The increasingly accurate rifles is another thing favoring the defender.
The rifle is a great weapon on the defense, but when they went on the offense?
The primary weapons of the WWI italian trench-takers were knives, clubs and grenades.
It's not until the development of the submachinegun (and to some extent the semiautomatic carbine) that we see a really effective offensive infantry weapon. On the defense its limited by the effective range, but on the offense the firepower compensates pretty well for that.
P.S: Also favoring the defender. Mines.
You missed two of the most important weapons of WWI: Machine guns and Barbed wire.
Machine guns where the number one defensive weapon bar none. A single machine gun manned by 2 or 3 guys could stop an attacking company right in its tracks. John Basilone in WW2 managed to stop 3000 Japanese attackers at Guadacanal with just a 2 sections of Machine guns(4-5).
And then there is Barbed wire, which wasn't the single strand seen in movies, but over a dozen intertwined rolls several meters(yards) deep. Way too deep to just lay a plank over, easily replaced in the dead of night if damaged and night impossible to traverse without getting stuck in. A person caught in Barbed wire would be an easy kill for the defender.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
The increasingly accurate rifles is another thing favoring the defender.
The rifle is a great weapon on the defense, but when they went on the offense?
The primary weapons of the WWI italian trench-takers were knives, clubs and grenades.
It's not until the development of the submachinegun (and to some extent the semiautomatic carbine) that we see a really effective offensive infantry weapon. On the defense its limited by the effective range, but on the offense the firepower compensates pretty well for that.
P.S: Also favoring the defender. Mines.
You missed two of the most important weapons of WWI: Machine guns and Barbed wire.
Machine guns where the number one defensive weapon bar none. A single machine gun manned by 2 or 3 guys could stop an attacking company right in its tracks. John Basilone in WW2 managed to stop 3000 Japanese attackers at Guadacanal with just a 2 sections of Machine guns(4-5).
And then there is Barbed wire, which wasn't the single strand seen in movies, but over a dozen intertwined rolls several meters(yards) deep. Way too deep to just lay a plank over, easily replaced in the dead of night if damaged and night impossible to traverse without getting stuck in. A person caught in Barbed wire would be an easy kill for the defender.
Both Barbed wire and machineguns and artillery had been mentioned in previous posts.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
There was also the trench shotgun which was so devestating and fucked up to the Germans they made an early version of the Commisar/Commando rule just for shotgun users.
That's not quite accurate. It was more of the perception of the weapon. In America shotguns have always been used for just about everything from hunting to defending a home to protecting stagecoaches. We get the term "riding shotgun" specifically from a stagecoach having the driver and an armed guard. The American perception is that it is a weapon with no stigma attached to it.
The German view of the shotgun is that it is primarily a hunting weapon. And more specifically for hunting vermin or small animals. So when they capture someone carrying a shotgun they don't see it as a weapon of war. They see it as vermin extermination. Combining this view with a captured enemy that you probably already dislike can lead to someone getting executed.
Yeah, the Germans threatened to execute Americans caught with shotguns. They didn't because the American response was "If you do, we will start executing the Germans we have taken prisoner."
Also have to slightly disagree with you. A shotgun was a good trench gun. 12 gauge in confined quarters does real ugly damage. Not spectacularly more efficient than a Thompson or BAR but better than a bolt action.
it speaks to the resources being fought over; in the biblical era the primary resource being fought for was labor itself, either in the form of slaves or additional women and children. Land and livestock are great but without the people to labor over them, what's the point?
by the time WW1 rolls around most newborns are living to adulthood and labor is an increasingly abundant commodity; thus, trench warfare
Trench warfare was more of a symptom of the technology being used. Machine guns, more advanced artillery, and chemical warfare gave much more advantage to the defender than those going on the offence.
Planes and tanks getting better at what they do seems to be the answer to all of this.
There are many things involved. Radio was a new thing then. Tanks (as a mechanized force) don't work without it, can't coordinate. Artillery fire couldn't be called in quickly. Scouting reports from planes are delayed until landing, etc, etc, etc. Communications alone changed WWII. Also note that the trench warfare of western europe was an exception, WWI was fought in more than one theatre and one only ended up in the trenches
Improved communications is definitely an often neglected aspect of changes in war. It's just not nearly as sexy as a bigger bomb or shooty-er gun.
In a similar vein, (I think I've recommended this book before) Napoleon: A Life has a really good in-depth examination of how Napoleon completely revolutionized western military concepts... And that rather than it being about how he say, deployed his artillery, which gets a lot of discussion, it was much more about bureaucratic restructuring and standardization.
Kana on
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Primarily it was about abolishing the aristocratic privileges, which allowed talent from the middle-classes to move upwards and to structure the government around this meritocratic system.
The standardization of supplies and weaponry had pretty much already been done, with the french army already using a unified system of artillery (including supply) and firearms (Modele 1777), although the late revolutionary and early napoleonic eras saw a massive upscaling of these systems due to the available manpower (levee en masse*).
*The first successful form of conscription used on the continent. Sweden had already used a fairly extensive system of conscription for 200 years, a major contributing factor to its success during the 17th century, although not enough to compete during the 18th century given its lack of population.)
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
There was also the trench shotgun which was so devestating and fucked up to the Germans they made an early version of the Commisar/Commando rule just for shotgun users.
That's not quite accurate. It was more of the perception of the weapon. In America shotguns have always been used for just about everything from hunting to defending a home to protecting stagecoaches. We get the term "riding shotgun" specifically from a stagecoach having the driver and an armed guard. The American perception is that it is a weapon with no stigma attached to it.
The German view of the shotgun is that it is primarily a hunting weapon. And more specifically for hunting vermin or small animals. So when they capture someone carrying a shotgun they don't see it as a weapon of war. They see it as vermin extermination. Combining this view with a captured enemy that you probably already dislike can lead to someone getting executed.
Yeah, the Germans threatened to execute Americans caught with shotguns. They didn't because the American response was "If you do, we will start executing the Germans we have taken prisoner."
Also have to slightly disagree with you. A shotgun was a good trench gun. 12 gauge in confined quarters does real ugly damage. Not spectacularly more efficient than a Thompson or BAR but better than a bolt action.
I thought it was also because of the kind of wounds shotguns caused? Ie, buckshot spread and caused infections and death where a single bullet could be extracted presuming it didn't fracture on impact
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
Primarily it was about abolishing the aristocratic privileges, which allowed talent from the middle-classes to move upwards and to structure the government around this meritocratic system.
The standardization of supplies and weaponry had pretty much already been done, with the french army already using a unified system of artillery (including supply) and firearms (Modele 1777), although the late revolutionary and early napoleonic eras saw a massive upscaling of these systems due to the available manpower (levee en masse*).
*The first successful form of conscription used on the continent. Sweden had already used a fairly extensive system of conscription for 200 years, a major contributing factor to its success during the 17th century, although not enough to compete during the 18th century given its lack of population.)
So Nappy was the anti-Toyotomi Hideoshi?
Who I hate.
Vincent Van Gogh's parents had a child one year to the day before Vincent was born. Sadly this child, a boy, was stillborn. They named him Vincent and buried him in a grave not far from their home. The living child born to them exactly a year later was also named Vincent in this lost boy's honour.
This meant that as a child every day on his way to school Vincent Van Gogh passed a grave with his name and birthday on the headstone.
Primarily it was about abolishing the aristocratic privileges, which allowed talent from the middle-classes to move upwards and to structure the government around this meritocratic system.
The standardization of supplies and weaponry had pretty much already been done, with the french army already using a unified system of artillery (including supply) and firearms (Modele 1777), although the late revolutionary and early napoleonic eras saw a massive upscaling of these systems due to the available manpower (levee en masse*).
*The first successful form of conscription used on the continent. Sweden had already used a fairly extensive system of conscription for 200 years, a major contributing factor to its success during the 17th century, although not enough to compete during the 18th century given its lack of population.)
So Nappy was the anti-Toyotomi Hideoshi?
Who I hate.
Pretty much, conscription evolved in Europe for much the same reason as the ashiguru system, as a force multiplier, and Hideyoshi disarmed the populace and instituted a rigid class system to prevent anyone from being able to threaten the aristocracy just by giving a bunch of peasants pikes and guns.
The aristocratic system was pretty much dead, in many cases literally, in France before Napoleon, though, he was just took full advantage.
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
edited April 2017
In the interwar period, you start to see a couple of people working out the theory of strategic bombing. And a really big one was Giulio Douhet. Douhet was an Italian general in WWI who advocated for air power so much that they threw him in jail for a year. You might be wondering how much of a jackass was he, and that is the wrong question. The right question was how staggeringly stupid was the Italian High Command. But what Douhet brings to the table is the idea that Air Power is an primarily strategic offensive weapon. The idea the bombers will always get through isn't his but it does belong to his followers.
And the lesson from WWII was that Douhet was wrong in a lot of ways. There were practical uses for aircraft at the tactical level. And you could defend against bombers. But he was also right in that if you can't defend against bombers, they will flatten your cities. This wasn't helped with the development of nuclear weapons, in fact it became even scarier. Because now if I send a stream of bombers and you get all but one or two then your city is effectively gone. This is very worry some for the US because of this:
Totally not a B-29.
Anyone who thought to themselves "Ah the B-29..." is wrong. That's the Tu-4. Which is a reverse engineered B-29. The B-29 was the most expensive weapons project of the war, more so than even the Manhattan Project when you take into account B-29 production costs. And it was the most cutting edge bomber of the day. And now the Soviets had a knock off. If they built bases in the far eastern part of Russia, they could hit the Pacific Northwest. If they made a better bomber, then the rest of the US would be in danger. You can imagine this scared the crap out of people.
This doesn't get better as we get into the Jet Age. Now the bombers have more range and can cover it a lot faster. The time you have to work with is smaller. In WWII they had plotting boards like this that worked pretty well:
But now that's not fast enough. So the Air Force starts looking at automated systems. And came across Project Whirlwind.
During the war, the Navy attempted to make a better flight simulator than what they had. So they got MIT to start working on it, and they started developing Project Whirlwind. Project Whirlwind is kind of a big deal for computers for a number of reasons. First, it was real time, not batch processing. And it was doing bit parallel not bit serial operations. Lastly it had the first magnetic core memory. Right about the time they got it to work the Navy lost interest. But it was exactly the kind of machine the Air Force needed. So they turned it into Project Claude and hooked it up to the air defense radars in New England. It was a smashing success except for one issue. Doing this nation wide would be more than MIT could handle. It did lead to a bit of a spin off though. MIT worked on a transistorized version of Whirlwind. And part of that team would leave and form Digital Equipment Corporation. And the DEC PDP-1 is remarkably similar if smaller than the transistorized version of the Whirlwind.
So with the prototype successful they brought in IBM and scaled it up. Making the AN/FSQ-7 that would become the basis for Semi-Automatic Ground Environment or SAGE. This scaled it up to a nation wide project.
[img][/img] The SAGE sectors.
The AN/FSQ-7 was the largest computer system ever built. There were 24 units, each weighing 250 tons. 60,000 vacuum tubes. 3 megawatts of power. They were simply massive. And by the time SAGE was completed, obsolete. Now most of the time an obsolete computer gets scrapped. But the AN/FSQ-7 became a movie star. It became the go to prop for any set that needed a futuristic computer.
•Fantastic Voyage (1966)
•Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)
•The President's Analyst (1967)
•Airplane! (1980)
•The Swarm (1978)
•Spaceballs (1987)
•Get Smart, Again! (1989)
•Eve of Destruction (1991)
•Beverly Hills Cop 3 (1994)
•Independence Day (1996)
•Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)
•That's So Raven - Season 1, "Saving Psychic Raven" (2003)
•Return to the Batcave (2003)
•Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002)
•Soap - Season 3, Episode 3 (1979)
•Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973)
•Virus (1999)
•Damnation Alley (1977)
•The Towering Inferno (1974)
•Sleeper (1973)
•Lost - Season 2 (2005)
•Snowball Express (1972)
•Zontar: The Thing from Venus (1966)
•Westworld (1973)
•Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)
•Columbo - Season 4, "A Deadly State of Mind" (1975)
•Winter Kills (1979)
•Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)
•Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
•The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries - Season 2, Episode 22, "Campus Terror" (1978)
•War Games (1983)
•Way... Way Out (1966)
•12:01 (1993) •The Cat From Outer Space (1978)
•Get Smart - Season 4, Episode 19, "Absorb the Greek" (1969)
•It Takes a Thief - Season 1, "Hans Across the Border" (1968)
•Planet Earth (1974) •Earth II (1971) •Paper Man (1971)
•The Power (1968) •Project X (1968)
•The Man From U.N.C.L.E. - Season 4 (1967)
•Scarecrow and Mrs King - Season 1, Episode 4, "Magic Bus" (1983)
•City Beneath the Sea (1971)
•Futureworld (1976)
•By Dawn's Early Light (1990)
•KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park (1978)
•Stowaway to the Moon (1975)
•The Time Machine (1978) •The Invaders - Season 2, Episode 1, "Condition: Red" (1967)
•FlashForward - Season 1, Episode 22, "Future Shock" (2009)
•The Time Tunnel - Season 1 (1967) •Electra Woman and Dyna Girl - Season 1 (1976)
•Brave New World (1980) •Battlestar Galactica - Season 1 (1979) •Computercide (1982)
•Hawaii Five-O - Season 1, Episode 19, "Once Upon a Time" (1969)
•Capricorn One (1977) •Firestarter (1984)
•Sliders - Season 3, Episode 3, "Electric Twister Acid Test" (1996)
•U.S. Marshals (1998)
•Every Thing You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask (1972)
•The Invaders - Season 2, Episode 14, "The Believers" (1967)
•Lost In Space - Season 3, Episode 1, "Condemned of Space" (1967)
•Lost in Space - Season 3, Episode 3, "Kidnapped in Space" (1967)
•Lost in Space - Season 3, Episode 10, "The Space Creature" (1967)
•Silver Streak (1976)
•Planet of the Apes - Season 1, Episode 5, "The Legacy" (1974)
•Rock Jocks (2012)
One of the capabilities of the SAGE system was that an operator had a monitor and a light gun. When issuing an intercept, they could use their light gun to teletext to the airbase, or BOMARC launch site. Later on this capability was upgraded so that the operator launch directly. Given that the BOMARC SAM system could be equipped with nuclear warheads, I assume that damn dog never snickered at the operators when they missed.
"Heiltsuk oral history talks of a strip of land in that area where the excavation took place. It was a place that never froze during the ice age and it was a place where our ancestors flocked to for survival," said William Housty, a member of Heiltsuk Nation.
B.C. archaeologists have excavated a settlement in the area — in traditional Heiltsuk Nation territory — and dated it to 14,000 years ago, during the last ice age where glaciers covered much of North America.
"This find is very important because it reaffirms a lot of the history that our people have been talking about for thousands of years," Housty said.
[...]
[Archeologist Alisha] Gauvreau says the site — which is one of the oldest sites of human occupation on the Northwest coast of North America — gives a new meaning to the First Nations concept of "time immemorial."
"When First Nations talk about time immemorial, it just goes to show how far back the occupation of this land goes back in deep time," she said.
That's interesting, but perhaps in the wrong thread?
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
On April 20, 1902, Pierre and Marie Curie first isolated radium. Marie and Pierre Curie shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with Henri Becquerel; originally, it was to go to only Pierre and Henri, but Pierre insisted on the importance of his wife's work. Marie later won the 1911 Nobel Prize for Chemistry in her own right. She defined the international standard for radioactive emissions that's now named for herself and Pierre, the curie. The daughter of Marie and Pierre, Irène Joliot-Curie, also won the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with her husband, Frédéric Joliot-Curie.
The ways that Pierre and Marie died says a great deal about how quickly the world was changing at the start of the 20th century. Marie died in 1934, of a radiation related illness. Marie's papers, including her cookbook, are so radioactive that they're stored in lead cases and people need to wear protective gear when handling them. Pierre died in 1906, when he was run down by a horse-drawn wagon.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
On a less Awesome note. Marie Curie got her first shared nobel prize because her husband insisted that she had done just as much as he had (if not more), and she went on to prove it by winning the nobel prize again (being twice awarded the nobel prize is an honour only shared by four people).
So many other women in science didn't have someone that stood up for them, that had their fame and recognition stolen from them. Sometimes because the researchers thought that their findings would be ignored if they had a woman on their paper, sometimes by sexist coworkers and superiors simply stole their findings.
If you want to have your blood boil in anger, then read up on Ada Lovelace, Cecelia Payne, Candace Pert, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Rosalind Franklin, Lisa Meitner, Nettie Stevens or so many more...and these are just the names of some of those who have been recognized later, after a long struggle and sometimes after their own deaths. How many more there are out there we don't know.
We do have a name for the phenomena, it's call the Matilda Effect
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
The dude was a race official named Jock Semple and he had a history of weirdly aggressive behavior at the marathon
Semple became known to a lay audience while working as a Boston Marathon race co-director. He had been in the long-time habit of physically attacking those he perceived to be "non serious" runners competing in the race, whether officially entered or running the course unofficially. In a 1968 interview with Sports Illustrated, he called them "These screwballs! These weirdies! These MIT boys! These Tufts characters! These Harvard guys!" According to fellow race official Will Cloney: "He hurls not only his body at them, but also a rather choice array of epithets... Jock's method of attack is apt to vary." In 1957, Semple had narrowly escaped arrest for assault after attempting to tackle a runner in swim fins and a snorkeling mask.[1] In the 1967 Boston Marathon, one woman, Bobbi Gibb, ran and finished unofficially, as she had the previous year, because women were not allowed to participate. When another, Kathrine Switzer, entered the race officially, through an "oversight" in the entry screening process,[3] Semple tried to stop her as she ran.[4][5] Switzer wrote in her memoir "A big man, a huge man, with bared teeth was set to pounce, and before I could react he grabbed my shoulder and flung me back, screaming, 'Get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers!'"[6] Switzer's boyfriend managed to shove Semple aside. Photographs of Semple attempting to rip Switzer's number off were widespread in the media.[1]
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Dr. Jose Galán says, "We knew of the possible existence of these gardens since they appear in illustrations both at the entrances to tombs as well as on tomb walls, where Egyptians would depict how they wanted their funerals to be. [...] This is the first time that a physical garden has ever been found, and it is therefore the first time that archaeology can confirm what had been deduced from iconography. The discovery and thorough analysis of the garden will provide valuable information about both the botany and the environmental conditions of ancient Thebes, of Luxor 4,000 years ago."
Galán continues, "The plants grown there would have had a symbolic meaning and may have played a role in funerary rituals. Therefore, the garden will also provide information about religious beliefs and practices as well as the culture and society at the time of the Twelfth Dynasty when Thebes became the capital of the unified kingdom of Upper and Lower Egypt for the first time."
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simonwolfi can feel a differencetoday, a differenceRegistered Userregular
An amateur historian has unearthed compelling evidence that the first Australian maritime foray into Japanese waters was by convict pirates on an audacious escape from Tasmania almost two centuries ago.
Fresh translations of samurai accounts of a “barbarian” ship in 1830 give startling corroboration to a story modern scholars had long dismissed as convict fantasy: that a ragtag crew of criminals encountered a forbidden Japan at the height of its feudal isolation.
The brig Cyprus was hijacked by convicts bound from Hobart to Macquarie Harbour in 1829, in a mutiny that took them all the way to China.
Its maverick skipper was William Swallow, a onetime British cargo ship apprentice and naval conscript in the Napoleonic wars, who in a piracy trial in London the following year told of a samurai cannonball in Japan knocking a telescope from his hand.
Swallow’s fellow mutineers, two of whom were the last men hanged for piracy in Britain, backed his account of having been to Japan.
Western researchers, citing the lack of any Japanese record of the Cyprus, had since ruled the convicts’ story a fabrication.
But that conclusion has been shattered by Nick Russell, a Japan-based English teacher and history buff, in a remarkable piece of sleuthing that has won the endorsement of Australian diplomatic officials and Japanese and Australian archival experts.
Russell, after almost three years of puzzling over an obscure but meticulous record of an early samurai encounter with western interlopers, finally joined the dots with the Cyprus through a speculative Google search last month.
A watercolour of a British-flagged ship that arrived off the coast of Mugi, in Shikoku, Japan in 1830, chronicled by low-ranking Samurai artist Makita Hamaguchi in documents from the Tokushima prefectural archive.
The discovery of numerous carved human skulls at the Neolithic ritual site in Turkey now suggests it was also the site of the world’s earliest "skull cult”, a group who practiced the ritualistic worship of mutilated human skulls and skeletons.
[...]
This is the earliest archaeological evidence of carved skulls for ritualistic purposes. These “skull cults” have been documented throughout the world, including parts of the Pacific, South Asia, the Americas, and other nearby areas of Eurasia. Although it bears some similarities to the practices of the Naga people of India, the style of this modification is unique within the Early Neolithic of Anatolia and the Levant.
Of course, there is a competing interpretation of the findings:
Why do so may ancient cults seem straight out of Conan ?
Hyborian Age is true fact, obviously:
c. 17,500 BC: A lesser cataclysm breaks the Thurian continent in two.
c. 15,500 BC: In the eastern part of the shattered Thurian continent, the Lemurians free themselves from slavery. The Lemurians travel west and overwhelm the serpent people there, founding the kingdoms of Acheron and Stygia. They adopt the practices of the serpent people and worship many dark gods, including Nyarlat, Sebek, Set, Gol-Goroth, and Shuddam-El. The Stygians also cultivate a plant called the Black Lotus, which "enhanced" their worship of their deities. ("The Hyborian Age," Howard; "Timeline of the Cthulhu Mythos," Appel; "The Children of Yig," Appel; "Dope War of the Black Tong," Price)
The surviving serpent people flee to the southern edge of the continent. ("The Children of Yig," Appel)
c. 15,000 BC: The Cimmerians, under the chieftain Crom-Ya, begin their ascent to glory. Crom-Ya is later deified as the god Crom. ("The Shadow Out of Time," Lovecraft)
c. 13,000 BC: The Hyborians, a northern people, conquer Acheron and form eight separate countries- Aquilonia, Argos, Brythunia, Corinthia, Koth, Nemedia, Ophir, and Zingara. Stygia, however, endures. ("The Hyborian Age," Howard; "Black Eons," Howard and Price)
The oldest copies of the R'lyeh Text, written on scrolls in a Chinese-esque language, date from at least this time, although they are probably older. (Ex Libris Miskatonici, Stanley)
c. 10,000 BC: The time of Conan. The Cimmerian barbarian wipes out the last serpent people in their Hyborian city of Yanyoga. ("Timeline of the Mythos," Appel; "The Children of Yig," Appel)
c. 9600 BC: The Hyborian Age begins to end, as the nations and peoples of the era begin to fight. Aquilonia and Hyperborea battle, the Picts and Hyrkanians wreak havoc across the land, and the Vanir destroy Stygia. The Aesir settle in Nemedia, and the Cimmerians war against the Hyrkanians before retreating to the east. The Hyborians themselves are overwhelmed by another northern people. This is the time of the heroic Ghor Kin-Slayer of the Aesir, and the warlord Gorm of the Picts. ("The Hyborian Age," Howard; "Black Eons," Howard and Price)
c. 9550 BC: A final cataclysm destroys the Hyborian world and rises new land masses, moving the world into more or less its modern configuration. Portions of the Hyborian continent, Poseidonis, and Mu all sink beneath the waves. In later times, this event is remembered as the Great Flood. ("The Hyborian Age," Howard; "Timeline of the Cthulhu Mythos," Appel)
Rhan9 on
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TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
So, Josip Broz Tito.
Former President of Yugoslavia from the years following WW2 to his death in 1980. Yugoslavia as some of you should know was the first and only country to basically tell Stalin to bugger the hell off and stay out of their business regardless, which resulted in them being kicked out of the Cominform with Stalin hoping that Tito would be removed from power as a result. He wasn't, and Stalin got somewhat personal about it.
Stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle. (...) If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second.
— Josip Broz Tito
The discovery of numerous carved human skulls at the Neolithic ritual site in Turkey now suggests it was also the site of the world’s earliest "skull cult”, a group who practiced the ritualistic worship of mutilated human skulls and skeletons.
[...]
This is the earliest archaeological evidence of carved skulls for ritualistic purposes. These “skull cults” have been documented throughout the world, including parts of the Pacific, South Asia, the Americas, and other nearby areas of Eurasia. Although it bears some similarities to the practices of the Naga people of India, the style of this modification is unique within the Early Neolithic of Anatolia and the Levant.
Of course, there is a competing interpretation of the findings:
It's pretty important to keep in mind that Göbekli Tepe is an enormous crank magnet, even among academics who are tripping over one another to find really flashily-specific religious connotations about anything found on the site. The actual journal article's comparatively restrained, but I've already seen a few screamy articles flying around about the universal standardized Ancient Skull Cult that proves something or other about forgotten civilizations, and I'm sure there'll be five breathless books taking the observations from the team and carrying them over the nearest horizon by Christmas.
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
Whoever it was that recommended the History of English podcast, than you!! I've been thoroughly enjoying binge listening to it at work.
I'm about halfway through the archives. And I've realized I just want to listen to somebody read me Beowulf in Old English.
Whoever it was that recommended the History of English podcast, than you!! I've been thoroughly enjoying binge listening to it at work.
I'm about halfway through the archives. And I've realized I just want to listen to somebody read me Beowulf in Old English.
While he doesn't read the whole thing, the History of English podcast does read portions of it. And also it's a fascinating podcast of why words sound the way they do.
Blasted Normans, ruining perfectly good Old English.
ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
Little things matter.
This is Miss Mary Hamilton. She was the first female field organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality. And in 1963, she was in Gadsen, Alabama. Gadsen was the site of various sit-ins and a boycott. And after the success of Birmingham, various civil rights organizations pour in support for the protesters in Gadsen. And the same is true of the segrationist supporters. The Alabama State Police is called out again, and this time takes a more active role in protest suppression. And they add a new wrinkle by acquiring cattle prods. The actions of the Alabama state police against non-violent protesters is brutal. In one day over 500 protestors were arrested. With Mary Hamilton among them. Later that night a crowd of 600 gather in a vigil outside the courthouse only to be met with dogs, fire hoses, night sticks and cattle prods.
On June 25th, seven days after her arrest, the NAACP gets a habeas corpus hearing for the protests. And Mary Hamilton is among the witnesses called. It was common for white people to be addressed with the honorifics Miss/Mrs/Mr in court rooms. For everyone else, they were generally referred to by their first name. Which lead to this exchange:
Prosecutor: "What is your name, please?"
Witness: "Miss Mary Hamilton."
Prosecutor: "Mary, who were you arrested by?"
Witness: "My name is Miss Hamilton. Please address me correctly."
Prosecutor: "Who were you arrested by, Mary?"
Witness: "I will not answer a question until I am addressed correctly."
Judge: "Answer the question."
Witness: "I will not answer them unless I am addressed correctly."
Judge: "You are in contempt of court."
For five days Mary Hamilton was in jail. With the local police attempting to break her into accepting the lack of honorific. Abuse and intimidation were used and yet she did not break. Nor does she pay the contempt of court fine of $50. After the five days the NAACP and other organizations manage to bail her out. And lawyers from the NAACP appeal her contempt of court case to the Alabama supreme court. Which promptly rules against her. But the NAACP appeals to the Supreme Court. Which agrees to certiorari. And without hearing oral arguments, the Supreme Court ruled on Hamilton v. Alabama, overturning the the contempt charge. Sending a message that everyone in a court room, regardless of race deserves to addressed with titles of courtesy.
Little dignities like this matter. They act as a signal about how others should treat you. About how you're different. If a judge or a prosecutor treats you with less respect, it tells the jurors and the police to do it too. It seems like a little thing but it's a little thing but it makes it clear to the world that you aren't worth as much as other people.
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
Oh and I should point out what prompted me to bring this up. Mary Hamilton had a roommate Sheila Michaels who just passed away. And Sheila Michaels also had something to do honorifics too. While they were roommates, Mary Hamilton had gotten a magazine sent to her and the address sticker said "Ms. Mary Hamilton" which struck Sheila Michaels. Ms. was in use in business correspondence as an honorific you used when you weren't sure if Miss or Mrs was appropriate. But Sheila Michaels saw it as as a title that could be used to reflect not belonging to a man.
She launched a crusade for it during the 60's and by the 70's it was seen as a Feminist marker. And then Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes started a magazine and it entered wider use.
Oh and I should point out what prompted me to bring this up. Mary Hamilton had a roommate Sheila Michaels who just passed away. And Sheila Michaels also had something to do honorifics too. While they were roommates, Mary Hamilton had gotten a magazine sent to her and the address sticker said "Ms. Mary Hamilton" which struck Sheila Michaels. Ms. was in use in business correspondence as an honorific you used when you weren't sure if Miss or Mrs was appropriate. But Sheila Michaels saw it as as a title that could be used to reflect not belonging to a man.
She launched a crusade for it during the 60's and by the 70's it was seen as a Feminist marker. And then Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes started a magazine and it entered wider use.
As I understand it, the use of Ms. or Miss as an honorific is also falling out of fashion and are being replaced with Mrs. just like how Mr. is the default honorific for any man.
My wife's a teacher, and just about every unmarried female teacher she knows goes by Mrs. Lastname. Actually, I don't think she knows a single female teacher that goes by Ms. Lastname in their classroom.
Posts
You missed two of the most important weapons of WWI: Machine guns and Barbed wire.
Machine guns where the number one defensive weapon bar none. A single machine gun manned by 2 or 3 guys could stop an attacking company right in its tracks. John Basilone in WW2 managed to stop 3000 Japanese attackers at Guadacanal with just a 2 sections of Machine guns(4-5).
And then there is Barbed wire, which wasn't the single strand seen in movies, but over a dozen intertwined rolls several meters(yards) deep. Way too deep to just lay a plank over, easily replaced in the dead of night if damaged and night impossible to traverse without getting stuck in. A person caught in Barbed wire would be an easy kill for the defender.
Both Barbed wire and machineguns and artillery had been mentioned in previous posts.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Yeah, the Germans threatened to execute Americans caught with shotguns. They didn't because the American response was "If you do, we will start executing the Germans we have taken prisoner."
Also have to slightly disagree with you. A shotgun was a good trench gun. 12 gauge in confined quarters does real ugly damage. Not spectacularly more efficient than a Thompson or BAR but better than a bolt action.
Improved communications is definitely an often neglected aspect of changes in war. It's just not nearly as sexy as a bigger bomb or shooty-er gun.
In a similar vein, (I think I've recommended this book before) Napoleon: A Life has a really good in-depth examination of how Napoleon completely revolutionized western military concepts... And that rather than it being about how he say, deployed his artillery, which gets a lot of discussion, it was much more about bureaucratic restructuring and standardization.
The standardization of supplies and weaponry had pretty much already been done, with the french army already using a unified system of artillery (including supply) and firearms (Modele 1777), although the late revolutionary and early napoleonic eras saw a massive upscaling of these systems due to the available manpower (levee en masse*).
*The first successful form of conscription used on the continent. Sweden had already used a fairly extensive system of conscription for 200 years, a major contributing factor to its success during the 17th century, although not enough to compete during the 18th century given its lack of population.)
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I thought it was also because of the kind of wounds shotguns caused? Ie, buckshot spread and caused infections and death where a single bullet could be extracted presuming it didn't fracture on impact
So Nappy was the anti-Toyotomi Hideoshi?
Who I hate.
Vincent Van Gogh's parents had a child one year to the day before Vincent was born. Sadly this child, a boy, was stillborn. They named him Vincent and buried him in a grave not far from their home. The living child born to them exactly a year later was also named Vincent in this lost boy's honour.
This meant that as a child every day on his way to school Vincent Van Gogh passed a grave with his name and birthday on the headstone.
Happy birthday Vincent!
Pretty much, conscription evolved in Europe for much the same reason as the ashiguru system, as a force multiplier, and Hideyoshi disarmed the populace and instituted a rigid class system to prevent anyone from being able to threaten the aristocracy just by giving a bunch of peasants pikes and guns.
The aristocratic system was pretty much dead, in many cases literally, in France before Napoleon, though, he was just took full advantage.
And the lesson from WWII was that Douhet was wrong in a lot of ways. There were practical uses for aircraft at the tactical level. And you could defend against bombers. But he was also right in that if you can't defend against bombers, they will flatten your cities. This wasn't helped with the development of nuclear weapons, in fact it became even scarier. Because now if I send a stream of bombers and you get all but one or two then your city is effectively gone. This is very worry some for the US because of this:
Anyone who thought to themselves "Ah the B-29..." is wrong. That's the Tu-4. Which is a reverse engineered B-29. The B-29 was the most expensive weapons project of the war, more so than even the Manhattan Project when you take into account B-29 production costs. And it was the most cutting edge bomber of the day. And now the Soviets had a knock off. If they built bases in the far eastern part of Russia, they could hit the Pacific Northwest. If they made a better bomber, then the rest of the US would be in danger. You can imagine this scared the crap out of people.
This doesn't get better as we get into the Jet Age. Now the bombers have more range and can cover it a lot faster. The time you have to work with is smaller. In WWII they had plotting boards like this that worked pretty well:
But now that's not fast enough. So the Air Force starts looking at automated systems. And came across Project Whirlwind.
During the war, the Navy attempted to make a better flight simulator than what they had. So they got MIT to start working on it, and they started developing Project Whirlwind. Project Whirlwind is kind of a big deal for computers for a number of reasons. First, it was real time, not batch processing. And it was doing bit parallel not bit serial operations. Lastly it had the first magnetic core memory. Right about the time they got it to work the Navy lost interest. But it was exactly the kind of machine the Air Force needed. So they turned it into Project Claude and hooked it up to the air defense radars in New England. It was a smashing success except for one issue. Doing this nation wide would be more than MIT could handle. It did lead to a bit of a spin off though. MIT worked on a transistorized version of Whirlwind. And part of that team would leave and form Digital Equipment Corporation. And the DEC PDP-1 is remarkably similar if smaller than the transistorized version of the Whirlwind.
So with the prototype successful they brought in IBM and scaled it up. Making the AN/FSQ-7 that would become the basis for Semi-Automatic Ground Environment or SAGE. This scaled it up to a nation wide project.
The SAGE sectors.
The AN/FSQ-7 was the largest computer system ever built. There were 24 units, each weighing 250 tons. 60,000 vacuum tubes. 3 megawatts of power. They were simply massive. And by the time SAGE was completed, obsolete. Now most of the time an obsolete computer gets scrapped. But the AN/FSQ-7 became a movie star. It became the go to prop for any set that needed a futuristic computer.
Before Hollywood
The list is in the spoilers. If you want to see where it appeared, this website will guide you. Also it provided the list.
•Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)
•The President's Analyst (1967)
•Airplane! (1980)
•The Swarm (1978)
•Spaceballs (1987)
•Get Smart, Again! (1989)
•Eve of Destruction (1991)
•Beverly Hills Cop 3 (1994)
•Independence Day (1996)
•Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)
•That's So Raven - Season 1, "Saving Psychic Raven" (2003)
•Return to the Batcave (2003)
•Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002)
•Soap - Season 3, Episode 3 (1979)
•Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973)
•Virus (1999)
•Damnation Alley (1977)
•The Towering Inferno (1974)
•Sleeper (1973)
•Lost - Season 2 (2005)
•Snowball Express (1972)
•Zontar: The Thing from Venus (1966)
•Westworld (1973)
•Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)
•Columbo - Season 4, "A Deadly State of Mind" (1975)
•Winter Kills (1979)
•Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)
•Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
•The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries - Season 2, Episode 22, "Campus Terror" (1978)
•War Games (1983)
•Way... Way Out (1966)
•12:01 (1993) •The Cat From Outer Space (1978)
•Get Smart - Season 4, Episode 19, "Absorb the Greek" (1969)
•It Takes a Thief - Season 1, "Hans Across the Border" (1968)
•Planet Earth (1974) •Earth II (1971) •Paper Man (1971)
•The Power (1968) •Project X (1968)
•The Man From U.N.C.L.E. - Season 4 (1967)
•Scarecrow and Mrs King - Season 1, Episode 4, "Magic Bus" (1983)
•City Beneath the Sea (1971)
•Futureworld (1976)
•By Dawn's Early Light (1990)
•KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park (1978)
•Stowaway to the Moon (1975)
•The Time Machine (1978) •The Invaders - Season 2, Episode 1, "Condition: Red" (1967)
•FlashForward - Season 1, Episode 22, "Future Shock" (2009)
•The Time Tunnel - Season 1 (1967) •Electra Woman and Dyna Girl - Season 1 (1976)
•Brave New World (1980) •Battlestar Galactica - Season 1 (1979) •Computercide (1982)
•Hawaii Five-O - Season 1, Episode 19, "Once Upon a Time" (1969)
•Capricorn One (1977) •Firestarter (1984)
•Sliders - Season 3, Episode 3, "Electric Twister Acid Test" (1996)
•U.S. Marshals (1998)
•Every Thing You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask (1972)
•The Invaders - Season 2, Episode 14, "The Believers" (1967)
•Lost In Space - Season 3, Episode 1, "Condemned of Space" (1967)
•Lost in Space - Season 3, Episode 3, "Kidnapped in Space" (1967)
•Lost in Space - Season 3, Episode 10, "The Space Creature" (1967)
•Silver Streak (1976)
•Planet of the Apes - Season 1, Episode 5, "The Legacy" (1974)
•Rock Jocks (2012)
One of the capabilities of the SAGE system was that an operator had a monitor and a light gun. When issuing an intercept, they could use their light gun to teletext to the airbase, or BOMARC launch site. Later on this capability was upgraded so that the operator launch directly. Given that the BOMARC SAM system could be equipped with nuclear warheads, I assume that damn dog never snickered at the operators when they missed.
Starslip Crisis?
- John Stuart Mill
Yeah...in my defense, I'm already at 52 hours for the week at work.
- John Stuart Mill
On April 20, 1902, Pierre and Marie Curie first isolated radium. Marie and Pierre Curie shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with Henri Becquerel; originally, it was to go to only Pierre and Henri, but Pierre insisted on the importance of his wife's work. Marie later won the 1911 Nobel Prize for Chemistry in her own right. She defined the international standard for radioactive emissions that's now named for herself and Pierre, the curie. The daughter of Marie and Pierre, Irène Joliot-Curie, also won the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with her husband, Frédéric Joliot-Curie.
The ways that Pierre and Marie died says a great deal about how quickly the world was changing at the start of the 20th century. Marie died in 1934, of a radiation related illness. Marie's papers, including her cookbook, are so radioactive that they're stored in lead cases and people need to wear protective gear when handling them. Pierre died in 1906, when he was run down by a horse-drawn wagon.
So many other women in science didn't have someone that stood up for them, that had their fame and recognition stolen from them. Sometimes because the researchers thought that their findings would be ignored if they had a woman on their paper, sometimes by sexist coworkers and superiors simply stole their findings.
If you want to have your blood boil in anger, then read up on Ada Lovelace, Cecelia Payne, Candace Pert, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Rosalind Franklin, Lisa Meitner, Nettie Stevens or so many more...and these are just the names of some of those who have been recognized later, after a long struggle and sometimes after their own deaths. How many more there are out there we don't know.
We do have a name for the phenomena, it's call the Matilda Effect
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
"Boy, I sure am a fetid pile of sulphurous dogshit."
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
A watercolour of a British-flagged ship that arrived off the coast of Mugi, in Shikoku, Japan in 1830, chronicled by low-ranking Samurai artist Makita Hamaguchi in documents from the Tokushima prefectural archive.
Of course, there is a competing interpretation of the findings:
Hyborian Age is true fact, obviously:
Former President of Yugoslavia from the years following WW2 to his death in 1980. Yugoslavia as some of you should know was the first and only country to basically tell Stalin to bugger the hell off and stay out of their business regardless, which resulted in them being kicked out of the Cominform with Stalin hoping that Tito would be removed from power as a result. He wasn't, and Stalin got somewhat personal about it.
It didn't work out well for Stalin.
Scientists have an explanation for Rome's ancient and long lasting concrete!
It's pretty important to keep in mind that Göbekli Tepe is an enormous crank magnet, even among academics who are tripping over one another to find really flashily-specific religious connotations about anything found on the site. The actual journal article's comparatively restrained, but I've already seen a few screamy articles flying around about the universal standardized Ancient Skull Cult that proves something or other about forgotten civilizations, and I'm sure there'll be five breathless books taking the observations from the team and carrying them over the nearest horizon by Christmas.
I'm about halfway through the archives. And I've realized I just want to listen to somebody read me Beowulf in Old English.
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
https://m.soundcloud.com/fallofromepodcast
It 100 percent gets away from the one damn thing after another that history podcasts have a tendency to devolve into.
While he doesn't read the whole thing, the History of English podcast does read portions of it. And also it's a fascinating podcast of why words sound the way they do.
Blasted Normans, ruining perfectly good Old English.
WoW
Dear Satan.....
This is Miss Mary Hamilton. She was the first female field organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality. And in 1963, she was in Gadsen, Alabama. Gadsen was the site of various sit-ins and a boycott. And after the success of Birmingham, various civil rights organizations pour in support for the protesters in Gadsen. And the same is true of the segrationist supporters. The Alabama State Police is called out again, and this time takes a more active role in protest suppression. And they add a new wrinkle by acquiring cattle prods. The actions of the Alabama state police against non-violent protesters is brutal. In one day over 500 protestors were arrested. With Mary Hamilton among them. Later that night a crowd of 600 gather in a vigil outside the courthouse only to be met with dogs, fire hoses, night sticks and cattle prods.
On June 25th, seven days after her arrest, the NAACP gets a habeas corpus hearing for the protests. And Mary Hamilton is among the witnesses called. It was common for white people to be addressed with the honorifics Miss/Mrs/Mr in court rooms. For everyone else, they were generally referred to by their first name. Which lead to this exchange:
For five days Mary Hamilton was in jail. With the local police attempting to break her into accepting the lack of honorific. Abuse and intimidation were used and yet she did not break. Nor does she pay the contempt of court fine of $50. After the five days the NAACP and other organizations manage to bail her out. And lawyers from the NAACP appeal her contempt of court case to the Alabama supreme court. Which promptly rules against her. But the NAACP appeals to the Supreme Court. Which agrees to certiorari. And without hearing oral arguments, the Supreme Court ruled on Hamilton v. Alabama, overturning the the contempt charge. Sending a message that everyone in a court room, regardless of race deserves to addressed with titles of courtesy.
Little dignities like this matter. They act as a signal about how others should treat you. About how you're different. If a judge or a prosecutor treats you with less respect, it tells the jurors and the police to do it too. It seems like a little thing but it's a little thing but it makes it clear to the world that you aren't worth as much as other people.
She launched a crusade for it during the 60's and by the 70's it was seen as a Feminist marker. And then Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes started a magazine and it entered wider use.
As I understand it, the use of Ms. or Miss as an honorific is also falling out of fashion and are being replaced with Mrs. just like how Mr. is the default honorific for any man.
My wife's a teacher, and just about every unmarried female teacher she knows goes by Mrs. Lastname. Actually, I don't think she knows a single female teacher that goes by Ms. Lastname in their classroom.