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xthetenth posted:I'm pretty confident in saying there's a considerable amount more behind that book than that. It doesn't read like a popular understanding of history, the popular understanding of history doesn't beat up on Japanese ships for requiring rebuilds to not get wrecked by heavy seas for example, it doesn't tend to criticize small missile boats for having bad sensor fits, and it doesn't tear into things for not having a clear strategic role and rationale. The fact that he lumps H.M.S. Polyphemus and U.S.S. Katahdin together does not inspire confidence at all. They were vastly different ships built for vastly different purposes and had next to nothing in common except a general similarity of appearance.
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Apr 6, 2015 01:46
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Is there a time limit on how long you can stay? Well supposing that you had to return to the same exact moment you left, you would want to stay only long enough that you're aging wouldn't significantly detract from the rest of your life after you returned. So that's something you can determine based on your personal feelings on the matter.
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Apr 6, 2015 01:53
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Does drinking count as interacting? If so, the period I study.
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Apr 6, 2015 01:57
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Juno Beach, D-Day
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Apr 6, 2015 01:59
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HEY GAL posted:Does drinking count as interacting? If so, the period I study. Think like the invisibility stuff in that one TNG movie. Just executed a lot more effectively and without plot holes.
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Apr 6, 2015 02:00
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V. Illych L. posted:The 1968 Paris Spring was not that far away from outright overthrow of de Gaulle. People forget about it a lot these days, but it was a danger taken very seriously at the time, and successfully navigating out of it is what made Pompidou's career. Didn't De Gaulle basically coup the 4th Republic? Like they were having some political crisis over Algeria and he was like gently caress this, I'm in charge now, write me a constitution with a powerful presidency that's immune to prosecution please.
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Apr 6, 2015 03:58
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Juno Beach, D-Day It's well-documented. I'd want to pick a time and place that isn't, such as the pre-contact Aztec empire. If I could take videos, I think it's important enough that I'd be willing to give up decades of my life to watch everything from the Arawak culture around 1490, the contact with Columbus and subsequent genocide, and then spend time observing pre-contact Aztecs and the fall of the empire.
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Apr 6, 2015 04:07
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Kanine posted:If you had a time machine that could only travel back in time and return once, and you could only observe and not interact: what is the one time and place you would want to go back to? Baghdad, 1257 AD. I'd give my eyeteeth to see, and more to record, all that I could from the grand library before the Mongols destroyed it all.
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Apr 6, 2015 04:15
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Cythereal posted:Baghdad, 1257 AD. I'd give my eyeteeth to see, and more to record, all that I could from the grand library before the Mongols destroyed it all. The Library of Alexandria before it was destroyed.
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Apr 6, 2015 04:20
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Chamale posted:It's well-documented. I'd want to pick a time and place that isn't, such as the pre-contact Aztec empire. If I could take videos, I think it's important enough that I'd be willing to give up decades of my life to watch everything from the Arawak culture around 1490, the contact with Columbus and subsequent genocide, and then spend time observing pre-contact Aztecs and the fall of the empire. There's a reason it's personal preference  
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Apr 6, 2015 04:21
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chitoryu12 posted:The Library of Alexandria before it was destroyed. The House of Wisdom in Baghdad was quite possibly bigger. It was the center of learning in the Islamic world during the Islamic Golden Age. Survivors said the Tigris ran black and red with ink from all the books thrown into the river and blood from the scientists and philosophers killed.
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Apr 6, 2015 04:31
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:The fact that he lumps H.M.S. Polyphemus and U.S.S. Katahdin together does not inspire confidence at all. They were vastly different ships built for vastly different purposes and had next to nothing in common except a general similarity of appearance. I just basically called it a political hit piece. I'm pretty sure they got lumped together as ships that got passed by by the times because what made them work was based on something that changed. It's very weird and backwards considering the title, but it seems like the ships are chosen more to illustrate various ways the ship design process can fail than actual bad ships (a lot of why I thought it was really meant for political impact with a sensationalist title). After all, as one of the main influences likes to say, a source without context is dirty paper. Incidentally, in another discussion, the subject of the RN engineering staff's decline in status and lacking sufficient numbers of experienced designers and British ship design came up, do you know much on the subject of WWI-WWII Royal Navy internal politics and engineering? And I don't care when I go back to, but I'm coming back with Lives of Famous Whores. Jokes aside I think the best I could do is to do my best to turn myself into a pre-Colombian Rosetta Stone. xthetenth fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Apr 6, 2015 |
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Apr 6, 2015 04:33
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The Indus River Valley. Any info I bring back will tell something new, easiest job ever.
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Apr 6, 2015 04:40
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Agean90 posted:The Indus River Valley. Any info I bring back will tell something new, easiest job ever. Part of the reason I want to go back to try to pick up pre-Columbian linguistics is because it'd be something incredibly lucrative but also because it'd be something that'd pretty quickly show that it worked and back itself up. Any idea on how not to become another theory on the subject even if you're right?
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Apr 6, 2015 04:44
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Kanine posted:If you had a time machine that could only travel back in time and return once, and you could only observe and not interact: what is the one time and place you would want to go back to? You guys are missing the point. If you could really do this, the real thing to do would be to try to break the machine and learn about time. The most obvious thing I can think of is to turn the machine to the earliest time it can go and see what happens. xthetenth posted:Part of the reason I want to go back to try to pick up pre-Columbian linguistics is because it'd be something incredibly lucrative but also because it'd be something that'd pretty quickly show that it worked and back itself up. Any idea on how not to become another theory on the subject even if you're right? Trivial, just find their graveyards and trash dumps and mark them down on a map, then talk to some geologists to see where that volume of dirt is now. If nothing else you greatly increase your credibility. Of course, I think that simply presenting recordings of speech to linguists specializing in the current dead and dying languages of the continent would be sufficient in your case. Keldoclock fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Apr 6, 2015 |
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Apr 6, 2015 04:45
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You know, this would be an interesting question to track against all the various academic disciplines, not just historians. A biologist for instance would probably want to either go back to see dinosaurs, or to the primordial soup to observe the beginnings of life. A physicist would probably want to go all the way back to the Big Bang. An astronomer would probably pick any period with interesting but badly-documented cosmic phenomena. An engineer, maybe go back to Tesla to see what the hell he was on about with some of his wackier claims. And so on!
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Apr 6, 2015 04:52
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chitoryu12 posted:The Library of Alexandria before it was destroyed. Go back and copy Lives of Famous Whores
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Apr 6, 2015 05:09
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I can't think of anything particularly valuable to the advancement of knowledge. I want to ride shotgun with Stanhope Ring and yell at him for a while for getting hopelessly lost.
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Apr 6, 2015 05:16
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Keldoclock posted:You guys are missing the point.
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Apr 6, 2015 05:24
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Kanine posted:If you had a time machine that could only travel back in time and return once, and you could only observe and not interact: what is the one time and place you would want to go back to? Does not interacting mean I can't be killed?  pre-history, but whatevs. If I have to stick to actual history, it'd probably be the Aztecs during the fall, or late Republican Rome, just to see how well we actually understand the most studied period in ancient history. While I'm there, copy Lives of Famous Whores and watch a legion fight.
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Apr 6, 2015 05:26
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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A lot of you would get pretty squeamish the first time you have to crap in a pot. But I'm sure it just gets easier and easier.
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Apr 6, 2015 05:57
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im pretty sure wiping your rear end with your hand would cause more problems After all, what is a toilet but a pot with running water?
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Apr 6, 2015 06:01
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Cythereal posted:Baghdad, 1257 AD. I'd give my eyeteeth to see, and more to record, all that I could from the grand library before the Mongols destroyed it all. 200 books of Arabic puns.
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Apr 6, 2015 06:04
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Agean90 posted:im pretty sure wiping your rear end with your hand would cause more problems They use their shirttails.
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Apr 6, 2015 06:09
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cheerfullydrab posted:A lot of you would get pretty squeamish the first time you have to crap in a pot. But I'm sure it just gets easier and easier. Is this an intentional dysentery joke?
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Apr 6, 2015 06:14
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cheerfullydrab posted:A lot of you would get pretty squeamish the first time you have to crap in a pot. But I'm sure it just gets easier and easier. You've never been on a long hike and felt the call? It really isn't so bad.
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Apr 6, 2015 06:24
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Agean90 posted:im pretty sure wiping your rear end with your hand would cause more problems I feel like I might get red text'ed for this, but wiping your rear end with your hand is only as bad as the lack of soap and running water and the modern nail clipper.
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Apr 6, 2015 06:31
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PittTheElder posted:You've never been on a long hike and felt the call? It really isn't so bad. I've been on some quite long trips in the woods. Milhist answers about time travel, go to all the sleepy villages and farms that had incredibly decisive battles on them, buy the land for very little, then travel forward in time to an appropriate place where you can sell the land to people who want to set up hotels and tourist attractions and stuff. Or to governments who want to build monuments. edit: this strategy only works when you'll be assured that a legal framework enabling you to keep your legal title to the land will exist after whatever horrible battle happens on it
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Apr 6, 2015 06:42
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People remember the stipulation of you being invisible and essentially a ghost, and only being able to go back and forth once.
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Apr 6, 2015 06:56
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Amelia Earhart's plane on her final voyage. Because D-day is a bad choice apparently.
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Apr 6, 2015 08:51
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Wheres the guy with the admittedly male nipples text? Cuz I bet I know where he'd like to go.
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Apr 6, 2015 09:19
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I'd go back to late 1930s Germany with a modern camera and a male and a female prostitute and prove once and for all what was Hitler's skin colour and sexual orientation.
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Apr 6, 2015 10:13
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Hogge Wild posted:I'd go back to late 1930s Germany with a modern camera and a male and a female prostitute and prove once and for all what was Hitler's skin colour and sexual orientation. Don't forget to count his balls.
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Apr 6, 2015 10:19
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If I had to pick just one, I'd be following Gaius Marius on the campaigns that made the man.
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Apr 6, 2015 10:29
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I'd go to Yalta summit and see if Churchill really did assassinate Stalin by slipping poison into his pipe. All photos of Stalin after February 1945 have his face wrinkles a little smoother, suggesting he was replaced with a body double.
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Apr 6, 2015 10:44
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JaucheCharly posted:If I had to pick just one, I'd be following Gaius Marius on the campaigns that made the man. This but Julius Caesar in Gaul and after. I'd consider saying Napoleon but we already know a poo poo load about that with much greater certainty.
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Apr 6, 2015 10:47
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The Mongol Invasion into Europe would also be something to behold.
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Apr 6, 2015 11:05
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Amarna, during the eponymous period.
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Apr 6, 2015 11:13
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sullat posted:Didn't De Gaulle basically coup the 4th Republic? Like they were having some political crisis over Algeria and he was like gently caress this, I'm in charge now, write me a constitution with a powerful presidency that's immune to prosecution please. Well, sort of. The 5th Republic emerged during the reaction phase to the algerian crisis, as you say, with De Gaulle basically stepping forwards and presenting himself as a saviour of the country (again), basically sacrificing the French colonial empire and parliamentary supremacy in favour of domestic political stability. A bunch of leftie intellectuals (most prominently one Jean-Paul Sartre) were furious, but there was nothing they could do - the implicit threat of a military coup was hanging over everyone's heads, and people trusted De Gaulle. Sartre's essay "The Frogs who Demanded a King" is very good reading, and it's set almost precisely at this juncture. So, yeah, a kind of soft coup. French political history is weird.
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Apr 6, 2015 11:20
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Right next to Donald Trump, as he types in the PIN for his bank account.
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Apr 6, 2015 11:37
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