question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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why does root beer foam so much when poured onto ice cream? | It's a combination of two major factors:
- Ice cream has a lot of surface area, which means more nucleation points. More nucleation points mean more bubbles.
- Milk and cream have a higher surface tension than water. This means the bubbles are stronger.
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The reason why Mentos in soda makes it fizz is because all the pits and holes means the surface area is ***huge*** compared to the volume. You could get similar effects from a spoonful of sugar or sand.
Easy experiment: Get a bottle of seltzer or clear soda. Get it nice and cold before opening and pour it into a glass. Pour slow so it doesn't fizz too much. Wait for the bubbles to stop and drop in a few grains of sugar or salt. You will see that the bubbles will form around the granules until they dissolve. Use a few grains of sand and it the bubbles will keep forming until there is none left, which will probably be longer than you are willing to sit around.
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/u/GaidinBDJ has the dissolved gases issue backwards.
Hot liquids will hold more solids (salt, sugar, minerals, etc.) while cold liquids will hold more gases (oxygen, carbon dioxide, methane, etc.)
One of the worries with global warming is the amount of methane dissolved in the ocean. Warm up the ocean and the methane comes out. Methane is a much more effective greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. If enough methane gets into the upper atmosphere, the global temperature will skyrocket in a runaway reaction and life as we know it is ***fucked***. | [
"One mechanism of destabilization of a beer foam is due to gravitational drainage. The water or liquid between the bubbles will drain and cause the liquid and gas phases to separate. This allows for the bubbles to become close enough to merge. This can be slowed down by increasing the viscosity of the liquid.\n",
... |
how do bullets get loaded in the gun from the magazine? | As the bolt travels forward it catches the top of the back of the bullet, pushes it forward and onto a ramp and into the chamber.
_URL_0_ | [
"To load the magazine, the shooter moves the cartridge-follower along the slot in the top portion of the magazine-tube and pivots it to the right to open the front-end of the magazine. Then, he loads the 15 cartridges one by one. When full, he pivots the top portion back and release the follower.\n",
"The ammunit... |
Earth is made up of tectonic plates, will the number of these plates ever change over time? | Neither the number of plates or the geometry (i.e. their sizes/shapes) of plates are fixed. It's first worth noting that even the current number of plates is somewhat contentious and depends on how the criteria / data used to define them (e.g. [this paper](_URL_5_) which both lays out a set of criteria for defining 159 plates and also includes a summary of some prior efforts and criteria to define plates). There are similar discussions about how plate numbers and size may have changed with time (e.g. [this paper](_URL_1_), which mainly focuses on the best way to describe the variation in plate area, but considers the implications of changes in plate number and area a bit).
Regardless of the exact number either now or in the past, there are a variety of processes that can change the number of tectonic plates (the second paper I linked to discusses this a bit more as well). For example, however, the number of plates can be reduced by the formation of mountain belts and the ['suturing'](_URL_4_) of plates together (e.g. while still separate, the [Indian](_URL_0_) plate is in the process of being sutured to the Eurasian plate in the process of the Himalayan-Tibetan orogeny). The number of plates can be increased by the [rifting](_URL_3_) of a plate (e.g. the [Somalian](_URL_2_) plate was formerly part of the [African/Nubian](_URL_3_) plate prior to formation of the East African Rift). | [
"In the history of Earth many tectonic plates have come into existence and have over the intervening years either accreted onto other plates to form larger plates, rifted into smaller plates, or have been crushed by or subducted under other plates (or have done all three).\n",
"Plate tectonics (from the Late Lati... |
How does the population of wasps survive year on year if they all seemingly die off in the winter? | In many wasp families such as Polistidae and Vespidae, only a fertilized reproductive female (i.e. gyne) overwinters and subsequently starts a colony in the spring. | [
"'P. japonicus\" lives in temperate regions, so these wasps do not all survive through the winter. This results in smaller colonies because many do not have a long life span as a result of winter. Queen-destined females of \"P. japonicus\" have been found to overwinter in wood or human constructions. They have also... |
how do n95 masks reduce lung capacity? | Your lungs have to work harder, to force the air through the filter membrane. Working harder can have side effects, but you can accommodate to it (like living at a higher altitude) over time. It's more of a near term problem that you recover from if you work in a job where you wear a respirator all the time. | [
"Typical oxygen masks allow the person to breathe in room air in addition to their therapeutic oxygen, but because filtered oxygen masks use a closed design that minimizes or eliminates the person's contact with and ability to inhale room air, delivered oxygen concentrations to the person have been found to be high... |
the ssl handshake protocol. | There are common secure key exchange protocols. An example is [Diffie-Hellman](_URL_0_). That page has a great ELI5 example that I'll narrate:
Suppose 2 friends, Alice & Bob want to paint their awesome super-secret clubhouses the same color, but they don't want anyone else (especially the mean girl Eve) to be able to make the same color (this is the shared encryption key).
In this example, the "public keys" would be Alice & Bob's "awesome super-secret club" membership cards...they're only used to prove that each person is who they say they are (i.e. authentication, but not secrecy).
They agree ahead of time that they'll start off with yellow paint. It's OK that Eve knows this.
Then, both Alice & Bob choose their own secret color. Alice chooses red & Bob chooses blue. Alice mixes her red paint with the yellow & gives some to Bob. Likewise, Bob mixes his blue paint with the yellow & gives it to Alice. Eve can see Alice & Bob trade their paints, but it's difficult to tell exactly what color each person mixed with the yellow.
Both Alice & Bob mix some of their own secret paint in with the paint mixture that they got from the other person. Now, both Alice & Bob have the same mixture of red, yellow, & blue paint, an Eve never sees the final mixture.
Of course, the real thing uses math to accomplish the same thing, and it relies on the fact that there is a certain type of problem that we can't easily solve: the [discrete logarithm problem](_URL_1_).
As an aside, this is part of the reason that quantum computers (if/when we're able to make them) are so interesting. Some mathematicians have proven that the discrete logarithm problem can be efficiently solved by a quantum computer, so this type of cryptography would be broken. | [
"Once the client and server have agreed to use TLS, they negotiate a stateful connection by using a handshaking procedure. The protocols use a handshake with an asymmetric cipher to establish not only cipher settings but also a session-specific shared key with which further communication is encrypted using a symmet... |
if you are flying in an airplane and it is storming, can you get struck by lightning if you are flying above the clouds? | Lighting hits planes all the time as most of the time it just passes thru the plane
but some times it can make the plane explode.
[the plane explode ](_URL_0_) | [
"An off-duty Northwest Airlines pilot who observed the crash told newspapers that he believed that the airliner had been struck by lightning. Some local farmers said that the plane seemed to barrel roll, but also observed that while rainfall was significant, winds were relatively light.\n",
"Before this flight, t... |
Which aspect of religion came first, deities or laws/ethics? | You may be interested to know that the ancient Chinese ethical system, Confucianism, has a lot of rules to follow, but no divine reason for following those rules. The only justification for following the rules of Confucianism is because it makes for better people living in a better society.
Also, the Aboriginal Dreamtime religion is just a series of stories about how the world and its inhabitants came to be. It has no moral rules.
Therefore:
* Not all religions have moral laws.
* Moral laws can exist without religion.
But, in *some* religions (such as the Abrahamic ones you're most aware of) the rules were attached to the deity. And, this would have happened in both directions:
* Existing laws would have been attached to the deity, to give more force to those laws.
* The deity would have created new laws. An example here would be Yahweh's commandment to have no other gods before Him. This moral law could not exist without the deity.
So, the answer to your question is that neither deities nor laws came first. They came separately and independently of each other.
| [
"Religion is generally defined as a belief system concerning the supernatural, sacred or divine, and practices, values, institutions and rituals associated with such belief. Some religions also have a moral code. The evolution and the history of the first religions have recently become areas of active scientific in... |
Has the gravitational constant ever been measured somewhere apart from the surface of the earth? | We can measure it in space. The expansion of the Universe, for example, depends on the value of the gravitational constant. We can constrain deviations from the terrestrial value by looking at [supernovae](_URL_0_), for instance. The abundances of light elements like helium and deuterium also [depend sensitively](_URL_1_) on the value of G at extremely early times, about a second after the Big Bang. These all agree pretty well with the value we measure on Earth. | [
"In 1901 the third General Conference on Weights and Measures defined a standard gravitational acceleration for the surface of the Earth: \"g\" = 9.80665 m/s. It was based on measurements done at the Pavillon de Breteuil near Paris in 1888, with a theoretical correction applied in order to convert to a latitude of ... |
What happens when a black hole is given charge? | You are correct that there would be multiple boundaries, but the probe wouldn't escape the outer event horizon.
There are [two horizons](_URL_0_), meaning there is basically a black hole inside a black hole. | [
"A charged black hole is a black hole that possesses electric charge. Since the electromagnetic repulsion in compressing an electrically charged mass is dramatically greater than the gravitational attraction (by about 40 orders of magnitude), it is not expected that black holes with a significant electric charge wi... |
these child internment camps. | Crossing the border illegally is a crime.
During processing before deportation, the illegal migrant is held in jail so they don't vanish into the US.
We don't send kids to jail with their parents, but we have to put them *somewhere*.
This is not a new policy, it's only being more strictly enforced. | [
"The idea of family internment was a new concept proposed with regards to the detention of German and Japanese aliens in World War II. In the Crystal City internment camp, German and Japanese internees lived separately from one another and were placed in two different sections of the Camp. Crystal City INS official... |
how does "duty free" work? why do they have it? who is it helping to have overpriced bulky gifts at the airport? | Well when else would you buy a Toblerone? | [
"Duty Free World (\"DFW\") is a U.S. based duty free and travel retailer headquartered in Miami, Florida, specializing in inflight duty-free sales. The company sells primarily luxury products onboard aircraft. It operates from 12 locations around the world to service traveling passengers who purchase through its ai... |
Why did Saudi Arabia refuse to accept Osama bin Laden's offer to use his troops during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait? | The Saudis rejected bin Laden's offer largely because it was arrogant and incredibly naïve of him to believe that the *mujahideen*, whose experience in Afghanistan was waging asymmetric warfare in a geographical setting perfectly suited to those tactics, could usefully apply those skills against a large, mechanised Iraqi army in the flat, open landscapes of Iraq and Kuwait.
The Saudi army was lavishly equipped, but relatively tiny; they had fewer than 60,000 troops, against the million-strong Iraqi army (then the fourth-largest in the world.) Saudi Arabia found itself with relatively few allies in the region; despite the objections of senior members of the House of Saud, including then-Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the United States was the most obvious — arguably the only — place to turn.
There's a wider context, however, to the always-difficult relationship between bin Laden and the Saudi regime. By 1990, the relationship was already strained, almost to breaking point: less than two years later, he would be banished from the Kingdom; in four years, he would be stripped of his Saudi citizenship.
But bin Laden nonetheless had connections at the highest levels of the regime: he had forged a working relationship with Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, the long-serving chief of Saudi intelligence, the *Mukhabarat*. Prince Turki had been a crucial liaison between the CIA, the Pakistani ISI and the *mujahideen*. The interior minister, Prince Naif bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, had also been intimately involved with bin Laden during the Afghan *jihad*. The official to whom bin Laden made his offer of assistance in fighting Saddam was the defence minister, Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.
But by the time of the invasion of Kuwait, there was already a breach emerging between bin Laden and the Saudi government. As bin Laden became more radical and more activist, both within the Kingdom and abroad, the government found him increasingly difficult to handle. His meddling in Yemen during unification in 1989-90, for example, infuriated the Saudis — in financing Al-Qaeda operations in the new Republic of Yemen, he antagonised powerful members of the Saudi royal family, from Prince Turki to Prince Naif to King Fahd himself.
Conversely, bin Laden became increasingly contemptuous of the government, which he came to view as deeply corrupt, insufficiently pious and in thrall to infidels. The decision to allow American forces into the Kingdom was an outrage bin Laden could not abide. By the mid-1990s, when the Saudis finally revoked his citizenship, bin Laden was deeply convinced that they were unworthy guardians of the two holy cities.
Good sources on the life of bin Laden and the evolution of Al-Qaeda are Lawrence Wright's *[The Looming Tower](_URL_1_)*, Peter Bergen's *[The Longest War](_URL_3_)*, and Steve Coll's *[Ghost Wars](_URL_0_)* and *[The Bin Ladens](_URL_2_)*. | [
"The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait under Saddam Hussein on August 2, 1990, put the Saudi kingdom and the royal family at risk. With Iraqi forces on the Saudi border, Saddam's appeal to pan-Arabism was potentially inciting internal dissent. Bin Laden met with King Fahd, and Saudi Defense Minister Sultan, telling them not... |
How similar were ancient libraries to modern public or academic libraries? | The first thing that comes to mind when you're talking about ancient libraries, is the Library of Alexandria in Egypt ~3rd Century BC, when Callimachus created the first bibliography of it, it was 120 volumes of a 200,000 + volume collection, compare Oxford’s Bodleian library in 1602 had only 2500. Books were kept as scrolls, though so much of what was in the library was eventually lost. From what I know though they were mostly concerned with bringing works in, and borrowing wasn't a practice (correct me if I'm wrong) Librarians were more collection managers who worked on editing and translating (since scrolls, as they were copied could hold errors, they would get multiple scrolls of the same text and compare them). I can't really imagine the librarians job was going around to tell researchers to be quiet, you have to imagine it as more of a research institute than what we know as a modern library today.
If you're like me and love documentaries (and Carl Sagan), I found this fun little thing he did on the library - ~10:00. or if you really want to dig in there's this _URL_1_ (~45 min long) _URL_0_
I got most of my details on it from university Hellenistic age lectures. I would love try my best to elaborate more if you'd like on something in particular, but I didn't want to assume too much. Also I haven't fact checked those documentaries so take it with a grain of salt.
| [
"Private or personal libraries made up of non-fiction and fiction books, (as opposed to the state or institutional records kept in archives) first appeared in classical Greece. In the ancient world, the maintaining of a library was usually (but not exclusively) the privilege of a wealthy individual. These libraries... |
why are the demonyms for countries like america, canada, and china (american, canadian, and chinese) different even though they all end with a? | Why isn't a Canadian from Canadia? | [
"English commonly uses national demonyms such as \"Ethiopian\" or \"Guatemalan\", while the usage of local demonyms such as \"Chicagoan\", \"Okie\", or \"Parisian\", is rare. Many local demonyms are rarely used and many places, especially smaller towns and cities, lack a commonly used and accepted demonym altogethe... |
if blood is a biohazard, why are feminine hygiene products not thrown away in a more careful way? | In a hospital setting it's treated as a biohazard because there is a much higher change that the owner of the blood is infected in some way (otherwise they wouldn't be in a hospital). Also, the blood isn't treated as a biohazard for the protection of the patients, it's more for the nurses and employees. They have to come into contact with blood far, far more often and from a much wider range of individuals than a typical person does. This increases their statistical change of being infected; thus it becomes wise to put more strict and careful controls in place. | [
"Due to poverty, some cannot afford commercial feminine hygiene products. Instead, they use materials found in the environment or other improvised materials. Absorption materials that may be used by women who cannot afford anything else include: sand, ash, small hole in earth, cloth, whole leaf, leaf fiber (such as... |
Why did Germany not finish Britain off during WW2? | I think this thread got pretty comprehensive replies:
_URL_0_ | [
"Meanwhile, by the spring of 1940, the Allied cause had taken a decided turn for the worse, as Norway fell after a disastrous British-Norwegian defense, and France and the Low Countries crumbled under the German \"blitzkrieg\". In addition, German submarines—preying upon the convoys in the Atlantic which served as ... |
how do scene and torrent groups remove tv show drm?? | That kind of flag just send a signal to a device not to allow copying, and relies on circumventing it being illegal under the DMCA. It is kind of like the lock on most homes...pretty easy to overcome, so the deterrent is more about having to commit a serious crime.
Technically, DRM on video is a difficult problem. Unless your output device is also going to enforce your DRM, at some point it has to receive a clear, unencrypted signal, which can be recorded. Every attempt to put DRM in video has been laughably hacked within days. | [
"In the aftermath of the takedown of TVTorrents and btefnet, the BitTorrent community felt a need for a site that moderated its content. The two groups were known to never provide any fake links, a problem that used to be quite prevalent on public bittorrent sites prior to improvements in community-powered filterin... |
why do airlines force people to keep their seat belts on for so long when people in private planes can lay down, sleep, party, etc.? | Seatbelts aren’t just for collisions or sudden stops while taxiing. They are primarily there to keep you in your seat in the event of bad turbulence. Turbulence can happen suddenly and without warning. If you’re not secured you can easily fly up and hit the ceiling. On your way back down, you can land on another passenger and injure them too.
On private planes, it’s more of a “your house your rules” deal as no one will be liable for injury but you, but I can guarantee the pilots up front who know what’s up are wearing theirs at all times.
Edit: pilots are required to wear seatbelts at all times. Even in private aircraft. What I meant to imply was that given their awareness of clear air turbulence, I’m sure they would do so regardless of requirement. | [
"In aviation, safety measures require all passengers and crew to be seated during take-off and landing, so airlines do not allow passengers to travel without a seat. However, in 2010, Ryanair, a low-cost airline proposed a \"vertical seat\" design for use by standing passengers on its aircraft.\n",
"Extremely unr... |
Before machinery, how would people make straight edges and find right angles? | For making an edge straight, you can stretch a thread with a bow- like the bow of a bow and arrow. If you put ink on it and snap it against a piece of wood, it will mark a straight line ( and carpenters' chalk lines still work on this principle). Saw or cut to that line, and you have a straight edge. ( If you want a smooth straight edge, it's a bit more complex- you need two straight edges and something like soot or colored grease to rub on them: this can tell you what high spots need to be shaved off, as you rub one against the other and scrape until they are both evenly colored. Check with the stretched line to make sure you're not making one concave to the other's convex).
To make a square, once you have the straight stick for a base, you fasten another straight stick sort of perpendicular to it- drive a nail into it, so it can still stiffly pivot a little. Scribe a line along the base stick and the perpendicular stick- it will make a sort of right angle. Flip the square over and scribe the lines from the same point again. However much the stick is off of perpendicular, that error is doubled between the two scribed lines. Keep adjusting the perpendicular stick until the same line is being scribed. Then put another nail into the sticks, so they won't move , or brace them with another stick nailed across the ends, to make an even more solid triangle. If you do this and play around a bit with the same technique of scribing and flipping, once your have a reliable 90 degrees square you can also set that brace stick to make an isoceles triangle, which will also give you 45 degrees for marking miter joints.
This may sound like something for the ancient Greeks, but this method of scribing and flipping the square is the one still often used to check carpenter's framing squares after they've been knocked around a bit. | [
"The pointing machine is used for making one-to-one copies of existing sculptures and to reproduce models made of plaster, modeling clay or modeling wax in materials like stone or wood. It is not possible to use a pointing machine to produce enlarged or reduced copies; the traditional instruments for this are a set... |
My History teacher once told me that the Soviets (during world war two) had so many men but so few guns that many had to run into battle unarmed and pick up dead men's weapons, how true is this? | This question come up all the time. u/Searocksandtrees gave a good summary of some of the responses in [this post](_URL_0_).
It's definitely not "pretty spot on". | [
"The three Soviet fronts had altogether 2.5 million men (including 78,556 soldiers of the 1st Polish Army), 6,250 tanks, 7,500 aircraft, 41,600 artillery pieces and mortars, 3,255 truck-mounted Katyusha rocket launchers (nicknamed 'Stalin's Pipe Organs'), and 95,383 motor vehicles, many manufactured in the US.\n",
... |
does eating spicy food destroy beneficial bacteria in your colon? | I am not an expert by any means, but [this article](_URL_0_) suggests that capsaicin, the active ingredient in spicy food, actually has a beneficial effect on your gut flora. Giving mice capsaicin increased the number of good gut bacteria and reduced the number of bad gut bacteria. | [
"The manipulation of the gut microbiota is complex and may cause bacteria-host interactions. Although probiotics are considered safe, when they are used by oral administration there is a risk of passage of viable bacteria from the gastrointestinal tract to the internal organs (bacterial translocation) and subsequen... |
I just found out wild hamsters are rare. What's the story on how we tamed them? | The link describes but I'll summarize
_URL_0_
Specifically, it's _Syrian_ hamsters that are rare in the wild, there are other species. But Syrian hamsters are the most commonly kept as pets.
So in 1930, a scientist went to catch some Syrian hamsters in order to study them. After a lot of effort (including digging up a whole field) he and the people helping him found _one_ female and her 11 offspring, a full 8 feet underground. Of these, all but 4 died or escaped. From there, basically the entire population of captive syrian hamsters originated via the usual method of them breeding incredibly rapidly (except for those descended from another brood of 12 captured in the 70's). | [
"Hamsters first gained popularity as pets in the 1930s, with virtually all modern Syrian hamsters (the most common pet species) tracing their lineage back to a single litter of hamsters taken to Palestine for scientific research in 1930. Shortly thereafter, in 1938, hamsters were introduced to the United States. Dw... |
why was america online (aol) unable to become a popular internet service provider after the dial-up days ended? | What replaced dial-up was faster connections directly to your home. Companies that already owned the connection to your home - the phone company and the cable company - were the only ones in a position to exploit those and offer broadband. That's why most people only have a choice of at most two broadband providers, and sometimes only one.
If you're lucky and you live in a major city, you might have a choice of a new fiber connection. But it's very expensive to set that up - approximately $1000/home to run a new wired connection of any kind. The phone companies already did this 100 years ago and the cable companies did 40 years ago, and very few companies have the capital to fund running new wires to everyone's homes.
So what could AOL do? The only infrastructure they had was lots of dial-up modems around the country. That didn't help them provide broadband even if they wanted to.
Of course, there are a lot of other reasons they failed. They could have transformed their business in some way to stay successful - maybe by partnering with cable or phone companies, or by becoming a hosting company instead.
But they didn't - they just kept milking their existing customers for money for as long as they could and never really did anything new.
| [
"In 1994, the \"Washington Times\" reported that America Online (AOL) was selling detailed personal information about its subscribers to direct marketers, without notifying or asking its subscribers; this article led to the revision of AOL's terms of service three years later.\n",
"AOL was one of the early pionee... |
why do some gasses have an odour while others are odourless? | Nature has sculpted all living things through evolution for billions of years. Species tend to evolve ways to avoid deadly gasses. Sulfur for instance is highly toxic. We would want to be instinctually repulsed by that odor, otherwise our natural curiosity may end up killing us. I imagine the reason there are noxious gasses that are odorless is because they have become prevalent only in recent times. I’m pretty sure carbon monoxide isn’t a major threat in nature (if it is, maybe the native life would develop a method to detect it ). I would say it’s why lots of toxic foods and like, poop for example smells like, well, shit. When food rots, we are repulsed by it. Cats hate citrus and it happens to be toxic to them I believe.
Anyway I have no idea the bio-mechanism behind the actual detection of these molecules but I think we need specific receptors and also a brain designed to process the varying signals properly
Edit: typos | [
"Odours occur as well in chemical processing of coal or crude oil into precursor chemicals (feedstocks) for downstream industrial uses (e.g. plastics or pharmaceutical production) and the ubiquitous needs of petroleum distillation for gasolines, diesel, and other grades of fuel oils production.\n",
"These gases h... |
AMA - Byzantine Empire | How did educated Byzantines view earlier Greek states, such as Athens, Macedonia, or the Seleucid Empire? I know that they valued the cultural legacy of Greece, but their political identity always seems more connected to Rome. Did they share any of the modern sense that the Greco-Persian Wars somehow safeguarded the development of their civilization? Were Pericles, Leonidas, Alexander and the like viewed as national heroes? | [
"The Byzantine Empire was ruled by the Palaiologos dynasty in the period between 1261 and 1453, from the restoration of Byzantine rule to Constantinople by the usurper Michael VIII Palaiologos following its recapture from the Latin Empire, founded after the Fourth Crusade (1204), up to the Fall of Constantinople to... |
when i am really angry, why does throwing something make me feel better? | I would say that it's the release of energy that eases you. I actually do a set or two of push ups when I'm mad. I put that energy towards something productive instead. | [
"Frustration can be considered a problem–response behavior and can have a number of effects, depending on the mental health of the individual. In positive cases, this frustration will build until a level that is too great for the individual to contain or allow to continue, and thus produce action directed at solvin... |
It's WWII in Germany and i live in Munich. I'm not a member of the Nazi party, I'm not Jewish. I'm a normal german citizen working for a family business. How is my life different than before the war? | Are we talking 1940 or 1944? The answers are going to be completely different depending on whether Germany was winning or losing at the time. | [
"In 1939, the municipal government was taken over by the German Nazi Party (NSDAP) following the city's surrender during the German invasion of Poland. It quickly began to engage in anti-Semitic violence and state-sponsored discrimination. Many Jews were fired from their positions and fled Danzig.\n",
"After Hitl... |
how does the rest of the world find out so much about north korea when they're so isolated. | There's a few ways actually:
* Official NK news sources. Many of these such as Rodun Simuun (sp?) and the like can be accessed from outside the DPRK. Whilst /r/Pyongyang has become something of a Reddit joke, if you look in the sidebar then you'll find there a fairly long list detailing various DPRK media.
* Radio. Those living close enough to NK (either from South Korea or China) can pick up radio and other broadcasts from North Korean stations. Whilst much of DPRK radio is propaganda, there is also factual information.
* Defectors. Although a somewhat biased source of information, defectors have often provided sometimes massively detailed information that would otherwise not be known, including the existence of some prison camps. However there have been accusations that some defectors, in a bid to try and make accounts sound more interesting, have doctored their accounts to be more graphic/horrible/brutal than it may actually be.
* Inter-government sources. NK is not totally isolated in that it does share diplomatic relations with other countries, which collects, collates and uses information regarding activity and information within North Korea.
* Satellites and geosurveying. It is easy using a basic orbiting satellite to view such things as roads, buildings and other physical landmarks from space, as has been done by the likes of Google and the US military. There is a famous picture from some time ago of the Earth at night. North Korea is famously almost in pitch blackness.
* Travelling to North Korea. The tourist industry within DPRK is relatively new but growing steadily, and the country sees a steady stream of those who wish to see the country for themselves. With this there is a growing amount of raw, primary source material including pictures and verbal accounts of what they saw there.
* Many elderly Koreans remember the unified Korea, and also the split. Many still have family living in DPRK and attempts have been made to reunite families.
As to the story you mention, I would hazard a guess that the primary motivation for the story about the mines was simple- fear. The basic premise seems to be about creating an atmosphere in which no-one feels safe, because here they have an example of a very high-ranking person being punished with their rank meaning nothing when it comes to enforcement of the rules. | [
"North Korea Uncovered is a comprehensive set of mappings of North Korea. It includes in-depth coverage of thousands of buildings, monuments, missile-storage facilities, mass graves, secret labor camps, palaces, restaurants, tourist sites, and main roads of the country, and even includes the entrance to the country... |
How honest were WW2 tank crews with the number of Kill rings on the barrel? | I wouldn't call it so much dishonest as I would ill-informed. Modern combat the likes of which we saw in WW2 was often hectic enough that it was difficult to confirm kills - if 4 Shermans shot at a Panzer IV and then the crew was seen to bail out or the vehicle to "brew up," it was likely that each crew would assume that *their* shot was the one that took the enemy down.
(I'll try to find page numbers for this but I remember reading it in *Armored Thunderbolt*)
Aircrew had a very similar problem actually - one of the biggest issues facing 8th Army Air Force statisticians was trying to figure out how many aircraft the Eighth's bombers were taking down, as the destruction of the Luftwaffe was imperative for the success of OVERLORD. Trouble was, for every Messerschmitt or Focke-Wulf shot down, there'd be upwards of 10 gunners who'd shot at him and all would claim the kill. Kill claims were usually rounded down to about a third.
(Don Miller, *Masters of the Air*) | [
"The United States military used a short-barreled version known variously as the \"trench\" or \"riot\" shotgun. The Winchester Model 1897 was the major production, but Remington made 3500 of the Model 10-A version for issue to U.S. troops during World War I. The Model 10 was modified by reducing barrel length to 2... |
How does my brain know where my hands are in 3D space? | Humans have more than the 5 "classic" senses. One sense we have that people seem to overlook is [proprioception](_URL_0_). There are specialized stretch receptors in muscles and ligaments that allow your brain to figure out the positions of joints and the force being applied by muscles.
An interesting quote from the Wikipedia article (most things involving Oliver Sacks tend to be interesting):
> Oliver Sacks once reported the case of a young woman who lost her proprioception due to a viral infection of her spinal cord.[25] At first she was not able to move properly at all or even control her tone of voice (as voice modulation is primarily proprioceptive). Later she relearned by using her sight (watching her feet) and inner ear only for movement while using hearing to judge voice modulation. She eventually acquired a stiff and slow movement and nearly normal speech, which is believed to be the best possible in the absence of this sense. She could not judge effort involved in picking up objects and would grip them painfully to be sure she did not drop them. | [
"Usually, the system provides the user a 3D cursor represented as a human hand whose movements correspond to the motion of the hand tracker. This virtual hand technique is rather intuitive because simulates a real-world interaction with objects but with the limit of objects that we can reach inside a reach-area.\n"... |
why do you get that awful feeling in your stomach when you hear bad news or feel betrayed or jealous? | "Butterflies in the stomach" is caused by the fight or flight response, adrenaline draining blood from the stomach to other areas. I would guess it is a similar biological response, if not the same one. Jealousy particularly is more defined by your reaction to the feeling (sadness, anger, etc). | [
"Gastritis or stomach upset is a common irritating disorder affecting millions of people. Gastritis is basically inflammation of the stomach wall lining and has many causes. Smoking, excess alcohol consumption and the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as ibuprofen, account for the majority... |
tpp, ttip, and tisa and what they're (doing) trying to do. | All three are trade agreements between the U.S., Asian countries and the E.U. They are all designed to reduce trade barriers that exist between countries. Beyond that, things get very political, very fast. | [
"The contents of the TPP go far beyond the standards drafted by the World Trade Organization. The TPP includes a negative-list of all sectors covered for the liberalizing trade, except for those clearly stated. The TPP includes new regulation for online commerce, treatment of foreign investors, far more comprehensi... |
what happens to a deceased person's phone number, bank account, etc? | Usually they close the bank account and give the remaining balance to the beneficiary labeled on the account. A phone number is taken out of circulation for a certain period and then given back to the system as a new.number. | [
"BULLET::::- The Phone Goes Dead – A teenage boy discovers that his mobile phone can receive calls from the dead, after its last owner died while using it. He repeatedly receives messages telling him to tell people about how to deal with their death, but he never tells anybody. His parents later receive a phone cal... |
If traveling close enough to the speed of light, would a human live to make it to the edge of the observable universe? | If you can achieve speeds relative to Earth arbitrarily close to the speed of light, then you can travel an arbitrarily large distance (as measured on Earth) in an arbitrarily small amount of time (as measured by you).
For example, if you could travel at
0.9999999999999999999999999999999999997 c
you could reach a point that people on Earth believe to be 46 billion light-years away in 1 second of subjective time. Of course, those people on Earth would see you taking 46 billion years to complete the journey. | [
"Since one can not travel faster than light, one might conclude that a human can never travel farther from Earth than 40 light years if the traveler is active between the ages of 20 and 60. One would easily think that a traveler would never be able to reach more than the very few solar systems which exist within th... |
what is reddit built on and how does each of the technologies used work together? | [Python is a programming language](_URL_1_).
[Pylons is a web framework for Python](_URL_0_). Basically, it's a toolkit that gives you some of the generic pieces of a web application, allowing you to focus on the bits that make your site unique.
[Cassandra is a database originally written by Facebook](_URL_4_) that's optimized for giant data sets. In comparison, [PostgresSQL](_URL_2_) is a standard SQL-using relational database.
[Memcached](_URL_5_) is a simple way to story recently used data without having to actually query it from the database.
[Zookeeper](_URL_3_) is a tool for handling configuration of lots of servers. This is useful since Reddit runs across dozens (hundreds?) of VMs on the cloud. | [
"The Ourboox platform enables users to add text in any language that is compatible with html5, to add artwork in jpeg, png, or gif formats, and to embed various media content from other websites, e.g. YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud and others.\n",
"Techmeme works by scraping news websites and blogs, and then compiles... |
When did the idea of the future become that of Sci-fi? | About 1827. Jane Loudon's *The Mummy! A Tale of the 22nd Century* is the earliest speculative fiction I can find that pictures a future of changed and advanced technology and society. Others like Shelley's *The Last Man* picture a future where everything of technology and even costume is unchanged, with some political changes that form the ambitions of leading men. But Loudon pictured a world, not only with steerable balloons but small one-man LTAs that were ridden, ladies wearing court trouser outfits with gas-jet hair ornaments, steam plows and steam mechanical guards patroling the prisons, the servant class highly educated in proper language and science, but no brighter in applying them (you can educate people but can't give them common sense), and England, having dropped its monarchy, have returned with a rule of virgin queens whose nieces inherit the crown.
In short, the first future that's changed in a lot of ways, and not just in political arrangements.
I have never found a serious "vision of the future" from earlier, though I haven't read everything. There are a couple of slight possibilities from the late 1700s. There are any number of Utopias laid out, from the time of the tale of Atlantis, or the description of The Republic,, but that was present or past tense, not predictive. | [
"Future Life, known as \"Future\" in its first year, was a science and science fiction magazine published from 1978 to 1981 by O'Quinn Studios. Contributors included Harlan Ellison, Ed Naha, Boris Vallejo, and many more. It covered futuristic topics - largely space travel - as well current scientific events of the ... |
why do schools in the us invest so much money in sports when education appears to be falling behind? | College sports are billion dollar industries because the nation as a whole is invested in alma maters, student athletes, sports in its "purest form," and the idea that "I followed this player before he made it big." That's why people like Coach K have multimillion dollar salaries. It's economics, supply-and-demand.
| [
"A second factor concerns the transformation of education system. Nowadays, schools do not solely rely on governments funding; instead, students’ fees are thought of as major income. Universities are more competitive because students as customers choose prestigious schools which are highly evaluated on the aspect o... |
how do silly bands (the weirdly shaped plastic bands from a decade ago) retain their shape even after stretching them for long periods of time? | Plastics are made of extremely long, skinny molecules, and a good analogy for what that's like is a big bowl of spaghetti. Weaker plastics are held together by weak attraction between the molecules, as well as the molecules being tangled up.
Some plastics, like rubber, have additional strength and the ability to spring back into shape by adding crosslinking sites, which are permanent connections between random spots on two different polymer molecules where they touch. When stretched, the crosslinking prevents molecules from sliding past each other, so if you let it go, the molecules all spring back to where they were when they were crosslinked, which restores the rubber to its original shape.
However, if the rubber is stretched too hard, permanent shape change can still happen because this starts to break the molecules. How long you stretch the rubber for can eventually cause permanent shape change, but this process is very slow because of the crosslinking. I've only noticed it happen in natural rubber bands, which seem to degrade pretty fast compared to a lot of other common plastics.
Source: My Bachelor's is in Materials Science, though I'm not a polymers specialist, so if anyone has something to add, please do! | [
"Rubber bands are made by extruding the rubber into a long tube to provide its general shape, putting the tubes on mandrels, curing the rubber with heat, and then slicing it across the width of the tube into little bands. This causes the tube to split into multiple sections, creating a rubber band. Which is then sh... |
why do little kids like sweet flavors so much more than adults do? | There's a few factors.
Firstly, children don't have an upper limit on how sweet a food they'll eat. Finding sweet food sickly isn't something developed until adulthood. Apparently this has something to do with bone growth.
Secondly, children have a lot more taste buds than adults. We lose taste buds as we age.
Thirdly, children are much more sensitive to bitter foods than adults, beyond simply having more taste buds. This is thought to be an defense against accidental poisoning.
All of these add up to children having no reason to dislike sweets, and more reasons to dislike other flavours. | [
"The process of acquiring a taste can involve developmental maturation, genetics (of both taste sensitivity and personality), family example, and biochemical reward properties of foods. Infants are born preferring sweet foods and rejecting sour and bitter tastes, and they develop a preference for salt at approximat... |
why we get lot of sticky spit in our mouth when we are crying and lot of snot in nose? | There is actually a duct running from your eyes into your nasal cavity (nasolacrimal duct), and liquid can run down the back of your nasal cavity into your throat.
Apparently, this means medicine applied into your eyes (like eye drops) can end up running into your mouth.
Also, excess mucus can run up these ducts out of your eyes if your nose is very obstructed. | [
"This is the reason the nose starts to run when a person is crying or has watery eyes from an allergy, and why one can sometimes taste eye drops. For the same reason when applying some eye drops it is often advised to close the nasolacrimal duct by pressing it with a finger to prevent the medicine from escaping the... |
can a human fetus grow inside an animal? | Almost certainly not. Doing so would be like doing an organ transplant on steroids. Not only would the doctors/scientists have to find a way for the carrier not to reject the fetus, the larger underlying problem is how to nourish the fetus inside the animal. You’d have to find an animal that has super similar pregnancy demands. For a human fetus, it’d have to be done in an ape, almost certainly, if even done at all.
I suppose it’s theoretically possible, but for all intents and purposes not really possible. And from what I can tell, has never been tried. At least not for legit and ethical scientific purposes. Maybe some “mad” scientist did it.
They are, however, working on creating artificial wombs that seems to show progress. | [
"A fetus is a stage in the prenatal development of viviparous organisms. This stage lies between embryogenesis and birth . Many vertebrates have fetal stages, ranging from most mammals to many fish. In addition, some invertebrates bear live young, including some species of onychophora and many arthropods. The preva... |
How small would an asteroid or other object have to be for you to be able to reach escape velocity simply by jumping off of it? | It's the amount of mass, not necessarily the size that matters here. Escape velocity v can be defined as:
v^2 = 2GM/r
and the average human jump speed is about 2.5m/s so we have
M/r = 3.125/G = 4.683 x 10^10 kg s^2 m^-3
Now, M/r by itself is not useful but if we assume the body has the same density as the Earth, we can make some progress. Call the value we've just calculated x. Then,
r = M/x
and since mass is volume multiplied by density,
r = 4/3pi * r^3 * 5500 / x
where 5500 is the average density of the Earth in kg/m^3. Rearrange:
r^2 = x / 7333pi
r = 1425m ∎
Subbing this back into an escape velocity calculator gives me the right answer of 2.5 so I think I've done everything correctly but knowing me I've simply made two errors that cancel each other out.
| [
"For larger asteroids ( 100m to 1 km across), prediction is based on cataloging the asteroid, years to centuries before it could impact. This technique is possible as they can be seen from a long distance due to their large size. Their orbits therefore can be measured and any future impacts predicted long before th... |
Can car engines be given an efficiency rating based upon horsepower ratings? | You are a little confused with your units and physical quantities. You can't convert hp to joules.
Joules measure energy (or work).
Horsepower and watt measure *power*, ie energy (or work) over time.
There are several definition of HP, depending on where you live (like gallons) but it's usually about 700-750 watts.
What you're after is thermodynamic efficiency of car engines, that is amount of work the engine produces over the amount of heat you get from burning the fuel.
Unfortunately, there's no easy way to tie efficiency to max power, displacement or other commonly available engine specs.
For one, a car engine's efficiency is *strongly* dependent on throttle position.
You try to think in terms of stochiometry (15g of air for a gram of gasoline) which is nice but won't get you very far I'm afraid. 1.29g/L is air density at normal temperature and pressure but temperature and pressure of the air inside the cylinder is *very* different and varies wildly depending on the situation.
If you want to be precise about it, look up [brake specific fuel consumption](_URL_1_). You will get maps like [this one](_URL_0_).
x-axis is rpm, y-axis is how much torque the engine is producing (the red line is max torque) the blue lines are iso-values of grams of fuel per unit of work (which is basically what you want).
If you manage to find such maps for different engines (good luck), you'll have a good idea of how engine efficiency evolved.
That wiki article also has peak thermodynamic efficiency of various engines. They don't tell the whole story since engines don't always operate at peak efficiency but it's better than nothing. You could also look at mpg rating of car of comparable size, shape and weight (ignore performance) over the years.
| [
"Reciprocating engines can be characterized by their specific power, which is typically given in kilowatts per litre of engine displacement (in the U.S. also horsepower per cubic inch). The result offers an approximation of the peak power output of an engine. This is not to be confused with fuel efficiency, since h... |
if japanese is read top to bottom how do their text boxes work? | It can also be read and written left to right the same way as English and other such languages. So it works no differently. | [
"Traditionally, Japanese is written in a format called , which is inspired by the traditional Chinese system. In this format, the characters are written in columns going from top to bottom, with columns ordered from right to left. After reaching the bottom of each column, the reader continues at the top of the colu... |
Was there an official line of communication betwen the Nazi and Allied leaderships during WWII? If so, what was discussed? | This is a question I've wondered about. It turns out the answer is the system of "protecting powers" _URL_0_, in which the interests of one state are protected in a second state by the diplomats of a third state, when state 1 and state 2 don't have diplomatic relations. In WWII, this meant that most communication went through Switzerland:
> At one point Switzerland represented the interests of 35 states in their enemies' capitals, including the Allies in Axis capitals and the Axis in Allied capitals simultaneously, totaling around 200 mandates. The Swiss were able to cover various issues between the warring states, including the repatriation of prisoners of war, the welfare of Rudolf Hess after his arrival in Scotland and notification of Japan's acceptance of unconditional surrender.
Basically, there weren't direct communications, but there were formal means by which they could discuss the issues that had to be discussed while they were trying to kill each other. | [
"During World War II, radio was used to propagandize Germany; German POWs would be brought on to speak and assure their relatives they were alive, with propaganda being inserted between the announcement that a soldier would speak and when he actually did, in the time allowed for his family to gather.\n",
"BULLET:... |
Why do bullets spin? | Learnt this in Physics.
It's to do with he Magnus effect.
'The Magnus effect is the phenomenon whereby a spinning object flying in a fluid creates a whirlpool of fluid around itself, and experiences a force perpendicular to the line of motion. The overall behaviour is similar to that around an airfoil (see lift force) with a circulation which is generated by the mechanical rotation, rather than by aerofoil action.'
The Magnus effect causes bullets to curve unpredictably. Causing the spin to be along the velocity vector (by "rifling" the barrel), Magnus effects are reduced and accuracy is greatly improved.
It's all to do with accuracy.
When things are spinning, they are very hard to deflect from their path. It's called gyroscopic inertia or stability. | [
"Top spin is imparted to a ball by hitting it above the midpoint of its vertical plane as it faces the shooter. Top spin is spin in the direction a ball naturally \"wants\" to take in reaction to friction from contact with the pool cloth. Because of this, a ball sliding on the cloth will rapidly pick up follow. Lik... |
What was the romantic relationship process like for humans in ancient times before the modern form of "dating" was invented? | Can you define "ancient times"? | [
"Generally, during much of recorded history of humans in civilization, and into the Middle Ages in Europe, weddings were seen as business arrangements between families, while romance was something that happened outside of marriage discreetly, such as covert meetings. The 12th-century book \"The Art of Courtly Love\... |
how do particle accelerators work? how do they achieve the accuracy to collide one atom or subatomic particle with another, especially considering that we can't create true vacuum? | I guess the most important thing to remember is that atoms are mostly empty space. Even when there's a stack of them, they don't tend to talk to each other much, because they're so small and don't influence things unless they're really, really close together.
As for how big those numbers appear to be, don't let them fool you! Some back of the envelope calculations tell me that there are approximately 2.55 x 10^22 air molecules (nitrogen and oxygen) floating around us at sea level... which means this terrible "vacuum" is 12 orders of magnitude (that's 1,000,000,000,000 times) better than regular air pressure.
As for the actual operation of particle accelerators, they work off the idea that particles with charge can be accelerated by electric fields, and squeezed together with magnetic fields. So, it's possible to get some gas, heat it up (so that the particles become charged - we call them ions), and stick them in the accelerator so that the electric and magnetic fields speed them up to close to the speed of light! (*300,000* kilometres per second)
Finally, you are correct in saying it's tricky to hit individual particles together... that's like two people shooting machine guns near each other and trying to cross the streams so the bullets hit. But again, it's a numbers game. You may only have a 0.0000001% chance for any two particles to hit head on, but if you're operating with a trillion trillion (no, I didn't stutter) charged particles heading towards each other, a few are bound to hit. When they do, huge amounts of energy are produced, and since E = mc^2 we get all kinds of strange, new particles produced in the explosion, which we have fancy sensors to detect (usually by their decay products, we used to use cloud chambers to track their paths, and that would let us work out things like their electric charge and their mass).
Source: I'm a physicist. | [
"The output of a particle accelerator can generally be directed towards multiple lines of experiments, one at a given time, by means of a deviating electromagnet. This makes it possible to operate multiple experiments without needing to move things around or shutting down the entire accelerator beam. Except for syn... |
[NSFW] How did large Roman armies handle sewage? | Excellent question! And there are a few different answers, really. The first, easiest one would be applicable to an army on the march. When an army was traipsing around the countryside for whatever reason, their camps would be temporary structures, created and destroyed daily. In this case, a cesspit would be dug and would be used as a latrine. Next day, a new cesspit in a new spot. Digging a hole is relatively basic, simple, and doesn't take too long when you have a few hundred people who are ready and willing to do the work!
The question that I think you're asking, though, is about the larger garrisons that were planted around the Roman empire (specifically the hotspots) right around the time when we start counting years forward instead of backward. That answer is slightly different! Latrine technology in general was actively adopted by the Romans during the second century BC, and since the army was renowned for having the best engineers in the Roman world, it was only natural that they did some fun stuff with that knowledge. Unfortunately for the majority of the soldiers....well, they didn't get those benefits. Even in the permanent camps, their latrines were cesspits lined in wood or clay to prevent leakage into the drinking water.
But! You see the small problem here. When there's no leakage, even forgetting the stench of a gigantic port-a-potty, that waste isn't going anywhere. So there were a couple of solutions to that problem: installing drains and assigning someone to [*stercus*](_URL_0_) duty. We've actually got one extant document that lists the different details of one unit of soldiers, one of whom got that aforementioned lucky assignment.
But! The Romans also brought *class* to their toilets. The officers, at least, had their own latrine area set up nearby the bathing complex. That sounds a bit odd on the surface, but then you realize that they could flush. It was a relatively simple matter to divert some of the water that was used for the bath houses to flush the waste out and into the nearest river.
Hope that covered it! Feel free to ask if you have any more questions. If you'd like to read some more on Roman bathroom stuff, I recommend checking out *The archaeology of sanitation in Roman Italy: toilets, sewers, and water systems.* The Google Books preview is unfortunately pretty restrictive, but I can confirm that the book itself does, in fact, have a chapter specifically on the Roman army :) | [
"Sanitation in ancient Rome was quite extensive. These systems consisted of stone and wooden drains to collect and remove wastewater from populated areas—see for instance the Cloaca Maxima into the River Tiber in Rome. It is estimated that the first sewers of ancient Rome were built between 800 and 735 BCE. Neverth... |
(Computing) Is there a reason many places have a limit on how long you can make a password? | In most cases the limit is arbitrary. The password should be hashed before being stored in a database and all of these hashes will be the same length anyway (if the hash length were dependent on the password length then it would leak information about the password).
If the length limit is low then it may imply that someone has decided that long passwords bring too many support queries from users forgetting them. That would suggest that they have a disregard for user security. One other reason could be that they have limited space in the password field and are storing passwords plain-text, which would be a major security failure.
Alternatively it may been a consequence of a legacy mainframe using something like [RACF](_URL_0_) which may impose limits on passwords. | [
"Many policies require a minimum password length. Eight characters is typical but may not be appropriate. Longer passwords are generally more secure, but some systems impose a maximum length for compatibility with legacy systems.\n",
"possible combinations. Taking a single machine that could attempt 500 passwords... |
why is it that an image appears large to the naked eye but once i take my phone out to take a picture it's not at the same scale? | The lens on your phone's camera is equivalent to a 30-35mm lens on a 35mm format camera. That gives the ability to have a fairly wide angle field of view.
The focal length which best mimics the perspective of the human eye is closer to 50mm. | [
"Pictures taken in this fashion take on the appearance of a miniature model, taken from a short distance, and those not familiar with such pictures often cannot be convinced that it is the real object. This is because we cannot see depth when looking at such scenes in real life and our brains aren't equipped to dea... |
What is known about the fate of Hitler's corpse? | Hitler had set orders that his body be cremated upon his suicide, his body was burnt in the Reich Chancellery outside the bunker. Soviet records show the remains of Hitler and his wife Eva were buried in unmarked graves outside of Berlin
In 1970 the remains were interred and burnt again afterwards scattering the ashes.
So no, there's no evidence to prove Stalin or anyone else used Hitler's skull as an ashtray.
Source: Kershaw, Ian (2008). Hitler: A Biography. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. | [
"In 1970, the Soviet autopsy on Hitler's remains was released. This document, which was allegedly compiled shortly after the conclusion of World War II on the basis of the examination of the remains claimed to be those of the Führer, stated he was monorchid. It stated:\n",
"In the following days, a lot of specula... |
r/askscience, is there anywhere in the world where I could look through a telescope to physically see the artifacts left by astronauts on the moon? | What if the Hubble Space Telescope were aimed at Earth; how detailed would the images be?
[Relevant XKCD Comic](_URL_0_) | [
"This wafer was supposedly covertly attached to a leg of the Lunar Module \"Intrepid\", and subsequently left on the Moon during Apollo 12. \"Moon Museum\" is considered the first Space Art object. While it is impossible to tell if \"Moon Museum\" is actually on the Moon without sending another mission to look, tec... |
Why do we get high/loopy when we become tired? | Per _URL_0_ it would appear that the brain switches into a different form of functionality when sleep deprived. Certain parts of the brain stop reacting normally(as compared to being wide awake), and other parts start over-reacting.
The prefrontal cortex tends to become over-active and that could explain why our behaviors become more irratic and irrational as we become more and more exhausted.
What I personally find most interesting though is the act of microsleep. Where the brain basically says 'fuck it' and just forces you into sleep for small moments of time, no matter what. | [
"Fatigue can be a symptom of a medical problem, but more commonly it is a normal physiological reaction to exertion, lack of sleep, boredom, changes to sleep-wake schedules (including jet lag), or stress.\n",
"Fatigue is a subjective feeling of tiredness that has a gradual onset. Unlike weakness, fatigue can be a... |
Is time actually linear? | You can't really have a stationary point in 3D space, any point in space is either a point in space and time or it's a line in spacetime. I recommend reading [this superb post by RobotRollCall](_URL_0_), it will show that a beam of light is not travelling through time at all.
I don't have the technical knowledge to explain in which ways time isn't linear and in which ways cosmic graph paper fails to model it, I hope someone with an interest in topology can though. | [
"If a time-invariant system is also linear, it is the subject of linear time-invariant theory (linear time-invariant) with direct applications in NMR spectroscopy, seismology, circuits, signal processing, control theory, and other technical areas. Nonlinear time-invariant systems lack a comprehensive, governing the... |
What was a typical day in the life of an ordinary sailor like during the Golden Age of Exploration? | First of all, a disclaimer, most of what I know deals with the Golden Age of Piracy (roughly 1650-1730) rather than the Golden Age of Exploration (1490-1600s sometime). Also, both of those terms are terribly Eurocentric, but what can you do..
Anyway, in the Age of Sail, a typical sailor's day would have consisted essentially of significant periods of menial labor, and significant periods of idleness, with the ratio depending on the weather, the attitudes of the captain, the size of the crew, and the purpose of the ship.
Generally their diet would have consisted of hardtack (flour, water, salt, perhaps a tiny bit of sugar), salt pork or other salt meats, along with salt fish, and a small ration each of water and rum (grog was a later invention, incorporating watered rum and lime juice that was thought to ward off scurvy).
Labor would have included keeping watch, changing the sails at need, cleaning the ship, and drills in the case of warships. For entertainment, gambling was both commonly forbidden and commonly practiced anyway. Contests, music, and other means of passing the time also existed.
Sodomy was almost certainly not as common as laypeople frequently assume. There is almost no direct evidence for it ever occurring aboard ships, and relatively little indirect evidence as well. It may have been an occasional occurrence, but it probably was not a major part of seafaring culture
Generally a sailor would have only a small bundle of possessions and a hammock--sometimes shared with someone who worked a different watch--to his name, at least aboard the ship, and conditions were unbelievably cramped belowdecks.
That's all I can think to write for now. It's kind of a broad question. Anything else people want to know?
Source: That "Pirates and the Early Modern World" class I took for my history degree. If you want to read more, I cannot recommend Marcus Rediker's [Villains of All Nations](_URL_0_) highly enough. It's definitely a somewhat class-oriented take on piracy, but it's highly entertaining (for a history textbook) and very informative.
Edit: I accidentally some letters. | [
"Such voyages helped to improve his health, and possibly to prolong his life. He also took a great deal of pleasures from his experiences aboard ship, particularly when he had the honour of spending a month in the company of George Bernard Shaw; he later described how he spent \"many hours every day talking – the g... |
How could men serve in WW2, Korea, and Vietnam? | So people often trot out 20 years as a full military career, and in many cases it is what the goal is and has been for decades. But often especially senior officers in command billets will serve significantly longer periods of time. 20 is often talked about because for decades it has been the time required for receiving a pension. [Here is a nice breakdown of how the system and particularly retirement pay has evolved since the 80's, and you can see the benefits of staying in to rack up better pay](_URL_0_). But there are counterbalanciong regulations, for officers there is an "up or out" system where if you fail to be selected for promotion too many times in a row you are forced out.
And then we come to the mandatory retirement ages. For reference's sake here is where they stand now.
> 10 U.S. Code § 633: Mandates retirement for O5s not on a promotion list to O6 after 28 years of active commissioned service, except for certain officers in the Navy or Marine Corps who are either limited duty officers or permanent professors at the United States Naval Academy.
> 10 U.S. Code § 634: Mandates retirement for O6s not on a promotion list to O7 after 30 years of active commissioned service, except for certain officers in the Navy or Marine Corps who are either limited duty officers or permanent professors at the United States Naval Academy.
> 10 U.S. Code § 635: Mandates retirement for O7s not on a promotion list to O8 after 30 years of active commissioned service or 5 years in grade, whichever is later.
> 10 U.S. Code § 636: Mandates retirement for O8s after 35 years of active commissioned service or 5 years in grade, whichever is later; after 38 years of active commissioned service for O9s; and after 40 years of active commissioned service for O10s.
> 10 U.S. Code § 1251: Mandatory retirement age is age 62 for all officers other than general or flag officers. Service Secretaries may defer the retirement of health professional officers and chaplains until the age of 68.
> 10 U.S. Code § 1252: Mandatory retirement age for permanent professors at service schools is age 64.
> 10 U.S. Code § 1253: Mandatory retirement age for general and flag officers is age 64. Officers in O9 and O10 positions may have retirement deferred until age 66 by the SECDEF or until age 68 by the President.
> 10 U.S. Code § 3911, § 6323, and § 8911: Regular and reserve officers in the Armed Forces may retire after 20 years of service, at least 10 of which must have been as an active commissioned officer.
> 10 U.S. Code § 3918, § 6322, and § 8918: Regular officers in the Armed Forces with at least 30 years of service may be retired upon their request, at the discretion of the President (or the discretion of the Secretary of the Navy for Navy and Marine Corps officers).
From here: _URL_1_ Understandably this would still be contingent on good health and an ability to still pass height/weight regs and a fitness test that does scale for age.
So for instance legendary fighter pilots for the Air Force like Robin Olds(born 1922!) could enter West Point just before WW2, commission as a 2LT after just 3 years thanks to an accelerated war curriculum during the war, then go on to command formations in Vietnam(were he backed up his 12 WW2 kills with 4 more MiG's) in the mid 60's and retire in the early 70's because he had risen sufficiently in rank. A very similar story exists for Chuck Yeager(born 1923), famous for being the first to break the sound barrier, but who had enlisted in the Air Corps in WW2 before commissioning, and would only retire in the mid 70's after a command tour in Vietnam when he flew combat missions as well. Olds' XO in Vietnam then was another similar story who had actually seen combat in Korea, Col. Vermont Garrison, born in 1915 he enlisted in 1941 in the Royal Air Force because of failing out of US flight training before later swapping back to the USAAF. Famous for making Ace in both WW2 and over Korea, Olds actually said he did what he could to keep him away from MiG's and aerial combat in Vietnam as his eyesight wasnt what it once was, but that his value as a bombing leader and pillar of strength and gravitas was invaluable as well. | [
"Korean soldiers that volunteered for service in Vietnam were given bonuses: they would \"receive credit for three years of military duty for each year served in Vietnam as well as additional monetary entitlements; further, combat duty would enhance their future Army careers.\"\n",
"From 1944 to 1946, he served i... |
why do diamonds sparkle but other carbon-based materials do not? | Maybe off-topic but here's why diamonds are transparent:
A diamond consists of a 3 dimensional array of carbon atoms bound together. A chemical bond is just electrons moving around two atoms binding them together by electrostatic forces. Electrons can absorb light, which raises their energy level, and they loose the energy in form of heat for example. When a compound absorbs light (=the bond electrons absorb light), and that light has a wavelength within the visible spectrum, the compound has a color. When every visible wavelenth gets absorbed, the compound is black.
More tightly bound electrons need more energy (=smaller wavelength of light) to be excited to higher energy levels. Lets compare diamonds and graphite. The electrons in diamond are too tightly bound to the carbon atoms , they only absorb high energy UV light, which is invisible - so diamonds absorb no color, they are transparent. The carbon atoms in graphite are arranged in sheets, and these sheets are bound together by weaker bonds called pi-bonds. These pi-bond electrons absorb light at almost every wavelength in the visible spectrum - so graphite is black. These pi-bonds are also the reason why graphite conducts electricity and diamonds don't. | [
"Diamonds have been adapted for many uses because of the material's exceptional physical characteristics. Most notable are its extreme hardness and thermal conductivity (900–), as well as wide bandgap and high optical dispersion. Diamond's ignition point is 720– in oxygen and 850– in air.\n",
"Diamond is a solid ... |
why cant humans have a food that brushes their teeth? | Um. Any crunchy fruit (apples, pears) or vegetables (carrots, celery) all help to keep our teeth clean? | [
"However oral hygiene is effective at preventing gum disease (gingivitis / periodontal disease). Food is forced inside pits and fissures under chewing pressure, leading to carbohydrate-fuelled acid demineralisation where the brush, fluoride toothpaste, and saliva have no access to remove trapped food, neutralise ac... |
US and EU increased sanctions on Russia recently. What specifically do they mean by 'sanctions' and what are typical sanctions a country might impose? | Usually, banking sanctions have to do with a bank's ability to get financing (capital) in multiple forms (short, medium, and long term) from another financial institution.
In this case, the US has banned its banks (and the EU has recently done so too) from providing medium and long term financing for Russian state-owned banks. This means that Russian banks are not able to have their debt purchased by American or European banks beyond a 90 day (I believe) window. This means that while American/European banks can do small transactions with their Russian counterparts, they aren't able to finance larger capital projects undertaken by Russian banks (this means that Russian banks have less money to underwrite mortgages, loans, do bank stuff). This also puts pressure on Russia's currency, the ruble.
The new sanctions also prohibit some degree of arms sales (this was what France was in a tizzy about), but mostly with regards to technology transfer (this also applies to the energy sector). For instance, you've probably heard that France is selling two large warships to Russia, the Mistral-class helicopter carriers. Of course, they can't just plop the ships in Russia and say that's that. The sale also includes training and transfer of technology to the Russian navy, so that they can integrate the sensor suite of the ship into their network and also learn how to use a big amphibious assault ship like the Mistral.
A tangential aspect of a lot of these sanctions (and often a direct effect of sanctions on individuals) is capital flight. So, if you're Mr. Russian Oligarch, and you have billions of dollars sitting in a bank in Red Square, you're in trouble if you're targeted for sanctions. So, in order to protect your money from sanctioned banks, you move it out of the Russian economy (this hurts the currency) and into another country. Of course, if your assets held in another country are frozen (which is being debated), then you're really screwed.
Hope this helps!
Edit: Wow, this has been a fantastic discussion! /u/aetrips made a translation of my comment into Russian, in case there are any Russian speakers who'd like to take a look.
_URL_0_ | [
"The US and European Union vowed early May 2014 that they would impose further sanctions against Russia (sanctions have been in place against Russia since the 2014 Crimean crisis) if it disrupted the election. However, unlike previous sanctions which were limited to individuals and companies, the third stage is set... |
During the Weimar Republic there were a lot of different parties in the parliament, many with a low amount of representatives. What role did this play in its downfall? | The Wiemar Republic is generally said to end when the Enabling act is passed in 1933, and this is true. But Hitler didn't get that act passed because of a large amount of minor parties, but rather because he managed to destroy the major parties that actually opposed him using violence and intimidation.
Around the time of Hitler's seizure of power (1932-1933) there were two major coalitions in the German government. A right wing one made up of the Nazis and a German Nationalist party known as the DNVP. And a left wing coalition made up of the SPD and KPD, other wise known as the Communists and the Social Democrats. The only other party that really commanded influence in the Reichstag was a Catholic centrist party. Hitler's right wing coalition held a slim majority, in the 1932 election The Nazis won 196 seats and their allies won 51 for a total of 247, which is only slightly more than the 221 seats won by the left wing coalition.
The people arguing that "too many minor parties led to the fall of Wiemar" probably mean there wasn't any one party or coalition of parties big enough to stop Hitler from seizing power. This clearly isn't the case. But what did help Hitler seize power was that the coalitions that could have fought against his Nazis, were ineffective at doing so and the parties failed to form a truly united front to stop Hitler. Infighting between the left wing parties was common. Communists refused to work with the Social Democrats, going so far as to label them “Social Fascists”. Each left wing party had their own paramilitaries that fought hard against the Nazi's SA stormtroopers, but the Nazi's were just far too numerous (their SA numbered more than half a million). Hitler also had the support of the Army and Nazis occupied key positions in the government, which helped him further repress the left wing parties.
The Social Democrats represented the “best” chance of stopping the Nazis. But they were often harassed and intimidated by the Nazis into not putting up a serious resistance. They, much like the communists, also suffered from serious repression. When Herman Goering was appointed Prussian minister of the Interior, he gave the Nazi stormtroopers the ability to act as an unofficial police force. They quickly used that power to attack the Communists and the Social Democrats. Political offices were raided, notable leaders and supporters were beaten, tortured, and throw into prison. Over 100,000 Communists and Social Democrats ended up in prison, and many others went into hiding.
This all came to a head when Hitler “created” a new worker's holiday and than while the workers were distracted had his Stormtroopers raid and loot the offices of the Social Democrats and the Trade Unionists (the Social Democrats biggest supporters). Mass arrests followed and just like that the biggest opposition to Hitler had been broken. After that Hitler began to deal with the other smaller splinter parties, and eventually he managed, through bribery and intimidation, to get the enabling act passed which ended the Wiemar Republic.
Two good books on the matter are “Third Reich in Power” and the “Coming of the Third Reich” both by Richard Evans. | [
"In the thirteen years the Weimar Republic was in existence, some forty parties were represented in the Reichstag. This fragmentation of political power was in part due to the peculiar parliamentary system of the Weimar Republic, and in part due to the many challenges facing German democracy in this period.\n",
"... |
Were there political parties in colonial America? | Yes, there were political parties in Colonial America. My expertise is in New York history, so I will confine my answer to that, so maybe someone else can fill you in on the rest.
As you may know, New York was originally a Dutch colony that was taken over by the English in 1664. But the takeover wasn't altogether peaceful, as the Dutch increasingly saw the English undermining their way of life. The treaty handing over New Netherland to the English agreed to allow religious freedom to continue to exist in the colony, for example, but the English almost immediately began levying taxes against all the colonists to pay for the clergy and buildings of the Anglican church.
The Dutch ended up re-conquering the colony briefly in 1673, but the English took it back in 1674, and kept it for a hundred years.
But by the 1680s, the relationship between the Dutch farmers and the English government had deteriorated enough that there was a rebellion. This was called Leisler's Rebellion because it was led by a New York Assemblyman named Jacob Leisler.
Leisler and his forces took over the fort at the south end of Manhattan, then called Fort George. The fort included the colonial treasury, so the forces essentially took over the finances for the colony.
This was all peaceful; there were no shots fired and nobody was killed. But the English Navy was notified, who then sent ships down to Manhattan to put down the rebellion.
This, too, was done mostly peacefully. A shot was fired but nobody was killed and Leisler and his forces agreed to relinquish control after some of their demands were met.
But then the English governor of the colony, Henry Sloughter, put Leisler and his son-in-law to death. They were hanged in the public square, not far from where the New York Stock Exchange now stands, and this upset the people of New York a great deal. Nobody had been killed in the actual rebellion itself. Jacob Leisler's punishment did not seem to fit the crime.
The aftermath of this was that New York politics for the next ~40 years was divided into two political factions that were known as the Leislerians and the anti-Leislerians. The Leislerians tended to be middle and lower class farmers, particularly those who spoke Dutch. The anti-Leislerians were middle and upper class merchants and other New Yorkers, particularly those who spoke English.
These divisions eventually gave way as the Dutch population of the colony diminished in relation to the English population. By the 1750s, New York politics was divided in a way that paralleled the divisions back in Britain. [The "Whig Club" formed in New York in 1752](_URL_3_), led by local aristocrat William Livingston. The more conservatives Tories, then, were led by another local aristocrat, Oliver Delancey.
The Livingston and Delancey families both became political dynasties, and they have often been written about as a microcosm of New York politics in the lead up to the American Revolution. Livingston's Whigs were the Patriot party, pro-America and pro-Continental Congress. Delancey's Tories were just the opposite. When the war broke out, Oliver Delancey joined with the British forces and raised Loyalist regiments to fight against George Washington and the Continental Army.
That all said, the political parties of that era weren't officially organized as they would become later on under Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln and others. There were definite political factions who would side with each other over issues, but there wasn't anything like a formal party structure with a published agenda trying to get a platform enacted or legislation passed or anything like that.
And again, this only applies to New York. The political situation was different in each of the colonies, and national politics didn't really arise in the soon-to-be-United States until the aftermath of the French and Indian War and the run-up to the Revolution.
FURTHER READING:
[*Colonial New York: A History*](_URL_4_)
[*The Whigs of Colonial New York*](_URL_2_)
[*Gotham: A History of New York To 1898*](_URL_0_)
[*Leslie's History of the Greater New York*](_URL_1_) | [
"None of the colonies had stable political parties of the sort that formed in the 1790s, but each had shifting factions that vied for power, especially in the perennial battles between the appointed governor and the elected assembly. There were often \"country\" and \"court\" factions, representing those opposed to... |
Is there any truth to the notion that North Americans Natives tribes's war were not "deadly" before European contact ? | Sounds like an exaggeration of the Great Plains tradition of "Counting Coup". Key to a man's success in Plains combat was demonstrating his own courage by proving superiority over his opponent and, in a competitive sense, over his own comrades. Killing was part of war, but showing courage in the process was more important for individual status. This was best accomplished by risking one's life in charging the enemy on foot or horseback to get close enough to touch or strike him with the hand, a weapon, or a "coupstick." Humiliating the enemy also played a part in this fighting, as illustrated by an account from the Jesuit missionary Father Pierre-Jean De Smet. In De Smet's 1848 visit to the Oglala Lakotas, the Oglala leader Red Fish related to the priest how his men had just suffered a disgraceful defeat at the hands of the Crows. The Crows killed ten Oglalas, then chased the others for a distance. The Crows then were content merely to repeatedly count coup on their enemies with clubs and sticks, thus demonstrating to the Oglalas that they were not worth the ammunition needed to kill them.
This is where you see the non-leathal weapons, and idea that fighting wasn't only about killing. | [
"Because a large part of the conflict between the native tribes took place far beyond the frontier and in locations that had yet to have European contact, the full extent and impact of the war is unknown. Most knowledge of the western parts of the conflict comes through accounts of French explorers and the tribes t... |
Was Joseph McCarthy as 'crazy' as he is made out to be? | This has been asked a few times, but there's never been, as far as I can tell, a comprehensive and well-sourced answer. So, I encourage people to provide one.
That said, there have been _good_ answers. Here's [one](_URL_0_) with some good debate about what McCarthy got right or wrong, and [another](_URL_1_) that discusses whether the "Venona Files" exonerated McCarthy's claim that communist inflitration was widespread and dangerous. (The answer given in the thread is "no" -- infiltration was real, but McCarthy didn't find it, and it was not the clear and present danger he believed it to be.)
I can't speak to the accuracy of those answers but if you don't hear back from others, that's a start. | [
"McCarthy went straight to the police. At first they did not believe him. They accused him of having had too much to drink and he was told to go home and sleep it off. They even said that he was crazy. He went back again the next day and tried to explain what had happened, but they still didn't believe him. This pe... |
why do our eyes start to get watery after staring at something for awhile? | Your eyes get dry when you "stare" at something (without blinking), so a gland near your eye produces a small bit of tears to keep things moist | [
"There may also be a stringy discharge from the eyes. Although it may seem strange, dry eye can cause the eyes to water. This can happen because the eyes are irritated. One may experience excessive tearing in the same way as one would if something got into the eye. These reflex tears will not necessarily make the e... |
why is it that a car journey feels less bumpy if you are the driver? | For the same reason that you cannot tickle yourself: *anticipation of effect dampens perception of effect*. When you are driving a car you control the speed, direction, and changes in velocity while also viewing road conditions that generate bumps. Using all of this information, you can usually correctly anticipate movement (bumps) and anticipated movements are accounted for in the brain and somewhat canceled out in our perception. Passengers do not control any of these factors and generally do not pay attention to the road in the same way and thus do not dampen perceived movement. Neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert brilliantly explains these effects in his talk, [The real reason for brains]( _URL_0_;). | [
"High levels of comfort are difficult to reconcile with a low center of gravity, body roll resistance, low angular inertia, support for the driver, steering feel and other characteristics that make a car handle well.\n",
"Good ride quality provides comfort for the people inside the car, minimises damage to cargo ... |
The Godfather and popular depictions of Sicily in early 1900s: corruption, mafia, backwardness. How true is this depiction and how did Sicily end up that way? | The mafia in Siciliy appears to have its origins in the 19th Century brotherhoods that formed in Palermo and other Sicilian cities. The Sicilian economy was largely dependent on Sulphur mining and Lemon orchards which were prone to corrupt management. The brotherhoods effectively formed as crude workers unions to protect their members interests and ensure that they would not lose their jobs. However the brotherhoods often went further, delving into bribery, extortion, vandalism of rival companies property and even murder, all in the name of protecting their own interests and expanding their influence. The mafia grew out of these organisations and retained many of their traditions. By the early 1900's, the mafia had become an integral part of the struggling Sicilian economy, effectively having a stranglehold over many local communities. While this was beneficial to the mafiosa, it slowed economic growth in Sicily, further increasing the regions economic problems and influencing many Sicilians to emigrate to the Americas. | [
"Sicily suffered a ferocious outbreak of the Black Death in 1656, followed by a damaging earthquake in the east of the island in 1693. Sicily was frequently attacked by Barbary pirates from North Africa. The subsequent rebuilding created the distinctive architectural style known as Sicilian Baroque. Periods of rule... |
[Question about the Black Death] Did Cats or Dogs that hunted the infected rats get affected by the plague? | I'm not too familiar with medical history but I've done some reading and took a class on the Black Death. I'm sure there are others that would be more qualified on this topic.
Your second assumption is correct, the predator animals and the rats became infected with plague and died, so having a cat or dog would be useless to stop the spread of plague. Actually, the death of the rats is said to be one of the main causes as to why the disease would spread to humans. The rats would die and then the fleas would need to find another host, making its way to people.
The sudden death of a huge amount of rats would actually warn people during the 3rd outbreak in the 19th century in China of plague. The death of the rats was noted by many people and recorded in some poems that talked about the plague. This actually became a point of debate among historians since the death of the rats was noted by so many people in China during the 19th century, but not during the Middle Ages and the European outbreak. Many people were unsure if the diseases were the same since no records from the Middle Ages mention the sudden death of hundreds of rats, even though the symptoms were the same. However, tests have been done since then and have proved that the diseases were almost identical, or at least related if I remember correctly. Some historians hypothesize that the disease during the Middle Ages may have been spread differently. However, this is getting beyond my knowledge and I can't mention any specific examples.
Sources:
Great Britain, Colonial Reports, Miscellaneous, Hong Kong, “Memorandum on the Treatment of Patients in their own Homes and in Local Hospitals,” 1903.
Benedict, Carol. Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth-Century China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.
Lehfeldt, Elizabeth A. The Black Death (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005)
Naphy, William and Andrew Spicer, Plague: Black Death and Pestilence in Europe (The Mill: Tempus Press, 2004 [2000]).
| [
"Wild rodents, including rats, can carry many different zoonotic pathogens, such as \"Leptospira\", \"Toxoplasma gondii\", and \"Campylobacter\". The Black Death is traditionally believed to have been caused by the microorganism \"Yersinia pestis\", carried by the tropical rat flea (\"Xenopsylla cheopis\"), which p... |
What do we know about the judicial system of ancient Egypt? | Most of the time people use Ancient Egypt that way :D
However, Egypt did indeed keep a lot of its' institutions very similar throughout much of its' native dynasties. But, for clarity's sake, let's stick with the New Kingdom period.
Save for perhaps the Ptolemaic period, this is arguably the time that most people think of when they envision "Ancient Egypt".
It's a time of greater bureaucracy and written testimony.
Why don't we start from the top?
* **The Pharoah**
Because this part is largely intuitive, and it has more to do with the structure of government than anything, I'll try to be brief.
The King was the ultimate expression of Law. The Egyptians held that the King was responsible for maintaining *ma'at*, or justice, order, etc.
This charge meant that the King was at the top of the law.
However, it must be said that the amount that a King personally got mixed up in judicial matters had to have been determined by the personality of the said king.
Thutmose III stated that he "laid down the correct laws". Amenhotep III said he was "one who established laws" and that he "expelled falsehood from every land".
Officially, the King was responsible for that maintaining of **order** at a fundamental level. Perhaps, we can say according to today's standards, religious level.
King's could make **Royal Decrees** that could be edicts towards things such as temple construction or endowments.
These decrees followed a conventional composition.
First, they Horus name of the King was given in a vertical column, followed by the name and titles of the recipient in a horizontal line at the top.
Second, the content of the decree in vertical columns next to the King's name. This would form the main body of the text and would end in the statement: "sealed in the presence of the King himself" and the date of the decree.
Now this decree could inscribed on a stele at Karnak, Abydos, and other public places for all to see. Even though they likely couldn't read it.
The original could be stored in an archive, and perhaps even mass-produced in papyrus form.
We have some surviving accounts of King's getting involved in judicial affairs. One from Deir-El-Medina in the 19th Dynasty, recorded on Hieratic Ostracon British Museum 5631, tells of an official that demanded that a writer from the village return copper tools that belonged to Pharoah. When the writer refused, the official seized 12 servants from the writer's household. When the writer's father appealed to Pharoah, he caused that the writer and his servants were set free.
Finally, under the King's authority, special cases could be heard by a tribunal of officials that he chose.
For instance, Ramesses III of the appointed a tribunal to deal with the Harem Conspiracy.
Now in all fairness, Ramesses could've been dead as a door nail when he did so! However, if he was dead, then it was still a plausible legal fiction to those that would read the account.
We read in Turin Judicial Papyrus:
"I commissioned....(Here he lists a total of 12 different officials including the overseers of the treasury Montemtowe and Pefrowe, the King's adjutant Penernute, and others.) saying:
'As for the matters which the people have plotted, go and examine them.'
And they examined them and caused them to die.
But I had charged them strictly, saying: 'Take heed, have a care lest you allow that somebody be punished wrongfully by an official who is not over him.' "
So the King was the ultimate letter of the law and could create laws and prosecute them in turn.
However, he actually deferred the majority of the job to the Vizierate and the 2 Great *knb.t* courts. These courts, as well as their Local variants, are supposedly a creation of the King's, according to *The Decree of Horemheb*.
(Sources: Ancient Egyptian Economy- Brian Muhs, Jurisdiction in the Workmen's Community of Deir El Medina- A.G. McDowell, The Pharoah: Life at Court and on Campaign- Garry Shaw.)
After all of this talk of Pharoah, let's take a look at the real brains of the operation.
* **The Vizier & His Court**
"A petitioner wants his plea considered
Rather than have his case adjudged." -*Instruction of Ptahhotep*
With that literary quote, and plenty of other admonitions, the Vizier Rekhmire was sworn into service.
One other notable passage from Rekhimre's tomb says "He who does justice before all people, he is the Vizier."
We could liken the Vizierate to something of Prime Minister. He was the chief judge of the land and the King's representative.
Focusing on the high bureaucracy period of Rekhmire mentioned above, we find that there are 2 Viziers. 1 for the North and 1 for the South. At the end of the reign of the late Ramesses III (mentioned above), the Vizierate was consolidated into 1 office based in Thebes.
All of the officials were subject to justice by the Vizier.
Disputes regarding the high offices of Mayor and Estate Ruler (the men responsible for the economies of Egypt's 42 Nomes.) came before him, while most disputes outside of the Royal House were only reported to him.
The southern Vizier was also responsible for the Workmen's village in the Valley. The Deir-El-Medina referred to earlier.
Petitions regarding land found their way to the Vizier, and he was responsible for sealing every *imyt-per*(Transfer Deed) himself.
Besides being Judge, he was also the supervisor for the police. He would appoint a chief of police and received a report on the security of the country regularly.
He also interacted with the Great Prison, such that archives of hearings by the Vizier were registered there in case an official committed a 2nd offense.
Viziers could investigate cases with the assistance of "Scribes of the Vizier."
They apparently could decide cases on their own, based on the evidence found in the fragments of Hieratic Papyrus Geneve D409 + Turin 2021 from the late 20th Dynasty.
Alternatively, the Vizier and his subordinate scribes could investigate and decide cases alongside the 2 Great *knb.t*-courts, on which they sat over and presided.
These, like the Viziers, would've been associated with the great cities of Upper and Lower Egypt. So one at Thebes and one at Heliopolis or Memphis.
Of primary concerns to these courts, and the officials presiding over them, were matters of state such as tomb robberies, and abuse of authority.
They did occasionally adjudicate over private property disputes, and as witnesses to transactions.
In the Geneve D409 + Turin 2021 Papyrus mentioned earlier, the Vizier persuades some heirs to accept the will of their father, and orders that that decision be made known in the Great *knb.t*-Court of Thebes.
The Vizier was the chief executive of the state, and he was the one personally responsible for handling matters of the law that dealt with the state.
The punishment for one found guilty by of such things as tomb robbery was death! And thus, people that wanted to condemn their enemies could accuse them of this such as in the Great Tomb Robbery of the Abbot Papyrus.
(Sources: Ancient Egyptian Literature: the New Kingdom- Miriam Lichtheim, Village Life in Ancient Egypt- A.G. McDowell, Ancient Egyptian Economy- Brian Muhs, Thutmose III: a New Biography Edited by Eric Cline and David O'Connor)
| [
"The head of the legal system was officially the pharaoh, who was responsible for enacting laws, delivering justice, and maintaining law and order, a concept the ancient Egyptians referred to as Ma'at. Although no legal codes from ancient Egypt survive, court documents show that Egyptian law was based on a common-s... |
What language was spoken by common Romans? | It depended where they lived. If they lived in Rome, they spoke Latin. Elsewhere they spoke their native language - Greek in Greece, Aramaic in Judea, the various Celtic dialects in north western Europe, and so on. | [
"The native language of the Romans was Latin, an Italic language in the Indo-European family. Several forms of Latin existed, and the language evolved considerably over time, eventually becoming the Romance languages spoken today.\n",
"The native language of the Romans was Latin, an Italic language the grammar of... |
Blues music originated from slaves in the US and has influenced and permeated almost all Western music for the last century. Is there any evidence of music playing slave owners adopting "black styles" of music? If so, how was this perceived by other whites? | You know how 'blackface' - the practice of white singers and actors darkening their faces to act black - is now so taboo as to be a career-ending move? Well, there's a very good historical reason for that taboo: a genre of music called minstrelsy.
Put it this way: you know how the post-Reconstruction racial segregation laws are called 'Jim Crow'? That name comes from a 'minstrel' song called 'Jump Jim Crow'. This was written by Thomas Rice in 1828, in imitation of a song he heard from a black stable worker in Louisville, Kentucky. Rice would perform it in blackface, wearing burnt cork makeup. This song was so popular and widely imitated that 'Jim Crow' soon became a pejorative term for African-Americans. Thus the naming of those racial segregration laws.
In 1843, Dan Emmett and his Virginia Minstrels established the first full-length minstrel show in New York. Anyway, the Virginia Minstrels would wear blackface, and would send up African-Americans while playing music that was directly inspired by African-Americans. White minstrel performers would visit plantations and study their music - and would go on to make fun of that music on stage in ways that were obviously deeply, deeply racist.
In terms of what the black music heard by white people actually sounded like, the Ted Gioia history of the delta blues, titled *Delta Blues*, records one view on what African-American worksongs sounded like in the era of slavery, according to a British author/actress, Frances Kemble, who was staying at a Georgia plantation in 1839:
> I have heard that many of the masters and overseers on these plantations prohibit melancholy tunes or words...and encourage nothing but cheerful music and senseless words, deprecating the effect of sadder strains upon the slaves, whose peculiar musical sensibility might be expected to make them especially excitable by any songs of a plaintive character, and having any reference to their particular hardships.
Elsewhere, Gioia explains that:
> ...above all, the various accounts that have survived from letters, journals, and publications convey the extraordinary richness and inventiveness of this music. When deprived of instruments, the plantation slaves would rely on their bodies for an endless range of musical effects: striking their thighs, clapping, patting their feet, whistling, vocalizing, and so forth. Happenstance objects would be transformed into musicmaking devices. William Cullen Bryant, in an account from 1843, describes a slave who made music for other black residents by whistling and beating two sticks on the ground. We hear also of musicians playing bones, or panpipes fashioned from reeds, or other instruments constructed from gourds, jugs, cans, pie tins, shingles, pieces of wood, whatever might be at hand. When they had access to formal instruments, the black underclass mastered these as well, and the literature provides accounts of slaves playing everything from the piano to the bagpipes. But (prefiguring the later preference of blues musicians) string instruments were the most popular and the easiest to obtain. In particular, the banjo and violin held pride of place at plantation entertainments.
Anyway, in terms of how this music was perceived by other whites, Dan Emmett's minstrel shows were enormously successful, spurring many imitators. This was a genre of music that would be very popular for close to a century (for example, Nick Tosches' book *Where Dead Voices Gather* profiles a blackface minstrel performer from the 1920s, Emmett Miller; [you can hear a recording of Miller here](_URL_1_)). Gioia says that it was popular basically right up until the early talking movie *The Jazz Singer* featuring Al Jolson performing in blackface. Perhaps ironically, given that *The Jazz Singer* featured a performer in blackface, the movie essentially set in motion the decline of the traveling troupes in favour of Hollywood musical spectacle. The last documented performance by a minstrel group took place in Iowa in 1951.
But before *The Jazz Singer*, blackface performers doing minstrelsy would tour around rural America as part of medicine shows, or as minstrel shows of their own. These tours were enormously popular - often they were the only touring entertainment that would come to many rural areas. For much of rural white America, long after slavery, much of their perception of African-Americans came directly from these shows, according to Gioia:
> For many Americans, especially those outside of the South, their attitudes toward the country’s growing slave population, their sense of African-American vernacular speech, music, and behavior, were shaped as much by these vulgar routines as by any firsthand encounters with black culture. And the medicine show, seen as appropriate family fare in most communities, brought these stereotypes to audiences that would never have attended a minstrel performance—indeed, even the pious “Quaker Healers” included blackface comedians in their shows, imparting an aura of religious respectability to the base proceedings on stage.
So yes, minstrelsy was black music adopted by white people in the antebellum era. It was enormously popular in rural areas in particular. And given the sheer extent of its reach and decades and decades of its popularity, it's very unsurprising that it was deeply influential on the rural white folk music that turned into country music - [for example, one of Hank Williams's biggest hits was a cover of the Emmett Miller song I linked to above](_URL_0_). | [
"While the findings of Kubik and others clearly attest to the essential Africanness of many essential aspects of blues expression, studies by Willie Ruff and others have situated the origin of \"black\" spiritual music inside enslaved peoples' exposure to their masters' Hebridean-originated gospels. African-America... |
To what extent was Spain colonized by Carthage? | You may find something like [this map](_URL_0_) to be a better representation of the complexities of Carthaginian Spain.
Carthage did have true colonies in Spain. But they were limited to the SE coast between Gadir and New Carthage. They also had a band of conquered territory. This was populated by native Spanish peoples, with very few Carthaginians present on the ground. This area was largely conquered in the period between the 1st and 2nd Punic wars. So Carthaginian rule was recent. And this conquered area was largely still directly ruled by local Spanish elites. Their loyalty was insured by relatives held as hostages in the true Carthaginian towns. There was also a third area where Carthage had influence, if not outright control. This was maintained through a complex web of alliances, trade agreements, etc.
Even this map I have linked doesn't really show the complexities on the ground. All of this was done on an ad hoc basis. One town might be Carthaginian, one neighbor ten miles inland might be conquered. Another town between them might be allied. And the truth of the matter is we don't really know the details. Records from the area are sparse. Archeological digs can only tell us so much. If we find Carthaginian coins in a town that lets us know they were part of the Carthaginian sphere. But it doesn't tell us if they were a Carthaginian town, a conquered town, an allied town, a trade partner, or something else. So these bands designating different territories on the map should be taken as estimates at best. | [
"Carthage was founded in 814 BC by Phoenician colonists from Tyre, and by the 6th century BC the sailors and merchants of Carthage were known throughout the western Mediterranean. In the 4th century BC, following a series of military conquests, Carthage controlled many territories west of the gulf of Sirte in prese... |
What is the difference between a proton and a positron? | A proton is about 1800 times as massive, for one. | [
"Protons are spin-½ fermions and are composed of three valence quarks, making them baryons (a sub-type of hadrons). The two up quarks and one down quark of a proton are held together by the strong force, mediated by gluons. A modern perspective has a proton composed of the valence quarks (up, up, down), the gluons,... |
how does apple cider vinegar help relieve heartburn? | Not a Dr but this what mine told me. Also it works for me. There is some reason why you stomach is making more acid than it needs, by taking an antacid you are neutralizing acid and therefore your stomach makes even more to compensate. By adding acid in your stomach is all like "Hey we are good to go on acid so stop making it." Also equalizes your pH. | [
"Apple cider vinegar, or cider vinegar, is a vinegar made from fermented apple juice, and used in salad dressings, marinades, vinaigrettes, food preservatives, and chutneys. It is made by crushing apples, then squeezing out the juice. Bacteria and yeast are added to the liquid to start the alcoholic fermentation pr... |
Would English archers receive any melee weaponry or training? In close quarters, would they fare any better than a civilian? | If we're talking about English longbowmen in the high Middle Ages, then yes, they would have had some sort of melee weapon for backup use if they were surprised at close ranges. Jean Warrin, writing about Agincourt, described the actions of the English longbowmen as they ran out of arrows and charged the French flanks: “the English archers...then took their swords, hatchets, mallets, falcon-beaks and other weapons...”
The mallet in particular seemed to be a common tool of the archer, since the English preferred to fortify their positions with sharpened stakes to protect themselves from cavalry and these mallets were useful to pound stakes into the ground. As Religieux of St. Denis (Michel Pintoin) said, "In addition, many of them [archers] had adopted a type of weapon until then unknown - great lead-covered mallets [clavam plumbeam] from which one single blow on the head could kill a man or knock him senseless to the ground."
It would be worth noting that while this worked out pretty well for them at Agincourt, this backup weaponry in no way made an archer the equal of an infantryman. In the battles of Patay and Verneuil, the English longbowmen were routed by heavy cavalry before they had a chance to set up their protective stakes. | [
"Archers are shown preparing to fight French forces whom have double the number of soldiers as the British on the battlefield. The longbow allows the British to become victorious due to the ranged advantage and the high rate of fire.\n",
"BULLET::::- Archery: The most valuable archers were the crossbowmen. Their ... |
why do car companies name their cars a year in advance? | The 2015 cars are just 2015 models that are released early. The are normally released in the last few months before the year ends. This stops the lull in sales that occurs when people decide that they want to wait to buy a car until next years model comes out, because it already has. | [
"As well as yielding many more available numbers, it was a handy way for vehicle buyers to know the age of the vehicle immediately. However, the year letter changing on 1 January each year meant that car retailers soon started to notice that buyers would tend to wait until the New Year for the new letter to be issu... |
Where was the Judicial Review principle of the United States based from? how did it came to existence? | See the case of [Marbury v. Madison](_URL_0_). In that case, the Supreme Court under John Marshall found the long-existing concept of judicial review to be implicit in the constitution. | [
"Although it is a potent check on the other branches of the U.S. government, the power of judicial review was rarely exercised in early American history. After deciding \"Marbury\" in 1803, the Supreme Court did not strike down another federal law until 1857, when the Court struck down the Missouri Compromise in th... |
how do they make 3d sound work? | They do it the same way they create the 3D illusion for your eyes -- by controlling how long it takes the information to get to your brain. In the case of 3D vision, the image going to your left eye comes from a slightly different place than your right eye, and your brain fills in the blanks to create 3D.
For audio, it's the same thing. Your ears are very sensitive to the timing and apparent direction of sound signals coming in. You really only need two speakers, or headphones to do this -- by controlling the combination of the main signal coming into one ear and the echoes and delays that come to the other ear as if they were bounced off a wall, or whatever, your brain fills in the blanks and decides that a certain sound came from a certain place.
Here's a great example to play with using headphones -- two speakers only, but the illusion is that you're sitting in the environment and everything is happening around you: _URL_0_. | [
"3D Audio displays are devices that present information (in this case sound) through the human auditory system, its objective is to generate and display a spatialized 3D sound so the user can use its psychoacoustic skills and be able to determine the location and direction of the sound. There are different localiza... |
How valid is Lucid Dreaming? Can you really condition yourself to Dream what you want? | The first evidence for lucid dreaming was produced in the late 1970s by British parapsychologist Keith Hearne. A volunteer named Alan Worsley used eye movement to signal the onset of lucidity, which were recorded by a polysomnograph machine.
The first peer-reviewed article was published some years later by Stephen LaBerge at Stanford University, who had independently developed a similar technique as part of his doctoral dissertation. During the 1980s, further scientific evidence to confirm the existence of lucid dreaming was produced as lucid dreamers were able to demonstrate to researchers that they were consciously aware of being in a dream state (again, primarily using eye movement signals). Additionally, techniques were developed that have been experimentally proven to enhance the likelihood of achieving this state.
I wrote a program that records my sleep every night and plays an audio track when it detects rapid eye movements. I also created an online sleep research database where I share these recordings. And I have been training myself to type by blinking in Morse Code patterns in hope that I can transcribe the first message from within a dream one day. | [
"Though lucid dreaming can be beneficial to a number of aspects of life, some risks have been suggested. People who have never had the experience of lucid dreaming may not understand what is happening when they first experience a lucid dream. The person who lucid dreams could begin to feel isolated from others due ... |
How likely is it for meiosis to dish out extra and lacking chromosomes which happen to result in the correct total for a 'normal' human? | What you are describing is actually a reasonably well studied phenomenon known as [uniparental disomy](_URL_0_).
For hard numbers, it is difficult to tell how often this occurs, because if it causes no ill effects or phenotypic expression in the offspring, it will go undetected for their whole life. There are definitely people walking around with this in the world today. It can cause a phenotype in cases where either the maternal or paternal gene is imprinted, or in cases where one parent is a carrier for a recessive condition that is located on the chromosome in question (the child will receive two copies of the affected allele from the same parent, and will be affected by the disease).
Inheriting all chromosomes from one parent is not compatible with life. | [
"As it has been already mentioned, the Y chromosome is unable to recombine during meiosis like the other human chromosomes; however, in 2003, researchers from MIT discovered a process which may slow down the process of degradation.\n",
"Without proper homologous recombination, chromosomes often incorrectly align ... |
How can a black hole's singularity be a "point", wouldn't that violate the pauli exclusion principle? | /u/rantonels has covered the problem with the singularity part of the question but there are other problems too:
1) Any calculations in GR are purely classical so any (anti) commutation relations between fields aren't taken into account and therefore no PEP
2) The Pauli exclusion principle is about states not positions and we have no idea about what kind of state structure could be at the singularity (if one even survives the quantisation process). | [
"The Schwarzschild solution, taken to be valid for all , is called a Schwarzschild black hole. It is a perfectly valid solution of the Einstein field equations, although it has some rather bizarre properties. For the Schwarzschild radial coordinate becomes timelike and the time coordinate becomes spacelike. A curve... |
How does the human digestive system separate solids from liquids? | They all mix together into a liquid solution. This is broken up in the stomach and nutrients are absorbed through the small intestine (enzymes in the stomach and small intestine help with this). In the large intestine components that cannot be absorbed (e.g. cellulose) remain and the water is re-absorbed, leaving solid waste. | [
"Water and saliva enter through the rumen to form a liquid pool. Liquid will ultimately escape from the reticulorumen from absorption through the wall, or through passing through the reticulo-omosal orifice, as digesta does. However, since liquid cannot be trapped in the mat as digesta can, liquid passes through th... |
In the Napoleonic Wars, what was the difference between a soldier in an elite unit and a regular unit? | The Imperial Guard was the special unit of the French Army. While it started as the Consular Guard which in itself was a combination of the *Garde du Directoire exécutif* and the *Grenadiers près de la Représentation nationale*, they formally became the Imperial Guard when Napoleon ordered the creation of the Empire. As /u/pllew1, there were requirements to joining the Guard but they were not as absolute. Marshal Davout, formal commander of the *Grenadiers de la Garde Imperiale*, had told an applicant that was too short to place a deck of cards in his shoes to make him taller.
However, the need is different and their treatment was certainly different. During this time period, Guard regiments were simply easy places to keep the sons of minor nobles busy with military experience. This of course changed during the Revolution as merit became an important measure rather than rank. The standards mentioned had become a way to ensure that Guard units would be competent and able to protect those whom they were formed to protect.
After 1805, the Imperial Guard was generally used as a tactical reserve. Held back at major battles like Austerlitz and Borodino, the Guard was rarely used until 1814 where it was a majority of Napoleon's Army. Admirably they served very well and ended up fighting enemies two times their size and pulling stunning victories but was not able to stem the tide. However, there is a disconnect between elite in 1800 and elite today. Elite soldiers get special training in a different type of warfare than the standard soldier and get better equipment as well due to their elevated status, but in 1800 there wasn't a different type of musket or sword for them to use, the Guard units knew how to use it better simply out of experience.
What made the Guard special how they were treated. Due to their elevated position, they were paid better than a standard line regiment, received better medical care and food while on campaign and in garrison. They were not allowed to do basic guard duty, which was given to the line, but were expected to serve as waiters and footmen (in the service way) for the Emperor when he was entertaining. One Guardsman even pointed out one time that the prim & proper Empress Marie Louise (von Habsburg) was an excellent billiards player, even mounting the table "like a man" in order to get off a good shot.
However, there were three versions of the Guard; Old Guard which was the battle hardened while the Middle Guard was an expansion of the Old Guard, and the Young Guard which was often the hand picked recruits of conscription. Those in the Young Guard would be taught by a tutor and trained to become the future NCOs of the regular army.
So, generally the different between the elite Guard and a regular line/light unit is how they were treated. Guard regiments got better everything but also fought to the death, such as during the 1814 campaign and at Waterloo.
Edit: I didn't mention another item. On campaign, when a Guard regiment passed a regular line regiment, the line regiment would halt and dip their standard while the regimental band played a song for the Guard. The Guard would recognize this by dipping their standard as they passed and marched at attention (as if Napoleon was watching them). While a little thing, it showed the respect that was expected to those whom served in the Guard as well as the professionalism of the Guard. | [
"France's Imperial Guard (\"Garde Impériale\") was the elite military force of its time and grew out of the \"Garde du Directoire\" and \"Garde Consulaire\". It was, quite literally, a \"Corps d'Armée\" itself with infantry, cavalry and artillery. Napoleon wanted it also to be an example for the entire army to foll... |
what happens when astronauts clog the toilet in space? | There's not really anything to get clogged because space toilets don't have plumbing like Earth ones do. For solid waste, the astronaut "sits" over the opening which has a plastic bag underneath. There's gentle suction so the waste collects at the bottom of the bag. When he or she is finished, they push the bag through a hatch into a larger conainter that holds all the bags until eventually they get loaded into a cargo spacecraft that burns up in the Earth's atmosphere. | [
"When humans travel into space, weightlessness causes fluids to distribute uniformly around their bodies. Their kidneys detect the fluid movement and a physiological reaction causes the humans to need to relieve themselves within two hours of departure from Earth. As a result, the space toilet has been the first de... |
why is it when you experience anxiety or fear your body starts getting hotter? | Because stress increase blood pressure. Heart begins to pump aggressively, blood is going through the body faster and more regularly, like when you’re working out. So the body becomes incredibly overheated from the body flipping out. | [
"Feelings of anxiety start with a catalyst – an environmental stimulus that provokes stress. This can include various smells, sights, and internal feelings that result in anxiety. The amygdala reacts to this stimuli by preparing to either stand and fight or to turn and run. This response is triggered by the release... |
how does increasing government spending affect aggregate demand in the economy? | The general idea is that aggregate demand is comprised of _all_ of the entities buying goods. That includes individual consumers, businesses, foreign firms and governments. If any of those groups starts buying more, then aggregate (i.e. total) demand goes up, so increasing in spending from any of them can increase aggregate demand.
The US Government is somewhat special in this regard, though, as it basically has access to unlimited funds over the short term. If the economy is flagging due to low demand, it can take on debt with incredible ease and spend that money in the economy buying goods and services. The firms that sell goods to the government then take that money and buy goods and services of their own, so every $1 spend by the government could have a 3-6x effect on demand. Then, once the economy is good again, spending can be reduced, taxes increased and the debt paid back.
Of course, that is a very Keynesian opinion. Ask a Chicago-school economist and they will tell you that government spending has zero effect on aggregate demand... | [
"Military expenditure can impact the economy of a country and its growth through the demand effect. An increase of military spending, will increase the prosperity of the country and its employment rate, thanks to a rise of demand. It is link to the Keynesian multiplier effect, introduced by Richard Kahn in the 1930... |
the lack of goal line replay technology in american football as compared to other sports | In Football a lot of it is that the ball moves and stuff after the play anyway, and often it's not a matter of 'did it go this far' its' 'did it go this far before his knee touched here and did he have control and was it grounded etc...
In Tennis the location is like 99% of the call. In Football, its not very common that the ball's specific location is the problem, its the timing of it being in that location relative to other events | [
"Throughout the 2000s various incidents incited discussion as to the potential for goal-line technology in the game. The lack of use of technology in association football was contrasted with other sports, which had incorporated video replays and other systems into their rules.\n",
"Compared to similar technology ... |
Are quarks and electrons really indivisible? | > It's hard for me to understand how something can exist without being made of anything else, it just exists.
Do you imagine that the sub-particles of electrons and quarks would also have sub-particles etc.? I find the idea of there being an infinite regression of sub-particles much harder to swallow. | [
"Quarks are the fundamental constituents of hadrons and interact via the strong interaction. Quarks are the only known carriers of fractional charge, but because they combine in groups of three (baryons) or in pairs of one quark and one antiquark (mesons), only integer charge is observed in nature. Their respective... |
how do we not run out of stuff? like metals, helium, plastic, salt, anything? | Metals are recycled and mined. There's actually a shitload of metal on earth, for example the earth is about 8% aluminum. It will be hard to run out of aluminum.
Helium, we are running out of. It's the smallest molecule, and the second lightest, so it tends to escape any container it is put in and float away into space.
Plastics, we are also running out of. Plastics are synthesized from oil (hydrocarbons), nitrogen, and oxygen. We won't even run out of oxygen (because of our atmosphere, and the fact that the Earth is 48% oxygen), or nitrogen, which makes up 70% of our atmosphere. We can run out of oil though, so once all our oil is gone, expect the plastic industry (and the chemical industry as a whole) to grind to a halt. Hopefully we'll have fusion by then so we can have the energy to synthesize the needed hydrocarbons from graphite and water. (Edit: or from plants, as someone else mentioned)
The ocean is 3.5% salt, so it's unlikely we'll ever run out of that either. If we ever did though, that would be rough, because while sodium is very common (2.3% of Earth's mass), chlorine is rare. | [
"Another potential source of raw materials, at least in the short term, is recycled orbiting satellites and other man-made objects in space. Some consideration was given to the use of the Space Shuttle external fuel tanks for this purpose, but NASA determined that the potential benefits were outweighed by the incre... |
Which is more energy efficient, internal combustion driven generator to power an electric motor, or direct drive? | This would only be true in a more complicated system like in some hybrid cars, where the internal combustion engine first charges a battery. This has the advantage of regulating the output of the engine, so that it can operate at maximum fuel efficiency, instead of changing in response to the required torque while driving.
A direct engine-generator-motor would not be more efficient. The engine already produces torque, so any intermediary between the engine and the wheels just adds more losses. Electric motors do usually produce torque more efficiently than mechanical pistons though, so if you powered the motor by a battery, it could be more efficient than a gasoline engine. | [
"EV 'tank-to-wheels' efficiency is about a factor of 3 higher than internal combustion engine vehicles. Energy is not consumed while the vehicle is stationary, unlike internal combustion engines which consume fuel while idling. However, looking at the well-to-wheel efficiency of EVs, their total emissions, while st... |
realistically speaking, are there any benefits to continuing an embargo on cuba? | America has a lot of Cuban refugees and immigrants who were trying to escape Cuba. Many of them were political prisoners. Others just wanted a better life. They held such a gross animosity towards Castro.
So they all live in Florida. And, roughly 1/3 of all elections are decided by the Florida swing state. And, all the Cubans are in Florida. If you can promise continued embargo on Florida, you can insure that this group won't vote against you in the next election.
For Obama and the Democrats normalized relations with Cuba is very risky. They already lost the House and the Senate due to the Pipeline states. They could now lose the presidency to the Cuban stance if the Republicans were to say they'll continue embargoing Cuba. | [
"Cuba does not have an advanced industrial base and manufactures little of value that could be traded with the United States if the embargo was lifted. U.S. needs of products that Cuba does export are usually easily covered by domestic production or trade relations with more economically reliable and friendlier nat... |
if dogs can just eat dog food and be healthy, why can't humans eat "human food" equivalent and be healthy? | Mainly that the dog doesn't mind the monotony. Would you be hopping up and down excited to eat the same thing every day? There are thing like [Soylent](_URL_0_ (which is also DIYable for cheap) and [Nutraloaf](_URL_1_) if you're really interested. | [
"Feeding table scraps to a dog is generally not recommended, at least in excess. Just as in humans, a dog's diet must consist of the appropriate mix of nutrients, carbohydrates, and proteins in order to give them the minerals and vitamins that they need. Dogs get ample correct nutrition from their natural, normal d... |
the cliven bundy cattle grazing situation (not the racist remarks) | A rancher, Bundy, paid the government money to use their land to let his cattle graze (pretty common practice). He quit paying the bill so the government told him to stop using their land. He still used the land for his cattle so the government confiscated some of the cows. A bunch of gun nuts went down and stood around with guns to try and intimidate the government. They even put women in front of them and talked about shooting the cops if things went south. The government backed down and the gun nuts are claiming it a victory against a tyrannic government.
Please no comments about the term "gun nuts". I'm a gun owner. I don't need a lecture. But these guys are, in fact, nuts. | [
"The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported on 19 May 2016 that RSPCA Australia was investigating alleged cruelty to sheep after a video was posted on Facebook showing members of the school's teams tackling older rams around a paddock. The principal of the school likened it to \"shearing\".\n",
"It is belie... |
what does the type of tv "producer" mean to the actual end result? | Most writing teams on dramas have about 6-12 depending on number of episode and budget. "The Showrunner" managed the entire creative process, usually a writer, and does the most writing and creating. Depending on what his agent negotiates he's probably an Executive Producer or Co-executive producer. If a Co-executive producer is not the show runner he's probably the show runner's right hand man. Both Executive producers and Co-executive producers do the bulk of the writing. Supervision producers and producers are mid-level writers that do less of the writing load and will get assigned 2-8 scripts per season. Story editors usually keep track of the continuity and assist all the writers with additional scene work and writing. Story editors get assigned scripts as well. Staff Writers are baby writers. They might get a script. They will do support work but they are also there to get their feet wet. Some writing staff hire veteran writers that could get an EP credit but politics or budget can't justify such a high title. Consulting producer is a title that make that writer affordable yet is not insulting to the writer. There are also non-writing producers with the same titles. If there's a series director, that the show hires to direct the bulk of the episodes then he might get a EP or Co-ep credit. If directors are really seasoned they might turn into showrunners and let the rest of his team writes. the non-writing producers who manage the budget and production flow can get a title from Producer up to EP depending one the need for a super star producer. Assicate Producer usually work in post production. There are also A-list Executive Producers that have major deals with the studio and networks like DIck Wolf that get an EP credit but do little writing. They handle the bigger picture stuff. Aaron Spelling is another great example. He's the most produced producer ever. | [
"A television producer is a person who oversees all aspects of video production on a television program. Some producers take more of an executive role, in that they conceive new programs and pitch them to the television networks, but upon acceptance they focus on business matters, such as budgets and contracts. Oth... |
Neutrino speed | Basically, the experiments we have to measure neutrino speed are only so precise (they're pretty difficult experiments to set up because neutrinos are so ephemeral and the sun spews so many of them at us), and the difference between the actual neutrino speed and light speed is smaller than the precision at which we're able to measure it.
Perhaps that will change soon. | [
"Since the protons are transferred in bunches of one nanosecond duration at an interval of 18.73 ns, the speed of muons and neutrinos could be determined. A speed difference would lead to an elongation of the neutrino bunches and to a displacement of the whole neutrino time spectrum. At first, the speeds of muons a... |
Is the Roman Catholoic tradition of canonizing saints connected to the Roman (pagan?) tradition of deifying state heroes? | Before Christianity was ever centered in Rome, it spread throughout the Middle East, made its way across the former Persian empire to India and traveled south, deep into Africa. Although Rome was the center of the Roman empire, Roman culture was not shared by large swathes of the ancient Christian world. However, the Christian practice of venerating saints existed even among the ancient Christian communities in the Middle East, Far East and Africa (many of these communities still exist today). It is highly unlikely that a specifically Roman pagan practice would have been adopted across the entire ancient Christian world.
Info Source: "The Story of Christianity" by David Bentley Hart | [
"Historian Peter Brown, in his \"The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity\", argued that one cannot equate the ancient cults of pagan gods with the later cults of the saints. However, Caesarius of Arles and other churchmen deplored certain customs that from time to time seem to develop ar... |
if light moves so fast, then why to we see light blur from cars and light sabers? | That effect is created by the fact that when the human eye sees an image it will be perceived by the brain for about one tenth of a second. Nothing to do with the speed of light | [
"Some witnesses describe the light as appearing to approach them several times before retreating. Others report that the lights were able to keep pace with them when they were in a moving motor vehicle.\n",
"In some instances the stoplight traffic detector will not change the light for small vehicles such as moto... |
Is there an infinitesimal equivalent to the Dirac delta function? | Standard disclaimer: delta is not a function. It can be thought of as a [measure](_URL_1_) or a [distribution](_URL_3_) or perhaps as some other kind of thing, but it is not a function. I bring this up because here, too, what we are looking for can not be a function. If we were to try to simply assign it a value at each point, obviously the value would need to be 0 everywhere, and this doesn't give you something that integrates to 1 over (-infinity,infinity). So we aren't sure, a priori, what kind of thing it is that we're looking for.
Going off of your description, I'd say that at the least you want something that assigns a value to any interval (the "integral over that interval") with 0 assigned to finite intervals, 1/2 to an interval which is unbounded on one side, and 1 to the interval (-infinity,infinity).
In technical terms, this defines a finitely additive measure on the field of sets which are finite unions of intervals. Such a thing is also known as a [content](_URL_2_) on that field of sets. Note that if any finite interval gets the value 0, then the assignment can't be countably additive, or else you'd have a contradiction by decomposing [0,infty) as the union of [0,1), [1,2), [2,3), ..., and noting that 1/2 does not equal 0 + 0 + 0 + ... . So it's a finitely additive measure that can not be extended to a countably additive one.
However, as noted in the Wikipedia article, this isn't enough information to integrate our "thing" against a function, as we'd want to be able to do to take its Fourier transform. We don't know what value to assign to, say, the union of the intervals ... [-2,-1), [0,1), [2,3), [4,5), ... . The question of whether you _can_ specify enough information to integrate against an arbitrary bounded function is kind of dicey -- it starts to involve the axiom of choice.
Still, you can assume that you've done that, and see what you can say about Fourier transforms. As it happens, this topic was discussed on Mathoverflow:
_URL_0_
The first part of the response is rather technical, but I think the main takeaway is that it seems the natural extension of the Fourier transform to this class of objects turns out to be highly non-injective, so unfortunately you don't end up with something very interesting (since lots of information is lost). This part more or less answers the question of what the Fourier transform of your object would have to be:
> To see that the injectivity fails let m in L^(infty)(R^(n)) be a translation invariant and unital element, which exist because R^n is amenable. The translation invariance implies that Fm(θ)=χ\_η Fm(θ) for every η. So Fm can either be identically 0 or be 1\_{0}. Since m is unital we are in the second case. As there are infinitely many invariant means on an amenable group, see exercise 14 in Paterson's Amenability, the difference of any two will be in the kernel of the Fourier transform.
So if your object is translation invariant, then its Fourier transform should be invariant under multiplication by e^iηθ for every η. Also it should take the value 1 at θ = 0. But the only function satisfies this is the function 1\_{0}(θ), which takes the value 1 at θ = 0, and the value 0 everywhere else. So this is its Fourier transform, if it has one, and unfortunately is also the Fourier transform of many other similar objects. Because of the latter point, you can't really take an inverse Fourier transform and recover the object in question.
There's always the possibility that there could be some other way to formalize what you mean, but if you want to integrate it over intervals, and you want to assign it a Fourier transform in something like the usual sense, I think this is pretty much what you arrive at.
TL;DR
Yes there are mathematical objects fitting that description, and they can have Fourier transforms. The Fourier transform F(θ) of such a thing should satisfy F(0) = 1, F(θ) = 0 for θ not equal to 0. One can't invert the Fourier transform to recover the original object, as many other objects will have the same Fourier transform. | [
"with formula_15 the Dirac delta function, considered as a distribution, or generalized function, in two variables. Then by convolution, \"T\" induces a linear operator acting on a Banach space \"V\" of functions formula_16, which we also call \"T\", so that\n",
"In mathematics, the Dirac delta function ( functio... |
Why hasn't 'ugly' been bred out? | Genetics is complicated. The shape of your face (for instance) is determined by a rather complicated interplay between a lot of different genes, so the effect a particular gene has depends on all the other genes in your genome.
Perhaps the same gene which gives your father a perfectly-shaped nose will, when combined with the genes which give your mother such perfectly-shaped ears, will wind up giving you an ugly chin. Of course it's be far more complicated than that, but the point is that there's no individual genes for "pretty" and "ugly", just a whole lot of ingredients that give varying levels of pretty and ugly in different genetic contexts. | [
"When an Ugly turns 16 they undergo a massive Operation that makes them perfect in beauty and health. The Operation completely overhauls a person's body structure and also includes lesions upon the brain, which makes them compliant and less likely to cause conflict. The lesions also tend to \"dumb them up.\" They b... |
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