Slashdot Mirror
Robot Submarine Maps World's Deepest Sinkhole
holy_calamity writes "The world's deepest water-filled sinkhole has finally been mapped — by a robotic submarine whose descendants may one day swim on one of Jupiter's moons. The last attempt to find the bottom resulted in the SCUBA diving depth record and the death of a diving legend. The sub's sonar found that the divers had descended to only about 10m from the floor. The sub's mapping also indicated that the sinkhole, which is over 300m deep, could connect to even deeper caves."
I know that wikipedia isn't exactly the world's most reliable source, but why in the heck hasn't that article been deleted yet.
Are you kidding? Art Bell would descend with his minions claiming "Government Cover-Up" if they deleted it.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Why would it be deleted?
A) It's hilarious.
2) It's a recounting of the guy's tall tales and doesn't seem to allege the truth of the stories. It's thus as valid as many other entries that discuss fables, comic books, etc.
#) It's hilarious. The story of the alternate-universe dimes is reason enough to keep the article in perpetuity!
I know that wikipedia isn't exactly the world's most reliable source, but why in the heck hasn't that article been deleted yet.
For the same reason that articles on Leprechauns or the Piltdown Man aren't deleted. So someone can go & read about them, find out they're not real things, and the read the story of how the hoax/myth/whatever was perpetutated.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Quite a sad tale as I recall. Shows the dangers of nitrogen narcosis. Makes your judgement horrible.
Shaw made one serious mistake: he had a plan, and when something went wrong - the corpse's head came off - he tried to modify the plan at 800+ ft below, instead of going up to safety and making a new plan. ( Can't say I would have done better, though )
But I have a hard time crying too much about those stories where someone takes a lot of risks and then dies. Either you're incompetent and in over your head, in which case you deserve whatever you get. Or, you know the risks but take them anyway, figuring a potentially short, but adventure-filled life is better than a long, boring, risk-averse one, in which case you knew exactly what you were getting into, so you can't complain too much. Still, they do make for great reading.
The gaping hole in that theory, is that the Mel's Hole article doesn't bother to corroborate or contradict any of the evidence offered, even though much of it would be trivially easy to track down... Large checks and non-profits don't just appear and disappear without a paper trail. Not to mention travel records, alibis, etc., etc.
The Piltdown Man article specifically says it was fake, and disproven. No such luck statement for Mel's Hole. And the "DISPUTED" tag at the top of Mel's Hole doesn't exactly lend credence to your claim, either.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I'm not sure if people like him needs anyone to feel sorry for or to even pass any judgment on him. From the article, his friends certainly didn't. They accepted the fact and that was it. He accepted the risks and knew that there's always an element of chance. His luck ran out and he's dead. There's a great deal of stoicism that I admire in people like that. If all of us waited until all the conditions were 100% right, nothing amazing will ever be achieved.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Most people would be able to figure things out when they got to this, the second sentence: "Despite extensive efforts, the hole has never been located by anyone else, and none of Mel's claims about it have ever been confirmed." But then again, such alarm bells might not ring for the average slashdotter...
We all die. Sooner or later. We all die.
I recently watched a few people get into a flamefest on another site because someone made the comment that "America is tied for first for the highest mortality rate." It was great watching all the "America: Love it or leave it" people come out saying there was no way that was possible and calling the guy a troll and telling him that America was the greatest country so it couldn't be true, etc. None of them seemed to be able to figure out that the guy was saying "everyone dies". : p
This guy's the limit!
It's nominated for deletion and most of the votes are Deletes. So pretty soon, people looking for information on the subject - maybe people reading through an archive of this discussion - won't find anything on Wikipedia.
Wikipedia's policies on deleting information are ridiculous and stupid. Notability filtering has no place on an online encyclopedia. After the barrage of negative mainstream press articles a few years ago, they really sold out. I guess they just want to be the online equivalent of a paper encyclopedia now, medium be damned.