Of course, both of them are rather reductionist considering the complexity of human behaviour and the whole nature vs nuture; intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation, etc.
*cracks knuckles* do you wanna hear me about dolls, residual traits some humans have and some others have evolved out of, Shakespearian references in Buffy the vampire slayer or roman baths? (I won't post a huge dissertation here though)
1. The first dolls appeared during Prehistoric times. At the time, they were toys for kids, made by their parents out of clay or wood. Some were already articulated! Nothing changed much until the Renaissance, except maybe the material (straw, fabric, leather if you were rich). The dolls started wearing clothes that mimicked their owners and they almost always represented babies, which changed during the XIXth century, when tailors started presenting their creations on dolls (hence the term fashion dolls). They started looking like young girls/women, and this evolution also caught on the kids' market (Zola's short story Catherine shows how immoral these were considered by some, and how Zola can be a misogynistic prick despite writing some wonderful females characters). Dolls were made out of wax (not good on heat days!), with rooted hair (human or yarn). They invented a lot of stuff : eyes that could close, automated dolls (Germany was killing the game), ball joints still used today
for collectibles BJDs. Speaking of collectibles, this phenomenon dates back from the 30's when women started exposing their dolls, taking pics with them etc. Now we have discovered celluloid and later vinyl, hard or soft, even weird rubbery stuff like those Dance n' Flex Barbies from the 2000's (and I could write a book on Barbies). No other major innovation except dolls that light up, film stuff with a built-in camera and eyes that can move from side to side (Pullips, a collectible korean doll) and change (a set of like 4 different pairs in the head, used in Blythe _collectibles_ and some Monster Highs _made for Mattel by kids_).
2. Wisdom teeth: some have 4, some 3, some 0 (prior to any surgical removing obv), we're loosing them because we don't need to eat really hard food such as raw meat or the occasional tree bark anymore. A remnant sinew in the wrist: we don't climb trees as adults :'( and even some "abnormalities" like a friend of mine was born with a temporal hole_bc
ontogenesis is like phylogenesis but faster, to poorly translate what Hegel said. It means as a fetus we live through evolution super fast _we have a tail at some points and it falls off afterwards, except when it doesn't, and also these holes in the skull.
3. I lied I can't do this in less than 4 hours and 5 pages.
4. Water was brought up from a giant well thanks to a noria (=giant elliptic wheel covered in buckets, activated by donkeys or slaves) and the hypocaust was a heating method that used a fake floor. Under it was a fire, and the heat was conducted up the walls because the walls were hollow, but still stable thanks to the use of tegulae mammatae (="tile with nipples", I don't make the names). The nipples were there for structure, but there was enough space between them for the heat to go up.
I really thought these would get downvoted^^ Ok you can choose between the black plague and an old good luck incantation. (But then I'd like some geology stuff please! I used to study that I forgot almost everything. And @jmmcclain it's your turn too, hit me with that physics knowledge _or any other subject really!_)
@purplepumpkin, welcome back! Of course you're getting upvoted, we need to get you your star.
,
I like this random stuff, so I'll contribute too. Steven Johnson wrote How We Got To Now. I really recommend it if you like learning a lot about random stuff. Example:
,
26 million years ago, in the Lybian desert, something crazy happened. We don't know what, but we do know it changed a bunch of silicon dioxide from solid crystals to a weird not-solid not-liquid state. The whole stretch of desert was a shimmering sheet of glass.
,
Ten thousand years ago, give or take, humans started wandering through there and becoming obsessed with it. King Tut had a scarab beetle with a silver of this glass set in it.
,
The Romans figured out how to make vaguely translucent, brownish window panes the stuff, as well as drinking vessels and bottles to hold wine. Not much happened for a while.
,
When Constantinople was sacked in 1204, a small community of glassmakers fled in a panic. They ended up...
..being welcomed in Venice. They settled there in this brand new city and saw it become a major player in the Adriatic. Venice got tired of all the various glassmakers accidentally burning down their neighborhoods, so they gathered them all up and exiled them, in 1291, a short distance to the island of Murano.
,
Information spillover stated happening between all these glass makers and something crazy happened. Glass got WAY better. It finally became clear as crystal. Ever heard of Murano glass?
,
We don't know when, but sometime in the next hundred or so years, monks started wearing glass disks on their eyes to facilitate reading manuscripts. Slowly, other literate people wanted spectacles and they gained popularity.
,
Guttenberg came along in the early 1400s and adapted an old wine press with moveable type and created the first "printing press" and then everyone wanted spectacles.
,
Once more clear glass was available and cheaper, scientists started experimenting with..
..lining up lenses. Suddenly the microscope and the telescope entered the world and kicked off huge changes in how we thought about everything.
,
I love how chain reactions of shared knowledge can spiral bigger and bigger and change everything.
,
Now we know how to spin clear glass into long, fine strands and encode massive amounts of data on it. Fiber optics is the only reason people from the US, Canada, South Africa, the UK, France, Japan, and more, are all comfortably sitting on this thread, chatting and sharing our random experiences and interests. <3
That's so cool! I have a calligraphy pen made of Murano glass, it feels like I know a bit of his family's history now^^ I knew of vitrification for volcanic rocks but I hadn't heard of the wide-scale Lybia event. Must have been mesmerizing (I'm picturing something like the Salar de Uyuni).
Edit: Found the book thanks to the attack on Constantinople and a few other stuff :D
I have this with Skyrim. It's gotten so much that when my friends are having an issue with a quest or a dungeon or deciding what to multi class, they ask me for advice cuz I know most of the game by heart.
What I could talk about for more than an hour? The Japanese language, why Macross Delta didn't live up to my expectations and why Starcraft Brood War is so good.
I'm great with lore and history from fictional universes like, Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, or Star Wars. Garbage at non fiction history though.
What are yours?
D'you prefer the Myers-Briggs or the Big 5?
Are you a blank slater or a structurist in terms of human behaviour and belief?
Mostly stuff in game, whether it be lore, my memories of it, upgrades, bosses, the story, etc
2. Wisdom teeth: some have 4, some 3, some 0 (prior to any surgical removing obv), we're loosing them because we don't need to eat really hard food such as raw meat or the occasional tree bark anymore. A remnant sinew in the wrist: we don't climb trees as adults :'( and even some "abnormalities" like a friend of mine was born with a temporal hole_bc
3. I lied I can't do this in less than 4 hours and 5 pages.
4. Water was brought up from a giant well thanks to a noria (=giant elliptic wheel covered in buckets, activated by donkeys or slaves) and the hypocaust was a heating method that used a fake floor. Under it was a fire, and the heat was conducted up the walls because the walls were hollow, but still stable thanks to the use of tegulae mammatae (="tile with nipples", I don't make the names). The nipples were there for structure, but there was enough space between them for the heat to go up.
,
I like this random stuff, so I'll contribute too. Steven Johnson wrote How We Got To Now. I really recommend it if you like learning a lot about random stuff. Example:
,
26 million years ago, in the Lybian desert, something crazy happened. We don't know what, but we do know it changed a bunch of silicon dioxide from solid crystals to a weird not-solid not-liquid state. The whole stretch of desert was a shimmering sheet of glass.
,
Ten thousand years ago, give or take, humans started wandering through there and becoming obsessed with it. King Tut had a scarab beetle with a silver of this glass set in it.
,
The Romans figured out how to make vaguely translucent, brownish window panes the stuff, as well as drinking vessels and bottles to hold wine. Not much happened for a while.
,
When Constantinople was sacked in 1204, a small community of glassmakers fled in a panic. They ended up...
,
Information spillover stated happening between all these glass makers and something crazy happened. Glass got WAY better. It finally became clear as crystal. Ever heard of Murano glass?
,
We don't know when, but sometime in the next hundred or so years, monks started wearing glass disks on their eyes to facilitate reading manuscripts. Slowly, other literate people wanted spectacles and they gained popularity.
,
Guttenberg came along in the early 1400s and adapted an old wine press with moveable type and created the first "printing press" and then everyone wanted spectacles.
,
Once more clear glass was available and cheaper, scientists started experimenting with..
,
I love how chain reactions of shared knowledge can spiral bigger and bigger and change everything.
,
Now we know how to spin clear glass into long, fine strands and encode massive amounts of data on it. Fiber optics is the only reason people from the US, Canada, South Africa, the UK, France, Japan, and more, are all comfortably sitting on this thread, chatting and sharing our random experiences and interests. <3
Edit: Found the book thanks to the attack on Constantinople and a few other stuff :D
But I do.