question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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My great grandfather supposedly worked on the Manhattan Project, but I can't find any information on him. | You would be better off putting the name (first and last) into the title and asking specifically if anyone knows more about the whole project. In the text of the post itself, you'd be best off putting everything you know. Since there were thousands of people working on different parts of the Manhattan project, you'll want to be as specific as possible for best results. | [
"Robert Frederick Christy (May 14, 1916 – October 3, 2012) was a Canadian-American theoretical physicist and later astrophysicist who was one of the last surviving people to have worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. He briefly served as acting president of California Institute of Technology (Caltech... |
Considering grad school and I am seeking advice. | If you really want to do grad school, I would definitely be looking at schools other than the one you attended for undergrad. By looking at more schools, it's likely you'll find a history department that specializes more closely to your own research interests. You should NOT look to get an MA just because it's from the school you went to for undergrad and because they'll pay you. Stipends are rarely if ever enough to fully support yourself without loans, especially for terminal MA programs (programs that offer Master's but not PhDs).
Furthermore, are you looking to eventually get a PhD? If not, I wouldn't suggest you apply to a Master's program in history unless it is professionally oriented (public history, digital history, etc.) From what I've encountered, a straight MA in history is pretty much worthless job-market wise. I'm currently in a PhD program, but got my Master's at a terminal MA program. Of the 30 MA students that were in the MA program while I was there, 3 went on to a PhD program, 1 works at a museum, and the others are either unemployed or found jobs that are in no way related to history--and many of these people were getting degrees in the supposedly more marketable field of public history.
Besides the potential to get a stipend that is very likely well below a living wage, what makes you want to get a graduate degree in history?
| [
"\"Recommended Itinerary\" is an address McCullough gave to the 1986 graduating class of Middlebury College, in which he urged graduates to travel abroad to gain a better appreciation of the United States, and to study history in order to gain a better appreciation of their own time.\n",
"The school runs a psycho... |
what stops us patent office workers from stealing the ideas from submitted patents and copying them? | Their submission date would by necessity be *after* the original submission, and therefore not valid.
The original submitter would have record of the date and easily win any legal challenge.
I'd imagine there's also something in the job description about this (like how McDonald's employees can't win McDonald's contests), but I can't say that for certain. | [
"Two types of illegal patent acts can be handled by administrative authorities - ordinary infringement complaints regarding the making/importation, use, and sale/offering for sale of patented articles; and patent counterfeiting (which encompasses several acts similar to false marking). Administrative enforcement is... |
Why did guerrillas form in South America, and How did individual governments respond to them? | Fidel's triumph in 1959 became an inspirational moment for students around both Central and South America. I cannot specifically look at South American movements in the 1960s, however, Guatemala remained in a state of Civil War (after the 1954 coup) between the authoritarian regime backed by the United States and rebels who were primarily led by students and other intellectuals under the radicalized Communist front known as the Communist Guatemalan Workers Party(PGT). However, the continuously stubborn inflexible military regime caused further alienation within its own ranks. By 1960, two Lieutenants, Marco Antonio Yon Sosa and Luis Turcios Lima, defected and began their own rebel movements against the Guatemalan government. Both lieutenants ironically gained much of their training from visits to the United States yet, fought against what they viewed as American Imperialism that negatively impacted the Guatemalan state.
The response by the government remained nothing but brutal force to suppressed the revolutionary activities in the mountains. However, the wave of terror also targeted the main University of San Carlos in Guatemala City since it remained relatively autonomous with its academic courses. Furthermore, Libertarian Theologians, forming missions for the Mayan people, were also targeted. However, the shear brute force, along with US financial support, destroyed much of the rebel force by the late 1960s. Anyways, I'm sure someone else has some other material that's more relevant to the South American region.
Source:
Sheldon B. Liss, Radical Thought in Central America, Westview Press (1991) | [
"The FARC began their rebel activities in the early 1960s during the National Front years in which bipartisan hegemony controlled and held political power. In an effort to exterminate the armed guerrilla movements the Colombian government aided by the United States launched an attack to destroy the \"Marquetalia Re... |
How many particles of a disease causing virus do you need to be exposed to in order to contract the disease? | It depends on the particular virus. Hepititis is dozens of times more virulent than HIV (easier to get with the same amount of exposure) HIV is weakened relitivly quickly outside the human body while other viruses are more robust. | [
"For example, when an MOI of 1 (1 viral particle per cell) is used to infect a population of cells, the probability that a cell will not get infected is formula_8, and the probability that it be infected by a single particle is formula_9, by two particles is formula_10, by three particles is formula_11, and so on.\... |
Is the air quality in major cities today worse than cities in the early 20th century like Birmingham which were industrial hubs? | This is largely dependent on which specific city you are trying to look at. I'm not sure of any city in the United States that actually has lower air quality levels than they did in the early 20th century even with population expansion.
In the developing world you can definitely find cities like this. Beijing and Mumbai are obvious examples. | [
"Transportation (of all types including trucks, buses and cars) is a major contributor to air pollution in most industrialised nations. According to the American Surface Transportation Policy Project nearly half of all Americans are breathing unhealthy air. Their study showed air quality in dozens of metropolitan a... |
When I undo an action on a word document, does it run the action in reverse or revert to a saved copy of what the document was like before the action? | It runs the action in reverse. Typically, a text editor has both an undo stack, and a redo stack. Every change gets pushed onto the undo stack. When you undo, the last change gets popped off the undo stack, reversed, and added to the redo stack. If you now redo, it gets popped off the redo stack, added to the document, and pushed onto the undo stack. But if you make a change in the meantime, the redo stack is cleared.
Saving each state of the whole document would have much larger and more unpredictable storage requirements, since it would be proportional to the size of the document. | [
"Undo is an interaction technique which is implemented in many computer programs. It erases the last change done to the document reverting it to an older state. In some more advanced programs such as graphic processing, undo will negate the last command done to the file being edited. With the possibility of undo, u... |
How is it that electric eels can deliver up to 600 volts that stuns their prey, but they themselves don't get stunned? | > Nobody knows exactly how the electric eel keeps from shocking itself, but the best working hypothesis is that the vital organs like the brain and the heart are located as far as possible from the electric organ (up near the head), surrounded by fatty tissue that acts as an insulator. In cross section through the tail, the electric eel is nearly entirely electric organ.
_URL_1_
More info: _URL_0_ | [
"In the electric eel, some 5,000 to 6,000 stacked electroplaques can make a shock up to 600 volts and up to 1 ampere of current. This level of current is reportedly enough to produce a brief and painful numbing shock likened to a stun gun discharge, which due to the voltage can be felt for some distance from the fi... |
Why do some electronic items continue working temporarily when unplugged? | Many circuits have capacitors as one of their components. When you unplug your appliance, these capacitors still contain a charge and continue supplying a current while discharging. | [
"Some electronic components are stressed by the hot, cramped conditions inside a cabinet. Electrolytic capacitors dry out over time, and if a classic arcade cabinet is still using its original components, they may be near the end of their service life. A common step in refurbishing vintage electronics (of all types... |
if something does a lot of noise, does it mean it's loosing power, transforming it to sound? | You have the right idea. The drill is wasting some power to vibrate the drill bit and the bits of the wall that are generating the sound. If, somehow, you could redirect this vibrational energy back into the drilling process it would be more efficient. | [
"Noise is a term often used to refer to an unwanted sound. In science and engineering, noise is an undesirable component that obscures a wanted signal. However, in sound perception it can often be used to identify the source of a sound and is an important component of timbre perception (see above).\n",
"Noise is ... |
why do humans crave a happy ending in movies? | It's not humans. It's mainly Americans. If you watch foreign films, they have realistic endings. | [
"In storylines where the protagonists are in physical danger, a happy ending mainly consists of their survival and successful completion of the quest or mission; where there is no physical danger, a happy ending may be lovers consummating their love despite various factors which may have thwarted it. A considerable... |
How impactful was Lenin's New Economic Policies (NEP)? | It's interesting that you picked up on this because I'd agree that the NEP period is often overlooked in the histories of the early Soviet state. Much like the contemporary Weimar Republic, there's a temptation to read the NEP as either merely the aftermath of revolution or a foreword to the transformation 1930s. This understandable: 1917 was a world historical event of major importance, while the foundations of the enduring Soviet system were laid during Stalin's revolution.
The NEP has therefore often been seen as an odd interregnum. With the exception of the 1980s (when Bukharin was briefly popular with American academics and reforming Soviet politicians), the NEP has been traditionally overshadowed in the historiography by the October Revolution and Stalinism. In Shelia Fitzpatrick's *Russian Revolution*, for example, the short chapter on the NEP consists almost entirely of the intra-party disputes over the succession struggle and economic course.
On the one hand I don't think this does the years in question justice. This was an exciting half decade, one that witnessed a rich debate as people tried to understand just what a new socialist society was supposed to look like. Passing over the big political items, conversations also abounded on a wide variety of topics: education, rapprochement with the intelligentsia, peasant policy, new scientific discoveries, attitudes towards religion, relationship with the working class, healthcare, sexuality, etc, etc. These were all up for discussion, albeit within set limits.
And it's particularly worth nothing the cultural and intellectual flowering of the decade. One just has to look at a small sample of the names publishing/working during the period: Eisenstein, Ilf and Petrov, Mayakovsky, Sholokhov, Bulgakov, Gladkov, Mandelstam, Babel, etc. Not all of these were exclusive to the NEP and there were limits to what the censor would allow (eg Zamyatin's *We*), but this was still a vibrant cultural milieu, easily the most expressive in the history of the Soviet state.
But there's a reason that this is largely overshadowed: the NEP came to an end. In pretty much all of the fields noted above, the 'Great Turn' of 1928 heralded a decisive break with the past. A decade later the country was being run by a very different cohort and along very different lines. Any of the ambiguities of the NEP had been erased in the white heat the Stalin industrialisation drive.
So when we step back what, aside from a wealth of cultural riches soon to be condemned, was actually the long-term impact of the NEP? And here we see why people tend to gloss over the 1920s.
At a high level, the NEP saw the Soviet regime finally establish itself. On the economic front - always central to early Soviet history - what had begun as a set of stability measures quickly paid off. The agricultural and industrial recovery was relatively swift and by 1926 the economy was returning to 1913 levels of production (albeit with new structural constraints). The urban working class slowly reconstructed itself and for the first time the Party began to made inroads into the countryside (significantly aided by the demobilisation of the Red Army). It was also a period of relative calm in foreign affairs.
But if the NEP was a chance to recover (successfully) from the Civil War, it was also laying the foundations for its own demise. Whether one accepts that there was a genuine potential for an alternative path in the 1920s (eg Cohen) or that this was merely a breathing space for the inevitable industrialisation drive (eg Carr), Stalin's 'revolution from above' would not have been possible without the NEP. The perceived retreat from socialism, yearning for a return to the 'heroic period' of the Civil War and scourge of mass unemployment all made a renewed socialist offensive attractive. Yet much of the thinking, practice (eg the 'regime of economy') and institutions (particularly TsKK-RKI) of the Five Year Plans were also developed during the NEP. And, of course, these years were formative for the later Stalin generation of leaders that would govern the USSR up to the 1980s.
So the Party emerged from the NEP a much less pluralistic organisation but also with the strength to enforce policies (eg collectivisation) that would have been unthinkable a decade earlier. Paradoxically this was the product of one of the freest and intellectually challenging periods of the Soviet experiment.
Recommended Reading
As I said, the NEP is relatively neglected in the literature, at least when compared to the forests that have been expended on 1917 and Stalinism. Lewis Siegelbaum's *Soviet State and Society Between Revolutions* is the best place to start, particularly because it has the great benefit of treating the period on its own merits. Ditto with Shelia Fitzpatrick et al's *Russia in the Era of NEP*, although, like the rest of that particular series, this collection of essays goes too far in avoiding the political dimension.
Other key works would include Stephen Cohen's *Bukharin*, nominally a biography of one of the major players of the period. It's a bit outdated - and very much cheerleads Bukharin as a viable alternative to Stalin - but still the best narrative of the political and economic disputes that wracked the Party leadership. The usual counterpoint is EH Carr, whose multiple volumes on the period (in *Socialism in One Country* and *Foundations of a Planned Economy*) treat the NEP as a staging point en route to the inevitable crash industrialisation of the 1930s. Not for those who can't stand detail.
Finally, I didn't spend time on this above but Kevin Murphy's *Revolution and Counterrevolution* has a good couple of chapters on how NEP institutions enjoyed legitimacy with the working class at shop floor level. Bodies like the trade unions and Rates Conflict Commission, (RKK) allowed workers input into management decisions in a way entirely unlike previous or later experiences. This touches on the broader question of *how* the NEP was discarded for the more coercive Stalinist system. | [
"The 10th party congress launched Lenin's \"New Economic Policy\" (NEP), in response to the poor state of the Russian economy that resulted from World War I, the Russian Civil War, and the War Communist system used during the latter. The state faced large scale popular revolts of workers, which Trotsky believed thr... |
Attention loyal citizens of AskHistorians, it is time to come pay homage to your New Mods! | Oh, just what we need on this sub: *more* moderation.
< /sarcasm >
Seriously though, I've been following the answers of these three as flairs in the Sunday Digest, and if the quality of their moderation efforts match their dedication in their answers, I for one welcome our new mod overlords. | [
"The Young Mods' Forgotten Story is an album and song by the American soul music group the Impressions. The album was their second album released on Impressions member Curtis Mayfield's label Curtom Records originally in 1969.\n",
"The MOD is considered by most ex-servicemen, including former head of the Armed Fo... |
why do cell phone companies not allow you to buy a new phone without a large fee when you have a contract? | iPhones cost $500-700, when you upgrade the service provider (AT & T/Verizon/...) is basically paying Apple the difference in cost. In exchange they have you paying a contract for two years, with penalties for an early exit.
| [
"Cell phone service companies, including major players like T-Mobile, as well as third-party retailers like Radio Shack, Wirefly and others have received growing attention due to complex rebate redemption rules. Both carriers and retailers make customers submit rebate claims during a 30-day window, often 6 months a... |
Any good books on the varangian guard? | I highly recommend [The Varangians of Byzantium](_URL_0_). It's a somewhat difficult read in parts but it's just about the only good book on the Varangian Guard that's out there, to my knowledge. | [
"The Varangian Guard not only provided security for Byzantine emperors but participated in many wars involving Byzantium and often played a crucial role, since it was usually employed at critical moments of battle. By the late 13th century, Varangians were mostly ethnically assimilated by Byzantines, though the gua... |
in a first person shooter, how is the video game able to track the trajectory of a fired bullet and its interaction with online players in real time? | For simple bullets, there is no trajectory tracked. What they do is called hitscanning. Basically they treat your gun as a laser pointer and wherever it is pointing is what is hit.
Internally, it draws an imaginary line from your gun to some boundary, then calculates all of the objects that line crosses, then finds the object closest to the player and then that object is "hit." | [
"The speed of the player's shot (players take two shots) on net is recorded with a radar gun. The shot \"must\" hit the net to count. The fastest shot wins. If there is a radar gun malfunction, or if a radar gun is unavailable, a Most Accurate Shot competition will take place in lieu of the Hardest Shot. Players wi... |
tank rounds - armor piercing tank shell, how do they work on other tanks when fired? | There are many different types of tank shells. Can't be bothered to mention them all.
Armour Piercing are the classic antitank round. They're a solid shot that punches through armour through kinetic energy. However, they were kind of crap. To fly well they needed to be pointed, but pointed rounds break on armour quite easily when fired from high velocity guns, which is what you want your antitank gun to be. Rounded heads punch through armour better, and were known as APC (Armour Piercing Capped - they were fitted with a softer rounded cap to absorb shock and to squash on the target) but they don't fly as easily and so don't go as far and therefore don't hit as hard as they could.
To get around this they would make a rounded shell and put a soft pointed head on it or just a cover. This would allow it to fly easily and when it hit the soft head would squash and allow the solid, and hard (but capped), rounded head underneath to punch through the armour. These are known as APCBC (Armour Piercing Capped Ballistic Capped).
Shaped charge heads were also employed. These are known as HEAT rounds. Contrary to popular opinion they don't burn through armour they punch through. HEAT stands for High Explosive Anti Tank. A shaped charge shoots most of its explosion forwards and so when it hits the armour this explosive jet punches through. The advantage to these was that they would punch through the same amount of armour whether they hit from close range of long range. The disadvantage was that they'd only punch through the same amount of armour whether you were long range or short range.
Today the most common type of round employed by tanks is the Sabot round. Sabot means Shoe.
The penetrating round is enclosed in fall away sabots. The penetrating round is made of very dense material, such as tungsten or depleted uranium. By enclosing it in a sabot it can be fired from a much larger calibre gun and thus be given a lot more muzzle velocity. The Abrams uses a German gun to fire its APFSDS (Armour Piercing Fin Stabilised Discarding Sabot) rounds. They're basically arrows made out of depleted uranium.
There are other rounds, but as I said, over there years there have been a lot.
| [
"Tank rounds are stored in individual fire-proof canisters, which reduce the chance of cookoffs in a fire inside the tank. The turret is electrically-powered (hydraulic turrets use flammable liquid that ignites if the turret is penetrated) and \"dry\": no active rounds are stored in it.\n",
"Tanks usually go into... |
at altitude, i will suffer the effects from a thinned atmosphere. if the oceans were removed, and i could walk down to the ocean floor, such as the marianas trench, what ill effects might i suffer? | If the oceans were removed, the atmosphere would just sit lower. Therefore, in the marianas trench, you'd have the effects of 1 atm, at current "sea level" you'd have the effects you have now on top of the Everest. I wouldn't encourage you to climb oceanless mt. Everest. | [
"The oceans depths and temperatures contains some of the most extreme conditions for any species to survive. The deeper one travels, the higher the pressure and the lower the visibility gets, causing completely blacked out conditions. Many of these conditions are too intense for humans to travel to, so instead of s... |
Why didn't Rome expand the African portion of their empire past the immediate region bordering the Mediterranean sea? | I'll reiterate this [old answer of my own here](_URL_0_). The core points still remain solid, although I'll have to see if there are any salient recent works that cast more light on the nature of the engagement that they did have. I should also point out that moving armies by sea was not the easiest thing for a small possible return, and Rome already enjoyed having Adulis and perhaps even Rhapta in its distant orbit. There was no sense trying to run invasions up the Red Sea to Aksum or kingdoms further out that would have both ecology and numbers on their sides. | [
"At the greatest extent of the Empire, the southern border lay along the deserts of Arabia in the Middle East and the Sahara in North Africa, which represented a natural barrier against expansion. The Empire controlled the Mediterranean shores and the mountain ranges further inland. The Romans attempted twice to oc... |
what makes humans so curious, and why do we need to know everything? | I'm not a expert in this so it's possible I could be wrong but I believe it's basically a survival strategy of you know how to make traps is cook food that will give you an advantage. Add a result we basically need constant stimulation. In fact, boredom and disgust are the same emotion (kinda). I mean that they are the same in the way that rage and mad are the same emotion. Boredom is a more mild version of disgust.
There was an experiment where they had people touch a button that would shock them and when asked they said they would not touch it again. But when asked to wait in a room alone almost all of them touched the button again with 20-30 minutes | [
"Humans have adapted to pay attention to surprising and confusing information, because it could make the difference between life and death. (For instance, if a person left the campsite and mysteriously never returned, it would be wise for the others to be on guard for a predator or some other danger.) Understanding... |
Why does water short out an electric circuit? | Well, firstly, metals conduct electricity well, but that isn't to say that non-metals don't conduct electricity. Electrical resistivity takes all kinds of values in all kinds of systems. However, you are correct in your intuition that for water it's largely the impurities doing the work and you have a sort of ionic conduction of impurity ions. You can look at a table like [this](_URL_0_) and see that *de-ionized* water (i.e. "pure" water) is not very conductive at all, having even higher resistance than wood. On the other end you have sea water - with all those nice Na+ and Cl- ions - that conducts about as well as germanium, a semiconductor. Drinking water lies in the middle, but closer to sea water than de-ionized water and is close in conductivity to silicon. | [
"Water has been shown not to be a very reliable substance to store electric charge long term, so more reliable materials are used for capacitors in industrial applications. However water has the advantage of being self healing after a breakdown, and if the water is steadily circulated through a de-ionizing resin an... |
Double galaxy in the new Hubble image. | It's hard to tell without more information - it could be two interacting galaxies, it could be two galaxies in front of each other, or it could be an optical illusion. Which Hubble image are you referring to? | [
"In January 2005 the Hubble Heritage Project constructed a 11477 × 7965-pixel composite image (shown in the infobox above) of M51 using Hubble's ACS instrument. The image highlights the galaxy's spiral arms, and shows detail into some of the structures inside the arms.\n",
"Hubble also devised the most commonly u... |
difference of vapor pressure to saturated vapor pressure. | Saturated vapor pressure is the vapor pressure at equilibrium. But systems arent always at equilibrium, so saturated vapor pressure is a specific kind of vapor pressure, while vapor pressure is a larger term that encompasses any state. | [
"Vapor pressure (or vapour pressure in British spelling) or equilibrium vapor pressure is defined as the pressure exerted by a vapor in thermodynamic equilibrium with its condensed phases (solid or liquid) at a given temperature in a closed system. The equilibrium vapor pressure is an indication of a liquid's evapo... |
how are movies being uploaded when they're not even officially out yet? (ts/cam?/rip/...) | Nobody has gotten it right yet. my time to shine.
I used to (briefly) work in the movie industry. People at work, and the academy award voters, are given DVDs of the movie for review so they can see their own work (movie studio) and so they can give it awards (academy), especially if the movie comes out close to the awards and they need to see it and rate it a while before it actually comes out. Someone steals one of these or uploads it themselves online. They try to combat this by making random parts of the movie black and white, so they know who it was that uploaded it/ who it was stolen from. for example, if the movie is black and white at 1hour 38min, that one went to Sam Smith. Fuck that guy. | [
"On some websites, users share entire films by breaking them up into segments that are about the size of the video length limit imposed by the site (e.g. a 15-minute video length limit). An emerging practice is for users to obfuscate the titles of feature-length films that they share by providing a title that is re... |
what happens to cargo when a plane crashes? | Assuming you'd ordered from a reputable company, the cargo would be insured. Therefore in the case of a total loss of the aircraft (i.e. a crash) the shipping company would send you out a replacement item and claim the cost of that back from their insurance company.
It's simply not worth the time, effort, and money that would be necessary to retrieve every item of cargo, check it individually, and if not damaged send it on to its destination. Especially as cargo aircraft crashes are fairly unusual, and therefore the insurance costs are unlikely to be prohibitively high. | [
"This article lists aircraft accidents and incidents which resulted in at least 50 fatalities in a single occurrence involving commercial passenger and cargo flights, military passenger and cargo flights, or general aviation flights that have been involved in a ground or mid-air collision with either a commercial o... |
why us has such complex presidential election system? why not a simple election system? e.g. count total republic/democratic voters all over us.who ever has higher vote, simply becomes president? | The current system gives more votes to smaller states. ~~In addition, it allows gerrymandering.~~ As both parties profit, no one wants to change that.
Besides, this wouldn't actually help in solving the issues. | [
"In general elections where senators and presidents are elected at the same time, the presidential candidates often have their own slates of senatorial candidates. This means voters have more choices unlike in midterm elections, when there are usually only two major contending political forces.\n",
"In the unique... |
[Physics] Why do Materials sound the way they do? | What you should look for is called [resonance frequency](_URL_0_), some frequencys of vibration are propagating better in a material. This depends not only on crystaline structure of the material itself, but also on its size and shape. | [
"Although the sound is often described as metallic, it is most likely due to a combination of the density of the rock and a high degree of internal stress. The sound can be duplicated on a small scale by tapping the handle of a ceramic coffee cup.\n",
"The sound can be created when two rough surfaces in an organi... |
how does saltwater and freshwater fish body system work? | Living organisms need to have some amount of salt in them, but not too much. Now water will naturally want to flow from less-salty areas into more-salty areas to maintain its own balance. The body of a fish will not have the same saltiness as the water it lives in so fish have to do some special things to maintain the right amount of saltiness within their bodies.
Freshwater fish have more salt in their bodies than there is salt in the water. As a result, water tends to flow into their bodies. So they don't drink very much and they pee a lot.
Saltwater fish have less salt in their bodies than there is salt in the water. As a result, water tends to flow out of their bodies. So they drink a lot and don't pee very much.
There are various glands and organs and things that help the fish do what they need to, but that's the basics of it. | [
"The presence of common salt, sodium chloride, helps to preserve salted fish, through inhibition of bacterial growth. When the solution of salt, or brine, is more concentrated—specifically, has a lower water potential—than the fluid of the fish tissue, osmosis will occur. Water molecules will pass from the fish tis... |
Has there ever been a global crisis on par with global warming? | If what you mean by "daunting" is "existential," as in, "stuff that actually threatens our future existence as a species," the only other major existential threat that has existed in historical times (which is to say, after _Homo sapiens_ dispersed to the multiple continents and whatnot) is that of the nuclear arms race. That's basically the only other time where we've had the ability and means to make the entire planet either unlivable or so awfully unpleasant that what remains is barely what we'd consider the same place. This is in fact related to the climate change problem, incidentally, both in the effects of a full nuclear exchange in general (which would have vast effects on the climate, as well as the radiological issues), and also because our understanding of climate change comes in part from studying these kinds of nuclear weapons issues.
(J. Robert Oppenheimer put it this way, when asked if we had the ability, in 1955, to destroy all of humanity: "Not quite. Not quite. You can certainly destroy enough of humanity so that only the greatest act of faith can persuade you that what's left would be human. [pause] This is a matter on which much more should be known." Things got worse after the 1960s, however.)
As for other existential threats, meteor strikes potentially loom large, and humans have never done all that much about them until very recently (and even that is limited). I suspect [synthetic biology will, in the next century, possibly get to existential-threat capability](_URL_0_), but that's terribly speculative. | [
"The Real Global Warming Disaster (\"Is the Obsession with 'Climate Change' Turning Out to Be the Most Costly Scientific Blunder in History?\") is a 2009 book by English journalist and author Christopher Booker in which he asserts that global warming can not be attributed to humans, and then alleges how the scienti... |
why people are against government controlled healthcare and education/ free healthcare and education? | Any chance that anyone could actually give an unbiased account of this perspective rather than just turning this into a "this opinion is retarded" circle-jerk? | [
"Problems also arise in U.S. public schools concerning the teaching and display of religious issues. In various counties, school choice and school vouchers have been put forward as solutions to accommodate variety in beliefs and freedom of religion, by allowing individual school boards to choose between a secular, ... |
the difference between a patent and a trade secret. if a product is patented, why the need to protect a special ingredient as a trade secret? | A patent requires filing a public record of how the thing works, complete with recipes or detailed diagrams. That protects anyone but the inventor from producing the thing for only 7 years, after which anyone can produce it.
Trade secrets don’t have those issues. | [
"Compared to patents, the advantages of trade secrets are that a trade secret is not limited in time (it \"continues indefinitely as long as the secret is not revealed to the public\", whereas a patent is only in force for a specified time, after which others may freely copy the invention), a trade secret does not ... |
In a perfectly 50/50 semi-transparent mirror, what determines whether a photon will go through it or bounce off? And is it possible to predetermine? | It's largely a quantum physics thing. 50/50 or half-silvered mirrors have a coating of reflective silver that covers about 50% of any given area on the glass. If the quantum interactions of the photon's waveform interact with the silver, it'll be reflected; if it doesn't it'll pass through the mirror unaffected. And because it's a quantum interaction, it's based on probabilities, which are impossible to predetermine at the individual photon level, but fantastically accurate at the macroscopic interaction level.
Basically, the photon has a 50/50 chance of interacting each time and you can't know what it does until it does it. But with enough photons, you can observe the 50/50 split, kind of like flipping a trillion coins each second and observing the output of heads and tails over time. | [
"If a single photon is emitted into the entry port of the apparatus at the lower-left corner, it immediately encounters a beam-splitter. Because of the equal probabilities for transmission or reflection the photon will either continue straight ahead, be reflected by the mirror at the lower-right corner, and be dete... |
I put a 1 liter bottle of water and two 0.5 liter bottles of water in the freezer. Will the two 0.5 liter bottles freeze faster as the 1 liter bottle and why (not)? | All other things being equal, yes. The biggest effect of splitting up the water in two containers is to increase the surface area where the warmer container is in contact with the cold surrounding air. You can get a bit of intuition for why this area of contact is important from [this video](_URL_1_), which shows water freezing in slow motion. Notice how the water freezes from the outside in. The reason it happens this way is that for the water to freeze two things need to happen: 1) water must cool to below 0^(o)C, 2) it can then undergo a phase transition from the liquid to the solid state.
In order for the water to cool, its thermal energy needs to be transferred to its surroundings. This process can happen through different mechanisms of [heat transfer](_URL_0_), including 1) conduction, 2) convection, and 3) radiation. If we look at conduction, the simplest expression for the rate of heat transfer (R) is
R = k\*A\*dT/dx,
where k is a constant, A is the surface area of contact, dT is the difference in temperature and dx is the thickness. This simple equation isn't quite right for our situation, but it still captures something essential, namely that the rate of conduction is proportional to the surface area. Conceptually, you can think of it as follows: conduction involves a series of collisions between atoms (and their electrons), which end up transferring energy among each other. By providing a larger surface area more of these collisions can happen, which in turn causes thermal energy to transfer more quickly. This result should not be surprising, in fact we see it every day. For example, this exact same mechanism is at play when a fresh pot of coffee stays hot longer than the same coffee when poured into different cups.
So to sum it up, splitting up the water into two bottles increases the surface area, which in turn increases the rate of heat transfer, which finally allows the water to reach its freezing point and freeze. | [
"The half-liter water bottle (16.9 fl oz) has nearly replaced the 16 ounce size. 700 mL (23.6 fl oz) and one-liter sizes are also common, though 20 fl oz, and 24 fl oz sizes remain popular, particularly in vending machines.\n",
"The Container Recycling Institute estimates that 125 million disposable water bottles... |
how do certain countries, like sweden, turn their garbage into energy? | burn anything combustible and anearobically digest organic waste and then use the methane produced to power generators | [
"In Sweden, some municipalities encourage the installation of disposers so as to increase the production of biogas. Some local authorities in Britain subsidize the purchase of garbage disposal units in order to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill.\n",
"Household waste in economically developed countries ... |
Is it possible to express a musical sound's timbre quantitatively? | The perception of timbre has a lot to do with waveforms and overtones. You can quantify these by doing a Fourier transform and generating a graph showing which base frequencies are represented, at which amplitudes. You'll end up getting something more akin to a spectrum than a single number.
The complicating factor is that much of our perception of timbre, especially identifying what instrument is being played, also depends on identifying the "attack" (the beginning of a note) which is distinct from one instrument to another, and not easily quantified. | [
"Timbre is the quality that gives the listener the ability to distinguish between the sound of different instruments. The timbre of an instrument is determined by which overtones it emphasizes. That is to say, the relative volumes of these overtones to each other determines the specific \"flavor\", \"color\" or \"t... |
why do anime opening songs often include english words at key points in the song? | This happens a lot in Japan because American and/or English language culture is pretty popular there and seen as "cool", or of having a cool sound.
You could say it's analogous to American's getting Chinese characters as tattoos. You don't have to know what it means, exactly - it's just "cool" and says something about you/what you like. | [
"According to the liner notes to the album \"Refrain of Evangelion\", director Hideaki Anno had originally wanted to use a piece of classical music as the opening, but due to concern that this might confuse the anime viewership, a decision was made to use a more upbeat J-pop song instead.\n",
"The Japanese openin... |
why is it that anytime something horrible happens in the usa the news outlets act like it is the first time this has happened? | Because if they act shocked and surprised it makes things more dramatic and then more people will watch it and they will get more money. | [
"The News Corporation scandal involves phone, voicemail, and computer hacking that were allegedly committed over a number of years. The scandal began in the United Kingdom, where the News International phone hacking scandal has to date resulted in the closure of the \"News of the World\" newspaper and the resignati... |
why can you develop immunity to some diseases after having them once but not others? | It depends largely on the type of disease. Bacteria have proteins on their surfaces, and viruses have a protein shell that is left on the outside of your cells when they inject their genetic material. These proteins are markers that your immune system will learn, and use to fight the infection. We refer to these as antigens. The first time you body is exposed, you immune system has to learn these antigens (a process called primary immunity). In the process of fighting it, your immune system creates a memory of the pathogen's antigens, and starts producing antibodies, specific to those antigens, that mark the infection, clump it together, and facilitate it's destruction (secondary immunity).
Secondary immunity is a much faster, more effective way to fight a disease. This is also why vaccines work. They contain broken down, or weakened versions of the bacteria or viruses, and present then to your immune system to learn the antigens without actually being infected. When you encounter any pathogen with matching antigens in the future, your body already has a leg up. It already has a search and destroy blue print for that disease.
The trouble is, some diseases mutate. They are proverbial leopard that can change their spots. Even if you've been exposed before, your body can't recognize the new antigens, and the infection can get a foothold again. That's why the flu vaccine changes every year, because the flu virus changes every year.
Edit, because damn you autocorrect. | [
"Susceptibles have been exposed to neither the wild strain of the disease nor a vaccination against it, and thus have not developed immunity. Those individuals who have antibodies against an antigen associated with a particular infectious disease will not be susceptible, even if they did not produce the antibody th... |
How difficult would it be to create an English computer language? | A lot of computer languages already try to accomplish this- making commands as simple and intuitive as possible. Python springs to mind. And other applications (wolfram alpha, google search) can to some extent take standard english input, interpret it to give it a precise meaning, and then give you results based on that precise meaning. The problem, however, with what you're describing is that English is an inherently ambiguous language - even simple logical words like "or" and "if" can be interpreted differently depending on context. So in general, interpreting written English directly with a computer program requires you to try to guess the user's intent. Generally, you don't want your computer program's behavior to be ambiguous (i.e., the human reading it should be able to determine how the computer program will interpret each statement, which for natural language processing will be very difficult since the meaning of each token can depend on its context) so totally natural language computer programming isn't particularly attractive. Possible maybe, but not necessarily a good idea. | [
"When Hopper recommended the development of a new programming language that would use entirely English words, she \"was told very quickly that [she] couldn't do this because computers didn't understand English.\" Still she persisted. “It's much easier for most people to write an English statement than it is to use ... |
Before the modern level (for woodwork and such) was invented, how did people build things to be level to the ground? | You'd use a plum bob within an isosceles triangle, like [the square level here](_URL_1_) from an Egyptian tomb.
You can start with just a taut piece of string or thread- that will give you a straight line. Then you pare and plane two boards, checking with the line, until they're straight. Put them together with a nail to make a right angle square, adjust that angle by scribing a straight line, then holding one leg of the square against that and scribing another line with the upright, then flip the square and scribe from the other side. Adjust the angle to divide the difference, put another nail in the corner, and you have an accurate square. Layout an equal distance on each arm of the square, run another straight board across, connecting them, and you have the Egyptian square level shown on the website, though without hieroglyphics. ( This is just doing it from scratch, of course if you already have a square you can make another one from it without doing all this)
For long distances: put a notches or loops of wire into that connecting piece, so you can sight along the top of it accurately. Now you have a surveyor's transit- if the plumb bob is pointing right in the center of the connecting piece, it's level. So if you hold it on top of a one-meter tall post and sight along it, you should be able to have someone drive another post until it's right in the sights- that will be one meter as well.
There are also simple things like pouring water on something and seeing which way it runs off or puddles, or setting a bowl of water on something to see if it tilts. The Romans had water levels on their transits.
A very nice website with more info on Roman surveying tools and methods is [here](_URL_0_) | [
"Along with stone, clay and animal parts, wood was one of the first materials worked by early humans. Microwear analysis of the Mousterian stone tools used by the Neanderthals show that many were used to work wood. The development of civilization was closely tied to the development of increasingly greater degrees o... |
During the Black Death's onset, why didn't it infect and kill the nomads believed to be the original carriers from the central Asian plains before it could reach Europe and infect everyone there? | Both Giovanni Villani, famous merchant chronist in Florence and some Russian Chronicles agree that pestilence had already killed mass of Mongols as well as Turk nomads before its arrival in Crimean Peninsula.
& nbsp;
> 'But there were uncountable death in Turkey and other countries overseas, where the disease lasted longer and did the most harm. God's justice fell harshly upon the Tartars (Mongols), so much so that it seemed incredible'.
Quoted From: Doc. no. 3 (Villani, *Chronica*), in John Aberth (ed.), *The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348-1350*. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005, p.19.
According the Quotation in Benedictow's *The Black Death 1346-1353*, the narrative of a certain Russian Chronicle states as following:
> 'In the same year [1346], God's punishment struck the people in the eastern lands, in the town Ornach [on the estuary of the River Don], and in Khastorokan, and in Sarai, and in Bezdezh [at an arm of the River Volga], and in other towns in those lands; the Mortality was great among the Bessermens, and among the Tartars, and among the Armenians and the Abkhazians, and among the Jews, and among the European Foreigners [Geonese and Venetians], and among the Circassians, and among all who lived there, so that they could not bury them [sic]'.
From: Vasil'ev, K. G. & A. E. Segal (ed.), *Istorya epidemiy i Rosii*, Moskow, 1960, p.29 [quoted as English translation from Russian, in: Ole J. Benedictow, *The Black Death, 1346-1353: The Complete History*, Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005, p.50.]
| [
"The Silk Road trade played a role in spreading the infamous Black Death. Originating in China, the bubonic plague was spread by Mongol warriors catapulting diseased corpses into enemy towns in the Crimea. The disease, spread by rats, was carried by merchant ships sailing across the Mediterranean that brought the p... |
why is twitter worth $10 - $15 billion? | Valuing stocks can be complex, and will always end up the price the market is willing to buy it for. Having said that, usually the total value of the firm will be its present value. The present value will we be the value their assets and the "calculated" future profits. (More precise: Assets-debt + future profits discounted - ratio of dividends. Within this calculations there must be discounting, and growth!)
Simplified: Value of Twitter stocks (or total value of firm) is set by assumed profits they will earn in the future. Since the there is less cost to revenue ratio in the expansion path for the firm; it has the potential to become a goldmine. It currently has 230M users, and is increasing!
It's realistic that it will archieve somewhere around 600M revenue this year, and is increasing. (This is the basis for this simplified calculation of valuation)
But if it will archive 1B revenue, assuming some cost to revenue ratio, it will have profit of 230M, if it will archieve 2B revenue, it will have
a profit of 700M. Do you see the cost structure of such a firm? This is what makes these internet companies valuable, even through they don't
have any assets.
Valuation calculation would be (VERY SIMPLIFIED):
20-30 times revenue
20x600 = 12B, 30x600=18B -- Between 12B-18B
edit: more precise, edit some numbers | [
"In July 2009, some of Twitter's revenue and user growth documents were published on \"TechCrunch\" after being illegally obtained by Hacker Croll. The documents projected 2009 revenues of US$400,000 in the third quarter and US$4 million in the fourth quarter along with 25 million users by the end of the year. The ... |
Why are we so sure that Electron and Quarks and other elementary particles aren't made of anything else? | We are not so sure of that, we're just sure that there's no experimental evidence of it and have no theoretical need to posit anything smaller. If new evidence arises, that situation could change, as it did for protons and neutrons 50 years ago and atoms 100 years ago. | [
"Via quantum theory, protons and neutrons were found to contain quarks—up quarks and down quarks—now considered elementary particles. And within a molecule, the electron's three degrees of freedom (charge, spin, orbital) can separate via the wavefunction into three quasiparticles (holon, spinon, orbiton). Yet a fre... |
how do scientist discover new things about the universe? | They do it with the scientific method:
1) Conjecture that something "could" be possible (or true).
2) Create an experiment that will test your hypothesis in such a way as to be sure you are actually measuring what you think you are measuring.
3) Use the results of your experiment to classify your initial hypothesis as valid or invalid.
4) Refine your original hypothesis and start the process again.
From an astronomy standpoint, it would look like this:
1) Conjecture that there are Earth-like planets out there.
2) Build an "experiment" that uses telescope data to look for exo-planets that have the approximate correct mass, are in the correct orbit and have spectrographic readings indicating the right atmosphere. Nearly all of the data collected comes from automated radio telescopes and occasional optical scopes. More statistical analysis of numbers than peering through a tube.
3) See if you can find any previously unidentified planets that match your criteria.
4) If not, perhaps you need to relax your requirements or build better equipment. Wash, rinse, repeat. | [
"“Nobel prize winners in Physics finds out the origin of space” shows how the winners found out that the universe was made 13.8 billion years ago. There is also a model of a large particle accelerator to show how scientists tried to find out what the smallest particle is.\n",
"The Search shows scientists who have... |
why was the church so offended by the notion of Heliocentrism? It was pagan natural philosophers who came up with the generally accepted (generally accepted in the late middle ages I mean) notion of the geocentric model, not catholic theologians | Among other things, it was a violation of the idea of a naturally existing hierarchy, an idea which Christianity had fully adopted from Platonism or neo-Platonism through the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (late 5th c.) and St. Augustine of Hippo.
This view of the universe orders the world into spheres of descending quality until one arrives at the Earth (or Hell, beyond), like Russian nesting dolls. This sort of natural hierarchy of spheres is fairly well expressed in Cicero's *Somnium scipionis* (Scipio's Dream). Such a hierarchy of spheres mirrors Pseudo-Dionysius' angelic hierarchy, and also the hierarchy of the Church itself. The same basic premise is even at play in Dante's *Inferno*.
To people with this sort of world-view, placing the sun in the center makes no sense and contravenes the idea of a perfectly ordered divine plan in which everything is a typological reading for the relationship of man to the divine. In a reality constructed in such a way, Heliocentrism is effectively chaos and goes against all reason and logic. | [
"After 1610, when Galileo began publicly supporting the heliocentric view which placed the Sun at the center of the universe, he met with bitter opposition from some philosophers and clerics, and two of the latter eventually denounced him to the Roman Inquisition early in 1615. Galileo defended his theories by mean... |
how do climbing plants know where to climb/grow? | Well first, vines grow out of their 'limbs'. So when they grow what's actually happening is their limbs are just getting longer. Their limbs are always facing up towards the sun, so they always grow up. Also, climbing plants grow in a rotating pattern. So if they are 'climbing' a pole they will go around and around the pole until they reach the top. Once there, they will grow longer and longer, and keep moving around and around. If there is another pole close to the first one, eventually the climbing plant will rotate into it, then start rotating around it.
Edit: In addition Ivy, another kind of climbing plant that goes up walls, works kind of the same way. It also grows out of its limbs, and goes up towards the sun. As it gets higher, it sprouts more leaves, and these leaves take in more sun than the lower ones. This allows for the higher parts to keep moving up quickly. | [
"Gardeners can use the tendency of climbing plants to grow quickly. If a plant display is wanted quickly, a climber can achieve this. Climbers can be trained over walls, pergolas, fences, etc. Climbers can be grown over other plants to provide additional attraction. Artificial support can also be provided. Some cli... |
What kind of people became pirates? (1400-1900 Atlantic/Caribbean) | I recently answered another question here about [*how* people became pirates in the early 18th century](_URL_1_) which answers a lot of this question. Like the answer to that question, what kinds of people became pirates could vary hugely. The majority of pirates were poor sailors, from lower class backgrounds just like the majority of regular non-piratical sailors at the time. Some were habitual criminals from the very lowest dregs of society, like Edward Low. There were also a few that came from wealthier backgrounds or who had been officers aboard ships before becoming pirates, like Edward Thache (Blackbeard) and Bartholomew Roberts. More than a few pirate captains fit into the latter category, and that probably has something to do with them being better educated and therefore standing out and being able to take control. One pirate captain, Stede Bonnet, who is probably one of the most unusual pirates of all, had actually been a wealthy plantation owner before he recklessly decided to outfit a ship at his own expense in 1717 and begin engaging in piracy.
The vast majority of pirates in the early 18th century were English speaking and either from the British isles or born in the American colonies with recent British ancestors. Within Britain, most were English and many of those were from the West Country in southwestern England from places like Bristol which had a long maritime history and were where a lot of sailors were from. A surprising number of famous pirates were Welsh, like Bartholomew Roberts, Howell Davis (and Henry Morgan in the 17th century). Others like William Kidd and John Gow were Scottish, and there were a few Irish pirates like Walter Kennedy and Anne Bonny. There were some French pirates like Olivier Levasseur (called La Buse) and especially in earlier times, in the 17th century, a significant number of buccaneers were French but there were also Dutch buccaneers and a few Spanish ones. There are some very limited indications that there might have been a few African pirates who were freed slaves, but it's very unclear if this was ever actually the case (Leigh). At least in the 17th century there were also a few Native Americans from the Mosquito Coast in modern Nicuragua and Honduras who joined the buccaneers (Exquemelin, Dampier). A typical pirate crew would have tended to be overwhelmingly composed of one nationality or at least language group.
Not only does this question vary hugely in the specific timeframe of the early 18th century, however, but also throughout the heyday of piracy beginning almost a century earlier. In the 17th century, things were somewhat different than what I've described. The range of your question from 1400-1900 is hugely broad and couldn't possibly be covered in one comment or book, so that's why I'm confining it to the so-called "Golden Age of Piracy" in the early 18th century. If you have any other questions I can try to answer them.
**Sources:**
*Under the Black Flag* by David Cordingly
[*The Historical Record of Black Caesar*](_URL_0_) by Devin Leigh
*The Buccaneers of America* by Alexandre Exquemelin
*A New Voyage Round the World* by William Dampier
*A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates* by Charles Johnson | [
"Pirates were often former sailors experienced in naval warfare. Beginning in the 16th century, pirate captains recruited seamen to loot European merchant ships, especially the Spanish treasure fleets sailing from the Caribbean to Europe.\n",
"The famous pirates of the early 18th century were a completely illegal... |
Does anyone actually know what happened to Gaius Julius Caesar's ashes? | Even before Caesar became a cultural icon for Renaissance Italy and unification, people liked to tell stories linking him to various things. Most of them are ridiculous. There are some stories that claim that Caesar's body was moved from the Campus Martius (where bodies were traditionally burned) to the forum by an angry mob, but it's not attested by anyone except Appian, and the episode bears far too much resemblance to the burning of Clodius Pulcher (memorably recounted by several sources) to be taken without a grain of salt. In any case, our ancient sources are pretty much all in agreement that his ashes were contained in the Temple of Divus Julius, built at great expense by Augustus, who wen pretty far out of his way to build up his relationship with the Caesarians by stressing that he was the dutiful heir.
What happened later? We don't know. There are plenty of stories of various barbarians destroying traditional Roman artifacts and stuff, mostly for rhetorical effect. We can't know generally whether those episodes took place or not. So after that, it's safe to say that at some point--probably when Rome was sacked some time or another--they were lost. | [
"BULLET::::- It was forbidden to bury the dead inside the pomerium. During his life, Julius Caesar received in advance the right to a tomb inside the pomerium, but his ashes were actually placed in his family tomb. However, Trajan's ashes were interred after his death in AD 117 at the foot of his Column, which was ... |
Smallest possible air bubble in a liquid | The limit basically occurs when the pressure in the bubble required to maintain surface tension overcomes the chemical potential of the gas at that pressure. The limit for air bubbles in water is thought to be at around 50 nanometers. There's a lot of references about nanobubbles here: _URL_1_
Nanobubbles that adhere to surfaces are more stable. You can read a bit here: _URL_0_ | [
"Gas bubbles with a radius greater than 1 micron should float to the surface of a standing liquid, whereas smaller ones should dissolve rapidly due to surface tension. The Tiny Bubble Group has been able to resolve this apparent paradox by developing and experimentally verifying a new model for stable gas nuclei.\n... |
how is a nation's economy affected when its biggest export is an illegal good, a la cocaine via pablo escobar? | My understanding is that the value of the dollar is dependant on the number of dollars in circulation that represent the effective total 'worth' of a country. By printing money, more dollars represent the same amount of 'worth', meaning that each dollar is effectively worth less and less, and this is how countries printing money destroys the value of their dollar.
In the context of Pablo Escobar giving money to the poor, I'd think it would function effectively the same way that any export or tourism business that brings foreign currency into a country. Pablo would export Cocaine produced in his country, and then distribute the wealth that came in from foreign nations, effectively giving people more money to spend and more active circulation of wealth in the economy (unlike how printing money functions).
Tl;dr Large scale successful exports which bring wealth into the country would positively stimulate the economy. | [
"Improved cooperation of Mexico with the U.S. led to the recent arrests of 755 Sinaloa cartel suspects in U.S. cities and towns, but the U.S. market is being eclipsed by booming demand for cocaine in Europe, where users now pay twice the going U.S. rate. U.S. Attorney General announced September 17, 2008 that an in... |
to what degree did the apple-publisher collusion affect e-book prices? what sort of price consequences can be expected from now on? | The prosecutors were able to conclusively show that the price of e-books had been raised $3-4 because of Apple's meddling.
[Here is a chart!](_URL_0_)
And yes, we are expected to see a drop in prices. Amazon has already begun lowering prices back to their original $9.99 (or even lower) levels. | [
"In June 2015, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals, by a 2-1 vote, concurred with Judge Cote that Apple conspired to e-book price fixing and violated federal antitrust law. Apple appealed the decision.\n",
"In March 2016, the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear Apple's appeal that it conspired to ... |
How much interest did Jews charge in the 14th century? | Those numbers are oddly specific, and 86% is extremely high. But other sources I've found are still quite high, but somewhat lower. See [here](_URL_1_), [here](_URL_0_), [here](_URL_4_), and [here](_URL_2_).
As you can see from those, the reason is that Christians weren't forbidden from loaning money at *any* interest, but at a rate above a legal level. This meant that the area Jews had a monopoly was what we'd today call sub-prime lending, or high-risk loans that required a high interest rate to compensate for their risk. Note that modern [payday loans](_URL_3_), which are high-risk and short-term loans today, have triple-digit interest rates for fairly short term loans. Of course, this would only be a part of a typical Jewish moneylender's portfolio, and the very short-term nature of those loans isn't typical of a loan in the Middle Ages. But they do give a peek into why interest rates would be so high. Christians and Jews could compete at lending money at low rates (think mortgage), but higher rates were what Jews generally monopolized. It's that stuff that drove up the average rate charged.
sources: see the links. Also, in addition to my flaired knowledge in Jewish stuff, I'm a business student. | [
"The value of the Jewish community to the royal treasury had become considerably lessened during the 13th century through two circumstances: the king's income from other sources had continually increased, and the contributions of the Jews had decreased both absolutely and relatively. Besides this, the king had foun... |
eli: why we call her royal majesty the queen of england instead of the queen of the united kingdom. | There hasn't been a Queen (or King) of England since 1707, when the separate monarchies of Scotland and England were legally joined together by an Act of Parliament, creating a single King (or Queen) of Great Britain.
For one hundred years before this, the separate titles of "King of England" and "King of Scotland" existed but belonged to the same person.
So for the last 300 years, anyone who's used the phrase "King (or Queen) of England" to refer to the current reigning monarch has been, quite simply, wrong. | [
"In the uncodified Constitution of the United Kingdom, the monarch (otherwise referred to as the sovereign or \"His/Her Majesty\", abbreviated H.M.) is the head of state. The Queen's image is used to signify British sovereignty and government authority—her profile, for instance, appearing on currency, and her portr... |
how does a rubber band work on a molecular level? | Rubbers (aka elastic polymers) are made of atoms that are strongly attracted to one another, in a process called hydrogen bonding.
The molecules form flexible chains that interconnect, like a crowd of people locking arms with each other randomly.
When you stretch the rubber, the chains hold together. And when you stop stretching it, the chains pull the rubber back into its original shape.
& #x200B; | [
"The result is that a rubber band behaves somewhat like an ideal monatomic gas inasmuch as (to good approximation) that elastic polymers do not store any potential energy in stretched chemical bonds. No elastic work is done to \"stretch\" molecules when work is done upon these bulk polymers. Instead, all work done ... |
How did the ukrainian culture develop after the Kiever Rus? Why did people claim ( and still do ) that the ukrainian culture and ethnicity are made-up/fictional? | As a matter of fact I got my degree as a Ukrainian historian. Unfortunately I haven't used it for ten years so my description could be sketchy. Leave a comment if you see something wrong.
As you probably know Kievan Rus was federation of several Slavic tribes. It appeared on a trade route that connected Viking states and Byzantium between Baltic and Black seas and essentially was a birthplace of Belorussian, Russian and Ukrainian cultures. The golden period of the state was in the 11 century. But as age of the Vikings came to an end and Byzantium lost most of it's power, Kievan Rus lost influence as well. The state fell with Golden Horde invasion in the midst of the 13 century.
Mongols were waging wars with light cavalry — small horses, small people, small bows — which was amazing in steppe but not that great in the European forest. So their expansion stopped roughly on the territory of modern Ukraine. Kiev was destroyed. Most of the east slavic cities conquered. A few left though and amongst all Moscow, whose rulers sworn allegiance to Golden Horde.
There were also few others — northern states as well. Baltic principalities which formed Grand Duchy of Lithuania to join forces with Poland and become a power in Slavic lands.
So this how it went. Lithuanian-polish state to the north and the west. Golden Horde to the east and the south. And emerging Moscow duchery to the north and the east of them.
Territory of modern Ukraine became giant borderland. Steppe without king, godless veld between three giant Catholic, Islamic and Orthodox states. Even the modern name shows it. One of the explanation for the origin of the word "Ukraine" connects it with Old Russian "оукраина" — Borderland.
It was a fertile land though. So as time went Slavic people were settling here. Around 15 century Ukrainian language was formed sprouting from Old Russian language with strong influence of Polish. In the same time people started to organize armed militia opposing constant Islamic attacks. Later this militia was famed as cossaks.
In the seventeen century the cossaks of Polish lands rebelled and founded Zaporizhzhia, first Ukranian-speaking state. As it was settled by descendants of Kievan Rus (who were orthodox people), leaders of Zaporizhzhia decided to align with Moscow state. But Moscow czars didn't understand the concept of protectorate and in the following years declared independence of Zaporizhzhia slowly deteriorated. This in turn led to rebellion in the 18 century when cossaks leader Ivan Mazepa switched sides in Russian Swedish war.
The conflict between Moscow rule and Ukranian speaking people resulted in emergence of Ukrainain nationalism. In 18 and 19 century several cultural groups formed in city bourgeoisie. They were printing books in Ukrainian language. To answer this in 1887 Russian czar banned printing of all Ukrainian books.
I'm leaving a lot of cool details here. To name a few: reading my text you could think that the nation is formed around its language. But it more than this. Ukranians used eastern weapons, speaking with Polish melodic and managed to come up with one of the [first democratic constitutions in history](_URL_0_).
Finally: to answer your question why some people speak about Ukranian culture as made up.
Two things led to that.
* The late development of national identity. There wasn't a lot of big cities in "Borderlands" (Kiev was destroyed and became big city only in the end of the 19 century). People were speaking one language, sharing one culture but they didn't had any cultural centers.
* Russian resistance. Modern Ukraine is giant country with a lot of natural resources. 45 million people are living there. If you'll manage to convince some of them that they are not Ukrainians but misguided Russians you'll get influence and in the future their land for free. The first mentioned factor is helping this.
The fact that Ukrainians didn't have a lasting state in centuries not working well for them either. But I have an impression that people identity is strong, that they still keep the tradition of regular rebellions and as a nation become more and more solid.
Hope it helps!
| [
"The history of Ukrainian nationality can be traced back to the Kiev-based kingdom of Kievan Rus' () of the 9th to 12th centuries. It was the predecessor state to what would eventually become the Eastern Slavic nations of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. During this time, Eastern Orthodoxy, a defining feature of Ukrai... |
How much of this is true about Victorian London, anno 1868? | > The industrial revolution, in essence, is society going from almost a medieval society to the modern society which we live in today.
This is untrue. While the Industrial Revolution certainly transformed Britain, it bore almost no resemblance to the Medieval era.
> It's an increase in productivity that's never been seen before in the history of mankind. You see transportation breaking through, and in the span of a few years enough railroads were constructed to go around the circumference of the earth.
This is true, but its such a general statement that it's hard to really comment upon.
> It's a world that's ruled by science, we'll see tons of progress in medicine that prolongs the lifetime of people from around 20 years old to 50 years old.
This is completely untrue. While the advent of the Industrial Revolution fostered several scientific breakthroughs, pre-industrial Britain was by no means devoid of art, culture or science -- recall that Newton was born in 1642.
> It's a world no longer ruled by kings or by religion, it's a world that's run by money.
This is, again, utterly untrue: there is no separation between church and state in the United Kingdom. For example, when the Prince of Wales remarried, he was obligated to receive a blessing rather than a wedding because the Church of England does not recognize remarriage after divorce. The Duke of Windsor's desire to marry a twice-divorced American woman caused the Abdication Crisis in 1937.
> You have the upper classes which still rule the city
This is true. They still do even today. A vast portion of Greater London is owned by the Crown Estate and members of the peerage.
> because they're the ones that have the right to vote.
This is untrue; virtually every adult male was granted the right to vote with the Reform Act 1867. This is almost a laughable claim, especially since it's an incredibly important piece of legislation. You'd think the designers would have at least asked themselves what happened in the year prior to the date their game was set in.
> So the fate of the lower classes was to either work hard and to die young, or to resort to something new.
Sort of, kind of, maybe. The idea of the "self-made man" is a thoroughly American concept although the British middle class dramatically expanded throughout this period.
> What the industrial era sees is the birth of organised crime, a bit as we know it today.
This isn't merely incorrect, it's an overt lie. | [
"Buildings from the Victorian era (1837–1901) and their diverse range of forms and ornamentation are the single largest group from any architectural period in London. The Victorian era saw unprecedented urbanization and growth in London, coinciding with Britain's ascendancy in the world economy and London's global ... |
why aren't electrical sockets standardized globally in the same shape? | Because if you have 4 inputs try to make a universal standard then you end up with 5 inputs. | [
"The principal advantage of interchangeable sockets is that, instead of a separate wrench for each of the many different fastener sizes and types, only separate sockets are needed for each size and type. Because of their versatility, nearly all screw and bolt types now have sockets of different types made to fit th... |
What sort of contact did the Okinawan's have with the Japanese throughout the 1500's (Sengoku Period)? | During the Sengoku period both China and Malaysia had a greater influence on Okinawa and the other Ryūkyū islands than Japan did.
Only in the Edo Period (1603-1868) did the Japanese gain more influence, as they invaded the islands and made it a tributary.
Ryūkyū remained an independent nation and had a formal trading contract with the Japanese only after the invasion during the Edo-Period.
The Ryūkyū Islands became a tributary of China in 1372, consequently they were allowed to trade in Ming ports. Their trade partners did in include Japan. Trade is the biggest influence Japan had on the islands during that time, as they traded their silver, weapons and interior design like folding screens and tatami mats.
During the 1500's they were also plagued by wokou, which are Japanese pirates.
In the late 1500's (around 1590) Hideyoshi sought help from Naha (capital of Okinawa) to help the Japanese invade Korea due to the advantageous position of the islands. They declined.
In the following years the Shimazu family, lords of Satsuma in Kyushu, who had a history of trading with Ryūkyū, threatened the Ryūkyū kingdom into submission and demanded an embassy of tribute. They declined again until the invasion in 1609.
Sources: George H. Herr, Okinawa, p. 155: Shin'yashiki Yukishige, Shinkou Okinawa issennen shi
Ronald P. Toby,State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan. Asia in the Development of the Tokugawa Bakufu, p. 40 ff: Princeton University Press
Chōshin Higa, Okinawa sengoku jidai no nazo: Nanzan Chūzan Hokuzan Kumejima Miyako Yaeyama | [
"The first contacts occurred with the Ryūkyū Kingdom (modern Okinawa), a vassal of the Japanese fief of Satsuma since 1609. In 1844, a French naval expedition under Captain Fornier-Duplan onboard \"Alcmène\" visited Okinawa on April 28, 1844. Trade was denied, but Father Forcade was left behind with a Chinese trans... |
how a transformer "steps up" and "steps down" voltage. | This is really hard to ELI5, but basically we found out that if you make loops of wire and pass electricity through them it turns into a magnet. If you have ever wrapped wire around a nail and then connected it to a battery you can see this for yourself.
What we also found out is that the opposite is true. You can pass a magnet through a loop of wire and it will make electricity pass through the wire.
So basically if you stack loops of wire with your electricity on top of other loops of wire, the magnet made by the first set of loops makes electricity in second wire.
By making more or less loops of one of the wires we can make more electricity or less less electricity come out of the second wire. | [
"A transformer is a static device that converts alternating current from one voltage level to another level (higher or lower), or to the same level, without changing the frequency. A transformer transfers electrical energy from one circuit to another through inductively coupled conductors—the transformer's coils. A... |
how come new military planes don't come out as frequently as they used to? | The time around WWII was a time of extremely rapid technological growth, as well as rapidly changing political environments. This made it conducive to rapidly churning out new aircraft every half-decade. There were wars that needed to be won, and new advancements that needed to be put into action.
Since the 70's onward, there has been much less necessity for pushing aircraft from conception to deployment as fast as we used to. So, we focus more on engineering, testing, and development, ensuring that the aircraft is put through it's paces well before it ever gets into a squadron in the real world. This is also a byproduct of the media culture we are in, where a single aircraft crash can bring a whole assembly line to a halt, and make the government question the project altogether. It's more important to make sure the kinks are worked out in advance as much as possible, than it is to push them out the factory doors ASAP. Tiny engineering issues look HUGE in today's media, whereas a bunch of prototypes crashing in the desert in 1950 didn't make quite as big a splash. Too much money at stake to rush anything these days. | [
"On average the Group annually receives 300 aircraft for storage and processes out about the same number (with 50 to 100 of those returning to flying service). Aircraft that fly again either return to the U.S. Military services, U.S. government agencies (such as the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Forest Service, and NASA) ... |
Can you build muscle by just flexing for periods of time? | You can build muscle by flexing, yes. Muscle is made up of fibers (long muscle cells) that within them have units known as sarcomeres. These sarcomeres are laid on longitudinally and, during flexion of the muscle, contract to shorten. This is why they say to look for what's getting shorter when you want to know what muscle is being worked out during a given activity.
My fairly informed guess is that flexion mimics isometric contraction, one of the two types of muscle contraction. Isotonic contraction is like weight lifting, where through shortening your muscle you are able to move a load and perform work on the environment. In isometric contraction, you are unable to move a load and simply push against it (think of isometric exercises, where nothing is actually being lifted or moved).
Your muscle, faced with prolonged isometric contraction, will lay on additional sarcomeres, making the fibers - and your muscles - bigger. This is why people and animals with congenital heart defects that make their heart work harder have enlarged hearts: it is pushing against a load that it can not move and attempts to compensate accordingly. For skeletal muscle, though, this is a more normal adaptation. That being said, isometric exercise obviously puts more stress on your muscles than simply flexing, which probably accounts for the dearth of exercise routines involving only flexing. | [
"Flexibility is improved by stretching. Stretching should only be started when muscles are warm and the body temperature is raised. To be effective while stretching, force applied to the body must be held just beyond a feeling of pain and needs to be held for at least ten seconds. Increasing the range of motion cre... |
if i'm in the exact same spot in my house on new years when the ball drops from one year to the next, am i in the exact same spot in the solar system, relative to the sun? (excluding expansion of the universe.) | Not quite. For a start there are leap-years. You're about a quarter of a day out each year until we throw in an extra day to tidy up. Without this the seasons would slowly drift out of synch with the year.
Also there's the precession of the equinoxes, which means that eventually though the planet will be in the same place (though "place" is a bit hard to define, though I know what you mean) the north pole will be pointing in a slightly different direction.
| [
"Recent research demonstrates that the house is perfectly oriented and aligned to the position of the sunrise at the winter solstice or shortest day of the year - so that the rising sun bisects the house, running through the front door, out the rear door and hitting the sandstone cliff face at the rear of the house... |
When did it become at least relatively common for servants to not live in - particularly in the north eastern United States | Hey! I can partly answer this one. But first, a few important points:
I would argue that the most important thing to recognize is that live-in servants were never all that common in the US, although they were more common in the urban northeast than elsewhere. In 1880 in the northern US (North of the Mason-Dixon, East of the Mississippi) there were 92 domestic servants per 1,000 families. By 1920 this sunk to 39 servants per 1,000 families. These numbers were lower elsewhere. So, while employing a servant was represented as a middle-class norm, it seems like fewer than 10 percent of families had them, at least by 1880. Servants were endlessly discussed in the popular media during the second half of the 19th century, but reading these accounts you might get an exaggerated idea of just how common they were.
Another important thing to note is that what we think of as a live-in servant (a uniformed maid with a room in the attic) is only one model of service. Another one would be the “hired girl,” a girl or young woman who may be from a similar social class as their host family, lived in close quarters with them, and who helped with agricultural or domestic tasks, often on a short-term or seasonal basis. This was especially common in rural areas and on farms. This kind of informality is the norm, rather than the exception, in the history of domestic service. Even today, babysitting, nannying, and housecleaning are all extremely informal industries.
Ok. But you asked about live-in and live-out service, particularly in wealthy households. I can’t answer this exactly, because you would need to be more precise about what we define as “wealthy” vs. “middle class,” and because I’m not sure the data is out there anyway. But if there was a watershed moment, I would put it in the early 20s. This was driven by a number of factors. One was advancing technology and electrification, which automated or eliminated some of the roles servants played (although some historians overstate this, I think). Another was the generally disruptive effect of World War One; following this point you see a much greater embrace of a simplified, “modern” home life. The third factor was the great migration of African Americans from the south to the north. During this period, African American women became increasingly overrepresented in domestic service. For white women, working as a servant was often seen as a temporary step before getting married, while black women were far more likely to work their entire lives, including after marriage. In a survey of servants from the early 1920s, 80% of white servant women said they preferred to live in, while only 36% of black servants said the same.
I’m sorry I couldn’t give you a precise answer to your question. If you do want to read more, I’ve included sources at the bottom of this post. I’ve been working from my own memory of these books, so its possible there may be more precise statistical information within them, if you look them up. I suspect that David Katzman’s book would be the most helpful.
Katzman, David M. Seven Days a Week: Women and Domestic Service in Industrializing America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
Salmon, Lucy Maynard. Domestic Service. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1897.
Strasser, Susan. Never Done: A History of American Housework. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982.
Sutherland, Daniel. Americans and Their Servants: Domestic Service in the United States from 1800 to 1920. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981.
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"The demands that urbanization, industrialization, and immigration placed on poor and working-class families in the late 19th century left many children unattended. Rural states relied on family placements to care for their own homeless or dependent children. This was a precursor for today's foster care system.\n",... |
"The United States are..." vs. "The United States is..." | This is one of the textbook examples of a place where Big Data can help pinpoint the specific moment in which things changed — [Google Ngrams of "The United States are" vs. "The United States is"](_URL_4_). (And by "textbook example," I mean, "one of the three examples the Google Ngrams people use to prove that their approach might be useful to the humanities, and the one that doesn't just produce a no-duh shrug [like their example where they show that indeed, when the Nazis banned various artists, the frequency of their name-use in German decreased].")
It supports the claim from the Supreme Court article, though only takes about 1 second to run. [If you want to see it as relative percentages, you can do that too.](_URL_1_) In 1880, both were used with equal frequency in printed English. ([It shifts back to 1875 if you use American English only, interestingly.](_URL_0_) [British English has very choppy patterns which look to me like the indications of a small sample size](_URL_2_).)
Obviously one should take such data with a grain of salt — it requires good OCRing, good metadata, and careful choosing of proper search query (I used the capital "The" because it seemed less likely to produce problems than a lower-case, e.g. "The bison of the United States are..." — and [indeed, if you use the lower-case, you get a graph skewed to the plural](_URL_3_)).
While it doesn't change overnight, the trends shown do indicate a fairly rapid change from a period when the plural was more common (1860 and previous) to the point where the singular became most common from the (1900 and beyond).
Of course, understanding why and how this usage changed — the Big Data alone can't show us that. So hooray, historians will not be out of jobs anytime soon, computer scientists' dreams to the contrary. | [
"The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country comprising 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At , the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly... |
How come the Angles and Saxons (and Jutes) did not adopt the local Romance language when they invaded Britain, just like the Franks, Visigoths, Vandals etc. did when they settled their respective locations? | In technical terms, it's because there was no local Romance language in Britain at the time these peoples invaded Britain. The two languages in most use at the time were Brythonic (the Celtic language that eventually became Welsh and Cornish) and Latin, the latter of which was not a spoken language outside of religious society.
Why Brythonic was not adopted to any significant degree into the languages that would become Old English is one I can't answer, and I'd love to hear from one of our Anglo-Saxonists on that. ~~The lack of word-borrowing that happened between the Germanic and Celtic peoples is part of why we know that the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain was not a conquest, but a displacement of the native peoples. The settlers pushed the Brythonic peoples out of their way with apparently not much interest in absorbing them or integrating themselves with them in any way that we have evidence of. I want to make that distinction clear because it was a very different case with the Scandinavian settlers who colonized northern England in the 9th century. Scandinavian men took Anglo-Saxon wives and to some degree worked with Anglo-Saxon laborers, and as a result, there are a lot of English loan-words with Scandinavian origins (household words like *fork* or *kettle* and natural words like *dirt*).~~
Even more to your question, though: a Classicist can definitely answer better than I can here, but the Latin that the Franks, Visigoths, and Vandals adopted was the same Latin the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes adopted *before* invading Britain. Latin did heavily influence Old English in several waves, both during the Roman period before the invasion and in the context of clerical reforms later. It sounds like what you're asking is "if these are all settlers who adopted Latin, why does English sound so different," and if so, one big factor is the simple fact that the Anglo-Saxon invaders settled an island and their language developed relatively isolated from continental Europe. We don't see the same kind of permeability with the Celtic languages besides a few place-names, so besides the Latin-influenced West Germanic languages the settlers crossed the channel with, the only major linguistic influence Old English faced was that of the Scandinavian invaders.
Of course, then 1066 and William the Conqueror happened, which is where the development of English *really* gets interesting, but that's way past the scope of your question. But my understanding of *why* the Anglo-Saxons didn't absorb Brythonic is too far outside what I know to answer confidently, so Classicists, I'd love to hear from you.
* See *History of the English Language* by Baugh and Cable.
EDIT: Looks like I knew less about this than I thought! Many thanks to u/Steelcan909 and u/BRIStoneman for their corrections. Tagging u/LigniteCA to make sure they see the replies. | [
"These Germanic invaders dominated the original Celtic-speaking inhabitants. The dialects spoken by these invaders formed what would be called Old English, which was also strongly influenced by yet another Germanic language, Old East Norse, spoken by Danish Viking invaders who settled mainly in the North-East. Engl... |
Does earth's changing tilt angle require satellites to continually adjust themselves to stay geo-stationary? | The tilt is extremely slow changing and is drowned out by other effects.
Disturbances from your trajectory are known as perturbations, and they can get quite complicated. The most dominant orbital perturbation for GEO satellites is solar radiation pressure. Sunlight imparts momentum onto the spacecraft, nudging it a bit. Overtime this requires maneuvering in a process known as "station keeping".
Other perturbations come from the gravitational influence of the planets, moon and sun (collectively known as n-body effects), the non-uniform gravitational potential field of the Earth (dominated by the J2 zonal harmonic, and dominates in LEO and orbits with non-zero inclination), atmospheric drag (primarily for LEO objects), and the Yarkovsky Effect (anisotropic thermal radiation emission, which is of particular concern for rotating small bodies in deep space, like asteroids).
These kinds of effects dominate the perturbed orbit and so station keeping maneuvering which is done regularly, will naturally "catch" the polar drift in the process of accounting for other effects. That being said, the drift of the rotation axis is accounted for in other things, primarily the rotation between earth centered inertial reference frames, and earth centered earth fixed frames. | [
"Note that for satellites, orbits are decoupled from the rotation of the Earth so the orbital period is not necessarily one day, but also that errors can accumulate over multiple orbits so that accuracy is important. For such problems, the rotation of the Earth would be immaterial unless variations with longitude a... |
When I'm looking at a star where are my eyes focusing? | At infinity, which is to say they're not focusing, they're staring straight ahead. Their orientations are parallel. | [
"\"Slowly, his eyes adjust to the light of the sun. First he can only see shadows. Gradually he can see the reflections of people and things in water and then later see the people and things themselves. Eventually, he is able to look at the stars and moon at night until finally he can look upon the sun itself (516a... |
What part of a volcanic eruption actually creates a powerful shockwave that can be heard loudly from far away? | This actually depends on the temperature of the magma *and* whether the surface of the magma is solid.
Temperature plays a huge role in whether a volcano is explosive or not. Viscosity of a liquid is strongly linked to it's temperature--warmer magma is more liquidy.
The more viscous magma is, the more often it explodes in an eruption. It just so happens that this explosion causes the shockwave.
The surface of the magma also plays a fairly big role. Magma tends to cool at the surface, and sometimes the surface can turn solid, or very close to a solid. Or, in the case of a caldera--the ground above is solid.
When an eruption happens in this case, there would be way more pressure because of the surface, making a bigger explosion, and in turn a bigger shockwave. | [
"Scientists have been able to connect sounds to sights in both types of eruptions. In 2009, a video camera and a hydrophone were floating 1,200 meters below sea level in the Pacific Ocean near Samoa, watching and listening as the West Mata Volcano erupted in several ways. Putting video and audio together let resear... |
why do younger people seem to prefer instructional videos over text, even when there are few visuals required? | Even if we accept your assertion that the most reliable information is via youtube, that only tells us about the content creators, not the content consumers. And I believe that in many cases, the content creators choose video over audio because it's easier, flashier, and less subject to academic criticism (spelling, grammar, organization).
Nevertheless, I believe your premise is true, even though I can't point to anything that proves it.
In the particular case of gaming, it's often easier to show how to do something than to explain it clearly. It's the picture-worth-a-thousand-words phenomenon.
That doesn't explain it in general. We know that different people have different learning styles, but less about how they develop them. It's possible that with more A/V instruction available (particularly at younger ages), that people simply become more adept at learning that way. But another possibility is that text, while very effective in hard copy, loses its advantages on screen. | [
"In classrooms, teachers and students can use this tool to create videos to explain content, vocabulary, etc. Videos can make class time more productive for both teachers and students. Screencasts may increase student engagement and achievement and also provide more time in which students can work collaboratively i... |
I remember somewhere in one of my high school US history classes that I read that, during the Civil War, it was a common practice for wealthier citizens to picnic on a hill and watch a battle. Was this true? Was this common in other eras as well? | This question has been mostly answered before:
_URL_2_
This was something that mostly just occurred in the First Battle is Bull Run (Manassas). Washington, DC residents believed the battle would just be a rout for Union forces, so they gathered on the hillside to watch. The battle turned out to be the opposite.
Part of the motivation for certain civilians to spectate the battle was for the political networking opportunities, not just to watch a battle for the sake of it. It was also an opportunity for journalists to document what was going on during the battle.
During the civilian retreat, New York congressman Alfred Ely was captured by confederate forces and spent several months in a military prison.
There’s little evidence of this happening during other parts of the war.
Source: _URL_1_
_URL_0_ | [
"During the American Civil War, Soldiers Delight was the scene of minor short-term fights between the Maryland Volunteers of the Confederate Army and the regular troops of the Union Army. After the Civil War and the emancipation of slaves, the great estates of the early families were reduced to many small farms and... |
why do newborn babies smile in their sleep? | TL;DR Gas
Longer answer - babies often have involuntary movements all over their bodies (witness wet/dirty diapers), not just their faces. But it's also known that they dream, and that dreaming is essential for their health and development. Perhaps they still dream of heaven (questionable, of course, and endlessly debatable), or maybe they are just dreaming of their last feeding. But gas is also a possible (and hilarious) answer. | [
"Beginning at birth, newborns have the capacity to signal generalized distress in response to unpleasant stimuli and bodily states, such as pain, hunger, body temperature, and stimulation. They may smile, seemingly involuntarily, when satiated, in their sleep, or in response to pleasant touch. Infants begin using a... |
why can't we average out our sleep? like, if we sleep for 10 hours one day and 6 the next, why do we still feel we didn't get enough sleep even though on an average we slept for 8 hours? | It's not so much that we can't average it, it's that we can't store it. Sleeping 10 hours, when you only need 8 hours, doesn't make you more well-rested than the 8 hours (and in fact may make you feel worse). Think of it like a bucket of water; if you need 8 gallons to fill it put but you put in 10, the extra 2 just overflow and are wasted.
If you sleep 10 hours then 6, you'll be tired. However, you can sometimes sleep 6 hours then 10 and feel good; you incurred more a deficit with the 6, but made up for it the next night so you're back to normal. | [
"\"National Geographic Magazine\" has reported that the demands of work, social activities, and the availability of 24-hour home entertainment and Internet access have caused people to sleep less now than in premodern times. \"USA Today\" reported in 2007 that most adults in the USA get about an hour less than the ... |
why do live tv shows make such a big deal out of not saying the name of a product, when everyone clearly knows what it is? | Why specify live shows? If you every watched Dan Schneider's shows on Nickelodeon, they go one step further and even create fake parody products, like a Pear phone.
When you mention a company, that's advertising, if you weren't paid, that's free advertising. Two issues with this, companies in the future will pay less for product placement because they see that you do it for free, the second is that that company can sue you if you portrayed them negatively. | [
"Some TV programs also deliberately place products into their shows as advertisements, a practice started in feature films and known as product placement. For example, a character could be drinking a certain kind of soda, going to a particular chain restaurant, or driving a certain make of car. (This is sometimes v... |
Do most flying insects share a common ancestor? Or did multiple different species evolve to fly independently? | True flight is an extremely rare and difficult feat in terms of evolution. All known instances of flight in animals can trace its origin back to one of 4 sources (insects, birds, bats, and pterosaurs), and of those only birds are particularly **efficient** fliers.
All flying insects can trace their wings to a single source. | [
"Adult insects typically move about by walking, flying, or sometimes swimming. As it allows for rapid yet stable movement, many insects adopt a tripedal gait in which they walk with their legs touching the ground in alternating triangles, composed of the front & rear on one side with the middle on the other side. I... |
why is it so hard to make a gum that doesn't lose it's flavor? | Main ingredients of gum is a gum base, sweeteners, and flavoring. Your saliva can't break down the base (neither can your stomach acid), but your saliva works quickly to start digesting the sweeteners and flavoring, just like in other food, and you naturally swallow that partially digested flavoring/sweeteners.
So, the answer is, it is very difficult to develop a flavor that can resist the digestion from your saliva. | [
"Studies have shown that gum flavor is perceived better in the presence of sweetener. Companies have started to create chemical systems in gum so that the sweetener and flavor release together in a controlled manner during chewing.\n",
"The polymers that make up the main component of chewing gum base are hydropho... |
what happens to the plastic pouch that's filled with laundry detergent? does it disintegrate into my clothes? is it even really plastic? | It's [polyvinyl alcohol](_URL_0_) and it simply dissolves in the wash water and then goes down the drain. | [
"The bag adheres to the skin using a disk made of flexible, adherent materials. Unfortunately, there can be problems with leaking and rashes (excoriation), and heavy physical exertion will exacerbate deterioration of the appliance. Sometimes the leakage occurs unexpectedly, and \"ostomates\" (as they are known) usu... |
Do injuries take significant amounts of calories? | Yes but it is situational. The injury severity will determine the amount of calories needed for repair. One example is that a second or third degree burn will require substantially more calories for all the metabolic activities required to repair the damaged tissue. Something of this nature can actually cause weight loss in patients who have been hospitalized due to a burn covering a significant amount of the body. To counter this, extra food or supplements will be given to those patients. Something minor like a paper cut will require some caloric energy but nothing major. | [
"BULLET::::- Nutrients – Malnutrition or nutritional deficiencies have a recognizable impact on wound healing post trauma or surgical intervention. Nutrients including proteins, carbohydrates, arginine, glutamine, polyunsaturated fatty acids, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, magnesium, copper, zinc and iron all pla... |
How was jewelry made in 4th century BC in Greece? | I assume that you are mostly interested in the antelope heads, which were probably produced by lost wax casting. Objects made from lost-wax casting have been found that are about 6000 years old, and lost-wax objects associated with the Aegean are found from ~1000BCE. The lost-wax process was widely used across the ancient world and continues to be widely used today.
Basically, the creator would begin by carving the desired object in solid wax. Next, they would create a mould using the solid wax model and plaster or other material. Now the (empty) mould would be used to create a hollow-wax cast by adding successive thin layers of wax to the mould. This hollow cast would be removed and used to form a fireproof mould (often clay-based). This fireproof mould would then be heated so the wax can drain out (be "lost"). Next, melted metal into the mould, and after it cools, remove it. The final casted metal piece will have the shape of the initial wax model used to create the mould. Since wax is a very easy to work material, it's possible to create very fine detail that is carried to the final product, and very easy to create many identical casts.
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"The Greeks started using gold and gems in jewellery in 1600 BC, although beads shaped as shells and animals were produced widely in earlier times. Around 1500 BC, the main techniques of working gold in Greece included casting, twisting bars, and making wire. Many of these sophisticated techniques were popular in t... |
why do you have to pop your ears when you dive down 8/10 feet under water but you can go 70/80 feet up an elevator without having to? | The change in pressure is greater when you go underwater then if you would up a lift in air. Because water is dense it creates more preassure. The same as when you gobup in a plane the preassure difference is very different causong your eara to pop. | [
"When the bell is raised, the pressure will drop and excess air due to expansion will automatically spill under the edges. If the divers are breathing from the bell airspace at the time, it may need to be vented with additional air to maintain a low carbon dioxide level. The decrease in pressure is proportional to ... |
why does the catholic church deal with sexual assault allegations against priests as opposed to the law? | You’re mistaken. The priests answer to the same laws as you and I as applicable in their jurisdiction. However, with all situations such as this, the prosecution needs credible witnesses and bonafide proof to bring these charges against them. This is called due process and it’s guaranteed to all American citizens. The Roman Catholic Church does have the right to conduct its own investigation and then decide whether or not to strip a priest of their privileges based of this internal review process.
Long story short, there are two different processes involved here and they act independently of each other. | [
"Major lawsuits emerged in 2001 claiming that priests had sexually abused minors. In response to the ensuing scandal, the Church has established formal procedures to prevent abuse, encourage reporting of any abuse that occurs and to handle such reports promptly, although groups representing victims have disputed th... |
What caused Irish nationalism to take a distinctly left-wing position? | I would just like to note that European Nationalism is quite often left-wing. The SNP in Scotland, Plaid Cymru in Wales, ETA in Basque, Catalan Nationalism and Kurdish Nationalism are all considered left-of-centre, though of course right wing nationalism still exists (UKIP, the EDL, the French National Front, Golden Dawn) | [
"Irish nationalism has been left-wing nationalism since its mainstream inception. Early nationalists during the 19th century such as the United Irishmen in the 1790s, Young Irelanders in the 1840s, Fenian Brotherhood during the 1880s and Sinn Féin and its successor Fianna Fáil in the 1920s all styled themselves in ... |
the athletic part of being a car racer | Get in a Formula 1 car, drive it around a track in the same time as Lewis Hamilton, and then see how you feel.
Racing cars put a LOT of force on the driver's body, and driving a car at that kind of speed for a long time does put a physical exertion on the driver's. For example, most will lose around 4kg of body weight during the race due to dehydration...
_URL_0_
The other aspect is that "sport" is not necessary "athletic" sport (which, conveniently, used to be called "athletics" until we started adding lots of other sports and condensed "athletics" to only mean track and field).
To some people sport requires running around, to others it requires only skilful competition. Other grey areas include horse riding, eSports, and things like Chess (skillful with little exertion) or Bowling (a physical activity, but hardly "athletic")
It's all about where you define the line between sporting activities and non-sporting activities, and the true answer is that some people do not consider them sports at all, while others do. | [
"Contrary to what may be popularly assumed, racing drivers as a group do not have unusually better reflexes or peripheral response time. During repeated physiological (and psychological) evaluations of professional racing drivers, the two characteristics that stand out are racers' near-obsessive need to control the... |
why does macau drive on the left when portugal drive on the right? | China used to have left and right hand driving in different parts of the country. They standardised it to the right in the '40s, but Macau is semi-autonomous and decided to stay left (like nearby Hong Kong). | [
"The United States Virgin Islands is the only place under United States jurisdiction where the rule of the road is to drive on the left. This was inherited from what was the then-current Danish practice at the time of the American acquisition in 1917. However, because Saint Thomas is a U.S. territory, most cars are... |
This may be a silly question, but what did the Supreme Court do during the American Civil War? | Notable pre Dred Scott Cases.
Amistad-(_URL_1_
> On March 9, Associate Justice Joseph Story delivered the Court's decision. Article IX of Pinckney's Treaty was ruled off topic since the Africans in question were never legal property. They were not criminals, as the U.S. Attorney's Office argued, but rather "unlawfully kidnapped, and forcibly and wrongfully carried on board a certain vessel". The documents submitted by Attorney General Gilpin were not evidence of property, but rather of fraud on the part of the Spanish government. Lt. Gedney and the USS Washington were to be awarded salvage from the vessel for having performed "a highly meritorious and useful service to the proprietors of the ship and cargo".
When La Amistad came into Long Island, however, the Court believed it to be in the possession of the Africans on board, who had no intent to become slaves. Therefore, the Adams-Onís Treaty did not apply, and the President was not required to return the slaves to Africa.
“ Upon the whole, our opinion is, that the decree of the circuit court, affirming that of the district court, ought to be affirmed, except so far as it directs the negroes to be delivered to the president, to be transported to Africa, in pursuance of the act of the 3rd of March 1819; and as to this, it ought to be reversed: and that the said negroes be declared to be free, and be dismissed from the custody of the court, and go without delay.”
[The Antelope]( _URL_3_)
[Prigg vs. Pennsylvania](_URL_2_)
> Writing for the Court, Justice Story reversed the conviction and held the Pennsylvania law unconstitutional as a denial of both the right of slaveholders to recover their slaves under Article IV and the Federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1793, which trumped the state law per the Supremacy Clause. Six justices wrote separate opinions.
Though Story ruled the Pennsylvania laws unconstitutional, his opinion left the door open for further such actions by the state in his writing:
As to the authority so conferred upon state magistrates [to deal with runaway slaves], while a difference of opinion has existed, and may exist still on the point, in different states, whether state magistrates are bound to act under it; none is entertained by this Court that state magistrates may, if they choose, exercise that authority, unless prohibited by state legislation - Justice Story (emphasis added)
This last phrase - "unless prohibited by state legislation" - became the impetus for a number of personal liberties laws enacted by Pennsylvania and the other Northern states. These laws did as the Court had suggested - they prohibited state officials from interfering with runaway slaves in any capacity. Runaways could not be caught or incarcerated, cases could not be heard, and no assistance could be offered to those wishing to recapture slaves. The Fugitive Slave Act still stood, but only federal agents could enforce it.
[Strader v. Graham](_URL_0_)
> the Supreme Court of the United States held that the status of three slaves who went from Kentucky to Indiana and Ohio depended on Kentucky law rather than Ohio law.
And of course [Dread Scott](_URL_4_)
...to complex to sum up here, go read the wiki, and if you read the decisions and dissents you will realize how fucked up of a ruling it was. It really was a shitty shitty decision. Really shitty. I mean, it makes Citizens United look like Brown v. Board. Goddamn what a shitty decision. Thank god for the 14th Amendment and the [Slaughter-House Cases](_URL_5_).
So you can see, there were no Supreme Court cases as far as I can find in a short bit of Google Fu, that actually pertained to the overall legality of slavery, but to the overall ideas of property rights, international and interstate commerce, and citizenship. | [
"The period of the American Civil War and the immediate aftermath of Reconstruction saw shakeups in the Court and in legislation concerning its size. This culminated in the Judiciary Act of 1869, the last piece of legislation which altered the size of the Supreme Court. Pursuant to the Tenth Circuit 1863 Act, Steph... |
how is instagram worth money if it doesn't make money? | Let's say you own facebook. Your friend own's google plus. Even though right now Instagram is not making money, you and your friend both believe that you could use the technology or the product to make money somehow, perhaps by integrating it with your service. If your friend gets control of Instagram entirely, you won't be able to do this, and so you will be missing out on money you could be making. Likewise, if you get control of Instagram, you can make money, and your friend won't. Perhaps you can see where I am going with this. The least messy way to get control of Instagram is to simply buy the company, in which case you now control its employees, its trademarks, its patents, everything about it. But your friend wants it too. So you make offers to the current owner of Instagram, and because you are now willing to pay for it, Instagram is worth money. Generally, people would say it is worth whatever the highest bidder is willing to pay for it, and this price will be driven up by competition. | [
"In February 2011, it was reported that Instagram had raised $7 million in Series A funding from a variety of investors, including Benchmark Capital, Jack Dorsey, Chris Sacca (through Capital fund), and Adam D'Angelo. The deal valued Instagram at around $20 million.\n",
"On Instagram alone a profile with three-to... |
why can isis/isil be considered as an independent state? | It isn't AFAIK. They might call themselves one, but I don't know any state that recognizes that claim.
In terms of how could it be? They do meet a few of the criteria for being a state. | [
"The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), who are also known as Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), have been trying to take back the areas they once controlled. Because of the revolt against the Assad regime in 2011, a civil war broke out which caused the country to weaken, ISIL took the chance to tak... |
Given supernovae release neutrons, allowing heavier elements to be created, as well as the expanding universe, is it theoretically possible for there to be more heavy elements we have yet to find? | The question about superheavy elements has nothing to do with an expanding universe or neutrinos.
We can produce elements up to 118, and beyond uranium (92) their lifetime decreases with increasing element number - while uranium has a lifetime of billions of years the heaviest elements just live fractions of a second. Even heavier elements could live a bit long*er* (maybe several seconds, maybe even days - "island of stability"), it is not expected that there are elements with a long lifetime. Even if supernovae can produce elements beyond 118 (which is unclear on its own), they would probably decay quickly. | [
"Super-heavy elements such as rutherfordium are produced by bombarding lighter elements in particle accelerators that induces fusion reactions. Whereas most of the isotopes of rutherfordium can be synthesized directly this way, some heavier ones have only been observed as decay products of elements with higher atom... |
I'm looking for counterarguments to Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States | While I confess that I'm generally politically sympathetic with the late Howard Zinn, I think that the main problem with his *A People's History of the United States* is that it is polemic, rather than history. It was admirable that Zinn made no efforts to disguise his point of view--everyone has one, and at the end of the day the idea that any human will write a completely dispassionate and "objective" history of anything is positivist foolishness.
However, the problem with *A People's History* is that there's little, if anything, in the way of original research in the book. It is more a cataloging of crimes against history's "victims," cobbled together to make a political point. And though many of the dastardly acts listed therein are not disputed and duly noted, it doesn't make the book a responsible work of history in any meaningful sense.
I'll quote from [an excellent article](_URL_1_) I read a few months back about this:
*In the New York Times, Eric Foner, something of a radical historian himself, explained why Zinn’s bugaboo of “balance” was a red herring: historians are obliged to explore the viewpoints of elite actors, however unattractive, not to parcel out sympathy in proper proportions, but to show, in a faithful account of the past, the interconnectedness of the rulers and ruled, and of all strata of society, and how one group’s experiences influence another’s. But Zinn reduced historical analysis to political opinion. He assessed a work of history by its author’s partisan loyalties, not its arguments about causation, influence, motivation, significance, experience, or other problems he deemed “technical” in nature.*
The article in question was a review of this book, which is worth a read:
Duberman, Martin. [Howard Zinn: A Life on the Left](_URL_0_). The New Press, 2012. | [
"Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922January 27, 2010) was an American historian, playwright, and socialist thinker. He was chair of the history and social sciences department at Spelman College, and a political science professor at Boston University. Zinn wrote over twenty books, including his best-selling and influential... |
how does the same comet pass earth more than once, and how do we figure out their "schedule"? | The vast majority of comets that we see are orbiting around the sun. Solar orbits tend to be fairly stable (although interactions with other bodies can alter them). The orbits of comets tend to be much longer than the Earth's 365 day long orbit, so they don't come around as often, but some of them come by often enough that we've noticed a pattern. Also, with more modern astronomical equipment, we can see some of the comets while they're further away, and by tracking their movement we can calculate their orbits. | [
"If a comet is traveling fast enough, it may leave the Solar System. Such comets follow the open path of a hyperbola, and as such they are called hyperbolic comets. To date, comets are only known to be ejected by interacting with another object in the Solar System, such as Jupiter. An example of this is thought to ... |
the difference between different cpu types | The intel chip and the powerpc chips are different architures. That means that the CPU understands a completely different language. It's as if Intel speaks English, and PowerPC speaks Chinese. | [
"In a multiprocessing system, all CPUs may be equal, or some may be reserved for special purposes. A combination of hardware and operating system software design considerations determine the symmetry (or lack thereof) in a given system. For example, hardware or software considerations may require that only one part... |
why does grunting, groaning or generally making little noises when you are in pain help the pain level go down? | your brain can only take a certain amount of input, and can only focus on so much at a time. By vocalizing, you're focusing your brainpower on an output and a feeling other than the massive pain input that your brain wants to focus on.
Another method that's been proven to work are things like virtual reality sims where someone can explore a complex area and focus on that experience. | [
"Pain asymbolia, also called pain dissociation, is a condition in which pain is experienced without unpleasantness. This usually results from injury to the brain, lobotomy, cingulotomy or morphine analgesia. Preexisting lesions of the insula may abolish the aversive quality of painful stimuli while preserving the l... |
when the federal reserves buys bonds from the market, where exactly is the money coming from? | By printing money - or more accurately, by crediting the reserve balances of their member banks. | [
"BULLET::::4. Every business day, the Federal Reserve System engages in Open market operations. If the Federal Reserve wants to increase the money supply, it will buy securities (such as U.S. Treasury Bonds) anonymously from banks in exchange for dollars. If the Federal Reserve wants to decrease the money supply, i... |
why i can buy a new tv for $300, new tablet for $500 but a new phone costs $700? | A new phone does not cost $700 dollars. *Certain* phones cost $700 dollars, just like there will also be high end TVs that cost $2000 dollars and low end phones that cost $30. And those high end phones cost that much because that is how much people are willing to pay in that market segment. | [
"North American consumers purchase a new television set on average every seven years, and the average household owns 2.8 televisions. , 48 million are sold each year at an average price of $460 and size of .\n",
"In January 2017, Samsung has confirmed that Samsung Pay Mini will not only work on its Galaxy devices... |
Why did a decimal clock and calendar not catch on? | Rest of the decimal units measured things that did not have any natural ratio. So there was nothing inherent about length that required 1ft=12in, so we might as well have all conversion ratios be a power of 10.
But with the calendar there is a natural ratio that is not a power of 10: 1year=365.2.. days. So using a decimal calendar means either giving up the concept of day by, say, dividing the year into 1000 units of \~8hrs or be content with having a non-decimal conversion ratio. In the calendar that was used in France for few years, 1 year had 12 months, each month had 3 decades, and each decade had 10 days. So conversion ratios between successively shorter time spans were 12, 3, and 10. Also, people had religious reasons for treating Sunday differently (which still came once every 7 days), and workers wouldn't have been too happy about rest 1 day in a decade rather than a week. This was not in any sense better than the existing Gregorian calendar.
The decimal clock was a nice idea. 1day = 10hr = 1,000 minutes = 100,000 seconds. I have no idea why it was not accepted more widely. | [
"Between 1794 and 1795, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, the French government briefly mandated decimal clocks, with a day divided into 10 hours of 100 minutes each. The astronomer and mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace, among other individuals, modified the dial of his pocket watch to decimal time. A clo... |
why when people get older they get this blue circle around their pupils? | It's not around their pupils. It's in the cornea, which is the first thing your finger touches if you decide to poke yourself right in the middle of your eye. It's called arcus senilus. It's above the iris, which surrounds the pupils.
Over the course of your life, your body likes to put cholesterol in all sorts of places its not meant to go. It's just a fact of life. It occurs slowly over time. In your eyes, as you age it's thought that the blood vessels become more leaky over time, and these special carrier vessels full of cholesterol called "Low density lipoprotein" will exit and get stuck in the cornea, usually in the very bottom or very top layer. These deposits can be found elsewhere in the eye as well. Because your sight is through your pupil, the small hole in the middle of the iris, this halo/ring won't affect your eyesight.
Low density lipoproteins or LDLs are also involved in another disease that takes a long time to happen called cardiovascular disease. It's what causes the majority of heart attacks. It's when LDL/cholesterol gets stuck in the walls of your arteries and can't get back out again. In both arcus senilus and cardiovascular disease, being young and having very high LDL, less specifically cholesterol, can cause the ring and heart attacks. | [
"Dark circles are likely to become more noticeable and permanent with age. This is because as people get older, their skin loses collagen, becoming thinner and more translucent. Circles may also gradually begin to appear darker in one eye than the other as a result of some habitual facial expressions, such as an un... |
What is the smallest body in space that can have or support an atmosphere? | If a gas molecule in the upper atmosphere is going faster than escape velocity, then it's gone! This is called [Jeans escape.](_URL_1_)
Magnetic fields help by giving escaping molecules a chance to redirect, but the main force holding the atmosphere on is gravity.
At a given temperature and at equilibrium all types of molecules will have the same average kinetic energy. Lighter molecules will have higher average [(root-mean-squared)](_URL_0_) velocities. As the temperature increases or mass and escape velocity decreases, light molecules such as hydrogen escape first while heavier molecules escape later.
Almost all sizable objects technically have some kind of atmosphere, although on low-mass rockballs such as Mercury and the moon it's mostly a very thin collection sodium and other elements heavy enough to stay bound. | [
"The smallest solid objects can have water. At Earth, falling particles returned by high-altitude planes and balloons show water contents. In the outer Solar System, atmospheres show water spectra where water should have been depleted. The atmospheres of giant planets and Titan are replenished by infall from an ext... |
why are there so many more shootings, attacks, and bombings in europe than the us when the us is more actively involved in destabilized regions than countries, for instance, like france? | 1. There aren't more shootings in Europe than in the USA, but there are more Islamic terrorist attacks, which I presume is your point.
2. Europe is more populous than the USA, the EU alone has over 500m residents. More people = more stuff happening.
3. Europe is closer to areas of unrest and shares land borders leading to the whole of Eurasia. You can walk from Beijing to Lisbon, so it's easier for terrorists to get around.
4. As a collection of countries it is more difficult for Europe to have unified action. Sharing intelligence and coordinating operations is more difficult when dealing with multiple governments and a large number of languages.
Of these I'd suggest that proximity is the biggest factor. Europe is a closer, and therefore, easier target.
| [
"Since 2014, more than 20 fatal attacks have been carried out in Europe. France saw eight attacks between January 2015 and July 2016; this included the January 2015 Île-de-France attacks, the November 2015 Paris attacks, and the July 2016 Nice truck attack. The United Kingdom saw three major attacks carried out in ... |
What are some good history books about 1970s-1990s America (both domestically and in the wider world)? | A couple of good places to start are James Patterson's *Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore* or Sean Wilentz' *The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008*. Wilentz focuses primarily on politics while Patterson is a bit more wide-ranging by also including things like culture, economics, and society. Both books focus a little on foreign relations, although it's not a major component. For that, I think a good book would be Hal Brands *Making the Unipolar Moment: US Foreign Policy and the Rise of the Post-Cold War Order*. I can give other suggestions if you're interested in something more specific than what these overviews offer. | [
"The Sixties is a documentary miniseries which premiered on CNN on May 29, 2014. Produced by Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman's studio Playtone, the 10-part series chronicled events and popular culture of the United States during the 1960s.\n",
"The Seventies is a documentary miniseries which premiered on CNN on June ... |
How much of "The Rape of Belgium" actually happened and how much of it was inflamed propaganda? | I recommend John Horne and Alan Kramer's *German Atrocities 1914: A History of Denial*. It takes an extremely detailed look at the atrocities, the propaganda that followed (from BOTH sides), and the ways it was portrayed in the years following the war. /u/NMW and /u/elos_ have, to my knowledge, given answers about it in the past as well.
In August 1914, about 5600 Belgian and 900 French civilians were murdered outright by advancing German Army units. At Leuven, the old medieval library and university were set ablaze, and over a hundred people were shot. At Dinant alone, over 600 Belgian civilians were killed. These were most certainly NOT isolated incidents, though the petered off towards the end of August.
When the Bryce Report, the source of much controversy, was published in 1915, it drew from a number of sources: Allied soldiers testimony, civilian testimony, captured diaries, and POW interviews. It contained lurid tails of babies being bayonetted and nuns being 'rung to death' on church bells. These were of course exaggeration, but they were included alongside many bonafide stories largely because the British had little information sources besides what they had, which wasn't much to begin with. Bryce ensured that it was made clear that not all of the stories could be verified, but he felt it his duty to publish these stories to avoid an even greater untruth, and that was that the Germans, as was claimed in the German 'White' Book, had done nothing unjustified, and had been perfectly civil.
Arthur Ponsonby, in *Falsehood in Wartime*, would claim that none of the stories could be trusted, because the interviewees were not under legal oath to tell the truth. The interviewees of the German 'White' Book *were*, and yet a study done in the 1950s by German and French scholars found the 'White' Book to be full of nothing but perjury.
TL;DR: It happened, but the more lurid tales (maimed babies, murdered nuns) were exaggeration. | [
"During the First World War, Montgomery, horrified by reports of the \"Rape of Belgium\" in 1914, was an intense supporter of the war effort, seeing the war as a crusade to save civilization, regularly writing articles urging men to volunteer for the Canadian expeditionary force and for people on the home front to ... |
could the force of a hurricane affect the rate of earths rotation? | Alright, math time. So an average hurricane's radius is about 500 km and is about 15 mm high. Approximating it as a cylinder, that means that it is moving a total volume of about 11 million cubic km of air. With a density of 1.225 kg/m^3, that is about 1.3×10^16 kg or air. That's a big number! That is, until we consider the fact that the earth's mass is about 6×10^24 kg. Let's just assume that the earth is a uniform sphere (which it isn't, but it makes things easier), it should have angular momentum of about 5.8×10^33 kg m^2/s. So for the hurricane to actually effect the rotation, it should be at least within 1% of that, so let's just be generous to and require it to have an angular momentum of about 10^31 kg m^2/s. With a moment of inertia of about 3×10^27 kg m^2, our hurricane would have to rotate at about 3000 rotations *per second*. That is to the point where we can no longer calculate the wind velocity classically, since we get about 1.5 million km/s for the winds at the outer edge, which is about 5 times the speed of light, and since nothing can travel faster than light, this answer is wrong. So, we would have to use relativity to find the correct velocity. So essentially, for an average sized hurricane to actually affect the rotation of the earth, the wind speed would have to be very close to the speed of light, and that is under the most ideal conditions (that all of the hurricanes angular momentum comes from the angular momentum of the earth rotating). | [
"It was from the 1821 Norfolk and Long Island hurricane that William C. Redfield published his account in the American Journal of Science presenting his first evidence that hurricanes had counter-clockwise rotation of destructive winds from area tree fall patterns he examined. This also corroborated John Farrar's p... |
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