Scientist Stereotypes

Biologist: Can't do math

Theoretical Physicist: Can’t do anything but math

Geologist: Rock collection addict

Military Scientist: Meet the Engineer TF2

Archeologist: Thinks about the Roman Empire more times a day than most men think about sex 

Sexologist: Thinks about sex more times a day than most men think about the Roman Empire

Chemist: A pyromaniac and/or is very fun at parties

Science Communicator: Is only fun at parties when everyone else there are nerds

Mycologist/Entomologist: They are VERY interested and passionate about gross things and THAT IS YOUR PROBLEM

Computer Scientist: gay

With regard to Kipling's "Arithmetic on the Frontier", and Gilbert & Sullivan's "Modern Major General" & "Admiral of the King's Navy", was there actually a problem in late 19th century militaries (or at least the British), of highly educated, but militarily unqualified, officers?

Up until 1871, it was entirely possible to purchase commissions in the British army and to a lesser extent in other European armies, save Prussia. Officership was a matter of social class, so there were plenty of military officers singularly unqualified to run a military.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

Greg Stoker, a former Special Operations member in the US army, analyzes the war in Palestine from a military perspective, debunking Israeli propaganda and explaining why the regime is losing its ground campaign.

I absolutely love greg.j.stoker's I/P conflict analyses on Instagram.

He's an ex US veteran who knows the ins and outs of military science, as well as US military obv.

Usually his IG vids are a few minutes long analyzing Israel's military tactics (or lack of)

He's so good at explaining and gets right into his subject matter that I didn't notice this interview of his on TMJ News Network was 30 minutes long lol

He talks about what the US military really thinks of Israel's military, years before Oct 7th. Spoiler: The US military doesn't trust Israel's info coz they know they just LIE.

Is evil military science just military science but for the countries we don't like?

(multiple red dots appear on my forehead)

i love science and I think it does more good than bad, but things were better when war was just a glorified dick measuring contest between guys from different tribes. now it's a glorified dick measuring contest with dicks so big they can end the world

Gunpowder and the Beginning of the End of Medieval Warfare

An original essay of Lucas Del Rio

           Warfare has a long history, for it is as old as civilization and perhaps has roots in the hunter-gatherer societies that predate cities and large-scale agriculture. Organized violence, whether between or within societies, is truly ancient, and it has existed at different times in every corner of the globe. Given the diversity of times and places wars have been fought, it should come as no surprise that warfare itself has been just as diverse in these countless settings. Medieval warfare, consequently, had many characteristics. For much of the medieval era, there were occasional innovations in tactics and weaponry, just as there had been in ancient times. The Greeks and Romans had developed the military formations known as the phalanx and the legion, respectively, whereas the ancient Chinese invented the crossbow. In the Middle Ages, Greek fire was invented in the 600s, bearded axes in the 1000s, longswords in the 1200s, and halberds in the 1300s, among others. No medieval military innovation, however, and perhaps no weaponry invented in any earlier eras, was as significant as gunpowder. Once gunpowder was being utilized on the battlefield, all aspects of medieval warfare, and all that preceded it, were being challenged. This story does not begin in Europe, but rather in the land known as China that was then mysterious to Europeans.

           The original form of gunpowder was black powder, which was a mixture of charcoal, potassium nitrate, and sulfur. No one knows for certain exactly when black powder was developed, but it may have been as early as the 700s. It is also unknown who the inventor was, although historians believe it was the work of alchemists. Both Europeans and the Chinese had been practicing alchemy, a pseudoscience that would eventually lead to the more serious discipline known as chemistry, for centuries prior to the discovery of gunpowder. Whereas European alchemists were interested in finding a way to artificially manufacture gold, their Chinese counterparts wished to create an elixir that would grant eternal life in the same way that there were elixirs which could cure ailments. Gunpowder was probably first created when the Tang Dynasty ruled China. In 804, a description of the process to make gunpowder was written down by Qing Xuzi. During the years that followed, the Chinese would begin to use gunpowder in fireworks, which had already existed in China for many centuries using more rudimentary compounds. Weaponry that would harness gunpowder would come next.

           It would be during the Song Dynasty that China, long one of the most advanced societies in the world, would face a genuine threat to its existence. While the Mongol conquest of China would not occur until 1234, the Chinese were already having to repel Mongols and other attackers in the 900s. Prior to using it in lethal weaponry, the Chinese found that the sound of gunpowder in paper bombs could cause panic during battles amongst enemy warriors. Later, the Chinese harnessed the explosive potential of gunpowder by launching primitive bombs with bows and arrows or catapults. They would continue to innovate by using the compound in the earliest forms of more modern weapons such as flamethrowers, grenades, mines, and even poison gas. To cement their technological advantage, China stopped exporting its chemical components in 1076. The Chinese did not cease to find new ways for their armies to effectively make use of gunpowder. After having previously only invented weapons that employed gunpowder as an explosive, the next step would be its usage as a propellant.

           By the 1100s, they were manufacturing a weapon that they called the huo qiang, which translates into a “fire lance.” These armaments were simple guns made from tubes of bamboo, later replaced by metal, that could fire arrows or the earliest bullets. However, their effectiveness was minimal compared to later firearms because they could not shoot their projectiles very long distances and had the disadvantage of releasing an excessive quantity of smoke. Some of these inventions were more valuable than others, and many, including the fire lance, were precursors to greatly improved weapons. Their attempt to forever keep this advantage exclusive would be futile, however. In 1211, Genghis Khan, a Mongol leader, invaded China and proved immensely more successful than his predecessors. While there is minimal evidence that the Mongols adopted gunpowder under his leadership, there is better documentation of them employing it after he died in 1227. Gunpowder enabled the Mongols to capture Kaifeng, then the capital of China. The usage of this new form of weaponry was clearly spreading throughout Asia. Next to come was its adoption further west.

           How gunpowder reached Europe and started to be used in its wars in unknown, although there are theories. One such belief is that Europeans learned about the new technology from the Mongols, who invaded the continent in the early 1200s. As the Arabs learned to use gunpowder around this time, possibly through trade routes, it has also been hypothesized that they were the ones who introduced it to Europe. While it might not be known who brought gunpowder to the west, the technology must have arrived by 1267, when its existence was documented by English philosopher Roger Bacon. Europeans would not take long to adopt the new weaponry, as evidenced by Italian cities in the 1300s building freshly developed forms of artillery and ammunition. Medieval European battlefields were soon lit up by detonating gunpowder, filled with clouds of smoke, and shook by the impacts of cannonballs. Archaic siege weapons such as ballistas and catapults had long been useful for the purpose of tearing down fortifications. Now, large metal cylinders ejecting round pieces ammunition at great speed could determine the outcome of a battle in the open field.

           Warfare had already been changed time and time again by military innovations. However, it destroyed the way that wars had traditionally been fought. The first change, brought upon by cannons, was the end of the importance of castles. Humans had built forts and walls for thousands of years, and medieval castles were the perfect combination of the two. Before cannons, destroying stone walls was very difficult. Attackers often had to resort to building battering rams or siege towers, both of which had to reach the walls themselves in order to be used and whose crews were vulnerable to archers. A cannon, on the other hand, could make such a wall crumble from an enormous distance. Constantinople itself fell to the “gunpowder empire” of the Ottomans in part due to such artillery.

Once there were firearms that could be carried and fired by individual soldiers, battles would never be the same. An early firearm of this kind, developed by the Spaniards in the 1400s, was the arquebus. After another century, muskets would follow. Guns like these could kill from a distance and easily penetrate metal armor. Soldiers wielding melee weapons that had dominated warfare for millennia now faced hopeless prospects in the face of volleys of bullets. A new era had begun, and wars would not again see changes so immense until the First World War.

A Review of Edward Hagerman's The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare: Ideas, Organization, and Field Command.

Edward Hagerman. The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988. The bloody four-year conflict of the American Civil War resulted in over 600,000 deaths and untold pain and suffering for those who lived through the conflict. This war not only changed American society but revolutionized the face of warfare. When applied to the Civil War’s…

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Epitome of Military Science :: Flavius Vegetius Renatus

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Robert Oppenheimer: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

As every sci fi film ever has taught us, this will totally end well.

Math

Geologist: I do more math than you might think

Chemist: I mean, chemical equations are basically mathematical equations. If you think about it (I also do math math)

Physicist: Oh, yeah, it’s all math but we just handwave it

Mathematician: YOU DO WHAT!?

Quantum Physicist: *regularly does math that is literally beyond human comprehension* *now resides in a higher plane of existence*

Engineer: If I don’t do this math correctly PEOPLE WILL DIE

Military Scientist: If I don’t do this math correctly PEOPLE WILL SURVIVE

Topologist: If I don’t do this math correctly PEOPLE WILL BE MOSTLY UNAFFECTED

Philosopher: But what even IS math, really? No seriously, what is it?

Organic Chemist: I kinda forgot how to do math, to be honest

Biologist: I literally only chose this field so I wouldn’t have to do as much math. I love stamp collecting

Biostatistician: wtf

Question re: the Battle of Hoth. There is an argument waging elsewhere about why, if X-wings can waste AT-ATs like they do in Rogue One, why not use them on Hoth. The argument is X-wings are overkill & too valuable to risk. But they actually used X wing pilots like Luke & Wedge (and Janson, according to the X wing novels) in the speeders. My uncle, years ago, told me pilots are more valuable than planes. Would real military risk pilots in subpar aircraft, to save the more valuable fighter-craft?

Tangentially, would the military refuse to risk expensive assets due to their cost just to save a bunch of infantry? The analogy used was it's not worth risking a B-2 bomber compared to a handful of infantry. Also claiming neither Russia nor Ukraine would be willing to throw away a 6h generation fighter just to cover a few companies worth of infantry. What's the reality of the thinking? I could see a rare strategic asset over troops, but do they make calculations on strictly financial costs?

Your uncle, unfortunately, is looking at a false dichotomy. A pilot without a jet is an overtrained soldier, a jet without a skilled pilot is a glorified paperweight. The pilot and aircraft are a weapons system only when together and must be evaluated as one coherent unit. Moreover, this is driven primarily by industrial capacity and training capability. An industrial nation with many factories but few skilled pilots will have a bottleneck in pilot training, while a country that cannot source components for avionics systems will find themselves constrained in new airframe construction in a way that they may not be with pilot training.

As for dispatching a B-2 to save a bunch of infantry, you have to look at the environment. In an area with dangerous air defense, sending a B-2 to save a bunch of infantry might just end up with a downed B-2 and more dead, wounded, and captured, which is completely counter-productive. As with all things, strategic considerations do consider the long war over the immediate costs. Neither Russia nor Ukraine want to lose a company of skilled troops if they can save them, but something else might be even harder to replace, in which case, that help won't come.

Sadly, that's part of the calculus of war and something that all soldiers (including myself), have to reckon with: you are a political tool, your life is nothing but a hash mark on an asset sheet, and it will be spent to achieve an objective.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

Mech 02 by MrTomLong

A Lancer pilot for one of my Patrons!

Call sign "Crosswire"

cool links you wanna click on to help me out