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What is definitely known about the subconscious/unconscious? | So first, both subconscious and unconscious, like nearly every other word used in psychology, are just handy descriptors with arbitrary and changeable definitions, they aren't like "gravity" or something where there's some kind of measurable physical constant. Depending upon which definition you happen to be using you could be talking about complete fictions or very well established facts.
"Subconscious" is a word much more closely associated with the psychodynamic theories of Frued and Jung and is not in wide use in modern psychological research.
"Unconscious" however, is commonly used as a blanket term meaning "subject did not report awareness, but there was some measurable effect of our manipulation." There are many ways to get that effect. Sub-threshold stimuli (very quiet sounds, faint lights, short duration (ms) images/words etc). can often have an impact on behavior at the group level, even if no individual reports awareness of the stimuli. These effects tend to be small things, such as slightly faster or slower reaction times due to [priming](_URL_0_.
As for brain regions, the sort of facetious, but also basically correct answer is that all brain regions are unconscious processors. Every region of the brain does some processing, but we don't know what it is through introspection: we are unconscious of it. Early visual regions are pretty well understood and do things like edge/corner/movement detection and processing, but we don't experience that processing consciously, it's below the threshold of data our conscious minds work with. It's actually much harder to find regions that correlate well with conscious processing since these tend to involve large brain networks, and not small localized processors. | [
"Charles Rycroft explains that the subconscious is a term \"never used in psychoanalytic writings\". Peter Gay says that the use of the term subconscious where unconscious is meant is \"a common and telling mistake\"; indeed, \"when [the term] is employed to say something 'Freudian', it is proof that the writer has... |
how does science disprove religion? | It doesn't. Science and religion address and cover completely different things. Religious people, who say otherwise, are stupid and atheists, who say otherwise, are stupid. | [
"In a dissertation on faith and doubt, Raman says one of the reasons for the incompatibility of science and religion is that in science \"one believes what one sees, whereas in religion one sees what one believes in\". Science relies on data for its belief and religion on intuition. Faith is a necessary component i... |
If I could physically manipulate atoms, how much force would it take to smash or combine two? | Warning: Not a particle physicist.
First, for colliding hydrogen and oxygen to make water, that's not exactly what happens. When you add a certain amount of energy to hydrogen and oxygen (the activation energy), they are able to break up and recombine to form water and heat. This reaction is not a direct collision, it happens because the electrons move around and form bonds.
The thing to remember is that your original question was a collision between whole atoms (nucleus and electrons). But the collisions in the LHC are just the ionized nucleus.
The force of the collision is often measured in electron volts. It's a measure of energy and is based on how fast the particles are going when they hit.
The LHC is trying to run 14TeV collisions between two protons. Converting units, that's only 2*10^-6 joules....a very tiny amount of energy. However, because these particles are so small, the protons are travelling close to the speed of light. These speeds are able to reproduce the quark gluon plasma that existed right after the big bang. | [
"The explosive power of a fully moderated explosion is thus limited, at worst it may be equal to a chemical explosive of similar mass. Again quoting Heisenberg: \"One can never make an explosive with slow neutrons, not even with the heavy water machine, as then the neutrons only go with thermal speed, with the resu... |
What did the Romans ever do for the Ancient Israelis? | Well we do know about a rather large ramp construction up to Masada due to Flavius Josephus but that was military rather than civilian!
Caesarea was s provincial capital back in Roman Judea. According to Josephus in Antiquities of the Jews, it was rebuilt under Herod/Roman Rule and the Romans with the full works: Amphitheater, market places, temples an aqueduct for fresh water, cisterns and a breakwater to protect the harbor. This would certainly qualify as improvement through civil construction and would be something "that the Romans have done for us!".
The Romans/Roman Jews extensively built in other places too but I used Caesarea as an example as it easier to see as a Roman city. However, there are others such as Tiberias in the province of Gallilee. There is so much history at the other locations, it is more difficult to drag out what is particularly theirs. Here is a [list](_URL_0_) of currently active archeological sites.
Someone who knows the area better may comment on the roads/bridges that the Romans built (I can't think of any locations off hand) but given that the area was occupied by the Romans for a couple of centuries or so, it would seem strange if they didn't do their regular construction. | [
"The museum traces the history of the Jews and, in particular, their relationship with Rome. This goes back to the time of Judas Maccabeus who, in the mid-2nd century BCE, petitioned Rome for help in opposing the Hellenistic Kings to restore Jewish worship in Jerusalem. According to tradition the two ambassadors se... |
why does water make white t-shirts see-through? | _URL_0_
To sum up the article (correct me if I'm wrong), it's basically about the complexity of the material and how many surfaces there are.
Cloth is made up of lots of fibers all woven together, so there are a lot of air-cloth surfaces in there. So when light hits the cloth, it gets bounced all about in lots of directions, and not a lot of it gets all the way through to the other side.
When the cloth gets wet, all those little fibers swell up and stick to each other, so instead of the many surfaces you had before, you now have almost a big block of one material, with only a front surface and back surface. So the light can go straight through.
It also helps that water makes clothing stick to your skin. Usually clothing hangs kind of loose, so there's a good air cushion between it and your skin. So the color of your skin doesn't really get through. But when the clothes are wet, they cling right on to your skin, allowing it to show. | [
"Grey water (also written; greywater, gray water, or graywater) is water used with appliances that do not involve or encounter human waste. It gets its name relative to black water which is heavily contaminated with human waste. Different resources suggest what equipment produce grey or black water. However, it is ... |
What is the largest non-self-propelling object that we can shoot into Low Earth Orbit? | You actually can't get anything into the orbit of earth without a small rocket. Not because of a not powerful gun, we could get to orbital velocity just fine. However, the apoapsis would still be in the atmosphere where the cannon was fired, so you would have to do a small burn at periapsis to raise the apoapsis and circulise your orbit. | [
"The orbit would be around 150km in altitude. Energetically, this would require a launch vehicle powerful enough to be capable of putting the weapon 'into orbit'. However the orbit was only a fraction of a full orbit, not sustained, and so there would be much less need to control a precise orbit, or to maintain it ... |
was black and white as a film medium necessary before the evolution of colour? | There are a couple reasons we couldn't really have jumped straight to color film.
One is that early photographic film was sensitive only to blue-green, blue, violet, and ultraviolet - so we had no way of recording red light. We could never make full-color pictures without a dye sensitive to red light.
Another reason is that color photography is really complicated. Before there were one-part color films, you had to take three different photographs, with a different filter and light detector each time, and combine them later on. There were cameras that did this automatically, but fundamentally you still had three copies of each picture that you had to manually combine later on.
Kodachrome, which was the first modern color film, combining all these colors into a single piece of film, required a lot of chemical development. It took a long time for people to figure out how to stack the film. You had to make sure each layer was exposed to its proper type of light, and that it didn't react with the other layers - and then you also had to figure out how to *develop* the film properly!
The final version of Kodachrome film had six layers: from top to bottom, blue-sensitive (with yellow dye coupler); yellow filter; blue-green sensitive (with magenta dye coupler); blue-red sensitive (with cyan dye coupler); acetate base; antihalation (light-absorbing) backing. And I won't list the processing steps because there were *17* of them. And this is the *final*, refined version - the original process was even more complicated.
e: The reason the light-sensitive/dye coupler thing is opposite colors is this: the way color film works is by first creating three black-and-white images and then converting each of those images into dye. The basic way black-and-white film works is that when the silver halide on the film is exposed to light, it is converted into metallic silver, and the amount converted depends on the amount of light it receives. The dye couplers, in the conversion process, use this metallic silver to convert into colored dye - so that particular image, instead of being black-and-white, becomes shades of (e.g.) red. The key thing to remember when we make the original exposure, we're creating a **negative**.
That should make it clear why the filters are the way they are. Let's look at the top layer: blue-sensitive, with yellow dye coupler. Because the top layer is blue-sensitive, it reacts only with blue light, turning black/creating metallic silver where there's a lot of blue. Because blue and yellow light are opposites, we want our *negative* to be **yellow** everywhere where the image is actually *blue*. So the yellow coupler combines with the metallic silver to make yellow dye where the film detected blue light. That's why we combine opposite light sensitivity in the film with dye colors in the coupler - because we're making a negative image, not a positive image.
Then when we actually *print* our image, we make *another* exposure *through* the negative - and because, as I said before, the film *darkens* in response to more light, we're back to the real colors we wanted: the negative is very dark where there was a lot of light; so when we project through it onto the print, the print will receive very little light; so the print will stay light, just like the original scene.
Tl;dr: ***Film is really complicated, and color film is even more complicated***
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"Monochrome (black and white) photography was first exemplified by the daguerreotype in 1839 and later improved by other methods including: calotype, ambrotype, tintype, albumen print and gelatin silver print. The majority of photography remained monochrome until the mid-20th century, although experiments were prod... |
What was the strength of the post-WWI German Monarchists movement and is there any meaningful support for it still? | I'm not going to delete this question since it does seem to be predominantly historical, but it is a borderline case. The last half of this question *does* violate our pre-1993 rule.
For commenters: Please only make analysis on historical German Monarchism. While you can quickly answer the second part of the question, do not let the topic drift into the tendencies of the German Monarchists as they exist today. Instances of that will be seen as topic drift and deleted by the moderators, as per our latest [META] post. | [
"Germany's defeat in World War I in 1918 led to the German Revolution. The Hohenzollerns were overthrown and the Weimar Republic was established, thus bringing an end to the German monarchy. Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia is the current head of the royal Prussian line, while Karl Friedrich, Prince of Hohenzolle... |
Is blue cheese mould benign because it's in very small quantities, or because it's a different kind of mould? Can you get ill from eating too much? | It's a non-pathogenic mold so knock yourself out. | [
"The mould \"Penicillium roqueforti\" contributes the blue coloration and much of the flavour in blue cheeses such as Roquefort and Stilton. Mould fungi are processed to produce vegetarian meat substitutes such as Quorn.\n",
"The rind is normally natural, clean and a yellowy straw colour. It may be oiled with oli... |
what is needed to get matter to being a bose-einstein condensate, the least known about state of matter? | You want bosons in a system(usually weakly or noninteracting- typically using a dilute gas) at a low enough temperature.
At it's core, a BEC is a bunch of bosons sitting in the same ground state. You want bosons as opposed to fermions because Pauli exclusion won't allow fermions to all chill in the same ground state.
> the least known about state of matter?
I'm not sure I'd classify it as the least known about state of matter. There are many many new states of matter these days, that we know very little about. BECs aren't completely solved, but we do know quite a lot about them and how to make them.
Especially the simpler cases- you can derive the critical temperature for the simplest case of a noninteracting boson gas with pretty standard quantum stat mech
edit:
As someone pointed out below, i assumed you had some background (or were willing to let some things be swept under the rug for the sake of simplicity) based on the way you worded your question. If you'd like BECs explained in much greater detail from scratch, I'd recommend these previous posts:
_URL_0_
_URL_1_
They do go into *much* more detail (that i swept under the rug), but it's a lot to take in if you have no background. | [
"Compared to more commonly encountered states of matter, Bose–Einstein condensates are extremely fragile. The slightest interaction with the external environment can be enough to warm them past the condensation threshold, eliminating their interesting properties and forming a normal gas.\n",
"In 1995, a gas of ru... |
Why is the elementary charge not redefined to be one-third of its current value to avoid the fractional charges of the quarks? | > Why is the elementary charge its current value instead of one-third, so that the charge of any fundamental particle is truly elementary? Is it a matter of historical convention, so that -e is the charge of the electron?
We discovered protons and electrons a long time before we discovered quarks and their fractional electric charges. It would be a lot of effort to redefine the fundamental charge, and we wouldn't really gain anything by doing it.
Working in units of proton and electron charges is convenient for most disciplines of physics and chemistry, which don't really care about individual quarks.
And it's not that hard for QCD physicists to just carry around factors of 1/3 and 2/3 in their calculations.
> Is my understanding of color confinement correct? Is it truly never, ever possible to isolate a quark to obtain a free particle with a fractional charge?
It's never possible to have a truly "free" quark. You can have confined hadrons. At very high temperatures, you can have quark-gluon plasmas. But you can never have a single quark in isolation.
> If it is impossible to isolate a quark, are they actually fundamental? (This might be a silly question!)
I'm not sure I see how those things relate. As far as we know, quarks *are* elementary particles. | [
"In particle physics, the X-charge (or simply X) is a conserved quantum number associated with the SO(10) grand unification theory. It is thought to be conserved in strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational and Higgs interactions. Because the X-charge is related to the weak hypercharge, it varies depending on... |
How would one enroll in a Medieval University, and how did they pay for it? | I'm only familiar with the ~11/12th century universitas and its creation, so I can't answer for later schools. Enrollment, prices, and payments depended on what school you went to. “School” meant one charismatic master surrounded by students in a university town. Many of these students were foreign, so to protect themselves, they often banded together in “nations” (because these student groups were based on country of origin) to enforce their demands on the city. These nations banded together to form a “universe” (universitas), a corporation of masters and students that was a legal entity apart from the state/church. In student-run universities like the University of Bologna, the students fixed curriculum and textbook/lodging prices and hired the masters themselves. In master-run universities like the University of Paris, students had less power, but the situation wasn’t totally unreasonable (especially because if you’re a master, you don’t want to scare your students off to another guy—competition between masters was vicious).
Enrollment would have been one-on-one, with one prospect or his parents approaching a master (often through letters) and asking to join the school. The master would admit the student if he decided he was competent and could pay for his education. The price of tuition could change, usually depending on how popular the master was; lots of student letters begging for money from back home complain about how their master has become too popular and tuition has been raised. The tuition would generally be paid as a lump sum by the parents. It should be noted that the main cost for a medieval student would be lodging and books, with daily living expenses and luxuries piling on top of that. One of my favorite letters from a medieval student to his father:
“…This is to inform you that I am studying at Oxford with the greatest diligence, but the matter of money stands greatly in the way of my promotion, as it is now two months since I spent the last of what you sent me. The city is expensive and makes many demands; I have to rent lodgings, buy necessaries, and provide for many other things which I cannot now specify. Wherefore I respectfully beg your paternity that by the promptings of divine piety you may assist me, so that I may be able to complete what I have well begun. For you must know that without Ceres and Bacchus, Apollo grows cold.”
I laugh every time I read “… many other things which I cannot now specify,” especially considering the inclusion of Bacchus in the last line. (University students in the medieval era were just like university students today, love of partying included.) Not to mention the expenses that came with graduation. In another medieval letter, a student complains to his father than the only thing standing between him and graduation is the huge cost of the inception banquet.
But prices were also flexible and subject to student demands, such as the School of Bologna’s students fixing prices for lodging and textbooks. The fact that a) these schools were decentralized and b) there was high competition among masters meant that the students did have an influential voice. If a master demanded an insanely high price for an education from him, the students could easily go "lol k" and abandon him for a more reasonable master.
As for loans, I am unaware of any institutional form of student loans or incremental pay system (though that’s not to say that they didn’t exist, I have just never heard of them). However, borrowing money and textbooks from acquaintances for school was very common, as was not being able to pay back the loan. Generally the lender would appeal to the debtor’s bishop in seeking repayment, or municipal authorities would confiscate property from the debtor if he did not pay his loan back. Actually, the popularity of universities mixed with the cost led to generations of overeducated, underemployed, and debt-loaded graduates with few job prospects who became the cynical and satirical goliards, who are really fun to read about if you ever have the time.
sources:
The Life of Medieval Students as Illustrated by their Letters (Charles Haskins)
The Medieval Universities (Nathan Schachter)
edit: Thank you for the gold. I should mention that this is a really generalized answer. If you'd like better, more in-depth information and sources, definitely read the threads linked by /u/Whoosier and /u/Searocksandtrees below.
edit 2: Information about the goliards [here](_URL_0_).
| [
"The medieval universities formed as guilds of masters (teachers) and/or students on the model established by the crafts guilds. Once the scholars were able to receive a charter, they would begin negotiations with municipal authorities to secure fair rents for lecture halls and other concessions. Because they had n... |
how does a space telescope judge distance? | Parallax is the most common type for near-ish objects.
Put something in front of you. Look at it with only one eye open, then the other. You notice how you can use those two slightly different images to judge the distance? That's ***basically*** how we do it for nearby objects too. We can look at a star from one point of earth orbit, then look at it again when the earth has moved.
There are tons of different ways to measure cosmic distances however: _URL_0_
Redshifting is easily one of the coolest though.
| [
"BULLET::::- NASA astronomers report that the Hubble Space Telescope can now precisely measure distances up to 10,000 light-years away by using spatial scanning, a ten-fold improvement over earlier measurements. ()\n",
"The parallax method is the fundamental calibration step for distance determination in astrophy... |
How can photons move in waves if they have a constant speed? | Photons don't move in waves. Photons **are** waves. Well, kind of.
Photons act *like* particles in some circumstances. They act *like* waves in other circumstances. The truth is that they're quantum objects that have some properties that are analogous to those of particles, and some properties that are analogous to those of waves. But they are not actually particles *or* waves. They are a different type of thing entirely.
We just don't have any macro-scale objects that exhibit this behavior, so we're forced to conceptualize photons in terms of things that we actually understand, and we end up using "particle" and "wave" analogies because they best fit the behavior that we observe.
So when we talk about the wave properties of photons, we're not talking about particle-like photons moving in waves. We're talking about situations where photons act as if they were waves instead of as if they were particles. | [
"Individually, each of these waves travels at the speed of light in vacuum, \"not\" at the (slower) speed of light in glass. Yet when the waves are added up, they surprisingly create \"only\" a wave that travels at the slower speed.\n",
"Signal velocity is usually equal to group velocity (the speed of a short \"p... |
If the U.S. Constitution framers were so concerned about federal government asserting to much power and the executive (Presidential) branch becoming a Monarch, how come they didn't establish term limits on the Executive branch? | The issue came up multiple times in the Constitutional Convention, as well as the Ratification debates.
1. They believed voting was enough to counter any bad side-effects of no term limits. People would only vote for Presidents if they didn't think they were a tyrant. If they *did* do something tyrant-like, they could be impeached to be immediately removed from office, if entirely necessary.
2. They didn't feel like the President should be forced to rejoin the general population. Benjamin Franklin believed that the President was merely a servant to the people, and so being forced out of the Presidency after a certain amount of time would be a *promotion* rather than a demotion.
3. Hamilton didn't think it was wise to have a ton of ex-Presidents running around, complaining about the current administration and wistfully remembering about their previous office.
Sources:
Catherine Drinker Bowen, *Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention May to September 1787* (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1966).
The Federalist 39 & 69 | [
"The balance of federal powers and those powers held by the states as defined in the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution was first addressed in the case of \"McCulloch v. Maryland\" (1819). The Court's decision by Chief Justice John Marshall asserted that the laws adopted by the federal government, when exerc... |
What caused the Turkic migrations? In the 7th century, they seemingly were mostly confined to the steppes. By the 11th century, Turkic states, mercenaries and slave-soldiers were everywhere throughout the Middle East and dominated the political scene. What happened? | Phew, good question. Bear with me as I try to help you understand this situation. (part 1)
**Turkic Confederations**
Luckily for us, Persian chroniclers tell us that in the 10th century, the lands of modern-day Northern Kazakhstan are shared by a Nomadic Steppe people known as the Kirghiz and the Kazakhs. A bit West of them they tell us that these regions are inhabited by the Cumans, some may know them as the Kipchaks, the Russians called them the Polovsy – this group will eventually migrate West to the lands of modern-day Southern Ukraine and Southern Russia. In Southern modern-day Kazakhstan as well as modern-day Kyrgyzstan, a loose confederation of Turkic tribes roamed. Just like the Cumans, different people had different names for this group; the Byzantines had a name for them, the Persians called them the Ghuzz, I’ve heard of them commonly referred as the Oghuz Turks.
These tribes were pretty much constantly fighting with each other, whether it was for territory, survival, you name it. With lots of fighting came lots of practice so they were often used as mercenaries or even brought in as slave soldiers by the sedentary people that bordered them. All of this fighting is one of the reasons many historians believe that the Cumans decided to head West, perhaps they would have better luck in that direction. We know of this movement because of Byzantine and Rus chronicles, in the 11th century they began mentioning the Cumans. And this type of movement wasn’t unorthodox for these people, a man named Dukak Temur Yalig (literally meaning *of the Iron Bow*) who was the chieftain of the Kinik tribe (part of the Oghuz confederation), lead his tribe closer to the Western side of the Aral Sea. If his “surname” is of any hint, these people were fierce warriors and excellent hunter, and they had a lot of practice shooting their bow and that made them specialists of their weapon. Dukak is very important in this story because he is the father to a certain legendary man named Seljuk. This certain Seljuk will lead his tribe to the Syr Darya river sometime before the Cuman migration West (so potentially in the late 10th century) and began moving south to modern-day Uzbekistan, and they were now inhabiting the borders of Transoxiana.
Transoxiana was in this period under the control of the Iranian dynasty known as the Samanids. This government had experience dealing with Turkic tribes and used a tactic which seems to be a preventative campaign against the Nomads. Their thought process was probably along the lines of bringing the fight to the troublesome tribal people rather than waiting for them to be attacked or raided. Another tactic the Samanids will try is conversion; they viewed these tribal people as Shamanistic and barbarous, and they thought that if they could bring Islam to them then they could educate them and “pacify” them. This is not an uncommon tactic for this period, for instance the Byzantines will use a similar tactic on the Bulgarians by introducing Christianity to them.
The Samanid Dynasty was suffering for multiple reasons in the latter 10th century. North East of them lied another Turkic confederation comprised of the Karluks, Yagmas, Chigils and other Turkic peoples – the Kara-Khanid Khanate. This group of people started to gain the upper hand on the Samanids, especially since they had some internal problems as well, and with their enemy approaching they thought of a brilliant plan. You see, the Kara-Khanids were already Muslim, so the Samanids thought of them as less barbarous then Seljuk and his crew, so the Samanids thought they could use the Turkic tribe that recently showed up on their borders to fight the Kara-Khanids.
Unfortunately for our Iranian friends, as their empire continued to weaken internally their enemies smelled blood. The Kara-Khanids will move in with the intent of conquest and in 962, one of their Turkic slave soldiers no less, who was employed as a commander in their military took his chance and seized control of Ghazna – a city in Central Afghanistan. The descendants of this commander will go on to create the Ghaznavid Empire.
**Seljuk Beg**
I’ve already mentioned that Seljuk lead his tribesmen to the borders of Transoxiana but I want to talk about his background for just a bit so that you can understand his past. First of all, a lot of this is legend and we have few sources that can verify all of this information, but it’s a cool story nonetheless.
As I stated earlier, Seljuk is the son of Dukak and there are arguments on whether Dukak was already Muslim or whether they belonged to the Nestorian Christian faith in the East. The reason we can narrow it down to these two faiths aside from geographical location is the names of Seljuk’s sons. Their names are Biblical – Michael, Israel, Moses and Jonah; however, with that said, they could have easily been Mikail, Israil, Musa and Yunus. This is something I admittedly shouldn’t do, but I prefer the Nestorian Christian claim and I will explain in just a second, but first: Seljuk’s military career.
Before the migration Southwards, it is said that Seljuk personally served in the Khazar army. This is very important because he would have learned some interesting military tactics. So, he wasn’t just a raider, he had the benefit of military experience and he could lead his troops in this fashion.
Back to the theology bit because I believe it is important to mention that according to Seljuk legend, after leading his tribe to the borders of Transoxiana, Seljuk himself will convert to Islam. This really adds to the legitimacy of House Seljuk as he lead the tribes to the land of opportunity and converted to the religion which his descendants would follow because once the Seljuks adopt Islam, they consider themselves as Muslim warriors rather than Turkic warriors – and remember the Great Seljuk Empire which we will talk about here in a bit will essentially be the predecessor to the later Ottoman Empire, and again, the Ottomans consider themselves Muslims, not Turkish, though they do not forget their roots.
Our protagonist here had the title “Beg” which in Turkic language translates to Lord. Maybe his tribesmen called him Lord and it was exalted in Seljuk legend as well; however, this is a bit of a stretch he would have been considered a Warlord through and through. Regardless, it is an important distinction to make because he will never be Emperor, his grandsons are the ‘creators’ of the Great Seljuk Empire.
Seljuk’s son Michael will die in one of their battles and he will raise his sons Toghril and Chagri as his own. | [
"In the 11th and 12th centuries, constant incursions by nomadic Turkic tribes, such as the Pechenegs and the Cuman-Kipchaks, caused a massive migration of Slavic populations to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north and temporarily halted the expansion of the Rus' state to the south and east. Like many ot... |
how does an iv drip work? how does the body accept and process that fluid? | It's a windy day outside. You're holding a glass of water and turn it over. The water spills out. Does it fall straight down? No - it falls at angle in the direction the wind is blowing.
This is similar to the fluid entering your blood. When the needle enters the vessel, the fast moving blood "pulls" the fluid out of the needle and into the bloodstream in the direction of blood flow. The IV bag being elevated relative to the needle helps this along. This can be further explained with some basic fluid mechanics (engineering principles). I can elaborate if you'd like.
Blood is made largely of water and other chemicals (along with the blood cells). IV fluid, whatever it may be, is mostly water, so the body processes this normally - hydrating tissues until it reaches your kidneys where excess water is filtered out and turned into urine. This is why you'll have to urinate frequently while on an IV drip even if you're not drinking anything.
The chemicals in the IV drip are absorbed through various tissues and also eventually filtered out through the kidneys and sometimes liver, turning into urine or solid waste. | [
"A standard IV infusion set consists of a pre-filled, sterile container (glass bottle, plastic bottle or plastic bag) of fluids with an attachment that allows the fluid to flow one drop at a time, making it easy to see the flow rate (and also reducing air bubbles); a long sterile tube with a clamp to regulate or st... |
How did KGB spies work there way through the U.S.? Did the Red Scare actually help in their capture? | First off, are you familiar with the declassification of VENONA?
During that period, the Soviet relied on one-time pads to send ciphers. Given that WW2 demanded many more ciphers for military ops, the Soviets ended up having to recycle some pads. Once you start recycling crypto, it becomes crackable. By 1944, the early NSA and GCHQ were able to read about 50 percent of the Soviets' ciphers. When WW2 ended, so did the demand for ciphers, and the Soviets stopped recycling their crypto.
The thing is, the NSA and GCHQ captured so much data, they didn't finish decoding, translating and analyzing it until 1980. Also, most deep cover operations are long term projects with similar tradecraft, so those 3-4 years during WW2 ended up explaining quite a lot more than you'd expect.
The other thing though was that VENONA wasn't declassified until 1995, and it took several years after that for historians to really digest it. The fact of the matter was, that VENONA identified 300+ spies the Soviets were running in the West, and presumably many of those ran witting and un-witting subsources. Many supposed victims of the Red Scare ended up having more guilt that pop history really expected.
Ethel Rosenberg was once a poster-child for the supposed Red Scare witch-hunt. A mother with two young children, truly only a barbaric nation could execute her on guilt by association! There were massive protests to spare her. If you ever saw "The Atomic Cafe," they played a contemporary clip of a sympathetic witness to her execution. Well according to VENONA, it turns out she was guilty after all. Granted, their overall charges were trumped up, but they were indeed both Soviet spies.
Alger Hiss was another case worth mentioning. A fairly high profile figure with many powerful friends, he went all the way to his deathbed fighting allegations of Soviet spying. Quite a few in the media were conned by it. However, VENONA records point out an "ALES" who very much followed his pattern of life and access.
Another good example is the Cambridge Five, though admittedly the British side of the Cold War is outside my wheelhouse. Again, very prominent men with powerful friends spent their lives conning the media into believing they were victims. Again, VENONA pretty much sealed it that they were Soviet agents.
Though the other thing to keep in mind was the VENONA remained a very compartmentalized program. Originally an Army program, they actually hid it from President Truman because they didn't trust politicians, and even kept it from the CIA until 1952. Eisenhower was a general, so it became safe to trust the White House with SIGINT once he came to office. In fact, it's unclear where exactly McCarthy was getting his intel from, and I'm skeptical a mid-level politician would be trusted with VENONA.
VENONA also proved that the threat actually was out there. McCarthy fragged a lot of innocent people, but VENONA ended up proving that he was right at least some of the time too. | [
"During the Cold War, the KGB (and allied services, including the East German Stasi under Markus Wolf, and the Cuban Intelligence Directorate [formerly known as Dirección General de Inteligencia or DGI]) frequently sought to entrap CIA officers. The KGB believed that Americans were sex-obsessed materialists, and th... |
why can my phone not connect to two different bluetooth devices? | It should, devices have been able to connect through multiple Bluetooth channels since like 2.1. My smart watch is always connected via bluetooth, and then I can pair my earbuds with no issue.
If you're specifically talking about like, bluetooth speakers, then the device has to support it (The speakers, not your phone). Most don't. | [
"Because the Bluetooth system hops over 79 channels, the probability of interfering with another Bluetooth system is less than 1.5%. This allows several Bluetooth piconets to operate in the same area at the same time with minimal interference.\n",
"Bluetooth exists in numerous products such as telephones, speaker... |
what would happen to the economy if the entire world decided diamonds, gold, silver, etc were worthless? | Well they all have uses in everyday products, so their value would be re-evaluated. As for any country with a gold standard, their economy would most likely crash. | [
"Imbalances in international trade were theoretically rectified automatically by the gold standard. A country with a deficit would have depleted gold reserves and would thus have to reduce its money supply. The resulting fall in demand would reduce imports and the lowering of prices would boost exports; thus the de... |
overthrow of hawaii monarchy | Sugar cane farming was the major export from Hawaii. White American plantation owners moved over in mass in the mid-1800's.
Along with the plantation owners came American missionaries. The powerful influence of religion and profit doomed the Hawaiian Monarchy in the long term.
There were a lot of arguments and a few rebellions over taxes and democracy, that eventually culminated in a coup d'état. This was orchestrated by the U.S. government and the white land owners.
The U.S. government wanted Hawaii to extend its influence in the Pacific region and the land owners wanted more control over Hawaii’s trade and government.
| [
"Following the proroguing of the legislature and the unsuccessful attempts of the queen to promulgate a new constitution, the monarchy was overthrow on January 17, 1893. After a brief transition under the Provisional Government, the oligarchical Republic of Hawaii was established on July 4, 1894. During this period... |
Why did the Fukushima nuclear plant switch to using fresh water after the accident? | Salt is corrosive. As water boils in the core, the salt concentrates, and you get deposits that impinge heat transfer. With enough salt you can eventually have molten salt which is harder to manage. If you had any intact fuel, the salt and sediment from raw water will plug the fuel inlet debris strainers, preventing adequate cooling (this can be bypassed by raising water level above the steam separator skirt, but was not in the emergency operating procedures at the time).
Fresh water is the best option. | [
"A year after the accident it was announced that even the water of the Chernobyl plant's cooling pond was within acceptable norms. Despite this, two months after the disaster the Kiev water supply was switched from the Dnieper to the Desna River. Meanwhile, massive silt traps were constructed, along with an enormou... |
Why was a revolver type mechanism never adopted for military rifles? | There were military issued revolving cylinder mechanisms on rifles.
_URL_0_
There's one example used in the Civil War- over 4 thousand were purchased for the Civil War, and it was used at some level by both sides.
The issue was basically cost and reliability. The carbine had a reputation for discharging *all* it's rounds at the same time, and when it didn't, it still took a long time to reload. Furthermore there were concerns that the increased rate of fire simply meant soldiers wasted more ammunition.
| [
"Most modern revolvers are \"traditional double-action\", which means they may operate either in single-action or self-cocking mode. The accepted meaning of \"double-action\" has, confusingly, come to be the same as \"self-cocking\", so modern revolvers that cannot be pre-cocked are called \"double-action-only\". T... |
the manti te'o situation. | Manti Te'o is a very good American college football player for the University of Notre Dame. He plays linebacker, a defensive position, and plays it so well that he was voted second place for the very important Heisman Trophy, a prize that defensive players almost never win.
In September, Manti told a bunch of people in the news that his grandma and his girlfriend went to heaven on the same day. A few days later he played a very good game and told the news "they were with me." This story got him lots of attention over the next couple of months as he continued to play very well and his team went to the college football championship game. People liked the story. It made them feel good.
A web site called Deadspin did not believe this story and talked to some people who knew a secret: Although Manti's grandma did go to heaven in September, his girlfriend was an imaginary girlfriend. He said she went to a school where there was no record of her. The pictures of her were of a friend of one of his friends. She was made up by a boy who was friends with Manti, and he tricked people into believing she was real.
Some people think that Manti knew. Other people think that he was tricked. Notre Dame, Manti's school, wants to know what happened. If Manti did know, there are several reasons he may have pretended. The nice story got him attention. It may have got him more votes for the Heisman Trophy. It may have got him picked sooner in the NFL Draft later this year, giving him more money. But if he did lie, now that people know about it they will not like him as much. | [
"The Mensalão scandal () took place in Brazil in 2005 and threatened to bring down the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. \"Mensalão\" is a neologism and variant of the word for \"big monthly payment\" (\"salário mensal\" or \"mensalidade\").\n",
"Brazil, which has been considered \"yet another clear sign t... |
When an embryo is developing, how do the first few cells "decide" which end will be the head and which end will be the feet? | After the blastula, the embryo undergoes gastrulation where the germ layers are formed. These 3 germ layers will become all the different body tissues, and I'd recommend reading up on [germ layers](_URL_0_). Cells that differentiate do so by signalling cues from other cells through the process of signal transduction. These cues are not fully understood, but there are chemicals involved that affect which genes are read and by how much. These chemicals are released in specific patterns that govern how and when our cells differentiate. | [
"Following this, a narrow line of cells appears on the surface on the embryo. Its growth makes the embryo undergo gastrulation, in which the three primary tissue layers of the fetus, the ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm, develop. The narrow line of cells begin to form the endoderm and mesoderm. The ectoderm begins ... |
when you buy land, what do you actually own in terms of height and depth? and who dictates this? | Well, first off it's important to note that the land may not include mineral rights. So you can purchase the land, but you may not have the rights to any valuable things in it, like oil or gold or whatever.
From a practical view, you own enough land beneath the ground level, and enough air above the ground level, for you to reasonably use and enjoy the land. So, for example, you can't prohibit a plane from flying 30,000 feet over your house -- but you may have a cause of action against someone flying a drone 100 feet over your back yard. | [
"Ownership of land can be held separately from the ownership of rights over that land, including sporting rights, mineral rights, development rights, air rights, and such other rights as may be worth segregating from simple land ownership.\n",
"The definition of land can include the buildings situated upon the la... |
Why didn't the US Civil War get as trench-y as WW1? | simple answer is -- a combination of technology, geography, and European military doctrine. Generally what you said.
At the outbreak of WWI, European commanders still engaged in battles characterized by large units of soldiers directly engaging each other. However, new advances in weaponry made these tactics impractical and costly. Massed defensive indirect fire of artillery positioned well behind the front line, combined with fire from entrenched machineguns, and infantry rifles which could produce a high volume of accurate fire, meant direct advances by large attacking units were likely to receive enormous casualties before they even reached a position to engage their enemy with return fire.
Also, the Western Front was a relatively crowded geographic area, especially towards the end of the war when literally millions of troops were concentrated on either side of the front. As you point out, there wasn't much flank and so progress generally meant having enormous numerical superiority and a willingness to sacrifice a great number of lives in actions that were generally a direct and open advance.
Aerial reconnaissance also equipped each side with greatly magnified intelligence capabilities, and so surprise maneuver to achieve a strategic advantage was much more difficult than it was during the Civil War, or the Crimean War.
Still, the Civil War was a bit of a preview of what was to come in WWI. Trench warfare on a large scale did occur in places like Petersburg and Vicksburg. Defensive fire from cover by rifled arms was shown to be an enormous tactical advantage. And the concept of 'total war', used by Grant, Sherman, Sheridan and a few others, was certainly what distinctly characterized WWI versus prior European wars. | [
"Another example of trench warfare after World Wars I and II was the Iran–Iraq War, in which both armies lacked training in combined arms operations. However, both countries often prepared entrenched defensive positions and underground tunnels to protect and supply the cities and bases throughout the regions. Anoth... |
how is it determined that a very specific chemical or food (e.g. bacon) causes cancer? | Salt cured pork belly doesn't cause cancer. Nitrite and nitrate preservatives used in bacon making causes cancer.
These interact with the red meat cells to make N-nitroso compounds, which cause cancer in bowels | [
"Starting in the 1970s, Dr. Weinstein was among the first groups of researchers to make the connection between chemical compounds that are commonly found in the environment and their cancer-causing potential by identifying carcinogens that would be able to find molecular targets in the body. Weinstein investigated ... |
What's the difference between Special Relativity and the Lorentz transformations? | The Lorentz transformations are an integral part of SR. They are how you transform between different inertial reference frames. | [
"In relativistic physics, Lorentz symmetry, named after Hendrik Lorentz, is an equivalence of observation or observational symmetry due to special relativity implying that the laws of physics stay the same for all observers that are moving with respect to one another within an inertial frame. It has also been descr... |
the situation at standing rock | As far as my understanding, it's being built on land that's been procured by the army corp of engineers, so technically private. The Sioux of that area say the land was taken from them in violation of a treaty, some years ago. Their main concern is that it will go under the Missouri River, a vital life source to the tribe, and region. It's being built by Energy Transfer Partners. I believe St worth being upset about, if for no other reason, than the last thing the world needs right now is more oil production. At a time when we should all be divesting, and supporting alternative, eco friendly power solutions.
The pipeline's advocates argue that it would be a safer and more efficient way to transport the crude than the current train-bound method.
_URL_0_ | [
"Rockfall, caused by ice jacking during freeze-thaw cycles in the Rocky Mountains, is cited as a \"chronic hazard\" at over 750 locations by the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT). On May 24, 2019, a rockfall from a mountain ledge occurred at milepost 22 of SH 145 near Dolores, completely covering and clo... |
re-financing my mortgage | Okay, he means no money out of pocket. All those closing costs would get rolled into your loan, slightly driving up the principal(what you owe).
What you want to do is get the breakdown of what it will really cost,and calculate your break even point (the point where your savings on your payments offsets the extra closing costs. If you plan to be in the house long enough to break even, it may be worth doing. If you are only there a couple more years, it penalty would end up costing you in the long run.
Also, make sure you are comparing apples to apples. If one mortgage is a 30 year fixed, and the other is not fixed, has a direct term, or some other change, you have to think that over, too.
Finally, if you got an FHA or similar loan, you may currently have mortgage insurance. If your home value has increased enough, you may also be able to get rid of mortgage insurance, by refinancing to a conventional loan.
If your mortgage broker can't explain this all in language you understand, you need a better broker, or at least a good book on finance. Go shopping before you act. Don't take long - rates are pretty low right now and can change in a dime. You might be able to lock in this rate of you ask, but is use a week or two making sure you understand the terms and that they are favorable to you.
I highly recommend Personal Finance for Dummies. I gave it to my daughter for her 18th birthday, and is got a lot of clear information. | [
"BULLET::::- Even though the mortgage is 30 years, the borrower could theoretically pay off the loan earlier than 30 years, and will usually do so when rates have gone down, forcing the investor to have to reinvest his money at lower interest rates, something he may have not planned for. This is known as \"prepayme... |
How far above the earth does gravity lose its pull? | In a Newtonian picture, if we had *just* the Earth, the gravitational influence of a body extends infinitely out and just falls off as things get further away.
Incorporating the sun and other solar system bodies, we can ask when the Sun's influence begins to dominate Earth's influence. Specifically, we can look for Earth's [Hill sphere](_URL_0_). As noted in that article, Earth's dominance in this sense extends out to around 1.5 million kilometers. Beyond that, the Sun takes over and things are really orbiting the Sun with Earth just contributing as an increasingly minor perturbation. | [
"The gravity of Earth is the acceleration that is imparted to objects due to the distribution of mass within the Earth. Near the Earth's surface, gravitational acceleration is approximately . Local differences in topography, geology, and deeper tectonic structure cause local and broad, regional differences in the E... |
Historically, are USSR and Soviet Union synonymous? | I believe your teacher is incorrect. Russia is not the same as the USSR as Russia is one republic in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Perhaps that is what your teacher meant. Unless there's some obscure nuance I'm unaware of the USSR and the Soviet Union are the same thing. | [
"The Soviet Union (or more formally USSR – the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) was established in 1922 as a federation of nationalities, which eventually came to encompass 15 major national territories, each organized as a Union-level republic (Soviet Socialist Republic or SSR). All 15 national republics, crea... |
How many of the French aristocrats who fled to England/Austria/wherever after the Revolution of eventually managed to come back to France? Did Napoleon allow any of them to return? | Yay! My dissertation is relevant!
Over the course of the decade 1789-1799, over 150,000 _émigrés_ fled France - some voluntarily when feudal privileges were abolished in August 1789, others forcibly as political refugees. About a quarter of those were clergy who refused to take the [Civil Oath](_URL_0_). About 25,000 fled to London, and destinations like Russia, Italy, and Spain were also popular where nobles could take up offices in other courts or fight in _émigré_ armies against the Republic.
There were a series of back-and-forth legislative battles over the status of _émigrés_, but the most important pieces are the November 1791 decree calling for the sequestration of _émigré_ property and the better known [Law of Suspects](_URL_10_) in 1793, which banished _émigrés_ from France in perpetuity upon penalty of death should they return. This was later enshrined in the Constitution of 1795.
When Bonaparte became Consul, he declared a partial amnesty for _émigrés_ in October 1800. This was followed in 1802 by a decree of general amnesty for almost all _émigrés_, the text of which can be read [here](_URL_2_). This came on the heels of the Concordat with the Catholic Church, which Bonaparte sought [the previous year](_URL_11_) and coincided with the creation of the Legion of Honor. The important thing to note about the 1802 amnesty law is the second title: any _émigrés_ returning to France **would not** be compensated for their lost property. This was crucial, because one of the main points of contention for both aristocrats and the clergy was the seizure of their land (the _biens nationaux_).
Some of these returning nobles became newly-anointed "aristocrats-of-merit" under the Empire. Bonaparte, according to his personal correspondence, wanted to merge the old aristocracy with his new merit-based order to legitimize his position as a ruler and stabilize the state.
When the Bourbons were restored to the French throne, _émigrés_ returned in droves and formed the bulwark of the "ultra-royalists" in the legislature. There was a huge debate in 1825 over whether or not _émigrés_ should be compensated for the property they lost during the Revolution. The Chamber voted into law a compensation - the so-called [_milliard des émigrés_](_URL_6_) - which took the form of _rentes_ of three percent (roughly 630 million francs) to nobles as compensation payable from the treasury, even though notables like Lafayette and Talleyrand made passioned arguments against it. The entire amount was never payed out (the 1830 July Revolution made sure it wasn't).
Further resources:
* Howard G. Brown, [_Ending the French Revolution: Violence, Justice, and Repression from The Terror to Napoleon_](_URL_12_) (2006).
* Kirsty Carpenter, [_Refugees of the French Revolution: The French Émigrés in London, 1789-1802_](_URL_13_)(1999).
* Kirsty Carpenter and Philip Mansel, eds., [_The French Émigrés in Europe and the Struggle Against Revolution: 1789 - 1814_](_URL_9_) (1999).
* Martin Lyons, [_Napoleon Bonaparte and the Legacy of the French Revolution_](_URL_3_) (1994).
* Louis Bergeron, [_France under Napoleon_](_URL_4_), trans. R. R. Palmer (1981).
* R. S. Alexander, [_Re-Writing the French Revolutionary Tradition: Liberal Opposition and the Fall of the Bourbon Monarchy_](_URL_8_) (2003).
* Guillaume de Bertier de Sauvigny, [_The Bourbon Restoration_](_URL_7_) (1967).
* J. A. W. Gunn, [_When the French Tried to be British: Party, Opposition, and the Quest for Civil Disagreement, 1814-1848_](_URL_1_) (2009).
* David Laven and Lucy Riall, eds., [_Napoleon's Legacy: Problems of Government in Restoration Europe_](_URL_5_) (2000). | [
"The demise of Maximilien Robespierre in 1795 provided a brief window of opportunity for French Royalists at home and abroad. For example, those who had participated in the Vendée uprising were able to communicate with their supporters in Great Britain. These rebels, in collaboration with their British allies, atte... |
How does the optic nerve know what color a particular photoreceptor in the eye is responsible for? | tl;dr - color information is relayed by ganglion cells, not photoreceptors, to the brain. Once there, we don't really know how color information is organized other than input from different kinds of ganglion cells goes to different layers of primary visual cortex (V1), but then is ultimately combined anyway in blobs in V1 (yes, they are really called blobs), in thin stripes in V2, and in V4.
--------
Photoreceptors do not send signals directly to the brain. There is a lot of processing that occurs in the retina by [other cells](_URL_7_) like bipolar, horizontal, amacrine, and ganglion (with many varieties of each), and it is these ganglion cells that ultimately send signals to the brain. Before we talk about what that signal is, we need to clarify a few things about cones.
The "red" "green" and "blue" names for cone cell types are actually misleading. It is not the case that we have cones for detecting only red or only green light. It is more appropriate to refer to them as [short, medium, and long cones](_URL_14_) indicating the preferred wavelengths to which they respond. Light at those preferred wavelengths corresponds to red, green, and blue, but actually the idea of having three receptors for those three colors comes way before we knew anything about the physiology (more on this later). The reason the color names are misleading is because the spectral sensitivity of cones is a function, not a single value -- the cones actually respond to light from a wide band of the spectrum, not just to one particular wavelength. So your "red" cone will also respond to longer wavelengths of light, just not as much as the "green" cone.
However, this broad sensitivity causes a problem. How does a single cone actually know what the wavelength of light is? The closer the wavelength of the light to the preferred wavelength, the more the cone will fire, *but* a cone will also fire more if there is just more light (i.e., light of a higher intensity), even if that light is not at the preferred wavelength. This is because the more photons that hit the cone, the more the cone will respond. Therefore, a single cone cannot discriminate between different wavelengths of light: it doesn't know if it's firing a lot because it's getting a little bit of light at a preferred wavelength or a lot of light at a non-preferred wavelength. Both kinds of stimulation can result in the same pattern of firing. This is called the problem of univariance. You can read more about it and how it is solved by having multiple cone types in [these slides](_URL_9_). You need at least two cone types, with different sensitivity functions in order to disentangle intensity and wavelength (you can think of it as having two unknown variables so you need two equations to be able to solve for them). Here's an example: suppose your "red" (short) cone is firing a little bit. Is it because there's a little bit of red light or a good amount of green light? We don't know just from this cone alone. However, if we look at a "green" (medium) cone and see that it's firing a lot, we know that it can't be because there was a little bit of red light (then it would fire very little), and must instead be because there is a good amount of green light.
So part of the function of those other cells in the retina is to combine signals from several cones in order to deal with the problem of univariance, which you have to do to be able to even know what the wavelength of incoming light is in the first place. So what are those others cells doing? How does the comparison take place? Before we get into that, a little bit of history:
There was a big debate starting in the early 1800's and continuing in to the 20th century about whether color vision was due to three color sensors (didn't know about cones yet) or due to an opponent system. The main evidence for the three color receptors was that you can get all colors from various combinations of just those three primary colors. This has often been referred to as the [Young-Helmholtz theory](_URL_2_). On the other side of the debate, the [opponent process](_URL_5_) camp pointed to the existence of color afterimages ([here is a cool, fancy version](_URL_13_)), to the fact that the afterimage to a blue image is a yellow one (if you adapt the blue receptor and the resulting percept is yellow because the green and red receptors are enhanced (additive color combination), then when you adapt to green, shouldn't the red *and* blue be enhanced leading to a purple afterimage?), and to the fact that there are certain colors that we never see together at the same time -- there is no reddish-green for example. This theory is often attributed to Ewald Hering. It says that color vision isn't based on 3 receptor types, but instead on 4 (red/green and blue/yellow) that work in an opponent fashion. The arguments from yellow afterimages were really important for this view.
Turns out that both are right. In addition to the cones that most people are familiar with, there are these subsequent cells in the retina that receive inputs from multiple kinds of cones and combine them to form color-opponent, center-surround receptive fields. As an example, one such later cell may be maximally stimulated when there is red in the middle and no green surrounding it, or when there is no red in the middle and lots of green surrounding it, or if there is blue in the middle and no yellow on the outside, etc. You can see the wiring diagrams of how the signals from the cones are combined to give these four opponent colors (red, green, blue, and yellow) [here](_URL_12_) or [here](_URL_4_). And [here](_URL_11_) is an illustration of how center-surround organization might emerge. [Here](_URL_8_) is an illustration of the center-surround organization of a red-on, green-off (or R+/G-) cell and it's responsiveness to different kinds of stimulation. [This](_URL_10_) and [this](_URL_6_) image might be helpful as well.
So the signal that is ultimately sent out is actually massively processed and comes from ganglion cells, not photoreceptors. Once we get to primary visual cortex, things get a little unclear. Different cone signals project to different layers -- L+M go to 4C & beta;, S-(L+M) (blue on) go to 2/3 and 4A, and (L+M)-S (blue off) go to 4A. Signals are then sent to cytochrome oxidase ["blobs"](_URL_0_) (which is the technical term!) in layers 2/3 and then onward to thin stripes (another technical name) in V2, and from there on to V4. (There are also signals from "inter-blobs" sent on to "inter-stripes" and then to V4). We aren't really sure about the role of V4 -- it certainly does a lot more than just color processing ([Roe et al. 2013](_URL_1_)). For example, in addition to color, cells in V4 are also orientation, depth, and motion-sensitive, suggesting some role in shape processing. We also aren't exactly sure about the functional organization of blobs in V1 (primary visual cortex). There have been some suggestions that maybe color signals are organized by hue, but evidence has been scant. See [Conway et al. 2010](_URL_3_) for a recent review. | [
"Retinal is a conjugated chromophore. In the human eye, retinal begins in an 11-\"cis\"-retinal configuration, which, upon capturing a photon of the correct wavelength, straightens out into an all-\"trans\"-retinal configuration. This configuration change pushes against an opsin protein in the retina, which trigger... |
if calories in = calories out, what difference would 3000 calories of bread compared to 3000 calories of protein have in terms of weight loss? | So long as you are getting all of the nutrients you need in the day there is no practical difference between sources of calories and it is the raw number in compared to the amount of energy you are burning that matters. | [
"A single serving of 44.0 g has 96 Calories (kilocalories), 1.0 g of fat, but no trans or saturated fat, 1.0 mg of sodium, 22.0 g of carbohydrates, 0 g of dietary fiber, 6.0 g of sugar, and 1.0 g of protein.\n",
"In 100 grams, wheat provides 327 kilocalories and is a rich source (20% or more of the Daily Value, D... |
why do i get sick from old raw chicken, even if i cook the hell out of it? | > Considering germs are supposed to die at a relatively low temperature (i.e., less that 200 degrees)
At that point, it's not the germs you have to worry about. Rather, it's the toxic chemicals that they release as part of their metabolism. Cooking doesn't help with that. | [
"People have reacted by buying less chicken, causing poultry sales and prices to fall. Many individuals have stockpiled supplies for a possible flu pandemic. International health officials and other experts have pointed out that many unknown questions still hover around the disease.\n",
"A 2012 chicken meat study... |
why are some u.s. cities, like nyc, designed in a nice grid-system while others, like boston, look like something a drunken toddler with a magic marker drew on his parents' walls? | Some cities' roads were planned in advance - SLC and Chicago are good examples. They laid out the streets in a grid BEFORE people started building roads, houses, etc.
In the case of Boston (and many old cities in New England, Europe and elsewhere) the cities were not really planned in advance. The roads at the time were often originally based on native american paths through the woods (which themselves might have been based on trails that deer and other animals used), or just random trails/roads between farms, things like that. Stuff that didn't need to support a lot of traffic and just went from point-to-point.
Once you build up a whole area like that, it turns out completely random and stupid. But after it's built up, it's too late to change. | [
"The neighborhood is also notable for its unusual street grid. The original street plan was based upon Lenape Indian paths and the boundaries of Dutch farms. In 1839, this was redrawn to better match the rest of Brooklyn, resulting in several buildings that are oddly-shaped or face the street at an angle.\n",
"Li... |
do animals in the wild fail to produce milk in the same way as humans? | Yes, some mothers fail to produce milk, especially in hard times when food is less available. And, yes, those babies generally just die. Sometimes they're abandoned before they die because mom is desperate for food herself and can't afford to keep trying to produce inadequate milk. Baby's going to die anyway, it's better for her survival to not waste resources trying to keep it alive.
Whether or not the baby will be supported by others in the group depends on the animal and how social they are. For many social animals, the answer is absolutely yes. The whole pack survives better when they share resources, and a mother taking care of someone else's baby now means that someone else will probably take care of her baby later. But that's not universal - some animals won't waste resources for offspring that isn't their own. Spending resources on milk for someone else's baby means fewer resources for your own baby, or just fewer resources for yourself and your own survival.
Then again, some animals will straight up kidnap the offspring of others in the group if their own offspring dies, because the instincts to care for a baby are so strong. It really depends on the species and even sometimes the individual, and the circumstances. | [
"Milk from other mammalian species (goat, sheep, etc.) should not be used as a substitute for cow's milk, as milk proteins from other mammals are often cross-reactive. Nevertheless, some people with cow's milk allergy can tolerate goat’s or sheep’s milk, and vice versa. Milk from camels, pigs, reindeer, horses, and... |
I have heard that people before the 20th century drank huge amounts of alcohol from an early age because water was not safe to drink otherwise. If this is true, how did teetotal groups (most obviously, Muslims) survive? | You may find [this AskHistorians thread](_URL_0_) from a few years ago has some discussion on yhe subject, at least until this one takes off. | [
"At times and places of poor public sanitation (such as Medieval Europe), the consumption of alcoholic drinks was a way of avoiding water-borne diseases such as cholera. Small beer and faux wine in particular, were used for this purpose. Although alcohol kills bacteria, its low concentration in these beverages woul... |
Do insects get thirsty? | Insects do require water for their metabolism. However, they are very small and have an exoskeleton, which means they do not lose much water through evaporation. Their water requirements are therefore rather low. Many insects obtain enough water from their diet, for example when they feed on plant leaves. Small raindrops or dewdrops also provide water. Some [desert insects](_URL_0_) are even able to accumulate water in the air on their own body. | [
"Another possible source contributing to higher levels of initial body water in insects is hemolymph volume. The insect equivalent to blood, hemolymph is the fluid found within the hemocoel, and is the largest pool of extracellular water within the insect body. In the fruit-fly \"Drosophila melanogaster\", flies se... |
Why don't astronauts use steroids to prevent muscle atrophy? | Likely because steroid use comes with its own set of drawbacks and side effects. Seeing as space travel is already quite unhealthy (i.e. radiological hazard is higher), its not a good idea to introduce even more potential problems. | [
"BULLET::::- Barbiturates and Benzodiazepines are both very strong sedatives. While they certainly would work (at least short term) in helping astronauts sleep, they have side effects that could affect the astronaut's ability to perform his/her job, especially in the \"morning.\" This side effect renders barbiturat... |
Do nonlinear differential equations truly have no analytic solutions or have we just not discovered a method of solving them? | We don't have any **general** solution, but it doesn't mean we don't know how to solve some of them. | [
"Many differential equations cannot be solved using symbolic computation (\"analysis\"). For practical purposes, however – such as in engineering – a numeric approximation to the solution is often sufficient. The algorithms studied here can be used to compute such an approximation. An alternative method is to use t... |
why do high schools and colleges press so hard on learning a second language? | Partly because it is a unique opportunity.
It is very hard to learn a second language as a adult. The best time to do so is early childhood, failing at that, it takes the sort of dedicated, repeated classroom time you'll rarely find outside of an academic setting. If you ever want to learn a second language, that is the time to do it. | [
"In some countries, such as Australia, it is so common nowadays for a foreign language to be taught in schools that the subject of language education is referred to LOTE or Language Other Than English. In the majority of English-speaking education centers, French, Spanish and German are the most popular languages t... |
How did people of Rome at the time react to Paul's Epistle to the Romans? | Do you mean the church in Rome? There is no direct evidence for this. The best I suppose one could do would be to analyse 1 Clement which appears to be from an elder in Rome to the church in Corinth, and would provide some very indirect evidence on the church of Rome, but even this is dated to late 1st century/early 2nd century and I would consider reconstructing "Roman reception of Paul's letter to the Romans based on 1 Clement" to be a very speculative study. | [
"Protests against Rome began in earnest when Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk and professor at the university of Wittenberg, called in 1517 for a reopening of the debate on the sale of indulgences. The quick spread of discontent occurred to a large degree because of the printing press and the resulting swift move... |
Is it true that marijuana can cause (activate?) schizophrenia in people predisposed to it? | There is definitely correlation. Causation is up for debate.
_URL_0_
This article tends to lean towards at least partial causation. But you'll find a lot of people argue the other side.
| [
"Cannabis use is also suspected to contribute to the hyperdopaminergic state that is characteristic of schizophrenia. Compounds found in cannabis, such as THC, have been shown to increase the activity of dopamine pathways in the brain, suggesting that cannabis may exacerbate symptoms of psychosis in schizophrenics.... |
what barriers are in place to stop an up-and-coming drug company from undercutting the epi-pen monopoly? | > So why is it that nobody has made some new kind of plastic autoinjector that works as easily as an Epi-pen and packs the same dosage of Ephinepherine?
Parts of the delivery system are still under patent. You would have to be careful not to violate those patents while making your new kind of autoinjector. Then, you would have to prove to the FDA that it worked as easily as an Epi-pen--which is very expensive to prove.
> Then by charging much less than the Epi-pen costs, they could crush the monopoly and make a lot of money too.
Not necessarily. Once you have survived the patent fights and gotten it through the FDA, they can still just lower their price to be lower than your costs, and destroy you. | [
"However, other companies may not be able to enter the market due to another barrier to entry, intellectual property (IP) rights. The drug company may have a patent on the new formulation, barring competitors until the patent expires unless they can license rights from the IP owner. An example of a competitive adva... |
The destruction of the 2nd Temple is remembered as a terrible event in Jewish history and, in some ways, a part of the Jewish identity. With the establishment of the state of Israel, was there ever a movement to create a 3rd Temple? | Rebuilding the Temple has been an extremely fraught issue, accelerated considerably since Israel regained control of the Mount after the Six Day War. The Israeli PM at the time, Levi Eshkol, ceded official control of the Mount & the Al Asqa Mosque to the Muslim Waqf, where it continues to this day. While many religious Jews believe this was done as a naive gesture of peace, I personally think Eshkol didn't want the Mount to become a point of contention between religious & secular Israelis.
Modern Israel is a secular, western-style state with a parliamentary government. During epochs of the two temples, however, it was a theocracy, ruled by Halacha, or Jewish law. Building a Third Temple would certainly imply that Israel has once more become a Halachic state. Needless to say, gentiles with an interest in the region—excepting those Christians who believe that rebuilding the Temple is a biblical perquisite to the Second Coming—join in preferring Israel remain secular. In fact, politically, any attempt to build a Third Temple would first require demolition of the Al Asqa Mosque, & removal of Muslims from the site altogether. You can probably imagine how incredibly provocative that would be to already volatile ME relations. In fact, the Jordanian government controls the Waqf, & in spite of Israel's treaty with Egypt predating the one she has with Jordan, Jordan is really Israel's oldest neighboring ally. In 1973 King Hussein met secretly with Golda Meir to warn her of Egypt & Syria's impending strike against Sinai & the Golan Heights. Imagine what a blow to Israeli-Jordanian relations reduction of the Mosque would constitute.
Although many religious Jews are forbidden from entering the Mount for fear of accidentally treading where the Holy of Holies stood—accessible only by purified Kohanim priests—I don't think location is the issue as much as the need for a pure red heifer, which Numbers prescribes must be sacrificed, burned & it's ashes used to purify the site. The existence of said red heifer today is more theoretical than real, though there have been several candidates.
So, there are several, virtually insurmountable barriers, political & religious, to the rebuilding of the Temple. In the past few years, religious elements have attempted to bomb the Mosque, or drive Muslim worshipers away. Others have attempted to reinstate Jewish prayer at the Mount (instead of just the Western Wall), usually rebuffed by Israeli or Islamic authorities. On the other side, recall the 2000 Al Asqa Intifada, prompted in part by Sharon's needlessly provocative visit to the Mount.
The Mount is essentially a trigger set in a region that has all the stability of a lake made of nitroglycerine. Right now, maintaining the status quo is about the best anyone, other than extremists on either side, can hope for.
Given the growth of Israel's religious population, the time may come when sentiment for it outweighs the desire for Israel to remain a secular, western-style state. So, who knows what the future will bring? But, bottom line, whatever the focus of the majority of Israelis, building a Third Temple would doubtless plunge the region into chaos.
Incidentally, I've been told by religious friends, that because the Al Asqa Mosque was built where it was built, Jews cannot pray there anymore under any circumstances. That is simply not so. Jews are not allowed to pray in any place where idolatry was performed, but Islam is not regarded as idolatrous. Furthermore statues of Jupiter, then later, I believe, the Emperor Julian (who encouraged Jews to rebuild), where kept on the site for a time, but that didn't stop two attempts to rebuild the Temple, one in the 4th century that terminated in an earthquake, the other early in the 7th century that included animal sacrifice, only to end after Persians conquered Jerusalem & a Christian mob tore down the rudimentary temple in 615. So, occupation is not a religious problem, but mainly a political one. | [
"BULLET::::3. The Second Temple built by Ezra and Nehemiah was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, scattering the people of Judea and commencing the Jewish exile from the Holy Land that continues to this day.\n",
"The destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE marked a turning point in Jewish history. In the absence... |
if everyone wore respirators for 1 year, would every cold and flu virus go extinct? | No. Many new flu epidemics happen from inter-species transmission. New variants often appear first in chickens or other birds, then spread to pigs, and then spread to humans. | [
"As the influenza virus can persist outside of the body, it can also be transmitted by contaminated surfaces such as banknotes, doorknobs, light switches and other household items. The length of time the virus will persist on a surface varies, with the virus surviving for one to two days on hard, non-porous surface... |
if two offspring come from the same parents, how come their genes/characteristics are different from each other? | Imagine a woman drops in 100 red balls in a vase and a man dropps in 100 green balls. Now you go ahead and pull 100 balls out if that vase. Each ball symbolises a gene, one of them is dad's curly hair the other one is mom's eyes. Etc. Now do that 10 times. Each result will be easily different. And we have a whole lot more genes than 100. | [
"In heredity the genes of the parents are passed on to their offspring unchanged. That is why the organisms which carry the same genotype should be identical in every feature. However, this is not the case. Due to environmental conditions they can vary from each other up to a certain point. There are two types of m... |
if the aca is giving insurance to everyone, why do i still pay $350 per month for insurance? | "I understand that the ACA will be taking portions of everyone's paycheck to cover insurance for all, right?"
Wrong, that's not even kind of what the ACA does.
ACA requires you to buy insurance from somewhere, and sets up some extra places where people who don't have jobs or places to buy insurance can.
This will not eventually go away, unless new legislation is passed. | [
"By 2017, nearly 70% of those on the ACA marketplace exchanges could purchase insurance for less than $75/month after subsidies. The ACA was evaluated multiple times by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which scored it as a moderate deficit reducer, as it included tax hikes primarily on high income taxpayers (... |
why in american culture, is using the middle finger as in "flicking you off", considered offensive? | From [Wikipedia](_URL_0_)
> The middle finger originated in Classical antiquity, where the gesture was used as a symbol of anal intercourse in a manner meant to degrade, intimidate and threaten the individual receiving the gesture. It also represented the phallus, with the fingers next to the middle finger representing testicles; from its close association, the gesture may have assumed apotropaic potency. | [
"In Western culture, \"the finger\" or the middle finger (as in giving someone the (middle) finger or the bird or flipping someone off) is an obscene hand gesture. The gesture communicates moderate to extreme contempt, and is roughly equivalent in meaning to \"fuck me\", \"fuck you\", \"shove it up your ass/arse\",... |
why use median vs mean for household income data? | In places where the income spread is relatively narrow (400 - 1000%) such as Scandinavian countries, then high or low income outliers are well treated by the data.
In places where the income spread is wide (1,000,000%) such as Russia or the USA, a small number of outliers can seriously skew data.
Outliers in high income inequality areas can mask such things as the fact that most workers live below the poverty line, simply because there is one neighborhood in the designated area where the bosses, who make 1,000 or 10,000 times the workers’ wages, reside. | [
"Median household income is commonly used to measure the relative prosperity of populations in different geographical locations. It divides households into two equal segments with the first half of households earning less than the median household income and the other half earning more.\n",
"It is important to no... |
how do viruses with a high mortality rate actually manage to survive and spread out in the wild? | Some viruses have reservoirs - meaning that they can stay in hosts that aren't affected by the disease (the mosquito *Aedes aegypti* can carry a number of viruses that can give humans diseases, e.g. yellow, Zika and dengue fever).
Other times, a virus doesn't need its host to survive for very long. If the human can stay alive long enough for the virus to replicate to a certain amount and to spread it to other humans, then the virus can still survive whilst being lethal to its host. | [
"Viruses can cause massive human mortality. The smallpox virus killed an estimated 10 to 15 million human beings per year until 1967. Smallpox was finally eliminated in 1977 by extinction of the virus through vaccination, and the impact of viruses such as influenza, poliomyelitis and measles are mainly controlled b... |
In a busy office environment is it more efficient to boil a full kettle, then re-boil for subsequent cups, or boil small amounts of water for each cup? | The heat capacity of water is near constant, it changes by less than a percent between room temperature and boiling. So it requires the same amount of energy to heat a given amount of water from 20 to 30 C as from 90 C to 100 C. That means you don't gain anything from heating water that's already warm, you've only lost energy due to the cooling.
In other words, it requires almost exactly twice as much energy to boil two cups as to boil one cup. You don't save anything by boiling two cups at once when you only want one, and then re-heating the second cup. The re-heating is just making up for the energy you lost.
| [
"Overall comparative efficiency can only be estimated by calculating the energy wasted by the water heater, and comparing it with that wasted by heating more water than necessary in a kettle in typical circumstances. Kettle efficiency is subject to patterns of usage, and can be improved by user discipline; dispense... |
why is it so easy to stream a live event, and seemingly impossible to stream a live event in hd? | There is a user that streams hockey games for a specific team who I won't rat out. I once asked him why he does not stream in HD and he said there were a few reasons, first is that the equipment is more expensive. Secondly, he needs a higher upload speed than he currently has, which also costs more money. These are the two biggest reasons I can think of off the top of my head. I would assume most pirates don't have or want to spend a lot of money for your HD pleasure when they can spend a little money for your simple viewing pleasure. | [
"Live streaming refers to online streaming media simultaneously recorded and broadcast in real time. It is often referred to simply as streaming, however this abbreviated term is ambiguous due to the fact that \"streaming\" may refer to any media delivered and played back simultaneously without requiring a complete... |
how can game bundles be profitable to the seller? | Most games in bundles like that aren't new. The people who made them game have already made their investment, these are just the excess copies, they bundle them together because while you might not pay $10/game, you might pay $20 for three games. | [
"Humble Bundle, Inc. is a digital storefront for video games, which grew out of its original offering of Humble Bundles, collections of games sold at a price determined by the purchaser and with a portion of the price going towards charity and the rest split between the game developers. Humble Bundle continues to o... |
what benifit / purpose does day trading on the stock market serve? | One of the big purposes of the stock market is to provide liquidity - the ability to quickly sell any stock that you own. When investors price any particular asset, they take liquidity into account; lower liquidity (harder to sell) means that the price is also lower.
The markets don't have a big issues with day trading because it helps provide additional liquidity - more buyers and sellers is better for the market as a whole. | [
"Day trading is speculation in securities, specifically buying and selling financial instruments within the same trading day, such that all positions are closed before the market closes for the trading day. Traders who trade in this capacity with the motive of profit are therefore speculators. The methods of quick ... |
Is there an evolutionary and selection aspect to the exponential rise of technology in the last 150 years or so? | > "Has mankind had the mental capacity to make very profound discoveries throughout the last 4000 years or so but been limited by other factors?"
No. Humans have not changed in the last 10k years to any degree that would explain the explosion in productivity and technology.
And actually, the most profound change has occurred since the industrial revolution which should clue you in as to why the change occurred at all. Automation, using non-biological sources of fuel. Animal power or human power is quite limited. You can't really upscale them that well.
But start mastering steam and fossil fuels and a world of opportunity awaits you. All that untapped energy is now at your disposal. It's all about fuel and industry. That's where we started seeing the exponential growth you're talking about. | [
"Technological innovation and human population can be similarly considered, and this has been offered as an explanation for the apparent hyperbolic growth of the human population in the past, instead of a simpler exponential growth.\n",
"Unified growth theory suggests that during most of human existence, technolo... |
How does tap water stay clean through transit? | Pipes in any finished water distribution system are supposed to be cleaned/flushed out according to an established regimen, depending on the diameter and length of pipe, water quality, average flow rate and other factors. A common standard in such systems is that each segment gets thoroughly flushed at least annually, with some requiring greater frequency and others requiring fewer flushes or none at all (often, segments with high regular flow rates are effectively self-cleaning).
For further reading, I suggest [*Investigation of Pipe Cleaning Methods*](_URL_0_) by Dan Ellison and Steven Duranceau, published in 2003 by the American Water Works Association. | [
"Water flow through a tap can be reduced by inexpensive small plastic flow reducers. These restrict flow between 15 and 50%, aiding water conservation and reducing the burden on both water supply and treatment facilities.\n",
"Refill is a nationwide scheme providing a network of points offering the public free ta... |
Was military combat more often performed by highly trained warriors before the introduction of firearms, or is that an invention of film and fiction? | While there is an element of truth in your main question (whether combat required "better trained troops" vs. "less trained ones," the thesis you read seems rather suspicious.
The best comparison for your argument is that of a longbowman vs. an arquebusier. An arguebusier usually took only a few weeks to train, especially as accuracy at the time was far less important than rate of fire. By comparson, a good bowman would often need to be trained for a far longer time, and it was an ongoing experience, as well as strength (to pull the bowstring to fire it at the appropriate range and angle) and endurance (sustainable rate of fire).
The main advantage firearms gave were threefold. Firstly, they were simple to use in combat, allowing one to raise levies and arm them quickly. Secondly, a volley would create a loud sound and smoke, causing confusion in the enemy lines. The most important bit, however, is that they were cheap. Standing armies didn't exist for the most part around the advent of the arquebus, partly because they were so expensive. For the most part, troops were raised by feudal levies, which required a certain commitment to feudalist principles. The rise of the musket allowed countries to slowly begin maintaining a standing army, thus reducing their reliance on feudal lords. Over time, this allowed monarchs to centralize more power underneath them, as they were able to maintain a force on hand, while also reducing their obligations to the lords (although there were exceptions, such as in Poland, where the lords gained more power, probably due to the Polish reliance on heavy cavalry, which remained a very elite group among early modern militaries).
So while I would agree it reduced the need for "highly trained warriors," but it didn't do away with them, and while it took power away from feudal lords, more often than not it gave the power to the monarchs rather than to the common people.
Sources:
Jones, The Art of War in the Western World | [
"Historical martial arts reconstruction developed in the later 20th century and became influential in cinema only from ca. the 1990s. Earlier sequences of combat with pre-Renaissance weaponry were typically based on classical fencing techniques, or choreographed as ad-hoc \"blade whacking\".\n",
"Other arts exist... |
Pre-Columbian Civilization in North America | What you really need to read is the book [1491](_URL_0_) by Charles Mann. He gives the best treatment of this out of anybody, and it's an awesome read. | [
"The author notes that, according to these findings, two of the first six independent centers of civilization arose in the Americas: the first, Norte Chico or \"Caral-Supe\", in present-day northern Peru; and that of Formative-era Mesoamerica in what is now southern Mexico.\n",
"The culture of Pre-Columbian North... |
explain some of plato's most important philosophical ideas | Really there's only two things you need from Plato: forms, and the philosopher king.
Forms are a little tough. Plato liked to use analogies to describe it, like the cave dwellers staring at shadows on a wall, but I'm going to make an original one. Imagine there is a god of the color blue. Everything he touches becomes an imperfect reproduction of his perfect blue-ness. You, not being a god, can only see the imperfect reproductions, never the perfect god of blue. That's forms: forms are the "gods" of things like color, shapes, just about anything that can be described. We only see the reflections that the gods have touched.
The philosopher king is easier. Plato thought the ideal form of government was a meritocracy; and at the top of the pig pile would be the smartest people around, and those people are philosophers. | [
"The core of Plato's philosophy is the Theory of Forms (or Ideas), and many writers have seen in this metaphysical theory a justification for the use of literary allegory. Fletcher, for example, wrote:\n",
"Plato was the innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms in philosophy. Plato also appears to ha... |
why is the ring finger so connected to the middle and little finger? | > Why can't I move my ring finger without moving my little or middle finger,
I can. Is that abnormal? | [
"The use of the fourth finger of the left hand (the 'ring finger') is associated with an old belief that the left hand's ring finger is connected by a vein directly to the heart: the \"vena amoris\" or vein of love. This idea was known in 16th and 17th century England, when Henry Swinburne referred to it in his boo... |
the hanging gardens of Babylon weren't in Babylon but in Nineveh is this true?? | While it doesn't directly address the article you cited, you'll be interested in [this](_URL_0_) answer by /u/mythoplokos! | [
"To date, no archaeological evidence has been found at Babylon for the Hanging Gardens. It is possible that evidence exists beneath the Euphrates, which cannot be excavated safely at present. The river flowed east of its current position during the time of Nebuchadnezzar II, and little is known about the western po... |
What was the Mongol government like during the time of Genghis Khan | Let's start by recognizing that a lot of the places were severally depopulated (especially in Western Asia) after the Mongol conquests which tends to, as you might imagine, make control a lot easier. Territory at the time of Genghis's death stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea.
You may have learned that the original incursions into Eastern Europe managed to crush the (probably) largest army the Kingdom of Georgia had ever put together as well as Russo-Cuman army and a few other nomadic tribes. This force, led by Subutai was nothing more than a scouting party. This should give you some idea about the skill and power of the Mongolian army. They eventually left Europe (being just a scouting party and all) and wouldn't return until after the death of Genghis Khan.
On an administrative level Genghis (and to a larger extent Ogedei) used [darughachi] (_URL_0_) to administer and control regions. They were basically Mongol appointed governors who were loyal to the regime. But how did the Mongols get people to do what they wanted? Like pay taxes and behave? Military force. This is why I mentioned that scouting party in the previous paragraph- How few horsemen do you think it would take to regain control of an area which had already (more or less) had it's army destroyed? 10,000? Not likely. Undoubtedly far less and probably in the mere triple digits (depending on area size etc). The Mongol army was extremely mobile and had little trouble reacting to trouble in any given region in a timely manner.
*Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World* by Jack Weatherford is a great book and focuses on the government and social changes brought in by the Mongols. But be careful; Weatherford tries to make the Mongols sound like a bunch of nice guys and goes out of his way to avoid mentioning, you know, the mass slaughter, murder, rape, and looting conducted during the Mongol invasions. | [
"Mongols were highly tolerant of most religions during the early Mongol Empire, and typically sponsored several at the same time. To avoid strife, Genghis Khan set up an institution that ensured complete religious freedom, though he himself was a shamanist. Under his administration, all religious leaders were exemp... |
why do we capitalize "happy new year"? | My guess is that happy is capitalized because it's the beginning of a sentence, and New Year is a proper noun (shorthand for New Year's Day). | [
"Happy New Year, America is an American television special that aired on the CBS television network to celebrate the New Year. It first aired on December 31, 1979 (leading into 1980), and last aired December 31, 1995 (leading into 1996).\n",
"\"Many happy returns\" is a greeting which is used by some on birthdays... |
why do ed medications, whether prescription or otc supplements, also delay orgasm? | They don't delay orgasm. They simply help you get hard(er), and remain hard during sex. But you still orgasm normally | [
"Orgasm disorders, specifically anorgasmia, present as persistent delays or absence of orgasm following a normal sexual excitement phase in at least 75% of sexual encounters. The disorder can have physical, psychological, or pharmacological origins. SSRI antidepressants are a common pharmaceutical culprit, as they ... |
If hydrogen is so low in mass how did it ever coalesce into population III stars? | i think you need to have a large planet to keep the solar wind from blowing away the upper atmosphere of hydrogen of something like a gas giant....
there is not really a solar wind in a star forming nebula. What happens is a sufficient mass of gas exists in an area small enough that it is gravitationally bound. it continues to move and swirl around but the gas dynamics disapate potential and kinetic energy due to friction, and the cloud compresses.
Eventually when the star ignite, i believe a large quantity of yet uncoalessed gas actually does get blown away. Not 100% goes into the star, because as the star get brighter and its solar wind/radiation pressure gets more powerful and it gets harder to absorb free gas (but it can still merge with other stellar objects).
This is one of the limiting factors in the size of stars. You cant have a 1000 solar mass star form naturally because of once it ignites and grows to a fraction that size it start shedding more material than it can accumulate. | [
"Early theories concerning the nature of the lowest-mass stars and the hydrogen-burning limit suggested that a population I object with a mass less than 0.07 solar masses () or a population II object less than would never go through normal stellar evolution and would become a completely degenerate star. The first s... |
what it means when actors are "classically trained" | It means they trained in a program which focused on the work of Saint-Denis and Stanislavski. Most modern techniques of acting are derived from their works. A classically trained actor has learned the science and history of their craft in a way that a common actor who is merely talented has not. This training implies to directors a specific skillset that can be predictably drawn upon, rather than just having to draw out their intent more laboriously they should merely need to direct the actor who understands the specific techniques and terminologies involved in the craft. | [
"Classical acting is a type of acting that is based on the theories and systems of select classical actors including Konstantin Stanislavski and Michel Saint-Denis, including the expression of the body, voice, imagination, personalizing, improvisation, external stimuli, and script analysis.\n",
"BULLET::::- Class... |
Where did the Carthaginian and Roman Rivalry come from? How did it start and why? | Damnit, I should be studying. I blame you for this.
So a group of mercenaries in Sicily (calling themselves "Mamertines" after an Oscan god) had been let into the city of Messana which they took over.
So the tyrant of Syracuse (Hiero) wasn't terribly fond of this and began attacking. After suffering a setback the Mamertines appealed to Carthage (which controlled the western half of Sicily) and the two defeated Hiero. Then when the Carthaginians wouldn't leave, the Mamertines appealed to Rome for assistance.
Rome was reluctant because this was outside of Italy but many elites recognized that Messana was crazy wealthy or they saw an opportunity for conflict and glory (this latter issue was a constant problem for Rome). The Romans then threw out the Carthaginians which triggered the war. It went from 264 - 241 BCE with Rome slowly whittling away the Carthaginian-held cities on Sicily while Carthage originally dominated the sea. Eventually Rome got the upper hand at sea and invaded Africa causing Carthage to sue for peace.
So it was a war that neither had really planned for. Both knew that Messana controlled the easy trade route to Sicily which allowed one to tax ships passing through. Opportunism led to their interference which then triggered a long, bloody war. Sicily was very important to Carthage and Rome never accepted anything short of total victory. So both sides fought to the bitter end. | [
"The Carthaginians were rivals to the Greeks and Romans. Carthage fought the Punic Wars, three wars with Rome: the First Punic War (264 to 241 BC), over Sicily; the Second Punic War (218 to 201 BC), in which Hannibal invaded Europe; and the Third Punic War (149 to 146 BC). Carthage lost the first two wars, and in t... |
How close were the Romans to completely conquering England, Wales & Scotland? | As you are no doubt aware, most of Scotland isn't that productive in terms of land. Scotland could have been conquered easily but there was no material benefit to doing so, particularly when Hadrian's wall was such a brilliant defensive position and the infrastructure around the wall was so well developed. You are correct in that Agricola's recall somewhat knocked the steam out of the conquest, but Scotland was never really a priority for economic purposes (much like Ireland).
If you've not been to Hadrian's Wall, it is well worth a visit. It is, perhaps, the best wall of its kind ever built and the manner in which it exploited the Northumbrian landscape is extraordinary particularly given that you can go to the well preserved fort of Vindolanda which, neatly, is close to what is, in my view, the most spectacular part of the wall utilising the natural defences of the landscape.
The Antonine Wall, across the Central Belt of Scotland, is far less well preserved due to it not being built as much out of stone and also due to it being abandoned fairly quickly because the roman infrastructure wasn't there to support it. | [
"The conquest of Britain continued under command of Gnaeus Julius Agricola, who expanded the Roman Empire as far as Caledonia, or modern day Scotland, between 77 and 84. In 82 Agricola crossed an unidentified body of water and defeated peoples unknown to the Romans until then. He fortified the coast facing Ireland,... |
Is there a way or has there ever been a case where protons are removed from the nucleus of an atom? | Yes, we can remove protons from a nucleus using various kinds of nuclear reactions.
If you're asking whether there exists any nucleus with only neutrons in it (besides a single neutron), no such nucleus is bound. There are only resonances, like the dineutron and the tetraneutron, which decay with half-lives on the order of 10^(-22) seconds. | [
"For a proton to escape a nucleus, the proton separation energy must be negative - the proton is therefore unbound, and tunnels out of the nucleus in a finite time. Proton emission is not seen in naturally occurring isotopes; proton emitters can be produced via nuclear reactions, usually using linear particle accel... |
the us occasionally has drone strikes in yemen (i.e. we have airplanes dropping bombs on a foreign country), yet we are not at war with this country in any way. how is this possible? | I may be wrong here, but I remember hearing that the Yemeni government supported some of the drone strikes, as the strikes were on essentially rebels against their government. I think it came out in one of the diplomatic cable releases that a Yemeni official had said "We'll keep saying they're our bombs"? | [
"The U.S. launched a series of drone attacks in Yemen to curb a perceived growing terror threat due to political chaos in Yemen. Since December 2009, U.S. strikes in Yemen have been carried out by the U.S. military with intelligence support from the CIA. The drone strikes are protested by human-rights groups who sa... |
Spin is an intrinsic property of a particle; how does it interact with other particles' spin if it isn't a force? | Let's think of this classically first. When modeling a rotating electrically charged body using classical E & M, the rotation or "spin" will induce a magnetic dipole moment, and thus there is a corresponding magnetic field. This is where the force comes from (in this case, the relevant boson is the photon.)
When moving from a classical model to a quantum one, it turns out that many of the quantities that are relevant to classical mechanics carry over to quantum mechanics, though with modifications. So, it's an *experimental fact* that electrons have spin (for instance, this is shown in the famous [Stern-Gerlach](_URL_1_) experiment). The same logic from the classical case was also found to hold in the quantum case by George Uhlenbeck and Samuel Goudsmit, and was theoretically justified by Dirac.
In fact, this question of yours is quite significant! Dirac was trying to marry quantum mechanics with special relativity in hopes of explaining finer details of atomic spectra. His solution, the [Dirac equation](_URL_0_), ended up justifying electron spin and was more-or-less the beginning of Quantum Field Theory.
tl;dr: Electron spin induces a magnetic dipole moment that has a corresponding magnetic field, same as classical physics (though with some mathematical modifications to keep things consistent with relativity **and** quantum mechanics). This is where the force comes from. | [
"Spin is an intrinsic property of elementary particles, and its direction is an important degree of freedom. It is sometimes visualized as the rotation of an object around its own axis (hence the name \"\"), though this notion is somewhat misguided at subatomic scales because elementary particles are believed to be... |
Is there any evidence that Pope John Paul I was murdered? | There are conflicting stories as to who found him and when, which raised questions, but the Vatican hasn't investigated it and believes that there was no wrongdoing. Because of the "in-house" nature of dealing with a pope's death, there was never anything credible for conspiracy theorists to go off of. | [
"Pope John Paul I died suddenly in September 1978, 33 days after his election. Following contradictory reports about the circumstances of his death and apparent anomalies about the issuing of the death certificate and other procedures, several conspiracy theories have gained currency.\n",
"The attempted assassina... |
Why did the Founding Fathers of America choose a plurality voting system? | I'm dodging your question because I don't know the precise answer. I don't care much about third parties, but I do agree we could have a much better system (IRV with batch elimination would be a nice start). I re-read Federalist 10 yesterday. I'm not sure that Madison would consider our system today a 2 party system. I think he would see each of our two political parties as a conglomeration of smaller factions that do not entirely agree with each other.
E.g. The Republican Party has factions that are primarily concerned with social conservatism and economically liberal, factions that are economically conservative and socially liberal, and factions that are conservative on both issues. The largest obstacle in applying founding thought to the modern system is that founding fathers would have trouble with the number of different issues that make up who we are as political opinion-holders, far different from Madison's prediction in Federalist 10 that the primary branching point would be whether or not someone owns property (certainly relevant, but perfectly correlated with taxation views like Madison would have predicted). | [
"By popular pressure, states had recently expanded voting rights to nearly all white men in nearly all elections. For example, in 1824, state legislatures chose Presidential electors in six states, but by 1828, four had transitioned to voter choice. Also, while nationally organized parties had fielded rival candida... |
- why "artificial" elements that are man-made are significant and put onto the periodic table. | Well, each element on the periodic table represents a completely different kind of atom. This is important from the perspective of physics. It just so happens that some of those atoms do not exist in nature (or, possibly do exist, but then disappear so quickly we could never observe them). Any high quality periodic table will clearly indicate the elements that have only been created by man.
As a side note, you might be interested to know that some man-made elements actually have uses. Technetium (#43) is used in medical imaging, for example. | [
"A synthetic element is one of 24 chemical elements that do not occur naturally on Earth: they have been created by human manipulation of fundamental particles in a nuclear reactor or particle accelerator, or detonation of an atomic bomb; and thus are called \"synthetic\", \"artificial\", or \"man-made\". The synth... |
how does checking out a book from the library support the author or publishing company of a book? | The library has to pay for each copy of the book that they own. If a particular book is checked out frequently enough, the library system will purchase more copies of the book so people don't have to wait as long for it to become available for them to read, which means more money goes to the author/publisher. | [
"Books can be viewed in a list view or grid view in the user's library. They can be arranged based on title, author, file size, file type, and when they were last opened. Users can also arrange their books into collections.\n",
"Books can be viewed in a list view or grid view in the user's library. They can be ar... |
what happens when you recycle something that isn't recyclable? | Dang it, I read an article about this just recently and now I can't find it. There are people whose job is to watch the stuff come down a conveyer belt, and they pick out what is not recyclable. They can miss things, though, which then go into the recycling, uh, machines (I should really find the article) and can mess the machines up pretty badly. After I read this I started being a lot more careful about only putting what is actually recyclable into my bin. | [
"\"Recyclate\" is a raw material that is sent to, and processed in a waste recycling plant or materials recovery facility which will be used to form new products. The material is collected in various methods and delivered to a facility where it undergoes re-manufacturing so that it can be used in the production of ... |
why do we get homesick? | Familiar surroundings, people, and routines provide a sense of security and comfort. In a new place, you may find yourself missing the comforts of home and loved ones. Those homesick feelings are completely normal.
Some people may only feel a little loneliness, sadness, or anxiety. Others may feel physical symptoms, like stomachache or headache, or even become truly depressed. Most of the time, once the new surroundings and people become more familiar, feelings of homesickness go away. But if you are feeling overwhelmed, it's a good idea to seek help from the school or camp counselor.
If you have additional stress in your life — like a divorce or a death in the family — homesickness can be more intense. When you're coping with other loss or change, you'll feel especially attached to things that bring you comfort and miss them more when you're not around them. | [
"In its mild form, homesickness prompts the development of coping skills and motivates healthy attachment behaviors, such as renewing contact with loved ones. Indeed, nearly all people miss something about home when they are away, making homesickness a nearly universal experience. However, intense homesickness can ... |
what's with the british parliament and pedophilia? | There are currently 650 MPs in the House of Commons, and 700+ Lords in the House of Lords. These sex offences go back to at least the 70s, so there must be several thousand people who have been in Parliament during that time.
Chances are out of those thousands, several will have paedophilic tendencies, and being in a position of power gave them the means to indulge their desire to abuse.
As for why it seems like it's more prevalent in the British Parliament compared to other countries, your guess is as good as mine. It could be that it is happening in other countries, it's just not getting reported right now. Or it could be that there is something about the culture of the British establishment that lends itself towards this sort of crime. | [
"The Papists Act 1734 (8 Geo. 2, c. 25) was an Act of Parliament passed by the Parliament of Great Britain during the reign of George II. Its long title was \"An act to indemnify protestant purchasers of estates of papists, against the penalties or forfeitures papists are liable to for not having enrolled their est... |
How did vertebrates evolve a "backwards" retina? | It may be useful to consider the vertebrate process of [neurulation](_URL_0_) that forms the [neural tube](_URL_1_). Insects don't do this. The eyes branch off the forebrain, i.e. part of the inside of the neural tube. As a result the you might say the eye is "backwards" relative to where it would be if it were a simple invagination from the skin, like the otic vesicle is. Now mind, that revolution per se doesn't make the inside of an eye not the inside, but it suggests that some reworking would be needed somewhere in the process of having the eye rooted at the inside rather than at the outside. However, this isn't really the whole story, because some organisms actually have both types of eyes... | [
"The cephalopod retina does not originate as an outgrowth of the brain, as the vertebrate one does. It is arguable that this difference shows that vertebrate and cephalopod eyes are not homologous but have evolved separately. From an evolutionary perspective, a more complex structure such as the inverted retina can... |
Historically, how much did the Catholic church charge for indulgences for various different sins and what is today's value (inflation considered)? | Indulgences were never categorized by sin and they did *not* forgive sins (though undoubtedly this was the popular perception of them by ordinary Christians). All of them stipulated that you had to be “contrite and confessed” for them to be valid. An indulgence was meant to reduce time you (or officially after 1478 your dead loved ones to whom they could be applied) spent in purgatory. They were an “earthly calculation” of the time you got off your sentence in purgatory, where you went if you had unfulfilled penance for your sins when you died and had to be “cleansed” before you got admitted to heaven. Prices varied quite a bit and money was not the only way, or indeed the initial way, to get an indulgence. Until, say, the 14th century, you normally got an indulgence by performing pious acts: going on pilgrimage or visiting certain local saints’ shrines, helping to repair bridges or highways, giving alms to the poor, or simply saying certain prayers, etc. Typical indulgences initially were for a short amount of time, generally forty days. Thus, an indulgence from England in 1300 just required praying an Our Father and a Hail Mary for to get 40 days. The first plenary indulgence (wiping your whole debt clean) was for the First Crusade in offered in 1095. Other plenary indulgences followed, like the 13th-century Portiuncula indulgence for visiting the little church Francis of Assisi rebuilt with his own hands. The Jubilee indulgence below was a later kind of plenary indulgence. The inflationary spiral of people seeking indulgences is a later medieval phenomenon, where indulgences were offered for hundreds of years rather than days.
R. N. Swanson gives this example of late medieval prices in *Religion and Devotion in Europe, c. 1215-c.1515* (1995), where £=pounds, s.=shillings, and p.=pence
> For the Jubilee of 1500 the collector [of money for the sale of indulgences], Jasper Ponce, set a sliding scale of charges varying with landed income or the value of moveable goods. For the landed, the costs ranged from £3. 6s. 8d. for incomes over £2000 [this is an *enormous* income, that of a high baron] down to 1s. 4d. for the £20-40 category; for the others from £2 for those with goods over £1,000 down to 1s. for those in the £20-200 group. People falling below £20 paid what they felt able to contribute out of devotion. (p. 220)
Elsewhere he notes that the “general level of 4d. per pardon in early-sixteenth-century England was still substantial for a craftsman.” A Spanish indulgence of 1488 asked for 1/20th of a ducat to gain the prayers and benefits offered to a local hospital. (I think that’s around the equivalent of an English shilling—I think!) To put these sums in perspective, in 13th-century England, the average daily wage of a carpenter was 3d. The statutory annual wage for a vicar (more or less an assistant parish priest) was £3. 6s. 8d. or 5 marks, in other words what the rich baron above would pay. There are 12d (pennies) in a shilling and 20 shillings in a pound, so a pound = 240 pennies.
EDIT: I should add that *technically* you weren't *buying* an indulgence; you were making a contribution to the cause for which the indulgence was issued, e.g., rebuilding St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, the cause whose indulgence helped launch the Reformation.
| [
"Martin Luther, professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg and town preacher, wrote the \"Ninety-five Theses\" against the contemporary practice of the church with respect to indulgences. In the Roman Catholic Church, practically the only Christian church in Western Europe at the time, indulgences ... |
what are the facial differences between men and women? | Sexual Dimorphism - Some species of animals exhibit differences between sexes so that an individual of that species can fulfil they're reproductive and survival requirements relative to they're species. the differences can vary for different species and there is no set characteristic for males or females. i.e. in mammals (particularly social mammals) males tends to be larger and stronger and physically better adapted to aggression and conflict, females tend to be better suited to child rearing (before I get hate mail of Feminazis this is biology, not sociology). In Insects Females tend to be larger and better suited to child rearing, where males tend to be simply used sperm production.
But back to your original question, what are the facial differences between men and women?
Sexual selection seems to be one of the key factors in later human development. determine the fundamental characteristics of each sex based on the needs and requirement of the opposite sex. For example, men tend to be larger, stronger and broader shoulders; conversely women have wider hips, are shorter and have a higher fat to muscle ratios. These Characteristics are indicative that men historically have been considered the better fighters and women he better child carers, and in purely reproductive terms would have influenced the sexual selection of either sex, in laments terms men with more masculine features are more sexually desirable, and women with more feminine features are more sexually desirable. (generally speaking)
However these selection characteristics have also influenced other arbitrary features that we have associated with better mates. I.e. men having wider, squarer jaw lines, and females having the converse. Women having "softer" facial features and men having "harder" facial features.
This isn't an exact science and I based on generalizations, which in turn are based on social perceptions. So a forensic investigator in the situation you provided would have to used assumptions to determine the difference. However I do think there are certain aspects that are absolute, like nose to eye width ratios and so on. | [
"It is suggested that the masculinity of facial features is a reliable indication of good health, or, alternatively, that masculine-looking males are more likely to achieve high status. However, the correlation between attractive facial features and health has been questioned. Sociocultural factors, such as self-pe... |
Louisiana used to be one of the crowns of the French Empire. What happened to it? | First, we are talking two hundred years, and Louisiana had a [very different shape](_URL_1_) when it was French : US history basically happened between now and then. Second, is it Louisiana, or is it the Southern states that are poor and unequal ? Look how similar its neighbours are in the two indicators you mentioned. It's proably part of a broader southern dynamic and history. And third, barely ten years ago, Louisiana was hit by the [cotliest hurricane in History.](_URL_0_) Needless to say, it's hard to recover from that type of horror. | [
"In 1763, France ceded Louisiana to Spain to compensate for the loss of Florida, which had been ceded to the British in 1763 after losing the war of the 7 years (Spain and France were allies). The Government of Louisiana lived in New Orleans, capital of Lower Louisiana, but had representatives (or \"commandants\") ... |
[Astronomy] If the dark side of the earth points outwards from the sun, how come we see the same constelations throughout year? | We don't. For example, Orion cannot be seen in the Northern summer. | [
"In the case of annual aberration of starlight, the direction of incoming starlight as seen in the Earth's moving frame is tilted relative to the angle observed in the Sun's frame. Since the direction of motion of the Earth changes during its orbit, the direction of this tilting changes during the course of the yea... |
Why does the Japanese Imperial family not have a last name? | Fun fact: the current emperor of Japan published a paper in *Science* in 1992 ([link here](_URL_1_)—requires subscription; doi:10.1126/science.1411568): the article, which is about early Japanese scientists, is signed "Akihito", and there is a little biographical footnote that says: "Akihito. His Majesty the Emperor of Japan, is an ichthyologist who has published 26 papers in the *Journal of the Ichthyological Society of Japan*. He resides at the Akasaka Imperial Palace in Tokyo."
In 2007, he published a paper in *Nature* ([link here](_URL_0_)—also requires subscription; doi:10.1038/448139a), about Linnæus and taxonomy in Japan: this time it is signed "His Majesty The Emperor of Japan".
Classy. | [
"The Japanese emperor and his families have no surname for historical reasons, only a given name such as Hirohito (), which is almost universally avoided in Japan: Japanese prefer to say \"the Emperor\" or \"the Crown Prince\", out of respect and as a measure of politeness.\n",
"In Japan, the emperor and his fami... |
how can i help anyone with depression. | Read [this](_URL_0_), for one. It is vaguely humorous, but it addresses arguably the worst thing about depression.
If a person is depressed for legitimate situational reasons, the best thing to do is give them passive support and encouragement.
If a person is depressed because of problems involving brain chemistry, the best thing you can do is impell them to seek psychiatric help.
(NOTE: Do **not** *compell* them. The difference is, you make them want to, not force them to when they don't want to.) | [
"Depression is a treatable illness. Treatments for a major depressive episode may be provided by mental health specialists (i.e. psychologist, psychiatrists, social workers, counselors, etc.), mental health centers or organizations, hospitals, outpatient clinics, social service agencies, private clinics, peer suppo... |
In the Christian religion Lucifer punishes the evil in hell, despite him being "the fallen angel" who will fight god at the end of days.... Why would he punish his supporters/followers? How did this belief come about? | So, I can speak to this a little from a historical perspective of the ancient world. Perhaps someone else can chime in with medieval perspectives.
First off, let's disentangle some terms in their original context.
"Satan" in Hebrew means "adversary" or "accuser." The sense is sometimes used formally as "prosecuting attorney." The term "Satan" shows up in the Hebrew Bible only a handful of times. The only clear reference to a character is in the book of Job (and *maybe* Zechariah). There are vague and debatable references in a few places that may just mean "an adversary." I've heard Bible scholars say "HaSatan" (stress on last syllable) to distinguish the entity we're discussing, because the definite article ("Ha") is only present in the two clearer cases of Job and Zechariah.
In Job, Satan is a member of God's heavenly court, a spirit or god or angel of some kind assigned to accuse humans. The relevant section is Job chapters 1 and 2. Satan seems to want to catch Job in the act of sin, while God wagers that Job will stay faithful, no matter what harm Satan may do to him. God and Satan aren't depicted as the best of friends, but there's a clear sense that Satan works for God, answers to God, and has to get permission from God to afflict Job.
Lucifer comes from Isaiah 14, and refers to the King of Babylon. It doesn't mean Satan.
There is no "Hell" described in the Hebrew Bible. The word "hell" is a Germanic borrowing, but the New Testament mostly talks about Hades or Gehenna. Gehenna is a real place, a location of child sacrifice. The Hebrew Bible refers to it several times in this capacity, deploring the ritual of infant sacrifice. The New Testament seems to use it more or less interchangeably with Hades. There is contradictory evidence as to how much this was imagined as a place of suffering, or simply a state of anihilation. On the one hand, there are a few places that refer to the "gnashing of teeth" etc, but just as commonly the early Jesus movement talked about their goal being "Life" or "Everlasting Life," as opposed to death and hades.
Satan shows up with a few names and in a few roles in the New Testament, somewhat closer to the contemporary idea of a "devil." The term "diabolos" is used for him, which is a Greek word for an accuser or slanderer. In the Tempation narrative, Satan mostly acts (as in Job) as an accuser, trying to trip Jesus up. But elsewhere we get some sense of him as a leader of demons. In a few places the roles seem to blend into each other.
The probable causes of the shift in thinking about Satan in relation to demons (the origins of which merit another long post) or as an incarnation of evil, or cosmic adversary of God are Zoroastrian and Gnostic dualism. Angra Mainyu in Zoroastrianism is very similar to many traditional ideas about Satan. Angra Mainyu is a spirit of chaos and destruction. You can't really be a "follower" of Angra Mainyu, you can just be chaotic, destructive, and cruel in your own life, which leads to both your own destruction and harm to others. Angra Mainyu, insofar as we can assign him/her/it agency, is interested in the destruction of the created order and all that Ahura Mazda has made. The wicked are not friends of Angra Mainyu; they are those damaged most in the effort to undo creation. | [
"Satan, formerly called Lucifer, is the first major character introduced in the poem. He was once the most beautiful of all angels, and is a tragic figure who famously declares: \"Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.\" Following his failed rebellion against God, he is cast out from Heaven and condemned to ... |
how could there be so little voter fraud in us without photo id before? | because if you're really trying to fix an election, having individuals show up at polls claiming to be a person who's registered there, but won't show up, is a really inefficient way to do it. | [
"Election law expert Richard L. Hasen noted that it was \"the only prominent non-governmental organization claiming that voter fraud is a major problem,\" and called the Center a Republican Party front group whose support of a photo ID requirement was intended to suppress the minority vote. \n",
"Some experts, su... |
prenuptial agreements | Essentially, it's pre-planning a divorce. It's a legal document detailing how assets will be split in the event a marriage ends. It's most often used if there's some kind of disparity in assets going into the marriage.
If one person has 90 percent of the wealth and the other has 10 percent going in, a prenuptial agreement can prevent the person with 90 percent from losing a lot of wealth. | [
"A prenuptial agreement, antenuptial agreement, or premarital agreement (PNA), commonly abbreviated as prenup, is a contract entered into prior to marriage, civil union, or any agreement prior to the main agreement by the people intending to marry or contract with each other. The content of a prenuptial agreement c... |
Light bends around massive objects. Could there be something so massive that light orbited around it? | **Short answer:** Yes. If you're near a black hole.
**Longer answer:** So you already hit on the fact that light can't escape black holes, and it turns out that if you are at just the right distance from the event horizon (which is sort of the point of no return- where the black hole begins and the normal universe ends), photons can actually orbit at this point. It means that if you were at this point, and you looked straight ahead, you'd see the back of your head!
Anyway, it's called the [photon sphere](_URL_0_) (not to be confused with the photosphere of the sun). | [
"According to Prof Leonhardt, all optical illusions can slow down rays of light and the sphere can be used to bend this illusion around an object, reflecting off it and making it appear to be invisible. Mr Perczel added: \"When the light is bent it engulfs the object, much like water covering a rock sitting in a ri... |
objects turn darker when wet, why do hands not turn darker when wet. | Now I'm no water scientist or anything but the stuff that gets darker when wet is the stuff that absorbs the water, like paper towels or fabric or something. Spill some water on some plastic or metal and it doesn't get absorbed. Therefore, humans are made of plastic or metal | [
"This effect is sometimes called \"wet look\", since wetting wood with water often displays the chatoyancy, albeit only until the wood dries. Certain finishes cause the wood grain to become more pronounced. Oil finishes, epoxy, and shellac can strongly bring out the \"wet look\" effect. When the refractive index of... |
When are a human fetus's senses first activated? What effects would these "new" senses have on it? | Receptors begin to develop within the first several weeks. However, neural pathways for many of these (pain, for example) will not exist until the third trimester, with development of the thalamus. Check out results in:
**DISCOVER** (*When does a fetus feel pain?*)
**JAMA** (*Fetal pain:
A systematic multidisciplinary review of the evidence*).
_URL_0_ | [
"The sense modalities of the fetus develop prenatally and are functioning very well at birth. The examination of such abilities is connected with experimental examination of behaviour, provoked by stimuli.\n",
"The human vomeronasal organ has epithelia that may be able to serve as a chemical sensory organ; howeve... |
even if we were to figure out light speed travel how can it possibly be safe? | > Like I'm sure it's impossible to get from point A to point B in space in a "straight" line without coming across an inevitable planet, asteroid, star, black hole or whatever else.
Not at all. If you pick a random direction in the sky, you are *overwhelmingly* likely to go many billions of light-years without hitting a damn thing. Space is REALLY empty. | [
"In 2018, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency made public a 2010 report that surveyed multiple different approaches to faster-than-light travel. One physicist who reviewed the report explained, that, while the theories were legitimate, they did not represent \"something that's going to connect with engineering any... |
why can't we put windmills on things like air conditioners and cars to generate energy as they use it? | Because they pull more energy out of the system than they give back. The AC unit will have to work harder to maintain the same air flow rate if there are turbines blocking its outlet.
It's always a net-loss, in a perfect, frictionless, non-conductive universe the best you could hope to do is break even. | [
"Ion wind generators and wind turbines share some of the same advantages and disadvantages. Both are subject to the conditions of the wind, and are unable to generate electricity if the weather conditions are not favorable. This can be mitigated to some degree with strategic placement of the devices in areas with m... |
why do individuals vomit after a concussion? | Did you know that there is a part of the brain that controls vomitting? See: _URL_0_
When the brain encounters a physical shock, it is possible that this part of the brain becomes triggered. Once that happens, nausea may occur, which sometimes leads to vomitting. Because of the triggering, the brain might be trying to eject (a non-existant) toxin from the stomach. | [
"Repeated or profuse vomiting may cause erosions to the esophagus or small tears in the esophageal mucosa (Mallory–Weiss tear). This may become apparent if fresh red blood is mixed with vomit after several episodes.\n",
"Sufferers may vomit or retch 6–12 times in an hour and an episode may last from a few hours t... |
What language preceded Ancient Greek? | Here's a family tree of Indo-European languages.
_URL_0_ | [
"The Ancient Greek language includes the forms of Greek used in Ancient Greece and the ancient world from around the 9th century BCE to the 6th century CE. It is often roughly divided into the Archaic period (9th to 6th centuries BCE), Classical period (5th and 4th centuries BCE), and Hellenistic period (Koine Gree... |
how do us government agencies "recruit" new (young) agents? | That particular instance might have just been a family connection. His sister talked her boss into giving him a job.
I do know that many government agencies (CIA, FBI, NSA) recruit people off of college campuses through career fairs and seminars. Its all fairly mundane stuff though. | [
"Some third-party recruiters work on their own, while others operate through an agency, acting as direct contacts between client companies and the job candidates they recruit. They can specialize in client relationships only (sales or business development), in finding candidates (recruiting or sourcing), or in both... |
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