More importantly for Greenpeace is how they can blame this on George W. Bush for his failure to steer Kyoto Protocol through Congress... (Nevermind that he's merely the Governor of Texas at the time).

They died solely because they climbed to an oxygen-shy altitude without carrying emergency oxygen tanks and masks with which to inhale from the tanks. Which was foolishness. And therefore, tough shit on them.

Nature has no answers for stupidity except death.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

No extra oxygen tanks and a freak storm. Sad.

But that's a very interesting article.

How many people get to invent a new way to die?

I dunno about inventing new ways to die, but I'd like the first thing out of people's mouths on hearing of my death to be "HOW many Victoria's Secret models?!?"

Have you read the book about that, Dean? It is called Into Thin Air. I read it probably 5 or 6 years ago, but many of its passages have stuck with me. Highly recommended.

Just watch... this will cause a new fetish.

Due to the Bonfire, I just saw your overcrowding post but couldn't reply... so here:

Innumeracy makes dunces of too many.

I taught pre-algebra to a dozen 12-year-old boys. One boy mentioned overcrowding. I said "nonsense".

Next, we worked out how much space we'd need to give everyone on the planet 8000 cubic feet (that's a 20' x 20' x 20' box or eight 10' x 10' x 10' rooms).

We got 7 billion people into less than a 30 mile cross-section of the Grand Canyon, rounding off the GC to be about 10 miles wide and 2 miles deep.

California's population would comfortably fit into two cubic miles, everyone having their own 8k cubic feet.

We'd leave the problems of sanitation, electricity and plumbing to the engineering geeks.

Darth Vader's Death Star was way too big.