The Walmart book/DVD price war

zontar Opinion

I urge you to avoid supporting the  Walmart-Amazon-Target price war over books and DVDs. You might save a couple of bucks, but authors lose, publishers lose, and other booksellers lose. Do you really want the  big-retailers to control what you can read and watch? Allowing these large corporations to kill off competition is a step in that direction. Please support …

Farewell Charlie

zontar Altitude science, Opinion, The Altitude Experience

Dr. Charles Houston died recently at the age of 96. I first started learning about high-altitude physiology from his book Going Higher. He was the godfather of high-altitude medicine and climbed in Alaska and Asia. My book wouldn’t have been possible without the research he conducted and inspired over the years. Read a fitting tribute by journalist Bill Moyers. Watch …

Two good books

zontar Everest 2009, Opinion

Neil Heil’s ‘Dark Summit’ and Lincoln Hall’s ‘Dead Lucky’ both describe events on the northside of Everest in 2006. Hall’s book talks about his person experiences (surviving a night out high on the north ridge after developing cerebral edema) while Heil covers the entire tragic season (11 deaths I think). Also, famed Italian alpinist Ricardo Cassin died yesterday at the …

You are unique: more interesting research

zontar Altitude science, The Altitude Experience

If you’ve read my book, you know that I talk a lot about your uniqueness, and how that affects your response to altitude, training, etc. Here’s another study which confirms this. Researchers at Tufts University published a study that examined differences among people’s glycemic index (GI) for white bread. Recall that the GI measures the degree to which a food …