I bet you didnt know that

bonzodog2

Maybe they were being stingy with the blocks?
"Sure lads they'll never know! Make a big hole and bill them for blocks!"

cdeb

There are more pubs in Ireland than there are in New York and California combined

Realt Dearg Sec

cdeb wrote: »

There are more pubs in Ireland than there are in New York and California combined

In Ulysses Leopold Bloom thinks "Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without passing a pub".

In 2011 a software developer came up with an algorithm to solve the puzzle.

This is the route, although I don't think you've "crossed" Dublin until you get to the coast:

cdeb

Have you been reading the same book I have?

"Have ye no homes to go to? - The history of the Irish pub" by Kevin Martin. Great read.

Realt Dearg Sec

cdeb wrote: »

Have you been reading the same book I have?

"Have ye no homes to go to? - The history of the Irish pub" by Kevin Martin. Great read.

No, I've been reading Ulysses.

*pushes glasses up bridge of nose*

server down

I've always felt that stonehenge was unfinished back in the day. There probably was some wonder of the world competition going in the bronze age, until one lad comes back with stories of the Pyramids:

"Lads, we 'ave no hope. They've got giant big triangle buildings as high as you like. Best leave 'er as is. Abandon the roof"

ohnonotgmail

Realt Dearg Sec wrote: »

In Ulysses Leopold Bloom thinks "Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without passing a pub".

In 2011 a software developer came up with an algorithm to solve the puzzle.

This is the route, although I don't think you've "crossed" Dublin until you get to the coast:

is that including pubs that exist now or pubs that existed in joyces day?

Realt Dearg Sec

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

is that including pubs that exist now or pubs that existed in joyces day?

Well from what I know the guy who did it has never read the novel so presumably wasn't going to research 1904 Dublin. I'm assuming then that he only solved it for 2011. It's at least theoretically possible to solve it for 1904 by taking all of the information on public houses from Thom's Directory for that year (which Joyce owned and used extensively to write his novel) and feed that info into the same algorithm, and I know people who could do this and WOULD do it as well, but I don't know that anyone has done it.

cdeb

Realt Dearg Sec wrote: »

No, I've been reading Ulysses.

Nobody reads Ulysses!

I think the map is current - excluding hotels and restaurants, even though they serve alcohol. Somewhat satisfyingly, the route crosses the James Joyce Bridge.

There were a lot more pubs 100 years ago - and fewer bridges - so it's likely there was no solution back then.

Wibbs

server down wrote: »

I've always felt that stonehenge was unfinished back in the day. There probably was some wonder of the world competition going in the bronze age, until one lad comes back with stories of the Pyramids:

"Lads, we 'ave no hope. They've got giant big triangle buildings as high as you like. Best leave 'er as is. Abandon the roof"

IIRC Stonehenge was already 500 years old before the first pyramids went up and Newgrange was over a thousand years old.

The Irish round tower built in Ardmore

(the last to be built)was roughly contemporaneous with the Leaning Tower of Pisa


Both are circa 12th century. Ours didn't lean mind you. The cool thing about the Irish round tower is the majority don't have particularly deep foundations. Like a couple of feet down at best.

Realt Dearg Sec

cdeb wrote: »

Nobody reads Ulysses! .

Some of us have no choice!

Never noticed it crosses the JJB. Yeah no idea of whether it's possible in 1904, I agree with you that it probably isn't, especially since there were probably a lot of pubs on the quays.

Professor Moriarty

Wibbs wrote: »

IIRC Stonehenge was already 500 years old before the first pyramids went up and Newgrange was over a thousand years old.

The Irish round tower built in Ardmore

(the last to be built)was roughly contemporaneous with the Leaning Tower of Pisa


Both are circa 12th century. Ours didn't lean mind you. The cool thing about the Irish round tower is the majority don't have particularly deep foundations. Like a couple of feet down at best.

The Stonehenge you see today was built roughly the same time as the first pyramids.

Standing on top of a round tower (St. Canice's) and reminding yourself that you are on a building that is 1150 years old and has very little foundations concentrates the mind.

byte

IvyTheTerrible wrote: »

The file format .gif is pronounced with a hard g, (like gift without the t), and not with a soft g (jif).
A soft g at the start of a word in English comes from the French, in words like "general". The rule in French is that the g is hard unless followed by e.
Gif is an acronym of Graphics Interchange Format. Graphic comes from the Greek , and the g is hard.

Huh, that's how I always pronounced it, then was lead to believe I was wrong and that it's supposed to sound like Jif.

So I was right all along...

Mind you, even the creator says it's pronounced Jif, like giraffe.
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/22/tech/web/pronounce-gif/index.html

*shrug*

Duffy the Vampire Slayer

Doesn't that route go past the Guinness Brewery?

Realt Dearg Sec

Duffy the Vampire Slayer wrote: »

Doesn't that route go past the Guinness Brewery?

I'm guessing the algorithm didn't regard that route as "passing" the Gravity Bar because it's not really facing the street.

Greybottle

Realt Dearg Sec wrote: »

In Ulysses Leopold Bloom thinks "Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without passing a pub".

That puzzle is easy to solve at any time in history. By going into any pub you come upon, you don't actually pass it.

(I think that was the original answer to the puzzle as well. It's was always supposed to be more of a joke than a puzzle).

Ipso

server down wrote: »

Talking of scurvy and pirates. Did you ever wonder why if the Royal Navy and the Pirates knew what cured scurvy earlier than the 17th C why did Scott and Shackleton suffered from it the early 20C?

The royal navy took scurvy seriously and knew the cure. In 1799 the scheduled allowance for the sailors in the Navy was fixed at I oz.lemon juice with I + oz. sugar, served daily after 2 weeks at sea,

Its an interesting story, and it didnt just happen because they forgot. It happened because how a cure becomes undiscovered or ignored because it seems unscientific. How advances in some science can create a new, not fully correct, dogma.

Scurvy was cured by lemon in the 17C, however by the mid to late 19C the British started using lime instead, so as to procure it from their colonies rather than Spain. Vitamin C wasnt understood at the time and it was assumed that any antiscorbutic properties were related to acidity.

Lime is acidic for sure, but it has less than 25% the vitamin C ratio of lemon and it was stored in copper cans which leeched the vitimin C. However this didnt have much of an immediate effect as by the mid 19C as sailors were out at sea for much shorter periods, as steam shops became common. By the 1870s, therefore, most British ships were sailing without protection against scurvy. Only speed and improved nutrition on land were preventing sailors from getting sick.

Scurvy returned with a vengeance when George Nares led the British Arctic Expedition in an attempt to reach the North Pole via Greenland in 1875. Within weeks the crew was striken. Twenty years later the Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition was stranded for 3 years, frozen into the pack ice. The crew were served lime every day and yet most got scurvy, except for the people who ate polar bear ( which was unpalatable to most who ate older preserved or salted meat). This scenario repeated in other expeditions.

In the absences of a theory of vitimin C then, it looked to the doctors and the scientists of this time that scurvy was caused by the meat going off. After all if fresh meat helps, and lime doesn't, it doesnt look citrus or fruit in general is antiscorbutic but that freshness is. And around this time most diseases were found to be caused by bacteria. In fact curing a disease with greens sounded like an old wives tale.

The doctor on the expedition (Koettlitz) said

That the cause of the outbreak of scurvy in so many Polar expeditions has always been that something was radically wrong with the preserved meats, whether tinned or salted, is practically certain; that foods are scurvy-producing by being, if only slightly, tainted is practically certain; that the benefit of the so-called "antiscorbutics" is a delusion, and that some antiscorbutic property has been removed from foods in the process of preservation is also a delusion. An animal food is either scorbutic—in other words, scurvy-producing—or it is not. It is either tainted or it is sound. Putrefactive change, if only slight and tasteless, has taken place or it has not. Bacteria have been able to produce ptomaines in it or they have not; and if they have not, then the food is healthy and not scurvy-producing.

ptomaines is basically bad meat that is assumed to cause food posoining. Given the advances of the day on diseases being caused by bacteria this seemed to be most rational solution. And it was the solution that informed the doctors and physicians who consulted with Scott and Shackleton. (With regards to the past, the extent that citrus juices were effective in preventing scurvy, it was assumed their acidity denatured ptomaines, or killed the bacteria that caused them but that this wasnt reliable.).

So on to the Scott expedition. His main advisor was the aforementioned Koettlitz, and so Scott was impressed with the idea that his meat should be freshly canned. They canned the fresh meat under medical supervision, and opened it under medical supervision. In fact all tins were opened in the presence of his medical staff, including Dr. Koettlitz, and carefully examined for signs of spoilage. Any doubtful cans were consigned to the trash heap.

They were surprised then, when 3 weeks in, the first signs of scurvy started to appear....

I heard that the term Limey for British people came from how when they arrived in the Caribbean they would always look for limes to prevent scurvy.

server down

Limey did originate from that, but ironically they were using Lemons at the time. In fact its the superifical similarities between lemons and limes that caused some of the problems later on. You cant actually substitute one for the other to cure scurvy.

New Home

New Home

New Home

New Home

server down

The slime post reminds me of a joke - a guy asks his (smarter friend) how does a thermos work.

“When I put cold liquid in it keeps it cold, but when I put hot liquid in it keeps it warm. Tell me Seanie, how do it know?”

So, how do it (the slime) know? My guess is that as it expands the food keeps certain paths open, because they get energy from the food, and the other paths wither.

Someone get some slime on a map of Dublin. Thanks.

New Home

In the early days of iTunes, Universal Music Group deducted artist's iTunes royalties for costs such as "packaging" and "breakages" on digital downloads. Eminem sued them.

Source

New Home

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

server down wrote: »

Limey did originate from that, but ironically they were using Lemons at the time. In fact its the superifical similarities between lemons and limes that caused some of the problems later on. You cant actually substitute one for the other to cure scurvy.

While limes are lower in Vitamin C than lemons, they were most certainly used. The Merchant Shipping Act (1867) required all ships of the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy to provide a daily lime ration to sailors to prevent scurvy.

West Indian limes were used to supplement lemons after the Spanish alliance with France, against Britain, in the Napoleonic Wars made the supply of Mediterranean lemons difficult.

Chancer3001

I've met Russian submarine users (through a friend in the Irish navy ) that suffered from scurvy.
Their diet while underwater seemed to be 90% vodka.

New Home

Soooo... they drink like fishes? :pac:

bonzodog2

New Home wrote: »

Soooo... they drink like fishes? :pac:

Talking of fish, I heard today of a venomous snail that hunts small fish :eek:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conus_geographus

Greybottle

server down wrote: »

Someone get some slime on a map of Dublin. Thanks.

They already have done. It concentrated itself on the area around Kildare St. and Montrose.