Photography And Half-Thoughts By Mitchell Hegman

...because some of it is pretty and some of it is not.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Obligate Ram Ventilators versus Nikola Tesla


The obligate ram ventilators are not a football team, not a part of an HVAC metal ductwork system, and not the latest gadget to enhance engine performance on a racecars.  Obligate ram ventilators are species of sharks (including great whites and makos) that will perish from a lack of oxygen in their systems if they stop swimming.   Such sharks have lost the ability to “pump’ water across their gills with muscles in their mouths or movable gill plates.  To live, they must swim so oxygen-rich water is always passing through their gills.

Try to imagine the need for constant motion in human terms.  What would that look like?  Well, start with the need for sleepwalking as the norm.  And can you envision having sex while jogging?  I think most of us can grasp terms of motion on the opposite end of the scale—for example, being confined or bedridden for several days.  We enjoy snuggling on the sofa with a significant other or with 40 pounds of cat and not moving at all for an hour or more.  But constant motion is difficult.

Never-ending motion is nearly beyond human comprehension.  A few humans have tried to remain swimming.   Nikola Tesla (my hero) is said to have functioned regularly on only two hours of sleep.  Tesla wanted to always be working on his inventions.  He also insisted that the motion of taking long walks was required for problem solving.  On one such walk he envisioned the rotating magnetic field that became his invention of the AC induction motor.

Brilliant!

While Tesla’s relative motion may have helped him invent the electrical, gadget-filled world we now enjoy, his lack of normal periods of rest may have contributed to his becoming increasingly withdrawn and paranoid.  He was a germaphobe, for starters.  As time went on, Tesla fell into a host of obsessive compulsive habits.  Tesla developed an obsession with the number three.  He always washed his hands three times in a row and sometimes would circle a building three times before entering.  Toward the end of his days, he more or less fell in love with a pigeon.

That’s a bit weird.
 
The bare truth is that humans, on occasion, need to shutdown and rest.  Sitting there and watching the clouds roll by has its benefits.  We are not great white sharks and should not aspire to be.
 

--Mitchell Hegman

2 comments:

  1. I only tend to be like an Obligate Ram Ventilator when I'm upset in which case I don't need sleep or food but only constant brain and/or body activity as a way of escaping. Last time I did that, I lost so much flesh so quickly somebody dared accuse me of being into meth. There's a reason we humans are not like Obligate Ram Ventilators. Otherwise, we could be even more eccentric than Tesla was although of course I find absolutely nothing wrong with that.

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  2. I think we all become Obligate Ram Ventilators from time to time, depending on our circumstance. I wish I could be a fraction of a fraction as brilliant as Tesla!

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