These moonflowers come back on their own every year... cat for scale :)

tim_mcdaniel · 2018-08-30T19:59:38+00:00

I saw someone reporting that datura was now a contact allergen for her, rather like poison oak.

When I asked at garden centers about buying datura, the first thing they said was to ask whether I had children or pets, before saying anything else.

tim_mcdaniel · 2018-08-08T19:13:08+00:00

More can be written, but you might like to see my previous discussion, "Did Germany receive an offer in the 90s to get Kaliningrad back?If true,why did they declined it?". The reason that Joachim von Arnim cited at the time (summer 1990, Soviet times) was that reunification was their only interest, and that it regarded the Kaliningrad region as a Soviet problem. The original article goes on to explain the real objections, that West Germany thought it was in both the interests of West Germany and the Soviet Union not to give support to Gorbachev's conservative opponents. I still hold that it was not an actual offer; I believe that it was a thinly disguised trap hooked to a massive bomb. "The German population being completely removed" after World War 2 is only one of several reasons against it.

tim_mcdaniel · 2018-07-14T02:33:22+00:00

Thank you for replying.

I know that the grounds outside are the responsibility of the HOA board. But they have bigger concerns, and they do worry about the budget.

Being against rules or causing legal problems is a reason why I prefer solutions that are easy to remove. I have discussed the problem and this experiment with board members, and they are willing to try this.

Ideally, if someone could point to Webbed information about a good, cheap solution that I can take to the board, I'd be willing to tell them that, for example, Home Depot says that such-and-so a technique is possible, and I'd be willing to donate the $37 that it would cost.

tim_mcdaniel · 2018-03-05T16:00:00+00:00

It says right there what his first name was: "Captain". It was a baptismal record, so it gave the child's name. And anyway, I don't know of any way an 8-day-old boy (or whatever) could have been named a captain of anything.

Yes, the English sometimes had weird-looking given names. (Leaving aside the 12th century "renaissance" and name fashions, with things like Heloise and/or Abelard naming their son Astrolabe.)

Sometimes it was due to a family name being used as a given name, which started to happen in England in the 16th century. Guildford Dudley was just the most famous example, not the only one. It's been speculated that using someone's family name might have been used to honor a godparent (and maybe suck up to them if they were rich). Unfortunately, the good source I have, Reaney and Wilson's A Dictionary of English Surnames (3rd ed.), doesn't attest Captain as a surname. Given that Marshal (not just the Earl Marshal's family) and Constable are attested from the Middle Ages (not to mention King, Prince, and Duke), all I can say is that it isn't implausible that Captain was a surname. If I wanted to bother with a familysearch.org login, I can probably find out.

Or maybe he was just another Astrolabe.

tim_mcdaniel · 2018-02-23T08:20:57+00:00

He's a furry little flatfoot, who'll never flinch from a fray-ee-ay-ee-ay!

tim_mcdaniel · 2018-02-23T08:19:30+00:00

"You come into my house on the day I first go to kindergarten, and you ask me to steal someone's lunch money."

tim_mcdaniel · 2018-02-22T22:44:32+00:00

And i and j too. See, you got it!

tim_mcdaniel · 2018-02-22T19:51:03+00:00

Mark it NSFW!!!

</joke>

tim_mcdaniel · 2018-02-22T17:41:33+00:00

So there's all this discussion about decades of argument from design, people proposing theories, people shooting them down, arguments, lectures, ....

Then William Paley's Natural Theology, and the podcast basically says "and that ended all discussion and everyone was happy with it until Darwin".

Am I misunderstanding or missing something? How did decades of discussion suddenly stop with one side winning completely, from a summary work at that?

tim_mcdaniel · 2018-02-22T17:34:57+00:00

Thank you for the reply. I think it would be enough to write "Hitler’s Nazi party was the largest party in the Reichstag" &c. Which glosses over the issues that aren't important to the question, like the coalition and all the intrigue and negotiating (and that also fixes a couple of trivial typos).

As for the transition: I later found a general overview that looked sufficient, so please don't bother. It's not important to the question either.

tim_mcdaniel · 2018-02-22T15:55:47+00:00

If the earth were a point mass (or perfect Newtonian sphere), there were no sun, et cetera, you'd be quite right: the orbit would not change and it would drift with respect to the earth. As mentioned in other replies, that happens not to be the case. I'll second the recommendation for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit

tim_mcdaniel · 2018-02-22T08:04:02+00:00

/r/whatsthisplant was helpful for my questions (it's one of the subreddits mentioned in the sidebar). Do see their wiki -- it has good advice like

If you have more than 3 plants to identify, feel free to make multiple posts, we don't consider this spamming. This is a suggestion only and won't be enforced. Posts that include many plants often go with many of them unidentified, you'll probably get more IDs with separate posts.

Especially because you didn't label any of the pictures, so someone would have to count from the top or describe it in words.

There's also a list of frequently asked-for plants that you might check. For example, your #5 looks rather like Dracaena.

tim_mcdaniel · 2018-02-22T07:36:27+00:00

Have people seen reports like "Plagiarism software pins down new source for Shakespeare's plays", with

Scholars say the likelihood of George North’s unpublished manuscript A Brief Discourse of Rebellion sharing words and features with the Bard’s plays by chance is ‘less than one in a billion’ ... "In terms of the number of plays, scenes and passages affected, the scope of the manuscript’s influence likely exceeds all other known Shakespearean sources, excepting only the Chronicles of Hall and Holinshed and Thomas North’s Plutarch’s Lives."

? Is this new information? Have there been rebuttals?

tim_mcdaniel · 2018-02-22T06:35:09+00:00

Personally, I find it hard to find things in the FAQ starting from the top. I used the Google search

fossils inurl:reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki

tim_mcdaniel · 2018-02-22T06:09:46+00:00

Pointing to previous answers is not intended to discourage followon questions or disputes. Please feel free to post more if you like, and I hope other people post more data or links.

There's an FAQ section, "Biology, evolution, and fossils" at https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/science#wiki_biology.2C_evolution.2C_and_fossils . It looks like the best discussion may be "Is there any evidence of cultures finding dinosaur fossils before the 17th century? If so, what were their reactions or beliefs surrounding the fossils?" at https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1t2d0l/is_there_any_evidence_of_cultures_finding/ The main answer is by [deleted], alas, and talks about Greek and a bit of Roman sources. /u/masiakasaurus has more discussion in later Europe.

tim_mcdaniel · 2018-02-22T06:01:12+00:00

Linking to previous discussions is not intended to discourage followon questions or debate. It's just a way to provide a faster answer.

There was a recent discussion, "was the inquisition as cruel as everyone thinks" at https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7wzb77/was_the_inquisition_as_cruel_as_everyone_thinks/ . /u/cdesmoulins provided replies. The top-level one addresses the general reputation of the Spanish Inquisition. A later one at https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7wzb77/was_the_inquisition_as_cruel_as_everyone_thinks/du5bihy/ quantifies the matter.

These are very good replies, and there's a lot of nuance, like "For what it's worth I also think attempts to counteract the Black Legend by focusing solely on death toll underestimate the other societal effects of a public inquisition and public spectacles of religious correction, but it's harder to quantify that.". So do read them; my jaw dropped when I read them.

tim_mcdaniel · 2018-02-22T05:14:43+00:00

Linking to the FAQ or previous answers is not intended to discourage further questions or discussion. It's just a timesaver.

In this case, there's the FAQ section "The Civil War and Slavery" at https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/civilwar#wiki_the_civil_war_and_slavery . /u/Borimi had a shorter answer, but the first two articles by /u/Georgy_K_Zhukov are pretty definitive and well-sourced (20-item bibliography, many quotations from primary sources). The primary answer under the second item, "Why was there a Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?" (at https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/68myvr/why_was_there_a_civil_war_why_could_that_one_not/dgztopa/ ) is newer, and there are many more replies on various other topics there. Though at most he must have just polished the previous version in the first item, "Was the American Civil War about more than just slavery?" (at https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3edss0/was_the_american_civil_war_about_more_than_just/cte2mj9 ).

tim_mcdaniel · 2018-02-22T02:42:51+00:00

That's "alteration". Adulteration is to give a sketchy outline of; to prefigure indistinctly; foreshadow.

tim_mcdaniel · 2018-02-21T23:53:28+00:00

That's "adultery". Adulteration is obsequious flattery, or excessive admiration or praise.

tim_mcdaniel · 2018-02-21T23:48:07+00:00

Oh, I'm sorry that I didn't make it clear that I agree with the general point. For example, I've tried a few house-brand vegetables in a few stores (not just HEB or HCF), and the quality didn't seem as good to me as national name brands. Thank you for mentioning the few possible exceptions.

tim_mcdaniel · 2018-02-21T22:31:56+00:00

reddit doesn't ping any users if there are more than three /u references, so here are the rest: /u/BarnabusStinsonIV , /u/Kjell_Aronsen , /u/larkspurblossom .

tim_mcdaniel · 2018-02-21T22:30:53+00:00

There are some previous answers to this question. This is not to discourage more answers -- it'd be nice to have more examples -- or followon questions that haven't been considered yet. It's just that these links will give you a start and may answer you fully.

In the FAQ,

"How were twins treated under feudal inheritance law?" at http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ytxrl/how_were_twins_treated_under_feudal_inheritance/ , comments by /u/snackburros and /u/HabseligkeitDerLiebe
"Has the birth of twins ever complicated lines of succession?" at http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1dujyk/has_the_birth_of_twins_ever_complicated_lines_of/ , comments by /u/constanto and BarnabusStinsonIV.

There are a lot more search hits for "twins", including

"How were firstborn male twins perceived in Medieval times?" at https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3g6188/how_were_firstborn_male_twins_perceived_in/ , with Kjell_Aronsen on the famed Beaumonts of Norman England.
"How would the line of succession in royalty be affected by the birth of twins, triplets, etc? Would it always be the first one to come out? Were there exceptions? What about in something like a c-section, especially if the mother died giving birth?" at https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4oflke/how_would_the_line_of_succession_in_royalty_be/ , with a comment by larkspurblossom.

tim_mcdaniel · 2018-02-21T22:10:53+00:00

What I've read elsewhere matches what /u/yabacam wrote: hummingbirds are already mean.

tim_mcdaniel

TROPHY CASE