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What happens to the concentration of oxygen in air when air is passed through water or carbon? | Under normal conditions, the water or carbon would already be in an equilibrium with the oxygen in the air, and little or nothing would happen. We can use [Henry's law](_URL_0_) to estimate the quantity of Oxygen already in the water, which gives us around ~10 mg of Oxygen/Liter of water. So, if you exposed completely pure water to air it would uptake oxygen up to roughly that concentration.
As for a carbon, I'll assume you're talking about a carbon filter, like you could find in those relatively cheap gas masks. These are typically made of activated carbon, and adsorb many chemicals, gas, liquid, and particulate, very readily- you can see examples investigating this that are over [100 years old](_URL_1_). You can define an expression essentially identical to Henry's law for a solid as well, and this has been done. Note that to strongly adsorb gas, Dewar had to cool the carbon down to extremely low temperatures- this is because most atmospheric gasses are very stable, and will only bond very weakly. Perturbations due to normal room temperature are enough to 'kick' them off the surface.
I was able to find adsoprtion behavior for some gasses on dry activated carbon: [{1}](_URL_2_) , but unfortunately no information on oxygen in my brief search. However considering that oxygen is a very stable atmospheric gas, I don't think oxygen concentration in air would be depleted much by activated carbon, even if it was a sample which had never been exposed to an atmosphere before. Unless the air was percectly pure, the carbon would strongly adsorb other small molecules such as water or organics, which would prevent oxygen from binding by taking up 'sites' on the surface.
I like this question because you can get a qualitative answer by considering macroscopic ideas- if oxygen adsorped readily into common materials, it would rapidly be depleted out of the atmosphere by the huge masses of material in the ocean and ground. Same for the rest of the atmospheric gasses. So while it isn't conclusive proof, one could guess that most atmospheric gasses weakly interact with most materials, just by virtue that they've been around in high concentration for exceptional periods of time. And this guess, while not the entire picture, often proves to be correct. In [{1}](_URL_2_) you can see that the enthalpies of adsorption for the N2 are significantly lower than those of the light organics, and even lower than the noble gasses, indicating it's bound less strongly. | [
"Any oxidizable material present in an aerobic natural waterway or in an industrial wastewater will be oxidized both by biochemical (bacterial) or chemical processes. The result is that the oxygen content of the water will be decreased.\n",
"Oxygen is poorly soluble in water. Fully aerated fresh water therefore c... |
What were the most significant events in british history that led to their modern political system | I would argue there are three major events that led to the modern political system, but of course also many minor events, gradual developments, etc.
& #x200B;
**Part 1**
The first is the **signing of the Magna Carta**. Although this is often exaggerated in importance and effect, it is still important in terms of principle.
Early Norman Kings often took the quite sensible measure of asking advice from their council, which was generally made up of the most powerful lords both secular (Earls, Barons, etc) and ecclesiastic (Archbishops, Bishops, etc). This could even be the Magnum Concilium (Great Council). After all, if the King passes a law that all his leading subjects hate, how will he enforce it? He had no national army or police force, only the feudal oaths of his lords to supply men (or, as the system developed, cash payments). If all his lords refused to follow his laws, then he'd have no soldiers. So while there was not really a codified legal obligation for the King to consider the wishes of his lords when making laws, in practice it was a very good idea.
In 1100, the 4th son of William the Conquerer, Henry I, became King. The Barons didn't like him, the Archbishop didn't like him, his brother the previous King (who once threw Henry in prison for 2 years) had died in a hunting "accident" during a hunt that Henry attended. The common people, being Anglo-Saxons, didn't like him. He solved the last problem by marrying Edith, princess of Scotland and more importantly an Anglo-Saxon princess, great-niece of the last English King, Edward the Confessor. However, this made him even more unpopular with the Norman nobles.
So, to mollify them, he passed the Charter of Liberties. This charter bound the King to certain legal responsibilities; he couldn't seize property from a dead Bishop, he couldn't charge the sons of nobles to inherit their father's titles, he couldn't stop the widows or daughters of nobles from marrying, he forgave all murders and debts to the Crown from his brother's reign, he restored some laws of King Edward and William his brother had changed, he promised to maintain England's forests, he couldn't charge nobles tax and demand their soldiers, and he would no longer allow noblemen to pay money to escape prosecution for crimes.
These may not seem very related to modern politics, but it established a key principle; the King's power is not absolute, and he himself has obligations to the country, to God (ie the Church), to his nobles, and to fair and just laws. But... it was pretty much ignored for the next 115 years.
This brings us to the reign of King John. John was the younger brother of the King Richard I. He'd attempted unsuccessfully to rebel against Richard while Richard was on Crusade. But when Richard died, he won a war of succession against his young nephew Arthur. He inherited England, Ireland, Normandy, and extensive lands in France. But 3 years into his reign, in 1202, war broke out with the King of France when John abandoned his wife to marry another woman. Her fiancee complained to the King of France, and war broke out when John refused to go and answer to the King of France. He quickly captured the rebels, but kept them in bad conditions, and many died. John apparently killed his nephew Arthur while drunk and threw his body in the river with a corpse tied to it. He also treated his main ally very arrogantly. John's allies began to abandon him, and he hired many mercenaries. All of this made John more and more unpopular, and desertions in his forces to the King of France's side led to him losing most of his land in France.
John had gone from a powerful and rich King to a poor and unpopular one. He spent the next 10 years trying to rectify this by building up his forces and treasury through extensive taxes. Taxes for inheritance, taxes for imports and exports, taxes on Jews, taxes on widows, taxes on feudal lords to pay for wars even when there weren't actually any wars... you'll notice that some of these explicitly contradict the Charter of Liberty, something that, after 100 years of being ignored, the Barons suddenly remembered as being very important.
(A small note; John also did a lot of good work on currency standards, professionalisation of the courts, fair laws for commoners, etc. That's just not very relevant to this answer.)
Unrelated to this, John got into an argument with the Pope about the election of a new Archbishop, and the Pope excommunicated him. He used that as an excuse to raise money from the Church; seizing the lands of clerics who supported the pope, kidnapping their girlfriends and demanding fines to get them back, collecting tithes meant for the Church and keeping them, etc.
In 1214, John lost a war to France, again, and returned to England. With the King poor and weak, many barons revolted, swearing oaths to fight for "the Church and the Realm." They demanded John reissure the Charter of Liberties.
In 1215, John met the Barons to negotiate. He was forced to sign the Magna Carta, which promised many legal protections for freemen, guarenteed the freedom of the Church, and heavily regulated the King's rights to impose taxes without the consent of the Barons.
Most clauses have since been repealed or altered due to new laws, but three clauses still exist in English law, and some clauses have also been used in US trials.
* I. FIRST, We have granted to God, and by this our present Charter have confirmed, for Us and our Heirs for ever, that the Church of England shall be free, and shall have all her whole Rights and Liberties inviolable. We have granted also, and given to all the Freemen of our Realm, for Us and our Heirs for ever, these Liberties under-written, to have and to hold to them and their Heirs, of Us and our Heirs for ever.
* IX. THE City of London shall have all the old Liberties and Customs which it hath been used to have. Moreover We will and grant, that all other Cities, Boroughs, Towns, and the Barons of the Five Ports, as with all other Ports, shall have all their Liberties and free Customs.
* XXIX. NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right
The most significant clause was Clause 61, which established a council of 25 Barons, who were required to monitor the King and ensure he was following the rules. If he did not, they were legally authorised to fine him or remove his property. So here we have a)laws the King must follow, and b)a parliament of laws with power to enforce this on the King, and which was required to pass new taxes.
The King and the Barons soon fell out, of course, and the charter was not enforced. But John died a year later, and his young son became King. As the King was a child, he was weak, and while he won the civil war, was forced to issue a new form of the Magna Carta, watered down from John's version
Legal arguments over whether or not Magna Carta bound the King or not, but over time, large portions of it became accepted by both King and Nobles, with both sides ignoring it or fighting for it's rights as required.
Its legal strength retreated under the Tudors, but by this time the concept that the King ought to hold regular parliaments, and get their support for any new taxes (ie to pay for a war) was widely accepted. | [
"From 1837 until 1901, Queen Victoria reigned over the United Kingdom and the ever-expanding British Empire. The Industrial Revolution had begun in Britain and during the 19th century it became the most powerful Western nation. Britain also enjoyed relative peace and stability from 1815 until 1914, this period is o... |
if our nose and mouth are connected, why do we sniff some drugs and swallow others? | The ones that go up your nose usually don't go down into your stomach. Sniffable drugs are intended to be absorbed through the mucous membranes that are up in your sniffer. Not all chemicals can be absorbed in this way, some have to be absorbed through the stomach or intestine. | [
"Some drugs are inactive in the digestive tract, but this can be avoided if held between the upper lip and gum. This prevents the substances from getting swallowed with salivation, as would normally occur between the lower lip and gum, permitting slow release of the drug to prolong the duration of action.\n",
"Th... |
How is genetic information added through evolution? | A. In terms of physical quantity of DNA, genetic material is added by duplication. Either individual segments of DNA get duplicated or occasionally entire genomes.
The former is more common in animals, while the latter is more common in plants. This is mostly due to how tolerant each type of organism is to having your entire set of genes doubled. (Plants are usually okay with an extra branch or two, animals... not so much).
Sometimes this duplication process can run away with itself. In the case of transposons, so called "jumping genes", they can duplicate themselves to the point that they almost overwhelm all the DNA. Thankfully most species have mechanisms to remove transposons, creating a genetic balancing act where two opposing forces maintain a regular genome size.
Consider a scenario where it is suddenly more fit to have more DNA.
How would evolution select for this? It might tweak the balance of these opposing forces so that more transposons jumped, allowing an increase the overall raw DNA content.
How would it tweak this balance? Natural selection would select individuals that were more prone to transposon jumps. This would result in offspring that had the same trait. This would then go through a positive feedback loop until you hit the ceiling of fitness.
Consider a more drastic step. Let's say a pig is born that has had it's entire genome duplicated. By chance it is far more fit than it's siblings. That increase in genetic content would then spread (and likely create a new species). This while highly unlikely, is a plausible mechanism for new DNA content. Usually something like this would just result in a dead pig.
There is no optimal amount of genetic information. Genomes are a big soup in constant flux with lots of DNA being added, and being snipped out. Most of the time this flux doesn't touch genes because they are mostly essential, but it has the potential to, and sometimes that can result in new phenotypes.
B. In terms of novel genotypes, new genetic material is added by the random force of mutation.
All organisms undergo genetic mutations, random errors in DNA created by polymerase when replicating strands. Any given mutation can have three effects. It can be deleterious, harming the organism. It can be advantageous, benefiting the fitness of the organism, or it can be neutral, having no effect on fitness.
The vast majority of mutations are neutral. This if followed by deleterious mutations, and finally advantageous mutations are exceptionally rare.
New "genetic material" from mutations arises from two sources. New advantageous mutations that are instantly fit and sweep to fixation in all individuals in the population (cause everybody wants that hot new gene). Alternatively, when a population is exposed to a new environment, mutations that were once neutral or even deleterious may suddenly become fit. At that point, these variable sites in the genome suddenly become fixed by the forces of natural selection filtering out only those individuals that have that one allele.
**Tl;Dr** New genetic material is added often in both quantity and novel genotypes. Mutation and duplication work to constantly add new DNA and new patterns of nucleotides. Mostly this results in neutral and unfit changes. Very rarely this results in adaptive changes, but when they do happen they spread fast to everyone in the population.
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"These claims have been widely rejected by the scientific community which asserts that new information is regularly generated in evolution whenever a novel mutation or gene duplication arises. Dramatic examples of entirely new and unique traits arising through mutation have been observed in recent years, such as th... |
Why is the binding energy within a nucleon positive? | > Right. Here's the weird thing. If you consider, instead, a single nucleon and its quarks, then adding the mass of the quarks again gives a different number than the mass of the nucleon. This time, though, the mass of the quarks comes out dramatically less than the mass of the nucleon.
Not if you add up the [constituent quark mass](_URL_0_). That's the number that's comparable here. The 'bare quark' mass is significantly less, but that's basically a theoretical construct. In the formalism of quantum field theory, you basically treat things as 'bare' (non-interacting) and then add the interactions with the field back in to get the actual 'real' value (a method known as perturbation theory).
For heavier things like protons and neutrons, which exist as free, observable particles, you can directly measure the mass. As you seem aware, it's not as simple for things like quarks though.
| [
"The difference in binding energy between neighboring nuclides increases as the sides of the valley of stability are ascended, and correspondingly the nuclide half-lives decrease, as indicated in the figure above. If one were to add nucleons one at a time to a given nuclide, the process will eventually lead to a ne... |
why does vimeo's 720p look better than youtube's 1080p? | Bitrate. I don't know what Vimeo streams at, but 1080p 30fps on YouTube streams at a max of around 3.8Mbps (depending on the original file size).
1080p 30fps on Netflix is 5.8 Mbps (if using Safari or IE for your web browser), and apps like HBO Go/Now streams 1080p 30fps at around 8Mbps.
To give you a frame of reference, 1080p 24fps on Blu-ray ranges from 24-36 Mbps usually (32 Mbps being average).
Each tv provider is different, but I have FiOS and they broadcast at around 10 Mbps, you can zoom ~50% in on 720p channels and it still looks decent. | [
"720p is used more for Internet distribution of high-definition video, because computer monitors progressively scan; 720p video has lower storage-decoding requirements than either the 1080i or the 1080p. This is also the medium for high-definition broadcasts around the world and 1080p is used for Blu-ray movies.\n"... |
why does fox allow their shows to make fun of the network? | Fox, like most TV companies, cares formost about money. If the show's jokes can get a laugh out of the expense of Fox, that just adds to the people who may stick through the commerical break. Furthermore, Fox's ability to take a joke could attract other shows, which could increase profits further.
TL:DR: As long as there's no serious critism on Fox, they just like the money. | [
"The PTC has targeted Fox, criticizing the network for failing to include \"S\" (sexual content) and \"V\" (violence) descriptors in content ratings for some \"Family Guy\" episodes. The Council has cautioned parents that due to the animation style, children could get attracted to the adult show. In order to preven... |
Why do African nations (generally; there are obviously some exceptions) need so much more international aid than the rest of the world? | I'm not a historian but my degree is in business and international development so I might be able to shed some light on your question. I won't go into it too much as there's such a long and rich history but I'm sure others will be able to add to what I say. Also, forgive me if I bounce around the subject. There's so much that I'd like to cover!
Firstly, you're absolutely right. Colonialism did have a large part to play in the unevenness of today's international system but there are lots of other forces at work that I feel have halted (or hindered) Africa's development.
Some African governments went to the World Bank and IMF for loans to repay existing loans that they had taken from commercial banks. These loans from the IMF and WB were known as Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) and, in order to receive those loans, governments needed to adopt certain ("Western") policies, particularly liberal capitalist processes. The idea was to allow for Africa's markets to be liberalised, to encourage free international trade, and thus boost their economy. However, many would argue that this enabled developed countries to exploit parts of Africa for cheap resources, labour and land (it's interesting that you question whether Africa is rich in resources or not. They have oil, 30% of the world's mineral reserves, gas, precious metals - it's just that Africans don't tend to see any of it).
Through those SAPs, those more powerful, developed states, that make up the IMF and WB were effectively dictating parts of Africa's governance, whom they are allowed to trade with etc. So, it can be argued, how is a state ever going to fully develop and emerge as equal when they are still 'under the thumb' of the West? Furthermore, just because a liberal economy worked for one country's development, it doesn't necessarily mean it will work for another.
There is also a theory known as dependency theory, which would question how developing states are expected to catch up and equal the international playing field if the resources they need in order to do so are being used by developed countries for their own gain (note all the resources I listed earlier). Furthermore, a lot of African governments were/are corrupt. Some citizens never saw the money that the IMF and WB were funnelling into Africa. And then, interest was added on, more loans were needed, and more stipulations had to be adhered to.
There has also been continued humanitarian intervention (military) and aid-giving by developed nations in many African countries, despite their sovereignty. Some see the flow of monetary aid into Africa as leading to dependency on developed nations (much like with the loans from the IMF and WB, although, for me, there are some clear differences). In terms of humanitarian intervention, some see this as almost antagonistic (security promoting insecurity, negative freedom rather than positive, the West wading in without consideration of local ideologies, norms, wants and needs) or even as the West exerting its dominance on developing Africa, much like with the SAPs; all of this can halt or hinder development. Civil war has also made development difficult in parts of Africa and has increased security concerns (especially human security concerns that revolve around individual wellbeing). To go back to conflict, war also leads to damaged infrastructure and casualties, thus, your workforce decreases, and with it your country's productivity (disease and famine also present similar issues), so your economy suffers.
So there's a lot going on in some parts of Africa and probably a lot more that I could talk about but I think these are good starting points. I hope this was helpful.
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"Foreign aid makes African countries dependent on aid because it is regarded by policy makers as regular income, thus they do not have any incentive to make policies and decisions that will enable their countries to independently finance their economic growth and development. Additionally, aid doe not incentivize t... |
why are cartoons primarily considered as being "for children" in the modern day? what happened? | The answer is "Saturday Morning Cartoons".
In the 70's and 80's, Toy manufacturers and their marketers figured out that they could make half hour long commercials for their toys, run them on saturdays when kids were off from school, and profit.
During this time, the cartoon business was essentially an extension of the toy business. | [
"The 1980s also saw a number of cartoons based on children's toys, such as \"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles\", \"\", \"The Transformers\", \"My Little Pony 'n Friends\", \"He-Man\", \"\", \"Jem and the Holograms\", \"Thundercats\", and \"Care Bears\". There were even cartoons based on \"Pac-Man\" video games and \"th... |
Byzantine or Judaism Historians, does anyone know how Jews were treated under Byzantine rule? | I’m sure someone else can give you more of an idea of day-to-day life of Jews under Byzantine rule, but since you're still waiting on an answer, I can give you a little bit of background info on attitudes and laws relating to Jews in the Eastern Empire/Byzantine Empire.
Early Church fathers debated the issue of ‘what to do about the Jews’. For practicality's sake, the 'failure' of Judaism was used as an assertion of the triumph of Christianity. Very early on, the story of the Jews is used to define Christian identity. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (Chapter 4) tells the story of Abraham and his sons, one born to a mistress and one born to a wife, as heirs to what Paul regards as two covenants – one ‘earthly’ and one ‘heavenly’. Paul sees the ‘earthly’ covenant (bestowed on the son born to the mistress) as the Law of Moses, and the ‘heavenly’ covenant (bestowed on the son born to Sarah) as the one that the Christians are bound by.
Two slightly different views emerged regarding the Jews – one, that they were not deliberate unbelievers and heretics, and two, that they were. Augustine of Hippo, father of the Latin tradition, defined the role of Jews through his Doctrine of Jewish Witness – he basically said that Christianity needed the Jews to stick around in order to show the background of Christianity (and because they were such good librarians!!).
A year before Augustine’s conversion to Christianity in 387, John Chrysostom was ordained as a priest in Antioch. Chrysostom heavily influenced the Eastern Christian tradition and attitude towards Jews, and is kind of the father of Christian anti-Semitism. His homilies denounced the Jews, and he regarded them as heretics (wilful misbelievers) rather than infidels, who were deliberately insulting and denying their biblical heritage, rather than just interpreting it wrongly [Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity by Jeremy Cohen]( _URL_0_)
John Chrysostom wanted to make it clear that Judaism and Christianity were mutually exclusive:
*“Where Christ-killers gather, the cross is ridiculed, God blasphemed, the Father unacknowledged, the Son insulted, the grace of the Spirit rejected... In a word, if you admire the Jewish way of life, what do you have in common with us? If the Jewish rites are holy and venerable, our way of life must be false. But if our way is true, as indeed it is, theirs is fraudulent.”*
So, to simplify early Church attitudes, the Latin tradition, influenced more by Augustine, originally saw the Jews as a misguided lot who had missed the Messiah train (this view obviously changes due to a number of other factors, including the creation of the Talmud, and the image of Jews as Christ-killers becomes more prolific in the West). The Byzantine tradition, influenced more by Chrysostom, regarded the Jews as deliberate wrongdoers.
As in the Roman Empire, there were functional reasons for anti-Semitism in the Byzantine Empire as well as essential/theological reasons. Jews had a tendency to revolt when their religious rights were violated or they were being oppressed. They were forbidden from Jerusalem for the entirety of Byzantine rule (fourth to seventh centuries), and this was obviously a source of constant tension between Jews and Christians in the area. Under Heraclius, who became Byzantine emperor in 610, the Jews of Galilee joined forces with Persia to take Jerusalem and Galilee. Antiochus Strategos’ account of the Sack of Jerusalem in 614 gives us some insight into Christian feelings at the time:
*” Thereupon the vile Jews, enemies of the truth and haters of Christ, when they perceived that the Christians were given over into the hands of the enemy, rejoiced exceedingly, because they detested the Christians; and they conceived an evil plan in keeping with their vileness about the people.”*
A couple of decades later, the Byzantines reclaimed Jerusalem, and Heraclius dealt with the Jews through massacres and forced conversions. The problem of Jerusalem was ‘solved’ when a few years later the city came under Muslim rule, and Jews were allowed back in.
Apart from Heraclius’ actions in the seventh century, Jews were allowed to live and work within most parts of the Byzantine Empire without too much persecution until the Crusades. There were still periods of harassment (a decade or two per century) when Byzantine emperors tended to enforce harsher restrictions on Jews, particularly during times of religious upheaval. The rest of the time, they occupied a sort of middle ground between Christians and pagans, even though permanent restrictions on many aspects of Jewish life were maintained.
If you want to read up on the sorts of laws that applied to Jews in the early Middle Ages in both East and West, [this page]( _URL_1_) from the Fordham Medieval Sourcebook is pretty useful. You can see as well that, at certain times, Jews experienced greater persecution in the West than they did in the East – for example, circumcision was completely outlawed in the Visigothic kingdom under Recceswinth in the mid seventh century, yet circumcision was only prohibited in the Byzantine Empire if it was performed on Christians. So, to sum up, you could say that Jews were grudgingly tolerated in the Byzantine Empire, but they were not liked, and they were certainly not allowed to thrive.
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"The size of the Jewish community in the Byzantine Empire was not affected by attempts by some emperors (most notably Justinian) to forcibly convert the Jews of Anatolia to Christianity, as these attempts met with very little success. Historians continue to research the status of the Jews in Asian Minor during the ... |
Are there any alternate explanations for the cosmic microwave background? | To talk about your second question, when we look at the edge of the known universe we are seeing a wall of hot plasma. The light is horrible at permeating this plasma because these unbound particles can absorb a near continiuum of light as thermal energy. Thus they couple very well and little light can escape. Eventually the universe expanded and cooled and allowed the particles to form neutral atoms and lowered its ability to absorb light thus rendering it transparent. | [
"The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation signature presents a direct large-scale view of the universe that can be used to identify whether our position or movement has any particular significance. There has been much publicity about analysis of results from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) an... |
Why did animals evolve the spectrum of vision that they did? Wouldn't broader sets of photoreceptors be more useful? | There are only two bandwidths that readily pass through out [atmosphere](_URL_0_): the visible (with some UV and IR) and radio waves. If the point of sight is to see far, it only makes sense for organises to evolve sight that sees these wavelengths.
As you point out, many animals see in spectrums we don't see, such as the UV. The IR band isn't very useful because the Earth (and many other objects) blackbody radiate in the IR. This means it's pretty noisy in general.
Very long wavelengths, such as radio, are unusable from a resolution point of view. Roughly, electromagnetic radiation can only resolve objects that are on the same scale as the wave length of radiation. Visible light can resolve objects on the order of 500 nm. X-rays can resolve much smaller sizes, and thus why it was used to probe the structure of DNA. Electrons (which aren't E & M radiation) have a very small wavelength, and are good for looking at *very* small objects.
The radio waves that pass readily through the atmosphere have a wavelength of 5 cm to 10 m, which means that an animal that used there waves to see could only resolve details larger than 5 cm. This isn't useful if you want to find find fruit smaller than a large orange, or walk through a forest, etc. | [
"The only known animals to employ a similar visual system were the now-extinct trilobites. Phototropic chromatophores can change \"O. wendtii's\" color and regulate how much light will reach the photoreceptors.\n",
"Although many aspects the human visual system remain uncertain, the theory of the evolution of rod... |
how on earth do weapon suppressors work? do they really decrease penetration/range potential of a bullet? without it overheating, how long would it take for it to break? | Suppressors work like car mufflers. They capture the explosion and expanding gasses. They do not actually effect the projectile. Suppressors are actually built quite solid. I recommend lookin up iraqveteran888 on YouTube for a more knowledgeable souce. | [
"In January 2005, at the IQPC's Directed Energy Weapons conference in London, Gerald Wilson said the system takes between 5 seconds and 4 minutes (typically 30 seconds) to destroy a mine, resulting in a clearance rate of up to 25 explosives per hour when equipped with a 0.5 kW laser.\n",
"Suppression can be deliv... |
How much of the oil and coal in the world are actually dead dinosaurs? | For oil, none, and for coal, virtually none. The parent organic material for oil is almost entirely microscopic organisms which live(d) in the ocean, like zooplankton or algae. For coal, the majority of the original organic material is from plants living in swamps. This somewhat [simplistic page](_URL_0_) basically answers the same question and points out that with coal formed during the Mesozoic there is some small chance that an occasional dead dinosaur was buried along with a plethora of dead plants that eventually became coal, but this represents an insignificant percentage of any coal that was formed. | [
"Ten days have passed since impact, and few dinosaurs remain. In Mongolia, the \"Charonosaurus\" stays close to the watering hole, but collapses and dies from inhaling hydrogen sulfide that rose from the watering hole. The \"Saurornithoides\" runs up to the dead \"Charonosaurus\", but it too is killed by the poison... |
how would you explain how short a human life span is in comparison to the age of the universe? | If the entire history of the universe was condensed into one calendar year, humans wouldn't even show up until December 31st. Modern civilization wouldn't show up until the last 14 seconds of the year. | [
"In October 2016, scientists identified the maximum human lifespan at an average age of 115, with an absolute upper limit of 125 years. However, the concept of a maximum lifespan in humans is still widely debated among the scientific community.\n",
"These are the 4 nuclides with half-lives comparable to, or less ... |
could scaring a person in anaphylaxis - along with benadryl - create enough adrenaline to hold the person over to get to an epipen? | Person is already scared they are going to die. (duh)
Histamine release that has occurred by that time is already too massive to be so easily counteracted that benadryl would work. | [
"Isoprenaline, a drug that has similarities with adrenaline, can be used in an emergency for people with Brugada syndrome who are having frequent repeated life-threatening arrhythmias, known as an \"electrical storm\". This drug must be given as a continuous infusion into a vein and therefore is not suitable for lo... |
Did Genghis Khan have on-foot infantry, or Just Ranged Horsemen? | I'm pulling a lot of this from memory but the answer essentially boils down to:
Certainly! As the Empire grew, the Mongols saw a greater diversity in unit types. Although the Mongols themselves fought almost exclusively on horseback (as had largely always been the case in the steppes), they would conscript the armies of defeated tribes/nations (at least the portions they didn't slaughter) as they expanded. While some of these groups were already nomadic and integrated well into the Mongol horse-archer style of warfare, many were sedentary people, and as such were not quite suited for this. Thus, the Mongols used them to garrison towns and defend territory (the mobility and small size of the Mongol contingent within their own army made it a waste to use horse-archers for this task) but, on occasion, also as auxiliaries. Additionally, keep in mind that the Mongols would also take along with them anyone from a defeated peoples that they thought could be useful during and/or after their conquests (i.e. doctors, scribes, and especially siege engineers). Even if you weren't particularly useful, they might also take you along as cannon fodder and put you to work filling in moats during sieges, or some other such dreadful task.
As a result, the Mongol army (which originally was almost completely composed of horse archers) eventually expanded to included a little bit of everything, while maintaining a highly mobile core of horse archers, which made them all the more fearsome to face.
* *The Mongol Art of War* by Timothy May
* *Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World* by Jack Weatherford - > Probably the most cited book on this subject within this subreddit, although it's not without its flaws.
Edit: minor grammar/wording changes | [
"Each archer had at least one extra horse – there was an average five horses per man – thus the entire army could move with astounding rapidity. Moreover, since horse milk and horse blood were the staples of the Mongolian diet, Genghis' horse-herds functioned not just as his means of movement but as his logistical ... |
why is the option to invert colors on certain electronic devices usually under the accessibility section? | Because inverting colors can be helpful for people with a sensitivity to brightness, it can make text and images easier to distinguish for some people with color blindness, and easier to make out for some people with low vision.
It's under Accessibility, because it is a feature designed to make the device more accessible to those with certain disabilities. | [
"In a display where the colors are either on or off and various brightness levels do not have to be created, the system can be further simplified by removing the color selection grid and modulating the voltage of the electron gun itself. However, this also causes problems because the electrons will reach the screen... |
where the science of electric forcefields meets science fiction. what is possible, what is not? | I read a good straightdope once, that said the easiest way to build a forcefield would be to create an immobile sheet of electrons. This would impede progress due to the Pauli exclusion principle, which means it could potentially stop aggressors and even bullets. The easiest way to make one is to build a wall, you can use bricks, metal, whatever you're feeling.
None of the other fundamental forces are particularly useful for the idea of a forcefield. Gravity is incredibly weak, and to make a significant gravity field you basically need a planet's worth of mass. The strong and weak forces operate at such small ranges that it wouldn't be able to interact with any of your objects you want to 'stop.'
'Electric forcefield' doesn't really say much to me. It's two words assembled together, but not a meaningful concept as far as I can tell. Even if we assumed such a field could be generated, I suppose the biggest problem is a *lot* of weapons work just fine with no circuits at all. Many guns are simply chemical reactions. You can't short circuit those. | [
"The ability to create a force field has been a common superpower in comic books and associated media. While only a few characters have the explicit ability to create force fields (for example, the Invisible Woman of the Fantastic Four and Violet Parr from \"The Incredibles\"), it has been emulated via other powers... |
How can one place the square root of two, or any irrational number for that matter, EXACTLY on a number line? | If you make a 45-90-45 triangle with legs equal to 1, then use its hypotenuse as the radius of a circle whose center is at the 0 point of the number line, it will cross the line at exactly ±sqrt(2). In the real world, this is just as accurate as constructing any other constructible number. | [
"The proof above for the square root of two can be generalized using the fundamental theorem of arithmetic. This asserts that every integer has a unique factorization into primes. Using it we can show that if a rational number is not an integer then no integral power of it can be an integer, as in lowest terms ther... |
how can telescopes capture close up pictures of planets without any obstructions in the picture? wouldn't you be able to spot out debris such as meteorites and such? | Do you mean "why don't we see stuff in the way between us and the planet"? If so, it's because those objects are much, much too small to be seen by telescope at the distances we're talking about. In principle, we could see them, but they're just too small to disrupt the picture at all. | [
"By taking two exposures of the same section of the sky days or weeks apart, it is possible to find objects such as asteroids, meteors, comets, variable stars, novae, and even unknown planets. By comparing the pair of images, using a device such as a blink comparator, astronomers are able to find objects that moved... |
why are humans said to be the only species on earth to be self-aware and able to think philosphically? | They aren't. Several other mammals are self aware. You can tell by seeing if they recognize themselves in a mirror. You put a silly bow on their head, show them in a mirror and see if they think their is a bow on THEIR head.
In terms of philosophy...it is hard to tell, but many animals have a sense of fairness. | [
"\"Humans, unlike just about all the other animals on earth, create fairly sophisticated languages which not only enable them to think about their feeling, their actions, and the results they get from doing and not doing certain things, but they also are able to think about their thinking and even think about think... |
Did the Soviet Union ever directly fight alongside any Western allies in WW2? | Well, that depends what you mean, if you're asking 'did they ever share a front line', then the answer, to the best of my knowledge, is no. The theatres that the Soviets were involved in (Eastern Front and Manchura) were not in any form directly connected until [April 25, 1945](_URL_1_) just around two weeks before fighting in Europe concluded.
However, there was a Free-French fighter squadron that fought with the Soviets on the eastern front the [Normandy-Niemen](_URL_0_) Squadron.
So not in the sense that there were boots on the ground fighting along-side one another. But in the skies, yes, French Pilots mostly in Soviet aircraft did indeed fight alongside the Soviets. | [
"The bulk of Soviet fighting took place on the Eastern Front—including a continued war with Finland—but it also invaded Iran (August 1941) in cooperation with the British and late in the war attacked Japan (August 1945), with which the Soviets had border wars earlier up until in 1939.\n",
"The Soviet Union entere... |
How did criminal sentencing work in the United States in the early 20th century? | In general, life sentences *did* exist in the early 20th century. For instance, the 1909 edition of [Kentucky Statutes](_URL_0_), sec. 3627, gives the punishment for murder as:
> [D]eath or confinement in the penitentiary for life, in the discretion of the jury.
When I have access to sources, I will try to look into the specifics of the particular case you cite. | [
"During the colonial and revolutionary periods, the United States criminal justice system was \"victim-centric,\" in that crimes were often investigated and prosecuted by individual victims. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, however, the focus shifted so that crime was seen primarily as a \"social harm.\" The c... |
re: reporters / paparazzi who follow people around despite their clearly expressed wishes not to. is that legal? | Not being one of them, I can only address a piece of the legality allowed to other media. You can't keep the public out of a public space. Regardless of your profession, you have the same right to walk on a public sidewalk, come into a public place like a business, street or park, and, yes, walk up to someone and ask them a question as any other human being. They don't have to answer, but you can't keep someone from talking or following someone around simply because you don't like them or what they do. (sorry, I'm talking about the US. I don't know about other countries). | [
"Journalists call into the conference to ask their questions. This saves time and money for the personality being interviewed as there is no need for them to move from one location to another. This is used more and more frequently, for example during times of crisis when organizations use their communications depar... |
Where do steam boats or steamships get their water source to produce steam? | Usually from the lake, river, ocean they are on, and as they systems got more complex, so did their water treatment systems, with modern systems using steam distilling and/or reverse osmosis. Older steam systems had mud drums to catch large particles and the boilers needed descaling on a regular basis. Also, as the steam engines got more efficient, more of the steam got recycled back into water for use. Now, the steam engines on locomotives lacked the ability to recycle steam so that was single pass. | [
"Steam ships were used to transport goods and personnel across oceans and within coastal areas. Steam powered tugboats were created for the purpose of manipulating larger vessels at within ports or areas with limited maneuverability. Steam vessels were a practical solution for the international transportation of pe... |
how a windup/ kinetic-powered watch stores energy | Think of it as a rubber band. When you twist it you add energy. When you release it the energy is released. Instead of a rubber band they use a [mainspring](_URL_0_) | [
"An oscillating weight (selfwinding mechanism in a traditional watch) transmits the mechanical energy to the micro generator through the microbarrel. The generator converts this mechanical energy into electrical energy and stores it in an accumulator (Capacitor for caliber 1400).\n",
"Citizen Eco-Drive Thermo wat... |
Is time dilation occurring to some degree for every object in the Universe? Are there stationary objects that perceive time as much faster than us? (see below) | > Are there stationary objects in the universe? Or is everything moving and therefore experiencing time as "slower" than a theoretical stationary object? If there are stationary objects, wouldn't it be experiencing time at an extraordinarily fast pace as compared to Earth?
"Stationary" or "moving" is purely relative to some reference frame. *ALL* objects are stationary in some frame (called the rest frame of that object) and moving in some other frame.
As a correlary to the above, *nothing* in the universe is "absolutely" moving or "absolutely" stationary. These concepts (moving and stationary) are necessarily relative -- and accordingly, time dilation is also relative.
> Therefore it's safe to assume that because the Earth is traveling so fast within the Universe, humans right now are perceiving time as much slower than a "stationary point".
As mentioned above, all movement is relative, there is no such thing as absolute movement, so your assumption is in fact not safe at all, and is gravely flawed. ;(
Also, regarding gravitational time dilation, as inkieminstrel already noted in a previous comment, nothing else is moving through time "at an extraordinarily fast pace" as compared with Earth. The best you can do is take something in an infinitesimal gravitational field, that is also stationary with respect to the Earth. And such an object would only be travelling *very slightly* faster through time than us, because we are in a stronger gravitational field and thus experience a very slight gravitational time dilation. This type of time dilation is different from what you are talking about, however.
> But wouldn't it be far more plausible to simply construct some form of high-speed centrifuge that could hold a few people?
No, this would not be possible. The reason for this is because it is *acceleration* that creates the discrepancy between Earth's time and the spaceship's time. While it's true that the centrifuge could do the acceleration, in order to get any significant amount of time dilation, you would need to do *so much* acceleration and get up to *such* a high velocity, that there is no practical way your centrifuge would not shear itself apart from the centrifugal forces. Even if you built the centrifuge out of diamond or something, the centrifugal forces at those velocities would just be so enormous, it wouldn't be able to stay solid matter bound together.
Of course, you could just make it a *really really huge* centrifuge, but that's extremely impractical, and at that point, it wouldn't really be all that different from ordinary linear acceleration. | [
"One more important step being left out of the standard model, Wiltshire claimed, was the fact that as proven by observation, gravity slows time. Thus, a clock will move faster in empty space, which possesses low gravitation, than inside a galaxy, which has much more gravity, and he argued that as large as a 38% di... |
Why have so many Pre-Columbian civilizations declined "mysteriously?" | This is a common misunderstanding. When an archaeologist says "mysteriously", he's not saying that it might have been aliens or a curse behind their downfall, just that the academic community does not at present understand why the societies collapsed, usually because we don't yet have enough information about conditions at that time.
In the case of the Maya - whom I studied pretty extensively in undergrad a few years ago under Stephen Houston, a Maya anthropologist at Brown - we've known about their collapse for some time, but only recently have we started to get a glimpse of why it happened. Actually, it wasn't until recently that we knew much about the Maya at all: almost none of their texts have survived, we couldn't even read their writing until the late 1980s, and almost all the scholarship before the 1960s was completely wrong.
We're seeing now that their collapse was at least in part due to their societies overburdening their natural resources and environment, but we're still working on that. It might take a while, since there are so few (~20 max) Maya archaeologists in the US.
tl;dr: "Mysterious" just means we don't *yet* understand due to lack of data, but that a perfectly rational explanation is out there waiting for us to find it. | [
"In the Americas, cities of the Mississippian culture such as Cahokia, Kincaid and Moundville went into an accelerated state of decline in this decade. Factors such as depletion of resources, climatic change, war, disease, social unrest and declining political and economic power have been suggested, although the si... |
singapore | **Disneyland with the death penalty**
Life is pretty damn good in Singapore. The cost of living (save for homes and cars) is affordable. The island is well-lit and generally safe. Shops open until late, and amenities are convenient.
However...
Our laws say that if you traffic in drugs, you hang. No discretion on the part of the judge - the death penalty is mandatory. And if you're holding more than a certain amount of the drug, you are *presumed* to be trafficking unless you can prove otherwise. We used to have the highest per-capita execution rate in the world, but I believe the number has gone down in the last decade.
**The only shopping mall with a seat in the UN**
I haven't heard this one before... I don't think it's accurate. Shopping is pretty big here for tourists, but all locals know that Singapore is more food heaven than shopping mall. | [
"Singapore is an island city-state in Southeast Asia. About 5.6 million people live and work within , making Singapore the 2nd-most-densely populated country in the world, after Monaco, another city-state. The Central Area in the south-eastern part of the island, is the country's city centre. It is surrounded by su... |
what happens when the eurozone breaks up | Sorry I don't know howto ELY5 so this is my best shot
Option 1. Greece Exit (GREXIT).
So Greece leaves the eurozone, it's currency is now the New Drachma, Drachma2.0 whatever, the balance sheets of of pretty much all Greek banks and non-financials have been completely destroyed by the uncertainty and speculation leading upto the exit. Drachma2.0 will begin to devalue sharply vs EUR or USD however all bonds, insurance contracts and stuff that pension funds/banks/small companies/government uses would already have been redenoninated into Drachma2.0 at it's higher rate (Only the things covered by Greek law can be redenoninated into Drachma2.0 and some of the government debt is covered by British law). This is kind of the ideal situation for bank runs, people will have little faith in banks who have terrible balance sheets in an very unstable currency, the main thing is this won't be like the bank run on Northern Rock where people were nervous but queued this will be like Argentina bank runs. So basically pain for everyone in Greece for the short term however the devalued currency will make Greek businesses able to compete so the is the possibility for very rapid growth after the initial extreme pain, notes I have seen project 10%+ GDP growth. What happens outside of Greece is anyones guess
Option 2. German Exit (GEREXIT)
Germany leaves and forms the Deutsche Mark 3.0, it's value increases a lot because of Germany's balance of payments and desirability as a reserve currency. The Bundesbank is probably going to have to defend it's exchange rate the same way Swiss Nation Bank does for the Swiss Franc right now. German bond yields will probably go very negative and the increased value of it's currency could make things difficult for exporters. In the rest of the eurozone other northern european countries many join germany in using the Deutsche Mark 3.0 or create their own currencies, but really no one knows. GEREXIT is a much more chaotic option than GREXIT and will probably leave everyone the EU in a much worse state.
Option 3. Euro2.0
Everyone argees the Euro in it's current design has failed so European politicians get their shit together and form a new monetary union that includes things like balance transfers from Germany and north Europe to the south until they can balance their budgets as well as greater fiscal control and common borrowing (eurobonds etc), Germany inflates wages so that the rest of Europe can compete and everyone lives happily ever after.
| [
"The eurozone crisis resulted from the structural problem of the eurozone and a combination of complex factors, including the globalisation of finance, easy credit conditions during the 2002–2008 period that encouraged high-risk lending and borrowing practices, the financial crisis of 2007–08, international trade i... |
Did the romans' attitude to nudity change after they went Christian? were public bath houses still common after that point? | Can I ask for clarification from someone in the know?
The OP seems to be indicating that European christians would care about nudity, but this is not my impression of Europeans at all. I spent a couple years there as a kid, and people would get nude all the time if there was water involved.
I also understand that there are college age kids that clean houses in the nude as a job. Wish I could remember the term...
So anyways, my request is to know if nudity is really an issue, historically, at all in the heart of old christiandom. | [
"One exception to public nudity was the baths, though attitudes toward nude bathing also changed over time. In the 2nd century BC, Cato preferred not to bathe in the presence of his son, and Plutarch implies that for Romans of these earlier times it was considered shameful for mature men to expose their bodies to y... |
Can anyone help me identify this apparent 5 star general and the location this picture was taken during World War II? | Judging by the markings on the front of the jeep, it is possible that the vehicle came from the 441st Anti Aircraft Battalion (SP). This unit fell under operational control of the 3rd infantry division over the course of WWII. [source](_URL_2_) I am not sure what the 25 on the right side stands for. There was no commonly known unit utilizing the moniker 25 [during all of WWII](_URL_3_) that fell under the 3rd Infantry division. Marking vehicles is often a unit SOP type thing, so it could just be a general use vehicle for the HQ element of the 441st.
When I looked at your other pictures, I found a photo of a soldier with what is obviously a [71st Infantry Division](_URL_0_) patch... that unit didn't see its first action until March 11, 1945. (This would actually coincide with a lot of the other photos showing captured or destroyed late war equipment like the ME262.)
*EDIT* Follow-on info. I was curious how and when a subordinate unit of the 3rd Infantry Division would meet up with the 71st Infantry Division during WWII, especially since the 71st joined so late in the war. It appears that between 15 and 30 March, 1945, the 71st moved through the Siegfried line and captured Pirmasens. On the same day that the 71st began their attack, the 3rd ID was attacking the Siegfried line just south of Zweibruken. Zweibruken is less than 10 miles from Pirmasens, and if they were attacking roughly South to NE, those two units were within ~5 miles of each other, on the same day, 15 March, 1945.
The 71st was part of XV Corps [source](_URL_1_) and that would mean that on 15 March these units were participating in Operation Undertone, which attacked the Siegfried line on 15 March finally breaking through on 20 March. | [
"George James Eade (October 27, 1921 – August 26, 2018) was an American four star general in the United States Air Force who served as Deputy Commander in Chief, United States European Command (DCINCEUR) from 1973 to 1975.\n",
"Three-star Lieutenant Generals and four-star Generals were reauthorized temporarily fo... |
What property makes materials able to absorb water, how does it work, and how does this property change for absorption of other liquids (e.g. oil)? | I believe most of the phenomenon of absorption is based on surface tension in the liquid. Suppose you take a close look at a sponge you'll see that it has many pores or holes in its surface. When you wipe a puddle of water with the sponge the water fills the holes. The surface tension of the water causes the water to hold to the sponge when lifted because it would require an addition of energy for the water to form a free surface when it pulls free. Obviously if you were to try to soak up ketchup (higher surface tension = more energy to create a free surface) with the sponge, it would "stick" to the sponge more easily. Conversely if you were to soak up a light weight oil (like trombone slide oil or something) with a low surface tension, it would tend to drip more (meaning absorb less.)
The second piece of the absorption question I think has to do with the secondary bonding between the liquid and the thing doing the absorbing. I'm less familiar with the mechanisms, but if you for instance spray your sponge with a super-hydrophobic spray then the water would not secondarily bond with the surface of the sponge and you'd never make the shared surface-- which would mean that additional energy wouldn't be required for the water to form a free surface, and the water would just drip off.
_URL_0_
Finally there is capillary action or "wicking" that pulls the liquid from the surface of the sponge to regions that are not in direct contact with the water. This creates additional places for the water to share contact area with the sponge which obviously increases its ability to hold water.
_URL_1_ | [
"Absorption or desorption of water (or other solvents) can change the size of many common materials; many organic materials change size much more due to this effect than due to thermal expansion. Common plastics exposed to water can, in the long term, expand by many percent.\n",
"The process of absorption means t... |
the tour de france. | The Tour de France is a largely team sport. Within each team, each racer plays a unique role. Some are designated to supply the team with food and water (they will go back to the team car, stuff as many supplies in their jersey and bottle carriers as possible, then bring it to the team. Think of them as the pack mules). Others are there to pull the team along, they will be out in front of their group, pulling the team along taking most of the wind. Some will dash out to the front of the race, trying to earn points in other categories (I will explain these later). Then, of course, there is the designated winner in the team. This is the one racer, usually the strongest and best chance of winning, everyone else supports. They will pull him along and let him do less work, carrying him to the end. He can conserve his energy then unleash it all at the end when it counts in the final sprint. These are the racers people know by name. To answer your question about the commentator, the team manager (he sits in the team car with the spare bikes/supplies) told a racer to get back to his team, perhaps they were getting tired and needed him to share some of the effort. Drafting and cutting down on wind resistance is essential in these hundred plus mile races, every bit counts. Finishing times are based on when you cross the finish line. If you are part of the peleton, the main group, everyone will receive the same time. If you crash within a certain distance of the finish line, you will receive the same time as the peleton.
Now, there are essentially four jersey colors which are important. Yellow, considered the leader, is awarded after each race to the person with the lowest cumulative time. The polka dotted jersey is given to the "King of the Mountains." Points for this category are awarded to the racer who reach the summit of different points along the track quickest. The green jersey is awarded to the sprinters who reach certain checkpoints on different days first. The white jersey is awarded to the rider under the age of 26 with the best overall time. Each of these jerseys are based on cumulative scores/times and can change hands after each day. Some teams are out to win the whole competition (yellow jersey), other lesser teams will aim for other jerseys (green, polka dot, and white).
Hope this helps, and enjoy the racing! | [
"The Tour de France is an annual road bicycle race held over 23 days in July. Established in 1903 by newspaper \"L'Auto\", the Tour is the most well-known and prestigious of cycling's three \"Grand Tours\"; the others are the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España. The race usually covers approximately 3,500 kilomet... |
Why was the Greek city of Syracuse typically governed by tyrants? | This touches on some questions of my own.
Thucydides (1.17) had noticed a similar phenomenon:
> Wherever there were tyrants, their habit of providing simply for themselves... made safety the great aim of their policy, and prevented anything great from proceeding from them.... All this is only true of the mother country, for in Sicily they attained to very great power.
I've wondered about that passage for a long time. What are great things, and what great things did the tyrants of Syracuse do? I also wonder why democracy sometimes broke out. I've never had the opportunity to look into it. | [
"Syracuse (Gr. Συρακοῦσαι) was an ancient Greek city-state, located on the east coast of Sicily. The city was founded by settlers from Corinth in 734 or 733 BC, and was conquered by the Romans in 212 BC, after which it became the seat of Roman rule in Sicily. Throughout much of its history as an independent city, i... |
How do moving electrically charged particles cause magnetism? | What you are asking is an extremely deep question. This is the puzzle that eventually led to Einstein developing his theory of special relativity.
You are correct that magnetism and electricity are "2 sides of the same coin." Specifically, they are related by Lorentz transformations from the framework of relativity. That is, magnetism arises from viewing electric fields in a different frame of reference. As a very loose analogy to understand what's meant by this, consider being in a traveling train and tossing a ball up and down. You will only see the ball moving up and down. However, if I am standing outside the train, I'll see the ball move sideways with the train as well; the change in perspective introduces some new apparent phenomenon.
We see explicitly that (inertial, i.e. non-accelerating) reference frames will play an important part in electromagnetism, since the formula for the total force on an object due to electromagnetism is F = qE + qV x B, with q being the charge of the object, E being the electric field, B being the magnetic field, and importantly V being the velocity of the particle (the x just indicates a vector cross product between V and B; it's not important for understanding this discussion). Consider the case of moving through constant and uniform electric and magnetic fields for simplicity. Just by changing our reference frame so that we travel along with the object, the velocity we measure goes to 0. Hence the magnetic force would apparently be 0. But the total force on an object shouldn't change between reference frames. So the conclusion is that the change of reference frames also changes the observed electric and magnetic field, so that the trajectories a particle takes are consistent between the two reference frames. In other words, electric and magnetic fields transform into each other under the effects of special relativity. (Edit: I think my example here was unclear and may not be correct; this page explains another example much better than I can _URL_0_)
By the way, as for why magnetic forces are not in the direction of a current, that stems from the cross product (v x B) that appeared in the Lorentz force law I'd mentioned earlier, which produces a resulting vector that is perpendicular to both of the vectors which are being cross-multiplied. Cross products are all over magnetic equations, and ultimately it stems from applications of Stokes' Theorem in Maxwell's Equations, which relates a line integral over a closed line to a surface integral of a cross product. | [
"All moving charged particles produce magnetic fields. Moving point charges, such as electrons, produce complicated but well known magnetic fields that depend on the charge, velocity, and acceleration of the particles.\n",
"When a charged particle—such as an electron—is placed in a magnetic field, it experiences ... |
how is bosch's stock trending around $19,000 per share? | The absolute cost per share of a stock is a relatively meaningless number. You can divide a company into whatever number of shares you like, and that number can change over time (and does, when companies do stock splits or merges). If a company has a high price per share, it basically just means that they haven't done very many (possibly any) stock splits in the past, so there are relatively few shares of stock outstanding. If they were to split their stock 100:1, the shares would be worth $190 each but there would be 100 times as many of them, so the company would be worth the same amount of money. | [
"On July 10, 2008, Dow agreed to purchase all of the common equity interest of Rohm and Haas Co. for $15.4 billion, which equated to $78 per share. The buyout was to be financed with equity investments of $3 billion by Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and $1 billion by the Kuwait Investment Authority. The purpose of the dea... |
Why do salmon and eels need to migrate up rivers to reproduce? Why can't they spawn where they live? | This framing is actually a little bit backwards: in general, these species aren't migrating long distances to reproduce, they are migrating long distances to live at adults. What I mean is that you have a kind of fish that live in a certain habitat and spawn in that habitat, but then sometimes members of that group of fish will adapt to swim to another location to grow up, but still have to return to their original habitat to spawn.
To work through your specific examples: Eels are a large group of fish, most of whom live in the ocean (think moray eels, etc). The ancestral eel lived its whole life in the ocean, too. Eel larvae are these weird leaf-shaped things that live in the open waters of the ocean and eat plankton. Some eels, however, developed the habit of migrating up rivers to live and grow in freshwater. This lets them take advantage of feeding opportunities that they can't get in the ocean. If the ocean's full of eels but there's no eels in freshwater, it makes sense to move to the less crowded spot to make a living. However, even though the rivers are good for growing eels, the larvae can't live there. A big adult eel can adapt to freshwater, but the larvae aren't able to. And to survive they need to drift around in the plankton which you can't really do in a river. So the eels have to migrate back to the ocean to lay their eggs.
In the other hand, consider salmon. The ancestral salmonid was a freshwater fish. Many of its descendants are still freshwater fish (think trout). They lay their eggs mostly in the bottoms of creeks and streams, where the eggs are exposed to cold, oxygen rich water, and when the babies hatch out they can start life as a big fish (salmon eggs are big) in a small stream, without many predators around. But the streams and rivers and lakes where trout live are limited in food supply. The ocean, on the other hand, is enormous and there's lots of small foods for a swimming predator like salmon to eat. So some salmonids migrate to the ocean and grow much larger and faster because of this increased food supply. But they can't lay their eggs there, because a) below a certain size, these fish can't handle saltwater b) there aren't good habitats with lots of oxygen rich water flowing through gravel and c) after hatching out their large and kind of awkward babies would be exposed to an ocean-full of predators. So they have to migrate back up into their original habitat to spawn. | [
"Typically, salmon are anadromous: they hatch in fresh water, migrate to the ocean, then return to fresh water to reproduce. However, populations of several species are restricted to fresh water through their lives. Folklore has it that the fish return to the exact spot where they hatched to spawn. Tracking studies... |
What role did "popular religion" play in the unrest within the late-Qing dynasty? | I'll admit now to having not yet read either Kuhn's *Rebellion and its Enemies in Late Imperial China* (1980) or Prazniak's *Of Camel Kings and Other Things* (1999), which would probably give a broader view of the rebellions of the day. However, I have done a lot of Taiping reading, so I can talk about the Taiping in particular.
Essentially, there are two possible extreme answers to the question. On one side, you have what is essentially in line with the view of the Chinese Communist Party, which, espousing a Marxian view, would claim that socio-economic (indeed mostly economic) factors were the key in bringing about the rebellion. The opposite is in the vein of Reilly (2004), who posits that religion was in fact the linchpin of the movement, and that its political, social and economic aims stemmed from its religious tenets. Of course, there are more moderate proponents. Spence (1996) and Platt (2012) both suggest that the motives of the rebels were too wide-ranging and variable between individuals and sub-groups to generalise, and that other ideas, especially nationalism and traditional precepts of legalism and constitutional legitimacy were more significant.
There is merit to all of these positions. The Chinese peasantry were genuinely oppressed as a class and did, when the Taiping arrived, flock to the movement. However, I would argue that ideological factors were more important for a number of reasons.
Firstly, supporters of the Taiping did so usually with knowledge of the movement, and presumably its nature. Rather than many peasant rebels springing up across southern China, the Taiping banner was the specific target of support, and although religious observances were less frequent in the later stages of the rebellion, the performance of religious ritual was apparently no less fervent when it started. This would suggest that ideology was by no means diluted by increasing numbers of followers who were not the more explicitly zealous original converts.
Secondly, the Taiping leaders themselves made little mention of socio-economic factors in their propaganda, which for a movement that was founded upon a social divide would be highly suspect, but in a movement based on loftier ideology makes more sense. The idea of the post of emperor being blasphemous for having appropriated titles reserved for God, the non-Chinese heritage of the Manchus and the natural right of a new dynasty to rise – the Mandate of Heaven – were vastly more common.
To be fair, the Taiping's (presumably) unimplemented policy of state-owned, equally distributed land was technically in the common interest. However, why did they not approach the problem by simply redistributing private ownership? The Taiping land policy cites religious reasons – all are God's children and thus deserve the same land. Of course, the Taiping leaders could have been rather crafty in how they decided to present themselves, but even so, this top-down proto-socialism seems unlikely without that doctrinal influence.
Most importantly, the devastation of the war did little to dampen the zeal of the Taiping. Despite the fall of Nanjing in 1864, the last Taiping king was not defeated until 1866 and the last rebel army was active until 1871. A purely economically interested movement would probably long since have given up hope.
You can disagree with my conclusions – I'm not sure how convinced I am beyond the first two points I made – but I would say that the Taiping religion was an essential part in the distinctiveness of the movement and that to dismiss it merely as a disguise for seemingly deeper socio-economic issues is unreasonable. | [
"In the Ming and Qing dynasties many folk religious movements were outlawed by the imperial authorities as \"evil religions\" (邪教 \"xiéjiào\"). With the collapse of the Qing state in 1911 the sects enjoyed an unprecedented period of freedom and thrived, and many of them were officially recognised as religious group... |
why military coups don't happen often in democracies? | Dont happen as often...
But authoritarian states are more likely to have coups since they relay heavily on both police and military (and many times a mix of both) to retain control,
So In a democracy or a free state, the police is controlled in a civilian manner and the army has political and civilian oversight, while in Autocracy the millitary and police tend to have less oversight, to make their job easier...
So its easier for higher ups in the army to roll out the tanks and get rid of the army.
A good example is Turkey, Turkey has had several coups, even while being a democracy several Islamic themed parties in the past have tried to impose more autocratic rule and were overtrown, while the current president before starting his reforms and road towards autocracy first took the time to dismantle the control over the army and replace key military leaders to people loyal to him to prevent this.
Also popular satisfaction in autocracies tends to be quite lower, so they wont bother if the army goes out and kills the president. | [
"According to Naunihal Singh, author of \"Seizing Power: The Strategic Logic of Military Coups\" (2014), it is \"fairly rare\" for the prevailing existing government to violently purge the army after a coup has been foiled. If it starts the mass killing of elements of the army, including officers who were not invol... |
What are some of the newer theories on the nature of consciousness? | In spite of Postmodern_Pat sentiments, there is a healthy, active and growing literature regarding the phenomenon of consciousness studied from neural perspectives.
There is Baars' [Global Workspace](_URL_3_) model, for instance, as wells as Edelman's concept of [primary consciousness](_URL_0_), which would go on to evolve into the the [Dynamic Core Hypothesis](_URL_4_). Here's [a relatively accessible, short paper](_URL_2_) co-written by both Edelman and Baar's that attempts to reconcile the two.
These, however, are only theories of the specific neurobiological processes underlying conscious experience. [Another theory](_URL_1_) has been put forward by Tononi hypothesizing the specific *physical* aspect of those processes which underlies conscious experience. | [
"In summary, Morin concludes that from the many concepts discussed above it is near impossible to settle for only one theory without accepting at least a fraction of another. Although each hypothesis has been debated either in scientific or more spiritually focused literature, he states that consciousness is relate... |
when toddlers talk ‘gibberish’ are they just making random noises or are they attempting to speak an english sentence that just comes out muddled up? | It’s usually just them learning and playing with all the noises they are capable of vocalizing. You will also notice that pronunciation improves greatly over the next few years as they gain better coordination of their mouth and vocal muscles | [
"Gibberish, alternatively jibber, jabber, jibber-jabber, or gobbledygook, is speech that is (or appears to be) nonsense. It may include speech sounds that are not actual words, or language games and specialized jargon that seems nonsensical to outsiders. \n",
"Poglish is a common phenomenon among persons bilingua... |
When did societies start erecting memorials to their losses? | The Hieroglyphic Staircase on structure 10L-26, in Copan was built between 746 CE and 756 CE by the 14th ruler of Copan. The English translation of his name is Smoke Monkey. This is the longest single Mayan inscription ever found. It was discovered by Alfred Maudslay in 1889 and was partially excavated by the Peabody Museum of Harvard University in 1891 and 1895. Silvanius Morley did additional work on the behalf of the Carneige Institue and published his findings in 1920. The staircase was in deplorable shape. Two flights of this monumental staircase were still in situ, but the upper flights had tumbled down and were in a jumble at the foot of the staircase. Attempts to restore the staircase were made by Strosvik in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He placed the glyph blocks with Long Count dates in sequential order, but since his understanding of the Mayan text was extremely limited, the rest of the blocks were replaced in a haphazard manner. It wasn't until the Copan Mosaics Project was launched in 1986, that William Fash directed an intense program of program of excavations and new epigraphic studies to unlock the secrets of the Hieroglyphic staircase. At the time (1986) there was a strong theory that the staircase documented the capture and execution of the 13th king of Copan, known as 18 Rabit, by his erstwhile vassel in the much smaller Mayan city of Quirigua. It was thought to have been imposed on Copan as a reminder of their bitter defeat in 726 CE.
However, by 1991, this theory had been modified. Now, the Hieroglyphic staircase is thought to show the 15th king of Copan, Smoke Shell, and his attempt to rebuild the prestige and legitimacy of the indigenous Copan ruling dynasty. The 12th king of Copan, Smoke Imix God K, is prominantly mentioned in what was the jumbled upper flight of the staircase. Smoke Imix God K is not only known from several Copan stela and monumental altars, he is also depicted in Quirigua dealing with the local rulers from a posistion of strength. It is highly unlikely that Quirigua would even mention him if they were imposing their version of past events on the defeated city of Copan.
So now that the entire text of the Hieroglyphic staircase has been restored, sorted out properly and the glyphs are better understood, it can be said. Yes, it does mention the shameful defeat of 18 Rabit, the 13th king of Copan, but it is just a small part of the story. The bulk of the Hieroglyphic staircase pays homage to the long and glorious history of the ruling dynasty of Copan. After 18 Rabit was executed, no stelae or monumental architecture was built in Copan for 20 years, but the dynasty did bounce back from their defeat, even if their were reluctant to provide many details of that defeat.
Source: "Scribes Wariors and Kings : The City of Copan and the Ancient Maya" by William Fash | [
"The huge losses of the American Civil War saw the first really large group of sculptural war memorials, as well as many monuments for individuals. Among the most artistically outstanding is the Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the all-black 54th Regiment by Augustus Saint-Gaudens in Boston, with a second cast in ... |
Why were DD Tanks used on D-Day as opposed to landing tanks directly on the beach? | Tanks *were* landed directly on the beach by landing craft on D-Day, in particular many of Hobart's 'funnies', the specialised vehicles like Sherman 'crab' mine flail tanks or Churchill AVREs, which were too cumbersome, heavy or just awkward to swim ashore. The DD was another specialisation, conceived with the Allied need to land as much materiel on relatively small beaches as quickly as possible. Landing craft posed large targets, and if they were hit, or the leading vehicles knocked out, they could foul up the beachhead and prevent other equipment coming ashore. The idea behind the DD was that individual vehicles would be harder to hit, would be less likely to clog the landing zone, and were not all bunched together.
Greenwood, *D-Day to Victory* | [
"LVTs were used in the Normandy landings, but their use by the United States was limited as the US Army doctrine in Europe viewed the Sherman DD as the answer to assault on heavily defended beaches. LVT-2s were used to help unload supplies after the landings on Utah Beach, from the cargo ships off the coast to the ... |
what's the role of each of the multiple gaming companies that's working on the same game? | Bandai Namco is the publisher of Dark Souls, they market and fund development of the game. FromSoftware is the developer, they're the ones who design, write and build the game. | [
", formerly known as GAU Entertainment and , was a Japanese video game developer. The company usually does not market or publish the games it develops, instead they primarily develop games for other companies on a contract basis. Their clients include Sega, Capcom, Namco, Takara, Taito, Atlus, and Square Enix.\n",
... |
why do we accept when someone identifies as another gender than their physical one, but not if they identify as another race? | Like lots of other anatomical features, the brain is sexually dimorphic (slighy different for males and females.)
The brains of people of different race or ethnicity do not differ in anatomy. | [
"This issue is illustrated with the example of those who identify themselves as Hispanic/Latino, typically a mix of Caucasian, Native American and African ancestry. Although some studies include this as a \"race\", many such as the U.S. Census do not, forcing members of this group to choose between identifying them... |
Up until the 50s, London was the most populated city in the world. How did it fall so quickly and so drastically down the list? | Yeah, China and other parts of Asia industrializing had a lot to do with it. Another big factor was the loss of empire. Before the war, London was the capital city of an empire that spanned the world. After the war, most of the empire was gone, and the UK was in financial dire straits. People no longer flocked to London looking for opportunity like they did before.
At the same time, the rise of the automobile allowed more people to leave the urban center for the surrounding areas. So even if London were supplying the same degree of economic development, more people could partake in it without actually living within Greater London. Opposed to that, the rising urban areas in Asia were still heavily dependent upon mass transit and foot transport. China has only converted to a car culture within the last 15 years. India is still working toward it. Japan has been one for a while, but their population is so dense and their livable land so limited that they don't have the same options to live away from urban centers. | [
"With increasing industrialisation, London's population grew rapidly throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it was the most populated city in the world until overtaken by New York in 1925. Its population peaked at 8,615,245 in 1939. There were an estimated 7,753,600 official residents in mid-2009.\n",
... |
how does masturbation work in space? | In our usual Earth gravity, blood is being pulled down, which our heart and blood vessels are used to dealing with, constricting in the legs to avoid blood pooling down there. You can't just tell your body to stop doing that when you're in space's microgravity, so blood tends to pool in various parts of your body especially when at rest (e.g sleeping). Astronauts often wake up with raging boners because of the blood pooling in the corpora cavernosa of the penis.
Other than that, astronauts are not teenagers and probably can live for a while without spanking the monkey, but if they need the urge, they can just do it normally. | [
"Sex in space is human sexual activity in the weightlessness of outer space. It presents difficulties for the performance of most sexual activities due to Newton's third law. According to the law, if the couple remain attached, their movements will counter each other. Consequently, their actions will not change the... |
If you just gave birth to a baby underwater, is it possible to attach the umbilical cord to an oxygen/nutrient-giving machine and have the baby live underwater for its entire life? | No. Humans are not aquatic, and development would cause the umbilical cord to eventually detach, among other things. | [
"In rare instances where the fetus has a very large lesion, resuscitation after delivery can be dangerous. In these situations a specialized delivery for management of the airway compression can be planned called the EXIT procedure, or a fetal laser ablation procedure can be performed. During this minimally invasiv... |
How does water "know" where to go in osmosis? | The individual water molecule is still zipping around randomly. The probability to find a water molecule on either side of the box is a function of temperature, the size of the molecule, size of the pores, inter molecular interactions etc. In your example there is a higher pressure of water on the right side, since the solution is more dilute, this pressure gradient tends to _URL_0_ when you observe the bulk behavior of your system you will find a net flow of water to one side of the box, this however is not telling you anything about what each water molecule does, even after the gradient is equalized there will be molecules moving from one side to the other and vice versa. | [
"Osmosis is the movement of water molecules across a selectively permeable membrane. The net movement of water molecules through a partially permeable membrane from a solution of high water potential to an area of low water potential. A cell with a less negative water potential will draw in water but this depends o... |
why doesn't ram let go of unnecessary memories | Because the programmers didn't give the computer permission to "let go" of their memory yet. Computers aren't smart, they'll happily run themselves off a cliff every time you tell them to. If the computer is running out of RAM but the computer hasn't been given permission to free any of that memory it won't free it. It doesn't know whats necessary or unnecessary and neither do you so it holds on to all of it until it gets permission to free it. | [
"This form of memory breakdown involves problems at the point where attention and memory interface. Common errors of this type include misplacing keys or eyeglasses, or forgetting appointments, because at the time of encoding sufficient attention was not paid to what would later need to be recalled.\n",
"Memory i... |
if mckayla maroney and liz lee where underage at the time there nude photos where taken, why are they not being immediately arrested for taking and distribution of child pornography? | Jesus your user name :/
Mostly because it's really, REALLY stupid to arrest kids for what they do with their own bodies. Most governing bodies know this. It would also be hilariously bad PR to arrest someone who's privacy was so violated for distribution of child porn. | [
"BULLET::::- In 2008, an assistant principal in the US state of Virginia was charged with possession of child pornography and related crimes after he had been asked to investigate a rumored sexting incident at the high school where he worked. Upon finding a student in possession of a photo on his phone that depicte... |
sound editing vs sound mixing as an oscar category. | **Sound Editing**: Finding/making the sound effects, which may include manipulating (editing) them to fit. For an example, all the chainsaws and stuff in Mad Max or Godzilla's original roar being made from "a double bass, using a leather glove coated in pine-tar resin to create friction...They'd rub it against the string of the double bass to create that sound."
**Sound Mixing**: How they are incorporated (mixed) into the film. For an example (not this year though), [the cafe scene in Inception](_URL_0_). | [
"The Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing is an Academy Award that recognizes the finest or most euphonic sound mixing or recording and is generally awarded to the production sound mixers and re-recording mixers of the winning film. Compare this award to the Academy Award for Best Sound Editing. In the lists below, ... |
Attempting to understand W and Z bosons in relation to (or independent of) the Higgs boson. | I'm going to attempt two explanations here... the first will have to be taken with a grain of salt, because it is my attempt to explain this at a less technical level, which trades precision and correctness in wording for understandability. If not, the second explanation should be more exact (although not completely, since the exact explanation would involve the actual math and even more precise wording, but it should be fairly close).
**First try:**
The W and Z bosons are heavy because of electroweak symmetry breaking. Earlier, when the universe was hotter (higher than a temperature corresponding to an energy of about 100 GeV; today's CMB temperature corresponds to about 10^-4 eV = 10^-13 GeV), the electromagnetic and weak forces were unified into one force. Lower than about 100 GeV, the symmetry was broken and we got the EM and weak forces we see today.
According to the Higgs mechanism, which seems to be our best explanation for EWSB, so far, the presence of a Higgs field that wasn't zero (on average) broke this symmetry. The photon was left massless, but the two W bosons and the Z boson acquired masses based on the average value of the Higgs field.
**Second try:**
Our particle universe is described by [quantum field theory](_URL_5_), in which our particles are localized disturbances in fields. The [Lagrangian](_URL_3_) describes how these fields interact with each other. (It's similar to the Lagrangian you'd see in a classical mechanics class.)
Our fields can be rotated by certain phases, and this is described by a gauge symmetry. These gauge symmetries are described by [Lie groups](_URL_0_), which are continuous symmetry groups following certain special rules. (A more down-to-earth example of this is the [gauge invariance](_URL_4_) in classical electrodynamics, which is a [U(1)](_URL_2_)\_EM gauge symmetry. Changing your gauge is the same as rotating the phases of all the charged particles. U(1) is the Lie group, named after the mathematician Sophus Lie.)
At energies higher than about 100 GeV, we have an unbroken ( SU(2)\_L ) x ( U(1)\_Y ) gauge symmetry on just about all the matter particles you know and love. (Hereafter, I'll refer to this symmetry simply as SU(2)xU(1).) Somehow, this symmetry gets broken below these energies, and only U(1)_EM remains.
These gauge symmetries carry with them gauge bosons. For example, the gauge boson of U(1)_EM is the photon, which carries the electromagnetic interaction. SU(2)\_L carries 3 W bosons: W1, W2, and W3. U(1)\_Y carries a B boson.
The Higgs mechanism is the best explanation we have so far (although we're still trying to directly produce and observe the Higgs boson). In it, the scalar Higgs field couples to all of the matter fields, as well as the gauge bosons in SU(2)xU(1). However, unlike all the other fields, the Higgs field "acquires a [vacuum expectation value (vev)](_URL_6_)" - on average, the Higgs field is not zero as it is with the other fields, but is some positive number. It's as if there's a field of Higgs particles everywhere. The massive particles you know of interact with this nonzero field and acquire masses.
This alone would not break SU(2)xU(1) symmetry, though! The clincher is that the Higgs vev does not follow the same SU(2)xU(1) symmetry as all the fields do. The Higgs vev "[spontaneously breaks](_URL_1_) SU(2)xU(1)." (You'd spontaneously break the symmetry of a perfect sphere by smacking a pin into the top of it. Now you don't have a spherically symmetric object - just a cylindrically symmetric object. You've broken the spherical symmetry to a cylindrical one.)
The Higgs vev breaks the SU(2)xU(1) symmetry into a U(1)\_EM symmetry. W1 and W2 mix to give us W+ and W-, and acquire mass in the process. W3 and B mix to give us Z and the photon. Z acquires mass, but the photon does not because it is the gauge boson of an unbroken symmetry, U(1)\_EM.
If you want an explanation without the Higgs mechanism, I can only offer this general insight: [Goldstone's theorem](_URL_8_) states that when a continuous symmetry is spontaneously broken, it generates Goldstone bosons. This isn't specific to any model, but is rather a result of how Lagrangians and symmetries work. These Goldstone bosons then tend to be "eaten up" by gauge bosons, making the gauge bosons massive in exchange for getting rid of the Goldstone bosons.
There are [Higgsless theories](_URL_7_) out there, but they aren't as well-developed as the Higgs mechanism, as far as I know. I don't know most of them, except for a bit of Technicolor, which has a problem with predicting that the proton decays. The Higgs mechanism seems to work best, and the only nagging doubt we have is that we haven't found it yet. Next couple years, though.
Also, I should say that my understanding of the Higgs mechanism is not as complete as I'd like it to be. I only learned it last year. | [
"An initial focus of research was to investigate the possible existence of the Higgs boson, a key part of the Standard Model of physics which is predicted by theory but had not yet been observed before due to its high mass and elusive nature. CERN scientists estimated that, if the Standard Model were correct, the L... |
How and why was the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth formed? What lead to its demise? | Poland and Lithuania had a personal union under Sigismund II. A personal union means that two countries share a monarchy, such as Austria-Hungary having the Empire of Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary as two separate entities, ruled by one person who was simultaneously the Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary.
Around the time of the Union of Lublin, Lithuania was under severe pressure from the Russians. However, the Polish nobility didn't really want to help without some sort of concession from the Lithuanians. Sigismund decided to try and manipulate the nobles to agree to join the two countries into one, which was achieve at the Union of Lublin. However, when Sigismund died without an heir, it was decided to have the nobles of Poland-Lithuania elect the next king-thus rendering the Commonwealth an elective monarchy. And that structure remained the system of the Commonwealth until its eventual dismemberment.
The problem with the structure is that, while granting a large number of liberties to the nobles allowed for the elections to take place mostly undisputed, the nobles often acted autonomously and would feud with each other and the king. Often times the king's military was essentially limited to his personal levy and whatever his allies would be able to dig up. There was also a clause in the Polish Parliament, the Sejm, that required all the nobles to agree on legislation. This resulted in what was known as a liberum veto, where any noble could veto any legislation single-handedly. Foreign influenced nobles (from Prussia, Austria, and Russia) often invoked this veto whenever Poland tried to reform, thus preventing any real internal change or development.
Meanwhile, Poland's foreign policy was in chaos. After a failed attempt to add the crown of Russia to the Commonwealth, Poland experienced a time of instability. Ukrainian cossacks revolted against the Poles and swore loyalty to the Russians, resulting in an extremely costly war that depleted the Polish military. Meanwhile, Swedish troops swept into Poland proper, sacking and burning valuable and wealthy Polish territories, in what became known as the Deluge. The result was a severely weakened Commonwealth that became easily manipulable by its neighbors, which eventually resulted in the Partitions of Poland by Prussia, Austria, and Russia.
The Winged Hussars were primarily effective because of their military discipline and the fact that they were superior cavalry to most other countries at the time. For instance, at the Battle of Kircholm, the extremely strong and disciplined Swedish army was routed within half an hour by a massive Polish cavalry charge despite outnumbering the Poles by more than 2:1. The Swedish cavalry simply didn't have the power to engage the Polish lancers and shattered, exposing the infantry's flanks and causing a total collapse of the line. This battle among others inspired the Swedes to change their cavalry tactics from the sword and pistol reiters to lance equipped chargers. However, the main disadvantage of the hussars was that due to the need to maintain powerful war horses, only some of the Polish nobility, or szlachta, were able to maintain them, thus limiting their numbers and use. In addition, as infantry rate of fire started to increase, cavalry as a whole became less effective, especially the frontal charges favored by the Poles.
After World War I, both Poland and Lithuania received independence from Germany and Russia. However, the two quickly got involved in a border dispute over the city of Vilnus/Wilno. This sparked a war between Poland and Lithuania, which Poland won, securing both Vilnus/Wilno and the Suwalki region for Poland, and earning the ire of the Lithuanians. Specifically, the Polish leader, Pilsudski, was born in Wilno, and arranged a military seizure of Vilnus by a group of so-called Polish mutineers that declared independence from Lithuania and held a "referendum" to join Poland. This did not go over well and polluted Polish-Lithuanian relations for some time.
Sources:
Frost, Robert. After the Deluge: Poland-Lithuania and the Second Northern War
Davies, Norman: White Eagle and Red Star | [
"Growing threat of Muscovy and prolonged Muscovite–Lithuanian Wars forced Lithuania into the union of Lublin 1569 in which Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was created. Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth existed up to 1795 and was partitioned in three stages by the neighboring Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, and ... |
why do supermarkets sell meats in a refrigerated space as opposed to a freezer where the meat would last longer? | A lot of people want to cook the meat that day or the next and don't want to have to thaw it. Also, fresh meat vs frozen is preferred for most due to taste and texture that changes when frozen. | [
"Meats and vegetables stored in a manual-defrost freezer will last longer than those stored in automatic-defrost freezers. This is because the temperature of a manual defrost freezer remains closer to while the temperature of automatic defrost freezers fluctuates, and because automatic-defrost freezers have drier a... |
why there needs to be separation of ncos and commissioned officers? | Commissioned officers and Non-commissioned officers have different jobs. NCO's would need to know more about troop welfare and must have technical and tactical proficiency in their designated job whereas a commissioned officer is a leader and is more of a logistics supervisor. Although they are trained to lead in a fight, which they are taught very well and are very capable, they are more about movement than engagement.
One must prove their ability in their tactics to become an NCO whereas one must prove they have the ability to see a bigger picture to be commissioned. | [
"The non-commissioned officer corps has been referred to as \"the backbone\" of the armed services, as they are the primary and most visible leaders for most military personnel. Additionally, they are the leaders primarily responsible for executing a military organization's mission and for training military personn... |
What are historians' opinions on the book "How History Gets Things Wrong The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories" by Alexander Rosenberg? | I haven't read it, but I will say:
* Historians are _well aware_ of the limitations of narrative as a form. We have been talking about this for ages amongst ourselves (nobody outside of our profession seems to care, except apparently this neuroscientist). Hayden White's _Metahistory_, which is all about narrative forms, is a typical history grad school history reading. There are many works which apply the study of narrative to history (even an entire sub-field of "narratology"). It's mostly dry, methodological stuff (alas), but it's not like we haven't been talking about this for decades.
* While I am actually _totally fine_ with someone (a philosopher?) bringing neuroscience into discussions about narrative, I find the framing of "historians are getting this wrong!" very strange. Perhaps it is just the publisher blurb, but it seems core to the presentation of the book. I would challenge said scientist to come up with a non-narrative way of giving compelling, complex evidence. As historians and sociologists of science would be quick to point out, _every science paper that is more than a dump of numbers_ is embedded within a narrative as well (one that typically downplays the appearance of human agency in an attempt to look more "objective"). If he thinks philosophy papers lack narratives... I've got disappointing news.
* The idea of "understanding history without making it a story" is totally incoherent. I would submit a challenge to anyone: show me a historical understanding that is not reliant on narrative. Even something that appears "narrative-less" (a Wikipedia-style list of facts, for example) always contains an implicit narrative from the editorial selection, and even if it didn't, would be useless (there would be no sense of importance, no sense of argument, and would contain everything from "Julius Caesar got a hangnail" to "Trotsky blew his nose"). What "understanding" would come from that? Again, I don't know what this guy has in mind. If it's something like quantitative methods... yes, those can have their role (and issues) in historical discussion. But even quantitative data requires a "spokesman" to create a narrative for why a given chart tells us something. There's always a narrative.
* I find myself wondering if this guy is self-aware enough to realize his own book necessarily has a narrative structure to it? I'd like to believe so but the ridiculousness of this blurb makes me suspect he actually thinks there is something outside of narrative.
The way historians deal with narrative is to be self-aware of it and to try and be in control of it. We try to recognize what kind of story we find ourselves telling, and make that explicitly part of the argument and interpretation. The idea that we should deny narrative is essential is naive at best, deceptive at worst.
So anyway. I haven't read the book, just the publisher page. But assuming the latter reflects the argument of the former... it seems to be based on some serious misunderstandings of history, historians, and, frankly, narrative. It is not surprising to me that this is a book written by a philosopher — I would love for him to try and write some non-narrative history and see how that works out.
(I am going to file this in the same place I put the comments from political scientists who think they're being very wise when they tell historians that not everything in history ends up in archives. _Wow you have blown my mind no historian has ever realized that before because we're all dumbasses k thx bye._) | [
"In 2018 Rosenberg published ’‘How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of our Addiction to Stories’‘ This work develops the eliminative materialism of ‘‘The Atheist’s guide to Reality‘‘ applying it to the role ‘the theory of mind’ plays in history and other forms of story telling. Rosenberg argues that the ... |
Tentacle porn goes back hundreds of years, but when did Japan start getting known for having it? | Joris-Karl Huysmans, a prominent French novelist of the fin-de-siècle wrote in *Certains* (1889) wrote (trans. Richard Lane, ):
> The most beautiful Japanese erotic print that I know is truly frightening: it is of a Japanese woman mounted by an octopus; with its tentacles, the horrible beast sucks the tips of her breasts and rummages in her mouth, while its head drinks from her lower parts. The almost superhuman expression of agony and sorrow - which convulses this long, graceful female figure with aquiline nose - and the hysterical joy - which emanates at the same time from her forehead, from those eyes closed as in death - are admirable.
This is a description of *Tako no Ama* ("Diver and Octopi") by Hokusai Katsushika (1760-1864), the famous ukiyo-e etching which is more popularly known in English-speaking countries as ["The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife"](_URL_4_), which was first published in *Kinoe no komatsu* (1814). It is the ur-example that most people think of when they consider Japanese tentacle erotica...but it is not the beginning of the story.
Danielle Talerico in "Interpreting Sexual Imagery in Japanese Prints: A Fresh Approach to Hokusai's *Diver and Two Octopi*" in *Impressions: The Journal of the Ukiyo-e Society of America* #23 (2001) traces Hokusai's imagery as part of a tradition in Japanese art:
> Hokusai's contemporary audience would have viewed his illustration quite differently from Huysmans, Goncourt, and subsequent generations of Western connoisseurs. They would have recognized the origns of the scene in the ancient folktale *Taishokan* ("The Great Woven Cap"). Taishokan derives from a title bestowed upon a person who held the highest rank at court, and it became the epithet for the seventh-century courtier Fujiwara no Kamatari, who was well known by this name. It was not unusual for ukiyo-e to parody popular literature [...] *Taishokan* is the dramatic story of a diving woman who retrieves a precious gem from the Dragon King of the Sea. It is essentially a Buddhist moral tale. [...] *Taishokan* has a long literary history and several variants of the tale exist. The earliest dates to the fourteenth century and is found in *Legends Surrounding the Founding of Shido Temple (Shidoji engi)*. This version of the tale is the source of the popular Noh drama *Ama* (Diver) by Zeami (1363-1443). Between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries ballad-dramas known as *kowaka-mai*, dramatic chanting associated with Bunraku called *joruri*, and theatrical Kabuki versions of *Taishokan* were performed for Edo audiences. Not surprisingly, ukiyo-e artists capitalized on teh tale's dramatic and literary popularity, and the story became a common print theme from the early Edo period onward. Early Edo-period ukiyo-e illustrations draw on the ballad-drama version of *Taishokan*.
The original story and the play did not depict the diver in a sexualized way, and the octopus was one of the Dragon King's servants sent to capture her. Over a period of decades, a combination of government censorship and artistic efforts to skirt that censorship gave way to "risky pictures" (*abuna-e*), commonly featuring nude female divers:
> The sexualization of the abalone diver was also encouraged by terms connecting sex with water: *mizu shobai* ("water trade," or prostitution), *mizu age* ("sexual initiation"), and *mizusho* (a wanton woman) to name a few. Many ukiyo-e artists created sexually explicit prints featuring water and sex.
The octopus comes into these erotic diver prints in the 1700s, with one particularly evocative work by Katsukawa Shunsho (1725-1792).
> Following Shunsho several artists exceeded the bounds of "risky pictures" in sexually explicit diver and octopus imagery; the multiple appendages of the octopus take on a phallic character, performing penetration and cunnilingus. [...] Kitao Shigemasa (1739-1820) seems to be the first to directly link sexually explicit diver and octopus imagery to the *Tamatori* story. His rendition is a sexual parody of the Noh play *Ama* and a visual pun on early *Tamatori*-tale imagery.
Hokusai was a student of Shunso, and Hokusai's *Tako no ama*, published in 1814, is actually a throwback to this older erotic motif, what Talerico calls "the last-known Edo-period sexual image of a diving woman and an octopus." So how did it end up giving Huysmans the chills in France?
Ricardo Bru in [Erotic Japonisme: The Influence of Japanese Sexual Imagery on Western Art](_URL_3_) describes sporadic encounters between Westerners and erotic Japanese art, and there was a limited trade in erotic art with Westerners in Japan into the 19th century - the "opening of Japan" in 1853 meant there were suddenly a lot more Westerners, and hence more exposure to the material.
> [...] the first European merchants settling in Yokohama and KObe began to export *ukiyo-e* (including erotic prints), which they sold directly to the many outlets springing up in major European and American cities, in particular, Paris. The latter was the first center of Japonisme in Europe and the location of some of the best collections of *shunga* that were assembled from around 1880 to 1910.
"Japonisme" was a European art movement inspired by Japanese prints, including erotic prints. Hokusai's erotic work arrived in France at an auspicious time:
> The arrive of *Pine Seedlings on the First Rat Day* in France roughly coincided with Victor HUgo's (1802-1885) romantic novel *Toilers of the Sea (Les travailleurs de la mer*, 1866), in which one of the protagonists was a terrorizing octopus (*pieuvre*). This creature was based on popular European folktales also employed later by Jules Verne in his *Twenty Thousand Leaues Under the Sea (Vingt mille lieus sous les mers*, 1869-1870). [...] The release of Hugo's and Verne's works occurred at precisely the moment when Hokusai was discovered and applauded as one of the greatest Japanese artists--it was at this time that the first Japanese prints featuring erotic or frightening octopuses arrived in the West.
Many Western artists would be inspired by the erotic octopus prints of Hokusai and others, including Pablo Picasso--for more on which, see [Secret Images: Picasso and the Japanese Erotic Print](_URL_0_)--and this formed the core of the reputation for Japanese tentacle erotica around the late-19th century in the West, and by its influence inspired a lot of tentacle erotica in Western art.
But that's not the whole story. The contemporary reputation for tentacle erotica in Japan traces to the Toshio Maeda's *Urotsukidōji* and *Demon Beast Invasion* anime (manga 1986, anime 1990), when Japanese *manga* artists were struggling with government censorship. In an [interview](_URL_1_), Toshio Maeda says:
> At that time [pre-*Urotsuki Doji*], it was illegal to create a sensual scene in bed. I thought I should do something to avoid drawing such a normal sensual scene. So I just created a creature. [His tentacle] is not a [penis] as a pretext. I could say, as an excuse, this is not a [penis], this is just a part of the creature. You know, the creatures, they don't have a gender. A creature is a creature. So it is not obscene - not illegal.
> Drawing intercourse was, and is, illegal in Japan. That is our big headache: to create such a sensual scene. We are always using any type of trick.
The idea of penetrative tentacle sex in comic art was not unique to Japanese *manga* of the period (a Western example is “Love in Arms” by Bob Lee and Brad W. Foster in the comic *Fever Pitch* (1988), where a woman imagines penetrative sex with an octopus.) However, the idea did not really catch on in the US until the concept was imported by Japanese erotic *anime* such as *La Blue Girl* (1993) - which was also based on a Maeda *manga*. Limited availability of titles in European and American markets helped push a somewhat skewed image of Japanese eroticism - because titles like *La Blue Girl* and *Demon Beast Invasion* were made fairly widely available, they helped cement the reputation for "tentacle sex" as a Japanese convention (and, to be fair, artistically it is now very much a trope, over and beyond Maeda's original purpose of skirting censorship limitations). The [Erotic Anime Movie Guide](_URL_2_) section "Tits and Tentacles" explains:
> The visual grammer permitted by the tentacle is extremely useful to the pornographer. With no restriction on length, it permits penetration without blocking the view. It can also be used as a form of restraint, permiting multiple penetration, sexualised bondage and east of access. Best of all for the tentacle as a pornographic device, while it may often look suspiciously like a penis, to the extent of possessing a foreskin or glans, or even ejaculating upon climax, it is not a sexual organ by definition.
Which I hope answers your question. | [
"Maeda is credited with the proliferation of the tentacle rape genre mostly on the reputation of the animated versions of his manga, but he did not implement the use of the \"tentacle\" as an erotic device until the 1989 \"Demon Beast Invasion\". Although \"Urotsukidoji\" is often labeled as being the first tentacl... |
Are there any interesting comparisons to be drawn between the 'Zoot Suit riots' of 1940s USA and the popular reaction to the 'Stilyagi' of 1950s USSR? | You could also add the French Zazous and German *Swingjugend* into the narrative - they were also movements made up of young people dressing in an exaggerated fashion connected to swing music. There's a certain basic similarity to the mainstream backlash to each counterculture - newspaper articles grumbling about "those young people, wearing their crazy clothes and listening to that sexual swing music," turning reality into a symbol of what's wrong with the world - but each fits slightly differently into the immediate context and illustrates the concerns of the society at the time.
Zoot suits: The "riots" are somewhat misnamed, as they give the impression of two equally-strong opposing forces bashing into one another, or an authoritarian force stepping in to quell a protest by a large group. In reality, the riots of June 1943 in Los Angeles were made up of groups of white servicemen and then civilians who armed themselves and went out seeking non-white men in zoot suits (mainly Mexican-Americans, but also African-Americans and Filipino-Americans) to beat up, some of whom fought back. The police response was largely to arrest zoot-suiters; only two servicemen were arrested. As Kathy Peiss points out in *Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style*, "the riot climaxed years of growing apprehension in white Los Angeles over racial and ethnic minorities," members of which had been steadily migrating there for work. After the Japanese-American residents were moved to internment camps in 1942, other ethnic enclaves began to spread into the newly emptied space, increasing white fears. Earlier in 1943, Mexican-American zoot-suiters and white sailors had been engaging in back-and-forth conflict - first heckling, then escalating into fistfights - around the navy training school in Chavez Ravine. Racial tensions of this nature were felt and acted upon all over America at this time, and the zoot suit and related styles became symbols of the Other against the look of the "clean-cut" white GI or sailor in his uniform.
*Stilyagi*: The *stilyagi*, "style-hunters", began to appear in the late 1940s. Where the zoot-suit phenomenon tends to be examined as a masculine style, *stilyagi* were young male and female urbanites who liked American music and American styles: men wore coats with broad, padded shoulders, garish ties, long hair (for a 1940s-1950s definition of "long" - Johnny Weismuller in *Tarzan's New York Adventure* is sometimes cited as a style influence), and narrow trousers, while women wore short and tight skirts, lipstick, and high heels. Some even gave each other English names, used English endearments, and renamed local places with Western titles (eg, "Brooklyn", "Piccadilly Circus"). Where you either were wearing a zoot suit or you weren't, the distinction between *stilyagi* and the rest of the West-loving Soviet youth was not clear: because of the perception and stigmatizing of *stilyagi* as extreme deviants, it was easy to see oneself as just a normal, non-*stilyagi* young person even if one listened and danced to swing and wore exaggeratedly Western clothing, according to Alexei Yurchak in *Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation*. The fundamental conflict, though, was between the state trying to eradicate Western fashions, music, etc. from the USSR and the young people who wanted to import those fashions, music, etc. and as you say, the backlash was not violent.
Zazous and *swingjugend* can both be read as primarily a rebellion against the Nazis; Zazous appeared in France following the occupation, and of course the *swingjugend* were growing up in Germany. Both focused on American swing/jazz, and to the Nazis, these genres were debased black and/or Jewish music. Like *stilyagi*, they dressed in an exaggerated version of American fashions, which were seen as sexual, louche, and decadent, and in some cases these young people did prove to be more sexually liberated than the older generation. Going beyond the fun-loving middle-class *swingjugend* were the groups like the Edelweiss Pirates, who came out of the working class and actively resisted the Nazis and Hitler Youth while enjoying American dress and music. The Nazis and Vichy government cracked down more strictly than the Soviets did, shaving the heads of young offenders and sending them to hard labor. | [
"The Zoot Suit riots were vivid incidents of racial violence against Latinos (e.g., Mexican-Americans) in Los Angeles in 1943. Naval servicemen stationed in a Latino neighborhood conflicted with youth in the dense neighborhood. Frequent confrontations between small groups and individuals had intensified into severa... |
why is grief sometimes sexy? | Vulnerability is often viewed as a feminine trait. In the case of a widow, a man may see her as available and subconsciously see her as being in need of a new provider. | [
"Grief is the deep sorrow usually caused by someone's death. It has now become a normal human reaction to a loss of a loved one. It is not uncommon for someone to be in sadness. Many have to deal with coping with grief.\n",
"Holleran's novel, Grief, had a great initial reception among gay literature critics. Even... |
duty-free shopping | so what's to stop anyone from buying it and then giving the bag to someone leaving/flying within the country? | [
"Duty-free shops (or stores) are retail outlets whose goods are exempt from the payment of certain local or national taxes and duties, on the requirement that the goods sold will be sold to travelers who will take them out of the country. Which products can be sold duty-free vary by jurisdiction, as well as how the... |
how do chickens have eggs with babies in them? how do the male chickens fertilize the female chicken's egg? | Pretty similar to the way mammals do it, but roosters don't have penises. They have a "cloacal opening", that they rub on each other and sperm comes out and gets in the female. Then the egg is laid. | [
"Fertile chicken eggs hatch at the end of the incubation period, about 21 days. Development of the chick starts only when incubation begins, so all chicks hatch within a day or two of each other, despite perhaps being laid over a period of two weeks or so. Before hatching, the hen can hear the chicks peeping inside... |
why are there different hunting seasons for different animals? | You generally can't hunt animals when they are raising their young. For example, deer have their young in the late winter/ early spring, so therefore deer hunting season is in the fall. Nuisance animals, like wild boar, do not enjoy such protection and therefore there is no hunting season. It is legal to hunt them all year long. | [
"Hunting is permitted in season in order to control the population growth of non-indigenous species (goats, pigs and wild cats) because they can represent a threat to various endangered species. The hunting season usually commences in December and ends in April. Camping is allowed from May through November.\n",
"... |
why isn't amoled/oled display technology incorporated into monitor/tv displays? | It is. Samsung made TV based on oled.
Now we don't have technology cheap enough to create display big enough to be competition to LED/plasma. Price of oled TV would be now magnitude higher than "regular" TV. | [
"AMOLED displays may be difficult to view in direct sunlight compared with LCDs because of their reduced maximum brightness. Samsung's \"Super AMOLED\" technology addresses this issue by reducing the size of gaps between layers of the screen. Additionally, PenTile technology is often used for a higher resolution di... |
What did people think of migrating birds before they had bbc documentaries? Where did they think the birds went to? | People theorized that they traveled far distances from a very early time.
Homer stated that cranes migrated south to flee the winter, and attacked the Pygmies, who were believed to dwell in the southern parts of Africa where it met the Ocean. (Don't read too much into this--Greek geographical understanding of Subsaharan Africa was pretty terrible, especially in Homer's day).
> with a cry like birds, even as the clamour of cranes ariseth before the face of heaven, when they flee from wintry storms and measureless rain, and with clamour fly toward the streams of Ocean, bearing slaughter and death to Pigmy men, and in the early dawn they offer evil battle
--Iliad III.2-6
Aristotle described migration fairly extensively:
> Some creatures can make provision against change without stirring from their ordinary haunts; others migrate, quitting Pontus and the cold countries after the autumnal equinox to avoid the approaching winter, and after the spring equinox migrating from warm lands to cool lands to avoid the coming heat. In some cases they migrate from places near at hand, in others they may be said to come from the ends of the world, as in the case of the crane; for these birds migrate from the steppes of Scythia to the marshlands south of Egypt where the Nile has its source. And it is here, by the way, that they are said to fight with the pygmies; and the story is not fabulous, but there is in reality a race of dwarfish men, and the horses are little in proportion, and the men live in caves underground. Pelicans also migrate, and fly from the Strymon to the Ister, and breed on the banks of this river. They depart in flocks, and the birds in front wait for those in the rear, owing to the fact that when the flock is passing over the intervening mountain range, the birds in the rear lose sight of their companions in the van.
> Fishes also in a similar manner shift their habitat now out of the Euxine and now into it. In winter they move from the outer sea in towards land in quest of heat; in summer they shift from shallow waters to the deep sea to escape the heat.
>
> Weakly birds in winter and in frosty weather come down to the plains for warmth, and in summer migrate to the hills for coolness. The more weakly an animal is the greater hurry will it be in to migrate on account of extremes of temperature, either hot or cold; thus the mackerel migrates in advance of the tunnies, and the quail in advance of the cranes. The former migrates in the month of Boedromion, and the latter in the month of Maemacterion. All creatures are fatter in migrating from cold to heat than in migrating from heat to cold; thus the quail is fatter when he emigrates in autumn than when he arrives in spring. The migration from cold countries is contemporaneous with the close of the hot season. Animals are in better trim for breeding purposes in spring-time, when they change from hot to cool lands.
>
> Of birds, the crane, as has been said, migrates from one end of the world to the other; they fly against the wind. The story told about the stone is untrue: to wit, that the bird, so the story goes, carries in its inside a stone by way of ballast, and that the stone when vomited up is a touchstone for gold.
>
> The cushat and the rock-dove migrate, and never winter in our country, as is the case also with the turtle-dove; the common pigeon, however, stays behind. The quail also migrates; only, by the way, a few quails and turtle-doves may stay behind here and there in sunny districts. Cushats and turtle-doves flock together, both when they arrive and when the season for migration comes round again. When quails come to land, if it be fair weather or if a north wind is blowing, they will pair off and manage pretty comfortably; but if a southerly wind prevail they are greatly distressed owing to the difficulties in the way of flight, for a southerly wind is wet and violent. For this reason bird-catchers are never on the alert for these birds during fine weather, but only during the prevalence of southerly winds, when the bird from the violence of the wind is unable to fly. And, by the way, it is owing to the distress occasioned by the bulkiness of its body that the bird always screams while flying: for the labour is severe. When the quails come from abroad they have no leaders, but when they migrate hence, the glottis flits along with them, as does also the landrail, and the eared owl, and the corncrake. The corncrake calls them in the night, and when the birdcatchers hear the croak of the bird in the nighttime they know that the quails are on the move. The landrail is like a marsh bird, and the glottis has a tongue that can project far out of its beak. The eared owl is like an ordinary owl, only that it has feathers about its ears; by some it is called the night-raven. It is a great rogue of a bird, and is a capital mimic; a bird-catcher will dance before it and, while the bird is mimicking his gestures, the accomplice comes behind and catches it. The common owl is caught by a similar trick.
>
> As a general rule all birds with crooked talons are short-necked, flat-tongued, and disposed to mimicry. The Indian bird, the parrot, which is said to have a man's tongue, answers to this description; and, by the way, after drinking wine, the parrot becomes more saucy than ever.
>
> Of birds, the following are migratory-the crane, the swan, the pelican, and the lesser goose.
--*Historia Animalium* VIII.12 | [
"As explained in the sixth episode, some of the birds were imprinted on a human and filmed from an ultralight plane; others were filmed with a helicopter drone. Some other footage resulted from tiny cameras being strapped to the backs of birds.\n",
"Winged Migration (, also known as The Travelling Birds in some U... |
how do resonance tones create geometric shapes? | Ever drop something into water? You create a wave on the surface, that goes untill it hits the edge of water, and then it bounces back, right?
If your wave does not resonate, then the high point of an incoming wave will be a low point (or somewhere in between) of the wave bouncing back from the edge. So, put together, they will mess eachother up, and equal out.
If the wave you make resonates, then the high point on your wave will overlap with the high point of the wave bouncing back from the edge. So, the wave will be twice as high (and low)
Now, if you make a wave that bounces, and bounces again, and again, and again, and all those waves add together, that's called a standing wave, and what you see in the video is the low points of a standing wave. | [
"A particular type of \"shape resonance\" occurs in multiband or two-band superconducting heterostructures at atomic limit called superstripes due to quantum interference of a first pairing channel in a first wide band and a second pairing channel in a second band where the chemical potential is tuned near a Lifshi... |
are trees that look "half dead" still alive? | The root system probably got damaged. Certain parts of the roots will only feed certain parts of the tree, if it can still produce leaves it is still alive. | [
"The tree has been dead since 1915 and is in poor structural condition, due in part to politically-motivated vandalism, but there is a very similar living tree a short distance away known as \"Pi Jove de les Tres Branques\" (\"the young three-branched pine\"), which is regarded as its successor. Both are protected ... |
Communist Attempted Coup in Portugal | Maybe [this](_URL_0_) can help.
I don't know any of the English ones in particular, sorry. | [
"The Coup of 25 November 1975 (usually referred to as the in Portugal) was a failed military \"coup d'état\" against the post-Carnation Revolution governing bodies of Portugal. This attempt was carried out by Portuguese Communists and other left-wing activists, who hoped to hijack the Portuguese transition to democ... |
how does jumping work? | Inertia! when you crouch down to prime for a jump, you're lowering your center of mass.
When you extend your legs to actually jump, they can only push you as far as they are long (as soon as your legs fully extend, that's it. You're not going anywhere)
Inertia takes over at this point. Your mass, previously lowered, is now moving upward at a rate determined by your legs' extension. Since you're already in motion, your mass wants to stay in motion [(Newton's First Law)](_URL_0_) and your body travels up, despite your legs no longer pushing you that way.
Eventually, gravity catches up with you and you fall back down
| [
"Jumping involves capturing the other player’s pieces by moving two spaces in the same direction, jumping over the opponent's piece in the intermediate square. Multiple opposing pieces may be captured in a single turn provided this is done by successive jumps made by a single piece. Pieces must jump into an unoccup... |
how does invisibility work? how do you make something invisible? | For something to be "invisible" all light would have to pass around or through it without distortion. Nobody has accomplished this in real life so far. The best/closest efforts so far try to capture the light on one side of the object and project it on the other side. (Think of it as walking around with a big t.v. screen strapped to your front that projects what's behind you. )
"true" invisibility is probably impossible. You'd need to relay all energy spectrums, not just light. Arguably, if you didn't absorb or emit any energy at any wavelength, you'd be effectively outside space/time and therefor unable to interact with it. | [
"The invisibility cloak is basically the medium on which light waves refract. Invisibility cloaks allow for an object to be undetected while confined in the area of the cloak. In other words, the viewer does not see the real object. In illusion optics, devices are not limited to only invisibility cloaks. For exampl... |
what is the difference between regular speed and ground speed for aircraft? | The reason we have airspeed and groundspeed is because they serve different purposes. For an airplane to gain lift (fly) it has to move through the air at a certain speed so that the wings will work. To make sure we are at that speed and not coming close to falling below it, we measure airspeed. This is how fast the plane is moving through the air. If air never moved anywhere and stayed in the same place all the time, then airspeed and groundspeed would be the same thing. However, air also moves! We all know that. We call it wind! The airplane is a part of the air mass in the same way that a fish is a part of the water mass. A fish can swim through the water at a certain speed *relative to the water*, but if that water is itself moving with respect to the earth, then fish's speed with respect to the earth is *also* changed the same amount. So if our airplane (a sky-fish!) in the air is flying north at 50mph through the air, and the air itself is moving 10mph *south* relative to the earth, then we have two speeds happening to our aircraft. We are going north at 50mph through air, but only 40mph over the ground, because the air itself is pulling us back as we move forward!
Groundspeed allows us to calculate how long it will take us to arrive at a given destination, and is particularly important so we can make calculations for fuel consumption. Our airspeed is important because the plane will behave differently in the air depending on its speed. Too fast and we could stress or damage the airframe. Too slow and we risk losing lift and "stalling", which is basically falling out of the sky (don't worry, we can recover from those easily!). | [
"Ground speed is the horizontal speed of an aircraft relative to the ground. An aircraft heading vertically would have a ground speed of zero. Information displayed to passengers through the entertainment system often gives the aircraft ground speed rather than airspeed.\n",
"Modern jet airliners also include gro... |
how do groups like neo-nazis and the kkk still manage to recruit people? | Hate breeds hate. Lots of people are a product of their environment or fall into the wrong crowd. | [
"The organizations that the KKK targeted for bloc recruitment were usually fraternal lodges and Protestant churches. Protestant ministers were offered free membership and powerful Chaplain status within the KKK. Recruitment also involved recruitment drives that toured the United States. Members of organizations lik... |
Did America ever have military parades in which military equipment is put on display? | I hope this is ok, it's OC taken by my Grandfather.
They lived in Lompoc, California, where Vandenberg AFB is, where they have launched missiles with satellites on them (ETA: And nukes) since the early 60s. There used to be a Flower Festival Parade, and they would put the missiles in the parade. Here are some pictures:
Here's an Atlas Missile in 1963:
_URL_0_
The NASA float 1964:
_URL_5_
Missile 1964:
_URL_1_
Titan Missile 1964:
_URL_4_
_URL_3_
Terrier Missile 1965:
_URL_2_
THOR IRBM 1965:
_URL_6_
If these are not ok I'll delete them. | [
"Military parades in the American capital are held quadrennially by servicemen of the United States Armed Forces during the Presidential inaugural parade. These are not considered to be regular military parades however, as the parading formations are actually not entirely composed of armed servicemen. The first kno... |
search warrants and probable cause in the united states | law student here:
The 4th Amendment protects citizens from **unreasonable** intrusions into their privacy. So this is basically the analysis:
Let's say you are in your house, minding your own business, when suddenly police bust into your house and begin rummaging through your stuff, then take a packet of information from your bookshelf.
What do you do?
Well, the first question is "were the officer's actions unreasonable?" To figure that out, we have something called the "Katz Analysis," where you ask two questions: (1) Did /u/Renson have a subjective, reasonable expectation of privacy in the property/items searched/seized?; and (2) Does society generally support such an expectation.
Here, it is likely that you, inside your home, had a reasonable expectation of privacy -- and you also had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the packet of info on your bookshelf. Plus, it is safe to say that society would support that (most people would be offended by police barging into their home, going through their personal belongings, and taking personal property).
So after a *Katz* analysis, we can argue that the search was, in fact, unreasonable. This now triggers the **warrant requirement**.
But first, what would happen if, after the analysis, we decide there was no reasonable expectation of privacy? For example, if you had a bunch of drugs on top of your picnic basket, and a cop passing by sees them, reaches into your basket, and takes your containers of drugs... because you had no reasonable expectation of privacy in your drugs that were openly visible in a public park, the warrant requirement isn't triggered and the officer was justified in searching/seizing your property.
But back to where we were: you had a reasonable expectation of privacy in your home, which triggers a warrant requirement. What does that mean?
Well, a warrant creates a barrier for abuse. Rather than having police decide when they can perform otherwise unreasonable searches, we say, "You know what, let's make it so a neutral, respectable party has to authorize it." This is a judge.
So maybe the officer knows that you are a drug dealer. And they know that you have a packet of information where you keep records on all your drug deals. Police begin to gather evidence of your crimes until they have an "articulable level of suspicion" of your crime. They put this all in paper and submit it to a judge, and the judge reviews it. If the judge agrees that there is enough evidence to support the search/seizure, they sign it and give it back to the officers.
The officers now how permission to enter your property and search/seize to the extent of what the judge has authorized. Here, that means they may enter and seize that packet of information... they can't just tear up your house, search your computer, etc. However, if the warrant is general enough, they may be able to look anywhere the records may be (which, if slips of paper, could be anywhere). But let's change the example a bit... let's say they are looking for guns. They would be allowed to search anything capable of concealing a gun (boxes, drawers, etc.), but they wouldn't be allowed to go through envelopes, small containers, and other things that are "outside the scope" of the warrant.
So if the warrant is valid, then the search/seizure is justified. If the warrant is invalid (or nonexistent), then the search is invalid and any evidence obtained is considered "fruit of the poisonous tree" and is inadmissible in court as evidence of your crime...
...**UNLESS** police can show one of several excuses under the circumstance. One excuse could be that someone inside of your home saw police walking outside, screamed for help, which justified them entering your home, at which point they saw evidence of the crime. Another is "plain sight," which would be like if you decided to grow a marijuana plant in the front window of your home... because it is in plain sight of the officer, and because it is immediately recognizable as a crime, police don't need to seek a warrant to seize it.
**tl;dr** Society wants police to be smart, and they want police to catch criminals... but they don't want police to just search everything and rummaging through everything to discover crimes... rather, they want them to notice crimes, then gather evidence to stop it. So we balance that out with the 4th Amendment and make it so we can effectively prevent crime while not preventing a "parade of horribles" by enabling police abuse.
**tl;dr;tl;dr:** If reasonable expectation of privacy -- > need warrant; if no warrant or no special circumstances -- > evidence inadmissible... If no reasonable expectation of privacy -- > no need for warrant. | [
"A common law rule from Great Britain permits searches incident to an arrest without a warrant. This rule has been applied in American law, and has a lengthy common law history. The justification for such a search is to prevent the arrested individual 1.) from destroying evidence or 2.) using a weapon against the a... |
why is the atmosphere cold? | The sun and core of the planet heat the ground. As warm air rises, it expands and cools down. To add to this, air far away from the ground radiates heat into space. | [
"Usually, within the lower atmosphere (the troposphere) the air near the surface of the Earth is warmer than the air above it, largely because the atmosphere is heated from below as solar radiation warms the Earth's surface, which in turn then warms the layer of the atmosphere directly above it, e.g., by thermals (... |
Does scratch resistant glass (Gorilla Glass) become structurally weakened after taking a significant impact? | Yes. It's more resistant to structural weaknesses through shock than normal glass but you can put micro-fractures in it if you drop it... Eventually these structural weaknesses mean less of a drop/shock is needed to cause a sometimes apparently disproportionate shatter pattern. | [
"Gorilla Glass 3 was introduced at CES 2013. According to Corning, the material is up to three times more scratch-resistant than the previous version, with enhanced ability to resist deep scratches that typically weaken glass. The promotional material for Gorilla Glass 3 claims that it is 40% more scratch-resistant... |
Why did the emperor of the HRE have one of his most capable commanders Albrecht von Wallenstein, assassinated mid way through the 30 years war? | Here's [my old answer](_URL_0_) to a very similar question. | [
"Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Wallenstein (24 September 1583 – 25 February 1634), also von Waldstein (Czech: Albrecht Václav Eusebius z Valdštejna), was a Bohemian military leader and statesman who fought on the Catholic side during the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648). His successful martial career made him one of th... |
what is the smallest a habitable planet could be? | There are a couple of factors that determine the optimal size for an ecosystem, like organismal space and diversity. These would influence planet size, but there is one big daddy that would overshadow most other factors: biochemical cycling.
"What's that?" Good question. All life on Earth uses similar molecules to survive: Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen (unless it's an anaerobic bacteria), Phosphorus, and Hydrogen are the biggest elements found, but there are other important elements found at lower concentrations too. If you have an element present in an ecosystem there are only 2 places that element can be
1. Inside of an organism
2. In the environment
Biochemical cycling is the transition of molecules between these 2 states. The smallest size a planet could be is the smallest size where the biochemical cycling can still happen normally to ensure life survives and doesn't become starved or overrun with nutrients. | [
"In June 2008 it was reported at the meeting of American Astronomical Society that using their new MOA-II telescope, the observatory discovered what is at the time the smallest planet known outside of our Solar System. The planet MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb is just 3.3 times larger than Earth and is orbiting a small star, M... |
is geothermal energy perpetual? how does earth remain so hot? | It's not perpetual. It'll eventually run out (but it will take billions of years).
The earth produces around 47 TW (terawatts) of heat. For reference, the USA uses about 0.5 TW of electrical power. So across the globe, the earth produces around 100x as much geothermal heat power as the USA uses in electricity.
Of the 47 TW of geothermal heat, it is estimated that over half comes from decaying radioactive elements in the earth's crust (like Uranium 238). The rest is primordial heat, left over from when the earth was originally formed from a cloud of hot gas.
Source: wikipedia | [
"Geothermal power is considered to be renewable because any projected heat extraction is small compared to the Earth's heat content. The Earth has an internal heat content of 10 joules (3·10 TW·hr), approximately 100 billion times the 2010 worldwide annual energy consumption. About 20% of this is residual heat from... |
How accurate are scenes in movies featuring ancient combat of battlefield commanders addressing their armies in formation just before battle? | Hi! Not discouraging other contributions but you can get started with this thread from the FAQ, which luckily addresses battlefield motivational speeches in the ancient world including Greece
* [Do the speeches we often see before a battle in most literature and visual performances have any historical basis. Did the kings and generals leading an army ever give a speech to rally the troops. Or is this just a modern romanticism?](_URL_0_) | [
"Little is known about the actual battle from historical texts save from its context which has been well documented. Much of what is known including troop positions and movements has been gleaned from archaeological work at the site of the battle.\n",
"Using the original locations of the battle, the film featured... |
why do cars have blind spots (dead angle)? can't we design side mirrors that would help eliminate this problem? | You actually can set up mirrors on a regular car to eliminate blind spots. Most people just set their mirrors up incorrectly. | [
"If the side view mirrors of a car are adjusted in a particular way, there is no blind spot on the sides. Such an arrangement can greatly reduce the probability of side swipes and other accidents, particularly during lane changes. This method was first revealed by George Platzer in a 1995 paper presented to the Soc... |
Why are there so few trees in Scotland, Iceland, and other North Atlantic islands? | Iceland had thick forests of northern birch when it was first colonized.
It was all cut down and used for construction and firewood. The introduction of sheep and goats did not help either, as grazing animals discourage new growth and often reduce land to flat treeless plains.
[More](_URL_0_)
England and Scotland once had more forest too, but there was an insatiable demand for timber due to England's love of shipbuilding and charcoal for ironworking.
| [
"Natural vegetation in Norway varies considerably, as can be expected in a country covering such a variation in latitude. There are generally fewer species of trees in Norway than in areas in western North America with a similar climate. This is because the migration routes after the ice age is more difficult in th... |
When is the last time the Queen's Guard had to use it's military power? | Guards at the royal palaces are made up of soldiers from one of the 6 different guards regiments in the British Army (Grenadier, Coldstream, Welsh, Irish and Scots Guards in the infantry and the Life Guards in the cavalry). These are regular regiments of the British Army and are regularly deployed to combat zones like other regular regiments. Hope this helps. | [
"The Queen's Body Guard of the Yeomen of the Guard are a bodyguard of the British Monarch. The oldest British military corps still in existence, it was created by King Henry VII in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth. As a token of this venerability, the Yeomen still wear red and gold uniforms of Tudor style. There are ... |
Historians, how do you deal with the depressing side of history? How do you not get cynical? | That's assuming I am not already a cynic :)
Seriously though, I think it depends a lot on what you're researching and what questions you're asking. Right now I'm looking into the epigraphic culture of an area, that is, why do people put up grave monuments and inscriptions, why do they portray the dead the way they do and what can we learn about them from that. Everything I do comes from the grave of someone, someone who was obviously mourned and missed.
When I look at their names, I hardly think about the persons that are mentioned there and their lives, I look at whether the name is celtic or illyrian or latinized and where I can put it in my database. When I look at how long they lived I'm interested in the cold hard number, whether the number is rounded or not, where I can make another entry on my list, not whether a life was tragically cut short. When I look at steles with portraits of man and wife, I don't really think about how one died before the other, or what it might have meant for the man to bury his wife or vice versa (and at the same time erect his own grave monument for his own inevitable future, which happened quite often); but I look at what they wear, what attributes they have, the make and provenance of material and what the style says about the origin of the work (imported/local). Found someone who has the same name as the father of someone buried somewhere close? That's awesome! Maybe I can draw a (hypothetic) family tree from that!
In short, I'm looking with a purpose and am so focused on answering the questions that I have that I don't really think about the other, more human aspects too much. Sometimes I get carried away and do, and spend a lot of time speculating and it might affect my mood, but most of the time those people are just numbers and arguments to prove a point, factors in some statistic I'm putting together. Stalin probably had the right idea with respect to that.
I'd imagine that for other areas and other questions it could be quite different, though (someone working with diaries, doing research for a biography). | [
"It is no secret that there have been some difficult episodes in our past – Jallianwala Bagh, which I shall visit tomorrow, is a distressing example. But history cannot be rewritten, however much we might sometimes wish otherwise. It has its moments of sadness, as well as gladness. We must learn from the sadness an... |
What would happen if the oceans were uniformly 10 feet deeper? | Is this a change that's supposed to happen currently, or is it just an alternative history? | [
"Most of the waters in this zone are thousands of metres deep, with the exception of the Grand Banks, which average about 150 metres before the sea floor drops precipitously beyond the continental shelf.\n",
"The deep sea is one of the less explored areas on Earth. Pressures even in the mesopelagic become too gre... |
What are the advantages/disadvantages of an engine with more cylinders compared to one with less cylinders but both have the same displacement. | One of the biggest advantages of having more cylinders (with the same displacement) is reduced vibration. An engine with more, smaller cylinders will generally vibrate less than a comparable engine with less cylinders because fewer cylinders means larger, heavier pistons are required to sweep the same volume.
Larger, heavier pistons also are generally not as well suited for high-revving, as they put more inertial force on crankshafts, journals, etc.
The main tradeoff is a simpler design, as fewer cylinders will not necessitate as complex a design.
Of course, being an extremely general question, there are many other variables at play. | [
"Four-cylinder engines also have a smoothness problem in that the power strokes of the pistons do not overlap. With four cylinders and four strokes to complete in the four-stroke cycle, each piston completes its power stroke before the next piston starts a new power stroke, resulting in a pause between each power s... |
in tennis, why do most women to scream whenever they hit the ball, but most men play in silence? | There are really two parts to this, neither is completely black & white:
*Women grunting*
[One belief is that](_URL_0_) grunting when you strike the ball generates more power. Players naturally inhale before striking the ball to stabilise their core (support their body), and exhale when striking the ball. If you exhale simply by relaxing you risk losing control of your support, so players are taught to forcefully exhale. The easiest way of telling if a player is doing that is to teach them to vocalise it. That way if they do not exhale correctly you can immediately tell.
The second theory is that some do it to hide how they've hit their shot, and there have been women players who have complained about this in the past. The different spins and power a player can hit the ball with make distinctive sounds at the point of contact between ball and racquet, and so some players deliberately grunt in order to mask the sound. As women's tennis is slower-paced than men's due to less power/slower movement, using different spins without your opponent realising can give you an advantage. ie. If they don't realise the ball is going to come off the ground differently, they are more likely to miss their shot.
*Men*
The fact is men do grunt. The top 4 players of the last decade are Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, and Andy Murray - out of all of these, Roger Federer is the only one who doesn't grunt on almost every shot. The women do tend to scream instead, whereas the men seem to be somewhere between a grunt and a shout these days. However, it isn't completely a new thing: Jimmy Connors is one of the greats of the game, played from the early 70's all the way through to the mid 90's. He had a distinctive 'bark' even then, so it's been around a long time. | [
"In women's tennis matches the ball is usually played without effect (less than lift) and games tend to play more from the baseline; typing is generally less powerful than men. The game is made in a more tactical speed and anticipation. The service is also less powerful; it is relatively less important than for men... |
what part of the brain controls ejaculation? and why cant we control it on demand? | The male sexual response is mediated largely by the subconscious Autonomic Nervous System, which includes both the parasympathetic ("rest & digest") and the sympathetic ("fight or flight") systems. Again, these are both largely subconscious, meaning that we don't have much direct control over their activation.
A common mnemonic used in anatomy classes is "**P**oint and **S**hoot" for remembering that "pointing" (erection) is mediated by the **P**arasympathetic system and the "shooting" (ejaculation) is mediated by the **S**ympathetic system. It's a fun line of thought to explore how men are primarily parasympathetic-driven during the initial stages of sexual arousal and transition to a primarily sympathetic-driven physiology as they reach orgasm.
Hope this helps! | [
"Ejaculation is the ejecting of semen from the penis, and is usually accompanied by orgasm. A series of muscular contractions delivers semen, containing male gametes known as sperm cells or spermatozoa, from the penis. It is usually the result of sexual stimulation, which may include prostate stimulation. Rarely, i... |
Is there any evidence for a belief by Genghis Khan in cultural or martial continuity between himself and Attila? | Further question: how much would the Mongols have even know about the Huns, considering they predated them by so long. | [
"In the early 1990s, the memory of Genghis Khan underwent a powerful revival, partly in reaction to its suppression during the Mongolian People's Republic period. Genghis Khan became one of the central figures of the national identity. He is considered positively by Mongolians for his role in uniting warring tribes... |
how a cpap or bipap machine works? | It's essentially just an air pump that adds some moisture too.
By adding some pressure through a pump, it forces the airway open, so when someone would stop breathing or snore, the air opens the passage and you breath properly. | [
"The main difference between BiPAP and CPAP machines is that BiPAP machines have two pressure settings: the prescribed pressure for inhalation (ipap), and a lower pressure for exhalation (epap). The dual settings allow the patient to get more air in and out of their lungs.\n",
"In computer security, a NOP slide, ... |
the "chopity-chopity-chopity" thing wind occaisonally does when you're driving with the windows down | It's called ["Helmholtz resonance"](_URL_0_). The air pressure inside your car with the windows up is much higher than the fast moving air surrounding your car while you travel down the freeway. Rolling down your windows causes the high pressure air inside to escape your car quickly. As this happens the pressure inside your car becomes slightly lower than the pressure outside which inturn causes more air to be drawn in to increase the pressure once again. This process repeats over and over again and causes the horrible brain-splitting pressure oscillations. | [
"A windblocker or wind deflector minimizes noise and rushing air reaching the occupants. According to the engineer responsible for the 2008 Chrysler Sebring, its windblocker reduces wind noise by approximately 11 to 12 dB.\n",
"The wind machine is played by rotating the crank handle, which is attached to the cyli... |
why do donuts heat up so fast? | Partly because of the donut shape. Donuts have a hole for the same reason [bundt cakes](_URL_0_) have their shape.
Consider how heat moves through your food. If it's in the oven or microwave, the heat will hit the outside first, and then it has to travel through conduction to the inside... So if it's a big, thick cake, it's going to take a while to get all the way in.
But what if there's more surface area? There's more "outside" to warm, so the outside heats faster, so the inside heats faster? With donuts (and bundt cakes), the ring shape means you have a big ring of "inside" with a lot of "outside" available for your microwave to heat up, rather than one big ball of inside that has to wait a long time for the outside to heat up.
[It works with leftovers, too](_URL_1_). | [
"Because the product requires storage at temperatures below , it is not sold in most grocery stores, as most cannot meet such extreme cooling requirements. Dippin' Dots are sold in individual servings at franchised outlets, many in stadiums, arenas, shopping malls, and in vending machines, as well as at theme parks... |
how do babies gain so much weight with so little protein? | People don't need *that* much protein to grow healthy tissue. Babies and children get plenty of protein from regular-ass food (not to be confused with regular ass-food).
Breast milk has a lot of protein, as well as fats, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals, which you also need to make killer gainz bro. You could argue it's the most "well-balanced" diet out there. I'm slightly disappointed that you, /u/bigbouncytitties, did not know this.
The only thing a baby would gain(z) from drinking protein shakes is the foulest diarrhea ever. | [
"Infants born to young mothers who are not fully developed are found to have low birth weights. The level of maternal nutrition during pregnancy can affect newborn baby body size and composition. Iodine-deficiency in mothers usually causes brain damage in their offspring, and some cases cause extreme physical and m... |
why when we become self-aware of something, such as blinking, we have an increased urge to do it? | Take a second to think about blinking. Now that you’re thinking about it, you probably stopped blinking to see what would happen. In this time, you may have missed several blinks that would’ve happened naturally and not really even been noticed. Now, you’re brain is going to go “oh crap, I didn’t blink! Let me make up for it right now!” and you’ll blink several times to “get caught up” from the blinks you “missed.” Now that your brain has reset itself on blinking, you’ll think “have o blinked enough? Maybe I should throw in a couple more JUST IN CASE,” this the increased urge to do it. | [
"For the most part (except for basic bodily feelings like hunger and pain, which are innate), people are able to decide what they want to focus their attention on. However, when one is in the flow state, they are completely engrossed with the one task at hand and, without making the conscious decision to do so, los... |
I have a bit of a "niche" question that may sound silly, but I'm quite interested: how did early seafarers in sailing ships go to the bathroom? Would, say, an ancient Roman and a Portuguese sailerin the Exploration Age use the same "technique," or did it evolve? | This gets asked here from time to time. Check out [this older answer](_URL_0_) that u/davidAOP and I collaborated on. | [
"The history of navigation is the history of seamanship, the art of directing vessels upon the open sea through the establishment of its position and course by means of traditional practice, geometry, astronomy, or special instruments. A few people have excelled as seafarers, prominent among them the Austronesians ... |
Can you tell me about Livius Drusus, the tribune? | We know very little about the tribune of 91 (not to be confused with his relative, tribune of 122 and opponent of Gaius Gracchus). His entire career fits into exactly two chapters of Appian, with a further sentence of 1.37 devoted to the Varian law, which has been the subject of debate for a century and a half. Velleius Paterculus likewise only has two chapters in which Drusus features. Florus apparently devoted a lengthy section to him, but his epitome only preserves this discussion as a single chapter. Livy has a brief note in the *Periochae* on Drusus which tells us pretty much nothing.
It's very hard to tell what the hell was going on with Drusus. Appian describes him as proposing his Italian bill from the beginning, along with proposing the foundation of a number of colonies to secure the support of the urban *plebs*. Appian says that only then did he propose the transfer of the law courts to the senate from the *equites*, by attempting to increase the size of the senate from equestrian enrollments. The defining feature of Appian's description of Drusus is one of compromise, which Appian blames for his failure. Drusus, he argues, pissed off the senate by proposing to add equestrian enrollments to their roll, pissed off the *equites* by suggesting a transfer of the law courts, and pissed off the Italians by proposing the foundation of colonies (despite what wikipedia and the internet will tell you, colonial foundations and land distributions are not the same thing. The former was generally favorable to the urban *plebs* and the latter to the rural *plebs* and Italians). Only the urban *plebs* were satisfied by their part of the deal, says Appian, which I'm afraid I cannot agree with. Appian spends the majority of Book One describing the urban *plebs* violently resisting any attempt to enfranchise the Italians or even distribute them equally among the voting tribes. Yet he conveniently forgets that conflict here, I think simply because he does not understand what support Drusus could possibly have had. Appian suggests that the Italians killed Drusus, out of fear that his colonial plan might infringe on their right to the *ager publicus*.
Velleius Paterculus says pretty much the same thing, but he reverses the order. Drusus' main aim, he claims, was the transfer of the law courts to the senate. He proposed a number of bills in favor of the urban *plebs*, says Velleius, to secure their support ultimately for the transfer of the law courts. But the senate misunderstood the purpose of his *popularis* legislation and he was forced to propose a bill enfranchising the Italians, which resulted in his murder--the implication in Velleius Paterculus is that Drusus was killed by the senatorial class, although Velleius seems consistently to fail to understand that the urban and rural *plebs* were decidedly different.
It's hard to see from Florus' description how Velleius could be right, though. Florus agrees that Drusus tried to court both sides (not necessarily unusual for a tribune--the four *leges Clodiae* of 58 were successful in exactly this aim, and we already see Gaius Gracchus trying to do the same) and essentially was carried away by his *popularis* program--in promising simultaneously benefits for the urban *plebs* and Italians he doomed himself to violent measures and attacked the consuls. Florus' testimony is pretty confusing though, and is generally largely discarded--he seems to think, for example, that Drusus died a natural death.
Livy says pretty much the same thing as Velleius Paterculus, that Drusus was an agent of the senate's desire to transfer the law courts from the *equites* and tried to rally the urban *plebs* with *spe largitionum*, the "hope of largesse." He does not mention the Italians at all.
The problem here is we have next to no information and what we've got is totally contradictory. It would be wrong, I think, to suggest that Drusus was particularly popular with *anybody* at all at the time of his death. Pretty much all our sources agree that he had pissed off both the *equites* and senatorial class, and those that recognize the distinction between the urban and rural *plebs* note that he had alienated the Italians with his colonial proposal. Our sources note that only the urban *plebs* still backed him, and realistically I don't think Appian can be right about that--in the later second century and early first century any motion proposing Italian enfranchisement was opposed tooth and nail by the urban *plebs*, whose already minor political position was essentially wiped out in the wake of the Social War, which rendered the tiny electoral power of the four urban tribes insignificant. Generally speaking scholars have tended to favor Appian's account. It's the one that makes the most sense, is the most detailed, and fits pretty well into a broader narrative of evolving Italian unrest. It seems likely that Drusus' bills were all proposed at once in the attempt to unify the voting blocs in a single go--introduced piecemeal they would seem to have little logic. There's also the problem of whether the laws actually passed. Appian (and Badian) seems to think they were not, but we have an indication from Cicero that the *leges Liviae* were abrogated by Phillipus. If they were passed we're not sure how--Livy and Florus seem to indicate that Drusus employed violence to force the passage of the bills, but there's not a hint of political violence in Appian and Velleius, and both Livy and Florus seem to be reciting stock invective against *popularis* tribunes. We simply don't know. More recently Mouritsen has suggested that the Italian bill was, as wikipedia and Mccullough suggest, proposed in a later package to try and salvage his earlier program. Perhaps, and Mouritsen's arguments make a lot of sense, but of course that raises other questions. I would be very uncomfortable saying, as you seem to think, that even if Drusus had anything resembling widespread urban popularity (which I sincerely doubt) this would be enough to ensure the passage of much of anything. With senatorial and equestrian resistance rallied against him the influence of the urban *plebs* would have been almost totally insignificant. Moreover, if Mouritsen is right and the Italian bill was proposed later, we should imagine Drusus as realizing the power of Italian influence. The Gracchi and Saturninus had both relied much more heavily on Italian support than urban, and in general the urban *plebs* were pretty unimportant--when tribunes like Gaius Gracchus proposed bills on their behalf they generally seem to be intended to keep them quiet and allow the much larger Italian base of support to get its way, a tactic which Drusus (tribune 122) had exploited to knock Gracchus' support out from under him. If Drusus had failed to take the Italians' influence into account earlier surely he realized his mistake now--moreover, championing Italian enfranchisement might actually secure him some important senatorial support, since the great orator Crassus was a vigorous supporter of Italian enfranchisement, and his death was a major blow to Drusus' program. But then again, all of this would be true if the bill were proposed earlier. Mouritsen's arguments for a later Italian bill are all good, but I think he overplays the damage a controversial Italian bill would do if it was indeed proposed alongside the rest of the package. Crassus had been lobbying for such a bill for a couple of decades now, and Badian has shown that the *equites* were sharply divided over the issue, with a very strong portion championing it. Italian enfranchisement was *the* topic up until the Social War, and I'm not totally convinced that its controversial nature alone would have been reason enough to avoid the subject. Still, we really don't know. Our sources are few and confused--and, importantly, information on the allegiances of various parts of the urban and rural *plebs* is hard to come by. We do not know with any degree of certainty what portions of the urban *plebs* and Italians supported or did not support the bill, these groups are spoken of in grand chunks, whereas we know the senate and *equites* were sharply divided on such controversial measures--should we not expect the *plebs* to be the same? | [
"Gaius used his celebrated oratory, considered to be the best in Rome, to attack his opponents at every chance and frequently lamented the fate of his brother Tiberius. He criticised the Senate's failure to emulate their ancestors' respect for the tribune, citing its decision to wage war on the Falerii for insultin... |
scientifically speaking, what determines the color a leaf will change to in the fall and do trees always change the same color year after year? | Well I don't remember too much about leaf senescence and pigments right now, but here is a quick answer to hold you over until someone comes along and corrects me.
Basically, leaves have colour because of pigments. Different pigments absorb different colours (wavelengths) of light. They also reflect other colours. Leaves are generally green because of the well known pigment chlorophyll . It reflects green light, hence why it appears green. However there are two main types of chlorophyll, A and B. Red maple trees have...red leaves. They have mainly chlorophyll B, and anthocyanins, and other pigments. So for any given tree, it has chlorophyll (A, B, or both) in different amounts, along with other pigments that are not as "strong" as chlorophyll (present in lesser concentration s). Once a leaf begins to senesce (prepare to fall off), chlorophyll "dies off" (breaks down) and leaves the other pigments you could not see because of the over powering chlorophyll. Mostly red, yellow and orange reflecting pigments are left. Hence the colours.
A specific tree will generally stay the same colour every year, but a plant can have different amounts of pigment in a leaf (or cell), at a different time of day! So the colour can change year to year. but not too much usually.
Hope somebody can correct me, as I'm going from a course I took 3 years ago by memory. I haven't studied this area in quite a while.
Source: Msc student studying plant metabolism
TLDR: once main pigment chlorophyll is gone, the accessory pigments show up and give pretty colours.
Edit: just to add the accessory pigments (anthocyanins, xanthophylls, and carotenoids) are there to absorb more wavelengths of light that chlorophyll can't do well. Chlorophyll A and B absorb similar, but different ranges of wavelengths. The compliment of all pigments creates a wider range of wavelengths to be used in photosynthesis, so more food for the plant is made.
Edit 2: there are some really good comments below adding to this and explaining this more in depth. Check em out. | [
"Autumn leaf color is a phenomenon that affects the normal green leaves of many deciduous trees and shrubs by which they take on, during a few weeks in the autumn season, various shades of red, yellow, purple, black, blue, orange, magenta, and brown. The phenomenon is commonly called autumn colours or autumn foliag... |
why is it, with all of our technological advances, that we still don’t have cell service in all areas, especially pretty populated areas? | Mainly, it's expensive to build more cell towers, and the companies that provide cell service don't see a need to spend more money on that. | [
"Some of the most dramatic technological benefits are seen in underdeveloped countries. For instance, cabling for landline telephone service is expensive and requires a lot of time to complete, especially in the most remote areas. Introduction of cellphone service, on the other hand, is much cheaper and dramaticall... |
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