Comments by "Peter Lund" (@peterfireflylund) on "Veritasium" channel.

  1. Just about the only good thing to come out of the French revolution and its aftermath! (And in reality, most of the work was actually done before the revolution.)
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  2. He left plenty for both Gauss and Euler. Stop complaining.
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  3. He said it was disregarded by everybody because it was “obviously” nonsense. Turned out, it wasn’t nonsense.
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  4. Scientists against myths shows us on video how it could be done. Just copper, abrasive, and a little water. Wedges would do the rest and dolomite hammers and polishing would make it smooth.
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  5. As a person who can read, this pained me greatly.
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  6. Emperor Picard The Magna Carta is overvalued in the Anglo sphere in pretty much the same way that the Code Napoleon and the (many) declarations of human, female, natural rights from the French Revolution is overvalued in the Franco sphere. The Magna Carta was actually a pretty typical germanic deal between a king and his most powerful nobles (some of whom perhaps even more powerful than the king). There were tons of them in Scandinavia and the Holy Roman Empire.
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  7. @Jason Bourn look up how much the obelisks weighed. If they could move those (and they obviously could) then they could easily move much smaller limestones from quarries right next door.
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  8.  @karlkarlsson9126  there is a really nice thesis that describes research into reconstructions of “stone lifters” that would be able to move a stone one step up along the outside of a pyramid being built. It contains data on how many people were required per “lifter”, how fast they were, and even on how strong the wood had to be for various parts of the “lifter” and where along the Eastern Mediterranean such wood could be acquired. Ramps were certainly used for some pyramids but we still don’t know if some of them were internal. This research shows that ramps weren’t as necessary as they were once thought to be.
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  9. FlorentB seems like he was somehow defending the republic (and looting and plundering) everywhere but in France. Who knew it was necessary to defend the French Republic in so many far away places?
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  10. Not published nearly as much. Literacy was very important to Christians, especially after Gutenberg and Luther. It wasn’t important to the Muslims. Being able to recite the Quran in Arabic (often without understanding Arabic!) was. Priorities, you know.
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  11. I tried to find out just a few days ago. It seems she is doing better, but only slightly.
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  12. @Jason Bourn depends on how far up the ramps went. We know that they could have lifted stones without ramps, so it’s really a question of optimization. Ramps were obviously superior for the very bottom part, probably superior even for the middle part if internal ramps were used, and a really dumb idea for the top.
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  13. @Jason Bourn as for the cellophane brain idea of melting and reglueing granite: take your meds. That idea is exactly as dumb as it sounds.
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  14.  @beautifulcarpetdiagram  What change? That murderous dictators are great and should be celebrated even 200 years after their deaths? If the French had been good at embalming, you know that they would have kept Napoleon's decaying corpse in a glass chest so devout dictator lovers could come and see him. Not much difference from Lenin or Mao there. And the whole thing isn't new. Ptolemy did something similar with Alexander's dead body.
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  15. Magic Shrek are you for real?
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  16. Emperor Picard the Wikipedia page for the Magna Carta is a good place to start. You could also try googling for “håndfæstning” (literally something that ties a hand).
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  17. Magic Shrek you pretty much are. Read Emperor Picard upthread.
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  18. Math isn’t quite reality. It is a sort of idealized, prettified, simplified world — which turns out to be useful for approximate descriptions of reality. If you try to do geometry with lines that have width and points that take up space, you realize you are imprecise (and that your math can’t be simple). You realize that thinner lines and smaller points work better — and the ultimate version of that is lines with no width and points that take up no space. (Your elementary school teacher should have told you that. Mine didn’t and I’m still pissed about it.)
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  19.  @BentleyDeuce there isn’t much justice in accepting the Jewish Final Solution to the Palestinian Problem.
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  20. Once is enough. Twice is more than that. This is n times too many.
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  21. Why wouldn’t he? Christians in medieval Europe had no problem citing their works. They had a problem with the Muslim religion and with the constant piracy, slavery, and war from the Muslims but not with their better philosophers — who were generally heretics, anyway. Many of them spent decades in exile or house arrest… (All decent people have a huge problem with Islam because it is a central tenet of Islam that Christians must be treated badly. Precisely how depends on where in the religious texts one looks: maybe they should be killed, maybe their lands should be stolen, maybe they should be slaves of the Muslims, maybe they should just pay extra taxes for the sin of not being Muslim. If you agree with that, you are a good Muslim and an awful human being. If you disagree, you are a bad Muslims but maybe a good person. If you deny this dichotomy, you are either a liar or ignorant about Islam.)
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  22. That film making isn't about a degree and a well-defined path sounds exactly like a meritocracy to me. ... and you made it. You do have the merit.
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  23. Regarding the subtitles: discr*ete*, not discr*eet*.
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  24. It’s because Tom Lehrer didn’t write a song about him.
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  25. My dad looked younger when he was 60. I also look younger at 49 than Sinclair does, except for the gray hairs in my beard and hair.
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  26. Bad choice of words on Derek’s part. He meant a new postulate that was essentially “the 5th postulate is false”. There are many ways of doing that (with many equivalent postulates), just like there are many postulates that are equivalent to the 5th postulate.
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  27. The Kerala school (India’s only real claim to math fame before Ramanujan) was a lot later than Euclid. The Greeks really were far ahead of everybody else — except for a tiny area of math about simultaneous equations where the Chinese were ahead. This is what led to linear algebra once the Europeans started thinking seriously about it. (But their head start seems to have come a few centuries after Euclid… it’s hard to say exactly what was invented/discovered when because no original manuscripts survive from China and Greece. All we know is that the Indians were far behind the Greeks in everything and that the Chinese were far behind in almost everything.)
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  28. I think they are missing in Blackburn, Lancashire.
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  29. Thank you for that photo of a young Jerry Pournelle! :)
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  30. No, there won't.
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  31.  @FahlbeckIII because they don’t like freedom fighters.
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  32. Palestinians usually behave very badly in Europe so we don’t have much sympathy. We know the Jews stole the land, we know they are the aggressors — but Jews don’t rape and murder people in Europe and they don’t blow up random buildings in Europe or run big trucks into crowds to kill people. A pox on both your houses.
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  33. Be careful with the silica aerogels. The dust isn't good for your lungs.
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  34.  @molybd3num823 are they equibolic?
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  35. @Jason Bourn were the largest obelisks also poured/cast… or did the Egyptians actually know how to move them across fairly large distances?
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  36. @Jason Bourn glass, yes. Optically useful glass, no. I suppose you are as much of an expert on glass as you are on stones.
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  37. Take a look at 22:08
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  38. Precisely. I hate that model because it gives people an entirely wrong idea while also giving them a fake feeling of “understanding”.
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