Rag-Doll

SG -I'm not sure, are you having a go at me or the media? It seems to me that the media picked up on the Brit dying because it adds a salacious scandal to the Kiwi’s success. I agree completely that he is being unfairly singled out and it is not as if this sort of thing hasn’t happened before on Everest. It has, at least one other time that I know of, when a US woman made it to the top and then died on the way down. A South African team copped a pasting in much the same way that the Kiwi guy is now simply because the local media wanted to juice the story up a bit. The thing I find fas

Aust beat Greece last night 1:0. It was only a friendly and even though the Greeks probably didn’t appreciate that when it comes to sports Aussies don't do freindlies. Nevertheless, it's an encouraging sign for next month. It's be a close call between Aust and Croatia for the second team out of our pool I reckon.

Here is an article by Stephen Venables from this morning's Age about 8000+ climbing. The legless Kiwi guy suffered frost bite to his fingers and the stumps of the legs - the climb obviously knocked him a round a bit. I find this stuff fascinating: NOT FOR nothing is it called the "death zone". Unless you have experienced it for yourself, it is impossible to imagine the brutality of a world above 8000 metres - a rarefied, desolate place where the human body is effectively dying; where the longer you stay, the more you deteriorate; and where the potent mixture of oxygen-starvation and ambi

Thanks.

Sounds like an interesting job your have there Farquah - tho I'm not sure about the "finishing work most mornings around 4am" bit. What time do you start? I'm amazed and quite pleased to hear that there are still turtle breeding grounds in Japan. Are they very common?

This may be a dumb question me jane, but do they record the finger prints electronically or is it done with ink and paper?

Would it really be that different from LPG cars now in terms of storage and capacity? The real problem is electricity. There’s not much point in having H2 cars if you still need a dirty great oil (or worse coal) fueled power station to generate the power for the H2 generation. In some ways H2 cars are a bit of a red herring in the environment/clean air arena. It is the power (or lack there of) needed to create the fuel that is the real problem.

Ocean, I think you’re just impressed by someone with a fancy title. You didn’t read the reports yourself and formed your own views, you just accepted the views of other people whose motives and qualifications (I'm assuming) you have accepted without question. Don’t you think it is ironic that you so glibly accept the rubbish that these guys put forward yet pride yourself on being such a thorough skeptic of the official view? Your simplistic world would nice if it wasn’t so bleak. So Bush is like Hitler or Stalin, eh? I guess the truth of that will be borne out when he suspends elections

Mr. Wiggles, Mate, I completely agree with just about everything you've just said. I also quite like the neat reference to thick walls to support the "heavily defended" line Perhaps you've summed it up very well when you said there is not much value in amateurs arguing small points based on the paucity of evidence that has been released. I think ultimately that is where we end up with this stuff. There are only points in your post on which I would differ. One is whether a government orchestrated 911 (involving the deaths of thousands of Americans) is comparable to the Gulf of Tonki

This is an interesting addition to the story. I've seen a couple of other reports, docos etc of the dilemma facing climbers in this situation. It probably happens to some degree in quite a few of the high alt deaths on Everest. Should they stop and help or keep going? It must be particularly hard for the family of the person who died to know that there were other people there who did not even try to help. http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/disa...8150234881.html

Mr. Wiggles, “The Pentagon is the most heavily defended building in the world” Really? Is that something you know as a fact or is it just your guess because it’s a very very big military building. What defenses does it have? You tell what defenses it has and I'll tell you why they didn't work. The claim that the pentagon’s defenses didn’t prevent the plane that hitting the building is often used to support the claim that the government/military were involved to some degree. A fine argument, but people never seem to actually identify what defenses the pentagon has that failed

Rach, It’s not that I liked her, it’s just that I thought she would appeal to the middle America voters, but apparently not. I didn’t see last night’s show but I know who gets the boot and who is in the final. The votes for each of the three were so close they disclosed the actual percentages. From memory, there was less than 1% between all three.

Thanks JPChucky. The whole Gortex on ice thing, eh?. Makes ssense. Here is a link to an account of John Griber's decent of Mt Elias and the death of two skiers due in some part to the same thing. http://www.jacksonholenews.com/Archives/FeatureArchive/2002/020417-feature.html

Second, he wore death pants and slid like a thousand meters before a parachute could stop him damn near ending his life. JPchuky - What are "death pants"?

Honestly? I have no idea. It just seemed that there was bit of a difference but there is no accounting for people's taste, so who knows. I thought baldy and Paris were dead certs for the final and look what life offers them now - drug addiction, infamy and guest appearances on "Where Are They Now?" variety shows.

I watched your next week's show last night. It was pretty good with each person getting to sing three songs - one selected by a Mr. big in the music industry, one by the judges and one themselves. Not that we're much of a judge of these things (none of our faves have made it this far), but by the end of the show my wife and I were both thinking, yeah it's pretty clear who will be on the show next week.

Decent snowboard bindings.

Granted and with the Premier League being of such a high standard there is a legitimate reason to hope/expect that they do well. It's just the hint of desperation that comes with it that makes me laugh. It's almost as if it's personal and the whole England v German thing is pretty funny as well.

Don't the English do the same? They always talk up their prospects and put so much pressure on the players only to suffer crushing disappointment when the inevitable happens. All jokes aside, I wouldn’t be surprised if Japan fails to win a game this time round. They have no hope against Brazil (who does?) and both Aust and Croatia will give them a real go. It might be a case of Zanen Nihon! The first game for Aust and Japan will be a cracker. Both teams need to win if they’re to have any hope of getting to the next stage. I used to live next door to Zico - eve

Ocean – fair enough but I think this is a good example of the problems with this sort of stuff. Here is the list lifted from the website you linked to: I accordance with letters I have inserted: (A) These go to the science point. If their science is wrong then these arguments fall away. Science is has often been wrong and buildings are occasionally not built to spec. ( Why does the BBC get more credence than other news services? © Don’t know about this, but weren’t the transponders on the aircraft turned off making them nearly invisible to air traffic controllers? From the

Ocean Although I have nothing but complete distain for your beliefs on how 911 came about I feel no compulsion to try to dissuade you from your beliefs. I know that any attempt will be ultimately futile. You’re a smart man and I’m sure that you have reached your conclusions based on your own wide ranging enquiries and reading and after you have explored this issue in depth rather than simply taken your information from one side of the argument. Did you not find government report on 911 at all convincing? What were your problems with the NYFD report? Some of the many problems I ha

Thanks for that SG. 60-70% more engery eh? And there I was thinking that maybe having the steel legs might not have been that much of a handicap and may have actually made things easier. Pretty amazing guy.

Like I said - Yeesch! Life's too short.

Interesting? Depressing more like. Isn’t it just so much more likely that bad guys with some flight training did it? Isn’t it so much more likely that if their science suggests the buildings shouldn’t have collapsed when they obviously did that their science is wrong (science has been wrong before) rather than people planting a shit load of explosives throughout 3 NY buildings? The capacity of people to close their eyes to anything that doesn't fit within their own frame work of beliefs is truly worrying. Obviously this doesn’t just apply to the 911 guys but lots of other groups as

Yeesch! Thanks Soubriquet, you're a brave man getting into that stuff. I don't think I'll bother reading through the entire thread - life's too short.