True enough

[lederhosen]

Correction to a SMH article about lasers being used to dazzle football players and airline pilots (quoting from memory):

"The article referred to ten-megawatt lasers when it should have referred to ten-milliwatt lasers. The effect of a ten-megawatt laser on the victim would be spectacular."

Comments

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

Ah. It had been a while since I had last had coffee in my nose.

That was partly because it had been a while since I had brewed coffee in the lab (I was stuck on tea for the past few weeks), but partly because, well, you know.

("Sir! The entire eastern Sydney powergrid *blink*ed again!"
"Damn, there's another game in the Stadium, isn't there. The laser itself is bad enough, but the bloody cooling system!")

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

I don't recall the name, but I have fond memories of a Arthur C. Clarke story about a football game set in a nameless South American country where the ref is grossly biased. One wealthy sponsor pays for about a hundred thousand souvenir programmes that are essentially a couple of square feet each of reflective metal, and on a prearranged signal the supporters of the losing team all reflect sunlight at the ref at once... it's never quite established whether the culprit intended to reduce the ref to a small pile of ashes, or just hadn't checked the numbers beforehand.

(It occurs to me in hindsight that aiming gets harder as the number of people involved increases, so it probably wouldn't be quite as devastating as that, but it was a cute story.)

[scascot.livejournal.com]

The effect of a ten-megawatt laser on the victim would be spectacular.

<snork> <choke> <sputter> <cough>

<wipe> <wipe> <wipe>

Yeah...to say the least.

("Dammit! That's the third player to be vaporized today!" "I hate playing 'away' games...")

100 KW laser...

[torin3.livejournal.com]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5T5yEMMiDs

Re: 100 KW laser...

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Awesome. I can imagine the Four using that to toast pigeons...

[culfinriel.livejournal.com]

Hee!

[drzero.livejournal.com]

Hats off to the SMH for being so self-effacingly droll about their corrections. Reminds me of the time a paper (name escapes me currently, sorry) apologised for: "Referring to Inspector Johnston of being a defective in the police force. Of course, we meant he was a detective in the police farce."

[fluffy-cloud.livejournal.com]

Thank you, I needed to laugh.