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Actually … the oral literatures of the Northwest Coast natives (several distinct cultures, but sharing this) are very interesting to look at from a software-y perspective. They were intellectual badasses, and it’s a shame that their work is almost forgotten now when we’re reading Plato and Euclid and Homer on the land where they lived. Quick examples:

• In Nine Visits to the Mythworld, or maybe one of his other translations of Haida myths, Robert Bringhurst makes some great points about how the stories were, in a broad sense, fractal. Often a myth has a couple distinctive themes (like a particular number or emotion) which appear both openly and subtly all through the story. This is fun to look at from a computational perspective; it makes you think about how the stories are encoded in memory as a fairly small set of features, then produced in slightly different forms in each performance.
  
  
• Russel Barsh’s Coast Salish Property Law: An Alternative Paradigm for Environmental Relationships is a legal perspective on how these cultures handled ownership of abstractions. Some of it is remarkably like WIPO IP law; some of it is remarkably different. And of course potlatch-style gift economies have already been compared with the open-source model.
  
  
• Just for one example of practical ingenuity, some of the ways used to catch salmon were incredibly clever. They were even creating favorable habitat for prey fish to lure salmon to particular coves year after year. All their foodstock management was practical and long-term; there’s a grain of truth to the patronizing “lol they were in tune with nature” comments you sometimes hear. I know some people who are trying to get some of these systems back in place, but it may be too late.
  
  Here’s something that really did my head in. The glaciers left the Pacific Northwest at the end of the last ice age, about ten thousand years ago. At that time it was basically sand and scoured rock: no soil, no nothin’, and with new topology. But the earliest Coast Salish artifacts are from pretty much the same time. In other words, since this land was last reset by geology, its natural state has been to be inhabited and managed by the Coast Salish.

> I'll add I'm also single and without dependents

Given that and your location, if you're also a college student, you're basically at the absolute peak of American sociability.

> I'm not so sure about measurements of very personal relationships throughout history.

You could be right. I've read a study or two that show that circles of friendship are shrinking, and books like Bowling Alone and The Great Good Place discuss the issue, but it could just be wrapped up nostalgia in disguise.

> most Americans are urbanized.

That's true and will, I think, ultimately be good news but keep in mind that "urban" here is a pretty broad term that includes the sparse suburbia a lot of Americans live in.

> Besides turning back the clock, do you think that urbanization will continue to worsen or improve our social opportunities

Everything seems to swing back and forth. Since the industrial revolution, we've swung towards depersonalization to some degree. As we move towards an information economy I think we have the opportunity to swing back some.

> or is that question too broad/undetermined/dauntingly huge to broach?

I don't think any question is too huge to broach, you just need to approach it with similarly huge solutions. In this case, honestly, I think the problem might be solved for us. If the energy crisis gets worse, people will start clustering back together for practical reasons, and I think that will lead to more human contact.

Things like new urbanism are positive signs too, but I don't know if it's a fad that will pass. (At the very least, the real estate bubble popping has put a hurt on it. Orlando is full of empty condos right now.)

A bad economy is actually good news for this too: a new TV and a big house in the suburbs is pretty expensive compared to a smaller home and having friends over for Monopoly.

>A military target is something targeted by the military

So you would agree that Dresden, targeted by the military, was a military target? I'm sorry, I think I can see what you're trying to say here, and I understand what you mean. I would include, however, that Dresden was being used as a supply depot for the German military, one that was fighting the Soviets not 100 kms from Dresden.

The Allies agreed at the Yalta conference (Feb 4-11, 1945) to begin bombing targets that would help the Soviets advance. Dresden was a city that was supplying the German army fighting the Soviets. Before this agreement, Dresden was not on Bomber Command's radar screen because there were other higher priority targets. After the agreement, however, Dresden was bumped to the top of the list, as we can see by the raid being planned for February 14-15th, only a few days after the conference.

So, did dropping the bomb save Soviet soldiers' lives? Yes, it undoubtedly did. Did it save the life of Victor Klemperer? Yes, it did. Did it cost the lives of thousands of German civilians? Unfortunately, yes it did.

I'm not trying to justify or condemn, just trying to throw some facts into a debate that is nearly always devoid of them. I did in fact mean that Dresden was a 'perfect' raid in a military sense. In a moral vacuum, the raid could not have gone any better, much to the chagrin of the people on the ground.

No, it isn't considered one of the canonical gospels. There were also many other gospels that the early church fathers decided not to include in the Bible. Early Church fathers, such as Irenaeus, decided to accept the gospels that are now part of the New Testament Canon and reject others, such as
the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, the Gospel of Thomas, and other Gnostic works as heretical.

Another dealing with Jesus' early life is the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew.
I've excerpted a portion from the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew as can be found in
Documents for the study of the Gospels By David R. Cartlidge, David L. Dungan:

>When they came to a certain cave and wanted to rest in it, Mary got down from the pack mule, and, sitting down, held Jesus in her lap. There were three boys traveling with Joseph and a girl with Mary. And behold, suddenly, many dragons came out of the cave. When the boys saw them in front of them they shouted with great fear. Then Jesus got down from his mother's lap and stood on his feet before the dragons. They, however, worshiped him, and, while they worshiped, they backed away. Then what was said through the prophet David was fulfilled: "You dragons of the earth, praise the Lord, you dragons and all creatures of the abyss." Then the infant Jesus walked before them and ordered them not to harm any man. But Mary and Joseph were very afraid lest the child should be harmed by the dragons. Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid, nor consider me a child; I always have been a perfect man and am so now; it is necessary that all the wild beasts of the forest be tame before me.

Art, Identity, and Devotion in Fourteenth Century England: Three Women Patrons and their Books of Hours by Kathryn Ann Smith
contains the following, which can be found through Google Books:

> The majority of the Apocryphal Infancy miracles
ultimately derive from the accounts of Christ's Infancy
and childhood contained in various early Christian
and early medieval apocryphal gospels. The most accessible
and widely-circulating repository of Infancy miracles
was the Gospel of Psuedo-Matthew, known as the
Liber de Infantia during the Middle Ages, whose
narrative of Christ's childhood depends on a still
earlier source, the fifth-century Infancy Gospel of
Thomas. A small number of the Infancy miracles in
Psuedo-Matthew, such as the Fall of the Idols or the
Miracle of the Palm Tree, appear frequenty in medieval
art. The author of Fasiculus Morum referred to these
and other, more unusual tales from Psuedo-Matthew
and cited the Liber de Infantia itself in a sermon
on the theme of 'Christ's Entrance into this World':

> . . that in the same year that Christ was born Joseph
took him to Egypt, and when he entered that country,
all the idols of Egypt fell down . . . the Book of
the Infancy of Christ [[in] Libro Infancie Christi]
reports that when Mary with her son Jesus, and Joseph
fled to Egypt and were resting beneath a palm tree, with
Mary suffering much from hunger, at the bidding of the
child Jesus the palm tree bent to the ground . . . and
when Joseph was thirsty in the same place, at the
bidding of the Child Jesus the dry earth produced a rich
wellspring of water
. . . when the Blessed Virgin and Joseph on their
way to Egypt rested at the entrance of a cave and two
large dragons came out of it, they were greatly
frightened by their sight; but at the bidding of the
child Jesus the dragons meekly bowed their heads and
made for the desert. Also, a lion came along on the
same way and served them obediently until they were in
Egypt. Besides these marvels there were many
other miraculous things in the nativity of this blessed
child.

Of course the Gospel of Pseudo Matthew may not even have been written until the 7th century.

Ok 15 miles. That is 79,200 feet.

This 65 pound test 500 yard fishing line weighs 5.6 ounces shipped. We'll be super generous and say half the wight is the spool and the carton. So 2.8 ounces per 500 yards, or 1,500 feet.

That would mean 79,200 feet of it would weigh 147.84 ounces, or 9.24 pounds.

So assuming he tied his knots well and the line didn't have any defects, he could possibly measure that distance with the fishing line. He would need a significant weight at the end, something probably > 5 pounds, to keep the line taunt and feel the bottom.

Unless there is some law that governs tensile strength that makes this invalid (probably is), he could at least measure it.

If anyone's interested in learning more about the history of banana, I'd highly recommend this book. The author does a great job keeping you interested, such a fun read.

> Without the Pacific Campaign Asia (and probably Australasia) would have been taken by the Japanese Empire.

That's kind of a ridiculous assertion to make. By the late 30's Japan was faltering in central China. Sure there was the big push in the early 40's that gave them lots of territory, but there was no way they could keep up that momentum over so many fronts. Japan could never have conquered all of Asia/Russia, much less Australia as well. Japan was/is a relatively small country.

EDIT: I'm getting downvoted because I think the idea of Japan conquering all of fucking ASIA and AUSTRALIA is absurd? Wow reddit. You all do realize Japan was fighting in China and Korea for 10 years prior to US entrance into the war? And by 1941 the advance of Japan was already stopped in China for the most part. Any sort of victory would have been very, very costly.

> By 1941, Japan had occupied much of north and coastal China, but the KMT central government and military had successfully retreated to the western interior to continue their resistance, while the Chinese communists remained in control of base areas in Shaanxi. Furthermore, in the occupied areas Japanese control was limited to just railroads and major cities ("points and lines"), but they did not have a major military or administrative presence in the vast Chinese countryside, which was a hotbed of Chinese partisan activities. This stalemate situation made a decisive victory seem impossible to the Japanese. (Source)

Not to mention the Chinese Communists had some superb propaganda strategies that were quite affective in combating the Japanese. The US actually sent a research party to learn from them, since America's propaganda of "We are way more powerful so you should just give up" wasn't working. Read this book if you are interested in the topic.

Just no, there is no way Japan could conquer so much. Nopenopenope. If they conquered all of Asia and Australia, that would make the Japanese Empire the largest in human history. That's pretty impressive from a country with a population in 1940 of about 70,000,000 when the world population at the time was 2.3 billion.

Christopher Guest was pretty meticulous in researching the scenarios that would be improvised by the cast. He talked to a number of bands that told him ridiculous stories of life on the road, many of which made it to the film. Among the bands and scenes?

Uriah Heep - They were actually once booked at an Air Force Base.

Slade - Noddy Holder and Jimmy Lea told Christopher a number of stories from the road that all were embellished for the film.

They were the band that got lost backstage. Although, in the case of Slade, they were admittedly drunk at the time and couldn't find the door. A nice security guard eventually helped them to the stage.

At a low point in their popularity, they were billed at an amusement park, second to a magician (changed to a puppet show in the movie; and nothing to do with a girlfriend managing the band in real life).

In fact, most of Slade's "low period" of the late 1970s is what inspired Christopher Guest to create Spinal Tap in the first place. For those who don't know, Slade was a heavy rock band that was absolutely huge in Europe in the early 1970s that then found their popularity severely decline after the punk revolution.

This particular scene from Slade's film "Slade In Flame" is what inspired Spinal Tap overall. In the movie, Slade vocalist Noddy Holder is stuck in a casket and can't get out. This was based on a real-life thing that happened to Holder when he sang for another band. The "pod scene" in Spinal Tap came from this.

When Chris discovered that this scene was based on a real-life event, that started the ("are you serious? that REALLY happened?!") conversation and then got the ball rolling for Spinal Tap.

Slade eventually rebounded quite nicely during the Heavy Metal years of the early 80s...but Chris and Mike McKean have said that Slade and their hilariously awkward fall from rock superstars to suddenly "who?" was a big inspiration for Spinal Tap.

See these books for more great and very funny details about Slade in general.

Van Halen - Nigel's rant about the bad deli tray was inspired by Van Halen's demand that only brown M&M's be allowed in their dressing room. This was seen a prima-donna move by VH until David Lee Roth later explained that they specifically requested brown M&Ms only because they wanted to be certain that promoters had read through their entire contract regarding safety requirements. If they arrived and saw anything other than brown M&Ms, they knew that the promoter hadn't read the agreement and then got pissed as the audience might be in danger. Thus, the stories of "VH got pissy and trashed their dressing room because the promoter didn't take the time to provide a big bowl of brown M&Ms" - no, they were mad because their very specific requirements for staging were likely also ignored...and the stage could collapse, endangering thousands of fans. But I digress...

Saxon - Contrary to what others have said in the thread, actually it wasn't Sabbath that inspired "Stonehenge" (their album and the debacle that came with it was released a year after This Is Spinal Tap). It was the British heavy metal band Saxon that inspired the scene.

In this case, it wasn't a Stonehenge set. Vocalist Biff Byford told Chris Guest of a similarly ridiculous story of the band ordering a stage piece (a giant anvil) that was supposed to be dramatically lowered to the stage at a key point in their rocking-out-ness...and they looked behind them only to find a small, foam-like anvil being sheepishly lowered to the stage.

Guest brought the story to the table and during improv, Stonehenge was born. This was Mike McKean's baby as he built the backstory.

But one of my favorite artist reactions to the film was Tom Waits': "I can't fucking watch that movie. It hurts. It's too real."

Source? I'm a huge fan of the movie, Christopher Guest in general and here's an additional one if you're picky.

Turn it up to 11!!

There's an excellent treatment of this raid and several like it in the book "Spec Ops: Case Studies in Special Operations Warfare: Theory and Practice."[1]

The author of the book has a pretty interesting resume, too: "McRaven is credited for organizing and executing Operation Neptune's Spear, the special ops raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011."[2]

[1] www.amazon.com/Spec-Ops-Studies-Operations-Practice/dp/0891416005/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McRaven#Operation_Neptune.27s_Spear:_Death_of_Osama_bin_Laden

Ah, Chūshingura, The Story of The Loyal Retainers. One of my favorite books. This edition, in particular, I like. For anime fans, its a must read as it has influenced so many of the shows you know and love.

If you like that, check out the book An Exaltation of Larks by James Lipton (yes, the "Inside the Actor's Studio" guy.) that is mentioned on the Wikipedia page. It has a great introduction about these "terms of venery" and some of their origins, a really comprehensive list with illustrations, and Lipton himself even gets into creating new ones. Very cool book.

I read Draw: The Greatest Gunfights of the American West last year and loved it. Here's an Amazon link if anyone's interested in reading it.

If that interests you, you should read The Code Book by Simon Singh. Great history of cryptography with a lot of well explained examples. He also wrote a great book about Fermat's Last Theorem.

There's a great book covering the history of refrigeration and its impact on science and society: http://www.amazon.com/Absolute-Zero-Conquest-Cold-Shachtman/dp/B003YCQF5U/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1345467617&sr=1-1&keywords=absolute+zero+and+the+conquest+of+cold

Very fun read. I found the part about the ice trade fascinating.

If you get a chance, Ronson's book Them: Adventures with Extremists is an incredibly interesting read. The documentary was somewhat of a pairing with the book, and the two are very informative and entertaining.

Them: Adventures with Extremists by Jon Ronson is an exceptionally fun read if you'd like to learn more about this.

Lords of Chaos does the same and is a great read.