I just HAD to post this – considering my line of work. 
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Mille: When I'm old enough to have a car, I'm going to get a window sticker that shows Calvin relieving himself on the phrase "copyright infringment".
Rule 1: "Pillage, THEN Burn"
Welcome to the world of Schlock Mercenary. Written by Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary is an awesome webcomic about a group of mercenaries traveling the galaxy, meeting fascinating life-forms and killing them!
[click here for basic training] 
Most of you have heard about Schlock Mercenary before as I've been reading the comic for about 4 years now… so why am I writing about it? Because I just received my very own copy of " Schlock Mercenary: Under New Management"!!!! 
"Schlock Mercenary: Under New Management" is the first book released by Tayler based upon the webcomic ["based upon" isn't quite factually correct as the book is just a printed version of the online strip… BUT it does have a cool bonus story about how Schlock (hmm… how do you describe Schlock… how about "Schlock, a plasma toting, action crazy blob"?) got his first plasma gun].[@more@]
Note: Schlock is the green blob at the bottom of the picture holding the wicked looking gun. Before you make fun of him, please note that he can devour, eat, kill or otherwise harm all the other sapient being pictured – including the thing in the podium.
Needless to say, I was very, very surprised and very, very happy! 
(oh – did I mention that it was a late BD present? As such, it was very unexpected – which of course, makes opening the box that much more fun!)
I spend the weekend devouring the comic book in all it's glory. Reliving the days when plasma guns, sapient eating plants and teleporting missiles ruled. Ah.. the good old days. 
The Vatican has announced that it’s ok to believe in aliens. In fact, Father Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory, said that there may be “some aliens could even be free from original sin.”
Interesting statement.
This reminds me of a book I read a few years ago called Alone in the Universe? Aliens, the X-Files & God by David Wilkinson.
It was a great book that looked at everything from the possibility for extraterrestrial life, government conspiracy theories, scientific arguments for space travel, and claims that the Bible describes alien encounters. Wilkinson also talks about what would happen to the Bible and the Christian belief if aliens are discovered.[@more@]
The end result: it doesn’t really matter. If there are aliens out there, God made them and he has a plan for them.
Comic by ironychan of Get Medieval
Yes – the conclusion. We all let our breath out as Irony-chan has discovered the terminal velocity of a balrog!!! This deserves a Nobel Peace Prize!!!
Well… at least read her comics: Dumnestor's Heroes (just started this year) or the completed Get Medieval. Both are really good web-comics!! (just ask E).
Now to the conclusion of the Balrog debate:
Did you get all that? 
And you thought I forgot – shame on you!!
When we last left our faithful Balrog scholar she was making a Balrog model so she might determine it's mass. Using a bucket of water and a teaspoon Irony-chan determined that a full size Balrog has a volume of 43,000 liters.
[full story here]
Now that we have the volume, we can find the mass…. oh – wait, we need it's density first. *sigh*[@more@]
[full density post here]
By the way, if you haven't check out Irony-chan (our awsome Balrog scholar) newest comic (Dumnestor's Heroes) – you need too!! It's pretty cool.
After many days, it was determined that what was really needed was the terminal velocity of a balrog.
More belrog debate here and here
Seeing that we need the mass of the balrog before we can continue, our brave author buys the only scaled balrog model she can find. The theory being that if she can measure the volume of water the model displaces to calculate the mass of a full size balrog.
This bring ups some interesting thoughts…
Toosdoodle says: In the Two Towers Merry and Pippin discuss their exact height when Pippin drinks the special water in Treebeards forest and it makes him get taller. You could determine how tall Gandalf is based on Pippins height and then Compare Gandalf to the balrog to determine the Balrogs height.
Anonymous says: Do you really need to build the balrog? Surely if you immerse all his dis-embodied parts it will be equal to the volume of all his parts glued together.
Sparkzy says: You know, you don't need to assemble the Balrog. Just make sure the hollow pieces are filled in with something waterproof (spackle?), and then dump the pieces in the water. It would be the same as if you chopped up a Balrog, then determined its volume. Should be the same as an intact Balrog.
Fings says: A rough approximation: Gandalf falls after the Balrog, but catches up with him, so obviously the Balrog's terminal velocity is slower than a falling Ainu (which for purposes of estimation, we will assume equals a falling human). As the terminal velocity of a falling human is around 50m/s on the low end, let us assume that speed for the Balrog.
Furthermore, let us ignore the initial acceleration and assume the Balrog starts at that terminal velocity. Therefore, 50m/s*104s = 5200m, or 5.2km. This is a rough upper bound, as the Balrog may have an even lower terminal velocity, or had its speed reduced from bouncing off walls, etc, plus the fact I ignored the slower than terminal velocity for the first few seconds. So I would say the lake is no more than 5.2km down.
Steve V. says: To add more complication to all this, let's go back and forget about terminal velocity and realize that there are other things happening if you can accelerate towards the center of the earth for 104 seconds.
In this case gravity is not constant, but is decreasing towards the center. Offhand, that makes a difference of about 2% in the gravitational force at the end of the plunge – mostly negligible. What would happen if it went to the center? Weightlessness. And if the hole goes all the way through? Periodic motion down to the center, up to the other side to zero speed, then reverse and start back all the way through. How many seconds to get to the center? Need to do an integral…
Then another thing is forgotten. The radial velocity – the earth is spinning at the same angular velocity, but the linear velocity varies based on radius. The balrog's sideways motion does not vary with radius (depth) and the vector direction was determined when he started falling, but the hole orientation is rotating with the earth. The balrog would presumably hit the wall when falling far enough. Need to do the complete math here – the real thing is that the balrog is doing a truncated orbit… Have fun.
My very nerdy wife sent me a link to a webcomic (Dumnestor’s Heroes) where the author is trying to calucate the aerodynamic properties of balrogs. Yes – Balrogs. As in LOTR balrogs.
Using the movies as her reference (leaving out the Jackson LOTR vs Tolkien LOTR debate), it was discovered that Balrog and Gandalf fell for 104 seconds. Knowing that the Middle Earth was an ancient part of this earth, we can say that gravity produces an acceleration of 9.81 meters per second squared. Plugging in the numbers you get a distance of 106 km – which is strange concerning the earth’s crust is only 50 km think!!
Read the full debate here
Now we get the cool part – for us nerds – does a Belrog have wings? ’cause that could heighten the air resistance… [@more@]
Diabhal says: If you want to work out whether the Balrog had wings or not, work at the problem backwards.
Gandalf must have fallen at the same terminal velocity as the balrog, since they stayed together and fought all the way down. We know Gandalf is approximately 6 feet tall and 70kgs, and has the cross-section of a human male, and should therefore have an approximate freefall speed of 120mph (55m/s).
The balrog must have a suitable cross-section to fall at the same speed. You can then compare this to that of the spherical balrog, and if the spherical one falls much faster wings will be necessary to slow it down. I admit to neglecting a magical factor invoked by either one, but since I have no idea how to include that, it’s just going to have to stay neglected.
Of course, the real question isn’t if the belrog had wings or not, but was it an European, or an African balrog??
Em just sent me the funnist comic strip ever!!!!
Background: a group of geeks are playing a D&D style game based upon the LOTR. Only, the game is shown by using still photos from the LOTR movies – with hilarious quotes!!!
You have to check out "The DM of the Rings"!
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