your terrible ideas

iirc watt was inspired by a principal of planetary movement that ptolemy posited, i think gibson is making a bit of a jump there. hero(n) is really the guy who laid it out. but doctor casino here is essentially correct, the problem is metal. advanced metal working didn't really get going - and like many academic and scientific disciplines it peaked early and tailed off quickly. rome was pretty degenerate after the early empire. i think mental was a PITA for romans because the ores were elsewhere. and crucially they didn't get very far with iron alloys, and that is really the business end of things.

it likely peaked early
and metal, not mental

http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/~gel115/115CH5.html

ps i love ancient and still-running academic webspaces like this

Great info Roberto, thanks.

goole otm.

Ancient smiths had to learn the metallurgy of iron and its alloys, which again is non-intuitive, much more difficult than that of copper and bronze. They solved the problems empirically, of course, but the chemistry and metallurgy involved were not understood at all until modern times. Most important, the smithing of iron demanded much more luck or skill than the well-understood smithing of copper and bronze. Some smiths made tools and armor and weapons that were significantly better than others. The mastery of iron and steel truly was a rather magical process, and it is at this point that legends begin to feature magic swords, produced by smiths who are also wizards.

^^^ the kind of shit i just eat UP. Makes total sense when they put it like that.

Bronze Age heroes did not have magic weapons. The heroes of Troy had to use tricks for victory, even when the gods were interfering. (I imagine that the gods would have provided their favorite mortals with magic weapons if they had been available: certainly the Iron Age Norse gods did.) However, Iron Age soldiers had swords that were forged one at a time, and Iron Age gods and heroes often had magic swords such as Fafnir and Excalibur. Legendary Iron Age smiths such as Wayland Smith traditionally possessed great strength for hand-forging weapons, as well as great skill. Ironically, Wayland was lame, but only because he was maimed deliberately by the King: is this a faint echo of the Bronze Age?

there is an interesting division between legendary swords that did crazy shit and swords that were just known for being especially hard or sharp, e.g. excalibur or durendal(sp?). the latter seem obviously to be referring to steel swords, most likely accidentally made rather than some particularly talented smith, hence the specialness/rarity.

also fafnir is a dragon not a sword

ha, wait, yeah, what is that about?

Agreed about 'magic' versus 'special' swords. On the Gibson tip, there's a great sequence somewhere in Stephenson's Baroque Cycle - probably midway through "The Confusion" where a couple of our heroes, one a warrior, one a seasoned alchemist, get to watch a bunch of metallurgists at work somewhere in the Near East. The alchemist is following the whole process, step by step, focusing on what they're doing with the hammers and the heat and so on, and meanwhile the warrior, who has been carrying around a prized 'watered steel' blade the entire story, gradually has this jaw-drop moment of realizing that this is the place where watered steel comes from, this is the procedure that's created his amazing super-sword that everyone fears. And this is set in the late 17th century!

the sword sigurd used to kill fafnir was forged by wayland the smith, which is probably the writer slipped there. it has a more boring name though (gram)

I remember Gram, it was a sword in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. IIRC the description was the rather underwhelming ''The sword named Gram.''

An actual terrible idea: sitting in the inverse castle library and killing eight million Dodos in the hopes of them dropping a rare Crissaegrim. (I speak from sad experience.)

Er...wait. those are Shmoos, I think. The Dodos are in the inverse castle entrance but they also drop something really cool about one in ten thousand times.

kill ilxor account

a poster that reads

KEEP CALM
and
SHOW ME
THE MONEY!

I had a terrible idea, which was to start a thread called "Describe yourself in the harshest, most uncharitable way possible."

omg, it exists already

so does
"keep calm and i drink your milkshake"

however

"keep calm and don't taze me bro" is open

i think that's a great idea xp

KEEP CALM
and
DROWN CATS
& BLIND PUPPIES

This came to me in a vision on the way home -- it's a movie in which Clint Eastwood plays a truck driver who picks up a hitchhiking Chris Tucker, and the rest of the film is just two hours of them talking in the truck, with Clint Eastwood doing more or less his character from Gran Torino, and every exchange is Chris Tucker doing his stupid schtick and Eastwood responding with his slow, salty barbs. "Yeah so I really appreciate you pickin me up dawg" "I'm not your...dawg." "So what up man you like hip-hop or what?" "No...I don't like...hip - hop."

If Chris Tucker hadn't self-imploded that would be available on Netflix right now

My Drive Wit Dre

Here's one: a site that's like a "longform" version of buzzfeed -- "576 Cool Things You Didn't Know About European History 1076-1492" "1000 most attractive people of the 20th Century" etc.

A cover version of King Missile's 'Detachable Penis', but retitled 'Detachable Booster', with new lyrics appropriate to the video game Kerbal Space Progam ("I was orbiting Kerbin, and my booster was missing again. This happens all the time. It's detachable.").

Here's one: a site that's like a "longform" version of buzzfeed -- "576 Cool Things You Didn't Know About European History 1076-1492" "1000 most attractive people of the 20th Century" etc.

― HOOS next aka won't get steened again (Hurting 2), Thursday, August 1, 2013 4:35 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

buzzfeed actually has a 'longform' section now, i would sort of love if it became this

"Wow, has it been three and a half hours already? Better get back to that spreadsheet"

This would be great if the factoids were in chronological or organized thematic order, so it was basically just every sentence of a high school textbook, rewritten as a dumb heading with a huge picture.

an 8+ piece band playing a hybrid of math rock and western swing named "texas instruments"

lol

the line-dancing would be incredible

I guess you don't really line-dance to western swing. Oh well. I like it anyway.

DANCING SQUARED

An app solely for sharing pictures of alligators called Instagator

an lp of Boris playing music by Carl Orff. Boris Carl Orff.

lol at instagator

Third-party app that gathers up the photos of the angriest and most dangerous specimens: AggroGator

A cover version of Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start The Fire', except with new lyrics that reference historical internet memes.

We didn't know what to say
when Spiderman made you gay
Badger badger badger badger
badger badger badger badger

...or something like that.

A t-shirt with a picture of Foghorn Leghorn dressed as Jules from Pulp Fiction, with the words 'BAD MOTHER CLUCKER' at the bottom.

That sounds like a pretty strong money-making idea, even if it would have been more viable 18 years ago when Pulp Fiction and Looney Tune t-shirts were both flying high. I still think you'd move a few at state fairs, etc. If you could get the Foghorn Leghorn to not exactly look like a copyrighted character you could probably get them into Hot Topics or Spencer's or whatever mainstream outlet it is that sells crap like that to 15-year-olds.

Foghorn Leghorn/Jackson would definitely be making the Dreamworks Face though.

An ice cream shop called "In The Dessert of the Real"

or maybe an ice cream shop/movie theater called "In The Dessert of the Reel"

Put it in Brooklyn and call it In the Mouth A Dessert

Parody thread called "what movie is this no longer taken from"

http://terribleideas.neocities.org

would 100% DEFINITELY go to a ice cream shop / movie theater but would hate to be the clean up crew

A cover version of Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start The Fire', except with new lyrics that reference historical internet memes.

star wars kid/keyboard cat/i don't know what to think of that

ugh, the other day i had the terrible idea of illustrating/animating the true story of the Sound of Music which would pick up where the film ends, detailing the tragic journey of the von Trapp family as they cross over the Alps on their way to Switzerland. but while i was looking up information about the end of the film so i could make a nice segue, i found that someone already had the same terrible idea in 2008 - http://gratzindustries.blogspot.com/2008/11/alternate-endings-sound-of-music.html. now it is a terrible, unoriginal idea

i want to move to a space colony that only has 1 million people

an 8+ piece band playing a hybrid of math rock and western swing named "texas instruments"

please subscribe me to your singles club

A right of passage for my future sons inspired by the bullet ant gloves of the Sateré-Mawé tribe. When our cat is sleeping under the ikea lounger, the participant must place his arm underneath the chair and make contact with the cats belly. If he withdraws his hand before 15 seconds has passed, no ice cream after dinner.

i like it