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Hey, what can you historians tell me about the personalities of the conspirators responsible for Rasputin's death - Prince Felix Yusupov, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, and Vladimir Purishkevich? I am particularly interested in Purishkevich and his involvement in the Black Hundreds. | For the black hundreds see Orlando Figes, *A People's Tragedy* and Richard Luckett, *The White Generals*
For Purishkevich, there's not a whole lot in English about him personally, outside of books on the time-period. I'd look at, if you can, an old book on Rasputin, *The Holy Devil* by Rene Fulop-Miller. If you have read most of the books on Rasputin, glean info from that. There are two documentaries on Netflix (both I thought are crap) which could give you info. Bruce Lincoln's *In War's Dark Shadow* gives one of the better summaries of his death.
Joseph Fuhrmann just wrote *Rasputin: The Untold Story* in 2012, you could find info in there. Then there's Radzinsky's bio of Rasputin called 'The Rasputin File' (also, in my opinion, crap).
Check out Robert Massie's bio of *Nicholas and Alexandra*, and if I'm not mistaken, their collection of love letters has some references to many of the main actors. That's also a great way to see first hand how people communication and wrote. It's called *Lifelong Passion* by Andrei Maylunas and Sergei Mironenko. There's also a very recent bio called *Alex and Nicky* by Virginia Roundling, which, for the life of me I can't figure out why she wrote it. It's a rehash of Massie's book. It's good, but I just don't know why it was written right when Massie's was being republished. Whatevs.
The 2nd volume of Antony Polonsky's *The Jews in Poland and Russia* could help as well. | [
"As a son-in-law of Ivan Betskoy and a secretary to Prince Potemkin, he became one of the earliest administrators of the New Russia. He may have been involved in the conspiracy to overthrow Emperor Paul, but died several months before the coup took place. Contemporaries thought he had been poisoned by one of the co... |
neurologically what is happening at the moment i fall asleep and why can't i ever remember transitioning into sleep. | there is a theory that consciousness is something that when numerous subsystems of the brain are online and fully coordinated, and when these go out of communication with each other then that is you go to sleep.
There is much more to the idea, but that is the general idea
| [
"Transition to and from sleep may be attended by a wide variety of sensory experiences. These can occur in any modality, individually or combined, and range from the vague and barely perceptible to vivid hallucinations.\n",
"Threshold consciousness (commonly called \"half-asleep\" or \"half-awake\", or \"mind awa... |
why do dog paws smell like fritos (corn chips)? | better question is: 'Why did they make Fritos smell like dog paws?" | [
"Nutmeg is highly neurotoxic to dogs and causes seizures, tremors, and nervous system disorders which can be fatal. Nutmeg's rich, spicy scent is attractive to dogs which can result in a dog ingesting a lethal amount of this spice. Eggnog and other food preparations which contain nutmeg should not be given to dogs.... |
why are most call centers based out of india? | It started because of the abundance of English speakers and the relatively low wages. Now that there are a lot of call centers, the infrastructure is in place and it's easy to train workers.
General Electric was one of the first companies to establish a call center in India - possibly because there were Indian executives who promoted the idea. Then everyone else copied GE.
The Philippines is also a popular location for call centers.
| [
"A call center is an office with the capacity to field many telephone calls for a company. Types of call center work can include customer service and telemarketing. Factors that have made India attractive as a hub of call center work from the US, UK, and Australia include its convenient time zone, low labor costs, ... |
How did the dutch prepare their coffee in the age of exploration? Was it different from today? | Today i'd say most people use a drip machine, Senseo (blech), or some Nespresso type machine. None of those of those existed before the 20th/21st century.
I don't think it's the earliest method of making coffee in the Netherlands, but the [kraantjespot](_URL_0_) (tap pot) has been around since the 18th century. Ground coffee would go in, with water poured on top. After it had brewed long enough the tap could be used to get the coffee, because the tap sits above the bottom of the pot the grounds will stay inside.
To keep the coffee hot a small burner could be placed under the pot.
| [
"As the Dutch Republic enters its Golden Age in the 17th century, dishes of this kind became available to the wealthy middle class as well, often consisting of a rich variety of fruits, cheeses, meat, wine, and nuts. The Dutch Empire enabled spices, sugar, and exotic fruits to be imported to the country. The Dutch ... |
why do some states prohibit recording your own phone calls? | Because a phone call isn't "yours", it is the person you're talking with too. If they are under the impression that it is private, it should be. If you want to record, tell them. | [
"Call recording laws in some U.S. states require only one party to be aware of the recording, while other states require both parties to be aware. Several states require that all parties consent when one party wants to record a telephone conversation. Telephone scammers and others intentionally violating the federa... |
Late Roman 'gun control' - did people in the western empire, c.400 CE, have personal weapons? | Have you checked out Stuart Laycock's *Britannia: A Failed State*? His conclusions are more than a little goofy (Roman Britain=literally Yugoslavia, also some claptrap about primordial ethnic conflict) but he did a really good job of mapping out belt buckles and has some pretty interesting categorizations of them.
More substantively, I would disagree with you about the Roman state discouraging private arms. Judtinian's Codex 3.21.1 reads:
> We grant everyone the right to resist a soldier or a person in private station who
enters fields as a nocturnal plunderer, or besets frequented roads with intentions of
robbery, and who is worthy to be subjected to immediate punishment pursuant to such
permission and to receive the death and incur the danger which he himself threatened.
For it is better to forestall, rather than to punish the deed. 1. We therefore grant you
permission to avenge yourself and make an act which is too late to be punished in court
subject to this edict. Let no one spare a soldier when he becomes a robber and should be
opposed by weapons.
In particular, the last sentence:
> nullus parcat militi, cui obviare telo oporteat ut latroni
(Do not spare soldiers, who out to be opposed with a weapon as a bandit) implies private arms. I suspect that in this case, as in many others, the state had neither the power nor inclination to regulate individuals.
That being said, cool questions, sorry I can't answer directly. | [
"The use of firearms and balls had been known before the advent of the Portuguese. As gunpowder and shot made by the natives were poor quality, Kozhikode later employed the Europeans to manufacture them. The Mappilas formed the main corps of musketeers, led by Thinayancheri Elayathu.\n",
"The earliest kind of pis... |
-- why do people blame the nra for mass shootings? | they’re a big part of the reason why gun control laws are so lax in the US, and give tons of money to politicians for their special interests. hence why it’s so easy to get a gun. | [
"The NRA has been criticized for their media strategy following mass shootings in the United States. After the Sandy Hook shooting the NRA released an online video which attacked Obama and mentioned Obama's daughters; New Jersey Governor Chris Christie called it \"reprehensible\" and said that it demeaned the organ... |
How rich and smart are we today compared to those of the 16th century? | we are vastly, astonishingly wealthier than in the past. more than you can imagine, the pre-industrial world was desperately, impossibly poor by modern standards. And the flynn effect suggests that we are smarter as well, but that is a much trickier thing to measure and much more controversial. wealth, however, is utterly indisputable. | [
"Since the mid-sixteenth century Rich has had a highly negative reputation for immorality, financial dishonesty, double dealing, perjury and treachery that is seldom matched in all of English history. The historian Hugh Trevor-Roper dismissed Rich as a man \"of whom nobody has ever spoken a good word\".\n",
"Ther... |
why is the president saluted while they retain a civilian status? | The President of the USA is also Commander in Chief of all branches of the military. So, he is technically a part of the military chain of command, and is treated appropriately by military personnel. | [
"In the United States, civilian military auxiliaries such as the Civil Air Patrol are required to salute all commissioned and warrant officers of higher rank and return the salute of those with lower ranks of the U.S. Uniformed Services (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, U.S. Public Health Service, ... |
what causes cavities and how do dentists fix them? | Bacteria on the surface of your teeth consume sugar from the food and drink you ingest and secrete acid. The acid wears away at your teeth, creating holes called cavities.
Dentists will drill out the hole and fill it with a material, then cap it off so it matches the countours of your other teeth. | [
"Cavities can develop on any surface of a tooth, but are most common inside the pits and fissures in grooves on chewing surfaces. This is where the toothbrush bristles and fluoride toothpaste cannot reach effectively.\n",
"A key benefit of CAMBRA is that it forces both the dental professional and the patient (or ... |
how does food become skin, blood, organs, etc? | Food is broken down to proteins, carbs, lipids
Then these molecules are further broken down to amino acids, simple sugars cholesterol and fatty acids. These are simple building blocks containing mostly carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and phosphate (among others) that make up all the cells and tissues in our bodies
DNA is a instruction sheet on how to arrange amino acids in order to make enzymes and other proteins
These proteins/enzymes then make things like cell walls and DNA or whatever the cell needs using the other building blocks | [
"BULLET::::- Though we might eat various food stuff the stable food which constitute to main dishes lead to the formation of “Blood” in the body. Wheat and wheat bread, rice, beans and chickpea, sweat fruits such as fig and grape, read meat specially lamb and beef, liver, kidney and heart meat, egg, fatty food stuf... |
Is gravity infinite? | Gravity does have infinite range. So if you had two atoms of hydrogen, at rest with respect to each other, separated by billions of light years in a static universe, then they would eventually hit each other.
However, if they're in any sort of relative motion, they would instead end up in some (probably ridiculously large) stable orbit. | [
"In 2009, Verlinde showed that the laws of gravity may be derived by assuming a form of the holographic principle and the laws of thermodynamics. This may imply that gravity is not a true fundamental force of nature (like e.g. electromagnetism), but instead is a consequence of the universe striving to maximize entr... |
what are snails even trying to do? | Make more snails. It's what life does. There are more snails than humans, so arguably they're better at it than we are. | [
"This snail species has extremely limited dispersal capabilities, which means it has little or no ability to find, and disperse to, other suitable habitats, or to move out of a habitat where the conditions have changed such that it is no longer suitable. Consequently, these snails are unable to avoid contaminants o... |
how do video cards, gpu's and ram work together in terms of gaming? | First here are the components I am going to describe:
1. CPU (Central Processing Unit) The main controller, calculator and processor for the PC.
2. RAM (c) (Random Access Memory) The "working memory" of the PC, it is where currently needed or soon to be needed data is stored by the computer. The (c) is to remind you that this is the computer RAM and not the video card RAM.
3. RAM (g) (Random Access Memory) This is the RAM that is built into the video card and dedicated to storing graphics data. (g) to remind you that this is not the computer's RAM but the video/graphics RAM.
4. GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) This is the main controller and processor for the video card.
To see how these components work together let's trace the path through the system that is used when you game.
1. The user chooses to launch a video game they want to play.
2. A signal is sent to the CPU to start the program.
3. The CPU sends a request to load the game data. This request goes to the RAM (c) and if the data is not already loaded into RAM (c) then the request is sent on to the hard drive. The game data is loaded into RAM(c), this includes everything from the AI to control the enemies, to the textures, pictures and video files that are used to make the graphics in the game, the sound files that are played. (note: with many larger games, not all the data can fit in RAM(c) so only the portions of the game that will be used first are loaded, so likely you will get the data that makes up the intro movies and the main menu, once you click start the game you might notice you get another loading bar, this is the game loading more resources from the hard drive into RAM(c) and RAM(g) as the game engine itself is loaded).
4. As the game engine is loading, the CPU sends instructions to begin loading textures and graphics data into the RAM(g). If the RAM(g) is not big enough to store all of the texture data that is currently needed, then the data will be stored in RAM(c) and can be loaded into RAM(g) as needed. The video card's RAM(g) is very fast, and is located close to the GPU, so for performance reasons it is desirable to have any data the GPU needs on the RAM(g), any time that RAM(c) has to be used instead of RAM(g) there will be a performance degradation.
5. As soon as the game engine is done with its loading, and you start actually playing the game, then the GPU is going to work. Modern GPUs can handle a large chunk of the processing needed to do graphics and physics calculations for games, so it will be working hard to render and compute as much as possible. It uses its close connection to RAM(g) to get data very quickly, and since it is directly connected to the output device there is no bottleneck for the data, it can send it is fast as possible.
So the difference between the two types of RAM is that RAM(g) only stores graphics/physics data that will be processed by the GPU. RAM(c) can store that same data if RAM(g) is full and RAM(c) will also store everything else that makes up the game (The AI, the sound, the menus, the game engine). RAM(g) tends to be faster, is located in the video card and is usually smaller than the RAM(c).
The interaction between the two types of RAM is that usually data will go through RAM(c) before being loaded into RAM(g). RAM(g) and RAM(c) will pass data back and forth as it is needed or not needed by the GPU.
Hope this helps, this is all from memory and my understanding, so of course I might have made a mistake or two.
| [
"Similarly, 3D games often rely on a powerful graphics processing unit (GPU), which accelerates the process of drawing complex scenes in realtime. GPUs may be an integrated part of the computer's motherboard, the most common solution in laptops, or come packaged with a discrete graphics card with a supply of dedica... |
Books on ancient sexuality? | It’s not a book, but I would recommend Holt N. Parker’s article “The Myth of the Heterosexual: Anthropology and Sexuality for Classicists” in the journal *Arethusa* Volume 34, Number 3 (2001). It offers a good look at how we often need to think differently when we look at sexuality in the past.
| [
"In his 1996 debut book \"Sex and Society in Graeco-Roman Egypt\" Montserrat presented a broad study of ancient sexuality and its cultural manifestations in Greco-Roman Egypt. His second book focused on the life and times of the \"heretic pharaoh\" Akhenaten (2000), whose long afterlife as an object of modern inter... |
How was weather different when landmasses were clumped into super continents like Pangaea? | With a large conjoined landmass, the weather would be more severe. Much of the continent was very distant from the cooling ~~affects~~ effects of the sea. The hot interior would be dry (like a midcontinental desert). The margins would probably experience extreme weather patterns such as monsoons (formed by heating of the interior regions producing an onshore low pressure region like Tibet-India) and maybe larger hurricanes because there was more open water in which a storm could gain energy.
Edit: typo.
| [
"After the vigorous convergent plate mountain-building of the late Paleozoic, Mesozoic tectonic deformation was comparatively mild. Nevertheless, the era featured the dramatic rifting of the supercontinent Pangaea. Pangaea gradually split into a northern continent, Laurasia, and a southern continent, Gondwana. This... |
- why does eating a banana help with muscle cramps? | Well, you probably know that muscles contract when you run electrical current through them. The stuff that actually conducts the electricity within your muscles is called electrolytes. It's a combination of sodium, *potassium*, and calcium.
When you're working hard you can sweat out these electrolytes. If your muscles can't conduct the electricity they need to move, bad things happen. Like them not working when you want them to, or moving when you don't want them to.
To fix this, you can take a source of electrolytes, such as a banana(Or electrolyte drinks). Bananas are also great because they have carbs, and a lot of nutrients, and easy to eat.
TL;DR : Bananas make your muscles work, and are good for you in general. Eat them, unless you are me, and allergic. | [
"Banana bags are used in the intensive care unit to correct acute magnesium deficiencies. They are stated to be beneficial for patients with terminal illness because magnesium can mitigate nerve pain and relieve muscle pain and cramps.\n",
"Fe'i bananas are generally eaten as \"plantains\", i.e. they are usually ... |
why are different audio channels/layers played through left and right earphones and not all layers through both? | Not necessarily. If there are two similar sounds (like two guitars for instance) it might be better for one to be on the left and one to be on the right so that the sounds stay independent until your brain mashes them together. | [
"When played on a conventional two channel stereo equipment, the front channels are narrower than ordinary two channels because of the low separation. But the rear channels are heard from points outside the ordinary stereo spectrum. So the QS record gives a totally broader stereo picture than conventional two chann... |
Is the 7.9 earthquake in Alaska related in any way to the recent eruption of Mount Mayon in the Philippines? | In short, no.
Earthquakes and volcanoes are spatially correlated because the majority of them both occur along plate boundaries. In certain specific cases they can be temporally correlated as well. Eruption of volcanoes can be accompanied (and preceded) by earthquakes, but these are VERY local and are associated with movement of magma or deformation of the crust associated with movement of magma [(e.g. this informative description of this process from a volcanologist)](_URL_1_). Large earthquakes can sometimes (maybe, this is still something people argue about) [cause small volcanic eruptions](_URL_3_) in distant volcanic systems, but this is kind of the exception as opposed to the rule. This also isn't really relevant in this case as Mount Mayon began showing signs of an impending eruption well before the Alaska quake this morning. To the extent that it matters (it really doesn't), Mount Mayon and the Alaska earthquake also involve [totally different plate boundaries](_URL_2_) (Phillipine Sea - Eurasian plate for Mount Mayon and North American - Pacific plate for the Alaska earthquake).
Basically, a volcanic eruption along active subduction zone and a moderate sized earthquake on a different active subduction zone are both relatively unsurprising events. That they occurred within a day or so of each other is coincidence, but not a very interesting one given that you expect [around 10-15 magnitude 7-7.9 earthquakes to happen somewhere in the world each year](_URL_4_) and if you look at [databases of volcanic eruptions](_URL_0_) you would expect something in the ball park of 50 notable eruptions per year (this is a little more variable than the EQ stats), so the probability that two of these events will happen in close temporal proximity isn't really surprising in any sense. | [
"An earthquake off the coast of Samar occurred on August 31, 2012, at 20:47 local time (12:47 UTC) in the Philippines. The populated islands of Visayas were struck by an earthquake of magnitude 7.6. The earthquake has a depth of 45 km (27.9 miles). A tsunami warning was announced within the Pacific area and was lat... |
how did scientists breed produce for specific traits hundreds of years ago | Take the seeds of the offspring you like, and plant and nurture those. The offspring you don't like as much, just destroy the seeds.
Bam. Evolutionary pressure via artificial selection. | [
"The idea of shaping an organism to fit a specific need isn't a new science; selective breeding of animals and plants started before recorded history. However, until the late 1900s farmers and scientist could breed new strains of a plant or organism only from closely related species, because the DNA had to be compa... |
how are boneless fish made? | When they slice open the fish to pull its guts out they pull out the bones too since they are all connected. | [
"Boneless Fish is a fish-based frozen food brand and grocery product, the process in the production of which was invented by Dairei Corporation (大冷株式会社) of Japan in 1998. It is essentially a fish that has been scaled, gutted and deboned by a skilled worker before being reassembled with a transglutaminase to look li... |
Which elements of a family crest should be kept
intact? | I'm sorry, but your "best image" is from House of Names, who are a blatant and frankly absurd scam operation with no basis in legitimate genealogy or heraldry. Their crests are basically bullshit with no more validity than something made through generators like [this](_URL_1_) or [this](_URL_0_). If you really want armorial bearings then go be such an awesome amazing world-changing person that your favorite monarch can't help but honor you with them. If you already had a right to them, *you would know*. | [
"The family crest, put on Castle Sypesteyn's gates by Cornelis Ascanius was a symbol of recognition of the family. This crest is also visible on many doors and shutters in the castle. On the crest there are three birds without beaks and legs. These are called \"merletten\". Each 'eldest' son or daughter receives a ... |
Given the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, why is there order in the world? | The second law of thermodynamics is perfectly fine with order appearing. To say otherwise is simply wrong, although distressingly often stated anyway as part of a false argument against evolution. Perhaps that's where you heard it.
The important missing part is that a *closed system* tends towards disorder. The Earth is not a closed system, and is very far from it, as it receives massive amounts of energy from the sun. This energy is the basis for almost all life, and the order increase here is more than offset by the massive entropy increase from the sun.
There's also some life around thermal vents in the ocean which seems disconnected from the sun, but this relies on the (again entropy increasing) heating of the Earth). | [
"The Second Law of Thermodynamics is concerned primarily with whether or not a given process is possible. The Second Law states that no natural process can occur unless it is accompanied by an increase in the entropy of the universe. Stated differently, an isolated system will always tend to disorder. Living organi... |
Was Julius Caesar a reformist, a conservative, or just an opportunist? | I don't think any of these terms are particularly useful, because they assume a sort of governmental structure and set of norms that was quite different from what existed in antiquity. Within the context of ancient Mediterranean politics, however, Caesar had a very well worn archetype that describes him well: the populist tyrant. The examples from Greek history are legion, from Peisistratus to Agathocles, and while somewhat less common in Roman history we can look at, say the reaction to the Gracchi to see that the fear at least was highly present. And of course in later times we can see the mold fitting around people such as the Medici.
As for his particular motivations, that is a bit more difficult to suss out. Adrian Goldsworthy's *Caesar* makes a very compelling case contextualizing him within the politics of the day to argue that he was essentially a conventional Roman politician who, because of the extraordinary times, was driven along a course towards extraordinary ends. I think this interpretation should at least be the foundation f any reading, but the arguments over Caesar's nature go back literally more than two thousand years, so there are plenty of other ways you can take it *after* understanding him within the context of the times. | [
"Alföldi's work regarding the downfall of the Roman Republic was marked by his thesis that Julius Caesar intended to establish a monarchy along the old Roman pattern. He believed that he found evidence that confirmed this theory in the coinage of the year 44BC. Alföldi defended Caesar in this. Like Theodor Mommsen,... |
Does the moon have an effect on the speed of earth's revolution around the sun? | Well, because Earth and the Moon orbit around their common barycenter (ignoring the very small effects of other bodies) there's a very slight "wobble" in Earth's orbit. Earth's speed around the barycenter is roughly 11 m/s, which, compared to the ~30 km/s (note: meters vs. kilometers!) average orbital speed around the Sun is hardly noticeable. | [
"Pierre-Simon Laplace produced in 1786 a theoretical analysis giving a basis on which the Moon's mean motion should accelerate in response to perturbational changes in the eccentricity of the orbit of Earth around the Sun. Laplace's initial computation accounted for the whole effect, thus seeming to tie up the theo... |
How long can radio wavelengths get, while still being useable? | It has to be roughly the same order as the wavelength you want to measure, typically about one-half length (see [here](_URL_2_)). So, to measure a wave the diameter of the Earth, you have to build an antenna roughly that size, though even if you scale it down an order of magnitude, you're talking about ~1200 km in length.
FYI, the ionosphere will reflect radio waves that are below the characteristic plasma frequency. This allows radio operators to communicate over great distances (see [here](_URL_1_)). It depends on the electron density in the ionosphere, which varies, but means that somewhere below ~1-10 MHz, you can't pass through the ionosphere (good [reference](_URL_0_)). So even if you had an antenna the size of the Earth, you could only receive signals from outer space, except that you wouldn't actually be able to receive them because they wouldn't propagate through. | [
"Extreme interference at the longer edge of the 150–200 meter band – the official wavelengths allocated to amateurs by the Second National Radio Conference in 1923 – forced amateurs to shift to shorter and shorter wavelengths; however, amateurs were limited by regulation to wavelengths longer than 150 meters (2 MHz... |
why are there fewer blue raspberry jolly ranchers than every other flavor? | They might have a more expensive ingredient. I know blue dyes are often more difficult to create than others.
Maybe they wanted to include blue, for a 'rainbow' effect, but the blue dye (or some other ingredient specific only to the blue ones, like a flavour) makes them expensive, so they put in enough for there to be *some* blue. | [
"Adding to the confusion is the fact there are also wild American blueberry varieties, sold in stores mainly in the US and Canada. These are uncommon outside of North America. Even more confusion is due to the huckleberry name, which originates from English dialectal names 'hurtleberry' and 'whortleberry' for the b... |
are humans designed to eat meat? i get that we have canines, but aren't our digestive tracts too long? | The length of the digestive tract argument, and the "meat actually rots in your body" claim, are both horrifically inaccurate and are deliberately played up by the more evangelizing members of the vegan crowd.
Humans are opportunistic omnivores, in that we have a wide variety of foods that we are "meant" to eat. That means fruits, nuts, grains, vegetables, and yes, meat.
Edit: Proof, because I was getting hit by downvotes earlier...
[Meat does not rot in your gut.](_URL_4_)
[Scientific American](_URL_1_)
[NPR](_URL_0_)
[Moar NPR](_URL_7_)
[Huffington Post](_URL_8_)
[Washington Post](_URL_3_)
And blog posts, not that they are always suitable evidence, but they'll add some more weight:
[Other sources](_URL_5_)
[Reasons to eat meat](_URL_6_)
[Why do we eat meat?](_URL_2_)
Now none of this is to say that you *must eat meat*. There are many people who will see improved health by cutting meat in their diet, and there are others (myself included) who just prefer a more veggie-heavy diet. This is just evidence against many of the motivations and reasons (particularly the bullshit evolutionary arguments) given by the more hardline vegans.
Edit 2: Changed "evangelical" to "evangelizing" so as not to confuse vegans with fundie Christians. | [
"Dog food is food specifically formulated and intended for consumption by dogs and other related canines. Like all carnivores, dogs have sharp, pointed teeth, and have short gastrointestinal tracts better suited for the consumption of meat than of vegetable substances. In spite of this natural carnivorous design, d... |
When did the cannon reach the end of it's use as a conventional artillery weapon? | Well, that's a good question. The problem with answering it is that "cannons" per se have three defining characteristics which differ them from modern artillery:
* Flat trajectory, direct fire targeting
* Inert ammunition
* Muzzle loading
In answering your question we have to consider that these three attributes disappeared at different times. The first to go was inert ammunition. Explosive shells appear as early as the 18th century, but they weren't very practical in many ways, principally because they relied on fuses lit by hand or by the powder blast that tended to go off prematurely or not at all. Napoleon's armies still would have been more familiar with solid, cast cannonballs than they would have with exploding rounds. The exception is with navies; the development of mortars with explosive shells was especially useful to offshore forces in opening up paths for their landing infantry, and one of the first recorded instances of their use is in fact the line "bombs bursting in air" in the Star Spangled Banner, written in 1812. By the Crimean War of 1853-1856 this had changed; explosive rounds were becoming the norm, especially in shelling fixed and fortified targets, though standard inert ammo was still used widely by some batteries, including that in the Charge of the Light Brigade ("stormed at with shot and shell"). The American Civil War also marked a step in the prevalent usage of the exploding shell, and by the 1860s the cannonball was throughly obsolete, though at the Battle of Sadowa/Koniggratz in 1866 there were still recorded usages of non-exploding shells, probably not incidentally coinciding with Austria's embarrassing defeat.
Muzzle Loading weapons were not so simple to eradicate. Even in the Civil War, the US Navy was loading Forty-Pounders through the muzzle (the Dahlgren Gun), and they were by no means alone. France was still using muzzle loaded pieces in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, albeit in a reserve capacity. The simple fact of the matter was that for anything more powerful than a five-pounder, the charge needed to fire the shell would blast out the breech loader as well, wrecking the gun after its first fire. This was remedied with the invention of the interrupting screw in 1845, though this didn't come into common usage for another 20 years.
The last of the cannon's attributes was its inability to fire indirectly, which is to say it couldn't hit anything you couldn't point it straight at. This handicap wasn't modified for many, many years; at the Battle of Tannenberg in 1914, 3/4s of all German artillery was designed for direct fire, meaning that they had a serious problem hitting anything "over the hill", so to speak. Accounts of the skirmish at Gumbinnen early in the battle even record Landwehr reservists (sort of like the US National Guard) who had never been trained in direct fire closing to point blank range on a machine gun pit and taking the Russians there hostage at the point of their medium artillery guns! This wasn't unique, the Russians were similarly handicapped with over 2/3s of their artillery unable or undesigned to fire in an indirect capacity. Many of these pieces were phased out by 1915/1916, but occasionally they were scraped up in last ditch efforts during World War II, a few of them seeing action on the Eastern Front.
So, in general, the cannon as you know it was obsolete by the 1860s, but "cannons" by definition took much longer than that to disappear. Besides, "cannon" is still a term used today for large caliber inert ammunition weapons, usually mounted to light armored vehicles or helicopters.
As to the Mexican military, I don't really know. I seem to recall that they were using traditional cannons in the Mexican-American War, and that they had probably switched to modern artillery by the 1900s, but I haven't a clue beyond that.
EDIT: formatting | [
"The history of the cannon spans several hundred years. It is unclear exactly where the cannon was invented, however there are accounts of its usage in warfare as early as the 12th century. These early accounts occur in Middle Eastern, European as well as Asiatic sources. The cannon traces its development from the ... |
Is it true that Roman dictators stepped down voluntarily for a 500 years? | Yes, it's true.
There are two separate periods of Roman history involved here: the Roman Republic *before* Julius Caesar, and the Roman Principate/Empire *after* Julius Caesar.
The period that the squeaky guy in the video is talking about is the 500 years *before* Julius Caesar. During this time, there were [a lot of dictators](_URL_0_) and every single one of them resigned the office of dictator voluntarily - including the last one, Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Even Sulla, who got himself made dictator by threatening to invade Rome with his army, who had many leading Romans killed under his dictatorship, who set up a scheme where people were rewarded for turning in family, friends, and acquaintances as "enemies of the state"... even Sulla resigned his dictatorship voluntarily.
Julius Caesar was the first dictator who did *not* resign. Quite the opposite: Caesar was voted "dictator perpetuo" by the Senate (dictator in perpetuity, or forever). And, this led directly to him being assassinated, because Romans would not accept a king, even a king called "dictator perpetuo".
But, for the 500 years before Caesar, every dictator resigned voluntarily.
One small point, though: Caesar *did not* pass down his dictatorship through his bloodline. When Caesar was assassinated, his dictatorship died with him. His grand-nephew Gaius Octavius inherited most of Caesar's fortune, Caesar's clientele (the people who owed Caesar favours) and, effectively, Caesar's army - but not Caesar's dictatorship. The dictatorship was not Caesar's to bequeath. Octavius did eventually go on to become sole ruler of Rome, but he was never appointed dictator.
| [
"A dictator was expected to resign his office upon the successful completion of the task for which he was appointed, or at the expiration of six months. These sharp limitations were intended to prevent the dictatorship from too closely resembling the absolute power of the Roman kings. But the six month limitation m... |
How are the massive diesel engines on industrial ships started? | Simple answer: compressed air.
Yup, any engine is basically just an air pump with fuel thrown in the mix. To get that much metal moving they basically prime the cylinders in a certain order to get the kinect energy flowing.
Huge accumulators hold the air that's used for this (and many other) ship functions. Typically ~400psi is what you are talking.
Edit: here's a cool article with some awesome stats and pictures: _URL_0_
The fact that next to things like the camshaft and pistons, the people working literally look like they have been hit with a shrink ray due to the massive scale at which these things are built. The stats are what amaze me... like consuming 1600 gallons an hour, or the massive 5.6 million ft-lbs or torque. | [
"The first diesel engines for ships were made by A. B. Diesels Motorer Stockholm in 1903. These engines were three-cylinder units of 120 PS (88 kW) and four-cylinder units of 180 PS (132 kW) and used for Russian ships. In World War I, especially submarine diesel engine development advanced quickly. By the end of th... |
why do humans have sex (mostly) in missionary, when nearly all other animals do it doggy, even apes / chimps? | Throughout the evolution of human history, the vagina (well, to be perfectly accurate, the vulva) has moved forward. It seems as though face-to-face sex is likely to keep the father around longer and likely to have more sex with the female. Since human babies need a lot of support in order to develop through the first few years, keeping the dad around was a huge evolutionary advantage. | [
"Research has proven that non-human animals can and do have sex for non-reproductive purposes (and for pleasure). In 2006, a Danish Animal Ethics Council report concluded that ethically performed zoosexual activity is capable of providing a positive experience for all participants, and that some non-human animals a... |
why do our teeth feel dirty after sleeping? | When you brush your teeth at night, your teeth are clean and smooth. When you sleep, your mouth isn't moving the saliva around your teeth like it does when you're asleep. Plaque accumulates naturally from your saliva. Because your mouth is mainly stagnant when sleeping, the plaque is just staying on the surface of the tooth and can feel slimy when you wake up. | [
"Dentures should be taken out at night, as leaving them in whilst sleeping has been linked to poor oral health. Leaving a denture in during sleep reduces the protective cleansing and antibacterial properties of saliva against Candida albicans (oral thrush) and denture stomatitis; the inflammation and redness of the... |
How could the UK afford to set up the NHS in '48 if WW2 had bankrupted them? | It was super expensive however at the end of the war, Labour, a left wing political party was voted into party and they aimed to create a better future for all the people who had been affected by the war. Many people were happy with the government planning of the economy and wanted it to continue into peacetime. So things such as the NHS were introduced as a result of the 1942 Beveridge report which detailed the 5 giants (Ignorance, Idleness, Squalor, Disease and Want). This was able to happen due to John Maynard Keynes trip to Washington where he only just managed to get Marshall aid from the USA ($13bn) which was used to rebuild the UK economy but growth was slow and rationing only ended in ~~1951~~ 1954. The creation of the welfare state was incredibly costly but through taxation and loans from the US the UK was able to implement the large social change, which was in line with the view of the electorate.
Edit: It was really expensive to implement and lead to the labour defeat in 1951 to the conservatives as there was a charge introduced on glasses and it angered Bevan who was the chancellor at the time and it caused a split in the Labour party which Atlee couldn't hold together. Also the lack of consumer choice was used by the conservatives who promised "More red meat". I haven't got all the figures with me but there was around £600m being spent on the NHS alone in 1949, which is a very large amount of the governments revenue, which is why it had to be cut back and privatised in some areas. | [
"Healthcare was reformed in 1948 after the Second World War, broadly along the lines of the 1942 Beveridge Report, with the creation of the National Health Service or NHS. It was originally established as part of a wider reform of social services and funded by a system of National Insurance, though receipt of healt... |
art thieves. for those who do it for the money and not the challenge, how do you get by the fact that everyone knows it's stolen? | I am going to guess a private collector hired the thief. Or they steal not so popular art. | [
"Unfortunately for the thieves, it is extremely difficult to sell the most famous and valuable works without getting caught, because any interested buyer will almost certainly know the work is stolen and advertising it risks someone contacting the authorities. It is also difficult for the buyer to display the work ... |
how can companies like t-mobile offer streaming for certain products that doesn't count against your cap? isn't this prioritizing one company's data over another's? | The short answer is yes. It's not quite as problematic as the old fast lane issue because TMobile does not have a steaming service they are trying to push, they aren't charging companies for the privilege of streaming their stuff without going against the cap and they're trying to add as many competing companies as possible to the service. There isn't the conflict of interest issue, but it still might be bad overall since larger, more established services are more likely to be added than smaller start ups which gives them an unfair advantage. | [
"Since June 2014, U.S. mobile provider T-Mobile US has offered zero-rated access to participating music streaming services to its mobile internet customers. T-Mobile launched its plan called “Music Freedom” which would exempt users of T-Mobile from having to pay premium prices for access to music content; additiona... |
what things happened (not the actual weather) that caused hurricane katrina to be such a disaster. | most of the city of New Orleans is below sea level...just think about that for a minute...it can not exist without a complex and expensive system of canals, levees and pumps. given that, and the fact that it had been about 75 years since the last major NOLA flood, it was probably inevitable that some kind of disaster was going to happen eventually. check out _URL_0_
| [
"Accompanying Hurricane Katrina's catastrophic coastal impacts was a moderate tornado outbreak spawned by the cyclone's outer bands. The event spanned August 26–31, 2005, with 57 tornadoes touching down across 8 states. One person died and numerous communities suffered damage of varying degrees from central Mississ... |
Is the heat that radiates from humans (and other living things) enough to effect the temperature of the Earth on a global scale? | A person radiates something like a 100 watts, so 7 billion people are putting out 700 billion watts. The earth receives something like 200 petawatts from the sun.
So the heat from humans amounts to something like 0.00035% of the heat coming in from the sun (which is the primary driver of Earth's temperature). Even adding in all other living things I doubt it gets close to 0.1%.
| [
"While the total internal Earth heat flow to the surface is well constrained, the relative contribution of the two main sources of Earth's heat, radiogenic and primordial heat, are highly uncertain because their direct measurement is difficult. Chemical and physical models give estimated ranges of 15–41 TW and 12–3... |
if anonymous is just an idea, then what are these social media accounts and websites. | Groups that loosely identify with the ideas behind anonymous and band together to act upon those ideas and/or people who like Guy Fawkes masks. | [
"In 2010, the \"Wall Street Journal\" found that many of Facebook's top-rated apps were transmitting identifying information to \"dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies\". The apps used an HTTP referer that exposed the user's identity and sometimes their friends' identities. Facebook said that \"Whil... |
what is "the stack"? | Gonna need the context. In ultimate frisbee, it's an offensive tactic where member of the attacking team forms a line to begin their cuts from. | [
"A typical stack is an area of computer memory with a fixed origin and a variable size. Initially the size of the stack is zero. A \"stack pointer,\" usually in the form of a hardware register, points to the most recently referenced location on the stack; when the stack has a size of zero, the stack pointer points ... |
why do votes recorded on electronic voting machines need to be counted separately? is it not possible to count the votes as they are cast? | The votes can be counted as they are cast, however the ballots are also counted separately because the machines could be in error, could have a bug and miscounted, or were intentionally programmed to commit fraud.
Without paper votes that can be counted separately, you'd never know if the machine was accurate. | [
"A recorded vote may be taken in one of three different ways. One is electronically. Members use a personal identification card to record their votes at 46 voting stations in the chamber. Votes are usually held in this way. A second mode of recorded vote is by teller. Members hand in colored cards to indicate their... |
What is nutrition? | It is an exaggeration to say it has no nutritional value. Colloquially, yes, it has no nutritional value. But it does have nutritional value in that it provides calories. "Nutrition" is anything that provides cells with what they need to function. It might be better to say that soda has minimal nutritional value. | [
"Nutrition is the science that interprets the interaction of nutrients and other substances in food in relation to maintenance, growth, reproduction, health and disease of an organism. It includes food intake, absorption, assimilation, biosynthesis, catabolism, and excretion.\n",
"Nutrition is the selection of fo... |
Given that the earth is spinning, and water is a liquid, will sea level rise (due to climate change) be greater at the equator? | The Earth is an oblate spheroid. That means it is like a losing politician: flattened at the poles. (An Asimov joke, forgive me. I do have a real answers.) The spin means that the equator does bulge and that there is more water there as well. (I'm not saying that well. The water is deeper at the equator than it would be if the Earth was not spinning.)
So a sea level rise would be larger at the equator. Not by much but it will. The fun thing is that this will slow the Earth down (by a tiny amount). | [
"Sea level rise is not uniform around the globe. Some land masses are moving up or down as a consequence of subsidence (land sinking or settling) or post-glacial rebound (land rising due to the loss of the weight of ice after melting), so that relative sea level rise is higher or lower than globally averaged. There... |
How reliable is the medical information regarding marijuana that is published on _URL_0_? | You shouldn't focus on the site where the information is published, but the groups who do the research.
Any organization with a political bias is going to selectively choose the information that backs their positions. That said, I've done a few projects and utilized NORML as a starting point for them. I found their research to be sufficient for me in those projects. | [
"Medical Marijuana News & Reviews is a quarterly magazine published by \"High Times\" magazine through the company’s West Coast office. The magazine focuses on the medical marijuana movement in America and includes information on dispensaries, medical cannabis activism and the efficacy of certain strains of marijua... |
Do the animals (mammals, mostly) that we keep as pets exhibit behavior that is akin to that of a human suffering from Stockholm Syndrome? | As /u/Nixie9 has already pointed out, definitely, without a doubt. That said, saying so is slightly problematic.
One of the most common mistakes people make when trying to understand animals and animal behavior is assigning human feelings and characteristics to them; personification of non-persons is always a little wonky because it's sort of ignoring the animals' own massive genetic history.
Yes, dogs display symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome in your home, but wild dogs display all of those same symptoms toward their alpha male. Saying your dog has Stockholm Syndrome is like saying your dog loves you; it appears true, but at the end of the day it's more of a metaphor for our perception of that animal than an actual description of how the animal feels. | [
"Common causes of disordered behavior in captive or pet animals are lack of stimulation, inappropriate stimulation, or overstimulation. These conditions can lead to disorders, unpredictable and unwanted behavior, and sometimes even physical symptoms and diseases. For example, rats who are exposed to loud music for ... |
Did the transportation of convicts to Australia lower the crime rate in Britain? | The short answer is no, the crime rate was not lowered due to the transportation of convicts. This is in part because recidivism was not the main cause of crime in England between 1787 and 1868. People transported to Australia were typically people who had been convicted of property crime - theft (petite and grand larceny), burglary, highway robbery (Hughes, *The Fatal Shore*). These people were not notorious lifelong criminals, but instead typically people who were unattached, young and poor who had some necessity to steal to survive.
The second reason that transportation did not reduce crime rates was because the crown government had been transporting criminals out of Britain to her colonies for almost two centuries beforehand. Convict transportation began around 1614 (Coldham, *British Emigrants in Bondage*) but the first felon that we have concrete evidence for his transportation is Daniel Frank, a man convicted of cattle theft in Surrey in March of 1622, transported to Virginia in September, and executed for another theft in August of 1623 (Cockburn, *Calendar of Assize Records, Surrey Indictments under James I*, Nos. 1288, 1292, 1293, 1313, 1314; McIlwaine, ed. *Minutes of the Council and General Court of Colonial Virginia*, pp. 4-5) From there, there were rare shipments of convicts to the British West Indies, the most famous being the Irish and Royalists deported by Cromwell in the 1650s (Hutton, *British Republic* pp. 108-110; [*Englands slavery, or Barbados Merchandize*](_URL_0_), (1659)). From the Restoration of Charles II to 1717, about 10,000 convicts were transported to the colonies. At least another 50,000 were transported under the revised law for transportation in 1718, and this number is likely an underestimate (Ekirch, *Bound for America*). After the outbreak of hostilities with the North American colonies, Britain didn't know what to do with the convicted persons who began to crowd the jails. Eventually, the government began employing them in the harbors of London & Dublin lifting silt. In other words, the convicts were assigned to lift gravel from the bottom of the harbor to the shore for weeks and months. After the War, Britain tried to continue sending convicts to North America, but the ship that arrived in Maryland in 1783 was met with open hostilities (Ekirch, "Great Britain's Secret Convict Trade to America, 1783-1784", *American Historical Review*, 1984). During the war, parliament tried to figure out a new location to transport felons. The West Indies, Sierra Leone, and Australia were all suggested, but it was not until 1787 that the British established a foothold on the island continent for their prisoners.
Between 1787-1868, 163,000 men, women and children (over the age of 10) were transported to Australia (McDonald and Shlomowitz, "Mortality on Convict Voyages to Australia, 1788-1868", *Social Science History*, (1989) p. 287). This punishment was intended to be both a deterrent and a means of removing criminals without killing them. However, the overall crime rates were not reduced due to this punishment. Instead, the transportation of felons ended up being what it had been in earlier centuries - a means of strengthening an imperial hold in colonial settlements by controlling the bodies of convicted persons. | [
"Between 1788 and 1868, approximately 161,700 convicts (of whom 25,000 were women) were transported to the Australian colonies of New South Wales, Van Diemen's land and Western Australia. Historian Lloyd Robson has estimated that perhaps two-thirds were thieves from working class towns, particularly from the Midlan... |
callouses | It's like light scar tissue. A tool runs on you hand. But not enough to cause a blister. It doesn't mean the same actions that would cause a blister didn't happen. The small tears heal. But with repeated use more tears happen. More healing. More scaring thicker dead skin layer. Callous. | [
"Callose is a plant polysaccharide. Its production is due to the glucan synthase-like gene (GLS) in various places within a plant. It is produced to act as a temporary cell wall in response to stimuli such as stress or damage. Callose is composed of glucose residues linked together through β-1,3-linkages, and is te... |
if i have a large sum of money sitting in a checking account, then why would bankers from the same institution encourage me to invest the funds? doesn’t the bank make more money off of my funds if i’m completely hands off? | They do, but if you invest then you have the potential to be putting in even more money. They're looking at it long-term, you'd be putting in more money over time from investments rather than one lump sum. | [
"The case decided that a banker does not hold the sums in a bank account on trust for its customer. Instead the relationship between them is that of debtor and creditor. When the customer deposits money in the account it becomes the bank's money, and the bank's obligation to repay an equivalent sum (and any agreed ... |
if reddit was against sopa and other censoring freedom of speech on the internet, why are many subreddits pushing to ban others? | Because Reddit is not one person.
Because a private operation like Reddit imposing content restrictions on itself is far different from government imposed censorship that applies to everyone. | [
"As early as 2015, platforms such as Reddit began to enforce selective bans based, for example, on terms of service prohibiting \"hate speech\". According to technology journalist Declan McCullagh, \"Silicon Valley's efforts to pull the plug on dissenting opinions\" began around 2018 with Twitter, Facebook, and You... |
why would anyone choose a revolver over a pistol, given the substantial reload time? | Because there are still a great deal of myths about the capabilities of revolvers. People still believe that they are somehow easier to shoot and handle and there are a great deal of stories about over inflated reliability. They are still ok for pocket guns or a back up gun but the reality is that they are in fact obsolete compared to modern semi auto guns. Problem is that there is a plethora of myths about the draw backs of those as well. People often make the argument that the revolver is easier to use for newer gun owners or women which could not be more wrong. Also you will often here revolver guys say things like " if I need more than 5 rounds Im screwed anyway" which is absolute nonsense as there are numerous cases of individuals taking more than 5 rounds and continuing to fight and also multiple opponenets. Essentially, the vast majority of people who choose revolvers because they believe myths and/or have never actually tried to run that gun hard. Modern pistols are superior to revolvers in every practical aspect. | [
"Using a revolver is not a disadvantage because the \"rapid-fire\" stage is not as demanding or fast as the true rapid-fire event of 25 metre rapid fire pistol. The current record is set with a revolver (Toz 49). The most popular handgun choices however are larger caliber versions of rimfire semi-automatic pistols ... |
how bad is the rain forest fire that's been going on for weeks now? how irreversible us the damage? | Well, the nice thing is that forest fires are a part of nature. They happen, they happen often and within 5-10 years after the fire most of the damage is repaired.
The problems happen when these fires get so intense that they damage and kill the larger trees. So while these fires are part of the natural cycle, if they are enhanced by lots of dead plant matter on the ground, increased temperatures, drought or other external factors, it can be a real problem.
The scope of the damage won't be known until the fires are essentially done, but this is a record event that we haven't seen in the last 100 years. Now that is a relatively small time period, but still enough for concern. | [
"The wildfires destroyed many acres of forest. Due to the lack of trees' roots holding the soil together, the ground had reduced stability and was vulnerable to mud slides in heavy rain. In early January 2018, heavy rain was predicted for the American Southwest, causing flash flood watches and evacuations to be iss... |
why would an artist want to start their own record label? | For the same reason the guy who makes $100k a year leaves hisbjob to start his own business. People like to work for themselves, not for others. | [
"On occasion, established artists, once their record contract has finished, move to an independent label. This often gives the combined advantage of name recognition and more control over one's music along with a larger portion of royalty profits. Artists such as Dolly Parton, Aimee Mann, Prince, Public Enemy, BKBr... |
How much petroleum is used for making, say, a plastic bag? | Bear in mine that petroleum is split into "fractions" of varying densities using fractional distillation. Because only certain fractions are used for making plastic, although the amount of raw petroleum needed to make one plastic bag would be (relatively) quite a lot, the other products wouldn't be wasted (making them co-products.) | [
"While petroleum is also used as a source for plastics and other chemicals, and powers various industrial processes, today two-thirds of oil consumption in the US is in the form of its derived transportation fuels. \n",
"Naturally occurring crude bitumen impregnated in sedimentary rock is the prime feed stock for... |
Why do most landmasses appear to taper downward? | just coincidence. [Looking back into Earth's past](_URL_0_), we don't see that trend. | [
"For about as far as the camera can see, the land is flat, but shaped into polygons between 2–3 meters in diameter and are bounded by troughs that are 20 cm to 50 cm deep. These shapes are due to ice in the soil expanding and contracting due to major temperature changes.\n",
"Historically, taperes were almost alw... |
How did medieval urban militias maintain training? | J.F. Verbuggen suggested that the Flemish urban militia infantry did not have any real form of training for weapons such as the pike. He argues that the militia would have had to learn to maneuver with their weapons "during a campaign, on the march, and on the battlefield" and attributes their general ineffectiveness in the attack (in contrast to their more successful defensive engagements) to their lack of regular drill or training. If Verbuggen is correct, then that makes the Flemish pikemen distinct from their counterparts in the crossbow and shooting guilds. The shooting guilds were a major part of civic and political life, whose competitions were important and exciting events. The Dukes of Burgundy were very active in maintaining their ties with the shooting guilds. John the Fearless participated in a crossbow competition in 1408 at Oodenarde, going so far as to wear the same uniform as the other men of the Guild of St. George. Phillip the Good, in 1440, did not personally participate in the competition held at the city of Ghent, but still used the event as a way to emphasize his ties to the guilds and the broader civic community. He formed his own team which included the son of a man who had been killed during a rebellion in 1437. It seems contradictory that such attention and importance would be given to the crossbow guilds but not the pikemen. However, it may simply have been easier to arrange shooting guild practice (which would primarily be standing and shooting at targets) than regular pike drill (which would require coordinating hundreds of men for days at a time, resulting in great public expense).
There is other evidence pointing to certain kinds of military training in urban centers. Shooting competitions (with either bow or crossbow) were common across Europe. Civic records for the city of London show that people fighting with swords and bucklers was a matter of public concern and resulted in crackdowns about weapons in the streets by city officials. Obviously, it is hard to draw conclusions from such limited evidence, but clearly there was some interest in and experience with weapons among the regular people of London. Again, the conclusions we can draw from this are limited. This is not to say that regular London military recruits were expert swordsmen or that this would have a significant impact on the battlefield. However, I find it difficult to believe that men from military families, who had relatives with combat experience and were preparing to serve in combat themselves, would not have bothered to familiarize themselves with the weapons they carried. English archers were expected to participate in hand-to-hand combat and acquitted themselves reasonably well, so they clearly had some knowledge of arms besides their bows. Italian communities seem to have had some kind of organized war games to prepare their militias for combat. These activities had names like the "little battle" or "shield games," and apparently had designated fields. They were conducted with shields and batons, with iron weapons being strictly prohibited. These games became so organized that special defensive equipment was made. Interestingly, this equipment can also be seen in a castle garrison record from 1202, showing that these sorts of training games were not limited to the cities alone. By the late middle ages, the importance of these games had diminished, to the point that citizens participating in them were mocked for making a show of being warlike without actually being good soldiers.
Sources: J.F. Verbuggen, "Arms and the Art of War: The Ghentenaar and Brugeois Militia in 1477–79."
Aldo Settia, "Military Games and the Training of the Infantry"
Laura Crombie, "Defense, Honor and Community: The Military and Social Bonds of the Dukes
of Burgundy and the Flemish Shooting Guilds" | [
"The large number of sieges during the medieval era called for huge numbers of infantry in the field, both in defence and in attack. Aside from labour units to construct defensive or offensive works, several specialists were deployed such as artillerymen, engineers and miners. Strongly fortified castles were hard t... |
why do actors alter their credited name slightly between films, often long after they are an established name? | If an actor wants to join an actor's union (which is basically a requirement if they want to work in Hollywood) they can't use the same name as someone who is already in the union.
Sometimes actors will use a different name on a film in order to avoid certain union rules governing their participation in those films including minimum pay and other union required accommodations. | [
"The main catalyst for change was the public's desire to know the actors' names. Film audiences repeatedly recognized certain performers in movies that they liked. Since they did not know the performers' names they gave them nicknames (such as \"the Biograph Girl\", Florence Lawrence, who was featured in Biograph m... |
why aren't things in orbit constantly accelerating? | They are constantly accelerating. But it's important to know that, in physics, "accelerating" doesn't mean "getting faster". Rather, it means "changing velocity". And velocity is a vector, meaning that it has both a direction and a magnitude.
We tend to think of the magnitude portion of velocity as the "speed" of the object, and acceleration as increasing that speed. But changing the *direction* of the velocity vector is also acceleration. So the acceleration of objects in orbit manifests as the constantly changing direction of their velocities. | [
"If an orbit is about a planetary body with significant atmosphere, its orbit can decay because of drag. Particularly at each periapsis, the object experiences atmospheric drag, losing energy. Each time, the orbit grows less eccentric (more circular) because the object loses kinetic energy precisely when that energ... |
doppler effect and radar guns that cops use | The gun sends out a wave of particles and then times how long it takes to get back.
Based on the difference in times between two pulses, you can determine the distance traveled.
If you know the amount of time between pulses, you also know the amount of time it took to travel that distance.
Since since Rate = distance/time all you have to do is divide the change in distance to the radar by the amount of time between pulses and you get the rate of the vehicle. | [
"The Doppler effect is used in some types of radar, to measure the velocity of detected objects. A radar beam is fired at a moving target — e.g. a motor car, as police use radar to detect speeding motorists — as it approaches or recedes from the radar source. Each successive radar wave has to travel farther to reac... |
what factors can cause a medication to produce fatally adverse reactions in humans during phase 1 drug trail, but pass animal testing with no problems? | Different animals can be affected by chemicals in different ways. Breaking down chemicals requires *really* complex series of chemical reactions and not all animals use the same enzymes, pathways, etc so even if the drug isn't immediately toxic the byproducts of the drug as the body breaks it down can *also* be toxic.
You have probably heard that dogs can't eat chocolate. Theobromine is a chemical in chocolate, related to caffeine, and it's fine for humans (a mild stimulant) but toxic to dogs. In this specific case, they do not break it down as quickly as humans (plus dogs will eat *a lot* if you let them) so they end up with big doses in their body that doesn't get filtered and broken down, and then it kills them with arrhythmia, seizures, and heart attacks (because it's a stimulant!)
For every different chemical there will be a different process for breaking it down, how quickly it can be broken down, and different ways it can interact with organs and cells.
For the opposite effect, catnip has a large effect on cats but virtually none in humans. | [
"Ro4-1539 has never formally undergone clinical trials in humans, but based on its effects in animals it would be expected to produce effects similar to those of other potent opioid agonists, including strong analgesia, sedation, euphoria, constipation, itching, tachyphylaxis and respiratory depression, which could... |
Did some people like living in East Germany? What things did they like about it? | East Germany was, by comparison, one of the richer Communist nations and although it was a failure in comparison to the economic powerhouse that was the Federal Republic, its citizens did not live in abject poverty or anything of the sort. Far from it, in fact. East Germans could boast several, at least perceived, advantages over the West. Full employment, greater gender equality (abortion, for example was a right in the East, but not in the West), guaranteed housing, less materialism, and a greater sense of family were but a few things your typical regime supporting East German might say were better in the East.
After the fall of the wall, a sort of reminiscing culture developed around the former DDR affectionately called *Ostalgie* (a portmanteau of the German for "east" and "nostalgia"). So you have people who look back fondly on certain brands or TV shows or other aspects of life in the former DDR. Perhaps more obvious to tourists in Berlin are the [Trabant cars](_URL_0_#tbm=isch & q=berlin+trabant) you can see or the old [Ampelmann](_URL_0_) street crossing signs, but there are lots and lots of other examples. Popular culture has even made fun of this tendency, with movies like [Goodbye Lenin](_URL_1_), which was nominated for several awards, including a BAFTA and a Golden Globe.
One of the best books I've read about this is actually by an anthropologist. [*Where the World Ended*](_URL_3_) by Daphne Berdahl looks at reunification in a single German border town. While it doesn't focus specifically on *Ostalgie*, the concept does play a significant role in the monograph. | [
"The culture of East Germany varied throughout the years due to the political and historical events that took place in the 20th century, especially as a result of Nazism and Communism. A reflection on the history of arts and culture in East Germany reveals complex relationships between artists and the state, betwee... |
why is cold water so effective at getting rid of suds? | Suds, or bubbles, in water are a result of decreased surface tension.
As the Surface Tension increases, the Surface Area is caused to decrease. Bubbles on the surface are a surfeit of surface area, compared to the flat surface of your non-soapy filled sink, so they exist at a much reduced tension.
It turns out, as water heats up, it's surface tension goes down. If you floated the largest sewing needle you could, on top of water in a pot, and heated it, it would fall in before the water boils. You could use a thermometer and over several attempts, the temperature when it falls in should be pretty close to the same every time.
Conversely, the cold water has higher surface tension and is better at pulling back the bubbles. | [
"Since some hot tubs are not drained after each use it is necessary to treat the water to keep it attractive and safe. It must be neither too alkaline nor too acidic, and must be sanitised to stay free of harmful microorganisms. Partly due to their high water temperatures, hot tubs can pose particular health risks ... |
why do apps in the apple app store have 5 star ratings, but when i scroll down and look at the reviews, they're all angry customers who left one star? | Because people who like the app just click the 5 stars. People who are pissed enough to click one star are probably going to also write up a diatribe. | [
"The Windows Phone Store was redesigned in Windows Phone 8.1 to become more information-dense. App collections, which were previously visible in a different page, are now fully featured on the front column of the Store. There is also no more distinction between Games and other apps; both now show up in the app list... |
How much of the sunlight, emitted from its birth untill now, is still travelling? | > How much of the sunlight, emitted from its birth untill now, is still travelling?
The [sun is about 4.567 billion years old](_URL_1_). Light emitted from the Sun will [keep travelling until it hits something](_URL_0_) and is absorbed. The surface area of any objects within a 4.567 billion light-year distance of the sun is absolutely tiny compared to the surface area of a sphere of 4.567 billion light-year radius, so almost all of the light ever emitted by the sun is still travelling.
So the short answer to your question *"How much of the sunlight, emitted from its birth until now, is still travelling?"* is ... "almost all of it". | [
"The VLT has observed the afterglow of the farthest known gamma-ray burst. With a measured redshift of 8.2, the light from this very remote astronomical source has taken more than 13 billion years to reach the earth. It occurred when the universe was less than 600 million years old (less than five percent of its pr... |
why do movies/series always fake phone screens? | The refresh on the phone isn't synced with anything and the persistence isn't very good. If they didn't fake them, you'd see all sorts of moire effects, that changed as the camera zoomed. It would be horrible. Like all things that look bad, they get replaced in post-production. | [
"Cell phones were used to call friends, take pictures and make videos of the phenomenon and send them to friends. Critics have suggested that the overexposed and blurry quality of the pictures and footage being sent around on cell phones, facilitated the illusory perception of a figure, when in fact some people wer... |
how does political instability in the middle east affect oil prices? | A lot of oil comes from the Middle East. Political instability might lead to chaos on the ground, that could result in less of it being produced in the future.
You're probably familiar with the idea that prices are determined by supply and demand. If just as many people want something, and there's suddenly less of it, the price will rise.
OK, so how does this cause the price of oil to rise *before* there's actually chaos on the ground causing less of it to be produced? The way this works in practice is pretty complicated, and is largely controlled by [futures markets](_URL_0_), but, basically, if I think oil will be worth $60 a barrel in a month, why would I sell it to you for $35 a barrel today? I'd make way more money just holding onto it for a month and selling it then.
So, if you want to buy my oil today, you're going to have to give me more than $35 to get me to part with it — the price rises as soon as there's a reason to *think* it might be in shorter supply in the future. | [
"As many of the world's major oil producing countries are in the Middle East, the unrest has caused a rise in oil prices. The International Monetary Fund accordingly revised its forecast for 2011 oil prices to reflect a higher price, and also reported that food prices could also increase. Additionally, concerns abo... |
how is cgi put into non-digitally filmed movies? | They use a device called a [Film Recorder](_URL_0_) - modern film recorders simply expose a frame of film to a brightly backlit high res LCD screen, but previous generations would scan the picture onto the film with lasers | [
"Chathra Weeraman personally supervised the film's visual effects. He studied visual effects and animation at the Multimedia University in Malaysia. Digital set extensions were used in filming palaces and battle camps in the film. 3D technology has been used in with photography and matte paintings. Computer-Generat... |
Why did birthrates in the United States decline so rapidly in the 1920s? | This was VERY fun to research, so thank you for the question!
After looking at [this PBS fact sheet about the Decline in U.S. fertility](_URL_0_), I eventually found this neat article from the CDC called ["Achievements in Public Health, 1900-1999: Family Planning."](_URL_1_) The basic argument that these scholars put forth is that Margaret Sanger's promotion of birth control in the 1910s and their increased popularity (and availability) in the 1920s allowed couples to limit their family size (probably with great success for the first time!). This leads to the tremendous drop in birthrates seen on your chart. | [
"Following the thriving economic success that was a product of the Second World War, America's population skyrocketed between the years 1940-1959, to which the new American generation was called the Baby Boomers. Today, as of 2017, many of these Baby Boomers have celebrated their 60th birthdays and in the next few ... |
price fixing | Essentially, it is when competing companies agree to keep their prices higher than would otherwise be logical, in order to make more money, which is illegal.
Usually, for every competing market, there is a price that everyone makes the most money to sell at, because their profit equation ([Sale price - cost]*number sold) is maximized. However, if anyone actually tried to sell at that number, some competitor would just have their product be slightly cheaper, totally selling out while the company trying to sell at the profit maximizing price would sell nothing and lose money. This means that everyone has to sell at a certain much lower point to avoid being undercut. However, if all the companies get together and agree to not undercut each other, they easily get around that issue.
Collaborating in such a manner is called price fixing and is highly illegal. | [
"Price fixing is maintaining a price at a certain level, which has been agreed upon between competing sellers and is illegal in most countries . When price fixing occurs and a price is set by an industry, customers are forced to pay the exorbitant price due to a lack of options.\n",
"Price fixing requires a consp... |
why do lips get chapped in cold weather compared to hot? doesn’t the hot air absorb the moisture more? | Hot air does make moisture move more, but that also includes nearby water sources, making the air more humid.
The higher water content of the warm air doesn't suck from your lips as much as the very dry cold air.
Plus, when it's warmer, you're sweating more, applying moisture more directly. | [
"Lip licking, biting, or rubbing habits are frequently involved. Counterintuitively, constant licking of the lips causes drying and irritation, and eventually the mucosa splits or cracks. The lips have a greater tendency to dry out in cold, dry weather. Digestive enzymes present in saliva may also irritate the lips... |
Could you recommend sources with information about cultural conceptions of time in post-World War II America? | > I am especially curious about the impact the internet has had on our understandings or perceptions of time. Thank you!
AskHistorians places a 20-year limit on discussions here. You might consider asking about this particular angle over in /r/AskSocialScience! | [
"The Contemporary Period generally covers history still in living memory, approximately 100 years behind the current year. However, for all intents and purposes, the period will be used here as spanning from the second world war in 1945 to present day, as it is considered separate from the past eras and the newest ... |
butt smacking in sports. | In baseball, it's easier to smack someone's butt than pat them on the back. The smacking motion is way easier to do under handed than an overhand pat on the back. Plus, when they get excited, I'd imagine a vigirious smack on the butt is a bit more tolerable than an aggressive pat on the back. Usually it only happens after an exciting play.
It's just part of the game. | [
"Tamakeri (玉蹴り) (lit. ball kicking) is a sexual fetish and subgenre of BDSM within which a man's testicles are abused. The genre is also referred to as ballbusting (\"bb\" for short). Tamakeri is the Japanese term, but it is used by many non-Japanese people to describe media where Asian people—mainly women—are part... |
how does my phone number show up on a stranger’s call log even though i never called that person? | This literally is still happening to my husband but he's recieving so many calls and texts that his phone can't function right now. It's been since this morning around 10, and it's 5pm now. | [
"These telephones are almost always marked by a placard or sign indicating a unique serial number or identifier which allows the authorities to know exactly where the caller is - even if the caller does not know - by having the caller read the short identifier from the placard over the telephone. Some phones are eq... |
Do ears have depth perception? | No, they cannot. You can only hear the direction where the sound is coming from (and this in all 3 dimensions!). This is because the sound will hit your ears at different times (so you can tell if it is from left or right), and it will be forwarded a bit different dependent on the direction it hits your auricle (you can then tell if it is from behind/front and up/down).
Also: you only have the depth perception of your eyes because they overlap and each one has a slightly different picture, and this picture is made of linear photons, while sound is brought to you by a wave that gets around corners.
*btw, this is not psychology at all. This is biology/medicine and/or neuroscience* | [
"Depth perception results from many monocular and binocular visual clues. For objects relatively close to the eyes, binocular vision plays an important role in depth perception. Binocular vision allows the brain to create a single Cyclopean image and to attach a depth level to each point in it.\n",
"Scientists wh... |
how do child actors/actresses play roles in films and tv shows meant for mature audiences such as "game of thrones?" | Depends on the rules in the country, but in the US, child labor/acting laws are pretty restrictive.
They have permission from their parents, they know they're acting, and they're well guarded from any potential abuse. If the parents are OK with it, and the kids are OK with it and no other laws are being broken, then everyone's happy.
Not sure what else to say. | [
"Many child actors find themselves struggling to adapt as they become adults. Lindsay Lohan and Macaulay Culkin are two particular famous child actors who eventually experienced much difficulty with the fame they acquired at a young age. Many child actors also become successful adult actors as well, a prime example... |
what does inflammation have to do with a diabetics pancreas? | Type 1 Diabetes is an autoimmune disease. i.e, the immune cells of the body like lymphocytes starts attacking the insulin producing beta cells of the pancreas. As more and more beta cells are destroyed, there will be reduced production of the insulin and ultimately the pancreas cannot produce anymore insulin. That is why Type 1 diabetic patients depend exclusively on external insulin injections and cannot be treated with other hypoglycemic tablets.
The key here is the lymphocytic infiltration of the pancreatic beta cells. An inflammation is nothing but an infiltration by the immune cells of the body here. | [
"Diseases causing inflammation in the GI tract can lead to blood in the stool. Inflammation can occur anywhere along the GI tract in Crohn's disease, or in the colon if a person has ulcerative colitis.\n",
"Malnutrition–inflammation complex (syndrome), abbreviated as \"MICS\" and also known as \"malnutrition–infl... |
ruth's chris steakhouse. what is a chris steak? why is it ruth's and not ruth chris' steakhouse? | The original Chris Steak House (1927–1965):
Chris Steak House was founded on February 27, 1927 by New Orleans entrepreneur Chris Matulich. It was located at 11 Broad Street near the New Orleans Fairgrounds Racetrack, seated 60 people, and had no parking lot. During Matulich's 38-year management, the business was sold six times, failing each time, and enabling him to buy the restaurant back cheaply from the purchasers.
Ownership by Ruth Fertel, 1965–1999:
Ruth Fertel (February 5, 1927 - April 16, 2002)
Main article: Ruth Fertel
Acquisition, 1965
In 1965, divorced single mother Ruth Fertel, realizing she needed to earn more money to send her teenage sons to college, mortgaged her house to purchase the restaurant, ignoring the advice of her banker, lawyer, and friends, and despite knowing nothing about the restaurant business. She initially planned to raise just $18,000 to cover the purchase price, until it was pointed out to her that she would need an additional $4,000 to cover the cost of renovations and food. On her first day, May 24, 1965, she sold 35 steaks at $5 each. Fertel personally took a hand in every part of the business. She had to teach herself how to butcher steak, and despite being just five-foot-two and 110-pounds, would saw up 30-pound short loins by hand until she could afford an electric band saw. She staffed her restaurant with single mothers, saying that they were hard workers and reliable. For many years, Chris' Steak House was the only upscale restaurant in New Orleans with an all-female wait staff.
From the beginning her restaurant attracted local politicians as well as athletes, businessmen and reporters. Political reporter Rosemary James noted that she "would not have missed a Friday before a major election at Ruth's Chris Steak House. That was the place to be if you wanted to get some scoops." Local celebrities like Fats Domino were regulars.
Name change to Ruth's Chris Steak House, 1976:
In early 1976, shortly after signing a new ten-year lease on the restaurant, a fire destroyed the building. Fertel had recently acquired a second property nearby to rent out as party space. Within seven days, she had relocated the restaurant to its new location a few blocks away at 711 Broad Street and re-opened it, expanding to 160 seats in the process. The sales agreement with Matulich prevented her from using the original name at any other address, so she named the new restaurant Ruth's Chris Steak House in order to keep some continuity with the previous location. She admitted later to Fortune Magazine that "I've always hated the name, but we've always managed to work around it."
TL;DR: Ruth Fertel bought the original "Chris Steak House" from Chris Matulich. Ruth was forced to rename the popular restaurant when moving locations due to a contract obligation that prevented her from keeping the name at any other site.
Directly from wikipedia: _URL_0_
Edit: Summarized the important parts of the wikipedia page for the extra lazy | [
"A steakhouse, steak house, or chophouse is a restaurant that specializes in steaks and chops. Modern steakhouses may also offer other cuts of meat such as poultry, roast prime rib, and veal, as well as fish and seafood.\n",
"A carpetbag steak or carpetbagger steak is an end cut of steak that is pocketed and stuf... |
1953 & Iran | I would recommend that you read over the CIA's own history of the coup. A lot written about this event tends to be highly biased, so its difficult to find concrete sources. But, the CIA's history is a basic look at the CIA's arguments for the coup and the actual events, which I found insightful. _URL_0_
He's right, but he's wrong at the same time. In one sense, there was a level of discontent with Mossaddeq and his government. Mossaddeq was a fairly controversial leader, who alienated many with his unrelenting opposition to an oil agreement with the British. He was seen by many to be overly emotional, to the extent that he would physically collpase after extended speeches and rants. In one discussion with an American ambassador, Mossadeq reportedly responded to the looming economic disaster with the French phrase “tant pis pour nous,” meaning “too bad for us.” Pro-shah forces were also fairly significant (although much less pronounced) as the traditional power base of the monarchy was still prominent, especially in the military.
While Mossadeq did have oppositions within the clerics, business leaders, and other elements of society, it was not enough on its own to materialize a coup. The CIA's and British involvement was absolutely critical in this endeavor. The CIA's TPBEDAMN program had for years been distributing black propaganda throughout Iran, attempting to delegitimize the Communist Tudeh party and Mossaddeq power base. Millions of dollars were spent by the CIA to buy off religious leaders and business men, while false flag attacks were carried out against religious leaders to complicit the Tudeh party and Mossaddeq. Protests and counter protests were explicitly created by the CIA to maintain a level of chaos in Tehran, which would form the basis of an Iranian military intervention on the side of the Shah.
The actual coup was entirely organized by the MI6 and the CIA, which would involve the Shah issuing decrees dismissing Mossaddeq and declaring General Zahedi as PM. Zahedi would then use the military to quell the protests, arrest members of the Tudeh and Mossaddeq, and cement the Shah's rule.
The coup actually failed magnificently, with Mossaddeq preempting the Shah and Zahedi by arresting key military officers and dissolving the Iranian parliament. The Shah would soon flee the country, crippling the ability to carry out the coup. It was only the ingenuity of CIA operator Kermit Roosevelt, who used the TPBEDAMN propaganda wing to massively augment the protests of both the pro-shah and pro-mossaddeq parties, while massively distributing the royal decrees of Mossaddeq dismissal to the populace. With this and a combination of a US condemnation of Mossaddeq's handling of the riots, Mossaddeq was forced to order his National Front protestors from the streets, otherwise face international scrutiny and the evacuation of the American embassy. When the pro-shah supporters later over-ran Radio Tehran, they were able to further augment the pro-shah protestors by convincing much of the military to side with Zahedi. The military and protestors eventually consolidated their control over the Tehran, arresting Mossaddeq and other Tudeh party members.
The author of the Foreign Affairs article is correct in the idea that all the pieces of a potential coup was already present in Iran. However, it was the CIA who explicitly augmented those realities via its operations. The coup could not have existed without these preexisting conditions, and yet the fall of Mossaddeq government and reestablishment of the Shah could not have happened without the CIA and MI6. Both were critical aspects of Mossaddeq's fall, contrary to the author's one-sided claim that the US involvement was "insignificant." | [
"The Tehran Conference (codenamed Eureka) was a strategy meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill from 28 November to 1 December 1943, after the Anglo-Soviet Invasion of Iran. It was held in the Soviet Union's embassy in Tehran, Iran. It was the first of the World War II conferences of... |
why do we have toll booths when driving through states and such? is it just an easy way for them to get tax money? | Toll roads are highways that pay for themselves. They're often used by drive-through states (like Kansas) that have people from other states use their highways but not spend money in their state to generate revenue to keep the highways cared for. | [
"On an open toll system, all vehicles stop at various locations along the highway to pay a toll. (This is different from \"open road tolling\", where \"no\" vehicles stop to pay a toll.) While this may save money from the lack of need to construct toll booths at every exit, it can cause traffic congestion while tra... |
When an object breaks the sound barrier, mach 1, there's a sonic boom; is there a similar occurrence when it goes double or triple the speed of sound? | A sonic boom doesn't occur only when an object passes through Mach 1. A sonic boom is produced whenever an object is traveling supersonically. | [
"The tip of a bullwhip is thought to be the first man-made object to break the sound barrier, resulting in the telltale \"crack\" (actually a small sonic boom). The wave motion traveling through the bullwhip is what makes it capable of achieving supersonic speeds.\n",
"A sonic boom does not occur only at the mome... |
why do some people use comma (,) instead of dot/period (.) when writing decimals? | Historical reasons
> In France, the full stop was already in use in printing to make Roman numerals more readable, so the comma was chosen.Many other countries, such as Italy, also chose to use the comma to mark the decimal units position. It has been made standard by the ISO for international blueprints. However, English-speaking countries took the comma to separate sequences of three digits.
From [wikipedia](_URL_0_) | [
"Punctuation varies from language to language. For example, French Braille uses for its question mark and swaps the quotation marks and parentheses (to and ); it uses the period () for the decimal point, as in print, and the decimal point () to mark capitalization.\n",
"In France, the full stop was already in use... |
why does mic feedback always present itself as high pitched ringing? | Audio Engineer here:
& #x200B;
It doesn't always. Sometimes it's low end frequencies feeding back from a subwoofer into a mic stand or similar.
& #x200B;
The reason that *most of the time* it's high pitched is because:
* The speakers are better at reproducing high pitches
* The mics are better at picking up high pitches
* High pitched sound waves don't need as munch energy to get from point A to point B as lower frequencies do, so they don't die out as fast as lower frequencies.
When I tune a sound system to prevent feedback, there are usually at least 3 or 4 frequencies I have to filter and they are pretty well spread across the audio spectrum. | [
"The loud squeals that sometimes occurs in audio systems, PA systems, and rock music are known as audio feedback. If a microphone is in front of a loudspeaker that it is connected to, sound that the microphone picks up comes out of the speaker, and is picked up by the microphone and re-amplified. If the loop gain i... |
Why did the Romans use the letter 'C' for the sound already represented by the letters 'K' and 'Q', when it comes from the Greek letter 'Γ' (gamma) ? | The use of C/G/Γ, K, and Q in the early Latin alphabet was influenced by the Etruscan, which didn’t distinguish between voiced/unvoiced pairs like *k/g*. Instead, the choice of letter was determined by the following vowel: Q was used for *k* and *g* sounds before rounded vowels; K was used before *a*; and C was used for *k* and *g* sounds before other vowels.
When the Romans became more familiar with Greek and its distinction between Γ and Κ, they realized they’d been doing it wrong; so they invented a new letter G as a variant of C (which was itself a variant of Γ) to represent the *g* sound. | [
"C, K, and Q in the Roman alphabet could all be used to write both the and sounds; the Romans soon modified the letter C to make G, inserted it in seventh place, where Z had been, to maintain the gematria (the numerical sequence of the alphabet). Over the few centuries after Alexander the Great conquered the Easter... |
What happened to the confiscated items the Nazis took from the prisoners during the Holocaust? | Most of it had already been redistributed among Germans, the SS, the Führer's Chancellory, etc. We have the actual letter ordering camp commandants what to do with the items. It is from SS-Brigade-Führer August Frank dated September 26, 1942. Frank was the head of the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt (WVHA, the SS Main Economic and Administrative Department), which was in charge of the financial side of the Final Solution of the Jewish Question. I have summarised its points below:
1. Cash to be paid into the WVHA account.
2. Gold (including golden teeth), precious metals and stones, jewelry to be handed over to the WVHA.
3. Watches, clocks, pens, mechanical pencils, razors, pocket knives, scissors, flashlights, wallets to be sold to the Army.
4. Men's clothing and shoes to be handed over to the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (Welfare Office for Ethnic Germans). The proceeds to go to the WVHA. May exceptionally be used for the needs of the Army.
5. Women's and children's clothing and shoes to be sold to the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle.
6. Bedding, suiting, scarves, umbrellas, canes, thermos flasks, earwarmers, prams, combs, handbags, leather belts, shopping bags, pipes, sunglasses, mirrors, cutlery, backpacks, suitcases to be handed over to the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (Welfare Office for Ethnic Germans). Payment will be discussed later.
7. (Bed) linen, dish and bath towels, tablecloths to be sold to the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle. May also be used for the troops, for a fee.
8. Glasses to be handed over to the Medical Branch. Glasses with golden frames to be classed with the precious metals.
9. Valuable furs, treated and untreated, to be handed over to the WVHA. Inferior furs (sheep, rabbit, hare) to be sent to [the concentration camp for women at] Ravensbrück.
It was only at the six death camps (listed below) that these items were collected as it was only at death camps that people arrived with luggage, as they had been told they were going to be resettled. Inmates at other concentration camps arrived there as regular prisoners do now at a prison, without luggage and just in the clothes they stand up in. From the death camps, trains carrying tons of these items, neatly categorised, regularly left the camps en route to distribution centers in Germany and Poland. The death camps of Sobibor, Belzec, Treblinka and Chelmno were dismantled before the end of the war and there was nothing left to liberate.
It was only at Auschwitz and Majdanek, which had to be abandoned in a hurry in the face of the advancing Red Army, that an appreciable number of items were left behind. That's where the iconic images of mountains of clothes and shoes, etc, come from. Many of these items were distributed to or taken by the local Polish population and by the liberating Soviet troops (everybody was in dire need of even basic items at the time). In late 1944 (Majdanek) and early 1946 (Auschwitz) , work started on turning the camp sites into a memorial and the remaining items were shielded from further appropriations. Many are now on display. | [
"From 1933 through the end of World War II, the Nazi regime maintained a policy of looting art for sale or for removal to museums in the Third Reich. Hermann Göring, head of the Luftwaffe, personally took charge of hundreds of valuable pieces, generally stolen from Jews and other victims of the Holocaust.\n",
"An... |
Why do certain substances leave an odor that is nearly impossible to remove from your skin, while others was off with ease? | The chemicals that are responsible for the smells you have listed are not water soluble, so washing your hands with water would not be an effective way to get rid of them. Rinsing your hands in something non-polar (such as, for example, cooking oil) should, theoretically, do more to get rid of these smells. If that fails, it is also possible that some of these chemicals may soak into the skin (like the laboratory solvent DMSO does) and that may be why the odor is difficult to get rid of. | [
"Outgassing can be significant if it collects in a closed environment where air is stagnant or recirculated. For example, new car smell consists of outgassed chemicals released by heat in a closed automobile. Even a nearly odorless material such as wood may build up a strong smell if kept in a closed box for months... |
regarding evolution. assuming the first life was single cell organisms that reproduced by splitting, or reproduced asexually. at what point was the male/female two-part system introduced...and why? | The downside of asexual reproduction is that it doesn't easily introduce new genes into the mix. Reproduction with a partner does do this, and generally those are genes are pretty good. (else they wouldn't have survive until adulthood) Species become more varied as a result which helps them survive in changing environments. | [
"The much larger eukaryotic genome with its rapid copying gave eukaryotes the capacity to create many different types of cells and assemble them together into large, complex, multicellular life. By 1.2 Ga, meiosis and sexual reproduction are present in single-celled eukaryotes. Bangiomorpha pubescens, a fossil mult... |
Why can we digest fats but not plastics when both are mostly hydrocarbon chains? | 1) The carboxylic acid changes the chemistry of fatty acids compared to plastic hydrocarbons massively. It looks subtle on paper, but it is like the difference between a stick and an arm (with a hand!) in terms of chemical functionality.
2) Plastic/polymeric hydrocarbons are very chemically inert and there is therefore a larger energy barrier to chemical transformations (and therefore use as an energy source).
3) The enzymes evolved over many millions of years to be exquisitely selective for fatty acids, not plastics. | [
"Polyunsaturated fats are fats in which the constituent hydrocarbon chain possesses two or more carbon–carbon double bonds. Polyunsaturated fat can be found mostly in nuts, seeds, fish, seed oils, and oysters. \"Unsaturated\" refers to the fact that the molecules contain less than the maximum amount of hydrogen (if... |
if america were to do away with the penny, what would happen to all the pennies i have? | They're legal tender, so the government has to honor their value -- at least until they decide they don't anymore.
People would box up their pennies, and take them to banks and get other currency for them. The banks would then send the pennies to the Treasury, who would dispose of them.
You could keep them, but after a certain amount of time (probably a long time), banks could refuse to take them, and they'd be more or less useless trinkets of metal to you. | [
"In 1990, the organization commissioned a survey which found that 62% of Americans opposed eliminating the penny. They commissioned another survey in 2012 which came to a similar conclusion; namely, that about two-thirds of Americans supported keeping the penny.\n",
"A debate has long existed within the United St... |
why do antibiotics make you nauseous? | Your stomach is filled with bacteria, tons of it. And...that's a good thing. There is increasing amounts of research that show that our symbiotic relationship with the bacteria in our gut is a powerful part of "feeling good" in the belly. Anti-biotics indiscriminately destroy bacteria - even the good stuff. This is the rationale behind the pro-biotic craze (although...the research that shows that pro-biotics fix problems related to intenstinal bacteria isn't as clear as the research that shows that intestinal bacteria are really great). But...it's pretty common place now to take pro-biotics along with heavy anti-biotic regimes. It'll help more with recovering after you're off them, then from dealing with the discomfort day-to-day.
| [
"While antibiotics are beneficial in certain types of acute diarrhea, they are usually not used except in specific situations. There are concerns that antibiotics may increase the risk of hemolytic uremic syndrome in people infected with . In resource-poor countries, treatment with antibiotics may be beneficial. Ho... |
In what way were the Mongolians affected by the Black Death? | You asked about trade so I'll cover that specifically but the plague had massive implications for the whole empire.
By the time the whole 'pillage and slaughter' thing had slowed down in the Mongol conscious they readily turned to trade. For awhile many in the Mongol elite had been interacting with Confucian scholars on a personal level and it was this Chinese cohort of learned elite that convinced them that killing everybody was actually less profitable than say, taxing the dickens out of them. They also managed to set up extensive trade networks, monopolize them, and then taxed those as well. It was pretty easy for them to do this for a number of reasons; they had direct control over means of production as well as raw materials. Additionally they were operating in a bit of a vacuum- that is to say there really wasn't anybody left alive to directly challenge Mongolian economic supremacy. Even the Europeans, who wanted nothing to do with the Mongolian trade behemoth, inadvertently found themselves purchasing things like carved ivory statues made as far away as China. These statues would have found their way into European hands by means of extensive and well maintained trade networks. Along these trade networks were way stations where people could stop, rest, maybe trade mounts, information, ensure they were heading the right way etc etc. The Black Plague essentially removed these trade stations from the equation as nobody was left alive to operate them. What quickly followed was a halt in the large scale flow of goods across any significant distance. | [
"The Mongol Empire established commercial and political connections between the Eastern and Western areas of the world, through the most mobile army ever seen. The armies, composed of the most rapidly moving travelers who had ever moved between the steppes of East Asia (where bubonic plague was and remains endemic ... |
how do teeth move? | The hole is 'stretched' by the continued application of force, and then the gaps are slowly filled in by new bone as it heals. This is part of why you have a retainer to wear even after the correction is done with and it must be worn a lot more at first. | [
"When the teeth are moving in the unrestricted (i.e. forward) direction, the pawl easily slides up and over the gently sloped edges of the teeth, with a spring forcing it (often with an audible 'click') into the depression between the teeth as it passes the tip of each tooth. When the teeth move in the opposite (ba... |
why are 99% of ads which are supposed to be funny so unfunny? surely multi-billion dollar companies could afford comedic ad writers? | They get group tested to hell and back, scrutinized backwards and forwards to eliminate any possible offense, to fit specific demographics, to fit in allotted time,etc.
Small companies generally do better at this, as they just go with the initial idea (saw a Bigfoot themed ad for a mattress protector that was funnier than the video it was before) | [
"\"TV Guide\" described it as \"a mildly amusing comedy that never really delivers its laugh quota, due primarily to its uneven script. Drake, a popular British television comic of the day, is good, though the movies are clearly not his metier.\"\n",
"Jokes are made at the expense of plot holes, inconsistent char... |
Why are most tuxedos and other formal clothes black and white? | This question needs a big asterisk attached - it's *men's* formal clothing that tends toward black and white.
The story starts in the late 1770s and 1780s, a period when men and women of fashion began to show their status by, among other things, wearing looser and less formal clothing - the most obvious example we tend to talk about is chemise gowns (often constructed as tubes of white cotton, held in with a sash) in opposition to silk gowns with a fitted bodice and a waistline seam, but this shift affected men's clothing as well. A coat with turn-down collar and revers (together referred to today as "lapels"), previously suitable for wearing while striding around one's country estate, became more fashionable than the earlier coat without lapels. The lapels served a function as country clothing - buttoning a coat over your chest made it warmer on a blustery day, as did turning up a collar over your neck - but were simply an element of fashion at, say, the Tuileries, where the lapel-less coat had been functioning perfectly well. Another, more relevant aspect of this change in attitude toward what was fashionable included a tendency toward darker colors for men.
By the early 1790s, fashionable men could mostly be found wearing dark blue, dark green, grey, brown, and black coats; their waistcoats and breeches might match (the "ditto suit" of matching pieces had previously been fashionable), but going into the 19th century, it became standard for the dark coat to be paired with white or buff breeches/pantaloons and waistcoat. By the 1820s, darker pantaloons and trousers were being worn, and by the middle of the century they were common; between these periods was a time of colorful waistcoats, but by the 1860s-1870s, they were calming again into the matching waistcoat of the three-piece suit or simply buff.
Stark black ended up remaining in use for evening dress for a couple of reasons. For one thing, as you can see from the above, it had achieved a "traditional" status by the mid-19th century by virtue of being what used to be exceptionally fashionable. For another, evening dress, as formalwear accessible only to the affluent, most fully represented and conformed to the mainstream 19th (and 20th) century philosophies regarding men's and women's clothing: that the color, fuss, and frivolity of fashion was reserved for women, while men should be "above" fashion and remain in soberer attire.
Black does also have a long history of being a prestige color in the west. While of course it has also been used as the main color of mourning, it had been quite expensive to procure cloth of a true, deep, and stable black: it required multiple dye baths (and not the second or third uses of a bath that created lighter versions of the dye color, either) which drove up the cost. Meanwhile, the ability to have one's personal body linen - men's shirts, women's shifts/smocks/chemises - regularly cleaned and kept a spotless white was also a status symbol. Body linens would show to some extent, in different ways depending on the era: for men in the 19th century, this included the collar, the shirtfront, and sometimes the cuffs. The clean, starched, white shirtfront was especially prominent for evening dress, which included a waistcoat with a shawl collar and a very deep neckline. | [
"The toque most likely originated as the result of the gradual evolution of head coverings worn by cooks throughout the centuries. Their roots are sometimes traced to the \"casque à meche\" (stocking cap) worn by 18th-century French chefs. The colour of the \"casque à meche\" denoted the rank of the wearer. Boucher... |
Who was the wealthiest individual in ancient history? | Ancient history is a pretty broad timespan. You might want to narrow that down a bit. | [
"The Richest Man in Babylon is a 1926 book by George S. Clason that dispenses financial advice through a collection of parables set 8,000 years ago in ancient Babylon. The book remains in print almost a century after the parables were originally published, and is regarded as a classic of personal financial advice.\... |
why do employers ask to upload resume and also fill out employment history, school information, etc... that is already listed on the resume? | they want the ability to sort, filter, search etc. all of the resumes submitted very efficiently. Rather than having a person extract that information from all the various formats of resumes they receive they ask you to do that form them. It also serves to some degree to assure that they get the information they need.
edit: you also upload your resume (rather than just fill out the form) most typically because "screening" (what the structured data is for) gets rid of the garbage applicants, but is not good at finding the best applicants. A resume still allows for a person to convey stuff that matters to the applicant, not just the narrow criteria. This is both because structuring a resume requires some intelligence and also because it allows for (limited albeit) self-expression that can separate the great from the good. | [
"The school is building an online alumni directory where ex-students can attach resume, skills, years of experiences, qualifications, whether looking for jobs or not, type of jobs looking for etc. so that it can be used as a Resume Service for HR managers.\n",
"A typical résumé contains a \"summary\" of relevant ... |
how come if your fingers are paralyzed or have nerve damage, they don’t prune, (wrinkle) and why do only our finger tips and toes prune? | Pruning of the fingertips is a mechanism that is regulated by the nervous system. If there’s paralysis or some form of nerve damage in the fingers, these nerve impulses are unable to initiate the physiological changes that result in the pruning of the skin in that area.
Pruning of the fingertips/toes are thought to help improve the grip of these appendages in wet conditions but there are studies that show no noticeable improvements between pruned and non-pruned fingertips in wet conditions and as such, the true reason for this phenomenon is largely still unknown. | [
"Carpal tunnel syndrome is a common disorder of the hand. This disorder results from compression of an important nerve in the wrist. Disorders like diabetes mellitus, thyroid or rheumatoid arthritis can narrow the tunnel and cause impingement of the nerve. Carpal tunnel syndrome also occurs in people who overuse th... |
why ireland separated | Ireland was a colony of britain for 700 years. In 1919 an Irish independence movement and its military wing the Irish Republican Army waged a guerrilla war on the british army stationed in the country. Now there had been various rebellions and pushes for independence but nothing worked as the british were very good at both infiltrating Irish separatist groups and the had military superiority. But this time the movement was successful in doing real damage to the troops stationed in Ireland.
Between 1919 and 1921 war raged between the police force/british army and the IRA. Many military historians have concluded that the IRA fought a largely successful and lethal guerrilla war, which forced the British government to conclude that the IRA could not be defeated militarily. This caused a push for peace from London, and eventually a delegation was sent from Ireland to London to negotiate independence from Britain.
The biggest issue and the reasoning for the partition was the fact that the north of the Island had been mostly populated by planted settlers, or undertakers as they were known. This meant the majority of the population were still very loyal to the crown and Protestant and they had their own particularly violent paramilitary group known as the Ulster Volunteers. Their job was to prevent home rule at any cost.
So with all this to take into account the Anglo-Irish treaty decided it best that Ireland be split into two separate countries the Republic of Ireland in the south with 26 counties, independent from britain but still be a dominion of the british empire and Northern Ireland the remaining 6 counties to remain completely under the control of London. | [
"The partition of Ireland () divided the island of Ireland into two jurisdictions, Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. It took place on 3 May 1921 under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. Today the former is still known as Northern Ireland and forms part of the United Kingdom, while the latter is now a sovereig... |
what is healthcare reform in america and how will it affect me-a middle class, fulltime worker with benefits? i seriously cannot figure this out and nothing makes sense when i try to find simple explainations. | It probably won't effect you all that much, besides offering you more options if you end up losing your job at some point.
There are some restrictions on healthcare insurance in the future, mostly that you can't as easily have the insurance companies abandon you in some situations. | [
"The healthcare reform debate in the United States has been a political issue focusing upon increasing medical coverage, decreasing costs, insurance reform, and the philosophy of its provision, funding, and government involvement. \n",
"A variety of specific types of reform have been suggested to improve the Unit... |
why do certain drinks (i.e: milk) make you sick in large quantities while others (i.e: water) do not? | Have you ever heard the saying, "too much of anything isn't good for you."? Things such as water can also be harmful in extreme quantities. A few years ago, a football player drank 4 gallons of fluids to stop cramps, and later died from water intoxication. | [
"According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 300 people in the United States got sick from drinking raw milk or eating cheese made from raw milk in 2001, and nearly 200 became ill from these products in 2002. \"Drinking raw milk or eating raw milk products is like playing Russian roulette ... |
what does a cigarette actually contain? | They contain processed tobacco, various flavor additives (see link to list posted by u/bulksalty, and the paper "tube" or wrap. The paper will vary by brand - it can be rice paper, hemp paper, flax paper, lots of different things.
The tobacco plant is harvested, cured (dried), and processed down into a pulp that is basically made into tobacco paper. The tobacco paper is sprayed down with flavors and tobacco juice. This is where a lot of the control goes into how much nicotine, tar, etc. Or formerly were called lights vs. full-flavor, etc. The paper is then chopped up and loaded into the paper/filter tubes and packaged.
I read somewhere that one of the most common flavors in American tobacco is maple. The tobacco industry uses so much maple that more is put in cigs than is consumed as a condiment or food flavoring - but don't quote me on that. | [
"The term \"cigarette\", as commonly used, refers to a tobacco cigarette but is sometimes used to refer to other substances, such as a cannabis cigarette. A cigarette is distinguished from a cigar by its usually smaller size, use of processed leaf, and paper wrapping, which is typically white. Cigar wrappers are ty... |
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