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Post by brucemacneill on Jul 8, 2020 13:55:16 GMT -5
I posted this in a writer’s group where there are people who know a fair bit about medieval arms and armor. The main observation was that that’s pretty much a toy bow. The old English long bows, or the compound bows the Mongols used would have made most of the trick shots and super rapid fire stuff impossible. On top of that, the use of missile weapons, (guns,) to lay down fire just to make people keep their heads down, which is very much a part of modern warfare, was not done back in the day. Arrows were expensive, they had to be made and transported, and for most armies, it was not the bowmen making them. They bought them by the sheaf, and a sheaf of arrows cost the same as several days wages for the average bowman. So, they aimed and fired pretty carefully. They also had recovery people to go and get them afterwards. Then you start to wonder, how the hell did people like the Mongols, with those immense long supply lines going across Asia, manage to keep their armies in enough arrows? In England, one of the Henrys forbade the use of poplar, the normal wood for arrow shafts, to be used for anything but arrows. There was also a law at one point that all goose feathers needed to be collected and forwarded to the crown. Guess the English kings liked that waterfront property and nice vineyards in Bordeaux. I'm told that when canons went into use the Scottish had canon ball retrievers to keep costs down.
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Post by billhammond on Jul 8, 2020 13:59:01 GMT -5
I'm told that when canons went into use the Scottish had canon ball retrievers to keep costs down. < cannon >
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Post by brucemacneill on Jul 8, 2020 15:39:35 GMT -5
I'm told that when canons went into use the Scottish had canon ball retrievers to keep costs down. < cannon > canon Yup. Spellcheck should have caught that because it's a company name that should have been capitalized.
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Post by billhammond on Jul 8, 2020 15:42:33 GMT -5
canon Yup. Spellcheck should have caught that because it's a company name that should have been capitalized. No, canon was a noun long before the camera company existed. Canon of laws, for instance.
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Post by brucemacneill on Jul 8, 2020 15:48:27 GMT -5
canon Yup. Spellcheck should have caught that because it's a company name that should have been capitalized. No, canon was a noun long before the camera company existed. Canon of laws, for instance. Well, I thought it was a word and apellcheck didn't complain so I left it.
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Post by sidheguitarmichael on Jul 8, 2020 23:03:50 GMT -5
A canon is also a musical form with the melody repeated at different intervals.
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Dub
Administrator
I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
Posts: 19,958
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Post by Dub on Jul 9, 2020 9:04:29 GMT -5
Misspell cannon and you could wind up receiving your just deserts [sic].
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Post by billhammond on Jul 9, 2020 9:07:01 GMT -5
Misspell cannon and you could wind up receiving your just deserts [ sic]. Actually, you spelled just deserts correctly. The root of deserts is that which means deserve. Every time we put it in a headline we get e-mails of derision from readers who don't bother to look it up.
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Post by theevan on Jul 9, 2020 10:41:37 GMT -5
Apple pie and Moon Pie are just desserts.
Bananas Foster...now that's a dessert!
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Post by theevan on Jul 9, 2020 10:43:03 GMT -5
I would desert ice cream for a good bread pudding.
Though ice cream is a good dessert for the desert.
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Post by theevan on Jul 9, 2020 10:43:38 GMT -5
I KNOW, I KNOW, it's <desert>
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Post by Marshall on Jul 9, 2020 11:02:02 GMT -5
It's the flip side of the "I, Pencil" essay. Modern technology, modern distribution systems, modern monetary systems...those things lift us all up, but they also push us into the velvet bear trap of specialization. Each of us gets really good a doing something that would be considered useless by the standards of even a few hundred years ago. But because of the "leverage" afforded to us by the modern world, we not only don't recognize our own incompetence, we delude ourselves into thinking we have some manner of ultra competence. We're all really good at pushing our unique button on The Machine, but take away the machine, we're useless. Yeah, that's very good. (What is "I, Pencil" ?) I'm reminded of a story a friend told when his kids were little. The school was looking for parents to come in for career day and talk about what they did. This guy was the manager of the Mechanical Engineering Department for a Power Plant Design Engineering firm. Big stuff. Coal Fired Plants. Nuclear Plants. He decided he wouldn't go in, because all he could talk about were "Famous memos I have written."
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Post by theevan on Jul 9, 2020 11:13:29 GMT -5
It's the flip side of the "I, Pencil" essay. Modern technology, modern distribution systems, modern monetary systems...those things lift us all up, but they also push us into the velvet bear trap of specialization. Each of us gets really good a doing something that would be considered useless by the standards of even a few hundred years ago. But because of the "leverage" afforded to us by the modern world, we not only don't recognize our own incompetence, we delude ourselves into thinking we have some manner of ultra competence. We're all really good at pushing our unique button on The Machine, but take away the machine, we're useless. Yeah, that's very good. (What is "I, Pencil" ?) I'm reminded of a story a friend told when his kids were little. The school was looking for parents to come in for career day and talk about what they did. This guy was the manager of the Mechanical Engineering Department for a Power Plant Design Engineering firm. Big stuff. Coal Fired Plants. Nuclear Plants. He decided he wouldn't go in, because all he could talk about were "Famous memos I have written." I did that for 1st grade. I followed a lawyer, engineer and CPA. I brought a squeegee and a scrubber and let the kids wash a window. At the end of class a number of kids said they wanted to be a window washer when they grow up...
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Post by theevan on Jul 9, 2020 11:29:42 GMT -5
It's the flip side of the "I, Pencil" essay. Modern technology, modern distribution systems, modern monetary systems...those things lift us all up, but they also push us into the velvet bear trap of specialization. Each of us gets really good a doing something that would be considered useless by the standards of even a few hundred years ago. But because of the "leverage" afforded to us by the modern world, we not only don't recognize our own incompetence, we delude ourselves into thinking we have some manner of ultra competence. We're all really good at pushing our unique button on The Machine, but take away the machine, we're useless. Yeah, that's very good. (What is "I, Pencil" ?) I'm reminded of a story a friend told when his kids were little. The school was looking for parents to come in for career day and talk about what they did. This guy was the manager of the Mechanical Engineering Department for a Power Plant Design Engineering firm. Big stuff. Coal Fired Plants. Nuclear Plants. He decided he wouldn't go in, because all he could talk about were "Famous memos I have written."
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Post by fauxmaha on Jul 9, 2020 11:32:08 GMT -5
It's the flip side of the "I, Pencil" essay. Modern technology, modern distribution systems, modern monetary systems...those things lift us all up, but they also push us into the velvet bear trap of specialization. Each of us gets really good a doing something that would be considered useless by the standards of even a few hundred years ago. But because of the "leverage" afforded to us by the modern world, we not only don't recognize our own incompetence, we delude ourselves into thinking we have some manner of ultra competence. We're all really good at pushing our unique button on The Machine, but take away the machine, we're useless. Yeah, that's very good. (What is "I, Pencil" ?) I, Pencil is an essay written in 1958 that describes the somewhat miraculous fact that while we live in a world awash in pencils (or, in 2020 terms, smart phones), there isn't a single person anywhere who can make one by himself.
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Post by Russell Letson on Jul 9, 2020 12:01:33 GMT -5
It's scary enough to see how that has affected the way the average Joe perceives ancient people. It's far scarier to realize that the greatest misunderstanding and mis-characterizations (and perhaps what led the average Joe to his conclusions) resided in the academic world. Former member of "the academic world" here, who learned a great deal about pre-industrial technologies from other members of that world, living and dead. If there's a failure of knowledge and imagination on the part of average Joes and Janes, it's at least partly thanks to their lack of interest in their own educations. I used to teach a writing course based on the history of technology. "Why are we reading this? I'll never have to use it when I'm a (insert target career here)." There's plenty of indifference, ignorance, and laziness out in average-Joe land, where certification is more important than education. The failure of the academic world is in giving in to the notion that the customer is always right--or that the student is merely a customer. BTW, the "oligarchy of 'experts'" is one reason so few of us had polio in childhood and carry computer-videophones in our pockets. Or are having this conversation. Heinlein was full of shit on a number of matters, including the importance of interdependence. Lazarus Long could deliver a baby or build a log cabin on a distant planet, but he couldn't build the starship that got him there. Hell, he couldn't do the metallurgy that made the hull possible. There's a not-very-high ceiling on the kind of rugged individualism he romanticizes.
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Post by theevan on Jul 9, 2020 12:38:55 GMT -5
It's scary enough to see how that has affected the way the average Joe perceives ancient people. It's far scarier to realize that the greatest misunderstanding and mis-characterizations (and perhaps what led the average Joe to his conclusions) resided in the academic world. Former member of "the academic world" here, who learned a great deal about pre-industrial technologies from other members of that world, living and dead. If there's a failure of knowledge and imagination on the part of average Joes and Janes, it's at least partly thanks to their lack of interest in their own educations. I used to teach a writing course based on the history of technology. "Why are we reading this? I'll never have to use it when I'm a (insert target career here)." There's plenty of indifference, ignorance, and laziness out in average-Joe land, where certification is more important than education. The failure of the academic world is in giving in to the notion that the customer is always right--or that the student is merely a customer. BTW, the "oligarchy of 'experts'" is one reason so few of us had polio in childhood and carry computer-videophones in our pockets. Or are having this conversation. Heinlein was full of shit on a number of matters, including the importance of interdependence. Lazarus Long could deliver a baby or build a log cabin on a distant planet, but he couldn't build the starship that got him there. Hell, he couldn't do the metallurgy that made the hull possible. There's a not-very-high ceiling on the kind of rugged individualism he romanticizes. Wouldn't you cop to there being several sides to this? The kind of independent/interdependent fields that make the pencil possible is one thing. The "I don't need to know that to make money" mentality leaves that dumbo helpless in all but the simplest tasks.
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Post by Russell Letson on Jul 9, 2020 13:41:14 GMT -5
One of the factors that formed my imagination (that is, my ability to conceive of conditions and situations I have not directly experienced) was literature, and specifically science fiction, including Heinlein. It's a tradition strong on fantasies of power and competence and problem-solving and coping. All those are fine. But the more mature parts of the tradition also recognize limits, including the possibility of failure. Poul Anderson's "The Man Who Came Early" is precisely about how context-bound competence can be. SF is one of the places where I came to understand the pyramid of technologies and knowledge structures, the tools-that-make-the-tools part of material civilization, and the interdependence of specialists and generalists. Which is what Obama was referring to in the "you didn't build that" remark that his opponents ran with.
There's a whole other conversation about what constitutes an education, as distinct from a training course or certification process. (See the Wizard's gift to the Scarecrow.)
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Post by millring on Jul 9, 2020 17:17:25 GMT -5
It's scary enough to see how that has affected the way the average Joe perceives ancient people. It's far scarier to realize that the greatest misunderstanding and mis-characterizations (and perhaps what led the average Joe to his conclusions) resided in the academic world. Former member of "the academic world" here The Earth has rotated MANY times since those days.
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Post by millring on Jul 12, 2020 18:42:44 GMT -5
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