1.) If Cortes had never caused the fall of the Aztec Empire, who would be the best-selling recording artist in history?
2.) If small dogs (up to the size of fox terriers) were currency, what derivative instrument would have caused the 2008 financial collapse?
3.) If guns had never been invented and sling-thrown grenades taken their place in military history, what would be the capital of the United States?
4.) If goat milk rather than cow milk had become the most popular milk in the world circa the mid-1500s, who would be the villain in the Star Wars movies?
5.) If continental drift was nonexistent and we all still lived on Pangaea, what would be the most popular type of house pet?
Show your work.
(yes i watch The Big Bang Theory but only ironically – no YOU shut up)
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1.) Cortés, obviously.
2.) Collars.
3.) Small dogs, as covered in the prelude to the above question.
4.) George Lucas still.
5.) Trick question. We’d all be dead and there would be no house pets.
If you don’t show your work, your answer is incomplete and therefore worthless.
I’m fine with you watching big bang theory, provided you are watching community first.
“Hold on a sec. I need to use my force field to prevent Chang from getting food.”
You like BBT! Admit it!
3. At 6684 ft above sea level, Yancey, NC, is the highest city in the 13 original colonies and therefore the most easily defended by your fanciful leather arsenal.
OK, as someone who doesn’t watch Big Bang Theory, ironically or otherwise, please to explain this.
1. — The artist known in this universe as Buffy St. Marie who would be known by her Indigenous Peoples Name in the CounterFactual universe
2. — Dingos, which are not genuine canines
3. — Austin, Texas b/c of the large amount of leather found in that state
4. — Jar Jar Binks; he looks like a goat. And he sucks.
5. — The Norwegian roof rat
…I really need to start watching Big Bang Theory again if you’re going to start making jokes about it.
1) It would still be the same, since it was not Cortés that caused the fall of the Aztec empire.
Someone said to show your work? that sounds like a challenge!
Although Cortés arrived in Mexico in 1519 with his fellow 600 Spaniards (two thirds of which were rapidly killed), it was due to a smallpox infected slave arriving in Mexico in 1520 that the Mexican population dropped from about 20 million to 1.6 million by 1618.
One could argue that it was Cortés that caused the slave to arrive in Mexico, but this ignores the fact of what caused Cortés to arrive in Mexico?
Thus, we can draw this causation back to geography, and more specifically, latitude.
For example: the vast majority of domesticable plants and animals evolved in the Fertile Crescent, giving the peoples of West Eurasia a massive headstart over those in the Americas. While wheat, peas, olives, sheep and goats were domesticated in Southwest Asia around about 8,500 BC, it was another 5,000 years before the potato, manioc, llama and yes, the guinea pig, were domesticated in the Andes.
The evolution of these plant and animal domesticates was only possible by their geography.
So one can go back further, to examin what caused this geography?
So yes, it does indeed all go back to the Big Bang. For everything after this was a proximate factor, not an ultimate explanation.
And that is how one ties the last sentence of the article right back to the first one 🙂
1: David Hasselhoff (because the Aztec Empire, if it survived well into the 20th Century, it would’ve either joined with or fallen to the Axis Powers, enabling them to win World War II and forcing the dominance of German culture throughout the world.)
2: Evolution. (Over time, it would force breeds of dog to grow larger or die out, much like “catch-and-release” fishing is believed to have caused fish to grow smaller.)
3: Los Angeles. (The increase in damage during the major skirmishes of the Civil War would’ve made most central locations unfavourable, and picking New York would be feared to cause Southern uprisals all over again.)
4: Luke Skywalker. (Due to the goat’s unfortunate Satanic implications, dairy farming would be seen as an unsavoury occupation. Luke, being a water farmer, would no doubt be painted with the same brush.)
5: Cats. (As there are fewer water boundaries seperating warring nations, dogs would be seen as guard and work animals, and would seldom be domesticated.)
And [i]that[/i], gentlemen, is called “showing your work”. 🙂
1: Michael Jackson and the Beatles. Due to the Aztec’s advanced technology and awesome pot, the Beatles never broke up until John Lennon’s death, and when Paul McCartney befriended a young Michael Jackson, they reformed as Michael Jackson and the Beatles.
2: Trick question. If small dogs were currency, we’d never have any financial crises, ever.
3: Arkansas (the entire state) as their obsession with blowing shit up causes them to gain immense power.
4: Jabba the Hutt, because he clearly hates goats.
5: Toy Velociraptors. We’d grow enamored with these creatures, not hunt them to extinction, and breed them into tiny, cute little pets. Also, we’d have less racism and fewer social ills. And pet raptors. WHY IS THIS NOT REALITY?
The real velociraptors were already kind of small.
1. Metallica, because even a cursory examination of Aztec culture reveals that they were totally metal.
2. LOLdogs. They’re perceived as having a greater value than actual dogs because they’re exceptionally cute images coupled with amusing captions, resulting in hot competition for them and intense, bubble-style trading. Then one day someone notices they’re just images on a computer, and someone else asks how Impact became the official font for these things, and… well, boom.
3. Des Moines. It is impossible to successfully hunt small game for meat with grenades, so settlers wouldn’t have populated much of the east coast, instead gravitating to the bison herds of the Midwest, which can take a grenade hit and still leave enough bits to make stew.
4. It’d still be the Empire, but there would only be one, and it’d be called be The Journal of the Whills. Goat milk is similar enough to cow milk that relatively few things would be different, just a few slightly different calls here and there. Also, you wouldn’t have to put “War” in the title to help it play in Peoria, because with a smaller and more efficient dairy industry, nobody lives in Peoria.
5. Well, this would be a fundamentally different world built on completely different assumptions about species, climate, and evolution. Given all that, probably your mom.
1.) M.C. Zuma.
2.) Pet-It Default Swaps
3.) London
4.) Howard the Duck.
5.) Pet Rocks.
1.) David Arkensasknifewithaclippoint
2.) Cat dentures and cufflinks.
3.) Sex Mountain, Nevada
4.) Count Jarjarula from the titular Battlestar Jarjarula
5.) The Vole.
If small dogs were currency then unrestrained breeding would cause rapid inflation, which would cause the financial collapse in question. However, this would rarely happen because of strictly enforced neutering requirements.
Bob Barker would be chairman of the Federal Reserve.
If small dogs were currency, the following exotic financial instruments would have contributed to the collapse:
Yield-Over-Return Collateralized Instrument Equity (YORCIE)
Debt Amortized Credit Handling Swap Held Under Near-Default (DACHSHUND)
Balanced Earning Annual Growth Leveraging Equity (BEAGLE)
As per #4… in a goat milk world, Luke would be Vader, and Anakin would have been the hero. “ANAKIN… I AM YOUR KID.”
1.Neil Young, who would have written the greatest song in the world instead of Cortez the Killer.
2. While derivatives based on non-existent Chilean kennels had caused problems in the past, it was the coming of new, unorthodox “hybrid” breeds such as the Toy Cockapoo and the Affencorgi that led to systematic instability and uncertainty. When Lehman Bros. proposal to certify the Huskihuahua was rejected by the AKC in late 2008, a crisis gripped the financial community and only a loan of 10 billion Shar-peis from China saved America from deflation. Europe, however, was the most severely affected due to its adoption of a single-breed currency (the Euro-mutt) in 1999.
2 – The banks secretly buy up larger breeds of dogs and when giving out loans provides puppies in place of actual small dogs, but will not accept those dogs as payments. Eventually the dogs grow and are worthless, and thus the debtor owes more than what they have.
1. The first band to ever utilize vampires in their name or image due to the Aztec obsession with blood.
2. Teensie weensie terrier sized sweaters.
3. Trick question. There wouldn’t be a US. Without guns there would never have been a shot heard ’round the world and everybody knows that was the start of the revolution.
4. I have to go with Skemono. George Lucas.
5. Humans would lovingly serve their dinosaur overlords.
3.London, England(as noted above, grenades aren’t that useful for hunting, so the rebels at Lexington and Concord would not have access to an armory capable of standing up to the redcoats).
4.Darth Vader and The Emperor, the same as on Earth Prime. The main difference in movies would be a relative lack of fart jokes in lowbrow comedies (goat milk is more compatible with the human digestive system than cow milk, so people would fart less and think about farting less).
5. I basically agree with benfromcanada on this one. Probably an animal resembling a cute hyena or a cute velociraptor. If human-analogues evolved on the savanna in this world, we’d probably domesticate whatever small-to-medium-sized scavenger was around (So maybe dogs, but that answer isn’t as fun).
@buzz:
Dingos are too canines. They even interbreed with canis familiaris.
3. The United States wouldn’t exist, since the British would have had far superior ‘nade slings than the American revolutionaries, thus eliminating the advantage of hiding in the bushes.
3. Even if you believe that the US wouldn’t have won the War of Independence, the UK will eventually be overstressed trying to keep a far flung empire no matter what. In this scenario the North America colonies are spun off as a new country including both Canada and the US. Toronto is probably the capital.
5. Homo Sapiens; in this scenario Homo Neaderthalenis is the dominant form of intelligent life and uses their brute strength to keep us as slaves and servants.
1. Zamfir. He is Master of the Panflute, after all.
2. I have no answer for this as I am allergic to dogs.
3. Trick question. Without guns, the early American settlers would have been easily overwhelmed by the Native Americans and their much more accurate bows and arrows. As such, there would not be one central government, but rather a series of roaming tribes that follow the herds of buffalo (which were never hunted to near extinction).
4. Darth Ebriate. Everyone knows that Akira Kurosawa decided to make “Hidden Fortress” while drinking a glass of warm milk on a chilly March morning. As he is goat lactose intolerant, “Hidden Fortress” never gets made, and George Lucas ends up basing his film on “Drunken Master”.
5. The River Otter. The abundance of rivers in Pangaea makes the species plentiful, and it is discovered that their ability to use simple tools makes them adept at learning to perform simple household tasks. Plus, they are SOOOOOOOO CUTE!
DC
I watch Big Bang Theory, not ironically, but empathetically, because I have far more in common with the main characters than I will ever admit to myself.
It occurs to me that my answer for #3 will make much less sense if you didn’t grow up with School House Rock.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhdmDDBjco0
Did they have School House Rock in Canada? I hope so. School House Rock was awesome.
@ Prankster
It’s a game created by a couple of the characters for fun*. You propose an alternate reality that differs from ours in one key way and you ask a question about how that would influence other areas of everyday life in that world.
*The characters who created it are the only ones that actually find it fun.
Yeah, I will admit to enjoying BBT … but its lucky that I can see the NBC lineup and Bones on Hulu because that’s the only reason I stuck with it after the move from Mondays.
3. Would bows and crossbows still exist in this world?
If so, hunting might be harder than it would have been with a blunderbuss or rifled flintlock, but harder isn’t the same thing as impossible.
For that matter, archers with Welsh-style long bows or possibly even dragoons armed with crossbows might play a vital role in European military combat.
Since it takes more time to master archery than it does to learn how to use a smoothbore flintlock, white settlers would lose an advantage over the Native Americans. This would make it harder to compete for resources with the more warlike tribes and the newcomers might have been forced to adopt a more peaceful approach to colonization.
Although the lack of guns might be offset somewhat by a more widespread use of armor and well… grenades.
Having said all that, the capital would probably be New York but the people who lived there would have gotten a better trade for the land.
I was only able to apply Insane Troll Logic for the first two questions before I lost steam:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InsaneTrollLogic
1.) If Cortes had never caused the fall of the Aztec Empire, who would be the best-selling recording artist in history?
With the Aztecs still in power, they would continue to sacrifice masses of their populace to their sun god. Ergo, the UV rays would never reach the greenhouse effect of melting the glaciers. Therefore, without the power of holes in the ozone layer to threaten mankind, there would be no need for the Vietnamese war to draft Muhammad Ali. Without which, there would be no need for hairspray. Therby negating the need for the Beetles to implement their popular hair style, since everybody would be casually spraying petroleum jelly on their epidermis.
2.) If small dogs (up to the size of fox terriers) were currency, what derivative instrument would have caused the 2008 financial collapse?
With chichuhuas being the lowest common denominator, it would only be a matter of time before counterfeiters started cross-breeding rats in massive numbers for loose change. From these, they would be able to produce rats the size of bears. The effect of which would cause black plagues multiple times throughout history. The innoculous invention that would cause the collapse of currency would be the modern day mouse trap.
2) Any economy based around a currency as cumbersome as small dogs would naturally form a massive and costly dog care industry. As it would be impractical for most people to keep and maintain their entire life savings at their own homes; huge kennels akin to banks would arise. The cost of these structures would lead to a large amount of investment capital being needed. Thus each of these facilities would have many shareholders. When in the early 2000s electronic transactions became the norm the needed for physical dogs would decrease thus there would be a reduced need for the kennels. The shareholders of these kennels would lose billions of fox terriers and the economy would plummet.
1. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart the 13th, as there would have to be that many generations of Mozarts to equal the amount of progress that was delayed by the lack of capital “gifted” *ugh* to the Europeans.
2. Really? Given the idea that size=quality, people would have over-invested in Irish wolfhounds and Great Danes. Some asshole would come along and make rabies airborne and contagious (but just for dogs, because altering the virus’ vectors while allowing it to be harmful to people would be *wrong*), and the dogs would have to be put down.
3. Whatever the capital of Newfoundland is (St. Johns). Newfoundland would also very likely be one of the breeds of dog to die quickest in the “Great Rabies Scare of 2008”. Back on topic, the US would have retreated/advanced to an area that would have allowed the lowest amount of visibility (Newfoundland-island, foggy, near uninhabitable) and set up operations there during the Revolutionary War.
4. Probably a badly-conceived pastiche of Lazarus Long, as the person who would have grown up to partner with George Lucas on the mythology of Star Wars had tragically died during infancy due to exposure to cow’s milk (goat’s milk, as it’s more digestible, would have been serviceable enough to compensate for his mother’s lack of milk.) Instead, he lived (albeit as a relatively sickly child) and gorged himself on the works of Heinlein. BTW, Luke and Laura? They’re totally doing it in the ATL Star Wars, and they already *know* that they’re brother and sister because she learns how to access the Force in the first movie. And guess who’s trading the “Lucky Pierre” position with Luke? No, not Chewbacca.
5. Yoshis. Just… Yoshis.
I’m guessing that you, like the characters on the show, have a “right answer” in mind for these questions? In that case, I’ve got what might be part of the answer for number four: insofar as the word “daughter” derives from Indo-European terms involving cows and milk production, and “father” is likely to be related to those terms, and “Vader” is based on the Dutch term for ‘father’ which comes from the same sources, might the name “Darth Vader” have to be changed in this Earth-2?
The answer to all five questions is “Elvis Presley”, and no, I don’t need to show my work, Elvis as an inevitably emergent phenomenon in any conceivable parallel universe has been well established.
I`m just going to answer one if thats ok.
For the #3 about the grenades…
I think the capital would be located in an area where it would be far less prone towards enemey attacks. Kind of like a whole Switzerland situation, where the natural geography of the location itself would helop deter those who want to attack. Assuming the US had some liberty to change capitals in the 1800s (which does happen now and then, Japan switched from Kyoto to Tokyo a while back), then I would place the capital somewhere in Colorado where it would be hard to access, but at the samet ime very hard to attack.
Otherwise, a more simple answer would be, the casualties would be so vast from the earlier days of the Nation in thelate 1700s early 1800s, that the nation would never become independent, thus NONE or London.
1. Elvis Presley – The Aztec Empire would have continued to grow and expand into the USA south. Elvis would have been born into a Hispanic family and would never have known the pleasure of bacon, peanut butter and banana sandwiches. He would have lived into his 90’s and gone on to sell more records than the Beatles.
2. The Louis Vuitton Dog Carrier – With LV cornering the market with the largest purse on the market, LV dog carrier sales soared, and counterfeit designer purse manufacturers seize the opportunity. Billions around the world are affected by high priced counterfeit purses, LV sales drop and soon the GFC is on upon us.
3. Moscow – The USSR military, with their manly, massive shoulders, would have had greater strength, skill and accuracy with their sling-thrown grenades. The USSR would win the Cold War, and Moscow would become the capital of the US.
Here is a new one:
In a where where the Humpback Whale is a land animal, which Country would be the first to the Moon?
Kinda an old thread, but here’s an answer:
4. Luke Skywalker. Because Anakin Skywalker drank the Tattoine equivalent to goat’s milk (couldn’t figure out what it would be, but the banthas are the equivilent to cattle, thus cow’s milk in Star Wars) and decided that it was very good. Bantha milk, on the other hand, was bad. Because of this, he harbored no ill will to the bantha farmers (the Tusken Raiders), remaining rather indifferent to them, and they do not capture Shmi Skywalker. Thus, Anakin does not have to go after them, and does not kill them and does not go to the dark side. Instead, all the anger and rage he represses as a Jedi goes to his son, Luke, who rebels against the Jedi and turns to the dark side.
3. Olympia – defense – Greeks invented catapult which would be used to throw grenades which would make Olympus or Olympia the capital
1. No idea.
2. Teacup breeds, as their ill breeding and illegal puppy farms equates to currency forgery, but the continued popularity of these breeds would lead to an economic dependence on this forged currency leading to financial collapse.
3.London. Guns never come to the forefront, sling grenades prove heavily destructive to the Rebels guerilla tactics. With their strategic advantage lost, the British’s greater numbers and supplies leads to the failure of the American Revolution.
4. Darth Vader, but not as we know him. The reliance on Goat Milk causes an earlier rise on Asian labour to produce milk products. With a strong economic position, China becomes aggressively expansionist to its neighbouring nations. China becomes the Third Reich of its time, Germany joins the allies in exchange for expunging their reparations. The allies force China back and their designs go on to influence the design of Darth Vader and the Empire. Meanwhile Germany becomes a stable European nation a lot sooner and is the political giant of 2015, more so than it is now.
5. Pgymy Kangeroos. With no continental drift, animals previously exclusive to one area of the world expand outward. Kangeroos, as both adorable and more dexterous than dogs, become companion animals and are bred to be smaller and less invasive than their larger cousins. Dogs remain a service animal, eliminating the show breeds from history.