Forum: Author Hangout

I don't know, they certainly loved Napoleon.

Contrary to myth, Napoleon was of normal height for his time. The whole myth of him being short started because he predates international standardization of weights and measures and at the time french feet and inches were longer than English feet and inches.

The English press made a big deal about his height without realizing the need for unit conversion.

ETA: Cite: https://www.thoughtco.com/was-napoleon-bonaparte-short-1221108

Contrary to myth, Napoleon was of normal height for his time. The whole myth of him being short started because he predates international standardization of weights and measures and at the time french feet and inches were longer than English feet and inches.

So you're saying France was Texas before Texas was Texas?

So you're saying France was Texas before Texas was Texas?

Texas was never Texas in the way you mean. If we cut Alaska into two equally sized states, Texas would become the third largest state.

Global warming regardless of cause may shrink Alaska to the second largest state. :)

Unlikely All that land bound ice actually pushes the land down. If the ice melts, sea level rises, but so does the land in around 90% of Alaska.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2013/09/rising-seas-ice-melt-new-shoreline-maps/

Doesn't look like Alaska would lose enough land for Texas to get much closer in land area, particularly as it also loses land in the deal.

How do rising seas cause the land to rise?

They don't, but rising land and rising seas are both caused by shrinking of land bound ice masses.

Rock and earth don't float

Yes, they do. They are floating on molten rock and metal in the deeper layers of the earth.

Glaciers and ice sheets are so massive that when they sit on dry land, they push the Earth's crust down into the mantle. When they melt, that weight is taken off the crust and it floats/rises back up.

Much of the land in the Northern half of North America is still rising from the melting of the ice sheets at the end of the last ice age.

Much of the land in the Northern half of North America is still rising from the melting of the ice sheets at the end of the last ice age.

Mostly around the Hudson Bay at this point, as that is the postulated cause of the "gravity anomaly" detected in that region. (It is slightly lower than the rest of the planet)

How do rising seas cause the land to rise? Rock and earth don't float (dirt does, but only below a certain quantity). I can see it now, the mountains in Alaska will be bobbing along in the waters covering the state. 'D

"Glacial Rebound" is a known thing, and can take a very long time to occur, as it involves miles of rock(which doesn't tend to move quickly). However, Antarctica is probably the only place on earth at present that would be likely to experience more than a few inches of change should its ice cover disappear.

After all, the Earth's crust does "float" above a molten mantle filled with magma. ;)

Understood, but that hardly occurs within a single lifetime,

Neither does sea level rise from melting glaciers.

Note: The current rate of sea level rise is around 2-3 mm per year, that's only about 1 foot per century, and it has been in that range since the 1800s.

and it's still about 40 feet down from where it was about 500 years ago.

Doubtful, the Little Ice Age wasn't even at its halfway point then. Some of those points you're referencing against likely experienced glacial rebound in the intervening centuries.

Now if we're discussing water levels circa 1000AD, or even a thousand years earlier, that's different. But once more, glacial rebound from the last major ice age is going to have screwed with things to varying degrees.

The most clearly identified areas I know of are on the British isles, one is on the west coast

Land can rise (or fall) for reasons other than glacial rebound.

New Orleans is sinking due to ground water extraction.

Venice is sinking from land subsidence due to compaction of the sediments on which it was built.

Land can get pushed up by tectonic forces and glaciers pushing the land down in one area can cause the land to bulge upward elsewhere.

Just because there is a water-line 40ft up a coastal cliff doesn't mean the ocean used to be 40 ft higher.

Perhaps sea level was 20ft higher and the land was 20ft lower.

Or perhaps it's just a high tide mark. The level difference between high and low tides varies over time and with changing geography. The difference between high and low tide in the bay of Fundy in Canada is 16.3 meters. The tides at Anchorage Alaska are 12.2 meters. It's possible that those areas in the British Isles you are thinking of used to experience more extreme tides than they do now.

It does when the drawings and plans for the castle show the gateway as being at sea level and what is now farmed fields was under water back then.

You should have led with that then.

It's not a likely candidate for such a large change over just a few centuries, but glacier related land elevation changes can effect very large areas relatively evenly.

One thing to check would be if sea ports/coastal castles on Mainland Europe of a similar age are also now further above sea level than indicated by historical records.

If not, that would be an indication that issues you point to on the British Isles are due to land rising rather than sea level drop.

yup and the earth is flat, google "flat earth movement"

I'm under the impression that there is an unstated agreement to not nit-pic the typos and other errors posters make in their posts.

Yeah, but I generally consider that courtesy suspended when they're going off on other peoples'. Glass houses and all that.

If he wants to use exclamation marks in a rant, I don't see that as a problem since they are meant to indicate strong emotion.

In the admittedly small sample (two) of 4041's posts that I've read, every single sentence ends in at least one exclamation mark. That's excessive by any measure.

4041 never claimed to read Cmsix. Instead, he referred to all the authors to write that their stories "are inspired by the works of cmsix", which is like announcing, "just like him, I have absolutely no intention of finishing this story, so don't get your hopes up".

Yeah, okay... I SHOULD have been more clear and said, "cmsix and the other writers who emulate him". So, if 4041's claims are valid, then so is my, "don't like it, STFU and don't read it".

I'd also like some verification (from the grave I guess" that he " no intention of finishing" his stories and/or that anyone who has more than one story going at the same time is some sort of evil, conniving poopoo doodoo head.

Just a little background, based upon my fragile memory and things I've read others post.

cmsix had finished posting a number of those stories currently bearing the yellow stripe.

He decided to revise them, and rather than leaving them up and posting the revised version separately, he pulled them and started posting from the beginning.

This wouldn't have been a problem, except that his health took a serious turn for the worse, resulting in his being in a care facility with no computer/Internet access, so no posting, even if he'd been up to it.

Yes, some of them had never been completed, but a number of those currently incomplete, are because he pulled the complete versions prior to finishing posting the revised versions, and then his health prevented him from completing the revisions.

That's the lesson to take from this; don't pull the original version until after completing posting the revised version, if the changes are sweeping enought that you can't just replace existing chapters as you go.