• Welcome to the Internet Infidels Discussion Board.

Things that make you laugh...

but it’s quite direct, IMO.
Then you explain it.
Er... Never mind. Tom's comment says enough.
But also explains why that poster didn't know what he was getting into. The group title is too niche.
You've never been in the sub basement of a big urban gay club?
Ever?
Never.
Why would I.
Are you making the mistake of assuming all atheists are atheist for the same reason you are?
 
but it’s quite direct, IMO.
Then you explain it.
Er... Never mind. Tom's comment says enough.
But also explains why that poster didn't know what he was getting into. The group title is too niche.
You've never been in the sub basement of a big urban gay club?
Ever?
Never.
Why would I.
Are you making the mistake of assuming all atheists are atheist for the same reason you are?
Oy. The statement “Hold my beer” is widely understood to mean “I’m about to do something really stupid.” They could be putting “it” anywhere, but almost certainly where no rational person has ever thought to put it.
 
but it’s quite direct, IMO.
Then you explain it.
Er... Never mind. Tom's comment says enough.
But also explains why that poster didn't know what he was getting into. The group title is too niche.
You've never been in the sub basement of a big urban gay club?
Ever?
Never.
Why would I.
Are you making the mistake of assuming all atheists are atheist for the same reason you are?
Oy. The statement “Hold my beer” is widely understood to mean “I’m about to do something really stupid.” They could be putting “it” anywhere, but almost certainly where no rational person has ever thought to put it.
Reminds me of an old ditty I know.

In days of old
When knights were bold
And ladies weren’t invented,
Men stuck their poles
Into little holes
And walked away contented!
 
How not to populate your catalog:


And there's an outfit in Hangzhou that supposedly lists 1kg quantity of FOOF. You do not want to even think about that much of it. Among other things it will detonate if you look at it. (Photosensitive.)
 
How not to populate your catalog:


And there's an outfit in Hangzhou that supposedly lists 1kg quantity of FOOF. You do not want to even think about that much of it. Among other things it will detonate if you look at it. (Photosensitive.)
I am thinking about Angry FOOF.

No, not Angry Floof; FOOF - Dioxygen Difluoride, which is a very angry compound indeed.

As ably described by chemist Derek Lowe in his "Things I won't work with" blog.
It barely gets a mention in John D. Clark's Ignition, which tells the story of the quest for military rocket propellant/oxidiser combinations that don't instantly kill the people handling them, and/or set fire to the ship or airbase on which they are located. All he has to say is:

"O2F2 had been reported, but was unstable at room temperature" - a masterful understatement.

Clark's preferred halogenic oxidiser was CTF, of which he has rather more to say:

Chlorine trifluoride, ClF3, or "CTF" as the engineers insist on calling it, is a colorless gas, a greenish liquid, or a white solid. It boils at 12° (so that a trivial pressure will keep it liquid at room temperature) and freezes at a convenient -76°. It also has a nice fat density, about 1.81 at room temperature. It is also quite probably the most vigorous fluorinating agent in existence—much more vigorous than fluorine itself. Gaseous fluorine, of course, is much more dilute than the liquid ClF3, and liquid fluorine is so cold that its activity is very much reduced. All this sounds fairly academic and innocuous, but when it is translated into the problem of handling the stuff, the results are horrendous. It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that's the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water — with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals — steel, copper, aluminum, etc. —because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminum keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes. And even if you don't have a fire, the results can be devastating enough when chlorine trifluoride gets loose, as the General Chemical Co. discovered when they had a big spill. Their salesmen were awfully coy about discussing the matter, and it wasn't until I threatened to buy my RFNA from Du Pont that one of them would come across with the details. It happened at their Shreveport, Louisiana, installation, while they were preparing to ship out, for the first time, a one-ton steel cylinder of CTF. The cylinder had been cooled with dry ice to make it easier to load the material into it, and the cold had apparently embrittled the steel. For as they were maneuvering the cylinder onto a dolly, it split and dumped one ton of chlorine trifluoride onto the floor. It chewed its way through twelve inches of concrete and dug a three foot hole in the gravel underneath, filled the place with fumes which corroded everything in sight, and, in general, made one hell of a mess. Civil Defense turned out, and started to evacuate the neighborhood, and to put it mildly, there was quite a brouhaha before things quieted down. Miraculously, nobody was killed, but there was one casualty — the man who had been steadying the cylinder when it split. He was found some five hundred feet away, where he had reached Mach 2 and was still picking up speed when he was stopped by a heart attack.
Can you also mail-order CTF from your supplier in Hangzhou?
 
That's a powerful heart attack to be able to stop a man travelling at Mach 2.
My understanding is that it was only the heart attack that prevented him from (very wisely) accelerating his running beyond that velocity. One should not let the fact that it is impossible to outrun an explosion dissuade you from making the attempt.

"...the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes".

Clark does have a writing style that rather brilliantly blends understatement with hyperbole. His book (published in 1972, and now out of copyright) is available as a free pdf online.
 
Last edited:
Well, there's why we're putting tariffs on helicopters from the Heard and McDonald Islands...
 
Back
Top Bottom