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Archimedes Death Ray in San Francisco
Monkey-Man2000 writes "Following the recent demonstration by MIT students that Archimedes' death ray could have been used to burn Roman ships, the producers of the Discovery Channel's Myth Busters invited the MIT team to San Francisco to try their death ray on an 80-year old fishing boat. This time, even with perfect weather, they were unable to set the boat afire. From the article, "Peter Rees, executive producer of "Myth Busters," said the experiment at the Hunters Point Shipyard showed that Archimedes' death ray was most likely a myth.""
...if they had properly powered it with cold nuclear fission.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Looks like getting someone's pants on fire was not the pastime in Archimedes's day.
The height of conceit: having an orgasm and calling out your own name.
This thread needs more pictures of Kari...
...wait, wrong website. :-P
they should lay of their marketing, then their sales will drop.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
Screw the sails.. real triremes would have been covered in hemp rope. And from the experiments I performed in college, I can attest that hemp burns very well!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Yeah, but then the Romans would complain that the Greeks weren't abiding by the Geneva Conventions, and Archimedes would be tried as a war criminal.
5 second rule? What are you a barbarian? Where I come from it's 3 seconds. 5 seconds is just insane.
Arbitrary sig
Ergo egyptians did not build the pyramides. Martians did the good job, but they used all the resources available on Mars leaving the planet as we know it today.
Now I only have to put down my conlusions nicely written so it can be published in Science or something.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming says that the earth has dimmed 'only' 5% globally since the 50's. Nice try, don't forget to turn in your geek badge on the way out!
I'd also like to see somebody try to take my badge for not cross-checking my wikipedia results with some other source. Go on, have at you!
your awesome logic and irrefutable arguments have completely convinced me sir. thank you for setting me straight. i wish all slashdot posts were as well reasoned and concise as yours.
Mythbusters attempt and fail to land on the moon, then issue the following press release:
.. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.
It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)
Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors
Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!
Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.
MIT seems to have done well in this year's Head of the Charles Regatta. Reports of opposing crew shells bursting into flames have been dismissed by experts as "pure myth", but spectators were annoyed to find that all of the good viewing locations on the Harvard Bridge were occupied for the duration of the event by MIT mechanical engineering students.