Alleged censorship on ScubaBoard

[danvolker]

Hopefully continuing in a constructive manner...

The term started in the cave diving community, but it spread out throughout the entire dive community through a conscious and deliberate action from within the DIR inner circle. As soon as DIR divers were being exhorted to go out and "make recreational divers better" by showing them the superiority of the DIR system, the entire baggage, including the word "stroke," went with it.

Here is a good example of one of those exhortations, an essay by Dan Volker still being used by DIR divers to this day: Making Recreational Divers Better

John
I wrote that in a polite and constructive manner, and that was back in the late 90's when the "bad" pretenda-DIR's were being mean spirited in the guise of being DIR.
I don't think your point would be that it was wrong to suggest that DIR "could" help recreational divers be better.....If your point was, that my introducing the world of recreational divers to DIR, suddenly put them into contact with words and ideas that could be mis-used, like Stroke.... I suppose that has some substance...but I think the merit of the system, is greater than the threat of hearing a word being mis-used.

Did you mean something else?

 

[supergaijin]

Sorry to derail this but from Dan's article:

Your low work rate will allow very low heart rates, which in turn will allow low breathing rates, longer bottom times if desired,and lower in-gassing of nitrogen per minute of bottom time.

I've never heard that a slower breathing rate/ heart-rate has any effect on Nitrogen on-gassing, which (I thought) is only in relation to gas gradients.

 

[boulderjohn]

John
I wrote that in a polite and constructive manner, and that was back in the late 90's when the "bad" pretenda-DIR's were being mean spirited in the guise of being DIR.
I don't think your point would be that it was wrong to suggest that DIR "could" help recreational divers be better.....If your point was, that my introducing the world of recreational divers to DIR, suddenly put them into contact with words and ideas that could be mis-used, like Stroke.... I suppose that has some substance...but I think the merit of the system, is greater than the threat of hearing a word being mis-used.

Did you mean something else?

What I meant was that the origin of the term in cave diving became irrelevant when a conscious effort was made to send the message to all divers. It may be unfortunate that the term was now being applied as it was not originally meant to be applied, but it is a natural consequence of a conscious decision. The point is that it does not matter how a word was used when it was created. When we use a word today, what matters is how it is generally understood today.

If I said you were a "nice" man, you would naturally take it as a compliment, and you would be right in doing so. It does not matter today that a few hundred hears ago the word meant "silly."

 

[Insta-Gator]

:focus: or take it to the general discussion area.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 4

 

[The Chairman]

Very good perspective!!!!!

I was walking with JJ one day at DEMA, I think it was the first Lost Wages DEMA. Someone came up to him and went on and on, and on and on about nothing but themselves. As he walked away, I muttered stroke under my breath and JJ stopped, turned to me and said: "You get it." I always have.

I would still stress the word has been used improperly --essentially malapropped ....

Words evolve. There are two basic schools when it comes to linguistics: descriptive and prescriptive. The former seeks to describe how words are being used and the latter tries to force how words should be used. You may want it to have a precise meaning, but you don't own the word. Go to dictionary.com and you'll find 26 definitions of the word and none of them are derogatory in nature. This isn't a malapropism: it's a morphed meaning! Once started, trying to stop the morphing process is as useful as sticking your finger in the dike.

 

[danvolker]

Sorry to derail this but from Dan's article:


I've never heard that a slower breathing rate/ heart-rate has any effect on Nitrogen on-gassing, which (I thought) is only in relation to gas gradients.

This was our "expectation" and our interpretation of gas physics at the time.....and remember, the models all the agencies use today, are just models...they are not the reality now... or back in the past.

The idea was..is, that nitrogen getting into your tissue or cells, gets there based on a combiination of how well perfused you are ( how cardiovascular developed you are) , how much volume of blood gets pushed past all of your cells via this perfusion --this coming from heart rate and stroke volume........and, on the pressure gradient.

There is also the effect of shunting blood, primarily to your major leg muscles--which are very fast tissue...this is seen in bicycling time trial riders.....part mental, part training induced. This may or may not be involved--we never planned on it, but it is fun to consider as an X factor for us.

If I use my scooter on a 280 foot dive, and my heart rate never goes above 60 beats per minute, the volume of blood that will be exposed to gradient will be much smaller than the volume that would pass by each cell in my body, if my heart rate was at 125 beats per minute ( because my cardiovascular system was working hard to increase gas exchange in each cell in my body---and while this exchange was refers to oxygen and CO2 at the level of the cell and the mitochondria, the implication is that ALL GAS EXCHANGE is increased at higher heart rates.

When you get to off-gassing, a diver with an elite level cardiovascular system, from the peripheral adaptations to intense training, will be far more perfused than a sedentary diver..... which means that less chance will exist that some compartments will fail to off-gas in the time we set aside for each deco stop we take. It also means that it is important to have a very slow heart rate during the bottom time on the dive, and that while doing deco stops, there should be an advantage to a slight elevation in Heart rate--but not in attaining a high heart rate, due to more complicated issues with dissolved gas in fluid where turbulence from high blood flow/high heart rate would become problematic.


While the cardio elite would have the potential to in-gas faster than a sedentary diver, the idea is for the elite cardio diver to run very low heart rates, drastically lowering the exposure of each cell to gradient--by the smaller volume of fluid passed by them--while the sedentary diver would be working much harder at the same speed, and their body would be drastically increasing gas exchange and fluid volume/speed in order to keep up and avoid becoming anaerobic.

Think of this only as a theory. It was mine and George's, and it worked for us on hundreds of very deep dives.....It worked so well for George, that the Navy's Spec Warfare group used to visit Wakaulla when he was doing major exploration pushes, because the deco he would do for the huge exposures, was so far less than the navy tables, it was deemed to be in the interest of the Navy to observe and consider what Georgge was doing, and how he was doing it.

 

[The Chairman]

but it spread out throughout the entire dive community through a conscious and deliberate action from within the DIR inner circle.

John, I kind of skimmed that article, but I don't see a call for DIR minded divers to evangelize others to their way of thinking. That's just a natural reaction when anyone feels that they have seen the light for the first time. Most of the invective spewed on the interwebs were by certifiable strokes trying to show the world that they were even badder than GI3 in their DIRness. It's more a function of our cyber environment.

 

[Tortuga68]

A Stroke by George Irvine definitiion: "The term 'stroke' refers to someone who, knowing there is a better system, chooses to dive in a less than optimal way. It applies to those instructors who encourage students (who know no better) to exercise Personal Preference, in order to sell more equipment; it applies to those who don't plan their dives; those who dive beyond their abilities; who dive deep on air; who take unnecessary risks; who do big dives using unfamiliar gear; who's only reason for diving is depth. Diving with strokes moves us into an area where our safety is no longer in our own hands. Strokes are sometimes highly 'qualified'. Often they seem very confident - usually because they have no concept of the danger they are getting themselves, and you, into." — George M Irvine III

Dan did you (or George) ever 'dive deep on air'?

This goes to someone's earlier (tongue in cheek perhaps) question - once a stroke, always a stroke?

 

[danvolker]

Dan did you (or George) ever 'dive deep on air'?

This goes to someone's earlier (tongue in cheek perhaps) question - once a stroke, always a stroke?

Did I ever? Prior to 1995, prior to the world of tech diving existing, prior to when Michael Menduno penned the name Tech Diving...there was no helium or trimix in use, except by the Navy or elite deep commericial divers with tenders. Ask DCBC about this!

So when we were pioneering the deep dives in the early 90's, doing 200 to 280 feet deep dives in ocean, we were using deep air.....George recognized the danger or narcosis in deep cave, and in deep ocean, and around 95 began pushing us into trimix...he began with the navy tables, and soon created a WKPP version with the help of Dr Bill Hamilton, and of Bill Mee. In these early days, George just explained the difference in how we would shape the ascent and deco, and there was little resembling instruction...most of this was very simple common sense changes, easy to follow.

By the late 90's, we stopped using deep air completely, but in deep cave, it was stopped practically as soon as George figured out how to get the mixes and the tables worked out--much earlier than the 100% adoption for ocean would occur.

For this to have been "Stroke" behavior, we would have to know there was a much better way, and refused it due to some personal preference issue.

In the mid-90's, it was still conjecture in the first year or so....though we felt smarter/less stupid at 280 feet. Concentration was better, we would remember more, and this soon created a new "culture" of how we considered what we should do in deep ocean dive sites. But again, the Trimix thing was not an instant epiphany...there were dangers with it..many divers were afraid that it would cause severe DCS, even neurologic hits, and a real fear existed until George and JJ and Bill Mee and a few others, used themselves as guinea pigs on so many huge dives, that the safety margins became clear, and what the smarter behaviors would seem to be.

Sorry to derail your "needle"

 

[Tortuga68]

Did I ever?

Yes, that was my question, thanks for answering it

So it was okay to dive deep air when there was no commonly available 'better system'?