s n a p p e r h e a d

DIVE · TASK · STICK

I have created a recreational diver’s multi-tool and will custom build one, for you, for approximately $200 - $220 US**. If you are interested in purchasing a dive·task·stick, e-mail veachglines@gmail.com.

This waterproof tool enables scuba divers to communicate with—and point out items of interest to—dive partners.

The middle portion contains pellets which (when shaken) act as a signaling device. One end has a waterproof laser pointer, operated by spring-button, and powerful enough to see in clear, shallow, bright-daylight dives or even snorkeling. The other end has a wide angle (43 degree) waterproof flashlight (torch) to improve visibility during daytime dives, (looking under ledges, diving on cloudy days, seeing the "true color" of deep marine life, etc.)—and powerful enough to be used as your primary light source on night dives. The dive·task·stick has a no-slip rubber cover in the middle with a sliding wrist lanyard.

Obviously, these items could be purchased separately and kept in a pocket of your BCD. In my diving experience, however, items in your pocket are rarely used.

          The dive·task·stick is constructed from:

          · Wide-beam LED flashlight by Intova (10 hr burn time)

         · Green laser pointer by Beam of Light Technologies

         · Custom made aluminum tube “Shaker style” signaling device

         · Wrist lanyard and rubber cover

         · Three CR123 lithium batteries

         · 57.2 cm × 2.5 to 3.6 cm × .90 kg (22.5 in × 1 to 1.4 in × 2.0 lbs)

         · Safe to a depth of 40 meters (130 feet)*

         NOTE: This dive·task·stick is not a "touch-tool;" the glass end-lenses would be scratched and damaged if this pointer were misused to brace against underwater objects or touch marine life.

* Although the laser company attests it will survive above depths of 200 feet (61 meters) and the flashlight company attests it will survive above depths of 400 feet (122 meters), I can not attest to the dive task stick surviving below the recreational diving maximum depth.

** This price depends on retail purchase prices (with shipping) of three items as well as the cost of shipping the insured tool to you. As of August 2010—the laser was $88; the flashlight was $47; the center pipe, pellets, rubber cover, epoxy, and labor were $45; I profit $20; and shipping varies.

          Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom. — Benjamin Franklin

Wondering what to do with ten dollars?

Give it to the director and cast of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

If you enjoyed last year's comedy Zombieland, you will be more entertained by this film. You don't have to like Michael Cera (I never need to act because I play my expressionless self just fine.)—he holds the center of a typhoon of actors who keep all the hilarity swirling around him.

You also don't have to prefer Edgar Wright. This is funnier, tighter, and more over-the-top than all the movies he has previously directed, combined.

Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today. — Benjamin Franklin

Accumulonimbus

Originality is the art of concealing your sources. — Benjamin Franklin

Progress, as predicted

I believe that as California goes, so—eventually—will the country. Twenty-one months ago, I wrote an essay decrying the bigotry of our age and pointing out the need for:

...California...Judges...to do, after the fact, what the mentally infirm majority of Californian voters were incapable of doing: enforce equality under the law...

California's Proposition 8 law banning same-sex marriage has been repealed. Continued appeals by both religious bigots as well as generic non-religious haters will be made to higher courts, and in a year or two the US Supreme Court will (hopefully) enforce equality under the law for the entire United States.

But think how great a proportion of mankind consists of weak and ignorant men and women...who have need of the motives of religion. ... If men are so wicked as we now see them with religion, what would they be if without it? — Benjamin Franklin

jury duty

A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats. — Benjamin Franklin

I know you are, but what am I?

While eating at the very best German Restaurant in Portland, we asked the waitress about a large bag of water hanging eye-level over a window box of flowers just outside the front entrance.

Tart words make no friends; a spoonful of honey will catch more flies than a gallon of vinegar. — Benjamin Franklin

Going to hell in a handbasket for the last 100,000 years

          People always want to recall the past events, that they were part of, as bigger and better. One way we bolster our memories of ourselves is by looking with pity at the young preparing to take our place.

          I, too, am guilty of participating in this form or self-aggrandizement.

          For sixteen weeks of infantry basic training my unit exercised and ran in combat uniform and boots. The Army soon changed its policy. Trainees began wearing running shoes and a temperature-specific training uniform when they exercised. I recall disparaging comments I made about these new recruits—they would, obviously, not be as tough as I.

          I later learned, from soldiers who'd entered the military a decade before me, that they thought similarly about me; back then, (in the days of the draft) drill sergeants used beatings and the threat of beatings to motivate trainees and since my drill instructors weren't permitted to touch trainees, I was—obviously—not as tough as they were.

          It’s human nature—the need to feel superior through negative comparison.

          A nomadic tribesman crossing the frozen bearing strait once said, ‘Kids today...they’ve got no respect...they're too soft.’ That hunter-gatherer was only repeating something he'd heard his grandfather say. Without being asked to, these derogatory sentiments have left every adult mouth for as long as human mouths have formed words. (Strangely, some have forgotten they are echoing their ancestors words...spoken, about them, a generation ago.)

          Parents should worry if their children haven’t been arrested by the time they turn sixteen. Being a juvenile delinquent is a birthright and as much a part of healthy adolescence as smoking cigarettes or getting pimples. — John Waters