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  1. A world with out a holocost

    Sorry to take an absurdly narrow view of a very broad question, but ... Purely culturally, the difference would be astounding. The Holocaust has become the benchmark for unarguably evil occurrences in human history. I think I remember Will Self describing it as an "almost Edenic loss of...

  2. Question about the Cretan Muslims...

    Crete's notoriously hard to kick people out of, though, isn't it? E.g. the 1923 population exchange, which IIRC was less complete in Crete than anywhere else. (Lots of nice remote mountains to hide out in if you really want to.) Don't know if there's any evidence for Saracen survival, but I...

  3. More archaeological Biblical evidence surfaces earlier

    Not least because 18th-19th Century archaeologists were all Romantics at heart, and tended to put the cart before the horse. (Schliemann was as guilty of this as anyone - he found what he wanted to find.)

  4. Margaret Beckett as PM

    How can we make this come about, and what happens as a result? The first hurdle is her being elected leader of the Labour Party. In OTL she's Labour Leader in 1994 after the death of John Smith, but loses the subsequent election to Tony Blair and John Prescott. The only way round this I can...

  5. WI Steve Irwin survived?

    He put a lot of his money into buying areas of the outback to maintain as nature reserves. That's a project I'd like to have seen him continue, and possibly extend to threatened environments elsewhere in the world.

  6. AH challenge: swords remain popular, widespread as real weapons of war

    It's a fair point that modern fencing has nothing to do with training to kill. Up until two years ago you could score a hit in foil by 'flicking', so that the tip barely touches the target. They've now changed the timing to make this harder, but in any case it's far from self-defence...

  7. WI humans raised insects for food.

    That's what makes them so useful - you don't need land to keep pigs, just a small pen and the leftovers from your own table. Up to the 1950's in the UK it was pretty common practice for most rural families to have a pig in the yard that they reared every year for slaughter. They'd eat what...

  8. WI humans raised insects for food.

    From a farming point of view, bigger animals are more energy efficient. It's easier to pen and manage a flock of sheep than a flock of locusts, and by the time you've slaughtered and prepared a few thousand locusts you might just as well have eaten the sheep. Locusts the size of VW camper...

  9. Cold War brings out a third side: Europe

    Off the top of my head Stalemate in Second World War? Not quite sure how you achieve it, but anyway: Germany holds continental Europe but is fought to a standstill over Russia (possibly both are forced to accept truce with the introduction of nuclear weapons?) UK and US on one side, USSR on...

  10. What About the Potato

    Aah, student living. :D

  11. What About the Potato

    Out of curiosity: what's the great advantage of the potato over, say, the swede or turnip? Is it easier to grow, or just more nutritious ..?

  12. Mithras- & Christ-worship survive alongside one another.

    I think Tom B's point is still the stumbling block: Christianity will always trump Mithraism as long as Christianity welcomes all-comers and Mithraism only accepts the elite. To have them co-exist would require a re-jigging of Mithraism as well as Christianity.

  13. WI No Chernobyl?

    ... possibly resulting in a worse meltdown somewhere someday as a result? If nothing else, Chernobyl highlighted the potential for catastrophe and encouraged people the world over to handle nuclear power with care. (This may not be entirely a good thing: I for one think nuclear isn't a bad...

  14. China in the Sudan

    Thanks for these. The idea is that this is a propaganda mission: the Chinese force has to be big enough to take control without resorting to scorched earth tactics, and crucially without support from the West. I'm afraid I have no idea how plausible this is militarily (although I gather Chinese...

  15. China in the Sudan

    Just an experiment, really, but I was listening to a radio programme last night about China’s involvement in Africa. There is some concern that, where the UN and IMF offer aid and purchase resources in return for anti-corruption and human rights reforms, China is willing to make deals with any...

  16. WI:Minoan Civilization Survives into this day?

    Fascinating stuff. Thanks for bumping. I wonder if shortage of timber might be a problem for a large Cretan navy. It's a big island, but much of it is dry, mountainous and rocky - you can build fishing/trading fleets, but could you supply a navy on a war-footing (problem with initial supply...

  17. Would Bradman get 10 000 test runs without WW2

    Good knowledge! (Bill Frindall in disguise?) :D I wonder if medical advances from the Wars have had much effect on sport? (I suspect not, to be honest, given that the kind of injuries one sees in war are likely to end a sporting career. Um.)

  18. WI No paid lawyers?

    Fair enough - I daresay there is a degree of obfuscation (no doubt in part designed to preserve the role of the legal expert!); but remember that the role of the judiciary is not just to understand but to interpret the law. You have to know something about the history and exact terminology...

  19. WI No paid lawyers?

    Surely it's governments that makes law, not lawyers? And, up to a point, laws have to be phrased in complex terms in order to be as precise as possible: a law that is in any way ambugious or unclear is a bad law, and prone to abuse. This necessitates a profession dedicated to understanding the...

  20. Survival of the Þ

    Sorry, I meant William Caxton, founder of printing in English. He's credited with helping to unify the English language, creating a standard dialect by broad dissemination of printed material. There's a reasonable if brief Wiki summary.
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