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Mount Everest Gets 3G Service
bossanovalithium writes "It's what every mountaineer wants when they reach the summit of Mount Everest: a 3G high-speed communication. Those who have trekked to the top will soon able to call their mates, go on Facebook or Twitter, and boast that they got there thanks to TeliaSonera and its subsidiary in Nepal, Ncell, which have brought 3G to the Mount Everest area. Climbers who reached Everest's 8,848-meter-high peak previously depended on expensive and erratic satellite phone coverage and a voice-only network set up by China Mobile in 2007 on the Chinese side of the mountain."
You joke, but I remember when I watched an IMAX documentary on Mt. Everest. One of the guys had climbed it several times, but he messed up and got stuck somewhere halfway up where he would definitely freeze or starve to death. He left behind his pregnant wife, and they played some of their last conversation. After the final conversation, the narrator called the guy a hero. I remember that pissing me off even as a kid. How can someone who pointlessly risks his life when he has responsibilities to a wife and child be called a hero? People who climb Mt. Everest aren't heroes, they're thrillseekers who border on suicidal. Which is fine, but let's be honest about it.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
We do that all the time. We call slain police officers and soldiers "heroes", when really they aren't. They have dangerous jobs and working a dangerous job means that you run a higher than normal risk of injury or death. They get extra pay and extra benefits (police pension, G.I. bill education, etc) to help compensate for the additional risk. Sure, their deaths are tragic and sad and usually unnecessary, but that doesn't make them heroes.
I only consider someone to be a hero when they go above and beyond. For example, a guy off the street who runs into a burning building to save someone is showing heroism in my book.
I find the overuse of the word "hero" just as annoying as every time there's a natural disaster and thousands of people die, but one child survives, everyone starts calling it a "miracle". A miracle would be if we never had natural disasters. Or if we had a giant earthquake and *not one person* died.
...Their junk to frostbite.
Am a I heartless bastard if the first thought that crossed my mind was "Damn, he successfully passed on his genes before dying of gross stupidity"? I'd suggest a Darwin award but the idiot managed to reproduce before he kicked the bucket.
Let's see, the physical strength and stamina to climb one of the toughest mountains on earth several times, not to mention the mental fitness, flexibility and willpower one needs in large quantities in order to do something like that.
I'd say his genes were top of the bill really
Funny you mention Darwin though.. .
The guy traveled around the world, visiting remote deserted places for years at a time in a era where such voyages were still the equivalent of playing Russian roulette. Also gross stupidity?
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
I read "He left behind his pregnant wife" and my first thoughts were - "Damn that's heartless of him" and "WTF was she doing climbing Everest if she was pregnant anyway?"