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How are cannabinoids metabolized? | _URL_1_
> After smoking, the initial metabolism of THC takes place in the lungs, followed by more extensive metabolism by liver enzymes which transform THC to a number of metabolites. The most rapidly produced metabolite is 9-carboxy-THC (or THC-COOH) which is detectable in blood within minutes of smoking cannabis. It is not psychoactive. Another major metabolite of THC is 11-hydroxy-THC, which is approximately 20 per cent more potent than THC, and which penetrates the blood-brain barrier more rapidly than THC.
Not sure about what it "binds to" in the blood, if that's even necessary.
> THC and its metabolites are highly fat soluble and may remain for long periods of time in the fatty tissues of the body, from which they are slowly released back into the bloodstream. This phenomenon slows the elimination of cannabinoids from the body.
From [the wiki article](_URL_0_), this seems to be fairly correct. | [
"Cannabinoid production starts when an enzyme causes geranyl pyrophosphate and olivetolic acid to combine and form CBGA. Next, CBGA is independently converted to either CBG, THCA, CBDA or CBCA by four separate synthase, FAD-dependent dehydrogenase enzymes. There is no evidence for enzymatic conversion of CBDA or CB... |
how do remote controlled cars work? | A radio sends commands to a controller in the car. That in turn sends electrical signals to the various motors and solenoids that operate the mechanical parts of the car.
This can be super basic in a battery powered car with simple steering, or increasingly complex as you approach full sized gasoline powered vehicles.
| [
"A remote control vehicle is defined as any vehicle that is teleoperated by a means that does not restrict its motion with an origin external to the device. This is often a radio control device, cable between control and vehicle, or an infrared controller. A remote control vehicle or RCV differs from a robot in tha... |
Why did the vice president switch from being the second place finisher in the US presidential elections to a ticket with the president? | The most obvious answer is the election of 1800, but the election on 1796 had some impact on the 12th Amendment as well . The way the constitution was originally structured, electors from each state had 2 votes each with no distinction for president and vice president. It was also the case that many states decided to allot proportional votes (Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina).
The 1796 election between Thomas Jefferson & John Adams was the first contested election as it was the 1st that Washington wasn't running in. The election was pretty nasty even by today's standards with party papers for the Federalists accusing Jefferson of being an anarchist and atheist and Republican papers charging John Adams with having monarchist sentiments and eyeing the creation of a "throne" which his son could inherit. In the end Adams won the electoral college vote with 71 votes to Jefferson's 68. Federalist electors didn't coordinate their "second" votes and split their votes regionally so that Thomas Pinckney (southerner) received 59 votes and Oliver Ellsworth (northerner) received 11. If the Federalists had voted in a block, they would've sent 2 Federalists to the White House. Instead the mix-up allowed Jefferson to finish second and sent him to D.C. to work in the cabinet of a president he had just accused of wanting to destroy the Constitution (Imaging HRC as Trump's VP, it wouldn't be pretty). In the end, Jefferson was relegated to watching over the Senate in what he described as pretty monotonous task (he did oversee a rather unimpressive Andrew Jackson fill an interim Senate term). Jefferson spent his term under the radar and wasn’t serving any advisory roles in the Adam's cabinet. He also played a role in drafting the KY & VA resolutions which sought to directly undermine the Adams supported Alien & Sedition Acts.
In 1800 the same cast of characters ran for the presidency, but this time 2 things had changed: Electors became more disciplined in voting the party preference for President and Veep, and 2 states (NY & VA) independently decided to no longer give proportional electoral college votes. With Aaron Burr's open campaigning (which many saw as unseemly) the Republicans won New York and won the election. Republican electors were too disciplined though and Jefferson and Burr tied with 73 votes each (The Federalist had actually coordinated their votes and allotted Pinckney one less vote than Adams). Burr, being the scoundrel that he was, didn't concede the presidency to Jefferson and, as per the Constitution, the House had to decide the election. This led to 35 separate votes in which Jefferson and Burr kept tying. Eventually on the 36th vote Jefferson was selected as Pres and Burr and VP. Hamilton convinced some Federalists that Jefferson was the least bad option for president-he would undo Federalist policy, but he was at least a known quantity unlike Burr who just seemed power hungry. The whole Hamilton-Burr conflict escalated pretty quickly after that.
So after 2 contested (I mean in the sense that Washington wasn't the unanimous choice) elections it was pretty obvious that no one foresaw how nasty party politics was going to get in 1787 when the Constitution was drafted. So, the 12th amendment stipulated that electors still had 2 votes, but they needed to be marked for President and then Vice-President. The way the text reads it may seem like the intent was to have a separate election for Veep, but it was really about allowing electors to vote for the party ticket. | [
"The President and the Vice President are elected through universal suffrage by the nation considered as a whole. The Constitutional reform of 1994 introduced a \"two-round system\" by which the winning President-Vice President ticket has to receive either more than 45% of the overall valid votes, or at least 40% o... |
what's the difference between thermionic emission and thermoelectric effect? | Thermionic emission is the ability of some materials to emit electrons more readily when heated. Electronic vacuum tubes (valves) use heated cathodes to take advantage of the effect.
The thermoelectric effect happens when two different metals are joined. Temperature difference can be converted to electric current and vice versa. | [
"The electrocaloric effect is a phenomenon in which a material shows a reversible temperature change under an applied electric field. It is often considered to be the physical inverse of the pyroelectric effect. It should not be confused with the Thermoelectric effect (specifically, the Peltier effect), in which a ... |
even with the advances in sciences, why is meteorology so inexact? | Because the climate is complicated and modeling it is hard and expensive. Being sort of right is good enough and spending the money to be right slightly more often (meteorologists aren't actually that bad at predicting the weather) isn't worthwhile for, say, a news station. | [
"\"Why did modern science, the mathematization of hypotheses about Nature, with all its implications for advanced technology, take its meteoric rise only in the West at the time of Galileo [but] had not developed in Chinese civilisation or Indian civilisation?\"\n",
"Meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientifi... |
Why did the Western borders of Tang China jut out? | That extension to the Northwest is the modern Gansu Corridor and some areas along the Tarim Basin. These areas were strategically important because they controlled key overland trade routes with India, Central Asia, and the Middle East -- the proverbial Silk Road. This area was important for commerce, but also strategically because it helped encircle and contain the Tibetan Empire which at that time controlled nearly the entirely of what is today Qinghai Province.
The actual amount of functional control that the central government in Chang'an was able to exert over their border territorries varied considerably over time, especially in the later Tang when the area was repeatedly menaced by both Tibetan and Muslim military incursions, and an unstable central government devolved ever-greater powers on their regional military governors. Which is one of the reasons that contemporary historical atlases vary so much on their depiction of Tang-Chinese "ownership" of this area. | [
"Because Chinese Tang forces in the \"Western Territories\" were negligible, to resist the restoration of the Türkic Kaganate, the Tang government had to accede to the rise of Turgesh, a nation descendent from Abars and Mukri, under the leadership of an \"Uchjile\". In effect, the territory captured by Tang by 659 ... |
Pandemics and Quarantine History - Megathread | This current pandemic is falling on a presidential election year in the United States. How did the 1918-1920 flu pandemic affect the 1920 presidential election? | [
"As the pandemic intensifies it gains many names, \"Captain Trips\" and the superflu being the most used. A multi-faceted narrative—told partly from the perspective of primary characters—outlines the total breakdown and destruction of society through widespread violence; the failure of martial law to contain the ou... |
when a restaurant runs out of something, why is it "86ed"? | As you'll see in [this article](_URL_0_) there are a number of theories, none of which are confirmed and all of which have problems.
I think as the article states at the end that the most likely answer is that it rhymes with "nix," meaning eliminate or negate. Wouldn't shock me to learn that a bit of rhyming slang just caught on and became popular somewhere, and then ended up in a book/movie and so became popular everywhere.
| [
"In British English, the term \"restaurant\" almost always means an eating establishment with table service, so the \"sit down\" qualification is not usually necessary. Fast food and takeaway (take-out) outlets with counter service are not normally referred to as restaurants. Outside North America, the terms fast c... |
why do we sneeze and why would our body cease all other functions to favor one thing? | We sneeze to clear irritants out of our noses. As a multistep process to keep whatever it is out of our lungs.
Our bodies are fallible though, sometimes it overreacts. Like seeing pollen as a dangerous intruder. | [
"There is much debate about the true cause and mechanism of the sneezing fits brought about by the photic sneeze reflex. Sneezing occurs in response to irritation in the nasal cavity, which results in an afferent nerve fiber signal propagating through the ophthalmic and maxillary branches of the trigeminal nerve to... |
If the mechanisms of nerve impulses is always exactly the same, how does the brain differentiate between different signals/messages and carry out different functions? | In the same way that when your doorbell rings you go to the front door, and when you phone rings, you pick up the phone, even though both of them use electricity to make the ringing happen.
Which is to say that even though the physiological mechanisms are the same, their pathways in the nervous system are not the same (so the brain can know where the signals came from) and their connections to various parts of the brain are not the same (so the brain can process them differently).
Edit: typo | [
"At the most basic level, the function of the nervous system is to send signals from one cell to others, or from one part of the body to others. There are multiple ways that a cell can send signals to other cells. One is by releasing chemicals called hormones into the internal circulation, so that they can diffuse ... |
Do you and I see the same colors? | [Is it possible that you and I see the same colors differently?](_URL_0_) | [
"BULLET::::2. Colors that cannot be seen directly from any combination of retina signal output from one place in one eye, but can be generated in the brain's visual cortex by mixing color signals from the two eyes, or from more than one part of the same eye. Examples of these colors are yellowish-blue and reddish-g... |
if liquids in containers above 100ml in size can be dangerous (for various reasons), why does airport security dump the contents of said bottle into a bin (with who knows what else) not that far from people amassed in long lines? | Honestly, you're going to have a hard time finding logic in most of the TSA's guidelines. It's more about security theater than actual security.
_URL_0_
Basically, the thought is that if people -feel- safe and secure, they'll act safe and secure. And if people -think- security is high, they won't try to bypass it. It's not completely useless, but it's also not based in, you know. Facts. | [
"As of 26 September 2006, the Transportation Security Administration adjusted the ban on liquids, aerosols and gels. Travellers are permitted to carry liquids through security checkpoints in containers of 3.4 ounces (100 mL) or less that fit comfortably in one quart-size clear plastic zip-top bag. This procedure ca... |
Was the Dunkirk evacuation a triumph or defeat for Britain? | The Evacuation of Dunkirk was essentially a defeat (and as close to a rout as it got) for the British Expeditionary Force that had its image turned around due to good PR on the part of the performance of the Royal Navy, Merchant Navy and civilian volunteers who helped shuttle retreating soldiers from Dunkirk, as well as Churchill's famous *We shall fight on the beaches* speech delivered to the House of Commons on June 4, 1940.
Now despite the fact the BEF was completely surrounded and on the verge of annihilation at Dunkirk, German forces stopped short of annihilating them as they awaited evacuation from the beach. Now the common myth goes that Hitler ordered German Commanders to hold their positions around the BEF rather than finishing them off, though most contemporary historians tend to agree that it was more likely German commanders felt constrained by their supply lines as they had rapidly advanced through France and the Low Countries faster than their supply lines could keep up as well as German forces wishing consolidating their forces before making a final push, giving the BEF time to evacuate as many troops as they could from Dunkirk before the German offensive resumed. Had the Wehrmacht possessed adequate supply lines for the majority of their forces as they reached Calais, (and this veers into what-if territory) it's very likely the entirety if not the majority of the BEF would have been annihilated or captured by German forces. What this would have resulted in is hard to say, though I'd like to think Britain would have still been able to keep herself in the war without concern, as the Germans were not anywhere near well equipped enough to carry out a successful cross-channel invasion. Knowing this, it's clear that the BEF was essentially defeated at Dunkirk, but was sparred the final crushing blow. Though it should be noted, a still considerable number of BEF forces were captured or killed before they were able to be evacuated from Dunkirk, so while the evacuation was seen as a miracle and success, it was not without it's share of setbacks.
The eventual evacuation of Dunkirk of well over 300,000 BEF soliders and personal by the Royal Navy and Merchant Navy as well as civilian volunteers greatly helped turned this defeat into the perfect example of what good PR can do to turn morale or opinion around. Churchill's speech delivered to the House of Commons on the last day of the Evacuation further solidified the idea for the British that the Evacuation of Dunkirk was not so much a defeat as it was a miracle and an example of the British spirit to keep the fight going even when facing overwhelming odds.
Sources:
[*Inferno: The World at War: 1939-1945*by Max Hastings](_URL_2_)
[*Why the Allies Won** by Richard Overy](_URL_0_)
[Churchill's *We Shall Fight on the Beaches* speech](_URL_1_) | [
"BULLET::::- 26 May: Around 850 British civilian ships and vessels help assisted Allied forces of Dunkirk, which would become the largest military evacuation in history. On 6:57 PM Operation Dynamo code name for the evacuation of British forces from Dunkirk took place. Hitler also ordered his army forces towards Du... |
why do bytes use metric prefixes (giga, mega, etc) if they don't follow metric standards? | Computers like powers of 2, and people decided that 2^10 = 1024 was close enough to 1000 to use the kilo- prefix.
But then some marketers came along, and decided they could make hard drives look bigger if they used 1000 for kilo instead of 1024. So things got confusing.
There are some alternate prefices, kibi-, mibi-, and gibi-, that have been proposed use with powers of 1024, keeping kilo-, mega- and giga- for powers of 1000, but they are not commonly used. | [
"BULLET::::- Prefixes for bytes are now used in strictly decimal meaning (as opposed to their binary meaning) when describing disk space, such that an indicated file size of 1 MB corresponds to 1 million bytes, as commonly used by hard disk manufacturers.\n",
"A metric prefix is a unit prefix that precedes a basi... |
Was there a moral justification given in ancient India for the practice of slavery? | Slavery as in West (west of Indus) never existed in India until Muslim conquests into India(Legally). There were no Historical stories which mention about slavery, other than few anecdotes.
Due to high population and economical/social segregation of Varna system, Slavery as seen in west was observed in the west although , Dasee(women who are dedicated to temple or queens) are not uncommon.
Traditionally slavery was never justified by religion in Indian sub continent . | [
"There are some very notable differences between the way ancient punishment was to be administered and how modern punishment is administered in Hindu societies. If a criminal were to confess to a crime, he would received half of the prescribed punishment in ancient India; however in modern India, confessing does no... |
what prevents us from just arranging protrons, electrons and neutrons together in any way we like to create any elements we want and make anything we want out of nothing? | It takes a *lot* of energy to attach and rearrange those pieces. Think about burning a log: you're rearranging the *chemicals* by changing the bonds between different atoms, so that you turn cellulose into carbon dioxide and water (and some other byproducts). Doing so requires you to add energy to the system (a match) and produces excess energy. Or electrolysis, which is using electricity to turn water (H20) into hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2), which requires even more energy in and you get less energy out of it than you put into it.
The bonds between protons and neutrons is *much* stronger. How much stronger? [Here are some atoms being rearranged violently to form different chemicals](_URL_0_), and [here's some protons and neutrons being rearranged violently to form different atoms](_URL_1_). There is a *lot* more energy involved in making different elements compared to chemical changes. The technology to produce that energy and, more importantly, to control it simply doesn't exist at the moment.
EDIT: That said, this is pretty much exactly what particle accelerators do. That's how we "discover" more elements: we smash smaller elements together to form bigger elements. We just do that at a very very small scale (a few atoms at a time). But we use larger elements, which require less energy to get to fuse. We could conceivably get smaller elements to fuse, but it wouldn't be economical at all to do so. | [
"The RIS process can be used to ionize all elements on the periodic table, except helium and neon, using available lasers. In fact, it is possible to ionize most elements with a single laser set-up, thus enabling rapid switching from one element to another. In the early days, optical schemes from RIMS have been use... |
what was the reason to split programs into interpreters and compilers? | Compilers came first, they took your code and brought it down to machine code ahead of time so it can run directly on the processor quickly when you needed it to.
Compiling is/was a reasonably slow process and was done on slow equipment so it was good to do it in advance. You could optimize the code during the process as well, reorder some instructions for better hardware usage, and overall just make things run faster
An interpreted language runs on an interpreter, basically a precompiled program that takes what you've written, compiles and executes each line in order using precompiled function calls. There is little to no optimization being done because the code is read in at run time so if you access your array in a non-ideal fashion you're going to pay the price but a compiler would generally rearrange things so you end up accessing it in an ideal fashion
An interpreted language is going to be slower, you're running code on top of code and missing out on lots of optimization, but doesn't require precompiling in advance and porting the executable to the target hardware | [
"Compilers are not the only language processor used to transform source programs. An interpreter is computer software that transforms and then executes the indicated operations. The translation process influences the design of computer languages which leads to a preference of compilation or interpretation. In pract... |
how do some studies (referenced) come to the conclusion that smoking marijuana is not harmful to the human body? | Smoking might induce the body to produce more blood than otherwise, but so would doing something like donating blood. Unless we are to accept that the Red Cross is harming donors it wouldn't be reasonable to consider the minor monoxide poisoning to qualify as a harm on such a report. | [
"Exposure to marijuana may have biologically-based physical, mental, behavioral and social health consequences and is \"associated with diseases of the liver (particularly with co-existing hepatitis C), lungs, heart, eyesight and vasculature\" according to a 2013 literature review by Gordon and colleagues. The asso... |
Alexander the Great marched all the way to India. How did he supply his army? | So Alexander the Great's great cause he conquered the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Until he passed over the Indus, all the lands he had conquered had either been Persian satrapies or at least within the Persian orbit. This included everything from Thrace, the Levant, Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, and Persia itself, all highly developed societies with an organized and ancient tradition of rule.
Though every generation saw its share of separatist movements, Persian satrapies were generally quiescent and obedient to Persian rule. Once Alexander showed up as an unstoppable menace however, Persian satraps would often betray the Persian central authority and surrender themselves and their services to the conqueror. The political result of Alexander's conquests being that satraps were either trusted Greek advisors placed to the position by Alexander or they were holdovers from the preceding Persian state. Further, the officials serving within state ministries continued to hail from the local area, as they had under the Achaemenids.
With Alexander's attention focused on his military conquests, oversight of his empire was slack as long as the necessary materiel and soldiers arrived for his campaigning. Alexander notoriously conscripted men from his conquered provinces (much like the Persians had) and expected to collect the same sort of tax revenue as his predecessors. But with his constant warfare, he wasn't going to conduct a full audit of his empire's finances.
Satraps realized this. Basic quotients of money and goods traveled to Alexander or back to Macedon on Persia's famous road system. But beyond what was needed to slake Alex's immediate demands, the administrators of the Persian bureaucracy could act nigh indiscriminately. The Macedonian army wasn't traveling through to set up a longstanding, permanent civilization; they moved at lightning speed, conquering a continental empire in less than a decade. Thus the local politicking of each court, in Susa, in Sardis, in Babylonia, went completely unchecked. Corruption spread as the only state obligations were to Alexander, a foreign conqueror who moved increasingly further away. Sometimes, they revolted, and Alexander executed several of them for this (Arrian VI.26) on his way back from India. Normally, however, they sent goods where they needed to go as the state apparatus built up by Darius and Artaxerxes could easily handle both completing Alexander's limited fiscal desires and fleecing their own pockets.
In addition to receiving replenishment from centralized redistribution Alexander's army could expect to collect sustenance and good grace from any ruler through whose lands it passed. There was of course the underlying coercive aspect to parking the greatest empire the world had ever known next to anybody's palace, but most kings, satraps, or rajs (if that's what they were called yet). When local supplies were limited, such as in the Central Asian steppelands, high mountain passes in the winter, or in the Gedrosian Desert, his army had serious problems with attrition. In sum, they were a much more live off the land type army, though they did it in a rather "civilized," rather than Hunnic fashion.
Sources:
Paul Cartledge's *Alexander the Great*
Arrian: _URL_0_
Seriously, check Arrian out. Alexander brought a bunch of historians with him to document his conquests, and what gets passed down to us is nothing short of pulp fiction. It paints Alex as a mega badass who successively beats Achilles, Hercules, and Dionysus in his feats.
Duncan Ryan *The Achaemenid Empire* -super fast breeze through Achaemenid history. Not too much content, but does give a rough trajectory of their empire. I recently read it just to cover my bases as I begin to do more research into Near Eastern history | [
"Alexander's march east put him in confrontation with the Nanda Empire of Magadha and the Gangaridai of Bengal. According to the Greek sources, the Nanda army was supposedly five times larger than the Macedonian army. His army, exhausted, homesick, and anxious by the prospects of having to further face large Indian... |
When showing teeth (in art, photograph and portraits) became culturally acceptable? And why it wasn't before? | The first question to ask is what message the portrait is intended to convey. Through to the eighteenth century, portraits were primarily commissioned by either the clergy or the nobility and so reflected the social norms and customs of those two groups. In particular, open-mouthed smiling in art was considered somewhat lewd and unattractive. Women especially were encouraged to demonstrate restraint in displaying their emotion; coyness, grace and subtlety were the goal of all portrait commissions of young noble ladies.
But once you step outside of portraits of the saints, of clergy and of nobility and look at depictions of less "serious" folk, of people *expected* to show lewdness or lack of restraint, you can find tons of open-mouthed smiles and toothy grins. For example:
* Court jesters ([1](_URL_19_), [2](_URL_0_)),
* Court dwarfs ([1](_URL_17_), [2](_URL_9_))
* Children ([1](_URL_8_), [2](_URL_7_))
* The drunk ([1](_URL_14_), [2](_URL_10_))
* The insane
* The poor ([1](_URL_16_))
* Musicians ([1](_URL_18_), [2](_URL_13_))
* And, well, the artists themselves. ([Leyster](_URL_4_), [Liotard](_URL_12_), [Rembrandt](_URL_6_), and the Reddit-famous [Ducreux](_URL_15_))
You can also find nice wide smiles in the art of non-European cultures. There are several Mesoamerican sculptures of grinning ball-players ([1](_URL_3_), [2](_URL_20_)), for example.
Back to Western art. Informality *starts* to creep in once art opens up to the middle class, who are more willing to buy portraits showing a little more geniality. ([1](_URL_5_), [2](_URL_1_)) The truly toothy grins are reserved for when the subjects themselves are supposed to be the object of ridicule - [political caricatures](_URL_11_) or just [funny cartoons](_URL_21_).
Open-mouthed grins in photographs of important figures are primarily a twentieth-century development. Aside from the change in acceptable levels of informality, there are two other factors to consider. First off, dentistry. It was not particularly good for most of the periods we've been discussing. Compounding this, the models used by the artists were drawn primarily from the pool of prostitutes and destitutes - neither of which are famed for good oral hygeine even among their contemporaries. Look at the mouths of Ducreux or Liotard above, where they're not making an effort to prettify the subject. Lots of black discolouration and gaps. Very unsightly.
Secondly, early photography required sitters to remain entirely still due to the long exposure time. Holding your mouth open and motionless for that long is a burdensome task if you don't have a specific reason to do so, and the results would look rather fake regardless. The development of film technology (pardon the pun) allowed for more spontaneous and candid shots. Politicians largely still wanted to project an aura of sober authority most of the time, but you can find the odd glimpse of a cheeky grin or a laugh ("[DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN](_URL_2_)" springs to mind immediately). In the U.S., it's Kennedy who truly popularised flashing your pearly whites for the camera - it worked towards the image he was trying to put across of youthful vigour (when the truth was actually somewhat different behind the scenes). Since then, bright white smiles and good hair have been fixtures for successful Presidential campaigns.
So, in summary and in decreasing order of importance - changing attitudes towards informality, the invention of polaroid and digital cameras, prettier smiles. | [
"Although oral hygiene was nowhere near today’s standards, white teeth were prized by the Romans, and so false teeth, made from bone, ivory and paste, were popular items. Ovid shed light on the way white teeth were viewed in society when he wrote the statement, \"You can do yourself untold damage when you laugh if ... |
what makes white wines "dry"? | There is a spectrum of wines! Both red and white have it.
They range from dry to sweet. That's how you get semi-sweet, etc.
It's determined by how much natural sugar from the grapes is left in the wine. You can stop the fermentation process early to make a sweeter wine (or add sugar afterwards). If they ferment until there's no sugar left, it's dry.
That's how you get dry wine.
| [
"The dry white wine is a wine without sugar (the sugar ratio is generally less than 4 grams per litre). It is a wine very difficult to develop because the balance of the wine is based on only two parameters: acidity and alcohol. This is the wine that the consumer refers to when he speaks of white wine without givin... |
A question about intelligent life. | With the exception of some very very exotic and speculative reproductive technologies, no.
Evolution is just long-term adaptation to our environment. If, say, our brains start getting smaller because we can offload thinking to technology, then that *is* the process of evolution in action. If the main standard for mate selection becomes having a great OKCupid profile, then there will be an evolutionary pressure for good writing skills. | [
"Design that favors the development of intelligent life, argues Behe, is not only demanded by \"the most recent findings concerning biological complexity\", but also by discoveries in the fields of chemistry (he uses the example of the peculiar, life-supporting structure of water), and of cosmology (referring to th... |
If I have two quantuam entangled particles at large distance, can I change the state of the far-away particle by changing the state of my near-by particle? | No. Entanglement is nothing more than a correlation between the outcomes of measurements. If you measure the state of the first particle, then you will be able to predict with certainty the outcome of a similar measurement on the second particle. It has nothing to do with controlling the second particle with the first. | [
"Now, if the initial state is very localized in position, it will be very spread out in momentum, and thus we expect that the wave function will rapidly spread out, and the connection with the classical trajectories will be lost. When Planck's constant is small, however, it is possible to have a state that is well ... |
What's the deal with the pyramids in bosnia? | You'll be interested in my response [here](_URL_0_), as well as the discussion elsewhere in the thread. I and the others definitely welcome follow-up questions. It's a claim backed by a few people with monetary investments (read: tourism) in the site, based on results that have not been replicated by any one else. I'm also going to sacrifice my integrity and vouch for the quality of the details in the Wiki article. | [
"The 'Bosnian Pyramid' project is alleged to have done considerable damage to the archaeological heritage of the area, which contains ruins of a medieval capital, Roman observation post, and earlier remains. Anthony Harding, Professor of Archaeology at Exeter University and then-president of the European Associatio... |
Is beauty a human invention, or do animals differentiate in a similar way? | This is typically called [sexual selection](_URL_0_) and yes, it occurs in many species of animals (humans included). One good example is the tail of a male peacock. The color, size, luster etc, of the plumage works to attract the females of the species (peahens). This makes for a pretty good example because we too can appreciate the beauty of a peacock's tail. | [
"In evolutionary aesthetics theory, there is evidence that perceptions of beauty are determined by natural selection and therefore Darwinian; that things, aspects of people and landscapes considered beautiful are typically found in situations likely to give enhanced survival of the perceiving human's genes.\n",
"... |
how the mpaa can decide what i get to watch? | Because all the major movie producers agree to listen to what the MPAA says. There's nothing stopping some rogue producer from ignoring them, but you'd have a hard time finding that producer's movies. | [
"The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) film rating system is used in the United States and its territories to rate a film's suitability for certain audiences based on its content. The MPAA rating system is a voluntary scheme that is not enforced by law; films can be exhibited without a rating, although c... |
Please join us in /r/HistoryNetwork for an Historical IAmA in 190 with Prime Minister Winston Churchill shortly after the Battle of Dunkirk | Might just have to have a look at that... | [
"On 31 May 1940, Churchill flew again to Paris for a meeting of the SWC, this time with Clement Attlee and Generals John Dill and Hastings Ismay. Discussions were held at the French Ministry of War on the deteriorating military situation with a French delegation consisting of Reynaud, Philippe Pétain and Maxime Wey... |
how did samsung not notice note 7s exploding in the testing | There are 35 worldwide reports of explosions or fires from Note 7s, 2.5 million were sold. That's 0.14% that have had a problem. Its very possible that its just bad luck none of the phones they tested had the issue. | [
"In the wake of the recall, Samsung, as well as UL LLC, Exponent, and TÜV Rheinland performed internal testing and analysis to determine the exact causes of the defects. Samsung released its official findings on 23 January 2017. Concurrently, the company announced that all of its future battery-operated products wo... |
Can you tell me what this is that fell from the sky? | Really great video that should put bugs above in perspective. (Starts slow for first minute but get super interesting) _URL_0_ (1:27 for your answer) | [
"The original stone is believed to have been approximately the size of an automobile traveling towards the Earth at more than 10 miles per second. The fall occurred in the early morning hours of February 8, 1969. At 01:05 a huge, brilliant fireball approached from the southwest and lit the sky and ground for hundre... |
network ports and its exact purpose | No, no. Ports are used so the **device**, identified by it's IP address on the network, knows which application should handle the data, *not* so that the network knows where to send the data.
It's essentially the same as a ship harbour - the IP address is the coordinates of the harbour, and the Port is the... well, the port the ship should dock at.
You shouldn't get multiple applications sending or listening on the same respective ports, however a single application can send or receive on many ports at the same time.
A practical example is the internet. Most HTTP websites are served via port 80, and most HTTPS websites are served via port 443. Other websites, for whatever reason, might be served on another port, a common alternate to port 80 is port 8080. In your web browser you would navigate to _URL_0_ in order to access that resource (note the colon).
There is a sort of 'good practice' when it comes to assigning ports to applications, but it is not mandatory, and hence the server administrator can select any free port they like to serve data on. | [
"The port numbers in the range from 0 to 1023 (0 to 2 − 1) are the \"well-known ports\" or \"system ports\". They are used by system processes that provide widely used types of network services. On Unix-like operating systems, a process must execute with superuser privileges to be able to bind a network socket to a... |
israel-palestine war. which country started and why? | well, this could be a brief answer to your question _URL_0_ | [
"The 1947–1949 Palestine war, known in Israel as the War of Independence (, \"Milkhemet Ha'Atzma'ut\") and in Arabic as The Nakba (\"lit. Catastrophie,\" , \"al-Nakba\"), was fought in the territory of Palestine under the British Mandate. It is the first war of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the broader Arab–... |
how do payday loans pay so fast? | Many Australian banks will offer loan money to customers as soon as they're approved (at least for personal loans, mortgages can be more complex). Transfers between accounts within a bank are also usually instant.
What often takes a long time is transfers between banks. [This is complicated](_URL_0_).
Payday loan companies can bypass this issue by having agreements/accounts with the banks so any transfers they make to customers are within the same bank network. | [
"Payday loans originated in the United States and have been growing quickly in the UK market over the last five years. They offer a relatively small amount of capital (usually up to £500) for a short term, often under two weeks on average (or until \"payday\").\n",
"A payday loan (also called a payday advance, sa... |
Why are certain people always prone to the virus that causes warts? | Viral infections such as those caused by [HPV](_URL_0_) often exhibit latent, asymptomatic phases. The virus may remain in the host for many years, cycling through periods of heightened activity before being suppressed [but not cleared entirely] by the immune system.
So, to answer your question: it's not that they are necessarily predisposed to re-infection, they simply never cleared the infection to begin with. | [
"Warts are caused by infection with a type of human papillomavirus (HPV). Factors that increase the risk include use of public showers, working with meat, eczema and a weak immune system. The virus is believed to enter the body through skin that has been damaged slightly. A number of types exist, including \"common... |
why hasn't the united states adopted a propotional representative congress? | It has to do with the federal nature of our government. One of the core goals of our Constitution was to give all regions of the country a voice in the government. The way that that was done was to create a bunch of separate, winner-take-all districts. | [
"Representation in the United States Congress is \"geographically based\". Moreover, the Founders explicitly designed the House of Representatives to be an institution that reflects local and regional concerns. These inescapable facts, and the actual history and actions of Congress itself, led many prominent histor... |
modern art...i just don't get it. | You know how everyone in your class always tries to colour in the lines? Because pictures always look better when you colour in the lines, right? And the sky should be blue and the grass should be green and if you follow all those rules your pictures will always be pretty. ...And they'll all kind of look like everyone else's.
Well, modern art is that kid that said, "Meh. I'm drawing however I want. I don't care about your stupid rules. And my pictures are still going to be pretty!"
Postmodern art is the kid who saw that and said, "What? There's no rules? Cool! I'm going to pee on my desk!"
| [
"Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of experimentation. M... |
How do printers pick out one piece of paper if they are all stacked up? | Rubber rollers with a lot of friction, spread across the sheet. This is really easy for thin sheets. (text weight paper)
Sometimes on the bigger industrial printers they are air-fed. A blast of air separates the top sheet and guides it foreword to a rubber roller.
I work with these printers. | [
"Single-sided printers can print both sides of the paper by manually removing and turning over a stack of sheets after one side is printed; however, the user has to manually turn the print job over and re-initialize the printing of the document, with care to ensure that the order and orientation is correct.\n",
"... |
what keeps mail delivery people from taking your packages? | Aside from the fact the packages are tracked and logged, it is unlikely an individual would want to risk there income for a £10 loot crate | [
"There is a small amount of storage fee (1-2 Thai Baht) when picking up the mail or parcel. Keep in mind that the recipient must track the delivery status by themself via Tracking number provided. So it is recommended to deliver using Registered mail or EMS. Since regular mail delivery service does not provide a tr... |
Many galaxies are moving away or towards us. Are there any galaxies that aren't moving considerably, or have more sideways movement than in and out? | Measuring the sideways motion of galaxies isn't something we can really do. However there are nearby galaxies with have negligible velocity (relative to us) in the radial direction; in these cases, you can safely assume that their sideways motion (relative to us) is the larger component. | [
"In models of the expanding universe, the farther galaxies are from each other, the faster they drift apart. This receding is not due to motion \"through\" space, but rather to the expansion of space itself. For example, galaxies far away from Earth appear to be moving away from the Earth with a speed proportional ... |
what exactly causes websites to display special characters incorrectly (often quotes or ampersands) | Different character encoding standards.
Your computer only recognizes the number that's being sent, not the character. Computers only understand zeros and ones. A computer will assign each letter a different set of 8 zeros and ones, but problems happen when two computers use a different system of matching these numbers to the letters. Unicode is the most common system, but there are many others. The guy writing the site is using a weird set of numbers for his symbols and probably doesn't know it.
Google Chrome was unable to detect what encoding this site is using, but it's not Unicode or the European standard. | [
"Because many fonts are designed to fulfill the WGL4 set, this set of characters is likely to work (display as other than replacement glyphs) on many computer systems. For instance you are probably able to see all the characters in the table below, compared to the many missing characters that may be seen in other a... |
was meat considered to be something just for the upper class in Europe 900 years ago? | Not at all. Medieval peasants grew livestock and used their produce for their own sustenance - chickens, pigs, goats, and cows were all consumed by members of all classes. If they lived near a river or the sea, they would also probably eat fish as well.
The difference between classes, as far as culinary was concerned, was the higher classes' ability to get stuff like spices. These sorts of things usually grew outside of Europe and had to be imported by merchants, thus becoming very rare and precious. | [
"European consumption of meat remained exceptional by world standards, and during the period high levels generally moved down the social scale. But the poor continued to rely mainly on eggs, dairy products, and pulses for protein. Often they did better in the less populated regions, where wild game and fish could s... |
why has china not taken over mongolia and korea but shows irredentism when it comes to tibet, taiwan, islands in south china sea? | This is a [progress of China's borders](_URL_0_) through out history.
Notice both Tibet and Mongolia were part of China's Qing (1644 to 1911) dynasty. China's Yuan (1271–1368) dynasty was actually Mongols, which of course includes Mongolia. China broke apart into several warring factions after 1911. Tibet, Mongolia and other outlaying regions became self governing. After communist took over in 1949, their first order of business was to reclaim Tibet, Mongolia, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Taiwan and Hong Kong were both islands protected by the US/British fleet. Russia forced Mao to give up Mongolia as a condition of alliance.
Korea was considered a vessel state to China's ming (1368-1644) dynasty. As in they would contribute soldiers and pay tribute to Ming. But they were always self governing. After China was taken over by the Manchus and established Qing dynasty, Korea did not became a vessel state to Qing. | [
"Since the 1960s, China had considered the Soviet Union the principal threat to its security; lesser threats were posed by long standing border disputes with Vietnam and India. China's territorial claims and economic interests made the South China Sea an area of strategic importance to China. Although China sought ... |
Where did Yiddish as a language originate? | א שיינעם דאנק פור די שאלה!
Yiddish is, as the podcast and others have said, closely related to German. It's got loans from Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages, and occasionally romance loans (beyond what exists in German dialects), and it's got pronunciation differences like a German dialect would. It formed by Jews in German-speaking areas migrating east but still speaking Yiddish, forming eastern Yiddish, while those that stayed had their language diverge from German and spoke western Yiddish, which is extinct.
Measuring mutual intelligibility is difficult. I've seen lots of German-speakers say they can figure out Yiddish, but usually that's standard Yiddish on YouTube or something. Colloquial Yiddish has lots more loans from other languages and can have funkier vowel shifts than standard Yiddish. Yiddish speakers can't always understand each other!
It's also easy to construct a Yiddish sentence unreadable to Germans because of vocabulary. Like "der rov leynt a seyfer" means "the rabbi reads a book", but rov, leynt, and seyfer are not German words. Or an actual example from /r/Yiddish, "kulem hobn nekudes toyves", meaning "everybody's got good points"--all words but "hobn" are loans | [
"Yiddish is a major linguistic creation of the Jewish Diaspora, originating in what is now Germany. It is one of many languages that emerged as a result of the migration of the Jewish people throughout Europe, alongside Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), Italkian (Judeo-Italian), Knaanic (Judeo-Slavic), Yevanic (Judeo-Greek),... |
if vegetables are good for you, why do soda, chips, and other "junk food" taste better? | Sugar, salt, and fat are critical for the human body to work. Our brain users more sugar than any other part, salt is needed to conduct electricity, and fat is of course an excellent store of energy.
You and I are unfortunately a very old model, stuck in modern times. Human beings haven't had a major evolution in 35,000 years. We are essentially designed to be the perfect hunter gatherers, but that's not been our role in a very long time. Our tastes turn us on to exactly what our ancestors needed the most, but in the age of the Big Mac that's exactly what we have too much of. | [
"Most vegetables are low- or moderate-carbohydrate foods (in some low-carbohydrate diets, fiber is excluded because it is not a nutritive carbohydrate). Some vegetables, such as potatoes, carrots, maize (corn) and rice are high in starch. Most low-carbohydrate diet plans accommodate vegetables such as broccoli, spi... |
notre dame is getting lots of donations to rebuild and they say it's not enough. wouldn't a world landmark be covered in insurance for catastrophe like this? | From my understanding, neither the maximum amount of insurance possible on the church, nor the insurance bond of the construction company doing the restorations, come anywhere close to the BILLIONS it will take to rebuild. | [
"On Tuesday 16th April 2019, the company's Chief Executive Officer, Patrick Pouyanne pledged that Total will make a €100 million contribution to the reconstruction of the Notre-Dame cathedral after it was extensively damaged in a fire. \n",
"Since 1905, France's cathedrals (including Notre-Dame) have been owned b... |
What was civilian life like during WW2? During WW2 in US was life in country more or less "business as usual"? | It was fairly different. Though as the war went on, people took the restrictions less seriously and there was always a thriving black market.
The main differences were the number of men leaving to join the military was very different, the lack of military age males meant for the first time large numbers of women joined the work force, and they joined in large range of jobs, blue to white collar.
They rationed food, gas, oil, and tires.
No one went hungry, but many goods were hard to get, meat and fresh vegetables were more scarce, and this prompted people planting "victory gardens" in the yards or even open lots in their neighborhoods.
The gas rationing was serious enough, that unless you had a job that required you used a car, you really had to cut back on driving. Tires were rationed, and didn't last as long back then.
There was a black market on ration books and hard to find goods. Gas ration coupons were a very popular item in these markets.
Everyone knew at least someone who was off fighting, most extended families had all their young men off fighting. In some cases they would not come home for several years, and the only form of communication for most people was letters. mail to and from GIs could take months.
News was via Radio and newsreels at movies. TV had just begun in the US, but broadcasts were suspended during the war.
Some jobs had waivers, so they could not be drafted, police, firemen, civilian pilots, etc. These people could still join of their own accord, and many did leaving many cities with thinner police and firefighting forces. In some cases retirees came out of retirement to help fill positions.
Edit to add more.
ALL automobile manufacturing was suspending, so even though getting gas to drive wasn't impossible, getting a good car got harder as the years wore on. Right after the war the car makers went back to the 1941 models and it wasn't until the late 40s new redesigned models started coming out.
Anyplace there was a lot of factories, or a port, or both, like the DC, the CA, Bay Area, Washington state around seattle, LA and San Diego etc, all had housing shortages. Mix in military bases already there or that were built, and you had lots of people packed into the cities.
Many companies that made consumer goods went to all military production. You were not going to get you hands on a new radio for the house, or a new fridge, or even a toaster or sewing machine. | [
"As well, during World War II, the war effort created work in the cities, and returning soldiers were less willing to return to small communities. With the rise in consumerism, \"places like Cheapside...were casualties of an upwardly mobile society\".\n",
"Inside the United States, every aspect of life from polit... |
what is the difference between knitting and crocheting? | Knitting uses two needles
_URL_1_
crocheting uses a hook
_URL_0_
| [
"Knitting is the process of using two or more needles to loop yarn into a series of interconnected loops in order to create a finished garment or some other type of fabric. The word is derived from \"knot\", thought to originate from the Dutch verb \"knutten\", which is similar to the Old English \"cnyttan\", “to k... |
Were US troops in WWII required to have haircuts? | If you mean buzzcuts in the modern sense, no; at least not for the US Army. They absolutely, however, had grooming standards; its a basic tenet of military hygiene. Hair had to be short at the sides and back; away from the collars and not covering the ears. [Haircuts happened when they could](_URL_2_) and the frequency of them were never guaranteed. However, especially in the US, battalions could rotate off the line with frequency at the end of a drive or series of attacks; so obviously it isn't a case of 'hair growing back.' One has to remember that 'being at the front' doesn't mean you're constantly dodging bullets; it could mean your Battalion is in division reserve, or that you're in a low-activity area; lulls happened even in the high tempo operations of WWII.
The idea of 'high tops' in hairstyles isn't out of the ordinary across any armies of WWII; the general rule of ['short sides, above the collar in the back'](_URL_1_) generally applies to every branch and army, with obvious variations.
Finally, and as always, lets never forget that Band of Brothers is an interpretation of a book made for our entertainment; and such content will always have inconsistencies, as myself and /u/rittermeister have [discussed before](_URL_0_).
| [
"Before World War One men generally had longer hair and beards. However, short hair on men was introduced in World War One for soldiers. Slaves and defeated armies were often required to shave their heads. The trench warfare in 1914 to 1918 exposed men to flea and lice infestations, which prompted the order to cut ... |
Could polar bears and penguins be introduced to their respective opposite poles (south, north) and survive? | Its unlikely that they would survive. [Polar bears](_URL_5_) are adapted to eating seals, but its very hard to hunt them in the open water so they hunt on land. Two common ways of catching seals include: crashing through the ice using their paws and kill the seals in their dens or stalking air holes and kill seals as they surface for air. These conditions are not as common in Antarctica because it is an area where land is covered in ice, with no seals under it but the Arctic is ocean covered in ice with seals under it. (There are seals in Antarctica, they would just be harder to hunt). Of course assuming you transferred the polar bears to areas with penguin colonies they would have pretty good (but seasonal) food source - unless it is the [Emperor](_URL_3_) which winters in Antarctica. But over time, the penguins being defenceless against polar bears would probably be exposed to intensive hunting pressure from which they may be extirpated from the region.
Its probable that polar bears could survive Antarctica temperatures - they have many [adaptations to the cold weather](_URL_4_) - thick fur, lots of fat, skin that is black ~~to absorb the sun's heat and clear fur to allow the rays in~~. I do not know the absolute lowest temperature that a polar bear can survive but I do know that [Antarctica](_URL_0_) experiences colder temperatures than the [Arctic](_URL_1_).
"The temperature in Antarctica has reached −89 °C (−129 °F)...Temperatures reach a minimum of between −80 °C (−112 °F) and −90 °C (−130 °F) in the interior in winter and reach a maximum of between 5 °C (41 °F) and 15 °C (59 °F) near the coast in summer. And Antarctica is colder than the Arctic for two reasons. First, much of the continent is more than 3 kilometres (2 mi) above sea level, and temperature decreases with elevation. Second, the Arctic Ocean covers the north polar zone: the ocean's relative warmth is transferred through the icepack and prevents temperatures in the Arctic regions from reaching the extremes typical of the land surface of Antarctica." and from the Arctic article...". Average winter temperatures can be as low as −40 °C (−40 °F), and the coldest recorded temperature is approximately −68 °C (−90 °F)." So polar bears if transferred to Antarctica would possibly have to face temperatures as low as −80 °C which is colder then what they are normally exposed to at −40 °C. This could potentially be problematic, but not unsurmountable.
The problem with penguins is that they are essentially adapted to living in an environment where they have very few land predators - only sometimes are eggs/chicks killed by predatory seagulls. Adults main predator is killer whales from the ocean. Anyway... penguins in the Arctic would have a hard time of making it because of land predators like the polar bear, arctic fox or wolf. Even if they lived on cliffs like [puffins](_URL_2_) they can't fly so they would not be able to get to and from the sea. It would be better if they were transferred to a location - island - where no land predators can get them, but bare rock is available in summer for nesting (if the species requires). In terms of food there would be plenty of fish in the Arctic ocean for them to hunt, probably something like pollock. Also, temperatures in the arctic are warmer, so they wouldn't have to deal with being too cold so much as being too warm, especially in the summer months if they live in areas where it gets above what they might normally be exposed too.
| [
"Although almost all penguin species are native to the Southern Hemisphere, they are not found only in cold climates, such as Antarctica. In fact, only a few species of penguin actually live so far south. Several species live in the temperate zone; one, the Galápagos penguin, lives as far north as the Galápagos Isl... |
why do smaller animals seem to live shorter lives and larger animals longer? such as a fly compared to a whale | Typically organisms with shorter life spans have a survival strategy based on rapid and mass reproduction. A fly for example would be expected to grow many larvae to maturity, mate, and lay their own eggs within a month because flies die all the time to various things. If a fly needed to survive for 5 years before it could reproduce then it would never work as the mass of flies required every generation would be impossible to achieved. From the other side it is equally untenable as there is no way to grow a whale up to full size in 28 days. There simply isn't enough available food even if the organism could grow that quickly. | [
"In mammals, larger animals tend to have longer lifespans than smaller ones; the Brandt's bat is the most extreme outlier to this pattern, with lifespans exceeding 40 years in the wild while only weighing .\n",
"The life expectancy is typically twenty to thirty years; as in many mammals, smaller species often hav... |
modern vs. post-modern | Modernism was a cultural movement that began around 100 years ago. Modernist writers are the folks who rejected big, dramatic stories about glorious heroes defeating sinister villains, chosen people going on exciting adventures, comedies about elaborate social disasters, etc and instead focused on intimate and in-depth characterisation, subtlety, social realism, and on the psychological side of things. If you've ever read Virginia Woolf, she is a great example of modernism; she wrote what was later named "stream of consciousness", where the book is just a character's brain being poured out, unfiltered, directly onto the paper. It came about during a time when psychology was just taking off as a field, and took from that. Modernists deliberately broke the established rules or preferences to achieve the impact they wanted; this passage by James Joyce is a great example of all of the above.
> Yes because he never did a thing like that before as ask to get his breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs since the City Arms hotel when he used to be pretending to be laid up with a sick voice doing his highness to make himself interesting for that old faggot Mrs Riordan that he thought he had a great leg of and she never left us a farthing all for masses for herself and her soul greatest miser ever was actually afraid to lay out 4d for her methylated spirit telling me all her ailments she had too much old chat in her about politics and earthquakes and the end of the world let us have a bit of fun first God help the world if all the women were her sort down on bathingsuits and lownecks of course nobody wanted her to wear them I suppose she was pious because no man would look at her twice I hope Ill never be like her a wonder she didnt want us to cover our faces but she was a welleducated woman certainly and her gabby talk about Mr Riordan here and Mr Riordan there I suppose he was glad to get shut of her and her dog smelling my fur and always edging to get up under my petticoats especially then still I like that in him polite to old women like that and waiters and beggars too hes not proud out of nothing but not always if ever he got anything really serious the matter with him its much better for them to go into a hospital where everything is clean but I suppose Id have to dring it into him for a month yes and then wed have a hospital nurse next thing on the carpet have him staying there till they throw him out or a nun maybe like the smutty photo he has shes as much a nun as Im not yes because theyre so weak and puling when theyre sick they want a woman to get well if his nose bleeds youd think it was O tragic
So part of the goal of modernism was to be "true", to be "accurate" and show things as they really were, with all the stagey drama stripped away. And that became quite popular for a while.
**Post**-modernism is a movement that popped up in response to how popular modernism had gotten. Post-modernism's essence is basically "Yo modernism, fiction *can't* be true, *can't* be accurate." Post-modernists threw away the goal of realism that modernism had, but also threw away the "convincing illusion" goal that earlier art and fiction had. Rather than using fiction to represent reality, or using fiction to create fantasy, post-modernists used fiction to mock fiction, or point out how silly fiction was. The characters in a post-modernist book may be aware of their status as fictional characters, and ask the author to make sure they have good fates. Or the author might just cut a chapter out and say "Just imagine whatever you want happening here." Post-modern artists might just slap their name on a urinal and say "There, that's my new piece of art." It is basically a cultural movement that points out how silly/pointless previous cultural movements are.
Modernist/post-modernist movements exist in architecture and other fields as well, but I don't know anything about those. Presumably it is, in some way, the same essential concept as modernist/post-modernist literature.
Also note that post-modern is a pretty vague term, different people have used it in different ways, so it's not as clear and agreed-upon a label as something like 'romanticism' is. Moe Szyslak defines it as "weird for the sake of weird" and in casual conversation, more often than not, that's what it means. | [
"Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era), as well as the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the Renaissancein the \"Age of Reason\" of 17th-century thought and the 18th-century \"Enlightenment\... |
When doing statistics, is too large of a sample size ever a bad thing? | The only way I can think of would be if your sample size is larger than your population of interest. For example, if you want to figure something out about a population of 10,000 people and you poll 20,000 people, you've clearly polled at least 10,000 people that are not part of your population of interest. | [
"Larger sample sizes generally lead to increased precision when estimating unknown parameters. For example, if we wish to know the proportion of a certain species of fish that is infected with a pathogen, we would generally have a more precise estimate of this proportion if we sampled and examined 200 rather than 1... |
It seems to be a commonly held belief that only the richest american families owned slaves. Is this true or just another case of southern revisionist? | Adapted from [an older answer](_URL_1_):
It's a myth that "only the richest American families" in southern states could own slaves, which is perpetuated mainly by Confederate apologists hellbent on arguing that the Civil War wasn't about slavery.
Spoiler alert: it was about slavery.
*Many* people in the antebellum South owned slaves. I wrote an answer on this awhile ago, adapted from the multiple times it's come up before. Before we get to that, here's a handy chart adapted from the 1860 census that looks at percentages of families who were enslavers, and percentages of enslaved people, in the seceding states and border states:
## Enslavers and enslaved population by state
### Seceding states
State | Enslaver families by % of population | Enslaved people as % of population
---|---|----
Alabama | 35 | 45
Arkansas | 20 | 26
Florida | 34 | 44
Georgia | 37 | 44
Louisiana | 29 | 47
Mississippi | 49 | 55
North Carolina | 28 | 33
South Carolina | 46 | 57
Tennessee | 25 | 25
Texas | 28 | 30
Virginia | 26 | 31
### Border states (did not secede)
State | Enslaver families by % of population | Enslaved people as % of population
---|---|----
Delaware | 3 | 2
Kentucky | 23 | 20
Maryland | 12 | 13
Missouri | 13 | 10
[The answer I referenced above](_URL_7_):
It's funny you mention Twain, because he classified lies into three categories: lies, damn lies, and statistics. That statistic you quote is used by Confederate apologists to make it sound like the war wasn't about slavery. (It was about slavery.) To answer your second question first, while many enslaved people worked on slave labor camps (Monticello, Mount Vernon, etc), many households in the South owned "only" one or two enslaved people.
Adapted from [an older answer](_URL_4_):
> What percentage of whites owned slaves?
If you ask this question in this way, you'll get what seems to be a low number because it counts only property owners, who are heads of households, and not families/households who would benefit from the slave. (Think about it in this way: in my household I own a car, but my wife and child also benefit from my ownership of the car -- she drives it, he rides in it, we all use the groceries it brings home, etc.)
It also depends on whether you look at the percentage of slave owners (or slave-owning households) in the overall population of the U.S., or in slave states particularly.
So the better question is what percentage of *households* owned enslaved people. Here's a resource for the 1860 census which breaks down slave ownership by state: _URL_5_
I wrote about this awhile back in the context of a border state: _URL_0_
To expand on that just a bit, the reason why how you count slave ownership matters is that if you state the question as "what percentage of whites owned people in 1860", you get a number that's about 8 percent of families owning enslaved people. (See the 1860 census link for context.) That number is often used by Confederate apologists to "prove" that the war couldn't be about slavery, because such a low percentage of households owned enslaved people.
So now we get into some basic stats. The 8 percent number is accurate, but it's also misleading, because fully half the states in the United States banned slavery, and those states held well over twice the population of the southern states -- about 22 million in the North, about 13 million in the South. Further, in the South, about 4 million of the population were slaves. So 22 million people were ineligible to own enslaved people right away, plus there were about four million enslaved people themselves -- so the question has to center on the population eligible to own enslaved people, that is, the remaining 8.2 million.
If you take a look through that [census link](_URL_5_) it's quite illuminating; slaveholding families ranged from a low of three percent of the population in Delaware, to highs 46 percent in South Carolina and 49 percent in Mississippi. It's also interesting to look at enslaved people as percentage of population, where 57 percent of South Carolina's population and 55 percent of Mississippi's were enslaved people.
For more on this, see also these threads:
_URL_3_
_URL_6_
_URL_2_ | [
"Of the Founding Fathers of the United States, as defined by the historian Richard B. Morris, the Southerners were the major slaveholders, but Northerners also held them, generally in smaller number, as domestic servants. John Adams owned none. George Washington freed his own slaves in his will (his wife independen... |
Some mammals have internal testes (Elephants, Rhinoceroses, Cetaceans), how do they get around the difficulties that body heat imposes on sperm production? | This has more to do with the sperm than the testes.
Temperature tolerances of proteins can vary quite a bit with very small changes in the amino acid sequence used to make them. The bonds between amino acids not linked together by peptide bonds are typically pretty weak so the extra movement with temperature (the average **kinetic** energy of a substance) can rattle this long twisted string apart.
Animals with external testes have sperm that have proteins with lower heat tolerances and require a lower temp to be viable.
If the proteins of the sperm have a high enough tolerance, the testes can remain inside, which reproductively is advantageous (since they're less likely to be accidentally lost).
| [
"The mammalian male reproductive system contains two main divisions, the penis and the testicles, the latter of which is where sperm are produced. In humans, both of these organs are outside the abdominal cavity, but they can be primarily housed within the abdomen in other animals. For instance, a dog's penis is co... |
cryptology | People like to communicate. When we communicate, sometimes we tell each other secrets - things that nobody else should know.
If you are sending a message containing a secret to somebody you might fear that this message will fall into the wrong hands and the wrong people will know your secret. So to outsmart the bad guys you can modify your message to seem like gibberish to anybody else.
For example let's say your secret message is "I'm high". You can substitute the letter "h" with the letter "z" and your message will become "I'm zigz". You tell your buddy "listen, I don't want people to know I'm high, so when I write you messages I will swap the 'z' and 'h' letters.". If the wrong person gets the message they won't understand it.
Changing your message to seem like gibberish to other people is called encoding.
When the recipient receives that "gibberish" message and turns it back into a meaningful message, we say that he decodes the message.
Well obviously with a little detective work a person might find out that "I'm zigz" probably means "I'm high". So we use more complicated methods for encoding our messages, usually involving some complicated mathematics. But the idea is the same. | [
"Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties (called adversaries). More generally, it is about constructing and analyzing protocols that overcome the influence of adversaries and that are related to various aspects in information security such as da... |
Why do people (usually children) associate transparency with the colour white? | For children coloring, white and clear mean the same thing, on a white piece of paper. If they want to show something as white, they don't fill it in, it'll be the white of the paper. If they want to show something as clear, they'll leave it blank, and it'll be transparent to them. | [
"\"White\" is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light that stimulates all three types of color sensitive cone cells in the human eye in equal amounts and with high brightness compared to the surroundings. A white visual stimulation will be void of hue and grayness. White is the lightest possible color.\... |
- why does one get cravings? when one quits a drug/behavior, what's exactly happening when one senses a 'craving'? | When one does drugs or smoke or eat junk food, our brain responds by giving you a “feel good” feeling. This feeling is caused by chemicals aka neurotransmitters, in our body like dopamine and endorphins. Our brain remembers what caused us to feel this way and knows in the future what it needs to make yourself feel good like before ., which leads to cravings.
With quitting drugs, particularly opiates, painful or just unpleasant withdraw happens because our body grew accustomed or dependent on the drugs to make the body produce the feel good chemicals and it didn’t think it needed to produce anymore of its feel good chemicals on its own. Once the drugs stop, the body takes time to readjust and build its own supply back up on its own. ......in the mean time, the person is in agony.
| [
"\"Cue-induced wanting\" or \"cue-triggered wanting\", a form of craving that occurs in addiction, is responsible for most of the compulsive behavior that addicts exhibit. During the development of an addiction, the repeated association of otherwise neutral and even non-rewarding stimuli with drug consumption trigg... |
why must clothes irons be hot in order to serve their purpose ? | It's kinda like how you straighten hair the carbon bonds are weak in hair heat allows the breaking of bonds and forms it straight under the flat surface | [
"A clothes iron is a device that, when heated, is used to press clothes to remove creases and help prevent the spread of infectious disease. Domestic irons generally range in operating temperature from between to . It is named for the metal (iron) of which the device was historically made, and the use of it is gene... |
how do lottery ticket companies make sure their workers don't track down the winning tickets that they print? | A computer prints the numbers on the scratchoff tickets as they roll through the printing presses at a thousand tickets a minute and the machine also coats the tickets with the scratch off coating in the same process. So when they come out of the press all the employee sees is the completed tickets in a giant stack. They have no way of knowing which tickets are winners unless they are upper management of the company who program the software. Those employees are heavily scrutinized at all times to make sure there is no way they can cheat the system. | [
"Companies operating using a ticket reseller model purchase tickets for the official lottery draw on behalf of the player. The company then charges the player the price of the ticket, as well as an extra commission. In the event of a winning ticket, the company collects the winnings from the official lottery operat... |
why is it so difficult to provide africa with clean drinking water desalination? | Solar stills might be more viable there than in other parts of the world, but the problem is that they still aren't very viable.
The parts of Africa that have trouble accessing clean drinking water generally aren't coastal regions, those tend to be quite prosperous areas that have wells or other forms of water.
The parts of Africa that we see that need help, are sub-Saharan, middle of the continent Africa. Where they can't reach the Ocean.
This combined with the high amounts of corruption throughout the continent mean that plants would inevitably end up in the hands of someone who would make it hard for the poor to access it. It'd just be another resource for certain group to try and control. | [
"To adequately address the issue of water scarcity in Africa, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa emphasizes the need to invest in the development of Africa's potential water resources to reduce unnecessary suffering, ensure food security, and protect economic gains by effectively managing droughts, f... |
Has there ever been any movements similar to Zionism? | Check out the [Back to Africa Movement](_URL_0_) from 19th century America. It lead to the foundation of Liberia (fun fact: the capital of Monrovia is named after James Monroe!)
Sierra Leone has a similar history of resettlement in the foundation of the Province of Freedom, which was founded for the "resettlement" of black loyalists who fled the Revolutionary war in America, as well as other poor, free blacks from around the empire.
Neither of the projects had smooth sailing.
Source: Took a class called "Small Wars in the Global Context" Mostly covering cold war proxies and African civil wars. There were no overarching books on those topics, only some memoirs from reporter and child soldiers. | [
"Zionism was formed in Europe as the national movement of the Jewish people. It sought to re-establish Jewish statehood in the ancient homeland. The first wave of Zionist immigration, dubbed the First Aliyah lasted between 1882 and 1903. Some 30,000 Jews mostly from the Russian Empire reached Ottoman Palestine. The... |
Are there visual anomalies that the human eye can see but wouldn't be seen on a picture taken? | I can think of a couple:
- Extreme dynamic range. You've probably noticed most cameras can't take a picture containing some items in direct sunlight and others in shadow: either the sunlit areas are blown-out to white, or the shaded objects are solid black. This is because our eyes have a greater dynamic range than most sensors. HDR photography is a way of compensating for this with multiple exposures.
- While it's pretty rare, some people can see polarized light. Looking at the blue sky about 90 degrees from the sun, they will see a pattern of blue and yellow.
- This one's controversial, but there's some evidence that certain females may be "tetrachromats"--they have a fourth variety of cones in their retinas that would allow them to see a color between red and green, a true yellow. Since cameras emulate the *typical* human eye's sensitivity, they detect red and green, but make no distinction between red+green yellow and true yellow. | [
"Every normal mammal eye has a scotoma in its field of vision, usually termed its blind spot. This is a location with no photoreceptor cells, where the retinal ganglion cell axons that compose the optic nerve exit the retina. This location is called the optic disc. There is no direct conscious awareness of visual s... |
the universe is expanding, but where is the center of the expansion? is that the point in which the big bang happened? and where are we relatively to it? | Every point is expanding away from every other point. There's no "center of the expansion".
Imagine an infinitely large rubber sheet, with a 1" grid drawn on it.
Now stretch out the rubber sheet so that the grid lines are 2" apart instead, everywhere. Is there a "center" to this stretching? Every point is moving away from every other point. | [
"Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding and that the farther away a galaxy is, the faster it is moving away from us. Two years later, Georges Lemaître suggests that the expansion can be traced to an initial \"Big Bang\".\n",
"Since Georges Lemaître first noted in 1927 that an expanding universe co... |
if the universe is infinite but empty outside of the "edges", wouldnt gravity curve space so that if you go straight sooner or later you would end up "inside" of the edges again? | Reading through this thread I'm imagining this discussion taking place 500 years ago and we're all monkeys grunting and banging sticks to explain our individual understanding of this .
| [
"If formula_7, the geometry of space is open, i.e., negatively curved like the surface of a saddle. The angles of a triangle sum to less than 180 degrees, and lines that do not meet are never equidistant; they have a point of least distance and otherwise grow apart. The geometry of such a universe is hyperbolic.\n"... |
how were the victims of the hiroshima and nagasaki bombs "killed instantly"? | The bomb generated extreme heat, around 3000 degrees Celsius and given that humans are mostly water, they literally steam cooked and exploded at the same time | [
"The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are identified as the cause of Japanese whaling. The two Japanese cities were destroyed by atomic weapons during the final stages of World War II under orders by U.S. President Harry Truman, which killed about 220,000 people. In \"Whale Whores\", the Japanese are prese... |
The rate of universal expansion is accelerating to the point that light from other galaxies will someday never reach us. Is it possible that this has already happened to an extent? Are there things forever out of our view? Do we have any way of really knowing the size of the universe? | Yes, there are galaxies from which we will never receive any light at all. (Any galaxy beyond a current distance of about 65 Gly.) There are also galaxies whose light we have already received in the past but which are currently too far away for any signal emitted from us *now* to reach them some time in the future. (Any galaxy beyond a current distance of about 15 Gly.) The farthest points from which we have received any light at all as of today are at the edge of the observable universe, currently at a distance of about 43 Gly.
For more details, [read this post](_URL_0_). | [
"However, because the expansion of the universe is accelerating, it is projected that most galaxies will eventually cross a type of cosmological event horizon where any light they emit past that point will never be able to reach us at any time in the infinite future, because the light never reaches a point where it... |
encoders, decoders and transcoders | Encoder - changes data into a certain format or "code". Usually it's to conform to certain standards for displaying the information, such as ASCII being the standard for displaying letters and symbols on computers and other devices, or .mp3 being a common format for audio data.
Decoder - changes the encoded data back into it's original form
Transcoder - changes encoded data into a different code, which is generally faster and more efficient than decoding it and re-encoding it to the new format (although in some cases, that's all you can do). | [
"An encoder is a device, circuit, transducer, software program, algorithm or person that converts information from one format or code to another, for the purpose of standardization, speed or compression.\n",
"An autoencoder consisting of an encoder and a decoder is a paradigm for deep learning architectures. An e... |
why is it not practical for more countries to send a space shuttle to the moon with all the advances in technology since 1969? | Two reasons. First, getting to the moon is *incredibly* difficult. It's not like "Yeah, it's hard to figure out but once you crack it it's easy." I mean it's *incredibly* difficult. The energy requirements are really enormous. You just wouldn't believe.
The other, better reason is that the moon's a shithole. There's no reason to go there. | [
"In the 2000s, the People's Republic of China initiated a successful manned spaceflight program, while the European Union, Japan, and India have also planned future crewed space missions. China, Russia, Japan, and India have advocated crewed missions to the Moon during the 21st century, while the European Union has... |
I'm the illegitamate kid of a English king in the Middle Ages, what's my life like? | I assume you're talking about an *acknowledged* illegitimate kid?
If so, and you're a boy, you'll probably be made a duke or an earl and the king will pay for you're upbringing and you'll have a very comfortable life, including favouritism for a political career if you want one. If you're a girl, you'll probably be married off to a peer.
Also, while it's unlikely, you may potentially be a candidate for the throne; both Henry I and Henry VIII had illegitimate sons that were at times considered potential successors. | [
"BULLET::::- \"Making a Living in the Middle Ages: the People of Britain, 850–1520\" (London and New Haven, 2002 (Yale UP); London, 2003 (Penguin);), New Haven, 2003 (American paperback, Yale UP), 403 pp.\n",
"For detailed information about the middle ages Scott drew on three works by the antiquarian Joseph Strut... |
Why does a pistol's muzzle flip upwards when you shoot? | The hot gas does leave the muzzle equally.
Handguns are held from the bottom and the recoil goes backwards through the barrel on top, so there's a torque force which wants to rotate it a little.
Even if the recoil force translated directly through the hands and wasn't off center (which would make aiming tricky), the gun would still tend to rotate a little to point more upward by virtue of human anatomy - elbows only bend in one direction. | [
"The muzzle rises primarily because, for most firearms, the centerline of the barrel is above the center of contact between the shooter and the firearm's grip and stock. The reactive forces from the fired bullet and propellant gases exiting the muzzle act directly down the centerline of the barrel. If that line of ... |
regarding the current event surrounding the missing malaysian airplane, if family members of its passengers claim that they can still call their missing relative's phone without getting redirected to voice mail, why doesn't the authority try to track down these phone signals? | Phones don't really work that way. When you dial a phone number it's sent to the telco. The telco could choose to send you a ring tone while it's attempting to locate the phone. Unable to find the phone it can just send you to voicemail which is located at the telco not on the phone.
Just because you hear ringing isn't a promise that the other phone is actually ringing or reachable.
Alternatively the telco can just sit there and play ringback tone forever because thats how it's configured. None of which is a promise that it can reach the phone. | [
"Some had speculated that the passengers were still alive but could not answer their cellphones—sometimes known as the \"phantom cellphone theory\". This was based on early reports that family members of Flight 370 passengers heard ringing (as opposed to a busy/off signal) while calling the passengers' phones, thou... |
why would a company sell stock and buy it straight back? | Sell when it's high, stockholders may start selling too which can bring down stock price, buy it all back again. Profit. | [
"Stock can be bought and sold privately or on stock exchanges, and such transactions are typically heavily regulated by governments to prevent fraud, protect investors, and benefit the larger economy. As new shares are issued by a company, the ownership and rights of existing shareholders are diluted in return for ... |
How much beta/gamma radiation does the core of a star that has undergone supernova emit? | It depends slightly on the type of supernova, and what the core will be made of. However you need to remember a star is much bigger than a nuclear reactor! As such it will emit trillions of times more radiation.
To go into a bit more detail, stars don't contain many radioactive materials (the radiation comes from fusion instead) until a supernova. At this point the flux of neutrons creates many unstable isotopes, which will undergo radiative decay. A core of a recent supernova and the surrounding material is incredibly radioactive. | [
"Core collapse supernovae are on average visually fainter than Type Ia supernovae, but the total energy released is far higher. In these type of supernovae, the gravitational potential energy is converted into kinetic energy that compresses and collapses the core, initially producing electron neutrinos from disinte... |
I just learned about foreign accent syndrome, when brain damage makes it sound like you have a foreign accent. Do those who suffer from it actually speak with an accent from one they know or is it just the new speech patterns that come with the syndrome making it sound similar to an existing accent? | I'll answer this with the caveat that this is a very rare condition [( < 20 cases worldwide to date)](_URL_0_) and with an etiology that is not perfectly understood.
The basic idea is that after a stroke regions of the brain are damaged that result in a changed prosody. Most of the time, the change in speech pattern becomes close to but does not perfectly correspond with another accent (not necessarily one known to the patient). The current thinking is that observers hear this atypical speech and attribute it to an accent that they are familiar with, even if there are inconsistencies. | [
"Its symptoms result from distorted articulatory planning and coordination processes and although popular news articles commonly attempt to identify the closest regional accent, speakers suffering from foreign accent syndrome acquire neither a specific foreign accent nor any additional fluency in a foreign language... |
Is the Out of Africa hypothesis still widely accepted? Are all humans really "african?" | The good fellows over at /r/AskAnthropology gave me some [wonderful answers](_URL_0_) | [
"Alan Templeton (1997) asserted that the study did \"not support the hypothesis of a recent African origin for all of humanity following a split between Africans and non-Africans 100,000 years ago\" and also did \"not support the hypothesis of a recent global replacement of humans coming out of Africa.\"\n",
"The... |
How do stains work on the molecular level? | I can tell you how bleach works on some types of stains. So some Compounds have color because of the molecule is a conjugated system. Meaning that more than 8 groups of alternating double then single bonds in a row all share electrons. When light hits this conjugated system it absorbs then releases energy that we see in the visible spectrum. Bleach comes in and breaks double bond(s) in this system making them single bonds. This breaks the conjugated system up either completely or into smaller conjugated systems. So for example, where you had 8 groups of alternating double then single bonds you now have 2 conjugated systems of 4 groups which emit light in the ultraviolet spectrum and it’s not visible, BUT the stain is still there, you just can’t see it.
I suspect the stains are hard to remove because intermolecular forces between the stain maker to the fabric. | [
"Staining is a technique used to enhance contrast in samples, generally at the microscopic level. Stains and dyes are frequently used in histology (the study of tissue under the microscope) and in the medical fields of histopathology, hematology, and cytopathology that focus on the study and diagnoses disease at a ... |
What were the extent of Anglo-Saxon and German Saxon Relations until the Carolingian Conquest of Saxony? | To answer briefly, there was a massive amount of contact between the two cultures. Trade continued between them in the early years, and after the Anglo-Saxon conversions were complete numerous missionaries were sent to different parts of Germany, the most famous being Boniface and Willibrord in the eighth century. I do not know, but I can't imagine that any Anglo-Saxons would have fought on the side of the pagan Saxons against Charlemagne, nor that they would have felt more kin with the Saxons specifically than other Germanic groups on the continent. Connections continued after Charlemagne, with one of Alfred's advisers being John the Old Saxon. If I remember right, there is also some evidence that the Old Saxon poem *Heliand* was copied in England in the late tenth century, but I forget the details on this at the moment. | [
"In the late 6th century there was another period of Saxon expansion, starting with the capture of Searoburh in 552 by the dynasty that later ruled Wessex, and including entry into the Cotswolds area after the Battle of Deorham (577), though the accuracy of the entries in the \"Anglo-Saxon Chronicle\" for this peri... |
What did the British plan to do if the captured New Orleans during the war of 1812? | I've written [pretty extensively](_URL_0_) before on the causes of the war, on [British war aims](_URL_2_) and their [alliance with American Indians](_URL_3_), and how they contrasted with [American goals](_URL_1_). To make a long story short, the British were defending their colonies in Canada and the Caribbean from an American invasion, and they had no interest in conquering the United States, at any point in the war.
However, even in a purely defensive war, the British realized fairly quickly that passively defending their borders was not going to end the war quickly, and was unsuitable for the style of warfare preferred by their native allies - early, aggressive successes by British commanders like Isaac Brock earned the British a popular renown among American Indians, which contrasted heavily with Henry Procter. Brock was universally liked and respected by American Indians, and had a famous relationship with Tecumseh, who allegedly reported on meeting him: "This is a man!" Procter was likened to a bull, running away with its tail tucked between its legs.
But aggressive defense didn't necessarily mean that they were attempting to conquer the country, by any means. The goal was either to raid in such a devastating, sustained manner that the country would surrender or the civilian population would no longer support the effort (it was already *highly unpopular*), or to capture key cities and force a treaty on terms favorable to Great Britain. The (brief) capture of Washington was an effort to that end, and it should be noted that the destruction of public buildings was a recognized aspect of long 18th century warfare, and it was practiced on both sides. Burning the White House wasn't *necessary* and was viewed at the time as excessive, but it certainly wasn't beyond the pale, and Americans had done similarly in captured Canadian cities, as well.
By 1814, there were two large-scale efforts to end he war by capturing key cities. An invasion force assembled in Canada would sweep down into Northern New York, following Lake Champlain. A second force was being assembled in the Caribbean, and would invade the southern coast, capturing New Orleans. Of the two efforts, the New Orleans campaign was the more critical; New Orleans was an economic bottleneck, because it was where the Mississippi river met the sea, and a great deal of American agricultural produce was shipped down that river. With New Orleans in British hands, they would have a powerful bargaining chip with which to end the war.
Both of these campaigns ended in disaster, which gave a somewhat inflated impression to the American public that the war had been *won* when they heard news of the Treaty of Ghent following the battles of Platssburgh and New Orleans, more or less back-to-back.
The long term plan, such as it was, was *end the war*, hopefully from a position of strength. Being able to hand back an important city to the United States would be a powerful motivation to cave to British demands.
I'll be happy to answer follow-ups.
_____
Jon Latimer's *1812: War with America* and Donald Hickey's *The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict* are the two best overall histories of the war. For more on the American Indian role, check out John Sugden, *Tecumseh's Last Stand* | [
"During the final campaign of the War of 1812, the British sent a force of 11,000 in an attempt to capture New Orleans. Despite great challenges, General Andrew Jackson, with support from the U.S. Navy, successfully cobbled together a force of militia from Louisiana and Mississippi, including free men of color, U.S... |
What was the mentality/practice behind conducting electro-shock therapy on homosexuals as a "cure"? | I'm no expert on this, but I'm currently reading [Steve Silberman's Neurotribes](_URL_0_), which is a cultural history of autism. It's not specifically about homosexuality, but it does delve into the use of electro-shock therapy on autistic children, as what's known as aversion therapy. Basically, the psychiatrist gives an order, and if it isn't followed, a shock is administered. Theoretically, the subject will learn to avoid the behavior on his/her own.
[This article](_URL_1_) from the Huffington Post (but written by an archivist at the National Gay and Lesbian Archives)
Silberman proposes that those administering these "cures" believed they were acting humanely. Given that it was deemed impossible to change the attitude of society toward homosexuality, it was more humane to change the undesired behavior.
[This article](_URL_1_) (from the National Gay and Lesbian Archives) might also shed some light on your question. Remember that homosexuality was considered a mental disorder before 1973, and the prevailing attitude of psychologists seemed to rest on curing disorders, instead of either encouraging acceptance or studying how best to integrate into mainstream society. | [
"In the early 1970s, Ford McBride did research in electroshock therapy while a student at Brigham Young University (BYU); he performed it on volunteer homosexual students to help cure them of ego-dystonic sexual orientation. This was a standard type of aversion therapy used to treat homosexuality, which was conside... |
Why didn't the Greeks try to explore west? | Precisely because they were able to calculate the circumference of the Earth. Ancient Greek ships weren't able to handle the open ocean, and it was thought all the way up until Columbus' time that there was nothing but open ocean between Europe and Asia. Sailors and explorers at the time would have wisely figured that they would die of thirst, starvation, or to a storm before they ever made it to the other side, and this was actually a huge obstacle for Columbus himself to get funding since everyone thought he would die. Any Greeks setting out to the West would know they would find a watery grave, and if any tried that's exactly what they got with their ships at the time. | [
"The Greeks had to fight off Scythian and Sarmatian (Alan) raiders who prevented them from progressing inland but retained the shores which became the wheat basket of the ancient Greek world. Following the conquests of Alexander the Great and the Roman conquest the provinces maintained active trading relations with... |
who decided the #2 pencil was the one to rule them all? | The #2 is a measure of the "hardness" of the pencil lead (which is actually graphite, but that's a different thread).
#1 pencils are very "soft", meaning they wear fast, smudge often, and it's difficult to keep the writing point sharp. Numbers #3 and higher stay nice and sharp, but make lighter markings, which is why they aren't recommended for machine graded "fill in the bubble" forms.
I've used #5 pencils, and I like the sharp points for drawing math equations and graphs. I understand that they are commonly used for drafting. I prefer #3s, or "extra hard" pencils which are kinda like a #2-and-a-half.
But #2 is, for most people, the"just right" of pencils, that don't smudge much, stay sharp fairly well, but still make a dark mark when writing. | [
"Similar to the role of the writers, few pencillers stuck around for more than one or two issues, with exception being Sal Velluto, who, alongside David Michelinie created the book, and pencilled 22 issues of the title. The only other regular artist was Ramon Bernado, who pencilled nine issues in total and pencille... |
why can't we just like take a giant telescope and look at the planets that nasa discovered? similar to how our satellites can zoom in on earth. | Satellites take pictures of things from about 100 miles away. A planet that's 40 light years away is 235,100,000,000,000 miles away. So, you'd need a camera that is about one trillion times more powerful than what's on a satellite. | [
"It has been estimated that a telescope with a diameter of 80 meters would be able to spectroscopically analyse Earth-size planets around the forty nearest sun-like stars. As such, this telescope could help in the exploration of exoplanets and extraterrestrial life (because the spectrum from the planets could revea... |
why is it that most of us won't think twice about spending £3.00 on a beer but will hesitate and think far too long about buying something that'll actually be useful and last for a long time? | Where the fuck are you getting a beer for £3.00? | [
"The Act has caused some controversy. On one side of the argument is the frustration some British drinkers and many tourists have with the traditional closing time of 23:00, as opposed to the more liberal drinking regulations of continental Europe and further afield. They believe that a liberalisation of the drinki... |
why do they market toys and collectibles before their respective movies come out? | It's better to have them released beforehand, so when people see the movie and get excited they can immediately find them on the shelves in stores, than risk a delay and them not getting into stores when demand is highest.
Back when Star Wars (the original movie) came out in theatres, the toys weren't ready yet. For Christmas of that year parents could give their kids a card printed by Kenner that promised delivery of the action figures in February of the following year, IIRC. | [
"Many successful films, television programs, books and sport teams have official merchandise, which often includes related toys. Some notable examples are \"Star Wars\" (a space fantasy franchise) and Arsenal, an English football club.\n",
"Toys are big business: the global toy market is estimated at over 80 bill... |
Did the USSR have any kind of youth counterculture movement like the USA during the late 1960s? | [Punk in the Soviet Union](_URL_0_)
edit: not in the 60's, but might be interesting. | [
"Several factors distinguished the counterculture of the 1960s from the anti-authoritarian movements of previous eras. The post-World War II \"baby boom\" generated an unprecedented number of potentially disaffected young people as prospective participants in a rethinking of the direction of the United States and o... |
if the 4th dimension exist does that mean im already dead somewhere/when in time? | The way I like to think about all these dimensions, is that the one before it is a just a slice.
So like a point is just a slice of a line, a line is just a slice of a square and a square is just a slice of a cube.
Now we're in the 4th dimension, meaning we can fully experience the first three, which we interpret as length, width, and height. We can only experience the fourth, time, as a straight line, continually moving. Now think back to the points, lines, squares, and cubes. If you drag a point, you get a line, if you drag a line, you get a square (Think painting with the edge/line of a paintbrush), if you drag a square, you get a cube.
So theoretically, next dimension experiences ALL of time at once (Kind of like how we experience all of the lines of a square at once to form a square), so yes, in the next dimension up, you are already dead, but also alive, all at the same time. | [
"In the \"Brothers Karamazov\", Dostoevsky's last work completed in 1880, the fourth dimension is used to signify that which is ungraspable to someone with earthly (or three-dimensional) concerns. In the book, Ivan Karamazov laments to his younger brother:\n",
"In the first volume of \"In Search of Lost Time\" (o... |
How far into North America did the diplomatic/economic sphere of the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican empires extend? For instance, would a Native American living on the Chesapeake have heard of massive, city-building empires to the south? | Connections between what is now the American Southwest and Mesoamerican are so well established that it is almost inappropriate to think of them are entirely separate areas. These links were primarily trade based, not political or military, with products like [tropical birds/feathers](_URL_1_) and [cacao](_URL_4_), as well various other products like cotton, rubber, and copper goods flowing north from Mesoamerica in exchange for Southwestern goods, primarily turquoise (Phil Weigand's work is focused on this). There were cultural links as well, with Mesoamerican style ballcourts appearing in the Southwest and an endless discussion of whether symbolic elements of Southwest and Mesoamerican religions were borrowed, adopted, or simply convergent. McGuire's ([1980](_URL_3_)) paper is dated, but represents not only a seminal summation of the evidence for connections, but also a turning point in moving away from the older diffusionist idea that the complex societies in the Southwest were necessarily founded by long distance traders from Mesoamerica.
The Meso-SW connect, running up through West Mexico, reached its peak in the early (Mesoaemrican) Postclassic, about 900-1200 CE. This is pre-Aztec, after the decline of Teotihuacan and the Classic Maya, during the time when the Toltecs in Central Mexico and Chaco Canyon in the Southwest. There several sites in NW Mexico/SW US which flourished during this period as a result of this connect, such as Alta Vista and La Quemada. After this period, the Southwest and Mesoamerica see a [period of drought and aridity](_URL_0_) (ironically known better as the Medieval Warm Period) which would lead to a decline in these interstitial groups. This climatic change was also a factor in the dissolution of the dense, complex societies in the SW and would spur the migration of Nahua groups from the Chichimec region into the Basin of Mexico, where they would eventually found the Aztec state.
Outside the Southwest, however, there is little indication of contact between Mesoamerica and other North American groups. Indeed, the only Mesoamerican linked artifact found outside the SW-Meso context is a [single obsidian scaper](_URL_2_). The inevitable question is "why not more connection?" but "why" is rarely a useful question in examining historical trends. One thing to take into account is the immense distances involved and the lack of pack animals. Direct trade between Tula and Cahokia, for instance, would *walking* from central Mexico to Missouri. Moreover, because humans can't graze like pack animals, it would have involved feeding all the porters carrying goods, which meant they would have had to carry supplies for themselves across long distances with uncertain resupply. Hassig in *Aztec Warfare* makes the case that these sort of logistic limitations were key in Mesoamerica being a hegemonic political system, rather than one that routinely exercised direct control. It's a useful concept to consider with regards to long distance trade as well. | [
"The Aztec Empire arose in the early 15th century and appeared to be on a path to asserting dominance over the Valley of Mexico region not seen since Teotihuacan. Spain was the first European power to contact Mesoamerica, however, and its conquistadores and a large number of native allies conquered the Aztecs.\n",
... |
What does "punk" mean in this context? | "Punk" was used to mean listless or generally poor. So this could be taken to mean that he was going to a party that was bland and he wasn't having a good time. Would that make sense in the context? Context is everything. References to this use of the term in North American slang appears in the Oxford English Dictionary. | [
"\"Punk\" explores \"the music, the fashion, the art and the DIY attitude of a subculture of self-described misfits and outcasts.\". Each episode focuses on an individual era of punk, beginning with protopunk in the 1960s up until the present day. \n",
"Art punk or avant punk refers to punk rock and post-punk mus... |
if i sat in a bathtub of liquor would i get drunk? | Not a doctor. Do know several though that work ER. Since "butt-chugging" of alcohol is a thing I would be more concerned about the alcohol getting in there. Or just burning like hell on your bits. But if it did make it in, the effect is much stronger than if you drink it, which is why these idiots end up in the ER.
I get what you're after though- is absorbing it thru the skin going to impact you. I don't see how it could make it to the bloodstream, which is where it would need to go. But again, not a doctor. I do agree with others in here though that the fumes would most likely get to you regardless as they would be replacing the oxygen you're breathing. I believe that was actually a brief thing- oxygen bar-type with alcohol instead, but I'm fuzzy on whether that was just a rumor. | [
"BULLET::::- Sauna or steam-bath: Medical opinion holds this may be dangerous, as the combination of alcohol and hyperthermia increases the likelihood of dangerous cardiac arrhythmia}abnormal heart rhythms.\n",
"Unfortunately, there are the quite a number of cases of unruly drunk patrons who vomit or urinate on t... |
difference between enlisted and officers in army and how different are their selection process. | Almost anyone can enlist, and it's basically the entry level to the military. Officers are required to have at least a bachelors degree, and are placed into leadership positions. The [rank](_URL_0_) system is completely different, and they are also sent to different boot camps to be trained in their respective positions. | [
"With regard to rank, a U.S. Army officer candidate exists in a gray area. AR 600-20, Army Command Policy, places their rank as outranking all enlisted members of the service and rank directly below all officers. They are not yet officers. They are enlisted soldiers who lose all rank status when reporting to the co... |
why is it that links are repeated on different pages in reddit? | Going to the next page asks reddit to give you the 25 links following the link that's at the bottom of your current page. But the rankings of links are constantly changing - if that link has moved up the reddit rankings since you loaded your old page, it can jump over links you've already seen, and you'll get them again. | [
"This phenomenon also occurs in the Internet. Counting the number of links to a page can give us a general estimate of its prominence on the Web, but a page with very few incoming links may also be prominent, if two of these links come from the home pages of sites like Yahoo!, Google, or MSN. Because these sites ar... |
if spider webs are one of the most stiky things we know, why do spiders dont get stuck if they get tangled in them? and what aobout nest like spider webs? | Spider webs are not completely sticky.
Some of the "silk" (sorry, don't know the name in English), is sticky, but spider can produce some that are not.
So, when a bug come in contact with the web, it get glued on it, but the spider, who know where it put the sticky or non sticky silk, can move around and stay on the non sticky part | [
"As these spiders live in constant proximity to humans, they are not usually aggressive and will even let a human hand approach their web. Like any other spider, however, they are afraid of bigger foes, and, in most cases, will retreat behind an obstacle (such as a dried leaf or prey remains) upon perceiving more t... |
Can someone explain to me what ricci flatness is? | A manifold is Ricci-flat if the Ricci curvature tensor is zero. This roughly means that small cubes whose edges are geodesics have the same volume as cubes in the corresponding Euclidean space of the same dimension. But the geodesic cube itself may be twisted or curled into a different shape. (Think of distorting a spherical ball into an ellipsoid of the same volume.)
In general relativity, a Ricci-flat spacetime is one which is a vacuum solution to the Einstein field equations. That is, there are no matter fields: no baryonic matter, no radiation, no energy or any kind. All of the spacetime curvature is caused by gravitational energy.
All of the classical black hole solutions that get talked about most often (Schwarzschild, Kerr, Nordstrom, etc.) are all vacuum solutions, and thus represent Ricci-flat spacetimes. Minkowski space of special relativity is also Ricci-flat. The FLRW metric, which models our expanding universe, is *not* Ricci-flat.
There are some interesting mathematical questions about Ricci-flat manifolds. For instance, if a (Lorentzian) manifold is Ricci-flat and geodesically complete (i.e., singularity-free), is the manifold flat? The answer turns out to be "no", and one such family of spacetimes is the pp-wave spacetimes, which model a universe with massless plane wave radiation only. | [
"In mathematics, Ricci-flat manifolds are Riemannian manifolds whose Ricci curvature vanishes. Ricci-flat manifolds are special cases of Einstein manifolds, where the cosmological constant need not vanish.\n",
"Richard Strier additionally notes the complexity of the word \"flatter\" not only within Sonnet 87 but ... |
What will replace integrated circuits once they reach the smallest size possible? | [Three-dimensional integrated circuit](_URL_0_) | [
"IEDM papers from Intel in 2002, 2004, and 2005 illustrate the industry trend that the transistor sizes can no longer scale along with the rest of the feature dimensions (gate width only changed from 220 nm to 210 nm going from 90 nm to 65 nm technologies). However, the interconnects (metal and poly pitch) continue... |
Did any significant amount of early-ish American settlers return to Europe? | In the seventeenth century it was pretty common for people to settle in the New World for a few years to fish, trap, or log before returning to Europe. Merchants in particular would often only stay in the New World long enough to set up agents or to collect enough goods to fuel their European operations. Newfoundland in particular was notable for a largely temporary and transient population during the seventeenth and much of the eighteenth century as workers, merchants, and planters would often return to Europe after a few seasons.
It may be unfair to call these people settlers since many of them never set out with the intention of permanently staying in the New World. | [
"The first permanent European settlers arrived in the early 19th century. People came from the Bahamas to South Florida and the Keys to hunt for treasure from the ships that ran aground on the treacherous Great Florida Reef. Some accepted Spanish land offers along the Miami River. At about the same time, the Semino... |
Why do frozen foods thaw faster on granite countertops? | Granite has a very high thermal mass. This means that it takes a lot of heat to change its temperature - much more than a laminate counter top.
So, you put some cold food on the granite. The heat transfers from the granite to the food, but since it has so much thermal capacity, its temperature does not decrease as quickly as laminate (its heat capacity is not used up as quickly). And since the rate of heat transfer is greater when the temperature difference is greater, his means that the transfer rate remains higher. The laminate, on the other hand, also loses heat to the food, but since it's capacity is much lower, its temperature drops faster, the heat transfer rate goes down more quickly, and as a result, it takes longer to transfer the heat to the food.
| [
"Due to its properties of rapid cooling/melting, the small size of granular ice is used widely by the process industries, particularly food manufacture for cooling products made in mixers or bowl choppers such as dough or sausage meat, here it is mostly known as \"fine ice\" or \"micro ice\". It is also used in lab... |
- what does it mean when a file is encrypted? | Encryption is mixing up the message, such that it can only be made readable again with a key.
To explain what hackers do, It might be easier to use an example:
Let's say you want to send a book to a friend on the other side of the country, but you don't want anyone else to see it.
You could stick the book in a box, and send it to your friend.
A hacker, could intercept the box, open it, and access the book.
You can also put the book in a box with a padlock on it, and send it to your friend, and send the key in another box.
However, if the hacker grabs both the locked box, and the key, he can open it anyway.
The last option, is that your friend first sends you a padlock, and keeps the key. You can now put your book in a box, lock it with the padlock your friend sent you, and then send it back.
Even if the hacker intercepts the box, he cannot open the padlock, and he cannot intercept any keys, since they are not being sent.
Your friend can then receive the box, and open it.
On the internet, the box, would be a message, and the padlock+keys an encryption.
In RSA-encryption, one of the most used encryptions today, the padlock and key are both huge numbers, chosen specially.
While the key-number is kept secret and the numbers are long enough, the encryption is impossible to break. (It can be broken, but doing so would take longer than the universe has existed) | [
"File level encryption encrypts only the file contents. This leaves important information such as file name, size and timestamps unencrypted. Parts of the content of the file can be reconstructed from other locations, such as temporary files, swap file and deleted, unencrypted copies.\n",
"The process of encrypti... |
When NSDAP wanted to replace Roman law with German law, what did they meant? | A little while ago, there we had [a thread](_URL_0_) concerning this rather obscure topic. Perhaps you want to take a look at it. | [
"The statute drew legal influence from previous measures, including those undertaken by the Holy Roman Empire and Prussian states. It was amended several times. The Nazis broadened the law in 1935; in the prosecutions that followed, thousands died in concentration camps as a widespread social persecution of homosex... |
Were left leaning student beatnik types any less hostile towards the Soviet Union in 1960s than most "normal" Americans at the time? | [Students for a Democratic Society](_URL_0_) was one of the most popular and powerful of the "New Left" student groups. SDS was founded in 1960, and permitted Communist party members within their ranks (this was a change from previous leftist student groups). SDS campaigned against the Cold War and militarism. They became the primary student opposition group to the Vietnam war, and grew immensely as that conflict developed. SDS didn't engage in overtly pro-Soviet activities (though they did allow Communists to march with them), but they were widely seen as being sympathetic to the Communist cause and agenda.
| [
"As for the PPR on American side, some examples are also present. Between 1946 to 1956, there was a censorship campaign against schools and libraries in an effort to remove literature, described as 'radical'. The political move was explained through the danger that such literature was posing to the American democra... |
How come the Abwehr were so inefficient and seemingly completely useless in gathering intelligence? | Look up what they did in the Netherlands. They were very effective in gathering intelligence before the invasion, trained, supplied and provided information for the Brandenburgers who took vital bridges during the Invasion of May 1940, and managed to capture almost all Allied spies active in the Netherlands between 1940 and 1943, as part of Operation Northpole.
My source: Kingdom of the Netherlands during WW2, Loe de Jong | [
"\"Abwehr II\" was a section of German Intelligence which amongst its other duties was tasked with seeking out the disaffected and anti-authoritarian in opposing nations to give arms, assistance, or whatever means to increase disharmony. Following the successful 1940 campaign to defeat France, and the capture of Br... |
by what method does google translate detect the language of input texts? | Matching words with words it knows from various languages. Also what characters you input. Like, if you were to input the Kanji lettering for the term "Horse stuffer", it'd detect that it was Kanji first, then what words it is, then makes the connection.
Or for other roman lettering, it just knows what words belong to what language. Such as "Pferd Stuffer" it knows there's no word in english that's spelled Pferd, so it checks it's database and sees that Pferd matches a word in German. | [
"Google Translate can translate multiple forms of text and media, including text, speech, images, sites, or real-time video, from one language to another. It supports over 100 languages at various levels and , serves over 500 million people daily. For some languages, Google Translate can pronounce translated text, ... |
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