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since our "time" is determined by the orbit of the earth around the sun and it's day/night cycle, why don't we just make a slight adjustment to the duration of a single second to eliminate leap years and dst issues? | We chose not to do this. The reason is actually very simple: because this definition would be much harder to maintain than the current one.
First of all, let's eliminate daylight savings time. That pretty much makes no sense in general, I agree, but it is also not here due to the drift of the "second" definition. Leap years, and particularly leap seconds, _are_ here for that reason, though, so let's talk about them.
A second used to be defined as a fraction of a sidereal year (that is, the _actual_ 365.256 days of a year), and so was, in effect, very close to what you proposed. It was actually the definition of the "day" and "year" that were off, in that they didn't contain precisely the right number of seconds.
When we got good at keeping time, however, we started to use clocks to calculate seconds, and not, say, sundials, which would correct for this drift. The "second" was so ingrained, in other words, that to redefine it would cause a slight but noticeable shift in every clock, every computer, every time-based device on Earth, and this shift would actually happen over time as the Earth's orbit changes slightly.
More significantly, a year is not an exact number of days. Think about what this would mean to clocks: what would, in effect, happen if we redefined a second is that the hours of a clock would rotate on a 4 year period. On January 1, year one, the sun would rise at, say, 6:00 AM. On year 2, it would rise at noon. Year 3, it would rise at 6 PM. Year 4, midnight. Then the following year, it would realign. This is due to the fact that your clocks now shift a quarter-day per year (or, as you pointed out, .256 days per year). That's kind of confusing. It's better to keep the sun rising at 6:00 and just shove in an extra day every 4 years.
At the same time, we discovered something else: the seconds in a year change. The Earth's orbit isn't constant, but rather accelerates and decelerates a bit every year (mostly due to gravity effects of the other planets). This is a main reason we have leap seconds, to reset the year ever so slightly as we detect this effect. A continually-precise clock calibrated to the year would have to take _this_ into effect as well.
We decided to just define what we mean by a second in a way that doesn't depend on the Earth's orbit. The current second is defined according to atomic clocks:
> The second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom.
This definition fixes a second to be a set period of time, for all orbits, in all locations, and allows all of our clocks to work perfectly well except for occasional point-in-time shifts, as opposed to having to continually drift the duration of a second forward and back according to the vagaries of one rock spinning around one star somewhere out there. | [
"Because Earth takes one year to orbit the Sun, the apparent position of the Sun takes one year to make a complete circuit of the ecliptic. With slightly more than 365 days in one year, the Sun moves a little less than 1° eastward every day. This small difference in the Sun's position against the stars causes any p... |
why are ultrawide monitors 21:9 and not 7:3? | First, it's not actually 21:9; it's 64:27. 21:9 is just a close approximation that can be easily compared to 16:9.
As to why it's 64:27, it's because monitors were initially in 4:3 ratio. Wide screen squared the ratio (4:3 ⨯ 4:3) to 16:9 and ultrawide screen cubes it (4:3 ⨯ 4:3 ⨯ 4:3) to 64:27. | [
"On smaller CRT monitors (up to about ), few people notice any discomfort between 60–72 Hz. On larger CRT monitors ( or larger), most people experience mild discomfort unless the refresh is set to 72 Hz or higher. A rate of 100 Hz is comfortable at almost any size. However, this does not apply to LCD monitors. The ... |
can a sea creature that lives in deep sea swim to the surface? | If a human swims too deep he drowns. Unless he have specially designed breathing equipment in which case he will be fine. It is not the pressure that kills you but the problems of supplying you with oxygen. And at high pressures air changes properties so there is a long list of issues with getting oxygen to deep sea divers. But pressure is not the direct issue. If you look at deep diving whales for example they just stops breathing when they dive. They even exhale before they dive and survive on what oxygen is dissolved in their blood.
So pressure is not an issue for animals. However low pressure can be an issue. Again even the vacuum of space will not kill you before you suffocate. So if you were to put a deep sea whale in a vacuum chamber he could probably survive for a few hours. But the problem is the rapid loss of pressure. When you put a gas and a liquid together the gas will dissolve into the liquid. And the higher the pressure the more gas will dissolve. And when you lower the pressure the gas will release from the liquid. You see this all the time with soda. This also happens in your lungs where nitrogen dissolves into your blood. And in fish the gas molecules in the water will dissolve into the blood though the gills. Fish also have a swim bladder which is filled with gas that they can regulate to help them swim. If you catch a deep sea fish and real it up to the surface it will bloat up from the gas and die, possibly explode. But if you go more slowly it might make it. Of course different creatures are different so it depends a lot between creatures. Squids in general can handle more pressure changes then most creatures. | [
"The term deep sea creature refers to organisms that live below the photic zone of the ocean. These creatures must survive in extremely harsh conditions, such as hundreds of bars of pressure, small amounts of oxygen, very little food, no sunlight, and constant, extreme cold. Most creatures have to depend on food fl... |
Why is mortality from measles in the Philippines so high? | Copied directly from one of the sources you provided in your post:
*"The measles case-fatality rate in underdeveloped nations,* **where vitamin A deficiency is prevalent**, *is about 3–6% of reported cases, 30 to 60 times higher than in developed countries."*
•World Health Organization. Measles: fact sheet [updated 2017 Oct] | [
"In 2014 the Philippines experienced a large measles outbreak. According to the World Health Organization there were 57,564 suspected cases of measles, including 21,403 confirmed cases, and 110 measles deaths reported in the Philippines from January 1 through December 20, 2014. Most of the cases were among unvaccin... |
what do the +/- tracking controls do on a vcr? | From what I remember from a long, long time ago, the information magnetically encoded on the VHS tape are actually encoded in diagonal stripes running the length of the tape. If you were able to see it, it would look something like this:
-------------------
/ / / / / / / / / /
------------------
The tracking actually moved the read head so it was reading a slightly different part of the diagonal line. | [
"The control track is used to fine-tune the tape speed during playback, so that the high speed rotating heads remained exactly on their helical tracks rather than somewhere between two adjacent tracks (known as \"tracking\"). Since good tracking depends on precise distances between the rotating drum and the fixed c... |
why are some muslims so radical? what is written in the koran that makes them lash out to such extremes? | There is extremism in all forms of religion. Look at all of the deaths that have occurred in the name of Christ, whether it be the crusades or a crazy having a killing spree. The constant civil unrest in Africa is another good example of extreme radicalism.
Just because the news focuses on extremes does not mean it paints a very clear picture of the larger part of any given religion or group.
_URL_0_ | [
"Hathout stressed throughout his life that being a faithful Muslim was entirely compatible with being a proud American, and that Islam is a religion of coexistence, reason and moderation. While he criticized Salman Rushdie’s book \"The Satanic Verses\", finding it \"insulting\", he also condemned Ayatollah Khomeini... |
since i learned so much in the detroit discussion, what happened to cleveland? | I think these videos do a comprehensive job explaining, with the first explaining how jobs are being funneled out of the city and the second touching on how the Cleveland economy was greatly impacted by the loss of its greatest export.
_URL_1_
_URL_0_ | [
"Although Cleveland needed financial assistance from the federal government to both rebuild and address its extensive problems, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) cut off federal urban renewal funding to the city in the wake of the Hough Riots because the administrations of Mayor Lo... |
After the winter and summer solstices, why does it take so long for the Earth to warm up/cool off? | This delay in warming is mostly to do with lag times in heating and cooling of water, water requires a lot more energy to raise its temperature by a degree than the equivalent surface of land, this is knowing in climate mapping as continentality. When an area is near a large body of water, i.e an ocean, it takes significantly more time and energy for the water to heat up than the land. this is both to do with the heat capacity of water and the mixing of energy throughout the whole layer of water down to about 600m whereas land heats down to maybe 50cm to 1m. So to heat one square meter of water by one degree is just over 6x10^8 Joules. Land amounts vary but are considerably less. This energy is then used during the winter months as a store to heat the air above the water slowly, this is why it takes longer.
The second issue is that as the days shorten you are right to say that the energy does decrease but it is a gradual change. [This](_URL_0_) gives you an idea of how the net radiation over a day changes, this can be thought of as a similar process just with a yearly cycle instead of a daily one. It is not about the total radiation, more the change in net radiation around the middle of the year. all the time there is a positive net radiation the surface is heating more than it is being cooled, as soon as there is negative net radiation the surface is cooling more than it is being heated.
to give you an idea of how this affects land surfaces, compare the temperature profiles of cites at similar latitudes but with different amounts of surrounding water. London and Berlin for example have very different yearly temperature profiles for this reason, among a few others. The difference is that Berlin's surrounding area loses heat almost as soon as the net radiation decreases. London's surrounding area retains much more of the energy in the surrounding ocean which keeps it thermally insulated over the winter.
Hope this helps :) | [
"During early spring, the axis of the Earth is increasing its tilt relative to the Sun, and the length of daylight rapidly increases for the relevant hemisphere. The hemisphere begins to warm significantly, causing new plant growth to \"spring forth,\" giving the season its name. \n",
"In the winter time, there i... |
if sociopaths make up a sizable portion of the population, why aren't mass murders more common? | Do you have a citation that indicates that sociopaths are "a sizable portion of the population"? Martha Stout's notion that they are 4% of the population seems outrageously high, given that the DSM-IV prevalence of Antisocial Personality Disorder is 2% and sociopaths are a small subset of that. | [
"As with any large concentration of people, there is usually crime. High population densities, placing lots of people together, invariably result in higher crime rates, as visibly seen in growing megacities such as Karachi, Delhi, Cairo, Rio de Janeiro, and Lagos.\n",
"A 2016 opinion piece concluded that 22% of m... |
how is it possible for comets to continually “shed” themselves for hundreds, if not thousands, of years and never run out of comet dust? | It’s because it’s a very tiny amount of dust. It doesn’t take that much dust for a noticeable tail. Couple this with the fact that comets are huge (Haley’s comet is 3 miles in diameter) and you will see that it would last a long time | [
"A comet will experience a range of diverse conditions as it traverses its orbit. For long period comets, most of the time it will be so far from the Sun that it will be too cold for evaporation of ices to occur. When it passes through the terrestrial planet region, evaporation will be rapid enough to blow away sma... |
In beta positive decay, isn't mass created? | That is precisely why a solitary proton can't decay into a neutron. Beta plus decay only occurs in certain nuclei, where you have to calculate the total mass based not only on the sum of protons and neutrons, but also the mass due to intranuclear binding (the [liquid drop model](_URL_0_) is useful for calculating this). Beta plus decay only occurs in nuclei that decrease in mass upon having a proton become a neutron. | [
"Beta decay does not change the number () of nucleons in the nucleus, but changes only its charge . Thus the set of all nuclides with the same can be introduced; these \"isobaric\" nuclides may turn into each other via beta decay. For a given there is one that is most stable. It is said to be beta stable, because ... |
why aren't people buying the $1 houses in detroit? | Three reasons, all of which intermix.
The first reason is that the houses are *awful*. Old, full of asbestos, dilapidated, crumbling - it would cost a lot of money to make Detroit's abandoned buildings useful.
This ties in perfectly with the second reason: liability. These houses are so awful, that if a homeless junkie hurt himself in it, you would be liable. None of these houses are up to code - and ownership means you are now responsible for the condition of the building.
Lastly, high taxes. Detroit is a big city - and its services are paid for by property taxes. But, because more and more people are fleeing the city - there is a smaller tax *base*. This means that each homeowner has to pay *more* in taxes to make up for the vacancies. To be fair, it does balance out somewhat - the houses are so worthless that the property taxes end up being reasonable.
edit: sweet fingerfuck, my inbox blew up! | [
"The average price of homes sold in Detroit in 2012 was $7,500. , 47 houses in Detroit were listed for $500 or less, with five properties listed for $1. Despite the extremely low price of Detroit properties, most of the properties have been on the market for more than a year as the boarded up, abandoned houses of t... |
why do d-day landing crafts open at the front? | In addition to the other remarks. One of the main issues with a beach landing is the water, the further the troops are away from the beach the deeper the water, the more the risk of drowning, the slower the troops move, the wetter and more tired they are when they eventually make it to the beach. A side exit means that the troops are further away from the beach and the deeper the water is and you also risk being hit by other boats coming into land. Front exiting especially with the additional assistance of the ramp means that they can exit in as shallow a water and quickly onto the beach and spread out and although if a machine gun was directly ahead of the boat they may be in trouble that rarely happens and the quick and safe dispersal is more likely to mean that the soldiers are alive once they are on the beach.
Another issue that needs to be considered is the seaworthiness of the boat, due to the slope of the beach the front of the boat is actually higher than the stern which means that very little water is going to wash into the boat when the ramp is lowered. Side ramps could easily flood the boat, leaving it stranded and blocking the beach. Then again jeeps and other light vehicles can be transported in landing craft and these need to come out of the front of the boat to be efficiently dispersed, coming out of the side would be nearly impossible. | [
"Tactical landing zones (abbreviated to TLZ) are landing zones selected on the battlefield for the insertion of troops or supplies. A TLZ can be used for the landing of an aircraft (in terms of the Royal Air Force, this could be a Hercules carrying supplies or troops or any of their other helicopters, such as the M... |
Why were double barreled guns not used more in 18th and 19th century European warfare? | The reason is rather simple. You're effectively halving your numbers of men if you have a musket that's double barreled. If you're making a double barreled musket, you're making two barrels of two muskets into one, so you're now limiting the amount of soldiers on the battlefield. While you could argue a quality over quantity, within this time period, due to the inaccuracy of the weapons it isn't viable to spend unnecessarily on wonder weapons like this.
Generally, with the exception of the double barreled shotgun, most double barreled guns were for the nobility due to the expense of making them and of those weapons used, most were used for hunting. | [
"In the 17th century, European armies expanded their use of firearms, which were at first matchlock weapons like arquebuses. These were later supplanted by unrifled muskets fired by a flintlock mechanism, which became the weapon of choice because it could be fired relatively rapidly (six shots per minute). Because ... |
When were dates invented? And if it was a long time ago, how did they calculate 365 days for the earth to rotate around the sun? | It is quite easy to note the day of the year with the longest or shortest hours of daylight. All one needs do is count between two successive midsummer days and you'll get the number of days in a year.
We use the [Gregorian calendar](_URL_0_) adopted on 24 February 1582, itself a variation on the precursor Julian calendar which had existed since Roman times. There [isn't a specific date known for the invention of the calendar](_URL_1_) although humans have been noting the passage of time for centuries. | [
"Ancient tables provided the Sun's mean longitude. The German mathematician Christopher Clavius, the architect of the Gregorian calendar, noted that the tables agreed neither on the time when the Sun passed through the vernal equinox nor on the length of the mean tropical year. Tycho Brahe also noticed discrepancie... |
What effects does castration after puberty have on a male's lifespan? | I do not believe this topic has been researched. I cannot find studies regarding this topic. There is a difference between removing the gonads and having the sperm duct cut (which is done when you want sterilization). If the sperm duct is cut, the gonads will still produce it's hormones without displacement.
There is rarely a good reason to castrate a man, though some might be testicular cancer, a twisted testicular duct (torsion testis) and other such. So you will have a hard time finding a healthy population to study, who were also castrated.
On an unrelated note there's been [some studies about mens health and quality of sperm](_URL_0_), but this is most likely related to lifestyle, environmental factors etc. | [
"A subject of castration who is altered before the onset of puberty will retain a high voice, non-muscular build, and small genitals. He may well be shorter than average, as the production of sex hormones in puberty—more specifically, estrogen via aromatization of testosterone—stops long bone growth. The person may... |
What was the reaction of the major world powers at the time to the creation of the Zionist movement in 1897? | First of all, I know you're referring to the first Zionist Congress, but the Zionist movement itself had begun before. The first people to write about Zionism that books usually mention as influential are the German-Jewish Moses Hess (1862, wrote *Rome and Jerusalem* arguing for a Jewish social commonwealth in Palestine to solve the "Jewish problem") and the Russian-Jew Leo Pinsker (1881, wrote *Auto-Emancipation*, said anti-Semitism was everywhere and Jews had to organize and find any national home). In any case, the first real Zionist organization most books talk about is Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) which was formed in the 1870s, and would turn into Hibbat Zion (The Love of Zion) in 1887 and adopt Pinsker's writing as their "ideological charter".
Both Hovevei Zion and Hibbat Zion were small, and when reorganized into Hibbat Zion Pinsker was essentially forced to be leader by the group. It received very little funding, including from world Jewry, and came out of Eastern Europe/Russia. It failed to attract any major attention, or encourage much immigration: only a very small fraction of the Eastern European Jewish population turned to Zionism.
Another group working around the same time as Hibbat Zion was the BILU (acronym refers to a biblical phrase). They organized and committed to establishing agricultural settlements in Palestine (they were based in Ukraine). They too had very little success in organizing, and sent 14 members to try and settle in Palestine. They failed, and were forced to return to Europe.
At around the same time, a decentralized movement to a degree arose. Many Jews were fleeing for Palestine from Russia and Eastern Europe from 1881-on, in what came to be called the first Aliyah. Some fraction were indeed Zionists, but most were simply fleeing anti-Semitism. Those who were Zionists managed to appeal to wealthy Western Jews, like Baron Edmond de Rothschild and Moses Montefiore, who helped keep afloat some settlements. During this first Aliyah, the first wave of immigration (1882-1903), roughly 20-30,000 people headed for Palestine. Most would leave for the West, or return to Russia, but the movement did help teach organizations what *not* to do when attempting to settle in Palestine. Hibbat Zion's various societies (it was a confederation) were in decline when Herzl finally organized the Zionist Organization at the end of the decade.
Now that we somewhat understand the background of the Zionist movement, and how it played into the Zionist Congress in 1897, let's talk about the rest of the world. How did they react?
I can't find any initial reactions to the Congress itself, but I can tell you what followed in the reactions to the organization of the Zionist movement. The Germans were fairly sympathetic from the start to the movement. Kaiser Wilhelm II wrote in 1898 that perhaps "the tribe of Shem would be directed [once embarked on the Zionist road] to worthier goals than the exploitation of Christians." True, the Jews had "killed our Savior." But, given "the tremendous power represented by international Jewish capital in all its dangerousness," it would be well were the Jews to look upon Germany as their pro-Zionist protector.
Wilhelm II wasn't the only one paying attention of course, but he did offer great power recognition that the Zionists desperately needed to lend legitimacy to their cause. Herzl's plan was to meet with the Ottomans, attempt to convince them to allow for a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine, and if he failed, to attempt to get a great power to do the convincing for him. He met with the king of Italy, Pope Pius X, Kaiser Wilhelm (twice), and the Ottoman sultan. The Kaiser had indeed attempted to give full support to Herzl, and even wrote that he would intercede with the Sultan. However, when meeting with the Sultan, it's noted that he tried to raise the issue of Palestine, but could get nowhere. Count Eulenberg noted to Herzl that "we are anxious to remain on good terms with [the Sultan]. As a guest, the Kaiser could not, of course, press the subject."
At the same time that the German overtures were being made, the Ottomans were also being approached, of course. The Sultan passed along the message that the Ottomans would never part with any province's sovereignty, especially not Jerusalem. Herzl tried to present another offer to the Sultan, saying that Jews could perhaps establish an autonomous vassal state, under the suzerainty of the Sultan, where the Jews would embrace Ottoman nationality, pay a tribute of 100,000 pounds (which would rise to 1 million annually as immigration increased), and they'd be granted autonomy as a result and allowed to maintain an army. The Turks turned this down as well, saying that the Jews were welcome to live in the Ottoman Empire, but they could not be granted any territory or autonomy.
In London, the British had been approached as well. While Zionism had electrified some Jews, rich Jews remained mostly aloof and unwilling to fund the Zionist enterprise (with the notable exception of Montagu). However, the British all but ignored the Zionist movement until negotiations began in earnest in 1902, and in 1903 they offered a piece of land (the Uganda Plan, wrongly named as the land was actually in Kenya). Russian Jews would reject the plan, as did some of the other Jews in the Zionist organization, and Herzl would eventually join that group. The British negotiations were notable only because they, in essence, formed a base for the future negotiations with the British on a Zionist state.
At the same time as negotiations were going on with the British, the Russians were also talking to the Zionists. It would be the Russians who first recognized the Zionist cause and Jewish right to a state, in 1903. A letter from the Russian Minister of the Interior, Vyachelslav Plehve, came to Herzl on 12 August 1903. It promised that Russia would intervene with the Sultan on behalf of the Zionists, and would assist them in the organization of a massive Jewish immigration and settlement run in Palestine with the aim of establishing a Jewish state.
This was momentous because it lent great power legitimacy to the Zionist cause, as noted, since it meant that a great power would take action *with the goal of establishing a Jewish state*. This letter helped sway Herzl against accepting the Uganda offer, because it gave a greater sense of legitimacy. However, despite all the support, the Zionist cause felt it needed a "concert of European powers" to convince the Ottomans, and this they failed to get. As noted, the British gave an offer, but the offer was effectively rescinded when the next colonial secretary took the place of Chamberlain (who had resigned). The Foreign Office also changed its tune, because of the strong objections by white settler Kenyans to the idea of Jewish immigration and settlement. Without the British, and with the Kaiser refusing to press too hard on the Ottomans, two major world powers were already out of the picture for convincing the Ottomans to give up Palestine, which was the ultimate goal of the majority of the Zionists. Herzl continued, therefore, his diplomacy.
He met with Victor Emmanuel III of Italy in early 1904, who received him kindly. However, he was of the opinion that the Zionist movement was attempting to act too fast, and that he had little to gain. He believed that Italy had no "Jewish problem", though he did say that "Palestine will and must get into your hands, it is only a question of time. Wait until you have half a million Jews there!". This would be especially interesting, since it *was* when over half a million Jews were there that the Civil War erupted in Palestine. In fact, in the partition plan in 1947, it was estimated there would be roughly 498,000 Jews (half a million!) in the Jewish state, when one didn't include the 100,000 in what would've been internationally administered Jerusalem. At any rate, the Italians would lend their support, but did not seem eager to lead the cause. The same would be true of the Austro-Hungarians (Herzl's home), who did not lend their support until the autumn of 1903. Using Russia's letter helped immensely with convincing other powers that they would not be alone in supporting Zionism, since it meant they had less fear of upsetting a great power. Herzl's death in 1904, however, ruined what most agree would've been the next step: a visit to London to attempt to establish a concert of powers to finally force the question. One of the most effective Zionist statesmen was lost with Herzl, and the movement's international support failed to gain steam again from then on, until Weizmann began to take a leading role in international contacts with Britain in 1917.
Sources:
Friedman, Isaiah. Theodor Herzl: Political Activity and Achievements
Israel Studies, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Fall, 2004), pp. 46-79
Harms, Gregory, and Todd M. Ferry. The Palestine-Israel Conflict: A Basic Introduction. London: Pluto, 2005. Print.
Morris, Benny. Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001. New York: Knopf, 2001. Print.
Reich, Bernard. A Brief History of Israel. New York, NY: Facts On File/Checkmark, 2008. Print.
Smith, Charles D. Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A History with Documents. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Print. | [
"The World Zionist Organization was established in Constantinople; Theodor Herzl had tried to set up debt relief for Sultan Abdul Hamid II in exchange for Palestinian lands. Until the First World War its activities focused on cultural matters, although political aims were never absent. Before the First World War, H... |
sovereign citizens. why do people think they are not required to follow the law? what is this based on? | [This decision](_URL_0_) by a Canadian Court is the best write up I have ever seen of what the SC movement is/believes and where it comes from.
The ELI5 version is that SC's have been told---sometimes by people trying to sell books and seminars, sometimes by true believers---that the legal system is effectively a lie and not binding on them, so long as they take certain steps, which vary from SC to SC. Usually, these steps involve some sort of highly formal (and meaningless) legal filings or actions in court.
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"Every citizen is free to travel, both outside and inside the territory of the Republic, with restrictions granted by law only for possible health and security reasons. Citizens have the right to freely assemble, both in private and public places, peacefully and unarmed. Notifications to the authorities is required... |
Since the Indian Plate is subducting under the Eurasian plate, will there come a time when the whole subcontinent no longer exists? | No. Continental crust is very difficult to subduct because of the density contrast between it and the underlying mantle. Small portions of continental crust (small being relative to the size of an entire plate) can subduct in large continent-continent collisions, but this is restricted to the leading edge of continents typically and is usually driven by the pull of a subducted slab of oceanic crust that is still attached (i.e. the cumulative density of the oceanic slab + some continental crust is able to be subducted). Within the Indo-Asian collision, much of the Indian subcontinent is actually a [craton](_URL_2_), i.e. an extremely thick, old bit of continental crust, making subduction even more difficult (and essentially impossible). We know from tracking the rate at which the Indian subcontinent has moved relative to Eurasia since the beginning of the collision at ~50 million years ago that the rate of convergence [has been slowing from an incredibly fast rate of 15 cm/yr](_URL_1_) to the [current rate of ~3-4 cm/yr ](_URL_0_) over the course of the collision. This slowing is driven by the increasing resistance to both continued underthrusting but also the growth of the Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau. The convergence will continue to slow as these forces increase and plate motions continue to reorganize (slowing or change in direction of motion of one plate requires response by all neighboring plates because the motions are required to balance, i.e. no holes open up between plates, etc). | [
"It is unknown when and where the India–Asia (Indian and Eurasian Plate) convergence occurred, at or before 52 Million years ago. The plates have converged up to ± . The upper crustal shortening is documented from geological record of Asia and the Himalaya as up to approximately less.\n",
"India is entirely conta... |
how does a computer read keystrokes from a keyboard? | A keyboard is just a list of switches. There is several ways to connect those switches but basically when a switch is pressed, it allows current to flow thru and a microcontroller ( a smart chip if you wish) will detect this current and basically record which one was pressed or released. In turn the microcontroller will send this information to the computer via a serial connection ( PS/2 or USB) , the computer receive this information and the operating system acknowledges it and send it thru the program that "own" the keyboard at that time.
Each key has a keycode ( based on ASCII for most western language, and ISO-xxxx, for other languages)
| [
"A keyboard is the device most commonly used for writing via computer. Each key is associated with a standard code which the keyboard sends to the computer when it is pressed. By using a combination of alphabetic keys with modifier keys such as Ctrl, Alt, Shift and AltGr, various character codes are generated and s... |
Was America inevitably going to declare war on Germany after Pearl Harbor, had Hitler not pre-emptively declared war first? | A look into the [World War II](_URL_1_) section of the FAQ, [United States](_URL_2_) subsection, finds only ["Would the US have still gone to war with Germany in WW2 if Hitler hadn't declared war on the US post-Pearl Harbor?"](_URL_0_), a reply by /u/coinsinmyrocket, but it's only one comment and it's from 3 years ago. (So it's archived, so no new comments can be put there.)
He noted the continuing US+UK talks deciding on a Germany First policy ("Collapse in the Atlantic would be fatal; Collapse in the Far East would be serious but not fatal." - General Marshall), and how the US was pretty much in a shooting war in the Atlantic already, and was giving a lot of military aid to the UK.
But I'd like to see more discussion on his point, "If Germany hadn't declared war on the U.S. , it could be argued that the U.S. may have not declared war on Germany as soon as it did, if at all, especially considering the high feelings of isolationism and 'America First' running through the nation prior to Pearl Harbor.". I wonder whether he might be minimizing that possibility. But I don't know what sources of the time said. I dimly recall seeing the book of New York Times front pages, where the issue after Pearl Harbor had a bit of article that seemed to presuppose an anti-German declaration of war -- but that's a dim memory.
EDIT: I have also tried a search.
* [Is there evidence suggesting that the United States would have gone to war with Germany in 1941 absent Hitler's declaration of war after Pearl Harbor?](_URL_3_): oo, nice answer, /u/The_Alaskan! He has more info about the war-plan leak (linked to by /u/dhpye below). More tellingly, he has a long quotation from FDR's fireside speech of 8 December 1941, where FDR tried hard to tie Germany to Japan.
* [Would it have made a difference if Germany and Italy didn't declare war on the USA in WWII?](_URL_5_): /u/dhpye suggests it was largely due to the leak of US war plans a few days earlier
* [Was there any possibility the US would have not gone to war against Germany after Pearl Harbor?](_URL_4_), from 5 years ago, only has a little data from /u/CarlinGenius
| [
"BULLET::::- In Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen's book \"1945\", Hitler did not declare war on the United States after Pearl Harbor. As a result, President Franklin Roosevelt had no pretext to take the US into the European war -much as he would have liked to do it. In the following years, the US concentrated it... |
Why are sun spots black? | They are still very bright but they are significantly less bright than the surrounding material so appear dark in contrast.
They can be up to half as hot (~3000-4000K) as the normal photosphere (6000K) and due to the T^4 relationship of luminosity that can mean up to 16 times less bright.
edit: If you want to know **why** sunspots are cooler...
There are a few ways that you can think about this. The best in my opinion is: magnetic fields provide pressure, this pressure scales with the square of the magnetic field and sunspots have very much larger magnetic fields than the surrounding material.
Wherever you have an increased magnetic field you have an increased magnetic pressure. If the sunspot and the surrounding plasma were the same temperature than the sunspot would have a higher total pressure (P thermal + P magnetic) this would cause the plasma to expand and expanding gasses cool, lowering the temperature.
This cooling drops the thermal pressure and would continue until the pressure inside (P_thermal + P_magnetic) and outside (P_thermal) are equal.
You often hear that the strong sunspot magnetic field restricts cross field motion (this is true, motion of plasma across a magnetic field is inhibited and along the field is not). This restricted motion means that convection stops working as efficiently and the sunspot cools.
This is a nice idea but it does not explain why the cooler sunspot does not simply contract and thus heat until back to the same temperature as the surrounding photosphere. | [
"The Sun's color is white, with a CIE color-space index near (0.3, 0.3), when viewed from space or when the Sun is high in the sky. When measuring all the photons emitted, the Sun is actually emitting more photons in the green portion of the spectrum than any other. When the Sun is low in the sky, atmospheric scatt... |
why it's bad when car batteries go completely dead/once they go dead they can't/rarely can be recharged to full strength? | Car batteries are designed to be able to push a few hundred amps on demand. That's actually kinda atypical for most batteries; your cellphone battery might do 4 amps top and that would be considered a high workload, and your car's battery is only 3 times the voltage (~12 car battery vs ~4 cellphone battery)
But in designing them to do this, there is a tradeoff. They don't tolerate being drained down very well. After doing so their expected life is usually dramatically shortened. Normally this isn't such a big deal - they're supposed to be mostly idle for a while, crank the engine to start it, and then get immediately recharged by the running engine.
If you want a 12 volt battery that can handle being drained, look into a "deep cycle" battery. They can't provide hundreds of amps like an "automotive" battery, but they take being drained way better. | [
"All batteries gradually self-discharge (whether installed in a device or not) and dead batteries will eventually leak. Extremely high temperatures can also cause batteries to rupture and leak (such as in a car during summer) as well as decrease the shelf life of the battery.\n",
"Batteries that are stored for a ... |
If we are made of tiny particles and empty space then how do we stay together/solid? | Particles aren't just tiny, they're points according to the standard model. You can't really zoom in on them... they aren't at all like really tiny baseballs. So, besides being empty space if you consider the area where the particles spend the vast majority of their time as their volume, what's empty space and what isn't starts becoming a bit wishy washy once you consider what the particles really are. So no, as you get to smaller and smaller scales, the idea of solid starts making less and less sense. States of matter are kinda nice to think about here. A gas is where you have the particles interacting somewhat weakly. Some approximations just take the particles to be not interacting at all... this is why gasses just diffuse all over the place... but still they have pressure. If you crush enough particles together, they'll push back against you much like pushing two magnets together really closely. Liquids and solids on the other hand have an attractive force going on there as well. When you have an attractive and repulsive force, eventually there's a place in between where the two balance out and the thing experiencing the forces feels nothing, so it just sits there. That's generally what's going on in solids. It's a mix of mostly electrostatic forces, some quantum effects, and strong and weak interactions going on within the atoms themselves that actually causes everything to stick together but not all fall together into one single point. | [
"In a solid, constituent particles (ions, atoms, or molecules) are closely packed together. The forces between particles are so strong that the particles cannot move freely but can only vibrate. As a result, a solid has a stable, definite shape, and a definite volume. Solids can only change their shape by force, as... |
what are the characteristics that define the market as either a bull or bear? | It's called a "bull market" when the line indicating the price of stocks is trending upwards, like the horns of a charging bull, and it's a "bear market" when the line is trending down like a claw of a bear. | [
"The terms \"bull market\" and \"bear market\" describe upward and downward market trends, respectively, and can be used to describe either the market as a whole or specific sectors and securities. The names perhaps correspond to the fact that a bull attacks by lifting its horns upward, while a bear strikes with it... |
What evidence is there that the rivers on Mars were actually composed of water from their leftover traces? | Several types of minerals have been identified on Mars that are only known to form in the presence of water. [Phyllosilicates](_URL_1_) (think clays) are the products of the weathering of earlier rocks in the presence of water and have been identified in many locations on Mars. Sulfate salts, which are often found in [evaporites](_URL_0_) on Earth, are also common on Mars and are evidence of past water. | [
"In June 2000, evidence for water currently under the surface of Mars was discovered in the form of flood-like gullies. The question that was immediately asked was: is this an ongoing process or is this ancient and simply well preserved evidence of water/liquid flow? Most scientists agree that it is highly likely t... |
The Homeric myths and stories were a definitively oral tradition, passed in by word of mouth. But our text translations today go back at least as far as medieval Europe. Where do our current ‘definitive’ Iliad and Odyssey come from, and when was it penned? | Okay, well, this is like, a crazy complex question with huge amount of scholarly debate, although a lot of fun. Even the **TL;DR** is long:
----------------
The Iliad and Odyssey have been been circulating as complete editions in written form from at least from the 6th century BC, but an idea of a 'true' and 'authentic' Homer probably goes earlier than that. The basic storyline, themes and style were always there, but the poems continued to exist in somewhat varied textual versions, until an important watershed moment in the 2nd century BC Alexandria, where a hub of grammarians sought to remove all 'unauthentic' variants and errors and collate one 'original' version of Homer. The result of their work became the standard version of Homer, sometimes called the 'Aristarchus' version', that was in popular circulation for the rest of antiquity, and we have substantial manuscripts of large chunks from every century up to the 7th century; the texts were, however, always in flux - addition of a line here and there etc. - but the variants gradually become more and more sparse with time. The earliest complete texts only date to the 9th-10th century CE. These are more or less the versions of Homer we use today, although scholars continue to debate what exactly the 'true' and 'authentic' Homeric versions (often titled as the 'vulgate' Homer) were, through all this fog and chaos of c. 2700 years of oral and written transmission; each new edition of the Greek texts are different and scholars can still majorly disagree on many points, so there isn't really such a thing as the one 'definitive' Homer.
---------
Okay, and the long version. Already in antiquity the 'correct' version of Homer's epic was a self-consciously contested issue, although it remains an open question whether there truly ever was one complete poem created by a person called Homer; ancients believed so, certainly. Later commentators, such as Strabo, Cicero, Plutarch, and some scholiasts, believed that Peisistratos, tyrant of Athens (c. 561-527 BCE), realised that there were 'confused' and wrong versions of the true, pure Homer in circulation, and laid out a definitive 'master Homer'; this is sometimes known as the 'Peisistrean edition' in scholarship, but whether one ever really was made by a histrocial Peisistratos is impossible to say. Some sort of full versions of Homer definitely existed in written form in classical Athens. Notably, Plato's quotations of Homer differ quite a lot in quality from Aristotle's quotations of Homer; Plato's are considered as 'pure' and 'correct' in that they correspond almost perfectly with what was later coined as the authentic Homer (titled in the scholarship often as the 'Vulgate' Homer to differentiate from 'unauthentic' variants, although an extremely elusive and contested concept), whereas Aristotle's variations are considered as errors or unauthentic additional lines, which shows at least that Plato and his student Aristotle had differing editions.
We can best start studying the formation of the 'Vulgate' Homer once we start having something that isn't just out-of-context chance quotations, but actual editions of the text. From c. 3rd century BC onwards, we have scattered papyrus versions of Homer - these are never the whole poems, only larger sections. About forty such papyrus 'manuscripts' dating from before c. 150 BC were known to Michael Haslam in 1997, who I'm using as my source; I don't know if any have emerged since then. These do, however, show quite remarkable level of variability, meaning, verses have alternative spellings; differing choices of words; sometimes extra words, sometimes less; sometimes a full verse or half of a verse is found in a 'wrong' place; and there are, indeed, some handful of verses that are completely unknown in the later tradition.
A real watershed moment to Homeric transmission is the c. 2nd century BC, when the science of grammar begun to take shape in Alexandria. A hub of scholars started to take really seriously the idea that there is one 'pure' and 'correct' version of Greek, and the original Homer was held as a semi-divine paragon of the perfect Greek. Thus, the Alexandrian scholars, discontent with the variability and quality of contemporary versions, 'corrupted' by centuries of transmission, set out to 'restore' Homer's original poem. We know quite a lot of this process because of the tradition of ancient textual commentaries ('scholia') who tended to, similar to modern academic traditions, note down changes and opinions of 'previous editors'. The [Wikipedia article](_URL_0_) actually does a pretty good job in summarising what this exactly meant, if somebody wants to read more. This went beyond just grammatical, metrical or lexical considerations. Any inconsistencies in logic or style were considered as corruptions, and thus they were fixed. Too much repetition of the same word or line too close to each other, fixed. This is, actually, what modern scholars still do when reconstructing an ancient text from differing manuscripts. But, the Alexandrians went sometimes a bit far in comparison to modern scholarship. A word too weird, fixed. A line of too 'poor' poetic quality, fixed (the divine Homer could never write something mediocre!). Questionable morals portrayed in the text? Homer wouldn't do that, fixed! There are some indications in the later commentaries that the Alexandrians might have rejected whole passages as 'un-Homeric', which they indeed might have been (these guys really were dedicated, thorough and knew their Greek), but we of course can't ever find out if we would agree. The most notable of these Alexandrian grammarians were Zenodotus, who probably established the tradition of dividing both Iliad and Odyssey into 12 books each and put the narrative in the order we know today; and Aristarchus of Samothrace, who created an overhauling, major critical editions of both Iliad and Odyssey.
These editions of the Alexandrian school, the 'Aristarchus' version' became more or less the standard that was popularly circulated throughout antiquity. However, the tradition continued to be joyfully in flux, open to further debate and disagreement, as each new commentator had their own idea of what the most Homeric Homer was. We have editions of major chunks of Homer from practically every century down to 7th century CE, and no two versions are exactly the same. However, variants become more and more minor and less and less sparse through time; the first fully preserved versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey date to the 9th and 10th centuries. This is basically the tradition of transmission from which we get our Iliad and Odyssey today.
However, scholars continue to heavily disagree what style, wording, ordering is truly 'the most authentic Homer', the 'vulgate' version of the texts. Some believe that the pre-Aristarchus version was closer to the original Homer, some believe that the creation of Aristarchus et co. was as comfortably close to the true master Homer as we will ever get to (evidenced by the Plato quotations which well correspond to it, perhaps?). Some scholars, in turn, believe that the whole idea of a 'vulgate' Homer is a wild goose chase and we should just be comfortable to think of it as a multi-text tradition. In any case, each new edition of the Greek Homer still has to contend with this massively long and confused tradition of centuries of transmission, compare different manuscript versions, consider how seriously old papyri versions should be taken and so forth. As a consequence, we still have no 'definitive' Homer, and it's still an evolving text (though, admittedly, ignoring the more radical calls to go back to the pre-2nd c. BC versions - we are mainly talking about minor variants that are mainly of interest to serious scholars of Greek language and literature, not something that would get reflected in English translations). | [
"It has been shown from comparative study of orality that the \"Iliad\" and \"Odyssey\" (as well as the works of Hesiod) come from a tradition of oral epics. In oral narrative traditions there is no exact transmission of texts; rather, stories are transmitted from one generation to another by bards, who make use of... |
might sound dumb, but what's a rational number? | A rational number can be written as the *ratio* of two integers: q = a/b, like 3/5. In other words, fractions.
This includes whole numbers, since, e.g. 7 = 7/1. | [
"No rational number is normal in any base, since the digit sequences of rational numbers are eventually periodic. (However, a rational number can be \"simply normal\" in a particular base: formula_4 is simply normal in base 10.)\n",
"Every rational number is constructible. Every irrational number that is construc... |
why does urinating on a lemon tree help it grow? | Hold up.....WHA?????? lol
Ok I know nothing of this legend BUT i do know that urine will break down into Nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium with many trace minerals. so in that respect it is actually one hell of a good fertilizer for any plant. If the salts were an issue there would be many a dead tree in dog parks....
Give you an example. I have some huge rose bushes and people are always commenting on the size of the blooms and the strength of the rose smell. they always ask what I do and I say nothing special. but in reality I make sure I take at least one wizz a night in my garden lol. in this way they are getting raw pure nitrogen no different then the chemicals in miracle grow, and has the benefit of being natural which doesnt kill the soil microbes like chemical fertilizers do.
It's safe, it's free, and it's potential can match any commercial chemical fertilizers. (the Romans even made cleaning solutions from Urine)
_URL_0_ | [
"The viability of the lemonwood's seeds is affected by moisture levels of the soil. If the moisture levels are too high the seed is likely to become unviable. The lemonwood like other pittosporums is somewhat drought resistant therefore rainfall is not a major factor in the lemonwoods survival. P. eugenioides is re... |
why can all the areas in our mouths repair itself with new skin, but our gums can not? | Our cells can only figure our their function from their surroundings and interactions.
A wound in the skin of our mouth is surrounded by other skin cells. The new cells see those surrounding cells and realizes they should function as skin.
The gums attached to your tooth are different. They expect a firm attachment to the tooth that formed when the tooth first came out. Remove that attachment either due to poor dental hygiene, rough brushing, or other factors and the separated gum-line cells don't know that they should be attached to the tooth. This is why your gums don't regenerate the attachment to your tooth. | [
"Once the bacteria and calculus are removed from the periodontal pocket, the tissue can begin to heal. The inflammation dissipates as the infection declines, allowing the swelling to decrease which results in the gums once again forming an effective seal between the root of the tooth and the outside environment. Ho... |
Why can't astronauts whistle in their space suits? | [Referring to this interview with astronauts](_URL_0_) in which they mention "the resonant frequency of the cavity of your mouth" (around 1.10).
I'm going to take an educated guess that the lower frequency doesn't resonate inside the mouth, so no sound can be heard. | [
"If nitrogen is used to increase pressure as on the ISS, it is inert to humans, but can cause decompression sickness. Space suits typically operate at low pressure to make their balloon-like structure easier to move, so astronauts must spend a long time getting the nitrogen out of their system. The Apollo missions ... |
if i open the car window is there an equal but opposite breeze outside? | Technically if you open a window air will flow in yes. But also air will flow outward because of the maximum capacity of airflow. The air will circulate and exit the car.
So yes there is an equal and opposite airflow | [
"An alternative explanation for the orientation of the window is that getting at least one corner of a window up as far as possible in the interior of the house allows hot air (which rises to the top of the room) to escape on summer afternoons. However, this reasoning seems suspect, as Vermont is not as hot as many... |
Has the United States been the primary cause of disruptions in the Middle East since the 1940s? | Clarification: the US was not a primary disruptive force in the establishment of the Jewish state either. Typically, the British, Soviets, and Arab states are considered to be more disruptive in terms of turning the tide towards Jewish self-determination. The US played a critical role in helping pass UN General Assembly Resolution 181, the partition plan, but it was never implemented. The US made mostly symbolic moves, as with the endorsement of the Zionist request to grant 100,000 visas to Holocaust survivors and Jewish refugees to enter the British-controlled Mandate of Palestine, but its involvement was mostly limited to a diplomacy based pressure that added to the more powerful moves by other groups and actors.
Your question seemed to imply US involvement was critical in that instance, and I just wanted to clarify that point. Palestinians have often "damned" the British for that early period, and America for later ones. | [
"The U.S. responded to Soviet influence in the Middle East after the Camp David Accords by using economic sanctions to influence the Arab world. Geopolitics transitioned from post-Cold War polarization to 21st-century regional conflicts. The lack of two superpowers destabilized the Middle East as pressure-relieving... |
what happens after we die? (i.d, saving accounts, property, etc) | Presently dealing with this, pm me if you like.
Each State has different laws, but basics should be similar.
Assuming US here.
If you have a will or trust setup in advance, that can declare your legal assignment of things. Similar to if you knew you were dying, and gave your stuff away in your last hours.
If anything is jointly held, or ' joint tenancy' / 'jtwros- joint tenant with right of survivorship' - that property goes to the joint tenant/s named.
1 job- you can't meet job needs, your employment is separated.
2 govt ID- funeral director and/or next of kin notifies social security, provides death certificate. Death cert includes SSN, so they catch on soon anyhow.
3 assets - if you have joint acct, the other person owns it. If you spell it out in a will, then others can get money after probate. If none, bank holds money as soon as they become aware (usually 2 days or less) - releases money to court named beneficiary, or after time passes, goes to State as abandoned money.
4 loans- banks will try to get their money, if you have any 'estate' or will, they'll try to get bills paid. If it goes for a long time, or if probate court is slow- they may try to foreclose or repossess. They may go to probate court and fight to get paid- even if it means the court orders your stuff has to be sold. Some loans carry optional life insurance; if you have that, it probably pays the banks off.
5 Still stuff like utility bills, valuables/ junk in your home - someone needs to settle all this. If not in your will, probate court will assign someone. Handle your final arrangements, and clear out your home/apartment, sell or distribute anything you owned.
Generally , probate courts will look for close relatives to take care of things, and to benefit from anything left over. Spouse, parents, children, siblings, etc. They will need to keep careful records of time ( they can ask to be paid for the work) and any expenses. Usually, relatives can't be held for your debts, but they can't gain a free car that wasn't paid for, either. Finally, someone ( probably your executor or court-appointee) will need to file your last taxes. | [
"The concept of \"death of money\" also refers to the fundamental change in the nature of business transactions based on a complex, electronically managed system of valuations used for stocks, bonds, insurance policies, and other financial contracts that go beyond the simple, historic notion of money representing p... |
what happens if you take a stimulant and a depressant at the same time? | You end up potentially not realizing how out of it you are. It feels more normal, but in terms of objective measurement you're just as out of your mind as you'd predict given dosage and drug. This runs the risk of people thinking they can safely take more and ODing or just getting way higher than they meant to. | [
"In rare cases antidepressants can make users obsessively violent or have suicidal compulsions, which is in marked contrast to their intended effect. This can be regarded as a paradoxical reaction but, especially in the case of suicide, may in at least some cases be merely due to differing rates of effect with resp... |
how does nuclear materials make it possible to split the atoms to make a nuclear bomb possible. | It only works if you start with rare, special unstable atoms that are ready to split already. Typically these will be plutonium, or enriched uranium.
Average atoms are damned hard to split. | [
"Nuclear fission type atomic bombs utilize the energy present in very heavy atomic nuclei, such as U-235 or Pu-239. In order to release this energy rapidly, a certain amount of the fissile material must be very rapidly consolidated while being exposed to a neutron source. If consolidation occurs slowly, repulsive f... |
how did germany manage to take so much of europe during wwii despite its central geographic location? | There are too many reasons to list succinctly, but some factors that combined to get them their initial gains were initiative, an element of surprise, some newer military tricks and strategies, unpreparedness of their enemies, making effective use of modern weapons, etc.
And once they had taken everything through France (and a lot to the north, east, and south) there weren't any major continental Allied forces left. So until Germany was deep at war with Russia and the Allies landed at Normandy, they really *weren't* surrounded by enemies on all sides. | [
"Germany's foreign policy during the war involved the creation of allied governments under direct or indirect control from Berlin. A main goal was obtaining soldiers from the senior allies, such as Italy and Hungary, and millions of workers and ample food supplies from subservient allies such as Vichy France. By th... |
how did jordan maintain relative stability during and after the arab spring, and how is jordan still maintaining the relative stability with the state the middle east is in right now? | Despite being a monarchy, Jordan is actually one of the better countries in the region when it comes to democracy and human rights. The king is popular and doesn't rule as a dictator.
The religious demographics also help. Jordan is 92% Sunni Muslim and allows a decent amount of religious freedoms for the rest (mostly Christians). Iraq and Syria are partially in the mess they're in because their Shia governments were unpopular among their Sunni populations, which lead to support for ISIL.
Also, they have no oil to fight over. There's the conspiracy-theory view that that means nobody is interested in toppling their government. | [
"The Arab Spring were large-scale protests that erupted in the Arab World in 2011, demanding economic and political reforms. Many of these protests tore down regimes in some Arab nations, leading to instability that ended with violent civil wars. In Jordan, in response to domestic unrest, Abdullah replaced his prim... |
Can you explain me quantum decoherence in simple language? | To understand this, it probably helps to start with quantum coherence. At a simplistic level, coherence can be thought of as the information that the quantum system holds. More precisely, it is a measure of the relationship between different possible states of the system. Quantum computers rely on this information to function.
If the system is isolated, coherence is conserved. Decoherence occurs when the system interacts with its environment. This means that the information that the system contains gets mixed up with its environment.
Here's a (limited, but useful) analogy. Imagine I have a small bottle of red ink. I can see that it is red because the pigment is highly concentrated. Let's say I now tip the ink into a large lake or the ocean. At first I can see the colour, but it slowly starts dispersing. After a while, I can't distinguish the ink (system information) from the ocean (environment). The larger background completely overwhelms the smaller system, making it impossible to separate. Quantum decoherence is like that. If you are interested, you may also want to look up quantum entanglement.
Source: PhD in High Energy Physics.
EDIT: Thank you for the silver and gold kind strangers! | [
"Quantum decoherence implies that irreversible macroscopic phenomena (hence, all classical measurements) render histories automatically consistent, which allows one to recover classical reasoning and \"common sense\" when applied to the outcomes of these measurements. More precise analysis of decoherence allows (in... |
how is profit margin a useful metric when a company can just reinvest all of their money back into the company? | This is why you actually *read* the earnings reports if you want to invest in a company. They specify how much they earned for what sectors and how much they spent on various activities(materials, wages, facilities, marketing, expansion, and reinvestment)
If you dig through it you'd see something along the lines of
**Gross income** $50M
Materials $15M
Labor $10M
Overhead $15M
**Cost of Goods sold** $40M
**Operating Income** $10M (this is the income after all necessary expenses to earn the revenue so its Gross Income - Cost of Goods Sold)
Facilities expansion $10M
Net Income $0
While the Net Income is 0 the operating income is not. At any time the company can stop the additional expenditures and turn the operating income into profit but this is generally not worth it in the long term. | [
"BULLET::::- while average profit \"rates\" on capital invested may decline as a result, profit \"margins\" (or profit volumes) will increase, because more output can be produced and sold in a given accounting period, using the new technologies (implying unit-costs for products made will decline).\n",
"If it is a... |
what are foreign currency reserves and why are they important? | Foreign currency reserves simply put are just monies from other countries a government (or central bank, if it is separate) have on hand at any given time. They use these reserves to buy and sell securities of other countries (which are denominated in foreign currency). This has important implications for government financing, as well as exchange rates.
In order for a government (and/or, central bank) of a country to pursue a certain economic agenda, the exchange rate is an important factor in how much investment flows into, and out of, the country. Reserves are necessary to maintain the exchange rate, if natural market forces (including recessions/financial crises) push the exchange rate in an undesirable direction. For example, if the yuan (china) were to weaken against the dollar undesirably, the Chinese government could buy yuan with their dollars, thereby increasing the supply of dollars and lowering the supply of yuan, thereby raising the exchange rate back to normal levels.
If a country were to run out of foreign currency reserves, they would be unable to exert control over the exchange rate, and thus considerable control over investment in their economy. | [
"These foreign-currency deposits are the financial assets of the central banks and monetary authorities that are held in different reserve currencies (e.g. the U.S. dollar, the Euro, the Japanese yen and the Pound sterling) and which are used to back its liabilities (e.g. the local currency issued and the various b... |
with all the wealth, resources, and technology in the world today, how does everyone not have a basic education, food, water, and shelter? | Because 85 individuals control the same amount of wealth as 3.5billion people. Yes, you read those numbers right.
Source: Oxfam | [
"In 2012 Kotler published \"Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think\" with Peter H. Diamandis. The book revolves around the idea that the world is getting better and in the future most people of the world will have access to clean water, food, energy, health care, education, and everything else that is neces... |
how do procedurally generated video games work? how are players not constantly stuck in a situation where they can no longer progress due to the level generation? | > Are procedurally generated levels given guidelines they must abide by
yes. that's why it's called "procedurally" and not "randomly". the game has to follow a procedure that makes sure the result is a playable map. a simple example would be to allow it to make gaps in a path, but the gaps have to be < 1m wide and have > 1m of land between them so it doesnt create a too-wide gap by placing 2 right next to each other | [
"There are two players in static games: the \"machine\" and the \"environment\". The machine can only follow algorithmic strategies, while there are no restrictions on the behavior of the environment. Each run (play) is won by one of these players and lost by the other.\n",
"Throughout the game, the player is pre... |
why isn't the orlando shooting on my front page? | The uncensored megathread on /r/news (censored comments appear in red): _URL_0_ | [
"Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator John McCain, accused President Obama of being \"directly responsible\" for the Orlando nightclub shooting \"because when he pulled everybody out of Iraq, al-Qaeda went to Syria, became ISIS, and ISIS is what it is today thanks to Barack Obama's failures.\"\n... |
how do power outages happen when too many people are using electricity? | Imagine a bathtub full of water, the water represents electricity. The bathtub has a faucet, which represents the generation of electricity. Imagine now that there are little holes in the bottom of the bathtub, all plugged up. When ever a home needs power, unplug the drain and let the water flow out.
Now imagine that there are thousands of holes, all unplugged. The bathtub will drain very quickly - even if you turn the faucet on, full blast, only a few of the holes near the faucet will still get water flowing through, the rest of them will be dry until you plug up some of the holes again. It's generally the same concept with power. | [
"A power outage is an interruption of normal sources of electrical power. Short-term power outages (up to a few hours) are common and have minor adverse effect, since most businesses and health facilities are prepared to deal with them. Extended power outages, however, can disrupt personal and business activities a... |
So what's up with dogs and TV's? Can get watch it or is it something about the type of TV? | There is evidence that most dogs don't see a typical frame rate of 24 to 30 frames per second as continuous motion, but as separate still images. (_URL_0_) The changing images will still often attract an animal's attention, and many will react to what's on the screen even if it doesn't look smooth for them. | [
"DOGTV is a premium cable television network and the first television network that is made specifically for dogs. The network was founded in equal parts by Ron Levi and Guy Martinovsky, its first CEO, that sold his shares later to The Jasmine Group. DOGTV provides 24/7 digital TV programming that is designed to pro... |
if an spf50 sunscreen increases my skin's natural resistance to uv rays from 5 to 250 minutes, does its effectiveness wear off after 250 minutes even if i spend them in the dark, or does it only wear off during sun exposure? | The spf and how long it lasts aren’t really directly connected the way you described.
The spf is a measurement of how much sun it blocks, not how long it stays on your skin. | [
"The SPF is an imperfect measure of skin damage because invisible damage and skin aging are also caused by ultraviolet type A (UVA, wavelengths 315–400 or 320–400 nm), which does not primarily cause reddening or pain. Conventional sunscreen blocks very little UVA radiation relative to the nominal SPF; broad-spectru... |
breastfeeding and immune system | Only babies young enough that their digestive system hasn't started to its full capacity can get whole antibodies from breast milk. As soon as the child is capable of digesting solid food, its digestive system breaks down the antibodies before absorbing them. Antibodies are made of protein, so they are digested just like other proteins.
We can intravenously administer antibodies to people, but the immunity only lasts as long as those antibodies are still floating around in them. Having to lug around a continuous IV drip of antibodies may be more trouble than it's worth to a lot of people. | [
"Because various components present in human breast milk stimulate the growth of the immune system, there is a growing interest in whether breastfeeding provides a long term protective effect against auto-immune and inflammatory diseases.\n",
"Breastfeeding is thought to be an important driver of infant gut micro... |
How effective was gunpowder armies against traditional armies in battle? | A lot of ink has been spilt in /r/AskHistorians over the question of muskets v.s. bows, many of them ridiculously well-sourced. It's not a direct answer to your question, but I think it's pretty easy to infer: in general, gunpowder armies destroy traditional armies, which is why there are none of the latter left. Here are some I picked out:
- /u/hborrgg answers [Why was the musket used instead of the bow and arrow during colonial times?](_URL_2_)
- And him again on [Bow and Arrow vs. Musket in the Revolutionary War](_URL_0_)
- And this thread: [the bow is better than the musket - why did Napoleon not use archers?](_URL_1_) which turned into a massive row. | [
"Until the invention of gunpowder-based weapons (and the resulting higher-velocity projectiles), the balance of power and logistics definitely favored the defender. With the invention of gunpowder, the traditional methods of defence became less and less effective against a determined siege.\n",
"Until the inventi... |
Viking era (late 8th, early 9th century) history breakdown | If you want an overview of the Viking period as a whole, I'd check out Gwyn Jones's *History of the Vikings* from Oxford Press. It'll give you just about everything you need for a broad overview of the period. | [
"The Viking revival was a movement of interest and appreciation for Viking history and culture in the 18th and 19th centuries, often with romanticized heroic overtones. It began with historical discoveries and early modern publications dealing with Old Norse culture. These appeared in the 16th century, e.g. \"Histo... |
How do our lungs differentiate between oxygen and nitrogen when breathing? | Lungs themselves don't really separate gases like you seem to be imagining. The alveoli have a very large surface area with lots of capillaries, allowing gases to diffuse in and out of the blood. Any molecule that's more concentrated on one side than the other will diffuse across the barrier (although small molecules will generally diffuse faster).
The exact rates and concentrations depend on chemical interactions involving the particular gas molecules. For instance, CO2 dissolves readily in blood plasma, whereas nitrogen and oxygen are much less soluble. (see e.g. [these graphs](_URL_0_))
Only a small amount of either nitrogen or oxygen actually dissolves in your blood; however, your body can store extra oxygen by binding it to hemoglobin. Nitrogen doesn't react with hemoglobin the same way, so its concentration stays much lower. | [
"The sum of partial pressures of the gas that the diver breathes must necessarily balance with the sum of partial pressures in the lung gas. In the alveoli the gas has been humidified and has gained carbon dioxide from the venous blood. Oxygen has also diffused into the arterial blood, reducing the partial pressure... |
If I eat a 3500 calorie surplus today, how long until 1 pound of fat is produced on my body? | Hypothetically, the fat would mostly be stored within 4-48 hours of ingestion. The fat gets broken down in the stomach and small intestine, absorbed into the lymphatic system and broken down into free fatty acids, then most are transported around the blood in the form of triglycerides (because lipids aren't water soluble, they need a glycerol backbone to travel through plasma).
At this point it's basically just a matter of depositing the fat into adipose tissue, which is accomplished by a variety of enzymes, but primarily one called Lipoprotein Lipase. Triglycerides are broken down and the free fatty acids are taken up by cells which then store them, making them swell in size. You don't generate a whole lot of new fat cells, that wouldn't an effective way of storing energy, instead the ones you have just get bigger or smaller (for the most part).
The reason I say hypothetically is that I'm not sure whether it would be possible to eat 3500 kcal of pure fat over and above your total daily energy expenditure. It would certainly take a long time, quite likely most of the day, and I suspect that you'd feel pretty bad throughout the process.
On a smaller scale (eg, 350 kcal of excess fat), I suspect that the time frame would be more truncated. The bulk of the time needed for fat to be absorbed into adipose tissue is simply digesting it and passing it through the stomach and small intestine. I'm honestly not sure how that process would be affected if you were continuously eating large amounts of fat throughout the entire day, but I suspect that it would cause at least some back-ups and slow downs.
edit - I completely misread the question. I thought you were asking how long it would take if you ate 3500 excess calories of fat. That said, the principle is fairly similar with carbohydrates, at least. Insulin would spike, and the glucose would be stored in adipose tissue along with FFAs, as the glycerol backbone in a triglyceride. Protein is a little more complex (and would take longer to be properly digested), but essentially after a certain point it starts to behave like carbs. Instead of insulin you produce glucagon, which stimulates gluconeogenesis which turns the amino acids into glucose, which is then stored in the adipose tissue by insulin.
Generally speaking, eating that many excess kcal of carbs and protein would also be more dangerous, as it would risk seriously spiking your blood sugar and possibly causing a hyperglycemic coma. Mind you, that much fat would be pretty terrible for you too, but my understanding is that the effects would be less acute. In any event, don't try this experiment at home.
The bottom line is that most of the time the process takes is going to be getting the food through your stomach and intestine. Once it's in your blood stream, your pancreas, liver and adipose tissue do a pretty fair job of getting it to where it needs to go. | [
"Calories expended, however, changed little. Accordingly, Cutler posits that the 20 min average reduced time of food preparation has resulted in an average increase of 100 Cal per day per individual. The extra 100 Cal can largely account for a weight gain of 10-12 lb in the American population over the past 20 year... |
how do non-human primates look after their teeth and why do humans need dentists? | They don't really, and they don't really need to. Evolution wants you to live long enough to reproduce then its just a waiting game, so you only *need* teeth in your early adulthood in a manner of speaking.
we also live longer and eat more sugars acids and general crap that is bad for us so there is a massive difference on wear and tear.
Early man did not have dentists and their teeth were arguably more healthy than modern man without the intervention of dental hygiene or dentists. | [
"Primates have four cutting upper parallel fore-teeth, except in some bat species which have two or none; solitary tusks in each jaw, one on each side; two pectoral teats; two feet and hands; flattened, oval nails; and they eat fruits.\n",
"The impala has a special dental arrangement on the front lower jaw simila... |
fair use of copyrighted material. | That wouldn't fall under *any* fair use laws, since that would not be a fair use of the material.
Fair use is what's called an *affirmative defense,* meaning that once you get sued for copyright infringement, you can claim that your use of the material — which *was* infringing, you admit — was a fair one. It's basically saying "Yes, I technically violated your rights, but my reasons for doing so were okay, so I shouldn't be liable." And the court may or may not agree, depending on the circumstances.
Using somebody else's song in a Youtube video doesn't meet *any* of the standards of fair use. Fair use covers things like criticism and parody; if you were critiquing the song, you could fairly claim that you included some of it in order to make your points. Likewise, making fun of the song would be a fair use of it, within reason. "Oh, but I didn't mean to hurt anybody" is explicitly *not* fair use under any standard. | [
"Fair use is a doctrine in the law of the United States that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests of copyright holders with the public interest in the wider ... |
what would happen if 2 hurricanes ran into each other? | This is rare but it does happen. If two hurricanes are formed pretty close to each other they can interact. They basically spiral around each other and form one large storm.
This doesn't have the hugely devastating effect that you may think of and such large storm systems merging normally leads to the storm dispersing quiet quickly. | [
"Hurricanes are another natural disaster found in the US, which can hit anywhere along the Gulf Coast or the Atlantic Coast as well as Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. Particularly at risk are the central and southern Texas coasts, the area from southeastern Louisiana east to the Florida Panhandle, peninsular Florida, ... |
magic the gathering rules/strategy | Deck building strategy largely depends on what format you are playing in (ie, Vintage, Legacy, Modern, Extended, Standard, Block, Commander) The different formats dictate which cards you can use, which in turn dictates play styles and meta-games.
Make sure you understand the rules first, as lasgnaman suggested, (the different phases, combat, the stack, etc.)
Lands produce mana that are necessary to pay the casting costs of the cards you play. Higher casting costs (CC) dictate that you'll need more lands to produce the mana to pay for these costs. The rate at which you draw lands combined with the distribution of CC's of your cards will form the "mana curve" of your deck and will affect the rate at which you are able play the cards in your hand. Thus, mana and the number of cards in your hand are the limiting factors to how many spells you can cast per turn.
I assume you're just looking for casual play amongst friends. I'd start by making a 60 card, mono-color deck. Have 20 of the 60 cards in your deck be the basic land of whatever color you choose (eg: green deck will have 20 forests). Fill the other 40 slots with a combination of spells: creatures, instants/sorceries, artifacts. I would fill the majority of the forty spots with creatures if I were starting out. Find a friend, preferably more experienced, with a deck and begin to play! You'll quickly figure out what's not working. Perhaps your deck has too many high CC cards, making it slow. Maybe you find yourself playing everything in your hand then running out of steam. Adjust accordingly. Focus on gearing your deck towards a consistent win condition. When you start out, this will most always be beating the life points out of your opponent with creatures. How are doing this? Are you waiting to draw several heavy hitters, or are you overwhelming him with a lot of small creatures (wheenies)? Are you constructing your deck around a specific type of creature (eg. elves or goblins) that gains cumulative benefits when you control many creatures of that type (tribal deck)?
Just play and have fun first. Style will develop in time. | [
"Magic: The Gathering - Tactics was an online turn-based strategy video game for the PC based on the card game that includes elements of positioning and map control. \"Tactics\" was developed and published by Sony Online Entertainment. The game was released for PC on January 18, 2011 and shut down on March 28, 2014... |
what's my computer doing for the last 1% of an upload? | Your file is uploaded in chunks. Once all the chunks have uploaded, the server has to put the chunks back together and perform an integrity check to ensure the received file is the exact same as the one that you've attempted to send. These additional steps aren't factored into the total upload time with consistent levels of accuracy. | [
"The first proposed interval between successive pageloads was 60 seconds. However, if pages were downloaded at this rate from a website with more than 100,000 pages over a perfect connection with zero latency and infinite bandwidth, it would take more than 2 months to download only that entire Web site; also, only ... |
Do the properties of a black hole change depending on the amount of material they suck in? | *Amount* of material? Yes. Most notably, their mass, and thus gravitational attraction and volume, depend on how much mass they sucked in. If a black hole sucks in 1kg of material, it gets 1kg heavier. Ditto with electric charge, and a couple other bulk properties.
What about *type* of material? Is there a difference between sucking in 1kg of iron vs 1kg of chocolate cake? Well, jury's still out on that one. According to the currently accepted theories, no, there isn't a difference, but the whole issue is pretty hairy. It's called the [Black Hole Information Paradox](_URL_0_), and since it has 'paradox' in its name, you know there's something wrong with it. We have some [alternative descriptions](_URL_1_) that don't have this problem, but they are speculative and not yet confirmed by experiment. So the correct answer is that we don't really know. | [
"In summary, the process results in a slight decrease in the angular momentum of the black hole, which corresponds to a transference of energy to the matter. The momentum lost is converted to energy extracted.\n",
"Because a black hole has only a few internal parameters, most of the information about the matter t... |
how do scientists determine the composition of atmospheres from earth? | There's a Cosmos episode that should cover this. They basically take a prism and split the light coming from a celestial body into a spectrum. There will be darker lines in that spectrum. Each group of lines corresponds to an element, depending on which frequencies of light are most easily absorbed by that element.
BTW, the fact that Titan is older than Saturn isn't that weird. There are lots of ways for planets to gain moons after the planet is formed. Given that Saturn is a gas giant, it could have literally captured a wandering moon. Gas giants have large atmospheres. They're basically nothing but atmosphere. So it's possible for another object like a moon to pass close enough to enter that atmosphere and slow down, potentially enough to go into orbit.
I know we'd considered that an option for how our own moon was formed, but we eventually decided our atmosphere was too thin to slow a moon enough to capture it. | [
"Observations of atmospheric chemistry are essential to our understanding. Routine observations of chemical composition tell us about changes in atmospheric composition over time. One important example of this is the Keeling Curve - a series of measurements from 1958 to today which show a steady rise in of the conc... |
In WW2 who had the most effective small arms and why? | I don't think this question is specific enough. Do you mean the most produced and used small arm? Probably (Mosin Nagant). The most innovative and influential after the war? (STG 44). The easiest to produce? I would put that to the (grease gun).
The guns were produced based on the infantry doctrines of each of the military involved. The German forces were MG based squads so their whole tactic set focused on how to compliment that gun. Part of the reason the bolt action 98K was used for so long by the Germans was this focus on MG based tactics.
My long winded point is, that outside of personal preference, the question is probably not answerable in a pure factual sense. A close question would be what infantry units were the most effective with small arms. I would throw my money in for the Germans in 1941 as some of the most "effective" soldiers of the war. That is easy to debate though, because all of the major powers during the war became well versed in infantry based combat by 1945. | [
"When World War II ended in 1945, the small arms that were used in the conflict still saw action in the hands of the armed forces of various nations and guerrilla movements during and after the Cold War era. Nations like the Soviet Union and the United States provided many surplus, World War II-era small arms to a ... |
how are professional rugby players able to tolerate such physical punishment seemingly with little injury where as soccer, basketball and protected american football players seem to have devastating injuries quite frequently? | As a rugby player I'll give my thoughts but they aren't science backed or anything. When you play rugby you learn how to take an impact without getting injured. You learn how to fall correctly and brace before you get hit. If you watch some "big hit compilations" on YouTube you will see that there is plenty of injuries, mostly stemming from the recipient of the tackle not being prepared to be tackled.
football is similar but i think the injuries occur because the pads allow you to lose some of the fear of being hit, or hitting someone, at high speed. So the collisions are at a higher speed.
| [
"It is especially important to avoid any serious knee injuries, such as torn ligaments or fractured bones, because arthritis can complicate knee injury treatment. High-impact or repetitive stress sports, like football and distance running, should be avoided.\n",
"The occurrence of concussions in amateur leagues a... |
how does planting trees in drier areas increase rainfall? | Trees transpire (essentially 'breathe out') water vapour - they draw in water from the root system, circulate the water throughout the tree, and then expel water in vapour form through stomata in their leaves. If you get enough trees planted in a dry area the collective 'breathing out' of water vapour will create more humid conditions, which may lead to rain in areas formerly facing drought conditions. | [
"BULLET::::- Watershed function: Because of the cloud-stripping strategy, the effective rainfall can be doubled in dry seasons and increase the wet season rainfall by about 10%. Experiments of Costin and Wimbush (1961) showed that the tree canopies of non-cloud forests intercept and evaporate 20 percent more of the... |
the heat of our body...what is producing the ''warm'' side of our body? and why are some animals cold blooded like frogs? | For starters, 'warm blooded' and 'cold blooded' are pretty generic terms. There's actually a lot of complex variation between and within either category. Not all cold blooded animals are cold blooded the same way, and vice versa.
There are advantages to either system. For instance, reptiles, or amphibians like your frog, have a lower resting metabolism. They don't constantly burn energy purely to keep themselves warm, but rather extract that needed energy from their environments. This means that they're more at the mercy of the elements than you or I, but on the other hand, they burn through their 'fuel' more slowly, whereas you and I have to eat (relatively) constantly to stay alive.
In humans, we largely produce heat through our liver, as well as other organs, and contractions of our skeletal muscles. Our body's cellular respiration is exothermic, it produces heat. In cold conditions the body can send signals to trigger shivering, to increase this output, and also can convert stored brown adipose tissues (fat) into heat. | [
"It has been hypothesized that warm-bloodedness evolved in mammals and birds because it provided defense against fungal infections. Very few fungi can survive the body temperatures of warm-blooded animals. By comparison, insects, reptiles, and amphibians are plagued by fungal infections.\n",
"Animals, including h... |
how do aquatic animals know how far they should go down in the water? ex. blue whales can only go so far down, what prevents them from going further? | Probably "similar" to the feeling you get when holding your breath past what's good for you. Your body just knows what it needs and will tell you when you are taking risks. | [
"In 2011, a tagged Cuvier's beaked whale dove to 2,992 m, (9,816 ft) which is the deepest recorded dive by any mammal. The whales' rib cages can fold down so as to reduce air pockets and decrease buoyancy.\n",
"Because krill move, blue whales typically feed at depths of more than during the day and only surface-f... |
how do we keep track of locations in space? | You have to agree on something to act as the base point from which everyone else is measuring from. When dealing with stuff in our galaxy, we usually use the Earth as the reference point, since pretty much everyone knows where the Earth is.
For an extrasolar planet, we'd use two reference points. We'd use the Earth as a reference for the location of the exoplanet's host star, and then we'd use that star as the reference for the exoplanet's location within its system.
Star ABC is 740 light years from Earth, and Planet XYZ orbits Star ABC at an average distance of 48 million kilometers. | [
"BULLET::::- A NASA experiment, Station Explorer for X-ray Timing and Navigation Technology (SEXTANT), shows how spacecraft may possibly determine their location by focusing on millisecond pulsars in space.\n",
"BULLET::::- Real-time location systems (RTLS) are used to track and identify the location of objects i... |
How large does a piece of land have to be before it is no longer considered an island? | I would guess it has to do with [plate tectonics](_URL_0_). For example, Hawaii is a volcanic *island* because it is in the middle of the Pacific Plate. Similarly, Greenland is an island because it is part of the North American Plate. On the other hand, we call Australia a *continent* rather than an island because it is a dominant land mass that alone occupies most of the Australian Plate.
Edit: Unlike other definitions, this also explains why we define Eurasia and Africa (alternatively, North America and South America, though you could argue the Panama Canal separates them) as two different continents, despite being connected by land.
Edit 2: The definition above does not explain why India is not it's own continent. I give the revised definition:
A land mass is considered a **continent** if:
1) Any two points can be connected by a path on land
2) It is completely surrounded by water
3) If it is separated among tectonic plate components, then:
* Each piece is the largest land mass in its respective tectonic plate
* The faults separating the pieces are convergent
| [
"The largest island is Spitsbergen (37,673 km2 or 14,550 square miles), and the largest settlement is Longyearbyen (approximately 2,075 inhabitants, the administrative centre of Svalbard, located on Spitsbergen).\n",
"The largest island is \"Île Sud-Est\" (Eastern Egmont), where the settlement was located, with a... |
why is kim dotcom wanted by the us government? | For copyright infringement by the MPAA, the Motion Picture Association of America, amd the RIAA, the Recording Industry of America. They were mad that he was profiting off of piracy, or stealing (copying?) copyrighted, or works created by people for profit.
Example:
I make a movie, I expect people to pay for it.
Kim D. hosts a site and my movie is uploaded there. Some people pay for premium membership for faster speeds to download my movie.
Millions of people download my movie and I lost all of that potential money. Guess who's mad? | [
"In February 2014, Prime Minister John Key said in the media that Winston Peters had visited the Kim Dotcom mansion three times. This information turned out to be correct, and Peters publicly challenged Key to release the source of the information, suggesting that the Prime Minister had used spying agencies to trac... |
If we send garbage into the sun to be incinerated and the cargo contains some iron would the sun destabilize? | No. Iron does not directly cause stars to cease fusing elements, nor does it directly cause destabilisation or anything like that.
What actually happens with iron during fusion is that stars lose energy from fusing iron and heavier elements. Elements lighter than iron produce more energy than they consume through fusion, whereas iron and heavier elements consume more than they produce; thus there is an overall loss and eventually there will not be enough energy to sustain fusion. | [
"With the Earth's atmosphere full of dust and other material, radiation from the sun would be refracted and scattered back into space, and absorbed by this debris. The first effect on the Earth, after the blast wave and potential multiple fire storms, would be the death of most, if not all, of the photosynthetic li... |
What is the earliest known example of satirical, fake news in the same vein as the Onion? | I can't attest to what I've encountered being *the* earliest, but my period of study (English Civil War) was significantly affected by the boom in printing and the drop in restrictions on publishing so I feel it'd be a strong starting point for the discussion in a 'rise of mass media' sort of a way.
The text that I've found before that best seems to fit the bill was Jordan, Thomas, *A diurnall of dangers. VVherein are manifested and brought to light, many great and unheard-of discoveries. To the admiration of all who have eares to heare, or strong hearts to endure. Found out and published in the yeare of just jealousies, apparant plots, fatall feares, and single securities*, London, 1642., (British Library Thomason E.112) which is full of comically dim Royalists, cannon stealing shenanigans and the attempted theft of a lion from the Tower of London, oh and also tells us that some of the lions were sick poor things :( ‘one is troubled with a chincough, and the other lies sick of the tooth-ache’.
Really though you'd be better looking at Hughes, Ann, *Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution*, Oxford, 2004. for a more definite and less specific answer, she covers a lot more of the general literature of the period, within its type and applicability to *Gangrarna* of course, where as my focus was particularly on the Tower.
Or of course someone may have other info that hugely predates me! | [
"\"The Onion\" is a satirical American publication that parodies traditional newspapers. Founded in 1988 in Madison, Wisconsin as a weekly satirical print newspaper, it began publishing online in 1996 and discontinued its print edition in 2013. Articles in \"The Onion\" often parody real-world public figures and cu... |
If quantum physics deals with phenomenon on a microscopic scale, what is the largest observable quantum phenomenon? | I think the question is too open-ended, and extremely dependent on variations on the interpretation of the question. (e.g., "largest"? "quantum phenomenon"?)
For example, I can say a diffraction grating demonstrates quantum phenomenon. I can equally say that repulsion between my hand and the table is due to quantum phenomenon. Which is "larger"? | [
"Macroscopic quantum phenomena refer to processes showing quantum behavior at the macroscopic scale, rather than at the atomic scale where quantum effects are prevalent. The best-known examples of macroscopic quantum phenomena are superfluidity and superconductivity; other examples include the quantum Hall effect. ... |
why do your bones "crack" when you stretch in the morning? | Your bones aren't actually cracking. It's the sound of pockets of air in your body getting crushed by joint movement. It's sort of like how it makes a sound when you pop those packing bubble sheets. | [
"The main symptom is pain, causing loss of ability and often stiffness. The pain is typically made worse by prolonged activity and relieved by rest. Stiffness is most common in the morning, and typically lasts less than thirty minutes after beginning daily activities, but may return after periods of inactivity. Ost... |
why does my phone take longer to charge than the actual time of me using it? | Yeah that doesn't sound right... Unless your usage is high performance, like you're rendering 3D video constantly.
It sounds like there's a problem with your battery. Consider getting your phone replaced? | [
"It also comes with Battery Care, Sony's proprietary charging algorithm, that controls the charging process of the phone through machine learning. It recognizes the user's charging habits for a certain period and automatically adjusts itself to the pattern, for example an overnight charge, by stopping the initial c... |
what happens to my digital media if the distributor goes bankrupt? | Kinda yeah, but most likely they would give you a warning ahead of time to download all of your stuff before it goes down. | [
"An important aspect of the digital supply chain is the process of encrypting the content so that it cannot be played back without the proper license which is often acquired via purchase of content or subscription. This reduces the possibility of media being pirated.\n",
"Despite the aforementioned legal rulings,... |
why does everyone use q-tips to clean ear wax when the box specifically tells you not to? where did that start from? and what should be used instead? | Since 1923, people have been inserting q-tips in their ears. It starts out innocently enough: you're just kinda fooling around with a firm swab one day and then, whoops!, the tip just kinda slides in. You tell yourself that it's just the tip: if you don't go any further, it won't do any harm. But it feels *so freakin' good*, you want to go a little deeper...and then still deeper...feeling increasingly naughty with each additional millimeter...until it's all the way in. And THAT'S when you discover there's this little spot right at the very end of the canal that feels *amazing* if you just rub it around a bit.
This much is true for [practically everyone](_URL_0_). Some people lose control, however, and end up with a bouncy baby eardrum rupture or infection. After enough of these "accidents" were reported, the manufacturers started printing a warning on their boxes. | [
"Ear picks, also called ear scoops, or ear spoons, or earpicks, are a type of curette used to clean the ear canal of earwax (cerumen). They are preferred and are commonly used in East Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia because Asians tend to develop dry ear wax.\n",
"Ear candling, also called ear coning or therm... |
how is redbox in business? | Because what costs me $1.28 at Redbox costs me $3.99 (at least) On Demand or Amazon. | [
"Redlasso is a broadcast media website which allows users to search, clip, and share licensed television and radio content. Initially envisioned as a video clip search engine, the company currently seeks to help publishers \"extend the life of their perishable content in a secure and controllable platform, while gi... |
Are European dragons and Asian dragons related? | There is a thread from about a year and half (?) ago [here](_URL_0_) that you might be interested in.
/u/AdamSC1 provides a very informative summary [here](_URL_0_cufab91/) and [here](_URL_0_cufabir/). | [
"The modern western image of a dragon developed in western Europe during the Middle Ages through the combination of the snakelike dragons of classical Graeco-Roman literature, references to Near Eastern European dragons preserved in the Bible, and western European folk traditions. The period between the 11th and 13... |
In the colonial times, the tricorne hat is often portrayed as being very popular which then evolved into the bicorne hat. Why were both these hat popular, especially when it doesn't look like they are effective at blocking the sun from you face? | [This](_URL_0_) thread with /u/mimicofmodes 's answer might help with some answers you have here. | [
"The tricorne appeared as a result of the evolution of the broad-brim round hat used by Spanish soldiers in Flanders during the 17th century. By pledging (binding) the brims, a triangular shape was obtained. This shape was favored by Spanish soldiers, as when standing at arms their muskets could be held at their sh... |
Why was the Prime Minister of Australia dismissed in 1975, and what was the reaction? | The short answer is that Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was unable to secure supply (he was unable to pass the budget, so no one working for the government would be able to be paid). Constitutionally a Prime Minister who is unable to secure supply he is required to call a double dissolution election. Whitlam refused to do this and so the the Governor-General John Kerr (the Queen's representative in Australia) dismissed Whitlam for failing to adhere to his constitutional duty. Kerr then invited the opposition to form a caretaker government till an election was held.
The immediate reaction was generally one of anger and outrage. There were instances of rioting. However, ultimately the public chose not to reelect the Whitlam government. In the longer term, the events of 1975 seem to have caused Australian politicians to be very reluctant to block supply.
This answer is based on a project I did awhile ago. I can provide more details, however, this site < _URL_2_; gives a fairly good explanation, backed up with original documents.
**Sources**
Jeffrey Archer & Graham Maddox, 'The 1975 constitutional crisis in Australia', *The Journal of Commonwealth & Comparative Politics* Vol. 14, Iss. 2, 1976, Viewed on 27/10/2014, URL: _URL_0_
*Whitlam Dismissal*, URL: _URL_1_ | [
"The Whitlam government ended in 1975 with a constitutional crisis in which Governor-General John Kerr dismissed the ministry and appointed Opposition Leader Malcolm Fraser as prime minister, an act in which the monarch herself was not consulted and, when approached after the event, pointedly refused to intervene, ... |
how does rock climbing work? how do people get the ropes set up at the top of the rock/cliff? can you climb any rock face you want or does it have to already be set up for all the equipment to work? | There are many types of rock climbing.
What you're talking about sounds like free climbing, where a person inserts clips and rope as they climb up the cliff. The clip (called an "anchor") holds very tightly into the cliff and then the climber can put the rope through it to prevent injury.
In some cases anchors might be left over from previous climbers, but in general if a person is wanting to climb a tall cliff they will bring their own gear (mat, rope, anchors, etc.) with them.
At a rock climbing gym the rope is looped through a pulley at the top of the wall and the person belaying (holding the rope so that the person climbing doesn't fall 20 feet if they fall off) is tied in to one end of the rope and the climber is tied in to the other end.
In real life for serious climbs there is generally no rope already installed at the cliff. In order to install a rope like that in the wild, a person would either have to climb up first to anchor the rope or hike around the top (if there is a secondary route).
There are many other types of climbing, not all of them require ropes and anchors and clips and harnesses. | [
"Rock climbing is a sport in which participants climb up, down or across natural rock formations or artificial rock walls. The goal is to reach the summit of a formation or the endpoint of a usually pre-defined route without falling. Professional rock climbing competitions have the objectives of either completing t... |
does a charge of attempted murder include all of the crimes that go into the attempt? | Nope...Separate offenses, even if they are steps in an overall plan are charged separately. This is done to improve chances of a conviction, assure that any individual aspect that is somehow justified does not pardon the entire case, and to maximize sentencing.
You would be charged for kidnapping, aggravated assault, and attempted murder | [
"In the United States, attempted murder is an inchoate crime. A conviction for attempted murder requires a demonstration of an intent to murder, meaning that the perpetrator either tried to murder and failed (e.g. attempted to shoot the victim and missed or shot the victim and the victim survived) or took a substan... |
how does breaking one part of a screen mess up the picture of the whole thing? | Each individual pixel in a screen needs to be controlled somehow. You can do this with a pair of wires to every single pixel, but that’s a lot of wires and very expensive with a high res screen. More usually it’s done by setting up a grid and scanning the screen with vertical and horizontal wires that “select” pixels as they go. But that also means a breakage in one of the wires can break a large section of the screen. | [
"If the subject matter is a landscape, you may consider putting the frontmost object at or slightly behind the surface of the screen. This will cause the subject to be framed by the window boundary and recede into the distance. Once the adjustment is made, trim the picture to contain only the portions containing bo... |
is it possible for unskilled workers to form unions? | depends on what you consider "unskilled", if you mean jobs that do not require a certification then yes, happens all the time. | [
"Labour laws relating to trade unions or the Industrial Relations Act 2012 do not enable workers to form unions. There is also very little room for those who are already organized in trade unions to bargain for the collective rights of workers.\n",
"Employers can also avoid unionization by entering into \"protect... |
Why is WWII history so fascinating? | One reason is certainly the vastness of the whole conflict. The 'Vietnam' or 'Korean' Wars can largely be said to confine within the geographical limits of those two countries. Obviously they involved the US, China, Soviet Union and extended geographically into other areas, but you get the point. WORLD WAR, however, carries a much more epic connotation.
So if we lay out a few things, I think it'll make it clearer. Let's discuss scope, including beligerents, the origins, and the ramifications or long-term results.
1. Scope: The enormity of the war defies logic, and it really should be classified as 'The World Wars of 1937-1954' if you ask me. When an American student is asked to assess WWII, s/he will often begin with Pearl Harbor, some 8 years after the start of the Asian Theatre. The Wars transformed the 'dynamic of destruction' begun in WWI into a truly catastrophic and epoch-defining conflict in which Race, Ethnicity and Combatant-Status were given entirely new meanings. The Wars involved nearly everyone on the globe (not literally) fighting nearly everyone else, and in seemingly any single theatre of fighting, the complexities are mind-boggling enough to almost defy explanation. In looking at the scope of destruction in Warsaw in 1939, it's difficult to imagine that War could be more brutal, until you look at the 'Rape of Nanking' or the fratricidal and very confusing wars fought in the Balkans. The scope of the war also involved ideologies on a scale not really seen before. The clash of western liberalism, national socialism and marxist inspired communism really dealt a sense of seriousness and existentialism to the conflicts. By that I mean there was a real sense of an apocalyptic showdown: each saw the 'other' as not only the enemy, but barbaric and even 'evil.' Barbarism is present in all wars, but again, the scope, the severity of the death and destruction of both individuals and of groups of people, is staggering.
2. Origins: What caused the War(s)? The answer to many is even more disturbing than the actual war, because it appears to many that the origins of this brutal war lie in a decision by the victors of WWI to impose a settlement upon Germany that would end all wars. What does this really mean? It means that even without Hitler, the suffering of the Germans prior to the outbreak of hostilities was incredible. The moral and physical landscape of Europe had been ravaged by WWI to such an extent that it would seem no war could ever take place again. The Great Terror and Holodomor in the USSR had already hit their peaks by 1939 (the traditional start of WWII) and that was only the beginning. The origins of the war lie in nefariousness, in cunning, in duplicity, in deceit and in imperialism. Which means it basically started like any other war - except this time ideologies were the driving force, rather than economics. Hitler didn't invade Poland to secure minerals, to acquire natural forests or to take advantage of their industry. He essentially invaded to secure 'living room' for his Germanic peoples, his 'Volk'. In his moral landscape there was no room for the Jew, the Slav or the undesirables. At the same time, Stalin invaded to secure the territory of the Ukraine and the Baltic countries in a bid to continue his centralization of Soviet power into a country denied to him in 1921. Russia had all the natural resources in the world with the open tundra of Siberia, so he was not after resources either, his was an ideological mission to spread Communism.
3. Ramifications: We are in the year 2013 and the United States is the lone super-power. Yet in 1938 the US was far from a global super-power in today's sense of the word. The War(s) dramatically impacted the United States' meteoric rise to the top of the world. The US was spared the civilian bloodshed and infrastructural damage of the European/Asian wars, yet reaped the physical and moral benefits by defeating Nazism, culturally colonizing Western Europe, and catapulting her economy into superstardom through the tremendous industrial capabilities gained through the War's result. The USSR and USA came out of the conflicts much better off, and to cut this answer a little short - the Korean War and Vietnam Wars don't exist without the USA's triumph in WWII. Neither does our current predicament in Afghanistan. The Soviets continued expanding and went into Afghanistan in 1980, a place even the Tsars at the height of their empire couldn't do very well. The US's interventions in Asia and Latin America and the Soviet Union's interventions and expansions into Central Asia, the Balkans and the Caucasus were direct results of the situation in Europe after 1945.
In a nutshell, that is why people are still fascinated with the Wars of 1937-1954. That and the well-publicized and relatively unprecedented genocide of Europe's jewry which spawned our idea of, and our word for, Genocide.
**Edit:** I didn't include citations or sources. But maybe this proves my point further on the vastness of sources and interpretations. Two recent books which I like are Max Hastings' [Inferno](_URL_1_) and Antony Beevor's [The Second World War](_URL_3_). A few years ago Timothy Snyder wrote the excellent, excellent and harrowing [Bloodlands](_URL_2_). But there are literally millions of pages of outstanding literature out there, and books and monographs on basically every single conflict within that conflagration imaginable. Norman Davies' [Rising 44](_URL_0_) for instance is a 600+ page book just on the 1944 Warsaw uprising. | [
"There is a wide range of ways in which people have represented World War II in popular culture. Many works were created during the years of conflict and many more have arisen from that period of world history.\n",
"\"The World at War\" attracted widespread acclaim and is now regarded as a landmark in British tel... |
why does licking a 9v battery zap you, but touching it to your skin not? | The skin on your arm has a higher level of resistance to electricity, mostly (I believe) due the natural oils from your skin. Your tongue does not have this shielding and will have little resistance against the electric current.
> The condition of the skin at the points of contact are critical. The actual resistance of the
body may vary from 1000 ohms for wet skin to over 500,000 ohms for dry skin. However, once
the skin is broken through (for example by the burning away of skin) the body presents no more
than 500 ohms resistance to the current. | [
"Niacin is known for its tendency to cause an uncomfortable flushing of the skin. This flushing is triggered by the activation of the GPR109A G-protein coupled receptor. NR does not activate this receptor, and has not been shown to cause flushing in humans—even at doses as high as 2,000 mg/day.\n",
"Electrical bu... |
Let's talk organized crime. | Well organized crime came in plenty of forms. For as long as people were making an honest buck, whatever that means, there were people willing to aggressively and perhaps violently deprive them of it.
The most straight forward forms were simply **robbery, banditry, and piracy**. In China there have always been bandits and pirates. Sometimes they would be **foreigner raiders** preying on isolated farms and towns. Other times they would be **disenfranchised soldiers**, either tossed out with the change of dynasty or simply unemployed during times of peace.
Then there were those who chose for one reason or another to be a bandit. They were particularly a problem on the **Silk Road**, the famous route that led anyone who traveled on it to prosperity, bandits included.
One of the top priorities of a new Emperor would be to clean up the mess of bandits that even a brief power gap would produce.
No Emperor, no mandate. No mandate, no orders for garrisons. No garrisons, free reign for bandits for at least a while.
China has historically looked inward, not because of a Chinese superiority complex but because they were **beset by more problems inside their borders than outside**. One of the biggest was bandits.
They were not only a drain on coffers and a waste of potential manpower, that by all divine right of Heaven, should be loyally serving the Emperor. They were one of the biggest causes of unrest within the kingdom.
The idea was that the Emperor and his direct servants, much like a nation's government today, was supposed to have a **monopoly on violence**. People were supposed to rely on the Emperor to provide for their protection and well being. In return, they were his loyal subjects. Fairly universal feudalism up to this point.
The difference was that the Emperor held his right to rule within the fabled **Mandate of Heaven**. When times were good, the sun was shining, and the harvest came in on time, of *course* the Emperor had the blessings of Heaven. But when certain signs, ill omens appeared in succession, it was the sign of an illegitimate ruler. It would be cause for **revolution**.
Suffering the hardships of banditry was one of these signs.
If we put one and two together, we see that banditry wasn't just a problem the plebeians dealt with. It was something **the Emperor himself took a great deal of interest in**. If shit was going down in places he called his turf, where he ran protection rackets, you can bet he had soldiers there as fast as they could say Long Live the King.
Of course there were plenty of other crimes. For as long as China was large enough to be called an empire and have magistrates, there has been **corruption**. And because of the very nature of corruption, it had to be multiple people acting in an organized manner. The corruption that happened back in the day is pretty similar to what we see today. **Embezzlement, favorable contracts, bribes, appointing family and friends to positions regardless of ability, exorbitant taxes**, generally being an oppressive overlord, etc.
Because of the central idea of the Chinese feudal system being harmonious and stable depended on the existence of a **benevolent ruler**, corruption was a serious crime that generally entailed life imprisonment or exile if they were lucky. Execution after ~~torture~~interrogation if they weren't. The Emperor often had **court officials whose job was supposed to keep watch over magistrates** high and low to make sure they weren't abusing their power. Of course this wouldn't work if those officials were also part of the scheme, something that seemed to often elude people apparently.
You might have guessed it at this point but **corruption was another sign an Emperor lost the Mandate of Heaven** so it was some very heavy stuff to get involved with because if someone found out, you were usually as good as dead.
There was also plenty of lower level organized white collar crime. People at the market place had plenty of tricks. **Weighted scales, slightly slanted tables or floors** (another tipping-the-scales trick), **melting down metal coins/making your own metal coins** (very serious crime because depending on the time the economy could have been on a fiat currency system and even when it wasn't the state held the monopoly on money making), **devaluing coins** (melting coins down and mixing in cheap materials to stretch the coins), **fraud, cartels/monopolies/price manipulation** etc.
There was also, depending on the time, fairly extensive systemic **human smuggling** operations for a wide variety of customers because of the **restriction of freedom of movement**, especially for commoners. This waxed and waned depending on the court measures of the Emperor and the time period.
That's all that I could think of at the moment. I may return with more. Hope this helps! Cheers.
| [
"BULLET::::- Organized crime: a business that supplies illegal goods or services, including sex, drugs, and gambling. This type of crime expanded among immigrants, who found that society was not always willing to share its opportunities with them. A famous example of organized crime is the Italian Mafia.\n",
"BUL... |
[Physics] How far can the human visual system semi-accurately detect range via only parallax? | According to [this study](_URL_0_), 97.3% of subjects could detect a difference in depth at 2.3 minutes of arc or smaller.
& #x200B;
Converting that to degrees, we get 0.0383333 degrees. If we now consider a right triangle with one leg of 65mm (typical distance between pupils in a human), one angle of 90 deg, and another angle of 0.0383333deg, the distance of the longest leg comes out to 97.15 meters.
& #x200B;
So, it sounds like right around 100 meters is the point where our stero vision alone can no longer help us judge depth. Of course, there are other cues available to us, which is why we're able to see that a distant street sign is closer than the horizon. | [
"Parallax also affects optical instruments such as rifle scopes, binoculars, microscopes, and twin-lens reflex cameras that view objects from slightly different angles. Many animals, including humans, have two eyes with overlapping visual fields that use parallax to gain depth perception; this process is known as s... |
Has there ever been a case of a racially/ethnically segregated society where all of the races/ethnicities were truly "separate but equal" and everybody was more or less content with the system? | The closest I can think of is the Ottoman Empire. Different religious communities lived in different neighbourhoods and villages and applied their own law to social issues (marriage, divorce, inheritance, etc) although all were also subject to imperial law. Furthermore it was relatively common for non-Muslim merchants to use Islamic courts for trade disputes, suggesting judgement was relatively impartial (insofar as it concerned the religious background of the individual) There was opportunity to gather wealth and prestige regardless of position, and indeed many Jews and Christians became influential at court.
However this was not total equality by any stretch of the imagination as non-Muslims paid extra tax, the jizya, and, depending on the politics of the time, were sometimes required to wear specific clothing. However they were also exempt/banned from military service. That said towards the end of the 19th century as the Ottoman state attempted to westernise we see a move reduce religious disabilities. | [
"Wherever there have been multiracial communities, there has been racial segregation. Only areas with extensive miscegenation, or mixing, such as Hawaii and Brazil, despite some social stratification, seem to be exempt.\n",
"It can be argued that segregation between black and white ethnic groups is so strong in s... |
where do waves come from and why do they come in sets of seven when you’re at the beach? | Earth's magnetic field may affect our measurements of gravity, but they are separate. The moon's ( & sun's) gravitational "pull" on Earth cause the tide changes, but magnetism has nothing to do with it.
And waves do not specifically come in sets of 7. They can really come in any number of waves per set at many different intervals. It depends on the wind patterns, as an earlier post already stated. If your area has pretty consistent wind patterns way off the coast where the sets are generated, then that may be the reason you see such consistent sets of 7. I can remember going to beaches as kid that would repeat sets of 5, that were 3 small followed by 2 large in each set.
Edit: this was supposed to be a response to a comment elsewhere in the thread referencing magnetism, but accidentally replied to the original post. | [
"The beach forms an attractive bay that ends in a rocky point where the waves it is famous for break. These break from left to right, are well shaped and go for about half a mile on a good day. The renowned quality of its waves is mentioned in the Beach Boys' song \"Surfin' Safari\". However, the quality of the wav... |
How much do we know about Rome prior to the Republic? | We don't know very much at all: all the literary sources for this period are from centuries later, and the archaeology of early Rome is made difficult by the fact that most of it is buried underneath later Rome. There are basically two schools of thought about early Rome: one is that the sources are too late to be of any use, and virtually everything we hear in the legends is a later invention. The other position is that there is a core of truth to the later sources, although even Tim Cornell (✝), one of the main exponents of this line, is pretty sceptical when it comes to the monarchical period. About all we can say for certain is that before the Republic, Rome probably was ruled by kings, and some of the names passed down may be historical. There is some supporting evidence for kingship at Rome: the *lapis niger* is a very ancient inscribed stone which has the word *recei* on it, an archaic form of *rex, regis*, king. But barring the discovery of some pre-Republican king lists or something, we'll just never know with any certainty about the historicity of the seven kings, although that won't stop people from offering their own unconfirmable interpretations based on the source material that we do have.
✝ see his excellent *The Beginnings of Rome* (Routledge, 1995). | [
"The history of the Roman Empire covers the history of ancient Rome from the fall of the Roman Republic in 27 BC until the abdication of the last Western emperor in AD 476. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the Republic in the 6th century BC, though it did not expand outside of the Italian Peni... |
Did pre-automobile societies have ”drunk driving” laws? How drunk were you allowed to be while riding through town before you get arrested? | How drunk you were was always up to the enforcing officer until tests were introduced in the 20th Century.
I can only attest for English law. Although other countries may have previously have had laws concerning drink driving in past centuries, the texts of those laws are not readily available on the internet. I'm fairly sure that driving under the influence was first reported and punished during the times of the Roman Empire or much earlier.
The Offences Against the Person Act 1861 provided for punishment for "Drivers of carriages injuring persons by furious driving". The Act covered "wilful misconduct and wilful neglect [..] which may do or cause bodily harm to any person whatsoever." Although not clear in its language, wilful misconduct and wilful neglect could be interpreted as being drunk in charge of a vehicle.
Further clarification was enacted with the Licensing Act 1872, which, along establishing penalties for people found in a drunken state in public, stated that "Every person who is drunk while in charge on any highway or other public place of any carriage, horse, cattle, or steam engine, or who is drunk when in possession of any loaded firearms, shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding forty shillings, or in the discretion of the court to imprisonment for any term not exceeding one month."
It is noteworthy that Westminster took less than ten years to react to the advent of the self propelling steam engine. | [
"New Jersey enacted the first law that specifically criminalized driving an automobile while intoxicated, in 1906. The New Jersey statute provided that \"[n]o intoxicated person shall drive a motor vehicle.\" Violation of this provision was punishable by a fine of up to $500, or a term of up to 60 days in county ja... |
why is the daytona 500 so important in nascar? | Cause it just is. NASCAR has a lot of history in Daytona Beach the Daytona 500 has a huge purse, it's one of the fastest tracks of the season, it's the first race of the calender, but mostly it's the biggest race of the year cause it's the **Daytona 500**.
It's along the same vein as the **Indy 500** for Indycar and the **Monaco Grand Prix** in F1. | [
"The Daytona 500 was conceived by NASCAR founder Bill France Sr., who built the Daytona International Speedway. The race was first held in 1959; it is the successor to shorter races held on beaches around Daytona Beach. It has been the opening round of the NASCAR season since 1982, and from 1988, it has been one of... |
Question on Iranian government | Forgive me, I’m not positive whether you mean Reza Shah, the first monarch of the Pahlavi dynasty, or Mohammed (Reza) Shah, his son and successor. Either way, the answer, for the most part, is yes: both men ruled more or less autocratically during their reigns. Both men pushed programs meant to Westernize and modernize Iran, as well as reduce the power of traditional groups, in particular the ulema, who in particular tended to bristle against the kings’ reforms. The Majles tended to be largely, if not entirely, made up of delegates supporting the current Shah’s policies, and the prime ministers appointed by the Shahs were no different.
Reza Shah was brought to power on the back of strong military support and opposition to the then-current ruling Qajari dynasty. He enjoyed the broad support of the Majles through much of his rule, though as time wore on he became increasingly protective of his hold on power; Hidayat (in Qudsizad) quotes the slogan “every country has its own ruling system and ours is a one man system.” Most of the Majles elected in his reign had little-to-no oppositional factions, a trait that would continue in a good portion of his son’s rule as well.
Mohammed Shah’s first decade was decidedly against this autocratic pattern; after his father was forced to abdicate in 1941 by the occupying Allied forces, the Majles asserted its independence, and the young Shah usually acceded to the deputies’ choice of prime minister (whoever had the support of the most parliamentary factions). Over this decade, the Shah began to slowly consolidate and rebuild the central power of the monarch. One aspect of this was in 1951 to institute the Senate, a legislative body that had been included in the 1906 constitution but had never been established; the constitution provided that half of this sixty-member body be appointed by the monarch.
The big event that heralded the Shah’s return to power was the downfall and overthrow of Prime Minister Mosaddegh in 1953 by international forces in alliance with parts of the Iranian military. This is a topic that has been discussed at length in other areas, but one of its outcomes was to finally curtail the independence of the Majles and prime minister, and to reinforce the position of the Shah. From 1953 onwards, the Shah centralized and enhanced his power at the expense of elected representatives; he worked to eliminate serious opposition, including vocal clerical opposition led by Ruhollah Khomeini who went into exile in 1964. “[F]rom 1964 to 1978 … Mohammed Reza Shah was more than ever the absolute ruler of the country.” (Bakitari 47)
Sources:
Bakitari, Bahman. “Chapter One: Dimensions in Prerevolutionary Politics.” *Parliamentary Politics in Revolutionary Iran: The Institutionalization of Factional Politics*. University Press of Florida, 1996. [Google Books](_URL_2_)
[Helen Chapin Metz, ed. *Iran: A Country Study*. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1987.](_URL_0_)
*The Pahlavi Dynasty: An Entry from Encyclopaedia of the World of Islam*. Edited by Gholamali Haddad Adel, Mohammad Jafar Elmi, Hassan Taromi-Rad. EWI Press, 2012. [Google Books](_URL_1_)
| [
"The Iranian Revolution of 1979 resulted in an electoral system (an Islamic Republic with a constitution), but the system has a limited democracy in practice. One of the main problems of Iran's system is the consolidation of too much power in the hands of the Supreme Leader who is elected by Assembly of Experts for... |
if a dj is truly mixing and not "pressing play", how does the lighting team sync lights to the music? | There are basically two ways: automatisation or manual control.
You can hook up a machine that starts/stops/moves specific lights at specific moments, volumes or frequency's, or you can listen to the music in advance and practice or program the lighting-computer / improvise and mash the buttons : )
^^editedforDMX | [
"DJs use equipment that can play at least two sources of recorded music simultaneously and mix them together. This allows the DJ to create seamless transitions between recordings and develop unique mixes of songs. Often, this involves aligning the beats of the music sources so their rhythms do not clash when they a... |
what are particle accelerators trying to achieve when the particles collide? | The mocking analogy that's been used is that they're trying to figure out how clocks work, by smashing them to tiny pieces and studying the explosion. To be honest, that isn't so far off the mark. Instead of clocks though protons, anti-protons, electrons and positrons are used, to study what *they* are made of, and... more broadly to study other effects. After all, electrons are fundamental particles, so in that case it's not about studying their potential internal structures, but studying the jets of particles created by the energy of the collision of a beam of positrons and electrons.
In either case, the "pieces" being studies are jets of particles that are emitted when these energetic beams collide, and those collisions are designed to occur within a lot of testing equipment. The actual sensors vary depending on what they're trying to study, but you would have some means of tracking charged particles, various targets to induce muon decay, and calorimetry (the ability to see how much energy is being released in various forms).
With combinations of sensors and means of processing the data, you can search for "missing" energy, which you can correlate over many many runs to search for new particles (since energy cannot really go away, it must be in previously unrecognized form). You know in theory, how much energy was in play with your colliding beams after all, so you're basically playing cosmic accountant and looking for anomalies that persist.
| [
"Particle accelerators and colliders produce collisions (interactions) of particles (like the electron or the proton). In the terminology of the quantum state, the colliding particles form the \"Initial State\". In the collision, particles can be annihilated or/and exchanged, producing possibly different sets of pa... |
do i have to be worried about isps selling my information? | You should only have a problem if you happen to get your internet from an American ISP... Which would be strange given that you live in Sweden. So no, I wouldn't be concerned about it at all in your personal situation. | [
"Dallas Harris, an attorney who specializes in broadband privacy and a policy fellow at consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge notes that ISPs might be able to figure out where you bank, your political views, and your sexual orientation based on what sites you visit and asserts that \"the level of information tha... |
What's the estimated amount of time for distant galaxies to start disappearing due to the expansion of the universe? | For about the next 2.7 billion years, more and more galaxies will become visible as the light from them reaches us. After that, it will all start to slowly go dark as everything else is too far away for the light to EVER reach us, and the visible universes red shift into obscurity.
edit: said universes when I mean galaxies | [
"If the expansion of the universe continues and it stays in its present form, eventually all but the nearest galaxies will be carried away from us by the expansion of space at such a velocity that our observable universe will be limited to our own gravitationally bound local galactic cluster. In the very long term ... |
how do electric cars work so it supplies enough energy to the car? | Electric cars use an electric motor (or multiple motors in most cases) The electric motor is powered via electricity by energizing elector magnets that basically push and pull causing the motor to turn. Attach a wheel, and you've got something to strap into a car. Your battery in your gas car doesn't provide nearly enough energy to propel your car any respectable distance. | [
"Road powered electric vehicles (RPEV) (sometimes called roadway powered electric vehicles) collect any form of potential energy from the road surface to supply electricity to locomotive motors and ancillary equipment within the vehicle.\n",
"While an electric car's power source is not explicitly an on-board batt... |
how is sarah palin such a high profile political figure? | she was governor of Alaska. she was a vice-presidential candidate. she strikes a chord with the republican base. She's very loud and "genuine." People who want a wackadoo republican viewpoint invite her on their shows. She is a high profile figure because we made her one. | [
"A great deal of attention was paid to Palin's physical appearance during the 2008 elections. According to \"Vogue\" magazine, \"Besides being telegenic, [Palin] had a tough-girl Alaskan résumé that most politicians could only dream of—the protein her family eats comes from fish she has pulled out of the ocean with... |
how can a company "take over" another one? and how is this different from a sale of a company? | If a company is publicly traded, you just buy up a majority of the shares to take control of the Board of Directors and thus the company. If it's privately held it's a little more complicated because you have to negotiate with shareholders independently, but if you can convince enough investors to sell to you to get majority control the same result will occur. You oftentimes don't even need a majority. A large minority interest combined with convincing some of the existing shareholders to take your side will often get you over the 50% threshold. | [
"There are a variety of reasons why an acquiring company may wish to purchase another company. Some takeovers are \"opportunistic\" – the target company may simply be very reasonably priced for one reason or another and the acquiring company may decide that in the long run, it will end up making money by purchasing... |
how and why was america chosen as the name of the original uniting colonies? | The name, "The United States of America" was chosen because the colonies were conceived of as being separate countries (state is another word for country) coming together for a common purpose (hence united). All of the colonies were situated on the continent of North America, which is why it's "of America".
[The Americas were named](_URL_1_) after [Amerigo Vespucci](_URL_0_), the first person to prove that they were in fact new continents, and not part of Asia. | [
"The colonies were independent of one other long before 1774; indeed, all the colonies began as separate and unique settlements or plantations. Further, efforts had failed to form a colonial union through the Albany Congress of 1754 led by Benjamin Franklin. The thirteen all had well-established systems of self-gov... |
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