Weird - Random - Interesting

[Azdeus]

  

17 minutes ago, Skazz said:

I've always known that Azdeus is a man of culture.

Cultural as ****!

Edited July 23, 2020 by Azdeus

[Malcador]

10 hours ago, Azdeus said:

Pfft, Ultrasmurfs. White Scars is where it's at.

Or go with Lamenters. Then any faults with the design will be lore based.

[Raithe]

[Raithe]

NYTimes - How play energises your kids brains

[Raithe]

 

Digital History - Explorations; Zheng He

Although there's still much discussed on whether the big ship actually did go on the long trips or just stayed close to home...

Edited July 27, 2020 by Raithe

[Raithe]

 

[Lexx]

11 hours ago, Raithe said:

 

Digital History - Explorations; Zheng He

Although there's still much discussed on whether the big ship actually did go on the long trips or just stayed close to home...

Pretty sure this is mostly chinese propaganda and / or wishful thinking. If ships like that would really work and be economical, we would have seen them everywhere.

[Raithe]

54 minutes ago, Lexx said:

Pretty sure this is mostly chinese propaganda and / or wishful thinking. If ships like that would really work and be economical, we would have seen them everywhere.

As gets pointed out :

 

While Zheng He was crossing the Indian Ocean, the Confucian scholar-officials who dominated the upper echelons of the Chinese Government were at political war with the eunuchs, a group they regarded as corrupt and immoral. The eunuchs' role at court involved looking after the concubines, but they also served as palace administrators, often doling out contracts in exchange for kickbacks. Partly as a result of their legendary greed, they promoted commerce. Unlike the scholars -- who owed their position to their mastery of 2,000-year-old texts -- the eunuchs, lacking any such roots in a classical past, were sometimes outward-looking and progressive. Indeed, one can argue that it was the virtuous, incorruptible scholars who in the mid-15th century set China on its disastrous course.

After the Yongle Emperor died in 1424, China endured a series of brutal power struggles; a successor emperor died under suspicious circumstances and ultimately the scholars emerged triumphant. They ended the voyages of Zheng He's successors, halted construction of new ships and imposed curbs on private shipping. To prevent any backsliding, they destroyed Zheng He's sailing records and, with the backing of the new emperor, set about dismantling China's navy.

By 1500 the Government had made it a capital offense to build a boat with more than two masts, and in 1525 the Government ordered the destruction of all oceangoing ships. The greatest navy in history, which a century earlier had 3,500 ships (by comparison, the United States Navy today has 324), had been extinguished, and China set a course for itself that would lead to poverty, defeat and decline.

 

[Hurlshort]

I teach all about this to 7th graders. China was nearly a century ahead of Europe when it came to ship building and navigation. Modern compasses, water-tight compartments, garden ships, etc.

None of Zheng He's 7 voyages were particularly successful from a financial perspective though. They were not economical for the time. Caravels and later European designs were fast and could pay for themselves 10 times over with a successful expedition.  

[Malcador]

2 minutes ago, Hurlshot said:

I teach all about this to 7th graders. China was nearly a century ahead of Europe when it came to ship building and navigation. Modern compasses, water-tight compartments, garden ships, etc.

None of Zheng He's 7 voyages were particularly successful from a financial perspective though. They were not economical for the time. Caravels and later European designs were fast and could pay for themselves 10 times over with a successful expedition.  

See, the PRC has bought the American Education system!

[Lexx]

Did someone try to build such a ship, for science? So far I've read various comments about it going from "it would be too heavy because of all the wood"(??) to "it can only float on rivers" and then  "it can totally traverse the oceans".  However, some said the design would start rotating around itself when on the open water, etc. etc.

Seems either nobody is 100% sure if this works, or there are too many experts on the internet.

/edit: Another point would be if the ship was really as big as depicted in the model, or if they just made it a little bigger for whatever reason.

Edited July 29, 2020 by Lexx

[Gromnir]

10 hours ago, Lexx said:

Did someone try to build such a ship, for science?

an ocean going flat bottom boat requires an enormous rudder and likely additional daggerboards.  am suspecting a ship o' the size depicted would need involve rather complicated engineering to make such measures functional. am not saying the chinese didn't solve such issues, but replicating would be difficult. the chinese junks, for instance, did have what amounts to a kinda simple power-steering for their rudder control, but the scale o' that ship makes such measures impractical w/o serious and as yet unspecified innovation.

perhaps/probable the image is an exaggeration, and am not a fan o' the rigging and maintenance issues which come with a batten junk rig, but certainly more modest (but nevertheless enormous) chinese junks were ocean capable long before europeans were making similar blue water voyages. 

HA! Good Fun!

[Malcador]

 

 

[Gromnir]

side note:

king henry v o' england had one one o' those overcompensation moments and he built a ship which were more than twice as large as the santa maria. made a single voyage, or two, before the crew mutinied.  should be ez to search for it, but am forgetting name... something like Thanks be to God, but in latinish. 

regardless, we are getting into quibble range. 2x size o' santa maria were not only possible but such were constructed in early 1400s england. 3x or 4x strikes us as more than simple plausible, but perhaps not the the most judicious use o' funds when it would be considerable cheaper to build many smaller and more nimble ships which could make multiple journeys simultaneous. is less a question of possible as is a question o' practical, but as henry v and countless others have shown us in the past, build a bigger/biggest ship need not make sense for kings and madmen to embrace.

still, the rudder and daggerboard issues we mentioned is requiring the input o' folks with ancient engineering expertise, which we clear do not have. you got no idea how heavy those pieces o' equipment is gonna be on a ship ~400 feet long along with lord only knows how many thousands o' tons o' displacement.

HA! Good Fun!

[Amentep]

Grace Dieu

[rjshae]

On 7/27/2020 at 3:55 PM, Raithe said:

 

Digital History - Explorations; Zheng He

Although there's still much discussed on whether the big ship actually did go on the long trips or just stayed close to home...

Imagining women going, "see, size really doesn't matter. It's the motion of the ocean." 

[Raithe]

BBC - One of the  mysteries around Stonehenge's origin has been solved

The origin of the giant sarsen stones at Stonehenge has finally been discovered with the help of a missing piece of the site which was returned after 60 years.

A test of the metre-long core was matched with a geochemical study of the standing megaliths.

Archaeologists pinpointed the source of the stones to an area 15 miles (25km) north of the site near Marlborough.

English Heritage's Susan Greaney said the discovery was "a real thrill".

The seven-metre tall sarsens, which weigh about 20 tonnes, form all fifteen stones of Stonehenge's central horseshoe, the uprights and lintels of the outer circle, as well as outlying stones.

The monument's smaller bluestones have been traced to the Preseli Hills in Wales, but the sarsens had been impossible to identify until now.

The return of the core, which was removed during archaeological excavations in 1958, enabled archaeologists to analyse its chemical composition.

No-one knew where it was until Robert Phillips, 89, who was involved in those works, decided to return part of it last year.

Researchers first carried out x-ray fluorescence testing of all the remaining sarsens at Stonehenge which revealed most shared a similar chemistry and came from the same area.

They then analysed sarsen outcrops from Norfolk to Devon and compared their chemical composition with the chemistry of a piece of the returned core.

English Heritage said the opportunity to do a destructive test on the core proved "decisive", as it showed its composition matched the chemistry of sarsens at West Woods, just south of Marlborough.

Prof David Nash from Brighton University, who led the study, said: "It has been really exciting to harness 21st century science to understand the Neolithic past, and finally answer a question that archaeologists have been debating for centuries.

"Each outcrop was found to have a different geochemical signature, but it was the chance to test the returned core that enabled us to determine the source area for the Stonehenge sarsens."

Ms Greaney said: "To be able to pinpoint the area that Stonehenge's builders used to source their materials around 2,500 BC is a real thrill.

"While we had our suspicions that Stonehenge's sarsens came from the Marlborough Downs, we didn't know for sure, and with areas of sarsens across Wiltshire, the stones could have come from anywhere.

"They wanted the biggest, most substantial stones they could find and it made sense to get them from as nearby as possible."

Ms Greaney added the evidence highlights "just how carefully considered and deliberate the building of this phase of Stonehenge was".

 

 

[Gromnir]

2 hours ago, Raithe said:

"They wanted the biggest, most substantial stones they could find and it made sense to get them from as nearby as possible."

Ms Greaney added the evidence highlights "just how carefully considered and deliberate the building of this phase of Stonehenge was".

the true amazing part is the 'bove is not complete accurate. for years, another site were the hypothesized origin o' the largest sacens. there is an ancient quarry approx 7 miles closer to the stonehenge site which archeologists surmised coulda' produced the stone. similar color stone were available at a more geographic proximate quarry in use at time o' stonehenge construction. instead, the ancient builders chose different and further. chemical analysis confirms the origin o' stonehenge sarsens is from a quarry more distant than necessary. also, as noted in the article, the smaller bluestone rock came from wales, ~150 miles away from stonehenge. the bluestone were 2-ton hunks o' rock. 

am not having any idea what were the protocols for the stonehenge builders when choosing their construction materials, but they clear were not over concerned with convenience. 

HA! Good Fun!

[Raithe]

Engineers in Japan have been hard at work building a gigantic, 60-foot humanoid robot modeled after those in the “Gundam” sci-fi franchise.

And while construction of the robot has slowed due to the coronavirus, it seems like progress is well under way. A recent video shows it taking its first tentative steps, Popular Mechanics reports, despite still missing its head.

The footage appears to be sped up, so it’s unclear how long the procedure took. While the robot managed to raise its right leg, it doesn’t appear to be putting any weight on it — meaning this was likely just a test for future walks.

[Raithe]

Doesn't quite fit in either film or literature.. That sort of crossover of both.

PasteMagazine - Conant the Barbarian took what worked and abandoned what didn't (the racism)

[ShadySands]

https://taskandpurpose.com/opinion/marine-amphibious-assault-vehicle-ride

[Keyrock]

Welcome to another Random Musing of a Truck Driver. This time around I will be tackling the topic of consciousness, specifically as it applies to today's most widely accepted scientific view of the world.

According to Quantum Field Theory all forces and energy are a manifestation of fluctuations or disturbances in fields. Well, what if there is a Consciousness Field and all individual consciousnesses are fluctuations in said field? That includes every conscious being on Earth and potentially on any other planet in the universe.

Furthermore, this could be used to explain the wave function collapse dilema, famously introduced by the double slit experiment, that scientists have been struggling with for nearly 100 years. As a quick recap of the dilema, particles seem to behave as a wave, with the peaks and valleys giving probibilities of where the particle might actually be, until a measurement is made at which point the wave function "collapses" and the particle instantly has a definite location. The big issue is that the Schrodinger Equation, which describes the wave function beautifully, does not have in it the capacity for this "collapse". Numerous solutions to this have been proposed but no consensus has ever been reached and there are still debates on points, such as what exactly constitutes a measurement and who or what can do the measuring? 

I propose that the "measurement" is the fluctuation in the consciousness wave corresponding to the observer interacting with the probability wave of the particle. When the two waves meet and interact at the instant said conscious being observes and measures the particle the consciousness wave essentially cancels out all of the probability wave of the particle except for the lone peak of its actual physical location, hence causing the wave function to "collapse".

Edited August 3, 2020 by Keyrock

[Azdeus]

I wonder what they put in truckstop foods...

[Keyrock]

10 minutes ago, Azdeus said:

I wonder what they put in truckstop foods...

Only the finest Grade C processed into oblivion "meats" and grains fortified with fillers and preservatives. 

[Azdeus]

1 hour ago, Keyrock said:

Only the finest Grade C processed into oblivion "meats" and grains fortified with fillers and preservatives. 

Mmm... maybe some horsemeat spiced with ketamine?