Do you write for Marvel?
Nutation? That sounds like something a dietician would deal with.
No, but I did spend almost a decade as a USAF officer. Creating awesome acronyms is just part of the job. Plus being a close spectator of the whole Aerospace/Defense complex since before I could read. So I’ve seen an awful lot of stretched-past-the-breaking-point contrivances.
Although I should have used Navigating instead; I changed the direction of the whole phrase about halfway through when I got stuck on the second “I”. 
I thought you made this up. Shoulda’ known better.
[Emphasis Added]
Holy shit. I’m now twitching a little, having read that. Thanks.
Glasstone mentions that 35 cal/cm^2 is in the ballpark of heat energy to get dry wood to burn. I always wondered just how directed, engineers were able to get the radiation from something like Casaba Howitzer.
To quote a sign that was placed only semi-jokingly at the laser lab my wife occasionally helps out with:
WARNING: Big Scary Laser, please avert remaining eye!
I worked at NASA GSFC for a summer. I was wandering around the hallways one day, and came across an article from an ophthalmology magazine that had been taped to a door. It told the story of a guy who caught a reflected laser beam in the eye - he heard a “pop,” and lost vision in a portion of his visual field. They had photos of the damage to the eye, and a description of his prognosis (vision gone in that area forever).
At the bottom of the article, someone had written:
“The laser in this room 10,000 times more powerful than the one in the article - wear your safety goggles!"
Every laser lab in the world has that sign taped to the door.
Sometimes it’s necessary.
The Bat bomb is one of weirdest things I’ve ever read about WWII and I’ve read a lot! It had my 13 year old in stitches though, so there’s that.
No kidding. A number of other grad students in my department were also using similar high-power lasers for flow visualization, and our only training was what we could learn on our own. The Army Research Office was one of the main funders of our lab, and one year when they came through on a tour, they were shocked to find one of these lasers firing right out the lab door onto the opposite wall of the hallway. That was the year they insisted on our department implementing a formal laser safety program, including (among other things) lab door interlocks that would disable or block a laser beam if the lab door was opened.
A bat bomb may not work, but incendiary birds have been used, and my guess is this is a real story. The key detail is that the pigeons and sparrows were gathered from the target:
…The surviving Drevians begged for mercy and offered to pay in honey and furs to escape her anger.
She seemed to soften, although at this point you’d think they’d know better…
“Give me three pigeons,” she said, according to the Primary Chronicle , “and three sparrows from each house. I do not desire to impose a heavy tribute, like my husband, but I require only this small gift from you, for you are impoverished by the siege.”
The Chronicle records in great detail the feat of precision-guided pyromania that followed:
“Now Olga gave to each soldier in her army a pigeon or a sparrow, and ordered them to attach by thread to each pigeon and sparrow a piece of sulfur bound with small pieces of cloth. When night fell, Olga bade her soldiers release the pigeons and the sparrows. So the birds flew to their nests, the pigeons to the cotes, and the sparrows under the eaves. The dove-cotes, the coops, the porches, and the haymows were set on fire.
“There was not a house that was not consumed, and it was impossible to extinguish the flames, because all the houses caught on fire at once.
Actually the bat bomb worked in its one major field test. It just took long enough to develop that a slightly larger bomb was ready for use.
Apparently Lockheed Martin is not the only defense contractor to milk a contract to the point of uselessness.
I just got a small desktop CNC cutter, and it came with a swappable laser module that replaces the spindle for laser cutting/etching. The thing puts out 5.5 WATTS of laser power, and can burn through plywood and other non-reflecting substances. Including your eye.
These things sell to the public for about $300. I’m waiting for the epidemic of people blinded by these things. Oh, and the safety glasses they sent with it were for the wrong kind of laser at a different frequency.
Don’t those things have all sorts of safety interlocks to prevent them from being turned on when they’re pointed anywhere but down into the beam-trap?
I don’t doubt that some idiots will still manage to defeat all of those and blind themselves anyway, but it’ll only be the ingenious idiots.
The kind that cost several grand, yes. The $300 models? Not a chance. Of course they’re illegal, or at least skirt the edges of the law. Typical laser cutters/engravers are actually class 1 devices, i.e. completely safe to humans. They achieve this by being enclosed and having lockouts. Same deal with optical disk writers and laser projectors. Even though the laser itself is high powered, there’s (in principle) no way for it to harm a human.
These CNC devices are well into class 4, which requires some degree of licensing, but in practice you can easily buy them off eBay or whatever. No one seems to care. It’s just a completely open-air frame with no lockout or even cover.
I have one of these myself (though IIRC, mine is “only” 3 W), but haven’t fired it up yet.
An example of the kind of machine Sam is talking about:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/3-Axis-CNC-Router-Kit-1610-2418-3018-500mw-2500mw-5500mw-Laser-Engraver-DIY/184256798427?hash=item2ae68f9edb:g:rTwAAOSwGSZemW1C
It may be that they skirt the law by requiring some assembly of the machine. Or maybe customs just hasn’t caught on yet.
Mine is going into a closed room, and inside an opaque enclosure.
A common way to get injured by one of these is by trying to cut or engrave something reflective like metal, and carching a specular reflection in your eye. Since the laser head is moving, the angle of the reflection moves all over the place, increasing the chance of getting hit.