I wish I could find it to show everyone and/or remember the %s concerned but way back in my university days one of the prof's showed us a page of 'Lord of the rings' and demonstrated how hard Tolkien had strained to use germanic words wherever possible. Was meant to be something like 80%...
coincidentally i was reading the wikipedia article on sound recording and discovered the phonoautograph. pretty amazing stuff
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonautograph
Machine of God's - Technology of the Ancient World
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPuQQJ4oB2o&spfreload=10
found this doco quite interesting. is all about how important it used to be to create mechanical "stage magic" for ancient temples.
even the Antikythera mechanisms main purpose may...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fobos-Grunt
I'm still pretty gutted that the Russian Phobos mission failed when it did. That would have been really interesting to see - and the first sample return from the vicinity of mars.
Island Hopping loss
The problem is that by the time the ancestors of the Maori reached NZ they were at the end of hundreds of years [Millennium?] of island hopping across the Pacific. A lot of the technology their ancestors would have started out with had been lost. For instance things like...
I've been trying to figure out whether the planet where ASOFAI is set is an alternate version of earth or in "a galaxy far far away".
I'm fascinated by the cosmology in the series, its not mentioned very often but some odd things going on with moons and meteors.
I gather there are two moons...
In some ways this is what has happened anyway.
Post WW2 US military has always been much bigger than necessary. Lots of pointless military actions to justify its existence IMHO.
An even bigger US military would not be a nice world to live in.
Entire season based on "Spocks Brain" premise. Brain thief runs rampant in TOS universe. Zombie crew, all controlled by Spocks brain which has been implanted in the enterprise computer fight to get their brains back.
Two Years Before the Mast
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Years_Before_the_Mast
pretty oldschool but I really enjoyed Richard Dana 'Two Years Before The Mast' which is pretty awesome comtemporary account.
probably particularly interesting for someone from the US West Coast. San Fransisco is...
inevitable blowback
When 9/11 happened i was not surprised. /Something/ was going to happen eventually - the way that the US was treating the world made it pretty much inevitable. [Thats just my opinion BTW not trying to start a fight here.]
Would be an interesting discussion to see how...
Australia?
What about that government that the CIA toppled in Australia in the 70s? I can't remember many details but know that it was supposedly too left leaning
cheers
been checking in each day... not much else going on in space at present since the tragic loss of Phobos-Grunt. Although must go check what DAWN is up to..
but greatly enjoying so far. thanks for sharing this with us