[TML] Low Berths

[Jerry W Barrington]

On 8/3/08 4:39 PM, "shadow at shadowgard.com" <shadow at shadowgard.com> wrote:

> On 2 Aug 2008 at 22:16, Jerry W Barrington wrote:
> 
>> On 8/2/08 9:36 PM, "Robert O'Connor" <robocon at ozemail.com.au> wrote:
>> 
>>> By reducing metabolic rate by a factor of 60, body temperature falls
>>> over 4-6 hours, eventually equilibrating with room temperature. This is
>>> a consequence of physiology and physics, and kind of hard to handwave away.
>> 
>> All your comments following this seem to be derived from the body
>> temperature problem...
>> 
>> Never heard of blankets & heating pads?!?
> 
> Not practical if you are going to be moving around.

So keep room temp near normal body temp, if you need it.  :)

> *Years* back the list's resident medic did a rather thorough
> breakdown of all the things that would happen with fast drug. Most of
> them even worse than the listed items.
> 
> I do recall that if you raise the body temp without increasing the
> metabolic rate the body is apt to *rot*.

Well, hibernation is generally a cold-weather phenomenon.  On the other
hand, estivation occurs *because* it's warm, and the Madagascan fat-tailed
dwarf lemur does that for 7 months a year...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estivate>

So clearly all these objections *could* be worked around.  I don't think
almost-low berth passengers would object to a minor thing like an enema (as
suggested earlier).