Starting reading an interesting book this Labor Day: Shadow Divers. The journalist author chronicles the adventures of a group of guys who find a sunken WWII German submarine off the coast of New Jersey in 230′ of water. This was in the early 1990s, when deep divers were mostly still using compressed air and therefore getting nitrogen narcosis and risking decompression illness. None of the divers using the then-experimental trimix of helium, nitrogen, and oxygen got sick but three guys using compressed air died trying to figure out the identity of this wreck, which was not known to either German or U.S. authorities.
One of the main characters of the book is John Chatterton, who had been a medic in the Vietnam War, and in the early 1980s he was considering using his G.I. Bill benefits to learn computer programming:
“I can’t become a computer programmer.”
“What are you saying?” [his wife Kathy responded]
“I can’t spend the rest of my life sitting under fluorescent lights.”
Chatterton went on to become a commercial diver and visited offshore wrecks on weekends for recreation. Bill Nagle was a legendary diver and charter boat captain.
One day Nagle paid [Chatterton] the highest compliment by saying, “When you die no one will ever find your body.”
That’s one way to pick a career…
[Last night I finished another interesting book, Snowball Earth, about life on Earth at the end of the Pre-Cambrian, which seems to have consisted of runaway glaciation (ice reflects sunlight thus breeding more ice) followed by CO2 greenhouse warming.]
Why not combine a career in diving with a wondrous middle class lifestyle in sunny Mexico:
“It was 11 a.m. in a massive drain underneath Mexico City, where the smell of human waste and rotting trash was so strong it was hard for a visitor not to vomit. But it didn’t seem to bother Barrios, one of four divers who maintain the 600 miles of sewers and pipes beneath the biggest city in North America. He was just doing his job: keeping pumps and sewers clear.”
from http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/pls/impreso/noticia.html?id_nota=6200&tabla=miami
I pity the guy. He gave up his chance to contribute to the RSS vs. ATOM debate.
For more about living versus fluorescent lights, watch the video of Joe Versus the Volcano, http://imdb.com/title/tt0099892/ , starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, with the late television diving star Lloyd Bridges. Pay special attention to the first 20 minutes after Joe first enters his (fluorescent-lit) office. Then see my web site and what I am doing to put the discussion of lighting on a scientific basis: http://www.jimworthey.com .
Jim Worthey
This article, titled ‘Career Choice Might Predict Chances of Alzheimer’s’ http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/health/feeds/hscout/2004/08/09/hscout520536.html Gives me a little comfort in my choice of working as a computer analyst.
There is something about suffering constant damage to my soft tissues that makes diving seem a little less desireable as a long-term occupation.
Besides, isn’t discovering some unknown piece of code and bringing its functionality to light something like diving a lost sub 🙂
Nova did a special on U-869 called Hitler’s Last Sub.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lostsub/
I suppose that this thread is now over and I’ve lost whatever the argument was…
So does that mean that with this new substance the bends can be avoided nowadays?
Michael: Replacing nitrogen with “something else” is a good idea for any SCUBA dive, even to the bottom of a swimming pool. For normal recreational diving you replace the nitrogen with more oxygen, the resultant mixture being called “Nitrox”. Going deeper the oxygen becomes toxic and the serious guys start to substitute helium. All of that said as long as one is breathing nitrogen under pressure there is some risk of decompression illness (“the bends”). A Nitrox or trimix diver will have a longer bottom time without decompression stops and/or a much smaller risk of decompression illness given the same dive profile as someone using compressed air.
Post college (1969) it was foxhole or “something else”. Being a pilot (got my license in high school) I joined the Navy and flew F-4’s in VietNam (as a radar operator; my eyes are not good enough to be a military pilot). Thus “hooked on the adreneline” I stayed in the Reserves, flying F-14’s until age-42 (when the commie-pinko-subversives that permeate our military deemed me “too old”).
But that’s the point… “hooked on the adrenaline” (high altitude mountaineers fall in the same category).
Truthfully had I known of the Colorado School of Mines in ’64, I’d have done that over Economics at a Catholic all-male college (imagine 1200 Bart Simpsons, alcohol-fueled).
In closing, IMHO “offices suck” and for a significant segment of the (male?) population “flourescent lights = hell”.
Bring on the g’s…
Actually, Phil, it should read “Any field or computer programmer”! I’d rather collect aluminum cans outta the gutter than sit in some boring-ass office all day…. day in-day out!!! Even if it could provide me with an income leading to aircraft ownership. The plane would be nice and all, but the boredom would be killer, for sure.
!