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Further to Yesterday's Giant Squid Media frenzy...

And, now that we know what they actually look like, it can surely only be a matter of time before we start catching them and serving them up with a samphire garnish in the nation's most bourgeois eating establishments.
Click to expand...

Riight...now we should change "bourgeois" to "idiotic" and inform the uninformed new agency that any sane TONMO member could tell you that Hatt was correct and he was not "raining on their parade" or a "spoilsport", it just that he has common sense. Dimwits.


Now where did I put the red wine to soak the Archi?
 
Come now, Chrono, I know it's the pipe-dream of intellectuals to reach the cud-chewing herd, but it's never going to happen! Let them believe! It makes them happy. It also keeps them away with all their dangerous pitch-forks, torches, and muskets! Do you know what it costs to repair a good tesla coil these days? Let alone replace a loyal hunchbacked manservant?! It's astronomical!:madsci:
 
erich orser said:
Actually, Chrono, you use a jacob's ladder for teacher-zapping.
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1 out of 1 mad scientists surveyed vote for tesla coils; sorry Erich:

Lightning On Demand

(see also SRL - Survival Research Labs although they team with the above for their lightning... if you go to their shows, bring ear protection and check your survival instincts at the door.)

Van de Graaff generators are also worthy of consideration.

Of course any of these has potential so it's not good to show an unfair bias lest we be charged with trying to polarize the current views on the subject.

If you want to irradiate a teacher with neutrons, consider a
fusor.
 
I was just impressed with the terrifying effect a live jacob's ladder had on Bela Lugosi when he worked for Ed Wood. Rather dangerous, but very cheap to manufacture!

Monty, did you see SRL when they were down here last time?
 
...and back on topic.

UK's Daily Mail had a full page article that I shall paraphrase here for you now:

ahem!

"******* Hell! There's a Colossal Squid too! It's got hooks and suckers!"

They also go on to say that, yes, it could indeed "rip a man apart!"

(For UK cephfans, I would just like to state that I don't buy The Daily Mail, I have to check it through for books as part of my job).

..and falling straight off topic again. What you chaps need, is this book...

Electronic Gadgets for the Evil Genius : 28 Build-It-Yourself Projects: Bob Iannini: 9780071426091: Amazon.com: Books
 
erich orser said:
I was just impressed with the terrifying effect a live jacob's ladder had on Bela Lugosi when he worked for Ed Wood. Rather dangerous, but very cheap to manufacture!

Monty, did you see SRL when they were down here last time?
Click to expand...

Actually, the most, er, effective looking device I've seen for zapping specific targets looks like the taser cannon at lod.org... which also reminds me of an idea a friend of mine had... he lived somewhere with frequent thunderstorms, and his annoying neighbor had a pickup truck he was very proud of. So my friend had the idea (but didn't actually do it) of setting up a small mirror on top of the truck, oriented at 45 degrees from vertical. He would then point a CO2 laser at the mirror, causing a vertical column of ionized air to go up into the sky-- essentially putting a very tall lightning rod on the truck and causing it to become a lightning magnet. Of course, there is also a horizonal line of ionized air back from the truck to the laser itself, which could be a liability.

Actually, on the lightning topic, a friend of mine just had his plumbing wrecked by a lightning strike a week or 2 ago... he grounded his solar panel to his water tank, and apparently the best path from his water tank to ground was through the water in the PVC piping in his house. Apparently, the PVC pipes all cracked in a peculiar helical pattern-- he believes this is because the lightning, because of some self-induction or something, travelled in a helix along the outer edge of the cylinder of water in the pipes and created a very localized overpressure causing this fracture. (I'm not sure I buy this; I suspect it's also possible that the water just all vaporized and the helix is some artifact of the way the pipe is constructed or some such.)

I've seen SRL do a show in some industrial/alley area in a seedy part of LA a few years ago; I'm not sure if that was the last time they were down here or not, though... I count on an enthusiast friend to keep track of their shows, but he moved to NYC and I haven't been paying attention since... Have you seen them?
 
One of my uni lecturers has built a lightning cannon, it blew through a concrete wall 30 meters away, but I think the uni had a spaz about it cos the safety regulations here are real anal.
Oh and at a concert there was a guy with a lightening stick, 2m long sparks were flying outa his hands or the stick when he held it.
 

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