Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711 • Hacker News Board

Re: Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711

#41

Post by n4r9 » Tue, Jan 29, 2019, 10:44 AM UTC

benj111 wrote: post #16

benbreen wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coffee houses existed at that time but coffee itself was not thought of in quite the same way as today. It wasn’t taken for granted that it was a harmless stimulant, or even a stimulant at all. The idea of taking a pill to cure a disease did exist; it would’ve been called a “specific.” Pills were handmade but were fairly common based on what I’ve seen, although cordials, electuaries, and other drinkables predominated…

Interesting, thanks. "or even a stimulant at all" Its strange that tea was thought of as a stimulant but not coffee?! I could drink 10 cups of tea, and only feel the urge to wee. That much coffee and I'd be up the wall! But then the Victorians were shooting up opiates whilst warning of the dangers of alcohol so I suppose there is a lot of 'cultural conditioning' going on there (and here).

It depends on the quality of leaves and style of preparation. The mental stimulation you get from black tea in a modern UK cafe is mild and very different from what you'd experience from Chinese Gong Fu Cha [0], or from Russian chifir [1]. Herbal infusions, which are still referred to as tea by many Americans and Europeans, will have almost no stimulant effect. It's quite likely that Boyle first drank tea in coffeehouses, where [2]:

> The whole of the day's tea would be brewed in the morning, taxed by a visiting excise officer, and then kept in barrels and reheated as necessary throughout the rest of the day.

If I was a coffeehouse owner, I would brew that tea for a long time to get as concentrated a drink out of it as possible.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gongfu_tea_ceremony

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chifir

[2] https://www.tea.co.uk/a-social-history

Re: Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711

#42

Post by slavik81 » Tue, Jan 29, 2019, 11:31 AM UTC

hrpolice wrote: post #29

benbreen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short answer is that, on a very long time horizon, I think drug laws probably are just a phase that will go away. But socially- or religiously-enforced policing of conduct is as old as human culture itself, so even if drugs become decriminalized, the tendency to proclaim some substances or actions "taboo" is unlikely to ever disappear. The specific actions/substances in question can change fairly quickly, however.

Maybe criminalizing religions would be an answer. It is fascinating how perception of drugs changes over time. Even the Dutch royal family had a cocaine manufacturing site last century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nederlandsche_Coca%C3%AFnefabr...

Even if you destroy religion, the underlying drives that created religion in the first place will persist. The religions will just be less recognizable as religion, taking on a more secular flavour. Instead you'll end up with stuff like conspiracy theories, political ideology and pseudo-science taking over.

One of the nice things about science is that its members keep their religion and their scientific work separate. It's particularly noticeable when you look through the history of science. There's a long tradition of secularism that has benefited the religious and the non-religious alike.

Issac Newton, for example, had very unorthodox opinions about God and the Trinity. To become the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, he needed a get a special exemption from King Charles II, as traditionally the chair had required that you be an ordained Anglican priest. It's that very same exemption that Newton got for his unusual religious views that allowed Stephan Hawking to hold the chair as an atheist.

Re: Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711

#43

Post by lawlorino » Tue, Jan 29, 2019, 12:31 PM UTC

keithpeter wrote: post #40

corey_moncure wrote: post #33

It looks like even the brightest scientific minds of the past forgot to increment the year after January 1. Even as late as March and April in some years.

Might be using the 'official' 25th March date for new year? [1] The will probably be a 'readme' somewhere on the site about old style dates. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar#Beginning_o...

> In common usage, 1 January was regarded as New Year's Day and celebrated as such,[40] but from the 12th century until 1751 the legal year in England began on 25 March (Lady Day).[41] So, for example, the Parliamentary record lists the execution of Charles I on 30 January as occurring in 1648 (as the year did not end until 24 March),[42] although later histories adjust the start of the year to 1 January and record the execution as occurring in 1649.[43]

Super interesting, thanks!

Re: Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711

#44

Post by joshvm » Tue, Jan 29, 2019, 6:38 PM UTC

froindt wrote: post #37

joshvm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of stuff is a good candidate for Zooniverse. Have a look at some of the ship log projects, for example.

Thank you for mentioning this! I'd never heard of Zooniverse, but it looks very interesting. Have you used Zooniverse in the past? If so, what was the outcome/experience like?

I've played with a few of the projects. It can be very addictive and often a lot of fun - for example Snapshot Serengeti where you classify camera trap photos. You get lots of nothing and then suddenly an animal. I did try the log transcription tasks but they're pretty difficult and evidently some more enthusiastic people had been there first.

My research group actually has a project in beta at the moment on there: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/rossmcwhirter/astro-ecol...

We're asking people to tag animals in infrared images. There isn't much data on there yet while we figure out the simplest way to get people involved (feedback driven). The site engine is pretty good, it's very easy to set up your own data campaign. It's quite challenging to frame your problem in a way that people with no domain knowledge can label your data accurately.

The only disadvantage (from a research perspective) is that you need exposure and traction to really succeed, because you need a huge number of classifications (multiple times per image) to get good results. If you look, there are a lot of projects with quite a lot of classifications but 0% completion. Certain categories are just popular - e.g. exoplanet detection and astronomy always gets a lot of interest.

Re: Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711

#45

Post by corey_moncure » Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 1:30 AM UTC

keithpeter wrote: post #40

corey_moncure wrote: post #33

It looks like even the brightest scientific minds of the past forgot to increment the year after January 1. Even as late as March and April in some years.

Might be using the 'official' 25th March date for new year? [1] The will probably be a 'readme' somewhere on the site about old style dates. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar#Beginning_o...

Today I learned.