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TheIllestVillain posted:Pashtunistan and Afghanistan mean the exact same thing, Afghan and Pashtun can be been used interchangeably. As for the Pashtun nationalist concept of Pashtunistan (or Loy Afghanistan), the redrawn Afghanistan gives you a pretty good idea of what it would look like. No they don't. Pashtuns make up slightly less than half the population of Afghanistan. Tajiks represent another quarter of the people, with smaller minorities rounding it out. Why Afghans tend to realize that a Pashtun gets to be in charge, Afghanistan is no Pashtunistan.
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Feb 7, 2013 02:02
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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GreenCard78 posted:Maybe within the next century Africans will experience nationalism or another ism in which tribal and ethnic conflicts stop or decrease because people now see each other as from whatever country instead of whatever smaller group. The idea of who fits what groups will change (see ethnic Hans) and we'll have a new context to operate in. This indeed. At the end of the day, ethnicity is a pretty fluid concept (especially when skin color is largely removed from the equation), and given that these countries have really only existed for one or two generations, I think it's entirely plausible that people will start to define themselves by country rather than tribal ethnicity. Especially in places that can escape large scale civil violence, and establish good stable governments.
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Feb 26, 2013 19:51
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It must be some measure of soot in the air. Radiation wouldn't really hurt global crop growth much at all I don't think.
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Apr 11, 2013 17:47
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Panas posted:After 20 years working in a mine you can retire at 45 with a full pension if you happen to be a miner in the Rhineland. So not all coal mines are poo poo. It's hard work no doubt, but not everyone can work in an office.  Sounds like Socialism to me. Next thing you'll be telling us your government won't allow the coal mining companies to create a subsidiary that operates only one old mine, but is responsible for paying all the pensions of everyone who worked at the parent company.
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Apr 17, 2013 19:37
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Either that, or some bizarrely out of place marker for Diego Garcia.
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May 1, 2013 00:55
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Crowsbeak posted:
If it's anything like way too many Canadian reservations, it's because they have rampant substance abuse problems that basically nobody will ever do anything about because it's mostly our fault and we don't want to admit it, they have massive levels of unemployment and are miles away from anywhere with a growing economy or valuable land since these were the places we were going to let them keep, they have little to no control over their finances and no leverage to induce additional government spending, the governments are corrupt as all hell because they have no accountability to the band membership and the higher authorities don't want get bogged down sorting things out, and continue to suffer discrimination at the hands of non-natives outside their reservations. It's a goddamned tragedy, and I doubt it's about to get fixed any time soon. As always of course, there are big exceptions to that description.
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Jun 11, 2013 05:35
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I knew life on Reservations was bad, but those numbers are like what I would expect of the worst parts of Zimbabwe. Seriously what the hell is wrong with this country? Although I'll gladly use these stats when ever some libertarian racist shitheel says they don't deserve what little the Feds give them.
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Depending on who you talk to, it's the Slovenes, Croats, Bosniaks, Serbs, Montenegrins, Kosovars, Albanians,
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Jun 17, 2013 19:10
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It means there isn't a single polity they could draw there. Various tribal confederations, nomadic pastoralists, or just areas we might not know enough about, etc.
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Jun 18, 2013 21:29
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They've left the borders in Normandy and the Welsh Marches fuzzy in the 1100 one as well, almost certainly to show the instability in the borders. Don't know why that's cleared up by 1200, those two areas in particular were still just as chaotic as they'd been in 1100. Really, a lot more of those borders should be fuzzed.
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Jun 18, 2013 21:51
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Phlegmish posted:Look at that bulge, it's nowhere near China. What's their justification? Everybody is trying to claim these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_China_Sea_Islands Particularly the Spratlys, since it's suspected there's oil underneath them.
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Jun 20, 2013 19:35
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I take it the orange bit in the Austrian-Silesia zone is Krakow?
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Jun 21, 2013 17:11
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Is that supposed to be Europe ruled by an inexplicably undefeated Napoleon?
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Jun 30, 2013 07:46
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It makes about as much sense as "The Three Sicilies" and Mega-Belgium (gods drat you Alt-History writers) or a breakaway Janissary state, who somehow control Constantinople but not any of Anatolia.
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Jun 30, 2013 21:54
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Kainser posted:It honestly makes sense if you read the timeline. The three Sicilies is the result of the Bourbon King of Naples doing extremely well during a Spanish Civil war and then people started calling it Three Sicilies and the name kinda stuck. But why the hell is it called Three Sicilies? Two makes sense, since there used to be two Kingdoms, but where the hell is a third Sicily going to come from? I mean, I could read it, but I won't. It'll just make me angry. quote:The Janissary Sultanate was the result of a recent long civil war which left one faction in control of the European part and the other of the rest and neither side had the resources to cross the Aegean. The Janissary state is obviously not very viable in the long run. Crossing the Bosporus is pretty damned easy though. It doesn't make a lot of sense as a border, since either side will really want to control both sides of the Sea of Marmara. Otherwise it's relatively useless to you. quote:Most alternate history is just terrible nationalistic stuff, but this one is actually kinda okay. You can't judge an alternate history only from a map. Well, what I hate about most alt-history isn't the common raging nationalism, it's the fact they're rarely plausible in the slightest. So many scenarios start trying to be as different as possible for the sake of being different, which makes it utterly useless as a tool to reflect on real history.
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Jul 1, 2013 05:23
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Pretty much. Was a Russian protectorate since the 1870s. But it was still ruled locally, and said rulers weren't toppled until the 1920s.
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Jul 2, 2013 21:31
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icantfindaname posted:They basically took a map of what religion was in the majority in each county or whatever, drew a line between muslim and hindu and declared that the muslim counties were now their own country. Also notable is the case of Jammu and Kashmir. Kashmir, which had previously been ruled by the Sikhs, was arranged to be sold to the ruler of the largely Hindu princedom of Jammu in 1846. The idea being to create a buffer state between the Raj and the Sikh state (in what we now call Pakistan), but that quickly became something of a waste of time when the Sikh state collapsed just two years later. Nevertheless, J&K was allowed to continue as a princely state subject to the Raj. Fast forward to 1948, when the Raj is being partitioned and given independence. As part of the deal, all the princes of the Raj (hundreds of them) were being given a choice as to whether they would accede to either Pakistan or India. For most it was pretty much a non-question, but J&K was right on the border. The religious makeup was about an 80-20 split, with the 80 being Sunni Muslims, the 20 being mostly Hindu, but with tons of stuff mixed in there. Those Hindus were all the ruling elite, members of the high end Brahmin caste. The lower folks had all rushed to convert to Islam when it arrived in India to escape their lower status, yet were still mostly peasants, as authoritarian princedoms are generally not renowned for their social mobility. The British authorities made it abundantly clear on multiple occasions that the Maharaja (Sir Hari Singh) should accede to Pakistan, since his state was overwhelmingly Muslim. Of course, as a Hindu, he had no intention of doing that; immediately after securing control, the Pakistani authorities would almost certainly oust him from power. On the other hand, he had no intention of acceding to India either, since the Indian Congress had made it very clear that the princes of the Raj were not going to be left to run their fiefdoms going forward. Instead, Singh planned to go it alone, despite pretty much everyone around pointing out that this made no sense, and neither Pakistan or India would go along with it. In the end, he continued to sit on the fence until a bunch of Muslim mountain tribes - probably with the backing of Pakistan, but also not the official Pakistani military - launched their own little jehad to try and free their Muslim compatriots from the rule of a Hindu prince. Singh begged the Indians to pull his rear end out of the fire, which they did, which wound up with both the Indian and Pakistani militaries involved. Oddly enough, both sides were still being commanded by British generals who cooperated with their respective civilian authorities. Pakistan wound up in charge of most of the country, and that control has remained largely unchanged until this very day.
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Jul 3, 2013 04:31
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ComradeCosmobot posted:It's worth noting that India also didn't tolerate the flip side and basically conquered a state that had the opposite problem (Muslim ruler, Hindu subjects) that tried to stay independent. They sure did. And stormed their way into Goa in 1961 too.
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Jul 3, 2013 05:18
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khwarezm posted:Argh, Ireland, your meant to be the only independant Celtic nation and yet you still speak less Irish than all of the other ones still crushed by the colonial oppressers, pull it together! Meh, the English have successfully oppressed the world into speaking their language. No reason for Ireland to shoot itself in the foot now.
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Jul 5, 2013 04:00
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khwarezm posted:Well if you see it like that have the Welsh blown both their feet off already? Language is an important part of national identity and its depressing that Irish is so weak especially since some of the other Celtic languages are comparatively strong. Even Breton with its decades (centuries?) of been stomped on by the rest of France is livelier than Irish. Ras Het posted:Ah yes, bilingualism is completely pointless and unnecessary. I got nothing against bilingualism; I wish I spoke French so that I converse with half the folks in Quebec. But I don't think there's value inherent in this or that language. The world would be an easier place if we all just spoke one language - preferably English, because I already know that one.
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Jul 5, 2013 06:06
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a bad enough dude posted:Working hard for a goons.txt mention eh? Not particularly. I've just never heard a good reason why amongst a group of people, two languages would be better than one.
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Jul 5, 2013 06:41
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Jerry Cotton posted:If someone really wanted to make English the Universal language the most difficult bit, as I see it, would be deciding which English. Yeah, that's the important part. I don't think a universal language throughout the world is a realistic outcome anytime soon. There would be tons of dialects that wouldn't disappear, because you're still dealing with people in a local group. I was watching a documentary about Liberia not too long ago, and even though they're all technically speaking English, the accent made it drat near unintelligible to me without subtitles. Renaissance Robot posted:Because languages contain culture. The value inherent in language is the stored information about the way a group of people think about themselves and the world, because of how they've unconsciously chosen to name and talk about things, and how the language has evolved with the people over time. Well sure, but (random example) if everyone in China decided that they were going to speak German from now on. They begin massive education programs to get everyone speaking the new language. Would there really be much of a loss of culture from that shift? I wouldn't expect there to be one. Concepts that are expressed in one language can always be expressed in another, or even the old word kept and slotted into the new language. English has tons of that.
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Jul 5, 2013 17:32
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swamp waste posted:ARE YOU loving WITH ME???? Before we talk about speaking or even parsing language, have you noticed all those weird symbols on Chinese food cartons and the neon signs on the Hong Kong levels of cool action video games? "Nah, not much of a loss," you say, distractedly shoveling three and a half thousand years of cultural production into the loving garbage So the symbols themselves are important as well now? If all English speakers (or all writers of languages using a Latin alphabet I suppose) decided to switch from our current Latin alphabet to some new (let's say completely invented alphabet), does that make Latin characters cultural trash? Because I don't see why it would.
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Jul 5, 2013 22:14
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Yeah, there would be zero reason for a large ship to stop off in Hawaii during a journey from Asia to North America, or vice versa. Happened a lot back in the 19th century (there was a good triangle trade going, and not despicable like that other one), but ships are far more capable these days.
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Jul 12, 2013 21:19
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rzeszowianin 44 posted:The significant shipping density north of Norway and south of Greenland is unexpected. It's shipping into/out of Murmansk, which is actually ice-free year-round thanks to the peculiarity of ocean currents.
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Jul 13, 2013 06:01
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rzeszowianin 44 posted:The Tartars settled in the Eastern part of the Polish Crown in exchange for military service, so when you think Tartars think Western Belarus and Western Ukraine. What are you talking about? There were certainly some settled thusly, but the vast majority of Tatars that still identify as such are in Russia, mostly east of the Volga.
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Jul 13, 2013 17:16
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Ah, fair enough then.
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Jul 13, 2013 18:00
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texaholic posted:
That certainly is loaded. But the legend is so terribly worded I don't know whether to be horrified or not. Still pretty sure I should be; if more than 10% of people chose to prevent 9/11, the world is broken. Oh, it's some internet poll. Still horrifying, but at least it's not actually representative of anything.
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Jul 15, 2013 23:35
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steinrokkan posted:I bet some of the Middle Eastern responders chose their answer because 9/11 hurt them personally: brought a new wave of violence and to the region, and made global opinion on Muslims more hateful, so it was more significant for them than a genocide committed on another continent by people of another generation. Or maybe I'm just optimistic. Yeah, I assumed that's why the Arab countries swung that way. I am surprised at the level of solidarity though; places like Egypt I would think would have been rather removed from any of the American flailing in the time since 9/11. If Iran had been included there might be some possibility of a crazy holocaust denying element, but most Iranian folks do actually seem quite a bit more grounded than the public face of their government. Pakistan I would totally understand, since the politics around Afghanistan and the Taliban have messed their country up something fierce. No idea what Jamaica is on about.
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Jul 16, 2013 00:31
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I think Israel and Egypt actually get on reasonably well these days. So I kind of doubt that's it. Although it could certainly be the spergiest anti-semites who found their way to this poll.
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Jul 16, 2013 06:24
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Trench_Rat posted:edit: isnt Vietnam mostly catholic? Not even close. It's like 7% Christian, probably nearly all of those are Catholic. That's a big part of the reason why the Vietnam War went the way it did. Ngo Dinh Diem, the President of South Vietnam, was a Roman Catholic, and insisted on only promoting Catholics, and removing Buddhist flags from everything, and also lots and lots of nepotism and corruption in general. The U.S. were more than willing to back him anyway, since at least he wasn't a communist, but their support of a guy who was doing everything he could to piss off the peasantry didn't exactly endear the U.S. to the population of South Vietnam. Diem actually wound up being assassinated pretty early into the war and replaced with a military junta, but that was lead by a guy equally corrupt, and who was believed to have converted to Catholicism for political advancement.
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Jul 16, 2013 19:42
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texaholic posted:Also I keep seeing articles like the one you linked. Texas will be changing a lot over the next couple of decades, I wonder how it all ends up for us. Electing Democrats. 
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Jul 17, 2013 02:50
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ComradeCosmobot posted:Hussites were the proximate cause of the [Thirty Years] war... Say what?
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Jul 31, 2013 22:57
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Bishop Rodan posted:As a bonus, this it what the Chinese thought the people of "Daqin" looked like: You know, that's probably not far off the map. That's fairly plausibly what a high-status priest/Bishop in the Christian (at least Catholic, I assume also Orthodox) church would have looked like. Minus the bowl of coral.
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Aug 1, 2013 22:43
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Grand Fromage posted:How the Romans eventually got their own silk industry going under Justinian is a fun story worth looking up. Secret agents! Is it as ridiculous as how a clearly Scottish guy pretended to be Chinese somehow and thus stole the secrets of the Chinese tea industry?
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Aug 4, 2013 20:33
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wdarkk posted:Why are Texas and Texas Caucus are different colors? Because I don't think the delegates are actually bound to vote for the people chosen by the electorate. That's why the last Republican primary had tons of idiots trying to get delegates elected who would actually just vote for Ron Paul. But I'm not American, so I don't follow these things super-closely, and I might be way off base there.
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Aug 5, 2013 06:38
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Phlegmish posted:It is interesting to me that everyone assumed Antarctica existed, and it's even more interesting that they were right. Tons of people saw how much land there was in the northern hemisphere, and just assumed that there had to be a missing continent or two in the south, if only to make sure the Earth was balanced. They were right, but for all the wrong reasons.
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Aug 5, 2013 21:26
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KernelSlanders posted:I don't follow this. Somewhere, there is a center of mass of the Earth. If you draw any plane intersecting the center of mass exactly half of the mass must lie on either side of the plane, no? Yeah, I think you're right about that, but that's absolutely no guarantee that the mass will be in the form of land (ie. not covered by water). e: I should also point out that the vast majority of the land is in fact in the Northern hemisphere: 
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Aug 5, 2013 22:44
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Randandal posted:Well it's better than Mercator but I think it might still be.... eh, never mind. Yeah, I realize the flaw in that I don't think that projection preserves area, but  Here's an equal area map for anyone who's curious. Northern hemisphere is where it's at, land area-wise. 
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Aug 6, 2013 20:38
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Randandal posted:Actually the flaw I was going to point out was the vast land area that is completely absent. Yes, I suppose that's important too.
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Aug 7, 2013 00:10
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Lord Hydronium posted:The politics of map projections Obligatory supplementary material: What your favorite map projection says about you. And, Why are we changing maps? Personally I think we're overdue for scrapping Mercator. The emphasis on preserving bearings is kind of stupid, since it's almost never the shortest route to get somewhere. Shortest distance is instead given by geodesics, or if you're some sort of rube who hates math or thinks the Earth is a sphere, by Great Circle. Vegetable posted:Great post, Lord Hydronium. Does this mean globes are generally accurate for areas and stuff? Are there ways a globe can be biased? Yes, they are, within the tolerances involved of course. You could bias a globe by making it inaccurate, or a weird shape, but all the projection issues come from transforming a round-ish 3D shape into a flat one. If you dispense with that, half the work is done for you. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Aug 9, 2013 |
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Aug 9, 2013 22:00
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