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how expensive would it be, and what would be the effect if we launched a nuclear warhead at the moon? | There are not enough nuclear weapons by far. See the craters on the Moon? It's already survived countless hits by asteroids. A few nuclear weapons aren't going to destroy it.
| [
"BULLET::::- Estimates of the cost per unit mass of launching cargo or people from the Moon vary and the cost impacts of future technological improvements are difficult to predict. An upper bound on the cost of launching material from the Moon might be about $40,000,000 per kilogram, based on dividing the Apollo pr... |
If a single uranium atom was fissioned, with no addition chain reaction fissioning, how big would the explosion be? | There'd be no explosion and good thing too since granite (say in your kitchen) and rock in general is laced with trace uranium. As a rule of thumb, the behavior of any single atom is utterly irrelevant to anything that happens to you.
Over the course of a few days a single uranium-238 atom and its daughters will produce about 10 MeV in kinetic energy spread out over a handful of alpha, beta particles and photons. | [
"If at least one neutron from uranium-235 fission strikes another nucleus and causes it to fission, then the chain reaction will continue. If the reaction will sustain itself, it is said to be critical, and the mass of U-235 required to produce the critical condition is said to be a critical mass. A critical chain ... |
During the Anarchy in England, what did Matilda do to antagonise Londoners to the point where she was unable to be crowned? | Several factors combined to make the Empress unpopular in London.
First, the city had accepted the candidacy of King Stephen after the death of Matilda's father, Henry I, and it had done this in direct defiance of the dead king's attempts to have Matilda accepted as queen regnant. The relationship between the city and the king seems, moreover, to have been rather more than one involving the acceptance of a legitimate monarch by his subjects; even the *Gesta Stephani* (a chronicle which favoured Stephen's claims to the throne) stated that he was not so much acclaimed as actually formally elected king by London – in other words, his successful assertion of his claims to the throne in the face of Matilda's rival, and in many ways superior, claim owed a great deal to his legitimation by the city.
London received favourable treatment from Stephen in consequence – in particular, and secondly, it seems to have been granted the right to organise a commune, which meant that the city gained privileges equivalent to those of a baron or tenant in chief. This was a highly unusual right in the 12th century, and one that was opposed by the great majority of the nobility, since (as the chronicler Richard of Devizes commented later in the century) communes were "a tumult of the people, the terror of the realm, and the tepidity of the priesthood"; according to Richard, Henry II would not have allowed one to be formed "for a million silver marks." In consequence – at least according to a remark attributed to Stephen's brother, the Bishop of Winchester – Londoners began to consider themselves "more or less nobles on account of the greatness of their city in England", and the Archbishop of Rouen, in a letter written to its leaders, described its them as "glorious senators".
Third, it seems extremely unlikely that Matilda would have allowed the young commune to continue. She was backed by precisely the sort of nobles who most hated the idea of a commune, and her chief weakness as a claimant to the throne was her notorious arrogance and anxiousness to gather as much power as possible to her person, ruling instead by what the *Gesta* terms "arbitrary will". So it seems that the freshly-minted commune had sound financial and political reasons to oppose Matilda, and for this reason the city continued to show loyalty to Stephen even in the face of the catastrophe of the Battle of Lincoln (1141), which resulted in the king's capture by Matilda's forces.
From the Londoners' perspective, fourthly, the Empress's actions during her brief period of ascendancy gave every indication that she would be bad news for the city. It became obvious that she intended to rule in her own name, and without bothering to consult others when it did not suit her to; most tellingly, it was reported that when a group of senior magnates comprising her uncle, King David of Scotland, the Bishop of Winchester and her own brother, Earl Robert, attended her court, and knelt before her, she "bawled out a furious dismissal." Faced with the substantial costs of maintaining an army, and needing funds to pay for an appropriate coronation, she went on to demand a huge sum from the commune – apparently as a tallage, not a loan.
The *Gesta* delights in its set-piece description of Matilda's reception of a delegation sent by the Londoners to discuss the payment, though it's worth noting that Truax, in a recent paper, downplays the chronicles' insistence on her arrogance and stresses Stephen's longer and closer relationship with the city (which dated to the reign of Henry I) as the decisive factor:
> She, with a grim look, her forehead wrinkled into a frown, every trace of a woman's generousness removed from her face, blazed into an unbearable fury, saying that many times the people of London had made very large contributions to the king, that they had lavished their wealth on strengthening him and weakening her, that they had long since conspired with her enemies for her hurt, and therefore it was not just to spare them in any respect, or make the smallest deduction from the money demanded.
Thus, even at a time when she could hope to reap significant benefits with a display of diplomacy and a willingness to forget past wrongs, Matilda was apparently incapable of doing so, and when she summoned a church council to endorse her claim to the throne in April 1141, she found that she could not proceed with a coronation at Westminster, or enter the city, because London had refused her entry; indeed, the city sent delegates to Winchester to request that the king be released. It took the appointment of one of Matilda's main supporters, Geoffrey de Mandeville, as castellan of the Tower of London – and hence the serious possibility of that the city might be sacked by Matilda's forces – to force the commune to grant her entry.
A fifth and final point needs to be noted: during the brief period that Matilda was in the city, Stephen's most significant ally, his wife, Matilda of Boulogne, was doing what she could to remind Londoners what a bad idea it was to side with the Empress and her allies. The queen mustered a large army on the south bank of the Thames, directly opposite the city, and began pillaging the area - which was full of market gardens and small farms that supplied the city with much of its food – threatening to reduce the rich farmlands of the area to "a habitation for a hedgehog". This, as the *Gesta Stephani* points out, meant that "the people of London were then in grievous trouble."
Thus, during Matilda's brief ascendancy, it must have been obvious to London not only that it faced the short-term prospect of starvation if it continued to back the Empress, but also that it would be significantly worse off if it did allow her to establish herself as queen regnant. Its future, in that case, would be to remain at the mercy of an arrogant, financially greedy absolute monarch and her close allies for the duration of her reign.
That London preferred the rule of a king who was, for all his many faults, a far more generous, biddable and Christian monarch – in the contemporary meaning of the term – and who was, moreover, a ruler it had helped to make, is anything but surprising.
**Sources**
RHC Davies, *King Stephen* (1966)
Edmund King, *King Stephen* (2010)
J.A. Truax, "Winning over the Londoners: King Stephen, the Empress Matilda and the politics of personality," *Haskins Society Journal* 8 (1996)
Kenji Yoshitake, "The place of government in transition: Winchester, Westminster and London in the Mid-Twelfth Century," in Dalton & Luscombe (eds), *Rulership and Rebellion in the Anglo-Norman World, c.1066–c.1216: Essays in Honour of Professor Edmund King* (2015) | [
"Matilda remained in England until 1148. The disorders were at their peak between 1142 and 1148, but her cause could never secure enough support to enable her to be crowned. Nor could Stephen decisively defeat Matilda's forces, which meant that England remained divided in allegiance between the two rivals. But whil... |
Did pre-Neolithic Revolution humans suffer from depression and other "modern" mental disorders? | It may be worth x-posting this to our sister sub, /r/AskAnthropology | [
"The premise of \"Inside the Neolithic Mind\" is that irrespective of cultural differences, all humans share in the ability to enter into altered states of consciousness, in which they experience entoptic phenomena, which the authors discern as a three-stage process leading to visionary experiences. Arguing that su... |
Could we irradiate meat to keep it "fresh" longer and without refrigeration? | Yes, we already do this with meat, as with produce, etc. | [
"In the food industry, refrigeration contributes to reducing post-harvest losses while supplying safe, foods to consumers by enabling perishable foods to be preserved at all stages from production to consumption by the end-user.\n",
"When refrigerants are removed they should be recycled to clean out any contamina... |
What geological processes could cause features like this? (Pic inside) | Zhangjialie is in the heart of a large swath of Karst topography. This is a predominantly Limestone landscape which has been eroded chemically by water, and in the case of this region to form these pillars and pinnacles.
Karst topography starts out as water chemically erodes limestone underground creating caves, eventually sinkholes form and over time the entire surface layer collapses down into all the caves below. In this part of China the pillars are an example of a very old Karst landscape. Long ago all the sinkholes collapsed into void below. What you are left with at this late stage are these mounds and pillars of rock in many locations all over the region which represent all that is left of those starting layers of Limestone.
[The area in the post](_URL_1_)
[Some info on Karst Topography](_URL_0_)
[List of Karst Locations](_URL_2_) | [
"To be distinguished from this are plainly aitiological tales that account for geological features without any connection to their formation; for example: the Native American legend of a giant bear chasing a couple who were saved when the land rose beneath their feet; the bear's claws left gouge marks on the sides ... |
Was there a North/South divide in Britain before the industrial revolution? | There has been a divide between North and South since royal authority situated itself in London and had a harder time imposing its control on the distant North. For example, during the Reformation the Crown had a much harder time imposing Protestant reforms on the North where Catholic traditions were much slower to die out for the simple fact that away from the watchful eye of authorities, it was easier for individual parishes to just keep doing it the way they had always done it. | [
"Prior to the development of socialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the primary divide in British politics was between classical liberalism (Whiggism) and traditional conservatism (Toryism) as seen in debates about free trade and the Corn Laws, and James Kirkup, writing in the \"Daily Telegraph\", has... |
British Navy vs Napoleon's Navy circa 1798 - Egypt invasion - Timing & Communication question | John Keegan spends a chapter discussing this particular incident in [*Intelligence in War*](_URL_0_) (which I highly recommend to anyone with a passing interest in military intelligence as it is very accessible).
Keegan states that Nelson's hunt for Bonaparte's army and the French fleet commanded by Brueys, had to rely primarily on intelligence gathered locally by Nelson's own forces (typically either from merchant ships encountered while searching the sea or through Ottoman officials at Peloponnese) while conducting operations in the Mediterranean. So to answer your first question, communications between the Mediterranean and London took three to five weeks to traverse in one direction (so double that time frame if you're awaiting a reply), and adding to the time delay problem, any intelligence or requests you may receive or provide to your home base may very well be outdated or incorrect by the time it is received. This had it's benefits as well as it's obvious drawbacks. Also that time delay is only for communications, as sending actual manpower in the form of a fleet or army would take far longer.
Now as far as your question about reinforcements, I think you mean land forces, since Nelson's fleet was able to completely decimate the French fleet when they finally encountered them a month later at the Battle of the Nile. Had Nelson encountered Brueys's fleet prior to the Battle of the Nile, I think it's safe to say so long as Bonaparte had not landed his troops anywhere particularly sensitive, Nelson would need not worry about sending a dispatch for immediate reinforcements as a naval battle would have likely ruined any advantage Bonaparte may have had if he were able to continue undetected, not to mention the very possible loss of large portions of the French Army's troop transports. We know that Bonaparate upon learning that Nelson had missed intercepting his invasion fleet by two days at Alexandria, ordered a very hasty invasion of Egypt (which backfired since it caused the Ottomans to declare war against France after seeing the French fleet destroyed at the Battle of the Nile and helped give Austria and Russia the pushes they needed to enter the Second Coalition and declare war on France the next year) primarily due to his concern that Nelson would come upon his fleet again and threaten to eliminate his invasion force before they ever stepped foot on land.
Even after the Battle of the Nile had taken place, Nelson and the rest of the British military leadership, weren't nearly as concerned about the threat posed by Napoleon and his army in Egypt as they had been prior to the Battle of the Nile. The destruction of the French fleet essentially left the French Army in Egypt cut off from resupply or reinforcement since the British fleet pretty much had complete control of the Mediterranean (and it's much easier to hold off a fleet/resupply when you know it's destination whereas prior to the encounter at Aboukir Bay, Nelson was at a loss as to what the French intended to use their fleet/army against), leading to their ultimate defeat by a British Expeditionary Force in 1801. | [
"The launching of the steam-powered ship of the line \"Napoléon\" by France in 1850 began an arms race between France and Britain that lasted for a decade. The destruction of a wooden Ottoman fleet by a Russian fleet firing explosive shells in the Battle of Sinop, early in the Crimean War, followed by the destructi... |
How does eating certain foods (In my case, anything with High Fructose Corn Syrup and peanuts) cause acne? | I would much appreciate it if someone linked a peer review journal article outlining relationship between diet and acne.
If you eat greasy foods, it is more likely that grease on your fingers is what is transferring the grease to your skin.
I have heard it suggested that foods can increase insulin like growth factor, which in turn increases sebum production on the skin, but you really have to increase intake of sugary foods.
_URL_1_
_URL_0_
The best answer is, we don't know if there is a causal link between diet and acne. | [
"Celery is among a small group of foods (headed by peanuts) that appear to provoke the most severe allergic reactions; for people with celery allergy, exposure can cause potentially fatal anaphylactic shock. The allergen does not appear to be destroyed at cooking temperatures. Celery root—commonly eaten as celeriac... |
How prominent were stage actors before the 16th century, if at all? | Hi! I've been browsing this subreddit for a while, and created a username because I've finally come across a question I can answer!
I can only speak to the western tradition - my education was sorely lacking when it came to Asian theatre.
The answer to your question depends on which point in history you're looking at. I can speak to a couple of time periods.
Ancient Greece - Most theatre at this time took place within the context of Dionysian festivals (celebrating the god Dionysus). Financing came from the state. After 449 BCE, the cast was selected by the state - most likely to reduce one playwright/director having an unfair advantage over the others. Actors were also paid by the state, however, lead actors - and only lead actors - could compete for a best acting prize, which could be awarded to a play that didn't win the festival. Note that these festivals would occur about four times a year, so most actors would most likely not have been an actor by profession. Based on historical writings, it seems that vocal ability was most prized. Greek actors wore masks, so facial expression was of no matter.
Middle Ages: Most of the theatre that occurred during the early middle ages was associated with the church. Liturgical dramas, etc. These would have been devotional in nature, and unpaid (think Christmas pageants). Even outside of the church, a lot of theatre was religious in nature, such as the plays that took place during the feast of Corpus Christi. These celebrations would recruit local guilds to take part in a processional, and in theatrical events. This would have been on a volunteer basis. According to Oscar Brockett's "A History of Theater," most actors taking part in these festivals would have been merchants or working class, although nobility and clergy occasionally participated.
Professional theatre in the Middle Ages and very early Modern period was mostly relegated to a few distinct forms: morality plays (public performances), interludes (private performances). Morality plays were first performed by amateurs, but were then taken over by professionals. Interludes were plays performed indoors for those who could pay for it - usually rulers. Interludes were often performed by minstrels. Doing a good job could mean being retained by a nobleman as part of his regular company of performers (this starts to happen by 1350). Nice work if you can get it! That said, professional performances were not nearly as common as amateur performances until the last half of the sixteenth century.
Oscar G. Brockett's "A History of the Theatre" is a great introductory textbook, and is where most of my information comes from - that, and what I remember from introductory theatre history five years ago. The Broadview Anthology of Drama is also a good resource - while it's a dramatic anthology, each play is introduced by some historical context. | [
"In the Elizabethan era, research has been conclusive about how many actors and troupes there were in the 16th century, but little research delves into the roles of the actors on the English renaissance stage. The first point is that during the Elizabethan era, women were not allowed to act on stage. The actors wer... |
r/AskScience, what fascinating thing do YOU want to share with us laypeople? | Even though this isn't directly related to my field of study, I find it utterly fascinating. Mitochondrion, the tiny organelle in our cells that (among other things) acts to power them with ATP, originated as a free-living bacterium that was taken up and incorporated into one of our early eukaryotic ancestors. Their symbiosis was so successful that it persisted, evolved and now the vast majority of eukaryotes have mitochondria in their cells (though red blood cells lose them upon maturation). Even though mitochondria have significantly changed from their ancestral form, they still have their own DNA (separate from our genomic DNA) which is circular and resembles bacterial DNA. Moreover, like all prokaryotes, they replicate by binary fission as opposed to being assembled as components of our cells. There is plenty of other evidence that mitochondria were once free-living bacteria and it's the basis for the endosymbiotic theory. Another organelle which has similar origins is the chloroplast, responsible for photosynthesis in plants.
Edit: I just realized I sound like a mediocre textbook.
| [
"His interests include bird watching and jungle safari. He likes films, music and reading, and has a taste for trying out different cuisines of the world and seeks recreation in interacting with friends and working on computer. He is a member of the India Habitat Center, Delhi, and Boat House Club, Nainital, and li... |
How did the reputation of the 1950s evolve? | I'll speak to part of your question on a way in which some denigrate the 1950s. In the 1950s, the middle class was growing as good jobs were relatively plentiful. It was easier to support a family on a single income. Women faced social pressure to stay home, raise kids, and be perfect housewives. [The Feminine Mystique](_URL_0_) is definitely worth a read, even just the first chapter, "The Problem that Has No Name," as it speaks to this social shift and the resulting dissatisfaction that many women felt as housewives. Thus you have the "1950s housewife" being used as a way to reference a sort of unattainable, unrealistic goal for how a woman should be as well as a way to represent the oppression of women (a lack of focus on women's education and career development). | [
"The 1950s were a decade known for experimentation with new styles and culture. Following World War II and the austerity years of the post-war period, the 1950s were a time of comparative prosperity, which influenced fashion and the concept of glamour. Hairstylists invented new hairstyles for wealthy patrons. Influ... |
What is the earliest record we have of humans supplementing their diet with spicy (hot) foods? | If you don't get an answer here, you could try /r/askhistorians | [
"Indians have used leafy vegetables, lentils, and milk products such as yogurt and ghee all along their history. They also used spices such as cumin and coriander. Black pepper which is native to India was often used by 400 A.D. The Greeks brought saffron and the Chinese introduced tea. The Portuguese and British m... |
why does a slight change in glasses prescription cause headaches and eye ache? | Because your eyes are trying to focus through your new lens as if it was your old ones. Your eye are a muscle and this causes strain on it as it tries to focus again and again.
Try putting the new ones on as you wake up. | [
"Eye strain can also be a result of the distortion caused by the refractive properties of certain types of spectacle lenses. The subtle blurriness caused by this distortion in peripheral vision, requires eye muscles to strain in order to retain clear vision. Such prolonged distortion can lead to an increase in stra... |
how do electric cars heat the cabin? | Electric heaters blow warm air.
But they also tend to have heated seats and steering wheels since it's more efficient to heat you directly than to heat the air, which then heats you. | [
"Some electric cars, for example the Citroën Berlingo Electrique, use an auxiliary heating system (for example gasoline-fueled units manufactured by Webasto or Eberspächer) but sacrifice \"green\" and \"Zero emissions\" credentials. Cabin cooling can be augmented with solar power external batteries and USB fans or ... |
how is it that someone can post the same question on askreddit every day, and it gets thousands of upvotes and tens of thousands of people answering the same thing? | Because it the question has easy answer that get tones of upvotes, people will upvote the question just so their response gets more upvotes.
Example
"What show should have gotten another season?"
The first person that says Firefly get thousands of upvotes as long as the post gets popular. | [
"Questions are initially open to answers for four days. However, the asker can choose to pick a best answer for the question after a minimum of one hour. However, comments and answers can still be posted after this time. To ask a question, one has to have a Yahoo! account with a positive score balance of five point... |
In the WWI Eastern Front was there a use of trenches as complex and extensive as in the Western Front ? | No. That is not to say there was no use of trench warfare on the eastern front, just that the theater maintained a much more mobile character than the static west. If you consider the sheer size of the Eastern Theater than you can begin to understand the difficulties both the Russians and Germans would have had to establish a system as extensive as the one in France and Belgium. The reason that trench warfare was so effective on the Western Front was that it was a completely interlocking defensive network, from the coast to Switzerland – it was an enormous distance, but close enough that both sides could rush reserve divisions to reinforce any point in the line that was about to collapse, which is why all the massive offensives in the west resulted in massive casualties, but relatively little territorial gains. Replicating this same paradigm in the east would have been nearly impossible due to the sheer size of the front, the time it took to bring up reserves to different points in the line, and the communication system, which was more primitive than in the West.
Trenches were utilized, but the Germans discovered in their 1915 offensives that by coordinating artillery and infantry to attack cohesively, they could overwhelm the Russian trenches and resume mobile warfare, much to the satisfaction of the OberOsts.
Sources:German Strategy and the Path to Verdun: Erich von Falkenhayn and the Development of Attrition, 1870–1916; The Eastern Front: 1914-1917 | [
"Early World War I trenches were simple. They lacked traverses, and according to pre-war doctrine were to be packed with men fighting shoulder to shoulder. This doctrine led to heavy casualties from artillery fire. This vulnerability, and the length of the front to be defended, soon led to front line trenches being... |
why is it possible to order something from china on ebay and pay zero postage, but ordering from australia to australia costs so much more? | Probably still relevant (2014):
[ELI5: Why can a Chinese company ship me an eBay purchase for $1.06 including the product, when it costs me a minimum of $1.97 to ship something across town in the U.S.???](_URL_0_)
More about how the UN and the USPS wind up subsidizing Chinese shipping: [The United Nations is helping subsidize Chinese shipping. Here's how.](_URL_1_) | [
"Under the Australian Postal Corporation Act 1989, letters up to 250 grams are reserved to Australia Post – other people and businesses can only carry them if they charge four times the basic postage rate. All of the other goods and services provided by Australia Post are sold in fully competitive markets and, in 2... |
Why isn't the Meissner effect used in MagLev trains? | EDIT: /u/luckyluke193 has pointed out that this is incorrect. They do use superconducting magnets to lift the train now.
~~Well, for one thing, you'd have to supercool the bottom of the train to make it superconducting. That's hard to do. This is why people are trying so hard to find materials that are superconductive at high temperatures. It would be great, for example, to replace all power lines with superconducting material to reduce energy loss between plant to user. However, you'd have to cool the lines down to superconducting temperatures, which isn't practical.~~ | [
"In EDS maglev trains, both the rail and the train exert a magnetic field, and the train is levitated by the repulsive force between these magnetic fields. The magnetic field in the train is produced by either superconducting magnets (as in SCMaglev) or by an array of permanent magnets (as in Inductrack). The repul... |
is there a reason why there are no indian fast food chains? | In the US it's not popular enough to support fast food, especially amongst the demographic that eats fast food. | [
"The major fast food chains in India that serve American fast food are KFC, McDonald's, Starbucks, Burger King, Subway, Pizza Hut, and Dominos. Most of these have had to make a lot of changes to their standard menus to cater to Indian food habits and taste preferences. Some emerging Indian food chains include Wow! ... |
contact with heat | Germ-X is a poor conductor of heat. Even though it's on fire on the outside, on the inside it's still cool because heat takes a while to transfer from one side to the other.
Hot oil and hot metal are much better conductors of heat, so you're not only exposed to the *source* of the heat (as they're hot in and of themselves), it also allows heat to transfer out of the material and into your hand much quicker. | [
"On a microscopic scale, heat conduction occurs as hot, rapidly moving or vibrating atoms and molecules interact with neighboring atoms and molecules, transferring some of their energy (heat) to these neighboring particles. In other words, heat is transferred by conduction when adjacent atoms vibrate against one an... |
what is the war on terror? | The "War on Terror" isn't so much an actual war as much as a declaration of an initiative to devote resources to stopping terrorism. I'm not an expert on the matter but after its declaration we increased funding in airport security, CIA, NSA, and probably many other areas (maybe military but not sure as a % of GDP). We also invaded Afghanistan, specifically looking to target the Taliban, probably the largest terrorist group that was also responsible for 9/11.
We also invaded Iraq, but that was more on the presumption that they had weapons of mass destruction that could potentially be used to attack us or our allies. And of course if that's the new bar for when US can invade a place, then guess what, US can invade anywhere it wants (in its own head). | [
"The War on Terror is the campaign launched by the United States of America in response to the September 11 attacks against organizations designated with terrorism. The campaign, whose stated objective was eliminating international terrorism, began in 2001. The following is a timeline of events linked to the War on... |
why do i have need to use 4g on my phone for gps but on m garmin it's free? | Because part of the purchase price of your Garmin includes a library of maps. The downside of this is that access to updated maps can be somewhat limited, in addition you sometimes need to chose what area you want maps for.
Your cell phone does not store any maps. If it needs a map it downloads it from an online source. Therefore it requires an internet connection.
It is possible to get a navigation map that does not require a data connection. For the most part you need to pay for these apps, and they often are not as cheap as you might like.
tl;dr a Garmin (and Tomtom) stores it's own maps in internal storage. Most phone map apps do not. | [
"A typical A-GPS-enabled receiver uses a data connection (Internet or other) to contact the assistance server for aGPS information. If it also has functioning autonomous GPS, it may use standalone GPS, which is sometimes slower on time to first fix, but does not depend on the network, and therefore can work beyond ... |
How are the weights of body parts (the hands, head etc.) measured? | Not a direct answer to your question, but there is a method of calculation for surface area (for burns and the like) called the rule of 9's; each area of the body is apportioned as a factor of 9:
Head - 9%
Each Arm - 9%
Front and Back Torso - 18% each
Each Leg - 18%
Groin/Pubic area - 1%
I don't know if there is a comparable method for weight, but I'd think it would be something along the same line of thought. | [
"Strictly speaking, body weight is the measurement of weight without items located on the person. Practically though, body weight may be measured with clothes on, but without shoes or heavy accessories such as mobile phones and wallets, and using manual or digital weighing scales. Excess or reduced body weight is r... |
Given recent developments in our understanding of water/ice bodies on Mars, is it possible that we could one day be surprised by Martian fossils? Or do we have reason to believe that Martian life would be limited to microorganisms? | It's not _impossible_ (because that's a pretty high bar to clear) but I'd say it's very, very unlikely.
The reason is time. Multicellular life didn't become common on Earth until 500-600 million years ago (EDIT: _Life_ showed up on Earth very early. But it consisted of microorganisms). There are a very few possible older fossils of very simple (think algae sheets) forms of multicellular life. This is also past the point where oxygen was common in the atmosphere.
Mars never had that kind of time. When it dried out and froze, earth was still billions of years away from its first real multicellular life. For plants and animals to have shown up on Mars, they'd have had to appear much, much faster than they did on Earth.
EDIT: Of course, stromatolites or other fossils resulting from single-celled organisms are more likely. I discussed the second part of the question, but fossils aren't limited to multicellular life. | [
"There is evidence that Mars had a warmer and wetter past: dried-up river beds, polar ice caps, volcanoes, and minerals that form in the presence of water have all been found. Nevertheless, present conditions on Mars' subsurface may support life. Evidence obtained by the \"Curiosity\" rover studying Aeolis Palus, G... |
How would life differ for a Roman merchant in 0 AD compared to 1000 AD? | By Roman, do you mean someone from the city of Rome or someone from the Roman Empire? In 1000 AD, the Roman Empire (or Byzantine Empire) no longer possessed the city of Rome itself and was centered around Constantinople. | [
"The status of the merchant has varied during different periods of history and among different societies. In ancient Rome and Greece merchants could become wealthy, but lacked high social status. In contrast, in the Middle East, where markets were an integral part of the city, merchants enjoyed high status. In mode... |
How prevalent is Holocaust denial and how does it vary by nationality? | **Part 1**
This is a huge question that is probably not possible to answer in its entirety, because of the fundamental problem on how to measure Holocaust denial and how to gauge its prevalence in society, especially on an international or even world-wide scale.
*Edit*: There is a summary at the end for those who want to skip ahead.
## What is the Holocaust? What is Holocaust Denial?
As a starting point, I'm going to define what is the Holocaust and subsequently, what is Holocaust Denial.
Within the relevant scholarly literature, the term Holocaust is defined as the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews and up to half a million Roma, Sinti, and other groups persecuted as "gypsies" by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. It took place at the same time as other atrocities and crimes such as the Nazis targeting other groups on grounds of their perceived "inferiority", like the disabled and Slavs, and on grounds of their religion, ideology or behavior among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses and homosexuals. During their 12-year reign, the conservative estimate of victims of Nazi oppression and murder numbers 11 million people, though newer studies put that number at somewhere between 15 and 20 million people.
Holocaust Denial is the attempt and effort to negate, distort, and/or minimize and trivialize the established facts about the Nazi genocides against Jews, Roma, and others most often with the goal to rehabilitate Nazism as an ideology.
Because of the staggering numbers given above, the fact that the Nazi regime applied the tools at the disposal of the modern state to genocidal ends, their sheer brutality, and a variety of other factors, the ideology of Nazism and the broader historical phenomenon of Fascism in which Nazism is often placed, have become – rightfully so – politically tainted. As and ideology that is at its core racist, anti-Semitic, and genocidal, Nazism and Fascism have become politically discredited throughout most of the world.
Holocaust Deniers primarily seek to remove this taint from the ideology of Nazism by distorting, ignoring, and misrepresenting historical fact and thereby make Nazism and Fascism socially acceptable again. In other words, Holocaust Denial is a form of political agitation in the service of bigotry, racism, and anti-Semitism.
In his book *Lying about Hitler* Richard Evans summarizes the following points as the most frequently held beliefs of Holocaust Deniers:
> (a) The number of Jews killed by the Nazis was far less than 6 million; it amounted to only a few hundred thousand, and was thus similar to, or less than, the number of German civilians killed in Allied bombing raids.
>
> (b) Gas chambers were not used to kill large numbers of Jews at any time.
>
> (c) Neither Hitler nor the Nazi leaderhsip in general had a program of exterminating Europe's Jews; all they wished to do was to deport them to Eastern Europe.
>
> (d) "The Holocaust" was a myth invented by Allied propaganda during the war and sustained since then by Jews who wished to use it for political and financial support for the state of Israel or for themselves. The supposed evidence for the Nazis' wartime mass murder of millions of Jews by gassing and other means was fabricated after the war.
[Richard Evans: *Lying about Hitler. History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial*, New York 2001, p. 110]
## A short history of Holocaust Denial and its methods in the West
Holocaust denialism has its roots in the Nazis' own efforts to hide their crimes from the world. I have gone into this before [here](_URL_0_). Especially the efforts of Sonderkommando 1005 and the destruction of records at the end of the war was intended to hide and deny these crimes and thus portray the regime in a more positive light.
This was , of course, used in Nuremberg and other various post war trials by the defendants, who either pushed a narrative of not having known, not having been involved, or all going back to Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich and others who were dead or otherwise not present at Nuremberg (Eichmann e.g., who was made out by Dieter Wisliceny to be sort of a master mind of the Holocaust). Similarly, several defendants at Nuremberg engage in what has developed to become a classical tactics of deniers, e.g. minimizing the numbers, taking code language out of context with phrases such as resettlement, chalking up deaths to disease etc.
Also, surrounding Nuremberg and the revelations of the Nazi crimes, several different strands of fascist, right-wing extremist, and Nazi political agendas started to deny the Holocaust for a variety for reasons. In Germany, you -- of course -- have all the former Nazis who in order present a clean image of the regime and to rehabilitate themselves and the Nazi regime started to write books where they claimed the Holocaust to have either not happened or be the result of a Jewish conspiracy. For example, Otto von dem Bach-Zelewski, former head of an Einsatzgruppe, who had freely given information at the Nuremberg trials and thus saved his skin started in the 1950s to once again reverse his stand and put out a wealth of denialist literature. Similarly, a plethora of former Wehrmacht generals and officers engaged in their own form of denial by either denying the crimes of the regime outright or by presenting the Wehrmacht as not involved in such crimes. Especially the latter, the myth of the clean Wehrmacht, was one of the most successful forms of Holocaust denial and was very popular in Germany until the 80s and can still be observed today.
Another political agenda that used Holocaust denialism as its tool right after the war, was a certain strand of proto-fascist and right-wing extremist thinkers who wanted to clean fascism and their ideology from the strain of being associated with Hitler and the Holocaust. Douglas Reed is such an example. Reed, who was a prominent journalist in Great Britain, was against Hitler but not against Nationalsocialism (he favored the Otto Strasser position). In the late 40s, early 50s he started publishing books which claimed Hitler had been a Zionist agent and his policy of killing the Jews was a Jewish plot to justify the creation of Israel and which was done against the wishes of many Nazis. At some point it became increasingly hard for him to find publishers, so he moved to South Africa and became involved in supporting apartheid politics in SA and Rhodesia.
Another -- and rather odd -- strand of denialism comes from a pacifists. Pacifism had been very popular during the time between the World Wars because of the effects of WWI and after World War Two, a couple of people of the radical pacifist movement saw their positions threatened because the crimes of the Nazis were a major reason why the war against Nazi Germany was portrayed as a moral and necessary war. In the United States, a former mainstream historian and pacifist activist, Harry Elmer Barnes, started publishing literature that claimed the Holocaust was an Allied invention to justify their war against German, which they had started in 1939.
Another example of this is the -- still cited by Holocaust deniers to this day -- work of Paul Rassinier, who in many a ways is the father of modern Holocaust denial. Rassinier, also a staunch pacifist, was a member of the French resistance, where he -- unsuccessfully -- tried to get the Resistance to engage the Nazi occupation peacefully rather than with violence. Arrested by the Nazis in 1943 and deported to the Buchenwald and later Dora-Mittelbau Concentration Camps, Rassinier did write several books and pamphlets after the war in which he denied the existence of gas chambers and of mass extermination - ostensibly because he had never experienced it.
Rassinier was an odd fellow, whose work could be engaged in its own journal article. He, for example, did not deny the brutality of the camps but instead of holding the SS responsible, he blamed his fellow prisoners. Something, which could and has been engaged in modern scholarship as the result of the perfidious Nazi camp system.
But aside from the reason of Rassinier denying the Holocaust because he never experienced it, he also started to engage in Holocaust denial because he was an anti-Semite and a lot of his writing is informed by his hatred for Jews and the state of Israel, which he saw as based on a Jewish lie and as a threat to peace. The fact that Rassinier was a survivor, an academically trained historian, and a Holocaust denying anti-Semite makes his works favorites in denialist circles to this day.
Holocaust denialism the way we know it today started in the 1960s/70s with the rise of neo-fascist and neo-extreme rightits political movements and causes. Not directly referencing Nazism and old-school fascism as their sources of inspiration but still viewing themselves in the same historical lineage, a lot of these people saw themselves as the right counter-movement to the New Left of 1968 and so on. From Arthur Butz to David Irving, it was this generation who had not themselves taken part in the war and in the Anglosphere rejected the narratives of their elders as the Second World War being just, which formed the most tropes, arguments and methods used by Holocaust deniers to this day. This ranges from the supposedly "scientific" denialism of Leuchter and Zündel to the more subtle relativism of Irving and Nolte to the outright denial of everything like Faurisson's.
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"Because Holocaust denial is a common facet of certain racist propaganda, it is considered a serious societal problem in many places where it occurs and is illegal in several European countries and Israel. Holocaust denial is sponsored by some Middle Eastern governments, including Iran and Syria.\n",
"Holocaust d... |
if you have 2 credit cards, and one has debt, can’t you just use one to pay the other, then the next month do the same, and so on and so on? | Credit cards basically always have debt unless youre paying off your balance. Doing this essentially is like giving the credit card company a bunch of I.O.U's. All you're doing is adding more to your balance that needs to be paid off eventually. | [
"A simple solution to this problem is to call the credit card company, request a new card with a different account number, and cancel the previous account. They will transfer the debt amount from the old account to the new account. This makes companies that have the credit card information unable to continue chargi... |
What is the purpose behind Phillips(cross-head) screw heads? Mechanical efficiency? | > Created by Henry F. Phillips, the Phillips screw drive was purposely designed to cam out when the screw stalled, to prevent the fastener damaging the work or the head, instead damaging the driver. This was caused by the relative difficulty in building torque limiting into the early drivers.
_URL_0_
| [
"The mechanical advantage \"MA\" of a screw is defined as the ratio of axial output force \"F\" applied by the shaft on a load to the rotational force \"F\" applied to the rim of the shaft to turn it. For a screw with no friction (also called an \"ideal screw\"), from conservation of energy the work done \"on\" the... |
Moses was attributed as the author of the first five books of the Bible; at what point did scholars realize this probably wasn't true? Were any of the earliest five books written by the same author? | This is a bit complicated. The main theory on the creation of the Torah or Pentateuch is the Documentary Hypothesis. Basically, it is thought that these first five books are a combination of 4 sources and possibly a 5th editor. The sources are J, E, P, and R. J is the Jehovah source (they used the term Yahweh for God. Jehovah is the transliteration of the term to German, and then English speakers, not realizing how it should be pronounced based on the German language, bastardized it). E is the Elohim source as he called God Elohim. P is the priestly source as they were most like a priest and were more concerned about that aspect. R is the redactor who edited the works together and added a bit as well. There may be another editor as well who cleaned it up.
These sources can be picked out quite well, and it explains why there are multiple tellings of the same stories.
These sources would have been known early on, especially as some were based in specific geographic areas. J and E, for instance, were most likely court writers, one for the northern kingdom and the other for the southern kingdom.
These works would have circulated independently for decades if not centuries. It wouldn’t be until much later that the Torah, as we know it, was compiled. And even then, it wasn’t attributed to Moses. That occurred more towards the end of the Babylonian captivity, when they were regrouping and were looking at their cultural heroes.
While Moses would largely then be attributed as the author, there were scholars who rejected that notion. But when modern Biblical scholarship began in the 1800s, the idea that Moses was the author had been ignored and the Documentary Hypothesis came out. | [
"According to tradition, Moses was the author of the first five books of the Bible, including the book of Genesis. Philosophers and theologians such as Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), Benedict Spinoza (1632–1677), and Richard Simon (1638–1712) questioned Mosaic authorship. Spinoza said Moses could not have written the p... |
Can I jump from the ISS in such a way I fall to the earth? | Nope. The ISS orbits at 7660 m/s, and your speed determines the height at which you orbit. If you jumped really hard backwards to give yourself a 10 m/s boost, you'd slow down to 7750 m/s and orbit slightly lower. Either way, you'd eventually slow down due to the tiny but still present air drag and reenter the atmosphere, but it would take months.
How fast would you have to jump in order to succeed in deorbiting yourself? I was surprised that it was only about 10x as much. The space shuttle's deorbit burn was apparently just in the 60 to 170 m/s range (delta v), and it used about the same orbit as the ISS.
_URL_0_ | [
"In the case of an abort to orbit, where the shuttle is unable to reach the ISS orbit and the thermal protection system inspections suggest the shuttle cannot return to Earth safely, the ISS may be capable of descent down to meet the shuttle. Such a procedure is known as a joint underspeed recovery.\n",
"BULLET::... |
Why do cinnamon rolls get hotter in the center than the outer layer when you microwave them? | If they're like cinnamon rolls where i'm from, it's because the crusty exterior has very little water content, compared to the soft dough inside. A Microwave heats by exciting the molecules in the food, those that get most effected are liquids (water), fats & sugars. | [
"Another misconception is that microwave ovens cook food \"from the inside out\", meaning from the center of the entire mass of food outwards. This idea arises from heating behavior seen if an absorbent layer of water lies beneath a less absorbent drier layer at the surface of a food; in this case, the deposition o... |
why do beverages like coffee and beer taste better now than when i was young? | My theory:
When we were younger, our natural affinity for taste is sweet. Somewhere along the lines of becoming a teen our taste buds became apt to begin liking coffee and beer's bitter taste either through acquired desensitization or enough social norms that say it's what we should like and eventually it becomes that.
Many teens start drinking coffee due to academic pressure. Many teens also start drinking alcohol due to academic pressure. It's not the taste at first we desire. It's the chemical effects. | [
"Taste preferences and eating behaviors in children are molded at a young age by factors, such as parents' habits and advertisements. One study compared what adults and children considered when choosing beverages. For the most part, adults considered whether beverages had sugar, caffeine, and additives. Some of the... |
How did the transition to an amniotic egg happen? | Plenty of amphibians lay their eggs on land, so that isn't really a huge issue. The main issue is how the extraembryonic membranes actually evolved; that is substantially more complicated and not fully understood. | [
"The amnion is a membrane that closely covers the embryo when first formed. It fills with the amniotic fluid which causes the amnion to expand and become the amniotic sac which serves to provide a protective environment for the developing embryo or fetus. The amnion, along with the chorion, the yolk sac and the all... |
how can a lawn survive a full winter covered by snow, but start dying and turn bright green from 2 days of being covered by a tarp (or something similar)? | This is all about temperature. In the cold the grass is dormant, most processes shut down. In the summer, the grass is going full tilt with its biological processes- covering it with a tarp is like putting saran wrap over someones mouth while they are trying to run a marathon. | [
"The plant has proven resilient at times; it has been noted to persist in dry conditions and after being mowed when it appeared in the lawn of a home. It can also live without sunlight in darker areas of the forest understory, albeit in sterile form.\n",
"Others theorize that leaves which remain on a tree due to ... |
How was the term 'heterosexual' used to refer to a perversion? | Can you pull out the quote/citation from the article? I've only ever read of "heterosexual" being a sort of reaction/companion term to "homosexual," so I'm intrigued but confused! | [
"Although some early writers used the adjective \"homosexual\" to refer to any single-gender context (such as an all-girls school), today the term implies a sexual aspect. The term homosocial is now used to describe single-sex contexts that are not of a romantic or sexual nature.\n",
"Homosexuality, now widely ac... |
why did martin shkreli raise the price of life saving medicine a ridiculous amount? | Why did you ask your boss for a raise, your parents to give you more money for your allowance? Same exact reason. | [
"In October 1996, Eli Lilly and Company agreed to pay Neurocrine $74 million over five years to develop drugs for obesity and Alzheimer's disease based on its research of CRF-binding protein-ligand inhibitors.\n",
"In September 2015, Martin Shkreli was criticized by several health organizations for obtaining manu... |
if we couldn't stop ebola from spreading from 1 person to over 6,000 people (current estimation), how can we stop it from spreading from the 6k infected people to a much larger number? | There's lots of parts to the containment problem.
Problem 1: "We don't know there's an ebola outbreak"
This is a problem we had when one person had ebola. We didn't know anything about it until it had spread quite a bit already. That's no longer a problem
Problem 2: We have nothing in place to fight an ebola outbreak
This was a problem when we realised what was happening, but we've since moved people and resources in to help deal with the problem.
Problem 3: People don't know what precautions to take against ebola
This is one that is still ongoing, and is being tackled by trying to inform people.
Problem 4: People don't trust that help is genuine, or don't believe the threat is real.
This is another similar problem and it is partly borne out of the fact that the most affected areas are very poor areas with very little education. 3 & 4 would be far less of a problem in more developed areas.
Problem 5: We don't have effective treatments for ebola
Partly this is down to there not being a lot of effort put into researching ebola compared to illnesses that effect more people. If ebola spreads, there is going to be a greater and greater effort in trying to cure it as soon as possible.
All of that adds up to it being harder for the disease to spread, the more it spreads. It doesn't mean it's not going to spread, but it's not exponentially easier for it to spread as more people are infected. | [
"On 29 November 2014, a new 15-minute Ebola test was reported that if successful, \"not only gives patients a better chance of survival, but it prevents transmission of the virus to other people.\" The new equipment, about the size of a laptop and solar-powered, allows testing to be done in remote areas.\n",
"On ... |
How and why did the Republic of China (Taiwan) keep China's seat in the UN for so long? How did the Nationalist government go from being recognized as the sole representative for China to being denied membership even as Taiwan? | At the time of the defeat of the Republic of China forces by the PRC, and the former's subsequent retreat to Taiwan, there was no disagreement as to whether or not there was one or more "China". Chiang and the Guomingdang were under the conviction that the Republic of China was the sole authority over the Chinese mainland, and that their retreat to Taiwan was simply a tactical strategy that was to only be a temporary setback. Chiang was known to have referred to Taipei as the "wartime capital". Mao and the PRC viewed Taiwan as a renegade province that was the last remaining stronghold of the doomed Republic of China. Both sides agreed that there was ONLY one China; they just disagreed on who was the ruler of this one China.
Henry Kissinger stated in his book "On China", that "“Washington and its allies periodically floated the idea of recognizing the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China as separate states—the so-called two China solution. Both Chinese sides vociferously rejected this proposal on the ground that it would prevent them from fulfilling a sacred national obligation to liberate the other. Against its initial judgment, Washington affirmed Taipei’s stance that the Republic of China was the “real” Chinese government, entitled to China’s seat in the United Nations and other international institutions.”
Excerpt From: Henry Kissinger. “On China.” p. 321
The United States, Chian's primary ally, had little appetite in supporting a reconquest of the Chinese mainland by the ROC, especially after the Korean War. While Chiang Kai Shek was in favor, there was no pragmatic and realistic proposal that was persuasive enough to gather US support, which would have been necessary. This seemed especially so after Eisenhower withdrew the 7th fleet from the Taiwanese Strait, as he argued that the 7th fleet's mission in preventing attacks from both sides effectively implied that "“the U.S. Navy was required to serve as a defensive arm of Communist China” (p.324)
In fact, while Kissinger isn't a historian, he is undoubtedly one of the most influential figures, if not THE most, in US-PRC relations. A huge portion of his book "On China" focuses on the development of relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China, and covers the delicate situation Taiwan posed behind every conversation. Kissinger discusses how at the time, capitalist and 'democratic' ROC was supported by the US and its allies, while the socialist world dominated by the Sino-Soviet bloc were fully in support of recognizing the PRC. This caused a massive schism in the UN regarding recognition of who held the seat of China, especially considering that it held a permanent seat status in the UN Security Council.
There are way too many pages and things to cite in his book, but Kissinger effectively spells out how the transition from recognizing Taipei to Beijing was gradual and strategic, used as a means to appeal to the Chinese leadership at a time when both viewed Moscow as a greater threat than each other. Once the socialist bloc AND the United States began recognizing the PRC, it largely became inevitable.
I can't really add anything to you last question about Enver Hoxha, but I can say from Kissinger's work and first-hand sources I have spoken with, (including the Shanghai Communique and the Republic of China's constitution), the reason there was never a "two-state" solution whereby both the PRC and ROC could both hold seats in the UN is because neither side was willing to accept anything more than a "One China".
The question that now remains is whether or not that stance is mutual between Taipei and Beijing. Frequent surveys of the Taiwanese population point to a growing national identity as "Taiwanese" as opposed to Chinese; however, China's threat to use military action should Taiwan ever declare independence has left many people supporting Taiwan's current quasi-independent nation status rather than declaring full-blown independence. While the "One China Policy" is effectively void at the realistic level, it nonetheless is the official stance at the political level.
Taiwan (ROC) has consistently made efforts to enter organizations including UNESCO and the World Bank on a special state status similar to 'Palestine' and 'Hong Kong', which further supports their moving away from the One China Policy; however, this is a unilateral suggestion as China(PRC) is firmly convinced that Taiwan will ultimately return to mainland control, and is unwilling to relent on Taiwan's 'renegade province' status.
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"BULLET::::- China's seat was originally held by the Nationalist government of the Republic of China. However, it lost the Chinese Civil War and retreated to the island of Taiwan in 1949. The Communist Party won control of mainland China and established the People's Republic of China. In 1971, UN General Assembly R... |
why is it that 4k makes such a big difference in quality against 1080p for a videogame but barley for a tv series/movie | The difference is between something that is already rendered vs. something that is being rendered at that time.
1080p resolution is 1,920x1,080, while 4k resolution is 3840×2160. That means that 4k has _a lot_ more pixels available to it and, if those pixels are utilized, will produce a much sharper image. However, the resolution available on your TV is only part of the equation; you also need to think about the resolution of the _source_ files.
If a video is recorded at 1080p, then it doesn't matter if you play it back on a 4k TV - the source video only has 1,920x1,080 resolution so that is all that you have available; some TVs or decoders can "upsample" but as a general rule you can't get clearer than the source file - you can't magically make more pixels. Video games, by contrast, are being rendered _at that moment_ so if you have a console that can render at 4k, it will do so (3840×2160) and if you only have a 1080p TV it won't (1,920x1,080).
If you are watching 4k video (the source file) then you will see a difference from a 1080p source file, but odds are you are not getting 4k video so you are limited to the lower resolution that is being provided to you. | [
"The changes in the 2008 ruleset were made because 1080p was getting more and more popular and the authors felt it was necessary to lower the 720p bitrate minimum as well to show x264 lovers WMV is equal quality. The video size wasn't determined by the length of the movie anymore, but by the minimum bitrate.\n",
... |
why is primer needed for a paint job? why not just use paint? | 1.Better paint adhesion
2. Protects the painted material
3. Prolongs life of paint
4. Hides imperfections or former paint color that can bleed through
It is a pain in the butt step but if you have ever tried to turn an olive green room to canary yellow you will get it. Also if there are any oily/greasy spots primer can help absorb it so it doesn't affect the final paint color.
I am not a pro but I have painted exterior and interior walls for the last 20yrs. Primer is important especially exterior. It's worth the effort. | [
"Primer is a paint product that allows finishing paint to adhere much better than if it were used alone. It is designed to adhere to surfaces and to form a binding layer that is better prepared to receive the paint. Compared to paint, a primer is not intended to be used as the outermost durable finish and can inste... |
When did humans first start doing push-ups? | I want to start by saying that some preliminary research into push ups and press ups as a term I found that the first recorded use of the phrases were recorded in the early 20th century (_URL_1_ and _URL_0_)
The legend of Milo of Croton using a bull calf in his training. It was said that he would lift a calf and either put it on his shoulders or just lift it, and would do so everyday as the calf grew. Unfortunately, this may be just legends as the only sources that I can find report Milo lifting a calf on his shoulders through a stadium (Galen, Exhortation 13) and running with it.
Equally, as you mentioned weightlifting, on this page from the Perseus website (_URL_2_) you can see there is an inscribed stone weighing 316lbs that reads "Bybon son of Phola (?), has lifted me over [his] head with one hand."
I hope that my sources there aren't too shaky for you, I'm sure there are others who will be able to provide you with more in depth answers. | [
"The pushup aspect of the awareness campaign proved value in the organic growth of campaign's mission because it garnered much attention when the pushups were done in a public setting which ultimately led to people asking what the pushups were all about. This ongoing strategy combined with leveraging social media t... |
why do jury verdicts need to be unanimous? | Because we have agreed that to convict someone the standard they are held to is "beyond a reasonable doubt." That is an extremely high bar, and it is assumed that if as a juror you don't believe that burden has been met, then the person is not guilty.
Most civil cases don't require unanimous verdicts. The burden there is a preponderance of the evidence, which is a much lighter burden.. | [
"Unanimous jury verdicts have been standard in US American law. This requirement was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1897, but the standard was relaxed in 1972 in two criminal cases. As of 1999 over thirty states had laws allowing less than unanimity in civil cases, but Oregon and Louisiana are the only states which... |
why can you just tag the base to get a runner out at first in baseball but it seems like you need to tag the runner himself all other times? | It's an issue of "forced" or not. If the runner has an alternative destination then you have to tag them, if they do not...you can tag the base. In the case of a runner stealing from first to second, the runner could return to first base if they decided to do so, so...you must touch them. When the player has just hit the ball, they _must_ go to first base, so...you can just touch the base. For an advanced (!) example, if there is a runner on first and someone hits the ball, the runner on first can be made "out" by just touching second base, because the runner on second can't go back to first base because it's occupied by the person who just hit the ball. | [
"Base runners may attempt to advance at any time while the ball is alive, even before or while the pitcher is throwing a pitch. The catcher—or pitcher, in lieu of delivering the pitch—often tries to prevent this by throwing the ball to one of the infielders in order to tag the runner. This \"pick-off attempt\" is u... |
Can insects get heat stroke or hypothermia? | Insects are cold blooded, which means they mostly get their body heat from the environment. As such, they can tolerate a wider range of body temperatures than a warm blooded animal, which strives to keep its temperature within a few degrees of a specific temperature. Heat tolerance is going to vary from insect to insect. There are arctic insects which can survive being frozen solid. There are Japanese honeybees that can tolerate body temperatures up to 115F and desert ants that can survive for short periods when the ground temperature is 140F. | [
"The body temperature, and therefore activity level, of this scorpionfly depends on its absorption of short-wave and long-wave radiation rather than surrounding air temperatures (by which it is completely unaffected). The boundary layer of snow that the insect occupies has very low thermal conductance, and so the i... |
what is the difference between sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming? | In sleep paralysis you don't feel asleep, just trapped in a sleeping body. In lucid dreaming you feel freed into a dream world. So they are basically opposite, even though they both result from the conscious realization that you are sleeping. | [
"Lucid dreaming occurs when one realizes that the events experienced within a dream are bizarre or would not occur in one's waking life. As such, the inability to notice the bizarre nature of the dream has been coined as an example of change blindness, also known as individuals who are non-lucid dreamers. However, ... |
Is it true that, during Medieval Times, the court Jester could often tell the King frankly what others would end up being beheaded for? What was the dynamic behind this relationship? | Please try to stick to the topic of court jesters and make sure your answers are factual and source-based. I have removed all off-topic comments and speculation. | [
"There is some historical debate over the identity of the man who beheaded the King, who was masked at the scene. It is known the regicides approached Richard Brandon, the common Hangman of London, but that he refused, and contemporary sources do not generally identify him as the King's headsman. Ellis's Historical... |
how does electricity get into a battery | The electricity starts as chemical energy. When a regular one use battery is built it has two different salts that will react with each other loaded into it separated by a porous membrane called a salt bridge. Electrodes are placed into each solution of an appropriate type for the salts being used. The reaction doesn't take place until something connects the two electrodes, because in order for the reaction to happen electrons need to flow between them. Generally one of the electrodes is slowly turned into more salt and the other collects more metal from the salt. How much the reaction wants to happen is what "pushes" the electrons through the wires making electrical energy.
For rechargeable batteries plugging the battery in to charge forces the electricity to run the opposite direction undoing this reaction and allowing it to happen again when it's unplugged. | [
"A battery is a device consisting of one or more electrochemical cells with external connections provided to power electrical devices such as flashlights, mobile phones, and electric cars. When a battery is supplying electric power, its positive terminal is the cathode and its negative terminal is the anode. The te... |
why are blackberry phones considered more secure/unhackable compared to apple or android phones? | I believe it is the same reason Macs seemed more virus-resistant for quite awhile, too-- because fewer people use it, fewer people are creating viruses for it. Why create a massive virus to affect a minority of users when you can put your effort into hacking Apple or Android, which take the largest part of the market? It's more secure because there are fewer users. It's also likely more secure due to fewer app options. | [
"The primary competitors of the BlackBerry are Android smartphones and the iPhone. BlackBerry has struggled to compete against both and its market share has plunged since 2011, leading to speculation that it will be unable to survive as an independent going concern. However, it has managed to maintain significant p... |
why does non-dairy creamer dissolve more quickly in hot coffee/tea than cold? | When something is hot, the molecules are moving around in it much faster. That's actually what heat means on a physical level. All that moving around is kind of like stirring on the molecular level. Things get mixed by the motion and there's more energy available for the chemical reactions that we see as dissolving. | [
"Non-dairy creamers, commonly called tea whiteners or coffee whiteners are liquid or granular substances intended to substitute for milk or cream as an additive to coffee, tea, hot chocolate or other beverages. They do not contain lactose and therefore are commonly described as being non-dairy products, although ma... |
What makes and erupting volcano like the 1883 eruption of Anak-Krakatau loud enough to be heard at great distances? | Things in general that make an eruption explosive:
**High volatile content**. This is chiefly water, though also carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and methane dissolved within the magma. As this magma nears the surface the confining pressure is lowered, these compounds exsolve, formung bubbles of gas (which means a large volume increase) and can cause a runaway effect which results in a violent explosion and tearing apart of the magma and wall-rock into fragments (ash, or tephra if you want to include all size ranges).
**High silica content**. Almost all magmas are from partial melts of silicate rock (some very rare ones are based on carbonate melts). The higher the silica content, the more viscous the magma/lava will be due to the polymerisation that occurs with silica chains. This makes the magma more resistant to flow.
**Low temperature**. Obviously, all magmas are hot, but high silica ones tend to melt at lower temperatures (700-800 ⁰C) than low silica ones (1000-1100 °C). Temperature is also another control on the viscosity, the lower the temperature the more viscous and resistant to flow a magma will be.
Seeing as high silica magmas are formed at lower temperatures, this makes them by far the most viscous. Add to this the fact that they are able to dissolve large amounts of water in, and you have a potentially explosive eruption waiting to happen. Krakatoa is part of the Indonesian island arc (part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, which you may have heard of), where volcanoes are formed because water is transferred from a subducting oceanic plate into the mantle, which causes melting. So there is going to be a significant water content in the magma generated.
To try and get some relative sense of eruption scales, let’s consider the concept of Volcanic Explosivity Index. VEI is an open ended logarithmic scale which rates eruptions based on the volume of tephra output. Something like the eruptions at Hawaii would be a 0 or between 0 and 1, as they are not really explosive at all - they are what is described as effusive. Geologists can carry out fieldwork looking at the thickness of volcanic deposits and how widespread their occurrence is in order to estimate VEI for past eruptions; the biggest super volcanic eruptions are rated at 8 (past eruptions of the Yellowstone caldera and a few other supervolcanoes). With modern eruptions, the height of the eruption plume and duration of the main eruptive phase can also be used to assign the VEI.
Krakatoa’s 1883 eruption has been assigned a VEI of 6. That’s a big deal. Check out this footage of Mt Tavurvur (a stratovolcano in Papua New Guinea, also part of the Pacific Ring of Fire) erupting in 2014: [holy smokin toledos!](_URL_0_) I always think that particular shockwave feels pretty earth shattering just listening on earphones, but imagine what it must have felt like in person. That eruption has a VEI of 3. Remember the scale is logarithmic, so each whole number up represents ten times more material than the last. Krakatoa was about as big as an eruption you get before you move into the realm of supervolcanoes, which come from much larger volumes of magma sitting in the crust, spread out over areas of hundreds of km.
Edit: changed ‘high silica’ to ‘low silica’ in relation to magmas with melting temps of 1000-1100 °C.
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"On Tuesday 7 September, Mount Sinabung erupted yet again, its biggest eruption yet since it had become active on 29 August 2010 and experts warned of more eruptions to come. Indonesia's chief vulcanologist, Surono, said \"It was the biggest eruption yet and the sound was heard from 8 kilometres away. The smoke was... |
What's the point of Machiavelli? | Very general answer to the question: history is not science. The point of history is not to get at the true or right way to understand life, nature, human beings and cultures.
Instead, the point of history is to understand the way the way people thought and believed about the way things actually were. (Even discovering the way things actually were, i.e., factual history, is often less useful than understanding how people generally believed things to be.)
Another way of saying the same thing is to say that history is *descriptive*, not *normative*. History describes what happened and what was done or said about it... not what should have been done or what is the right way to approach the experience of life, society & culture.
So to answer the specific question: Machiavelli is studied today because his work was very popular and widely read in his own time period in Europe, and has been popular and ever more widely read around the world in all the time periods since then. And it is every bit as interesting that we regard some of Machiavelli's opinions and advice as "wrong" today as it is that tens of thousands of his contemporaries regarded him as "right". Or even that they regarded some of his ideas as "wrong" that we or another culture might regard as "right." Their opinion differs from ours, and that difference of opinion can be used to derive descriptions of cultural change. Machiavelli's texts are a touchstone that professional historians (and the rest of us) can use to gauge differences in fashions, cultural beliefs & practices, language, power relations, attitudes towards war and morality, and so forth. | [
"Machiavelli's promotion of ambition among leaders while denying any higher standard meant that he encouraged risk-taking, and innovation, most famously the founding of new modes and orders. His advice to princes was therefore certainly not limited to discussing how to maintain a state. It has been argued that Mach... |
If you vibrate the atoms of an object at a high percentage of the speed of light, would that object experience time dilation? | not sure about the time dilation aspect of it, but if you are vibrating the atoms at close to the speed of light, then you have to put in quite a bit of energy, and you might end up breaking the chemical bonds and killing the organism. | [
"An ideal impact to a structure is a perfect impulse, which has an infinitely small duration, causing a constant amplitude in the frequency domain; this would result in all modes of vibration being excited with equal energy. The impact hammer test is designed to replicate this; however, in reality a hammer strike c... |
Why does the interface between air and water look like a mirror, when seen from the water? | This is a phenomenon called [Total Internal Reflection](_URL_0_). This happens when the medium in which the light is travelling has a higher refractive index than the medium at the other side of a boundary, and the light is at a high enough angle (depending on the refractive index difference) with respect to the interface. | [
"Water-air interfaces provide another source of circular polarization. Sunlight that gets scattered back up towards the surface is linearly polarized. If this light is then totally internally reflected back down, its vertical component undergoes a phase shift. To an underwater observer looking up, the faint light o... |
what is database indexing? | A database is like a library - it holds information.
A completely unindexed table is called a "heap." It's analogous to the books just being piled in a heap on the floor. The info's still in there, but it's going to take forever to find the exact piece you need.
When the books are all on the shelves in the correct order, that's comparable to a clustered index. You can probably find what you need by walking the stacks until you get to the Dewey Decimal number you need and looking around.
The card catalog is a nonclustered index. You can look stuff up in the there and then walk to a specific section and shelf and pick up the book you need. | [
"A database index is a data structure that improves the speed of data retrieval operations on a database table at the cost of additional writes and storage space to maintain the index data structure. Indexes are used to quickly locate data without having to search every row in a database table every time a database... |
How did Cadillac become (for a time) the premiere American luxury automobile? | Prior to 1930, the three dominant luxury car manufacturers in the US were Packard, Peerless and Pierce Arrow. All three out sold Cadillac and dominated the much more limited production by companies like Dusenburg, Stutz, Brewster and Locomoble. General Motors tried to enter the high end luxury car market with Cadillac, but it wasn't until they introduced the V-16 engine that Cadillac really got a toe hold in this market.
The Great Depression also helped. Peerless had been declining during the late 1920s and went bankrupt in 1932. Pierce Arrow was bought out by Studebaker in 1928 and was in dire straights before Pierce Arrow was able to regain its independence. Pierce Arrow never recovered and finally folded in 1938. Packard was able to ride out the Depression by introducing lower cost models, like the 120. Packard was still the leader in the high end luxury car market and was selling three times as many cars as Cadillac as late as 1948.
However, many of these Packards were lower cost cars, competing in the Oldsmobile, Mercury and Chrysler price range. That devalued the Packard mystique. Harley Earl also began to style better looking Cadillacs, introducing such innovations as tail fins and automatic transmissions. GM was also able to retool the Cadillac production line every year, where as Packard could only change their body styles every three years. When Chrysler bought Briggs in 1954, Packard lost its provider of body shells and had to develop their own in house source for body work. Quality declined drastically after 1954 as their fit and finish was certainly below the standards of a premium luxury car. A merger with Studebaker did not help either. By 1950 Cadillac became the leader in the luxury car market segment. Except for a short period around 2000, when Lincoln briefly out sold it, Cadillac has been the premiere American luxury car brand.
Sources: "Fifties Flashback : The American Car" by Dennis Adler
"Packard" by Dennis Adler
"More than they Promised: The Studebaker Story" by Thomas Bonsall
"The Complete History of General Motors: 1908-1986" by Richard Langworth and Jan Norbye
| [
"By the time General Motors purchased the company in 1909, Cadillac had already established itself as one of America's premier luxury carmakers. The complete interchangeability of its precision parts had allowed it to lay the foundation for the modern mass production of automobiles. It was at the forefront of techn... |
why are polygraph tests inadmissable in court? | They're not considered very trustworthy. They really only measure heartrate, and while it is common for your heartrate to elevate while lying, your heartrate can elevate for a LOT of reasons- like stress for example. Do you know what's stressful? Being accused of things, while taking a polygraph test. | [
"When polygraphs are used as a screening tool (in national security matters and for law enforcement agencies for example) the level of accuracy drops to such a level that \"Its accuracy in distinguishing actual or potential security violators from innocent test takers is insufficient to justify reliance on its use ... |
How much resistance was there to West Virginia becoming a state? | At the national level opposition to West Virginia being admitted into the Union was over West Virginia's reluctance to free it's slave population. While it is true that 87% of Virginia's slave population was centered in the east, as a result of decades of political disenfranchisement and economic stagnation(as well as the basic economic realities of the early to mid 19th century) much of the political power in Western Virginia was held in the hands of the elite who often employed large numbers of slaves for traditional agricultural works as well as coal mining etc.. | [
"The Northern hold on Charleston and most of the western part of Virginia created a larger problem. Virginia already had seceded from the Union, but the western part was under Union control. The issue of statehood was raised. So amid the tumultuous Civil War, West Virginia officially became a state through Presiden... |
Why should vaccinated individuals stay away from immunocompromised individuals or pregnant women? | Well, first, unvaccinated people should stay away from the pregnant or immunocompromised, for the most part, but, there are circumstances where RECENTLY vaccinated people who were given a [live, attentuated vaccine](_URL_1_) should do so.
An attenuated vaccine uses live organism or virus, that has mutated to become less virulent, but in effect does cause an infection, that is easily cleared, resulting in immunity. Examples include: measles, mumps, rubella, polio, chicken pox, influenza (certain vaccine forms), typhoid, rota, yellow fever, tuberculosis, typhus.
Individuals given these vaccines will shed live organism for a period of time, and there is a small chance of reversion to a virulent form. The Sabin Polio virus, for example, has a [known rate](_URL_0_) of causing disease.
The pathogens being shed, although usually still attenuated, can still cause illness in the compromised. | [
"In humans, vaccination has become readily available, and is important to the prevention of some diseases like polio, rubella, and smallpox, among others. There has been no association between congenital malformations and vaccination, as shown in Finland in which expecting mothers received the oral polio vaccine an... |
it's nearly 2012...eli5 what problems are still preventing a hoverboard from being created and mass marketed. | This isn't my area of expertise, but I can think of a few reasons:
1) The amount of energy needed to power the device. The weight of a person plus the board plus the engine could easily weigh over 200 lb. That means that when the board is hovering in place, it must generate 200 lb of force upward to prevent the board from falling. This isn't an insane amount of force in terms of building a device, but you might have to use gasoline for power or constantly replace D batteries. Either way, it's a lot of power for a modified skateboard, making it impractical and too expensive.
2) Safety problems. Other forms of transportation, such as cars, motorcycles, and bikes are dangerous enough. A hoverboard has the potential for some really bad crash landings. A similar issue is that if a hoverboard malfunctions, causing an injury, expect a lawsuit.
3) What purpose does a hoverboard actually serve? Could a motorized scooter work just as well? Don't get me wrong, hoverboards sound cool, but they probably won't have a purpose beyond being a really cool gadget. | [
"As a result of high oil prices following the 1973 oil crisis and the 1979 energy crisis, the profitability of the first generation of commercial hovercraft was badly hit, causing some operators to lose money and provoking requests from customers for more fuel efficient vehicles. Advances were quickly made in skirt... |
We have split atoms but could we split anything smaller than that with a similar nuclear reaction? | In a lot of particle collider experiments, protons are smashed into each other and break apart. | [
"The U-235 nucleus can split in many ways, provided the atomic numbers add up to 92 and the atomic masses add to 236 (uranium plus the extra neutron). The following equation shows one possible split, namely into strontium-95 (Sr), xenon-139 (Xe), and two neutrons (n), plus energy:\n",
"This splitting is called fi... |
why being quiet is so taboo. | Being quiet in a social context is often a symptom of being shy, introverted, or both. Most people are extraverts, and because they're the majority, they don't learn about or understand introverts. They can only interpret quietness according to how *they* might choose to be quiet, and not why an introvert or shy person is quiet. | [
"Within one week of its publication, \"Forbes' \" Jenna Goudreau noted that \"Quiet\" was featured by several major media outlets and was shared extensively across the Web, Goudreau observing that readers said they felt validated and seen for the first time. Cain spoke at leadership, management, training and educat... |
In movies like Braveheart, leaders often give inspiring speeches. Assuming this was accurate, how would thousands of foot soldiers hear this leader right before battle? | Just a note - you've placed Patton's speech in the same way as those highly fictionalized accounts of Braveheart and The Last Samurai.
Patton's speech to the 3rd Army is a well documented historical event. It occurred on June 5th 1944, the eve of the Allied invasion of Nazi Europe. The text of the speech can be found in Charles M. Province's *The Unknown Patton* (page 32 specifically), which is a 3rd hand account of the speech which compiles the text from a variety of other accounts. | [
"Joseph's message, often called a speech, is frequently cited as one of the greatest American speeches. Coincidentally, Arthur \"Ad\" Chapman, the translator of Joseph's message, was also the man who had fired at a Nez Perce truce party before the Battle of White Bird Canyon nearly four months earlier, thus setting... |
how did people living before the modern ages survive and get different sources of food which grew far outside their nation if global shipping came very later on? | What makes you think that the essential vitamins weren't available locally?
Vitamins are basic chemicals needed for life. Any stable ecosystem will have sources of them. | [
"Life was, however, not quite idyllic. Northern Coast Salish and Wakashan from harder climates to the north were wont to raid. Food resources varied, and resources were not always sufficient to last through to spring. There is evidence that an extensive trade and potlatch network evolved to help distribute resource... |
A family member recently told me that slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War. Can anyone provide me with articles to show him he is incorrect? | Linking to the FAQ or previous answers is not intended to discourage further questions or discussion. It's just a timesaver.
In this case, there's the FAQ section "The Civil War and Slavery" at _URL_0_ . /u/Borimi had a shorter answer, but the first two articles by /u/Georgy_K_Zhukov are pretty definitive and well-sourced (20-item bibliography, many quotations from primary sources). The primary answer under the second item, "Why was there a Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?" (at _URL_2_ ) is newer, and there are many more replies on various other topics there. Though at most he must have just polished the previous version in the first item, "Was the American Civil War about more than just slavery?" (at _URL_1_ ).
| [
"Albert Taylor Bledsoe (November 9, 1809 – December 8, 1877) was an American Episcopal priest, attorney, professor of mathematics, and officer in the Confederate army and was best known as a staunch defender of slavery and, after the South lost the American Civil War, an architect of the Lost Cause. He was the auth... |
how low would gravity need to be for a human to survive falling at its terminal velocity? | Depends what you land on. Humans have survived falls at terminal velocity on earth: it's just not pleasant, and not massively likely. | [
"Based on wind resistance, for example, the terminal velocity of a skydiver in a belly-to-earth (i.e., face down) free-fall position is about 195 km/h (122 mph or 54 m/s). This velocity is the asymptotic limiting value of the acceleration process, because the effective forces on the body balance each other more and... |
why do people irrationally hate things that are popular, e.g fortnite, musicians etc. | In the beginning, you don’t care about the thing. But after countless mentions from TV, friends, social media, family, school, etc., you start getting tired/annoyed at the thing. And thus, you start hating the thing.
Also, this is like being Pavlovian trained to hate the thing, just like making your favorite song your alarm clock. | [
"All the things that happened were really inspiring, because it was frustrating ... But for me at least, every time we get really frustrated and you're hitting a wall and everything is chaos, it just makes the music that much better, because you have passion—even if it's negative. That's sometimes better, actually.... |
How to understand vacuum electrical permittivity and magnetic permeability? | > The speed of light in a vacuum is defined as (electrical permittivity * magnetic permeability)-0.5, which happens to be c in a vacuum. These constants only apply to E & M, and are therefore part of a much "smaller" theory than c itself.
the vacuum permeability and vacuum permittivity are linked through the speed of light which is a fundamental constant of nature. think μ = 1/(εc²) that's really just one constant, not two. the other can be derived from the first one. | [
"It is a useful unit for electromagnetism because, in a vacuum, an electric field of one statvolt/cm has the same energy density as a magnetic field of one gauss. Likewise, a plane wave propagating in a vacuum has perpendicular electric and magnetic fields such that for every gauss of magnetic field intensity there... |
Self Polymer | For step growth polymers, the monomers generally require a relatively large amount of activation energy that is usually provided by heat. Keep the monomer cool enough and you shouldn't need to worry much about unwanted polymerization. Additionally, if the monomer is a solid it can't really undergo much polymerization unless you dissolve it or melt it. There are probably stabilizers that could be added for certain specific monomers, like a base if the polymerization occurred under acidic conditions.
Monomers for chain growth polymers are often a little harder. Styrene polymerizes via a radical mechanism and you only need a few radicals to get a lot of polymer, so you can do things like storing in UV-blocking bottles to avoid radical generation. Usually a stabilizer chemical is also added to these types of monomers that grabs and holds any unwanted radicals (termed radical scavenger or anti-oxidant). These stabilizers usually need to be removed before you can get the polymerization you want. | [
"e-Polymers is a peer-reviewed internet journal under the auspices of the European Polymer Federation. In the area of polymer science and engineering, it makes novel scientific and technological results available both in academia and industry, and basically free of charge. It has become a respected journal with an ... |
Why does quantum tunnelling not effect the result demonstrated the Ramsauer-Townsend effect? | As far as I understand, the Ramsauer-Townsend effect is usually described as an electron with energy E > 0 passing a potential well (an atom) with E < 0. It thus doesn't have to tunnel (which happens when the energy of the electron is lower than the potential barrier), but it does at least experience scattering. | [
"Fundamental quantum mechanical concepts are central to this phenomenon, which makes quantum tunnelling one of the novel implications of quantum mechanics. Quantum tunneling is projected to create physical limits to the size of the transistors used in microprocessors, due to electrons being able to \"tunnel\" past ... |
why do we believe that "this is the one" and fear we "will never meet somebody like him/her in our life again"? | I don't believe either of those things. I just want to be clear that not everyone believes this. Or feels this. | [
"I never believed I was anybody special. I still don't think so, nor did I ever believe that anyone would give a hoot hearing about who I was, where I came from, what I did at various stages of my life, and why. I am convinced the world would function equally well, or equally badly, with or without me. - Andrew Las... |
why is ios said to almost never be affected by viruses, whereas other operating systems are? | With mobile phone operating systems, a challenge is getting malicious code onto a user's device. With web browsers limiting plugins like Flash and Java, and blocking installation of apps from outside offical sources, that is a very challenging task. A properly implemented permissions system would also limit what malicious code could do without asking the user for permission to do so.
Desktop operating systems are generally far more permissive on what programs can be run, and unfortunately that also runs the risk of executing malicious code or code with a flaw that allows malicious code to run | [
"Mobile phones used to have proprietary operating system unique only to the manufacturer which had the beneficial effect of making it harder to design a mass attack. However, the rise of software platforms and operating systems shared by many manufacturers such as Java, Microsoft operating systems, Linux, or Symbia... |
Can many small, quieter speakers produce sound equivalent to a single larger, louder speaker? | Yes, due to a principle called constructive interference, the sound waves with matching and in phase frequencies will build on eachother, making the amplitude higher and the volume louder.
Think of a crowd cheering in a stadium for a simple example.
However, from an engineering point of view the sound would probably sound distorted unless you were listening in an open field, or the small speakers were very close together. This is because the holes you see in speakers are designed to 'spread' the sound out, and with multiple different speakers the waves could reach you at different times causing a very slightly dodgy sound (this may well be an insignificantly small error however) | [
"Often, large speakers such as those used in clubs and in professional audio actually allow little cone excursion and/or they have fairly stiff surrounds which do not allow them to fluctuate greatly without high power. This is because they would otherwise overdrive and have a much shorter lifetime because it doesn'... |
Why was Mohammed’s army so successful? | [I answered a similar question not long ago.](_URL_0_) To summarise, the Islamic armies were superior to their enemies primarily in political unity and morale, and didn't have any real advantage in numbers, tactics or technology. | [
"The exact size of the army under Muhammad's command is not explicitly stated, but it was likely much greater than al-Mu'tazz's forces. As many of his units were irregulars, however, their conduct in battle was not always reliable, and they were disciplined often for their failure to follow orders. In addition, whi... |
Is this really the first time in history that obesity has been so widespread across socioeconomic levels? | The view of obesity and what it signifies has changed over time. During the Renaissance, for example, the ideal body shape for women would be what's considered "fat" by today's standards. To give an example, here's Rubens' [_Three Graces_](_URL_0_).
The theory goes that being overweight signified your social status in that you had enough to eat - and then some. You didn't work off all those calories through manual labor and had plenty of extra body weight to birth children.
Now, this isn't to say that there weren't poor people who were fat, but malnourishment and famine were much more common among the economically disadvantaged than obesity. It just depended on who you were, where you lived, and what you did for a living. | [
"In earlier historical periods obesity was rare, and achievable only by a small elite, although already recognised as a problem for health. But as prosperity increased in the Early Modern period, it affected increasingly larger groups of the population.\n",
"BULLET::::- Sedentary lifestyles, due to labor-saving d... |
why is the standard dose of just about all medicines two tablets? couldn't they just make one that's twice as concentrated? | Some people have trouble swallowing larger tablets, children take smaller doses, larger people can take larger doses without taking a double dose (when I was over 300 I would take 3 Tylenol for instance) and a myriad of other reasons that I don't know. | [
"The recommended dose of Zyflo is one 600 mg tablet, four times per day. The tablets may be split in half to make them easier to swallow. The recommended dose of Zyflo CR is two 600 mg extended-release tablets twice daily, within one hour after morning and evening meals, for a daily dose of 2400 mg. Do not split Zy... |
Are there any modern recreational drugs that could have been synthesized in Europe between 1000-1500CE, with the knowledge we have today? | Ha! You're not totally out of luck. If you were to somehow time travel back to 1300, you might be able to make some pharmaceuticals which would not actually be discovered until much later. And yes--you could even realistically make Meth, more than 500 years before it would actually be discovered.
First, the relatively straightforward ones
Alcohol is so simple to make that it is consumed in almost every human culture, even among hunter-gatherers. You won't find any dried yeast packets in 1300, but you can still use the foamy barm produced during brewing to achieve the same result.
Opium was nowhere near as common as it would become after the rise of Global Shipping in the early-modern era, but with luck you might have been able to find some around the westernmost fringes of the Silk Road. Much like Cannabis, Opium would've been much more accessible to you in Medieval India or the Middle East than in Europe.
But worry not! You might not even need to trade to obtain Opium. Papaver somniferum, the beautiful flower from which opium is extracted, is native to parts of Europe, being especially common in Greece. Opium extraction is very simple, requiring no special equipment (a caveman could do it), and as a bonus--you get edible poppy seeds as a byproduct of the process.
Cannabis is going to be a lot trickier, for no reason other than it being a lot less common than it is today. Hashish was common enough in India and starting to see use in the Middle East, but it would not see widespread use in Europe until the turn of the 19th century. Even the very low THC cannabis from the commercial hemp industry wasn't too common, as it had still yet to replace wool as the most common source of fiber for manufacturing.
~~
Now, some trickier stuff. The stuff that involves ~~chemistry~~ alchemy.
Distilled liquor is important, not just because it's a recreational drug, but because it serves as a solvent which can be used in the manufacture of other substances. Though distilled beverages would not become widespread in Europe for another two centuries, the technology was there, and if you could convince your local alchemist to let you borrow his equipment, you might be able to produce some yourself. This distilled product would not be anywhere near the proof of everclear--that requires some more sohisticated equipment not available to you in 1300, though you might be able to make something akin to vodka.
Nicotine is at the very fringes of possibility--IF you have access to distillation, and are neighbors with an eggplant farmer. Tobacco would not be imported to Europe for another 200+ years. However, [nicotine is present in most members of the Solanaceae](_URL_1_))--the Nightshade Family. Eggplants have by far the highest concentration of nicotine of any nightshades that may have been available in Europe in 1300 (and aren't dangerous), but even still, the amount of eggplants you would have to process to get any appreciable amount of smoking material is...pretty damn high.
But, let's say you feel like buying 20 kilograms of eggplants, drying them, grinding them up, putting them into the alcohol you distilled earlier for a few hours, straining the grinds out of the eggplant-alcohol solution, then distilling the solution, you will end up with a miniscule amount of brown sap, with a decently high concentration of nicotine. If you're willing to go through all of that effort to make the equivalent of a single cigarette, I'm sure you'll have no trouble making a cheap pipe to actually smoke it.
Opiates, though they would not be discovered until the 19th centuries, would be MUCH easier for you to obtain in 1300 than nicotine, using the Thiboumery-Mohr process still used by black-market heroin producers today. Morphine can be obtained by mixing opium and hot water to create a thick paste. This paste is mixed with a solution of quicklime and water, and the resultant solution is filtered to remove solid impurities. Ammonia, which you could obtain in 1300 by fermenting urine (ew), is added to the solution, then heated. Doing this causes solid morphine crystals to form, which may then be filtered out.
It is almost disturbing how easily morphine may be converted into heroin today. All you need, in addition to morphine crystals, is concentrated ~~acetic acid~~ acetic anhydride and sodium carbonate. But this would be much more difficult ~~or even impossible~~ to accomplish in 1300, since freeze distillation of vinegar isn't an option without refrigeration, and artificial synthesis requires a fairly complex series of reactions. No concentrated acetic acid means no heroin--~~morphine is probably the strongest opiate you can hope for with medieval alchemy.~~ (Edit: I forgot that winter exists. If it's cold enough outside, you can definitely freeze distill vinegar and use the resulting acetic acid solution to produce heroin)
(Edit 2: I made one other mistake. Heroin is synthesized with morphine and acetic anhydride, NOT acetic acid. Obtaining acetic anhydride would be possible in 1300, but much, much more difficult than obtaining acetic acid. You would need white phosphorous, a possible medieval synthesis of which is described later in the answer. In addition, you would need hydrochloric acid, which had already been discovered by alchemists by that point, Pyrolusite, a naturally occurring mineral, baking soda, and vinegar. Hydrochloric acid and pyrolusite are reacted in a distillation apparatus to form chlorine gas. Because chlorine is heavier than air, it will descend into the lower chamber of the apparatus. In that chamber, the chlorine is reacted with white phosphorous to form phosphorus trichloride. The phosphorus trichloride is reacted with acetic acid to form acetyl chloride. Then, mix the baking soda and vinegar--yes, you probably made a volcano with that same reaction in grade school. Collect the sodium acetate produced by that reaction and mix it with the acetyl chloride, to form acetyl anhydride. Finally, the acetyl anhydride is reacted with morphine to form heroin, and basified with sodium carbonate.)
Diethyl Ether, though it would not be discovered for another few centuries, would be relatively simple to make. Like alcohol, diethyl ether is a very small and very simple molecule, which can be produced by fairly straightforward chemical reactions. You still have some of your distilled alcohol left over, right? You didn't use all of it on the eggplants?
Diethyl ether can be produced by the reaction of Ethanol with any strong acid in a water solution. Luckily, sulfuric acid is fairly simple to synthesize--naturally occurring Iron and Copper sulfates can be heated, and the resulting sulfuric acid can then be collected using a simple distillation apparatus. Mix that sulfuric acid with your ethanol solution to obtain a solution of diethyl ether and water. Ether, being much easier to vaporize than alcohol, can also be distilled from water more easily, allowing you to obtain decently pure ether easily.
Ether would be by far the easiest anesthetic drug to produce with 1300s European alchemy, and perhaps unsurprisingly, was the first synthetic anesthetic ever discovered. Historically, the earliest confirmed discovery of ether occurred in Italy in 1540.
But it wouldn't be your only option. Though it would be much more arduous, you could also obtain nitrous oxide (laughing gas) with Medieval alchemical technology. Your ingredients for this are Saltpeter, Alum, Copper(II) Sulfate, Urine, and Sulfuric Acid. The saltpeter, alum, and Copper(II) sulfate, are heated to produce nitric acid. The urine is distilled to obtain urea. Then, the nitric acid, urea, and sulfuric acid, are mixed, to produce a mixture of nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide gas. I'm sure you can understand why it took until 1772 for laughing gas to be discovered.
Similarly to nitrous, chloroform might also be obtained with an even more convoluted series of individually simple chemical reactions, but I won't bore you with the details. It was first synthesized in 1830. Substances like ketamine and PCP, common recreational anesthetics today, require much more complicated chemical syntheses with technology that would not be invented until the 1800s and early 1900s, as organic chemistry came into being as its own distinct field of science and engineering.
How about psychedelics? The only plants which naturally contain lysergamides are found in South Asia and Central America. Mescaline containing plants are similarly not found in either Eurasia or Africa. DMT might be extracted from marsh grasses in genus _Phalaris_, though as the potent neurotoxin Gramine is also present and impossible to separate using medieval alchemical equipment, I would recommend against it. Artificial syntheses of these compounds requires complex and technologically highly sophisticated organic chemistry equipment. But, while Acid and Mescaline are well out of your reach in 1300s, you might still be able to find magic mushrooms. _(Edit Note: Paragraph originally said DMT could not be found in Medieval Europe, due to a lack of acacia or mimosa shrubs and trees. A few replies suggested alternative means of obtaining it)_
Magic mushrooms grown naturally on every continent except Antarctica, and are fairly common in France and Germany, but were not used recreationally until the 20th century. I've discussed the reasons why 'shrooms weren't discovered earlier in a [previous AskHistorians answer of mine.](_URL_0_) Nobody in medieval Europe would've been likely to trip on them, but you, as a time traveler with the gift of 21st century knowledge, just might. | [
"Several drugs like hashish and opium were increasingly well known in Europe by the beginning of the nineteenth century. At that time, the use of these drugs was widespread among scientific and literary circles for purposes of recreation. \n",
"Since classical times and possibly much earlier, hundreds of species ... |
Does Helium drift away from Jupiter (or other planets) like it does from Earth? | It depends on the gravity of the planet, and the temperature of the atmosphere. In the case of Jupiter, no.
> It can be shown that for cold giant gas planets such as Jupiter and Saturn there is no thermal driven atmospheric escape of significance...
_URL_0_
If you want the background physics, there's a lot more detail and some plots of things like escape velocity vs temperature including ranges for various gases and where each planet lies in [this paper from Scientific America](_URL_1_). Specifically, Figure 3 shows that helium would slowly escape from Earth and Mars, and more readily escape from bodies with a higher temp/gravity ratio like Mercury, Titan, etc. | [
"\"Voyager 1\" found that about seven percent of the volume of Saturn's upper atmosphere is helium (compared with 11 percent of Jupiter's atmosphere), while almost all the rest is hydrogen. Since Saturn's internal helium abundance was expected to be the same as Jupiter's and the Sun's, the lower abundance of helium... |
How does the brain distinguish between images you are actually seeing and images you are imagining? Can the two become confused? | We experience the visual world as being complete and in rich detail, but in actually, our brains are doing a lot of "filling-in", construction, reconstruction, and guess-work. The most obvious example of [filling in](_URL_3_) occurs at the [blind spot](_URL_2_) where nerves exit the eye and there are no photoreceptors. We, however, don't experience a missing area in our visual field; our brains fill it in! Less intuitive is the fact that our brains are actually doing something similar for most of the visual field at any given instant. We only have detailed vision for regions on which we are foveating (light from those areas reaches the [fovea](_URL_4_) which has the densest packing of cones and highest photoreceptor-to-ganglion cell ratio (almost 1-1)). We are constantly moving our eyes by tiny amounts to get more areas of the scene to fall onto the fovea. Everything else we actually aren't able to resolve in very good detail, but it seems to us like we can.
Here's a little experiment you can do on yourself: take a piece of paper and write the word DOG as you would in your normal handwriting. Take your index finger and put it right below the word. Hold the paper ~6 inches away from your face. Gradually move the paper sideways while keeping your eyes fixed on the tip of your finger. I can't read the word anymore or distinguish between any of the letters when it's about 1.5 inches away from the tip of my finger. The detail of our vision is very poor outside the fovea!
All this is to say, when we look at the world, it's not as though we have taken a picture. There's a lot that is constructed (but not willy-nilly! it's constrained by what's actually out there and by what we expect). This contributes to why we might see something out of the corner of our eye or mistake a shadow for something -- we just don't have high acuity everywhere and have to make a best guess.
When we imagine something, there is evidence to suggest that we may be activating some of the same parts of our brain that are active during perception including early visual areas (e.g. [Kosslyn & Thompson, 2003](_URL_6_) < - pdf ; [Slotnick, Thomspon, & Kosslyn, 2005](_URL_5_) ; [Albers et al. 2013](_URL_1_)), but there is some debate about this. This is purely "top-down" activation. When we actually see something, input from the eyes is guiding cortical activity as well.
When we are actually looking at something, the representation that we form of an object is general and abstract - without focusing your attention, many details are not encoded or represented. [Change blindness](_URL_7_) is a fun example of where you can see this clearly at work. [Here](_URL_0_) is an example. Each time the photo blinks, a large part of is changing, but, unless you are focusing on that particular location, you won't see it. We just don't represent all of the details in an image.
The important point here is that if you do know where to look, you CAN see the details. That's not the case with imagery. If you look at a picture of a zebra, you can count it's stripes. Not at a glance, but you can point your finger at them and slide your finger along and count the stripes. If you imagine a zebra or a tiger, you can't do it.
When you confuse reality with a mental image, that's called a hallucination.
edit: missed a word | [
"Direct realists can potentially deny the existence of any such thing as a mental image but this is difficult to maintain, since we seem able to visually imagine all sorts of things with ease. Even if perception does not involve images other mental processes like imagination certainly seem to. One view, similar to ... |
High school sophomore, considering a career in history or physics. What are job opportunities in | Someone who specializes in history could potentially find work at any museum or historical society. I live in the Chicago area and there are historical societies for practically every suburb around here, not to mention all the big name museums downtown. There are organizations like Daughters of the Revolution, _URL_0_, and others that are always looking for history majors. If you're particularly ambitious, the CIA might have a job for you. About 90% of what the CIA does is gather information about the politics and culture of other countries and regions and sell that information to people and businesses looking to expand their operations to foreign countries.
And of course, you can be a teacher of history, which seems to be what most people think the majority of history majors do.
This of course is just some of the options for a history grad. | [
"The Department of Physics, comprising more than 60 faculty and over 100 graduate students, is a major research department, offering graduate programs that have been ranked amongst the best in the nation by \"U.S. News and World Report\".\n",
"Physics First is a popular and relatively new movement in American hig... |
If energy can be never be created or destroyed, and as the universe is expanding, would there come a time where all energy is so dissipated that things have little to no, energy and hence would freeze? | There are no (nontrivial) global conservation laws for energy in GR. There are some spacetimes in which conservation laws can hold, but there is no law that holds for all spacetimes. That is, the statement that "energy cannot be created or destroyed" is not necessarily true in GR. Indeed, energy conservation typically is a consequence of time-homogeneity of an associated Lagrangian function. But since the universe is expanding, it is clearly not time-homogeneous.
That being said, the concept of [heat death of the universe](_URL_0_) is likely the closest to what you are asking. The idea is that the universe will achieve thermal equilibrium; the free energy is zero. That is, no work can be performed via temperature differences. One problem with such a proposition is that it is not clear how we should define the entropy of the universe (particularly, a gravitational field), whence the question of whether the universe will achieve maximal entropy is not, at the moment, precisely stated. It's not even clear whether a gravitational field can be described by thermodynamics.
This is about the limit of my knowledge on the subject. It seems to me also that since dark energy remains more or less at constant density as the universe expands, then this energy can be viewed as just sort of appearing out of nowhere. (This goes back to what I stated earlier about the lack of global conservation laws.) An expert in cosmology can much better answer the fine details. | [
"There is no clear way to define the total energy in the universe using the most widely accepted theory of gravity, general relativity. Therefore, it remains controversial whether the total energy is conserved in an expanding universe. For instance, each photon that travels through intergalactic space loses energy ... |
why does the water pressure drop a little bit once the water heats up? | Do you mean water flow? Usually rubber in taps expands when it heats so the flow decreases. | [
"The perception of water pressure is actually the speed of the water as it hits a surface, (the hands, in the case of hand washing). When an aerator is added to the faucet (or fluid stream), there is a region of high pressure created behind the aerator. Because of the higher pressure behind the aerator and the low ... |
what is a site's robot.txt? | It's a file containing instructions telling search engine spiders and other programs which parts of the site they shouldn't look at, for example _URL_0_ on Reddit. It won't stop an evil program from reading those pages, but a polite one like Google's will do as you tell it. Sometimes those pages will still show up in Google searches if lots of pages link to it using relevant words, but Google doesn't know what's actually on the page because you asked it not to look. | [
"AR Bots is a minigame that places thirty robots in the DualShock 4 controller screen. Players can interact with the robots through the controller, utilizing the motion sensor. The robots can also be displayed on the television instead of the controller screen by gesturing up on the touch pad.\n",
"The robot is s... |
Do people with dextrocardia experience right arm numbness during a heart attack? | Dextrocardia is a rare congenital condition in which your heart points toward the right side of the chest instead of the left.
Normally, when a person without Dextrocardia experiences a heart attack, they may feel a pain in the left arm. This is because of referred pain to the arm.
Referred pain can indicate that a problem is occurring somewhere entirely different than the pain site.
A heart attack may cause a sensation of pain to travel from your heart to your spinal cord, where many nerves merge onto the same nerve pathway. Your arm may be perfectly fine, but your brain thinks that a part of the heart’s pain is the arm.
When your heart muscle cells begin to run out of oxygen during a heart attack because of a blocked artery preventing oxygenated blood from feeding that muscle, they begin to send off signals of pain through the nervous system. Your brain may confuse those nerve signals with signals coming from the left arm because of the nerve proximity/closeness.
The same thing happens when a person Dextrocardia gets a heart attack. But this time, the brain may confuse the nerve signals with signals from the right arm because of nerve proximity.
| [
"This is complemented by gastro-coronary reflexes whereby the coronary arteries constrict with \"functional cardiovascular symptoms\" similar to chest-pain on the left side and radiation to the left shoulder, dyspnea, sweating, up to angina pectoris -like attacks with extrasystoles, drop of blood pressure, and tach... |
why does having bigger muscles enable someone to lift or push more weight? | Actually the 650 skeletal muscles in the human body contract when they receive signals from motor neurons, which are triggered from a part of the cell called the sarcoplasmic reticulum. Motor neurons tell your muscles to contract and the better you become at having those signals tell your muscles to contract, the stronger you can get.
When someone like a powerlifter is able to lift very heavy weight despite not looking very muscular, it’s due to their ability to activate those motor neurons and contract their muscles better. This is why some powerlifters can be relatively smaller compared to bodybuilders, but can lift significantly more weight. Motor Unit recruitment also helps to explain why, after practice, certain movements become easier to perform and most of the initial strength gains will be when you first start to lift weights. Muscle growth tends to occur more steadily after this initial period of strength gain because you are more easily able to activate the muscles.
So you can be very strong without having huge muscles. But my experience is even these people still look strong, just skinnier than bodybuilders.
| [
"Weight training aims to build muscle by prompting two different types of hypertrophy: sarcoplasmic and myofibrillar. Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy leads to larger muscles and so is favored by bodybuilders more than myofibrillar hypertrophy, which builds athletic strength. Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is triggered by increa... |
Was there ever any serious discussion on the United States joining the Commonwealth of Nations? | The simple answer is no. By the time the Commonwealth was created, after WW1, the Anglo-American relationship had developed its own unique characteristics.
Its worth noting that Commonwealth wasn't really planned, it was the product of a series of compromises as British colonies gained independance. Essentially the commonwealth continues the beneficial imperial links while allowing member states a level of sovereignty that would be impossible had they remained colonies. America, having been independant for a century was too far removed from the empire to have ever been part of, or even considered including in, the conversations that lead to the Commonwealth. | [
"The idea of admission to the United States was discussed among some netizens alongside proposals of becoming independent (within or outside the Commonwealth, as a republic or a Commonwealth realm), rejoining the Commonwealth, confederation with Canada as the eleventh province or the fourth territory (with referenc... |
is it possible to change the structure of molecules using electricity or vibrations? | Yes, but not in the way you are describing. We can use a technique called electrolysis to cause an otherwise non-spontaneous reaction like turning water back into hydrogen and oxygen. This process doesn't work beyond the molecular level though, so we aren't going to get different atoms from the process (so no water into quartz). | [
"In modern semiconductor research, surface vibrations are of interest as they can couple with electrons and thereby affect the electrical and optical properties of semiconductor devices. They are most relevant for devices where the electronic active area is near a surface, as is the case in two-dimensional electron... |
legally speaking, how does recanting a confession work? | [This](_URL_0_) wikipedia article is actually a pretty good survey briefing of the topic of both coerced and voluntary false confessions.
Typically, short of evidence of coercion, once a confession is out there it's usable by the prosecution (there are other ways of getting a confession thrown out, legal technicalities, the subject was mentally incapable of understanding what they were doing when they confessed, etc...)
That's not to say that it's insurmountable, if other evidence suggests that the accused was not the actual perpetrator it can be used to argue against the truthfulness of the confession.
As always, the reddit disclaimer applies. If this is a situation you or someone you know is actually facing then you should be asking a lawyer in person and not looking for legal advice from the reddit hivemind. | [
"\"Confession and absolution\", sometimes called the Sacrament of Reconciliation, is the rite or sacrament by which one is restored to God when one's relationship with God has been broken by sin. The form is the words of absolution, which may be accompanied by the sign of the cross. Confession and absolution is nor... |
What is magnetic flux? | Basically it's the total amount of magnetic field passing through a given area. So if there's an area of 1 m^2 and there's a magnetic field of 1 tesla passing through it, the magnetic flux is 1 Weber. | [
"In physics, specifically electromagnetism, the magnetic flux (often denoted or ) through a surface is the surface integral of the normal component of the magnetic field B passing through that surface. The SI unit of magnetic flux is the weber (Wb) (in derived units: volt formula_1 seconds), and the CGS unit is the... |
what is the funny taste we experience after hitting our heads too hard? | Post traumatic dysgeusia
The short version is that it's your body undergoing trauma and your salivary glands sort of going haywire temporarily.
It is not an adrenal response or spinal/brain fluid as most people falsely perpetuate. | [
"This nerve can cause an electric shock-like sensation by striking the medial epicondyle of the humerus from posteriorly, or inferiorly with the elbow flexed. The ulnar nerve is trapped between the bone and the overlying skin at this point. This is commonly referred to as bumping one's \"funny bone\". This name is ... |
In what ways did Conquistadors worsen Native American mortality due to European diseases? | You are absolutely correct that the combined colonial cocktail worked to decrease host immunity and survival during periodic waves of infection, and then those same factors served to decrease chances of population rebound following those epidemics in the Americas.
Any examination of disease epidemiology after contact must incorporate a larger ecological perspective. Epidemics require the proper conditions for the host, the pathogen, and the environment to spread widely. Too often the narrative of “death by disease alone” in the Americas after contact fails to examine the greater context that facilitated the spread of epidemics. Infectious agents are treated as an inevitable miasma spreading ahead of contact. As [the case study on the U.S. Southeast](_URL_2_) showed, the ecological context underscores how pathogens spread in conjunction with the repercussions of conquest. In the Florida missions, early disease outbreaks failed to travel beyond the immediate mission environs due to contested buffer zones between rival polities. Only after English slaving raids changed the social environment, erased these protective buffer zones, and destabilized the region did the first verifiable smallpox pandemic sweep the greater U.S. Southeast.
When attacks by slavers disrupted normal life, hunting and harvesting outside the village defenses became deadly exercises. Nutritional stress led to famine as food stores were depleted and enemies burned growing crops. Displaced nations attempted to carve new territory inland, escalating violence as the shatterzone of English colonial enterprises spread across the region. The slave trade united the Southeast in a commercial enterprise involving the long-range travel of human hosts, crowded susceptible hosts into dense palisaded villages, and weakened host immunity through the stresses of societal upheaval, famine, and warfare (Kelton). All of these factors were needed to propagate a smallpox epidemic across the Southeast, and all of these factors led to increase mortality once the epidemic arrived.
The popular story of catastrophic disease spread often cites an incredibly high case fatality rate (number of people infected who die of that disease) for introduced pathogens in the Americas. We hear that an infectious organism like smallpox, which historically has an overall [fatality rate of 30%](_URL_3_), killed 95% of infected Native Americans. Taken without reference to the greater ecological situation, and assuming the validity of colonial mortality rates (a large assumption), the myth arises of an immunologically weaker Indian population unable to respond to novel pathogens.
Examining the greater context reveals how the cocktail of colonial stressors often stacked the deck against host immune defense before epidemics arrived. Plains Winter Counts recount disease mortality consistently increased in the year following nutritional stress (Sundstrom), and this link was understood by European colonists who routinely burned growing crops and food stores when invading Native American lands, trusting disease and depopulation would soon follow (Calloway). Mortality increased in populations under nutritional stress, geographically displaced due to warfare and slaving raids, and adapting to the breakdown of traditional social support systems caused by excess conquest-period mortality. Context highlights why many Native Americans, [like modern refugee populations facing similar concurrent physiological stress](_URL_0_), had a decreased capacity to respond to infection, and therefore higher mortality to periodic epidemics.
Traditionally, the discussion of epidemic disease after contact contains an element of a *post hoc* fallacy. Archaeologists uncover evidence of population dispersal in the protohistoric and assume disease led to the abandonment of the site. Historians read de Soto’s retelling of the Plague of Cofitachequi and assumed the population perished from introduced infectious disease. This assumption rests on the flawed notion that the New World was a relatively disease-free paradise, that site abandonment can only be attributed to disease, and the belief that observed epidemics arose solely from introduced pathogens.
A full discussion of the New World disease load before contact is beyond the scope of this post, but populations in the Americas were subject to a wide variety of intestinal parasites, Chagas, pinta, bejel, tick-borne pathogens like Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, syphilis, TB, and zoonotic pathogens. Those infectious organisms didn’t stop infecting Native Americans after European arrival. Changes in host ecology associated with conquest could alter the transmission cycle of native infectious organisms, and transform a benign, or at least contained, infectious organism into one capable of causing massive mortality. [Researchers propose](_URL_1_) the devastating cocoliztli epidemics, which killed millions in 1545 and 1576 in Mexico, were the work of a native viral hemorrhagic pathogen similar to our modern Hantavirus rather than an introduced infection. The authors hypothesize that extended drought altered the interaction of the mouse host with human populations and, combined with other shocks of conquest, allowed for the virus to jump to humans. The story of cocoliztli encourages us to at least entertain that notion that epidemics after contact could occur from pathogens indigenous to the New World, and not solely from introduced infectious organisms.
The “death by disease alone” narrative ignores the myriad of factors influencing the demography of Native American populations after contact. Introduced infectious disease mortality was awful. However, the popular story tends to ignore abundant evidence of persisting Native American communities, and fails to place epidemics in the larger context of vibrant populations adapting, resisting, accommodating, and negotiating in the post-contact environment. Southeastern populations responded to the shocks of conquest by coalescing into powerful confederacies. Violent resistance to conquest continued throughout the Americas, and periodic waves of disease could not diminish the vitality of mission inhabitants across the northern border of New Spain. Epidemics were not an automatic cultural death sentence.
Humans are demographically capable of rebounding from high mortality events, like epidemics, provided other sources of excess mortality are limited. In the mid-twentieth century when the Aché of Paraguay moved to the missions ~38% of the population died from respiratory diseases alone. However, the Aché rallied quickly and are now a growing population. The key factor for population survival after high mortality events is limiting other demographic shocks, like violent incursions from outsiders, providing sufficient food resources, and the territory needed for forage and hunt to supplement food intake.
When the colonial cocktail arrived in full force demographic recovery became challenging. Warfare and slaving raids added to excess mortality, while simultaneously displacing populations from their stable food supply, and forcing refugees into crowded settlements where disease can spread among weakened hosts. Later reservations restricted access to foraged foods and exacerbated resource scarcity where disease could follow quickly on the heels of famine. The greater cocktail of colonial insults, not just the pathogens themselves, decreased population size and prevented rapid recovery during the conquest.
Sources
Acuna-Soto et al., (2002) “Megadrought and Megadeath in 16th Century Mexico”
Calloway *One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark*
Cameron, Kelton, and Swedlund, eds. *Beyond Germs: Native Depopulation in North America*
Etheridge & Shuckhall, editors *Mapping the Mississippian Shatter Zone: The Colonial Indian Slave Trade and Regional Instability in the American South*
Kelton *Epidemics and Enslavement: Biological Catastrophe in the Native Southeast 1492-1715*
Panich & Schneider, editors *Indigenous Landscapes and Spanish Missions: New Perspectives from Archaeology and Ethnohistory*
Andrés Reséndez *The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America*
Sundstrom (1997) “Smallpox Used Them Up: References to Epidemic Disease in Northern Plains Winter Counts, 1714-1920.”
Wilcox *The Pueblo Revolt and the Mythology of Conquest: An Indigenous Archaeology of Contact* | [
"While technological superiority and cultural factors played an important role in the victories of the conquistadors in the Americas, their conquest was greatly facilitated by old world diseases: smallpox, chicken pox, diphtheria, typhus, influenza, measles, malaria and yellow fever. The diseases were carried to di... |
what is wifi, like, physically? electromagnetic radiation? if so, what kind? | Radio waves. Very high frequency, approximately what you use for good cordless phones. | [
"BULLET::::- \"Wireless (WiFi) modem\" - an automated short range digital data transmitter and receiver on a portable wireless device that communicates by microwaves with a nearby access point, a router or gateway, connecting the portable device with a local computer network (WLAN) to exchange data with other devic... |
how did we learn to make fire? | Someone else will probably have a better informed/cited answer. But I did a quick 5 minute research session and will back up what I found with a wikipedia link and some wild speculation.
"Claims for the earliest definitive evidence of control of fire by a member of Homo range from 0.2 to 1.7 million years ago..."
_URL_0_
So probably as human ancestors began walking upright and covering larger distances they encountered fire more and more often as a natural occurance. No doubt there were dead animals in the fire which would be a super bonus since it would mean no hunting.
These early protohumans would likely have found that the cooked meat was softer and easier to chew and probably tasted really good. So it would have been obvious that fire was useful for food.
All the other stuff about fire would have also made it very attractive to human ancestors: it's light at night - as our night vision is not as good as the other animals, it's warmth in cold - as we lost body hair, it scares away other animals.
So at first the coals from the fire were probably carried around in a pouch to start new fires, but eventually someone must have been striking a stone and noticed that the sparks started a fire.
How they realized that friction could cause a fire was probably happened upon as someone was making weapons like a bow and noticed how hot the wood would get when they ground another piece of wood against it. | [
"The use of flint in particular became the most common method of producing flames in pre-industrial societies (see also fire striker). Travelers up to the late 19th century would often use self-contained kits known as tinderboxes to start fires.\n",
"Fire can be created through friction by rapidly grinding pieces... |
How does the hippocampus transfer short term to long term memory? | We do not know how our experience or information is encoded and decoded in the brain. As in precisely how the strength/association between neuron pairs changes or the neuron network structure of the brain changes.
What we do know is that short-term and long-term memory are probably two very separate processes. In fact, it is from observation and experiments that researchers propose the existence of a separate form of memory called short-term memory. This wikipedia entry highlights some of the major ones. _URL_0_.
Short-term memory mainly describes the ability we have to retain various pieces of information and manipulate/transform them. Essentially this is what we mean by "thought". Long term memory on the other hands describes the changes in our brain that allows us to recall things (actually it's closer to piecing back information rather than recalling). | [
"Short-term memory is supported by transient patterns of neuronal communication, dependent on regions of the frontal lobe (especially dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) and the parietal lobe. Long-term memory, on the other hand, is maintained by more stable and permanent changes in neural connections widely spread thr... |
How strong would a "cord" of DNA be if it was one inch thick? | It's not really possible to say, as you're extrapolating over about 7-8 orders of magnitude here, a DNA strand being about 1 nm is diameter.
The strength within a DNA strand, and between the two complementary strands, is likely going to be a lot stronger than however you bind the separate strands together at the nano-scale, and how those bundles are held together at the next scale and so on up. So the ultimate strength here depends on the unknown intermediate levels of structure.
A single DNA molecule would have an incredible tensile strength if you could scale it up, but it's the scaling-up that's really the whole problem here. Just about every molecule would have an incredible tensile strength if you could scale it up. The actual chemical bonds holding DNA together aren't unusually or exceptionally strong in any way.
So it wouldn't necessarily be different than for existing polymers. Because if you assume that you could produce really long DNA strands which were tightly interwoven at the nano- and microscales, then you should really compare to what the result would be if you could do the same for other polymers as well. In which case DNA wouldn't necessarily be the strongest, although they'd all probably end up around the same orders of magnitude, and all much stronger than our existing materials.
| [
"DNA diameter is about 2 nm, while the length of a stretched single molecule may be up to several dozens of centimetres depending on the organism. Many features of the DNA double helix contribute to its large stiffness, including the mechanical properties of the sugar-phosphate backbone, electrostatic repulsion bet... |
why are lakes so calm but oceans and rivers so unpredictable? | Lakes are smaller than oceans by a lot, and so they end up with fewer instances of turbulence or choppiness compared to ocean water.
For example, the spin of the Earth causes a band of high winds and ocean currents near the equator, which churns the oceans continually, but a lake will generally only get disturbed by rivers flowing into it or animals swimming in it. | [
"On the other hand, lakes and lagoons are permanent accumulations of water over impervious depressions. Their difference is mainly based on their extension and depth. They are very important for stream regulation, as a source of energy, tourist attraction and its ichthyologic wealth. In Argentina, all major lakes a... |
the human body maintains a core temperature of around 37℃. how does the body know its temperature ? how does it know if its above or below its ideal temperature ? | your skin is covered in cells that detect temperature. These react very quickly to any temperature outside of a very narrow range. When it goes too far from that range, it transmits signals very similar to pain. these signals go to your brain, which immediately responds by doing things to return temperature to stable levels.
This is also why if it goes WAY too far beyond the safe level, you react faster than the signal can reach your brain. its just forcing muscle contraction at the site. Its really neat.
Anyway. These cells are extremely specialized in that they are only stable at this extremely specific temperature range. It would be well beyond an ELI5 answer to try and go into the details of how they do this or the large number of responses your body has to them, but the system does work extremely well.
If you want ot learn more, you could ask the r/science folks for information on how thermoreceptor cells work. Here's a wikipedia article for a slightly less detailed but much less ocmplicated overview: _URL_0_ | [
"Core temperature, also called core body temperature, is the operating temperature of an organism, specifically in deep structures of the body such as the liver, in comparison to temperatures of peripheral tissues. Core temperature is normally maintained within a narrow range so that essential enzymatic reactions c... |
why do we, as humans, often make decisions contrary to what our brains "know deep down" that we're supposed to do? | If I recall correctly, our limbic system dictates our "gut instincts" and our prefrontal cortex dictates decisions based on logic. The more data we get, the more our prefrontal cortex gets overloaded with information causing us to overthink things.
The limbic system would be more tied into our emotional decision making, versus our rational decision making. | [
"Similarly, human decisions often cannot be easily explained: they may be based on intuition or a \"gut feeling\" that is hard to put into words. Requiring machines to meet a higher standard than humans is thus arguably unreasonable.\n",
"Humans have limitations in their ability to collect and react to relevant i... |
how mao got into power and why china is one of the most successful communist countries. | It became more successful by loosening up and becoming less Communist. I think they took notice of Hong Kong's success and tried to implement some of that without giving up full control.
Since they opened up to the US in the 1970s, they have managed to continually grow their economy on exports. That will eventually have to change. | [
"From the pivotal Zunyi Conference forward, Mao Zedong was the undisputed leader of the Communist Party of China, though he did not formally become party chairman until 1943. However, much of Mao's authority was informal, earned after years of building clout through the civil war and intra-party struggles. After Ma... |
Why couldn't Britain defend itself from German Luftwaffe bombings during WWII? | The Royal Air Force successfully defended the UK by day in [the Battle of Britain] (_URL_0_) (July-October 1940); this forced the Luftwaffe to largely bomb at night in [the Blitz] (_URL_1_) (September 1940 - May 1941).
Intercepting a bomber at night was incredibly difficult in 1940. The ground-based Chain Home radar system that was a critical part of Britain's air defence network faced out from the coast so was unable to track aircraft over land, this being done by the Observer Corps in daylight; Ground Controlled Intercept (GCI) radar capable of operating over land was still in development, a limited number of sets coming into operation in early 1941. Early Airborne Interception (AI) radar was in service mounted in [Bristol Blenheim night fighters] (_URL_2_), but limitations of early sets and the poor performance of the Blenheim (a converted bomber) resulted in few successes.
The introduction of the Bristol Beaufighter, faster and more heavily armed than the Blenheim, equipped with improved Mk IV AI radar was a significant boost to the RAF's night fighting capability. Coupled with the introduction of GCI radar, RAF fighters finally started to become a serious threat to Luftwaffe bombers at night over 1941; until then the bombers were able to operate more or less at will. As the British defences finally started to become effective the Blitz was winding down anyway as Germany prepared for the invasion of the Soviet Union.
The RAF's Bomber Command could, and did, attack targets in Germany (including Berlin from August 1940), though they were also forced to operate at night due to strong air defences, and were limited in number and highly inaccurate until arond 1942. | [
"During the Battle of Britain, the German Luftwaffe attempted to destroy Great Britain's Chain Home radar stations in order to degrade the British air defense network. However, German High Command failed to realize the efficiency of not only the radar stations themselves but the command and control system directing... |
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