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Re: DIR? or DIW?


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Posted by Kendall Raine on April 27, 2006 at 10:30:00:

In Reply to: DIR? or DIW? posted by Mark W on April 26, 2006 at 22:13:18:

The problem with these things is people generally don't know what they're talking about. They believe things, often passionately, but often have neither the experience nor knowledge of the subject matter and the alternative perspective to do more than devolve any content into mudslinging. Some of the responses to your post qualify as just that-mudslinging by people who hold strong passions without really knowing what they're talking about.

The njscuba diatribe on DIR is that, as well. I have dived in the Northeast, on the Doria, and have seen how they dive. There are far more efficient means of diving anywhere, including the Northeast, than the style adopted by some of these guys. The amount of overweighting and sloppy configuration creates a spiral of adding gear to solve problems caused by poorly constructed gear packages in the first place. No wonder these guys think so highly of themselves. Just surviving a dive wearing some of this stuff is an accomplishment in itself. That's different than such a package being optimal, smart or necessary. It's also obvious to me the author hasn't the vaguest idea what diving in caves is all about. He also has no idea what it's like to dive in a DIR fashion, other than it's different from they way he and his crowd dive. Also obvious is his sneering disparagement of DIR as an intolerant quasi-religious diving Taliban. Passion and ignorance are the ingredients of all religious wars. In that respect the warring parties are often more similar than different.

DIR's hands are dirty, too. The name itself is interpretively dismissive of alternative. That's stupid inasmuch as how can you hope to productively advance the acceptance of your logic-and DIR has much logic to it-when the first thing people know about it pisses them off. Something becomes DIR when George Irvine says it is. The irony is when GUE teaches something Irvine disagrees with, or Halcyon makes something Irvine disagrees with. This happens regularly though one has to look carefully to see it. The njscuba article is right that the DIR system was developed in caves and does not lend well to hauling lots of heavy wrecking tools around. The DIR system is designed around efficient u/w propulsion. Enormous gear packages can be handled with ease using DIR because the guiding principal is buoyancy neutrality and streamlining. Efficient propulsion leads to improved consumption, better stress control and decision making, etc. The NE wrecker design precludes efficient u/w propulsion. There are ways to more efficiently configure a tool centric package with DIR as a guiding principle. The challenge is that's of no interest to George and so becomes impossible as long as one needs to have affirmation from him.

The happy medium is to really understand what DIR is getting at without needing to call oneself DIR or anything else. Once relieved of labels-and the imbecilic arguments that follow-mission specific optimization presents. Such optimization represents minor evolutions to core configuration. Attitudinal foundation is undisturbed. There is a path between the warring extremes. One just needs to STFU long enough to develop the experience necessary to see it.



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