141–150 of 161 posts
Wow, I really wanted that to continue the path all the way to Europe. Really just a treat to use. The smoothness of the "gif-like" images just smashes typical video in my mind.
They're called http://www.reddit.com/r/cinemagraphs
Time to trot out trivia. As the article points out, the Silk Road faded in importance in the 1400s. But it doesn't say why. There were three major reasons why it faded. The first was the final fall of Constantinople in 1453, ending the last remnant of the original Roman Empire. This made trade with Europe harder. The second was the development, initially by the Portuguese but followed by others, of direct sea routes…
http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2013/04/29/selenium-silk-spices-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The decline of Venice has less to do with the decline of the Middle East and more to do with the rise of the Ottomans -- whose conquest of Constantinople shuttered a 2-century long dominion of the Bospherous (and the substantial trade thereof) by Venice. Additionally, Mongol incursions at the north end of the Black Sea made the increasingly-expensive trade with the Ottomans very expensive. On top of all that, the agi…
I just finished reading City of Fortune ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400068207/ref=pe_180000_31... ), and this is closer to the truth - the rise of the Ottomans, the fact that Christian Europe couldn't get its act together after the debacle that was the 4th Crusade, etc etc - at one point, Venice was almost single-handedly fighting the Ottomans.
So, yes, the proximate causes were the Ottomans and other problems, but a significant portion of the root cause can be attributed to 1) the discovery of the new world, and 2) new sea routes around Africa to the spice islands and Asia.
At least that's what I've gleaned from what I've read. Naturally, human affairs are often quite complex, and so there are a lot of different things that contribute.
7000 miles in 18 days is 16 miles per hour on average. The article mentions that the trains move at 50mph, but doesn't say if that's the max speed. But regardless, even if we assume 40mph average, that's a lot of time sitting around not moving at all. I wonder where that time is spent, and how much more of it can be removed from the process. It's presumably largely customs checks, which seems like a straightforward p…
To speed things up, you'd need to convince the former soviet republics that going to standard gauge is a good investment for increasing trade in and through their countries. Additionally, you'd need to convince various nations to sign trackage rights and operation rights agreements so you don't need to change locomotives at every border. After all that, then you can start worrying about customs agreements, which would not be that significant of a delay compared to all the other logistics of transporting things over long stretches of rail. It's just time consuming almost by definition.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A friend showed me the HTC One recently. Apparently the camera shoots those mini-videos by default, and you can then pick a still from there. You can also stitch multiple shots into a single one: http://blog.htc.com/2013/05/your-sequence-shots-with-htc-zoe...
Wow, that's amazing and a superb idea. I always feel like the biggest weakness of cell phone cameras is that its hard to control exactly when the photo happens. With videos (from which you can pick a still) this would be way less of an issue. Do you know if the HTC One Google Edition does this, or only regular HTC One?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A friend showed me the HTC One recently. Apparently the camera shoots those mini-videos by default, and you can then pick a still from there. You can also stitch multiple shots into a single one: http://blog.htc.com/2013/05/your-sequence-shots-with-htc-zoe...
Wow, that's amazing and a superb idea. I always feel like the biggest weakness of cell phone cameras is that its hard to control exactly when the photo happens. With videos (from which you can pick a still) this would be way less of an issue. Do you know if the HTC One Google Edition does this, or only regular HTC One?
Time to trot out trivia. As the article points out, the Silk Road faded in importance in the 1400s. But it doesn't say why. There were three major reasons why it faded. The first was the final fall of Constantinople in 1453, ending the last remnant of the original Roman Empire. This made trade with Europe harder. The second was the development, initially by the Portuguese but followed by others, of direct sea routes…
Can you expand on that (or recommend further reading/links/videos/books?). Especially the "the extend of which was not realized by the west"? Were people in western europe suprised when napolean conquered egypt?
I actually disliked this page design. The image and text always faded to black before it went off the top of the screen. I am in the habit of moving text to the top of the screen to read it. It kept vanishing as I did so meaning I'd have to move the text I wanted to read down to the middle of the screen. Did this not happen to anyone else?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> long-term economic and military decline of areas like the Middle East It put in motion the long-term decline of the Venetian Republic, as well, which made most of its money trading with the middle east. Interestingly enough, this also led the Venetians to focus a bit more on their land conquests in northern Italy, so there are some areas that received more attention at that point: swamps drained, villas built, and…
Some of my grand-grand-...-parents moved from Venice to England around that time, together with many other families.