Mount Everest is a popular mountain to climb, largely because it's the tallest on Earth. It's not considered the most difficult- there are mountains in the Himalayas with higher death rates, with Annapurna rating highest- but because it's the tallest, it's the most popular. In recent years, it's been very popular. There have actually been traffic jams at the summit, as due to the weather, people have to make their attempts in similar timeframes, often having to wait for one group of climbers to get off the summit before they can take a turn.
This link, showing a photo from Outside Magazine and reprinted by the Daily Mail, shows just how bad it's been getting; the photo shows a line of 150 people, only a fraction of the 600 that were on the mountain at the time. It's as if you took everyone in line at a videogame console launch in Manhattan and plunked them on, well, Mount Everest. People seem to be getting the impression that climbing Everest is something that isn't incredibly difficult to do.
And they're starting to pay the price. Just because it's a popular mountain doesn't make it an easy mountain, and just because there are a lot of people around doesn't mean Mother Nature isn't just as ready to swat some of them off her throne. Which is precisely what happened to four climbers the day after the photo was taken, who got caught up in a windstorm and tumbled down the mountain.
The feeling among experts and locals is that people have simply lost respect for the task they're undertaking. The Guardian article linked above quotes one German climber that ultimately turned back, Ralf Dujmovits, encountering several people that never should have been on Everest in the first place, including an 80-kg (175-pound) French journalist who had burned through her oxygen supply before even having reached the hard parts, and one American climber who for some reason was hell-bent on dragging his bicycle to the summit.
The small timeframe during which one can feasibly summit, combined with the seeming ignorance and/or defiance of the death zone- the point above roughly 26,000 feet at which there isn't enough oxygen to sustain human life (Everest's summit is 3,000 feet higher than that)- means there's only so many people that can be up on the mountain at once. You bus climbers in by the barrelful, and odds are some of them aren't coming back down. Spend too long on Everest, and frostbite becomes a factor as well.
And now there's a new risk: global warming. Rising temperatures on Everest have made for unstable ice, which leads to lost grip, which leads to plummeting climbers. Switzerland's Eiger- its north face the most notoriously deadly climb in the Alps- requires low temperatures to be able to climb it, because the north face has too much loose rock to be climbable without ice freezing the rock in place. Everest may see the ice itself come loose, breaking away in big chunks and potentially slamming into an entire line of climbers there because they had to wait for the warmest weather available to make their attempt.
You're not outrunning that on a bicycle.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Random Widget Update
Just a note that the flag counter on the right side of the page has been dumped. In its place is a spiffy little globe from Revolver Maps. It has the effect of resetting the hit counter- the hit counter you see, anyway. I still have the full tally in the administrative functions, with stats in better detail. The flag counter was nice, but I never felt like it was doing enough to note exact locations, especially outside the US and Canada. I have that with the globe. I think it also highlights the recent hits, which helps me better see if a piece I've written on a specific region wound up drawing in any locals.
So... have fun with your new toy.
So... have fun with your new toy.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Dispatches From Oiba Peivki
Thomas Stedman Whitwell was a British architect who lived from 1784-1840. His main claim to fame was laying out a planned community and going in with cotton mill owner Robert Owen on buying the land for what would become New Harmony, Indiana in 1825 (Owen gets top historical billing). His goal was the same as a lot of architects who let their heads get a little too big: the utopian community, infused with the peace-bringing power of perfectly-laid-out infrastructure.
A lot of cities have been laid out with aims like this, way too many to list. (Though Wikipedia will try.) A couple key names are Fairhope, Alabama, Ruskin, Florida and Zion, Illinois. Most are laid out with some sort of religious motive, and most are designed for small populations. Sometimes they work out, though 'utopia' always has this pesky way of eluding all involved. Sometimes they don't, and the community dies off, often due to the factor that any community wanting to be utopian really has to rely on: the townspeople in it. If they're not getting along, kiss your utopia goodbye. If they turn out to not like the master plan for the utopian community, they will start fighting that plan. That's what happened in New Harmony, which ended up only hanging on to its utopian drams until 1829, before becoming a regular old community.
Replacing money with "time money" will tend to do that.
Whitwell, though, had another idea cooking right alongside New Harmony: renaming every city in the world. You see, somewhere along the way, Whitwell decided that travelers were getting needlessly confused by the fact that a whole lot of places had the same name. Sure, it might make the Simpsons writers' lives easier, and it gives rock-ribbed Republicans the opportunity to potentially name everything in the world after Ronald Reagan, but come on. There's a Portland, Oregon AND a Portland, Maine! Who can tell them apart? And I can't even tell you how many people have gone on a trip to San Jose, California and wound up in Costa Rica.
Well, Whitwell was going to fix this problem. He was going to give every city in the world its own unique name.
Let's go over the basics of how this was supposed to work (the full rules couldn't be found, but we have the basics). You start with a city's latitude and longitude, measured in degrees and minutes. (Go on Google Earth and look at the coordinates of any point. Let's say a latitude reads 42° 17' 33" N. That reads 42 degrees, 17 minutes, 33 seconds.) Each of those individual numbers- the 4, the 2, the 1 and the 7- gets converted into a letter of the alphabet.
According to The New Harmony Communities by George Browning Lockwood (copyright 1902, free in e-book form!), the name construction works out roughly as follows:
*Every city name is two words.
*When converting latitude numbers, convert to a vowel when possible.
*When converting longitude numbers, convert to a consonant when possible.
* If the city is south of the Equator, insert an S somewhere into the first word. If the city is north of the Equator, leave the S out.
*If the city is west of the Prime Meridian, insert a V into the second word. If the city is east of the Prime Meridian, leave the V out.
The conversions are:
0 converts to A and B.
1 converts to E and D.
2 converts to I and F.
3 converts to O and K.
4 converts to U and L.
5 converts to Y and M.
6 converts to EE and N.
7 converts to EI and P.
8 converts to IE and R.
9 converts to OU and T.
The rest of the rules are apparently based on making the result something that can be uttered by human mouths. A few of the sample conversions given seem to allow some movement up or down on the conversion scale in order to get a more usable letter. Everyone that tells this story seems to love latching onto the conversion given for New York City, listed at 40 degrees, 43 minutes N and 73 degrees, 59 minutes W: Otke Notive. One location in New Harmony, the Feiba Peveli Institute, carries the name that this system gave it. Given the latitude and longitude for my local post office, Watertown, Wisconsin became, as best as I can tell, Oiba Peivki. Or at least it would have had Watertown not been founded two decades after Whitwell came up with this. Just from looking at the name, a traveler was supposed to be able to tell where the city was.
Remember, this was supposed to be a simpler, easier to understand way of doing things. At least in Whitwell's head. The fact that Feiba Peveli is the only use it's actually gotten is a testament to the fact that everyone else figured that it's actually simpler to just use the names that people have been using and go with it, and those that heard of it have just politely ignored the suggestion. (How many of you still call what is now the Willis Tower the 'Sears Tower'? I know I do.)
Besides, you've seen all those stories about people not being able to find their home state or other well-known places on a map. If they can't get that, how are they going to get latitude and longitude right, let alone translating latitude and longitude into what looks like some ambiguously foreign language?
A lot of cities have been laid out with aims like this, way too many to list. (Though Wikipedia will try.) A couple key names are Fairhope, Alabama, Ruskin, Florida and Zion, Illinois. Most are laid out with some sort of religious motive, and most are designed for small populations. Sometimes they work out, though 'utopia' always has this pesky way of eluding all involved. Sometimes they don't, and the community dies off, often due to the factor that any community wanting to be utopian really has to rely on: the townspeople in it. If they're not getting along, kiss your utopia goodbye. If they turn out to not like the master plan for the utopian community, they will start fighting that plan. That's what happened in New Harmony, which ended up only hanging on to its utopian drams until 1829, before becoming a regular old community.
Replacing money with "time money" will tend to do that.
Whitwell, though, had another idea cooking right alongside New Harmony: renaming every city in the world. You see, somewhere along the way, Whitwell decided that travelers were getting needlessly confused by the fact that a whole lot of places had the same name. Sure, it might make the Simpsons writers' lives easier, and it gives rock-ribbed Republicans the opportunity to potentially name everything in the world after Ronald Reagan, but come on. There's a Portland, Oregon AND a Portland, Maine! Who can tell them apart? And I can't even tell you how many people have gone on a trip to San Jose, California and wound up in Costa Rica.
Well, Whitwell was going to fix this problem. He was going to give every city in the world its own unique name.
Let's go over the basics of how this was supposed to work (the full rules couldn't be found, but we have the basics). You start with a city's latitude and longitude, measured in degrees and minutes. (Go on Google Earth and look at the coordinates of any point. Let's say a latitude reads 42° 17' 33" N. That reads 42 degrees, 17 minutes, 33 seconds.) Each of those individual numbers- the 4, the 2, the 1 and the 7- gets converted into a letter of the alphabet.
According to The New Harmony Communities by George Browning Lockwood (copyright 1902, free in e-book form!), the name construction works out roughly as follows:
*Every city name is two words.
*When converting latitude numbers, convert to a vowel when possible.
*When converting longitude numbers, convert to a consonant when possible.
* If the city is south of the Equator, insert an S somewhere into the first word. If the city is north of the Equator, leave the S out.
*If the city is west of the Prime Meridian, insert a V into the second word. If the city is east of the Prime Meridian, leave the V out.
The conversions are:
0 converts to A and B.
1 converts to E and D.
2 converts to I and F.
3 converts to O and K.
4 converts to U and L.
5 converts to Y and M.
6 converts to EE and N.
7 converts to EI and P.
8 converts to IE and R.
9 converts to OU and T.
The rest of the rules are apparently based on making the result something that can be uttered by human mouths. A few of the sample conversions given seem to allow some movement up or down on the conversion scale in order to get a more usable letter. Everyone that tells this story seems to love latching onto the conversion given for New York City, listed at 40 degrees, 43 minutes N and 73 degrees, 59 minutes W: Otke Notive. One location in New Harmony, the Feiba Peveli Institute, carries the name that this system gave it. Given the latitude and longitude for my local post office, Watertown, Wisconsin became, as best as I can tell, Oiba Peivki. Or at least it would have had Watertown not been founded two decades after Whitwell came up with this. Just from looking at the name, a traveler was supposed to be able to tell where the city was.
Remember, this was supposed to be a simpler, easier to understand way of doing things. At least in Whitwell's head. The fact that Feiba Peveli is the only use it's actually gotten is a testament to the fact that everyone else figured that it's actually simpler to just use the names that people have been using and go with it, and those that heard of it have just politely ignored the suggestion. (How many of you still call what is now the Willis Tower the 'Sears Tower'? I know I do.)
Besides, you've seen all those stories about people not being able to find their home state or other well-known places on a map. If they can't get that, how are they going to get latitude and longitude right, let alone translating latitude and longitude into what looks like some ambiguously foreign language?
Monday, May 28, 2012
Random News Generator- Wallis and Futuna
Oh, yes, this is how you come back from a week off. Why did I put these guys in the list in the first place?
First off, let's note where Wallis and Futuna is. Wallis and Futuna is a French territory in Polynesia, though it isn't part of French Polynesia or even anywhere particularly near it.
Here's a map of the South Pacific, linked due to size. Go north from New Zealand, find the yellow blotch. That's Fiji. Just north of that is Wallis and Futuna. Go east from there and find the big pink blotch. That's French Polynesia. The total population is about 15,000 as of 2009.
The whole idea behind the Random News Generator is to show that there's stuff going on in the world beyond the generally agreed-upon hotspots. The thing is, though, you do need at least one person in the area saying something about what's going on in town in order to find out these things so they can be spread around to others.
That appears to not be happening, or at least, not to the extent that it can be found online. News out of Wallis and Futuna seems to come at about the rate of one or two tidbits a month, such as the fact that they've elected Vetelino Nau to lead their national assembly, or that they supported Francois Hollande in the recent French presidential election, or the news in January that they couldn't attend the Pacific Arts Festival on the Solomon Islands due to lack of funds, or the comment from a politician in New Caledonia suggesting that they take Wallis and Futuna on as a province because, according to him, France barely cares. Going on Google News and typing 'Wallis and Futuna'- the usual method for finding RNG stories- merely returns a lot of unrelated stories where the name is simply a keyword placed in a long list of other geographic keywords meant to drive up the hit counter.
So on that, and with really nothing better to go on, here's a video on the area from last year celebrating their 50th anniversary of being a French territory.
First off, let's note where Wallis and Futuna is. Wallis and Futuna is a French territory in Polynesia, though it isn't part of French Polynesia or even anywhere particularly near it.
Here's a map of the South Pacific, linked due to size. Go north from New Zealand, find the yellow blotch. That's Fiji. Just north of that is Wallis and Futuna. Go east from there and find the big pink blotch. That's French Polynesia. The total population is about 15,000 as of 2009.
The whole idea behind the Random News Generator is to show that there's stuff going on in the world beyond the generally agreed-upon hotspots. The thing is, though, you do need at least one person in the area saying something about what's going on in town in order to find out these things so they can be spread around to others.
That appears to not be happening, or at least, not to the extent that it can be found online. News out of Wallis and Futuna seems to come at about the rate of one or two tidbits a month, such as the fact that they've elected Vetelino Nau to lead their national assembly, or that they supported Francois Hollande in the recent French presidential election, or the news in January that they couldn't attend the Pacific Arts Festival on the Solomon Islands due to lack of funds, or the comment from a politician in New Caledonia suggesting that they take Wallis and Futuna on as a province because, according to him, France barely cares. Going on Google News and typing 'Wallis and Futuna'- the usual method for finding RNG stories- merely returns a lot of unrelated stories where the name is simply a keyword placed in a long list of other geographic keywords meant to drive up the hit counter.
So on that, and with really nothing better to go on, here's a video on the area from last year celebrating their 50th anniversary of being a French territory.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
The One Supposedly Easy Thing In Politics
There's a step in the American electoral process that comes before the primary. Maybe you've taken part in it, maybe you haven't, maybe you don't even know about it, but you can't just walk up and say 'I want to be on the ballot'. Before you can do so, you have to gather signatures from people who would support your bid for election or re-election. The number of signatures required is ridiculously low- a couple thousand people is all- and so while it's technically a barrier to entry, it's not really much of one if you're at all organized in the absolute slightest. Even candidates deep in enemy territory, even candidates who have ticked off their constituents and are about to be thrown out of office with torches and pitchforks, can at least turn up enough people to get them on the ballot so they can be slaughtered on schedule. The only way it ever knocks people out of the race are if they make a beyond-gigantic screwup, get more or less defrauded out of the race when opposition supporters tally the signatures, or if they're so minor and so unknown and so utterly unorganized that their "campaign" is incapable of even this most simple of tasks.
Thaddeus McCotter, a House Republican from Michigan since 2003 and therefore a person who has undertaken this task a minimum of five times prior, has somehow managed to prove incapable of this most simple of tasks. He could hand in 2,000 signatures- which he did- and at least 1,000 had to be ruled valid- which were not. As a result, McCotter now has to attempt to win his seat back via the write-in ballot, throwing the door open out of nowhere to a Tea Partier named Kerry Bentivolio- who now can sleepwalk to the Republican nomination- and two Democrats, William Roberts and Syed Taj, that did manage to get the signatures, as well as more prominent names who may now opt to take on McCotter via the write-in route as well.
The heck of it is, had McCotter just completed this one simple task, the rest of the campaign would have been easy sailing for him.
Now, this isn't entirely unprecedented for someone prominent to fail to get the signatures. In fact, we don't have to leave this election season. In the Republican Presidential primary, potential nominees made it look somehow difficult. Five different candidates failed to get the signatures required to make the ballot in Virginia, which has also seen a Senate hopeful, David McCormick, miss out. Three candidates made at least partial failures in Illinois. Rick Santorum failed to get on in DC and Indiana and made a partial miss in Ohio. Jon Huntsman Jr. failed in Arizona. Newt Gingrich failed in Missouri.
And then there's the third-party effort made by Americans Elect, which somehow managed to get on the ballot (in 29 states) and then failed to get a candidate to put on that ballot.
Usually it's not anywhere near this hard. But maybe it's best they fall off the ballot here. If they couldn't even get this right, how can you expect them to handle something as complicated as holding public office?
Thaddeus McCotter, a House Republican from Michigan since 2003 and therefore a person who has undertaken this task a minimum of five times prior, has somehow managed to prove incapable of this most simple of tasks. He could hand in 2,000 signatures- which he did- and at least 1,000 had to be ruled valid- which were not. As a result, McCotter now has to attempt to win his seat back via the write-in ballot, throwing the door open out of nowhere to a Tea Partier named Kerry Bentivolio- who now can sleepwalk to the Republican nomination- and two Democrats, William Roberts and Syed Taj, that did manage to get the signatures, as well as more prominent names who may now opt to take on McCotter via the write-in route as well.
The heck of it is, had McCotter just completed this one simple task, the rest of the campaign would have been easy sailing for him.
Now, this isn't entirely unprecedented for someone prominent to fail to get the signatures. In fact, we don't have to leave this election season. In the Republican Presidential primary, potential nominees made it look somehow difficult. Five different candidates failed to get the signatures required to make the ballot in Virginia, which has also seen a Senate hopeful, David McCormick, miss out. Three candidates made at least partial failures in Illinois. Rick Santorum failed to get on in DC and Indiana and made a partial miss in Ohio. Jon Huntsman Jr. failed in Arizona. Newt Gingrich failed in Missouri.
And then there's the third-party effort made by Americans Elect, which somehow managed to get on the ballot (in 29 states) and then failed to get a candidate to put on that ballot.
Usually it's not anywhere near this hard. But maybe it's best they fall off the ballot here. If they couldn't even get this right, how can you expect them to handle something as complicated as holding public office?
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Rapid-Fire Book Club: We're Back (A Dinosaur's Story) Edition
Show of hands: who actually watched that movie? Anyone other than me remember that that movie even existed?
Anyway, the book draft is done, with a final word count of 300,861 words. That's kind of a lot. That's six of those NaNoWriMo projects laid end-to-end, with the added burden of actually trying to write something good as opposed to just writing anything at all. Ultimately, 1,076 clubs made it into the draft, encompassing 219 national entities. The last club in was Albion Rovers of Scotland, notable for being the first club to employ Jock Stein, regarded as the greatest manager in Scottish history. Congratulations, Wee Rovers, you are Mr. Irrelevant.
There will, of course, be an editing job yet once I find out what needs editing. (I have my suspicions- in a piece of writing of that size, there's always going to be something that needs work- but luckily the nature of this particular piece of writing makes them pretty easy to do upkeep without tearing half the book apart.) And of course there's the tiny issue of trying to get the thing published. But the most major bit of writing is behind me, leaving me free to come back to the blog.
During that stretch run, I attended Wednesday's MLS contest between the Chicago Fire and FC Dallas (Chicago won 2-1). If you've never been to a soccer game, suffice to say that a soccer crowd of 11,947 can easily drown out a baseball crowd three times that size. Easily. On the way to the game, I stopped in at Powell's Bookstore on the campus of Illinois-Chicago, and grabbed two books for a total of ten bucks:
*Aaronovitch, David- Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History
*Harmon, Larry- The Man Behind The Nose: Assassins, Astronauts, Cannibals and Other Stupendous Tales (you know Larry Harmon better as Bozo The Clown)
Good to be back here.
Anyway, the book draft is done, with a final word count of 300,861 words. That's kind of a lot. That's six of those NaNoWriMo projects laid end-to-end, with the added burden of actually trying to write something good as opposed to just writing anything at all. Ultimately, 1,076 clubs made it into the draft, encompassing 219 national entities. The last club in was Albion Rovers of Scotland, notable for being the first club to employ Jock Stein, regarded as the greatest manager in Scottish history. Congratulations, Wee Rovers, you are Mr. Irrelevant.
There will, of course, be an editing job yet once I find out what needs editing. (I have my suspicions- in a piece of writing of that size, there's always going to be something that needs work- but luckily the nature of this particular piece of writing makes them pretty easy to do upkeep without tearing half the book apart.) And of course there's the tiny issue of trying to get the thing published. But the most major bit of writing is behind me, leaving me free to come back to the blog.
During that stretch run, I attended Wednesday's MLS contest between the Chicago Fire and FC Dallas (Chicago won 2-1). If you've never been to a soccer game, suffice to say that a soccer crowd of 11,947 can easily drown out a baseball crowd three times that size. Easily. On the way to the game, I stopped in at Powell's Bookstore on the campus of Illinois-Chicago, and grabbed two books for a total of ten bucks:
*Aaronovitch, David- Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History
*Harmon, Larry- The Man Behind The Nose: Assassins, Astronauts, Cannibals and Other Stupendous Tales (you know Larry Harmon better as Bozo The Clown)
Good to be back here.
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Internal Programming Note
Lately, in an effort to concentrate on the book, I've had to do shorter pieces here, as I've noted. In addition, I've had to be able to get them posted more quickly, as every minute I'm blogging is a minute I'm not spending working on the book.
However, in doing so, what's been put out here has not been me at my best. It's been me trying to keep the blog active, really for the sake of keeping it active. I haven't wanted a situation where the blog appears to have been abandoned. And as more and more of my time has been allocated towards the book than towards here, there's been a dip in quality. If you've noticed, know that I've come to notice it as well lately. I apologize for that. And I need to take some sort of corrective action; if I'm trying to get into journalism as a career, material like what I've been putting out recently isn't helping.
The original plan has been that I would have the book draft done by the end of the 25th, this coming Friday, and that the 23rd-25th would be spent totally on research and completion of the draft. I'm going to amend that plan. I need to get my efforts focused on one project or the other, and as one has a time limit and the other does not, for the next week it should really be the book. So instead of a three-day hiatus, it's going to be a seven-day hiatus. Just take the week, make the final push on the book, and make it the best damn book I can possibly make out of it. Then when I come back, I'll be able to get back to business here and my normal, usually higher standards.
See you in a week.
However, in doing so, what's been put out here has not been me at my best. It's been me trying to keep the blog active, really for the sake of keeping it active. I haven't wanted a situation where the blog appears to have been abandoned. And as more and more of my time has been allocated towards the book than towards here, there's been a dip in quality. If you've noticed, know that I've come to notice it as well lately. I apologize for that. And I need to take some sort of corrective action; if I'm trying to get into journalism as a career, material like what I've been putting out recently isn't helping.
The original plan has been that I would have the book draft done by the end of the 25th, this coming Friday, and that the 23rd-25th would be spent totally on research and completion of the draft. I'm going to amend that plan. I need to get my efforts focused on one project or the other, and as one has a time limit and the other does not, for the next week it should really be the book. So instead of a three-day hiatus, it's going to be a seven-day hiatus. Just take the week, make the final push on the book, and make it the best damn book I can possibly make out of it. Then when I come back, I'll be able to get back to business here and my normal, usually higher standards.
See you in a week.
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