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Crimean Ottoman slave trade | The Crimean Khanate was in a strategic position regarding slave trade, and was the center of the Black Sea slave trade. To the North and Northwest they had access to vast areas, to the trade and transport networks, and to the peoples to be captured and traded as slaves. Slave raids extended as far as Poland, Lithuania and Finland.
And to the South they had access to the Ottoman Empire and Middle East which were big markets for slaves. They also had trade access to other khanates in the East, and to Genoa which was a major exporter of slaves to North Africa. It is estimated that between 1200-1760 all in all about 6.5 million slaves were exported through Crimea, most of them women. The economic significance was huge to the slave traders as was the damage to peoples and countries subjected to slave raids.
The slave raiders were often not Crimean Tatars but warlords from places such as Novgorod. Raiders would make raids on villages, capture people as slaves, and sell them forward through the well established trade routes for example by Novgorod - > Moscow - > Dnieper route. Slaves would get sold and bought multiple times on that journey before reaching the big slave markets in Crimea. From there they would get exported to the Ottoman Empire, Middle East, North Africa or other Khanates such as Kazan and Astrakhan.
Let's take for example slave raids to Finland. In the Crimean markets blonde girls and boys captured from Finland and Karelia were most valued because of the color of their skin and hair. And their exceedingly high value made it worthwhile to capture children in the far-away North and to transport them all the way to Crimea to be exported to markets in the Ottoman Empire and Middle East. The slave raids to Finland were most often from Novgorod but there was also raids from Astrakhan khanate.
Here's a relevant paper: [The Baltic Finnic People in the Medieval and Pre-Modern Eastern European Slave Trade](_URL_0_)
Also this blogpost gives context and details with more sources: [Blonde cargoes: Finnish children in the slave markets of medieval Crimea](_URL_1_)
> The prices they commanded, however, were simply colossal; one source notes that girls who could be purchased for as little as 5 altyn in Karelia could be resold for 6,666 altyn even before they reached the Khanate – a mark up in excess of 133,000 percent. The higher price, equivalent to 200 roubles or (in about 1600) 250 sheep, was also about five times the usual price for a Crimean slave. It is no surprise, in these circumstances, that slaves from the far north were highly sought-after for their colouring – nor that their special characteristics were scrupulously noted in the slave registers so carefully kept in the ports that lay at the heart of this commerce in human misery: “white skin, white hair.”
There are many factors into a price: rarity, exotism, luxury etc. yet the high prices also tell us these slaves were also valued for their beauty. And the participants on the slave markets had networks for capturing, transporting and trading those blonde slaves from that far.
The clientele knew about these peoples living in the North, sometimes even seeking after them in the markets (for example, Shāh Abbās of Persia sent out delegations to slave markets that seeked after and acquired three Finnish girls in Moscow and 30 more in Kazan), the slave traders knew where to capture them, and raids were extendend as far as the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia in Finland to capture blonde boys and girls.
The slave raids to the North faded over time. But as late as in the 18th century in the Great Northern War (1700–1721) Russia occupied Finland, and unleashed a reign of terror known as the Great Wrath (1713–1721) during which tens of thousands Finns were killed or taken away as slaves.
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"Until the late 18th century, the Crimean Khanate (a Muslim Tatar state) maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East. The slaves were captured in southern Russia, Poland-Lithuania, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Circassia by Tatar horsemen and sold in the Crimean port of Kaffa. About 2 mi... |
Is an ice cube necessarily the best structure for ice to resist melting the longest? | A sphere has the least surface area per volume | [
"Ice XVI is the least dense (0.81 g/cm) experimentally obtained crystalline form of ice. It is topologically equivalent to the empty structure of sII clathrate hydrates. It was first obtained in 2014 by removing gas molecules from a neon clathrate under vacuum at temperatures below 147 K. The resulting empty water ... |
how do fingerprint scanners work? what format are the scans themselves stored in? | Not an expert, but I used to work on police in-car software services. The fingerprint scanners they used at the time identified the branches and terminations of the ridges and recorded their relative positions. Those were called "minimals". You can turn that into a map of your prints and use math/analysis techniques to match best fit. | [
"Live scan fingerprinting refers to both the technique and the technology used by law enforcement agencies and private facilities to capture fingerprints and palm prints electronically, without the need for the more traditional method of ink and paper.\n",
"There are four types of fingerprint scanner: the optical... |
if a trading partner's currency deflates, what negative impacts could that have on my country and its economy? | If their currency deflates, then it would cost them more of their currency to exchange for your currency. This would make your exports to them more expensive, which might cut your sales as the effective price to them increases. Weaker demand for your export products can hurt sales and profits, cause layoffs, and showball the effect into sectors not directly affected as those laid off pull back their spending. | [
"All exchange rates are susceptible to political instability and anticipations about the new ruling party. Political upheaval and instability can have a negative impact on a nation's economy. For example, destabilization of coalition governments in Pakistan and Thailand can negatively affect the value of their curr... |
[Astronomy] What is the deal with all of the stars that don't appear to be part of a galaxy? | Those are either stars from our own galaxy, or other distant galaxies that are too far away to be resolved beyond a small point of light, depending on the picture you're looking at. | [
"The stars are believed to originate from outside of the Milky Way, likely from a destroyed, unusually dusty satellite galaxy. They have an extremely low metallicity, only about 3.5% that of the Sun, with unusual chemical abundances very different from those of stars formed anywhere in the galaxy. Because of this, ... |
why does traffic seem to 'bunch up' on long strings of highway? | because many people naturally slow down and maintain speed when they are near other people
people going faster catch up to people going slower and simply adjust to stay behind
its the natural inclination of people to form a group
| [
"In empirical observations, traffic congestion occurs usually at a highway bottleneck as a result of traffic breakdown in an initially free flow at the bottleneck. A highway bottleneck can result from on- and off-ramps, road curves and gradients, road works, etc.\n",
"Traffic behaves in a complex and nonlinear wa... |
why is it that when someone touches me in a certain place on my body it can send "chills" throughout my body? for example, when my so nibbles on my ear it makes my whole body tingle. why? | TL;DR: Blame your hypothalamus.
Disclaimer, I'm just a simple code monkey, not a doctor.
It all starts when someone is touched in an area with a lot of nerves and interprets that touch as a good emotion. The hypothalamus, a tiny part of your brain just above the brain stem and about the size of an almond kicks in. It is responsible for releasing a bunch of brain hormones that help control stuff you don't usually think about like breathing and body temperature.
When this gland receives the good feeling and good emotion it lets out extremely powerful hormones that make you feel very good. The hormones stimulate the rest of your body to do things like give you goose bumps, change your breathing, and importantly for your question, let out another special hormone called adrenaline. This adrenaline plus the activation of specific nerves is the main reason for the shiver in your spine. | [
"Titchener rejected the telepathic explanation. He instead suggested that when a subject experienced the feeling that they were being watched and turned to check, a second person who already had the subject in their field of vision might notice the subject starting to turn their head, and shift their gaze to the su... |
disregarding the impossible. vertically, how deep / high must i be before i am no longer within my country's boundaries? | There is no official, universally accepted standard for where a nation's airspace ends. The United States has a line at 80 km for where space begins, but it's regularly ignored even there. The general range used by nations is somewhere between 30 km to 160 km. | [
"BULLET::::- The lowest point underground is more than under the Earth's surface. For example, the altitude difference between the entrance and the deepest explored point (the maximum depth) of the Krubera Cave in Georgia is . In 2012, Ukrainian cave diver Gennadiy Samokhin reached the lowest point, breaking the wo... |
how can the fbi and other government agencies not shut down deep web sites like the silk road without finding the owner? | No one here seems to have given the right answer. Not even close.
"The Deep Web" is a over used term that really just means computers you cant connect to normally. Things that arent indexed by search engines, content behind paywalls or logins, or networks blocked off from the rest of the internet in some way. Silkroad falls into the last category, it was within a hidden network.
The most common way people access a large section of "the deep web" is through software called TOR, The Onion Router. TOR encrypts your traffic, so it cant be read, and proxies your data between at least three other computers. Every time data is passed to a new computer, its wrapped in a new layer of encryption. This is why its called Onion Routing, its wrapped in multiple layers of encryption, like an onion.
Now, the TOR networks main and really only function is anonymity. Its made in such a way that no two computers that interact with eachother know the IP of the other. I can connect to silkroad through TOR, but at no point do I know silkroads real IP, and at no point does silkroad know my real IP. When I connect to a normal website, they see my IP. Its actually necessary for the connection to be made. When I connect to a TOR website, the connection is made with a special cryptographic identifier that lets me connect to the site without reading its IP.
The police couldnt shut down silkroad easily because they had no way of knowing where the server was; what its IP was.
Now, be aware that TOR is not the entire deep web, remember the definition I gave you before. TOR is only one section of the deep web. The deep web has existed for as long as the internet, there is nothing special or mysterious about it, its just content you cant easily access. The Deep web existed for decades but tor has only existed since 2003, and with its creation came a whole new section of the deep web.
**TL;DR:** The silkroad operating inside the TOR network, a complex piece of software that uses cryptography and proxies to hide the IP of both servers and clients. | [
"On November 2014, the FBI, \"as part of a coordinated international law enforcement action\", seized dozens of \"dark markets\", including Silk Road II operating on the anonymous Tor network. These markets accepted payment in Bitcoins or similar crypto-currencies, and operated both domestically and internationally... |
Can any Bee larva become a queen? | There are 3 types of honeybees in a given colony:
1. More than 85% of all the bees are female workers. They do all the important tasks that keep the hive running smoothly, but cannot reproduce.
2. The remaining ~15% of bees are drones, the male bees. They can't do anything (even feed themselves) except try and mate with a virgin queen from another hive. If they succeed they immediately die, and if they don't the workers will forcibly evict or kill them before winter.
3. Every hive has one queen. Her only job is to lay eggs, but her pheromones also help keep the hive in a healthy state. She mates once at the beginnning of her life and then can lay > 1000 eggs a day during the summer for 1-5 years.
Bees have an interesting sex-determination system. All fertilized eggs that the queen lays become female, and unfertilized eggs become male drones. This means the drones have half as many chromosomes as their sisters, and actually don't have a father.
The fertilized female eggs are all fed a substance secreted by the workers called "royal jelly" for the first 2 days of their lives, but then most of them are switched to a diet of honey and pollen. This change in diet causes hormonal changes that prevent the bees from becoming sexually mature and this causes them turn into workers.
When the workers want/need to raise a new queen, they pick an egg and build a special "queen cell" around it, that's kind of peanut-shaped and hangs down instead of the normal hexagonal honeycomb. These queens-to-be are fed only royal jelly for their entire lives, even as adults. They fully mature and develop active ovaries.
Fun fact: bees usually raise multiple replacement queens at the same time, to hedge their bets that one successfully mates. However, if one emerges first she'll kill the others before they can reach adulthood. There's so much selective pressure to be the first that queens mature around 25% faster than normal workers. If multiple virgin queens emerge simultaneously they'll fight to the death until only one remains. This is pretty much the only time a queen will use her stinger. | [
"Within the honey bee colony, a queen bee typically mates with 10 or more males. This extensive mating is performed in an effort to secure a great range of genetic variation in her colony to cope with diseases, as well as respond to nectar sources and a wide range of external stimuli. Apart from the queen bee, the ... |
why are we being bombarded with so many superhero movies? | Because they make god awful amounts of money. Not that I'm complaining either, I have enjoyed this run this far. | [
"Long-running superheroes such as Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and Iron Man have a \"rogues gallery\" of such enemies. One of these supervillains might be the superhero's archenemy. Superheroes will sometimes combat other threats such as aliens, magical/fantasy entities, natural disasters, political ideologies such... |
How do helicopters with coaxial rotors and no pitch control turn? (Like on some rc copters) | Yes, it does. These little helicopters are able to rotate the blades independentally, and rotates by slowing down one while speeding up the other, creating unbalanced torque.
Real coax helicopters are a little different. Their blades always rotate in sync, but by changing the collective pitch on the rotors in opposite directions they can produce a torque in either direction. | [
"Coaxial rotors or \"coax rotors\" are a pair of helicopter rotors mounted one above the other on concentric shafts, with the same axis of rotation, but turning in opposite directions (contra-rotating). This tiltrotor configuration is a feature of helicopters produced by the Russia Kamov helicopter design bureau.\n... |
why doesn't water vapor in our air turn to liquid? | At room temperature, water exists in both liquid and vapor form. Humidity (water vapor) does turn to liquid when it touches a cool surface. It's called condensation. Notice the outside surface of a cold drink you've poured. It will become wet. This is condensation. | [
"Liquid air is air that has been cooled to very low temperatures (cryogenic temperatures), so that it has condensed into a pale blue mobile liquid. To thermally insulate it from room temperature, it is stored in specialized containers (Vacuum insulated flasks are often used). Liquid air can absorb heat rapidly and ... |
Is it possible to start a fire with superheated steam? | Sure! Superheated steam can pack a lot of thermal energy, which can then be transferred to another object like paper. If the temperature of the steam is high enough, the paper can reach a local temperature above its [autoignition temperature](_URL_2_). This temperature marks the point where a material can [spontaneously ignite](_URL_1_), which for paper happens to be just over 200^(o) C. In other words, if you manage to create superheated steam above 200^(o) C you can set paper on fire.
In fact, here is a [cool demonstration of this exact effect!](_URL_0_) | [
"In a more domestic setting, steam explosions can be a result of trying to extinguish burning oil with water in a process called boilover. When oil in a pan is on fire, the natural impulse may be to extinguish it with water; however, doing so will cause the hot oil to superheat the water. The resulting steam will d... |
What would happen if 2 objects with mass going as close as possible to the speed of light collided? | Since you excluded the scenario of a head on collision, you seem to be asking what would happen if the energy in one object was transferred to the other to speed it up.
It's a good question, and as you expect, speeding one object up doesn't allow it to reach c.
The kinetic energy of one object is calculated by ((1-v^2 / c^2 )^-1/2 -1)(mc^2 ) where m is the rest mass of the object. You find out how much energy it originally has, and add the energy transferred to it, then solve for the new velocity. | [
"The rate at which two objects in motion in a single frame of reference get closer together is called the mutual or closing speed. This may approach twice the speed of light, as in the case of two particles travelling at close to the speed of light in opposite directions with respect to the reference frame.\n",
"... |
Was there gravity before, and during, the Big Bang? | There probably wasn't gravity as we know it during the first moments after the big bang. At high energies, fundamental forces cannot be described as separate interactions -- for example, shortly after the big bang, the electroweak interaction split into the electromagnetic and weak interactions. During the [Planck epoch](_URL_0_), the first 10\^-43 seconds following the big bang, we think that gravity was probably unified with the unified force (EM+weak+strong interactions), but we don't yet have a sufficiently descriptive theory of quantum gravity to deal with the associated energies. | [
"\"Big Bang\" chronicles the history and development of the Big Bang model of the universe, from the ancient Greek scientists who first measured the distance to the sun to the 20th century detection of the cosmic radiation still echoing the dawn of time.\n",
"English astronomer Fred Hoyle is credited with coining... |
what causes exhausts to have that rasp-y sound people tend to associate with tuners? (civics, integras, etc) | It has a lot to do with the resonater (muffler) design. Being a resonater, the size volume and pathway makes different tones. Think of how different brass instruments make different sounds.
If you are tuning for high rpm horsepower you will likely end up raspy, if you tune towards low end power you will sound more burbley.
Things like header design makes a difference too. Like a 4 to 2 to 1 header might sound burbley while a 4 to 1 might sound raspy screamy.
| [
"The exhaust pipes in automobile exhaust systems are designed as acoustic resonators that work with the muffler to reduce noise, by making sound waves \"cancel each other out\". The \"exhaust note\" is an important feature for some vehicle owners, so both the original manufacturers and the after-market suppliers us... |
why are revealed female breasts/nipples considered erotic? | They're [secondary sexual characteristics](_URL_0_). Essentially characteristics that appear during puberty to say that the person is able to reproduce. It's important for mate selection, as mating with one unable to reproduce is evolutionarily a bad idea.
It's interesting to me because it shows just how important biology is to psychology. Our culture and practices are shaped by our emotional and hormonal instincts, which are in turn controlled by our evolution and environment. | [
"Men typically find female breasts attractive and this holds true for a variety of cultures. In women, stimulation of the nipple seems to result in activation of the brain's genital sensory cortex (the same region of the brain activated by stimulation of the clitoris, vagina, and cervix). This may be why many women... |
why do ceiling fans have two speeds: hurricane and is this on? | Every ceiling fan I've personally known has had 4 speeds: off, low, medium and high.
Each has their uses, such as low being good to spread heat around in the winter without causing a cooling draft (this is also why they usually have the reverse switch). High works best when you are sweating to create as much of a draft as possible to cool you through evaporation. Medium is a decent general speed. And off, well, off is best for when you don't want/need a fan. | [
"HVLS fans work on the principle that cool moving air breaks up the moisture-saturated boundary layer surrounding the body and accelerates evaporation to produce a cooling effect. Ceiling fans produce a column of air as they turn. This column of air moves down and out along the floor. Called a horizontal floor jet,... |
phase/neutral/3-phase how does electricity work ? | Phase is the positive side of the circuit (240 volts here in the UK) and neutral is at 0 volts. Now imagine electricity as water. Water will always flow downhill, electricity will always want to flow to 0. The voltage is the difference between the low and high points of the water system, the water will be in a tank 240 meters above the ground. The higher the tank (higher voltage) the more 'potential difference' there is in the system.
As for 3 phase, this type of distribution system has 3 phases 240 volts per phase at 120 degrees apart, imagine the single phase as a small spot on the tyre of a wheel, as the wheel rotates, the spot moves around in a circle, when the point is above the axle (top half of the wheel) , then it means the appliance is receiving power, when it's close to the floor (bottom half of the wheel), the system isn't receiving power. When there are 3 spots on the outside of the wheel, 120 degrees apart (3×120 = 360 =full circle) there will always be a spot above the axle, meaning ye device is being supplied with power at all times.
Tried to be as clear as I can, not done an ELI5 before :)
Sorry if there are typos, typing on a new phone difficult :) | [
"In electrical engineering, three-phase electric power systems have at least three conductors carrying alternating current voltages that are offset in time by one-third of the period. A three-phase system may be arranged in delta (∆) or star (Y) (also denoted as wye in some areas). A wye system allows the use of tw... |
Is there a connection between Sheol (or the Jewish underworld) and the Christian concept of hell? If not, where did the Christian concept of hell come from? | Sheol in the Hebrew Bible isn't really related to hell; it is more akin to the type of afterlife more commonly depicted in Mesopotamian texts as a kind of shadowy existence. There isn't an explicitly outlined concept of eternal reward or punishment in this type of afterlife, although individuals do retain to a limited extent the status they held in life. Later Jewish literature generally follows this trend of rejecting a belief in Hell as it is understood in Christianity with Sheol and Gehenna as places of temporary purification. The explicit extended discussion of postmortem reward and punishment and of eschatology more generally doesn't start appearing until the Second Temple period and then in certain specific genres of literature and it seems that the Christian concept of hell emerged from this background. Why this is the case isn't perfectly clear; one very common argument that probably holds some water is that Judeo-Christian eschatology is a product of Zoroastrian influence. In particular, Avestan texts refer to distinct realms of the righteous and unrighteous and to the final renovation of the cosmos(frashokereti). The tricky part of this argument is that the most detailed descriptions of the afterlife are found mainly in later Pahalvi texts so there's a risk in projecting too much backwards. | [
"Hell in [[Christianity|Christian]] beliefs, is a place or a state in which the [[Soul (spirit)|soul]]s of the unsaved will suffer the consequences of [[sin]]. The Christian doctrine of Hell derives from the teaching of the [[New Testament]], where Hell is typically described using the Greek words \"[[Gehenna]]\" o... |
how to herbivores get enough nutrients from just grass? | The short answer is that they eat a shitload of grass.
Cows spend pretty much every waking moment of their lives eating and have a very complicated digestive system designed to get maximum nutrient and caloric value from grass. | [
"Foliar feeding is a technique of feeding plants by applying liquid fertilizer directly to their leaves. Plants are able to absorb essential elements through their leaves. The absorption takes place through their stomata and also through their epidermis. Transport is usually faster through the stomata, but total ab... |
how am i suppose to charge and maintain my lithium based laptop battery? | Avoid fully discharging the battery. Try not to go below about 30% on a regular basis.
Avoid heating the battery above 30C (86F).
Use the battery semi-regularly. Avoid maintaining a perpetually full charge, especially at temperatures above 30C. | [
"A laptop's battery is charged using an external power supply which is plugged into a wall outlet. The power supply outputs a DC voltage typically in the range of 7.2—24 volts. The power supply is usually external and connected to the laptop through a DC connector cable. In most cases, it can charge the battery and... |
What caused some of the early Earth's surface to become oceanic plates while other parts became continental plates of much higher elevation? Why wouldn't it form plates all of roughly the same elevation? | They're made of rocks of different density. [Oceanic crust is denser](_URL_0_), at about 2.9 g/cm^3 . [Continental crust](_URL_1_) is less dense, at about 2.7 g/cm^3 . | [
"At the end of the Proterozoic, the supercontinent Pannotia had broken apart into the smaller continents Laurentia, Baltica, Siberia and Gondwana. During periods when continents move apart, more oceanic crust is formed by volcanic activity. Because young volcanic crust is relatively hotter and less dense than old o... |
why do people walk in a circle when they're in a fistfight? | I'm no professional boxer, but I spar once a week. Constantly moving is good for three things:
* It makes you harder to hit
* It makes looking for openings of your opponent easier, since people can only protect their front and not their side
* It hides your attack movements. Good power comes from low in the body, so it is more difficult to predict where a blow is going if your whole body is moving.
Because you are moving and always trying to keep your arms between you and your opponent to block, the result is fighters moving in circles. | [
"During the brawl itself, men will often carry rocks in their hands to have greater force in their punches, or they will just throw them at opponents. Sometimes, especially in the town of Macha in Potosí, where the brawl gets the most violent, men will wrap strips of cloth with shards of glass stuck to them around ... |
I am wondering what is the oldest known human created artifact discovered? | This is a question better suited to /r/AskAnthropology | [
"In a number of caves (including Vogelherd, Hohlenstein-Stadel, Geißenklösterle and Hohle Fels), all just a few kilometers apart, some of the oldest signs of human artifacts were found. Best known are: a mammoth, a horse head, a water bird, and two statues of a lion man all of surprising quality and all more than 3... |
why does bread become doughy again when you squish it up? | Bread is airy because of the bubbles baked into the bread and held in place by gluten (or the gluten-free equivalent). Squish the bubbles and you're left with a dense, baked dough that feels squishy instead of pillowy. | [
"Method of twisting bread dough in one direction whereby difficult to heat portions of dough are created. During the baking process, these areas continue to ferment, thus producing fluffier, plumper bread in the folds. However, over-twisting the bread can cause the gas produced during fermentation to escape, thus c... |
why do we have capsaicin receptors on our buttholes? | > I mean I understand evolving with capsaicin receptors in our mouth because we consume food that orifice
You didn't evolve receptors to detect capsaicin. Capsaicin evolved because it irritates existing receptors in your tissues, making mammals less likely to eat the plant or its seeds. That the receptors exist in other tissues than your mouth is immaterial to the evolution of the substance, they're in your mouth too and that's good enough for the benefit to plants.
The plants that typically have capsaicin are typically distributed by birds, who are not sensitive to the substance and are less likely to destroy the seeds. | [
"Like capsaicin, capsinoids activate TRPV1 receptors, although they are not hot in the mouth. Capsinoids cannot reach the TRPV1 oral cavity receptors, located slightly below the surface in the mouth, because of structural differences from capsaicin. On the other hand, both capsaicin and capsinoids activate TRPV1 re... |
Why was japan allowed to remain whole and become a democracy and not split like Korea was after WWII? | Expanded from [an earlier answer of mine](_URL_1_)
The question of why Korea was divided and Japan was not is a tricky one with a lot to untangle here.
Firstly, the seeming permanence of Korea's division and the long-term division of Germany suggests that the wartime Allied powers planned for division based on geopolitical spheres of power. But the reality was these divisions were planned to be temporary, at least when the Allies were coming up with a schematic plan for the occupation of the Axis powers in the last years of the war. With regards to Germany and Austria, there was a wartime consensus among the Allied powers that both of these countries would need to be occupied for an undefined interregnum before a final peace treaty would unify them. The administrative divisions of these countries was less about carving out spheres of influence and much more concerned with the practicalities of administrative authority. The Soviet zone, for example, copied internal structure that the US Control Commission had come up with in 1944 because the Soviet government had not bothered to think that far ahead. Much of the division of Germany and Austria was predicated on the idea that this was an expedient and temporary measure.
The Cold War and growing distrust between the superpowers meant that temporary became permanent for the foreseeable future. While the responsibility for starting the process of turning the two zones into separate countries is a highly contentious issue in the historiography of Germany, one of the consistent features of early Cold War rhetoric was that both sides blamed the other for division and that German division was not their desired outcome. The idea that the two Germanies were in fact two separate countries took until the 1960s to become a mainstream opinion in public political rhetoric, even then there were still holdouts. While there was a diplomatic breakthrough on the Austrian question in the mid-1950s which ended the division and occupation of Austria, such a *demarche* was not possible with Germany. Not only were wartime memories of Hitler too strong to give sanction to unification, but both the GDR and FRG would likely sabotage any breakthrough that would leave one the loser in reunification.
Korea was a different matter than Germany. While the German question was one that preoccupied large number of intellectuals and policymakers, what to do about former Axis colonies was something that commanded far less attention in policy circles. While places like Formosa and Ethiopia were easily resolved by returning them to China or returning sovereignty to Jalie Selassie's government-in-exile, colonies like Korea, Somalia, or Libya were more difficult. While the Allies agreed that these areas should not be returned to the defeated Axis powers, there was no pre-existing political entity for the military governments to hand off sovereignty. These areas had been colonies for nearly fifty years and there were few indigenous political elites the Allies knew of that could readily take up ruling an independent state.
One solution the Allies employed was one used by the League of Nations after the First World War in which military governments would act as trustees for the freed nations while they developed their own political infrastructure. FDR had proposed such a UN trustee status for the whole of Korea, but this did not come to pass. The result was that the Allied occupation of Korea proceeded along a very haphazard manner. The December 1945 Moscow Conference issued a declaration that the US-Soviet military governments would encourage the development of peaceful, democratic parties in a unified Korea, but provided precious little in the way of actual structures to accomplish this. Dean Rusk would recall in his memoirs that the State Department decided on the 38th parallel as a division between American and Soviet occupation based on a map from an issue of *National Geographic* since Washington did not have any decent maps of Korea. The 38th parallel became a consensus choice for both superpowers as it neatly divided the country while ensuring the US zone received Seoul.
Yet the occupations of Korea soon went on separate trajectories with a good deal of American disinterest in the details of occupation and the joint administration of the peninsula fell apart. While the Soviets showed an interest in sponsoring a Korean Communist Party in their zone, American support for Rhee and other Korean politicians ranged from indifferent to soft support. Yet, despite the development of two separate political zones, the *raison d'être* for parties in both political zones was to lead a unified Korea. Like works on German disunity, the historiography on responsibility for the Korean War is quite complex and multifaceted, yet there was an overall desire on both superpowers' part to have a united peninsula, albeit on strategic terms favorable to them.
In more than a few ways, the course of the Korean and German divisions are reversed images of each other. While there were multiple solutions to the German Question bandied about in 1945, Korean policy was often shaped in a vacuum. While the charter generation of postwar Korean politicians stressed unity and worked towards that end, to disastrous results, a good many German politicians on both sides of the Iron Curtain recognized the geopolitical realities of the time and accepted division. By the same token, both superpowers nervously eyed each other's moves in German affairs, there was remarkably little in terms of actual Korean policy for the superpowers to analyze. One of the reasons why Stalin backed Kim Il-Sung's invasion was that the US had omitted Korea from a policy paper on its defense zones in East Asia. Finally, one of the salient features of German division was that while the Soviets had a roughly pliant satellite Eastern Europe and German communist party, the Soviets faced in the form of Mao an upstart communist leader that the Koreans could use as leverage against the Soviets for their own purposes. Soviet policy towards Korea not only had to contend with American reactions, but also their fluctuating relationship vis-a-vis the Chinese.
Japan was a somewhat different matter entirely.
Although the US presence looms large in Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP)'s occupation of Japan, the occupation of the home islands was not a US-only affair. There was a British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF), dominated largely by Australians that operated under GHQ's authority. The BCOF included contingents drawn from the British Empire and the Commonwealth with headquarters in Kure. But the BCOF was largely a failure; it was an expensive undertaking without any true mission for it. Still, the BCOF was not an analogue to the division of Germany. This was by design as the US took active measures to ensure that US authority would prevail over the home islands.
The decision to transform the occupation of Japan into an American-run show was not exactly straightforward. The Pentagon initially envisioned a division of the Japanese archipelago into multiple occupation zones. The Joint War Plans Committee produced one plan, JWPC-385/1, entitled "Ultimate Occupation of Japan and Japanese Territories," on 16 August 1945. JWPC-385/1 envisioned splitting the home islands between the US, the Soviets, UK/Commonwealth, and China with Tokyo split between the four powers. The USSR would receive northern Honshu and Hokkaido, while the Americans governed Honshu, the RoC and US held the Kansai region with Chinese control over Shikoku, and the UK governing southern Honshu and Kyushu. As with the occupation of Germany, this occupation mixed geographic logic- the Soviets in the north, for example- with a somewhat haphazard and arbitrary division lines. JWPC-385/1 planned for a staged occupation with a degree of collective leadership that would terminate within a few years with a final peace treaty between a reformed Japanese government and the Allied powers.
JWPC-385/1 though was a dead letter as the Pentagon drew it up. Both the State Department and President Truman did not want to replicate Germany in the Far East. Truman would later recall in his memoirs:
> I was determined that the Japanese occupation should not follow in the footsteps of the German experience. I did not want divided control or separate zones. I did not want to give the Russians any opportunity to behave as they had in Germany and Austria.
Although Truman's claim has to be seen within the context of the early Cold War and an *ex post facto* justification of his actions, he was moving by August to ensure the Americans would run the occupation of the home islands. He already refused a Soviet request at Potsdam for a Soviet postwar occupation of Hokkaido. The State Department via the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee (SWNCC) in the meantime had drafted SWNCC 70/5, [viewable here](_URL_0_), on 13 August which outlined much of what emerged postwar as SCAP. This document was the culmination of thinking within the State Department which stretched back to 1944 in which the occupation of Japan needed an American control that was unquestioned. SWNCC had a leg up on JWPC-385/1 in that MacArthur's staff was already opposed to a zonal division and had a preexisting contingency plan for occupation of the home islands- Operation Blacklist- in case Japan suddenly collapsed. So the State Department have a powerful ally within the Pacific to argue against the Pentagon's JCS factions favoring a zonal division. Truman ultimately sided with the State Department and SWNCC 70/5. Truman had made his decision known by late August 1945 and endorsed the SWNCC plan for Japan.
| [
"Korea was administratively partitioned in 1945, at the end of World War II. As Korea was under Japanese rule during World War II, Korea was officially a belligerent against the Allies by virtue of being Japanese territory. The unconditional surrender of Japan led to the division of Korea into two occupation zones ... |
Why, during the American Civil War, would people gather and watch battles for recreation? Wouldn't heads being blown off disturb them and their picnics? | To my knowledge, this only happened at the very beginning of the war, as everyone had their sharp new uniforms on, and people expected neat Napoleonic type warfare, with minimal civilian casualties (and people expected to watch from very far away). It was the common thought at the time that "their" side would win very quickly and easily. Either the rebels would bloody the Northern "wusses" enough right away that they would lose the will to fight, or the Union would stomp out the South due to superior numbers and equipment. So people came to watch their team win, but they were sorely disappointed and quickly this stopped happening. | [
"During the Civil War, the park served as an encampment for soldiers. Men \"gathered about the park's famous old springs; here could be heard bugle-calls and sentry orders, and also presently the moans of passing wounded soldiers.\"\n",
"The clearing of the city buildings by Sumner's infantry and by artillery fir... |
How badly did the Holocaust hinder the Nazi war effort? | > The Nazis killed able-bodied Jews and others who could have instead been fighting for Germany or at least working to build materiel.
You're looking at the Second World War in a vacuum. The only time the Germans would need collaborators to fight with them/for them and Jews for their industries would be in the aftermath of their failed Blitzkrieg against the Soviet Union. Their planning for the invasion of the Soviet Union saw its fall in some 2-3 months time, thus planning for anything beyond that time period was not a part of original German plans. So the above can only apply to after the failure of Blitzkrieg. At that point you're omitting German ideology for starting the war in the first place. They are not going east to liberate nationalities and ethnicities, they are going east to create 'living space' and a slave population to work their newly conquered territories (along the way killing off some 30-40 million Slavs through starvation). When realistic pragmatism met ideological dogma, the latter usually won out long enough to make the former irrelevant when implemented. Finally, the collaborators who did work with the Germans in fighting the Red Army, for instance, had their own interests to worry about and those interests were usually incompatible with what the Germans desired. I.e., they wanted autonomy and their own nationalist movements, additionally the Germans usually worried about arming too many of any one nationality as they feared one day those weapons would be used against them. A reasonable fear as the 14th Waffen SS Galicia division, as one example, was made up of Ukrainians and they treated it as the beginning of a Ukrainian army that would help liberate them from both the Germans and Soviets.
> Yes, slave labor was used, but it seems to have mostly been about working the Jews to death, and damn the inefficiencies.
That mainly applies to Jews, there were also 'eastern workers', millions of them, working in German industries.
> Did any Nazis ever lament the willful destruction of labor or potential soldiers?
Yes, mainly those who were not as entrenched in Nazi ideology, usually those in business/industries and soldiers/officers on the ground who saw the potential in using collaborators as auxiliaries. Even some high ranking Nazis also lamented the destruction of so much humanity for seemingly needless reasons (at least when it came to Soviet POWs).
> Was slave labor actually anywhere near as productive as free labor, or at the very least, non-extermination-based labor would have been?
Hard to answer, slave labor is not experienced labor, defects in products produced were a regular part of it.
> Was there ever a faction that said, "let's hold off, try to sue for peace, and THEN implement the Final Solution"?
The 'Final Solution' cannot be treated separately from the war on the Eastern Front. While the Holocaust might be treated as a separate topic when discussing the western front, the eastern front was intimately tied in with anything that happened in the holocaust/genocide that Nazi Germany unleashed. The Final Solution in many ways was a reaction to the war effort on the eastern front. | [
"In the book Tooze writes that having failed to defeat Britain in 1940, the economic logic of the war drove the Nazis to invade the Soviet Union. Hitler was constrained to invade the Soviet Union in 1941 to obtain the natural resources necessary to challenge the economic superpowers of the United States and the Bri... |
Marines on D Day | It was due to them all being in the Pacific. The Marine Corps only comprised of six divisions during the Second World War and by 1944 all six divisions were engaged in the Pacific Theatre. Even if it had been possible to withdraw some of these divisions and transport them to England, a difficult task even at the best of times let alone an active theatre with shipping at a premium, the Marine Corps’ expertise in amphibious assault was better utilised in the Pacific where amphibious assaults were commonplace as opposed to the invasion of Normandy which saw the US undertake only two landings. Additionally, US Army units were not without experience conducting amphibious assaults. The US had undertaken such landings in North Africa in 1942, as part of Operation Torch, Sicily in 1943 with Operation Husky and Italy in the same year with Operation Avalanche. Some of the units involved in these landings such as the US 1st Division also took part in the D-Day landings, bringing with them their experience of amphibious landings.
Basically, the Marine Corps wasn’t needed on D-Day. The US had enough units with prior experience with amphibious landings or training in the doctrine that the Marines were of more use in the Pacific where they would undertake multiple amphibious landings than they would in Normandy where they would undertake one landing then be committed to a standard land campaign or be transported back to the Pacific. | [
"The Amphibious Reconnaissance Company (and later Battalion) were a small group of men that conducted preliminary D-Day amphibious reconnaissance of the planned littoral beaches occupied by the Imperial Japanese Army and Special Naval Landing Forces in the Central Pacific during World War II. They were infantry Mar... |
Were any of the Founding Fathers openly opposed to slavery? | It depends what you mean by openly opposed, really. (And also on who counts as a founder, which can be...contentious.) On the level of national politics and among the most famous names, there's not much. If you mean opposed to slavery in the sense of preaching immediate, uncompensated abolition, then we're down to nobody or nearly nobody on the national level. There may have been some founders who preferred that for slavery in their own northern states (all thirteen had legal slavery in 1776), but I've not looked into those emancipations to say. With the exception of a judicial decision in Massachusetts, emancipation as actually passed in the North was gradual. (The last northern emancipation law passed was New Jersey's in 1804, which proved sufficiently gradual that the 1860 census still has some slaves in the state.) Gradual emancipation was the accepted wisdom of mainstream antislavery people up into the Civil War, though you see more immediate, uncompensated emancipation advocates once it becomes clear to many that the ordinary political process isn't steadily working to diminish slavery circa 1820-30.
Ben Franklin, as /u/newenglandredshirt notes, went pretty public with opposition to slavery late in life. For the founders, he's on the extreme end. Most opposition to slavery was expressed in theoretical terms, with a fair bit of condemnation of the institution that but little in the way of practical action. Franklin and Alexander Hamilton both came to Philadelphia with petitions asking the convention to do something about slavery. Both realized they had nowhere near the votes to manage that and they would instead split the convention, so they sat on them. That's not a sterling chapter in political courage on their part, but given that South Carolina and Georgia threatened to quit the convention if they couldn't keep importing slaves from Africa, which was generally considered the worst sort of slaving, they might have judged the room rightly.
Washington and Jefferson both expressed discomfort with slavery, though Washington did so largely in private. (I don't *think* he ever made a public declaration on it, but it's possible that he wrote something in a letter he understood would be made public that's escaped my notice) He freed everyone he owned in his will, though he lacked the legal power to free his dower slaves. Martha retained ownership of them in her own right.
Jefferson has a reputation for being antislavery which derives from his stirring, and more than a little confessional, condemnation of the institution in *Notes on the State of Virginia*, which became a standard text for antislavery Americans to quote. Benjamin Banneker even quoted it back at him, which must not have gone over well since Banneker was black and Jefferson had wanted to keep his name off *Notes*.
But Jefferson's practical opposition to slavery was limited to rhetoric. During his life he had numerous opportunities to reduce his personal reliance on slave labor and free slaves in contexts which would not cause a stir among his peers. (This was, by his own admission, very important to Jefferson.) He declined almost every one of them. For Jefferson, the practical work of extirpating slavery in the United States always ended up being a job for people far away or some future generation. He would float proposals on those lines and few were enacted. By the time he got the prohibition of slave imports through, American slavery was already self-sustaining from a demographic standpoint. He also did not exercise himself greatly to ensure that those who participated in slaving in defiance of American law were prosecuted vigorously. (Neither had previous the presidents, but Adams had made an effort and gained some ground toward the end of his term.)
This all falls well short of what antislavery politicians would seek to do even during the lives of some of the founders. In his old age, Jefferson writes a relative of his who wants to take inherited slaves to Illinois and free them that it's a bad idea and he should keep those people as slaves in Virginia. He's against the Missouri Compromise not because it's a defeat for antislavery (which it was) but because he believes the antislavery movement in the North is a Federalist plot. That "Federalist plot" managed to include members of his own party as well as Federalists, but he didn't keep score that way. Instead he found the proposal to set Missouri on a path to gradual emancipation, the same kind of plan he had recommended himself in the past, objectionable. | [
"Many founding members used a practical approach to slavery, saying economically it did not make sense. Wright used the rhetoric of religion to elicit empathy toward African Americans, and presented slavery as a moral sin directed at those who were persecuted.\n",
"“The Founders and Slavery, A Crisis of Conscienc... |
Why is Robert F. Scott's expedition regarded higher than Amundsen's in some places? | The problem is not that it is higher, It seems to be more of a case that in the English speaking world, Robert F Scott, an English speaker of the global empire of Britain, tried, failed and died. We lap that kind of heroic failure up in Britain. As Anglo-Saxon-Norman has become the lingua franca so to has it partially come to dominate world culture, Blame the english for spreading their story wider as there are more english speakers to understand the story.
I personally don't feel this is a true historical question. You are asking the opinion of historians for opinions of others. I mean, is it really regarded as higher? What do you mean as higher? do you mean greater? more world renowned? Again I feel this is only because there are far more English speakers in the world and the Influence of Britain, and now the U.S.A is just greater then that of Norway.
Amundsen was the first, he won, fair and square. The story of Scott's expedition is just one of individual tragedy: They struggled on at great odds only to find the Norwegian flag and then, realising they lost, on the way back they all started to succumb to the hard cold. Oates leaving the tent to walk off into the frozen tempest to die in a vain bid to save his comrades uttering something So British it hurts: "I am just going outside, and may be some time"
Come to think it, It is a greater tale to tell, who doesn't love a good tragedy? But Amundsen Won and if you are a fan of national pride then Amundsen is a true Hero to the Norwegians
| [
"Amundsen's expedition benefited from his careful preparation, good equipment, appropriate clothing, a simple primary task, an understanding of dogs and their handling, and the effective use of skis. In contrast to the misfortunes of Scott's team, Amundsen's trek proved relatively smooth and uneventful.\n",
"Oate... |
will social security run out in the foreseeable future? when? | Social Security was designed to run at a slight profit, because increasing numbers of workers would fund it, and (in theory) the pool of retirees would always be a smaller group. It is only the huge number of retiring Baby Boomers combined with the smaller pool of young working citizens that is throwing that out of balance.
Fortunately, unlike Y2K, we saw this coming decades in advance, and in 1983 the Reagan Administration enacted the [Social Security Amendments of 1983](_URL_0_) (note: link is a PDF). Social Security is funded through the next fifty years or so without any further changes. A few minor tweaks, such as a less-than-a-single-percentage-point increase in SS taxation, will keep the system solvent even longer.
A complication is that because SS has been sitting on an enormous pile of cash for decades, some politicians (on both sides of the aisle) decided it would be okay to raid that cookie jar to cover deficits elsewhere in the budget. So, while on paper the numbers still work out just fine, the reality is that SS will need to be repaid at some point, and *that* will require cuts elsewhere. When Republicans claim SS is insolvent or in danger and should be privatized, that is what they are not telling you. SS is not the problem - the rest of the budget is. | [
"These Social Security proponents argue that the correct plan is to fix Medicare, which is the largest underfunded entitlement, repeal the 2001–2004 tax cuts, and balance the budget. They believe a growth trendline will emerge from these steps, and the government can alter the Social Security mix of taxes, benefits... |
what power to influence policy does the uk's shadow cabinet actually have? | Shadow cabinet can't directly affect government policy so it's the latter.
However as members of Parliament they can vote on acts and issues put before the house.
The government can be defeated on an issue if enough MPS vote against them. This is why any party likes to have a majority so that they can push through their acts.
If members of the ruling party vote against government it's embarrassing for the prime minister and can lead to their downfall.
You can see MP voting records at:
_URL_1_
Log of votes and proceedings:
_URL_0_ | [
"The Shadow Cabinet or Shadow Ministry is a feature of the Westminster system of government. It consists of a senior group of opposition spokespeople who, under the leadership of the Leader of the Opposition, form an alternative cabinet to that of the government, and whose members \"shadow\" or mirror the positions... |
How were the borders of Canada's provinces/territories finalized into their modern form? | I can't speak for the other provinces, but the border between Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec was settled by a 1927 decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (then effectively the court of final appeal for Canada and other Dominions - including Newfoundland, which didn't join Canada until 1949).
Before that, Quebec claimed much of what is now Labrador (and some provincial maps still show Labrador as part of Quebec, or at least refer to the boundary as "disputed," even though no one else disputes it). | [
"The provinces and territories of Canada are sub-national governments within the geographical areas of Canada under the authority of the Canadian Constitution. In the 1867 Canadian Confederation, three provinces of British North America—New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the Province of Canada (which upon Confederatio... |
Were the Sons of Liberty responsible for terrorism in the colonies leading up to the American Revolution? | The US Department of Defense defines terrorism as the following:
> terrorism — The unlawful use of violence or threat of violence, often motivated by religious, political, or other ideological beliefs, to instill fear and coerce governments or societies in pursuit of goals that are usually political
It's often hard to pin down what groups did what in the run-up to the American Revolution, especially since groups of the same name operating in different states often had little in the way of coordination, much less a unifying central authority.
But in the specific case of the Sons of Liberty, specifically the Massachusetts chapter, there's not really a better example of political activism turned terrorism than the treatment of Andrew Oliver. The Sons of Liberty claimed to have grievances with the Stamp Act and effectively took their frustration and anger out on Oliver, first burning down some of his property, then beheading and then burning him in effigy, then throwing stones at his house, and finally vandalizing his home.
If it ended there one might make the case that this was simple an isolated event. It didn't. Oliver's brother-in-law (then the Lieutenant Governor of the colony, Thomas Hutchinson) was harassed. Oliver was eventually forced to resign publicly (it's hard to imagine that coercion wasn't involved). Since all of this happened *before* he was legally appointed, he was eventually forced to resign yet again a few months later (after the royal appointment arrived), this time with the requirement that he swear to not take up the job in the future.
So, to summarize, a group styling itself the Sons of Liberty destroyed (or stole) significant amounts of Andrew Oliver's personal property, effectively laid siege to Oliver's home while he and his family were present, and then forced him, under duress, to resign his legal appointment (both before and after it arrived). That's pretty clearly the use of violence in pursuit of a political agenda (in other words, terrorism). And I suppose McIntosh, the ringleader in all of this, can probably be charged with fomenting a riot, too.
If you're looking for more sources, I suggest Justin Winsor's *The American Revolution*, which relates this story (and others) to provide a less rose-tinted history of the American Revolution than we get in primary school. | [
"After the end of the American Revolutionary War, Isaac Sears, Marinus Willet, and John Lamb in New York City revived the Sons of Liberty. In March 1784, they rallied an enormous crowd that called for the expulsion of any remaining Loyalists from the state starting May 1. The Sons of Liberty were able to gain enoug... |
how come places have sales and sell stuff for only $1 | Their system might not allow for a zero dollar sale. They also still have to track all tires for inventory management.
Also management can pull up sales to see how many of those deals they sold.
Edit- Grammar. I can't believe I mixed up They're and Their | [
"Land for sale is available, with a plot selling for between UShs25 million (US$6,800) and UShs50 million (US$13,600), depending on the location. A lot sells for between UShs80 million (US$22,000) and Shs200 million (US$54,500).\n",
"As a catch phrase, “Buy Local” has become generic to the point of being easily m... |
During WWII Ultra, Purple, and Bodyguard are well known large-scale successes of Allied counter-espionage. Are there examples of any Axis successes? | You may be interested in this brief note about Finnish codebreaking efforts I wrote earlier. Finnish signals intelligence provided valuable information about Soviet plans and intentions and arguably had a very important role in stopping the 1944 Soviet offensive.
[_URL_0_](_URL_1_) | [
"Glimmer, Taxable and Big Drum were World War II deception operations. They were conducted as part of Operation Bodyguard, a broad strategic military deception intended to support the Allied invasion of German-occupied France in June 1944. Bodyguard was designed to confuse the Axis high command as to Allied intenti... |
can someone please explain a reciprocal in algebra? | it's a number, when multiplied by the denominator(the bottom number in a fraction), equals 1. so, 1/2 is the reciprocal of 2, because when you multiply 1/2 by 2 you get 1. so, in keeping with that the reciprocal of 837 is 1/837. | [
"where S is the sign of the permutation that reorders the sequence of and to put the ones that are paired up to make the delta-functions next to each other, with the coming right before the . Since a pair is a commuting element of the Grassmann algebra, it doesn't matter what order the pairs are in. If more than on... |
During the American revolution did Great Britain suffer a financial crisis? | Do you mean a financial crisis or an economic crisis? If you mean a financial crisis, the British debt rose considerably during the Revolution – although it was part of broader increase in indebtedness from the early 18th century to 1815. [This graph]( _URL_1_) gives you some idea of how indebted the British government became during this period.
That being said, this debt did not necessarily mean the government was in crisis. As John Brewer has argued in *The Sinews of Power*, Britain was in the process of building a “fiscal-military” state in the 18th century: a highly effective machine of using taxes and bonds to financial global wars of empire building. As [this graph]( _URL_0_) shows, government spending at this time was oriented almost entirely toward financing the military and servicing the debt. This was possible through an expansion of the tax base, especially through excise taxes (i.e., consumption taxes levied on products such as salt, beer, and soap), and eventually by the 1790s an income tax.
So while wartime expenditures increased (from annual expenditures of £5.5 during the Nine Years War of 1688-97 to £20 million during the Revolution), so did government revenues (from £3.6 million during the Nine Years War to over £12 million during the Revolution). So the British government bent, but did not break, during the war.
When it comes to an economic crisis, ordinary people certainly did suffer from shortages that resulted from interruptions of trade. Over a third of all British exports in 1770 were directed to the American colonies; the loss of trade certainly caused an economic downturn in port towns and the manufacturing sector. On the other hand, it was offset to some degree by an increase in demand from the military sector.
There was no rations regime during the war – it was a very different kind of economy (wartime rations didn’t get introduced until the 20th century). Whereas in World War II, the US had an industrial economy that was managed to a large degree by the government, Britain in the 1780s was still a largely agricultural society, with little government involvement beyond taxes and bonds. Also, the military was also outsourced to a large degree – for example, privateers were still an important element of naval campaigns, and armies still depended to some degree on forage and plunder. (See David Hackett Fischer’s *Washington’s Crossing* for details on the latter.)
| [
"The Financial Revolution was a set of economic and financial reforms in Britain after the Glorious Revolution in 1688 when William III invaded England. The reforms were based in part on Dutch economic and financial innovations that were brought to England by William III. New institutions were created: a public deb... |
how do epoxies work on a molecular scale? | Epoxy resins form ionic bonds at an atomic level with the bonding surfaces.
Disadvantages of epoxies are that they have a high coefficient of thermal expansion and they are not that strong at elevated temperature. The high CTE becomes an issue if you are bonding low CTE materials like Titanium and then using the resulting assembly at the low temperatures of space since the bond will want to contract more than the bonded materials and thereby put mechanical stress in the bond. Similarly the high temperatures of space pose problems as well. | [
"This parameter is used to calculate the mass of co-reactant (hardener) to use when curing epoxy resins. Epoxies are typically cured with stoichiometric or near-stoichiometric quantities of curative to achieve maximum physical properties.\n",
"Silane precursors with more acid-forming groups and fewer methyl group... |
Dear historians! Do you know any good books about the area of Brandenburg before the German eastward expansion in the High Middle Ages? | If you can read academic German well enough:
*Die Entstehung der Mark Brandenburg*, by Lutz Partenheimer.
*Albrecht der Bär. Gründer der Mark Brandenburg und des Fürstentums Anhalt*, by Lutz Partenheimer.
*Die Mark Brandenburg: Band I* (you may have to pay for the entire collection) by Johannes Schultze. Band. I and II deal with the foundation and development of Brandenburg until 1415, which already goes beyond your stated area of interest.
If you are looking for books in English then, unfortunately, you are out of luck. I have not been able to find a book on Brandenburg in this time period (and I assume you cannot find one either), most likely because the effort to publish a peer-reviewed academic book for English speakers on a relatively narrow and unknown area of history is usually not worth the effort, stress, and monetary investment. You will probably need to look for "survey" books (as in books about the wider region - the entire Holy Roman Empire, or a wider date - Brandenburg-Prussia from its foundation to 1815) but focus on the areas of those books that are relevant to you. This information will most likely not be extensively descriptive, unless it is also the author's (or an author's) passion.
Unfortunately, most of the focus in the English world has been on the rise and influence of the Hohenzollerns, which comes considerably after your period of interest.
Although, if you have access to databases, scholarly journals, or a university library, you may try searching in them to see if there are articles about your topic. It is far more likely that any academic information about Brandenburg before the Hohenzollerns can be found in those resources.
I hope this information helps. | [
"When Frederick I of the House of Hohenzollern took over the Electorate of Brandenburg in 1411, he and his successors restricted the influence of the local nobles, towns and clergy, and followed a policy of territorial expansion. Since the eastern frontier with Pomerania, the Neumark, was pawned to the Teutonic Ord... |
is it better to leave my desktop running all the time or to turn it off every night? | Honestly? Now-a-days it's negligible.
Yes, there is some wear and tear on the parts, but most parts now-a-days are geared towards being power cycled on a regular basis.
The best way is to use the computers in built "sleep". This turns off power to things that don't really need it while keeping parts of the computer supplied with power. This also prevents the dust build up you are talking about, as the CPU and HDD's are turned off, thus no fans are needed.
Now, back in the day when the components weren't as mature, turning the computer off put a pretty significant strain on the power supply resulting in loss of product life.
| [
"Services that alternate between high and low utilization in a daily cycle are described as being diurnal. Many websites have the most users during the day and little utilization at night, or vice versa. Operations planners can use this cycle to plan, for example, maintenance that needs to be done when there are fe... |
i give up. exactly how do resistors work? | I think your question is more how LEDs work since your changing the resistors and seeing the LED behavior change.
Since the resistance is changing the amount of current is also (the formulas you mentioned). The more resistance the less current that gets to the LED.
So your questions is why does the brightness of the LED change... less current going through it means less light to emit. The light source are the electrons in the current. So less electrons, the less light you see. | [
"A resistor is a passive two-terminal electrical component that implements electrical resistance as a circuit element. In electronic circuits, resistors are used to reduce current flow, adjust signal levels, to divide voltages, bias active elements, and terminate transmission lines, among other uses. High-power res... |
Are vaccines as effective as getting the real disease? | I would say that you don't want to get hepatitis, because your liver will be left damaged even if you do survive.
I believe that some vaccines do not offer the same level of protection, but most do, and some do even better.
In any case, better 12 vaccines than 12 serious diseases, even if you might get theoretically better protection in one or two cases...
I would be interested in the opinions of professionals. As I'm sure would you lol! | [
"Vaccines are very effective on stable viruses, but are of limited use in treating a patient who has already been infected. They are also difficult to successfully deploy against rapidly mutating viruses, such as influenza (the vaccine for which is updated every year) and HIV. Antiviral drugs are particularly usefu... |
Why isn't there one test for contact lenses and glasses? | To fit contact lenses, one must determine the exact shape of the eye because the lens sits on the eye directly. Those with glasses do not have to worry about fitting the exact contour of the eye. | [
"Another important area of contact lens research deals with patient compliance. Compliance is a major issue pertaining to the use of contact lenses because patient noncompliance often leads to contamination of the lens, storage case, or both. However, careful users can extend the wear of lenses through proper handl... |
Shotguns Use in War. | Although only for WWI, these two answers might interest you:
_URL_1_
_URL_0_ | [
"Since the end of World War II, the shotgun has remained a specialty weapon for modern armies. It has been deployed for specialized tasks where its strengths were put to particularly good use. It was used to defend machine gun emplacements during the Korean War, American and French jungle patrols used shotguns duri... |
aircraft stalling | As fznsw said, when we talk about stalling in an aircraft, we're talking about the wing, not the engine.
When a wing moves through the air, the angle between the wing and the air is called the "angle of attack".
When the angle of attack becomes too big, the pattern of the airflow over the wing changes. This is shown in [this diagram](_URL_0_). This change results in a loss of lift, and is called a stall.
In general terms, to maintain level flight, the slower you go, the higher the angle of attack you need to fly at. This is because the wing has to work harder to keep the aircraft in the sky. So, as you slow down and increase the angle of attack, a stall can happen.
(However, i_noticed_you is wrong to say that the stall is caused by the low airspeed. The stall is caused by the high angle of attack. Low airspeeds only correspond to high angles of attack in level flight. For example, in the incredibly poorly named ["stall turn"](_URL_1_), the aircraft doesn't stall at all, despite its speed being almost zero just before the turn. This is because its angle of attack is not increased as it slows down, since it is not in level flight.)
You can recognise that you might be approaching a stall by the following symptoms:
- Airspeed lower than it ought to be
- Nose higher than it ought to be
- The controls will becomes sloppy and unresponsive
- The turbulent airflow causes the controls to shake a little, called "buffet", and light buffet is a sign that you are approaching the stall
The stall itself will be recognised by these symptoms:
- Heavy buffet
- The nose will drop as the lift decreases
- One of the wings may drop if one wing stalls before the other
During the stall, ailerons should not be used, because they work by changing (and perhaps increasing) the angle of attack of the outer part of the wing. Although modern aircraft are designed so that the outer part of the wing stalls last, so the ailerons will continue working for as long as possible. Rudder must be used to prevent yaw, since yawing in the stall may result in a spin. To recover from the stall:
- Lower the nose until all the symptoms of the stall go away
- Almost simultaneously, apply full power in order to reduce height loss
- Rolls the wings level, and remove the final stage of flap (drag flap) if it was selected
- Pitch the aircraft into a climb attitude
- Once a positive rate of climb has been achieved, raise the gear and the rest of the flap, if they were selected
The actual speed at which a stall occurs depends on many factors, including the power setting, flap setting, and g-force (which is related to the wing loading). The aircraft manual will usually give two different stall speeds. Vs1 is the stall speed clean (no gear or flaps), at 1g, in straight and level flight, with the power at idle, at the maximum allowable weight. Vs0 is the same but with gear and flap selected down.
Finally, it's worth noting that the design of most modern airliners means that they don't experience buffet, and that recovering from a stall would be difficult if not impossible, because of the way the air flows off the wing and onto the tail. Because of this, they use artificial systems - a "stick shaker" makes the controls vibrate when you fly at a high angle of attack, similar to buffet, and a "stick pusher" physically forces the controls forward if the angle of attack is increased even further to prevent a stall from actually occurring.
Hope that fills in the gaps. Please ask if there's anything else you want to know.
| [
"Stalls in fixed-wing flight are often experienced as a sudden reduction in lift as the pilot increases the wing's angle of attack and exceeds its critical angle of attack (which may be due to slowing down below stall speed in level flight). A stall does not mean that the engine(s) have stopped working, or that the... |
Inquiry about Mithras | Roger Pearse has a site on Mithras, which he tries to keep in line with the most current reputable scholarship, [here](_URL_0_). Also, there was a recent episode of the BBC podcast In Our Time [on Mithras](_URL_1_), which was pretty decent. There are listings of further sources on both sites, which should be helpful. | [
"The Mithraic Mysteries, colloquially also known as Mithraism, was a 1st–4th century neo-platonic mystery cult of the Roman god Mithras. The near-total lack of written descriptions or scripture necessitates a reconstruction of beliefs and practices from the archaeological evidence, such as that found in Mithraic te... |
How did Michel Ney, a competent commander his whole career, screw up so badly at Waterloo? | Michel Ney, *les brave des braves*, was a rather interesting character in the Napoleonic Wars. Being in the original class of the Marshalate, he was unique that he didn't serve directly under Napoleon nor was particularly famous in France as being a competent commander, rather he was known within the French army as a daring and audacious commander. So, his rise to Marshal has more to do with popularity rather than skill at command.
From here, he would serve in a good capacity in many major battles during the Prussian campaign of 1806/7 against Prussia and Russia, often being a flanking corps commander. However, he wasn't known for being a quality commander. Napoleon himself said that Ney was "too immoral, too stupid to be able to succeed" and that "he was good for a command of 10,000 men, but beyond that he was out of his depth." The ten thousand men is an rough size for a French division as a corps could number from twenty to forty thousand men depending on campaign requirements and losses. Beyond the "immoral and stupid" comment, the comment about ten thousand men seems to be best. He has been described as an ideal infantry division commander, often leading from the front with the men rather than being sensible and leading from behind a few lines of infantry.
The thing he's most famous for is his rear guard not just in Russia but in Spain. In 1808 when the French intervention in Spain, Marshal Massena left Ney behind to cover the retreat of the French army, but rather than getting destroyed he showed extraordinary skill at rear guard actions. This would be a test for his future in Russia where he would lead one of the best rear guard actions in all of military history. However, this rear guard action would cost something.
The rear guard action took toll on Ney, with a force of a couple thousand, it would slowly fall to a hand full of men no more than a couple hundred. Combine that with a constant need to be ready to act and the physical exhaustion from the Russian winter, Ney would have been worn out more than any other commander. After Russia, he would serve and get wounded several times, but was the leader of the push for Napoleon to abdicate.
So, now we come to The Hundred Days. At first, Ney was shown to be a pet of the Bourbon Restoration, swearing to bring back Napoleon in a cage. We know he didn't and turned in favor of his commander, however this could be the final straw that would unravel him.
At Quatre Bras, he was known to have said aloud that he wished a ball would find it's way to kill him on the spot. Then at Waterloo, you see the poorly made cavalry charge (done way too soon and as you said, poorly supported) that did little to change the situation (by not spiking the guns). This cavalry charge might give the ultimate clue, as you said he didn't spike the guns but he was famously shown to be slapping the side of the guns with the flat of his sword. Later in the day, rather than call his men to retreat, he would cry out (after his fourth horse has been killed) "Come and see how a marshal of France dies", which is nicely portrayed in the Waterloo section of *Les Miserables*.
As a result of these confusing actions, the only thing that can be surmised is that the years of war and the excessive risk he put himself through finally started to cause him to crack, leading to the theory that he was experiencing PTSD. He did have a few symptoms of PTSD, such as suicidal actions (see the quote, willing to fight the British to the death), shame or guilt (seen by the ball quote), irrational anger (slapping the gun with his sword) and general negative thoughts about the venture (see all of the above combined into a semi-suicidal madman).
So, the problem is compounded with a mediocre leader and a possible case of PTSD.
Edit: reguard =/= rear guard, make appropriate fixes. | [
"At the Battle of Waterloo Hill commanded the II Corps. He led the charge of Sir Frederick Adam's brigade against the Imperial Guard towards the end of the battle. For some time it was thought that he had fallen in the melee. He escaped unwounded, and after the battle wrote to his sister, \"I verily believe there n... |
how exactly does google's self-driving car know to stop for red lights, stop signs, other cars etc? | Well, it knows to stop for lights and other cars because it has a sophisticated system of sensors that look for those things and then a software system that tells it to stop when it see them. The cars don't have the ability to refuel or plug themselves in. They do know, however, if their current path will take them beyond range of their gas tank and will alert the passenger. | [
"Cars are typically fitted with multiple types of lights. These include headlights, which are used to illuminate the way ahead and make the car visible to other users, so that the vehicle can be used at night; in some jurisdictions, daytime running lights; red brake lights to indicate when the brakes are applied; a... |
if ebola is contracted "through contaminated bodily fluids" only, how is it that so many people, including health care workers, are getting it? do they go bashing on each other bodily fluids or something? | Ebola is incredibly infectious once you've been exposed to it; it takes far less contact to become infected than most other diseases. The disease can also cause vomiting and diarrhea, so it creates a lot of bodily fluids to be potentially touched. Finally, it remains infectious even in a dead body for a good bit of time, so people can get infected while cleaning the corpse for burial.
Health care workers tend to get sick because they're exposed so frequently; because the virus is so infectious, even the slightest mistake can cause them to be compromised. | [
"It is believed that between people, Ebola disease spreads only by direct contact with the blood or other body fluids of a person who has developed symptoms of the disease. Body fluids that may contain Ebola viruses include saliva, mucus, vomit, feces, sweat, tears, breast milk, urine and semen. The WHO states that... |
how do people have access to winter sports like luge and skeleton at a young enough age to become olympic level good? | They live near places where those sports are practiced (usually major ski areas) and have parents who can afford to buy them lessons and equipment. | [
"Early sports specialization has long been typical among children and teenagers in gymnastics, swimming, diving and figure skating, especially if they have aspirations of being competitive at elite levels. Undeniably, the main purpose for athletes to specialize in sport is to become a better player in order to incr... |
How can ice age humans be compared with today humans? | You are asking a huge question. There are entire college courses on this.
In general, differences between 40 kya humans and modern humans may be accounted for by normal human variation. It may be like looking at living people and cultures that are different from your own, but included in “normal variation.”
There tends to be two camps - lumpers and splitters. I’m a lumper. I tend to view things as similar and normal. I’m the last person to be convinced a new human or ape species has been discovered. | [
"The identification of ice ages was important context for the antiquity of man because it was accepted that certain mammals had died out with the last of the ice ages; and the ice ages were clearly marked in the geological record. Georges Cuvier's \"Recherches sur les ossements fossiles de quadrupèdes\" (1812) had ... |
why does slang (or more informal ways of speaking in general) form in language? is it just a natural part of the gradual change in a language over time? what makes slang stick around or fall out of use? | I'm not a linguistic major, but I am a history one so let me take a crack at it
Historically the Everyman is uneducated, and doesn't know the proper way to speak or the proper words for certain things
It's the reason we call it a bath instead of An ablution | [
"Linguists have no simple and clear definition of slang, but agree that it is a constantly changing linguistic phenomenon present in every subculture worldwide. Some argue that slang exists because we must come up with ways to define new experiences that have surfaced with time and modernity. Attempting to remedy t... |
Phlogiston was first named in 1703, but was disproven by 1800. What's the story here? What theoretical issue did phlogiston solve, how popular did phlogstonic theory become, and was in there any negative response to its introduction or replacement? | Stahl's phlogiston came, by his own account, from Johann Becher. Becher was a mid-17th century alchemist and chymist who in many ways lived up to the early modern stereotype of the alchemist-charlatan (as in Ben Johnson's play), for instance, Becher had encountered a rock which made you invisible if you held it, and tried to get the Dutch government to sponsor his scheme to produce gold from sand. (That said, one should avoid adopting the traditional Enlightenment historigraphy of viewing alchemists as _little more than_ charlatans)
Becher's legacy would be his book _Physica Subterranea_ ('Subterranean physics') of 1669, where he laid out his ideas, which were not really _that_ revolutionary. Becher held fast to the classical four elements, but considered 'air' and 'fire' to be the agents of chemical change rather than elements per se. Earth was the most significant element (perhaps inspired by his professional interests in minerals and mining). He subdivided the element of earth into three 'earths': _terra lapidea_ (rocky earth), _terra fluida_ (liquid earth) and _terra pinguis_ (oily earth), which bore more than a passing resemblance to the Three Principles of Paracelsus.
The association between 'oiliness' and fire might not seem so obvious to a modern observer, but at the time it was 'established' that sulphur was the element of fire - it came out of the earth near volcanos, it burned with a mysterious blue flame and left no ash, and such. But sulphur is also a yellow, waxy substance in elemental form, and oil of vitriol (sulphuric acid) is of course an oily substance. (Compare to the 'sulphur principle' of Homberg, which he associated with light)
It doesn't seem like Becher's book had much impact - Boyle never mentioned it. Becher on the other hand, was influenced by Boyle. (In fact, those who would paint Boyle as the 'father of chemistry', particularly 19th century Englishmen, would often paint phlogiston almost as a distraction that set chemistry back between Boyle and Lavoisier) Even though Stahl gave huge credit to Becher, phlogiston theory was largely his own invention. (to some extent he was probaly following the old routine of seeking raising his own status by raising that of his predecessor)
There is no way to explain what exactly whas meant by phlogiston, because it depended on the scientist using the term and the experiment in question. Phlogiston and its properties were not rigourously defined during its existence. Phlogiston sought to explain what we now understand to be multiple distinct phenomena; that is, combustion and its production of heat and the apparent loss of matter associated with it. Wood had phlogston in it, which was lost on combustion and heat emitted. But wood contained many other 'earths' and left ash behind. Sulphur and carbon would be rich in phlogston, leaving nothing behind as they burned. But they did contain something else, since they produced acid when the combustion products were mixed with water. In that context, phlogiston is effectively "negative oxygen". Phlogiston was also a substance of great 'levity' (and here we go all the way back to Aristotle), explaining why the combustion products would rise and disappear.
Cavendish, upon discovering hydrogen (inflammable air) as its own substance in 1766, thought that it might be pure phlogiston - it burned with a barely visible flame and produced no ash or products (later he would discover that water was produced when burning inflammable air in dephlogistated air), and the gas was a substance of great levity. The identity of phlogiston with hydrogen was shared by Scheele and Kirwan among others, although their theories cannot be reduced to that alone.
Priestley would also term pure oxygen as 'dephlogistated air'. But _phlogistated_ air was CO2. Hydrogen doesn't quite fit with that.
Jean Bodin had already in 1596 observed another mysterious thing. Burning/heating metal turned it to a powder, a _calx_ (metal oxide), which weighed _more_ than the metal had done. While adding carbon to a calx and heating it produces metal again. Boyle, pre-phlogiston, had explained this as fire particles having combined with the metal. This was an apparent challenge to phlogiston theory was handled in various ways (besides claiming it to be in error, of course)
This is not as big as a discrepancy as it might occur to us now that we take Lavoisier's conservation of mass for granted. If phlogiston weighed less than air, then ought things not weigh more if they lost it? Perhaps the loss of mass on burning other matter was simply due to the acids they form? Metal calxes on the other hand are bases, so this can seem quite reasonable. Another idea was that the loss of phlogiston was accompanied by some acid-making substance combining with with things like carbon, but being lost with metals. (let's note here that 'oxygen' means 'acid-making')
Stahl himself acknowleged that metals got heavier as they lost phlogiston and formed a calx, but it's not entirely clear whether he considered phlogiston itself to have mass.
Lomonosov disputed Boyle's interpretation by heating metal in a closed glass vial, finding the total weigh of the vial not to have changed. (However, as opposed to frequent claims, Lomonosov did _not_ draw any general conclusions on the conservation of matter from this) Lomonosov explained the phenomenon through his own theory of gravity. He also had a peculiar mechanical theory of heat of his own, even though he was a phlogistonist (despite claims to the opposite)
The result though, is that phlogiston theory was not much of a scientific theory in the modern sense - even though it became widespread, it didn't have much predictive value. Phlogiston only really comes to the forefront as it comes under scrutiny and attack, around the 1770s-1780s. But at the same time it's a moving target, as I mentioned - the theory developed and changed with Cavendish, Priestley, Kirwan, etc. In Kuhnian terms this was of course a 'crisis', being one of the defining examples in _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_. However it has been challenged, not least in recent years, whether phlogiston ought to be considered a paradigm in the first place (e.g. Kim 2008)
The revolution of the Lavoisiers and their close collaborators was not just about throwing out phlogiston, but jettisoning _all_ old alchemical rubbish from chemistry that lacked empirical support. For instance old mystical planetary names and symbols - just say 'copper sulphate' not 'vitriol of venus', much less '🜖♀', not to mention stuff like 'salt of crab's eye' (calcium acetate). Lavoisier was a republican but the revolution he was plotting in 1789 wasn't the one most think about. Nevertheless he did correspond with people he disagreed with, from all over too. (It's rather fascinating when you consider the discovery of oxygen is shared by a English theologist sitting in rural Wiltshire, a French tax farmer in Paris, and a Swedish small-town apothecary. Even if Lavoisier to his shame denied getting Scheele's letter announcing the discovery. A century later it was found in Lavoisier's archives)
So Lavoisier came up with 'caloric theory' instead, separating out heat/light from being any sort of corporeal matter, even if he listed it as an 'element', it lacked mass. The likely reason why he grouped it with elements was that considered caloric to be conserved, as mass was. He describes it as a fluid which can be transferred from one body to another, and has for instance the effect of causing expansion, getting in-between the particles in matter to move them farther apart. However, unlike many phlogistonists or indeed any scientists of his time, Lavoisier was very lucid about the ontological status of his substance. In _Traité Élémentaire de Chimie_ he more or less states that he cannot prove caloric exists, and that it _need not actually exist_ merely that something that causes its described effects does exist. In other words, caloric theory in Lavoisier's view was not actually incompatible with the later kinetic theory of heat (which it's frequently put in opposition to), other than in the conservation aspect. But that aspect was in turn key to Carnot's theories (1820) which were the start of thermodynamics. (Carnot himself would abandon caloric in that sense, having discovered Joule's results before Joule did, but not publish them - likely because he couldn't reconcile it with his earlier ideas. They weren't reconciled until the Second Law of Thermodynamics came about in the 1850s)
| [
"In 1703 Georg Ernst Stahl, professor of medicine and chemistry at Halle, proposed a variant of the theory in which he renamed Becher's \"terra pinguis\" to \"phlogiston\", and it was in this form that the theory probably had its greatest influence. The term phlogiston itself was not something that Stahl invented. ... |
A question on French military uniforms. | I believe this is the jacket and waistcoat worn by a French Divisional General during the late 18th/early 19th century. It looks identical to the uniform Napoleon wore when he crossed the Alps.
[Edit] There are some other pictures of just such a uniform [here.](_URL_0_) | [
"The battle dress of the French Armed Forces is the FÉLIN system combined with SPECTRA helmets. France has adopted a light beige dress uniform which is worn with coloured kepis, sashes, fringed epaulettes, fourragères and other traditional items on appropriate occasions. As an alternative parade dress, camouflage u... |
[Astronomy] What anti-contamination procedures do we engage in for space exploration? | 1) While space is a hostile environment to life, there are a number of extremophiles like tardigrades and certain bacterial spores that can survive for years or decades exposed to space, and space agencies absolutely take measures to prevent contamination of other solar system bodies. We do this to prevent Earth life from possibly taking hold on another celestial body because it could harm life already there, or it could make it impossible for us to tell if any life we might encounter is native to that body or is an Earth organism that hitched a ride. At NASA, this is done through the [Office of Planetary Protection](_URL_0_). Depending on the specific mission of the spacecraft, they take a number of measure to reduce the number of bacterial spores on spacecraft to the minimum possible amount. This includes exposure to UV and gamma radiation, heat, and various toxic gasses. Probes are also assembled in clean rooms.
2) During the first few moon missions, the astronauts were quarantined for 2 weeks upon return to Earth in case they encountered any microorganisms on the moon. After Apollo 14, it was determined that there was no life on the moon and they discontinued the practice. Since then, all human activity in space has been confined to low Earth orbit where there's basically no chance of any contact with extraterrestrial life, so there's no concern for that with regards to space suit design or anything else. I'm unaware of any policies or procedures regarding biological cross-contamination in a potential first contact scenario with intelligent life that shows up at our doorstep.
3) Yes, but any payloads that get launched have to go through the same procedures regardless of whether they're privately funded or not. If SpaceX wants to send it's own probe to Mars, it won't get launched without going through the same protocols as a probe built for NASA. Musk's Tesla was not sterilized because its orbit is not taking it close enough to any body, even Mars, for there to be a high enough risk of impact or contamination. There are levels of sterilization depending on the mission. For example, a probe sent to orbit the moon will receive little to no sterilization because we know the moon is barren and it's not even touching the surface. A mars lander, however, will undergo the most rigorous sterilization protocols because Mars could potentially harbor life. | [
"Current space missions are governed by the Outer Space Treaty and the COSPAR guidelines for planetary protection. Forward contamination is prevented primarily by sterilizing the spacecraft. In the case of sample-return missions (back contamination) the aim of the mission is to return extraterrestrial samples to Ea... |
How prevalent was Chinese as a language in post-Heian Japan up until the late Edo period? | Classical Chinese was learned as a written language through all these centuries, but hardly ever as a spoken language. This was the case even in the Heian period itself. Bruce Batten writes in his account of a Chinese merchant ship arriving in Hizen (current day Nagasaki prefecture) in 945:
> Probably all communications with the visitors were in writing; all Japanese bureaucrats were trained to read and write literary Chinese, but few if any could speak the language. Chinese-speaking interpreters would have been available at Hakata, but probably not in Hizen.
- p. 108, * Gateway to Japan: Hakata in War And Peace, 500-1300* by Bruce Loyd Batten
As you assume, there were Chinese interpreters in ports that traded with Chinese merchants. Nagasaki emerged as the natural gateway to Japan for Chinese ships sailing across the East China Sea, and throughout the Edo Period, there was a large Chinese quarter in Nagasaki. Many "Chinese" Nagasaki families lived in Japan for generations, were of mixed Japanese/Chinese blood, and facilitated Japanese-Chinese trade. But spoken Chinese was not a skill that officials or elites in Japan learned or even thought of learning.
During the Edo Period, under the *sakoku* laws, Japanese subjects were not permitted to leave the country, and Japan had no formal diplomatic relations with China (although Japan permitted Chinese ships to trade at Nagasaki), so there was really no exposure to spoken Chinese, despite Chinese texts continuously entering the country.
This language gap became a problem in the 1860s when Japan decided to tentatively reach out towards China. In 1862, the shogunate decided to send the *Senzaimaru*, a modern ship they'd bought from the British, on a diplomatic mission to Shanghai. The mission was unannounced, and the participants a rag-tag group of shogunate officials, Japanese merchants, Dutch and Chinese interpreters a Chinese medicine expert, servants, sailors, and a bunch of attendants: determined young samurai from various domains. Some members of this last group were not supposed to be on board. Choshu Domain, for instance, bribed a shogunate official to take their young retainer, Takasugi Shinsaku, along as an attendant. Takasugi was on the trip as an observer for Choshu. He had a keen interest in modern arms and warfare, Western studies, and the effects of Imperialism in China, and kept a very detailed diary of the mission, which researcher Joshua Fogel has used as a main source in studying the Japanese side of the voyage.
The *Senzaimaru*'s arrival in Shanghai in June 1862 was a complete surprise to both Westerners and Chinese in Shanghai, but they were welcomed immediately. These were the first Japanese to set foot in China for hundreds of years, and they were instant celebrities, followed by friendly crowds everywhere they went. Westerners in Shanghai were also extremely welcoming and obliging, especially Shanghai-based missionaries who hoped that Japan would soften to allow Christianity again.
There were a few Chinese interpreters aboard the *Senzaimaru*, members of those Nagasaki families who'd served that role for centuries. But most of the Japanese mission, particularly the young samurai attendants, made their way around the city relying on their ability to use "brush conversations".
> A brush, ink, and a piece of paper could facilitate a conversation, as many Japanese learned on this voyage to their surprise, or a discussion on virtually any subject from the profoundly political to the utterly prosaic. There were minor differences in the way Japanese traditionally used the literary Chinese language, but slight dissimilarities would not have impeded the exchange of ideas. Embedded in the use of the literary language was a wealth of referents rooted in Chinese cultural and literary history that would have been as familiar to well-educated Japanese as to well-educated Chinese
- p. 75, *Maiden Voyage : The Senzaimaru and the Creation of Modern Sino-Japanese Relations*, Joshua Fogel
Japanese copies of the brush conversations between Japanese inquirers and their Chinese informants have been preserved, and they cover very complicated, in depth interesting discussions about the Taiping rebellion, English and French colonialism, Russian ambitions etc. To demonstrate the way in which they could communicate deeply by writing, Fogel points out a short exchange between Mine Kiyoshi and Guan Quingmei, both scholars of their respective countries. (p.79)
> [Mine] Kiyoshi: You have recently employed British and French troops. Does this not make possible a Shi-Jin disaster in the future? Are the affections of the British and French to be trusted?
> [Qingmei] replied: During the crisis last year, we did not bother being concerned about this, as we were planning for the future.
They're discussing the Taiping rebellion, but Mine Kiyoshi is referring to an episode from tenth century Chinese history to explain his point.
> it does reveal the easy manner in which educated Japanese and Chinese could communicate. What I have translated as “a Shi-Jin disaster” refers to Shi Jingtang (892–942) of the short-lived Jin dynasty (936–947, in the Five Dynasties era) employing Khitan troops, which led both to disaster for the Jin and to the subsequent founding of the alien Liao dynasty of the Khitans. The message to be conveyed to his Chinese interlocutor was clear: Can you really trust the Western (foreign) barbarians? Their minds and hearts are different from ours. Guan Qingmei effectively ignored the obvious thrust of the question.
So while these educated Japanese couldn't speak Chinese, they could communicate amazingly well without it.
There's one amusing footnote to these brush conversations. They took a lot of time. Time that these scholars had to spare, but not 20th century movie goers. Joshua Fogel finishes his book with a survey of fictional adaptations of the Senzaimaru's voyage. These usually focus on its most famous passenger, the previously mentioned Takasugi Shinsaku, who after his voyage to Shanghai would become a major player in overthrowing the Tokugawa shogunate.
Fogel recounts the making of a WWII propaganda film: a Japanese-created film with a Chinese co-director and Chinese actors, created for a Chinese audience. *Noroshi wa Shanhai ni agaru* (Signal fires over Shanghai)/*Chunjiang yihen* (Lingering resentment over Shanghai) with a message of Asian unity against Western Imperial powers. There's one brush conversation in the film, but the directors realized that watching Takasugi and Chinese scholars write long paragraphs to each other would be very boring. Instead, they
> introduced a female character by the name of Wang Ying (played by the stunningly beautiful actress Li Lihua, b. 1924, who turns all the Japanese heads when she makes her initial entrance) to act as an interpreter. (p. 181) | [
"Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial texts did not appear until the 8th century. During the Heian period (794–1185), Chinese had considerable influence on the vocabulary and phonology ... |
Were wax seals known to have been copied during history to create forgeries of letters? | You’re asking two questions here: 1) whether seals could be forged and 2) whether the recipients could tell if a seal was “the real thing” or not. My specialization is in medieval Britain, and my answers will come from that perspective, so I hope that time frame can get to what you're looking for.
In short, yes, seals could be forged and often were, but whether a recipient could verify them is a little more complicated, and it takes a little background on how seal use developed to answer fully. In northern Europe from the 11th to 13th centuries especially, the nobility started using seals much more than ever, and over this period, we see seal designs develop into a complex system of self-representation, in a very literal sense. This is a mostly non- or partially-literate society, and that’s kind of a hard concept for us to wrap our minds around, since we’re living in a society that’s completely and entirely bound up in reading and writing. If we need to communicate in any way, writing is either the go-to or the next best thing, and we’re taught that from an extremely early age. For medieval Europeans in the early/high middle ages, this isn’t the case. It isn’t that they just didn’t *learn* literacy, it’s that literacy as we know it *did not exist* outside mostly religious or high academic contexts. To a medieval noble, writing looked like a clunky, indirect middleman—where’s the authority? Where’s the immediacy? Where’s the personal presence?
This is where seals come in. Seals were how medieval people represented themselves in the most physical, literal way possible without actually being with whatever document the seal was attached to. Some of the earliest seals (I want to say 10th-11th centuries but I’m not completely sure) include hairs or bitemarks belonging to the sealer in the wax as a way of making themselves even more physically present in the seal. Until the later 12th century, only royalty and the pope used seals. The first time we see documented evidence of an attempt to nail down authority and authenticity was from Pope Alexander III in the late 12th century; he came up with the idea of a *sigiullum authenticum* while trying to regulate the emerging non-royal seals being used by lesser nobility. A seal matrix (the cast that you press into the wax) would include an image and be surrounded by authoritative Latin text that generally said something like “This is the true seal of Such and Such, Countess of…)” The images could be very sophisticated, but that’s another question—all this is to say that a seal was a person’s authority in physical form. The medieval scholar Peter Abelard skirted around the idea that a seal was in fact an *incarnation* of the person. So, if you are a medieval count drafting a charter, you have a cleric write down everything you dictate, theoretically in a room full of important witnesses, and then you and your witnesses attach your seals by little strips of parchment to the bottom of the charter. That charter would then be as good as if you were standing in front of whomever reads it and saying the words with your own mouth.
So when we talk about medieval seal forgery, we’re talking about identity theft of the highest degree. Seal matrixes and signet rings were extremely important to keep out of the wrong hands. For perspective, one 12th-century source notes that when Ranulf Flambard, King William Rufus’s Keeper of the Seal, was kidnapped while on a ship in the Thames, “he took the ring which he wore on his finger, and his notary took the King’s seal, and they threw them into the middle of the river, so that their enemies should not be able to circulate deceitfully forged writs throughout England where the ring and the seal were known.” Of course, you *could* make a convincing forgery if you just have a few good wax impressions of the seals, like Westminster Abbey did in the 11th century when they produced a few forged charters with Edward the Confessor’s seal. Forgeries of pre-Norman Conquest seals were especially useful because, well, there were no pre-Norman Conquest rulers left to prove them wrong.
Verifying a seal was another matter, and here, it seems to have come down to physical examination. The papacy kept working to address forgery and authenticity, and in 1199, Pope Innocent III examined a document sealed by Emperor Henry of the Holy Roman Empire, but the seal was damaged, so he couldn’t tell if it the legend said Ludovicus or Henricus. He concluded that the damage invalidated the document. Something similar happened with King Louis IX of France in the late 13th century—he had to invalidate one of his own charters because the seal was so damaged that only the legs remained and he couldn’t be sure it was his own, until another charter with the exact same impression was brought up to compare it to—an exact match, according to the source.
Again, this overview only covers a pretty narrow time frame, even if it was a pretty important one for northern Europe. After about 1250, seals become a lot more standardized and common, to the point that just about anyone could or did have a seal, and I know a lot less about them after that point--I'd love some backup from anyone with expertise further down the road!
Sources and Further Reading:
* [The Matter of Sealing in Medieval Thought and Praxis](_URL_1_) by Bridgette Bedos-Rezak
* *From Memory to Written Record in England 1066 - 1307* by M.T. Clanchy
* A [couple](_URL_0_) of [excellent](_URL_2_) blog posts on the subject, including some actual examples of forgeries, courtesy of the British Library | [
"Glyptics or \"glyptic art\" covers the field of small carved stones, including cylinder seals and inscriptions, especially in an archaeological context. Though they were keenly collected in antiquity, most carved gems originally functioned as seals, often mounted in a ring; intaglio designs register most clearly w... |
the warhammer 40000 universe | At the beginning of the 29th millennium (year 28,000), the Emperor, an immortal being, perfect in nearly every way, began a project to create for himself 20 sons. These 20 sons, the Primarchs, would each embody a particular aspect of the Emperor's perfection.
The project nearly came to fruition, but for the intervention of the Chaos Gods, four representations of humanity's darkest emotions. Their powers scattered the 20 children across the galaxy, each to a separate planet, to be raised in different ways.
After the scattering of the primarchs, the Emperor decided to launch a Great Crusade, to reclaim the galaxy for humanity, to reunite the planets separated by 7000 years of darkness and war, and to find his sons in the bargain. To this end, he created 20 Legions of genetically-enhanced super soldiers, the Space Marines. Each of these legions were thousands strong, and each Space Marine's enhancements came from the genetic code of their primarch.
As the 30th millennium, and the Emperor's Great Crusade, raged on, the primarchs were found, one by one. The first to be found, and soon to be the Emperor's favorite of all, was Horus, primarch of the 16th Legion, the Luna Wolves (soon to be renamed the Sons of Horus). Horus most closely embodied the perfection of the Emperor. The last to be found was Alpharius, primarch of the Alpha Legion, and he embodied the Emperor's secretive nature. There were, however, two primarchs about which very little is known. Their Legions have been struck from Imperial records, and the primarchs themselves were forbidden to speak of their unknown brothers.
In the beginning of the 31st millennium, Horus found himself lured to the Chaos Gods, and convinced eight other primarchs, and their Legions, to rebel against the Emperor in what would be known as the Horus Heresy. At the end of the Heresy, three primarchs lay dead. Horus himself was obliterated by the Emperor's own hand. The cataclysmic duel between Horus and the Emperor would force the Emperor to be enshrined in the Golden Throne, a life support machine powered by the souls of humans.
Shortly after the Emperor's Ascension to the Throne, Roboute Guilliman, the primarch that embodied the Emperor's tactical genius, wrote the Codex Astartes, a book that defined tactics and organization for the Space Marines. Shortly after the completion of the Codex Astartes, the nine loyal Legions were broken down into forty one-thousand-strong Chapters of Space Marines in the Second Founding. Nine of these chapters retained the names and insignia of their founding Legions.
Since that time, there have been at least 24 other Foundings of Space Marine Chapters, as chapters wax, wane, and are destroyed altogether. The great majority of Space Marine Chapters can trace their genetic lineage back to a founding Legion, one of the original nine, and this lineage defines many aspects of a particular chapter, including the level at which they follow the Codex Astartes, the value they place upon different aspects of war, and even some genetic traits, such as the Salamanders' coal-black skin or the Blood Angels' Red Thirst.
The Blood Ravens in particular are notable because they have no knowledge of their primarch, and as such, have no chapters that they can truly call "brother." This is extremely rare, for a chapter not to know their primarch, and is a source of great frustration for them. The Blood Ravens therefore value knowledge above all else, as there must be someone in the galaxy that knows the identity of their primarch.
I think that should do it... | [
"Warhammer 40,000: Rites of War is a turn-based strategy game based on the Panzer General 2 engine by SSI. It is set in the fictional \"Warhammer 40,000\" universe. It was produced by Games Workshop in 1999, and concerns the invasion of a Tyranid Hive fleet and the Eldar and Imperial efforts to defeat it. The game ... |
why does installing some linux distribution take no time at all, while windows takes hours? | Depends on the hardware. On an ssd it takes me less than 20 minutes to install Windows. Also, most Linux distros are much smaller than a Windows os. | [
"Reasons to change from other operating systems to Linux include better system stability, better malware protection, low or no cost, that most distributions come complete with application software and hardware drivers, simplified updates for all installed software, free software licensing, availability of applicati... |
how verizon got away with not building fiber networks in nyc, despite having been paid to do so | Technically, they're not getting away with it. The city audited the implementation, and now everybody knows they've been being bad. It's just too bad that it's six years later. They'll probably have to pay some fines and finish the project. | [
"On March 13, 2017, Verizon was sued by New York City for violating its cable franchise agreement, which required the provider to pass a fiberoptic network to all households in the city by June 30, 2014. Verizon disputed the claims, citing landlords not granting permission to install the equipment on their properti... |
how were the worlds first words agreed upon and how did everyone know what they meant? | The meanings actually came first, before there was proper language.
Human ancestors would have a variety of call, not unlike modern apes. One sound might mean "Help! Danger!" while another might mean "Who is that over there?". These grunts and screams got progressively more refined to express more subtle meanings, until they evolved into a true language. | [
"Sometimes, existing words were repurposed to translate these new concepts. For example, was a Classical Chinese Buddhist term which became the modern word for \"world.\" Other words were completely new creations, such as , , and . The majority of \"wasei-kango\" were created during this period. Following the Meiji... |
(nsfw) why is it that men "get back to their senses" after ejaculation? | [This comment](_URL_0_) summarizes it relatively simply. It comes down to the limbic system, which is a set of brain structures responsible for controlling instinct and mood. Basically, when you're that horny, some areas of your brain have less blood and oxygen going to them, and as soon as you ejaculate, the limbic system allows normal flow to the brain again, and you're back to thinking normally, for better or for worse. I would assume that this also explains why sometimes you may feel light headed right after ejaculation - there is a rush of blood back to the brain. In the end though, always remember to masturbate before making any important decision. | [
"In addition, due to the relaxation of the prostate smooth muscle, another side effect that arises in men being treated for BPH is impotence, as well as the inability to ejaculate. However, if any ejaculation activity does occur, oftentimes, it results in a phenomenon called retrograde ejaculation, in which semen f... |
why is dust so omnipresent and no matter how frequently we clean an area, it still comes back? | Dust is just tiny flakes of "stuff". As long as there's "stuff" moving around a room, you'll have dust. A lot of dust is made up of you: dead skin/hair and whatnot, but it's really just any fine particulate that settles on a surface over time. | [
"Dust can contain a number of materials including skin, mold and inorganic fragments like silica or sulfur. It is important to keep collections free of dust whenever possible because it can become bound to a surface over time, making it that significantly more difficult to remove. Dust is hygroscopic, meaning it is... |
if pink eye is super contagious, how can it infect only one eye without infecting the other? | Because most things that carry germs and touch your left eye also carry germs and touch your right eye. In the off circumstance that you only contacted one of your eyes with the fomite then it’s possible it only infects that one eye.
I had pink eye a couple times as a kid and it was always in both. Never heard of anyone getting one eye infected only. | [
"Furthermore, there is also the risk of blindness from the resulting infections, as well as styes. The difference in bacteria between the eye and mouth is why it is no longer recommended to lick contact lenses before they are inserted into one's eye.\n",
"The prognosis is better if one does not attempt to squeeze... |
why does peanut butter only stick to the roof of my mouth, and not the other surfaces i.e. my cheek? | Someone will have a much more scientific explanation, I'm sure, but do this test for me:
* Open your mouth wide. Swallow any excess saliva.
* Breathe in deeply a few times. Four or five times should do it, just until your breath starts to feel "cold" and you start getting the urge to close your mouth again.
* Now run your tongue along the roof of your mouth. It meets a bit of friction, right?
* Now run your tongue (you may have to repeat the breathing part) along your cheek. Still no friction?
The roof of your mouth is different fleshy material than your cheeks, and dries out much faster (also caused by a much firmer surface than your cheeks, etc.), causing peanut butter to "stick" there. Peanut butter also gets stuck in the crevices of your mouth and is sometimes hard to get out, these areas are similar in texture to the roof of your mouth.
Again, not wholly scientific, but hopefully answers the question. | [
"Peanut butter is a food paste or spread made from ground dry roasted peanuts. It often contains additional ingredients that modify the taste or texture, such as salt, sweeteners or emulsifiers. Peanut butter is served as a spread on bread, toast or crackers, and used to make sandwiches (notably the peanut butter a... |
why do dimes have the little ridges all along the side? | Back when coins were made of precious metals, some people would shave tiny bits off the sides of the coins. They would then melt down the metal and sell it. The tiny ridges allow you to verify that the entire coin is there. | [
"The usual shape for cutting cabochons is an ellipse. This is because the eye is less sensitive to small asymmetries in an ellipse, as opposed to a uniformly round shape, such as a circle, and because the elliptical shape, combined with the dome, is attractive. An exception is cabochons on some watches' crowns, whi... |
Can creatures that are small see even smaller creatures (ie bacteria) because they are closer in size? | In short, no.
Humans and other mammals have a very high resolution of sight which allows us to see things in detail. What you might call an insects 'sight' is not at all like ours. Ants for example can detect low level light and polarisation on top of this they communicate and travel based mostly on pheromones.
The way an insect sees the world will be blurry and almost unrecognisable to us.
There's a more in depth answer here: _URL_0_ | [
"Bacteria display a wide diversity of shapes and sizes, called morphologies. Bacterial cells are about one-tenth the size of eukaryotic cells and are typically 0.5–5.0 micrometres in length. However, a few species are visible to the unaided eye—for example, \"Thiomargarita namibiensis\" is up to half a millimetre l... |
Do rainbows make complete circles but we just don’t see them? Or is it just part of a circle? | They make complete circles.
Light forming part of the rainbow has to follow a path with makes a specific angle between the sun, the raindrop, and your eye. The circle described by the raindrops which satisfy the condition is usually partially obscured by objects in the way, or is cut off because the rain hits the ground.
In theory though, a rainbow is a circle. | [
"A circular rainbow should not be confused with the glory, which is much smaller in diameter and is created by different optical processes. In the right circumstances, a glory and a (circular) rainbow or fog bow can occur together. Another atmospheric phenomenon that may be mistaken for a \"circular rainbow\" is th... |
how does focusing a lens work? | A glass lens changes the direction of light that goes through. What happens with a focusing lens is that the light rays coming from an object at a specific distance in front of the lens will focus at another specific distance behind the lens. [Like this](_URL_0_). Objects at a different distance will focus at a different point behind the lens.
Focusing with your camera is simply moving the lens so that the point where your subject is in focus falls precisely on the camera film or sensor.
Designers know what settings will focus on a specific distance because the diffraction through the glass is completely predictable and can be calculated.
You can also [read this article](_URL_1_). | [
"The lens is a transparent, biconvex structure in the eye that, along with the cornea, helps to refract light to be focused on the retina. The lens, by changing shape, functions to change the focal distance of the eye so that it can focus on objects at various distances, thus allowing a sharp real image of the obje... |
if condoms were invented in the 19th century, how were stds not a globally widespread issue when condoms did not exist? | The short answer is they *were* an issue. The difference is the names those diseases went by. | [
"Initially used for contraceptive purposes, condoms also came to be used to limit or prevent sexually transmitted infections (STIs/STDs), even after other contraceptive methods were developed. As AIDS emerged and the sexual transmission of HIV became known in the 1980s, the use of condoms to prevent infection becam... |
why can non-american actors so commonly mimic a perfect american accent, but rarely can an american actor accurately mimic a foreign accent? | In part there's a survivor bias. If you can't do an American accent, you won't land a role playing an American. So we don't get to see actors with poor American accents. | [
"While actors in theatre are traditionally trained to have a \"Standard American\" accent, actors in film are instead trained to have a General American accent. Dialect coach Robert Easton said the Standard American accent was \"too semi-British\" and opted for General American. Easton commended British actors in l... |
Alexander the Great, Fredrik the Great, Cyrus the Great... by what criterion are these men given the title "Great"? | FYI, there was brief discussion on "the Great" last month. It won't answer all your questions, but it's a start...
[How did certain historical leaders come to be known as "the Great" or "the Terrible"?](_URL_0_) | [
"Alexander the Great (356BC-323BC) was a Greek king of Macedon and the creator of one of the largest empires in ancient history. He was tutored by the philosopher Aristotle and, as ruler, broke the power of Persia, overthrew the Persian king Darius III and conquered the Persian Empire. His Macedonian Empire stretch... |
Why is the Ferrel cell not rotating like the Hadley and Polar cells? | Until somebody who knows more about atmospheric circulation answers, what I can say is that the neat schematic of atmospheric circulation that you're probably thinking of is a very big simplification. The Hadley cell, which transfers heat from the equator to the mid-latitudes _is_ a significant feature of the large-scale atmospheric circulation. However, what happens at the mid-latitudes where the Ferrel cell theoretically sits is complex. Whilst the atmosphere would ideally likely to simply transport heat from the equator (where it is excess) to the poles (where it isn't), the rotation of the Earth and the resulting Coriolis force deflects this poleward transport and you instead end up with powerful subtropical jets which travel broadly along lines of latitude. This is (part of the reason) why the Hadley cell isn't able to just extent right to the poles, because these subtropical jets do not travel poleward and therefore cannot do anything about the temperature gradient.
In the neat schematic view of atmospheric circulation, this is where the Ferrel cell takes over. In reality, because the subtropical jets do not permit efficient polewards heat transport, the temperature gradient across the jet increases until the point that it's so large that you get a kind of [fluid instability](_URL_0_). This instability generates structures called [eddies](_URL_2_), which _can_ transport heat polewards. It is actually these eddies that dominate the state of the atmosphere in the mid-latitudes and if you look at any [synoptic weather chart](_URL_1_), these are the features that will jump out of you in the mid-latitudes in particular.
If you average over a long period of time, something resembling a Ferrel cell may appear. But this isn't actually what's happening at any particular moment in time, and it's quite misleading to think that there's some well-organised overturning cell in the mid-latitudes - there isn't! | [
"Migrating cells have a polarity—a front and a back. Without it, they would move in all directions at once, i.e. spread. How this polarity is formulated at a molecular level inside a cell is unknown. In a cell that is meandering in a random way, the front can easily give way to become passive as some other region, ... |
"New Research Undermines Key Argument for Human Evolution." Does this article make sense?
| Wow.
Ok:
*note: in the following I accept some of the author's premises just for the sake of the argument.*
> 2 At the purported fusion site, there is a very small number of intact telomere sequences and very few of them are in tandem or in the proper **reading frame**.
Uh, telomeres are not transcribed. They don't have a reading frame.
> The small number of randomly interspersed telomere sequences, both forward (“TTAGGG”) and reverse (“CCCTAA”), that populate both sides of the purported fusion site are not indicative of what should be found if an end-to-end chromosomal fusion actually took place.
What? Why? They're just making stuff up.
> 3 The 798-base core sequence surrounding the fusion site is not unique to the purported fusion site, but found throughout the human genome with similar sequences (80 percent or greater identity) located on nearly every chromosome. This indicates that the fusion site is some type of commonly occurring fragment of DNA in the human genome.
Really? Did you think about this for even one second? The sequence surrounding the site of fusion of the ends of two chromosomes will be telomeric sequence. Of course it will be found in the other chromosomes. *In their telomeres!*
> 5 Queries against the chimpanzee genome with fragments of human DNA sequence (alphoid sequences) found at the purported cryptic centromere site on human chromosome 2 did not produce any significant hits using two different DNA matching algorithms (BLAT and BLASTN).
You think you can just ram two chromosomes together and not have a little carnage?
> 6 The purported cryptic centromere on human chromosome 2, like the fusion site, is in a very different location to that predicted by a fusion event.
Uh huh? Are you just going to say that, or are you going to tell me what the hell you mean?
Ugh. What's the use. Responding to this drivel is probably counter productive, as giving them attention just recognizes them as holding a legitimate position. The whole article is just BS. | [
"Evolution is a 2017 study guide to evolution written by Steve Jones and illustrated by Rowan Clifford. The volume, according to the publisher's website, explores the extraordinary diversity of life on our planet through the complex interactions of one very simple theory, and, according to its author, goes from fox... |
how can you create a local currency that has actual value? | The problem is what is actual value? Value is only derived from someone else being willing to exchange something for it. If you made your new currency gold backed and issued say 100 fake dollars the sum of which equaled the value of one ounce of gold that you had stored in your fake central bank you and your friends could go about using that currency however you chose. 2 things can happen, if none of you ever cash in for the gold then the system is no different than using a system that isnt backed by gold, like the US dollar. Or some day in the future all the bills are eventually cashed in for gold, hopefully the guy who ends up with the most gold did a lot of work for the rest of you guys, otherwise he is coming out with a pretty nice profit. Regardless of what happens that gold always had a vlaue in both US dollars and in your fake dollars, so at any time you could have exchanged for US dollars and it would make no difference. | [
"In economics, a local currency is a currency that can be spent in a particular geographical locality at participating organisations. A regional currency is a form of local currency encompassing a larger geographical area. A local currency acts as a complementary currency to a national currency, rather than replaci... |
how do insulated bottles (such as thermos brand) so effectively keep warm foods warm? | There are 2 containers, inner and outer with an effective vacuum between them. This cuts off 2 main processes of heat transfer [Conduction](_URL_1_) and [Convection](_URL_1_). The surfaces in contact with the vacuum are brightly polished which reduces the heat absorbed by [radiation](_URL_0_), by reflecting it away.
[This is a diagram of a thermos flask](_URL_2_) | [
"Insulated beverage containers, or KOOZIE branded products, are used to insulate a chilled beverage from warming by warm air or sunlight. Using an insulated beverage container, or KOOZIE branded product, can reduce the rate a drink warms in the sun by up to 50%.\n",
"Bottle warmers warm previously made and refrig... |
everything that has happened with the chris dorner situation to this point | _URL_0_
This pretty well explains everything you'd need to know about it.
| [
"At the start of season 6, the rest of the team notices how Sheldon appears distracted and insisting on working overtime a lot. In episode 606 \"It Happened to Me,\" he's staying on the couch of a friend's apartment when the man is arrested for embezzlement. Sheldon claims he was just crashing for the night but Fla... |
if only 3% of the water one earth is fresh, how is there so much drinkable water (at least in developed countries)? | 3% of all of Earths water is still a fuckton of water. | [
"The United Nations (UN) estimates that, of 1.4 billion cubic kilometers (1 quadrillion acre-feet) of water on Earth, just 200,000 cubic kilometers (162.1 billion acre-feet) represent fresh water available for human consumption.\n",
"Water is the world's most consumed drink, however, 97% of water on Earth is non-... |
rocket propulsion. | Newtons 3rd law: for every force applied there is a equal force applied in the opposite direction.
Ok in ELI 5 terms: Have you ever punched a wall? well you know that it is gonna hurt right? well this is because when you punch the wall the wall is actually "punching you back" with the same force you punch the wall with.
Now how does this apply to rockets you may ask? well rockets have really big engines that put out a lot of force. So when those engines light up they exert a force on the ground and the ground (like the wall) pushes the rocket up with the same force causing it to lift. | [
"Spacecraft propulsion is a method that allows a spacecraft to travel through space by generating thrust to push it forward. However, there is not one universally used propulsion system: monopropellant, bipropellant, ion propulsion, etc. Each propulsion system generates thrust in slightly different ways with each s... |
why we think the "bloop" sound is from an animal and not a natural occurrence. | Huh.. sped up like that it sounds like an air bubble.
People think it's an animal sound because we know animals can make sounds kind of like it. There's also reason to believe it's something else because it was so loud and because we've never heard it before. | [
"According to the NOAA description, it \"rises rapidly in frequency over about one minute and was of sufficient amplitude to be heard on multiple sensors, at a range of over .\" The NOAA's Dr. Christopher Fox did not believe its origin was man-made, such as a submarine or bomb, nor familiar geological events such a... |
why do we have difference suffixes for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, but all the rest* use th? | "First" or 1st comes from the word "foremost".
"Second" or 2nd comes from Latin "secundus" which means "following" or "next".
Source: My 8th grade math teacher. | [
"While the digraphs \"CH\", \"PH\", \"RH\" and \"TH\" were at one time used in many words of Greek origin, most languages have now replaced them with \"C/QU\", \"F\", \"R\" and \"T\". Only French has kept these etymological spellings, which now represent or , , and , respectively.\n",
"BULLET::::- The digraphs kh... |
how do hemispherectomy patients regain functionality in their whole bodies? | This rerouting only is possible for very young patients. I know a teen who had it done and he has incomplete use of one half of his body. So he limps and such. But a baby who has this done will likely be completely fine. Some physical therapy is likely necessary. The young have a lot of neuroplasticity. | [
"Overall, hemispherectomy is a successful procedure. A 1996 study of 52 individuals who underwent the surgery found that 96% of patients experienced reduced or completely ceased occurrence of seizures post-surgery. Studies have found no significant long-term effects on memory, personality, or humor, and minimal cha... |
What religion did Muhammad practice before founding Islam? | I'm sure there's more to say about it, but u/frogbrooks provided some great comments in [this thread](_URL_0_) a few years ago, discussing Muhammed's pre-Islamic beliefs and how they compared with other local religions. | [
"Donner's book \"Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam\", an account of the early years of the spiritual movement that would come to be known as Islam, was published by Harvard University Press in May 2010. Donner's main argument is that what came to be called Islam began as a monotheistic \"Believers... |
if eli5 suggests we search eli5 or google before asking an eli5 question, and i can find the answer to every eli5 question on google without reading any of the comments, what is the motivation or psychology behind people using eli5? | Karma, intellectual laziness, or simply lowering the barrier to entry I would think. ELI5 having been made a default subreddit reminds me of when WoW replaced their detailed talent trees... | [
"BULLET::::2. A user specifies some keywords he would like to search and the search engine answers the query immediately by looking up the indexing result and responds to the user with all the documents that contains the keywords.\n",
"answering (i.e. users could ask questions in English to the search engine apar... |
how are we still speculating about and uncovering tombs from pyramids we explored almost 100 years ago? | Not the same pyramid - Tutankhamun was not buried in a pyramid. Same tomb, though. No one noticed the "ghost" doorways because they were bricked and plastered up. It wasn't until the recent high-res scans that tiny differences and cracks in the walls were noticed. | [
"Excavations have resulted in about eight kilometers of tunnels inside the pyramid, which began with two in 1931 to prove that the hill was an archeological find. Within, altars with offerings, floors, walls and buried human remains from around 900 AD were discovered. Today, only about 800 meters of these tunnels a... |
what exactly is "missing" in the brain/mental processes when someone has above average written communication skills, yet poor/below average verbal communication skills? | When speaking your brain has to translate the words in your head, into impulses that go to your vocal cords and lungs. This is a synced process I.E your body has to send the impulse continually or you won't get the word out. This takes brain power which you could normally use to create better arguments. It also prevents you from correcting mistakes mid sentence.
Writting doesn't have this problem as you can stop, think, and rewrite correcting for mistakes this makes communication less taxing and can lead to better argument.
My suggestion is to sign up for debating class (I.E Kung-Fu with words) or join a club they'll help you practice your verbal skills and show you various tricks to make better verbal arguments. | [
"A communication disorder is any disorder that affects an individual's ability to comprehend, detect, or apply language and speech to engage in discourse effectively with others. The delays and disorders can range from simple sound substitution to the inability to understand or use one's native language.\n",
"BUL... |
Is race really relevant for a medical diagnosis? | Many reasons why race may be relevant.
Certain genetic diseases are more prevalent in some ethnic groups than others.
For example, sickle cell anemia is more common in people of African, Hispanic, Mediterranean descent. Thalassemia affects people of Mediterranean and South/East Asian descent.
Cystic fibrosis is more common in people of Caucasian dsecent.
Tay-Sachs disease is more common in Ashkenazi Jews and French Canadians.
Another reason is that certain races respond better/worse to medications than others. Hydralazine is a drug used for hypertension and heart failure that seems to work better in African Americans than other populations.
Last reason is that certain ethnic groups have certain practices that make them more prone to some diseases. For example people in the Middle East commonly drink very, very hot tea - nearly doubling their risk in certain esophageal cancers. Some groups (e.g. Japan) also have nitrite rich diets that predispose them to stomach cancers. | [
"There is an active debate among biomedical researchers about the meaning and importance of race in their research. The primary impetus for considering race in biomedical research is the possibility of improving the prevention and treatment of diseases by predicting hard-to-ascertain factors on the basis of more ea... |
why do liquids like beet juice stain so effectively? | The bonds of the compound that give beet juice (and other things that stain) their deep color are oriented in a way that make them very strong. These compounds (called chromophores) absorb visible light so you see them as colored.
It is quite difficult to break these bonds using just soap or water. However, something like bleach (an oxidizing or reducing agent) can break or reorient these bonds so that the chromophore loses its ability to absorb light, and becomes invisible to you. | [
"A number of their juice products, designed for 'extended shelf life', are colored with the extract of cochineal beetles. As this previously embarrassed the company, they use 'Carmine' on the label which is an alternate name for the dye.\n",
"Lemon juice, containing citric acid which is the active bleaching agent... |
how do they put empty space into a flash drive? | The answer from /u/WRSaunders is almost correct. The charge isn't really stored on capacitors, it is stored on the "floating gate" of [special-purpose transistors](_URL_0_). The gate is called floating because it is not electrically connected to anything. The charges are forced onto/off the floating gate through a thin insulating oxide.
They are similar in certain ways to capacitors, but not quite the same thing.
| [
"Fill flash or \"fill-in flash\" describes flash used to supplement ambient light in order to illuminate a subject close to the camera that would otherwise be in shade relative to the rest of the scene. The flash unit is set to expose the subject correctly at a given aperture, while shutter speed is calculated to c... |
Do snakes actually have tails and if so, where does it start? | Snakes do have tails, they start in the region behind the cloaca (the opening used for reproduction/waste excretion). The tails on most snakes are relatively short compared to the overall body length. Here's an image that will give you an idea
_URL_0_ | [
"Based on this definition, the tail of a snake would typically consist of a small portion of the rear end of its body, where none of its vital organs are being housed, and begin at its last rib, contrary to the commonly held assumption that the tail begins precisely at the middle of the snake's body due to its line... |
why does the united states require a census at great expense, beyond article 1 section 2, to count its citizens when there is more than ample computerized data (state id cards, passports, birth certificates, tax statements, intelligence records, etc.) on its population to complete the task? | Not everyone currently in the country has all of those things. Some people don't have state ID's, some are here illegally and don't have a passport, birth certificate, some people don't get tax statements, and most people aren't on intelligence records.
The census literally goes door to door. It's the most accurate way of compiling this information since most of the things you listed don't apply to everyone and all that information is spread among 50+ different governments within the US. | [
"The United States Constitution and federal law mandate that a census be taken every ten years in order to apportion the number of members of the United States House of Representatives among the several states. Census statistics are also used in order to apportion federal funding for many social and economic progra... |
why isn't the regrowth of nerves and other key cells using stem cells not more popular or more researched if it works so well? | The ethics of Stem Cells are a little fuzzy.
The best Stem Cells for use in Humans come from Human Fetuses. That means harvesting cells from freshly dead babies.
Any situation that leads to a researcher extracting fresh stem cells is going to stumble afoul some dark decisions by one party or the other. | [
"Stem cell technologies are always salient both in the minds of the general public and scientists because of their large potential. Recent advances in stem cell research have allowed researchers to ethically pursue studies in nearly every facet of the body, which includes the brain. Research has shown that while mo... |
Does calorie restriction inhibit healing? | Also, does calorie restriction inhibit or change brain functions? Just wondering, as I do believe that my thought patterns change when I suddenly go for a long time without eating. | [
"Studies have demonstrated that calorie restriction displays positive effects on the lifespan of organisms even though it is accompanied by increases in oxidative stress. Many studies suggest this may be due to anti-oxidative action, oxidative stress suppression, or oxidative stress resistance which occurs in calor... |
I'm an academic working in Paris in the summer of 1940; how disruptive is the German occupation to my work? Would German officials pry into my affairs, and perhaps even censor or confiscate my research? How seriously would the war disrupt my ability to read and review other international studies? | This is a small piece of the pie: in 1945, the US State Department asked [Sven S. Liljeblad](_URL_0_) (1899-2000) to assess what remained of European anthropologists, folklorists and linguists in Europe, in the wake of the war. Liljeblad had risen in the pre-war ranks with his important 1927 dissertation on the Grateful Dead (a folklore motif). He had extensive contacts with continental scholars, and in the final years of the 1930s, he operated an underground out of Copenhagen to help Marxists, Jews, and others to escape the Nazis. With the outbreak of war, Liljeblad was forced to flee Europe since he was a "marked man." He had also stolen money for bribes (after the war, King Gustav VI Adolf wrote to Liljeblad to tell him all was forgiven and asking for his return to Sweden).
After corresponding and attempting to correspond with former colleagues, Sven sent a report in 1946 (and a follow-up report several months later) to State: he indicated that the vast majority of the pre-war European scholars outside of Germany, Britain, Ireland, Sweden, Spain, and Italy were dead. Scholars in occupied territories were some of the first victims of purges. In answer to your question in the case of this part of the academic community: the disruption was nearly total because it was usually fatal. Surviving scholars had often survived because they fled, leaving a disrupted, nearly non-existent network of scholars.
The source of this is correspondence in the Liljeblad papers at the University of Nevada, Reno Special Collections Library.
Edit: I meant to conclude with the following observation: based on the evidence in the Lijeblad Papers, it is easy to extrapolate that the US State Department reached out to other foreign scholars who had reached North America before or during the war, to ask them about survivors and the surviving networks in other academic fields. I imagine those records are somewhere in the State Department files or in the National Archive. | [
"In his essay \"Paris under the Occupation\", Sartre wrote that the \"correct\" behaviour of the Germans had entrapped too many Parisians into complicity with the occupation, accepting what was unnatural as natural:\n",
"Matters looked grim across Axis-occupied Europe. After the surrender of France in 1940 and th... |
how is bacon made? | Bacon is made out of [pork belly](_URL_1_) that has been [cured](_URL_2_ or [smoked](_URL_0_.
It can then be sliced (as you often see in the supermarket) or left whole. | [
"Bacon is often used for a cooking technique called \"barding\" consisting of laying or wrapping strips of bacon or other fats over a roast to provide additional fat to a lean piece of meat. It is often used for roast game birds, and is a traditional method of preparing beef filet mignon, which is wrapped in strips... |
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