General Science/History Questions Thread.

[Crissa]

It'd be nice if those were actually based on science. But they're not.

It's like the evidence there are less autistics in poorer societies - but there's also higher child and infant mortality. Which more than make up the difference!

-Crissa

[Username17]

In the dark ages, farming in Europe got incredibly shitty. Christian civilization (if you could call it that) decided that they were going to eat Roman food, minus all the stuff they decided was decadent. And furthermore, that they were going to use Roman farming techniques, minus all the hydrological engineering that they couldn't remember how to do. So you got people trying to live on Bread and Wine in places where grapes didn't even grow. There were places where the crop yield was just 1.6. As in literally you would plant 100 bushels and get back 160 bushels and try to live on 60 bushels, leaving aside 100 for replanting.

I used to think that the Pilgrims who came to New England were special kinds of idiots, trying to grow plants from different climates with no real concept of growing seasons or vegetables. But it turns out that was a Christian standard operating procedure for over a thousand years.

Agriculture in other parts of the world doesn't look as bad. Because people had a tendency to grow different stuff using different techniques. Hell, the Chinese grew Rice in the South and Wheat in the North. Every so often, some Emperor would try to impose some sort of land use overhaul that would benefit one system at the expense of the other (hell, even the PRC did with their socialization/privatization schemes), but no one let that kind of crap go for a thousand years anywhere else.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Is it possible to have Star-Trek like forcefields or will that always remain a science-fictiony thing?

[IGTN]

Is it possible to have Star-Trek like forcefields or will that always remain a science-fictiony thing?

AFAIK, not possible with present data. There's no theoretical reason why they couldn't work, but we'd need to know of some phenomenon that acts at all like they do so that we can manipulate it.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Is it possible to have Star-Trek like forcefields or will that always remain a science-fictiony thing?

http://io9.com/5499652/british-military ... rce-fields

[Koumei]

I have a bunch of random science and history questions:

1. Frank once mentioned something to the effect of "there is evidence that there is an evolutionary advantage in having gay members of a species". Could someone elaborate? I'm guessing it's vaguely a population control thing, maybe also a social cohesion... thing?

2. Was Maggie Thatcher the first person to decide to sell her country off to private companies, with disastrous results? My (English) father believes she wasn't that bad a ruler, seeing as England was relevant under her rule, with even America afraid of her (based on that time they sent the SAS out to fight over a small rock), and "Nobody else had tried mass privatisation then, so she was trying to do something to the benefit of England and it failed."

If that's true, I'll be willing to say "Okay, she had no way of knowing, assuming her ministers of finance etc. all said it was a good idea. But everyone since then should have learned from this mistake". But it seems a bit too recent to be the first instance.

3. Okay, xeno-biology time. Let's pretend man-sized (or whale-sized) land-dwelling insectoid (namely, the exoskeleton) aliens could even exist on Earth. I mean, apparently fungus-orks and elves and humans and these bugs can all survive on the same atmosphere... the same atmosphere in every single planet.

So, allowing for all of that... adrenal glands. If such a critter had advanced adrenaline glands to pump masses of the stuff and turn their "Fight or flight" syndrome into "PCP RAAAAAGE", then would these glands be visible? I mean, would they still look like a normal 10' tall ant, or would they have giant lumps in places, sort of like swollen lymph nodes, or would they actually need a giant... whatever part of the body produces it? Or an extra one or something?

Obviously this is a "modelling tyranids" question, because unscientifichammer 40k feels they should get extra external... brains. It also feels that the production of toxins requires external... well they look like scrotums attached to random parts of the body.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The first one is actually pretty easy. Not every member of a species needs to breed in order to propagate the race. Easy example: ant colonies.

[Username17]

1. Frank once mentioned something to the effect of "there is evidence that there is an evolutionary advantage in having gay members of a species". Could someone elaborate? I'm guessing it's vaguely a population control thing, maybe also a social cohesion... thing?

Heterosexuality and homosexuality are of course not a simple either/or. The capacity for homosexuality is pretty much part and parcel with the capacity to meet another male and not fight. Extreme heterosexuality is like unto elk: which of course means that other male elk do not help protect the herd of females/children or participate in "society" at all. Such a situation would be disastrous for humanity.

But beyond that, humanity operates on a division of labor system, and child rearing is itself given over to lots of different people. Grandparents are a great source of day care, but so are bachelors. Gay people never produce offspring, but that just means that they are always available to do work.

2. Was Maggie Thatcher the first person to decide to sell her country off to private companies, with disastrous results? My (English) father believes she wasn't that bad a ruler, seeing as England was relevant under her rule, with even America afraid of her (based on that time they sent the SAS out to fight over a small rock), and "Nobody else had tried mass privatisation then, so she was trying to do something to the benefit of England and it failed."

Americans were not afraid of England for having lost a bunch of people, planes, and warships beating the crap out of Argentina over strategic sheep resources. America was puzzled.

As for Privatization, it was abandoned a hundred years prior in New York garbage collection. For exactly the reasons it didn't work in England. So while technically true that Thatcher's plan was the biggest, smaller scale systems of exactly that date back to the early 19th century (when the economy was much smaller), and resulted in precisely the same kinds of looting and degradation of service that Thatcher's plans did.

If that's true, I'll be willing to say "Okay, she had no way of knowing, assuming her ministers of finance etc. all said it was a good idea. But everyone since then should have learned from this mistake". But it seems a bit too recent to be the first instance.

Different privatization schemes have actually worked out OK. Japan's privatization and breakup of telecom services in the late 80s has produced positive results. It's not like competition doesn't deliver sometimes. But privatizing without competition (such as British rail and gas) is just forking your economy over to an extractive monopoly. It's one of those things that is really obviously a bad idea.

3. Okay, xeno-biology time. Let's pretend man-sized (or whale-sized) land-dwelling insectoid (namely, the exoskeleton) aliens could even exist on Earth. I mean, apparently fungus-orks and elves and humans and these bugs can all survive on the same atmosphere... the same atmosphere in every single planet.

Uh.... OK. Probably require as many segments in the arm as a Mezzoloth, but go on.

So, allowing for all of that... adrenal glands. If such a critter had advanced adrenaline glands to pump masses of the stuff and turn their "Fight or flight" syndrome into "PCP RAAAAAGE", then would these glands be visible? I mean, would they still look like a normal 10' tall ant, or would they have giant lumps in places, sort of like swollen lymph nodes, or would they actually need a giant... whatever part of the body produces it? Or an extra one or something?

What?

The Adrenal glands produce Mineralcorticoids like Aldosterone, which is a hormone that regulates blood pressure by interacting with ion retention. They produce Glucocorticoids like Cortisol, which is a hormone that regulates blood sugar by adjusting sugar retention targets. It produces Androgens like DHEA, which is a precursor to the Testosterone we hear so much about. But you're probably thinking of its production of Catecholamines like Epinephrine, which is a sympathetic nervous system activator that pumps up your fight-or-flight response.

The point is, in every case the chemicals in question trigger receptors to provoke certain responses. So while increasing the amount of chemical production can and does increase the power of the response, the target cells could also just inherently have a stronger response to the receptor being activated. There's no need for the glands to be any particular size in any particular organism. If you posit a huge reaction to a small amount of signal molecules, the producing structures could be practically or even actually invisible.

For example: the reaction to nervous impulses is often pretty strong. The nerve bundle to a larger muscle that produces a larger response doesn't have to be any bigger. The nerve bundle that produces a more graduated response needs to be bigger.

-Username17

[erik]

3. Nothing needs to be externally visible except stuff that interacts externally. And even some of that stuff could be retractable. Organs... fugeddaboudit.

For an insect or other carapace covered creature, you aren't even likely to tell what is underneath the shell. I don't see an evolutionary advantage to having exposed organs when it could just as easily be hidden under armored plating.


(ninja'd by Frank, though he took a different tack to it)

[Crissa]

Of course, having a big reaction to a small dose means that when you encounter similar chemicals in the environment, bad things can happen. Which is where poisons come from.

-Crissa

[Koumei]

Thanks, that was all quite handy. And I felt it was a bit stupid for these critters to have extra brains/toxic scrotums hanging outside the carapace.

[Red_Rob]

Firstly, your pointing out that the 40k fluff has some scientific anomalies?

Secondly, all the Tyranids are bioengineered, so I assume they could look like whatever the Norn Queens wanted. Maybe hanging scrotum sacs are 'in' this season. Or maybe she just has the aesthetic sensibilities of HR Geiger and really digs the spiky bio-mech look.

But really, in this world you pick on the genetics as being wonky?

[Koumei]

Nah, it's more "Every now and then I put a few nids together, and I'm hoping science agrees that I shouldn't throw extra brains on every model with Furious Charge and scrotums on everything with poison.

[Zinegata]

2. Was Maggie Thatcher the first person to decide to sell her country off to private companies, with disastrous results? My (English) father believes she wasn't that bad a ruler, seeing as England was relevant under her rule, with even America afraid of her (based on that time they sent the SAS out to fight over a small rock), and "Nobody else had tried mass privatisation then, so she was trying to do something to the benefit of England and it failed."

Privatization has been around a long time, and yeah selling it all off to one company who can have a monopoly is a bad idea.

Thatcher's main claim to fame is that she reversed the prevailing British policy that had been around since... oh... The Suez crisis. Which is "We're never gonna do anything major militarily unless the Yanks back us up".

The Falklands War pretty much changed all that. Pretty much everyone (including the US State department) expected the Brits to give up the Falklands. Instead, the Brits launched a campaign thousands of miles from home against an enemy that outnumbered them in every category of military equipment and won. Sure, the Royal Navy was literally hours away from defeat before the Argentinians surrendered, but from a national pride perspective it was still a win.

In practical terms though, it also meant that the Brits recovered their senses and stopped dismantling their own military (The Royal Navy, for instance, was literally weeks away from selling the carriers that won the Falklands War), which today remains among the most powerful in the world.

That tends to give the Brits quite a bit of clout on the international scene. Without the Falklands to make them realize that "Shit, we can win even without the Yanks", the Royal Navy might today be less powerful today than oh... fucking Iceland?