>> There are no flukes in nature, excepting on cetaceans.
A fluke is a statistical anomaly – i.e. yes it could happen but the chance of it happening on any given occasion is very small. I’ve just started reading a book, “Against The Gods”, which is a study of the history of risk management. The author so far makes a compelling case that the unpredictability of nature is essential to human progress. Flukes of nature happen all the time – if they didn’t, we would still be living in caves.
I won’t bore you with any of the mathematics but, in short, it is impossible to eliminate all potential hazards (btw, did you know that “hazard” comes from the Arabic word for “dice”?) so in the end, it’s a personal decision to pick which risks we are willing to accept and which ones we are going to mitigate.
>>What befell Mr Ralston and my party have utterly no difference. He failed to take certain pretrip precautions and had a boulder fall on his arm. My woefully ill led party somehow circumvented, overlooked and ignored every rule and guidelines for the islands.
I have no problem with this answer, although I disagree with it slightly. What bothers me is the double standard I see on this forum – because you’re “one of us”, nobody would dare to call you an ignoramus. Yet Aron Ralston – whose mistakes were, IMO, far more subtle than yours were – is treated as though he went sky-diving and forgot his parachute.
Going to a desert island and forgetting your water bottle (as one member of your party did) is downright stupid. Going to that same desert island without ensuring that your supplies would arrive at the same time as you is careless. Going hiking without a partner, because your whole reason for going is to be by yourself, is a calculated risk.
>>I would be remiss not to address Doug's "profit" motive in giving lectures. Doug is a recognised member of the safety/survival community. I can personally attest that his efforts return little enough for the investment in time and energy.
That was not my point, Chris. My point was that, for those who haven’t taken the trouble to read the page in question, it is clearly not just a public service announcement. It is a sales pitch for Doug’s services as a guest speaker. I don’t know, and neither does Aron Ralston, how much Doug charges as a guest speaker, or what he uses the money for. I don’t begrudge his making a living – we all gotta eat, and Doug gotta pay someone to host this web site and connect it to the Internet. But from my point of view, and probably from Aron Ralston’s as well, this is not just a public service announcement, and I think Ralston is well within his rights to ask that he not be associated with it. Which is all he did, after all.
>> In closing, individuals who register solely to post attacks in the safety of faceless anonymity also lack the collection of vertebrae one would attach to said structure. But then this incident seems to center on the progressive loss of body parts.
I’m not sure if this refers to me or not. If it doesn’t, fine. If it does, then I have this to say:
1. Disagreeing with someone is not an “attack”.
2. I’m no more “faceless” or anonymous than anyone else on this forum. In fact, as a computer security expert, I would strongly recommend against anyone publishing their real name, or any other personal information, in a forum as public as this.
Native North American tribes often had taboos against giving their names to strangers. They didn’t consider this cowardly or faceless; it was, to them, a sensible precaution, to prevent evil shamans from being able to work magic against them. In these days of identity theft and on-line stalkers, when people’s lives have been ruined, and innocent people have been murdered simply because some wacko they never met took a dislike to them, it seems to me an equally sensible precaution. My name and e-dress are things that I share with people I trust; I’m not posting them on the Internet for millions of anonymous lurkers to read. If you have a problem with that, then I’m sorry, but it’s your problem, not mine.
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"The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled."
-Plutarch