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Whales, seals, and other marine mammals seem to do alright in the chill waters of the arctic seas, so the US Navy is developing a type of "artificial blubber" to allow divers to work in freezing conditions for hours on end. Sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the collaboration between MIT and George Mason University uses an off-the-shelf wetsuit permeated with inert gases to triple a diver's resistance against the threat of hypothermia.
[...] The modification involves replacing the air trapped in the neoprene foam that provides heat insulation with heavy, inert gases, such as xenon and krypton, which make the neoprene act like fat-concentrating blubber. This is done by putting an ordinary neoprene suit into a bespoke pressure tank the size of a beer keg and pumping in the inert gases. After several hours, the gas permeates the suit, forcing the air out.
According to ONR, this makes the suit effective at 10° (50° C)[sic see note] for hours instead of minutes. The treatment isn't permanent as the gases leak out over 20 hours, but the team points out that this is much longer than the time divers spend in the water.
Why not recruit divers with more blubber?
[Note: This conversion error appeared in the original story; it should have read: 10°C (50° F). Story updated 20180907_011649 UTC --martyb]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 07 2018, @01:43PM (5 children)
It's a dog whistle for journalists who spent a semester abroad in England. It used to be French terms, because that's what the previous generation of journalists thought made you interesting, cool, and worldly. Apparently now it's the British Isles.
As a Freemason myself I'm sensitized to signals like these that are hiding in plain sight. Masons do it all the time. There are Masonic symbols on the dollar bill; the street plan of Washington DC was laid out with Masonic symbolism; and there are all kinds of phrases Masons can drop into casual conversation to signal other Masons, which non-Masons wouldn't pick up on. In fact when I visited Savannah, Georgia for the first time and walked around the town I thought there was something mighty familiar about the street plan; sure enough, the guy who designed it was a Mason and he scaled all the little parks the town is known for on the dimensions of a Masonic lodge.
Another common set of signals you can listen for are those Jews insert into news stories or screenplays they write. They use constructions that are based on Yiddish. For example, where a person from Iowa, say, would ask, "Why are you crying?" the Jewish journalist or playwright would say, instead, "What's with the crying?" That construction has become very common to hear in the media and entertainment because so many Jews work in the media and entertainment industries in America and use it universally, but it's not standard English. Watch programs written in Britain, and you won't hear it. In short, it's hiding a message in plain sight.
More subtly, people signal their level of education in the idioms they use and the references they make. Somebody who refers to their "categorical imperative" is signaling they read Kant, and the Great Books, and are therefore college-educated or higher.
And so on.
It's a fun exercise to train your ear and eye for the many overlays of hidden messages and symbols all around us, to all the layers of communication which far outnumber that which is actually said or shown.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Farkus888 on Friday September 07 2018, @06:26PM (4 children)
You sound prone to conspiracy theories. Certainly dog whistles exist, but your examples likely don't qualify. Accents aren't dog whistles. You wouldn't call it that if someone from the Midwest said pop instead of soda. With three data points I think I can confidently predict that your choice of examples is dog whistling though.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 07 2018, @10:46PM (3 children)
Do tell. I can guess, but how's about not leaving us in suspense?
Perhaps you prefer innuendo, because you haven't offered any evidence to the contrary. Has the relative incidence of "bespoke" been constant in American prose over the last 40 years? The Parent had never heard of it before, and neither had i before six years ago despite having been a fan of British entertainment (Dr. Who, Monty Python, etc) for many years and having devoured popular fiction of all kinds from British authors for many years.
Do American journalists salt their composition with French terms at the same density they did during the Cold War?
Does the prevalence of Yiddish structures in dialogue in American entertainment not obtain?
You see, i can insinuate dark intent behind your post, too. Have we enriched the conversation, or impoverished it?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Farkus888 on Saturday September 08 2018, @12:25AM (2 children)
I never said any of that isn't true. Dog whistle as a term has the connotation of ill intent by the group. I think someone saying pop, bubbler or y'all are equally telling of a person's story. You picked equally harmless points about the alt rights favorite targets and called it dog whistles.
I think we all need to do better than yelling racist or communist at each other all the time. So I didn't, but you protested a little too much and now I'm forced to think it wasn't an accident that you would want to reconsider in the future.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday September 08 2018, @01:37AM (1 child)
No, see, you can't cast aspersion and then claim you didn't. It's dishonest, and doesn't constitute the clever rhetorical trap you suppose it does.
"Dog whistle" might have strictly negative connotations for you, but its valence is neutral. That is how I used it. A dog whistle is a device everyone can see you blow, but which only other dogs will hear. You use it to signal identity or a reference that only the cognoscenti will recognize.
I used several classes of folks who use dog whistles, and identified as one of them. If freemasons are a favorite target of alt right groups then how does it make sense to you that i would say, "i am a freemason, so..." and then proceed to target myself?
The parent cited the use of "bespoke" in an article, so journalists were his mention; thus they served as the segue for my examples.
But i suspect none of that is what triggered your inference. I surmise it was the example of Yiddish syntax that Jewish screen writers frequently inject into movies, TV shows, and other such material to signal their presence to other Jews. Now, i used the example because there are a great many TV shows and movies produced in America any of us can check out and test the theory i was expounding. Also, for native speakers of English, English words placed in a Yiddish/Germanic word order are quite noticeable. They leap out at you.
Now, if, say, the American entertainment industry was replete with South Asians who wrote the South Asian head bobble that indicates assent into every scene, then i would have chosen something like that as an example to say, "see? That story set in kansas, with blond haired blue eyed kansans? They're bobbing their heads side to side in South Asian fashion to mean yes, instead of nodding American style. That's a dog whistle from south asian writers to other south asians in the audience."
But, you know, they're not. Neither are screen writers in Hollywood predominantly Mexicans who write "pendejo" into the mouths of WASP Wall Street bankers, or southerners who put "y'all" into the mouths of prim school marms from Connecticut. Such a thing might be out there, but is so rare that I, at least, can't cite any examples.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Farkus888 on Sunday September 09 2018, @03:34AM
By your own admission here you ascribe intent. I place the blame fully on lazy writers who live in a bubble and never bothered to learn how different people can be since they never leave their home city. It isn't intent it is just bad writing and an extremely sheltered life. Remember the reporter who scoffed at the idea of even knowing someone who owns a pickup truck when a truck is the most common vehicle in most states? Like that, they have no clue how weird they are because everyone they know is like them. Truthfully in all of these examples except masonic city designs the "in group" wouldn't notice, it is the outsiders who notice. Y'all will never sound out of place to a southerner but is so out of place to the rest of us that it is a principle characteristic in stereotypes of southerners. Half of the humor of the movie Fargo comes from how funny they sound and act to the rest of the country. Bespoke may sound like someone trying to be fancy to you but the first American use I recall is from the show Archer, which tells an entirely different story about the person using it.
For the record you were wrong about the Jewish thing. I am not and not from a place where they are a larger portion of the population. It was Kant and the categorical imperative. I am not a college graduate but I have read Kant and many of the Great Books because I believe in educating myself. I have had a lifetime of being mocked for reading things like that without a teacher cracking the whip. In that time my patience for people being anti intellectual has worn very thin.