Monthly Archives: July 2014

A Pope’s Vampire

Leave a reply

The Enemy of My Enemy is My Fiend

After the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II….

[Popet} Pius II convened the somewhat ineffectual Council of Mantua in 1459, calling for a new crusade against the Ottomans, who by this point were making forays into southeastern Europe. The Christian princes of Europe were a little too busy stealing stuff from each other to take him seriously, except for one particularly enthusiastic supporter named Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia (1431–1476), also referred to by the Romanian moniker Vlad Tepes (“the Impaler”), or his patrynomic name “Dracula”.

Continue reading →

Peter Follansbee is leaving Plimoth Plantation

Leave a reply

Look out your window & I’ll be gone…

I decided a while ago to leave Plimoth Plantation so I can concentrate on a range of wood-working that falls outside the guidelines of 17th-century English furniture. That work continues to fascinate me, but I’ve been drawn in several different directions in recent years, some re-visits of work I have done before (baskets, spoons, bowls) some new areas I hope to explore. A book to finish, for example. And other stuff.

Continue reading →

Burning Libraries

Leave a reply

A Saucy Roman History Book

We have Commodus killing animals (classical serial killer behaviour), and then getting himself strangled by a wrestler in a bath. We have Caracalla who allegedly enjoyed incest with his mother and certainly had his brother killed at a meeting arranged by this quondam lover: worst of all he wore a hood and a blonde wig and he gave Maximus several jobs. Macrinus got Caracalla’s mother to starve herself to death and then got himself killed in a temple. Then, best of all, what fun Suetonius would have had, there was Elagabalus ,,,, more Eurovision performer than Roman emperor. He divorced five women in his short life, married two men, worshipped a meteorite and used to hold competitions to see who could pimp themselves for the most money in the Imperial palace. He naturally took part.

“Winter is Coming”

Leave a reply

Notes from A Song of Fire and Ice and SCIENCE: A panel on George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series. Saturday, July 5, 2014, at Convergence 2014.

One of the distinctive features of this world is that the seasons last for multiple years, and the length of each season is unpredicable. How can this happen? Not by axial tilt, as on our Earth. Nicole Gugliucci said it could be achieved by planetary dynamics and referred us to “Winter is coming”. This paper (and I strongly recommend a look at the full paper as well as the abstract) suggests that the planet is orbiting a double star, in which case the orbit could be chaotic, leading to unpredictable seasons. Apparently (I have not finished reading the series) GRRM never explicity wrote that there was only one sun. In any case, one of the stars could be a roughly solar mass black hole, and hence invisible. Contrary to popular culture, black holes do not suck up everything around them. If you are in an orbit that stays well outside the event horizon you will never fall in. I asked about the long term stability of such a system. You want to be sure your planet stays in the “Goldilocks zone” — not too hot and not too cold. From “Winter is coming”:

To study the long-term stability of the CBP, we embarked on a long voyage of integration.
The orbit was stable after integrating for one million days. On Day 1,000,001 the Andals invaded. Funding cuts to all research projects promptly followed. We were unable to continue our work. Those of us who expressed strong opinions against the cuts were sent to the Wall.

You have to use days as your unit of time here because the years would vary in length. In winter they would be longer. I think these would also have to be sidereal days, certainly if both stars of the binary system are visible suns.

Clicking Their Way to Outrage

Leave a reply

On Social Media, Some Are Susceptible to Internet Outrage

…anger is the emotion that spreads the most easily over social media. Joy came in a distant second. The main difference, said Ryan Martin, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, who studies anger, is that although we tend to share the happiness only of people we are close to, we are willing to join in the rage of strangers. As the study suggests, outrage is lavishly rewarded on social media, whether through supportive comments, retweets or Facebook likes. People prone to Internet outrage are looking for validation, Professor Martin said. “They want to hear that others share it,” he said, “because they feel they’re vindicated and a little less lonely and isolated in their belief.”

Ultimately, Internet outrage is the milquetoast cousin to direct action, a way to protest by tapping and clicking rather than boycotting and marching. It is a noble endeavor to become incensed about a cause and risk arrest or toil without acclamation for one’s deeply held beliefs. Less honorable is joining a digital pile-on as a means of propping up one’s ego, even if it comes in the form of entertaining zings.