zompist bboard

One of my history teachers last year had the theory that continual contact with Central Asian groups (like the Mongols) that relied on compound bow-using horse-back archers stunted development of firearms among Indians, Chinese, Middle Easterners, and Russians. Central and Western Europe slowly pro...

"True writing, or phonetic writing, records were developed independently in four different civilizations in the world." Like I said, only if you don't count indirect transmissions of ideas. Uh, okay. Yes I see now you said that later on. I'm confused, however, of what the value is in discussing how...

I really don't know why it took so long for someone to invent winged or lighter-than-air flight. The principles for both are fairly easy to grasp...OK maybe not the second one, Winged flight is actually a pretty difficult concept. Up until pretty recently (on the history scale) all investigation of...

I'm quite fond of Richard Cowen's Essays on Geology, History, and People.

As the title might suggestion, it's a good overview of the history of people's interactions with stone and metal, covering technological development, precious metal economies, natural disasters, etc.

Writing, although not alphabetic writing, was invented probably three times in Earth's history, by the Chinese, the Mayans, and the Sumerians (and by the Egyptians as well depending on whether or not heiroglyphics were inspired by Sumerian writing, although they probably were). Lol no, writing has ...

I like the new picture alot, but it's a little blurry, it could use a little more of the crispness of the original. The castle in the new picture is awesome Is it tiles, or stones, that cover the streets? There's a difference? Tiles are generally clay-ish type things. oops, I didn't see the 2nd page...

Feeling argumentative. And this is where my great problem with Chomsky lies. His indefensible assumptions like the "poverty of stimulus" non-argument on which he bases his claims that his UG exists are: a) rampantly disproven by the data, and b) never even have attempted proofs or justifications (ap...

Fmra wrote:That armadillo is awesomeness!!

Yep, Ursula Vernon is utter awesomeness


PARASAUROLOPHUS

http://flood.nhm.ac.uk/perthMedia/dino/drawing/parasaur.jpg PARASAUROLOPHUS http://www.prismenfernglas.de/images/paleo/parasaur02.JPG PARASAUROLOPHUS + PARASAUROLOPHUS + some hypsilophodonts? http://www.nbb.cornell.edu/neurobio/land/OldStudentProjects/cs490-94to95/moyer/gifs/para_color.gif PARASAUR...

I'm confused too. Is someone trying to say there's a form of the subjunctive that actually indicates a tense also, instead of just borrowing a tensed wordform? I thought the subjunctive was a tenseless mood. Sorry, I was unclear, I was (partially) mock-mocking the idea that English had a subjunctiv...

Ahribar wrote:If I were you, I wouldn't be too sarcastic..... English does have a past subjunctive, it's just that it's much less used.

That's what I'm being sarcastic about, yes.

Yeah, right, like English has a seperate past subjunctive! What do you think this is?

I really like the historical-theology stuff, I'm still trying to work that out for some of my cultures. Another thing I noticed was a possible borrowing from Earth? ":sh arus" for cycle seems realted to the Chaldean astronomicla cycle, the saros , the word still used today for the 19-year cycle of e...

my point was that such a war would a really obvious (which i interpreted as unimaginative) option for the future. however, if Zompist (should i call him Mark?) has mentioned it, im sure he has some ideas to make it original, so maybe i spoke too soon. Well, sometimes in conworldry, obvious is unima...

vegfarandi wrote:And also, are the ilii still ... ehm ... not extinct? Are they still up and running?

Extraodrinarily confusingly, the technical term for the opposite of "extinct" is "extant".

Earth's axial tilt is one of the many very lucky factors that have made Earth habitable and condusive to intelligent life. If I remember correctly, Earth's tilt is caused by the moon (I could be mistaken, however). Naw, it's just held relatively stable by the moon. Most planets have axial tilts. An...

So, you're saying if I had dwarves, they should be greedy miners in the mountains and the humans should be powerstriving and curious merchants? Or am I getting this all wrong ... Backwards. We know that us-humans are not all powerstriving and curious merchants. So if any other species is a such a c...

I'd say that its best to use the fewest number of intelligent races you canallow yourself to get away with. Non-human races cause all sorts of problems, and its difficult to answer them without stereotyping yourself - how do they react with humans, how does their biology effect their society? All t...

Why aren't rhinos domesticateable? Or if they are, why didn't rhino-mounted bantu shock troops overthrow the roman empire? Though having said that, why exactly would have rhinos overthrown the Empire? After all, elephants tried and failed. Why would rhinos have been better? Elephants weren't really...

I thought Diamond's writing was a little prosaic, but the content outweighed that trivial complaint. Prosaic! How can you call anyone's writing prosaic when they are the writer of the phrase "Rhino-mounted Bantu shock troops"? That phrase will live with me forever. :D Someday I'll write up the sako...

"Rhino-mounted Bantu shock troops" That's in Guns Germs and Steel!? What page? Can't remember exactly, and I'm not at home to check, but it's in the chapter on what kinds of animals are domesticable. The larger context is something along the lines of: "If African rhinos and hippos, had they been do...

I thought Diamond's writing was a little prosaic, but the content outweighed that trivial complaint. Prosaic! How can you call anyone's writing prosaic when they are the writer of the phrase "Rhino-mounted Bantu shock troops"? That phrase will live with me forever. :D Someday I'll write up the sako...

Currently I just have one, and I plan on complementing it with another: on my left bicep is Ahriman written in Avestan characters, Ahriman being the Persian god of darkness and all evil (on my right bicep I'll be getting Ohrmazd, the god of light and everything good and cool. ... I hadn't considere...

Salmoneus wrote:

Whimemsz wrote:Like /S/, but laminal, would be a close approximation, I'd say. And <j> is the voiced version. In other words, what Pharazon said.

Is not /S/ normally laminal?

Is it? I don't think so, it seems primarily apical to me, though there is a bit of lamina action.

I guess this must already have been thought of, so everyone who knows anything about the subject will have ten reasons off the top of their heads why it ain't so. :) Yeah, pretty much. They both spiralled off out of control pretty early in the history of the solar system. It's doubtful that they ha...