Alekat

We've had some pretty fun experiences in the winter. Snow sure can ramp up the difficulty of caches that would otherwise be pretty easy. We did one last winter that required an 8 mile snowmobile ride, followed by a half-mile snowshoe in waist deep powder and then a good session of digging in the snow with avalanche shovels. Enjoyed it very much. When placing a cache - In an area that could be under snow for 4-5 months a year, should you work that into the terrain difficulty rating? We just placed a cache that is possible in the winter but the terrain is more difficult and the the weather can be more dangerous. I stated all that in the log, rated it for summer and then added a note saying "in winter this could be a 4 terrain rating."

How many of you who live in cold / snowy climates continue geocaching when winter hits? I've had some fun times "caching through the snow... in a 4X4 sleigh... " Hmm I feel a song coming on.

Alekat's Corollary: Anytime Nazism is mentioned in a thread, Godwin's Law is sure to be mentioned and/or quoted. Sorry, I had to... Crazy thing - I was never arguing the main point of the thread. I just got into a sub-sub-argument. Ooops.

Guess we all got way off topic, huh? Those sub-arguments really kill a thread.

And that is one place where it is too black-and-white. Comparing Darfur to Nazi Germany would be one instance where "Godwin's law" would thus allow such a comparison. But how about a situation that could lead to genocide or extintion? Is that any less serious of a point? Most of us do not think that it could happen, but there are plenty of instances of the killing, beating, etc (the persecution) of someone else who is a member of a group because of who they are (religious membership, sexual-orientation, color, etc) If enough people felt that these people were sub-human, couldn't we see laws being made to reduce their rights? It's not that unimaginable of a jump to genocide. Why? Because it HAS HAPPENED before. And so I see no problem with using the comparison here, because it is a horrific reference point, a reminder of what unfounded beliefs can lead to. It is a most powerful and humbling reference point.

Godwin's is a bit too black-and-white for me. I can see where bringing up Hitler and the Nazis and the holocaust can be meaningless, but I also see that it can be very useful - as a very extreme example. Philosophy is full of extreme examples used to refute blanket-statements that some people take as true. Take for example the statement that "majority opinion is right." I'm sure you can think of many examples where this was not the case. But we could easily fall into a long, unneeded moral discussion. Just trying to say that sometimes we need extreme examples to open eyes. Although I agree that Nazi comparisons are vastly overused. Thanks for the link.

Of course it could. The more the horror is trivialized, the more thinkable it becomes. I agree. And I'm sorry if you thought that I was triavializing the holocaust. On the contrary, I am very sensitive to those horrors, but also to what led up to those horrors. Just trying to help clear up what another post was suggesting, that the holocaust didn't happen all at once, there there were certain sentiments that led to its ugly conclusion. Sentiments, beliefs, although they should be "free", are indeed dangerous. And if we don't examine them very, very carefully, then we are led to ugly conclusions...

One of the great astonishments of my adult life has been watching the generations coming up after me cheapen the holocaust. Must be the way they're teaching WWII these days or something. Every inconvenience, every restraint, every offensive remark is somehow seen as headed straight down the fast track for Godwin territory. If I believed in forcing people to do stuff, I think I'd decree that everyone be made to sit the World at War over and over again until the scale, the hugeness and the wickedness of the whole thing sinks in. And what else is staggering is the thought that it could never happen again... Not to us! Not in such a civilized world!

Do us all a favor and don't compare a sticker in a logbook to a holocaust. Talk about offensive. [edit: self modded] It all starts somewhere, doesn't it?