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[Graknorke]

Objective, is this you?

[timferius]

Canadian front doors at least tend to be rather solid, to help keep winter/moose out.

Yeah but our interior doors are hallow.

That's actually written into most building codes, for the specific reason that they're easy to break down in an emergency such as a fire. If the door is stuck (far from rare in a damaged building), having a fireman or resident being readily able to smash it down without resorting to an axe (which most non-firemen would have no reason to have on hand) saves lives.

Huh, weird, but makes sense. It's funny because in commercial buildings you need a lot of really sturdy interior doors for fire separation.

[BullDog]

Also, sauce on the Gabe thing, please? And what game was it?

Here's an article on it.

[Lord Shonus]

Canadian front doors at least tend to be rather solid, to help keep winter/moose out.

Yeah but our interior doors are hallow.

That's actually written into most building codes, for the specific reason that they're easy to break down in an emergency such as a fire. If the door is stuck (far from rare in a damaged building), having a fireman or resident being readily able to smash it down without resorting to an axe (which most non-firemen would have no reason to have on hand) saves lives.

Huh, weird, but makes sense. It's funny because in commercial buildings you need a lot of really sturdy interior doors for fire separation.

Commercial's a bit different. They're much more likely to have expensive sprinkler systems, are far larger (which translates to much sturdier construction), are much more heavily compartmentalized by volume, and, most importantly, the vast majority of people in a commercial building will be awake at any given time (leading to much faster response to any given fire). In that sort of situation, you save more lives by slowing down the fire than you do by ensuring easy escape from any given room.

[Sinistar]

Also, sauce on the Gabe thing, please? And what game was it?

Here's an article on it.

Oh, Paranautical Activity, eh?

Well, I hope, despite everything, this marks a start of a new, less drama-fueled existence for this game.

[Neonivek]

To admit though quite a few commercial buildings are pretty much impossible to burn down. The most you can hope for is some interior damage.

I remember that there was a fire at my school once and the fire fighters actually came AFTER, they didn't put it out, and all that occurred was that one room's stuff was on fire and that was pretty much it. (well ok the school's plexiglass melted too)

It was interesting to think about because there were fire drills... but there wasn't as much a need to really exercise it.

----

Also what is with fiction writers and making science and the supernatural complete contradictions?

Science is about quantifying and understanding phenomena and over time things seem much less supernatural... It isn't some sort of banishment tablet.

As if Science is so flimsy that the existence of, lets say, fairies suddenly invalidates science.

I miss the days when Wizards were also scientists and there simply was no contradiction... DAMN it Renaissance!

[hops]

I guess I still haven't outgrown the idea that non-heterosexual people are exceedingly rare.

Then again, they pretty much are in real life.

Tell that to all the people hitting on me at school...

Well. I guess the difference is you're attractive.

[Neonivek]

Ok I have to ask this because it is bugging me with all the politics.

When was "The South" a thing in US history? When did people start to consider them distinct entities?

Because I am getting contradictory information where one says that they only existed during the Civil War and another says that the idea existed far longer and wasn't codified until then. Both explanations are equally likely.

Also I REALLY REALLY hope what I just asked doesn't start a destructive discussion... but to my knowledge this isn't one of Bay12's trigger topics.

[penguinofhonor]

I think the divide mainly started when some states outlawed slavery quite a bit before the Civil War and some didn't. The ones that outlawed it were in the North, and the ones that didn't were in the South. There was a ton of tension between slave states and free states, mostly centered on making sure there was always an even split of slave/free states because neither half would let the other half get an advantage in the Senate.

[Neonivek]

Why was there such an even split based on location?

The last program I watched that STRONGLY hinted that it was a re-enactment of slavery suggested it was because the North found slavery less profitable for the amount of work and were thus more willingly to give it up. (It had a LOT less of an Altruistic viewpoint then is typically given. Amounting the abolishment of slavery in the north as less of a "its the right thing to do" so much as a "Well we milked it for what its worth and now it is more of a burden")

It would certainly make sense if the Southern States' climate allowed for a more profitable venture.

Another I guess could be because the South wanted self-determinism and kept slavery because it was a way they could gain economical superiority over the North...

[EnigmaticHat]

The divide definitely existed before the civil war.  I don't know exactly when it started, but when the north became urban, industrialized, and outlawed the slave trade, any point past then the divide has existed for sure.

Why was there such an even split based on location?

The last program I watched that STRONGLY hinted that it was a re-enactment of slavery suggested it was because the North found slavery less profitable for the amount of work and were thus more willingly to give it up.

It would certainly make sense if the Southern States' climate allowed for a more profitable venture.

Because of the way Congress did things.  They put a line in the sand defining slave states and not slave states, and that took existing regional differences and made them very polar.  On one hand the southerners were afraid that northern abolitionist politicians would gain a majority and destroy their lifestyle.  On the other hand the policy that forced Northerners to return slaves that had escaped from slave states essentially forced all the northerners that might have stayed neutral to take sides.  After all its one thing to know slavery is happening off in the distance, its another thing when you're forced to decide the fate of a particular slave.

[Orange Wizard]

This sounds like a really terrible governmental system.

"Okay, guys. I need you to stop denying basic human rights to your populace!"
"Never!"
"Okay, then. Only these guys over here need to. The rest of you can carry on as you were."

Maybe I'm biased because I think having independently governed states is a terrible idea to begin with, but it still seems grossly inefficient.

[Descan]

IIRC, the North found industrialism more profitable, where-as in the South, with the cotton gin, cotton farming was more profitable.

Happens to be that one is more conducive to slavery than the other.

[RedWarrior0]

Ok I have to ask this because it is bugging me with all the politics.

When was "The South" a thing in US history? When did people start to consider them distinct entities?

Because I am getting contradictory information where one says that they only existed during the Civil War and another says that the idea existed far longer and wasn't codified until then. Both explanations are equally likely.

Also I REALLY REALLY hope what I just asked doesn't start a destructive discussion... but to my knowledge this isn't one of Bay12's trigger topics.

Yeah, that's basically it. The South had a LOT more farming, especially large-scale, than the much more industrialized North. The Northern farms were kept small by things like climate and soil quality, while the Southern farms were able to become huge tobacco and cotton plantations. Note that most Southern farms had no slaves; only the really huge farms needed a large work force.

[Lord Shonus]

The divide wasn't really primarily about slavery (although it became such later on), and existed when George III was crowned, if not earlier.


The difference was rooted in the very different economic and social systems in the three regions of the colonies (North, South, and the Western frontier), and was extremely important in the manner which the Revolutionary War was fought (and likely prolonged that conflict by at least a year). The North was primarily driven by pure trading and transshipping of goods due to the many excellent ports (and many excellent places for smugglers to sneak in, which was important due to the idiotic trade restrictions Britain imposed on her colonial possessions) and later those same ports fueled the birth of widespread industrialization, while the South was built entirely on cash-crop agriculture (initially tobacco, later cotton). (The West was mostly subsistence agriculture in this era, and wasn't significantly important to the country as a whole).

The social makeup was also very different, with the South being a very stratified society, with the upper classes owning huge swaths of land that were farmed by indentured servants, slaves, or freemen paid a pittance for their labor. In a very short time, this had evolved into what was an active aristocracy de facto if not de jure, resulting in very little social mobility. Even if a former indentured servant or poor white (or even black, in the earlier days) freeman managed to scrape together the cash to buy the land and slaves for a plantation of his own, he wouldn't be part of Society, and thus snubbed. The North wasn't nearly as stratified (and the wealthiest Northerners weren't as rich as the wealthiest Southerners), and there was much more of a "middle class" makeup the population in the mercantilist days, which endured even after industrialization changed everything. After the IR, while there were massive numbers of immigrant laborers creating a true "lower class" that had no analogue in the South (slaves had somewhat equivalent living conditions, but weren't free, while few poorer freemen were quite that badly off), there was no real attraction to Society at the time, and the only limit to social mobility (in either direction) was the amount of effort you were willing to put in and the amount of money you could get from that labor. (Carnegie famously stepped off an immigrant ship in 1848 and was a wealthy industrialist by the time the Civil War ended in 1865, something impossible in the South.) The result was two very, very different cultures.