Saturday, April 30, 2016

Saturday in Space - Keep It Secret

Three from Science Alert this week with the first being "NASA has detected strange signals coming from the gravitational wave source" here.


Also, they tell us "The Sun might have consumed a 'super-Earth' in our Solar System" here.


Finally, we're told "Hubble just discovered a moon hiding at the back of our Solar System" here.


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Friday, April 29, 2016

Flora & Fauna Friday - Smart Creatures

Three from smithsonianmag.com witht he first one being "Chimps May Be Performing Rituals at "Shrine Trees'" here.


Also, read of "The Story of One Whale Who Tried to Bridge the Linguistic Divide Between Animals and Humans" here.


Finally, they ask "Do Insects Have Consciousness and Ego?"  Find out here.


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Thursday, April 28, 2016

Historical Thursday - The Plague of Justinian

When most folks think about the plague, they usually think about the Black Death in the Middle Ages.  Nevertheless, the Plague of Justinian which hit in the Byzantine Empire, as well as around the Mediterranean and deeper into the Middle East, in the Mid-Sixth Century was just as brutal to the affected areas as what came many years later to Europe and elsewhere.  In fact, there were many plagues (and epidemics) over the course of history that wiped out millions of folks in the populations where they struck.  The Influenza epidemic of 1918 killed a number of people rivaling the death toll of the Black Death (though, obviously, not as great a percentage of the population).


Justinian prosecuted a number of wars both east and west of the empire during his reign.  To the east, he had to first deal with the Sassanid Empire with which his uncle, the previous emperor, had been in conflict.  He bought them off to ensure "Eternal Peace."  What he did next was more interesting.  Despite ending a war with religious enemies, he started another right on its heels with a traditional enemy of the later Roman Empire of the west, the Vandals.  A few hundred years earlier, the Vandals had rocked the western Roman world.  Pliny the Elder, Strabo, Tacitus, and Ptolemy all mention the Vandals (or Lugii, which are believed to also be the Vandals) which were pushed into the empire, mostly likely by the Huns, where they dealt serious damage to the Franks and Romanized Gaul.  Over the course of several generations, the Vandals muscled their way across Late Ancient Europe and eventually into Northern Africa where they seemed to gain their most solid foothold, establishing a a Kingdom.  In addition to the devastation they caused moving through the Western Roman Empire, they continued to be a thorn in Rome's side until a peace was finally negotiated in which Rome had to cede the territory of Numidia to the Vandals.  They had even sacked the City of Rome in 455.  Furthermore, they held Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica by the 470s.  This history, as with all Roman history, must have been known to all Byzantine emperors.  In 533, Justinian used the deposition of a friendly Vandal ruler that happened toward the end of his uncle's reign in 530 as impetus to invade North Africa.  Although the Byzantine Empire would only have loose control of that territory throughout the next few decades, simply invading the old Roman enemy was an impressive show of force for the new emperor.


Still, the Plague of Justinian came at a most inopportune time for the Byzantine emperor.  The death of King Athalaric of Ostrogothic Italy and subsequent misdeeds of the usurper who followed in 534 gave Justinian the excuse to begin to retake the Western Roman Empire and attempt to restore the whole.  The first part of what would be called the Gothic War went fairly well for Justinian from 535 to 540.  Within the first year, Byzantine forces had sacked Naples and retaken the City of Rome.  Ostrogothic leadership changed hands at this stage and their army attempted to take Rome back for two years but were unsuccessful.  The war would continue to drag on for decades and there were many problems along the way but none more crippling than the Plague of Justinian which reduced potential army strength and resupply of forces as well as disrupting their peace in the east requiring Justinian to split focus again.  His time as emperor it still touted for many great achievements but one has to wonder if the Plague of Justinian scuttled a reunification of the whole Roman Empire and a very different future for Western Europe as a result.


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Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Worldbuilding Wednesday - Hidden Waters

Over on environment.nationalgeographic.com, they treat us to "11 Rivers Forced Underground" here.


Also, on offbeattenn.com, they tell us of "The largest underground lake in the US is under Tennessee" here.


Finally, on newscientist.com, they recently revealed a "Huge never-before-seen lake spotted hiding under Antarctic ice" here.


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Tuesday, April 26, 2016

The Tuesday Sundries - Mortsafes

Someone on Facebook brought up Mortsafes (wiki entry here) recently while Sharing an old meme showing a picture of a Mortsafe with text suggesting it was being used to keep something in a grave rather than out.  Naturally, that's a great gaming idea and such thinking is encouraged among Gamemasters.  However, let's look a bit more closely at these curiosities of interment and dig a little deeper into some ideas of how they might be further used.


First, there are a number of kinds of Mortsafes and other structure made for the same purpose.  The cage type Mortsafe seems to be the most common and there are many styles of these as well.  Likely, these are more widely used because they can handle most situations while using the least amount of material.  Since a cage is a mesh of metal bars it will be less costly than any complete encasement whether it is a solid metal box or a stone tower with a sealed entrance or no door at all.


But is it too easy to simply suggest that their use in a fantasy game is to keep the undead within the ground?  I think so and it doesn't take into account all the nasty ramifications available if one sticks closer to the real world explanation for them.  There was a time when medical science had trouble finding enough corpses on which to experiment, and mainly they were used for training students who would go on to keep people from becoming corpses themselves.  But religious beliefs held that someone needed to be in the ground and undisturbed to eventually achieve a place in the afterlife.  This led to a great deal of grave robbing and even shipping the bodies across and out of the country or origin.  Here the actual real world situation presents enough conflict and grey areas to fuel a large portion of a campaign.  Does a party of player characters side with the religious leaders or those seeking to advance medical science?  Can alternatives be found?  What are the implications in a world where folks can in fact be brought back from the dead?  Should all religions in a fantasy setting even condone resurrection?  Many questions need to be asked by a GM as a campaign is developed if Mortsafes are to be added.


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Sunday, April 24, 2016

Mapping Monday - Viking Maps

Over on brilliantmaps.com, they shared maps on "Countries That Were Raided Or Settled By The Vikings Based On Modern Borders" here.


Also, on webexhibits.org, they tell us "Vikings Came Before Columbus" with maps here.


Finally, there's been an ongoing controversy over the so-called Vinland Map which some believe to be a forgery.  A few years ago on the show "Secrets" they did a whole episode which is sampled here on the Smithsonian channel website.  And the same discussion was taken up on NOVA on PBS some time ago as well and is detailed here.  Per Wikipedia here, is was revealed in 1965 as a 15th Century map and as soon as photos of the map were circulating, the controversy began!


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Setting & Society Sunday - Shakespeare

Over on telegraph.co.uk, they tell us of "The man who made Shakespeare famous" here.


Also, on shakespeare-online.com, they share "Words Shakespeare Invented" here.


Finally, on the ouLearn on YouTube channel shared a video on "Shakespeare: Original pronunciation."  Enjoy!



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Saturday, April 23, 2016

Saturday in Space - Propulsion

Three from Science Alert this week with the first being "NASA just announced it's building an electric propulsion system to take us into deep space" here.


Also, have a look at "This new hypothesis could explain how the controversial EM Drive works" here.


Finally, check out how "Stephen Hawking and a Russian billionaire plan to send spacecraft to Alpha Centauri in 20 years" here.


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Friday, April 22, 2016

Flora & Fauna Friday - Giant Crabs

A couple of years ago, stories started circulating about a Crabzilla, -zilla being the suffice we English speakers like to add to things to kaiju-ize another word.  We're goofy on language in that way.  Just ask anyone in the northern USA who has lived through a Snowpocalypse or someone from Brooklyn who has eaten a Hampire State Burgding for lunch on a Friday and had to stay in all weekend with the meat sweats.  It's not pretty.  Nevertheless, when stories like the one on the mirror.co.uk website began to surface appearing to show a "50ft giant crab caught on camera yards from British harbour" here, GameMasters began to drool over how much bigger they could make their own monsters and not seem like they were too far fetched.  I know my own giant crabs went from Harryhausean to GiTanakan faster than someone can scream and point toward the ocean.  Sadly, such stories were swiftly debunked by the saviors of all Internet-dupes-like-myself, Snopes.com, with articles like this one here.  Still, it was fun while the crab meat and melted butter lasted.


But the promise of a gianterest crab had me searching about for something just a bit bigger than the confusingly named Dungeness crab, which has nothing to do with the underworld and is no fitting counterpart to Dragonesses, ampersand or no.  Also known as the Metacarcinus magister (formerly the Cancer magister), two additional ominous names, it was named the state crustacean of Oregon in 2009.  An honor to which all crabs should aspire.  But Ray Harryhausen, for his movie Mysterious Island (1961), had bought a real crab at a market and had it put down, cleaned, then fitted with an articulated inner framework to use for his stop motion filming process.  He alternated his own footage with some of live crabs which he filmed in Spain, so he may well have used a Velvet crab (the coloration aside).


Ultimately, though, the largest known crab species of our real world seems to be the Japanese Spider Crab.  These beasties can grow to be nearly twenty feet across, leg-spread included.  One can find good pictures of these all over but to find a good one for scale, The Nature Geek has found out one of the best is here.  The fact that this crabzilla can be found around Japan is probably just a coincidence and not a byproduct of nuclear activity or accidents.  Probably.


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Thursday, April 21, 2016

Historical Thursday - Roman Meal

Over on messagetoeagle.com, they discuss "Ostia Antica  – Unique Ancient Harbor City in the Suburbs of Rome."  This port was one of the earliest settlements in the area, nearly as old as Rome itself, and quickly became the means by which Rome fed herself, with the fish hauls from the sea and later with grain shipments from all around the Mediterranean, particularly Egypt in the era of the Late Republic and onward.  It became vital to during the Punic Wars when Rome first developed a large navy.  Read more about this ancient harbor city here.


Also, on brlsi.org, they have a wonderful report on "Feeding Ancient Rome" here.


Finally, on livescience.com, they tell us that "Most Ancient Romans Ate Like Animals" here.


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Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Worldbuilding Wednesday - Nazca Civilization

Depending on where you check, Nazca culture flourished in South America from as early as 200 BC and as late as 800 BCE.  While primarily known for the Nazca lines, colossal geoglyphs around which some measure of mystery still abounds, there are many artifacts from that period and civilization worth noting.  Check out some of the pottery, textiles, and even a head trophy shared on the wikipedia page here.


Also, on ancient.eu, they have a fairly extensive write up on Nazca Civilization here.


Finally, from space.com and one of the prompts for this blog post, a recent article told us an "Ancient Peruvian Mystery [is] Solved From Space" here detailing an early use of wind power.


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Tuesday, April 19, 2016

The Tuesday Sundries - Lost Treasures

Over on sciencedaily.com, they tell of us "Lost Tudor sculptures reassembled with help from 3-D scanning" here.


Also, on time.com, we learn of a "Treasure Trove of 4,166 Roman Coins Found in Swiss Molehill" here.


Finally, on livescience.com, we learn of "Ancient Booty Discovered in Transylvania" here.


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Monday, April 18, 2016

Mapping Monday - Early Tribes in Britain

Over on bbc.co.uk, they have a simple map and summary of the "Native Tribes of Britain" here.


Also, on historyfiles.co.uk, check out this more extensive "Map of Europe's Tribes" at "Maximum Size" here.


Finally, on heritagedaily.com, have a look at the "Iron Age Tribes of Southern Britain" using their "Interactive Map" here.


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Sunday, April 17, 2016

Setting & Society Sunday - Sleeping, Eating, & Surviving

Three from the Medievalists.net this week with the first being "How did people sleep in the Middle Ages?"  Wake up to the details here.


Also, learn about "Food, Digestion, and Humour in Late Medieval Danish Wall Paintings" here.


Finally, they have discusses and Shared a video from the rianews YouTube channel titled "Alone in the Past — Surviving the Russian Winter, 9th-Century Style" in their article "Surviving Winter in the Middle Ages" here.



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Saturday, April 16, 2016

Saturday in Space - Exploration & Survival

Over on thisiscolossal.com, they tell how "The Chart of Cosmic Exploration Elegantly Details 56 Years of Human Adventures into Space" here.


Also, on ndtv.com, they tell us "NASA Plans Mission To Explore Life On Jupiter's Moon" here.


Finally, on the TED Talks 2016 YouTube channel, a recent TED Talk from "Stephen Petranek [TED Talk 2016 (HD)]" explains "Your kids might live on Mars. Here's how they'll survive."  Enjoy!



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Friday, April 15, 2016

Flora & Fauna Friday - Megafishes

Over on padi.com, they featured "The Colossal Humphead Wrasse" here.


Also, on blogs.seattletimes.com, a few years back they told of an "Eight-foot sturgeon found belly up in Lake Washington" here.


Finally, on environment.nationalgeographic.com, they have a whole section on megafishes here.


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Thursday, April 14, 2016

Historical Thursday - The Middle Ages

Over on medievalists.net, they discuss the question of "When were the Middle Ages?" here.


Also, on medievalists.net, they examine "The Most Dramatic Moment of the Middle Ages!"  Learn more here.


Finally, on historyextra.com, they tell us "10 things you (probably) didn't know about the Middle Ages" here.


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