frogontrombone
frogontrombone t1_ivtz945 wrote
Reply to comment by Sketchy-Fish in The Nazca lines depict people, birds, and even the rare "pampas cat." Get a birds-eye view of these geoglyphs. by novapbs
A lot of these structures have alignments, but again, astronomy, religion, and art were all basically the same category for most of human history.
frogontrombone t1_ivt527p wrote
Reply to comment by Faking_Life in The Nazca lines depict people, birds, and even the rare "pampas cat." Get a birds-eye view of these geoglyphs. by novapbs
You bet. I highly recommend the podcast. It debunks pseudo archeological claims by going over what we DO know and makes the point that real life is much more interesting than the one dimensional and racist "aliens", "Atlantis", or "preColumbian exchange" claims
frogontrombone t1_ivsziia wrote
Reply to comment by Faking_Life in The Nazca lines depict people, birds, and even the rare "pampas cat." Get a birds-eye view of these geoglyphs. by novapbs
According to archaeologist Ken Feder, there are sites nearby that have artifacts suggestive of these being part of some meditative practice. Ken points out that for the vast majority of human history, religion and hobby and art were all the same thing, so these very likely have a religious meaning.
As far as seeing them, I dont recall if he mentioned there being a viewpoint or not, but he did make the point that.it didn't matter since the purpose of these was more spiritual than not. He gives many examples of geoglyphs that have no viewpoint, such as Serpent Mound in Ohio.
Source is Archeological Fantasies podcast, episode 25
frogontrombone t1_itzdpru wrote
Reply to How can we incentivize real discussions around solutions to home affordability in CT? by otter_spud
The easiest solution is to give owners the legal right to improve their property. Right now, improvements such as putting an accessory dwelling unit in the rear of a lot are illegal everywhere. Changing that zoning law doubles the land available for development overnight without affecting the "character" of the neighborhood, forcing anyone to do anything, or hurting property values.
There are other solutions, such as legalizing the construction of townhomes and condos up to 3 stories on any residential plot; expanding the definition of "residential" to include coffee shops, restaurants, small stores, daycares, etc.; and changing taxes to disincentivize vacant space or large lawns in the city center. These all have pros and cons and various levels of political will, but the ADU solution is easy, cheap, and has no valid NIMBY arguments because it isn't something they would see in the first place.
frogontrombone t1_ir2c9zw wrote
Reply to comment by fuckfrankieoliver in Why No Roman Industrial Revolution? by Magister_Xehanort
lol, sorry to hear that. On the bright side, lifetime of learning, right? :D
I cover it so students feel some sense of their professional "heritage" and to motivate why we care about planar mechanisms at all in the age of mechatronics. And my class is very demanding, so it's a "sit back and enjoy it" lecture to give them a breather.
frogontrombone t1_ir0i55s wrote
Reply to comment by BobbyP27 in Why No Roman Industrial Revolution? by Magister_Xehanort
Fair points. I made my comments with steam locomotives in mind, but I appreciate the more comprehensive description.
And yes, when talking about the most complex economic and scientific revolutions, single factor explanations necessarily fall short. I tend to see technology as something akin to biological evolution, where economic and social pressures drive mathematics, science, and engineering. More generally, we can say "necessity is the mother of invention".
On this point, I often reflect on pre-Columbian copper culture in the Great Lakes region. The natives of that region never developed metallurgy because they didn't need to. They could literally bash out huge nuggets of pure copper straight from the rock and they already had access to lithic material that produced razor sharp edges that self-sharpened with use. They had no pressure to develop for harder metals than copper. Despite their use of the metal, their use of it was a stone age tech, not a bronze age one. I find it a striking example of a people who were highly intelligent, sophisticated, and advanced, but didn't have the need for metallurgy, and thus never put effort toward it. It really reinforces for me the role of external factors in preconditioning and driving technological innovations.
frogontrombone t1_ir05g5t wrote
Reply to comment by BobbyP27 in Why No Roman Industrial Revolution? by Magister_Xehanort
I appreciate the pushback. I agree that Watts contribution was preconditioned on those earlier inventions and that the growth period preceded Watts engine by a few years.
In my mind, all tech is a continuum, and we choose events to mark beginnings of whatever taxonomy we lay on top to make sense of it. With Watt and Bolton, I see their engine as occupying a similar position to the industrial revolution as solid state transistors replacing vacuum tubes in the computing revolution. I see both as the point where the technologies took off because they were the first two to improve efficiency by orders of magnitude.
Case in point, the steam engines up through the 1940s were all incremental improvements of the Watt Bolton engine. By this, i mean the thermodynamic cycle remained unchanged after them and all future steam engines used the exact same thermodynamic configuration until the steam turbine became widespread in the early 20th century. In terms of thermodynamics, the difference between the watt engine and the ones even a year before was as stark as the first Macintosh personal PC and the ENIAC before it.
Im not disagreeing with you. Im memorializing a different milestone for different criteria
frogontrombone t1_ir03hg2 wrote
Reply to comment by Borazon in Why No Roman Industrial Revolution? by Magister_Xehanort
Great ways to put it with a blacksmith making an engineer block.
The part of the thesis i found so compelling was that Britain had a unique combination of resources and economics that presented creative pressure to invent that was not present otherwise. I think the Netherlands is a great counterpoint because even very inefficient windmills were enough to get the land reclamation done, so there was no creative or economic pressure to create precision pumps, for example.
To your point, I do think that the medieval use of wind and water turbines itself constitutes a "little industrial revolution", as these were not present to the same degree in antiquity.
frogontrombone t1_ir02p1n wrote
Reply to comment by NationOfSorrow in Why No Roman Industrial Revolution? by Magister_Xehanort
Thanks for the recommendation
frogontrombone t1_iqyxzmq wrote
Reply to comment by boda_fett in Why No Roman Industrial Revolution? by Magister_Xehanort
The youtube channel "Machine thinking" has excellent videos on the development of these techs.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=machine+thinking
frogontrombone t1_iqy7b95 wrote
Reply to Why No Roman Industrial Revolution? by Magister_Xehanort
I teach the history of the industrial revolution in my engineering classes, and I was expecting technical gaps, but were not any. This was a great article.
The only thing I would add, and it is a corollary to the article's thesis, is that machine precision was not worked out until the industrial revolution. The early steam engines were next to useless and would have remained so if it were not for precision machining.
There were several key innovations that happened in quick succession that lead to precision machining, after centuries of research into them. First, the lathe completely transformed manufacturing because it allowed for precision screws, which allowed for precision measurement. At the same time, the straight line mechanism was essential for getting steam engines to hold any significant pressure, and the lathe was also modified to create the first precision cylindrical bore. All of this and more came together in the Watt-Bolton engine, which was the point at which steam power became widespread. The first flat plates were created not long after. And shortly after that, high precision lengths and weights. Exactly none of the industrial revolution could have not happened without major leaps in measurement, precision, and mechanisms.
But as I said, this is secondary to the articles thesis
Edit, wanted to add some sources for those interested. The Youtube channel "Machine Thinking" produces extremely accessible yet technically useful videos on the history of the industrial revolution. Highly recommend. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=machine+thinking
Edit 2: in particular, this video is most informative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNRnrn5DE58&t=1493s
frogontrombone t1_j01qb8q wrote
Reply to comment by alexjewellalex in Medieval ship found in Norway‘s biggest lake by J4tune1860
If they havent been able to retrieve samples yet and are going based on imaging only, its a reasonable range