Talk:Aron Ralston

Aron Ralston - man's man

Wik - Last year when this was in the news, that was pretty much the consensus of the entire world. If you want some by products of that (which are not easy to find now since this was transient media, which means that much of it has disappered), you need look no farther than Maddox's article on "real men", or "Aron Ralston is a real man and one tough son of a bitch" [1] or "He's obviously one tough guy," said Sgt. Mitch Vetere, one of the Emery County Sheriff's Office searchers who first located Ralston in a remote area 60 miles south of Green River, Utah." [2]. →Raul654 09:29, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)

Raul, I'd go with the quote then, rather than "man's man" which is kind of a sentiment but not a quote. Some thought him a foolish idiot for going alone and not telling anyone where he was, so should that be in there? Perhaps "tough" could be put in. Fuzheado 09:32, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Quite frankly, yes - both are relavent and both belong in here. I didn't know that he was criticized, or I would have put that in the original article too. →Raul654 09:35, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)

Aron Ralson exercised poor judgment, got in a jam and "chewed" off his arm. He therefore demonstrated the intelligence of a racoon, but with less common sense. For this he is judged a hero. Why? Being a "tough guy" should have something to do with using your brain effectively.

Perhaps he made a mistake, but he also rose to the task of solving it himself by doing something intensely difficult, difficult to the degree that it would impossible for many people. There are those who are more intelligent than your anonymous self, maybe even more intelligent than a racoon, who would have been unable and/or unwilling to sever their own arm and would have instead simply died still pinned under that boulder. Druff 20:03, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

From a semantic standpoint, I'd echo that. He is not being "judged a hero", he is being judged to have exemplified a particular set of traits from the classical masculine ideal which inspire respect amongst those who consider that ideal valuable and desirable, generally other men. Hopefully I need not explain the classical masculine ideal, since I'm sure we have an article on it. Those who don't consider that ideal to be valuable will not respect him; this includes most women and many men who hold themselves up to a different ideal. It's quite simple. While I'm sure many equal but less dramatic acts of "toughness" by both men and women go unheralded every year, they are also not nearly as compelling and mythological to men. Raising a kid is hard, but it's not sawing off your own arm with a dull pocketknife. Curse the ideal if you will, but don't curse the man for fulfilling it. I'm quite certain he'd rather have his arm back than legions of admirers buying him beers. Bullzeye ^{(Ring for Service)} 11:32, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

These people would have been unable to sever their own arm since they would not have gotten into that predicament in the first place.Nemokara (talk) 06:08, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Hello, My name is Richard Mullins and I'm a newspaper reporting doing a story on Wikipedia. I'd love to chat with the author of this entry. If you could contact me by e-mail, that would be great. rmullins@tampatrib.com.

"Prolifically?"

"Prolifically?" Tragic romance 00:17, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

What. --Liface 00:21, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Assuming you're asking about the appropriateness of the phrase "still climbs mountains prolifically", then I guess 'prolifically' is a bit subjective, but his personal webpage indicates he's done plenty of summits in 2003 and 2004, at least. --David Edgar 21:08, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Maddox mention

"Ralston was given mention in Maddox's tribute to real men." Is that notable? Maddox has a small following, but in the end he's just a guy that rants about things. -kotra 00:07, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I've removed it. Besides being non-notable, it wasn't even a "public appearance" anyway. -kotra 20:55, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree that it probably shouldn't be mentioned, but it is interesting to note that if the counter on the original Maddox page is to be believed, roughly 2.5 million people have seen his tribute on that site. Whether this equates to more or less people than some of the other programs and reports actually mentioned in this article i don't know... I suppose if its not mainstream its not notable though.

Colorado's 14ers

I think its worth noting that Aron did not just climb all the 14ers, but that he was the first person to solo all 54 of Colorado's 14ers in the winter. <added note- this feat has been accomplished since his injury. So most of those winter solos were achieved with a prosthetic limb.>

Juksey 22:02, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Broken External Link

Aron's personal website link seems to go nowhere. I think the actual site is down though. Should the link point to his geocities page? Is there any info on when the site might be working again? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.217.221.217 (talk) 15:48, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Semi-Criticism

Should we include information on his attempt to sue/shut down a website that criticised him for not traveling with a partner or informing the relevant authorities where he would be going? 121.221.99.164 (talk) 03:03, 24 July 2008 (UTC) Harlequin

Maybe; it depends on how the website handled it. That information is nothing new (Ralston talks at length about his own poor judgment in his autobiography), so maybe he had other reasons for wanting the site shut down. It's possible that what they were saying was libelous ("Ralston's a f---ing moron, we're so much smarter, don't ever listen to Ralston 'cause he has no idea what he's talking about, bitch, rant, etc.") rather than informative. So yeah, we should look into that. intooblv (talk) 04:28, 23 August 2008 (UTC)