Human Interest | John Clarke Online

Saturation Diving for Marine Science

In 2018, eight years after the disastrous explosion of the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Drilling Rig, I was invited to speak at the Gordon Research Conference (GRC). The conference topic was “The Functional Roles of Mesophotic Coral Reefs in the Anthropocene Mesophotic Coral Reef Ecosystems.” It was held at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine.

The term mesophotic refers to the “middle light” region of the ocean, generally assumed to begin at about 30 meters seawater (98 feet sea water, fsw) and reaching to 150 meters (490 fsw.) [Exact values vary depending on location; in clearer ocean water where deeper water corals grow, light penetrates deeper (up to 200 meters) than in sediment-filled water.] Beyond the mesophotic zone, the available light is too low to support photosynthesis.

Mesophotic Zone image generated by OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 and modified by the author.

As the Scientific Director of the Navy Experimental Diving Unit, I spoke on the topic of “Saturation Diving as a Tool for Mesophotic Depths and Beyond.” Ten years before that, I’d spoken at an American Academy of Underwater Sciences (AAUS) Conference on “What the Navy Can Contribute to Scientific Diving.” So, the GRC talk was a continuation of the theme.

Well, my GRC talk was met with polite skepticism. To be fair, some marine biologists, such as Dr. Sonia J. Rowley, want to be hands-on with their research subjects. Having trained to be a science diver, I fully understand that. But in my opinion at the time, sometimes you just need a professional, well-equipped diver to do the dangerous dives for you.

CCR Bounce Dives

For a fictional example, an independent minded researcher plans on using a closed-circuit rebreather (CCR) to make a single dive to 160 meters. The purpose of the dive is to transplant deep water corals for 15 minutes working on the bottom. The breathing gas planned for the work on the bottom is 5% oxygen, 83% helium, and 12% nitrogen, maintaining a PO₂ of 1.1 atmospheres at depth, 1.3 PO₂during decompression.

The time cost for those 23 minutes of bottom time (15 min of working time) is 9.3 hours, mostly spent decompressing[1] during the ascent back to the surface. (If you’re lucky enough to decompress on a wall coming up, then you’ve found the perfect dive spot!)

The next day, the same dive is repeated, implanting coral in another site a few yards away from the first. After two days of diving, 30 minutes of work on the bottom will have been completed, and about 18 hours will have been spent unproductively, hanging on a line, decompressing, exposed to the elements, at constant risk of life support (CCR) failure and the need for bailout, and deterrence of curious marine predators.

Saturation Diving

The alternative to decompression-intense “bounce” dives, is saturation diving from a habitat under pressure, a home away from home. Why spend nine hours hanging on a line when those same hours could be spent working at depth?

Of course, a saturation diver still must decompress, but they only do it once, at the end of the work-filled mission which can last days or weeks.

The 37 day diving profile for a saturation dive to the pressure equivalent to 1500 fsw. Author’s copy.

Living Under Pressure on the Surface

One method which works well for the U.S. Navy and oil-well workers around the world, is to descend to the ocean bottom under pressure in a diving bell, and once bell pressure and sea water pressures equalizes, swim or walk to the worksite. At the end of the shift, divers return to the surface ship or platform, still under bottom pressures, and lock in to the pressurized living chambers.

NEDU’s Saturation Detachment hyperbaric living chambers connected to the diving bell. Photo courtesy of NOAA.

Saturation diving bell being lowered through the diving well of a support vessel, into the deep water of the Gulf. Photo courtesy of NOAA.

NEDU’s saturation diving bell at 722 fsw at 1:24 in the afternoon. Photo courtesy of NEDU.

US Navy Saturation Divers planting coral at 100 meters depth in the Gulf of Mexico. Photo courtesy of C-Innovation.

This US Navy assisted coral reef restoration dive series was described in a 2024 NOAA publication.

NOAA used US Navy Sat Divers on one coral propagation mission, and rebreather divers on another mission.

Upon a repeat visit of a NOAA vessel to the area where Navy Sat Divers implanted deep corals, there was a 95% survival rate of a diverse genetic population of corals.

Living Under Pressure on the Sea Floor

There has been a rich history of aquanaut habitats placed on the sea floor. As a graduate student at Florida State University, I spent the summer in Panama City, Florida diving with retired Navy divers and fellow graduate students in the Navy, NOAA, and State University System Institute of Oceanography funded Scientist in the Sea (SITS) Program.

One diving exercise was to resurface the SEALAB I habitat sitting in 60 feet of seawater. We were very hands on with the habitat, which now sits at the Museum of Man in the Sea, in Panama City Beach.

Sealab 1(1964, 194 fsw, 59 meters)

Sealab 1. At the Man in the Sea Museum, Panama City Beach, FL.

Sealab I was originally deployed in Bermuda in 1964 at 194 fsw (59 msw).

Helgoland (1969, 25 meters)

Helgoland. By Klugschnacker – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

The next habitat I encountered was Helgoland, an uber-sized German habitat, decommissioned at the end of the 1970s. It was displayed outside GKSS Research Centre, Geesthacht, Germany where another Navy scientist and I were conducting physiological studies on a trimix dive to 450 meters sea water. Peter Bennett from Duke University was proving once again how Trimix, (oxygen, helium, and nitrogen), could suppress the High Pressure Nervous Syndrome.

Aquarius Reef Base

At one time during my career at the Navy Experimental Diving Unit, I was a part of the certification board for the Aquarius habitat. I got to dive on it and in it, in an inspection capacity. But regrettably, I never got to saturate in it.

Other habitats

The Sealab projects did not end with Sealab I. The Navy followed up with larger and more ambitious habitats, known as Sealab II (1965, 205 ft, ~62 meters), and Sealab III (1969, 610 feet, ~185 meters). Then there was La Chulupa (1972, 20 meters, 66 feet), Tektite (1969, 49 feet) and Hydrolab (1970, 50 feet.)

Even today the La Chulupa habitat, renamed Jules Undersea Lodge, rests in thirty feet of seawater in a shallow lagoon. Touted as an underwater hotel, it accepts visits or stays by scuba divers. (As an instructor in SITS 2000, I visited, but did not stay.)

A 60-year Time Jump

From the U.S. Navy’s Sealab series of saturation dives to today is an approximately sixty-year leap into the future. In that time span, engineering and manufacturing improvements have advanced two generations. Human’s saturation experience at depth has advanced from 65 feet to over 2000 feet. As a result, the new generation of Deep’s undersea habitats promises to be a marvel to behold.

Concept visualization of Deep’s expandable Sentinel habitats.

Advances in Breathing Apparatus

There’s not much point in living underwater if you can’t step outdoors. Underwater breathing apparatus have likewise made great advances over the last 60 years. The greatest advance is in electronically controlled closed circuit rebreathers; known categorically as e-CCR.

Diver Burden

I don’t know of any diver who enjoys being burdened with a sometimes-bulky rebreather, plus large cylinders for bailout gas, and offboard cylinders for decompression gas mixes. But their survival depends on it. All that gear is required to safely accomplish a few minutes of useful work at depth.

CCR Bounce diver Dr. Sonia J. Rowley: multiple gas bottles on person for gas switches on way to the bottom and back, plus open-circuit bailout gas for 10 hours in case of rig failure or floodout. A depth of 200 msw (650 fsw) or more, is achievable with modern e-CCRs, although not recommended.

Sonia J. Rowley at depth. Photo by Dr. Dan Barshis in Indonesia, Wakatobi, 2023.

One solution is to dive with two or more rebreathers, one being a backup. That may be an improvement, but has not guaranteed safety in all situations.

The Case for Underwater Habitats

As Aquanauts have opined through the years, there is nothing more enjoyable than waking up, fixing a hot breakfast, putting on your minimal dive gear, and jumping into the water to work as long or as little as you wish. No hanging on a line in cold water to decompress, no wave action, just becoming as close to an ocean inhabitant as is possible for humans.

As the Deep company states, humans can become aquatic, once again.

There are no persons better equipped to describe the newest undersea habitat concept than those interviewed here by PADI.

The January 2026 PADI interview with Deep’s Dr. Dawn Kernagis, Norman Smith, and Roger Garcia.

The future of deep-ocean science may depend less on how deep we can dive than on how long we can remain. When expertise is embedded at depth—unhurried, observant, and continuous—the ocean stops being a hostile place briefly visited and becomes a working environment shaped around human capability. In that sense, saturation aquanauts are not relics of an experimental past, but early examples of a new kind of professional: knowledge workers operating under pressure, where sustained presence, not momentary endurance, defines both safety and success.

[1] Decompression model: Buhlmann ZH-L16C; Conservatism: Gradient factors (50/75)

When Truth Breaks Down: Disinformation in the Digital Age

Disinformation Before the Internet (1991)

The Naval Security Officer looked across his desk at me with a noticeably stern look on his face. A minute before, he had made the strange comment, “Let’s get this over with.”

That was weird enough. But when he followed with, “They don’t know you in Fort Smith, Alaska.” I was, as the Brits would say, gobsmacked.

I questioned what I had heard: “Alaska?”

He nodded, so I slowly spoke the truth: “Fort Smith, Arkansas, not Alaska.”

There is no Fort Smith, Alaska. A claim to the contrary was startling disinformation.

I bear some of the responsibility for the error. For most of my life, people abbreviated Arkansas as Ark. But when I filled out the security paperwork, I only had two initials to work with. In 1991, there was no World Wide Web. Google was still years away from its public birth, and I had no set of encyclopedias handy. So, I made an “educated” guess.

I didn’t know any two-letter abbreviations for Arkansas. My instinct told me that the two-letter abbreviation AR must stand for Arizona, so AK must be the right choice.

Well, as we all know now, that was wrong. I was born in Fort Smith, AR, not AK.

Now, mind you, I had already been working for the Navy for 12 years in Washington, D.C., and had made several trips to the Navy base in Panama City. But it took nothing more than one erroneous alphabetical error to bring the Panama City onboarding process to a halt.

A temporary one, fortunately.

After the Internet (2025)

Now that the Internet and AI knows all things about everybody, and that information is freely available to the world’s masses, you would think such disinformation would be rare.

But it seems to have gotten worse. Two recent events bear witness to the propagation of internet disorder.

To avoid the quandary of not knowing which Internet claims are true and which false, I’m reporting on my own personal facts—facts that I have no doubt about.

Example 1

For instance, I was Googling my name while searching the internet for a 1996 paper I’d given for a rebreather forum in Redondo Beach, California. Shockingly, I found a brief article published recently in a Fort Smith, Arkansas online publication. It started by getting my name and birthdate correct. But almost everything else was wrong. Not wrong by a little bit, but wildly inaccurate.

In that article, the misinformed writer claimed I was born in Lewiston, Idaho. My academic path included a Bachelor of Science in Physics from the University of Idaho and a Master’s degree in Oceanography from Florida State University.

All of that was disinformation. None of it was even close to the truth.

Now, I can perhaps understand the newspaper’s homage to their phantom scientist with my name and birthdate, because according to them, I was a homeboy of sorts. Apparently, my formative years of physiological research were at the University of Arkansas, where “he completed his doctoral studies.”

That was not true either.

The actual facts are out there, so I’m perplexed that so much disinformation could be in digital print.

Unless there really is something to this alternative universe thing.

In theory, one universe's disinformation can be another universe's information.

Example 2

A December, 2025 incident puzzles me even more.

The following is an excerpt from the third email “letter” I received from the same university. (I deleted the name of the Indian University to not embarrass anyone.) Admittedly, it is very gracious letter. It begins with:

“Esteemed Prof (Dr) John Clarke

Nobel Laureate
Warm Greetings from____ University, India

Hon’ble Nobel Laureate, I hope this message finds you in good health and high spirits.

With the utmost respect, we write to gently follow up on our earlier correspondence regarding our sincere invitation for you to grace the Convocation Ceremony of _______ University. We hold you in the highest regard, and it would be a profound honour for our academic community to welcome a Nobel Laureate of your distinguished stature.”

You may have already guessed the problem: I am not the John Clarke with a Nobel Prize in Physics for my work in quantum mechanics. There is such a fellow in the U.K. with the same name. Unlike me and most of the world, he seems to actually understand quantum mechanics. I don’t.

To be fair, the University covered its bases by addressing this email to every John Clarke they could find at prestigious universities, just in case. But they also addressed it to my website, the one you’re reading now. That website has no university affiliation.

Actual facts are easy to find. That is the supposed beauty of the internet. Unfortunately, wrong “facts” are even easier to find.

What does it all mean?

I am forced to conclude that perhaps true scholarship is dead. AI and the Internet have created a caste of people who gravitate to publishing even illusory information, assuming one of two outcomes. Either no one will check the facts, and they will thus appear knowledgeable (and be suitably rewarded), or they will cast their nets far and wide, hoping that somehow the right person will get their message.

The strange thing about it, actual facts are easy to find. That is the supposed beauty of the internet. Unfortunately, wrong “facts” are even easier to find.

AI on AI

Out of curiosity, I ran the Fort Smith article past a Large Language model, ChatGPT an AI chatbot. It quickly determined that the article’s structure was diagnostic.

“The article:

Correctly included a less-obvious personal detail (diving and aviation background)
While simultaneously fabricating or misplacing formal academic credentials

That inversion (getting “color” right but “core facts” wrong) is a strong fingerprint of synthetic or semi-synthetic authorship.

A careful human biographer almost always gets degrees, institutions, and chronology right first,
personal color later (or not at all). This piece does the opposite.”

ChatGPT concluded its analysis with a pithy observation. “You weren’t misled; you were observing a system error in the wild. The AI hallucinated, but the responsibility belongs to the writer/editor.”

Just as I thought!

Entropy

Remember what you learned in school about entropy? All things tend to become disordered over time? Well, it seems to me that the more order we attempt to build into our Internet knowledge bases (the assumed intent of such a database), the more disordered the universe of information actually becomes.

A classic way to express that is to add ink to a bowl of water. Whereas the water had been pure, the ink corrupted it. It was no longer pure, no longer drinkable. Convection and diffusion, and ultimately entropy, disordered the bowl’s contents. Neither pure water nor pure ink remained. You could claim that the water was pure, but that would be a lie.

So, they don’t know me in that fictional town, Fort Smith, Alaska. They also don’t know me in Lewiston, Idaho, or the University of Arkansas, or a university town in India. And that’s alright with me. I can live with it. However, if the world database becomes a stinking pot of frequently stirred cesspool overflow, eventually nothing will be known with certainty.

I don’t think I can live with that. I may need my trusted encyclopedias once again.

I once imagined the Internet as water—clear, pure in its newness—but that was before the ink of disorder appeared. Whatever the elements had been, they did not remain separate. The ink spread, darkened, altered the whole. There was no returning to the before, no skimming it out with care or time. Theorists naively believed that you could boil it down, distill something clean from the damage, but that could not eliminate the uncertainty. You would never know if what you consumed on the internet was tainted or not.

Perhaps that is what growing older with the Internet is all about: not the recovery of purity, but learning to live happily inside the color.

But I sure hope that is not our destiny.

A New Novella from John Clarke

Historical fiction and romance collide in an account of young people during a time when the Vietnam War and its aftermath dominate the headlines.

As the heat from the 1967 Summer of Love turns to the chill of winter, a relationship both sweet and bitter is renewed. Decades after their whirlwind 1960s romance ends, strait-laced medical student Carl Blanchard and free-spirited artist Jo Cranston lead separate lives. When a premonitory dream precedes Jo’s sudden reappearance as his patient, Carl and his wife Brenda must confront the past. Their attempt to heal her sets in motion a chain of events spanning continents, culminating in a bittersweet final gift that will forever link their families and test the boundaries of fate and love.

“The Silence Between Years is a masterfully written novel that explores the enduring connections between people and the choices that define their lives…a compelling and heartfelt read.

“Readers who enjoy the works of Nicholas Sparks or Kristin Hannah will appreciate Clarke’s ability to blend emotional depth, personal growth, and poignant relationships into a detailed historical setting.” — Carol Thompson for Readers’ Favorite.

“…the narrative balances intellect and feeling: science and art, duty and desire, then and now. … The writing is thoughtful without being heavy, and poignant without slipping into sentimentality. It’s a story about compassion, second chances, and how love—of any kind—can quietly reshape a life.” — Jennifer Senick for Readers’ Favorite.

“…an incredibly beautiful ending, this is a five-star read. Very highly recommended.” — Jamie Michele for Readers’ Favorite.

Reviewer #1

“The Silence Between Years by John Clarke is a powerful story set during the Vietnam War era, capturing the turbulence of a generation struggling with love, loss, and self-discovery. Clarke skillfully crafts a narrative that spans decades, examining the complexities of relationships, the burden of personal choices, and the lasting effects of past connections.

“The story starts with Carl Blanchard, a pre-med student, navigating the counterculture of the 1960s. His chance reunion with Joie Cranston, a high school sweetheart turned free-spirited artist, sets the stage for a journey full of emotional highs and lows. The realities of their diverging paths challenge their rekindled bond.

“The novel’s exploration of themes such as love, sacrifice, and the search for meaning is complemented by its historical context. John Clarke’s firsthand experiences during the Vietnam War era immerses readers in the cultural and political climate of the time. The vivid descriptions of Atlanta’s hippie scene, the challenges of medical school, and the haunting landscapes of Laos create a compelling backdrop for the characters’ journeys. The writing captures the era excellently. The dialogue is genuine, and the pacing is seamless.

“The Silence Between Years is a masterfully written novel that explores the enduring connections between people and the choices that define their lives. Readers who enjoy the works of Nicholas Sparks or Kristin Hannah will appreciate Clarke’s ability to blend emotional depth, personal growth, and poignant relationships into a detailed historical setting. Fans of authors who explore themes of love, loss, and resilience will find The Silence Between Years a compelling and heartfelt read.” — Carol Thompson for Readers’ Favorite.

Reviewer #2

“The Silence Between Years by John Clarke is a sweeping read that had my emotions and heart pumping with a fierce arrhythmia. As much as I appreciate Carl as a solid and really caring protagonist, it is the women who take the story to a totally different level.

“Clarke presents Jo’s art as a lifeline that reshapes her direction while her trusted friends, Carl and Brenda, encourage her talent and health.

“The story hits its strongest note when Clarke takes us to Laos in the footsteps of veterans from Luang Prabang to the Plain of Jars, where Jo’s landscape art is a distinct shift from her prior medical illustrations and psychedelic work. I love that her arc is tied to her art, and with an incredibly beautiful ending, this is a five-star read. Very highly recommended.”— Jamie Michele for Readers’ Favorite.

Reviewer #3

“The Silence Between Years by John Clarke is an emotional novel about lost love, unexpected chances, and what it really means to move forward. It begins with Carl, a medical student, reconnecting with his high school sweetheart, Jo, during a trip to Atlanta in search of adventure. Years later, Carl—now a doctor—once again finds his past and present colliding when he meets her again, now known as Josephine Meyers. He learns she’s married to a soldier missing in action. As their lives continue to intertwine through medicine, memory, and mystery, the book asks questions about fate, hope, and the bonds that last long after goodbye. Will they ultimately meet at a point in time that brings them together like they used to be, or will life follow a different course?

“The Silence Between Years left me thinking long after I finished reading the last page. It’s the kind of story that feels quiet at first but slowly builds as it makes its way into your heart. John Clarke writes with such tenderness that even the smallest moments, like an old memory, a hospital conversation, or a simple act of kindness, are charged with emotion.

“What stood out to me the most was how the narrative balances intellect and feeling: science and art, duty and desire, then and now. My favorite part was how Carl gave Jo the gift of using her natural talent in a way she had always wanted to. The writing is thoughtful without being heavy, and poignant without slipping into sentimentality. It’s a story about compassion, second chances, and how love—of any kind—can quietly reshape a life.”—Jennifer Senick for Readers’ Favorite.

Find the Novel on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Silence-Between-Years-John-Clarke/dp/B0FVXM3JKV?

Simulated Mechanical Chaos. Toy or Teaching Tool?

For years, I had a wood and plastic mechanical chaos demonstrator sitting on the front of my desk in my Navy office. As I anticipated, visitors could not resist the urge to spin the wheels and watch the chaotic motion that ensued.

Depending on the context of the conversation, those spinning wheels could represent the harmony or disharmony between individuals, or departments within an organization, or between the head office and various departments. In my novels, I had one demonstrator sitting on the desk of the President of the United States, serving as a reminder of how normal behavior can turn into chaotic conflict without warning. POTUS would use it as an object lesson when dealing with Senators, Representatives, or Heads of State.

In other words, the toy demonstrates far more than the physics of a toy.

Chaos Simulation Concept

The concept behind the toy is as follows: Each three-spoked wheel sits atop a pin, thereby earning the name pinwheel. At the end of each spoke is a magnet. The magnets all have the same polarity exposed to the outer surface of the spoke. Therefore, as magnets from one wheel approach a magnet from the other wheel, there is a repulsive force applied to each spoke.

The user spins each wheel in whichever direction they wish: clockwise or counterclockwise. The amount of rotational force applied to each wheel’s hub determines how fast the wheels turn. At high rotational speed, the magnetic repulsion exerts little influence on the spinning wheels. But as the wheels slow down due to resistance within the pin and wheel hub contact point, the repulsive forces begin to exert an effect on the wheel’s rotation. Very quickly, that battle of the magnets devolves into chaos. The rotation of each wheel becomes unpredictable.

It is entertaining to watch. That is, as long as you don’t think too hard about the geopolitical implications.

Chaos Simulation

I have an innate desire to simulate things. If I can successfully simulate something in code, then I know I understand what’s going on. So, I attempted the Wheels simulation using Visual Basic. My code sort of worked, but after a minute or so of running, the simulated wheels would speed up until they were nothing but a blur.

The code obviously had issues.

Losing interest, I moved on to other, more successful simulation topics and forgot about the Wheels. Until ChatGPT came along. After giving GPT-5 a detailed prompt, the AI laid out 550 lines of HTML code. I was amazed.

The first time I ran that code with my Chrome browser, it worked. And after two days of tweaking the code to work exactly the way I wanted, it worked well enough to share.

Chaos Video

The following link is to the YouTube video which accompanies this blog post.

https://youtu.be/mKwyurn4sr4

YouTube Video Description

“A computer version of a mechanical Chaos Simulator was created in HTML code so it can be run from any popular web browser. It introduces Chaos Theory and is a model for the unpredictability of both interpersonal and geopolitical interactions.

Unlike the physical simulator it replaces, it is both quantitative and highly interactive. Thus, it is transformed from a toy to a teaching tool for high school introductory physics, or college-level, calculus-based classical mechanics lessons. The fact that it uses simulated magnetism to occasionally create a harmonic oscillator may also be of interest to junior-level Electricity and Magnetism students.”

The Result

Baseline

For a baseline, the wheels have no magnets; i.e., no repulsive or attractive force generators. The mass of the magnet is present, but no magnetic fields are produced.

Both wheels are spun with the same impulse magnitude, but in opposite directions. The left wheel (wheel 1) is “spun” with a clockwise motion, and the right wheel is forced counterclockwise. After the initial impulse, no other spinning force is applied to the wheels.

The wheels begin rotating with the same velocity. The gray line in the figure below is the line for zero angular velocity. The blue wheel spinning clockwise has, by convention, a positive angular velocity. The red wheel spinning counterclockwise has, by convention, a negative angular velocity.

Due to the effect of wheel hub friction (resistance), both wheels begin slowing down. After 50 seconds, the wheels are essentially still, approaching zero velocity.

Chaotic Repulsion

Now lets add magnetic fields to the ends of the spokes. Initially, the simulated magnets are oriented so that only repulsive forces are encountered as opposing magnets approach. However, the magnets do not make physical contact. Due to the strength of the magnetic fields, the magnets exert forces on each other from a distance.

Whenever a red or blue line approaches the central gray line, the respective wheel has essentially stopped momentarily. When the blue line descends below the gray line, the blue wheel has stopped moving clockwise and is moving counterclockwise. Likewise, when the red line rises above the gray zero line, the red wheel is moving clockwise, rather than its original counterclockwise motion.

The net result is chaotic movement.

The next figure captures the moment of magnetic (but not physical) contact between the opposing wheels. The oblique lines illustrate the repulsion force vectors, indicating angle and magnitude information about those vectors at that particular instant.

Teaching Tool

The more I played with the computer simulation, the more I discovered how sophisticated the model was and how useful the results were. On the one hand, it illustrates chaotic (unpredictable) behavior. As you might imagine, Chaos Theory is of considerable academic interest.

However, I quickly appreciated the sim’s potential for illustrating physics topics in Classical Mechanics. My aged library of freshman and sophomore college physics books contains calculus-based topics that are integral to the working of this model. Relevant examples range from force vectors to harmonic motion.

In Third-Year Electricity and Magnetism physics courses, the subject of magnetostatics covers boundary conditions on magnetic fields. That is relevant because within the Sim’s HTML code, a very simple implementation of changing magnetic field locality, is invoked. Although for simplicity, the magnets are considered as point sources, the extent of the magnetic fields is variable, encoded within the program’s code. Since the code is HTML, altering it to suit the user’s needs is trivial.

Force model: F = repulsive*exp(-kR*(d - d0)) - attractive*exp(-kA*(d - d0))
    const kR = 0.01; // repulsion locality
    const kA = 0.02; // attraction more spread-out

At the undergraduate level, these topics require calculus to adequately understand them. Indeed, looking at the constantly varying shape of the angular velocity plots produced by the simulation, the invocation of calculus is obvious. However, even when using algebra in a high school physics class, the simulation should still be a useful tool.

Physics Curricula

The following table illustrates where the topic of classical mechanics is typically distributed throughout the physics education curriculum. Within each educational topic, it is my opinion that the magnetic pinwheel simulator has a teaching role.

Topic	High School (Intro)	University Physics I	Advanced Undergraduate / Graduate
Force & Vectors	✓	✓
Inertia	✓	✓
Momentum & Impulse	✓	✓
Torque	✓	✓	✓
Rotational Velocity	✓	✓	✓
Harmonic Oscillator	✓	✓	✓

The Unexpected Harmonic Oscillator

One of the delights of simulation is that the unexpected will occasionally appear. The fun part is figuring out why the unexpected happened.

A case in point follows.

When preparing the downloaded HTML code, nullify the repulsive force slider, maximize the attractive force slider, maximize hub resistance (friction coefficient), and set a moderate initial transient impulse on wheel 1. Set the initial transient wheel 2 impulse at about 60% of wheel 1. Select clockwise initial rotation for wheel 1 and counterclockwise rotation for wheel 2.

The result is remarkably different from the simulations with high repulsion forces. There is no chaos, per se, but a rapid decrease in rotational velocity as a result of the intermittent attraction forces between close magnets and hub resistance. When two magnets become magnetically bonded to each other, wheel motion transitions to that of a damped harmonic oscillator.

Curiously, the nature of the oscillation is probabilistic. About a third of the time, the two wheels oscillate in phase, a third, 180° out of phase, and another third, with no oscillation at all.

I’ll leave it to the interested reader to ponder why the oscillations seem less damped than the non-oscillatory movement.

Download

If you wish to try this simulator, the HTML code can be downloaded here in the form of a zip file. As always, be sure to check your download with a virus checker before running the code on a web browser like Chrome.

Here is a link to a zip file containing the HTML code for running in your browser.

Also, it’s a good habit to inspect any downloaded HTML code with a text editor like Notepad or Notepad++ to confirm it is harmless.

Questions?

As always, if you have questions, I can be contacted at john@johnclarkeonline.com.

Don’t Let that Lying ChatGPT Trick You!

Just because technology is easy to use, doesn’t mean it’s right.

ChatGPT is renowned for its wide breadth of knowledge. As a scientist-writer, I use it almost daily to discover sources for my writing. For instance, to validate a strange storyline I knew zilch about, I gave ChatGPT the following prompt:

“List examples of dead people who have reappeared in full human form to provide a message to loved ones.”

It responded thusly:

Wilson, C. (1990). Afterlife: A History of Life After Death. Grafton.

ChatGPT said of the book, “It surveys historical and modern reports of post-death contact, including full-body manifestations intended to comfort the living. Covers spiritualist and non-religious traditions alike.”

It even offered to provide the book’s bibliographic citation in all the usual formats, including APA, Chicago, and MLA. After struggling to do that job manually many times, I thought that was a great feature. Thank you, ChatGPT, for saving me the time and effort!

That was followed by what it called a “Summary Chart” of information:

Case	Deceased Person	Message Type	Witnesses	Source	Notes
Lincoln Whitehouse Ghost	Abraham Lincoln	Silent presence, calm	Mary Todd Lincoln, staff	Wilson (1990)	Seen in bedroom and halls post-assassination

I was impressed!

Except for one tiny detail. When I attempted to buy the book, it did not exist!

It was pure fabrication! Or as AI apologists prefer to call it, a hallucination!

Wilson’s Book

The actual book by Colin Wilson, which I now own, is titled “Afterlife: An Investigation of the Evidence for Life After Death.”

It was initially published in 1985, then under a new publisher in 1987, but NOT in 1990. It was first published in Great Britain by Harrup Limited, not by Grafton. Furthermore, the book includes nary a single word about “Lincoln” or “White House.”

So, ChatGPT got the title, year, and publisher wrong. Therefore, the nicely formatted bibliographic citations were garbage. (Woe be to any student who might include them for “references.”)

Furthermore, ChatGPT’s offer to summarize the book was a red herring. The book had nothing to do with Abraham Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln, or the White House.

It is hard to imagine how ChatGPT could cram such a great amount of disinformation into such a small space.

Philip Arnold

To add to the confusion, there is a book titled Afterlife: A History of Life After Death. It was written by Philip Almond, an academic, and published in 2016 by Cornell University Press.

Ironically, by 2016, Colin Wilson was deep within his Afterlife. He passed in 2013 at the age of 82.

Due Diligence

The phrase “due diligence” refers to thoroughly checking your sources. Your teacher/professor probably knows the assigned subject matter and references better than you and ChatGPT combined.

It cost me five dollars to verify my reference by purchasing the book, but it might cost students a lot more if they don’t. So, students beware! By asking ChatGPT to do your homework, you may risk receiving an F on your grade.

As we say in the aviation world, check, check and double-check. So far, until proven otherwise, no AI assistant is entirely trustworthy.

The Earth is Not Our Property? Really?

Are we the aliens on planet Earth?

At least one brilliant and knowledgeable scientist thinks so.

There was a good reason why a famous 1982 Spielberg movie was named “E.T. the Extraterrestrial.” For decades, “E.T.” was the initialism that American culture associated with Extraterrestrial Aliens, creatures from outer space.

But now it isn’t in fashion. In fact, the notion of “aliens” has seemingly been replaced by NHI, “non-human intelligence,” at least in official government channels. Gone is the obsession with aliens from outer space. In fact, gone is the obsession with aliens, period.

Why might that be? Well, the anthropologist Dr. Michael P. Masters makes the argument in his book The Extratempestrial Model that so-called aliens might be human time travelers.

However, there is a corollary to the old (over a hundred years old) question about aliens that has arisen once again.

Who are the original intelligent occupants of planet Earth? Are we the aliens?

My long-held response to such ludicrous questions used to be, “Poppycock!”

Until a few days ago. Now, I’m not so sure.

Garry Nolan

My understanding of the universe and our place in it was recently shattered when a highly credentialed and respected scientist from Stanford said something incredible during a Podcast interview. Jordan B. Peterson, a Canadian psychologist, author, and Podcaster (The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast), interviewed Dr. Garry Nolan for Episode 563 (July 17, 2025) of his podcast. The tagline for that episode was startling: “Something Non-Human Has Been Here a Long Time.”

Dr. Garry Nolan – screen capture from the 2025 interview with Jordan Peterson.

Garry Nolan is a Professor in the Department of Pathology at Stanford University. Actually, that is an understatement. He is a British-American immunologist, academic, inventor, and business executive. He holds the Rachford and Carlota A. Harris Professor Endowed Chair in the Department of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Nolan has founded biotechnology companies and is the senior science advisor for the Skywatcher program which lures UFOs (UAPs) to land and be captured.

Dangerous stuff there, in my humble opinion.

During the closing minutes of the 90-minute interview, Peterson asked Nolan for his conclusion about the presence of NHI on Earth. Nolan’s response was a shocker.

“I conclude that there’s definitely something here. But I think the more interesting conclusion is if they are, if something is here, it’s likely been here longer than humans have even been civilized. So, it really opens the question, and actually it’s something that I think Charles Fort actually said, …Earth is probably somebody else’s property.”

Let that sink in for a moment.

Charles Fort

The person Nolan mentioned, Charles Fort, was even more draconian than Nolan. In the first chapter of his first book, Book of the Damned, published in 1919, he claimed that some unknown intelligence may own the Earth and its inhabitants. He wrote, “I think we’re property.” Twelve years later, one of Fort’s speculative writings in his third book, Lo!, is the most chilling of all. He wrote in no uncertain terms, “The Earth is a farm. We are someone else’s property.”

As can be heard in Part 1 of the Audiobook version of his book, Fort explains that the “damned” are those natural observations, data, that “science has excluded.”

Charles Fort. an early 20th century American writer and researcher

Ninety-four years later, most of us view Fort’s imaginative musing with a bit of subdued laughter and a healthy serving of skepticism. However, when a scientist of international caliber and fame such as Stanford’s Gary Nolan, repeats Fort’s idea, deadpan, in all considered seriousness, then, we have the makings of a nightmare.

That may be the reason that the cognoscenti in government and world leadership are so determined to resist full disclosure at all cost. It might scare the crap out of us.

Most of us with a good reason to believe that aliens and their craft have visited Earth, are perplexed by the resistance of the government to disclose visitation from other worlds. Surely, we can accept that fact, despite often-heard protestation that we are “not ready” to know the whole truth.

On the other hand, maybe they are correct. Perhaps, we are not ready for what Gary Nolan and Charles Fort had to say.

What if those two savants, Fort and Nolan, are correct?

What if Nolan’s recent words are a carefully measured leak? Who or what are the true Masters of our planet? Care to guess?

Based on a genetic probability argument, Nolan dismissed the likelihood that they were humanoid. If not human in appearance, then what are they?

Reptilians

Well, there is plenty of legendary lore about super intelligent reptilians hiding deep underground. Is there more to it than lore?

Frankly, I’ve yet to see the slightest hint of evidence for highly advanced, ancient reptilians hiding beneath our feet. If they are hiding, they’re darned good at it!

Without evidence, reptilian overlords are nothing more than a fantasy.

Shadow People

But what if the entities of which Fort and Nolan speak are not physical at all? Some, like Heidi Hollis, refer to vaporous Shadow People. (Hollis’s claim to fame is her 2014 book, The Secret War: A True Story About Real Alien War and Shadow People.) Those supposed entities are negative spirits in the extreme, even demonic, perhaps.

And the worrisome part is that Hollis (and others) claim that such ephemeral phantoms can induce vulnerable humans to do harmful things, harmful to themselves and others.

Well, once again, without verifiable evidence of Shadow People, the reality of these nightmarish entities can be neither proved nor disproved.

But still, since Gary Nolan put his top-notch reputation on the line, I’m hesitant to dismiss his general conclusion out of hand. Something may in fact own us. Unfortunately, Nolan claims not to know WHO owns us.

Methinks people like him know something the rest of us don’t.

Booth Tarkington

Within the Introduction to Charles Fort’s Lo!, I found a delectable passage written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Booth Tarkington. His words came not from Lo!, per se, but from Tarkington’s introduction to Fort’s New Lands, from 1923. It specifically addressed Fort’s earliest writing.

“(After dipping here and there in The Book of the Damned—) I turned back to the beginning and read this vigorous and astonishing book straight through, and then re-read it for the pleasure it gave me in the way of its writing and in the substance of what it told. … Here indeed was a ‘brush dipped in earthquake and eclipse’… He [Mr. Fort] deals in nightmare, not on the planetary, but on the constellation scale, and the imagination of one who staggers along after him is frequently left gasping and flaccid.”

Apparently, I am not the first person to view Fort’s reasoning, and Nolan’s echo of it, as a nightmare.

Henry Fuseli’s ‘The Nightmare’ from 1781. Google Arts and Culture

Thank-you Sylvia Earle, the Lady of the Sea

In 2024, I met renowned marine biologist Sylvia Earle at the NOGI Awards in Las Vegas, expressing gratitude for her past mentorship in 1972. Her impact on aspiring divers has been profound, inspiring my shift to studying deep-sea diving physiology.

A chance meeting in 2024 gave me the rare opportunity to personally thank a diving scientist of unbounded fame, Sylvia Earle. Recently, at the 2024 Academy of Underwater Arts and Sciences NOGI Awards in Las Vegas, I found myself in the center of the assembled NOGI Awardees—both old and new. And right in front of me, was Sylvia.

Sylvia Earle

For those who don’t know, Sylvia Earle is an American marine biologist and oceanographer. While I call her The Lady of the Sea, she is more commonly called Her Deepness, or The Sturgeon General. Time Magazine named her their first “Hero for the Planet.”

According to Wikipedia, she has been a National Geographic Explorer at Large since 1998, and was the first female chief scientist of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

But I came to know Sylvia for a more humble reason: her simple act of sharing with young, aspiring divers.

Academy of Underwater Arts and Sciences

I had come to Vegas specifically to help diver and author Jeffrey Bozanic celebrate his NOGI award for diving education. The NOGI has been described by James Cameron, also a NOGI awardee, as the Oscar of the underwater world.

Jeffrey Bozanic giving his NOGI acceptance speech.

But much to my surprise, being one of the shorter attendees at the yearly photo op, I found myself standing behind Sylvia Earle. She was wearing her signature turquoise jacket.

I touched her shoulder and said, “After the photo, I want to tell you something.”

She nodded with a smile, “Sure.”

Scientist in the Sea

After posing and taking photos, I told her that over fifty years ago, in 1972, she had been a guest lecturer to our graduate science divers class in Panama City, Florida. We were in the second class of the NOAA, State of Florida, and Navy-funded Scientist in the Sea (SITS II) Program run by Captain George Bond, Wilbur Eaton, and others at the Navy base in Panama City.

Captain George Bond, M.D., 1972

Wilbur Eaton and a SITS student.

Back then, I had planned to be a marine biologist specializing in the effects of high pressure on the physiology of deep-sea organisms. So, having Sylvia Earle talk to our small class of divers was a dream come true.

Vegas

In Vegas, I told her my research path eventually shifted to human deep-sea diving physiology. Still, I will always be indebted to her for spending a day or two teaching us how challenging but rewarding a career in marine biology can be.

I can only speak for myself, but as a young diver, I was a little star-struck.

And now, many years later, I am thankful for the chance to let her know that we young divers greatly appreciated being taught by a pioneer in science diving.

Sylvia Earle, Ph.D. and Dan Orr at the Academy of Underwater Arts and Sciences NOGI Awards Gala, Las Vegas, 2024.

Lede photo credit: Outsideonline.com.

You Don’t Need a Tardis for Time Travel

The author discusses their interaction with Dr. Harold Puthoff, a key figure in the CIA’s Remote Viewing program, and its declassification leading to unique storytelling opportunities. Their new novelette, “Soul Has No Name,” explores time travel through human soul “fingerprints.”

Twice, I have been suspected of being a CIA Remote Viewer. I have no idea why.

Harold Puthoff

However, I have hosted the Ph.D. physicist and engineer Dr. Harold Puthoff, who initiated the CIA’s Remote Viewing program. Puthoff, best known currently as a theoretician in UFO propulsion systems within the UAP Disclosure effort, came to our laboratory to lecture our Navy scientists on advanced physics, namely scalar energy.

He had been slated to speak elsewhere, but at the last minute, that Navy venue became unavailable. Only after Puthoff returned to the Stanford Research Institute did I discover his past involvement in the dark side of national intelligence

Stargate Project

After the U.S. Army showed an interest in the CIA’s remote viewing results, the program became known as the Stargate Project. Not surprisingly, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was involved. Since Stargate has been declassified, the internet is awash with information about this unique intelligence-gathering technique.

What does that have to do with the Tardis?

As the “Doctor Who” fandom knows, the Tardis is a fictional time machine/spaceship. Even though the Tardis looks like a nondescript British Police phone booth, it is anything but.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Remote Viewing as a Literary Device

Thanks to declassification, we know that Stargate Project remote viewers could reportedly “view” past and future events. That is, the viewers could travel through time sans Tardis.

But just imagine what Remote Viewing can contribute to storytelling. Based on what we know about real-life remote viewing, a character in a book or short story can be bestowed with seemingly magical powers to see clearly at a distance, both backward and forward in time. Best of all, the reader does not need to suspend disbelief because those powers are real, at least in trained viewers.

This author could not resist using that literary device in books two and three of the Jason Parker Trilogy. In Triangle and Atmosphere, a blind remote viewer keeps distant tabs on the series’ protagonist and his female accomplice.

Borrowing again from Remote Viewing, there is the new $2.99 novelette Soul Has No Name.

Soul Has No Name

The above history, including my serendipitous nexus with the avowed father of the Remote Viewing programs, provides a little background on my latest publication. Soul Has No Name, A Story of Soul Travel is a longish short story (aka novelette) about a specialized, boutique form of time travel from the comfort of a padded recliner. No phone booth is required.

That makes it yet another form of time travel using remote viewing. Of course, such a thing is entirely fictional.

Unless it isn’t.

Soulmates

The story’s premise differs from other time travel stories because it’s dependent on future technology that can identify the “fingerprint” of human souls. After all, based on known physics, energy cannot be created or destroyed. Likewise, a soul’s energy is unique and everlasting. Knowing those soul fingerprints, technology can be applied to match those unique energies throughout time. One’s fingerprints can lead to “meetings” with soul mates. Past lives literally become alive, at least for a brief soul-travel interval.

(Please remember the previous paragraph includes some fiction. It only makes sense to the reader after the requisite “suspension of disbelief.” For the reader (and this author), there is no requisite belief in past lives, reincarnation, or anything else. Like any good science fiction, the story assumes certain things can happen, whether they actually can or not. It’s “make-believe.”)

Of course, no time travel story would be complete without someone screwing things up. In this case, the protagonist has his entire life upended for a reason and in a way that no one would suspect.

All things considered, Soul Has No Name is unique in the science fiction time-travel genre.

Review

Commercialized Time Travel as a boutique industry.

“In all the millions of words I’ve read, I never came across Clarke’s time travel concept. This story ranks near the top of my long list of science fiction short stories.” Robert G. Williscroft, Bestselling author of The Starchild Saga and The Oort Chronicles.

Shortly after Time Travel is commercialized, a boutique specialty focuses on identifying and tracking human souls through their unique energy “fingerprints”—fingerprints that remain unchanged through all incarnations of that soul, swapping from one gender to the next, and even while inhabiting other Earth or off-planet locations.

In the mid-21st Century, commercial time travel to experience a soul’s previous lifetimes becomes a most exotic and expensive recreational adventure, taking the explorer on individualized trips back through time. Through Spirit Writing, a fallout of time travel, we follow a Tennessee family that drops in on its Scottish Highlander forebears in the 1620s, rebounding back to Atlanta in 2040, then on to Boston and Hungary in 2080. Soul connections, multi-generational romance, and devastating foibles highlight this tale.”

Header image credit: Photo by Dingzeyu Li on Unsplash

When a Florida Rip Current Loses Its Way

June 2023 saw deadly rip currents at Florida Panhandle Beaches, despite warnings. Tourists ignored safety measures, risking lives. Experts clarify that most rip currents lead back to shore, yet under severe conditions, swimming can be perilous. Safety is paramount; stay out during warnings.

A rip current may have different shapes, but it can always turn deadly.

June of 2023 was a disastrous month along Florida Panhandle Beaches. Having saved money all year for a beach vacation, tourists were dead set on entering dangerous water. They did so despite double red flags warning of unsafe water, police-levied fines (reportedly $500 in Panama City Beach), and lifeguard alerts.

The poster below defines the classic shape of a rip current, as well as methods for escaping that irresistible force of water returning offshore.

A Chance Encounter

Reality may be more complicated than shown in the poster. The aerial photos below, taken by my copilot wife in 2017, show an alternative shape of a rip current. Sediment stirred up in the surf zone stained the flow, revealing its form distorted by the down beach, longshore current. That sediment also exposed three rip currents along a three-mile section of the sandy beach.

Visible rip currents at Panama City Beach, Florida.

Visible rip current in Panama City Beach, Florida

Three rips, original version. Shell Island is in the distance.

Three rip currents are enhanced by brightening.

The aerial photos validate the swimmer escape plan shown in the above poster. It also confirms that once you turn shoreward, you may reenter the rip current if you stray too close to the drained portion of the beach.

Paradoxically, if the current loops back as it does in these photos, and if you have flotation, the current might eventually carry you toward shore. Of course, if you drift too far down the beach, you might encounter yet another rip current.

From the Experts

The University of California San Diego Sea Grant Program answered a myth about rip currents in the following web article based on insights from Dr. Dalrymple, an Emeritus Professor at Johns Hopkins University and currently a Distinguished Professor at Northwestern University. I quote from that Sea Grant article.

Myth: If you get caught in a powerful rip, you can be swept out to sea forever.
Answer: Even under the worst conditions, you won’t be swept to the middle of the ocean, though it could be a long swim back to shore.
Most rip currents are part of a closed circuit, says Robert Anthony Dalrymple, a coastal engineer and rip current scientist at Johns Hopkins University. If you ride a rip current long enough – float along with it – you will usually be taken back to shore by a diffuse, weaker return flow.
The exception to this occurs during fierce storms, when pounding surf sets up powerful longshore currents that shed turbulent eddies. The seaward-flowing arms of these swirling currents may look and feel like “rips,” but they are not part of a circulation cell that will slowly carry you toward shore. Instead you’ll be deposited outside of the surf-zone, sometimes a distance of multiple widths of it. When the surf is big, most people should stay out of the water.

Interpretation

From Dalrymple’s comments, it seems that the above photos show longshore currents distorting the rip current circulation. If you were lucky enough to be able to float with those currents until they dissipate, you would indeed be left far from the surf zone.

Application

As Dalrymple said, when the surf is big, most people should stay out of the water. But frankly, based on recent beach history, that is a gross understatement. Most emphatically, STAY OUT OF THE WATER when double red flags are flying. Those flags mean the beach is formally and legally closed.

No beach is worth dying for.

Nighttime Prayers in War and Peace

The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has reawakened fears parents once took for granted, particularly the nighttime safety of their children. The author reflects on the historical context of childhood prayers, revealing how wars disrupt innocence and reshape bedtime rituals.

The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought clarity to many things we have long taken for granted. One of those is the ritual of putting children to bed at night. For most of a century, parents have had the security of knowing their children were likely to survive the night.

Now, as before, that is no longer a sure thing.

*A summer bed on the porch. Photo by Dr. Albert S.J. Clarke.*

World War II

I was born two months after World War II ended. Throughout my early years, echoes of the war still reverberated. Although knowing no violence first hand, I grew up with a book of poetry and prayers for children. One page featured a graphic of orphaned children saying night prayers during the London Blitz of 1940. The photo below is not exactly what was in my book, but it is similar.

*Homeless and orphaned children settle down to sleep in the air-raid shelter at John Keble Church, Mill Hill, London, during the Blitz in 1940. Public Domain.*

On that page of wartime horror were the words I had been taught as a nighttime prayer.

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

During my wife’s childhood, she recited that same prayer. Mirroring our own bedtime ritual, we taught our children the same words.

According to this source, this children’s prayer originated in the 1700s, inspired by Psalm 4:8. “I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, LORD, only make me dwell in safety.”

1700s to 1900s

When that childhood prayer was still new to the world, high infant mortality was a fact of life. During the first months of the Covid 19 pandemic, I received a stark reminder of that statistic as I walked through the North Cemetery in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

*North Cemetery Marker, Portsmouth, NH. Own photo.*

I came across a tombstone marking the deaths of all three of the children of Seth and Temperance Walker in a matter of four days in 1798.

According to the marker, Nancy, Temperance, and Samuel Walker were “promising children … who were lovely and pleasant in life and in their deaths were not divided.” The children were 12, 6, and 4 years old. Presumably, a contagion of some sort took those young lives in quick succession.

War brings its own contagion of horror and uncertainty to parents and children alike.

*September 1940. Photo of East End of London during the Blitz. WWII. Public Domain*

A Brighter View

When our youngest was five or six years of age, she was invited to a sleepover with my wife’s aunt. When her aunt heard our daughter’s prayer, she thought the words were anything but comforting for a child. So, she taught her a new version of the nighttime prayer, the same one she had taught her child.

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
Guard me Jesus through the night,
And wake me with the morning light.

Our little one taught that version to us parents, and we adopted it henceforth as an improved nighttime prayer for both our children.

A Darker Reality

However, over the past seventy years, humans have not evolved as much as we had thought. We had been deluded by a long period of relative peace into believing that over time, mankind had become more spiritual, more humane.

Clearly, that is not the case. The dark side of humanity, inhumanity, has risen its loathsome head once again.

As always, innocent children are being devastated, either bodily or emotionally. So, I expect that to the childhood victims of war, the blander version of the nighttime prayer that our daughter taught us seems out of touch with reality.

Whereas my family, historical and present, never put much thought into the last two lines of this 300-year-old prayer, Ukrainian children probably do.

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

According to Google translate, the prayer I recited as a young child looks like this in Ukrainian.

Тепер я лягаю спати,
Молю Господа, щоб моя душа збереглася.
Якби я померла, не прокинувшись,
Молю Господа душу мою взяти.

Teper ya lyahayu spaty,
Molyu Hospoda, shchob moya dusha zberehlasya.
Yakby ya pomerla, ne prokynuvshysʹ,

Translated back to English, we get the following.

Now I go to bed,
I pray to the Lord that my soul will be preserved.
If I died without waking up,
I ask the Lord to take my soul.

Arguably, prayers can’t stop bombs and missiles from destroying human lives. However, bombs and missiles can’t destroy souls, especially those of the most precious human beings, children.