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Authorized for Cold Water Service: What Divers Should Know About Extreme Cold

The following is reprinted from my article published in ECO Magazine, March 2015. It was published in its current format as an ECO Editorial Focus by TSC Media. Thank-you Mr. Greg Leatherman for making it available for reprinting.

It is the highpoint of your career as an environmentally minded marine biologist. The National Science Foundation has provided a generous grant for your photographic mission to the waters 100 ft below the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica. Now you’re on an important mission, searching for biological markers of climate change.

Under Antarctic Ice, photo by Dr. Martin Sayer.

Above you lies nothing but a seemingly endless ceiling of impenetrable ice, 10 ft thick. Having spent the last several minutes concentrating on your photography, you look up and notice you’ve strayed further from safety than you’d wanted. The strobe light marking the hole drilled in the ice where you’ll exit the freezing water is a long swim away. And, unfortunately, your fellow scientist “buddy” diver has slipped off somewhere behind you, intent on her own research needs.

You’re diving SCUBA with two independent SCUBA regulators, but in the frigid cold of the literally icy waters, you know that ice could be accumulating within the regulator in your mouth. At the same time, a small tornado of sub-zero air expands chaotically within the high-pressure regulator attached to the single SCUBA bottle on your back—and that icy torrent is increasingly sucking the safety margins right out of your regulator. You are powerless to realize this danger or to do anything about it.

At any moment, your regulator could suddenly and unexpectedly free flow, tumultuously dumping the precious and highly limited supply of gas contained in the aluminum pressure cylinder on your back. You’re equipped and trained in the emergency procedure of shutting off the offending regulator and switching to your backup regulator, but this could also fail. It’s happened before.

As you try to determine your buddy’s position, you’re feeling very lonely. You realize the high point of your career could rapidly become the low point of your career—and an end to your very being.

The preceding is not merely a writer’s dramatization. It is real, and the situation could prove deadly—as it has in far less interesting and auspicious locations. Regulator free flow and limited gas supplies famously claimed three professional divers’ lives in one location within a span of one month.

There is a risk to diving in extreme environments. However, the U.S. Navy has found that the risk is poorly understood, even by themselves—the professionals. If you check the Internet SCUBA boards, you constantly come across divers asking for opinions about cold-watersafe regulators. Undoubtedly, recent fatalities have made amateur divers a little nervous—and for good reason.

Internet bulletin boards are not the place to get accurate information about life support safety in frigid water. Unfortunately, the Navy found that manufacturers are also an unreliable source. Of course, the manufacturers want to be fully informed and to protect their customers, but the fact remains that manufacturers test to a European cold-water standard, EN 250. By passing those tests, manufacturers receive a “CE” stamp that is pressed into the hard metal of the regulator. That stamp means the regulator has received European approval for coldwater service.

As a number of manufacturers have expensively learned, passing the EN 250 testing standard is not the same as passing the more rigorous U.S. Navy standard, which was recently revised, making it even more rigorous by using higher gas supply pressures and testing in fresh as well as salt water. Freshwater diving in the Navy is rare—but depending on the brand and model of regulator in use, it can prove lethal.

The unadorned truth is that the large majority of manufacturers do not know how to make a consistently good Performing cold-water regulator. Perhaps the reason is because the type of equipment required to test to the U.S. Navy standard is very expensive and has, not to date, been legislated. Simply, it is not a requirement.

Some manufacturers are their own worst enemy; they cannot resist tinkering with even their most successful and rugged products. This writer is speculating here, but the constant manufacturing changes appear to be driven by either market pressures (bringing out something “new” to the trade show floor) or due to manufacturing economy (i.e., cost savings). The situation is so bad that even regulators that once passed U.S. Navy scrutiny are in some cases being changed almost as soon as they reach the “Authorized for Military Use” list. The military is struggling to keep up with the constant flux in the market place, which puts the civilian diver in a very difficult position. How can they—or you—know what gear to take on an environmentally extreme dive?

My advice to my family, almost all of whom are divers, is to watch what the Navy is putting on their authorized for cold-water service list. The regulators that show up on that list (and they are small in number) have passed the most rigorous testing in the world.

Through hundreds of hours of testing, in the most extreme conditions possible, the Navy has learned what all SCUBA divers should know:

• Even the coldest water (28°F; -2°C) is warm compared to the temperature of expanding air coming from a first stage regulator to the diver. There is a law of physics that says when compressed air contained in a SCUBA bottle is expanded by reducing it to a lower pressure, air temperature drops considerably. It’s the thermal consequence of adiabatic (rapid) expansion.

• Gas expansion does not have to be adiabatic. Isothermal (no temperature change) expansion is a process where the expansion is slow enough and heat entry into the gas from an outside source is fast enough that the expanded gas temperature does not drop.

• The best regulators are designed to take advantage of the heat available in ice water. The most critical place for that to happen is in the first stage where the greatest pressure drop occurs (from say 3,000 psi or higher to 135 psi above ambient water pressure (i.e., depth). They do that by maximizing heat transfer into the internals of the regulator.

• First stage regulators fail in two ways. The most common is that the first stage (which controls the largest pressure drop) begins to lose control of the pressure being supplied to the second stage regulator, the part that goes into a diver’s mouth. As that pressure climbs, the second stage eventually can’t hold it back any longer and a free flow ensues.

• The second failure mode is rare, but extremely problematic. Gas flow may stop suddenly and completely, so that backup regulator had better be handy.

• Second stage regulators are the most likely SCUBA components to fail in cold water due to internal ice accumulation.

• Free flows may start with a trickle, slowly accelerating to a torrent, or the regulator may instantly and unexpectedly erupt like a geyser of air. Once the uncontrolled, and often unstoppable free flow starts, it is self-perpetuating and can dump an entire cylinder of air within a few minutes through the second stage regulator.

• A warm-water regulator free flow is typically breathable; getting the air you need to ascend or to correct the problem is not difficult. In a cold-water-induced free flow, the geyser may be so cold as to make you feel like you’re breathing liquid nitrogen and so forceful as to be a safety concern. Staying relaxed under those conditions is difficult, but necessary.

• Water in non-polar regions can easily range between and 34°F to 38°F; at those temperatures, gas entering the second stage regulator can be at sub-freezing temperatures. European standard organizations classify ~10°C (50°F) as the cold/non-cold boundary. The Navy has found in the modern, high-flow regulators tested to date that 42°F is the water temperature where second stage inlet temperature is unlikely to dip below freezing.

• The small heat exchangers most manufacturers place just upstream of the second stage is ineffective In extreme conditions. They quickly ice over, insulating that portion of the regulator from the relative warmth of the surrounding water.

• Regulator “bells and whistles” are an unknown and can be problematic. Second stage regulators with multiple adjustments can do unpredictable things to heat transfer as the diver manipulates his controls. The last thing a cold-water diver should want is to make it easier to get more gas. High gas flows mean higher temperature drops and greater risk of free flow.

• Only manufacturer-certified technicians should touch your regulator if you’re going into risky waters. The technician at your local dive shop may or may not have current and valid technician training on your particular life support system. Don’t bet your life on it— ask to see the paperwork.

• Follow Navy and Smithsonian* guidance on handling and rinsing procedures for regulators in frigid waters. A single breath taken above the surface could freeze a regulator before you get your first breath underwater.

U. S. Navy reports on tested regulators are restricted. However, the list of those regulators passing all phases of Navy testing is available online. If your regulator, in the exact model as tested, is not on that list, do yourself a favor and don’t dive in frigid waters.

The original Editorial Focus article is found in the digital version of the March ECO magazine here, on pages 20-25.

I Remember Nothing After the First Bounce

http://sandiegoairandspace.tumblr.com/post/63597123684/from-an-album-belonging-to-barnstormer-daredevil — From an album belonging to barnstormer Sergeant Carter G. Buton. Photo from latter half of the 1920s. Image found at San Diego Air & Space Museum Blog.

“It was a gorgeous day to jump from a perfectly good airplane. I, Mickey McGurn, was good at it, and I got paid well to do it.

But one day I got careless.

It was 1927, and parachute jumping was a new thing on the barnstorming circuit. It made people catch their breath when I jumped out of airplanes. They just knew they were going to see me fall straight to my death.

I would gather the parachute in my arms, without packing it, bundle it into the cockpit, and go aloft for a jump.

One day a number of my barnstorming friends protested at the way I handled the parachute. But I told them to mind their own business.

“Forget it,” I said. “I built this thing myself and I know what it’ll do.”

Well, I might have been wrong about that, because one day the ‘chute didn’t work. It opened only about a quarter of the way and I fell to the ground with a terrific speed. Those folks who were waiting to see me die almost got more than they bargained for.

Folks told me I bounced at least 10 feet into the air, but I don’t remember anything after I hit the ground.

The doctors said I broke pretty much every bone in my body, but obviously I lived, sort of.

I’m now hobbling around on crutches. I’m deaf, nearly blind, and can’t taste my food, or enjoy any of the things I used to.

My bones have healed, sort of, but not the way they were when I was a cocky young fool who felt invincible.

I guess I should have listened to my friends. They realized I was courting disaster, but I was too proud, or arrogant, or just plain stupid to notice it.

But they were right.

I suppose that no matter what you do, whether it’s racing cars, jumping out of airplanes, or walking on the bottom of the ocean, your friends are usually better at telling when you’re getting careless than you are.

I guess it’s similar to the way a friend can usually tell when you’re drunk before you can.

The above is a fictional version of an actual accounting by one aviation daredevil named Mickey McGurn, given to a newspaper reporter for the Syracuse American. The short piece appeared in the Sunday edition under a section called the “World of Aviation”. The publication date was February 26, 1928. The writer was Gordon K. Hood, a feature writer who penned several aviation-themed chapters for the paper, a collection of mini-stories such as this one, collectively called “Sprouting Wings”. Mr. Hood was himself quite an accomplished early aviation pioneer, as recounted in a 1939 edition of the Syracuse Journal.

I have taken the time to paraphrase this story due to its applicability to many potentially hazardous endeavors. Safety risks are not always noticeable to those at greatest risk.

The actual article is found below. It, and a full page copy of the 1928 newspaper page, was provided to the present author by Mr. Douglas Barnard, presently from Waldorf, Maryland.

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After the Heart Attack – The Healing Power of Athletic Passions

There is nothing quite like a heart attack and triple bypass surgery to get your attention.

Even if you’ve been good, don’t smoke, don’t eat to excess, and get a little exercise, it may not be enough to keep a heart attack from interrupting your life style, and maybe even your life.

Post-surgical recovery can be slow and painful, but if you have an avocational passion, that passion can be motivational during the recovery period after a heart attack. There is something about the burning desire to return to diving, flying, or golfing to force you out of the house to tone your muscles and get the blood flowing again.

My return to the path of my passions, diving and flying, began with diet and exercise. My loving spouse suggested a diet of twigs and leaves, so it seemed. I can best compare it to the diet that those seeking to aspire to a perpetual state of Buddha-hood, use to prepare themselves for their spiritual end-stage: it’s a state that looks a lot like self-mummification. Apparently those fellows end up either very spiritual or very dead, but I’m not really sure how one can tell the difference.

The exercise routine began slowly and carefully: walking slowly down the street carrying a red heart-shaped pillow (made by little lady volunteers in the local area just for us heart surgery patients). The idea, apparently, is that if you felt that at any point during your slow walk your heart was threatening to extract itself from your freshly opened chest, or to extrude itself like an amoeba between the stainless steel sutures holding the two halves of your rib cage together, that pillow would save you. You simply press it with all the strength your weakened body has to offer against the failing portion of your violated chest, and that pressure would keep your heart, somehow, magically, in its proper anatomical location.

I am skeptical about that method of medical intervention, but fortunately I never had occasion to use it for its avowed purpose.

Eventually I felt confident enough to ditch the pillow and pick up the pace of my walks. In fact, I soon found I could run again, in short spurts. It was those short runs that scared the daylight out of my wife, but brought me an immense amount of pleasure. It meant that I might be able to regain my flying and diving qualifications.

Three months later I was in the high Arctic with good exercise capability, and most importantly the ability to sprint, just in case the local polar bears became too aggressive on my nighttime walks back from the only Ny-Alesund pub.

After that teaching adventure, I prepared myself for the grinder that the FAA was about to put me through: a stress test. Not just any stress test mind you, but a nuclear stress test where you get on a treadmill and let nurses punish your body for a seeming eternity. Now, these nurses are as kindly as can be, but they might well be the last people you see on this Earth since there is a small risk of inducing yet another heart attack during the stress test. Every few minutes the slope and speed of the treadmill is increased, and when you think you can barely survive for another minute, they inject the radioisotope (technetium 99m).

With luck, you would have guessed correctly and you are able to push yourself for another long 60-seconds. I’m not sure exactly what would happen if you guess incorrectly, but I’m sure it’s not a good thing.

And then they give you a chance to lie down, perfectly still, while a moving radioisotope scanner searches your body for gamma rays, indicating where your isotope-laden blood is flowing. With luck, the black hole that indicates dead portions of the heart will be small enough to be ignored by certifying medical authorities. (An interesting side effect of the nuclear stress test is that you are radioactive for a while, which in my case caused a fair amount of excitement at large airports. But that’s another story.)

The reward for all the time and effort spent on the fabled road to recovery, is when you receive, in my case at least, the piece of paper from the FAA certifying that you are cleared to once again fly airplanes and carry passengers. With that paper, and having endured the test of a life-time, I knew that I’d pass most any diving physical.

IMG_0645 (2014_06_22 07_00_11 UTC) — Vortex Springs, 2010

Having been in a situation where nature dealt me a low blow and put my life at risk and, perhaps more importantly, deprived me of the activities that brought joy to my life, it was immensely satisfying to be able to once again cruise above the clouds on my own, or to blow bubbles with the fish, in their environment. Is there anything more precious that being able to do something joyful that had once been denied?

DIGITAL CAMERA — A goofy looking but very happy diver sharing a dive with his Granddaughter, July 2014.

Without a doubt, the reason I was able to resume my passions was because I happened to do, as the physicians said, “all the right things” when I first suspected something unusual was happening in my chest. The symptoms were not incapacitating so I considered driving myself to the hospital. But after feeling not quite right while brushing my teeth, I lay down and called 911. The ambulance came, did an EKG/ECG, and called in the MI (myocardial infarction) based on the EKG. The Emergency room was waiting for me, and even though it was New Years’ eve, they immediately called in the cardiac catheterization team. When the incapacitating event did later occur I was already in cardiac ICU and the team was able to act within a minute to correct the worsening situation.

Had I dismissed the initial subtle symptoms and not gone to the hospital, I would not have survived the sudden onset secondary cardiac event.

The lesson is, when things seem “not quite right” with your body, do not hesitate. Call an ambulance immediately and let the medical professionals sort out what is happening. That will maximize your chances for a full and rapid recovery, and increase the odds of your maintaining your quality of life.

It will also make you appreciate that quality of life more than you had before. I guarantee it.

A Salute to Warriors

It was a moment in time that no one had expected. Through a twist of fate I found myself standing in the midst of warriors; warriors dressed in civilian clothes, waiting for a ride somewhere. They sat on the floor, propping themselves up against walls, wasting no energy, efficient even in their resting.

They had the look, those warriors. There is no mistaking that look once you’ve seen them; handsome, intelligent, lean and fit. They looked like the type of men that growing boys always want to be. They were in their prime.

As I walked among them, they noticed me, undoubtedly. They sized me up, but mostly kept silent. A few talked softly to their near-by friends about whatever interested them, to pass the time. They were clearly not a rugby or football team, all full of themselves, headed off for a game. They were quietly confident, having done this so many times before.

One of them had body art and dark features. His look said Navy, and since he sat alone I paused in front of him. If he was indeed a Navy man, I wanted to wish him well.

“You fellas shoving off?”

It was a harmless question, since the answer was obvious. Of course they were. But that warrior lowered his head, did not speak. It looked like he regretted being singled out, as if he would break some code of silence if he spoke to someone who was not one of them. As they say, his silence spoke volumes. I then knew him for exactly who and what he was, and both admired and respected him and his silence.

Before the moment became too awkward, one of his buddies, twenty or so feet away, spoke, drawing my gaze, flashing an easy smile, removing attention from a pinned down comrade. That’s instinctive for them; protecting their own.

“Yes, we are,” is all he said, and was all he needed to say.

I gave him a thumbs up. “Good luck fellas,” I said; and I meant it with all my heart. I was thankful that one of them had given me a chance to wish them all well.

If only my good wishes had been more effective. When I saw the photos in 2011 of those lost in Afghanistan, which included that dark-haired SEAL with the decorated arms, I shuddered. I don’t know if those lost in the helicopter with him were some of his travelling buddies that day that I walked among them, but they were all fine, fine men. The loss of any of them is a loss to the world I believe.

I salute them all.

Blood, as a Delicacy, Is Underrated

Those words earned me a first place prize of $20 in a contest for the best first line in a comic vampire novel. The contest was held during the 2010 Ozark Creative Writers’ Conference in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

Not that I would ever write a vampire novel, comic or otherwise, but I guess it proved I can be succinct – from time to time. I admit that comes as a shock to those who know me best.

What amazed me about that line, and winning, was that it was my first submission for a writing competition. Now, if I can just keep it up. Let’s see, that was $3.33 per word, so a 100,000 word novel would earn me …

Holy Mackerel! What am I doing wasting time blogging?

OK, seriously, what is it about the European cultures and blood? Have you ever had blood pudding?

I once stood in a working man’s cafeteria line in Geesthacht, Germany, on the Elbe River, paralyzed before a large stainless steel pan filled with — blood, or at least something really, really bloody. It wasn’t like rare steak. It was more like a pan from an autopsy table.

My German friends told me the “pudding” was really fresh. Did that mean there was a meat packing plant close by? Maybe it’s just me, but any recipe that starts off with one quart of pig’s blood is just not that appetizing. I know, it’s a cultural thing.

I didn’t gag, but I also didn’t eat much of anything for lunch that day. Maybe some very white bread, and milk — nothing with shades of pink — that’s for sure.

Which brings me to the observation that perhaps I could write the first line of a comic vampire novel, but I would probably throw up before finishing the first chapter.

Guess I’m just squeamish.

Of Mussels and Whales

Wal_Cuviera — Cuvier’s Beaked Whale. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

It was a coincidence forty years in the making. I was recently at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, talking to Scripps professor and physician Paul Ponganis about deep diving whales. He told me about the recent discovery that Cuvier’s Beaked Whale, an elusive whale species, had been found to be the deepest diving of all whales.

How deep I asked? One whale dived to 9,816 feet, about 3000 meters. At that depth, water pressure exerts a force of about 4400 pounds per square inch (psi), equal to the weight of a Mercedes E63 sedan pressing on each square inch of the whale’s ample body surface. That is a seriously high pressure, a fact that I knew well since I had once created that much pressure, and more, in a small volume of seawater in a pressure vessel at the Florida State University.

Early in my science career, I published my work on the effect of deep ocean pressure on intertidal bivalves, a mussel (Modiolus demissus) being among them. I found that if you removed the hearts of such molluscs (or mollusks) and suspended them in seawater, they would continue to beat. Furthermore, those excised hearts would beat when subjected to 5000 psi of hydrostatic pressure. As if that wasn’t surprising enough, the slight genetic differences between Atlantic subspecies and Gulf Coast subspecies of mussels resulted in the isolated hearts responding slightly differently to high pressure.

oyster-anatomy — If you’ve eaten live raw oysters, a cousin to mussels, you’ve eaten beating hearts like the one in this photo. (Click to enlarge. Photo credit: rzottoli, Salt Marshes in Maine, at HTTP:// wordpress.Com )

120-modiolus-demissus-excellent-mb-oct-19-20041 — The mussel Modiolus demissus in their natural habitat at low tide (Photo credit: rzottoli, Salt Marshes in Maine, at HTTP:// wordpress.Com )

That was a remarkable finding I thought since none of those mussels had ever been exposed to high pressure; ever as in for millions of years. (This study occurred long before the discovery of deep sea vents and the almost miraculous growths of deep sea clams.)

Eventually, my research transitioned from invertebrates to humans. Humans, like intertidal mussels and clams, are not normally exposed to high pressure. But like my unwilling invertebrate test subjects, sometimes humans do get exposed to high pressure, willingly. But not so much of it. Deep sea divers do quite well at 1000 feet seawater (fsw), manage fairly well at 1500 fsw, but don’t fare well at all at 2000 fsw. That depth seems to be the human pressure tolerance limit due to the high pressure nervous syndrome, or HPNS. At those pressures, cell membranes seem to change their physical state, becoming less fluid or “oily” and more solid like wax. Cells don’t work normally when the very membranes surrounding them are altered by pressure.

The Beaked Whale is genetically much more similar to man than are mussels. Therefore, man is far more likely to benefit by learning how Cetaceans like whales tolerate huge pressure changes than we are to benefit from the study of deep diving (albeit forced diving) clams and mussels.

As I talked to Dr. Ponganis it was obvious to him, I suspect, that I was excited about learning more about how these animals function so beautifully at extreme depths. But to do that, you have to collect tissue samples for study and analysis in a laboratory. The only problem is, collecting useful tissue samples from living whales without hurting them may be a bridge too far. Humans rarely even see Beaked Whales, and if the Cetaceans wash up on shore, dead, their tissues have already been degraded by post-mortem decomposition, and are no longer useful for scientific study.

RoboTuna,_1994,_view_2_-_MIT_Museum_-_DSC03730 — MIT’s RoboTuna; ca. 1994. Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

Potentially, here is a job for underwater Cetacean-like robots that when released in a likely Beaked Whale environment, can locate them, dive with them, and perhaps even earn their trust. And when the whale beasts least expect it, those robotic Judases could snatch a little biopsy material.

If only it were that easy.

Considering how difficult it would be to acquire living tissue samples, would it be worth the effort? Well, if man is ever to dive deeper than 1500 to 2000 feet without the protection of submarines, we must learn how from either the mussels or the whales. My bet is on the whales. Unlike mussels, the whales dive deep for a living, to catch their preferred prey, squid and deep sea fish.

What are arguably the first studies of the effects of high pressure on intertidal bivalves (mussels and clams) can be found here and here. Moving up the phylogenetic scale, Yoram Grossman and Joan Kendig published high pressure work on lobster neurons in 1990, and rat brain slices in 1991. I made the leap from mussels to humans by conducting a respiratory study on Navy divers at pressures of 46 atmospheres (1500 feet sea water), published in 1982. For a more recent review of high pressure biology applied to animals and man, see the 2010 book entitled Comparative High Pressure Biology. My theoretical musings about the mathematics of high pressure effects on living cells can be found here.

With time, these studies, and more, will add to our understanding of mammalian pressure tolerance. However, it may well take another generation or two of such scientific effort before we understand how the Beaked Whales make their record-breaking dives, and survive.

The Return of Souls – A Science Fiction Theme

“I believe we don’t stay dead long”, said Robert Frobisher, a talented composer created by David Mitchell for his epic novel, “Cloud Atlas”.

I recently watched for the second time the complex and potentially disturbing movie adaptation of “Cloud Atlas.” The first time I watched it I simply held on for the ride, trying to make sense of the action and changing plots and characters. On second viewing, it was still a page-turner, so to speak.

During my second viewing, I noticed, apparently for the first time, that short sentence uttered by Robert Frobisher; “We don’t stay dead long.” It was an introspective comment in a letter directed to his lover, and pretty much summed up the entire movie.

In spite of the perplexing current interest in a zombie apocalypse, the “Cloud Atlas” book and film are not about the undead. It’s about reincarnation.

In my opinion, there are two themes in science fiction that make for almost limitless possibilities — time travel and reincarnation. “Cloud Atlas” uses the latter theme as a platform for topics far more meaningful than the tired theme of man meets giant worm, worm eats man, man’s friend kills worm, and so on. Regardless of what I or anyone else thinks about souls or reincarnation, they do make for interesting theater.

Another bit of narration from the movie, this time from Zachry Bailey (played by Tom Hanks) struck a chord with me for it accurately reflected a seriocomic theme in one of my previous posts, Conversation with a Cloud.

In Bailey’s words, “Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an’ tho’ a cloud’s shape nor hue nor size don’t stay the same, it’s still a cloud an’ so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud’s blowed from or who the soul’ll be ‘morrow?”

In my own less artful words, quoting a sentient and telepathic cloud that knows it will die at the end of the day, “I am not a cloud. I am moisture. A cloud is my physical appearance, but that changes throughout my life. And regardless of how I look, what I am, vapor, still exists.”

If we accept that almost all religions propose the survival of a soul after death, then the essential question raised by David Mitchell’s story is whether or not an eternal soul is granted only one chance to incarnate.

If you accept the concept of a soul, then you may accept the concept of a God who created souls. And I would be a very presumptuous man to decide what God would or would not do with one of his creations throughout an eternity of time, an eternity that I cannot even imagine.

Unfortunately, there is no data with which to debate the return of souls. That is, there isn’t if you ignore what seems to be documented anecdotal accounts such as a recent one involving a three-year-old Druze boy who seemingly identified his murderer, with supposedly witnessed proof of the crime.

That story, and others like it, make for interesting and mind challenging reading for those steeped in western religion, like me. As I understand it, in Eastern and Middle Eastern regions such stories are rather commonplace.

Of course, the story of the Druze three-year-old could be fictitious, an elaborate deception. Regardless of the truth of the existence of souls, and soul mates (a currently popular meme with a subtle assumption of reincarnation), there is a literary aspect to consider. To state the obvious, fiction does not have to be true to be entertaining.

If I were capable of writing a sequel to “Cloud Atlas”, (which I am not), I would be unable to resist adding Karma to the mix. The notion that you get what you deserve, in this life or the next, is simply too enticing to ignore, whether it be truth or fantasy.

For instance, suppose a chapter in a sequel covered the life of Jack the Ripper, of both historical infamies, and future infamy; except in the future, his would-be victims are packing heat (carrying a gun). Jack’s story of infamy would end abruptly.

Based on such a karmic premise, the literary possibilities are endless. With the proper writer in control, they could also prove endlessly entertaining.

How to Read an e-Book

In days not too long past, proper lighting and posture were the keys to enjoyable and prolonged reading comfort. Now, things have changed.

Fotothek_df_ps_0000370_002_Kinder_^_Kinderbeschäftigungen_^_lesend — Child reading by candle light. Deutsche Fotothek‎ [CC-BY-SA-3.0-de (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons

When reading by candle light, you placed your reading material in close proximity to the candle, and placed your chair in as comfortable a position as could be managed.

Electric lighting, by nature of its enhanced luminosity, gives the reader greater flexibility. I well remember the days when studying required the reading of physical books, not electronic displays, and so students were routinely counseled to set up a study environment with a flat desk and a study lamp off to the left side to avoid casting shadows on the reading material.

Body posture was a critical complement to this system. Slouching was as strongly discouraged then as it is today.

A__L__Leroy_-_Interior_with_a_Man_Reading_at_His_Desk_-_Google_Art_Project — Man reading at his desk. By A. L. Leroy (Details of artist on Google Art Project) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

However, with self-lit electronic displays, all the former concerns about lighting and posture have become irrelevant. Or so it seems.

In many ways children make ideal subjects for scientific observation. If caught young enough, they have not yet learned the “proper” ways of acting, or sitting. Therefore I am convinced that if left to their own innocent, non-self-aware devices they will instinctively find the most energy efficient and bodily pleasing ways to read, as long as lighting is not a concern. For popular devices such as iPad, Kindle Fire and Nabi, lighting is never an issue. The screen glows with light, sharply contrasting with the dark words of print on electronic books, those so-called “e-books.”

The subject in this photo essay was approximately six years old, freshly out of a bath, in her PJs and pushing her bed time by some very determined reading. In these photos she was reading about dinosaurs, using Booksy on an iPad.

As the following photos demonstrate, gravity itself seems not to impede elementary school reading.

SnapShot(5) — The subject first assumed a standard kid reading posture, possible only for pint-sized kids. Neck support is important.

SnapShot(7) — The inverted standard kid position. Apparently forehead support is important too.

Since kids are ever inventive, sometimes they spice things up with variations on a theme.

SnapShot(18) crop — 90° rotated, inverted kid reading position.

SnapShot(17) — Reach Out and Touch Someone

When engaged in challenging reading, increasing blood flow to the brain is important. Apparently the easiest way to do that is to raise the body’s center of gravity above the heart, as the following photo shows.

SnapShot(14) — The Rabbit Ears reading position.

This observation demonstrates that lighted reading displays have freed us from the unnatural constraints imposed by archaic reading and writing instruments. Our work devices have become smaller, lighter, and brighter, enabling a renaissance in body awareness and endless possibilities for comfortable and stimulating postures, never before thought possible.

TheFaulknerPortable — Faulkner’s portable work space

SnapShot(12) Sepia 75 — Kindergartner’s work space.

Admittedly, it helps if you’re six-years old and weigh 40 pounds. I do not guarantee that similar gyrations during reading are entirely safe for adults.

Reader beware.

To Elect a Mockingbird

The days when Kings led their Army into battle are long gone. Not so, for princely animals who through loyalty, devotion, or instinct act at times with seemingly calculated personal abandon.

It was a spring day when I stopped my car at an intersection, then made a gentle right turn onto a crossing street. In front of me, scarcely 30 feet away, a curious standoff was underway.

A mockingbird was standing in the road, face to face with a cat that weighed a good 100 times more than the bird. They were no more than five feet away from each other. Since it was spring, I’m guessing that mockingbird was defending a nest with young.

As the cat saw my car approaching, he moved from the center of the road to an adjacent driveway, and the fearless bird flew up to the top of a mailbox just a few feet away. There the slim grey bird held the high ground and acted as hawkish as a little bird can. It was not in him to be intimidated by a much larger, more powerful, born-killer of birds.

As I continued down the road and lost sight of that duo, I had a funny thought. If that mockingbird ran for political office, I think I’d vote for him.

Granted, that was a curious, and to me humorous thought which I rethought when I shortly thereafter found myself reading to my Granddaughter the best-selling book “Duck for President.”

Well, Okay then, maybe it wasn’t such an idle thought after all. If a duck can be elected, at least in the mind’s eye of children, how much better a very brave and cunning mockingbird?