Sad. But I have to say - climbing Everest when your wife is due to give birth - not cool.<p>Overall death rate for Everest climbers is pretty close to 3% - pretty high (although its been falling).<p>Edit: 3% is for climbers above base camp - for summit climbers its close to 10%! According to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Mount_Everest_disaster" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Mount_Everest_disaster</a>
This article: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978295" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978295</a> has stuck with me since it was posted a while ago.<p>I guess everyone who goes there knows the dangers, and would be prepared for the worst.
Can't reach the page, but the submission title made me want to share an on-topic book recommendation - Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster, by Jon Krakauer. [1] It's a very sad, but thrilling, account of a catastrophic journey up Everest.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Into-Thin-Air-Personal-Disaster/dp/0679457526" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Into-Thin-Air-Personal-Disaster/dp/067...</a>
I think most would agree that climbing Everest (with a young kids) represents poor judgment.<p>Sometimes I wonder if various acts of greatness are often made possible by the person having a "blind spot". Maybe starting Intrade was equally stupid.<p>Generally I think of this mostly for entrepreneurs and fiction authors.
Won't someone think of the children???<p>I have yet to meet anyone who started a company and is not a little crazy, and a little less risk-averse than most.<p>Where do you draw the line for acceptable behavior? Is flying a plane OK? Riding a motorcycle? Skydiving? Having an extra helping of dessert?<p>Hell, starting a company is a risk and takes a toll on a family.<p>Whenever you read a tragic story like this, you try to think of all the reasons it couldn't happen to you.<p>He spun the dice, maybe a little harder than most, and he lost. You could draw an unlucky card tomorrow driving in your car, or get cancer from your cell phone.<p>If you don't want to spin the dice that hard, you don't have to, I know I wouldn't. Some people have the need to go to the limit. They shouldn't put others at risk. But if he was a CEO and reasonably prudent, the family is, I hope, well-provided for. If he loved them, and he did that and died doing something he loved, bad break and a life well lived.
This happened about ten days ago. I knew John a little, and put up a post with a couple memories here: <a href="http://blog.mercury-rac.com/2011/05/29/in-memory-of-john-delaney-1969-2011/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.mercury-rac.com/2011/05/29/in-memory-of-john-del...</a><p>And here's one from the Freakonomics blog: <a href="http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/05/24/r-i-p-john-delaney-prediction-market-entrepreneur/" rel="nofollow">http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/05/24/r-i-p-john-delaney-pr...</a>
There is a time and place for everything, so we are told. personally, I believe that HN is not the place for this. And if HN is now the place for this, then perhaps HN's time has now passed.<p>Other people's personal lives are their own. They make their choices, the people they share their lives with share their choices, by choice or otherwise.<p>Leave them alone. Leave it alone. Go build something useful.
I am not sad for him personally. We all die, he chose his time and place. Attempting to summit Everest is meaningful in part because one out of every ten climbers making the final push doesn't make it home alive.<p>Compare and contrast his death to Bob Parsons' cowardly choice of shooting an elephant. Bob was never in any meaningful danger, where is the courage in killing an animal that can't shoot back?<p>I am sorry for his family's loss.
New York Times article as the site is hammered: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/business/27delaney.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/business/27delaney.html</a>
Rest in peace.<p>Ironically, the odds on an InTrade bet might have warned him that he was not expected to survive. The crowdsourced research about conditions and the likely physical ability of Mr. Delaney would have exceeded his own and might have led him to delay or reconsider the trip.
Someone else mentioned Anatoli Boukreev in relation to the 1996 season on Everest.<p>If you want to understand more how high-altitude climbers think, this makes for a perfect read: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Above-Clouds-Diaries-High-Altitude-Mountaineer/dp/031229137X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306968293&sr=8-1" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Above-Clouds-Diaries-High-Altitude-Mou...</a>
I can't judge. Everyone dies, but not many die awesome. The sad fact is that even though he died tragically young, he still probably provided far more both in money and example for his kids than I will be able to manage with a lifetime of cautious mediocrity.
Well he joined the crowd. Everest is littered with dead, exposed bodies.<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978295" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978295</a><p>How about running a marathon instead. Or is that not expensive enough?
One's life and ambitions don't end when one becomes a parent.<p>For those whose greatest ambition (confirmed by their actions) is to be a responsible parent, great!<p>The reality for actual parents is that parenting is a constant struggle between one's ambitions and one's responsibilites.<p>Yes, this is an extreme case, but how is this much more selfish than parents who get divorced?<p>One might argue that if a father cannot always and in all conditions put the children first, he should not be a father.<p>I'd argue that this is overly simplistic. Honestly and strictly applied, it would mean that we'd almost never reproduce.
I think the drive in people who push boundaries between what is safe and what is dangerous is beneficial to overall human survival. It puts us more in control of the surrounding natural environments.<p>We all take survival risks. I wouldn't climb Everest but I do ride a motorcycle and scuba dive. Both hobbies do add survival risks for only enjoying life more.
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