|
HEY GAL posted:wallenstein's handwriting is good looking and easy to read, and his ink hasn't faded, but everything that comes out of the office of Leopold, Erzherzog of Further Austria, is a goddamned bitch to read i hate it i hate it so much I believe it. 
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2015 19:58
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 08:42 |
|
|
HEY GAL posted:
Good ol' Arulfy Bryuvfjrhsj. Have a page of Fisher:  And one from Beresford: 
Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Oct 27, 2015 |
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2015 19:59
|
|
|
If Fisher was around today he would write like half his mails in all caps.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2015 20:08
|
|
|
your dudes suck, SEXMAN, how did we get worse at writing in a straight line between the 1620s and the nineteen-teens
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2015 20:13
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:Yeah, it's not that medieval Christians didn't want people understanding the bible, it's just that they knew translation is dodgy at best and didn't want people getting the wrong idea. That's how you get hosed up heresies and the like. Translation is fine for conveying meaning, but a lot of the nuances and emphasis can fall by the wayside. When you're discussing the fine points of morality and theology that's a big deal. ...
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2015 20:17
|
|
|
Cathars were right...
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2015 20:19
|
|
|
HEY GAL posted:your dudes suck, SEXMAN, how did we get worse at writing in a straight line between the 1620s and the nineteen-teens something something typewriters something something telegrams something something BACK IN MY DAY
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2015 21:28
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2015 21:56
|
|
|
HEY GAL posted:your dudes suck, SEXMAN, how did we get worse at writing in a straight line between the 1620s and the nineteen-teens Mass literacy has its downsides, I guess.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2015 22:07
|
|
|
What do contemporary historians consider when determining accurate figures for army sizes and casualties? I'm thinking mainly of the classical period here. Is it a matter of splitting the difference between sources? Does demographic or economic analysis factor in? Is it a case-by-case thing, or are there more general "rules of thumb" historians use?
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2015 22:07
|
|
|
There is some kind of neat crop yield/storage analysis modeling that can get you to approximate populations and you can use some decent scale factors for army sizes based on approximate populations. I always get the feeling that people back in the day just used really big numbers (like a thousand, or ten thousand) to mean "a lot of dudes were there" much like the way we use millions and billions today.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2015 22:15
|
|
|
KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:There is some kind of neat crop yield/storage analysis modeling that can get you to approximate populations and you can use some decent scale factors for army sizes based on approximate populations. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. The Greeks had a big THING about recovering the dead, so certainly in small scale engagements if they say "our side had 128 dead and 7 missing" then you can think that that's a pretty good number because they went and pulled 128 bodies off the field and 7 guys were standing around going 'poo poo i can't find my brother, now he's going to go to one of the bad afterlives.' Whereas if they're talking about the otehr side they're going to go 'yeah, we totally killed bunch of their dudes. Like... bunches.'
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2015 22:22
|
|
|
P-Mack posted:If you tried to mill at home they'd confiscate your grinding stone. One monastery paved their walkway with confiscated stones. Keldoclock fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Oct 27, 2015 |
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2015 23:01
|
|
|
Shut the gently caress up Keldoclock.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2015 23:13
|
|
|
the JJ posted:Sometimes yes, sometimes no. The Greeks had a big THING about recovering the dead, so certainly in small scale engagements if they say "our side had 128 dead and 7 missing" then you can think that that's a pretty good number because they went and pulled 128 bodies off the field and 7 guys were standing around going 'poo poo i can't find my brother, now he's going to go to one of the bad afterlives.' Whereas if they're talking about the otehr side they're going to go 'yeah, we totally killed bunch of their dudes. Like... bunches.' Thermopylae would be a perfect example of this wouldn't it? There were exactly 300 Royal Guards there and they killed millions of people! Apparently.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2015 23:14
|
|
|
KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:There is some kind of neat crop yield/storage analysis modeling that can get you to approximate populations and you can use some decent scale factors for army sizes based on approximate populations. In Chinese 萬, wan can mean either "10,000", or "a really big number, guys!" and it's not necessarily clear from context. Some times they just say "many tens of 萬, which narrows it down to somewhere between 200,000 and 900,000, if you take the source at face value. (And then the actual number turns out to be like 15,000.)
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2015 23:41
|
|
|
Hazzard posted:Thermopylae would be a perfect example of this wouldn't it? There were exactly 300 Royal Guards there and they killed millions of people! Apparently. Exactly 300 Spartiates, and like 5,500 Greeks, of which some 4000 withdrew after being outflanked by the Persians. But yeah, that's a pretty classic example.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 00:08
|
|
Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
|
the JJ posted:Sometimes yes, sometimes no. The Greeks had a big THING about recovering the dead, so certainly in small scale engagements if they say "our side had 128 dead and 7 missing" then you can think that that's a pretty good number because they went and pulled 128 bodies off the field and 7 guys were standing around going 'poo poo i can't find my brother, now he's going to go to one of the bad afterlives.' Whereas if they're talking about the otehr side they're going to go 'yeah, we totally killed bunch of their dudes. Like... bunches.' As we've seen with Eastern Front kill numbers, this is pretty common in modern warfare, too. You know exactly how many your side lost, because it's important to keep track, but your estimates for the enemy dead range from hilarious to impossible.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 00:28
|
|
|
HEY GAL posted:your dudes suck, SEXMAN, how did we get worse at writing in a straight line between the 1620s and the nineteen-teens Thankfully most official records were mostly typewritten. Of course then you get ink that's faded all to hell and paper so thin you can see the next couple pages through it. The most shocking part? Both those pages I showed you? Perfectly comprehensible to me without squinting. ArchangeI posted:If Fisher was around today he would write like half his mails in all caps. God yes. He would have fit right in on the internet circa 1997. All 72 point fonts and random capitalized words. And I love him so drat much for that fact. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Oct 28, 2015 |
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 01:11
|
|
|
Keldoclock posted:There it is. I knew the accounts I was reading were missing something, but I didn't know enough about the culture to see it. I guess they all just assumed the readers would know. When I was thinking about this idea of being unable to grind your own flour, I felt this instinctive sense of disgust. Then I realized what it really was- slavery in the form of thirlage. Thralls, serfs, call it whatever you like, a man who can't eat without permission is a slave. Since you live in 2015 CE, you are several times more dependent on another guy's labour/capital for your meals than a medieval farmer. Pointless adolescent posturing like this is why people instinctively find your posts repulsive. hth P-Mack posted:In Chinese 萬, wan can mean either "10,000", or "a really big number, guys!" and it's not necessarily clear from context. Chinese military histories always seem to play fast and loose with hard fact. Some Chinese "battles" are actually month-long campaigns, sometimes they're just narrative devices, and sometimes all the missing and deserted soldiers just get attached to a minor skirmish and we're supposed to be believe that 50,000 soldiers died assaulting a tiny outpost in the Gobi.gfnjk
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 01:26
|
|
|
cyberbug posted:I grew up in a Lutheran country and I think I was told that the clergy did this because they didn't want anyone being able to even try to challenge their absolute authority as the mediators between man and god (and all the perks that came with it, such as being able to sell indulgences). England did have a period where owning a bible was punishable by death, so I can see why American Protestants would have that notion that Catholics don't want people to have bibles.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 04:30
|
|
|
That's what I was taught when I was doing basic history in school. In Ireland. In the late 90's.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 04:37
|
|
|
Arquinsiel posted:That's what I was taught when I was doing basic history in school. In Ireland. In the late 90's. Northern or Republic of? Is Irish public education sorta anticlerical?
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 05:15
|
|
|
I... was not publicly educated. Jesuits told me this. In the Republic.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 05:36
|
|
|
Oh, well, the Jebbies, what do you expect
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 05:37
|
|
|
Arquinsiel posted:I... was not publicly educated. Also, does public school mean in Ireland what it does in Britain or what it does in America?
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 06:21
|
|
|
Arquinsiel posted:I... was not publicly educated. Now I'm extremely confused. Millers were one of those natural monopolies, in that the lord built them, then got one guy to run. Everyone loathed that guy, because he could cut your flour with, idk, milled acorns or something. Basically a drug pusher... or a sausage manufacturer using that sweet, sweet "pink slime". Nobody liked the baker, either.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 06:30
|
|
|
Why is milling wheat so important for an army? If you really needed to couldn't you just boil the grain and eat it like rice?
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 06:36
|
|
|
Squalid posted:Why is milling wheat so important for an army? If you really needed to couldn't you just boil the grain and eat it like rice?
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 07:03
|
|
|
Squalid posted:Why is milling wheat so important for an army? If you really needed to couldn't you just boil the grain and eat it like rice? Wheat can be made into porridge or bread. I'm not fully educated on the nutritional differences between the two, but I think a lot of it has to do with culture and prestige. Simple gruel is a poor man's food, less expensive than properly made bread. Bread is also easier to transport, as you can make loaves or hard crackers but can't easily transport barrels full of porridge unless you plan on cooking it fresh every time you need rations.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 07:05
|
|
|
I'm only on like page 126 but I just wanted to say that I read Shattered Sword on the (repeated) advice of many goons, and it was awesome. I especially liked the discussion of Japan's command structure/personality issues and how it contributed in so many ways to the defeat, it's an angle I hadn't properly considered before. The analysis of bomb impacts was also fascinating from a perspective of ship construction and damage control - that one bomb (and one near-miss that damaged steering) effectively doomed the Akagi, for example, was kind of horrifying.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 07:07
|
|
|
Coucho Marx posted:I'm only on like page 126 but I just wanted to say that I read Shattered Sword on the (repeated) advice of many goons, and it was awesome. I especially liked the discussion of Japan's command structure/personality issues and how it contributed in so many ways to the defeat, it's an angle I hadn't properly considered before. The analysis of bomb impacts was also fascinating from a perspective of ship construction and damage control - that one bomb (and one near-miss that damaged steering) effectively doomed the Akagi, for example, was kind of horrifying. One big pickup I found with that book was how the problems faced by other parts of the axis were mirrored (though they arose independently) in the IJN, though this wasn't laid out in the text. There's this narrow band of appropriate conditions, inside which the boat/tank/whatever would be quite effective. However, once you get out of that band, effectiveness drops off drastically and soon gives way to catastrophic failure. Like a tank that brews up when turning while reversing or a boat with probably 50 men who have any clue about even basic firefighting.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 07:22
|
|
|
FAUXTON posted:There's this narrow band of appropriate conditions, inside which the boat/tank/whatever would be quite effective. However, once you get out of that band, effectiveness drops off drastically and soon gives way to catastrophic failure. Like a tank that brews up when turning while reversing The hell tank was that?
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 07:23
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:The hell tank was that? Sounds like the Panther, combine a badly over-stressed engine and transmission with porous fuel lines and you get a machine that tries to kill itself via immolation fairly often. Two of them caught fire just trying to disembark from a train before the battle of Kursk.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 07:38
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:The hell tank was that? I want to say it was the Panther but I could be wrong. Ol' Firebug Ferd had a hand in a lot of very bad design choices.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 07:48
|
|
|
FAUXTON posted:One big pickup I found with that book was how the problems faced by other parts of the axis were mirrored (though they arose independently) in the IJN, though this wasn't laid out in the text. I always got the feeling that it stemmed more out of tactics and the aggressive nature of the Axis powers - they expected to be on the offense a lot of the time, so had less to fall back on doctrine-and-leadership-wise when forced into any other role. Look at Phillipine Sea: outnumbered in every way, the IJN still tried to go for their 'decisive battle'. I guess it was to some extent, in the end, just not in their favour. The rest, I thought, came down to design and operational quirks. Most IJN carriers had unarmoured decks and awful firefighing capacity. The Mitsubishi Zero was a lethal fighter that rewarded elite piloting skills - but even elite pilots can't avoid every bullet, and the Zero took hits like a wet paper bag, so losses were inevitable. They didn't put much stock into scouting, since every plane scouting was a plane that couldn't attack you gotta be attacking all the time attack attack ATTACK And it's not like the Allies are innocent in this regard, either. Many USN carriers had unarmoured flight decks too, and they lost some because of it. The M3 Lee was pretty sucky, I'm sure the problems with American torpedoes have been covered already by someone in the thread, and a whole slew of planes and other vehicles were just crap when WW2 kicked off.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 07:53
|
|
|
ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:The most shocking part? Both those pages I showed you? Perfectly comprehensible to me without squinting. edit: most official records i read are written by professional secretaries, and those dudes are great. nice looking writing that's easy to read. all the big officers have secretaries too, but in this culture if you write something with your own hand it's more emotionally meaningful so the stuff that's most important to them is least legible HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 08:35 on Oct 28, 2015 |
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 08:31
|
|
|
Coucho Marx posted:The rest, I thought, came down to design and operational quirks. Most IJN carriers had unarmoured decks and awful firefighing capacity. The Mitsubishi Zero was a lethal fighter that rewarded elite piloting skills - but even elite pilots can't avoid every bullet, and the Zero took hits like a wet paper bag, so losses were inevitable. They didn't put much stock into scouting, since every plane scouting was a plane that couldn't attack you gotta be attacking all the time attack attack ATTACK Ahem, a wet paper bag can at least tolerate exposure to flames, unlike the Mitsubishi Zero. Unless you mean said paper bag is wet from AvGas? v  v
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 08:47
|
|
|
Coucho Marx posted:And it's not like the Allies are innocent in this regard, either. Many USN carriers had unarmoured flight decks too, and they lost some because of it. The M3 Lee was pretty sucky, I'm sure the problems with American torpedoes have been covered already by someone in the thread, and a whole slew of planes and other vehicles were just crap when WW2 kicked off. The whole 'unarmoured flight deck' thing is a bit misleading, because its sometimes put across (usually by British people) that 'hurf durf stupid Americans didn't think to armour their flight decks, stupid yanks.' When in fact it was a conscious decision to have an unarmoured flight deck and allow a double stacked hangar, thus allowing a bigger aircraft wing and more CAP fighters. Prevention is better than cure and all that. Also, while it's impressive that HMS Illustrious could survive an absolute pounding from kamikazes and stay afloat, she had half as many planes as an Essex class and those planes were not nearly as good as American carrier planes. Plus there's the minor fact that the kamikazes had cracked the ships superstructure so she had to go in for major repairs anyway As for the M3 Lee that was nothing more than a stopgap while the Sherman was developed. IIRC the method of casting a turret large enough for what was needed for the Sherman was still being developed, so a big enough gun was stuck on a sponson on a decent automotive chassis and sent out. It performed fine in North Africa, the Soviets hated it because they already had something better.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 11:08
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 08:42 |
|
|
Grand Prize Winner posted:Also, does public school mean in Ireland what it does in Britain or what it does in America? Same as America, a state run school. cyberbug posted:I grew up in a Lutheran country and I think I was told that the clergy did this because they didn't want anyone being able to even try to challenge their absolute authority as the mediators between man and god (and all the perks that came with it, such as being able to sell indulgences). If you received an education in Ireland at any point from the early medieval up to the time of the hedge schools then you were at least familiar with Latin so if you wanted to read a bible you probably could. My guess is that there were professionals around who's job was to do the bible stuff so why bother. The clergy in Ireland only really becomes a significant factor after the destruction of the Gaelic noble class in the 17th century, and reach the kind of unchallengeable power we used to associate with them in the 19th century.
|
|
#
?
Oct 28, 2015 11:20
|
|