Thank-you for contacting Cosmic Capacity Corporation’s FAQ regarding our popular Personal Black Hole Product.
1. The price of your product seems astronomical. Will there be equally large maintenance fees?
As they say, if you have to ask, you can’t afford it. But keep in mind, science has shown that if your PBH is not properly maintained it will disappear due to Hawking radiation.
2. Why do you only show artist’s conceptions of the PBH?
It is microscopic. That is the only way to make sure the PBH remains safe for the environment. And of course, CCC is an environmentally mindful enterprise.
3. I need the highest level of security for shredding sensitive documents. Will the PBH provide that?
There is no higher security. Once in, there is no coming out.
4. Our local landfill is filling up. Can I lease my PBH to my local municipality for garbage disposal?
You can within reason. Too much garbage input will cause uncontrolled growth of the Black Hole, and as you must understand, that would be undesirable.
5. The hardware front-in to the PBH supposedly limits the amount of feeding of the PBH I can do. Is that hardware reliable, and can it be defeated?
Any attempts to defeat it will cause a transitory swelling of the PBH, just enough to consume whatever is attempting to tamper with the device. Again, physics dictate that the swelling will be both limited and transient. Of course the device will be consumed in the process and your investment will be lost.
6. Why is there such a prolonged security review for any potential CCC customers?
CC Corp has to be satisfied that criminal elements are not purchasing our equipment for nefarious purposes, such as body and evidence disposal. While our device is obviously ideal for that purpose, we would be negligent to not screen, within the limits of the law, all potential customers.
7. If say, a government entity, were to use your device to dispose of weapons and munitions, would that process be safe?
The physically catastrophic events occurring at the event horizon make safe any material entering it. For Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) questions, please contact our military sales representative.
8. I have heard that black holes may spawn other universes. If so, are there security concerns associated with that?
Well, as they say, “Garbage in, garbage out.” But security should not be your concern. Any universe spawned by human waste or discarded items is unlikely to be suitable for life as we know it.
9. The bullet riddled body of my traitorous Uncle Harry is unlikely to become a star or something on the other side. Right?
With a sardonic sneer typical of the glistening-haired, easily-bored waiters in upper crust restaurants, he poked a neatly manicured finger into my menu. “It’s right there. You chose carbon dioxide or methane.”
Even though that conversation is imaginary, it is true, apparently, that in certain parts of the country where fracking is popular for extracting natural gas from the ground, there is some risk of that gas being forced into aquifers feeding wells intended to provide potable water.
Obviously water infiltrated with dissolved methane should not be used for cooking on gas stoves. I don’t need to explain the consequences.
And no doubt, drinking methane containing water could turn the high-school males’ risky game of flatus ignition into a pyrotechnic event competing favorably with the energy release of flaming napalm.
Although the Environmental Protection Agency seems to be silent on the issue, the AMA has recently posted their concern about fracking, for medical reasons. Not all of those reasons are proctological in nature.
Having been an observer and worker within the medical science community for many years, I have only two thoughts that might cheer the energy industry.
The first is that sometimes the medical community makes an issue of things that the human body produces, like cholesterol. Cholesterol is vital for a healthy nervous system. In fact, it is so important that the body makes it, just to make sure it has enough. So why do I have to deprive myself of dietary cholesterol which accompanies the finest food in the world; like lobster, fried fish, and filet mignon? Because supposedly it’s bad for me. That’s what they say, even though my body is producing prodigious amounts to keep itself healthy. Non sequitur is the phrase that comes to mind.
I have nothing against physicians. My father was one, as is my son. Some of my best friends are physicians; and one of them alerted me to this news item. Arguably, physicians have even saved my life.
As the son of a physician I grew up reading the Journal of the American Medical Association … which was almost as entertaining to a young boy as National Geographic. But I don’t understand the profession’s concern for methane in water. After all, methane is colorless and odorless, and does not react with biological systems. What goes in, comes out, unperturbed.
Like cholesterol, the human body produces methane. Methane is produced by bacteria in the gut (so-called methanogens) whose sole purpose is to live well and prosper in the low oxygen environment of the large intestine, and as a byproduct of that anaerobic life style, produce methane. Methane now actually seems to have some purpose in the gut; it stimulates the human immune system. So, apparently, it has a biological purpose. Without it, one could argue, we would literally get sick.
OK, there you have it: my two thoughts that might cheer the energy industry.
But since I don’t anticipate a check coming in the mail from the gas companies, now I’ll share my scientific opinion, of sorts. I once was a fellow in the Water Resources Management Training program at Georgia Tech. (Curiously, the director of the program was named Dr. Carl Kindswater, presumably originally Kindswasser. In German, Wasser is water, and best I can tell, Kindswasser is amniotic fluid. So in a sense it is truly water of children.)
I honestly don’t know if the ironically named Program Director spoke German or not, but I suspect that if he did, he might respond thusly to the story of fracking product found in our precious, and clearly mismanaged, fresh-water supplies.
“Sind Sie aus Ihrem brennenden Geist?”
According to Google, that would mean, “Are you out of your flaming mind?” Somehow, that phrase seems entirely appropriate.
By the way, I always take water without gas, just in case.
I admit it, my early training in physics has made me irritatingly sensitive to the principle of parsimony.
Parsimony, pronounced similarly to “alimony”, can be summed up by the following: the simplest approach to understanding nature should be considered before contemplating a more complicated line of reasoning. In a famous example, it is more probable that planets, including the Earth, orbit around the sun than the visible planets and the sun orbit around the Earth. Of course, in a different time that probability was not obvious to the common man. But then they hadn’t been thinking about parsimony.
Thank-goodness someone (Nicolaus Copernicus) did.
In the search for habitable exoplanets (planets outside of our solar system), the following statement was recently made by astronomer Steve Vogt in response to a storm of skepticism about a potentially habitable planet. “I do believe that the all-circular-orbits solution is the most defensible and credible,” he said. “For all the reasons I explain in detail … it wins on account of dynamic stability, goodness-of-fit, and the principle of parsimony (Occam’s Razor; in Latin, lex parsimoniae).”
William of Occam (also Ockham) was an English theologian of the 14th century. He did not invent the premise behind his razor, but he famously used it to slice through the complicated philosophies of the day and rebut them by an unfaltering demand for simplicity over complexity.
Photo credit: damianskinner.com
Medical students are taught essentially the same principle, albeit using different words: “When you hear hoof-beats, don’t think of zebras.” Wise physicians know that occasionally zebras do show themselves, but they should not be the first thought when a patient presents with unusual symptoms.
If simplicity is to be generally preferred over complexity, then an example in the diving literature comes to mind. This example annoys me to no end, but I’m slowly coming to terms with it. It is the growing popularity of referring to the respiratory effort required to breathe through a scuba regulator or a closed-circuit underwater breathing apparatus (a rebreather) as work (in joules, J) per tidal volume in liters, L.
When work in joules (J) is divided by volume (L), dimensionally the result is pressure (kiloPascals, kPa). To be exact, what is often called work of breathing in diving is actually the average pressure exerted by a person over the entire volume of a breath. The principal of parsimony says that if it is a pressure, if it has units of pressure, then we should call it a pressure (kPa) and not something more complicated, such as Work of Breathing specified with units of J/L.
The light grey ellipsoidal area within this pressure-volume loop is equal to the work (J) of breathing for that breath.
(Examples in the regulatory diving literature correctly using Work of Breathing with units of joules can be found in early editions of NATO STANAG 1410. EN250:2000 is an example using the units of J/L for work.)
I find in my dealings with non-respiratory physiologists, that the concept of work of breathing is difficult to grasp since mathematically it involves a definite integral of pressure over a change in volume. I have made various attempts to simplify the concept, but I still find knowledgeable medical professionals misunderstanding it. In fact, mathematical integrals seem to be as frightening to most physicians as poorly dissected cadavers would be to laymen. Even engineers who certainly should grasp the intricacies of work and power end up confused.
I’m sure it adds to the confusion when some diving physiologists speak in quotients. For example, since a cubit is a length of 48 cm, and a hectare is 2.47105 acres, you could describe a person’s height as 165,400 cubic cubits/hectare. Dimensionally, that would be correct for a six foot (1.8 m) tall individual. However, most people would prefer the units of feet or meters rather than cubic cubits per hectare. Certainly, the simpler description is far more parsimonious than the former.
The shaded area within this triangle is equal to the “Work” inside the previous P-V loop. By dividing by tidal volume, you obtain the average mouth pressure on the vertical axis.
For the same reason, it makes more sense to speak of a descriptor with units of pressure as simply pressure (kPa) rather than a quotient of work per liter (Joules/L).
If describing a simple parameter like pressure as a quotient is not defensible scientifically, is it defensible psychologically?
Maybe. The U.S. Navy has used terms like “resistive effort” to convey the impression that a volume-averaged pressure is something that can be sensed by a diver. To breathe, divers have to generate a pressure in their chest, and that pressure generation requires effort.
“Effort” is admittedly not a hard-science term: it doesn’t even pretend to be. However, the use of “Work of Breathing” connotes hard science; the concept of work is pure physics. But as I have shown, the way it is increasingly used in diving is not pure physics at all. So its use is misleading in the eyes of a purist, and undoubtedly confusing to a young engineer or physicist.
But to a diver, does it matter? Does it somehow make sense? Do divers care about parsimony?
Well, I have yet to find anyone who does not intuitively understand the notion of the work involved in breathing. If they have asthma, or have tried breathing through a too long snorkel, they sense the work of breathing. So I imagine that the inexactitude of J/L is of no import to divers.
However, I also believe that the over-complication of an arguably simple concept should be just as unappealing to designers of underwater breathing apparatus as it was to William of Occam or, for that matter, the designer of the Cosmos.
Under thick ice in the Ross Sea, near McMurdo, Antarctica.
When scuba diving under 3-m thick polar ice with no easy access to the surface, the last thing you want to worry about is a failure of your scuba regulator, the system that provides air on demand from the aluminum or steel bottle on your back.
However, cold water regulators do fail occasionally by free-flowing, uncontrollably releasing massive amounts of the diver’s precious air supply. When they fail, the second stage regulators, the part held in a scuba diver’s mouth, is often found to be full of ice.
The U.S. Navy uses scuba in polar regions where water temperature is typically -2° C (28° F). That water temperature is beyond cold; it is frigid. Accordingly, the Navy Experimental Diving Unit developed in 1995 a machine-based regulator testing protocol that most would consider extreme. However, that protocol has reliably reflected field diving experience in both Arctic and Antarctic diving regions, for example, in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, or under the Ross Sea ice near McMurdo Station.
There are currently both philosophical and quantitative differences between European standards and the U.S. Navy standard for cold water regulator testing. Regulators submitted for a European CE mark for cold water diving must pass the testing requirements specified in European Normative Standard EN 250 January 2000 and EN 250 Annex A1 of May 2006. In EN 250 the water temperature requirement for cold water testing ranges from 2° C to 4° C. Oftentimes, regulators that pass the EN 250 standard do not even come close to passing U.S. Navy testing.
An iced up, highly modified Sherwood SRB3600 Maximus second stage regulator
The Navy’s primary interest is in avoiding regulator free-flow under polar ice. The breathing effort, which is a focal point of the EN 250 standard, is of lesser importance. For instance, the 1991 Sherwood SRB3600 Maximus regulators long used by the U.S. Antarctic program have been highly modified and “detuned” to prevent free-flows. You cannot buy them off-the-shelf. Detuning means they are not as easy to breathe as stock regulators, but they also don’t lose control of air flow to the diver; at least not very often. Here is a photo of one that did lose control.
NEDU performs a survival test on regulators, and any that pass the harshest test are then tested for ease of breathing. The so-called “freeze-up” evaluation breathes the regulator on a breathing machine with warmed (74 ±10°F; 23.3 ±5.6°C) and humidified air (simulating a diver’s exhaled breath) at 198 feet sea water (~6 bar) in 29 ± 1°F (-1.7 ± 0.6°C) water. Testing is at a moderately high ventilation rate of 62.5 L/min maintained for 30 minutes. (In my experience a typical dive duration for a dry-suit equipped diver in Antarctica is 30-40 min.)
To represent polar sea water, the test water is salted to a salinity of 35-40 parts per thousand. The possible development of a “freeze up” of the regulator 2nd stage, indicated by a sustained flow of bubbles from the exhaust port, is determined visually.
In contrast, the European standards call for slightly, but critically, warmer temperatures, and do not specify a duration for testing at an elevated respiratory flow rate. I have watched regulators performing normally under EN 250 test conditions (4° C), but free-flowing in water temperatures approaching 0° C. Those tests were run entirely by a non-U.S. Navy test facility, by non-U.S. personnel, using a U.K. produced breathing machine, with all testing being conducted in a European country. The differences in testing temperatures made a remarkable difference.
Haakon Hop of the Norwegian Polar Institute in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard.
The NEDU testing results have been validated during field testing by scientific diving professionals under Arctic and Antarctic ice. The same regulators that excel in the NEDU protocol, also excel in the field. Conversely, those that fail NEDU testing fare poorly under the polar ice. For instance, a Norwegian biologist and his team exclusively use Poseidon regulators for their studies of sea life inhabiting the bottom of Arctic ice. (The hard hat in the photo is to protect cold skulls from jagged ice under the ice-pack.) Poseidon produces some of the few U.S. Navy approved cold-water regulators.
As is usual for a science diver in the U.S. Antarctic Program, a friend of mine had fully redundant regulators for his dive deep under Antarctic ice. He was fully prepared for one to fail. As he experienced both those regulator systems failing within seconds of each other, with massive free-flow, he might have been thinking of the words of Roberto “Bob” Palozzi spoken during an Arctic Diving Workshop run by the Smithsonian Scientific Diving program. Those words were: “It’s better to finish your dive before you finish your gas…”
In both NEDU’s and the Smithsonian’s experience, any regulator can fail under polar ice. However, those which have successfully passed U.S. Navy testing are very unlikely to do so.
A diver’s breathing equipment, helmet, gas bottle, umbilicals and buoyancy compensator lie stretched out on the grey concrete floor. The diving gear has a look of sadness about it. Perhaps that equipment will tell a story of why its owner is dead, but usually it does not.
Storm clouds from 30,000 ft. Photo by Wendell Hull.
In another part of the world the NTSB catalogs the fragments of an airplane shredded by the elements and thrown in a heap back to earth. The only good thing to come from an aircraft accident is that usually there are enough clues from wreckage, radio recordings, radar returns and weather reports to piece together a story of the end of life for pilot and passengers.
It’s always the question of “Why?” that drives any investigation.
Perhaps it is the knowing of how death comes, so unexpectedly to surprised souls, that makes it just a little bit easier to make the mental and emotional connection between an interesting moment and a deadly moment. If that is true, and I believe it is, then the telling of such macabre stories can be justified. It is not a telling through morbid interest, but a sincere belief that by examining death closely enough we can somehow force it to keep its distance.
That may be foolish thinking, but humankind seems to have a hunger for it, that esoteric knowledge, so perhaps it is a truism. Perhaps we sense instinctively that the knowing of something makes it less fearsome.
Being a student of diving and diving accidents, I know full well how unexpected events can make you question what is real and what is not, what is normal and what is abnormal. Without practiced calm and reasoning, unexpected events can induce panic, and underwater, panic often leads to death. That is also true for aviation.
The best preventative for panic is a realistic assessment of risk. Risks are additive. For instance, flying in the clouds is accompanied by a slight degree of risk, but with a properly maintained airplane, with a judicious use of backup instruments and power supplies, and with recent and effective training, that risk can be managed. In fact, I delight in flying in clouds; it is never boring, and I know that I am far safer than if I had been driving on two lane roads where the potential for death passes scant feet away every few seconds.
Flying at night is another risk. If something were to go terribly wrong, finding a safe place to land becomes a gamble. On the other hand, seeing and avoiding aircraft at night is simple because of the brilliant strobe lighting which festoons most aircraft. For me, the beauty, peace and calm air of night flight makes it well worth the slight risk.
Garmin NEXRAD Weather display.
Technology has made weather flying safer and, I have to admit, more enjoyable. The combination of GPS driven maps and NEXRAD weather has made it almost impossible to blunder into truly bad weather. During the daytime, my so-called eyeball radar helps to confirm visually what NEXRAD is painting in front of me. If it looks threatening, it probably is.
Unlike aircraft weather radar, virtually every pilot can afford to have NEXRAD weather in the cockpit. And unlike aviation radar, NEXRAD can see behind storms to show the view 100 miles downrange, or more. Having often flown in stormy weather without benefit of NEXRAD, I truly rejoice in the benefits of that technology.
WX 900 Stormscope
I routinely fly with not only NEXRAD, but also a “Storm Scope” that shows me in real time where lightning is ionizing the sky. Those ozone-laced areas are off-limits to wise aviators. But sometimes even a Storm Scope is not enough to keep the willies, or as some call it, your spidey sense, from striking. (Presumably spiders are not particularly cerebral, but they are pretty adept at surviving, at least as a genus and species.)
I was recently flying around stormy weather, carefully avoiding the worst of it, and maneuvered into a position that would provide a straight shot home with yellow tints showing on the weather screen, suggesting at most light to moderate precipitation. I had flown that sort of weather many times; it usually held just enough rain to wet the windshield.
However, my internal risk computer made note of the following factors: we were in the clouds so if weather worsened I wouldn’t see it. Night was approaching which markedly darkened the wet skies we were beginning to enter. The clouds and darkness conspired to make useless my eyeball radar. In addition, the Storm Scope was unusually ambiguous at that moment. I thought it was confirming a safe passage home, but I could not be 100% certain.
On top of that, the FAA recently warned that NEXRAD signals can be considerably more delayed than indicated on the weather display. The device might say the data is 2 min old, but the actual delay could be 10 minutes or more. In other words, the displayed image could be hiding the truth.
Aircraft weather radar.
Planes have been lost because of untimely NEXRAD data. For that reason there is a philosophical difference between NEXRAD and true radar. On board weather radar is said to be a tactical weather penetration aid, and NEXRAD is a strategic avoidance asset. My gut told me that at that moment in airspace and time the boundaries between those two uses, tactical and strategic, were getting fuzzy.
It is times like that when an awareness of the slim margin between a safe flight or dive, and a deadly flight or dive, becomes a survival tool. In this case, I and many other experienced pilots have made the call to turn around and land. Unfortunately, the record and the landscape is littered with the wreckage of those who chose otherwise.
They forgot just how thin the margin of safety can be.
The flight (green line) from Cobb County Regional (KRYY) to Panama City (KECP) was interrupted by a stop at Montgomery AL.
Some people command your attention, without effort or intention on their part. For the few seconds that it took for her to walk past me, the lady pilot was one of those people.
She was an attractive blond, and tall, and her posture in no way diminished her height. She walked with poise and purpose, chatting and smiling to another pilot in those Navy Blue Delta Airlines Uniforms. The fact that she had four stripes on her shoulder, indicating her Captain’s rank, immediately explained part of her purposefulness. The fact that she was, or appeared, young, in her early to mid-thirties, spelled out her competence, which I sensed immediately. It was doubtful she could have risen so quickly through the ranks unless she excelled at her job.
The fact that she was attractive is not what separated her from the other women in the Atlanta concourse at that same moment. There were lots of pretty girls there. Her bearing was as if she was in Command of a U. S. Navy heavy Cruiser; that’s what separated her from the rest.
As I later sat in a window seat of our Boeing 757 being readied for departure to Pittsburgh, I saw that the blond Captain was indeed in charge of a heavy cruiser; a 757-200 (FAA registered as N604DL) parked beside us. I watched her as she climbed down the steps of the boarding platform and performed her inspection walk around the aircraft she would be commanding. If she is like most pilots, she would also be admiring the beautiful machine she had the good fortune to fly, while thinking about her responsibility for the lives of the passengers who would soon be boarding.
N604DL on departure, from the Flight Aware web site.
She must have made that walk thousands of time in her career, but every little part of the aircraft visible to her was examined. The fact that most of those parts loomed far above her attested to the size of the aircraft, and made her job more difficult. But she took her time, being fully devoted to her work.
I once asked a Captain and First Officer pair how it was decided who would make the walk around the aircraft. The wise-old Captain said it depended on the weather; and the experienced first officer agreed, smiling broadly. That day in Atlanta the weather was fair, and not too hot, but I got the feeling that lady pilot would do that job regardless of the weather.
A Boeing 757 cockpit. Click to enlarge.
As I watched this Delta Captain make her rounds and return up the stairs to her office, the 757 cockpit, I thought that I had just witnessed a nascent cinematic moment. But this pilot was no movie star, in all probability, although I’m sure she could have been, if that had been her ambition.
And then in a three-second flash of irony, I saw her on the video screen no more than 12 inches away from my face. Our 757 crew was playing a video safety brief, and in the closing frames that blond pilot looked back from her left seat in the cockpit of a Delta jet and said with her easy smile, “Welcome to Delta.”
As I later reached my hotel room in Pittsburg, I opened up Flight Aware on my iPad and found that N604DL was nearing its destination of Las Vegas. I smiled, thinking that Delta’s passengers on that flight were willing to gamble on the slots and card tables, but they didn’t have to gamble on their flight. They had an ace in the cockpit.
If you are interested in a career in commercial aviation, you might find a blog posting on the Delta Airlines web site of interest. It’s written by an African-American female who was a copilot for Delta at the time of the writing. It describes how she ended up in the right seat of a major commercial carrier.
Not every animal that flies is an aviator. June bugs and mosquitoes fly without any particular destination in mind; they just seem to flit around, hoping to detect a random meal. In my way of thinking, to be called an aviator you have to navigate, to use the air as a travel medium with a destination in mind, either consciously or subconsciously. By definition, navigation is not random; it is purposeful. Migrating Monarch Butterflies qualify as navigators and aviators, and so do migratory Bats.
While visiting Austin, Texas, I searched the front pages of the Austin Telephone directory for points of interest. No. 1 on their list was the nightly bat show at the downtown Congress Ave. Bridge.
I was just one of hundreds (maybe thousands) of tourists waiting on and around the bridge to see the show that night. Once downtown I was told that about half of the 1.5 million strong Mexican free-tailed bat colony had already migrated to Mexico for the winter, but the remaining bats might put on a good show at sundown. They did.
Bats exiting the Congress Ave. Bridge, Austin, TX. From: http://joyridevideos.com/567/ignite-your-senses-in-austin-tx/
Once the skies had fully darkened, I saw what looked like a soundless horizontal waterfall of bats erupt from underneath the crevices of the bridge structure. Can you imagine 1000 planes a second leaving a major airport at the same time, using all available runways, with no controllers and no collisions? That’s how it seemed.
I watched with morbid fascination as a very fat bug made the biggest mistake of its short life by blundering near the bat departure pattern. At least five bats peeled out of the pattern and within milliseconds honed in on the hapless target. The first bat to the target must have gotten a meal because the squishy bug disappeared out of the traffic pattern with nary a puff of smoke. No NTSB investigation needed.
Walking up on the bridge for a different view I saw an even more incredible sight. Every once and awhile a bat jetting up the departure pathway would make a high speed 180° turn and head straight back into the torrent, without getting hit, best I could tell in the midst of the furiously flinging wings. It made the head-to-head passes of the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels look like child’s play. Why they did that I don’t know; maybe just for the adrenaline rush.
On the other hand, even the best aviators can screw up. I saw evidence of this back in Panama City while looking out at my pool one evening. In the dim light I could see ripples in the usually glass smooth surface of the pool. On investigating, I found a Little Brown Bat in the pool, spreading its wings to support itself by the surface tension of the water. They really were — dare I say it — water wings. But it was clearly tired and in danger of drowning.
Had his bat radar gone on the fritz? Or did he just mess up like the occasional seaplane pilot who becomes disoriented by a glassy water surface. On the one hand, bats can maneuver safely through a storm of oncoming high velocity fellow bats, but could be foiled by something as innocuous as a still water surface. Strange.
I guess even great human pilots have messed up for lesser reasons.
A frightened Little Brown Bat.
I scooped up the bat in a net and laid the wet furball on the ground to recuperate. Oddly, after a minute’s rest, the bat started crawling forward towards my foot using the hooks on its wings to pull himself along. Then he climbed onto my shoe. My Granddaughter who was watching the whole scene thought that was very strange. I did too.
But then the little water-soaked bat started climbing up my slightly nervous leg. I assure you the sensation of having a bat crawl up your leg can be discomforting, but my sense of curiosity was far more compelling. I was trusting he wasn’t looking for a place to bite me. However, as he got closer to my most sensitive region, that thought began to really concern me. Fortunately all he wanted to do was climb, to safety from predators I assume. At least he didn’t consider me a predator. Maybe he thought I was a tree: I was, after all, standing oh so still.
As he approached my neck I began to wonder whether he was a werebat, looking for a succulent neck. Then it occurred to me that fleshy earlobes might be ripe for biting — like fat bugs perhaps, in a bat’s mind. Yet strangely I didn’t feel threatened, even when I could feel his hooked wings gently grab a “handhold” on my neck.
I then realized that once he reached the top of my head he had nowhere to go. And the thought of a bat sitting on my head for a while was not all that appealing. I wasn’t about to pick him off my head without a thickly-gloved hand. They do have teeth.
So I choose a non-confrontational course of action. I leaned my head into a tall pine tree trunk, and sure enough the soaking wet little bat kept on going. The photo below taken from behind him shows him (or her) continuing the ever-so-slow climb.
Water-logged Little Brown Bat climbing up a pine tree.
I have mixed emotions about the fact that my granddaughter did not take a picture of me leaning my head against the tree — with a bat on my head.
Moral of the story for human aviators? The little guys are absolutely awesome fliers, with unbelievably fast reflexes, unerring navigation, and the best possible terrain avoidance equipment. But even they can screw up. And when they do, their survival depends on the help of others; others willing to take a risk to help the fallen air-critters.
I was pleased to share this Nature moment with my Granddaughter. After all, it’s not every day you get to watch a bat climb your Grandfather, from his toes to his head.
Every fall I look forward to the current of Monarch Butterflies coursing their way across our local roads and beaches in Panama City Beach, FL, searching for one last refueling stop before heading out across the Gulf of Mexico to overseas destinations. They know where they are going enmasse, so casually it seems, not in the least concerned about the doubtful safety of single engine flight over vast stretches of unforgiving water.
While over land, most fly low, at human shoulder height, perhaps looking for food. It makes for an almost magical walk outside — continuously being passed by little animated flying machines. When crossing roads, most of the migrating butterflies, but not all, climb to safer altitudes, and increase their speed. I like to think that strategy is deliberate, but it could in fact be nothing more than the effects of buffeting by the wake of passing cars. Nevertheless, their success rate at crossing roads seems to be better than that of squirrels, which are arguably larger-brained animals. But then squirrels are dare-devils, not aviators.
I have walked to the water’s edge, watching how the little aviators behave as they approach the beginning of their long leg over water. They do not hesitate, but fling themselves forward into whatever awaits them.
Whenever I witness this sight I want to cheer them on, like Americans must have cheered Lindbergh as he set off across the Atlantic for the first time. It seems like folly for them to attempt such a journey, but amazingly, millions of them make that transit every year.
Image Credit Flickr User Texas Eagle
The scene during their return in the spring is even more emotional. Walking on the beach at that time, you see the surf washing in the numerous bodies of those aviators who almost made it, reminiscent of the beaches at Normandy. And like the scenes of war, dragonflies lie in wait at the water’s edge attacking the weakened Monarchs soon as they cross over the relative safety of land.
I have been so infuriated at the sight of such wanton attacks that once I chased a heavily laden dragonfly with a Monarch in its grasp, and caused the little Messerschmitt to release its prey.
The Monarch I saved did not thank-me by landing on my shoulder to take a breather. It was too dangerous to stop, and it had places to go, places far away from the sea, driven by a genetic memory of fields of milkweed.
Oddly enough, experts seem unsure as to whether there is actually a migratory flyway from the Panama City area to Mexico, the over-wintering grounds for most Monarchs. To me the answer is obvious; even though the flight of roughly 800 miles over water with no place to feed is almost unimaginable. The little aviators make that trip, spring and fall, as proven by the millions of orange and black-rayed butterflies crossing the white sand shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and by the surf-washed bodies of those brave aviators who died in the attempt.
Migration map from Queen's University Dept of Psychology
I began the trip with the following adage firmly in my mind: “It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.” Admittedly, at the time that apocryphal quote might not yet have been uttered, but I was nevertheless well familiar with the principle.
The trip was an end-of-the-school year ride from downtown Atlanta to Prairie Village, Kansas on a 50 cc piston displacement Honda motorcycle. I don’t know of anyone else who has tried it, but I can attest, in hindsight, that it is a risky idea.
But it was adventuresome, and adventure was what my twenty-one year old mind craved after spending another school year trying to force college physics into my head. But I knew there was no way to get permission. I would just show up at my parent’s doorstep, and accept the consequences later. Considering how it turned out, that was a reasonable plan.
A stroke volume of 50 cc is minuscule for road bikes. It is in fact approximately equal to the cardiac stroke volume of a typical nine-year old child’s heart. No nine-year old I know is capable of carrying a 145 lb college student on his back for over 800 miles. Not even close. But that was what I was asking that little Honda to do, and it made a valiant effort to do just that. Of course I had to help by not exceeding 35 mph.
The logistics had seemed doable; 862 miles at 35 mph yielded about 24 hrs of driving. The Honda dealer advised me to keep the speed no higher than 35 mph since the top speed for the little Honda was 40 mph. I was also advised to stop about every 30 min to an hour to let the engine cool down. That seemed like reasonable advice, to which I adhered religiously, except for one time.
In late May headed northwest I should be able to count on almost 12 hours of daylight. So I would leave Saturday AM, and arrive late Sunday. Just to be sure, I’d allow three days and tell my parents to expect me Monday evening.
They assumed I’d be flying commercial.
Route to the Mississippi River (from Google Earth). Click for a larger image.
Due to the low top speed of the 4-stroke, overhead valve Honda engine, the trip was planned for small, two lane roads. And that path laid out for me a route through small towns of Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, a sliver of Kentucky, and Missouri with colorful names like Natchez Trace, Bible Hill, Howes Mill, and sometimes curious names like Boss, Minimum, Meta, Enon, Chloride, and Topsy. I travelled through towns so small and out-of-the-way that Google’s Street-View cars still haven’t found them all.
A sign of things to come happened soon after I entered hill country. Having spent much of my life to that point in eastern Kansas, I was starved for vertical relief. When I came across an inviting road-cut during one of those down-times, when the engine was cooling, I set about to climb the road-cut, just for the fun of it, and perhaps to scout the road ahead. It was a scramble, loose rocks slipping beneath my feet, but eventually I worked my way to the top. But coming back down proved more daunting. For some reason the slope seemed even more crumbly than on the way up. As I was pondering which way to step, a car, one of the very few I had seen on that road, pulled up below me. The driver asked if I needed help.
How nice. Of course I said I was fine, but thanks, and they drove off. After all, unless they were angels with wings to pluck me off the rocks, what could they do?
As they made their way around the bend, out of sight, my next step was not good, at all. I started sliding, turning around instinctively to grab something solid, and managed to open a 5 in. long tear in my corduroy pants with the only solid rock I unfortunately found. If I had not been wearing tough cloth, that tear would have been in my leg.
Upon reaching the bottom where my bike rested, I motored on, thoroughly embarrassed by my naiveté.
As my first day of travel neared an end in a respectably-sized town, I dragged myself up the steps of an old two-story house with a “room to rent” sign in front of it. And that is where I met my first angel.
As the elderly lady came to the door, she recoiled slightly at the sight of the young man with pants with unintended earthen streaks on them, and a long tear hanging open. After hearing my story, of the young son heading home on a wimp of a scooter, her sense of mothering must have overcome her sense of caution. She fed me and let me shower and sleep in her house that night.
She didn’t have wings, but she might as well have.
Route through Missouri (From Google Earth). Click for a larger image.
I met the second angel the next day, on Sunday. Early that day I ran out of two-lane road. There was simply no way to continue on my way without a hopefully short run on an interstate highway. You may not have noticed, but most interstates in the U.S. have a 40 mph minimum speed limit. My Honda had a 40 mph speed limit too. So I set off, hugging the right edge of the road, just barely meeting the legal speed limit. When semi trucks passed me I was able to draft them for a few seconds, feeling myself accelerated up to maybe 50 mph by the truck’s suction. It was exhilarating.
But probably not too good for the bike. Not long after making my way back to two-lane country roads, the engine began to run roughly. And it’s top speed was declining noticeably. My scooter and I limped into a small town on Sunday afternoon, and I set about to find some help. Stopping at a gas station I was sorely concerned with my seemingly hopeless predicament, until one of the men sitting outside pointed to his small engine repair sign propped in the gas station window. Well, a 50 cc engine is a small engine, and if he was willing to help me out, I was willing to let him.
The fact that his man might have been an angel occurred to me when he started taking apart my little engine, on Sunday afternoon mind you, and found the problem was due to a broken piston ring. No problem, he happened to have a ring that would fit a small Honda piston. What are the odds of that?
I learned a lot that day about small engines, and about the kindness of small town folk who are accustomed to coming to the rescue of those in need. I paid the man the pittance he asked for, to cover the cost of the piston ring, and hit the road an hour or two later with a revived engine.
Hickman Ferry (photo credit Buddy Rogers)
Upon reaching the Mississippi River at Hickman, Kentucky, I and a semitrailer truck were parked at a ferry ramp waiting on the next ferry. We had a long wait ahead of us, and the mid-day heat was becoming oppresive. Just as I was surrendering to the inevitability of a long, hot wait, the truck driver opened up a small access door in the back of his semi and pulled out a cool watermelon. He had an entire load of them, and with a wink he confided that one wouldn’t be missed.
I’ve never had any better watermelon than that one.
On Monday, the last day of my planned trip, I still had 350 miles to cover. At 35 mph it would be doable in daylight if it weren’t for those incessant cooling down breaks. But as I inched across the map of Missouri I knew I would be arriving in Prairie Village Kansas after dark.
Unfortunately as dusk was approaching, the headlight which had been burning for safety nonstop since my departure from Atlanta, died. Truly, the thought of driving into Kansas City traffic at night without a headlight was simply untenable, not to mention illegal. So I made the decision to press on without the engine cooling spells. I would try to beat nightfall to my doorstep.
Two things brought my trip to a premature end. I pulled into a truck stop in Raytown, Missouri, on the outskirts of Kansas City, as it became fully dark, and as one of the engine valves decided it was too burnt to continue.
The phone call home that night was intense.
Even though my Dad offered to pick me up, I told him I’d make it the rest of the way on my own; which I did. The next morning after a short bus ride home, I walked up to the house and received the dressing down I deserved.
At home at last, Prairie Village, KS. The tear in these same pants had been repaired by the time the photo was taken.
But as the emotion of the moment wore off, I could see a little smile of pride, and wonder, at what his son had done.
My Dad and my bride, after I'd matured a little, and graduated to a 350 cc Honda.
By the way, after the bike was repaired, it was shipped back to Atlanta, not driven.
“HEVVN” is the politically correct, government approved spelling for a place pronounced, as you might expect, “Heaven”. I’ve been there, and I could go again today if I wanted. But since I’m still a living, breathing person I can’t stay there.
It should come as no surprise to you that HEVVN is not a town or city; it’s nowhere on land. It’s not an island: it’s not on the water. It can best be described as an ephemeral place somewhere in the “air”; in space if you will.
Theoretically, an infinite number of people could be at HEVVN all at the same time, without actually being at the exact same place at the same time. There is, in other words, considerable spatial ambiguity, uncertainty, about where one might be in HEVVN. In an earthly sense, two people at HEVVN might be miles apart, not even able to see each other, not even aware of each other’s presence.
I would guess that on a typical day, thousands arrive at HEVVN: on a slow day, maybe merely hundreds.
If the government admits to a HEVVN, does it admit to a HELL? Well, not exactly. But it does admit to a SATAN.
But don’t worry – if you’re at HEVVN, you won’t be anywhere near SATAN. HEVVN and SATAN are a thousand miles apart.
I’m still being serious…really.
HEVVN intersection lies in the center of the blue donut. Click for a larger image.
Are you confused? Well, here’s an explanation. HEVVN is a Federal Aviation Administration defined airway intersection used, along with an assigned altitude, to define an aircraft’s position. HEVVN lies roughly ten miles off the coast of the Florida Panhandle, and connects the major flyways of the Florida Panhandle and the north-south air corridors of the Florida penisula. Theoretically many aircraft can simultaneously be at HEVVN, as long as they are separated by at least 500 feet in altitude.
SATAN is a wicked sounding GPS fix a few miles north of the Portsmouth International Airport at Pease Tradeport near Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I am surprised Portsmouth would allow itself to be associated with such a diabolical name, but perhaps the government never told the city elders before it was too late to change the name. Or perhaps the word SATAN no longer engenders the fear and loathing it used to.
SATAN intersection (red triangle). Click for larger image.
Oddly enough, SATAN is included in a much more innocent sounding group of GPS fixes, those defining a GPS approach to runway 16 at Pease Airport. When cleared for the GPS 16 approach coming from the west, the aircraft is expected to follow sequentially a route to the airport using up to five GPS fixes. Those five fixes, including the two “missed approach” fixes used in case a pilot can’t find the runway due to low clouds, are named thusly:
ITAWT ITAWA PUDYE TTATT … IDEED.
Apparently someone at the FAA has a sense of humor.
If you’re not laughing, you might want to say those five words in quick succession. If you’re still puzzled, try repeating it with your best Tweety Bird impression.
After the FAA named a point in space SATAN, someone must have decided some comic relief, à la Warner Brothers, was needed. And a famous quotation from the canary named Tweety Bird somehow seemed appropriate.
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