{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1749",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1749,
    "subject": "Feeding Nessus [Digest urth.v028.n016]",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-08-16T10:05:29+00:00",
    "last": "1999-08-16T10:05:29+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0059@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "John Bishop",
        "address": "jbishop at blkbrd.zko.dec.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-08-16T10:05:29+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Re: Feeding Nessus [Digest urth.v028.n016]",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Mantis says:\n\n  ..the agricultural technology really has to be =much=\n  better than that [quasi-medieval] to support Nessus.\n\nThree points:\n\n1. Gyoll is a big river, which implies a big valley upstream,\n   and allows river transport of bulk cargo like grain.  So\n   a large urban population could be fed, even if local productivity\n   is low.  There's no mention of significant food shortages\n   that I can recall.   \n\n2. The technology we see isn't quasi-medieval: it seems higher\n   than that to me.  And if we allow merely modest sail-boats,\n   of the stort Rome had in the year 0 (assume obligatory jokes\n   about coins marked 54BC and pedantry about \"no year 0\", etc.\n   all made here), then we have good precedents: Classic Rome\n   had a million inhabitants, fed wheat from North Africa and\n   Egypt.  This means shipping over the Mediterranean, a far \n   harder problem than shipping downstream on a big river.\n\n   Similiarly, the Greeks ate wheat grown on the shores of the\n   Black sea, and before them the Egyptians shipped grain up\n   and down the river to various large cities like Luxor.\n\n3. How big is Nessus anyway?  Much of it is ruined and largely\n   abandoned, and the actual population might be quite small.\n   I envisioned it as being a large, circular ruin, with small\n   populations living along the river and nearby.  And that\n   population doesn't extend the full length of the urban shoreline,\n   as we are told that the abandoned downstream portion of the\n   city is huge.  Indeed, we are told the population is declining,\n   and has been so for some time.\n\nOne last lunar trivium: the Abell discussion of the \"Harvest Moon\"\nthing is worth reading, though perhaps I can convey some of it here:\nAround the fall equinox, the path of the Moon is at an angle to the\nhorizon.  The daily movement of the Moon moves it west on its path;\nthe angle means that from our point of view it moves only slightly\nwest and a lot north [a diagram would be nice here].  This means\nthat the Moon stays almost full for more than the usual 3 nights,\nand that for about a week, a bright Moon rises just about as\nthe Sun sets, allowing workers in the fields to work longer days\nthat usual at harvest time, when such assistance is welcome.\n\nThose of us with indoor jobs may not feel the force of such\nillumination; I've seen photos of farmers using artificial light\nto allow harvesting at night, but even now it's expensive enough\nto be rare.\n\n\t-John Bishop"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}