How Hilarious Am I?
DON'T ANSWER THAT QUESTION. You may also have expected this Intro, as Conrad deliberately avoided going into detail yesteryon about how many rules of physics "Armageddon" broke or strained to their elastic limit. So! we are back today to do a follow-up, because there is nothing like giving a film a good shoeing when it has no defence. Art!
Here we see Grand Central Station being destroyed by asteroid fragments that arrive ahead of the main body, 'Dottie'. New York's Transit Authority finally has a genuine reason for trains being late.
Now, 'Dottie' itself is described as being 'The size of Texas'. Art!
That's part of Dottie's surface with puny human shuttlecraft for scale.
However - a word you knew was coming - there are a few errors at work here. You see, one of the largest asteroids in the Asteroid Belt is Ceres, which is a whopper of a body, large enough for internal forces to make it assume a spherical shape, which is rare amongst asteroids, which normally lack the size and mass to become the opposite of square. Art!
Ceres and friends
Ceres is 590 miles in diameter. Texas, for your information, is 773 miles wide and 800 miles long. Any asteroid of such dimensions would have been plotted back in the nineteenth century in the early stages of interplanetary astronomy, simply because of it's size. Another thing about Ceres and other large asteroids is that their orbits are i) stable, ii) predictable and iii) consistent. There is 0% possibility of their 'sneaking up' on Planet Earth, thanks to the International Asteroid Warning Network, which is a whole Intro to itself.
Next item of concern is the lead time for Dottie's arrival upon Earth, which is given as 18 days.
O come on! I know that from tension comes drama, but can they at least make a desperate stab at reality?
I8 days to transit from the Asteroid Belt to Earth means Dottie will be traversing 178 million miles, meaning it will be cracking along at 412,275 miles per hour (114 miles per second). This, for an object that masses AT LEAST 900 quadrillion tons, quite possibly a quintillion tons, which is rendered longhand as 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 10¹⁸. Art!
THE SCIENTISTS ARE ANGRY!
"What are you doing with a gun in space?" Art!
A question Chick, to starboard, is asking Colonel William Sharp, who is pointing said lethal instrument at Harry. To be fair, Harry was about to lamp seven shades of shinola out of the mission's thermonuclear warhead. Even a 'fizzle' detonation would have vapourised the shuttle and occupants, so you can understand why Colonel Sharp is being a bit tetchy.
Note that Chick doesn't have any qualms whatsoever about babysitting one of the largest nuclear warheads ever created - estimated at 100 megatons, but jibs at a low-velocity handgun that (very probably) won't pierce the shuttle hull. Art!
This is Rockhound, climbing off the thermonuclear warhead, after mimicking Colonel Kong from "Doctor Strangelove". This, Chick, is why you might need a gun in space; to deal with people who suffer from -
SPACE DEMENTIA! JUST LIKE 'REN AND STIMPY'! Except to less comic effect.
One of the things that the film does get correct is the despatch of two shuttles, carrying two separate crews, and two separate Armadillo ground vehicles, because in a mission this critical you need redundancy.
Chick never quibbles about why the Armadillos are each armed with a six-barrel Vulcan gun, one of those hideous ultra-rapid fire weapons that will turn tanks into Helvetian cheese, which is like Swiss just more so. Art!
Thanks to the 'Internet Movie Firearms Database' for putting up these pictures, which prove that the 'Freedom' and 'Independence' were willing and able to battle any evillll green-skinned triple-headed Dottitians trying to defend their planet-killing space-rock. Or something.
There was also a proper analysis of the size of warhead needed to destroy Dottie, which is perhaps hair-splitting a tad too far. Joe Public is not cognizant with warhead yields and just needed to know that the mission was going to use A Really Big Bomb. A moment's pause and reflection - which this film doesn't allow! - would bring realisation that a single bomb is unlikely to destroy an asteroid 775 mile across and you'd need either a whole batch of them or a single teraton yield device. Art!
 |
| Explosion courtesy the Department Of Silly Effects |
I suppose Bay and Bruckheimer had the last laugh, as the film grossed a decent profit on a budget of $140 million, proving that Engage Eyes And Put Brain In Neutral films can do well, if you sell enough popcorn. Art!
So it cleared $275 million, back in the days when Promotion, Advertising and Distribution were a fraction of what they are today.
Well, so much for my plan to use 'Armageddon' as an into in the Intro to serious science. Maybe tomorrow.
"The Boys" Season 4
Conrad is not so big a cad that he'll reveal how Black Noir ended up in the comics; suffice to say that it's completely different from where the television series has him. Which is to say, hilarious. Art!
It's the same actor as Black Noir I. Can you tell?
In this scene he very obviously fall asleep whilst Homelander is blathering on, only to be kicked awake by The Deep, then apologising in a mumble"Sorry, I'm narcoleptic". Fair enough, Black Noir I had a severe peanut allergy.
More Mythbusting
No! Nothing to do with Jamie or Adam, this is about Dan Snow's pocket recapitulation and revocation of commonly-believed nonsense about the First Unpleasantness, which Conrad has probably already punctured over the past <thinks> twelve years. Art!
Utter drivel! It was fought on the Eastern Front, too, which included Ruffian Poland, Galicia and Romania, and later Ruffia Actual. Also at Gallipoli, which we have covered here, though that ended in early 1916. Then there was Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Jordan and the Hejaz in the Arabian Peninsula. Then also in the Caucasus, which was between the Ruffians and Turks. Salonika, where the British and French faced the Bulgarians. In Italy, along the Italo-Austro-Hungarian border. For a while until 1915, it went on between the Serbs and the Austro-Hungarians as well. Not to mention the sideshow sideshows in Africa, and the mopping-up of Teuton possessions in China and the Pacific Islands.
Having written all that out I'd better go watch the video. Art!
The Teutons at Tsingtao
That above completely ignores the war at sea, which I will, too, as otherwise it means poring over my six volumes of the 'Official History'.
Cakey Bakey
Really an 'Apple Sponge Pudding', which Your Modest Artisan created because those Bramley cooking apples were suffering from attrition due to rot. I'd had to chuck one of them which had turned a shade of brown from it's normal green. Plus, I wanted to use up more of my Canderel sweetener, before it caked into a solid lump at the bottom of the jar. Art!
I'm waiting for it to cool, so that when I take a slice out, the filling doesn't ooze out, away from the cut sides. It will need to be kept in the fridge, so consequently I'm unsure how long it will last.
Let The Venom Flow!
Allow me to grace you with a statistic about how many people Commented on the thread dealing with Tottenham Palace and United In Manchester, or similar. Art!
Dys
22:01 21 May
Philidor13
22:27 21 May
This is, by the standards of the rest of the Comments, a very positive and poetic statement.
That's all for today. Chin chin!
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