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Is there enough food for everyone in the world? | There's more to this complex topic than politics. There's also transportation issues, more people in the world having access to meat which is less efficient for feeding people, people honestly not caring and the like. Hunger does kill roughly [17,000 children](_URL_2_) around the world per day.
Here's a [good paper](_URL_1_) from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences that talks about the constraints of the world's food supply.
Wikipedia has a good page on [food security](_URL_0_). | [
"At the 1996 World Food Summit, governments reaffirmed the right to food and committed themselves to half the number of hungry and malnourished from 840 to 420 million by 2015. However, the number has increased over the past years, reaching an infamous record in 2009 of more than 1 billion undernourished people wor... |
What is the maximum frame rate and resolution on a computer monitor or TV before it makes no difference to the human eye? | > Does it even make sense for an 8k camera to exist?
Even if the resolution of an image is indiscernable at lifesize, that doesn't mean higher resolutions are useless. To take a simple example, imagine you make a very large print of a picture you have taken. Then fine details that would be blurry at low resolution will be clear at higher resolutions. Similar effects take place if you crop the image to a small region of the full picture. | [
"Computer displays with aspect ratios wider than 4:3 are also called widescreen. Widescreen computer displays are typically of the or aspect ratio. Widescreen (16:9) monitors can be found in resolutions of 1024×576, 1152×648, 1280×720, 1366×768, 1600×900, 1920×1080, 2560×1440 and 3840×2160. Apple's 27\" iMac introd... |
What are some good resources for translating Mesopotamian cuneiform into English? (xpost r/cuneiform) | I am not sure what you mean by "employ an ancient symbol(s)", but assyriologists use a couple of different standard sign lists for getting from cuneiform signs to a Latin alphabet equivalent. Keep in mind, however, that this is only one step; an additional step is necessary in order to translate the transliterated signs into English. Also, my own focus is on Akkadian (the language of the Assyrians and Babylonians), and not any of the other cuneiform languages, such as Sumerian, Elamite, Ugaritic, etc. The process of transliteration and translation is similar, however.
Anyways, most assyriologists use either R. Borger's *Assyrisch-babylonische Zeichenliste* (1981), or R. Labat's *Manuel d'épigraphie akkadienne* (1976). These books are essentially sign lists, which list all known cuneiform signs, and then lists their various values and interpretations.
When faced with a new Akkadian text ([such as this drawing of the Cyrus Cylinder](_URL_1_)), they will use the aforementioned sign lists to transliterate the signs into pronounceable Akkadian words in a Latin alphabet. The result is what you would see [here in the left column of this edition of the Cyrus Cylinder](_URL_0_). Akkadian is a syllabic language, meaning that a single sign generally represents a single syllable. A string of cuneiform signs then can be read together as a word, and words are stringed together to compose sentences.
The process is complicated by a couple of major features of cuneiform: first, a sign can have multiple possible values. For instance, [a single horizontal wedge](_URL_6_) can have the phonetic value of *ash*, *as*, *rum*, *ru*, *dil*, or *til*. Think of it as a very difficult sudoku puzzle. There a number of possibilities for each sign, but then each sign taken in context with the surrounding signs really can only correspond to select number of combinations to form an attested word.
Second, signs can also be logograms, meaning that an individual sign can be read as an entire word instead of with its phonetic value. In Akkadian, logograms are borrowed from Sumerian. [That aforementioned sign](_URL_6_) also has a logographic value of ASH, which is Sumerian, and has a number of different Akkadian meanings, including *aplu* (son), *ina* (in), and *shumma* (if). Again, the way assyriologists figure out what value to assign to a single sign is based on the context of the sign. What combination of signs around it can be made into some sensible phrase or sentence?
Anyways, if you want to find the cuneiform symbols that can be strung together to mean words that in English mean water or slumber, your best bet would be to start with a simpler dictionary like the *Concise Dictionary of Akkadian*, edited by J. Black, A. George, and N. Postgate, and search around for the English words you want and their Akkadian equivalents. The entries will often also give you the logographic values as well.
So, for example, "water" in Akkadian is *mû*, which can be written in signs with the signs for "[MU](_URL_2_)-[U](_URL_4_)" or just "[MU](_URL_2_)". Alternatively, the logogram for *mû* is the sign [A](_URL_5_). So, as you can see, there is no simple way to translate cuneiform into English. There are a variety of ways to say even a single syllable in Akkadian, and Akkadian grammar and style differ from period to period and genre to genre.
A final resource I will recommend is [John Huehnergard's *Grammar of Akkadian*](_URL_3_), which is by now the standard for any class taught in Akkadian. Check it out if you are interested in learning the grammatical structure of Akkadian, or the finer points of cuneiform signs. | [
"The Journal of Cuneiform Studies was founded in 1947 by the Baghdad School of the American Schools of Oriental Research. The journal presents articles about ancient Mesopotamian language and history in English, French and German.\n",
"Muss-Arnolt's \"Concise Dictionary of the Assyrian Language\" was completed in... |
if i play sports that are challenging for my joints, will they get stronger from the work out, or will they get bad (especially if pain shows up when i get older)? | Muscles (including the ones that support ligaments, and therefore our joints) can get stronger. Joints and the soft tissue that surround them cannot. If you play a sport, or engage in an activity that puts consistent loads or includes twisting and turning on your joints, you run the risk of injury. You can mitigate that risk by ensuring proper form, training smart, working on both strength and flexibility, etc... but the risk is never zero.
As a personal anecdote, I started cross country in high school, and continued to run longer and longer distances until my mid-30's. I suffered dozens of ankle sprains during that time and as a result, am no longer able to run. The ligaments that support my ankles are "floppy". The main driver of these injuries was a lack of flexibility, primarily in my hips and hamstrings. I'm continuing to try and lengthen those muscles and strengthen them slowly in the hopes I can continue to run someday, but those chances are slim. If I had to do over again, I would have researched WHY I was continuing to injure myself and fixed it far sooner... I didn't understand the damage I was doing was permanent. | [
"In general, studies have shown that physical exercise of the affected joint can noticeably improve long-term pain relief. Furthermore, exercise of the arthritic joint is encouraged to maintain the health of the particular joint and the overall body of the person.\n",
"Loose or lax ligaments in turn are not capab... |
how do the autonomous regions of spain work in relation to the national government? | It is similar to states, in that autonomous regions can enact their own laws if those laws mesh with national laws.
Spain's monarchy doesnt matter much, as it is primarily lead by a Prime Minister (not the King).
All autonomous communities have a parliament (Legislative Assembly, Council of Gov't and High Court of Justice)
Since certain autonomous regions share languages/beliefs, many of them will share regimes amongst eachother. | [
"Since the creation of autonomous communities, the Government of Spain appoints a special representative to the region, the Government Delegate, part of the Peripheral State Administration. Unlike other single-province autonomous communities, the Government also appoints the Government Sub-delegate, the successor o... |
"eli5" how is the flame shaped behind a rocket. | These cones are commonly called shock diamonds and is present in all jet engines not only rocket engines. A jet engines nozzle is designed to output an exhaust at a specific velocity and pressure. Ideally the pressure would be the same as ambient pressure. However, especially for rocket engines that is designed to operate in a wide range of altitudes, the nozzle usually outputs gas with too high or low pressure. So at the edge of the nozzle you have two areas of gas at different pressures meeting. That creates a shockwave through the gasses as the pressure tries to equalize. And because the exhaust gas is moving faster then the speed of sound the shockwave will move backwards in the exast gas forming a cone. As the shockwave from all around the edge of the exhaust meet in the middle there is momentum of the gas which means it creates an overpressure area in the middle of the exhaust gas. This is usually visible as a bright spot in the exhaust. The overpressure again creates a new shockwave now moving outwards. As this shockwave hits the edge of the exhaust it gets reflected back again. And ever time it moves between the edge and center it gets blown further and further back creating repeating shock diamonds. | [
"In the original version of the facility, flames were directed in a trench beneath the rocket in two opposite directions. In December 1955, workers installed a new more durable elbow-shaped flame deflector designed by Rocketdyne engineer Carl Kassner. Water injected through small holes in the elbow quickly turned t... |
why would a beverage have both sucrose and sucralose in it? | It's likely related to the well-known "sugar tax" being levied by various governments, US included. Drinks with sugar levels above a certain limit are subject to additional taxation.
Removal of X% sugar, and replacement with sucralose, will take it below that level. | [
"A variety of beverages call for sweetening to offset the tartness of some juices used in the drink recipes. Granulated sugar does not dissolve easily in cold drinks or ethyl alcohol. Since the following syrups are liquids, they are easily mixed with other liquids in mixed drinks, making them superior alternatives ... |
Did the Vikings really perform the "Blood Eagle" on christians, or is it just a myth? | [Here is a previous thread](_URL_0_) that answers this question. The answer is probably not. | [
"Roberta Frank reviewed the historical evidence for the ritual in her \"Viking Atrocity and Skaldic Verse: The Rite of the Blood-Eagle\", where she writes: \"By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the various saga motifs—eagle sketch, rib division, lung surgery, and 'saline stimulant'—were combined in inventiv... |
does marijuana have side-effects/withdrawal symptoms like controlled-substance medications such as xanax? if not, why is the latter available legally in every state (with prescription)? | Wow, some really awful replies in this thread, I'll try to get a clearer picture.
It's very important to recognize that cannabis is not a single chemical like Xanax. The plant can include any of some 60 psychoactive chemicals, all with their own effects. In addition, the exact percentage of those chemicals which are biologically available varies depending on method of ingestion, temperature, how the plant was cured/stored/exposed to light, etc. So when you ask about the effects, keep in mind that you will receive a wide variety of perspectives and experiences.
Even the question of whether or not cannabis reduces anxiety and depression depends on the relative ratios of psychoactives in any particular strain. Some strains have been bred to include more anxiolytic chemicals, some have been bred to include more stimulating chemicals. Really each strain has its own character and can affect the user differently. This is why most dispensaries offer a wide variety of strains.
As for dependence and withdrawal, they are far far less than with benzodiazepines. There are many people who use cannabis every day for most of their lives and remain pretty much fine. Additionally, most people can choose to stop using it if they really want to, or go for days/weeks without like if they're on vacation or something. That being said, it is not entirely without effects, like other people have mentioned. Ceasing use can cause irritability or just feeling sort of unbalanced for a few days to a few weeks, disruption to sleep cycles, etc. These are nowhere near the physical dependence issues like with Xanax, which produces much more extreme and dangerous withdrawal effects. The drugs really are entirely different, although they may have some minor similarities.
As for why cannabis is illegal, that's a complicated historical question that I would encourage you to research on your own. Primarily it is due to the use of the plant by minorities and the counterculture in the 30's through 60's. Any evidence-based examination of the effects and dangers of the plant indicates that it is clearly less dangerous, and shows less potential for abuse than more common legal pharmaceuticals. | [
"There have also been reports of a strong compulsion to re-dose, withdrawal symptoms, and persistent cravings lasting up to a week after taking synthetic cannabinoids, indicating that synthetic cannabinoids may be significantly more addictive than marijuana. The greater addictiveness and more severe adverse effects... |
A question or two on Jellyfish | Hmmm I wish someone answered these questions. They seem quite interesting! | [
"Given that jellyfish is a common name, its mapping to biological groups is inexact. Some authorities have called the comb jellies and certain salps jellyfish, though other authorities state that neither of these are jellyfish, which they consider should be limited to certain groups within the medusozoa.\n",
"The... |
In High School I was taught WW2 began because of the Treaty of Versailles. However on /r/warcollege and /r/shitwehraboossay the users often point out the Germans not only came out of WW1 economicly strong but that the Germans sabatoged their economy. Can someone expand? | There are two things to disentangle here.
Firstly, much of what the two subreddits mentioned are doing is tackling popular misconceptions about the Versailles Treaty and the impact of reparations upon the German economy. In short, the popular view is that it was a Carthaginian peace in which the Versailles Treaty imposed undue and harsh levies upon a defeated Germany. This is an opinion that dates back to the 1919 with Keynes's argument that the peace terms were too severe and contrary to the wider interests of both the victors and defeated. The type of posts that are often debunked on these subreddits often take this popular notion and add a particular pro-German slant to it, with some verging into a defense of Hitler and National Socialism.
The reality behind the Treaty and the immediate postwar economy was more complex and nuanced. To speak of "Allied" demands on Germany, for example, suggests that there was a unified Allied policy for Germany, when in fact there was comparatively little Allied unity. By the same token, there is some argument to be made that Germany was the strategic winner out of the postwar system. Russia (now the USSR)'s diplomatic *persona non grata* status meant that German encirclement was no longer possible, the "Little Entente" of Eastern Europe being a much less potent adversary and a highly fractious one to boot. Germany was intact, aside from some key territories, and not as demographically weakened as France. Nor had German territory been occupied during the war, so its economic infrastructure was still intact. The disarmament provisions meant that Germany did not have to maintain expensive armaments, which was a source of budget headaches in an era of rapid technological change. This type of revision can of course can be taken too far, but it is a good thought exercise to escape conventional wisdom.
This more differentiated picture of Versailles is rather old hat to historians and claiming that the Versailles Treaty was not all that bad is a bit of banging at open doors. The mainstream view of the Treaty is that there was a discrepancy between its punitive clauses and the mechanisms to enforce them. In short, it was a was kind of a Schrödinger's cat, being both too weak and too strong simultaneously. But that does not mean that there is a consensus among historians about the impact and trajectory of the Versailles Treaty upon German politics and its economy. Especially with the issue of the relationship of hyperinflation to reparations, there are actually some rather sharp debates about this topic.
Herein lies another problem with these subreddits is that some of the posters present the historiography about this contentious topic as somewhat settled. To put it simply, there are two contemporary historical camps about the nexus between hyperinflation and reparations. The first camp emerged in the late 1960s and challenged the Keynesian orthodoxy and argued that hyperinflation was self-sabotage on the part of the Germans to evade their responsibility for payments by undermining the system. Sally Marks in a highly influential 1969 essay, followed up by a stronger one in 1978, argued that the reparation demands were not too onerous and Germany had the resources to meet their Treaty obligations but elected not to for reasons of politics. Stephen Schuker would also likewise argued that the Germans were not acting in good faith and the French Ruhr policy was more rational than the Keynesian paradigm asserted. Marks in particular relied upon the opening of Allied archival sources which showed much of the Allied consternation over German actions.
This anti-Keynesian thesis did not go unchallenged though. In a spirited exchange in *Central European History*, David Felix questioned a number of the key precepts behind Marks's assertions. The German historian Peter Krüger also questioned the assumption that Germany had the ability to pay its reparations and maintain something resembling fiscal sanity. Two of the most forceful counterattacks upon the self-sabotage thesis were Niall Ferguson and Gerald Feldman. Ferguson, before he went down the dark path as a public intellectual (which, judging by the rather mediocre *The Deluge*, Adam Tooze is heading down too), contended that finances in this time was a complex mishmash which included important data that Marks and the like ignored or minimized that painted a much more complicated picture. Feldman eschewed Ferguson's propensity for economic figures and data and instead argued that political restraints, both foreign and domestic, hemmed in German options.
Elements of Feldman's approach are worth repeating because it taps into the OP's question. One of the legacies of the war was the the Republic would have had to deal with inflation even if the Treaty had been magnanimous. German war finance relied overwhelmingly upon loans in the expectation that they would be paid off by reparations from the defeated Entente. One of the baleful legacies of the Bismarckian Reich was that it saddled the German government with an inefficient tax system; and the level of taxation on the German public was well below the other great powers in the war. While this might seem short-sighted on the part of the German government (and it was), it is important to understand that state financing was a third rail of *Kaiserreich* politics. The popularly elected *Reichstag*'s most powerful tool against the Kaiser-appointed executive was the former's control of the budget and this habituated a generation of German politicians to avoid touching the tax system. To Weimar's credit, the central government did enact a major reform of the tax code, but such a reform took time. Therefore, deficit spending in the 1920s was necessary for the Weimar state. The fact that Weimar relied upon a narrow coalition for governance precluded more extreme options such as soaking the rich, or, as some German industrialists called for, workers donate an extra two hours of their shift without pay. The state could have cut spending to meet reparations, but such a strategy would have been politically dangerous to the extreme as the Republic was beset by insurgents on both the left and right. One of the immediate priorities for the Republic was a stabilization of the domestic economy to denude these insurgents of a mass base. This led to a curious phenomena in which inflationary policies fed exports so that German unemployment was actually somewhat better than in Allied countries in 1920-21. The problem was this was an unsustainable policy, albeit an understandable one, and Feldman notes that hyperinflation had actually begun before the French demands of 1923. Additionally, the resurgence of political violence also created a disincentive for the Weimar government to pursue an alternative course of stabilization through cooperation with the Allies, especially after the Rhineland occupation. Allied reparation policy also played a role in this impasse; as J. P. Morgan noted at the time, the Allies were confused as "to whether they wanted a weak Germany who could not pay, or a strong Germany who could pay." The hyperinflation did not benefit any parties, and mass panic also played a role in sustaining the crisis. As the German economic historian Knut Borchard put it aptly in *Perspectives on Modern German Economic History and Policy*:
> The end of this witches' sabbath did not come immediately. Stabilization only succeeded after the money economy reached the verge of total collapse in 1923, and no one could any longer gain advantage from the situation: not the government or the employers, and not the organized and employed workers. In November 1923, the Mark was worth only 1/10 ~12 of the old gold Mark. But the real expropriation of monetary assets lay further back, and had nothing to do with the occupation of the Ruhr in 1923, which had merely further accelerated the inflationary cycle. It is surely insignificant whether one retains a thousandth of one's assets, or only a millionth millionth.
All of this, naturally, does not justify Hitler or his unilateral abrogation of the Versailles system. Stresseman was more than capable of gaming the Versailles system to Germany's advantage without rejecting it. But a proper evaluation of the Weimar economy and Versailles needs to account for the numerous domestic and international complexities of this period and reducing the hyperinflationary period to just "sabotage" misses a lot of the important context.
| [
"British economist John Maynard Keynes denounced the 1919 Treaty of Versailles as ruinous to German and global prosperity. In his book \"The Economic Consequences of the Peace\". Keynes said the Treaty was a \"Carthaginian peace\", a misguided attempt to destroy Germany on behalf of French revanchism, rather than t... |
why are pesticides meant to kill insects and rodents also poisonous to humans? | Because we are very close relatively speaking in terms of evolution. We are, in a broad sense, not "very" different to each other. That's why it's hard. For example, Nicotine (and caffeine) were created by plants to attack insect "brains" and those molecules also bind to humans brains. But it can be done!, one example are chitin disrupters: we have cheratin (mammals) instead of chitin (insects) to make hard things in our body (hair, skin, nails) so any compound that targets chitin (chitin formation for example) affects only insects, and we've used that to kill them (Novaluron is an example). | [
"Many pesticides achieve their intended use of killing pests by disrupting the nervous system. Due to similarities in brain biochemistry among many different organisms, there is much speculation that these chemicals can have a negative impact on humans as well. \n",
"Pesticide use is also a major threat to arthro... |
suppose you live in Italy in 90 BCE. would you (likely) think of yourself as entirely Roman, or would you still identify as whatever culture (etruscan, latin, ect) your ancestors had belonged to before the romans conquered them? | In 90 BCE most likely (it is a current debate among historians what actually was going on, and when I finish my dissertation I'll tell you what actually was going on) didn't consider themselves Roman citizens - certainly not in a legal sense, and possibly not in an ethnic sense. The coins of the rebel confederation in the Social War carried the legend "Italia" in both Latin and Oscan letters, and the images on the coins show things like bulls (symbol of Italy) trampling wolves (symbol of Rome). This is of course a representation of elite ideology and how far this ideology penetrated the Italian rank and file is another question people argue over.
It seems clear that SOME Italians were interested in at least having the legal rights that accompany Roman Citizenship. Appian reports that Rome squashed budding revolts in Etruria and Umbria by offering them citizenship if they didn't rebel. These guys don't seem to have lost their ethnic identities - 50 years later Propertius identifies himself with Etruria and Umbria in a way he never does with Rome. Livy identifies himself with Patavium. There is also an increase of ethnically-associated names in the early imperial period such as Sabinus - Farney's book on Ethnic Identity has whole catalogs of these names and how and why Roman citizens started ("started" seems to be the right word - they become more popular after the Social War, or at least better attested) using them.
Cicero theorized this seeming contradiction this way (from de. Leg. if you want to look it up - also, I'm paraphrasing from memory): Every Roman has two fatherlands (Patriae): one of nature, to whom he owes affection, and one of citizenship, to whom he owes duty. Cicero was an odd duck, and I wouldn't ascribe anything he thought to Romans generally, but it shows at least one Roman was bothered by the disjunction of ethnicity and citizenship that appeared in the first century BCE.
There were also Italians, most stridently the Samnites, who had no interest at all in becoming Roman. Some of these guys were still fighting in the late 80s when Sulla returned, long after the main issues of the Social War were settled. Likewise, there were Romans who, even though Italians after 88 had the legal rights of citizens, did their best to keep them from effectively participating in Roman government. Appian reports an attempt to restrict the new citizens to just four tribes, effectively making their votes worthless.
The bibliography just in English is pretty big. There are regional studies (Salmon, Samnium, Bradley, Umbria, Miller (I think), Etruria), Social War studies (Keaveny, Davies, Mouritsen) ethnic studies (both kind of historical studies such as Farney and oddly enough a lot of poetic stuff - I think Gowing has an article on Italian ethnicity in Virgil and the elegy people get into this more than I at least imagined before I got into the topic).
I'm probably just babbling now. It's a big topic the scholarship isn't decided on and the nature of our sources don't let us discuss the "average" Roman at all - just what a few surviving authors thought. I hope there's something useful for you here though, and I'm around if you have other questions. | [
"The Ancient peoples of pre-Roman Italy – such as the Umbrians, the Latins (from which the Romans emerged), Volsci, Oscans, Samnites, Sabines, the Celts, the Ligures, the Veneti and many others – were Indo-European peoples, most of them specifically of the Italic group. The main historic peoples of possible non-Ind... |
Post Roman Britain ruins | Hi there. /u/itsallfolklore and I discussed what is essentially your question [here](_URL_0_).
The TL/DR of that is that the Anglo-Saxons were extremely aware of *who* built the Roman sites around England, and often *how*, and lamented the fact that they were often unable to replicate them. The use of Roman sites was a key element of English political symbolism, and by the late ninth and early tenth centuries, the English were capable of rebuilding substantial Roman structures and celebrated this accordingly.
Poems such as 'The Ruin' in The Exeter Book explore a lot of popular sentiments about the 'fading glory' of Rome during the period. | [
"After the Roman withdrawal from Britain around 410, the area of Mamucium was used for agricultural purposes. It has sometimes been identified with the listed among the 28 cities of Britain by the \"History of the Britons\" traditionally attributed to Nennius. After lying derelict for centuries, the ruins were comm... |
why is the 5-pointed star so prevalant on flags & in militaries | The pentagram has been a popular symbol since ancient times. There are a few theories about why this might have happened:
* It is possible to draw a pentagram in one go. It might have been a symbol of continuity or endlessness, much like a circle, just more fancy looking. This might also explain while the pentagram has often been encircled.
* Golden Ratio. The lines intersect each other in a way that one outer part of a line compared to the remainder of the line is in the golden ratio as is each outer part to just the middle part. This probably leads to the pentagram to be aesthetically pleasing.
* Easy to draw. Stars with three, four or seven points are much harder to draw than those with five and six.
The followers of Pythagoras used the pentagram as a symbol of identification, furthering its association with wisdom and mysticism in the following ages.
When it came to designing flags, the five-point star was already a strong, ancient and well-known symbol with many different meanings. Also, when you want a star in your logo or whatever, which star are you going to use otherwise? Three-point does hardly look like a star at all, four-point is strongly associated with the rose of a compass, six-point with Judaism and seven-point begins to scale badly (looks more and more like a spiky wheel when styled small) although some flags like New-Zealand and Australia have seven-point stars. | [
"Other symbolic interpretations have been offered based on the account of its design by Paul M. Levy. The five-pointed star is used on many national flags and represents aspiration and education. Their golden color is that of the sun, which is said to symbolize glory and enlightenment.\n",
"There are four red six... |
Why did the Germanic word France replace the Latin name Gaul, but the Latin name Germany survive against the German name Deutschland? | The Latin name Gaul originally referred to the people of modern northern Italy and southeastern France, and gradually came to apply to a much larger area as the Romans expanded their control.
The Latin name Germania was how Caesar referred to the tribes that attacked across the Rhine.
The French say "Allemagne", which derives from the Allemani, a tribe that lived in modern Alsace. It's not exactly modern Germany, but it's kind of in that direction from France.
In English, the term Germany didn't so much survive as it was brought back from the Latin. The first use of "German" wasn't until after 1500, and Shakespeare used "Almain" interchangeably with "German".
There is a frequent occurrence in place naming where a culture applies the name of a nearby place to many more regions beyond it. Cis/Trans-alpine [Gallia](_URL_1_) of 2nd Cent BCE was used in naming the eventual Ceasar's three parts of "~~Omnes~~ [Omnis Gallia](_URL_0_)". Asia used to be a province on the Aegean, but the name got stuck onto everything else in that direction. Africa was also a single province. The Allemani were taken as a representative of Germany from the viewpoint of what is now France. Canada originally meant some towns built along the Saint Lawrence river but came to mean a much larger place. The Indus river gave the name to a country that does not presently contain it.
It's kind of hard to come up with a reason why a particular name wins over another. Names so easily attach themselves onto other places that it's really not a matter of accuracy or correctness, but just a matter of shifting usage.
| [
"The name \"Germany\" and the other similar-sounding names above are all derived from the Latin \"Germania\", of the 3rd century BC, a word simply describing \"fertile land\" behind the limes. It was likely the Gauls who first called the people who crossed east of the Rhine \"Germani\" (which the Romans adopted) as... |
Why has the Colombian armed conflict lasted so long? | Because is has ceased to be a political conflict and is about power and destabilization to protect drug interests. [This article](_URL_0_) discusses the FARC involvement in the trade from 13 years ago. It is now a financial life line for FARC. Most of their charismatic leaders are dead. Their power base ends outside the narco traffic interest areas. Would they still exist without the consistent inflow of money to attract new "soldiers?"
One could argue that the state has done a good job of retaining influence and fighting the destabilization we see in Mexico. | [
"The Colombian conflict started in 1964, although systematic violence in the country can be dated since the end of the 19th century (Thousand Days' War). The National Liberation Army (ELN) is one of the most prominent participants of the ongoing conflict. For decades, residents of Bogotá lived in fear of being a vi... |
Eli5 has asked where the term "Russian Roulette" comes from, but the answers are a mess. Historians, is there any historical explanation for the term? | Sources conflict:
- *[Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable](_URL_0_)* says that *"the practice was popularized by Russian officers at the Tsar's court in the months before and during the 1917 Revolution, when the term is first recorded."* But they don't give a source, and don't say *where* it was first recorded.
- According to an essay in the *[Comprehensive Textbook of Suicidology](_URL_6_),* the first known description of Russian Roulette occurred in the writings of Lord Byron, whose roommate apparently played and survived a variant of the game (though it didn't involve a revolver, and wasn't called "Russian Roulette") sometime prior to 1821. According to this source, Byron's account inspired a scene in Mikhail Lermontov's short story *"The Fatalist"* (1839), which *"served as the prototype of for the subsequent practice of Russian Army officers using a pistol in a gamble with death."*
- Byron's (brief) description of how his friend Edward Noel Long put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger (apparently without knowing for sure whether or not it was loaded) is [here](_URL_5_):
- > He told me that, the night before, he had "taken up a pistol - not knowing or examining whether it was loaded or no - and had snapped it at his head, leaving it to chance whether it might, or might not, be charged."
- It's too long to quote, but if you're interested, you can read Lermontov's short story [here](_URL_2_) (it's part of a larger work - just do a page search for "the fatalist").
- I searched for medical literature on this, most public health scholars suggest that the game originated in tsarist Russia, often citing French sociologist Jean Baechler, who simply states in his 1979 text *[Suicides](_URL_1_)* that the game was invented by Tsarist officers in Russia. Neither Beachler nor any of the other medical literature I could find referred to a specific historical source for this information though.
- [This book](_URL_3_), agrees that Byron described a similar game, and that this was similar to what's described in *The Fatalist,* but also says that it's "completely wrong" to see this as the origin of true "Russian Roulette," because in both of these works the gun used was a single-shot pistol, and there's no proof that Lermontov was inspired by Byron.
- According to the *Oxford English Dictionary,* the earliest known use of the term "Russian Roulette" is actually from 1937, when a short story by Georges Surdez *titled* "Russian Roulette" was published in *Colliers Magazine.* The relevant passage is:
- > Did you ever hear of Russian Roulette?... With the Russian army in Rumania, around 1917,... some officer would suddenly pull out his revolver,... remove a cartridge form the cylinder, spin the cylinder, snap it back in place, put it to his head and pull the trigger." (Quote & ellipses taken from OED, not the original source)
- A quick search of [Google ngrams](_URL_4_) pretty clearly suggests that the term "Russian Roulette" was not really used at all prior to the 1940s (after Surdez's story was published).
- Graham Greene claimed in his [autobiography](_URL_7_) (1971) to have played the game himself in 1923. He claims that he found a revolver and:
- > I knew what to do with it because I had been reading a book (I think Ossendowski was the author) which described how White Russian officers, condemned to inaction in southern Russia at the tail-end of the counter-revolutionary war, used to invent hazards with which to escape boredom. One man would slip a charge into a revolver and turn the chambers at random, and his companion would put the revolver to his head and pull the trigger."
Graham is referring there to Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski - who did indeed serve in the White Russian forces and later write about it. The kicker, though, is that nothing like what Greene describes actually seems to have appeared in any of Ossendowski's writings (at least, not as far as I - or any source that I can find - has established). So this may be a case of Greene mis-remembering and/or projecting something backward (a pretty common occurrence in memoirs).
To sum up: there are lots of hints of a Russian origin, but no direct evidence. To me, and taken as a whole, these sources suggest that the *term* Russian Roulette originated around the time that Surdez published their story, and was popularized in the years that followed (which is when I also found the first/earliest newspaper reports of people being killed *playing* "Russian Roulette"). Notably, newspaper databases yield *nothing* for "Russian Roulette" prior to 1938, when I found several obituaries for people who had shot themselves while playing the game. I don't think it's a coincidence that those kinds of stories appear one year after the publication of Surdez's story.
It's *possible* that the game itself is older than that (Greene does claim to have played it himself in 1923) but it's difficult to say for sure from any of the sources I have looked at or can find. Since it appears in the *Colliers* short story itself, we should at least consider the possibility that the "tsarist officer" angle may very well have been an invention of Surdez too, and that Greene was projecting that backwards. But it's not possible to say for sure - especially since if the game existed before 1937, it appears to have been known by a different name (making it hard to find sources that document it).
**tl/dr:** It's often claimed/written that "Russian Roulette" originated with Russian officers around the time of the Russian Revolution, but there's no direct evidence that confirms this that I can find. It's also often claimed/written that either Lord Byron or Mikhail Lermontov first wrote about the game during the first half of the 19th Century - but neither of them actually referred to "Russian Roulette," and both described a game involving single-shot pistols. There is considerably more, and more direct, evidence that a 1937 story by Georges Surdez published in *Collier's* magazine was what popularized the idea of "Russian Roulette" as we know it - the term itself does not appear to predate that story, and newspaper accounts of people actually playing the game only start to appear the following year (when they're surprisingly, and tragically, common for several decades afterwards). | [
"The original Russian-language full title was Сказка про шута, семерых шутов перешутившего (\"Skazka pro shuta, semerykh shutov pereshutivshevo\"), meaning \"The Tale of the Buffoon who Outwits Seven Other Buffoons\". The spelling \"Chout\" is a French romanization of the Russian word шут meaning \"buffoon\".\n",
... |
If I had an electric chain saw, and then accidentally sawed the electric cord, would I get shocked? | The short answer is yes, it is possible. In order to disable the chainsaw, you have to cut through either the live or neutral line. So there may be a brief or sustained period where the chainsaw housing becomes live.
However, there are simply too many variables to be able to say whether you would receive an electric shock in a particular instance. Is there a conductive path between the chain and housing? Is the chain still in contact with the live side of the cut? What are the handles made of? Is the user wearing gloves or boots? Is one hand grounded and the other live? Was the ground line severed?
So in some instances the chainsaw will stop functioning, in others the safety switch will trip, in other cases the cut will be lethal to the user, etc. | [
"The overhead electric wires were brought down by gunshots. A policeman was seen throwing a tear-gas bomb which did not explode, and then firing at the electric wire, resulting in a burning coil falling on him. The foreign delegates who attended the conference had also confirmed that the police had fired into the a... |
How did Scandinavians shift from being plundering Vikings to the seemingly sensible folk they are perceived as today? | First, it is important to note that all Scandinavians was not plundering Vikings, most of them was in fact farmers, fishers and hunters. Furthermore, those that actually travelled was not only raiders, they were traders, explorers, colonizers and even mercenaries too. It is also important to know that it had not always been like this, and that (as all historical events) it did not happen at one moment, it was a continuous process that started around the late 8th century with small raids and which continuously developed with larger and more organized raids and travels. Now there is multiple reasons why they began, and I will refer you to [this](_URL_0_) post I made earlier for those.
Now for answering your question. Why did these raids stop? Well firstly there is a multitude of reasons (who would have guessed?) and (again) it did not happen over a day. One of the main reasons for the decline of Viking raids was that the political situation in Europe had changed. When the raids began Europe, and especially the British Isles, was fractured and week. This meant that the Vikings easily could do their raids. By the 11th century this had changed a lot. The European countries had my then established systems to answer to and repel the Viking raids, doing raids therefore was no longer worthwhile based on the risk you did by attempting one.
In addition, the political system in Scandinavia had also changed. When the Viking age began Scandinavia was divided among many local rules and if you did not own large amounts of land it was hard to get rich. In the raids, the ordinary people found a way of getting money, as the same time as they won glory for their family, a concept that was very important in Scandinavia at the time. During the Viking age this changed, the Scandinavian countries united one after the other, and the kingdoms that we know from today took form. With them come another change of life for people, because now there was new ways of getting rich. You could now become a part of the hird. This way you could get both fame and riches from working and fighting for the king. Therefore, there were less of a reason to go on raids.
Another factor may be the change of thought in Scandinavia. Before the Viking age the Scandinavian society was a militaristic one where people were encouraged to always bring a weapon with you because you never knew if you met you brother’s murderer on the road and where the only way to Valhalla was to die in combat. With the travels in the Viking age came a lot of European ideas to Scandinavia, laws and punishment where put in the hand of the king instead of it being up to each person to issue his own justice, Christianity was introduced and the old gods removed. This would have led to a change in the way of thinking possibly going away from a more violent society to a society where the king and the laws where more important than fighting.
These is the main reason that the Viking age ended, and therefore, the main reason for the end of the Viking raids. Now this does not mean that the people of Scandinavia living in the 12th century thought the same way as today, nor that they would be any more sensible in the minds of us living today, but I think I answered your question of why the Scandinavians stopped doing their raids.
Thank you for reading and I am sorry for all my spelling mistakes, bad grammar, and terrible English in general, it is not my first language. If there is something that is hard to understand please ask and I hope it is mostly understandable. | [
"At that point, the Scandinavians had entered their medieval period and consolidated their kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. This period marks the end of significant raider activity both for plunder or conquest. The resurgence of centralized authority throughout Europe limited opportunities for traditional r... |
Is there any cost increase for ISP's in increasing download speeds ? | That's entirely based on whether they have to invest in infrastructure ( routers, switches, cabling, etc ) or if the structure is already there.
Example. I worked for Comcast in 2007. Their entire network up until the last mile before your home is fiber optic. They could quite literally flip a switch and boost speeds at any point to gigabit or higher with little to no investment in infrastructure upgrades.
Other service providers may not have that, so they max out lower and do have to upgrade components, so in those cases, yes, there is a one time cost.
And that's the thing. Upgrades are one time costs unless stuff breaks. So if you do a huge upgrade, but then trickle the speed lower, you can control people's perceptions and slowly increase speed overtime for no cost. The benefits of that are fantastic for the company itself. | [
"With increased consumer demand for streaming content such as video on demand and peer-to-peer file sharing, demand for bandwidth has increased rapidly and for some ISPs the flat rate pricing model may become unsustainable. However, with fixed costs estimated to represent 80–90% of the cost of providing broadband s... |
trading 'futures' in the stock market | "Futures" are contracts for the future delivery of an item. Instead of buying a farmer's onions that he just harvested, I invest in the onions that he has yet to grow. The farmer can use the investment on his farm right away, which might help the harvest, and it tends to stabilize the price. | [
"A futures exchange or futures market is a central financial exchange where people can trade standardized futures contracts; that is, a contract to buy specific quantities of a commodity or financial instrument at a specified price with delivery set at a specified time in the future. These types of contracts fall i... |
If I have two insulated bottles one contains water that is 10 degrees c lower than room temp. The other 10 degrees warmer. Which will become room temp faster / slower. | Practically, both will reach room temperature at the same time.
Theoretically, the warmer one might reach it slightly faster because it starts out less dense, and therefore starts with less mass, but the difference is likely negligible. | [
"When a stratified hot water storage tank has closed water circuits, the water temperatures can be up to 90 to 95 °C at the top and 20 to 40 °C at the bottom. Calm, undisturbed water is a relatively poor heat conductor when compared to glass, bricks and soil.\n",
"In tropical countries, like Singapore and India, ... |
Historians, how do you deal with sad moments of History? (written records, images, films, etc) | I often end up crying during my research. Due to the area I study I focus specifically on the 'lighter' topics within it, and even those can be very distressing. However, I think I'd be extremely worried if it didn't phase me. When you're seeing the personal experience of someone who you have a 'connection' with through their work it's very easy to understand their lives, whereas "40 million" is a number, a horrible number, but less distressing in a lot of ways. | [
"A novelist such as Sir Walter Scott or Leo Tolstoy (\"War and Peace\") would describe historical events accurately. They would give rein to their imagination only in scenes that were not significant historically, when interactions with fictional characters could safely be introduced.\n",
"The scene is set in 197... |
will my teeth move after braces are removed? | Nah, at least not significantly in 10 days. Putting the retainer on the first time might be uncomfortable because of the minute movement, but if you wear it properly afterwards it will keep it in place.
It is important you're not lazy with your retainer though. Many people have to get braces for a second time because they didn't wear their retainer enough. | [
"Braces have constant pressure which, over time, move teeth into the desired positions. The process loosens the tooth after which new bone grows in to support the tooth in its new position. This is called bone remodeling. Bone remodeling is a biomechanical process responsible for making bones stronger in response t... |
Is the production of bio-fuels viable? | Some biofuels use [waste vegetable oil](_URL_1_) from restaurants although this is a smaller niche market.
I've seen [these people](_URL_0_) at fast food restaurants. | [
"The depletion of petroleum sources and increase in greenhouse gas emissions in the twenty and twenty-first centuries has been the driving factor behind the development of biofuels from microorganisms. \"E. coli\" is currently regarded as the best option for biofuel production because of the amount of knowledge ava... |
how do they determine what age group of kids is safe for a specific toy? does the administration just say what they think is right or is there actually a scientific way to determine this? | In the United States there are regulations that spell out how toys for children need to be tested and how the safe age range should be determined. Most toy manufacturers have to submit toys for third party testing and then certify the results in a Children's Product Certificate. The United States Consumer Product Safety Commission oversees all of this. You can see more details and specific regulations [here](_URL_0_). | [
"Manufacturers often display information about the intended age of the children who will play with the toy. In the U.S. this label is sometimes mandated by the CPSC, especially for toys which may present a choking hazard for children under three years of age. In most countries the intended age is either shown as a ... |
How much ammo did the typical Napoleonic era musket man have? | Amendment: My original calculations on rate of fire were based on a company and then incorrectly widened to a battalion. A company fires 108 shots a minute on average, with a battalion firing 648.
Hello There,
I am going to use my knowledge of the Habsburg military during the war of 1809 as an example. I hope others will add their insights on the other armies and areas of Napoleonic history.
Further reflection on this youtubers accuracy can be found [here] (_URL_0_).
A Habsburg musketeer from the infantry regiments of the *kaiserlich und königliche Armee* or k.u.k, would be provided with 60 rounds. In 1809, the average number of men in a battalion from a German line infantry regiment was 900 men, with a three battalion regiment consisting of 2700. If you remove the regimental officers and the company officers, *feldwebel* (sergeant-major) and fourier from each battalion you have 2540 muskets. Thus, a regiment when marching into Bavaria carried (according to maths) 152,400 rounds of ammunition. The baggage trains for each battalion would consist of 30 packhorses with ammunition (on average 36 rounds for every soldier), adding a further 91,440 rounds to each regiment. Though small isolated companies or battalions fighting in fortified granaries or villages may have fired off all their principle ammunition, if a battalion had access to their baggage trains they would never exhaust their allocation.
The reason being that a Habsburg brigade (2 regiments grouped under the command of a *generalmajor*) would never be and never was, engaged with the enemy for any longer than thirty minutes at a time. Divisional doctrine dictated a brigade should be replaced in the line after an action (either an attack or the defence of a position) by its sister brigade, allowing the command to restructure and reorganise. This process of recycling would continue until the corps was withdrawn or battle finished. Based upon contemporary sources of the campaign, battalions from both sides would withdraw from action after 20-30 minutes of sustained fighting, if they had not been forced to capitulate (see action of III/IR#59 Jordis at Battle of Neumarkt-Sankt Veit, where they discharged one volley in square, which subsequently fired high and with their backs to the river were forced to surrender to the Bavarian and Württemberg Chevaulegers who had them cut off). Generally a battalion would withraw because of a break down in battalion organisation (loss of an officer, fractured line, pressure from nearby artillery), rather than straight up routing.
Let us use the calculations you provided of 1 death per 200 shots and then extrapolate that over 30 minutes of fighting, using a ‘German battalion’ from 1809.** Deployed in line and averaging a battle tempo of 1-2 shots a minute (1.5) and firing by *zug* (platoon), a company with a frontage of 32 files and a depth of two ranks across the battalion could fire 648 shots per minute, thus killing 3.5 men (if not deployed as skirmishers the third rank would reload the rifles of the first two, and then replace any losses sustained). If we times this exercise out to 30 minutes then the battalion should have inflicted 105 fatalities on the enemy. In this time we can calculate the battalion would have fired a maximum of 19,440 of its 48,000 rounds, if we don't take into consideration lulls in fighting and casualties sustained.
How many times a battalion and its brigade would be 'in the thick of it' depends on their position in the battle. If we examine the Battle of Wagram and the actions of the Hauptarmee’s left during the second day, we can see that the IV Corps under Rosenberg was engaged in heavy fighting with the III French Corps under Davout from 5am until 4pm. There was a substantial amount of down time when French division were being brought up to replace those who had been repulsed, but we can easily assume that of the 11 hours of battle, there was 6-7 hours of fighting. If we maintain the divisional doctrine of the k.u.k, then each battalion could have been in direct contact with the enemy for 3-3.5 hours. Therefore, they had the possibility of inflicting 735 fatalities on the enemy. In that time they could possible have fire a maximum of 136,080 rounds, again this is a best case scenario and does not take into account casualties sustained, time not engage or when out of range of the enemy. In other parts of the battlefield, some units didn't see any fighting at all (the majority of the V Corps).
So, what would happen of a company fired off all its ammunition? The *Unterleutnant* (the third company officer after the Hauptman and the Oberleutnant) would take a *Korporal* (corporal) and his section (8 privates) to the regimental baggage train, where the Regimental adjutant would have the *Unterleutnant* sign for the company’s designated allocation of ammunition. These men would then ferry the ammunition back to the company and distribute it out. *Korpralen* were also responsible for collecting the ammunition, equipment and water of the dead to redistribute to the living during battle.
When we compare total number of men that could possibly have been killed by a battalion over thirty minutes (using Rosenberg's egagement as a tester) with a hit ratio of 1 fatality to 200 rounds fired, the losses are significant and in theory should not drag out a battle longer than expected.
The battle of Wagram, as argued by Arnold in his work *Napoleon Conquers Austria: The 1809 Campaign for Vienna*, marked the beginning of modern warfare. He designates the First and Second World Wars as modern, and where artillery was the largest killer of men. Arnold points to the number of artillery pieces present on the field, almost 600 pieces with a caliber of 6 pounds or over, as the main reason for the majority of the 75,000 casualties suffered by both sides during the two days of the battle, more than fourth of the men present. This was the largest number of battle casualties sustained during the Napoleonic period up until 1813. If we agree with Arnold's definition of a modern war, we can see at Wagram that expertly handled artillery could offset the deficencies found with small arms fire, resulting in a larger proportion of casualties.
**Note I am inclined to take 200 to 1 ratio at face value as smooth bore musketry was notorious for being poor at pretty much all ranges and the training of recruits so bad(Austrians had three rounds of live practice firing a year!!!), whole volleys would 'fly high'. Will follow with sufficient research pertaining to such figures
For further reading see:
Arnold, J. Crisis on the Danube: Napoleon's Austrian Campaign of 1809: The 1809 Campaign for Vienna.
Rothenberg, Gunther E. Napoleon's Great Adversaries: The Archduke Charles & the Austrian Army, 1792-1814. 1982, p1. 219p. Historical Period: 1792 to 1814.
Gill, J, H. 1809 Thunder on the Danube: Napoleon's Defeat of the Habsburgs: Wagram and Znaim," volume 3
Rothenberg, Gunther E., Michael Hochedlinger, Paul W. Schroeder, and Lawrence Sondhaus. 2001. "THE SHIELD OF THE DYNASTY: REFLECTIONS ON THE HABSBURG ARMY, 1649-1918." Austrian History Yearbook 32, 169-206. | [
"For example, the Brown Bess musket, in service with the British army from 1722 to 1838, had a 19 mm (.75 inch) smoothbore barrel, roughly the same as a 10 gauge shotgun, and was long, just short of the above recommended 168 cm (5 feet). On the other hand, records from the Plymouth colony show a maximum length of 1... |
Can DNA be made using L-sugars? | Yes you can! It is called L-DNA, as opposed to naturally occurring D-DNA. You can even [buy it](_URL_1_). It retains all of the base pairing rules, but the helix chirality is reversed. As a result, L-DNA will not hybridize with a complementary strand of D-DNA.
It has potential uses in biological systems because it is not recognized or broken down by enzymes. This allows the functionality of DNA in a biological system without enzymatic degradation. See this example for [molecular tagging](_URL_0_). There is some interest in using L-DNA for more complex DNA nanotechnology in living systems for this reason, but sadly I don't have a good citation handy. There is also apparently interest in L-DNA for controlling gene expression but that is way out of my field. | [
"While DNA, RNA and proteins are all encoded at the genetic level, there exists a separate system of trafficked molecules in the cell that are not encoded directly at any direct level: sugars. Thus, glycobiology is an area of dense research for chemical biologists. For instance, live cells can be supplied with synt... |
How did medieval Islamic historians write about/conceptualise the history of their religion? Please also tell me about who wrote history in the medieval Islamic world, why, and what written history was used for in medieval Islamic society. | Islamic history was, like Jewish and Christian history, originally preserved orally. As these oral histories were passed on, early Muslims attached special importance to whom they heard these stories from. As such, each of these early religious traditions, known technically as [*hadith*](_URL_2_) consists of both a text (*matn*) and a chain of who told the story to whom (*isnad*). It is safe to assume that a number of these hadith preserve authentic memories of what Muhammad or his Companions did or said in the early 600s, but these stories and their authenticating chains of transmission weren't written down in the forms that survive today until the 800s.
At that time, several experts of Islamic religious experts decided to collect and collate the hadith that they knew or considered most important and the earliest collections—each of which is unique based upon its editor's knowledge and interests—became the [canon of hadith](_URL_3_) that have been most commonly cited ever since. ([Here](_URL_4_) is one consolidated resource in English.) This situation gives modern scholars at least two very productive avenues for approaching our sources of early Islamic history. Either they can look at the role of the collectors in the 800s, and this allows them to study what problems people were trying to answer with historical precedents in the 800s. Or they can look at the chains of transmission, and this tells them what stories people were interested in hearing and remembering in various places between the 600s and 800s.
As you can imagine, either effort is a daunting task, and neither of them produces a "total" picture that we might want of early Islamic history. It would be something akin to trying to reconstruct early American history from cases that the Supreme Court cited in the late 1900s, an interesting and fruitful approach, albeit inherently incomplete. Nevertheless, some Islamic scholars have tackled these very questions. I'll briefly summarize the findings of Fred Donner, whose [*Narratives of Islamic Origins*](_URL_0_) (1998) provides some of the best answers for your questions. Donner categorized a number of themes, and I'll highlight a few.
**Prophetic Themes.** As Muslims mingled with newly conquered Christian and Jewish populations, they remembered hadith emphasizing Muhammad's unique role as prophet as a way to set themselves apart from Christians and Jews. These hadith were collected and cultivated especially in the area of the Fertile Crescent, where there were strong Jewish traditions and Christians in close contact with the Byzantine Empire. They seem to have been less important and less likely to have been remembered in Arabia itself.
**Quranic Themes.** These hadith elaborate on Quranic passages, which are often difficult to interpret on their own. Many of these hadith explain that Muhammad received a particular passage to answer a particular need of the early community, or that he explained it in a particular way. These hadith were best preserved in Iraq and Yemen, suggesting that these were early centers of Quranic scholarship, whereas there is surprisingly little evidence for their transmission in Egypt and Syria.
**Community Themes**. Some of these dealt with defining the Islamic community, known as the [*umma*](_URL_1_), and these hadith were probably fairly commonly preserved, since they could be used to answer many questions. More particular hadith dealing with how the umma was meant to be managed and administrated seem to have focused around the circle of people associated with the early Umayyad dynasty, who were especially entrenched in Syria.
**Themes of Hegemony, Leadership, and Authority.** Many hadith speak directly or indirectly to who should rule and how, and Donner discerned a fairly complex image of how these traditions were cultivated over time. Some of them can be used to justify Muslim rule over Christians and Jews, and would have likely been popularly remembered by Muslims in the Fertile Crescent. Others deal with issues of Arab or non-Arab rule, and these would have been remembered across the Middle East. And a number also deal with some secondary administrative details, which were probably most important in the administrative centers such as Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. Donner doesn't try to pin these hadith down too closely, since there was a very complicated history of civil wars that would have made these hadith variously important in different places at different times. He does, however, give a much more thorough categorization of them than I am repeating here.
With these themes in mind, it's actually possible to suggest how early Muslims thought about and eventually came to record their history as hadith. Between about 630 and 670, the Muslim community focused especially on defining themselves according to piety, and there seems to have been relatively little interest in developing historical traditions. Muslims first began to curate their own historical traditions as a way to set themselves apart from the people they conquered and intermingled with. In some places, this may have begun as early as 655, and this period lasted until around 730. As Muslim rule had become more firmly entrenched, histories dealing with administration and law held special importance as the caliphate developed between about 700 and 770. Finally, around 770, the hadith began to be written down, and this allows us to see more particular concerns develop, as jurists collected hadith to answer fine questions about taxation, apostasy, or other local problems. This was the process that produced the diverse collections that survive today and give us an early snapshot of the concerns that drove early Islamic historians to do their work! | [
"In the medieval Islamic world (13th century), universal history in this vein was taken up by Muslim historians such as Tarikh-i Jahangushay-i Juvaini (\"The History of The World Conqueror\") by Ala'iddin Ata-Malik Juvayni, Jami al-Tawarikh (\"Compendium of Chronicles\") by Rashid-al-Din Hamadani (now held at the U... |
What is the white thread-like substance found under a scab? | [Fibrin](_URL_0_).
It's a fibrous matrix protein that polymerizes to cover open wounds as part of the clotting response. | [
"The formation of this stain is the subject of ongoing research. It was originally speculated that it represented body contents forced out by the pressure of overlying rocks, although decay contents would form more quickly and thus be a more likely interpretation. This is supported by their presence around organism... |
why do humans find it necessary to try and control how others live their lives even when it doesn't affect them personally? | We are a social species that evolved to live in villages of under 300 people. So we have evolved instincts designed to ensure our place in the hierarchy, and to regulate and stabilize the group. When you live in a small village, *everyone's* behavior affects you personally.
| [
"Speaking of personal control, in many circumstances, people usually cannot directly control social conditions or institutional practices that effect their daily lives. People would then try by one means or another to get those experts who are resourceful or who can produce influence and power to act at their behes... |
why when you look sideways at a moniter it looks like a picture negative? | Nope, it's just LCD monitors. LCD stands for "liquid crystal display", because there is a layer of an electrically reactive liquid, enclosed in tiny little cells, over the top of the screen. When the liquid is activated, it turns dark, blocking out a pixel of color. As you move to the side, instead of looking straight through the cells, you're looking at them from an angle. As you move further to the side, you start looking through the barrier between the cells as well. When light from the screen hits those walls, it *refracts* - it gets bent at an angle, and the colors no longer line up exactly. The further you go to the side, the more this diffracts the colors away from your eyes, so you don't see them.
LCD manufacturers have worked very hard to fix this issue, and it's hardly noticeable on modern LCDs unless you get way off to the side. | [
"Because camera lenses invert the image and flip it left to right, orienting the film strip so that the image's \"up\" is up, and its \"left\" is to the left, the left-eye image of the stereo pair is to the viewer's \"right\" (see the included photograph). Note that in the Realist 45 the film cartridge is loaded on... |
why won't companies like valve make games such as half life 3 which would pretty much guarantee them unimaginable profits? is there another reason for not doing it apart from the risk of it not being that good? | Valve is making money hand over fist with Steam. Half Life 3 has impossible expectations to live up to so I'm sure they'll wait until the risk doesn't outweigh the reward. Why risk messing things up right now when they're doing really well?
Square long ago said they would never remake FF7. They're now remaking FF7 because something about their situation changed and they think it's good for business. That might happen in the future to Valve but there is really no way to tell without waiting for it to happen. | [
"Several of Valve's series feature only two primary games, such as \"Half-Life\" and \"Half-Life 2\". With no apparent announcements of a third title in these series, Valve has acquired a joking reputation for being unable to count to 3. In the absence of an official announcement of a \"Half-Life 3\", players and j... |
Why is the American West of the 1800s portrayed as a desert? | The vast majority of the American West cannot support agriculture without irrigation - often involving water from wells. It is a dry place, and this reality sets it apart from the other North American regions. It is depicted as a dry place because that is what it is. There are obvious exceptions to this, notably the Pacific Northwest, the coast in general, and various places hugging mountains where precipitation can be at its greatest. That said, crossing the expanse - by wagon or now by car or train - involved/involves a great deal of time crossing very brown terrain. Because water is key to settlement, the result is that much of the Intermountain West has been characterized as a sagebrush ocean - vast amounts of unsettled land with isolated "islands" of towns. It also has resulted in Nevada, for example, frequently appearing as the second-most urban state in the nation (the first being New Jersey - which has nothing to do with this modeling!).
Surviving journeys could be extremely difficult and resulted in many deaths along the California-Oregon trail. Crossing what was called the "Great American Desert" was not easy. People followed rivers as much as they could, but in Nevada especially, there was a forty mile stretch with no water, tackled at a point when the oxen were at their weakest. If you go back to the 1850s in a time machine, stay on the East Coast, or arrange for your teleportation so that you arrive in San Francisco. San Francisco has always been a great place. | [
"Settlers in the regions east of the Missouri River had found ample trees with which to build log houses. The eastern quarter of Nebraska was also well supplied with timber. However, as settlers moved further west, they encountered the treelessness that had led Major Stephen H. Long, exploring the region in 1820, t... |
why do you always need a resistance in front of a led even if the voltage is lower than the max the led can handle? | The issue is that for an LED a small change in voltage can mean a very large change in current. For the resistor a change in voltage produces an equivalent change in current, different from an LED. You can't really know how much current is going through an LED at a given voltage except by testing, so you really need to consider feeding a specific current to the LED rather than a voltage. That is what the resistor does in feeding a specific current to your LED. | [
"This is also a problem where the LEDs are using individual resistors instead of shared resistors, if there is a path through two LEDs that has less LED drop than the supply voltage these LEDs may also illuminate at unintended times.\n",
"Resistors of extremely high precision are manufactured for calibration and ... |
What is the particle physics behind the triple point of a substance? | From the point of view of thermodynamics (basically, looking at the system as a whole) the triple point is the point at which 3 phases of matter all have the same energy so matter can freely change between the 3 states.
On the scale of a single molecule, thermodynamic properties (such as the phase of matter) are not really well defined things. What you can say is that (roughly) the kinetic energy of a molecule being free in a gas vs the attraction energy of being in a rigid crystal structure are about the same (and the liquid phase has big contributions from both the interactions and kinetic energy, and these also add up to be about the same). | [
"In thermodynamics, the triple point of a substance is the temperature and pressure at which the three phases and solid of that substance coexist in thermodynamic equilibrium. It is that temperature and pressure at which the sublimation curve, fusion curve and the vaporisation curve meet. For example, the triple po... |
Is heterochromia the result of transposoable elements? | I wouldn't apply that concept to humans right away. We are much more complex than corn and have mechanisms in place in our DNA to combat things like this since this could be death to us if we had random genes jumping around willy nilly in us. Heterochromia can be the result of many causations like genetic mutation (most likely no from transposable elements though), certain disease, chimerism, genetic differentiation problems during development in the womb, but none the less these all affect melanin levels in that area of the body. Like Different eye colors: one eye has different colored melanin because the genes in one eye are slightly changed from one of the above listed causes and same thing with discoloration in the skin. So overall, transposable elements do exist in people, but I do believe it doesn't have a high impact for human eye color and such. I hope I cleared some things up, have a good one. | [
"Heterochromatin mainly consists of genetically inactive satellite sequences, and many genes are repressed to various extents, although some cannot be expressed in euchromatin at all. Both centromeres and telomeres are heterochromatic, as is the Barr body of the second, inactivated X-chromosome in a female.\n",
"... |
Is there any scientific basis for the claims of "r/nofap" on their FAQ page? | There is such thing as numbed pleasure response, it occurs when dopamine releasing behaviour happens, it usually only occurs after an excess. | [
"Several journalists have criticized NoFap after having participated in its programs. According to Elizabeth Brown, neuroscientists have questioned some of the claims made by people on NoFap. One psychologist, David J. Ley, wrote: \"I'm not in opposition to them, but I do think their ideas are simplistic, naive and... |
why doesn't gravity have an opposite, like the other fundamental forces? | Gravity is just the manifestation of the curvature of space. Gravitons (particles that convey gravity) might exist, but we haven't found them yet, and assuming they do doesn't help this explanation.
It's not possible for a human only exposed to a 3D universe to fully grasp higher dimensional curving of space (we can calculate and find what it's like, but we can't visualise it) so I'll go with the standard 2D explanation.
Say you have a flat elastic sheet with ping pong balls on it (assume they're massless). The balls don't move. This is what space would be like if it were flat. Replace the balls with bowling balls. Now they can bend space, and they clump up. This seems like using gravity to explain gravity, but you must remember our gravity is the curving of space. It corresponds to the bending of the sheet. In the model, our real life gravity just allows the set up to work. A bend in space causes clumping. It's just what it does. It's not because of some extradimensional gravity-thing.
Theoretically, you could push up on the sheet and make a mound where objects repel. But that would require an object other than balls. Our universe does not, to our knowledge, contain such objects. Those would be extending poles which could represent antimatter.
It's worth noting that gravity affects the fabric of space itself. It's causing the universe to slow its expansion. There's also a force (not really a force, but kind of) called dark energy, which causes the continued expansion of the universe. That could be your opposite to gravity. In the same way that gravity causes clumping, dark energy will eventually rip things apart at the subatomic level. But that's only when universal expansion enlarges the distance inside atoms too much. Just like how things get crushed really small when they're close to a strong source of gravity like a neutron star. | [
"Gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental interactions of physics, approximately 10 times weaker than the strong interaction, 10 times weaker than the electromagnetic force and 10 times weaker than the weak interaction. As a consequence, it has no significant influence at the level of subatomic particles. In ... |
Can animals become friends? | This story could be true. Our cat had four kittens, one of which started sleeping beside our dog at a very young age. They were completely inseparable and the kitten (who was very healthy and in no way a runt) had very little to do with its siblings, preferring to spend all its time with the dog.
As it grew older the kitten (now a cat) would often go and stir up other cats in the neighbourhood, then run and sit between the legs of the dog as soon as they gave chase.
Edit: *know* changed to *now*. Thanks creaothceann. | [
"Mutualism can contribute to the formation of interspecies friendships because it involves a pair of organisms experiencing mutually beneficial exchanges with each other which may lead to a long-lasting bond. The mutualistic relationship observed between coyotes and badgers after hunting ground squirrels together i... |
why do videos playback/appear smoother on my phone when the brightness is all the way down and the lights are off? | It has more to do with how your brain interprets visual data. The low brightness makes it harder to notice small little hiccups in playback, so you have an easier time perceiving it as smooth motion. | [
"Higher refresh rates, while they reduce flicker, may cause other problems. Simply redisplaying the fields may cause judder, particularly on fast moving images, as the image is displayed repeatedly in the same location, rather than moving smoothly. Conversely, interpolation (which avoids judder and may create more ... |
what's wrong with developing downtowns? | You'll have to give more details.
Who is saying there is a problem developing downtowns? What are their arguments?
Most people involved in urban design and development would argue that developing downtowns is the best thing that a city or region can do to improve its finances, reduce car congestion, and increase quality of life for residents. | [
"The city's economic growth can be witnessed in the extensive vertical growth experienced across many of its neighborhoods. The construction boom is reflected in the many high density residential towers, shopping malls, elevated highways, the metro expansion and overall increase in commercial activity.\n",
"Numer... |
why military forces use standard-capacity magazines for their rifles if there are magazines with much higher capacity? | Simplicity, low cost and, often overlooked, the means to carry, exchange and manage magazines in the heat of battle would be my guesses.
Very large capacity mags tend to be bulky and heavy. | [
"Magazines come in many shapes and sizes, from tubular magazines on lever-action rifles that may hold several rounds, to detachable box and drum magazines for automatic rifles and machine guns that may hold more than one hundred rounds. Various jurisdictions ban what they define as \"high-capacity magazines\".\n",
... |
Are sociopaths born that way, or "formed" through dramatic childhoods/experiences? | Both. There is a genetic predilection towards whether someone is a sociopath but the genes responsible (those we suspect based on genome wide association studies) are neither perfectly predictive nor required. That unpredictability implies conditioning is also important in the development of sociopathy. I should also point out that the answer could equally be neither. Human emotional responses exist on a spectrum. Sociopathy is an artificial division that while defined in psychiatric manuals, is diagnosed subjectively. MRI studies have shown high similarity between the brains of sociopaths and geniuses for example.
Sociopaths anecdotally experience emotions but do not associate or internalize the emotions of others. When we see a person in pain or afraid, similar networks in our own brains respond by emulating those emotions. We experience empathy. For a sociopath, they would either not have that same empathy or not "care" about what another person was feeling. I suspect the similarity in MRI results between geniuses and sociopaths comes from a geniuses ability to suppress emotion while activating the reasoning network. The difference would then come later, when a genius would later be able to relive the experience and also analyze and experience the emotional content, a sociopath would not. | [
"Personality also affects the development (or lack of development) of adult psychopathology as a result of childhood abuse. Individuals who scored low in neuroticism exhibit fewer negative outcomes, such as psychopathology, criminal activity, and poor physical health, after exposure to a potentially traumatic event... |
[Math][Physics]How can the Many-World Interpretation make meaningful statements about probability when infinity is involved? | Your main question is really a math one: if we have an uncountably infinite number of possible outcomes x, how do we define probabilities? This is done using a [probability density function](_URL_0_) p(x). Then the probability that x will be between the values a and b will be given by
P(a < x < b) = ∫*_a_*^(b) p(x) dx
That is, the probability of finding outcome x = X around some small interval δx is
P(x = X) ≈ p(X) δx
Notice that the total probability must sum to 1 as usual, meaning we must always have
∫*_-∞_*^(∞) p(x) dx = 1
So we've normalized p(x), which is equivalent to the "dividing out the total" in the discrete examples you gave.
For the definite example of quantum mechanics, the theory gives us how to calculate p(x) for observables. For example, let's consider measuring the position of some particle in a box. In QM, you first calculate the wave function from Schrödinger's equation (a differential equation which comes from the physics of the box and its walls), and the wave function will be a function of the particle's position ψ(x). Then the probability density function describing the particle's position is given by
p(x) = |ψ(x)|^2
Notice that we have to make sure the wave function is normalized so that this integrates to 1. Now we can answer a question: is the box has a wall at x=L and the particle should be confined to x < L, what is the total probability that the particle has tunneled to x > L? The answer is
P(x > L) = ∫*_L_*^(∞) ψ(x) dx
These sorts of calculations are routine in quantum mechanics. | [
"Modern mathematics generally incorporates infinity. For most purposes it is simply used as convenient; when considered more carefully it is incorporated, or not, according to whether the axiom of infinity is included. This is the mathematical concept of infinity; while this may provide useful analogies or ways of ... |
why is artificial light used to grow plants on iss instead of the sun? | If you leave the window shades up all the time, you will heat the inside of the ship up a lot. Additionally, you'd only get light on the plants half the time since you're going around the earth every 90 minutes. Finally, with LEDs you can control the wavelength and intensity of light to optimize growth conditions. | [
"In recent years LED technology has been introduced into the grow light market. By designing an indoor grow light using diodes, specific wavelengths of light can be produced. NASA has tested LED grow lights for their high efficiency in growing food in space for extraterrestrial colonization. Findings showed that pl... |
how do movies go from the raw footage (film or digital) to 4k? | With digital recordings, the raw footage is usually higher quality than 4K (IIRC, 8K is fairly common). For final release, you just render the video in the release quality and write it to the DVD or blu-ray (or digital download/streaming service).
With film, we're lucky because film is actually very high quality. People tend to think film has low quality because back in film days, the film *duplication and distribution* technologies were not-so-great, making the version in theaters of lower quality. To go from a film recording to a 4K digital video, you essentially put each frame of the film into a digital scanner (like the one in a multifunction printer) and make sure they line up with software. You can optionally use software to remove defects in the film from the digital file. You then send the scanned images off to be written to the DVD, bluray, etc. | [
"Digital movies made in 4K may be produced, scanned, or stored in a number of other resolutions depending on what storage aspect ratio is used. In the digital cinema production chain, a resolution of 4096 × 3112 is often used for acquiring \"open gate\" or anamorphic input material, a resolution based on the histor... |
if fish are cold blooded, how do some species function at depths of over 900 meters where the temperatures are 0-3 degrees celsius? | Fish have a unique chemistry. It has been determined that often their blood is similar to antifreeze. This makes them able to function at colder temperatures than a lake trout or some similar surface water species. | [
"Most fish are ectothermic (\"cold-blooded\"), allowing their body temperatures to vary as ambient temperatures change, though some of the large active swimmers like white shark and tuna can hold a higher core temperature.\n",
"Coldwater fish species survive in the coldest temperatures, preferring a water tempera... |
how did the pdf format become so popular? | First, there was a need for a way to represent paper online. A PDF is a decent approximation of a paper document as it will print to actual paper without any issues. The PDF is an early example of "What You See Is What You Get", or WYSIWYG. This became handy when people would need to send print documents over electronically, as it could be reasonably assumed that the receiver could print it if they could open it.
Second, Adobe made its reader free. This meant that anyone could read a PDF across different operating systems. So, if you had to create an electronic document that was to be printed, you could safely assume that people would be able to open it via PDF. | [
"Adobe Systems made the PDF specification available free of charge in 1993. In the early years PDF was popular mainly in desktop publishing workflows, and competed with a variety of formats such as DjVu, Envoy, Common Ground Digital Paper, Farallon Replica and even Adobe's own PostScript format.\n",
"PDF's adopti... |
What was the Russian reaction to the finding of gold in Alaska? | Hey there, /u/usaf2222. There wasn't any "oh, damn" moment, if that's what you're asking. From the perspective of the Russian-American Company, gold was actually a headache.
Russian officials were aware of traces of gold on the Kenai Peninsula as early as the 1840s, when engineer and [geologist Peter Petrovich Doroshin](_URL_0_) arrived in the territory. From April 20 to Sept. 22, 1848, Doroshin, six Russians, two Creoles and four Tlingits prospected the Kenai River in search of placer gold. Apparently, there had been reports of placer gold in the area.
Sources differ about the amount of gold recovered, but in any event, Doroshin returned to New Archangel (Sitka) with the news that the amount of gold was not economically viable for development.
When news of the California Gold Rush arrived in Sitka, Doroshin and his crew sped south to California, arriving in San Francisco in December 1848. After surviving some harrowing encounters with criminals along the Yuba River, they managed to take away nearly 12 pounds of placer gold with their gold pans. They subsequently bought a three-masted ship for the Russian-American Company and returned to Alaska.
Doroshin and his group made repeated attempts at prospecting in the Kenai River basin but never found paying quantities of the mineral. He turned his attention to coal mining and was more successful at that.
In the 1860s, Russian-American Company officials found themselves worried by a stampede to the Stikine River that started when rumors spread in British Columbia that gold had been found there.
This area, on the mainland of the Alaska panhandle, was being leased by the Hudson's Bay company and was not under the direct authority of the RAC at the time, but the fact that it brought hundreds of Americans and Canadians to the area worried the Russians.
There were fewer than 1,000 Russians in Russian America at its peak, and the Stikine River experience showed that even a minor stampede would bring many more Americans and Canadians than that.
Indeed, this lack of control, and the belief that Russia could not hold on to its American possessions in the event of American encroachment, was one of the factors that led to the sale of Russian America. Tsar Alexander's brother, Admiral-General Konstantin, was foremost among those who believed that Russian America could not be kept if American and Canadian settlers moved into the area en masse. Russia did not have the resources or ability to stop them from doing so.
If you'll permit me to engage in speculation, I imagine that if Russia had not sold Alaska, it would have soon lost it, much as Mexico lost Texas and California to encroaching American settlers. This likely would have taken place no later than the 1880s, when the Juneau Gold Rush brought thousands of miners to Southeast Alaska. | [
"It was believed by 20th century prospectors that the early Russian traders discovered gold in a tributary to the Kuskokwim called \"Yellow River\" in 1832. Many think that the Yellow River these traders referred to is the Aniak River. A mercury deposit was discovered by Russian traders near the trading post called... |
explain to me how stocks work, what makes the price go up/down? | Also, you can think about companies like cows, and buying stock like buying part of a cow (and buying part not in the sense of the tail of the hooves, but owning a certain portion of the money the cow generates). The cow can make you money in two ways:
1) Whenever the cow is milked the owners of the cow can give you some of the money they get by selling the milk (this money is called dividends). alternatively, the rancher can choose to use some, or even all, of that money to improve the value of the cow, maybe by feeding the cow better food or having a veterinarian give it a check up (retained earnings). You may be okay with not getting even of the milk money if you trust the rancher to use that money wisely to increase the value of the cow (Apple's cow is worth a TON of money despite the fact that, until recently, they never paid out any of their milk money to investors).
2) At some point the cow can be sold (the company can be bought out) and you will be payed based on what percentage of the cow you own. Even if the whole cow is not sold, you can sell your portion of the cow to someone else if you want.
The value of the cow, and therefore your portion of the cow is decided by a couple things. First, the basic attributes of the cow are important. Is it a healthy cow? Does it produce a lot of milk? Does it produce good milk that people like to drink? Is it likely to grow in the future? How does it compare to other cows that are similar to it? These kind of things are the cow's (or company's) fundamentals.
In a perfect world, the price of the cow would perfectly reflect everything that you, or anyone else knows about the cow.
Second, what people think about your cow, and cows in general affects the price of the cow. Is there a mad cow scare brewing? Is veganism in fashion? Or on the positive end maybe you're expecting a hot summer where a lot more people than usual will want to barbeque hamburgers, or maybe you know of a new beef-based diet that you think will become all the rage and expect the value of your cow to increase. These kinds of things are the "behavioral" aspects of the price of your cow (or stock) and are important too, but much harder to see or measure.
| [
"The price of assets such as stocks is set by supply and demand. By definition, the market balances buyers and sellers, so it is impossible to have \"more buyers than sellers\" or vice versa, although that is a common expression. In a surge in demand, the buyers will increase the price they are willing to pay, whil... |
Were there any signs of the native American tribes moving towards unification before the arrival of Europeans? | Well, first you'll want to consider that the indigenous people of the Americas are nowhere near a homogenous unit. The differences in culture, language and societal structure between a Pequot village in Connecticut and a Blackfoot band in Montana are (speaking unscientifically) as great as any between Eurasian peoples. Even neighboring tribes with related languages, e.g. the Ute and Comanche, often perceived themselves as distinct enough to have tribal rivalries stretching back as long as any source can tell you.
The reason people presuppose Native American homogeneity is because of a concept essentially foreign to precontact Americans: a racial division between 'Indians' and everyone else, but especially Europeans. Once you bring *that* concept in, and make it visible enough to trump tribal allegiance, then you start to form a possible 'Indian nation'. This is essentially what happened in the confederacies that formed to combat Spanish and English (and later Mexican and American) colonization - most famously those of [Popé](_URL_3_) and [Tecumseh](_URL_2_). Tecumseh's War in particular, part of the War of 1812, was based on the idea of Indian unity and the formation of a pan-American confederacy. This is built into the religious revival movement that Tecumseh belonged to, that of his brother [Tenskwatawa](_URL_0_). Such religions were very influential in extending the view of Native American unity.
So the idea of Native Americans attempting to 'unify' in precontact times is pretty problematic. Nonetheless, there are signs of certain local unifying cultures building up, most famously the Iroquois. Scholars now generally believe that the [Iroquois Confederacy](_URL_1_) was created before European contact. Suggested dates vary, but the late 14th-15th centuries are commonly hypothesized. Also called the Five (now Six) Nations, this confederacy was an alliance, bound up in ritual, between five tribes of the Iroquoian groups on the southern side of Lake Ontario; the sixth tribe, the Tuscarora, were added much later, in 1722.
From that we can see that the Iroquois Confederacy was at least in principle open to adoption of other tribes; but in practice the bonds were very tight, and extended only to Northern Iroquoian tribes in that particular location. Their success post-contact is attributable more to their location on the fur trading routes, the abundance of fur within the area, and their aggressive means of acquiring trapping land, rather than their unifying culture.
Other than the Iroquois - and that a marginal case - you won't find good examples of nations dominating like that in America north of the Rio Grande, because as I've said above the concept of a 'nation' wasn't one in common circulation in most areas. 'Tribal' allegiance was much more common. If you're willing to look south, however, the Aztecs and Inca are great examples of cultural as well as military empires. | [
"The Cuu-ma-as, Klehkoot and Muhuulaht people decided to amalgamate prior to the European’s (or any other groups) arrival to the territory. This decision was made because each of the tribes were at war with the Coast Salish people and they thought that joining the three tribes would make them stronger in their war ... |
Will a mixture of two different liquids, distributed into two beakers in a closed system, eventually separate into pure liquids in each beaker via vapour? | A fully separated mixture is a very low entropy state. If the system is being driven by thermal fluctuations, it is very unlikely that it will evolve to such a state. For that to occur, there has to be an internal energy benefit to separation (such as buoyancy in a centrifuge). | [
"Equal mixtures of liquid and below will separate into two immiscible phases due to their dissimilarity (they follow different quantum statistics: atoms are bosons while atoms are fermions). Dilution refrigerators take advantage of the immiscibility of these two isotopes to achieve temperatures of a few millikelvin... |
Ok so this might be a dumb question but in WW1 why didnt the americans use Winchester lever actions instead of the bolt actions they used? | The lack of lever actions in frontline service prior to WW1 by most Great Powers is due to a variety of factors largely relating to doctrine. The US in particular had a lot of driving reasons that paralleled concerns of most other powers, but exacerbated by the country's unique circumstances between the Civil War and WW1.
In general, armies all over the world were reluctant to adopt magazine rifles en masse owing to concerns over ammunition expenditure. In an era where supply of armies was generally very precarious and strained on campaigns, there was a very real fear of excessive ammunition expenditure from soldiers firing in a panic would heavily strain logistics and even lead to critical ammunition shortages. Other concerns endemic to magazine rifles of the time included issues like per-unit cost and ammunition type (Winchesters in particular weren't capable of chambering military rifle cartridges for some time). For the US in particular, these issues were a bit more pressing than for the continental armies of the Great Powers in Europe. After the Civil War, the US Army was a comparatively small force with a very limited budget, and was almost exclusively fighting on the frontier, where supply was even more strained than normal. American doctrine around this time would come to stress the marksmanship of the individual soldier at comparatively long distances, a trend that would continue in some shape or form all the way to the early Cold War. The standard infantry arm until the adoption of the Krag Jorgensen in 1892 was the Trapdoor Springfield, which was adopted in large part thanks to its simplicity and the fact that existing stocks of muzzle-loading rifles could be easily converted to the new design. And then, to top it all off, the .45-70 cartridge that was the standard of the time was too powerful for any existing lever-action rifle until the Winchester 1886 - at which point smokeless powder cartridges made the .45-70 round and guns that fired it obsolete.
So when we look at lever-action rifles in the pre-smokeless powder era, we see that they're practically the antithesis of everything the US Army needs. They're expensive guns chambered in weaker, shorter-ranged cartridges, and their chief benefit - rapid fire - was seen as a liability in the kind of fighting the US Army was expecting. And even their rapid fire capabilities weren't all that important in a long-term engagement - in an era before the advent of rapid-loading devices like the stripper clip, detachable magazine, and en-bloc clip, magazine rifles had no rate of fire advantage over a single-shot in a long-term engagement. Magazine rifles like a Winchester may get more rounds off in succession at the start of an engagement, but once the magazine is expended, the soldier is going to spend significantly longer reloading the magazine, while the a single-shot rifle will be keeping up the same consistent rate of fire.
The US did finally warm up to the idea of a magazine rifle soon after the advent of smokeless powder in 1886, but a lot of the concerns that drove procurement to that point lingered. The US Army was still concerned over excessive ammunition expenditure and (as with many other armies) required a magazine cutoff on their rifles so that soldiers would use the rifles as single-loaders until otherwise directed by their commanders. A modern small-bore smokeless powder rifle was also wanted, which would materialize as the 30-40 Krag. Among other factors, the ultimate result was that the Krag Jorgensen fit US requirements fairly well, while the only competing lever-action design (a precursor to the Savage Model 1895) was deemed too complex for adoption. Although the failings of the Krag Jorgensen made apparent in the Spanish-American War would lead to the adoption of the Springfield 1903, the second round of rifle trials wouldn't give lever-actions any room to compete. The US Army was heavily influenced by the Spanish Mauser Model 1893s they encountered in the war, and from the start would copy a lot of Mauser features as they developed the new rifle. A more powerful cartridge was developed (30-06), a Mauser bolt and magazine system was used, and a magazine cutoff was added to the design.
Even when the US entered the war and rapidly had to re-arm faster than existing arsenals could handle, they opted to rework the British Pattern 1914 design for 30-06 to become the Model 1917. Thanks to the ease of converting existing production lines, US commercial arsenals (Winchester included) were able to churn out so many 1917s that the gun was more common in US service by war's end than the "standard" 1903 it was supposedly a substitute for.
& #x200B;
Winchester did make lever-action rifles that were used in WW1, but not by America. Britain and France both had placed small orders for more traditional Winchester rifles through the war, and, much more famously, the Russians ordered a substantial number of Winchester 1895s that would see significant service in the war.
& #x200B;
British purchases were aimed at arming troops in secondary roles, and, like most of their non-standard rifles they would procure during the war, they were purchased with the intention of freeing up rifles from the front. These orders would amount to:
* Fewer than 50 Winchester 1886 rifles chambered in .45-90 (Royal Flying Corps)
* 21,000 Winchester 1892 in .44-40 (Royal Navy)
* 2,000 Winchester 1894 in 30-30 (Royal Navy)
France would also procure small numbers of similar patterns for similar uses, although I unfortunately don't have any hard numbers for it.
& #x200B;
The Winchester 1895 was the only realistic option for a lever-action service rifle by WW1, as it was the only commercially available option that could really mount all the necessary military features. Winchester would chamber the gun in a variety of different calibers, but for Russian service they created a variant that chambered the Russian 7.62x54r rifle cartridge and could use the same stripper clips as the Mosin-Nagant. Features to make it more suited for military use like full-length stocks, handguards, adjustable sights, and a bayonet were also incorporated. However, while the Winchester 1895 served reasonably well in Russian service and into the Spanish Civil War, it only ever took this form at the outbreak of WW1, with the Russians desperate for rifles of any type and Winchester looking to bolster sales of a gun that had thus far struggled to find a good market. | [
"Due to the higher rate of fire and shorter overall length than most bolt-action rifles, lever-actions have remained popular to this day for sporting use, especially short- and medium-range hunting in forests, scrub, or bushland. Lever-action firearms have also been used in some quantity by prison guards in the Uni... |
why do all big music artist's youtube channel's names end with vevo? | "Youtube/Google was in danger of being sued by Sony Music/UMG music. To prevent a potentially devastating lawsuit, Google's CEO (at the time) Eric Schmidt made a deal with Doug Morris, CEO of Sony Music, to build a parallel video platform based on YouTube tech where Sony could control the monetization settings and sell their own ads. Vevo V1 was basically a shell website that hosted an embedded YouTube player which in turn loaded Vevo's own ad module at runtime. This allowed YouTube to keep the music video content, provided a link was present to the 'official' Vevo page (effectively, a rebranded YouTube page.) The videos were still hosted on YouTube.
Source: I was a YouTube software engineer who worked on the Vevo launch.
Edit: Wow, this thread really blew up! I'm a bit amazed at the sheer amount of nastiness lobbed at my inbox, but I guess that's par for the course on the internet. As far as my opinions on YouTube's changes since I left: they're completely inconsequential. YouTube costs a ridiculous amount to run and provides a pretty amazing platform for free video hosting. It's a rare day I don't search YouTube myself or get directed to a YouTube link by a friend or colleague. Whatever your beef with it, I can assure you that if that beef were strong enough to force a decline in viewership Google would be making changes tout de suite. I'm afraid I can't help all that have asked how to increase their channel's visibility, make more revenue, get Sergey Brin's phone number, etc.
As far as working at Google/doing an AMA: I think that subject has been covered pretty extensively and I'm not sure I have much to add to that conversation. My path to becoming a software engineer was pretty atypical, so I'm afraid I don't have much career advice to offer either. I suppose if you want to follow my lead: spend a good long while in art school, play in a lot of bands, and read everything you can get your hands on dealing with software development.
Silicon Valley loves a disruptor. If you really think YouTube has lost the plot, and that your UI/video player ideas are superior, start working on your website! The worst that could happen is that you learn a ton about web/software development and perhaps get a better understanding of what makes hosting/serving video at Google scale such a challenge. The best that could happen? Ask Steve Chen and Chad Hurley.
Edit again: Reddit gold! I feel as though I have now truly arrived. Thank you kindly jlota. I honestly had no idea Vevo was this contentious of a subject, but I'm glad I could answer a few questions."
Credit: extuber
| [
"Unlike AKB48 and HKT48 (which release full versions of previous single, whenever a new one is released), SKE48 does not release full versions of their music videos on YouTube as of 2011, due to restrictions imposed by Avex Trax, which currently belongs. A short version of music video was published on March 7. The ... |
] what is the volcker rule, and how does it operate? | So, it's actually really simple but the formal legislation is so complicated because of politicians.
It means that banks that take deposits (Like JPMorganChase) cant participate in proprietary trading. What is prop trading? It's basically trades that are purely for JPMorgans books/profits (basically, what a hedge fund does). Banks like JPMorgan should be making money from client trades and things like that, not taking on risk for their own accounts. | [
"The Volcker Rule refers to § 619 of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (). The rule was originally proposed by American economist and former United States Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to restrict United States banks from making certain kinds of speculative investments that do no... |
Does There Exist A Series Smaller than the Harmonic Series that STILL Diverges? | Relative growth rate of series
---
Yes, there is a way to talk about how fast a series converges or how slowly a series diverges. Let's consider only series with positive terms. So a*_1_*, a*_2_*, ..., a*_n_*, ... is a positive sequence and the partial sums
> s*_n_* = a*_1_* + ... + a*_n_*
are positive and increasing.
We can compare the rate at which two sequences diverge or converge by examining the limit of their ratio. That is, we look at the limit
> L = lim*_n - > ∞_*(a*_n_*/b*_n_*)
Since we are assuming all of the sequences are positive, this limit exists and is equal to some extended real number in the interval [0, ∞]. If L is some positive, finite number, we say the sequences a*_n_* and b*_n_* grow at the same rate. If L = 0, we say b*_n_* grows much faster than a*_n_*. This is because, in that case, by definition of limit, it is possible, given any ϵ > 0, to choose *n* sufficiently large so that a*_n_* < ϵ b*_n_*. If L = ∞, we say a*_n_* grows much faster than b*_n_*.
The limit comparison test that you learn in Calculus II actually tells you that you can compare the growth rate of two partial sums s*_n_* and s*_n_*' by computing the growth rate of the associated sequences a*_n_* and a*_n_*'. If two sequences grow at the same rate, then their series both converge or both diverge. If a*_n_*/d*_n_* -- > ∞ and the series whose terms are d*_n_* diverges, then the series whose terms are a*_n_* also diverges. If a*_n_*/c*_n_* -- > 0 and the series whose terms are c*_n_* converges, then the series whose terms are a*_n_* also converges.
p-series
---
Okay, so let's look at the harmonic series and then consider a very interesting general question. If *p* < 1, then you know that the series
> 1^(-p)+2^(-p)+3^(-p)+...
diverges. This series, in fact, diverges *faster* than the harmonic series. Why? The limit
> lim*_n - > ∞_* (n^(-p)/n^(-1)) = lim*_n - > ∞_*( n^(1-p) ) = ∞
tells us so. But that seems obvious, right? After all, the sequence n^(-p) goes to 0 slower than the sequence n^(-1) (as the above limit shows). So it makes sense the associated series also diverges faster. The terms are bigger, so the sum is bigger! (Of course, both sums are infinity, but we are talking about how the partial sums scale here.)
Can you come up with a series that diverges but does so *slower* than the harmonic series? One example as provided by u/functor7 is the sum
> 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/5 + 1/7 + 1/11 + 1/13 + ...
which is the sum of the reciprocals of the positive prime integers. Clearly, the associated sequence goes to 0 faster than 1/n, but it's a non-trivial fact that the series still nevertheless diverges.
Is there a boundary for divergence?
---
But that seems almost too exotic. u/functor7 gave a good heuristic for finding a series that diverges or converges as slow or as fast as you want. Here's another way to do it, and this method will answer the following interesting question:
***Is there some sort of "boundary" of divergence? That is, does there exist a sequence a*_n_* such that all "larger" sequences have an associated *divergent* series and all "smaller" sequences have an associated *convergent* series.***
For the particular case of *p*-series, that is, sums of the form 1^(-p)+2^(-p)+3^(-p)+..., there is an answer to this. The sequence that satisfies the desired property is a*_n_* = 1/n. This is commonly known in Calculus II as the *p*-test. If p < 1 then the series diverges, and if p > 1, then the series converges. But I want to answer the question above in general, for *all* series, not just *p*-series.
It turns out that there is no such boundary. Let's see why.
If you are given a divergent series...
---
Suppose a*_n_* is a positive sequence such that the series Σa*_n_* diverges. Let s*_n_* be the *n*th partial sum as usual. Now consider the two following sequences:
> b*_n_* = a*_n_*/s*_n_*
> c*_n_* = a*_n_*/s*_n_*^(2)
(The sequence c*_n_* always has limit 0. The sequence b*_n_* has limit 0 if a*_n_* has at most polynomial growth, but generally b*_n_* is bounded.) If you've taken analysis, you should be able to prove yourself that Σb*_n_* diverges and Σc*_n_* converges. Note that is true for *any* positive sequence a*_n_* whose series diverges. (In the case of a*_n_* = 1/n, the sequences defined above are roughly equal to b*_n_* ~ 1/(n log(n)) and c*_n_* ~ 1/(n log(n)^(2)).)
What's so interesting about these sequences? Well, since s*_n_* -- > ∞ as n -- > ∞, we have the following:
> b*_n_*/a*_n_* -- > 0
> c*_n_*/a*_n_* -- > 0
That is, both b*_n_* and c*_n_* are much *smaller* than a*_n_*. Yet Σb*_n_* diverges and Σc*_n_* converges.
If you are given a convergent series...
---
Similarly, suppose a*_n_* is a positive sequence such that the series Σa*_n_* converges. Let r*_n_* be the *n*th remainder sum. That is,
> r*_n_* = a*_n_* + a*_n+1_* + a*_n_2_* + ...
Now consider the two sequences
> b*_n_* = a*_n_*/r*_n_*
> c*_n_* = a*_n_*/√(r*_n_*)
(Both of these sequences have limit 0.) Again, if you've taken some analysis, you should be able to prove that Σb*_n_* diverges and Σc*_n_* converges. (In the case of a*_n_* = 1/n^(2), the sequences defined above are roughly equal to b*_n_* ~ 1/n and c*_n_* ~ 1/n^(3/2).)
What's so interesting about these sequences? Well, since r*_n_* -- > 0 as n -- > ∞, we have the following:
> b*_n_*/a*_n_* -- > ∞
> c*_n_*/a*_n_* -- > ∞
That is, both b*_n_* and c*_n_* are much *greater* than a*_n_*. Yet Σb*_n_* diverges and Σc*_n_* converges.
Summary
---
This method shows that given *any* positive sequence a*_n_* whose series diverges, there is always a pair of positive sequences that are both smaller than a*_n_*, but only one of which whose series diverges also. Similarly, given *any* positive sequence a*_n_* whose series converges, there is a always a pair of positive sequences that are both larger than a*_n_*, but only one of which whose series converges also.
Think about what this means. Start with your favorite divergent series. Mine is a*_n_* = n. That's *really* divergent. Then compute the sequence b*_n_* = a*_n_*/s*_n_*. In this case, we have exactly
> b*_n_* = 2/(n+1)
but more generally
> b*_n_* ~ 1/n
Then Σb*_n_* diverges more slowly than Σa*_n_* but it still diverges. Okay, not let b*_n_* become your new a*_n_*. So a*_n_* = 1/n. Now compute b*_n_* = a*_n_*/s*_n_*. In this case,
> b*_n_* ~ 1/(n log(n))
Then Σb*_n_* diverges more slowly than Σa*_n_* but it still diverges. Now do it again. We get the sequence
> b*_n_* = 1/(n log(n) log(log(n)))
The associated series diverges *even slower* than all the previous ones. And we can do this for as long as we want. We will keep getting divergent series that diverge slower and slower and slower.
The same can be done in the opposite direction. Start with a convergent series and you can keep making larger and larger series that still nevertheless converge.
So, alas, there is so such "boundary sequence" for divergence of series.
| [
"The harmonic series can be counterintuitive to students first encountering it, because it is a divergent series even though the limit of the th term as goes to infinity is zero. The divergence of the harmonic series is also the source of some apparent paradoxes. One example of these is the \"worm on the rubber ban... |
How were Roman provincial governments setup? | I'm a little confused by what you mean here. What are military provinces exactly? There's no such class of provinces in Roman law. Do you mean the Imperial Provinces of the Principate, which housed legions and whose administrators were directly appointed by the emperors, as opposed to the Senatorial Provinces whose administrators were promagistrates (as in the Republic) but (with the sole exception of Africa) did not contain full legions? That system was a result of Augustus' need to maintain strict control on provincial military commands, it did not exist in the Republic. In the Republic provinces were governed and administrated by magistrates with consular or praetorian authority. Initially a complex system maintained the presence of sitting consuls and praetors in the provinces, along with specially-appointed proconsuls and propraetors. By Sulla's time this had been replaced with the institution of regular provincial promagisterial appointments for all consulars and praetorians following the expiration of their year of office. Provincial assignments were given by senatorial dispensation, and could be extended or reduced. All late Republican provinces were administrated by promagistrates, period. | [
"As part of the Constitutional Reforms of Augustus which transformed the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire all Roman provinces where divided into imperial provinces and senatorial provinces. Imperial provinces were those border provinces which required a permanent military presence to protect the Empire from inv... |
do planets get smaller with time? | Just the opposite, actually. Continuous meteor impacts make planets gain mass over time. Eventually though all suns explode, and the planets around them scatter to dust. | [
"The great orbits of the planets take longer than the shorter: Saturn and Jupiter take many years, Mars two, whereas the Moon takes only a month. Jupiter's moons take even less. This is not changed if the Earth rotates every day, but if the Earth is stationary then we suddenly find that the sphere of the fixed star... |
why are spell checkers still not aware of grammatical issues? | Complexity.
Here's a computer's spell checking algorithm.
For each word in document
If word does not appear in dictionary
highlight it
compare closest word matches based on percentage and position of letters
include mouseover window or other view to show and allow selection of alternate suggestions
end if
next word
I'm not going to do grammar's equivalent because it's way too long, but
* you have to look at sentences now, including punctuation, capitalization, and phrasing;
* words now have to be examined in relationship to each other, not one at a time;
* you now have to worry about consistency, such as if this list is separated by ";", or ".", or nothing at all;
* grammar rules can be very complex, particularly in longer sentences, and false positives or missed negatives are very easy; and
* even a decently phrased sentence with good grammar doesn't necessarily convey its intended point clearly, but people might expect a grammar engine to deal with that.
**TL;DR: Spellchecking is simple, grammar-checking is very hard.** | [
"Grammar checkers are considered as a type of foreign language writing aid which non-native speakers can use to proofread their writings as such programs endeavor to identify syntactical errors. However, as with other computerized writing aids such as spell checkers, popular grammar checkers are often criticized wh... |
why is addition so much easier to do than subtraction in your head? | Practice. I noticed this when I was a kid, too. And noticed teachers always gave more add/multiply homework than subtract/divide, which seemed (still does) backwards to me. | [
"Addition or subtraction is performed in a single step, with a turn of the crank. Multiplication and division are performed digit by digit on the multiplier or divisor digits, in a procedure equivalent to the familiar long multiplication and long division procedures taught in school. Sequences of these operations c... |
as a british person who has never used or had dealings with comcast, what is so bad about them? | [This minute and a half long silly YouTube video is actually a really great explanation of the Cable Industry here in the US](_URL_0_) | [
"Comcast is frequently the subject of criticism. Customers of the telecommunications company report low levels of customer satisfaction on both service and cost. Comcast has also had several customer service scandals, the most notorious of which featured a representative not allowing a customer to cancel his servic... |
what is the purpose of the turnable dial around the face of a watch? | The ring as we know it today on some watches, also called rotating bezel, actually dates to the first diving watches of the 1950's. At the time, using a stopwatch was impossible, because every additional pusher could further compromise water-resistance, so instead they relied upon the bezel as a basic timing apparatus.
Right before a dive, the wearer aligns the zero mark on the minutes hand. The bezel then indicates the minutes passed since entering water. To add security, the bezel can only be turned counter clockwise, meaning that if it were accidentally rotated, the immersion time would appear longer and the diver would be compelled to return to the surface earlier.
During the 1960's and 1970's, the US and British Ministries of Defence also incorporated the bezel into military standard, either to display dive time or hours. | [
"BULLET::::- The button on the top right is the \"Light\" button which is used to illuminate the display in the dark. It is also used it set the figures backwards when the watch is in time adjusting mode.\n",
"The face of the watch reads \"World Time\" and the top and \"Illuminator\" on the bottom of the outer ca... |
why can't software companies make an update/download/install status bar that moves evenly and accurately reflects the percentage of the task that is actually complete? | As a programmer, it's difficult to know how long each process may take in a multi-step process. And processes may take different amounts of time on different machines. So generally, the idea is to just keep the bar moving to let the user know stuff is still happening. Perhaps if there is time and funding, the developers can recalibrate the progress bars to be a little more even, but it still may differ across machines. | [
"A more detailed listing of software enhancements is below, grouped by their value to Analytics or OLTP workloads, or their impact on Availability. Similar enhancements cannot be duplicated on other platforms because they require software and API modifications and integration across database software, operating sys... |
why is a photocopying machine so huge compared to a normal colour printer? | There are very small photocopiers too.
On the large ones, most of the extra size is for complex paper handling: several large supplies of different sizes of paper; a collator that can make 10-20 separate copies of a whole document; sometimes an auto-stapler; a high-speed jam-resistant paper feeding and duplexing mechanism. | [
"The DPI measurement of a printer often needs to be considerably higher than the pixels per inch (PPI) measurement of a video display in order to produce similar-quality output. This is due to the limited range of colors for each dot typically available on a printer. At each dot position, the simplest type of color... |
What evolutionary advantage do bacteria gain by producing highly lethal toxins? | In some cases, poisons cause the host to excrete bacteria everywhere, getting it in the water supply and infecting others. Lots of diaharreal diseases work this way. Sure, the host may be killed but many more may be infected. On the other hand, many non-parasitic bacteria produce toxins. These may be to keep away competitors. Say you are a bacteria growing on a moldy hunk of meat. The last thing you want is for some animal to come by and eat your food source and you as well. By releasing all sorts of noxious chemicals that don't affect you but do affect animals, you can reduce the chances of this happening. Or maybe your anti-mold agent (getting rid of another competitor) just happens to be terribly toxic to animals as well. | [
"Bacteriophages are very specific, targeting only one or a few strains of bacteria. Traditional antibiotics have more wide-ranging effect, killing both harmful bacteria and useful bacteria such as those facilitating food digestion. The species and strain specificity of bacteriophages makes it unlikely that harmless... |
where do our sweat glands pull water from when we sweat? | Yes, it mostly comes from blood (and tissue fluid, which is blood without the cells that takes nutrients all the way to your cells). The sweat glands actively pump out salts into your pore and water follows by osmosis. | [
"Myoepithelial cells form a smooth muscle lining around the secretory cells; when the muscles contract, they squeeze the secretory ducts and push out the accumulated fluid into the hair follicle. Sweat and sebum are mixed in the hair follicle and arrive mixed at the epidermal surface. The apocrine sweat is cloudy, ... |
does frequency of life change during refraction? | > So how can the frequency of the light beam change to different frequencies?
It doesn't. The "white" light beam was actually made up of many different frequencies all going along together. A prism is dividing up already separate things like you would sort a bag of M & Ms, not splitting something which was a cohesive whole like cutting up a banana. | [
"There is a cut-off frequency above which the equation formula_23 can no longer be satisfied. The refractive index formula_4 varies with frequency (and hence with wavelength) in such a way that the intensity cannot continue to increase at ever shorter wavelengths, even for very relativistic particles (where v/c is ... |
Is it true that all elements/chemicals/things metallize at high pressures? | I believe so. Things become metals because the valence band of electrons overlaps the conduction band. This happens when you squeeze things.
Here are a few examples
[Water](_URL_0_)
[Nitrogen](_URL_1_)
[Oxygen](_URL_3_)
[Helium](_URL_2_)
[Hydrogen](_URL_4_)
[Sulfur](_URL_5_) | [
"In physics, a metal is generally regarded as any substance capable of conducting electricity at a temperature of absolute zero. Many elements and compounds that are not normally classified as metals become metallic under high pressures. For example, the nonmetal iodine gradually becomes a metal at a pressure of be... |
When a man urinates from a standing position into a toilet, will less splash back be generated if he aims for the water or the dry porcelain? | If you kind of hit the side of the bowl at an angle there is little splash. | [
"Toilets without cisterns are often flushed through a simple flush valve or \"Flushometer\" connected directly to the water supply. These are designed to rapidly discharge a limited volume of water when the lever or button is pressed then released.\n",
"Washout, or \"Flachspüler\" (\"shallow flush\"), toilets hav... |
why is it when you’re sick and can’t keep water down that something like sprite or ginger ale will stay down? | Answer: ginger has some medicinal properties that help deal with nausea or indigestion. Pop drinks also have a lot of sugar in them, which is a quick source of energy when you're sick and unable to keep food down. So a flat ginger ale gives you the benefit of soothing your stomach a bit and giving you some energy to keep fighting the sickness. | [
"2. Laugh, Basil, Laugh - When Basil comes down with a cold, Johnny and Ginger discover that the best way to make a sick Sprite feel better is to make them laugh. Johnny sings a song about all the things to make someone laugh, but it doesn't work, but Basil laughs when Johnny does silly yoga poses. \"Make Someone L... |
why do military ship names begin with uss, hms, etc.? | They signify what country's military they represent.
USS = United States Ship
HMS = Her/His Magesty's Ship, meaning UK.
HMCS = Her Majesty's Canadian Ship
| [
"The names of commissioned ships of the United States Navy all start with USS, for \"United States Ship\". Non-commissioned, primarily civilian-manned vessels of the U.S. Navy under the Military Sealift Command have names that begin with USNS, standing for \"United States Naval Ship\". A letter-based hull classific... |
why do networks like abc,nbc,etc "partner" with comcast or other providers to view shows online. | Broadcast networks make lots of money selling carriage licenses to cable companies which allow those companies to include the channels in their lineups.
By limiting the audience of free in-season streaming video, broadcast networks are keeping their partners happy. When video is completely freely available, there's less reason for people to continue getting cable TV service. | [
"Comcast delivers third-party television programming content to its own customers, and also produces its own first-party content both for subscribers and customers of other competing television services. Fully or partially owned Comcast programming includes Comcast Newsmakers, Comcast Network, Comcast SportsNet, Sp... |
How can non-locality avoid violating causality? | The trick is information is never actually transmitted via entanglement. Thus, causality is never broken since you can't actually influence anyone outside your lightcone. In other words, entanglement can only ever produce correlated results, but each result is truly independent and random and you'd never know something profoundly weird occurred until you met with the person with the rest of the entangled system and compared notes.
In the classical example of Bob and Alice each with a photon of entangled spin, because simultaneity is not unique, it isn't clear which photon "communicated" with the other as there will be frames of reference where Bob measures his photon first and other frames of reference where Alice measures her photon first. Since no frame is truly preferred, the "communication" has no direction. We just know that each event of measurement is independent and random, but together must be consistent. | [
"Some philosophers believe that causality may not exist if determinism is true, as causality is merely the observation that one event precedes another, or that there is a pattern throughout spacetime in which events of one similar type tend to correlate with events of another similar type (that is, the mass-energy ... |
How do we know that entangled particles don't have predetermined spins from the very start? | This is known as the "hidden variable" hypothesis. In fact, there's ways to test this, designed by John Bell in the 20th century. If your suggestion is true, then if we run a very carefully designed kind of spin-measuring experiment many times, we would find a different proportion of outcomes than if the spins are only determined at the moment of measurement. This leads to "Bell's Inequalities," which are tests of hidden variables. The data supports the latter possibility strongly.
Further, if we measure a particle's spin along one axis as soon as it's created, the spins along every other possible axis are thrown into a random probability. What you are suggesting is that not only is the spin along *every* axis determined upon the particle's creation, it's redetermined every time we measure the spin along *any* axis. Experimentally, if we measure along one axis and then measure along a second axis 90 degrees from the first one, the spin along this second axis has a 50/50 chance of being either up or down, so then the spin isn't well defined since we can keep measuring along axis 1, then axis 2, then axis 1, then axis 2, etc and find inconsistent results.
A good example of a Bell's Inequality experiment explained fairly succinctly is here: _URL_0_ | [
"The paradox is that a measurement made on either of the particles apparently collapses the state of the entire entangled system—and does so instantaneously, before any information about the measurement result could have been communicated to the other particle (assuming that information cannot travel faster than li... |
When you look up at the night sky at you see a single star, how many photons are entering your eye so that you can see that one star? | The Sun has [apparent magnitude](_URL_2_) -26.74, and the dimmest star we can see with the naked eye is magnitude +6. That's a magnitude difference of 32.74, meaning the Sun is about 12 trillion times brighter (as viewed from Earth). Since the Sun is radiating [1361 Watts per square meter](_URL_0_) on Earth, that dimmest star is shining with a brightness of about 0.11 nanowatts per square meter, or 1.1e-10 W/m^2.
Let's say the human pupil has a radius of 4 millimeters, that gives an area of about 50 mm^2, or 5e-5 m^2. That means the pupil is absorbing about 5.5e-15 Watt from that dim star.
A photon of yellow-green light has an energy of about 2.25 [electron-volts](_URL_1_), or 3.6e-19 Joule.
Dividing 5.5e-19 Watt by 3.6e-19 Joule gives about 15,000 photons per second.
*edit to fix formatting*
*and one more edit* to note that the above assumes all the star's power is in the visible (and it's not), and that Earth's atmosphere absorbs a significant fraction of incoming solar power. Both of these (and no doubt many more) factors will reduce the photon number by at least a factor of three, bringing the number of photons down to around 5000 per second. Thanks aggasalk for the correction! | [
"If we assume a 10 m diameter ideal ground-based telescope and an unresolved star: every second, over a patch the size of the seeing-enlarged image of the star, 35 photons arrive from the star and 3500 from air-glow. So, over an hour, roughly arrive from the air-glow, and approximately arrive from the source; so th... |
why do high scoring posts (top all time) get archived so you can't vote on them? | all reddit posts are archived after 6 months
theres not difference between a high scoring post and a low scoring one | [
"BULLET::::- Upvote/Downvote: Up and down votes were essentially user ratings on a given yak. For a post to become popular it had to receive more upvotes than downvotes, at which time it displayed a positive number next to it. If votes on a post reached a value of -5, it was permanently deleted.\n",
"Once the tim... |
is there a specific reason clocks go clockwise? | Probably because they were modeled after sundials. | [
"Clocks traditionally follow this sense of rotation because of the clock's predecessor: the sundial. Clocks with hands were first built in the Northern Hemisphere (see \"Clock\"), and they were made to work like horizontal sundials. In order for such a sundial to work north of the equator during spring and summer, ... |
saturn's 'storm' | > Monster storms rip across the northern hemisphere of Saturn once every 30 years or so, or roughly once per Saturn year.
> "We think this huge thunderstorm is driving these cloud particles upward, sort of like a volcano bringing up material from the depths and making it visible from outside the atmosphere,"
_URL_0_
> In fluid dynamics, a **Kármán vortex street** (or a von Kármán vortex sheet) is a repeating pattern of swirling vortices caused by the unsteady separation of flow of a fluid around blunt bodies.
_URL_1_ | [
"Dragon Storm is located in Saturn's Southern hemisphere, which is labeled as the \"Storm Alley\" region. The storm can have a range of and more. The Dragon Storm is a dramatic giant thunderstorm that can be compared to the electric thunderstorms on Earth. It acquires its energy in the deep layers of Saturn's atmos... |
why don't musicians and performers yawn or hiccup on stage ever? | Classical music performer for 8 years here:
It happens more than you think. I've seen people take small naps on stage, vomit, pass out, etc. The reason it doesn't happen more though is probably because when performers are on stage, their brain focuses on the performance itself and anything else gets put aside. | [
"Clive Barnes of the \"New York Times\" observed, \"The people involved are talented enough...So what went wrong? How did \"Enter Laughing\" end up leaving us yawning?\" He noted composer/lyricist Stan Daniels was a producer of \"The Mary Tyler Moore Show\" and suggested \"he should stay where he is well off...when... |
Where did the KKK get its bizarre titles for its hierarchy, such as "Imperial Wizard," "Grand Goblin," "King Kleagle," and "Cyclops"? | According to a history I read about them, the Klan started out as kind of a lark. The idea was to be mysterious and scare people with the idea that they were the ghosts of dead Confederate soldiers, which turned into intimidating "free" black people really quickly. But the idea was more to be a secret society and gentleman's club first, not a quasi military organization. The name is somewhat close to the Greek word for "circle" and they based the idea around fraternities and such, which often carry Greek names. Hence "Cyclops", a monster from Greek mythology, was chosen as an early rank. Gradually I think they just added such names, anything that sounded monstrous or attached to things that go "bump" in the night.
Iirc, Nathan Bedford Forrest was the first "Grand Wizard." Although Forest never repudiated all of the Klan's goals, and protected them when called to give evidence at federal trials, he did eventually call for the organization to be disbanded and recognized it had been guilty of "outrages." ... Another fact I learned from the history which was interesting is that Grant briefly suspended Habeas Corpus in South Carolina in order to fight the rise of the Klan.
Edit: Thank you most kindly, generous Redditor, for the Gold. It is appreciated. A few things here on this comment. I am not a historian of the era, I had read a single history and shared some interesting tidbits because at the time there were no substantive responses. There are many cool longer explications and corrections in the comments. Secondly, I did not mean to imply the Klan was a "lark"; it was guilty of numerous atrocities. I only meant to say that the history I read implied it was started as such by its direct founders (though the point is not uncontroversial). In very short order it became a part of a longer history of intimidating and generally terrorizing black people, White Southern Republicans, and other people Klan elements disliked. I do not disagree. | [
"The principle villain, the Wizard Wutz, is another unusual character for Oz: a handsome, smooth, graceful but pure-evil villain who commands a hierarchical organization of subversives, with planted spies in positions of power all over the land of Oz, and a systematic collective strategy for overthrowing the govern... |
With all of the testing done on mice, roughly how long do you think we could keep one alive in captivity? Assume cost is no issue. | _URL_0_
This is a challenge to figure out exactly that. | [
"The life span of nude mice is normally 6 months to a year. In controlled, germ free environments and with antibiotic treatments found in many laboratories that routinely use nude mice, they can live almost as long as normal mice (18 months to two years).\n",
"House mice usually live less than one year in the wil... |
what function do insects like ticks serve in nature? | Evolution does not require a "function" in order to justify an animal existing in a niche, it's not all part of some unseen designer's "plan".
Ticks have a niche because there are things for them to eat. Perhaps one could argue that this keeps "something worse" from filling the niche, but that's just humans seeking a pattern where none is required. | [
"Ticks are invertebrate animals in the phylum Arthropoda, and are related to spiders. Ticks are in the subclass Acari, which consists of many orders of mites and one tick order, the Ixodida. Some mites are parasitic, but all ticks are parasitic feeders. Ticks pierce the skin of their hosts with specialized mouthpar... |
Are there more protons, neutrons, or electrons in the universe? How do the three rank by abundance? | I think [this thread](_URL_0_) may be of interest to you! u/fishify says that there are about 7 times as many protons as neutrons in the universe. If we assume that most protons are in atoms and not ions, then it would make sense that there is about one electron for every proton.
This agrees with what u/nivlark said. | [
"According to the current models of big bang nucleosynthesis, the primordial composition of visible matter of the universe should be about 75% hydrogen and 25% helium-4 (in mass). Neutrons are made up of one up and two down quarks, while protons are made of two up and one down quark. Since the other common elementa... |
why do you have to refrigerate eggs from the grocery store but you don't have to if you get them fresh from a farm? | There is a membrane that comes out of the chickens that cover the egg. In the US, its standard to have the manufacture plant wash and sanitize them, but in places like the UK, they don’t so they can leave their eggs on the counter or shelf for a while. | [
"All egg products sold in the U.S that are pasteurized due to the risk of food-borne illnesses are done per U.S. Department of Agriculture rules. They also do not allow any egg products to be sold without going through the process of pasteurization. They also do not recommend eating shell eggs that are raw or under... |
Why did human life originate in Africa instead of elsewhere? | You may consider posting this question in r/askscience instead, as historians (mostly) work with written evidence. | [
"This suggests that, rather than modern humans arising in East Africa around 200,000 years ago, it appears that humans may already have been present across the length of Africa 100,000 years earlier. According to Jean-Jacques Hublin, \"The idea is that early \"Homo sapiens\" dispersed around the continent and eleme... |
Why was Octavian chosen as Caesar's heir? Why wasn't his son chosen? Of course, Agustus had him killed later on, so I'm curious as to why a protector ship wasn't set up instead. | It has to do with the fact that Octavian was purely roman noble blood and ceasarean was half Egyptian. There was also the fear that Caesarian wasn't actually ceaser's son. | [
"Antony sent an announcement of the donations to Rome, hoping that the Senate would confirm them, which it refused to do. Octavian's political position was threatened by the acknowledgement of Caesarion as legitimate and heir to Caesar's name. Octavian's base of power was his link with Caesar through adoption, whic... |
why coffee is not considered as a drug even though it's one of the ten most addictive substances in the world? | Caffeine is a drug.
These are the first lines of its wikipedia page:
> Caffeine is a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant of the methylxanthine class. It is the world's most widely consumed psychoactive drug. Unlike many other psychoactive substances, it is legal and unregulated in nearly all parts of the world. | [
"Dating to the 1970s, coffee has been incorrectly described by many, including historian Mark Pendergrast, as the world's \"second most legally traded commodity\". Instead, \"coffee was the second most valuable commodity exported by developing countries,\" from 1970 to circa 2000. This fact was derived from the Uni... |
Were any people of colour present during the evacuation of Dunkirk? If so, how many? | This question has been asked a lot recently. I discussed it [here](_URL_0_), but there's always more to be said. | [
"In the Second World War, ten of the fleet of sixteen ships were commandeered for active duty, four of which were lost. The Dunkirk evacuation was perhaps the company's finest hour, with \"Mona's Isle (IV)\" being the first to leave Dover and the first to complete the round trip during the evacuation. Eight company... |
why should we care about the depreciation of a new car? | A car is not an investment. You are always going to lose money on it. But you may chose to lose more or less money. | [
"The yearly depreciation of a car is the amount its value decreases every year. Normally a car's value is correlated with the price it has on the market, but on average a car has a depreciation around 15% to 20% per year. Depending on market conditions, cars may depreciate between 10-30% the first year.\n",
"Unli... |
why is apple flavoured candy always green when red apples are far more prevalent? | Firstly, depends on where you live, red maybe more prevalent to you. Red is used for strawberry and cherry as they don't have alternates, leaving green as a good option for apples.
| [
"Candy apples, also known as toffee apples outside of North America, are whole apples covered in a hard sugar candy coating. While the topping varies from place to place, they are almost always served with a wooden stick of sorts in the middle making them easier to eat. Toffee apples are a common treat at autumn fe... |
Do paper airplanes "fly" using the same principles as actual airplanes? | Pretty much anything can produce lift depending on its angle of attack, the profile mainly affects how efficiently it will produce that lift.
A sheet of plywood for example can produce a decent amount of lift depending on the angle, its just that its going to produce a lot of drag at the same time. | [
"A paper plane, paper aeroplane (UK), paper airplane (US), paper glider, paper dart or dart is a toy aircraft (usually a glider) made out of paper or paperboard; the practice of constructing paper planes is sometimes referred to as aerogami (Japanese: kamihikōki), after origami, the Japanese art of paper folding.\n... |
why do some online stores have different regions? | It's due to copyright related issues, one different companies can hold the rights to the same book in different regions, for example that upcoming Star Trek series was licensed to Netflix in every other country than the United States.
Sometimes it is also due to legal issues, e.g. games with Nazi symbols may not be sold in Germany or only in a German version with altered symbols.
A third reason is the distribution strategy, Pokemon Go is a good example. Nintendo launched the game in a few selected countries first to see how successful the game might be before distributing it in other countries. | [
"Shopping hubs, or shopping centers, are collections of stores; that is a grouping of several businesses in a compact geographic area. It consists of a collection of retail, entertainment and service stores designed to serve products and services to the surrounding region.\n",
"Products may be out stock in relati... |
why does it take amazon several days to "prepare" items for shipment? | Okay, you know how a mailman comes to your house every day, it's kinda like that for amazon, except instead of your house, it is a warehouse with thousands and thousands of items shipped every day.
If you order it later in the day, you've likely missed the delivery company's pickup, so you have to wait till the next one.
Another thing that might be a cause for amazon taking more than one day is that they can only physically ship or set up postage for so many items per day, so if there are lots of people ordering one day, it may take another day or two to process the shipments. | [
"In April 2014, Amazon began a service for shipping non-perishable grocery store items into a single box for delivery for a flat fee. The service is available in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, India, Japan, Italy, Spain, and France.\n",
"A customer orders a parcel from Amazon and has it ... |
why do i hear no music when i push an earbud deeper into my ear? | Earbuds make sound by making waves in the air between the speaker and your eardrum.
If you seal the ear canal tight and compress the air even tighter, the speaker needs to work harder to make waves. Cheap earbuds under low voltage can't move the air. | [
"In an interview with Los Angeles magazine, he revealed, \"I’m 80 percent deaf in my left ear. People trip out on that. I was born that way, so I just roll with it. But if you listen to the records in your headphones or your car stereo, I tend to pan my favorite instruments to the right because that’s what I can he... |
why do you have to dunk what you're frying first in flour then egg then bread crumbs and sometimes back to egg and a second round of bread crumbs? | “Dry sticks to wet” is as simple as I can explain it.
Flour sticks to wet surface of, say, chicken
Egg is used to make the surface wet again and also helps to adhere the bread crumbs. It’s like a glue. If you just dunked the chicken directly in the bread crumbs alone, they wouldn’t stick.
Second round is for extra crispy skin that everyone loves! | [
"Once the flour was done, it was mixed with water to make dough. The dough was widened to round, flat sheets and placed on hot rocks over a fire. When done baking, a tortilla was produced; it was the most important staple available to them.\n",
"When there are problems with the breading separating from the meat w... |
What role do harmonics hold in Acoustic Levitation? | Depending on what you mean by harmonics the answer could either be "none" or "location."
The acoustic levitation I'm most familiar with uses a standing wave to levitate an object at the pressure nodes. If your question is how multiples of the input frequency make a difference for acoustic levitation, then the answer should be "none" because these standing waves are generated at a single frequency and thus lack harmonics.
If, however, you think of harmonics as being the modes modes of the standing wave, then the wave shapes of those harmonics are going to determine the locations of the pressure nodes, and thus the number and location of objects that can be levitated.
For example, let's assume you are driving a clear plastic tube with a hard end at resonance to create a standing wave. If you drive the tube at its first mode (the 0th harmonic), then there will be one pressure-node in the middle. If you drive the tube at its second mode (1st harmonic), there will now be two nodes, one at 1/4 of the pipe, and the other at 3/4 of the pipe. The third mode has three nodes, and so on.
Just a point of clarification, before someone jumps in to try to correct me. Depending on who you ask "harmonics" can either refer directly to the modes, or they can refer to the frequencies above the fundamental. I'm choosing to use the latter definition here. Second, we are talking about pressure nodes, as opposed to particle velocity nodes. For an acoustic resonator, the pressure antinodes correspond to particle velocity nodes and vice versa. Acoustic levitation is achieved at locations of stable pressure. | [
"The practice of acoustic levitation would not be possible without understanding nonlinear acoustic phenomena. The nonlinear effects are particularly evident due to the high-powered acoustic waves involved.\n",
"In an electric power system, a harmonic is a voltage or current at a multiple of the fundamental frequ... |
why are there so many immigrants coming across the mediterranean sea? | Because their cost/benefit calculation (likely based on incomplete information) tells them it's a good option. Lots of parts of the middle east are very unstable, and offer poor economies and life chances. Lots of parts of Africa have few jobs, and lots of young people. They know that if they stay put, their likely lot in life will be poverty or death. They think that if they get to Europe, they have a better chance of living, a better chance of finding work, a chance to send money home & to provide for themselves & their loved ones.
That establishes the demand. As for getting them across, they have a few viable routes: stowing away on aircraft (very likely to lead to death), overland route through Turkey & Greece (long, difficult, likely to get stopped by officials or killed by others en route), or across the sea.
People smugglers then provide barely seaworthy boats, charge several times more people than can fit into them extortionate amounts to get over, and head the boat towards the southern coast. If they're lucky, a European naval patrol finds them before they sink.
So long as Europe is much richer than countries relatively nearby, this will continue to be, for some, an appealing option. | [
"Ascertaining motivation is complex, but, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, most of the people arriving in Europe in 2015 were refugees, fleeing war and persecution in countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Eritrea: according to UNHCR data, 84 percent of Mediterranean Sea arriv... |
Possible to change the temp of a liquid by stirring? | Absolutely. One of Joules experiments was using a [weight powered whisk to heat water](_URL_0_). He was extremely careful in his work, including things like losses in the string, to arrive at what was for the time incredibly precise results.
However the temperature change was subtle because water takes a lot of energy to change temperature (high specific heat) so you need to do a lot of stirring to make a difference. | [
"The liquid is then heated to about 85° C. Upon reaching this temperature, a total of 200 grams of potassium peroxydisulfate (KSO) in portions of about 40 grams each is added at intervals of, for example, 1 hour. After addition of the final portion of oxidant, stirring is continued for 3 hours. The product is then ... |
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