Spoiled brat thinks he can get away with anything. Well he thought wrong.

Is "peace disturbance at an athletic event" an actual crime, separate from normal disturbing the peace?

Anyway, I understand throwing the kid out of the stadium, but criminal charges seem excessive.

Is "peace disturbance at an athletic event" an actual crime, separate from normal disturbing the peace?

Now you know what life is like when the Quakers institute their version of Sharia Law!

Anyway, I understand throwing the kid out of the stadium, but criminal charges seem excessive.

Actions have consequences.

Best Fans in Baseball.

Anyway, I understand throwing the kid out of the stadium, but criminal charges seem excessive.

Green lasers can damage eyes, and pointing them at someone is more than a harmless prank. I see no reason not to throw the book at him.

He should have his children taken away once he has them.

Green lasers can damage eyes, and pointing them at someone is more than a harmless prank. I see no reason not to throw the book at him.

Agreed. This isn't as bad as the morons that shine lasers into the cockpits of planes but there's a fairly good chance it won't be harmless and it will hopefully discourage people from doing it in situations that may pose a bigger danger.

Green lasers can damage eyes, and pointing them at someone is more than a harmless prank. I see no reason not to throw the book at him.

Lasers are actually four times as bad for the eyes as a conventional bright light of the same intensity, because they interfere with themselves to form speckle patterns. Since the intensity goes as the square of the field, the bright parts of the speckle do a lot of damage. In general, visible light lasers are less dangerous than IR or UV, because the eye will try to blink before too much damage is done.

Laser safety courses can get really gruesome. One story that stuck with me is the guy who bent down to adjust a mirror and heard his own eyeball pop when it interrupted the beam.

The other thing that makes laser light more dangerous than regular light is that, since it's all the same frequency, your eye will focus it all at the same point rather than over a slightly extended volume. So instead of the entire retina getting dazzled, one part gets burned.

Leyshock and several other officers arrived at the suite and found other teens there with an adult who he said was uncooperative with police.

Matheny went to the security office, where the three teens were held, and identified the suspect, who was a friend of the suite contact's son, Leyshock said. The suite contact is an executive with Mercy Health Systems whom Leyshock characterized as "uncooperative" and "confrontational."

Most of the guests inside the suite were teenagers, Leyshock said.

Once the suite occupants left, Cardinals security personnel recovered two bottles of liquor that had been smuggled into the stadium, Walsh said.

The Cardinals will be discussing the issue with the owners of the suite and they could face sanctions ranging from revocation of privileges to being charged for the confiscated liquor bottles, Walsh said.

"We had young kids acting stupid, but we had adults acting even more boorish," Walsh said. "They were interfering with what we were doing to stop the problem."

They sound like lovely people

So much for St. Louis having the best fans in baseball.

It sounds like the adult in the box with the drunken teens is a GREAT role model.

This is how society sociopaths are groomed.

I'm guessing most people have not actually used a green laser - they are MUCH stronger than the typical laser pointer you buy at Office Max. They can put a sharp point on a building on the other side of town. A red laser probably wouldn't be noticeable from the boxes to the dugout.

Green lasers can damage eyes, and pointing them at someone is more than a harmless prank. I see no reason not to throw the book at him.

Based on the article, he pointed it at the mound and above Matheny's head. I'm not saying there was zero risk involved, but I'm not sure what law he broke. Teenagers do stupid somewhat risky things all the time.

Are green lasers worse than other color lasers?

EDIT: deputydrew just answered my question. Thanks.

Green laser pointers usually use a powerful IR diode plus a frequency doubling crystal to get the green light. Because of that, there's usually a lot of IR mixed in with the green. So they're doubly bad. There's a lot more energy in the beam than you would guess from the visible dot, plus invisible light doesn't trigger the blink reflex.

C'mon, how bad could it really be? If there's anything I learned from 80's cartoons it is that lasers can only hurt robots and vehicles (and then only in manner that allows all the passengers to escape first). And TV never lies.

All that this laser waving accomplished is to prove that Mike Matheny is not a robot. Or that, if he is a robot, he is carrying around tiny people inside him.

I should note that laser pointers typically have output strengths regulated to minimize the likelihood of eye injury, for exactly the reasons I've been talking about. Still, shining a laser directly in someone's eye is always stupid and sometimes dangerous.

I don't know who to believe, Zach or zack.

I should note that laser pointers typically have output strengths regulated to minimize the likelihood of eye injury, for exactly the reasons I've been talking about. Still, shining a laser directly in someone's eye is always stupid and sometimes dangerous.

You can easily purchase lasers imported from abroad that exceed US standards (if there are such standards). The one green laser I've handled was amazingly powerful and made me feel quite uncomfortable just having it in my hands.

Posts 16 through 18 are intensely confusing in terms of the speaker. This is even worse than when we had all those Joneses!

This one time back in college, we filled up a guy's house with popcorn and used a laser to pop all the kernels. Professor Hathaway was mighty pissed.

This one time back in college, we filled up a guy's house with popcorn and used a laser to pop all the kernels. Professor Hathaway was mighty pissed.

That was you in the bunny slippers?

Wow Shane Loux sighting! Still knocking around after being on the 119 loss Tigers team back in the day. ERA over five and a miniscule strike out rate, that's the Shane Loux I remember.

This isn't as bad as the morons that shine lasers into the cockpits of planes but there's a fairly good chance it won't be harmless and it will hopefully discourage people from doing it in situations that may pose a bigger danger.

Yeah maybe, but idiots aren't really in the business of studying case history before they decide to do their idiocy. Just ban him from the stadium, strong punishment, no tax payer impact.

How do you ban someone from a stadium, anyway? Do you train all the gate employees to be on the lookout for someone resembling one of these banned people? That's not going to work.

How do you ban someone from a stadium, anyway? Do you train all the gate employees to be on the lookout for someone resembling one of these banned people? That's not going to work.

I imagine it's mostly a threat, and a way to have someone arrested for trespassing if he ever shows up and causes mischief again.

This one time back in college, we filled up a guy's house with popcorn and used a laser to pop all the kernels. Professor Hathaway was mighty pissed.

Dan, this is God. Stop playing with yourself.

This one time back in college, we filled up a guy's house with popcorn and used a laser to pop all the kernels. Professor Hathaway was mighty pissed.

First thing I thought of was "Is this a reference to real Genius" (had to go to IMDB to verify)

Posts 16 through 18 are intensely confusing in terms of the speaker. This is even worse than when we had all those Joneses!

Now all we need is for RB and RMc to come in.

I don't know who to believe, Zach or zack.

One of them is a robot.

Now all we need is for RB and RMc to come in.

And rlr.

And rlr.

rLr is dead. There is only the Skat Kat. All hail the Skat Kat.

How do you ban someone from a stadium, anyway? Do you train all the gate employees to be on the lookout for someone resembling one of these banned people? That's not going to work.

Do whatever God did to Cain so that people knew something was wrong. Maybe some sort of facial tattoo, like Mike Tyson or John Candy's The Guy With A Snake On His Face.

The one green laser I've handled was amazingly powerful and made me feel quite uncomfortable just having it in my hands.

That's what she said.

Do whatever God did to Cain

I don't think having this guy throw a perfect game is really going to turn him away from baseball.

You can easily purchase lasers imported from abroad that exceed US standards (if there are such standards).

There are such standards. Laser performance and labeling standards are found in 21 CFR Part 1040. Federal enforcement is via the Centers for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), the same folks at FDA who regulate x-ray systems.

Lasers and other radiation-emitting devices from abroad are subject to FDA inspection at the time of import clearance (importers fill out FDA form 2877). Anything from overseas not meeting U.S. standards would have to be smuggled in or otherwise fraudulently identified.

I imagine it's mostly a threat, and a way to have someone arrested for trespassing if he ever shows up and causes mischief again.

This.

Back in college, I made an impromptu roadtrip with three friends to a riverboat casino to play some cards -- I and one of the guys with me were 21, the other two weren't, but had decent fake IDs (I think they were 20). One of the 20 yo's got snagged and taken out of line when he tried to pass off his fake... We were prepared to just give him the car keys, tell him to have fun at MacDonalds, and that we'd see him in a couple hours -- but eventually, they took our entire party out of line and took us to the security office (really freaking out the other 20 yo whose ID had passed muster). They took all our pictures, told us we were banned from the premises, and security guard then walked us out to yellow line painted on the sidewalk and explained that if we crossed over the line, we could be arrested for trespassing.

About a month later, my grandmother -- who fancies a little blackjack -- invited me to meet her and some family at the same riverboat... having not divulged my banning, I was sweating bullets - but boarded and played for a couple hours without incident (in retrospect, a trespassing fine would have been cheaper).

As a laser physicist that went into that line of study because of Real Genius... I feel I need to respond.

First, and most importantly, the laser physics in Real Genius is actually not bad at all... their chemistry is a bit off though. At one point they ask if a substance that is clearly a solid is "liquid nitrogen"...

As for the lasers. Technically all of the green laser pointers are supposed to be under 5 mW or a class IIIa laser. Both of the ones I have ar 7-9 mW with full batteries. If they are below a certain threshold, as one fo the Zackhs mentioned, the human blink response is fast enough that you will close your eye before any permanent damage... at 8-10 mW where some of these green laser pointers are... I’m not sure if that is still true. Im not sure how much of that extra power is the IR beam. If they are designed correctly, there should be negligable IR radiation coming out as intercavity doubling is very efficient.

Actually some of the red laser pointers are nearly as powerful, but the eyes response peaks in the green, so they will appear brighter even at the same power level.

I have a burn mark on the inside rim of my last pair of glasses as I was leaner over to align the beam. I was thinking to my self... what is that burning smell... Oh.. its my glasses. One more millimeter and it would have hit the glass and possibly bounce into my eye, and I’d immediately have been a pirate.

Now all we need is for RB and RMc to come in.

Here, sir! (rushes in, trips over own feet)

This one time back in college, we filled up a guy's house with popcorn and used a laser to pop all the kernels. Professor Hathaway was mighty pissed.

First thing I thought of was "Is this a reference to real Genius"

Ahh, Jordan. Brilliant, cute, sweet, short dark hair, and just a pinch of crazy. You will be mine. Oh, yes...you will be mine...!

As a laser physicist that went into that line of study because of Real Genius... I feel I need to respond.

This could be the greatest sentence I've ever read.

As a laser physicist that went into that line of study because of Real Genius.

I'm guessing it wasn't beause you could hammer a six-inch spike through a board with your penis, because that would seem to be a terrible waste of your talents.

I [heart] Toxic Waste

Ahh, Jordan. Brilliant, cute, sweet, short dark hair, and just a pinch of crazy. You will be mine. Oh, yes...you will be mine...!

Meh.

I'll take Hilly from Weird Science for $800, Alex.

If they are below a certain threshold, as one fo the Zackhs mentioned, the human blink response is fast enough that you will close your eye before any permanent damage... at 8-10 mW where some of these green laser pointers are... I’m not sure if that is still true

My guess is that it is still true. Green wavelenghth lasers are preferentially absorbed by the hemoglobin in retinal tissue, resulting in a processs called photocoagulation if the power density (irradiance) is high enough. However, I know that continuous wave aiming lasers in green wavelength ophthalmic laser systems can be directed onto the retina for indefinite periods of time. These beams are -- if my memory serves -- 500 microwatts or below.

Back in the day, a colleague of mine was looking right down the barrel of the resonant cavity of a (supposedly) malfunctioning 5-watt argon laser when it turned on. Argons are blue-green. He lost the sight in that eye due to the significant photocoagulation in the macular area. N=1, blink response is no good at 5 watts.

Nerds!

#26 The Brits have made stadium bans work. Basically they start with facial recognition software on the crowds outside the gate and have stadium security (or the police, since there are some court ordered bans) follow up with the people flagged at step one.

It's obviously fairly expensive and I'm doubtful whether the Cardinals have anything more than a banned individuals book that security maintains.

But the more important question is that could you really pop corn with a laser?

And #37, Zonk -- Vegas casinos have put a fair amount of money into spotting people they don't want in (mostly blackjack counters plus known cheats). It's not perfect, but it is pretty good. A small place such as the one you're talking about probably wouldn't bother.

#40 I get that a lot

#41, as I had never tried the world will never know. It sounds painful though, so I’m guessing I did not miss any major opportunities.

The pinnacle of my laser physics career was in the closing years of grad school. I had been running the film society for a few years and was the treasurer. As I needed to focus on graduating I was transferring all my treasurely knowledge to a rather attractive young co-ed. I told her to meet me at the lab. She came in in the middle of an experiment where we had 3 pretty powerful lasers going (500 mj/pulse) green light was scattered everywhere with the lights off, and I had my goggles on. I told her to wait outside for a few minutes.

When we finished the measurement I joined her, and she remarked "Wow, you really are Val Kilmer".

Its been all downhill from there... until I met my wife, and she was one of the first people who when I said "I’m a laser Physicist..." She did not say.. "oh" and walk away.

Real Genius is actually one of the better depictions of science that you'll see in the movies. As Dr. Scott says, the laser physics is pretty realistic (the optical table is suspiciously uncluttered, but how many movies do you see that even have optical tables?). It also does a really good job of capturing the pressure and intensity of being at a hardcore science school, while still making it seem fun.

N=1, blink response is no good at 5 watts.

I'm reminded of that scene in Terminator, where the robot has a laser in place of an eye. Only less awesome, and more bleeding.

" It also does a really good job of capturing the pressure and intensity of being at a hardcore science school, while still making it seem fun."

I was expecting more parties with future beauticians... but that turned out to be a scam!

Zach, who are you working with at Colorado. I was working with Steve Harris (12 years ago now) doing experimental atomic physics (Electromagnetically induced transparency, nonlinear optics stuff).

Since there are experty people in this thread, it's probably not a bad time to ask - are there any good books out there discussing lasers and the associated physics that are written for non-experts?

I worked with Chris Greene, doing strong field theory. As the only theorist working on strong field stuff, I ended up doing a lot of the laser safety courses just because it was easier than creating an exception for people who never actually worked in the lab. That held true in my next job, too -- they had us watch an old East German instructional video.

RJ -- almost definitely.

Just looking at Amazon, it looks like
Beam would fit the bill.

Lasers are used for so much that it's impossible to cover everything, but the general ideas aren't that difficult.

Zach, thanks. That looks like it should be worth reading.

Ive been out of the loop for about 10 years.. by strong field, are you just talking about the rather large field of non-pertubative atominc physics or does it have a more specific meaning. I assume EIT would be strong field, but we never used the term.

I have no recomendations for layman books on lasers. I started with Oshea and Callens book, as Oshea was my friends dad.

Ahh, Jordan. Brilliant, cute, sweet, short dark hair, and just a pinch of crazy. You will be mine. Oh, yes...you will be mine...!

Meh.

And now...you must die. Mock my new-wave movie crushes at your peril, pal.

I'll take Hilly from Weird Science for $800, Alex.

OK, not a bad choice. But Jordan still wins in straight sets.

I have to agree with RMc here. It was amazing how attractive I found nerosis when I was 15... to say... 40.

Ive now come to realize its easier to try to deal with ones own nerosis, then to be attracted to and then deal with even more.

Oooohh. Lack of spell check and the fact that I cant edit make it dangerous for me to post here...

by strong field, are you just talking about the rather large field of non-pertubative atominc physics or does it have a more specific meaning.

I usually work with laser fields strong enough that they rival the electron's Coulomb interaction with the nuclei. The experimentalists usually work around intensities of 10^14 watts per square centimeter, with pulses of a few femtoseconds. The really big experiments are starting to get up to 10^18 W/cm^2, where they can get electron/positron pair creation and photon/photon scattering. The lasers are strong enough that one of the popular approximations is to forget about the nuclei entirely and let the electrons follow the laser field freely.

At 10^14 W/cm^2, one of the big processes is high harmonic generation -- the laser rips an electron off an atom or molecule, accelerates it in the continuum, and slams it back into the source ion. It's a way to get really short pulses of UV/soft X ray light, which you can use to look at molecular dynamics on really short timescales.

This is all spectacularly nerdy. God bless you all.

How do you ban someone from a stadium, anyway? Do you train all the gate employees to be on the lookout for someone resembling one of these banned people? That's not going to work.

I'm banned from the Toronto Zoo, though I bet I could walk in there without a problem. I've never tested that theory though, mostly because I'm not much of a zoo guy.

For what? Taunting the chimps?

For what? Taunting the chimps?

They started it!

Nah it was nothing actually exciting. I just broke into it accidently one night.

EDIT: For a place with wild animals walking around they sure don't put much of a fence around the exterior.

I'll take Hilly from Weird Science for $800, Alex.

I recently learned that Wyatt from Weird Science, Ilan Mitchell-Smith, is now a professor of Medieval English literature at Cal State-Long Beach. One of his publications is called "Racial Determinism in the Narrative Setting of Dungeons and Dragons". It's good to see that he's just as much of a massive nerd as his character in the film, only tending in the direction of knights and D&D and Medieval poetry instead of towards laser physics and whatnot.

Nah it was nothing actually exciting. I just broke into it accidently one night.

Accidentally? And you call that "nothing exciting"?

Well it makes for a fun story to tell, but at the end of the day not much happened. Me and a friend were exploring the river valley adjacent to the zoo one day and got a tad lost. So we were just following the river until it made its way back to civilization, which necesitated hopping over a few "private property" fences...and let me tell you, the zoo fence ended up being by far the tiniest one there. It was a barely six foot tall chain link fence and had a tree leaning against it just begging to be climbed. As near as I can make out we hopped over in the "Canadian" sanctuary. We saw some moose I think in the distance and that's when it clicked that we were in the zoo. It had a closed an hour or two earlier so it was pretty empty. On our way out we did also jump off the monorail track into what might have been the lion sanctuary (I could see some animals in the distance that looked like lions anyway...they didn't seem too curious about us).

Anyway, we managed to walk through the entire zoo without anyone noticing, though I suppose there were cameras at the entrance because some zoo security guys picked us up just outside the zoo. (Luckily my quick thinking friend tossed the memento of our trip we had stolen into a ditch as the jeep was parking. I guess he was better at it than this green laser kid because they didn't seem to notice. The cops actually specifically said later that they bought our story of being lost since we didn't steal anything). The zoo guys detained us and eventually some cops came by to arrest us.

My friend had some gems he busted out to the cops which provided some entertainment while we waited for them to figure out what to do with us.

- during their formal ceremony of putting us under arrest
"Do you know how long is this going to take? I have a curling match at 9"

- when another zoo guy radioed back that they had found an unmarked car in the zoo parking lot
"That has nothing to do with us!"

- on the ride home in the back of the cop car, while the cops are looking up the license plates of random cars they pass on the highway
"Are you allowed to do that?"

This is all spectacularly nerdy. God bless you all.

Seriously, at this point a good D&D discussion would increase the testosterone level.

EDIT:

Is it bad that I knew Greg's story before he posted #69? Do I spend too much time here?

recently learned that Wyatt from Weird Science, Ilan Mitchell-Smith, is now a professor of Medieval English literature at Cal State-Long Beach. One of his publications is called "Racial Determinism in the Narrative Setting of Dungeons and Dragons". It's good to see that he's just as much of a massive nerd as his character in the film, only tending in the direction of knights and D&D and Medieval poetry instead of towards laser physics and whatnot.

I couldn't stand Weird Science, but I really liked him in the earlier Daniel (a very underrated movie, IMHO, though since I [1]really liked the novel & [2] have long been what Joey would mislabel, in his political illiteracy, a Red Diaper Baby, no doubt left me so biased in its favor that I can't be counted for anything even remotely approaching an objective viewpoint), as it happens.

Is it bad that I knew Greg's story before he posted #69? Do I spend too much time here?

Nah, just means I need some new stories!

Is it bad that I knew Greg's story before he posted #69? Do I spend too much time here?

We should really do an detailed analysis of the two versions we now have, to see how the story evolves over time. Maybe there's a pretentious paper in it: "Reinterpreting Reality: Greg (U)K's transition from modernist to post-modernist historian through the prism of the Toronto Zoo story"

We should really do an detailed analysis of the two versions we now have, to see how the story evolves over time. Maybe there's a pretentious paper in it: "Reinterpreting Reality: Greg (U)K's transition from modernist to post-modernist historian through the prism of the Toronto Zoo story"

It really was spot on is the problem. The smallest fence bit, frolicking with the lions and the buddy asking about random license plate look ups all are consistent. Hmm, maybe the rest is embellishment? Was there actually a curling match at 9? I submit there was not! Greg (U)K your story privileges are hereby revoked for a period of no less than 10 days, and don't doubt you will be ip-monitored to ensure no name changes.

We should really do an detailed analysis of the two versions we now have, to see how the story evolves over time. Maybe there's a pretentious paper in it: "Reinterpreting Reality: Greg (U)K's transition from modernist to post-modernist historian through the prism of the Toronto Zoo story"

There definitely is. I never tell the same story twice (which means a lot of cumulative changes over time as I don't have that many stories to tell). In my initial tellings the first enclosure I got into was some kind of antelope...but a review of the zoo map today leads me to believe it was moose.

The unmarked car also wasn't in the zoo parking lot, but another parking lot further along the river valley...but it's too long to explain how it ties into the story, so I figured I'd go with a simplification lie.

Furthermore, lying is one of my dearest hobbies (so long as the lie neither A) benefits me, nor B) hurts anyone else, nor C) has any clear motivation - ie. makes me look cool), so there's always a chance of some of that slipping in.

By the way, I'm tickled pink we've managed to pull two separate threads towards history!