question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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how do "game rooms" and other illegal casinos get away with it for so long in places where gambling is illegal i.e. texas | It probably varies based on the location, but in Texas some of them are basically skirting the rules. They have a membership to go in and play, and don't take a cut, so it effectively becomes just people getting a place to gamble against other people, which is legal.
In other cases, the casino is on a reservation. That's technically considered tribal lands, and isn't subject to state regulations. | [
"Casino games as well as spread betting and betting exchange are not licensed, because the lawmakers said they were too addictive. Poker is one of the games played at casinos, but it is legal, because the outcome of the game depends on the skill of the player, who can alternate their strategy depending on the game ... |
what happens to stomach acid once food is ready to move to the next step of digestion? how does the body dispose of it without causing harm to itself? | If you mix an acid and a base, you get salt and water. Your stomach has hydrochloric acid. It also has a special lining that protects it from acid. Food and acid then goes from your stomach to the duodenum. There is another connection from your pancreas to the duodenum. The pancreas secretes a base called bicarbonate. This neutralizes the hydrochloric acid. | [
"Digestion begins in the mouth with the secretion of saliva and its digestive enzymes. Food is formed into a bolus by the mechanical mastication and swallowed into the esophagus from where it enters the stomach through the action of peristalsis. Gastric juice contains hydrochloric acid and pepsin which would damage... |
what is the white stuff on my tongue and where does it come from? | Bacteria and debris. Comes from eaten food and dead cells. You should clean your tongue more often, as it isn't supposed to be white. | [
"BULLET::::- The tongue starts out by having a white coating on it while the papillae of the tongue are swollen and reddened. The protrusion of the red papillae through the white coating gives the tongue a \"white strawberry\" appearance.\n",
"A normal, healthy tongue is pale red or pink with a thin white coating... |
Is it possible to make metallic hydrogen on earth? | I did a project on this and there has been a few claims of creating metallic hydrogen over the years. These use methods which should produce the pressures required for metallic hydrogen. The problem is when you are dealing with such high pressures, there are lots of things that can go wrong to give false positives.
You are right in thinking that metallic hydrogen would be a brilliant fuel source, but manufacturing it seems to be too energy intensive at the moment. | [
"In January 2017, Dias and Isaac F. Silvera (Thomas D. Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences) at Harvard University reported the creation of metallic hydrogen in a laboratory. They claimed to have gathered experimental evidence that solid metallic hydrogen had been synthesised, using a diamond anvil cell.\n",
"... |
How accurate is the stigma surrounding "Gypsies" throughout history, specifically in Russia immediately preceding and during the Reign of Czar Nicholas II? | I don't have a lot of primary sources, but I ran through the articles on the Russian wikipedia and there's some good stuff. My initial feel based on general knowledge of the period seems to be correct that it was a different attitude towards gypsies (Roma) in the Russian empire.
The Roma are known as цыгане (pronounced tzigani). The earliest mention in legal docs is from 1733 referring to the integration and taxation of the people. The notice refers to them as 'born in the lands', meaning that this was at least the second generation of this ethnicity.
My hunch from 19th century literature was that Russian Roma were known as entertainers and traveling minstrels as well as merchants and horse breeders. This seems to be largely corroborated by the articles referrenced in the wiki article (_URL_0_ - in Russian). During the Napoleonic Wars the wealthier Roma donated considerable sums and horses to the war effort and many young men volunteered to serve in various horseback regiments. Later in the 19th century Roma performances became very fashionable in the upper echelons on the Russian empire to the point where a performance in the Maliy Theater was given by a touring group. Many stopped migrating and settled in permanent cities.
It seems that they were not perceived as thieves or viewed negatively. | [
"Many Russians believed that tsars and tsarevichs bore special marks on their bodies symbolising their royal status, which became known as royal marks. Four of the pretenders claiming to be Peter III showed royal marks to legitimise their claims. The first fake Peter to have royal marks was Gavrila Kremnev who Lev ... |
Can the visual cortex be stimulated in ways that
cause the perception of 'impossible' colors? | Some possible answers -- depending on the definition of impossible you had in mind.
* Some scientists think that 2-4% of women have Tetrachromacy - meaning they can see colors impossible to the rest of us: _URL_1_
* You can selectively desensitize some of the cones in your eyes, but not the others; letting you temporarily see hues that appear more saturated than otherwise possible. For example - this optical illusion desensitizes your red-sensing cones letting you see a deeper cyan than you otherwise would: _URL_0_
* Wikipedia claims that some scientists claim that some people can see a yellow-blue that's not green: _URL_3_
* The colors seen by people with color Synesthesia meet the second part of your question "a sensation of color that [at least wasn't] caused by stimulation of the cone cells" _URL_2_
| [
"A change in brain structure (typically lesions) disturbs the psychological process of understanding sensory information, in this case visual information. Disturbance of only visual motion is possible due to the anatomical separation of visual motion processing from other functions. Like akinetopsia, perception of ... |
how is medicine made/dispensed at a pharmacy? | For most common things, sure. A normal corner pharmacy probably stocks 1,000's of different pills and liquids. For uncommon things, they have it shipped in from the manufacturer. My wife has prescriptions that are overnighted directly to our house in cold containers. | [
"Formulated drugs are stored in container closure systems for extended periods of time. These include blisters, bottles, vials, ampules, syringes, and cartridges. The containers can be made from a variety of materials including glass, plastic, and metal. The drug may be stored as a solid, liquid, or gas.\n",
"An ... |
how did "special head" on america's got talent do his levitation act? | It appears to be a variation of the traditional version of this that street performers do:
_URL_0_
Basically he has a bar in his arm and around his back to hold his weight (must have some special apparatus to allow him to stand beforehand. It's probably bulky which is why he moved so slowly) and the staff connects to a base beneath the carpet, so his entire weight is distributed and he doesn't have to lift any of it.
There's no way the show runners didn't know how this was done since they had to help put out the heavy metal plate and the rug to cover it up. | [
"Martin Joe Laurello (born Martin Emmerling, 1885-1955), also known by the stage names Human Owl and Bobby the Boy with the Revolving Head, was a German-American sideshow performer and biological rarity who could turn his head 180 degrees. He performed with groups such as Ripley's Believe it or Not, Ringling Brothe... |
Could fatal diseases such as AIDS eventually evolve to spread by different means, such as airborne? | The route by which infectious diseases spread is based on a number of factors.
- Where they live (e.g. cold virus lives in the nose and throat)
- Number of particles required to cause disease (which in turn is usually related to a bug's ability to replicate and avoid the immune system)
- Makeup of the bug (some diseases are very hardy outside a human being, while others die quickly outside of a host)
HIV is an enveloped virus which is quite wimpy outside the body. It also does not reach high concentrations in saliva. It would be unlikely for it to evolve an airborne or droplet spread ability, although anything is theoretically possible. (if it altered its outer composition so it was hardier, for example. However, in that case, it may lose another ability, such as the ability to infect immune cells). | [
"When in July 1982, the first cases of AIDS appear in hemophiliacs receiving highly filtered blood samples, the scientific community realized that AIDS was most likely caused by a virus. Jacques Leibowitch noticed some intriguing similarities between AIDS and the pathology linked to HTLV (Human T Cell Leukemia Lymp... |
Why does the body not process pain after a serious injury? | When placed in a stressful situation, e.g. the cutting open of one's hand, your body has a fight-or-flight response. This is the term for a combination of several effects including increased heart rate, slowing of digestion, etc. These effects are the result of an increased presence of a group of neurotransmitters which include epinephrine (adrenaline), norepinephrine, and dopamine. This fight-or-flight response is evolutionary advantageous in several ways, one of them being a dulled pain response.
As to the reason for the decreased sensation of pain, I believe it has to do with the initiation of the response as a whole. First there is a stressful stimulus. Then your body begins to take action.
Increased oxygen intake is necessary for greater muscle action? Increase heart rate, increase respiratory rate, dilate muscular blood vessels, and divert blood from non-essential systems (digestion). Epinephrine accomplishes many of these things; however, to form epinephrine, norepinephrine must first be formed. Norepinephrine is formed from dopamine. Dopamine is thus a precursor to epinephrine (cool/related graphic below!). Dopamine is also shown to deal with pain response and thus the production of epinephrine may contribute to the decreased sensation of pain.
The main reason for this phenomenon, however, most likely lies with the release of endorphins. Endorphins, like the neurotransmitter above, are released during stressful situations (it's also responsible for orgasms feeling, well, like orgasms). Their primary effect is the overproduction of dopamine which as mentioned results in a decreased perception of pain and a general 'good feeling'.
tl;dr - dopamine
As promised: _URL_0_ | [
"Pain motivates the individual to withdraw from damaging situations, to protect a damaged body part while it heals, and to avoid similar experiences in the future. Most pain resolves once the noxious stimulus is removed and the body has healed, but it may persist despite removal of the stimulus and apparent healing... |
how do hypnotists make people do stupid things on stage? | They're not really pretending. The brain has a great capability to trick itself...if it wants to. The object of stage 'hypnosis' is to make the subject want to fool themselves.
If you got up on stage, firmly set that you wouldn't do anything the hypnotist wanted, it wouldn't work. The only reason it does is because the audience members approach it wanted to be hypnotized. | [
"Out of the crowd the hypnotist will spot people who appear trusting, extroverted and willing to put on a show. The hypnotist starts them off by having them imagine ordinary situations that they have likely encountered, like being cold or hot, hungry or thirsty then gradually builds to giving them a suggestion to d... |
how bacteria appears in its enironment? | > Or is it in the egg "by default"?
First the chicken needs to have salmonella living in it, and then the bacteria can enter the egg as it is forming in the oviduct of the chicken. | [
"Prosthecate bacteria are a non-phylogenetically related group of Gram-negative bacteria that possess appendages, termed \"prosthecae\". These cellular appendages are neither pili nor flagella, as they are extensions of the cellular membrane and contain cytosol. One notable group of prosthecates is the genus \"Caul... |
why does bring your knees up to your chest relieve stomach pain? | Something along the lines of: when you bend your knees up to your abdomen, it relieves the pressure inside your abdominal cavity that is causing the pain (usually triggered by the nerves in the lining of the abdominal cavity rather than from organs, themselves)
Edit: Textbook answer:
"A patient with severe abdominal pain will often...draw his knees up toward the chest, and breathe fast and shallowly to reduce the movement of the diaphragm. The condition usually involves irritation of the peritoneum (lining of the abdomen" (Brady Prehospital Emergency Care, 9th edition) | [
"Symptoms can include abdominal pain, chest pain, nausea and radiating pain to the back, neck, and shoulders. Lifting heavy objects or trauma to the chest may be the cause of this musculoskeletal disorder and pain may be heightened by bending or twisting. Anesthetic and steroid injections are commonly employed to t... |
Why does my face gets flushed after drinking alcohol? | Are you Asian? If so, it's probably [this](_URL_0_) | [
"Alcohol flush reaction is a condition in which a person develops flushes or blotches associated with erythema on the face, neck, shoulders, and in some cases, the entire body after consuming alcoholic beverages. The reaction is the result of an accumulation of acetaldehyde, a metabolic byproduct of the catabolic m... |
why do old people always put those bright green tennis balls on their walkers? | its to make it easier to push along a carpet and less risk of catching or buffing wooden floors | [
"Required equipment is fairly simple and inexpensive: junior tennis racquets and standard lawn tennis ball. In decades past, modified tennis balls were manufactured for the game. They had higher pressure and were slightly smaller than tennis balls. The last specially manufactured ball was green, so that it could be... |
The Articles of Confederation allowed Canada to join the US if desired. Was this a serious prospect at the time? | It was indeed, though more so before the American Civil War. Donald Warner's 1960 book, *The Idea of Continental Union: Agitation for the Annexation of Canada to the United States, 1849-1893* is one of the more complete works. I'm more familiar with it in the context of British Columbian annexation, which ended as a serious topic about the time that word of confederation reached the colony from across the continent.
In early 1867, the Alaska Purchase treaty was signed, and this spurred a massive wave of discussion in British Columbia about the future of that colony. [I wrote about this period extensively in an answer to a semi-related question.](_URL_0_)
In fall 1867, the talk of American annexation was serious enough that U.S. Army officers visited the colony on an advance mission to judge the likelihood of incorporating it alongside Alaska into the United States. Although the officers reported that two-thirds of the colony was in favor of annexation, the idea of Confederation was attractive enough to defuse the drive for annexation. In addition, the recovering economic fortunes of British Columbia (which at the time was in a deep recession) further undercut those who wished British Columbia to become just plain Columbia. | [
"The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was an agreement among the 13 original states of the United States of America that served as its first constitution. It was approved, after much debate (between July 1776 and November 1777), by the Second Continental Congress on November 15, 1777, and sent to the s... |
why does sleeptalking happen? like, why do our in-dream actions correspond with our real ones? | It's your body not completely disengaging your body from your brain during dream state. Call it a mild form of sleep walking. Ever get those ticks in your arms or legs as you fall asleep? This is your mind "testing" to see if it has disengaged from your body. I don't remember the specifics from the lecture but i'm sure somebody will fill in the gaps better. | [
"Oftentimes people experience external stimuli, such as an alarm clock or music, being distorted and incorporated into their dreams. Freud explained that this is because \"the mind is withdrawn from the external world during sleep, and it is unable to give it a correct interpretation ...\" He further explained that... |
At what point does .9 repeating differ from 9.../10...? | Once it is infinite/recurring. There is a distinct difference between going on for a really long time, and being defined as an infinite sequence of 9s. | [
"For numbers greater that nine, there is only one word for each numeral. they no longer vary depending on what they are being used to count. The Pingepalese words for numbers greater than 9 are as follows:\n",
"When represented as a digit, the number \"10\" is used to encode the number zero. Because there are onl... |
How did the passage of the 14th amendment change the powers of the US states? [US History] | Here is John Bingham, author of the relevant section of the 14th Amendment, talking about it, post-ratification:
> Sir, before the ratification of the amendment, the State could deny to any citizen the right of trial by jury, and it was done. Before that the State could abridge the freedom of the press, and it was so done in half the States of the Union. Before that a State, as in the case of the State of Illinois, could make it a crime punishable by fine and imprisonment for any citizen within her limits, in obedience to the injunction of our divine Master, to help a slave who was ready to perish; to give him shelter, or break with him his crust of bread. The validity of that State upon the rights of conscience and the duty life was affirmed, to the shame and disgrace America, in the Supreme Court of the States; but nevertheless affirmed in to the requirements of the Constitution. [[Moore v. Illinois, 55 U.S. (14 How.) 13, 19-20 (1852)](_URL_0_)]
> Under the Constitution as it is not as it was, and by force of the fourteenth amendment, no State hereafter can imitate the bad example of Illinois, to which I have referred, nor can any State ever repeat the example of Georgia and send men to the penitentiary, as did State, for teaching the Indian to read the lessons of the New Testament, to know that evangel, "The pure in heart shall see God."
Speech of Rep. John Bingham, [42 Cong., 1st sess., Cong. Globe app. 84 (March 31, 1871)](_URL_1_).
As you can see, Bingham repeatedly invokes the freedom of speech; and for good reason. Many Southern states had restricted speech rights in an attempt to control literacy among slaves, and to suppress criticism of slavery. | [
"The Convention did not start with national powers from scratch, it began with the powers already vested in the Articles Congress with control of the military, international relations and commerce. The Constitution added ten more. Five were minor relative to power sharing, including business and manufacturing prote... |
What makes peanut butter & jelly different in terms of stickiness? | Here's a recipe for peanut butter:
_URL_0_
And here's one for jelly:
_URL_1_
Look at the sugar difference: The peanut butter has 1.5 teaspoons of honey for 1.5 cups of PB. Since the jelly recipe makes 8 cups, that works out to about 8 teaspoons of honey if we made that much PB. Honey and sugar substitute at about 1:1, which means you have the equivalent of 8 teaspoons sugar in the same amount of peanut butter as jelly, but you have 7 and a half *cups* of sugar in the jelly, or *360* teaspoons! (and that's not counting the sugar found in the strawberries themselves).
Wet sugar is pretty sticky. Hell, BASF points out that the stuff used to be used as hair spray back in the 50's. So the basic answer is that sugar is sticky, and jelly has a whole lot more sugar in it than peanut butter does.
| [
"Peanut butter is served as a spread on bread, toast, or crackers, and used to make sandwiches (notably the peanut butter and jelly sandwich). It is also used in a number of breakfast dishes and desserts, such as peanut-flavored granola, smoothies, crepes, cookies, brownies, or croissants. It is similar to other nu... |
why do rich people always pursue more money? isn't there a ceiling in which they can already have everything they've ever wanted/needed? | $1 million seems like a lot of money. I'll be set when I have $1 million.
Shit, $1 million is hardly enough to have a decent retirement, I need $2 million.
Hmm, $2 million is nice, but I could have a nice cottage on the lake travel to Europe regularly if I had $4 million.
Well, $4 million is good, but what if the market crashes or I have a terrible health problem? I need $6 million to be safe.
And this can go on and on. No matter how much you have, there is always something more you could have or could achieve with more money. Most people are subject to this way of thinking.
I would be willing to bet that even very wealthy people who have given billions to charity would fire their money manager if he happened to fall short of his benchmark return a couple years in a row. Even people who just want more money to give away still want more money. | [
"Corresponding to financial resources, the wealthy strategically organize their money so that it will produce profit. Affluent people are more likely to allocate their money to financial assets such as stocks, bonds, and other investments which hold the possibility of capital appreciation. Those who are not wealthy... |
During the Late Bronze Age, what kinds of objects would be made of iron, and how common/available were they? | Early iron wasn't particularly better than bronze. In fact, crude iron is often _softer_ than bronze. As both copper and tin melt at low temperature, bronze is easy to work with. It's also easy to mass-produce objects in bronze, where early steel was close to alchemy and requires very skilled smiths to work it properly. Furthermore, bronze doesn't rust. There are 3,000 year old bronze swords that are still usable. The earliest iron swords are mostly dust.
So far I'm answering a question that you didn't ask, but but it's important to establish that there wasn't a huge technical pressure to switch from bronze to iron. The bronze age actually came to an end due to more a more mundane force: availability.
Tin is pretty rare and unevenly distributed. Europe in particular is tin-poor. For the Romans, this wasn't a problem, as they could import whatever from wherever, but as the Empire broke down, so did trade routes and people had to make do with what they had at hand, which in this case was iron.
So the real answer is this: if you lived near both tin and copper, the bronze age was slow coming to an end. If you didn't live near tin* and copper, then you couldn't make bronze and therefore most (or all) of your metal implements were made of iron.
*: Not entirely true. You can also make bronze with copper and arsenic (cleverly called arsenical bronze) but the arsenic compounds necessary were just as difficult to come by as tin, so the same rules apply. Also, arsenic is poisonous and tended to kill the smiths working with it. | [
"During the initial centuries of the first millennium BC bronze was still the most used metal, although iron was progressively introduced. Main products include tools (sickles, hoes, ploughs, axes), domestic items (knives and cauldrons), and weapons (antenna swords, spearheads). During the initial Iron Age the loca... |
if scientist can reach absolute zero what will it provide in the field of science and everyday living? | It would mean that a lot of our understanding of physics and chemistry is wrong so we'd have to do a lot of serious work to try to fix science. Absolute zero being impossible to reach is one of the most fundamental tenets of science right now, it would be a huge blow if it turned out to be possible.
It's impossible to say what the practical applications and stuff would be, since (as we understand things right now) it's not possible. We can't predict how it would be useful using our current theories, since our current theories say it's not possible. | [
"Absolute zero cannot be achieved, although it is possible to reach temperatures close to it through the use of cryocoolers, dilution refrigerators, and nuclear adiabatic demagnetization. The use of laser cooling has produced temperatures less than a billionth of a kelvin. At very low temperatures in the vicinity o... |
if men are required to register with selective service, why not automatically have men registered when they turn 18? | Because this way, you have to sign a document promising to go to war if needed so when they tell you and you say "no" they can force you. | [
"In the United States, men between the ages of 18 and 25 and residing in the country with limited exception are required to sign up and maintain their registration in the Selective Service System, established by the Military Selective Service Act. Failure to register or maintain that can lead to fines and prison, a... |
What are birds calling for every morning, hours on end? | There are [many reasons](_URL_2_) why birds call, and it has more to do with just reproduction. Calling happens at dawn and dusk because the air is more likely to be still. Calls carry father at these hours then during the middle of the day. It sounds like you are specifically asking about a [dawn chorus](_URL_0_. The two most common reasons are as follows:
1. They may be signalling their territory. Some birds maintain territories year round and calling at dawn and dusk is a way of signalling to others that this space is occupied. Males will usually call in this case.
2. They call to attract reproductive mates. Males may sign complex songs to attract a mate. They may also signal to other males that they are "more fit" and not to come near the occupied territory. Depending on the species females or rival males may or may not answer the call.
"In temperate countries, this is most noticeable in spring, when the birds are either defending a breeding territory or trying to attract a mate."
3. In certain places there is no "breeding season" because reproduction can take place year round. I am not particularly familiar with Australia and you have many ecosystem types. In northern latitudes like Canada, you will get a specific breeding season (early spring between March and May) because resources for raising young are only available in the spring and summer. In good years birds may produce more then one brood. In other places like the tropics breeding can take place year round because resources are available year round. However, some tropical species may also be seasonal breeders depending on the specifics of that environment. Some tropical forest have "rainy" and "dry" seasons which birds time their reproduction accordingly.
4. "Many birds engage in duet calls. In some cases, the duets are so perfectly timed as to appear almost as one call. This kind of calling is termed antiphonal duetting. Such duetting is noted in a wide range of families including quails, bushshrikes, babblers such as the scimitar babblers, some owls and parrots".
5. It may serve a social function especially in species where they tend to aggregate. In your case you may be hearing parrots. Parrots are very social and so calling may also function as a way to "catch up" with others in the group.
6. Birds also use calls to warn others of predators. These alarm calls are usually short and would not last for hours unless there is a predator nest near by (like a hawks nest). Or something particularly disturbing or new in the environment.
[More on this](_URL_1_): "The dawn chorus is one of the most conspicuous vocal behaviors of birds, and one of the least understood. Near sunrise, birds often sing more loudly and vigorously than they do at other times of the day. Recent studies have suggested that these intense bouts of song may help male birds exchange information about their social standing. However, because so many birds sing at once, sorting out these vocal interactions has been difficult using traditional techniques such as observation and simple audio recordings."
> What are they calling for that never seems to get answered?
In many cases birds do not get "answers to their calls" for many reasons. Simply put, there may not be someone else to answer. | [
"The birds have a wide range of calls which can be heard at any time of the day or night: the warning call, a loud defending call, courtship calls, calls to its young, and others. Since this bird lives on the ground it is always alert and even though it rests it never sleeps properly.\n",
"Birds wake up before da... |
if jupiter is made of gas and has no solid surface how did shoemaker-levy 9 make impact craters? / marks? | First, the center of Jupiter has such high pressure, it does become solid. But the impact marks aren't craters as much as an insane amount of energy disrupting the normal currents in which the gases flow around the planet. After a number of months, the currents resumed their normal flow, covering the impact sites. | [
"Impact craters are roughly circular shaped depressions in the surface of a planet due to high velocity impacts with extraterrestrial bodies. The surface of Venus contains almost 1000 impact craters. However, unlike some planets in our system, Venus' thick atmosphere creates a strong shield that decelerates, flatte... |
What Native American cooking traditions have made their way into other cultures' cuisines? | Many of the foods eaten today in Mexico have their roots in pre-Columbian indigenous cuisine. Mexico is, after all, a part of North America. Everytime you eat a taco, a tamale, a bowl of pozole, drink hot cocoa, add chili powder or fresh chillies to a dish, eat popcorn or corn on the cob, and drink a shot of tequila you are consuming Native American foods and cooking traditions.
If you like, you can check out some previously asked questions on Mesoamerican cooking that I have answered.
* [What did the average meal look like in the Aztec and Inca Empires?](_URL_8_)
* [How did they make hot cocoa–or any other kind of chocolate–before 1492](_URL_2_)
* [Was enduring the consumption of extremely capsaicin rich foods tied to masculinity in the Aztec culture? Did the language reflect differences of "strength" of various plants or is that a product of later cultivation?](_URL_4_)
* [
How did Native Americans eat pumpkin?](_URL_3_)
* [What kinds of alcoholic beverages did the Native Americans/First Nations consume?](_URL_1_)
* [Is it true that "pozole" was invented by Aztecs and that the meat that was used was human? And that they would make it spicy to mask the flavor of human meat?](_URL_0_)
* [What pollinated North America before bees?](_URL_5_)
* [Do we have recipes for the fermented chocolate drink favored by the Maya?](_URL_9_)
And you may also be interested in these two other topics
* [What was Native American cuisine like before the Europeans invaded?](_URL_7_) by /u/RioAbajo
* [What do we know about Native American cuisine?](_URL_6_) by /u/ThucydidesWasAwesome, /u/retarredroof, and /u/MirandaTheSavage | [
"Native American cuisine includes all food practices of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Modern-day native peoples retain a varied culture of traditional foods, some of which have become iconic of present-day Native American social gatherings (for example, frybread). Foods like cornbread, turkey, cranberry, ... |
Were pirates like Kidd and Blackbeard mythologized in their time as they are today? | If by "in their time" you mean while they were active pirates, not really - but in the years after happened quite a bit. Books such as Alexandre Exquemelin's *History of the Bouccaneers of America* and Charles Johnson's *A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates* brought much attention to the story of the pirates in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In the case of Johnson, his work mixed in fiction with fact in some parts of his book (the early eighteenth century being notorious for such actions, now referred to as "factual fiction"). Blackbeard, for instance, can probably thank Johnson for really helping bring forward the actions of his career to the status it has today. The famous descriptions of Blackbeard all pretty much go back to Johnson. But, these descriptions cannot be traced or verified by any other accounts. Johnson's chapter on him is one of the chapters this more than likely moderately to heavily influenced by "factual fiction." Other publications such as newspapers helped popularize pirates as well. Publications about criminals were popular, so newspapers that featured reports about their actions and trial accounts came out regularly. William Kidd had his trial in London and received a lot of attention in publications (probably because it was politicized so the Tories could use it as bludgeon against the Whigs that originally invested in Kidd, since Kidd started as a privateer). When compared to Henry Every though, it seems like nothing. After his actions in the Indian Ocean, his story became mythologized on a huge scale compared to anyone else at the time. He had period plays and books written about his career (with lots of fiction mixed in). A story line that he returned to Madagascar and set up a little pirate empire there with many men and ships went around quite a bit. | [
"\"Kidd the Pirate\" is a short story by American author Washington Irving, based on legends of Captain William Kidd. The story was published in \"Tales of a Traveller\", an 1824 collection of Irving's writings, where it immediately precedes that work's most famous story \"The Devil and Tom Walker\", which also inv... |
Is there a good way to quantify how "random" a given method of shuffling cards is? | In cryptography, there are multiple tests used to try to "quantify" how random a set of numbers is (usually a set that's been created by a random number generator). I'm sure you could assign numbers to cards and use similar tests. Look in any good crypto text and you should find some randomness tests.
But all such measures have issues. From what I've read, there's no metric that can really say with high certainty "This set of numbers is/isn't random". They can be used as relative metrics (if you have large data sets to run) but can never be definitive.
A main reason why this is true is that any collection of numbers could have been generated by truly random means, since a random number generator by definition can generate *any* set of numbers, and they are all equally probable. That's what random means!
For example, say you are going to generate integers between 0 and 9. Let's look at a few collections of 5 numbers:
7 4 3 3 8
7 7 7 7 7
1 2 3 4 5
1 2 1 2 1
Looking at those, we'd be tempted to say that the first set is "more random" than the others. But each of them is equally likely to be generated by a true RNG.
But if you look at large sets, there are certain *properties* that do become less probable (such as runs of one number). If you assign metrics to various such properties, you can decide that some RNGs are apparently better than others. I say apparently, because seemingly odd characteristics *can* happen by random chance. | [
"In the mathematics of shuffling playing cards, the Gilbert–Shannon–Reeds model is a probability distribution on riffle shuffle permutations that has been reported to be a good match for experimentally observed outcomes of human shuffling, and that forms the basis for a recommendation that a deck of cards should be... |
Did ancient explorers ever go to the north or south pole? If not, how close did they come? | No, ancient - I assume you mean the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean, Near East, etc. - explorers never reached that far. Reaching the north and south poles required navigational techniques/instruments and shipbuilding technology that didn't exist in those times. For the most part, their ships stayed near to coastlines or on routes that had been long-established within maritime trade networks. Reaching Antarctica especially would have required a long voyage over an open, unknown ocean, an impossible task for ancient mariners.
That said, there are a few examples of ancient explorers who reached quite far south and north of the Straits of Gibraltar. Pytheas (4th century BCE), a Greek, supposedly circumnavigated Great Britain and reached a northerly region of freezing ocean beyond. Exactly how far he sailed into the North Atlantic is unknown, but he certainly didn't reach the north pole. In the other direction, the Carthaginian Hanno the Navigator (5th century BCE) sailed south along the African coast supposedly as far as the Gulf of Guinea before he turned back. Not much reliable information exists on his voyage though. | [
"In 1827 he attempted one of the earliest expeditions to the North Pole. He reached 82°45′N, setting the record for human exploration Farthest North that stood for nearly five decades before being surpassed at 83°20′N by Sir Albert Hastings Markham in 1875.\n",
"In the years before reaching the pole was a realist... |
Is there an estimated maximum number of planets that can orbit a star? | The mass and density of the initial accretion disk limits the total cumulative size (and number) of the orbiting bodies that form around a star. The term "planet" is used to refer to objects of a certain size or larger. The number of planet-sized bodies that would form would likely be quite low, although, there may not be a theoretical upper limit, if you include extrasolar captures. | [
"Additional data is needed to confirm the possibility of more sub-Saturn planets between 0.5 (really, 0.3) and 30 AU from the star. An Earth-mass planet in the star's habitable zone (which would still be too small to detect with current technology) remains possible.\n",
"Orbiting the star are three planets, whose... |
why is the sound quality at a drive through so bad? | You mean like the speaker to talk to the guy taking the order?
There isn't any incentive to make it good quality. it's not like your rocking out to some heavy metal through it. You're just talking to the guy. If you can understand the words the quality is fine enough. | [
"Cars significantly contribute to noise pollution. While on common perception the engine is the main cause for noise, at city speeds the noise produced by wheel and asphalt is commonly the dominant factor while at highway speeds air friction noises become a major factor.\n",
"The engine noise in the interior of t... |
I there a theoretical limit to how heavy an atom can be? | Yes. I mean we're kind of already there right? Making atoms that are barely able to hold their nuclei together. The strong nuclear force that holds nucleons together is quite short ranged and can't really "reach" across the entire nucleus. It barely holds on to nearest neighbor nucleons. There's a thought that there may be some elements that are marginally more stable, the so-called[ island of stability](_URL_0_). Beyond that there are some theoretical things based on the ability for the nucleus to hold on to electrons, [around proton number 137 or 173 or so.](_URL_1_) | [
"Density criteria range from above 3.5 g/cm to above 7 g/cm. Atomic weight definitions can range from greater than sodium (atomic weight 22.98); greater than 40 (excluding s- and f-block metals, hence starting with scandium); or more than 200, i.e. from mercury onwards. Atomic numbers of heavy metals are generally ... |
Is there a reason why tiny Pacific Island nations exist? | This is a bit like asking "Why don't Canada and America become one state? It would benefit both of them!"
They exist for the same reasons that any other nation exists. You have areas of land populated by people with fairly homogeneous backgrounds (language, religion, culture, ethnicity, economics, history, etc.). There's enough similarity in the populations of these islands that they feel a national bond to the other people residing on their island. However there's not necessarily a shared bond with other island nations, and therefore each one prefers to maintain its sovereignty.
It's also important to note that some islands HAVE joined together to form a bigger nation. The Philippines and Malaysia are great examples. The Philippines has about two thousand populated islands, while Indonesia has almost a thousand populated islands (additionally they both have thousands of more unpopulated islands), and all of those islands are under one flag.
| [
"Many of the present-day Pacific Island nations in the Oceania region were originally populated by Polynesian, Melanesian and Micronesian peoples over the course of thousands of years. European colonial expansion in the Pacific brought many of these under non-indigenous administration. During the 20th century sever... |
why are side scrolling platformers almost always scrolling from right to left? | What games are you thinking about...Mario and Sonic are left to right ? | [
"A side-scrolling game or side-scroller is a video game in which the viewpoint is taken from the side, and the onscreen characters generally can only move, to the left or right. Games of this type make use of scrolling computer display technology, and sometimes parallax scrolling to suggest added depth.\n",
"The ... |
Did married couples actually sleep in separate twin beds as depicted in old movies from the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s? Or was it just for the propriety of the movies? | Yes, some did!
First of all, we have to recognize that bedroom habits historically varied by class. In the nineteenth century, to be brief, working-class and middle-class couples shared beds, while the upper classes, with lots of room in their grand mansions, kept separate bedrooms for the husband and wife; upper-middle-class families that couldn't quite swing that might instead have one large master bedroom with dressing rooms for each spouse (or at least one dressing room for one of them). While the shared marital bed might be idealized in Victorian culture - though not actually talking about shared marital beds was also a big part of Victorian culture - the idea of separate beds was already present, and potentially something for individual couples to aspire to as it represented high social status, lots of money, and a large house. Thomas Sheraton (a big-deal English furniture designer) also came out with [a summer bed "in two compartments"](_URL_0_) quite like paired twin beds as early as 1793: this setup allowed for one bedroom while helping to manage the heat by keeping bed partners from having to touch.
Another important thing to bear in mind is that, despite the popular idea of the past as uniformly filthy, people were obsessed with hygiene and healthiness in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Four-poster beds with hangings, previously considered warm and cozy, were now seen as something that held in all kinds of bad things in the air:
> *A Bad Custom - Scotch Set-in Beds.* And in the houses of the working classes, and sometimes of their betters, there is one especial abomination that ought to be got quit of. I refer to bed curtains and hangings. The set-in beds which prevail in Scotch houses are themselves very objectionable. They prevent a free circulation of air around the patient, and the atmosphere which he breathes soon gets vitiated by poisonous exhalations from the lungs and skin, and becomes a source of danger both to himself and to others. ... All such arrangements still further contract the small outlet for bad air and inlet for fresh air. And not only that, they also catch and collect matter from the patient's skin, especially in fevers, during what is called the period of desquamation, when the outer cuticle is coming off in minute shreds, easily conveyed by a whiff of air to any near object. And so the curtains become most dangerous factors in the spread of disease.
(From "Health and Disease in Kilmarnock", by Dr. John C. M'Vail in *The Sanitary Journal*, April 2, 1883)
This is the kind of atmosphere that gave rise to husbands and wives sleeping in separate twin beds in the same bedroom.
> Houses are built and rooms arranged for the accommodation of large double beds. And there is not the least doubt but that it is the more economical arrangement.
> But aside from economy, economy of space, economy of bedding, and economy in laundry, the custom has nothing to commend it. Indeed, it is radically wrong and unhygienic.
(From "Home Hygiene: The Double Occupancy of Beds", by Dr. John Riddle Goffee in *The New York Polyclinic*, August 15, 1894)
Sharing a bed with a sick person could lead to the healthy spouse (or sibling - the practice of children sharing beds was also criticized) catching the disease through closeness or the bedclothes; those exhalations and skin excretions that the bed hangings kept in were also easily shared with a bed partner even if the bed were out in the open; elaborate and large headboards and footboards could pick up and hold dust, germs, and vermin (this is also when we see the rise of the plain brass bed). It was also mentally healthier to get a full night's rest without a spouse kicking or tossing and turning directly next to you - particularly, Dr. Goffee pointed out, if you were a doctor who needed to be fresh for his practice. Wealthy and fashionable families like the Astors and Vanderbilts started to use separate beds in one bedroom in the 1890s, and the practice trickled down to the middle class. Mind you, many protested that it was unnatural, that it was silly, grotesque, even. It made sex a *lot* less likely, which some found a good and moral thing, while others thought the fact that words and planning would be necessary to facilitate sexual intercourse was itself immoral and awkward. But they do seem to have actually become a normal practice after this! Or at least a viable and common alternative to the shared bed, given that people kept expounding about the hazards of sleeping in the latter into the twentieth century, and given that wealthy people included them in their high-end interior design plans.
Now, the last part of the key to understanding this has to do with the Hays Code, named for William Harrison Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. The Motion Picture Production Code was issued by the MPPDA in 1930 (though it took a few years to really go into effect), and listed a number of things that were no longer allowed in order to keep movies to a strict moral standard that didn't suggest that Bad Things (As Viewed By WASPs In 1930) Could Be Fun, Kids! This included showing criminals as good guys or law enforcement officials as bad guys, prostitution, homosexuality, and drug use or sale. It also forbade showing "indelicate" realities of life that the MPPDA felt should not be publicly viewed, such as childbirth, nude bodies, violence, and ... men and women in bed together. If a married couple was to be depicted in bed, they would therefore have to be in the twin option. The Hays Code didn't invent the concept, but it's because of the Hays Code that they are so overwhelmingly shown in visual media of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s.
Further reading:
*The Victorian House: Domestic Life from Childbirth to Deathbed*, by Judith Flanders (William Collins, 2003) | [
"Creators and writers Brian Cooke and Johnnie Mortimer had to get special permission from the IBA (the then governing body of Independent TV in Britain) to be able to portray an unmarried couple living together; special concern arose at scenes in which Robin and Vicky were seen in an obvious state of undress in bed... |
please eli5 ... why is the headrest part of most car's seats designed to be so angled forward? | Headrests aren't there to rest your head against, but to protect you from whiplash or worse if you're in an accident. When a car decelerates VERY quickly (like in a head-on collision) and you are wearing your seat belt, then your arms and upper torso will fly forward very quickly. The three-point seat belt keeps you from flying through the windshield or splattering over the dashboard, but after it catches you, your body snaps backward very quickly. The quickest part to snap backwards is your head. Your body from the shoulders down is caught by the seat itself, but without the "headrest", your head would snap backwards over the seat while the rest of your body stays put. This would be really bad for obvious reasons. The headrest is angled forward so that when your head slams back against it at 60 mph, the headrest compressess, and your head stops when it is more or less over top of your shoulders. | [
"The car itself was designed from the start as a four-seater. The rear seats are smaller than the front, a design commonly referred to as a \"2+2\". However, the interior is designed so that the passenger seat can slide farther forward than the driver's seat. This allows more room for the person sitting behind the ... |
Anyone here work with holographic technology? Are we getting anywhere near the stuff we've seen in movies for the last 30+ years? | A research group where I work is working on something very similar to the type of device shown in [this video](_URL_0_). This is, of course, nothing like a hologram in science fiction.
I believe that some companies are working on holographic displays but it is outside my field so I will not comment on it. I would suggest doing a google search on "[volumetric displays](_URL_1_)" | [
"BULLET::::- In J.G. Ballard's book \"Hello America\" (1981), holographic technology is used by President Charles Manson to scare nomad peoples along the United States of America, showing images of American pop culture icons such as Gary Cooper, Mickey Mouse, or the starship \"Enterprise\".\n",
"Video games have ... |
what would the pros and cons of having your kid learn an additional langauge when they're little in a special program? | The only con is that you have to pay for it, and transport the kid to class. Language classes are worthwhile at all ages--it doesn't matter what age they start at, but the younger the better. | [
"A 2e student’s grades commonly alternate between high and low, sometimes within the same subject. The child might have advanced vocabulary and ideas but be unable to organize those ideas and express them on paper. They might be a skilled artist or builder but turn in assignments that are messy or illegible. They m... |
when i'm talking and all of a sudden air just halts, i nearly choke and can't talk for a second until i take a breathe? (with air still in my lungs) | Are you sure it's not a mild panic attack? | [
"The main symptom is choking and difficulty or inability to breathe or speak, a feeling of suffocation, which may be followed by hypoxia-induced loss of consciousness. As the airway reopens, breathing may cause a high-pitched sound called stridor. The episode seldom lasts over a couple of minutes before breathing i... |
why do oceans exist? | Oceans cannot be absorbed into the sea bed because below the sea bed there is bedrock and the water is already saturated within the sea bed. Open water sits on top of the water within the sea bed. | [
"As the world ocean is the principal component of Earth's hydrosphere, it is integral to life, forms part of the carbon cycle, and influences climate and weather patterns. The World Ocean is the habitat of 230,000 known species, but because much of it is unexplored, the number of species that exist in the ocean is ... |
the differences between synthetic marijuana and actual marijuana and why synthetic is apparently more dangerous. | Synthetic marijuana is in no way related to real marijuana. It is plant material that has been sprayed with one or more of any number of chemicals that happen to affect the same parts of the brain as the THC in real weed. It is dangerous because all it takes is to find a chemical that is an agonist of those receptors then sell it without further testing. Real weed has been tested for millennia and proven pretty safe. | [
"Use of the term “synthetic marijuana” to describe products containing synthetic cannabinoids is controversial and, according to Dr. Lewis Nelson, a medical toxicologist at the NYU School of Medicine, a misnomer. Nelson claims that relative to marijuana, products containing synthetic cannabinoids “are really quite ... |
Is there a limit to how big speakers can be made today? | They can get [pretty big](_URL_0_). Big speakers indeed work less well for higher frequencies, but its more to do with the fact that they start to [beam](_URL_1_). A 2m wide speaker that plays anything above 500 Hz will send the sound pretty much in a straight line, and only be audible if its pointing at you.
The main physical limit is that the cone will break if it's too big, since it's all supported at the center. That's a complex interplay between the frequency and power of the speaker though, and depends on the material. It's not the simplest integral in the world so I'll leave it to someone else if they want to figure it out. Also, check out r/diysound or r/diyaudio if you want to learn more! | [
"Fabrication of finished loudspeaker systems has become segmented, depending largely on price, shipping costs, and weight limitations. High-end speaker systems, which are typically heavier (and often larger) than economic shipping allows outside local regions, are usually made in their target market region and can ... |
the "power factor" of ac electric power and how it relates to things we use in the home and office | Alice buys stuff from Amazon and they ship it to her and she likes it and keeps it. Everyone is happy! Alice has a power factor of 1.0.
Bob buys stuff from Amazon and they ship it to him but he doesn't like half of it and returns it. Amazon likes that they're selling stuff to Bob, but they're kinda annoyed that they have to deal with all the shipping costs associated with the stuff that he returns. Bob has a power factor of 0.5.
If a device has a power factor of less than 1.0, it means that it is not actually consuming all the electrical power that is sent to it down the wire -- some of that power is reflected back into the grid. Utilities don't like it too much. | [
"In electrical engineering, the power factor of an AC electrical power system is defined as the ratio of the \"real power\" absorbed by the load to the \"apparent power\" flowing in the circuit, and is a dimensionless number in the closed interval of −1 to 1. A power factor of less than one indicates the voltage an... |
When did it become popular to group the Caribbean with Latin America? | Part of this is politics not history, I would doubt very much that Jamaica, Haiti and other English and French ex-colonies associate primarily with Latin America. However, debating this is not the point of this subreddit so I'll leave this here.
Its important to understand that the Caribbean was colonized by quite a few different groups. The first was the Spanish (see Cuba, Dominican Republic). Soon after the French and the English made colonial acquisitions (Haiti and Matinique for example for the French, Cayman Isles and Virgin Isles are British). Its important to note that colonies changed hands fairly often (for example Jamaica was originally Spanish but captured by the British).
After and During Decolonisation each of of these individual countries had to decide where they would associate with. A lot of french colonies assocaited themselves with the 'Organisation internationale de la Francophonie' movement which was a global grouping of french speaking countries (mostly ex-colonies and France).
As for the British colonies associated with the new British Commonwealth of Nations (this provided economic benefits similar to Organisation internationale de la Francophonie). While far from colonialism Britain still had a hand culturally and economic in the well-being of the commonwealth.
The Spanish situation is a bit different due to the Empire declining a lot earlier than the British and French empires. These ex-colonies are much more likely to identify with Latin America because these colonies are far closer ethnically and linguistically to it.
As to the reason why they are not in political terms aligned to the US or Europe, the Cold War. Decolonization of most of these areas (French and British mainly) happens shortly after the end of World War 2 which the cold war follows. Rather than picking sides, lots of new countries opted for neutrality. Prior to our modern terms for geo-political alignments were the old First World, Second World, Third World terms. Aligning geo-politically with Third World and Latin America (in the newly formed U.N) made them appear more Neutral and less likely to be drawn into conflicts. Notable exceptions are countries like Cuba who underwent the Cuban revolution placing themselves in the Second World. | [
"In 1899, the All Cubans, consisting of Cuban League professional players, were the first Latin American team to tour the United States. The team returned in 1902–05, exposing white Cuban players to U.S. major league and minor league scouts, and introducing black Cuban players to competition against the Negro leagu... |
Couple questions on medieval cities | This is going to differ widely based on the location/culture, and medieval Europe isn't my field, but I'll take a stab:
1) Cities usually had a charter that they negotiated with a monarch which gave them the privilege to form their own systems of governance: town councils, courts of law, taxation, the regulation of trade and guilds, and civic defense. There was no "standard" for such a charter; each city had it own rules and regulations that they worked out with a king/queen on a case-by-case basis. Such cities would often contain a number of free "citizens": privileged members of the community who could vote and hold office.
Again, though, this differed vastly depending on the time and location. In France, for example, some regions had royal courts known as _parlements_ whose authority (at least in theory) overrode the local system, and the king appointed royal _intendants_ to collect taxes.
2) Any city in Europe could be considered "cosmopolitan," just not in the way we think of it today. In medieval Europe, you might travel one region over and the people would be speaking a different language. London, for example, might contain people who not only spoke Old English, but Danish, Norwegian, Cornwall, Welsh, and three different dialects of Gaelic. A man in the next county might be as foreign to you as someone from the other side of the continent.
The variety you seem to be seeking is more what we would consider cosmopolitan (Christians and Muslims, for example). Venice would be a good candidate, as would any trading hub in the Mediterranean. In fact, the _institut du Monde Arabe_ [had an exposition](_URL_0_) several years back on Venice and the Orient that showcased cross-cultural artifacts and artwork (the site's in French, so I apologize if you can't read it). | [
"The medieval city was made up of the cathedral, castle and administrative buildings on the peninsula. The outlying areas were known as the townships and owned by the bishop, the most famous of these being Gilesgate (which still contains the mediaeval St Giles Church), Claypath and Elvet.\n",
"European Medieval c... |
Why did military uniforms suddenly change from bright colours to kakki? | Because at the late 19th century firearms (rifles) became increasingly deadly, reaching their maximum fire range (up to 1500-2000m, Mauser 98, for example), not to mention introduction of machine guns with high rate of fire (around 600 rounds per minute - Maxim guns). In following conflicts it became obvious how fatal for soldiers can be bright colored uniform or any other gear as they were perfect targets for enemy snipers, armed with new rifles firing bullets with smokeless gunpowder (therefor hard to detect their position). As result khakis (meaning dirt/soil in Hindi (?)) was introduced in Britain's colonial army's around 1870-1880. French was the last who stick to bright colors - check for french red pantalons in WW1. | [
"When khaki was adopted for the continental British Service Dress in 1902, the shade chosen had a clearly darker and more green hue. This color was adopted with minor variations by all the British Empire Armies and the US expeditionary force of World War I, in the latter under the name olive drab. This shade of bro... |
Why can't we use smaller wavelengths of light instead of electron microscopes? | Electron microscopes can get in the order of 50 pm resolution, while diffraction based systems rely on the wavelengths (as you've picked up on). However to get down to 50 pm visual resolution, you need light with a wavelength in the order of 100-150 pm. This is down in x-ray territory, so you need to have a source of x-rays that you can use, and the surface you're looking at needs to be able to reflect said x-rays in a meaningful manner. Since x-rays love to pass through things, they're not very practical. (And might damage the sample, depending on what you're looking at.)
[The wikipedia page on diffraction limited optics](_URL_0_) is probably of interest to you. | [
"Until the invention of sub-diffraction microscopy, the wavelength of the light limited the resolution of traditional microscopy to around 0.2 micrometers. In order to gain higher resolution, the use of an electron beam with a far smaller wavelength is used in electron microscopes.\n",
"The electron microscope is... |
where do worms go in the winter? | If you're referring to earthworms, they simply go deeper into the ground. Even in harsh winters the ground doesn't usually freeze more than ~~an inch or two~~ a few feet deep, so the worms just burrow below the frozen layer and wait for a few weeks until it thaws out again.
*Edit* corrected how deep the ground freezes. TIL, etc ... | [
"Winter bugs on crops and in natural clover plants in the soil, at a depth of up to 5 cm, in forest belts, fringes, ravines, on the borders, roadsides - under fallen leaves and plant remains. Beetles from wintering places come out in 1-2 decades of April during the period of clover growth and feed on the parenchyma... |
how does a company separate from a parent company, or rather, how is the parent company compensated for the lost value? | Any company, be it parent or a subsidiary/child company, has shares, meaning who owns the company (Simple way to imagine it would be- if a company has 100 shares, each share is 1% of the company, limited liability companies simply have owners, who own some % of the company).
The shareholders can be other companies, or physical people. If a majority of shares are owned by another company (more than 50%), it is a parent company.
In order for a subsidiary to gain independence from the parent, someone else needs to obtain a majority of shares from the parent. When people say that a company separates from it's parent company, it, most likely, means that the parent has sold its shares in the subsidiary and the subsidiary has a new majority shareholders, and the parent has been compensated for these shares.
Also, to discuss one of your examples, in case of Bungie, Microsoft retained its right to the Halo franchise, which was most of the compensation, while still remaining a minority stakeholder. So Bungie came to an agreement with Microsoft, that it would give up the franchise for it's own independence, since franchises like this are worth more than any physical assets the company might have had.
You might think that a large part of the value of the company came from the employees that worked and developed at Bungie, however people can't be classified as assets, therefore the only real value in the company were its franchises. | [
"The separation between the shareholder and the company has one other important consequence. If a company is wound up, its shareholders will lose their stake, but their separateness from the company will prevent its creditors from pursuing them for fulfilment of the its debts. If, on the other hand, an unincorporat... |
why when looking at a certain point without blinking for few seconds you start seeing double? | Not everybody sees double. If you do, it is probably because your eyes get tired and stop looking in exactly the same direction. This is technically known as a strabismus. | [
"The corneal reflex, also known as the blink reflex, is an involuntary blinking of the eyelids elicited by stimulation of the cornea (such as by touching or by a foreign body), though could result from any peripheral stimulus. Stimulation should elicit both a direct and consensual response (response of the opposite... |
why does “cleaning” our ears with a cotton swab feel so good when we’re told not to put anything in them? | Because you are touching the Vagus nerve. It's a cranial nerve and one of the longest in your body. It controls a lot of stuff, like heart rate and swallowing. Stimulation to this nerve can feel good! To the point that some women have reported to had orgasms from just stimulation to the Vagus nerve. This nerve is also the reason why touching your breasts and armpits can feel good, or makes you giggle. | [
"Cleaning of the ears is very important for treatment of ear infections. Home remedy cleansing and antiseptic mixtures are made from isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol, boric acid, acetic acid (vinegar), and many herbal extracts in various proportions. In some recipes, povidone-iodine (\"betadine\") is added as well. Some... |
Who else, other than the British Empire, profited from long distance communications in the 1800s? | This is only tangentially a partial answer or side note to your question but it's one of my favorite historical anecdotes so I hope you don't mind me sharing it.
In 1876 Egypt basically went bankrupt and the French and British exercised joint direct control of Egypt's finances under a system called the Caisse de la Dette which basically saw France and Britain effectively take over the administration of the country and which would eventually culminate in the British occupying the country completely by military force in 1882.
One of the tasks of the Caisse de la Dette was to institute austerity measures, which mostly involved ending the various modernization programs and initiatives put in place by Egypt's ruler, Ismail Pasha, some of which were quite extravagant and expensive.
Ismail Pasha it turned out, had funded not only a telegraph line into Egypt but was also paying a Reuters wire service subscription for the country which cost something on the order of a couple thousand pounds (an enormous sum at the time) for a country with very high rates of illiteracy and no real need for that service.
But when it was suggested to the British members of the Caisse de la Dette that they consider cancelling this subscription as an austerity measure, this was rejected on the grounds that it would make it impossible to get up-to-date betting odds on the Oxford and Cambridge boat race. | [
"At Porthcurno in 1870 Britain became wired to the world. For the first time telegraphy made it possible for Britain to communicate with its colonies in the British Empire. Originally, the intention was to land telegraphy cables at Falmouth, Cornwall, but a last minute change by the \"Falmouth Gibraltar and Malta T... |
how are people born "geniuses"? | The actual answer is that we don't know.
The origin and nature of human intelligence and creativity is one of the most hotly debated subjects. Much of what has been written about it has been bullshit. You've just asked a question that hasn't been resolved with any kinda of clear explanation. Sorry.
Also, Einstein was a poop and vomit factory like all other babies. | [
"A genius is a person who displays exceptional intellectual ability, creative productivity, universality in genres or originality, typically to a degree that is associated with the achievement of new advances in a domain of knowledge. Despite the presence of scholars in many subjects throughout history, many genius... |
why does a sudden influx of energy break objects? | Newton's second law, F = ma. When a fast moving object is suddenly stopped, acceleration is very large and the resulting forces are enormous. If these forces exceed the yield strength of the material involved, the object breaks. Stop the same object travelling at the same speed over a longer time and you get smaller forces that are less likely to exceed the yield strength. | [
"Electromigration, which means to physically move the atom to new locations (to physically alter the device itself) is another type of attack. It involves the relocation of metal atoms due to high current densities, a phenomenon in which atoms are carried along by an \"electron wind\" in the opposite direction to t... |
Is it true that income inequality in Ancient Rome was less than in the modern United States? | First of all, neither the Business Insider, Huffington Post, nor ThinkProgress are historical publications. The story from that Business Insider article is sourced from a website called Per Square Mile and is written by the creator of that site, Tim De Chant. He is also not a historian, nor is Per Square Mile a historical or peer-reviewed publisher. De Chant’s PhD is in Environmental Science, Policy and Management. However, as I was finding this out I was thinking this story did not have much hope, but it seems like I was too doubtful too quickly. De Chant sourced his information on Roman economic inequality from one of the world’s best peer-reviewed historical publishers for Roman history, the *Journal of Roman Studies*. The article was authored by Walter Scheidel and Steven J. Friesen, both PhDs in ancient history. The study they conducted is very comprehensive, and De Chant reports it accurately. Scheidel and Friesen conclude a Gini coefficient of 0.42 and 0.44 for the Roman Empire midway through the second century CE, while the Gini coefficient of the USA is higher at 0.45 in 2007. Therefore, I would say yes, the evidence suggests income inequality was less during the Roman Empire than it is today in the United States.
However, I would still advise people to practice caution when reading historical information from non-peer reviewed publications. It is easy for these things to become exaggerated. In the source article from the *Journal of Roman Studies* the authors urge reader caution and discuss the problems caused by a lack of “hard data” from the Roman period. Their numbers are provided within ranges, and even still might not be exact. Thus the stated Gini coefficient could easily go up or down a couple of points. De Chant does not transfer these cautions to his article, writing:
> Schiedel and Friesen figure the elite orders and other wealthy made up about 1.5 percent of the 70 million inhabitants the empire claimed at its peak. Together, they controlled around 20 percent of the wealth.
Schiede and Friesen actually wrote, “some 1.5 per cent of households controlled 15 to 25 per cent of total income.” Thus De Chant provided a middle-of-the-line number that is not inaccurate, but without providing the truthful statistical range.
The Business Insider, that you linked too, goes a further step of exaggeration. The first paragraph ends with, *the supposedly advanced and progressive United States of America is **plagued by even worse income inequality**.* Their bold, not mine. You can be sure the Business Insider does not qualify their article with statistical cautions. Hence while not outright wrong, chasing up the sources of historical articles from places like the Business Insider is the best way to find out accurate historical information.
| [
"After the Second Punic War, there was a great increase in income inequality. While the middle class was drafted to serve in increasingly long campaigns, their farms and homesteads fell into bankruptcy. With Rome's great military victories, vast numbers of slaves were imported into Italy. In the middle of the secon... |
why do heating pipes make a loud banging sound? | Based on the one that sits next to our couch-bed in our very small NYC apartment, it is the expansion/contraction of the metal and wood around the heated pipes/radiator that cause the loud banging, pops, and cracks that occur as the heater heats up, loses heat, and heats up again. | [
"The noise known as “steam hammer” sounds like someone hammering on a pipe. It is caused when water condenses and is trapped in a horizontal section of pipe where it cannot drain back to the boiler. When the system is next turned on, this water is hurled through the pipes by the steam pressure, creating a loud bang... |
How to the water drops in clouds affect a plane's flight? Do they slow the plane down, or interfere with its thrust or lift vectors? | Most of the droplets in a cloud will flow around the airplane. Water droplets will accumulate on the wings and body, and flow off of the back of the trailing edges. The drag imparted on the plane due to the mass of water is usually negligible, the droplets on the wings will affect the performance just noticably.
Flying through heavy rain can be a problem, there have been counts of very severe showers causing engines to flame-out.
Freezing clouds can however be a problem. Supercooled droplets will stick to the wings, building up to become very ugly stalagmites on the leading edges. These ice structures affect lift dramatically. This can and has caused aircraft not fitted with adequate de-icing to crash. | [
"In flight, droplets of supercooled water often exist in stratiform and cumulus clouds. They form into ice when they are struck by the wings of passing airplanes and abruptly crystallize. This disrupts airflow over the wing, reducing lift, so aircraft that are expected to fly in such conditions are equipped with a ... |
the constitutional breaches of the national defense authorization act? | > I understand the removal of Habeus Corpus is in violation of the Bill of Rights
Why? | [
"The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 (, , 123 Stat. 2190.) is a law in the United States signed by President Barack Obama on October 28, 2009. As a bill it was H.R. 2647 in the 111th Congress. The overall purpose of the law is to authorize funding for the defense of the United States and its... |
What are some other proposed dates for the end of the Roman Empire aside from the traditional 476? | A date for you to consider is 1453. The Fall of Constantinople was the death blow to the Byzantine Empire, and in essence the Eastern Roman Empire. | [
"The history of the Roman Empire covers the history of ancient Rome from the fall of the Roman Republic in 27 BC until the abdication of the last Western emperor in AD 476. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the Republic in the 6th century BC, though it did not expand outside of the Italian Peni... |
what makes something look modern? | There's really nothing "modern." The gist of it is that every period has "modern" styles. To our current day and age, sleek = modern. What sleek means is really curved edges, shiny, futuristic looking, etc.
In architecture, every age had it's modern look. There was the Gothic style a long time ago that was considered revolutionary. Same with the large, straight towers that we see a lot of buildings using. Then there was a move toward slightly curved, glass buildings. Now it's a move to make things look very "odd" but retain beauty.
Modern is less a style than a flavor of the month. If you'd like another example, look at the Tesla Model cars. If you were living in 1990, you'd say the look futuristic- when in fact, they're now modern. Modern is whatever everyone seems to do now and hasn't been done for a vague period of time.
Bonus 1: We only think things no longer look modern because modern = new. iPhone 4 is not new, it's old. iPhone 6 is new. New = Modern. (Even though Samsung already did it). Blame it on public perception of new v old and a great marketing campaign.
Bonus 2: Modern is subjective. When they were building it, it could have been modern then, but now is less modern. If you can already see how it will look dated, keep that in mind. It's a great thing to know when designing your future house. | [
"Modern design grew out of the decorative arts, mostly from the Art Deco, in the early 20th century. One of the first to introduce this style was Frank Lloyd Wright, who hadn't become hugely popularized until completing the house called Fallingwater in the 1930s. Modern art reached its peak in the 1950s and '60s, w... |
Why did the nazis spend time and resources transporting Jews to concentration camps by train to gas them rather than shooting them on the spot? | They did start off by killing them on the spot. The large scale extermination of the Jews started with the invasion of the Soviet Union. Accompanying the army were special SS and police units called Einsatzgruppen whose task was to execute all communist officials and all Jews in the newly conquered territories in the Baltic States, Ukraine and Belarus, where the bulk of the Soviet Jewish population lived. They would enter towns and villages in the wake of the Army, round up all the Jews and march them out to a convenient spot where there either was a natural depression in the landscape such as a ravine, a pre-existing pit from mining or other activity, or have them dig their own mass graves. They were then executed, mainly by a shot to the back of the head, sometimes by mowing them down with machine guns, though this was less accurate.
Why was this discontinued? It was discontinued for two main reasons. First of all, it was not very efficient as it took a long time to kill a few thousand people. But the main reason was the toll it was taking on the perpetrators. It is not easy to shoot people at point blank range day after day after day, especially women, children and elderly people. First of all it is extremely messy and the shooters were always covered in blood and brains. Secondly, either your conscience torments you, or you turn into some kind of amoral psychopath. Neither were desirable outcomes to the nazi authorities who thought of especially the SS as the elite of the pure German race. They didn't relish seeing them turn into alcoholic, depressed wrecks anymore than into soulless killers, both of which started happening quite early on to the men involved.
Himmler, who was head of the SS and ultimately in charge of all this, visited such an execution site in Minsk in mid-August 1941, just two months after the start of the operation, and he was appalled by the gore of the actual reality of what he had ordered. The SS general in charge made things plain to him by stating:
> Look at the eyes of the men in this Kommando, how deeply shaken they are! These men are finished for the rest of their lives. What kind of followers are we training? Either neurotics or savages!
That's when the thoughts of the authorities started turning towards other, more “humane”, killing methods. Ultimately they decided to adopt the gassing method that they had been using since 1939 to kill the mentally and physically disabled in special “hospitals” in Germany. This had the added advantage of involving far fewer men and allowing for far more deaths at a time than shooting.
As to your question on resources, please have a look at [these comments](_URL_0_) I wrote a few days ago on how the Holocaust didn't cost anything, but in fact actually made money for the Germans. | [
"Shipments of Jews to the camps had priority on the German railways over anything but the army's needs, and continued even in the face of the increasingly dire military situation at the end of 1942. Army leaders and economic managers complained about this diversion of resources and the killing of skilled Jewish wor... |
sometimes when doctors flash light in your eyes, what do they exactly look for? | Except for the ophthalmologist, they are looking to see that your iris contracts quickly to the bright light. This shows that the eye - > brain - > eye pathway is working. If it works on both sides, that reduces the likelihood of a whole class of problems. | [
"A doctor examining an eye with retinopathy may be able to see no signs at all, or a slight macular edema, which is a sort of blister on or under the macula, an oval colored spot normally visible to an eye doctor on each person's retina.\n",
"Just as an experienced doctor is able to diagnose certain ailments the ... |
how do college degree concentrations work? | First of all Bachelor of art and bachelor of science has more to do with the type of university or college you go to than what you are studying. For example, I go to BU and study chemistry, but will graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree with chemistry...despite it clearly being science. It's because BU has so many liberal art requirements that my degree isn't a Bachelor of Science.
The difference between the two are the requirements set by the college for the degree. A bachelor of arts requires more liberal arts than a bachelor of science.
As for concentrations, concentrations are subtypes within the field. For example, my concentration is biochemistry. Basically, my degree is Chemistry: biochemistry. The difference is that I am required to take a few extra classes that the other chemistry majors in my class don't have to take (like Biochem II and another 400 level biology class).
So a business student concentrating on marketing would likely receive a degree in business administration with a concentration in marketing. You could probably receive it with either a BA or a BS just because you could take a varying range of supplementary classes for you major. The BA or BS is more dependent on the college and their graduation requirements and what they grant for a degree than anything else. | [
"The college grants undergraduate degrees (B.Ed and B.Ed.F.A.) and graduate degrees (M.Ed and M.Teach) in a variety of disciplines in teaching and education (formal and informal), in the Arts (Fine Arts, Film, Art Education, Art Therapy), Humanities, and Social Sciences. The college also issues teaching certificate... |
why does mcdonald's charge $3 for a mcmuffin & coffee, but $3.59 for just a mcmuffin? | This is a marketing trick. It does two things. One, it's get you in the habit of ordering the grouped items (for other things like meals, it cost more). You will subconsciously do this in the future out of habit.
Two, if they add coffee then it sets you in the morning routing of going there. If you miss your coffee, then oh didn't get your egg sandwich and you pretty much missed breakfast. Remember, coffee is very cheep and addictive (believe it or not). This will also keep the buyer coming back every day. In the very short term, McDonalds looses pennies. In the long term, they gain a small fortune per person. | [
"In the US and Canada the standard McMuffin consists of a slice of Canadian bacon, a griddle-fried egg, and a slice of American cheese on a toasted and buttered English muffin. The round shape of the egg is made by cooking it in a white plastic ring surrounded by an outer metal structure.\n",
"Their signature \"n... |
what are "common sense" gun laws? | In politics "common sense" means "vague to the point everyone thinks I agree with them".
It is a way to campaign against something without offering any real solutions of your own, because, hey, who can be against common sense?
Once details are provided, supporters start to realize what you consider common sense is different than what they do. Hopefully that happens after you get elected. | [
"The usage of firearms by the police is covered by statute (such as the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and Human Rights Act 1998), policy (such as the Home Office \"Code of Practice on Police use of Firearms and Less Lethal Weapons\" and the ACPO \"Manual of Guidance on Police Use of Firearms\") and common l... |
we donate to cancer research and treatments are getting better, but why do we still have to pay the enormous costs for said treatment? | Cancer treatment costs *much more* than the amount being paid to the research centers. The donations are used to do investigations to discover new, better ways to treat cancers; but it does not include enough money to pay for the doctors, nurses, and hospital facilities used to treat hundreds of thousands of separate cancer patients. | [
"He says the Cancer Drugs Fund should be scrapped because the money would be better used on 21,000 patients with heart, lung and gastro-intestinal diseases who are denied cost effective evidence based treatment. He was the author or a report saying that the maximum threshold, currently around £30,000 a year used by... |
When evidence of water is found on very distant planets through the Hubble telescope, what distinguishes it as water from that distance and not another liquid? | Actually, it is not liquid water that was detected, but the presence of water in the atmospheres of several planets.
To detect the presence of different compounds in the atmosphere, absorption spectroscopy was used. Light from the planet's host star is detected on Earth, and a comparison is made between the intensities of various wavelengths when the light comes straight to us and when it has to pass through the exoplanet's atmosphere first. Different substances absorb different wavelengths of light, and so by studying what wavelengths are suppressed when the light goes through the exoplanet atmosphere, we can determine whether water or other substances are present. | [
"BULLET::::- 31 August – Astronomers at the Hubble Space Telescope report the first hints of possible water content within the TRAPPIST-1 multiplanetary system, which includes seven Earth-sized exoplanets, about 40 light-years away from Earth.\n",
"In October 2013, water was detected on an extrasolar body for the... |
if whatsapp chats are encrypted then how facebook is going to collect data from whatsapp chats for targeted advertising? | Theoretically, if they are using end to end encryption correctly, no-one, Facebook included, can read the messages other than the sender and recipient(s). Now what is NOT encrypted is the meta-data. Meta-data, in comparison with an email, is basically like all the stuff that is related to an email, except for the email itself. If you want to think of it like a physical letter, the meta-data is all the information regarding the letter, except the contents of the letter itself, like the sender's name and address, the receiver's address and name, and other publicly visible information regarding the letter. Meta-data includes, the time the message was sent, who it was sent to and from, the date sent, location sent from. Facebook can get information on who you talk to the most on WhatsApp, who you talk to the least, who your friends are on WhatsApp, and other information regarding your use of the App except for the actual messages, theoretically. They can then use that information they get to link it to your Facebook account if you have one, and other online profiles they have on you, and be able to target you with more advertisements.
The reason I keep saying theoretically Facebook can't read your messages is because the encryption that Facebook utilizes in WhatsApp is not verifiable because it is closed source. Even if they encrypted everything perfectly, and showed that, they could still have some questionable code in the actual application that essentially would allow Facebook to pull encrypted content as soon as you opened it when they wanted to.
This is simply a speculation by people concerned about online privacy, but it is a legitimate one since there is no way of disproving it without having some form of audit on Facebook's code, which can never really be trusted unless it is open source so ANYONE can audit it, which will never happen. So essentially you are trusting Facebook to have end to end encryption. This is one of the reasons that people concerned with privacy choose open source applications as much as possible, since anyone can audit the code, including themselves.
I hope that explains it. | [
"An app named \"WhatsApp Sniffer\" was made available on Google Play in May 2012, able to display messages from other WhatsApp users connected to the same network as the app user. At that time WhatsApp used an XMPP infrastructure with encryption, not plain-text communication.\n",
"On January 15, 2017, a research ... |
Can a black hole singularity be created by man? | So, first thing, in the video they most certainly are not encountering a black hole. The amount and concentration of energy that is involved w/ that engine is so dispersed that there is absolutely no way it could happen.
Now, as to the headline question, the answer at present (afaik, not my area of expertise) is that it is not expected that we are able to.
Classically, the smallest a black hole can get is governed by the [Chandrasekhar limit](_URL_2_). That is the minimum size for a stellar body to be to have enough gravitational pull to overcome the electron degeneracy repulsion. Nothing on earth has the mass or energy to do something like that.
Now, there's a potential that we can create [micro black holes](_URL_3_). Various hypotheses state that we could potentially be making black holes at the energy levels of the [LHC](_URL_0_) at CERN. And really, the only man made micro black holes we could do would be at CERN. There's no where else where you can get the energy and energy density needed to make them.
So, afaik, it's not expected we can make them, but if we were able to, it could only be at places like CERN where we have large particle accelerators. As an aside, it's interesting to note that oftentimes cosmic rays have more energy than what we could create here. The very energetic ones, called [ultra high energy cosmic rays](_URL_1_) have many orders of magnitude more energy than what we can create right now. So, it's much more likely if we were to have an earth based black hole event that it would be caused by cosmic rays, nothing manmade. | [
"While in a non-rotating black hole the singularity occurs at a single point in the model coordinates, called a \"point singularity\", in a rotating black hole, also known as a Kerr black hole, the singularity occurs on a ring (a circular line), known as a \"ring singularity\". Such a singularity may also theoretic... |
Besides Solar, and Hydro, are we likely to develop a method of generating electricity that isn't ultimately steam turning a fan? | Maybe not forever, but for the foreseeable future... yeah probably. All of those things generate heat, and there are only so many things you can do with thermal energy. You can directly convert it to electricity via the [Seebeck effect](_URL_1_), as is used in [RTGs](_URL_4_), but it's extremely inefficient. The conversion method of (blah) - > steam - > electricity is generally fairly efficient, well understood, and lots and lots of engineering work has gone into it.
Edit: A note on efficiency. In a normal [PWR nuclear reactor](_URL_3_), the heat extracted from the core raises the coolant temperature to typically around 600K. Thermal efficiency for converting that heat to electricity is limited by the [Carnot efficiency](_URL_0_), which is about 50% given the coolant temperature. Actual end-to-end efficiencies tend to be around 30-35%, which isn't bad considering the hard theoretical limit. To increase over efficiency, you can increase the core temperature, decrease the sink temp (pretty much impossible), or increase conversion efficiency (the steam part). The conversion efficiency really isn't going to change much, so increasing core temp is the way to go. There are some cool [Gen IV](_URL_2_) ideas that do this -- I've done some work on coolant piping metallurgy that says 650-700'C is doable, which could make 50% end-to-end efficiency a reality.... if anyone ever builds them. | [
"A solar fan is a mechanical fan powered by solar panels. The solar panels are either mounted on the device or are installed independently. Solar fans mostly do not require secondary power sources other than solar power, as most of them are used for cooling purposes during day time. Some types are also used for hea... |
the president, what he can and can't do, and what makes him different from prime ministers and such? | Most western democracies fall under one of three categories: The presidential system (e.g. the USA), the semi-presidential system (e.g. France) and the paliamentary system (e.g. Germany). These terms may seem confusing, as all three countries have a parliament and a president. But the difference is as follows:
In a **presidential system**, there is a strict separation between the government (aka *the executive*) and parliament (aka *the legislative*). The leader of the government is elected directly by the people, functions also as head of state and stays in office until the end of his term, unless he breaks any laws. He mustn't be a member of parliament, and he can't introduce a bill into parliament. On the other hand, he can veto bills.
In a **parliamentary system**, there is some mixing between government and parliament. The leader of government (called prime minister or chancelor) is elected by parliament, he isn't the head of state and parliament can force him to resign if the members lose their trust in the government. He can be a member of parliament (in some countries he must be) and the government can introduce bills, but the leader of the government can't veto bills.
In a **semi-presidential system** you will find elements of the other two systems, with great variations between different countries.
**tl; dr:** In one way, the American president is more powerful than a German chancelor or a British prime minister, because he doesn't depend on parliament to stay in office. In another way, he is less powerful, because he can only veto bills but not actively introduce them into parliament. | [
"The president appoints as prime minister, the person most likely to command the support of the majority in the Lok Sabha (usually the leader of the majority party or coalition). the president then appoints the other members of the Council of Ministers, distributing portfolios to them on the advice of the prime min... |
When a substance is stretched beyond its elastic limit i.e. undergoes plastic deformation, in what form is the work done on it stored? And can we get it back? | When you deform a material you're causing atoms/molecules to displace, so you're adding kinetic energy. Unsurprisingly, it is dissipated as heat.
_URL_0_
> can we get that energy back?
In theory, yes, if heat is useful energy in any way. However for most practical purposes it isn't useful, so we would consider it as a loss.
| [
"Elastic deformation stretches the bonds between atoms away from their equilibrium radius of separation, without applying enough energy to break the inter-atomic bonds. Plastic deformation, on the other hand, breaks inter-atomic bonds, and therefore involves the rearrangement of atoms in a solid material.\n",
"In... |
When do birds developing in an egg start breathing or using their lungs? | There's an event called "pipping", just before hatching, when the bird breaks through a membrane into an air cell just under the shell. This is when the lungs start working, and it's also when you sometimes start to hear the chick (still in the shell) start to vocalize. | [
"Birds have lungs but no diaphragm. They rely mostly on air sacs for ventilation. These air sacs do not play a direct role in gas exchange, but help to move air unidirectionally across the gas exchange surfaces in the lungs. During inhalation, fresh air is taken from the trachea down into the posterior air sacs and... |
How did drummer boys/trumpet players actually function in battle? | Field musicians were/are required to learn numerous calls. I played with various Fife & Drum groups, including Williamsburg Fifes & Drums. Some of the calls include the Breakfast Call, The General (signal to strike the tents and prepare for departure), The Parley (desire to conference with the enemy), The Assembly, Reveille, etc.
Fifes and drums were used to signal troops. The fife is a very high pitched, shrill instrument that can easily be heard across the battlefield. The drum can also be easily heard. A company of about 100 men would have one or two fifers and one or two drummers. When companies banded to form a regiment, the musicians were also banded. Besides signalling on the battlefield, the general would usually have a drummer close by for emergency calls and musicians signaled various duties within the camp. Musicians, when marching, were also used to lighten the spirits of troops.
The Fife, as a signalling instrument, began to drop in practice as brass bands became more popular around the time of the Civil War.
EDIT to further answer...Yes, there were specific rhythms, or rudiments, for signalling.
_URL_1_
_URL_0_ | [
"Ancient Fife and Drum Corps, as well as modern drum corps have been used by early modern armies for signalling and ceremonies, occasionally played by drummer boys in conflicts such as the American Civil War.\n",
"Before motorized transport became widespread, drummers played a key role in military conflicts. Mili... |
what is the lorentz contraction? | Imagine a car moving away from you. The time it takes for the light reflected off the front of the car to reach you, and the time it takes for the light reflected off the rear of the car to reach you, are for all intents and purposes the same when considering the speed of the car. You can then measure the car's apparent length knowing that the front and the rear hadn't moved in respect to each other when the light from each arrived at your position. In actuality it had, but given the relatively slow speed of the car it's not really measurable and certainly not perceivable.
Let's crank up the car's velocity to 15% of the speed of light. Measuring the car's length based on viewing the front and the rear should give you the same answer as before, right? But in the difference in the time the light took to travel to you from the front, and from the rear, the car has moved measurably. This means that just by looking at a car travelling at 15% the speed of light, it appears shorter because the car moved in the time difference between seeing the front and seeing the rear of the car. In this case, 1% shorter for a speed of 15% the speed of light. | [
"The Lorentz factor or Lorentz term is the factor by which time, length, and relativistic mass change for an object while that object is moving. The expression appears in several equations in special relativity, and it arises in derivations of the Lorentz transformations. The name originates from its earlier appear... |
How does your body know when someone is behind you? | In a quiet environment your sense of hearing is better than you think. If you stand near a wall, and lean in closer to it with your eyes closed, you can easily pick up audible, "ambient" sounds that will tell you fairly accurately how close you are to the wall. We're not bats, but we have a limited ability for passive echo-location...
One of my fave Richard Feynman stories is how we also underestimate our sense of smell -- he had a colleague hold a book in his hand for a minute or so, before putting it back into the bookcase. Feynman could pick the book out by smell alone...
| [
"BULLET::::- Orientation of the body. Usually people talk directed toward each other, but not squarely face to face, which can be indicative of a confrontational stance. In conversation, the participants' bodies are usually turned toward each other at an angle. When a person ignores someone else, they tend to ignor... |
is every square inch of land in america owned by someone or some entity? | All land in the US is technically owned by someone or by the federal or a state government. If there were any "unclaimed" land, it would (and did and does) default to state government ownership. | [
"The fifth largest federal landowner is the U.S. Department of Defense, which owns, leases, or possessed 26.1 million worldwide, of which 11.4 million acres are located in the United States. DOD land is mostly military bases and reservations. The largest single DOD-owned tract is the 2.3-million-acre White Sands Mi... |
each decade of the 20th century had a distinct character ie the 60s and hippies, the 80s and hairspray... what about the 19th century? was each decade defined by a certain style/music? | Back in the day, cultural trends would move more slowly. We didn't have TV, Radio, cars & airplanes to spread pop culture & then replace it with the next big thing.
There were definitely trends & fashion but it didn't come out of nowhere & replace the existing thing overnight. | [
"In the 1960s and 1970s, it catered to hippie and bohemian culture. From the 1980s to the end of the 1990s, it catered to punks, new romantics, metal heads, ravers, goths, trance, acid house and various sub-cultures of modern music, fashion, hair stylists, body arts, crafts and accessories, vintage rock 'n' roll we... |
why do high income and developed countries place such high taxes on their population compared to poor and undeveloped countries? | Rich people can afford to pay high taxes while still having enough left over to pay for food, clothing, shelter, and other necessities.
And rich countries tend to provide costly government services like nice transportation systems, clean water supply, sanitary waste disposal, police and fire protection, and a professionally run military -- so the government needs quite a bit of tax money. | [
"Some low-income countries have relatively high tax-to- GDP ratios due to resource tax revenues (e.g. Angola) or relatively efficient tax administration (e.g. Kenya, Brazil) whereas some middle-income countries have lower tax-to-GDP ratios (e.g. Malaysia) which reflect a more tax-friendly policy choice.\n",
"In h... |
why do animals and other mammals follow the same body structure? | There's a few things to dissect here.
1. Mammals are a Class (high level category) of animals.
2. Mammals in particular, and any animal under different classes (like a Salamander, an Amphibian) share common evolutionary ancestors and as such, are likely to have certain base traits in common. There's no reason for a species to change unless external, evolutionary pressure makes it advantageous to change. As for example, there's been no massive evolutionary pressure to get rid of sweat glands, mammals all share these as their common evolutionary ancestors had these. Although they're not universally ACTIVE in all mammals.
3. Additionally, certain features are just useful across different classes on account of physics and the enviornment. Almost all land-based animals have legs, because there's only so many ways to locomote on land. | [
"Weiss also compared the anatomical structures of humans and animals in order to establish proof that the reason why human and animals have different behaviors is because of their anatomy. He concluded that humans are capable of having biosocial responses and animals are not. Animals are unable to have biosocial re... |
What have been some of the crazier Endtimes theories throughout history? | my favourite recent one was when the Jehovah's Witnesses claimed the world was ending in '75 - of course they'd previously claimed a lot of dates including 1799, 1874, 1878, 1914, 1918 and 1925 but *THIS* was gonna be the real deal...
Of course they'd been burnt so many times before that they knew not to be too sure of themselves, in fact what i love about this is it's a frequently denied occurrence - despite the huge amounts of evidence and living memory of many people involved it's argued by the church not to have happened; which is kinda their MO because they've changed the story about all their predictions after the event...
1914 for example, this was originally supposed to be the time when Jesus takes over as king of kings; the start of the tribulation or Armageddon as described in the bible; which starts with
> The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand
God starts the end times by borrowing some more ideas from the eastern philosophies, lots of impressive uses of the number seven happen and people get sent some letters which say things they've been studying for thousands of years now... but i guess it will be fascinating for the leaders of LDS, JW, PCP and other churches to find out exactly which faction they are; '*oh, so we're the church of Ephesus? I always felt more like the church in Smyrna personally*...' and '*wai- who here has been teaching the doctrine of Balaam? and who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel?! i thought we agreed not to to eat things sacrificed unto idols, or to commit fornication*!?'
Up in heaven the seven seals were opened in 1914 by '*a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth*.', this involved events such as
> a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth,
Which was a fairly memorable event, but not so much as
?every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?
This actually explains a lot of strange happenings in the twentieth century, the reason there was no wind for example easily explained by '*four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree*.' and speaking of trees 'the third part of trees was burnt up' which probably made the news at the time, 'the third part of the sea became blood' which i why i rarely go boating anymore, well that and 'a third part of the ships were destroyed.' although it is understandable that barely got mentioned when much larger events such as 'the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise.' were happening at the time...
So although NONE of the things listed in the bible had come anywhere near close to happening a group of theological crazies were perfectly happy to accept a literal interpretation that relied on them having happened already...
in 1975 many non-believers had mock 'end of the world parties' the day before the due date and 'still here sinning' parties in the days and weeks after - however of course Watchtower magazine and other mouth pieces simple adjusted their doom predictions forward and added in some extra excuses, avoiding any reference to past mistakes wherever possible... | [
"Since the development of the concept of deep time in the 18th century and the calculation of the estimated age of the Earth, scientific discourse about end times has centered on the ultimate fate of the universe. Theories have included the Big Rip, Big Crunch, Big Bounce, and Big Freeze (heat death).\n",
"The te... |
What do these markings on my Grandfather's helmet mean? _URL_0_ | Aaaaaaaaand I formatted it wrong... Sorry about that.
Here's a link. _URL_0_ | [
"The remaining portions of the helmet consist of three main parts: a head-piece with face mask, a brow band, and ear and neck guards on either side. It would have originally had an iron skull cap, of which only fragments remain. The head-piece, made of silvered bronze, depicts a youthful face. The eyes, mouth, and ... |
Why does hot water make more bubbles than cold when I'm washing my hands? | Hot water has less surface tension. This is also why it is better at cleaning. The molecules of warm water move around more than cold water and as a result are less tightly bonded. Soap works by bonding the hydrophilic end of a soap molecule to a water molecule. The other end of the soap molecule is hydrophobic and will bond to grease and dirt. The soap reduces surface tension even more making the water 'stretchy'. This is what makes bubbles. Because the warm water has less surface tension to begin with, the soap can more easily bond with the warm water molecules than the cold ones. This means the soap is more effective at bonding to the water and as a result more foaming action. | [
"BULLET::::- Soap bubbles have very large surface areas with very little mass. Bubbles in pure water are unstable. The addition of surfactants, however, can have a stabilizing effect on the bubbles (see Marangoni effect). Note that surfactants actually reduce the surface tension of water by a factor of three or mor... |
if you burn more calories than you take in, how do you manage to remain alive? | Because the car still has gas in the tank. That's what fat is; it's the amount of gas you still have in your tank.
And yes, if you continually are at a caloric deficiency indefinitely (which would require you to constantly adjust it down because as you lost muscle/weight your base consumption levels would drop some) then eventually you would suffer from starvation and die. Generally most people's baseline will adjust downward enough to balance out or they will slightly increase their calorie consumption to match their use before that point though. | [
"As the calories required for energy homeostasis decreases as the organisms's mass decreases, if a moderate deficit is maintained eventually a new (lower) weight will be reached and maintained, and the organism will no longer be at caloric deficit. A permanent severe deficit, on the other hand, which contains too f... |
Is it a coincidence that all elements are present on Earth? | Astrophysicist here -
1. past supernovae and kilonovae produced a lot of these elements. Just this past discovery of the colliding neutron stars that got a lot of news for its gravitational wave, it produced ~~solar~~ many earth masses of gold.
2. The most important thing though is turbulent mixing in the interstellar medium. This process mixes heavy elements in a very short timescale. So effectively there's pretty much of the same relative abundance of the same periodic table elements everywhere. Astronomers routinely just used a term called metallicity Z to describe the content of heavy element relative to the sun.
3. However, have we lived in an elliptical galaxy, or some region of the halo of a galaxy, there are chances that the relative pattern might be different for alpha elements. This is because of the population of stars that could be different. More type I vs type II supernovae could change this.
Edit: See correction down comments below. Not solar masses. But you get the idea | [
"As of 2010, there are 118 known elements (in this context, \"known\" means observed well enough, even from just a few decay products, to have been differentiated from other elements). Of these 118 elements, 94 occur naturally on Earth. Six of these occur in extreme trace quantities: technetium, atomic number 43; p... |
What would be the minimum number of transistors required to build a simple turing-complete computer? | While there's some research into the smallest possible Universal Turing Machine (the current best has 2 states and uses a tape with 3 colours), I have no idea how you would actually build that out of transistors. For one thing, an official Turing Machine needs to have an infinite amount of storage space. For another, you'd need a computer that works in base 3 to build this particular one. | [
", the largest transistor count in a commercially available single-chip microprocessor is 19.2billion, in AMD's Ryzen-based Epyc, which is manufactured using Samsung's 14 nm FinFET process. , the highest in a GPU is Nvidia's GV100 Volta with 21.1billion transistors, and the highest in FPGA technology is Xilinx's Ev... |
why is black truffle so prized in the culinary industry? | It all boils down to their rarity. Truffles are mycorrhizal this which means they will only fruit if grown in conjunction with certain types of trees. The mycelium of the mushroom (the vegetative body) forms a net and grows in between the cells of the root hairs which allows nutrient moves between the mushroom and the tree. Only when the mycelium is mature enough and the conditions are correct will it produce a fruiting body (truffle).
Truffles are very specific to the climate and soil type in which they grow and because their life cycle and growth habits are complex it takes them a long time to get from spore to fruit (truffle).
Also they are difficult to find since the fruit of the mushroom is completely hypogeous (grows underground). Dogs are used to find them but they take a long time to train and are therefore also very expensive. Pigs were once used but the scent truffles give off is close to pig pheromone and pigs many times end up eating them.
Finally something could be said about their complex unattainable flavor, I have never thought they were that great but maybe I'm just a philistine. | [
"In cooking, black truffles are used to refine the taste of meat, fish, soups and risotto. Unlike white truffles, the aroma of black truffles does not diminish when they are heated, but becomes more intense.\n",
"Ernest Matthew Mickler's \"White Trash Cooking\" (1986), based on the cooking of rural white Southern... |
difference between midi and mp3 file | A MIDI file is “instructions” for how a song should be played, like sheet music but with more options. An mp3 is a compressed (smaller file size by sacrificing some fidelity) version of an actual recording of a song. | [
".mp3 is the most common extension for files containing MPEG-1 Layer 3 audio. An MP3 file is typically an uncontained stream of raw audio; the conventional way to tag MP3 files is by writing data to \"garbage\" segments of each frame, which preserve the media information but are discarded by the player. This is sim... |
How was the Japanese Navy able to conceal their defeat at Midway from the Army or the population as a whole? | The IJN's efforts to conceal the scale of the defeat had a powerful patron in the form of Emperor Hirohito. The Naval General Staff informed the Emperor of the scale of the defeat on 8 June. This meeting was done privately, without any IJA representative or other state officials. The Emperor responded that although the losses were regrettable, they should not interfere with the Navy's morale. This gave the IJN a degree of cover to distort the battle and its losses in the joint IJA-IJN command conference on 10 June. The IJN could not conceal that it lost the battle, but it did obscure the scale of its losses from the Army and the wider public. Only the Emperor, the upper echelons of the IJN, and select individuals of the imperial household and IJA knew the full truth. Tojo, even though the head of the government, complained postwar that he did not know of the realities of the defeat until a full month after the battle.
One stratagem for this deception involved using a degree of bureaucratic sleight of hand to hide the fact that these ships were at the bottom of the Pacific. The official 10 June IJN announcement noted that one carrier was lost and another damaged along with a heavy cruiser. The bulletin did not announce which ships were lost and internal IJN memoranda picked *Kaga* as the designated sunk ship, while the other carriers were still on the naval registry as damaged. The result was a paper shell game in which nonexistent damaged ships were supposedly in various Japanese ports and unmanned. The IJN then gradually revealed the sinking of these carriers and the *Mikuma*. The families of those KIA were also gradually informed of the loss of their loved ones, but over the course of a few months. In the meantime, for all intents and purposes, these sailors were alive with their ships, but under strict secrecy not to contact their families. The Chief of Staff for the Sixth Fleet sent out this instruction:
> Concerning those KIA, the personnel bureau and personnel section will gradually notify the families of the deceased, but the name of the ship sunk will not be mentioned. The policy is to handle the killed merely as individuals.
So in this scenario, their deaths were completely unrelated to the Midway defeat and kept as vague as possible.
This type of secrecy also extended to the some 600 wounded from Midway. Most of them were shunted into hospitals with strict instructions not to contact their families or let on to the nature of the defeat. The naval hospitals quarantined the wounded and only allowed specially vetted doctors and nurses to treat them. The men were not permitted mail and after they recuperated, they were not allowed to go on leave for over a year. A few such a the dive-bomber pilot Takashige Egusa escaped this cordon of security on their own volition, but this was not an option for many of these men.
The emerging attrition campaign in South Pacific also abetted the efforts of the IJN to maintain its fictions. Surviving Midway personnel from the carriers were ordered to IJN ship and shore units to meet the Guadalcanal campaign. The enlisted men were allowed no home leave and they were distributed throughout the Southern front. The surviving aviators, of which there were much more than the popular American accounts of Midway hold, filtered back into the IJN air establishment to replenish losses from the Coral Sea or man some of the new carriers. Egusa, for example, went from carriers to instructor work at Yokusuka. The increasing tempo of operations because of Guadalcanal meant that many of these men did not have much time to dwell on the defeats of June in light of these new challenges. Reiji Masuda, a merchant seaman involved in the salvage operation of *Mogami*, reflected some of these concerns. He recalled postwar that he encountered both charred bodies as well as testaments by dying men. All Masuda could think about with this grim evidence was "I won't be coming back again," when he received his orders to go south.
The Japanese press was largely acquiescent in this deception. Naval journalists repeated the IJN's lies verbatim as well as the cushioning blow that one should always expect losses in war. A number of journalists knew that something dire had happened. For example, Domei News Agency cameraman Tatsuzo Asai recalled:
> We learned we were gradually losing. It was after Midway that things got bad. Before that operation, I was in Sumatra. Someone told me, "Planes are being transferred," so I wangled my way onto one. Something must be up. We flew back to the Homeland, but then we kept on going north, to Paramushiro Island, near Soviet Kamchatka, then with a scouting mission flew over Attu and Kiska in the Aleutians. When I went out, the plan for the invasion of Midway was being implemented in the Central Pacific. When I got back, everyone looked so deflated. So glum. The staff officers at headquarters kept saying, ''This is terrible. A disaster."
But putting two and two together immediately was quite difficult given the paucity of information about the battle. In contrast to the US's treatment of Kimmel and Short for Pearl Harbor, there was no command shake-up at the IJN in light of the disaster. Nagumo remained in charge of the reconstituted *Kido Butai* and Yamamoto still had a very public presence in the IJN.
The net result of all this deception was that by the time the full scale of the Midway defeat was made clear by the gradual release of information, Japan was facing an even deeper military crisis. By 1943/44, by which time anyone diligent enough could see that the four carriers were no longer in operation, these losses were becoming eclipsed by other losses. The management of information also created a dubious precedent for the IJN to cloud news of its post-Midway losses. News of the Midway defeat became just one of many nebulous setbacks for Japan's war effort and enmeshed into a wider web of lies.
*Sources*
Bix, Herbert P. *Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan*. New York, NY: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2000.
Cook, Haruko Taya, and Theodore Failor Cook. *Japan at War: An Oral History*. New York: New Press, 1992.
Parshall, Jonathan B., and Anthony P. Tully. *Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway*. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2005. | [
"At the Battle off Samar, the effectiveness of the U.S. Navy's escorts was demonstrated when they managed to defend their troop convoy from a much larger and more powerful Japanese battle-fleet. The Japanese force comprised four battleships and numerous heavy cruisers, while the U.S. force consisted of escort carri... |
What is the process- start to finish, of a hurricane? | A hurricane requires a few things to form: warm, humid air, low vertical wind shear (the wind speed at the surface is similar to the speed in the upper troposphere), a latitude higher than about 5 degrees, and an instability to kick it off. I'm not a huge weather expert but I know there are ways to measure the stability/instability of the atmosphere in an area as it relates to the gradients of temperature and pressure of the air. Basically, a hurricane needs to form around a small low-pressure spot, rather than a large low-pressure region.
The point of these conditions is that a hurricane is basically a giant heat engine, sucking warm air from the surface of the ocean into the cold upper atmosphere until it cools down enough for the water to condense, forming storm clouds, then the air falls back down. This is called secondary circulation. The air being sucked up in the center of the hurricane creates a low-pressure area, so surrounding air flows inwards. This is where the latitude comes into effect, because a hurricane can only form when the coriolis effect is significant enough to drive the primary circulation of the storm, which is the characteristic circular rotation.
Because the earth is a rotating sphere, air at the equator has a higher speed in the direction of the earth's rotation than air at higher altitudes (air at the equator has to go around a larger circumference in the same amount of time). For this example, I'll assume we're in the northern hemisphere. When a low-pressure zone is created, air to the south of it will move north. As this air moves north, its eastward speed becomes greater than the ground below it, so it veers off towards the east. The air to the north of the low pressure zone will move south, and as it moves south its eastward speed becomes lower than the ground, so it veers to the west. This creates a counterclockwise rotation around the center of the storm. The lower the pressure in the center, the more air it can pull in and the faster the rotation can get.
This process can only continue as long as there is warm, humid air driving the low-pressure eye of the storm. Eventually the storm will hit cold water or land where there won't be enough energy to keep the system going and it will dissipate. | [
"Hurricane response is the disaster response after a hurricane. Activities performed by hurricane responders include assessment, restoration, and demolition of buildings; removal of debris and waste; repairs to land-based and maritime infrastructure; and public health services including search and rescue operations... |
Why did scientists estimate the Opportunity Rover to only last for 90 days, and why did it last for that much longer (14 years)? | The main limiting factor was expected to be accumulation of dust on the solar panels. They had a good idea of the rate at which dust was likely to accumulate and made the panels large enough that they would still provide enough power to complete the 90-day mission even as the dust accumulated.
What they had not accurately predicted was how frequently the wind in the thin atmosphere of Mars would be strong enough to blow the dust off. It turns out that these "cleaning events" are frequent enough that the dust never got to a level where the rovers couldn't operate. The amount of power varies with the seasons and with dust levels and the amount of driving and science they can do varies accordingly, but it's always been enough to keep the systems going.
The rest of the systems lasted longer in part because most things built tough enough to last the harsh conditions of launch and landing are not going to fall apart in a couple of months or after driving a few hundred metres. I doubt anybody expected them to go for as long as they have, but they knew if they had power they could go for a lot longer than 90 days. | [
"BULLET::::- \"Opportunity\" (MER-B), Mars Exploration Rover, launched on July 7, 2003 and landed on January 25, 2004. \"Opportunity\" surpassed the previous records for longevity at 5,352 sols (5498 Earth days from landing to mission end; 15 Earth years or 8 Martian years) and covered a total distance of . The rov... |
why does holding your nose help stifle your vomit impulse? | Actually, allthough the nose is not directly connected to the muscles or gag reflex itself, the brain is very much involved in vomiting. So by holding your nose, you are blocking smells/neural signals that might trigger/help the urge to vomit.
Sometimes you vomit because of internal issues (disease or something you ate), but a lot of the time people vomit or trigger their gag reflex by smells, tastes or something visual - meaning the brain is triggering it.
ELI5: it's like muting a scary movie, or covering your eyes so you don't see the scary face. Still scary, but not as scary as looking directly at it. | [
"Irritation of nerve endings within the nasal passages or airways, can induce a cough reflex and sneezing. These responses cause air to be expelled forcefully from the trachea or nose, respectively. In this manner, irritants caught in the mucus which lines the respiratory tract are expelled or moved to the mouth wh... |
Did 'white' skinned humans originate with albinism? | This is a bit unknown. There are a number of theories. One of the wilder ones is that the white skin came from cross-breeding with Neanderthals. But more likely either light skin evolved to absorb more sunlight in darker/colder places (to get more Vitamin D, etc) or dark skin evolved in hot/sunny places to prevent sunburn/cancer and folate depletion.
Our distant anscestors lived under the forest canopy and had more hair, so upon moving away from the trees and losing some hair, we needed to evolve mechanisms of dealing with various body changes, hence melanin and the changes to the skin pigmentation.
Albinism is very different than simply being light skinned. The gene variant is an all or nothing so you do not get an "albino mixed" baby, you simply have a CHANCE of having an albino baby, or a normal one. Albinism is a recessive trait, so you need two carriers to give birth to an albino child. It's also associated with no eye or hair pigment, and always results in very poor vision. There are a few variants, however, so it's not always identical, but it's most certainly not related to caucasion ancestry, although a similar (but different) genetic mutation sometime in the distant past may have caused the current light-skinned expression, thus allowing evolution to then play out, based on the survival of variants of each.
As a side note, genetic studies indicate that blue eyes likely descended from a single individual in Northern Sweden. The effect of this can be observed very clearly in the following map:
_URL_0_
Crazy stuff, that genetics. | [
"Melanin theory is a claim in Afrocentrism that a higher level of melanin, the primary determinant of skin color in humans, is the cause of an intellectual and physical superiority of dark-skinned people and provides them with supernatural powers. It is considered a racist and pseudoscientific theory.\n",
"Albini... |
the whole "corporations are people" thing and why people hate it so much. | To fully understand this issue, we have to go back a few hundred years, before the idea of a corporation was invented. Prior to the industrial revolution, if you owned a business, you were personally liable for any debts that your business accrued. So, for example, if a piece of brick fell off your business' building and injured someone, that person could take you to court, and recover damages. If your business didn't have enough money to cover the damages, then the court could actually take the money from your personal holdings, e.g. force you to sell your property to pay for the damages.
As time went on, and businesses reached larger scales with many different shareholder-owners, it became impractical to try to go after the personal holdings of the owners themselves. So, the state came up with the solution of the corporation, which is a legal shield, that prevents the courts from going after the personal holdings of shareholders, and instead considers the "corporation" liable for the debt; this also had the side-effect of encouraging investment in business, since people no longer had to fear that the rest of their personal wealth was in jeopardy when they made an investment.
So corporations came into existence with this legal shield, but there was a problem. Under common law (which is the legal tradition of the US), only a "person" was allowed to sue or be sued. This meant that the courts would have to recognize the "personhood" status of corporations, or else people wouldn't be able to sue corporations. So, the courts came up with a [legal fiction](_URL_0_) called "corporate personhood," the result of which was that a corporation can be brought to suit (and also that they can bring suits). The courts still do distinguish between a "natural person"(a flesh and blood human) and a "legal person" (a corporation).
As for why people hate the "corporations are people thing": for the same reason people detest anything about a corporation - corporations are the "Big Bully" just trying to keep the little guy down, etc. etc.
**TL;DR** - corporate personhood comes from a quirk of the common law legal system, whereby only a "person" could appear in court. | [
"Some people consider corporations to be intrinsically amoral entities. This can refer to the \"ethical numbness\" of these organizations' executives and managers especially when approached from the view that corporations can be considered moral agents as well as a kind of legal person. \n",
"Corporate personhood... |
if calories are just a unit of energy then how can things like redbull have 0 calories but still give you energy? | Energy is an odd word when it comes to food. You derive energy only from foods containing calories. However, there are substances that for various reasons give you the perception of being energetic, or awake, or whatever. Consider that a pound of fat has approximately 3,500 calories worth of energy within it to use. That's enough to run for several hours. What things like Red Bull do is introduce chemicals into you that block receptors that tell you that you are tired. There are also other chemicals with no value, or little value, or that aren't really understood very well. Generally, it's the Caffeine and Guarana that are assisting in making you feel less tired.
The rest is likely psychology, and later on psychological addiction. You'd be better served drinking a cup of coffee and avoiding the rest. Better safe than sorry. | [
"The calorie equals the amount of thermal energy necessary to raise the temperature of one gram of water by 1 Celsius degree, from a temperature of 14.5 degrees Celsius, at a pressure of 1 atm. For thermochemistry a calorie of 4.184 J is used, but other calories have also been defined, such as the International Ste... |
In 1466 would the natives in Cuba have been aware of the Mayans or the Aztecs? If "yes" did the trade with either? If so what? | The indigenous peoples of Cuba were the Taíno, an Arawak people who inhabited most of what is now Cuba, along with other Carribean islands such as Jamaica and Hispaniola. The Taíno have their roots in South America, particularly in what is now the Orinoco Valley in Venezuela, and divided from the Arawak by migrating to the northern Lesser Antilles, and even further into Hispaniola, modern-day Puerto Rico, and Florida. They relied heavily on canoes in trade and transportation; they were accomplished seamen and traveled throughout the Caribbean. Some examples of large canoes found could carry thirty people. There is a strong amount of evidence for contact between the Taíno and the Mayans, mostly through archaeological research. There are two pools of evidence supporting this: Mayan trade goods found in Taíno heritage sites and some indicators of cultural exchange, mostly through the similarity of Mayan and Taíno ballgames. On Columbus' first voyage into Cuba, they found a cask of beeswax in easternmost Cuba, which is most likely to have come from Yucatan; to quote Ronald Canter in his paper 'Yucatan Channel and Trade:' "The common honeybee was unknown in the Americas before
contact. Only the stingless bees Meliponini beecheii and M. Yucatanica were suitable for honey production, and the Maya were virtually the only beekeepers. Bartolome de Las Casa, in comments on Columbus’s “Journal of the First Voyage”, noted that the people of Cuba did not keep bees or produce beeswax themselves. Las Casas speculated that the wax had come from a wrecked Maya trading canoe. Given the currents, this seems unlikely, but not impossible."
In addition, recently mineralogist George Harlow traced Preclassic jadeite axes from a site on the Island of Antigua to the mines the material was retrieved from in modern-day Guatemala. It is highly unlikely this material drifted across the Caribbean, which suggests the possibility it was traded indirectly through South/Central American societies. Besides that, there have been observed similarities between Mayan ballgames and the Taíno game known as 'batay', a word which also seems to appear in Classical Mayan inscriptions to refer to the game; similar courts as those found in Mayan sites have been found in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, all more recent than 650 AD.
Sources:
Canter, Ronald 2006 "Yucatan Channel and Trade." *FAMSI Journal of the Ancient Americas*, 11-28-2006. (PDF warning) _URL_3_
Colombus, Christopher 1493 “Journal of the First Voyage of Columbus.” In American Journeys: a Digital Library and Learning Center, Document No. AJ-062, Wisconsin Historical Society. With notes by Bartolome de Las Casas. _URL_0_
Petit, Charles 2006 “Jade Axes Proof of Vast Ancient Caribbean Network, Experts Say.” National Geographic News, 6-12-06. _URL_2_
Taylor, Dicey 2001 “Taino: Ancient Voyagers of Sea and Spirit.” Precolumbian Society, exhibit/lecture 12-8-01, Philadelphia, PA. _URL_1_
Jones, Chris 2001 “The Ballcourts of Puerto Rico.” Precolumbian Society, lecture 5-12-01, Philadelphia, PA | [
"Christopher Columbus traded with Maya merchants off the coast of Yucatán in 1502, but never made landfall. Arriving in Yucatán during the decade following Columbus's first contact with the Maya, the first Spanish to set foot on Yucatán soil did so by chance, the survivors of a shipwreck in the Caribbean. Most of t... |
Why do U.S. politicians refuse to label the genocide on the Natives as a 'genocide'? | > For all intents and purposes, the United States actively teaches its citizens about the genocide on the Natives
Eh... I don't think so.
I'm from Nebraska and we've got a couple of reservations and a decent sized Native American population. I cannot think of a time where the term genocide was used to describe what happened to the Native Americans. Granted, this is my experience and, assuming high school and older, 20 years ago, but I honestly think you'd be hard pressed to find non-Native Americans in Nebraska who have been taught that what happened was a genocide.
Also, I think your question is too broad. What does genocide mean? What time period are you talking about? What native people are you talking about?
**First, what does genocide mean?** The Nuremburg Trials charged the Nazis:
> They (the defendants) conducted deliberate and systematic genocide—viz., the extermination of racial and national groups—against the civilian populations of certain occupied territories in order to destroy particular races and classes of people, and national, racial or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles, Gypsies and others.
The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment on the Crime of Genocide says:
> Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. (Article 2 CPPCG)
There are lots of other definitions, some of which include a much broader scope. I think the UN definition is fairly comprehensive - it includes the phrase "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction." I like this phrase because it IS broad enough to include things that might not have been considered, yet still brings about the end result - destruction of a people.
**What time period are you talking about?**
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington - they were all friendly towards the natives and wanted to live in peace with them. Now, one could argue that a "voluntary" genocide began around then. The [Treaty with the Cherokee of 1817](_URL_1_) offered 640 acres of land if they became US citizens. Can one be a US citizen and a member of the Cherokee at the same time? Is this the beginning of genocide? I don't believe it is, but others might disagree. [Jefferson wrote to William Henry Harrison](_URL_0_), the governor of the Indiana territory in 1803:
> Our system is to live in perpetual peace with the Indians, to cultivate an affectionate attachment from them, by everything just and liberal which we can do for them within the bounds of reason, and by giving them effectual protection against wrongs from our own people.
He goes on to explain the desire to get the natives to start farming and doing other work and getting them used to a lifestyle similar to Americans so that when the US would expand towards them, they would voluntarily join OR they would move west of the Mississippi. He also mentions that any tribe who wanted to fight should have their lands seized and be forced west of the Mississippi as a warning to the others. Again, on one hand, Jefferson is talking about peace, but he IS talking about changing the native population's culture, but he's NOT doing it to destroy the people. It might be a cultural genocide, but it's not something that is "calculated to bring about its physical destruction."
**What native people are you talking about?**
If you look at the Hopi and Navajo peoples, the Hopi asked the US government for protection from the Navajo. The Navajo were then marched to a fort where some of their enemies were at and trouble ensued. This shows that 1) the US government was willing to help a native tribe (Hopi) and 2) the US government didn't know enough about the tribes to keep the Navajo and the Mescalero apart.
If we compare this with the southern tribes (Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, Creek, Chickasaw), it's night and day. The Choctaw were forced off of their lands in the middle of winter and forced to Oklahoma. En route, they froze to death, they were murdered and robbed by local whites, they starved, and they had no water to drink as the creeks were all frozen. But again, is this genocide? Was this done "to bring about [the native people's] physical destruction in whole or in part"? Or was this just a stupid and/or brutal decision done with little regard for human life?
Looking at the Nuremberg definition, genocide is "deliberate and systematic." I don't think we can say that the US government was deliberate or systematic in wiping out Native Americans.
I think that it's fair to say:
* US government policy towards Native American tribes was hostile for at least 50-70 years. (From Andrew Jackson until the mid 1870's (end of the Great Sioux War) or 1890 (Wounded Knee Massacre).
* Native American removal policies were harshest against tribes in the East. Tribes out west, having seen what happened, fought back.
* US government actions against certain tribes at certain times have been brutal and harsh.
* US government actions against certain other tribes can be considered genocide.
/u/Hello_There2 mentioned the [Bureau of Indian Affairs apology](_URL_2_). It's a good read, and I think it definitely sheds some light on this whole argument.
> This agency forbade the speaking of Indian languages, prohibited the conduct of traditional religious activities, outlawed traditional government, and made Indian people ashed of who they were. Worst of all, the Bureau of Indian Affairs committed these against against the children entrusted to its boarding schools, brutalized them emotionally, psychologically, physically, and spiritually.
This is the genocide that is clear. The BIA took native children and taught them to not be Native American. There's more in the speech about the physical destruction - killing bison, alcohol, killing women and children - but in my opinion, the schools is the issue that seems clearly designed to bring about the destruction of the native people. I find it interesting, too, because of all the horrible things that the US DID do, the one that seems the most innocuous (schools) is the one that did the most damage.
So, I would change your question to be more specific.
* Why has the US government not apologized for the cultural genocide against the western tribes in the latter half of the 19^th century? (A genocide that an agency of the US government has admitted to)
* Was the brutal treatment of Native Americans east of the Mississippi River genocide or simply brutality/stupidity? (Horrible acts that would qualify as genocide if the end goal can be proven.)
So to answer your final part, what are the historical, political, or legal reasons that the President and/or Congress hasn't apologized?
Two things. First, a lack of political clout. Without getting into the 20 year rule, I would not be surprised if a future administration makes an apology in the next 10-20 years. Native American tribes have been getting stronger economically which lends itself to political power. The obvious sign is Indian casinos. The not so obvious is the non-gambling related businesses. The Winnebago of Nebraska have Ho-Chunk corporation, some native tribes in Washington have a fishery they operate - things are getting better for Native American tribes economically. If you look at the history of Columbus Day vs. Native People's Day, I think you'll also find some pretty solid evidence of political changes that have happened/are happening.
Second, a lack of historical awareness and acceptance. People need to be aware of the history (and again, I'm not convinced that they are) so that when a Native chief says, "Hey, we want an apology," people are thinking of genocide and not of the stereotypes of beads for Manhattan or drunk people on a reservation. Then, people need to recognize and accept that what happened was genocide. Until all of those conditions are met, I don't see an apology coming.
All that said, the growing clout of Native tribes, the ability to spread the word these days, a growing awareness - I would not be surprised to hear an apology soon. | [
"In a speech before representatives of Native American peoples in June, 2019, California governor Gavin Newsom apologized for the genocide. Newsom said, \"That’s what it was, a genocide. No other way to describe it. And that’s the way it needs to be described in the history books.\"\n",
"In the United States, bla... |
photon reflection off a mirror. | Say that we have a laser at point A and a detector at point B. We aim the laser so that the light coming out of it bounces off a mirror and goes into the detector. The actual physics of what's going on at the point where the light bounces off the mirror is extremely complicated and depends on material properties and the frequency of light, etc. But in short, what *probably* will happen is that the individual photons are absorbed by electrons in atoms/molecules which then go into an excited state. The electron then wants to lose this energy to be in a more relaxed state, so it spits a photon out, typically with the same frequency at the absorbed photon. The direction that the photon is most probable to be emitted is going to be determined by specific properties of the atoms/molecules that make up the mirror and this absorbing/emitting process might happen multiple times.
Okay, now for the fun question. How does it "remember" its path, and how does it know to reflect at the same angle it came in at? The short answer is that it doesn't. In fact, as we understand it, the photons (both incoming and outgoing) take *every possible path simultaneously.* Each path gets assigned a "probability" (really, it is an amplitude which you can think of as a kind of "square root" of a probability) based on the fundamental properties of nature and these either add together or subtract from each other. It just so happens that the paths very near the path of shortest distance (the one where the light bounces off the mirror at the same angle it came in) all add together, while paths far away from this subtract out. So you are left with a net effect of light traveling the shortest distance between the two points, never once having to know or remember its path. | [
"Now, the same photon is moving through two different parts of the device. The photon that passed through the mirror is now on the \"lower path\". It may or may not encounter a bomb, which is designed to explode if it encounters a single photon. The photon that was reflected off the mirror is now on the \"upper pat... |
What are these WWII era Japanese men wearing? | They are wearing kimono, a traditional Japanese garment. The kimono itself is the long robe-looking piece of clothing that is secured at the waist by a sash (obi). On top of that, they seem to be wearing haori - a sort of coat commonly worn over kimono robes. Additionally, some of them are also wearing hakama - a sort of pleated trouser or skirt (depending on the design - some are divided, like pants, whilst some are undivided, like a dress) that are worn over the bottom of the kimono. | [
"Kempeitai personnel were dressed in the standard Japanese military uniform, but they were distinguished by an armband bearing the Japanese characters for \"Kempeitai\" (憲兵隊). They also wore khaki uniforms with an armband or were simply dressed in civilian clothes. While officers were armed with a shin guntō (milit... |
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