Here it is, folks - your chance to debunk anything related to MacGuyver, including more recent MacGuyverish tricks and tools.

Here's one: Lasers that carve through solid rock on The Core. They'd produce so much gas-off that it'd be like falling through a tornado. You certainly wouldn't have been able to return against both gravity and the gasses.

__________________
I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol. A human.

Whoever says "perception is reality" is daft. It's merely an abstraction, and often not a very good one.

MacGuyver had plenty of ways to produce explosives--all of them with a key ingredient wrong. I've always suspected that they did this to prevent eager young minds from blowing themselves up.

__________________
Keeper of the Jabberwock

Exactly. When the show was actually on the air, there was an article in, I believe, 3-2-1 Contact Magazine about it, and they were very clear that they felt the best way to keep people from "trying it at home" was to make it impossible for them to do so.

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I loved that MasterCard ad with MacGyver that aired not long ago.

__________________
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

The only episode I recall was the one where he was trapped in a reactor. The radioactive sludge glowed, green of course. Shooting the control panel made the reactor "go critical" and they were kept safe from gammas by spraying water on themselves. Ugh.

__________________
"I have a cunning plan that cannot fail."
S. Baldrick

Something tells me this is going to be a very long thread...

__________________
N6MAA10816
Faber '62 ΔTX
Are you a Bright?

"Don't thank me, thank the moon's gravity."
-McGyver as heard on the Simpsons

I believe the line is actually "gravitational pull."

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

The ability of Simpsons' fans to remember this stuff never ceases to amaze me.

Just don't suggest to Marge's sisters that he's gay!
It Stinks! (The Critic crossover)

__________________
N6MAA10816
Faber '62 ΔTX
Are you a Bright?

You know, the average English major graduates being able to quote Keats and Milton and Shelley. I? I went to The Evergreen State College, Matt Groening's alma mater, and so I can quote Homer.

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

One of the first ones I noticed was when he made a torck out of a magnesium frame bicycle. EH just filed the magnesium adn let it fall into the tube, then ignited it and used it to cut through the back door of an armored car.

One of the worst I ever saw was some move that came out about year after the show ended. There was some lock that could only be opened when all the planets, plus a comet were in exact aignment. (Gravity based lock, you understand). Well, as they stood there looking up to see watch the planets line up, you could see surface detail on all but Pluto. Yes, Pluto was a naked eye object. You could see Saturns rings, the Great Red Spot, Mars' polar caps, and Venus' clouds. Ecah planet moved into position in a perfectly straight line, then the comet came into view in the form of a huge fireball. The door or whatever unlocked and all the planets started moving again.

Now, aside from the obvious to most people here, (any lock that needed the combined gravity of the solar system to open was as risk from any good gust of wind), Mercury and Venus were shown as full disks and inline in the night sky with the other planets, also full disks. So they must be further from the Sun than the Earth. It was just bad.

On the other hand, I did watch several seasons of the show, and I have to give it credit for opening me up to seeing things for what they can be, not just what they are. I made a supervisor key out of a paper clip at the store one night. Picked the alarm control box on the fire door with a screw driver and tweezers from my Swiss Army Knife, Fixed many of the checkstands with 1/4 of a gum wrapper, and used rubberbands to fix a lot of staplers when the plastic spring breaks. The printer here beside me has a fastener I made from a paper clip that hild the from of the paper tray in place after is was dropped. If I lock my keys in the car, I can use the antenna to open the door. I had to use the holes in a street sign post to bend it to the right shape the first time, but it works great. I built a piggyback camera mount for my ETX for about 7 bucks from stuff from a hardware store.

All of these things I attribute to watching MacGuyver... But the science was generally really dodgy.

__________________
I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

__________________
Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

*rimshot*

You know in Dante's Inferno just before the main character reachs the center he comes to the place where people who make jokes like that reside.

__________________
Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

Now, that, I've read. Granted, it was in high school . . . .

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

At the risk of derailing, did you read the Purgatorio as well? I never managed to finish that, I found the Inferno tough going but the Purgatorio was just impossible

I've read all three, though "Inferno" is the most entertaining. (Niven and Pournelle wrote an updated version with the same title, that is extremely entertaining.)

__________________
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

I read that one too. It was a much better read.

__________________
Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

Now, Niven I like - good person, and a great author. Pournelle I take exception to, mainly because of his ravings at Chaos Manor.

__________________
I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol. A human.

Whoever says "perception is reality" is daft. It's merely an abstraction, and often not a very good one.

[quote=Tog_]One of the first ones I noticed was when he made a torck out of a magnesium frame bicycle. EH just filed the magnesium adn let it fall into the tube, then ignited it and used it to cut through the back door of an armored car.[\QUOTE]

Push some O2 through that tube and assuming you had a torch to get the exit end hot enough to burn (wouldn't be hard, actually), then you'd have a very fast-burning version what's often used to break into bank vaults when people inadvertantly lock themselves inside. Once through the door they insert an air hose and wait until the time lock unlocks the next morning. Then, they simply weld plates over where they drilled the holes.

__________________
I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol. A human.

Whoever says "perception is reality" is daft. It's merely an abstraction, and often not a very good one.

Ahh Mugs, the classic thermal lance.

As stated earlier, I hope this isn't too much of a derail, but a friend of mine owns a garage and one time a company that made magnesium alloy pistons for porches made an error with their ratios and two of his customers had their engines burnt clear out of their cars.

__________________
Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...