One of those litle factoids I picked up along the way: Salt Lake, because of it’s salinity makes the body too bouyant to drown. Is this true? I did a search for a previous thread and got a long list which included stuffing gerbils up the poop chute, and one of our esteemed members asking the TM’s if he’s an asshole, but nothing about drowning in Salt Lake.
Thanks,
Quasi
You can drown, just get knocked out face down in that stuff. You can’t sink in it however. You will notice a great deal of diffrence in boyancy between fresh water and sea water too.
The buoyancy factor in heavily salinated water isn’t going to stop you from drowning if you are unable to keep your airways clear of water - it just makes it easier to remain afloat for a longer period of time.
You can sink, too, but you have to try really hard. Stapling oneself to a sack of concrete blocks, then getting someone to toss one in, would probably work.
Of course, one wouldn’t sink very far; the lake isn’t more than some tens of feet deep.
Nah, you won’t drown.
It’s those Goddammed blood-sucking flies you need to worry about.
Having lived in SLC for four years and having swum (swam?) in the Great Salt Lake, I have to admit that I personally didn’t feel extraordinary buoyed up. I could certainly sink if I wanted to.
Of course, you might want to drown in the GSL. Every cubic foot of it is filled with hundreds of Brine Shrimp (“Sea MOnkeys” to you comic book readers). They look like the feathers from your bed pillows with two tiny black dots for eyes. The water is uncomfortably warm, and on the shore are those black flies that Cnote talks about, making a solid wall you have to pass through to get out. I assume that the flies eat the washed-up Brine Shrimp, and that the omnipresent seagulls eat the flies. (This raises a good point – if, as we’re always told, Brine Shrimp are the only things that can live in the GSL, then what the hell do they eat? Clearly, somebody’s lying, and there’s something for the shrimp to eat.)
After you get out, the salt crystallizes on your body hairs, turning them white and uncomfortably stiff. What you want more than anything is a shower – but there’s noplace to get one, so you drive home really uncomfortable. It’s worse than the sand in your bathing suit you get from swimming at the Jersey shore.
I would imagine that the brine shrimp graze bacterial/algal growths, when you keep sea monkeys at home, the ‘food’ you’re supposed to give them is actually ordinary bakers yeast, which I suppose isn’t all that dissimilar to algae or bacterial mat (I mean from the shrimp’s point of view, before some pedant leaps in to correct me)
So, when people say Brine Shrimp are the only things that can live in the GSL, they actually mean the only Brine Shrimp are the only animals that can live in the GSL.
I stan…er…sit corrected. Actually I thought of that after I hit the reply button but the board was moving slow so I didn’t add anything. How much info is simply not posted because this board is so slow - probally setting back humanity a couple of years at least.