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May 25, 2005
Luke, I am your faaaargh! It burns! It burns!
"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools."Herbert Spencer
Yesterday, my friend Bob brought this story to my attention. In short, two people in england thought It a brilliant idea to make light sabres for themselves and then have a duel.
Whilst I've done this myself and had a good many mock battles with my brother (and if it wasn't Star Wars, it was Captain Blood), typical stand-ins for light sabres were cardboard tubes, sticks, plastic piping, and, on the very rare occasion, the authentic plastic replica merchandise. Thankfully, I was far less imaginative than these people.
They, for their own unfathomable reasons, used fluorescent lighting tubes, poured in petrol (gas), lit them to make them glow and commenced whacking at each other.
And, aparently, filmed it.
Putting aside the small details that the fumes from petrol are explosive, that the phosphor compound inside the tubes is highly toxic, that glass typically weakens quite a bit with heat...
Perhaps someone might have thought that banging two sticks of very thin glass together might cause one or both to break.
Burns are terrible things. I've had a few third degree incidents, and they are not experiences I would care to repeat. I can sympathise with the suffering they're doubtless experiencing. But, really, whacking away at each other with what amounts to exceedingly long and fragile glass pipe bombs dilutes this somewhat.
As my friend put it when he sent me the article: "Leads to Darwin Awards, the path of stupidity does."
Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at May 25, 2005 11:20 AM
Comments
Its not like glass is susceptable to heat or anything... like you fire up sand to make glass. Come on now. It's perfectly reasonable to pour petrol into glass and set it aflame for effect. Cardboard tubes are so unassuming and unimposing. (glass shards and flames scare me)
Methinks Darwin's hand was definitely in play on this circumstance.