[QUOTE=Excalibre]
Exactly. The Balrog’s wings slowed its decent.
[/QUOTE]
Eeeevil…you’re just evil…
battens down the hatches
[QUOTE=Martini Enfield]
You know, this reminds me of a funny story that happened while I was on Safari in Tanganyika back in… well, it was after all that business with the Zulu, but before that little adventure in the Sudan, so I guess it would be around '82 or thereabouts- when my Native Bearer, M’Boko, fought off a Rhinoceros with Lady Hampshaw’s violin and Lord Fotherington’s regimental trumpet. My word, you should have seen the expression on that fellow’s face! I don’t know who was more terrified, M’Boko or the Rhinoceros. Of course, we all had a jolly good laugh about it back at the Colonial Club afterwards, but I can tell you, things were looking pretty dicey for a few moments there! 
[/QUOTE]
M’Boko was your bearer, too? He was with me for over a year after I rescued him from the lion pride that raised him. Did he ever tell you how he developed his musical talents? He stepped on a carcass that had been bloating in the sun for two days after the lions made the kill, and it made an awful noise. He experimented around with it until he’d built a crude bagpipe. He was the piper for my regiment. Always complained about the standard-issue greatpipes. Said he could do better with a dead warthog and two sets of oryx horns.
Ok, to offset the skew till science ficion (sheesh people, there are other genres 
) I’ll mention the movie I’m watching just this second: O Brother Where Art Thou.
I’ll buy it. Every bit as much as I buy the Odessy. But there is no way that singing is coming out of George Clooney’s mouth. Which is fine. Nothing wrong with dubbing an actor who can’t sing with a singer who can. But in this case it…jarring.
Still, good soundtrack.
[QUOTE=Excalibre]
Exactly. The Balrog’s wings slowed its decent.
[/QUOTE]
OMG.
**jayjay **you got room in there? I gotta hide too.
Many cartoons and/or children’s shows have characters (usually villians) who, in an attempt to trick the hero, disguise themselves. Although it should be patently obvious who they are, they don’t realize who it’s supposed to be until the disguse is lifted (usually by a piece accidentially falling off). In some cases, this is believable- Elmer Fudd, for example, isn’t really the brightest of fellows, and I’m sure he really does think that Bugs Bunny is somebody else when Bugs puts on a disguise. But heroes falling for it every time? Somewhat dubious. The Bullwinkle Show, which often satirized TV conventions, poked fun at this one in one episode where Boris Badenov (who was always disguising himself) tells Natasha he thinks his disguise is going to fail this time- there are just so many times moose and squirrel can fall for the same tricks. Natasha is sure it will work, quoting from the villain’s handbook that there is no one more gullible than the star of a TV cartoon show. Sure enough, she’s right.
(A more believable version of the disguise scenario is the long-running series of ads for Trix cereal. Although the rabbit believes his disguise will get him some Trix, the kids are smart enough to realize it’s really the rabbit, and play along with his ruse until eventually tricking him out of his Trix.)
[QUOTE=Seven]
I remember watching The Core when it first came out on DVD. I was fine until the second frame.
[/QUOTE]
It’s true- there is just no way that a group of stars can reposition themselves in a perfect arc over a mountaintop with the word “Paramount” appearing out of nowhere. 
I haven’t read the entire thread… but my biggest pet peeves are self-repairing and self cleaning cars…
The truck in Twister… well, there was a lot in twister that was “stretching the bounds”, but that truck just kept self healing… and not to mention the fact that the odomoter kept going backwards, and changing roads at will…
[QUOTE=jayjay]
Eeeevil…you’re just evil…
battens down the hatches
[/QUOTE]
So much for trying to be good.
[QUOTE=kawaiitentaclebeast]
Exactly. See my last post.
Is this from personal experience?
-
I believe manually aimed .50cal machine guns on helicopters are very rare. Wikipedia lists only 4 ACH-47 helicopters in Vietnam, that had these on the back cargo ramps. I have also seen recent pictures of a similar setup on more modern CH-47s, but as I understand they are not generally used. But of course, if you are saying that you’ve actually done it yourself, I have no reason to doubt you.
-
I do have some idea of how helicopter door gunners operate, one of my friends did that for a year or two and I’ve seen him at work. The usual drill is to start firing and then walk the tracers onto the target. Usually this required a burst of around 20-30 rounds, and this is from a fixed mount. Although I did not try it then and there, I am very doubtful that single shots of hand held 5.56mm would have impressed any enemy on the ground very much.
[/QUOTE]
Nope, I’m a bit too young and female to have gone to 'Nam–but I partied in my misspent youth with a disproportionate number of disaffected guys whose natural tendencies toward alternative lifestyles got a definite boost from their war experiences. Sure, could’ve been “no shit there I was stories” but I don’t argue with guys who sport large numbers of scars obtained by interactions with less than friendly persons in a jungle, y’know? Especially since most of them were quite large, had PTSD symptoms in spades long before it became fashionable, and had brought home some distressing trophies, many of which they also had ammo for… Good times, good times…
I also lived in Japan during the height of that particular conflict ('67-'70) and spent a fair amount of time talking to wounded guys who’d been med evac’d to Zama hospital… I was a preteen at the time so they didn’t give me chapter and verse about what went on back in Vietnam, but they did tell me what their jobs were and what kind of equipment they were using. We used to play on tanks at the depot and helicopters too, until the MPs would chase us out. Those are some neat toys if you don’t think about what they’re used for…
[QUOTE=Lemur866]
And I’m pretty sure that replicators don’t just convert raw energy to matter, they have a stored mass that they use to create whatever you need. So you’re not creating a cup of coffee out of photons, you’re creating it out of stored protons, neutrons and electrons.
[/QUOTE]
Actually, I heard about this theory shortly after I did my calculations. Still, even if replicators don’t create matter, using teleportation to assemble objects on an atom-by-atom basis must be a massively energy-intensive process. Same goes for the transporters, the warp drive, and the holodecks. All of these things must have pretty steep power requirements. I think that Trek’s writers realized this too; this is probably why plasma conduits are used to channel energy around the ships. (Now that I think about it, this might explain why control panels are always blowing up in people’s faces. They’re plasma-powered!).
To get off Star Trek for a moment, I always have a problem with movies where a computer expert can hack into a high-security computer nework quickly and easily. The most recent offender for me was Mission: Impossible. Apparently, noone at the CIA has ever heard of a little bit of technology called a “firewall,” and the schematics to CIA headquarters (including the locations of sensitive rooms) are readily available to anyone who wants them. :rolleyes:
[QUOTE=outlierrn]
I somehow find it far easier to suspend disbelief for western superhero movies like Spiderman or X-men than eastern martial arts like Crouching Tiger Hidden Wires, go figure.
[/QUOTE]
Funny – I’m just the opposite. I accept the unrealistic fight choreography as a Hong-Kong-Asian-kung-fu-martial-arts standard, but I expect my western fights to obey the laws of physics.
[QUOTE=InvisibleWombat]
Okay, she’s been trekking through the jungle for a week without a shower. Her clothes are torn in strategic places. There’s a tidy little smudge of mud on her cheek. But her hair billows beautifully in the wind. Not a tangle, not a leaf or stick. Not a matted, oily mess. And she has lipstick on. After a week in the jungle?
[/QUOTE]
Or, it’s the action hero, and his clothes get torn to reveal bulging biceps (if he’s got 'em), or his whole shirt falls off (if it’s Ahnold).
[QUOTE=Steve MB]
I take it that, in this case, “I don’t believe it!” is not so much a rational analysis as an expression of irritation (e.g. “My lottery ticket was one number off from winning a million bucks! I don’t believe it!”).
[/QUOTE]
No, my analysis is entirely rational. It’s just that if Jack Black had been wearing the indestructible slip, I wouldn’t have added “Damn it!”
[QUOTE=kawaiitentaclebeast]
- I believe manually aimed .50cal machine guns on helicopters are very rare.
[/QUOTE]
Manually-aimed .50 cal machine guns were on most Hueys in Vietnam. How do you think they defended the choppers? Although I didn’t man those weapons, I frequently rode on Hueys right next to the gunner hanging half out the door.
Upon further research, it seems that the GAU-15/GAU-16 series was used on the UH-1N, which entered service in 1970. But I cannot find any reference to the UH-1N ever being used in action outside the US. Is this the type of weapon you are referring to, or is there another type?
[QUOTE=kawaiitentaclebeast]
Upon further research, it seems that the GAU-15/GAU-16 series was used on the UH-1N, which entered service in 1970. But I cannot find any reference to the UH-1N ever being used in action outside the US. Is this the type of weapon you are referring to, or is there another type?
[/QUOTE]
I am not a weapons or aircraft expert, so I am not familiar with the model numbers you are mentioning. I was only a troop serving in Vietnam in 1967-68. When our group (musicians in the band) travelled outside the base, we used either trucks & jeeps or Hueys or Chinooks. On the Hueys and I think on the Chinooks were gunners sitting next to .50 cal, belt-fed guns, the same kind we had mounted over the truck cabs for ground travel. These guns were hand-pointed out the door/window by the gunners.
I seem to recall a practice that if Hueys travelled in groups, at least one, maybe all, had door gunners. This is how squads of soldiers were transported to remote areas; areas that were typically not secure. While troops were being landed or picked up, the machine gunners were the primary defense as the troops were too busy running and climbing in or out to turn around and shoot effectively.
If there were remotely-controlled weapons in the nose of the choppers, I don’t recall. Perhaps a Huey pilot can join this discussion and tell us that.
Here is a picture of the GAU-16. Is this the same type that you saw? Could you describe the mounting mechanism somwhat? The .50 cal Browning on it’s own weighed 63lbs, not including the ammunition belt, so the only way it could be effectively used was on a tripod or pintel of some kind. I am very curious about this and would be happy to be proven wrong.
I’m not trying to be a pendantic nitpicker here, but my original point was that the .50 cal. was not used very often as door gunner weapons, as opposed to the 7.62mm MGs and/or Gatling guns, precisely because of it’s slow rate of fire, the theory being that in a helicopter you need a high rate of fire to make up for the loss of accuracy, and not a high weight of fire provided by the .50. I know that the use of crew served large caliber machine guns on modern helicopters is comparitively rare, but I don’t know about Viet Nam.
[QUOTE=kawaiitentaclebeast]
Upon further research, it seems that the GAU-15/GAU-16 series was used on the UH-1N, which entered service in 1970. But I cannot find any reference to the UH-1N ever being used in action outside the US. Is this the type of weapon you are referring to, or is there another type?
[/QUOTE]
The ubiquitous 'Nam era gunship was the UH-1B
The doors guns were either mounted M-60 or .50 cals.
[QUOTE=Mirror Image egamI rorriM]
Anyway, during “The Two Towers,” when Gandalf was falling after the Balrog, they were falling at different speeds. No way. Everything falls at the same pace.
[/QUOTE]
Well, one is a huge (ie. wide) thing with wings and the other is a relatively compact man. Gandalf was also accelerated by gravity and by being yanked off the ledge by the Balrog’s whipe. Since they were falling a long way I could see Gandalf catching up.
That, and, you know, he was a wizard. He could telekinetically toss Saruman around, so maybe he could telekinetically pull himself toward the Balrog.
I always really loved that scene…Gandalf riding the Balrog on the way down and hacking him up was pretty damned cool.
-Joe
You know what I’d like to see? Just once? I’d like to see a movie where a bolt of lightning hit a machine that has a computer with advanced AI programming and a billion electronic parts. Then I’d like to see that machine fry and keel over dead instead of somehow being imbued with sentinent life. OK? Is that too much to ask? I once accidentally shocked my NIC card with static electricity when installing it, and it didn’t start talking to me and trying to escape so that it could meet girls. I had to go out and buy a new NIC card and a grounding strap.
Fucking Short Circuit and Stealth just piss me off every time I see them. :smack: