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I'd never, ever, use Wiki for research...there is absloutely no trust in that site for not having every single fact on there compleately falisifed or even slanted by someone else instead of just reading a ton of books, which is also good weight training. My teachers are not even alloing any webpages on our bibilographies anyway...

t.s.a.o wrote:I'd never, ever, use Wiki for research...there is absloutely no trust in that site for not having every single fact on there compleately falisifed or even slanted by someone else instead of just reading a ton of books, which is also good weight training. My teachers are not even alloing any webpages on our bibilographies anyway...

As long as you have an appropriate time stamp to avoid versioning problems, I don't see how Tony Snow's blog is any less worthy of bibliography inclusion than his book. I can see why they wouldn't want an explosion of cites where the students are citing each other but there is an awful lot published on the web that is 1st class reputable and accurate.

t.s.a.o wrote:I'd never, ever, use Wiki for research...there is absloutely no trust in that site for not having every single fact on there compleately falisifed or even slanted by someone else instead of just reading a ton of books, which is also good weight training. My teachers are not even alloing any webpages on our bibilographies anyway...

See http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 8900a.html

Besides, the best articles are extremely well-referenced and footnoted, much moreso than encyclopedias usually are, so in those cases there's nothing to your worry. There's no reason to trust it any less than any other well-referenced source.

Doink wrote:Speaking of which, how much do the humans know about rac'conan laguages? Or anything about the rac'conans, for that matter?

Since they used to trade with them only a little more than a century ago, they must know about them. And if trade was happening and neither side required a special education to understand the other, their languages must be mutually intelligible. (Remember that the Rac'conans picked up human terms for lux technology.)

reignbow wrote:@Straw:
I consider it unlikely that rac cona are taught human languages; isolationism seems in full bloom and any move in that direction would be difficult to justify. Heck, until a few decades ago, people here barely learned passable english. Quentyn will either discover that humans and rac cona surprisingly share a language (but not an alphabet) or he will need a translator - who would need to be taken into confidence at least partially. If I was him, I'd maybe stop by the dwarves first; they would have news on developments in the human world and they already know about the seven villages.

@Catherine_Puce:
Rubber can stink, that'll be it. Getting a new pump shouldn't be too difficult; they are routinely manufactured, and if money trouble keeps Quentyn from getting one on his own, he need only ask the surpemely grateful people of Freeman Downs for a little sponsoring. Most of them probably feel that they owe him big time.
BTW, that french line... "especially since he probably doesn't know how it all works"? Not quite sure how it's connected to the rest of the post...

As to languages--- the settlers who came to Sanctuary all those years ago came from all over the known world. Most likely the common tongue started out as a "trade" or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_language"> pidgin language, </a> and then became established as a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_language">creole language</a> of the Seven Villages.

In short, the racconans speak a somewhat outdated trade-language, which should facilitate communication with outside races.

And they're right about gases. Hydrogen is most commonly used-- though most people don't know that ammonia, methane, and even neon gas can be used for lifting gas (though they only have a fraction of the lifting power of hydrogen or helium.) Steam, theoretically, can be used as well-- but condensation quickly removes its lifting power.

There are several methods of producing hydrogen gas besides electrolysis of water.... exposing metals to various acids, for instance, or spraying water across red-hot iron. (dropping aluminum foil into liquid Drano will do it, too, though I doubt the racconans have either.)Heaven only knows what sort of jury-rigged gas-producer our favorite village wizard used, but he probably had an eye towards milking hydrogen from as many sources as possible.

get a cow and large field fo grass and you get plenty of methane.

Acolyte wrote:

shyal_malkes wrote:I don't know how reliable Wikipedia really is

Wikipedia is about as reliable as the Britannica, especially on scientific subjects.

Actually, Wikipedia's OODA loop is much, much quicker than Britannica. It starts from a much lower base of accuracy and completeness but goes through generations so quickly that after awhile it can get better than traditional encyclopedias. So Wikipedia essentially gets to be better but it's very much dependent on how much time has passed and how many contributors have improved things.

Wikipedia is multilingual. The quality in other languages is much less because there are fewer contributors.

TMLutas wrote:Actually, Wikipedia's OODA loop is much, much quicker than Britannica. (snip)

In theory, yes. But the actual error count reported in the Nature study shows them to be in fact merely comparable, as matters stood when the study was conducted.

WOOT RH is on a roll yeah.

Acolyte wrote:

TMLutas wrote:Actually, Wikipedia's OODA loop is much, much quicker than Britannica. (snip)

In theory, yes. But the actual error count reported in the Nature study shows them to be in fact merely comparable, as matters stood when the study was conducted.

oooooookay, so how reliable is britanica, I've never used it.

all I know is the websters dictionary in book form (and we've got a big book)

shyal_malkes wrote:oooooookay, so how reliable is britanica, I've never used it.

all I know is the websters dictionary in book form (and we've got a big book)

The Encyclopedia Britannica has been a standard reference since the 18th century, and is something of a gold standard among encyclopedias. In other words, no one will fault you if you cite it. If you want details, see the Nature article I linked to earlier.

Incidentally, many Wikipedia articles are based on the most recent edition of the Britannica to have fallen into the public domain. This is from 1911 IIRC, and so is obsolete in many areas, but still contains much useful information.

An encyclopedia is not a dictionary. Printed encyclopedias aren't as common as they used to be, but they span many volumes. The current edition of the Britannica has 32.

Ok let me put my 2 cent in on the journal. There is a code in the journal which will be very important for the quest that Quentyn will be able to decifer. It will be in the pages that Quentyn #1 wrote and will only become apparent when the pages of the Scout and Guardsmen handbook are removed giving Quentyn the location of the Artifacts. Why else would the Journal be written and left to the next Questor of Freeman Downs.

maxgoof wrote:
They are probably using hydrogen. Hydrogen is not nearly as explosive a gas as it is made out to be, is far easier to make than helium, and has close to four times the lifting capacity.

Serious, though common, misconception. The lifting capacity of hydrogen is only about 8% better than helium. Lift is the difference between the density of the light gas and the density of normal air; for Helium, this is 28 - 4, or 24 g/mole. For Hydrogen (H2, not monoatomic hydrogen) it is 28-2=26 g/mole.

It is easy to manufacture, though, and we have textev that the Raconnans understand enough electricity to do electrolysis. Helium requires a uranium or thorium mine, and they don't have that (or they'd be using the metal as metal).

Kerry Skydancer wrote:Helium requires a uranium or thorium mine, and they don't have that (or they'd be using the metal as metal).

Uranium or Thorium are low enough ratiation to be safe to be around (and yes, they probably WOULD know the dangers if they had samples), and have good enough mechanical and melting properties to be on a par with iron, lead, or copper as working materials??
I don't know anything about the above for sure, but I am always glad to learn.

I agree with the opinion that Quentyn 1. always filled in his journal after returning back home. But maybe he had two journals? One back home for safekeeping and one along which was filled during the journey and then copied to the other journal. Like the journey journal was was filled with general sentences descripting the situation and footnotes then the details were written to the journal back home.

The talk about which sources are better since they got it from who, got me to thinking... Who wrote the original "The Scout and Guardsman's Handbook?" If Q of R's journal pre-dates the first edition of the Handbook, it could set off a whole other legal battle about who's the real author of the very-much-in-circulation Handbook. A potentially profitable one. Profitable enough to buy back the land? Who knows?

Links to other mentions of the Handbook would be helpful, I'm just not awake enough at the moment to do it.

Also: I wouldn't put it past Q of R to be hiding some kind of secret message in his journal.

Kerry Skydancer wrote:Helium requires a uranium or thorium mine

uhm... helium is not obtained by nuclear fission...

Yes, an uranium atom decays into a helium nucleus and thorium. However, the weight ratio between helium and uranium is 0.0168:1, so if you had one ton of pure uranium, you might theoretically get 16-17 kilograms (1.3 qr) of helium. the problem is that there are no deposits of pure uranium... so you'd have to wear away whole mountains in order to get a few kilograms of helium by using that method... and you'd be stuck with a huge heap of highly radioactive byproducts. The same thing goes for thorium.

In our world helium is obtained by cooling down natural gas until all gases except helium and hydrogen are liquified. Remove those liquids (mostly liquid nitrogen), cool down further, voilà: liquid helium.

Quick note from the spelling gestapo: camouflage is mispelled in this strip.

Acolyte wrote:

TMLutas wrote:Actually, Wikipedia's OODA loop is much, much quicker than Britannica. (snip)

In theory, yes. But the actual error count reported in the Nature study shows them to be in fact merely comparable, as matters stood when the study was conducted.

Thus the importance of timestamping web resources. They can change, rot, relocate in a way that needs to be acommodated.

shyal_malkes wrote:

Acolyte wrote:

TMLutas wrote:Actually, Wikipedia's OODA loop is much, much quicker than Britannica. (snip)

In theory, yes. But the actual error count reported in the Nature study shows them to be in fact merely comparable, as matters stood when the study was conducted.

oooooookay, so how reliable is britanica, I've never used it.

all I know is the websters dictionary in book form (and we've got a big book)

Britannica is considered a very reliable english language encyclopedia. It's probably the best out there in the language for the dead tree set.