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2021-02-25, 10:51 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Serini's diary, some fridge logic
There's also very little incentive to properly map out a desert. After all it's vast expanses of nothingness. Get the roads and places where you can find water right, the rest isn't nearly as important.
Forum Wisdom
Mage avatar by smutmulch & linklele.
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2021-02-25, 10:59 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2015
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Re: Serini's diary, some fridge logic
I suppose that there is something about a 24h (or better a 23:59:58, to take in account the time needed to turn it) hourglass that I can't grasp, because it seems a decent solution, albeit you need a person ready to turn it as soon as the sands drops completely.
Even with an additional error of 2 secs every time added always in the same direction (which seems kind of a stretch) it needs a full month before accumulating one minute of error.
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2021-02-25, 11:00 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Serini's diary, some fridge logic
I feel like people describing the mapmaking challenges that the western continent might face are neglecting to account for the fact that people can fly, teleport, and otherwise use magic. Heck, "find the path" is a 6th level cleric spell, so its not at all out of the question that Soon would be able to access it if he so desired.
“Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I'm not a pious hermit, I haven't done only good in my life. But if I'm to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”
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2021-02-25, 11:08 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2018
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2021-02-25, 02:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Serini's diary, some fridge logic
Last edited by KorvinStarmast; 2021-02-25 at 02:51 PM.
Avatar by linklele. How Teleport Worksa. Malifice (paraphrased):
Rulings are not 'House Rules.' Rulings are a DM doing what DMs are supposed to do.
b. greenstone (paraphrased):
Agency means that they {players} control their character's actions; you control the world's reactions to the character's actions.
Second known member of the Greyview Appreciation Society
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2021-02-25, 03:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2012
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- Waterworld
Re: Serini's diary, some fridge logic
Serini probbably wrote the real co-ordinates of Girard's Gate in her coded diary because it's hard to remember where in a vast blasted desert in the middle of a war-torn continent you left the darn thing.
Meanwhile there's less need for her to go into depth to herself about how she's rigged her own Gate
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2021-02-28, 10:36 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2015
Re: Serini's diary, some fridge logic
This is a poor answer. The problem is accurately measuring fractions. Measuring exactly how many days have passed is irrelevant to the issue at hand, measuring precisely the differences in time between specific events (noon, or sunset, or sunrise, for example) is what matters. If all you've got are tools to measure the time at your current location (such as anything based on the sun), then you lack any means to obtain the time it is currently in /another location/, the comparison with which is necessary to establish distance in terms of longitude.
I've studied in geography, with many classes relating to GIS and arpentry. These guys have been doing their job, with pretty fair accuracy, since way before the GPS. Never meant to say any random schmuk could do it. But an initiate with the proper training and a few basic tools? That's another issue. See: Eratosthenes.
This is a far more satisfying answer, which I find quite plausible.
That said, I would add a nuance that the ability to reliably tell longitude on the fly, and for an extended period of time, would require more needed for naval travel than mapping, which, I'd expect, could do a fair enough job with much cruder tools.
After all, we do see maps being made since way before. The Cantino Planisphere dates from 1502, and it's pretty accurate.
It also all brings into question just how big the thing we want to map is. Also, how much divergence there is between the true north and the magnetic north in the OotS-verse. And if their planet is even a sphere at all. I think we've seen it as a sphere, but I'm not really sure we have. I know my own campaign setting is set on a flat world with a great ice barrier. Others are as well.
If the desert is large, sparsely populated, and of little interest to the educated urban elites, than that would greatly explain why it's poorly mapped. More than technical difficulties.
That brings the same issue as my first comment. It's not about measuring a precise 24h period, it's about measuring the difference with a precise 24h period.Attention LotR fans
Spoiler: LotRThe scouring of the Shire never happened. That's right. After reading books I, II, and III, I stopped reading when the One Ring was thrown into Mount Doom. The story ends there. Nothing worthwhile happened afterwards. Middle-Earth was saved.
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2021-03-01, 10:26 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2018
Re: Serini's diary, some fridge logic
Agreed! Fortunately there are a lot of objects in the sky that aren’t the sun, and we can determine the time based on those objects instead.
Keep in mind that mechanical clocks are helpful as ways to determine your longitude quickly, and they’re helpful when viewing conditions aren’t ideal. But we’ve been doing longitude calculations for literally 2000 years before the invention of a reliable clock.
But even after the invention of accurate clocks, dedicated surveying crews who were charged with accuracy still calibrated their clocks to astronomical observations.
And according to Wikipedia, stellar time today is still based on astronomical observations, not on clocks (stellar time being based on the angle of some far off quasars observed with radio telescopes or whatever)Last edited by Dion; 2021-03-01 at 11:09 AM.
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2021-03-01, 04:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2011
Re: Serini's diary, some fridge logic
While the Polynesians have a more complex system, the European version was essentially to aim for the lattitude of your goal then sail on it until you hit land. Once currents had been mapped the regular routes could be refined to make use of them, but otherwise, longitude remained an educated guess until a British guy invented the escapement thingy that makes watches tick. And then the Royal Navy screwed him out of the reward they promised for inventing a reliable method of finding longitude at sea.
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2021-03-02, 02:53 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2009
Re: Serini's diary, some fridge logic
You're on the right track with "astronomical" - the answer is "celestial navigation". Eclipses may be rare, but there's a sun in the sky every day, as well as the moon, and the stars, which move in trackable and predictable patterns. Historically, navigators had excellent understanding of the celestial bodies, as their lives depended on it. You'd be amazed at how advanced even ancient navigators were and how much they had managed to extrapolate about the movement of the Earth and heavens without advanced scientific tools.
Incidentally, this is why the old myth about "everyone believed the world was flat until brave Christopher Columbus proved it was round" is complete nonsense. Sailors knew the world was round - they relied on that to be able to accurately navigate the ocean using the sun and stars. Maybe common land-bound peasants might not know, but anyone who sailed the seas and anyone who was educated knew the Earth was a globe.
In fact, Eratosthenes, a Greek scholar all the way back in 2nd century BC, calculated the circumference of the Earth and the tilt of the Earth's axis, using nothing but survey data and solar measurements. And his estimate was really accurate - off by just about 1 or 2% from the real figure. This was 200 years before Christ. Over the following millenia, our understanding of math and science and the movement of the heavens would grow, building upon that ancient knowledge.
And then 1,700 years after Eratosthenes died, Columbus came along and decided that he - and all the science and math confirming his calculations - was wrong. Not just a tiny bit wrong - amazingly, hugely wrong. Columbus' bold, grand, paradigm-shifting idea wasn't that you could reach Asia by sailing west around the globe. Everyone knew that was theoretically possible, but everyone also knew that with the shipbuilding and sailing technology of the day, any expedition would run out of water and food long before they reached Asia (and then presumably die in unpleasant ways). There was a technological and practical limit to how far their ships could travel in open seas, and Asia lay well beyond that limit.
But Columbus said NO. That wasn't true at all. HIS bold idea was that the world was way smaller than you think, and a man can definitely reach Asia by sailing west without losing their mind and eating the crew. And I ... I will be that man. And so, after several unsuccessful attempts at raising funding from less credulous audiences, Columbus delivered his 15th-century TED talk to the court of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain - and the rest is history.
Of course, Columbus was actually incredibly wrong about his estimations - by the time his ships washed up what's now Haiti, his crew was already starving and on the verge of mutiny. And modern-day science has confirmed that Haiti is not, in fact, in Asia.
As for how wrong - in Spain, Columbus boldly declared that the distance from the Canary Islands (off the coast of Morocco) to the coast of Japan was no less than 2,400 nautical miles. For a comparison, this is roughly the distance from Miami to Vancouver. The actual distance from the Canary Islands to Japan going westwards is about 10,000 nautical miles. He was misled not only by his very incorrect estimations of the size of the planet, but also by some mistranslations and very optimistic readings of maps and other explorers' notes. In fact, it is actually significantly shorter to go eastward around the globe from the Canary Islands to Japan - about 6,700 nautical miles.
Sometimes, it's better to be lucky than good.Last edited by skim172; 2021-03-02 at 02:55 AM.
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2021-03-02, 01:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-03-02, 02:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2015
Re: Serini's diary, some fridge logic
[Insert honorific of your choice], that was really an education. I will not take it's contents as given, but the very idea that Columbus dared an expedition that was considered a fools errand by people with better understanding of earths dimension (and, it turns out, unsufficient knowledge on it's geography) just because he was in error, well, if it is not the truth it is well told anyway! I shall need to read it up.
He's was bit Elan like then, believing in the good outcome of a very heroic but stupid decision, or am I the only one getting this vibe out of it?
On the strip:
So, Checkovs Serini appeared at least, at least some of her. And I find myself angry of her lying to and beating the paladins. I am very disappointed in me. I took lengths to annoy every paladin or monk warrior that I encountered in my roleplaying days (even played one myself, and was constantly amused by my corset of behaviour rules), and now I take emotionally their side? The giant has made me root for paladins. He IS a awesome storyteller.Last edited by Onkeldata; 2021-03-02 at 02:45 PM.
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2021-03-02, 02:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
Re: Serini's diary, some fridge logic
To misquote Pratchett, most people didn't care what shape the Earth was as long as it contained, somewhere, their next meal. But to those that were in a position to know because they were not subsistence farmers, yes, the number of proofs that the Earth is round are multitude. The most obvious being that the Earth's shadow on the moon during eclipses is round. But also: people with views to the sea and decent eyesight can just make out the flag of an incoming ship at the top of the mast before they see the hull. And if you've travelled minimally, you can see that stars are different at different latitudes.
Nitpick: we aren't actually sure of this, because he measured it in stadia... and we aren't sure how far that was to the Greeks (or rather, we know it depended on the greek Foot measure, which could vary by location). There is a lot of circular references when tracking down the conversion value, and the one that makes Eratosthenes work is actually derived backwards from his own measurements, re-measured in modern times.
He wasn't far off (nothing close to Columbus' hubris), but it is likely the error is actually larger than 2%.
Oh, no, it is absolutely true. It is the reason why the Portuguese king sent him packing when he pitched the idea to him. Heck, if Castille hadn't had a surplus of able bodied men, having just completed a major war, it is likely they wouldn't have bit either.
Grey WolfLast edited by Grey_Wolf_c; 2021-03-02 at 02:47 PM.
Interested in MitD? Join us in MitD's thread.There is a world of imagination
Deep in the corners of your mind
Where reality is an intruder
And myth and legend thrive
Ceterum autem censeo Hilgya malefica est
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2021-03-02, 03:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Serini's diary, some fridge logic
Since Columbus rejected the scientific consensus of his time to pick the theory that suited his own agenda because he knew better than everyone else, ironically that might suggest he'd be a flat earther now.
ungelic is us
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2021-03-02, 04:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2015
Re: Serini's diary, some fridge logic
More like a *small* earther. Hey, let's take this as an initiative to found our own conspiration! Let's call it "order of the small world"
I mean, everybody keeps telling us, it is a small world, right? We keep seeing known persons at the unlikeliest places, right? Astronauts keep calling it a marble, Armstrong said, a pea. THIS IS THE PROOF! WE BEEN LIED TO! SANON WILL... (collapsing while frothing and searching for my horned pelt hat)
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2021-03-02, 05:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Serini's diary, some fridge logic
Oh, are we crapping on Colombus? That man did not deserve his luck and it infuriates me. He died believing that the Caribpbean was Japan. Columbia and Colombia should change their names.
The story I know (which may sadly not be true) was that Erathostene used in his calculations the distance between Alexandria and some other city which was measured by counting the steps a camel took. Apparently measuring distance by watching a camel was a real job back then and that is marvelous to me.Forum Wisdom
Mage avatar by smutmulch & linklele.
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2021-03-02, 07:21 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2009
Re: Serini's diary, some fridge logic
Yes, very true. However, on the flip side, because we don't know exactly what the length of stadia Eratosthenes was, there is a non-zero possibility that Eratosthenes was absolutely spot-on correct, down to the micron.
*conspiratorial whisper* The Turtle moves.
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2021-03-02, 08:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2007
Re: Serini's diary, some fridge logic
Maybe. Maybe not. On top of all the other terrible crimes he was guilty of, he was also a known liar. On his first trip, he kept two log books, one public one where he intentionally lied about the distance they travelled each day, and a private one with the real distance. So it is possible he knew full well that he was full of crap (there has been suggestions that he might have known about the Americas from tales about the viking colonies; I'm not sure how much hard evidence there is for this though).
GWInterested in MitD? Join us in MitD's thread.There is a world of imagination
Deep in the corners of your mind
Where reality is an intruder
And myth and legend thrive
Ceterum autem censeo Hilgya malefica est
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2021-03-02, 11:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2015
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Re: Serini's diary, some fridge logic
I knew that when I was about five years old. At some place run by Walt Disney. There's even a theme song for that group. There are some authors, Mark Kurlansky is one, who think that Basque cod fishermen had already discovered the grand banks but kept it a trade secret, and that Columbus was in possession of a stolen or copied log book from one such ship. Not sure how strong the evidence is for that, but it's plausible, and it would fit into Cristobol Colon's penchant for presenting whatever story he thought he could get away with telling.
Last edited by KorvinStarmast; 2021-03-02 at 11:07 PM.
Avatar by linklele. How Teleport Worksa. Malifice (paraphrased):
Rulings are not 'House Rules.' Rulings are a DM doing what DMs are supposed to do.
b. greenstone (paraphrased):
Agency means that they {players} control their character's actions; you control the world's reactions to the character's actions.
Second known member of the Greyview Appreciation Society