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Burt
Big Wall climber
Las Vegas, Nv
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Jul 12, 2011 - 02:31am PT
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Yeah Ammon's got a teddy.. most dangerous snake in the valley...
Can of King Cobra...
Right on Ammon, hope you come down with some "enlightening" news...
Kurt Burt
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#1SuperMama
Social climber
Oakdale, Ca
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Jul 12, 2011 - 10:43am PT
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Ammon's Teddy = The Jolly Roger!
But I'll have to delve farther into this!
King Cobra is gone - the climb should speed up now!!!!! Or we can only hope. lol
Enjoy your day!
And everyone should be back on The Captain! A week of absolutely incredible cool weather!!!
As the old adage says...Go Climb a Rock! Instead of the walls raining water (John Muir) they should be raining climbers. Well...not falling down that is - falling up. Is that even possible?
Woot Woot!
Ciao,
Mom of Kait & Ammon's Mom two
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Tarz
Mountain climber
Calli
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Jul 12, 2011 - 11:03am PT
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Jul 12, 2011 - 11:36am PT
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Hey there, Annie - thanks for your reports. I was smiling into my coffee this morning. Did you, ahem, have a couple of beers when you were writing those first ones last night? They were actually becoming very Wing-of-Steelish. I think you should have a couple more beers before posting tonight!
Werner writes,
"I believe what Steve and Mimi's arguments are really based on is if most of the hook moves were "doctored" with a drill bit or scraped then the so called line was "forced" since there are also a high number of aid holes (bolts & rivets) for the amount of pitches.
This would be the "root" of their argument, (The line was "Forced").
They also most likely believe that the FA party was not truthful in revealing how much was doctored."
The argument expressed above was valid prior to 2006, and was generally believed. Since then, Mark and Richard came onto the forum, and told us what they did, and how they did it. These numbers and facts have best been told in Mark's and Richard's posts here and here:
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=963934&tn=0&mr=0
http://www.supertopo.com/climbers-forum/516588/Wings-of-Steel-XXVII-the-Downward-Spiral
The counts are as follows:
 113 drilled placements in the slab by ascending the Bogus Start [alternate start from the left to the first two pitches after the first pitch was chopped]
20 drilled placements in the original start, prior to joining the alternate start partway up the second pitch
Total of 133 drilled placements on the slab, of which 78 are rivets
They then say a total of 145 holes were drilled to do the route, which includes the 12 bat-heads required to join Aquarian Wall at the end. The actual number may be 13
They recount the 20 drilled holes on the original start, which they redrilled after the original start was chopped, for a grand total of 165 holes, of which 41 of these were for anchor bolts. [I don't believe they should recount the 20, and that the actual hole count should be 145]
They made 151 hook moves to ascent the route, all of which except five were on Leeper narrow hooks
Mark and Richard have maintained that they micro-enhanced about ten percent of the hook placements, for a total of about 15 enhancements over the length of the route. They also said that the enhancements they made are so small as to be virtually invisible. All subsequent observations have confirmed this.
While there are a fair number of bolts and rivets on the route, the number of drilled placements may not be excessive when compared to some other routes on a "hole per foot climbed" measurement. The runouts on Wings of Steel are long, sporty and dangerous, and will result in long and serious falls even for highly skilled climbers like Ammon, who has taken quite a few whippers. One of the first ascensionists dislocated his ankle in a fall, Ammon has dislocated [and re-located!] his shoulder in a fall. This should come as little surprise since the climb has been unable to be repeated in its entirety since its first ascent.
If I understand correctly, Ammon reports again seeing no enhancements, so truly the enhancements made were so small as to be invisible, especially with the help of a quarter-century of erosion.
Because of the lack of natural protection, you can argue that line is contrived, and you can argue that it is forced.
The root of Steve and Mimi's argument has always been that Mark Smith and Richard Jensen are liars - that they climbed Wings of Steel in a certain way, but then lied about it afterwards to make themselves look better.
There is no evidence whatsoever to support the assertion that Mark Smith and Richard Jensen lied about anything.
All evidence suggests that Richard and Mark have told the truth from the beginning.
To continue suggesting that Richard Jensen and Mark Smith are liars, and that they misrepresented anything in their ascent of Wings of Steel, would be both libellous and a defamation of character.
Peter Zabrok
Ontario, Canada
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crunch
Social climber
CO
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Jul 12, 2011 - 12:34pm PT
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Turf Wars and Turmoil at Walla Walla College
Walla Walla College is
today a deeply wounded
and divided camp. The
Academic Standards Committee has
been temporarily stripped of its authority
to hear appeals of student grades.
The history department is still bitter
from having its decision to terminate
Richard Jensen overturned by the
Board ofTrustees last year, following a
storm of criticism. The board of trustees
lays down specific instructions which
the departments openly defy, and
which the president is unable to enforce.
Ugly written accusations have
been made by the history department,
and refuted. Lawsuits have been
threatened, and administration is walking
on eggshells. The history department,
through the humanities program,
built up the tension by again recommending
that Jensen be terminated
after this school year. Unless the board
of trustees again overturns the
department's decision at a March 4
meeting,Jensen will not be back next
year. All sides tensely await the unfolding
of the end game.
At the epicenter of this maelstrom is
Richard Jensen, an analytic philosopher
who expects to finish his doctorate in
philosophy from UC Santa Barbara early
this spring with a dissertation entitled,
"Authority and a Solution to the Problem
of a Divine Command Theory: An
Answer to Subjectivism in Ethics."
According to Jensen the goal of his
dissertation is "to establish a metaphysical
objectivism in ethics based
upon modifications and synthesis of
the various divine command theories
that have sprung up in the last thirty
years." He is halfway through the third
of three one-year contracts at Walla
Walla college on a tenure track. The
next step in that track would be a
three-year contract, followed by candidacy
for tenure. Barring another surprise,
the three-year contract leading to
tenure will be denied.
WWC is the only SDA college with a
full-time philosopher and has had a
philosopher in residence going back at
least to the 1980's, according to Presi-
dent Nelson. When Jensen was recruited
by Roland Blaich, recently retired
chairman of the history department,
it was with the express
understanding that WWC had committed
itself to raising philosophy to full
department status. Without such a
commitment, says Jensen, he would not
have agreed to come. Jensen was initially
assigned to Roland Blaich's history
department.
By all accounts, Richard Jensen is a
brilliant and enthusiastic lecturer with
high academic standards, is theologically
conservative, has impeccable student
evaluations and student loyalty,
and loves teaching at Walla Walla. Even
his detractors do not seem to question
his abilities as a teacher and lecturer in
philosophy. But beyond that, to say that
the differences in opinion regarding his
influence are astonishing is to understate
the case.
Depending on whose version you
hear, opinions about Richard Jensen
range from calling him an irreplaceable
intellectual and spiritual asset whose
loss would be tragic, to a devastatingly
divisive David Koresh-Iike cult leader at
war with the church who needs to be
terminated as soon as possib. Did he
subtly orchestrate the student protests
that led to his forced rehiring last
spring, as some of his critics suspect, or
was it a spontaneous outpouring of
appreciation and loyalty from his students?
The Battle Over Plagiarism
Jensen traces his fall from grace with
administration to his well-advertised,
uncompromising, aggressive policy
against plagiarism. He spends at least a
whole lecture on the evils of plagiarism
alone. Plagiarism, even in a measly tenpoint
homework assignment, is sufficient
to fail a student, and has. Unlike
many teachers, he will actively search
the Internet or library for the source of
text which he suspects has been plagiarized.
In his two and half years at the
school, he estimates that he has failed
6-7 students for plagiarism. Plagiarism,
he says,was a bigger problem at WWC
when he arrived than at any other college
where he had taught previously.
From the beginning, it had been his
policy to get the plagiarizing student to
sign a document summarizing the
points of mutual agreement sufficient
to establish plagiarism beyond a reasonable
doubt. Despite this seemingly
airtight documentation establishing
plagiarism in every case,his battle with
administration began in May of 1999,
when a student decided to appeal the
failing grade with the Academic Standards
Committee (ASC)chaired by Mel
Lang.
The student's initial appeal was
turned down. Then the stakes were
raised as a voting member of the ASC
helped the student draft a second petition
in which the student retracted the
confession of guilt on the basis of intimidation,
and the student's father, a
big school donor, threatened a lawsuit
unless Jensen's decision was overturned.
Jensen says he was subsequently
called in by administration and
berated for having such a strict plagiarism
policy and informed of the possible
lawsuit that might ensue as a result.
When Jensen refused to back
down, ASC upheld the student's second
petition on the basis of intimidation
and expunged the course and grade
from the student's transcript.
WG. Nelson, college president, John
Brunt, vice president for Academic Affairs,
Mel Lang, ASCchairman, and Terry
Gottschall, ASC board member at the
time, all declined to discuss ASC issues
with AT. However, Gottschall's 7/21/99
letter of resignation from ASCover the
handling of this case corroborates virtually
all of Jensen's account (SeeAT's
website, atoday.com).
Jensen appealed ASC'sdecision and
filed a formal grievance with the grievance
committee against Dr. Brunt, Dr.
Lang, and the ASC,against the advice of
Dr. Brunt. The grievance committee
found unanimously that Jensen's right
to due process had been violated, and it
stripped the ASC of their power to hear
any further grade appeals until their
Handbook could be rewritten with the
proper protections for due process.
The grievance committee's report of
March 3,2000, admits the student was
allowed to submit two "second petitions,"
but Jensen was allowed to see
and respond to only one of them,
whereas ASC'svote to uphold the
student's petition was based on the
content of both petitions. Additionally,
the questions themselves commingled
three separate issues: the extent of plagiarism,
the reasonableness of Jensen's
standards, and Jensen's alleged mistreatment
of the student.
The BattLe Over AnaLyticaL
Philosophy
While Jensen was battling administration
over plagiarism, tension was
mounting along another front. From
AT'sfirst contact with Jensen, he had
emphasized that he was not just a philosopher,
but an analytical philosopher,
as opposed to the Continental variety,
which Jensen had little patience for, and
considers largely discredited.
Jensen explains that analytical philosophy
is a mainstream approach to
philosophy which holds that propositional
truth claims can be evaluated for
correctness using rules based upon
indubitable axioms. A central axiom is
that truth is never contradictory. He
emphasized that analytical philosophy
was not a specialty, or a particular set of
doctrines, but a logical approach to
philosophy that could be applied to any
given aspect of philosophy, including
the history of philosophy even Continental
philosophy itself. Although it has
historically been rough on conservative
Christianity, Jensen asserts that this
reputation is undeserved. If used properly,
hard-nosed analytical philosophy
can consistently save the faith of intelligent,
informed, and thoughtful Christians
who would otherwise be intimidated
into believing that intellectual
integrity demanded that they give up
their faith.
By contrast, he says,"Continental"
philosophy is a deconstructionist approach
which has been largely discredited
by the philosophical community
and is today practiced by only a small
minority of philosophers centered
mainly in France and Germany (thus
Continental). Exemplified by existentialism
and Kierkegaard, truth is seen as
something that might well at times be
contradictory.
Thus, in general, a fundamental absolutism
arises out of analytical philosophy,
while a fundamental relativism
arises out of Continental philosophy.
While on the surface both approaches
may seem equally plausible and attractive,
says Jensen, he found the underlying
relativism of continental philosophy
to be ultimately contrary and corrosive
to the absolutist premise of conservative
Christianity and Seventh-day Adventism
and more suitable to Eastern
religions.
What would emerge as a bone of
contention, was whether analytical philosophy
constituted a narrow
"specialty"or doctrinal focus within philosophy,
analogous to Marxism, as Robert
Henderson, WWC history professor,
still assumed during AT's phone conversation
with him on January 29, or
whether it is an approach to philosophy
that is equally applicable to any subject
in the field, including Continental philosophy,
as Jensen maintains.
Jensen referred ATto Brian Leiter's
"the Philosophers Gourmet Report" on
the internet for corroboration. Brian
Leiter is the Charles I. Francis Professor
in the School of Law,a professor in the
department of philosophy, and director
of the Law & Philosophy Program at the
University ofTexas at Austin, where he
has taught legal philosophy, ethics, Continental
philosophy, and evidence since
1995. In his "A Note on 'Analytical' and
'Continental' Philosophy", Leiter corroborates
Jensen's contention that analytical
philosophy is overwhelmingly
dominant in America and the world,
that analytical philosophy is an approach
encompassing all subjects
within philosophy including the study
of Continental philosophy, and that
even those wishing to pursue a scholarly
career in philosophy "cannot do
better than to pursue training in analytic
philosophy-even if one plans to
work, in the end, on (Continentals like)
Hegel or Marx or Nietzsche."
The FinaL MeLtdown
The events leading to Jensen's termination
and dramatic forced rehiring began
innocently enough with the history
department's recommendation to Brunt
for Jensen's rehiring, contingent on the
hiring of a second philosopher of the
Continental variety. When Brunt replied
that no second philosopher would be
hired, the history department chose to
terminate Jensen for "curricular" reasons.
The board of trustees overturned this
decision after student and faculty
protests, mandating that Jensen be
given an opportunity to demonstrate his
breadth (the history department had
argued that he was too narrow) and a
new evaluation in February.The history
department struck back with a letter
stating "extracurricular" reasons why
Jensen needed to be terminated, and
got the humanities program to
endorse their previous decision only
three weeks into the new school year in
open defiance of the Board's mandate.
Nelson has been powerless or unwilling
to do anything about it.
Another Perspective
Dan Lamberton, chairman of the humanities
program, took a more balanced
position than most when speaking with
AT.The core issue,he maintains, is not
"analytic" versus "Continental" philosophy,
Jensen's teaching skills (which he
admits are excellent), nor his stand
against plagiarism (though he saysothers
do not seek it out as aggressively, nor
generate as much student hostility from
those failed for that reason). Jensen, he
says,while excellent in what he does, and
performing a function of philosophy
essential to any department, simply cannot
also teach a wide spectrum of philosophers,
which a department must be
able to do. Hiring a second philosopher
would have been the sufficient solution
originally, and one which the humanities
progam continues to pursue. But since
the traumatic upheaval of last spring, he
admits, there has been so much collateral
emotional damage that the current
climate has become very difficult for
everyone.
Finally, he reminded AT,hiring and
firing of teachers within the first three
years without explanation, is a
department's right.
The story was difficult to balance, as WW administration
was unwilling or unable to speak freely. Jensen was
cooperative when contacted, but did not initiate the story.
The writer attended WW for two years in the mid-sixties.
AT's editorial staff; including the Managing Editor, Diana
Fisher, was not involved for reasons of conflict of interest.
volume 9, issue 1, Adventist Today
http://atoday.com/files/Jan-Feb%202001_1.pdf
click on “magazine”
then “pdf archive”
scroll down to the 2001 issues. Click on Issue 1.
Download, go to page 12.
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crunch
Social climber
CO
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Jul 12, 2011 - 12:35pm PT
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On a more positive note, all the best to Kait and Ammon!
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bringmedeath
climber
la la land
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Jul 12, 2011 - 12:35pm PT
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Well said Pete!
Mimi has also ripped on them for their religious ties which has left an even worse taste in my mouth than some of the climbing ethic bullsh#t. I really get the sense that she truly hates the WOS FA crew and this attitude comes off so strong that I struggle to take anything she has to say about this too serious in terms of climbing.
On another note, I have a topo of Beyer's that says, that one should just enhance placements instead of drill a bolt. Not a quote, but pretty sure that is what he is implying. But Jim Beyer is like a honey badger that doesn't give a shit!
"Climbing is anarchy" Jim Beyer
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#1SuperMama
Social climber
Oakdale, Ca
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Jul 12, 2011 - 12:58pm PT
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So proud if I'm actually becoming very Wings-of-Steelish!!!
Thanks Pete! And glad you're back on- this thread missed you.
But no beers - it's just me! I'm kinda a water girl! But I do like champagne. And I absolutely die for an El Chola Margarita - but the two I chugged last month for my 50th (thanks Ron for the compliment) almost took me under the table. And the next day - no thanks! I'll stick to water!
When I told Kait and Ammon, I've read that they actually have water only bars in Europe and I think are working their way way into U.S. big cities - they about spit out their beer! Notice I say ABOUT. They'd never waste it! lol
Oh, water! I love it!
That's why I'm a climbing mom! And not a climber - hahaha
Ciao
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Jul 12, 2011 - 01:01pm PT
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I remember that story about Richard at the university. It occurred around 1999 - 2001 if I recall correctly.
I have to run out right now, but somewhere I made a post regarding Richard, where I asked you guys if a person should lose his job before giving a student a mark she didn't deserve. I believe it is the same story that is referenced above, where the university basically told Richard that he had to raise her mark because her dad was a HUGE donor to the university, but that Richard refused.
Can anyone find that link? Something like, "Would you be willing to lose your job to do what's right?"
P.S. The reason I was away was I was fishing with my son out in our canoe!
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Off White
climber
Tenino, WA
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Jul 12, 2011 - 01:38pm PT
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The Chief said, "I can personally detest that I saw no enhancements on the first pitch"
No comment aside from the fact that I love a good malapropism. I think we need all the laughs we can get from this topic.
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Bubba Ho-Tep
climber
Evergreen, CO
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Jul 12, 2011 - 01:48pm PT
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"To continue suggesting that Richard Jensen and Mark Smith are liars, and that they misrepresented anything in their ascent of Wings of Steel, would be both libellous and a defamation of character. "
Pete
To suggest that this behavior will stop just because someone did the SA and somehow "validated" the route is ludicrous.
When a person has hated someone they have never met, so hard, for so long, over something as insignificant as a rock climb they have never done, that person quite obviously has their own reality.
They have invested 30 years of hate, angst, energy and attacks into developing that reality and they will not let go easily.
I'm just happy that despite the fact that the route was put up in a style I don't agree with, I manage to get through life without it consuming me.
I think what this thread needs now is more pictures of Murph.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jul 12, 2011 - 01:54pm PT
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Pete wrote a very fair, logical and balanced summary above.
So off with his head!!
Interesting story on the academia, apparently the universe likes frying Jensen in sizzling oil but it's probably good for him and at least shows some good qualities.
Now if you insist on truth (and you could be wrong, but that's a related issue) then politics are not going to go smoothly for you.
These days, the truth about things seems to be coming out, much to the dismay of secret keepers.
Maybe we need to start Wiki-Climbs
Peace
Karl
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Tarz
Mountain climber
Calli
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Jul 12, 2011 - 01:55pm PT
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Tarz
Mountain climber
Calli
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Jul 12, 2011 - 01:56pm PT
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Tarz
Mountain climber
Calli
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Jul 12, 2011 - 02:00pm PT
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mawk
Big Wall climber
Hugo, MN
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Jul 12, 2011 - 02:02pm PT
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“People's minds are changed through observation and not through argument”.
Will Rogers
Observe the snoozing puppy...
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Bubba Ho-Tep
climber
Evergreen, CO
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Jul 12, 2011 - 02:05pm PT
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There you go!
Puppies beat ethics arguments every time.
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TwistedCrank
climber
Ideeho-dee-do-dah-day boom-chicka-boom-chicka-boom
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Jul 12, 2011 - 02:22pm PT
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I can't resist observing that the story of Jenson's rattle in academia is pretty telling regarding the personality of the FAionistas.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jul 12, 2011 - 03:30pm PT
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I can't resist observing that the story of Jenson's rattle in academia is pretty telling regarding the personality of the FAionistas.
Yup, but perhaps revealing lack of compromise and diplomacy rather than lack of integrity
Failure to please those who feel their authority needed to be surrendered to.
peace
Karl
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