Did Not Do The Research

[Aleol]

Swords, Swords and swords. Nobody seems to understand how longswords work; even though they clearly have two sharp edges and a pointy end, most people think their heavy club-like metal sticks. Seriously? Also, katanas are seriously overrated. They're no better than any other sword

Also armor. Why does armor seem to be made of paper and heavy as a steel beam in movies and videogames? A guy in a full plate harness is not going to go down easily at all, and yet most depictions of it have blades going straight through it. Even stabbing through plate was difficult. and there are other armors too that are given the shaft. I don't mind it in games so much (unless it's a goddamn cutscene), as it's mostly just visual aesthetic, but movies have no excuse. Also, their maille must be really bad quality, because apparently swords can cut through those as well (they can't) maybe a hard stab, but not a cut.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArmorIsUseless

Katana's were pretty crappy swords really. I mean I think they WERE sharp, but the edge dulled pretty fast if it was used pretty well, and it was fairly brittle to be using against metal armor or to be striking against other weapons. As I understand it it was largely a symbolic weapon, used as a status symbol, in duels and against unarmored peasants. The samurai's real combat weapons were spears, other pole arms and bows. (Pretty sure most of this is incorrect but I'm not sure if all of it is.)

I believe western swords, or really any blade could cut through armor.... eventually, and given enough force but it would largely wreak havoc on the edge( dulling the every loving SHIT out of it) and probably damaging the structural integrity of the entire weapon... unless they were specifically designed to counter armor. As said stabs would be much more likely to work as most were generally designed to foil slashes rather then trusts.

Typically you looked for gaps in the armor (joints typically as you have to be able to move), used a blunt weapon which could possibly do even MORE damage on someone wearing armor than someone who is not (crushing through plate to the point the owners own armor is stabbing them into something vital or crushed in so heavily that they suffocate), or use arrows which have all that inertia to help them penetrate the armor.

Yeah, I know. Most people don't know though.
Katanas were essentially dueling weapons.
European and middle eastern armor is largely underrated. Plate armor was extremely tough and not easily pierced. It's actually been used quite a bit in the last 300 years in wars to protect soldiers.
Swords aren't exactly armor breakers. It usually took a specialized weapon (warhammer, pike, halberd, mace) but the sword itself was quite versatile, and often soldiers held the blade such that they could use the pommel as a hammer (with protection of course) Axes were also quite effective.

I am personally ashamed for using the wrong form for "they are" in my original post.

 

[Tyrant T100]

Swords, Swords and swords. Nobody seems to understand how longswords work; even though they clearly have two sharp edges and a pointy end, most people think their heavy club-like metal sticks. Seriously? Also, katanas are seriously overrated. They're no better than any other sword

Also armor. Why does armor seem to be made of paper and heavy as a steel beam in movies and videogames? A guy in a full plate harness is not going to go down easily at all, and yet most depictions of it have blades going straight through it. Even stabbing through plate was difficult. and there are other armors too that are given the shaft. I don't mind it in games so much (unless it's a goddamn cutscene), as it's mostly just visual aesthetic, but movies have no excuse. Also, their maille must be really bad quality, because apparently swords can cut through those as well (they can't) maybe a hard stab, but not a cut.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArmorIsUseless

Katana's were pretty crappy swords really. I mean I think they WERE sharp, but the edge dulled pretty fast if it was used pretty well, and it was fairly brittle to be using against metal armor or to be striking against other weapons. As I understand it it was largely a symbolic weapon, used as a status symbol, in duels and against unarmored peasants. The samurai's real combat weapons were spears, other pole arms and bows. (Pretty sure most of this is incorrect but I'm not sure if all of it is.)

I believe western swords, or really any blade could cut through armor.... eventually, and given enough force but it would largely wreak havoc on the edge( dulling the every loving SHIT out of it) and probably damaging the structural integrity of the entire weapon... unless they were specifically designed to counter armor. As said stabs would be much more likely to work as most were generally designed to foil slashes rather then trusts.

Typically you looked for gaps in the armor (joints typically as you have to be able to move), used a blunt weapon which could possibly do even MORE damage on someone wearing armor than someone who is not (crushing through plate to the point the owners own armor is stabbing them into something vital or crushed in so heavily that they suffocate), or use arrows which have all that inertia to help them penetrate the armor.

Yeah, I know. Most people don't know though.
Katanas were essentially dueling weapons.
European and middle eastern armor is largely underrated. Plate armor was extremely tough and not easily pierced. It's actually been used quite a bit in the last 300 years in wars to protect soldiers.
Swords aren't exactly armor breakers. It usually took a specialized weapon (warhammer, pike, halberd, mace) but the sword itself was quite versatile, and often soldiers held the blade such that they could use the pommel as a hammer (with protection of course) Axes were also quite effective.

I am personally ashamed for using the wrong form for "they are" in my original post.

Yes this, pommels became popular on swords because it made it far easier to damage plate armour, however many knights carried small daggers which were designed to make the job of getting through the plate or small gaps in the armour far easier.
It was the crossbow that removed armour from the battlefield due to it slicing through the best plate like butter, the Pope tried to ban Crossbows because it made it easy for peasants to kill a skilled knight.
Modern body armour however is much better than traditional armour, a modern Flak Jacket will provide the same slash and stab protection as the plate armour, but it also softens blows, which the plate wasn't capable of.

 

[direkiller]

What's the most egregious example you've seen of someone Not Doing The Research?[/B]

CSI:"Terminal Velocity is 9.8m/s^2 he would have hit the ground in under 5 seconds"

They got something wrong that is taught in middle school science.

 

[Kolby Jack]

One slightly glaring problem with Mass Effect is Liara. She is a Xeno-archeologist (someone who digs up and categorises the remains of unknown civilisations) and yet is listed as an 'Asari Scientist'. Archeologists do know a smattering of science (it does help with digs) but they are firmly in the HUMANITIES camp and are not SCIENTISTS, as they study the works of humans. I think the confusion probably set in as it is possible to gain a doctorate in both history and archeology which does give them the right to stick 'Dr.' in front of their names.

This may sound pedantic, but as a humanities student, this is such a collosal error I'm amazed that none of the writers pointed it out!

What about having an honorary doctorate in Fine Arts? Like Sir Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, DFA?

 

[Saltyk]

Obviously... Video Related.
At first I thought you were someone who was asking for help because you didn't research something.

Spoiler: I'm actually a bigger fan of this one

see, if a person doesnt know how to use a keyboard, but knows how to hack computers, then something is not right in this world...

You know, there's one other thing in that scene that bugs me. How does she know that she's being hacked? They pretty much established in that scene that they have a pretty decent defense against that. It's a major surprise that there's someone able to get through, right? So... if this hacker is good enough to do that, why can't they cover their tracks? Isn't the idea of hacking to not be detected? Maybe I'm computer illiterate, but I wouldn't think your computer would bring up a message saying "You are being hacked right now. Here's the hackers progress within your system."

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Anytime in scifi where they're going FTL, and suddenly they decide to stop. No one is wearing a seatbelt, and they come to a complete stop. How the balls are they not smeared across the wall like bugs on a windshield? "Inertial Dampeners!" they claim.

Inertia does not work that way!

Glass. As usual. The whole "glass is a liquid!" thing.
The one argument: There are a few windows from like 200 years ago that look like that!
Well, considering we have glasses from even further back that look like they did then...
"But it's a VERY slow process."

Just... Bothers me. EVERY time. Expecially since few accept counter arguments.

Glass isn't a liquid. It's amorphous in structure, like a liquid. Use science to beat them over the head until they understand, like a rolled up newspaper.

 

[mrblakemiller]

Anytime in scifi where they're going FTL, and suddenly they decide to stop. No one is wearing a seatbelt, and they come to a complete stop. How the balls are they not smeared across the wall like bugs on a windshield? "Inertial Dampeners!" they claim.

Inertia does not work that way!

Wait, if you could "dampen" inertia (and we're talking Sci-Fi, so, yeah, you can, because they say so) then why wouldn't that work? I'm legitimately asking as I no longer remember the basics of inertia and the other concepts of physics in play here. I read a book on the science of Star Trek that, IIRC, seemed to think minimizing inertia would have worked.

 

[I Have No Idea]

snip

A Christian? On the internet? Mine eyes deceive me!

OT: All those forum trolls who pull statistics out of their ass to make themselves sound smarter. Really. I hate those people.

 

[SuperMarshmallow]

Any time somebody in an action movie hipfires a gun. And then manages to kill somebody with it. From long range. I'm 99% sure most actors have never even held a gun, that's the only explanation I can think of for this.

 

[ChildishLegacy]

These people. I feel my IQ being sapped into my computer screen every time it plays.

 

[THE_NAMSU]

It's enough to avoid copyright. For example, in The World God Only Knows, the main character uses a "PFP" which looks identical to the PSP, and the font is the same, but it's enough to avoid copyright infringement. WcDonbalds being another infamous 1, Japan does this a lot.

Edit: Goddamn ninja'd.

Pintendo GS (or something) in Drake and Josh.
Good times.

 

[Yopaz]

-A lot of people think there's a line in the Bible that goes something like "better to spill your seed in the belly of a whore than on the ground to be trampled by men." It seems to say that having extramarital sex is still better than masturbation. There is no such verse in the Bible.

It's been a while since I did any studies, but the part to which you are referring is in fact in the bible. I wont say how the actual quote goes since I have never read the English version so the words are very different. However this quote, or misinterpretation is from a story the story of Onan. Because of some social rules he had to marry the widow of his brother Er, but he did not want his brother's wife to have children because they would for some reason be his kids (strange logics in the bible stories). So he let his seed spill to the ground rather than having his wife bear children. In short he pulled out. You're right this has nothing to do with masturbation, it doesn't even mention sex outside of marriage since they were in fact married. In the story he was killed by god directly for doing this several times, indicating that this was a very bad sin.

No. No, it isn't. I worried I was wrong when you said that, so just to be extra safe, I googled "Onan", found which chapter he was in (Genesis 38), and read it in English and with a Hebrew text as well (I haven't taken Hebrew yet, though, full disclosure). This is Onan's entire life story in the Bible:

"And Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah?s firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the LORD, and the LORD put him to death. Then Judah said to Onan, "Go in to your brother?s wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother." But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went in to his brother?s wife he would waste the semen on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother. And what he did was wicked in the sight of the LORD, and he put him to death also."

Nothing in those verses sounds remotely like the old "proverb". This is what I dislike: everyone is just sure that they remember the 1,000-chapter book correctly. Not trying to be mean, but it's annoying. If you're saying that the quote sounds like the Onan story, that's your opinion, but what I dislike is people thinking they're quoting Scripture that allows them to say, "Well, my balls are blue, God would rather I have sex than lose control and fap."

I did not say that. I mentioned in my post that the story about Onan is where the misinterpretation of the proverb comes from, I NEVER said that this story says anything about masturbation being a sin. I said the misinterpretation that masturbation is a sin comes from here. Religious fanatics will always quote small parts of the bible and use that as proof that something is a sin. So the proverb you use has its roots in the story of Onan. They quoted the part that god struck him down for spilling his seed to the ground. I NEVER claimed once in my post that this story claimed masturbation was a sin. I just retold the story briefly from my own memory and how it has been accepted by religion rather than looking up the story. As said the proverb demonstrates a huge misconception, but also it shows that the words get twisted when it gets taught by people who didn't understand it, or abused it for their purposes, then people who never knew the truth will retell it with their own words. I am guessing the quote escalated in America because we got something similar to that proverb here which is closer to the actual quote. That quote too has been used to say that the bible says masturbation is a sin. Here it simply says something along the line that it's a sin for a man to spill his seed.

Don't get annoyed at me for not reading my damn post! I was clearly agreeing with you all the time, I was just trying to fill you in on the origin of this bullshit. Just take a look at what I said before I started paraphrasing the story:'

However this quote, or misinterpretation is from a story the story of Onan.

I clearly said this was a misinterpretation in my first post. Now you made this thread about how annoying it is when people don't do their research and you show off that you are in fact incapable of doing any research or even reading through one single post without misinterpreting it. I'll have you know that I have actually studied this story and how it escalated to the belief that this means the bible is against masturbation at length! This is partially because the quote used is often incomplete only mentioning spilling seed without mentioning that there's sex involved. Partially because the name Onan has been used to name the word for masturbation in several languages.

 

[Jabberwock King]

The movie "Son of the Mask." It thoroughly butchered Norse mythology. When I was a kid, I loved the 1st movie, or rather, the only "real" "The Mask" movie. Norse god of mischief drops an artifact in the human world? Fine, seems like something Loki would do, even if they only mention him in one scene. Fast foreword to next movie, and they show Loki, but they completely fuck up his relationship to the one other Norse god they show. NO. Loki was not the son of Odin, he was his blood brother, which should technically make him Thor's uncle-in-law. Maybe the writers did it on purpose for the sake of making the character interactions fit better with the "troubled father-son theme," but I still can't condone that bullshit.

 

[Inkidu]

Anyone who claims the Terrans from Starcraft or similair did the whole "Space Marine" first. In truth (especially in the case of Starcraft), GW's Space Marines came out first. This is one I can even provide DATES to.

Well technically you're wrong. The first person to ever do space marines was Robert A. Hienlen (God I know I'm spelling it wrong.)

In fact, he did it like such a boss he didn't even have to call them space marines. They're called Mobile Infantry. If you look at what they did in combat, they were marines though... in space.

 

[Spectral Dragon]

Glass isn't a liquid. It's amorphous in structure, like a liquid. Use science to beat them over the head until they understand, like a rolled up newspaper.

I know that. I've had to state this repeatedly, with higher frequency then ever thanks to this thread. But I've got enough common sense to not argue with a 6th degree karate blackbelt...

 

[kickassfrog]

http://www.cracked.com/article_19160_8-scenes-that-prove-hollywood-doesnt-get-technology.html

Particularly bad for the escapist in that, not only do they have fuck all knowledge of technology, they reference there being a level 10 in PoP:SoT.
And apparently, all gamers have hand reflexes that twitch when watching someone else play a game.

What i think is worse than the "taking 19 bullets and only minor injuries" thing is the "instant death bullets" thing.

Also, the saturation of swords in medieval settings. How come you never see somebody who's good with a lance?

why even a lance- have someone who is reasonably good with a longbow, and you can mow down armoured dudes unless they zerg rush you.

 

[Richardplex]

It's enough to avoid copyright. For example, in The World God Only Knows, the main character uses a "PFP" which looks identical to the PSP, and the font is the same, but it's enough to avoid copyright infringement. WcDonbalds being another infamous 1, Japan does this a lot.

Edit: Goddamn ninja'd.

Pintendo GS (or something) in Drake and Josh.
Good times.

The reason X-box sales being bad in Japan is because they've all got Y-boxes...

 

[Yopaz]

Nope. I know it's solid. But my CHEMISTRY TEACHER thinks it's liquid.

Wow, I am amazed. Your chemistry teacher really thinks that? You've got to have the most idiotic chemistry teacher ever! Also I understood form your first post that you did not, so I am sorry if I indicated that I did.

It's both.
When frozen, it's crystalline and solid, but it gradually become softer and less viscous when heated, eventually becoming liquid.
It's very hard, if not impossible, to tell exactly when it can be considered liquid and vice versa.

OK let's start with the basics. We got 3 different states that a substance can be in. There's gas, liquid and solid. Now take water. At temperature below 0 Celsius it is solid. In the are 0 to 100 it's liquid, after that it's gas. If we are in a room where the temperature is below 0 (let's say -10) will you be able to determine if the ice cube I am holding is in a solid or liquid state?
It's actually quite easy. If it is not viscous and does not allow easy movement of molecules when you touch it the molecule is a solid.
Glass, composed of silicates in an intricate pattern creates advanced networks (not at the level of carbon) and thus got an extremely high melting point compared to what you would expect form the polarity of the molecules involved. Even the glass with the lowest melting point requires more than thousand degrees before it melts. When we refer to something as a liquid, we mean that it is liquid at STP (standard temperature and pressure), oxygen exist as a liquid, do you refer to oxygen as a liquid or a gas?

Yeah, but it's not something she could test, so she rolled with the "fun fact" that it seems like.

Although I think crystallines have a bit more fleeting temperatures for melting/boiling etc. But for reasonable temeratures, it's always solid. It is a bit misleading that you say that it forms an intricate network, given that it has no proper structure. It's fairly random.
Oh, and the nitpicker in me wants to add that you forgot plasma.

I would advice you not to challenge me on my knowledge about silicates. I've been working with silicates all week, and I've spent hours drawing various kinds of silicates. It is actually organized in either chains, double chains, rings of 4 or 6, or a 3 dimensional network where all the tetrahedral silicates are tied together, like the structure of a diamond. The basic thing about a crystalline structure is that the melting point is high and there's always a very specific order. When I checked it up the lowest melting point you'll ever reach on silicates is 1400 C, or at least the kind used in glass is 1400. It all comes down to what kinds of cations is used to fill the orbitals, and also what kinds of other molecules that pollute it.

I also did not mention plasma because I mentioned STP. You will not find plasma under normal conditions though I did consider mentioning it.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

A few things...

1. People I know who absolutely think that 300 is historically accurate. Really...

2. People who think sword fighting in medieval times was awesome. It wasn't. It was brutal and short, and most people who used swords weren't flashy fighters at all. You're confused with fencing if you think that. The average sword fight in a war setting lasted seconds. Also people who think two-handed swords were foot soldier weapons. They were used to cut the ends off of polearms and entrenched stakes. Quit watching Braveheart. Also swords weren't particularly heavy, because it isn't practical to swing a heavy sword nor is it healthy. Swords are supposed to be weight balanced and light. Any sword that is heavy is basically a piece for display and not battle ready, and the tang on it is most likely a quarter the size it needs to be.

 

[theheroofaction]

What i think is worse than the "taking 19 bullets and only minor injuries" thing is the "instant death bullets" thing.

Also, the saturation of swords in medieval settings. How come you never see somebody who's good with a lance?