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Secret doorway in UK Parliament leads to historical treasure trove

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Secret doorway in UK Parliament leads to historical treasure trove

#101

Post by ocdtrekkie »

kaikai wrote: post #99
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #60

My honest first question when I read this is: Isn't knowing about every single passage and doorway absolutely critical to security in a facility where high risk persons work? It seems absolutely crazy to me to think that, as a US comparison, they would let the President go anywhere that might have passages the Secret Service is unaware of.

The doorway only leads to a small empty room. The actual passageway was blocked already in previous renovations, so there was no danger of anyone coming through it.

Sure, they know this now. But if they don’t even know what passages exist, how can they be sure one that leads outside doesn’t exist?

Even as an internal only room, could someone hide in there?

Re: Secret doorway in UK Parliament leads to historical treasure trove

#102

Post by kd5bjo »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #55
foldr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orthographically speaking, 'p' is the first consonant, 'r' is the second consonant, and 'k' is the third consonant. Phonetically speaking, 'k' is the second consonant.

Yes, I understand what you're saying. I am curious, though, how you would personally describe orthographic consonant clusters such as "th" and "sh", and how, in your experience, other people usually refer to them.

In my experience, the unqualified terms “consonant” and “vowel” unambiguously refer to individual letters, and the terms “consonant sound” and “vowel sound” are used to refer to the noises produced when speaking. Thus, most people I know would refer to both “th” and “sh” as two consonants.

This is coming from a general US education with no focus on linguistics, and feels like the sort of thing that may have significant regional variances.

Re: Secret doorway in UK Parliament leads to historical treasure trove

#103

Post by squiggleblaz »

nitrogen wrote: post #93
roywiggins wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might as well ask why ancient cesspools are historically valuable and best left alone for archaeologists to work on, while we still clean garbage off the streets. It's because they're old and rare . A pile of modern garbage? Not interesting. A pile of Roman garbage? That's an archaeological site.

Obviously these conversations are from the perspective of future archaeologists

If we didn't clean up the garbage and prevent the graffiti, the ancient historical garbage and graffiti wouldn't be rare, so it would be much more boring to future archæologists!

Re: Secret doorway in UK Parliament leads to historical treasure trove

#104

Post by squiggleblaz »

cm2187 wrote: post #49
nallerooth wrote: post #26

I wonder how much history would be lost to us if people didn't write stuff on walls. :D

I rather wonder how the historian will make something of the many billions of selfies, mindless tweets and click bait articles that our civilisation produces and that will likely be stored forever!

I doubt they will be stored forever. They will be lucky to make it through a great recession. A forgotten scratch in a forgotten passage can last as long as the building. But digital media requires someone to constantly maintain it. If we all move from Instagram and Facebook goes broke, you can bet those selfies will go the same way as geocities.

Re: Secret doorway in UK Parliament leads to historical treasure trove

#105

Post by cm2187 »

squiggleblaz wrote: post #104
cm2187 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rather wonder how the historian will make something of the many billions of selfies, mindless tweets and click bait articles that our civilisation produces and that will likely be stored forever!

I doubt they will be stored forever. They will be lucky to make it through a great recession. A forgotten scratch in a forgotten passage can last as long as the building. But digital media requires someone to constantly maintain it. If we all move from Instagram and Facebook goes broke, you can bet those selfies will go the same way as geocities.

Except that the cost of storing this data is constantly going down. I wouldn't be surprised if you could store all of the internet as of 2000 in a handful of modern 16TB drives.
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