ONLINE GAMBLING AND CASINO GUIDE

Today, the Stratosphere hosted the “2009 Scale The Strat” climb, and I went over to the hotel to cover the event.

The premise of “Scale The Strat” is to have people from all over the world fly to Las Vegas in order to climb to the top of the Stratosphere Tower on foot.

What does this accomplish?

It cures lung disease.

Yes, I know.  I laughed too.  Of course, this premise is patently ridiculous, but it’s also quite ridiculous to climb the Stratosphere on foot when there is a perfectly good elevator a few yards away.

Why people run marathons, climb rocks, and subject themselves to this kind of abuse is beyond me, but to each his/her own.  Personally, I have enough problems and challenges in life that I don’t need to make up entirely new ones.  Still, there are far worse hobbies to have than climbing massive staircases.

In order to reach the top of The Strat Tower, you have to climb 108 stories into the sky, which totals 1,455 stairs. According to the event, the first 26 flights are configured like a typical stairwell, but the upper flights are suspended inside the middle of a hollow tower with open air on each side.  There is no exit point, and it is not for people who are claustrophobic, afraid of heights, or have vertigo.

Oh … hell no!

If little Timmy’s life depends on me completing this thing, start picking out caskets.

I have two shot knees, and one bad ankle from years of basketball, and all kinds of other abuse.  I don’t know why little guys have complexes.  It sucks to be big.  You punish every joint in your body twice as fast, and by the time you hit 40, you have outlived your usefulness to the human species.

Even if I could participate in this thing, though, I would not.

I have a rather controversial position on the topic of charities, but in a nutshell, this is my opinion:

They’re scams.

The best ways to make money out of nothing in this country is to form a church.  The second best way is to form a charity or foundation.

Disease walks and “pink ribbon” campaigns are notoriously misleading. As a matter of fact, the pink ribbon campaign ranks second only to “carbon offsets” in the complete and utter nonsense department.

The folks who organize the walks/runs don’t want you to know that in 2009, we are no closer to a cure for breast cancer than we were in 1980.  We are not much closer to a cure for most diseases.  If climbing/walking/running could cure cancer … it would have been cured already.

Most of the money raised in run/walks is used to underwrite the cost of the event. If the remainder of the proceeds are not simply pocketed by the event promoters, where does the “cure” money go?

It certainly does not go toward finding a cure.  Even if they wanted to put the money toward finding a cure, they couldn’t.

Why?

Because there is no coordinated effort in the USA to find a cure for cancer, or any disease.

Pharmaceutical companies are publicly traded corporations that answer to shareholders.  If you want to help fight cancer, buy stock in a company that is trying to develop drugs to combat the disease.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying that the people who participate are bad folks.  To the contrary.  It’s a noble goal, but it makes no difference whatsoever.  If people stopped participating in these events tomorrow, it would have no impact on the diseases whatsoever.   The goodwill of the public just gets preyed upon, and it personally depresses me when that happens.

You can walk until you are blue in the face, but the only thing you are really doing is paying to frigging walk, run, or climb. I’m going to let you in on a little secret.  You can do that for free.

There, I just saved you a small fortune.  You’re welcome.

Then again, I think the majority of people just use these things as social events, so if they get something out of it … good for them.

If the American Lung Association wasn’t bad enough, the event was also sponsored by Anthem.  The local health insurance company that cares so much about you, they raise your rates every year to a point that you can no longer afford health insurance, and they bend over backward to deny each and every claim that crosses their desk.

Bless their caring hearts.

I used to have Anthem.  They are awful.  Every claim I filed was denied, and they only paid the bills when I filed an official dispute.  Since most people don’t go through the trouble of filing disputes, they use the “always deny” business model to keep costs down, and profits up.

If Anthem spent less money sponsoring novelty events, and more money treating patients and keeping premiums down, maybe they actually could help cure a few hundred cases of lung cancer.  But hey, there is no public relations or advertising value in actually curing people.

The U.S health care system would be great if it wasn’t such a dismal failure.

Now that I have completely killed your “make a difference” buzz, I do give the people who participate in these events props.  If “intent” is the measure by which we judge individuals, then these are all very good people … and they certainly looked to be enjoying the climb.

Most of them were smiling when they came back down, and they all seemed to be enjoying themselves.
There was a pretty good cross-section of people participating in the climb.  Male, female, young, old … there was a good representation across the board.

I stopped and talked to several of the climbers, and I was surprised at how many of them were from right here in Vegas.  Then again, the event was held on a Friday morning.  It’s not exactly prime time for tourism. Hell, it hasn’t been prime time for tourism since 2006.

Since you couldn’t go into the stairwell itself unless you were a climber, it wasn’t much of a spectator event … but it was fun to hang out in the lobby and hear tales of the ascent.  One lady told me she “almost died about halfway up”.  I’ll take her word for it.

To their credit, The Stratosphere was prepared for just such casualties.  The base of the tower was surrounded by ambulances and EMT trucks for the duration of the climb.  They really prepared for the worst. Frankly, I am surprised that all of the emergency medical equipment didn’t scare some climbers away.

When all was said and done, and the final climbers made their way down the tower, lung cancer was still uncured.

Oh well, maybe next year.

• Keep updated through Newsletter or on Facebook

  E-mail:
  

  Subscribe
  Unsubscribe