111–120 of 208 posts
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Lead, or pewter [0]? Which was and still does sometimes contain lead which acidic drinks like wine can leach the Pb into solution. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pewter
Don’t (virtually) all crystal “glasses” also contain lead?
So often any of these single causal theories forget to look at timespan. Which was either decades or centuries... If system survived previously with mostly same things in place there is really no reason why such thing as lead pipes would be the cause of downfall part. By any reasonable conclusion the culprit in such case should be some disruptive innovation. In the end gradual natural degradation of system is much mo…
> Take Caligula as an example. We all know him as the mad emperor who supposedly once declared war on Neptune, then ordered his soldiers to attack the sea and take seashells as booty. The problem is that this story and the others like it all come from extremely late, hostile sources such as the biography Life of Caligula by Gaius Suetonius Tranquilus (lived c. 69 – after c. 122 AD) and Roman History by Kassios Dion (…
Basically when an emperor died he was either transformed into a god or demonized depending on which was more politically convenient to his successor. The truth seemed more like the emperors were quite similar in their cruelty and competence compared to the exaggerations of the surviving propaganda about them.
Didn't they straight up remove some people from historical records? [0]
That's something that stuck with me when visiting the Pula Arena in Croatia; In there was plaque, as old as the colosseum, where a name was scratched out.
Sadly the plaque didn't have any explanation with it, so I just assume that's a case of damnatio memoriae.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnatio_memoriae#Ancient_Rome
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If you could earnestly profile even a few scientists who have personally flip-flopped their way to tenure like that, you'd surely have a red carpet welcome across a thousand podcasts and alt-media outlets Heck, maybe you could even get tenure somewhere if you happened to have academic creds of your own. Surely someone's done it? Are you familiar with any such profiles that you could share?
How to get published: "Other authors are wrong." How not to get published: "The general consensus is right." So although individuals may not flip-flop constantly, fields as a whole do. Pick almost any topic in almost any field (especially humanities) and read papers 10-20 years apart. There's a constant cycle. The cycle becomes self reinforcing too, because now you can interact with previous criticisms ( Dr. A said t…
A much better approximation to the truth would be something like this:
How not to get published: "Other authors are wrong."
How to get published: "These specific other authors are right, and I have built upon the solid foundation laid by their brilliant work to do this other thing that may or may not have any actual utility or be of interest to anyone."
[UPDATE] I actually did once publish a paper [1] that explicitly described (some of) the reasons that one of the then-leading theories in my field was wrong and how I thought it could be improved. It was more or less the beginning of the end of my career. I don't know if there was any causal relationship between these two events, but there was definitely a temporal one.
And now that I reflect upon it, it wasn't even me who pointed out the problem, I was actually just citing Ralph Hartley who had pointed out the problems seven years earlier. He was, AFAICT, never heard from again either.
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Don’t (virtually) all crystal “glasses” also contain lead?
Yeah, and most leach into the wine. It's less of an issue with wine glasses since the wine is not in them very long, but decanters are a cause for concern. Tbh, I refuse to use crystal glass at all. Cheaper stuff is simply safer.
Beethoven, too, is suspected to have died from lead poisoning. In his case, too, a drinking cup for wine made of lead is the prime suspect.
Lead, or pewter [0]? Which was and still does sometimes contain lead which acidic drinks like wine can leach the Pb into solution. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pewter
It was the poor people without pewter plates that made tomatoes in Europe popular.
It's interesting to note how many historical figures we really only know about through one or two sources, and those sources may be themselves biased.
This article argues against the fall of the roman empire being caused by severe lead poisoning. I would argue that it was more likely caused by widespread minor lead poisoning. If everyone is more forgetful and learns slower, then that isn't something that will be written in history books - the people themselves will just consider that 'normal'. Yet an empire of forgetful and slow-learning people won't be efficient.…
That seems to be transplanting modern education and growth norms onto a historic situation. Roman literacy was exceptionally high by the standards of ancient civilisation, which meant that one in ten people (probably not farmers) could read a book and doing the same as last year or as their ancestors was the rule rather than some sort of anomaly. People smart enough to make substantial changes would tend to be stopped far more by social structures than any minor slowdown to their cognitive abilities. In that sense, if lead poisoning had effects on modern information and intellect driven civilisations so small it took some pretty thorough statistical analysis against a backdrop of rapid growth to convince us there was anything to the theory at all, it seems unlikely it could have made so much more difference to daily life in Ancient Rome. A cognitively impaired Emperor could do a lot of damage, but the inherent flaw in the system was that sort of power also flowed to natural born idiots and every civilisation has those.
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I can see that happening. Thinking about Canada. The other day I calculated it would take 25 hours of work for the minimum wage worker to afford a weekend camping. And I think that's a pretty good indication we're pretty close collapse. Workers not being paid enough, and out of control inflation is how the soviet system collapsed.
That’s actually a really interesting metric. Cost of living has really shot up in Canada while wages have stagnated. Everyone knows that housing has increased dramatically. This leads to less disposable income obviously. I’m 40 and grew up in Edmonton. Once or twice a year, as a kid and into my late 20s, my family and and/or I did a hotel type vacation in Banff or Jasper once a year, which seemed expensive at the tim…
We have been getting fucked for a while now.