The 1.5 megaton myth

[Praeothmin]

mojo, as this is the first time you are directly insulting someone, I'm only giving you this public warning.
Please refrain from insults, and just use arguments.
Your post was very descriptive and easily understood without the insults.
Thank you.

[mojo]

mojo, as this is the first time you are directly insulting someone, I'm only giving you this public warning.
Please refrain from insults, and just use arguments.
Your post was very descriptive and easily understood without the insults.
Thank you.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!

[Airlocke_Jedi_Knight]

mojo, as this is the first time you are directly insulting someone, I'm only giving you this public warning.
Please refrain from insults, and just use arguments.
Your post was very descriptive and easily understood without the insults.
Thank you.

Really?

[mojo]

are you implying that my use of the word 'idiot' twice was required to make the point i was aiming for, locke old chum? because i am tempted to agree.

i also have a bit of a problem with 'you're acting like an idiot' being taken to mean 'you're an idiot', but since i was thinking 'you're an idiot' the entire time i just let it go.

*edited an accidental 'and' into a correct 'an'

[Airlocke_Jedi_Knight]

are you implying that my use of the word 'idiot' twice was required to make the point i was aiming for, locke old chum? because i am tempted to agree.

i also have a bit of a problem with 'you're acting like an idiot' being taken to mean 'you're an idiot', but since i was thinking 'you're an idiot' the entire time i just let it go.

*edited an accidental 'and' into a correct 'an'

No. I don't think.....Wait, what?

[mojo]

mojo, as this is the first time you are directly insulting someone, I'm only giving you this public warning.
Please refrain from insults, and just use arguments.
Your post was very descriptive and easily understood without the insults.
Thank you.

Really?

then what was the 'really?' referring to?

[Airlocke_Jedi_Knight]

mojo, as this is the first time you are directly insulting someone, I'm only giving you this public warning.
Please refrain from insults, and just use arguments.
Your post was very descriptive and easily understood without the insults.
Thank you.

Really?

then what was the 'really?' referring to?

What?

[mojo]

you're a choad!

oh no, another warning approaches!

[Airlocke_Jedi_Knight]

you're a choad!

oh no, another warning approaches!

Dumbass

[mojo]

you're a choad!

oh no, another warning approaches!

Dumbass

REPORTED!

[Praeothmin]

Guys?
Can you two grow up, please?
This is not TrollKingdom, nor is it SB.com.
If you do not wish to debate in a mature fashion, then please stop posting.
If you simply wish to make fun of the warning system, then stop posting.
If you have something to contribute to the discussion at hand, then post freely, and often...

Thank you.

[Mith]

Picard, if you were to read more Star Wars books you'd realize that the author never breaks the fourth wall or makes any mention to real life except for in sections like about the author.

You don't actually understand anything about literature do you?

Writers write--here's a shock, in context. Where the author is from and what his/her culture has a massive influence on their writing. Ie, we write what we know. If you've ever seen an extensive amount of anime, you'd notice how they talk and what they consider of value is vastly different than someone from America.

Same applies here. The writer is American and their book is in the English (American) language. Therefore, when the writer refers to something that they don't get into detail on, he is sculpting a mental image for the audience (the reader) to form in their head. Your casual reader doesn't know what a small town in Star Wars looks like and will thus imagine a small town similar to the ones they know.

If the writer wanted to go into detail as to what he thought was a small town, then he would have described it or he would have described the actual destruction that the bolts would have created. The reason is that the author is describing something that we don't see in that novel--a Star Wars 'small' town.

So comparing it to what equates to a large city or a continent in our world is outright absurd, because it by its very definition, goes beyond the concept of what a city is. And Face (who is pro-wars) even pointed out that the fact that they call planets like Coruscant a city-planet pretty much indicates that it is of a different class than a normal city.

As for in universe, you really don't seem to get it, do you? A small town in Tatooine is not representative of the Star Wars galaxy's small towns, because Tatooine is rather backwater even by modern standards. It's like comparing a "large" city in Zimbabwe to a large city in the United States.

Um, no.

First off, being "backwater" has absolutely nothing to do with the size of a town. I'm willing to be that a large city even in Zimbabwe is still much larger than our small towns. Of course a Zimbabwe city is nothing compared to our cities--we're much more advanced and prosperous, so comparing the largest of the two is just silly. Yet on the smaller end of the scale, a small town or just a town is not going to be that much different.

Mos Eisley is a small town, or smaller. Where darkstar is wrong is assuming that Mos Eisley is a standard sized "small town", and not, say an extremely small town. More ridiculous commences as you ask me to prove a negative. Darkstar made the claim that Mos Eisley is a standard Star Wars small town, he has to prove it. He hasn't, and common sense implies otherwise.

Which makes sense since it's the only town that we really ever see. Nor are we exactly seeing massive towering buildings on other planets. Ryloth for example, was actually pretty small in its cities and towns--yet it was like #18 on the list of planets to invade.

You might ask why. Classical era Rome was considered to be a very large city, the largest in the Roman Empire and one of the largest, if not the largest, in the world. However, it's population was about 500,000 within the city walls. To put that in comparison, Baltimore, a major modern city, has a population of about 8.4 million residents. Yet both are large cities.

No.

Again you fail to understand. Writers take that into account. Take Rome for instance. If one of them had traveled to our time and looked at our cities and our weapons, they wouldn't write in their time to their people "and the people far future can vaporize entire cities with sorcerous shells of steel and fire", he'd first describe the city because the very concept of what a city is to them and us is so vast in terms that the author would devout an entire paragraph to it instead of lightly glossing over it.

Something like:

"Their cities, so large that even the smallest of which would engulf our capital with buildings so massive that the tallest fortress towers are but trivial sticks standing out of the dirt and powered by the might of Zeus himself, is no match for the weapons these strange people created.
Shells of steel containing fire and wind far beyond our understanding--perhaps the power of the ancient titans themselves, are capable of vaporizing entire cities. Those that don't die from the flames and the wind are subjected to a disease more horrible than anything found in Hades."

You know why? Because the people of Rome wouldn't understand the terminology for what what a city in their world is compared to the future. So any author worth their salt would explain it because it is so alien, so massive, so far from what his audience would know that he'd have to describe it.

And the same goes here. If the author meant a city the size of a continent or shit, New York, then he would have described it as such. But he didn't. Therefore, he assumed that our terminology is appropriate for what he was refering to, be it to our understanding or theirs--and the fact that Mos Eisly is what it is only really supports Darkstar because he even chose something from in-universe.

And thus far, you've yet to disprove that Mos Eisly is a standard sized town. You've done nothing but bitch that it MAY not be of proper size. Yet...it's the only example he really had and it still holds up when compared to the Clone Wars and again, you haven't shown us anything different. You're just complaining.

"But Mos Eisley existed in the same time as the quote was in!" you might say. From a time standpoint, yes. However, from a social development standpoint, Mos Eisley was far, far behind most of the rest of the galaxy. As a modern day comparison, New York City has a population of about 22.2 million people. Meanwhile, the largest city and capital of Zimbabwe is Harare, with about 2.8 million people. Both would count as "large cities" and "metropolitans" by their own standards, but compared to other countries, what Zimbabwe thinks is a major metropolitan really isn't, because Zimbabwe is a 3rd world nation. Tatooine is analogous to this, being a 3rd world/backwater planet, and is therefore hardly representative of the Star Wars galaxy.

Again, that doesn't work. Mos Eisly is the only town we see in Star Wars. Therefore, that would be our benchmark--especially if you wanted to go around screaming that Star Wars terminology (even made to American readers) is equal to American terminology.

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

"But Mos Eisley existed in the same time as the quote was in!" you might say. From a time standpoint, yes. However, from a social development standpoint, Mos Eisley was far, far behind most of the rest of the galaxy. As a modern day comparison, New York City has a population of about 22.2 million people. Meanwhile, the largest city and capital of Zimbabwe is Harare, with about 2.8 million people. Both would count as "large cities" and "metropolitans" by their own standards, but compared to other countries, what Zimbabwe thinks is a major metropolitan really isn't, because Zimbabwe is a 3rd world nation. Tatooine is analogous to this, being a 3rd world/backwater planet, and is therefore hardly representative of the Star Wars galaxy.

Actually you pretty much made the point with your comparison.

Instead of taking a small town comment in regards to the SW galaxy take a example of a small capital city on planet earth

If i said "a nuke with enough power to vaporise a small capital city" when writing about a war based on 1990's ish earth then Harare would apply and NY would not because the arena the story is based in (contemporary earth) gives us that perspective.

The fact that if you were to describe Harare in regards to size you would call it a "small capital city" and other capital cities in more developed countries would be called "large capital cities" supports that.

Now use that same method but instead of a planet based story we use a pan galactic war arena and we have "a turbolaser bolt capable of vaporising a small town". So we do the same thing and we remove the larger towns from developed planets from our choices and look for a example of a "small town" in the arena we are in (the SW galaxy) and as such Mos Eisley is exactly that.

[mojo]

Guys?
Can you two grow up, please?
This is not TrollKingdom, nor is it SB.com.
If you do not wish to debate in a mature fashion, then please stop posting.
If you simply wish to make fun of the warning system, then stop posting.
If you have something to contribute to the discussion at hand, then post freely, and often...

Thank you.

REPORTED FOR BEING RUDE AND ALSO FOR BEING IRRELEVANT. (OUR CONVERSATION WAS RELATED TO THE MATTER AT HAND.)

[Airlocke_Jedi_Knight]

Guys?
Can you two grow up, please?
This is not TrollKingdom, nor is it SB.com.
If you do not wish to debate in a mature fashion, then please stop posting.
If you simply wish to make fun of the warning system, then stop posting.
If you have something to contribute to the discussion at hand, then post freely, and often...

Thank you.

Such wonderful condescension you have there, Praeothmin. My response to you would be to calm down and stop taking things so seriously. It really is less fun when you disallow.......well, fun.