March 30, 2009

A query

By: Sonny Bunch

When the man who invented BASE jumping on skis dies while BASE jumping on skis,* isn’t it wrong to describe his death as an “accident”? Wouldn’t some variation of “logical endpoint” be far more accurate?

So shouldn’t this sentence — “Legendary extreme skier and base jumper Shane McConkey died yesterday in an accident while filming a movie in Italy” — be more accurately rendered as “Legendary extreme skier and base jumper Shane McConkey died yesterday in an entirely predictable and obvious fashion while filming a movie in Italy”?

I mean, I’m not trying to make fun of the guy’s death, but c’mon. When you ski down and then jump off a cliff with the goal of deploying a parachute into a ravine aren’t you more likely to die than survive?

*Thanks to Conventional Folly reader JM for pointing out that I had misspelled skis as skies. I did this twice. To clarify: I meant the plural of “ski,” not the plural of “sky.” The lesson, as always? I’m an idiot.