April Pieces Of My Mind #2

But really, isn’t skraeling common knowledge?

It might be in Scandinavia, but not in the US, and an author with that name is unlikely to be Scandinavian (he's more likely to be American or Canadian). I know of that term because Jared Diamond mentions it in Collapse--one of the reasons the Greenland Norse died out (and the Vinland colony was abandoned) is that they were consistently hostile to the natives, who reciprocated that feeling. But I hadn't encountered the term before reading Diamond.

It sounds like there is plenty of reason to criticize the novel in question, but applying the term skraeling to a spider-like killer robot isn't one of them. My ear tells me that this word might be cognate with the English word "scrawny", and I can understand somebody applying that word to a spider-like killer robot.

enjoyed the Rothfuss novels, waiting for the third one: though the anguished superhero did become a little tiresome. John Scalzi who did like the book, upon picking up the first of them:
"I have to admit that while first looking at the book I felt it had three strikes against it: First, it was another one of those damn thick fantasy books (derisive emphasis on “thick,” not “fantasy”); second, it was labeled as the first of a trilogy, which meant I was going to have plotus interruptus; third, in the first few pages it had characters eating a hearty stew, which in fantasy is one of your red flags that here there be cliches, arrr."
plotus interruptus is very frustrating.

I took skraeling to mean the skinny weird and frightening alien/foreigner, seemed approximately appropriate. Last encountered it in Nancy Farmer's Sea of Trolls trilogy, which is recommended though will probably irritate you even more than Rothfuss..

Good point on the troubadors, never occurred to me before.. human beings have an endless capacity for self-delusion I guess.

Thanks Doug!

"But really, isn’t skraeling common knowledge?"

I knew it. How common are we talking about?

I confess I never made any linguistic connection to scrawny or skinny though. I think I looked it up once and figured it meant people who wore animal skins, but to me it just evoked a word for "Alien" or "the Other" in a pejorative sense.

"probably based on the Old Norse word skrá which meant "skin" ... The proto-Inuit ... as well as other indigenous people whom the Norse Greenlanders met, wore clothes made of animal skins, in contrast to the woven wool clothes worn by the Norse." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skr%C3%A6ling#Etymology

I can kind of understand “My religion is better than yours”, but how any Christian can argue that one brand of it is more pleasing to God than the others is incomprehensible.

I understand that you don't have a lot of so-called evangelicals in Sweden (or in most of Europe, for that matter). We have too many of them here in the US, and too many who want to impose it on everybody else. That attitude invariably leads to "My kind of worship is better than your kind," and frequently continues to "Kill them all, let God sort them out." Or as Monty Python put it, "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" The actual teachings of that radical rabbi Yeshua bin Yosef don't seem to play any role here. See also the Sunni vs. Shia schism in Islam, or Wahabism vs. less austere interpretations of the Quran. It's the same sort of deal.

It's ridiculous. People shouldn't be allowed to have group identities -- ethnic, religious or otherwise.

Well you can feel *partly* bad for me, because ALT-Backspace is a new one on me.

Personally I feel bad for people who don't know what Windows-E does. Mind you, in vanilla Windows 8 it probably doesn't work any more; it most likely opens an exciting range of apps in shiny flashing colours. Grumble grumble usability grumble grumble.

I use Win-M a lot and sometimes Win-L. Dunno about Win-E.

Re: no complex machines: But they do have printed books, therefore large, complex machines. Also, a wind or water mill is a large, complex machine. Just because it's made of wood doesn't mean it isn't a machine. (I'll admit I gave up about half way through the first book.)

i understand that Christianity might look like a group identity from outside. But from the Old Testament (Cain &. Abel) to the New (the "widow's mite" story) God/Jesus was always pointing out that some of His followers did it better than others. You know Christianity itself started as a sect within Judaism that split off and its history ever since has been one of sectarian splits led by people convinced they knew how to please God better than their fellows in the same pews. It's the nature of the thing, particularly among Protestant faiths that stress the authority of the individual conscience or inner light.

Let's not forget about the Redo yin to the Undo yang: Ctrl+Y ;-)

"In a Medieval world where to my knowledge there are no machines"
I understand your irritation, but sometimes it is hard for the writer to communicate with the reader without using concepts that were unknown, or only known to a very small group of people in the period mentioned. I come across it sometimes in the "Garrett, PI" novels.
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“My religion is better than yours” -I start every day by logging in to "Dispatches From The Culture wars" by Ed Brayton.
It provides a hilarious and scary catalog of the activities of Fundigelicals and other nutters in the US and elsewhere.
The stupidity and malice has NO BOTTOM.
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"Some of the older participants in the Apollo program had siblings born in the 19th century". Hermann Oberth, less well known than von Braun was one of the 19-century people.
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"a big hillfort" -Izmir in Kurdish Iraq has a central town/citadel built on 7000 years of layers ceating a hill. The name goes back at least to 2000BC, accordiing to cuneiform tablets. The first townspeople there lived when mammoths still roamed Siberia. True.
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"Belle & Sebastian?" -I can proudly say I haven't heard about them. :)

Aaand “Dispatches From The Culture wars” pointed me to this link "Moron: All Racists are Atheists" http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/04/28/radio-host-disc…

Detector dancing from Bornholm Denmark!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQx-vQrxT7I

Fantasy lost something when it started being inspired by 20th century fiction more than ancient myths, medieval sagas, and 19th century traveller's tales. I think that those helped keep it in touch with preindustrial life. Tolkien seems to have been vague on economics and material culture, but having read his Arrian and his Polybius he did know that horses won't charge elephants, and that puts him one ahead of Peter Jackson.

I thought that Old Norse "skraeling" was common knowledge, although maybe Canadians forget it after school.

My all time favourite tennis player Venus Williams once wrote on Facebook: "I'm supposed to have world class hand-eye coordination, and I just spilled teriyaki sauce all over my keyboard."

Well, I'm supposed to have a high verbal IQ, and I thought "Tönerne Aquamanilien" must be someone's name.

I thought “Tönerne Aquamanilien” must be someone’s name.

Given the names that pop up in spam messages, I can understand the confusion. Somebody who thought "Euphonious Q. Seismology" was an actual name sent me a e-mail several years ago.

Of course, "Tönerne Aquamanilien" might make a good band name.

"evangelicals"
Two words: "Southern baptists"! -They split off because they said the Bible supports slavery. After they got their asses handed to them on the battlefield, they did not back off from "The Only True Faith" stuff, despite apparently losing the approval of Heaven.
Do not diss Rikki-tikki-tavi: Mongoose are plucky.

Fighting skraelings? I think Thor should have the Spanish gold medal of police merit – which is normally reserved for police who have died in terrorist attacks. Thor kept the worlds safe from giants and finally perished fighting the Ice Giants. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/29/spanish-govt-court-after-a…

My daughter wonders why people make such a fuss about Elizabeth I, when Hatshepsut was so impressive 3,000 years earlier.

http://www.joanannlansberry.com/fotoart/met-muzm/hat-spx2a.jpg

....and sailing from Egypt to Eritrea with the flimsy boats would have been as challenging as the cross-Atlantic journeys done during the Elizabethan time.

(OT) Stay up late for tonight's Eta Aquarid meteor shower http://phys.org/news/2014-05-late-tonight-eta-aquarid-meteor.html

And we have to leave it to Halloween enthusiasts to celebrate Lady Fu Hao.

http://takebackhalloween.org/wp-content/uploads/products_img/fuhao2012_…

There is the mild embarrassment that she presided over the human sacrifices. But then, so much the better for Halloween.

Thanks for bringing lady Fu Ha0 to my attention.

(OT) For skeptics: Mock the Movie: Space Vampire Edition
““This sounds awful!” I hear you cry. Yes. Yes, it does. “This must be mocked mercilessly”, you say. Well, then you’re in the right company. See link for the instructions for playing along http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2014/05/05/mock-the-movie-sp…

(OT) Runaway train investigation:
" the cleaner had simply closed the train doors, a move that started the engine". http://www.thelocal.se/20140505/stockholm-train-crash-not-the-cleaners-…
Not very reassuring if you live close to the rails.

Birger - Fu Hao's tomb excavation was really something interesting, to me.

A while back, Martin was discussing whether 'shield maidens' were real and the general lack of female graves with weapons as grave goods - Fu Hao seems to have been a genuine case of a female military leader - that doesn't mean she was actually wielding weapons in battle, necessarily, of course, but that is also not excluded by anything that I have been able to find about her. Allegedly she died of 'exhaustion' at a still young age while on her last military expedition, so it seems she never lost a military engagement.

-John, bronze age China was on the other end of the steppe band stretching from the Scythians, so I am not ruling out cultural influences travelling along nomadic people. Wether influences spilled over into early agricultural states in China is another matter.
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A New World zodiac to keep track of the seasons?
"5000-year-old animal effigy mounds in Peru" http://phys.org/news/2012-03-rare-animal-shaped-mounds-peru.html Benfer suggested the structures may have been built as terrestrial manifestations of constellations the ancient Peruvians saw in the stars above.

This is kind of clunky but with good bits - the oracle bones and tomb do seem to strongly suggest that Fu Hao was a real military leader, rather than some sort of symbolism. I guess a problem is that her tomb is the only unlooted tomb found from that period, but there is the corroboration of the oracle bones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M48Zd_n0GDI&list=PL1BCDF9C3C10208C2

The corroboration must be unique for a historical figure of this early time.
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(OT) Nr. 3 may be a living Denisovian (or Homer Simpson’s cousin) Nr.6 is a Chinese fake beggar. And nr.9 is what zero fat *really* looks like, which is pretty gross.
http://viralious.com/2013/12/29/9-people-you-wont-believe-actually-exis…

It's a pity Fu Hao's remains are 'missing' (apparently crushed when the coffin disintegrated and collapsed) (but was that just insufficiently careful excavation and sampling? - her remains can't have evaporated in that case, they were just no longer recognisable as parts of a skeleton).

The tomb had not been looted of very valuable grave goods, so it cannot have been the case that someone just made off with Fu Hao's remains. So what was left of her must have been in there somewhere, although in crushed and unrecognisable form. Given what appears to be the good state of presentation of the remains of some of the other people interred with her, I find it somewhat puzzling - for example, her remains were missing, but someone else buried beneath her was there, skeleton looking pretty intact. Is it possible that was actually her? Or had her remains really been rendered to dust totally indistinguishable from bits of disintegrated coffin and collapsed earth, such that no form of sampling was possible?

Such sampling might not have been of much use at the time, but could be useful now. After all, I presume Chinese archaeologists have access to BGI, which is one of the biggest genomics companies in the world.

OK, the Internet is exploding. Damn. Oops, 3 links - this is going to sit in the spam filter for a while.

http://polishgenes.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/hundreds-of-prehistoric-scan…

http://polishgenes.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/prehistoric-scandinavians-ge…

http://beanproject.eu/

Wow, that's two major archaeogenetics projects in Scandyland counting the Atlas project!

People born in the 20th century longing for the 19th century... if "archaeology" is defined as "digging up old cr*p", wow, here is a biggie: "Neo-Confederate Beliefs Common in the South". http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/slavery-nostalgia-is-rea… People who think slavery is OK.

Don't bother watching the new RoboCop movie, it's rubbish.

More archaeogenetics - why Sardinians are different. Answer: Sardinians are not different, everyone else is.

http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.10043…

The full paper is available on open access.

Neo-Confederate Beliefs Common in the South

Unfortunately, that headline is up there with "Water Wet", "Bear Defecates in Woods", and "Generalísimo Francisco Franco Still Dead".

If you've never seen the scene from Blazing Saddles where the new sheriff arrives in town, take a look, and you will learn much about contemporary American politics. People who hold such beliefs used to feel that they had to hide those beliefs in polite society ("The President is near"), but not anymore. And many in the southern US think the wrong side won the War Between the States (don't call it the Civil War in the rural South).

Eric: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Meanwhile, advice from an Australian retirement advisor:
‘Eat your vegetables, go to the gym and inform yourself about your future health by getting your genome sequenced. Staying mentally and physically fit helps keep your job. Working prolongs your life. Move out of the family home and downsize. House prices will fall. And save money for a rainy day. Because your investments won’t be there for you. My last piece of advice to all of you in the audience is this: Always be nice to your children.’

I should add the footnote that Australian houses are now the largest in the world, even larger than American houses, and much larger than they need to be, and they are widely regarded as a form of retirement investment.

Martin will regard the advice about going to the gym with disdain, but I think few will quibble about always being nice to the kids.

If the houses are tall enough, you should be able to launch a wind turbine into the jet stream. Actually serious studies have been done of using giant kites hoist wind turbines into the jet stream over Australia. If you could solve the million design problems, it would work. Sort of like fusion power.

"the War Between the States" The wossname state who fired upon Fort Sumpter actually sent a document to the federal government outlining why they were quitting the Union. There was no mention of "State's Rights" but pleny of complaints of how the northern states refused to ship back escaped n*ggers.
"State's Rights" my ass.

Australia gets enough solar radiation to roast a goat. And my home town Perth is the third windiest city in the world, after Chicago and Wellington.

But if people generate too much solar energy and feed it back into the grid, the power companies can't make enough profit. Besides, someone needs to use all that coal that the mining companies dig out.

When the only thing your country produces any more are raw minerals, you need to keep producing them, or you have no income. And then who will pay for the huge houses with their air-conditioners and the petrol guzzling cars needed to drive all that distance to town?

As for the local n*ggers, the early settlers of Perth seemed only too happy to get rid of them. The people who lived in that region when the first European settlers arrived are now extinct - certainly their language and culture are, although I guess some genetic inheritance might linger on.

The polite opening question to any 'full' Aboriginal person in the street is to enquire if they are 'visiting town', although it is blindingly obvious that they are. But it is polite to say hello and ask, in cases where the body language and eye contact suggest that a friendly greeting would be welcome. The last middle aged Aboriginal lady from out of town that I spoke to in the street wanted to know where she could buy an AC/DC T-shirt. Cultural diffusion. I was ashamed not to know the answer.

It's actually polite to question their presence?

No, not to question their presence in the sense of an intrusion - to say hello, ask if they are visitors and where their 'country' is. It needs to be read in the context of the culture of nomadic hunter-gatherers at low population density or people who live in small isolated remote communities, who know everyone in 'their' country, and so instantly recognise visiting strangers.

Asking provides the context for them asking for assistance if they need something. If they do, the correct response is to give it, hence my shame about not knowing where to get an AC/DC T-shirt. When someone has travelled several hundred or possibly even thousands of kilometres in the hope of getting one, that could be seen as a pretty serious failure to assist - we ended up asking a series of passers-by until we found someone who knew.

When the first European settlers landed in the Swan River, the greeting from the locals was friendly and welcoming. Relations only deteriorated later, when farmers started fencing land and disrupting nomadic seasonal routes, which made it impossible for people to feed themselves, and that set up the clash of cultures and legal systems, with European notions of personal possession conflicting tragically with Aboriginal hunter-gatherer rules of communal sharing of resources.

So, if an Aboriginal man approaches you on the street, and asks for $1 for bus fare, give him $5 or $10 - whatever you can afford, because that is the right to do (although it might elicit shocked looks of disapproval from politically correct passers-by). If a girl asks you for a cigarette, and you have some, offer her two, one for her friend. And a box of matches. Or even a packet, if you can afford it.

Do that, and you will get polite thanks and a covert glance of appreciation. Refusal will hurt and offend deeply, and could be an invitation for resentment, vocal abuse or even violence. This is not begging - culturally, it is not the same thing. Friendly engagement and willingness to share is the correct response, and will be appreciated.

On the other hand, if the person is visibly drunk, then the only safe strategy is avoidance. But that is a universal.

(OT) This Shoggoth does not look very impressive (ca. 570 million years ago) http://phys.org/news/2014-05-paleontologists-fossil.html

I'm gonna kick that shoggoth's median tubular structure.

John, under what circumstances is it socially accepted for a white person to ask an Aboriginal person for gifts?

The same basic rule applies - if you need something, and I have something, the rule says I should share what I have with you. This obviously breaks down very badly in modern society; it just doesn't work at all.

But if an Aboriginal person is asking me for something small and affordable, I am going to give them more than they ask me for, partly because they have made their request small and affordable. No Aboriginal person has ever asked me for more than something I could easily afford.

When I was a kid, my bedroom was full of Aboriginal artefacts, which were gifts Aboriginal men had given my father to thank him for teaching their children in school. They understood it was his job and that he was paid for it, but they gave him things to thank him anyway. To reciprocate, he used to give them rides on the back of his motorcycle - I have one classic old black and white photograph of my father on his motorbike, grinning gleefully, tobacco pipe clenched between his teeth, with a terrified looking Aboriginal man sitting on the motorbike behind him, holding on grimly. I know how he felt, I also rode on my father's motorbike.

Origin of Scandinavian gorges finally revealed http://phys.org/news/2014-05-scandinavian-gorges-revealed.html
Damn! there goes my "ancient astronauts quarried gorges" manuscript.

Speaking of motorbikes, the dry climate of the "outback" must be good for preserving all kinds of vehicles dumped behind barns. I know Canadian prairies are a good place to look for 80-90-year-old cars, traction engines and stuff.

(OT) Exorcism by carbon monoxide? Man dies during ritual. “He was heavily possessed by djinns and when I was curing him of them, I could hear the djinns shouting back at me” http://tribune.com.pk/story/705086/demonic-possession-man-dies-as-exorc…

'the dry climate of the “outback” '

Too right, cobber. Stone the crows, it's as dry as a dingo's dick out there.

I found some very well preserved 1920s car bodies in a peat swamp - no rust, shiny metal. I suppose the same works for human bodies, eh?

During World War II, my father was in what was called the 'coastal defence force'. Hopeless task, Australia has a huge northern coastline and there were not very many of them, but they were armed to the teeth - submachine guns, hand grenades, anything they could carry. My father could never shoot anyone, he would pick up a poisonous spider and carry it outside rather than kill it, so he emptied the ammunition out of his ammunition pouches, and filled them with cheese - spare rations.

If the Japanese Imperial Army had ever invaded, all he could have done was throw cheese at them.

John, in theory coastal defenders might have used armoured vehicles to destroy invaders, but the British tank designs were crap until the end of 1944. Fortunately the Japanese got distracted by New Guinea and other places. "Look, a big island with high nearly impassable mountains and marshes -perfect for an invasion!".

...and full of malaria and dysentery - the ideal place, really. They were probably more deterred by that than my father's emergency cheese rations, despite being lactose-intolerant.

OT) Holy Benedict Arnold, Batman! Skeptic alert.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/a-modern-pope-gets-old-school-on-th…
Chocolate-throwing lesbian demons. On a plane. I want to see the film version.

Asked how he knew the woman was possessed, he said that “once you hear a Satanic growl, you never forget it.” Of course. Growling, when properly done, *will* stay in your memory!
Deicide: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL-BA86UhoE
“We are five!” -She is channeling Enid Blyton!

(OT) H.R. Giger 'created cinema's only non-shit alien' http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/arts-entertainment/h-r-giger-created…
Excerpt: Film critic Mary Fisher said: “Before Alien, and indeed after Alien, extra-terrestrials in films were uniformly wank.
“E.T. looks like a sunbed-addicted nan, the things in Close Encounters were just big fetuses and although Star Wars had some cool aliens in the cantina scene that’s counterbalanced by the ewoks, the shittest of all shit aliens.
“Independence Day aliens – shit. Men In Black aliens – shit. Predator – clearly a body builder with two stuck-on chicken wings for a mouth.
“None of them compares to an eyeless armoured demon with acid blood and a hydraulic fanged-penis mouth. That is just so admirably fucked up.

Agreed. Alien and Aliens are two good movies. They should have stopped there.

Thanks for the Solsbury Hill report.
The application of sophisticated data collection techniques by dedicated amateurs was both illuminating and inspiring. And badass.