Posted on 08/18/2018 5:09:45 PM PDT by daniel1212
Asked why they had quit their office jobs and set off on a biking journey around the world, the young American couple offered a simple explanation: They had grown tired of the meetings and teleconferences, of the time sheets and password changes.
Theres magic out there, in this great big beautiful world, wrote Jay Austin who, along with his partner, Lauren Geoghegan, gave his two weeks notice last year before shipping his bicycle to Africa...
Then came Day 369, when the couple was biking in formation with a group of other tourists on a panoramic stretch of road in southwestern Tajikistan. It was there, on July 29, that a carload of men who are believed to have recorded a video pledging allegiance to the Islamic State spotted them....
In all, four people were killed: Mr. Austin, Ms. Geoghegan and cyclists from Switzerland and the Netherlands.
Two days later, the Islamic State released a video showing five men it identified as the attackers, sitting before the ISIS flag. They face the camera and make a vow: to kill disbelievers.
It was a worldview as diametrically opposed as imaginable to the one Mr. Austin and Ms. Geoghegan were trying to live by. ...
After earning a masters degree from Georgetown University, he began working at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development...
In 2012, he met Lauren Anne Geoghegan, a native of Southern California, who like him had graduated from Georgetown and was now working in the colleges admissions office...
they had embraced the notion that the world was overwhelmingly good, the dozens of annotated photographs and the thousands of words they left behind show.
You read the papers and youre led to believe that the world is a big, scary place, Mr. Austin wrote. People, the narrative goes, are not to be trusted. People are bad. People are evil.
I dont buy it. Evil is a make-believe concept weve invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own
By and large, humans are kind. Self-interested sometimes, myopic sometimes, but kind. Generous and wonderful and kind.
I guess the Disney view of the world isn’t all what it’s cracked up to be.
Im going to put my head into the mouth of this Great WhiteShark, done it a million times . . hold muh beer
Add that kid that died in a bus in Alaska.
Reality,
What a Concept.
Chris & Steve O ‘Hiding in Zebra Suits Pride of Lions attack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3itAYq7ZvI
If evil is a make believe concept Mr Austin then Hitler was as good as Mother Teresa.
Dear diary:
Today the gene pool became just a little cleaner.
Stupid is supposed to hurt.
L
I watched the video. The lion did drag him for a bit, but according to the video he had only minor injuries.
Or maybe the global IQ just jumped a couple points.
i have tried to believe man is essentially good and circumstances make him evil. i really want to believe that but, since i teach 20th century Russian history and carry a GLOCK +1 with 2 spare mags and 2 knives pretty much all the time, obviously i am hedging my bets.
Yeah the poor crocodile hunter. I new he was going to die. Talking to poisonis snakes like they were toddlers. Surfing in the seas around Antarctica and so on. About a week before he was killed I was watching his show and looked over at my wife and said “this guy’s gonna die”. He would talk to scorpions in baby talk. I stomp the $hit outta them.
I wonder if he were spared and the others were murdered would he have a different opinion? I doubt it.
Yes. And the photographer - was it Vermont? - who went to the black bear for better pics.
You are right. The lion was killed as a result. I confused this with another story.
Yes, that is what I was thinking of. The similarity is a basic denial of the nature of the world.
Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men. (1 Corinthians 14:20)
Timothy Treadwell (born Timothy William Dexter; April 29, 1957 October 5, 2003) was an American bear enthusiast, environmentalist, documentary filmmaker, and founder of the bear-protection organization Grizzly People. He lived among grizzly bears of Katmai National Park in Alaska for 13 summers. At the end of his 13th summer in the park, in 2003, he and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard were killed and almost fully eaten by a 28-year-old brown bear,
Grizzly Man is a 2005 American documentary film by German director Werner Herzog... Herzog narrates and offers his own interpretations of events. He concluded that Treadwell had a sentimental view of nature, thinking he could tame the wild bears. Herzog notes that nature is cold and harsh. Treadwell's view clouded his thinking and led him to underestimate danger, resulting in his death and that of his girlfriend. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grizzly_Man
Well put. This story has been posted so many times...but the paries involved were so assertive but blind in their wisdom...it is mind numbing....But was not unexpected.
Reminds me of Tim Snackwell, oops,Treadwell. Living among the Grizzlies was fun, until he and his girlfriend got eaten. Then not so much.
Biking in the ME is fun, until ISIS kills you. Good luck with that.
The basic concept was sound. The problem was the route chosen
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