Year-end window closing wrap up, part 1
This is my first step towards fulfilling my new-year resolution: to post items of interest in a timely fashion. (There are two assumptions there: that I can post anything in a timely fashion, and that this is interesting, but bear with me.) If I close these windows, my browser will run faster and new posts will go up faster. That’s the theory, if that doesn’t work, I’m getting a new computer and declaring email bankruptcy.
* In the strictest sense, this probably counts as a comic strip. And now the song will be stuck in your head.
* If you’ve recently become unemployed, here’s what you’ve been missing– part Dilbert, part Kafka, part symbolic self-immolation.
* How comics can save us from scientific ignorance.
* Will Elder, remembered by the New York TImes Magazine.
* "I usually dream up a dozen or so profoundly stupid ‘high concepts’ for stories every day." — Brian K. Vaughan, interviewed in Esquire. Explains why J.J. Abrams hired him for Lost, I suppose. (Via io9.)
* Star Wars: A Musical Journey. Run, Luke, run.
* Baby, if you’ve ever wondered… wondered if there ever really was a WKRP in Cincinatti… there is now, but it’s a TV station.
* We hate to burst bubbles, but there’s no way the Lone Ranger melted silver over a campfire to make bullets. (And we mean silver the element, not the horse. That’s just disgusting.) This also means that any medieval werewolf stories are in trouble too…
WKRP in Columbus (Columbus GA) must have let the call go, i guess.
With regard to the Lone Ranger, it was established in both the radio and TV series that Capt. Dan Reid and his younger brother (who was never given a first name in either series) had a silver mine. It was from that mine (overseen by a trusted friend named Jim) that the younger Reid, now known as the Lone Ranger, obtained the silver for his bullets. When he refreshed his supply of silver bullets, he did so at the mine.Rick
I'm not disputing where he got the silver, I'm just disputing what it takes to make a silver bullet. A campfire won't come close to making the heat needed to melt the silver– silver melts at 1763.474 F.
I've no doubt you're right about the campfire, but I'm not aware of any episode of either the radio or TV series that either stated or implied that the Lone Ranger made any of his silver bullets while sitting around a campfire. The implication given in both series is that whatever process is necessary to make the bullets took place in or around the mine (presumably, that was one of Jim's full-time jobs). Now whether silver bullets have any real-world benefit from a marksman's point of view is another matter; but in the fictional world of the Lone Ranger, where they apparently allow the shooter (or at least one of the Ranger's caliber) to shoot a gun out of someone's hand without destroying said hand (and/or any of the fingers), they're the darlings of the bullet community.But again, no bullet-making campfire scenes that I'm aware of.Rick.
I'm not sure if silver would be a good bullet material, anyway – it may be too hard, leading to rapid erosion of the barrel.From that standpoint, gold would be better (and i read somewhere that at least one Indian tribe *did* make gold bullets because they could get gold but not lead), but it would have the problem of barrel fouling (lead does, too, but gold would be much worse).