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What is the oldest name we have recorded and what is the oldest name still in use. | To add to the comment of /u/jschooltiger I know of several other names that date from around the same period.
Due to the nature of how writing developed in Sumer that is in the context of accounting, trade and other economic interaction the first Sumerian names we have are those of slaves and accountants. We have the slave owner Gal-Sal and his two slaves Enpap-x and Sukkalgir (3200-3100 BCE). We also have Turgunu Sanga (3100 BCE), an accountant for the Turgunu family.
As for the oldest name still in use I'm not sure that question is definitely answerable without being able to access the naming conventions of every people in the world and the history thereof. Sure we can look at the the earliest Sumerian or Egyptian writing and date a particular use of a name reasonably well. However there is no way to say when say Turgunu Sanga was first used as a name. Presumably the first appearance of Turgunu Sanga was not on the slate of OIM A12259 in 3200 BCE. There is no way to definitely tell the age of the name and it could be as old as the earliest spoken Sumerian which goes considerably further back than than 3200 BCE.
Thinking a bit further it would be true nightmare to determine that age of say Yakut names when the first written Yakut is from the 20th century. In fact any people who were illiterate until relatively recently recently pose quite the problem in this situation.
So I don't really have an answer to the second part of your question I guess.
| [
"The oldest known name is Sis or Siskia. Under the Roman Empire, it was for a time named Flavias or Flaviopolis. The Greek version of the older name, Σίσιον Sision, came back into use in the later Byzantine period. In Armenian, it is called Sis Սիս or Sissu.\n",
"The earliest probable surviving mention of the nam... |
How did Western culture come to associate specific colors with specific emotions (red rage, green with envy, feeling blue, and so on)? Are these emotional connotations universal or specific to Western culture? | I can speak to colors and moods association in early Modern Europe very generally. The color-mood associations are due the the Four Hum(u)ors or temperaments. This is the ancient idea that health is mediated by four constituent body fluids -- blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. We don't REALLY know where the idea of the humors started, but they're usually associated with the Hippocratic school, though it's really with Galen where they truly became formalized. In many ways, the Humors were the first naturalistic model of medicine. The Hippocratics felt, just as Empedocles had asserted that all existence was made from the four elements, all disease could be explained in terms of imbalance from the four humors. This was in opposition to the idea that disease came from supernatural causes. Humorism, as it became to be known, was not the ONLY explanatory model in the ancient world; we know of a model based on atomism, and there were fierce debates between rationalists and empiricists (a fascinating position whose writings I wish had survived, because it parallels modern EBM in some interesting ways) in Rome during Galen's time.
But Galen was a supporter of the humours, and when Arab scholars began their attempt to categorize medical knowledge, it was Galen that served as the model. By the time Avicenna published his Canon of Medicine (still used until the 19th century!), humorism was the primary explanatory model. These Arabic texts were the basis by which Italian, and later more European scholars became aware of Galen and Hippocrates, though from the 15th century on they were usually translating the originals.
So the Greeks would have recognized that imbalances of the humors could cause what we today would call psychiatric disease. In particular, an excess of black bile could cause "melancholia," which appears to have been not uncommon in the ancient world (as well as today). But with the Arabs and Europeans, the gradations and associations with the humors became far more complex, with associations with the zodiac, certain foods, & c. In particular to your question, colors were ascribed to them -- and as you could guess, "blue" was ascribed to black bile, and melancholy in particular.
Red has typically been associated with cholerics, caused by an excess of yellow bile, though also with sanguines. I have no idea where green with envy comes from (though Dr. Google tells me Othello).
I hope that provides some context, though it doesn't REALLY answer your question. If you're interested in reading more about the long-lasting influence of the Four Humors, I recommend [Passions and Tempers by Noga Arikha]( _URL_0_). | [
"Favoritism of colors varies widely. Often societal influences will have a direct impact on what colors we favor and disdain. In the West, the color black symbolizes mourning and sadness, red symbolizes anger and violence, white symbolizes purity and peace, and yellow symbolizes joy and luck (other colors lack a co... |
What's the history of the indigenous people in British Columbia? | There are many tribes in British Columbia...do you have a specific one in mind? Also, what era are you looking at? | [
"The area now known as British Columbia is home to First Nations groups that have a deep history with a significant number of indigenous languages. There are more than 200 First Nations in BC. Prior to contact (with non-Aboriginal people), human history is known from oral histories of First Nations groups, archaeol... |
how is auto stop-start on modern cars more fuel efficient? growing up i was always told that turning off and starting your car burned more gas than just idling. | What you were told was wrong, leaving your car idling for as little as 10 seconds takes more gas than turning it off and back on.
I was told the same thing, but it's wrong. | [
"Vehicle automation can improve fuel economy of the car by optimizing the drive cycle. Reduced traffic congestion and the improvements in traffic flow due to widespread use of automated cars will translate into higher fuel efficiency. Additionally, self-driving cars will be able to accelerate and brake more efficie... |
why are walmart employees notorious for being strange? | 1. it's a shitty job. being "strange" makes it hard to get a job, but...if you're going to pay shit-wages you can't always being choosey.
2. I think if you worked at wal-mart for a while it'd make you strange, but...please only take number 1 above seriously. ^And ^number ^2. | [
"Gabbard has alleged that \"Wal-Mart had widespread surveillance operations against targets including shareholders, critics, suppliers, the board of directors and employees,\" and that \"most of his spying activities were sanctioned by superiors.\" It has also been alleged that the corporation assigned a \"long-hai... |
How realistic would it have been for someone with a low IQ like Forest Gump to fight in Vietnam for the US? | u/Lich-Su answered a very similar question to this [here](_URL_3_) some time ago.
In the United States, about 1.8 million men reached draft age each year in the 1960s, and roughly a third (600,000) were disqualified as unsuitable for military service, half of these for physical reasons and the other half for mental or educational reasons.
As the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War escalated, in August 1966, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara instituted a controversial plan. Men who scored in the lower percentiles of the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) or were otherwise mentally or physically unsuitable for general service under the present requirements would be able to serve in the military in larger numbers through reduction of requirements and promotion of voluntary enlistments. The goal was 40,000 men for the rest of 1966 and then 100,000 additional men per year, to relieve pressure on Selective Service local boards. The experiment was often later derisively referred to as “McNamara’s Morons,” or the “Moron Corps.”
The main focus of “Project 100,000” was [enlisting those men who scored below the 30th percentile of the AFQT, with additional requirements depending upon the branch of service as scores decreased. Men who scored below the 10th percentile were still excepted. The regular military physical standards were not changed](_URL_1_), but waivers were granted for a list of mild or easily correctable medical conditions;
* Under minimum weight by not more than 10%
* Over maximum weight by not more than 20%
* Undescended testicle and inguinal hernia, same side
* Orthopedic fixture at site of old fracture
* Simple goiter
* External otitis
* Hyperdactylia (hands and feet)
* Deviated nasal septum
* Pilonidal cyst or sinus cyst
* Hemorrhoids
* Undescended testicle, unilateral
* Varicocele
* Hydrocele
* Hernia of the abdominal cavity
Each fiscal year, per a quota system, a maximum of one percent of the “Project 100,000” in the Army and Marine Corps, and two percent in the Navy and Air Force, were permitted to enter with these medical waivers. About 80% of the waivers granted were for underweight or overweight cases. During basic training, the men were expected to meet the same performance standards as normal soldiers, but additional help was offered. A [larger percentage of “Project 100,000” men were non-white (38%) compared to the control group (10%), and on average, they had completed one grade level less of schooling. More were from the southern United States. A larger percentage of the “New Standards Men” (another official name) were also assigned to combat-related military jobs](_URL_0_).
The project ended in December 1971 when the Department of Defense prohibited the use of mental capacity quotas for accepting men into the military. 354,000 men entered military service under “Project 100,000” between October 1966 and December 1971, with a peak of 103,000 during fiscal year 1969. 54 percent of men voluntarily enlisted, while 46 percent were drafted. 67 percent of the men went to the Army.
In the movie, Forrest Gump is stated to have an IQ of 75, in roughly the 13th percentile nationwide. As u/Lich-Su noted in their answer, the military converted projected AFQT scores to IQ scores and vice versa, and Forrest would have been on the lower end of Category IV, with just a high enough score to qualify for service mentally without further intervention. This is exclusive of his ability to follow military procedures and directions from his commanding officers. Given his physical prowess as also depicted in the film, he would have qualified easily in that regard.
**Conversion of Mental Category Scores from AFQT to IQ Scores**
Mental [AFQT] Categories|Percentiles|Stanford-Binet IQ|Wechsler IQ
:--|:--|:--|:--
I|93-99|124 and above|122 and above
II|65-92|108-123|106-121
III|31-64|92-107|93-105
IV|10-30|72-91|81-92
V|1-9|71 and below|80 and below
**Sources:**
Previous answer of u/Lich-Su
[Project 100,000: New Standards Program](_URL_4_) (RAND publication)
[Relation Between AFQT and IQ](_URL_2_) (RAND publication) | [
"ARVN J-2 (military intelligence) discovered \"a steady rise in VC strength levels\". The American advisors of \"MAAG\" \"Vietnam\" were familiar with ARVN J-2 records, but \"this unfavorable trend had not appeared in MAAG reporting\" because in 1960 it had \"no intelligence shop\". Initial CIA \"efforts to fill th... |
why would japan *announce* that they're going to resume whaling in antarctica? | It's their culture. "We're doing if for hundreds of years. It went fine till now. We don't question it, don't give a fuck".
I love Japan as in their historical culture, politeness, etc. But this part... I don't know, they're not in for change or individual thinking. Just be another gear in society and don't question what the big guys say.
It's sad, ignorance. But it helped preserve their otherwise rich culture which I personally love, so yea... | [
"On 5 January 2011, leaked US diplomatic cables revealed that the Australian legal challenge to Japanese whaling was heavily influenced by domestic political pressures and Australian government advisers were left deeply pessimistic about the prospects of success in the International Court. In its reports to Washing... |
Do we have any other ways of producing electricity? | Yes there are! Batteries turn chemical energy into electrical energy. There is also the nuclear reactors used in spacecraft such as Voyager 1 which use a process called Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator which turn the heat generated by small nuclear events into electricity, this process can be though of similar to a PV cell in a way.
But this is a very good point you make as neither of these options are suitable for large scale power generation in the order of 100's of Megawatts.
As a fun little fact, we could take the total world annual energy consumption as 150,000 TWh/year and lets round that up to 200,000 to account for some growth. This is the equivalent of just approximately just 1kg/s of Matter/Antimatter annihilation energy. Of course this is just so very far out of our reach. | [
"Electricity is most often generated at a power station by electromechanical generators, primarily driven by heat engines fueled by chemical combustion or nuclear fission but also by other means such as the kinetic energy of flowing water and wind. There are many other technologies that can be and are used to gener... |
Did people live like cavemen in 100,000 BC? | You should cross post in /r/AskAnthropology/ as they would have better knowledge to answer your question (this question is pre-history) | [
"The cave was first explored by Frane Bulić in 1890. It used to be thought that the cave has been continuously inhabited since the late Upper Paleolithic through the Mesolithic until the Bronze Age, i.e. from the 8th to the 3rd millennium BC. More recent results indicate an even older original usage - before 13,200... |
why are glasses still so common when contact lenses and eye surgery are becoming cheaper? | Some people like wearing glasses. Some people don't like putting things in their eyes. Some people are afraid of surgery. Or, if they're like me, they've had the eye surgery but their eye sight regressed and the new shape of their cornea makes wearing contacts pretty much impossible. | [
"Although lenses are normally prescribed by optometrists or ophthalmologists, there is evidence from developing countries that allowing people to select lenses for themselves produces good results in the majority of cases and is less than a tenth of the cost of prescription lenses.\n",
"Glass lenses have become l... |
why does reddit go down and how do they fix it? | Like all web sites, reddit is built on top of special computers called servers.
It happens that the servers that reddit uses are hosted by Amazon. There was a problem with some of the servers at one of Amazon's data centers in Virginia. Data centers are large buildings that house servers. The servers that had problems are named "Elastic Block Storage," or EBS. EBS servers are responsible for storing and retrieving data. When those servers aren't available, it isn't possible for reddit to store or retrieve the data it needs to operate.
Because the problem was with Amazon's services, it was up to Amazon to fix it. They did fix it, but it took a few hours for the fix to take effect. Amazon has a [status page](_URL_0_) where you can see current and past problems with their various services.
Reddit wasn't alone in having problems today. Lots of other sites use Amazon's services, like Pinterest, Foursquare and Minecraft. | [
"Reddit released its \"spoiler tags\" feature in January 2017. The feature warns users of potential spoilers in posts and pixelates preview images. Reddit unveiled changes to its public front page, called r/popular, in 2017; the change creates a front page free of potentially adult-oriented content for unregistered... |
why does depression make you gain weight? | People cannot gain weight unless they eat above their base metabolic rate, it's physically impossible, no matter what your third cousin's fat sister might tell you about her condition.
That said if you are depressed you are definitely more inclined to simply not do anything, so you might not be doing any physical activity no matter how light it might have been, which means you now have a daily calorie increase due to not burning calories the way you used to. | [
"In a major depressive episode, appetite is most often decreased, although a small percentage of people experience an increase in appetite. A person experiencing a depressive episode may have a marked loss or gain of weight (5% of their body weight in one month). A decrease in appetite may result in weight loss tha... |
why do we no longer see bench style seats in cars? | The 2013 Impala was the last car to be made with a bench seat.
They're not as safe, don't work well with airbags.
| [
"Seating is improved by eliminating the bucket seats in favor of comfortable benches in bright colors in Red, Yellow and Blue. The interior has longitudinal seats on one side and transverse seating on the other, unlike previous IRT cars, which since 1910 have always featured all-longitudinal seating. One side is sh... |
Did people have midlife crises when the age of death was significantly lower? | Honestly, the best explanation/theory I've ever read about midlife crisis was that it was maybe an instinct, but not caused by the man's age, but the *evolutionary presumed* age of his wife:
Most people married others of a similar age. So for men in their 'mid life crisis', their wives are entering menopause, which means infertile. So, to procreate their genes, they need to find a younger mate. So - act younger/flash around wealth. Change clothing style, buy something that attracts many younger girls (nowadays sports car), etc. This seems pretty reasonable in terms of those genes doing well, I think.
If that evolutionary explanation is true, then it's more an absolute situation in terms of being around 50. Rather than any psychological idea of "my life is a bit over half over".
| [
"The midlife crisis may mark the first reliable drop in happiness during an average human's life. Evidence suggests most people generally become happier with age, with the exception of the years 40 – 50, which is the typical age at which a \"crisis\" might occur. Researchers specify that people in both their 20s an... |
How much influence has organized crime had on American politics? | This is a complicated question to say the least.
The easy answer is that in certain corrupt areas organized crime has had, and continues to have, a strong effect on politics. In Chicago local leaders make deals with gangs for support (link: _URL_0_) There are also strong rumors that in NJ and Rhode Island the Mob continues to have a ton of power.
There are also organized corruption schemes that show up every once in a while, especially in Illinois. I'm not sure if you are counting that here.
Historically organized crime has had a huge impact on American politics.
There was a ton of what we would now consider racketeering in American Politics that moved several elections, both Presidential and otherwise, through maneuvers of doubtful legality, from industrialization until the 1950s at least. These came in the form of political machines, which sold influence, illegally moved votes, and otherwise seriously influenced politics.
The Kennedy's are also really tied into the Mob. Joseph Kennedy (JFK's Dad) made a great deal of money from illegal sources and used it to support his kids' political ambitions. It is also an open question if certain counties in Illinois voted the way they were counted in the 1960 presidential election (this was due to Chicago's legendary political machine)
There was also a lot of political good will to be made running against the mob. Dewey ran for president twice on his anti-crime record. Robert Kennedy made a name for himself attacking the mob (Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy)
The list goes on from there. I will say that none of this means your local leaders are in bed with the mob. They probably aren't. Unless you are in Chicago | [
"Organized crime was the subject of a large number of widely read articles in several major newspapers and magazines in 1949. Several local \"crime commissions\" in major cities and states had also uncovered extensive corruption of the political process by organized crime. Many cities and states called for federal ... |
Why do we define the prime numbers to be greater than 1? | If we were to include 1, we'd have to make an exception to almost every theorem about primes. For instance, the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic says that every positive integer can be written uniquely as a product of primes. If we include 1 as a prime, this is no longer true, as we could write 6=2x3=1x2x3 = 1^(2)x2x3..., there are infinitely many ways. If we included 1 as a prime, then we'd have to say that "Every integer greater than 1 can be written uniquely as a product of primes greater than 1".
Another example is that all primes have two divisors: Itself and 1. If one were a prime, this would have to be changed to "All primes greater than 1 have two divisors, 1 and itself, and 1 has one divisor."
We say that two numbers a Coprime if they share no prime factors. For instance, 15 and 28 are coprime. Being coprime is very important when studying numbers, as it can allow for some really nice properties (such as the [Chinese Remainder Theorem](_URL_0_)). If 1 were a prime, we would have to adjust it to mean that "Two numbers are coprime if they share no prime divisors, except 1".
An important property of primes is that we can use them to generate very nice [number systems that have only a finite number of elements in them](_URL_1_). These are very useful in programming and computer science, since you can do arithmetic with them instead of something infinite like the reals or rational numbers, which is good because computers can only do finite things. But we can't use 1 to create one of these number systems. So we'd have to say "For all primes, except 1, there is a unique finite field with that many elements".
Almost every theorem dealing with primes would have to be changed to add an exception for 1. If I have to exclude it from every theorem about primes, then it's probably a bad idea to think of it as a prime.
We can also generalize the notion of a prime to more abstract and sophisticated objects. But this process does not work if we try it for 1. So if we use this more general notion of a prime to look back at the integers and find the primes of the integers, then this more sophisticated definition will say that one is not a prime. | [
"A prime number that is one less than a power of two is called a Mersenne prime. For example, the prime number 31 is a Mersenne prime because it is 1 less than 32 (2). Similarly, a prime number (like 257) that is one more than a positive power of two is called a Fermat prime—the exponent itself is a power of two. A... |
what would the short- and long-term consequences of abolishing the stock market be? | Without a place for the rich to invest their money, what would they do with it? Hoard it? Buy a million mansions? The stock market is one of the most beneficial things a rich person can use their money for, building successful companies that have investments to be able to hire the common people and pay them a wage.
As far as businesses only caring about there bottom dollar, that applies to private companies who don't participate in the stock market too. | [
"The Securities and Exchange Commission initiated a temporary ban on short selling on 799 financial stocks from 19 September 2008 until 2 October 2008. Greater penalties for naked shorting, by mandating delivery of stocks at clearing time, were also introduced. Some state governors have been urging state pension bo... |
At the height of its power, what percent of GDP did the British Empire spend on their military? | Hi there! We've removed your question because it's asking about something like a name, a number, a date or time, a location, or the origin of a word - [basic facts](_URL_0_). We'd encourage you to instead post this question in the weekly, stickied ["Short Answers to Simple Questions"](_URL_3_) thread, where questions of basic fact can be answered succinctly, based on reliable sources. For more information on this rule, [please see this thread](_URL_1_).
Alternatively, if you didn't mean to ask a simple question about basic facts, but have a more complex question in mind, feel free to repost a reworded question. If you need some pointers, the mod team is always happy to assist if you [contact us in modmail](_URL_2_), but also be sure to check out this [guide on asking better questions](_URL_4_).
Finally, don’t forget that there's many subreddits on Reddit aimed at answering your questions. Consider /r/AskHistory (which has lighter moderation but similar topic matter to /r/AskHistorians), /r/explainlikeimfive (which is specifically aimed at simple and easily digested answers), or /r/etymology (which focuses on the origins of words and phrases). | [
"Goedele De Keersmaeker estimated the GDP of the British Empire using Angus Maddison's data. Keersmaeker estimated that the British Empire's share of world GDP was 24.28% in 1870 and 19.7% in 1913. The empire's largest economy in 1870 was British India with a 12.15% share of world GDP, followed by the United Kingdo... |
how big or small can animals get? | **TL;DR:** Microscopic animals can be very small, down to 50 μm length. The main issue is the diffusion of oxygen.
Smaller animals reside solely on the transportation of oxygen -the main resource in animal metabolism- by diffusion, this is because the [surface:volume ratio](_URL_3_): smaller organisms (smaller volume) have more surface than volume, this helps the diffusion of oxygen. Diffusion is very effective when the diffusion path is less than 1.0 mm.
Here are some groups of very small microscopic animals:
Group | Length (μm)
-----|---------
[Rotifers](_URL_4_) | 50, 100-2000
[Gastrotrichs](_URL_5_) | 75, 50-3000
[Kinorhynchs](_URL_0_) | 150, 100-3000
*[Hydra](_URL_2_)* (genus of cnidarians) | 500-20000
As you can see, the most basal groups of animals are pretty small. For comparison, bacteria can be 0.5-5 μm in length.
* Source: [Brusca & Brusca, 2003. Invertebrates, 2nd ed. Sinauer Associates, EU.](_URL_1_) | [
"In their description of \"B. gabonica\", Spawls \"et al.\". (2004) give an average total length of 80–130 cm (32 to 51.5 in), with a maximum total length of 175 cm (69.3 in), saying the species may possibly grow larger still. They acknowledge reports of specimens over 1.8 m (6 ft), or even over 2 m (6.5 ft) in tot... |
Is the reason that we can't unify gravity with the standard model because we are exploring the behaviour of subatomic particles under the influence of gravity? | Gravity is so weak on elementary particles that it is not observable, so no, it has no effect at the LHC whatsoever. The Standard Model for sure does not include gravity in it (you can work out predictions, there would be no planets if it was the end of the story). As a side note the experiment are underground to minimize the effects of particles coming from space (cosmic rays) which could be observed in the detectors and be mistaken for particles coming from collisions. I don't know where you read this thing about Earth's magnetic field, but it is so small that it is of no incidence on what happens at the LHC.
The problem with quantum gravity is twofold:
* As I said, the effect of gravity on individual particles is incredibly small. So small it is not measurable. The handwavy general understanding is that gravity could affect significantly individual particles at energy scales 10^16 times bigger than those at the LHC. There is therefore an experimental problem which is that we don't know if we will ever be able to make experiment sensitive to quantum gravity.
* On the theory side, we discovered that we cannot make quantum gravity in the "natural way" (the way we made quantum electromagnetism form example). There are deep mathematical problems with this. People are trying different approaches, the most famous of which is string theory, but all of them involve extremely complicated mathematics, to the point that it's still an open question whether any given approach can reproduce the features of the Standard Model realistically and people are trying to work through this.
We would make progress if any of these two problems were solved. For now, string theory is a framework which has quantum gravity for sure, but it's not a real "good" candidate for unification until it has a full Standard Model as well - it's good for many other things, it's interesting as a math subject by itself and it provides insight for other theories. The real deal would be that we could be mistaken about what energy scale is relevant for gravity influencing individual particles. There are models - entirely hypothetical and arguably not the most appealing theoretically - in which it is possible to have quantum gravity manifestations at the LHC. This is why the experiments are looking for things like black-hole production at the LHC - although it's not one of the popular candidates for discovery people are putting money on. | [
"Opponents of the gravity model explain that it can not be confirmed scientifically, that it's only based on observation. They also state that the gravity model is an unfair method of predicting movement because its biased toward historic ties and toward the largest population centers. Thus, it can be used to perpe... |
What is peer review? | Journals tap established researchers in each field to be referees.
* Send manuscript to journal
* Journal classifies paper and sends manuscript to anonymous referees (a few days)
* Referees read and comment on manuscript (a few weeks to a month)
* Decision (accept, reject, or edit) and comments sent back to journal, and journal sends to authors (a few days)
* Authors either do what referees suggested or argue why it's not necessary. Resubmit new manuscript to journal, and journal sends to same referees. (Repeat steps above, if severe argument occurs, new referees may be brought in)
* After 0-3 iterations, the paper is finally accepted (days to months to years)
* Authors work with editors on proofs (a few days)
* Publication! (a week or so)
Total process length: 2 weeks to years
| [
"Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competences as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review methods are used to maintain quality standards, improve performance, and p... |
how come animals can eat off the ground? does germs not effect them? | Not all germs cause disease. You can eat off the ground, too, and (depending on what ground you're eating on) getting a parasite is very possible, but most bacteria and viruses don't survive outside a body for a very long time. People ingest more germs than they think they do, and for the most part, its unavoidable. | [
"Among animals, facultatively kleptoparasitic species generally can survive by hunting or scavenging for themselves, but it often is more profitable for them to rob food from other animals kleptoparasitically, whether their hosts are of the same species or not. Such behavior occurs in lions and hyaenas for example,... |
what happens when you press the elevator button more than once? | The signal goes to the controller, which has already registered your request for a car. It doesn't speed things along at all. Same with crosswalk buttons. | [
"Elevators often have a red two-way button on the control panel which is either marked \"Emergency Stop\" or \"Run/Stop\". Normally, the button is in the \"up\" or unpushed position, allowing the elevator to \"run\" in normal service. When the button is pushed, the elevator comes to an immediate stop. When the butt... |
How credible is Freud's structural model in modern psychology? | Freud's model of the Id, Ego, and Superego is typically seen as an unscientific model and is commonly rejected in the modern psychological community for having no evidence to its existence, and no way of gathering any.
It does continue to somewhat exist in psychoanalytic psychotherapy as it provides a good model for thinking about how other people think in this particular therapeutic orientation. So it is used in psychoanalysis today as the goal of psychoanalytic therapy is to bring the unconscious conflicts to light. However modern psychoanalytic therapy should not be condemned because of this lack of science and I am glossing over the details of it, the scientific merit of modern psychoanalysis is another thread entirely.
I guess Freudian dream interpretation still kinda exists in psychoanalytic therapy too but its nowhere near Freud's dream interpretation (that shit was insane) and it uses dream interpretation primarily as a pejorative test for the patient.
Freud's models of the death drive, libido energy, and any other instinctual energy no longer exist in modern psychology.
Hypnosis still exists and has some evidence shown for a few disorders, but it is not directly related to Freudian hypnosis. I do not remember the specifics about modern hypnosis, my apologies.
TL:DR Freud's models are completely unscientific and have been largely kept out of modern psychological research and thinking. However they are still used today to help understand and conceptualize behavior in psychoanalytic psychotherapy.
Note for the uninformed: psychoanalysis is a particular brand of psychotherapy and not referring to therapy in general.
| [
"Freud's theory of personality is based on the idea that much of human behaviour is determined by forces outside awareness. The relation between the person and society is controlled by primitive urges buried deep within ourselves, forming the basis of the hidden self. Freud argues that much of our psychic energy is... |
If I am standing on a beach at sea level, how far can I see into the horizon? | If you assume the Earth is a perfect sphere, the distance you can see is about sqrt(2Rh), where R is the radius of the Earth, h is the height of your eyes above the surface, and sqrt is the square root function.
The radius of the Earth is about 6,371,000m. If you're 1.8m tall, then you get a distance of 4,800 metres, or about 3 miles. | [
"To compute the greatest distance at which an observer can see the top of an object above the horizon, compute the distance to the horizon for a hypothetical observer on top of that object, and add it to the real observer's distance to the horizon. For example, for an observer with a height of 1.70 m standing on th... |
Why are there more fluent Welsh speakers in Wales than Irish or Gaelic speakers in Ireland & Scotland, when the latter were conquered by the English hundreds of years later? | There are a multitude of factors which will impact whether a language thrives or dies out. Welsh, [according to Alan R. Thomas](_URL_0_), hits on a number of these: geography, regional linguistic homogeneity, and perhaps most critically, prestige status. Although there was a sociolinguistic split in Welsh society during the Tudor era and then again post-Industrial Revolution, where the wealthy adopted English and Welsh continued on as a marker of the lower classes, the fact that religion was so strongly entwined with the culture meant that chapels and Sunday schools were "the principal vehicles of language maintenance in Wales until the second half of the twentieth century." He cites the translation of the Bible into Welsh in 1588 as a crucial piece of the puzzle as to how Welsh maintained linguistic prestige once it had been removed from general official usage (such as in government).
The wave of younger workers who migrated out of rural areas also meant that there was a concentrating effect of sorts, leaving behind a swathe of older people who continued to speak Welsh (a common enough phenomenon in language change, where younger people tend to adopt/creolize/codeswitch with the new language/s as they seek economic opportunities, and the older generations maintain the home language).
More modern factors for the survival of Welsh as a living language include 1) a shift in perception of Welsh language being a critical piece of culture, leading to a different institutional prestige status as bilingual education was instituted, and 2) broadcast media, in particular radio. The Welsh Language Act of 1993 was a critical piece of legislation, and the [Welsh Language Commissioner's office](_URL_1_) was established in 2012, reflecting a spike in interest in not only preserving the language but in prioritizing it. Recent legislation to this end has been somewhat polarizing, [as seen in this recent BBC report](_URL_2_). (As an aside, as a linguist with a heavily sociolinguistic flavored education, I can say that it is not surprising that there is some friction happening with that. Language rights and usage strike to the heart of what people consider their personal and social identities as well as their economic livelihoods, so these kinds of things can become flashpoints quite quickly.) Nonetheless, the Commissioner cites a census which indicates that modern Welsh usage appears to be on the rise.
Part 2 in a followup comment. | [
"The Welsh language is in the Celtic language group, whereas English is in the West Germanic group; consequently the English language is further from the Welsh language in both vocabulary and grammar than from a number of European languages, such as Dutch, for example. Comparatively few English people can understan... |
why don't toilets have an overflow hole to keep them from overflowing all over the floor? (like sinks do) | What other commenters haven't explained is that the drain at the bottom of the toilet is literally an overflow hole already.
The way a toilet works is that the S-bend in the pipe behind the toilet rises higher than the water level in the bowl. This is a "hill" that the water can't get over. But if the water level rises in the bowl, it rises in the S-bend as well, until it rises enough to get over the hill. Once it starts flowing over the hill, the flow itself creates a [siphon](_URL_0_) effect that sucks the water behind it along. This pulls all the water out of the bowl and over the S-bend down into the sewers, draining the bowl. It's the same principle as [Pythagoras' Cup](_URL_1_).
When you flush a toilet, all you're doing is draining the water from the tank into the bowl - the raised water level is all it takes to start the siphon effect. You can flush a toilet yourself just by dumping a bucket of water into it. In other words, the entire flush mechanism is to intentionally overflow the bowl, and the exit pipe is a glorified overflow control.
So to get back to your original question, why can't we put an extra overflow hole on the side, just in case the main hole is clogged? Because that would add needless complexity, and it wouldn't be efficient. The extra hole would get clogged more easily than the main hole, and it would end up being near-useless.
Clogs happen when some part of the flow (say, TP) gets snagged on the wall of the pipe. For this reason, they're much more common in skinny pipes than in fat pipes. In skinny pipes, any random part of the flow has a higher chance of contacting the wall and thus getting snagged than in fat pipes, where most of the flow never touches the wall.
As a result, if you want your toilet to stop spilling shit water on your floor, the answer is not to get a toilet with an added skinny pipe to try and control overflows. The answer is to get a toilet whose main pipe is wider, and thus harder to clog in the first place. | [
"A blocked vent is a relatively common problem caused by anything from leaves, to dead animals, to ice dams in very cold weather, or a horizontal section of the venting system, sloped the wrong way and filled with water from rain or condensation. Symptoms range from bubbles in the toilet bowl when it is flushed, to... |
Are modern Greeks descended mostly/entirely from Slavs? | You dont see this question asked a lot in a modern context because modern historians do not touch topics like this. The reason they dont is because its a nationalistic question, not just for Greece but for all those nationalist groups in other countries that dont like Greece or Greeks. These are the kinds of questions that were popular during the days of racist ideologies like the "white man's burden". Ill give you some sources to look at though.
Anyway there were people in Greece from places like Scythia, Thrace etc. even before 400 B.C. so there always has been intermixing. There is no such thing as a "pure race' and the whole idea of "racial purity" is racist rhetoric that isnt true for any group and there are plenty of other theories like it, such as for nations like Japan and their Korean/Chinese influence etc.
_URL_3_
King Phillip II buried with a Scythian Princess
The "Greek theory" emerged because of the racist ideologies in the early 1800's and the events that unfolded after the congress of Vienna. The congress of Vienna advocated for keeping the balance of power in Europe and preventing the rise of revolution because of what happened during the Napoleonic wars. Then the Greeks looked to gain their independence and the creators of this keeping the balance of power idea, Britain, France and Russia did a total 180 and supported the revolution for the Greeks. Greek independence pretty much succeeded because of the involvement of these three great powers.
Fallmerayer didnt like this and anti-Greek and later anti-Russian sentiment by men like Fallmerayer led to closer relations between the German states and the Ottomans which lead to economic benefits like the Anatolian railway. Fallmerayer also caused other nations like Bulgaria to advocate for and promote for an ancient connection to Macedon. Greece had basically achieved independence because of the 3 great powers involvement and they helped for 2 reasons one they liked ancient Greece and 2 they wanted to divide the sick man of europe.
Also this historian of Greek history [Vera Sykora] (_URL_0_) basically states that the whole reason why men like Fallmerayer and William Leake said Greeks have no connection to ancient Greece was because it hurt the western classicist connection to Ancient Greece. Also men like William Leake wanted to take Greek antiquities from Greece and the Greeks wouldnt let them but the Ottomans would.
For a modern genetic take, here is a genetic study of Minoans and their relationship to modern Cretans.
_URL_2_
This chart shows that the genetics of Greeks from the Lasithi plateau are very similar to the genetics of the ancient Minoans buried in the Odigitria Tholos tombs.
_URL_1_
*The PCA analysis also highlights the high affinity of the Minoans to the current inhabitants of the Lassithi plateau as well as Greece. Among the top 10 nearest neighbours to our Minoan population sample, four are Greek populations and two of these from Lassithi prefecture (Fig. 5). The close relationship of the Minoans to modern Cretans is also apparent, when analysis is restricted to populations originating from Greece (Fig. 6b). Particularly in respect to the first PCA (capturing 92% of the variance of this particular subset of the data), the Minoans are extremely close to the modern Lassithi population, the populations from the islands of Chios and Euboea, as well as the populations of Argolis and Lakonia (Southern Greece ) (Fig. 6b). Thus, the modern inhabitants of the Lassithi plateau still carry the maternal genetic signatures of their ancient predecessors of the Minoan population.*
| [
"Some pockets of Greek populations probably remained for some time, and to this day, some communities in the Hindu Kush claim to be descendants of the Greeks, such as the Kalash and Hunza in Pakistan, and the neighbouring Nuristani in Afghanistan. \n",
"Relations between the Slavs and Greeks were probably peacefu... |
why is it so important to keep global temperature increase under 2°c until 2100? where did this number originate from and what happens if we cross it? | Above 2 degrees and you start to trigger feedback loops such as ocean acidification, release of methane trapped in Arctic ice etc. The idea is that 1.5 - 2 degrees is bad but can be mapped whilst even 2.5 degrees could quickly become 3, 4 or 5 with no possibility to reverse the process. I'm sure you'll get some better and more scientific answers. | [
"According to Berkeley Earth's list of average global temperatures by year, the average global temperature for the 1850-1899 period was 13.8 °C (56.9 °F). Because greenhouse gases have increased rapidly since the 19th century, the average global temperature was 15.0 °C (58.9 °F) for the 2013-2017 period.\n",
"In ... |
why do we care if iran gets a nuclear bomb? they would be insane to try to use it against us, even if they had one. so why is this such a ballbreaker for us? | Nobody is afraid of nuclear weapons actually being used, aside from a few loud-mouthed fear-mongers who say that Iran will bomb Israel or some shit.
The true story is that, a nuclear Iran will mean a new Cold War between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Those two nations are at each others throats, desperately vying for political and economic influence in the area. If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, then Arabia will rush to get one too, and then we'll have an arms race on our hands, and that can't lead to anywhere good.
It will fundamentally change the nature of diplomacy in the Middle East, a region that is also absurdly hard to conduct diplomacy in already. | [
"BULLET::::- A potential reason behind U.S. resistance to an Iranian nuclear program lies in Middle Eastern geopolitics. In essence, the US feels that it must guard against even the possibility of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapons capability. Some nuclear technology is dual-use; i.e. it can be used for peaceful ener... |
movie soundtracks: is there a particular order/way the songs are put on the cd? if so, how does it work? | I would've assumed it was chronologically according to where in the film they were? | [
"Apart from soundtracks from the TV series, there have been three CDs known as which include the full versions from the opening and ending themes. Each of the CDs also have an extra DVD with the original videos. The two movies have also had their own original CD soundtracks.\n",
"While the official CD release of ... |
Why did the North American Bison never take off as a source of beef? | Oo, I can do this! I'm not a historian, but I come from 4 generations of ranchers, and we started ranching in the mid-1800s, when the Bison wasn't totally gone. So I can give you some history about the attempts to use Bison and cow/Bison crossbreds (the "Beefalo").
The very short answer is that Bison are problematic domesticated animals. They're (by and large) ornery. And they're tall enough that you (as a rancher) need to have specialized fencing, corrals, trailers--every aspect of your physical plant needs to be specialized JUST for Bison. So, before you (as a rancher) incur the SUBSTANTIAL costs associated changing every aspect of your physical plant, you'll need to be convinced the monetary upside is there. And it simply never has been. By virtue of being more ill-tempered then, say, Herefords (a very common breed in the 19th and 20th Century American West), Bison will tear up your physical plant more, and will be more dangerous for you to work with. Bear in mind, on many occasions, you'll need to work with your herd on foot, and up close and personal. So you want the gentlest, nicest stock you can get. And Bison ain't it.
There's another problem most people don't have any idea about. Cows need to eat 1.5% of their weight in dry matter every day. (In some cases, like when they're pregnant or nursing or when it's really cold, that number goes up.) So in the American West, where forage is a bit hard to come by, you want stock whose carcass to meat ratio is really slim--the most beef for your total weight, if you will. [Herefords will give you a carcass ratio of 66%,](_URL_1_) meaning that 66% of the total carcass weight is useful, saleable beef, rather than bone, sinew, organs, etc. [The best data I could find is that Bison have a 57% carcass ratio.](_URL_0_) So you're feeding 9% more feed to get to the same amount of saleable beef. Most ranches run very close to their 100% sustainable load (and, for reasons I won't get into here, that's a desirable approach), so what that means is decreasing your total sales by basically 10%. And for most ranches for most years, that by itself will entirely consume your profitability---over 100+ years of ranching, my family's data suggests an average annual return of 3%.
Finally, a version of the physical plant issue comes up. You can hire cowboys who know how to work with cattle. Ditto vets, and slaughterhouses. But once you start raising Bison, you need to find people who know how to work with them (there aren't many), vets who know their particular health problems (there aren't many), and slaughterhouses who will process them (there aren't many). And you'll pay a premium each and every time. It's just not worth it.
Final note: there was an attempt in the mid-1900s to breed a hybrid cow/bison product call the Beefalo. That failed, as far as I've ever heard, because the products managed, largely, to successfully combine the worst traits of both breeds. I.e., what you got was a large, ornery, thin animal (the bison traits) with susceptibility to heat, dust, and insects (the cow traits); what you wanted was a smaller, well-natured, fat animal (the cow traits) with resistance to heat, dust, and insects (the bison traits). And people just never found a way to get that combination of genetic traits to express.
I've tried to cite SOME sources for this stuff. A lot of this, to be frank, is just me sitting at the dining room table with my father and grandfather (collectively, about 100 years of ranching experience) and listening to them talk about things like why we never raised bison. Both were very active in the NCA (National Cattlemen's Association), which was very involved with both the early bison ranching experiments in the West, and the attempts to crossbreed Beefalo, and some of our neighbors were involved in one or the other of these attempts, so we had a great deal of personal experience. I know the problems (especially in this sub!) of citing yourself as a source, but.....I've been involved in this stuff for 30 years. And OP's questions are pretty well known to ranchers who have taken time to educate themselves about bison. | [
"Despite being the closest relatives of domestic cattle native to North America, bison were never domesticated by Native Americans. Later attempts of domestication by Europeans prior to the 20th century met with limited success. Bison were described as having a \"wild and ungovernable temper\"; they can jump close ... |
the nhs reform bill that has been passed in the uk | The Conservative government so far has been going around talking about their 'big society'. This has meant 'making work pay' (reforming welfare), 'putting parents and teachers in control of schools' (reforming education) but healthcare is more complicated.
1. They want to put GPs all together in a big pot (consortium) which sorts out stuff. This replaces 'unnecessary quangocrats'
2. Restricting the role of the Health Secretary. He will have a more 'overwatcher'-type role.
3. “A move away from centrally-driven process targets which get in the way of patient care; and a relentless focus on outcomes and the quality standards that deliver them". This means fewer 'targets'.
4. Watchdogs for patients - except these won't be government-funded, and will be local and community-based. In fact the local authorities will be handed a larger role overall.
5. 'No decision about me, without me': the reform bill is a bit vague about this, but it's basically about changing the attitude of the staff (I think)
6. "Liberate NHS providers" - NHS trusts will be 'liberated' and more detached from the state. It removes the cap that certain trusts can receive from non-NHS (private) patients. This is because the cap is, according to the bill "arbitrary and unfair".
7. According to The Spectator, 'The government will strengthen the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) role in ensuring “essential levels of safety and quality” from providers.' Again, this is just further distancing the NHS from the government, finance-wise and management-wise.
8. Cutting a load of admin costs
9. Different ways of budgeting. Again, a lot of it is freeing up loads of ways that the NHS can use 'third party arrangements' or where money is handed directly to the patient to buy their own services.
This is controversial. Some people think that the necessary behind-the-scenes work is being only cut down for reasons like typical Conservative beliefs or simple cost-cutting. They might think that it is not being done because it is better. Also, it is seen as being too complicated and would actually increase the inefficiency in the NHS.
| [
"The publication of the NHS Long Term Plan in January 2019 marked the official abandonment of the policy of competition in the English NHS, with integrated care systems to be created across England by 2021, mergers of Clinical Commissioning Groups and probable merging of NHS England with NHS Improvement, though thi... |
why boiling water becoming vapor (gas) doesn't separate its atoms and become air? | I think percentage means amount of water in air compared to the amount of saturation, so ir humidity is 80% it doesn't mean that 80% of molecules in air are H2O, it means that air can only fit a bit more water before it's oversaturated | [
"Liquids may change to a vapor at temperatures below their boiling points through the process of evaporation. Evaporation is a surface phenomenon in which molecules located near the liquid's edge, not contained by enough liquid pressure on that side, escape into the surroundings as vapor. On the other hand, boiling... |
Why didn’t the Romans or Persians ever attempt to conquer Arabia before the rise of Islam? | Rome did actually attempt to conquer the east coast of the Red Sea and southern Arabia during the rule of Emperor Augustus in the first century BC.
The territory roughly corresponding to modern day-Yemen was then occupied by the Sabaean Kingdom, one of the main incense-producing regions of the ancient world. It also possessed gold reserves and a seaboard facing the Indian Ocean, making it a potentially valuable addition to the empire. The Romans recognised this value and also sought to bring the entire Red Sea under their jurisdiction by conquering both coasts.
In 25 BC a Roman army invaded Arabia and was militarily successful against its opponents but made slow progress towards the Sabaean capital, largely due to the climate and geography of the region. The Roman advance eventually halted altogether when soldiers began to suffer from a scurvy-induced paralysis in their limbs, likely brought on by a lack of vitamin C in the campaign diet. Fearing the "unknown" sickness killing his troops, the Roman commander withdrew his forces from Arabia.
However, the Roman assault nevertheless destabilised the Sabaean Kingdom and caused it to fragment. The new regimes that seized the territory understood the threat posed by Rome and regularly sent embassies, envoys etc. to discourage invasion and promote friendship and trade ties, hence why no further attempt was made by Rome to conquer Arabia.
Source: *The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean* by Raoul McLaughlin, a very in-depth and interesting read that I highly recommend if this sort of thing interests you. | [
"While the Byzantine Roman and Sassanid Persian empires were both weakened by warfare (602–628), a new power in the form of Islam grew in the Middle East. In a series of rapid Muslim conquests, Arab armies, led by the Caliphs and skilled military commanders such as Khalid ibn al-Walid, swept through most of the Mid... |
how a vegan diet would reverse evolution. | Now that we have a global economy, you can find the essential amino acids (protein), fats (ω-3 and ω-6), vitamins, and minerals that you need in all kinds of food. Being vegan at this point would have little to no effect on your metabolism or biochemistry, as your liver will break down most of the plant derived products to the same compounds you would find in a meat eater.
If you were a caveman and a vegan, depending on where you live, you might not be able to achieve the essential nutrients required to sustain all of your body's needs. The only reason being a vegan would decrease your intelligence is if there is insufficient proteins and lipids required for mental development, which you would be more likely to come across in a more diverse diet. Now you can just take supplements and eat a balanced vegan diet to compensate for meat consumption.
**Edit:** Oh, and when it comes to apes evolving due to a meat diet, I can read more into this, but from what I remember, early primates that still lived in trees did no have sufficient protein consumption to increase the size and complexity of the brain. Meat did help these animals evolve larger brains, but we don't really *need* meat anymore. You can live a completely normal life and get plenty of essential amino acids just from eating a vegan diet. I am not vegan, and I'm not trying to sell anyone on being vegan, but it seems legit! | [
"In 2012, Cameron, his wife, and his children adopted a vegan diet. Cameron explains that \"By changing what you eat, you will change the entire contract between the human species and the natural world\".\n",
"The vegan diet became increasingly mainstream in the 2010s, especially in the latter half. \"The Economi... |
How did the Jesuits go from being "God's Soldiers" of the Counter Reformation to being a relatively liberal organization within the Catholic Church? | The key document that drove it was the Jesuit's adoption of education - they didn't originally set out to be educators but kind of fell into it after holding all sorts of offices in court during the Early Modern Period. Just when science, opening up the East and the study of vernacular literature became important, the Jesuits had the right people with all the right skills in the right place to establish a well structured course - enshrined in the 1598 document *Ratio Studiorum* which was the first Jesuit education curriculum.
The Society of Jesus was different from the monastic orders of previous years, being much more flexible in its organisational structure as well as in formal observance of rituals. This does not, however, mean it is flexible in Church doctorine - as famously quoted by its founder, St Ignatius Loyola"I will believe that the white that I see is black if the hierarchical Church so defines it."
That being said, they got so powerful with their close ties with the royal courts they were formally suppressed by the Pope in the 18th century. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna changed the political climate considerably, so much so that suppression against the Society was lifted; but the Superior General decided to keep the Jesuits on a lower profile - which is why they have been seen to avoid the limelight, so to speak, in recent centuries.
Source:
* To Know Worship and Love (1998) by Peter Elliot (Ed.)
| [
"The Jesuits were the most effective of the new Catholic orders. An heir to the devotional, observantine, and legalist traditions, the Jesuits organized along military lines. The worldliness of the Renaissance church had no part in their new order. Loyola's masterwork \"Spiritual Exercises\" showed the emphasis of ... |
is it normal for members of the american government to sue the president? | It's not exactly what I'd call common, but it's not impossible. You can basically sue anyone at any time for anything.
This doesn't mean that the judge won't just throw your case out of court though. I'm fairly certain that's what's going to happen here. Nothing will be accomplished except for a waste of time for the sake of a publicity stunt. | [
"Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681 (1997), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case establishing that a sitting President of the United States has no immunity from civil law litigation, in federal court, against him or her, for acts done before taking office and unrelated to the office. In particular, there is ... |
how has the u.s. economy changed since the 1970s? | That is a hell of a question with a million parts to it!
Society has changed a lot, as has science and technology for countless fields and professions. Thus, more specialization is required for the highest levels of education due to so many fields existing. This means expansion and growth of more colleges/universities.
'back in the day' many professions and technologies simply did not exist, so less education was required overall.
Also, it becomes more and more culturally pushed that you must go to college to be successful as a young person. A hotly debated subject.
That is as much as I can speak on when it comes to the college education aspect. | [
"The United States has been the world's largest national economy in terms of GDP since at least the 1920s. For many years following the Great Depression of the 1930s, when danger of recession appeared most serious, the government strengthened the economy by spending heavily itself or cutting taxes so that consumers... |
Why do some people faint/vomit at the site of blood/severe injury and others not? | This is semi-layman speculation, so please don't downvote me to hell for trying!
This is due to the [vasovagal response](_URL_0_). Essentially, when presented with a trigger such as a cut or injury or even seeing someone else get injured, a cascade of responses fire off.
> On one end of the spectrum is the cardioinhibitory response, characterized by a drop in heart rate (negative chronotropic effect) and in contractility (negative inotropic effect) leading to a decrease in cardiac output that is significant enough to result in a loss of consciousness. It is thought that this response results primarily from enhancement in parasympathetic tone.
On the other end of the spectrum is the vasodepressor response, caused by a drop in blood pressure (to as low as 80/20) without much change in heart rate. This phenomenon occurs due to vasodilation, probably as a result of withdrawal of sympathetic nervous system tone.
The majority of people with vasovagal syncope have a mixed response somewhere between these two ends of the spectrum.
Everyone's different, so the sudden drop in heart rate/blood pressure affects some people more severely than others. | [
"One theory in evolutionary psychology is that fainting at the sight of blood might have evolved as a form of playing dead which increased survival from attackers and might have slowed blood loss in a primitive environment. \"Blood-injury phobia\", as this is called, is experienced by about 15% of people.\n",
"Th... |
if i store 1 gb of files in the cloud (dropbox, google drive, etc.) how many gb on servers is that for the provider? | It's probably 3GB, plus backups- storing data in 3 locations is pretty standard to keep it safe (the primary, a backup, and somewhere offsite). Which costs them next to nothing to store because hard drives are dirt cheap. | [
"Entire folders can be downloaded as a single ZIP file with OneDrive. For a single download, there is a limit of 15 GB; the total ZIP file size limit is 20 GB; and up to 10,000 files can be included in a ZIP file.\n",
"There are also storage limits to individual Gmail messages. Initially, one message, including a... |
How Did the US Navy Do Against the British in 1812? | It should be noted that while the US Navy mustered 23 ships with about 550 guns, American privateers fielded over 500 ships with almost 3,000 guns. The U.S. Navy took 254 prizes, while privateers seized another 1,300 prizes.
| [
"The U.S. Navy saw substantial action in the War of 1812, where it was victorious in eleven single-ship duels with the Royal Navy. It drove all significant British forces off Lake Erie and Lake Champlain and prevented them from becoming British-controlled zones. The result was a major defeat for the British invasio... |
why do springboard/platform divers sit in a jacuzzi after their jump? | The water in the diving pool is cold, and when you're cold, your muscles tense up a little, and your circulation gets worse, especially around your extremities.
Divers need to be very flexible and very precise with their movements, so they need to warm back up before their next dive - the jacuzzi warms them up so that they don't have any of the problems that come from cold water. | [
"The divers of the group are informed of the intention to ascend, using the thumb up hand signal, and if not already neutrally buoyant, will adjust their buoyancy, and hold the inflator mechanism ready to dump excess gas from the BCD as it expands during the ascent. Increased buoyancy of the BCD and dive suit due t... |
Will the universe ever retract in on itself, creating another big bang? | Evidence seems to be to the contrary. Cosmic Inflation is accelerating, outstripping Gravity's ability to pull everything back together. We still have another 1 to 100 Trillion years of star formation left, but after that, grab your blankets, it's going to get rather cold and lonely. | [
"A more specific theory called \"Big Bounce\" proposes that the universe could collapse to the state where it began and then initiate another Big Bang, so in this way the universe would last forever, but would pass through phases of expansion (Big Bang) and contraction (Big Crunch). \n",
"Various new models of wh... |
stock values | A stock is like any other product and its price is influenced by supply and demand. People buy stocks to either: participate in the company's earnings in the form of dividends and capital gains (which is more often the case) or gain control of the company (which is rarer, but could massively influence the stock price).
When a company announces, that it is going to release a breakthrough product, for example, people's perception of the company's earning power changes. More people consider the stock a good bet. People wanting to buy the stock will accept higher prices, since they are competing against more buyers (like in an auction) and people who already own the stock would be more reluctant to give it up, unless they get an additional incentive (i.e. more money).
The same applies for bad news, when more people want to dump the stock, than buy it.
TL;DR News affect the supply and demand of a stock, which in turn affects the price. Whether the price is fair and you are getting your money's worth is a totally different subject. :) | [
"Intrinsic value (true value) is the perceived or calculated value of a company, including tangible and intangible factors, using fundamental analysis. It's also frequently called fundamental value. It is used for comparison with the company's market value and finding out whether is the company undervalued on the s... |
Here's hoping this can be answered maturely... what is the science behind the inability to urinate while you have an erection? | Since sperm travel through the urethra at high pressure, the passageway to the bladder needs to be closed off in order to prevent "backflow" doing ejaculation. | [
"Physiologically, urination involves coordination between the central, autonomic, and somatic nervous systems. In infants, some elderly individuals, and those with neurological injury, urination may occur as an involuntary reflex. Brain centers that regulate urination include the pontine micturition center, periaqu... |
If silica sand (which is what the insulated plates on the space shuttle were made out of) has a melting point of 3200*F, and our thermosphere can reach 3750*F, then how did the Shuttle pass through without major malfunctions? | Basically, the thermosphere is very hot but also very thin. It doesn't have a high energy density. It's true that if you left the space shuttle in the thermosphere for a while, it would eventually suffer damage; however, it would take a while.
This is similar to how boiling water (100 C / 212 F) is more painful to stick a hand in than an oven (200 C / 400 F). The water has a higher energy density but a lower temperature than the air in an oven does. | [
"\"Columbia\" was destroyed because of damaged thermal protection from foam debris that broke off from the external tank during ascent. The foam had not been designed or expected to break off, but had been observed in the past to do so without incident. The original shuttle operational specification said the orbite... |
do hallucinogens have the same effect on reptiles that they have on humans? | I don't think a reptile can have an existential crisis, followed by a period of self-discovery and then settle on a period of emotional nirvana.
| [
"Other species claimed to be capable of producing hallucinations include several species of sea chub from the genus \"Kyphosus\". It is unclear whether the toxins are produced by the fish themselves or by marine algae in their diet. Other hallucinogenic fish are \"Siganus spinus\", called \"the fish that inebriates... |
How many blacksmiths would be in a castle? To smith all the weapons and armor. | You may be interested in [this previous answer](_URL_0_) that I gave about supplying medieval armies. At least by the high and later Middle ages (the period that produces the castle we think of), Weapons and armour would not be made in a castle, normally, but bought from armouring centers elsewhere. Some particular royal castles (like the Tower of London) were indeed turned into armouries but even these functioned more as places for storage than as places of manufacture (though they could also produce quite a bit). | [
"While there are many people who work with metal such as farriers, wheelwrights, and armorers, the blacksmith had a general knowledge of how to make and repair many things, from the most complex of weapons and armor to simple things like nails or lengths of chain.\n",
"Schlaikjer began blacksmithing in the early ... |
for the digits of pi (that we can calculate) is there a trend of certain digits being more common than others. | I don't believe there is. But check out this video. If you're into math it's pretty interesting and I believe it may answer your question.
[Mile of Pi - Numberphile](_URL_0_) | [
"While the PiHex project calculated the least significant digits of pi ever attempted in any base, the second place is held by Peter Trueb who computed some 22+ trillion digits in 2016 and third place by \"houkouonchi\" who derived the 13.3 trillionth digit in base 10.\n",
"Later computers calculated pi to extrao... |
how are claw machines - a game of chance - legally allowed to present themselves as games of skill? | Are you sure you seen them marked as "game of skill"? They probably don't. | [
"Claw cranes are the most common example of a merchandiser. The player guides a claw in an attempt to pick up a prize and drop it into a hole. Other types of merchandisers can offer prizes ranging from cheap and inexpensive to high end merchandise such as handheld game consoles and mobile phones.\n",
"A claw vend... |
Mirepoix, or slight variations of it. What's the significance of onion, celery, carrot and why do they appear in almost every European cuisine? | This would be an excellent question for r/AskFoodHistorians as well! | [
"Allium polyanthum, called the many-flowered garlic, is a Mediterranean species of wild onion native to Spain, France, Italy, Morocco, and Tunisia. It is widely cultivated for its edible and potently aromatic bulbs and foliage.\n",
"The origin of the blancmange is obscure, but it is believed by some that it was a... |
How far away from our solar system would our Sun still be visable enough to be in an alien constellation? | Only 30-40 light years. Our sun has an absolute magnitude of ~4.9, which by definition means it would have a magnitude of 4.9 when seen from 10 parsecs away (~33 light years).
Our eyes on the clearest nights with no light pollution can only see things brighter than about 5th magnitude, so the sun would already be almost gone at 40 light years. Note that this means that the Sun would only be visible with the naked eye to the nearest ~2000 stars or so!!
This is why almost all the stars you can see in the night sky are much bigger and brighter than the Sun. Even though 70+% of the stars in the universe are M-dwarfs (masses < 60% of the Sun), none of them are visible to the naked eye because they're just so dim. All the stars we can see with our eyes are the much rarer stars that are more massive and luminous than the Sun. | [
"In a 2009 interview with the Discovery Channel, Mike Brown noted that, while it is not impossible that the Sun has a distant planetary companion, such an object would have to be lying very far from the observed regions of the Solar System to have no detectable gravitational effect on the other planets. A Mars-size... |
why can't evolution just be a part of creationism's plan? | Simply put, you can, if you want.
Some people do just that.
Whether or not to believe that an intelligent creator guides a scientific principle like evolution does require a lot of justifying, as evolution relies on random mutations that are usually NOT beneficial to the organism in question. I would be left with the question of why, assuming an overseeing creator, would there be so many failures, or so many things about our biology that really don't make much sense (sex organs and waste organs being mixed together, vestigial organs that serve no current purpose, etc) if someone is tailoring them? | [
"Creationists argue against evolution on the grounds that it cannot explain certain non-evolutionary processes, such as abiogenesis, the Big Bang, or the meaning of life. In such instances, \"evolution\" is being redefined to refer to the entire history of the universe, and it is argued that if one aspect of the un... |
why doesn't soil's "usefulness" run out? | It doesn't run out in nature because the soil is constantly being replenished by rotting vegetation, animal poop etc. Worms and other little creatures take that stuff, process it and boom..."new" soil.
Source is long but gives you your answer:
Biological: In many soils, earthworms play a major role in the conversion of large pieces of organic matter into rich humus, thus improving soil fertility. This is achieved by the worm's actions of pulling below the surface, deposited organic matter such as leaf fall or manure, either for food or to plug its burrow. Once in the burrow, the worm will shred the leaf and partially digest it and mingle it with the earth. Worm casts (see below) can contain 40% more humus than the top 9" (23 cm) of soil in which the worm is living.
Chemical: In addition to dead organic matter, the earthworm also ingests any other soil particles that are small enough—including sand grains up to 1/20 of an inch (1.25 mm)—into its gizzard, wherein those minute fragments of grit grind everything into a fine paste which is then digested in the intestine. When the worm excretes this in the form of casts, deposited on the surface or deeper in the soil, minerals and plant nutrients are changed to an accessible form for plants to use. Investigations in the United States show that fresh earthworm casts are five times richer in available nitrogen, seven times richer in available phosphates, and 11 times richer in available potassium than the surrounding upper 6 inches (150 mm) of soil. In conditions where humus is plentiful, the weight of casts produced may be greater than 4.5 kg (10 lb) per worm per year.
Physical. The earthworm's burrowing creates a multitude of channels through the soil and is of great value in maintaining the soil structure, enabling processes of aeration and drainage. Permaculture co-founder Bill Mollison points out that by sliding in their tunnels, earthworms "act as an innumerable army of pistons pumping air in and out of the soils on a 24-hour cycle (more rapidly at night)".[22] Thus, the earthworm not only creates passages for air and water to traverse the soil, but also modifies the vital organic component that makes a soil healthy.(See Bioturbation.) | [
"The soil is produced from decomposing organic matter and the breakdown of bedrock, but is generally poor in nutrients; most nutrients are found as superficial detritus and within the living components of the ecosystem. There are multiple reasons for why the soil is generally very poor in nutrients. Firstly, the wa... |
How much protection would chainmail give a warrior in the earliest medieval period? | Questions like these are always impossible to answer precisely, or in any quantifiable sense. We haven't any surviving, fully intact mail shirts from the 6th century, nor can we reconstruct it exactly - the metallurgy, if nothing else, will always be a bit off. There have been some limited tests performed using reconstructed mail, most notably by Alan Williams. But, we can speak generally about what mail did for the warrior who wore it. I'm not an expert on the Migration Era, but these comments should be applicable to mail in general.
As far as we know, the mail being worn in 6th century England - indeed, through to about ~1100 - would be very similar to that worn by the late Romans. This would consist of a short-sleeved shirt, hip or perhaps mid-thigh in length, made from 10,000-20,000 iron rings, half riveted and the other half solid. While later medievals would wear some kind of padded garment under their mail, there is no evidence for such at this time. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; we simply can't know.
As mentioned above, Alan Williams conducted a series of tests using reconstructed mail made from riveted, mild steel rings and various weapons. Williams found that one-handed swords, whether used to slash or to stab, were wholly incapable of piercing his reproduction mail sample; they simply can't generate enough force. He found that bodkin arrows could defeat the mail itself, but struggled to penetrate the padding worn beneath it; only if the arrow was delivered with a force of 120 joules was the armor completely defeated. Lance thrusts and halberd slashes required more than 200 joules to defeat the armor. Again, though, we cannot assume that these tests entirely reflect the reality of medieval armor. I should note that he also tested a 15th-century mail sample, which produced slightly inferior results, but I'm hesitant to make any assumptions from that; most things don't work quite as well 550 years down the line.
So, if experimental archaeology can't fully answer our question, what are we to do? Like all those trained in history, I'm going to suggest that we - say it with me - Read The Sources! I'm sad to say that basically nothing survives from 6th century England, so we will have to extrapolate from other sources describing the use of mail. Rather than dig through every primary source I can find looking for references to mail - sorry, I don't love you that much - I will turn to [this article](_URL_0_) by Dan Howard, who has helpfully collated a number of passages referencing the effectiveness of mail armor.
From Ammianus Marcellinus, describing the Siege of Amida in 359:
> The Persian infantry found it hard to avoid the arrows shot from the walls by the artillery, and took open order and since almost no kind of dart failed to find its mark, even the mail-clad horsemen were checked and gave ground.
From Joinville in the 13th century:
> ...and whilst the Turks were fleeing before him, they (who shoot as well backwards as forwards) would cover him with darts. When he had driven them out of the village, he would pick out the darts that were sticking all over him; and put on his coat-of-arms again... Then, turning round, and seeing that the Turks had come in at the other end of the street, he would charge them again, sword in hand, and drive them out. And this he did about three times in the manner I have described.
From Baha'al-Din, writing about the Third Crusade:
> ...drawn up in front of the cavalry, stood firm as a wall, and every foot-soldier wore a vest of thick felt and a coat of mail so dense and strong that our arrows made no impression on them... I saw some with from one to ten arrows sticking in them, and still advancing at their ordinary pace without leaving the ranks.
From Galbert of Bruges, discussing a 12th century archer named Benkin:
> And when he [Benkin] was aiming at the besiegers, his drawing on the bow was identified by everyone because he would either cause grave injury to the unarmed or put to flight those who were armed, whom his shots stupefied and stunned, even if they did not wound.
From Usamah ibn Munquidh, describing an encounter in which he struck a Frankish knight in the side with his lance:
> He bent sideways so much that his head reached his stirrup, his shield and lance fell off his hand, and his helmet off his head...he then resumed his position, erect in the saddle. Having had linked mail under his tunic, my lance did not wound him.
Same author:
> A Kurd named Mayyah smote a Frankish knight with a lance, which made a piece of the link in his coat of mail penetrate into his abdomen, and killed him.
Ibid:
> ...the horseman who struck Philip the knight, for verily the Franks have all been astounded on account of that blow which pierced two layers of links [back and front] in the knight's coat of mail and did not kill him.
What can we make of these sources, and why did I assault you with them? Basically, what we can see is that, at least on these occasions, mail could provide prodigious protection from a variety of weapons, and this supports the results of Williams' tests. It was consistently difficult to pierce by archers at long range, and could stand up to lance thrusts under certain circumstances; under other circumstances, it could fail spectacularly. The accounts don't describe its effectiveness against swords, but given that arrows and lances outperformed swords significantly in Williams' tests, I think we can assume that he is largely correct in thinking that swords would have grave difficulty in penetrating mail.
Finally, a note on the purpose of wearing armor. The idea is not to make one's self invulnerable; that is patently impossible. Humans, given enough time, will always find ways to get through the armor. The idea is not to give them the time. Armored men simply have a much larger margin for error than unarmored men and can take risks that the latter can't. I've used the metaphor of a car's seat belt before. Even if you wear your seat belt, there are some collisions that simply aren't survivable. But, by wearing your seat belt, you greatly lower the odds of that happening. An accident that would have killed you becomes one that seriously injures you; an accident that might have seriously injured you becomes one that you walk away from with bruises.
It's the same principle with armor. A battle is not a duel. Whether in a small-unit skirmish or the rarer pitched battle, in which you are fighting shoulder-to-shoulder in a close formation, against enemies in a similar formation, most blows will not be perfectly aimed and delivered because the fighters' main priority is not dying. It doesn't matter how bad ass your mail shirt is if someone cuts your hand off or stabs you in the testicles; you're out of the fight. But, where even a glancing blow will injure a wholly unarmored man, an armored man can shrug it off and keep on trucking. The knowledge that he is protected from most blows makes for a much more effective fighter because he has the self-confidence to fight more aggressively than someone who isn't armored.
**Works Cited**
The Knight and the Blast Furnace, by Alan Williams.
Mail: Unchained, by Dan Howard. | [
"Chainmail was the prominent form of armor during the 13th century. A precursor to plate armor, chainmail protected its wearer from opponents while allowing mobility, and was extremely effective against edged weapons and thrust attacks.\n",
"The most common type during the 11th through the 16th centuries was the ... |
why is happening leidenfrost effect? | Pan is so hot that bottom of water drops evaporate immediately and form a vapor cushion for the droplet to hover around on abs insulate the drop from evaporating. In other words the steam below the drop isn't hot enough to evaporate it, even tho it's vapor itself. | [
"The Leidenfrost effect is a physical phenomenon in which a liquid, close to a surface that is significantly hotter than the liquid's boiling point, produces an insulating vapor layer that keeps the liquid from boiling rapidly. Because of this 'repulsive force', a droplet hovers over the surface rather than making ... |
why do my previously broken body parts hurt when it rains. | no one knows for sure. but some theories..
_URL_0_ | [
"Complete tears of the plantar fascia are often due to sudden trauma or injury. Often, the rupture will be accompanied by a popping sound and painful snapping sensation. The bottom of the foot often bruises and swells. Former NFL athlete Peyton Manning suffered a complete rupture in 2015. \n",
"Rain will quickly ... |
Did America offer offer France any assistance during the French Revolution (Or France asking for US aid) and how did the political elite of the US react to the demise of its ally. | By demise of "its ally" are you referring to the defeat of Napoleon in 1814 or Napoleon seizing control? | [
"France's desire to keep their aid to the United States secret was evident during the 1777 incident involving Arthur Lee and Silas Deane. Lee, who frequently aided the Committee of Secret Correspondence, suspected Silas Deane, a colonial agent in France, of financial wrongdoing. In order to prove Deane's wrongdoing... |
Where would an RNA World abiogenesis ideally take place? | I had a professor explain his theory, and I like it more than anything I've heard in literature, so I'll pass it on to the best of my abilities.
If you are familiar with how PCR works, you know that it relies on temperature changes to begin the various steps: very high temp to denature the DNA, lower temperature to re-anneal the primers, and moderate temperature to allow replication.
This fits into a solar cycle- very hot during the day, cold at night, and warm in the morning. So if all of the ingredients necessary for RNA replication are dissolves in shallow pools in direct sunlight, you get a sort of natural PCR process, repeated daily. | [
"The RNA world is a hypothetical stage in the evolutionary history of life on Earth, in which self-replicating RNA molecules proliferated before the evolution of DNA and proteins. The term also refers to the hypothesis that posits the existence of this stage.\n",
"The hypothesized existence of an RNA world does n... |
Where in the Universe it is the darkest? | [This is certainly one very dark place.](_URL_1_)
That darkness is a molecular cloud. Lots of dust and gas that obscures all the stars behind it from our view.
Edit: Thanks to kodiakus who prompted me to find the [same area in IR](_URL_0_) | [
"Krsna passed over all these planets and reached the covering of the universe. This covering is described in the Srimad-Bhagavatam as great darkness. This material world as a whole is described as dark. In the open space there is sunlight, and therefore it is illuminated, but in the covering, because of the absence... |
why does coke in a glass bottle, or in a can, taste noticeably different from coke from plastic bottles? | The polymer that lines aluminium cans might absorb small amounts of soluble flavor from the soda. Conversely, acetaldehyde in plastic bottles might migrate into the soda. The FDA regulates this kind of potential chemical contact, but even minute, allowable amounts could alter flavor. Glass is apparently the best for keeping its true flavor.
[Source of this theory and my wisdom.](_URL_3_)
& nbsp;
This has been asked before btw:
* [ELI5: Why Coca Cola in a glass bottle tastes better than in a plastic bottle?](_URL_1_)
* [ELI5: Why do drinks taste different when drunk from metal cans, glass bottles and plastic bottles?](_URL_7_)
* [ELI5: Why will the same drink from the same company taste noticeable different depending on the material of the container they put it in?](_URL_6_)
& nbsp;
**Best edit EVER:** THANKS /u/fatcatfromspace. Sorry guys I massively messed up I forgot about the whole ELI5, [so I made this to make it easier to learn and understand.](_URL_5_)
**[Here's my best attempt (its hard to colour between the line).](_URL_0_)**
& nbsp;
Edit 2: Guys I spent a couple of minutes looking on google for an answer that I've always pondered about and when I found an answer I was happy with, I went with it! Mine probably isn't the right/final answer but I was sufficiently happy with it. Especially after I coloured it in, it really helped me get my head around it.
& nbsp;
Edit 3: Thank you /u/rkp1923 for your [comment](_URL_2_) and contribution.
[This is just for you and everyone else on reddit under 5.](_URL_4_)
And here's my attempt **[Damn those lines, it's so hard trying to stay inside!](_URL_8_)** | [
"Mexican Coca-Cola is sold in a thick or glass bottle, which some have described in contrast to the more common plastic American Coca-Cola bottles as being \"more elegant, with a pleasingly nostalgic shape\". Formerly, Coca-Cola was widely available in refundable and non-refundable glass bottles of various sizes in... |
why do the drawstrings on sweaters and hoodies always try to come out of the hoods when they are run through a washer and dryer? | My guess is that one of the drawstring ends can easily get snagged by other garments or other parts of the hoodie, then as the washer or dryer turns the clothes are tossled and the string is pulled. Imagine the drawstring end getting sandwiched in some jeans then as the washer spins the jeans move away from the hoodie and the string pulls away with it.
Side note: As an infrequent redditor, why does my view (using "reddit is fun" app) say 2 comments but show no comments? | [
"Sweaters are often maintained by washing or dry cleaning and the use of a lint roller or pill razor. But airing (and rinsing in pure water if necessary) is considered better than washing with soap or another detergent, especially when not all of the natural oil (lanolin) has been removed from the wool. The use of ... |
Does the density of a material have any relation with its thermal conductivity? | They are positively correlated, for example [here is a plot of thermal conductivity and density of different kinds of snow](_URL_0_). A simple way of thinking about it is that heat is conducted by atoms bumping into each other, and this can happen more readily when the atoms are closer together. | [
"The electrical conductivity of a bulk layer of particles depends on both surface and volume factors. Volume conduction, or the motions of electrical charges through the interiors of particles, depends mainly on the composition and temperature of the particles. In the higher temperature regions, above , volume cond... |
why does my congestion move from nostril to nostril with gravity? | My best guess (I don't really know) is all congestion is is a mucus/fluid build up in your nasal cavity, not exactly in your nostrils so I kind of imagine it as water in a bottle. It moves around based off gravity but if won't just drip out on its own. | [
"The ventricles are stronger and thicker than the atria, and the muscle wall surrounding the left ventricle is thicker than the wall surrounding the right ventricle due to the higher force needed to pump the blood through the systemic circulation. Atria facilitate circulation primarily by allowing uninterrupted ven... |
The dynastic union of Castile and Aragon seems to have rapidly coalesced into a unified Spanish kingdom. Why couldn't the later dynastic union of Spain and Portugal achieve the same results? | Well your premise is wrong, Castile and Aragon didn't coalesced into a unified Spanish kingdom, it didn't do that until the Spanish War of Succession (1705-1715).
Before that, the territories of the Spanish crown only had two common institutions: the Monarch and the Inquisition. But for the rest, each territory had their own institutions, with less or more degree of autonomy. Castile, for example, was mostly an autocratic kingdom, specially after the Civil War between Joanna and Isabel in the 1470s and the War of Communities in the 1520s, but still it had some territories with special privileges and laws like the Lordship of Biscay. Meanwhile Navarre, which had been conquered in the 1510s, nonetheless preserved its Charter and its political autonomy on laws, taxes, Cortes, and other matters of internal significance. The same happened in the Crown of Aragon, where each kingdom (Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia) kept its laws, customs, governments, Cortes, and even their own currency and army. Despite the desire from the Kings of Spain to unify the Peninsula under the system that ruled Castile, it never came to be until the Bourbons came to power. The Count-Duke of Olivares, minister of Philip IV, tried to do so to force the other kingdoms under the Monarchy to fund the wars of the Crown in Netherlands and France during the 80 Years War, but that resulted in the revolt of Catalonia and Portugal, the former failed while the latter successful.
It wasn't until Philip V won the Spanish War of Succession that all the privileges of the Realms of the Crown of Aragon were abolished. The Nueva Planta decrees abolished the charters and privileges of the Kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia and the Principality of Catalonia. That is when we can start talking about a unitary state, and even just so much, because Navarre and Biscay kept their charters, as well as some other smaller territories. | [
"Under Isabella and Ferdinand, the royal dynasties of Castile and Aragon, their respective kingdoms, were united into a single line. Historiography of Spain generally treats this as the formation of the Kingdom of Spain, but in actuality, the two kingdoms continued for many centuries with their own separate institu... |
Did people of Indochina know of the Australian landmass before European discovery? | Yes, they did. Fishermen from Makassar, in southern Sulawesi, travelled to the north and northwest coast of Australia for months every year from at least the mid-eighteenth century, quite possibly from the mid-seventeenth century and – according to at least seven contested, hard to explain but carbon-dated items – perhaps even from as early as the eleventh century.
The 17th-18th century voyagers went in search of trepang (sea cucumbers) which were from 1600 or so a highly valued exotic gourmet item in mainland China, and thus the peoples of Northern Australia became linked to a trade route that stretched as far north as Japan. We're much less certain that the northern coast had sufficient resources to attract earlier voyagers, though the Makassans traded for rare tortoiseshell there as well as for trepang. The relations between Australian Aborigines and the Indonesians were sometimes hostile, but for the most part very friendly - so much so that they travelled together, and a small Aboriginal "colony" existed in Makassar from at least the early 19th century onwards.
I wrote about the trepang trade and Aborigines in Makassar [in detail here](_URL_0_), with references. But Makassar is an area of particular interest for u/PangeranDipanagara, who may well have more to add to your query. | [
"While Australia's territory (originally known as New Holland) never became an actual Dutch settlement or colony, Dutch navigators were the first to undisputedly explore and map Australian coastline. In the 17th century, the VOC's navigators and explorers charted almost three-quarters of Australia's coastline, exce... |
Was the Soviet union during cold war always poor and just postering wealth? | Well, you have to consider the context. The disparity was there even before the Soviet Union existed. The Russian Empire was much poorer (per capita) than Western Europe or the United States. It was significantly behind in industrialization, human development and infrastructure. If fact, the poor state of the Russian economy was one of the reasons Russia did poorly in WWI.
When Bolisheviks came to power in 1917, not only was their country already suffering from 3 years of war, they also had to fight for power in the extremely brutal Russian Civil War. Not only that, but hundreds of thousands of people - mostly people of means who were educated and entrepreneurial - left the country to escape persecution.
The Soviets did a pretty decent job or rebuilding and catching up in industrialization during the late 1920's and 1930s. However in 1941 the USSR was invaded by Nazi Germany. The war was disastrous for the country, with over 27 million people dead, and huge swath of the country - cities, infrastructure, farmland, etc - almost completely destroyed. Even though the USSR and the allies won in the end, the victory came and an astonishing price. So again the Soviets had to rebuild.
Of course none of that excuses poor policy decision and the inefficient nature of a planned economy. However the USSR and the US were never on level playing field. The US never experienced even remotely close to such destruction or casualties from world wars as the Soviet Union did. | [
"One of the greatest strengths of Soviet economy was its vast supplies of oil and gas; world oil prices quadrupled in the 1973–1974 and rose again in 1979–1981, making the energy sector the chief driver of the Soviet economy, and was used to cover multiple weaknesses. During this period, the Soviet Union had the lo... |
Do you think camera quality will ever be good enough to be measured in gigapixels? | The technology for gigapixel images already exists, but it's not being used in traditional cameras yet. For example, the [Pan-STARRS](_URL_0_) survey uses a 1.4 gigapixel camera. Each of the images taken with it is ~2Gb.
The difficulty in moving them to traditional, handheld cameras is that 1 billion pixels (currently) requires a large CCD. To make a CCD with that many pixels fit in a standard camera, you have to manufacture your pixels to be incredibly small. It also requires a lens that can reduce focal aberrations to the size of those pixels, which is difficult as well. | [
"A detailed comparison in 2006 by a professional photographer of drum-scanned 10×12.5 cm (4×5″) images and digital 39-megapixel images on a medium-format camera found resolution very similar, with the scanned images slightly better. Color accuracy was not compared as digital profiles for the digital back were not a... |
Does every culture in the world assume a 24hr day? What are some alternate time keeping units in the world and throughout history? | This isn't really a science question. Except that it's acceptable for scientists to use 24 hours a day as a measurement according to the [SI](_URL_0_). But that's just science fitting the older cultural phenomenon for convenience.
Why not try /r/AskHistorians? | [
"The 24-hour time system has its origins in the Egyptian astronomical system of decans, and has been used for centuries by scientists, astronomers, navigators, and horologists. In East Asia, time notation was 24-hour before westernization in modern times. Western-made clocks were changed into 12 dual-hours style wh... |
How does relativity affect orbital mechanics? | The scenario is impossible. It's impossible to have a classical orbit with speed greater than c (anywhere on the orbit) and the entire orbit being outside the Schwarzschild radius.
Schwarzschild Radius = 2μ/c^2
Maximum speed of orbiting particle = √(((1+e)μ)/((1-e)a))
Minimum distance from central body = (1-e)a
If you set the maximum speed greater than c, then for the periapsis to be outside the Schwarzschild radius, e > 1. The particle would take a hyperbolic path classically.
Basically, with purely Newtonian mechanics, it's impossible to have an orbit with speed greater than c anywhere on the orbit. As a result, there's unfortunately no meaningful answer to your question.
It is, however, possible to answer how relativity affects orbital mechanics when things are supposed to move at a subluminal velocity, but that's not what you really asked. | [
"The above classical (Newtonian) analysis of orbital mechanics assumes that the more subtle effects of general relativity, such as frame dragging and gravitational time dilation are negligible. Relativistic effects cease to be negligible when near very massive bodies (as with the precession of Mercury's orbit about... |
What determines how much of an ingredient you have to add to a dish in order for the dish to have a noticeable change in flavor? | Taste is quite complicated so it is not always a linear 'more of X = stronger flavour', although that will generally be true if you are talking about something simple like adding more sugar to water.
It also depends on what the other flavours in the dish are already. For example if you over brew your coffee it will taste bitter. You can add a lot of (high fat) milk or sugar to hide this. However adding even a small pinch of salt to the coffee will mask the bitterness of coffee without you being able to taste any saltiness.
Similarly when cooking Italian food; it is common to add a small amount of sugar to a tomato based sauce, since the sugar hides acidity of the tomatoes without making the sauce taste sweet.
| [
"The flavourings and spices differ from region to region, for example, some use more vinegar. The size of the pieces also varies, as does cooking technique: some sautee the meat prior to cooking it in the sauce, while others add the diced parboiled meat directly to the sauce. \n",
"The current ingredients vary sl... |
what makes fruits taste different from one to the next? | Not sure on the chemistry behind fruits but as for mimicking a fruit, flavours have been mimicked for years without actual fruit extracts. Strawberry milks being a common one. | [
"The fruit's taste has been compared to a combination of banana and passionfruit or a combination of banana, cucumber and lime. A small amount of salt or sugar can increase the flavor. Some also eat the peel, which is very rich in vitamin C and dietary fiber.\n",
"In the type most often grown in Florida, the USA,... |
the social construction theory in feminism | People act the way they do because it's been taught to them both consciously and subconsciously. In other words, teachers and parents actively enforce the roles, and observation of the way the world works and looks reinforces them.
It is not only for men and women but for races, too. Different races only exist because society says they do. There is no inherent biological difference between a black man and a white man besides outward appearance. And yet, we put them in two socially distinct categories (for better or for worse) because such categories have been "constructed" over time due to historical and cultural circumstances.
The idea of the theory is that we could hypothetically live in a world in which different identities were constructed in place of our own, that there is nothing innate about the identities that exist in society, and that if we were to suddenly become "colorblind," race would no longer exist as an identity. No one would ever say, "as a black man, I think x" because there is no special difference to being a black man in that society, it is a completely arbitrary characteristic. There is no God that says, "black people are to be subjugated," no rulebook that tells you who is black and who isn't. Humans just like putting things into categories for convenience sake, but we ignore the possibility that there are people who don't fit neatly into these boxes. What about a black person with skin fair enough to pass as white? Are they black? How about a black person raised by white people who doesn't understand anything about street culture and has no values traditionally associated with African-Americans?
We have so much faith in our categories that we treat them as if they're natural or God-given, but they can't be because they don't always work, and they come from social and historical factors rather than from nature.
As for gender, even if a woman is a raging butch lesbian, she is still living in a world in which there is a single socially accepted version of a woman she is being compared to. The identities exist and shape other identities.
This is a controversial theory because a lot of scientists have demonstrated innate differences between the sexes. However, even if that's true, the idea here is meant more to discourage the "Men are from Mars, Women from Venus" fantasy. In reality, men and women are biologically more identical than not. Male and female genitals are made from almost the same tissues and structures; males in the womb actually start as female. Both men and women produce estrogen and testosterone, have breasts, etc. Feminists would prefer that we stop thinking as men and women as two different breeds that are "supposed" to behave a certain way; to stop thinking of things as "for" girls or "for" boys. Those things are almost certainly not biological and are in every way socially constructed.
It is also, true, however, that the very fact that we as humans socially construct things is itself biological. But queer theory/feminism/postmodernism would have us believe that we are smart enough to think beyond our constructions. So, even if you could prove somehow that men's brains are on average more stimulated by violence and therefore demonstrate that guys should scientifically prefer playing video-games over girls, we as human beings should be intelligent enough to subvert those expectations because we have free will, and not every single male/female is wired exactly the same way, otherwise we'd all be the same person.
The danger is falling into the trap of saying girls CAN'T like video-games. Nothing is ever CAN'T, SHOULDN'T, or DON'T. | [
"The social construction of gender is a theory in feminism and sociology about the operation of gender and gender differences in societies. According to this view, society and culture create gender roles, and these roles are prescribed as ideal or appropriate behavior for a person of that specific sex.\n",
"The t... |
The 1946-2000 map of Palestine is frequently used in debates about the ongoing conflict. Does it provide a reasonable picture of the development of the conflict? | I have seen this map and similar variations of this map before. The first map is probably depicting private rather than political land ownership. Politically all of the land in the first image is owned by the British Empire in what was known as the British mandate of Palestine. Britain acquired this land and other Mid-Eastern lands from the defeated Ottoman Empire after World War I. France was given Lebanon and Syria, and the British were given Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq. Mandates were basically seen as colonies that will eventually be given independence when it is felt they could stand on their own. During the time of the British Mandate and prior a significant number of Jews made their way to the land. While the first map should show the private land owned by Jewish versus Palestinian citizens. The way private ownership is depicted though is not accurate. All Jews are grouped together though the Mizrahi Jews had been residing there for many years before Theodor Herzl and Zionism began and larger amounts of Jews arrived. Also any land not owned by Jews is simply grouped into Palestinian land. This ignores countless other groups who owned land such as perhaps Brits, Arab Christians, Druze, Bedouins and others. Some land was also not owned at all and was uninhabited. In particular the southern area where the Negev Desert is sparsely populated even today, more so back then. Much of the uninhabited land is grouped into Palestinian land.
The second map is the UN partition plan as you said. The southern land allocated to the Jewish state is the most striking addition and it is because it was sparsely populated that it was given to the Jews as there would be less disturbance of other peoples. The Northern coast was also populated mostly by Jews and or sparsely populated. These were the proposed boundaries for the Arab and Jewish states. The Arab states did not agree to the UN Partition Plan and the day after Israel was declared a state by its inhabitants war was declared upon it by a coalition of Arab states to reverse the Partition. Israel was able to win this war and as a result acquired the land seen in image 3. The war caused large forced migrations of people both Jews and Palestinians. Palestinians in Israel were forced out and so were Jews living in other Middle Eastern states. After the 1948 war Egypt annexed Gaza and Jordan annexed the West Bank. So the land in the 3rd images isn't really Palestinian land but land formerly part of the proposed Arab state annexed into Egypt and Jordan.
Following the Suez Crisis Israel occupied the Sinai peninsula though the Egyptians get it back shortly after. By 1967 tensions were high again and another Arab coalition was gearing up for war with Arab forces on the border. I don't recall exactly recall but I believe a day before the Arabs launch their attack the Israelis launch a preemptive strike. The Israelis win this war and and take Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula. 6 years later the Yom Kippur War began as a surprise attack on Israel to reverse Israel's gains from 1967's Six Day War. The Arabs were eventually repulsed by Israel and peace achieved. Egypt and Israel later write a peace treaty and Israel returns the Sinai Peninsula.
The 4th image is supposed to represent more modern times though it is out of date. Since 1967 settlements of Jewish Israelis have grown in the West Bank and Gaza, some built by more zealous Jews who see it as land reclamation or returning to formerly Jewish lands. Settlements have attracted large amounts of condemnations to say the least though many are now well established. Some have been removed such as settlements in Sinai and Gaza which Israel pulled out of. I found some more recent maps of the are [here](_URL_2_), [here](_URL_1_), and [here](_URL_0_).
| [
"Many critical cartographers have engaged in counter-mapping to rewrite the narrative of the history of Israel’s expansion into territories contested with Palestine. One example is the Counter Cartographies Collective’s map of how much of the land belonged to which country since 1948. Another example is how Palesti... |
how the united states is in so much debt, but day-to-day life seems completely normal. | The same reason you can be 10s or 100s of thousands in debt from college loans, car loans, mortgages and credit card debt, and still live "normally." Debt doesnt matter, so long as you are capable of paying it back (with interest).
The US has debt by issuing bonds and treasuries, and eventually people cash them in. And so long as the US is capable of honoring these bonds, they will continue to be able to sell them in the future.
To put it in perspective...the current US GDP is 14.99 Trillion, and current US debt is 16.7 Trillion. Of course, this means we crossed over past 100% in Debt:GDP ratio, but "only" by 1.8 Trillion, which isnt too much.
In simple terms: lets say you have an annual income of 150,000$ per year, and you have outstanding debt (credit cards, student loans, etc) that is a total of 170,000. Now...could you still live "normal?" absolutely, because you dont have to pay that debt back in a single year, and with your salary, you are more then capable of paying it off at some point. Also, would you still be allowed to take on MORE debt, say for a new car? Again...with your salary, a bank would have no hesitation in giving you a loan. | [
"Except for about a year during 1835–1836, the United States has continuously had a fluctuating public debt since the US Constitution legally went into effect on March 4, 1789. Debts incurred during the American Revolutionary War and under the Articles of Confederation led to the first yearly report on the amount o... |
Was Pope John Paul I poisoned by powerful members in the Vatican? | Of course if I could definitively answer your question here I would be a very rich man, as this is still an incredibly contested event. That being said, we can make a few assertions.
The 'freemasons' you refer to are **P2**. This was a secret and illegal lodge in Italy, something akin to a covert government, comprised of incredibly influential people from public life. The master of the lodge was **Licio Gelli**, a powerful banker. The lodge drew membership from many politicians (including future prime minister **Silvio Berlusconi**), media magnates (including the operators of national papers and television stations), the military (including generals and the secret service) and the former Italian royal family.
This secret society was uncovered as two large criminal operations fell apart during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The first was the **Banco Ambrosiano scandal**. This was a bank, operated by **Roberto Calvi**, which had the Vatican Bank as its biggest customer. Calvi and his bank were almost certainly laundering and funneling huge amounts of illegal currency, both for the Italian mafia and for the Vatican and US to international concerns around the world. As the system disintegrated, it became dangerous to those who may be implicated, who **David Yallop** asserts were within the Vatican. Calvi fled to London but was found and murdered. The P2 lodge, who referred to themselves as the *frati neri*, hung his corpse under *Blackfriars bridge*; supposedly as some kind of warning.
The second involved **Michele Sindona**, a mafioso and the head of a corrupt banking outfit similarly tied up with Banco Ambrosiano. It is claimed that he was involved in making illegal payments directly to members of the Vatican, including Vatican Bank's head **Archbishop Paul Marcinkus**. Sidona, despite being in prison for murder, was also assassinated with cyanide in his coffee.
This VERY VERY condensed account is the foundation of Yallop's claim: that His Holiness John Paul I had been made aware of the financial crimes and 'freemason' penetration within the Vatican and was about to act. His murder was therefore to protect the perpetrators, as were the murders of Calvi, Sidona and several others.
The actual mechanics of murdering a pope are discussed in the book you mention and it is something you will have to read yourself if you want to draw a personal conclusion. Your friend isn't indulging in any 'conspiracy theories' in so far as the corruption, murders and secret societies of Italy at the time, which are now a matter of record. However, the direct link to John Paul I's death is subjective.
If you are going to read the book, please also read 'A Thief in the Night', which is the response of **John Cornwall** to Yallop's work.
Edit: I can't type/speak. | [
"Pope John Paul I died in September 1978, only a month after his election to the papacy. The timing of his death and the Vatican's alleged difficulties with ceremonial and legal death procedures have fostered several conspiracy theories. British author David Yallop wrote extensively about unsolved crimes and conspi... |
is there any consequence to the increasing number of illegal immigrants (primarily and specifically, hispanic) in the united states? | Yes. Their children will be American citizens, and they will be voting in about thirty years from now. And they have a *lot* of children. | [
"The estimated population of illegal Mexican immigrants in the US fell from approximately 7 million in 2007 to 6.1 million in 2011 Commentators link the reversal of the immigration trend to the economic downturn that started in 2008 and which meant fewer available jobs, and to the introduction of tough immigration ... |
In the Roman Empire, were their notable high-status people who had ethnic backgrounds that today we would generally categorize as black African, Indian or East Asian? | Whilst it doesn't directly address your question, this earlier answer by u/cleopatra_philopater may be of interest (as may some of the quotes from Mary Beard in the article linked by the OP): [Given the recent furore concerning Dr Mary Beard, I wondered if there are any official accounts of black Roman officers or any records of census' carried out in Romain Britain to give an idea of the homogeneity of Britain at that time?]
(_URL_0_) | [
"The Roman Africans were generally local Berbers or Punics, but also the descendants of the populations that came directly from Rome itself or the diverse regions of the Empire as legionaries and senators.\n",
"Roman writers described people with physical characteristics of sub-Saharan Africans as \"Aethiopes\", ... |
How did Rasputin survive? | There's always more that can be said, but you might enjoy these older posts.
/u/kieslowskifan on [how the myth was created](_URL_0_).
and /u/carlton_the_doorman gets into the [actual assassination.](_URL_1_) | [
"Rasputin is a huge, violent evil mystic who lives in Siberia. He and his band of raiders have terrorized Siberian villages for years. Rasputin is obsessed with immortality, and has his assistant prepare numerous medicines to slow down his natural aging. When he learns that one of his supposedly dead daughters is a... |
when i am woken briefly in the night, i often have no memory of it by morning, why is this? | When you fall asleep, your hippocampus, the area of your brain responsible for learning and memory, sort of switches off, or into "sleep mode." Most likely, you're still in a dream-like state, or experiencing a parasomnia, and the hippocampus hasn't kicked back into gear. | [
"[...]And while you sleep you don’t know what happens either, what could have been changed while you have been sleeping. If things are different when you woke up just now, it could have been different before and you might not have remembered. Or if it is the same, the scenery, one way or the other you don’t see muc... |
Why doesn't the Coriolis effect on the Earth create a perpetual westward wind? | /u/I_Cant_Logoff correctly pointed out that wind is slowed down by friction on the Earth, which means that there should not be a permanent westward wind. In fact, meteorology is very complicated and chaotic, so that any simple picture you might have is necessarily subject to instabilities and large perturbations.
That being said, you correctly guessed that [the prevailing winds](_URL_0_) around the equator [are easterly](_URL_1_). However, there are many dynamical effects at play, which means that this is not what happens all the time. Around the poles, as you can see, other effects dominate. | [
"A consequence of the Coriolis effect, Ekman theory explains that oceanic flow at the surface is directed at 45 degrees to the right of the wind stress in the Northern Hemisphere. Thus, winds blowing from the southwest result in eastward currents, while winds blowing from the northeast result in westward currents.\... |
if mass production and automated efficiency lowers the cost per item, how do podunk smaller grocery stores sell their own (lower volume) products for far less $? | Could you give some examples? I'm not sure whether you're talking about mass-produced store-brand goods, bulk goods, or what. | [
"The smaller convenience stores typically have very few perishable items because it is not economically viable to rotate perishable items frequently with such a low number of staff. Smaller convenience stores also do not generate the business needed to sustain food spoilage rates typical of grocery stores or superm... |
is it fact that frequent readers are smarter, and if so, what happens in the brain during reading to cause this? | That's a lot like observing that frequent runners are agile. Frequent reading builds focus, making it faster and easier to recall what you've read and integrate it into your understanding. When you do something over and over, the brain strengthens those pathways. When you don't do something much, the pathways get recycled to learn something more important. | [
"Reading and writing have some correlation with intelligence. It appears, for example, that reading classical texts can at least temporarily increase intelligence because they are highly coherent in their composition. LVT focuses on the operations that create structure. It is a compositional technique that also aid... |
Why are there exactly 7 full notes? (Music) | The most basic interval is an octave, which represents a doubling of frequency. The second most basic interval is a fifth, which is a ratio of 3:2, or a fourth, which is a ratio of 4:3. These are the perfect intervals, and all other intervals can be derived from them. The perfect intervals have been part of music theory for many centuries; see [Pythagorean hammers](_URL_0_).
If you take those building blocks then you can start to add more tones to the scale. For example, if you go up two fifths you have a ratio of 9:4, or just over 2:1 (an octave). Thus, 9:8 is where you would place a whole tone. Continuing this approach allows you to populate the entire scale--if you go up 3 fifths and down one octave you get a ratio of 27:16, which is just over 3:2.
This approach isn't perfect, though. If you go up 12 fifths and down 7 octaves you arrive at almost the same frequency you started at, having populated the scale with 13 notes (counting the octave). The key to this, though, is "almost." For a long time western music was tuned to allow certain intervals to be exact ratios, even though the result is that the ratio between any two adjacent notes isn't always the same. This meant that an instrument tuned in, say, C, would sound different than an instrument tuned in F. Also, if you took a piece written in one key and played it in another then it would sound different. This led to the idea that various keys evoked certain moods.
That practice is largely obsolete in much of western music, having given way to the equally tempered scale. This involves taking the frequency band from one note to an octave above it and dividing it up into equal portions (on an exponential scale). Thus, a half step is a ratio of 2^(1/12): 1. A whole step is a ratio of 2^(2/12) : 1. This means that a fifth is a ratio of 2^(7/12) : 1, or 1.498307:1. This is *almost* the same as the natural 3:2 ratio (1.5:1), but not quite. However, it means that a piece will sound the same played in all keys. Many professional classical musicians will tune their instrument on the fly in order to "fix" these ratios, but a lot of western listeners have learned to hear equally tempered tuning as correct. Note that what sounds good or bad has a large cultural basis--tuning and even the scale itself is very different in non-western settings.
As to why we use a 7 note scale, that is just what happens when you start at a note and move up the scale with the rules: Increase by a whole step by default; Increase by a half step when necessary to make sure that the perfect fourth, fifth, and octave are included. When you follow these rules you wind up with a major scale. | [
"In everyday language, these notes are located between two semitones and they are essentially heard in Arab and Greek music throughout Europe and Eastern countries, in Turkey, Persia, as well as in Africa and in Asia. They were also used in tempered scales by certain European microtonal composers during the 19th ce... |
Is there any hard evidence that the USA has secretly influenced Brazilian politics to put a "puppet" president in power? | It depends on how you'd define such things.
The best candidate is the 1964 coup against João Goulart. The coup was not engineered in the US. But the coup plotters involved the US early on. The US provided money and CIA resources to support the plotters. President Johnson also sent the carrier *USS Forrestal* along with a number of destroyers, and supply ships to the area to help out. A supply depot of fuel and ammo was set up in New Jersey ready to be airlifted to an airbase the coup was supposed to take in the early hours.
One of the plotters jumped the gun. The planned "go" date was supposed to be around April 10th, when the US ships were due to arrive in the area. But on March 31st General Olímpio Mourão Filho roused his men and began to move toward Rio. It took the better part of the day for most of the plotters to decide to support the move, but by April 1st they had largely succeeded. Goulart fled to his farm and then left the country on the 4th. On the 11th the plotters' candidate, Castello Branco was sworn in. So outside some of the prep work and intelligence the CIA had provided, the US resources weren't used.
It should be again emphasized that this was an internal coup. The primary actors were all Brazilian, and they were motivated by internal politics. Nonetheless they sought and received help from the US government. Plus the US hated Goulart and may have already been working on a plan when they were approached; we won't know that for certain until the CIA files are declassified. Post coup they strongly associated and allied themselves with the US. So depending on your point of view, it may or may not meet your definition of a US intervention, and the plotters may or may not have been puppets.
For a much more thorough treatment I'd recommend *Brazil and the Quiet Intervention, 1964* by Phyllis Parker | [
"In a telephone conversation, President Johnson spoke on the phone from his Texas ranch with Undersecretary of State George Ball and Assistant Secretary for Latin America, Thomas Mann. Ball briefed Johnson on that status of military moves in Brazil to overthrow the government of Joao Goulart who U.S. officials view... |
why is "boohoo" a word used to represent crying? | I'm guessing it's a sort of onomatopoeia. Like "buzz" for insects or "meow" for cats. When people cry, sometimes it sounds like "boo hoo", so it sort of stuck. Same with "wah!" | [
"In Chinese, (), meaning \"Crying\", refers to an asterism consisting of μ Capricorni and 38 Aquarii. Consequently, the Chinese name for μ Capricorni itself is (, .). From this Chinese name, the name Kuh was appeared.\n",
"\"Crying Song\" is a song composed by Roger Waters, bassist of the British rock group Pink ... |
Will the oceans eventually recede back due to the increase in temperature? | They'll [eventually boil off due to increased solar output](_URL_0_). The salts won't evaporate. | [
"That the oceans warmed in the past significantly faster than we thought would imply that the effects of climate change could be worse than currently expected, placing the planet's sensitivity to toward the higher end of its possible range.\n",
"The loss of the oceans could be delayed until 2 billion years in the... |
what do best men, maids of honor, grooms men and bridesmaids do in a wedding? | The best man holds the ring until the vows, the maid of honor holds the bride's bouquet during vows, and the others just stand up there awkwardly watching the ceremony | [
"During the ceremony, it is customary to include bridesmaids and groomsmen in the event. The members of the bridal party are chosen to share the happiness with the couple getting married. Including bridesmaids in the ceremony originated as a technique of confusing evil spirits as to who the actual bride was. Grooms... |
During the Age of Sail, how did sailors keep from freezing during the night | The answer is pretty basic, really: ships would have a galley stove and often a small stove in the wardroom (where the officers gathered) that would warm the space. Sailors would wear oilskins to prevent getting wet, and wool clothes that keep you warm even when wet. Space and crowding was also something that would take care of some of this for people -- in the Royal Navy, sailors were allocated 14 inches of space (width) to sling their hammocks. In practice, only half or one-third of the crew was off watch at a given time, so they would have 28 inches of space, but you can imagine the amount of heat produced by several hundred sailors sleeping cheek by jowl. | [
"Throughout this period sailors supplied or made their own clothing. Sailors developed traditional clothing suitable for their work: loose-fitting trousers with belts made of rope; tunics that slipped over the head, with arms to above the wrist so that the cloth would not foul in ropes passing through a cleat or pu... |
why do you change from breathing perfectly normal, to snoring when falling asleep? | Snoring is usually caused by some sort of obstruction in the upper part of your airway. During sleep, your muscles start being relaxed and they may collapse a little to block your airway which results in snoring. | [
"However, because the diaphragm is largely driven by the autonomous system, it is relatively spared of non-REM inhibition. As such, the suction pressures it generates stay the same. This narrows the upper airway during sleep, increasing resistance and making airflow through the upper airway turbulent and noisy. For... |
I've never liked math. I thought it was boring. Now I see it's practical. How do I teach myself it? | _URL_0_
Algebra and calculus are good, it really depends on what you need it for or what you've realised it is practical for. Any more info? | [
"Her first book, \"Math Doesn't Suck: How to Survive Middle School Math without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail\", was a \"New York Times\" bestseller, and was favorably reviewed by Tara C. Smith, the founder of Iowa Citizens for Science and a professor of epidemiology at the University of Iowa. The book also r... |
viruses - can i get them only by running executable files (.exe, .bat, .com, .jpg.exe), or are there other ways? | Yes, and the gist is that it comes down to interactions. When two different types of "things" interact, it is an attack vector and can be exploited. Two different kinds of things can be "a browser displaying some media" or "a viewer executing a macro" - where a container attempts to perform an action that isn't necessarily native to its core.
You have often heard of flaws in Flash which are sometimes fixed by Adobe, and sometimes by the browser creators. Flash is its own 'thing' but the browser is hosting it.
Specially crafted [images](_URL_0_) could execute arbitrary code on certain servers.
There's PDF itself; to view a PDF file you need a PDF reader. The way the PDF is rendered may have vulnerabilities and is another attack vector.
Javascript is another favorite; a browser needs to execute Javascript to make it 'do things', however it uses engines. Those engines are the attack vector and people look for ways to exploit them, often by hoping to execute a command on the user's machine.
Ultimately - as long as the vector allows them to execute commands, they can then use it to download the actual virus, or execute the script directly. | [
"Taking advantage of this default behaviour, virus writers and other malicious programmers have used names like codice_14 for their creations, hoping that if it is placed in the same directory as the corresponding EXE file, a command or batch file may accidentally trigger their program instead of the text editor co... |
If you get wetter from running in rain than from standing still, do you get more sunburnt from running in the sun than from standing still? | Light exposure does not change based on your movement, unless your move into shadow or under cloud coverage.
Other factors may play like if you sweat, you will have more protection against the sun, etc. | [
"Several drivers tried to anticipate a heavier rainfall by stopping for wet tires very early in the first light shower. Panis, Cristiano da Matta, Jacques Villeneuve and Nicolas Kiesa all stopped on Lap 6 or 7, only to find the track beginning to dry already by Lap 8. Beginning with Villeneuve on Lap 9, they all st... |
Would’ve Neanderthals been able to build and use boats? | The presence of Mousterian-style tools on the Greek islands of Kefallinia and Zakynthos suggests that they might have done, according to [this](_URL_1_) 2012 article. (See also popular press summaries [here](_URL_2_) and [here](_URL_0_)) | [
"Among the earliest known watercraft were canoes made from hollowed-out logs, the earliest ancestors of galleys. Their narrow hulls required them to be paddled in a fixed sitting position facing forwards, a less efficient form of propulsion than rowing with proper oars, facing backwards. Seagoing paddled craft have... |
Time dilation effects the hour in miles per hour- which effects speed, which effects time dilation?! How can this work? | I'm a little confused by the wording of your question but I will try to answer what I think you are asking.
To begin relativity is what happens between frames. So in your frame you will measure a speed, the passage of time, and the length of objects in your frame, all of these are correct measurements. Now if an observer moves past you at a different speed (in a different frame) he will measure your speed, time, and length differently, but these will also be correct for his frame. To recover this apparent disparity either observer can use the Lorentz factor and everyone will agree on what everyone is seeing in the different frames.
To answer your question directly things like time dilation and length contraction are consequences of the velocity you are measuring in your frame and do not change your measurement of the velocity.
| [
"The current precision with which time dilation is measured (using the RMS test theory), is at the ~10 level. It was shown, that Ives-Stilwell type experiments are also sensitive to the formula_3 isotropic light speed coefficient of the SME, as introduced above. Chou \"et al.\" (2010) even managed to measure a freq... |
Can a gas/smoke stick to an adhesive surface? And if so, at what density would it require for this to possible? | Smoke or gas? They're very different. A gas is a chemical that is above its boiling point and has evaporated, like water vapor, oxygen, and other components of our atmosphere.
Smoke is a colloid, a solid aerosol to be specific. It's made of solid particles of ash/soot suspended in the air, which absolutely do eventually settle on surfaces, which is why the smell of cigarettes persists in a smoker's car or house for a long time; the sticky smoke particles stick to any porous surface and are difficult to remove. | [
"When smoke comes into contact with the surface of any substance or structure, the chemicals contained in it are transferred to it. The corrosive properties of the chemicals cause the substance or structure to decompose at a rapid rate. Certain materials or structures absorb these chemicals, which is why clothing, ... |
black circles from lack of sleep | A lack of sleep can make your skin more pale, which in turn makes the blood vessels under your eyes more visible. | [
"The Dark Desert is a transition phase between life and afterlife on the Discworld (and is a part of Death's Domain). It is described as having brilliantly-lit black sand, under a black sky studded with cold bright stars, stretching away to distant mountains. Living people can cross into it, however, it is then har... |
how come turning wifi/data on and off again makes it work better? | Like pretty much anything computer related, resetting fixes an abundance of issues. By starting something over it is forced to run all it's code from the beginning, refreshing anything that might have gotten out of whack.
I don't have a specific technical answer because it could be a whole number of things making your wifi or data not work well in the first place, but in short, it's like when you're in a conversation with someone and you get confused and say "woah woah hold on let's start over." | [
"Time switches can be used for many purposes, including saving electric energy by consuming it only when required, switching equipment on, off, or both at times required by some process, and home security (for example switching lights in a pattern that gives the impression that premises are attended) to reduce the ... |
why do a lot of song recordings fade out instead of ending like a live version would? | They were designed to be played on radio or in clubs, where one song would be smoothly overlapped and transitioned to the next song without a clear stop in the music.
Sometimes in popular music the artists just didn't have a creative way to end the song. | [
"A recorded song may be gradually reduced to silence at its end (fade-out), or may gradually increase from silence at the beginning (fade-in). Fading-out can serve as a recording solution for pieces of music that contain no obvious ending. Both fades and cross-fades are very valuable since they allow the engineer t... |
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