Tag: usa

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cromulent postings

Wikipedia is a fantastic source of useless (and useful) information. After an entertaining read of made up words in the Simpsons, I read the tomacco page….

In 2003, inspired by The Simpsons, Rob Baur of Lake Oswego, Oregon successfully grafted a tomato plant onto the roots of a tobacco plant, which was possible because both plants come from the same family, Solanaceae or nightshade, and furthermore both plants are dicotyledons. (It is not possible to graft monocotyledons, because the xylem and the phloem are distributed in bundles throughout the stem, and therefore it is impossible to align the vascular tissues of the two plants.)

Baur suspected that the normal looking tomato that resulted may have contained a lethal amount of nicotine, however testing gave it the all clear (although the leaves of the plant did contain nicotine) – where’s the fun in that?

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an exciting glimpse into the world of chartered accountancy

One of the other Australians in the climbing group was farewelled in style, as I discovered that climbing fibreglass poles barefoot can lead to friction burns. Two days later I discovered that climbing offwidth cracks in an indoor gym leads to removal of skin (I suspect this rule applies to outdoor offwidth cracks as well, although I may have to test this theory in person). These incidents have combined to lead to painful stinging shower experiences.

For the non-climbers: an offwidth crack is one too wide to wedge hands inside and too narrow to wedge one’s body inside – the style required to climb such a thing is best described as ‘interesting’.

poleocean

Meanwhile, newsflash, I have a new way to entertain myself as work – planarity. I just finished level 11. It’s not very exciting. Nothing gets blown up. And I might even concede that it’s just a little bit geeky. Yet strangely addictive.

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but if we didn’t have ears, we’d look like weasels

Happy dandelion for a hot and muggy day.

squamish

After a chance meeting with one of the other people living in my apartment block (well, it’s not really a block, just a converted townhouse, but anyway) I discovered there were air conditioning units living in the basement. Last night was stinking hot and muggy (I understand this trend is to continue for the next couple of months, and probably get worse – am unimpressed). I eyed off the ac unit lurking on my kitchen floor. After some awkward manouvering, there was then an ac unit in my kitchen window. I poked it. It wobbled. Hmm, it didn’t seem to stabilise in any position. So I closed the window on it, and hoped I wasn’t going to come home to the prostrate corpse of a passerby who had been crushed by my air conditioner. My kitchen’s nice and cool now though. I might have to start sleeping there.

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climbing general trip reports

Then the storm would pass, and they would go back to their primitive lives, chasing rabbits and impregnating their womenfolk.

The world’s most mediocre climbers have discovered a dangerous new way to defy gravity — free soloing above a lake, which sometimes has swell from passing motorboats, which makes it really extreme, and totally hardcore.

I’ve just seen the future of climbing. It’s not on Everest, or a wind-lashed Patagonian spire, nor is it on some gargantuan wall in Yosemite Valley. It’s in West Virginia, on some sandstone cliffs above Summersville Lake.

I insinuated myself into a clan of cragrats, practitioners of a new mode of climbing called “deepwater soloing.” I was bobbing in the swell from passing speedboats at the mouth of a gaping cavern, watching the 31-year-old American phenomenon Terence ‘Vegas’ Kudo perform on an as yet unclimbed route he was calling ‘Vegas in a Blender’.

…. back to what you were doing people, there’s nothing to see here.

deep water soloing

 

deep water soloing

Oh, and we did things on dry land too. I’m not sure why. Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun … to play in a suntrap.

hawks nest dam

Today’s title brought to your courtesy of a random quote from johnnyb. Today’s images brought to you courtesy of the EOFSO – Equal Opportunities for Stalkers Organisation, as well as Vegas (first image, and squad of ninjas), Boer (second image, sound effects and staff twirling skills).

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leaping madness

Niles stands around nonchalontly enjoying the view…. does some stretches… then makes the jump.

deep water jump

(click on the image for the larger version)