question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
|---|---|---|
What does it mean when one has a 'teleological view of history'? | To build a bit on /u/Sherbert42's answer: teleology (in a historiographical sense) is a form of historical enquiry which attempts to construct a narrative view of history as a progressive march in one direction; towards an inevitable end point.
To give one particularly notable and illustrative example of teleological thinking: look at 'Whig history', a school of thought [described by Herbert Butterfield](_URL_0_) which argued that all history can be considered as an inexorable march towards enlightenment/liberalism.
The problem with the teleological approach is that it tends towards sophistry: to use the Whig history example again, the idea that British-style liberal enlightenment is the apex of human progress, and that the eventual convergence of all history on that point is an inevitability, is deeply problematic.
The idea that you can divine a perfect (or in any way satisfactory) linear narrative in history become ludicrous almost as soon as you start to interrogate it to any depth. The construction of these teleological narratives generally involves highly selective use of evidence, straw men and the complete dismissal of countervailing viewpoints or interpretations.
What always surprises me is that this prism for understanding history hasn't entirely gone out of fashion. Butterfield wrote *The Whig Interpretation of History* in 1931, about historians mostly of the 19th century, but Francis Fukuyama's 'End of History' theory in the 1990s owes a lot to these ideas: the idea that the fall of the Soviet Union represents the ultimate triumph of liberal democracy as "the final form of human government".
Edit: as someone else pointed out in the comments, I mangled my understanding (misread old notes from uni and clearly wasn't paying enough attention) of Butterfield's place in the Whig canon — as a critic and taxonomist, not a part of the canon. Duly corrected/now going to go hang my head in shame. | [
"Historist historiography rejects historical teleology and bases its explanations of historical phenomena on sympathy and understanding (see Hermeneutics) for the events, acting persons, and historical periods. The historist approach takes to its extreme limits the common observation that human institutions (langua... |
if my bathroom scale shows different numbers around the house, which number should i trust? | Find something in your house that you know weighs a certain amount for sure. E.g. a new bag of rice or potatoes or whatever. Weigh that in different areas of your house and see where you get the most accurate reading. Just use your scale in that spot. | [
"Take as an example the calculation of body mass index (BMI). The BMI is the body weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in metres. A bathroom scale may have a resolution of one kilogram. We do not know intermediate values about 79.6 kg or 80.3 kg but information rounded to the nearest whole number. It... |
how family guy uses brand names so frequently, but no other cartoon can. | Any TV show can mention brand names.
They usually don't, because:
* it makes sit harder to place ads for that product and its competitors
* it can date the show and make it less desirable in syndication
* viewers often have strong brand affinities, and might not relate to characters who use brands they do not like
*Family Guy* is basically making fun of this adversion. | [
"Without laws governing name usage, many American names pop up following the name's usage in movies, television, or in the media. Children may be named after their parents' favorite fictional characters.\n",
"Brand names and logos are regularly blurred or covered with tape or a \"MythBusters\" sticker. Brand name... |
if passwords for websites are suppose to be encrypted or only known to the user, how come some websites can tell me i have entered a password i changed years ago? | They don't know the password, but they do know when you have set it. You tell them the password when you set it, but they don't remember the password, only its "checksum", or "salted hash", and forget the original password. which can be calculated from the original password and data that don't change during the lifetime of the account.
They don't have to know your password to check against it - they can just compute the checksum. They don't have to know the password to tell you when you have set it - they only need the timestamp for that.
This is just an ELI5 explanation, as crypto is extremely complex, counterintuitive and hard to understand. | [
"A simple protocol that does not rely on a human third party involves password changing. This works anywhere one has to type in new passwords the same twice before the password is changed. The first individual will type their secret in the first box, and the second person will type their secret in the second box, i... |
if i kept switching out older body parts of mine with healthier ones as i grew up, could i live forever? | Your brain cells will eventually age and die. If you replace those you can technically live forever, but will you still really be yourself?
This concept has been debated since the Ancient Greeks _URL_0_ | [
"His healing factor also dramatically affects his aging process, allowing him to live far beyond the normal lifespan of a human. Despite being born in the late 19th century, he has the appearance, conditioning, health, and vitality of a man in his physical prime. While seemingly ageless, it is unknown exactly how g... |
the observer effect, the measurement problem and the 'conscious observer' of quantum mechanics? | The "observer effect" and "measurement" problems are commonly misrepresented on the internet by people who are obsessed with new-age pseudoscience. It has nothing to do with conciousness or anything magical. To put it in ELI5 terms:
Imagine that we you are blindfolded and sitting in a chair. I have set up a machine that can always shoot an apple across the room and have it whiz by right in front of your face. You, being blindfolded, have to "detect" when the apple has passes by you by listening to a hair dryer that I have taped to your head. When the apple passes in front of the hair dryer, it changes the sound of the air being blown. The hairdryer will not change the flight of the apple in any way significant to our observations. To detect the apple, you have interacted with it, but not changed it. This is an observation made at our regular, real world scale.
Now imagine we repeat the experiment with a paper ball instead of an apple. In this case, we'll still have to interact with the paper ball to detect it, but since the paper ball is so light, it's *going* to affect the paper ball's trajectory. This is an observation made at a quantum scale scale.
On a quantum scale, you can't "see" an electron or any other quantum particle. You have to interact with them to detect them, and interacting with them changes them. that's the problem. | [
"An especially unusual version of the observer effect occurs in quantum mechanics, as best demonstrated by the double-slit experiment. Physicists have found that even passive observation of quantum phenomena (by changing the test apparatus and passively 'ruling out' all but one possibility), can actually change the... |
why are dj's treated like artists, with a stage name and everything, and their own 'shows' people get tickets to, when they just play other people's copyrighted music? | "Art" is a form of expression.
Imagine that 100 people are going to be showing up to your house in an hour. How will you entertain them? Playing music is a good option. Do you have the right music to play? Would you just turn on the radio? Go to Pandora?
Radios have commercials. Songs don't always compliment one another.
But let's say you don't want to risk having your party fail due to poor music selection... so you spend some time listening to songs, figuring out which ones compliment one another, which flow together, which ones get the crowd pumped and excited, and which ones give them a short breather so they can get ready for the next song.
But crap... that takes a lot of effort. Sure, pressing "play" on a machine may end up with a similar result... but you don't want to use a machine for this. You want to learn the fine-motor skills and muscle memory required to fluidly operate your music gear covered in buttons and switches. Like an audible chef, you craft a meal of sounds and rhythms for the crowds' ears... you manage to completely hide and obscure the pattern of song selection from the crowd to the point that the entire experience feels like one long ride of enjoyment. All those songs made by all those other artists might as well be different brands of paint being combined onto the DJ's percussive canvas.
So, to answer your question, the reason that people pay to see these shows is because these DJs provide a service that **not everyone** can do. And, sure, while the entry barriers to becoming a "Dj" are not very high, some Djs are simply better than others and can provide better experiences than their competitors.... so much so that fan bases develop and seek out opportunities to exchange their money (which plays no music) for temporary exposure to auditory stimuli that is otherwise unavailable.
At the end of the day, an experienced, talented DJ (just like any musician) can combine layers of sound in a way that taps them directly into the minds of their audience. That's pretty neat.
Imagine yourself on stage with some tables, wires, and buttons. Before you is a crowd of thousands. They are there because you have created something that meant something to them. You are there because you are an artist. | [
"I party with the promoters I play for. A lot of DJs don't like to do that; they play the party, go back to the hotel and then get ready to go home. Not me. I don't deny it! For me a DJ is someone who brings a vibe. If you don't party, then how do you bring that vibe?\n",
"Most of the DJs and live musicians who p... |
what exactly was dialup and why couldn't you use the phone at the same time? | The computer sent data through the phone line. Since the phone line transmits sound data - the computer was literally generating sounds that could be interpreted as data - high and low pitched squeals that represent the data you are sending or receiving. It was like a very rapid morse code.
If you picked up the phone, you would be adding your own sounds on top of the computer's sounds. The computer at the other end wouldn't know that you picked up the phone, it would just assume that you're sending data to, and this would screw up all of the data that gets sent. | [
"Dial-up access is a connection to the Internet through a phone line, creating a semi-permanent link to the Internet. Operating on a single channel, it monopolizes the phone line and is the slowest method of accessing the Internet. Dial-up is often the only form of Internet access available in rural areas because i... |
Why don't modern cellphones create interferences near speakers any more? | So, for our friends that don't know, the buzzing is a signal in the AM range.
The effect is well known since the rollout of GSM in Europe begun (see Stephen Temple's _"Inside the Mobile Revolution_", Ch. 22). What's happening is that in TDMA, each transmitter gets a time slot in which to transmit, and then remains silent until the next slot. This pattern (transmit-silence-transmit) leads to the power amp delivering large amounts of energy within either the 850/950 or 1800/1900 MHz GSM bands, and in these bands it results at a ~217 Hz-modulated intervals IIRC. The signal is detected on any transistors or diode structures in chips, on multiple points of an amplifier simultaneously, including power regulator chips, batteries, and so on. It can occur even inside the handset itself. In GSM's 800-900 MHz range, any 80mm-long copper trace works like a quarter wave antenna, or stripline resonator.
You can see the spectrum of the burst [here](_URL_0_). The transmission power is near 2 Watts (yeah, GSM is power hungry). The resulting detection at an audio chip results in a voltage transient that looks like [this](_URL_2_); note the shift in both the supply and the ground. The output of the amplifier will eventually be clipped and filtered down to the audible range, but distortion can produce frequency components at any sum/difference of multiples of the original frequencies.
The reasons subsequent RANs (UTRAN, GERAN, E-UTRAN) don't present this problem are:
* First and foremost, awareness of the problem. For example, back in 1990, when GSM was being rolled out across EU, this interference even affected devices like hearing aids, and there was major cause for concern, which translated in safety requirements for the development of subsequent standards
* TDMA was abandoned. Instead, CDMA was adopted, where each channel uses the entire spectrum all the time, and multiplexing is achieved with frequency convolution with a signal that is orthogonal between every pair of transmitters; read more [here](_URL_1_)
* Power requirements for user equipment became more stringent. For example, one of the first prototype chips for E-UTRAN claimed power consumption below 100 mW during the demo; see [here](_URL_3_). _Don't take that at face value, the demo was a tranmission of a few seconds. Still a remarkable difference w/ GSM_.
I'm not aware if audio components changed their design to avoid problems like this. | [
"The longer wavelengths have the advantage of diffracting more, and so line of sight is not as necessary to obtain a good signal. Because the frequencies that cell phones use are too high to reflect off the ionosphere as shortwave radio waves do, cell phone waves cannot travel via the ionosphere. (See Diffraction a... |
whats going on with the statehood movement in puerto rico as of now? | There was a non-binding referendum is 2012, but most people see it for the sham it was.
The pro-statehood ruling party rigged it so they first asked if they people preferred the status quo, then asked the remaining people if the wanted statehood. If they asked the questions in the other order, they would have gotten a different answer. | [
"The Independence Movement in Puerto Rico refers to initiatives by inhabitants throughout the history of Puerto Rico to obtain full political independence for the island territory, first from the Spanish Empire, from 1493 to 1898 and, since 1898, from the United States. A small variety of groups, movements, politic... |
How do deaf people perceive heavy bass sounds? | I'll take a shot at this. I think many people will agree they can "feel" low-frequency (bass) sounds in their chest when loud enough. We can perceive this vibration in our bodies with other senses, probably [somatosensation](_URL_3_) (i.e. touch), perhaps with [proprioception](_URL_0_). I found [this paper](_URL_1_), which measured chest vibration due to jet engine sounds and found a resonance at 63-100 Hz, indicating sounds in this frequency range might possibly be felt in the chest. [This paper](_URL_2_) basically confirmed that by reporting that the perceptual rating of vibration in response to low frequency sound was better correlated with accelerometer measurements on the chest/abdomen compared to the head. This supports the "chest-thumping" idea of bass sounds.
As far as actual studies with deaf individuals, I could only find a paper briefly discussed in [this review](_URL_4_) but couldn't find a copy of the actual paper (Yamada et al., Jnl Low Freq Noise Vibn 2, 32). Anyway, supposedly the deaf subjects could perceive low-frequency sounds at levels only 40-50 dB above normal hearing subjects. For reference, we usually consider a deficit of > 90 dB to be "profound hearing loss". This indicates the deaf subjects were probably using another cue (e.g. vibratory) to perceive the sound.
It should be noted that deaf individuals can have some residual hearing that allows them to perceive very intense sounds. I have a friend with thresholds at something like 105 dB SPL, so he can hear something like a loud power tool. Of course, for these sounds there's the vibration sense as well, so the perception sort-of merges together. There's also the sense of pain, which kicks in around 130-140 dB SPL (think standing next to a jet engine).
edit: typos
| [
"The human ear can generally hear sounds with frequencies between 20 Hz and 20 kHz (the audio range). Sounds outside this range are considered infrasound (below 20 Hz) or ultrasound (above 20 kHz) Although hearing requires an intact and functioning auditory portion of the central nervous system as well as a working... |
Before the Augustus founded the empire, the Roman republic was plagued with civil wars. Why didn't the Parthians invade? | They did...it's all over the sources...
The Parthians crossed the Euphrates only twice. In 51 Cicero feared a Parthian invasion into Cilicia, but it did not materialize, and the brief Parthian campaign following Crassus' defeat fizzled out quickly. Plutarch claims that Pompey reached out to the Parthians for asylum, but he ended up going to Egypt instead and the Parthians were not active on the Roman frontier for most of the 40s. A Parthian campaign in 41, led by the younger Labienus, was initially successful, but they were disastrously defeated by Ventidius Bassus, losing the crown prince Pacorus. The Caesarians' success at Philippi allowed Antony to launch a large expedition into Armenia, which was not particularly successful but was not followed by a Parthian counterattack. Though wars were occasionally fought in Armenia, and the Romans successfully invaded Parthia a few times (under Trajan and Septimius Severus, for example), the Parthians did not again cross the Euphrates. | [
"Battles between the Parthian Empire and the Roman Republic began in 54 BC. This first incursion against Parthia was repulsed, notably at the Battle of Carrhae (53 BC). During the Roman Liberators' civil war of the 1st Century BC, the Parthians actively supported Brutus and Cassius, invading Syria, and gaining terr... |
Can bacteria feel pain? | Not in any sense of the term that would make sense from a human perspective, for sure: by definition, single-celled organisms don't have nerve cells, and what we call "pain" is entirely a nervous-system response to various stimuli. | [
"Though it has been argued that most invertebrates do not feel pain, there is some evidence that invertebrates, especially the decapod crustaceans (e.g. crabs and lobsters) and cephalopods (e.g. octopuses), exhibit behavioural and physiological reactions indicating they may have the capacity for this experience.\n"... |
What is Bell's Inequality and how does it work? | It is a response to the famous EPR (Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen) paper written in 1935 where they described a thought experiment leading to what we today know as quantum entanglement. Or to quote them: "spooky action at a distance".
Entanglement can be briefly explained by two entangled electrons (A and B) being in the combined state where one has spin up and one has spin down (in some direction). We do not know which is which, but we do know that if electron A is measured to have spin up, electron B will for sure have spin down. An important thing to note here is that the outcome of the measurements is not physically decided (even in quantum mechanics), so the outcome is "chosen" the moment the first electron is measured. The second electron will immediately obtain the opposite spin value than the first one.
If the electrons are separated by a large distance (say 1 light year), it could be interpreted that some signal is sent faster than light, since the second electron will choose its state right after the first electron is measured. This is called non-locality.
In this paper and after, many argued that quantum mechanics was indeed an incomplete theory. Some people suggested that there must be some *hidden variable* (this could be a number, a set of variables, whatever), that will solve all of the problems with non-locality, and maybe even remove the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics. Once these variables are known, these weird effects disappear.
So now to Bell's theorem. In 1964, Bell published a paper called *On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen paradox* where he showed that if we assume some hidden variable that takes away all the uncertainty in the experiment described in the EPR paper, there is a measurable physical quantity that should follow some inequality that is proven to be **false** both theoretically and experimentally.
In other words, any hidden variable as described above is inconsistent with the postulates of quantum mechanics. This is the consequence of Bell's theorem.
So was Einstein wrong? Well, modern formulations of locality (the speed of light being upper limit) usually state that no *information* travels faster than the speed of light. And as far as we know, quantum entanglement cannot be used to send information faster than light because we cannot control the outcome of the experiment (electron A gets spin up or down). | [
"The intention of a Bell inequality is to serve as a test of local realism or local hidden variable theories as against quantum mechanics, applying Bell's theorem, which shows them to be incompatible. Not all the Bell's inequalities that appear in the literature are in fact fit for this purpose. The one discussed h... |
Can any experts comment on this article about the nuclear reactors in Japan please? | Seems like a fairly in-depth article. Not sure why people would call it anti-science as such, everything I read was more or less what I have read elsewhere.
What does worry me was the section about mobile generators being brought in to provide power for the cooling but the "plug not fitting". Now I'm no engineer, but surely with the level of expertise available onsite, would it not be possible to make it fit?? I.e. Rip out whatever terminals are there and connect it up somehow?
Anyway all sounds fairly plausible and at least grounded in reality. | [
"One reactor model, the L-54, was purchased and installed by a number of United States universities and foreign research institutions, including Japan. The Japanese Atomic Research Institute renamed theirs Japan Research Reactor-1 (JRR-1) and the government of Japan issued a commemorative postage stamp noting the e... |
what is being done in the world of science to offset the imposing "antibiotic apocalypse?" | [Here is an article you may want to read](_URL_0_) I'll post a little of the article so my comment doesn't get deleted.
Scientists have come across a potential game-changer in the fight against drug-resistant superbugs - a new class of antibiotic that is resistant to resistance. Not only does the new compound - which comes from soil bacteria - kill deadly superbugs like MRSA, but also - because of the way it destroys their cell wall - the pathogens will find it very difficult to mutate into resistant strains | [
"Antibiotic resistance is another major concern, leading to the reemergence of diseases such as tuberculosis. The World Health Organization, for its World Health Day 2011 campaign, is calling for intensified global commitment to safeguard antibiotics and other antimicrobial medicines for future generations.\n",
"... |
What animal has the worst common cause of death? | Manatees getting hit by propellors and bleeding out. Usually they get hit multiple time in their life, and are killed by particularly brutal hits. | [
"In 1993, 25 schools throughout New England, United States participated in a roadkill study involving 1,923 animal deaths. By category, the fatalities were: 81% mammals, 15% bird, 3% reptiles and amphibians, 1% indiscernible. Extrapolating these data nationwide, Merritt Clifton (editor of \"Animal People Newspaper\... |
the current global warming is very concerning, but there was global warming about 1000 years ago called the "medieval warm period" - how many other such warming periods have there been and why is the current one so different? | The medieval warm period was not as extreme, and came on much more gradually. The current one has been sudden and steady, and we have a clear cause for it: increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. We've increased the atmosphere's carbon dioxide content by 1/3, for example - that's a huge effect on a planetary scale. The rise almost exactly mirrors the growth of human industry, and even tapers off briefly at the collapse of the Soviet Union and its industrial capacity.
We have reliable climate records dating back tens of thousands of years from e.g. ice cores, and we are pretty sure this warming isn't like the others. | [
"In a perspective commenting on MBH99, Wallace Smith Broecker argued that the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was global. He attributed recent warming to a roughly 1500-year cycle which he suggested related to episodic changes in the Atlantic's conveyor circulation.\n",
"The Holocene climatic optimum (HCO) was a perio... |
what decides whether something will release alpha, beta, or gamma radiation? | Type of radiation is determined by the material that emits it. Gamma radiation is electomagnetic radiation, like radio waves, microwave, x-rays, gamma rays... they are typically formed when a charge (electron) is accelerated or decelerated or moved in a circular path (which is an acceleration btw). It can also be formed when an electron jumps between shells in an atom (different energy states).
Alpha radiation is essentially helium atom cores. They typically form as a result of a radioactive decay. Similar thing for beta except they are electrons.
| [
"Alpha decay or α-decay is a type of radioactive decay in which an atomic nucleus emits an alpha particle (helium nucleus) and thereby transforms or 'decays' into a different atomic nucleus, with a mass number that is reduced by four and an atomic number that is reduced by two. An alpha particle is identical to the... |
What would be the effects of a normal diet that was entirely liquids? | People survive quite well on liquid diets for long periods of time. Google might turn up more information if you search for [tube feeding](_URL_0_). For people who can't tolerate solid food for any reason, a tube can be placed through the nose or through an incision into the stomach, and fluid given through that tube can meet all nutritional needs.
The lack of solid matter may cause loose stools and discomfort, but that can usually be dealt with by making sure the feeding solution contains enough fiber. | [
"A liquid diet is a diet that mostly consists of liquids, or soft foods that melt at room temperature (such as ice cream). A liquid diet usually helps provide sufficient hydration, helps maintain electrolyte balance, and is often prescribed for people when solid food diets are not recommended, such as for people wh... |
How do we know which way up a planet is? | All planets in the Solar System orbit in almost the same plane, and their axes of rotation are almost perpendicular to such plane. (Only exception is Uranus). So you can define East as the direction the planet is rotating, and North as 90° left of the East.
We also have reference frames and coordinate systems: cartesian or spherical, centered on the Sun or centered on a planet, inertial or rotating. See [this recent thread](_URL_0_).
| [
"Still another method is to first determine the geographic center of the country and from there measure the shortest distance to every other point. All U.S. territory is spread across less than 180° of longitude, so from any spot in the U.S. it is more direct to reach the easternmost point, Point Udall, U.S. Virgin... |
Is it true that a third of the knights in the battle of Agincourt were over 50? | Well life expectancy is a very skewed statistic, because infant mortality deflates it substantially. The upper-classes could expect to live to the beginning of what we'd call "old-age" (about 60s, 70 and above was more of a gamble) if they weren't taken ill or killed in battle. It's possible- there would be plenty of old knights over the age of 50 to take part- but it seems unlikely. Maybe your source meant a third of knights in England were over 50 at the time of Agincourt? | [
"This story does not stand up well under scrutiny. Walter would have been around seventy years old at the time of the battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, and rather old to be taking up the sword instead of his accustomed musical instrument. He is not listed among the knights created by Edward IV before or after the battl... |
why do fireworks look so bad on film/video, yet look good irl? | Fireworks can look great on video if you have a good enough camera. Cheap cameras, like the ones in our phones, can't handle low light conditions very well and have a hard time focusing on the rapid flashes coming from a firework. The camera is constantly trying to auto focus but can't, resulting in a blurry image. | [
"Novelty fireworks typically produce a much weaker explosion and sound. In some countries and areas where fireworks are illegal to use, they still allow these small, low grade fireworks to be used. A few examples include:\n",
"Availability and use of consumer fireworks are hotly debated topics. Critics and safety... |
how 2 wifi routers on the same channel can interoperate without completely jamming each other's signal? | It's FM, and you know what happens to FM signals when 2 people try the repeater at the same time, with equal power. It's unreadable. Yes, the wifi points would jam each other too.
They can interoperate only because packets are short bursts and can be error corrected. They don't route the other networks traffic as it does not match their own essid. If you tried to operate demanding content on either, it would be a different story entirely. But just small amount of network traffic, you may only have a 20% duty cycle, so you can see with the ability to detect errors and resend, the only big challenge is to detect major packet collisions where headers are missing and you dont know who to send it back to.
This problem actually exists in networking without 2 access points as well. You would just need 2 users to feasibly create collisions. Well, that's where spread spectrum comes into play. That is above my level of understanding, but I believe it is correct to say the transmitters carrier frequency basically changes within the channel, seemingly at random and very often, and this change helps prevent collisions, but doesn't entirely eliminate them. Hence it does hurt performance but doesn't kill communication entirely. | [
"In the case of WiMAX, Uplink Collaborative MIMO is spatial multiplexing with two different devices, each with one antenna. These transmitting devices are collaborating in the sense that both devices must be synchronized in time and frequency so that the intentional overlapping occurs under controlled circumstances... |
how do you steer a gunship? or a clipper? or large sailship in general? | On most boats, the rudder is, in fact, the principle steering device.
The sails on sailing vessels generally do not "steer" the boat. However, they must be re-positioned when the boat changes direction or when the wind direction changes, to maximize the thrust provided by the sails, using the available wind.
For non-sail vessels, there is often still a rudder, although steerable propellers or thrusters are often also used. Google "Azipod" and start reading, for more info. | [
"A steerer can also use the steering oar to adjust the position of the boat by cranking. When a steerer cranks the steering oar, the stern of the boat moves either to the left or right, spinning the boat. This is typically executed to turn the boat around at practice or to ensure a boat is lined up straight and poi... |
How definitive are the DNA results on the Richard III skeleton? | You didn't really elaborate on what you mean, but I'm guessing you want to know how confident we can be that the skeleton they've found is King Richard?
Here's an overview of the evidence:
DNA comparisons:
* Geneticists were able to extract and sequence mitochondrial DNA from the skeleton
* Mitochondrial DNA is passed down from mother to child unchanged except for the occasional mutation
* So, by comparing the skeleton's mitochondrial DNA to living people who descend from King Richard's mother's line along an unbroken line of females, we can see if the skeleton has the same mitochondrial group as what King Richard would be expected to have.
* Genealogists were able to track down two direct matriline descendants of Anne of York (Richard III's sister) both of whom provided DNA samples for mitochondrial DNA testing. One of the descendants wants to remain anonymous. The second descendant is a Canadian by the name of Michael Ibsen.
* The fact that they have two people means that they can compare them both and make sure that they match. It makes us more sure that we are predicting King Richard's haplogroup correctly because we can more safely say that there's no anomaly (such as an unknown adoption in one of the descendant's background).
* The two descendants do indeed match, and they are members of a subgroup of haplogroup J. Luckily it is fairly rare, somewhere between 1 and 2 percent of the population belongs to this particular group. If the two living descendants were members of a very prevalent haplogroup, it would increase the odds that any match found between them and the skeleton would be purely coincidental.
* Mitochondrial DNA comparison of the three people can be found [here](_URL_0_) -- it's a virtually perfect match.
So, that's the particulars of the DNA evidence that they have. However, there's additional evidence which makes them more sure that it's King Richard, and not some random haplogroup J guy:
* Records say he was buried at a church in Leicester, 100 miles north of London. Archaeologist Richard Buckley identified a possible location of the grave through map analysis. They looked where his analyses predicted that King Richard would be, and they found the skeleton.
* Radiocarbon dating estimates that the death occurred between 1455 and 1540 (Richard died in 1485)
* The skeleton they found appears to have died in battle, and there's no coffin or anything like that, consistent with an enemy burial.
* Various head injuries that the skeleton suffered are consistent with the way King Richard's death in battle was described
* The remains display signs of scoliosis, consistent with contemporary descriptions of Richard. Other features of the skeleton are also consistent with Richard, such as the age. He died at age 32 and the skeleton they found died "in his late 20s to late 30s"
The DNA evidence alone or the circumstantial evidence alone would not have been enough to make a strong conclusion, but looking at everything together is pretty convincing. The research team is not saying that they are 100% sure they have found King Richard, but rather that they:
> can now confirm that the body is that of Richard III "beyond a reasonable doubt" | [
"In February 2016, French, Danish and Norwegian researchers opened the lead boxes in order to conduct DNA analysis of the remains. Radiocarbon dating of the remains showed that neither skeleton could be that of Richard I or Richard II. One skeleton dated from the third century BCE, the other from the eighth century... |
What was the anti masonic party and what happened to them? | They were a political party formed in the wake of public outcry over an incident where some Masons in NY state were accused of kidnapping and possibly killing at fellow Mason (named Morgan) who had published an expose on the initiations.
This was in the 1820s.
The Anti-Masonic party was the most successful third-party in US history, coming in second in a Presidential election!
However, after the failure to win their bid for the highest office, the party began to unravel. The damage to Freemasonry being done, the party found that it was too divided to last.
Freemasonry would not fully recover until later in the century during a period that lead to what's now called the Golden Age of Fraternalism, and spawned countless fraternities modeled on Freemasonry and also saw Freemasonry itself return to and in many ways surpass its former strength.
That period lasted until the early part of the 20th century, and the decline that followed (esp. during the depression) didn't rebound until after World War II. | [
"The Anti-Masonic Party, also known as the Anti-Masonic Movement, was the first third party in the United States. It strongly opposed Freemasonry as a single-issue party and later aspired to become a major party by expanding its platform to take positions on other issues. After emerging as a political force in the ... |
Did the US ever try to convert Filipinos to Protestantism during their colonisation of the country? | After the US colonized the Philippines the Catholic Church was disestablished, and was no longer the official religion. When that happened there was a large influx of Protestant missionaries of all denominations to the Philippines. Today, Protestants make up around 10% of the total population in the Philippines, with about 9 million people. While Protestantism was introduced to the Philippines during the period of US colonialism, it wasn't necessarily due to a push from the US government. It really was due more to missionaries acting opportunistically after the disestablishment of the Catholic Church. | [
"During the early part of the United States governance in the Philippines, there was a concerted effort to convert Filipinos into Protestants. As Filipinos began to migrate to the United States, Filipino Roman Catholics were often not embraced by their American Catholic brethren, nor were they sympathetic to a Fili... |
what's the difference b/w high quality and low quality meats? | Meat from an animal that received high-quality feed is more chemically varied, and has more flavor. This is particularly noticeable in mild-tasting meat like chicken.
High-quality beef typically has more fat mixed throughout (an effect called "marbling") which creates a richer taste and more delicate texture. | [
"Consisting of low-quality rib meat, described as a \"tough, scraggy meat\", if not well cooked, In recent years their high fat content has made them unpopular in many Western countries, although they are widely used as döner meat in Europe. \n",
"Beef quality grades - A quality grade is a composite evaluation of... |
Why do we always put reactive materials in glass beakers/flasks/graduated cylinders etc.? | In a nutshell, glass is very stable, and will not react easily with most compounds.
The class stays intact, the chemical stays the same, everyone is happy.
However, some reagents are better kept in plastic containers such as polyethylene, or even quartz, because glass is not a magical non-reactive substance either. | [
"Until 2010, no organic strong glass formers were known. Strong glass formers can be shaped in the same way as glass (silicon dioxide) can be. Vitrimers are the first such material discovered, which can behave like viscoelastic fluid at high temperatures. Unlike classical polymer melts, whose flow properties are la... |
Why do the continents seem to migrate north, leaving a gap between antarctica and the rest of the world? | It's random, mostly.
Plate tectonics is driven by convection currents in the mantle under the crust. Most of the time, people only consider the major continents moving, but [the jigsaw puzzle is slightly more complicated](_URL_0_) than that. Numerous oceanic plates are jostling around too.
During Pangea, Antarctica was wedged between India, Australia, and Eastern Africa. This whole assembly was around [the same latitude as modern day Southern Africa](_URL_1_). You'll see North America and Eurasia are up in the northern hemisphere, which is a good chunk of the land on Earth.
As things started to break up and migrate, Antarctica happened to get shunted south. Australia kinda followed it, these are the two landmasses that have been isolated the longest, but everyone else just sort of drifted north. The Northern Hemisphere is a lot more crowded land wise than the Southern, so it makes sense that the pole is more packed.
This was a bit rambling, but I hope it covered your question. tl;dr It's luck of the geologic draw. | [
"Antarctica continued to become more isolated and finally developed a permanent ice cap. Mountain building in western North America continued, and the Alps started to rise in Europe as the African plate continued to push north into the Eurasian plate, isolating the remnants of Tethys Sea. A brief marine incursion m... |
Would a nuclear bomb explode if you bomb it with an other bomb? | No. There's a very critically timed cobination of events that have to happen to get a nuclear detonation. The worst that would happen is that you detonate the charge around the fissile material and produce a conventional 'Dirty' bomb. | [
"Fusion-boosted fission bombs can also be made immune to neutron radiation from nearby nuclear explosions, which can cause other designs to predetonate, blowing themselves apart without achieving a high yield.\n",
"Although neutron bombs are commonly believed to \"leave the infrastructure intact\", with current d... |
If gravity is a pulling force, why is there no equivalent repulsive/anti gravity force? | short answer to your question can be: because there is no matter with negative mass.
all matter has positive energy (this statement is called "weak energy condition") and creates positive curvature of spacetime (positive and negative are subject to sign convention). effect of this "positive" curvature is, that when you move forward in time, it acts as attracting force. you can imagine it like two people starting at the equator and going toward pole - they come closer to each other just as if there was some force that pulls them together, but in fact, they are only changing one coordinate (in real case it would be time coordinate) ( < - this was an EDIT2).
in theory, you can invent metric (metric describes the curvature of spacetime) that has negative curvature on some places in space and positive on other ones. those metrics can have really cool properties. some are described as "wormholes" some other as "warp bubbles", but the problem with all of them is, that they would require this matter with negative mass (also called exotic matter). we have no evidence of such a thing.
EDIT1: also, there are some issues with mathematical structure of the equations that describe gravity (einstein equations)...
EDIT3: google up "energy condition" | [
"This is because gravitation is an attractive force, but if there is an underdense region it apparently acts as a gravitational repeller, based on the concept that there may be less attraction in the direction of the underdensity, and the greater attraction due to the higher density in other directions acts to pull... |
what is the difference between an originalist interpretation and a "living document" interpretation when it comes to the u.s. supreme court? | The idea is a debate about whether the founders wrote the thing to be specific, rigid, and amendable only through the amendment process...
or whether the founders wrote the thing with deliberately looser language to take shifting societal norms into account.
For example, the 8th amendment prohibits "cruel and unusual" punishments but neglects to define those terms. An originalist would argue that we need to research what "cruel and unusual" meant to the founders. A proponent of living document theory would argue that "cruel and unusual" is deliberately vague so that the boundaries of cruel and unusual can shift as society progresses. | [
"Originalism is a theory of \"interpretation\", not \"construction\". However, this distinction between \"interpretation\" and \"construction\" is controversial and is rejected by many nonoriginalists as artificial. As Scalia said, \"the Constitution, or any text, should be interpreted [n]either strictly [n]or slop... |
Slavery in ancient Greece | It's a simplification, and simplifications like this are only going to make sense with respect to some benchmark; perhaps that's the context of your friend's view. But without context, there isn't really much to support her.
Estimates of the slave population in Classical-era Greek states are exactly that, estimates, but those estimates normally range between 60% and 80% of the total population. One census reported from the late 4th century BCE would put the figure at nearly 87%. Even if we're sceptical of that figure, it's still a *lot* of slaves.
Some did serve functions as valets, child-minders, scribes, and so on. These ones certainly fit your friend's model. But you don't have to look far to find slaves in manual labour. There were also public slaves, responsible for things like cleaning up obstructions and large messes in the streets: so far, not too bad. But an awful lot of farmwork was done by slaves, and it's much harder to believe that they led a happy fulfilling life.
And there were some really awful slave positions around: for example, in Athens the silver mines at Laureion were worked exclusively by slaves, precisely because conditions were so appalling that any worker would have a pretty short lifespan after going there. Tens of thousands of slaves worked the mines, because the mines were so lucrative for Athens, and because slave-owners could actually lease unwanted slaves to the mines for a steady income. In Sparta things were even worse in a way, though perhaps not as intensely awful as silver mining: every year the ephors would ritually declare war on their helots, there were occasional mass slaughters, and adolescents were trained to go stealing and killing among them. Slaves could also be recruited for warfare: both Athens and Sparta used slaves in this way (though their treatment of the slaves afterwards varied a lot: after the naval battle at Arginousai, Athens officially freed all the slaves who had fought in the battle; in Sparta, a group of troublesome helots who had served in battle were rounded up under the impression they were going to be freed, and then slaughtered).
Slaves had no rights and could be tortured, deprived, and killed without recourse (the only limit was on doing these things to *someone else's* slave). When testifying on a legal matter, slaves' testimony was only valid if extracted under torture. So sure, *some* slaves had cushy positions. But it's certainly not a lot that I'd choose. | [
"Records of slavery in Ancient Greece go as far back as Mycenaean Greece. The origins are not known, but it appears that slavery became an important part of the economy and society only after the establishment of cities. Slavery was common practice and an integral component of ancient Greece, as it was in other soc... |
The "Duel of Champions": how common was it? What was it's purpose? | Been asked before a few times. The term for this is [Single Combat](_URL_0_).
_URL_1_
_URL_2_ | [
"Orazi e Curiazi (English title: \"Duel of Champions\") is a 1961 film about the Roman legend of the Horatii, triplet brothers from Rome who fought a duel against the Curiatii, triplet brothers from Alba Longa in order to determine the outcome of a war between their two nations.\n",
"A duel is an arranged engagem... |
What mechanisms are behind stereotypical accents in people with English as a second language? | **First the basics:**
Different languages have different phonetic systems (where phonetics refers to the individual consonant vowel combinations that form the phonemes which establish contrast for word differentiation. You know "bat" and "pat" are different words because [b] and [p] are "contrasting").
The primary factor that differentiates languages is the vowel inventory of that language (I say vowels as primary because they are "sonorant" or sound creating whereas consonants like "stops", "labials" and "fricatives" are the continuation of sound or the stoppage of sound). English has the basic vowels of /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ (the orthography I'm using to describe the vowels is not standard IPA. I decided not to spend the extra time typing it all out). You then have dipthongs, which are the vowel sounds created by adjacent vowels. You then have, to a lesser degree your allophonic dipthongs and vowels based on the surrounding consonants (a /a/ sound is going to sound slightly different if it's next to a [b] as compared to an [sp]).
The native speaker perceives and produces language given the above criteria.
**Now to apply this to a second language learner:**
The native German speaker who is learning English has DIFFERENT vowels than you as a native English speaker (different consonants as well, but the vowels are easier to recognize). As a native English Speaker, you have your inventory of English Vowels. When you listen to the native German speaker who has acquired English as an adult (as opposed to the bilingual, young child between 4 to 7 who has the opportunity and the language acquisition mechanisms to acquire "native fluency"), you are listening to the cross-influence of the native German speaker's German vowels and his attempt, successfully or otherwise, to produce English vowels. The "accent" you hear is thus your ability to pick up the difference in vowel quality.
**What about the consonants?**
Consonants likewise have an impact on how the vowel of the speaker is formed. Vowels, as mentioned before, are sonorant and the quality of the vowel is thus determined by multiple different factors: elevation of the tongue in the mouth, the "frontness" or "backness" of the tongue (is the tongue closer to the teeth, is it further away from the teeth?), and the shape of the lips. The mouth is thus an acoustic chamber that changes the sound of the vowel based on its shape. Just like for vowels, different languages have different consonants. While the different consonant inventories is obviously a part of the equation, it would have, comparably, lesser impact as most consonants in a language "stop" sound as opposed to create sound.
An oft used example of how consonants impact the accent is when you compare most Asian languages to that of English. Japanese and Chinese are notorious for not having the [r] that's native to English. They instead of what is called a "flap/tap" (the same sound you hear when someone says the word /button/ which only occurs word-medial or in the middle of the word). The Japanese or Chinese speaker in most instances does not have the muscle control and dexterity to move the tongue into such a position as to produce the [r] so they instead produce an approximation of the consonant [ɾ]. They approximate the sound by substituting a sound that is produced most similar in tongue positioning. The end result is "rat" sounds like "lat". | [
"Certain English accents feature variant pronunciations of these sounds. These include fronting, where they merge with /f/ and /v/ (found in Cockney and some other dialects); stopping, where they approach /t/ and /d/ (as in some Irish speech); alveolarisation, where they become (in some African varieties); and debu... |
How are ions made artificially? | You usually just take regular atoms and rip off their electrons somehow (heat them up, subject them to strong electric fields, shoot them through stripper foils, or some combination of those). | [
"Ions can be non-chemically prepared using various ion sources, usually involving high voltage or temperature. These are used in a multitude of devices such as mass spectrometers, optical emission spectrometers, particle accelerators, ion implanters, and ion engines.\n",
"Ions can be created in an inductively cou... |
why can a laser be seen from miles away but a regular flashlight has such a limited range before the light fades? | A laser tends to be very well focused, which means that its energy doesn't spread out that much as it travels. A flashlight, on the other hand, isn't focused that well, which means that its energy spreads out very quickly as it travels, so gets dimmer much faster than a laser does. | [
"BULLET::::- Diode lasers are used as a lightswitch in industry, with a laser beam and a receiver which will switch on or off when the beam is interrupted, and because a laser can keep the light intensity over larger distances than a normal light, and is more precise than a normal light it can be used for product d... |
why can most people jump higher off of one leg, when clearly there is more power in two legs? | Well, it's not all about raw power. The problem isn't being able to move upwards, you can climb stairs a lot higher than you can jump. The problem is accelerating quickly.
Look at it this way; stand perfectly still with your hands at your sides and jump.
You probably didn't get very far. This is because when you jump off one leg, neither your arms or your extra leg is sitting as dead weight. Your body spends a great deal of energy to thrust them upward just before you leave the ground. There's a lot of weight in a leg, so the inertia from that plus your arms all being thrust upwards helps to accelerate the actual dead weight (the rest of the body).
Take for instance [this tornado kick](_URL_0_ ). The person in the gif appears to exert very little force on the ground as they lift off. This is because they slowly build up momentum leading up to the jump (by spinning) then angle that energy upwards to carry them off the mat.
Basically the idea is rather than pushing yourself up with two legs, you're pulling yourself up with the momentum you built up in your swinging arms and legs. | [
"\"\"I never assumed my handicap and if anything, as a kid not having a leg meant that my arms were much stronger,\"\" Pueta added. His right leg is stronger than a tree and he jumps all over the field–like a kangaroo–and will tackle everything that comes his way. His line-out jumping is also an asset to whatever t... |
How do flu shots work? | > How does one shot protect you from all variations of flu?
> Do they need to be topped up, as newer strains come into existence?
One shot contains vaccines for three different strains of flu. The CDC spends a LOT of time and effort every year trying to predict which three strains are most likely to be a significant health threat that year, and do so with enough lead time to get the vaccines produced and distributed.
| [
"Flu-flu arrows are often used for children's archery, and can be used to play flu-flu golf. Similar to Frisbee Golf, the player must go to where the arrow landed, pick it up, shoot it again, and repeat this process until he reaches a specified place.\n",
"The influenza vaccine comes in two forms, the inactivated... |
I found this old helmet in an antique store, and I was wondering where it is from. | Swedish M26 Army Helmet seems to be the one,
_URL_0_
Heres some info on it.
_URL_1_ | [
"The Canterbury Helmet is an Iron Age helmet found in a field near Canterbury, Kent, England, in December 2012. Made of bronze, it is one of only a few helmets dating from the Iron Age to ever have been found in Britain. The helmet currently resides in the British Museum, and is undergoing conservation work. It was... |
When/how did human started cooking? | The modern human gastrointestinal tract is evolved to digest cooked food. That takes a long time. Here is a peer reviewed article that argues that control of fire was achieved nearly two million of years ago by some of the first members of the Homo genus:
_URL_2_
Because of the time needed for our current digestive systems to have evolved and also corresponding archeological evidence of controlled use of fire (ancient radiomatrically dated firepits) it's now the general consensus that control of fire (and it's use for cooking) must have occurred no earlier than 400,000 years ago:
_URL_1_
_URL_0_
Irrefutable evidence of cooking fires has been dated to 125,000 years ago. But this is not really a possible timeline for when control of fire began due to the evolutionary evidence of our guts: Our species, Homo sapiens, must have evolved in a population that had control of fire and used it to cook food, which means control of fire and cooking must have begun half a million years ago at the earliest.
Edit:
It's impossible to answer the second part of your question. Humans would have experimented with cooking the variety of foods available. I don't see how you could get a specific timeline of the integration of spices and other cooking ingredients; it would all be highly variable and probably a subject of debate with many of the wild varieties. For instance we have no idea when humans started eating garlic, it's really difficult to get an accurate date of pre modern (read pre writing) things like this. | [
"Phylogenetic analysis suggests that human ancestors may have invented cooking as far back as 1.8 million to 2.3 million years ago. Re-analysis of burnt bone fragments and plant ashes from the Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa, has provided evidence supporting control of fire by early humans there by 1 million years ag... |
Is there a history of monasticism in Islam? | *I speak of the Middle Ages.*
Islam doesn't really have monasticism. Within Sufism, Islam's mystical tradition, we can see some parallels to Christian monasticism, but fundamental differences remain--they are, at heart, different institutions with different roles to play in their respective religions and societies.
According to Christian tradition, the roots of monasticism lie in the late antique Egyptian desert, where so-called Desert Fathers (and Mothers!) were inspired to (in theory) leave "the world" behind, and move into isolated (in theory) caves or rough buildings to focus on their spiritual lives and relationships with God. Two things happened: one, they were seen as holy and people from nearby villages/cities came to them seeking advice and consolation. Two, they started to form their own communities. First, communities of hermits who sometimes came together; eventually, communities who devoted as much time to seeking God *as a community* (in group prayer) as on their own. And, eventually, these communities developed formal Rules to regulate their daily lives.
That is what we typically mean by "monasticism" in Christianity: a group of people, typically single-sex (although "double-houses" of women and men, isolated from each other but living side-by-side, are a western medieval thing in certain times and places), who swear permanent vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience; wear a uniform; and follow a rigid daily schedule of group prayer, individual prayer, and some amount of time for work.
As a social institution, monasteries own land, play power politics, are played with *in* power politics among bishops and secular lords (donating land to a monastery to keep it out of someone else's hands), offer a place for noble and royal widows to finish out their lives without needing to remarry (and thus preventing their lands from leaving the family), provide charity, and intercede between their patrons and God. In the early Middle Ages, monasteries were *crucial* in spreading and anchoring Christianity across pagan Europe. They were centers of learning, literacy, and libraries throughout the medieval world. As a religious institution, monasteries allow monks and nuns to nurture their inner spiritual lives--Christian mysticism largely, though not exclusively, comes out of the monastic tradition.
So in Christianity, mysticism tends to emerge from monasticism, or is just one part of it. Conversely, Sufism is the inner or mystical dimension of Islam, and in some cases, we can see some parallels to monasticism within that mysticism tradition.
The Sufi tradition generally consists of disciples or students under a leader. As you might expect, this idea of a teacher with a group of students, appointing one as their heir upon their death, does lead to the development of *tariqa* or orders of Sufism.
Unlike the rigid, exclusive, vowed communities of monasticism, however, Sufi orders are fluid. People can join them, leave them, adhere to multiple traditions at the same time! They are collective teachings of ways to build your individual relationship with God. The Christian monastic orders can also be seen that way, but they are exclusive, for-life, and consider the full way of life as part of building that relationship.
Adherence to Sufi orders can manifest in many different forms. In some cases, particularly in north and west Africa, where an entire people or branch of a people will follow Sufi principles. Some Sufis will live independently and come together or meet with the teacher. But in other cases, we do see Sufis living in community. I stress that this is not the formal vowed life under a Rule of Christian monasticism. Neverthless, *zawiya*/*tekke*/Sufi "lodges" of the Middle Ages resemble their Christian counterparts in some ways.
Structurally or architecturally, the zawiya complex provided lodging for their Sufis, a school (zawiya simply means madrasa/religious school in some parts of the Arab world), space for daily prayer, and sometimes institutions like lodging for visitors or hospitals for the sick and indigent. You would find equivalents for all of these in medieval Christian monasteries! Zawiyas, though, reflected Sufism's individualistic focus much more than their Christian counterparts tended to. While most Christian monastic traditions did not allow individual cells or space for private prayer until later in the Middle Ages (Christianity also has an eremetic or hermit tradition, though), Sufi zawiyas frequently offered both. And again, vows and the rigidity of monastic Rules were not part of life in a zawiya.
Sufi zawiyas did, however, mirror Christian monasteries in their missionary function. Both individual Sufis and established zawiyas played crucial roles in the expansion of both Islam and literacy in the early medieval (and also rather more modern) world.
Islam and eventually Sufism are born and cultivated partially in lands very familiar with either western or eastern forms of Christian monasticism--including, of course, the Egyptian desert itself. Were the Sufi zawiyas inspired by the Christian monastic communities their founders were well aware of? Was it simply the case that the medieval Mediterranean world shared enough circumstances that educated religious communities as beacons of charity and missionary work filled a necessary niche in both? Or was it a mix of the two? As you can imagine, influences between Christian monasticism, Sufi zawiyas, and the mystical tradition within the two religions (and Judaism as well) remains a rather hotly debated question.
Overall, it is wrong to say medieval Islam developed monasticism. But a closer look reveals that within Sufism, institutions did develop that paralleled contemporary Christian monasteries in several important respects.
*My apologies for not including the Buddhist, Hindu or Jain monastic traditions in this discussion.* | [
"Islam forbids the practice of monasticism. In Sunni Islam, one example is Uthman bin Maz'oon; one of the companions of Muhammad. He was married to Khawlah bint Hakim, both being two of the earliest converts to Islam. There is a Sunni narration that, out of religious devotion, Uthman bin Maz'oon decided to dedicate... |
How long did it take a skilled armourer to make chainmail armour during medieval times? | My own area of study is the armour of high and late medieval Europe. So my answer will focus on that, not on the Early Middle Ages. I mention this caveat because the economics and social organization of Europe were very different between 600 and 1450, and this effected things like how armour was made, which in turn effected the time it took to make it.
My source for this is Alan Williams' The Knight and the Blast Furnace.
A mail shirt might have between 28,000 and 50,000 links, depending on the size of the links and the length of the skirt an sleeves. Some mail was made of alternating riveted and solid links (IE, something like a washer). This was quicker to make, and modern estimates suggest it would take around 750 man-hours to manufacture. If a single laborer worked 10 hour days, this would take 75 days to make (not including sundays and feast days). However, laborers often didn't work alone, and workshops would include division of labor to speed up the process. So the actual time to manufacture a shirt would often be less than 75 days, even if it represented 750 hours of labor - how many people worked on a shirt, and how well they collaborated would determine the actual time of manufacture.
From the 14th century onwards, mail is increasingly made of all rivetted links, perhaps because it allows a tighter weave with thicker links and thus makes mail more protective. Rivetting all those extra links would add around 250 man-hours of labor, for a total of 1000 man-hours.
This made mail rather expensive, as you can imagine. In the beginning of the 14th century mail shirts bought in Bruges in Flanders were the equivalent of 60-130 days wages of a common soldier on campaign. In the early 15th century mail shirts bought from the Westphalia region of Germany were the equivalent of around 25 days wages, which is a good deal more affordable. At least some of this reduction in price may have been due to the re-use of mail - mail is easy to recycle, alter, cut up and repurpose. Many surviving mail shirts shows signs of alteration from decades or more after they were first made, and smaller pieces of mail armour like standards (collars), sleaves, skirts and gussets (underarm guards) may well have been made from older mail shirts that were cut up. So a lord buying mail shirts for his retinue might not be buying new mail, but 'remanufactured' mail.
As a final aside, the first step to making mail is making some form of wire or at least some thin piece of metal that can be bent into a ring. The quickest way to do this is to draw it - basically pulling an iron rod through a series of hole in a 'draw plate', creating a wire of a given thickness. This process is first mentioned by Theophilus in the 11th century, but mail with links of fairly even thickness dates as early as the 8th century. Some medieval mail is made from 'wire' of less even thickness, which may have been made through other processes like cutting strips from flat pieces of metal and then twisting them. I mention the manufacture of wire because while it isn't included in the calculations above, it is important to keep in mind that this was labor that needed to be performed before mail could be made - even though it wasn't necessarily performed in the mailmaker's workshop by the mailmakers themselves. Improvements in making wire made mailmaking faster and mail more affordable.
EDIT: A final note is that mailmaking and making plate armour were different crafts, and at least in larger cities like London were represented by different guilds.
| [
"During 12th century chainmail armour is first introduced in the Indian subcontinent and used by Turkic armies. An reference of chainmail armour was found in the inscription of Mularaja II and also at the Battle of Delhi where it was used by the armoured war elephants\n",
"Chainmail was the prominent form of armo... |
if utilities infastructure was created through taxpayer dollars, then why do people have to pay private companies for their utilities? | In most cases where facilities were built by the public and then privatized, the company either had to pay the government for the facilities, or agree to repair or improve the facilities at their own expense, thus effectively paying a bill that would have been the government's bill.
| [
"Although utilities are regulated industries, they are typically privately owned and must therefore attract private capital. Accordingly, because of constitutional takings law, government regulators must assure private companies that a fair revenue is available in order to continue to attract investors and borrow m... |
after accomplishing something very challenging why do we sometimes feel empty and emotionless about it immediately after? | Because the challenge is gone.
Possibly. | [
"Emotionally unpleasant experiences have the tendency to come back and haunt us, even after frequent suppression. Such memories can be recovered gradually, through active search and reconstruction, or they can come to mind spontaneously, without active search.\n",
"In time, emotional exhaustion may set in, leadin... |
Does having houseplants at home provide any sort of measurable benefit to ones health? | [They can help reduce indoor pollutants](_URL_0_) | [
"The Healthy Homes program was made possible through a grant from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development via a Healthy Homes Demonstration Program (HHD). The grant allows the Healthy Homes program to address environmental triggers that contribute to illnesses, conduct education and outreach t... |
What is the difference between German Blitzkrieg strategy and Soviet Deep Battle doctrine? | First of all, the Germans never used the word 'Blitzkrieg' themselves and did not have a specific doctrine around deep penetration or strategic battle - as you can see from from them turning back from Warsaw to deal with the Polish counterattack at Bzura 1939-09-09, the halting of the armoured units in front of the Dunkirk pocket 1940-05-17 and 1940-05-24 and diverting the armoured units from *Heeresgrupp Nord* and *Heeresgruppe Mitte* to help form the Kiev pocket 1941-09-16.
The Germans had a strong tactical focus, with their *auftragstaktik* and were extremely flexible tactically, allowing them to penetrate enemy lines and advance on the depth. However, they did not have any specific strategic doctrine other than the traditional military ideal of the dual pincer cut-off, famous ever since Hannibal did it in the Battle of Cannae.
The Germans never managed to get mroe than about 17% mechanisation of their forces - most marched on foot and pulled their heavy weapons with horses, and the difference in speed of these two different kind of units was a constant headache, and was exploited by the allies and Soviets multiple times. As the German armoured units attacked the suburbs of Warsaw 1939-09-08 (losing 70 tanks in the process and learning that tanks were not very good in urban warfare), the untouched Polish Poznan and Pomorze armies gathered at the Bzura River and attacked the German *30. Infanterie-division* that was the only stretched-out flank protection of the German advace. The Germans had to pull back from their attack of Warsaw, go after the Poles and the campaign lasted for another two weeks.
**In essence, the Germans had no blitzkrieg, they were flexible tactically and strived for encirklement strategically, and had severe problems with the armoured and motorised units outrunning the foot infantry.**
The Soviets did develop a doctrine of deep penetration, but essentially abandoned it during the 1937-1938 purges. While the purges mostly killed off generals and colonels and left the non-senior officers in place, it did freeze the Red Army in place. No-one dared do anything without orders, and tried to replace tactical flexibility with zeal and discipline, which was a recipy for disaster - which the defeat of the Spanish Republican Army (organised along Soviet lines in late 1936 and early 1937) and the performance of the Red Army in the Finnish Winter War 1939-1940 and early in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1942 shows.'
The Red Army slowly got better at knowing what it was good at and what it was bad at, and how to use what it was good at and compensate for what it was bad at. It created massive breakthough artillery units, shifting them to where they were needed. They knew they could never match the Germans in tactical flexibility, and instead created an operation doctrine, where they would rely on firepower of pre-calculated artillery barrages and massed use of tanks and assault guns to achieve penetration of the enemy lines. Massive reserves would be ready to attach to any attack that showed promise, and attacks that failed was stopped and their best forces moved to reinforce the attack that did well. Once penetrating, the Red Army focused more on destroying the enemy supply, communication and weaker rear units (destroying tank repair shops, supply services, traingin depots, etc.) and capturing important transportation hubs. Other so far untouched enemy units would be forces to retreat to not be cut off, and once out of their entrenchment and unprotected by artillery, they could be an easy prey for another massed attack. Flexibility on a larger scale, it was very effective against the Germans once their ability to conduct large scale armoured warfare had been ground down. The skill in *maskirovka*, the art of camouflage, hiding own forces and making it look like there were substantial forces where there were almost none was also important. The Red Army mastered this art.
**In essence, the Red Army could not match the Germans in tactical skill, and thus built up flexible reserves to quickly shift to any breakthrough. Combined with *maskirovka* this allowed them to decisively defeat the Germans on the eastern front.** | [
"During the 1930s, the resurgence of the German military in the era of the \"Third Reich\" saw German innovations in the tactical arena. The methodology used by the Germans in the Second World War was named \"\"Blitzkrieg\"\". There is a common misconception that \"Blitzkrieg\", which is not accepted as a coherent ... |
[META] Wide-scale revisions to the official rules | > [W]hile this is a public forum it is not an egalitarian one; not all answers will be treated as having equal merit.
Thank you for taking a clear stance on this issue and not pussy-footing around it. I come to this subreddit for content and there really is a very impressive panel of historians to provide that.
As a history buff, I always get the itch to pitch in my own two cents, but refrain from doing so as there probably is someone who can provide much more accurate information. (I should clarify that I am not implying that I have never found a helpful and on topic response from a non-flaired poster. Just that posts with people speculating and postulating have been on the rise..)
To the Mods and the panel, thanks a lot for all the work that you put into this subreddit! | [
"There are currently 44 rules, with the latest revision having been adopted on January 24, 2013. (The Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2006 lobbying reform bill introduced a 44th rule on earmarks). The stricter rules are often waived by unanimous consent.\n",
"The advanced rules have been period... |
how can i help somebody with seasonal depression feel better? | Phototherapy is noted to help people with seasonal depression. It involves basically shining a special lamp in your indoor space to help mitigate the lack of light that comes with autumn & winter. | [
"A depressed mood is common during illnesses, such as influenza. It has been argued that this is an evolved mechanism that assists the individual in recovering by limiting his/her physical activity. The occurrence of low-level depression during the winter months, or seasonal affective disorder, may have been adapti... |
what does the "crisper" drawer in my refrigerator do and what is the benefit to putting my veggies in there? | Actually, the crisper is the worst place to keep vegetables. They do better with air circulation and the temps higher in the fridge. The best thing to keep in the crisper are raw meats, primarily to prevent raw meat juices from dripping and contaminating anything else. The drawers are relatively easy to remove and sanitize afterward. | [
"A crisper drawer (also known as a crisper) is a compartment located within a refrigerator designed to prolong the freshness of stored produce. Crisper drawers have a different level of humidity from the rest of the refrigerator, optimizing freshness in fruits and vegetables. They can be adjusted to both prevent th... |
Can moons of dramatically different size happily co-exist? | There's nothing distinctively different between a planet's orbit around a star and a moon's orbit around a planet--there simply needs to be sufficient distance between them where "far enough" depends on the object's sizes.
Even asteroids [can have moons.](_URL_0_)
Essentially the question you need to ask is this, can the system I want to make well approximated by a two-body system, can I ignore the parent orbit? For an Earth-Moon-Sun system, the answer is yes, we can ignore the Sun, the system is stable. If we cannot, and we *have to* describe things as a 3-body system, then we risk always ejecting one of the bodies over long times as a three body system is able to easily transfer momentum around, eventually it'll wander into the phase space that unbinds one of the objects.
So to answer your question, yes. This is why we're able to have satellites around Earth as well as satellites around the Moon. One more bit of nuance, it seems like "cheating" to ignore the third body, in principle, it can contribute to momentum transfer albeit tiny ones. Luckily for us, there is plenty of situations where the "effective stability time" blows up to values magnitudes older than our universe, the Earth-Sun-Moon system is one such example. | [
"An intense search conducted by \"New Horizons\" confirmed that no moons larger than 4.5 km in diameter exist at the distances up to 180,000 km from Pluto (for smaller distances, this threshold is still smaller).\n",
"Only the two largest regular moons have been imaged with a resolution sufficient to discern thei... |
Do carbon based filters (such as brita) remove essential minerals that the human body needs? | First: Its important to note that Brita and similar water pitchers are not just an activated carbon pitcher. There is also an ion exchange resin present in the filter. Think of this ion exchange resin as working just like a water softener (that is, because it does work exactly like a water softener).
Activated carbon is really good at removing organic materials. Its safe to say that the vast majority of organics, you don't really want in your water anyway.
The other reason to use home-filtered water is if your water is hard -- which is where the ion exchange resin comes in. This is the part of the filter that removes any minerals. The way these resins work is that they are polymers which have counter-ions attached to them. Millions and gazillions of counter ions. The polymer is set up to have a negative charge and the counter ions are set up to be positive, typically sodium (which is why your home water softener takes salt -- ie NaCl, sodium chloride). There are more advanced water softeners and filters that will also exchange anions (negatively charged ions in water).
What happens is that as the hard water flows through the pitcher, it interacts with the polymer. The polymer is designed so that it will bind to the minerals common in hard water (calcium, magnesium etc) better than it will to sodium. So it snags the "hard" tasting ions and replaces them with sodium. Eventually the filter is depleted of sodium and so the water starts to taste funny again because the resin isn't doing a good job of removing the calcium and magnesium. Home water softeners remedy this by running a highly concentrated salt water solution over the resin to force the calcium and magnesium out and replace the sodium content.
Fluoride, however, is a negatively charged ion and is not affected by the resins commonly available for home use. This is good, because fluoride is good for your teeth.
Other 'trace' minerals that you need -- hard water doesn't contain nearly enough calcium to meet dietary needs. A lot of the other even tracer metals are poorly acquired through water. Here I'm talking about some of the ones that most people don't even think about but that [bullshit pseudo-science](_URL_0_) companies are happy to sell you at a high mark up.
To wrap up, any biologist who knows better is welcome to correct me on this, but basically: No, there are no health benefits or hurts. | [
"Carbon ion therapy (CIRT) uses particles more massive than protons or neutrons. Carbon-ion radiotherapy has increasingly garnered scientific attention as technological delivery options have improved and clinical studies have demonstrated its treatment advantages for many cancers such as prostate, head and neck, lu... |
why don't credit cards just use 19 digits instead of 16 digits plus 3 digit "security code"? | The CVV is separate from the card number, so if people record your card number (such as a card skimmer), they don't have access to the 3 digit security code.
If you made it 19 digit, then 1 swipe and they have all they need to literally take all your cash. | [
"The international standard for financial services PIN management, ISO 9564-1, allows for PINs from four up to twelve digits, but recommends that for usability reasons the card issuer not assign a PIN longer than six digits. The inventor of the ATM, John Shepherd-Barron, had at first envisioned a six-digit numeric ... |
why are the brussels and paris attacks so publicized and mourned over when others, like the current pakistani bombings, kill more and do more damage? | It's pretty much accepted that that part of the world is basically a warzone. Nobody's too surprised if something explodes or people die there.
However if it happens in a modern major city, that IS a nasty shock. That kind of thing isn't "supposed" to happen in a "civilised area".
Remember in the Dark Knight how the Joker talked about nobody panicking when things went "according to plan" even if the plan is horrifying? That's exactly it. You expect bombs to go off in a warzone, you don't expect them to go off in the middle of a major European city. | [
"The perpetrators belonged to a terrorist cell which had been involved in the November 2015 Paris attacks. The Brussels bombings happened shortly after a series of police raids targeting the group. The bombings were the deadliest act of terrorism in Belgium's history. The Belgian government declared three days of n... |
where and how does all the energy created by power plants get stored? or is the power being generated as it's needed? | The latter, mostly. In the case of plants that use some sort of fuel, the energy is *already* stored in whatever fuel that is being used. Generating energy from the fuel first, and then storing it back inside something else to be extracted later is a *huge* waste of everything. When you have too much power, you use less fuel. When you have too little, you use more, it's generally as simple as that.
In case of solar plants and such however, it gets interesting. Storing large amounts of energy is one of the biggest problems of today's engineering and there is considerable research being done about this very issue. There are some ways of storing the energy that a solar plant generates during the day, but they aren't exactly ideal. It usually revolves around conversion of electricity into some other form of energy. Like using the power from a solar plant to pump very large amounts of water uphill, which is essentially converting electrical energy into potential energy. You later let the water flow downhill and turn some turbines to generate electricity again. Or you could use the power from your soalr plant to pump air inside a huge tank to create pressure, and when needed you let the highly pressurized air out and, again, turn turbines with it. Obviously there are considerable losses involved in such techniques, but energy storage technology is still a developing one. We're getting there. | [
"Grid energy storage (also called large-scale energy storage) is a collection of methods used to store electrical energy on a large scale within an electrical power grid. Electrical energy is stored during times when production (especially from intermittent power plants such as renewable electricity sources such as... |
Has anyone ever taught a computer to code? | You might be describing something a bit like [genetic programming.](_URL_0_) I believe these still require someone to determine the fitness of each program, but if you have some desired output and a set input, you can have something compare what the program produces to what you want the output to be and the algorithm will fix itself, maybe. Disclaimer, I'm just a student and don't know a ton about computer science just yet! So that could all be wrong. First thing that popped into my head though on reading this post.
[Here's a program](_URL_1_) that can write music based on previous works and a human teacher for its output.
Hah, and [here's the album](_URL_2_) it wrote. Ridiculous. | [
"The first computer codes were specialized for their applications: e.g., Alonzo Church was able to express the lambda calculus in a formulaic way and the Turing machine was an abstraction of the operation of a tape-marking machine.\n",
"John Mauchly's Short Code, proposed in 1949, was one of the first high-level ... |
Historically, how long have Arabs been the dominant ethnic group in the Middle East? | Unfortunately I don't think this an answerable question. "Arab blood" does not define Arabness. Arabness is at least partially a linguistically defined ethnicity. That's why dark-skinned dark-eyed [Anwar Sadat](_URL_2_) is just as much an Arab as light-skinned blue-eyed [Bashar al-Assad](_URL_0_) is an Arab.
Aside from that definitional issue, our earliest sources, including biblical references, are to "Saracens", not Arabs. It's not at all clear who is being referred to when these classical sources are referring to Saracens. For instance while some sources might be using it in the sense that we mean of "ethnicity", and therefore define the area of territory occupied by Saracens broadly, others are using an unusually narrow definition, where, for instance, Saracens are the people who live in one very specific place. [This can easily be misrepresented by Arab nationalists](_URL_1_) in cumulative fashion as suggesting that some huge portion of the Middle East was meaningfully "Arab" from a very early period. Maybe. I'm hugely, hugely skeptical.
Most of the writers we're relying on for these descriptions in the classical era have never been to the Middle East, have no idea who lives there, and the picture will remain fuzzy until the Arab conquests themselves.
I think the best we can probably do is to say that there were strong tribal connections throughout the region. Quite good linguistic connections. But making definitive statements in terms of percentages for ethnic populations is just not possible. | [
"The earliest and most significant instance of \"Arabization\" was the first Muslim conquests of Muhammad and the subsequent Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates. They built a Muslim Empire that grew well beyond the Arabian Peninsula, eventually reaching as far as Spain in the West and Central Asia to the East.\n",
"A... |
what exactly is that steamy-looking stuff that comes out right after a beer bottle is opened? | Water vapour condensed out of the air due to the sudden drop in pressure in the neck of the bottle would be my guess. | [
"\"Beer\" consisted of a cylindrical metal container in diameter and long containing seven or eight half-pint bottles. Each bottle was a SIP grenade - it contained white phosphorus, benzene, water and a strip of raw rubber, long, which dissolved and formed a layer. After a delay caused by a slow burning fuse, the m... |
Why were the Franks so effective at conquering the Germanic tribes, where Rome had failed for so long? | Frankish hegemony over transrhenan peoples was less due to conquest or overpowering campaigns, and more to a policy of personal relationships, trade, raids and counter-raids that weren't that dissimilar to Rome's policies in Germania and that tended to define sort of a Frankish "sphere of influence/power projection" up to the Elbe, but also in Northern Italy, Armorica, southern England and Spain.
While Clovis battled against Alamans and Thuringians already in the late Vth and early VIth centuries, it mostly concerned groups established or raiding Gaul, not campaigns going beyond the Rhine. These peoples entering into Ostrogothic protection under Theodoric, the establishment of a Frankish hegemony in Germania can be more easily associated with the reign of Theudeuric I, who ruled the Northern-Eastern part of the Frankish realm and directly at contact with its polities (or raiders, as evidenced by the failed Danish raid of 516, whom defeat made enough of an impression to be accounted for in Beowulf).
This hegemony can mostly be traced from the reigns of Clovis' sons, especially Theudeuric who ruled over the lands associated with Franks since the IVth century and that was in direct contact with Frisians, Saxons, Alamans and Thuringians. The last two peoples already clashed with Franks during Clovis' reign, but mostly groups that were present in Gaul, the rest benefiting from the powerful and prestigious protection of Theodoric, king of Ostrogoths, a protection that disappeared in the VIth century along the decline and fall of the Ostrogothic kingdom itself.
As Francia appeared as the most prosperous and powerful polity of post-imperial western Europe and as kings in Italy were unable to really preserve Theodoric's diplomatic network, Franks were a necessary and powerful partner : the first Frankish intervention in Thuringia (with Merovingian kings probably had genealogical relations with) was even made at the behalf of a Thuringian king against another, hoping to get half of it which they did after an obscure situation where the supported candidate died. It's not that they annexed all of Thuringia : a good part was eventually swallowed up by neighboring entities, Germanic or Slavic, and the land within the realm was probably let to local nobles (led by a duke at least in the VIIth century, hinting at an "ethnic" rulership even if he was Frankish), poorly settled at best by Franks, with local populations being held tributary. The Thuringian exemple, eventually, can be set for the lot of Germanic principalties under Frankish influence.
Rather than a conquest, what was important for Merovingians was their capacity to halt raids, raid beyond the Rhine themselves and obtain both loot and substential tribute, raising auxiliaries and enforce their claims of over-lordship by including them into a personal and genealogical relationship as duces (dukes) although they probably had royal titles (in a system not unlike the Chinese tributary system, local and regional kings in Germany, Wasconia or Brittany weren't considered as such by Franks, who called them counts or dukes). On this regard, the difference usually made between Alamans, Bavarians and Thuringians from one hand; Frisians and Saxons from another one might not be that radical (Saxons, for exemple, being extorted a tribute and considered as rebels when refusing to pay up).
Of course, this was true when the Merovingian kings were able to enforce their rule beyond their borders, bullying their way into submission of local kings (especially under the reigns of Theudeuric I, Clothar I, Clothar II and Dagobert); but at the first sign of weakness, a revolt was always possible as it happened to Clothar I against Saxons (and as Marcomanni did with Marcus Aurelius in their time); even the own successes of peripheral rulers could led them to challenge Franks (such as Radulf, victorious against Wendish raiders and successfully beating Dagobert's Franks).
This could give the impression that Frankish Germania was kind of an aftertought, but it seems to have been rather the contrary : tributes payed in cattle, horses, possibly slaves were important, levied men served as auxiliaries in Frankish campaigns as soon as in Northern Italy and as late as the VIIIth century. It's just that, as Romans before, Merovingians were content (or had to do) with a fluctuating and warlord-ish relationship where their hegemony had to be regularly reasserted by demonstrations of strength or battle; rather than an effective conquest. That said, even this complex relationship left marks : local dynasties and nobilities were "Frenchified" to an extent, allowing Carolingians to maintain genealogic ties with dynasties such as Agilofings in Bavaria, giving some leeway to integrate them further to Francia (establishing law codes, notably, and "preparing" their annexation) and serving as model for further conquests such as in Frisia or Saxony : these conquest, as real they were, were also not so much "efficient" than brutal and requiring a lot of resources and attention from early Carolingian kings compared to the more light weighted management of Merovingians. | [
"The Franks became foederati in 358 CE, when Emperor Julian let them keep the areas in northern Gaul, which had been depopulated during the preceding century. Roman soldiers defended the Rhine and had major armies south and west of the Rhine. Frankish settlers were established in the areas north and east of the Rom... |
What would need to happen in order for it to be called the LAW of evolution? | There's nothing weak about the word theory. For instance, quantum field theory is the most accurate description of nature that we have.
As for laws and theorems in physics:
*Bell's theorem
*Newton's law of gravity, laws of motion, law of heating and cooling
*Kirkchoff's laws
*Kepler's laws
*Laws of thermodynamics
Are a few
| [
"The statement is often misinterpreted as claiming that evolution is not reversible, or that lost structures and organs cannot reappear in the same form by any process of devolution. According to Richard Dawkins, the law is \"really just a statement about the statistical improbability of following exactly the same ... |
why hockey refs fake a puck drop during a face off? | So that players who try to anticipate the drop and thus start their swing faster don't get an advantage. They are supposed to wait until the puck is dropped to start their swing. | [
"BULLET::::- In amateur ice hockey, intentionally icing the puck, lining up at the wrong face-off dot, or shooting the puck over the glass (in professional hockey, the team that ices the puck is not allowed a line change, while shooting the puck over the glass leads to a two-minute penalty).\n",
"A team which sho... |
why are cans in hawaii shaped differently than regular soda cans? | This is an older design of common cans. Let this guy shed some light on it in the most interesting can-related video ever produced:
_URL_0_ | [
"Cans come in a variety of shapes: two common ones are the \"soup tin\" and the \"tuna tin\". Walls are often stiffened with rib bulges, especially on larger cans, to help the can resist dents that can cause seams to split.\n",
"The American mechanical engineer and inventor Nathaniel Wyeth first patented PET in 1... |
Would an ancient Roman be able to read and understand the Latin Wikipedia? | Post this to r/latin--I think they'd get a kick out of it. :) | [
"Roman authors, such as Sallust, allude to some books written in the Punic language, but none have survived except occasionally in translation (e.g., Mago's treatise) or in snippets (e.g., in Plautus' plays). The Cippi of Melqart, a bilingual inscription in Ancient Greek and Carthaginian discovered in Malta in 1694... |
how have members of the bush admin not been charged with committing war crimes yet? | This is bull they by definition did commi war crimes facts are not opinions | [
"Bugliosi argues that, under the felony-murder rule, the resulting deaths of over 4,000 American soldiers and 100,000 Iraqi civilians (as of spring 2008) since hostilities began can be charged against Bush as second-degree murder. He said that any of the 50 state attorneys general, as well as any district attorney ... |
what does board mean in room and board? | If someone is offering "room and board", they are offering to house and feed you (generally). This sometimes is forgotten, but that's what it means. | [
"Room and board describes a situation where, in exchange for money, labor or other considerations, a person is provided with a place to live as well as meals on a comprehensive basis. It commonly occurs as a fee at colleges and universities; it also occurs in hotel-style accommodation for short stays.\n",
"The \"... |
If an atom emits a photon when an excited electron returns to ground state, can that happen without the atom being heated up? | There are many ways that can happen - basically every method of lighting that isn't incandescent light is an example.
[Light-emitting diode](_URL_5_) uses electricity to push electrons to a high energy state, and at the junction the electron falls to a lower state and emits a photon.
[Fluorescent lamp](_URL_11_) also uses electricity, but in this case electrons are fired between the electrodes. They impact mercury vapour in the fluorescent lamp, which excites the electrons within, and when they relax they emit a photon. One further step involves this emitted photon exciting electrons in the coating, which when relaxed emits a photon in the visible range. The phenomenon of exciting an atom with incident light and emitting a photon that way is [fluorescence](_URL_9_).
A similar phenomenon is [phosphorescence](_URL_0_), which also involves photoexcitation, but the relaxation occurs at a much longer timescale as the excited electron goes through [intersystem crossing](_URL_2_) before emitting a photon. You may have encountered this in many glow-in-the-dark toys or paint.
Speaking of glow-in-the-dark, back in the days, before the dangers of radioactivity was discovered, [radium](_URL_7_) was widely used in glow-in-the-dark paint. During radioactive decay, ionizing radiation is emitted, one of which are beta particles - energized electrons. The idea is the same as the above example of fluorescent lamp - you can harness the energy of those electrons by using a fluorescent coating. This is known as [radioluminescence](_URL_12_). Nowadays, [tritium](_URL_3_) is the safe radioluminescent source.
You also have [chemiluminescence](_URL_8_), where a chemical reaction produces a product with an excited electron, which then relaxes and emits a photon. This is the principle behind glowsticks, and also [luminol spray](_URL_6_) used to detect blood in crime scenes. When the chemical reaction is biological in nature (like in fireflies), we call this [bioluminescence](_URL_10_). In many biology labs an enzyme used in bioluminescence, [luciferase](_URL_1_), is used to track transcription.
A relatively recent and not-yet-fully-understood discovery is [triboluminescence](_URL_4_), where mechanical stress on the material causes charge separation and emission. Some famous examples are the emission of x-rays when unrolling Scotch tape, and glowing of mint [Life Savers](_URL_13_) when crushed.
So there are quite a number of ways to excite electrons without using heat. Many of these are already widely used, in household lighting, monitor displays, etc. | [
"If the atom is in the excited state, it may decay into the lower state by the process of spontaneous emission, releasing the difference in energies between the two states as a photon. The photon will have frequency \"ν\" and energy \"hν\", given by:\n",
"If an atom is already in the excited state, it may be agit... |
Why did cavalry during the U.S. Civil War operate almost exclusively as dragoons? | > Yet both Union and Confederate cavalry corps operated almost exclusively as dragoons. Why was this? To what extent was this affected by the duties of pre-war US cavalry, and/or the lack of a European-style military establishment?
The ways in which Union and Confederate cavalry came to operate during the war depended a lot on the availability and quality of mounts, the terrain on which the fighting took place, and the quality of training. The quality of Union remounts was appalling at the start of the war, with unbroken horses and those too young or old to ride effectively among other issues, being purchased en masse and poorly taken care of. Until George Stoneman took over as Chief of US Cavalry in 1863, and Sheridan as head of the Union Cavalry Corps, the situation didn't really improve. By the estimates of one French military attachee, Union Regiments went through up to 6 horses per annum per trooper, in the first 3 years of the war. The Confederates were somewhat better mounted initially, the horses often being personal mounts from home, these were irreplaceable and scarce by the later part of the war, 1864-65. So on both sides, poor quality mounts constrained the chances for mass adoption of shock tactics when these were appropriate. Shock action also required a good deal of training, as well as skillful execution to ensure success. Stephen G. Starr indicates that units that enjoyed initial success with the saber were more likely to continue with using it than those who were met with failure. For example, The 17th Mounted Infantry charged Bedford-Forrest's dismounted troopers at Bolger's Creek on April 1st, 1865, despite being raised and designated "mounted infantry." Most units appeared to favour firearms simply due to the ease of training and their being easier to obtain.
The lack of quality mounts, and the difficulty in training men for shock action compared to dismounted fire action, were further compounded by the terrain in which much of the war was fought. Stephen Badsey lays out the problem quite well:
> The main theatre of war, in Virginia, was by European standards
heavy ground, hilly, sparsely populated, with large virgin forests. This was scarcely ideal for the charge. The Western Theatre, far larger, saw considerable variation in terrain, but even there, so Colonel Duke of the Confederate Cavalry wrote: "The nature of the ground on which we generally fought, covered with dense woods or crossed with high fences, and the impossibility of devoting sufficient time to the training of the horses, rendered the employment of large bodies of mounted men to any good purpose very difficult."
Massed cavalry charges of divisions or more were very rare (it should be noted that this was historically the case even in Europe), but actions in troop, squadron and regiment strength were possible. A charge didn't even necessarily need to involve edged weapons; troopers with revolvers, carbines or rifles could "gallop" a position, charging up to it and dismounting to open fire. Shock action and dismounted action could also be combined quite effectively, as in the case of J.H. Morgan's charge at Shiloh in 1862, and in the clash between Pleasonton and Stuarts Cavalry in 1863.
To conclude, it might be more proper to say that American Cavalry, Union and Confederate, functioned more as 'Mounted Rifles' or 'Hybrid Cavalry', as 19th and early 20th century British (and Dominion) military writers termed them. In the former case, fire action dismounted was prioritized, but shock action could be resorted to in special circumstances, while Cavalry's scouting role was still central. In the latter case, emphasis was placed on shock action, but combining artillery and machine guns, as well as dismounted firepower. They weren't necessarily Dragoons who simply used their horses for transport, but could display great versatility in their tactics and missions.
Sources:
* "The Obsolescence of the Arme Blanche and Technological Determinism in British Military History" and "Writing Horses into American Civil War History" by Gervase Phillips
* [Fire and the Sword: The British Army and the Arme Blanche
Controversy 1871-1921] (_URL_1_) by Stephen Badsey
* "Cold Steel: The Saber and the Union Cavalry," by Stephen G. Starr
This [essay] (_URL_2_) on Civil War Cavalry from before WWI is worth a read, as is Alonzo Gray's [Cavalry Tactics as illustrated by the War of the Rebellion] (_URL_0_) | [
"Before the Civil War there was no light or heavy cavalry in the US army. Instead there were \"Dragoons\" (founded 1830) and \"Mounted Riflemen\" (founded c.1840). In 1861 these mounted regiments were renamed cavalry and given yellow piping.\n",
"During the American Civil War (1861–1865), cavalry held the most im... |
why do a lot of hentai and japanese porn use rape? | I would theorize it comes partially from the cultural status of women in japan as submissive beings that you can force your will on, and partially from the value of purity in the sense that a women *wanting* it is slutty. As a result you get a power fantasy of forceful men and an unwanting/pure woman.
At least in hentai there is also a difference between "true" rape and corruption rape, the former has the girl remaining resistant until the end, and seems to me to remain somewhat rare - The corruption of purity on the other hand seems to be *extremely* popular, in which case the girl is reluctant *at first* and then "learns to love it". So basically, turning someone pure and innocent to corrupt and slutty is what's fetishized here more so than the actual rape. | [
"Traditional Japanese religions do not consider sex or pornography a moral corruption in the Judaeo-Christian sense, and until the changing morals of the Meiji era led to its suppression, shunga erotic prints were a major genre. While the Tokugawa regime subjected Japan to strict censorship laws, pornography was no... |
Why can't the immune system prevent shingles outbreaks, since it already has antibodies for the virus? | My professor explained it as a cellular vs humoral immunity question.
Antibodies do a great job of stopping spread in humors (blood, interstitial fluid, etc.) -- hence antibody immunity is called humoral immunity. But, Varicella Zoster Virus (VZV) survives in the nerve (dorsal root ganglia, to be specific), which is an immune-privileged site -- no antibodies or T cells are getting into a nerve. So when the virus decides to come out of the nerve back to the skin cells (not well understood when or why, as CD8plus said), it can easily track along the nerve and infect adjacent cells.
& nbsp;
So, our only way of getting rid of the VZV outbreak in our skin cells (ie shingles) is for T cells to move in and purge the infected cells. This takes a while, and is very inflammatory. | [
"Unless the immune system is compromised, it suppresses reactivation of the virus and prevents shingles outbreaks. Why this suppression sometimes fails is poorly understood, but shingles is more likely to occur in people whose immune systems are impaired due to aging, immunosuppressive therapy, psychological stress... |
At what altitude on earth is the air pressure roughly equivalent to the surface pressure of the Martian atmosphere? | > The surface pressure on Mars is equivalent to the range of pressures on Earth at altitudes between ~30 km and ~60 km.
--[Math Encounters Blog](_URL_1_)
> At altitudes above 50,000 feet [_15.2 km_] man requires a pressurized suit to be safe in this near space environment.
--[A Brief History of the Pressure Suit](_URL_0_)
> At 55,000 feet [_16.76 km_], atmospheric pressure is so low that water vapor in the body appears to boil causing the skin to inflate like a balloon. At 63,000 feet [_19.2 km_] blood at normal body temperature (98 F) appears to boil. ... At altitudes above 65,000 feet [_19.8 km_] atmospheric pressure approaches that of space, that is the pressurization factors for protective equipment to be used at 65,000 feet are essentially the same as would be required for survival in a vacuum.
--[A Brief History of the Pressure Suit](_URL_0_) | [
"At about 28 miles (45 km, 150 thousand feet ) Earth altitude the pressure starts to be equivalent to Mars surface pressure. However, the major component of Mars air, CO gas, is denser than Earth air for a given pressure. Perhaps more significantly there is no land at this altitude on earth. The highest point on ea... |
the core principles of immanuel kant's philosphy. | Kant answers 3 big questions:
1- what is reality?
Kant says there's a real world outside of your body. But the way you experience this world (using your senses of seeing, hearing, touching etc.) creates a map, or model, of this outside reality in your mind, which is unique to YOU. Even things like space and time are unique to you. So if you had different senses, like Superman has superhearing, you'd have a completely different model of reality.
2- what should be? (Right and wrong)
This is Kant's most famous contribution (categorical imperatives.) It means when you conclude that something is wrong, it is wrong 100% of the time, under any circumstances, and for everybody. You can't say murder is wrong then justify using it in some situations (capital punishment, war, etc.) It does not change nor does it matter where or when.
His point is that because your model of reality is unique to you, you can always come up with situations to convince yourself what you're doing isn't wrong ("it's not stealing if you're starving.") And there would be no sense of morality if enough people do that. The only way that there can be any morality is that right and wrong are universally established.
3- How should society be governed?
So since right and wrong are universal, societies should be governed by a constitution and by the rule of law. Pure democracy (rule of majority) is not the answer, because no matter how many people believe something to be right, wrong is always wrong. | [
"Immanuel Kant employs the term \"amphiboly\" in a sense of his own, as he has done in the case of other philosophical words. He denotes by it a confusion of the notions of the pure understanding with the perceptions of experience, and a consequent ascription to the latter of what belongs only to the former.\n",
... |
How is nuclear radiation stored in objects? | Unstable nuclei will eventually decay and emit radiation. If something is bombarded with neutrons, some of them are captured by the nuclei, which can become unstable. In the case of water, it's possible that some could be captured to produce tritium, which is radioactive. | [
"Since nuclear materials are radioactive, it is important to ensure that radiation exposure of those involved in the transport of such materials and of the general public along transport routes is limited. Packaging for nuclear materials includes, where appropriate, shielding to reduce potential radiation exposures... |
If we set off a nuke near Jupiters core.... | No. Some fusion might occur but it would not be self-sustaining. | [
"\"Jupiter\" sank the on 17 January 1942. On 27 February 1942 she struck a mine laid earlier in the day by the as she steamed with the American-British-Dutch-Australian Command (ABDA) cruiser force during the Battle of the Java Sea. The destroyer sank off the north Java coast in the Java Sea at 21:16 hours. Initial... |
why does squirting lemon juice over spicy food make it less spicy? | It does reduce the spice. Spicy chili peppers contain an oil called *capsaicin* which gives the spicy flavor. Lemon juice has acids in it, and the acids neutralize the oils, which reduces the spice. | [
"Astringency, the dry, puckering mouthfeel caused by the tannins in unripe fruits, lets the fruit mature by deterring eating. Ripe fruits and fruit parts including blackthorn (sloe berries), \"Aronia\" chokeberry, chokecherry, bird cherry, rhubarb, quince and persimmon fruits, and banana skins are very astringent; ... |
if oil is ancient organic matter, then how is there so much of it? | Hundreds of millions of years of swamps doing swampy things...
...like sucking down carbon from the atmosphere and sinking it in anoxic environments where it turns to kerogen and then to fossil fuels.
The Carboniferous period predated the Permian Triassic Mass Extinction Event —aka: The Great Dying— by laying down gigatons of Carbon... which turned to coal, oil, and methane... huge volumes of which were burned by the EXTREME volcanism of the Siberian Traps.
Like 96%+ of the tree of life went extinct.
[Burning Fossil Fuels Almost Ended Life on Earth](_URL_0_) | [
"Petroleum is a naturally occurring liquid found in rock formations. It consists of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights, plus other organic compounds. It is generally accepted that oil is formed mostly from the carbon rich remains of ancient plankton after exposure to heat and pressure in... |
what exactly is management consulting? | In short you're correct: a management consultancy does spend a lot of time investigating a company, then makes a number of recommendations to senior staff on how to improve their business.
Not all management consultants are equal. The senior consultants and partners spend a lot of time with senior members of the company with which they're working, discussing performance and strategies.
Mid-level consultants tend to hold interviews with mid-level managers to understand the company and recognise problems. They may also supervise a team of junior consultants.
The junior consultants spend a lot of time typing up notes, fiddling with PowerPoint slides and ordering dinner because they're having to work very late.
Depending on ability, performance and luck it takes about 5 years and an MBA to move from junior to senior. | [
"The practice of management consulting is about \"helping organizations to improve their performance, operating primarily through the analysis of existing organizational problems and the development of plans for improvement.\" with the purpose of \"gaining external (and presumably objective) advice and access to th... |
Why didn't Israel keep the Sinai peninsular? | Because giving it up was a hugely important bargaining chip for peace with Egypt. No one really regarded it as part of Israel (the way the West Bank is), though there were people there who were less than thrilled about being kicked out. Making it demilitarized allowed for Israel to retain a buffer, while still getting peace with Egypt. | [
"The Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty led Israel to give up the Sinai Peninsula in 1982 and transform the military rule in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank into the Israeli Civil Administration in 1981. The Western part of Golan Heights was unilaterally annexed by Israel the same year, thus abolishing the Military Governo... |
Reddit science people, my 6 year old would like an answer to a space question. I have no idea what to tell her. | Your daughter is in good company with that wondering. One of the very first scientists was a Greek guy named Thales, who held that the primary essence of every substance was water.
What do you mean by "what if?" Do you mean "If the universe were all water, what would it be like?" Or do you mean "How do we know the universe is not made of water?" | [
"Less than two weeks after the trip, she applied to study communication and electronic engineering at Monterrey Tech, graduating in 2003. Unfortunately, she was the only one at the school at the time interested in space. Despite this, she attended space conferences and other events such as the National Astronomy Co... |
how do car dealerships work with the car companies and how do they make their profits? | Car dealerships are independent businesses who have franchise agreements with the various car makers they sell. They purchase the vehicles through the manufacturers at the invoice price, but there are often other mechanisms for the dealers to make money from the sale, such as manufacturer holdbacks, quota bonuses, and other incentives. So even if a dealer sells a car "at invoice" they may still be making 3-5% of the cost in profit. Obviously then, if they sell for above invoice, they make more profit. Then there are the additional revenue streams that the finance manager tries to sell you on, like extended warranties, wheel protection, etc. that are all high margin products (same reason Best Buy always tries to sell you the extended warranty). And then there is the financing, with bounty going to the dealer when they go through the auto makers' credit arm. But most dealers actually make the most of the profit form the service part of the dealership, whether repairs covered under warranty that the car maker reimburses for, or repairs/service that are paid directly by the customer. | [
"Car dealerships are usually franchised to sell and service vehicles by specific companies. They are often located on properties offering enough room to have buildings housing a showroom, mechanical service, and body repair facilities, as well as to provide storage for used and new vehicles. Many dealerships are lo... |
Is there any proof that Mesopotamia and Egypt had contact with each other and if they did, what was their relationship like? | What timeframe are you refering to? | [
"The intensity of the exchanges suggest however that the contacts between Egypt and Mesopotamia were often direct, rather than merely through middlemen or through trade. Uruk had known colonial outposts of as far as Habuba Kabira, in modern Syria, insuring they presence in the Levant. Numerous Uruk cylinder seals h... |
How much cytoplasm does the average animal cell contain? | About 100-1000 femtoliters.
& #x200B;
But it's a pretty hard thing to answer. The cell with the smallest volume that I know of is the sperm cell, with about 20 femtoliters (fL). The most numerous cell in your body is the red blood cell, and it has a cytoplasmic volume of about 100 fL. But a fibroblast has a volume of 1000 fL, a fat cell has a volume of about 100,000 fL, and a egg cell (oocyte) has a volume of about 1,000,000 fL.
& #x200B;
So how small of a volume is 100 femtoliters? Well, in 100 femtoliters, there is only a trillion water molecules. I know a trillion is a big number, but the fact that we even have a common word for the number of molecules in that volume tells you it's pretty small. | [
"The proportion of cell volume that is cytosol varies: for example while this compartment forms the bulk of cell structure in bacteria, in plant cells the main compartment is the large central vacuole. The cytosol consists mostly of water, dissolved ions, small molecules, and large water-soluble molecules (such as ... |
why does it take so long for employers to reach hiring decisions? | Hiring an employee is a big investment. If there are lots of good options, then you want to make sure you're making the right one. | [
"Edmund Phelps [1972] introduced the assumption of uncertainty in hiring decisions. When employers make a hiring decision, although they can scrutinize the qualifications of the applicants, they cannot know for sure which applicant would perform better or would be more stable. Thus, they are more likely to hire the... |
why is the senate investigating claims that facebook censors conservative news when facebook is a private entity/platform? | Because the senate doesn't give a shit about actual government duties and only cares about their own partisan political ideologies and abusing their powers as much as possible in order to advance those particular political ideologies. | [
"Claims of shadow banning of conservative social media accounts began in 2016 with Facebook’s “Trending News” controversy. Conservative news sites lashed out at Facebook after a report from an unnamed Facebook employee on May 7 alleged that contractors for the social media giant were told to minimize links to their... |
How do Historians typically calculate an "exact" date? | hi! hopefully some of the historians in antiquities will drop by with more info, but you may be interested in a few related posts
* [How do we know what years certain pre-gregorian historical events happened in?](_URL_4_)
* [How certain are we of what year it is? Were there every any disagreements, like during the Dark Ages or afterwards, of the exact year?](_URL_2_)
* [If an event is recorded to have occurred on a particular date, and I ask you to say with 100% confidence how many days have elapsed since that event, what is the oldest era for which you can do this?](_URL_3_)
* [What is the earliest recorded date that we can determine accurately?](_URL_5_)
* [What is the earliest reliable documented event in human history?](_URL_0_)
* [How do historians work with dates from different calendars? Do you have some kind of unified calendar?](_URL_1_) | [
"A calendar date is a reference to a particular day represented within a calendar system. The calendar date allows the specific day to be identified. The number of days between two dates may be calculated. For example, \"24 2020\" is ten days after \"14 2020\" in the Gregorian calendar. The date of a particular eve... |
With the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, the English language began rapidly changing. What other long-term cultural changes did this event bring about within England? | Hi there, I essentially answered a similar question to yours [here](_URL_1_), and linked to an earlier answer on some more of the legal changes [here](_URL_0_). The legal changes in particular would have had a genuine impact on the day-to-day life of the English people, especially as the legal system turned heavily from restorative to punative justice. | [
"After the conquest of England in 1066, the Normans's language developed into Anglo-Norman. Anglo-Norman served as the language of the ruling classes and commerce in England from the time of the conquest until the Hundred Years' War, by which time the use of French-influenced English had spread throughout English s... |
Biologically, how does pedophilia even make sense? | Although what causes pedophilia is not yet known, beginning in 2002, researchers began reporting a series of findings linking pedophilia with brain structure and function: Pedophilic (and hebephilic) men have lower IQs, poorer scores on memory tests, greater rates of non-right-handedness, greater rates of school grade failure over and above the IQ differences, lesser physical height, greater probability of having suffered childhood head injuries resulting in unconsciousness, and several differences in MRI-detected brain structures. They report that their findings suggest that there are one or more neurological characteristics present at birth that cause or increase the likelihood of being pedophilic. Evidence of familial transmittability "suggests, but does not prove that genetic factors are responsible" for the development of pedophilia.
Another study, using structural MRI, shows that male pedophiles have a lower volume of white matter than a control group.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has shown that child molesters diagnosed with pedophilia have reduced activation of the hypothalamus as compared with non-pedophilic persons when viewing sexually arousing pictures of adults. A 2008 functional neuroimaging study notes that central processing of sexual stimuli in heterosexual "paedophile forensic inpatients" may be altered by a disturbance in the prefrontal networks, which "may be associated with stimulus-controlled behaviours, such as sexual compulsive behaviours." The findings may also suggest "a dysfunction at the cognitive stage of sexual arousal processing."
Blanchard, Cantor, and Robichaud (2006) reviewed the research that attempted to identify hormonal aspects of pedophiles. They concluded that there is some evidence that pedophilic men have less testosterone than controls, but that the research is of poor quality and that it is difficult to draw any firm conclusion from it.
A study analyzing the sexual fantasies of 200 heterosexual men by using the Wilson Sex Fantasy Questionnaire exam, determined that males with a pronounced degree of paraphilic interest (including pedophilia) had a greater number of older brothers, a high 2D:4D digit ratio (which would indicate excessive prenatal estrogen exposure), and an elevated probability of being left-handed, suggesting that disturbed hemispheric brain lateralization may play a role in deviant attractions.
Wikipedia | [
"BULLET::::- Pedophilia is a psychological disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a sexual preference for prepubescent children. According to the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), pedophilia is a paraphilia in which a person has intense sexual ur... |
why do black americans resent white americans so much for slavery when america wasn't the first to use slavery, and banned slavery 13 years before the last country to ban slavery did? | So in your world slavery was the end of the matter? | [
"The passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution brought an end to the system of slavery that had kept American blacks in bondage since colonial times. After slavery was abolished, there was somewhat of a cultural crisis in the Southern states. Even though black Americans had received thei... |
What books should be trusted? | Obviously, there is always a ton to be said on this sort of question, but you might find [this](_URL_0_) response by /u/Cosmic_Charlie informative | [
"The \"Los Angeles Times\" wrote that the author \"has given us a clear, almost controversial book that draws on the text and teachings of an ancient mystical faith and applies them to the concerns of contemporary life. His insights into the use of meditation to overcome the fear of death are comforting, reassuring... |
Can light impart momentum? | The solar sail can either absorb the light (so the sail gains the momentum of the photon it asborbs), or better yet, reflect the light, reversing its momentum. By conservation of momentum, the sail then gains two times the photon's momentum.
This is completely analogous to experiments you might do with, say, a medicine ball and a person standing on a skateboard.
| [
"The angular momentum of light is a vector quantity that expresses the amount of dynamical rotation present in the electromagnetic field of the light. While traveling approximately in a straight line, a beam of light can also be rotating (or “\"spinning\"”, or “\"twisting\"”) around its own axis. This rotation, whi... |
Why are the lanthanides and actinides crammed in one space? | They don't, it's just a,way of drawing the Periodic Table more compactly. If you wanted the table set out properly as a grid it would have to be an unwieldy long piece of paper. The whole thing really should be split at that point and the La and Ac elements inserted as two long lines. We draw it the way we do for for covenience. If we wanted to, we could also draw the d-block elements similarly.
Chemically it's because the order of filling electron orbitals doesn't go simply shells 1-2-3-4-5... For the higher weight atoms, electrons start to fill the higher numbered "s" and "p" shells before the "d" and "f" of lower numbered shells have all the electrons they can take. So at the start of the Lanthanides and Actinides the sequence goes back filling in the remainder. | [
"Lanthanum and actinium are commonly depicted as the remaining group 3 members. It has been suggested that this layout originated in the 1940s, with the appearance of periodic tables relying on the electron configurations of the elements and the notion of the differentiating electron. The configurations of caesium,... |
How fast does an object inside the event horizon of a black hole move towards it? | There are two important things we have to remember here:
1. Velocity is a relative quantity. We can't just say, "That thing is moving at velocity *v*." We can only say, "That thing is moving at velocity *v* **relative to that other thing**." I assume you question is then, "Does an object inside the event horizon of a black hole move faster than c relative to an observer outside the event horizon?" This brings us to the second important fact.
2. The region inside the event horizon of a black hole **is not part of our universe**. This may sound shocking, but let's think about it. Nothing can cross from inside to outside, so we can never receive any information about it. It is completely inaccessible to us. We might as well say it's outside of our universe.
Thus, there's no meaningful way to talk about how fast something *inside* the event horizon of a black hole is moving relative to something *outside* of a black hole since we can never compare their velocities. Now, two massive objects inside the event horizon and in causal contact with each other (that is, they can "see" each other) must move at less than c relative to each other.
We, of course, could ask the hypothetical question, "Well, if we *could* see inside the event horizon of a black hole, would objects in there be moving at faster than c relative to us?" To answer that, I'd have to dig out my old relativity textbook and read up on it a lot, but even if it could happen, it wouldn't be a violation of special relativity thanks to the event horizon censorship. | [
"In the case of the horizon around a black hole, observers stationary with respect to a distant object will all agree on where the horizon is. While this seems to allow an observer lowered towards the hole on a rope (or rod) to contact the horizon, in practice this cannot be done. The proper distance to the horizon... |
the difference in programming languages. | Every single programming language serves one purpose: explain to the computer what we want it to do.
HTML is... not a programming language, it's a markup language, which basically means text formatting. XML and JSON are in the same category
The rest of languages fall in a few general categories (with examples):
1. Assembly is (edit: for every intent and purpose) the native language of the machine. Each CPU has it's own version, and they are somewhat interoperable (forward compatibility mostly).
2. System languages (C and C++) . They are used when you need to tell the computer what to do, as well as HOW to do it. A program called a compiler interprets the code and transforms it into assembler.
3. Application languages (Java and C#). Their role is to provide a platform on which to build applications using various standardized ways of working.
4. Scripting languages (Python, and Perl). The idea behind them is that you can build something useful in the minimal amount of code possible.
5. Domain-specific languages (FORTRAN and PHP). Each of these languages exist to build a specific type of program (Math for FORTRAN, a web page generator for PHP)
Then you have various hybrid languages that fit in between these main categories. The list goes on and on. Various languages are better suited for various tasks, but it's a matter of opinion.
Finally and most importantly: JavaScript is an abomination unto god, but it's the only language that can be reliably expected to be present in web browsers, so it's the only real way to code dynamic behavior on webpages.
Edit: Corrections, also added the 5th category
| [
"Just as different groups in software engineering advocate different \"methodologies\", different programming languages advocate different \"programming paradigms\". Some languages are designed to support one paradigm (Smalltalk supports object-oriented programming, Haskell supports functional programming), while o... |
why do modern tvs seem to increase the framerate of video, even when to footage is decades old? | Modern televisions have a setting that is usually turned on by default that causes this effect. The way it does it is by looking at two frames in the image, seeing what the differences are, and "guessing" what another frame between the two would look like if it was there when the show was recorded. The TV then creates this extra frame, and gives the appearance of the TV show or film being recorded at 48-60 FPS. | [
"Conventional video displays consist of a series of images, or \"frames\", representing single snapshots in time. When the frames are updated rapidly enough, changes in those images provide the illusion of continuous motion. This makes normal television tubes unsuitable for computer displays, where the image is gen... |
Why was king hussein of jordan pro-peace with Israel? | Part 1 (scroll to my reply to this comment to read Part 2):
The Jordanian motivations go much deeper than the history of the Hussein family and the Palestinians. Instead, one has to first understand the development of Jordan and the development of the state of Israel to understand their overlap.
On the one hand, Jordan has participated in a number of conflicts against Israel, including joining the efforts to destroy it in 1948, fighting alongside Arab armies in 1967, and participating in anti-Israel actions in various international forums. At the same time, as you noted correctly, Jordan has been far friendlier to Israel than other Arab states, going so far as to propose ways to avoid war in 1948 (King Abdullah proposing in 1947, for example, a nonbelligerency pact to split the Mandate) and to allegedly even warn Israel of an impending attack in 1973 (King Hussein told Golda Meir in a secret meeting on September 25, < 2 weeks before war, that Syria's military had moved to pre-war positions). Evidently, the willingness to cooperate with Zionist leaderships has extended to before King Hussein's father (King Abdullah I) was assassinated by a Palestinian fearing peace with Israel.
The roots are both strategic and also demographic. Through a variety of factors, Jordanian leaders have been forced to confront that in many ways, their goals overlapped with those of Israel historically.
Jordan, for example, was just as concerned as many other Arab leaders with the prospect of taking over the Arab areas of the British Mandate. However, unlike the other parties, Jordan was also party to the best-trained military in the lead-up to the 1948 war. Its well-trained military was counterbalanced, relative to the other Arab states, by the fact that it was (and has been) the smallest country population-wise of the major Arab belligerents since 1948, meaning it also was the least competitive in gross resources to bring to bear. This meant that Jordan was far more willing than the other parties to conflicts with Israel to accept that a secret compromise might net them better results (i.e. an agreement to gain the Arab portions) than to compete with larger Arab neighbors, such as Egypt or Syria. This was compounded in importance by the fact that Egypt and Jordan were rivals in the lead-up to the conflict, and approached it from different perspectives. Jordan, advised by the Arab Legion's head (a British commander named John Bagot Glubb), believed that the Arab forces were naive to think they could defeat the Jewish forces, and Abdullah was most conscious of this, saying that, "The Jews are too strong -- it is a mistake to make war". While other Arab leaders doubted victory, their inept military commands and the Arab League's closest thing to a plan seemed to approach conflict with overly optimistic ideas. As Glubb put it, the war pitch led to a situation where "Doubters were denounced as traitors", but only Jordan appeared to be as clearly aware of just how poor the planning/capability was and therefore willing to seek escape from the strictures of war.
Besides the question of gross resources, competition between Arab states, and awareness of military discrepancies, there existed yet another reason why Jordan and Israel often found themselves drifting together. This reason lay primarily in the shifting demographics of Jordan following the 1948 war. The influx of Palestinian refugees from this war into the West Bank and Jordan, and Jordan's desire to solidify its control over the West Bank, meant Jordan had an inherently aligned strategic interest in integrating Palestinian refugees with Israel's desire to see those refugees integrated (to avoid claims for return to Israel in the long-run, a situation that has persisted to present-day). At the same time, Jordan sought integration in a way to attempt to reduce Palestinian nationalism, and to buffer his own claim to the West Bank, a claim that the Arab world largely never recognized (but that Israel, in 1947, was semi-willing to accept in exchange for peace). While this proposal never included Jerusalem of course, the common ground there was far greater than the common ground with Egypt or Syria, who treated Palestinian refugees quite differently and had gained little territory as a result of the 1948 war (and the land they did gain was of questionable value, compared to the Jordanian gains of coveted Jerusalem and arable land). In fact, it is even arguable that as Jordan had gained most of what it wanted, its remaining conflict with Israel was more related to the question of Arab unity (until 1967, of course) than it was to specific claims it wished to make to Israeli territory. Jordan, rationally, feared Palestinian reactions if it sought to overtly accept Israel's existence (amplified by the assassination of King Abdullah in 1951 predicated on this fear), but it also feared Palestinian reactions if it sought too strongly to erase Palestinian nationalism without care. As a result, Jordan's balancing act largely failed: Palestinians never came to view themselves as true Jordanians, were excluded from Arab Legion combat formations, and were barred from high-ranking positions in the civil bureaucracy, for fear of potential coup (particularly since Palestinians made up such a large proportion of the population). Egypt and Syria, on the other hand, remained largely low on gains from 1948, still coveted and fought with Israel over things like water and passageways (such as the diversions of water from the Sea of Galilee/Jordan River, or conflict over the Gulf of Aqaba). Furthermore, Egypt sought (particularly under Nasser) a role of regional hegemony, and opposition to Israel and the West were a crucial component of Nasser's strategy in mass appeal. His ability to gain influence in other countries was also a source of great concern to Jordan, Israel, and the West, which led them to covertly remain more friendly than they otherwise might have. Nasser's rise thereby made friends out of those who had previously fought, and who had also had less disagreement prior themselves. | [
"He was also seen as too lenient toward some ministers who were alleged to be corrupt. The price of establishing peace with Israel in 1994 he had to pay domestically, with mounting Jordanian opposition to Israel concentrating its criticism on the King. The King reacted by introducing restrictions on freedom of spee... |
what exactly does a dip in economy do to a country? | If the economy dips less people are buying things, if less people are buying things then companies that make things can't afford to hire so many people to make those things. Those people lose their jobs and have less resources to buy things, and so on, and so on.
Houses are lost because the bank expects you to pay mortgages, cars are repossessed, utilities are shut off.
Quality of life goes down.
More people die from disease that could have been treated if they could afford it.
Crime rate goes up. | [
"These economic downturns occur because of increased supply and decreased demand, which combine to create a shift in surplus and power to the semi-periphery. Semi-periphery regions take advantage of the situation by expanding control of their home markets and the surrounding periphery countries at the expense of co... |
why do helicopters crash so much more often than other aircraft? | Helicopters have extremely poor glide characteristics. Your best case scenario for a malfunction resulting in loss of lift is a controlled crash. There are a lot of flight regimes in which you're basically just 100% screwed in a helicopter because you simply don't have enough velocity or altitude to make any real recovery.
Planes have a lot more options because they are much simpler machines, and most are pretty decent gliders. A small private plane that loses power at altitude can get a pretty good distance before he hits the ground. That allows for the pilot to have some time to consider the situation, attempt to recover the aircraft, or pick a good spot to land/crash.
Helicopters also tend to operate near the ground a lot more often than planes. | [
"Of the accidents and incidents included in this list, six were caused by engine failure, while six flight-into-terrain accidents were recorded, with two additional hard landings resulting in serious damage to the aircraft. Seven more of the accidents and incidents were a result of problems in the helicopters' driv... |
what are options and derivatives? and what are some of the more complex securities being traded? | A derivative is a contract you can buy and sell. For example, "whoever holds this piece of paper can buy 100 shares of IBM from me for $50 per share." Now, if IBM is worth a lot more than $50 a share, that piece of paper is valuable and you can sell it -- someone will pay good money for it, and its value fluctuates as IBM's (present and future) value fluctuate.
An option is a specific kind of derivative -- one which says you have the right to buy (or sell) a certain thing at a certain price if you want, often with a certain time constraint. The above example is an option.
There are also more complex derivatives, such as "I agree to deliver you any combination of apples and oranges totaling 100,000 kg, at a time of my choosing in November 2016, for a price equal to the then-current price of 1000 barrels of Brent crude oil, but only if the USA has exited Iraq by that time." | [
"This article covers those who deal in securities and futures in US markets. Securities include equities (stocks), bonds (US Government, corporate and municipal), and options thereon. Derivatives include futures and options thereon as well as swaps. The distinction in the US relates to having two regulators. Market... |
Is it theoretically possible to replace all my bones (or most of the) for something made from a stronger material, like carbon fiber | Start by reading [this](_URL_0_) to learn about the functions of bone, which go beyond the structural. | [
"Bone generally has the ability to regenerate completely but requires a very small fracture space or some sort of scaffold to do so. Bone grafts may be autologous (bone harvested from the patient’s own body, often from the iliac crest), allograft (cadaveric bone usually obtained from a bone bank), or synthetic (oft... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.