1,281 karma · joined November 2, 2015
I imagine if we were consuming news from India, Egypt or Nigeria it would be a very different story.
A quick look around I found this site: http://www.catchpenny.org/movebig.html that suggests ways it was moved.
Quick TLDR. They don't lift it, they dig under it. Either constructing a canal, and putting a weighted barge beneath it. Then remove the ballast so the barge lifts up the weight. For overland they do a similar thing, but with a sled, pour a lubricant under the sliders, and then pull. Apparently 2 people can pull 1 Ton this way. So 500 people pulling the sled. (They had approx 2000 people working on a similar project) Also they used shallow ramps over long distances to raise it up.
There was also a modern thing when they moved a lighthouse.
The 80 ton statue was difficult because they wanted to do it with minimal people, and with minimal disruption, and quickly. If you had 2000 people working 5 days a week, 3 years to do it in, and the legal ability to dig up the road/canal etc it can be done. The amazing thing to me is how much priority Ancient Egyptians gave building these monuments, seems like the most important thing they were doing. I guess it gets easier to deal with planning permission when your absolute ruler says "Do it".
> There are some granite blocks that weigh over 1000 tons. We’re told that these were transported from hundreds of miles away, across mountain and over a river. Historians are not engineers so they don’t understand what they’re saying.
I am still unsure which ancient blocks you're referencing though. Stonehenge? Could you link to them, or a picture, or where in the world they are so I can google it?
This is the closest I could find: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/largest-manmade-bl... but this one was not moved because it was too big (and is also limestone which i'm pretty sure is sedimentary)
As far as I am aware, modern humanity is by far the most capable civilisation that has ever existed on earth as far as moving rocks is concerned. The only thing beating us right now is glaciers and tectonic activity.
It could also be an internal thing for the Houthis that we (certainly I) don't know about. Being able to say "We're standing up to Israel and the US" could be big for their credibility in Yemen. That is pure speculation however.
They're stopping ships that they can, and it is in their interest to stop. Iranian ships seem to be passing through no bother, but ships flagged as Liberian, coming from Europe to Asia with a Filipino and Indian crew are stopped. You can consider any ship linked to Israel if you don't care how tenuous the link is.
> and that everyone in the UN bar the US and Israel are calling for a ceasefire.
Notably Hama's isn't calling for a ceasefire, and it takes two to tango, so even if Israel wanted a ceasefire there won't be one.
> wouldn't it be more useful to get a ceasefire, so then the Houthis can stop?
Since when did "Don't give in to terrorists" stop being a thing? Just throw ourselves on the good graces of a violent terrorist group.
If you look at the general populace for basically anywhere before modern times, they all had bad hygiene nutrition and medial aptitude by modern standards. Looking at what the 0.1% could manage doesn't tell you much about a society.
Boxed wine exists, and is a bit under half the market (by volume). Wine in glasses is still the majority of sales. Beer/cider/larger is sold in cans or bottles, with cans being about 2/3rd by volume.
Of course you can also over build this capital that will never be used, but will need to be paid back (for example a local government pays to build a town that there are no people to fill it with) and the maintenance is too much, but you still have to look after the people who did the building.
For the East/West corridor slower speed trains at the same stations allowing transfers would be preferable (cheaper and quicker to build, with minimal speed impact) to high speed rail.
Places like Gresham to Forest grove are better for the Portland tram network, they are just part of the one metro area, they are not different metro areas like Seattle and Portland.
The latter requires building millions of individual cars, each with large expensive lithium batteries, plus the road network and upkeep of that. Then building green energy, solar, wind, nuclear, hydro, plus storage!
The other includes building some train tracks and trains.
The planning system must be utterly dysfunctional, and the government incompetent when it comes to large projects, or tender for them, for the first to be anywhere near easier than the latter.
They were giving another perspective, not forcing anyone to do anything.
Elephants can't digest enough calorie rich food to be able to do this. They individually have to spend longer eating.
The optimal for this would still be much less animal farming, and a massive shift in how and where it is done. But removing all animal products would be counter productive. (Perhaps this is what you meant by plant based though).
I guess what I'm getting at is it's sometimes hard to untangle what changes are due to getting older, and which ones are due to the world changing. For me it's boredom, I used to have long boring summers, and get bored on weekends in the 90's and early 2000's. I haven't been bored in years. Is this because of the internet? But I'm not bored when I don't have access to the internet now, so maybe I just enjoy some peace and quiet now I'm older.
"Road traffic crashes are a leading cause of death in the United States for people ages 1–54"[0]
I wonder if you speeding in your car increased the likely hood of death for someone more than collecting your son from a rumored school shooting. Not saying you were wrong to do that, obviously this is something that comes to the front of your mind when something is wrong at a school. The disconnect between risks we find acceptable, and those we don't is interesting though.
[0]https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-safety/index....
Also it would not be an "Ultimate target" for "terrorists". Terrorists are violent political activists, not super villains that want to destroy the world. I doubt, for example, that the new-IRA would get a united Ireland by destroying orbital infrastructure.
It is politically unfeasible to turn swathes of these countries into an endless urban/suburban sprawl. Many have a strong agricultural lobby (The Netherlands in particular) and/or have an eye on food security.
So somewhere between you both.
Intercity transport really needs HS2 pushing through and increase electrification of other routes. This will speed up commuter routes and increase freight capacity.
This would 1. help the elderly have more freedom. 3. help people who already use public transport. 4,5. It would make roads safer and allow for less space being used for private vehicles which makes the remaining spaces safer.
Improving intercity and freight rail can also help many people in category 6 who can now do something productive or fun on the train rather than risk driving long distance, and can take some long distance freight off of roads.
The only people who need to have private vehicles are those would live in rural locations, who would still benefit from traveling to a more distant urban area, and people who's jobs demand it such as tradies (trades people). These would all be served by having less people on the roads when they don't need to be.
Say 30 years ago the fishery was at 80% depleted, and today it is 95% depleted, then conservation looking only 30 years back could decide to stop (or more likely lose political will) at that 80% mark.
You have an historical mistake that supports your argument here.
Bronze weapons were very expensive, due to needing tin which could not be mined locally and needed to be traded for from as far away, such as the balkans, Germany or even Britain [0]. Because of this it was only available for the rich, ie the rulers and their supporters. Bronze age Greece[1] was not democratic, and was based around kingdoms, ruled by those who had access to the bronze weapons.
The later more 'equal' (but by no means equal at all, simply more so than ruled by tyrants, they still had slaves and oppressed lower classes. It's just there was a more numerous upper/middle class) greek states were in the Iron Age. Iron was much easier and cheaper to make as it was available in large quantities locally. This lead to to the iron age weapons and armour being much more widely spread [2] and therefore they had less powerful dictators.
Not all Iron age Greek states were democracies, and those that were would not seem like fair democracies today. But partially because of the more easily accessible weapons, the power in these states was less centralised than it was when the weapons were predominantly bronze.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_sources_and_trade_in_ancie.... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycenaean_Greece [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Dark_Ages