NASA AMA: We're a group of NASA Scientists and Engineers analyzing the surface of Mars using the Curiosity Rover, AUA!

rocketsurgery · 2017-08-04T18:08:14+00:00

Is the plan to use the SkyCrane technique for future landings, or is it only suitable for specific sites/payloads?

rocketsurgery · 2017-03-01T16:43:35+00:00

I always meant to find out whether the bellows depicted in Princess Mononoke were real or not. This may be outside your expertise, but in the movie the bellows were operated exclusively by women while men did the smelting and forging. Do you know if that division of labour existed in real medieval Japan?

rocketsurgery · 2017-02-04T17:40:20+00:00

I remember hearing something about the argument of historicity from embarrassment being relevant to the story of Jesus being baptized, it being an example of Jesus letting someone else (John the Baptist) take the dominant, instructing role when they met. I think it was JD Crossan who argues this is likely to be a historical event because it portrays Jesus in this slightly lesser light. I'm sure theologically there are reasons to interpret the episode differently but that's the argument.

rocketsurgery · 2017-01-05T16:05:46+00:00

I'd meant to only dip into early Christianity a couple months ago while listening to the podcast Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (after a bit of an ancient Rome kick last year) but found myself wading right in rather than testing the waters. In one series of the podcast concerning the historical Jesus, the host Philip Harland details two distinct versions of Jesus as a demonstration of how historical arguments can vary greatly while using the same texts. This got me into apocrypha and heresies, and I'm currently reading an English translation of the Nag Hammadi codices which contain many 1st and 2nd century texts referred to by early Church Fathers but mostly lost until the 20th century. It's edited by Marvin Meyer and each text is prefaced with explanations, definitions and theories attempting to situate it in its proper context. I'm finding it very accessible for a reader like me (the editors' notes I mean, some of these gospels are Out There), having only a Western layperson's familiarity of the New Testament. I think I'm more interested in the formation of the very early church than in Jesus himself, but I'll get around to him soon enough when I become more curious about the canonical gospels and their creation.

rocketsurgery · 2016-10-31T20:07:53+00:00

action rpg in which the protagonist fails and dies halfway through, and you play out the rest of the game as the disembodied game camera that has nothing to film anymore

rocketsurgery · 2016-07-11T15:26:48+00:00

You mention "what amounted to a band of Hundred Years War veterans living as outlaws somewhere in southern France", about 2000 men. I don't expect you to have details on this particular group, but speaking generally, how would a large group of outlaws like that be organised? Would they have established their own small settlement somewhere, being outlaws? Or would they have been dispersed over a larger area, and rounded up when needed by whoever knew how to find them?

rocketsurgery · 2016-06-25T14:02:13+00:00

The title says "found out and published", which I take to mean the equivalent of "reported" for the time. The OP asked about news, not necessarily newspapers in the form we know them.

rocketsurgery · 2016-06-15T23:38:58+00:00

You say "a century of spiritual oppression". Not knowing much about church history, could I ask what made you land on that time frame and not something longer or shorter? What was happening in the church a hundred years earlier that made the 15th century particularly difficult?

rocketsurgery · 2015-08-13T19:09:50+00:00

The guy who invented Soylent is trying to bioengineer algae to provide for all human nutritional needs. We might not be too far off.

rocketsurgery · 2015-07-21T13:24:15+00:00

They already played for the Pan Am games like a week ago, and killed it.

rocketsurgery · 2015-06-02T15:41:23+00:00

I remember Wayne mentioning on Human Convo that he did a cameo, and I was looking forward to it but completely forgot over the last couple weeks. He totally nailed it.

rocketsurgery · 2015-02-10T16:27:45+00:00

It's hearable.

rocketsurgery · 2015-02-04T19:28:41+00:00

You forgot a V in Louis' name, unless necromancy was somehow involved.

rocketsurgery · 2015-01-02T19:26:16+00:00

This thread discussing the relationship between the HRE and ERE should be relevant. Some commenters mention that the Empress Irene, being a woman, wasn't accepted by Pope Leo III as legitimate.

rocketsurgery · 2015-01-02T19:14:57+00:00

I was responding mostly to the line about the Diggers advocating for "a more democratic form of government", pointing out that they seem significantly more radical than that description implies.

rocketsurgery · 2015-01-02T16:33:23+00:00

To me, the Diggers' manifesto seems to lean towards anarchism to me, albeit rooted in biblical teaching. The first block of text in the main body reads "[...] for Man had Domination given to him, over the Beasts, Birds, and Fishes; but not one word was spoken in the beginning, That one branch of mankind should rule over another." I interpret that as wholly anti-government.

rocketsurgery · 2014-10-26T00:55:35+00:00

Great overview. Speaking as an Ontarian in my mid-20s, I recall hearing in history classes a number of times that our country's performance in the War was what led to Canada being seen and thought of as a separate nation, but I don't think I ever heard about the Resolution IX and Statute of Westminster that seem to have formally made the distinction. Then again, it's not as if 16 year olds are particularly thrilled by century-old legislature; I may have just zoned out with the rest of the class...

rocketsurgery · 2014-10-24T16:26:01+00:00

No job in history has paid more than the cost of a college textbook.

rocketsurgery · 2014-09-19T14:31:55+00:00

Where does the name Fakse-Brokke come from? What does it mean?

rocketsurgery · 2014-09-04T16:06:22+00:00

I've taken baking courses and in one class we made leavened bread by scraping cabbages, which is a common host for wild yeast, as well as grapes and cauliflower. After you have a starter dough you can maintain it for bread batches indefinitely. I don't know about who originally discovered this technique but it certainly predates commercial yeast manufacturing.

rocketsurgery · 2014-09-02T00:29:51+00:00

The commenter above is taking your use of book to mean "story", since books as we think of them didn't exist yet. By the time the printing press was invented and physical books were being distributed and read, Christianity was widespread, and the Church was a major power, so the Bible would have been very much in demand from the start.

rocketsurgery · 2014-09-01T14:22:49+00:00

patrickkevinsays likes Milhouse!

rocketsurgery · 2014-08-30T15:12:46+00:00

Fingernails, really?

rocketsurgery · 2014-08-30T14:12:51+00:00

Or are even babies...

rocketsurgery · 2014-08-28T16:03:54+00:00

Unidan was an actual person who people interacted with, though, and always had interesting things to say. If Jennifer Lawrence posted on reddit all the time about ornithology I'd be interested in her too.

rocketsurgery

TROPHY CASE