None. My wife doesn’t know about tact, or the polite white lie or anything like that. She doesn’t have time for that bullshit. It’s one of her endearing qualities.

So is yours, ambiguous I mean.

In other words, I think you’re being ridiculously over-generous in your interpretation of ancient knowledge.

If it were in fact the case that the ancients had any real notion of Darwinian theory, I think they would have stated it in unequivocal terms, as they did with so many other Platonic and/or Aristotlean concepts.

Vaguely suggestive biblical lines interpreted as somehow suggesting an understanding of Darwinian theory strikes me as wishful thinking.

It’s partially but not entirely true. Having correct technique in your upper body matters too, as does accuracy, timing and the ability to create collisions.

All else being equal in terms of technical skill and leg strength, the guy with the bigger arms, fists as shoulders will have a stronger punch.

I had a ton of muscular atrophy in my right upper body due to a bulging disk in my neck --since corrected by surgery-- and I definitely noticed a huge diminution in my striking power, as did my regular sparring partners at the gym. So it definitely does matter.

I’m doing better now, but still not back to 100 percent and probably never will be. But that’s OK since I’m pretty old anyway.

That’s a very generous interpretation. I don’t think anyone can be blamed for not taking it seriously.

Most of what society tells us will make us feel happy and fulfilled in life is bullshit. Living a good life is primarily about your personal relationships. Things like social status and personal wealth are far less important.

you can always just call them by their first name or something else

Well I didn’t know you were called Dennis.

Right, no doubt, but still totally irrelevant to the fact that if you’re of a certain age, Hulk Hogan is way more famous than the Tiger King guy and Dog The Bounty Hunter.

I’m not here to defend his historical significance; that’s something you brought in and has nothing to do with my position.

I’m not arguing that he was more significant, just that he was pretty fucking famous. What part about this do you not understand?

It probably depends on your age. To people my age (gen x) he’s definitely more famous than either of those guys. He was all over the place in the 80s.

Fair play. That said, please do look up Hanford. It’s way bigger than Westlake and is potentially a much bigger problem, though granted, Westlake is problematic as well.

Scarcely. This is the tyranny of small differences. Portland and Seattle have way more in common with one another than they do with any other big cities in the US. Sure, there are differences, but to the rest of the world they seem trivial.

It’s notable, for example, that even something so organic as Seattle’s “grunge” music scene actually had its roots in Portland with all of the proto-grunge bands, like Napalm Beach and Dead Moon that came out of Portland’s Satyricon in the 1980s.

Right, but that’s why people are talking about nuclear as a bridge technology, not as a permanent solution. Whether or not we can make it pencil out before smashing through all of the critical tipping points in global temperature averages is not something I’m qualified to have an opinion on, but I’m credibly informed that we might at least want to give it a serious look.

Oh good, let’s quibble about semantics instead of actually discussing the meat of the problem.

Were they stupid or deliberately misled, propagandized and manipulated by the fossil fuel industry? Sure some of them were stupid, but I don’t think that’s the whole story.

The problem isn’t fire, it’s that the waste at Hanford has leached into the soil and a plume of it is headed towards the Hanford Reach on the Columbia River. There’s a mitigation plan in place and it looks like it’s ultimately going to work, but it’s very expensive and not something that anyone wants to see happen again.

The waste is vitrified, meaning that it’s encased in what’s basically solid glass.

It’s not that cold. It’s the Gulf Stream, which flows south-north from a tropical origin so it’s warmer than the water on the US west coast, for example, which flows north-south from the Bering Sea on the Alaska Current.

The Gulf Stream is also why northwestern Europe is as temperate as it is while being at the same latitudes as southeastern Alaska and northern British Columbia which have heavily glaciated coastlines.

If the Norwegian fjotds were in Alaska, for example, they would be the mouths of giant glaciers, but they aren’t, again because of the warming influence of the Gulf Stream.

Not sure if that makes sense, but anyway.

I’m from Portland and my complaint is nearly the opposite; that the baristas try to be too friendly/chatty with me. I don’t want to talk to you, I want my goddamned coffee and once I’ve had that I might be inclined to chat.

I even tell my employees not to talk to me until after I’ve had my coffee.

Actually the opposite is true. Most of the world tends to think that Americans are overly friendly and informal, though obviously there’s a lot of variation.

This is a real killer. People have no idea and tend to overestimate the risk from wildlife and underestimate the risk from weather conditions and exposure. Far more people are killed by hypothermia caused by extreme heat or cold than anything else in North American wilderness areas.

I’ve been part of my local SAR community here in Oregon for decades now and while we don’t have to worry so much about the heat, what gets people here is the cold.

If you are somehow lost or stuck in the high Cascades at night without adequate clothing or a heat source, you are in big trouble, especially if it rains or snows, both of which can and will happen even in the middle of summer.

River crossings are also a big danger since the current is always much stronger than it looks and the water is near freezing and if you fall in and don’t have dry clothes and it starts to rain and blow, you are fucked.