![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Atomic fireball.
A friend suggested to me that the words "atomic fireball" are weird. If you went back in time and talked with an educated 18th century philosopher, they would know the words "atomic" and "fire ball." But, says my friend, they'd probably think "atomic" meant "impossible to split up" or possibly "very tiny" since they would probably be familiar with the Greek theory of atoms as the basis of matter. So it would seem like a weird thing to say. What does a mean for a fire to be indivisible? I wasn't sure.
So I tried it. The particular 18th century philosopher thought that "atomic fireball" was a very clever and poetic way to describe a single spark.
And that's all, Your Honor! Honestly! I wasn't trying to smuggle anachronistic weapons designs into a previous time period. I was conducting totally innocent, licensed linguistic research. It was an honest mistake, and, as you can tell, no paradoxes resulted.
The defense rests.
A friend suggested to me that the words "atomic fireball" are weird. If you went back in time and talked with an educated 18th century philosopher, they would know the words "atomic" and "fire ball." But, says my friend, they'd probably think "atomic" meant "impossible to split up" or possibly "very tiny" since they would probably be familiar with the Greek theory of atoms as the basis of matter. So it would seem like a weird thing to say. What does a mean for a fire to be indivisible? I wasn't sure.
So I tried it. The particular 18th century philosopher thought that "atomic fireball" was a very clever and poetic way to describe a single spark.
And that's all, Your Honor! Honestly! I wasn't trying to smuggle anachronistic weapons designs into a previous time period. I was conducting totally innocent, licensed linguistic research. It was an honest mistake, and, as you can tell, no paradoxes resulted.
The defense rests.
