Eggnogboarding-off at Unfoggidycon!
Last year Labs punched Spackerman wearing body armor. This year, we're gonna eggnogboard Ogged?
This year, we're gonna eggnogboard Ogged
Doesn't sound any worse than a Santacon hazing, really.
You aren't with those goddamned elves, are you fishbane?
Eggnoggboard ogged
Oggnoggboard egged
Goggnoggbogg bored
bo-bogged.
banana fanna.
This guy's experiment doesn't get around the definitional issue -- nothing that US government does is torture.
Interesting post. Personal anecdote, on topic. I was a decent and confident swimmer, I am not doing a triathalon, but I could cross a lake or float until help came, in other words, not scared of water. Relatives had a lake cottage since the early 1930s which was visited every summer weekend, so I literally don't remember when I learned to swim. Before kindergarten, maybe.
But somewhere between age 5-8 I panicked in a swimming pool, and an adult had to jump in in his street clothes. I don't remember it well, but I was one embarrassed & ashamed kid..."But I know how to swim!"...and have been a little confused and ashamed about it ever since.
It makes more sense if I had inhaled a little water & hit the panicpoint.
Middle eastern guys and such who didn't grow up knowing how to swim are likely especially prone to panic quick with water. At my high school you had to pass a swimming test to graduate. If you failed you got enrolled in a basic swimming class. Watching the asian kids who often failed, it was pretty clear the water was kind of scary for them.
Uh, gswift, I don't think panicking at the sensation of drowning is a product of unfamiliarity with water. I think it's a product of, y'know, drowning.
Eh. I still panic in deep water, having allegedly had to pass a swimming course to graduate from college. The initial panic is due to unfamiliarity, but all of the rest of it is due to the bit about not being able to breathe in water. I'm guessing waterboarding doesn't really involve the first bit, since it's not in a swimming pool.
panicking at the sensation of drowning is a product of unfamiliarity with water
That's not what I said. I was just kind of thinking about how quickly the panic sets in at the prospect of drowning. I wonder if those of us who grew up around pools and the beach and such don't appreciate that level of panic. That fear some of those kids had just going into the deep water was totally foreign to me.
Yeah I mean I think the feeling of water in your respiratory tract that you can't expectorate is not really something you can easily get used to.
12: no, I understand, I just don't think this is the same panic.
Yeah, 9 didn't come out well. Stupid multitasking. Bob's story just reminded me of being surprised when I was younger of people's fear of water and/or drowning.
I still panic in deep water
My wife has this. To the point that I thought she was joking at first. Deep water like a lake, if she tries to swim for very long, pretty much brings on a panic attack.
I've been surprised by how intimidating I found swimming in deep (like, more than 100 foot deep) water. I still find swimming in deep ocean a little disconcerting... there's just so much unknown down there.
You never know when a kraken will drag you under.
Recently I went snorkeling for the 1st time. I had to get over panic a number of times. It felt like I wasn't getting enough air through that tiny tube. Also, having to expel the water before breathing took some learning.
You never know when a kraken will drag you under.
Or a sexxxy mermaid.
16: Absolutely agree, despite a lot of swimming experience, having no effective barrier between me and basically every marine predator in the world is somewhat unsettling.
.. and then there are the various critters that actually live in the sea.
Maybe I'm complacent from So. Cal upbringing. Not much in the way of stingy jellyfish or dangerous sharks down there.
I don't swim well, the ocean smells weird, and there are things essentially made out of snot that could eat me or sting me or kill me.
On the plus side "philosophy grad student consumed by snot-thing" would make a terrific thinking person's horror movie.
8.---I had something like that happen to me, Bob, but I was seventeen or around there. My sister took me out snorkling, we had to swim through some pretty tough breakers, the gear was unfamiliar and the flippers too big, yes, it ended with lifeguards and humiliation. I don't remember too well what happened; I was pretty out of it. And I don't really enjoy swimming to this day.
I was on the local swim team as a kid.
smells weird, and there are things essentially made out of snot that could eat me or sting me or kill me
It's UnfoggeDCon!
Fortunately, there are books specifically written to help with some hazards of the sea. For instance, How to Avoid Huge Ships.
Glad to know I'm not the only one with deep-water panic. Hell, if I can't see the bottom, I get freaked out, even if I know it's only 8-10 feet deep. This is why I don't like swimming in lakes.
One of my very few strong, irrational phobias is coral reef creatures: anenomes, sea squirts, crabs etc., squid, moray eels, starfish, and various other slimy predators and bloodsuckers (as well as leeches, lampreys, etc. not actually found on the coral reef. I'm just lucky that I've almost spent my whole life 5000 miles away from the nearest coral reef.
It's mostly in concepts and dreams. Aquarium, zoos, and tidepools don't bother me. But I think that snorkelling surrounded by slimy things would give me the creeps.
27: The reviews on that book are hilarious.
Free diving, snorkeling in coral reefs, on the few times I've done it, has been one of the greatest thrills of my life.
I wouldn't doubt it, what with the slimy creatures sliding over your body, trying to suck your blood, or to eat you, or or to burrow into your warm flesh. Thrill!
slimy creatures sliding over your body, trying to suck your blood, or to eat you, or or to burrow into your warm flesh
Observe the origin of the anti-relationship policy.
I wonder if those of us who grew up around pools and the beach and such don't appreciate that level of panic.
It's common enough in scuba divers that most of the rescue courses for recreational divers (ie not search and recovery) deal mostly with panic, and since this is in divers, that's panic in people who largely have a high level of water familiarity.
The first symptom is md 20/400's experience of feeling that your tiny tube (regulator hose for divers) isn't supplying enough air. Assuming you notice this, you have to breathe more slowly in response[1], which takes some severe self discipline. This is, I think, partly because it really can't supply the air that a full blown panic attack will demand, but mostly because slow breathing reverses the panic which takes the form of "can't breathe, am surrounded by water, can't breathe water, help!" that panic takes in divers.
In about 80 dives, I've experienced that early panic warning in 5 or 6 of them. Diving is comparitively challenging even for people with high levels of familiarity with and comfort in deep-ish water.
[1] Very occasionally the problem is of course that it actually isn't supplying enough air. Which is a problem, yes, but it's good not to tear through the last breaths in panic, leaving you bone dry as you attempt to swim up.
I failed my swim test at UNC but, having waited until the last day and finding bored Sports Medicine majors at the check-out table, got given a pass because none of them noticed the lifeguard pulling me from the pool in a sad reversal of those people who go try to push whales back into the ocean. It was totally awesome. Then I puked for twenty minutes.
I am not a fan of swimming.
I am informed by my wife that if you pet an eel underwater, it doesn't feel slimy. She had been informed by another diver that the eel was safe to pet as long as it was out swimming around in the water, as opposed to lurking in a crevice, because their aggression is entirely territorial.
As I was busy trying to control my own buoyancy at the time, my ability to verify any of this is limited to the observation that my wife still has all of her digits.
When an eel
bites your heel
pain you'll feel
then you'll squeal
that's a moray...
I am informed by my wife that if you pet an eel underwater, it doesn't feel slimy. She had been informed by another diver that the eel was safe to pet as long as it was out swimming around in the water, as opposed to lurking in a crevice
The phrasing here is fantastic. Of course, I'm in Butthead mode from watching the atheist's nightmare.
Morays are surprisingly sexual creatures, but you have to understand their needs.
i thought moray is an italian word
so it's an eel
have to go to work
come vorrei
The greenish-looking moral eels are green because they exude a kind of mucus all over their bodies, so somehow I doubt they don't feel slimy. Not that I have ever wanted to pet one on the couple of occasions I saw them while snorkelling.
Uh, that's moray eels.
Moral eels probably have mucus too but for other reasons.
One of my very few strong, irrational phobias is coral reef creatures: anenomes, sea squirts, crabs etc., squid, moray eels, starfish, and various other slimy predators and bloodsuckers (as well as leeches, lampreys, etc. not actually found on the coral reef.
This is a perfectly rational phobia. Coral reefs have all sorts of things that will hurt you very badly, venom-wise, and lots of them are pretty. I'm very comfortable in the water, but the safety lecture we got in the Peace Corps about cone shells, crown of thorns starfish, and so on, has left me jumpy about any kind of sea creatures for a decade and a half now.
45: What about land creatures? You know, I think I'm going to just stay inside.
40: Sadly, not original to me. I stole it from some guy on Usenet (who may well have stolen it from someone else).
The version I know is from the Fusco Brothers, although probably not original to them either.
[Spoken, while struggling with something beneath the surface of the water]: "Aaaah, aaack! Get it off me! Please, someone, help!"
[Sung in response]: "When an eel bites your leg
And the pain makes you beg,
That's a moray..."
My brother was stung by a tiny jellyfish once and it was pretty intense.
All fish produce some amount of slime. The hagfish or slime eel, a carrion-eater, can produce a bucket of it -- it uses it to repel predators. It's an important commercial fish, for food and for skin, and scientists have successfully used hagfish slime as an eggwhite substitute in baking.
49: fine, for chrissakes, I'll use hagfish slime in the egg nog.
Oh, go ahead, Tweety. It's the Christmas spirit. Don't let the nanny-state biotin-and-salmonella whiners spoil your lethal fun.
When a mace hits your face
And your brains are displaced,
That's a melee!
More on hagfish and maggots at the URL.
i think a hagfish is an evoluted tapeworm
Supposedly the hagfish is a very primitive chordate.
hee, nobody likes evolution with slight buddhist flavour
i like my nonsense as absurd and nonsensical as it could possibly be
that slime looks dead
the guy is pretty much alive and smiling though
Hagfish slime has greater tensile strength than any other slime because it's fibrous.
