Now if you don’t know me, you’re just going to assume I am crazy on this one, but here goes nothing.

Being a diver, you are well aware of DCS (Decompression Sickness) A.K.A. The Bends. Well one thing as a diver you may not be aware of is Diverticulitis. I mean why would you, after all, it has nothing to do with diving. In short, here is a quick snippet on Diverticulitis just to catch you up to speed a bit. Now bear with me, it gets to a diving point at some time.

Many people have small pouches in the lining of the colon, or large intestine, that bulge outward through weak spots. Each pouch is called a diverticulum. Multiple pouches are called diverticula. The condition of having diverticula is called diverticulosis.

About 10 percent of Americans older than 40 have diverticulosis. The condition becomes more common as people age. About half of all people older than 60 have diverticulosis.

Diverticula are most common in the lower portion of the large intestine, called the sigmoid colon. When the pouches become inflamed, the condition is called diverticulitis. Ten to 25 percent of people with diverticulosis get diverticulitis. Diverticulosis and diverticulitis together are called diverticular disease.

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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) – In a bad economy, fun is often the first casualty.

For James Hedrick, that means it’s a busy time in his line of work. He’s one of those dreaded repo men.

Hedrick spends his days scanning megayachts, sailboats and fishing skiffs as he steers his dinghy through a marina west of the city’s skyscrapers, looking for a piece of the American dream.

This particular piece is a gleaming white, 65-foot Hatteras with two master bedrooms, two full bathrooms and a full galley kitchen with glossy teak cabinets. The owner is $35,000 past due on his $1.5 million boat loan.

Hedrick is an agent with National Liquidators, considered by industry experts to be the world’s largest marine repo company. The Fort Lauderdale-based company has tripled its business in the past three years, and now takes possession of about 200 boats a month in Florida, Ohio and California. The company’s competitors also say they’ve seen similar increases in business.

“They’re going to hang on to the car, they’re going to hang on to the house. But they’re going to give up on the boat,” said Hedrick, whose employer has doubled its staff in two years to 85 repo agents so they can meet demand from the banks and lenders.

‘SELF INFLICTED’

It’s not just boats: Repo agents say banks and lenders have been asking them to reclaim all-terrain vehicles, motorcycles, small planes, snowmobiles, semi-trucks and, of, course, cars. Vehicle repossessions were up 10 percent in 2007 over the previous year, said Tom Webb, an analyst for Atlanta-based Manheim, the largest car auction company in the nation.

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Longstanding concerns about polarized sunglasses inspired ADS Sports Eyewear to take a closer look at polarized lenses. The results of this research were often contrary to conventional wisdom, and the lessons learned are so significant that some fundamental safety information should be rewritten.

Dallas, TX (PRWEB) July 16, 2008 — This research focused on three long-standing beliefs:

• Polarized sunglasses should not be used as motorcycle sunglasses because polarization makes it harder to see puddles on the roadway.
• Polarized sunglasses should not be worn by snow skiers because polarization makes it harder to see ice patches on a ski slope.
• Polarized sunglasses should not be worn by golfers because polarization affects depth perception.

This myth busting project began by investigating the belief that glare from a puddle will help a rider identify a water hazard more quickly. Motorcyclists have repeated this for generations. We found this to be the most disturbing misconception that we investigated.

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On NBC nightly news (with Brian Williams). NBC correspondent, Michelle Kosinski, has been working closely with REEF, NOAA, USGS, the National Aquarium in Washington DC and other partners to put the “Lionfish eating lion’s share of the Atlantic reefs” segment together.

For more information you can check out REEF’s website at www.reef.org/programs/exotic

A husband’s love of the outdoors and his wife’s passion for helping others is the recipe for an extraordinary Web site, which features adaptive hunting and fishing equipment for people with disabilities.

AdaptiveOutdoorsman.com “was fate,” said Renee Error, president of the company that she and her husband, Mike, launched recently. It’s also the couple’s first venture in e-commerce.

The inspiration for the company (http://adaptiveoutdoorsman.com/index.html) belongs to a 16-year-old boy with muscular dystrophy - the nephew of a friend of Mike Error, vice president of AdaptiveOutdoorsman.com.

“He would sit in his home at this huge picture window and watch the deer. And one of his wishes was to go deer hunting,” recalled Error. So Mike Error and his close friend, the teenager’s uncle, decided to take the youth hunting.

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