It’s climbing season again on Mt. Everest. As you might remember, I’m kind of obsessed with reading about every death on Everest. It didn’t take long for a fatality to occur this year:
An 82-year-old former Nepalese foreign minister has died in his attempt to become the oldest person to climb Mount Everest, a government official said Monday.
Shailendra Kumar Upadhyaya died Monday afternoon, hours after arriving at Camp One in his record attempt, the official told AFP by telephone from Everest base camp. The cause of his death was not yet known.
Upadhyaya had said he wanted to raise awareness about the capabilities of elderly people by scaling the world’s highest peak, which has claimed the lives of hundreds of mountaineers.
“The former minister died at around 4:00pm Monday,” said government official Tilak Pandey.
Camp One on the Nepalese side of the mountain is only 19,000 ft. (5943m). That’s high enough for a normal person to want some supplemental oxygen, but far below the 26,246 ft. (8000m) death zone where oxygen should be mandatory. In any case, it’s sad that Mr. Upadhyaya wanted to do something nice and lost his life because of it.
In other news, both Obama and the Democrats got a big boost out of the death of bin-Laden. I don’t think this is a temporary bubble. I think the episode fundamentally resolved questions many people had about Obama. Coupled with the release of his long-form birth certificate, you can see what it did to Donald Trump, whose teevee show has plummeted in the ratings. Trump is kind of a metaphor for a larger phenomenon, where people are able to embrace the president and get beyond identity politics.
The dragging economy will pull Obama’s numbers back down from their peak, but I think he will stay at an elevated level for the remainder of his first term. And the Republicans will assist him by launching one of the strangest, most implausible and frightening presidential campaigns of all time.
I saw earlier in the week that a study found that half the citizens of Detroit are functionally illiterate. Now I learn that you can buy crack pipes disguised as pens in Detroit dollar stores and gas stations. How hard is it to find the people who manufacture these crack pipes? If the Detroit metro police are fining the merchants who sell them, doesn’t anybody ask who makes them?In any case, just one more thing for Republicans to freak out about.
I did not realize that Maine was trying to horn in on our whoopie pies. Not cool.
Breitbart got pwned.
Can someone tell the Philadelphia Union that scoring is permissible in soccer matches? Their defense is great but…
Talking SlutWalks on BBC.
What’s going on in your neck of the woods?
