It’s amazing the power that is available in a hand held flashlight now. When I was a kid we had a flashlight that took one of those big 4″x4″x6″ batteries and it would barely be enough light to read by. Now you can practically start a fire or knock over small children with one. One day instead of annoying kids shining their laser pointers on a movie screen they’ll be doing it on the moon. As I’m writing this I’m wondering how many posts it will take for someone to tell me that the object Biff is holding is actually called a torch. 
Bahahaha, I love Biff’s face! “WTF did it do that for? I need that wall.”
This reminds me of the flashlight lasers from ringworld, it had an adjustable focus that made it change from hand held flashlight to cutting laser.
Is it just me, or do I see Biff’s right eye, instead of the squint?
And Kif, your toilet is set to stun instead of kill. Ten points to anyone to get that.
my friend is from south africa and he calls flashlights torches, starts to get anoying sometimes cuz il forget and be like “torch??……”
I know it was mentioned, but Wickedlasers.com has lasers with “the power to burn,” for between 500 & 3000 USD. Not quite what we are seeing here, but still cool.
Ringworld rocks, just sucked that the green cloaks absorbed the green lazers light.
What biff is holding here is best called a Photonic Shotgun, look at the spread on that thing.
Dentist: “No, open wide, just need to take a look here.”
Patient: “OwwwwAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”
I can’t find a picture of it right now… but I remember when my grandfather bought a 2 million candlepower spotlight…
Think of a flashlight, only 1 foot in diameter by two feet long… with a built in battery+charger… an emergency radio… and a B/W TV.
This thing could shine a light from Emerald Bay (South Lake Tahoe, CA) to Round Hill (Zephyr Cove, NV) and still illuminate a party pretty darn well… as we found out from experience when he did just that to us one 4th of July.
(the following is a link to a google map of the beam I am talking about… 7.12 MILES!!!)
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=38.975825,-119.982634&spn=0.059519,0.12085&z=14&om=1&msid=106222576896237079318.00043bb0e2e882c2ad4cb
It wasn’t quite as spiffy as the one joequincy mentioned, but a friend of mine had a whopping big (about 8″ lens, maybe 16″ total length) handheld flashlight he called his “Sun-in-a-gun”. The best range we could verify for it, since we lived in suburbia at the time, was about a quarter of a mile, but it was bright enough at that distance to read house numbers. It might or might not have been enough to start a campfire, but it was definitely warm enough to set on its butt end and warm your hands over!
I was in a store and bought this thing called a ‘Handy LED Flashlight’. I look on the little cashier’s screen as it’s being rung up – ‘handy LED torch’. Weird.
LED lights are better D:
I was watching How it’s Made on the science Channel and they claimed it’s called a flashlight because the first flashlights could only produce flashes of light, not a prolonged beam. So the name “flashlight” is inaccurate at best.
I’m not sure I can get behind “torch” either, despite how culturally enriched it makes you sound.
Marthion, I don’t remember hearing the quote, but if I recognize the name used, it’d be from Futurama.
It bugs me ever-so-slightly </understatement> when people misspell acronyms, such as Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Also, since LED stands for light emitting diode, that makes “LED light” somewhat redundant.
Yes, I know my pedantic mode is far too touchy. More on-topic, both “torch” and “flashlight” have issues in proper use. “Torch”, given its verb form (torch the village!), is too strongly associated with flame-on-a-fuel-soaked-stick, while a “flashlight” doesn’t actually flash. I’ve heard “dead battery case” as an alternate suggestion, though.
Biff’s firin his lazor?
Cool….
I started to talk about how my torch does this and that on a Game Forum somewhere, and no one knew what I was talking about. Eventually someone posted that:
Torch = Flashlight
Trousers = Pants
Fag = Cigarette.
Unfortunately I’m not British, so only the first applies with me. I don’t really understand why people call them flashlights. When I think of a flashlight, I think of those lights in clubs that make you look like you are moving in cartoon motion… you know, they flash.
Darn it, what ARE those lights called…. The ones Bug described.
Strobe lights!
Torch = Implement utilizing FIRE. Contemporary example, a welding torch, which uses pressurized gas to create the concentrated flame for making welds.
Flashlights utilize ELECTRICITY to make light, unlike fire based sources of light, such as a torch, they can be instantly turned on and off, thus the ‘flash’ part of it.
In Swedish it’s called ficklampa, “pocket lamp”.
You can get burney, melty lasers here: http://www.wickedlasers.org (com?)
Amake, you have NO idea (hopefully) how that sounds in German. (No, I won’t explain. Ask Google, if you must).
And Wickedlasers.com now has a It’s-Electric-But-Still-Sets-Things-On-Fire Torch. That’s its name. Wicked.
I really, really, REALLY hope that this was [i]supposed[/i] to be a Star Trek reference, otherwise I feel like a total geek -_-’
Bah, ignore the absent-minded attempt at coding there. Forgot where I was typing.
In russian it’s called fanare meaning lantern.
That’s not a flashlight, that’s a variable focus laser from Larry Niven’s know space stories.
Say, I wonder…. how old is Biff?
It’s called a torch.
Halloo from England.
@Armathos: Thank you, I was waiting for that…
If someone says they’re giving me a torch, there BETTER be fire involved. =D
My OLight is 210 lumens on the high setting. There are some that can literally be seen from orbit. The special forces guys use those with an IR filter for signaling. Mine will illuminate far enough to exceed tracer burnout on the machine gun.
Do I sense a Star Trek phaser reference?
i’m gonna end this argument. 2CAMMELS IN A TINY CAR B*&^ES!!
(btw thats a reference to =3) http://www.youtube.com/user/RayWilliamJohnson#p/search/2/GQkYjDeUq10
@ The Crack Ninja: You’ve been to Wicked Lasers, too? Personally, I want a Spyder II GX.
I’m British.
It’s a torch.
I want that flashlight BAD. It would make hunting down my socks that much easier…’cause then they couldn’t get away! BWAHAHAHAHAHA-*cough, cough* ow… evil laughter bad for throat…
basicly almost everyone except america calls it a torch. and use a diffrent system of mesurment. and drive on the opposite side of the road. america is backwards. we migrated over and were like ‘eff europe lets change EVERYTHING so they can’t just jump over here and blend in.’ they retaliated by having better beer and chocolate than we do.