1/19/2005: South Korean ice water divers
 

http://cellar.org/2004/koreanice.jpg

Ok, these are South Korean divers, and they're about to hit a hole in the ice, this is just the preparation for that. It's some sort of contest, apparently.

It seems like many different cultures have this group of people who enjoy diving into ice-cold water in the middle of the winter. In the US the women have seemed to join in, at a ratio of 10 men for every woman; looks like the South Korean women have retained their senses so far.

matching swimtrunks? me thinks this be a team sport. never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

My college roomie did the "jump in the hole in the ice for fun" thing and described it as enjoyable once you got past the searing pain of the blood vessels in your extremities closing up. He noted that afterwards you feel as if you're part of some great, exclusive club: "Men who had to have their testicles retrieved from their abdomen"

i remember as akid we went up to wisconsin with some friends who had a lakefront cabin. they also had a sauna on the edge of the lake. they showed us the great joy of breaking holes in the ice, sitting in the sauna until you couldn't stand it anymore, running through the snow to the lake and diving in. just about the time your testicles tried escaping through your esophagus, you would run back to the sauna. i only did it 3 times before i called off. but some of the people did it for hours.

It's been said that the cold alone doesn't make you susceptable to viruses and bugs, rather, it's the repeated raising and lowering of surrounding temperatures as you go in and outside (without a coat on?) that lowers your resistance to such things...

So, what I mean is, didja get sick from it? And the others there? I need to know these things!

P.S. <b><i>BRR</b>!</i>

nah, they claim it is very healthy and good for the circulation. unless of course you have a heart condition. then it may be lethal. i don't really know about any of that, but i'm still alive and kicking so it couldn't have been too bad.

http://www.evolvefish.com/fish/media...erestimate.gif

nice jim, where did you find that?

the place perth linked earlier with the darwin stickers

In Newport, they call themselves the Polar Bears. Every New Year's Day, everyone goes to the beach and watches them swim in the feezing cold water, it's like the big event of the day. http://users.ids.net/~cwwright/
their website lists a bunch of other groups who do this, too. crazy people.

Catching a cold probably has more to do with <a href="http://www.hhmi.org/cgi-bin/askascientist/highlight.pl?kw=&file=answers%2Fimmunology%2Fans_023.html">other things like proximity to people</a> than it does to the temperature.

Some other possible reasons
 

My roommate has recently read a book about some tests they did on people. Chilling didn't show to be responsible for catching a cold, not even for catching it more easily when being in direct contact with the viruses (they dripped viruses directly on the proband's nasal mucosa).

According to the book the current standard of knowledge is the following: in winter people don't ventilate the rooms as often as in summer. That's, besides the cause of increased levels of dust, one possible reason because the air is full of infectious particles. The other explanation that was given links to the decreased level of sunlight. In summer lots of bacteria and viruses are killed by the UV light of the sun. In winter they have a better chance to survive outside a body.