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what are the actual risks of talking about tienanmen square massacre in china? | You’ll get re-educated to be a more harmonious citizen in re-education camp if you have families that would make a fuss if you’re missing, if you don’t you’ll just disappear.
They actually talk about their version of the event in uni. The gist is: no protester die, many peace keeper die, there were no tanks. No info on how it started or why.
It’s a little bit better than talking about being gay in a Muslim country but not by much. | [
"On June 19, 2007, a group of around 100 Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmakers again denounced the Nanjing Massacre as a fabrication, arguing that there was no evidence to prove the allegations of mass killings by Japanese soldiers. They accused Beijing of using the alleged incident as a \"political advertisemen... |
Why are rashes red in colour? | Increased blood flow. Histamines and other inflammatory agents which are released at the point of cell damage or an immune response increase the flow of blood to the area, making rashes red and hot. | [
"A rash may be localized in one part of the body, or affect all the skin. Rashes may cause the skin to change color, itch, become warm, bumpy, chapped, dry, cracked or blistered, swell, and may be painful.\n",
"One form the rashes take is called \"heliotrope\" (a purplish color) or lilac, but may also be red. It ... |
Why is it that when I am eating cereal, and I have earbuds in, I can hear the crunch so much louder than usual? | The vibrations travel up your jaw to the ear bones. There's a brief [spiel](_URL_0_) that sort of explains the tie between the jaw and the development of the ear evolutionarily. You can look it up elsewhere for more info. | [
"On June 25, the company voluntarily began to recall about 28 million boxes of Apple Jacks, Corn Pops, Froot Loops and Honey Smacks because of an unusual smell and flavor from the packages' liners that could make people ill. Kellogg's said about 20 people complained about the cereals, including five who reported na... |
what's stopping me from taking a relatively large loan and leaving the country to live in another country? | With the exception of a small handful, all civilized countries recognize the jurisdiction of eachother's courts. You leave the country, default on the loan, get sued, get a judgment, then get enforcement proceedings in whatever country you're in.
If you go somewhere that doesn't allow this, then the only thing stopping you from doing this is the fact that you would be stuck living in one of the countries that don't recognize jurisdiction. And those countries all suck. | [
"A person who leaves the country to stay abroad for more than a year, loses municipal domicile immediately. However, exceptions are made for persons who retain close ties to Finland or work as diplomats, missionaries or aid workers.\n",
"Persons primarily seeking better economic opportunities may reasonably quote... |
what is a "reasonable doubt"? i know what the legal definition is, but i want to know what i means. | Identical twin brothers are accused of murder. Their identical DNA was found at the crime scene, proving one of them did it. Neither will rat on the other, so there's no witness testimony. Absent other evidence, neither brother can be convicted even though it's obvious one of them did it because a reasonable person can doubt which of the two men the evidence points to.
| [
"Reasonable doubt is a term used in jurisdiction of common law countries. Evidence that is beyond reasonable doubt is the standard of evidence required to validate a criminal conviction in most adversarial legal systems.\n",
"What then is reasonable doubt? A reasonable doubt is an honest and reasonable uncertaint... |
how can services like cloudflare filter out ddos traffic without getting a false positive from, for example, an article getting posted on reddit and subsequently getting clicked by 10 million people? | So I'm not the expert here, ~~Debbie~~ wait wrong subreddit.
Anyway, the goal of DDoS isn't to bring down a server in the sense you and I usually think of it.
Loading a webpage works like this:
"Hello, server at _URL_1_? Are you there?"
"Yes."
"Hi, I would like the page _URL_0_"
"Here you go!" And it then vomits the html, javascript, css, and flash to the person requesting, with feedback of "mhm," "yep" "got it" from the requester to confirm information isn't being mangled.
The goal of DDoS is to make a server *unresponsive*. To occupy it so completely that it cannot even answer the initial question.
To this end, you need to direct a lot of traffic at it but it is in your interests for the server to spend the maximum time processing your query with minimal overhead for you, or, if you're one of those types, creating a noticeable dip in internet quality for the people whose computers are part of your botnet.
For an easy example, imagine a robotic call center operator, able to answer a hundred calls a second. Calls range in quality, from being the dialogue I gave above, to a simple "Hello are you there?" "Yes" and the person hangs up. The former is legitimate traffic, but it requires dialogue the entire time from the caller. The latter is a ping, and resolves almost immediately, essentially harmless.
But imagine the operator starts receiving 130 calls a second, and answering them gets them stuff like this "Hello are you there?" "yes" "What is the price of tea on the moon and why is it related to your clock time?" This is an example of a malformed query. Malformed queries take much, much more time to process and respond to than a simple ping, and then the caller silently hangs up while the operator attempts to answer, only to call again and rejoin the queue to speak to the operator.
In this way, the burden on the people creating the DDoS is light, able to continually occupy the server's entry without stressing their own connection as badly in the process.
So then, imagine there's a bouncer named CloudFlare. CloudFlare picks up all calls directed to the operator, and handles the "Hello are you there?" question. Unlike the operator, CloudFlare is trained in responses to Malformed Queries, so the moment they ask for the price of tea on the moon, CloudFlare hangs up on them. If their question is legit, CloudFlare forwards to the Operator at _URL_1_ to answer.
CloudFlare is also, I should point out, an old hand at this internet game. Unlike the Operator, they can answer a *thousand* calls a second, to pick an arbitrary number. So you need a much bigger operation of crank calls to even make a dent in their abilities, in addition to the filtering in the previous paragraph.
_URL_2_ This is a picture of what CloudFlare sees itself as. | [
"Spammers that target third party analytics directly can pollute statistics, but do not consume the affected site's resources. Filtering referrer spam from analytics tools will hide it from reports. However, spammers that do visit the affected site will consume server bandwidth. To prevent this misuse, they can be ... |
How many trees (better yet, houseplants) do I need to plant to be 'carbon-neutral' at home? How about for the car | first a general remark: you must realize that planting trees, doesn't make your household carbon neutral.
carbon neutral refers to producing biofuels from biomass (like wood, energy crops, algae, ...). these biofuels can me burned to generate energy, to drive your car, ... in the process producing CO2. Since these biofuels are made by plants from CO2, taken out of the atmosphere, there isn't a netto emission of 'new' CO2, like one would have if they would burn fossil fuels.
Therefor it is difficult to make your household carbon neutral by planting trees or putting your room full of plants, since you are not using them for making fuel.
Without this cycle of CO2 - > plant material - > biofuel - > burning - > energy and CO2 - > plant - > ..., you will have to keep planting and planting trees.
What you can calculate is the amount of trees or plants that it would take to capture and store all the carbondioxide you have emitted in the atmosphere by using X amount of energy.
it's not that difficult, but i'm rather tired, maybe tomorrow | [
"When a tree is cut and the wood is used for products such as structural lumber or furniture, the carbon is stored for decades or longer. A typical home in North America contains 29 metric tonnes of carbon, or the equivalent of offsetting the greenhouse gas emissions produced by driving a passenger car over five ye... |
How do laboratories contain such astronomical levels of heat? | It should be noted that there is a difference between temperature and heat.
Say you have a bucket of hot water, vs a teacup of near boiling water. The teacup may have a higher temperature, but overall would be less effective at heating something up. So If you took a small kids pool, and poured in either the bucket of hot water or the teacup of boiling, the bucket would heat the pool more.
Just because something is a crazy high temperature, doesn't mean there is a ton of heat. In the case of a quark-gluon plasma, the size would be ~10^-15 meters. So essentially you have something with a huge temperature, but is it so incredibly small the total amount of energy is so small it would not be able to heat anything up of a reasonable size. | [
"Presently, as through its history, the Laboratory develops instruments and procedures for examining materials across a wide range of temperatures and pressures — everything from near absolute zero to hotter than the sun and from ambient pressure to millions of atmospheres. The Laboratory uses diamond-anvil cells c... |
does shifting quickly up in manual car really save gas? | A really really good driver can save gas with good shifting, but 99.999% of drivers are not that good. I think the average driver would be hard-pressed to beat a modern automatic transmission. | [
"The most common reason to short shift in day-to-day driving is to improve fuel economy. By keeping the engine at the lower end of its rpm range less fuel is consumed. This is especially common in \"torquey\" vehicles, vehicles whose engine torque curve peaks at lower rpm than the power curve, because the higher to... |
Why do humans have such bad backs/knees? | Because of technology, we're adapting in different movement patterns, positions, posture. You could say the advancing of technology has changed the way we do things e.g. prolonged sitting, prolonged standing, etc etc
We're designed to stay fit and flexibility. We have become so reliant on technology that nearly all humans live a sedentary lifestyle + poor dietary intake. The combination of the two factors is considered the biggest causative factor in today's chronic conditions & increased mortality rates. | [
"This leaves humans more vulnerable to medical problems that are caused by poor leg and foot alignments. Also, the wearing of shoes, sneakers and boots can impede proper alignment and movement within the ankle and foot. For example, High-heeled footwear are known to throw off the natural weight balance (this can al... |
why is tesla having higher networth than ford or gm, when the former hardly produces a small percentage of cars than latter? | Tesla does *not* have a "higher networth" than Ford or GM, it has a higher *market capitalization*. That is a very different thing and has a large speculative component, i.e. people are hoping that Tesla will take over a large segment of the car market *in the future*. | [
"These successful companies were built on sheer innovation and we can see how valuable they have become in the short time they have been around or have been focusing on innovation. When Tesla's value is compared to that of General Motors, we see that the market capitalization of General Motors is $53.98 billion tod... |
why is the japanese culture obsessed with robots? more specifically humanoid robots? | I am not 100% sure if this answers it but here goes.
When cartoons where first being developed to appeal to kids animation was super expensive and time consuming so people had to find a way to do it as cheaply and quickly as possible. Japan's animators found robots where very easy to animate because of their segmented structure, and because they did not need facial expressions.
[This video explains it better then I](_URL_0_) | [
"In Japan robots became popular comic book characters. Robots became cultural icons and the Japanese government was spurred into funding research into robotics. Among the most iconic characters was the Astro Boy, who is taught human feelings such as love, courage and self-doubt. Culturally, robots in Japan became r... |
How realistic are Western movies/games? | The "wild west" is an invention of hollywood through and through.
Let's start with those saloons. A typical "wild west" saloon is a large open space filled with tables with a bar at one end and wing doors at the entrance. In reality a typical bar in the old west would have been long and narrow with few windows. And it would have had a regular door because there is basically nowhere in the old west where you *don't* want to keep the outside (rain, wind, dust, cold, heat, etc.) separated from the inside. However, a narrow bar with a regular door isn't such a great setting to work with cinematographically.
As for "cowboys", that's another hollywood invention. The typical "cowboy" was not a gunslinger. The vast majority of cowboys were also very different from the stereotypical "white male protagonist" that fills hollywood depictions. Most were not white, instead they were mexican, native american, and black, predominantly. Indeed, cattle ranching techniques as practiced in the American West originated in Spain and were brought over and adopted by vaqueros ("buckaroos"). It was hard manual labor that was originally dominated by Mexicans, so it was a field of work that tended to be eschewed by white folks.
As for the sizes of towns there are many reasons for small towns. Many mining communities often started off very small, for example. When transcontinental railroads were built there was a need to maintain watering stations at regular intervals along the railways, and small towns sprouted up at these locations. Forts and outposts were also built by governments for protection and trading purposes. The long distances of travel across the west made it desirable to have small places to stop and resupply along the way.
Perhaps most importantly, the nature of agriculture at the time meant that towns would often be very small relative to the total population in the area due to the large percentage of folks who were farming. In an area most people would live out on their farms in their own houses. The city proper might only contain a general store, a post office, and a combination church/schoolhouse. And that's all the city infrastructure a community of perhaps even hundreds might need.
As for crime, banditry, and gun fights, those too are vastly exaggerated by hollywood. There are a few notable instances of exceptional crimes having been committed in the old west but in general things were not exceptionally different from the levels of crime in the more settled Eastern seaboard. And hollywood has taken those exceptional events and used them to paint a picture of a west that was more movie friendly than the reality (more violent, more white, more barren).
The west was still a pretty unfriendly place in reality however. But what it had was opportunity. It was perceived as a place anyone could go to and either make their fortune or just make a living. Regardless of where you started from, it was a place where the primary determining factor between success and failure was you and you alone, your determination, perseverance, and hard work. With those you could homestead a farm and own land (consider the power of owning your own land in the mid 19th century on a global scale, it's not insignificant). You could stake a claim in a gold mine and become wealthy. You could build a business providing goods or services to miners, settlers, etc. and make your fortune that way. Or you could go out and work for others and simply make a living doing manual labor. For a lot of people at the time simply having these options and routes towards financial security, wealth, land ownership, business ownership, etc. were a tremendous opportunity compared to what was available elsewhere (whether that's back East or in Europe, etc.) Poland, for example, had conditions of serfdom up through the mid to late 19th century.
The interactions between Native Americans and settlers coming into the old west is far too complicated to jam into this reply, or even several posts, so I'll avoid addressing it. The one thing I'll say about it though is that it's better to see Native Americans not as a monolithic community but as a group of individual separate entities, each with their own values and goals, each making different choices for different reasons throughout history. And each with a different, complicated, and evolving relationship with one another and with white settlers. One might use the complex geopolitical shifts and evolutions of 18th and 19th century Europe as an analogy to the complexity of Native American politics, trade, and warfare. | [
"Discussing inspirations for the game, Kopiński stated \"we wanted to capture the best of all the western movies we love, so it can't be simply categorized as either a Spaghetti Western or a realistic Western. It's a blend of the best elements from both.\" He specifically cited Sergio Leone's \"Dollars Trilogy\" (\... |
why does my body feel "slanted" when i'm lying in bed when i'm drunk? | the reason you are dizzy while drunk is that not all of your senses are working like they should. If you sit your tactile sense, inner ear and eyes are getting clear information. Once you stand up your tactile sense goes missing, your inner ears are are not getting clear information (because the alc effects the blood and the blood effects the inner ear fluids). Now your inner ear information are not equal to your eyes and your tactile sense are missing. If you spin around and stop, your ear fluids are moving while your eyes are steady - > dizzy.
Once we lay down in bed your tactile sense goes missing again, our inner ear are getting wrong information since we reached over 0,5 ‰ while our eyes are steady - > dizzy.
There is a really simple solution, get your tactile senses back; lay down on bed while one foot stays on the ground (hangs out) if you get contact to the ground the information of your tactile sense and eyes are the same again. Or skip the booze ! | [
"Alcohol can also cause alterations in the vestibular system for short periods and will result in vertigo and possibly nystagmus due to the variable viscosity of the blood and the endolymph during the consumption of alcohol. The common term for this type of sensation is the \"bed spins\". \n",
"It also appears in... |
What is the least complex living being known to feel pain or any clear response to damage? | Depending on how you define pain, one of the simpler could be a type of [Cnidaria](_URL_0_), e.g. a hydra.
They have sensory neurons, and they're able to respond to damage. But I wouldn't say they can *feel* abstract concepts such as pain, since they don't have a brain.
Disclaimer: I have no formal education in any pain related sciences. | [
"Invertebrate nervous systems are very unlike those of vertebrates and this dissimilarity has sometimes been used to reject the possibility of a pain experience in invertebrates. In humans, the neocortex of the brain has a central role in pain and it has been argued that any species lacking this structure will ther... |
Why are anti-depressants typically just re-uptake inhibitors instead of actual doses of serotonin or dopamine? | From what I remember is that serotonin and dopamine won't be able to cross the blood-brain barrier. Also the body will just start breaking them down. So they won't be very effective in getting to the desired sites. | [
"The majority of the tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) act primarily as serotonin–norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) by blocking the serotonin transporter (SERT) and the norepinephrine transporter (NET), respectively, which results in an elevation of the synaptic concentrations of these neurotransmitters, an... |
If your brain releases melatonin when it gets dark, is it the opposite for nocturnal animals, and it releases when it's light? | No. Melatonin is released from the pineal gland into the blood during darkness, regardless if the animal is diurnal or nocturnal. | [
"Melatonin is a hormone secreted by the pineal gland in darkness, normally at night. Its production is suppressed by light exposure, principally blue light around 460 to 480 nm. Light restriction, or dark therapy, in the hours before bedtime allows its production. Dark therapy does not require total darkness. Amber... |
During WWI & II (and/or in other relevant modern conflicts) how did belligerent powers actually make use of the industrial capacity of occupied territories? | It is well-documented that the Nazis (WW2) took over captured weapons factories and used them to turn out lots of weapons for use by the Wehrmacht. Examples include the FN-High Power, the Polish Radom, the FN M1922, the Norwegian Colt .45, and there are lots more. The Czech VZ 24 and VZ 33 rifles were produced on captured equipment by the Germans. For reference, see any edition of "Small Arms of the World" by Smith. Much of the labor (skilled and otherwise) was essentially slave labor from the conquered population. | [
"Physical capital in the occupied territories was destroyed by the war, insufficient reinvestment and maintenance, whereas the industrial capacity of Germany increased substantially until the end of the war despite heavy bombing. (However, much of this capacity was useless after the war because it specialized in ar... |
how did we end up with a silent k, of all sounds, in words like knight and knife? | Silent letters are the ghosts of pronunciations past. The word 'knight', with its silent 'k', and silent 'gh', is cognate with the German word for servant, 'knecht', where every letter is pronounced. ... The 'e' isn't pronounced, but it changes the pronunciation of the vowel by lengthening it. | [
"The letter ⟨k⟩ is normally silent (i.e. it does not reflect any sound) when it precedes an ⟨n⟩ at the beginning of a word, as in “knife”, and sometimes by extension in other positions, such as “tight knit”. Exceptions include the town of Knoebels Grove ( ) located in Pennsylvania in the United States, the Germanic... |
Is there really a debate on the amount of people killed by communists regimes in the 20th century? | You might be interested in the historic debates around the Holodmor that I describe [here](_URL_0_).
As for the "100 million deaths caused by communism" - as far as I am aware, this claim specifically comes from the *Black Book of Communism*, published in 1997 by Stéphane Courtois et al. While Courtois and the contributors are academics, I have to say that at least in English-language academic writings (the book was originally published in French) on the Soviet Union, this isn't a work that is cited much, if at all, and definitely not authoritatively. Courtois draws a lot on the totalitarian school, which supposes that fascist and communist regimes were effectively similar, "totalitarian" regimes, and this doesn't really have much currency in academia any more, at least in Soviet studies.
The book, from what I know, also suffers from a methodological flaw in that Courtois pretty much tried to work backwards to justify his 100 million dead statistic. It's also worth pointing out that the vast majority of the deaths that are included in those figures come from famines, specifically the Chinese famine during the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961) and during 1931-1933 in the USSR. In the case of the latter, as I note in the link answer, while most historians agree on the ultimate *responsibility* of the Soviet government, there are still debates around the *intentionality*. There's also a larger question to be asked around if the responsibility for such famines is different from, say, that of the British government in the Bengal Famine of 1943, but I am not an expert on that particular event.
In the broader sense, I would say that there *is* in particular a debate around the numbers of deaths caused by these famines, and that's not really something that can ever be completely settled. Malnutrition and starvation can obviously be fatal, but often is not a direct cause of death - these states weaken the immune system and allow victims to succumb more easily to epidemics, or can contribute to severe health problems later in life. Any estimates as to death totals will be just that - estimates, no matter how reasonable or plausible. As Ian Johnson [notes](_URL_1_) regarding deaths in the Great Leap Forward, there is a mid-range estimate of 30 million dead, but other scholarly estimates range between 25 and 45 million. Johnson notes that both of those high and low end estimates are "credible" and "plausible", and perhaps they very well are. But they are still *estimates* and ones that differ by 20 million at that.
Even in terms of Soviet deaths, 20 million total dead gets touted, and is the figure used in *Black Book*. It's something of a "safe" high number that still gets used, and probably owes most of its fame to use by Robert Conquest, but isn't really supported by the academic literature that has been produced since 1990. Stephen Wheatcroft and Michael Ellman, who (as noted in the linked answer) argue quite a bit over the intentionality of Soviet famine deaths, both largely agree on the number of deaths from Soviet "repression" and famine to be substantially lower, and more in the 9 or 10 million range (as noted by Timothy Snyder [here](_URL_2_)).
I think it's worth mentioning overall that these victims really are better thought of as victims of particular regimes, rather than of "communism". In the case of Soviet deaths, attributing the victims' deaths to "communism" is perhaps accurate in a 30,000 foot view sense, but does little to explain why almost all of these deaths occurred between 1928 and 1953, and almost none occurred in the latter half of the Soviet Union's existence.
In general, I dislike the focus on tallying these sorts of numbers. As can be seen, they tend to be used to create a balance sheet for political and ideological purposes. Whatever the estimates tend to produce, in most of these cases the answer will be 'millions", and we need to remember that these are individual lives we're talking about, and any amount of wrongful death is tragic and wrong. | [
"Rummel estimated the total number of people killed by all governments during the 20th century at 212 million, and he estimated that 148 million were killed by communist regimes from 1917 to 1987. To give some perspective on these numbers, Rummel pointed out that all domestic and foreign wars during the twentieth c... |
The Greek Gods and Jesus | Short answer, no. Long answer. Christianity was unique in that the miraculous birth story that is told of Jesus was through a virgin. But other than that, a miraculous birth isn't all that uncommon. In The Gospel According to Judas, Jeffrey Archer and Francis Moloney argue that the conception of Jesus is just one more example of the sort of Greek myths that tell of a god producing an offspring with a woman on earth. Those stories require a physical union, so they aren't virginal in nature, but the over all concept was well known. For instance, we have the birth of Augustus, where the god Apollo is said to have impregnated Atia (Augustus's mother), making Augustus the son of a god. The work of Jeffery Archer and Francis Moloney has to be taken with a large grain of salt though, because while Moloney is a great scholar, Archer was writing a fictional story. But they do nail the Greek myth part.
I mention that work though because Gerald O'Collins uses it to launch an article titled The Virginal Conception and Its Meaning. O'Collins doesn't discredit the fact that there were a host of such myths going around about Greek and Roman figures, but he objects to the idea that Jews in Palestine would have known those stories and thus copied them. He points out that when the virginal birth is raised by outsiders, the argument is that Mary committed adultery and had a child. Celsus, a pagan author from the late second century, made the claim that Jesus's actual father was a soldier named Panthera, and that he had heard this from the Jews.
The birth of Jesus, from a virginal conception, would have actually appeared more outlandish to Jews than it probably would have to the Greco-Romans because the Greco-Romans already knew of figures who were said to have been born of a woman and a god. The woman being a virgin would have been a new spin, but the overall idea was already there.
But we also have to look at how the virginal birth came to be. Paul never speaks of it. He makes it appear as if Jesus had a natural birth, saying that he was born of a woman. That would have been the common phrasing. It isn't until Matthew and Luke that we get this virginal birth story. There have been some arguments as to the birth narratives being a later addition, but many scholars see them more as theological in nature. O'Collins runs that view down in his work, and one of the best sources on the topic, Raymond Brown's Birth of the Messiah also takes that view.
So what we can say on this point is that the virgin birth narratives are later, and they don't seem to be questioned all that much. When they are, it's not based on the idea that it couldn't happen, but instead that this was a case of adultery.
Just one more point. We learn from the Pauline epistles that the manner in which Gentiles were brought into the faith was that a missionary, such as Paul, would first go to local synagogues (or places Jews gathered) and preach there. Pamela Eisenbaum, in Paul was not a Christian, really breaks this down. The reason to go to the local synagogues, for someone like Paul who was only entrusted to preach to Gentiles, was because of a set of people called God-fearers. These are Gentiles who like the Jewish message, but don't fully convert (often they simply wouldn't get circumcised). These God-fearers were really a stepping stone to the larger Gentile population.
So it was a gradual spreading. And we can be somewhat certain that it is out of this that the virgin birth stories first begin forming. It's as the story is spreading that a theological tradition is created, giving Jesus a miraculous birth. This wouldn't have been strange to the Gentiles as they would have already been familiar with stories that had the same general ring to them. | [
"Some have argued that Christianity is not founded on a historical Jesus, but rather on a mythical creation. This view proposes that the idea of Jesus was the Jewish manifestation of Hellenistic mystery cults that acknowledged the non-historic nature of their deity using it instead as a teaching device. However, th... |
why are there more bugs out at night? | Because they have a better chance of not being eaten by birds, most of which sleep at night. | [
"Bed bugs are attracted to their hosts primarily by carbon dioxide, secondarily by warmth, and also by certain chemicals. \"Cimex lectularius\" only feeds every five to seven days, which suggests that it does not spend the majority of its life searching for a host. When a bed bug is starved, it leaves its shelter a... |
Tooth decay only because of poor dental hygiene or can genetics play a part? | I am not a dentist but my understanding is that genetics can definitely play a part. Inherited [amelogenesis imperfecta](_URL_1_) for example can cause [enamel hypoplasia](_URL_0_). | [
"Dental decay or dental caries is the gradual destruction of tooth enamel. Poverty is a significant determinant for oral health. Dental caries is one of the most common chronic diseases worldwide. In the United States it is the most common chronic disease of childhood. Risk factors for dental caries includes living... |
Why did the Abbasids revolt against the Umayyads? Was it because the Umayyads were hostile towards the descendants of the prophet(12 imams)? | To begin with, the Abbassids did not claim descent from Muhammad. The Sunni definition of Ahl al-Bayt is broader than the Shi'a definition. Sunnis consider *all* of Banu Hashim and their descendants to fall under Ahl Bayt. That would be the descendants of Ali, Abbas, Ja'far, Aqeel, and Harith ibn Abdul Muttallib. The definition is even broader in the Shafi'i school. The founder, Muhammad ibn Idris ash-Shafi'i, considered Banu Muttallib and *their* descendants to also fall under the definition of Ahl-Bayt.
Shi'as, of course, consider Ahl Bayt to *only* refer to the descendants of Fatima. Even Ali's children through other women are not considered Ahl Bayt.
So the Abbassids, being descended from Abbas, are considered Ahl Bayt by Sunnis but not by Shi'as. An important point to note.
To answer your question.....kinda. As with most historical events, it's too simplistic to point to one cause and say it was the only reason. But yes, Umayyad hostility to Ahl Bayt played a role. In particular, the incident at Karbala was a major stain on the Umayyad reputation. It fomented rebellion and caused a near continuous string of uprisings between the time it occurred and the time the dynasty ended. Proto-Shi'as attempted many times to overthrow the dynasty and install an Alid ruler (descendant of Ali). The Abbassid's capitalized on this and allied themselves with the Shi'a movement.
However, realize that the proto-Shi'as were a relatively small movement. Alid sympathizers were larger and included many of those who would be considered Sunni. One of the most famous Sunni jurists, Nu'man ibn Thabit (Abu Hanifa), was pro-Alid and contributed financially to one of the rebellions led by Zaid ibn Ali (a grandson of Husain, the one killed at Karbala).
Even larger than just the proto-Shi'as and Alid sympathizers, however, were non-Arabs. Under the Umayyad dynasty, the majority of Muslims were non-Arab. However, there was heavy discrimination against them. To the extent that at times, jizya, a tax taken on non-Muslims was taken on non-Arab Muslims. This was more than just an issue of money, it was the highest insult you could give a Muslim. Basically saying that their Islam wasn't quite as valid as an Arab's Islam. What was particularly infuriating is that by this time, the religious and scholarly class was majority non-Arab. I mentioned Abu Hanifa earlier, he was non-Arab. If you go through a list of the most influential jurists, traditionalists, and other scholars, it would be dominated by non-Arabs (mostly Persian). Even if you weren't a scholar, imagine how angry it would make you to see that the most religious people in society are non-Arabs and yet non-Arabs are treated like second-class Muslims.
Abbassids made use of this. They organized their military units *not* by tribal affiliations or ethnicity but by location. It didn't matter if you were Arab or non-Arab, you were grouped by where you came from geographically. The modern equivalent would be replacing "White" regiments, "Black" regiments, and "Asian" regiments with a "New York" regiment, a "California" regiment, and a "Kansas" regiment. Not only does that show your supporters that you're not preferring a certain ethnic group or tribe over others, it creates a new solidarity with the people around you.
It's said by some historians that the Abbassid revolution represents a shift from an Arab empire to a cosmopolitan empire. That is true in a sense, but remember that the Abbassids were still Arabs, their language was still Arabic, and their culture (while Persian influenced) was still Arab. It opened up the doors for non-Arabs to join the political leadership but it wasn't a Persian defeat of Arabs as some people think.
All of this to say, the racial issues of the Umayyads played a bigger role than proto-Shi'a sentiment. The Abbassids benefited from Shi'as aligning with them but it's unlikely they ever planned on putting an Alid in power. And yes, the Abbassids didn't end up being much better for the remaining imams than the Umayyads were. It's not so ironic when you realize that their "pro-Shi'a" stance was never a true reflection of their ideals, just a way to get more people to join them.
For further reading:
*The End of the Jihâd State: The Reign of Hishām ibn ʻAbd al-Malik and the Collapse of the Umayyads* by Khalid Blankinship
*The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the 6th to the 11th Century* by Hugh Kennedy
And, although dated, *The 'Abbāsid Revolution* by M. A. Shaban | [
"Thus, the Abbasid branch of the Hashimites (descendants of ibn Abbas) and the Alid branch (descendants of Ali) each made their own separate efforts for overthrowing the Umayyads. The revolt of Zayd ibn Ali, a descendant of Ali, in the 730s, was ill-fated. Zayd, after being abandoned by many of his followers, fough... |
Anatomically, what muscles/tendons/etc. move the
jaw from side to side or front to back? | Side to side is accomplished by the [medial pterygoid muscles](_URL_2_) and the [lateral pterygoid muscles](_URL_0_)
Forward and backwards is accomplished by a couple muscles:
* Forward (protraction) is accomplished by the [masseter](_URL_1_)
* Backwards (retraction) is accomplished by the [temporalis](_URL_3_)
Of course, I'm probably missing some, I've never really dealt with *human* anatomy. | [
"The lower joint compartment formed by the mandible and the articular disc is involved in rotational movement—this is the initial movement of the jaw when the mouth opens. The upper joint compartment formed by the articular disc and the temporal bone is involved in translational movement—this is the secondary glidi... |
what is a subsidy? | Very simply, a subsidy is when the government offers money to a group, usually corporations, to achieve various results. This can range from lower prices for the consumer, to help researching new technologies, to an effort to stabilize prices.
A great example in the US is farming. As we all know, farming is largely dependent on the weather. This means that some years too little food is produced. This would cause prices to rise, which would in turn make food more expensive. A subsidy, in this example, would pay part of that additional cost to keep the grain cheaper for the end consumer. In the reverse situation, a year when too *much* grain is produced, prices can drop. If the cost drops too much then the farmer might not make any money (or even lose money to ship the food to its markets). In this case, a subsidy would help raise the *farmers* profit while again keeping the end costs low.
These are examples of fairly direct subsidies, but the government can subsidize almost anything. And they can do it to achieve different results. Changes in farm subsides recently have promoted the growth and use of corn in many different products (including gasoline!). They can promote the growth of one sector over another.
In the case of this article (which Ive just skimmed) it seems that the government would be subsidizing the cost of solar plants so that it becomes a cheaper alternative to coal. If people are given a choice between coal and more expensive solar, they would chose solar. This would (hopefully) have an environmental impact, and so would desirable, but its a very expensive technology. The government then steps in and takes some of the financial burden in order to promote the growth of solar power. | [
"A subsidy or government incentive is a form of financial aid or support extended to an economic sector (or institution, business, or individual) generally with the aim of promoting economic and social policy. Although commonly extended from government, the term subsidy can relate to any type of support – for examp... |
Is radioactivity "contagious"? | Neutrons can transmute nearby materials to unstable, radioactive ones. This takes a lot of neutrons though, as is generally only seen inside nuclear reactors. For instance, the stable iron inside reactor pressure vessels can absorb neutrons and become radiative forms of iron.
56Fe + n - > 57Fe
57Fe + n - > 58Fe
58Fe + n - > 59Fe, which is radioactive.
Other types of radiation can do this in theory, but it generally happens at levels too low to even detect. | [
"Unplanned exposure to radionuclides generally has a harmful effect on living organisms including humans, although low levels of exposure occur naturally without harm. The degree of harm will depend on the nature and extent of the radiation produced, the amount and nature of exposure (close contact, inhalation or i... |
Can water freeze above 0C/32F with additives? | As I recall, anything dissolved in water will always depress the freezing point. In the case of the article you're most likely thinking about, the idea is to install wind power pumps that will bring water from below the existing ice surface and put it on top. This will work to thicken up the ice, as ice itself has insulating properties. Expose more water to the (cold) atmosphere, you produce more ice.
This technique is used on a small scale for increasing the strength of things like ice roads or increasing the thickness of ice for skating purposes (the Ottawa canal system comes to mind). | [
"The relationship between the different temperature scales is linear but the scales have different zero points, so conversion is not simply multiplication by a factor. Pure water freezes at 32 °F = 0 °C and boils at 212 °F = 100 °C at 1 atm. The conversion formula is:\n",
"Water normally freezes at 273.15 K (0 °C... |
What are the causes for a hurricane of this magnitude? (Hurricane Matthew) | There were strong hurricanes before there was global warming, and Matthew is pretty typical for a Caribbean storm. It's not likely anyone could pin this one on climate change, but if there were some trend that was different over the course of decades, then you could look back and say maybe that was due to climate change.
Hurricanes need warm water and low wind shear to form and strengthen. | [
"All Atlantic Category 5 hurricanes have made landfall at some location at hurricane strength, and all but two made landfall at some location at major hurricane strength. Most Category 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic make landfall because of their proximity to land in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, where the usual ... |
Why isn't Greenland a continent? | Basically it's arbitrary. Continents are decided based mainly on convention rather than specific criteria. Also Greenland is quite a bit smaller than say Australia. 2,166,086 square kilometers as opposed to 7,617,930 square kilometers. | [
"Greenland (Greenlandic: \"Kalaallit Nunaat\", ) is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically associated with Europe (... |
Explain CPT symmetry and the implications of this article. | CPT symmetry means that if you flip C, P, and time, all of them, the particle will behave the same. It doesn't behave the same if you flip just C or just P or just T. | [
"\"CP-symmetry\", often called just \"CP\", is the product of two symmetries: C for charge conjugation, which transforms a particle into its antiparticle, and P for parity, which creates the mirror image of a physical system. The strong interaction and electromagnetic interaction seem to be invariant under the comb... |
Why did the muslims take so long to adopt the printing press considering how highly they value historical records and their sacred book? | Not to discourage further discussion, but you might be interested in [this previous answer](_URL_0_) from u/frogbrooks. | [
"By the 9th century, Muslims were using paper regularly, although for important works like copies of the revered Qur'an, vellum was still preferred. Advances in book production and bookbinding were introduced.\n",
"Printed copies of the Quran during this period met with strong opposition from Muslim legal scholar... |
how did newton figure out gravity? | The rotations of the planets were well known. however it was assumed that the orbits were circular. Newton invented calculus (though whether or not he was the first is a matter of debate) and proved that the orbits are elliptical not circular. | [
"Newton's contribution to gravitational theory was to unify the motions of heavenly bodies, which Aristotle had assumed were in a natural state of constant motion, with falling motion observed on the Earth. He proposed a law of gravity that could account for the celestial motions that had been described earlier usi... |
why is it that when i watch tv recordings from the 70's, 80's or 90's the quality is absolutely terrible, almost unwatchable, but back then they seemed perfectly fine? | Compared to everything else at the time, they looked pretty much the same. Also, you're probably watching on a much nicer screen now. | [
"On several occasions, malfunctions of either the television set or the Ampex recorder caused a tape to have serious video or audio problems. In some cases, no recording could be made, explaining some of the weeknight date gaps in the 1960s and 1970s. Some of the oldest tapes in the collection, mainly between 1968 ... |
What are your opinions regarding Martin Gilbert’s books of WW1 and WW2? | I read the WWI books by Gilbert, SLA Marshall, and Keegan about a decade ago. I enjoyed all of them as they offered quite different perspectives and focus.
Looking at them as strictly operational histories versus a more "war and society" approach, Gilbert's work falls into the latter whereas the other two are more slanted toward military although not purely operational. More than the other two he includes the views of society toward the war, notably the peace movement. I enjoyed how he interwove primary source quotations throughout his work. | [
"Many laud Gilbert's books and atlases for their meticulous scholarship and his clear and objective presentation of complex events. His book on World War I is described as a majestic, single-volume work incorporating all major fronts—domestic, diplomatic, military—for \"a stunning achievement of research and storyt... |
why sometimes paintings that look like a wounded chicken drew them are considered art and could be sold for millions? | Art isn't all about who can make the most detailed drawings, aesthetics are huge in it. A very detailed and beautiful landscape would fit in nicely with a traditional theme, however minimalist or abstract themes are part of a contemporary theme.
There is also meaning in the paintings. A well drawn portrait may not have any deep meaning, while a confusing, cluttered, incomprehensible picture like Picasso's ["Guernica"](_URL_0_) can convey feelings such as pain and suffering.
It's like music. A Beethoven symphony may be extremely well made, but maybe I enjoy the meanings and sounds of Metallica more. | [
"According to some native beliefs recorded by the Jesuits and others, the paintings were drawn by a race of giants—a supposition that has been discarded by scientific investigators since the late nineteenth century. This belief may have been suggested by the larger-than-life size of many of the human (as well as an... |
What caused the significant phenotypic diversity of Central Asia? | Central Asia has always been a contact zone between Caucasoids and Mongoloids. Indo-Europeans have inhabited the area for a long time, Tajiks are Indo-European speakers and also predominantly Caucasian phenotypically. Today's western China was once inhabited by Tocharians, who were Indo-Europeans, belonged to a haplogroup charcteristic for Ukraine and could pass for westrn Europeans.
Subsequently the area was invaded by Mongoloid Turkic tribes, which intermixed with the previous populations and the result is the stew we have today. So it's not really a modern development. | [
"Historically, Central Asia has been a \"melting pot\" of West Eurasia and East Eurasian peoples, leading to high genetic admixture and diversity. Physical and genetic analyses of ancient remains have concluded that – while the Scythians, including those in the eastern Pazyryk region – possessed predominantly featu... |
how did someone like duterte rise to the power in the philippines ? | It really comes down to the fact that the Philippines has had a massive problem with drug usage in the past several decades. Along with that is a prosperous organized crime epidemic. Rodrigo Duterte, while he was mayor of Davao, did manage to get rid of a lot of the towns drug problems.
Yes, he did it through murder and a litany of questionable methods, but he still did it.
At some point a problem or a set of problems becomes large enough that a population will take drastic measures and throw morality and justice out the window. This is what happened in the Philippines and some in the US would argue here as well with Donald J Trump and the hollowing out of industrial America, but lets not get into that.
If any ~~Philippinos~~ Filipinos are here, they will probably answer much better than I have as my perspective is maybe over simplistic. | [
"The triumph of the peaceful People Power Revolution and the ascension of Corazon Aquino into power signaled the end of authoritarian rule in the Philippines and the dawning of a new era for Filipinos. The relatively peaceful manner by which Aquino came into power drew international acclaim and admiration not only ... |
Why is it, that an infusion with artificial blood cannot develop itself into cancer? | Blood cells lack a cell nucleus (though that does not mean that they are prokaryotes. That term is used to describe cellular *organisms* without a nucleus, not single cells) and other important cell organelles (mitochondria, ribosomes, rough ER, etc...). That means that not only are they unable to produce any proteins, they are also not able to undergo mitosis, because they lack proper DNA and the enzymes necessary to multiply it. This explains why there's no danger of cancer - the cells simply are unable to multiply.
Side-fact: that also explains their limited life-time, since they simply "wear down". As they circulate through the body and get pressed through capillary vessels, they start to lose their flexibility, simply because the proteins that are responsible for their shape and flexibility get damaged - but sincethere is no machinery in place to synthesize new proteins, there's no way for them to replace those damaged proteins.
Erythrocytes that are not flexible will then sooner or later get stuck in special structures (for example) in the spleen and get "destroyed" there, while healthy and flexible erythrocytes will simply be able to pass through.
| [
"By manipulating the tumor environment, it is possible to create favorable conditions for the cells with least resistance to chemotherapy drugs to become more fit and outcompete the rest of the population. The chemotherapy, administered directly after, should wipe out the predominant tumor cells.\n",
"Angiogenesi... |
Can pyschopaths have traumatic disorders like PTSD? | Trainee clinical psychologist here. There's no current diagnosis of psychopath. That term, and sociopath, are a bit outdated and currently covered by antisocial personality disorder in the DSM-V (the manual used to diagnose mental health disorders).
It's a good question though. Theres no reason why the two shouldn't overlap. It's entirely possible (if not quite likely) that someone diagnosed with ASPD could have experienced distressing traumatic events when younger. That distress could reach a diagnosis of PTSD and they may have developed ASPD as a response to that trauma (or they may be unrelated but I would find this highly unlikely). Personally I would be surprised if someone with this diagnosis hadn't experienced some form of abuse when they were younger (though they may not).
When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Reduced empathy, heightened aggression and self-serving behaviour are relatively effective self-protection strategies at face value. They keep others away from you, reduce the chances of being caught in emotionally vulnerable relationships, reduce the chances of people knowing enough to hurt you and make sure that your needs are met before anyone else's. Quite a sensible response to trauma... Though perhaps not the most useful for personal growth and fulfilment.
But, yes, since ASPD is characterised by an unwillingness or inability to consider the individual's impact on others, there is nothing that precludes a comorbid diagnosis of PTSD. They can still feel fear, anger and sadness like anyone else. They're just not likely to feel compassion for *you*.
Edit: So it seems a lot of people felt personally affected by the third paragraph I wrote. I just wanted to say that I apologise if it was distressing for anyone. As someone who suffers from mental health difficulties myself, it can be difficult reading things laid out so plainly sometimes. It wasn't my intent to cause any upset and now I'm thinking perhaps I spoke bluntly.
If anyone was, I'd just like to say that there is help available for things like this and, if you're motivated, change is possible. If you do want things to be different, professional guidance can make a world of difference. Hope you're all ok! Doing my best to respond to as much as I can but I'm quite busy atm so I may not get time to reply to everyone!
Edit 2: Nobody complained! Everyone's been lovely and respectful (except that one guy). Just wanted to make sure people is ok! | [
"PTSD is a psychiatric disorder that requires an environmental event that individuals may have varied responses to so gene-environment studies tend to be the most indicative of their effect on the probability of PTSD then studies of the main effect of the gene. Recent studies have demonstrated the interaction betwe... |
What’s our early evidence for measuring horses in hands? Why has it persisted as the standard for measuring horses? | The hand is a unit of measurement that is used exclusively for the describing the heights of horses and other equids. Horses are measured from the ground to the top of the [withers](_URL_0_). One hand is equal to four inches. Although hands are expressed decimally, they are base four units. A horse who is 16.2 hands high is 16 hands and two inches tall at the withers, or five and a half feet or roughly 168 centimeters.
Deriving units of measure from dimensions of the body is intuitive, and the concept of using the human hand as a unit of length is ancient. The Egyptian hand was a fraction of the cubit system. The cubit was broadly defined in the ancient world as the length of the forearm from the middle finger to the elbow, but the Egyptian cubit was a standardized measure. Or at least, a largely standardized measure. Surviving cubit rods range between 52.3 and 52.9 centimeters. The Egyptian cubit was subdivided into seven palms, and each palm was further subdivided into four digits. A handsbreadth was 1.25 palms, or five digits, long.
An early attempt at fixing the length of the modern hand to four inches can be credited to King Henry VIII. The British horse in Early Modern England was a small, course creature. Henry VIII’s incursions into France and Scotland drained the nation of quality bloodstock. In 1513 alone the crown purchased 2,566 adult horses from England’s southeastern counties. In his later campaigns, the King turned to the Low Countries to supply his armies with horses, but Continental horses, especially draft animals, were expensive. British horses were cheaper, but on closer examination the reason became apparent. As many as fourteen or fifteen horses were needed to pull a single wagon. The Dutch managed with four.
The need to improve the quality of British bloodstock, as well as increase their numbers, was of utmost importance. The export of horses from England was banned in 1531, and the sale of horses to Scotland was banned the following year. Noblemen, clergymen, and gentry were ordered to keep breeding stock, and were constantly reminded of their duties by royal propaganda. And in 1540 a measure was passed that regulated the height of horses kept on lands where breeding could not strictly controlled:
> Be it enacted by the King our sovereign lorde...that no...horse or horses being above thage of twoo yeris and not being of the altitude and height of fyftene handfulls to be measured from the lowest parte of the hove of the forefoote unto the highest part of the wither, and every handfull to conteyne iiij ynches of the standard, to pasture feede or be in or uppon any of the said forrestis chaces commons mores marrishes hethis or waste groundis within any of the shires or territories…
King Henry VIII’s hand was four inches long, exactly like the modern hand. But despite the royal decree, the hand as a unit was a tad fungible even into the 19th Century. Britain had a second similarly named unit: the handsbreadth. Edward Phillips’ 1706 dictionary corroborates Henry VIII’s edict. The hand was a measure of four inches. The handsbreadth, however, was a measure of three inches. Thomas mortimer would echo the same definition in his dictionary sixty years later. However, he also provided a second, more field expedient, definition:
> The hand among jockeys is four fingers breadth, being the first clenched, whereby the height of a horse is measured.
The 1816 *Encyclopaedia Perthensis* conflates the two measurements. The second definition of “handful” is given as:
> A palm; a hand’s breadth; four inches.
However, the dictionary’s fourth definition of “palm” is:
> A hand, or measure of lengths comprising three inches
Although the hand has been used to measure horses for centuries, the unit is not ubiquitous. Hands today are only used in English-speaking countries; the remainder of the world uses centimeters. South Africa, reflecting both English and Dutch heritage, uses hands and centimeters interchangeably. The longevity of the unit likely lies in its practicality. Hands are neither too course nor too fine of a measurement for animals the size of horses, and as horse culture became entrenched in Britain and its colonies, the equine infrastructure was built up around the hand, cementing it into the horseman’s folklore.
**Sources**
Arnold, Dieter. *Building in Egypt: Pharaonic Stone Masonry*
Clagett, Marshall. *Ancient Egyptian Science: A Sourcebook, Volume 3: Ancient Egyptian Mathematics*
Donoho, Emily. “Why are horses measured in hands? H & H explains.” *Horse & Hound*
*Encyclopaedia Perthensis; or Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature, & c.*
Mortimer, Thomas. *A New and Complete Dictionary of Trade and Commerce*
Phillips, Edward. *The New World of English Words, or, a General Dictionary*
*The Statutes of the Realm. Printed by Command of His Majesty King George the Third. In Pursuance of an Address of the House of Commons of Great Britain*
Stone, Mark H. “The Cubit: A History and Measurement Commentary.” *Journal of Anthropology*
Thirsk, Joan. “Horses in Early Modern England: For Service, for Pleasure, for Power.” *The Rural Economy of England: Collected Essays* | [
"References going back to at least 1937 suggest that the \"gauge\" of ancient rutways, and the distance between the wheels of carts influenced the railway standard gauge of the modern era which is . The argument is that this is shown by the evidence of rutted roads marked by cart wheels dating from the Roman Empire... |
What do we hope to gain or reveal through research and experimentation of quantum entanglement? | Some of the motivation is fundamental research. There has been much effort invested in conducting truly loophole-free [Bell tests](_URL_3_) as they establish that the non-classicality that quantum mechanics predicts in fact can be observed in nature. While the relation between entanglement, existence of Bell inequalities and non-classicality is well understood for the simplest case of two entangled qubits, this topic becomes very complex higher dimensional systems. That is an aspect of entanglement in which many theorists are interested.
On the more applied side there are quantum communication protocols that rely on entanglement - most importantly [device-independent quantum key distribution](_URL_0_), which allows for absolutely secure communication between two parties that don't require you to make assumptions about the device you are using. Even if some malicious third party rigs your device, if you follow the protocol you will either come to the conclusion that the device cannot be used for secure communication or you will communicate such that eavesdropping is impossible.
[Quantum teleportation](_URL_2_) allows you to transmit single qubits without the need of physically sending them if entanglement is already shared. Based on this teleportation we hope to be able to build at some point [quantum repeaters](_URL_1_) that would allow for much more efficient long distance transmission on quantum bits than directly sending photons through fibers does.
That would be a few subjects of current research. | [
"Quantum Entanglement Science and Technology (QuEST) is a research program, announced by the DARPA Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) in 2008. As a follow-on to the QuIST Program, its goal was to further accelerate development in the field of quantum information science.\n",
"D’Ariano proposed quantum entanglem... |
Can you easily break somebody's neck by twisting their head quickly, like in the movies? | I read this question answered a few months ago on here. Basically the top comment said that a person's neck muscles are super strong, so that unless the killer really surprises the person being killed, the person could tense up and fight them off. | [
"On the 2016 \"Talk is Jericho\" podcast, Nancy's sister Sandra Toffoloni clarified some details further. She said that over the weekend after the murders, the search history on Benoit's computer showed he had researched \"the quickest and easiest way to break a neck\". He had then later used a towel around his nec... |
Really small question about napoleonic french army jackets | Although I don't want to discourage others from answering, the forum on [The Napoleon Series](_URL_0_) has a number of reenactors lurking on it. | [
"The cloth caps worn by the original grenadiers in European armies during the seventeenth century were frequently trimmed with fur. The practice fell into disuse until the second half of the eighteenth century when grenadiers in the British, Spanish and French armies began wearing high fur hats with cloth tops and,... |
If muslims were known as descendants of Ishmael in the middle ages, were they to some extent already recognized as some 'third' Abrahamic group prior to the birth of Mohammed? | Did Islam exist before the birth of Mohammed? | [
"In Islam there is a tradition of prophetic lineage, particularly with regard to the prophet Abraham (Ibrahim) who had many prophets in his lineage - Jesus (Isa), Zakariyyah, Muhammad, David (Dawud)), etc. - through his sons Ismael and Isaac.\n",
"The earliest three generations of Muslims are known as the Salaf, ... |
what is sql? is it one of the simpler programming languages? | SQL = Structured Query Language.
It is a language meant for getting/updating data in databases. An example command (so to speak) would be
INSERT INTO table(col1, col2) VALUES(val1, val2) | [
"SQL ( \"S-Q-L\", \"sequel\"; Structured Query Language) is a domain-specific language used in programming and designed for managing data held in a relational database management system (RDBMS), or for stream processing in a relational data stream management system (RDSMS). It is particularly useful in handling str... |
why isn't canada outrageously wealthy due to their landmass? | Cold. Too cold. Transportation is tough when it's too cold. | [
"The result of cheaply distributed land and land reforms has been that modern Canada's land holding pattern is very egalitarian and large-scale. The majority of the population owns some land, often in large quantities. This is distinct from the few large landed estates and masses of tenant farmers typical of Old Wo... |
how are baitcar operations legal? what makes it not entrapment? | Entrapment is when an officer convinces someone to commit a crime they otherwise wouldn't. When bait cars are set up, there's no undercover cop standing there telling them they should break in. They're doing it purely on their own volition. | [
"Bait cars can be used as part of a honey trap, a form of sting operation, in which criminals not known to the police are lured into exposing themselves. Unlike a sting operation that targets a known or suspected criminal, a honey trap establishes a general lure to attract unknown criminals. Bait cars are not consi... |
As we understand black holes, how does gravity outside the event horizon affect items inside the event horizon? | > Let's say that there's a Jupiter sized planet orbiting around a black hole. Would items inside the event horizon be affected by the planet outside it?
Yes
> Also, would that not also affect where the event horizon was? Wouldn't the gravity pull from the planet slightly move the event horizon inward a bit?
The event horizon is a coordinate singularity depending on the coordinate choice. The standard EH is a curve of constant Schwarzschild coordinates t and r. However, if you have a planet with significant gravity, spacetime is no longer Schwarzschild and you cannot build Schwarzschild coordinates again. In general, your absolutely arbitrary "reasonable" coordinate system will have an event horizon covering the BH singularity. The shape and position and state of motion of the horizon depends on the coordinates.
> Also, following that train of thought, would it not be possible for two event horizons to cancel each other (mostly, not absolutely) out if two black holes were to be in close proximity?
They won't cancel eachother out. What actually happens is very, very difficult to understand, and again you cannot use Schwarzschild coordinates. However, an EH will always cover the singularities, whatever the coordinates. | [
"In astrophysics, an event horizon is a boundary beyond which events cannot affect an observer on the opposite side of it. An event horizon is most commonly associated with black holes, where gravitational forces are so strong that light cannot escape.\n",
"Any object approaching the horizon from the observer's s... |
Why do royalty take the style of their first name (ex. Queen Elizabeth)? | They do *technically* have last names -- descendants of Queen Elizabeth II have the surname Mountbatten-Windsor.
["For the most part, members of the Royal Family who are entitled to the style and dignity of HRH Prince or Princess do not need a surname, but if at any time any of them do need a surname (such as upon marriage), that surname is Mountbatten-Windsor."](_URL_0_)
So basically, when Prince William got married he was married as "William Arthur Philip Louis Mountbatten-Windsor" -- but he is not bound to use this name, as evidenced by the fact that when he registered for university, and in the military, he used the name "William Wales".
Why not use a last name? I don't know the logic behind it (probably custom and practice as much as anything), but I believe a large part of it is that reigning monarchs belong to their country, not a particular family. "Queen Elizabeth the Second of the United Kingdom" (or, if you want to be correct, "Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas Queen, Defender of the Faith") sounds much more like she is the ruler of a nation and belongs to her people than "Queen Elizabeth the Second of the House of Windsor". | [
"For many centuries, the title \"princess\" was not regularly used for a monarch's daughter, who, in English, might simply be called \"Lady\". Old English had no female equivalent of \"prince\", \"earl\", or any royal or noble title aside from queen. Royal women were simply addressed or referred to as \"The Lady [F... |
why do you have to "charge" glow in the dark stuff? | That's actually pretty much correct.
It is called "phosphorescence" and basically means that it doesn't re-emit the light that it absorbs immediately (the way light shining on a red object would just absorb and then reflect back red light immediately at the same strength as the light that hit it, since it is all at once).
Phosphorescent materials absorb the light and then release it *slowly* over time by releasing it with lowered intensity.
That's why glow-in-the-dark items won't glow as bright as the light that was shining on them originally, but they can last longer. | [
"Some examples of glow-in-the-dark materials do not glow by phosphorescence. For example, glow sticks glow due to a chemiluminescent process which is commonly mistaken for phosphorescence. In chemiluminescence, an excited state is created via a chemical reaction. The light emission tracks the kinetic progress of th... |
why are probabilities called densities? | Density refers to how tightly packed the elements of a set are. Density as the trivial relationship between mass and volume follows this.
Observing probabilities as the relationship of chances and incidences and mapping them to a unitary scale gives rise to the idea of distribution—how great a share of a unitary chance any given incident or range of incidences holds. It’s the packing of that unit among incidences that shares the paradigm of density shown above.
I tried to keep it simple, but if you need me to get into detail, let me know. | [
"When it's convenient to work with a dominating measure, the Radon-Nikodym theorem is used to define a density as the Radon-Nikodym derivative of the probability distribution of interest with respect to this dominating measure. Discrete densities are usually defined as this derivative with respect to a counting mea... |
how do drugs like kamagra and viagra affect the body? | Your question was so interesting that I looked it up. Thanks for making me learn something interesting
I'll try to explain Viagra (active ingredient sildenafil). Wikipedia says:
>
"Sildenafil is a potent and selective inhibitor of [cGMP-specific phosphodiesterase type 5](_URL_0_) (PDE5), which is responsible for degradation of cGMP in the [corpus cavernosum](_URL_1_). "
Here's what this means:
There's an compound called cGMP. It does a couple things, but the one that interests us is that it increases bloodflow to the area in the body where it's released (for example an erect penis...). Of course, it's not active forever. There's an enzyme called cGMP that breaks it down and makes it inactive. Sildenafil (the active ingredient in viagra) blocks (or "inhibits") the enzyme. So, if you take sildenafil (viagra), the enzyme takes wayyyyy longer to break down cGMP, making it easier to achieve an erection.
And yes, it was originally developed for (and is still used for) cardiovascular disease treatment. So if you hear of a child who takes viagra, it's not as weird as one may think. | [
"Herbal viagras often carry a number of dangerous side effects. Primarily, they cause abnormally low blood pressure and can restrict blood flow to vital organs. There is also evidence to suggest some preparations may be toxic if taken in larger doses. Additional side effects and dangers of common herbal viagra adul... |
why aren't the joint chiefs five star ranks? | Because the joint chiefs don't individually control everything. They each have control in their respective branches, but they still have to coordinate with each other.
On the flip side, the president can't be expected to have the knowledge necessary to issue out advanced, detailed orders.
So what do you do when you need the ability to sidestep disagreements in lieu of time constraints, but to do so with knowledge and competence? You give one man (usually one of those joint chiefs) all the power, and that's the five star.
We don't actively maintain one because forcing compromise between multiple individuals is the greatest guarantee of satisfactory results, i.e. winning the war with the fewest amount of casualties in as short a time as possible and on the tightest budget reasonably available. | [
"As the table indicates, each of the members of the original Joint Chiefs was a four-star flag or general officer in his respective service branch. By the end of the war, however, each had been promoted: Leahy and King to Fleet Admiral; Marshall and Arnold to General of the Army. Arnold was later appointed to the g... |
Who was the first recorded Chinese person to visit or live in the United States? | My first thoughts of this is that there probably were no recorded records for the first Chinese person, because there was a robust international trade in goods and services by the time of the Pilgrims. People traveled throughout the world for tea and spices. So, it would make sense that at some point an adventurous person from China would have gotten on a boat and may have landed in what is now the USA. By the 1700s, goods from China often found themselves in the USA. One has only to go to the fabulous Peabody Essex Institute in Salem, MA to see these goods. So, it is likely that a trader, sailor, or someone who could translate from Chinese to English, would have come back with one of the tens of thousands of vessels that traveled to China in that time.
As for recorded person, it's a little convoluted. We know that around 1810, a group of "Manilamen" settled in Louisiana. The question is whether these men were strictly all Filipinos or whether they were Chinese who had immigrated first to the Philippines and then on to the USA. But definitively, we know that after the Sino-US Treaty in the 1820s, that Chinese began to immigrate to the USA. We simply do not have their names. | [
"Based on data collected in 1999, when 64,602 Americans resided in China, most resided in Hong Kong (48,220 in 1999), with smaller numbers in Beijing (10,000), Guangzhou (3,200), Shanghai (2,382), Shenyang (555) and Chengdu (800).\n",
"The historian William Mason stated that the first Chinese in Los Angeles were ... |
why is it best for someone with frostbite to warm up slowly? | It's not about you warming up too quickly. A very cold hand is also a numb hand, so you can't tell how hot the water you're putting on yourself actually is, so it would be very easy to burn yourself without realizing it until you've done serious damage.
Meanwhile it's not really important to have the hottest water possible to warm you up quickly. Whether you're trying to heat or cool something, moving water will get the job done quicker than standing water. It's all about heat transfer. If you combine something hot with something cold, heat will flow from the hot into the cold until both items are the same temp. Moving water maximizes contact, which allows for much faster heat transfer. | [
"Individuals with frostbite or potential frostbite should go to a protected environment and get warm fluids. If there is no risk of re-freezing, the extremity can be exposed and warmed in the groin or underarm of a companion. If the area is allowed to refreeze, there can be worse tissue damage. If the area cannot b... |
how did the states get their shapes? | Sometimes it was geographic boundaries like rivers or mountain ranges. Sometimes it was done via treaty with other countries (and they stuck when the state borders were formed). Sometimes they were just chosen arbitrarily (especially where the straight lines happen).
Obviously there are more details with every state, but the above is a good generalization. | [
"How the States Got Their Shapes is a US television series that aired on the History Channel. It is hosted by Brian Unger and is based on Mark Stein's book, \"How the States Got Their Shapes\". The show deals with how the various states of the United States established their borders but also delves into other aspec... |
Is there an evolutionary reason that most animals separate solid and liquid waste? | Animals don't separate their wastes per se. Solid waste is the result of processed food, liquid waste is the result of blood filtering via the kidneys. So the two different waste types come from different systems, and at no point are they really the same thing. Feces are from the beginning of the cycle, it's the bits of what are eaten that the animal can't or won't use, and it is basically sequestered from the biochemistry in the body. The things dissolved in urine are from the back end of the cycle, the toxins and metabolites that result from the biochemistry, and extracted by the kidneys before they reach toxic levels.
Birds and reptiles have the same set up, but with a slightly different kidney. Their waste is equally separated, they just store it up and secrete both at once. | [
"Much detritus is used as a source of nutrition for animals. In particular, many bottom feeding animals (benthos) living in mud flats feed in this way. In particular, since excreta are materials which other animals do not need, whatever energy value they might have, they are often unbalanced as a source of nutrient... |
why don't reboil water? or is it ok? | Completely false. There's nothing wrong with boiling water a million times, other than the fact that you won't have much left. | [
"In many cases, effluent water from one process can be suitable for reuse in another process if given suitable treatment. This can reduce costs by lowering charges for water consumption, reduce the costs of effluent disposal because of reduced volume and lower energy costs due to the recovery of heat in recycled wa... |
Did Aircraft Carriers in World War II carry spare aircraft? | Yes, many aircraft carriers in WWII carried spare planes, though the type and number varied quite a bit by the type of carrier and the individual navy's doctrine (and the availability of spare planes, of course).
For example, Nagumo's carriers at Midway (_Akagi, Kaga, Soryu_ and _Hiryu_) were nominally supposed to carry three spare aircraft of each type (fighter, dive bomber, torpedo/level bomber) which would have made for nine spare planes per carrier, or another 36 he could have thrown into the fight. (This is not insignificant considering _Akagi_ only had 54 aircraft at Midway.)
The three spare aircraft per squadron were logical for the Japanese carriers to carry, given that their basic tactical unit was the three-plane _shotai_ and that their squadrons air wings were built in units that were multiples of those three-plane units -- _Akaki, Soryu_ and _Hiryu_ each had 18 fighters, 18 dive-bombers and 18 torpedo planes at Midway, while _Kaga_ was similarly outfitted except it carried an oversize unit of 27 torpedo planes.
However, each carrier was down below its normal complement, and the only spare planes carried at Midway were two spare dive-bombers aboard _Kaga_. | [
"Seaplane carriers became obsolete at the end of the Second World War. A few remained in service after the war but by the late-1950s most had been scrapped or converted to other uses such as helicopter repair ships.\n",
"Despite the expensive reconstructions, both vessels were considered obsolete by the eve of th... |
On nutrition labels, why are sugars and carbohydrates listed as two separate entities? | To explain why, one first needs to understand the distinction between carbohydrates and sugars.
*Carbohydrates* - molecules composed of carbons, hydrogens, and oxygens. Another term more commonly used in glycoscience is "saccharide", but the two are more or less synonymous. While most people would probably think of typical sugars (a hexagon, maybe a pentagon of carbon surrounded by -OH, like glucose), it can refer to anything that has the general formula of CmH2On, including linear molecules like glyceraldehyde (three carbons, three H2O), and long chains/webs (polysaccharides) of repeating n-gons of carbon + H2O, like starch and cellulose, which are made of glucose.
*Sugar* - a term usually referring to certain mono- or disaccharides. These are the sugars as most know them - a monosaccharide is a hexagon (hexose) or pentagon (pentose) of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, with the chemical formula of C6H12O6, or C6(H2O)6. A disaccharide is simply two of these linked together. Fructose and sucrose are the ones usually used as sweeteners. At times, oligosaccharides are included in the definition - these would be chains of only a few linked together.
In other words, there's a lot more to carbohydrates than sugar; sugars are a subset of the building blocks of the rest of carbohydrates.
As to why they're listed separately, it's because just like different fats have different effects after ingestion, so do different carbohydrates. Some long chains and webs of sugars can't be easily digested; these are referred to as dietary fiber (such as cellulose, chitin, and lignin), and contribute substantially less to caloric value per unit mass/volume compared to the small sugars themselves while still promoting satiety. The chains and webs that can be digested, most notably starch, are metabolized at a somewhat different rate than sugars due to having to be broken down first, resulting in various effects such as less spiking of blood sugar/glucose levels after consumption. As such, it's important to differentiate these from simple sugars, especially given the prevalence of diabetes in the population.
Even this is a simplification of the complexity of carbohydrates; a lot of research is still being done.
A few references of note: [1](_URL_1_) [2](_URL_0_) | [
"This is a list of sugars and sugar products. Sugar is the generalized name for sweet, short-chain, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. They are composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. There are various types of sugar derived from different sources.\n",
"Sugar is the generic name for sweet-ta... |
if i bought a self driving car, would i need a drivers license? | California is still in the process of creating laws regarding this matter, so I can only give you a speculative answer.
You would need a drivers license to operate a self driving car in case the system malfunctioned. With that same line of thought, it's plausible that laws will govern that there be a licensed "driver" in the front seat at all times for that same reason. | [
"There will certainly be a requirement to show a driver's license, and only those drivers appearing on the contract may be authorized to drive. It may include an option to purchase auto insurance (motor insurance, UK), if the renter does not already have a policy to cover rentals—another important consideration for... |
how are we able to hold our breath for so long? how do our vitals still receive oxygen? | You do not consume all of the oxygen in the air you take in during one breath. Inhaled air contains about 21% oxygen, exhaled contains about 16%. So you can see how you would have enough oxygen in a single breath for a while (minutes). The actual urge to take fresh air comes from wanting to get rid of the CO2, which decreases blood pH if accumulated. It's all simple chemistry, gas exchange is governed by rules of diffusion (it's a little more complex when you consider hemoglobin and how tightly you're holding on to oxygen and CO2, but at the fundamental level it's diffusion). So if your blood contains 5X O2 and 10X CO2 (random units), and the breath has 20X O2 and 0X CO2, these two will go down their concentration gradients raising blood O2 and lowering CO2. As you continue exposing your blood to this air in the lungs, you continue to exchange, but as the CO2 is on the rise in the lungs and O2 is dropping, and you keep producing more CO2 and using more O2, you reach a limit and need to take fresh air to re-establish steep enough gradients. | [
"Oxygen (O) must be present in every breathing gas. This is because it is essential to the human body's metabolic process, which sustains life. The human body cannot store oxygen for later use as it does with food. If the body is deprived of oxygen for more than a few minutes, unconsciousness and death result. The ... |
why can't windmills based out at sea have a tidal power element at there base to allow for tidal-energy too ? | Because that would merely cost, while only increasing energy production by a very small margin.
Wind turbines are placed in areas with high wind, and ideally on sandbanks to reduce installation costs. The chance that this matches with a place where tidal forces can be gathered cost effectively, is unlikely. | [
"Tidal Farms utilize tidal stream generators that are grouped together to produce electricity. These generators use the moving tides to turn turbines that are very similar the wind turbines used on land. The power of the ocean and the turbines advance technology guarantee a much more predictable energy output then ... |
Why do some birds have forked tails? | Upturned wing tips increase lift in smaller wings we now use this in aviation as the upturn cuts the wingspan by a third and reduces drag.
The forked tail makes the bird more agile at high speed in the air hope that helps | [
"Most birds' tails end in long feathers called rectrices. These feathers are used as a rudder, helping the bird steer and maneuver in flight; they also help the bird to balance while it is perched. In some species—such as birds of paradise, lyrebirds, and most notably peafowl—modified tail feathers play an importan... |
why are universities treating education like it is corporate business? | You named them. More faculty, more housing, more classrooms. Universities are very expensive to run. Qualified professors aren't exactly a dime a dozen, and most universities I've seen are running low on space to expand, since they were either built in a major city or a city has grown around them.
| [
"Universities have taken a growing interest in creations that have revenue-generating potential, like online classes or lecture slides, while also showing concern for products that may be used by comparable institutions, potentially reducing their competitive advantage. In order to stay on top of others academicall... |
Math and operational warfare: how much and which type of applied mathematics was employed in tactical operations during the ww2? | I'd like to caveat by saying that while I certainly consider myself to be an avid student of the field artillery, and fairly knowledgeable in the science of Gunnery, I would not consider myself to be a historian, or a leading expert in the matter.
Unfortunately also, I am deployed at the moment, so I don't have access to my artillery reference library, which I would need to properly source this response.
What I can do is provide an accurate summarization of what procedures would have been, and then point you to a couple of general texts which would cover the subject.
By World War II, almost all troop contributing nations would have access to fairly accurate rifled howitzers capable of firing indirectly at targets. (An important distinction here is that you can still fire indirectly at a target which may be seen, it's not just for targets which cannot be seen.)
These accurate pieces were aimed by mathematically determining the effects of different weather and material corrections (for example air temperature and weight of the projectile) and applying those to a set of known data which had been pre computed and recorded in a set of "tables."
Think of those "tables" as a huge spreadsheet of known values - if we aim the howitzer this high in the air, it will cause the projectile to fly this far... And etc.
The process of determining the information to put in these firing tables was left to organizations like the US Army's [Ballistic Research Laboratory](_URL_2_) which was staffed by many women who did long hand calculations during the war effort. Later in the war, the BRL also designed and implemented the [ENIAC](_URL_0_) which is widely regarded to be the worlds first general purpose computational machine. It again had women working as it's primary programmers. The ENIAC was capable of running artillery simulations at a much faster rate than longhand computations, allowing for much more accuracy and speed of production in the tables.
Once a set of tables had been produced for a howitzer and specific projectile, it was implemented on the battlefield by a group of specially trained soldiers working within the Battalion as the fire direction Soldiers (most likely officers in most cases during this time period, I'm sorry, I would need to reference the specific task organization for the time.) Current conditions would still have to be factored in, which meant that manual computations were still required in the heat of battle. Because of the need for rapid mathematical solutions, most armies would have used slide rule calculators like [these WWII US variants.](_URL_1_) These slide rules were fast, accurate, and reliable, and in many cases are still produced for Field Artillery weapons and projectiles today to be used as a manual backup to our modern computer systems.
So, to summarize the answer, a calculator would have been handy, however, would not have sped the system up too much.
I highly recommend **Field Artillery and Firepower** by J.B.A. Bailey as a definitive text on the subject.
You may also find the US Field Manual 6-40 **TTPs for Manual Cannon Gunnery** in many locations online, it shows in depth how the computations are completed today, it will give you a good idea of what they evolved from.
I apologize for the incompleteness of my answer, hopefully this helps and makes it past the rigorous mods of /r/askhistorians.
Cheers! | [
"Accounts of the success of operations research during the war, publication in 1944 of John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern's \"Theory of Games and Economic Behavior\" on the use of game theory for developing and analyzing optimal strategies for military and other uses, and publication of John William's \"The Com... |
Is it true that one pound of body fat is equivalent to 3,500 calories? | Yes. One pound of body fat is not purely composed of pure triglycerides. There is also cell membranes and organelles and water too. So a cell of adipose tissue is maybe 85% triglycerides by weight. That yields enough grams of fat molecules (and at 9 Calories per gram) to yield about 3500 Calories in one pound of body fat. | [
"The assumption that a pound of human fat tissue represents about 3500 calories in the context of weight loss or gain is based on a review of previous observations and experiments by Max Wishnofsky published in 1958. He noted that previous research suggested that a pound of human adipose tissue is 87% fat, which eq... |
How did pre-Colombian societies in and around the Caribbean deal with the "Hurricane Season" | There's always room for discussion, but perhaps the section [Natural Disasters](_URL_0_) from our FAQ will answer your inquiry. | [
"Widespread rainfall occurred throughout Central America in early October 2008 due to the passage of a tropical wave through the region. Later, another tropical wave approached the region, which was believed to have left the west coast of Africa on September 17. The wave developed a low pressure area on October 10 ... |
how does the measles virus wipe out your body's "memory" of immunity to other viruses and why is this not common in other viruses? | The virus has a proclivity for immune memory cells as targets for infection. This causes the death of the immune memory cells from the action of the virus itself and from elimination by the healthy aspects of the immune system in fighting the infection. This widespread destruction of the immune memory cells, which are responsible for an individual's immune memory, therefore leads to a loss of said immune memory. The loss of immune memory is then compounded by damage to the skin, respiratory and gastrointestinal tract tissues, which are components of the passive immune system. This combined damage to both the adaptive and passive immune systems results in a higher vunerabiltiy to other pathogens. | [
"The virus replicates in those bone marrow cells, which disrupts the development and replication of leukocytes (white blood cells), eosinophils, and basophils. Because of this, thrombocytopenia could also a potential result. Erythrocytes, which are enucleated red blood cells, seem to be infected while they are eryt... |
running, sprinting, and jogging. what's the difference? | Running is what you'd call the action itself; sprinting and jogging are just different speeds of running.
I would say that sprinting is running as fast as you can-- think of how fast the athletes in the 100m dash at the Olympics go, or what you would do if you were being chased by a bear.
Jogging, on the other hand, is much more leisurely pace. The goal here is to work on your resistance/endurance and take on longer distances. | [
"Jogging is running at a gentle pace, its definition, as compared with running, is not standard. One definition describes jogging as running slower than . Running is sometimes defined as requiring a moment of no contact to the ground, whereas jogging often sustains the contact.\n",
"Jogging is a form of trotting ... |
What family ruled for the longest length of time? | If we look at this as skeptically as possible, accepting only the most well-attested historical records, the Imperial House of Japan is the best bet. The Solomonic dyansty in Ethiopia claims to have ruled earlier, but a lot of their claims are very poorly documented and they don't even claim to have ruled continuously. | [
"The longest-living member of the British royal family has been Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester (1901–2004), who lived 102 years and 309 days. Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester became the oldest ever member of the royal family when she surpassed the age of 101 years and 238 days in 2003, the age at which ... |
asian keyboards | Most of them look pretty much like U.S. keyboards.
You usually type the Japanese or Chinese characters phonetically with standard letters. Then a list of possible matches appears where you are typing, and you can click or arrow to the correct choice.
Most Japanese characters also have Japanese phonetic characters directly on the keyboard as well (for example, the Q key usually has a た character on it too), but I’ve never seen a Japanese person use that feature. I’ve always seen them typing Japanese by using the same alphabet we use. | [
"Chinese, Japanese, and Korean require special input methods, often abbreviated to CJK IMEs (Input Method Editors), due to the thousands of possible characters in these languages. Various methods have been invented to fit every possibility into a QWERTY keyboard, so East Asian keyboards are essentially the same as ... |
why is it easier for me to remember numbers that are hyphenated (social social security numbers, phone numbers) but hard to remember a long stretch of only numbers? | Our memory works best with "chunks" of related information. If you tried to memorize "5896325658" on its own (*disclaimer: that is not my phone number; I just made that up*), you might get confused and mix things up, because you're trying to remember 10 "things": the digits in the sequence.
But, if you can break it down into chunks and remember the parts of those chunks, you'll have an easier time. So the above being "589-623-5658", you have an easier time remembering *3* "things":
1. 589
2. 623
3. 5658
As long as you get the smaller bits of the chunks right, arranging them in the right order is much easier.
Consider the following:
GHY KUJ IOP LOI TRH FRE
Try to memorize all of these letters in order. Kinda tough, right?
Now try this:
FBI CIA NSA DOE TRY FOR
This is the same number of letters to remember, but you're not actually remembering the letters "F", "B", "I": instead, you remember the chunk "FBI". That's 1 "thing" instead of 3, so it's easier to hold onto.
EDIT: As others mentioned, and as I forgot, some research has shown the most people are able to remember up to 7 "things" at a time. That being the case, the original phone numbering system in North America using 7 digits was ideal for people to memorize and recall the phone numbers of others: any more than 7 might have been overkill. That, of course, depended on most people only needing to call their neighbors or others in the same area code, so they only had to dial 7 digits (back when we had "long distance", calling to another area code, requiring some extra connections between the local area code switchboard and that of the other area code, etc.)
These days, most if not all phone calls in NA are placed using 10 digits, including the area code, possibly thanks in part to the advent of cell phones. At the same time as those phones came about, most folks started saving contacts' phone numbers in the phone memory, rather than trying to memorize it themselves, so the switch to 10-digit dialing wasn't that big a deal. | [
"The memory system suffers from inhibition. This is why it is difficult to hold two different phone numbers in working memory at the same time. Although it may seem that inhibition impedes our memory system, it allows humans to focus on the relevant details and ignore irrelevant ones when required to make quick dec... |
Would surface area impacts gravitational pull ? | Gravity is a dependent on mass, not shape, so it doesn't matter how much of the surface is exposed. We're pulled to the center of the Earth, not the surface. The surface just keeps us from falling to the center of mass. | [
"Free-air gravity anomalies are relatively easier to measure than the Bouguer anomalies as long as topography data is available because it does not need to eliminate the gravitational effect due to the effect of mass surplus or deficit of the terrain after the gravity is reduced to sea level. However, to interpret ... |
Would it be possible to communicate from inside a black hole by changing its rotation rate? | When you are on the inside, you contribute to the total mass of the black hole. You've brought whatever mass you had outside to now be part of the black hole. The same is true of angular momentum. You can add to the angular momentum in some way but once you are inside the event horizon, that angular momentum now contributes to the total angular momentum of the black hole.
The [No-hair theorem](_URL_0_) says that a black hole can be described with three quantities: mass M, angular momentum J, and charge Q. If two black holes have the same values for all three, then you won't be able to distinguish anything different about them. This is different than for other objects in the Universe. For example, if you have two planets with the same mass, they could have different density distributions within the planet. The No-hair theorem sort of says that two black holes can only be described with the same mass, and the distribution on the inside doesn't matter. The same is true for charge and angular momentum. So, once the angular momentum of the black hole is what it is, you won't be able to change it from the inside, assuming the No-hair theorem holds. | [
"Both of these types of lines can be used to visualise black holes, and the ways in which spacetime warps around them. They may also help to explain phenomena such as the 'kicks' observed in simulations of merging black holes as they are flung away from their host galaxies, and may also help in the search for gravi... |
why is it when a child is learning to speak, the most common constant expressed is a "w"-sound? | It's because it's a really easy sound to make. Children learn easy sounds like /m p b w/ etc. first, and then they learn harder sounds later on. | [
"Sound is at the beginning of language learning. Children have to learn to distinguish different sounds and to segment the speech stream they are exposed to into units – eventually meaningful units – in order to acquire words and sentences. Here is one reason that speech segmentation is challenging: When you read, ... |
Was Qing imperial policies in Xinjiang, Yunnan, Tibet, etc. comparable with European colonial policies? Was the Qing Empire a "colonial" empire? | I don't really know enough about "colonial" policies in general to compare them to Qing policy in Tibet (it should be noted that China itself as a Qing imperial possession in the strictest sense). I mean, the "colonial period" lasted five centuries and was vastly different based on the colonial power and the colony. I.e. British policy in Singapore in 1900 was not the same as Spanish policy in Peru in 1540.
Anyway, I've written about the shifting relationship and understanding of Tibet's relationship with the Manchu and their Qing overlords [here](_URL_0_) which I think you'll find helpful for that part of the Manchu Empire. | [
"With respect to these outer regions, the Qing maintained imperial control, with the emperor acting as Mongol khan, patron of Tibetan Buddhism and protector of Muslims. However, Qing policy changed with the establishment of Xinjiang province in 1884. During The Great Game era, taking advantage of the Dungan revolt ... |
how were 5v and 12v decided on as the "go to" voltages for so many electronic devices, specifically computers? | Voltage of chemical cells is one factor. For chemical sources of DC voltage (i.e. batteries, rechargeable or not), you can't really alter the voltage easily, the best you can do is add multiple cells to get a multiple of their inherent voltage.
Alkaline non-rechargeable batteries provide around 1.5V. You can't run a 0.5V device on them (even the very small alkaline batteries have 1.5V) but you can make e.g. a 9V pack from such cells. When emptied, they slowly go down to ~1V and the devices are designed to accept that, so the many types rechargeable batteries whose chemistry gives 1.2V (and can't ever make 1.5V) are used interchangeably.
The classic lead acid cells provide 2V. You can't get 5V from that without a big hassle, but you can get 12V (or 10V, or 20V) by chaining multiple such cells when you want a larger voltage, so that you can provide the required power(watts) with less current.
12V has been a standard in portable pre-electronic devices because of that, and so this tradition probably made it standard when more electronics were designed.
As for 5V, I don't know, but I would guess that there may be some semiconductor properties that require this voltage to run them.
| [
"In the United States and Canada, national standards specify that the nominal voltage supplied to the consumer should be 120 V and allow a range of 114 V to 126 V (RMS) (−5% to +5%). Historically 110 V, 115 V and 117 V have been used at different times and places in North America. Mains power is sometimes spoken of... |
When did adult baptism go mainstream. | After the Reformation, the only sect of Christians that practiced adult baptism were the Anabaptists, as indicated by their name. This aspect of their practice caused persecution by Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists.
It moved towards the mainstream with the Methodists in the 18th century, and became more widely spread in America with the various sects that arose during the Second Great Awakening. | [
"In 1609, the Baptist movement taught that baptism is for adults (believers' baptism) according to their biblical understandings. The children's presentation thus developed in parallel with this movement and was widely spread in Baptist churches and in all Evangelical movements in the 20th century.\n",
"Thirteen ... |
because natural selection is not happening to humans with modern medicine, what does it mean for the human race in the near and distant future? | Natural selection is 100% happening. All modern medicine has done is changed the selective pressures. Things that exerted significant pressures before may not now, things that did not exert significant pressure in the past may now. | [
"Adaptation to space may involve resistance to radiation, photosynthetic and solar-sail organs, artificial and robotic organs, and adaptation to microgravity. If humans are so altered, will humankind still survive? Do we aim to preserve the human species, or help its evolution? By biotic ethics, the human species w... |
Are North and South poles of a planet or magnet interchangeable? | The right-hand rule sets the convention, which says that the north pole of, say, a bar magnet is the pole from which magnetic lines diverge and the south pole is the pole into which magnetic lines converge. We could have just as well defined the north and south pole the opposite way. (It would require a redefinition of the magnetic field also, since it is all ultimately based on the right hand rule.) But there is an element of arbitrariness to it.
Now that's for a bar magnet or a horseshoe magnet or whatever. The nomenclature is much more confusing for, say, the geomagnetic field. Opposite poles of a bar magnet attract, and the north pole of a compass needle is attracted to the north magnetic pole. So Earth's "north magnetic pole" is actually the south pole of an equivalent bar magnet that runs through Earth. It is called the "north magnetic pole" only because of its relative proximity to the geographical north pole. So the geomagnetic poles actually have opposite polarity from what their name would suggest. | [
"Although for many purposes it is convenient to think of a magnet as having distinct north and south magnetic poles, the concept of poles should not be taken literally: it is merely a way of referring to the two different ends of a magnet. The magnet does not have distinct north or south particles on opposing sides... |
Is the vacuum of outer space fundamentally the same as the empty space between particles like electrons and proton? Or are they different somehow? | An atom is not mostly empty space. This is a common misconception. The electrons, protons, and neutrons that make up an atom are not little solid balls separated by vast expanses of empty space. They are quantum objects that act somewhat like waves and somewhat like particles. In an atom, the electrons act mostly like waves and are spread through-out the entire atom into shapes called "orbitals". An atom is therefore not empty, but filled with electrons spread out into wave states.
Although outer space contains fewer atoms than Earth's surface, it does contain some. Perhaps you mean the regions in outer space between atoms? This is not that much different than the regions of space inside atoms, although the mass and charge density are much lower. The key concept is that electron wavefunctions are not completely contained in a rigid sphere you would call the atom. The electrons in an atom spread out diffusely far beyond the atom. The electron wavefunctions will be very small in a region of space a few meters away from all the nearest atoms, but in principle it will not be zero. So, the region between atoms is not fundamentally different than the region within atoms. Both have wavefunctions and fields.
Both the space between atoms and the space within atoms contain vacuum fluctuations. In an atom, the electric fields are stronger because you are closer to particles, and this stronger field has more of an effect on the vacuum fluctuations. But fundamentally there is no difference. | [
"According to quantum field theory, the vacuum between interacting particles is not simply empty space. Rather, it contains short-lived virtual particle-antiparticle pairs (leptons or quarks and gluons). These short-lived pairs are called vacuum bubbles. It can be shown that they have no measurable impact on any pr... |
What would happen if you antibacterialized your digestive system? | This happens frequently on very strong antibiotics. It causes digestive disorders and colonization of the gut by unfriendly microbes, notably Clostridium difficile (C. diff), which causes severe diarrhea, is hard to disinfect and is easily spread between patients and healthcare workers.
_URL_0_ | [
"Antimicrobials that reduce the number of the strict anaerobic component of the gut flora (i.e., metronidazole) generally should not be given because they may enhance systemic infection by aerobic or facultative bacteria, thus facilitating mortality after irradiation.\n",
"The ability of \"L. plantarum\" to produ... |
why do zambonis need to be so big? | To hold more warm water so they can clean/smooth ice more effectually.
How whole internal parts works I am not 100% on. But playing hokey for 10 years you tend to notice things. I know it picks up the ice it scrubs off and melts it for more water to use. As well as it needs weight so the tires/treads can actually move.
| [
"The Zamboanga Peninsula is a peninsula of Mindanao, the second largest island in the Philippines. It is a large, semi-circular peninsula located in northwestern Mindanao, forming the Moro Gulf and part of the border between the Sulu Sea and Celebes Sea. Politically, the majority of the Zamboanga Peninsula belongs ... |
How did Pangaea form into one island, given the randomness of plate tectonics? | In fact supercontinent cycles are a fairly regular occurrance as far as we can work out, with a periodicity of about 250-500 million years. _URL_0_
The driving force for plate tectonics is subduction of oceanic crust - in other words the closure of oceans. The natural product of that is bringing continents together. They can then remain stable for quite a long time, giving opportunity of subduction zones elsewhere to also complete their ocean closures, so you end up with a supercontinent. That large mass of land is then tectonically unstable (probably related to the sustainable size of mantle convection cells) and new rifting phase begins, which is able to rapidly break a supercontinent apart into multiple bits (remember, continental plates are moving over a spherical surface, not flat one and have a highly discontinuous internal geology, so just splitting something in 2 isn't actually very easy - multiple plates are almost inevitable).
All that said, certainly there are landmasses not part of any given supercontinent, although these are usually subduction arc volcanoes like modern day Japan. The point is, however, that the continental masses *are* all part of a single supercontinent.
To look at it from your odds / randomness perspective - firstly, nothing in geology is random - secondly the vast majority of the time all the continents *are* apart. The low probability 'everything together at once' thing is relatively unusual.
| [
"Pangaea's formation is now commonly explained in terms of plate tectonics. The involvement of plate tectonics in Pangaea's separation helps to show how it did not separate all at once, but at different times, in sequences. Additionally, after these separations, it has also been discovered that the separated land m... |
why does sleep deprivation make you see spiders/bugs on your peripheral vision? | I'm pretty sure you are asking why sleep deprivation causes hallucinations, well, sleeping is important for your body, but it's the most important thing for your brain, because during a sleep cycle the brain gets rid of toxins that have accumulated. If you don't sleep these toxins don't go away and grow in number instead, these toxins can disturb neurons activity and therefore make your brain slower and inefficient. On the hallucination side, this means that your brain is not able to correctly interpret an image and it compensates this by relying more heavily on your eyes' input (which makes it even worse, because there are more things for your brain to not see well) [source](_URL_0_) | [
"Sleep deprivation has been shown to negatively affect picture classification speed and accuracy, as well as recognition memory. It results in an inability to avoid attending to irrelevant information displayed during attention-related tasks. (Norton) It also decreases activation in the ventral visual area and the ... |
How did Romans and Greeks treat the ideas of war and peace? | There were people who have a lot of different viewpoints just as you have right now in our society. There was also a lot of discussion on war and peace as is now the case.
An interesting shift took place in the general discussion due to the coming of Christianity. War and the pacifist moral of Christianity don't mix to good. This led to thinkers finding answers to justify violence in warfare. Although this discussion about morality and warfare was already present, this impulse coming from Scholars like St. Augustinus led to the creation of a new school on warfare what we now call Just War Theory. In this tradition scholars try to make a list of requirements a war needs to have to make it Justified.
Of course a lot of other Scholars way before St. Augustine wrote about warfare like Cicero, Plato and Aristotle. Both Greek and Roman scholars shared and disagreed on the concepts of warfare. But their writings are still very relevant today and are cited much in contemporary debates.
This doesn't really answers any questions about warfare in practice since I don't know much about that subject. A very interesting read here is History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. In this book Thucydides a Greek Historian and General gives an historical account of the war between Sparta and the Delian League
| [
"This illustrates one of the central differences between the two cultures and their view on education: that to the Greeks beauty or an activity could be an end in itself, and the practice of that activity was beneficial accordingly. The Romans, on the other hand, tended to be more practically minded when it came to... |
what determines a person's sense of humor? | Mostly psychological. When a person has good sense of humor, it generally means they are happy, socially confident and likely to have a healthy perspective on life. But this has exceptions because humor has a dark side. There are people who use self-defeating humor; also humor is used to criticize and manipulate others through teasing, sarcasm and ridicule. So being funny isn't necessarily an indicator of good social skills and well-being. It all depends on the kind of humor the person uses. | [
"People of all ages and cultures respond to humour. Most people are able to experience humour—be amused, smile or laugh at something funny—and thus are considered to have a \"sense of humour\". The hypothetical person lacking a sense of humour would likely find the behaviour inducing it to be inexplicable, strange,... |
Putting something in orbit | I am currently working on a project that will do exactly this. My group has completed several high altitude balloon launches (+100k). During these launches we have tested things like low temp solid fuel motor ignition as well as methods of triggering ignition with accelerometer based altimeters. The end goal is that within the next year my team will achieve a "space shot" to 320km breaking the amateur record. This shot will require a balloon cluster to carry a spin stabilized rocket weighing approximately 25lbs to an altitude of around 110k ft. The motor used is a Cesseroni M impulse class motor. To achieve the next step, orbit, our calculations show that we will have to do two stage ignition. The first stage uses an M class motor again followed by an L class motor. Due to the low atmosphereic density at these high altitudes it is possible to achieve the needed 17.5kmph to orbit. The target date for the orbital shot is in 2014. These calcs are to put a 10 to 20 gram object into orbit. This design is to simply put the object into orbit, no recovery. As far as research has shown to this point, this is the cheapest way to do it. Every part used in this design in commercially available with little to no regulation. The toughest obstacle my team has crossed is dealing with the FAA. They don't like things over 50 lbs in the sky without there permission. I am a mechanical engineer with years of high power rocketry experience as well as an Xosphere Propulsion N Prize Team leader | [
"A space gun by itself is not capable of placing objects into stable orbit around the object (planet or otherwise) from which it launches them. The orbit is a parabolic orbit, a hyperbolic orbit, or part of an elliptic orbit which ends at the planet's surface at the point of launch or another point. This means that... |
how does time lapse video with the different angle work? does someone slowly move the camera to a different location to create that smooth movement? | jop, stepper motors and stuff, actually many people build those themselves because its really not dark magic. _URL_0_ | [
"However, to achieve the effect of a simple tracking shot, it is necessary to use motion control to move the camera. A motion control rig can be set to dolly or pan the camera at a glacially slow pace. When the image is projected it could appear that the camera is moving at a normal speed while the world around it ... |
I keep hearing Pro-choice People say harsh abortion laws will “take us back to the Dark ages”. How acceptable/unacceptable was abortion in the Early middle ages? | Answering this question is difficult, not least because record survival from this period is scanty and one-sided. The most prolific writers in late antiquity and the so-called ‘dark ages’ were theologians. If we dig deep enough, we might find some secular laws related to abortion in the context of homicide, but again, survival is an issue. This is not my area of expertise, so I wholeheartedly welcome corrections, additions and comments from those of you who study the medicine, law and philosophy of this period more closely. As frustrating as it was to realise how little we know about abortion in the early medieval period, it was worth refreshing and expanding my knowledge on the subject.^1
As is the case today, there were different opinions about abortion in the medieval West. In Abortion in the Early Middle Ages, c.500-900, Zubin Mistry observes that contemporaries debated the issue as much as we do today and asked questions like: ‘Is abortion murder … Does it depend on intention or effect? Who should be held responsible for abortion? Men too? Apothecaries? How should we deal with them?’. He also notes that the ever-present tension between ‘top-down regulations and bottom-up customs’ in medieval society applied to debates and practices surrounding abortion as well.^2 It’s crucial to remember that (you guessed it) men wrote most of the written evidence we have from this period. Unlike today, we don’t have women’s perspectives on the issue. For later periods, we can find some court records that deal with men and women charged with crimes ranging from abortion to infanticide where we do ‘hear’ female voices but during the ‘dark ages’ we’re SOL, for lack of a better term.
As you may have guessed, the Catholic church was not a fan of abortion. The most in-depth considerations on this topic pop up later in the medieval period, but there are some earlier indications that the church condemned abortion. As is the case today, the question of when life begins was essential to the people who made the rules. The most advanced biological understandings of conception and gestation in the Middle Ages held that, when semen came into contact with menstrual fluid, it started a process of solidifying that fluid, which then coagulated into a foetus over time and, at a certain point during gestation, God attached a soul to the foetus – ensoulment. So for moralists (whose moralising then guided canon law, which sometimes informed secular law), there was a difference between terminating the pregnancy before or after this moment of ensoulment: before, termination of the pregnancy was the sin of contraception; after, it was considered homicide.^3 Again, this is primarily in the religious context, but secular law might also take this view. For example, yesterday, I came across a case from Scotland (1549) where the charges are ‘the wounding of Janet … and the slaughter of a boy in the womb’. Therefore, (over)simply put, killing any human being with a soul was bad, foetus or otherwise. If Thomas Aquinas (thirteenth-century theologian) had been around today, he would probably be on board with the people who say life begins at fertilisation but, given the state of medieval knowledge about reproduction, most priests confronted with an abortion that took place before ensoulment wouldn’t have considered it abortion, just contraception (which was still a sin).
Now, even though the church was a major cultural and social force in medieval Europe, it wasn’t the only one. There were plenty of social and cultural customs that butted heads with the church, not to mention the personal frustrations and desperation of women had been raped, a victim of incest or who simply could not face the prospect of or support more kids. We have evidence that suggests women were ending unwanted pregnancies. Information on herbal contraceptives and abortifacients abounded – how much of this made its way to the masses is uncertain, but there is evidence in penitentials that priests were being encouraged to ask women whether they had consumed ‘herbs or other agents’ to avoid having children.^4 A general rule of thumb when reading laws or penitentials is to infer from the presence of a law or a question such as this that somebody making the rules encountered a behaviour or practice they did not approve of and that statutes and probing questions like this were meant to investigate and stop the action. The fact that we have sources containing information about, recommendations for and discouragements of abortifacients suggests that women were using them throughout the early medieval period.
About what ‘herbs and other agents’ was the penitential asking? Well, late antique and early medieval texts contain descriptions of various plants that were thought to either prevent pregnancy, induce menstruation or terminate a pregnancy – rue, pennyroyal, Queen Anne’s lace, and tansy, to name a few. Contemporaries were a little confused about the difference between contraception and abortion, mostly because they didn’t yet fully understand embryonic implantation and development, so anything that caused the evacuation of the uterine lining might have been called an abortifacient.^5 Now, most of the writing on abortifacients or emmenagogues (those which induce menstruation) warn women against taking them. This indicates that the male writers either assumed that pregnant women wanted to stay pregnant or that they had moral or religious objections to abortion. However, some ‘Islamic medical writers, such as Rāzi (Rhazes, c. 865-925) and Ibn Sīna, recommended’ these ingredients in their medical texts and even many Christian translators, like Gerard of Cremona (c. 1114-87) ‘made no concessions to the church’s position on reproduction, faithfully translating the discussions and recipes for contraception and abortion’.^6
So officially, contraception was a sin, and abortion was a sin as well as a crime. On that, the attitudes we are seeing from anti-choice activists and politicians are on par with those of the ‘dark ages’. We also know that there were some provisions for church and secular officials to punish men and women who caused abortions through violence or abortifacients, so that’s also a step back towards the ‘dark ages’.
I argue, however, that what’s happening in the US (and what some Canadian Conservatives are trying to get going in my neck of the woods) is worse than ‘medieval’ for several reasons:
1. Pregnancy, miscarriage and abortion were private matters in the early medieval period. The only situations that were likely to come to the attention of the authorities were: if a woman who desired her pregnancy accused someone of causing an abortion through violence, poisoning, or (in later centuries) witchcraft; if a husband accused his wife of aborting her pregnancies; or as a political manoeuvre to secure divorce among royals and the nobility (i.e., the husband accusing the wife). Otherwise, this was regulated through the ‘honour system’ of confession. With today’s medical records and the government oversight gaining traction in the US, a woman’s miscarriage can open up an investigation and subsequent legal action against her, despite the existence of loads of perfectly valid reasons for spontaneous miscarriage. Simply put, there were loads of ‘anti-choice’ proponents in the medieval West; they didn’t have the power or the means to control women to the extent that modern society does.
2. The penalties for contraception (including inducing a miscarriage before the quickening or ensoulment of the foetus) were doled out by the church in the form of penance. That is, admit your sin, perform some acts of penance, receive absolution and move on. The current situation brings this into the criminal realm and makes it possible to impose jail sentences on women who suffer a miscarriage. Most women don’t know they’re pregnant at six weeks, so they may drink alcohol or caffeine, go skydiving, continue attending kick-boxing class or any other number of things that could potentially land them in jail for allegedly causing their miscarriage.
3. Knowledge about reproduction was not sufficiently advanced for most people to be able to tell whether a foetus had ‘quickened’ or not. There were no ultrasounds so, even if abortion did come to the attention of the authorities, it was tough to prove whether the foetus had died in utero of natural causes, whether it had ever ‘quickened’, whether the termination was accidental or intentional… There was merely less concrete evidence on which to base legal action against the mother.
**TL/DR: The attitudes of anti-choice activists and politicians, as well as the desire to punish abortion with legal consequences, are certainly ‘medieval’; however, modern governmental oversight, invasion of privacy, medical advancements and technology mean that ‘medieval’ worldviews can now override personal autonomy to a degree that far exceeds that of which medieval authorities were capable.**
---
^1. I’d also like to add that, in the modern context, not all women have a uterus and not all people with a uterus are women. Jumping back and forth between medieval and modern is tricky enough so, with apologies, I’ve used women throughout my answer for ease of reading.
^2. Zubin Mistry, Abortion in the Early Middle Ages, c. 500-900 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2015), 13.
^3. John Haldane and Patrick Lee, ‘Aquinas on Human Ensoulment, Abortion and the Value of Life’, Philosophy 78, no. 2 (2003): 261-66.
^4. John M. Riddle, ‘Oral Contraceptives and Early-Term Abortifacients during Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages’, Past & Present 132 (1991): 28n118.
^5. Riddle, 9.
^6. Riddle, 17. | [
"In English law, abortion did not become illegal until 1803. English folk practice before and after that time held that fetal life was not present until quickening. \"Women who took drugs before that time would describe their actions as 'restoring the menses' or 'bringing on a period'.\" Abortifacients used by wome... |
how does russia maintain and sustain #2 military in the world with economy smaller than brazil or italy (#10)? | By spending a larger portion of their money on their military. This is how North Korea keeps a large army on a small GDP, they don't spend as much on food. It's all a matter of choices. | [
"Russia has a large and sophisticated arms industry, capable of designing and manufacturing high-tech military equipment, including a fifth-generation fighter jet, nuclear powered submarines, firearms, and short range/long range ballistic missiles. The value of Russian arms exports totalled $15.7 billion in 2013—se... |
Did royalty ever get an inkling that birth defects was a cause of marrying their family members? | People tend to think that the European royal houses were long, unbroken lines stretching back into the mists of time, aka "the Middle Ages". In fact, that's not the case at all, and intermarriage between royal houses was rarer -- and was not repeated, close cousin marriage -- until only a few hundred years ago (roughly the 17th century). Thus, it is only recently that intermarriage has been prevalent enough to have obvious adverse effects.
First, the factors that prevented this in the Middles Ages. The catholic church was relatively proactive in preventing marriage between closely related people. Your relative relationship to other people is called consanguinity. In the ninth century, the church required seven degrees of separation between bride and groom, and then, when that turned out to be impractical for several reasons, they reduced it back to four degrees. This means that the couple cannot share a great grandparent. There also was a lot more disruption in royal and noble lines than there would be later, with far less emphasis on royals marrying royals and more on marriage alliances based on building power and wealth. These factors helped mitigate the effects of inbreeding.
This isn't to say that royals did not sometimes marry cousins, it was more common in Spain because the houses of Castille and Aragon kept intermarrying. It just was usually not as overt as literal first cousins marrying, and the family trees in the Middle Ages weren't as tangled as they would become in the early modern period.
What changed was that, in the early modern period (in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) several different families, but especially the Hapsburgs, began using marriage alliances as a strategic way to consolidate power, and were more overt and successful than previous royal families. Simultaneously, Europe divided itself in half based on religion, which limited choices of marriage partners for protestant and catholic monarchs. The divine right of kings and the heavy emphasis of royalty and nobility as a matter of God-given superiority also became much more emphasized, which pushed monarchs into purposefully seeking out *royal* marriages, rather than just advantageous marriages. There were also arguably two sub-factors, first an explosion of eligible royal houses and second the split of the Hapsburgs between Austria and Spain (which meant that two catholic, royal houses with strong incentive to marry into each other were descended from the same person).
This is when royal family trees start to look more like family spiderwebs. Carolos/Charles II of Spain (1661-1700) is one of the first examples of a monarch who probably suffered physical and mental problems because of serious inbreeding (although we can't say for certain without the ability to do genetic testing). There were also major political problems for Spain when he died without and heir, leading to the War of Spanish Succession.
Now, did "royalty" ever figured out that inbreeding was bad? Well, certainly modern royalty is aware of that fact. We also know that the late nineteenth century royal families were painfully aware of the fact that Queen Victoria's children were the carriers of hemophilia, even if they were unaware of the exact genetic causes for this. It's possible that earlier royals were also aware of this. However, royalty continued seeking to marry royalty until the twentieth century, and then they still attempted to marry into the nobility until the very late twentieth/early twenty-first century. | [
"Members of untitled families today may be descended from illegitimate children of royalty as primogenitors. Since illegitimate children of royalty were seldom permitted to marry into other royal families because of their unacceptable status, these children tended to marry upper-class or middle-class families from ... |
How long did NASA truly expect the Mars Rovers to function? | All components, and the system as a whole, are calculated for a given reliability. Usually it's like 95% for the expected mission duration. If it does survive to this date as expected, odds are it won't fail right the next day. So the probabilities may be like 95% for a year, 85% for two years, 75% for 3 years and so on.
Usually redundancy is involved: needs a gyroscope? Put two of them, if one fails keep using the other. It may be active-passive redundancy (i.e. the second component stays dormant until the first one fails), or concurrent redundancy (i.e. all of them work at the same time but only a few are needed).
So at design time they know that an extended mission duration is quite likely, but there's no way to predict exactly how long it will last. They just know it will eventually fail. | [
"BULLET::::- \"Opportunity\" (MER-B), Mars Exploration Rover, launched on July 7, 2003 and landed on January 25, 2004. \"Opportunity\" surpassed the previous records for longevity at 5,352 sols (5498 Earth days from landing to mission end; 15 Earth years or 8 Martian years) and covered a total distance of . The rov... |
why do you hear a whoosh noise if you put a glass on your ear? | Blood flow in your year. I guess you can hear it because it is amplified in the enclosed space of the glass. | [
"Because its sounding portion is made of glass, the glass harmonica is a type of crystallophone. The phenomenon of rubbing a wet finger around the rim of a wine goblet to produce tones is documented back to Renaissance times; Galileo considered the phenomenon (in his \"Two New Sciences\"), as did Athanasius Kircher... |
how a noun can become a verb, like google or photoshop? | People just start using the word as a verb and it becomes popular.
There's not much more to it than that. | [
"A verb from noun creates a sentence that means \"to be \"noun or adjective\"\" when adding a -i. When the suffix is combined with the fa- prefix it can change the meaning of the sentence to \"to cause/let something become \"noun or adjective\"\". \n",
"A verb can be nominalized by preceding it with the definite ... |
how do electronic ph sensors work? | An electric pH meter is essentially just a voltmeter. An acid solution is essentially half of a battery, so the pH meter brings the rest of the battery along and measures the potential difference between the two leads on the probe. Once you've determined the voltage of your "battery" the Nernst equation gives you the relationship between voltage and hydrogen ion concentration.
Volume is irrelevant to figuring the pH out in this way because volume does not affect voltage of a battery, just the life of the battery. | [
"The design of the electrodes is the key part: These are rod-like structures usually made of glass, with a bulb containing the sensor at the bottom. The glass electrode for measuring the pH has a glass bulb specifically designed to be selective to hydrogen-ion concentration. On immersion in the solution to be teste... |
if light slows down in water, how does it speed back up again when it comes out? | There's a way to think about this problem that was--IIRC--in Stephen Hawking's *A Brief History of Time*.
Imagine a big famous actor walking through a room. They travel at a constant speed that we'll call A. The actor always moves at speed A, no matter what. When the room is empty, they're able to walk into the room and out of it easily in a straight line.
However, if the room is full of people then the actor can't walk in and out of the room in a straight line. They keep moving at A, but because of the people they have to bounce around and take a much more circuitous path to get out of the room. This means that despite remaining at A the entire time, it took them *longer* to get out of the full room than the empty room.
The same is true with light. The light doesn't 'slow down' in water. The light's still moving at c. However, water is much more dense than air or a vacuum, so in order to make it through the water, the light has to take a much more circuitous path. Despite never changing speed, we as an outside observe perceive the light taking more time to cross through the same distance as a difference in speed, rather than what it actually is: the distance having changed.
Then again, I'm not a physicist, so this could be wrong, but I think it serves as a good ELI5.
Edit: I’m seeing a lot of comments that this explanation is either wrong, too oversimplified or some combination of the two. As I said, I’m not a physicist, and am only repeating what I’ve heard from what I believed to be a reputable source. I would encourage anyone reading this to also look at the discussion underneath this comment and in the rest of the comments as well. Just because I got the most upvotes doesn’t mean I’m right. | [
"Assume that water flows in the pipes with speed \"v\". According to the non-relativistic theory of the luminiferous aether, the speed of light should be increased when \"dragged\" along by the water, and decreased when \"overcoming\" the resistance of the water. The overall speed of a beam of light should be a sim... |
Can two things ever truly 'touch'? | Yes, because touch and contact are words defined by our experiences, which means that it isn't an issue of scientific nomenclature. | [
"Donald Walton stated in his book that touching is the ultimate expression of closeness or confidence between two people, but not seen often in business or formal relationships. Touching stresses how special the message is that is being sent by the initiator. \"If a word of praise is accompanied by a touch on the s... |
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