Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

koz · Post by **koz** » Tue May 08, 2012 8:19 am

I once read somewhere (regarding the famous myth that Cleopatra dissolved a pearl in wine and drank it to prove a point) that 'pearls don't dissolve in wine, and anything they do dissolve in, you wouldn't want to drink'. So I'm curious - what will a pearl dissolve in?

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Tue May 08, 2012 8:28 am

Mister_Sinister wrote:I once read somewhere (regarding the famous myth that Cleopatra dissolved a pearl in wine and drank it to prove a point) that 'pearls don't dissolve in wine, and anything they do dissolve in, you wouldn't want to drink'. So I'm curious - what will a pearl dissolve in?

Serious guess? Soda or vinegar.

Pearls are calcium carbonate. Calcium carbonate isn't especially soluble in water (especially not as a pearl), but it will both react with and dissolve in acids. Especially phosphoric acid, which is in many sodas. Neither soda nor calcium carbonate nor its products are particularly toxic, either, so... bottoms up.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue May 08, 2012 8:38 am

Yeah, try Coca Cola. That's always a good bet for dissolving stuff. Interesting fact, if you leave your teeth to soak in Coca Cola overnight... you drown.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Tue May 08, 2012 12:30 pm

Actually Pearl will dissolve in Wine from the era. They.. weren't very good at making wine. It tended to be a bit vinegary.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Tue May 08, 2012 12:33 pm

Parthenon wrote: On a similar note, a few times on the internet I've seen websites, often for writers, have a warning that
No part of any of the material on this web-site may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a photographic recording, nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or otherwise copied for private, public or commercial use, reposted, disclosed, or redistributed, without prior written permission from the author or copyright holder(s).
I'm always highly amused because they've just said that no part of the website can be copied for private use, but every single time you look at a website you make a copy of it at the least in RAM on your computer, and often in your temporary internet files.

Why do people copy and paste this warning when it doesn't mean anything and following what it says means you can't actually look at the website?

Because most people don't understand how computers work?

I don't remember the specifics, but I thought congress did something similar (or attempted to) to protect copyrights. It was something to the effect of them wanting to get rid of caching or something equally retarded.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Tue May 08, 2012 4:41 pm

RobbyPants wrote:
Parthenon wrote: On a similar note, a few times on the internet I've seen websites, often for writers, have a warning that
No part of any of the material on this web-site may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a photographic recording, nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or otherwise copied for private, public or commercial use, reposted, disclosed, or redistributed, without prior written permission from the author or copyright holder(s).
I'm always highly amused because they've just said that no part of the website can be copied for private use, but every single time you look at a website you make a copy of it at the least in RAM on your computer, and often in your temporary internet files.

Why do people copy and paste this warning when it doesn't mean anything and following what it says means you can't actually look at the website?
Because most people don't understand how computers work?

I don't remember the specifics, but I thought congress did something similar (or attempted to) to protect copyrights. It was something to the effect of them wanting to get rid of caching or something equally retarded.

yeah it was good when WotC tried something similar with DDi, and the programmers said that you dont have a copy on your computer when you view a website. in order to READ or VIEW a website you must have a personal copy, that the server outputs to you, and with windows especially there is ALWAYS a cache even when no-cache is used. that is how you can view the page source with just about every browser.

congress definitely doesnt understand how computers work.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Tue May 08, 2012 5:37 pm

RobbyPants wrote:
I don't remember the specifics, but I thought congress did something similar (or attempted to) to protect copyrights. It was something to the effect of them wanting to get rid of caching or something equally retarded.

You're probably thinking of the "transient copy" arguements on DVRs. Look for "Cablevision DVR", because the case had a hojillion plaintiffs.

It's a fairly old principle though, which was established at least by the '70s when radio operators needed licenses to make "ephemeral copies".

koz · Post by **koz** » Sat May 12, 2012 5:10 am

Two very random questions:

1) All the doctors out there: How much do you learn about teeth and dental stuff in general by going through medical school (not specifically training to be a dentist)?

2) To everyone who can answer: I'm doing some brainstorming on a setting. Assuming a roughly Ancient Roman (circa Marian Reforms) tech-level, how many people does it take to support a full-time soldier (or put another way, what percentage of a population at this time could realistically be full-time soldiers)? Also, while I know Rome was BigMcFuckingLargeHuge at one point, what was a more 'typical' city size at around that time?

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sat May 12, 2012 6:05 am

MisterSinister wrote:Also, while I know Rome was BigMcFuckingLargeHuge at one point, what was a more 'typical' city size at around that time?

Rome really is ridiculously BigMcFuckingLargeHuge.

Your typical big cities number in the tens of thousands. There are enough of these that people who don't do a lot of travelling probably only know the names of the closest 2-3, and if you mention one far enough away to the average person you can still get blank looks. Then you have the really big cities like Greece's Athens/Attica, which hit the hundreds of thousands, and you have to go really, really far away to find someone who doesn't know what you're talking about when you mention their name. They are world-shapers in and of themself. Then you have Rome, which is just goddamn ridiculous.

MisterSinister wrote:To everyone who can answer: I'm doing some brainstorming on a setting. Assuming a roughly Ancient Roman (circa Marian Reforms) tech-level, how many people does it take to support a full-time soldier (or put another way, what percentage of a population at this time could realistically be full-time soldiers)?

The militarization rate is not a simple thing to measure because it's not static. There's probably some number which is the 'sustainable militarization rate' where everything balances out, but it doesn't matter because nobody sticks to it when the shit hits the fan. If you need the soldiers, you take the hit to your economy and population to field more soldiers.

I couldn't tell you what the typical rates were, but it was more of an economic thing than a population thing.

Blasted · Post by **Blasted** » Sat May 12, 2012 6:13 am

Pre Marian reforms, you're still mainly looking at citizen soldiery. Soldiers had to pay their own way, supplying their own arms and armour. During the battles of the previous generation, you see reports of soldiers in it for the loot. Post Marian, the wage is 225 Denarii which I believe is around the same as the average labourer. Ostensibly, they could field enormous armies, I believe there were 28 legions of around 3000 each. They would have a pension and land granted by their general following service. The main problem the Romans had was not getting the cash for an army, but the manpower. Hence the Marian reforms.
That's not really helpful, except to say that manpower is cheap, volunteers are hard to find. Something that would get worse for Rome in the following centuries.

Outside of Rome, I'm unaware of any other professional armies in the same area (Maybe Ptolmaic Egypt?, certainly whoever the eastern power happened to be at the time). So most of those would be citizen soldiers, in the case of the 'barbarians' that would be every able bodied man.

'Normal' cities tended to go from 10000 (small rural city/town) to 100000 for large cities (Large metropolis), including surrounds.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat May 12, 2012 7:59 pm

So it seems my desktop just crapped out. It loaded up once today, before freezing the windows, beeping, and freezing the curser.
I turned it off at the tower, started it back up, it got stuck on the Windows loading bar screen. I retried several times, safe mode, normal and last known good configuration, all of which resulted in getting stuck with that little green bar going back and forth much longer than normal, leading me to conclude it cannot fully boot.

I have no boot disk for this computer, because the people who bought it had the store set it up and didn't get the disk, for some dumb reason. The last time something like this happened, I borrowed a disk from my friend, which wound up upgrading it to vista. I have no clue whether that'll work again.

Is there some way for me to hook up my netbook to my desktop and run anti-virus programs that way?

Got my friend to bring over a restore disk, it's all good.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat May 12, 2012 9:32 pm

It's a little hard to sum up the total amount of tooth work you do in medical school. The actual Stomatology course is two weeks long and has an exam. But there's a bunch of stuff about teeth in anatomy, physiology, pathology, ophthalmology, ENT, and neurology.

-Username17

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sat May 12, 2012 10:04 pm

Historically, Rome had the ability to yank an ungodly number of soldiers out of nowhere if they were losing badly. During Hannibal's invasion of Italy, they lost 3/4ths of their entire standing army between the battles of Trebia and Trasmane, then proceeded to rebuild their army rapidly, follow him around for a while looking menacing, lose 3/4ths of their completely rebuilt army at Cannae, and then recruited two new legions and invaded Spain.

For reference, they had ~80,000 soldiers at Cannae, and ~40,000 each for the first two major battles.

That's not even the only war that was decided primarily by Rome's seemingly endless supply of young men with more patriotism than survival instinct.

Now, the typical size of the standing army by the imperial period was between 27 and 30 legions consisting of nominally 4,800-5,000 legionaries and some number of auxiliaries, totaling approximately as many auxiliaries as legionaries according to Wikipedia (though presumably some number of them were on bullshit patrol duty instead of with a legion at any given time).

koz · Post by **koz** » Sat May 12, 2012 10:14 pm

Frank: ENT? Also, isn't ophthalmology to do with eyes? How do teeth come into that?

To all the people responding about Roman legions: Thanks, that was very helpful.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat May 12, 2012 11:01 pm

Took me a bit too, but ENT is Ear, Nose and Throat.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun May 13, 2012 6:16 am

Mister_Sinister wrote:Frank: ENT? Also, isn't ophthalmology to do with eyes? How do teeth come into that?

As Prak said: Ears, Nose, Throat. In Czech it's ORL.

As for Ophthalmology, yes that's the eyes. The connection goes like this:

See, if you have an abscess growing up from your upper row of teeth, that can invade the orbit of the eye fairly easily. Or to put it another way: feel the top of your canine and the bottom of your eye with two fingers. Now pull those fingers back and look at the distance. Now consider that the supporting structures of the tooth go up while the supporting structures of the eye go down.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun May 13, 2012 6:59 pm

How the hell does the Arc Reactor in Iron Man even theoretically work? It's supposed to be this bright, shiny, clean new energy source, but it's never really explained (because the vast majority of viewers would find that boring).

Is it possible that it uses radioisotope decay in some manner?

Ted the Flayer · Post by **Ted the Flayer** » Sun May 13, 2012 7:54 pm

How do you say "horse ass" in swedish?

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Sun May 13, 2012 8:06 pm

Recent topics in thread.

Trademark,
Medicine
History
Military
Comic book pseudo-science
Horse Ass!

Ted: you win.

Ted the Flayer · Post by **Ted the Flayer** » Sun May 13, 2012 10:30 pm

Cynic wrote:Recent topics in thread.

Trademark,
Medicine
History
Military
Comic book pseudo-science
Horse Ass!

Ted: you win.

I post in this thread for the plot.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun May 13, 2012 11:15 pm

I can beat that.
Do vegans spit or swallow?

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Mon May 14, 2012 2:04 am

Ted the Flayer wrote:How do you say "horse ass" in swedish?

Google Translate give me "häst röv".

I have no idea how it translates "ass" though. I get entirely different words for donkey and buttocks, so, who knows?

koz · Post by **koz** » Mon May 14, 2012 3:08 am

Prak_Anima wrote:I can beat that.
Do vegans spit or swallow?

Having dated one, I can say that she swallowed happily. That being said, when we discussed the question further, she told me that she was more of an ethical vegan (i.e. the whole 'ethical treatment of animals' line), and thus, since I wasn't distressed at the time, it was all good.

However, YMMV.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon May 14, 2012 5:03 am

Mister_Sinister wrote:
Prak_Anima wrote:I can beat that.
Do vegans spit or swallow?
Having dated one, I can say that she swallowed happily. That being said, when we discussed the question further, she told me that she was more of an ethical vegan (i.e. the whole 'ethical treatment of animals' line), and thus, since I wasn't distressed at the time, it was all good.

However, YMMV.

This is roughly what I figure, in all seriousness. Still amuses me to ponder, though.

...wait, does that mean some vegans would be perfectly fine with animals dosed with happy pills prior to slaughter?

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon May 14, 2012 5:42 am

Prak_Anima wrote:
Mister_Sinister wrote:
Prak_Anima wrote:I can beat that.
Do vegans spit or swallow?
Having dated one, I can say that she swallowed happily. That being said, when we discussed the question further, she told me that she was more of an ethical vegan (i.e. the whole 'ethical treatment of animals' line), and thus, since I wasn't distressed at the time, it was all good.

However, YMMV.
This is roughly what I figure, in all seriousness. Still amuses me to ponder, though.

...wait, does that mean some vegans would be perfectly fine with animals dosed with happy pills prior to slaughter?

To roughly the same extent that you'd be okay with someone doping people then murdering them. There's a consent element to the reasoning, I imagine.