[Escape From Pleasure Planet Download Mega
Amancio Mccrae
A pilot's watch, I felt, ought to be a model of simplicity and legibility and accuracy, without any extraneous bells and whistles, and having a feature which aped a feature of a cockpit instrument panel seemed to betray the integrity of the pilot's watch as a genre, on the most fundamental level. It took me a while to articulate to myself exactly why these date windows bothered me so much. Finally, I realized it was because they turned the pilot's watch, into an illustration of a pilot's watch rather than the real thing.
I nursed this impotent outrage for the better part of a decade, but over the years I have become more tolerant. Altimeter-style date windows undoubtedly say "aviation" to a lot of us and moreover, aviation in the pre-glass cockpit era, when analog dials ruled the day, not Garmin. (I would hasten to add that having been in the front seat of a small aircraft with a Garmin instrument display, I think glass cockpits are indisputably an improvement in legibility and safety.) They also give makers of pilot's watches a wider range of design elements to work with. I mean, what was IWC supposed to do, just keep making Mark XIIs until they went out of business?
The reason behind them is simple. Helium escape valves are a solution to a problem encountered in the early days of saturation diving. Saturation divers work at such extreme depths that the amount of time necessary for decompression would reduce actual bottom working time to an unacceptable minimum. To get around this, divers enter a chamber on the deck of a support ship which is gradually brought to the pressure at working depths. To get to the work area, they descend in a pressurized diving bell, exit the bell and do their thing, and then re-enter the bell to go back to the living chamber. When they're finished with their tour of duty, the pressure chamber is gradually de-pressurized to air pressure at sea level and they can exit safely.
It sounds horrendously dangerous but in general, divers seem to tolerate the whole procedure well. The enormous difference in pressure between the inside of the living chamber and the surface is so extreme that on the highly improbable chance that you are involved in a catastrophic decompression accident, you're playing a harp before you can say Jacques Cousteau.
(After typing that helium atoms are much smaller than water molecules for many years and leaving it at that, I am pleased to announce that after several decades of being a watch enthusiast, I finally looked it up. The atomic radius of a helium atom is 0.49 angstroms and that of a water molecule is about 2.75 angstroms, I suppose depending on how you measure it as the molecule has a v-shape. An angstrom is 10 to the minus-tenth-power of a meter, or 1 / 10000000000 of a meter. One thinks of Robert Burns' "To A Mouse" which begins, "Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie." Or perhaps I'm getting old faster than I think.)
The Omega Seamaster 600M, better known as the PloProf (from Plongeur Professionnel or "professional diver"). Both the Seiko "Golden Tuna" and the PloProf, dispense with HEVs in favor of overbuilt cases and special gaskets.
The other solution, which involves a less massive case and probably gives you a watch easier to sell to ordinary consumers, is a one-way gas release valve that vents overpressure gas inside the watch case to the outside atmosphere during decompression.
A lot of modern watch enthusiasts don't care for the helium escape valve. The reason is straightforward: no one who buys a modern dive watch with an HEV needs one. This is, you might say, a completely watertight argument. The chances of anyone who buys a dive watch actually needing an HEV is probably lower on any given day than the odds of being struck by lightning, hit by a meteorite, and winning the Mega-Millions lottery all at the same time, and so having another opening in the case, and sometimes even an unnecessary external projection, seems pointless at best.
However, the fact is that no one who buys a modern dive watch really needs one at all. A 200m water-resistant watch which is compliant with the dive watch standard, ISO 6425, is overdoing it in the same way that a helium escape valve is overdoing it. You're not diving to 200m (at least most of you aren't) and I'm not diving to 200m. That, however, is beside the point. The fact is that it's nice to know you could dive with your dive watch even if you never do, and this ultimately has nothing to do with practicality, it has to do with feeling a part of a decades-long tradition of human exploration of the deep blue sea.
The helium escape valve may only be genuinely useful for saturation diving. But it is genuinely fun to know your watch could be used for saturation diving. Wearing an honest-to-goodness full-spec saturation diver's watch is a connection to a different world, where a miscalculation can be instantly fatal but the reward is experiencing a world few humans ever see. It is, in a word, a symbol of authenticity and integrity, and considering how short the supply of both is in so many of our lives these days, I for one remain a fan. HEV, I salute you. Long may you fart.
For a deeper dive on saturation diving, check out Technical Perspectives: What "Saturation Diving'"Really Means. For a lifelong diver's take on the HEV, see Jason Heaton's Too Much Hot Air About The Helium Escape Valve. For a very close look at a highly focused collection of watches made for saturation diving, watch Danny Milton's Talking Watches With Grahame Fowler, Supreme Collector Of COMEX Rolex Divers. And don't sleep on Louis Westphalen's Reference Points: Understanding The Rolex Sea Dweller.
Last issue we saw Magik teleporting the New Mutants away from Medieval Scotland, but it turns out they once again didn't make it home. Instead issues #48-49 show portions of the team in alternate future timelines, and then the double-sized issue #50 shows what's going on in Limbo that caused all the havoc this time and then gets the team back together with a very special reunion while also resolving the threat of Magus.
...and who is leading a "Bratpack" group of young mutants, fighting the mutant power structure led by an elderly (but, weirdly - unless i missed an explanation - not as old as Katie), Sunspot and Magma.
Back in the present, Magneto continues to hold out hope that the New Mutants are alive somewhere. This gets to the in-story reason for why Xavier passed on the mantle of schoolmaster to Magneto instead of, say, Storm or Cyclops. By doing that, Magneto is becoming more human.
Next thing we see are the Starjammers, including Professor X, Lilandra, and Binary, on a Fringeworld to buy parts to repair their spaceship. Unfortunately that deal gets interrupted when Xavier detects the thoughts of Illyana, who has appeared near him after her act of desperation in Limbo.
Cameo by the Micronauts during the scene with the Starjammers on the Fringeworld. Most likely it shouldn't be considered cannon since the same scenes also show the Herculoids and probably other Easter eggs. But i've listed them.
Illyana then gives Xavier a synopsis of recent events, and holy crap is it a lot of devastating stuff: the Mutant Massacre, with the Morlocks killed and half the X-Men injured, Karma's apartment blown up and her siblings missing, then getting chased through time by Magus and the other New Mutants lost and Limbo infected.
Xavier says that the mutant massacre is what he always feared: "an outright covert war for mutant supremacy". And from reading Illyana's thoughts (something that he can only do due to her current state; her demonic side is currently not present), he learns that the "Marauders are also mutants whose goal is apparently world domination". I guess it's worth saying that Xavier's observation there is limited by what Illyana has experienced, but it's a good clue when thinking about, say, whether or not Claremont intended Scalphunter to be a mutant.
Xavier, Lilandra, Binary, and Magik return to Limbo, and find that it's now a pleasant place, "what it should have been before Belasco got his scummy claws into it". And that's due to the fact that the Soulsword is present.
Magik is faced with the choice of pursuing S'ym or taking Xavier and company to rescue the time-lost mutants, and she chooses the latter. After happy reunions from both groups of New Mutants (and a scolding for Future Sunspot), the group return to the Starjammer's ship in the present. But there's no rest for them: this is when Magus shows up.
Professor X immediately switches into Danger Room mode, ably showing where Cyclops learned to be a great tactician. Magus had been pounding the local planet apart, so Xavier sends Magma to the planet to hold it together, and he sends Magik to teleport deep into the planet's ocean so she can slice off one of Magus' appendages
Instead, after getting energy restored by Binary (Xavier is also mentally enhancing the powers of his students, however that works, letting Mirage and Karma distract their foe), Warlock and Doug merge, and they instead attack Magus by sneaking onto him and hitting him with a computer virus.
Doug starts to panic, unable to find the right sequence to shut Magus down. Sunspot suggests that Xavier use his mental powers to help Doug, but despite the crisis, Xavier realizes that if Doug doesn't do this on his own he'll never be able to rely on himself. And he and Warlock do eventually get their virus working. They couldn't bring themselves to kill Magus, but they reduce him to infancy.
It's a great fight sequence, and a nice way to use Xavier as a battle leader. Where it feels a bit cheap, however, is the degree to which the New Mutants, and especially Magik and Warlock, talk about Xavier like he's a father figure.
The rest of the New Mutants Xavier has definitely trained and nurtured. But they've had their share of fights, too. Warlock, however, and Illyana once she was aged to a teen, did not get a lot of on-panel attention prior to Xavier leaving for space. That's due to Claremont juggling a bit more than he could handle in earlier X-Books. And it's always possible that they got more training time than we've really seen. But Doug and Warlock's merger, which is really what allowed the win here, happened while Xavier was in space. Xavier led them through a great battle, and i'd argue that it's really just the heat of the moment that gets them feeling so sentimental. In truth, next issue the illusion of the happy family will be shattered.
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