Gee, I missed a good dirt pounding and leaf throwing match here. I know attorneys that write 10 C & D letters before breakfast. They're worth less than the paper those letters are printed on, and so are the letters. The nerve of accusing Doug of doing something illegal when he's not selling PLB's boggles the mind. It is also a stretch to call Mr. Ralston a personality or to believe that he has any substantial commercial value. It is tragic that Mr. Ralston has lost his arm, and I hope he makes enough money from his book or whatever to make him comfortable in some way, but to take offense at Doug Ritter and ETS is doing a disservice to humanity. I posted a while back that Mr. Ralston was not a good example of a proper survival mindset. He simply did what he had to do in a bad situation. That doesn't make him some kind of gritty John Wayne hero. Why do I feel like I'm reading a story about Tonya Harding when I read of his actions after the tragic event? Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Regards, Keys

>> 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.

My comments were NOT pointed at you <img src="images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />, but the individual who registered solely to post on this affair. I hope, no I expect and would demand that my comments,activities and personal failings are subject to critique no less than everyone else. Alpha males have a nasty habit of getting removed from the gene pool <img src="images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />