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Why didn't the Algerian Civil War of the 90s lead to the same kind of refugee crisis that we see today in Syria, despite the war's similarly destructive nature and Algeria's close proximity to Europe? | Hi OP, this topic may be very difficult to address in this subreddit, due to this subreddit's [20-year rule against discussing current events](_URL_0_). The Algerian Civil War took place from 1991-2002, whereas our cutoff is 1996, which is the half-way point. Respondents are welcome to discuss the impacts of the war on society and population movements in those early years, but this may not be the sort of thorough analysis you're looking for. You might try x-posting in a current events / political science / social science sub for a broader take on refugees of this conflict. | [
"As a result of the Syrian civil war, large numbers of Palestinian refugees fled Syria to Europe as part of the European migrant crisis, and to other Arab countries. In September 2015, a Palestinian official said that only 200,000 Palestinian refugees were left in Syria, with 100,000 Palestinian refugees from Syria... |
why does oil smoke when heated instead of boiling like water does? | Because it's burning. Oil is a complex organic molecule which can't really go into gas phase the way that water can. Instead, it just falls apart when you heat it. | [
"Oil of various kinds could be heated to high temperatures and poured over an enemy, although, since it was extremely expensive, its use was limited, both in frequency and quantity. Moreover, it could be dangerous and volatile. Since the smoke point of oil is lower than its boiling point, the oil was only heated an... |
retirement plans such as 401k | I can't tell you if they even out but you are talking about a traditional IRA versus a Roth IRA. These are not part of a 401k they are completely different parts of the tax code. IRAs are ways for individuals to save for retirement, a 401k is sponsored by your employer and can receive tax deferred money from both the employer and the employee. | [
"A retirement plan is an arrangement to provide people with an income during retirement when they are no longer earning a steady income from employment. Often retirement plans require both the employer and employee to contribute money to a fund during their employment in order to receive defined benefits upon retir... |
Why are all Muslim historical states called by their ruling dynasties? | The -id (or sometimes a small variation, like -ite) indicates lineage. The Ummayads trace descent from Ummaya, the Abbasids from Abbas, the Hashemites from Hashem and so on.
Not all Muslim historical states were named in this fashion. The Sultanate of Rum, the Mamluks and the Almohads would be counter examples to the trend.
As for why it's used, well, it's used because it's useful. Even if their territory was similar, the political discontinuity in Egypt and the Levant makes it worthwhile to speak of Fatimid Egypt, Ayyubid Egypt, and Mamluk Egypt, and so on. | [
"Islamic monarchies are a type of Islamic state which are monarchies. Historically known by various names, such as \"Mamlakah\" (\"Kingdom\"), Caliphate, Sultanate, or Emirate, current Islamic monarchies include:\n",
"With weakening of centralized states, the Shads were gaining more sovereignty, and historical ac... |
"only 23 people are required in a room to have two persons same birth-date" please explain this phenomenon in simple logic. | > Here's a key fact that's important for intuitively understanding all of this:
The number of pairs of people in a room is a lot more than just the number of people in a room.
For example, say there are 6 people in a room, call them A, B, C, D, E, and F.
Here are some of the possible pairs of people who may or may not happen to have the same birthday.
A and B
A and C
A and D
A and E
A and F
B and C
B and D
B and E
B and F
C and D
C and E
C and F
D and E
D and F
E and F
With 23 people in a room, it turns out that there are 253 different pairs of people. And we're just talking about some pair with the same birthday, somewhere in that list of 253 different pairs.
This might be a little over ELI5, but I think it is a good explanation.
> This is called the Birthday Problem. The difficult part of the problem is that you naturally start thinking about individuals, when in reality you should be thinking about pairs.
So, let's give every person a number. Person number 70 might have the same birthday as person number 69, or 68, or 67, and so on. Person number 69 (who has already been compared with 70) might have the same birthday as 68, or 67, or 66, and so on. So the total number of possibilities is 69+68+67+...+1=2415. That's a big number. And while it's not the same as pairs picked randomly, since it's coming from the same group, it's easier to think about that way.
So, let's take it abstractly. If we assume that all birthdays are equally likely, and no shenanigans like leap days or twins, we can calculate how likely it is for people to not have the same birthday. Let's define each of our probability events as the person we're looking at not having the same birthday as anybody we've looked at before. So, with that in mind, let's iterate through our group of people.
Person number 1: well, we haven't tested anybody yet, so we know for sure that this person doesn't have the same birthday as the people we've asked yet, so our probability is 1, 365/365.
Person number 2: we've looked at 1 person so far, and there are 364 days in the year that aren't person1's birthday, so the probability that they are not the same is 364/365
Person number 3: same reasoning, 363/365
On down to 295/365.
So now we've got a whole bunch of probabilities for how likely it is that each person as we went down does not have the same birthday as anybody before. Let's put them all together to get a group probability.
365/365 x 364/365 x ... 295/365 = 0.00084042
That's the probability that the people don't have the same birthday. To get the probability that they do, you just flip it: 0.999159
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ELI Stats Major: _URL_2_
You can also google "Birthday Problem" | [
"With days in a year, the average number of people required to find a pair with the same birthday is , somewhat more than 23, the number required for a 50% chance. In the best case, two people will suffice; at worst, the maximum possible number of people is needed; but on average, only 25 people are required\n",
... |
how do ships "suck" water away from coastlines? | The ship displaces a lot of water. It pushes a lot of water higher in front of it. It has a 'hole' in the water behind it. In this case the ship first pushed a lot of extra water into that cove when it approached, then the water rushed in behind the ship to fill the 'hole'.
When the water went to go fill in behind the ship it left less water in that little cove.
It all balanced out shortly after the ship passed. | [
"With an almost effortless swinging and lifting motion, the waterproof vessel is used to scoop up and carry water from a body of water (typically, a river or pond) onto land or to another body of water. At the end of each movement, the water is emptied out into runnels that convey the water along irrigation ditches... |
What does it mean when a particle has a statistical significance? | The significance of a particle is just a proxy for the p-value from statistics. A larger significance means a smaller p-value.
What they’re doing is a statistical hypothesis test. They are testing their data against the hypothesis that all they see is background.
If there is a feature in the spectrum that deviates strongly from their background (assuming they know their background well), then the p-value for the null hypothesis (background only) should be small. Then you’d say that the “significance” of the feature is high.
In the case of a Gaussian distribution, the significance corresponding to some p-value is just a Z-score, which you may be familiar with from introductory statistics. But of course, not everything is Gaussian.
In particle physics, the convention to be able to claim that you discovered something is 5σ. That means that your data must deviate from a pure background hypothesis by a significance of at least 5σ before anybody will believe that you really discovered something new. | [
"Particle statistics is a particular description of multiple particles in statistical mechanics. A key prerequisite concept is that of a statistical ensemble (an idealization comprising the state space of possible states of a system, each labeled with a probability) that emphasizes properties of a large system as a... |
if it really is so easy to ddos xbl/psn. why aren't more people doing it? | becouse it requeres huge botnet and its criminal activity.
thats like saying if its so easy to shoot a person, why more people arent doing it. | [
"This attack is mainly done by hackers to benefit from the attacked resource or machine. DDoS attacks have been perpetrated for many reasons, including blackmailing website owners and knocking out websites, including high-profile sites such as large bank websites.\n",
"In 2012, hacktivism and vandalism were cited... |
Why do girls reach sexual maturity before their bodies are ready to bear children? | > There are many health risks associated with pregnancy and childbirth, particularly below the age of 15.
There are many health risks (to both mother and baby) also associated with giving birth after the age of 35. Yet many older women do get pregnant and deliver healthy babies.
In terms of biology, there is an "optimum" - probably between ages 20-25, and greater risks on both sides of the curve. So a more balanced question would be "why doesn't nature limit pregnancy only to this optimum, why does it permit pregnancy in non-optimum states"?
The evolutionary reason is that people who reproduce more often leave more offspring behind, and their DNA stands a better chance of surviving over longer periods. Since pregnancy takes some fixed amount of time (9 months), there are only so many pregnancies you can cram into the short optimum. Even less, if you consider that women are typically less fertile when breast feeding, sort of nature's way to spread out pregnancies.
So women who conceive both during the optimum and non-optimum periods are likely to have more offspring. As for why there is a non-optimum anyway, it's because of other physiological processes - growth (babies are born tiny, their body has to grow to a point where they can grow a baby of their own) and aging (which happens across all cells, not just the reproductive system, though the mutational burden on the reproductive system also gets worse with age).
However, it may not be quite as sharp a transition as you think. While it's true that the age of menarche is around 12 - 14 years, that doesn't mean girls get pregnant right away even if they're having sex at that early age. About 80% of menstrual cycles after the onset of menarche are anovulatory for the first year, meaning that the ovaries don't release an oocyte, so the girl can't get pregnant. By the 3rd year after menarche, half the cycles are anovulatory, and by the 6th year about 10%. So the girl's chances of getting pregnant are quite low in the first few years after menarche. It's just that when such a rare thing happens, it often makes the news, so we hear of it often.
So in reality, there is a ramp up period before the optimum and a ramp down period after the optimum, in which women can conceive, though there may be health issues for the mother and baby. The incidence of such health issues isn't very high. Often, the poor outcome isn't directly due to the mother's young age, bur [rather due to ancillary factors](_URL_0_) such as inadequate prenatal care and nutrition.
So even if the morbidity or mortality are higher in young women, the difference isn't huge, and it's overcome by the genetic benefit of being able to produce more children in their lifetimes. Which propagates their DNA to a greater extent into future generations, and therefore is maintained in the population. | [
"These young girls, some as young as 12, are being force into sexual relationships which results to them being pregnant and becoming mothers at an early age when they should be looked after by their parents. \n",
"This phenomenon is exasperated by the untimely sexual development of children that has been register... |
who's coming to collect when it comes to the u.s. deficit? how will they do it? | No one has ever had to "demand" payment on US debt. You simply say "here is my matured treasure bond" and you get your money back.
Except for debt payments suspended in times of war, the US has never failed to repay its debts on time. | [
"BULLET::::- The budget deficit section highlights the 53 trillion dollars in unfunded benefits (medicare, medicaid and social security) that will come due and can only be paid by tripling taxes or cutting all government spending except for that to those programs.\n",
"Representative Mo Brooks (R-AL) opposed the ... |
What kind of interactions are present between my cotton shirt and the red wine I spill on it, to make the stain so hard to remove. | Cotton is mainly composed of cellulose, which as you can see from its [chemical structure](_URL_0_) has many hydroxyl groups. Various dyes present in wine, such as tannins also usually have multiple hydoxyl groups, e.g. as with.[this particular tannin](_URL_1_) As a result, strong hydrogen bonds can form between these dyes and the cellulose fibers in cotton, to the point that it becomes very hard to remove them, and hence the stain. | [
"When Rogers saw the paper by Marino and Benford, his reaction was that they were not scientists, their theory was ridiculous, and that he still had fiber samples he had taken from the Shroud that could disprove their theory. Upon examining the fibers under a microscope, however, he concluded that, as they had hypo... |
what happens to our bodies when someone makes us jump? | Your brain thinks there is an immediate danger and tells your body to suddenly release loads of adrenaline and activate a part of your nervous system called the sympathetic nervous system which deals with the fight or flight response.
This has the effect of increasing your heart rate, making you more alert, making your hairs stand on end, breaking down energy stores so there's lots of glucose for muscles, dilating your pupils and a bunch of other effects. All of these effects are designed so that you can fight or run away as effectively as possible.
When we realise that there isn't any danger, we downregulate all of the above effects. | [
"Authorities recommend that only one person should be allowed to jump at a time to avoid collisions and people being catapulted in an unexpected direction or higher than they expect. One of the most common sources of injury is when multiple users are bouncing on the trampoline at one time. More often than not, this... |
why doesn't the us fed just keep interest rates at a sustainable rate rather than extremely high and extremely low? | When you're driving a car, even on a highway where you don't have to stop, you don't simply press your foot on the accelerator and leave it in one position. You are constantly making small adjustments to add or reduce the power of the engine. This is because the road is not perfectly flat, it has ups and downs which you have to adjust to.
In that analogy, the road would be the general economy, and the accelerator is interest rates. | [
"Lower interest rates stimulate the economy by making borrowing less expensive. The Fed lowered the target for the Federal funds rate from 5.25% to a target range of 0-0.25% since 18 September 2007. Central banks around the world have also lowered interest rates.\n",
"Federal Reserve officials had indicated earli... |
Is communication between Earth and our space vehicles and stations encrypted? And was it always that way? | The norm in the satellite world is that command uplinks are encrypted (but usually weaker forms of encryption are used; 128-bit AES is common for academic satellites), but data downlinks are not. I don't know when this started being the case.
As far as missions to Mars go, only communication that has to be encrypted would be encrypted. For other stuff, encryption just wastes data. | [
"The decoding of silent speech using a computer played an important role in Arthur C. Clarke's story and Stanley Kubrick's associated film \"\". In this, HAL 9000, a computer controlling spaceship Discovery One, bound for Jupiter, discovers a plot to deactivate it by the mission astronauts Dave Bowman and Frank Poo... |
how does a fingernail let go of the skin under your fingernail without hurting? | The part of your finger that the nail attaches to is called the *germinal matrix*. The base of your nail (where the nail starts) is called the *nail bed*.
The germinal matrix is a very unique and delicate structure. It holds your nail down but allows that growth movement you’re talking about. It’s not just “skin”, it’s a special surface.
Source: I learned all about it when I badly damaged mine on one finger and had to have surgery to remove the nail bed (because when your germinal matrix is fucked, your nail **doesn’t** do the awesome attachy thing and just hangs free from the nail bed forward. Ew. I didn’t want that!)
Edit: (I wrote this out and the person who tried to correct me that germinal matrix was wrong and is part of your brain deleted their comment before I could respond)
> Nail matrix. Germinal matrix is part of your brain.
Your nail has one, too. The germinal matrix is part of the nail matrix and is one of the [so far] untransplantable parts of humans.
Source: _URL_1_
Source: _URL_0_
Source: _URL_2_ | [
"Studies in the 1970s showed that children up to the age of 10 or so who lose fingertips in accidents can regrow the tip of the digit within a month provided their wounds are not sealed up with flaps of skin – the de facto treatment in such emergencies. They normally won't have a fingerprint, and if there is any pi... |
why is blackberry so commonly used in workplaces and why businesses would choose the z10 over iphones or android? | Blackberry offered the first all-around corporate communications solution.
If you have a Blackberry, your company can lock it down, erase it, deactivate it, et cetera, all remotely. The BB infrastructure allows for a lot more control over the phones.
Androids and Iphones don't, at least not yet. | [
"While BlackBerry was dominant in the early smartphone market, partially due to a large market share within the enterprise and governmental markets, the company had struggled in recent years due to the worldwide statistical dominance of the plethora of Android smartphones, and Apple Inc. and its iPhone line, the bi... |
Do materials that heat up the fastest also lose heat the fastest (i.e., retain heat the worst)? If not, why not? | Yup. Thermal conductors are generally symmetric with respect to the direction of heat flow, they conduct heat and loose heat easier than thermal insulators,
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This is because the thermal diffusivity in the heat equation is just a constant value. However, because the thermal diffusivity depends on the thermal conductivity, density and heat capacity, any dependence on temperature for these variables (which can and does happen) will break the symmetry and there can be a directional bias in how "quick" heat enters or leaves a material, but in most cases this will be very small. Also, situations where radiative effects or convective effects are significant might break this symmetry. | [
"Heat is the transference of kinetic energy to the leather. When this occurs, the internal molecules of the leather increase in speed and begin colliding with one another at a rate so fast that the bonds of the leather molecules are no longer capable of remaining intact and thus break. The effect of heat is most of... |
Why do abandoned buildings seem to decay so quickly when people live in buildings that are centuries old? | Buildings that are not abandoned are maintained. Wood is protected from rotting, iron and steel is shielded from the environment to slow down rusting, plants are prevented from growing and breaking apart concrete and mortar, etc.
Basically, most man-made structures are not designed to be able to withstand the harsh effects of nature without intervention (maintenance).
See also: Life After People, Aftermath, other similar television series. | [
"Ruins () are the remains of human-made architecture: structures that were once intact have fallen, as time went by, into a state of partial or total disrepair, due to lack of maintenance or deliberate acts of destruction. Natural disaster, war and population decline are the most common root causes, with many struc... |
how are big buildings like the hotels in vegas air conditioned/cooled? | Industrial grade AC. The units are not the same small units that we see at home or office. Such big buildings are chilled by cooling water which is then used to cool air which is circulated inside the building. The heat exchange between the water and the air renders the water very hot, which is then cooled in cooling towers. Most of the times the cooling system is housed in a separate building by itself because of the noise it generates.
Wikipedia will be a good source for more information. | [
"When the hotel opened, 48 guest rooms, each with a telephone and each pair sharing a bathroom. With no central heating or ventilation system, the structure was designed to facilitate natural airflow; the Palladian window at the top of the grand stair could be opened to induce a cross-breeze through the lobby, Fren... |
Japan and Korea being of a Chinese descent? | You might want to read on the Japanese Jomon period (14,000 B.C.), and on the Korean Jeulmun period (8,000 B.C.) to know about both regions probable first peoples. | [
"Korea and China have historically maintained strong ties. As Korea was annexed by Imperial Japan in 1910, Korea became under Japanese influence. Chinese believe that some ethnic Koreans were in the Imperial Japanese Army which invaded China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Additionally, adding to this sentimen... |
why does the exact same post appear as the 4th post on the first page and the 27th post on the second page and the 53 post on the 3rd page? | > there's really no such thing as "pages" on Reddit. Instead, you're saying "give me the links (from my current 50 subreddits at this time) #1 to #[page size] as ranked by voting right now at this exact moment"... When you go to the next page, you're saying "give me links #[page size] to #[page size2] *at this exact moment"... This is why you may see duplicate links from page to page! A link that was #23 a minute ago may be #26 now because of people voting things up and down | [
"BULLET::::2. If the letters appear on the same row of your table, replace them with the letters to their immediate right respectively (wrapping around to the left side of the row if a letter in the original pair was on the right side of the row).\n",
"In the book it is unclear whether the first line begins with ... |
Would a split brain patient be able to do sign language with both hands? | Language isn't purely lateralized in the brain. People with differing levels of lateralization show corresponding resistance to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS; a big magnet screwing around with specific brain areas). People with less lateralization were less affected when a TMS-induced temporary lesion took out left- or right-hemisphere language areas (Knecht, et al., 2002).
Additionally, language lateralization appears to be modulated by gender (Kansaku, Yamaura, & Kitazawa, 2000). Furthermore, the various measures and tasks used to establish this lateralization vary in reproducibility (Rutten, et al., 2002).
There's also neuroimaging that suggests native signers have activity in both hemispheres while signing (Newman, et al., 2002). There's a bunch of results that also show that the ways that signers process gesture is very different than how normal hearing populations do (e.g., Bavelier, et al., 2001; Fine, et al., 2005).
So - language doesn't just live on one side or the other. This is even more true for native signers. The amount of lateralization is dependent on many factors, including onset of signing, onset of deafness, gender, and onset of severing of the callosum where applicable. That said, I have not come across such a case, nor could I find one easily in a lit search.
**References:**
Bavelier, D., Brozinsky, C., Tomann, A., Mitchell, T., Neville, H., & Liu, G. (2001). Impact of early deafness and early exposure to sign language on the cerebral organization for motion processing. *The Journal of Neuroscience*, 21(22), 8931-8942.
Fine, I., Finney, E. M., Boynton, G. M., & Dobkins, K. R. (2005). Comparing the effects of auditory deprivation and sign language within the auditory and visual cortex. *Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience*, 17(10), 1621-1637.
Kansaku, K., Yamaura, A., & Kitazawa, S. (2000). Sex differences in lateralization revealed in the posterior language areas. *Cerebral Cortex*, 10(9), 866-872.
Knecht, S., Flöel, A., Dräger, B., Breitenstein, C., Sommer, J., Henningsen, H., Ringelstein, E. B., & Pascual-Leone, A. (2002). Degree of language lateralization determines susceptibility to unilateral brain lesions. *Nature Neuroscience*, 5(7), 695-699.
Newman, A. J., Bavelier, D., Corina, D., Jezzard, P., & Neville, H. J. (2001). A critical period for right hemisphere recruitment in American Sign Language processing. *Nature Neuroscience*, 5(1), 76-80.
Rutten, G. J. M., Ramsey, N. F., Van Rijen, P. C., & Van Veelen, C. W. M. (2002). Reproducibility of fMRI-determined language lateralization in individual subjects. *Brain and Language*, 80(3), 421-437. | [
"In deaf patients who use manual language (such as American Sign Language), damage to the left hemisphere of the brain leads to disruptions in their signing ability. Paraphasic errors similar to spoken language have been observed; whereas in spoken language a phonemic substitution would occur (e.g. \"tagle\" instea... |
If we don't know the exact value for Pi, how can we know the exact area of a circle if that is 2(pi) Rad? | We *do* know the exact value of pi. It's... pi. You are most likely conflating "knowing an exact value" with "having a terminating or repeating decimal representation". A number that lacks the latter is no less exact than any other number. Also, we may compute the decimal representation of pi for an arbitrarily large number of decimal places if we really wanted. There's rarely any point though.
(Finally, note that we may show that in planar Euclidean geometry, the ratio of circumference to radius is the same for all circles. So we may *define* 2\*pi to be that number such that C/r = 2\*pi. So whether you were able to calculate a decimal representation of pi or not, we know that C = 2\*pi\*r because we have defined it to be that.) | [
"Base π can be used to more easily show the relationship between the diameter of a circle to its circumference, which corresponds to its perimeter; since circumference = diameter × π, a circle with a diameter 1 will have a circumference of 10, a circle with a diameter 10 will have a circumference of 100, etc. Furth... |
eil5: why do cable and internet companies make their services cheaper if you bundle a land line you don't use with it? | They make more money. Consider Im a store and I normally make $10 per item when you buy 2 of them so I profit $20. But if I can sell you 3 items by offering you a $2 discount on each then I make $24 profit at the end of the transaction. It's logical for year store to try and make $24 instead of $20 especially if you would never use the last item normally. | [
"In plainer English, the purchase of an IRU gives the purchaser the right to use some capacity on a telecommunications cable system, including the right to lease that capacity to someone else. Smaller companies that need a leased line between, say, London and New York do not buy an IRU – they lease capacity from a ... |
What were Roman burial practices for soldiers out on campaign? | It's not easy to give a generalized answer for this, but your question already goes into the right direction. There are not many primary sources that dwell on this, but some things can be gathered from what we have.
Any Roman would expect a proper burial after his death, piety required this - and this was a matter taken very seriously - so he or she wouldn't spent the afterlife in a pitiful state, like the shade that Aeneas meets on his journey into the netherworld, forced to spend his death unable to cross the river Styx because he had been denied proper burial. The roads leading to and from Roman legionary fortresses were lined with hundreds upon hundreds of soldier's tombstones (burial inside camp or the surrounding cities was taboo), showing that the legionaries took burying their dead as serious as the civilians back home, at least in peace-time. For a soldier, the expectation of proper burial if he died on campaign would have made death easier to accept if he could expect that instead of being left to rot out in the open, his body would be properly buried or cremated.
In republican and imperial times, a proper burial meant either inhumation or cremation, inhumation becoming popular during the later imperial times. In theory, these were also the options available on campaign, but complicated by a few factors. The Greek philosopher and military theoretician Onosander wrote in the 1st century BC that a good general should bury his dead to keep up morale^1, while Tacitus criticizes a Roman commander who had failed to bury his own dead after his retreat from the territory of the rebellious Frisians^2. So in practice this might have often been less common than desired, as is illustrated by the most famous example of the burial of Roman war dead, which occured almost six years after the soldiers had died. Germanicus was leading his army through Germany when he came close to the site of the Varian disaster, recognizing this he was, according to Tacitus, overcome with "a passionate desire to pay the last tribute to the fallen and their leader, while the whole army present with him were stirred to pity at thought of their kindred, of their friends"^3. Germanicus had the remaining bones buried in mass graves and a funeral mound erected. Generally, Roman soldiers could expect to be buried, on the battlefield or in close proximity, but military necessities, especially following a defeat, meant that this could not be expected to be observed in each case.
We know little of the actual practice of battlefield burial, but this topic comes up in literary sources from time to time. For cremation or burial, they first had to be collected in the same place, as Livius describes after the battle of Numistro against the Carthaginians, where the Romans "burned their own who had been collected into one place"^4, something that is repeated later during the campaign after another battle^5. Pliny remarks that cremation became the preferred method of burial, after it became known that the corpses of those who had died in foreign lands were being dug up again (probably to be plundered).^6 But if the Roman army was known for one thing, it was pragmatism and adaptability, so if the situation made cremation impossible, for various reasons, inhumation was still better than no burial at all, and if the Roman army was known for a second thing, it was digging, so digging a big trench and simply throwing everybody inside wouldn't have been to difficult.
In fact, Lucius Antonius (the unlucky brother of unlucky Mark Anthony) decided to bury his dead during the bellum Perusinum, so that his enemies wouldn't see the funeral pyres and realize his dire situation; and Frontin relates the story of a Roman commander in Hispania who buried his dead overnight instead of cremating them, so that the enemy thought that the Romans had lost none or very little dead when they came on the battlefield the next day finding more of their own dead than Roman ones, and thus thought they had in fact lost the battle^7. Turner^8 also remarks that cremation is both time-consuming as well as something that requires a large amount of fuel (the human body doesn't burn easily) if one truly wants to burn the body (as required for a proper burial by cremation) and not just be left with a smoldering, blackened corpse. The building of appropriate pyres would have required large amounts of wood, something which wasn't available everywhere, as well as a lot of time, a luxury one didn't often have while out on campaign. Commanders (even those of the enemy), tribunes or especially honoured soldiers might get a separate burial and even some kind of monument, but for the masses that was out of the question.
So mass burial, either in a mass grave or on a big pyre, after the dead had been identified and collected - and this must have been no easy task, with often hundreds or thousands of bodies in various stages of decompostion, rigor mortis or bodily integrity! - was the common way of burial while out on campaign, but sometimes even that much wasn't possible. As for ceremony, as important this was to Roman burial custom, especially for the aristocratic families in Rome itself, with great ceremonial processions (*pompa funebris*), we have hardly any evidence for ceremonies surrounding the burial of the war dead. Valerie Hope concludes that burial was "probably rapid and unceremonious"^9, and for reasons of practicality that probably was the case in most campaigns. A counter-example would be Trajan's Dacian campaign in the year 101, where, after a battle with severe losses, the emperor ordered the erection of an altar to the war dead near Sarmizegetusa and the performance of annual funerary rites for them, but this was as remarkable as it was rare. If you weren't a famous general or aristocrat (like Drusus), you could expect no special treatment. During a military campaign, the focus was on more important things.
This meant that a lot of soldiers lay buried in some foreign land. But for their immediate families as well as their comrades (which is functionally probably close to the same), this was a very inaccessible place for commemoration. People need a place to mourn, even if it is just an empty grave. Consequently, cenotaphs are something that isn't uncommon among Roman funerary monuments. The most famous is probably [this one](_URL_3_) from the legionary camp at Xanten, erected by his comrade (*frater*, brother) for the centurion Marcus Caelius of the 18th Legion, who died in the battle of the Teutoburg forest (*[ce]cidit bello Variano*). The monument contains the sad remark that it is allowed to bury his bones in this plot (*ossa inferre licebit*), should they be found again in the future. Several other tombstones found near camps also mention that someone has been lost while out on campaign, using the phrase *bello X desideratus*, lost/gone missing during such and such war. [This memorial](_URL_1_) was erected for Aurelius Victor, soldier of the 2nd Italian legion, who was lost during the war against the Goths, 30 years old, by Aurelia Lupula for her dearest husband. So burial in a far-off country didn't mean that funerary rites or the erection of a funerary monument couldn't be performed closer to home.
Different burial traditions are not something I know about, and I'd be surprised if the sources mention something like that, but what we often see ist that different units develop different styles in their tombstones, since they were often done by the same workshop for a specific unit, so for example the auxiliary cavalry units favoured large stelae [featuring a warrior on a horse riding down a defeated enemy](_URL_0_), contemporary legionary stelae also from Mainz, [show little extravagance](_URL_2_). Other legions and units have other preferences, and there is lots of change in styles of representation, both over time and over space.
_________________________________
1. Onasander 36, 1-2: "The general should think about the burial of the dead [...] both a holy act of reverence toward the dead and also a necessary example for the living. For if the dead are not buried, each soldier believes that no care will be taken of his own body".
2. Tac. Ann. 4,73.
3. Tac. Ann. 1,61.
4. Liv. 27,2, 9.
5. Liv. 27,42, 8.
6. Plin. n.h. 7,187.
7. Frontin strat. 2,10, 1.
8. Turner 2010, 56 ff.
9. Hope 2003, 87.
Main sources used:
* V. Hope, Remembering Rome: memory, funerary monuments and the Roman soldier, in H. Williams (ed.) Archaeologies of Remembrance. Death and Memory in Past Societies. (New York 2003) 113-140.
* B.D. Turner, Military Defeats, Casualties of War and the Success of Rome (Diss. Chapel Hill 2010).
| [
"Cremation was the predominant means of disposing of remains in the Roman Republic. Ashes contained in cinerary urns and other monumental vessels were placed in tombs. From the 2nd century AD onward, inhumation became more common, and after the Roman Empire came under Christian rule, was standard practice. The Sarc... |
Countable vs uncountable infinity: 0 to 1? | Many variations of this question have been asked on this sub and you can find them by a simple search (e.g., "different infinities"). We should probably add something about cardinality to the FAQ. But anyway, quick rehash won't do any harm...
---
> Specifically between 0 and 1, I could use a system that went:
> 0,0.1,0.2,0.3, ..... 0.9
> 0.01, 0.02, 0.03, ... 0. 99
> 0.001, 0.002, 0.003 ... 0.999
> Basically, can't you cycle through 1, 2, 3 then 4 ... digit numbers, in order, to have a countable infinity? Slowly but surely I'd state every number between 0 and 1.
Your method does not work because, for instance, every number in your list is just a finite sequence of digits from a finite set of possible digits. That is, all of the numbers in your list have terminating decimal expansions. Every such number is necessarily rational, but not every rational number has a terminating decimal expansion (e.g., 1/3 = 0.3333...). So your list actually only produces a strict subset of rational numbers.
---
> Basically, I don't get why this feels uncountable vs fractions which are meant to be countable. And the argument he uses (where you have a list that you can always create a new number) also seems to work for integers where there's no fixed length.
I have not watched the video (I have a very strong distaste for VSauce because he propagates a lot of myths and misconceptions of science and math), but I assume you are referring to a *diagonalization argument* to show that [0,1] has more elements than the positive integers. The argument goes as follows. Suppose we have a function *f* : N - > [0,1]. (This means that *f* is a function that maps the positive integers N = {1,2,3,...} to the unit interval of real numbers [0,1].) For any positive integer *n*, we can write *f*(*n*) as a decimal expansion of the form 0.a*_1_*a*_2_*a*_3_*.... . To take care of issues like non-uniqueness of expansions, we can use the convention that if a number has two decimal expansions, we use the one that ends in an infinite tail of 9's. Now define the number *z* (which depends on *f*) such that *z* has the decimal expansion
> z = 0.b*_1_*b*_2_*b*_3_*....
where b*_k_* is not equal to the digit a*_k_* of *f*(*k*). We can even use a simple rule like b*_k_* = a*_k_* + 1 (mod 10) or something like that. Why is this called diagonalization? Write down the decimal expansions of *f*(*n*)'s:
> f(1) = 0.3437480924121....
> f(2) = 0.54325435001423....
> f(3) = 0.3242353112240...
> etc.
The number *z* would start as
> z = 0.455...
Then the number *z* cannot be on this list because it differs from the *k*th number on your list in the *k*th decimal place. (There is some subtlety about the non-uniqueness of decimal expansions again. But you can show that such numbers with two expansions are countable (they are a subset of rationals), so it doesn't end up mattering.)
So what have we shown? We have shown that given *any* function *f* from the positive integers to the interval [0,1], there exists an element of [0,1] that is not in the range of *f*. (It doesn't help if you then just define f(1) = z and then shift everything else down because we then just construct another number not on your list.) The fact that there exists *no* function with domain N that has a range that is *all* of [0,1] means that, by definition, [0,1] has a strictly larger cardinality than N.
---
There are actually some other proofs that [0,1] is uncountable that I particularly like. But most of them are quite advanced. For the math-inclined... for instance, using the Baire category theorem, you can prove the theorem:
> A complete metric space with no isolated points is uncountable.
(A point *x* is isolated if the singleton {x} is open.) This theorem relies on the definition of the real numbers as the completion of the rational numbers in the standard Euclidean metric. But the theorem is quite general. Another interesting way to prove that [0,1] is uncountable is via measure theory. Let m\* denote Lebesgue outer measure. Then we have
> If *E* is countable, then m\*(E) = 0.
(The nice thing about using the outer measure is that m\*(E) is defined for all subsets of real numbers.) It follows that [0,1] is uncountable because m\*(E) > 0, which ultimately follows from the fact that [0,1] contains a non-empty open interval. (So the first theorem I quoted about isolated points is not entirely unrelated.)
| [
"Although 0 is divisible by 2 more times than any other number, it is not straightforward to quantify exactly how many times that is. For any nonzero integer \"n\", one may define the 2-adic order of \"n\" to be the number of times \"n\" is divisible by 2. This description does not work for 0; no matter how many ti... |
What is the acceleration due to gravity of a black hole? | There's nothing gravitationally special about a black hole. For example, if the sun were replaced by a black hole of equivalent mass, none of the orbits of any of the planets and other objects in the solar system would change.
In short, the acceleration due to gravity of a black hole is proportional to its mass and your distance from it, just like any other massive object. | [
"An unexpected result can occur with binary black holes that merge, in that the gravitational waves carry momentum and the merging black-hole pair accelerates seemingly violating Newton's third law. The center of gravity can add over 1000 km/s of kick velocity. The greatest kick velocities (approaching 5000 km/s) o... |
coding: what exactly is it? and how important is it to the creation of a video game? | R/learnprogramming.
Tl;Dr all games have rules and instructions that a) tell the computer how everything works, like the graphics and the controls and such and b) control the logic of the game. Coding is the practice of speaking to the computer in a way it can understand. It's easy to get started doing, and how challenging it gets depends on how complicated you want to get. Full out games are pretty complex, requiring lots of abstract thinking, but smaller games like tic tac toe are pretty simple. See the above sub reddit for more. | [
"Creative coding is a type of computer programming in which the goal is to create something expressive instead of something functional. It is used to create live visuals and for VJing, as well as creating visual art and design, entertainment, art installations, projections and projection mapping, sound art, adverti... |
what is the difference between assault, aggravated assault and battery? | Threats alone don't amount to assault. Assault is actually defined as intentionally placing someone in apprehension of an unwanted physical contact. Aggravated assault is assault taken up a notch- attempting to cause serious physical harm. Battery is occurs when someone actually makes unwanted or nonconsensual physical contact that causes harm. | [
"Assault and battery is the combination of two violent crimes: assault (the threat of violence) and battery (crime) (physical violence). This legal distinction exists only in jurisdictions that distinguish assault as \"threatened\" violence rather than \"actual\" violence.\n",
"The term 'assault', when used in le... |
with no atmosphere to propagate a shock wave, are explosives in space actually even lethal? | The gas from the explosive itself will propogate a pressure wave a short distance, but range will be severely limited by the extremely low ambient pressure.
At a moderate distance shrapnel would be the greater concern because it won't slow down or stop in space. The shockwave would still cause damage at short range.
Depending on the bomb, thermal radiation may also be a concern. | [
"BULLET::::- Radioactivity Is Not The Bomb's Greatest Threat: In most atom raids, blast and heat are by far the greatest dangers that people must face. Radioactivity alone would account for only a small percentage of all human deaths and injuries, except in underground or underwater explosions.\n",
"As data from ... |
What dictated a killed/wounded ratio in a battle? | One of the things is access to prompt medical aid. Along the Kokoda Track during WW2 there were times when decent medical aid (for the Australians and talking hospital/surgery) was over a week away. Pretty much any wound to the abdomen would be fatal.
Killed:wounded was about 600:1000.
Sources:
* Those Ragged Bloody Heroes by Peter Brune
* We band of Brothers by Peter Brune
* A Bastard of a Place by Peter Brune | [
"The exact casualties during the battle are unknown. At least 130 civilians were killed, mostly due to allied and German artillery fire. The total number of deaths was probably between 1000-1100, with the number of wounded significantly higher.\n",
"Total casualties in the battle were 24,645: 12,906 on the Union ... |
if my urine is completely clear, is it still urine or just excess water being dumped? | It comes from your bladder so it is urine, even if the urea content is very low. Urine usually is mostly water, otherwise you would pee paste. | [
"Urine is typically present, although some is lost via leaching and evaporation. Urine can contain up to 90 percent of the residual nitrogen, up to 50 percent of the phosphorus, and up to 70 percent of the potassium.\n",
"A urine sample is urine that has come from the bladder and can be provided or taken post-mor... |
why is there a sudden rise in nationalism in english speaking countries? | It seems very sudden, but it has not been.
Nationalism kind of waits for an opportunity to present as a solution rather than as a problem. The recession and the fallout, the lost wages, the lost professions, have been very hard for many groups in Europe, the UK, and the US. Nationalism presents a simple answer: "If only they weren't here, we could do this together."
Simple answers are very attractive when you are desperate, and whatever one can say about those who have been screwed over by the global economy these days, they are desperate. Nobody at age 50 with a bad back and a high school diploma is getting back into the workforce... unless the workforce is absolutely on its knees.
I will say that it's not only English-speaking countries or white people, either. There is nationalism across the world right now as people adopt ideologies that give them something to believe in, to fight for, that is tangible and comprehensible to them.
The fact that almost none of us (since like 99.999% of the world is descended from serfs and peasants and slaves, if not more) were better off in the past is not a deterrent from nationalism. Because people don't want relative wealth. They want to feel like they are doing okay, and being a big or even medium fish in a small pond of your little exclusive national group pond is a much happier place to be than being a little fish in a huge global ocean. | [
"The English nationalist movement has its roots in a perception amongst many people in England that they are primarily or exclusively English rather than British, which mirrors the view in the other constituent countries. The perceived rise in English identity in recent years, as evidenced by the increased display ... |
What do nebulae and other stellar phenomenon actually look like? | This might not fully answer your question, but it would probably be worth your time to check out [this thread](_URL_0_) from a few days ago in r/astronomy. Read both dVnt's post (which is what the link is to) and doctorBenton's response. | [
"Once formed, the stars within the nebula emit a stream of charged particles known as a stellar wind. Massive stars and young stars have much stronger stellar winds than the Sun. The wind forms shock waves or hydrodynamical instabilities when it encounters the gas in the nebula, which then shapes the gas clouds. Th... |
how does the nuclear fusion produce cheap, reliable energy and eli5 how the new data produced in livermore, ca help us? | _URL_0_
Original story in which I am inquiring.. | [
"In the early 1990s, it was decided to add such a diverter design to JET, which occurred between 1991 and 1993. Performance was significantly improved, allowing JET to set many records in terms of confinement time, temperature and fusion triple product. It set the record for the closest approach to breakeven, reach... |
Why the hype about the gut microbiome? | It has important implications for treatment. We were generally aware that the microbe population can change, but once we have a better understanding of those changes, we can start developing therapeutic recommendations to improve the microbiome. Stool transplants are one example of a therapy being developed as a result of studying changes in the gut microbiome, and when the dietary implications are better understood, we can start making recommendations in that area as well. But we've got to get a better handle on the basic science first. | [
"Despite the many benefits of microbial colonization in \"D. melanogaster\", its gut microbiome requires replenishment from the environment, as the microbiome is lost over time in sterile conditions. Thus, \"D. melanogaster\" acquires its gut microbes from its food, a form of facultative symbiosis. However a recent... |
what exactly is happening to your legs in restless leg syndrome? | Okay, so everything that you do is controlled by one part of your body: your brain. Imagine that your brain is a city called Brain City. Brain City is divided into different sections based on the body activity that they control: the Cognition District, the Motor Quarter, the Reflex Precinct, etc.
In order to execute an activity, the systems that govern each involved section of Brain City must approve and send a neurotransmitter to the action site. Think of neurotransmitters as keys that open locks that the brain must open in order to perform an activity. Different activities have different locks, which require different keys, so you end up with a variety of neurotransmitters.
For example, whenever you want to raise your right arm into the air, a very complex biological bureaucracy is doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes:
1. Certain neurons (brain cells) activate ("fire") and send a neurotransmitter called dopamine to the Motor Quarter, Office of Motor Control, Department of Arms, Right Arm Division.
2. Dopamine unlocks all of the processes involved in raising the right arm.
3. With these processes open, impulses flow into the arm muscles and cause the right arm to raise.
4. In the Cognition District, there is a little guy named Consciousness who considers himself to be the person who controls Brain City. Consciousness notices the neuron and neurotransmitter activity.
5. Consciousness compares the pattern of firing neurons and releasing neurotransmitters to its record of past events in Brain City, and concludes that it matches the pattern that occurs whenever the brain wants to raise the right arm.
6. Consciousness makes an announcement to the rest of Brain City over a loudspeaker: "I WANT TO RAISE MY RIGHT ARM." We call these announcements "thought."
Notice anything counter-intuitive? That's right, we don't normally think of conscious thought as occurring AFTER a voluntary motion. But studies have shown that this may indeed be what happens, and that many of the things we believe to be consciously chosen actions are actually activated in the brain a fraction of a second BEFORE the section of our brain responsible for cognition.
So, with Restless Leg Syndrome, what's happening is that something is preventing the brain from using dopamine to properly unlock all the locks on the processes that control motor movement in the legs. This may be caused, for example, by an iron deficiency, as iron is involved in the creation of dopamine. And because the brain can sense that something's wrong with the legs' motor function, it triggers a stress response in the autonomic nervous system, leading to feelings of pain, discomfort, and an urge to keep moving one's legs (possibly related to the fight-or-flight response).
To make it stop, you can take a medication called a dopamine agonist (e.g. Mirapex) that will perform the function of dopamine (unlocking the locks), even if there's not enough dopamine to do so.
EDIT: Thanks for the gold, stranger! You are fantastic! | [
"Restless leg syndrome is a disorder in which patients feel uncomfortable or unpleasant sensations in the legs. These sensations usually occur in the evening, while the patient is sitting or lying down and relaxing. Patients feel like they have to move their legs to relieve the sensations, and walking generally mak... |
Why wasn't Russia broken up similarly to the Balkan states? | If you're referring to what we'd call modern Russia, [this](_URL_0_) is why. The redder those provinces are, the greater the percentage of ethnic Russians. The paler those provinces are, the fewer ethnic Russians. You can see pale [Tuva](_URL_2_) in the south-central area of Siberia -- despite looking like it has no Russians, it's still 16% Russian. That's a fairly sizable minority.
Beyond that, it's worth considering that the vast majority of territories that aren't dominated by ethnic Russians are simply not exactly viable nation states. If we look at [Yakutia](_URL_1_), we're talking about a region that, despite being so huge (it's nearly the size of India), has a population of just shy of a million people. Much of the economic wealth there is generated by Russian-dominated mining firms. Unless Yakutia wanted to base its entire economy on reindeer herding and related activities, it wouldn't be able to function as an independent state. And it would be effectively held hostage by Russian companies anyway. There's no point in Yakutia seeking independence because it would just be a subject state of Russia. The current situation actually *benefits* places like Yakutia -- they can count on Russian police and military services to keep them reasonably safe (there's only so much you can do when infrastructure is as poor as it is in Yakutia) and they don't have to worry about tariffs or barriers to direct investment from Russian companies. And since Moscow rarely meddles in Siberia (compared to the much more hotly contested Caucasus region), it's also fairly stable.
This situation is often mirrored across the trans-Ural territories of Russia. And pretty much all of these places where Russians aren't an ethnic majority are republics and thus have a fair degree of autonomy anyway. The relationship between those republics and the federal government isn't *terribly* dissimilar from the relationship between US states and the US federal government.
And, perhaps most importantly, Russia has clearly shown it has no interest in losing territory and that it's willing to use military force to crush dissidents. And given Russia's standing in international politics, any sort of intervention in those conflicts is a non-starter (whereas foreign intervention was what ultimately ended the internecine wars in the former Yugoslavia). And, of course, there's the matter of total population share. The Serbs only comprised a bit over a third of Yugoslavia's total population; ethnic Russians comprise 81% of Russia's total population. There's a pretty huge gap there. | [
"The Second Balkan war was a catastrophic blow to Russian policies in the Balkans, which for centuries had focused on access to the \"warm seas\". First, it marked the end of the Balkan League, a vital arm of the Russian system of defense against Austria-Hungary. Second, the clearly pro-Serbian position Russia had ... |
what happens if neither presidential candidate can continue to run? | The parties would probably each hold another convention. In fact, that's probably what would happen if only one of the two nominees could no longer run, provided there was sufficient time.
Political parties are private entities, so there isn't a specific clause in the Constitution or anything to tell us exactly what this would look like. It would just be up to party leaders to work something out, and each party probably has a contingency plan for this locked up somewhere. | [
"If the winner of an election were not running in the first place, then obviously someone else would have won instead. Similarly, if a candidate gets \"added\" to an election, it becomes possible for the new candidate to win. If these are the only cases in which a change in the candidate set leads to a different el... |
what exactly is being a stock broker and if they make so much money, why doesn't everybody become one? | They are salespeople. They earn a commission on what they sell. What they happen to sell are millions and millions of dollars of financial products, so their commissions are enormous.
Very hard job to get (well, its easy to get a job as a broker, it's just hard to get a job as a broker with clients who actually generate enough business to make a meaningful commission.)
The top investment banks recruit the very best graduates from the very best universities. Working your way into that system from the outside is extraordinarily difficult.
If you're interested in what is a pretty realistic look at the kind of hustle required, I highly recommend Will Smith's movie "The Pursuit of Happyness" and the autobiography it was based on.
_URL_0_ | [
"In general, market makers such as dealers and securities exchanges are willing to pay a broker for the right to transact with that broker's clients because they believe those clients will be uninformed traders—retail or other investors who are trading because of emotion or the need to raise cash and not because th... |
Do aromatic molecules have a defined smell, or do different animals smell things differently? | Smell cannot be objective. It is a sense that only has a definition with regards to human beings. An object does not inherently have a smell (or color for that matter), it releases molecules (or certain wavelengths of light in case of color) which are characteristic of the object. How those molecules (photons) induce a reaction in an organism will be organism-dependent. | [
"The earliest use of the term “aromatic” was in an article by August Wilhelm Hofmann in 1855.[1] Hofmann used the term for a class of benzene compounds, many of which do have odors (aromas), unlike pure saturated hydrocarbons. Today, there is no general relationship between aromaticity as a chemical property and th... |
the superposition of atoms | Atoms do not have (a noticeable) superpositon, it's the things that make up the atom that do, one type of these strange thingys are called electrons.
Lets step back a little. How do we know where anything is? Well by looking at it of course. But what if whatever we're looking at doesn't have very good "edges". Take a wave (the kind in the ocean) for example. Can you say exactly where the wave is? Nope, you can't really. How do you define the edge of the wave? The wave's effect on the water will get less and less on the water around it, but it would be pretty much impossible to say where that effect stops. We cannot say where the wave is, only where it is most concentrated.
Now here comes the hard part. The thingys that make up the atom (like the electron) are waves too! Why? Well for that we have to explain why we can never find out exactly where the electron is, just like the water wave.
Go back to how we know where anything is, by looking at it. For that we need light. To us, light is just this **really** tiny packet of energy that our eyes pick up and magically turn into colours. But to a **really** tiny electron, these packets of light are **really** big. So when we shine a light on the electron to see where it is, the light scatters the electron so much we can no longer tell exactly where it is, it is a wave. We can still tell how fast it is moving though, just the same way as we can tell how fast a water wave is moving towards us.
Luckily there are some really clever scientists out there who managed to get around this problem (kinda). We just build a **really** tiny hole in a thin sheet of metal. So thin that only 1 electron could fit through. If we detect the presence of an electron on the other side of that sheet, we know that the electron must have been in that hole, we know where the electron has been! The wave has been *collapsed* into a single place. This is called superposition.
However because we are not allowed to see the electron, we can no longer tell how fast it is going. We can never, and I really do mean never, tell, at the same time with 100% accuracy, where the electron is and how fast it is going. But when we do know where the electron is, we have the superposition.
Of course, this is all pretty crude. But then again, you are five years old :) | [
"The idea of a primeval “super-atom” lived on and was developed forward by Maurice Goldhaber in 1956. In his proposal there would have been a point, which had been called a Universon, that would have collapsed into a Cosmon and an Anticosmon pair. Goldhaber was wondering about why is there any matter if equal amoun... |
What is the probable condition of man made objects left on the moon? | There are several factors in the environment affecting this.
Cosmic rays are charged particles with very high kinetic energy. When they reach electronics [they can flip bits or burn transistors](_URL_0_) - the latter is a permanent damage. Over the course of all these decades, most likely all the electronics have become unusable. [Solar particle events](_URL_2_) are also harmful, and there have been lots of them during all this time.
The Moon's dust is very abrasive mechanically. The reason is that there is no weather on the Moon = no erosion, so dust grains are very sharp. They can clog the axes of wheels in the rover. You may tend think the dust has stayed on the surface unperturbed, but this is not true: it rises due to electrostatic levitation when UV ionizes the surface, so the rover might be covered in dust by now. _URL_1_
Temperature differences are extreme, as the Moon's day and night are equivalent to 14 Earth days each. There have been lots of cycles in all these decades.
So those objects are almost certainly unusable by now. | [
"This is a partial list of man-made materials left on the Moon. The table below does not separately list lesser man-made objects such as retroreflectors, Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Packages, tools such as a hammer, or the commemorative, artistic, and personal objects left there by Apollo astronauts, such as th... |
why do cats not bleed when they are given sub cutaneous fluids. it's still a needle in their skin? | 1, Needles in *skin* rarely bleed, try it on yourself. Its needles in veins that bleed, and needles in arteries that bleed more.
2, as humans, our skin is fairly well attached to the muscle and bone and whatever beneath. Dogs, cats, bears, rodents... not so much. Theres a lot of free space in there that is mainly just fat and extra skin, not a lot of bloodflow (like would be found in a muscle)
3, a paw or a face *will* bleed more.
Source: have stabbed a lot of fuzzy things. | [
"Even aspirin, which is sometimes used to treat arthritis in cats, can be toxic and must be administered cautiously. Similarly, application of minoxidil (Rogaine) to the skin of cats, either accidentally or by well-meaning owners attempting to counter loss of fur, has sometimes proved fatal.\n",
"Cats possess rat... |
why are fungi considered neither plant nor animal? | Like plants, they have a cell wall, which is a durable framework that supports the cell, which animal cells do not have. Unlike plants, this cell wall is made of chitin rather than cellulose. Animals though use chitin to make hard shells, which is what insect exoskeletons are made of. Fungi reproduce similar to how simple plants do, by spores. Yet they cannot synthesize their own food like plants can. Like animals, they have to take in food. However, they are also immobile for the most part, like plants. They rely on the environment to move around, where as even simple animal cells can move on their own power.
So they have attributes of both, but are not quite one or the other. | [
"Before the introduction of molecular methods for phylogenetic analysis, taxonomists considered fungi to be members of the plant kingdom because of similarities in lifestyle: both fungi and plants are mainly immobile, and have similarities in general morphology and growth habitat. Like plants, fungi often grow in s... |
How do chemists know the taste and odor of highly toxic substances? | Chemists frequently used to taste the chemicals they made in the lab. Sometimes it just happens by accident. If the chemist who invented saccharine had washed his hands properly before eating dinner, we would not be using it as a sweetener today. | [
"Analytical methods routinely used can detect and measure all the natural elements and their inorganic compounds and a very wide range of organic chemical species using methods such as gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. In water treatment plants producing drinking water and in some industrial processes using... |
how long would power grids stay up in an area who's power comes from hydrostatic electricity if a "last man on earth" situation arose? | If you suddenly find yourself as the last man on earth, power wouldn't really be that much of a problem. As you don't need the power from the hover dam to power what you need.
Just find yourself a generator and a gas station and you will have power for a long time. | [
"BULLET::::- A geomagnetic storm causes the collapse of the Hydro-Québec power grid. 6,000,000 people are left without power for nine hours. Some areas in the northeastern U.S. and in Sweden also lose power, and aurorae are seen as far as Texas.\n",
"The transformers and switching equipment were removed from the ... |
What is a "permanent" orbit, exactly? | The Moon is gradually moving away from the Earth, but is not escaping. It will be in orbit as long as the Earth survives. | [
"In celestial mechanics, the term stationary orbit refers to an orbit around a planet or moon where the orbiting satellite or spacecraft remains orbiting over the same spot on the surface. From the ground, the satellite would appear to be standing still, hovering above the surface in the same spot, day after day.\n... |
what exactly do economists do to "seasonally adjust" unemployment figures | It's pretty chill, iirc.
Step 1: Data
You want the average unemployment each year for 10 years or so, and the average unemployment during the test season for each of those.
Step 2: Ratios
In each year, figure out how much bigger or smaller it is than usual during the season. Like, if it's 1.1-1.3 times the unemployment rate for the year. Then average those to make a 10-year seasonal adjustment rate.
Step 3: Division
Divide the actual rate right now by the average seasonal adjustment ratio you made above. At this point, you're done for that data point. You have the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate. But it's boring on it's own, so..
Step 4: Comparison
Do the same for the previous seasons, going back 6 months. Feel free to vary what you define as a 'season', too - smaller seasons give more accurate results but take more work.
Step 5: Profit
Now you can see what the unemployment rate is really doing, adjusted for seasonal variables! Well, not perfectly precisely, because there's always factors that only influence the rate once, but better than just taking the rate. | [
"Seasonal adjustment is a statistical method for removing the seasonal component of a time series that exhibits a seasonal pattern. It is usually done when wanting to analyse the trend, and cyclical deviations from trend, of a time series independently of the seasonal components. It is normal to report seasonally a... |
why do soldiers wear watches with dial underside of wrist instead of over wrist? | Worn on the inside of the wrist, it's less likely that the glass face would reflect light and potentially give away a soldier's position.
I wear my watch this way as I find it easy to look at my watch with something in my hand, in particular, a drink. | [
"Military wristwatches are believed to have received their name from a German military request for a soldier in a watch house, otherwise known as a guard tower. One story tells that the military wristwatches came into use when a German naval officer needed to know the time but could not pull out a pocket watch sinc... |
why do pawns in chess that cross the board get to choose something other than the queen? why would you choose something inferior that has less moves? | Underpromotions are rare, underpromotions to anything but a knight are rarer still.
The main reason to underpromote to a rook or bishop is when promoting to a queen would result the other side having no legal moves, which is a draw. A rook or bishop does not create the stalemate, allowing the game to go on.
Also, some people play with a house rule that says you can only promote to a piece that has already been captured, largely because if you only have one chess set, you are unlikely to have spare queens laying around. This is not an official rule. | [
"In the endgame, it is usually better for the player with more pawns to avoid many pawn exchanges, because winning chances usually decrease as the number of pawns decreases. Also, endings with pawns on both sides of the board are much easier to win. A king and pawn endgame with an outside passed pawn should be a fa... |
Did the 1989 abolishment of the Fairness Doctrine achieve the goals of the D.C. Court of Appeals in Syracuse Peace Council v. FCC? | It depends who you ask. The Fairness Doctrine is so tied into modern political discussion that it's extraordinarily difficult to gain an outside perspective. We're looking at the box from inside the box, so to speak.
[The 1987 FCC vote](_URL_5_) and subsequent legal arguments might be 30 years distant now, but the effects certainly are not, which makes getting an objective analysis hard. That said, let's give it a go.
The *Fairness Doctrine* comes from [a 1949 FCC decision](_URL_6_) that required broadcasters to "devote a reasonable amount" of time to "controversial issues of public importance," and when devoting that time, they had to provide "contrasting points of view".
That idea didn't come out of the blue. It was the result of the FCC's attempts to clarify its paramount duty to regulate the public airwaves for "public convenience, interest, or necessity." The Fairness Doctrine helped the FCC determine (in edge cases) what qualified as public interest. Furthermore, the FCC believed that because there was a limited amount of radio (and television) spectrum, the issue of *access* was important. People who couldn't own/operate a radio station (or TV station, later) would be locked out of a public space. It'd be akin to charging $50,000 admission to a national park.
Aniko Bodroghkozy's *Equal Time: Television and the Civil Rights Movement* and Allison Perlman's *Public Interests: Media Advocacy and Struggles over U.S. Television* go into some aspects of this. For a pre-WWII look at how the regulatory system developed, try Robert McChesney's *Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy: The Battle for Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928–1935*. Victor Pickard's *America's Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and the Future of Media Reform* has some interesting comments as well, but I wouldn't recommend it.
In 1969, the constitutionality of the Fairness Doctrine was challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court in *Red Lion Broadcasting v. FCC*. That court ruled the doctrine didn't violate a broadcaster's First Amendment rights, but it did warn that the Fairness Doctrine could pose free-speech implications later. In 1974, Sen. William Proxmire, D-Wisconsin, began attempting to roll back the Fairness Doctrine with his "First Amendment Clarification Act" (Red Lion Broadcasting had been from Wisconsin), and in that same year, (in *Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo*) U.S. Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger wrote that "government-enforced right of access inescapably dampens the vigor and limits the variety of public debate."
Burger wrote that comment while declaring that newspapers didn't have to provide "right of reply" space to editorial comments, but his remarks would soon be applied to radio and television as well.
The latter 1970s and 1980s were a time of significant deregulation in the United States: airlines, utilities and other federally regulated industries were freed to conduct business as they saw fit. Radio and television weren't immune to this trend in American policy.
In 1981, Sen. Robert Packwood (R-Oregon) became chairman of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee and began holding hearings that concluded the *Red Lion Broadcasting* decision no longer had merit. That decision more than a decade before had held that because America's broadcast airwaves were a limited public commodity, they had to be regulated. With the development of satellite and cable television services, plus innovations in radio, that argument no longer held as much weight.
Furthermore, people testifying in Packwood's hearings ─ including Dan Rather ─ said the Fairness Doctrine hampered their ability to present the news.
Packwood was supported by others in Congress, and he also had a boost from private industry. Craig Smith worked with Packwood to establish the Freedom of Expression Foundation, which was funded by the major TV networks, AT & T, the Washington Post Company, and the Times-Mirror Company. That foundation's goal was to repeal the Fairness Doctrine, and [Smith (who subsequently became a professor) wrote about his experience in a 1999 paper.](_URL_0_)
In 1984, Packwood held a second round of hearings, and by this point the FCC was also in favor of repeal. The problem for backers of repeal was that there were many in Congress who were skeptical of the idea of repeal. This meant a statutory approach was unlikely to succeed. In 1985, however, the FCC gave repeal proponents an avenue when it cited a Syracuse TV station for airing ads that promoted nuclear power, then failed to balance those ads with opposing views.
The FCC was then in a bizarre situation. Its commissioners opposed the doctrine but found themselves obliged to follow it. Even as the TV station's citation was appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the FCC issued a report concluding:
> "In sum, we find that the evidence, derived from the record as a whole, leads us to conclude that the fairness doctrine chills speech. As a result of this finding alone we no longer believe that the fairness doctrine, as a matter of policy, furthers the public interest and we have substantial doubts that the fairness doctrine comports with the strictures of the First Amendment."
FCC commissioners told the D.C. Court of Appeals that they would like to repeal the Fairness Doctrine, but they didn't believe they had the power to do so. The appeals court ruled that in fact the Fairness Doctrine had not been codified into law, and so it sent the case back to the FCC.
The FCC subsequently voted to eliminate the Fairness Doctrine in late summer 1987. An attempt by Congress to codify the doctrine passed both the House and the Senate, but President Ronald Reagan vetoed it. While there have been occasional efforts to reinstate the doctrine in law, those have never gained a significant amount of traction.
***
Now that we've covered the background, let's address your question directly: Has the abolishment of the Fairness Doctrine reduced the "chilling effect" identified by the FCC?
Let's look at the numbers. [According to the FCC](_URL_4_), there were 32,867 broadcast radio and TV stations in the United States as of June 30, 2017. On Dec. 31, 1990 (the latest date for which I could find post-Fairness statistics), [there were 19,939 broadcast radio and TV stations in the country](_URL_1_). At the same time, there has been an explosion in the number of cable and satellite TV and radio stations, and an almost infinite increase in Internet communications. Those (cable/Internet) are regulated differently by the FCC, so they wouldn't be covered by the Fairness Doctrine, but they are relevant because they offer avenues for the kind of alternative viewpoints that the Fairness Doctrine was intended to protect.
Looking purely at the numbers doesn't examine the *content* of those stations, just the number of them.
In 1997, Thomas Hazlett and David Sosa attempted to quantify the effect of the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in [a paper published by *The Journal of Legal Studies.*](_URL_2_) They focused their look on radio stations and performed both statistical and social analyses of the national radio market. Their conclusion:
> **"The evidence suggests that the 1987 elimination of the FD had a pronounced effect on radio station formats—in favor of informational programming. Correlation is not causality, but the correlation is very strong."**
In 1993, New York Gov. ~~Andrew~~ Mario Cuomo (Democrat) [argued in a *New York Times* column](_URL_3_) that the Fairness Doctrine was rightfully dead. "Scarcity has been replaced with 10,000 radio stations and more cable channels than there is programming to fill them. All-news and talk show formats have proliferated. Diversity of viewpoints is virtually assured by the explosion in outlets for informational programming," he wrote.
He went on to say: "The fairness doctrine chilled as much dialogue and debate as it encouraged. If I ran a radio or TV station, I might avoid a controversial point in order to avoid entanglement with government. The F.C.C. has compiled more than 60 reported instances of broadcasters' quashing programming on such topics as the nuclear arms race, religious cults and municipal salaries for fear of triggering fairness doctrine obligations.
The constitutionality question ought to be left to the courts. But as policy, the doctrine is unwise."
| [
"By 1985, the FCC was concerned that the fairness doctrine might actually have a chilling effect, which was the very opposite of the policy's original intent of encouraging fair and balanced coverage: \"In order to avoid the requirement to go out and find contrasting viewpoints on every issue raised in a story, som... |
If the world's most powerful telescope was pointed towards the moon how closely could we examine the moon's surface? | It would be on the order of 10's of meters. If you're asking if you could see the American flag planted by the apollo astronauts, then no, there is no telescope capable of doing that. (For reference, it would take a reflecting telescope 1/4 mile wide to resolve the flag on the moon to a few pixels on a monitor where the video feed was coming in from an imaging telescope. -source wikipedia calculations of Dawe's Limit, Rayleigh Criterion, and angular resolution).
shavera, you seem to be thinking that angular resolution and magnification are not as strictly tied together as they are. In order to resolve 2 point sources that are extremely close in terms of angular separation, you not only need a very large light bucket like a newtonian reflector, but you also need to be at or near the telescope's maximum usable magnification. An example of this is a personal one. I have a 10" reflector and if I just stick my camera in the focuser, and point it at the north star, I only see 1 star on the computer screen. However, when I increase the focal length of my imaging setup via using multiple barlow lenses, and I again point it at the north star, you can resolve both Polaris A and Polaris B. My telescope is not large enough to resolve Polaris Ab though, the 3rd star in the group, at it's maximum magnification aka focal length. It would require a significantly larger telescope to do that. | [
"To some it may be more desirable to utilize a telescope in which case far more options for observing the Moon exist. Even a small, well-made telescope will show the observer much greater detail than is visible with the naked eye or small binoculars. As the aperture of the telescope mirror (in the case of a reflect... |
How are lab-created gemstones different from naturally formed ones? | *Not responding as my tag - but because I am a gemstone collector*
It depends on the gemstone. Diamonds, topaz, sapphire, etc - can be grown in the lab and create flawless gems.
However... there is a big difference between lab grown and natural - which boils down to the impurities (rutilation, inclusions, etc).
Natural gemstones can often have their origins determined based on things like rutilation and inclusions (down to which mine they came out of).
A good gemologist can often tell the difference between a lab-created stone and a natural stone based on these things. | [
"Whether a gemstone is a natural stone or lab-created (synthetic), the physical characteristics are the same. Lab-created stones tend to have a more vivid color to them, as impurities are not present in a lab and do not modify the clarity or color of the stone, unless added intentionally for a specific purpose.\n",... |
Why does paper 'remember' when it's been rolled up? | The outside of the roll is under tensile stress. Therefore, the interface in between the paper fibres and the matrix is deformed more than the inside. When you let go of the roll, the paper recovers the elastic portion of the deformation, but not the plastic portion. | [
"'Memory, not the notebook, holds the key. I try to keep a notebook when I'm on the move (largely because writing it makes one feel that one's at work, despite all appearances to the contrary) but hardly ever find anything in the notebook that's worth using later...Memory, though, is always telling stories to itsel... |
Why do historians sometimes reference a secondary source when a primary source is readily available? | For newer sources: Academic discussions build upon each other. While the point might have been made in 1968 it was probably expanded in 1997 and quoting the 1968 one would exclude the 1997 authors reflections which might have influenced the writer. It also invites more recent discussion and excludes the skipping over of more recent opinions. This increase the likelihood that your paper will be included in academic discussion. It presents yourself as being up to date with the latest research and able to posit a new line of inquiry previously not attempted.
For older sources: this is quite straightforward, translations are always open to interpretation. If you've got a 1st-century source written in completely legible modern English you could use it as a primary source. But I extremely doubt it. Academics also work in increments and using a non-published, self-made translation of the 1st-century text would need a separate academic discussion about its validity. To discuss a certain topic it is better to use a well justified translation by someone else than to combine two completely different studies into one single paper. | [
"In many fields and contexts, such as historical writing, it is almost always advisable to use primary sources if possible, and \"if none are available, it is only with great caution that [the author] may proceed to make use of secondary sources.\" In addition, primary sources avoid the problem inherent in secondar... |
sqrt(2) squared creates an rational number from an irrational number; can something similar be done for pi? Are there any exponents of pi that are rational? | No non-zero rational exponent will do this, because pi is transcendental.
sqrt(2) is irrational but algebraic - that means there is a polynomial with rational coefficients to which sqrt(2) is the solution. Of course, the polynomial is x^2 - 2 = 0.
But pi is transcendental, which means it's not algebraic. So there is no polynomial x^N - R = 0 for any rational R and any integer power N > 0 to which pi is a solution. Ergo, pi^N != R for all rationals R and all integers N > 0.
But there is a result that any algebraic function of one variable, applied to a transcendental number, yields a transcendental result. So 1/pi is also transcendental, which means it's also impossible when N < 0.
By a similar measure, pi^(1/M) is transcendental, so it's also impossible for any rational exponent N/M.
However, there are certainly irrational (and possibly transcendental) exponents of pi which are rational, given by log(rational)/log(pi) = exponent.
[ObWikipedia](_URL_0_) | [
"The proof above for the square root of two can be generalized using the fundamental theorem of arithmetic. This asserts that every integer has a unique factorization into primes. Using it we can show that if a rational number is not an integer then no integral power of it can be an integer, as in lowest terms ther... |
how do smartphones maintain their touchscreen capabilities with a glass/plastic screen protector? | Most modern smartphones have a capacitive touchscreen. Very simply put, this means that there is a very minute electrical charge on the touchscreen. As the human body is conductive, this will cause electricity to leak away. The location of the touch is then determined by comparing the voltage change in each corner of the screen. The bigger the change, the closer the touch to that specific corner.
& #x200B;
A screen protector is so thin, and usually made of 'electrically transparent' material, that it won't keep the electricity from leaking away through your finger. | [
"Some capacitive display manufacturers continue to develop thinner and more accurate touchscreens. Those for mobile devices are now being produced with 'in-cell' technology, such as in Samsung's Super AMOLED screens, that eliminates a layer by building the capacitors inside the display itself. This type of touchscr... |
Why can i see the outline of the whole moon right now, even though only a sliver is lit up? | Reflected Earthlight: In the same way the dark surface of the Earth is lit by moonlight, the dark surface of the moon in turn is lit by the light reflected from the Earth. | [
"Located southwest of Orion in the southern-hemisphere constellation Fornax, the rectangular image is 2.4 arcminutes to an edge, or 3.4 arcminutes diagonally. This is approximately one tenth of the angular diameter of a full moon viewed from Earth (which is less than 34 arcminutes), smaller than 1 sq. mm piece of p... |
When space expands, do objects get bigger? | No. The expansion of space is only a "global" phenomenon - it's something which makes sense to talk about on the largest scales, but it's not present when you're talking about atoms and the solar system and the galaxy and such.
By the way, you'll often read that this is because gravity "overcomes" the expansion or something like that. That's a very common misconception. The expansion isn't some kind of universal force - it's something that's very specific to the description of the Universe on large scales, where all the matter looks like it's spread out uniformly. When you're not talking about those scales, when you're looking at smaller distances where matter is clearly not spread out uniformly, there isn't really a notion of expansion anymore. | [
"Based on a huge amount of experimental observation and theoretical work, it is now believed that the reason for the observation is that \"space itself is expanding\", and that it expanded very rapidly within the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang. This kind of expansion is known as a \"\"metric\"\" expa... |
What is the minimum sized moon (or asteroid) that I could reasonably stand on and not reach escape velocity by simply pushing off? | [This sums it up pretty well](_URL_0_)
Deimos is at about the limit of what's necessary to keep you grounded. | [
"The asteroid has an Earth minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID) of . In combination with its size, this makes it a potentially hazardous asteroid, which require an intersection distance with Earth of less than 0.05 AU, which is about 19.5 times the distance to the moon, and a diameter of at least 150 meters. ... |
Why does overclocking a CPU make it unstable? | Instability is not caused by heat; that answer is simply incorrect. Higher temperature can lower stability slightly but the factor is very small compared to higher clock itself.
Each clock cycle consists of a set of instructions being run by the cpu. When you raise the clock the amount of time available for each cycle drops, naturally. If the set of instructions does not complete before the next clock tick, then your chip has become unstable.
Or to rephrase and be marginally scientific, a cpu becomes unstable because ~~the electrons don't get to where you need them to be fast enough~~ the transistors don't respond/flip state quickly enough. This is why overclocking is usually accompanied by an increase in voltage. | [
"Some BIOS implementations allow overclocking, an action in which the CPU is adjusted to a higher clock rate than its manufacturer rating for guaranteed capability. Overclocking may, however, seriously compromise system reliability in insufficiently cooled computers and generally shorten component lifespan. Overclo... |
Why does ethanol provide calories? How is it metabolized? | During the first two steps of alcohol metabolism, it is oxidized into acetate with concomitant creation of 2NADH. Each NADH is good for creating 2.5 ATP molecules (these are energy equivalents). After creation of acetate, this can proceed into the TCA cycle as acetyl-CoA or into fat generation.Either provides considerably more energy equivalents.
To distill it down, alcohol can be fully oxidized into CO2 by the body while gaining energy from this oxidation. | [
"Ethanol fermentation, also called alcoholic fermentation, is a biological process which converts sugars such as glucose, fructose, and sucrose into cellular energy, producing ethanol and carbon dioxide as by-products. Because yeasts perform this conversion in the absence of oxygen, alcoholic fermentation is consid... |
How difficult was it to design Chess? Was there multiple, evolving versions of it? How did it spread across the globe like it has? | Chess was most likely created in modern-day India roughly 1500 years ago, where it was called "four members" (chaturanga), referring to the 4 parts of an army: cavalry, elephants, chariots, and infantry. The earliest rule sets are lost to time, but it looked similar to modern chess. It was played on an 8 by 8 board with a row of 8 infantry (pawns) and a row of more powerful pieces: 2 chariots (rooks), 2 horsemen (knights), 2 elephants (bishops), the king, and the king's adviser (queen). The elephants probably moved exactly 2 spaces diagonally, without jumping, the adviser probably moved exactly 1 space in any direction, there was no en puissant move for the infantry, and it's not clear whether the horsemen could jump over other pieces.
Clearly this was meant to simulate militaries of the time, with an emphasis on the importance of chariots. The elephants/bishops and adviser/queen were much less powerful in early versions of the game, thus placing a much greater importance on the chariots/rooks, which could move quickly across the battlefield, and served as mobile archery platforms for elite bowmen.
From there it spread west to become the Persian game shatranj, and probably spread east to become the Chinese game xiangqi ("elephant game"), also called Chinese chess. However, some Chinese sources claim that xiangqi was invented independently. Xiangqi is played on a 9 by 9 grid with 5 infantry spaced out, 2 cannons that must jump over other pieces to attack, and a back row of 2 chariots, 2 horsemen, 2 elephants, 2 guards/advisers, and the general, which serves the same role as the king.
_URL_0_
According to legend, the general was originally called "king" or "emperor", but one day the Chinese emperor overheard two people playing the game, and one exclaimed, "I killed your emperor!" And that's when the piece was renamed to "general."
But xiangqi is quite similar to chaturanga, in particular with the elephants moving exactly 2 spaces diagonally. Although in xiangqi they're not allowed to cross the center row (the "river"). Xiangqi spread to Korea to become janggi, and to Japan to become shogi, both of which have somewhat different rules from xiangqi.
To the west, the game spread throughout the Muslim world, and "chaturanga" became "shatranj" became "shah", which eventually became "chess". This is when the pieces became abstracted rather than statuettes, due to the Muslim ban on idolatry and iconography. The game was introduced to Europe through Spain with the Umayyad conquest of the Iberian peninsula, but it also spread northward into modern-day Russia.
But it's in Spain that Chess began to change into its modern version. This is where the adviser/vizier transformed into the queen, the elephants transformed into bishops, and the chariots (Persian "rukh") became towers (Italian "rocca"). Especially, the reign of Isabella -- combined with a desire to speed the game up -- led to the creation of the modern rules for the chess queen, where the queen is the most powerful piece. This was also where the bishops became more powerful, and castling and en puissant were introduced.
The modern rule set was formalized in Europe by the 19th century, but I also want to mention an Ethiopian variant of the game -- senterej. This is quite similar to modern chess, but during the opening phase, players may set up their pieces within the first 4 ranks however they like, without regard to how many moves are made. They're just not allowed to cross the center line of the board.
For sources and further reading, I highly recommend:
Birth of the Chess Queen, 2004, by Marilyn Yalom
Chinese Chess, 1985, H.T. Lau
Chariot, 2005, Arthur Cotterell
| [
"The earliest precursor of modern chess is a game called chaturanga, which flourished in India by the 6th century, and is the earliest known game to have two essential features found in all later chess variations—different pieces having different powers (which was not the case with checkers and Go), and victory dep... |
In 1604 there was a supernova that caused a star to be bright enough to be seen during day time. How was this interpreted at the time? Did any figures or groups try to capitalise on it for political or spiritual influence? | Hopefully more people will be along to provide other perspectives!
Apparently, physican Baldassare Capra used the nova as an excuse to attack Galileo and make himself look better. Given the number of you who have heard of Galileo versus the number familiar with Capra, I think we can guess how *that* turned out.
There is, of course, a larger story here, one that is about either (1) what the "new star" was, whether it was actually new, was it a miraculous creation or the product of natural motions of the universe (2) which set of academics could explain it better, or (3) you see? you SEE? THE WORLD IS GOING TO END. LIKE, NOW.
Capra's accusation had nothing to do with any of that. He just wanted people to know that he had seen it first.
As Capra told the story, he had observed it one day along with his informal mentor and a non-academic but very rich Italian man. In his excitement, he later pointed it out to Giacomo Corano (another rich Italian man), and only then did Corano tell Galileo. But, Capra claimed angrily, Galileo had made no mention of his help in his lecture series.
Galileo *probably* ignored this attack publicly. (We'll get to that.) But one imagines that it contributed at least somewhat to the title he unleashed on a later publication aimed against Capra: *Defense against the Slanders and Deceits of Baldassare Capra.* Especially because, after demonstrating conclusively that Capra had plagiarized Galileo's (other) work, he stuck in a jibe about the "priority in discovery" episode. And he stuck in a jibe about the *writing style in which Capra made the accusation*:
> I do not know in what school Capra has learned these brutish manners.
The lower the stakes, the more everything matters.
(As well might also be applied re: the surprisingly vigorous modern debate over which texts in the actual *scientific* controversy over the nova were published under pen names.)
The broader context of the impact of the nova in western Europe, unsurprisingly, involves various levels of religion. In the academy, it became a flashpoint for the waning days of credible astrology, and whether mathematicians or philosophers had the better claim for explaining astronomical events.
Beyond academia, even less surprisingly, the question tended to be less "what does it mean" than "where do I build my apocalypse bunker."
Wonders in the heavens were a traditional sign of Bad Things To Come in Christian Europe. Early 1500s Augsburg, for example, witness the *Kreuzfall*--"cross-fall"--in which red and black (ash?) cross-shaped...things...fell across the land, on people, etc. This was immediately publicized as a sign of God's anger at the Augsburgers, and if they did not repent, he would send down *real*punishment. The event did not lead to "real" punishment, although it did lead to a woman named Anna Laminit claiming prophetic authority to interpet the *Kreuzfall*, becoming hugely famous to the extent that the emperor and empress became followers of her...until she was debunked as a fraud by, for real, the duchess of Bavaria.
But I digress because that's one of my favorite historical stories. More revelant to, you know, *the next century*: from the mid-1500s to the mid (ish)-1600s in particular (the 1400s are NOT excluded here, though), European popular pamphlets are rife with descriptions, fears, and expectations of weird things in the sky and/or astrological phenomena (alignments of the planets, and such). And these fears are centered around one thing: they all signal the coming apocalypse.
Oh, and now that we have progressed from academic pettiness to the deepest darkest places of religion, let's go to...cults?
Because yeah. The early Rosicrucian pamphlets, from 1614 and 1615, *especially* love citing 1604 as the herald or the actual dawning of a new, millennarian age. Which is not to avoid the apocalypse, but rather, to project a good time before the end.
The texts' link between the nova and the apocalypse signals its ongoing importance--either to the author of the texts actually believing in the philosophy they espoused, or to understanding how useful it could be to play on the imaginations of its audience.
Reminding one, rather, of Anna Laminit a century before, convincing the Augsburg upper class to give her a fancy house and a prime place at church...and convincing Martin Luther to visit her in search of prophecy and wisdom.
~~
Further Reading:
* Robert Westman's *The Copernican Question: Prognostication, Skepticism, and Celestial Order* (2011) parses the Capra/Galileo controversy within the context of the mathematician vs. natural philosophy debate (they were actually on the same side in that? More or less?). It's just Chapter 14; don't be intimidated by the whole book! | [
"In 1987, a star in the Large Magellanic Cloud exploded as a supernova. Designated SN 1987A, this event was of enormous importance to astronomy, as it was the closest known supernova to Earth, and the first visible to the naked eye, since Kepler's star in 1604 – before the invention of the telescope. The opportunit... |
what's the structural difference between regular glass, pyrex and corning gorilla glass, etc? | Pyrex, used in high temp laboratory glass and high temp cooking, is borosilcate; it has a percentage of boron blended into the batch. | [
"Gorilla Glass is a brand of chemically strengthened glass developed and manufactured by Corning, now in its sixth generation, designed to be thin, light and damage-resistant. Gorilla Glass is unique to Corning, but close equivalents exist, including AGC Inc. Dragontrail and Schott AG Xensation.\n",
"Gorilla Glas... |
; why does lying down make you less nauseous? | In nature, nausea is almost always caused by food poisoning. Motion sickness is very hard to get by chance without a mount or a vehicle.
Nausea makes you want to stop doing what you are doing, throw up, and lay down. Throwing up is good for treating food poisoning. Laying down just general makes you safer because you cannot fall. So it is a safety thing when you are disoriented.
That makes laying down a good response to getting motion sick as well.
It is not very useful but it is somewhat useful and rarely harmful. | [
"Pseudoclaudication, now generally referred to as neurogenic claudication, typically worsens with standing or walking, and improves with sitting, and is often related to posture and lumbar extension. Lying on the side is often more comfortable than lying flat, since it permits greater lumbar flexion. Vascular claud... |
Books on French colonial wars | You should have gone to 'Middle East and North Africa' - > Modern History to find a suggestion on the Algerian War on my behalf. Anyhow, here are my suggestions!
*A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962* by Alistair Horne - A classic in the literature of modern warfare, this outdated classic still works today as a primer to the Algerian War.
*Algeria: France's undeclared war* by Martin Evans - A new account written on the war by a professor of contemporary history, published by Oxford University Press. Great book to compliment Horne's more classical and outdated account.
*Street without Joy: The French Debacle in Indochina* by Bernard Fall - Perhaps the most famous book on the war in English and written by a man who knew the war inside and out. Like Horne, the book is slightly outdated but Fall dealt with this better than Horne and the book is a treasure chest of military information. Compliment this book with Fall's book on the battle of Dien Bien Phu, *Hell in a very Small Place*.
*The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French defeat in Vietnam* by Martin Windrow - Windrow, who is an expert on modern French military history, has written a great book on the battle of Dien Bien Phu and what led up to the battle. The book itself is really less about Dien Bien Phu and much more about the war itself and works as a great book to go to after reading Fall. Plenty of good use of Vietnamese sources alongside French.
There are other books that doesn't really focus on the wars themselves as much as they are trying to make connections with the war that would come during the 1960's. The best of these books is *Embers of War* by Frederik Logevall which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. | [
"France and England in North America () is a multi-volume history of the European colonization of North America written by Francis Parkman between 1865 and 1892, which highlights the military struggles between France and Great Britain. It was well regarded at the time of publication, and continues to enjoy a reputa... |
why is it illegal to deface united states currency yet those penny smashing machines are at every zoo and museum? | The laws for defacing coins and paper money are different, as coins and paper money come from different backgrounds. A long time ago when the legal framework for this was being set up a coin was owned by the person who holds it. They are free to use it to do whatever they want; it's just struck in an easily recognizable pattern to help people know how much silver (or other metal) is in it. If you wanted to melt it for your silver (back then; it's no longer legal EDIT: only for pennies and nickels) then you were allowed to.
Paper money, though, was owned in part by the government. It was a way for you to exchange the paper for the coin that actually backs it, which you can see when looking at certain old bills. They will say something like "This Certifies that there is on deposit in the treasury of the United States of America One Dollar in Silver Payable to the Bearer on demand." [pic](_URL_0_). Here the bill is just your claim check on the silver that you actually own. As such, the government has an interest in keeping you from destroying that bill.
Thus we wound up with two different laws. For coins you can do whatever you want with it, *unless* you are doing something *fraudulent*. That is to say, the defacement law doesn't care if you squash a penny since you're not going to then go on to try to convince someone that that penny is actually a new dollar coin. Separately, there was a law that makes it illegal to simply melt US Coinage, but a penny presser isn't melting the coins so this doesn't apply.
With paper money, though, it is illegal to simply deface the bill, provided you do so with intent to make it unfit for being reissued. This comes from a time where you could have taken a bill, defaced it, redeemed it, and now the government has a crappy, defaced bill that they can't reuse so they have to print another one to replace it. These days much the same process happens—when you deposit a bill at a bank they will take note of damaged ones and remove them from circulation, replacing them with fresh bills. If coins were legislated under the same laws as paper money then a coin smashing machine could be illegal, as it certainly renders the coin unfit for reissue, but luckily coins are still under the old laws, despite the fact that neither coins nor paper money derive their value from their material costs these days. | [
"The approximate cost to the U.S. from counterfeit sales was estimated to be as high $600 billion as of 2016. A 2017 report by the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, stated that China and Hong Kong accounted for 87 percent of counterfeit goods seized entering the United States, and claimed t... |
Why is Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) considered only effective with antidepressant-resistant patients? | TMS isn't as well studied as traditional drug-based treatments. It's considered riskier because of that vague uncertainty. Its effectiveness may not compensate for risk factors we simply haven't yet observed because of the treatment's novelty. | [
"Transcranial magnetic stimulation is also an alternative treatment for a major depressive episode. It is a noninvasive treatment that is easily tolerated and shows an antidepressant effect, especially in more typical depression and younger adults.\n",
"Electroconvulsive therapy is effectively used in major depre... |
with airspace so vast, why are there so many mid-air collisions and near-collisions? | I am not sure what you mean by "so many" as such things are rare. But almost all such collisions take place near airports, where the airspace is much more crowded. | [
"The potential for a mid-air collision is increased by miscommunication, mistrust, error in navigation, deviations from flight plans, lack of situational awareness and the lack of collision-avoidance systems. Although a rare occurrence in general due to the vastness of open space available, collisions often happen ... |
Has any President-elect ever done as poorly in their home state as Donald Trump? | I took a glance at all the presidential election data and found a few presidents-elect who lost their home state, depending on you define it. There was Trump, as you mentioned, but also the arguable cases of George H.W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Woodrow Wilson, and James K. Polk.
In the 1988 election, Bush lost Massachusetts (where he was born and where attended prep school) by 7.85 points, and lost Connecticut (where he was raised and where he attended college) by 12.13 points.
In the 1968 election, Nixon lost New York (where he lived and practiced law from 1962 until the election) by 5.46 points.
In the 1916 election, Woodrow Wilson lost New Jersey (where he was the incumbent governor) by 11.72 points. His case is the most interesting to me, because he's the one of two people I mentioned that actually ran for and won an election in his home state, and yet he lost his home state by a large margin.
In the 1844 election, James K. Polk lost Tennessee (where he was the incumbent governor) by 1.00 point.
Unlike the other presidents-elect I mentioned, Trump's home state is unambiguous. He is from New York, which he lost by 21.05 points. And he only got 10% of the vote in New York County, where his penthouse and Trump Tower are. But he never ran for election in his home state.
So, as far as I can tell, Trump lost his home state by a larger margin than any other president-elect. But of course, the answer depends on how you define "home state."
(Election data gathered from [_URL_0_](http://_URL_0_/)) | [
"Democratic incumbent President Bill Clinton won re-election, defeating Republican former Senator Bob Dole of Kansas. Billionaire and 1992 Independent Presidential candidate Ross Perot of Texas, the nominee of the newly founded Reform Party, though performing strongly for a third party candidate and receiving 8.4% ... |
how does the removal of amygdala affect someone? | Well the amygdala does a lot. Broadly, it is involved in emotions, but this covers a staggering array of things, from regulation to social behavior to perceiving other people's emotions to memory.
Firstly, the amygdala plays a major roll in fear perception. If you put a monkey in a cage, and put a peanut outside the cage, after some time the monkey will reach out of the cage and grab the peanut.
However, if you put a fake snake outside of the cage, the monkey will take significantly longer to reach out and grab the peanut. **However**, if you destroy the central region of the amygdala in a monkey, they will no longer take the extra time to reach out and grab the peanut.
Additionally, when healthy monkeys see a snake, they start to exhibit a stress/fight or flight response. Amygdala lesioned monkeys do not do this. It seems that without the amygdala, monkeys lose the ability to fear the snake.
The amygdala also plays a role in perception. If you show people a "trustworthy" and an "untrustworthy" face, they will have greater amygdala activation to the untrustworthy face, suggesting that the amygdala has a role in avoiding "untrustworthy" individuals.
In fact, when asked to identify a set of faces as trustworthy or untrustworthy, healthy people could do it pretty well, but individuals with damaged amygdalas couldn't at all; they were simply unable to distinguish between the two.
The perceived stimuli doesn't even have to register in conscious awareness. When researchers "flashed" fearful faces to participants too quickly for them to consciously process, they **still** showed increase amygdala activation.
The amygdala also plays a small role in sexual function. When a male rat detects pheromones released by female rats in estrous, they start a signaling pathway that passes through the amygdala; without it, male rats could not get an erection. Additionally, men and women both experience amygdala activation when they are watching porn.
**All of the above suggest that the amygdala is closely linked to arousing stimuli in general, whether it is positive or negative. Furthermore, the amygdala has a huge role in regulating memory**.
There are two kinds of memory I'll discuss here. Firstly, declarative memory is any memory that you can verbalize. It ranges from "When I was 6, my first grade teacher put me in time-out for eating crayons" to "George Washington was the first president of the United States". The amygdala plays a role in regulating these kinds of memories.
The amygdala also is deeply connected with nondeclarative emotional memory. This is the sort of memory that you can't consciously verbalize, but it's more of a "I like this thing" or "I dislike this thing". I'll talk about this one first.
I'll preface this with a (very very very) brief lemma: The hippocampus is required for basically all declarative memory. Individuals with hippocampal damage cannot form any new memories. They will forget everything they learn within 5 minutes of learning it.
So, modulating emotional memory...
If you scare a rat, it will exhibit a "fear response" where it freezes motionless for a few seconds. You can condition a rat to exhibit a fear response to a tone pretty easily by playing a tone, and then giving the rat a minor shock.
Eventually, with enough of these pairings, the rats will start to freeze when being exposed to just the tone. It turns out that if you damage a rat's amygdala, they won't ever have a fear response to the tone; they just don't seem to have the ability to "remember" that the tone is scary. However, **even rats without their hippocampus can remember the tone is scary**. This is really really big, since again, the hippocampus is linked to EVERY form of declarative memory. So these rats presumably cannot remember anything, including ever being tested-- but they can still remember the tone as being bad.
These experiments have also been done on humans, and the results are incredibly similar. Humans can learn to associate a tone with a shock, unless their amygdalas are damaged, in which case they can't. Even patients with severe hippocampal damage, who can't remember what they did 15 minutes ago, could learn this association. **Thus, it is clear that the amygdala plays a major role in helping you learn to associate things with negative stimuli. Without it, you cannot do this type of learning.**
Next, the amygdala plays a major role in **modulating declarative memory**. When you see a stressful stimuli, your amygdala releases a hormone called norepinephrine to your hippocampus, increasing its activity. It also triggers a complex pathway that I won't go into much detail here, but it eventually causes your adrenal glands to release the hormone cortisol to all parts of your brain, including your hippocampus. These two hormones can increase your memory of certain events.
So, first, an example with an experiment...
Researchers did this experiment where they told a "story' to research participants, complete with pictures. One story was a neutral story, summarized quickly like this
*"A mom and her son leave their house, and go to a place. Makeup artists simulated an injury on the boy, and they have a good time. They then leave to go back home".*
The other story was a emotionally arousing story, like so
*"A mom and her son leave their house, to go to a place. The son gets hit by a speeding car, and is gruesomely injured. They go to a hospital, and the boy is barely saved. They then leave to go home".*
Interestingly, **people remember the middle of the 2nd story better than any other part of either story**. It seems that eliciting an emotional response with graphic pictures and a shocking story makes people remember the event better than otherwise. Unsurprisingly, individuals with damaged amygdala's do not get this boost in memory
In a separate experiment, it turns out that individuals who viewed emotional stimuli had greater amygdala activation than individuals who viewed neutral stimuli. Additionally, among the individuals who viewed the emotional stimuli, the greater their amygdala activation, the better they remembered things.
Another example I'll bring up a study where individuals learned a list of words, and then some watched a funny video 0, 10, 30, or 45 minutes after learning the words. It turns out that the sooner you watch a funny video, the better they remembered the words a week later.
However, while active amygdalas do increase the amount of stuff you remember, if they become too active, then memory actually decreases. This can be seen in cases of "blacking out" traumatic memories.
Individuals with PTSD have overactive amygdalas, and this causes excess cortisol to be produced. It turns out that cortisol is negatively correlated with hippocampal volume, and that hippocampal volume is correlated with memory, suggesting that too much amygdala activation causes too much cortisol release, which actually impairs memory.
**tl;dr**: Emotions and memories and stuff.
| [
"Anatomically, the amygdala refers to the bundle of nerve cells in the brain that control emotional associations of many kinds. Aaron Helzinger's amygdala cluster was removed in an attempt to cure him of his homicidal rage. This procedure resulted in Amygdala becoming exceedingly angry and was the opposite of what ... |
What's happening when we go to sleep hungry, but awake without the urge to eat? Are we eating ourselves in our sleep? | Yes, when you're fasting, your body will get most of its energy from stored fat, unless you're below about 4% body fat, then most will come from muscle tissue. | [
"Sleep eating involves consuming food while asleep. These sleep eating disorders are more often than not induced for stress related reasons. Another major cause of this sleep eating subtype of sleepwalking is sleep medication, such as Ambien for example (Mayo Clinic). There are a few others, but Ambien is a more wi... |
How can an electron be "spherical"? | Very good explanation:
_URL_0_ | [
"Spherical harmonics are functions of the polar and azimuthal angles, \"ϕ\" and \"θ\" respectively, which can be conveniently collected into a unit vector n(\"θ\", \"ϕ\") pointing in the direction of those angles, in the Cartesian basis it is:\n",
"The spherical model in statistical mechanics is a model of ferrom... |
Can Alpha Decay excite the inner electrons of the atom? | It’s possible for the alpha particle to excite the atom and/or simply knock out electrons as it leaves the atom. | [
"Alpha decay is characterized by the emission of an alpha particle, a He nucleus. The mode of this decay causes the parent nucleus to decrease by two protons and two neutrons. This type of decay follows the relation:\n",
"Alpha decay or α-decay is a type of radioactive decay in which an atomic nucleus emits an al... |
what is the rohingya genocide, and why is it happening right now? | Myanmar (formerly Burma) is a largely Buddhist and Burmese country. There is a small minority of Muslims, centered in one particular region, called the Rohingya. The story the Buddhists tell is that the Rohingya are recent immigrants from Bangladesh and don't belong in Myanmar. However, the historical record shows that Rohingya have lived there for centuries. But the Burmese Buddhist majority is kicking them out and/or killing them. Presumably their land will be given to Burmese. | [
"The 2017–present Rohingya genocide began on 25 August 2017 when the Myanmar military forces and local Buddhist extremists started attacking the Rohingya people and committing atrocities against them in the country's north-west Rakhine state. The atrocities included attacks on Rohingya people and locations, looting... |
When was the first porn website created for the internet/arpanet? | \[NSFW\]
Well, it has a pretty long history. It is one of the few things that pushed the growth of World Wide Web. World Wide Web was founded at CERN (Switzerland, European Atomic Research Centre) but had almost no role in porn's rising popularity.
But before I delve into that part of history, let me remind you that porn over internet and arpanet was common in another form referred to as ASCII porn (or as they called it ASCII p0rn). It was emphasised from ASCII art, which you probably would have seen if you saw some old HTML sites or DC++. Sometimes, this ASCII art was made into something like a GIF through infinite loop. A common one was penetration one. \[Bonus: you can find a lot of ASCII art at [_URL_14_](_URL_14_). Google for sex related one. Including them here might be gross.\]
ASCII porn was also popular because of its compatibility. No matter what the system's configuration was, it was supported and could run without buffering. It was fast to load, unlike porn of this age. Also, it was an easy content to produce. Any person with enough time and effort could get it done, as it just took a text editor and no fancy gadgets like camera. ASCII porn was spread with Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) and Text Based Terminals, as GUI weren't that common. It was also widely circulated through emails, telnets, gophers and usenets. This is because, in my opinion, electronics engineers found this porn a creative way to search fun and get away from their perennial social awkwardness. Most of the engineers found some porn through their acquaintances and friends, usually by participating in exchanges/barters. With newer and faster forms of message transportations, this died a slow death. \[Pop-culture reference: Deep ASCII is ASCII art ensemble based on Deep Throat by Vuk Cosic.\]
Transmitting smaller low resolution images became much easier in 80s and 90s. There was popular gopher site in TUDelft which had a small collection of scanned pornographic images which was called Digital Archive on the 17th Floor. This in some sense, was something like an archival website accessed over FTP protocol by anyone. Access was later restricted to TUDelft members/Netherlands users. With the development of Usenet, it became easier to post images in *newsgroups*. Due to technical restrictions, the images first had to be encoded into ASCII messages and then decoded upon delivery. This was usually done through softwares like AUB (Assemble Usenet Binaries). This meant a lot of images but of low quality. Again, most of such images were scanned from pornographic magazines and were celebrity posts not like the porn of today.
This grew in popularity, to the extent that, as of 1994, 83.5% of images on Usenet newsgroups where images were stored were pornographic in nature (Rimm, 1996). There was also Time Magazine article on similar topic titled, "On a Screen Near You: Cyberporn". As with most things, there were lovers and there were haters. Some called it a free speech thing and others requested authorities for crackdown.
[_URL_2_](https://_URL_2_) to a great extent is considered the first major pornographic site which had the kind of porn we consume today. On October 17, 1995, a guy named Gary Kremen (also the founder of [_URL_6_](_URL_0_), so he *knew* what he was doing) bought a domain [_URL_1_](https://_URL_1_) through an organisation called Network Solutions. The website didn't see fruition till long but remained dormant. Another guy, named Stephen M Cohen, got control of the domain through some shady underhand trick which resulted in a five year legal battle. He developed the site to be full of clickbaits and pornographic thumbnails. The site was advertising heavily and received around 25 million hits a day, which is a lot. The site changed owners several times: back to Kremen after the lawsuit, Escom in 2006, Sedo (for some time) in 2010, and then Clover Holdings Ltd in 2010.
There were other sites which got popular at the time. Sites like Sizzle International broadcasted strip shows from strip clubs live. [_URL_9_](https://_URL_9_) was a BDSM site that got popular and was launched on June 21, 1997. [_URL_3_](https://_URL_3_) was another one whose owners brought the domain in 1995 but the site got live only in 1997. The porn websites were mostly composed of images in the form of thumbnails, or TGP. Some sites like [_URL_3_](https://_URL_3_) had linklist based arrangement. The content was listed with descriptive hyperlinks. This was faster but was less productive. Some had search facility like gamelink.
I would like to add that its difficult to find the exact first. Domain registrations are not the single parameter. Like [_URL_17_](_URL_10_) had its domain in 1995 but the site launched at a later date and we can never know the exact date (even Wayback machine has its oldest snapshot as of 1997). Some sites' domain were brought but sites never developed. Therefore, you can reasonably conclude that [_URL_1_](https://_URL_1_) was the first popular site for porn.
*Bonus:* Today, the online porn industry is the closest thing ever to monopoly. A single company, MindGeek, has attained horizontal as well as vertical integration for their network. They own and operate video sharing services Pornhub, RedTube, and YouPorn, as well as producers like Brazzers, Digital Playground, and Reality Kings among others.
& #x200B;
Wayback Archives:
* [_URL_13_](_URL_13_)
* [https://web.archive.org/web/19961219002946/http://www._URL_1_/](https://web.archive.org/web/19961219002946/http://www._URL_1_/)
* [_URL_7_](_URL_7_)
& #x200B;
Sources:
* Rimm, Marty (1996). "Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway: A Survey of 917,410 Images, Description, Short Stories and Animations Downloaded 8.5 Million Times by Consumers in Over 2000 Cities in Forty Countries, Provinces and Territories". *Georgetown Law Journal*. **83** (5): 1849–1934.
* Kerstin Mey, *Art and Obscenity*, I.B.Tauris, 2007, p155. [ISBN](_URL_8_) [1-84511-235-0](_URL_16_)
& #x200B; | [
"Though not the most popular pornographic website, Pornhub holds the honour of being the single largest such website on the internet, hosting more videos than any similar site. The site was launched in Montreal, providing professional and amateur pornography since 2007. Pornhub also has offices and servers in San F... |
gnu general public license (gpl), | Have you tried reading the preamble? its quite well written in non legalese | [
"The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or GPL) is a widely-used free software license, which guarantees end users the freedom to run, study, share and modify the software. The license was originally written by Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project, and grants the recipients of... |
why can blockbuster movie sequels be so much more profitable than the original? | If the first movie is really good, it creates much more anticipation for the following films. | [
"The blockbuster was born in 1975. While \"The Exorcist\" was among the top five grossing films of the 1970s, the first film given the blockbuster distinction was 1975's \"Jaws\". Released on June 20, the film about a series of horrific deaths related to a massive great white shark was director Steven Spielberg's f... |
why do we see super tiny rainbow dots zipping around in our view when looking at a neutral scene? | They shouldn't be a rainbow, they should be basically white -- but if it looks like a bunch of little insects zipping around sort of in circles around the center of vision, what you're really seeing are your own white blood cells moving through the capillaries in your eyes.
I don't know about the rainbow thing, though. You should ask your eye doctor about whether that's normal. | [
"Absolute rainbow dots are used to detect errors caused by scratches, and whether any fading has occurred. Absolute rainbow dots are predefined dots carrying a unique value. These dots can be inserted in the rainbow picture in pre-specified areas. If fading occurs these dot values will change accordingly, and at th... |
why is it impossible for large crowds to keep a consistent rhythm without a clear leading percussion? | I am going to piggy-back on this question and ask if it has anything to do with the amount of time it takes for sound to travel...If I am on one side of the stadium, i will see the clapping take place, but I don't hear it at the same instant...but if the tomahawk chop is playing, then everyone is on beat. | [
"Because of the diversity of percussive instruments, it is not uncommon to find large musical ensembles composed entirely of percussion. Rhythm, melody, and harmony are all represented in these ensembles.\n",
"In rock, drum solos are unique in that traditionally they are minimally or never accompanied, whereas ot... |
Why did France and England develop different forms of monarchies? | Could you be more specific about what you want to know? No two monarchies were exactly alike, just like no two countries today have exactly the same laws. Do you mean why did France become an absolute monarchy while England became a constitutional monarchy? | [
"Partly out of fear of a continental intervention, an Act of Union was passed in 1707 creating the Kingdom of Great Britain, and formally merging the kingdoms of Scotland and England (the latter kingdom included Wales). While the new Britain grew increasingly parliamentarian, France continued its system of absolute... |
why don't officers aim for an extremity when dealing with a possible threat instead of aiming to kill? | Dead man can't sue.
tbh... i never understood that either. Perhaps its harder to hit an arm and if you only got 1-2 shots to fire, you want to make sure you stop the perp. | [
"May be used to control a dangerous or violent subject when deadly physical force does not appear to be justified and/or necessary; or attempts to subdue the subject by other conventional tactics have been, or likely will be, ineffective in the situation at hand; or there is reasonable expectation that it will be u... |
Was there a "style" difference between the different decades in the Soviet Union? | Soviet Fashion was definitely a thing. I would argue that it more closely mirrored Western Europe than America, but there was some American influence as well.
Djurdja Bartlett's book on the topic is quite good, if you are interested in finding out more. It's called *FashionEast.* The book is organized by era/decade.
[1926] (_URL_1_)
[Spring/Summer collection 1939](_URL_2_)
[1970s (not sure on exact date)](_URL_3_)
[Fall 1985](_URL_0_)
Of course, there was some tension over the topic. There was a fine line to ride between fashion being a fine part of socialist life and fashion being a feature of capitalism - particularly because much of Soviet fashion *was* linked so closely to the fashion of the West, particularly by the 1950s. Groups like the *Stilyagi* were seen as dissidents for their adoption of American style, music and culture. There certainly was a black/grey market for Western fashion, and this was illegal.
But the politics of the Cold War were certainly as big a factor (or more of a factor) than ideology by this point. It was more about the poles of the Cold War than about an ideological argument based in socialism. Not that such things were never mentioned or argued. They were simply not as prevalent as they had been in the early years. As you can see from the examples above, fashion magazines were printed, new collections came out, etc. The trends are recognizable to European and American eyes.
Lastly, keep in mind that shortage was a really issue (generally speaking) in the Soviet Economy and even though things like fashion magazines existed it did not mean that such fashions were readily available for a lot of people.
| [
"In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the Brezhnev era, a distinctive period of Soviet culture developed characterised by conformist public life and intense focus on personal life. In the late Soviet Union, Soviet popular culture was characterised by fascination with American popular culture as exemplified by the blue j... |
how does one person compose for an orchestra? | Playing the instrument really isn't all that relevant, because the parts are generally written in the same format regardless of what instrument they're for. In theory the composer really only needs to know what the instrument sounds like, as opposed to actually knowing how to play it. | [
"An orchestrator is a trained musical professional who assigns instruments from an orchestra or other musical ensemble to a piece of music written by a composer, or who adapts music composed for another medium for an orchestra. Orchestrators may work for musical theatre productions, film production companies or rec... |
xbox download speeds | You are not only limited by the speed of your internet connection, but also the speed at which the remote server is willing or able to send you the data.
The smart money is that Microsoft has capped their connection speed from their servers to the consoles at about 150. | [
"The Xbox One is powered by an AMD \"Jaguar\" Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) with two quad-core modules totaling eight x86-64 cores clocked at 1.75 GHz, and 8 GB of DDR3 RAM with a memory bandwidth of 68.3 GB/s. The memory subsystem also features an additional 32 MB of \"embedded static\" RAM, or ESRAM, with a m... |
when a door leading outside on the main floor of my house is opened my bedroom door on a different floor moves a little bit. how/why does this happen? | Slight changes in pressure and drafts are created when you open the door.
On a side note, a house that does not have a constant flow of people coming and going is more likely to have mold growths. Foreclosed houses that sit for long periods have been found to have extensive mold growth because they don't get this changing airflow that is created by doors opening and closing. | [
"To the left of the front door is a served space occupied by the foyer and dining room on the ground floor and the bedroom on the upper floor. Like the living room, the bedroom runs the full width of the house from front to rear.\n",
"Internally, the residence has a large living area facing the southeast and nort... |
in movies when people point guns at each other is there actually a chance that if you shoot first the other person will shoot as he/she dies? | guns are only instantly lethal if they hit very specific parts of the body. Sure you'd have a very hard time shooting someone after being shot just about anywhere, but it's possible. | [
"In 2001, he answered the question of a girl in a Seattle school by saying that it is permissible to shoot someone with a gun in self-defense if that person was \"trying to kill you,\" and he emphasized that the shot should not be fatal.\n",
"If a single bullet is used, the probabilities of hitting the target are... |
Are there any widely accepted studies or evidence to support the blood type diet? (Biology) | There have never been any clinic trials showing that it does anything, and goes against our general understanding of biology in several regards. More than likely it's no different than any of the other psuedo-science scams that people sell on infomercials and books to get rich. | [
"As of 2017 there is no scientific evidence to support the blood type diet hypothesis and no clinical evidence that it improves health. Peter J. D'Adamo, a naturopath, is the most prominent proponent of blood type diets.\n",
"That hypothesis is, in turn, based on an assumption that each blood type represents a di... |
How much energy does a tree consume in a day? | The *net* amount of energy absorption that goes towards growth would in fact be the same as the caloric energy it contains.
I couldn't find much on the caloric intake, and I've completely struck out for the intake of a 22,000 pound tree that is 80 feet tall and two feet wide. Here's a [newsletter article](_URL_1_) that takes a stab at general plant energy consumption. You should be able to modify the math to work with a tree, but their example is based on corn. Their conclusion for corn is 8,000 calories in 90 days.
There's also a prior [/u/askscience](_URL_0_) question that concludes 224 calories per day for the upper maximum size for any tree. | [
"The latest solar tree constructed by the Solar Tree Foundation was erected for North Hillsborough Elementary School in Hillsborough California. At peak efficiency, the 10,000 lb Solar Tree is claimed to produce 20,000 watts of energy per day.\n",
"BULLET::::- Energy use: According to a study conducted by the Law... |
why does gum liquefy after eating chocolate while chewing? | Wait, it does what? Brb op, trying this out! | [
"Chewing gum is used as a novel approach for the treatment of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). One hypothesis is that chewing gum stimulates the production of more bicarbonate-containing saliva and increases the rate of swallowing. After the saliva is swallowed, it neutralizes acid in the esophagus. In effec... |
How did Nazi death camp survivors recover from malnutrition and starvation? | Often very poorly.
Refeeding syndrome is a real issue when you go from eating almost nothing to eating a whole lot at once. If you're ever in for major surgery, it's the reason they slowly work you up to solid foods over time, rather than just letting you eat normally.
While I can't speak for every camp, I know Bergen-Belsen is referenced as having had a significant number of rescued holocaust survivors who died when their rescuers handed over food. Eating large quantities of rich food is simply too much for a starved body. Rich soldier rations, chocolate and the like often made things worse, not better. While they wouldn't die instantly, often they'd vomit up what they'd eaten, and considering they were often dehydrated as well as starved, it could fairly easily kill them. There were plenty of other complications coming from rich food, but they very depending on what an individual was eating.
I have a lot of first hand accounts, but I don't have access to any solid studies on how things went after the initial panic. Simply put, people had better things to do, and weeks after the fact it's difficult, if not impossible, to determine exactly what killed someone.
The German book "Der Ort des Terrors" talks briefly about this. While exact numbers aren't available for most camps, Mauthausen is mentioned as having 'thousands' dying upon being rescued, although from various causes. Certainly not all of them were from overeating and refeeding syndrome, but at least some of them seem to be. | [
"The prisoners in the worst critical condition were taken to the 51st Field Hospital. Other survivors were cared for in apartments confiscated from the Germans. Despite these efforts, at least 59 former prisoners died of starvation and exhaustion. By 14:30 on 13 April, all survivors had been removed from the camp. ... |
what causes some people to be "toe walkers"? | When I was growing up, I got into the habit of trying to move around as quietly as possible and just naturally got into the habit of toe-walking, although I didn't realize until this thread that it was a thing. | [
"Toe walking refers to a condition where a person walks on their toes without putting much weight on the heel or any other part of the foot. Toe walking in toddlers is common. These children usually adopt a normal walking pattern as they grow older. If a child continues to walk on their toes past the age of three, ... |
why don’t cars use one large cylinder versus a v6/v8/v12 for additional horse power? | There is an optimal size for a cylinder at a specific RPM, you'll notice most cars don't have cylinders much over 0.6L, and most are around 0.5L.
A huge cylinder would have a lot of issue. It would have very low RPMs so it would be very rough. It would have a huge volume and likely not completely combust the fuel in the chamber so it is very inefficient. It would have a very large volume to surface area ratio so it would likely get very hot and that will hurt things more.
Multiple smaller cylinders result in a much smoother and more efficient engine, especially at higher RPMs | [
"These engines deliver power pulses more often than engines with six or eight cylinders, and the power pulses have triple overlap (at any time three cylinders are on different stages of the same power stroke) which eliminates gaps between power pulses and allows for greater refinement and smoothness in a luxury car... |
why are things shiny (or shinier) when wet? | When you look at something - anything - what you're really seeing is light bouncing off of that object and then traveling to your eyes. When light strikes a surface, it will reflect at the same angle that it struck the surface at, 100% of the time, according to what is known in optics as "the law of reflection".
Now, look at the nearest flat surface. It *looks* perfectly flat, but it isn't. If you zoom in, to a molecular level, you'd be able to see that the surface is really, really bumpy. Imagine playing ping-pong on a table that wasn't flat but was instead covered in bumps and deformities. When the ball hits the side of a bump it wouldn't reflect and keep moving to the other side of the table; it would probably be deflected to the left or the right or maybe even straight back to you. The exact same thing happens with light: when it strikes the surface that's bumpy at the molecular level, it can bounce in pretty much any direction.
Most dry surfaces are pretty bumpy, but water likes to lie flat and isn't as bumpy as those surfaces. When light strikes the water, it's more-or-less deflected all in the same direction because now the surface is much smoother. This is why wet things are shiny: because the water is making the surface smooth (again, on a molecular level!) which makes any light that strikes it reflect not randomly, but in the same direction. | [
"A surface can therefore appear very shiny if it has a well-defined specular reflectance at the specular angle. The perception of an image reflected in the surface can be degraded by appearing unsharp, or by appearing to be of low contrast. The former is characterised by the measurement of the distinctness-of-image... |
How do storms form in the middle of a large landmass like a continent? Don't they need enormous bodies of water like oceans to form? | 1) Even inland areas can provide a great deal of water. Lakes, ponds, soil, forests, all contain a ton of H2O constantly evaporating into the sky.
2) Water-laden air can still move great distances from oceans. It's generally only where there are steep temperature or altitude gradients that moist air can fail to pass through. | [
"If storms coincide with unusually high tides, or with a freak wave event such as a tidal surge or tsunami which causes significant coastal flooding, substantial quantities of material may be eroded from the coastal plain or dunes behind the berm by receding water. This flow may alter the shape of the coastline, en... |
During what decade did we rule out the idea of intelligent alien life on Mars? | William Wallace Campbell put forth an extensive, decades-spanning effort to prove against the weight of accepted turn-of-the-20th-century science to demonstrate that the Martian atmosphere had negligible water and oxygen. His 1894 and 1910 demonstrations still didn't quell public certainty, of course. In 1925, Charles St. John and Walter Adams confirmed Campbell's findings.
But since those scientists were looking at *present-day* Mars, there was still the possibility of ancient civilizations. And indeed, the 19th century fascination with what appeared to be (from observation) a series of constructed canals on Mars was the biggest driver of the public imagination for intelligent life. This was a big influence on H.G. Wells in the foundations of *War of the Worlds*.
Scientists in the first decade of the 20th century showed that the apparent presence of canals on Mars could very well be an optical illusion. Observatory work in France and Italy in 1909 confirmed this: no constructed canals, just geological formations.
Mariner 4's 1965 Martian observation mission gave us up-close photographs of a barren landscape formed by meteorites and geology, and confirmation of the lack of oxygen and water and protective magnetic field.
Speculative fiction is a wonderful genre for making the impossible and maybe-possible seem not only plausible but mundane. :) | [
"Although the original movie narration had explicitly stated that the aliens were Martians (even featuring artwork indicating an alien city on the planet Mars), since 1953 the concept of vastly intelligent life on Mars had lost plausibility. In the series, the aliens are revealed to actually be from Mor-Tax—a garde... |
Do radioactive materials really glow in the dark? | Yes, when immersed in water. Blue. Due to [Cherenkov radiation](_URL_0_).
[They can also glow by simple heat](_URL_1_) in which case it's usually red-orange. | [
"The relatively high specific activity and moderate half-life of 1,600 years of Ra-226, the main radioisotope of radium found in uranium ore, made for a material which when mixed with a phosphor allowed for a glow-in-the-dark substance.\n",
"The beta particles emitted by the radioactive decay of small amounts of ... |
How did parents view morbid nursery rhymes children sang about current events of the time, and were they written by children or parents? | Very likely it did not bother them to have their children singing them. Nursery rhymes would be sung at the same time Broadside Ballads would be sold in the local market and bought for singing in taverns and homes: these were composed about recent murders and other tragic events, and children would be hearing their own parents sing about sisters being pushed into the ocean to drown and boyfriends knifing their girlfriends ( though a possible reason for the knifing- an unwanted pregnancy- would never be mentioned, or anything else openly sexual). The original Grimm's Fairy Tales have quite a lot of bloodshed and cruelty in them, too- modern editors tidied them up for modern mothers. Death was also not rare enough to be hidden away. It's worth remembering that in a pre-industrial village, most children would have already seen a dead body before they were very old, and likely it would have been someone they knew, possibly a close member of the family.
Laslett: The World We Have Lost
| [
"The term \"nursery rhyme\" is used for \"traditional\" songs for young children in Britain and many English speaking countries; but this usage dates only from the nineteenth century, and in North America the older \"Mother Goose rhyme\" is still often used. The oldest children's songs of which we have records are ... |
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