They used the water currents itself as a pump to empty out the water and create a space to build on - that's brilliant!!
Animation of how bridges were built in Central Europe in the Middle Ages [video]
221–230 of 247 posts
Re: Animation of how bridges were built in Central Europe in the Middle Ages [video]
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a pretty typical mistake. We are just as smart as our predecessors. We just have a much higher population, a higher % of them are well educated, and we have an enormous body of historical knowledge (as well as easy ways for anyone to access it). "On the shoulder of giants" etc.
See "Flynn effect" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
Most interestingly "Research suggests that there is an ongoing reversed Flynn effect, i.e. a decline in IQ scores, in Norway, Denmark, Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, France and German-speaking countries,[4] a development which appears to have started in the 1990s.[5][6][7][8]"
Re: Animation of how bridges were built in Central Europe in the Middle Ages [video]
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
Less mindless and debilitating work is a good thing, but to replace work that challenges human capabilities in all its aspects with leisure and enjoyment is probably not a good thing. If for example reasoning was automated (we're not there yet, but it is on the horizon) then human capacity for nuance would likely diminish further, to the extent where concepts and ideas might only placed in a 'good' or 'bad' category…
The work is the problem, or should I say, jobs - not the activities. The problem is with people being forced to spend most of their lives fighting for survival. In the past it was toiling in the fields 3/4 of the year to have anything to eat. Today it's toiling in factories and offices to have money to pay for the house, food and medical care. The less time is spent on that , for the same level of quality-of-life, th…
While I agree in principle, I don't think many humans are capable of what you want. Without a desperate need to work, most people don't seem to bother doing much even it that would give them great satisfaction. Just look at almost every unemployed person who has a place to live and food to eat but nothing to do all day. Why aren't they spending their plentiful time on high quality of life activities?
This might be hard to imagine if you're well educated, already working, and in your 20's and the world seems full of excitement and opportunity but you're held back by the annoying need to pay your bills. If you didn't have to work, you might start a business or spend all day on your side project or whatever. But most people aren't in that position. Often, their only sense of fulfillment comes from their work no matter how unpleasant it is, and they only work because they have to to survive.
Re: Animation of how bridges were built in Central Europe in the Middle Ages [video]
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
Opening shot? That movie only had one shot ;)
Several shots, planned out carefully so it could be edited to look like one shot. Russian Ark (2002) (Russian: Русский ковчег) is a single 96-minute steadicam shot, and it has over 2,000 actors and three orchestras in it. It was recorded directly to a hard drive carried behind the camera operator, which could hold 100 minutes.
thus the winking emoji. thank you for reminding me that I need to watch Russian Ark again though!
Re: Animation of how bridges were built in Central Europe in the Middle Ages [video]
#225Building a Leonardo da Vinci Bridge
https://imgur.com/0lpS9k3Re: Animation of how bridges were built in Central Europe in the Middle Ages [video]
#226The one thing I don't understand is how the original posts were driven into the river bed. You have to deal with the current, deal with the fact that wood floats, deal with a long post, have to have a means of driving it down far enough, etc. I imagine that nowadays they'd use a pile driver on a huge barge with engines that can automatically compensate for the current, but I can't imagine what the equivalent was back…
Maybe the original posts didn't need to be that deep--just deep enough to be used as scaffolding for the wooden version of the pile driver to be set up. They may have also taken advantage of fair weather and seasonal changes. During the dry season, the river would be lower and easier to work with.
IIRC the water under the bringe is actually behind a weir (to aid river navigation). If the weir was already there back then, they could temporarily open it up and significantly lower the water level.
Re: Animation of how bridges were built in Central Europe in the Middle Ages [video]
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
We work harder? Seriously? Most of the time in human history people were struggling to even stay alive. You had to work until you got enough food to feed your family, or you'd die. Live was not great, it was very stressful and inefficient (but people were used to it). This is still the case in most of the world, although overall not as bad as it once was, it is improving constantly. We're the lucky ones who can susta…
Hunter gatherer societies are theorized to have spent the majority of their time not working, which is partly why were evolved such a complex social dynamic. Hunters would patrol their territory and hunt, with mixed results on the hunting, and gatherers would spend a few hours gathering food. It didn't take much work to sustain their tribes.
I wonder how much that depended on the population density of a particular place vs its "carrying capacity". I imagine that our hunter gatherer ancestors who lived with more competing groups fighting over diminishing herds probably spent more time/risk defending their turf.
Re: Animation of how bridges were built in Central Europe in the Middle Ages [video]
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a pretty typical mistake. We are just as smart as our predecessors. We just have a much higher population, a higher % of them are well educated, and we have an enormous body of historical knowledge (as well as easy ways for anyone to access it). "On the shoulder of giants" etc.
You're generally right, but missing an important detail: nutrition. We are not smarter than the subset of our predecessors who had the privilege of developing without ever starving.
Hopefully a rise in atmospheric CO2 doesn't start counteracting improvements in nutrition.
Re: Animation of how bridges were built in Central Europe in the Middle Ages [video]
#229It's interesting that this bridge is still around. It seems like most of that society's energy was concentrated on building this bridge, and physical infrastructure of that nature. Its best minds and hands were at work. Similarly, in San Francisco, many people live in 100 year old houses. It's not like we discovered better "must have" ways of building houses that made the old ones obsolete. I honestly think things li…
> Kind of like the PC BIOS is still around. Not any more. The BIOS has been replaced with UEFI on most new machines for about a decade now.
Yeah that is the thing that runs an entire OS right :) Like Minix or Linux.
Still I bet the BIOS will still be around in many places. What about QEMU? Does it present a machine that contains a BIOS?
A google search turns this up: http://funwithbits.net/blog/dissecting-the-rom-bios-shipped-...
Which means that OSes still have BIOS support.
It's not my area of expertise, but it seems like turtles all the way down.
BIOS may not have been the best example, but Linux itself or Minix may be a good one. If 100 years from now there's a new dominant OS, there's probably going to still be UEFI with some legacy operating system booting it up ... Or something emulating UEFI, etc.
Re: Animation of how bridges were built in Central Europe in the Middle Ages [video]
#230The one thing I don't understand is how the original posts were driven into the river bed. You have to deal with the current, deal with the fact that wood floats, deal with a long post, have to have a means of driving it down far enough, etc. I imagine that nowadays they'd use a pile driver on a huge barge with engines that can automatically compensate for the current, but I can't imagine what the equivalent was back…
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