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Admiral Joeslop posted:I figured no one had actually lead an army in a long time, if ever. I guessed most of it was similar to Obama and Bush; LBJ picking specific targets is not what I expected. The Whiskey Rebellion. Washington was president and led an army into Pennsylvania in that capacity, but there wasn't any real fighting.
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Dec 10, 2016 17:45
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Admiral Joeslop posted:That's similar to America's army in some ways, isn't it? The President is Commander in Chief but can't declare war without Congress yet Congress can declare without the President. How much actual leading have Presidents done since WW2? Roosevelt was heavily involved in WW2; was it mostly just diplomacy and choosing which Generals? It's a bit different because our constitution isn't as defined as the US one. Broadly speaking it's: The Crown is the commander-in-chief of all British forces. The technicalities of this are laid out by BalloonFish above. The Prime Minister, through the use of royal prerogative i.e. powers reserved to the Crown and exercised by the PM, has the power to declare war. The actual declaration is done by the Crown still I think (we haven't done this since WW2, mind - even in Iraq and Afghanistan we didn't actually declare war on anyone) but it's at the Prime Minister's behest, much like dissolving Parliament. Parliament has no formal powers in this area. However, since the Iraq War, Prime Ministers have generally asked for Parliamentary assent before they approve military action. At this point it's on the way to becoming a convention, and a PM who tried to declare war without consulting Parliament would be on a sticky wicket and unlikely to stay PM that much longer.
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Dec 10, 2016 18:03
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Corrode posted:It's a bit different because our constitution isn't as defined as the US one.  ???
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Dec 10, 2016 18:25
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Ignore this, didn't see thread had updated and the questions I posed were already covered.
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Dec 10, 2016 18:41
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Another fun historical English land law fact: a lot of the modern counties of England were independent kingdoms in the first millenium AD, and so the counties have flags and mottos and all that poo poo that date from that period. The county of Kent's motto is "Invicta", with the explanation being that of all the former kingdoms of England Kent was alone in being "undefeated" during the Norman conquest, which makes for a nice motto but is a little misleading as the reason Kent was undefeated was that there wasn't any fighting: the king of Kent just let the Normans roll on through in return for securing more favourable terms under Norman rule. I read about it last year sometime so take my half-remembered sources with a big grain of salt, but the historical documents actually back up this story, which is largely folk history: Kent was indeed ruled under different terms than a lot of the other former kingdoms in England, and it was legally property of the crown by right of gavel rather than sword; that is to say, it was given legally rather than taken through force.
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Dec 10, 2016 19:46
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System Metternich posted:...why would the British Army arrest the PM in France? They are irredentists who don't recognize France's claim to Normandy.
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Dec 10, 2016 22:31
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Red Bones posted:Another fun historical English land law fact: a lot of the modern counties of England were independent kingdoms in the first millenium AD, and so the counties have flags and mottos and all that poo poo that date from that period. The county of Kent's motto is "Invicta", with the explanation being that of all the former kingdoms of England Kent was alone in being "undefeated" during the Norman conquest, which makes for a nice motto but is a little misleading as the reason Kent was undefeated was that there wasn't any fighting: the king of Kent just let the Normans roll on through in return for securing more favourable terms under Norman rule. I read about it last year sometime so take my half-remembered sources with a big grain of salt, but the historical documents actually back up this story, which is largely folk history: Kent was indeed ruled under different terms than a lot of the other former kingdoms in England, and it was legally property of the crown by right of gavel rather than sword; that is to say, it was given legally rather than taken through force. The dates for this don't add up. The last real king of Kent died ~200 years before the Normans showed up, and Kent was already relegated to being a sub-kingdom of Wessex (and of Mercia before that). The various kingdoms and sub-kingdoms were gradually united into the Kingdom Of England by the time of Alfred the Great, who was also dead long before the Norman invasion. By the time William and his French friends arrived the kingdom of Kent hadn't existed for over 150 years. Edit: The flags and mottoes aren't from the days of the pre-English kingdoms either. That kind of heraldry didn't catch on until later and the various flags and coats of arms for the different kingdoms were made up several hundred years after the fact. Sweevo has a new favorite as of 11:45 on Dec 12, 2016 |
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Dec 10, 2016 23:53
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An actual fun historical fact - 'sticky wicket' comes from cricket, where a wet wicket (the space between the sets of stumps) meant balls bounced less and seemed to stick to the ground. This makes batting harder, and sometimes there's no good choice of shot because of the stick, hence 'batting on a sticky wicket' - in a position with no good options.
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Dec 11, 2016 00:26
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skasion posted:The Whiskey Rebellion. Washington was president and led an army into Pennsylvania in that capacity, but there wasn't any real fighting. I believe he led it a short bit and then turned over to Alexander Hamilton, after which he turned a blind eye to Hamilton's soldiers mistreatment of Americans. This kinda matters because it was Hamilton's tax they were enforcing.
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Dec 11, 2016 01:57
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Sweevo posted:The dates for this don't add up. The last real king of Kent died ~200 years before the Normans showed up, and Kent was already relegated to being a sub-kingdom of Wessex (and of Mercia before that). The various kingdoms and sub-kingdoms were gradually united into the Kingdom Of England by the time of Alfred the Great, who was also dead long before the Norman invasion. By the time William and his French friends arrived the kingdom of Kent hadn't existed for over 150 years. Yup. The "Invicta" origin story is local folklore about how the Kentish farmers scared off William the Conqueror by marching against him wielding cudgels. It grew out of the fact that partible inheritance was common in Kent even after the Norman Conquest, at which time primogeniture already was or became the normal rule of inheritance in the rest of England. In fact all the land ownership in Kent was considered to be subject to partible inheritance by default until 1925. So presumably this was some sort of concession from William, or else he just didn't care, nobody really knows. I will say the idea of William the Bastard being run off by a bunch of stick-wielding Saxon farmers and doing nothing about is pretty hilarious, given that a couple of years later he devastated the absolute gently caress out of Yorkshire to bring Edgar Aetheling under control. Fifty years later a chronicler wrote: quote:To his shame, William made no effort to control his fury, punishing the innocent with the guilty. He ordered that crops and herds, tools and food be burned to ashes. More than 100,000 people perished of starvation. Dodgy medieval math there but yeah, William wasn't one to knuckle under.
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Dec 11, 2016 02:55
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Shbobdb posted:They are irredentists who don't recognize France's claim to Normandy. The Queen is still Duke of Normandy. Even though it's centuries since the English had any lands there.
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Dec 11, 2016 06:28
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FreudianSlippers posted:The Queen is still Duke of Normandy. Even though it's centuries since the English had any lands there. She is just a pretender anyway. The Provinces of Britannia and Gaul rightfully belongs to Pope Francis, until such time as he crowns a new Western Emperor 
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Dec 11, 2016 06:34
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FreudianSlippers posted:The Queen is still Duke of Normandy. Even though it's centuries since the English had any lands there. Technically, the Channel Islands were part of the Duchy of Normandy, and remain under British rule - that's why they're legally Crown Dependencies, not part of the United Kingdom.
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Dec 11, 2016 06:41
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This got me curious so I dug up the wiki article on Liz II's full span of titles. This one is interesting:quote:- Nebraska, US TapTheForwardAssist has a new favorite as of 08:13 on Dec 11, 2016 |
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Dec 11, 2016 07:53
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Allow me to embrace my tour guide roots and share with y'all a (frankly far too lengthy and hella  ) story which helped me chose my career path, and is also frankly inspiring in a way. I was reminded of it today and feel like sharing it because not a lot of people know about this dude who saved back-to-back moon missions.So let's set the stage: it's November 1969, the launch of Apollo 12. I feel bad for these guys (Conrad, Gordon, and Bean in the capsule) because they were situated between the most historic endeavour of human history (Apollo 11) and the essence of American ingenuity and problem solving (13). Anyways, this rocket launches in a bit of a rainstorm, and it's going up and about 36 seconds into the flight something happens, causing everything electrical in the spacecraft to just loving poo poo itself. Pete Conrad comes over the radios and gives a super lengthy list of all the warning lights he's seeing. All the electrical systems on the vehicle fall onto one single dude in Mission Control, callsign EECOMS, and today it was this nerdy dweeby 26 year old (average age in mission control) kid named John Aaron. His job was to figure out what went wrong, if it can be fixed, and how to convey that solution to the crew in about the time it took to read this sentence. But because all the electrical systems are messed up, the telemetry coming from the spacecraft was garbage. Aaron saw a pattern in this data, though, and it was a pattern he'd seen before. A year prior, after a failed simulation, Aaron went home and on his own traced back the source of that pattern of garbage data and discovered it could be fixed by flipping an obscure switch in the rocket: Signal Conditioning Electronics from NORMAL to AUXILIARY, or SCE to AUX for short. So the Flight Director asks Aaron, "EECOMS, what do you see?" expecting a call to abort the mission, to which he replies "FLIGHT, try SCE to AUX." No one loving knows what he's talking about. They try it anyways and it goes up to Pete Conrad in the capsule, "Try SCE to AUXILIARY." Conrad, being Pete Conrad, simply replies "SCE to AUX? ... The hell's that?" Al Bean finds the switch over his shoulder, puts SCE to AUX, it works, and they nervously laugh their way to orbit and have a great mission. The thing that caused the spacecraft's electrics to poo poo the bed? Turns out it got struck by lighting... twice. Aaron went on to become sort of a folk hero at NASA from that call. He cemented his spot as a Steely-eyed Missile Man with Apollo 13 by working with the crippled spacecraft's power system and rationing it out to make sure the crew got home safely. gently caress yeah, space.  eta: If you want, here's the Flight Director's loop from that launch, so you can hear this whole exchange in real time, T-0 at 5:15 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T3pUuNl80k Spaced God has a new favorite as of 09:06 on Dec 11, 2016 |
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Dec 11, 2016 08:53
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We can't stop now, we're going to space today 
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Dec 11, 2016 09:02
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Bertrand Hustle posted:Some of it is. 2009 marked the 65th anniversary of the Normandy landings. There was a commemoration in Normandy and the Queen was not invited. Obama then worked with organizers to secure Her Majesty an invite, and it was reported that French officials said she was "welcome to attend". The initial outrage over her not being invited, outrage which a bit of cursory research shows to be mostly confined to the pages of the Daily Mail (and those bastards eat, sleep, and breathe outrage), was explained in several ways: Clearly Sarkozy just wanted to be the highest ranking royal figure at the shindig.
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Dec 11, 2016 09:03
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Spaced God posted:Allow me to embrace my tour guide roots and share with y'all a (frankly far too lengthy and hella I've read the full mission transcripts for Apollo 11, 12 and 13 but this never really stood out to me so thanks. There's so much going on and these guys (both mission control and the astronauts) are such cool customers that it's hard to differentiate between business as usual and poo poo hitting the fan.
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Dec 11, 2016 10:21
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theroachman posted:I've read the full mission transcripts for Apollo 11, 12 and 13 but this never really stood out to me so thanks. There's so much going on and these guys (both mission control and the astronauts) are such cool customers that it's hard to differentiate between business as usual and poo poo hitting the fan. Glad I could help! A lot of the stuff for 11 and 12 was backroom poo poo that you'd need to really know about in order to realize that something was off-nominal. This is a good way to segue into another Apollo story. My favorite instance of that was during Apollo 11's landing (here's a cool site to follow along with this story) when they almost ended in tragedy for like eighty different reasons. First thing that happened was for about the entirety of the descent, the comms and telemetry from the LEM was ratty as hell so they had to chase the signal through the steerable antennas. This happened right before a few of the critical GO/NO-GO moments which could jeopardize the whole mission, but luckily the data came back for just long enough for the mission control to make a decision. Anyways, once they're in the landing burn Armstrong and Aldrin start seeing the guidance computer spit out a fuckton of errors, mostly CODE 1201 and 1202 which meant the computer couldn't handle all the tasks it was doing so it would just drop the lowest priority ones in favor of things like "oh god don't loving pancake." Obviously the computer dropping tasks is a very bad thing, so the GNC crew had to figure out whether that was a cause for abort. Some folks in the back room remembered during a sim where they had 1200 errors and aborted, but later realized that they could probably have managed to land, so they quickly called to press on to land. Turns out the cause of the errors was actually because Buzz Aldrin tried to be too safe. For fear of the ensuing panic if a landing abort was called, he kept the rendezvous and docking radar active during the landing process. The computer struggled to compute the data from both the docking radar and the landing radar, so it just sorta collapsed. Margaret Hamilton and her team of programmers establishing a task hierarchy to fall back on when the computer was overloaded is the only reason Apollo 11 landed. Another thing that hosed up was a push of air from the undocking procedure put the LEM downrange, throwing Eagle into a boulder field. Armstrong took manual control and landed with about 27 seconds of fuel left. A mandatory abort would have been called if he went under 10 seconds. And then, while taking off their spacesuits after the EVA, someone broke the "GET OFF THE MOON" switch (ignition switch for the ascent engine). So Apollo 11, the biggest triumph in human history, lifted off the moon when a felt tip pen was jammed into a circuit by Buzz Aldrin to ignite the engines. Aldrin still has the pen  Sorry if I write too much, I can give obscure space fuckup stories for days
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Dec 11, 2016 10:38
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Spaced God posted:And then, while taking off their spacesuits after the EVA, someone broke the "GET OFF THE MOON" switch (ignition switch for the ascent engine). So Apollo 11, the biggest triumph in human history, lifted off the moon when a felt tip pen was jammed into a circuit by Buzz Aldrin to ignite the engines. Aldrin still has the pen It was the engine arming circuit breaker that broke, not the ignition switch. When Buzz poked the switch with a pen, the engine didn’t light immediately, but if he hadn’t poked it, the ignition switch wouldn’t have done anything when the time came to press it. e: second row, seventh column:  That’s from Apollo 12’s Intrepid (LM‐6), but Apollo 11’s Eagle (LM‐5) was basically identical—except for the broken knob, of course. The panel is on the right side of this composite image: 
Platystemon has a new favorite as of 12:44 on Dec 11, 2016 |
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Dec 11, 2016 10:54
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hackbunny posted:Ancient history? Some telemetry data from the Apollo missions, which we haven't even finished studying, has been lost forever because the tapes were erased and reused. Even when we save absolutely everything (e.g. the remaining Apollo telemetry), we have no good way to know what was saved, and where. Who knows if we'll still have the means (e.g. tape readers, the original software or at least the data format documentation, etc.) to read the data when we need it The tapes containing the episodes Monty Python's Flying Circus was almost erased by the BBC and was only saved because Terry Jones smuggled the tapes out of their offices.
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Dec 11, 2016 11:57
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There are still people trying to restore the original cut of Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons, even though the only known reels were deliberately destroyed by studio officials, in probably the single most harmful act in the history of American cinema as far as its consequences are concerned.
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Dec 11, 2016 12:58
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steinrokkan posted:There are still people trying to restore the original cut of Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons, even though the only known reels were deliberately destroyed by studio officials, in probably the single most harmful act in the history of American cinema as far as its consequences are concerned. I don't know the Ambersons story (or film), what were the consequences?
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Dec 11, 2016 13:11
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The Ambersons were meant to be the magnum opus of Welle's career, a higly personal movie in which he would fully use the experience he gained during the shooting of Citizen Kane, but after he had finished his version, he left for Brazil and started working on another project. The film was then subjected to audience testing, and it was decided that it would need to be completely reworked to have a happy ending and a simplified narrative. At that point began a war between Welles and the studio, in which W. was at a distinct disadvantage, being basically stuck at a place where he didn't even have a reliable phone line, and so his objections to changes being made on his footage went unanswered, and changes were made deliberately in violation of his wishes. So the movie was largely reshot by a new director, and the conflict between Welles and producers led to the cementing of Welles' reputation as far too difficult to work with, and something of a persona non grata of Hollywood because the studio effectively ran a low key smear campaign against him, meanwhile Welles himself was soured by his experience and lost much of his will to keep making movies with established companies. In summary The Ambersons led to Welles falling out of grace and struggling on verge of personal bankrupcy throughout the majority of his career, the cinematographic posterity lost what could have been a more influential film than Citizen Kane in terms of stylistic and narrative choices, and movie executives won a cornerstone battle that empowered market-research-driven movie making over film auteurs. steinrokkan has a new favorite as of 13:37 on Dec 11, 2016 |
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Dec 11, 2016 13:35
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Spaced God posted:Sorry if I write too much, I can give obscure space fuckup stories for days As a latent space nerd, I encourage you to continue.
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Dec 11, 2016 18:13
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theroachman posted:As a latent space nerd, I encourage you to continue. From the website for an Apollo Guidance Computer emulator: quote:Prior to the descent of Apollo 14's LM to the lunar surface, a short in the LM control panel caused the abort switch to be triggered intermittently. If this actually happened during the landing, an abort would have automatically occurred (meaning that the lower stage of the LM would have been jettisoned and the upper stage would have blasted back into space). No landing would have been possible, and the astronauts would have faced the grave situation of needing rescue by the command module. It was therefore necessary, in the orbit or two before descent, for the some of the software designers to work out a fix for this problem that allowed a software lockout of the abort switch during the initial phase of the descent, but also allowed reenabling the abort switch later in the descent, in case the astronauts needed to use it. They did, in fact, work out such a fix. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is this: Work out such a fix and send it to me. Remember, your fix can only involve erasable memory, since the core-rope containing the program cannot be altered. The fix needs to be keyed in at the DSKY by the astronauts. You have about 90 minutes to figure it out. Go! https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/#Final_exam_for_the_advanced_student_
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Dec 11, 2016 18:18
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Hello everyone, I am cross posting this from the Making Games thread, because it is historical in nature and I figure this thread might enjoy it. I have been doing a research project on the 19th century Detroit red light district called the "Potomac Quarter". For a lark as a side project I turned some of my research into an RPG Maker game, Potomac! This is a historical simulation of a real 19th century Detroit prostitute. It has some procedural generated scenarios, as well as permanent death (just like real life!) making it a rogue-like. You play a scenario over the course of 10 weeks, and must try to survive the mean streets of 1880 Detroit! Based on real historical documents, find clippings from the 1880 Detroit Free Press! Collect companions and items to assist you. At the conclusion of 10 weeks (if you survive!) you score is calculated. This game is designed like a Euro board game, you are meant to try for as high a score as possible! You must decide which weekly activities gain the most value, and adjust your strategy based on the luck of the streets. Potomac V1.0 Download available here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/no6312obg6a0x4g/Potomac+V1.0.rar      
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Dec 11, 2016 18:23
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Goons, goons never changes. This is an antique cumvase: It was used by the members of The Most Ancient and Most Puissant Order of the Beggar's Benison and Merryland, Anstruther (which was basically a literal circeljerk).
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Dec 11, 2016 18:26
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Alhazred posted:Goons, goons never changes. This is an antique cumvase: gently caress, my family is from Anstruther. I need to know if any of my ancestors were a member now.
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Dec 11, 2016 23:14
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Captain_Person posted:gently caress, my family is from Anstruther. I need to know if any of my ancestors were a member now. Maybe ask to swab it for DNA? 
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Dec 11, 2016 23:48
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Captain_Person posted:gently caress, my family is from Anstruther. I need to know if any of my ancestors were a member now. You did that on purpose
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Dec 12, 2016 00:18
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At least there's no My Little Pony toy in it.
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Dec 12, 2016 02:30
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Angry Salami posted:Technically, the Channel Islands were part of the Duchy of Normandy, and remain under British rule - that's why they're legally Crown Dependencies, not part of the United Kingdom. That makes me wonder, has France at all ever express a desire or interest at getting those back in modern times?
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Dec 12, 2016 02:33
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e X posted:That makes me wonder, has France at all ever express a desire or interest at getting those back in modern times? Why would France want a couple islands full of Englishmen?
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Dec 12, 2016 03:23
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Rutibex posted:Why would France want a couple islands full of Englishmen? annoying england is the french national pastime
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Dec 12, 2016 04:30
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France explicitly recognized English sovereignty over these islands in the Vienna treaty of 1815. Not that we wouldn't try to start poo poo there if we stopped having other ways to mess with UK, but we are not exactly short on subjects nowadays.
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Dec 12, 2016 07:39
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That antique cumvase reminds me of this story Paul McCartney liked to tell about how, in the 1950s when they first were getting to know each other, John Lennon would ruin the group wanking sessions that were apparently a normal thing among young British guys in that era
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Dec 12, 2016 08:14
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Rutibex posted:Why would France want a couple islands full of Englishmen? Until recently (like the late 19th century) the majority of islanders spoke a dialect of Norman instead of English, and on some of the islands French is still employed in some legal and ceremonial circumstances. The Channel Islands only really became anglicised after the war.
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Dec 12, 2016 08:31
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Rutibex posted:Why would France want a couple islands full of Englishmen? Squabbling over lifeless rocks in the ocean is a time honored past time of all nations through the ages!
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Dec 12, 2016 12:36
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System Metternich posted:Until recently (like the late 19th century) the majority of islanders spoke a dialect of Norman instead of English, and on some of the islands French is still employed in some legal and ceremonial circumstances. The Channel Islands only really became anglicised after the war. war era pic from the channel islands:  From wiki: Anticipating a swift victory over Britain, the occupiers experimented by using a very gentle approach that set the theme for the next five years. The island authorities adopted a similar attitude, giving rise to accusations of collaboration. However, as time progressed the situation grew gradually worse, ending in near starvation for both occupied and occupiers during the winter of 1944-45. Liberation arrived peacefully on 9 May 1945. And good old Churchill was being himself: "Let 'em starve. They can rot at their leisure", it is not clear whether Churchill meant the Germans, or the civilians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_occupation_of_the_Channel_Islands Hogge Wild has a new favorite as of 13:06 on Dec 12, 2016 |
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Dec 12, 2016 13:03
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