for durability, but not so much for traction. Patagonia has what they call "sticky rubber", which sounds good for traction, but the name reminds me of those Specialized Umma Gumma MTB tires from the '90s that wore out in just a few rides.

     

    Anyone have personal experience with these?

  15. http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_waronscience/all/1

     

    Just finished reading this article. Really good and worth a read. As a warning it has lots of words that make sense instead of emotional rhetoric.

     

     

    Good article. As for the debate concerning the efficacy of the vaccine, there has been work done to demonstrate it. However, when it comes to public health, you can't prove a positive. If everyone gets vaccinated and noone dies, the perception will be that the threat was overhyped.

     

    We run up against a uniquely modern mindset: whoever heard of young, healthy people getting sick and dying? It's unthinkable in our modern age. But 100 years ago, smallpox running through the village and wiping out half the population was not uncommon. Hell, my Dad spent time in the polio wards in Edmonton a mere 50 years ago and has been bilaterally paralysed by post-polio syndrome starting in middle age. Now that there's no wards, we have people running around concocting dangers for the Salc vaccine and warning parents about them! I love to arrange a trade.

  16. Thanks max........ i couldnt change it cause it works but it was crazy hearing all the different way and I never heard anyone explain this one. Even reading in different books they always have the weight above all the flies......

     

    I used to do that, but then I found that anytime a hooked fish jumped, the weight would get thrown around and turn the whole thing into a bird's nest.

     

    Lately I've been cutting my leader about a foot above the point (heavier) fly and tying it back on with a surgeon's knot. This way I can add lead as required above the knot without having to worry about it slipping down against the point fly. Thought it was rather clever, but I'm probably not the first to think of this.

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