The Time Machine

12:00 AM

I've previously heard the theory that crossbows balanced the social scales a bit, in that they allowed for easy assassination of nobles who had ticked off the peasantry. I think that's an entirely different argument though.

The equaliser effect does seem to be a common theory, but I'm not sure that it has much validity. The nobility seem pretty happy to make use of crossbowmen.

Yeah, I should probably actually read something from a proponent before saying this, but it seemed to me suspiciously like an argument a US 2nd Amendment proponent would want to be able to make.

That doesn't make it wrong of course, just need to take extra care with theories like that.

Calling them WMD's OTOH seems a lot like an argument someone on the other side of the political spectrum would like to make. So again, suspicion.

12:18 AM

Indeed

user2448131

So does anyone think we need an archery tag? Or would that just add to the excessive tagging...

4 hours later…

Q: What is the earliest evidence of vocation and birth based social stratification?

4:07 AM

Caste system in India as practices today has several layers of complexities, mostly undesirable ones. But it's a reality. Now, it's commonly accepted that the Indus Valley civilization involved people from parts of present day Europe. I am trying to understand if this practice has origins elsew...

ancient-india

2 hours later…

Q: How many trucks did Russia and Germany have at the start of Barbarossa?

5:56 AM

I've seen many times the lend-lease help cited for Russia, about 450,000 trucks (actually they were "jeeps and trucks" so it's hard to know trucks exactly). However, what I've never seen is citing how many trucks Russia already had, vs how many Germany had. Without these numbers, the lend-lease s...

world-war-two nazi-germany soviet-union industrial-history automobiles

1 hour later…

Q: Could equestrian prefects sit on sella curulis?

7:18 AM

Were prefects of less than important provinces of the early principatus (like Pilate) allowed to sit on the ivory curule seat curule magistrates and promagistrates used while performing their official duties? If not, then what was their seat like?

ancient-rome furniture

Q: Why are doughnuts toroidal?

8:13 AM

(Not sure which stackexchange this is best for, since it is vaguely mathematical but more historical I suppose?) I study maths and torii come up a bit, and same goes for physics with tokamak fusion reactors, for instance. In popular science talks, sometimes people say "torus" but most people are...

food mathematics names

Q: What did Murder, Inc call itself?

8:40 AM

My understanding is that the "Murder, Inc" moniker was invented by the media, and the actual organization never used that name.

united-states 20th-century

5 hours later…

sempaiscuba

2:08 PM

What It Means To Be English by Douglas Adams (originally from The Salmon of Doubt)

2 hours later…

Q: Did Reza Shah Pehlavi know about Turkish offer to restore Ahmad Shah Qajar?

3:39 PM

Ahmad Shah Qajar, Shah of Persia was deposed in a military coup by Colonel Reza Khan in 1921 and was subsequently exiled. While in exile, Kemal Ataturk summoned the Persian ambassador Anoushirvan Sepahbody and sent a message to the deposed Shah, offering to restore him to the throne. "The T...

turkey persia

@sempaiscuba I heard him tell that story on Letterman once. Honestly I was completely flummoxed by it until many years later when I realized he was talking about cookies. I just couldn't get past the oddity of anyone carrying biscuits around with them, the further oddity of eating more than one of them at a sitting like a snack, and the mind refused to wrap itself around the possibility of two people doing it.

4:48 PM

I'm always surprised to find Americans not understanding Commonwealth English terms.

I don't recall hearing such problems from people from anywhere else. Perhaps it's because American publishers apparently likes to translate International English into American English.

Ah, this reminds me of the time a user here was shocked that the Romans had "corn".

sempaiscuba

Another instance of "Two nations divided by a common language"

[attrib: George Bernard Shaw]

Taiwan/Hong Kong/China is another example. Although that one is far more lopsided.

If its a word that doesn't mean anything here (eg: "lorry"), or obviously from context means something different (eg: "rubbers"), then its not nearly as much of a problem. The issue is words like "biscuit" that are close enough that it isn't obvious I need to perform a translation.

We get some really amusing translation issues here amongst US soccer fans, who are accustomed to ... er ... appropriating English football culture.

For example, I've seen people have long arguments online over the difference between a derby and a darby, not realizing that the latter term they've swiped from the UK is actually spelled "derby", is the exact same word as our "derby", and is just pronounced differently over there.

4 hours later…

Q: How did Romans know if their money was debased?

8:55 PM

In many moments of Roman imperial history coin was debased, with its silver contents being reduced over time, and in general this was linked with increasing imperial expenditures. In Harper's The Fate of Rome (2017) it is stated that Caracalla needed to create a new kind of coin, the antoninianus...

roman-empire money

sempaiscuba

9:33 PM

@T.E.D. You could always have added to the confusion by asking whether they meant Darby from Darby and Joan, but they probably wouldn't have thanked you for it. ;-)

Nah. The whole situation is foolish enough that its actually a minor challenge convincing people that's really what's going on.

...and really, language is a kind of thing where enough delusional people can make that the truth if they keep at it. American English may well eventually end up with a separate word "darby" that means something like "sports rivalry game", and gets used for baseball and American Football matches as well as soccer.

Furthermore, should we Americans talk about the North London Derby with the last word pronounced the way Londoners do? "Yes" has a pretty strong case. But if so, how about our own soccer derbies? How about other sports? How about the Kentucky Derby? (won't happen) Where's the line where it becomes either ignorance or making fun of Brits?

It becomes quite the rabbit-hole if you stop to think about it.