Actually, they were using shock-absorbing lanyards, so, assuming they were using then correctly, a fall would result in a deployed shock pack and a dangling climber. Rescue from that position is another matter, and they don't say anything about that.
That being said, I think the author mentions carrying their camera and tripod by hand on the way down, which is a huge no-no. A drop could in serious damage or death as you mentioned.
Today, I am in New Mexico hanging off a wind turbine blade (that's what I do for work), when I noticed a strange looking balloon in the sky off to the north west. I radioed my ground support guy, who got on his iPhone, and sure enough, it's the supersonic skydiver. Talk about front row seats!
Honestly - the guy should apply his thoughtfulness and drive toward not eating so many hamburgers. There is a good reason why the insurance companies want to see that information.
I'm more or less young and healthy, and I think that my purchasing history would probably reflect that. But if they dug deeper, or took a look at my social networking profiles, they'd find out that I'm a climber. There are even picture of me on Facebook climbing ice without a rope.
I have heard that banks will be looking at our profiles in order to help determine our credit worthyness in the next few years; could medical insurers do the same?
> What really upset me was that there was practically no surrounding discussion of the intuition behind the algorithm. Behind all the rigor of mathematics lies very simple and powerful ideas. This book did nothing to emphasize those simple ideas.
I would just respond to this by saying that the mathematics do express the ideas. It's just a different language than most people are used to.
This jumped out at me and I want to make a correction.
The actors in that film trained at a gym called Gym Jones, run by Mark Twight, one of the strongest American alpine climbers of his day. The directors wanted them to look sinewy and jacked, not big, so they put them on a caloric restriction diet (they had to do reps to earn food, on a schedule designed for weight loss). The actual exercises they had to do were changed constantly to prevent their bodies from becoming accustomed to any one thing, so there really is no "300 workout" at all.