The very many questions-not-worth-their-own-thread question thread XXV

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Oxen would be great-great-great-great-great grandaddy! Horses have been far more useful than oxen for ploughing fields for the better part of the last thousand years.

 

[Borachio]

I'm not sure that that's true at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ox

 

[Farm Boy]

Well, I suppose an ox would be cheaper than hiring the custom combiner. But then I'd have an ox. Ew.

 

[Borachio]

The trouble (one of the troubles) with oxen is that one ox isn't probably much use for normal things like ploughing/harvesting.

You need a whole bunch of them.

 

[Flying Pig]

Oxen would be great-great-great-great-great grandaddy! Horses have been far more useful than oxen for ploughing fields for the better part of the last thousand years.

Sorry? The whole reason that horses have historically been an elite animal is that they're too expensive and fragile to use for ploughing. Oxen are stronger and more difficult to break - horses are actually remarkably easy to permanently damage, as well as far more expensive than most farmers have been able to afford.

 

[Mouthwash]

Are there "self-hating" black people who think that white people are racially superior?

 

[Dachs]

Are there "self-hating" black people who think that white people are racially superior?

"is there a real-life clayton bigsby?"

 

[Joecoolyo]

"is there a real-life clayton bigsby?"

 

[Hygro]

Cut it open and count the rings?

!!

 

[W|M]

Are there "self-hating" black people who think that white people are racially superior?

Leo_Felton. Frank Collin and Dan Burros were Jewish Nazis

 

[Mouthwash]

Leo_Felton. Frank Collin and Dan Burros were Jewish Nazis

I'm well aware that self-hating Jews exist. I'm asking about self-hating blacks.

 

[Borachio]

Isn't Leo Felton half black?

Hmm. I don't know. Does that mean he's wholly white or wholly black? I'm not up on these technicalities.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I'm not sure that that's true at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ox

Sorry? The whole reason that horses have historically been an elite animal is that they're too expensive and fragile to use for ploughing. Oxen are stronger and more difficult to break - horses are actually remarkably easy to permanently damage, as well as far more expensive than most farmers have been able to afford.

Um, excuse me? Horses make excellent draft animals. I watch the Amish plough their fields every Spring and Fall using teams of draft horses. It's one of the coolest things you'll ever see.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_horse

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plough

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_collar

From the time of invention of the horse collar, horses became extremely valuable for agricultural success and for pulling heavy vehicles. When the horse was harnessed with the horse collar, the horse could provide a work effort of 50% more foot-pounds per second because of greater speed than the ox, as well as having generally greater endurance and ability to work more hours in a day. The horse collar was important in the development of Europe, as the replacement of oxen with horses for ploughing boosted the economy, reduced reliance on subsistence farming, and allowed the development of early industry, education, and the arts in the rise of market-based towns.

 

[Flying Pig]

Interesting. Any idea of the prevalence of those in Europe over time? I'll admit that the timeframe in my head was sort of Classical and Medieval, while draft horses as we know them only really came about in the relatively modern period, but that doesn't exclude smaller breeds being used to pull things at all. Shire horses are massive things, I mean.

 

[Borachio]

Yeah. The horse collar was a significant development.

A lot depends on the type of ground you're trying to plough, how rich the farmer is, and so forth.

I do know horses can and have been used for ploughing. What I doubted was your suggestion that oxen hadn't been in widespread use for the last 1000 years.

You see, if you're into dairy farming perhaps (I'm no agri-expert by any means), what are you going to do with all those bull calves? You could eat them, or you could use them for draft. Or you could do both. Provided you castrate them, naturally.

 

[Cutlass]

Interesting. Any idea of the prevalence of those in Europe over time? I'll admit that the timeframe in my head was sort of Classical and Medieval, while draft horses as we know them only really came about in the relatively modern period, but that doesn't exclude smaller breeds being used to pull things at all. Shire horses are massive things, I mean.

European peasants also had the problem of affording good draft horses. At least until the early modern era.

Brand new tires, unless they've been aged in storage, which is expensive since storage isn't free, are softer than tires that have been around long enough to catch some use. Thus, brand new tires are indeed more likely to fail than older ones, up to the point where a tire is old enough to simply be worn out. You have this problem all the time with the front tires on combines these days.



After the combine pulls in the standing stalks with the head, it leaves behind stumps that it immediately then drives over. In the last 5-10 years, those stalks have gotten enough stronger that they destroy new tires unless they've been hardened. Took a couple years for the implement dealers to figure out/start holding in storage those tires so that once you blow one, you don't then wear out 3 more brand new ones before the season is over. It makes each tire more expensive now, but it's better than chain replacing them!

Why haven't the tire manufacturers taken this into account and changed the tires that they make?

 

[Phrossack]

Why are crossbows generally forbidden from use at archery ranges? Are they permissible to use at firearm ranges?

 

[Farm Boy]

They have now, they ship "harder" new from the store than they used to. But have you priced those things recently? You aren't going to pitch the old ones that were new and too soft. You're going to have stuck them in a corner somewhere until they got harder.

 

[Antilogic]

"is there a real-life clayton bigsby?"

That was pretty classy.

 

[Hygro]

Interesting. Any idea of the prevalence of those in Europe over time? I'll admit that the timeframe in my head was sort of Classical and Medieval, while draft horses as we know them only really came about in the relatively modern period, but that doesn't exclude smaller breeds being used to pull things at all. Shire horses are massive things, I mean.

ooh ooh I read this two summers ago. I forget when, but sometime in the 1100s-1300s horses had been bred stronger and stronger to the point that they way out-powered oxen. Oxen were much cheaper though, and were much stronger than many horses- most horses from before then.