Over my 14 months I spent in Iraq, I probably fired a couple of thousand rounds. All of those, bar 15, were at figure 11 or figure 12 targets. And the 15 that weren't probably didn't kill anyone.

Everyone of my 12 man section probably fired about the same.

Even the chefs and clerks and vehicle mechanics would probably have fired 600 or so as part of their training when they arrived.

It's not "panic firing, poor aim or pissing about".

GooberTheHat wrote:

Over my 14 months I spent in Iraq, I probably fired a couple of thousand rounds. All of those, bar 15, were at figure 11 or figure 12 targets. And the 15 that weren't probably didn't kill anyone. Everyone of my 12 man section probably fired about the same. Even the chefs and clerks and vehicle mechanics would probably have fired 600 or so as part of their training when they arrived. It's not "panic firing, poor aim or pissing about".

Yeah but you're not American.

I know, I'm just being silly.

GooberTheHat wrote:

From an academic point of view it would be interesting to know the ratio of rounds fired "in anger" vs intended kills and casualties, but even that stat would have massive caveats.

Yeah it's a strange distinction to make, the fact that press are reporting on it merely reinforces my view that the press have no good reason to be in theatre. A headline like that seems to imply that every round should kill and that soldiers somewhere are failing to kill enough foreigners. As you said as well, do you draw a distinction between suppressing fire, only count contacts at effective distance, it get's mad

b0r1s wrote:

The final aerial shot in the original cinema edit of Bladerunner is taken from footage Scott got from helicopter footage from Kubrick, from Apocalypse Now. He had something like 17 hours worth of footage and said Scott could use some of it for the new ending (which came from studio pressure).

Got that nugget from The Hollywood Reporters roundtable on YouTube. Brilliant show where they sit down actors and directors to talk about film.

Pretty sure it was footage from The Shining (shot for the opening sequence), not Apocalypse Now.

Whoever was on that round table was ill-informed.

https://nofilmschool.com/2017/06/why-does-ending-blade-runner-look-familiar-ask-stanley-kubrick

Fair enough, though given that this was post Prometheus, then Boris and I should really both have known better than to trust anything he says

Could be my imagination, but I could swear Quentin raised his eyebrows in an 'Amirite guys? Amirite?'

WorKid wrote:

The closest planet to Earth, on average, is Mercury

Really?? Is that something weird like we're more often on the same side of the Sun as Mercury? Just it sounds mental? I mean given the amount of revolutions all three planets have made round the sun surely it averages out to orbit distance at some point?? My brain's doing weird things? Thanks for firing my curiosity

Source? Sounds like nonsense to me, although SG knows his shit.

It makes some sense, Mercury flies round the Sun really quickly, and Venus might well be at a much closer speed to us, so we could spend loads of time on the other side of the Sun to Venus 

v- - - S- m- - - - - - E 
v- -m S- - - - - - - - E 
v- - - S- m- - - - - - E 

But if we take the lowest common multiple of the year length of all three planets, then common sense (which is often not sensible) makes me think that as Earth and Venus aren't tidally locked on other sides of the Sun, then given it's closer orbit then Venus must be closer even on average

edit: I say lowest common multiple, but that might be wrong, I mean line them all up at '12' and then cycle until they all line up at  '12' again, which will happen eventually

That's not how averages work

Re Bladerunner he did say Shining. I obviously wasn’t listening properly!

acemuzzy wrote:

That's not how averages work

The fact still send weird though. Maybe it varies year on year??

acemuzzy wrote:

acemuzzy wrote:

That's not how averages work

The fact still send weird though. Maybe it varies year on year??

Is that a Mercurian, Venusian, or Earth year??

Right so, taking the planets years as 88,224, and 365 earth days. That means if all three planets start in line at 12 o'clock, it will take 2464 earth years until they all meet at 12 o'clock again. Other that period of time no matter how weird the orbits each pair of planets will have have to have spent an equal time on the same side of the sun as they have on opposite sides of the sun

Surely if that's the case then Andy's numbers stand, the median orbital distance would count, or even if we have the time spent at each distance we could calculate a better average distance (mean over time), but that wouldn't be enough surely to negate the orbital distance between Mercury and Venus (c 50Million km) as that's a massive amount

Yup. I think so