Moontanman

No, I would not target an attacking shark eyes. I would long before that moment by caution sense.

 

--->http://www.sharksavers.org/en/education/shark-myths/424-myth-sharks-have-poor-vision.html

 

Lucky you that have not experienced scary dangerous situations. I have nothing to lose by carrying in a dive whatever else can work as defense. Has to be better than only my 357 bangstick.

A shark is aware of you long before you are aware of him, in pitch darkness with zero visibility he knows where you are, he can sense the electrical emissions of your heart beat. I never said sharks had poor eyesight, I said they can feed with out their eyesight very effectively.

I would advise you to avoid situations where sharks would be likely to attack, don't drag dead fish around with you, stay away from areas where big sharks are known to feed, stay out of poor visibility water conditions (I know thats a little unreasonable, I like to night dive) if the water is clear enough for you to see the shark he will most likely avoid you, most shark attacks occur in water with poor visibility where the shark cannot get a good idea of what you are or how big you are.

If the shark is big enough to just come out of no where and bite you in half your bang stick is not going to help you, a laser is not going to help you, just not being there is about the only real defense.

BTW, you are just stirring up a tempest in a tea pot, how many divers a year are really attacked by sharks? you almost as likely to be hit by a meteorite.

Sharks do not depend on their eyesight to a great extent ? Where did you get that from ?

I guess the whole sharks sense of smell and them feeding at night kinda tipped me off, a blind shark is just as dangerous as one that can see. A great many experiments that covered sharks eyes up with opaque disks showed they can feed quite effectively when totally blind.

..."I think you might just piss him off with the laser"... How can you tell such ? Nobody knows !

Give it a whirl, maybe he will like it.

When they bite who cares if their opaque membrane is on. It's too late for laser or bangstick !

So you think you're gonna be able to target an attacking sharks eyes? I'd rather have a bang stick or better yet just not attract the shark to start with.

A parasite that increased the libido and took away inhibitions should do the trick, ummm, that sounds a bit like alcohol!

I knew I shouldn't have filled out the forms with my real location!

..."This is totally untested at best and totally bogus at worst, I doubt a shark would be impressed by a laser underwater unless it was shown directly in it's eyes up close, even then i am skeptical to say the least."...

 

Of course that has to be aimed at the eye, one by one. What were you expecting ?

 

A poorly written site from someone making a living with a wimpy 5 milliwatt one:

 

--->http://www.airbuddy.com/id47.htm

 

The only sure thing is I do not want such laser aimed at my eyes, underwater or above water.

 

Better ask an eye doctor...

Considering that sharks do not depend on their eyesight to a great extent and that they have a opaque membrane that covers their eyes automatically when they bite and that many shark attacks occur in water that is somewhat less than clear (even in black water) I think you might just piss him off with the laser.

Yeah, doing the right thing is a bitch, just wrap up the suitcase and it's contents and ship it to me, I'll do the right thing, no, really i will!

According to my assossiation and sixth sense i think in a water or gas circumstance if you scale a given thing up, don't change its structure and material, the bigger form would be able to sustain higher pressure, wouldn't it? Why? What's the laws in that case?

The reason pressure is an issue for humans or mammals or any animal with hollow spaces inside is indeed the hollow spaces. As long as there are no hollow spaces to compress or as long as the internal pressure is equal to the external pressure the pressure is not an issue. (there is some ways pressure can change the shape of some very complex molecules but life has adapted to that in our oceans depths)

So it's not correct to think of the pressure being sustained or resisted, the pressure is simply the same inside as out. When a human scuba dives we have to breath air that is compressed to the same pressure as the outside water, if the pressure wasn't equal we would be crushed as would any animal, even a whales lungs compress when it dives. The issue is gravity and weight not pressure.

Though i know the trend isn't a straight line. There must be vertice or vertices and wave on the graph. Because the thing has its own gravity, when it's larger the gravity is greater, at a curtain size it will collapse itself...

yes, the cube square law covers that.

Hi.

Diver too. With some very scary incidents on records; am taking a couple of actions for the next season.

 

1.- This animal:

 

--->http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.1997

 

It is NOT A TOY ! Waterproofed, will permanently blind any menacing shark in less than a second, from a safe distance. Must be used with care.

This is totally untested at best and totally bogus at worst, I doubt a shark would be impressed by a laser underwater unless it was shown directly in it's eyes up close, even then i am skeptical to say the least.

2.- To try if protects the rear end, attaching magnets to the fin tips :

 

--->http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2007/05/sharkmagnets

 

If it does not work, well. I tried. I do think that motion of a magnetic field in a very conductive media as seawater, has to generate currents.

 

- I will not discuss the humane or not side.

There is gadgets in the market that attach to the diver and emit voltage pulses, supposed to work. Very pricey for peanuts technology.

 

Always wondered if a piezoelectric lighter, properly waterproofed with the terminals at the tip of a pole can give a shock to its nearby zone, (includes the diver) when triggered.

The link says this is not a viable way to prevent a shark attack,

Divers and swimmers may thrill to the idea of shark safeguards. However, before you rush out to buy neodymium magnets to create your own shark-repelling gear, Herrmann cautions that the magnets appear to have an effective range of only 10 inches. Also, you'd need to align the magnetic poles outward and keep the magnets from clicking together, and once you had the necessary 10 to 20 pounds of magnets all over your body, you'd sink. So, at a cost of about $5 a magnet, you could theoretically turn yourself into a $400 shark-safe anchor at the bottom of the sea.

 

 

 

Read More http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2007/05/sharkmagnets#ixzz0hMyGjL0w

Historically, the religion with the most power and followers is right or at least gets to lay claim to being right.

I scuba dived for many years, when I first started I was "concerned" with the problem of sharks, but after many years and many hours of dive time the sight of a shark is more of thrill than a scare. I think I've seen a shark maybe a dozen times over the years, good training and safety habits will keep you alive far better than all the bang sticks and shark repellents in the world. Sharks almost always ignore divers, it's why dive charters to see sharks have to attract them, if sharks were looking to eat people scuba diving would be suicide.

Okay when we talk about large, are we talking size, or mass? Also, deep sea animals are not quite large comparative to the many other animal on the planet. Unless you could point out a large animal that lives in the Hadalpelagic Zone.

Underwater or in a very dense atmosphere neither size or mass matter as much as in (standard) air, and yes deep sea animals can be quite large, generally speaking the food supply keeps deep sea animals smaller, giant tube worms, large clams and huge colonies of other creatures around black smokers where the food supply is large is a good example of large deep sea animals.

Huge salps, free swimming worms, giant squids, gigantic jellyfish, many large animals live deep in the sea, whales are an example of how a supporting medium allows large size. There are also very large sharks that live only in very deep water, the amount of food that drifts down from above is what limits the size of deep sea animals not the pressure.

Gravity limits the size of animals in a very primary way, the higher the gravity the smaller animals will tend to be unless there is some way around the cube square law. Internal skeletons is one way around the cube square law compared to external skeletons but gravity is still the primary reason land animals are smaller than oceanic animals in general.

Merged post follows:

BTW the Hadalpelagic Zone is a very small part of the ocean and the pressure there is far more than the pressure at the surface of Venus. But none the less the primary impediment to life there is lack of food.

Furthermore, to say that gravitational force at the planets surface would be the primary impediment to size is not true. You could have a really low mass planet that has very little natural resources to support life. Even though the gravity would be weak at the surface, It wouldn't make sense for large lifeforms to form because there is would not enough resources for such a lifeform to survive.

It is indeed the primary reason, that does not imply it would be the only reason. Even on a planet with a small food supply large creatures would be physically possible. The cube square law is the primary reason the food supply would be secondary.

I just do not understand your logic here?

The idea that there are smaller animals at the bottom of the ocean (because of greater pressure) would imply that the greater the pressure, the harder it is for large lifeforms to form.

If it were true that deep sea animals are smaller you would have a point but the fact is that deep sea animals are often quite large, food supply being the limiting factor in size not pressure.

I actually designed something similar to that 30 or so years ago, sadly I never developed it but it would seem someone else has perfected it.

http://www.shark.co.za/repel.htm

Well, if a planet is bigger, it does not exactly mean it has a greater gravitational pull, nor does the planets density. Gravity is really determined by the planets mass (amount of matter) and your distance from the planet. The greater the mass, the greater the gravitational pull, the closer you are to the surface, the greater the gravitational pull

 

While gravitational pull would have an effect on the size of the animals on the planet (greater the pull, the smaller the animals). It would not be a set rule.

 

Say if Venus for example was an inhabitable planet, it has a weaker gravitational pull than earth, and therefore, according to what you said lifeforms on Venus would be larger. However, the atmospheric pressure on Venus is much greater than the atmospheric pressure on Earth. So even though the gravitational pull is weak, the pressure is very strong, thus making it hard for large lifeforms to form.

No, the atmospheric pressure would not make larger creatures more difficult any more than deep sea animals are smaller due to pressure. Gravitational pull at the surface would be the primary impediment to size, greater air pressure might, if it was great enough, allow larger animals via being supportive much like water does in the oceans of the earth.

To be honest the gun is the real kicker here, the money I could probably see keeping, the pot might be kept or thrown away depending on the individual but the gun presents some real problems. Keeping the gun is unthinkable, a gun could be traced back to crimes unknown and implicate you if you had the gun in your possession. Just leaving the gun is equally untenable, a small child could pick it up and kill themselves or some one else. Destroying the gun could absolve you of any connection to it but the gun could be key piece of evidence in one or more crimes that could very well prevent more crimes if the police got the gun. Turning in the suitcase and it's contents is the only course of action acceptable to my own sense of morality.

I live in a medium sized town in the southern USA, assaults of any type are quite rare. I feel free to walk pretty much anywhere, a few small areas would best be avoided at night but I would assume that is true for any city.

Why Atheism? Why not Atheism?

aaah, what suitcase?

So in my invertebrate class a while ago we were discussing brain parasites and I couldn't help thinking about 28 days later. Maybe it's because I watched a fringe episode a few weeks before with a brain parasite infecting humans. Some parasites will affect the behavior of their secondary hosts to make their way over to a target host for example; toxoplasm will affect mice to be attracted to cat pee which they obviously wouldn't be otherwise and therefore be meals for the cats... we talked about a few others. Now I can't claim that I have the greatest background in parasites but what if... A brain parasite somehow evolved to be transmitted through blood and saliva through humans? Is it just me or would we have a zombie(like) pandemic at hand? lol

Parasites that turn their hosts onto "zombie" like automatons are rare but not unheard of. I'm not aware of any parasites that spread through from host to same species host via behavior changes and make the host attack another host.

Usually the parasite makes the host vulnerable to attack from a secondary host like a snail that it's behavior is changed to make it more likely to be eaten by a bird so that parasite can continue to the next host in the chain.

Something like rabies comes closest to doing what you are talking about but contrary to popular belief rabies victims do not go around looking for more victims to bite. Even in dogs the rabies just makes the dog irritable and more likely to bite they do not roam looking to bite like zombies do in zombie movies.

What lived on islands during the time of the dinosaurs is an interesting question. I'm not sure the idea of large island mammals is reasonable due in large part to the fact that modern mammals tend to ward dwarfism on islands.

Reptiles tend to do well in islands due to their ability to do with out food and water for long periods of time. I'd like to see what the fossil record, if there is any, shows about island animals during the age of dinosaurs.

I'm keeping watch on another forum but so far no fake doctors have popped up. He smelled bad to me from he start as well, i look up everyone when i debate them, his on line persona was easier than most to confirm due to his photo but it also made him easier to fake realistically. It is really sad the creationists are willing to lie cheat and steal to convert people to their point of view but not surprising considering what I've seen out of the religious in my life.

Before we discuss eugenics i think it's important to really know what the eugenics movement was and who supported it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

Another take on eugenics

http://www.accd.edu/sac/honors/main/papers02/Judge.htm

I find it interesting that many religious persons also supported eugenics not to mention that eugenics is not dead even today.

I think it's important to think of this as a beginning. The box is small, it can use gases other than hydrogen (methane is both a fossil fuel and renewable) think of how expensive a hand held calculator was 40 years ago, then think of them being givin away free as promotional items a decade ago with a business card printed on the back of a wafer thin calculator.

Never underestimate the power of mass production on the cost of an item. 20 years from now it's very likely the cost will be low enough that we can use them to power a bio-fuel electric car. There are lots of advantages to a car powered by fuel cells not the least of which is simplicity, lower pollution levels is a given.

A fuel cell that gives off just H2O, CO2 and electricity would be a wonderful replacement for the complex, expensive, (not to mention polluting), internal combustion engine. Think of how expensive it would have been to build what we use in our cars now 40 years ago, the internal combustion engine has increased in complexity many fold in the last few decades.

The idea of a home based electrical source just might be the least of it's important contributions to our civilization. Combine CO2 sequestering technology and or methane production from bio-fuel and the "Bloom Box" and they just might have discovered the savior of our civilization.

They already have medical procedures that can cure obesity, no need to use gene therapy.