Ontologies are often hierarchical in nature, and are then also referred to as taxonomies.

As data models I’d rather say Ontologies are network structures, similar to entity-relationship (ER) models: any entity (a.k.a topic, object, subject, instance, node) can relate to any other entity within certain defined constraints. Typically entities and relationships are typed and equipped with necessary attributes.
Taxonomy is a hierarchical categorization structure i.e. tree as a data structure. Should you add some controlled associations to your taxonomy, such as a narrower or a broader term - we often call them thesaurus.

The most powerful model is ontology, since taxonomies, thesauruses and flat list of controlled terms can be automatically derived from richer network model.

I agree that controlled vocabularies alone cannot fulfill somewhat contradictory business control and usability requirements. You need to seamlessly combine “folksonomy style” free terms and controlled terms so that, recommended terms are easy to tag (consistency, business relevancy), but new concepts can be easily proposed to the “dynamic library of terms”.

Last part of the puzzle is to bring external information sources close to your company terms. Say, your term tagging device shows also common related terms from Wikipedia. My final word is about definitions. Term without definition that clarifies the meaning in a given context is mandatory too. User might want to see the definition as mouse over tooltip on terms all over the desktop and tools.

I guess this comes down to semantics, and the meaning of words and phrases like ‘elevation gain’, ‘rise’, ‘face’ and ‘base’. A lot of this is subjective, and just as with words like ‘wilderness’, there are as many definitions as there are people who venture into the mountains. My own definition of ‘base’, which I allude to in the blog posting, is the nearest relatively ‘flat’ ground near the mountain and is often where you have to start ‘hillwalking’ (as opposed to ‘trekking’), it’s often where you first put your boots on, and it’s often where you park your car in the nearest car park! It’s also often the most logical place for the site of ‘base’ camp. I use this definition because to me it’s what is important - it’s what you physically would experience if you attempted to climb to the summit of the mountain using nothing but your own two feet.

A ‘face’, to me, is a large ‘wall’ on a mountain, defined by its near verticality and requiring climbing techniques and equipment. Measuring the elevation gain of a ‘face’ on a mountain is not the same thing as measuring the elevation gain from its ‘base’ to its summit.

The south ‘Rupal’ face of Nanga Parbat may well be the largest ‘face’ in the world with a rise of 4600m , but the mountain itself doesn’t have the highest base to summit elevation gain - unless you consider the base to be the River Indus, 25km away (and then it’s a contender), but that definition of base is not one that really fits in with my own definition - yes, you could climb Everest from the Dead Sea (and someone has) for the highest elevation gain possible on the surface of the earth, but this is playing the game beyond what I consider to be relevant to the experience of climbing a mountain.

The Wikipedia entry on Denali (Mt. McKinley) has this to say (and I know Wikipedia is not the final authority on anything, but it’s a pretty good starting place for research of any kind):

“McKinley sits atop a sloping plain with elevations from 300 to 900 metres (1,000 to 3,000 ft), for a base-to-peak height of 5,300 to 5,900 metres (17,000 to 19,000 ft)”.

The figure of 5500m I mention in my blog posting for Denali is not measured from sea level, but from this surrounding ‘base’.

There’s a lot of scope for debate here! And I guess that’s what this blog posting is all about, it’s not enough to simplistically say ‘mountain X is the biggest/tallest/largest on Earth’, and it’s also not worth losing your life on a mountain or destroying its environment just so you can claim to have reached this point.

Incorrect. There is no side(north, west, east, south, etc) where the base on Denali starts at sea level.

If you’re looking for mountains with the highest elevation gain from base to summit the best examples would
be Nanga Parbat(south face which in some places almost 15,000 FT which is the most elevation gain in the world
for a mountain face), Dhaulagiri(the west face has about as much elevation gain as the south face of Nanga
Parbat and the wiki says “Dhaulagiri I’s sudden rise from lower terrain is almost unequaled. It rises 7,000
metres from the Kali Gandaki River 30 km to the southeast. The south and west faces rise precipitously over
4000 metres.”), Rakaposhi from the north (from the wiki “Rakaposhi is notable for its exceptional rise over
local terrain. On the north, it rises 5,800 metres (19,029 ft) in only an 11.5 km (7.1 mi) horizontal distance
from the Hunza River. “) and Mount St Elias(not all that far from Denali) according to the wiki “Mount Saint
Elias is notable for being the highest peak in the world that is so close to tidewater; its summit rises only
10 miles (16 km) from the head of Taan Fjord, off of Icy Bay”

So the top 5 most massive mountains looking at the mountains from all sides I would say are
Mount Logan, Denali(McKinley), Nanga Parbat, Rakaposhi and Dhaulagiri. Of those Mount Logan
is probably the most massive simply because the summit plateau goes on for miles.

Actually technically the shield volcanoes like Mauna Loa are supposed to be the most massive
as you said but it just doesn’t have the steep studpenous rise that Nanga Parbat(from the south),
Rakaposhi(from the north) or Dhaulagiri(from the south and west but especially the west).

So when I think of huge impressive mountains I think of those 5 more than anything(Nanga Parbat,
Rakaposhi,Dhaulagiri, Mount Logan and Denali(McKinley))

• US National Geospatial Digital Archive (this follows on from the Alexandria Digital Library): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Geospatial_Digital_Archive
• UK Ordnance Survey MasterMap (not strictly speaking an accessible ‘library’, as it is a highly-commercialised product): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_MasterMap
• EU INSPIRE GeoPortal: http://inspire-geoportal.ec.europa.eu/

• Google Books: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Books
• Library of Congress National Digital Library Program: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Congress_Digital_Library_project
• Digital Public Library of America: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Public_Library_of_America
• Internet Archive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive
• Project Gutenberg (the first serious attempt to create a ‘universal library’ using digital technology, starting in 1971): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gutenberg

The list above is heavily weighted towards the United States and the English language, but other initiatives outside the US are:

• World Digital Library: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Digital_Library
• Europeana: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europeana

• H.G. Wells and his collection of essays ‘World Brain’, first written in 1936: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_brain
• Vannevar Bush with his famous essay first published in 1945 (but first written originally in 1939), ‘As We May Think’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-18367704

Presumably the body lay in an area of long-lying snow and was only revealed when the snow melted. On 1-3 June I undertook an expedition in this area (see my blog posting about this expedition here: ‘Expedition from Blair Atholl to Aviemore via Glen Tilt and the Cairngorms‘), across the western slopes of Braeriach and the Mòine Mhòr which had an extensive snowcover until only a few days before.

I think the crash you are referring to here is that of a Boeing KB-29 Superfortress tanker that crashed in July 1951 near the A713 between Dalmellington and the village of Carsphairn, next to Brockloch Tower, OS grid ref NX 539 959, killing all 11 crew. Not a Catalina, but a similar, large USAF aircraft. The amount of fuel being carried by the tanker might explain the smell you mention.

There is not much trace of the crash remaining now (apart from a memorial), but you can see some information about the crash and photographs of the site on the Peak District Air Accident Research website here:

http://www.peakdistrictaircrashes.co.uk/pages/scotland/scotland44-83950.htm