"No parenting class would have ever prepared me for having my kid ask me why we don't need artificial oxygen storage."
No, but a grade school science class would have...
Yeah this is mindboggling. It wouldn't have ever crossed her mind to tell her kid that they don't need oxygen canisters on this planet? I mean, what the dad said is good, as it opened the door to some more learning... but wow.
Never underestimate just how clueless the general population is about how the world works. More than you'd expect would prove to not really grasp even the most basic mechanisms of their environment.
People turn to religion for a reason.
To the majority of people, understanding the world beyond "inexplicable god magic" is difficult to learn good-for-nothing trivia unless it's needed for a good grade and maybe a job if you're cut out for it. Only the parts specific to surviving in the wild get a different treatment.
Even the non-religious seem to make a habit of thinking like this. The kind of "not a Christian" alcoholic that is completely disinterested in the actual philosophies that allowed for a world where open disbelief is safe, and vocally in favor of "rights" of some sort for currently relevant minorities, with maybe a rare acknowledgement of some surface-level misunderstanding of humanitarian ethics.
You completely missed the point.
This was about the elegance of the answer, not the answer itself.
My first thought, when I heard that question, would be "do we have a backup in case the naturally produced oxygen for some reason goes away?" like some families have an emergency supply of food or water, not that the child did not know that Earth's atmosphere naturally contains oxygen thanks to plants.
I mean... I know perfectly well that plants produce oxygen, but it never would've occurred to me that that was waht a child asking about oxygen tanks wanted to know.
It wasn't about wanting to know about photosynthesis, the original question was really about the oxygen tanks. Kids very often are looking for a simple answer. Even though the real answer is far more complex.
As a Dad who helped raise 4 Daughters, (a CPA, a Triage Nurse, PHD Mech Engineer, and a Computer Forensic Expert for the FBI), teaching at home is a crucial part of parenting. Beyond offering a wide variety of materials to learn from, (we built a library of books that filled my office), and being ready to answer those oxygen tank questions, you need to show and make asking those questions and learning from them fun.
Right? This seems like a…strange problem to have. “Why don’t we need gas masks when we go outside?” “Why don’t we need to worry about rivers of lava?”
…because those aren’t problems on this planet. Lava stays underground unless there is an active eruption and the air outside isn’t toxic. Pretty simple.
A time traveler's survival guide. The vertical green bars are the only times in Earth's history with enough oxygen to breathe (hypoxia) and low enough to avoid oxygen toxicity (hyperoxia):
That blue bar is extremely pessimistic. Humans can survive pretty well with 15% oxygen, and do so in several places in the Andes mountains, China and India. I wouldn't recommend doing it without lengthy acclimatizing, especially not considering my last paragraph, but it's completely survivable by itself.
Humans also don't really have a problem with 25% oxygen, although that will definitely bring down the life expectancy.
On the other hand, note how those pointers talk about giant insects, megafauna and other scary things. Those are a much bigger problem than the air you're breathing.
To add to this: At 3'500 meters above sea level, the pressure is down to 2/3 atmospheres. So instead of 21 kPa of oxygen partial pressure, it is only 14 kPa. So like breathing 14 % oxygen at sea level. People live at that height.
I'm super skeptical of this.
You don't get oxygen toxicity, even breathing pure oxygen, unless you're under significantly more pressure than atmospheric pressure...
So either this graphic is wrong/misleading, or the atmosphere was more than double current pressure for most of earth's history... Which I'm pretty skeptical of.
Sounds to me like Dad needs a little credit here.
Even if you arent good at improv "Thats a good question! I'm not sure, we should look that up!" Is an easy go-to.
Then after shower and get into bed we look up todays questions.
Sounds like you need some credit too!
Get some perri-air
God damnit I missed that pun until now.
This is just your “one of today’s lucky 10,000” moment.
First off, weird to point out that they're "age appropriate"
If your kid reads above the age level and understands it that's generally a good thing
Number two I don't get why this is such a weird concept on how to explain things to a child. Seems pretty normal and "age appropriate"
Not only that, it'd be better to ask the kid why oxygen tanks are needed on spacecraft, then ask why we don't need them here on earth.
It's a weird post, in general.
Yep. I was reading at a 6th grade level in 1st grade, and had advanced to university level comprehension by 5th grade. WTF was an "age appropriate book?"
I'm pretty sure that those people would have been incensed, if they knew that I chose TLotR as my 1st grade book report. (This was in 1985, so while there was an animated movie, it didn't cover the entire three books, so I had to read them.)
There's some old sci fi that I read as a kid that I wouldn't give to mine at the same age. Too much sexism, racism, incorrect astronomy
That's awesome. I love weird questions with weird but accurate answers.
So, where do I find this dad, as opposed to, "Dunno, ask yer mom, and fetch me a
bud lightcoors."?They're what you call "nerds."
They make great partners, because their spirits come pre-broken.
And they tell you to get whiskey or rum, not Coors.
Or a Coors. Who cares. It's alcohol.
Also how many whys does it take to get to the big bang and final we can't know before popping we need better instruments or math so difficult it's impossible for even mathematicians to pretend to make sense of besides 'maybe, the math works anyway.'
Almost everywhere…if all the men in your life are really that shitty it’s time to prioritize getting the fuck out of whatever community you’re stuck in.
I was both of those dads.
"Go get me a beer and let's figure out the answer to your question!"
Isn't the ocean that produces most oxygen?
I'm very disappointed there was no praise for dad at the end of all that.
We don't do that.
My kid is twenty three years old. I raised her alone. Crazy, I know, but she and I are pretty close.
To this day, I get dozens of adulating text messages on mother's Day for "playing both roles."
On Father's Day, total utter crickets except from my daughter herself.
Fathers are here to donate sperm and fund other lives. That's it.
Happy belated father's day, from someone who is glad you made this comment. I appreciate you highlighting this issue, because this is something that is sorely lacking in progressive discourse; it's getting better, I think, but that is likely due to people like you helping people like me to understand how caring fathers are usually not respected or appreciated by the world. (Edit: like you say, "appreciation" towards fathers is usually limited to financial support, which completely ignores the vast majority of what it means to be a father (and also marginalises full-time dads whose partner is the working parent))
As far as I can tell, the whole thing was praising the dad.
Phytoplanktons be like, what'd he say fuck me for (^_-)
Fuuuuuuccckkkkkkkk.
I want a kid so dang bad 😞
Never been a big fan of kids, but for some reason this post clicked with me. I think I get it.
You sure about that? Having a kid means that you will have to dedicate your money and energy (working), and you will have to be there with them.
But I hope this doesn't stops you from being a parent. /lh
Dude... just like.. think before you speak to a stranger on the internet. You assume. You assume I've never raised a child that wasn't mine in a relationship that lasted 10 years. You assume I didn't wake up 30 minutes early every morning to drive my exs' kid to school for 5 years. You assume I don't have my nieces and nephews over for sleep overs regularly. Mostly you assume that I don't take the "financial possibilities" of having a child into consideration. Just like shut the fuck up. I'm sorry, but be quiet. The adults are speaking and you don't know of what you speak. You spew, you throw up nonsense. Be quiet 🤫
Mostly, mostly you may assume I'm female. I'm a 40 y/o male that aches to have a child to love and raise. I yearn for the day when a child says "I love you dad" to me again. Cause it happened with my exs' child and it's like a hit from heroin, instantly addicted but in the best way possible
Oh look, it's buzz-Killington.
"Not on this planet... yet."
Or if you want to go full crash course, "For now, but that hasn't always been the case and might not be in another million years" and explain things like Oxygen Collapse/Great Oxygenation during the proterozoic when oxygen levels first shot up and killed off a ton of oxygen-hating things.
Aim her at Asimov and Clarke.
Not on this planet... Yet
You know that lil mf reading the expanse.
