when I read it, I was surprised just how slow travel for Eve really was. But you did do your research and were correct on just how plodding it was.

Yep.

My metaphor is: stage coaches were the airliners of the day (seats on the roof = economy; seats indoors = business/first class), while the private carriages of the aristocracy and rich merchants were equivalent to bizjets, with luxuries like padded leather seat cushions and foot-warmers with hot bricks for cold weather. And the cost of traveling was roughly equivalent in income terms -- if you had a private coach with your coat of arms on it, you also had at least two horses plus a coachman and two or more footmen, probably armed (as guards). As with a bizjet, you're not just paying for the vehicle -- you're paying for the people who operate it, and there are more than you might expect.

Sounds about right. Here in the US around the same time one of my ancestors made his living rafting logs from Louisville to New Orleans and then walking back. Roughly 900 miles, did it 2-3 times per year. We have a picture of him working on a crew building a RR bridge over the Ohio River. I wouldn’t want to cross him from the looks of it.

My favourite example of pre-industrial transport networks is the sacbe roads of the Mayan Empire, which kept a civilization and large trade network together--one where the fastest method of transport was running, and where the creatures principally used to carry heavy loads were the Mayans themselves.

Typo: 19th century not 18th! But, otherwise, as you say.

Most of the change came with steam, but there was another big jump in the 1960s, as air travel became affordable for ordinary people (in rich countries). Even in the 1950s, most travel from the UK to far-flung parts of the world was by ship to the nearest port and then slow trains or motor vehicles to the destination. It was several days from Durban to Lusaka, for example.

And, at the very end of the 19th century, remember bicycles - there are claims that smoother roads and tar-sealing were for those, not coaches.

One could more or less claim that Jules Verne wrote a whole novel about this. The key plot point of /Around the World in Eighty Days/ (pub 1873) is that Phileas Fogg could get a whole lot of people to bet that he, a wealthy man, could not circumnavigate the globe in eighty days. And this was close enough to truth to form a plausible basis for a novel. Nowadays, even at 2 days, you wouldn't find any takers.

I wrote a novel about Orcs which piggybacked on some of your research. (At one point you provided a weblink to a book you'd read on transportation back in the day.) I think the transport parts came out very well, and I really appreciated first of all, that you'd provided some of your research sources, and second that they made my book's worldbuilding and background so much more rigorous. Thanks!

a wooden bench in an unheated third class carriage and without a toilet, although the journeys did include scheduled relief stops.

And, at the very end of the 19th century, remember bicycles - there are claims that smoother roads and tar-sealing were for those, not coaches.

Described here, with supporting research:

https://roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/

Well-described in this review:

http://spacing.ca/national/2015/09/29/book-review-roads-not-built-cars/

(I backed this on Kickstarter, and have both the original hardcover and ebook versions. I recommend it.)

in the 1960s, as air travel became affordable for ordinary people (in rich countries). Even in the 1950s, most travel from the UK to far-flung parts of the world was by ship to the nearest port and then slow trains or motor vehicles to the destination.

In Dec 1956 my wife (with mom and dad), at the age of 6 weeks, came from Germany to the US via ship. I assume train from Germany to a port. In 1963 when her, her mom and two younger sisters went to Italy they flew TWA flight 800. Things changed a lot in those 7 years.

Duplicate comment from previous post.

Most people in rural areas never went more than 10 miles from their home.

The family story is that my great great (maybe one more great) grandfather road a mule from south of Paducah KY to Cape Girardeau, Missouri to find a bride. Around 1825. He did and brought her back. Likely crossing the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers each way. And that was a big deal then with no bridges and dams to smooth things out.

Today it shows as a 60 to 90 mile drive depending on route. In 1825 this wasn't very settled at all. Even today there's not a lot there when you take the modern highways. Well except for the home of Superman. :)

a wooden bench in an unheated third class carriage and without a toilet,

In the US early trains had a closet with a hole in the floor. Especially out west where stops were only for water and greasing the drive system.

Additional notes:-
1) A Macadamised road is not the same thing as "modern tarmac".
2) On "walking", circa 1900CE my Great Grandfather worked a 5 day week as a tailor, walked from Kilwinning to Rugby Park in Kilmarnock (~11 miles) to play Association Football with a 3PM kickoff, and if they won his fee was bus fare home. If they lost he had to walk back or pay his own fare.

I'll admit I had to look this up, but third class carriages with roofs and windows, not open sides, only became a requirement under the Railway Regulation Act 1844.

This is the Act that created "Parliamentary Trains". The requirement was that there was at least one train every weekday except Christmas Day and Good Friday (the latter not applying in Scotland) on each line that: * goes at a time acceptable to the Lords of the Committee of Privy Council for Trade and Plantations (the "Board of Trade") * averages at least 12 mph end-to-end, including time for stops * calls at every station along the line * has carriages provided with seats and protected from the weather * has a fare not exceeding 1d (1/240 of a pound) per mile * each passenger can take free 0.5 cwt of luggage (other than merchandize (sic) or other articles carried for hire or profit) * children under 3 go free; children 3 or over but under 12 go at half price.

If the company ran any trains on Sundays, the train that made the most stops had to obey these rules as well and have sufficient 3rd class carriages to meet demand.

Before that, carriages could be just open wagons with no seats and have no limit on prices.

My grandparents would cycle from North West London to the Isle of Wight for the weekend leaving after work on Saturday and returning in time for work again on Monday.

I don’t know what they are like now but in Italy in 1982 there were definitely trains with similar toilet facilities.

In the 80s I travelled on a Via Rail train that had facilities like that. With a sign saying not to use the facilities when at a station…

third class carriages with roofs and windows, not open sides

In one of the Giles Annuals* there was a lovely cartoon with a line of football louts between two rolls of barbed wire leading to a train of flatcars, with a railway porter saying "management apologizes for the lack of windows, pilchards, seating, and other amenities, and hopes you will occupy your tiny little minds with holding on".

*Giles was an editorial cartoonist with a British paper, whose cartoons were collected in annual books.

With a sign saying not to use the facilities when at a station…

I guess speed helped out with distributed dispersal.

In the 80s I travelled on a Via Rail train that had facilities like that.

Does France (Paris?) still have those split cylinders where men can go stand inside them and pee into a hole in the sidewalk?

Not too many years ago I read an article about the problem of men peeing in public in Paris.

One of Alan Moore's ancestors (lightly fictionalized in Jerusalem) circa 1889 was regularly walking between London and Northampton for work, approximately 60 miles!

Typo: 19th century not 18th! But, otherwise, as you say.

No, I meant 18th century. Travel time for a stage coach from London to Edinburgh roughly halved during the 18th century due to road improvements; prior to the 1700s the roads in England were terrible, but from mid-century onwards improvements got going.

The 19th century brought macadam surfacing and eventually tarmac, and also stuff like gas lighting and railways, but the big improvements were in the second half of the 18th century.

As for bicycles, yes (and I hammered that point in Dead Lies Dreaming): while the penny farthing became common between the 1860s and 1880, the modern "safety bicycle" showed up in the early 1880s and totally stormed the market, displacing penny farthings almost completely by 1890 and rapidly growing the market for personal transport.

For a modern reference point, the tsunami of bicycles arrived about as rapidly as multitouch smartphones displaced 1990-2000s dumbphones and featurephones after the iPhone 3G launched in 2008. Before the iPhone, smartphones were a weird/rare thing and only freaks like me wanted to carry a pocket computer: only 15 years later they're ubiquitous.

(The original 2007 iPhone was a "minimum viable product" -- it lacked 3G and installable app support -- so while it showcased some revolutionary design it wasn't ready for mass adoption. The real revolution started a year later with the second model, the 3G. Similarly, chain-drive bicycles appeared a couple of years before all the extras -- like handlebar-operated brakes -- showed up in the first recognizably modern safety bicycles.)

"I guess speed helped out with distributed dispersal."

More, I think, a case of not wanting the material left in purview of those waiting on the platform..

JHomes

Nowadays, even at 2 days, you wouldn't find any takers.

There was a Top Gear episode a couple of decades ago in which Jeremy Clarkson flew from London to Auckland and then back to London the long way round (circling the globe in the same direction via different destination airports) in 48 hours.

He flew first class and it was still brutal for a healthy forty-something bloke, but it was do-able. Budget was on the order of £10-20,000 if I remember correctly (you could do it for half the price in business class, and for a quarter the price in economy ... and then they'd have to hose you off the seat at the destination.)

Thanks for educating me! I had not realised that.

I don’t know what they are like now but in Italy in 1982 there were definitely trains with similar toilet facilities.

Modern Italian trains are a lot different. (Hint: think where Pendolinos come from.) In general, dumping raw sewage on the track is frowned upon throughout the EU these days -- it's only in the UK where the trains store it in tanks 'til they get to a station, flush it into the sewers, and the water company pumps the untreated waste into a river to save money.)

I will summarise my comment from the previous post: before trains travelling more than 20 miles or so was equivalent to emigration for most people. You left your job, travelled, and got a new one; going back to visit was the same process. Plenty of people travelled from Edinburgh or Cornwall to London to 'make their fortunes', and it could easily be done in a fortnight in summer, but they then stayed there.

Your grandfather's story is equivalent (today) to someone going from the UK to India or China to find a bride, and bringing her back. That happens.

Just one nit to pick:

McAdams roads were normally not surfaced.

A McAdam road consisted of three layers of stones in specified size-ranges, one of which was defined as "fits in your closed mouth" and they worked great for low speed horse drawn vehicles with large wheels.

One particular benefit of the McAdam layering, is that maintenance could be a one man job, you almost never had to dig up the bottom layer and seldom the middle layer of stones.

On high traffic roads, a thin coat of (wood- or petroleum-) tar would reduce the dust-nuisance, without impacting the necessary running maintenance of the road.

The higher speeds of motor vehicles on their their much smaller and wider wheels, produce a vacuum behind the contact surface, and that vacuum sucks the fine particulate out of a McAdams road, even with the traditional light tar.

This not only made the dust nuisance much worse, but it sucked out so much material from the road, that it destabilized the top two layers of stones.

The fix was to "tar" the roads /much/ heavier, eventually leading to asphalt roads as we know them.

But that made the traditional one-man running maintenance impossible, and eventually most roads have resurfaced so many times, that the original McAdam road is buried a couple of feet.

You do remember that Clarkson is a full 5'17" tall, which is marginal on "too tall" even in first class. My 5'9.5" is okish even in veal crate ;-) for a 1 hour flight. An inch or 2 more seat pitch would be better for trans-Ditch.

My father was the pastor of one of the northernmost protestant parishes in Germany in the 70s. He learned from the older people that many used to walk to the nearest town (Flensburg) in the past when necessary, as far from everyone had a horse, or even a car, in the first half of the 20th century. Flensburg was 20 km away, so it took them about 4 hours to get there. Feasible, but having business in town took a whole day.

In general, dumping raw sewage on the track is frowned upon throughout the EU these days

In Finland, the old express service train cars which had toilets just dumping stuff on the rails were in use apparently until 2016, replaced by InterCity and Pendolino trains from the 1990s onwards. I've ridden on those old trains a lot as a kid, but not after maybe 1995 or so.

Wikipedia has some indication that they'd still be in use in Northern Finland during high-traffic times, but I have no idea how that is now.

The toilets had instructions on to only use them when the train was moving. It was fun as a kid to open the toilet and look at the ground under the train go by fast. (Now I kind of prefer the modern toilets though their maintenance leaves a bit to be desired.)

By chance, for work, I did London-Shanghai-Auckland-LA-London once business class on an unexpected upgrade*.

I got to Auckland a bit jetlagged but, apart from that fine. I watched films, read, wrote a letter or two, slept and did some programming. Can't say I found it hard slog. And that was in my late 50s. It was the hanging around in Shanghai and LA that was so tedious - LA immigration is such a joy.

I feel going to the US west coast from London and working the next day is a far greater struggle. By the end of the first working day you're knackered and by midway through the second day you have no idea what time of day it is.

*I also recall being on a flight to the US and a two shuttle flight NASA astronaut being downgraded from Business due to overbooking and ending up sitting next to me. I got no sleep that flight as every half hour another member of the crew came to chat to him - talking across me. God, it was dull.

I also recall being on a flight to the US and a two shuttle flight NASA astronaut being downgraded from Business due to overbooking and ending up sitting next to me. I got no sleep that flight as every half hour another member of the crew came to chat to him - talking across me. God, it was dull.

I had almost that experience in Korea, but far more pleasant. I gave a research seminar at KAIST, a university in Daejeon, Korea. Korea's astronaut (that is an unique identifier -- Google it!), at that time a Biotech grad student, was at the seminar and was one of those who took me to dinner after. Throughout the meal random Koreans who recognized her from her publicity pictures came to our table and asked for her autograph and selfies. She was unfailingly gracious and charming to these folks.

Your grandfather's story is equivalent (today) to someone going from the UK to India or China to find a bride, and bringing her back. That happens.

I know it happens. But at the time in the situation of my ancester it was most likely for different reasons than happens today. I suspect the more established town of Cape Girardeau on the Mississippi River was a bit more civilized than anything near Paducah. Cape had been around in some fashion as a trading post then a town much longer than the Paducah which was not even an official town at that point. I suspect around Paducah the pickings were slim due to an unbalanced ratio of men to women. Especially if you wanted morals and character to factor into the situation.

There's stage coaches, private coaches and horse-drawn sporting vehicles, the latter being very much built for speed over comfort. I have memory of reading about the Prince of Wales --- I think the one who became George IV --- driving a curricle from London to Brighton at a reckless, kill-your-horses pace and arriving there in a matter of hours. Question: if one were fleeing from (or to) deadly peril, how far might one go in such a vehicle?

There's also a question of how far one might go by road to a convenient port for a costal journey around the British Isles, assuming that time is pressing. If one were travelling from London to the north-west coast, would it be reasonable to take ship in the Pool of London, or further down the Thames? IIUC, no, because one spends days anchored in the North Sea off Deal waiting for the winds to be right to get round into the English Channel. But would a quickish run by road to Portsmouth be better than going to Bristol?

The turnpike trusts helped too. Their tolls went on maintaining the roads: and given a lack of general govt maintenance that was a big deal.

It also let them effectively regulate to stop people doing things that damaged the roads. Narrow wheeled carriages (which damaged the roads more) were tolled more than wider wheels.

Now, recall that nowhere in Great Britain is more than about 40 miles from the sea.

Actually, it is 75 miles, and is near Coventry -- or Birmingham Airport.

Not that it makes much difference to your point...

Question: if one were fleeing from (or to) deadly peril, how far might one go in such a vehicle?

The problem with horses and speed is heat rejection. Simply put, they're big, so the square-cube law means that there's a lot of muscle mass generating waste heat and not a lot of skin surface area to radiate it away over. Humans are almost uniquely good at long-distance walking because we're adapted to sweat copiously through our buttocks which gives us built-in evaporative cooling (we can use up to half a litre of water per hour for cooling that way).

If the horses are walking then they've probably got comparable range to a human as long as they're fed and watered regularly. You can probably alternate walking and trotting for short periods, too. But that "8mph average speed" for a stage coach probably also applies to a curricle, and even then, you're going to need regular replacements.

Folks back then would no more flog a horse to the point of killing it than you'd thrash a Ferrari so hard the engine seized -- it's a comparably expensive mistake! (Well, a Ferrari for a well-loaded nobleman's mounts; for a Jarvie with a hire cab in London it'd be more like burning out a black cab in a day. Hint: black cabs cost more than a taxi driver's annual profits.)

If money is no object then you can go further. You start with a couple of spare horses, unloaded, and you trade (and pay through the nose) for replacement horses whenever the ones you're running on can't take it any further. Coaching inns will have horses they can rent or sell you. But this will burn through a small fortune in a couple of days, even if you're selling them your worn-out horses at the same time you pay for a replacement.

IIUC, no, because one spends days anchored in the North Sea off Deal waiting for the winds to be right to get round into the English Channel. But would a quickish run by road to Portsmouth be better than going to Bristol?

Bear in mind that if you're in the North Sea waiting for a fair wind, then you're not sitting around where your pursuer can catch up with you. Any ship they take will be at the mercy of the same weather, and rowboats on open water are of strictly limited range. (Even cultures that used biremes and triremes as warships only used them for the last-mile dash to ramming range: galleys were slow and inefficient, that's why sails prevailed.)

Some trains in the UK were still dumping the toilets on to the track as late as the start of the Covid lockdown. At that time the prediction to finish fitting retention tanks or withdrawing the trains was the end of this year. I don't know whether the reduced service during Covid meant things went faster or slower.

Edinburgh -> Wellington is notably “further” than London -> Auckland

I’m doing Wellington-> Europe this week, my first overseas trip since the pandemic started.

London-> Auckland or vice versa is hard, but it’s the connections either end that add up. Wellington -> Auckland, then hang around, the Auckland -> London or Paris or Frankfurt then hang around, then from there to your actual destination.

(But we are spending 24 hours in Singapore and then getting back on the plane, to make the trip easier. A fairly common practice if you have the time)

Portsmouth vs Bristol for that journey is probably an easy choice. Bristol isn't much further from London than Portsmouth is, but when you're heading up the Irish Sea in any case, it cuts off a massive corner and the reduction in time at sea is more than enough to compensate for the extra walking. Also, that corner is going round Land's End, which can often be a perilous passage.

It occurs to me that there is actually a subtle irony in a Ferrari badge being a prancing horse... ;-)

"With a sign saying not to use the facilities when at a station..."

Everyone knows those signs who has travelled on British railways. Absolutely standard and it's only in the last few years that it has ceased to be the case.

Now we have to have trains which carry a tank of shit around with them, which increases the amount of daily maintenance required, and the amount of kit required to do it, as well as meaning that the people who do it now have to handle shitty machinery as a normal part of their jobs. And it means that trains either have to be expensively converted, or taken out of service when they're still perfectly capable. And in some cases you get the tank of shit stinking out the passenger accommodation. All in return for basically nothing, because the quantities and concentrations involved are way below the capacity of natural processes to dispose of the effluent, so it's only from knowing how the toilets work that you'd realise it was happening in the first place.

The exception being a handful of stations where sleeper services would finish their journey at some stupid time in the morning and then sit in the platform for hours so the passengers didn't all have to get up at 4am. At some of these the sleeper platforms had flushable pits between the rails to get rid of the local concentration.

What's happened to the comment about "horses are not grass-eating motorcycles"?

As an illustration, at the beginning of Wuthering Heights, old man Earnshaw walks to Liverpool and back - sixty miles each way - rather than riding, even though he has his own horses. Basically because the human animal is considerably better at endurance stuff than the horse. He'd have been put to a lot more hassle recharging or replacing horses on that sort of distance than merely recharging himself (as well as the risk of the horse crippling itself, or getting pinched).

"Humans are almost uniquely good at long-distance walking because we're adapted to sweat copiously through our buttocks which gives us built-in evaporative cooling (we can use up to half a litre of water per hour for cooling that way)."

The sweaty arse as the explanation of human endurance?

I can't figure that out as a typo, but I can't figure it out as anything else either. Humans sweat all over, and lose heat from their entire exposed surface area by that means. Your arse doesn't count for much, and people generally tend to wrap it up in something to keep the sweat in without noticeably impairing their heat disposal capacity.

(Horses of course also sweat (and gentlemen perspire, and ladies glow), but to less effect. After all, as long as they can outlast the predator they're OK.)

On horses: Robin Hobb's "Assassin" series is good on this. The protagonist often has to travel a long distance as fast as possible. On these occasions his whole concern is how to optimise the stamina of whatever mount he has.

TV Tropes (warning! TV Tropes) has a page on this. Since Narnia is topical right now I'll mention that one of the aversions it lists (i.e. the book gets it right) is The Horse and His Boy.

Also, in most British conditions, long-distance walking doesn't heat you up enough to need much sweating, because the speed is rarely more than 3 MPH, and often less - it's jogging and running that do. I agree that the stretches where you have to climb hills also do, but they rarely account for more than 1/3 the time, even in very hilly parts. The main reason that we can walk for many hours is the structure of our skeleton and muscles.

The sweaty arse as the explanation of human endurance?

Yes.

Your thighs are where most of the muscles actively involved in walking are contracting. That's where the extra waste heat is generated. Being able to very efficiently dump heat through an evaporative cooler is biologically unusual -- it's circumstantial supporting evidence for modern humans having evolved as slow pursuit predators on the veldt. (Throw rock at target animal and hurt it. Animal runs away for half a mile. Fine, walk after it. It runs away again. Follow it. Repeat several times until prey collapses from heat stroke. Most prey animals are sprinters: so are most carnivores. Humans, on the other hand, can out-walk just about anything.)

The sweaty arse as the explanation of human endurance?

I can't figure that out as a typo, but I can't figure it out as anything else either.

Yes, speaking from experience and observation, humans do their major sweating in the upper torso, hips upward.

BaldiePete @ 16:

I don’t know what they are like now but in Italy in 1982 there were definitely trains with similar toilet facilities.

And in China in 2010. The toilet doors were locked whenever the train was in a station.

My favourite example of pre-industrial transport networks is the sacbe roads of the Mayan Empire, which kept a civilization and large trade network together--one where the fastest method of transport was running, and where the creatures principally used to carry heavy loads were the Mayans themselves.

I think you mean the Incan empire. The Mayans never had an empire, and in Central America they were close enough to the coast that large, seafaring canoes were often the preferred method of moving cargo.

And in China in 2010. The toilet doors were locked whenever the train was in a station.

Because a simple sign would have been ignored.

Likewise for pedestrians on roads. If they didn't want them on a road, they put up barriers between the road and the pavement.

And somewhere I've got a photo of a traffic barrier with serious sharp hooks that would snag any vehicle driving into it— apparently enough drivers will simply push a barrier out of the way that a disincentive is required.

So far as ships go, I've got to complexify things a bit:

Ocean conditions matter.

Civilizations got away with oar power (or even paddlewheel--I'll get back to this) in a bunch of places, mostly where the surrounding terrain made the water relatively calm: the Mediterranean, Indonesia/Coral Triangle, and coastal China. For example, the Romans used liburnian biremes as fast transport to Egypt. They had sails for when the wind was favorable, but when the wind died it was out oars and row.

This won't work as well in the major oceans. While people have proved it's possible to row solo across the Atlantic in purpose built rowboats, it's generally not a great idea to try that with a bireme. The pitching waves make keeping all the oars in the water rather challenging, especially with multiple banks of oars. Again, the point is that coordinating a lot of oars is the biggest problem, not that rowing long distances by itself is impractical. The history of the Mediterranean makes this pretty clear.

Obviously, I agree about the practicalities of wind power, especially for bulk transport and long distance. Even a Hawaiian double-hulled voyaging ship can circumnavigate the globe, as they've been proving with Hokulea.

We can also get into the minutia of designing sails for different waters depending on the conditions and materials you've got to work with, and that gets to be fun. One key point is that, if your women are spinning and weaving your cloth sails by hand, as with the Vikings, your sails probably take longer to make and are more expensive than is the rest of the ship combined. This is part of the design constraints on something like a Viking longship, and probably one reason they also carried oars. Industrialized weaving, whether with Roman slaves or mechanization, seems essential for making huge expanses of woven sails.

Finally, about paddlewheels and roads barely taken... You probably know about the foot-powered paddleboats you can rent to goof around in in park ponds. It turns out that, starting in the 5th Century CE, the Chinese were building full-szed ships with 2-4 human powered paddlewheels capable of traveling "hundreds of kilometers per day" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qianli_chuan ). The Ming Dynasty even fielded human-powered, paddlewheeled warships. It's not clear to me how they translated human power into the paddlewheels (treadmill covers several possibilities), but they obviously did it, and the boats were successful enough that they kept the tech around for at least 1000 years. I'd also bet these are calm water craft, not things one would take to Hawai'i or even Japan. But if you're into alt tech and/or silkpunk, full-sized paddlewheels are possible. Just another hint that the apex of human-powered tech wasn't the Roman empire or Medieval Europe it was India and especially China. Fantasists and others forget that rather too often.

In terms of land travel, the emergence of the bicycle, especially the version with equal sized wheels in the late 19th century, made a huge difference. See for example Hugill's World Trade since 1431. H. G. Wells wrote a lot about the impact of the bicycle on ordinary people's lives, being himself an enthusiastic cyclist. A bicycle roughly triples the distance a person can travel in an hour, multiplying the local area for them by a factor of about 10. This significantly increases the "extent of the market" and thus their range of choices in everything from groceries to spouses to jobs.

Light urban rail had a similar effect, of course, but only along the rail lines; Hugill's estimate is that the factor of effective area increase is significantly less, because you're working with a star, not with a circle.

There's some fun genetic studies being done in Polynesia these days, trying to work out stuff like how sweet potato is the same plant, called kumal in Quechua and kumara in Maori.

There's increasingly strong genetic evidence that at least one South American person left a genetic legacy in Polynesia. Which does rather suggest that someone once crossed 1000km+ of ocean to get to Polynesia from SA.

Video below also mentions some of the suspiciously realistic "oral traditions" about the existence and relative position of various islands in the Pacific, although IMO some of that stuff is a bit old hat. It's hard to argue the multiple waves of migration to Aotearoa happened accidentally or via "lost at sea" scenarios.

So it is definitely a discussion about travel from SA to Polynesia vs Polynesians visiting SA and taking souvenirs home. Which is going to be hard to establish given the lack of respect for local history expressed by later visors. Oh, and speaking of "lost" technologies, the destruction of the Rapanui written language also gets a mention.

Did Polynesians Reach America? by Stefan Milo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycRcWK7pMoM

Has references, including "Native American gene flow into Polynesia predating Easter Island settlement" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2487-2

We've discussed here before the crossover from Chinese wheelbarrows to bicycles, notoriously in the case of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The modern equivalent is either the bakfiets or the Africa bicycle depending on whether you're wealthy of not.

It's interesting to me that we also have a fad for "gravel biking" or "bikepacking", essentially cycle touring on rough roads. It doesn't seem to be deliberately aimed at the post sealed road world but it's suggestive. Bicycles are much better at navigating unformed terrain or rough tracks than heavier and especially wider vehicles are. While bikepacking is heavily contaminated by people trading off service life to get lighter weight you don't have to go that way.

Civilizations got away with oar power (or even paddlewheel--I'll get back to this) in a bunch of places, mostly where the surrounding terrain made the water relatively calm: the Mediterranean

Harry Turtledove wrote a series of five novels about two merchants whose families owned a merchant galley*: the Hellenic Traders series.

Quite good, and given Turtledove started as a historian and includes an afterward about which bits he made up I assume that the existence of merchant galleys isn't in doubt.

https://turtledove.fandom.com/wiki/Hellenic_Traders

*That type of ship had a proper greek name, which I totally forget.

The Ming Dynasty even fielded human-powered, paddlewheeled warships. It's not clear to me how they translated human power into the paddlewheels (treadmill covers several possibilities), but they obviously did it, and the boats were successful enough that they kept the tech around for at least 1000 years.

The Military Museum in Beijing had cutaway models of one when I visited over a decade ago. No idea if they're still there, and how accurate they are, but they looked very detailed.

If you're ever in Beijing, I recommend the Military Museum. It's on the subway, and has a lot of stuff you'd never see elsewhere.

Temple's book The Genius of China mentions the boats, but I don't remember how much detail he goes into.

So it is definitely a discussion about travel from SA to Polynesia vs Polynesians visiting SA and taking souvenirs home. Which is going to be hard to establish given the lack of respect for local history expressed by later visitors.

I'm willing to bet the Polynesians got to the South American coast, stayed awhile, and bugged out with kumara (sweet potatoes). They loved them some edible roots, and that's certainly kumara.

This isn't to say that the Ecuadorians couldn't have sailed a balsa raft into the Pacific. The 1970s Las Balsas expedition from Ecuador sailed three balsa rafts all the way to Australia. So they have the range, at least downwind.

What's missing is everything else, including a reason to go and a way to get back. South American traders rafted north to the Mayan area to trade metal for jade and probably stuff like chocolate, IIRC. That's how metallurgy got to Central America. In the Pacific, if you take off west, you get to the Galapagos, Rapa Nui, the Marquesas, and the Tuamotus before even reaching Tahiti. Not fun places for landfall. And these weren't even settled until ca. 800-1000 CE IIRC.

So if an Ecuadorian had made landfall in Polynesia prior to the Polynesians, they'd have none of the Polynesian terraforming system (coconuts, etc.) to allow them to settle on volcanic islands and atolls, and nothing to show for the trip except maybe some seashells and stories. They could survive, but then they'd have to tack their rafts upwind all the way home (which they could, using the guara centerboard system, but it would be a horrible trip).

In contrast, the Polynesians explored by tacking into the wind and following the flights of bird like the Golden Plover that migrates back and forth across Polynesia between New Zealand and Alaska, island hopping the whole way. They went upwind so that, when they'd used half their supplies, they could turn tail and run downwind to home. If you notice, I mention Las Balsa expedition that sailed more or less downwind from Ecuador to Australia. They didn't try to sail back home. That was probably wise.

Still, one could write Pacific SFF around the subject of big trees. The Polynesian Problem is that big trees are rare on the islands, and they're rarer still once the islander kill off the guano-pooping seabirds that fed the forests before humans arrived. So the normal pattern in Polynesia was colonization, followed by inter-archipelago voyaging for a few generations, using huge ships made from huge trees. As the personal connections frayed through passing generations and the big trees were all gone, long-distance voyaging was dropped.

Now imagine a Polynesian colony getting established in Ecuador, where there's a rare extension of the Amazon across the Andes that lets them grow balsawood. The islanders have access to an unlimited supply of huge trees for boat-building, not just balsas but real hardwoods. That's real power in Polynesia. What would the chiefs do to build those boats, especially if the were from the lowly Tuamotus and striving for power in Tahiti? There could be a story in how all that played out.

If you're ever in Beijing, I recommend the Military Museum. It's on the subway, and has a lot of stuff you'd never see elsewhere.

Thanks for the recommendation! I will have to wait until international politics (and Beijing's air quality) improve a bit.

I will have to wait until international politics (and Beijing's air quality) improve a bit.

I may never return. I have a niece and two grandnephews there who I'd like to visit, but (a) it's a 14 hour flight which is tougher as I get older, and (b) the international situation means being Canadian in China is no longer automatically a 'good thing'*.

*When I first visited two decades ago, small children would beg to get their picture taken with a Canadian. Everyone knew of Dr. Bethune, and most people knew Canada hadn't ever invaded China.

I assume it was likely one way for the South Americans unless they persuaded the nice Polynesians to take them home in a proper boat. They didn't need to make it back to leave a "genetic signature"* in the islands.

And I expect that finding a similar signature "somewhere in America" would be really hard work. Too many people mixing too much for too long.

* I love academic language. It's a reasonable description but it feels like a desperate euphemism.

I may never return. I have a niece and two grandnephews there who I'd like to visit, but (a) it's a 14 hour flight which is tougher as I get older, and (b) the international situation means being Canadian in China is no longer automatically a 'good thing'

That sucks. Nothing like the dick-swinging of Big Men to get in the way of normal humanity.

Hope you get to see them again.

I assume it was likely one way for the South Americans unless they persuaded the nice Polynesians to take them home in a proper boat. They didn't need to make it back to leave a "genetic signature" in the islands.*

Yeah, I can think of at least four ways to get that genetic signature.

As for the sweet potato, it got introduced three times, apparently: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1221569110

Read an interesting essay about how the approximately 20 year period ending about 10 years ago might be an exception in Chinese relations with the west.

They got the tech leap forward they wanted and learned how the rest of the world did finances and are now back to doing their own thing with a better skill set for dealing with the rest of the world.

»As an illustration, at the beginning of Wuthering Heights, old man Earnshaw walks to Liverpool and back - sixty miles each way - rather than riding, even though he has his own horses.«

This was likely an entirely economical decision: Using the horse for such a multi day expedition, would incur extra expense (hay & stabling) and would put a very valuable asset needlessly at risk.

»They got the tech leap forward they wanted and learned how the rest of the world did finances and are now back to doing their own thing with a better skill set for dealing with the rest of the world.«

Do not overlook the peace of mind which comes from "got a very significant part of the rest of the world's money".

When China can afford to experiment with weird nuclear reactors, moon-expeditions and high-speed maglev trains, it's because they can afford it.

A major reason why the chinese navy builds nuclear submarines is that they have to find something expensive to use their set percentage of the state budget for.

Charlie
Railways were barely a thing before 1830, but by 1860 1850 they'd changed everything.
Well ... Stockton & Darlington, 1825 - BIG bash coming up in 2 years' time ... but:
Liverpool & Manchester 1830 was the big one, followed by London & Birmingham, fully open by 1838, High Level Bridge - Newcastle 1849.
Pricing: NO, not so.
A first-class rail ticket cost about the same as a cheap stagecoach one - so the rail companies multiplied the volume, shortened the time & reduced the price.
This was one of the causes of the Railway Mania, of course - "free money!"
Err .. steam paddle-boats as early as 1820, actually.

EC
Precisely .. "the boss" has circumnavigated the planet by both ship & air - she's now 61.

Charlie @ 22
James Starley invented to "modern" bicycle - he lived a few doors away from here - see linked article. Date given as 1883/5.

Guy Rixon
I THINK the record for horse-conveyance must be Robert Carey's Ride ... Richmond Place (London) to Holyroodhouse (Edinburgh) just over 48 hours.
See also The Steel Bonnets J Macdonald Fraser.

H
This won't work as well in the major oceans. - or even something as unpredictable or violent as the N or Irish Seas, actually.

I'll be honest, the thing that surprised me most about this was that you could do London to Edinburgh in 48 hours. I would have expected it to take longer.

An issue I didn't mention was the season. We're a long way north here, and around the summer solstice Edinburgh gets 18 hours of daylight and the night sky stays light in the south.

One limit on stage coaches was visibility -- street lights didn't exist outside of villages and towns, and even there they were just oil lamps or candles outside buildings where mandated by law. Gas street lights first showed up in London in 1806, IIRC, and began spreading in towns rapidly thereafter, but country roads remained unlit (and in many cases still are). The stage coaches themselves could only carry limited light sources which were expensive to run in modern terms, so ate into the profits, so went unused where possible.

Upshot: in full darkness, the coaches kept moving but at something closer to human walking pace.

And around the winter solstice, Edinburgh gets 18 hours of night (and London isn't that much better).

So the number of hours in the day available for full-speed travel by stage coach tripled from midwinter to midsummer.

And this ignores the effect of climate. The British Isles are temperate and rainy all year round, but in general the further west you go the wetter it is, and Edinburgh is actually quite a long way west of London (as well as north) -- Scotland is overall west of England as GB is oriented roughly north-north-west to south-south-east. Ireland and Scotland get hit regularly by winter storms from October through February, with winds gusting to hurricane force. There's much less rain than a tropical hurricane would bring (the storms are cold and cold air has a much lower capacity for water) but I suspect the carriages came to a complete halt at the nearest inn while near-freezing 60mph storm winds were blowing and the roads were a muddy quagmire.

Upshot: 48 hours London-to-Edinburgh was in optimal conditions -- summer and dry. In winter I'd expect 72-96 hours to be more like it, even in good weather, and it bad weather it could take a week or two longer to make the trip.

A first-class rail ticket cost about the same as a cheap stagecoach one

I haven't checked but that wouldn't surprise me.

In London, we now think of buses as the cheaper option compared with the UndergrounD, but the early tube lines were typically charging 2d against a bus fare of 6d for a similar journey.

Flensburg was 20 km away

Yes. I have discovered ancestors who lived in Groß Tromnau (in Pommerania, now Trumeje in north-central Poland), would have significant events like weddings and baptisms in the church in Marienwerder (now Kwidzyn), which is about 20km, even though the former had its own church. As far as I can tell the only ones who travelled much further were to do with the military. Of course the fact that some emigrated to Queensland is almost weird in contrast.

Careys's journey is interesting, especially as context suggests he had no time to pre-arrange spare horses. But according to the article he rode rather than drove.

The whole of the Great North Road route is on the dry side of the UK (Edinburgh: 660mm, London: 760mm), but the UK has neglible evaporation in winter, so what gets wet stays wet. The speed will also have depended a great deal on how well made the road was (i.e. drainage as well as surface). Stagecoaches were better at handling bad mud than a modern SUV, but those get simply stuck in it, so that's not saying much. I don't know when that road was macadamised, but that would have speeded up winter travel immensely.

A first-class rail ticket cost about the same as a cheap stagecoach one

Yeah, a generation after the period I was researching and talking about. Remember the first steam engines were stationary engines in coal mines, which made mining more efficient: I'm going to speculate that the falling price of coal may have had something to do with enabling railways to get cheaper, while horse-drawn coaches required a constant amount of fodder (and the corn laws weren't helping make that any cheaper).

First commercial steam paddle steamer was in service in 1812CE. See PS Comet and you can view a replica in Port Glasgow town centre (train from Glasgow Central on the Gourock line).

The original engine from the PS Leven (1823) can be seen outside the Denny Ship Model Experiment Tank (North Clyde electric train from central Glasgow to Dumbarton East (not signed) or Central).

He would have taken money, and bought new horses (trading in the previous ones), probably every 25 miles or so. There would have been inns with horses every 10-20 miles or so, though they might not normally have sold horses - hence the need for ample money. According to one Web site, a few horses HAVE travelled 350 miles in 3 days in one race, but it killed 13% of them.

As has been said, toilets discharging on the track on the UK mainline was only just banned in the last couple of years. I think there's still an exemption for heritage railtour stock on the main line, but that will end soon. It apparently makes life pretty miserable for the track gangs. Talking to an ex rail fitter at work, another problem with discharge bogs is the underside of the coaches gets covered in it-not ideal for the regular maintenance of the brakes and running gear. On the other hand, some repairs to the catch tanks require suiting up and going inside :O

Heard something on the radio years ago, regarding children trespassing on the railway. Rail safety bloke said how some children told him how they liked standing by the trains as they went by at speed on a hot day because "there's a lovely cool spray from them"...then he told them what it was.

As has been said, toilets discharging on the track on the UK mainline was only just banned in the last couple of years.

You would think that the rail roads would take some ideas and equipment from the airline industry. In the US most modern jetliners have storage tanks and the airports have a "crap" truck that suctions it out during ground servicing operations.

Of course it is not "free" like just dumping it on the rail bed.

Charlie @ 75
Several essential "tweaks" all came to gether at Rainhill ( October 1829 ) making a mobile steam locomotive a really practical proposition. Forced draught, with the exhaust assisting steaming, by drawing combustion gasses through the boiler tubes - tubes, plural - the multi-tube boiler on "Rocket" was a sensational development & between the trials & the grand opening a separate smoke box became essential in production & a completely water-jacketed firebox. All of which pushed efficiency up & costs down.

Read an interesting essay about how the approximately 20 year period ending about 10 years ago might be an exception in Chinese relations with the west.

Do you happen to have a link?

From 1834, on the near order of 700,000 Americans migrated west using the Oregon Trail and trails that branched off. Just over 2,000 miles (3,200 km). A large majority of them walked it in about nine months.

If money is no object then you can go further. You start with a couple of spare horses, unloaded, and you trade (and pay through the nose) for replacement horses whenever the ones you're running on can't take it any further.

Then there is that totally misreading the future US thing called the "Pony Express".

10 days to get papers from St Joseph Missouri to California. At very high cost. And the telegraph existed but the backers seemed to think it would take a decade or more to get reliable lines run over the same route. It started in April 1860 and went out of business in October 1861 when a telegraph line was installed to the west coast.

Horses galloped about 10 miles between stations. Then the rider swapped to a new horse. Riders stayed on for 10 hours. 20 if the next person wasn't ready. Riders had to be small and put up with a lot. Weather and ill tempered locals. But they got paid 3 to 5 times a typical wage of the time.

10 days give or take.

Then of course the first transcontinental railroad route was done before the end of the decade.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pony_Express

""there's a lovely cool spray from them"...then he told them what it was."

Hanging out of the window once somewhere around Ribblehead I was hit by drops of moisture from a stream that had begun to emerge from the side of the loco, and thought that it had sprung a coolant leak or something... then I realised it was the secondman having a piss out of the cab door.

The airlines did the same until quite recently (a few decades), too, which was stopped because of patterns of anomalous cholera and typoid outbreaks. The difference is that they put a LOT more money into refurbishment than British railways do.

In the US big chunks of "blue" ice crashing into a house or car every now and then put some public pressure on the airlines and government.

I think the airlines had tanks but were supposed to dumped them over thinly settled areas. Or that was the plan.

Then there is that totally misreading the future US thing called the "Pony Express".

Which failed only because it came along just too late, and was pipped to the post by the telegraph (as you noted).

A few centuries earlier the Mongol Empire used a similar system for command and control, which allowed it to dominate most of Asia.

But the writing was probably on the wall ever since Chappe's optical telegraph went into service in 1792. Slower and much more labour-intensive than electrical telegraphy, but it still allowed Napoleon to send emergency orders from Paris to the French Mediterranean fleet in a matter of hours.

... Also, the design life of a jet airliner is 30 years, so they get replaced regularly -- because newer airliners are more fuel-efficient the older ones tend to be relegated to freight carriers or developing world carriers; European passenger carriers tend to operate new planes (the US carriers are unusual in running their fleet into the ground).

Airliners which dump raw sewage are at risk of being sued by random folks under their flight path, so there's an incentive to order new planes with tanks and pay someone at the airport to suck it clean every so often.

But to switch trains to using onboard honey tanks means you need platform-side support at stations. Either sewers and hoses for flushing the tanks laying alongside the tracks, or motorized sewage tankers for draining them and transporting the effluent away from the trains. Which is all construction-intensive and requires extra personnel to operate. Meanwhile, trains operate on a fixed network so there's less risk of random lawsuits by litigants who might have very deep pockets.

You would think that the rail roads would take some ideas and equipment from the airline industry.

Why does everyone assume they don't? Every time the airline people try to show they can do better, it doesn't end well. I could mention the Advanced Passenger Train, or an early issue with Virgin when they tried running railways in the UK.

Scenario: trains kept stopping in the middle of nowhere. Virgin: it's these terrible old trains we inherited. Rail industry: the rest of us remember to put diesel in them.

Virgin had changed all the working schedules of the trains without allowing for the need to refuel.

But to switch trains to using onboard honey tanks means you need platform-side support at stations.

That's not how it's done in the UK. The toilet tanks are supposed to cope with an entire day's worth of use. Then they're pumped out at the depot overnight.

All new stock for many years has had retention toilets. But there's still old stock around and converting them isn't trivial - you need to find somewhere to put the tank and to run the pipes for pumping it out. Then you need more pump lines at the depots, etc.

We also sweat a LOT from our heads. I've read something like 60% or more of our heat exhaust is there, and I, personally, would vouch for this.

A point Poul Anderson made near the end of Three Hearts and Three Lions.

Consider that a train carries a lot more passengers than a station wagon, with very much fewer staff.

On the other hand, these days on this side of the Pond, some organizations consider it on par with cruise ships. We are extremely po'd at Via Rail in Canada. It cost a friend and me something like $1200 or $1500 for a roomette on Amtrack from DC to Spokane and back in '15 (Worldcon). Ellen and I were looking forward to taking the train to Winnipeg for the NASFiC... hell, no. Amtrak to Toronto was reasonable, under $500. Toronto to Winnipeg, train runs twice a week, with AAA and senior discounts, about $3200!!!

We'll fly for almost a third of that.

I believe US trains stopped dumping toilet residue on the tracks somewhere between the 50s and the 70's (after a lawsuit by some idiot fishermen who'd been in a small boat and "took refuge from rain" under a railroad bridge.

Airlines I think between the seventies and eighties. There were still jokes about Icey BMs....

We also sweat a LOT from our heads. I've read something like 60% or more of our heat exhaust is there, and I, personally, would vouch for this.

There was a famous study about that showing that most heat lost is from the head (in the context of winter survival). Turns out if you look at the study that the head was the only uncovered part of the body — so of course that's where the subjects lost most of their heat.

When the study was redone it turned out that (at least in winter conditions) heat is lost from exposed skin at about the same rate no matter where the skin is located (at least before hypothermia sets in).

Toronto to Winnipeg, train runs twice a week, with AAA and senior discounts, about $3200!!!

Booking how far ahead? Via is notorious for a big jump in fares if you don't book a long time ahead.

I just checked for May 28, and the one-way fare Toronto-Winnipeg is $269 for economy, with no discounts. Sleeper accommodation is sold out so I can't see the prices. First class for two is $6000, which is cheaper than first-class airfare for two.

We're talking the NASFiC, so third weekend in July. We were looking into sleeper, as we really would prefer to not sleep on a coach seat.

I'll try looking online, bucause that's an insane price differential.

Just looked. With a sleeper, if upper berth, it's over $1500 one way.

A somewhat related ask historians answer on Did cowboys treat horses more like pets or cars?

A few centuries earlier the Mongol Empire used a similar system for command and control, which allowed it to dominate most of Asia.

I suspect a bunch of empires used posts and couriers riding or running between them. Certainly the Inca did, and IIRC even the Hawaiians had runners. Probably goes back well before marathon. The Pont Express was just a late attempt to monetize the idea.

Speaking of Mongols, check me on this, but I seem to recall that Mongol warriors tended to have strings of five horses, switching horses every day. I don't know how they arranged their baggage on the ones they weren't riding, but there's probably some fun logistics and horse psychology involved. If they were mostly riding mares, the warriors might have been (psychologically) working as the lead stallion for their little herd. Rather a different view than da warrior dude and his trusty stallion bro.

I seem to recall that Mongol warriors tended to have strings of five horses, switching horses every day.

Depending on the source, 3-5, 4-6, or 2-10 horses in a string are ranges I've read. In Mongolia our guide said it depended on how many the warrior could afford.

As has been said, toilets discharging on the track on the UK mainline was only just banned in the last couple of years. I think there's still an exemption for heritage railtour stock on the main line, but that will end soon. It apparently makes life pretty miserable for the track gangs.

software engineer I knew was going to work on train radios and would need to to work "trackside". She didn't mind the safety lectures, it was the Cholera injections that put her off...

"You would think that the rail roads would take some ideas and equipment from the airline industry."

They have, but the bits they copied were those that degrade the journey for passengers. Mandatory booking in advance, or walk-up fares becoming impossibly expensive, which achieves the same thing. Racks of seats facing the same way instead of seats facing each other across a table. Not announcing the platform (=gate) until shortly before departure so that waiting passengers can't relax. (Like the operators are feline carnivores working up a nice adrenaline garnish in the passengers selected for...) Over-priced glitzy shops instead of places to buy things for the journey. Bugger-all luggage space.

Crumbly gitly mutter moan nostalgia, but it really was better in my youth (apart from the risk of dinosaurs on the line)). And cheaper too, in real terms.

Depending on the source, 3-5, 4-6, or 2-10 horses in a string are ranges I've read.

I had the impression (probably from reading the Jack Weatherford biography of Genghis Khan a few years ago, that at least when riding as a Horde, whatever that might be, they used something like what the cowboys in Lonesome Dove call a remuda with some form of collective management of the herd. Maybe I misremember and each warrior rode with their own remuda. But I do remember the bit about mare's milk being one of the staples for Mongols on long rides, suggesting larger sized herds.

Neither. In a good environment, working animals were and are treated like junior employees; in a bad one, like valuable slaves.

They have done it since, using infra-red cameras, and it's not that simple, though the head myth remains just that. Some places have more blood vessels closer to the skin (e.g. hands, feet, groin and armpits), and so lose more heat. I am also pretty certain that at least some people can shut down near-skin circulation better in some areas than others (e.g. legs vs torso) but, while I have observed it quite a lot, I have never seen a good reference to the effect.

But that's reaction to cold. I don't think that reaction to heat is the same, and think that it's pretty constant (eccrine gland density). It doesn't seem to be that simple, either. While your palms have a higher density than elsewhere, I have not noticed them responding even as much to overheating.

94, 105 - Which makes the head thing "sort of true" as well as "partly a myth". What it actually indicates is that you are best to insulate the uninsulated area rather than to increase insulation anywhere else first.

Luggage, and lack of space for it: I suspect a cultural shift going into the railway age. It became traditional for British people to travel with way too much luggage, such that trains had enough stowage to park an HGV in and even that wasn't enough. Most railways operated a "luggage in advance" service by dedicated, non-passenger trains. But you can't take so much luggage in a private road-carriage and you definitely can't fit as much on a stage coach. Baggage wagons following the passenger coaches possibly arrive rather later if the coaches get changes of horses and the carts don't. So, at some point, the fashion must have changed from travelling light to travelling super-heavy.

Luggage, and lack of space for it: I suspect a cultural shift going into the railway age. It became traditional for British people to travel with way too much luggage,

Speaking as someone who has flown a LOT since at various periods since 1980 and have memories of people flying before then...

People's fashion needs have changed. People used to dress in "Sunday go to meeting" clothes just to get on the plane. From my observation that is now less than 1% of the traveling public now. And not much higher even on international flights. (I'm sure there are some cultures where the dress up still happens.)

Outside of vacations people flew with a suit or few (men and women). And even then the adults might dress up for the flight. The women had makeup cases. Those cases held as much or more as the backpack I travel with now.

I MIGHT take a pair of slacks and dress shoes with me. But a suit? Not likely. Jeans and shirts. I can travel using my travel backpack (about 50% larger than my daily one) with a change of clothes plus all my tech needs. My wife and I can share a medium to maybe small suitcase if we want for a weekend trip.

None of this was true "back in the day". The space needed for luggage on airliners and likely trains has gone way down over the years.

Aw, gee, who'd a thunk it?

My observation is that the main exceptions are due to the other effects of cold, more than simple heat loss. If hands and feet get cold, they lose control and strength - the same is much less true of legs, because there is a much thicker fat layer and better vasculated muscle underneath. And a cold back or neck seems to risk muscles going into spasm worse than for arms and legs, possibly because (for most activities) they are holding position rather than continually moving and producing force.

Remember that few people were travelling for a few days or couple of weeks, as at present; what they were more often doing was moving where they lived. I still have some of the steel trunks that were used when we moved from Britain to Africa and back again, as well as ones when other relatives did something similar.

The change Guy Rixon commented on was almost certainly due to the relative wealth of people in 1900 versus 1800. Fiction from the 18th century has many references to trunks being loaded onto coaches.

Current trains (certainly in the UK) have been downgraded so that they are suitable only for commuters and people travelling for a few days to somewhere else. Few of them have enough space for even a quarter of their passengers each having a single medium-sized suitcase. I am pretty sure that stagecoaches had more luggage space than that.

What I'm saying is that people don't take as much stuff PER DAY as they used to. At least most don't. Even on a two week trip across the ocean to Germany in the WINTER my wife and I had one suitcase each and we were spending holidays with relatives and friends.

And yes there are exceptions.

My wife spent 8 years "on the phones" primarily taking calls about lost luggage for an airline. People even then 10-20 years ago traveled with much less than when she was crossing the Atlantic herself in the 60s and 70s.

My daughter and her husband have been around the world a couple of times and 3/4s of the way a few more. They just don't take as much stuff (crap) as folks would have 50 years ago.

Moving is different. But even today people tend to ship most of their clothes. Now that UPS/FedEx/etc... will do it in a few days vs. a month or more a while back.

I was being unclear, then. I was trying to add more detail to what you said!

Back then, the train would be full of cigarette smoke. Lots of fun! (Not)

When I started flying weekly in the early 80s it was the beginning of the end of smoking on airlines. In the US at least.

I have memories of USAir flights where they limited smoking to the rear of the cabin. During those flights you could see the cloud/fog obscuring the back of the plane mid flight. It was terrible. And the flight attendants hated to work the back of the plane.

I was being unclear

Sorry. I read it "wrong".

The change Guy Rixon commented on was almost certainly due to the relative wealth of people in 1900 versus 1800.

Don't forget changes in both fashion and the cost of cloth!

During the period 1800-1900 the production of yarn moved from the spinning jenny to motor-powered spinning mules (a 10-50-fold increase in output per machine and a massive increase in output beyond that due to moving away from muscle power), sewing and knitting machines were invented, every step in fabric production was mechanized, and the price of cloth fell by multiple orders of magnitude -- a metre of woven cotton or wool today costs about as many pounds as it did in 1800, despite roughly 200-fold inflation.

The cost of manufacturing clothing also fell, insofar as before 1830 every seam was hand-stitched: by 1900 sewing machines were in ubiquitous use for long seams, and circular knitting machines for socks and stockings were in widespread use.

The upshot is that a single set of clothes—dress and underpinnings for a woman, suit and shirt for a man—went from being the equivalent of a new automobile in terms of expense in 1800, to being merely £1-2000 (in today's money) by 1900: yes, working class folks relied on hand-me-downs and second-hand clothing, and everyone repaired or patched clothes that were worn or damaged, but if you weren't in poverty you had a best outfit and a daily-wear outfit and probably a wash-day outfit as well. And if you were upper class or middle class you might well have a set of clothes for every day of the week for various social situations.

So there was more luggage to travel with by the end of the period.

The trend in cost reduction continued to the present day: shipping containerization and outsourcing to sweatshops in the developing world kicked the floorboards out from under the cost of manufacturing, which in turn made the present century's "fast fashion" possible. We also have numerous types of synthetic fibre, all designed for different types of fabric structure and use case. And stuff is really cheap.

I am currently wearing: boxer shorts, socks, cotton t-shirt, and microfibre fleece-lined joggers. Total replacement cost from new is about £50-60; add another £70 for shoes and another £70 for my jacket and a total outfit would cost me £200, although I could save money on the jacket and shoes and probably keep it to £100 all-in. In 1800 money that'd be about 8-12 shillings (but conversions are wildly hard to establish and it might have been a lot less).

But that's casual wear. A lounge suit, shirt, tie, and dress shoes can be had for less than £200 (just drop into your nearest M&S menswear department and look for formalwear), but the quality will be a bit shit. An acceptable quality suit plus alterations to fit can be had for £500 (hit up one of the tailors who visit to take measurements and pass them to a back end manufacturing operation in India) and £40-80 for a shirt: by the time you're finished with underwear, tie, socks, shoes, etc. you can easily be pushing £1000, and this price isn't very elastic because the limiting constraint isn't the cost of the fabric but the tailoring -- which is labour-intensive. But it's still cheaper than the equivalent would have been circa 1800.

As for womens' clothing, just don't go there. The falling cost of fabric plus innovations in sewing resulted in fashion from 1800-1860 sucking up ever-increasing yardages. Someone I know who was into historical costuming made a period authentic replica of a 1855 dress for herself, with a cage crinoline supported skirt and multiple petticoats, that took fifty yards of fabric and weighed close to 20kg! There was a good reason the dress reform movement took off between 1890 and 1920 ...

M&S menswear department and look for formalwear), but the quality will be a bit shit.

Yep. But for folks like me who work in tech but rarely rarely rarely ever need to dress up, shit is OK. I don't work on on Wall Street for a reason. (Well many reasons but this is one of them.)

I wear a suit for weddings and funerals. And maybe some other odd occasion. 1 to 3 times a year. (But not at all in the last 3 years.) (My social circle is smaller than many.) So a suit that with a cleaning or few that lasts 20 wearings does me fine and will last 10 years. In fact my body weight/size changes enough that I'll have to replace a crappy one before it wears out. If moths don't get it first.

My biggest issue with clothes wearing out lately is jeans where the seams in the crotch fall apart.

I want to be flummoxed as to why. Then I realize that I've had them for 5 to 10 years.

Yes. That was a large part of what I meant by more wealthy.

However, one niggle. Very few of the middle class had a separate suit for every day and social situation and not all of the upper class did, whether in 1900 or 1950, because the people who did were normally definitely rich. Multiple houses, (small) yacht and chartering private aircraft rich, in todays terms; not mere millionaires.

You are definitely right about repairing and patching, which remained until the sweatshop era. I slept a lot in side-to-side sheets, for example, and we were not poor. My wife gets exasperated that I mend clothing (especially jersies) way beyong the point she feels they are unfit for public display or even use in the garden :-)

My wife gets exasperated that I mend clothing (especially jersies) way beyong the point she feels they are unfit for public display or even use in the garden

We must NOT let our wives get together. I don't mend clothes but do keep them for working where I might ruin something. Jeans with tears. Shirts with stains or frayed collars and other bits. Shoes well past their wear by data. Especially work shoes. She wants to toss them while I keep them in the pile for when I need to dig a ditch or crawl under the car. Sunday I had planned to crawl through the attic 1 time. It turned into 4 times with the temps in the low 90s in the attic. I went through 3 sets of crap shirts in a few hours due to sweat and the crap I got on them crawling around.

Plus I tend to think repair on most household items when she's thinking toss and buy new.

Yep. But for folks like me who work in tech but rarely rarely rarely ever need to dress up, shit is OK.

Hard same.

I own a suit, but mostly because I'm too ashamed to take it to a charity shop -- it was bought as workwear (contract job required it) in 1995 and is ridiculously dated and probably doesn't fit any more. I also have the rather different one I got married in 20 years ago which still fits but isn't suitable for office work. And I have zero plans to ever buy one again. Neckties? I don't think there's one in the house currently and I never wear the things.

Westerners certainly don't carry as much gear today, but I'm not sure that's true for all nations. My wife and I recently flew through Cairo, and there was a marked difference between the European, tourist families and the Egyptian families who were well weighed down with cases. North African airlines seems to have a more liberal baggage policy than European operations, like including a 20-kg hold-bag free with every ticket without inflating the price.

When Roger Needham was asked to be vice-chancellor, he accepted on the condition that he would not have to buy or wear a suit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Needham

I wear a suit for weddings and funerals.

I usually do, but as it happens I went to a funeral yesterday, and although I do have proper tailored suits (why yes, I have been to Hong Kong), I didn't wear one. The deceased's family reckoned that he would have preferred not to have to wear one himself, so in some respects we'd be respecting him more by not going the full formal.

Most were dressed formally even so, but not all. His son's partner went all goth, which worked nicely.

During the lead up to the original iPhone, Jobs and associates had multiple meetings with Bellsouth muckity mucks. At one point one of them asked a Jobs underling if they could maybe wear some dress shirts or maybe a suit. It was ignored.

I haven't bought a suit in about 30 years, or owned one in 25. The last time I bought tee shirts I got 2 for GB£6-00 in Asda.
The most I've spend on any garment for me this decade is about £40 on a Winter jacket.

EC
Even worse than that, actually.
Going to-&-from Matlock last weekend, the main lin train to Derby had luggage racks with CONVEX top sides - so even my moderate-sized, unframed rucksack { Which was all the luggage I had } would not go in, at all.
Appalling bad design or lack of it.

E C & David L
You should see the disreputable stuff I wear to the plot ....
I MIGHT have a suit, somewhere in the cupboards.

You should see the disreputable stuff I wear to the plot

My "work" clothes range from "small food stain" to holes you can put your fist through. Especially on shirts. The point is to keep the grease and skeeters off my arms and wick away sweat. Not for looks. At all.

Aargh! PRO vice-chancellor.

What I'm saying is that people don't take as much stuff PER DAY as they used to.

On the flipside, expectations for how many days we were the same outfit (especially in a row) have also changed. When my parents were children you wore a piece of clothing until it was dirty — and what we consider 'dirty' now would have been 'wearable' back then.

My mother remembers going on overnight school cycling trips with no more luggage than a toothbrush, wearing the same clothes for several days, and that being normal.

Lower-middle-class and working-class England in the 1940s and 50s, for reference.

a cage crinoline supported skirt and multiple petticoats, that took fifty yards of fabric and weighed close to 20kg

I've got a book on Victorian and Edwardian fashion, bought to use to date photographs. In it the author remarks that the Rational Dress Society advocated that women's undergarments should weigh no more than 7 lbs — and they were widely derided as crazy unrealistic reformers!

I forget the year for that, but it was a time when cage crinolines weren't used so a woman's legs had to move lots of drapery with every step — roughly twice the effort of men for the same distance.

RE: airline clothing. Don't forget that "security theater" from TSA in the US largely dictates what people wear to the airport.

--Shoes have to come off to be screened for shoe bombs

--Belts might contain knives, so pants that can't be worn without belts are problematic

--Minimal metal, or anything else that will cause scanner hassles

--Minimal space for non-business class people and their carrion

--Increasing per-bag charges

--The rise of the super-rich class simply flying private planes

Etm.

I suspect metal detectors and politicians' "tough on crime/terrorism" campaigns might play as big a role in what people travel in as does the availability of cheap cloth. At least since 2002.

"Non-business class people and their carrion"? Do hope that was "Auto (in) correct, though "Carrion" might be a technically correct description of many meat products.

The rise of the super-rich class simply flying private planes

The cost per hour of running a bizjet, per seat, is comparable to the cost per hour of a first class seat (this is long haul first class, not US domestic "first class" which is what we in the real world call "premium economy" -- I'm talking 2 cabin crew for 8-16 seats, seats that turn into lie-flat beds plus an ottoman/storage/jump seat for visitors, limo to/from the jetway so you don't mingle with the proles in business class, and so on).

The difference is that the bizjet will be waiting for you at your nearest airfield (not necessarily a big-ass international terminal) and will fly as close as possible to your destination, it'll take off when you are ready to travel, and you don't bother with the security theater -- at most you get a polite visit from immigration and customs officers who come to meet you in.

It's not really any wonder that the wealthy have largely abandoned business class and first class on scheduled services if they can afford a seat on a private plane. For the same reason the nobs (before steam locomotion) used private carriages rather than stage coaches, and for some decades thereafter you could pay to have your private railway carriage hooked onto a train going in the right direction so you didn't have to mingle.

Riders through Central Asian steppes needed ingenious survival strategies, and the Mongols pretty much figured it out. Meat was kept fresh by storing it between the saddle and the horse's back, since the combination of horse sweat, heat and constant pounding motion somehow combined to discourage microbes. They also drank a slightly alcoholic fermented horse milk product called koumiss, so some of the mares they rode probably served double duty. That last line doesn't scan well but you know what I mean.

No, only bits of it would. The non-smoking carriages would not be, and they made up the majority of the accommodation (or came to, since adjusting numbers to match demand was as simple as putting no-smoking stickers on windows that weren't there before).

You used to have the choice of options. Now you are compelled under threat to follow only a single option, whether it's appropriate or not. The old system was clearly superior for that reason alone, never mind anything else.

To make matters worse, they've removed the workarounds as well. You can't go out into the vestibule and open the window to have a smoke, because they have adopted out of caprice the principle that high-altitude airliners adopt out of necessity, of sealing the passengers off from even the lightest of contacts with the external environment, so there are no openable windows any more. You don't even get the chance while changing trains in the middle of a journey, because they don't even let you smoke on the platforms any more, out in the open air, which is plain ridiculous.

Of course they haven't done a thing about the people who deliberately create clouds of stink that are both more pervasive and more persistent than tobacco smoke, by means of concoctions of chemicals specifically selected for their powerful smell and carrier substances which constrain those chemicals to evaporate at a controlled rate so the release of odour is continuous for the whole day. After all, this method doesn't provide an obvious visual indication of who's doing it. But it still only takes one to stink out an entire carriage; and many of the chemicals seem to have an affinity for hair, so the adsorption over the course of the journey then leaves you stuck carrying your own personal cloud of it around near your face for the rest of the day, and I for one end up feeling ill when it's gone on for long enough.

Here again they have removed the workaround, by removing all the openable windows, and instead relying - airliner-style, again - on artificial ventilation systems which are said to be able to "change all the air in the carriage every four minutes" (or some comparable time). Which they do not. They simply dilute it by half every four minutes. Walter Kaaden would have a fit.

I wholeheartedly agree with everything Guy Rixon has said...

"Lower-middle-class and working-class England in the 1940s and 50s, for reference."

School laundry schedule as considered appropriate for Diana Spencer's cousin and people of that ilk:

Clean socks and pants, every 2 days (or 3, since 7 is prime)
Clean shirt, once a week
Clean bed sheet, one a week (to last one week as top sheet then one week as bottom sheet), may be a side-to-side sheet
Clean suit trousers, schedule dependent on rate of bodily growth.

"Non-business class people and their carrion"? Do hope that was "Auto (in) correct, though "Carrion" might be a technically correct description of many meat products.

I'm rather afraid it was a feeble attempt at a joke.

"Neckties? I don't think there's one in the house currently and I never wear the things."

They are a foul abomination, and seem to have absolutely no function whatsoever apart from giving other people a convenient ready-made means of strangling you with minimal difficulty, which makes them quite an extreme case of a bug renamed as a feature.

A job I had had for something over two years before one of the other guys remarked in passing that I was the only bloke in the company who didn't wear a tie. I thought about it, and realised it was actually true; up until that point it hadn't crossed my mind to notice, any more than it had ever crossed my mind to wear one in the first place. Nobody ever gave me any hassle about it, and the computers didn't notice any more than I did.

"heat is lost from exposed skin at about the same rate no matter where the skin is located"

...which returns to my original point: this includes much of the heat generated in muscular effort. Naturally some of the heat generated in the parts of the muscle close to the surface reaches the skin by direct conduction, but for the bulk of it the internal heat is removed by forced convection of liquid coolant. It then goes through your lungs and out again before any of it can be distributed to the skin, which latter is a pretty even process and does not favour areas of skin close to the working muscles.

This also implies that the rate of heat loss through exhalation is likely to be a significant factor, albeit one that hardly ever gets mentioned since you can't notice or control it. Looks like dogs make deliberate use of it, though.

Birds, of course, take it further, and have direct internal air cooling as well as the liquid transfer coolant stage.

"If hands and feet get cold, they lose control and strength - the same is much less true of legs, because there is a much thicker fat layer and better vasculated muscle underneath."

And that muscle is usually working, too, even if only a little bit.

I have lost control of it when it was not working at all - two and a half hours on a motorbike in manky weather; when I tried to get off I fell off, and then found my legs to be more or less immovable, stuck in a riding-a-motorbike position. Took me entirely by surprise as the ankle-wiggling muscles were still working fine and I'd had no problem working the pedals, but the big upper leg muscles which had been doing nothing at all had gone quite cold and solid.

Friend and his brother were both Customs Officers, friend specialised in excise duty on oil tankers but his brother spent a lot of time on the arrivals desk at various airports. Brothers sense of smell had been disabled due to after effects of surgery so on a very regular basis he'd get colleagues saying "Phil, can you come and check this suitcase please" and retiring to as much distance as they could manage. The suitcase usually proved to contain bushmeat that had not coped well with the journey from wherever it had been harvested to the UK.

Back when I were a lad, late 90's, we'd go to visit Grandparents travelling by HST. Smoking carriages were still a thing, obviously Mum booked us non smoking. We found out the hard way that some utter cretin at BR had decided to designate the middle tables of the smoking coach as non smoking. It was fucking vile. Thankfully we found seats elsewhere.

They also drank a slightly alcoholic fermented horse milk product called koumiss

Which tastes absolutely vile, at least to my rather bland taste buds.

I quite liked the yoghurt I was given by a nomad, even if it did, as I expected, give me the runs. (Hospitality gift, really had no choice about accepting it*.)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/etherflyer/7965866962/

*We'd previously met several families selling rocks by the side of the road. Robert K was chatting with the girl and she was trying to earn enough money for school — something nomads struggle with. These nomads (different location) had a really bright little girl, maybe four, and I had a lot of Mongolian money I didn't need, so my guide helped me give it to the mother to pay for school or medicine for her children. Naturally they had to serve me tea and give me something back. One of my better memories of Mongolia, and well worth the following day of intestinal unpleasantness.

I fear my "suit" is much like Charlies... I hung it in the wardrobe some years ago and last time I remember seeing it the jacket was dusty on top. This discussion has prompted me to go and inhume it.

Pigeon
On the few occasions, now-a-days when I wear a collar shirt, then I will wear a ... cravat .. usually silk.
The point is that it is NOT tied tightly around the collar, nor itself buttoned-up.
It's tied outsde the collar & is a DISPLAY item ...

I have one reasonably nice dinner suit which is really just uniform for concerts with the choir I sing in, and I don't have another use for. I did have a reasonably nice interviews-weddings-and-funerals suit, but I forgot to re-bag it one time and left it hanging where moths could get to the jacket. I've kept it as it's still possibly useful for gigging (which would really just be uniform again, especially if I attach bling epaulettes and other genre-appropriate accoutrements, somewhat DAAS-inspired I guess). Interviews, weddings and funerals warrant some sort of pass-as-formal semi-formal jacket these days. I'll only get another suit at this stage in life if I find myself drawn into senior management (I never needed one as a middle manager or a tech).

I have clothes for playing dress-ups, but the "business suit" thing is hopefully passed for me. My current boss wears polo shirts at best unless he's meeting with very important customers (or, I assume, attending weddings or funerals) and that seems to be typical of small-ish business owners in my experience. And I won't/can't work for larger ones (I prefer to have the "you can just fuck right off" discussions with the person who actually makes the decisions, rather than "the board have decided to implement a 5% enhancement programme in human resources and that has trickled down to you").

Every now and then someone does raise an eyebrow when they see me playing dress-ups because normally I'm the target of "this only has a few holes and I figure you'll wear it and I won't" type donations (this is accurate). Mostly from friends, but occasionally kind strangers.

The last time I "might have" needed a tie it was effectively declared "optional" by a Commander (RN) who was wearing his uniform shirt open necked with uniform trousers.

Allow me to quote the relief driver as we pulled out of, I think, Omaha, as I was riding Grayhound (the bus) from SF to Philly in 1975 (a few weeks after the NASFiC in Anaheim): "Smoking is confined to the rear three seats of the bus. Cigarettes only, no pipes, cigars, or marajuana."

He presumably had heard about the evening before....

That's because they're making CRAP!

In '78, I think it was, I had a housemate who sold fabric and clothing, including to the Amish. The fabric for pants was guaranteed at 18 (I think that's threads per inch). The last time I looked, six or eight years ago, the CRAP you're buying might have 9.

And then there's the scum who want more ROI... until, I think, the early oughts, I never saw a guy standing at a urinal having to take their pants down... because the vendor made the zipper about 2" TOO SHORT.

Ellen just paid over $200 for a new down parka - her old one was dead.

Let's see: I bought a good gray wool suit new for my second marriage. I got lucky in the genetic lottery, yes, I can still wear it. Haven't, though, in forever. I prefer to wear the brown corduroy suit I bought in a thrift store around '89.

The last time I had to wear a tie at work... actually, the only job I had that I had to wear one was working for the Scummy Mortgage Co in Austin, TX, '87-'88. (Tie went on as I got to my desk, and came off on the way to the elevator leaving).

Otherwise, Weddings, funerals, and job hunting.

Now, actual dress up clothes... I need to decide whether I'm going to replace the good wool tux jacket I have that the moths got, damn them. And, ah, yes, when one daughter married her now-ex in '09, she called me beforehand, to ask me not to outdress the groom.

Full dress? I have a silver-gray tailcoat with matching pants, and a matching top hat my late wife and son got me. And I wear a cravat (pre-tied) with it. Yes, I outdress the waiters.

Ellen has heard of them. But then, she's done Victorian, as well as 18th century costumes.

On the other hand, I seem to remember a novel by someone those here might be familiar with, which had a character who had a genegnineered crest on his skull to radiate heat from his brain....

You can have my Devo concert shirt* when there's more hole than shirt. (In short, after it devolves.)

* Hearing Mongoloid live was brain-shattering.

Is there going to be a spoiler thread for Season of Skulls?

correct, though "Carrion" might be a technically correct description of many meat products.

I'm rather afraid it was a feeble attempt at a joke.

My wife did a 6 week stint at JFK helping to clear a backlog of "separated" baggage a long time ago. There were some folks from non US/EU countries who apparently had packed food delicacies from back home. Like "rotting" meat in a sealed container or bag. But the seal/bag had broken. For a few of them they carried them to a dumpster via poles. They skipped the normal "open it up and look for papers that might have contact information" process.

when I tried to get off I fell off, and then found my legs to be more or less immovable, stuck in a riding-a-motorbike position. Took me entirely by surprise as the ankle-wiggling muscles were still working fine and I'd had no problem working the pedals, but the big upper leg muscles which had been doing nothing at all had gone quite cold and solid.

Which as an older fart I've learned to stop at US rest stops on long drives every 2 hours or so even if I don't feel the need to dump fluids. More than that and I have trouble walking for a minute or few. Which can't be good for me living to be an even older fart.

Up to my 60s I could drive 5 or 6 hours without stopping, even when lightly drinking liquids. And just feel a bit stiff for a minute or so.

I sweat more than most so the car HVAC system tends to remove the humidity of the water on my clothes and from my breath and keeps my bladder from getting overly full. But it does/did come out dark after a 5+ hour drive.

she's done Victorian

My gaming group was going to have a Space: 1889 costume game/dinner once, dressing as our characters. Then we looked closer at all the layers that would involve and decided "no". Or in the case of the women, "no bloody way". Not in an Ontario summer with no air conditioning…

Thinking of costuming, some of you might be interested in Jill Bearup's YouTube channel. She's an Irish (I think) stage fighter who analyzes movie armour, movie fights, and debunks urban myths about clothing and fighting.

I found her breakdown of movie fights into phrases and analysis of how they move the plot and develop characterization (or not) fascinating.

She did a series of videos during lockdown about the practicality of fighting in various costumes, debunking or confirming bits of 'common knowledge'. Would be very useful for verisimilitude if you have female combatants in a fantasy novel!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRrvZqCL1YsqRA8IpXrhYQQ

Concert t-shirts have a high status that can easily offset a bit of wear. So long as the tour dates are still vaguely legible it's no matter whether there is more hole than fabric.

Rbt Prior
Movie sword-fights .... oh dearie, dearie me - just don't go there, it's pathetic at least 99% of the time.
It's a long time since I fenced, but the actual moves, when you are facing someone else, also carrying something long & pointy are nothing at all like the movies/TV etc.
Some years back, I went to a Kings Army/Parlaiment Forces display. They had several swords, etc on a display table, so I started picking them up, testing for balance (etc) ... I'd just found one that wasn't too bad { Point of balance about a handspan out from the guard } when ....
One of the re-enactors came up & said: "You've done this before, haven't you?
He could tell, simply by the way I handled the stuff (!)
We then had an interesting 5-minite conversation.

Is there going to be a spoiler thread for Season of Skulls?

Eventually. Maybe the week after next. (Not right now, off to an SF convention tomorrow: not another convention the following weekend.)

It's a long time since I fenced, but the actual moves, when you are facing someone else, also carrying something long & pointy are nothing at all like the movies/TV etc

Yup.

Just find some HEMA martial arts folks and hang out on the sidelines during a session or three. Or, for Japanese swordfighting, watch Kendo fights on YouTube.

The moves are nothing like movie swordfighting.

Modern fencing kinda-sorta evolved from 18th century formal dueling with short-swords so remains very vaguely relevant, to about the same extent that two guys marching away from each other for ten paces with raised black-powder pistols remains relevant to a shoot-out during an armed robbery. (In other words, not very.)

Just find some HEMA martial arts folks and hang out on the sidelines during a session or three. Or, for Japanese swordfighting, watch Kendo fights on YouTube.

There's also for example HEMA longsword or rapier on Youtube, so no need to find out a local salle. (You can also probably join in if you can find a salle!)

The trend in cost reduction continued to the present day: shipping containerization and outsourcing to sweatshops in the developing world kicked the floorboards out from under the cost of manufacturing, which in turn made the present century's "fast fashion" possible. We also have numerous types of synthetic fibre, all designed for different types of fabric structure and use case. And stuff is really cheap.

The fabric's gotten cheaper and the clothes have gotten cheaper†, but also laundry has gotten cheaper (and exponentially easier) too, which helps slim down luggage.

† I remember reading an author who did plenty of travel and obsessed about packing efficiency talking about his system; he threw out his socks after wear while travelling because the saved space was literally worth more to him. Imagine telling an 1800s-era Lancastrian that one!

Interesting, though not surprising.

Yes, exhalation is a major factor, and often dominates when people are well wrapped-up.

he threw out his socks after wear while travelling because the saved space was literally worth more to him. Imagine telling an 1800s-era Lancastrian that one!

Go back to the 1700-1800 era when male fashion was for knee breeches and stockings and women also wore stockings: in one historical biography I recall reading about a noble who was very pleased with a pair of fancy stockings they'd paid roughly £10 for. That's £10 in the 1730s, which would make it roughly on the order of £10,000 today: they were hand-knitted in silk with hand embroidery and stitching, which meant weeks to months of painstaking fine detail handiwork by someone who had been doing it for years and would probably end up going blind eventually.

Remember, no cheap electricity or light bulbs: candles and lamp oil were expensive, the equivalent of trying to light your house at night using flashlights powered by disposable AA cells. So this was a daylight hours activity, possibly with the aid of a glass magnifier to concentrate the sun's rays (that was a thing, flaws were acceptable if they were just for illumination, so they could be made much for cheaply -- FSVO "cheaply" -- than actual visual magnification lenses).

"possibly with the aid of a glass magnifier to concentrate the sun's rays"

I believe that the majority were simply blown glass globes filled with water - those are MUCH easier to make than solid glass globes, let alone even crude lenses of that size. There's at least one well-known painting that shows that.

As well as private carriages, you could hire a "special" train - loco and one carriage - to take you wherever you wanted. At (bignum) per mile. Conan Doyle mentions these from time to time.

Or the bullseye left over from a sheet of crown glass. They could be used for small windows used for illumination only -- too warped to see through -- but if you put it in a circular mount on a tripod base you could use it as a crude lens.

Yes. This attracted my interest, so I tried looking up actual prices. I could hire a private aircraft to take me from Cambridge to Oban for under ten grand, and probably one to take me to Nelson (NZ) for under two hundred grand. The latter is less clear, because almost all prices are POA.

Yup. But those prices are for the whole plane. While a small bizjet might have as few as four seats, a large one such as a Gulfstream G650 or a Boeing Business Jet (or an ACJ -- the Airbus equivalent) can have as many as 50 seats (typically 18-30). They're based on a narrow-body airliner with 100% business-class seating and luxury coachwork. £200K to fly Cambridge to NZ sounds like a lot; £5K/seat for a first class seat on that route is actually quite competitive with what the airline industry offers, and probably a nicer experience.

Anyone else seen this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liter_of_Light

That rings a bell. It's really only worthwhile in the tropics or subtropics, because I think the light bulb equivalence applies only in strong sunlight.

Indeed. While the Oban trip could be on a small aircraft, New Zealand would be on a much larger one. Even for two people, it's only a about 4 times more expensive than a taxi from Cambridge to Oban, which is essentially the only alternative to driving yourself if you have significant luggage and cannot send it 'ahead'.

Maybe see one to three of you there on Saturday or Sunday.

worthwhile in the tropics

If the choice is this or no light during bad weather I suspect the bottle light will win. Especially if you put in more than one.

Our values on such things are warped due to the low cost of electricity and other power and light sources compared to places without much or any of either.

And it is not like there's a shortage of empty 2 liter bottles on the planet.

Compared with no light at all, possibly, but that's not a realistic comparison, because windows are a more reliable technology (think: rain). Compared with a simple skylight (even made of opaque plastic) of the same area, it wins only if the light is mostly direct rather than diffuse.

Heteromeles @ 99:

A few centuries earlier the Mongol Empire used a similar system for command and control, which allowed it to dominate most of Asia.

I suspect a bunch of empires used posts and couriers riding or running between them. Certainly the Inca did, and IIRC even the Hawaiians had runners. Probably goes back well before marathon. The Pont Express was just a late attempt to monetize the idea.

"Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."
     --Herodotus (485-425 BCE)

... the royal riding post of the Persian Empire, described by Herodotus in his history of the Persian Wars,

Elderly Cynic @ 105:

They have done it since, using infra-red cameras, and it's not that simple, though the head myth remains just that. Some places have more blood vessels closer to the skin (e.g. hands, feet, groin and armpits), and so lose more heat. I am also pretty certain that at least some people can shut down near-skin circulation better in some areas than others (e.g. legs vs torso) but, while I have observed it quite a lot, I have never seen a good reference to the effect.

But that's reaction to cold. I don't think that reaction to heat is the same, and think that it's pretty constant (eccrine gland density). It doesn't seem to be that simple, either. While your palms have a higher density than elsewhere, I have not noticed them responding even as much to overheating.

What I remember learning is that the body's autonomic nervous system tries to keep the brain temperature within a "comfortable" range. When it's too hot blood circulates into the extremities which act as some kind of radiators (cooling the blood by shedding excess heat). In the cold the body limits circulation into the extremities.

The heat loss is not so much from the head as from the neck & shoulders, because that's where the body heat IS when you're cold.

but that's not a realistic comparison

I found out about this in a report on it being used in slums in the Philippines. And places like Rio and similar.

All of your options are not reasonable when you're house is made of scrap wood and sheet metal and consists of one or two rooms.

I'm talking about housing way further down the economic ladder than you are.

"DONT ARSK US ABOUT: rocks troll's with sticks All sorts of dragons Mrs Cake ..."

Tomorrow being the Glorious 25th of May “Truth! Justice! Freedom! Reasonably Priced Love! And a Hard-Boiled Egg!” should get a mention too. Tends to be a bit overshadowed by Towel Day.

The moves are nothing like movie sword fighting.

Not really surprising. Real conversation is nothing like movie conversation.

I've got a friend who learned martial arts from a guerrilla fighter, who learned it from shaolin monks and killing japanese. According to him, all the martial arts practiced as sports are unrealistic and and the reflexes they teach you could well get you killed in combat. Even krav maga is only useful in combat against people with no training.

In any case watch Bearup's analysis of the clifftop fight from Princess Bride, or indeed any of the fights: Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Zorro, Wednesday, and others. Fighting as conversation and character development (with occasional sarcastic remarks of "that would get you killed").

Satire on "Top Gun". Control asks "What's your location Maverick?" Maverick replies "Too close for guns; switching to Krav Maga!"

Elderly Cynic @ 110:

Remember that few people were travelling for a few days or couple of weeks, as at present; what they were more often doing was moving where they lived. I still have some of the steel trunks that were used when we moved from Britain to Africa and back again, as well as ones when other relatives did something similar.

It was also a function of the TIME it took to travel (speed of travel?). You carried more baggage because you needed clothes to change into during the journey. Where you might travel London to Johannesburg in 11 hours or so (3 flights daily according to Google) TODAY, how long would it have taken even as late as 1960?

OR 1950? 1920?

I know people who vacation in South Africa (photographers), so they'll spend a week there, but back in the day they'd have to spend a week (or more) just getting there.

I've been watching Jill Bearup's stuff for a while. She knows what she's talking about.

Real conversation is nothing like movie conversation.

True, dat.

Alfred Hitchcock is supposed to have said that movies are like real life with the boring bits left out. He could have added 'and with the stuff that would be boring in real life jazzed up to make it look good.'

From what I've seen in SCA-style fighting and Olympic fencing, one phrase of arms is generally very short indeed. Like, 5 seconds from engagement to 'someone got hit, and were this the real thing the loser would be bleeding out / seriously injured right now'. How much fun would that be to watch?

A window or skylight made of (scrap) plastic sheet isn't reasonable? Those people aren't totally clueless or incompetent, you know. If they can cut a hole in the roof and seal around a plastic bottle, they sure as egss is little chickens can make a simple skylight or window out of plastic sheet.

In any case, it may have skipped your mind that the Phillipines and Rio de Janeiro ARE in the tropics! As I said, that's where it is useful.

Of course you're right and I'm wrong. Oh well.

By 1960, I think BOAC had introduced the Comet on that route, so it wasn't all that much longer. But, in 1955, it was over 24 hours by Vickers Viscount, and a truly grim experience, too. Or a good couple of weeks on the Castle line (if I recall correctly).

Yes, clothes for the latter trip were a factor, but most passengers had severely limited cabin baggage allowances, because the cabins weren't large. I can't remember how much, but something like one medium suitcase a person. The steel trunks I referred to went in the hold. First class was different, of course ....

A pal of mine pilots those - passengers tend to be one or a couple of rich folk or sports people or kleptocrats plus family plus entourage: servants / nannies, bodyguards / goons, trainers / coaches, etc. So moving the travelling circus probably comes in at a reasonable price at that, plus not having to get them all through airport connections at either end

I like the idea of a 2 liter bottle having an afterlife of usefulness before it becomes trash. Possibly Cory Doctorow worked those into "Walkaway"?

Charlie Stross @ 116:

The change Guy Rixon commented on was almost certainly due to the relative wealth of people in 1900 versus 1800.

Don't forget changes in both fashion and the cost of cloth!

During the period 1800-1900 the production of yarn moved from the spinning jenny to motor-powered spinning mules (a 10-50-fold increase in output per machine and a massive increase in output beyond that due to moving away from muscle power), sewing and knitting machines were invented, every step in fabric production was mechanized, and the price of cloth fell by multiple orders of magnitude -- a metre of woven cotton or wool today costs about as many pounds as it did in 1800, despite roughly 200-fold inflation.

The cost of manufacturing clothing also fell, insofar as before 1830 every seam was hand-stitched: by 1900 sewing machines were in ubiquitous use for long seams, and circular knitting machines for socks and stockings were in widespread use.

Interesting that as the cost of manufacturing cloth & clothing fell the AMOUNT of clothing people wear decreased as well. Where our ancestors dressed in multiple layers as a matter of custom, we only layer up to keep warm.

My current - briefs, socks, jeans, T-shirt; less than $50 USD (£40 GBP at this morning's exchange rate) ... if I ditched the Levi's 501s for Wranglers or one of the department store brands.

I do still have a couple of good suits (if the moths haven't gotten them). I think I may have worn one of them within the last decade. Replacing one would cost around $500 USD (£405 GBP) + a new pair of dress shoes.

David L @ 128:

You should see the disreputable stuff I wear to the plot

My "work" clothes range from "small food stain" to holes you can put your fist through. Especially on shirts. The point is to keep the grease and skeeters off my arms and wick away sweat. Not for looks. At all.

My "work" clothes consists of jeans or old battledress trousers (cargo pants) + I have something less than 50 old brown Army Issue utility T-shirts.

I try to remember NOT to wear my GOOD T-shirts when I'm working.

Movie sword fights are overwhelmingly like little kids playing at it: see?! See?! I'm hitting his sword (not I'm trying to puke my sword through/into you).

For a few of them they carried them to a dumpster via poles. They skipped the normal "open it up and look for papers that might have contact information" process.

Elf: Why are you lugging around an 11 foot pole?

Dwarf: Because there are things in this dungeon I would not touch with a ten foot pole.

I fought heavy (armor, medieval weapon) in the SCA from around '76 through early eighties. I once saw a crown tourney - that's where the next king is decided by combat - that lasted almost 20 min. EVERYONE was amazed, and the two were utterly exhausted.

More common: let's see, we had a melee (several on several, not one-on-one), and the other two? three? on my side told me the plan was for me to keep the king busy while they took care of the others.

About two-three minutes later, the others came over, having killed my side, and it was me and the king. I actually wounded him before I died.

Or then there was the one-on-one I had with someone. I got killed, he stands there, then announces "And three days later, I die of blood poisoning", and falls down.

Most fights were well under 5 min. And one fight I don't ever remember seeing in a film: I got tired of fighting "rhino-hiders" ("oh, that wasn't hard enough to get through my armor, try again"), so I switched to mace and shield. No one ever argued when I got them with a mace. And a blow to the hip... was not wounding, you were dead, hydrostatic shock.

And having gone down once on a bicycle hard landing on a hip, let me assure you this is NOT an exaggeration.

"one phrase of arms is generally very short indeed"

One of my jiu jitsu instructors posted some WWII knife and stick fighting tutorial films to our group recently. There was a question from one of the guys about why there was nothing much about blocking, except in the most basic terms. The answer from another instructor (who's ex-military) was that they train you to get in there fast enough to nail them first, ideally without them getting time to react, and if you get to the point of needing to block then you're probably both going to die of stab wounds.

Interesting that as the cost of manufacturing cloth & clothing fell the AMOUNT of clothing people wear decreased as well.

Oh no it didn't!

The dress reform movement -- reducing the complexity and layers in womens' clothing -- only really got moving after 1870, about 70 years after the price of cloth began to plummet and 20-30 years after sewing machines showed up.

The period 1780-1820 saw an early proto-feminist false dawn followed by a vicious patriarchal backlash. The early reformist clothing fashions of the 1790s-1810s were followed by elaborate layering and expansion of womens' garments, which wouldn't have been affordable without the falling price of fabric: clothes remained a status symbol (much like cars today) so the rich wore more stuff, until the practical limits were reached (in the 1850s even maidservants expected to wear hoopskirts under multiple petticoats).

The amount of "stuff" women wore only began to decrease properly after about 1900: oddly, menswear remained more or less static from about 1830 (when the recognizably modern monochrome suit with trousers and waistcoat became ubiquitous) through 1930.

Agreed. In addition to that use (when relevant): you can cut the bottom off, usually remove the lid and use them as cloches in the garden; cut the top off, put a little beer in, cover them with a tile and trap slugs; fill them with water and use them as weights; use them as waterbottles (no! really?); and more. I have done all of those except the first :-)

Moz @ 145:

I fear my "suit" is much like Charlies... I hung it in the wardrobe some years ago and last time I remember seeing it the jacket was dusty on top. This discussion has prompted me to go and inhume it.

It comes back from the cleaners with a clear poly bag that fits over the suit while it's on the hanger. I left the bag in place last time I had it cleaned. Kept in the dark of a closet, the bag doesn't degrade over time. I also have a zip up hanging clothing bag to protect the other one.

The amount of "stuff" women wore

The lead actress in a Netflix or similar show about the gilded age (1870-1900) in New York City said a problem on the set was bathroom breaks. Lots of porta potties. Tiny spaces those things. And voluminous amounts of clothing to maneuver in the tiny space.

anonemouse @ 166:

† I remember reading an author who did plenty of travel and obsessed about packing efficiency talking about his system; he threw out his socks after wear while travelling because the saved space was literally worth more to him. Imagine telling an 1800s-era Lancastrian that one!

Couldn't do that. I only* wear Merino (SmartWool or equivalent) wool socks (85% wool/15% lycra). GOOD socks are expensive. But my feet are worth it.

• I do have some silk under-socks (wicking) for when I need to wear two pairs in boots.

Yeah. Bustles may have been slightly less OTT than crinolines, and long corsets slightly less OTT than bustles, but were all insane. It wasn't until the 1920s flappers that women's dress was even vaguely comparable with that of today, even when playing tennis!

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gallery/2011/jun/20/wimbledon-fashion-history-in-pictures

David L @ 174:

Anyone else seen this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liter_of_Light

First time I've seen THAT use for 2-liter bottles, but light tubes are an old idea (variation on skylights); particularly popular with the Mother Earth News "passive solar" crowd.

Elderly Cynic @ 188:

A window or skylight made of (scrap) plastic sheet isn't reasonable? Those people aren't totally clueless or incompetent, you know. If they can cut a hole in the roof and seal around a plastic bottle, they sure as egss is little chickens can make a simple skylight or window out of plastic sheet.

It's the ubiquity of plastic 2-liter bottles. HARD plastic sheeting suitable for skylights is usually not as readily available FOR FREE, and soft plastic won't last that long; degrades in the sun & has to be replaced too frequently.

In any case, it may have skipped your mind that the Phillipines and Rio de Janeiro ARE in the tropics! As I said, that's where it is useful.

But there are poor people & shanty towns in places other than the tropics. North Africa, the Middle East, India & China come to mind.

And this is just a variation on the theme of Deck Prisms & Vault lights (pavement lights) which are (were) used extensively in Europe, the U.K. and the U.S.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deck_prism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavement_light

Right, and men's clothing, at least office-level, hasn't changed in any real fashion since 1930....

Charlie Stross @ 199:

Interesting that as the cost of manufacturing cloth & clothing fell the AMOUNT of clothing people wear decreased as well.

Oh no it didn't!

The dress reform movement -- reducing the complexity and layers in womens' clothing -- only really got moving after 1870, about 70 years after the price of cloth began to plummet and 20-30 years after sewing machines showed up.

The period 1780-1820 saw an early proto-feminist false dawn followed by a vicious patriarchal backlash. The early reformist clothing fashions of the 1790s-1810s were followed by elaborate layering and expansion of womens' garments, which wouldn't have been affordable without the falling price of fabric: clothes remained a status symbol (much like cars today) so the rich wore more stuff, until the practical limits were reached (in the 1850s even maidservants expected to wear hoopskirts under multiple petticoats).

The amount of "stuff" women wore only began to decrease properly after about 1900: oddly, menswear remained more or less static from about 1830 (when the recognizably modern monochrome suit with trousers and waistcoat became ubiquitous) through 1930.

So there was a lag of decades? But over the term of a century or more ...

I accept their ubiquity, but it's not true that all soft plastics degrade fast. Polytunnel film and whatever it is that is used for marquee windows lasts for decades (at least under UK conditions), and there are a fair number of others than last years. Most can be salvaged from tips where rich people use them.

Yes, I know that it's just a variation on a deck prism, but I can assure you that those do NOT give anything like the light of a 50 watt incandescent under dull conditions. 5 watts if you are lucky. Vault lights almost always have much larger total areas.

My point wasn't that this doesn't work tolerably well in suitable conditions, but that it's not the marvellous innovation that article implied.

The period 1780-1820 saw an early proto-feminist false dawn

Can you elaborate on this a bit? I never heard of such thing in 1780-1820 period.

197 - Footman's mace, horseman's mace or morningstar?

207 - It's several years since I last wore a long-sleeved shirt for any particular reason other than arm insulation: certainly not for "office dress code".

The lead actress in a Netflix or similar show about the gilded age (1870-1900) in New York City said a problem on the set was bathroom breaks.

They were probably doing it wrong — and maybe had the wrong unmentionables. I saw a video, maybe by Bernadette Banner, maybe someone else, about how Netflix gets the costumes quite wrong, and especially things like corsets (ill-fitting, worn too tight and not broken in) so the clothing is a lot more uncomfortable than it should be.

Here's a video on how the Victorians managed with all those layers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ED-wKZBAl5w

No relation, AFAIK, although I think the name was why YouTube decided to recommend it to me after a Jill Bearup video.

Charlie @ 164 ... re "pointy things" & reality ...
Lois Mc M Bujold had an interesting take on that little problem:
The protagonist/hero, Cazaril, is up against one of the cheif baddies' sword-wielding henchman ...
He didn't doubt that he was a very pretty duello dancer, but against the brutalities of the battlefield, he'd probably last about 5 minutes
{ Quoting from memory, because I can't find the effing book! }

Clive Feather
Actually, usually two or three ( Much-shorter-than-today ) carriages, for stability in running, actually. { Brakevan / passenger carriage / brakevan }

John S
Union Castle Line specialised in London / Southampton <-> Cape Town (etc) voyages.
Did very well out of it for many years, beautiful ships, too.

ilya187
!780 ( 1792? ) - 1820 ... there was this little problem called the French/Naploleonic Wars, where EVERYTHING was second to defeating Boney.
Little side-issues, like subjugating women DID NOT MATTER.
The exact same thing happened 1919-39, after a glimpse of freedom during the 1914-18 "problems" - women, apart from "the vote" were worse off in the "interwar" years, until the next bad bash came around.

They were probably doing it wrong — and maybe had the wrong unmentionables

Fitting all the clothing into a porta potti without disrobing first was the issue. Even the lady in the video would have issues unless she could disrobe most of her outwear first.

Covers the publication of Mary Wolestonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women (published 1790) to the execution by guillotine of Olympe de Gouges in 1793 and about a generation thereafter -- the original post-Revolutionary Republic granted a lot of hitherto-unheard-of rights to women which were savagely curtailed from the Terror onwards, and Napoleon (a noted misogynist) did the final damage: everyone else (and by "everyone" I mean patriarchal shitbags everywhere, including the UK) took note.

Given that we didn't have horses, footman's. Morningstars were a banned weapon in the SCA, at least back then - either they were too light, or they were dangerous.

For those unsure, a morningstar is a ball, spiked or not, on a chain.

There was also a certain amount of feminism during this little dust-up in France just before Napoleon....

I didn't know about the availability or otherwise of gee-gees. However, that was exactly the answer I'd hoped you'd give a variation of regarding morningstars. They're not exactly banned over here, but are a really bad idea since you're likely to do more damage to yourself and your nearest team mates than to the Other Lot.

Even the lady in the video would have issues unless she could disrobe most of her outwear first.

Maybe. She had another video demonstrating how compressible and maneuverable those hoops are. (More than I expected, although I suspect it took a bit of practice.)

Given she remained standing, and the bulk of the clothing, in a portapotty she wouldn't need to close the door — just face inward (like a guy pissing in a corner).

Although given how sexist the movie business is, possibly a locked door was seen as a necessity.

There was also a certain amount of feminism during this little dust-up in France just before Napoleon....

Which, like equal rights for non-white people, got squashed by Bonaparte.Very reactionary chap, in so many ways…

Speaking as someone with no actual knowledge of the things, I have always thought that a morningstar was a one-shot weapon. I.e. its first strike was lethal but, if it was deflected or there was a second opponent, you didn't get another chance. Is that the case?

Elderly Cynic @ 209:

I accept their ubiquity, but it's not true that all soft plastics degrade fast. Polytunnel film and whatever it is that is used for marquee windows lasts for decades (at least under UK conditions), and there are a fair number of others than last years. Most can be salvaged from tips where rich people use them.

Where do you get "pollytunnel film" for free? ... in a shanty town where if there are rich people living nearby, their guards will run you off if you intrude too much into their garbage dump?

Yes, I know that it's just a variation on a deck prism, but I can assure you that those do NOT give anything like the light of a 50 watt incandescent under dull conditions. 5 watts if you are lucky. Vault lights almost always have much larger total areas.

And if you don't have electricity to power that 50W bulb?

My point wasn't that this doesn't work tolerably well in suitable conditions, but that it's not the marvellous innovation that article implied.

And MY point is it's NOT as useless as you obviously think it is.

*Given that we didn't have horses, footman's. Morningstars were a banned weapon in the SCA, at least back then - either they were too light, or they were dangerous. For those unsure, a morningstar is a ball, spiked or not, on a chain.

Awww, where's the fun in that?

Nowadays, it looks like definitions of "morning star" are getting a little more realistic.

Morning stars, originally, where batons and staffs with nails embedded in the pointy end out, often with a point or blade at the end. They saw a resurgence in popularity in the WW1 trenches. As one might expect, their main purpose was as a weapon turned out at minimal expense and in large numbers for arming rabbles, militias, mobs, and other back-benchers. Think clubs with benefits. Or not.

The uparmored blackjack (spiked ball on a chain, attached to a short handle) was, AFAIK, never a western European weapon.* It did show up in eastern Europe--maybe!--and in parts of Asia and China. It's sometimes known as a horseman's flail, as in D&D.

Now the footman's flail is a rather different beast, and widely used. The staff with a swinging, weaponized baton on the other end ('the swingle") has a long and inglorious history across Eurasia. One of my favorite uses was as the "big sweeper" in Chinese martial arts. Its primary military use, as I understand it, was in sweeping besieged walls free of besiegers trying to come over the parapet. Nunchaku are "short sweepers," following the common Chinese practice of making two handed, one handed, and short paired versions of many weapons.**

The closest thing I know of to the horseman's flail in western Europe is a Portuguese mangual*, which consists of 2-3 weighted chains with a shortish handle. The whole weapon is the length of a two-handed Portuguese montante sword, and is handled using largely the same movements. Dismounted, of course. Probably not safe for SCA, but...well...heh heh.

Flailing is fun.

*https://publicmedievalist.com/curious-case-weapon-didnt-exist/

*Oddly, possession of a nunchaku outside a dojo is a felony in California. Possession of a footman's flail is perfectly legal in California, so long as the swingle isn't a "handle." Make of this what you will.

*e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IV1IzE5TEA

Maybe

I find most porta potties hard to fit into when I need to drop my trousers.

David L @ 214:

They were probably doing it wrong — and maybe had the wrong unmentionables

Fitting all the clothing into a porta potti without disrobing first was the issue. Even the lady in the video would have issues unless she could disrobe most of her outwear first.

Whoever did their on-set logistics just wasn't thinking ahead. You can rent handicap (ADA compliant) porta-potties from the same places you rent regular porta-potties; enough interior room to accommodate a wheel chair should be enough to handle an actor in a period drama hoop skirt costume.

...aviation: fit a Schrader valve stem (without the core) in the lid, part-fill them with water, pump them up as hard as you dare with a foot-pump, then release the locking lever on the valve connector. (Also at least four and doubtless more separate and distinct types of device for smoking hash, if you count that as aviation.) Come to that, you can even fill them with some slowish-burning inflammable vapour mixture and ignite it, and have it work at least well enough to demonstrate the principle.

Storage of volatile solvents such as acetone - they seal well enough to prevent evaporation, and aren't degraded by the solvent. Also any of the various fluids used in cars and bikes. Also corrosive things like ferric chloride or sulphuric acid. Cut the tops off to make containers for mixing fibreglass resin in, or for paint, or cleaning brushes, etc. Use the cut-off tops as funnels. Put LEDs in them to make light bulbs. Stuff them with expanded polystyrene balls to make boat fenders, or even just leave them empty but sealed. Use them to buoy anchors or lobster pots. Cut and distort a small slit near the bottom to make a bird feeder. Cut them about a bit more to make rain covers for Mini ignition system components. Pneumatic accumulators. Catch tanks. Oil feed tanks for converting two-stroke engines away from premix. Squeezy air puffers for blowing things. It goes on and on...

Interesting discussions!

I'm only about a third of the way through 'Season of Skulls' therefore haven't come across any travel, luggage and women's clothing points of historical interest. Even so, here are my two bits ... mostly from BBC or similar types of documentaries.

Women's clothing through the ages in mid and northern parts of Europe ...

1- the climate was very different then, much colder. Heteromeles can fill in how often (several) and when the various ice ages/years without a summer happened. Anyways, layers of clothing meant that people, esp. the lower classes could sleep comfortably at night plus less reliance on expensive and often dangerous (both toxic and flammable) fuels.

2-child labor - esp. Wales - girls as young as 3 or 4 were put to work making lace (tatting). Because lace making was such a large part of the Welsh economy, laws were put in place allowing parents to keep young girls out of school. (The UK enacted a public education law sometime in the late 19th century which still allowed for plenty of loop holes.)

3-dyes - part of the reason for more clothing items across socioeconomic strata was access to dyed fabrics. When each piece of major outerwear can be a different color, having clothing in a range of colors is an easy and obvious way to signal wealth. Apart from clothing, dyes also made cloth covered furniture more fashionable and financially accessible, i.e., chintz. However, because chintz was originally/mostly produced in Asia (they had the best dyes and cheapest labor) this led to a huge surge in imports which threatened to ruin domestic producers. A few European countries actually banned anything 'chintz' which sorta coincided with Perkins discovering his purple dye - the color that historically was most 'royal'.

4-women going to the toilet while wearing 20 pounds of clothing - first off, women's underwear was crotchless until not that long ago (early 20th century) so they didn't have to remove/pull down their undies to pee, they only had to lift their skirts and sit/squat. Second, if they couldn't sit/squat - they used pee funnels which can still be purchased.

https://www.purplerainskirts.com/blog/2019/5/10/ladies-guide-how-pee-standing-up-backpacking-thru-hiking#:~:text=Some%20women%20use%20pee%20funnels,would%20be%20worth%20looking%20into.

Fencing - first corp I worked at bought a slew of tickets for various Olympics events to give to clients with the remainder handed out to staff. I went to one fencing event - nothing like the movies. Each 'bout' lasted less than a minute - you needed excellent eyesight plus a lot of knowledge of the sport to even follow it. The rowing event was the opposite - seemed to last forever. :) The highlight for me was a gymnastics event - superb!. At the time it seemed that the gymnastics action was happening faster in real life than on TV but I was still able to follow and appreciate it.

Thermoregulation/sweating - looking forward to some info/ideas on this as I've got a lot of weeding ahead and feel as though the more I overheat/sweat, the more mosquitoes I attract. (BTW, raw garlic doesn't keep mosquitoes away. And, they're attracted to O-Pos blood.)

possession of a nunchaku outside a dojo is a felony in California

Because clearly a nunchuck is way more dangerous than an AR-15…

I wouldn't care so much about your quaint customs if firearms didn't keep leaking across the border into my country.

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/09/1108967278/canada-gun-control-us-guns-trafficking

women's underwear was crotchless

Like I said, costuming likely provided the wrong unmentionables…

raw garlic doesn't keep mosquitoes away

Apparently coconut oil might.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/10/soap-can-make-humans-more-attractive-mosquitoes-study

I wouldn't care so much about your quaint customs if firearms didn't keep leaking across the border into my country.

The weapons of vagrants, immigrants, minorities and small-time crooks have proved much easier to outlaw than those of fascists, secessionists, wannabe slavers, and tactical cosplayers. In California, if you're homeless and put a rock in a sock to defend yourself, that's considered more criminal than threatening a homeless person with a gun.

Yes, it's disgusting, I quite agree.

In California, if you're homeless and put a rock in a sock to defend yourself, that's considered more criminal than threatening a homeless person with a gun.

What if someone defends themself from a homeless person with a rock in a sock, when the homeless person threatens them with a gun?

I'm guessing that the criminality would not be symmetrical, but then I'm cynical that way.

Deet is the only really effective mosquito repellent, though I have been told that drying your clothes with a fabric softener can work.

I worked in Northern Alberta and BC through a decade of mosquito infested spring and summers. The only thing that really worked was aggressive indifference (i.e. I just chose to ignore them). Get bit enough and you develop a tolerance for the bites - they don't swell or itch.

Now I'm a soft west coaster and we have very few mosquitoes. My tolerances are much reduced, so I get a minor itch if I get bit. But it takes a lot of mosquitos to bother me - unlike the rest of my family who seem to think a mosquito bite is equivalent to a 4 alarm fire.

The point of those laws is to enable oppression. Or defend the privileged against the less privileged, depending on your degree of wokeness.

There's blatant examples like the FBI and NRA being violently opposed to black people having gun rights back when black people having rights was a question. And numerous recent examples of less powerful person being shot by more powerful person, whether or not they have a gun.

NSW is currently having a bit of a think about whether giving cops tasers is a good idea, since both the death-by-cop rate and the use of less lethal weapons has gone up dramatically since cops got tasers here. Well, we assume the latter since government demand that no records of taser use be kept. A policy which could also do with being reviewed.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/24/nsw-police-officer-charged-over-alleged-tasering-of-95-year-old-woman-in-aged-care-home

I'm starting to think that the only way to deal with police body cameras is making using them part of the job description. Viz, start prosecuting cops for dereliction of duty/impersonating a police officer when their cameras are off when they're not in a police station but they claim to be working. "nah, if you were on duty at the time of the alleged incident your camera footage would have been logged. But it hasn't been, so you weren't. Now, we are investigating reports of a civilian attacking someone in the street..."

Deet is the only really effective mosquito repellent, though I have been told that drying your clothes with a fabric softener can work.

I read about some recent research which seemed to discover why such repelants don't work very often or for everyone. Apparently mosquitos have about 30 or more different odors they are attracted to when looking for something to bite. So you have to step on most of these to keep them away.

Personally, at least on the back deck, a battery operated smaller Ryobi fan or two to keep the air moving seems to work. I've also seen misting systems in Texas back yards to keep them away. But they seemed a bit wasteful and not all that useful during many activities.

What if someone defends themself from a homeless person with a rock in a sock, when the homeless person threatens them with a gun?

The US had an incident, not all that long ago, when a guy with an AR-15 fought a guy with a skateboard. Sadly, the internet was full of angry idiots shouting how dangerous skateboards were and that gun boy should be terrified and use lethal force to defend himself. None of them seemed to be able to ask who would pick such a fight, or even which one of them had planned ahead for violence.

(I personally triggered a known Sad Puppy author by using the term "incompetent chucklefuck" and suggesting that gun boy should not be allowed access to firearms.)

221 - That was the implied point; the first blow is lethal to the opponent if you hit them. Miss the opponent and it's likely to be at least injurous if not lethal to yourself or one of your team. Hellywood notwithstanding, just don't!

224 Para 3 - I'd have described those as spiked clubs or footman's maces (depending on nails or blades).
Para 6 - Of course flails, as described, are also used in grain cropping and threshing so have legitimate civilian uses.

227 on "rowing competitions" - I agree, and have similar feelings about sailing and swimming races.

I've occasionally been a commenter in blogs overlapping various similar groups, and openly talked about how the USA would treat my natural law right to carry around a half-brick in a sock. Whether I'd get in trouble for swinging it in circles above my head (as is customary in urban centres around the world) in crowded places. But of course there were usually lots of other Australians so the reaction was mixed.

Glom of nit, surely ?

Nah. Deet merely discourages them a little. Dimp just about works, but it's no longer sold as an insect repellent for humans. Of course, that's against African mosquitoes, which are much nastier than American ones!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyl_phthalate

Perhaps I should point out that I spent a significant part of my life in housing with no electricity or gas, and do have some idea of what purely natural lighting involves.

I imagine the POA on NZ flights are because the timing of your return will have a large impact on price. It is a somewhat thinner market than most, the film people tending to have their own.

Opening windows were removed because, among other things, they affect the air resistance of the train, which is significant at modern speeds.

And even ignoring the platforms that aren't open air, why do I have to stand on a crowded platform and have to suffer people's addictive drugs? I'll bet that, as soon as it starts to rain, they'll stand in the doorways of the shelters and smoke there, or they'll stand in the doorways of the trains and have their smoke drift back into the train.

Disclosure: I was at King's Cross station a short while before 31 people were killed by a fire caused by a smoker dropping a lit match.

Nowdays I only wear my DJ and black tie to the office Christmas party, and then only if it's a formal one.

As for travel, I've got things to the point where I can go hand-baggage only for a 6-day business meeting, bringing the laundry back for Linda to do when I get home (that's her instructions, not mine). Though I suspect I'll take a suitcase when I go to Sydney because I'll want a few extra days there.

243 re 136 - So air resistance is higher at 75mph than at 75mph!? (hint; I live on a suburban network)

Questions about Roman roads.

Great for marching legions, but suck for horse cavalry?

After Diocletian's military reforms, the Roman army switched emphasis from foot soldiers of the legions to more mobile horse mounted troops moving to reinforced fortified garrisons along the Rhine/Danube frontier - cavalry troops that later became the cataphracts of the East roman/Byzantine empire.

So perhaps the decay of Roman roads in the late empire had less to do with collapsing imperial finances and lack of manpower for road repair then a deliberate policy of neglect of a transport technology that was no longer needed or strategically important?

I suspect the non opening windows on most transportation has more to do with elimination a flash point for travelers arguing and/or fighting with each other than anything else. But it only works in more warm climates if the transport can be expected to have a working AC system. For the cold, well, they just expect you to wear more clothes.

Were Roman roads and roadways reused and upgraded by the improved British roads of the 17th - 19th centuries?

Did railroads follow the same alignments as the Roman roads surveyed centuries before?

Did these new British road have any military intent (moving troops quickly to any potential French invasion) or were they merely commercial?

Some were; some weren't. But the very idea of a deliberate policy in the dark ages is, I am afraid, a fantasy. In theory, in the UK, for most of the 1000+ years of neglect, the bordering landowners were required to keep up the roads, but there was often no king of any particular area to enforce it, or he was too busy defending himself and his lands against usurpers and pirates. Or, in the mediaeval period, gallivanting in foreign parts, on a crusade or jollification.

Were Roman roads and roadways reused and upgraded by the improved British roads of the 17th - 19th centuries?

Did railroads follow the same alignments as the Roman roads surveyed centuries before?

Did these new British road have any military intent (moving troops quickly to any potential French invasion) or were they merely commercial?

some of the UK (well English) road network still follows the Roman road network

"Most fights were well under 5 min."

Never did SCA, but boxed and wrestled in college.

Can't imagine doing the physical equivalent of that while wearing 60+ lbs of armor - no matter how well designed and weight distributed so you were still agile enough to do hand flips even when suited up - it has to be exhausting.

Actual pre-gunpowder hand to hand combat was nothing like you see in Hollywood ancient/medieval war movies (looking at you Braveheart). With maybe one exception, HBO's Rome showing how the legions would rotate men in out of the front ranks allowing them to rest, drink and get bandaged after a few minutes of fighting.

Romans also practiced efficient, least effort killing. No wild swinging of swords, just short jabs ("3 inches in the right place is death").

The quickly exhausted front ranks of a wild barbarian horde would be cut to pieces as a result.

"Finally, about paddlewheels and roads barely taken"

Didn't Napoleon have the opportunity to use Fulton's steam engine to power a fleet of paddlewheels?

Trafalgar becomes irrelevant if the French can launch and invasion of Britain on a becalmed day when the Royal Navy is stuck in port.

Many modern roads follow the courses of the more important Roman roads. Far more do not, and many of those that do have been downgraded, bypassed, or simply not used so much, since cars got to the point of beginning to choke the place. There are also craploads of minor Roman roads that no longer exist as much more than a dotted line on the map.

Railways did not use Roman road alignments because they are not suitable. The courses being laid out according to corvid flight plans, they make no attempt to mitigate gradients.

Nearly all roads were made/improved for civilian purposes. Only under exceptional conditions was it considered necessary to make a road for military use first and foremost: http://www.oldroadsofscotland.com/military_roads.htm

Random examples from a Scot - Ermine Street, Foss Way, Watling Sterrt, the "Great North Road"... I trust this makes the point that at least some of those routes are not only used but weel kent with it?

I'll bet that, as soon as it starts to rain, they'll stand in the doorways of the shelters and smoke there, or they'll stand in the doorways of the trains and have their smoke drift back into the train.

Both were common behaviours back in the 80s.

There was a woman who used to smoke in the no-smoking bus shelter I used, who would grudgingly move out after other people pointed out it was no smoking — every morning. Eventually she made the big (and grumpy) concession of moving out when she saw me approach, leaving me to enjoy my smoke-filled dryness alone while she sulked outside…

And on trains, smokers would come into the non-smoking cars for a smoke, because the air was so much better there (direct quote from one of them).

Fortunately that behaviour is no longer common, but as anti-social behaviour is on the rise it might return.

some of the UK (well English) road network still follows the Roman road network

I once navigated parts of my trip through England using the Ordinance Survey map of Roman Roads. Worked surprisingly well

Were Roman roads and roadways reused and upgraded by the improved British roads of the 17th - 19th centuries? The alignment often carried on being used. Many Roman settlements carried on after the empire left and the direct routes between them were still used. Maintenance was little to non-existent and very local until perhaps the 16th century and only seriously started again in the 18th. Particularly those that were taken over by turnpike companies.

Did railroads follow the same alignments as the Roman roads surveyed centuries before? No. As others have said, the requirements for gradients, curves are too different. One place where it does sort of happen is in a gap in a line of hills at Watford in Northamptonshire. The modern A5 there is on the Roman road of Watling St. There is an 18th century canal, a 19th century railway and a 20th century motorway (M1), all running close to each other to use the gap. The canal and railway have to use tunnels as well though.

Did these new British road have any military intent (moving troops quickly to any potential French invasion) or were they merely commercial? The 18th century Thomas Telford road to Holyhead on Anglesey was built for traffic across the Irish sea to Dublin, so important from a military/colonial point of view. Shortened a long and tricky sea voyage, a lot of which was against the prevailing wind.
The Wade roads in the Highlands of Scotland have already been mentioned. Used to exert British state military control over those areas. Generally speaking, until canals and later railways were built, moving people on land was expensive. Moving heavy/bulky stuff any distance was crazy expensive, unless you could get it on a boat, or ship. Navigable rivers and coastlines were the usual way of moving produce around. Over the high ground across the Pennines, for example, pack horse trails existed. More like paths than what you'd now recognise as a road. Able to carry not a great deal on each horse/donkey/mule and slow.

No. You're wrong. A morningstar, as I said, is on a chain. A club, often with metal on the head, or a metal head, is a mace, period. Calling it a morningstar is wrong.

And I don't care what google shows you, they're WRONG. I'd love to see their response to the gun nuts who, as soon as I call an AR-15 an assault weapon, try to argue that. Actually, I came up with an answer to them, and the next time they try, I'll get them to tell me how a US Army M1 from WWII isn't an assault weapon.

Yeah. Maybe over here, we should start sending cards to the manufacturer of AR-15s, with text from the Bible - you know, "lives my the sword, dies by the sword"? Waiting for someone who's lost a kid or other loved one to go after CEOs....

Actually, it's about 40 lbs, but it is exhausting. Most amazing bit in a fight I ever saw was in a crown tourney, with one guy who was also in the military for real. Wearing a full mail hauberk (down to his knees, almost), he was overbalanced, rolled backwards, and came up on his knees, shield up, sword ready.

Some of those paths and ridgeways are neolithic, but nobody knows how many.

Going back to the subthread about walking - when one of my daughters was about to get married (to her now-ex), she called me the day of the wedding before I drove down. She said she had to talk to another city person (she and her twin were born in Philly, but their mom moved back to her home town, pop 2k-3k, when they were about 3.5 years old). Her uncle, from same small town, was complaining that he couldn't park by their house, and had to walk like 2.5 blocks....

Yeah. Maybe over here, we should start sending cards to the manufacturer of AR-15s, with text from the Bible - you know, "lives my the sword, dies by the sword"? Waiting for someone who's lost a kid or other loved one to go after CEOs....

Or print the Bible on toilet paper and put it in the executive lavatory with a spy cam.

My petty and vengeful solution rests on the fact that firearms are prohibited at NRA conventions. So, we start by overturning that prohibition: everyone bring their firearms. Then we quietly evacuate the convention and catering staff. Then we lock the center doors. Then we set off a bunch of fireworks. Then, as in Uvalde, we urge caution on the cops, so that they establish a safety cordon before sending in a SWAT(ted) team an hour later to engage with and kill the remaining active shooters.

And no, I have no intention of doing this. I do sadly hope that there will be active shooter incidents in the executive offices of firearms manufacturers, so that they get a sense of what it's like to go to school in the US.

No. You're wrong. A morningstar, as I said, is on a chain. A club, often with metal on the head, or a metal head, is a mace, period. Calling it a morningstar is wrong.

Oh well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_star_(weapon)

Even Dungeons and Dragons disagrees with you: https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Morning_star

DP
NO Sometimes - the classic example is the "gap" near Kilsby where the Roman Road - now the A5, the Grand Union Canal , the LNWR main line & the M1 all parallel each other for about 5-10 k. But that's unusual.
See also: Roman roads along mountain or ridge tops) - with modern roads nowhere near.
Not usually, but see also:General Wade's Military Roads

Useful reference book for an obscure & vanished { Except to LIDAR } Roman Road in my part of the world - a fascinating read.

In the UK, Roman roads along ridgeways are extremely rare - is there even another example? Most of the ridgeways are ancient (as I said, sometimes neolithic), but rarely Roman.

Some yearsago when printed newspapers were still more of a thing, the Cambridge Evening News (who were normally very car friendly) published a letter from a woman who lived in Petersfield which is an area of Cambridge with back to back terraced houses built for industrial workers because the Colleges owned all the land closer in. She was complaining that after driving her kids to school one morning she had been forced to park two streets away from her house because all the parking in her street had filled up while she was away, and wasn't it ridiculous that she had had to park further away from her house than her kids school. No editorial comment, but much "she what?!?!?!" from the readers...

Actual pre-gunpowder hand to hand combat was nothing like you see in Hollywood ancient/medieval war movies (looking at you Braveheart). With maybe one exception, HBO's Rome showing how the legions would rotate men in out of the front ranks allowing them to rest, drink and get bandaged after a few minutes of fighting.

How does this look to you?

https://youtu.be/jR54A_PSPbM

Bronn makes absolute minimum of motion to step out of Vardis' swings until Vardis exhausts himself.

Wikipedia is not definitive. D&D doesn't count, at all.

Terrible. For one, there is zero use of the shield. In reality, a shield is also a weapon - and he should have been whacking at the other guy. In fact, shield to the head, and cut him in the side. And the idea that anyone back then would not wear armor, esp. when your opponent is wearing armor, is ludicrous.

I like where the one in armor has him backwards over the pool... and somehow he has the leverage to push him, in heavy armor, backwards.

@214, @225 Both true

I have a modern crinoline petticoat for Victorian era social ballroom dancing. Toilets are one thing; driving or being a car passenger is another. People put on the corset and the skirt(s), and carry the hoops to the venue, going to the cloakroom to put them on (they tie at the waist) under the many yarded full skirt that fits over them. After a while both I and my partners decided nets were more comfortable for dancing, if slightly less correct in the outline when standing still.

David L noted: "Deet is the only really effective mosquito repellent"

Permethrin should also work, but it's not available everywhere for personal use.

David L: "I read about some recent research which seemed to discover why such repelants don't work very often or for everyone. Apparently mosquitos have about 30 or more different odors they are attracted to when looking for something to bite. So you have to step on most of these to keep them away."

My understanding is that DEET is designed to muck with the mosquito's senses, like throwing up chaff to protect an airplane against missiles. Sometimes the missiles get through anyway. On a related note, I'd assume that there's a certain amount of selection pressure for mosquitoes to evade DEET in areas where humans are a major food source. As anecdata, I offer the note that I was once camping at a public campground, and accidentally sprayed a batch of DEET repellant on a picnic table, which was immediately swarmed by the skeeters. Presumably the swarm had learned to associate the scent with a good meal. As slightly more solid evidence, I note that the DEET content of repellant sprays has increased quite a bit since they were first released.

Rocketpjs @ 233:

Deet is the only really effective mosquito repellent, though I have been told that drying your clothes with a fabric softener can work.

I've had success with non-DEET picardin or lemongrass repellents.

When we went to Iraq we pre-treated our uniforms (outer garments) with permethrin. Roll 'em up and put them in a plastic bag you filled with water & poured in the permethrin mixture. Let it soak for a couple hours and then hang it up to dry. When it was completely dry it was supposed to be good for up to 50 cycles through the laundry. We RE-treated uniforms about half-way through our tour.

They now make outdoor clothing that is pre-treated with permethrin. The EPA says you cannot re-treat the factory treated clothing yourself.

Re: '... African mosquitoes, which are much nastier than American ones!'

Deadlier, yes - but probably not as painful as the Gallinipper mosquito.

Thanks all for your suggestions! At this point I think my safest and easiest to follow strategy will be to time my weeding to when the mosquitoes are least active, spray on the Deep Woods Off (contains DEET), check that there's no exposed skin and wear the net I bought last year. I'm not being insane here - last year the damned things found all sorts of ways of crawling in, under and through my clothing - I had bites in quite a few out of the way sensitive areas. That and I've got allergies despite a few years of allergy shots and still need to take antihistamines. Don't want to send my immune system spiraling up and out of control.

WaveyDavey @ 239:

Glom of nit, surely ?

Don't call me Shirley!

Agreed. It's the tsetse flies that really hurt!

whitroth @ 258:

Yeah. Maybe over here, we should start sending cards to the manufacturer of AR-15s, with text from the Bible - you know, "lives my the sword, dies by the sword"? Waiting for someone who's lost a kid or other loved one to go after CEOs....

Very difficult to do here in the U.S. [EXPLETIVE!! DELETED!!] Congress passed "shield laws" to protect gun manufacturers from lawsuits & those shield laws protect corporate executives as well ... and SCOTUS has already upheld those laws as Constitutional.

... unless you mean "go after" in the sense of "hoist on their own petard". That's why they have bodyguards.

Random observations:

Women will not be wearing crotchless underwear for roughly one-quarter of their lives plus time recently up from childbed. And it does take longer in the loo even with a relatively well-worn corset (Of course, I have shrunk over time in height which doesn't help much).

Since I had bad sinuses, I was the Designated Aide for the poor fellow dying of intestinal cancer (I openly vowed to dance for pennies to buy him heroin and I got the feeling the rest of the staff would contribute). He was really good-natured for all he was going through.

In a remuda, horses are supposed to be interchangeable. Horses are also perfectly capable of letting people know if they don't like you and who they do like, which will influence who rides them and who doesn't

As a 13 year old in the summer, I would rise a bit before dawn and then walk about a mile to where I would be picked up by a bus to be transported to a field to pick strawberries and then walk home again in the afternoon. I would rather had ridden my bike, but nobody was open that early in the morning. and it would have been stolen if I had.

I mainly live in T-shirts and blue jeans these days, but I do have 'painting shirts' and the jeans I use to go to the dump in. I did have a couple of lovely ball gowns, but my waistline won't let me wear them any more.

As a rule of thumb straight roads in the UK are either Roman or military. Straight roads (with the exception of motorways) are rare. The section of the A47 in Norfolk from Acle to Great Yarmouth is known as the “Acle Straight’ and even that has a kink in it. Paradoxically it’s the most dangerous road in the county. At night I avoid it and take the tortuous route through Broadland because on the straight road the headlights of oncoming traffic are always blinding even when dipped.

Speaking of mosquitos,

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gene-drives-could-fight-malaria-and-other-global-killers-but-might-have-unintended-consequences/

270 - Thank you for the female insight into the (im)practicality of Victorian era ladies' dresses. This was not something I'd ever acquire understanding of otherwise.

278 - The A811 between Arnprior and Stirling (known hereabouts as the "Stirling straights") has about 4 bends and one post 2000CE roundabout in 8 miles. Traffic speeds are controlled mostly by other traffic rather than by Police Scotland.

IIRC ... it was found with the very earliest Autobahnen in Germany ... they'd had the wonderful idea of making them completely straight - like many lengths of railway track.
And then found large numbers of accidents, as people went to sleep, or theor attention wandered, since they were not doing any steering.
Trains don't need steering, but the driver has other things to attend to, like watching for signals.

In looking around for sword things, there's actually film of sharp épée duelling to first blood . Picture quality leaves something to be desired, but I'm surprised it exists at all that late. There's more than one too.

As for accuracy, the general opinion on ask historians is, The Duellists gets it as well as you can while you're only pretending. Different from a battle situation ofc.

on the subject of walking...

https://www.stairwellbooks.co.uk/product/black-harry/

I picked up this small press edition at Eastercon. It's based on a documented case in Elizabethan England, when a deputation of tenant farmers walked from Glossopdale to London to register their protest against unreasonable rent increases, and surprisingly did not end up hanging from gibbets.

Then did it again.

Deet is the only really effective mosquito repellent...

If one is technology crazed (and presumably American), there are lasers!

The "logical" defense system is an active one with a stereophonic multiple microphone array feeding to a targeting computer, which then directs a turreted laser at any flying intruders.

There are several off-the-shelf models on the market, for moderate three figures. You can also build one yourself, with a Raspberry Pi and a few hours of tinkering. But so far the accuracy of active anti-aircraft lasers in the backyard doesn't really justify it except as a toy; outside the puffery articles, which don't go into effectiveness numbers at all, the quoted kill rate in reviews is about 15%. I can accept a 15% kill rate for Ukranian defense batteries, since the intruders are thinking ahead and using active countermeasures, but I'd like better against dumb mosquitos.

I knew someone who inadvertently spent $40.00* to electrocute a cockroach, it was exploring the inside of a microwave oven and foolishly climbed the capacitor can. It's charred remains presented a shorter path to ground than the wiring did.

• The price of a replacement capacitor.

Robert Prior may be able to confirm or deny, but my understanding is that in places like Saskatchewan or Manitoba (Canadian Prairies) the rule/law is that the road must have a turn every 8 miles or so to keep drivers awake. You really could build a highway in a straight line (aside from the occasional lake or river) for about 2000 km otherwise.

places like Saskatchewan or Manitoba (Canadian Prairies) the rule/law is that the road must have a turn every 8 miles or so to keep drivers awake

Never heard that. The grid roads occasionally jog because, despite appearances, the Prairies are the surface of a sphere not a plane and so parallel lines do converge…

If I've done things right, this link should show a 140 km stretch of straight road:

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Arcola+East-South+Side,+Regina,+Saskatchewan,+Canadà/Stoughton,+Saskatchewan+S0G+4T0,+Canadà/@50.1849304,-104.1238552,17038m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x531ea072dcf0a51d:0xd9a1557ebd438164!2m2!1d-104.5522824!2d50.4246891!1m5!1m1!1s0x531fc36c26cd39bd:0x99d5ae37e129f0ef!2m2!1d-103.029849!2d49.6785916!3e0?hl=ca&entry=ttu

In England the early rail routes often ran near or alongside the canals as the surveyors for the latter had already avoided steep inclines and minimised the lengths of tunnels through hills and aquaducts across valleys.
Sometimes they even used the canal tunnel to ventilate the train tunnel, for an example see https://youtu.be/4vhGdzCr9lY

The railway builders would also use the canal to help in the construction, allowing easy movement of material. In the Standedge tunnel example you linked to, the spoil digging the railway tunnels was dropped straight in to canal boats in the tunnel alongside, via short cross cuts. A bit of a double edged sword for the canal companies, as although they were paid for their help in construction, the railway almost always took away much of their traffic once complete.

I spent nothing at all to kill lots of flies with an old TV. Line output transformer, with one transistor, one capacitor and one resistor connected to the LT-side windings to make a blocking oscillator, run from a 12V supply and adjusted to set the output voltage just short of causing a flashover in the load; HT winding feeding a grid of 0.2mm wires at 3mm spacing, with the polarity alternating, strung across a wooden frame about 50x30cm suspended from the ceiling - the idea being to have a large lethal area hanging in mid-air with no apparent enough obstruction across that area to put a fly off trying to fly through it.

It was important to use the less common kind of line output transformer which does not have an EHT rectifier/tripler stage built in. The rapid discharge of the output capacitance in such a stage through a fly would deliver enough concentrated energy to damage the fine grid wires. By using the raw AC straight from the secondary, and making the blocking oscillator operate with little enthusiasm so as to give a high output impedance, the output became controllable enough to set it to kill flies without damaging itself in the process.

Consequently the sound of a fly being killed was not a sharp snap, but a half-second or so burst of continuous tone at a few kHz until the arc burned away enough of the fly to break the circuit. In fact, it sounded just like a brief burst of mosquito sound. But I've never needed to use such a device against mosquitoes, so I don't know whether that sonic quality would tend to attract more mosquitoes to investigate and so get zapped in turn, or put them off, or not make any noticeable difference.

I think it runs in the family. When my dad was little he built an electric rat trap for his uncle's farmyard barn. Unfortunately he no longer had any prototypes still in existence by the time I came along.

Indeed, it wasn't unknown for the railway company to end up buying the canal company out, sometimes so they could fill the canal in and build the railway on top of it, but sometimes just because it was the simplest way to make them shut up and stop making legal objections to the railway scheme.

There is a curve just SE of Lajord. Not a very big one and I needed an RBL to confirm its existence...

The grid roads occasionally jog because, despite appearances, the Prairies are the surface of a sphere not a plane and so parallel lines do converge

You tend to get this in the flat lands of the US due to survey errors in the 1800s. Periodically there would be a long series of property lines coming at each other from opposite directions that meet up 10' or 100' apart.

The government would use eminent domain to take over the offset areas needed for the road.

Consequently the sound of a fly being killed was not a sharp snap, but a half-second or so burst of continuous tone at a few kHz until the arc burned away enough of the fly to break the circuit.

Twice in my life I've been within a few hundred feet when a squirrel stepped across the high voltage side of a residential transformer. 14+KV. Small bomb sounds with very bright flash. Not sure if it was the trip disconnecting or the very rapid burning of the squirrel fur or both. I got to see both squirrels afterwards. You could easily tell the path the circuit took along the skin and fur.

For many years we used to see 'Bug Zappers', electric fixtures that emitted a bug attracting light that would then fry them on contact. A prairie BBQ would be punctuated with the constant zapping sound of mosquitoes and moths self-destructing.

As far as I can recall they had no meaningful effect on the number of bugs, and I remember reading that they tended to aerosolize the insects, which meant we were all breathing bug dust.

I think they have disappeared, but it's been a couple of decades since I was a prairie dweller, so it is possible they are still common.

At this point I think my safest and easiest to follow strategy will be to time my weeding to when the mosquitoes are least active, spray on the Deep Woods Off (contains DEET)

Found an article on the smell of people issue with mosquitoes and why repellents don't work all that well. Not to mention that different people give off different smells.

https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/mosquitoes-have-a-bizarre-sense-of-smell/

Deadlier, yes - but probably not as painful as the Gallinipper mosquito.

I hate dealing with mosquitos. But I utterly despise what I call horse flies. 2 or more CM in length and THEY BITE chunks out of your skin. Big enough chunks to create a blow FLOW. We had them at times in western Kentucky. And I understand they are a serious pain for a part of the year the further north you go into North America. To the extend bazookas at 10 paces are considered a suitable response. When one bites you and you're operating a tractor or such the mental shock can be dangerous.

I suspect their slang name comes from them mostly existing around larger livestock such as cows, horses, elk, moose, and such.

There is a curve just SE of Lajord. Not a very big one and I needed an RBL to confirm its existence...

You're right. Didn't notice that. The rail line is straight, though :-)

I grew up in Saskatchewan. Roads running straight to the horizon were expected, unless there was something to avoid. Likewise flatness — I impressed a fenland archaeologist (in the UK) by spotting the obvious rise (almost a foot higher than the surrounding countryside).

When my English grandmother visited the straight roads were all she could talk about for most of the trip. It wasn't until I visited England that I realized how unusual there were.

I utterly despise what I call horse flies.

Horse flies are painful, but black flies are more dangerous. They can remove enough blood to kill an animal (unlike horse flies).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f389hIxZAOc

Still common over here. They're a pretty standard sight on the wall behind the counter anywhere food is being handled in the open, like butchers and fish and chip shops. I think I've seen one actually kill a fly about once. They seem to be more for show than anything, although they're not even much of a show because they always look as if the grid hasn't been cleaned since the shop was built.

I'm dubious about their principle in any case, because I don't believe the "insect attracting light" attracts anything at all. None of the insects seem to take the slightest notice of it. They just buzz endlessly round and round in circuits around the middle of the open airspace, while the machine only gets the occasional one which happens to settle on that bit of the wall, and they aren't actually interested in settling on the wall in the first place. So I designed my version to hang in space and make their preferred flight paths become lethally dangerous, and after a few weeks there were hardly any flies any more.

Scott Sanford @ 284:

Deet is the only really effective mosquito repellent...

If one is technology crazed (and presumably American), there are lasers!

The "logical" defense system is an active one with a stereophonic multiple microphone array feeding to a targeting computer, which then directs a turreted laser at any flying intruders.

There are several off-the-shelf models on the market, for moderate three figures. You can also build one yourself, with a Raspberry Pi and a few hours of tinkering. But so far the accuracy of active anti-aircraft lasers in the backyard doesn't really justify it except as a toy; outside the puffery articles, which don't go into effectiveness numbers at all, the quoted kill rate in reviews is about 15%. I can accept a 15% kill rate for Ukranian defense batteries, since the intruders are thinking ahead and using active countermeasures, but I'd like better against dumb mosquitos.

Wouldn't it be easier to just use a mosquito net?

We used them in Iraq and I bought a good one from Amazon after we got home; works great with the four poster (I think that's what the four posts were originally for ...)

Robert Prior @ 287:

places like Saskatchewan or Manitoba (Canadian Prairies) the rule/law is that the road must have a turn every 8 miles or so to keep drivers awake

Never heard that. The grid roads occasionally jog because, despite appearances, the Prairies are the surface of a sphere not a plane and so parallel lines do converge…

I remember stories from back in the 60s about places out in the western U.S. where there were roads that had no speed limits. No speeding tickets per se, but if you crashed that proved you were driving too fast for the available road conditions.

One story I heard was about a guy "flying too low" in one of Carol Shelby's special creations when he came over a rise and saw a police roadblock ahead ... MILES ahead; many miles ahead.

He slowed down so that he wasn't obviously going too fast by the time he reached the roadblock. The police asked him how fast he had been going back when he first saw the roadblock and he said "maybe 50 or 60 mph".

At which point the officer laughed and told him he wasn't in any trouble, they just wanted to find out how fast he was really going, because he'd outrun the airplane they'd been chasing him with and its speed was around 150 mph (130 knots).

And if you've never heard it, you ought to check out Brian Shul's LA Speed Check story

David L @ 294:

Consequently the sound of a fly being killed was not a sharp snap, but a half-second or so burst of continuous tone at a few kHz until the arc burned away enough of the fly to break the circuit.

Twice in my life I've been within a few hundred feet when a squirrel stepped across the high voltage side of a residential transformer. 14+KV. Small bomb sounds with very bright flash. Not sure if it was the trip disconnecting or the very rapid burning of the squirrel fur or both. I got to see both squirrels afterwards. You could easily tell the path the circuit took along the skin and fur.

On one otherwise unmemorable 4th of July a few years back, just after I'd sat down at my computer with my morning coffee there was a loud bang and the power went off.

Half a block up the street, in addition to the usual fried squirrel, the top of the power pole was burning like the candle on a birthday cake.

What do you think of the French Government's decision to ban short haul domestic flights where there's an alternative train journey 2.5 hours or less?

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/24/france-bans-domestic-short-haul-flights.html

My understanding is this only affects 3 or 4 flights in France ... so maybe it's just "environmental theater" ... for NOW.

Do you think this might work to reduce (if only slightly) greenhouse gas emissions from air travel? Could this be extended to flights across the EU?

How about in the U.K.?

Wouldn't work in the U.S. I don't think because we don't have the passenger rail infrastructure. But maybe it could be if we worked on it.

I think the U.S. should nationalize the rail network (after all, they were built with government money that was never paid back). Upgrade it to double tracks & eliminate grade crossings. Set up a traffic control organization similar to the FAA for air travel and allow anyone to file a "flight plan". License rail crew the way they license flight crews.

If passenger rail was as convenient as air travel (factoring in the city center to city center nature & no need to get too & from the airport) AND as cheap, I think people would use it. Start out by connecting major metro areas to outlying smaller towns, then extend out farther until all the small towns are interconnected.

John S
OUGHT to be done YESTERDAY in the UK ... but if they did they would have to actually spend money on HS2 & the tories HATE railways.
Um.

Electrocution of unwanted livestock ... About 12 years back, I was at Harlow, doing passenger-counting .. had just finished, went to get on my train & a pigeon flew low, over it ... right between the pantograph & the 25kVAC wire & the top of the train carriage ...
BANG + puff of greasy smoke ... Train left about 5 "down" as the driver had to re-set the safeties shorted-out by said electrocuted pigeon

My first thought was "Really? Someone has actually finally realised that if you're the one who hands out the licences, you do have other options than merely moaning ineffectually about it?"

My second thought was "...and, of course, it's the French. It would have to be the French. It's always the French. It makes me want to be French."

ban short haul domestic flights where there's an alternative train journey 2.5 hours or less?

In some ways purely decorative because the fast trains have already made the air routes unviable.

But at the same time there's a difference between "you can only have a gun if you have a really good reason" and "very few people have guns". The political statement has value, as does the law.

Where it gets really fun is when they say "clause 17, part 4.xvii: applies to private passenger aircraft movements in general"

Since we are past 300, I have a completely unrelated question for Charlie:

Ever since I first read "Saturn's Children", I wondered whether you included the flashback to Rhea's training specifically to keep the readers from feeling too sorry about Homo sapiens. Was my guess correct?

Wouldn't it be easier to just use a mosquito net?

We used them in Iraq and I bought a good one from Amazon after we got home; works great with the four poster (I think that's what the four posts were originally for ...) My understanding is that four posters had a number of uses. They were a rich persons only thing and very expensive. Costly enough to be a specific line item in wills. People who would have servants, so gave you some privacy when the underlings were coming in and out of the room making up fires, bringing in hot water, emptying chamber pots, setting out clothes and so on. Also helped you keep warmer by building up a fug in side in poorly heated buildings, though that's not so much of a problem for the super rich. The link between mosquitoes and malaria wasn't known when 4-posters were more common.

Moz
In some ways purely decorative because the fast trains have already made the air routes unviable. - would be the same here of course, apart from the fucking stupid, greedy arsehole tories ....

My understanding is that many older homes can't be heated much. So the bed either four post or cupboard style means you have a smaller space that's easier to seal and insulate.

When I lived in Melbourne with the queen of the lizard people I built a four poster bed with proper thermal drapes and a plywood roof that had EPS sheets on in under the cloth cover. It was awesome, we could go from see-your-breath cold to toasty warm with a 1kw fan heater in a couple of minutes, and it stayed warm with that on about a 20% duty cycle. The electric blanket on high had much the same effect, turn that on, go and have a shower, come back and the bedding is warming the air. The two of us sleeping kept it warm enough that the endotherm didn't need her electric blanket on.

the smell of people issue with mosquitoes and why repellents don't work all that well

The most important thing to know about DEET (and its ilk) is that it's really, really unpleasant to lick off a young lady's skin, particularly when you might happen to be a very young gentleman with a fervent interest in doing so and there are lightweight sundresses and moonlit sandy beaches involved (not to mention the reciprocal fervour on the part of the young lady).

Almost certainly not. 'Horse' is a common term meaning large or coarse, as in horse mushroom, horse chestnut or horseradish. I don't know the relative discomfort of north American horseflies and European ones, but can easily believe what you say, because ours are bad enough.

The most painful bite I have had in the UK is from the Blandford fly, but it is a curious one because (for most people) the pain fades almost immediately after they have leaped out of their skin. Some people react fairly badly to it, though.

The USA's fascination with barbeques never fails to amaze me - how did the squirrel taste :-)

Yes, but don't believe that it wasn't a problem for the super-rich. They tended to live in large, stone-built near-castles with large rooms, and those do NOT heat well with open fires. Comfort always took second place to conspicuous displays of wealth ....

This talk of mosquito nets takes me back!

Back in the days before the plague and I was travelling regularly for work. I would be in France quite often. They were making a better stab at integrated travel than the UK. You could get through ticketing with Air France / SNCF , so if you flew into Paris CDG you would walk with in the terminal to the TGV station and your connection. This worked better than trying to do Eurostar channel tunnel rail service as you had to cross Paris to get your connections.

David L noted: "I hate dealing with mosquitos. But I utterly despise what I call horse flies. 2 or more CM in length and THEY BITE chunks out of your skin. Big enough chunks to create a blow FLOW."

Their close kin, deerflies, aren't any better. While I was working in the woods of northern Ontario, I once had one bite me through a rubber (pre-Goretex) raincoat, light sweater, sweatshirt, and undershirt and leave a 1-cm bloodstain on the undershirt. Makes sense that such armor provides little protection against something that evolution designed to bite through the skin of a moose, which gives a main battle tank serious competition in terms of armor.

Blackflies never bothered me much, since the bites didn't itch and they mostly stayed away from my eyes. In a typical field season, I'd end up with "blackfly fever" for a couple days (a non-infectious reaction to something in their saliva), and thereafter the bites were just a mild annoyance. We tried the Avon bath oil "Skin So Soft", which was reputed to keep the blackflies away. It sort of worked until you sweated it off. Seems the blackflies could care less about the smell, but hated the taste of the oil. On the other hand, the smell led to some raised eyebrows at truckstops: sniff, sniff "You boys are from Toronto, aren't you?"

But mosquitoes were the worst: after a day in the field, I had itchy bites all over my body, DEET or no DEET -- and they got under my eyeglasses, which was intolerable.

Flew into Frankfort Germany back in 2018. It was nice that the train station was below the airport. Literally.

A few escalator rides down and you're there.

Yes, but don't believe that it wasn't a problem for the super-rich. They tended to live in large, stone-built near-castles with large rooms, and those do NOT heat well with open fires. Comfort always took second place to conspicuous displays of wealth .... Good point. High ceilings too in many cases. The lower orders, with their livestock kept in the same small building as they were living were probably much warmer than their lords, if rather smellier. Also, chimneys weren't a common thing until the 16th century. Before then, it would have been open pit fires, with the smoke making its way out of the thatch.

The Duellists is a favourite, the production filmed in the Perigord for a lot of the location work so the landscapes and built environment are just gorgeous.

YouTube has a bunch of historical shorts done by HEMA enthusiasts to showcase more realistic fight choreography, here's one I ran across recently that I enjoyed - it depicts a late renaissance duel with messers and conveys a lot of story and character with only a few lines of dialogue:

https://youtu.be/HwHNzL9-zpg

Moz @ 311:

My understanding is that many older homes can't be heated much. So the bed either four post or cupboard style means you have a smaller space that's easier to seal and insulate.

When I lived in Melbourne with the queen of the lizard people I built a four poster bed with proper thermal drapes and a plywood roof that had EPS sheets on in under the cloth cover. It was awesome, we could go from see-your-breath cold to toasty warm with a 1kw fan heater in a couple of minutes, and it stayed warm with that on about a 20% duty cycle. The electric blanket on high had much the same effect, turn that on, go and have a shower, come back and the bedding is warming the air. The two of us sleeping kept it warm enough that the endotherm didn't need her electric blanket on.

The one I have is a piece of "American Country Style" furniture - not quite a reproduction, more of a homage to past craftsmen.

Back in the 18th century Philadelphia and other colonial cities would have fancy cabinet makers, but out in the "back woods" the gentry had to rely on local craftsmen to copy their betters (city cousin/country cousin) and most of country pieces were fairly plain.

In the late 20th century there was a revival in woodworking as a hobby & one such hobby craftsman set up a space at the local flea market. One of the pieces he had was a 4 poster bed w/canopy frame. I wanted one, but could never afford it.

BUT when I got home from Iraq I DID have a bit of surplus in my savings, so I indulged myself. After I got it I realized I could get a mosquito net that would fit over the canopy frame. That's worked a treat even when I had all the window screens in good repair.

Very similar to this design

I really like using the mosquito net. Much better than having to sleep with bug spray on to keep them away.

Elderly Cynic @ 314:

The USA's fascination with barbeques never fails to amaze me - how did the squirrel taste :-)

... like chicken.

“ pre-gunpowder hand to hand combat ” was a period that even you only start the clock at the Bronze Age encompassed thousands of years

During that time period pretty much all “real fighting” was various flavors of heavy infantry formation clashing with one another, usually using spears, not swords, usually supported by missile weapon troops and horse. The tactics, weapons and armor systems varied a lot but the battle usually decided by whoever’s formation held

You had some variations here and there (your occasionally steppe cavalry, shock cavalry, Roman heavy infantry used swords etc) but ANYTIME you have one single person squaring up against another person that’s not “real” fighting. That’s some kind of duel. And duels had rules. Because if it was real you’d bring a shit ton of friends.

Fencing is not real. No flavor of SCA combat is real. Hema is not real. Kendo is not real. These are all descendants of various kinds of dueling traditions, heavily regulated, stylized combats that were completely about proving skill within the rule set and never had any relationship with any type of no holds barred trying to kill your opponent.

Because I’d you really want your opponent dead you being friends

"The Queen of the Lizard People?"

Someone who could suck the heat out of an ice cube.

I have no idea how she managed to be so consistently colder than her surroundings but it's an amazing talent... if you live somewhere really hot. She could sleep comfortably under a doona when it was over 35 degrees in the bedroom. I was lying on the floor sweating at that temperature. Of course as soon as overnight lows got under 20 degrees she'd be dying of the freezing cold and wanting to have the winter doona and electric blanket.

(I meant ectotherm, I realised after posting. I even started with that then thought... that doesn't sound right, people are endotherms. Yeah, well, except that one particular specimen)

The Duellists is a favourite, the production filmed in the Perigord for a lot of the location work so the landscapes and built environment are just gorgeous.

Well in turn I recommend the Conrad novella it's based on.

I have known people who needed multiple layers during the day to keep warm when the temperature was around 22 C in Melbourne. They all seemed to come from Queensland.

Moz @ 311:

My understanding is that many older homes can't be heated much. So the bed either four post or cupboard style means you have a smaller space that's easier to seal and insulate.

Mine was one of them. Built before insulation in the walls was common.

My winter regimen was a 1,000 watt ceramic heater cube in the bathroom which kept it warm enough I wouldn't die from shock whenever I had to sit down in there; electric blanket under a down comforter and the wood stove in the living room. Heat from the wood stove would sort of permeate the part of the house I lived in.

Raleigh is in that zone between where winter gets cold & STAYS cold and where winter rarely gets cold at all ... so our winters can be kind of freakish - almost summer like warm one day and "who left the door open to Siberia" the next.

Without any other external heat input the house usually stayed around 50°F (10°C) throughout our winter. But it could get warm enough for mosquitos to become active some days, so I kept the net up year round.

Referring back to "DEET" & it's apparent ineffectiveness against "mossies" ...
I'm told that it is, however, very effective against somethingmuch nastier than them ... Ticks
Apparently ticks won't bite you / suck your blood / give you seriously unpleasant infections if you have used the stuff.
And some of the tick-borne blood diseases are truly revolting-to-fatal

Elderly Cynic @ 315:

This talk of mosquito nets takes me back!

Sometimes the old ways are still the best.

And re: barbecue squirrel - Squirrel was most often the "meat" ingredient in Brunswick Stew (which today is most commonly made with chicken). In colonial times made with whatever small mammal settlers on the frontier could acquire. Rabbit or squirrel; occasionally deer meat or Virginia Opossum (but Opossum's REALLY greasy meat); rarely skunk or raccoon.

I'm in the camp that credits Brunswick Stew to Brunswick County in Virginia, although the idea the recipe was brought to Virginia by settlers from Braunschweig in Lower Saxony (Germany) seems reasonable since Brunswick County, VA was named for George I in his persona as Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg where Braunschweig is located.

Greg Tingey @ 330:

Referring back to "DEET" & it's apparent ineffectiveness against "mossies" ...
I'm told that it is, however, very effective against somethingmuch nastier than them ... Ticks
Apparently ticks won't bite you / suck your blood / give you seriously unpleasant infections if you have used the stuff.
And some of the tick-borne blood diseases are truly revolting-to-fatal

Somebody forgot to tell the ticks down at Ft. Hood, TX when I was there back in 1988.

We used US Army issue bug juice liberally (the two fluid oz bottle would only last a couple days because you had to reapply it every couple hours as you sweated it off). We also practiced REGULAR tick checks (check your buddy). I still got a tick on me despite all the precautions. I followed protocol and had the medics remove it & document it in my medical record.

Ten days later I got sick. Somewhat flu-like symptoms. It was our last day in Texas, we were scheduled to fly out back to North Carolina in the morning.

I don't remember much from that day. I got my equipment packed up and went to bed. Some time in the night my roommate called in the medics & I vaguely remember waking up during what must have been an ambulance ride - the "bed" kept moving around & the ceiling didn't look right.

They DID wake me up in the ER (A&E) to sign a permission slip for them to do a spinal tap (a confirmed case of meningitis had presented on post that day - similar symptoms). They had to keep me awake for the procedure and I remember it was the most intense pain I've ever experienced before or since.

Some time early in the morning the First Sergeant showed up and asked them to release me so I could fly back to NC with the rest of the battalion. I vaguely remember sitting in the back of the plane during the flight. When we got to RDU, we were released & dispersed from where the plane unloaded at the civil aviation (private planes) ramp. Somehow I got home.

The following morning (Monday) I called my doctor and told his office I was coming in. By then I was running a high fever (peaked at 104°F/40°C) and was in intense pain including a headache worse than any migraine I've ever had.

I told him about the tick (by then I had self diagnosed it as href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountain_spotted_fever">Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever). The doctor agreed, ordered a blood test and prescribed a broad spectrum antibiotic. The blood test was inconclusive & I never developed the rash. I guess because the antibiotic prevented the disease from developing that far.

I saw him again on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday. On Friday morning I think I finally got through to the doctor how much pain I was in because he prescribed Percocet. I took one when I got back home and it knocked me right out.

I woke up again some time on Saturday afternoon & took another. By Sunday the pain & fever were gone. I continued to take the antibiotics until they were all gone (already knew about that even back in 1988).

The Army (National Guard) should have paid for my medical treatment & kept me on Active Duty until I was healthy - BUT THEY DIDN'T! It's the sickest I've ever been & the most pain I've ever experienced, so they're the standard I judge by even today (35 years later).

Ticks still freak me out.

Or in Britain. Your tick experience somes gruesome. I have have been bitten by ticks hundreds of times (once, in the UK, by 200 nymphs!), but have never been diagnosed with anything tick-borne. Which doesn't mean I haven't had anything - the evidence is that Lyme disease is almost always asymptomatic, for example.

And, yes, grey squirrel is quite good - a bit like a slightly gamier and stringier rabbit. Brush-tailed oppossum (the one that is a pest in New Zealand) lacks taste and flavour, even compared with supermarket chicken.

I am told that .. with GW, tick-borne real nasties are already / about to be loose in the UK?

Re: 'It's the tsetse flies that really hurt!'

I wonder whether there's any part of the planet that doesn't have killer insects that have a special appetite for human flesh.

Thanks all for the interesting info and video links re: women's undies, canals, black flies, deer flies, ticks, lemongrass, Skin So Soft**, etc.

I did a bit of searching for more/newer info on allergies, found a podcast by an allergist (paywalled) and after some further searches based on her info, found the below.

Charlie - I think this quashes the 'clean' hypothesis wrt allergies/asthma. Never really agreed with this as the likely reason for my allergies because when I was a kid my family would spend summers at one of our relative's farm. They had various farm animals (and their manure), plus we often did some planting/digging up vegetables in the garden, picking berries and mushrooms, etc. None of us were ever afraid of dirt but we mostly lived in the city and had seasonal allergies. :)

Heteromeles - Is this on your radar when advising on the ecological impact of tree selection? There's also a CO2 impact.

Greg - if you ever stealth plant any more trees, please keep this in mind. :)

Here's the article - very interesting and informative.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/16/how-urban-planners-preference-for-male-trees-has-made-your-hay-fever-worse

*Lemongrass - if this is the same plant that's used for Thai green curry, I'm planting it!

**Ditto crushed black pepper - haven't had black pepper steak in ages.

Robert:

We used to go boating in the Lake Huron area. One summer we got it all: black flies, swarms of deer flies, mosquitoes, ticks and a massasauga rattler right in front of/blocking the door of the park's outhouse.

tick-borne real nasties are already / about to be loose in the UK?

Likely/almost certainly.

You will likely have a brief period before they become endemic (the diseases). But like malaria, they will spread as the climate changes. How good is the NHS at monitoring for wildlife-borne diseases? And will this capability survive the coming Tory austerity budgets?

Hint: the reason SARS was such a problem in Toronto and not Vancouver (where it first landed in Canada) was that the neocon government of the day decided to save $100k by defunding the disease monitoring unit. Kinda like pulling out smoke detectors because we haven't had a fire this election cycle…

(And those neocons now look like the sane and sensible wing of the conservative party, sadly.)

any part of the planet that doesn't have killer insects that have a special appetite for human flesh.

Aotearoa comes close. Sandflies are the worst of the common encounters and they're mild by comparison with mosquitoes (which NZ also has, but not in great quantity), let alone tsetse flies or something fun like leeches. Plus of course the dangerous mammals mostly being domesticated ones ("do not pet fur seals" isn't a warning most people need).

There's a couple of spiders that have nasty but mostly non-lethal poison if you can find one then annoy it enough to make it attack you. Oh, and snails that will hurt someone quite badly if you drop one on them from a great height.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/97891320/giant-meateating-snail-found-in-sounds-bay

To a degree, but less than you think. Few of those diseases are temperature-dependent as such, and most rely on specific vectors. Malaria, for example, relies on a sufficient density of both (a) mammals and (b) a few species of mosquito. In turn, those mosquitoes need static, open water to breed. It was common in the UK (Marsh/Fen Ague) until it was extirpated by the draining of the fens and filling in of most ponds. It's now present only around Heathrow, and shows no signs of spreading.

Ticks are even less mobile and, while we have even half-competent zoosanitary systems, I doubt that the relevant ticks and diseases will arrive here and naturalise. Of course, 'reforms' by previous governments have reduced those enough to introduce several plant diseases (e.g. Dutch Elm), as well as create CJD.

"a massasauga rattler right in front of/blocking the door of the park's outhouse."

The expression that springs to mind is "Oh, shit!" :-)

No, that article doesn't eliminate the evidence that excessive hygiene is a factor in developing allergies and asthma. It's complicated. It has been known to not be "the cause" for some time, though - merely one contributing factor of many (most of which are unknown).

Lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus) is almost hardy enough to grow outside in the UK, and is grown in South Island, New Zealand - I grow it in our conservatory. Black pepper (Piper nigrum) is a tropical plant.

any part of the planet that doesn't have killer insects that have a special appetite for human flesh.

I had a whole comment typed up about the low bodycount of the Highland midge (not for lack of effort on their part, trust me), but it seems midge territory and Lyme-bearing tick territory overlap in These Isles.

I suppose I should qualify my assertion about Deet being the only effective mosquito repellent by adding the phrase 'that does not make you smell good to bears'.

I have heard that Avon Skin-so-soft can be somewhat effective, as well as the lemongrass and citronella scented items. However, they are reputed to be appealing to bears, and so very few of my coworkers ever used them much when I worked in the woods.

It's all well and good to have no bites, but eventually one must go to sleep. It is a lot easier to sleep in a tent when you know you don't smell like a tasty snack. I have lain in my sleeping bag and listened to a bear snuffling around my tent on several occasions - after the first incident I have always made 100% sure to extirpate anything that might give them the idea to try coming inside the tent. Toothpaste and other toiletries, food of any kind, and yes - no non-deet mosquito repellents.

As for horseflies and deer flies, a curse be upon them all. I once spent a few days working a site in the muskeg in northern Alberta. The horseflies were so plentiful and aggressive that I had to shout to make myself heard by my work partner, who was never more than 3 meters away. The only solution was to keep moving fast and present a difficult target. He ended up having a minor mental breakdown partway through one day, as did many people.

I wonder whether there's any part of the planet that doesn't have killer insects that have a special appetite for human flesh.

Interesting. So, we're ignoring the 70% of the planet that is covered by ocean? Insects never really invaded the sea, one of those little puzzles. And there's the 5-10% covered by ice caps, the chunk of the planet that in winter is too cold for anything not warmed by humans (bedbugs, fleas, and lice). But other than that?

I think the thing to realize is that a large majority of eukaryotes are parasites, so everything is either a sucker or a suckee or both. It might be worth asking whether or attempts to being part of the food web are a) sustainable, b) successful, and c) worth the cost.

I'd gently suggest that it might be slightly saner to adopt the Australian aboriginal idea of the dreaming: everything that exists has a dreaming and a place on the planet where it can survive and thrive. The trick that the aborigines pulled off to some degree is that the pest dreamers were able to manage their special lands to (from settler's accounts) confine the pests to certain tracts of land, and have them elsewhere in low numbers if at all. And they're the only people who might have pulled this off. Maybe something to think about, how much of the pest problem is due to us being stupid and greedy land managers?

Heteromeles noted: "Insects never really invaded the sea, one of those little puzzles."

Maybe not so mysterious? The problem I'd propose is that the true insects (those that breathe passively through spiracles rather than powered lungs) would die of asphyxiation in the water. So I'd hypothesize* that spiracle breathers and lung breathers parted evolutionary company long ago; the former couldn't deal with water but the latter could.

• Not having time to track down evolutionary histories.

But if you want to include crabs and other invertebrates in the insect group (hard shelled things with too many legs), then you could argue the insects successfully invaded most bodies of water. Ditto for diving spiders.

Yeah, that wiki page on the anti-mosquito laser is clearly in need of some maintenance:

Currently there are several scientists involved with the project, including scientist Jordin Kare, PhD

I heard about this project from Jordin in person. As he died in 2017, make that some years ago. The kicker is that for the sort of laser energy you need, the laser diode from a cheap consumer BluRay player would do just fine -- and the focusing array in said player was accurate enough to focus the beam on a mosquito at the range (10-30 metres) in question.

I can't help thinking that this ought to be practical, and at energy levels that would allow a small solar panel to provide mosquito-zapping coverage for a block or two.

I spent nothing at all to kill lots of flies with an old TV.

Pigeon, you really don't want to use an electrocution grid to kill flies. There's a reason you don't see them over butchers or supermarket deli counters any more -- health and safety regs banned them after new research showed that they sprayed exploded bug bits (complete with whatever faecobacteria they'd been walking in) all over whatever was under the zapper.

(If you want a better fly trap, you need something that doesn't spread fly guts around. Like, oh, a small open-topped fish tank full of sphagnum moss and Dionaea muscipula.)

How about in the U.K.?

It won't be much use in the UK because we don't have a European-standard high speed rail network: with the exception of HS1 (the Channel Tunnel link) and the planned HS2 (which won't be in service before 2030 -- assuming it doesn't get cancelled first) our trains max out at 125mph, so you'd be banning all flights of less than 300 miles on direct railway links.

But we're not as good as France or Germany about having railway stations at airports. I mean, they exist, but they're mostly commuter lines running to major rail hubs in cities, rather than handling high speed intercity lines directly.

In France you can walk to one end of the domestic terminal at CDG and hop straight on a TGV bound for Paris Gare du Nord or parts south or east at 200-250km/h. In the Netherlands, there's a major railway hub right underneath Schiphol's main terminal with trains every 10 minutes or so to Amsterdam and a bunch of long-range stuff going elsewhere. And at Frankfurt or Dusseldorf there are ICE trains going through. (Can't remember the situation at Berlin Brandenberg but I'm pretty sure it's both on the S-Bahn and U-Bahn with frequent connections to Berlin Hauptbahnhoff.)

For passenger rail to take over the USA what you need to do is to build high speed rail hubs at your major airports that act as hubs for commuter flights, with lines direct to the cities served by those flights. Zero freight traffic, fully electrified, designed for running at 100-250mph. As long as they're easy to connect with -- ideally you should be able to buy a through-ticket involving flights and onward rail travel, and check your bags through to the final railway station, and no messing around with security theatre or boarding queues at the railway platforms -- it would eat the vast mass of small short-haul airline operations alive. And in so doing it would free up runway slots for long-haul/wide-body airliners, improving the situation for the remaining flyers.

The point about Saturn's Children is that the humans had created a slave-state. A really unpleasant slave state, complete with the worst excesses of the US Confederacy and no escape. And they then went into demographic collapse, which we're re-learning is actually pretty hard for a society to climb out of short of total collapse/barbarian invasion.

Freya is an abuse victim. (Which is just one aspect of Saturn's Children being a homage to Heinlein's Friday -- Friday was a victim of child abuse, Heinlein just didn't have the modern language with which to describe it: he was writing in the 1970s/early 1980s before public awareness of child abuse as an endemic social problem really took off.)

Insects never really invaded the sea, one of those little puzzles.

Saw an article about that relatively recently ...

But general internet search degradation renders it undiscoverable!

(General summary: some of the enzymes used by insects when molting and rebuilding their exoskeletons don't work too well in seawater. Saltwater crustaceans are closely related but rely on calcium carbonate in a chitinous matrix for stiffening/armour, which is denser/heavier and probably leads to them being less viable on dry land, let alone as flying organisms.)

"...And they're the only people who might have pulled this off." Probably because they had a much, much longer time to work it out, a serious benefit from being around so very long in the one place.

For passenger rail to take over the USA what you need to do is to build high speed rail hubs at your major airports that act as hubs for commuter flights, with lines direct to the cities served by those flights.

My son and I were discussing this today in relation to how best to take a trip of 250 or 500 miles.

Every proposed high speed rail proposal tends to get bogged down as the local governments that the rail line will go THROUGH want a stop for economic reasons. And a stop every 5 to 20 miles makes it a NOT high speed rail.

Germany's short, medium, and long haul lines make it all work there. But the cost of doing that now in the USA would be astronomical (or higher) due to all the property that would need to be acquired. And the lawsuits that would appear. Especially if you don't want to share rails with freight. Locally we've cratered 2 proposals due to all the costs after spending the literal butt load of money trying to get them going. Plus a few others that spent just big piles of money on studies.

Coil and implant, Charlie?

they had a much, much longer time to work it out

There's a lot of circularity there though. They were able to live in one place doing much the same thing for a long time because they have a long term outlook and so on.

Modern/western civilisation is cyclical, we get one year's experience ten times instead of ten years experience. And we treat problems as opportunities to take stuff and run, rather than coming up with an actual solution. The good news is that we've discovered a whole bunch of explanations for things, like evolution and nutrient cycles etc, that will help us understand all the different ways we're killing ourselves off.

Speaking w=of which, I saw a fun piece on plastic recycling the other day, pointing out that the mixture of chemicals added to the base polymer are very hard to extract afterwards so a proper circular recycle is harder than it looks. They were studying "what's in the recycled plastic" and the answer is that you're better off not knowing. Makes me think that waste-to-energy is the only real recycling that's safe and effective (plastic-CO2-plants-bioplastic is the cycle). Plastic container - fill with neurotoxin/insecticide - wash - dump contaminated water in river - chop up contaminated plastic and melt into new food containers... it's a cycle, it's just not a cycle you want to be involved with.

Ocean insects - Sea Skaters (Halobates)

Heteromeles was right: I completely ignored the 70% of the planet that's covered by ocean. But when you mentioned an insect that lived on the ocean I did a search and found this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halobates#

No mention of enzymes but ... sea skaters can (when in a group) eat a whole fish. Maybe the only reason they've not eaten any humans is because humans are relatively scarce.

EC - 'It's complicated'

Yeah, I know.

I also think that all of the different viruses (esp. measles) and various meds (esp. antibiotics) contribute to out of whack immune systems. However even an in-balance functional immune system has its limits* so the excessive use of trees and other plantings that spew pollen/spores (allergens/biologic junk) into the local atmosphere as a major contributing factor is definitely not off the hook. And it's a problem that can be easily addressed.

*Good grief - even H2O has its limits/breaking points: gas, liquid, solid. Push the temp/pressure past a certain point and you've got a change in state.

Moz - About your electric fly killing gizmo: have you ever competed in any Rube Goldberg contests?

Here's the official MIT (music) video about this contest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w

Every proposed high speed rail proposal tends to get bogged down as the local governments that the rail line will go THROUGH want a stop for economic reasons. And a stop every 5 to 20 miles makes it a NOT high speed rail.

Solved problem -- run two or three different HS rail services on the same line. The fastest trains only stop at major stations and run through the less-served stations at full speed. The slower trains stop more often and take longer to go end-to-end, being held at some stations for a few minutes to let the higher-priority trains leapfrog them.

The Japanese shinkansens do this -- the Sanyo line has the Nozomi trains which are the fastest, the Hikari trains which have an intermediate stopping pattern and the Kodama trains which stop at each station. This requires an obsessive attention to scheduling and time-keeping and the lines carry no traffic other than the high-speed trains so no slower commuter trains and freight get mixed in to complicate things. There are quite a few station locations on the Sanyo and other shinkansen lines that don't make much sense economically speaking given the number of passengers per diem but the local governments needed to be tossed a bone when the lines were laid out.

I'm fairly sure that work was funded at least in parat by Nathan Myhvold. Somewhere out there is a video of the demo system operating. I think it was designed to target the female mozzies for somereason?

My favourite story from Jordin though, is the zuccini (that's "courgette" to many of us) laser. He was working on laser propulsion and they found that cheap left-at-the-end-of-the-day courgettes fromthe local farmer's market made very good test targets/rockets because cheap, almost entirely water and the right kind of starting shape. Freeze them and apparently they go whizz quite well when hit by a laser. He told that they had to stop using them because the giggle-factor was embarrassing when explaining the work to idiot pols.

I think it was designed to target the female mozzies for somereason?

It's the females who bite us. It doesn't hurt that it's also the female who end up as the bottleneck for the next generation: it doesn't matter how many males there are if there are no females to lay the eggs

It was Pigeon made the machine for aerosolising flies, not me.

I use locally made insect trapping widgets, there's one that uses a fan + UV light + fluorescent plastic that allegedly produces CO2 as well as a blue glow. Seems to work, I get dead mosquitoes in it as well as moths. The light+zapper one mostly seems to kill moths so I haven't bought another.

But on the general point, I tend not to build Goldberg machines so much as deciding I want something unusual/impossible to purchase, so I either build my own or commission someone to build it for me. I have a few citizen science things that I've bought and use (like the environmental monitor outside my house https://www.uradmonitor.com/tools/dashboard-04/?open=82000117), and a couple of open source* electronic widgets. Best documented are the bicycles. This is getting Rube-ish, I admit. But only as a side effect of "I want to move thing A, and I have thing B. Can I join one to t'other".

* including a "you can buy one just like it on ebay but I have nothing to do with that, please stop asking me for support" one. My firmware even worked on it!

[[ Fixed a link which tried to use the 'herf' attribute - mod ]]

I remember 10 years ago we were holidaying in Kuala Lumpur, and were due to fly on to Auckland NZ. We had come to KL by train, and could check in our air travel luggage at the KL Central railway station for forwarding to the airport, which was fabulous.

For those unsure, a morningstar is a ball, spiked or not, on a chain.

It looks like The Royal Armouries disagrees with you. But it's possible that it's a case of two nations divided by a common language.

It looks like The Royal Armouries disagrees with you. But it's possible that it's a case of two nations divided by a common language.

Possible, but more likely it's authors using the wrong words for weapons and then people copying the wrong usage until any distinction that might have existed has been long lost. Bret Devereaux has bitched about this as a very common problem when reading Roman histories, and he's a professional who reads Roman historians in their original Latin. If Livy and Crispus couldn't get their acts together, we can't expect much from 'some guy on Twitter.'

(Julius Caesar devoted considerable attention to Gauls and the various weapons they were trying to kill him with, and even he messed it up a few times.)

Ever get the impression that Charlie's books aren't kinky enough?

If John Crace's review of Cleo Watson's[*] first Political Bonk-buster is anywhere close to the truth, then I guess we'll all have to use it as source material.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/30/cleo-watson-whips-digested-john-crace

[*] Dominic Cummings principal assistant when he was acting as Boris' Brain a few Prime Ministers ago.

Possible, but more likely it's authors using the wrong words for weapons and then people copying the wrong usage until any distinction that might have existed has been long lost.

Welcome to tech support for non technical users. And some of them very smart who get very irritated when you have to ask them to clarify what they are talking about.

At the slight risk of a minimal spoiler for Season of Skulls, but directly on topic, I've been looking at Stage Coach travel from North West England to London. Mainly as a way to avoid using the Great North Road, about which I know far too much (having drunk in many/most of the Coaching Inns acting as first stopping point North of London in between St Albans and Towcester (Watling Street), and Hatfield and Stamford (Great North Road)). For non-UKians, these are the types of pubs you might associate with English Period Dramas.

Two websites had interesting information:

(*) http://www.carlscam.com/coachindustry.htm

(*) https://www.hslc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/6-25-Picton.pdf

Charlie, certainly has the costs right!

... though going first to Manchester (to pawn some items) and then taking a direct stage coach down what is now the A6, would have been quicker than going to York and then the A1.

The OED disagrees, too. It is possible (even likely) that the SCA has adopted an incorrect meaning for morningstar. Whether that is enough to give it a new meaning in English, I leave to other people to decide.

It looks like The Royal Armouries disagrees with you. But it's possible that it's a case of two nations divided by a common language.

That's a polite way of putting it. Even Skallagrim got into the act https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PHASxS8Voc

The problem is the spiked weight on a long chain with a shortish handle. That's the weapon that's hard to find before the 19th century as replicas. Plenty of societies used unspiked weights on lines or chains, from bolas to blackjacks to manriki-gusaris.

The general problem is that weight on lines tend to rebound off targets, often unpredictably.

The long-handled, short-swingled flails solve the problem by making it impossible for the rebound to hit the wielder.

Another solution is to use a heavy chain and a small weight, in which case the whole chain just wraps or pulls through the blow, which is how a Chinese chain whip works, and might be how a Portuguese mangual works.

The third solution is to catch/wrap and redirect the rebound, which is how nunchaku and gusari weapons work.

Now, which of these solutions work with a spiked ball on a long chain? None of them. If a spike embeds, you've got to free it or abandon the weapon. It can't drag through (too big a weight, and spikes catch on stuff), so what do you do about the rebound? You can't catch it or wrap it around your body like a nunchuck, because of the spikes, so when it rebounds, you've got to somehow let it flail itself out in air before letting it drop, cocking, and swinging again. Which is kinda, really slow on the rebound.

You want to take this thing on a battlefield and bet your life on it? Heck, would you want to duel with it even?

Finally, to be very clear, we know that people used long, two-handed flails in battles. My impression is that these were often peasant levies given jobs like defending walls from besiegers. Beyond that, it's not clear to me at least that many other chain weapons were ever used in pitched battles. They're too easy to break or foul. In duels, muggings, self defense, catching rheas, or street performances, they absolutely did have a place (and do, which is why so many are outlawed). But the spiked ball on a chain doesn't really fit any of these.

Re: 'Pigeon made the machine for aerosolising flies, ...'

Apologies to Pigeon and you for my error!

However, from this non-techie poster's POV, you've got some Rubes. (That bike - why?)

For me, the marvel to any Rube Goldberg machine is being able to keep expanding the detours/actions while still managing to get to the target. And I also wonder how the RG idea might be adapted to economics, i.e., build/expand an economic system that routes cash to the maximum number of people and hit whatever econ target figure.

Blinding oncoming traffic headlights - there is an answer. They have it on I-76 around Philly, a center barrier that's high enough to block the oncoming headlights. It has an extra good function: it blocks your view of the other side of the road, thus cutting way back on traffic jams as freakin' gapers slow down to 20 to stare at the accident on the other side of the road.

I've also seen green pipes, maybe plastic, maybe 6cm wide, and with the same hight as above, with the same good results.

My answer is simple: you have commuter rail for those short stops. Hell, the Acela to NYC is expensive, but I have taken commuter rail from Philly to Trenton to NYC.

Someone I know through a different online forum, asked Stable Diffusion AI for an aerial view of London. Here is the result:

https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-19546f2e0851cb4c9a4fdce9254e02f4

The guy who requested the image says it "looks like London if Sauron won the War of the Roses", and I agree. But it also immediately made me think of Laundry, and that it belongs on the cover of some New Management novel.

Ah, yes, "power users".

By George (John, Paul, and Ringo), I agree, it does.

“ Blinding oncoming traffic headlights - there is an answer. They have it on I-76 around Philly, a center barrier that's high enough to block the oncoming headlights.” We have these barriers as well but not on single carriageway roads.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/XrDKokcrd2GZVSCK6?g_st=ic

As you can see there is no room for such a barrier on this road. Norfolk is a forgotten area for government spending. There are no motorways in the county and many of the A roads have single carriageway sections like this. (But not straight) There was a plan for substantial upgrades to the A47 but it was cancelled by the coalition government then, just before the general election reinstated but, for an “unknown” reason it was reinstated for sections of the road in possible marginal Conservative constituencies.

No, no - read the second paragraph. My design does not deliver concentrated bursts of energy at such an intensity as to cause explosive disintegration of the target. It uses a high impedance high voltage AC source to power the grid, so it delivers the energy at a limited rate. The fly is killed more or less instantly, since merely killing it requires very little juice, but it is then cleared over half a second or so by the AC arc burning it away until it has created enough of a gap to break the circuit. The effluvium from this process is no more than a tiny wisp of plasma-sterilised smoke rising by natural convection.

The things in shops have a grid made out of birdcage bars or something, which are thick enough to shrug off a bit of superficial erosion from an explosive spark discharge. My device used a grid of wires thin enough to be barely visible, on the same principle as a spider's web. Therefore it was necessary to severely limit the power output to a level that would not damage the extremely fine wires, and this also has the side-effect of not exploding the insects.

It was deliberately not a plain reinstantiation of the things-in-shops design pattern; I thought the idea of those things was inspiring but its execution was shit. I don't think the silly lights do anything beyond looking impressive to humans, so they only catch flies at a rate determined by their random impulses to settle on that particular bit of wall space, which is such a rare event that you can only get them to look like they work at all by never ever cleaning them, so the two or three flies a year that they do catch are still stuck to the black grease ten years later. Also, their grid spacing is so wide that small flies don't set them off at all. So you just get a cloud of flies buzzing round and round in the middle of the airspace and totally ignoring the electric decoration on the wall.

My design is based on the idea that trying to modify the flies' behaviour so they come to the machine is a waste of time, and the way to do it is instead to put the machine where the flies' unmodified behaviour will naturally cause them to encounter it anyway. After all, this is what spiders do, so there are many millions of years of evidence to support its correctness. So the grid dangles in mid-air in the chunk of airspace that the flies like to buzz round and round in, doing its best to be invisible; and the consequence is that it actually does catch them at a useful rate.

Sorry, I was, in fact, only speaking of limited access highways, not two-lane roads.

If I may take your question as being intended for me, rather than Moz - No, I haven't. It's not the sort of thing that it would ever occur to me to do. I build things for myself, because I want them; they come out the way they do because I do care about how well they work, but I don't give a shit about what they look like or whether they use parts that are obviously taken from something else.

It's a principle I've understood ever since I was very small: you can have nice things even if you don't have any money, by making them yourself. Moreover, they will usually be nicer than the boughten versions would be, because you don't have to bother making the bad parts.

Well, having gotten back from Balticon yesterday finally pushed me, and I just booked our flight to Winnipeg for the NASFiC (argh!$!$!$!$).

And checked what documentation we need. I'm so old that I remember when the US and Canada were proud to have the longest undefended border in the world....

And yes, I know to come to Glasgow next year, the UK has some document that we have to apply for, and that they say it only takes a few days. I figure on applying for it in Jan. Early Jan.