The Old Hack

Les Immortels could turn invisible at will, change size and switch clothes on a whim, and that was as you mentioned after an improper reset. That is at least a start. Mind you, they also made an alarm clock which failed to wake them up, so clearly they did have limits. Maybe the simple stuff is really easy but the complex things can get tricky?

Thank you for putting things in perspective for me. I need to undertake the mind-bogglingly harsh journey of a ten minute easy stroll down to my local pharmacy where I usually only have to wait at most five minutes to get my prescription filled. I have very little to worry about, it seems.

Okay, this was kinda creepy. Today I realised that I was running out of every single medication I am taking practically all at the same time. Sure, not a big deal. All I have to do is request new prescriptions and these days I can do that in like 30 seconds online. And by tomorrow at the latest I will receive confirmation and can head straight to the pharmacy for refills. Still, it was the sheer timing of it. It creeped me out. I am very glad it is this easy to deal with these days. It has long been my nightmare scenario to be cut off from my medication and this gave me a reminder of it I really didn't need.

That's horrible, Prof. Please keep us posted!

I can't see why that would be necessary. Two other Immortals seemed to manage to get it to work fine on their own. And they weren't even very old.

Look, it's really simple. Pandora will just wear a t-shirt with the text "Everyday Student" written on it and no-one will pay any attention to her after that.

I have no idea, everyone just calls her Honey.

http://www.egscomics.com/comic/sister3-300

Your own fault for forgetting to return the Obelisk of Akhenaten when you were done reading it.

Big talk from the Pharaoh who lost the entire Library of Alexandria. Precisely what was it that was so sensitive that you had to burn the darn place to cover it up?

A sufficiently powerful wizard is indistinguishable from Merlin. Or possibly Gandalf.

It brought me out of a crap mood so I thought I'd share.

I think I am really tired still. I almost read that last sentence as "Jerry returned as Jesus." Ow.

I agree, which is why I used the term 'energy' in this case. A weapon which saps the enemy of morale and willingness to fight cannot be readily quantified yet loss of strategic or tactical momentum may decisively change the outcome of a war. But 'damage' did not seem like quite the right term to me. You can sap the momentum of an enemy force without physically harming it and it is possible for it to regain momentum later on without having lost any of its component integrity. It is complicated. Hrm. While trade can be a weapon, I am not sure that it belongs in this category. But it is possible to set it up so as to be so profitable that neither side wishes to risk ruining it. Indeed. As Sun Tzu said, the supreme excellence in war is to win without a single blow being struck. And one of his most important dictums was that all warfare is based on deception. While their status as weapon may be argued, I would say that the Bubonic Plague and smallpox are both excellent contenders here, too. The former made BOTH sides in the Byzantine/Persian war collapse and the latter allowed Cortez and his tiny handful of men to conquer the Aztec Empire. Indeed. As that charming old gentleman Josef Stalin put it, "At a certain level, quantity takes on its own quality."

http://www.egscomics.com/comic/sister3-299 I am sure this will not in any way be a problem.

http://www.egscomics.com/comic/sister3-301

That depends on what 'success' is determined as. If you are on a hopelessly losing side, doing any damage at all might be seen as success. If the weapon is experimental, success might be gaining information that will improve its reliability regardless of whether it does any damage at all this time. If the objective is to intimidate and overawe the enemy with a show of force, you might not need to do any damage at all. 'Energy', after all, need not result in physical damage nor even in any deaths. If you convince the enemy that he does not want to take this fight, that, too, may be a success.

Look, Pharaoh, I understand, but really, you need to let that von Däniken thing go. At this point you are only hurting yourself with it.

Not quite. You only need to ensure that the energy is released to the enemy. If you can partly or completely avoid having any of it spill over on yourself, this is a happy bonus.

I don't quite see the problem. The original statement was that as soon as you have a propulsion system, you also potentially have a weapon. At that point it does not matter if what is propelled is a separate unit or the system itself. What matters is that the energy from the propulsion system may be weaponised. This is true even for my jokingly mentioned balloon -- by rising it adds potential energy to anything aboard, and even if it is just common rocks these will still strike with a force equivalent to the potential energy added to them once they get dropped. Minus loss to heat created by friction, of course.

The Moderator: Perhaps you would benefit from reading the FAQ again. Particularly the section about being polite and offering constructive criticism instead of merely complaining and tearing down. ~tOH.

Ah! Well, in that case Pharaoh is correct. The hydrogen filled dirigible is much more suited for that given the speed with which it will combust.

Manners, Pharaoh. Mr. the Eighth. You of all people should know.

Indeed. One scenario that is a favourite of sci fi is taking a fair sized rock and then accelerating it towards a planetary target. If the math is done correctly, it will hit with destructive force that may readily be measured in kilotonnes of TNT. Overdo it and you may well badly damage or even destroy the planet's biosphere. Also, I believe it was in the Man-Kzin war in Niven's universe where the humans won the opening fight by unexpectedly using the _exhaust_ of their ramscoop drive as a weapon. I am less convinced of the value of the hot air balloon as a projectile. You can of course always drop things from it, but the much-loved maneuver of accelerating to ramming speed does not seem to come quite as naturally to it.

Okay it's just a little pin prick there'll be no more aaaaaaaaah but you may feel a little sick Can you stand up? I do believe it's working - good - that'll keep you going through the show come on, it's time to go...