Location: Engineering Library- QA76.9.D343M34 2016

Building and Rebuilding Good Credit

Ursula K. Le Guin's Revolutions - "Le Guin's work is distinctive not only because it is imaginative, or because it is political, but because she thought so deeply about the work of building a future worth living."

"Imaginative fiction trains people to be aware that there other ways to do things, other ways to be; that there is not just one civilization, and it is good, and it is the way we have to be," Le Guin says in Arwen Curry's new documentary, The Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin.[1,2,3,4] Le Guin spoke in defense of science fiction and fantasy, which were and often still are maligned or outright ignored by critics. But her statement admits another, deeper necessity: We must be trained to imagine. But imagine what? ... A feminist and a critic of capitalism, Le Guin must have known that progress was as much a necessity as it was an uncertainty. Nobody knows exactly what will happen when they set out to do what no one else has ever done. Le Guin's work is distinctive not only because it is imaginative, or because it is political, but because she thought so deeply about the work of building a future worth living. She did not just believe that a society free of consumerism and incarceration, like Shevek's homeworld, could exist; she explored how that society could be built and understood the process would be hard work, and probably on some level disappointing. The future is not a static thing; to its architects, it is always in motion, always mid-creation, never realized. Le Guin's utopianism perhaps explains why her characters exhibit a certain adaptability, as did Le Guin herself. In her work, she mostly eschewed great battles; a reader of her work should not expect to find a clash at Helm's Deep. A Le Guin character may be at war with his basest self, but the health of the body politic can be at stake at the same time. In The Left Hand of Darkness, Genly Ai only completes his mission to bring Winter into the Ekumen after he overcomes his own prejudicial beliefs about the people who live there. Le Guin found herself embroiled in a similar struggle, which she recounts to Curry. As acclaimed as The Left Hand of Darkness became, feminists criticized it because, while Le Guin's alien race changed genders, in their default state they used male pronouns. Genly is male, too. "At first I felt a little bit defensive," she told Curry. "But as I thought about it, I began to see that my critics were right." There's a quiet radicalism about her admission.

Yuval Noah Harari & Natalie Portman - "Yuval Noah Harari sits down with the award-winning actress, director, and Harvard graduate Natalie Portman to discuss his new book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century."[5]

0:57 The myth factory 2:22 The role of fictions 4:38 Fictions and co-operation ...

Balance of power: The Economic Consequences of the Peace at 100 - "Ann Pettifor finds astonishing contemporary resonance in John Maynard Keynes's critique of globalization and inequity."[6]

In December 1919, John Maynard Keynes published a blistering attack on the Treaty of Versailles, signed in June that year. The treaty's terms helped to end the First World War. Keynes's The Economic Consequences of the Peace[(fre)eBook] revealed how they would also pave the way to the Second... This is a bold, eloquent work unafraid of the long view. It contributed to the economic stability of the mid-twentieth century. And in a world still grappling with the socio-economic and environmental costs of globalization, Keynes's critiques — not least of the era's international financial system, the gold standard — remain powerfully germane.[7] Keynes censures the disregard of world leaders for the "starving and disintegrating" people of war-torn Europe. "The future life of Europe was not their concern; its means of livelihood was not their anxiety," he wrote. Keynes, however, was concerned for Europe's future. His book's significance lies in his revolutionary plan for financing recovery not just in Europe, but across the world. Keynes called for a new international economic order to replace the gold standard, which had held from the 1870s until the start of the war. That system had led to a form of globalization that benefited the wealthy, but impoverished the majority and ultimately destabilized both the financial and political systems... For a book published 100 years ago, the contemporary resonance is unsettling. Keynes writes: "England still stands outside Europe. Europe's voiceless tremors do not reach her ... But Europe is solid with herself." In another passage, he notes that the "principle of accumulation based on inequality was a vital part of the pre-war order of society". And in an era innocent of Amazon and containerized shipping, Keynes wrote that wealthy Londoners could order by telephone "the various products of the whole earth" and expect "their early delivery" to their doorstep. The globalized pre-First World War economy was the template for the modern one. Driven as it was by the international financial sector, the consequences of this economic system were predictable: rising inequality, economic instability, political volatility and war. Thus, a bankrupt Germany and its allies (the Central Powers) — all heavily indebted sovereign governments — were to endure increasingly frequent economic crises after 1919. Their creditors, the victorious Allied Powers, made no effort towards a sound and just resolution of these crises.[8,9,10]

Now's the time to spread the wealth, says Thomas Piketty - "His premise is that inequality is a political choice. It's something societies opt for, not an inevitable result of technology and globalisation. Whereas Marx saw history as class struggle, Piketty sees it as a battle of ideologies."[11]

Every unequal society, he says, creates an ideology to justify inequality. That allows the rich to fall asleep in their town houses while the homeless freeze outside. In his overambitious history of inequality from ancient India to today's US, Piketty recounts the justifications that recur throughout time: "Rich people deserve their wealth." "It will trickle down." "They give it back through philanthropy." "Property is liberty." "The poor are undeserving." "Once you start redistributing wealth, you won't know where to stop and there'll be chaos" — a favourite argument after the French Revolution. "Communism failed." "The money will go to black people" — an argument that, Piketty says, explains why inequality remains highest in countries with historic racial divides such as Brazil, South Africa and the US. Another common justification, which he doesn't mention, is "High taxes are punitive" — as if the main issue were the supposed psychology behind redistribution rather than its actual effects. All these justifications add up to what he calls the "sacralisation of property". But today, he writes, the "propriétariste and meritocratic narrative" is getting fragile. There's a growing understanding that so-called meritocracy has been captured by the rich, who get their kids into the top universities, buy political parties and hide their money from taxation. Moreover, notes Piketty, the wealthy are overwhelmingly male and their lifestyles tend to be particularly environmentally damaging. Donald Trump — a climate-change-denying sexist heir who got elected president without releasing his tax returns — embodies the problem... Centre-right parties across the west have taken up populism because their low-tax, small-state story wasn't selling any more. Rightwing populism speaks to today's anti-elitist, anti-meritocratic mood. However, it deliberately refocuses debate from property to what Piketty calls "the frontier" (and others would call borders). That leaves a gap in the political market for redistributionist ideas. We're now at a juncture much like around 1900, when extreme inequality helped launch social democratic and communist parties.

Ideological differences in the expanse of the moral circle - "Do clashes between ideologies reflect policy differences or something more fundamental? The present research suggests they reflect core psychological differences such that liberals express compassion toward less structured and more encompassing entities (i.e., universalism), whereas conservatives express compassion toward more well-defined and less encompassing entities (i.e., parochialism)."[12,13,14,15,16,17]

• In Our Time, The Rapture - "Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea that believers will vanish from the world, touching on religious entrepreneurialism, William Miller, dispensational modernism, premillennialism, and other such eschatological battiness."
• Medieval cannibal babies - "How a collective of intellectuals can engage in the production of unlikely stories to protect a cherished theory."
• Three Decades Ago, America Lost Its Religion. Why? - "'Not religious' has become a specific American identity—one that distinguishes secular, liberal whites from the conservative, evangelical right."[18,19]

Zadie Smith: Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction - "I could never shake the suspicion that everything about me was the consequence of a series of improbable accidents—not least of which was the 400 trillion–to-one accident of my birth. As I saw it, even my strongest feelings and convictions might easily be otherwise, had I been the child of the next family down the hall, or the child of another century, another country, another God."[20] We should all be reading more Ursula Le Guin - "Her novels imagine other worlds, but her theory of fiction can help us better live in this one."[21]

"The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,"[pdf] an essay Le Guin wrote in 1986, disputes the idea that the spear was the earliest human tool, proposing that it was actually the receptacle. Questioning the spear's phallic, murderous logic, instead Le Guin tells the story of the carrier bag, the sling, the shell, or the gourd. In this empty vessel, early humans could carry more than can be held in the hand and, therefore, gather food for later. Anyone who consistently forgets to bring their tote bag to the supermarket knows how significant this is. And besides, Le Guin writes, the idea that the spear came before the vessel doesn't even make sense. "Sixty-five to eighty percent of what human beings ate in those regions in Paleolithic, Neolithic, and prehistoric times was gathered; only in the extreme Arctic was meat the staple food." Not only is the carrier bag theory plausible, it also does meaningful ideological work — shifting the way we look at humanity's foundations from a narrative of domination to one of gathering, holding, and sharing. Because I am, despite my best efforts, often soppy and sentimental, I sometimes imagine this like a really comforting group hug. But it's not, really: the carrier bag holds things, sure, but it's also messy and sometimes conflicted. Like when you're trying to grab your sunglasses out of your bag, but those are stuck on your headphones, which are also tangled around your keys, and now the sunglasses have slipped into that hole in the lining. Le Guin's carrier bag is, in addition to a story about early humans, a method for storytelling itself, meaning it's also a method of history. But unlike the spear (which follows a linear trajectory towards its target), and unlike the kind of linear way we've come to think of time and history in the West, the carrier bag is a big jumbled mess of stuff. One thing is entangled with another, and with another. Le Guin once described temporality in her Hainish Universe (a confederacy of human planets that feature in a number of her books) in the most delightfully psychedelic terms: "Any timeline for the books of Hainish descent would resemble the web of a spider on LSD." This lack of clear trajectory allowed Le Guin to test out all kinds of political eventualities, without the need to tie everything neatly together. It makes room for complexity and contradiction, for difference and simultaneity. This, I think, is a pretty radical way of looking at the world, one that departs from the idea of history as a long line of victories. Le Guin describes her discovery of the carrier bag theory as grounding her "in human culture in a way I never felt grounded before." The stick, sword, or spear, designed for "bashing and killing," alienated her from history so much that she felt she "was either extremely defective as a human being, or not human at all." The only problem is that a carrier bag story isn't, at first glance, very exciting. "It is hard to tell", writes Le Guin, "a really gripping tale of how I wrested a wild-oat seed from its husk, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then I scratched my gnat bites, and Ool said something funny, and we went to the creek and got a drink and watched newts for a while, and then I found another patch of oats..." As well as its meandering narrative, a carrier bag story also contains no heroes. There are, instead, many different protagonists with equal importance to the plot. This is a very difficult way to tell a story, fictional or otherwise. While, in reality, most meaningful social change is the result of collective action, we aren't very good at recounting such a diffusely distributed account. The meetings, the fundraising, the careful and drawn-out negotiations — they're so boring! Who wants to watch a movie about a four-hour meeting between community stakeholders? ... We will not "beat" climate change, nor is "nature" our adversary. If the planet could be considered a container for all life, in which everything — plants, animals, humans — are all held together, then to attempt domination becomes a self-defeating act. By letting ourselves "become part of the killer story," writes Le Guin, "we may get finished along with it." All of which is to say: we have to abandon the old story.[22]

Future Tense Fiction: Stories of Tomorrow Has Arrived - "A thought-provoking excursion into the futures we would and would not want to live in."[23]

Though a sign on Washington State Route 129 points you in the right direction, driving the nearly 12 miles along Cloverland Road to arrive at the Cloverland Garage in Asotin County can make you feel like you're, well, chasing ghosts…

A map of downtown Spokane's east end, circa 1910, would be barely recognizable to most locals today…

It doesn't take long for a really old building to fall apart…

JS Wright to sponsor Stourbridge Lions rugby team.

Labour’s West Midlands Mayor candidate pledges to build 3,000 new affordable homes per year.

Construction is now underway on the latest phase of homes to be built on the former MG Rover factory in Longbridge, near Birmingham.

Pupils from St Columba’s Catholic Primary School received a lesson in site safety from local housebuilder St. Modwen Homes;

Birmingham City Council officials have written a report to the Cabinet stating that the 40-year-old Central Library building is not only vacant but ‘obsolete’ as well, reveals Alan Clawley.

A PROPOSED five storey development in Bellevue Hill approved by Woollahra Council on Monday night has been likened to a cruise ship.

Stop your self-centered whining, and let’s get on with the job of building more badly needed housing. And thank the Kroenkes’ for investing in Denver’s housing stock.

The truth is loose: The Broncos are colts, an increasingly younger team tasked with cobbling together a foundation for the future. They are cheaper, shrewder investments, their signings requiring Google searches for statistics and correct spellings of names.

The Bermuda Hospitals Board [BHB] announced it has “purchased Craig Appin House in Hamilton in a favourable deal that protects it from future rental increases.” A spokesperson said, “BHB has rented space in Craig Appin for over ten years, after it had to decant its Human Resources, ITS and Finance offices from the Queen Elizabeth […]

McKenzie Bean — a Bermudian who lives in Colorado — recently competed in the NPC Colorado Cup Bodybuilding Show, winning first place in the true novice category, and placing second in the heavyweight class, and fourth in overall novice. “Mr Bean, who has been training for 9 years, told Bernews, “My coach and I went […]

[Written by Stephen Wright] When Kyle Webb decided to hang up his running spikes, he needed an activity to replace the adrenalin rush he experienced rocketing down the 100 metres track as a Bermuda sprinter. Webb, who competed at the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast, Australia, in 2018, admits it was a wrench to […]

[Written by Stephen Wright] Mikle Dill says bodybuilding has helped fill the sporting void left behind when he quit rugby because of medical issues. When Dill, a former national team player, decided to hang up his rugby boots, he knew he had to find another outlet to channel his competitive spirit. The 24-year-old began training at […]

[Written by Stephen Wright] Mikle Dill is on a mission in Milan, Italy, to earn his bodybuilding pro card this weekend. Dill arrived in the Northern Italian city yesterday, where he will compete at the NPC Worldwide Olympia Amateur Italy in the men’s classic physique and believes he is in better shape than ever. The […]

Bermudian bodybuilder Jaydon Goddard made his professional debut at the IFBB Pittsburgh Pro earlier this month in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A spokesperson said, “Behind the Olympia and Arnold Classic Competitions, this is considered one of the largest and most prestigious professional bodybuilding competitions in the sport. “Goddard competed for the first time as a professional in […]

The Government has issued an RFP for rooftop solar for “approximately thirty Government owned buildings across Bermuda.” The notice said, “This Request for Proposals [RFP] is an invitation by the Government of Bermuda to prospective proponents to submit proposals for Government Solar Development Project, as further described in Section A of the Request for Proposal […]

In this year’s Budget, “$400,000 will be spent to complete the installation of solar panels on several government buildings,” the Minister of Public Works Lt/Col David Burch said. The Government tweeted the graphic below, saying, “Capital funding will be allocated to installation of solar panels on several government buildings, to Forts & historical sites, continuance of […]

BE Solar announced the successful completion of an innovative solar panel project at the Argus Group’s Wesley Street headquarters in Hamilton. A spokesperson said, “This 130 Aptos panel system installation marks a signifcant step towards sustainability and energy leadership in Bermuda’s corporate sector. “This initiative, designed with advanced double-sided solar panels that ensure a steady […]

The dream of traversing the depths of space and planting the seed of human civilization on another planet has existed for generations. For long as we’ve known that most stars in the Universe are likely to have their own system of planets, there have been those who advocated that we explore them (and even settle …

Continue reading "Project Hyperion is Seeking Ideas for Building Humanity’s First Generation Ship"

The post Project Hyperion is Seeking Ideas for Building Humanity’s First Generation Ship appeared first on Universe Today.

[Updated] Emergency services responded to a collision on East Broadway today [Oct 30] involving a car that crashed into the gas station building. The 83-year-old driver was not harmed, however his wife, 81, was taken to the hospital following the incident and a person in the building was also injured. Update Oct 31, 4.10pm: A police […]

As you continuously approach your fitness goals, you eventually hit a plateau, which occurs when you've nearly reached your ideal fitness level. At this point, you're basically stuck at one level, but you can take it to the next level easier than you make think.

Everyone who does resistance training―from newbies to professional bodybuilders―will hit this point, but what's important is knowing how to increase your productivity and enhance your workout, and with these 21 facts, you can definitely reach your fitness goals faster.

1. Are you exactly the same as your neighbor, or for that matter, even your sibling? Since we'll assume you answered, “No,” you must understand that everyone is different and doesn't respond to the same muscle building techniques; therefore, you should alternate the speed of your repetitions for optimal results.

2. What your parents gave you doesn't have to determine your goals. You should achieve your fitness objectives despite any genetic barriers you may have―i.e. a high BMI.

3. Establish your goals on paper. Research indicates that when a person writes down detailed goals with deadlines to meet, that the individual has a specific path to follow and is more likely to be successful at achieving that goal.

4. Age is nothing but a number, so don't let your age be a factor in achieving your goals, especially since you can't change this number. Focus on what you can control, such as your sleeping patterns.

5. Find a workout buddy. When you have someone to push you, you'll work harder than you would alone.

6. Keep in mind the ratio 10:1, because you generally need to gain 10 lbs for every inch of girth you add to your arm size. For instance, a majority of people gaining 50 lbs during the course of five years will also gain five inches in their arms.

7. Prior to increasing speed or resistance, increase the range of motion first, meaning you should fully contract and stretch your muscles. If you don’t, you’ll only receive partial results.

8. You need at least eight hours of sleep per night to build muscles, so aim to get this many winks as much as possible. Remember, a few late nights won't hurt, but making it a habit will take a toll on your target fitness level.

9. Stay hydrated! Your body needs at least 1 gallon or 16 cups of water per day for proper muscle growth. The composition of your body is 70 percent water, and in order for your body to maintain an anabolic state, water is essential.

10. Consume raw vegetables whenever you can. Cooking veggies removes much of their nutritional value. In fact, boiling these healthy treats removes between 50 to 75 percent of their nutrients. You may steam them, if you can't eat them raw, but never boil them.

11. Eggs are an excellent source of protein and despite their bad reputation, they're one of the healthiest foods you can select, especially for bodybuilding.

12. If you don't have one already, go out and purchase a blender. The amount of calories that you must eat as a bodybuilder are much easier to consume in liquid form. This vital piece of equipment is definitely important if you have a busy lifestyle that doesn't allow you to eat every three to four hours.

13. When you go grocery stopping, stick to shopping in the outer aisles. These aisles are typically where the fresh dairy and meat are located. The inner portion of the grocery store consists of processed foods and canned goods that should be avoided if you want to build muscle fast.

14. Never use a supplement in place of a meal. You must put food before supplements, so that you're consuming all the nutrients you need for bodybuilding. The nutrition you receive from foods surpasses that of a supplement.

15. In regards to supplements, creatine stands out as the top bodybuilding supplement. Beginning in the 90s, creatine has been at the top of supplement charts and has not seen a decrease in popularity since. The daily dosage recommendations vary; however, the most common dosage schedule consists of taking 20-30 grams for the first 5-7 days, then reducing the amount to 3-5 grams per day.

16. Maybe you don't have enough energy to workout, or maybe you want to increase the amount of time you workout. If either of these scenarios are the case, you should choose coffee for a pick-me-up, since it contains a mild stimulant known as caffeine. Caffeine is an inexpensive and safe performance enhancer.

17. You wouldn't drive your car without warming it up on a cold day, so why would you exercise without getting your body warmed up? Get those muscles warm to avoid injury while working out. Complete at least five to 10 minutes of stretching, in addition to some light cardio before you begin heavy lifting.

18. You've heard before that cheaters never prosper, but in certain cases, this isn't true. Although cheating to finish a set quicker or to lift more weight isn't positive, cheating on the last few reps makes the weight feel easier. This stimulates more muscle fibers with greater intensity.

19. Play nice and take turns! The you-go, I-go concept leads to an intense workout, because after you do a set, your partner immediately does one after you, then before you know it, it’s your turn again. You both use the same weights, but you take turns without any rests in between, and you see who can do the most reps per set. Try this technique with your workout buddy when you do barbell curls or other simple exercises.

20. During the 1940s and 1950s, Reg Park and Vince Gironda made a super intense technique for bodybuilding popular, which consisted of doing 10 sets of 10. This old-school procedure may have a modern name of “German volume technique;” however, this has been a preferred method to build muscles for quite some time. It causes your muscles to grow rapidly. Basically, you should do 10 sets of 10 reps for one body part at a time. Then, you should superset at two different body parts each workout. Make sure you don’t rest for more than a minute in between each exercise. Use this regimen for three weeks, and then return to a more traditional approach.

21. Switch up your routine. After three weeks, you should change your program completely. Basically, it should be opposite of the original order you did the exercises in. For instance, if you worked on your chest first, you should do it last next time. If you worked on abs on Monday, you should do them on Friday next time. Change up the amount of sets you do, as well.

Vince Delmonte

REVIEW – Fall is here, and the weather has turned chilly at night.  That means Christmas is coming soon, and before I can say “Jingle Bells” it will be time to decorate the house.  While many of the decorations in our house are traditions that have been used for years, we are always up for […]

“Violette Heymann, 1910” by Odilon Redon (French, 1840–1916), The Cleveland Museum of Art, Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection ,CC0. Creative Commons’ Open Culture Platform is supporting 25 institutions in opening up access to their collections by the end of 2025. Members of the Platform community will be working together to create a policy template, conduct outreach,…

The post Moving Institutions Toward Open—Building on 6 Years of the Open GLAM Survey appeared first on Creative Commons.

Blog Creation for Link Building In the effort to create links for back link profiles and more results, individuals and companies have resorted to tactics of duplicate profile creation, multiple fake profiles and an unsurpassed amount of blog sites with little or no use to anyone looking to gain valuable information. Some examples are WordPress […]

Words have the power to lift us up or tear us down, and nowhere is this more true than in our closest relationships. Understanding how language shapes our emotional connections can make all the difference between feeling deeply loved or feeling disconnected. One of the most potent tools for enhancing intimacy and trust in a ... Read more

The post Building Lasting Relationships Through Words of Affirmation appeared first on LifeHack.

Report 69 published by the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) in November 2014. This research, commissioned by the Department of Health (DH), set out to identify what could be learned about current policy and practice in self-neglect, experienced as a highly challenging aspect of contemporary adult social care.

Have you heard about Mississippi? It's a construction project brought to life by Waechter Architecture after more than 10 years of planning and investigation. This building isn't just your ordinary structure; it's a game-changer in terms of sustainability and creativity.[...]

The ways buildings are constructed has to change. It has become something else instead, something more sustainable, something newer. And it doesn't get much more modern than buildings that can actually move and adapt at will.[...]

Castelar 75 is a boutique building designed by the renowned architect Fernando Donis. The building is located in Polanco, an exclusive residential area in Mexico City, and is considered to be one of Mexico's most state-of-the-art edifices. The architecture is a revamp of the typical commercial building and features large spaces for offices, reception areas and parking. Its colossal size covers a floor area of 1207 m2, which amounts to 18,314 m2 that is spread out vertically over 17 floors. Besides its immense size, it is well-designed and features several environmentally-friendly design elements that make it an elegant yet practical[...]

Germany's most sustainable building is in Berlin, and it's a beauty. The EDGE Suedkreuz Berlin is a seven-story office complex consisting of two buildings comprising 32,000 square meters of floor space. It has been built by TCHOBAN VOSS Architekten using sustainable, climate and resource-saving techniques. Plus, it has a modular hybrid-timber construction that makes this hybrid-timber building one of the largest in Europe. [...]

Kaiserstraße is a new residential building currently under construction in Blumenau, Brazil. The project is designed by Alencar Arquitetura and aims to harness connections between residents and the natural world.[...]

I was overwhelmed by the response to my last post, and so grateful for the reminder that there is still connection to be found online, I just need to push through my own self-consciousness to find it. And I have many good models for this behavior, people who are quick with a kind and supportive word, people who do not shy away from nuance.

Today I spent the day offline in the company of people like this, a small group of friends that gathers once a month to share our love of stationery: pens, ink, paper, notebooks, planners, postal mail, and the like. We sit around a big table and journal together while chatting, snacking, and drinking lattes carefully crafted by FunkyPlaid. The middle of the table soon fills with stickers, stamps, inks, and washi tapes that we’ve brought to share with each other.

As I look around the table at these treasured people, I think about how much work goes into building community. Healthy communities take intention, upkeep, energy, and shared values. This gathering happens every month because we invest all of this into making it happen. As hosts, FunkyPlaid and I make sure people feel cared for with food and drink in a clean and welcoming space. As guests, everyone brings what they want to share, and expresses interest in what they are interested in (and refrains from expressing disdain for what they aren’t).

It’s a lot of work, joyful work. And this work results in a day each month to anticipate, and memories to hold close the rest of the month. I hope never to take this community for granted.

The post Kiev: Residential Building is in Fire Due to the Wreckage From the Air appeared first on English Russia.

The post Missile Hits a Residential Building in Kiev appeared first on English Russia.

Explore the outreach toolkit, sign up to receive an engineering activity kit, and tune in to upcoming virtual field trips and events this fall!

Body camera footage shows the moment a boy was saved from his home in Texas after his mother couldn't reach him in the fire.

Earlier this year on April Fools' Day, the Empire State Building announced that they would be opening at a Rainforest Café on the iconic building's 86^th floor observatory. If you got your hopes up just to find out it was all an April Fools' joke, rejoice, because now the joke is about to become reality. — Read the rest

The post Rainforest Café fans: don't miss this Empire State Building pop-up appeared first on Boing Boing.

This article is by Toni Šušnjar.

Warfare and military are an integral part of much of ancient and medieval fantasy. This is no surprise: warfare was a key element in development of society and of history, and much of mythology is also about it. As such, it is difficult for fantasy writers and readers alike to avoid war and military matters in general. And if you are going to do something, try to do it well. Army does not spring from the ground like the spartoi of Jason.

Environment and Geography

Environmental conditions include terrain, climate and resources. All three influence how an army will fight and which weapons it will use.

Terrain can be highly varied, but I will divide it into three categories: mountainous, rolling hills and flat. Mountains and forests – and especially forested mountains – are conductive to infantry warfare. Depending on other conditions (such as society, climate etc.), this can mean either light infantry with focus on ambushes, raiding and guerilla warfare; or heavy infantry, with focus on direct confrontation. Both of these were, at different points, in evidence in Spain and Greece.

Continue reading Building a Fantasy Army — Environment & Society at Mythic Scribes.

This article is by Toni Šušnjar.

Strategy and Enemies

The structure of an army will depend on the strategy, as strategy will determine the army’s role and tasks. A state which carries out expansion through outright territorial conquest will have large numbers of heavy infantry, combat engineers and artillery, and possibly some heavy cavalry as well (e.g. Roman Empire, 10th century Byzantine Empire). If conquest is done by slowly destroying an opponent’s economic and social structures through constant raiding (such as chevauchee or razzia / ghazw), then majority of the army will be light cavalry, with some heavy cavalry support (e.g. Seljuk and Ottoman Empires), and light infantry will be used if terrain is unsuitable for cavalry. If a state is defending against cavalry raids, then light cavalry will be dominant (e.g. 15th century Hungary), whereas heavy cavalry will predominate if enemy raiders are primarily infantry. If enemy armies are too powerful to face in the field, light and heavy cavalry will be used to harass the invading army and cut off its supplies and foraging. In terrain unsuitable for cavalry operations, heavy infantry will be used instead.

Raiding — as a strategy — is generally preferred against a peer opponent, especially if a state cannot have a developed logistical support system.

Continue reading Building a Fantasy Army — Strategy & Organization at Mythic Scribes.

This article is by Toni Šušnjar.

Recruitment and Numbers

The most basic style of recruitment is that of a local militia – rural or urban – where a portion or all of the free men take up arms. Militiamen are usually not highly trained, but they make up for lack of training with motivation: fleeing not only carries social stigma, but is also harshly punished. As such, militias were more effective than what would be expected of “civilians in arms”. Militias almost always depended on relatively cheap and easy to use weapons, though urban militias might have access to more expensive weapons – such as hoplite panoply or crossbows. Tribal militias typically used weapons that were also used for hunting and sport. Peasant levy however was only ever used in a support and harassment role, and often had weapons modified from agricultural implements. Only urban militias could have heavy equipment. A common disadvantage of militia armies is the inability to deploy over long distances and time-frames due to soldiers having a day job; thus, focus on long-term warfare (be it conquest or defence) typically brings about the professionalization of the army. This also means that militias are best used in cases with high political fragmentation – such as city-states.

Continue reading Building a Fantasy Army — Recruitment & Logistics at Mythic Scribes.

This article is by Toni Šušnjar.

In Antiquity and early the Middle Ages, the main weapon was the spear. Only a few exceptions appeared: Roman legions, which used javelins instead, and Macedonian pike phalanx with its sarissa. In the later Middle Ages, the main weapon could be a pike or a polearm (such as polehammer, poleaxe, halberd etc.), before the pike made its return in early modernity. Ranged weapons were not used to cause casualties, but rather to inconvenience the enemies and break up their formation.

Weapons and tactics will adapt to each other, as well as to the terrain and the enemies faced – but adaptations will be done within the boundaries of the society. A society without a significant tradition of horse archery will not counter horse archers with their own, but rather with foot archers. Horse archery was important for nomadic societies, because they could not afford the casualties which resulted from the shock and attrition tactics of the settled societies.

Weapons and armour likewise have a relationship, but since armour is the more difficult to produce of the two, it is developments in armour which typically drive the adaptation of weapons, rather than the other way around.

Continue reading Building a Fantasy Army — Weapons & Tactics at Mythic Scribes.

Wisdom to my mind is a bit of a paradox. It is subjective and context-dependent, but inherently universal. I say this, because for something to be wise it ought to be applicable across time and space, yet whether the claims are appraised as being “wise” hinges on the perception of a past, present or future audience. It is beyond the self, yet dependent upon the self. So that then begs the fantasy writing question: What if the self is not human? If culture already morphs the form and substance of wisdom, what effect might a different state of being have on it?

That would be terribly dull to prescribe, but I can help get some readers’ creativity going. Below I have listed relevant questions with examples you might consider when building your setting, so you may merrily thread into your fantastic realms to shape oddities rich and strange.

I would advise readers of this article to try and let go of their own presumptions on what is wise for the sake of worldbuilding. There are few cultures in our modern, human world whose philosophers deem obtuse narcissists dressed in mink robes as being wise, but why wouldn’t a race of bobcat-folk?

Continue reading Questions for Worldbuilding the Concept of Wisdom at Mythic Scribes.