You Learn Something New Every Day

[Aresen]

The last recipient of a Civil War pension died last week.

https://kottke.org/20/06/last-person-to ... nsion-dies

So, assuming the US got out of Afghanistan today, there would be veteran's benefits until 2175?

[Painboy]

Why Lead Poisoning Probably Did Not Cause the Downfall of the Roman Empire

Many people seem to have the impression that everyone in ancient Rome suffered from lead poisoning because the Romans used pipes made of lead. Indeed, many people seem to think that this was a major contributing factor in the decline of the Roman Empire. This idea is largely inaccurate, but there is some truth behind it. It is certain that some people in ancient Rome did suffer from lead poisoning. Nonetheless, we have very little evidence to indicate that lead poisoning was ever a widespread ailment on the scale that most people seem to imagine. Contrary to popular speculation, it is highly unlikely that lead poisoning played a significant role in the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. It is also highly unlikely that lead poisoning made any Roman emperors go insane.

Although modern theories about lead poisoning in ancient Rome almost invariably seem to focus on the fact that the Romans used lead pipes, most lead poisoning in ancient times actually did not come from the pipes. In fact, it is generally thought among historians that, although ancient Roman tap water did contain higher amounts of lead than tap water today, it probably did not usually contain a high enough concentration of lead to actually be harmful.

This was due to two reasons. The first reason is because a thick residue of calcium carbonate quickly built up on the insides of Roman lead pipes, insulating the water from the lead of the pipes. The second reason is because the water in the pipes was always running, meaning it was not in the pipes for long enough to actually become seriously contaminated.

A study conducted in 2014 estimated that, although ancient Roman tap water probably contained around 100 times as much lead as the water from local springs, the estimated lead concentrations were still probably not high enough to be harmful

[JD]

Sharecropping as a feature of the South is partly due to the Civil War and the destruction of the economy. After the war, plantation owners still owned their land but had virtually no cash and could no longer command slave labor; freedmen had their labor to sell but nothing else. The freedmen couldn't work as wage labor for plantation owners because of the owners' lack of cash, and they couldn't be tenant farmers because of the freedmen's lack of cash. At best they could use their labor and pay for the land (and anything else the owner provided, like equipment or animals) in kind, which at least had the advantage of the owner and sharecropper sharing the risks and rewards of the harvest.

[Kolohe]

One of the problems I have with the current Reconstruction revisionists is that there was really no way to un-fuck the Southern economy in the short term.

Maybe, maybe, something like 'industrial socialism' that eventually transitioned to a 'neoliberal' order may have worked. But that would have been an even harder sell than 'hey y'all should let black folks vote and stuff'.

[Hugh Akston]

Post hoc eminent domain payments to former slaveowners combined with land grants to freedmen would have been a good start.

[Warren]

Post hoc eminent domain payments to former slaveowners combined with land grants to freedmen would have been a good start.

Followed immediately by the freedmen selling back their land to the Big House because they didn't have the means to work it.

[Hugh Akston]

Post hoc eminent domain payments to former slaveowners combined with land grants to freedmen would have been a good start.

Followed immediately by the freedmen selling back their land to the Big House because they didn't have the means to work it.

Land is collateral for loans to buy seed, livestock, and materials. That's largely how farming works. If the government was feeling particularly ambitious about the prosperity of freedmen, they could have offered a low-interest loan program to substitute for financial institutions that won't deal with blacks or were patriotically burned to the ground.

[Kolohe]

Warren is right though. You give all the (until 5 minutes ago, rich) white people money, and you give all the black people land, pretty soon the white people are going to have all the land and the money again.

[Hugh Akston]

Warren is right though. You give all the (until 5 minutes ago, rich) white people money, and you give all the black people land, pretty soon the white people are going to have all the land and the money again.

How?

[Kolohe]

Because that’s what happened to the western land grants to poor white people until prairie populism rose up as a reaction to that dynamic.

And to the extent the farms of Prairie were able to rise above subsistence agriculture (which many never did, as all those Depression era WPA photos show) they did so because the process for harvesting the grain crops they were raising and selling had significant mechanization by then. The South wasn’t going to be able to compete head to head with that, not in a common market.

The crops that the South did specialize in were significantly labor intensive. Plus, in the late 19th century, worldwide competition from Egypt and India were going to keep prices down, making labor gains that much harder.

[Kolohe]

'Alternate side of the street parking rules' was something I mostly just know about from mentions in 1010 WINS traffic report. I don't think I realized that they had to do with streetsweeping.

[Mo]

There is no standard foot in the US and different states may use different definitions of a foot.

[Warren]

There is no standard foot in the US and different states may use different definitions of a foot.

Well 19 States are still using Metes and Bounds. So we can't really afford a fixed unit of measurement.

[Highway]

There is no standard foot in the US and different states may use different definitions of a foot.

Well, it's more that there are 2 standard definitions of a foot and states have picked one or the other. But honestly, this is a lot less of a problem than you might think. I'm sure there are some projects where some new guy picks the wrong conversion and it doesn't get caught, or where some out-of-state designer doesn't realize that the state the project is in uses a different standard. And all our engineering projects use US Survey Feet, for multiple state and county agency clients.

The article also presumes a lot when it talks about the conversion of GPS from meters. That's not how most of our work goes. Every project is locally surveyed from known or assumed benchmarks. And development of that project is done entirely within that local survey. If we do use GPS, it's to fill in area outside of that survey. And that does require selecting the correct conversion factor, but that's all it takes (and usually it's super obvious when it isn't picked correctly).

What we have a bigger issue with is the different datums /coordinate sets used in our state. State agencies use one datum, most counties use another one. And there's not really a good conversion between the two. There's a consistent elevation difference, but it's another time for things to go the wrong way (was this 0.89 higher or lower?)

lunchstealer's stuff might be more of a pain with different feet, but maybe his work output is just in meters.

[Kolohe]

I’m very surprised that not everyone uses WGS 84 by now.

ETA - like even 15 years ago, in my line of work finding something that was in NAD was like finding a Dead Sea scroll.

[Highway]

I’m very surprised that not everyone uses WGS 84 by now.

ETA - like even 15 years ago, in my line of work finding something that was in NAD was like finding a Dead Sea scroll.

Everything we do is in NAD83/91 coordinates, either with the NAVD88 or NGVD29 datums.

[dhex]

https://nypost.com/2020/06/27/former-tr ... -on-cameo/

MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCH!

[Hugh Akston]

https://nypost.com/2020/06/27/former-tr ... -on-cameo/

MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCH!

I guess we should start collecting for dhex's birthday.

[Eric the .5b]

Well, it's more that there are 2 standard definitions of a foot and states have picked one or the other. But honestly, this is a lot less of a problem than you might think. I'm sure there are some projects where some new guy picks the wrong conversion and it doesn't get caught, or where some out-of-state designer doesn't realize that the state the project is in uses a different standard. And all our engineering projects use US Survey Feet, for multiple state and county agency clients.

Yeah, I was thinking that it couldn't have been much of an issue when only a few states use international feet and a couple "don't specify" (in a way that makes me suspect it damn well is specified somewhere).

And talking about GPS as if it was a primary thing for surveying was bizarre.

[lunchstealer]

There is no standard foot in the US and different states may use different definitions of a foot.

Well, it's more that there are 2 standard definitions of a foot and states have picked one or the other. But honestly, this is a lot less of a problem than you might think. I'm sure there are some projects where some new guy picks the wrong conversion and it doesn't get caught, or where some out-of-state designer doesn't realize that the state the project is in uses a different standard. And all our engineering projects use US Survey Feet, for multiple state and county agency clients.

The article also presumes a lot when it talks about the conversion of GPS from meters. That's not how most of our work goes. Every project is locally surveyed from known or assumed benchmarks. And development of that project is done entirely within that local survey. If we do use GPS, it's to fill in area outside of that survey. And that does require selecting the correct conversion factor, but that's all it takes (and usually it's super obvious when it isn't picked correctly).

What we have a bigger issue with is the different datums /coordinate sets used in our state. State agencies use one datum, most counties use another one. And there's not really a good conversion between the two. There's a consistent elevation difference, but it's another time for things to go the wrong way (was this 0.89 higher or lower?)

lunchstealer's stuff might be more of a pain with different feet, but maybe his work output is just in meters.

I just work in meters. I sometimes wish I could work in decimal feet or decimeters, because there are some things that are hard wired as integers that become a PITA as floating point numbers and so having smaller units means you can get the resolution you need out of those integers. In other ways it'd probably cause other problems as you might get values outside of the short-integer range but life is pain.

[Warren]

there are some things that are hard wired as integers that become a PITA as floating point numbers

Example?

[lunchstealer]

there are some things that are hard wired as integers that become a PITA as floating point numbers

Example?

Elevation values, sometimes bin dimensions in a raster. Usually it's in RF engineering software that was written by RF engineers rather than GIS or remote sensing types.

[Warren]

there are some things that are hard wired as integers that become a PITA as floating point numbers

Example?

Elevation values, sometimes bin dimensions in a raster. Usually it's in RF engineering software that was written by RF engineers rather than GIS or remote sensing types.

RF = Radio Frequency to me. What does it mean to you? Also GIS pls.

[D.A. Ridgely]

there are some things that are hard wired as integers that become a PITA as floating point numbers

Example?

Elevation values, sometimes bin dimensions in a raster. Usually it's in RF engineering software that was written by RF engineers rather than GIS or remote sensing types.

RF = Radio Frequency to me. What does it mean to you? Also GIS pls.

Geographic Information Systems, of course! Hell, any liberal arts major could have told you that!

[Warren]

there are some things that are hard wired as integers that become a PITA as floating point numbers

Example?

Elevation values, sometimes bin dimensions in a raster. Usually it's in RF engineering software that was written by RF engineers rather than GIS or remote sensing types.

RF = Radio Frequency to me. What does it mean to you? Also GIS pls.

Geographic Information Systems, of course! Hell, any liberal arts major could have told you that!

Your average liberal arts major thinks 'Geographic Information System' is the search engine for nationalgeographic.com