During our freshman year in my Christian Brothers military high school, my buddy Bob sat behind me in first-hour home-room in prime position to snipe spit balls at me. When I reacted to the sting by backlashing at him, the teacher—Brother Thomas—would admonish me for disrupting the class. Devious! Nevertheless, I had to hand it to Bob for his ingenuity for classroom warfare—my superior by far.
I shudder to think what Bob could have done with the technology revealed by John Austin in his trilogy on Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction , which begins with spitball warfare and culminates in siege weapons of the dark ages. For example, check out this video of a classroom firearm sent to me by a PhD student from the Institute of Technology of Buenos Aires.
Inspired by Austin’s books, this Argentinian and conspirators set up a designed experiment that varied three factors:
- The length of the arrow (short 20 cm – long 25 cm)
- The width of the “barrel” (narrow 11 mm – wide 17 mm)
- The initial position of the arrow (p0 the firing pin will slightly hit the arrow – p1 the firing pin will push the arrow along the last 5 cm)
Bob’s spitballs did little harm in comparison to this weapon. At this rate, turtle-necks will come back into fashion, only now being made from Kevlar. Anyone who makes it through school at this rate will certainly be the fittest for surviving and ready for the dog-eat-dog corporate world.